Wes Huff on Rogan, Sufficiency of Scripture, Some Calvin Robinson

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:31

How in the world do people have this huge amount of time to listen to...

00:36

Man, we got a lot of stuff on this desk. We gotta clean it all out. Gotta clean all the stuff on the other side, all the connections.

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It just looks terrible. I think we've got Christmas toys here.

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All right. Anyways, I've heard people saying, how do you have...

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These people have three hours, twice a week to listen to Joe Rogan.

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And it's true. I don't. And we only do generally about two hours per week.

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Sometimes, you know, last program was an hour 45. We were talking about debating. Some people really liked it.

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Our friendly debate coach out there loved it. Then other people always have little picky things.

01:22

They've just got to throw at you. Oh, it's just too conversational. Well, okay.

01:28

What am I supposed to have slides or something? I guess I could have. I'd wanted to.

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But yeah, anyway. So evidently, since the

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Wes Hough interview... Now, of course, these could be recorded different times. So I don't know.

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But good old Mel Gibson was on. Okay. So one of the clips that's floating around with Mel Gibson is him going after Francis.

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What you need to understand, and I understand Sedevacantist or Sedevacantist, I've heard it pronounced both ways.

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Sedevacantism means Sede, seat, vacant, you get. The seat is vacant.

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There is no current valid Pope. And Mel Gibson has been a radical

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Sedevacantist for a very long time. In fact, when he did the Passion of the

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Christ movie many years ago now, man, it's coming up on like 20 years ago or something,

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I think. When he did that, the director's cut

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DVD had him talking about the film.

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And one of the two other people that he had on to discuss stuff was

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Jerry Matitix. Now, Jerry Matitix is a Sedevacantist as well. I'm not sure exactly when he became a

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Sedevacantist. I think it had something to do with his initial leaving

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Catholic Answers. Yes, would have been on John Paul.

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Yes. John Paul II, that is. Now, he couldn't have been one in 93 because when

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I challenged Catholic Answers to debate the papacy during the World Youth Day in 93 in Denver, they directed us to Jerry Matitix, who had already left

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Catholic Answers. So I don't think they would have done that if he was a Sedevacantist then.

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But certainly within the next couple of years, he adopted that position.

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And he was the one, obviously he knows Mel Gibson. And so he was the one they had on to do the director's cut conversation, blah, blah, blah thing they had at the time.

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So Mel is not an Orthodox Roman Catholic. And that's been known for decades.

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So people are quoting that one, man, listen to what he's saying about Francis and all this stuff.

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And it's like, well, yeah, there are Roman Catholics saying that kind of stuff about Francis right now, let alone people who don't even think he's a

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Pope like Mel Gibson. But a clip just popped up.

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And I put on the screen, but we probably end up getting dinged for it or something like that.

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I mean, this is one of those things where I'm sitting here the last few minutes before the program starts.

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You can't be doing much of anything else other than just being prepared and ready to go. And this pops up. It's the first time

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I've seen it. And I remember when this happened, but we'll just listen to the audio.

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Here's a little bit of what Mel says to Joe Rogan about Francis.

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I mean, we got a Pope that brought a South American idol into the church to worship. Really? He did.

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The Pachamama. I don't know what that is. It's kind of like a

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South American God, Pachamama. Why would he do that? Good question.

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But he did. Did he have an explanation for why he did it? Yeah, it's kind of a weasel worded thing of like, all religions are just as good as one another.

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But if that's his contention, it shouldn't be the Pope. No. How can you be the Pope and say all religions are just as good?

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We all worship. So, yeah, that's the Pachamama. There you go. So he brought that in.

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Yeah, into the Vatican. Then the hierarchy even worshipped that they had a ceremony around the outside.

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What? Well, that constitutes apostasy. That's an apostasy. Worshipping false gods.

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That's number one on the Mosaic hit list. Moses goes up on the mountain, he comes back down, people are worshiping him with a golden calf.

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It's that. He's right as far as that's concerned.

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This is what ecumenism looks like. Honestly, the defense that would be made is this is sort of a

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Marian concept and this transcends cultural norms and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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And look, once you've abandoned Sola Scriptura, what are you supposed to do?

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How are you supposed to stop something like this? Because the Bishop of Rome is now your ultimate standard.

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He's your guy. And under John Paul II, we were doing...

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I first started debating Roman Catholics under John Paul II. That's how long he was

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Pope. And there was consistency.

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But what the consistency was, was one year, he'd throw something out to the conservatives and all the liberals would have their hair on fire.

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And the next year, he'd throw something out to the liberals and all the conservatives that have their hair on fire. But he'd just keep doing that. So it was sort of the via media, in the middle, someplace type thing.

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So at least when we started debating with them, they had somewhat of a consistent guy that you could point to and say, hey, he's our ultimate authority.

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And then they got Ratzinger. And look, on a scholarly level, you've got to respect

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Ratzinger. He was one of the best scholars Rome had. But then he resigns.

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And I don't know if we will ever really know exactly why. I don't know if we're going to get answers to all that stuff in heaven.

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But if we do, that'll be a fascinating one. I'm not sure we will, because I'm sure it's very sinful and all the rest of that stuff.

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And we may not just care at that point. But he resigns and we end up with Francis.

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And that doesn't make a lick of sense either, because Ratzinger and Francis were not on the same page at all.

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So who knows? Who knows? So there's good old

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Mel on Joe Rogan. And that's all fascinating and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

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But we'll be talking a little bit more about Joe Rogan here in a second. There's been all this discussion over the past few days about who should go on Joe Rogan next.

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Well, you know what? I think actually Joe Rogan's people started doing all that stuff. But it's all people, yeah, get

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James White on there. And I immediately responded to that and go, I don't think I fit there.

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I don't view myself as... I get the feeling that Joe Rogan...

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Wes Hough was perfect, because Wes is buff. He's 33 years old. So he's four years older than when

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I did my first debate back in 1990. And so there could be a give and take there.

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And I just get the feeling that that's more keeping Rogan's interest. I mean, he said wow 33 times,

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I think. Someone did a wow count, and it was like 33 wows from Joe Rogan on that.

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So even though we were saying a lot of the same things, talking about textual criticism, the history of the manuscripts, stuff like that.

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And that's been so encouraging to me. And I said this, I'm sure at some point since the last trip, because I listened to his encounter with that black fellow that just obviously doesn't have a clue what he's talking about.

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Hearing people talking about the scribal habits of Codex Sinaiticus, CBGM, P52, P45, you know, sits behind me every time.

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And hearing other people talking about this stuff is extremely encouraging to me.

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Some people say, oh, everything's going on, it's all turf war. No. We need lots of Wes Huffs.

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We need the next generation. They've got to be coming up.

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And my biggest hope is that this ministry has been an encouragement to those next generations of people that are coming up, because we ain't going to be here forever.

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And we shouldn't be. That's not how it's supposed to work. The whole idea of producing hopefully 200 plus moderated public debates and who knows how many thousands of hours of the

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Dividing Line webcast and everything else, the books, it ain't for us.

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It's for the benefit of the church now and in the future.

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That's the whole reason you do this. You're supposed to be doing the things you're doing anyways. So, yes, sir.

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You raised the microphone. I just wanted to chime in here. When you were coming up, the big names were

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Martin, Walter Martin, Geisler. And they were sucking all the oxygen out of the rooms they were in.

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There wasn't any room for younger men. There wasn't any encouragement in that, as I recall. And when you tried to reach out to them, it was brick wall.

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And Hanegraaff did reach out on the King James Only controversy, if I recall, was the first time that kind of thing happened.

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But that was well down the road in establishing this ministry. And we've never wanted to be those guys to where it's like, you know what?

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We have a corner on the market and there's no room for you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Some of the big ministries,

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I think it's one of the reasons that we've remained relatively small. I mean, the big ministries could buy and sell us multiple times a year, budgetarily speaking.

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And I'm sort of thankful that we've stayed that way because we don't have to be concerned about things like that.

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There were a couple of times that things happened in the history of this ministry where I said something that caused a problem for some of the multi -million dollar ministries.

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And that's when I realized, you know, they sort of view things as competition and stuff like that.

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And we just don't think like that. We don't think about turf wars and stuff like that.

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And so I can sit back and I can see a Westhoff who,

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I think I mentioned when we reviewed his non, it wasn't a debate, it was a discussion. And in fact, most of the program wasn't even with the guy that makes all the wild and crazy claims.

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It was with the host of the program who calls himself a Christian, but has a lot of, doesn't seem to view scripture the way that Jesus viewed scripture.

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Let's just at the time that it's so necessary and refreshing to hear others getting to talk about stuff.

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Look, since 20, for the past seven or eight years, past seven or eight years, who's been about the only person other than Peter Gurry at Phoenix Seminary?

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Who's been the person talking most in the non -academic world out where stuff gets done in the church about CBGM?

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Me. And look that again, if we had to somehow support big buildings and staffs and all the rest of that stuff,

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I probably wouldn't be able to talk about stuff like that. I'd have to be always looking for what's going to get the most engagement and clicks and all the rest of that kind of stuff now.

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And so I wouldn't be able to talk about CBGM because there's a lot of folks that are like, I think

15:56

I'll find something else to listen to when you start talking about CBGM. Now I know we've got our geeks, we have a geek army.

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There's no two ways about it. My daughter still mocks me about our fans.

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But for a lot of folks, it's just sort of like, okay. And we try to say, hey, we're talking about this for this reason.

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This is the apologetic value of this. This is why this is so important. We try to make sure that people get that and understand that.

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But still, I'm thankful that we are as small as we are so we can do the things that we do and we can address the topics that need to be addressed that have a long -term value to the church.

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So everybody's been saying, hey, why don't you review the thing with Joe Rogan?

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Well, everybody's seen it. You've even sat down and listened to it now, or you've seen a bunch of clips from it. And what

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I found fascinating, look, I have no interest in reviewing the particular interview because I know what it's like to be in that context.

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So when social media was starting to get going when

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I did the Bible Answer Man broadcast with Hank Hanegraaff and George Bryson, it was still relatively new though.

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So I know what it's like to have people nitpicking every little thing you say.

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You're the one in the studio. You're the one getting questions when you're on Bible Answer Man back then anyways.

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It still had an audience. You'd have callers and you wouldn't know what was behind that blinking light.

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You wouldn't know where they're coming from. You wouldn't know what they're going to ask. And it's real easy to second guess people on stuff.

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And so I'm really hesitant to do that to others because I've been there. I've had that happen to me.

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And people will say, well, you should have said this, or you didn't emphasize this enough, and I know this is coming from people who've never done anything like this in their life and probably shouldn't do anything like that in their life, honestly.

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And look, some people are saying, hey, you need to have him on. You can talk textual criticism. Yeah, but look, he's a busy guy and he's much more busy now.

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My understanding is he's in his church. His wife is expecting. They've got young kids in the house.

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He's trying to finish his dissertation. And what

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I found interesting is he put out a video and I tweeted it. I retweeted it. And I said,

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I think this is more important for me anyways than the actual interview to talk about because what he was basically saying, and I've communicated this to him too.

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I did contact him. I said, you know, I'm praying for your wisdom. It's wisdom to know what opportunities to embrace and others to let pass by because you can't do it all.

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It's not possible. No one man can. And what you want to do, you want to do with real quality, which requires preparation.

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Now, the first thing he did, that dialogue, that discussion, which he only had 24 hours, didn't require as much preparation because what the guy was saying is just indefensible.

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It's so way out there. So I've done a number of conversations, radio programs, even a few debates where I had very little preparation time.

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I don't like that. If you listen to the last program, I spent at least four months preparing for the price debate, six months preparing for the urban debate and massive amounts of reading, listening, especially listening to Bart Ehrman's classes and stuff like that.

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That's the way I like to do debates. But look, on some issues, if you've got some type of Peter Ruckman clone disrupting a church,

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I don't have to have any preparation to deal with that at all. We've been there, done that, got the t -shirt.

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Most Mormon topics today, there's been some developments, there's been some changes in the church, stuff like that.

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But if we were to deal with Book of Mormon archaeology or something like that, you better be prepared to be able to do that.

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Not much has changed. Well, it has changed. The Mormon church ain't claiming nearly what it used to claim in regards to Book of Mormon archaeology and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

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But a lot of that stuff, it's sort of second nature, especially if you've been doing it for years and years and years and years and years and years and years.

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But most of the time, if you're going to do serious debates, you want to have time to do so. And so what

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Wes Huff said in this video was, hey, just because I decline your challenge to debate doesn't mean you're right.

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He says he's gotten hundreds of challenges to debate. And yeah, I get that. It's a daily thing.

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If you put yourself out there, you do debates, you're going to get this. And you've got that how to be

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Christian guy that we dealt with years and years and years ago. Guy seems a little autistic to me on the spectrum.

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He really does. He doesn't understand language. He doesn't understand exegesis.

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He doesn't understand logic. He'll just grab this thing here and grab that thing. Oh, look at this.

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You can put them together. No, you can't. Nobody does that. Well, even your church doesn't do that. Well, but it still refutes you.

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There's all sorts of folks like that out there that you just have to go, you have a nice day.

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See, I won. It's like, okay, all right, if you say so. So I'm sure he's just getting overwhelmed with that kind of stuff.

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And look, if it was somebody, if someone said, hey, I'll pay the big bucks because it does take big bucks to put together a debate between you and Bart Ehrman.

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I'm sure Wes would want to do that, but he'd want to have the time to do it right. And the other thing he said was, look,

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I've made commitments, family, wife's pregnant, and I'm working,

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I'm trying to finish my dissertation. And I've already committed to going to this place and that place.

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You don't just throw all that out and say, well, you know what, I'm famous now, so I'm not going to worry about you and do that type of thing.

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So I really appreciated the fact that he understands you have to prepare.

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And the majority of what takes place, the very fact that that first program he was on, people called it debate, debate, debate.

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It was not a debate. Wes said it was not a debate. There was no thesis, there was no moderator, there wasn't equal time, there wasn't rules.

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It was supposed to be a discussion that came about in only 24 hours.

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He understands what debate really is and how it needs to be prepared for.

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And so this wasn't a debate with Joe Rogan or anything like that. It was meant to be a conversation, a discussion.

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And so I just really, really appreciated what he had to say in that particular thing.

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And by the way, he was on with the Apologia guys. I didn't get to be there.

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We normally are on the air at the same time that they are. So unless we coordinate something.

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And in fact, I would have met him back in, I'm pretty sure it was 2019, because it was before COVID.

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I had gone back to New York and Jeff and Luke and Zach and I had visited

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Palmyra, New York. And we had visited the First Vision Grove and the house and all this stuff.

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And we were standing there in the house talking about all sorts of things that Joseph Smith did and people were not appreciative of that.

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But anyway, and then they had driven across the border up to an

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Ezra Institute conference. And I had flown home. I could have maybe changed arrangements and stuff like that, but I had other stuff to do.

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And I wasn't speaking there. And I wasn't one of the fellows at Ezra Institute yet.

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But lo and behold, Jeff spoke in the afternoon, Wes Huff spoke in the morning.

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So we would have met at that point. But that didn't happen. But there was that connection at that point, even back then.

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And so Ezra Institute, that's quality stuff.

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From my perspective, that's why I'm associated with it. And he was already involved with doing that kind of stuff.

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And man, he would have been like 28 or something like that at that point in time, even younger.

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So his background is fascinating. He was born in Pakistan or Afghanistan.

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I think it's Pakistan. And parents, missionaries, so exposure to all sorts of languages.

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Again, the older I get, the more I keep repeating. I've said for years and years and years, because I've said for years and years and years and years, that one of the fundamental weaknesses that I see in most apologists is their lack of linguistic training.

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They can't pick up a Greek New Testament and read it. They can't interpret the textual data at the bottom of the page, whether it's

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UBS 5th or NA 28th currently. And most of them are not connected to the church.

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He's an elder in his church. I mean, that's fantastic. So it seems to me he's started off on the right foot.

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And so my prayer is just, Lord, protect him and give him wisdom as to how to take advantage of the opportunities that come without burning out, without getting overwhelmed.

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I remember at that age, we could barely pay our bills.

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It was so hard to do things. It's different today with social media. Here, it's just this immediate, massive exposure.

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That wasn't even an opportunity. It wasn't even an option back in my day to have that kind of thing happen.

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So that's a lot of pressure to have put upon someone. And so I hope there's good people in his life that will give good advice.

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And it really seems like he's looking for that and wants to have that kind of stuff.

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So that's really positive. So it was the short video he put out basically saying, hey,

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I don't have to accept every debate challenge. I've done debates. Will I do debates in the future?

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Most probably. But I have other priorities. And y 'all don't have to have all the same priorities.

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If Wes does 25 really important great debates in his life, and I do over 200, does that mean something?

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No. Because he will be spending his time doing other things. There are areas that I've gotten into he probably won't, and vice versa.

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He's clearly studied areas that I have not. But we have a lot of overlap, a lot of area where we've been dealing with the same stuff.

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And that's exactly how it should be. And that's a really positive thing from my perspective.

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So some of the criticisms I've seen, again, it's so easy to sit back, look at a three and a half hours,

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I think is what it was, a three and a half hour program and say, well, you should have done this. You should have done that. I would have done this.

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You don't know what you would have done. You don't know what happened in the hour before the program started.

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If you've never done something where literally 100 million people are going to be watching what you're saying, don't sit there and pretend like you can go,

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I would have done this, or I would have said it this way, or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, no, you don't.

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So quit pretending you do. And then I saw someone saying, well, you got a lot of historical stuff wrong.

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And I'm like, what? What are you referring to? And I caught something.

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I caught something. You would have caught the same thing. For some reason, Mormonism came up.

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And Joe Rogan does not like Mormonism. He has no respect for Joseph Smith, which, okay, he claimed to be a prophet, and he most certainly wasn't.

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So I would agree on that level. But at one point, Wes quoted, we believe the

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Bible is the word of God as far as translated correctly, which is the, I just woke

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Rich up. He's just sitting there in front of the microphone.

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He goes, eighth article of faith in the church, Jesus Christ, Latter -day Saints. He had the same thing happen to him at 33 that just happened to you at 64.

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He called it the 10th article of faith. It's the eighth article of faith. Whoop -de -doo.

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I'm grasping for the actual, okay, there's this many articles of faith. Is it 14 articles of faith?

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Something like that? Yeah. Okay. That's what I was struggling with. I wasn't even trying to go for the number. Yeah. Eighth.

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That's from the 14 articles of faith. That's what I was going to say. Right. No, but it's the eighth. So it's the eighth article of faith.

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And of course, they don't really emphasize, those were early on in Mormon history and stuff like that.

31:04

But okay. I doubt that when he walked in there, Mormonism was anywhere close to the top of the list of things he thought he'd be talking about.

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I would not have connected that with Joe Rogan. That's not going to be the one I expect to talk about. No, I would because sometimes

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Rogan will say something and all of a sudden it's like, how did he get there? I got no idea, but you sort of got to be ready for almost anything.

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But it's like, okay, I probably have a lot more experience than the early Mormons. There probably weren't very many

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Mormons in his youth. Okay. But what does that mean?

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It means nothing. I've spent countless hours in conversation with LDS missionaries and people like that for decades.

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And so yeah, it's something that sticks in the mind. A couple of weeks ago, we were out at the

32:01

Christmas lights thing in Mesa, where it was extremely warm.

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I was listening to my son -in -law and he was talking to somebody.

32:15

And sometimes when the light would catch a bunch of people to corner, he'd just start doing street preaching type stuff.

32:24

And he was quoting from the King Follett funeral discourse. We have imagined, supposed to God's God from all eternity. I'll refute that idea.

32:31

And then he said, and lift the veil so that you may see. What? Right.

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And I'm sitting there going, now what I did, because I can't trust my memory the way

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I used to. What I did was, I may have even asked Grok.

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There's now a freestanding Grok app for your phone. So you can just go straight to Grok now.

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And I verified that the way I had memorized it was correct. I will take away the veil so that you may see, not lift up the veil.

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And so once I checked myself, I went over to him and said, I've got a bone to pick with you.

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And when I told him, he's like, are you sure? And I'm like, yeah. And then later on in the evening,

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I heard him doing it again. And he sort of looked over at me and smiled and said, lift up. He says, it's just the way I've memorized it.

33:32

I said, they're going to catch it. Somebody's going to catch it. He says, well, I'm not sure that's the most important differentiation.

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And remember, that's the funeral discourse. There were no recordings. That was a transcription.

33:45

Somebody was writing that down. So maybe Eric could argue that. But they will jump all over those kinds of things.

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Oh, I know that. I know that. And I told him that. I told him that. Now, does any of that have anything at all to do with the essence of what

34:02

Joseph Smith was saying? No, it doesn't. So I just found some of the criticisms to be rather picky -une.

34:12

And it's like, no. 99 .9

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% of the people making criticisms could not have dealt with the broad range of topics and issues that came up in that conversation.

34:34

They couldn't have. So until you can do that, keep your criticisms to yourself and don't worry about it.

34:41

So I'm just thankful that after hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of a lot of really foolish stuff going unchallenged on Joe Rogan's podcast and so many others, we finally had somebody get to demonstrate that you can stand toe -to -toe with these people.

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That was some of the value of my debate with Bart Ehrman. You can go toe -to -toe with these people. And we don't normally get the opportunity to do that.

35:15

But so when you do, you need to take advantage of it. So that's good.

35:22

Next thing. Probably did not see the announcement of this because most people have no earthly idea of how it's relevant.

35:33

But Richard Hayes died. And you go, who's

35:39

Richard Hayes? Well, not that long ago, I dealt with, and I forgot to grab the book.

35:49

At least I think I forgot to grab the book. Yeah. I had it with me on the last trip because I commented on it in St.

35:57

Charles. But A Widening of God's Mercy, it came out only a few months ago.

36:07

And it was Richard Hayes and his son who teaches Old Testament at Fuller Seminary. And if you recall, when it first came out,

36:18

I talked about it in the program and I said, look, there is one page in this book that even makes reference to the key texts in the

36:29

Bible that address the subject of homosexuality, one page. And on that page, they basically said, we're not going to talk about these texts because the thesis of this book is that there has been a widening of God's mercy that makes these texts irrelevant.

36:46

There has been a re -envisioning of scriptural teaching. And that's what we are presenting.

36:53

That's what we're promoting. And I explained at the time, this is the only direction they can go.

37:03

This is very similar to the hermeneutic of love. Now it's the hermeneutic of mercy.

37:11

I've talked to you about when Dr. Kirk used the same kind of argumentation in debating

37:17

Robert Gagnon in Scottsdale, Arizona, the day after I got back from South Africa one year, where he basically said, well, look, in the

37:28

New Testament, we see the widening of God's mercy in the embracing of the Gentile, something that the

37:35

Jews never could have imagined. And now what we're seeing today is the widening of God's mercy and the inclusion of our

37:45

LGBTQ brothers and sisters. And remember, that was where Kirk said, well, we've managed to get past the apostle

37:53

Paul, who was a first century Jew, his narrow views of things, and even

37:59

Jesus, who was a first century Jew. We've learned to get past that kind of narrowness.

38:05

And that just leaves everybody going, what? So this was what you have.

38:18

This is all you can get these days. And so it's just, it's a tragedy in many ways that the last public thing that Richard Hayes does is release this book that re -envisions the entirety of God's law.

38:45

And it does so, so as to turn it upside down and to empty scripture of its message, because that's what it does.

38:52

So as to embrace this, you know, whatever behavior

38:58

God's mercy is going to be wide enough to embrace it type of stuff. Talk about not finishing well.

39:07

Talk about not finishing well. What a tragedy. Really, to have spent your life studying the

39:17

New Testament and teaching the New Testament, and to end with something where the apostle

39:24

Paul, can you imagine what Paul would have said? Well, their theory would be, oh, well,

39:30

Paul would have embraced our perspective because he could have seen what the spirit of God was doing and all this kind of stuff, but not finishing well, not finishing well at all.

39:45

It's, it's a sad thing to have to talk about. Let's see here.

39:52

Oh, yesterday morning was

39:58

Jimmy Carter's funeral. Now you were, were you in the service briefly during that time?

40:06

No. During Carter's presidency. Very briefly.

40:13

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Very briefly. Okay. All right. I just remember, I just remember you mentioning something about that.

40:22

And my, you know, the feeling that I had and most people had at that time was the nation suffered greatly under Jimmy Carter.

40:35

He was just incompetent. And we were weak. During his presidency, you had the

40:42

Iranian hostage crisis and man, how, how ABC News and what that, what was that guy's name?

40:52

You're thinking Ted Koppel. Ted Koppel. It was nightline. And started with day one, then day two, then day three.

40:59

And it went like, what, 300 some odd? Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. Night after night after night, just counting down the hostage crisis.

41:05

And then we sent the helicopters across the desert. That crashed. Yeah. And that, that, that happened.

41:12

I had been in basic training for two weeks at that point. Yeah. Yeah. So are you admitting that you're the one that made them crash?

41:25

No. Okay. All right. Anyway. Okay. So the whole nation, you know, just, and, and I remember when

41:35

Reagan was, when Reagan won and it was a landslide. I mean, both his elections were landslides, just he and, and Dukakis.

41:43

Oh my goodness. Remember him in the tank? Dukakis was against Bush. That's right.

41:49

You're thinking Mondale. Mondale. And so the only state that Mondale won in that was his home state,

41:54

Minnesota. Minnesota. Yeah. Which still says something about Minnesota to this day. But anyways, yeah.

42:00

Dukakis was the one in the tank. So just putting that out there that Canada can have them if they want to. Hey, hey, come on.

42:05

I was born there. Yeah. I know. Be nice. Anyway. Be nice. Yeah. There were some really bad, bad

42:13

Democratic candidates back then. They just really, really weren't very good. Then again, we ended up with Clinton.

42:19

That's, that's pretty bad too. Anyway. Once Reagan got in office, man, talk about the, the whole nation felt different.

42:28

Everything, everything changed. It really, really did. So anyway, Jimmy Carter, once he left office, one term president, my recollection was he was a pain to everybody, including

42:42

Clinton. I mean, he's, he's trying to insert himself in foreign policy and he's traveling around and doing stuff and, and everybody's like, that's probably illegal.

42:52

What is, what in the world is he doing? And then of course, Jimmy Carter had called himself a born again Christian.

42:57

He was a Southern Baptist. And yet, especially after his presidency, he was, he was behind gay rights and homosexual mirage and, and all this kind of stuff.

43:14

And so it just, I was at a chiropractic office yesterday morning and I looked up and I see this guy getting ready to play a guitar.

43:31

And they're, they're showing the past presidents and their wives sitting there. And yes,

43:37

I have seen the hilarious AI produced thing where, where Kamala and Jill Biden start punching each other out and, and, uh, things like that.

43:48

And, uh, but, um, anyway, I didn't even recognize the guy who was singing.

43:54

It was Garth Brooks. Didn't recognize him. And then some other chick that joined in with him, but what,

44:03

Tricia Yearwood? Was it Tricia Yearwood? I think it's Tricia Yearwood. Yeah. Um, but they start singing the world's worst song.

44:13

Okay. I mean, it really is the world's worst song. John Lennon's Imagine.

44:19

And we use Imagine as an example of the nihilistic empty worldview of communism.

44:31

Cause, cause that's what it is. It's a communist manifesto. It's a communist theme song. No nations, no borders, no possessions and above you only sky, no religion, no judgment, you know, all this stuff.

44:48

And yet everybody's happy. Wasn't one of the lines, no heaven above, only earth below?

44:55

Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. I might actually, hold on a second here. I, um, yeah.

45:04

But this isn't news to anyone. This has always been known that this song was a atheist anthem.

45:14

Imagine there is no heaven. It's easy. If you try no hell below us, above us only sky. Imagine all the people living for today.

45:21

Imagine there's no countries. It isn't hard to do nothing to kill or die for and no religion to imagine all the people living life in peace.

45:30

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us and the world will be as one.

45:36

Imagine no possessions. I wonder if you can no need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man.

45:42

Imagine all the people sharing all the world. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us and the world will live as one.

45:49

Okay. So obviously, uh,

45:56

John Lennon lived in a drug hazed utopian world where he didn't realize that all of that's completely impossible because you don't understand man as the creature of God in a fallen state.

46:09

Don't understand the need for law. You don't understand, um, the goodness of God's law and the need to restrain evil.

46:19

Uh, communism rejects all of that stuff. And that's why every communist country, you've got the people at the top and they live in luxury.

46:29

They live in luxury and no one can question them and they can have people killed right, left and center.

46:36

Nobody cares. Uh, because there, there is no heaven above or hell beneath.

46:41

There is no judgment and therefore the state becomes God. And so you can talk about brotherhood all you want and all man,

46:50

I follow a Twitter account, um, on, uh, online that posts, uh, graphics from the

47:02

Soviet era in the Soviet union. And so many of them, their whole goal is to make it look like, you know, we're, we're just all brothers and sisters together and you know, all the rest of this stuff.

47:16

And these people are living horrible lives and they, they know the government's lying to them.

47:24

They, they know Pravda, which means truth in Russian, uh, is the exact opposite.

47:30

Uh, they, they know all this stuff, but it's self -deception. And so here's a guy who, oh, what a wonderful Christian man he was.

47:41

Doesn't, didn't really shock me all that much that in that building, which is supposed to represent, you know, the people's church, uh, the song is being sung.

47:54

And I'm sure there were some Christian songs sung too. Uh, that's the whole problem is that imagine is an anti -Christian song.

48:04

It's not a neutral song. Uh, it is a denial of the Lord. It's rebellion.

48:10

It's rebellion against what God has said about mankind, about the necessity of law, about the reality of sin.

48:17

Uh, it's, it's a song of rebellion. And so there's two country stars, uh, singing a song of rebellion at Jimmy Carter's funeral that said a lot more than I think a lot of people wanted to, um, want to think about.

48:35

Um, next there's been a, a bunch of discussion, um, evidently, and I haven't dug into all this, but someone who's going to be speaking at the defeating trash world conference, at least somebody said they was,

48:51

I maybe not, um, somebody online started a, uh, uh, a fracas, um, by basically saying that while scripture is sufficient to answer all of our questions about soteriology, how a person is saved, it is insufficient to, to build a solid continuing society.

49:24

Now, again, I have to remind everybody, if you actually believe in the sufficiency of scripture, inspiration of scripture, inerrancy of scripture, especially you're in a small group, relatively speaking.

49:39

Um, you may not realize that you may not have conversations with mainstream Protestants that don't believe any of that stuff anymore, but, and, uh,

49:49

I forget what it, what the, the number was, uh, a friend of mine sent me a, uh, a thing this morning, actually, that, uh, about the, uh,

50:04

United Methodist Church. There it is. Uh, United, United Methodist Church membership drops 37 % in five years, one third in five years, they're down to 5 .7

50:18

million. Um, they, they won't have one million in just a matter of years.

50:24

They'll, they'll just, they're disappearing. And there is a tale, uh, to be told about that.

50:32

And that's because the United Methodist Church from the, all across its leadership, no longer believes the view of scripture that Jesus held.

50:43

That's the easiest way I can put it. And the result is all the rainbow stolled priestesses who lead the

50:53

United Methodist Churches into utter despair and ruin. And that's all they can do.

50:59

It's all they know how to do. So anyway, you have those individuals, if you, if you listen to what most

51:10

Roman Catholic scholars say, they'll say the same thing. Scripture is sufficient to address, to tell us certain aspects of God's will for our life, but it's, all this other stuff is outside the purview of scripture.

51:29

And what they like to do is like say, well, and Brother Callahan at my old church, you say this all the time, um, scripture can't tell you how to rebuild, um, an automatic transmission.

51:44

Uh, it's, it's not meant to equip you to build, to rebuild an automatic transmission to tell you what part goes where, how much torque you got to put on this, that or the other thing.

51:57

And that's true. However, what scripture is sufficient to do is to give you the worldview that would allow you to understand that when you take an automatic transmission apart, you can put it back together again because it has a purpose.

52:15

There are certain laws. There's, there, you know, an automatic transmission functions on the basis of the continually valid observation that the laws of hydraulics work.

52:33

Um, you can put pressure upon a particular fluid and eventually it will move something else.

52:43

Um, you know, hydraulic, uh, hydraulics and, and all the associated physical properties of the world.

52:53

The scriptures tell us why you can build an automatic transmission, which have not always existed.

53:01

Obviously. I wonder when the first one was built. Interesting. Um, I looked that up.

53:09

Uh, it can tell you that we can build it and that we can then repair it and we can rebuild it because there are laws of science that are grounded in the

53:22

God who created this world and gave us the laws of logic, gave us the ability to discover things about the world around us, even gave us the ability to be looking into quantum physics, which most of us don't have any idea how any of that works.

53:41

Um, but there are tremendously smart people to do and, uh, they're doing their thing.

53:49

So this has sort of blown up into a, into a discussion where instead of a focus where it needs to be, and that is scripture, both in its teaching about who

54:09

God is, who Christ is, is our, is our creator. And, and this is where I think a lot of the problem comes in.

54:17

And in the giving of God's law provides us with the foundation upon which we can build modern societies that will function for mankind as created by God, rather than saying, well, all the

54:42

Bible does over here is tell us how to get to heaven. But everything else about nations and their relationship to one another and law and what peace looks like and what prosperity should look like, all of that we get from other sources.

55:00

We can't get that from scripture. So there are, it's a minority viewpoint, a small minority viewpoint to think the scripture is sufficient to give you those broad categories of divine revelation that can then be applied even in our modern day.

55:23

There's a large majority of people who just have automatically bought the idea that given how quickly things have changed, give,

55:35

I mean, let's be honest in light of AI, how many people really still believe in scriptural sufficiency?

55:50

I think a lot of folks are like, well, and it results in a schizophrenia, the schizophrenia where you, you have your religious life over here, then you have your tech life over here and the two shall never meet, which means one of them's going to die on the vine.

56:11

One of them's going to become irrelevant. There's no other way for that to happen. And so what this has definitely shown to me is that there is a lot of work to be done in defending not just sola scriptura, but scriptural sufficiency as well.

56:37

And old style fundamentalism just doesn't have the foundation to be able to do what needs to be done at this point.

56:50

It really doesn't because I'm speaking of what I was raised in and there wasn't any emphasis upon a whole worldview application of life,

57:03

Christ for all of life type of an idea. That just, we lived in a divided sort of schizophrenic context at that point.

57:14

And I know that now, didn't know that then, but I know that now. And the pressures being placed upon us now by AI, genetic manipulation, all this kind of stuff will require the next generations of Christians, especially to think these things through very, very deeply.

57:32

And the more connected they are and the more they trust scripture, the better their answers are going to be.

57:38

Pretty much out of time, but let me put that over there.

57:56

I don't know. Okay, here's a tweet from Calvin Robinson, and he says, let us pray a rosary for our reformed brethren, particularly the ones who have been launching vitriolic attacks this week, that our lady may intercede and through her immaculate heart, lead them to the

58:30

Lord who in his most sacred heart has the power to soften their hard hearts.

58:35

Now, all right, how do you understand that?

58:41

I mean, our reformed brethren who have hard hearts and need to be led to the

58:49

Lord. This reminds me a little bit of the confusion of terminology that we had to address years ago in 2004 when

59:01

Doug Wilson and I debated, are

59:07

Roman Catholics our brothers and sisters in Christ? And his position is yes, in the sense that by receiving triune baptism, they are covenanted to do what they then don't do because of their theology.

59:24

Okay, that would mean to me that they're not our brothers and sisters in Christ. If they're believing the gospel as taught by Rome, I can certainly see how one could be our brother or sister in Christ because they believe the true gospel savingly while still in the communion of Rome, which means they either don't understand or don't believe everything that Rome teaches.

59:52

Anyway, but please note, you're to pray a rosary that Our Lady may intercede and through her immaculate heart, something utterly unknown to scripture, obviously, a much later concept and addition, through her immaculate heart, lead them to the

01:00:16

Lord who in his most sacred heart has the power to soften their hard hearts.

01:00:23

So this is why I'm going to continue to ask the question until it gets an answer because so far,

01:00:33

I have not seen any answers. All right, but he later, let me just show you here, he later, very shortly after this, this was posted by A New Crusade.

01:00:56

Mary, please soften the hearts and enlighten the minds of those who have fallen into Calvinism.

01:01:05

And below it is Calvin Robinson saying, Amen. And then right below that, you've got someone saying

01:01:13

Deus Volt, that's the big popular crusader term these days, which we'll probably talk about more in the future.

01:01:22

God will convert the Protestant hordes. I was one for many years, now

01:01:27

Catholic, to which Calvin Robinson says, Deo Gloria. Isn't that great? Conversion of a

01:01:34

Protestant to Roman Catholicism. So the question that I have asked, and I will continue to ask, of the defeating

01:01:50

Trash World conference leadership, specifically Joel Webben, it's real simple.

01:02:00

Is this how you defeat Trash World? Is this the gospel that defeats Trash World? Or is

01:02:07

Trash World outside the range of the gospel? See, this is the same issue that we've dealt with in regards to abortion.

01:02:20

Apology of Church does regular abortion work.

01:02:26

I mean, there are men in our church that spend untold hours on their feet outside abortion mills in the

01:02:36

Valley of the Sun here, calling on people. And we see babies rescued all the time.

01:02:42

And we can show you pictures of the kids that are growing up, and they were going to be aborted and stuff like that.

01:02:52

And it has become a central aspect of end abortion. Now to say, this has to be done by the power of the gospel.

01:02:59

It cannot be done by the power of politics. This is a sin issue. This is a rebellion issue.

01:03:05

And when you go out there, what you'll see is you'll see the believers crying out and using the gospel.

01:03:17

And the Roman Catholics are huddled over in a circle, praying the rosary. They're not trying to bring, they don't have a gospel to bring to bear anyways, but they're not trying to bring a gospel to bear.

01:03:31

They're fingering their rosaries and asking Mary to stop people from aborting their babies.

01:03:37

Well, that's wonderful. But you know, there's just a huddle of people and they're just standing there.

01:03:44

And they won't join with us because, you know, remember the Bible Answer Man broadcast years ago, when

01:03:51

I said to Tim Staples, I said, look, Tim, you and I are standing outside an abortion clinic together. Okay.

01:03:56

You're talking about how we agree on so many things. Great. If someone walks up to us and asks us, what must

01:04:04

I do to be saved? Will we give them the same answer? And he was honest enough to say, no, we would not. Okay.

01:04:11

Same thing here. How do you defeat trash world? Calvin Robinson says, pray a rosary to the immaculate heart of Mary.

01:04:23

So, Joel, will you let him do that at the conference? Or will you tell him you cannot do that?

01:04:34

Why would you tell him you can't? This has to be the question.

01:04:42

I mean, am I the only one who goes, yeah, this is really sort of central, isn't it?

01:04:48

Because if what you say is, well, you know, look, this isn't just another solos conference.

01:04:56

Okay. It doesn't have to be a solos conference. It's Christ is king defeating trash world.

01:05:06

Okay. What does the kingship of Christ mean? Does it mean there's a queen?

01:05:13

Does it matter if you parallel all the unique offices of Jesus in a woman?

01:05:22

Because that's what Rome does. That's what Rome does. I, how long ago, this was, there it is, still available in Kindle format.

01:05:33

Okay. In fact, we just saw, Bethany House just sent us, was that Portuguese?

01:05:39

I think they had just produced a version of this in Portuguese, actually, which is really interesting given how old it is.

01:05:50

But I had, it's gotta be in here somewhere. There it is. I have a chart on page 141 and it's got the

01:06:03

Lord Jesus on one side and Mary on the other. So Lord Jesus, predestined to be redeemer,

01:06:09

Mary predestined to be redemptrix. Lord Jesus, virgin born, Mary immaculately conceived.

01:06:15

Jesus incarnate deity, the son of human flesh. Mary, spouse of the spirit, called by saints and theologians, a kind of incarnation of the spirit.

01:06:23

Lord Jesus, sinless, Mary kept from original sin and personal sin. Lord Jesus suffered and died on Calvary.

01:06:30

Mary suffered and almost died at the foot of the cross. Lord Jesus ascended into glory. Mary bodily assumed into glory.

01:06:36

Jesus, king of heaven. Mary, queen of heaven. Jesus, source of grace. Mary, channel of grace.

01:06:42

Jesus, our peace with God. Mary, treasurer of our peace with God. Lord Jesus, redeemer.

01:06:47

Mary, co -redemptrix. Jesus, mediator. Mary, mediatrix. Lord Jesus, advocate. Mary, advocate.

01:06:56

Okay? Now, I had obviously given all the quotes beforehand for each one of those points, but can a gospel that, like, you know,

01:07:14

I mean, he went on to say, after he said to pray the rosary, may the immaculate heart of Mary shine before the eyes of all

01:07:22

Christians as a model of perfect love toward God and toward our fellow beings. May it lead them toward the holy sacraments, by virtue of which souls are cleansed from the stains of sin and are preserved from it.

01:07:33

May it also stimulate them to make reparation for the innumerable offenses against the divine majesty. Lastly, may it shine like a banner of unity and a spur to perfect the bonds of brotherhood amongst all

01:07:44

Christians in the bosom of the one church of Jesus Christ, which, taught by the Holy Spirit, honors her with filial affection and piety as a most beloved mother," end quote.

01:07:54

I don't know how he gets away with this and rejects papal supremacy. I've seen, there are

01:08:00

Roman Catholics that have been commenting on this going, you know, this doesn't make a whole lot of sense because you're a schismatic yourself.

01:08:09

And a lot of this theology developed under papal authority anyways, so it doesn't make a lot of sense, honestly.

01:08:15

But that's the idea. That's the oneness. That's the bringing people together in the immaculate heart of Mary.

01:08:25

So why not do that in April? Why not? Is that going to help defeat trash world?

01:08:37

And if you say, well, you know, it's not my personal view, but hey, we just need to get everybody together, then you've told us what you need to tell us.

01:08:49

And that is, a lot of people have come to understand, you know what? We need to abolish human abortion, and we need to abolish it through the power of the gospel.

01:09:00

Okay. Well, we need to abolish trash world, but we need to do it through the power of the gospel. That's the only, it's the only power that's been given to us.

01:09:09

And if trash world is gay mirage, and homosexuality, and pedophilia, and all the things that, what are those things?

01:09:20

Sinful rebellion. So, Joel, can sinful rebellion be changed by dedicating those in sinful rebellion to the immaculate heart of Mary?

01:09:38

That's not a question that would have been asked when I spoke at Joel's conference in May of 23.

01:09:50

Yeah, I know. That's not a question. So, how is it a question now?

01:10:02

I don't understand how anybody, oh, you shouldn't be talking about this stuff. What do you mean? I've been talking about this stuff for generations, generations, decades, not generations, not that old.

01:10:16

This isn't anything new for me. You know, all these, you know, Calvin Robinson blaming me for why he was disinvited from a conference in March.

01:10:28

And I've explained to everybody over and over again, hey, I never invited him.

01:10:34

I never promoted him. I don't think I ever even retweeted him. But I had the idea that he was like a

01:10:43

J .C. Ryle, conservative Anglican, believes the Bible.

01:10:49

You know, there are a few of those guys out there, primarily down in Australia, but they are out there in Africa as well.

01:10:56

There's a few running around the United States too. But that's what

01:11:01

I thought. And I've talked to a bunch of other people, had the same thought. That's what they concluded.

01:11:07

Everybody's like, well, you need to vet people better. Well, okay. I didn't invite him to do anything. So, but yeah, those who did have even said when he was, when the invitation was withdrawn last week from the thing in March, we apologize.

01:11:25

We've learned our lesson. We need to dig a little deeper before we invite folks to participate in a

01:11:32

Protestant thing that's trying to get people together from different perspectives to make sure you're actually a

01:11:40

Protestant, you know, whatever that means these days. It's a pretty worthless term, sadly.

01:11:46

But yeah, I don't, how can anyone in any way criticize me for raising these issues?

01:11:57

I'm not the one posting this stuff by Calvin Robinson. I'm just reading it to you. And he is an old

01:12:04

Catholic. Now he's inconsistent, grandly so.

01:12:10

But when it comes to soteriology, we're talking about the exact issues that brought about the

01:12:16

Reformation. So it just amazes me that people are like, well, you're just jumping on this for this type of thing and that type of thing.

01:12:27

No, I'm not jumping on it about any type of thing. This is stuff we've been talking about consistently for a long, long, long, long time.

01:12:37

And we're just going, hey, you know what? It was important back then. It still is now.

01:12:43

It still is now. So I had a few other things, but we'll get to them as time allows.

01:12:51

It'll be interesting to see what has happened only in the hour and almost 15 minutes we've been on the air. Who knows what could take place in a short period of time these days.

01:13:01

So thanks for listening to the program today, and Lord willing, we'll see you next week.