Moore, Tim Staples on Synergism, Steven Anderson & the RBs, Callers, Thoughts on Growth and Change

Greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. It is a Tuesday on Thursday. We plan to be back, uh, but coming to you from, uh, Lord willing, Evergreen, Colorado will be our location, uh, for that program. I don't know what we're going to do the week after that, because both Tuesday and Thursday, I'm going to be very busy and Thursday's travel days.

So we may only have a Friday shot. We'll see what happens, uh, what happens next week. Uh, it's going to be very, very busy, hopefully a very useful period of time, a huge amount of travel coming up just to remind you that, uh, uh, we're able to go to the places we're able to go to.

I will be headed for South Africa. In fact, we need to get that, uh, taken care of ASAP, um, head to South Africa. There are going to be a number of important debates taking place then. Uh, we've got Australia this fall, uh, return trip to the UK, uh, debate with Shabir Ali in Georgia.

Uh, we've got a lot of stuff coming up this fall, and that means there's going to be a tremendous amount of pressure placed upon the travel fund. And so if you'd like to help us get to the places we need to be going to, uh, your help is greatly appreciated.

That's, uh, you know, all the time I see in Twitter, Hey, I just watched your debate with so-and-so and, you know, in London or whatever else. Well, you know, before you saw it and were blessed by it, somebody else, uh, made it possible for me to get there.

And so, uh, if you found that debate to be useful, then maybe you could help get us to another debate that someone else in the future will find to be useful. So, uh, that would be, that'd be great. If you could help us, uh, with that, the travel fund that you can find, uh, at the website, ailmen .org over the weekend, a, um, some developments, uh, in the discussion we had last week in regards to the issue of homosexuality.

Beth Moore, Biblical Sufficiency, and Questions About Homosexuality

Now I'm tired of it. You're tired of it. And that's exactly what the other side is counting on that. We are so tired of it, that we just give up, that we just simply retreat and, uh, and abandon. Um, everything, leave everything to the, the, the hordes, the Antifa hordes, um, which, uh, I saw a, uh, I saw a study, uh, from Europe that said that, uh, 92 of leftist, um, protesters by study live with their parents.

And normally when they do end up publishing pictures of the Antifa people, one-on-one, they wouldn't be overly intimidating. It's, uh, it's when they're wearing masks and helmets and, uh, and, uh, beating at your head with a, uh, with a cudgel, that's the, anyone's dangerous situation like that.

But one-on-one, not so much. Um, anyway, uh, yeah, I'm, I'm tired of it all too. And it would be one thing if we were all united, we were all on the same page. There wasn't division taking place within the body out of tradition or ignorance or the influx of external traditions and sources, but that's not the situation we find ourselves in.

And let me just tell you what I think's going to happen. This is what I fear is going to happen. I hope it doesn't, but I think it probably will. Um, couple of weeks ago, Rachel Held Evans passed away at a very young age and she had made a name for herself by her theological journey.

That's the term that we use now is I'm taking a theological journey. When you think about what theological means, knowledge of God, there can be a journey in theology where you're deepening your knowledge of God and you're going more and more by trust and faith into his revelation, but that's not what we're talking about.

When we talk about this kind of a journey, we're, we're talking about, uh, abandoning foundational beliefs that we've had in the past. Now, if you have foundational beliefs in your past that need to be abandoned, um, that's a good thing, but really the best way to test that is am I abandoning foundational beliefs in such a way that it is increasing my fundamental acceptance and belief in the whole counsel of God found in the scripture and scripture alone?

Or is my analysis of what I used to believe causing me to lose confidence in the ability of scripture and scripture alone to provide me with the needed light and guidance that I would desire to have as a follower of Christ, unfortunately, when people on the left today talk about theological journeys, it is, as we've seen with people like Peter Enns, Rachel Held Evans, Jen Hatmaker, um, it is a journey away from biblical sufficiency, um, biblical inspiration, biblical inerrancy into a self-made re-imagining of God, and therefore that leaves a huge vacuum and a vacuum, nature abhors a vacuum, and therefore it will be filled, um, in our day with a massive influx of cultural stuff.

Um, and so, um, I didn't say that Peter Enns had gone to secularism. I said he, he has gone on a journey and has abandoned what he once believed and now believes something very different. Need to listen carefully.

Um, anyway, um, well, hey, if you're gonna, if you're gonna ruminate and channel and demonstrate you're not listening to me, I'm gonna, I'm gonna correct you anyway. Um, so this, um, situation with Beth Moore, I am concerned because she has such a large following, um, that if she were to come out and say, you know what?

Now, there's, there's no question in my mind, and we're gonna look at this in a second, there's no question in my mind that she's already experienced a major paradigm shift over the past three or four years.

She even gives that time period herself and what she says, uh, three or four years in regards to the issue of homosexuality. Um, but right now she is well aware of the fact that if she were to follow that to its logical conclusion, um, that the slamming of doors would be very, very, very loud as yet that may change in the future.

And that may be what gives her the freedom to eventually really express where she's coming from now. But she would not be the first person to come out and say, you know, I've been spending time in prayer and I really believe Jesus has spoken to me and he says that I am to accept my LGBTQ P plus, who knows, depending on what year it is, I guess, um, brothers and sisters, um, and, uh, that this is a, you know, a move with the Holy spirit of God in our day.

And she wouldn't be the first person. There are dozens of books out there saying this very thing and the resultant, given how many of her followers have already demonstrated that they have a very, not only very strong personal attachment to her, but a significantly depreciated view of biblical sufficiency.

Just think how many pastors, elders, deacons in Southern Baptist churches and like evangelical churches, how many of them would be influenced by wives who would now be saying to them, we need to really think about this because if Beth Moore says we need to accept this and we need to accept this, I think it would have a huge impact.

I think it would have a huge impact. And, um, so when I see how she's handling this, she's handling this like a person trying to figure out how she can do that without substantially damaging, um, her ministry and her opportunities of influence.

That's what it looks like to me because the questions she was initially asked were fair questions. She won't answer them. And now that it has come out that she has edited a book and removed material from the book specifically on the subject of homosexuality and has stated that she overspoke, she went beyond scripture by a mile.

Any author whose book has been read by more than a thousand people or 500 people. Um, no, I better not use numbers again. Um, any author whose book has been written, read by anyone. How's that? Snowflakes.

Um, owes the people who took the time to read their work and explanation when you, without notation and without explanation in the book itself, change the fundamental argumentation of the book on an important point, especially a point such as homosexuality today that is being used as the primary mechanism of seeking to marginalize and silence the Christian church in the United States of America, where you happen to live and where the majority of your followers are, is, is that really arguable?

I can't see how that's arguable. I really, I don't get it. That, that seems obvious to me, but it seemingly isn't for, um, for other people. In praying God's word, she says in an article from June 6th, July 6th, sorry.

When I wrote PGW many years ago, I exceeded scripture and singled out same sex sin as particularly satanic. Well, let me remind you, um, and I transcribed this. Um, but let me remind you, this is actually a photocopy, uh, well, not a photocopy, what do you call it?

Graphic. Um, from the book itself, the printed edition, she writes before we proceed to our scripture prayers for overcoming sexual strongholds, we are wise to address another deadly sexual assault of the evil one in our society, homosexuality.

She didn't say that was the only one, but she identified it as a deadly sexual assault of the evil one in our society. Mrs. Moore is homosexuality, a deadly sexual assault of the evil one in our society.

Or have you changed your mind on that? Is that a fair question? If you, if you delete something from your book and say that I went way beyond scripture, then this is, this is not just a fair question.

This is a necessary question. If this was excessive, then what isn't, what's, what's, what's the, what's the new teaching on this subject? That it's just a, not a particularly deadly sexual assault, a sexual assault of the evil one.

Does the evil one have anything to do with it? Or is this now just a natural thing? It's just an orientation thing. It just sort of happens. I have wonderful news for anyone who has struggled with homosexual sin.

Do you now believe that you should not struggle against homosexual sin or that homosexuality isn't sin? God indeed can deliver you and anxiously awaits your full cooperation. Well, certainly not how I would put it, but God indeed can deliver you.

So do you believe, Beth Moore, that God can deliver someone from homosexual sin? Or do you believe there are certain people who are constitutively homosexual and that this is only for people who may be orient, orientation wise, not oriented, but orientation wise, heterosexual, but fall into homosexual sin.

There've been some, believe me, I've read enough books on this. There are people who take every single possible option on various of these things. But do you really, really believe that God indeed can deliver you?

Because that is a very unpopular position. I mean, you would not be invited to revoice if you actually hold out the idea. I mean, if you listen to Greg Johnson at the PCA two weeks ago, he said, I've talked to all the leading leaders, don't know of anyone who's ever been.

So do not let Satan shame you into not seeking forgiveness, fullness, and complete restoration in Jesus Christ. How is that overreaching scripture? We need to know. I actually know some people who could probably tell me exactly how many copies of this book have sold.

There are some people who have that kind of inside information. And I would say, since you indicated yourself that it continues to be used, it's sold tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of copies, right?

And if you're saying that this is overreaching scripture, you need to explain why. And is it overreaching scripture to say that you should not, this says you should seek forgiveness, fullness, and complete restoration in Jesus Christ.

Yes or no? How is that an overreaching scripture? You said, I know complete transformation is possible, not only because God's word says so, but because I have witnessed it with my own eyes. Now, you say, I know plenty of believers who have been set free from homosexuality.

Yes or no? Were you telling the truth or were you not? And if you said that God's word says so, does it no longer say so? Were you wrong in saying that it says so? I cannot believe the number of people who are going, you can't ask these questions.

You're just being me. You're just attacking poor Beth. Is there no possibility for meaningful truth-based discussion in our society or in the church anymore? I get it in the church. I mean, I get it in the society.

Critical theory, the intersectionality, the degradation of our society has created an entire generation of snowflakes, the generation of perpetual outrage. I will be offended by whatever you say. It doesn't matter what your intentions are.

It is now, everything's a macroaggression. We've gotten past the microaggression stuff now. So I get how in the society, you can't have this conversation. But my goodness, if in the church, someone that people watch by the thousands can publish a book used in churches and then remove this stuff and go, I'm not answering any questions about that.

And then their followers go, you terrible, mean people, you're picking on little Beth. That's how churches die, folks. That's how churches die. And so she said in an article, like I said, published on the 6th, as the years passed, I increasingly winced at what I'd conveyed about the basic rule of thumb in authorship is that it is better not to go back and edit an old book, but rather let it just phase out and simply don't make the same mistake in the future.

What was the mistake? Given the words, identify the mistakes that we know. The problem was because PGW is a handbook and not a regular nonfiction book, it didn't phase out in the same way. I have had many years to test the fruit of what I wrote and have seen over and over again that numerous readers who had gone to this chapter with their struggles came to my words and proceeded no further.

My words had kept them from God's words. That to me is a pretty serious stumbling block. We need to know why. It is not in any way, shape, or form an attack or anything else. It is simple truthfulness.

It's speaking the truth, speaking the truth. Now, you know, and as soon as this came out, she's like, well, I'm going to take some time off from Twitter because everyone's just so mean and nasty. And she immediately pulled the martyr card and it's like, no, I'm sorry.

That's not going to work. That's not going to work. This is not going to go away. As long as Mrs. Moore wants to continue to speak and to tell the rest of us a message from God, as she keeps saying, well, then we've got a message for her.

You need to answer these questions. Dr. Mohler's right. We cannot hide anywhere. And this is a serious subject. And running from social media and leaving people behind to blast away at anyone even asking the question is not how it needs to be handled.

It's not how it needs to be handled at all. Now, next, real quick. Well, real quick. I was sent a link to a Tim Staples presentation. The sound on this stinks. It was recorded on a phone in a high school gym, I think.

So it just echoes horribly. It starts right in the middle of comments. I don't know where it was, don't know when it was. Fairly recently, I think. It's relevant because, first of all, he attempts to address Calvinism, you would think, after all these decades.

Because, you know, I remember I was listening to Tim Staples' cassette tapes on an old Walkman in my bicycling jersey. I remember very clearly listening to a Tim Staples cassette out on Beardsley Road.

Beardsley Road doesn't exist anymore. It's now a freeway. It's the 101. So, I mean, this was back in the mid, it was in the 90s, early 90s, somewhere around there. Anyway, and back then, I kept catching him just, you know, Tim would just be so emotional and so excited that he'd say silly things.

Like, every church father believed what we believed about Matthew 16 and 18. Well, that's just baloney. And, but he was sort of a new convert, and, you know, you just sort of expected this kind of stuff.

He's got gray just like I do now. You would think by now he'd know better. Mmm, you listen to this, and this guy sounds like an Assemblies of God preacher, because that's where he came from. So, it deals with Calvinism, deals with the death of Christ, but I also want you to listen to something else.

I want you to hear the utilization of the Catholic Catechism and papal documents as he teaches. And keep in mind, this is in the day of Francis. In other words, he's going to quote this pope who said this, and that pope that said that, and this is over in the Universal Catholic Catechism.

Why not quote Francis? Because he says something different. That's why. So, this is a wonderful illustration of how Roman Catholicism can pretend to cite Bible verses, and you'll be very interested in what Bible verses he cites.

The very same Bible verses that our semi-Pelagian and Synergist friends cite in the very same context. They're not just swimming in the middle of the Tiber. They agree with Rome against us on fundamental foundational issues.

But, plainly and evidently, the ultimate authority is not Scripture, and Scripture is interpreted solely in the light of this external tradition, which is made up of, well, whatever Tim Staples decides it's made up of.

The funny thing is, they want to say, oh, so and Scriptura, it's you and the Bible and you're your own pope. Hey, all you've done is expanded the number of books to quote from. It's exactly what I said to Mitch Pacwa at the end of our debate on Sola Scriptura in 1999, I think it was, or 2000, somewhere over there in San Diego.

My closing statement, I go over there and I get out all these books, and the Cans and Decrees of the Council of Trent, and Vatican II, and the Commentary, and all that, and I stack up this whole thing of Roman Catholic books and say, what we're being told is that because you've got this, you can have a better, safer understanding of Romans 5, verse 1, than if all you have is the Bible.

But the reality is, that's not the case. It adds confusion. It does not clarify anything. And Tim Staples is his own pope. He gets to quote from this pope because it agrees what he says. He's not quoting much from Francis, is he?

No, he can't. Because Francis doesn't believe the things that other popes believed. He believes different things. And so you get to pick and choose. You've just got a whole lot more to pick and choose from.

It's how it works. It's how it works. Now, I'm not going to play him at any elevated speed, because that would be non-understandable. Especially when he starts preaching, which is what he's doing. So let's listen to little Tim Staples here.

And I'm sad to say, we were working on a debate with Tim. And then he backed out. Said, no, we're not going to do it. And we weren't given a reason why. It's the way it goes. But we tried. And we're going to try to get somebody else to do something.

But it happens. Happens a lot. It would be helpful if this was actually plugged in. Let's try that again. And you will immediately go, but you can't understand it. You just have to listen. Man, that sounds a whole lot worse now than it did before.

And wow, it just sounds horrible in my thing. So he became sin for us. He's talking about Calvin here. And he taught that Jesus became repugnant to God. If you're having trouble understanding it. Christ did not become reprobate.

Paragraph 602. Now, the problem here is that they use the term reprobate in a completely different way that we do. And yet he's talking about Calvin. And so he's going to say Calvin said this about, for example, he says Christ became reprobate.

Calvin never said that. But they use reprobate in a different fashion, a different way, which creates a straw man when it's applied to reform theology.

It's metaphysically impossible. Amen. He can't become evil. He is the eternal son of God. Human divine nature is hypostatically joined in the eternal second person who doesn't drink. That's impossible.

He was not reprobate.

You hear that? Take your reprobation for you. Not reformed language. He was never reformed. So when he tries to represent reformed theology, even though some of the rest of us can represent other viewpoints by using their language, that's never been something that Tim's been very good at.

That means your reprobation is gone. You're going to heaven.

So you're going to heaven whether you like it or not. A very common misrepresentation, straw man representation. Obviously, the reformed perspective is that in the life of the elect, there is regeneration.

There is a new creature. A person loves Christ. A person clings to Christ. It is the nature of the reborn individual to cling to Christ, to have faith and repentance toward Christ, to desire what is pleasing in his sight, etc., etc., etc.

They don't want to... Tim, again, struggles with the accuracy of representation very frequently.

So he could not have died and been reprobated for those who were going to go to hell. Because if that's true, then there would be double reprobation. Christ's reprobation would not be sufficient to save souls.

So John Calvin says Jesus did not die for everyone.

So interesting perspective, because at least he's making it very clear. Yeah, the death of Christ is not sufficient in and of itself. He's going to say that. It's a door opener. In the words of some of our traditionalist friends, it provides provision.

It doesn't save. It's vitally important, but not enough in and of itself. This is definitely part of the Reformation dividing line. Yep, there's no question about it. But it needs to be heard. And sometimes hearing Roman Catholics saying what the Arminians are saying helps you to understand what the issues were at the time of the Reformation.

He's going to get into Martin Luther and the bondage of the will here a little later on, which likewise will help us to understand that. Sorry John, you're wrong. Just so you know. So got two out of the three of the verses that we included in the chapter in the Potter's Freedom almost 24 years ago now.

And I can guarantee you that he has never read the response to that and has no interest in reading the response to that at all. But very same verses that I could show you every kind of traditionalist, semi-Pelagian, Arminian, you name them, all agree, all read the verses in the same way, and all ignore the counter exegesis.

Just simply throw them out there as a group without ever looking at the context, without ever dealing with who the identity of anyone being referred to is without looking at... And it's almost sound like instead of saying Peter, he said Corinthians, but the citation was the Peter passage.

But you know, it's not normal to hear Roman Catholic priests going, Amen? Amen? But yeah, that's... But that's old Tim.

What this Calvinist theology does is... You know what? By the way, just so nobody's confused here, I should point out, the Catechism points out that when Scripture says he became sin, very closely related to our Lord's, one of his seven last things on the cross, when he says, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Well, this is one Calvinist that has attempted to clarify that misuse of that text more than once, and has pointed out that there simply isn't any biblical basis for that perspective, and has tried to correct that more than once.

But I'm sure he's heard people, you know, make that kind of a... We've even got one song that mentions it, otherwise beautiful song, but that one line.

The Catechism tells us, no, he was not reprobated. The Catechism tells us. He was not repugnant to God. He is the beloved Son in whom the Father is well pleased, and that never ceased. But he became, the Catechism says, so identical to the place of us could say, My God.

Notice what you've got here. It's the Catechism says here. This Pope said that there. And instead of... If you're going to deal with this text, if you don't go to Psalm 22, you've completely ignored what its actual context and applied meaning is.

He's still getting what our preachers get when they go that direction with that text. He's still getting the same emotional type stuff. He's not dealing with it exegetically, but he's doing it through the citation of Catechisms and Popes and stuff like that.

Now, here's a pretty important point that I've made more than once. Galatians 2 .20, that is an important text. Christ died for me. I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

But once you join that with a universal atonement perspective, as you have in Rome, that can be said by every person in hell today. And whoever will be, they will be able to say, Christ died for me and he failed.

He intended to save me and he failed. They will rejoice in that for eternity, if that were true. I don't think that it is, but Rome's universal concept is right out there. It is blatant, and it's exactly what the other side says when we have debates with them.

So they are united together. On the other side of the Tiber River, from us on this issue. Hearing this Pope said in this document, well, why not Pope Francis? What does this tell you? What does this say about the Roman Catholic attack on solo scriptura?

If you get to pick and choose which popes you're going to quote from, I mean, that's picking and choosing which verses you're going to quote from in the Bible for us. You have to do that because that body of documents that you call tradition is a contradiction mess.

So you have to pick and choose. We illustrated this back in the 90s in the debates with Jerry Matitix. He would quote this early church father, that early church father, and he didn't know what to do.

Initially, when I came along, I started quoting church fathers too, some of whom he had already quoted. Until he finally said, well, but that isn't part of tradition. Who gets to say what tradition is?

Well, we do. Oh, sola ecclesia. The church alone. I mean, that's what you've got. And no matter how hard you try to avoid sola ecclesia, you're still stuck with it. But here you've got an individual, and he's got this whole mass of documents to quote from, and he can string together all he wants to string together.

Doesn't change the fact that he's picking and choosing as he's going along.

That Christ knew and loved each one of us from his mama's womb. Did you know that? Because he had to be a different vision from the moment of his conception. Jesus did not die for a human.

See what happens when, again, you promote, you don't have a decree of God, you don't have sovereign grace, you do not have election, but you have universal atonement. And so now you have everybody, quoting Galatians 2 .20, as if its foundational truths are true for every single human being, whether you're in Christ or out.

You just usually discover it. If you happen to choose Jesus, then you discover that that's the way it's always been. But it's true of everybody. That's what's going on here. Michael. Yes. Michael. Michael.

You're Michael. No, you're Michael. What's your name?

Jesus would die for me, right? No, as he says.

Now here's, you need to listen to this if you can hear it. Here is a Roman Catholic hearing and mocking the idea of the sufficiency of the finished work of Christ. He did everything so you don't have to do anything.

And see, they hear that. They are so attuned in their semi-Pelagianism to the necessity of their actions and the insufficiency, the mere providing of grace, and hence the need of the sacramental system within Roman Catholicism, that he does not blush to hear say, we have to do this and we have to do that.

And the death of Christ is not sufficient of itself. And they don't, you know, has Tim just never listened? Because I sure explained it to him more than once, because we not only did the two public debates, but we were on the Bible Answer Man broadcast as well, and we did the debate here on Purgatory.

I've explained it to him repeatedly that our wills are involved because we are redeemed persons. From their perspective, since redemption and the relationship with God is something that is gained and lost, gained and lost, you can, instead of that union being based upon the electing grace of God, they certainly don't have any concept of Christ in John chapter six, losing none of those that are entrusted to him, all the rest of that kind of stuff.

Since they have this very different understanding of what the Christian life and relationship to God is, something that can end and be started and end and be started and so on and so forth. Since that's their perspective, the idea of being dead in sin, raised to life, and then brought through the work, the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, the application of the truth of God over time to an ever greater understanding of who he is and to greater holiness, growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, so on and so forth.

That growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ is your addition. It's necessary on your part. Rather than being the result of what he does, it's necessary on your part. It's what you add.

And again, I've said it many, many times when we listen to the anti-lordship people, we listen to the people who once saved, always saved, got your ticket, punch, go into heaven. The only way to be balanced in dealing with the New Testament text is from the reformed perspective.

And listening to a Roman Catholic saying what many non-Roman Catholics say helps you, I think, to see where the inconsistent non-Roman Catholics miss the boat. And if you hear Tim Staples saying what you normally say, I would think about that,.

Especially if you're not a Roman Catholic. John chapter 19, Jesus said from the cross, it is finished, meaning Jesus went to hell, was reprimanded for us, he saved all that are going to be saved, he redeemed them.

Not whether they like it or not, that's misrepresentation. The hell and reprobation thing, misrepresentation. But if you mean he became a curse for us and because the elect are united to him, his death is perfect in their place.

He has obtained eternal redemption, entered into the holy place. All those things, those biblical teachings, most definitely. Nothing for us to do for what? There's nothing you can do if you're spiritually dead.

There's nothing I need to add to the finished work of Christ. But the biblical teaching is that it is God's purpose for the elect to be conformed to the image of Christ. It is God's purpose that we should walk in good works, not to gain something from God, but to glorify God.

God ordains the ends and the means and the ends includes the creation of a special people who are redeemed by his blood, who then become his body and who live his life out in this world through his spirit.

So the misrepresentation normally, and again, given the circles that he says he was in, a Baptist church, Assemblies of God, et cetera, et cetera. He wasn't all that stable even before he became Roman Catholic.

But given the background that he's described for himself, would that balanced, reformed understanding have been a part of his experience? Probably not. Does that excuse him after all these years of not knowing?

Not at all. It's been explained to him many, many times. Have you ever heard that, right?

The sufficiency of the sacrifice of Christ. We Catholics are called Pelagians. We're called whacked out because we say you've got to do good works to get to heaven. Amen? And yes, we do.

And yes, we do. You forgot the actual description. Semi-Pelagian. That's the actual description that needs to be thrown in there. But he's straightforward. Whatever in the world that is, I'd like to see that particular verse.

You better start working. You better start working. If you've reached the age of accountability, you better start working. That's what Tim Disstables just said. That, you know, you can call that grace all you want.

That ain't grace.

Mark Luther had a different take on this. He did not believe in double predestination. He did not believe in penal substitution or atonement the same way Calvin did. But Luther taught this interesting thing in his greatest work called The Bondage of the Will, that the will in man is entirely passive.

Now, hear me. We've come a long way.

Now, this is interesting because there are a lot of different interpretations of Luther, and modern Lutheranism is more Melanchthonian than it is Lutheran. But Luther was not a consistent, systematic theologian.

He was more of a theologian of the heart than the head, brilliant as he was. But what's interesting is he has to deal with the document that was signed with the liberal Lutherans. He calls them evangelical Lutherans because that's the name they use, but ELCA.

But the reality is these are the left, left, left Lutherans, not the conservative Lutherans. I would think he would want to bring that out, but he doesn't.

I'm not really sure why. At least with the evangelical Lutherans, we've come a long way. It's funny because with the evangelicals, you know, the document we signed with the Carlotians, but in the same document, they acknowledged that.

Well, okay, I'm not going to defend Lutherans, but isn't it interesting? It's Cardinal Ratzinger. Yeah, it's Cardinal Ratzinger now. Because again, he's in this weird situation where you have two living popes who clearly do not believe the same things.

I have to wonder if that's one of the reasons why there's not quite as many debates going on right now. Oh, yeah, yeah, no, no, no choice about it. No choice about it.

And Martin Luther says, if God gets on our back and rides us, he'll ride us to heaven. If the devil gets on our back and rides us, he'll ride us to hell and rides us.

Are you all with me here? That's funny. I did a search on Bonage of the Will, and neither donkey nor horse is ever used in anything even remotely like that. Not even close. So I don't know what in the world he's talking about.

There's all sorts of stuff running around through the internet that allegedly Martin Luther said. But that one, I would love to know what in the world he was referring to. On Luther's Twitter page, is that where he got it from?

Yeah, OK.

It was the whole thesis of his greatest work.

Well, at least you got one thing right there. That was exactly what Martin Luther said. Glad we got that one. Just a few more. And then let the devil jump on.

I use this analogy for the difference between Calvin and Luther when it comes to our salvation justification. Think of the Titanic.

You want to see how bad analogies can be? We already know some people who make really bad analogies. Really bad analogies. And Arby's has made a lot of money off the fact that there are certain people who make really bad analogies.

But Tim Staples makes really bad analogies, too. And here's a bad Tim Staples analogy. Our salvation justification.

Think of the Titanic. When the Titanic went down, people are bobbing in the water. Y 'all with me? Who got a still awake? Hello? Hey! All right, just checking. Folks are bobbing out. Just save those few that Christ was reprobated for.

Amen. And that God wills to save the others. He wills their damnation. The church condemns this in paragraph 1037, where the catechism says, God necessity the commission of a mortal sin. A willful, knowing 37th in the catechism.

But hear me, dunk some until they drown.

So that's double predestination, is you've got the people in the Titanic, and they're in the water, and then God dunks them until they drown. That's what double predestination is. Uh, yeah, nothing about the wrath of God against sin, nothing about rebels.

If you really wanted, you know, we've dealt with a lot of really bad analogies. Remember in The Potter's Freedom, we dealt with Norm Geisler's bad analogy of the kids in the swimming hole, and we tried to correct it to show what is actually presented.