Dobbs, Thomas, and Calls

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Started off pondering the level of evil displayed in the demonic screeching filling the land in response to the Dobbs decision, then moved to an analysis of Thomas Aquinas' comments on Romans 4 and again the question, is this the Great Tradition? Then took calls on a super wide variety of topics, such as explaining the Trinity to a child, foundational topics to teach teens today, biblical parenting, looking down the corridor of time, mind and will in the Trinity, translating "thelo" from Greek, and finally advice for a Disney cast member! Two hours and four minutes!

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00:31
Well, it's very rare that I get to say good morning, but it is morning here in Phoenix, Arizona.
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It's just afternoon in the Eastern time zone, I guess, but it's only nine o 'clock in the morning here in Phoenix.
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That's pretty unusual for us, but we need to sneak this in. Fact of the matter is, last weekend was my 40th wedding anniversary, and my wife and I got to do absolutely positively nothing.
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She is, she had wanted to get 25 years with one of the major airlines, but COVID ended all of that.
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And so she wondered what she was going to do. She was disappointed that she lost her job and had to retire and stuff.
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So you know, working full time all those years, she actually started baking, doing a lot of baking and she makes wonderful sourdough bread now.
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And the only thing I wish we could find a way to do is to cut it a little bit thinner.
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Super thick sourdough bread can be interesting, but it's so cute seeing her in the kitchen and she's got all these notes she's been making and, you know, try it this way, try it that way, you know, a little bit of this, a little bit of that.
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And that's a lot of fun. But her mom almost died of COVID and lived with us for a number of months and is on her own sort of now, but not really.
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Kelly gets to take care of her. Really helps her out a lot. And so that's the season of life we're in.
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My parents are gone, her parents are elderly, and so you've got other stuff that you got to do.
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So we didn't get to do anything for our 40th wedding anniversary. So we're going to try to grab a late lunch and help push, well,
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I already did, but help push Top Gun Maverick well beyond the one billion dollar mark.
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It's almost for me, it's sort of like saying to Hollywood, hey, you idiots, wake up.
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This is how it's done. This is if we build it, they will come in a new way, sort of.
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So anyway, that's what we're up to today. And let me get this full screen so I can keep an eye on the parking lot.
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And joined this morning by Rich Pierre, Rich, I have this on as good a basis and sources as the
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January 6th committee is using, just so you know.
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But I heard on the basis of that level of information that they wanted to put a statue of you up in Prescott.
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But you know why they couldn't do it? They couldn't write in French in Prescott. And that tells you a little something about how
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I feel about show trials in the United States, which is exactly.
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The sad thing is I don't think the vast majority of our citizenry any longer, especially those under 40, know what a show trial is.
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I grew up in the days when we would have news reports about show trials in communist countries and in banana republics, the tin horn dictators in Central and South America, illegitimate.
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They take control by force, by military force, whatever. But they're all leftists, all of them.
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And show trials are a part of these things. I mentioned this last week when I talked about what happened in Germany and with Rommel and things like that and why he, at least
04:34
I think I did. Do you remember me talking about that? Okay, good. All right. Anymore, I can't remember whether I typed it or said it.
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So that's how it worked. Anyways, it just seems that most Americans don't.
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If you were to just sit back and go, okay, let me ask you a question. Are meaningful rules of evidence and cross -examination being observed by the
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January 6th committee? Is there a meaningful opposition? You would care about this if you're the one being accused.
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You would want the defense to be able to be the defense. You would want to be able to cross -examine witnesses.
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You would want to be able to do your own research. There are rules that make judicial inquiry real rather than fake.
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None of those, of course, are being observed. When the Republicans tried to put people on the commission that would have done that,
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Nancy Pelosi simply broke all the rules and said, no, I'm not going to accept that.
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And they put Republicans on that are rhinos, they're Republicans in name only. And they just go along with the charade.
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So I think if you're in America, and I realize we have a global audience. So for people outside the
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United States, we have a show trial going on. We have corrupt government officials who are attempting to distract and failing, by the way, viscerally, but they're attempting, they're making a good college try to distract people from the collapse of our economy and the rise of hyperinflation.
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Just everything is simply falling apart. And it's going to fall apart much more rapidly in the future.
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And they're just trying to distract from all that. And they have one massive fear.
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They have one massive fear that Donald Trump will run for the presidency again.
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They want to make sure that simply cannot happen. And this is their attempt to do that.
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Now, I'll be perfectly honest with you. Personally, the last thing on the planet that I would want to see happen is
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Donald Trump running for president. I know, if the
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Republicans, who actually are Americans, who believe in the Constitution, and I honestly, the republic that was created by the
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Constitution may well already be gone with what's going on.
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If the Republicans can't put somebody else up that would have a backbone, then we're done.
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We're done. I don't know what's gonna take our place. We're done. Nothing has illustrated this more than what happened this first time we've been on the air since the
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Dobbs case was announced. And what?
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Okay, that's right. Okay, it's first time on the air since the reaction to the
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Dobbs case, which has been absolutely astonishing.
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Absolutely astonishing. I mean, not violence wise.
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These types of people, the people with the purple hair aren't really good at throwing bricks, okay?
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They're big with the talk. They're not big with following through. So we haven't really seen anything in comparison to what we saw two years ago during the riots and stuff like that.
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But I'll just be honest with you, from a Christian worldview, what
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I have seen over the past four days now, five days, has just left me almost speechless.
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You might say, well, you're not going to say much today if you're left speechless. But you know what I mean? We have a president and a regime that by its silence is actually commending to the populace the assassination of Supreme Court justices, violence in that sense.
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Any rational person that can set aside their emotions for just a few moments and analyze the legal arguments regarding the
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Roe decision, and this has been known, even leftists have recognized this.
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That's why they're trying to get it passed through Congress. They knew they never could. But this is why they're trying, is because they know that Roe was a joke as far as any type of legal jurisprudence is concerned.
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It's just a joke. It's indefensible. And the fact that the three leftist judges, their dissent was another mishmash of emotionalism and feel -goodism and virtue signaling, but without an ounce of meaningful thought or a constitutional argumentation in it.
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Just embarrassingly bad. First -year law student bad. And torn to shreds in the responses provided by the majority.
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Just smacked down big time, including
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Souter. Anyway, get back to the point here.
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Here's my real deep concern, and I haven't seen a lot of people talking about it.
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I have watched, I've seen some... Have you noticed how Twitter, and by the way,
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Twitter banned Pastor Gabe today, forever, eternally. He has to have a
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I'm banned from Twitter tattoo put on his forehead. And we now know exactly what got him.
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This was the tweet at 12 29 p .m. on Saturday.
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Q colon, not Q as in Q. This is question. Sad that we have to say things like that.
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Did I say Souter? I meant Breyer. Yeah, well, that shows how old I am. Well, it is early.
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I'm not responsible for anything before two o 'clock in the afternoon. It's funny how your mind runs through stuff like that when you're...
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Why would I be thinking about what I said two minutes ago when I'm reading something on the screen? I don't know. Strange how the mind works.
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Uh, what do abortion, adultery, bestiality, child sacrifice, homicide, homosexuality, idolatry, incest, and witchcraft have in common?
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A. So see for... I just want to help folks at Twitter because they're really challenged.
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Q means question. A means answer. Okay, that's like Q and A. Okay. A, they all deserve the death penalty.
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Turn from your sins to the Lord Jesus Christ and live. So you can't say that these things, abortion, adultery, bestiality, child sacrifice, homicide, homosexuality, idolatry, incest, and witchcraft.
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You can't say the wages of sin is death because that's what he meant. The wages of sin is death.
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But you can't say that on Twitter. And you can't say turn from your sins to the Lord Jesus Christ and live. So Pastor Gabe's gone permanento from Twitter as a result.
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So just so if you're looking around for him and you're wondering what in the world's going on, that's what happened.
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And we're sorry to see him go, but we'll all be there eventually. Um, uh -oh.
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Yeah. Yeah. Live on the air discussing that.
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I only do that for the Coop. John Cooper just sent me the TGC stuff.
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John, you need to get on Twitch. According to Rich, you need to be on Twitch.
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Why? Is John? Oh, he needs to be watching the Divine. Oh, I thought you meant
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Skillet needed to get on Twitch. Why? I don't think that John's really much of a gamer.
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Yeah, well, we're doing something. People keep saying it's the worst game stream they've ever seen.
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So what can I say? Anyway, the threatening, the racist attacks by governmental leaders upon Clarence Thomas.
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I'm plenty old enough to remember Clarence Thomas's confirmation hearings.
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I remember. And you know who the main person went after Clarence Thomas was? Joe Biden. It was
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Joe Biden. And this was back when Joe Biden was, it was pre -senility. Joe Biden pre -senility was a snake.
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He was the politician's politician. You know, he ran for president many times and he kept failing because people would just simply play videos of him lying through his teeth about his education, about his past, catching him.
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And well, this is not a big deal anymore, but, you know, using other people's writings as if they were his own.
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The Baptists can't say much about that anymore. And, you know, he would just, he would crash and burn because he was just a slimy, mealy -mouthed politician.
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And then for some reason, Obama picks him as VP. And now look at the mess we've got.
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But he was the one that led the just, they had borked Bork.
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They had managed to keep Bork off the Supreme Court. One of the greatest legal minds ever. And so they thought they could do the same thing to Clarence Thomas.
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They didn't. And the opinion that Clarence Thomas wrote in support of the overturning of Roe and Casey was begun on the day that Clarence Thomas responded to the
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Anita Hill attacks with Joe Biden sitting there with that smarmy smirk on his face.
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That's when it started. There is a sense of vengeance there.
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There's no question about it. But it is important to note, just in passing, lest I forget it, that while Alito tried to say that this decision is only in regards to abortion,
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Thomas is exactly right. The court adopted a stance that allowed it to start creating imaginary rights.
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And in his opinion, Thomas said the court needs to revisit all those cases where it has utilized that false foundation to create false rights, including
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Obergefell, which is exactly right. That's completely the case.
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He's right. And the left knows he's right. And that's why, you know, even comparing the view to Justice Thomas is like the collective
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IQ points of the entire view would be about one fifth of Clarence Thomas's IQ.
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That's not really fair. But they do represent a lot about the culture.
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And that's what I wanted to get to. I've seen his videos. I described it on Twitter.
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It was as if hell itself has broken open and the demons are crawling out after us, flying out after us.
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I have seen videos of performers. And I just realized I turned the fan off in here.
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It's unfortunate. I think you can. Yeah, camera won't see you.
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And no one will know that Rich is coming in to pop that little switch over there on.
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And so I'll be a little more comfortable during the course of the program. Yeah, it's
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June in Phoenix, though. I'll admit it's been well, sort of.
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It's been an amazing summer in comparison to 2020.
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It really, really has. I think we had like, what, three days so far above 110? And we had 54,
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I think, in 2020. So that gives you an idea. Global cooling. It's a grave danger.
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Anyway. Huh? Next ice age. That's that. Hey, I remember that in the 70s.
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Don't you? In school. That's their saying. Global ice age is right ahead of us.
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We're all going to die. Nothing new about that. I've seen performers in front of one of them.
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It was an outside venue. So 20, 30 ,000 people. The vile language and behavior while promoting women's health care and women's rights and every mindless, self -contradictory, irrational phrase that is flying around out there, that has no connection to reality.
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And these people are worshipping, the people in the audience are worshipping these quote -unquote celebrities.
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I can't show you most of them because they're disgusting. They're softcore porn.
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I saw a black woman wearing a thong and a bra, basically uncovered from the waist down.
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And there was a lot from the waist down, I'm going to tell you. Strutting around in front of 30 ,000 people, dropping
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F -bombs. I mean, this woman's intellectual capacity is absolutely minimal.
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But her hatred is astonishing, and she's being worshipped.
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These people are eating out of her hands. If this is what is forming the worldview perspectives of people under 40, this is why
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I want to join in the rejoicing. And I rejoice when the
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Lord grants any level of grace and relief. But I cannot help but look at something like that.
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Now, I know a large portion of those people in that audience don't vote.
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That's a mercy in and of itself. None of them have ever read the
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Roe case or Casey or Dobbs. And to be honest with you, the vast majority wouldn't understand if they did.
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Let's just be honest, they don't have the education because we don't educate anymore. We indoctrinate.
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Indoctrination and education are not the same thing. And I did not see, in all of the blather going on around us, any serious discussion of constitutional issues, legal issues, nothing rational.
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It's all emotion, emotion. And it's the rabble who are easily controlled by a small set of completely irrational phrases.
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Women's health care. Women's rights. My body, my choice.
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And you can just tell that none of these people have ever been challenged on a scientific level, a moral level, ethical level, because they have no moral and ethical development.
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Morally and ethically, they are infants and intellectually, maybe six or seven -year -olds.
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And that's what our educational system produces because that's what the left wants. That's how they can get away with their absurd hypocrisy and everything else.
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It really makes you go, all right, are these people going to be able to get around Dobbs by pushing a federal
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Roe or really Casey -like statute?
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And it won't. And it will not even be limited like those were. You look at the
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AOCs. You look at these people who are calling for the abolition of the court, packing in the court, whatever.
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Look, eventually, this younger generation that's filling those stadiums that have been robbed of any transcendent meaning.
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I mean, there was a video I saw this morning of pro -death activists.
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And man, they just fit all the standard tropes of leftist feminists and stuff like that.
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And I'm watching them standing there, screaming their chants that have no meaning.
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And I sat back and I realized this is all they have. We talk about abortion as the sacrament of the left.
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Why is it the sacrament of the left? Because it's all they have. They're only, you'd only get to ride around the sun a certain number of times.
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And in the worldview they've been given, the lies they've been told, that's it. That's it.
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That's all you got. There's nothing more. So you got to get everything you can now.
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And this is a movement. It's a religion that gives you this sense of meaning for now.
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Can you imagine what it's like when they go home and the chants stop? How empty.
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How horribly empty to be so robbed of your humanity that you don't realize that you are angry that someone might not get to murder a pre -born child, which you once were, which you once were.
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Is it? There's got to be, there's got to be some time in the silence.
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Though I've noticed younger people don't like silence. They've got to have something going on all the time.
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Some music. Some noise. So something. Silence? Don't do that. You might have to think.
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But eventually the batteries run out. And in that silence, don't you, doesn't it ever cross their mind that they as a unique person, there is only one point in their history where their unique genetic makeup was created.
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And even if you as a really younger person can avoid it, here's the problem.
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And you don't notice this when you're a younger person, but you get into middle age and all of a sudden one day you laugh and then stop and start looking around for your dad or your mom, because that laugh was theirs.
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You say something and then realize, oh my goodness, I've become my parents.
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And it's not just your dad. It's your mom. Now you may not know one or the other or both.
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And that's a shame. But if you do, you realize, man,
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I, I really do come from both of them. And there is only one point in time when that unique makeup could be made up.
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And it's called conception. And you're living your life screaming in anger and hatred because people don't get to kill those unique, never to be repeated human beings.
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63 million, 65 million cents a row. Just in the
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United States, we're not even talking about, not even talking about worldwide.
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Secularism is so empty. You see it in China today. You're seeing just the devastation of that culture and those people, they've been robbed of everything.
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They've been robbed of everything. And that's where the left wants to go here too.
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We've got the answer, but I'm gonna tell you something. It just seems to me, yes,
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I believe that Christ is going to build his kingdom. But as I've said over and over again, the greatest enemy to that kingdom is leftist secularism and its fall must be complete.
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We thought the fall of the Soviet Union would be enough. We thought the hundreds of, you know, 120 million people, that should be enough.
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Look around. It's not. It has been astonishing to watch the lawlessness and the utter degradation of what humanity is all about that has taken place over the past few days.
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Now the Biden regime, illegitimate and nasty as it is, is talking about putting abortion clinics with your money, totally against the
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Hyde Amendment, obviously. They don't care. This regime cares nothing about the constitution, about law, anything.
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They're gonna do whatever they want to do and smile and lie to you in the process.
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Well, actually they don't bother right now. Their spokesperson just incoherently babbles.
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I'm not sure if we're talking about the press secretary or Biden because it's the same thing. No one can figure out what they're saying.
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It's all doublespeak. And so they can just, yeah, let's put abortion clinics on federal lands in states that ban abortion.
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There is no one with a straight face can say this was the intention of the founding fathers, which means these are revolutionaries.
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We've been taken over by our enemies. We've fallen from within. It's where we are. Yes, sir. Did you hear what the
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Maricopa County attorney, the temporary one today announced? They're going to handle these cases that are violating the current law that we have with prosecutorial discretion.
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Yeah, yeah, that doesn't surprise me. Doesn't surprise me.
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So I want to be able to rejoice with folks. One of the things that I was taught in my youth, it was not emphasized as much even starting in the 70s.
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I started schooling late 60s, okay, mainly in the 70s.
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But it was there, was that we are a nation of laws and that this is a blessing.
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This is a good thing because if you're not a nation of laws, you become a nation of men and hence there can be no justice.
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The reason that the woman has the blindfold on her eyes is this is the only way to have actual equality and justice.
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And when you cease being a nation of law and become a nation of men, then justice is whatever the people in charge say it is.
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There is no actual justice. There is no establishment of a standard that will be true 10 years from now.
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And that's where we now are. The nation that was based upon laws is being overthrown by a regime that is a nation based upon people and opinions.
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And we must accomplish this level of equity in order to be a nation of law, you see. And they always use all the words that they're actually attacking, justice, equality.
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They don't mean any of those things because they have no standard by which to define those things. It's whatever fits my side.
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And that's what we're facing in this situation. Obviously from a
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Christian perspective, law is a good thing. It does interest me to look at evangelicals.
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They sense something is really wrong here. And they see the injustice.
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But they don't know how to say, and God's law reveals his holy character.
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And it's not just the 10 commandments to do that. That there is a moral aspect to all of God's law.
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I didn't realize, and it's funny, I honestly don't remember.
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Do you remember back, I don't know, six, seven years ago when
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I preached through the holiness code and people were listening to those sermons, they're still available.
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I don't remember getting people, all I heard was positive, man,
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I haven't never thought about that. Wow, man, you're covering some really tough stuff because we didn't dodge anything.
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I remember doing a Wednesday night service. I sort of feel sorry for those poor folks now, but I did a
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Wednesday night service where we covered the biblical passage that says that a woman's hands would be cut off if when two men are fighting, she reaches out and grabs one of the men by their gonads.
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The Wednesday night service, we didn't dodge anything. And we did it in the context of saying, not of saying that all of that's just simply done away with.
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Because as far as the theocratic nation of Israel, of course, of course it is.
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But what is the law of Jeremiah 31 that's written on the heart? Is that some new thing?
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Well, the new covenant theology guys, and I played around with that for a few months and it just didn't work.
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They'll say that, but that's not what anyone in Jeremiah's day would have understood. And so my whole sermon series was based upon the idea that there is an abiding moral validity throughout
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God's law. And I've given numerous examples of it.
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And I didn't have anybody back then. Now, everybody and their second cousin will come after you.
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If you even use the term theonomy or general equity or anything like that at all.
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But what do we have to say to the world that no longer has a basis for law outside of human autonomy?
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Don't we have God's law revealed and doesn't it provide an answer to all this stuff?
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Yeah, it does, but there you go. But we need to remember, now isn't the time for the church to beat its chest in celebration of a victory in the culture war.
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This is a moment for us to step up in love. The Gospel Coalition clearly is intent upon completely dismantling any final bits of credibility that everyone's had.
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I just simply have to say to the good guys that are still connected, guys, you got to make a choice someday.
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The marshmallow progressivism of TGC is just enough to give everybody a really bad taste.
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And you need to make a decision. You need to do something. Okay, let me tell you what we're gonna do.
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I forgot to mention this. Sorry about that. Had other things on the mind at the start of the program.
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I'm gonna be talking a little bit on a few other things here. And then in about half an hour, yeah, let's make it 10 minutes after the hour.
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We will open up our Zoom room. I don't know what it is.
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I've never called in this way. So I don't know. But Rich, why don't you tell folks?
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Because I don't know. So I put a video up on YouTube explaining how this is going to work.
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And so probably the top of the hour, I'll start screening calls. And if you've gone through that video and you've heard me explain how this works, you first will need to know the number of the room and the password to get in.
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If I simply put that link up on Twitter or wherever, then really bad things are gonna happen because we're gonna get a lot of undesirable folks.
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The thing is, is that I can't get on and talk to you and screen your call.
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So I need you to change your Zoom name when you link up to the room.
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And it needs to have your first name and a brief description of the topic that you wanna talk about.
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When I see that and it's legitimate, then I'm gonna let you into the room.
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So you're gonna go immediately into the waiting room. You need to have already changed that. So that's how that's gonna work.
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I'm gonna post in Twitch and I'm gonna post on Twitter just the room number and the password to get in.
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And it's not gonna be a link. And if you haven't already gone through my little tutorial on how to do this, it's probably best for you to wait, go through the tutorial.
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Or it's only like five minutes long. So go watch the tutorial now and figure it out.
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But you know, the show's live. So maybe next time. So that's it.
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There you go. So while you go watch that tutorial, yesterday with great fanfare,
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Matthew Barrett. And by the way, I'll pop this over here.
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And Matthew Barrett at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary I don't recall ever having even tweeted him.
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I really don't. Maybe I did at some point.
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I don't know. But he doesn't want to talk to me. I'm blocked.
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Actually, I've had a number of people comment in the past that he had blocked them too. So evidently he has a very active block finger and it's not based upon anything you might say to him.
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It's based upon what your perspectives are. And so if you come from a different perspective or if you would dare to question anything that he's saying or presenting, you will be blocked because evidently you don't need to hear from him.
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Anyway, with great fanfare, the Center for Classical Theology, I think there had been an announcement
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I think about two weeks ago about major changes in the PhD program at Midwestern.
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I'm really wondering how many Southern Baptists are really wanting to do all this type of stuff.
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But anyways, but here is a series that's going to be coming from Crossway. So Crossway is now signing on.
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And here's the new series. I can't maximize that.
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Well, wait a minute. Yeah, there we go. The Center for Classical Theology, together with Crossway, has announced
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Thomas Aquinas for Protestants. Series and volume titles are subject to change.
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A new forthcoming series from Crossway. Series editors Matthew Barrett and Craig Carter. Well, who are the primary people we've been quoting in responding to the new
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Thomism? Well, Matthew Barrett and Craig Carter. By the way, I retweeted just a few moments ago, just before the program started.
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Whoops, sorry about that. Um, just before the program started,
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I retweeted something from, yeah, and I said, amen and amen from Craig Carter.
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Conservative Christians need to come to terms with how much we are hated by dominant currents in the culture.
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We should expect miraculous conversions which have occurred in every age, but we should not expect unchurched people to just drift into our churches without radical conversion.
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Exactly. No question about it. I've said over and over again, it seems to me when
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I watch Craig Carter's feed, that when it comes, I doubt that he would disagree with almost anything that I said in the first half hour of this program.
43:49
In fact, I think part of him would wish he had the freedom to say some of the things that I've said in the first half hour of this program.
43:56
I get the feeling we're smack on, smack on. Oh, by the way, I need, I forgot to mention this.
44:03
I'm wearing my Latour shirt. La Tour de France begins July 1st.
44:10
And I feel sorry for all of you, like football fans and stuff like that, because you have like four hours a year for the
44:17
Super Bowl. For a cycling fan, you have at least three weeks. And that's the tour.
44:25
And really, honestly, I enjoy the Giro and the Vuelta more than I do the tour.
44:31
So I get nine weeks. Nine weeks of the
44:37
Super Bowl level stuff, with a few rest days thrown in. But yeah, that's coming up.
44:44
And I'm sort of excited about that. That's great. I am having to wince at the
44:52
UCI and it's being woke every once in a while, but it's not too bad yet. Anyways, back to Thomas Aquinas.
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Sorry about that. Now I can't get to, that's weird. There we go.
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There we go. Sorry about that. I can't click anything else or this will blow up. Thomas Aquinas for Protestants.
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Series editors Matthew Barrett and Craig A. Carter. Thomas Aquinas on Christian Virtue by Carl Truman.
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Thomas Aquinas on Christology by Matthew Barrett. Thomas Aquinas on God and Creation by Craig Carter.
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Remember, Dr. Carter has made the statement in the past that the doctrine of the
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Trinity reached its final point of Orthodox development with Aquinas.
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So it was a 1200 year process. I really have a problem with that.
45:51
Thomas Aquinas on Sin and Salvation by J .V. Fesco. That didn't surprise me at all.
45:57
Dr. Fesco, OPC. Dr. Fesco, rabidly anti -Vantill, anti -presuppositionalism.
46:05
All of this is deeply anti -presuppositional. Thomas Aquinas on Sacred Scripture and Natural Theology by David Zitzma.
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Anybody who's following the Great Tradition Baptist, Reformed Thomists, New Scholasticism amongst
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Baptists, you recognize all the names. These are the big names. Now, this doesn't mention it, but these are not due until, start to come out until 2026.
46:38
And I'll be honest with you, I'm sort of like, I'm not sure this has legs for another four years.
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In the sense that, in my opinion, I just, here's what
47:02
I think is happening, okay? I've been thinking a lot about this. I think there are a lot of good Reformed Baptist men, maybe even some women, though I'm not seeing a whole lot of women jumping on the
47:12
Thomist bandwagon at the moment. But I see brothers who get invited to a conference.
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And the conference got big names. People have written books, leadership positions, professors, seminaries.
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And everybody's all excited. And so they get all excited. And the presentations are really deep.
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But they look around and everybody's nodding their heads and going, wow, this is great stuff. This is really helping me to grow.
47:59
And so you sort of go along with it. But then, you know, you start hearing sermons for a few months.
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But eventually that starts getting a little old. And in your quieter moments, you sit there going, you know,
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I've lived my entire Christian life without even hearing most of this terminology.
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Not just the Latin, but even when it's translated and put into English, I've, if I really think that this stuff now is so central, then
48:48
I've got to admit, I was clueless for most of my Christian life.
48:54
And my pastors were, and everybody had been for a long, long time.
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And you start realizing there's only a very small portion of Christian people down through the ages that have ever even thought about this stuff.
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And I know I hear people saying that if you don't believe this, then it's gonna result in this, this, and this. But there's this little voice in the back of my head going, yeah, but none of us fell into all those errors in those preceding decades.
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So why is there such a huge danger now? Who are the tritheists?
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The only tritheists I know of are Mormons. And so I've got to believe this new stuff or I'm gonna end up consistently a
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Mormon. That doesn't make any sense. It doesn't. And you, there's another little voice that says, do you notice the huge gap between your
50:03
Bible reading and the conclusions that you are now being told are so vitally important that you have to really become a zealous missionary for these things?
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And I just, I just don't see how this thing's gonna have legs. Now, look, so there's a new center for classical theology.
50:36
Been lots of those. I joked, because I sort of feel, I almost feel bad for them. A couple of days ago, something happened on Twitter and Rich got into it with somebody about, well, are you gonna debate these folks?
50:50
And I was leaving the house when I saw some discussion in some places. So I threw out the question, who, what are they talking about?
50:58
And then eventually it was the guys from SES, the Southern Evangelical Seminary. They've been, you know,
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I spoke on the campus there that one time when I debated Michael Brown, remember? And I actually gave a paper at some conference and everybody else was giving papers on Thomas Aquinas, some aspect of Thomas Aquinas.
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I mean, they are, they were the non -reformed
51:28
Thomists long before anybody else was. I mean, Geisler, right.
51:36
Geisler, I mean, Geisler founded that school to be a
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Protestant promotion of Thomas Aquinas and they have stuck with it.
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And that he is the center of everything at that school.
51:56
And so there's a, some fellow there, don't remember his name, not meant to be disrespectful. I just had never heard of him before, but he wrote to me and I guess he went,
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I think it was Westminster and he had good reformed Palmares. But he's a big
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Thomist and he's at Southern Evangelical Seminary. Now I'm sorry, SES is not a reformed school.
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It is as anti -reformed as you can get. It's not anti -reformed in the sense of King James only
52:29
IFB schools, but it is fundamentally and foundationally,
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I mean, Norman Geisler detested reformed theology. Nobody knows this better than I do. Okay.
52:43
Anyone remember Chosen but Free, Potter's Freedom? Yeah. I know it's been two decades, but, so I'm not,
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I'm not concerned about the non -reformed, anti -reformed
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Thomists because I don't see that as being overly inconsistent.
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But it's the allegedly reformed Thomists that we are going to respond to.
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And we're going to say, hey, we're the ones that are still saying what we were saying 20 years ago.
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You're the ones that are not. And here's why we will continue to say, and it's not just what we just refuse to learn.
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No, we refuse to buy into the new fad. And yes, a lot of my brothers have gotten, have bought into a fad.
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And it's gonna, it's come and gone over and over again across history.
53:52
It's nothing new. It'll happen again after this one runs out. It's, you eventually get old enough to have seen these things come and go more than once.
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But I was looking at, and one of the reasons
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I don't have, and in fact, I went through some of the topics that I'd be willing to do a debate on.
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And I think they're very useful topics in regards to the nature of Sola Scriptura, the nature of the great tradition.
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Do we have to become Christian Platonists? Council of Nicaea.
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That's stuff that I've been teaching and writing on for decades. And so, yeah. But I don't think the people on the other side want to get to those real issues.
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But yeah, like I said, I put that out there. I am at an age in my life where I am not going to be investing my time in soul sapping stuff.
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When Jeff Neal and I wrote the Same Sex Controversy, that was a tough time. Having to read that, it's only gotten worse.
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But having to read that stuff, I do not enjoy reading
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Thomas Aquinas. It's not just a matter of, I find it tedious, which I do, but I find it spiritually paralyzing.
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It's dry. If I'm going to be reading people from the past,
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I want to be in stuff that is edifying.
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And I do not find Thomas Aquinas edifying. I don't understand how people do, but I'm not going to say it's impossible.
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But I have been doing some reading. And I wanted,
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I went to Thomas's commentary on Romans.
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And I wanted to look at what he said, because as Dr.
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Oliphant pointed out in his book on Aquinas, when you talk to Thomas today, you get dismissed if you're not reading
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Thomas regularly, or don't find him exciting or whatever. In the process, you may not be aware of the fact that Thomas has created a many, many, many, many, many shelves worth of disputation and argumentation as to exactly what he meant by all sorts of things.
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And that there are two major schools in even interpreting Thomas. The older school that sees
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Thomas as the father of Roman Catholic theology, Tridentine theology, as yet fully developed stage.
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Because there's almost 300 years between Thomas and Trent.
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And though there were heresies in his day, and he was a member of the Dominicans, the Dominicans were the heresy hunters.
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The Dominicans were the ones that were guilty of horrific violence against heretics in France and Italy and places like that.
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He wasn't specifically involved in that, but he provided the foundation, the theological foundation.
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And in the Summa, agreed with the destruction of heretics. It's just right there, that was the world he lived in.
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But it's not like he had a lot of interaction with them. And so when you have interaction with other viewpoints, that defines and clarifies your own definitions and perspectives.
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So that's one of the things we have to keep in mind when we're looking at Aquinas and his time in comparison to our day.
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But I want to look at what Aquinas said about the key texts in Romans 4, and who is the blessed man.
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Now, I may go back later and look at 4 .1
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through 4 .6, 7, 4 .8. Well, 4 .6.
59:09
Anyway, my right eye is bugging me today, as you all can tell who are watching.
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I may go back and look at that at another point, because once again, a question that remains unanswered in any usable fashion is what great tradition exegesis is.
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One of the grave dangers that I've seen is Reformed Baptist leaders, professors, pastors saying, our hermeneutics was all wrong.
59:47
We've adopted a new hermeneutics. You change your hermeneutics, you change your faith. And even saying that the old way of doing exegesis made mincemeat, hash out of the confession.
01:00:01
And so I want to know what this stuff is, because when
01:00:06
I read Calvin's commentaries, he's doing exegesis like John Murray, Douglas Moo, and people like that, back in the last century, which now is just that terrible century of horrible theology, the modern hubris.
01:00:31
But he doesn't do exegesis like Aquinas did. He doesn't do it like in Gratian's Decretum or those type of medieval things.
01:00:43
And people, oh, there's a connection here. Stop it. It's not the same thing. We're not saying they live on different planets, but it's not the same thing.
01:00:53
So let me give an example. Remember when Paul quotes from Psalm 32.
01:01:06
So Romans chapter 4, just as David also speaks, the blessing on the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works.
01:01:14
And then it's Psalm 31 in the Greek Septuagint. It's Psalm 32 in the
01:01:22
Hebrew. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven and whose sins have been covered.
01:01:28
Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account. So you have anemia, lawlessness, put in the plural anemiai, and then you have hamartiai, sins, and then you have singular sin in verse 8.
01:01:57
And as we pointed out before, Romans 4, 7, and 8 defines the imputation of righteousness apart from works of verse 6 in the covering over of sin.
01:02:14
And the only way to understand that in Paul's theology is the sin bearer. Our sins have been imputed to him, he's righteous to us.
01:02:22
It's the great exchange. And so, hmm, what?
01:02:36
You just said that to me and I'm like, what? Adam? Oh, oh.
01:02:55
Like, what? What the heck is that? Okay, anyway,
01:03:01
I only have that on the phone. I don't have it up on the system here, but I'll try to bring that up.
01:03:10
Anyway, sorry about that. A little mix up in communication here that threw me off there.
01:03:16
So here is the section that I looked at from Thomas where you have the blessing upon the man whose sin the
01:03:29
Lord will not take into account. So you need to be talking about what legiditate means, that is imputation.
01:03:38
You need to talk about what forgiveness and covering means. What does it mean that the
01:03:44
Lord will not impute sin to a man? And that this is all how
01:03:53
God imputes righteousness apart from works. This is absolutely key to the
01:04:00
Roman Catholic system, and it's something that Thomas did not understand. It's something that he missed, even though he's writing a commentary on Romans.
01:04:14
So here's straight out of Thomas. But what was it?
01:04:20
Straight out of Compton. What was that? Straight out of Compton. Here's straight out of Thomas. Then when he says, blessed are they, he presents
01:04:33
David's words containing the previous judgment and says that those whose sins are forgiven are blessed.
01:04:42
Consequently, they did not previously have good works from which they obtain justice or happiness.
01:04:53
Now, what came before this was the standard Roman Catholic understanding of good works as prompted by God being the foundation of one's justification.
01:05:09
So that opens the whole door for the sacramental system, which is not a part of Paul's context, but there you go.
01:05:18
But sin, now here's back to Thomas, but sin is divided into three classes, original, actual mortal, and actual venial.
01:05:34
Now, if you're not a former Roman Catholic, you may not be familiar with Rome's classifications of the categories of sin.
01:05:51
But one thing is painfully obvious, neither was Paul. And that is nowhere to be found in this text.
01:06:02
This is where the original intention of the author must be the starting point in all exegesis.
01:06:12
Or you're not dealing with the text. Remember, Joseph Smith also made changes to this text.
01:06:26
Earlier in Romans four, he had said, blesses the man to whom God will not impute righteousness.
01:06:35
What was it? I'm sorry. Let me get the right quote here. It was verse, excuse me.
01:06:50
Yeah. But believes in him who does not justify the ungodly. He negated the actual central aspect because he didn't understand justification.
01:06:58
That was Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism. Now, no one would take that seriously amongst
01:07:04
Christians, at least I hope not. No one would say, well, you know, there are millions of people who believe that.
01:07:11
And so you can't just dismiss millions of honest believers, right?
01:07:19
That's part of the great tradition. Oh, no, no. It's not part of the great tradition. Okay. So if it's not part of the great tradition, is
01:07:26
Thomas Aquinas, is original actual mortal and actual venial.
01:07:34
Is that a part of the great tradition? Again, I realize that the utilization of that phraseology today is primarily by people who want to talk about the doctrine of God only, but that's not what
01:07:46
Thomas did. So without introducing any of this,
01:07:54
Thomas says, but sin is divided into three classes, original, actual mortal, and actual venial. First, in regard to original sin, he says, blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven.
01:08:06
Here it should be noted that original sin is called iniquity because it is the lack of that original justice by which in equity man's reason was subject to God, the lower powers to reason and the body to the soul.
01:08:17
This equity is removed by original sin because after reason ceased to be subject to God, the lower powers rebel against reason and the body is withdrawn from obedience to the soul and subjected to death and decay.
01:08:31
Hence, I was brought forth in iniquities, Psalm 51 5. In both texts, original sin is presented in the plural, either because the multitude of men in whom original sin is multiplied or better because it virtually contains in itself all sins in some way.
01:08:46
Such original sin is said to be forgiven because the state of guilt passes with the coming of grace, but the effect remains in the form of fulness or concupiscence, which is not entirely taken away in this life, but is remitted or mitigated.
01:09:00
Second, regard to actual mortal sin, he says, and whose sins are covered. For sins are said to be covered from the divine gaze in as much as he does not look upon them to be punished, you covered all their sin,
01:09:13
Psalm 84 3. Third, in regard to venial, he says, bless this man to whom the
01:09:18
Lord has not imputed sin, where sin refers to venial sins, which although light, if they be many, man is separate and distant from God.
01:09:26
The good Lord will pardon everyone who sets his heart to seek God, even though not according to the sanctuary's rules of cleanness,
01:09:32
Second Chronicles 30 18. These three can be distinguished in another way for in sin are three things, one of which is offense against God.
01:09:41
In regard to this, he says, blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven. The way man is said to remit an offense committed against him.
01:09:47
Her iniquity is pardoned, Isaiah 42 40 verse 2. The second thing is the fact that the disordered deed has been done and cannot be said not to have occurred once it has been perpetrated, but it is covered over by the hand of God's mercy and is held as if not committed.
01:10:02
The third is a debt of punishment in regard to which he says, blessed is the man to whom the Lord has not imputed sin, i .e.
01:10:08
unto punishment. And then he goes on from there. Do you hear what's being said?
01:10:17
The key and important aspect of Paul's argument is not picked up by Thomas.
01:10:27
It's not even seen. Instead, he takes the concepts of original, mortal, and venial, and he, this is called eisegesis.
01:10:41
He reads them into the text. There is nothing in the citation from Psalm 32 to suggest that what you actually have going on is that blessed are those whose original sin has been forgiven and whose mortal sins have been covered.
01:11:04
Blessed is the man whose venial sins the Lord will not take into account. That's Thomas Aquinas' reading of that text.
01:11:13
That's Thomas Aquinas' reading of that text. That's what I just read to you. That has nothing to do with what would have been communicated by the words written on a piece of papyrus sent to the church at Rome.
01:11:29
But it has everything to do with the great tradition. And once you buy into great tradition eisegesis, how do you check it?
01:11:41
What's the standard? What's the standard? I don't think anybody can answer that question in an objective way.
01:11:52
It'll always be subjective. And as soon as people start giving answers, other people go, well, no, I don't, you know, because now what you've got to do is you're not only unpacking what you have to unpack in Romans 4, which is the
01:12:04
Greek text of Romans 4, plus its intertextual citation of the Greek Septuagint, and hence the background of both
01:12:11
Romans and Psalm 32, which is enough. But now you have put 1 ,200 years, 1 ,000 years of tradition on top of it.
01:12:30
So even if you just go to Thomas and use Thomas as your standard, you now have to unpack
01:12:39
Thomas' explanation and all the things that go into that and all the disagreements that people have as to what
01:12:45
Thomas' context would have required. Does this clarify
01:12:50
Romans 4, 6 through 8? No, it muddies it. It can do nothing but muddy it.
01:12:58
That's all it can do. So is this what we need to do?
01:13:07
Is this going to, does this edify the church? Does this help our preaching, our exegesis?
01:13:17
I mean, the only thing that I can see where Aquinas' comments on Romans 4, 7 and 8 would be helpful would be as an illustration of this is how you do not do biblical exegesis.
01:13:37
This is called eisegesis. This is called taking your theological system, which teaches you that there are these various kinds of sin, and this is how you read it into the text.
01:13:55
That's as far as I can see, that's all there is to it. So why am I wrong about that?
01:14:02
I invite the great tradition Baptists to explain to me why am
01:14:10
I wrong about that. And if you're going to say we get it, he was completely wrong on soteriology.
01:14:21
All we're saying is we need him for theology proper.
01:14:30
You need to explain why Thomas would have, well, he was
01:14:35
Dominican, so he had contacts. And your lifetime may have been a little shorter as a result of that in those days.
01:14:46
But where would, where do you get that from Thomas? And on what basis can you logically defend the distinction of theology proper from soteriology proper?
01:14:57
I just would like to know what that's all about.
01:15:08
I'm just looking at something in Twitter there.
01:15:18
Oh, so, oh, so Rich accidentally posted the wrong room number in the previous post.
01:15:27
You got five guys? I've only got one topic. Oh, well, now
01:15:35
I know what you're doing. And I brought signal up so I can see it now. So there you go.
01:15:42
All right. So hopefully those comments will be of assistance to you. We're going to take some phone calls here.
01:15:50
And that means I need to find my super high tech 1970s vintage earpiece.
01:16:01
We've tried other stuff and this little old wire just seems to be what works.
01:16:08
So I'm going to assume that the first one you sent me was what we're looking at. So let's talk to Adam.
01:16:15
Hi, Adam. What's going on, Dr. White? How are you doing? Can you hear me?
01:16:21
I can hear you. Okay. Hey, I had a quick question. I know there's other people, so I won't hold you.
01:16:28
What's the best way to explain the Trinity to a eight, nine -year -old child without getting too deep in the ontological stuff, but not confusing him?
01:16:41
Well, that's not an easy thing to do. I think there is sort of an earliest period where you can expect a level of understanding, because the child's brain can only begin to handle categorization at a certain point in time.
01:17:02
And that's why kids say the darndest things, as we used to say.
01:17:08
They don't know where to draw the lines because that part of their brain hasn't developed yet. And so there are children's catechisms that will give them the basics, but will not necessarily answer some of the questions that come as a result of that.
01:17:25
And so I think the best you can do at the very youngest ages is to emphasize that there is only one true
01:17:32
God who has revealed himself in three divine persons. And that you can say to a young child the being of God and the persons of God are different things.
01:17:48
And as you get older, we can give you some examples of that. But you have to determine as the parent,
01:17:57
I think, when they're old enough, when they start giving evidence of being able to see the distinctions between humans and animals.
01:18:07
Children struggle with that. They struggle to make those kinds of category distinctions that is required for an understanding of the difference between that which makes
01:18:19
God God, the being of God, and the divine persons. So it's really part of talking with the child and coming to understand where they are in their development that allows you to start making those stronger distinctions and leading them into that level.
01:18:40
But until then, memorizing passages of scripture that teach there's only one true
01:18:47
God, and that's really important. It's for most Christians, they already know some of the passages that teach the deity of Christ or something like that.
01:18:57
But in my opinion, the vast majority of adults in most good churches would struggle to give you more than two verses that teach monotheism.
01:19:07
And that's really where you got to start. Well, that's really all
01:19:12
I really wanted. I didn't know whether to take him to our church and doing a
01:19:18
Trinity presentation, and I'll be speaking at some moment. So I didn't know whether to take him or not.
01:19:25
You can only tell that by the conversation with the child to know what they are thinking about and what they've been reading that might get them prepared a little bit earlier for some of that more in -depth discussion.
01:19:42
But yeah, there are certain aspects, you know, when my parents explained to me substitutionary atonement for the first time, they said,
01:19:50
Jesus took my spanking for me, because those are the only categories that I could begin to understand.
01:19:58
You know, the idea of union with Christ and a whole group of people being united with one and representation and federalism, you know, that's tough for the younger child.
01:20:11
But it certainly should be something that Christian parents are seeking to inculcate and to encourage, because that's the very stuff that the world doesn't even want them to begin thinking about.
01:20:22
So that's good. All right. Well, I appreciate it. I'll let you get on with your building.
01:20:28
All right. I appreciate it, Adam. Thank you. Yes, sir. All right. God bless. Okay. Well, it's a similar topic there,
01:20:37
I'd say, with Dan. Hi, Dan. Howdy, Dr. White. How you doing? I'm doing well, and yourself?
01:20:45
I've got a little something in my throat that's trying to make me do some coughing, but you know what?
01:20:53
That's summer in Phoenix. There's all sorts of stuff flying around. Yeah, well, we got almond blossoms everywhere, and California is no good.
01:21:03
So question for you. I do a discipleship ministry with teenagers in my town.
01:21:09
A couple of things I've realized recently is, number one, I'm not really discipling a lot of them.
01:21:17
I'm catechizing them. And so there's some issues with not understanding foundational topics that I'm having to kind of adjust.
01:21:27
And the other thing is I do have kids that want to know more and go deeper. So as I take this summer to plan and figure out,
01:21:37
I'm wondering, given what you were talking about at the top of the show, what are some foundational topics that are really going to need to be stressed in this time, in this culture that we're living in?
01:21:51
Or is that the wrong approach and just go over books of the Bible over and over again?
01:21:57
No, I think we have to discern the days in which the Lord has placed us, therefore, we do have to provide the important stuff that they're not going to be getting in other contexts and emphasize the stuff where the world is particularly attacking.
01:22:16
That doesn't mean you... Hopefully, if they are serious in their faith and they're listening in the services, they're getting the whole counsel of God in the preaching ministry.
01:22:30
So you're not just putting stuff aside. You can't cover everything. You only have a certain amount of time. But our young people today are the absolute ground zero target of so much.
01:22:44
And so I can't overemphasize the fact that our young people should understand that they are made in the image of God, that they have transcendent meaning, that they are not merely an animal.
01:23:03
And that is the whole basis upon which we as Christians are to instruct them.
01:23:13
We are to instruct young men that they have a calling as young men that is so high and is so honorable, to be honorable, to treat young women.
01:23:30
I'll tell you, I was speaking with my grandson a couple months ago, and I said to him,
01:23:41
I said, do you want to get married some days? Well, yeah, yeah. Have kids? Yeah, yeah.
01:23:47
I said, have you ever thought about the fact that your future wife is alive out there somewhere right now?
01:23:54
And he's like, no, I really hadn't. And I said, what would you want for her today?
01:24:03
You know, I said, for some reason, I don't think anybody told me this, but I just started thinking of it as a teenager.
01:24:10
And I started praying for my wife before I ever met her, because I knew she had to be out there someplace, unless I was going to be marrying somebody a whole lot younger than me, which
01:24:20
I didn't expect to be the case. And so I started praying for her before I ever met her. And like I said, we've been married for 40 years now as of this past weekend.
01:24:28
So that was a good thing to be doing. And I said, how would you want her to be treated by the boys in her life right now?
01:24:41
She's going to be your wife. How would you want them to be treating her? And you could just see the light go on.
01:24:47
Wow. With respect and honor. Yeah, because she's going to be your wife, huh?
01:24:56
Yeah. And then I didn't have to say it. He's like, and that's how I need to treat girls in my life too.
01:25:04
Bingo. There you go. Everything in our society right now is telling young people to have the moral and ethical development of a junkyard dog.
01:25:23
And we just can't come along and say, no, don't do those things.
01:25:29
We need to explain the why. Why don't you do these things? Because you're called to something so much higher.
01:25:36
But if they accept the idea that we are a cosmic accident, which is what is presented to them in all the music and all the movies and all the everything.
01:25:47
Yeah. If that's all they're getting, they need that foundational stuff. You are made in the image of God.
01:25:55
And as a man, you are called to be a man and to provide and to protect and to raise up a family.
01:26:02
And if you are a woman, you have the gift of giving life. And there is no higher calling that you can possibly have than to pass that life onto others, because that is going to be ridiculed and mocked right, left and center.
01:26:20
So it needs to be something that for them is a precious truth, a precious possession. And the more it's attacked, the more they realize it's being attacked because it means so much.
01:26:30
And it's a such value to them. And so all the pizza parties and entertainment in the world is not going to communicate that.
01:26:40
Right. To our... We've never done that. Yeah. Yeah. That accomplishes nothing. And, you know, it's interesting because there's so much more.
01:26:48
There's so much more in the sense of having an appreciation of God's creation and God's purpose in creation and our role in that and our role in history.
01:26:59
Man, getting them to ask the question, who are your ancestors? Who are your people?
01:27:05
Who do you come from? What did they give that you might be able to have what you have today?
01:27:11
There's so many things that grounding us in the past makes us much less controllable now.
01:27:18
That's the danger. That's why history is being wiped out of public education, because if you know the past, you're going to start recognizing what people in the present are doing.
01:27:27
So you want them to be controllable. So you want all that stuff to be wiped out.
01:27:33
But it is interesting, one of the things you said, and we do have other folks, you said,
01:27:38
I have some young people that want to go much deeper. And that's where I was.
01:27:44
I mean, in high school, I remember going to my Bible study teachers over and over again and saying, man, this...
01:27:52
Do you know what a quarterly is? No. Okay. We used to have in Baptist churches, we'd have this quarterly.
01:28:00
It was a little booklet that would come out each quarter, and it would have the lessons for each week, which isn't a bad thing.
01:28:08
I mean, that's actually, except we'd always lose them. So I'm not sure how that worked well, but we'd have this quarterly.
01:28:14
And I remember going to my teachers over and over again saying, we're in high school. We're going to be going to college soon.
01:28:22
And this is fifth grade stuff. When can we do something more meaningful, something that has some guts to it?
01:28:32
And of course, they wouldn't. But I remember that level of frustration. And yeah, the hard thing is not to be obviously showing favorites, but at the same time, providing for the people who want to go farther.
01:28:52
They need to know they can go to you and ask for that. Without making everybody else feel bad.
01:28:58
That's a tight line to walk. It can be done, but it's a tight line to walk.
01:29:03
And you want to be prepared for it. You want to have some resources. You want to have the holiness of God by R .C.
01:29:13
Sproul hiding in the trunk and say, here, read this in one sitting like I did and just watch their eyes glow.
01:29:23
So yeah, there are things that you can do along those lines, too.
01:29:28
Don't let those kids who want to go deeper end up going deeper into stuff that's not really good for them someplace else.
01:29:36
It's always best to do it in the fellowship of faith. Right, right. Well, thank you.
01:29:41
I appreciate that. And I got to say, you were talking about the holiness code earlier, Deuteronomy.
01:29:48
And I just went over Deuteronomy with them. And let me tell you, that is an experience.
01:29:53
Going over those verses about getting your hand chopped off with teenagers. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. But it's quite a ride.
01:29:59
But at the same time, it's the same section that says, honor your elders, honor your father and mother.
01:30:09
Don't mistreat the older ones amongst you. Love your neighbor as yourself. It's the same set of verses.
01:30:15
And when we skip that, we're skipping the foundation that obviously was central to Jesus' own teaching.
01:30:21
Exactly. Yeah. Well, I appreciate it. Thank you so much for your time. Okay. Thanks, Dan. Have a good one.
01:30:27
God bless. That is good quality stuff, isn't it? And I'm sort of figuring, since we're doing it by Zoom, we are witnessing to our
01:30:36
Chinese overlords at the same time. Because there is clearly some poor Chinese person is monitoring everything we're doing on Zoom.
01:30:44
Now, this one could get a little bit sketchy here because Barrett is calling in with a phone line into Zoom.
01:30:53
So I'm going to ask him to unmute right now and really, really hope that he can.
01:31:01
Oh. And if not, we may have to come back to him.
01:31:09
You're watching the mute thing? Yes. I'm hoping that Barrett is there. Barrett, are you there?
01:31:15
Hello, Barrett. Come on, Barrett. Hi. Sounds like I'm unmuted. You are unmuted.
01:31:22
All right. Good. Always got to be the difficult one. Yes, sir.
01:31:28
Well, a lot of talk about young people. It's almost like we're all concerned or something. You'd think so. Yeah.
01:31:36
So I'm going to be a little shorter than my novel in the comments section. And I think I would just ask if Dr.
01:31:44
White was 28 years old with a four -year -old and a two -year -old under the current regime, you know, you have discipling and you have catechizing and, you know, devotions and all of that.
01:31:59
But then there's part of you that wants to go sock up on 556 and hunker down in Florida.
01:32:06
And so I'm just curious, you know, some practical steps that you would make in preparing your young ones for the suspected downfall ahead in our country.
01:32:18
I mean, what do you do? Yeah. Yeah. Believe me. We all seem to be thinking about the same things.
01:32:26
And I think about I was about, let's see, a four -year -old.
01:32:35
Yeah, I was about 26. I was just a little bit younger. But similar context.
01:32:45
You're never going to see me writing a parenting book, first of all. I do not claim any particular expertise.
01:32:53
My kids turned out just fine. But any parent that doesn't look back and go, oh, gosh,
01:33:02
I was so immature. Oh, gosh, I was so selfish. Oh, gosh, I should have done that. Is probably just not really thinking about things.
01:33:12
And I'll be honest. The church background that I had did not have the kind of support and emphasis that I think
01:33:25
I'm just looking at my own church context right now. As a grandparent, I look at apologia and I look at my daughter dealing with her kids, my grandkids and the support she gets from other families and the homeschooling and everything else.
01:33:44
It's just completely different. And I wish I had done so many things differently.
01:33:52
But I did not see. I was not a Francis Schaefer. I did eventually start reading
01:33:57
Francis Schaefer. But I did not see the kind of onslaught that we have today.
01:34:04
At the same time, in God's providence, my kids will tell you that one of their clearest memories of their youth was the fact that I emphasized to them the need of a
01:34:17
Christian worldview and the hostility of the world and everything else. So without knowing how quickly it was going to come on, we did lay those foundations.
01:34:28
Now, we just simply have so many examples that the real question is, how much do you even want to expose them to?
01:34:36
I mean, the stuff that's going on right now is completely...
01:34:43
I mean, I was... Back when I was that age, I was in arguments because my kids were in the school system.
01:34:53
We eventually put them in... Well, we started them in a Christian school system and then they were in special schools for a while as far as traditional schools and stuff, and then a
01:35:02
Christian school. But I had been so formed by my battling for my faith in the public educational system that I felt that that was something that was important.
01:35:18
And in fact, my daughter went back to a public high school after being in a
01:35:23
Christian school because she said to us, and she's told this story before, I'll never forget driving home from school in the morning, says,
01:35:30
I want to go to the public school. And we're like, why? I mean, we're paying more for a
01:35:36
Christian school than we're paying a mortgage on our house, okay? So we're struggling to do this.
01:35:41
It's like, I want to go to the public school. Why? I prefer my unbelievers straight up.
01:35:50
And what she explained, she says, I only know two Christians in my Christian school. So if I'm going to be amongst unbelievers, it would seem to be easier for me to be amongst unbelievers that are actually clear about their being unbelievers than amongst unbelievers that are pretending to actually to be believers.
01:36:08
But that was still before today. And I think she would say the same thing.
01:36:15
Yeah, things were very different back then. I could tell you some of the freedoms that she had that no one has today in the school system.
01:36:26
So all of that to come down to, you've obviously, you see what's going on around us.
01:36:38
You know what you need to be emphasizing in your own life. And that needs to be doubled down for them because of what they're going to be facing.
01:36:51
The, we have to be demonstrating contentment with what
01:36:57
God gives to us. We cannot, we cannot lead our children into a life of constantly looking at those around us and following their lead.
01:37:06
And if they've got something, we've got to have something. We've got to be, we've got to be demonstrating that we don't love the world or the things of the world.
01:37:13
And this is, this is just so hard for my generation. We failed so badly. I failed so badly in this area.
01:37:20
Because we had accepted the myth of neutrality. We thought that we could have all the goodies of the world and also all the goodies of scripture at the same time.
01:37:30
And now the world's using our love of the goodies to control us, to be perfectly honest with you.
01:37:36
Preach this sermon many, many times. But I preach to myself all the time because I have to. And so unconditional love in the biblical sense, not in the worldly sense, they need to understand the difference between the unconditional love of parent and the unconditional acceptance of rebellious behavior and that which destroys soul, which is what the world has now adopted as the idea of, of love.
01:38:06
A husband who demonstrates love for his wife is one of the greatest things that he can ever do for his sons and his daughters.
01:38:17
And a, and a mother who has a heart as large as the kitchen table will, will have the same effect in a completely different way upon her sons and daughters as well.
01:38:32
And so I was thinking actually this morning, driving in about the fact that one of the greatest gifts, you know, we, we live in a day where the government through death tax and stuff like that is trying to make sure that we cannot pass on to our children anything that we've worked for.
01:38:51
We cannot pass on inheritance to them. That's the, that's part of the evil of, of the current
01:38:57
American system. One of the greatest gifts that I can give, that me and my wife can give to my granddaughters and grandsons, we have a second one coming, excited about that.
01:39:12
But one of the greatest gifts that we can give to them is how long we're married.
01:39:20
I mean, I, I mentioned to people that I've been married for 40 years.
01:39:26
And I think back my, my, when, when Summer did go to the public high school, she started in her sophomore year and she came home the first week and she said,
01:39:37
I'm having to take PE because I didn't take it last year in the Christian school. And I discovered today in my
01:39:44
PE class, I am the only girl that is living with her natural parents, only one in her entire class, with both her natural parents.
01:39:55
And when she went to work a few years later at Starbucks and she'd tell people, my parents have been married over 20 years.
01:40:02
I think it was like 25 around there. They're like, no way. They're like, you're making it up.
01:40:08
Because they, they, they honestly had not experienced anyone that had been married for that long.
01:40:14
That is one of the greatest gifts that I can give to my grandchildren is to be married to my wife until one of the two of us heads to eternity.
01:40:26
And that consistency is, I think, one of the most important things that we can give to our kids as well.
01:40:38
Hello? Hello? That's good stuff. Okay. Yeah. I mean, there's much more it could be said, but like I said,
01:40:45
I'm not, I'm never, I'm not going to be writing a book on parenting anytime soon. Maybe, maybe mistakes on it, but yeah, no.
01:40:56
But hopefully, hopefully that'll be helpful to you. Thank you for calling in today. God bless you. Yeah.
01:41:02
God bless. All right. All right. God bless. Bye bye. Okay. Let's talk with Michael. And by the way, we've got more than enough right now.
01:41:13
Hello, Dr. White. Hello. Hello to our Chinese overlord with lowercase l.
01:41:19
That's right. Repent and believe. We need, we need, we need to learn repent and believe in Chinese because someone, someone needs to send that in as a recording to Rich.
01:41:29
This is how you say repent and believe in Chinese. Very good. Very good. Um, this is actually my second time calling in.
01:41:37
I think the last time I called in, I left, I might've left the impression that I was swimming the
01:41:44
Tiber, which I am absolutely not. I had asked you about, um, the fulfillment of the keys to the kingdom, uh, being in the book of Acts.
01:41:57
I don't know if that is enough to jog your memory or not, but anyway, uh, yeah, definitely not swimming the
01:42:03
Tiber here, but, uh, I, I finally am reading chosen by God or just finished reading chosen by God, uh, given to me by a good friend of mine.
01:42:13
And, uh, uh, that friend and another friend and yourself, um, are the main reasons or the main tools that the
01:42:20
Lord used has to bring me to a reformed perspective. And, uh, anyway, uh, looking at the corridor of time and, and in the context of predestination, uh, oftentimes the argument is made that God looks through the corridor of time and sees who would choose them and then, and then decides to predestine them and elect them and so on and so forth.
01:42:46
And my thought was, it came to my mind that that would be a violation.
01:42:53
And you can tell me, and this is my question. Tell me whether this is right or wrong, uh, that that would be a violation of the omniscience and perhaps even the impassibility of God that he would then have to learn who it was that would accept him and then go back, go back and predestined them.
01:43:18
And then learning would be something that he would not be able to do in the, in the, in, in the context of being omniscient.
01:43:27
And what would the issue with impassibility be? Well, I guess that's,
01:43:33
I don't know about the impassibility, but I, cause I'm, I'm certainly no expert on this, but I thought the idea of impassibility was
01:43:40
God doesn't, isn't impassable because he can't learn about our emotions. Maybe it's a parallel thought to impassibility, but more towards the omniscience.
01:43:49
Yeah, it would be in regards to omniscience. The issue is how does, how do the events of time exist in such a fashion as to be learnable by God?
01:44:05
That makes, that, that means that they have an existence outside of his creative decree.
01:44:11
And there are Arminians, I've heard Leighton Flowers specifically asserting that there are things that exist, such as actions in time that do not come from God.
01:44:22
So you, you do have a, an idea amongst some people that God's omniscience embraces that which exists outside of his creative decree.
01:44:39
And that would be how God would have knowledge of future events. The problem is you're now introducing a, a subordinate, um,
01:44:50
God now is, has to act in response to what he observes in a timeline that he himself does not actually create.
01:45:03
And that means his decisions become dependent upon decisions that come from men, which then introduces further complications because now you have to deal with, but can they change those decisions?
01:45:20
That's where all the mullinism comes in. Um, and, and, and people will, you know, obviously argue that till the cows come home, but no matter what, you end up with God acting on the basis of, um, creatures and their decisions that while he decreed to create them, uh, he did not decree what they were themselves going to do.
01:45:48
And so some, some would say, it's not that God learns he has eternally known, but since it comes from an origin outside of himself, you are introducing an order of knowing, um, to where God is not the ultimate being in each one of those, in each one of those chains.
01:46:13
So I'm, I'm, what I'm trying to do is I'm, I'm actually giving you the best the other side has to offer because generally when people talk about God looking down the corridors of time, they're not thinking about any of this stuff.
01:46:25
They're taking the much more simplistic, well, God looks into the future, sees what's going to happen and then acts in accordance with that.
01:46:34
Okay. That is, you know, the, uh, sitting in Denny's after church type of conversation.
01:46:43
That's normally where that is. But the, the folks have thought this through a little bit more recognize we gotta be a whole lot more nuanced in how we express this.
01:46:56
And therefore we need to try to come up with ways where God isn't just learning things, uh, because a lot of people recognize, man, that sounds so exactly the opposite of Isaiah, you know, that, uh, that I just,
01:47:11
I just don't want to have to say that, but there are people that literally do say God, God does learn things and open theism says that and process theology says that.
01:47:20
And, and most of us recognize there's stuff really wrong with those systems, but they are out there and, and they are rather popular to be sure.
01:47:29
So, um, but yeah, the, in a, in a, in the sense of omniscience being the result of a, of the unity of God's nature, then you're exactly right.
01:47:42
I'm just simply saying that there are some theologians that want to introduce some nuance there to try to open up some way, um, for creatures to create reality along with God.
01:47:56
And, uh, that's how they do it. I don't think it's successful, but that's how they do it. All right.
01:48:02
Well, thank you very much for your time today. I greatly appreciate it. And hopefully the Lord uses this in the
01:48:08
Chinese overloads lives. Indeed. All right. All right. Thank you. God bless. All right. Uh, okay.
01:48:15
We're, we're going to be going to the top of the hour. So, um, uh, I'll, I'll, I'm looking at the next one going,
01:48:22
I don't know how in the world we can do that and do it, but we'll, we'll try to be brief. Let's talk with Clark.
01:48:27
Hi, Clark. Hi, Dr. Wyde. So the question is,
01:48:33
I guess maybe it goes to personhood, but where do you draw the line in the Trinity on, is there a single shared mind and single shared will versus separate minds and separate wills?
01:48:46
Because I don't see in the inner Trinitarian communication where you could have a single mind, then it'd be
01:48:53
God talking to himself. But I've been, uh, cautioned that I may be flirting with tritheism.
01:49:02
Well, that's the, that's the conversation that has been had ever since, um, Chalcedon really.
01:49:08
And, um, that's where people try to find balance.
01:49:15
Unfortunately. Um, you know, my perspective would be that balance has to be a balance that is fundamentally conditioned on how accurately it represents the biblical text.
01:49:29
Uh, there are a lot of people today saying, no, it needs to be a balance that represents the end process of a traditional development.
01:49:38
And those are not necessarily the same things. So this is what I would say. Um, we have, um, in the scriptures, a rich revelation of the relationship of father and son.
01:49:55
We don't have nearly as much in the relationship of father, son, and spirit, but we do the father and the son because it's the son who becomes incarnate.
01:50:04
We have to affirm that it is not the father who becomes incarnate and it is not the spirit who became incarnate.
01:50:11
And so whatever, um, theory of inseparable operations you want to come up with, the only way to have a meaningful understanding of that phrase is that everything that the divine persons do is in perfect harmony in the accomplishment of God's decree.
01:50:30
If you push that so far as it's being pushed by some today, as to say that every act is the same act, that every act, the father, son, spirit are, are acting, you can't say in the same way because the incarnation would disprove that.
01:50:46
But, um, you, you, you, you end up, uh, destroying any kind of richness in the relationship that exists between the divine persons.
01:50:54
And so there is perfect harmony. Uh, there is, there can be no disunity. There is one, one accomplishment of one decree.
01:51:02
All of that is, is a given biblically, but you simply have to,
01:51:09
I believe you simply have to start with the depth of scriptural richness in the relationship of the father and the son.
01:51:19
When you read John 17, when you read John 14, John 10, um, when, when you look at Philippians 2,
01:51:29
Colossians 1, Hebrews 1, and you see this, this deep interactivity between father and son, whatever you do in regards to your understanding of the relationship of the divine persons and answering questions that the
01:51:47
Bible never even addresses, you can't sacrifice that. You have to have that richness or you're simply, um, not, no longer dealing with something that can be called biblical.
01:52:03
And so that's why when I wrote the Forgotten Trinity, I said, I'm a biblical Trinitarian. You have these biblical truths.
01:52:09
There is only one true God. There are three divine persons and they are distinguished from one another.
01:52:15
They use personal pronouns of one another. Um, they interact with one another.
01:52:21
They take different roles in redemption from one another. Um, and then you have the equality of those persons, the deity of Christ, the deity and personality, the
01:52:30
Holy Spirit. These are biblical revelations and they cannot be compromised. So I really do believe that you can look at scripture and one of the first order conclusions that you come to is to recognize the validity of what we call the pactum salutis, the eternal covenant of redemption.
01:52:58
That's not a biblical phrase, but I do believe that it accurately represents a biblical reality that is repeated for us over and over again in scripture.
01:53:11
And that is the father, son, the spirit are accomplishing that one glorification of God's grace that we see in Ephesians chapter one.
01:53:22
And they have voluntarily taken the roles that they have taken.
01:53:29
If that is a forced, um, action, if the son is forced to take the role that he takes, if the spirit is forced to take the role that he takes, then
01:53:43
I see that as a destruction of the balance, equality, um, the eternal deity of the divine persons.
01:53:54
I have for decades agreed with John Calvin against post -Nicene orthodoxy on the subject of the son being autotheos.
01:54:07
I've said that for a long, long time. And a lot of people don't even know what that refers to, but the son is
01:54:13
God in and of himself, not by derivation, not secondarily, but he is autotheos,
01:54:21
God in and of himself. Post -Nicene orthodoxy had posited the idea that the son receives his essence from the father in a, not in a sense of distribution.
01:54:39
And even if you make that eternal, um, you end up,
01:54:44
I think with, with necessary elements of subordinationism. So when you're, you're dealing with the relationship of father, son, and spirit and the mind of God, we have one will and decree of God that God is accomplishing.
01:55:06
There has to be perfect unity. There can't be, if you want to see, if you want to see the result, look at the debate that I did with, um, why does that guy's name just escape me all the time?
01:55:19
The open theist in Denver, Bob Enyart, uh, with Bob Enyart, uh, up in Denver in 2014,
01:55:27
I think off top of my head, where he literally posits the idea that the son could choose to do something other than the father desired him to do.
01:55:38
And therefore to introduce, um, rebellion and destruction into the, into the very nature of the, of the
01:55:45
Godhead, utterly impossible. There's only one Yahweh Yahweh cannot destroy Yahweh.
01:55:50
That's, that's, that's not a possibility. So within the strictures that are given, we likewise have to affirm the ability of the father to love the son and the spirit to witness to the father and the son and for this, for the father and son to make their presence within believers by the presence of the spirit, there has to be the pactum salutis.
01:56:11
And it has to be something, uh, that can deal with the reality that in Philippians chapter two, the son in a pre -incarnate state, um, humbles himself.
01:56:24
He chooses to make himself of no reputation. That is some, that is, that is a voluntary action.
01:56:32
It is not forced upon him. And if your
01:56:37
Greek philosophical categories or your creedal philosophical categories are not big enough for the biblical categories, then expand them.
01:56:47
But if it's going to be a living faith that you're going to be able to pass on in the next generation, it has to be biblical first and foremost, before anything else.
01:56:56
Once you lose that, look, history tells you exactly where you're going to end up. It tells you exactly where you're going to go.
01:57:03
And so you have to affirm, um, that God cannot be schizophrenic. God cannot be divided.
01:57:10
God cannot have inconsistency within himself. And yet the reality of the relationship of the persons is real.
01:57:18
And that the love the father has the son, the son has for the father is more real than any love any human being will ever experience must affirm.
01:57:30
And if that's too big for your categories, then your categories are too small. Um, I think sometimes using terms like mind just cram us into creaturely categories that, um, end up leading to confusion.
01:57:48
Um, I'm a biblical Trinitarian and I'm going to, going to defend it.
01:57:54
And, um, there you go. So that took me a long time. There you go. I hope it's useful.
01:58:00
Yeah. Thank you very much. Thanks, Clark. Thank you. Um, uh, okay.
01:58:06
It's got to be really, really fast. Chris, you still there? Yes, I am.
01:58:11
Can you hear me? I can, uh, translating fellow. What do you mean? Okay. So in, um, like most people would understand that you, you don't want to pay your taxes, but you will pay your taxes.
01:58:25
Kids don't want to eat their vegetables, but they will eat their vegetables there. This, the Thalo word group is, has a lot of different, um, spellings.
01:58:35
A lot of the words are the same I I've learned I'm guessing because there's a different case endings, but like in Matthew, there's 18 different permutations of, of this one, uh, word or, or word group.
01:58:50
And my question is, is there, uh, and I, I'm not trying to like put you on the spot in any way, but I, I'm just curious is, do you consider there to be a, an important functional difference between wanting and willing?
01:59:12
Uh, well, first of all, just a correction. The, the examples you gave in English do not map over to fellow because you were saying they will, but will in English is simply a, um, a verb that is completely disconnected from, uh, fellow in Greek, which means to will as in to choose to do something or to desire to do something.
01:59:34
As you pointed out, it has a lot of different translations, but it doesn't map over to, I will eat my, that would never be the same
01:59:41
Greek word that would be being used there. So we, so we have like, I will, it's just simply a few, the future of a, of a, of an
01:59:49
IME verb. Okay. That's probably really good.
01:59:55
Um, meat for me to, uh, to, to look into. I don't necessarily understand what kind of difference there is between what they're saying in Greek and how we use the words will and want, because this is how they're being translated into.
02:00:10
When I say I will do something in the future, um, that is a form of IME.
02:00:16
It's the, it's the verb of being. So it's, it's an action. I'm going to do something in the future. When I, if I want to, if I want to say something like I desire to be a better Christian in the future,
02:00:30
I will to be a better Christian. That's, that's a completely different concept. Uh, that's, that's a completely different term.
02:00:37
And so you do have noun forms. Thelema, thelo is the, is the verb, verb form.
02:00:44
Um, and yeah, there, there, there's boulomai and there are also other synonyms that are, that are used in the
02:00:50
Greek language to, um, to deal with that. So I'm not exactly certain where that's going.
02:00:58
I hope that's helpful. Cause I, I need to really, really quickly one last, uh, caller.
02:01:04
So, um, if, if I can, if I can do that, I, I appreciate it, Chris on, on the fellow
02:01:10
Caleb real quick. I'm, I'm, I'm over time, but no one's going to shoot me for that. What's up. Oh, hi,
02:01:16
James. Just want to say a little quick call out. Hi, Pastor Tony. I'm on dividing line. Um, so I wanted to just, uh,
02:01:23
I'm, I'm a young whippersnapper that you, that you talk about. We are pretty annoying and I just want some of your, uh, general, uh, advice you could ever give to a guy like me who loves
02:01:34
Jesus, but kind of hates the Walt Disney company, but yet I'm still working for them. Should I like, yep.
02:01:41
Yep. And, uh, I'm working in the theme park. So I like to think that I'm almost like right in the trenches cause
02:01:47
I'm around a lot of other people that would, uh, hate me for even, uh, saying anything like, you know, abortion is evil and homosexuality is wrong.
02:01:57
Come to Christ. You will forgive your sins. Um, so I am debating, should I stay or should
02:02:03
I go? And if I stay, how do I preach the gospel? Because it's pretty hard, especially for someone like me who hasn't really done much of that in my lifetime.
02:02:13
Hmm. Well, um, I would say, uh, that if, um, if your spiritual life can survive your being there, then be there as long as you can be a light.
02:02:29
And if you're going to be kicked out, get kicked out for the right reasons, not for being a jerk, but for being a righteous person.
02:02:36
So, uh, if you are required to fundamentally compromise your faith by your actions or your deeds, then make sure everybody understands not as a jerk, but by clarity of expression, uh, why you can't do that and force them to dismiss you.
02:02:58
Um, you know, you don't have to look for that. I think that'll happen in and of itself before very long.
02:03:04
Uh, but until that happens, uh, be light where you can be light. And, uh, there needs to be light in theme parks at Disney.
02:03:14
Um, like there needs to be any place else, but if your spiritual life is damaged by the constant pressure of balancing the demands that are placed upon you as to what you can and cannot say, or what you're being told, you have to say that, you know, is wrong and is promoting things that Jesus died to bring forgiveness for.
02:03:41
Uh, then you got to find someplace else to go. There's no, there's no reason to damage your spiritual life, um, for the sake of, of a job.
02:03:50
Um, none, none at all. So if you're strong enough to be there and be light, great. Make them get rid of you for the right reasons.
02:03:58
And if it's causing spiritual damage to your, to yourself, get out of there and find something else.
02:04:06
How's that sound? He's on mute. Okay. All right,
02:04:11
Caleb. Hopefully that's helpful. Boy, we went two hours and four minutes and covered every different topic under the planet on the planet.
02:04:22
I mean, how am I even going to write that up? What, what on earth?
02:04:30
Talked about a whole lot of stuff. We did. Thanks for watching the program today. Um, it's, uh, what is today?
02:04:37
Today is Wednesday. So we're gonna, are we shooting for Friday? We're gonna try. We'll see what happens.