Limited Atonement with David Allen, Ecclesiastical Textism with Robert Truelove

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Greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. I think it's a Monday. I sort of lost track of time there for a while, but we're back.

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We have a lot to get to. We've fallen far, far behind on far too many interesting topics, some of which, looking at my

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Evernote list, have already sort of passed away from relevance or soon to be replaced by other things.

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That's sort of how news works these days. But there are topics that we need to address that you're probably only going to hear addressed around here.

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I want to start off with, well, yesterday

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I spoke at our church. I'm not sure how useful, to be honest with you, my time there was.

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I gave it my best shot. My voice was not overly strong. I was not overly strong, but we gave it our best shot and tried to do something that would be useful.

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And in the process began addressing a section from John chapter 10.

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And I had in the back of my mind, I even made reference to our first subject of the day.

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First subject today is the topic of the atonement. It is that time of the year when we, some of us anyways,

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I suppose we should allow for those of you who do not feel the freedom to celebrate the

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Incarnation at this particular time of year. That's totally up to you. But many of us celebrate the

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Incarnation. If you are familiar with some of the characteristic differences that exist between Eastern Orthodoxy, between the

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Eastern Church and the Western Church, historically and functionally, there is a much greater emphasis upon Incarnational and Trinitarian theology in the

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East than there is in the West. There's more of a reference and emphasis in the

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West upon soteriology and atonement than in the

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East. And so balance is always a good thing.

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We try to find that from the pages of scripture. When we talk about the

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Incarnation, we are obviously necessarily talking about something that becomes absolutely foundational to our doctrine of atonement.

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I had a lengthy discussion with a Muslim in our chat channel yesterday.

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He just happened to run across our stuff and went to the website, saw the chat channel, popped in.

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Nobody was talking to him, so we had about an hour -long conversation.

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And I was once again impressed by the centrality of having a biblical doctrine of who

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Christ was to be able to present a meaningful concept of atonement, especially when you're talking about people outside of the

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Christian faith that don't even have the idea of the necessity of God's law being fulfilled or anything like that.

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And for Jesus to be the God -man, the incarnate one, absolutely central to the meaning of the atonement, at least any biblical or apologetic meaning of atonement.

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Unfortunately, there are many in the world today attacking penal substitutionary atonement.

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I had a guy on Twitter, someone on Twitter posted a quote from Jonathan Edwards about God's wrath and the cross.

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And this guy's one -word response was, yuck. I tried to engage him, and it became very obvious we're dealing with one of these

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Zond -type progressive, I don't know, liberals that I honestly don't have a whole lot of interest or desire in dealing with personally.

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I just find them extremely distasteful. Anyway, that necessity of the high exalted view of who

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Christ is to have a meaningful doctrine of atonement, a biblical doctrine of atonement, a doctrine of atonement that can communicate to the

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Muslim or a doctrine of atonement that can give us a basis for responding to Rome's doctrine of the mass as a perpetuatory sacrifice.

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These things are intimately connected, and it always seems around this time of year,

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I am struck once again with the importance of seeing the interrelationships that exist between what we tend in the

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West to call doctrines. And it's appropriate, it's useful for education and teaching to talk about the doctrine of such and so, the doctrine of such and so.

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My bookshelves are lined with books that will talk about the doctrine of this and the doctrine of that.

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The problem is it becomes way too easy for us to have a book on the doctrine of one thing here and then a book on the doctrine of another thing over here, and be perfectly comfortable that they are separated by that amount of shelf space.

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The Bible never allows for that kind of comfort because it keeps squishing stuff together.

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And it keeps taking these divine truths and weaving them together in the most amazing and beautiful ways that we can't keep our doctrine of this and our doctrine of that on several parts of the shelf.

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And at this time of year, we certainly have an emphasis upon the doctrine of incarnation.

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The taking of a perfect human nature by the Second Person of the Divine Trinity, the

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Beloved Son, takes on a perfect human nature. There is what's called the hypostatic union.

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He is one person with two natures, but they are not intermingled, they are not changed. He does not cease being the

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Eternal Son any more than that divine nature becomes some type of demigod or something along these lines.

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And I think a lot of Christians would be hard -pressed, really hard -pressed, to give more than a two -sentence explanation at best as to why that's relevant to the

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Atonement. If they even give a meaningful doctrine of the

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Atonement itself outside of, well, Jesus died for my sins. Why? How?

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What does that accomplish? And when you begin to see how these things are interrelated, how they are part of the same fabric of truth, that's really when its strength comes to be seen in your mind as well.

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I think a lot of people start picking at the various threads and trying to make it come apart.

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I'm not sure I like this thread here. Well, you keep pulling on that long enough and you're not going to have any fabric left.

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And that, in essence, is what a lot of people have done. A lot of people who have made shipwreck of the faith is they began pulling at that one.

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There was one thing that brought conviction, one thing that, and it doesn't take long for it all comes apart.

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My daughter has interrupted my train of thought, which is a very precarious train today.

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I just want everyone to know it could be very easy to just derail the train of thought.

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We're sort of running on one wheel, just on one track. It's the best we've got today. She says,

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I really appreciate the incarnation of your fiber optic Christmas tree. We've got a new tree.

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I've always wanted one with fiber optic in it. And so I got one.

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Can you understand the connection there? Because I can't. I was hoping you'd help me out.

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No? Oh, okay. All right. Sorry. Dare I say, sheologian theology?

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Sheologian theology? Maybe so. Maybe so. Maybe if I listened to certain

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Mars Hill praise bands, I would be able to understand.

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But I can't follow the argument. Maybe she's just saying that it has such pretty woven colors that it sort of represents what

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I'm talking about. Yeah, I got one. Yeah, I got one. Well, yeah, we had had that one for a long time.

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Anyway, back onto the track. Back onto the track. In John chapter 10, you have

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Jesus making incredibly strong, clear, soteriological statements.

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Statements concerning the subject of the doctrine of salvation. And I'm not sure who that was addressed to,

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Summer, but he made the comment. You complained to Uncle Rich. Rich the Tingle. That's his

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Twitter handle. It's Rich the Tingle. He'll take all complaints at richthetingle at twitter .com.

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Anyway, in John chapter 10, for example, in verse 11, I am the good shepherd.

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The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. This is going to lead us eventually down to the assertion in verses at the beginning of verse 26.

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But you do not believe because you are not of my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them.

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They follow me. I give eternal life to them. And they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all.

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And no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one. And I have often emphasized, it's important that everyone understand that the primary focus of the phrase,

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I and the Father are one. I and the Father, we are one. It's plural. There's a distinction even in those words.

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I and the Father, we are one is soteriological. It is not first and foremost an ontological statement of the unity of the

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Father and the Son and the Godhead. That's just not what the text is addressing. Now, you may be able to implicitly derive that from other considerations based on the idea that no mere prophet could ever say something like this.

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And no mere prophet could be so central to the giving of eternal life to God's people and draw things from the

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Old Testament. Fine. But the primary meaning of the text is soteriological.

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The Father and the Son are one and bring about the eternal life of God's people. Now, what we have then is we have a text that is specifically, unquestionably about what the

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Father and the Son are doing in salvation. Because it's talking about,

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I give eternal life to them and they will never perish. What are the categories do you put eternal life and never perishing in?

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I mean, so often when we talk about doctrine of atonement and things like that, we're looking at a statement over here that's not even talking about the subject of salvation, but a huge amount of weight will be placed upon it because, well, he says it this way, which means maybe he meant this or another one over here.

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This is a specific text on the subject of bringing about the eternal life, the non -perishing of God's people, the sheep.

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It's even included the Gentile mission. I have sheep who are not of this fold. I must gather them.

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There'll be one flock, one shepherd. It is soteriological and theological.

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The Father loves the Son because he lays down his life for the sheep. The Son has the authority to lay that life down.

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He has authority to take it back up. This commandment received from the Father. So you have Father and Son language, just as we're going to have in John 17, which we had back in John 8, all being tied together in the doctrine of salvation, what the

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Father and the Son are accomplishing. This is then going to lay the foundation then for the full

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Trinitarian aspect in John 14 -16, when the Spirit is brought in as the one who then makes all this come alive in our hearts.

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So my point is that here in this text, in John 10, we have

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Jesus saying, I give my life for the sheep. And then he says, my sheep know me and I know them.

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And he used the term my own, my own know me and I know them.

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This is a statement of intimate, reciprocal, personal relationship.

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This isn't my sheep know about me. My sheep have a general knowledge of facts about me.

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And I have a general knowledge about sheep. I hope that's not what he's saying.

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And it clearly is not. This is personal. And it has to be.

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I mean, we can't even, I can't leave it at that level. He says, my own know me and I know, just as I know the

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Father and the Father knows me. Now, that obviously is the most intimate personal knowledge that there is.

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And therefore, to make that parallel, there is a intimate personal knowledge that exists between the

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Savior and the saved. Now, why am

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I emphasizing all of this? Well, because this is one of the key texts where Jesus speaks of the purpose and intention of the giving of his life.

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He lays down his life for a specific people. And in that very same context, says to another group of people, you aren't amongst them.

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I lay down my life for the sheep. Only a few verses later, you're not my sheep.

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You're not my sheep. Now, those are frightening words.

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They're very heavy and weighty words, but they need to be allowed to have their say.

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The giving of his life here is in the context of soteriology. So, we're talking here about the intention of the atonement, then determining the conclusion we come to regarding the scope of the atoning work of Christ, the giving of his life.

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And Jesus tells us that the intention of the

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Father and the Son is to bring about the eternal life of a specific group of people. It's pretty easy to follow the specificity of this group of people from John 6,

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John 8, here John 10, all the way to John 14, 16, 17. The pattern is very clear.

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Here, it's specifically called the sheep. In John 6, those the Father gives me are the ones who come to me, and I give eternal life to them, and so on and so forth.

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And so, the connection between the laying down of life and the result, which is, well, which is what?

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The result of laying down life is not a hypothetical, well, barriers have now been removed.

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Well, now it's possible that this may happen. That's not what is said.

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In the text, the laying down of that life results in those sheep having eternal life.

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They are in the Son's hand. They are in the Father's hand. And I'll never forget having a conversation with someone years and years and years ago on this text, and they were just insisting.

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They were just insisting. Now, we can lose that salvation. You know, Jesus tries his best, but it's really up to us.

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And I pointed to this text and like, well, yeah, no one can ever snatch me out of the

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Father's hand, but I can jump out on my own. How far someone is willing to go to try to make sure that Jesus is nothing but a potential

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Savior? Because when it says, and they will never perish, apollontai, well, if you jump out, you will perish.

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I give eternal life to them and they will never perish. That's Jesus' promise. That's Jesus' assertion.

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If you want to invalidate that, you do so at the cost of the perfection of Jesus' Saviorhood.

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Just in passing, I might mention that. Especially because I didn't hear from Mike today.

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Mike had wanted to be on when we were planning on last Thursday or whenever it was.

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No, not Thursday, Wednesday. Hey, if he calls in, we'll interrupt what I'm doing.

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I'm not sure if he's listening live or anything today or not. We did announce, it was probably within a few hours of my contracting the flu.

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We did announce on a Facebook Live post the debate on January 18th.

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Is that on the website? Okay, it's on the website. January 18th, we will be having a debate as a pre -debate to the

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G3 conference in Atlanta. I have not been able to determine the last official time we debated

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Catholic answers. But I think it was in the 90s. Early 90s, yeah.

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Because I asked Pat Madrid and I said, were you still with Catholic answers?

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And he said, no, he had left in 96. So it could literally be over 20 years.

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Might be. Now, well, we do sort of count the dividing line debate with Tim Staples, though.

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But as far as a formal public debate face to face,

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I think probably like 92, somewhere around there. It was the last time that we had a debate with Catholic answers.

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And so that's a major announcement. I'm hoping that a lot of our friends who are planning on being at G3 will be able to come in a little early.

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That will be a great way to start the conference. And I believe that's

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January 18th, if I recall correctly. Wednesday, January 18th. Coming up very quickly.

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Very, very quickly. All of 2017 seems to be coming at me. Very, very quickly.

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And when you're moving as slowly as I still am, you just don't feel like you can get out of the way of all those boulders rolling at your direction.

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Anyway. Huh? It's just me staring at myself.

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There's nothing. Nothing there. Sorry. I mean, I see your mouse moving back and forth along the top of the screen, but there's a banner ad at the website.

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That's good. Okay. Anyway. Relevant topic is going to be the permanence of salvation as well, which we debated back in December of 1990 with Jerry Matitix at Northwest Community Church with Scott Hahn in attendance that evening.

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Jerry was, what, about 20 minutes late for that one, as I recall? That was the night before the debate on the papacy at City of the

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Lord over in Tempe. Never even seen that place since then. I wouldn't even know where to find it. Don't you?

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Have you? Okay. Where is it? Really?

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It's on Mill Avenue. I'll have to go by there sometime and just imbibe all the positive vibes from that evening because it was quite the evening.

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That's the way it is about it. Anyway, it's 23 minutes after the hour, and I have yet to get started on stuff.

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So something tells me I probably queued up a whole lot more than I'll ever get to. Let me see if I can tie some of this together, and then we'll start listening to something.

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The point is this, that when you look at a truly biblical doctrine of atonement, answering questions such as intention, which has to come first, and then the extent follows from what the intention of the

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Father, Son, and Spirit was, whether you believe God is actually accomplishing salvation to His own glory, whether you believe that there is a fundamental purpose that God is accomplishing and that He is able to accomplish that purpose, not that God has a fundamental sort of vague set of desires and He may or may not accomplish them, but whether you really believe that there is a purpose that God is accomplishing in this world, all of these things will have a tremendous impact upon how you then answer the other questions.

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I don't believe that there is any possible way to have a meaningful conversation on the subject of the atonement unless you have laid the proper foundations and your overarching understanding of what

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God is doing in this universe. If you just try to dive into that, you're never really going to accomplish anything.

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I can't see how it's possible. But what's more is, especially when it comes to the atonement, because a

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Christian doctrine of the atonement has to bring into consideration the incarnation, why is it necessary for the hypostatic union?

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Why is it necessary for Jesus to be the God -man? There are so many preconditions to make the doctrine understandable.

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We're talking here about a high -order doctrine that has many foundational revelations that come before it.

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Just as when we talk about the Trinity, you're talking about a high -level doctrine. There are fundamental issues that come before you can even begin to have a meaningful conversation about the doctrine of the

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Trinity. If we keep all of that in mind, then we recognize that the power of the

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Reformed understanding of the atonement is that we see all of that, we embrace all of that, and our doctrine of the atonement is actually right at the center.

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When you think about what we call the points of Calvinism, if you think about what comes before it, the kingly freedom of God, total depravity of man, unconditional election, these are either preconditions, man's deadness and sin, or they are expressions of divine intention and divine actions.

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It is at the L of the tulip that you have the interface between the divine intention and actual accomplishment in time.

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You have what the Father has intended to do in eternity past. You have what the Spirit has likewise chosen to do in eternity past.

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Now we're seeing what the Son has freely chosen to do in the divine counsel of salvation, but it takes place in time because it's unique, it's the

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Incarnation. The scope of the

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Son's work is going to be in perfect harmony with the scope of the intention work of the

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Father and the intention work of the Spirit. If the Father has unconditionally elected a particular people, if the

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Spirit is going to bring to eternal life and regeneration a particular people, putting a scope of activity into the work of the

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Son that does not match that of the Father and the Spirit is not only unnecessary, it's totally disruptive to the

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Godhead itself. And what those who deny particular redemption just either refuse to recognize or for some reason are highly fearful of or don't understand is the power of recognizing that connectedness.

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When I talk about limited atonement, what I hear is perfection of Father, Son, and Spirit working in perfect harmony with one another.

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What I hear is the power of the high priest to accomplish that which the

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Father has assigned for him. I see power and purpose and harmony and balance and accomplishment, all the glory of God.

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That's what I see. And I think sometimes some of my

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Calvinistic friends sort of get a little squeamish about this particular subject, this particular belief.

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Well, you don't really believe in that, do you? And my response is, well, you don't really believe in that, do you?

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Because the alternatives, which rarely really get put out there in any full sense, the alternatives are frightening and indefensible biblically.

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But it just seems like the other side does not get the power of divine truth when taken as a whole.

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They always want to try to atomize it. It's easier to try to, hey, we're going to find a way to do it again.

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Inculcate doubts in people's thinking about a single strand of the fabric.

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That is, when they stand together and you can see their coordination, their design.

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That's where the power lies. And I don't think that those who stand against Reformed theology understand what they're really arguing against when they argue the way they do.

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Now, it has been eight years. It was pretty much,

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I'm pretty certain it was November of 2008 when the first John 3 .16

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conference took place. I remember it because I remember which hotel I was staying at in London.

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It was my second trip over and I was staying at this really cool place. Oh, what was that place called?

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Roger would be able to tell me. I was staying at this really, really cool place.

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And I remember what the room looked like. And I was downloading the audio files of the presentations that were being made.

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And one of those presentations was Dr. David Allen's on limited atonement.

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Now, Allen had been at that time deeply influenced by Tony Byrne, who is a sub -Calvinist, an

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Amaraldian of some stripe. I'm not sure where he is now or what he's doing these days. But unfortunately, he's one of the things, if you're a real

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Calvinist, you're a hyper -Calvinist. He's the one that convinced David Allen, I'm a hyper -Calvinist, all that kind of stuff. So there's a real lack of balance there.

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But anyway, it did create this strange thing where you have someone who's not a

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Calvinist at all, Allen, who's a professor of preaching at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, utilizing arguments from someone who at least believes in the doctrine of election or at least a form of the doctrine of election, things like that.

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And at the time, one of the criticisms that we presented against Dr.

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Allen, something that we have repeated over and over again, and then was repeated in the lengthy book on Limited Atonement, it came out about three years ago now, where many of the articles made reference to Dr.

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Allen and to some of his comments, was that there was a lack of a holistic understanding of what

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Reformed theology is, what it means, and what its real power is.

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There was this very atomization that I was just referring to, this chopping of the system up into individual doctrines and focusing upon things.

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And over the years since 2008, we have repeated that criticism as Dr.

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Allen has repeated his assertions. And then a few years ago, started hearing about this major, major book that was going to come out.

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Well, it's come out now. And recently, Dr. Allen was on a webcast and I started listening to the webcast about two days ago because I was told that I'm referenced to it.

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I haven't even gotten that far. I started listening toward the beginning and that's when

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I realized nothing had changed since 2008. Allegedly, eight years of study and still not the first bit of familiarity, not the first bit of, we could say interest in accuracy,

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I suppose, but I'm just convinced that it is such a dogged devotion to a tradition that it just simply closes the mind and the ears to hearing anything other than, well, this group, these traditionalists, they need

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Calvinism to be what they need it to be. They need it to be a very monochromatic, simplistic, one doctrine here, one doctrine, we can only handle one doctrine at a time type situation.

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The idea of taking on a holistic, balanced, harmonious, reformed theology, not going to happen, not with these guys.

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And as I listened, I was just amazed. And I was going to say disappointed.

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And then as I was talking to a pastor friend, I was going to say, well, let's be honest, this is exactly what you expect out of Southwestern.

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A lot of us know what Southwestern does at its highest levels of leadership in regards to seeking to resist reformed theology, especially amongst

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Texas Baptists, but amongst others as well. And it's not a secret, we know.

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And so I guess it just simply flows. It's consistency on that level.

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But I wanted to play some segments of that, because I have other things to get to, believe it or not, today. But I wanted to play some segments of it and make some comments as we get started here.

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Well, get started as we're 36 minutes in. I'll pick up the speed just a little bit, and let's go.

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And the question of what exactly is the atonement, well, in contemporary usage, the term atonement really refers to the expiatory and propitiatory work of Jesus on the cross, whereby he substituted for the sins of all people.

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The satisfaction for sin was accomplished by his death on the cross and subsumed under the broad term of atonement would be the importance of understanding three things.

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The intent of the atonement, what was God's purpose and intent in the atonement.

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And number two is the extent of the atonement, for whose sins did Jesus die.

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Now, at least I get, whether it had anything to do with me or not, I explicitly recall about three years ago, spending an extensive amount of time in reviewing one of Alan's sermons on the subject, criticizing him for the fact that he simply refused to logically deal with the relationship of intention to extent when it comes to the issue of the atonement.

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To talk about the scope, you have to talk about the intention. Well, at least he's now using the term intention and focusing upon that.

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That's a good thing. That is the key question of extent. And then number three is the application of the atonement.

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In other words, what are the conditions that God himself has annexed that must be fulfilled for the atonement to be applied to anyone?

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And so basically that's in contemporary terminology or in theological terminology, that's the meaning of the word atonement, and one should never consider that theological concept of atonement apart from those three broad separate but interrelated categories of intent, extent, and application.

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Right. That's great. I mean, that's a great way to kind of lay it out. Let's talk, if we don't mind, but talk a little bit about extent, because oftentimes that's kind of where, it seems to me anyway, at least in my circles, that's kind of where the focus oftentimes goes to first.

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For example, a Calvinist might bring up the point of saying scripture teaches that Christ came to save his own, or he paid the price for his church, or he laid down his life for his sheep.

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And I've heard him often say, you know, it's not merely providing payment that may or may not succeed in saving people.

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He actually saves people. It's not a potential salvation. They'll say he actually saves people. How do you respond to that kind of argument?

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Now, of course, that's referring to me. Not to me alone, but first and foremost, primarily to me, because I've probably been one of the most consistent voices in criticizing this rather shallow response that is offered.

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So let's see how in -depth the response becomes. Okay. Well, let me, since you asked me first specifically about the extent of the atonement, then let me answer that and then see if I can also get to your second question.

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Okay. And if I don't get to that, remind me to come back. Yeah, no worries. The question of the extent of the atonement, that question is the question, for whom did

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Christ die? Right. For whose sins was Jesus punished? And in answer to that question, there are only two options.

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Either Jesus died for the sins of the elect alone, and that, of course, is what is familiarly known as limited atonement.

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Right. That's option one. Option two is that Jesus died for the sins of all people.

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He died for the sins of all humanity. Now, it is important to recognize,

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I think, Dr. Flowers, that— Well, if I get this thing to stop, my goodness. I don't know how many times

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I hit stop, and it just did not want to stop. Okay. Anyway, the only reason

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I wanted to pause it was to point out, maybe this was established beforehand.

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I don't think that it was. But there are many, many, many theories of atonement down through church history, the vast majority of which are utterly irrelevant from a biblical perspective.

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But there are theories of atonement. And it does seem that Dr.

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Allen has just sort of dismissed all of them and says, well, these are the only two possibilities. Well, I suppose from a biblical perspective,

41:10

I might tend to sort of agree with what the options are. But there are all sorts of folks, big names these days, who are looking at completely different ways of understanding atonement.

41:26

And, in fact, if you listened to, a couple weeks ago, the unbelievable radio broadcast with Justin Brierley and N .T.

41:35

Wright and Tom Schreiner, you're not going to hear that conversation taking place in the parameters that Dr.

41:44

Allen's even talking about here. And I'll be honest with you.

41:50

The Reformed exegete can move between those two discussions with consistency.

41:55

I don't see how the traditionalists even have a foothold there. I don't even see how they begin.

42:02

They don't even have a seat at that table. Just don't, in my opinion. When it comes to that category number two, it is not only true that all

42:14

Armenians and all non -Calvinists, and notice that I differentiate those categories because it is historically false, as well as in contemporary work, contemporary history, false, to say that there are only two categories.

42:27

You're either Calvinist or you're an Arminian. And that's a false dichotomy. It is a constant refrain that is heard from both sides.

42:38

Actually, the appropriate division is either you're a monogist or a synergist.

42:47

Good luck coming up with a third on that one. It is mistaken, and this book is an attempt to show, among other reasons, historically and otherwise, why it is mistaken.

42:58

But first of all, Armenians, all Armenians and all non -Calvinists, believe that Christ died for the sins of all humanity.

43:07

That's just not true. I mean, every time

43:12

I've critiqued Dr. Allen, I've been told, well, but he's just a professor of preaching. Be nice to the guy. Well, then don't write books.

43:18

Well, write books on preaching, then. If you're going to write books on theology, don't sit there and say that all non -Calvinists believe that Jesus died for all the sins of the world.

43:29

No, they don't. I mean, that's not even an Arminian belief. You're not familiar with the governmental theories of atonement and stuff like that?

43:39

I mean, I'm sure he's got to have read some of that. But I personally think that what you put in print and then what you teach, they should go like this.

43:50

Because if you cannot summarize accurately what you put in print, it makes me wonder how much of that is really you and not other people or stuff you didn't understand.

44:02

There should be a very clear consistency and harmony between what you say when you're asked questions in public and what you've written.

44:13

And there's nobody with a scintilla of fairness that would say there's any issue there with yours, truly.

44:22

What I say in my books, how I answer questions, what I say in debates, it's all me.

44:29

But here, that's just not an accurate statement. And I just don't even know how it's made, anyway.

44:38

But there is also a group of people within Calvinism who believe that. And that would be what is usually referred to in our normal parlance today, a four -point

44:52

Calvinist. He's referring to Amaraldianism. I mean, just explain who

44:58

Amaral was, maybe a quick understanding of his perspective. Whenever you hear someone who claims to be or you hear them described as a four -point

45:09

Calvinist, that means a Calvinist who rejects the L, the limited atonement aspect of the tulip acrostic.

45:16

Not for the same reasons as a person who rejects the S, the T, the U, the I, and the B. Now, the tulip acrostic has major problems.

45:24

It's a 20th century invention. And it has major problems, and I go into that in the book.

45:30

Not to belabor that right now. But basically, you do have a number of Calvinists who believe that Jesus died not only for the sins of the elect and thus died to procure their salvation and theirs alone, but Jesus also, they believe, died, paid the price for, suffered for the sins of all people.

45:49

And throughout church history, and my part of the purpose of this book is to demonstrate that you have a number of Calvinists throughout church history who—

45:57

Calvinists throughout church history? Don't you mean since Calvin?

46:04

I'm sorry, but the inaccuracies. When I hear someone say, I'm thinking Tertullian, Irenaeus, Augustine, Athanasius.

46:16

They all have rejected limited atonement. And so you have to think about the extent question with that in mind.

46:23

But now, to go back and summarize and make it clear, there are only two options in answer to the question for whose sins did

46:30

Christ die. He either died for the elect alone. That is the view held by all five -point

46:35

Calvinists. And by the way, that's the view held by all hyper -Calvinists. Now, five -point

46:40

Calvinist is a category that is clearly distinct from hyper -Calvinist. You don't— Catch that? Catch that?

46:46

Here Dr. Allen is contradicting himself about me. He's never apologized. We've refuted him completely.

46:52

We've done entire programs, multiple hours. Doesn't matter. He's never going to apologize. I've just accepted that's just, that's just, that's just reality.

47:00

That's the way life is. He stood up there, bore false witness about me, but that ain't gonna stop anything.

47:08

He's just— But he's making a distinction between five -point Calvinists and hyper -Calvinists.

47:14

Make the mistake of claiming that a five -point Calvinist is a hyper -Calvinist. All hypers are certainly five -points, five -pointers, but not all five -pointers are hyper.

47:22

In fact, the vast majority of them are not hyper -Calvinists. But all Calvinists who are high

47:28

Calvinists, who are five -pointer, five -point Calvinists, and all hyper -Calvinists affirm limited atonement.

47:33

That is, they believe Jesus died only for the sins of the elect. Or, to put it in a positive way, that Jesus' death is perfectly in harmony, in its scope and intention, with God's electing decree, and with the

47:52

Spirit's redeeming work. Perfect harmony between Father, Son, and Spirit.

47:57

They'll never put it that way. Because it's not really their purpose to respond to what we're actually saying.

48:05

They've got—you know, but that's really what it's saying. All other Calvinists who are four -point

48:11

Calvinists, all non -Calvinists, including all Armenians, believe that Jesus died for the sins of all people.

48:18

Again, there are many Armenians that would never speak that way. Historical Armenians, those who know the developments within Arminianism that hold to a governmental view of atonement and things like that.

48:32

He's just wrong. He's just completely wrong at this point. He's just oversimplified it and just doesn't seem to understand the other viewpoints that are out there.

48:44

What can I say? The issue and the question of extent. Now, what was the second part?

48:49

You had a second part to that question. I did, and before I even ask that, I'll give an example. I know I just heard a podcast called

48:55

These Go to Eleven with Bruce Ware, who was one of the guests. They were also

49:00

Armeraldians or four -point Calvinists, and they were questioning Bruce Ware, who's there at Southern Seminary and known to be a good

49:08

Calvinistic brother. But he holds to a four -point Calvinism, and he's just a good example. I think it's

49:14

Phil Johnson with Grace to You, who also has an article out online that if you type in his name and the word atonement, it's the first one on Google Search.

49:19

And he says that this is kind of an introversity debate among Calvinists, that this has been a debate throughout church history, and this is not the strongest point for Calvinists historically.

49:30

And he intellectually is honest enough to admit that that's the fact. I would love to see what

49:36

Phil said, especially when Blayton Flowers says, intellectually honest enough to admit.

49:42

We've heard that line many times before. I think

49:49

Particular Redemption is absolutely rock -bottom, smack -dab in the middle of Reformed theology.

49:56

And when you get rid of it, what you have left is wishy -washy inconsistency.

50:04

And I'll tell that to Bruce Ware too. That's fine. Love Bruce Ware, but I'll debate it.

50:14

I happen to know that a lot of these guys, what they're concerned about are issues in regards to the death of Christ, reconciling all things, and hence giving a platform for judgment and things like that,

50:29

Colossians 1. That's not relevant to the issue of extension and intention salvificly.

50:36

And you can affirm that God accomplished much in the cross.

50:42

Without beginning to affirm that it was his intention to redeem anyone other than the elect.

50:48

That's the issue. These men, Dr. Allen is saying that it was the intention of the

50:54

Father, Son, and Spirit to redeem those who will never be redeemed in the atonement. That needs to be laid right out there.

51:02

It almost never is. This is a debate between those saying that Christ actually accomplished his intention in the atonement perfectly, or he did not.

51:12

That's what this debate's about. That's what it's about. With regard to how

51:17

Calvinists have debated this view, and so I think you're exactly right, Dr. Allen, that this has been a point of distinction even among Calvinists that have really split

51:27

Calvinists throughout Christian history, it sounds like to me. I guess for these guys, the fact they've been

51:34

Amaraldians is the ace in the hole. That just proves their point. And I just go, why? There are 14 ,000 variations of synergists.

51:44

This somehow is an argument against you? You don't see it that way? What? Do you almost get the impression that they just realize that these people exist?

51:53

Like this is new news? No, no, no. I know they don't, but... No, this was back in 2008. This was

51:58

Tony Brennan introducing Allen to Amaraldianism, and see, these guys, there's division out there.

52:06

And it's like, so? Like we didn't know that? Anyway.

52:13

Well, yeah, that is correct. In fact, I make the claim, and then back it up in the book, that in the first generation of the

52:18

Reformed, and I don't mean just the Reformers, including Luther and Zwingli, but in the first generation of the

52:24

Reformed, which would be Calvin and Bullinger and all of those that were Butzer and all of those in that first generation, none of them held a limited atonement.

52:31

They all held to unlimited atonement. And that's a historical point that I make in the historical theology section of this book.

52:40

I despair of exactly how balanced that argumentation is going to be, but we move on. And that's an interesting point to see, that the earliest leaders of the

52:49

Reformed movement did not affirm limited atonement. They didn't affirm a limited extent in the death of Christ.

52:57

You mentioned Dr. Bruce Ware a moment ago, and it reminded me that two or three years ago at the Evangelical Theological Society, I ran into Dr.

53:04

Ware. He and I had never met personally before, and we happened to be at the same restaurant. And I chatted with him briefly, and he thanked me for my chapter in the book

53:13

Whosoever Willed, a biblical and theological critique of Five -Point Calvinism. He said that though he disagreed with aspects of, obviously the other aspects of the critique of Calvinism in that book, that he agreed wholeheartedly with my chapter arguing against limited atonement.

53:29

And I appreciated him saying that so very much. He was very gracious about that. I think that there's a really strong point to be made here on that front, just simply because other

53:38

Calvinists, obviously, or Four -Point Calvinists, believe this way. What does that matter? In other words, some

53:44

Calvinist Five -Pointers say, well, who cares if there's some people who disagree? There's different kinds of Arminians as well.

53:49

There's different kinds of traditionalists as well. So what if we have some differences between us? Well, what I think it does show, at least from my perspective, is that it shows that it's not necessarily a bias that's causing people to reject the concept of limited atonement.

54:01

In other words, it's not because we're just emotional, as oftentimes is the charge. We're not willing to take the text seriously.

54:08

All those kinds of charges that are sometimes brought against the non -Calvinist, we can point to other Calvinists who I think they would deem as being very serious -minded people and not biased with regard to their view of sociology and to show that they too can see and hold to a different perspective of atonement while still holding to other sociological

54:27

Calvinistic viewpoints, I think shows at least an unbiased perspective from us to be able to say this can be supported even by a

54:36

Calvinistic brother, that it's reasonable to be considered at least. Well, that's exactly right.

54:42

Limited atonement is a doctrine in search of a text. Now, that's what I wanted you to hear. Well, one of the first things.

54:50

Limited atonement is a doctrine in search of a text. I have a really difficult time with how anyone could spend eight years, because that's what we're being told, this book, eight years in preparation, and make a statement like that.

55:18

It boggles the mind, and it destroys the credibility.

55:29

You may disagree for your reasons, and it needs to be understood. The Amaraldian disagrees with John Owen for different reasons than this man does.

55:37

This man's a synergist. I think the very fact they have to borrow so much capital from Reformed writers says a lot about the bankruptcy of their own perspective at this point.

55:55

But it is utterly self -destructive to any attempted creation of credibility.

56:04

And yeah, I understand. Dr. Allen doesn't care about having credibility with us. We are not his audience.

56:11

We are not his audience. His audience is anyone in Southern Baptist churches that might start recognizing the biblical argumentation for Reformed theology and develop some kind of a willingness to listen.

56:32

His intention is to inoculate against Calvinism. That's what Southwestern is about.

56:38

That's their political and behind -the -scenes activity. That's what this is about.

56:45

He doesn't care whether he just destroyed his credibility with everyone who's read

56:50

John Owen. Because anyone who's read John Owen is sitting there going, Are you serious?

56:58

How can you say that? He doesn't care about that.

57:05

This is the type of argumentation that's only effective for a particular spectrum of individuals.

57:12

This kind of argumentation I cannot use, because I cannot limit who it is

57:18

I'm attempting to reach on the basis that he's limiting his audience.

57:25

I don't think that that works for a Christian theologian. And so, amazing words.

57:32

Talmud is a doctrine in search of a text. And the reason you have so many four -point

57:37

Calvinists out there, not only historically, and there are a ton of them historically, very famous names, including

57:43

John Calvin, and many, many others which I outline in this book. But the reason why not only all non -Calvinists reject it, but why a good chunk of Reformed theologians reject it, who would be called four -point

57:58

Calvinists, just for the sake of discussion, though that term is loose and not very – it's a bit inaccurate as I demonstrate in the book.

58:05

But the reason for that is because there is no exegetical support for limited atonement.

58:11

Okay, I just want you to hear that. This is after –

58:19

It's because there is no exegetical support for limited atonement. There's none.

58:27

Now, see, once you make that kind of a statement, you just set yourself up for such simplistic refutation.

58:38

I started off looking at a single text of Scripture, John chapter 10, and we looked at the testimony of the entire text and the interrelatedness of the giving of the life of the good shepherd for the sheep, the relationship of the

58:55

Father and the Son, and bringing about eternal life, never perishing of the sheep, all the soteriological things, the authority of the

59:03

Son to lay down His life, authority to take it back up again. So you've got not only the sacrificial giving, but you have the resurrection, you have the unity of the

59:13

Father and the Son, you have the personal nature of this action, my own know me,

59:19

I know my own as I know the Father. We walked through all of this and then pointed out, and you're not my sheep.

59:30

So there is a specificity in the text right there. So when you say there are no texts, you're just simply can't be taken seriously.

59:43

Now, you may want to argue. Now, what I'm saying is that no text taken in its fullest context, exegeted properly, and no text

59:53

I believe in the final analysis will be able to be seen to actually support the concept of the

59:59

Midtemptome. That's completely different than this. Because remember, he's not talking to us. He doesn't care.

01:00:06

He knew when he went on this program that I would go on this program and I would shred this, and it would not be difficult to do.

01:00:15

He knew that. He doesn't care. Because the people he's trying to reach, he hopes, will never hear of this program.

01:00:24

He hopes will never be exposed to the other side. And so it's more effective to say that there is no exegetical foundation than it is to say, well, there is, but here are some of the reasons why we would reject that and then have to start giving all of the standard synergistic, man -centered argumentation that you'd have to do here in Hebrews 7 and 8 and 9 and 10.

01:00:56

And yeah, well, anyway, we can get into those. To make this kind of statement is to demonstrate

01:01:06

I'm not concerned about reaching everyone with this message. There's a specific group, and so I'm going to go ahead and spin things.

01:01:15

This is sort of MSNBC theology. You have one group you're trying to reach.

01:01:26

You don't care if you offend the others. And therefore, you can go ahead and massage the data to fit into your paradigm.

01:01:36

We just saw that happen in an election. It happens in theology absolutely all the time, and it's happening right here.

01:01:44

It's happening right here. So there was a little bit more I wanted to include here.

01:01:50

We actually have another topic to get to today. Like I said, we're behind. Rich wants us to stop now because, obviously,

01:02:00

I'm just wasting your time. No, no, I'm just concerned that you don't have the energy to handle this.

01:02:08

Obviously, this has been utterly incoherent and a complete waste of your time and his to be sitting out there this whole time.

01:02:16

So I guess we're going to have to wrap things up there. So you're going to let me go and just continue to make a fool of myself.

01:02:27

Okay, all right, good. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. I did want to outline that particular one.

01:02:33

I may want to go back to that one. That's a quote we may be using again in the future, to be certain.

01:02:41

It is a doctrine in search of a text. It is primarily logically deduced out of what

01:02:47

I would consider to be an extremism of looking at the doctrine of election. Now, there is no question.

01:02:55

Now, notice it's extremism at looking at the doctrine of election. This is a sinner just speaking. So he doesn't even have a meaningful doctrine of election,

01:03:02

I would argue. It's going to be an impersonal doctrine of election. And given the personal nature of the biblical doctrine of atonement, it's understandable why he cannot allow that doctrine to stand.

01:03:15

Because if you have a personal doctrine of atonement, if Christ actually substitutes for a particular people for the purpose of actually saving them, then you have to believe in unconditional election.

01:03:27

They hold together. But he rejects unconditional election. And therefore, as a result, must reject the mechanism whereby the father who unconditionally elects brings about the grounds through the perfect work of the son for his unconditional election to be fulfilled.

01:03:46

But never forget, I keep emphasizing this and sometimes I think some people don't catch why this is so important.

01:03:52

The price of rejecting a full -orbed biblical doctrine of atonement is an impersonal doctrine of salvation.

01:04:07

Because Christ now dies to make a plan available.

01:04:16

The personal aspect now becomes based upon human initiative rather than divine choice and divine, well, prognosco.

01:04:33

That term that many synergists misuse, for those whom he foreknew.

01:04:41

To foreknow is a verb. It's not a noun. It's not a possession of knowledge.

01:04:46

It's something God does. And it's personal. It goes back to the

01:04:51

Hebrew term Yedah. When Adam yedahed Eve, she gave birth to a son. Only Israel was yedahed by God.

01:05:02

God knew intellectually about every other nation there was. But he chose.

01:05:08

He chose to enter into relationship with Israel only against all those others.

01:05:15

And so there is at its root a personal nature to this divine election that then consistently is found in atonement.

01:05:28

So you have to try to get rid of all of it. There's no way to have, if you have an impersonal concept of election.

01:05:37

God elects a nameless, faceless people. You can't have a personal atonement. It has to be just as impersonal as a doctrine of election is.

01:05:49

And that's what you end up with. You end up with a Savior who tries to save, but does not actually accomplish salvation.

01:05:59

That doesn't fit into John 10. That doesn't fit into John 17. That doesn't fit into Hebrews 7, 8, 9, 10.

01:06:06

It doesn't fit into these places. That's why saying limited atonement is a doctrine in search of a text is just frankly mind -numbingly absurd.

01:06:15

It's difficult to understand how anyone having written... See, it's one thing.

01:06:21

I hear people making these types of statements all the time. Remember Brian Zahn? What's the

01:06:26

Tanakh? Never heard of the Tanakh. Okay, that Brian Zahn? While writing commentaries on the Old Testament for certain people?

01:06:33

Folks like that, I get it. They just don't know. This guy just wrote an 800 -page book on this subject.

01:06:39

There's no excuses here. There's no excuses. Eight years, 800 pages, no excuses.

01:06:46

That kind of statement, that's culpable. That's culpable. Amazing stuff.

01:06:53

And this is what happened historically with Beza. Beza kind of went to seed on an election. And of course, as you know,

01:06:59

Arminius was a student of his and pushed back against that. And thus you have the issues that have developed throughout the debates that have occurred throughout

01:07:09

Reformed history on this specific issue of the extent of the atonement. So the exegetical hill, which all those who affirm limited atonement have to climb, is they have to explain how it is...

01:07:25

Okay, now hold on a second. Isn't it fascinating?

01:07:33

What has the vast majority, the vast majority of the time been spent on so far?

01:07:41

Making assertions about this theologian or that theologian, history, and you're saying that limited atonement is the doctrine looking for a text?

01:07:53

You haven't even gotten to a text. You haven't even tried to get to a text. We're the ones that go to the text.

01:08:00

The only texts mentioned were the hypothetical ones, such as Christ dying for his sheep.

01:08:06

And that hasn't even been answered yet. And when it is touched on, it will just be very lightly, nothing exegetical provided.

01:08:16

We saw how traditionalists handle when they're faced with the demand for actual exegesis.

01:08:23

We've already seen this. It's not pretty. It's not pretty at all. Which all those who affirm limited atonement have to climb, is they have to explain how it is...

01:08:34

They have to explain a dozen key scriptures in the New Testament that seem to state on the surface very clearly that Christ died for the sins of all people.

01:08:44

Now, stop. Logically, rationally, fairly, if you're actually approaching this subject with an intention to actually deal with it meaningfully, the first thing that has to be dealt with is the positive, in -depth, balanced argumentation put forward in defense of particular redemption.

01:09:12

That's what you have to deal with. When you're talking about a dozen texts, you're talking about texts that would be called oblique.

01:09:21

What do I mean? First Timothy 4 .10. He's the Savior of all, especially of those who believe.

01:09:29

It's not a satirological text. Well, but it must mean this. First John 2 .2.

01:09:34

Well, it must mean this. Yeah, it's not talking about... It's talking about false teachers and like that. And yeah, it's talking about another subject.

01:09:41

And sure, but it must mean this. See, they're the ones that are taking texts.

01:09:47

They're just like the Roman Catholics at this point. I've pointed this out over and over again. When you debate justification with Roman Catholics, and you hear them quoting, wisdom is justified by her children, as if that use of justification is relevant or even central to the definition of dikaiao in Romans 3.

01:10:10

You know you're dealing with someone who's not engaging in serious exegesis. You go to the plain text of Scripture first.

01:10:17

You go to the lengthy text of Scripture that are specifically on a topic, that are specifically addressing a topic, and you allow those passages to speak.

01:10:28

Then, having done that, you can look at secondary texts, tertiary texts.

01:10:36

They do it in reverse. They have to, because they don't have a long -term, consistent, exegetically -derived doctrine of atonement to begin with.

01:10:46

We do. We do. So, I just went to John 10, the beginning of the program.

01:10:53

It wasn't difficult to do. I could have gone to Hebrews 7. I could do it right now. I've done it before in the past.

01:11:00

And we can start at a certain point, and we can just simply walk through it, and we allow the text to say exactly what the text has to say.

01:11:11

Go to Hebrews chapter 10. By one will. He has perfected for all time. A particular people.

01:11:19

These are about the intention and, therefore, scope of the atonement.

01:11:25

They are not passing statements made on a completely different subject. That's called eisegesis.

01:11:33

What they're doing is called eisegesis. It's not exegesis. And what they'll do is they'll project.

01:11:41

You're going to hear him in just a few moments say, We're the ones engaging in eisegesis. But one of us can sit down.

01:11:48

We can put these texts on the screen. We can walk through them. The other side cannot do that in the presence of the other. I can play their comments.

01:11:56

They won't do that in reverse. So, keep that in mind. And there's simply no way to do it exegetically.

01:12:05

They're forced into eisegesis. I have yet to have, and I've asked dozens of them, both students and scholars who are

01:12:11

Calvinists, to please show me the single verse in Scripture anywhere that states that Christ died only for the sins of the elect.

01:12:19

And they cannot produce a single verse. There is no verse that states that. But one can produce a dozen verses that state the contrary, that he did indeed die for the sins of all people.

01:12:30

Now, there is a wonderful example of equivocation because I really doubt that Dr. Allen is a universalist.

01:12:37

And so, if we're going to use the term propitiation, and if we're going to use it in an appropriate fashion, then does

01:12:52

Dr. Allen believe that Jesus Christ propitiated the sins of all of mankind?

01:12:58

He's going to say yes. And as a result, he's going to have to fundamentally diminish the scope, range, and effectiveness of the word propitiation because he's not a universalist.

01:13:10

He doesn't believe all men are going to be saved. And so what Christ actually accomplishes can't be full propitiation.

01:13:17

It has to be a very limited form of it. Now, when he says, well, you can't show me one verse that says

01:13:25

X, Y, or Z. I can show you a dozen that demand that, that you'd have to agree to as long as you're not a universalist.

01:13:37

I showed you John chapter 10. I lay down my life for my sheep.

01:13:43

The result of the Savior, the Good Shepherd, laying down his life for the sheep, is that they have eternal life.

01:13:51

They will never perish. They are in the Son's hand. They are in the

01:13:56

Father's hand. They are given eternal life because the Father and the

01:14:02

Son are one and bring about the salvation of God's people. And in the same context, he says that he knows his sheep.

01:14:12

They know him. And then he says to the Jews who are rejecting him, you are not of my sheep.

01:14:19

Now, you can sit there and go, yeah, but that doesn't specifically say what I want. But that's no more meaningful than when the

01:14:25

Muslim sits there and says, well, there's no one verse where Jesus says, I am God, worship me. Therefore, all those verses about the deity of Christ don't really mean the deity of Christ.

01:14:34

Right? That's a form of argumentation. Heard it somewhere before.

01:14:40

Reject it then, reject it now, too. It's a kind of argumentation, once again, that only works when you do not put yourself in the situation of actually having to have the consistency of your presentation tested from multiple perspectives.

01:14:58

From multiple perspectives. And Dr. Allen knows. If he were to call this office and say, we'd like to have a three -hour long moderated public debate on the biblical doctrine of the atonement at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and we'd like James White to represent the other side, that I'd be there.

01:15:26

And I really don't expect the phone to be ringing anytime soon. But we'd do it.

01:15:33

Yeah, Rich is checking the line. Lines are working? They're working? Okay, good. Yeah, this kind of argumentation works well in monologues.

01:15:41

It doesn't work well in the debate situation. Well, I'm going to mark that spot as our next start there spot, because I actually, believe it or not, have had a lot of things to get to today.

01:16:00

But I'm sending you, I should be sending you a video. You have the video? Okay. Switching gears for the last 45 minutes of the program today.

01:16:18

While I was no Steelers fan,

01:16:24

I didn't even suggest that. Not even something I'd be semi -interested in. In fact,

01:16:30

I'm going to demonstrate that by, boom, there you go. That's the

01:16:38

Dave Hunt way. We learned our lesson a long time ago on that one.

01:16:46

While I was down for the count recently, the issue, once again, of the ecclesiastical text controversy came up.

01:17:03

And I forgot to bring these up, and I need to do so.

01:17:11

I apologize. Where did they go?

01:17:17

I thought I had put them up here, and maybe I actually only saved them on my local computer.

01:17:28

Oh, there it is. There it is. It's a zip file. Woo! I remember when zip files first came out.

01:17:35

They were so cool. What? Now they're obnoxious?

01:17:42

Now they're... Hey, back when you had xmodem and ymodem and stuff like that, that stuff was gold.

01:17:52

It really was. A fellow by the name of Bo Sutton made some comments on Facebook, and Luis Dizon responded and went back and forth with him.

01:18:15

At one point he had accused me of having a low view of scripture. He did write to me. I want to make sure people know that that Bo wrote to me and apologized for that terminology.

01:18:28

He felt that that was inappropriate.

01:18:35

Luis had said to him, that is not a base for accusing a brother of having a low view of scripture. You need to repair the slander.

01:18:40

If you believe that the text is corrupted and has to be restored, what else would you call it?

01:18:47

It's certainly lower than the confession. It was one of those that caused me once again to want to respond.

01:18:59

I was being accused of not being a presuppositionalist and a number of other things that were being thrown around just for the fun of it.

01:19:13

In the process, I listened to a presentation on the subject of to I guess what's called the

01:19:35

Confessing Bibliology Group or whatever, I don't know what it is. Regarding the presuppositional nature

01:19:43

Robert Truelove is the presenter here. The presuppositional nature of the ecclesiastical text position.

01:19:51

Now, I don't think there is any one ecclesiastical text position. Theodore Ledis' position,

01:20:00

I don't think could be Robert Truelove's position confessionally speaking. Ledis had some very interesting theology.

01:20:11

It does seem to me that ecclesiastical textism ironically suffers from a lot of individualism.

01:20:19

You would think of anything that would have an ecclesiastical definition.

01:20:25

It might be the ecclesiastical text movement, but there is none. But let's take a listen to what

01:20:35

Robert Truelove has to say and see if we can make any headway in this issue.

01:20:45

I've obviously explained a number of times both over at Apologia Studios and here on the program why

01:20:54

I believe this movement to be dangerous, counterproductive, non -confessional, ahistorical, and indefensible.

01:21:06

Obvious from my perspective, I don't think the other side is listening to our rebuttals, and they think the exact same thing about us.

01:21:13

So let's take a listen, see if we can learn something, and make some comments.

01:21:22

...about the Longening of Mark and the Pre -Coppea Adultery, where I made the point that I always do, the point that has never been addressed or answered, that if these complete narrative units in the

01:21:37

Scripture are invalid, then it calls into question the doctrine of self -authentication.

01:21:46

I use these units because they're unique in all the Scripture, both of those accounts.

01:21:52

They're not repeated anywhere else in the Scripture. And they are significant as far as what's covered.

01:22:00

They're not a minor textual variation. They're complete narratives. And if the text is self -authenticating as we confessionally believe it is, then the fact that these narratives were accepted into the canonical text for over a thousand years, really closer to 1500 years, then it calls the doctrine of self -authentication into question.

01:22:23

Now, I just stop for a moment. We have a number of presuppositions that have now been laid out, whether Brother Trulove recognizes it or not.

01:22:37

Accepted into the canon, by whom? What's this canon process that you're talking about here?

01:22:44

You eventually, in another video, will actually try to get Dr. Kruger on your side.

01:22:50

I don't think you want to go there. I really don't. I'm thinking about maybe seeing if he might address some of these issues on the program with us, but when you talk about accepted into the canon, so, what about the canon of the

01:23:11

Western Church versus the Eastern Church? Who decides then?

01:23:18

Because there are differences between the Latin Vulgate, which was the church, which was the very text of the church for 1100 years in the

01:23:27

West. Do you reject that? I mean, that's where most of your theological background and language comes from, is from medieval

01:23:36

Catholicism into the Reformation. That's fact. Your tradition does not derive from Eastern Orthodoxy by any stretch of the imagination.

01:23:47

I mean, no serious church historian is going to sit there and look at you and go, yeah, you're right in line with the

01:23:56

Eastern Church. So, when you talk about the church speaking or the church canonizing, which church are we talking about?

01:24:09

When you say they were accepted in, the church that endured persecution, you cannot provide me with any meaningful evidence that the

01:24:23

Gospel of John that they read included the Pericopaea Adultery. So, the church that now becomes significantly less focused upon how do you put it?

01:24:45

Living the Christian life where you could possibly lose your life every day. In other words, the church of the next few centuries, that's when that story enters into the

01:24:57

Greek manuscript tradition through Codex Bezae Cantabrigensis. So, is

01:25:05

Bezae the standard of canonization? Which manuscript is? What's the date?

01:25:13

How do we know this? What church fathers argued for this? You see,

01:25:21

I know what you're going to say. It's a presuppositional thing. Yeah, but you are assuming historical concepts into your presuppositions.

01:25:33

Then, when challenged on historical concepts, you're going, no, no, no, you're misunderstanding. We're not talking about that kind of stuff.

01:25:39

We can go talk about that later. So, when we start talking about smaller units of variation, that's when all of a sudden you start, well,

01:25:50

I believe, and I think you sense that you are doing this. You say you're not, but I think you start contradicting yourself very blatantly because you abandon the idea that the church has spoken, and now it's, well, we need to examine this theory or that theory, or, you know, well, you've got

01:26:07

Pickering, and then you've got Sturtz, and then you've got this, that, or the other thing, and, well, this guy says this particular family, and it all becomes an issue of textual critical methodology within extremely narrow minority range, but you get to pick and choose, and you can't answer the specifics of particular text -critical issues even with your presuppositions.

01:26:37

You can't do it. You just can't go there, and I think you recognize that.

01:26:46

That's the point I make from those texts. So it's very much a presuppositional argument. That is, this is used to demonstrate the presuppositional problem underlying reason -neclecticism because it seeks to weigh the evidence of the manuscripts completely divorced from Christian theology, completely divorced from any kind of biblical presuppositions that should guide how the evidence is weighed.

01:27:11

Now, there's truth, and there's error there, because it's a chicken -and -the -egg thing, isn't it?

01:27:23

Where does my Christian theology come from? Now, this is where I think Brother Truelove really needs to think this through because the

01:27:33

Roman Catholic does not believe the Christian theology has its primary locus in the

01:27:43

Scriptures themselves. Scripture is a subcategory of sacred tradition, which is broader than that.

01:27:51

So, for non -Roman Catholics, when you say

01:27:56

Christian theology should determine how we do textual criticism, where do you get your

01:28:01

Christian theology from? Well, from Scripture itself.

01:28:07

Okay, so, you look to Scripture to give your theology as to how you should determine the text of Scripture.

01:28:20

That's why I say, and I reject that this is some kind of humanistic thing, I think this is actually a biblical position that avoids the obvious conundrum.

01:28:32

I want to know what Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote, not what a scribe a thousand years later thought they should have written.

01:28:41

Now, the true element to what is said is that you don't approach the evidence as an atheist.

01:28:51

In other words, you don't approach the evidence without a recognition of the hand of God guiding and preserving.

01:29:00

But even then, you don't come up with a theory that says, well, I demand that God preserve this text, because guess what?

01:29:12

If you start there and you make that presuppositional, then you examine the facts and go, oh, look at that, that's how

01:29:18

God did it. That's not how it works. When I look at history and I see

01:29:24

God preserving the text, it's not because I started off with a theory of it. I look at what happened historically and go, there's

01:29:32

God fulfilling his word. It's the exact opposite. So it's nice to be able to say, well, it's just a presupposition and we're just allowing the

01:29:41

Bible to tell us how to analyze the text of the Bible. But it creates a very tight spin there.

01:29:49

When you're saying, well, my theology tells me how to do textual criticism and I do it as a believer.

01:29:57

Well, that's nice. What does that mean? And the only way to again illustrate this is to then go to individual textual variants and that's where the wheels fall off for the ecclesiastical text, guys, because outside of these big, huge texts, 12 verses, they're the only ones like it.

01:30:13

What's the cutoff point? Because he's saying, well, hey, look, if the church could be wrong about 12 whole verses, and of course, my assertion is the church never spoke to those 12 whole verses.

01:30:27

Not once. Show me the evidence. Well, it's all presuppositional. But if it's all presuppositional and it never touches history, then it's worthless.

01:30:38

It may sound great in a little Facebook group, but it's worthless out here in the real world.

01:30:46

Just realize that. It sounds great, doesn't mean anything. Because in this other video, the one with all the guitars in the background,

01:30:53

I guess somebody's a guitarist. The one with all the guitars in the background, once people started asking about specifics, then it was like, well, if you're a

01:31:05

Byzantine priority guy, then you take this view point, a majority text guy, this kind of majority text, and then you've got

01:31:12

Pickering, and you've got all these other... Excuse me.

01:31:17

All of a sudden, it becomes... All the presuppositions just go flying out the door, and the church is no longer spoken.

01:31:26

So, why is it that for five words, you can say, we can come to different conclusions, it's okay.

01:31:35

But for 12 verses, that's too big. The entire doctrine of scriptural self -authentication is thrown out the window.

01:31:43

Where's the dividing line? Is it six verses? Five? Two? How about Luke 23, 34?

01:31:52

How about Luke 23, 34? We've talked about it before. Luke 23, 34 is a very important textual variant.

01:32:01

And it is not found in some very important witnesses.

01:32:15

If you want to argue that church usage... This would be a big one where you'd have church usage.

01:32:24

Jesus was saying, Father, forgive them if they do not know what they're doing. I mean, you want church usage. Sermons and theologies and wow, that's church usage.

01:32:34

So, I'd have a hard time thinking this wouldn't fit into your things. This is half a verse.

01:32:41

So, what do you do with the other half -verse sections? Do you judge this, even though the earliest witnesses of all the major family types, including

01:32:52

Codex Washingtonianus, do not have this particular text, this particular reading?

01:33:02

So, what do you do with it? Where's the dividing line? How do we determine?

01:33:10

If 12 verses, that's too big. The entire doctrine of self -authentication goes out the window.

01:33:16

How about half a verse? Does this impact the doctrine of self -authentication?

01:33:25

Where do we get this from the church? Where does the church tell us these things?

01:33:30

That's what I would like to know. Unfortunately, we don't necessarily get answers to those particular questions.

01:33:42

Anyway, I'm seeing that the clock continues on here and there's still 10 minutes in the video.

01:33:48

So, when I make an argument like this and the response is, what do you think about this reading or that reading or a number of other small variant readings within the

01:34:00

Byzantine? We get off of the main point. Basically, what's being asked of me is how

01:34:08

I weigh this evidence. What do you think of this evidence or that evidence or this evidence over here? And it really doesn't matter how any of us would answer that.

01:34:16

Those are not honest questions where we're really looking for interaction. Those are trying to sidestep the actual issue.

01:34:22

No, those are not trying to sidestep the actual issue. They are demonstrating that the actual issue defies the idea of saying this is merely presuppositional.

01:34:31

It's not merely presuppositional. You are including historical assumptions in your presuppositions.

01:34:39

You may be ignorant of it. You may not see it. You may be blind to it. I don't know. But it's not sidetracking anything.

01:34:48

It's demonstrating that it's real easy for you to sit back and say, I'm confessional and so I'm being truly believing when

01:34:58

I accept what the church has said about these texts. The problem is all the people that put together either the printed or handwritten texts upon which you rely actually had to deal with the issues that you are skipping.

01:35:14

And you're just ignoring the fact that they had to deal with them. Did they deal with them right? Did they have all the information?

01:35:21

Did they even know what other manuscripts said? If they didn't, then shouldn't we allow that to impact our decisions as to what they said?

01:35:31

You see, you can just close your eyes and say, I'm not going to worry about any of that stuff. And go ahead.

01:35:38

That's why I keep saying, fine. In your little internet chat room, just stay in there.

01:35:45

Don't come out where the real stuff's happening because that's not going to fly. You're going to have your head handed to you on a platter if you do that because you're assuming things you simply can't assume.

01:36:00

To avoid the presuppositional question, and that is the issue in front of us. It's like talking to an evolutionist and the evolutionist does not want to address the foundational underlying presuppositions to his view and wants to keep talking about the evidence that he thinks backs up his position.

01:36:22

And it doesn't matter what you say as a Christian. He just goes back to how do we explain the development of bacteria and the mutations in bacteria and so forth and so on.

01:36:35

Before we can talk about the evidence, we have to talk about what presuppositions that we are weighing our evidence on.

01:36:43

Let's put those on the table. Admit that we all have them. That's what simply does not happen when it comes to this subject of textual criticism.

01:36:50

When we speak with not just Dr. White but any gung -ho pro -critical text advocates today is to have...

01:36:57

None of us have ever thought about any of the presuppositions we have. We've never given it slightest thought.

01:37:06

I just... As long as Bart Ehrman says it, I believe it. Yeah, that's...

01:37:11

Yeah. Seriously? Come on. Robert? Honestly? I have given...

01:37:21

I've been thinking about this longer than you have, brother. A lot longer than you have. And the difference between us is that I haven't been doing it in an echo chamber.

01:37:33

I've been doing it in a context where the voices coming back to me are always challenging. They're always saying, but what about this?

01:37:40

What about this evidence over there? And that makes a huge difference. Makes a huge difference.

01:37:48

So... You can... I hear you. It's all presuppositional.

01:37:55

It's not a methodology. It's not meant to answer specific textual variants. Okay, then.

01:38:01

That makes it irrelevant. At least as a basis for the claims that you yourself have made based upon it.

01:38:11

Because if... On the one hand you want to say the church has spoken and the word has been kept pure in all ages.

01:38:22

But then on the other hand, don't want to get your hands dirty enough to answer the question which church, when, who, where, how'd they do it, what information they had.

01:38:33

Why are we bothering with this? What good does that accomplish? All it does is gives us a chance to pat each other on the back.

01:38:43

Again, our little Facebook chat channels. But what does it accomplish? It doesn't do anything. It doesn't give you a text.

01:38:51

You guys cannot, you still... Look, if ecclesiastical textism doesn't give you a text, why bother?

01:39:01

What does this accomplish? Why are you doing this? I know why I do text criticism.

01:39:07

But why are you doing text criticism, if you're even doing it? Why? What are you accomplishing?

01:39:14

Don't get it. On this conversation, we can really just put that on the table and discuss it.

01:39:21

We just never seem to get there. In any of the dialogue, any of the chats, whether it's Facebooking or videoing back and forth, or even the debates and stuff people has, the presuppositional element is absolutely not allowed.

01:39:36

We just can't go there in the conversation. This is where I get on to some of you guys quite a bit.

01:39:43

When you take the bait and start debating these weekly supported readings in the

01:39:49

Byzantine and get off on focusing on trying to answer those questions, that's really not the issue.

01:39:56

The issue of week readings in Byzantine... You don't think that's an issue? I thought what

01:40:03

Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John actually wrote is the issue. Isn't it? Again, no offense intended, but this sounds very much...

01:40:18

It sounds spookily. Is spookily a good word? Spookily is a good word today.

01:40:26

It sounds... It's spooky. There you go. It's spooky how much it sounds like what the

01:40:32

Mormon church is telling its people today. Don't get off on all that stuff.

01:40:38

There's all sorts of stuff on the internet. Don't worry about what people are saying about Joseph Smith.

01:40:43

Just maintain your testimony. You know what the church has done for you.

01:40:49

You know how good it is. Don't get off on all that. Don't look at the man behind the curtain.

01:40:55

Why are you doing what you're doing? It is the issue.

01:41:03

It's asking, do your presuppositions have sufficient interface with the biblical text and history itself to produce a methodology that will actually give us a text that will allow us to proclaim the word of God to the nations?

01:41:19

You say, it certainly does. It's the... And then you all together say, this version of Texas Septus, this version of the

01:41:30

Robinson Peer Board, this version of Byzantine, this version of Pickering, and you all say it together and you don't have an answer.

01:41:39

You can sit there and bang the presuppositional drum all you want. It sounds great. It sounds wonderful.

01:41:45

It accomplishes nothing if it doesn't interface with history. Because we're talking about what

01:41:51

God has done in time, are we not? What does that get you? It's scary.

01:41:59

...manuscripts is not the key issue here. The key issue is, what presuppositions do we bring to the table?

01:42:04

And this is what... Those of us in the ecclesiastical text camp, though we have different... It's not monolithic.

01:42:10

We have different understandings within this broad ecclesiastical text camp.

01:42:17

We do subscribe to the same presuppositions about the preservation of God's word, that the self -attesting nature of scripture and the evidence is seen by the reception of the church universal in the reception of that text down through history.

01:42:33

And we try to seek that text. What is that text that has been received and witnessed to by the

01:42:39

Spirit of God through the usage of the priesthood of believers through the centuries? There's our common ground.

01:42:45

There's your basic ecclesiastical text platform. Okay, now there's the basic ecclesiastical text platform.

01:42:52

Let's make sure we got that down. Let's try it one more time. The evidence is seen by the reception of the church universal in the reception of that text down through history.

01:43:04

How do you determine that? Church universal. So, you mean

01:43:09

Rome? The papacy? Do you include the papacy in this, yes or no? Do you include the

01:43:17

Eastern Church? How do you determine the Eastern Church? Which of the patriarchs do you utilize? I don't know

01:43:26

I don't know almost anybody in our camp,

01:43:31

Brother True Love, that has a clue has a clue about the history of textual variation and receptions amongst the leading theologians of Eastern Orthodoxy.

01:43:47

I bet you don't. I don't. Calvin didn't.

01:43:53

Beza didn't. Nobody at the Westminster. None of the London Baptist Confession of Faith Fathers had a clue.

01:44:00

So, is that part of the church? So, what church is this? This had to have happened because you call the text of the

01:44:08

Receptus the text of the Reformation. But that was by default, not by choice. They did not say, here's this text here's the

01:44:16

Nessie Olin text. We'll take this. No, that's not what happened. And you know that's not what happened. It was by default.

01:44:22

It was not by choice. So, describe it that way, but that's a historical statement that is misleading at best.

01:44:30

So, what church, when, who, when we ask for specifics we're not trying to sidetrack anything.

01:44:38

We're trying to make the words mean something. Interface with reality and history.

01:44:45

Something we can grab hold of and say, it means this. Okay? And we try to seek that text.

01:44:54

What is that text that has been received and witnessed to by the Spirit of God through the usage of the priesthood of believers through the centuries?

01:45:02

Okay, so there's your ecclesiastical text model. The text that has been received and used by the priesthood of believers down through the centuries.

01:45:19

And how do you determine it? Who were the believers?

01:45:26

Can you tell from history? Can you look back? Are you including monks who claim to be priests?

01:45:37

How about the priests in the Eastern Orthodox? Coptic! Maybe it's the

01:45:42

Coptic? Well, that's hard to do, especially after Islam takes over North Africa.

01:45:49

So, who is this? And how do we determine this? And the priesthood of believers prior to the 4th century isn't relevant when it comes to Prick of Adultery.

01:46:02

Right? But it is relevant afterwards. Oh, you're just trying to just...

01:46:10

It's all about presuppositions. Presuppositions have to have meaning. They have to have a meaning.

01:46:19

Woe be to me if I ever call myself a presuppositionalist as an excuse for presenting meaningless stuff.

01:46:28

Utterly meaningless stuff that does not interface with proclamation or anything else.

01:46:37

So, what does it mean? Which church is this? How do we determine the priesthood of believers in the 7th century?

01:46:42

Where? In France? Spain? Italy? These are...

01:46:51

You're the one making the claim. The questions are honest ones.

01:46:58

Just wondering what the answers are. There's our common ground. There's your basic ecclesiastical text platform.

01:47:05

Now, some of you guys are strict TR. If it's in the Texas Receptus or one of its editions, that's it. There's others like myself who say, hey, you know,

01:47:13

I'm open to discussing readings with stronger evidence in the Byzantine manuscript platform.

01:47:21

Why? Because that's the broader ecclesiastical text. It's the broader witness to the same presuppositional foundation that we're all speaking to who hold this position.

01:47:32

So, you know, an ET position doesn't mean we all agree on all of the readings, but it does say that we do agree with foundational presuppositions that undergird the way we think about textual variation in the manuscript tradition of the

01:47:47

New Testament and the Old Testament, for that matter. You don't hear about the Old Testament a lot today in regards to textual criticism, but there are things even developing we're going to see over the next few decades here

01:47:58

I think with the Old Testament. So anyway, that's the issues here. So since Dr.

01:48:05

White's wanting to pick this up again after the comments that I made on Facebook over the last couple days, we will see today if, you know, does he engage the presuppositional argument?

01:48:16

Will we get an honest take on what the presuppositional concerns are and that that is the nature of the argument and then be able to progress from there?

01:48:27

Or will he just simply sling out other readings in the Byzantine or talk about the evidence that supports or goes against the pericope?

01:48:35

Will we hear about the floating pericope? Will we talk about the absence of the Longinian Mark in Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus?

01:48:44

See, again, I could come back and I could say, look, you know, the floating pericope is a result of the liturgical calendar in the

01:48:52

Eastern Church. There's substantial evidence to prove that it doesn't even happen until after the 10th century, as far as in the manuscripts, and we could talk about the

01:49:01

Longinian Mark and the attestation in Vaticanus of the space left in the last column of that book.

01:49:07

I mean, there's so many things I could talk about, but even then, if I engage in the evidence in that debate,

01:49:12

I'm cutting off the foundation of presuppositions. And evidently, according to a lot of folks,

01:49:22

I'm not a presuppositionalist because I find that to be an abandonment of any kind of meaningful debate.

01:49:33

I've read a lot of Van Till and I never got the idea that he was anti -evidence.

01:49:43

He was against the exaltation of evidence and the utilization of evidence outside a recognition of its proper role in light of God's decree and creation and all the rest of that stuff.

01:49:56

But, gee, I missed the note about where we don't discuss these things. I guess there's some...

01:50:03

I'm starting to wonder if there's something called hyper -presuppositionalism. I'm starting to wonder if that's out there somewhere.

01:50:08

But that issue aside, what was just stated there?

01:50:16

Well, there's space left there, so they knew it was there. Yeah, it's very early. The fact that there are multiple endings is the greatest argument against any one of them.

01:50:27

But the issue once again is presuppositional and that is

01:50:33

I want to know what the apostles wrote. And if you want to talk about the liturgical calendar in the

01:50:44

Eastern Church, wasn't that the church speaking? Again, this whole church thing, you know, it's so wonderful to talk about the priesthood of believers.

01:50:57

That's great! But how do you do criticism by that? Well, it's not really methodology.

01:51:03

It's just a presupposition. So it doesn't actually accomplish anything? It doesn't do anything? Why are we talking about it then?

01:51:11

Don't know. Don't get it. Alright, we're almost out of time.

01:51:18

That's the issue here. The issue is, do we bring presuppositions to the table and say that we have to identify those that guide us in how we weigh evidence and textual criticism?

01:51:30

Or is our presupposition purely naturalistic? That is the background to reason eclecticism.

01:51:37

Ah! So the background to reason eclecticism is a purely naturalistic way of thought.

01:51:44

So, if you recognize that God transmitted the scriptures through history, through human beings, and that he left us these things called manuscripts, and you want to apply the best methodology to lead you to what was originally written, you're a naturalist.

01:52:16

You need to listen to what the church says. And this accomplishes what again?

01:52:25

Because when I... I'm in the easy chair here. Because all

01:52:30

I've got to do is say, that sounds great. So what you're telling me is that the only people that can actually answer the question of what the reading of any particular text of scripture is are the naturalists.

01:52:43

The supernaturalists just simply have to go, well you can't ask me that question because then I'm going to have to abandon my presuppositions and then we're just going to...

01:52:52

No! We just have to look at what the priesthood of believers down through the history has read of that text.

01:52:58

Alright. So that sounds like it's just basically a majority text argument, isn't it?

01:53:09

Wouldn't that be the only logical thing there? The only logical thing there is you ignore all distinctions between East and West.

01:53:18

Ignore all the false teachings, false theologies. You ignore the persecuted subgroups because you can't tell who produced what manuscripts in 99 % of those instances.

01:53:34

And so you ignore all that stuff and you just go, well we're just going to assume that all these represent what was actually accepted into usage by the priesthood of believers.

01:53:51

And that therefore majority text wins. Majority text wins. And we're just going to slap a theological thing on it.

01:54:01

Now, what that means is that as far as our evidence today is concerned, that text is going to change depending on which century you're in.

01:54:10

Because the majority text in the 5th century is not going to have the Priccape Adultery, but the majority text in the 10th century will.

01:54:19

And so the text will actually change because well, it's not actually a methodology that takes you back to the original.

01:54:28

It's just a theological thing. Yeah, that's the problem.

01:54:36

And of course, I know what the response to that is. Well, actually, you see, the only manuscripts that you actually possess today are those that have survived over time, and they've preferred a particular kind, and we can speculate that these earlier manuscripts that no one has any evidence of today actually contain these things.

01:54:53

So we speculate about this and speculate about that. And that's why you stay in the internet chat room.

01:55:00

Because how are you going to take that out of there? How are you going to take that into a debate with a sound

01:55:09

Muslim and say, well, we speculate that there may have been manuscripts back then that did this or the other thing.

01:55:23

Hard to say. Hard to say. Yeah, as was just pointed out in the chat channel, goodbye to 1

01:55:30

John 5 -7, you take a majority text argument. Yeah, there's all sorts of stuff in the TR that goes out the door when you do the majority text argument, and that does raise all sorts of other issues.

01:55:41

I think we've spent enough time and beaten everybody to death on that particular subject.

01:55:47

There was one other aspect I wanted to get into about the proliferation of manuscripts. We don't have time to get into that.

01:55:54

We've gone for two hours as it is, and hopefully that's enough for everybody.

01:56:01

Hopefully you're like, okay, good to have you back. Go away. That was long enough. Two not exactly light -hearted subjects to address, but that's why we do what we do here on the program.

01:56:20

We appreciate... I always like to say, good to be with you on such and such day. It was good to be with you today.

01:56:26

Voice made it through. That hasn't really been the issue. Head made it through without exploding. That's a good thing.

01:56:34

Not sure of scheduling. I leave, I think, Thursday afternoon at some point.

01:56:40

I forget what my flight is Thursday. We'll see about that. You were putting your finger up.

01:56:46

Before we sign off today, I need to make an announcement and let folks know that I've been contacted by Tim Bushong.

01:56:56

Tim is the gentleman that did the audio for us for a rockin'...

01:57:04

Right. Mighty Fortress. Mighty Fortress. He has released a full album.

01:57:14

Album. CD. Does album mean anything anymore?

01:57:20

Albums used to be this big. Yes, I know. He has released... Belt in the car, if you like. Believe it or not, I guess this is a

01:57:25

Christmas... Christmas album? Yes. But he has put the full length version of Mighty Fortress on it.

01:57:35

Did he explain this in the liner notes, I wonder? What's that? Did he explain this in the liner notes,

01:57:40

I wonder? I don't know, but he he's given me links to both the page for the download version, which benefits his daughter's mission to help plant a church in Hawaii.

01:57:53

That seems to be a common thing to do, I guess, these days. As well as the CD that folks can get.

01:58:01

As he puts it, I am real happy with the overall mix, but Mighty Fortress is pretty stomping.

01:58:10

Pretty stomping. And I think that's been the reaction. So I will be putting up a page here in the next couple of days, linking to both of those so that folks can go...

01:58:19

Why can't we put it in the description now? We could do that too. We could. Send that over to me via Facebook.

01:58:25

I will. I'll get that, especially if there's Christmas music in there. That'll be great.

01:58:32

That may be how I start waking up my audiences. I've got this long conference coming up this weekend in St.

01:58:38

Charles, and Saturday afternoon sessions are pretty tough, and I just may cue that baby up and get people going that way and get them dancing in the aisles.

01:58:48

So I guess the title to the album is O Come Emmanuel.

01:58:55

O Come Emmanuel. All right. And so he's... Mighty Fortress is right there, number two.

01:59:02

All right. I'll link to it in the description of the program, and as you know,

01:59:08

I will be doing that in just a moment. All right, folks. Thanks for listening to the program today. We're going to try to get another one in before I head off to St.