Mormon Kids Talking Greek, Back to Cyril Lucaris

Greetings, welcome to the Divine Line. We're back in the big studio. I think I have the file in the right place now to continue with the Confession of Decithius, but we need to do Theroux Licaris first.

It gives us a good background anyways. If you haven't been listening to the program the past couple of weeks, I've been warning you for a while that eventually, of necessity, we would be doing more on the subject of Eastern Orthodoxy with the debate with Craig Trillia coming up in October, and then another debate in March of 2027 with another Eastern Orthodox representative, and there's just more happening online right now, and our desire is to provide balanced...

Again, thankfully, we thank the Lord for this. Even back when we were only dealing with Mormonism, I was still a churchman at the time, and so there was a balance that being in the church and needing to teach in the church gave at that point in time, and then once you start dealing with Jehovah's Witnesses and Roman Catholicism, you learn that the danger is if you're only dealing with one group, it's real easy to see them behind everything and see them in everything, and your exegesis of the text of Scripture, your view of church history, everything can start becoming colored by that imbalance.

And once you're dealing with Unitarians, like Jehovah's Witnesses, and polytheists, like Mormons, and Roman Catholicism, and so you're dealing with people denying Sola Scriptura, justification by faith, you have to be consistent.

You have to be balanced. If you start bending one direction to deal with one group, then you've got these guys over here, and they're going to take advantage of that. And so you have to be balanced, and that means there are arguments that some people might think are very effective that you can't use, because you would be using one standard in dealing with one group, a different standard dealing with another group.

And this is, I think, a major problem in Christian apologetics, is that there's a lot of people who don't have any problem using one standard in talking to this group, and then switching to another standard in talking to this group.

Unfortunately, that's one of the ways you discover the difference between truth and error, is inconsistency is a sign of a failed argument. So we have to be consistent. So we want to provide consistent, meaningful responses to Eastern Orthodox claims, but again, one of the big issues that I'm discovering very early on is, and this isn't just with them, this is with every single group, and I think the Internet is exacerbating this, and making it even more prevalent, but every voice you hear on social media claims to be it, claims to be the final word, without showing knowledge of other perspectives.

In other words, without recognizing, for example, the evolution in Mormonism that's taking place right now, and that took place early on, there's a clear evolution in Justice Smith's theology between 1829 and 1834, and then massive after 1838 until his death in 1844.

So which section of Justice Smith's life are we even talking about? So if you do serious reading of Mormonism, you know there's been development, and then there's development after Brigham Young and the Saints get to Utah, and in other words, doing a lot of reading in the sources keeps you from being overly simplistic in your representation of anybody.

You try to steelman people, you try to, you know, one of the advantages of doing more than 200 debates with folks is you're going to hit a lot of different perspectives, and you're going to recognize you need to be prepared for the best the other side has to offer, not just use the arguments that work for a bunch of people, but then falter against the best they have to offer.

So just some basic apologetics thoughts there. And so in the midst of all this, something popped into my mind. I think I bookmarked it, but I'm not going to bother to look for it. Flowers, or one of his people, took a recent clip from in here, so it's within the past week, where I was talking about Eastern Orthodoxy, and I was talking about the fact that you will find different people online from Eastern Orthodoxy claiming to be the voice of Eastern Orthodoxy, and what they do is just keep flashing Calvinism every time I say something.

They just put Calvinism. So the Calvinists do the same thing. As normal for the provisionists, the argumentation is bogus and wouldn't have survived cross-examination the same way Leighton Flowers never survived cross-examination.

He's been buried 14 times since the last cross-examination period. So the problem is that Eastern Orthodoxy is claiming to be the unchanging apostolic church, and I am well aware that there are variations within the broad spectrum of Reformed theology.

I am well aware that I have differences with Turretin, mainly textual issues, and of course I'm a Reformed Baptist, but I have differences with fellow Reformed Baptists. So I don't claim to be the one and only definer of anything.

But Leighton Flowers claims to be a former Calvinist, a former Reformed person, and yet he can't get us right for Loebner money. In fact, he gets worse as time goes by. So as normal, the provisionists struggle with the idea of categorical thinking, and posting that clip just demonstrated that they're only getting worse at it, not better.

So anyway. So I did remember to pull this up, and I want to thank... I was saying to Rich right before we got started, I didn't get finished telling him. I honestly think that when it comes to what? I honestly think that when it comes to...

I wasn't even looking up yet, so you're just distracting me back there. When it comes to finding out what's going on right now in Mormonism, I can get hold of my guys with Apology of Church up in Salt Lake City, because they're very actively involved in going out and sharing the gospel.

They go down to BYU and do that kind of stuff, and so they're running into all this stuff. But Aaron with Mormonism Research Ministry up there, just in my opinion, seems to have his finger on the pulse of everything.

And so I run across this guy, and no, he's not the hunchback of Notre Dame. This is just one of those situations where you've got this lousy background, and he just doesn't even seem to care that it's creating this hunchback look on him.

The whole thing, he just looks bored out of his mind. I don't know why. There are people calling in asking questions, and I have no earthly idea why. I mean, honestly, I'm not going to call into a program with a guy that looks like he's about to fall asleep and has zero passion about what he's saying.

But anyway, his name is Chandler Hendry, sometimes goes by Chuck. First time I've ever heard of him. Never heard of the guy. I certainly don't think he's written anything, taught anything. He looks like he's about 23, 24, maybe somewhere around there.

And so I was sent this thing, and initially, it was someone at my church that said, this guy claims to have 45 Greek linguists who agree with him about something on John 1 -1. And the way it was originally presented to me was that the issue with John 1 -1 is that God doesn't have the article in the third clause.

Boy, everybody who's seen my debate with Brother Ventilacion knows ton-te-on. If you haven't watched the debate, you just have to go watch it. It is, look, undoubtedly, out of the 203 debates I've done so far, I think that may be the most entertaining one.

I mean, the anti-freeze debate was pretty cool. No two ways about it. That was pretty entertaining. But Brother Ventilacion and his five cohorts running around the tables behind him, getting him books, still probably one of the most memorable evenings, especially because no matter how hard I tried, I was not able to teach him basic Greek grammar, the difference between the nominative and the accusative, singular, in the second declension.

And he just kept hammering away on ton-te-on, exactly, ton-te-on. But anyway, that was just a little walk down memory lane there for a second. Anyway, so my initial response to the brother at church was, well, a person can't possibly be able to read Greek if that's what they're saying.

But then I asked him to send me the link so I could listen to the whole thing. Well, this is what it is, and that's not what he was saying. So I was responding to a misapprehension of what his assertion was.

I know exactly what his assertion is. But I'm sitting here going, why would anyone want to learn about Greek syntax and John 1 -1 from an early 20s kid who looks bored and clearly doesn't read Greek for himself?

Certainly never taught it to anybody. Why is this happening? Is this the future of theological education? I think right now, a lot of this generation gets their information from Grok or Claude or Gemini or ChatGPT, or there's a new one called LUMO.

Have you tried LUMO? LUMO is in Proton. So there's a whole AI thing there. And I was talking with Gemini while driving today because something came up on my screen in my truck and said, you can now use Gemini for anything here while you're traveling and stuff.

And I'm like, okay, let's see how it works. And unfortunately, I'd ask a question and then I'd sit there for about three miles before I'd get a response. And then the response would come real slow in pieces.

So I'm not sure if my truck just doesn't have a really good signal generator in it or just what. But anyways, it might be useful on long trips. It says it can find rest stops up ahead. That actually would be a useful thing.

Hey, Gemini, where's the closest rest stop for a 63 and a half-year-old on a five-hour drive? Anyway, I just think that's what we're going to be running into. And it's like, well, the AI told me. And AI is AI.

AI is infallible. AI is extremely helpful. I'm using AI in doing the work I'm doing right now. But I catch it on things all the time. And so far, it's always like, you're right. I don't know how I missed that.

And sometimes it would be a form of a Greek term or a manuscript reading or something like that. And it's always admitted. You're right. That's why you got to check my work, is basically what it says.

But a lot of people can't catch anything. And so they'll just believe whatever they're told, even when it's completely wrong. I think that's what we got going on here. So anyway, some guy calls in and he's asking about the Trinity.

And it's like, well, I'm going to make a wild prophecy here that a 20-something returned LDS missionary probably not read a whole lot on this subject other than from only one perspective. But he goes into John 1 .1.

And so I wanted to just briefly engage with some of this just to sort of go, this is the kind of stuff you're going to be running into. And just a reminder, you know this to be true. The back door of the Mormon church right now is as large as the front door.

And so there's a lot of people coming out of Mormonism. But as far as I can see, they're not coming into something good and true and proper. They're not leaving Mormonism for truth. They're leaving Mormonism because they've discovered that it's untrue, but maybe not untrue in such a way that they can then know what the truth is.

And so the best way we can love Mormons is to be ready to, and you know, there's nothing new about this, everybody who used to go to Salt Lake City with us during General Conference will tell you that they heard me say to them at one point or another, I would rather have five people in Salt Lake City that can give a clear, solid presentation of the gospel and why we believe it than 50 people that can rip and shred Joseph Smith but can't give a positive presentation of the gospel.

So we've always stood on that ground. And that's how you show love to Mormons, is be ready when the opportunity arises. So anyways, so let's, I'll start and stop this, but let's, and just be prepared for the passion in Chuck's eye, for the scintillating energy that will flow through this video, demonstrating that this is something that is deeply important and exciting to him.

I don't want anyone, especially if you're older people like me, you're on heart medications, I don't want you to be overstimulated by what you're about to see. Here we go.

So LDS believe in the Godhead, I don't know a whole lot about the LDS. They believe in the Godhead, you believe it's, you don't believe in the Trinity at all? Yeah, no, it's not biblical. So the first, I guess the very first part of John, what's your thoughts on the very first part of that?

I'm talking about John 1 -1? John 1 through, I don't know, 14 -15, somewhere around there. The first part of the chapter. The first 18 verses. Sure. Yeah, where does that teach.

Consubstantiality between the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost? Okay, he's not even good at enunciating well. Okay, sorry. What he said was, where does that teach consubstantiality? Well, that's not an irrelevant question.

Consubstantiality, however, is based upon previous teaching in Scripture. No one says that that term appears in the Bible. As I've explained for many, many, many years, the doctrine of the Trinity is based on three biblical doctrines.

Absolute biblical monotheism. There's only one true God, creator of all things, heaven and earth. There are three divine persons who are distinguished from one another. This is the second doctrine. Three divine persons are distinguished from one another.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They speak to one another. They use personal pronouns of one another. They refer to one another in the first, second, third person pronouns. And then, the equality. Consubstantiality flows from the third, and that is the equality of the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit.

And so, how do you establish that? You establish that through the text on the deity of Christ. You can establish text of the deity of the Father as well, although that's really sort of obvious, but you can do so.

There's always someone come up with something weird. And then, the deity of the Spirit is testified, but it is the use and description of the Spirit in conjunction with the Father and the Son that is really the primary evidence of the deity of the Spirit.

You just don't do that with a created being or something like that. So, consubstantiality is just simply the recognition that if Father, Son, and Spirit are truly deity, and there's only one true God, then they have to be consubstantial.

That is sharing the same nature, because there's only one God. So, if Father, Son, and Spirit are truly deity, if they truly share the divine name, then they have to be consubstantial. That's just a later term to help define what you have in Scripture itself.

But it's almost like he's going, well, there's nothing in this. Well, actually there is. The context of the Prologue of John is the absolute monotheism of the entirety of the Tanakh, the Torah, the Nevi 'im, the Ketuvim, the Law of the Writings of Prophets.

So, John isn't just popping out of nowhere. And so, when he says, Enarke Ein Ha-Lagas, when he says, in the beginning was the Word, he can expect that his audience immediately catches what he's referring to.

Enarke is how the Greek Septuagint begins the Old Testament. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And so, it's an echo straight back to the preceding Scriptures, which are very clear, and they're testifying that there is only one true God, in their statement that the gods and peoples are idols, in their statement in recognizing the gods and peoples, that since they come out of the earth and didn't create the earth, they didn't create creation, that they will perish from under the heavens and from under the earth, Jeremiah chapter 10.

And so, that's the context of John 1 .1, and therefore, if John 1 .1 does introduce us to two persons, God, who is identified as the Father in verse 18, Theos, and then the Lagos, who sarks Agenata in verse 14, becomes flesh, hence we're talking about the Son.

If John 1 .1 and what follows teaches the full deity of the Son, as Creator, as Eternal, which it does, then the necessary end result of that is consubstantiality. You have monotheism, two persons, Eternal, Deity, Creator.

They have to be consubstantial. That's rather basic, but lots of folks struggle with it, and we have to be able to explain it, and we'll explain a little bit more here, too.

So, it says the Word became flesh in the beginning. That's not consubstantiality. It's not consubstantiality? No, it's not. Just because the Word, meaning Christ, Christ gained a body, does not mean He's consubstantial with the Father.

If John 1 .1 says the Word's eternal, and it does, in the beginning was the Word, and it's the imperfect form of I, Me, so there is no beginning point for the Lagos, and if the Word is eternally in the presence of the Father, and is as to His nature Deity, which is what's going to come up here in a second, by the way.

That's what we're getting. And the Word became flesh, then, yes, consubstantiality is the only possible conclusion of that, unless you abandon monotheism, which, of course, Mormonism has done. I'm not 100 %—my understanding is that—and I hesitate to say this, but the feeling I got from the small amount of information I was given about him is that he is in the Neo-Morm sphere of influence, and hence would not be an Orthodox Mormon, but would be one of the new, yeah, we know what Joseph Smith taught doesn't make a lick of sense, and so we're coming up with something new, but we want to still call ourselves Mormons movement, which is all the rage, I guess, on the campus of BYU.

They really need a Bruce McConkie right now. Can you imagine what Bruce McConkie would be doing right now if he all of a sudden came back from the dead? Oh my goodness, it would be pretty wild. Anyway, we press on.

Do you know what consubstantiality means? Yes. What does it mean?

That they are one in the same. Okay. What does that mean? I don't know. What do you mean? What does one in the same mean? That God is Jesus, Jesus is God.

Okay, so he's got an ignorant evangelical of some kind, maybe, online that can't define consubstantiality and falls into modalism pretty easily, pretty quickly. Not unusual at all. That kind of evangelical makes a good convert to whatever it is they would convert to, but that's what Mormonism has fed on up until recent years.

Still does, primarily.

Where is it saying that in John 1 .1? And by the way, you just committed modalism. Committed what? Modalism, which is a heresy. What is a heresy?

I always find it strange, maybe he's trying to do this, say this is what you guys say, but two things. Modalism was defined as a heresy, primarily in the Eastern Church before the Council of Nicaea, but from the Mormon perspective, there was no priesthood authority at that point anyways, and there was no true church.

So why would you accept that definition? And secondly, it is painfully obvious that at the time, in 1829, when Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon, he was a modalist. And only years later, as he became a polytheist, did he then edit the text of the Book of Mormon.

This is the key theological changes that have been made in the text of the Book of Mormon during Joseph Smith's own life, were removing plain assertions of modalism, making the father and the son the same person.

So Joseph Smith in 1829 thought he was a Trinitarian, but he held to modalistic concepts like many evangelicals, maybe even this guy who called in. But hey, I've said for decades that if I were to go into the vast majority of Bible-believing evangelical churches this coming Sunday and administer a quiz on the Doctrine of the Trinity, I think we'd have more than 50 of the people taking the quiz test out as modalists.

Not because they've chosen that, because they just don't know. They're just unaware of it. And sadly, because there are so few sermons delivered on the subject. So I'm taking longer.

In this than I should have. Sorry. People who profess to believe in the Trinity cannot describe the Trinity the way you just did. It's a heresy found in the historical Christianity. But where in John 1 does it teach that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are the same immaterial essence?

In saying that the Word became flesh. What is the Word? In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Yeah, so the Greek there, because there's no definite article in Part C, necessitates that the Word was divine, not God.

Okay, there's the thing.

That my brother at church can't hold him. In fact, let me, hold on a second.

Yeah, and I can give you a list of 45 plus Greek linguists and scholars that would actually agree.

With me. Okay, so there, that's the point. That was what my brother came to me and said, ran into this video, this guy is claiming that 45 Greek linguists agree with him that the Word was not God, the Word was divine.

Okay, so what's going on here? Well, lengthy discussions of this in the Forgotten Trinity, if you want to look it up. Lengthy discussions in the one debate we've done with the Jehovah's Witness, who, of course, no longer a Jehovah's Witness.

And by the way, did you see, I'm not sure if you saw this, somebody sent me some stuff where Stafford came out of the woods. Hadn't heard from him, his website hadn't been updated in years, and he came out of the woods, if I recall correctly, either to defend somebody, it had something to do with Sam Shimon.

I don't remember exactly what it was, but he was foul-mouthed. He was, he was foul-mouthed, Stafford was foul-mouthed in what he said, and I'm like, that makes you wonder what on earth has happened with Greg Stafford.

But anyway, I may have that saved someplace, but I get hit with so much stuff. By the way, I'm in full contact with the church in Aurora now. We got together, we're all, we're getting stuff scheduled, and we're gonna be over there.

It's a new small church, and so, hey, folks, just in passing, one of the things we do when we travel, like I will be starting in two weeks, we love to get into these smaller churches. And what I've loved over the years is I get to go visit a church, so people come, and they didn't know the church was there, and then I visit two years later, and there's two families that are part of the church because I had been there two years earlier.

When we can help grow a local church like that, that's the whole reason for being here. And so, you know, we're setting up what we're gonna do, probably on a Wednesday and a Sunday there, that week that I'm up in the Denver area.

So I did remember, well, actually, he reached back out to me again, and so it's like, okay, I'm gonna respond to this email now, and actually write it and hit send. That's the important part. Writing the email in your mind is not enough.

He's giving you a thumbs up. Getting a thumbs up in the, okay. We got things to do. Hey, you've got the, I mean, yes, we're set to do things up there, but we haven't discussed what yet, or things like that.

Good idea to do that. Yeah, you know, I'm easy. You know, I just, I show up and talk, and I've been doing this for four decades now, and so I got plenty to talk about. So, yeah. Anyway, I shouldn't have jumped ship there, but the point is here.

That's right. Greg Stafford got me off the trail here. I have a lengthy discussion of John 1 1 C in the Forgotten Trinity. We've covered it here on the program I don't know how many times over the years.

When he says that there are 45 Greek linguists, if what he means by that is that there are many people who recognize that it's not the lack of the article. He doesn't understand that part. Okay, he doesn't understand that if the that would make the two nominatives equal to each other.

It may make it equative. People who read stuff online about Greek, but who don't actually read Greek, make this kind of error all the time. I've told the story, I was in second or third year Greek, met with some pioneer Jehovah's Witnesses, a lady, two ladies actually, in someone's home, and this pioneer, pioneers are Jehovah's Witnesses.

I'm not sure if they've changed this since then, but back then pioneer Jehovah's Witnesses spent 30 hours a week going door-to-door. So they're almost full-time door-to-door guys, gals, both. So they're the really well-trained ones.

They're doing this all the time. That's their job. Not that they're paid to do it, but that's their job. Anyway, this lady gave me this pre-memorized speech about the significance of the lack of the definite article in John 1 .1 .c.

It was pre-memorized. It was at least two minutes long. Try memorizing something that takes you two minutes to quote it. It's a lot. What I did is I had my little, I still have this one, 26th edition of the Nessie Olin text.

It wasn't the UBS. The Nessie Olin has no English in it. And, well, there's an English introduction, but it's primarily Greek and German. So I had it with me, and so I handed it across to her, and I said, could you show me a Greek article?

She didn't know which way to hold it. She didn't know which, was that, is that what Greek looks like? She had no idea. But she had just given me a two-minute pre-memorized speech about the Greek article in John 1 .1 .c.

And so you run into this all the time. Now you might get it from AI or whatever. A lot of these groups will borrow from other groups. You know, all the anti-trinitarians will borrow from each other if it fits.

Hey, if it fits my heresy, I'll use it for my heresy type of thing. But if you actually read the language, you know, can open it up and says this and translate it into English, you understand that in this form where you have two nominatives, with this kind of verb, the language tells you which one's the subject and which one isn't, which is the predicate nominative, through the use or non-use of the article.

The issue in John 1 .1 .c, and this gets you into Greek syntax, and this is why a lot of guys don't understand it, is where you put the predicate nominative before or after the verb. That's where you get into Caldwell's rule and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

And that's where all the debate takes place. And that's where you could easily find 45 Greek linguists who would say that since it says kai theos ein halagos, rather than kai halagos ein theos, so theos there would be after the verb, whereas it appears before the verb in John 1 .1 .c, that the placement of the predicate nominative makes it, descriptive isn't the proper term, but it is saying that the word was divine, the word was deity.

Now it's not just divine as in lovely or something like that. It's the same term that is used in 1 .1 .a, so it's true deity. And in fact, the rest of the prologue is going to bear that out very, very clearly.

So yeah, it would be easy to find 45 Greek linguists who would agree with that, but not who would agree that that therefore means that this kid has a clue what he's talking about, because he doesn't. So you can just, I've taught Greek since 1985, I think, maybe 84.

That was 85, because Kelly started the class, she didn't get the finished class, she was one of my students. That's my wife, by the way, we've been married for, as of just a few days ago, more than 44 years.

She didn't get to finish because she got pregnant and had our first child who turned 40 just a while ago. Rich is sitting back there giving himself CPR, because he remembers when Josh was, you know, gay tall.

So anyway, but yeah, when you've taught it for 41 years now, something like that, you sort of recognize when someone is just blowing smoke or whether they can actually read it themselves. And anyone who's reading the language knows to look for the article when you have that form of the verb, when you have two nominatives, you recognize the nominatives, you know what's going on just by sight, and these kids don't know that.

So that was what I wanted to look at here. Let's play just a little bit more, but then I need to get back to the rest of the stuff.

Yeah, so John 1 says, in the beginning was the Word, so the Word is Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ was with the God, Ton Theon. Ton Theon is a definite article used to describe deity within the God. It's qualitative, okay?

And then Part C, when it says the Word was God, there is no definite article found to tie it to the God. So it's just saying, in the beginning was Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ was with the God, and Jesus was divine.

Okay, so he's just simply wrong, as we've just demonstrated. He doesn't know what he's talking about. He doesn't understand how the article functions in the Greek language. He doesn't understand pre-copulative, unorthodox predicates, nouns, and he just doesn't know what he's talking about.

He's read stuff online, and he's repeating it like he's an expert, and unfortunately the evangelical calling in is left going, oh, because evidently he doesn't go to a church where this type of thing is discussed.

Interestingly enough, my fellow elder Jeff Durbin is starting the Gospel of John next week, having just preached through Proverbs, and all the preachers are going, Proverbs? Yeah, that's not easy, believe you me.

Think about three years in Proverbs. So he's starting the Gospel of John, and what we're going to do is, Jeff's going to do John 1 -1 next Sunday, and the Sunday after, he's asked me to do a sermon on all of the ways people try to get around John 1 -1.

So our folks are going to get over two hours, because Jeff always goes 120, I go 55 to 105 lengthwise, so they'll get over two hours in-depth on John 1 -1, an apology to church, over the next couple weeks.

That's because our people go out with us to witness to Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, whatever it is, you know, go out to the campuses, we're everywhere, so we do that kind of stuff. And so that's what we'll be doing.

All right, let's get back. Oh, I already just minimized that, so I don't want to do that again. This should be it. There we go. All right. All right, get us back to speed here. I would, again, blow this up, but it puts it, for some dumb reason, into two columns.

All right, I think we got to chapter 9. Yeah, I remember chapter 8. I'll just touch on it here briefly. Again, let me make sure, you know, if you weren't with us last time, I can't give you the whole thing.

If you go to and look at the listing for the last dividing line, I know I sent the link. I haven't looked to see if it was inserted. I'm sure it was. I sent the link to the dividing line that we did with Jason Wallace on the subject of Cyril Lucaris, the reformed ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople.

And in that show, we talked about what happened to him and things like that. And the confession of Decythius, which we began looking at last week, is really a response to that. So this was an internal issue within Eastern Orthodoxy, which is a very embarrassing episode for them.

Most today will just accept the idea that either Lucaris was misrepresented, the Calvinists made this up, you know, whatever. They just try not to really deal with the reality that there was once a Calvinist patriarch in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

So the main reason for that being that Eastern Orthodoxy is inveterately opposed to, finds detestable. And I played for you some of the comments from the conversation Gavin Ortland had with Jonathan, where he said, yeah, I can't understand how anyone who actually believes what reformed people believe could ever be saved.

It just puts you outside the gospel. So it's not one view. It is absolutely detested by a large portion, not every, but a large portion of Eastern Orthodoxy. So what we're looking at is what caused the writing of the confession of Decythius, and this will allow us to get back into the confession.

And so again, what we're doing is we're looking at original historical materials in depth before we then make application, which is really what the internet needs right now. Because so much of what's called debate that's going on doesn't bother with the background stuff, doesn't, you know, just throw stuff out and just hope stuff sticks to the walls and, you know, hopes that memes will do it for you or something like that, rather than actually showing respect for the audience and saying, here's the fact.

Here's the documentation. Look it up for yourself. That's the important part. Okay, so chapter 8, this is from Cyril Lucaris. So again, the reformed patriarch. We believe our Lord Jesus Christ sits on the right hand of his father and there makes intercession for us, executing alone the office of a true and lawful high priest and mediator.

From there he cares for his people and governs his church, adorning and enriching her with many blessings. I just remembered, don't have time to do it today, I think it is in my bookmarks, so I should be able to remember next week, but a certain Eastern Orthodox fellow posted a fairly lengthy thing about me, saying that me and other low church evangelicals question the existence of the priesthood in the early church, and quotes me, there is no evidence of a sacramental priesthood in the apostolic period and in the first two centuries.

It really starts appearing with Cyprian. And he tries to refute that. And so I want to, and I will try to make note of this, again, lots of stuff going on, and now with a trip coming up pretty quick, I will try to, I don't have anybody to remind me of these things.

Okay, so Rich has got his stuff to do, I got my stuff to do, and so I will very much try to, next time, respond to that, put it up on the screen, because when Roman Catholics, and now with, when East Orthodox, so for example, there's a guy who wrote a book two years ago now, trying to argue that there is early evidence for iconography and iconodolia before the Council of Nicaea.

Their efforts actually end up proving how desperate they are. When they have to equivocate on every term, when they have to find, when they have to reach so far to try to make an application, they're actually proving our point for us, and that's definitely the case with that.