Seer Stones, Hillsong Church, and KJVOnly Deceitfulness

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:33

And greetings, welcome to the dividing line on a Wednesday. Yeah, we're doing something weird this week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, just, you know, throw y 'all off just the way that it works.

00:44

It is a warm day here in Phoenix. We're talking about 112 today.

00:49

That's not too bad for us. I remember one July where we averaged 111 .9

00:55

as the high for the whole month. So 112 once in a while.

01:01

Yeah, that's not too bad. That's the way it is. It's going to be Christmas before long, you know, so and then it'll be pot again.

01:08

That's just the older you get, the faster that particular process seems to go. A couple of things to get to on the program.

01:21

Someone just looked at the at the at the picture Angel did for me and noticed that it was on the big ring.

01:27

Trust me, the picture he was taking from it was not on the big ring. You don't know what we're talking about, but that's why you need to be on Twitter once.

01:37

I'm feeding you. Hopefully the picture you have a picture.

01:43

I remember 1984 maybe somewhere around there going into the church office building and going to the church historical department up in Salt Lake City.

02:11

Mormon Church and putting in a request to see.

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Joseph Smith's diary. The microfilm of Joseph Smith's diary and man,

02:27

I'm going to tell you something. We were sweating bullets. We were just we're just young guys.

02:33

Me and Mike. And, you know, for years, in fact.

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Yeah, there it is. There it is. Yeah, yeah, there it is.

02:55

Used to carry this thing around. Wow. And I heard

03:04

Rich through the window just identify this as the yes,

03:10

Mormon missionary masher. Just filled with all sorts of documentation and photocopies and it's upside down and just, you know, here's the

03:26

Deseret News. False prophecies, First Vision, Joseph Smith, Adam God, Blood Atonement, Doctrine of God, Book of Abraham, Robert Brown, Book of Mormon Errors, Book of Mormon Changes, Book of Mormon Archaeology, Doctrine and Covenants, Priesthood, Temple Ceremonies, Mormon Doctrine, Mormon Miscellaneous, Miscellaneous Statements.

03:48

I suppose a contradiction. Early Fathers, Bible passages. I mean, this was sort of what went into letters to a

03:59

Mormon elder. Sort of the source of all that. And what was why did you have to have all this stuff?

04:08

Well, because the Mormon Church was not overly forthcoming, shall we say, in honest discussion of its history.

04:21

And we were the ones that had to explain the meaning of the hypocephalus in the

04:32

Book of Abraham. And we had to explain to people what

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Toltec and Olmec archaeology was all about. And the kinderhook plates and just, you know, when

04:48

I first started studying Mormonism, I thought, man, I will never be able to remember all this stuff because there was just so many things.

04:56

But I remember going to that office building and we had the big old microfiche reader, whatever, you know, and we found it and you make the photocopy and stuff.

05:08

And I'm sure if I went to First Vision in there, I could show you the photocopy we made.

05:17

Now, Mormonism has not been my main focus for quite some time now. I still we will still talk about it.

05:26

And we, you know, when the big compromise movement started, we had evangelicals and Mormons together and Erdman's publishing

05:36

Mormon books and just all sorts of lunacy like that. We addressed those things.

05:43

But since the last 10 to 12 years, there has been such a massive change in Mormonism.

05:59

And I think they recognized they needed to give up. And trust me, if there hadn't been a

06:06

Gerald and Sandra Tanner, if there hadn't been folks up there in Salt Lake City, you know,

06:11

Bill McKeever and guys like that, but especially Gerald and Sandra Tanner, I don't know that we'd be seeing this.

06:18

I really, I really think that once that information, it was one thing for the, you know, when

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I first visited Gerald and Sandra's operation, they had these racks of paper and they put their books together by taking page, page, page, page.

06:41

And then it was some, it wasn't Velo binding. It was some other kind of the binding. You know, we've got a bazillion books.

06:49

No, the plastic, you know, it's just a tall stack of paper with drilled through with this plastic thing sealed onto with plastic covers, all the old books from the

06:59

Tanners. I'm sure that Twitter will come up with the word here in a moment. Yeah, probably. Anyway. Oh, I've got to go and channel.

07:07

Maybe something in channel window. I forgot to do that. Anyways, so they, you know, the

07:17

Mormon church knew that people like the Tanners were putting that information out there. There are books on archeology in the book of Mormon and, and photocopies this stuff.

07:26

It was that stuff was out there, but they figured what can one small little bookstore down on, you know, down in Salt Lake city really do as far as reaching the millions of people.

07:39

Well, then something came along called the internet and the internet changed.

07:49

Everything changed everything. And Mormonism over the past decade and a half now has been publishing books with material in it that we used to carry around in that thing and, and have to, you know, drag out and show to people and they're like, no, no, no way.

08:14

I don't know. I don't trust that. Now LDS scholars and historians are publishing this stuff and stuff that we could only speculate about.

08:25

Now, if you're familiar with the story of Joseph Smith, if you read the documentary history of church, if you've read times and seasons, if you've, if you've read almost anything by Gerald and Sandra Tanner, you know about the seer stone and you know that all of the early sources talk about how

08:47

Joseph Smith would use this seer stone and he would put it in his hat.

08:54

And he would cover his face with his hat and in the darkness, the spiritual light would shine.

09:03

He was even brought up on charges. He was brought up before a civil magistrate for basically hoodwinking people.

09:15

Yeah, glass looking was the charge of pretending to be able to find hidden treasures or wells, you know, the witching rods, remember the witching rods and stuff like that.

09:28

He would get people to pay him money to find ancient treasures, hidden treasures.

09:37

This ended up, this stuff even ended up in the Book of Mormon because when he would get all excited,

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I think it's right here. They start digging in. Oh, it became slippery. It's been cursed.

09:52

And if it was cursed, it would become slippery and it would slide deeper into the earth.

09:57

And that's why they couldn't get it. Good way to keep your $2 fee or whatever.

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And that ends up in the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon talks about a curse on the land and stuff becoming slippery and all the rest is weirdness.

10:13

And so there is even an association of the seer stone with the translation of the

10:20

Book of Mormon, even though some of the stories, the Book of Mormon was accompanied by the

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Urim and the Thummim, which is these spectacles that allowed Joseph Smith to translate

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Reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics. But other stories were that Joseph Smith used the seer stone as the mechanism of translating the

10:40

Book of Mormon. And so you had the golden plates, but Joseph Smith would put the seer stone and the hat, you know.

10:48

Well, I'm sitting here scanning through my, someone on Twitter said,

10:58

I just found a Urim and Thummim on sale on eBay. I think your subject matter sent me on a search.

11:06

It's almost that bad, sadly, because I'm going through my Facebook stuff and I see

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Sandra Tanner saying, so that's what the seer stone looked like.

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Even she was like, wow. And lo and behold, the Mormon church has published a picture of the actual

11:32

Joseph Smith seer stone, which is still locked away in a vault.

11:38

They've had it the whole time. The whole time that Gerald and Sandra were talking about the seer stone, their prophets and apostles could go into that vault and they could open up, you know, a certain box and there would be the seer stone that Joseph Smith himself used.

11:56

They knew it was there. They knew it was there. So here it is. While we show everybody, there's the seer stone, folks.

12:07

Brown, egg -sized rock. About the size of a rock. And it's smooth, well, relatively speaking.

12:17

And it's got brown bands on it. And, um, looks like it came from a, like a stream, something like that.

12:26

Been worn smooth. And there is the, um, there's the seer stone that Joseph Smith would put into his hat and the spiritual light would shine.

12:38

And, um, that some of the three witnesses, at least one of the three witnesses,

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I've forgotten who, uh, was it David Whitmer or Oliver Cowdery? Somebody said that, uh, this was, uh, this is what he used to translate the

12:55

Book of Mormon. I don't know how this religion is going to survive.

13:02

I really don't. Um, any intelligent

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Mormon who wants to validate the foundation of his or her faith now has such ease of access to such a tremendous amount of information that is simply beyond refutation.

13:35

I mean, the Book of Abraham alone, the

13:40

Book of Abraham, papyrus, the facsimiles in the Pearl of Great Price, more than enough to demonstrate that Joseph Smith was a huckster.

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He, he was pulling the wool over people's eyes and all of Mormonism is just the result of Joseph Smith's hucksterism.

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That's all it is. And now you get the seer stone, a singularly unimpressive item to be perfectly honest with you.

14:18

Um, but there you go. I do,

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I've, I've been saying for a long time, I just do not know what the future is going to hold, uh, for the

14:31

LDS church, but I cannot see it holding together the, the internal pressures.

14:39

And it's not just the, the advent of information on the internet and the ease of the obtaining of that information, all the rest of that stuff.

14:46

It's, it's not just that the internal pressures that Mormonism has brought upon itself, that the attempt to mainstream the, the attempt to send their scholars out to get degrees and non

15:01

LDS universities. Uh, they've brought back so much that has fundamentally changed the nature of Mormonism that I just,

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I cannot see how they're going to survive. I just cannot see how they're going to avoid a major, major split, but there you go.

15:28

There is the seer stone, evidently no longer. Can you put it into a hat and the spiritual light will shine?

15:36

Well, who was it that told you years ago that within a certain period of time, there were going to be crosses on top of the bill?

15:42

You know, I, I, I can see his face. I was at the, um, South gate of the temple.

15:49

Um, and we had, we had talked with him before, but he was a Mormon that was unhappy with the direction the church was going.

15:58

Yeah. I, I forgotten the name though. But yeah, it was a guy. I was, it was one of the last times we got to do the general conference before the

16:06

King James only street screechers showed up. And, uh, he pointed up to the top of that temple.

16:12

They said 20 years. So now you can see a cross up there. I don't think he quite made the 20. Well, it was, it was less than 20 years ago, but he's still got time.

16:20

But, uh, his point was things were changing. He saw it and he recognized it.

16:27

I think he may be wrong in the longterm about the cross being up there, but it might be a picture of, um, a family of statue of a bunch of family, you know, because it's becoming the family religion.

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It's all about family. Well, that's always been an emphasis, but the reason for it, there ain't much else.

16:48

You know, what made it grow was its uniqueness and its claim to authority. And that's what they've, that's what they've decided to abandon.

16:58

It's interesting. It's, it, it is interesting. Definitely. Okay. So there is, uh, um, that subject we shift gears.

17:09

Now, yesterday I came back from, uh, uh, Tucson, just a real quick lesson, 24 hour trip down there and, uh, uh, popped into channel and there was a discussion about what was going on in Twitter.

17:25

And what was going on in Twitter was a discussion of Carl Lentz and the

17:33

Hillsong church in New York. And of course there's the stuff with Brian Houston, who is the big

17:38

Hillsong leader out of Australia. And basically the two sides were talking past each other.

17:50

Unfortunately. Um, what I was concerned about in the whole thing was the accuracy of the articles that have been distributed.

18:03

I started seeing them a few days ago and they come up every once in a while, but there was a new spate of them in regards to Carl Lentz and comments about homosexuality.

18:14

Now I'm reformed Baptist. My ecclesiology is significantly more developed, shall we say, and traditional and historical than Hillsong ecclesiology is, as we're going to see here in a moment.

18:32

Um, I am obviously not a fan of seeker sensitivity or anything like that at all.

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The church is the body of Christ. It is where God is worshiped in holiness. There is to be church discipline.

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There is to be a call for holy living. Um, the, the, the church is not to look like the world, act like the world.

18:56

Uh, the world should, should be very uncomfortable. In, well, as Paul said, unbeliever comes in, should be convicted by what's, what's going on.

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So what really bugged me about the Twitter debate that was going on was one side was saying, look, um, you need to check the sources.

19:23

You need to be accurate in the facts that you're using. You may be right in your conclusions.

19:29

You may say, you know, these folks, they've got some serious problems here and, and we need to be careful about what's going on here.

19:39

And this seems to be symptomatic of that. That's one thing, but you've got to do so accurately.

19:44

You've got to make sure of your facts. You can't be making, well, it looks like, you know, I think they went to a conference one and this, this person wants to, this person was there and therefore, and you've got all these connections being made.

19:57

And that's just, no one should be surprised that I have a problem with inaccuracy and use of information because I'm, am

20:11

I not the guy who sits here for half an hour talking about being careful in talking about Muhammad and Aisha or history of the

20:22

Quran or et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Um, yeah, that's, that's me.

20:27

Same guy. So I would think you'd need to be just as careful in talking about these issues.

20:36

And what had happened was I almost talked about this on Monday, but we did the radio free Geneva, so I couldn't fit it in.

20:44

But I had seen a quote attributed to Carl Lentz in one of the articles that was starting to go around saying, ah, see the whole song is collapsing on homosexuality and here's how it's happening and so on and so forth.

20:59

And I read it. It was the standard. Jesus never said anything about homosexuality stuff.

21:05

And I'm like, I have decimated that argument so many times in this program.

21:13

And I've told people, I've said to people, I've said, if you hear anybody saying that Jesus never addressed homosexuality, that person is either deceptive or ignorant or both, but it can't be neither.

21:30

And so I don't always do this. I don't have a big black book of contacts and emails, but some of you will remember that September of last year,

21:43

I think almost a year ago, Carl Lentz contacted us. I made some comments about something

21:50

I'd seen. It was actually a video. As I recall at that point, I played the video and I said,

21:58

I got a problem with this and here's why. Well, somebody sent it to Carl Lentz and he wrote through the contact page.

22:06

And so I had an email. We had actually exchanged some emails back and forth. And so I did the standard search thing and pulled up an email and I said,

22:19

I'm going to ask him because there was no attribution in the article. It didn't say where it was from.

22:25

It had a he said at the end. Okay. I, I don't trust it.

22:34

Um, especially the sources, you know, if it's HuffPost, CNN, whatever else he said means nothing.

22:41

Uh, they may have strung those words together from three hours worth of conversation, but anyway.

22:46

So that, that contact, by the way, came through October 28th, 2014. Okay. October. So last year.

22:53

And so I, I wrote and I, I said, I gave the quote and said, is this accurate?

23:01

And he wrote back fairly quickly and said, who is this? And I wrote back and said, well, you, you contact us last year,

23:07

Alpha Omega Ministries saw this quotation. It's unattributed. Um, before I comment on it,

23:14

I'd like to know whether you actually said this. And he was very appreciative of that and said, I'm taking my girls their dance lesson or whatever it was.

23:21

I'll get back to you. And, and then said, actually, I'll get back to you faster than that.

23:26

And, and so he didn't. So we've gone back and forth. And in fact, um,

23:32

I have here, uh, this is from yesterday.

23:41

Um, you know, I, we, we went back and forth and I said, um, can

23:47

I quote you as saying quote, and then this is a quote from him. Um, what

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Jesus often did explicitly outline as you well know, is marriage between a man and a woman.

24:01

I made that point clearly in an interview and that was edited out. Our church has never wavered ever on our clear stance on what is biblical marriage or biblical sexuality for that matter.

24:14

All right. Now we've continued sort of going back and forth.

24:21

Cause I found some more quotes and he said, look, I would not say it the way that I said it.

24:28

Um, you know, this was CNN and I'm like, yeah, I know CNN now.

24:34

Yeah. Then they're done. That got the t -shirt. Um, and man, you've got to, you, you've, you've just, you've got to go straight for the heart.

24:45

If you're on CNN, you know, you can not try to make yourself look nice to these folks.

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It's not possible. You've got to go straight to it and press it. And, um, so we, we've gone back and forth.

25:06

I, I basically said, look, Jesus did address this issue when he used the term porn

25:13

Naya. There is no one that I've ever found anywhere.

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I don't care if it's Boswell, Skenzonian, Mollenkot, uh, Brownson, uh,

25:26

Lee, it doesn't matter who it is. Vines. I've never found anyone who has even started to make a meaningful argument that in the context of second temple

25:38

Judaism, in the context of the gospel writers, that poor

25:43

Naya would not have included homosexuality. I've never seen anyone even try to argue it because anybody who knows anything about that time period knows that poor

26:02

Naya, when it was written by Paul, when it was written by Matthew, when it was written by Mark, included homosexuality.

26:12

There's no question about it. None. So when someone says, geez, never addressed this issue, they're just ignorant.

26:21

They don't know what they're talking about. And Carl says, I know that I agree. Um, and they, they,

26:30

I, I, it was a combination of my not speaking clearly enough and them not following up with what

26:37

I said afterwards where I said those things. Um, so, you know, okay.

26:47

I hear you. Got it. All right. I tried to be, uh, if I'm going to criticize,

26:54

I want to try to be fair and I want to try to be accurate. And the fact is there are sources amongst conservative

27:06

Christians that are trusted that shouldn't be. We repost stuff that isn't always overly accurate.

27:18

And my concern was exactly that my concern was exactly that because these are important issues.

27:29

And when we are not, when we don't do our homework and we just go with the 12 gauge shotgun blast from the start, we may think we're doing the

27:40

Elijah thing. But in reality, we're only hurting ourselves because then people can just focus upon that and not focus upon what the real issue is.

27:50

I'm not saying that even when you focus upon the real issue that people are necessarily sadly going to listen to what you have to say, but it's worth the shot.

28:00

But then in the middle of all this, Brian Houston, who speaks more for Hillsong than Carl Lentz does, puts out,

28:13

I think yesterday, an article, yeah, August, uh, well, this is, well, not, no,

28:19

I, I posted, uh, I, I put it in here, uh, called do I love gay people? I think it was yesterday.

28:26

Um, it says, I also live by my own convictions, hold a traditional

28:31

Christian thought on gay lifestyles and gay marriage. Now, could I just say, if we, if we have a passionate love for God's truth, if we really believe that it is divine truth, that God has made us in a certain way, that we have the owner's manual, that the creator has, has specific purposes and therefore life will be experienced.

29:09

There's basics here. You know, you, if, if you don't get the basics, right, there's not going to be anything up the road.

29:16

If we really believe that it's going to influence how we speak. And it seems to me that we need to be really be putting some thought into how we can speak with more clarity about these subjects when it sounds like, well, yeah, you know,

29:37

I've got my convictions and I'm sort of, you know, I do the traditional Christian. You know, it's, it's like, we've already been beaten into the,

29:45

I'm sorry, don't throw things at me rather than I believe in natural marriage.

29:51

And I believe that this is divine truth and this is vitally important and this is exciting and it's worth living for.

29:58

There's a big difference between those two big difference. But anyways, the writings of the apostle

30:03

Paul in scripture on the subject of homosexuality are also clear. Good to hear. Lots and lots of folks are telling us just the opposite of that.

30:11

Just the opposite of that. As I've mentioned in previous public statements, Hillsong church welcomes all people, but does not affirm all lifestyles put clearly.

30:23

We do not affirm a gay lifestyle. And because of this, we do not knowingly have actively gay people.

30:29

Now here's where I'm confused. We do not knowingly have actively gay people in positions of leadership, either paid or unpaid.

30:43

Bow, blow the whistle. What? See, here's where ecclesiology comes into view.

30:50

Here's where your doctrine of the church comes into view. Because later on, here's, here's what it says later on.

31:00

So if you are gay, are you welcome at Hillsong church? Of course you're welcome to attend, worship with us and participate as a congregation member with the assurance that you are personally included and accepted within our community.

31:25

But this is where it gets vexing. Can you take an active leadership role?

31:32

No, this won't make everyone happy. And to some, this stance may even be seen as hypocritical.

31:39

We are a gay welcoming church, but we are not a church that affirms a gay lifestyle.

31:44

Excuse me, timeout. I, the, the poor little reformed

31:53

Baptist is confused. Yeah. Um, so do you have a church membership role?

32:05

Do you, do you have a statement of faith? Uh, do you, what, how can you be a member of the congregation?

32:21

While living a lifestyle that the church says is sinful and just won't allow into leadership, but we'll allow in the church.

32:33

Is that what I'm reading? If it is, here's where ecclesiology comes in, because you see, there are some people that view church incrementally.

32:43

You, you bring people in, we're inclusive, we're open, we're loving.

32:52

You bring people in, you see, and then over time you sort of hope that they're going to start seeing that selling those drugs is a bad thing.

33:04

Uh, the gang banging, it's bad thing. You might lose a few members in the process, you know, before they really get that idea, but Hey, you know, and it's this inclusive incremental thing to slowly get them, you know, and I go, the church is called holy.

33:28

It's made up of saints. I mean, again, first Corinthians five, you have a man who has had his own father's wife.

33:43

It's incest. You should have known better. It's right there. Leviticus 18 cast him out.

33:53

Right. So do you bring people into the congregation and incestuous relationships and go,

34:01

Hey, you're part of the community. It's okay. Have the Lord's supper. Hey, you know, but you can't be in leadership until you stop that incestuous stuff.

34:11

What it, okay. Maybe this is just a really, really, really badly written thing and I'm completely missing it, but it seems to me that, um, we have a really fundamental problem here in, um, worship with us.

34:36

Well, I thought we were to worship in holiness and that there was to be repentance.

34:43

Doesn't the church gather repentance, the proclamation of God's truth brings repentance and holiness so that we can worship in spirit and in truth.

34:57

Do we want people who are unrepentant?

35:04

Isn't, isn't, isn't the constant prayer. May your word shine into our hearts to show us what we need to repent of.

35:11

Is that what everyone? So if you don't tell people what you stand for, then how can there be any meaningful unity in worship?

35:26

I'm, I'm completely lost at this point. I really am. Don't get it. So worship with us and participate as a congregation member.

35:34

What does that mean? Sing, partake of the Lord's supper.

35:42

Our, our unrepentant practicing homosexuals allowed to partake of the Lord's supper in Hillsong church.

35:49

Bob, which can't be a leader. So what? Who cares? I mean, I think leadership's drawn out of the congregation anyways.

35:56

I mean, if you start making up rules like this to where, and have we not seen this in so many of the mainline denominations, you know, what's the, what's the big thing?

36:06

You know, all these halfway measures where, well, you know, uh, as long as you're a celibate homosexual, then you can be a bishop.

36:21

And how long that lasts, you know, before, well, we can't do that. They have to be able to express their love and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

36:30

You're, you're creating a clergy laity distinction. The new Testament knows nothing about here.

36:37

In their moral standard here. No, the, the standard for membership in the church is called regeneration.

36:46

Uh, isn't it repentance, baptism, you know, that, that stuff.

36:52

So are these folks baptized? Will you baptize unrepentant practicing homosexuals?

36:58

How else do you become a member of the church or is there no membership role at all? I mean, that, that would seem, that wouldn't surprise me because that's the

37:09

Calvary chapel model. The Calvary chapel model is no membership. That's why you have no church discipline.

37:15

I'm not sure how you're supposed to shepherd the sheep that you don't know who are in your flock, but there you go.

37:22

Um, wow. This is what happens when you don't have a statement of faith, when you don't have a sound ecclesiology.

37:32

It's, um, it's, it's, it's, it's a mess. It's a mess. Um, so I don't get it.

37:39

I don't get it. How you can say on the one side, one thing, and then the other side, you turn around and you're saying,

37:46

Hey, you know, uh, you're, you're welcome to, uh, to come in old song church, participate as congregation member with the assurance you're accepted within our community.

38:00

Only thing you can't do is to be a leader. Would that, would that count for your shacking up with your girlfriend or girlfriends, girlfriends, boyfriends, whatever.

38:17

Um, so, so the only difference between the people in the church and leaders is the leaders actually have to be repentant.

38:25

The people of church don't, I don't get it. I don't get it. There you go.

38:31

There you go. Great confusion. You moved your microphone again. That always means something. Well, the next step in being a member is

38:39

I understand it is you have a say in calling of leadership. Maybe they'd be allowed to vote for leadership and calling of a pastor.

38:49

I don't know. I do not know. I do not know, but there you go.

38:56

So what I'm calling for, you know, uh,

39:03

JD Hall said to me, I just don't understand why all these people are these reformed people are defending Hillsong JD.

39:09

It's not a matter of defending Hillsong. It's a matter of saying you need to be accurate in your criticisms for them, for them to be lasting and meaningful criticisms.

39:19

That's, that's the, that's the point. Um, we can see the problem, but isn't it interesting that on both this and the prior situation, who got to the actual heart of the matter by being careful about the criticism?

39:39

That's my point. That's my point. Got to be careful. You've got to do your homework. That's my point.

39:46

All right. Switching. Someone's asking about Brian Houston's interview with Mark Driscoll.

39:51

Never heard of it. Never seen it. Don't know anything about it. Can't comment on it. Don't know anything about it. And I, I'll be perfectly honest with you.

39:59

I don't think I've, have I ever said anything about Mark Driscoll on this program? I don't know that I have. I don't think so. Um, never read one of his books, never listened to one of his sermons.

40:08

The only sermon I ever heard was the one that Phil Johnson posted about porno vision. Um, and I have no interest in it.

40:16

Zip zero nada. Not a bit. Uh, he's going off into other stuff and, uh, that's not something

40:25

I'm interested in. So sorry. Don't know anything about it. All right. Shifting gears. Sort of doing about one third, one third here.

40:33

Uh, so shifting gears, what is this guy's name again?

40:39

Um, yes. Kent Brandenburg. King James only guy.

40:46

Evidently quote unquote, uh, reformed King James only guy. Uh, I mentioned on the program week or two ago, uh, the article on the

41:01

Logos forums. Now I have no interest in getting sucked into the

41:06

Logos forums, but most of the nasty stuff that I've seen coming at me has been posted by people on forums.

41:17

Um, Puritan board, Logos forums, whatever.

41:24

Um, there just seems to be something about hiding behind a keyboard that allows people to just speak in absurd ways.

41:35

I knew I recognized the Kent Brandenburg name and I looked at almend .org

41:41

and I had once personally mentioned some weird

41:46

King James only thing he had said. And then Alan Kirshner had actually written, I think two or three articles, uh, taking apart some claim he made about Psalm 12.

41:55

That was about all there was. Well, the guy that accused me of not believing the 1689, the guy that I talked about the ecclesiastical tech stuff about, um, and you know, he was saying if he would just believe that, then he wouldn't take the positions that he did.

42:14

That's why I did the segment I did pointing out that that is an abjectly a historical abuse of the writers, the framers, the 1689 and others.

42:28

Well, of course they don't respond to that part. I responded, well, you know, it's sort of unfair to cite them when the issues that we are now debating were not issues that they themselves were facing.

42:43

They didn't have a Byzantine text and an Alexandrian text and a Western text and didn't have the papyri and all the rest of the stuff.

42:49

And they didn't have all this stuff, but we're going to cite them anyways. And if you disagree with them, even though they weren't addressing what we now know today, then you actually don't believe in these things and so on and so forth.

43:04

It's, it's, it's common amongst people who don't do history very well, uh, or just, or use history as a bat, not really honoring history and trying to be truthful about it.

43:16

Well, uh, that guy, then someone sent me a link is

43:22

I'll debate James White and all this kind of stuff. And then he links to this article by Kent Brandenburg and here's the title more

43:32

James White on the version issue. Either he doesn't know what he's talking about or he's lying. I'm just sort of surprised.

43:38

There's not more all caps underlined with red blinking HTML in this, um, because it, we've all seen some of those.

43:49

Uh, yeah, yeah. Uh, vintage 2001 King James only websites.

43:55

That's, um, you know, with the revolving background and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

44:01

Yeah. We, we remember those things anyways. I know we did.

44:06

Yeah, that was thankfully not for too long. But anyway, um, this is from Monday, August 3rd.

44:13

It is, is it possible that Christians were wrong on the doctrine of preservation of scripture for hundreds of years?

44:20

Stop immediate. You know what I need to find on eBay is a little straw man doll, a little straw man doll.

44:32

That's what I need to find on eBay. And I'm just going to keep them down here. I don't think the fire code would allow it. No, we don't have to.

44:38

We don't have to light them up. I'm not going to light up the straw man. I'm just going to hold him up in front of the camera. Put it back down.

44:44

See how many times we can put a little number of the straw man to, you know, just, just do that type of thing.

44:50

Um, I can put them on a little, little thing is just up in front of the camera. Do you have a little space up here?

44:57

Because it, there's just so many straw men out there. Um, uh, when your first sentence is a straw man, you know, the rest isn't going to go very well.

45:10

And, uh, and that's the way it is. Is it possible that Christians are wrong on the doctrine of preservation of scripture for hundreds of years?

45:17

Hundreds of years ago, they did not know what we know today about the character of manuscripts.

45:27

That means that to try to drag them in and make them participants in the current debate is illogical and dishonest.

45:42

Mr. Brandenburg. Okay. So straw man, number one, uh, were they bibliological apostates?

45:52

That's a big, serious charge, but it is one that James White has been making again and again in recent videos to erase the record of biblical and historical beliefs in the preservation of scripture.

46:02

That is just lying. Why are King James only as so willing to lie through their teeth?

46:09

I don't get it. I mean, so many people in this audience, so many people in this audience have read this book.

46:21

They've watched the Mount impassable debate on revelation TV or whatever else it might be.

46:28

And they have watched debates where I have defended the preservation of scripture.

46:37

And so to, to make this kind of absurdly dishonest argument just destroys any kind of credibility right off the bat.

46:50

Why do you all do this? I don't, it's a King James only trait. Sam Gip does it, you know, uh,

46:58

Steven Anderson. Why do you want to be associated with names like Sam Gip and Steven Anderson and Peter Rockman and Gail Ripplinger or Will Kinney?

47:09

There's, there's another wild one. Um, just what is it about King James only ism that brings us out in people?

47:17

I don't understand it. It's, it's wild. Um, it is a falsehood, uh, that I've made this serious charge in the first place.

47:29

In every century men will be wrong in doctrine. It isn't entirely other matters matter to say that the confessions agreed upon by essentially every believer were wrong.

47:38

What confessions are you referring to exactly? Which one? Um, there's a reason that we have the

47:47

London Baptist confession. Yeah, it's a lot like the Westminster, but there are important differences.

47:53

So which one are we talking about here? The statements made about the preservation of scripture were repeated again and again, and no one offered an alternative.

48:01

The issue as everyone who has honesty and integrity knows is not the issue of the preservation of scripture.

48:09

It is the methodology of that preservation. It is how

48:15

God did it. That's the issue. You look like you're waiting for a phone call or something.

48:24

Oh, okay. Um, it is much more likely you are wrong to overturn the established doctrine.

48:33

You better do a great job of exegesis to show that they were not true. They were not true.

48:39

The writers, the confessions, what James White does not do that.

48:45

That's because you're misrepresenting me. Like he deals with most of his contemporary detractors.

48:51

He calls them names, reformed scholastics. See, this is why if you, if you link to something this bad and this misrepresentational and this filled with bad argumentation, um, why should

49:11

I take you seriously? Because I haven't called anyone reformed scholastics.

49:19

I read someone else who talked about reform scholasticism, but I likewise said that we cannot be stuck back in the period of reform scholasticism when it, when the reality is there's this pile of data.

49:41

That the enemies of the faith are thoroughly familiar with. And if we are going to close our minds and our eyes to that, to prove that we are truly reformed, um, then we are going to just have to stay in our little

50:00

Facebook chat rooms and pat each other on the back and send each other memes of John Calvin.

50:06

But that's all we're going to do because we're not going to get out in the world and make any difference. And that's my concern. Um, I'm not overturning any established doctrine.

50:18

Mr. Brandenburg, show me the council that examined these issues and made the decision that is binding upon me.

50:26

You can't do it. And you know it, you know it. You might say, well, they use this by default, not by choice.

50:37

Logical, rational people recognize the difference. But in my experience, once you get into actual

50:44

King James only -ism logic and rationality, take a hike.

50:49

White gets a pass from almost all evangelicals on this, whatever this is, except for those to the far left of him because they long ago capitulated along with a percentage of fundamentalism.

51:03

I'm sorry, this is just really badly written. Um, I think the they long ago is evangelicals, not the ones to the far left of him.

51:13

That's my assumption. Doesn't make sense otherwise. Most evangelicals relegate this issue to a non -essential with the biggest problem, the division they say it causes.

51:24

Now, what is this issue? Because I don't know anybody who says that believing the preservation of scripture causes division, but King James only -ism does.

51:32

So in your mind, are they the same thing? Sadly, for a lot of people, that's the exact point, which

51:38

I seem to recall discussing in here. First chapter, as I recall. Yeah. Okay.

51:44

Not much has changed. Um, White will mention this too on a regular basis.

51:52

However, it is a very serious problem because the Bible is a supernatural book. It's God's word.

51:59

It is. When you subjugate it to the human laboratory for testing and twisting and probing, it takes on a different nature.

52:07

I'm out. Any text you have has been mediated to you through someone who is doing textual criticism.

52:18

That's the one thing you just cannot stand to admit, but it's a fact you cannot escape. It's a fact you cannot escape.

52:28

It doesn't matter which one of these you use. Where did my, where'd my TR go?

52:35

Yes, I know it was there before. I mean, I've got my Nessie Ollin text there, but yeah,

52:41

I know it maybe got buried under the more missionary masher. Let's hope not. That'd be a bad place for it.

52:46

Um, well, it's around here someplace. Um, whether you're using, you know,

52:56

Nessie Ollin text, this is actually, which one is that? It's 27, 27 edition.

53:02

Whether you're using Texas Receptus, whether you're using a particular manuscript, let's say you are just really on it and you use,

53:14

I will only use Codex Washingtonianus, one of the earliest of the Byzantine unseals.

53:20

Guess what? Whoever wrote Washingtonianus had to engage in a form of textual criticism in regards to the choosing of the readings from the exemplars that it was derived from.

53:37

Somebody had to do it. Erasmus did it. And Erasmus had the biggest influence upon the production of what's called the

53:46

Texas Receptus. But there were people that we don't know in antiquity that were central in the production of the

53:57

Byzantine text type. And they all had to make decisions, textual decisions.

54:08

They either made them knowingly or in ignorance with part of the information, but not all the information, whatever, but they had to make decisions.

54:20

So you can sit here and pretend all you want that your text just floated down from heaven on a nice soft pillow, brought by angels in a calfskin

54:34

Oxford bound King James, if you want. That is indefensible because that's not what happened.

54:42

That's not what happened. You can pretend all you want. Some of us are just honest about the process.

54:49

Others, not so much. If it isn't preserved perfectly, then it lacks an authority, something less than full authority.

54:59

These men know this. They know it. White knows it. Preserved perfectly. What do you mean? When I say that,

55:06

I say all the original readings still exist. What do you mean? Now I can defend my position.

55:12

I have against some fairly knowledgeable opposition. I actually go out there and talk with those folks.

55:19

How about you? Which text is perfectly preserved? Which manuscript?

55:25

Is it the TR? Is it the majority text? Is it Hodges -Farstad? Is it Robinson? Pierpont?

55:31

Which one is it? Which manuscript is it? Washingtonianus? Is it a particular unseal?

55:38

Is it a particular minuscule? Which one is it? Because normally when that preserved perfectly line comes up, that's used as a weapon.

55:50

It's meant to mean something, but I don't get any identification from Brandenburg as to exactly which one that is.

55:57

Since no two manuscripts are identical. So which one is it? I would like to know that. I'm all you get so far in this, but I'm going to finish it all.

56:07

Because we got another program on Friday and I'll just continue it on. Because this stuff is dangerous.

56:13

This stuff destroys faith in the greatest gift

56:18

God has given to us and that is the true preservation of his word. It replaces it with a pious sounding theory.

56:29

And that's why I go after it. That's why I go after it.

56:36

Then he says, really quickly, White's position is that a percentage of the words of scripture have been lost or need restoring.

56:45

Lie, lie, lie, lie. And everybody who's ever read this knows it's a lie.

56:51

Why didn't you read it? Or if you did, why are you lying about it? Never said it.

56:57

You've never heard it. You can never quote me saying it. And you know it. You know it. That's why I do not understand this.

57:07

Percentage of the words of scripture have been lost and are in need of restoring. Lost from what? From the manuscript tradition?

57:16

How can I stand in front of Bart Ehrman and defend the tenacity of the text and you don't get it?

57:21

It's because you're not listening. You're not listening. You have a tradition and that tradition changes what you hear.

57:31

And it makes it dishonest. It makes it dishonest. So I'm going to pick up right there.

57:38

I'm going to pick up right at that point because we're out of time. And I'm going to finish refuting every single statement in this article.

57:48

And then I'm going to ask the person that cited it, what do you say about that? What do you say about that?

57:57

I think this is important because it gets right down to the very basic level of why we believe what we believe.

58:07

And you're either just going to believe that on the basis of some kind of tradition that you just create out of whole cloth or there's actually going to be something that's going to go back to what

58:15

God did in history. That's what Christianity is. When Christ died on a cross, he did so at a certain time, on a certain date, in a certain year, in a certain place.

58:26

Christianity is a faith that is rooted in history. It doesn't have to make things up.

58:32

We can back up what we're saying. I'm a little passionate about this. I don't like being lied about. Not by people who call themselves

58:38

Christians. Especially when they might overthrow the faith of some. Don't appreciate it.

58:45

Going to take it apart as it needs to be taken apart. So we'll continue this on Friday, Lord willing, right here on The Dividing Line.