The Gospel, the Shoebats, Christian Militancy, and a Bit More

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line on a Tuesday morning, a little early today because I assume it might take us a little while to get through what we need to do today.

Maybe somebody in channel can change the topic and let folks know that we are live and maybe somebody can tweet that.

There's still folks in channel, there's still folks on Twitter that don't know you go to aomin .org to watch the program or listen to the program or whatever else it might be.

But it's good to have you with us today. When you arose this morning, why did you not fear the wrath of God?

I often ask that question of Christians, I would not ask that question of non -Christians because they should in fact fear the wrath of God.

But as a believer, when you awoke this morning, why did you not fear the wrath of God?

There is only one biblical answer to that question and if you call yourself a

Christian and yet you cannot answer that question in a meaningful fashion, that would indicate that you've been given a false gospel and you might want to greatly consider the teaching that you have received.

Why did you not fear the wrath of God this morning? Well, I want to look at a couple of texts of Scripture with you before we start looking at some articles today.

I had a conversation with a Roman Catholic on Twitter earlier this week and it came back to the same issue that it always has to come back to and that is the nature of the gospel and what salvation is.

Look with me, we're going to put it on the screen, to Romans chapter 4 in the midst of Paul's discussion of how it is a man is made right before God.

Listen to his words. Now, to the one who works, his wage is not credited or reckoned, the term is legizitai, as a favor or according to grace, but according to debt or obligation is what is due, what is owed.

But to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness.

Now notice, if you look at the original language here, these two verses are put in direct opposition to one another.

You'll notice that in the beginning phrase here, to de ergo zameno, and then here, to de me ergo zameno, exact same opening phrase except you just put the particle of negation in there.

So, to the one working, the wage is not imputed according to grace, but according to obligation.

Romans 4, 5, but to the one not working, but, adversative use of de, but believing upon the one justifying the ungodly, that faith, his faith, that kind of faith that is opposite of the working concept of verse 4, that faith is reckoned as righteousness.

So, you have the empty hand of faith and the all -sufficient hand of grace, and if you bring anything in the hand of faith, you cannot grasp the hand of grace.

To the one not working, but rather believing, faith looks away from one's own works and looks solely to the works of another.

That kind of faith is reckoned as righteousness. Just as, verse 6,

David also speaks of the blessing of the man to whom

God reckons righteousness apart from works. So, there is a reckoning, a imputation, there is legizitate again, a crediting, an imputation of righteousness, kodes ergo, without works, not just works of law, not just Jewish symbols, but the whole attitude that was expressed in verse 4, of expecting that by one's doing something you're putting

God in a position of, you know, he's set up a system, you work the system, and now he's obligated to fill, fulfill his part of the bargain, no.

David spoke of the blessing of the man to whom God imputes righteousness, kodes ergo, and apart from works, and then we have the quotation from the

Psalter. Blessed are those whose lawlessnesses, lawless deeds, have been forgiven, whose sins have been covered over.

Blessed is the man who ume legizitate, there's the same, same root that we've got before.

Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.

Now, it's fascinating that Paul can express this.

He's speaking of the blessedness of the imputation of righteousness and he defines it within the context of forgiveness and the non -imputation of sin.

And this is the great truth that is laid out by Paul in 2

Corinthians 5. He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, we might become the righteousnesses of God in him.

And I know most of you, some of you anyways have heard my dialogue with N .T.

Wright about this. I know what he believes about it. I think he's just completely wrong on this matter, on that particular text anyways as to what's being referred to.

But as you can see in the text itself, you're still, you know, Paul is clearly focusing upon legizimi as it's found in the

Greek Septuagint in the citation from David in the Psalter. Blessed is the man to whom the

Lord will not impute sin. And I had a dialogue with a

Catholic on Twitter, tried to anyways, briefly this past week. I think it was this weekend.

And I asked the question that I've asked many Roman Catholic in debates, are you the blessed man of Romans chapter 4?

And well, yes, yes I am. Oh, so are mortal sins imputed to you?

Yes. Venial sins? Yeah. So are you the blessed man? And the only answer that Rome has is,

I'm the blessed man before falling. I'm the blessed man who's been forgiven of all my past sins and before I commit future sins, that's where I'm the blessed man.

But there is no non -imputation of sin. If I commit a sin, it will be imputed to me. And I will need to be re -justified if it's a mortal sin or go through the sacrum dependence and receive, you know, there's going to be temporal punishments of sins for my temporal sins and so on and so forth.

But there is, there is no blessed man in the Pauline sense in Roman Catholicism.

There just isn't. And that's the whole issue, is the nature of the gospel. Whether it is a finished work, yes, we experience it's ongoing,

I fully understand we are being saved. I understand all those things. But if grace is truly powerful and accomplishes

God's intended purpose, then there is in the biblical account of the gospel a finishedness that can never be in the

Roman version. Because Rome doesn't have a finished work of Christ.

Rome doesn't have a sacrifice that actually perfects those for whom it is made. So, there's the blessed man.

And that then becomes the basis for these words in Romans 5, 1.

Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our

Lord Jesus Christ. Here is the term,

Dikaiothentes, having been justified, therefore, ek pistos, by faith, we have peace with God.

Now, those of you who have read the Roman Catholic controversy know that there is a textual variant right there, ekumen, in the indicative.

There are a number of ancient manuscripts that have ekumen in the subjunctive.

But even the vast majority of Roman Catholic scholars recognize ekumen doesn't make any sense there.

And given that the omicron omega vowel exchange is very common, especially in manuscripts produced in scriptoriums where the exemplar is being read because of either a lack of differentiation in the pronunciation of the vowels or a lack of attention on the part of the person, ekumen is considered to be by far the strongest reading.

We have peace with God. Dikaiothentes, having been justified.

Now, is this just a Protestant bias? Because when we look at it, therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace.

Even in the English, you can see that the act of justification, first of all, having been justified means we are the passive object.

This is something that God does. Remember back in Romans chapter 4, what was the object of faith in Romans 4 -5?

The one justifying the ungodly. So God is described as the one who justifies the ungodly.

So God is the justifier, the God who justifies. Hmm, where'd that phrase come from?

Yeah, that's why I named the book that, The God Who Justifies. This is a divine act.

It is the act of God the Father as judge based upon the work of Jesus Christ applied by the

Holy Spirit of God. It's a triune act, justification. Here it's in the passive because we are the ones who have been justified and it is in the past and brings about the present reality of having peace with God.

That's why you can, as a believer, arise in the morning knowing your heart, knowing how many times you abused the grace of God, how many times you fulfilled your own lusts and desires, how many times you missed opportunities, how many times you did not love the

Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength. Knowing all of that of the preceding day, you do not arise to a spirit of doom and sadness and despair.

Instead you rise up trusting that God has been gracious and merciful to you in Jesus Christ and that you have peace.

But that term, Irene, its background is the

Hebrew term Shalom and Shalom does not exist in Israel today.

No Jewish person would say that it does when you have to be prepared, when public service announcements run on television all the time telling you to be prepared to take cover because there are incoming rockets from Hamas, when your armies are in the field, when you can hear the sound of battle, that is not peace.

And even if there were no rockets flying, even if there was no gunfire, if your borders are wrapped in steel wire, razor wire, and you have guards with dogs and guns, that's not

Shalom. Shalom is a wellness of relationship. Shalom has a positive element that would be absent in all of those things.

By faith, having been justified, we have peace with God, a wellness of relationship.

If war could break out any moment, that's not Shalom. If war could break out at any moment, that is not

Shalom. But we have Shalom. We have

Shalom having been justified. And so it's important to see the relationship between ekemen, the present indicative verb, and tekaiothentes, the passive participle.

In fact, let me point something out here so you don't have to just trust me.

Here is Dr. Mounce's discussion from his grammar. For those of you asking,

I generally use accordance. I also use logos. I could have brought some of this up in logos as well.

However, for my Bible study material, I primarily use accordance.

For books, commentaries, as a library resource and program,

I have a huge logos library. So I use those too. Why not BibleWorks? Because I use Mac. But they're coming out with a

Mac one. Yeah, I know. But there's no reason to have all three. And I preach from Olive Tree.

So I can recommend, I can say to everybody, if you've got

BibleWorks, you've got everything you need. If you've got logos, you've got everything you need. If you've got accordance, you've got everything you need.

Olive Tree is getting to that point. It's getting to that point. It's almost up. I mean, Olive Tree, I think, started on Palm, if I recall correctly.

And so it's been expanding out. And they've got a big sale going on today. I would not pay to do that. I just happened to notice they've got an incredible sale on NICNT, NICOT going on today and all the rest of this stuff.

There's an amazing amount of good stuff out there. I'm not going to take any more time on the geek stuff. But I'm just simply saying, if you wonder why primarily accordance is up, it's because when

I'm doing Bible study, I'm primarily using accordance. Why then do I preach from Olive Tree?

Because of the display. Display and the fonts, it's real simple. If I'm standing in a pulpit and I can move three feet back and still read the

Greek, that's good. That's, that's, it's, it's, it's all an age issue. It really is.

So anyway, here is Mounce's basics of biblical Greek in my accordance setup.

And you'll notice the chart here. If your main verb with the present participle and your main verb with an aorist participle and the resultant syntactical relationships.

So if you have a present main verb with a present participle, then you're talking about a present continuous action.

That's not what we have here. We have a present main verb with an aorist participle and hence it's simple past.

After eating is the simple translation that is provided here.

The point is that what we have in Romans 5 .1 back here, here is

De Cayo Centes. You'll notice now the, yeah, you can just barely see it on the screen there. So again, so no one has to take my word for it.

The program is verifying that this is an aorist passive participle. And so you have an aorist participle and then ecumen is a present tense, whether he was in subjunctive, still present tense.

We have a present tense and that is why the translation say having been after being justified.

The point is that the present possession and enjoyment of peace comes as a result of the preceding action of having been justified.

And that's passive, which means God is the one who justified us. So God is the one who has initiated this position of peace with him.

And this is the only way that a person can have peace with God.

It's the only way. Now, notice something else about De Cayo Centes. Let's do something here.

Search for that form. And here you see that it appears.

One click too many. There you go. There are three uses of De Cayo Centes. Here's our one in Romans 5 .1.

Therefore, having been justified by peace, we have by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Romans 5 more, 5 .9.

Much more than Palo un malon De Cayo Centes nun ento haimati alto.

Having much more than having been justified in his blood or by his blood, we shall be saved through him from the wrath.

So notice De Cayo Centes ek pistios, by faith, De Cayo Centes ento haimati alto, having been justified by his blood.

And then, Ties 3 .7, Hina De Cayo Centes te ekeinu carati, here's carati, that's caras, grace.

In order that having been justified by his grace, per anamoi gene thomin, we might become heirs according to the elpida zoes ioniu, the hope of eternal life.

So what are the three categories that are provided for this heiress passive of De Cayo?

We have ek pistios, by faith. We have ento haimati alto, by his blood.

And then we have by grace, carati, in Titus 3 .7.

And so what can we derive from an analysis of this text and this terminology used by Paul?

Well, there can be no justification without the sacrifice of Christ. There is no basis for God to render a verdict of righteous in behalf of sinners if there is not a sacrifice that makes that just and right.

God, I'm seeing this more and more, God's righteous character and his law are very important to him.

Very important to him. That's why even he is said to be justified in the sense that in the final judgment, it will be shown that what he did was just and righteous in all things.

And so without the sacrifice of Christ, as Romans 3 puts it, he had passed over sins previously committed in light of the certainty of what

Christ was going to do. That's why the whole open theism stuff is just non -Christian philosophical absurdity.

It is damnable heresy. It is not Christianity because there'd be no way for Romans 3 .25

to be true if the cross might not have happened. And the open theist has to admit that it might not have happened no matter what they say.

So his blood is absolutely necessary. His grace is what makes all of it possible.

It is solely by grace and it is solely by means of faith.

The faith that we already saw defined in Romans chapter 4 as the opposite of working for, putting

God in a position of debt, working a system, a system of sacraments maybe.

Therefore, we can rise in the morning and know that we have peace with God, not because of what we've done, but because of what

Christ has done in our behalf. And so why did

I start a response to some of the most libelous, insulting, invective -filled, absurd postings

I've ever seen on the internet with a discussion of the gospel? Because the only reason I'm even going to bother to respond to them is to try as best

I can to dig something out of all the excess verbiage and bluster and smoke and make it edifying and try to point out that in reality, the primary issue always has to be the gospel.

It always has to be. If this is what the triune God has done and chose to do in eternity past to bring about the glorification of His grace, then it has to be the ordering principle in our thoughts as well.

It's not about us. That's one of the real things that I think we struggle a lot with.

I think we really struggle at this point. This creation isn't about us, yet we judge God based upon what happens in regards to the lives of His creatures.

It's all individualism. It's all, I will judge God based upon what happens in this little life.

Not how this life is related to every other life and there can be no overarching grand purposes.

No, no, no, no, no, no. I will judge God based upon my happiness and my fulfillment, all the rest of that stuff.

And a person in that situation is just never going to understand the biblical narrative.

Not going to understand what's going on. And that's not what Jesus taught. That's not what

Jesus taught. Oh, there's everything wonderful to realize that God is concerned about my personal life.

But to take that and to mean that therefore my personal life will constrain what

God is going to do is to get things completely backwards. What is amazing is that God is concerned about my personal life in light of the fact that I am but one small briefly existing puff of vapor in the overall scheme of what

God is doing in the demonstration of His own power, His own righteousness, and His own holiness.

I am a puff of vapor. I am a flower that blooms in the morning and is gone by the afternoon heat.

And we know the foolishness of any such very temporal and short -lived creature to judge the purposes of the infinite

God based upon the very small amount of knowledge and brief experience that that little flower has.

And yet that's what the scriptures are trying to warn us against doing. And yet is that not what we do all the time? It is what we do all the time.

And so what I want to do in responding first to Waleed Shoubat and his

Christian militancy, his defensive Christian war, and the two articles that he has put up and who knows maybe today there's been another one that no one told me about.

I don't keep track but there were plenty here. Is to focus on the gospel because that's really what the issue is here.

The whole reason that I responded to Mr. Shoubat Sunday morning with that brief video that I did on my way to church is that this touches on the gospel.

Remember the article was titled, Catholics who died defaying the Jews during Nazism are all going to hell.

Well, first of all, I don't know they're all going to hell. But I do know one thing, apart from the gospel, everyone's going to hell.

Every single person, every single person without what said right here, what we just looked at without Dikaiothentes, without Pistaos, without the cross, without the atonement, without faith, the saving faith of Romans 4, the blessed man, without all that, the only possible place for me to go is away from the presence of God.

Because nothing unclean is going to abide in his presence, will it? And nothing unclean is going to want to abide in his presence, will it?

So the issue is the gospel, always has been the gospel, always will be the gospel. And so when

I talk about these issues, what I'm saying is what I heard

Waleed Shabbat saying, and he brings it out pretty plainly in this article as we get to it.

What I heard him saying was, how dare you say people who did good things could go to hell? And the only possible

Christian response to that is there's only been one innocent person who did good things in this planet. And that was

Jesus. Everything else that anyone has ever done is as filthy rags in God's sight.

All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags in God's sight, Mr. Shearer. Now, that's not a popular view.

There are a lot of people who call themselves Christians who think that it's just all a matter of, you know, you've got the scales going on, and good works and bad works.

And, you know, Jesus sort of pushes on one side a little bit. We get some grace and, you know, some things like that,

I suppose. But it's still just a matter of, you know, got to do your good works, got to keep your nose clean.

That really was the issue of the Reformation, always will be. And I'm well aware that the vast majority of the children of the

Reformation are not reformed. And the vast majority of people who call themselves non -Catholics are non -Catholics simply because of taste and tradition and not conviction.

Said that many, many times. Many, many times. And so I'm not really overly shocked that Mr.

Schubert is so scandalized by a consistent, historical, nothing new here, discussion of the

Gospel. It's just that he's on the other side. It just needs to be made very clear. He's on the other side of the process of Reformation when it comes to the issue of the sufficiency of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

That's all there is to it. I would not otherwise even respond to articles that, if you cut them down, if you had an editor actually go through and limit them to what's actually relevant to the point would be about a quarter of a page long, but are many, many pages long, filled with excess verbiage, utter irrelevancies.

Evidently, in the Schubert mind, verbiage and volume equals truth.

Say it loud and say a lot of it and you win. And if that's what you think debating is, Mr. Schubert, I give it to you.

You win. Congratulations. That's not debating and I don't have any interest in it.

But if that's what you think it is, more power to you. You go do your thing.

I normally would not respond to these because they were filled with infantile, invective, personal attacks based upon slander and libel and just the most absurd things you can imagine.

For a man I've never met, but that's the sort of the nature of the internet today.

But again, the issue is that I'm going to try to focus upon will be, where's the gospel here?

How does it apply? What's the application? What's the meaning? Let's take a look at some of the things that are said here.

So if a Catholic died in Hitler's furnace, believing he was serving Christ and carrying his cross, dying as a martyr to defend the

Jews, according to white, a Catholic is bound to hell just as the homosexual pastor goes into the pit with him.

Anyone, let's change this to a, how about a Mormon, Mr. Schubert? How about a

Buddhist? Maybe a Hindu? Can we put them in there?

I don't think you would, but why not? The issue is the gospel.

And I believe very firmly that if you knowingly embrace

Rome's gospel, if you knowingly embrace a system that says that Christ's death perfects no one, if you knowingly embrace a position that limits you to the, the treadmill of sacramental penances and indulgences and everything else, and that someday you'll stand before God clothed in the multi -fabric righteousness of Christ's righteousness and Mary's righteousness and the saints righteousness and your own righteousness.

Yeah, that's false gospel. That's false gospel. And, and I suppose

I need to, I need to prove that that's, that's relevant,

I guess. Let's, let's go back to the, to the

Bible for just a moment. Galatians chapter two, remember Galatians chapter one,

Paul talks, he, he starts off anathematizing anyone that would preach any of the gospel and the one that he had delivered saying they're under, they're under the anathema of God.

But in Galatians chapter two, but it was because of the false brethren, the pseudodelphoi secretly brought in who had sneaked in to spy out our liberty, which we have in Christ Jesus in order to bring us into bondage.

But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour.

Why? In order that the truth of the gospel might remain with you.

These men added one thing to the gospel. Just, they said, look, you need to become a

Jew first. You need to, you need to be circumcised. You need to enter into the old covenant. Then you can have faith in Christ and, but you've got to, you got to do this one thing first.

And Paul says, anathema, that's not the truth of the gospel. We did not abide. We did not put up with them for even one hour because if we had, then the truth of the gospel would not remain with you because that's not a true gospel.

He calls them false brethren. Oh, they look like us, act like us, talk like us, but they're presenting a gospel doesn't save, a gospel doesn't save.

So we have very strong biblical basis for taking the stand that we're taking.

And all I said, and all I have said in response to Mr. Shoebat is that it doesn't matter what somebody did.

It doesn't matter that these people risk their lives. That's a wonderful thing. But there are

Muslims who risk their lives to do good things. And there are Buddhists that risk their lives to do good things.

And there are Hindus and there are atheists and there are Muslim Mormons and Jehovah's witnesses.

And that's not the point. The point has to be, do you know the gospel?

Have you embraced the gospel? Have you abandoned your own self -righteousness because all those good works are as filthy rags in God's sight?

Evidently they're not to you. And what Catholic thought he is going to heaven because how he died.

It is why he chose to give his life as one of Christ's spiritual brethren and by emulating Christ carrying their cross and defending and dying for his physical brethren, the

Jews. And what Catholic thought he is going to heaven because how he died.

There's a lot of, obviously English is not Mr. Shoebat's first language. There's a lot of that in here. But the point is you're the one who made the assertion that you did.

You're the one saying, well, how could, how can any of them go to hell because of what they did? It's because of what they did.

You are adding to the gospel of Jesus Christ. You're adding something to it.

You just need to see it. If I can't force you to see it, but it's painfully obvious if you're saying you can embrace a false gospel, but that's okay.

As long as you add this, that's anathema. That's under the curse of the apostle

Paul. After all, they too, like Catholics and Orthodox are not

Calvinists who, by the way, even agree with Muslims on their denunciations of all these Christian groups. The shoebats make connections out of thin air that are illogical and irrational.

There is no logical, oh, look, uh, because a Muslim disagrees with Catholics and Orthodox and a

Calvinist disagrees with them for completely different reasons. That means that has some meaning.

I mean, the number of logical fallacies, you know, genetic fallacies and everything else there just makes any organized thinker go, wow, reading anything by either of the shoebats makes any organized thinker go, oh, where are you getting these connections?

And yet the vast majority of what they write is based upon this kind of stuff. Listen to the dialogue between Theodore and Keith that we talked about last week.

I listened to it Saturday morning, writing in the dark and, uh, just so many times

I was going, what does that have to do with anything? And by the way, I, there were times

I had to agree with Theodore. For example, I, as a reformed Baptist, I don't find

Paul Copan's stuff on the old Testament, all that helpful and useful. And so there, there was one thing that went on and on and on and on and on.

Did Joshua kill women and children? Theodore was saying he did. Uh, he said, no,

I said, obviously did. I don't think there's any question about that, but it was irrelevant because we're talking about a theocracy that God's using to judge a certain people.

And the church is not given the sword. I mean, it could have gotten past that 45 minute brouhaha in about 14 seconds.

So it was really frustrating. It was really frustrating, but still, uh, I, I just, the, the number of times that, that Theodore would say something and I'd just go, what does that have to do with anything?

That's completely irrelevant. And then you read Walid's stuff, same thing. They make connections out of thin air, thin air, never bothered to establish what the relevance is and think that making those types of connections is somehow a form of argumentation.

Um, wow. This should not be how, how Christians argue. They never, who after all believe in absurd theological ideas as the bread and wine became literal body and blood of Jesus, a concept developed way later in church history, icons.

Well, we know there's a big argument about that. God forbid icons or idols. Well, you might want to talk to the Orthodox about squeezing noses at that point.

The sinlessness of Mary, her bodily assumption, uh, by the way, the Orthodox believe bodily assumption of Mary as a dogma.

Really sure about that. Um, you really want to, it's amazing to me that you'd even mentioned bodily assumption, given it's so painfully obvious that the early church didn't even know it was such a belief, let alone believe such belief as there.

There's great example right there of the non -historical nature of this kind of argumentation that she is

Theotokos, mother of God. Uh, I guess you haven't read my book on that subject, huh? Uh, yes, she is just not in the modern

Roman Catholic use that phrase, uh, in the ancient Christological use that phrase, of course, uh, prayer to saints started early, still unbiblical to the millions of martyred

Armenians who were butchered by Islam. In fact, all of those Christians are also bound to hell, including, but not limited to even the

Catholics who gave, even gave their lives to die in Hitler's oven, defending the Jews. Again, scattered, uh, emotional written verbiage that doesn't even address the issue.

The issue is what's the gospel. If they embrace the gospel, then salvation is theirs.

The question is, are there things in each one of these religious beliefs that could keep a person from embracing the gospel?

There is the question. That's not what he wants. That is, if we agree with white's judgment, since he knows the

Bible more than all these and a myriad of theologians, martyrs and historians all put together again, another one of these.

Well, do you recognize the form of argumentation? Ad populum, uh, referring to the popular, you know, we've got the majority, so we went, oh, okay, great.

That's, that's brilliant argumentation. Well, brilliant. Sorry, Armenians, the white has spoken.

Um, then he goes on, um, talks about Mr. White's, uh, theological persuasion.

They're all bound to hell. Uh, when GS and Matthew 25 judges the church on the basis of persecution, he will say that Calvinist apologists and reformed

Baptist apologists will enter heaven while the rest are damned to hell. Really? That's, that's what they're based on is on persecution.

Where's, where's that? I don't remember salvation being based upon persecution.

And having said all this, are you going to post some silly comments that I am now anti Protestants? Um, you're just opposed to biblical gospel.

Yes. Yeah. But before you carry out your little slanders sitting comfortably behind a screen, please continue.

He really tried to be very focused upon things here. Um, while we all argue rightfully, why do we not occasionally unite under certain circumstances, save our brethren suffering the

Muslim scimitar instead of condemning the suffering as to which one of them go to heaven or hell. So this is actually where I, you can start getting into some things that provide a good focus.

We want to help suffering Christians. Evidently the shoe bots idea there is that the church takes up the sword to do so.

Now I think it is perfectly right that the United States has begun a little bit late, providing food and water, for example, to the people in Northern Iraq.

And it was very enjoyable to watch a 500 pounder take out, uh, an

ISIS, uh, uh, artillery piece, you know, uh, talk about precision, precision bombing.

The question is, and this is, this is where we have a fundamental disagreement, fundamental disagreement.

The shoe bats believe in Christian culture, Christian armies, and that this, the church carries the sword and can wield the sword, not the sword of the spirit, not, not spiritual discipline, but that the church has the right.

And in fact, the duty to kill the heretic. Now, this is where even some, my reformed brother than I will part company because I am a reformed

Baptist and Baptists have a very long murderology, even at the hands of reformed people.

I know that I would have been driven out of Geneva. Um, there is a

Baptist drown in London in 1611. And as a result,

I am very firmly committed to the belief that the church is not given the sword.

I see nothing in the new Testament where, where, where, where are the instructions?

We are given instructions on how to take care of widows and how to do prayers and how to run the church and preaching of the word.

And we are, we are given all sorts of instruction along those lines where we give instruction as to how we wage war, how we choose our military leaders, what we do with prisoners of war not there because none of the disciples, none of the apostles.

And hence, since we believe this is given by God, the spirit of God did not foresee any situation where the

Christian church would be involved in doing such things. Um, we see a fundamental difference between the theocracy of Israel, where you have a nation ordered the officials provided for in the law of God, the tax system laid out in the law of God.

That's what the ties were. There wasn't just one time there was the second tie. There was the third tie.

There was the heave offerings. There was all sorts of ways of providing for the Levites and, and, uh, the house of Aaron and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

You don't have any of that in the new Testament. You don't have any of that under the new covenant. And every single time, every single time the church has taken up the sword to exterminate heresy, she has brought tremendous disrepute upon the gospel of Jesus.

Tremendous. Now, I do believe that modern nations must indeed look to the law of God for guidance as to what is equity and justice and, and goodness.

And I'm going to be preaching through the holiness code at PRBC over the next number of months.

And one of the first things we're going to see is the land spewed the inhabitants out that violated the fundamental moral tenets of God's law.

And those, those elements of God's law are applicable to all people at all times, but there are all sorts of other things that were not applicable to all people at all times.

And one of the great errors of Islam is that it, it has to force a particular cultural context upon every other culture.

We have Acts chapter 15, so we don't have that. You don't have to make your statement of faith in biblical

Greek and coin a Greek or biblical Hebrew. But you do have to take the Shahada in Arabic.

Why? Because they didn't have Acts 15, we did. And so the gospel can flourish in China, even as China has announced it's going to try to co -opt

Christianity and come up with a Chinese version. All of these, all these places, it doesn't matter where in the world the gospel can go, because it doesn't have to bring a particular culture with it.

And as a Baptist, I am extremely concerned about religious freedom and religious freedom being removed by the power of the state.

And I see that coming, our direction, no question about it. So, do

I think it's appropriate later on, he's going to talk about, you know, like, like Israel.

I cannot see how anyone could argue that Israel does not have every possible right to defend herself against those who are sworn to her destruction, who will take monies that are given to them to build tunnels and to buy rockets and leave their people in utter poverty, and then do this from population centers, knowing purposefully that they will bring about the death of their own people.

They're despicable. Hamas is despicable, have no problem with what Israel is doing. But Israel is not the church.

In fact, I would argue Israel today isn't even the continuation of Israel of old by any stretch of the imagination. Disagree with a lot of people on that one.

Israel is a nation, and it has a right to its sovereign borders. It has a right to defend itself against people who would kill its citizens.

That's basic morality. That's basic biblical morality. Problem here is the

Shabbats don't want to put forth the kind of effort to think through these things. Instead, you have this jumbled, confused idea.

And later on, and I'm going to let's see here.

Oh, there it is. He identified as slander.

Yes, you slander. Here it is. And who is promoting aggressive Christian jihad? You slander. We promote

Christian defensive wars. We promote

Christian defensive wars. There's the Shabbats. We promote

Christian defensive wars. So they believe that the church is to have the sword.

Theodore said that it was appropriate for the church to wipe out the Cathars. And he used Old Testament paradigms to do that.

Did not have any meaningful argumentation in regards to the new covenant or anything like that. These men are not theologians by any stretch of the imagination.

Not trained in that area at all. They make egregious errors when it comes to exegesis, both of them.

But when you hear someone say, we promote Christian defensive wars.

And these are people who are constantly denouncing Islam. You do know what the

Muslims say. About jihad, right? Jihad is always and only defensive.

Has to be. All the classical scholars say the same thing.

Jihad is always defensive. You can prove that from the Quran. Say, how can that be defensive?

Look at what they're doing. I know that's the point. You can call anything you want defensive.

Everybody calls wars defensive. We promote Christian defensive wars.

Once you take up the sword. The whole idea of offense and defense becomes a tactical decision on the battlefield.

And every decent Muslim promoter of dawah will tell you the only proper context for jihad.

And this is the very thin and scary line between the moderate and the radical. Is that that line is you have to have a caliph.

Who will declare a state of jihad because the ummah is under attack by the infidel.

Now, why then do we see ISIS engaged in clearly offensive war? Well, because they're evil and they could really care less about half this stuff anyways.

But if they were to defend themselves, they would defend themselves as Osama bin Laden did in his writings.

By saying, look at what the West has done to us. Look at the state of Islam in the world today.

Look at what has happened in the colonization of historically Islamic nations by the

West. We are under attack. Even what 2008 when I debated Jalal Abu Alrub.

What do you say during debate on the deity of Christ? Christianity invaded Iraq. So I find very little.

Comfort Mr. Mr. Shuba in your saying, we don't promote aggressive

Christian jihad. We promote Christian defensive wars because that's exactly what the

Muslims say, too. So do forgive me for not finding that to be overly impressive, overly impressive.

Really not much there. Um, so, uh,

I'm skipping over the fact that once again, um, Mr. Shuba. Proved himself utterly without honor by doing the let's search the web, dig everything we can out of every website to throw mud at James White stuff, including personal family stuff about which he's utterly ignorant and a liar.

And throw it on the web. Both of the articles, uh, the series of articles, both authors that I'll be addressing, they did the same thing.

When you start going there, you demonstrate that you not only have no honor, no integrity.

Uh, but you also have no argument. If you had a meaningful argument, you'd have to do that. You don't have to do that.

Skipping over that. He says, would Mr. White dare accuse Israel carrying arms and fighting or the

U .S. bombing? Uh, Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, misspelled Nagasaki, as wrong.

Um, I have some questions about what happened to Dresden. If you've studied it, you should too.

Hiroshima, and actually it was Urakami. I know everybody says Nagasaki, but if you've actually studied the bombing at all, um, due to cloud cover, uh,

Nagasaki as a whole was primarily spared. It was Urakami that bore the brunt. And I didn't know until just recently that the

Hiroshima bomb was basically a dud. Only about a third of it exploded. Uh, the Nagasaki bomb was much stronger.

Um, were those wrong? I do not believe they were. I do not believe that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were wrong.

Dresden, I question. Um, the necessity of it. Given the point in the war, its military objections, uh, objectives, so on and so forth.

I question Dresden. But Hiroshima and Nagasaki, no. Why? A number of things.

What Japan had been doing for more than a decade, most of us don't know anything about. Unfortunately, most of us in the

West pretty much only know about World War II. Well, if jaywalking tells me anything, most people in the

West don't know anything about today, let alone then. But if you have a serious interest in what happened during World War II, most

Americans' interest starts at the earliest 1939 and much more after December 7, 1941, obviously.

The war atrocities of Japan have yet to truly be addressed.

I was not aware until just recently that there remains a very strong, many of the worst offenders lived long lives and have only recently died in Japan.

In fact, many were were lionized and rewarded. And only a small handful in comparison to Germany were actually punished.

What most people don't realize, and this is just a historical aside here at the moment, just because some of us actually think seriously about these things and don't just use these things as baseball bats in really bad internet articles.

In seven weeks in 1937, beginning of 1938, the

Japanese army in the taking of Nanking killed more innocent civilians in seven weeks for no reason in the most horrific and torturous ways that all who died in both atomic bombings put together.

Most people don't know that. The rape of Nanking is one of the most gut -wrenching demonstrations of total depravity that will ever be known in the modern world.

Well, okay, sorry. That is currently known in the modern world. And I know,

I know the murders of millions under Stalin, I know, just as horrible.

But the glee, the depravity that the

Japanese soldier showed in the destruction of Nanking, just amazing.

I can't go into it on the program, but the documentation's there. More civilians in seven weeks than in both together combined the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki or Hurricane.

And it is well known that Japan was preparing for a two, the last person defense of the home islands.

They were keeping their best fighter planes in reserve. They were literally producing guns that could only be fired about three times to be given to their citizens, but to be used on American soldiers after they walked by.

I mean, conservatively, a million U .S.

soldiers would have died in the invasion of Japan, conservatively a million, not including Japanese losses.

And so, yes, I do believe that it was proper to do what they did at that time.

And that it saved human life. Dresden, like I said, I don't think was necessary. I think there was, there was some, there was a problem there.

None of this has anything to do with the fact that it was not the

Christian church that made those decisions. It was a nation. The church is not given atomic bombs.

Thank God. The church is not given the sword to do these things.

Then he goes on to say, have the anti -Crusaders ever wondered why the liberal, the Muslim, and the Calvinists are all anti -Crusaders?

So what does that mean? The Shubhats are pro -Crusaders. Now, I've talked church history a number of times, which neither of these gentlemen have.

And unlike them, I don't use church history as a baseball bat. When I talk about the

Crusades, I talk about the effect they had upon Europe. I talk about the theology out of which they were born.

I talk about the fact they were primarily military things. They demonstrate the problems of sacralism.

The Muslims at the time did not see it the way modern Muslims see it, by the way. And I talk about the provocations that the

Muslims themselves had engaged in that brought these things about, but they are primarily military things.

And I do, of course, then recognize that Rome's role theologically in the

Crusades is extremely problematic because it's a violation of biblical norms. And of course, the granting of indulgences and everything else directly addresses the gospel.

But these guys are pro -Crusaders. He says, while it is true that the

Crusaders did err, the bulk of their efforts were justified. Ever wonder how fast we can turn a

Calvinist into a liberal and even pro -Muslim? It takes five minutes. Just bring up the Crusaders and enjoy the sophism.

Direct quote. Then in responding to the article, the video that I posted, he tries to soften his position.

No, I didn't try to soften his position. I was explaining my position. If you had read any of my books, you would have known this is my position all along.

And therefore, I wasn't softening anything. But I wouldn't expect you to do that. He tries to soften his position by saying that, quote,

Catholics can be saved despite being Catholic, but such is an oxymoron example and is an attempt of a sophist,

Mr. White. No, you're not saved by the name of the church into which you walk on Sunday morning.

Sadly, there will be people who have listened to the gospel explained with tremendous clarity in the pews of the

Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church that will not be in heaven. That's not what makes you a

Christian. And by the grace of God, there are simple believing folks, maybe because of where they live, maybe because of other issues in their life that go to Roman Catholic Church, but they're not believing the gospel according to Rome.

I've always said that. You can go back as far as you want to go and you will find me saying that.

Your ignorance of my 40 some odd debates with Roman Catholics and books on the subject, notwithstanding,

Mr. Schubat, I've always said that I wasn't softening my position. And it's very consistent, isn't it?

Yeah, it's very consistent. Not that you'll represent it accurately, because I don't know that that's something you're concerned about doing.

And when did we ever teach that one is saved by purely good works, but that works are the evidence of true faith?

This is why the solos are so important. I didn't say that you had said that you're saved purely by good works.

Rome is semi -Pelagian. The point, of course, is always has been.

And everyone who's known this ministry for any amount of time knows that this is something I have said until it's a broken record.

The issue of the Reformation was not the necessity of grace.

The issue of the Reformation was the sufficiency of grace. How many times have

I said that? Thousands, thousands. Then Mr.

White scrambles to find a response. Oh, yeah, I've never thought of any of these things before. I mean, wow.

Wally Schubat is just throwing stuff at me. I've never thought of no Roman Catholic apologist

I've ever debated. It has ever made me think about stuff like this. Mr.

White scrambles to find a response by saying that how one sacrifices themselves to die for others as meaningless.

By that, he makes Christ's own words invalid. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

Obviously, the context of Jesus' words is his own giving of his life for his disciples, his friends, and that it is his self -giving that provides a way of salvation.

If you want to turn that into a martyrology that says that if you give your life for someone else, that somehow will save you, then just be straightforward and say that and say that we don't need the cross.

All you've got to do is die for your own sins. Just be straightforward. But every rational person knows that what

I was saying is that there are men from every religion who have given themselves for others, and that does not wash away your sins.

Never can wash away your sins. Never will wash away your sins. Then, for some reason, the

Shabbats will not answer a simple question. Are you Roman Catholics? As to the question as to what denomination we belong to, you ask, are you a

Catholic? And we answer such a question with a question Jesus -style. Jesus was sinless.

You are not. Since when do Protestants allow themselves the right for an inquisition?

It's not an inquisition. It's an honest, necessary question. No meaningful communication can take place unless the beginning presuppositions and commitments of both sides are laid on the table.

And no person with honesty, integrity, and honor will ever, ever hesitate to answer the question.

Only dissemblers. Only liars. Only individuals who have no integrity will avoid answering the question.

Why not ask if we were Cops, Greek Orthodox, Russian Eastern Orthodox? Why only Catholic? Or is this

America's only accepted prejudice? And for us to be Catholic, it is anathema, a label, a scorn of insult, just as you portrayed us as dangerous promoters of Christian Jihad.

It's the tyranny of cliches. So here is my response as to which denomination I belong to.

To the Pharisee, I speak as a Samaritan about the Good Samaritan. And to the Samaritan, I speak of Nicodemus, who is a great man of God and a

Pharisee. Evidently, he thinks that makes sense.

I just simply say to anybody and everybody who is listening to the

Shabbats, listen to what they're saying, um, take it with a grain of salt.

Recognize where these guys are coming from. And when they say, hey, give us money, we'll help save Christian lives.

How? By fighting Christian defensive wars? Scary. Very scary.

I want to show, and I said I was going to show this, but I'm going to bring it up here and hopefully you can, you can bring this up and I can switch you over to it appropriately.

Um, I have to do some thingies here and there, uh, hopefully you've got a, you got it now.

Okay. Theodore posted a couple of very quick videos and then an article.

Um, this one allows me to, why does it look weird or something? What? Yeah, that's what it looks like.

Yes. Oh, the logo doubles up. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I see it. I see it.

Yeah. Um, let's, let's listen to this a 40 second. Well, you're gonna have to read it.

Um, what I'll do for those of you listening, I'll read cause it's just a text response. He doesn't say anything.

So it's a text response. You'll hear what I'm, I said, and then I will read the text response. Okay. Uh, so here we go.

I just paused because I see the time and stuff, but I just paused long enough to point out he did not understand the

Trinity. He could not eliminate something he did not understand. Where is the evidence from the

Quran? I keep asking my Muslim friends this. I'll ask you, where's the evidence for the Quran? He even understood it. Sir, 5116 says he didn't.

Okay. Uh, go, go full screen on this. Wrong. Mr. White, the rejection of the triune God is in the Quran. Then we have a citation of Quran 573.

They have certainly disbelieved to say Allah is the third of three. And if there is no God except one God, and if they do not desist from what they're saying, there was surely afflict the disbelievers among them a painful punishment.

So, uh, he posted that and see, see, they, they, they, they do, they do know. And, and what, what did

I, what did I say? I said that Muhammad did not understand the doctrine of the

Trinity. So let's, let's, uh, point this out. And, um, this is where we have to go to the whole screen and, uh, hopefully you still got that set up.

Okay. Um, let's take a look at the Quran. I, uh,

I tried, and this is actually looks really good. I'm glad we're able to do this because I tried,

I spent a lot of time yesterday trying to get this program. It's called Zecker to increase the screen font for the

Arabic and it simply would not do it. So I'm very glad that we're able to zoom on it so we can see this.

Um, here is the text that Theodore, uh, cited Surah 572. Now, once again, uh, those of you who have listened regularly to the dividing line, you've listened to the debate

I did with Adnan Rashid. You've listened to the debate I did with Bassam Zawadi. Um, you have heard the discussion of this text a number of times as I have reviewed other people speaking.

Uh, I have, you know, done this, this text a number of times.

Surahs four and five are extremely important and surah five, especially 17 and following is a whole section on this and what every

Christian needs to know about the Quran. I do notice there's been no citations whatsoever of my books from either the

Shabbats because I very obviously haven't read any of them. Um, but, um, extensive discussion of this subject, but I want to show you in, in the

Arabic here, here is it's, and sadly it has been a long time, uh, since my tutor and I got together and I, I miss,

I miss our time and I, I miss the opportunity of studying Arabic, but there is the important, two of the, one of the, one of the two important phrases in Surah 572.

Uh, well, let's start over here. Here is a word that you find in the

Quran that has a tremendous amount of impact in the Middle East today. The term kuffar means unbeliever.

And you may recall in the last program, we played that clip from the YouTube, uh, of a teacher speaking of people as kuffars.

And what do we do with kuffars? We slaughter them. There is the term. Uh, they have certainly disbelieved.

They have engaged in unbelief who say, and here is the term right there.

Now, what you have in Arabic is the term three and the term third, there is

Allah. And here's, uh, salithu thalatha.

You hear that term thalath? That's the word three. That's why when you encounter translations of the

Trinity, like Yusuf Ali does this point wrong. Uh, the term trend does not appear in the

Quran. And that's very, very important. Why? Well, first of all, Allah is a third of three.

Christians don't believe that Christians would never believe that Allah is not a third of three.

Even if you limit a lot to the father, Allah is not one third of the

Godhead. And what's important is notice what comes right after this.

Let's go back to the Arabic. Every time that the term three appears, what comes afterwards?

Instead, you have negative, the negative particle. And then you have right here.

That is one of the places in the Quran that you have in essence, the beginning of the

Shahada, la ilaha illallah. There's only got one God. Every time it says, don't say three, it is better for you.

Uh, they're unbelievers who say a law is a third of three. The next phrase is always an assertion of what?

Monotheism. So what does the Quranic author understand three to mean?

This isn't rocket science. And the only reason people come up with a different answer for this is they anachronistically recognize,

Oh, we got to interact with Christianity. So we'll come up with a different way. Anybody who just would allow this text to speak for itself.

I guess I should say, allow this text. There we go. This text to speak for itself, um, knows what the author is saying.

A law is a third of three gods. There's only one God. The author did not understand the relationship of sonship.

Have you seen Surah 6, 101? Have you seen the discussions of what it means to have a son?

How can you have a son unless he has a companion, a mate, a wife? What's the nature of sonship in the

Quran? Is there any place where the Christian understanding of the eternal relationship of father and son is ever even hinted at, let alone enunciated?

No, no, not there. It's not there. Now, did

Muhammad deny what he thought the trinity was? Sure did.

No question about that. But did he know what the trinity was? What does that demonstrate about the

Quran? That it's human in origin, human in origin. And there you have it in the

Arabic itself, right there. There's only one God. So what does that mean? This is saying that we think that God is a part of three gods, which as I pointed out,

Surah 5, 116 lays out who the three are, Allah, Mary, and Jesus. Allah takes a wife named

Mary, have a child named Jesus. There you go. So one of us,

Theodore, is very careful about this stuff. Tries to be as best

I can be. And one of us just throws stuff out right, left in a scattered way, scattered way.

That's inappropriate. Shouldn't be done that way. Shouldn't be done that way. We can take that down.

I'm going to go back to accordance. I don't know if I'm going to be going back to accordance, but if I do, then we're ready to go to it.

Okay. Then another article was posted called, While Each Shabbat Converts to Pharisaic Judaism.

I had said, Shabbat shows what happens when you de -emphasize the centrality of the gospel and elevate Christian nationalism and militancy.

Just as happened in Romanism during the Crusades, given that the Shabbats are promoting a new form of Crusaderism in our day, this raises important issues.

And I stand by everything I said there, and have now substantiated everything I said. He says, now that's a whopper of an accusation.

In fact, it's pure slander to say the least, especially coming from someone who considers himself a seasoned apologist. Anyone could easily counter with a similar spin argument to say, white shows what happens when you de -emphasize the centrality of the gospel by elevating

Protestant apologetics. No, Waleed, there isn't any connection there at all.

Just changing terms doesn't mean anything. I had actually substantiated the point that you're missing.

And that is, you said that what people did in hiding people from the Nazis means that they're going to go to heaven rather than the gospel.

So you've made the external more important than the gospel itself. I demonstrated that.

You would have to demonstrate that I, in some way, am de -emphasizing the centrality of the gospel by my defense of the gospel, which is what

I do. And see, unlike you, there are people in this audience, and they're the only ones

I'm concerned about. There are people in this audience that have watched my debates over the years.

And they've watched me stand in mosques and churches and universities and address a wide variety of subjects.

But almost always, I don't do it in an artificial way, but almost always, what do

I do? I bring a testimony of the gospel into that debate.

Even as I stood in the East London mosque a week after the attack upon Benghazi and debated a

Muslim on whether Muhammad is prophesied in the Torah and the

Injil, I still brought it back to the issues of the gospel. Briefly, it wasn't the primary thing.

I don't just use debates as a pretense to preach a gospel message. But if it is appropriate to demonstrate the relevance of the subject to the gospel,

I will do so. And so anybody who actually knows me, and I guess you're just counting on the fact that your followers don't, and so you're just throwing red meat to them, and so the truthfulness of what you're saying doesn't seem to matter to you.

But anybody who knows the reality knows this is untrue. Let's see.

He does a lot of talks, first to me as a spin artist, goes back to John 15 again.

We already talked about that. Christians do this all the time. Just look at 9 -11, and I presume that there were many firefighters from both

Christian persuasions, Catholic and Protestant, who gave their lives as martyrs for Christ. Yeah, that was my response,

Rich. We don't have the Rich Cam back yet, maybe someday. But Rich just was drinking coffee and went, what?

That's not dying as a martyr for Christ. When a person dies as a martyr, they're dying as one testifying to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

What happened on 9 -11 was terrible, and every Christian who faithfully lived their life died as a testifier in that sense.

But what about the Mormon firefighters, Wally? What about the atheist firefighters?

What about the Hindu firefighters, the Buddhist firefighters? Did they die as martyrs? See, whether you die as a martyr for Christ, and I wouldn't even utilize the term martyr here because it wasn't a matter of testimony, has to do with whether you possess the gospel.

I'm flabbergasted that such a thing was said in light of present -day circumstances, because when somebody comes to your home with the sword and says, you either pay a tax that you can't possibly come up with, or you and your family, with nothing, not even water, leave town, and we're taking your house, or we're going to kill you, or you renounce

Christ, that's martyrdom. When those people who lost their lives in those circumstances, because they would not renounce

Christ... Well, and here's the issue that if they were arguing in a meaningful fashion, they would say, that's happening to people that you would say do possess the gospel, and to people who do not.

The Muslims don't know, and they don't care. The Muslims who are doing this type of stuff persecute everybody.

They persecute Catholics, they persecute Coptics, they persecute all sorts of folks, and they kill people.

And so if you die at the hand of a Muslim, then you're a martyr for Christ, whether you possess the gospel or not.

Now, that's a powerful argument, but what we need to think through, and unfortunately, we're not really being prompted by them so much, but what we really need to think through is the great tragedy of suffering persecution for a false gospel.

That's why Paul wrote what he did. That's why the very strongest language in the New Testament is found in the book of Galatians, because suffering for a false gospel is a horrific tragedy.

And the responsibility for that falls upon those who promulgate the false gospel.

That's why Paul said, we did not put up with them for even a moment so that the truth of the gospel might remain with you.

But that's why he says about those who would seek to circumcise the believers in the churches in Galatia, I wish they'd let the knife slip.

That's strong language. But what he's saying is, these individuals who boast in your flesh, that's all they have, because they're not actually presenting the gospel.

And what does he say in Galatians chapter 5 to those individuals? Christ will be of no benefit to you.

That means they were claiming Christ. That's the tragedy of a false gospel. Now, I'd like to know from Mr.

Schubat, how do you define a false gospel? Biblically, not from a position of Christian militancy or anything else, but how do you define a false gospel?

What's your basis? I want to know. I want to know. Well, I don't know if I do want to know, because he goes on, but to some brand of Americanized Christianity, like white laying our lives is now all of a sudden considered salvation by works.

And that faith alone is striped away, should be stripped away from any evidence to prove true and saving faith.

Now, again, I don't understand the mindset of people who will make comments like this.

When the person that they are attacking has written books like this that contain 24 -page chapters on James chapter 2, it talks about the relationship of faith and works.

I mean, why do you purposefully walk into brick walls like that when I can say, do you read this?

No, so then why did you make comments about something in a vituperative, vitriolic fashion when you could have?

I'm lazy. I heard that, but they didn't.

And then he, as well, anyways, then one last funny thing in regards to the

Schubats, and I'm going to move on. It's very painfully obvious that what they've been doing is

Google apologetics, or in this case, just Google personal attack, because you can

Google my name and come up with all sorts of stuff. It's real easy. I've often said if I believed a 10th of what

I read about myself on Google, I'd move to Alaska and change my name. Both articles were 20 times longer than anything meaningful because they were just filled with verbiage that had nothing to do with anything relevant whatsoever.

I mean, there was this thing about, oh, the first one went after Sam Schumann as if somehow

I am Sam's controller. Sam undoubtedly is laughing right now, too, because Sam will tell you that if I was

Sam's controller, Sam would not say many of the things that Sam says in the way that Sam says them.

And he knows that. And the idea that, well, to all of you, as we're about to find out as I look at another article, to all of you who think that I sit around and I am the great puppet master, that I'm in control of all these people.

Look, Rich's office is on one side of our offices and mine's on the other.

I'm a bit of a loner. I'm a Scotsman. I don't play well with others,

I guess. And I have to work at this community thing.

I don't have a lot of contact with others outside of what you see publicly and what you see on this program.

The idea that I'm firing off emails, OK, now, Sam, you do this and you personally, is so laughably absurd that it's really hard to not just break out in goof -offs when you people think that's what

I'm spending my time doing. I'm not that smart. I mean, it took me some time yesterday to put together, you know, all the quotes and I wanted to have the stuff ready to go.

And I don't have a secretary. I don't have somebody that does this stuff for me. And when

I post stuff about my rides, I'm really out there for four hours on a bike.

Now, I'm studying. You know, I did South Mountain yesterday and loved doing it.

And I was listening to the end of a scholarly work on the Mirage of Muhammad and then got back into Itzhar al -Haq.

That's what I was doing. I wasn't sending emails to anybody. I wasn't on the phone. Phones don't work very well in South Mountain Park anyways.

I wasn't controlling my army. It's just so absurd that people think that I have this kind of influence.

The only influence I have is this program and my books and my debates and people watch them and they're either influenced or they're not.

They either go, wow, I'm appreciative of what this guy is doing or they're not. I'm not calling them,

I'd like you to do this or you go take that guy. It's just so absurd. I have no control over Sam Shamoon.

I don't. Ask him. So he has this big, long thing at the end of the first one, just pages of just utter irrelevancy.

I guess from his perspective, again, I posted 47 pages refuting this man.

Okay, well, three paragraphs happened to be semi -relevant and were easily refuted, but it's 47 pages.

Again, it's the amount of verbiage and volume. The VV form of argumentation.

What's funny at the end of this second article is he digs up an article from Paul Owen.

Now, I suppose it's possible that Paul Owen contacted him.

I don't think so. I hope not. I hope that's not the case. It just seems more probable that he just dug this up off of a website someplace.

But it's just hilarious that he'd quote from Paul Owen. Paul Owen's an Episcopalian. Shoebat's always the one talking about, oh, so you think these people are going to go to hell along with the sodomite preacher?

Um, the first, uh, maybe second American denomination to ordain a practicing homosexual, a bishop was, oh, the

Episcopalians. Yeah. Yeah. So we're going to, we're going to quote an Episcopalian.

And then when he quotes, well, he starts off affirming a lot of things that I've just been talking about in regards to the gospel.

But then Owen says this, listen to this, this will only be relevant for those of you who are actually reformed to go.

You really said that? Yeah. Here's, uh, here's, here's just the quote part of the quote. And there are further related problems.

When adherence to Tulip is the ultimate priority, other things, which should be of greater priority, take a back seat. As long as the doctrines of grace are promoted, it matters very little to these men, how the church worships, how the pastor dresses and conducts himself, the order of the service.

I know, I know. Quit looking at me like that. Uh, the form and content of the prayers, the atmosphere promoted through the structure of the service, the tone and substance of the sermons, the tempo content and style, the music and the themes that are viewed as suitable subjects for Christian teaching and reflection.

There should be, and have been distinctively Baptist patterns for doing church grounded in distinctive theology of what the church is and what exactly is its purpose.

But in the Tulip cult, rather than being based on principled theological convictions, all these matters are up for grabs for.

They have no substantive distinctive theology to undergird preaching ministry and worship. Now, those of us who are reformed

Baptists who have even a scintilla of knowledge of our ecclesiology, of our doctrine of our hymnology, um, find all of that to be as far removed from reality as most of what

Waleed Shobat has said. But Waleed Shobat would have no idea that that is as goofy and loony as it actually is.

Uh, but it ended up in this article, which makes you just go, whoo, uh, wow.

Amazing. Was there something you wanted? I was just wondering when the last time the clowns were in, uh, in church there up front.

Yeah. Yeah. We do that all the time. Follow the regular principle of worship at all. Never even heard of the thing.

Yeah. Regular principle of worship. What's that? I have no earthly idea. Weren't we going to have cheerleaders on Sunday?

Something like that. Amazing. Amazing stuff. Well, anyways, there's, um, there's my response to the, uh, the

Shobats. I guarantee that will result in a minimum of, uh, 35 ,000 words of utter irrelevancy.

Uh, oh, and by the way, the other reason that I, I really even hesitated is if you want to really see the level of immaturity in these from, from Waleed, they even took freeze frames from the video to make me look silly and posted them.

Yeah. Easy. I just do with anybody, any, any video, you can get people with their eyes closed, their mouths open, all sorts of things.

And they actually did that. And I'm like, congratulations, Waleed, you're up to third grade. Way to go.

Good job. We could have done that with his video. Of course. Of course. In fact, there were a couple of points. So I'm like, get somebody to do this for you.

This is terrible. I know it's, um, it's amazing. All right.

So there we go. Uh, hopefully, uh, the discussion of Romans and the nature of the gospel, uh, we spent already an hour and a half on all these things.

And now, um, to the second article, this was, uh, this is actually dated

Thursday, August 7th. Um, if you go to our website and put in the name,

Tim Guthrie, you will find, um, discussions going back to 2010 in regards to Mr.

Guthrie. Most of them, I think, I think all of them were in 2010. The initial, uh,

Eric Cantor stuff came out at that point in time. Hadn't heard much from him for quite some time, but on August 7th, he posted on his blog, an article that demonstrates

Mr. Guthrie has an exceptionally tentative connection to reality.

That's the only, that's the only description that I can give here. I, I have rarely seen a more libelous, utterly false, completely undocumented and undocumentable article aimed at me specifically in, um, in about 30 years of ministry.

Now it's called an open letter to pastors. Stop ministry bullying.

He says the words written flow from a heart that is broken and quotes the

Wartburg watch ladies as part of his source. Um, it is time for good men to stand up and say enough is enough.

The words of the Irish philosopher Edmund Burke ring true at such time as this, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

And I'll tell you ahead of time, I am the evil here. The Wartburg watch article above clearly shows that a small group of men have participated in cyber stalking for several years.

These two ladies may be the first to connect the dots in print, highlighting the devastation that has been occurring disguised as standing for truth.

Anyone who has been targeted by this group knows the pain and agony they shovel. And it is this agony that now must be repudiated once and for all by pastors of churches in every size under their tactics.

They bully people using social media and websites. Now catch this folks.

I'm reading this straight out. You can go to, uh, uh, this is a

PDF. So timguthrie .com, I think is what it is, or wordpress .timguthrie .com or something like that. This is his own words.

Now, again, I'm accused of illegal activities, libelous activities, personal attacks made.

It's, I'm not even going to all of it, but I want you to hear the conspiracy thinking that's behind these folks.

And by the way, guess who then promoted this article and retweeted it to folks, the vice president of Bruton Parker college.

Okay. Their tactics, they bully people using social media and websites.

Ironically, their main approach finds them using anonymous Twitter accounts and websites to bring about their desired action, usually repentance of their targets, anonymous

Twitter accounts. Um, I have one

Twitter account had two for a while, had AOMIN AO director, I think for a while.

Um, my picture is on it and it links to AOMIN .org and it's a

Dr. Oakley, 1689. And that is the only Twitter account that I have.

If you say otherwise prove it or admit you're a This small group, this is great.

This is here's where the conspiracy stuff really revs up to high gear.

I'm just going to read the whole paragraph. This small group will even speak against themselves on Twitter and social media using multiple

Twitter sites, et cetera. While no one knows, it's just one person talking to himself.

They know how the internet works. They understand how to raise their pages in the search engine rankings.

Their methods result in drawing attention to themselves. So there's someone Google's your name, their target, their material will be front and center.

It is intimidation. Like many have never seen or heard. They can ruin your repetition without you, their target person, realizing it until it is too late.

But there is more. Now let's just stop right there. So what they'll, what will you're going to find out here?

Cause I'm going to be, I haven't been named yet, but I, I will be in a moment. Um, so what

I'm doing is I'm not, I'm not preparing to, um, to do multiple debates with Muslims in South Africa.

I, I, I can do that without any preparation at all, I guess. And when, when

I reviewed debates and, and, you know, have gone through and Mark, see, obviously

I never sleep. I must be a robot because I'm not doing all that stuff.

I'm not writing or no, no, I'm not doing all that. I haven't written 24 books.

No, that's somebody else did that instead. I'm tweeting myself.

And in fact, evidently I must be James. I'm attacking myself and insulting myself and raising my page rankings that way.

Do you see how there's absolutely no way to interact with this mindset?

Because any fact in the conspiratorialist mindset becomes a fact that they can twist and fit into their conspiracy theory.

That's what's scary about conspiracy folks is because there's, there's no reasoning with them.

It's impossible to reason with someone like that, but there is more.

This group will call your office. They will contact your church staff.

They will hack into computers and steal emails and files. They will break the law to accomplish their so -called righteous activity.

I have personally been attacked in such ways. They are evil. So when Tim Guthrie loses a file on his computer,

I stole it. I'm sorry. You either cry or laugh.

I am not a computer moron. Okay. I'm not too, I mean,

I've got two of them running here and you know, I've installed the stuff that allows my cursor to go from one to the other and around and back again.

And, and you know, I know that I, you know, I can tell Rich that the

TCP IP address for my, my presenter program in here ends in a certain number so that he can get the right thing.

Okay. I at least know that much because man, I've been using them since all that first one had two 360K floppy drives and 640K of RAM.

Didn't even have a hard drive. But the fact of the matter is even here in the office,

I was having major problems with my Mac in my office, being able to do anything on the network.

And we had to have somebody come in to work on that. And the idea, I mean,

I really, I thought about playing the Napoleon Dynamite clip where he talks about having really cool hacking skills.

I really, the thought crossed my mind because it really does fit here. It really does fit here.

But the idea that, that I'm hacking into people's computers or that I'm having other people hacking into people's computers, not only is libelous.

I mean, this is, this stuff's actionable. It really is because he has absolutely, he has zippity -doo -dah evidence. I can stand before God.

God knows that this is a pile of lies. And I feel sorry for the man who, when he loses a file on his computer, thinks

I stole it. I lose files on my computer all the time. That's because it's got a one terabyte hard drive and I don't remember where I put things.

Okay. It has nothing to do with me. I've never called somebody's house.

I've never called somebody's office and I've never asked anybody else to do any of those things.

Yes, sir. John Boehner just called and wants to know if you can tell him where to find Lois Lerner's emails, please.

She gave me way too much money, man. I'm behind everything.

Wow. Now here, it continues on. Okay. They are evil.

Alerts will be sent to their army and the target declared. All of this done in the name of ministry.

No one escapes their wrath. If you go against them, you will pay dearly. They will reach out to your friends, coworkers, church members, et cetera.

No rock will be left unturned. You are marked and they never let up. Really? An army?

An army now. Woo. And next line.

They're out. That's the sub -directory. Sub -directory. That's the subtitle. Next line.

This group knows how to score points and then how to hide. Their master teacher, James White is known for his debates.

Everything White does, everything I do, is done to score points and to prove his super intelligence while remaining free from blame.

See, once you got the conspiracy thing going, then you can just throw out anything under the sun and you don't need to back any of it up.

You can even say, well, he's free from blame because he's got this army that does everything. That's why I can't prove any of this is because it's this army.

It gets worse. It gets worse. Listen to this. Everything White does is done to score points and prove his super intelligence while remaining free from blame.

They never do wrong. The bogus attacks and anonymous websites cannot be traced unless authorities are brought in.

They hide via fake IP addresses. They are in America, Canada, and London.

They partner with Muslims. They partner with thugs. They care about one thing, the destruction of their target.

And then, of course, he goes personal. If you want to know the real truth of James White, ask his sister.

Wow. They're in London. They're in Canada. They're in America. They're everywhere.

It's the Jesuits. Wow. Amazing. Absolutely amazing.

Now, of course, over the past year, I've been in America and I've been in Canada and I've been in London and South Africa and Kiev and Frankfurt and Berlin.

Is he a Russkie? No, no, not yet. They haven't taken over Ukraine yet, Lord willing.

They won't. I've been in all those places. But the idea that I would even know how to come up with a fake

IP address. Sorry, don't know how to do it. I don't even know how to do spoof and stuff like that. And I don't have an army.

I'm sorry, Tim, but your connection to reality is extremely tenuous.

Extremely tenuous. What's that? I figured it out.

You went to Ukraine so you could secretly meet with Edward Snowden. That's what that was going on. Well, I wouldn't have been that far away, huh?

I wouldn't have been that far away. That's right. That's right. Then they go on into the

Cantor stuff and just make stuff up in just. It's not connected to reality.

There's no documentation because he can't provide documentation. I read this.

It would be bad enough. It'd be bad enough if there was just one man out there.

Who is so addled. That he thinks that when he loses files on his computer, it's me and my army doing it to him.

That would be bad enough. And that would be reason for pity. And you might say, why even address this?

Part of the problem is we have lots of folks that have only recently come to know about the ministry. And then they run into stuff like this and they don't have the background and they don't know what the real issues are.

And those of you who've been with us for the years are just sitting there going, oh, you've got to be kidding. Really?

Yeah, I know. I know. I know. That's why I put at the end of the program. But the worst part about all of this is the promotion of this blog article by other people.

People who should know better, people who should have some level of responsibility, but they don't.

It's hard for me to believe the vice president of Bruton Parker College is promoting stuff like this without the direct approval of higher -ups, and there aren't too many higher -ups there.

It's sad. Let me just be straightforward. All of the accusations in this are false, if they're accusations.

Now, he says something about me and J .D. Hall. I met

J .D. for the first time when I went up to Reformation Montana, and that was 2013.

And J .D. moderated, well, no he didn't. He introduced, didn't moderate, introduced the debate

I did with Justin Lee, which most people have found to be extremely helpful and useful, by the way.

I heard him preach his sermon. I had lunch and dinner with him.

I held and coveted his AR -15, and there's pictures floating around the web of me holding that.

And I appreciated what he had to say. We have contact through email.

I do not believe I even have his phone number. Over the past few weeks, my contacts with J .D.

have been through others, primarily. He did send me an email yesterday of a real nasty gram that he had received.

I mean, if you want actual internet bullying, he could document that for you right now. The behavior of people has been unbelievable.

But evidently there's something in here about some video.

The only connection that I have had in a video format with J .D.

since I was in Montana was a Skype call when Gene Klyatt was here.

And I had Gene in the studio. I don't remember what, when was that? That was April? It would have been

April, because if I recall, it was just before we remodeled. Yeah, yeah.

I think Gene would like what we did if he was awake, because Gene was really tired that day and pretty much slept through the dividing line, or just sort of sat there like that.

But anyhow, that's the only contact I've had. I don't even know what he's…

The scary thing is, it's very clear to me that Tim Guthrie thinks everything he's saying is true.

That's what's frightening, to be so deceived, so gullible, so easily misled.

By whom? I don't know. His own mind? I don't know. Some of this stuff just seems so fantastic, such a fantasy that it's hard to even know where it's coming from.

The only thing I can make sense of that particular portion of what he's saying is, I think he is saying that he thinks that Gene came here so that we could all get together and make a movie about…

We came here to discuss the Cantor Project. Right. But he thinks that… They wanted to know what I thought the priorities should be, and that's what we discussed.

I think his imagination is… Well, conspiracy. Yeah, everything is conspiracy.

Way down the road. So if anybody talks to anybody else, that's a conspiracy. Not that they ever do that.

I mean, Peter Lumpkins has never had a phone conversation with Timothy Rogers or Eric and Cantor or anybody else, right?

Okay, anyway. And at that meeting, I put all the videos and stuff that I had in regards to Cantor on a jump drive and gave them to Gene.

That was it. Army. The Chick -fil -A army.

Because I think Gene was most excited about getting out of here and getting to go to Chick -fil -A, because we have some nearby here, and he just thinks that's wonderful.

Anyways, Tim, I don't know if you'll bother to watch this, but you've got some serious issues.

You've got some serious problems. You've been deceived. You believe in lies, and you are libeling and slandering based upon lies, and you need to stop it.

You need to get a hold of yourself. You need to get somebody in your life that can tell you, dude, balance. Whoa, back off.

You don't make accusations that you can't back up. They're just the fruit of your own mind running on fumes.

You just don't do this kind of thing. It's even worse. It's one thing to be this disconnected from reality.

It's worse to be someone like Peter Lumpkins who then takes the ramblings of someone who's disconnected from reality and promotes it.

The only term for that is despicable. Absolutely despicable. The behavior

I've seen over the past two weeks, just beyond comment.

It's beyond comment. I've just had to give it to the Lord and say, Lord, I don't know why you're allowing this kind of thing to happen, but show me what

I'm supposed to learn from it, because I never, ever want to behave in the way these people are behaving.

The lies, the complete disconnection, and the hypocrisy is just, it is absolutely beyond comment.

So it was an interesting weekend. It was an interesting weekend. I think I saw that on Friday or Saturday morning, and then

I saw the Shubhat stuff, I think on Sunday morning. And it does just make you wonder.

It does really, really make you wonder. So there you go. That was a mega long edition of the dividing line.

And though we had to deal with a lot of unpleasant subjects, I hope that by beginning the program with a half hour focus upon the centrality of the gospel, that it gave some coherence to what comes afterwards.

Because certainly even the participation in the difficult issue of the past number of years with Eric and Cantor has all had one focus.

And it's being ignored completely now, unfortunately. And that is within a matter of weeks,

I will once again be standing in public defending the gospel in the context of Islam.

And the motivation in 2010, it's the same motivation as today, and it's the integrity of that gospel.

And everything else has to be subsumed to that, has to be subsumed to that. We still need help.

Yes, I know. I just didn't want to discuss that at the end of a program like this, actually. But we do need people to stand with us for both

Ukraine and South Africa, especially. And that's why

I wanted to get in touch with Rudolph. And I'm going to do that as soon as we get done here and see if I can't arrange time to have him on this week so we can talk about that and maybe get people thinking about what's coming up in South Africa.

So with that, we will thank you for listening to The Dividing Line today. And Lord willing, we will be back on Thursday.