All the Dishes in the Kitchen Sink

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:34

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White, once again I'll have it on the screen, but we are doing

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The Dividing Line today live, and yes, you may be wondering what are you doing special today?

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Nothing in particular. I just decided to dress nicely for the program today, and for those of you outside the southwestern

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United States, this is called a bolo tie. Do you remember the name of the man who came into our living rooms almost every evening in the middle 1970s, always wearing a bolo tie?

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No, Walter Cronkite never wore a bolo tie. Bill Close. Bill Close.

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Walter Cronkite. Oh, that was a face plant. Sorry. Only people in Arizona have any idea what

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I'm talking about right now, but this was long before cable, and there were only a few television stations, and KOOL -TV

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Channel 10, which was the CBS affiliate back then, which on the hour had their station identification was

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Blessed is the Nation Whose God is the Lord, KOOL -TV Channel 10. Well, tells you how long ago that was.

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It was a long, long time ago. Anyways, Bill Close. This was back obviously when you wanted the guy who was reading the news to seem trustworthy, not like a model.

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Because Bill Close was an older guy, he wasn't pretty. He was serious as a heart attack, and I think it's how he died too, if I recall correctly, but he almost always had a bolo tie on.

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Who was his partner? Oh, a lady. Oh, no.

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Dave Nichols. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Dave Nichols. That's right. Yeah, yeah, that's right, he did.

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Anyways, bolo ties are, well, Rich can't complain.

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Well, first of all, Rich would like to have one, but he doesn't wear the pants in his family, and so that just tells you about that.

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Okay, now, hey. Someone told him that these are only for old men, and I went, what are we?

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I am being dragged down that milestone kicking and screaming, thank you very much. That doesn't matter. You can't kick and scream against time.

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That's just all there is to it. I can kick and scream. It doesn't work. Nope, doesn't do a thing about it.

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Doesn't do a thing about it. But bolo ties are a Southwestern thing. If I had one that had lots of copper, because part of your family was really into copper stuff and artsy stuff and things like that.

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This is Navajo. The Navajo make beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful things.

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You've seen a lot of the crosses that I wear are Navajo -made, American Indian -made.

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They're just incredible craftsmen, and so yeah, decided to do something different today, and Rich cannot complain because I'm not wearing a coogee, and as long as it's not a coogee, he has to be excited about it, right?

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Now, as a man who wears a cowboy hat to church, I have absolutely no problem with a bolo tie whatsoever.

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No, you can't. And as I told folks at G3, coming from the hometown of the world's oldest rodeo, a bolo tie fits right in.

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So yes, it is about time that you dress properly for the dividing line. Anyway, so if you're wondering, that's what it is.

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It's called a bolo tie, and I like it, and so here we are. Anyway, I forgot something last time, and I put a note right here on the screen.

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Someone just Facebook messaged me to remind me that I am not to forget this this time.

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Obviously, we all, by now, know. We got that weird delay going on in the thing.

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I don't know what it is, but yeah, okay, well. Anyway, everybody knows what happened

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Sunday evening with the Super Bowl.

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I was forced to find out that that debauchery had begun earlier, and you know how

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I was forced to find out? There was some AT &T Super Saturday thing that happened before the

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Super Bowl that was just as soft porn as the

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Super Bowl halftime thing was. And how do I know that? Because I was watching it? No, because Twitter kept throwing it at me.

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I mean, I'd be sitting here, and I have at home or here at the office. Now, at home, my monitors sit right here, so I've got two 27 -inch monitors next to my

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MacBook Pro. And here at the office, they're up above, so they're together up above it.

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Anyway, and I'd be sitting here working on something, and I'd look up at Twitter, and here's running video of some...

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I'm sure she's some superstar. I don't have a clue who she is. She's wearing a gold aluminum foil one -piece bathing suit type thing that leaves nothing to the imagination, prancing around, twerking, doing all this stuff, and it's this

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AT &T thing. Bring the mouse over, click, hide this ad. They don't even give you the proper, you know, why do you not want to see his ad?

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Because it's stinking offensive. No, that's not one of the choices. Too personal,

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I think, is as close as you can get. So I'm gone. Half an hour later, it's back three times.

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I had to tell Twitter, I'm not interested in seeing this. So the point is, we got an eyeful of a number of, well, interestingly enough, 40 -plus -year -old women doing their twerking and everything else, and completely losing all self -respect in front of millions and millions of people.

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And so I saw a discussion of it, and I quoted it.

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I got permission, by the way. I specifically contacted the author, got permission, because I wanted to make another point that hopefully will be helpful to everybody.

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It's going to make a lot of folks really angry, but that's life.

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Let me just read a portion of it. I posted it on Facebook. I did not post it on the blog. I posted it on Facebook. And I basically, without Googling, who said this?

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Let me just read the first three paragraphs. No, I didn't watch Super Bowl halftime yesterday. Actually, I didn't watch the match itself, as I'm not into watching sports, but that's another issue.

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By the way, the clue that only a couple people caught was in that first line. Match. Who calls a football game a match?

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Well, you'll find out in a second. But one can't help read about the antics in today's news feed. Truly, we live in disturbing times.

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What would have been an act that 100 or even 50 years ago perverted men would pay to see in some small dark club in a seedy part of town is now mainstream entertainment that is lapped up by hundreds of millions of people on prime time.

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Fathers and mothers watch with their children as semi -naked bodies dance, shake, intertwine, twerk, jiggle, and perform all types of indecent moves in what even a few decades ago would have been deemed semi -pornographic.

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And those who merely point this out are labeled as backward prudes. I am fully aware this post of mine will be mocked and taken as Exhibit A for those who love to make fun of the religious folks.

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But that much I understand. People who promote virtue have always been mocked by people of I'll read one more.

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of family and society and opens up a Pandora's box of issues that all of us realize. Double question mark.

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It was a great commentary. I edited nothing except I took out one quote because that would have made it too obvious.

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Contacted the author and said, would you mind if I posted this? And then asked folks who wrote this.

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The answers were very, very interesting. We've got

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Rod Dreher. We had a bunch of Does He Live in Moscow? Doug Wilson, Dougie Doug, Vody, Jeff Durbin, Robert Gagnon, Cy Ten Bruggenkate, Summer Jaeger.

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Even Summer got in there. Franklin Graham, Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro, John Cooper.

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There were two people. One was a cheater. There were two people who at least were moved out of the main spectrum.

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One lady, Roberta, she caught that word match and said, that's not an

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American. American would not call a football game a match. It's got to be someone who is from overseas.

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And she's right, even though actually he's born in the US, but he spent a lot of time overseas.

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And in countries where you'd have things like cricket and crickets are matches.

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So those are those are big matches, stuff like that. And then, of course, Ijaz Akhmed knew who it was, but that wasn't fair.

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But he didn't he didn't reveal it. Sheikh Yasir Khadhi.

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Sheikh Yasir Khadhi, Dr. Khadhi, with whom I did the dialogues two years ago and the world fell apart.

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And there are still people that I haven't even spoken to since then who just think that I'm the world's worst person on the planet.

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Yes, a Muslim imam wrote those words. And so I when

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I read them, I follow Dr. Khadhi and I read them and I wrote to him and said, would you mind if I posted that?

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He had had one quote from the Hadith in the original, just one two line quote.

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I took that out because that would have made it obvious. I think there's a line of Arabic at the end, but I didn't include that either.

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But why in the world do that? Real simple. This is a matter that we would, as Christians, put under the category of common grace, that we would recognize as a

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Romans two, uh, written upon the heart of man, general revelation, reality.

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And what that means is people who cannot see what is going on in Western society, you have to put out a lot of effort to suppress the natural recognition that we have, that what was done there was demeaning to those women, demeaning to the dancers behind them, really demeaning to the men as well, the way that they were dressed and the way that they acted, demeaning to the children, demeaning to the people in the stadium, the football event and all of Western culture as a whole.

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And if you can't see that, then there has been a tremendous investment of energy into dulling your moral senses so much so that Dr.

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Cotty was right. 150 years ago, 100 years ago, you had to go to some seedy part of the town to watch somebody do stuff like that and had to pay to do it and then slink out and hope no one noticed who you were.

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This kind of common sense points to the reality that there is, that general revelation works.

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It gets through. That we are creating the image of God. Muslims are creating the image of God just as we are creating the image of God.

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And Buddhists and Hindus and atheists all made image of God. That's where the connection point is, image of God.

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But what also struck me was one of the things that I've never gotten over from two years ago.

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And when Dr. Cotty and I do more dialogues and we were trying to do so, we're trying to set things up, both of us spend way too much time in the cabin of an airplane.

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It makes it very difficult. Aside from just finding locations that will allow the two of us to talk, that's considered a bad thing to do.

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But one of the things that struck me so strongly from two years ago were the number of people who did not, number of Christians, he didn't get much pushback from the

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Muslim side, but I'm the one that got the avalanche. And there were people who literally would say, we have absolutely nothing in common with Muslims.

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And I'm like, what? No, we have absolutely nothing in common with Muslims.

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Okay. You mean we're not all made in the image of God? Well, I mean, they worship a different God.

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Okay. I've made the case pretty plainly that even though the

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Muslim claim is that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the

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God that we all worship, the serious Muslim is going to say, but if they understand the centrality of the doctrine of Trinity, if they even understand the doctrine of Trinity, that Trinitarian worship is shirk.

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And if Trinitarian worship is shirk, then we're not worshiping the same God. So we recognize that, but that doesn't change the fact that, for example, we have to deal with the reality that the

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Quran mentions the Torah and the Injil, the law and the gospel. There is some kind of necessary relationship, according to Surah 5,

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Surah Tamayrah, between the

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Al -Kitab, the people, the book, the Al -Injil, the people, the gospel, and the transmission and preservation of Allah's message with the final message being given to Muhammad in the

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Quran. That's a part of the Quranic revelation, so you have to deal with it on that level. You have to recognize that that's the claim.

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So we both claim to be monotheists, and if you don't accept that as a reality, then you can never have a discussion in any meaningful fashion, and most of the people we're pushing back don't want to have a discussion in a meaningful fashion.

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That's the problem. You can never have a meaningful discussion with a

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Muslim as to what the real nature of our differences are, and that means you're assuming they have an accurate knowledge of what it is we believe.

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They don't. Almost none of them do. I've posted videos correcting

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Dr. Khadi. He doesn't claim to be an expert in Christianity, so he wouldn't have any problem with that, but the point is, if you cannot say, here are areas of agreement, and therefore, in light of those, say, so this is what our real disagreements are.

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If you simply say, we disagree about everything, then you can't have a meaningful conversation.

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We do not disagree that God has spoken. We believe in divine revelation. We do not disagree that God has a specific law and intent and purpose for how mankind is to behave, but for me, one of the most important things that I think we can be discussing with our

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Muslim friends right now is why it is that we respond differently to the current cultural revolution that we are both facing at the same time in the same place.

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So, here's an awesome opportunity for meaningful discussion, opportunity to get to the gospel, explain the gospel, the lordship of Christ, and do so in light of real differences, but if you won't admit the similarities, you can't ever get to the differences.

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Not in any meaningful fashion. And so, when I saw this,

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I'm sitting here going, okay, um, there's a lot in the

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Quran that demonstrates the impact that, for example, the law of Moses had, the impact of having a creator, a single creator, not multiple creators, not polytheism, etc.,

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etc. And so, that provides a foundation upon which we can then say, okay, now let's, well, upon which we can do what

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I did when I debated in the mosque in South Africa with Shabir Ali to talk about how can we know the one true

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God in light of our own sin. And there, I had the opportunity to talk about the need for the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ.

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And right there, with Muslims sitting not 10 feet away from me, on the floor,

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I'm standing in front of the Qibla, where the imam leads the prayers, and I'm talking about the necessity of the imputed righteousness of Christ, because I can look him right in the eye and say, you know your heart,

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I know my heart. And if God is truly holy, then nothing

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I could ever do could ever live up to his standard. I need a perfect righteousness.

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And that righteousness is found in Jesus Christ. So, there's the issue.

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And so, Dr. Khadi can see exactly what we see.

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So, recognizing that, how can we then move from there to a discussion of where we differ as to what our solutions would have to be?

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Because between Islam and Christianity, there is a fundamental anthropological difference.

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Fundamental anthropological difference. That is, we have very different doctrines of man, and a very different doctrine of sin.

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But there's a starting point. There's someone made in the image of God that can recognize the obvious reality that Shakira and JLo were not honoring themselves, they were not honoring their bodies, they were not honoring their creator, they were cheapening themselves, and everyone who was watching to do what they did.

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That's not empowering. I can't believe the number of people. You can tell when someone has decided to go hard left out of evangelicalism, when right now, they're talking about how empowering that kind of stuff is.

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And you know who you are. You're out there. But anyway, the point is, there's a place where we can now go, we agree.

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So, let's talk about application and where we go from here. Why is it that we would, where do we end up diverging on this issue, and why?

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And that's going to take you where? Straight to the gospel. Straight to the gospel. So, I found it very, very interesting, their responses.

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I'm not sure what Doug Wilson will think about this. I'm sure someone will let him know.

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If not, I'll let him know that he was the primary suspect as to who wrote those paragraphs, and that it was actually

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Dr. Yasir Qadhi. But I sort of expected that there would be that kind of,

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I expect an interesting pushback on this. Yes? I had made the remark, even from a secular point of view, with what's currently the big topic du jour, the

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Me Too movement. I don't know where that can possibly plug in to the Me Too movement. Frankly, it is a production that Harvey Weinstein would have been proud of.

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Oh, yes. Oh, yes. And so, the hypocrisy meter is off the charts. Dr. Qadhi absolutely nailed this thing from head to toe, and I'm told that apparently this is not unusual for these ladies, especially, is it

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Shakira? Honest, I'll, okay, I'm gonna, J -Lo is only seven years younger than I am.

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Yeah. So, I was a little more familiar with her. I had heard the name Shakira. I had never seen her.

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I don't know anything about her. I've never seen her and now I know why. But this is apparently commonplace in this production, and I'm just going, this is, you know, you want a video to put right next to the dictionary, next to the word objectification, that's the video to put there.

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I know. And the irony is, I saw this segment about, I guess, their daughters came up on stage and they showed a picture,

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I saw a picture of how the daughters were dressed, and I'm thinking to myself, now, I don't understand. Why weren't the daughters dressed like the mothers?

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That is the set. Isn't that sad? Because, you know, if what you're doing is fine, why don't you have the daughters up there performing in the same manner?

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You don't. No, no. Not at all. The hypocrisy is off the charts. The hypocrisy is definitely off the charts. But of course, you can't talk about hypocrisy today, because now what you're going to hear is a bunch of old white men putting down Latino women who are empowering themselves.

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That's all you get. There's no substance, there's no thought, it's just how it is.

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Okay, lots of things to get to today. Let me just make a brief comment, because Tom Buck is causing problems on Twitter again today, he always does.

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He evidently is going back and forth with a professor at Southeastern on the subject of Martin Luther King and his views on the

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Resurrection. And I have done a fair amount of reading on this subject in the past.

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My current understanding is that Dr. King's theological education was in a classically leftist liberal vein.

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And that even within a year or two of his death, in at least one interview, he had specifically reaffirmed his commitment to the worldview of that classically liberal education.

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And had eschewed any commitment to what he would call a fundamentalist understanding.

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I think a lot of people struggle with this, because I do have an unusual background.

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I think most people know that I did my first master's degree through Fuller Theological Seminary. And that was not because I sat there and looked at all the theological seminaries and went, oh,

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I'd like to go to Fuller. It was real simple. It was the only seminary in town.

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That's all there was to it. And I graduated in 1985 from Grand Canyon College at the time, became

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Grand Canyon University now. And I knew

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I needed to go to seminary. I had thought about going to Golden Gate. In fact, went up and visited. And then we found out we were having our first child and we were poor as church mice, as it was.

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And so that closed that door. So there was only one way of doing this. And there was one seminary in the valley.

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I don't think Phoenix started before I graduated. So 85, 89,

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I'm doing classes through Fuller here in Phoenix. They set up an extension here in Phoenix.

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They'd fly professors in. And they also used a number of professors from Grand Canyon. It was really nice. I was able to continue.

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In fact, I'm having dinner night with my Greek professor of seven years. Three years at Grand Canyon and four years at Fuller.

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Because he taught for both. And so Fuller is nowhere near.

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Even back then, now, way to the left of me. But it was way to the left of me in the 1980s as well, just not as far as it is now.

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And I've said very often, I got a good education there. And that's where I learned to appreciate the fact that you can learn from liberals.

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You just have to learn to be discerning. The liberals frequently are very good.

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Liberals are frequently better at the facts than conservatives are. They just stink at the application.

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I was starting to learn presuppositional thought. And in fact, my apologetics professor at Fuller was a

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Presbyterian presuppositionalist. And that's where I got introduced to presuppositionalism, was in that class.

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In fact, we did, do you remember this? We did a radio program with him. This would have been right around when you first started getting involved with this, actually.

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I remember what the studio looked like, but I don't remember which station it was.

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I don't even remember right now. We actually made it available for a while. But I had him on the radio program to present presuppositional apologetics, somewhere around 1987, 88, maybe as late as 89, but in that time frame.

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Yeah. So when I first started listening to this guy, I had no clue what he was talking about, because he's talking presuppositions.

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And all I knew about was Norman Geisler, I didn't, I was only... And Joshua Dow.

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And Joshua Dow, right. Anyway, so I went to Fuller.

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So I know how liberalism works, but see, I was already conservative when

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I went there. So I had a foundation. I saw many people who came into Fuller, didn't have a foundation, just got washed away, just destroyed.

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They got a master's of divinity and confusion. They came in much more firmly understanding what they believed than when they left.

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It's not unusual when you go to certain schools.

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And that was even the case back then. But I got a good education, learned a lot. But a lot of what

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I learned was from fighting with certain of my professors, not in a disrespectful, fundy manner, either.

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I mean, well, I won't, I'm not going to revisit all that right now. Point is,

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I know how liberals speak and how they think. And I'm thankful that I had that opportunity.

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And so when you listen to what Martin Luther King wrote and said on this subject, for those of us who have that background, this is not difficult to understand.

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And you must understand the classical liberalism uses our language, but since it starts at a completely different foundation, they'll talk about resurrection, everything else, they don't mean what we mean.

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If you want the clearest example of this, I linked in responding to the

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Southeastern seminary professor, I linked to the debate that Dr.

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Renahan and I did with John Dominick Crossan and the late Marcus Borg on board ship during an

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Alaskan cruise a number of years ago. And we could not have been clearer in our opening statements as to what we were saying and affirming the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave, that anastasis means anastasis.

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It means that which died, coming to life again. This was what caused the offense and Mars Hill and everything else. We were brutally clear.

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But if you watch the debate, it is not till the cross examination. And if I recall, it was

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John Dominick Crossan. Because Borg had a conservative background, so I think he knew. Crossan wasn't an apostate, isn't an apostate, because he never made that profession.

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Borg did and went the other direction. But at one point during the cross examination,

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John Dominick Crossan, you sort of see him go and he goes, are you saying that you think

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Jesus's body came out of the tomb? And we're all like, success, we got through.

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But we had already done our opening statements. We had already done rebuttals. We were in the cross examination.

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For someone who has an IQ 15 points or more above mine easily, maybe more than that, goes, are you saying that Jesus's body actually came out, that he was made alive again?

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And he was shocked. He was stunned. That is how deep, how deeply seated liberal tradition is and how it reinterprets everything.

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They were able to listen to everything we're saying and interpret it, interpret our words within their worldview to try to make sense of what we were saying.

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Until we just finally pushed hard enough that it broke through and the tradition couldn't reinterpret it any longer.

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And it's like, wait a minute, you're saying something completely different. Yeah, we are. So, there is clearly a desperate desire on the part of many people, especially woke evangelicals, to, can we turn this into a verb, orthodoxize

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Martin Luther King and to get him away from, so I have seen, there are simply men that you will talk to, don't even try reasoning with them.

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It does, there's no reason involved in this. It's just, nope.

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He preached it. He believed it. I don't care what he wrote in his papers. I don't care what he said in interviews.

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I can interpret his words in the way I'd like to hear them. Therefore, that's it.

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And if you say anything else, you're a racist. And that's it. There's no further discussion, nothing more to say.

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I know men like that. When you have to stretch things that far.

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So, interestingly enough, I wrote to, now why did this not come up?

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Here we go. Yeah. So I wrote to this professor that this professor had said something along the lines of, you know, he confessed believing all these things.

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And he said, I certainly wouldn't say some of the things he said, but he does say some things that indicate he seemingly understood the basic essential tenets of Christianity.

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Well, I know a lot of people who seemingly understand the basic essential tenets of Christianity. I wouldn't call them

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Christians. And so my response was, so did James Cone, did he not?

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Was James Cone a Christian? And his response was, did he believe that he was a sinner whose righteous acts could not make him right with God?

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And that the only way he could be right with God is by repenting of his sins and believing in Jesus as Savior and Lord and in Jesus as atoning life and death?

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So I assume, and I'm going to be covering so many subjects today, write these down.

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Start down with Cottie and then Martin Luther King, or I'm not going to remember them.

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And I'm not going to remember to remind you if I don't do it right now. So here's my problem with this response.

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It assumes meanings for each one of these words that James Cone did not give to those words.

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So did he believe he was a sinner in what way? He believed he was a sinner in a different way than white people are sinners.

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So the categories of oppression totally changed the very meaning of sinner in the

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Bible. Righteous acts, how do you define righteous acts? Well, in regards to the struggle for black freedom.

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That's not how the Bible defines them. Make him right with God. Well, my response to this was, he wrote, when whites undergo the true experience of conversion, wherein they die to whiteness, this is

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I'm quoting Cone, when whites undergo the true experience of conversion, wherein they die to whiteness and are reborn anew in order to struggle against white oppression and for the liberation of the oppressed, there is a place for them in the black struggle of freedom.

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Here, reconciliation becomes God's gift of blackness through the oppressed of the land.

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And then I said elsewhere, he wrote that whites can only be reconciled to God through their black brothers.

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So you tell me, sir, same semantic domain is your question or one completely other? To which he responded just an hour ago, and I just now saw this.

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That is clearly a wrong view of salvation. So if that sums up his final view of salvation, then

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I think you have your answer. Why not just come straight out? I guess leaving the door there that, well, maybe his final view of salvation was different.

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I see absolutely no evidence whatsoever from any source, given that Dr.

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Cone completed his teaching time at Union Theological Seminary, never repudiated his books.

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They're still for sale. They were for sale when he passed away, that that was his view.

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And so what does this illustrate? It illustrates that James Cone could quote from Karl Barth, and Karl Barth could say a lot of good things, but it's the meaning that you assign to the words.

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It's the context that gives the meaning. This is why evangelicals can sit down for an hour with a pair of Mormon missionaries and talk with them and come away with the assumption that we have a common faith, even though they're using completely different language.

39:37

The words are the same, the meaning is completely different. And the question becomes, are we being honest with ourselves?

39:45

When we read Martin Luther King, when you read his published works, when you read him saying in interviews toward the end of his life that he rejects fundamentalism and their understanding, and that he has not changed his views as far as worldview implications are concerned, when you understand how liberals use language, it becomes obvious that you can find all sorts of stuff that you can read in your context and say, well, it must have meant this.

40:16

But given the context of his own background, that's not what he would have meant, and that's not what his fellow classmates would have understood him to be saying, or his fellow travelers in that particular theological perspective.

40:31

I get the desperate desire, but it almost seems to me, I could be wrong if I may ask this question,

40:41

I'm not gonna do it right now in the air, but of the professor at Southeastern. So if that sums up his final view of salvation, then

40:49

I think you have your answer. It says that is clearly a wrong view of salvation. It almost sounds to me like he'd never seen this before.

40:58

And I just wonder how many people who are even commenting on James Cone have read

41:03

James Cone? It would only take one book. It really would. But read like three, and it becomes really clear.

41:20

But anyways, so yeah, Tom is out there causing problems.

41:28

Good old Tom. You used to just call him the troublemaker from Texas, but now he's too well known.

41:35

He's too big for his overalls. Now that he's doing his thing.

41:41

Okay, since we're in this field, before I go to something else, totally changing direction. This ain't gonna be only an hour, by the way, so just so you're aware.

41:51

If I'm wearing my new bolo tie, we need to go for at least 90 minutes.

41:56

Because I mean, people are probably going, wow, that's a really nice bolo tie. It is. It is.

42:04

Very briefly, do you remember my Uncle Don? Uncle Don and Esther?

42:11

They had an Indian jewelry thing going. And he gave me some stuff.

42:17

And so I remember as a teen, seeing the inlay work, the hand done inlay work that Navajos would do.

42:28

It's beautiful. I almost googled it.

42:35

I wonder if there is a Christian Navajo or Christian Indian Jewelry Association.

42:40

I'd love to find out. Because... I don't know. You know that my folks sold all that stuff in their art gallery back in the 70s, and that was a really big thing.

42:51

And the thing that I'm a little puzzled about is I'm hearing that there are no more turquoise mines.

42:57

There are no more turquoise mines? That's what I'm hearing. And so that was a major part of that.

43:04

So if you've got turquoise, it's coming back as a thing from what

43:09

I'm hearing, but I'm also hearing there are no more turquoise mines. Well, if the price gets high enough, they'll start turquoise mines.

43:18

They will. But yeah, we had all kinds of different folks that would come in from the reservations to sell us their jewelry.

43:27

And their skill is tremendous. It's beautiful stuff. I will not apologize for absolutely loving...

43:34

And the pottery. I mean, that's Navajo horsehair pottery right back up.

43:41

There we go. There we go. That's one of my

43:47

Navajo pieces right there. And frequently when I'll drive up to Colorado, there's those roadside...

43:56

Right in Monument Valley, there's one where there's like seven or eight that's set up that are really nice. So anyway, so since we're here, before I do a

44:07

William Lane Craig video, that'll get things going. We do have a blank screen up there.

44:16

Okay, good. I mean, I haven't maximized it yet, but I will when I go to that.

44:25

Yesterday, I invented a phrase and I think it is a really good phrase because I think it is a great improvement over the phrase we've been using.

44:42

So Jonathan Merritt tweeted this yesterday morning.

44:48

Uh, if you're bothered by the house speaker tearing a piece of paper, but not bothered by the president tearing apart immigrant families and caging kids, your moral compass needs a replacement battery.

45:03

Now, first of all, compasses don't need batteries. That's what makes them a compass.

45:09

So there's that issue, but leave that aside. This, what, what is this called today?

45:15

This is called virtue signaling, virtue signaling. This is where you let the whole world know how wonderfully virtuous you are because you are with them.

45:29

You are with today's culture. You are right there, even though, you know, yeah,

45:37

I claim to be a Christian, but I'm with you on this stuff because all she did just tear a piece of paper.

45:44

I mean, just because she's the speaker of the house, you know. So that's called virtue signaling, but signaling, that's what you do.

45:56

What you should do if you're a nice person, when you change lanes, when you turn a corner and it requires just moving a little handle up and down, you know, that's all it requires.

46:11

So what do you do when you've got someone who uses their self -proclaimed

46:18

Christianity, but just is constantly going, oh, the culture's right.

46:25

Oh, the culture's right. Oh yes. Oh yeah. It gets really annoying.

46:31

And so as I was writing my response, I came up with a new phrase and here's the phrase.

46:37

Oh, please, Jonathan, you may well be the king of virtue signalers from the left these days. That house speaker supports infanticide, the profaning of marriage, the destruction of true gender and the utter corruption of our children.

46:50

And all you can do is virtue twerk. Think on that one a second.

46:59

I think that's a thousand times better because it actually communicates what these people are doing.

47:07

They're virtue twerking. Now, I'm not going to try to show you what that looks like, but if you saw the

47:16

AT &T thing, if you saw the Super Bowl thing, almost anytime, anywhere you see this going on, it's not pretty, but it's real common and everybody knows what it is.

47:35

And that's exactly what these people are doing. They're not just simply going, oh, look at me.

47:40

They're going, I'm going to join you. I'm going to do what you do. Virtue twerking.

47:46

So whenever you see Jonathan Merritt and all those folks, almost all of whom are former conservatives, you notice that?

47:57

Almost all of them are former conservatives. They're raised in a conservative context, probably raised without meaningful worldview foundation.

48:08

And look, can I tell you straightforward here? Without regeneration, there's going to be no meaningful worldview foundation.

48:18

I mean, you can lay it out there and you can explain how everything fits together and by common grace, someone go, yeah.

48:25

I mean, that's why you have that book, The Madness of Crowds with a gay atheist writing it, recognizing the insanity of the current trajectory of Western culture.

48:43

A gay atheist recognized this is not sustainable. He doesn't have the foundation in a worldview to even begin to understand what can be done about it.

48:54

Changing hearts. The last chapter was sort of depressing because it's like, well, what can we do? Well, not much.

49:00

Because there is no solution from that perspective. But the point is you can lay it out and go, hey, here's how it all works.

49:09

But you can't change hearts. And almost all these virtue twerkers are individuals who are just, they want so desperately for all their fellow travelers on the road away from a meaningful commitment to biblical truth to rejoice with them in their walking away.

49:37

And then the people they're walking toward who see them coming from that Christian side of things.

49:43

Oh, no, no, no, no. We're not with them. No, no. We'll show you. We'll show you.

49:49

We'll virtue twerk for you. That's what they're doing. You watch. That's what they're doing. That's what they're doing.

49:55

I thought it was very, very communicative. Now, saw this.

50:05

Literally, I turned off the alarm on the phone. I found out one of my alarms has a really cool secondary feature to it.

50:15

And so I was using it last night. It was really neat and worked real well. I slept really well last night.

50:23

I need to sleep really well again tonight because tomorrow is the first 100 mile bike ride of the 2020 season.

50:33

So that'll take hopefully under six hours, depending on how much climbing I do. I'll get a number of books done in the process.

50:40

Not writing, I wish, but listening to. But anyhow, one of the first things

50:47

I saw on my phone was a tweet from Phil Johnson. And he, there,

50:56

I've maximized it. And he linked to this. And so I watched it.

51:02

I mean, I literally had not gotten out of bed yet. Um, but I watched this and I went, uh, yep.

51:09

Yep. Now one more time for the newbies in the audience. This is a

51:15

William Lane Craig video. The William Lane Craig isn't, isn't it's a reasonable faith video. It's really well done.

51:24

Um, we've got to start doing videos like this eventually, I guess, because unfortunately this is how you communicate to the current generation.

51:34

And I think it's appropriate to do that. It's one of those graphics type things with moving words and people seem to really like that.

51:43

I, I get it. It's well done. Um, I am not kicking

51:51

William Lane Craig out of the kingdom, but I am very concerned about what you win them with is what you win them to.

52:07

The message you win people with can, if it, if it is not as high as what you want to win them to, there's going to be a problem.

52:19

And so I want to play it. We may end up getting dinged by YouTube for daring to do that.

52:27

This is called fair use folks. We're criticizing it, but you got to see it first, be able to criticize it.

52:34

I want you to listen and see how theology is absolutely inextricable from apologetics.

52:48

You, you, you may pretend you can separate the two, but if your theology is determined by what you're trying to do, by your apologetic, it's backwards.

53:02

Your, your apologetic must be determined by your theology. And so listen to the theology.

53:09

It's a tough question. It's about what about those who have not heard and how you answer this will be based upon where you start.

53:19

There's absolutely no question about it. So listen, and then we will pick it up from there.

53:29

Early Christians proclaimed that Jesus is the only way of salvation, the only way to forgiveness and eternal life, the only way to God.

53:39

In our day and age, however, many consider this to be unacceptable and deeply offensive.

53:45

But why isn't it possible that Jesus is the only way? Many people object saying, if Jesus is the only way, then what about people who believe in him?

53:55

Never heard of him. They don't have a chance to be saved, but they do.

54:01

God is not unfair. The Bible says that God wants all persons to be saved.

54:08

Those who have never heard of Christ will not be judged on the basis of what they don't know. They'll be judged on the basis of what they do know.

54:16

Hold on a second. Hold on a second. Rich, rich. Is that what

54:23

I think it is? That's the Christus. That's the Christus, isn't it?

54:35

That's what you would be greeted with when you walked into the visitor center of the LDS church in Salt Lake City at Temple Square.

54:43

I could be wrong, but man, that looks like it. That just struck me.

54:49

I had seen this before. I'm sorry. That was an interruption on my part. In fact,

54:55

I need to go back because this is an important part. Notice in the background here, what's the quotation here?

55:03

It's 1 Timothy 2, then down here is John 3, 16. We'll talk about that because it's not like we haven't talked about that before.

55:16

All persons to be saved. Those who have never heard of Christ will not be judged on the basis of what they don't know.

55:23

They'll be judged on the basis of what they do know. So what do people who have never heard of Christ know?

55:31

There are two truths God has revealed to everyone everywhere. First, he exists.

55:37

We all know this by observing the natural world around us. And second, there's a moral law.

55:44

We all know this by experiencing our conscience within us. Every one of us has a moral sense of right and wrong.

55:52

So those who never hear of Christ can still respond to the light they have been given in nature and conscience.

56:00

On the basis of their knowledge of God and the moral law, they can turn to God for forgiveness and new life.

56:08

Just like people who lived prior to the time of Christ, they can be saved through Christ, even though they haven't heard of Christ.

56:16

But what about people who don't respond to God's self -revelation in nature and conscience? Granted, they freely separate themselves from God by rejecting his self -revelation to them, and God won't force them to believe if they don't want to.

56:31

But maybe they would have believed in Christ if only they had heard about him. Are they just victims of bad luck, born at the wrong time and place in history?

56:41

No, for according to the Bible, the times and places that people are born is not the result of accident.

56:48

Rather, God decides where and when each person will live. So it's possible that God has so ordered the world that anyone who would believe in Christ if he heard about him is created at a time and a place in history where he does hear about him.

57:04

Thus, no one is lost through historical or geographical accident. Anyone who wants or even would want to be saved will be saved.

57:15

Our eternal destiny truly lies in our own hands. So, how about you?

57:23

God made every nation of men that they should inhabit the whole earth, and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.

57:32

God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.

57:45

Okay. So, there you go. So much there.

57:55

What you just heard was an... It's hard to avoid that at least part of it could be interpreted as sheer inclusivism, that everyone has the ability to not only respond to the light of revelation.

58:16

So there's no deadness in sin. There's no original sin. There is no federal headship.

58:23

There is no incapacity. Romans 8, John 6, gone. Out the door.

58:29

They just aren't there. But it almost sounded like that if they respond to whatever light they have, that's the same thing as you're pointing to Jesus.

58:43

So they could be saved without faith in Christ, which would mean, and this has been pointed out by many people long before me, there's absolutely no reason for the missionary movement.

58:55

In fact, missionary movement's a bad thing. Because if you then proclaim

59:01

Christ to them, now that's the only way they can be saved. They could have been saved by just simply a general positive response to general revelation in their conscience.

59:12

But once you proclaim Jesus, now the guy believed in Jesus enough, you know, that adds an extra thing. And so, yeah, shouldn't be doing this missionary thing.

59:20

That has been one of the objections that's been raised to inclusivism for a long, long time.

59:26

But then what you heard was full on Molinism, was a

59:34

Molinistic presentation that does very much track with William Lane Craig's stuff, where you get this whole discussion of, well, maybe everyone who would have ever believed in Jesus are the ones who get to be born in the places where they will hear about Jesus.

59:59

And so the ones who don't hear about Jesus wouldn't have believed anyway, which is

01:00:06

Molinism. This is middle knowledge. This is the idea that God can know what someone will do in any given circumstance apart from his sovereign decree.

01:00:22

So the problem with Molinism is that it objectifies human individuals and assigns to them characteristics apart from God's sovereign decree to make them as they are.

01:00:41

Okay? This is fundamentally, if you're familiar with the theology, this is the grounding objection.

01:00:50

I don't believe it's ever been answered, and it is, I believe, a fatal objection because what middle knowledge requires, if it's going to be middle knowledge, if it's going to be middle knowledge, that means it has to be between God's natural knowledge and free knowledge, the knowledge

01:01:05

God has of himself, knowledge of what God is going to do in creation, his sovereign decree to create, how he's going to create, how he orders things.

01:01:12

And so the Molinist has this middle knowledge, and he uses that middle knowledge, and he can run all these possible worlds.

01:01:19

And so if I put everybody in this situation, this is how many people get saved. And if I put them in this situation, this is how many people get saved.

01:01:25

He can run billions and billions of possible worlds and put different people in different places at different times and know what they're going to do without decreeing who they are.

01:01:33

And that's the problem. Middle knowledge tells them who they are. So if you've got John Brown, John Brown, John Brown number, whatever, because there's been lots of John Browns, they were very different from one another.

01:01:44

But this particular John Brown, if he lives in this century, will do these things. If he lives in this, if he speaks this language, he'll do this.

01:01:52

And all of that is not from God's decree. It originates outside of God. It does not originate within God.

01:01:59

It is not his will that creates this knowledge. Because if it is, that's just one of the other, it's not middle knowledge anymore.

01:02:09

And so what you were hearing is this idea that Dr.

01:02:15

Craig has promoted, that maybe the maximum number of people who could be saved will be saved.

01:02:21

He has said, God cannot save everybody. There is no possible world where everyone would be saved. Couldn't do it.

01:02:28

It's beyond his capacity. Because of what? Middle knowledge. And middle knowledge doesn't come from his divine decree.

01:02:35

So as to use his terminology, got to deal with the, you've got to play the cards you've been dealt.

01:02:41

And middle knowledge deals him a certain set of cards, and then he makes the best result come out of that.

01:02:48

And so this idea is, well, you know, maybe that's how this works. That's the idea.

01:02:55

So why don't we put this in a sub -window and keep it up there, and I'll just make comments as we run through it.

01:03:02

It's only like three minutes long. It's not over three minutes and 18 seconds long. So let's see how this works.

01:03:10

Early Christians proclaimed that Jesus is the only way of salvation, the only way to forgiveness and eternal life, the only way to God.

01:03:20

In our day and age, however, many consider this to be unacceptable. Now, early

01:03:26

Christians did exactly that. And if you then present an idea that says that outside of faith in Christ, you can have forgiveness, how does that fit with the proclamation of the early

01:03:43

Christians? I don't follow that, but again, you know, this is the kind of video thing that really communicates with people today.

01:03:54

It's well done. Nice and short, because attention spans just aren't that long anymore.

01:04:01

Deeply offensive, but why? Isn't it possible that Jesus is the only way?

01:04:08

Many people object, saying, if Jesus is the only way, then what about people who've never heard of him?

01:04:15

They don't have a chance to be saved. Okay, so please notice the theology behind that statement.

01:04:24

They don't have a chance to be saved. The theology that lies behind this is that God owes people chances to be saved.

01:04:36

That is the essence of what is being communicated, and that's going to, obviously, have a tremendous impact upon how you believe.

01:04:46

Grace is not a chance. Grace is a saving power. God does not owe anyone anything.

01:04:56

And if you took seriously the fall of man and Adam, then you would recognize where the problem here is, but the vast majority of people do not take seriously the fall of man and Adam, nor Adam's federal headship.

01:05:10

Do. God is not unfair. The Bible says that God wants all persons to be saved.

01:05:17

God is not unfair. So you want to be careful about the, you know, God is fair.

01:05:25

God is not fair. He's just. Fairness and justice are not the same thing. Because, let me just back this up.

01:05:33

See this little screen right there? So that's fairness. You do not want fairness.

01:05:40

We have tried to point out over and over, you do not want fairness.

01:05:45

You want mercy and grace. You want mercy and grace. God is just.

01:05:54

No one will receive injustice. Everyone will receive either justice or mercy and grace.

01:06:01

You don't want fairness. It's a fundamental misunderstanding to say, well, you know, we want fairness.

01:06:08

No, no, you don't. The Bible says that God wants all persons to be saved.

01:06:14

So again, as I pointed out before, that's from 1 Timothy chapter two. You read what 1

01:06:20

Timothy chapter two is talking about. He's talking about all kinds of persons, those who are in authority, those who are not. There is only one mediator between God and man.

01:06:26

Jesus Christ is a mediator between these men that Paul is talking about. He is a mediator between all kinds of men, men from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.

01:06:34

Otherwise, we have Jesus attempting to mediate for all people individually, which results in dissonance in the

01:06:40

Godhead. This is not what Paul's teaching was. This is not what Paul's teaching the atonement was. We've gone over this many, many times as well.

01:06:47

Those who have never heard of Christ will not be judged on the basis of what they don't know. You need to pull up the

01:06:54

Christus. You need to pull up the Christus. We've got to find out.

01:07:02

It could be that the Christus was based upon somebody else's work, but I always thought it was specifically

01:07:10

LDS. Yeah, that may be.

01:07:19

The Presbyterians are going, second commandment violation, second commandment violation. And we're sitting there trying to go, is that from, is that, you know, and didn't they have, they used to have one in the visitor's center in Mesa.

01:07:36

They'll be judged on the base. I bumped something, but we got to get a close -up of the

01:07:44

Christus and see if that's what it is. Okay.

01:07:49

Anyways, I just disrupted my own review. Sorry. Says that God wants all persons to be saved.

01:07:55

Those who have never heard of Christ will not be judged on the basis of what they don't know. They'll be judged on the basis of what they do know.

01:08:03

Okay. So they'll be judged on the basis of what they do know. And the biblical teaching regarding that is that that leads to universal condemnation.

01:08:16

In other words, outside of the saving grace of God in Jesus Christ, no one, knowing, knowing general revelation and knowing their own hearts, will ever be saved.

01:08:33

Because we love our sin. We love our rebellion. We want to, we want to remain in that. That's, no man has the capacity in and of himself.

01:08:43

There is a sub -biblical anthropology going on in the presentation that is being made.

01:08:51

So, what do people who have never heard of Christ know? There are two truths

01:08:57

God has revealed to everyone, everywhere. Now this is interesting because the Molinist actually agrees with the presuppositionalist that general revelation gets through.

01:09:09

Because the presuppositionalist says, yes, men know that God exists, and they suppress that knowledge.

01:09:16

That is the universal response of man outside of grace. They suppress that knowledge.

01:09:23

But because of the satirological weakness that underlies this presentation, you don't get that suppression.

01:09:31

We have the free will, the autonomy, to not suppress is what lies behind this.

01:09:37

But the revelation gets through. First, he exists. We all know this by observing the natural world around us.

01:09:45

And second, there's a moral law. We all know this by experiencing our conscience.

01:09:50

Now notice what's in the background. It is interesting, if you look at the graphics go by pretty quickly. But what's in the background is from Romans chapter two.

01:09:58

And so it's talking about that, that revelation that is written upon the conscience.

01:10:16

So, they can respond. The Bible says they can't. The Bible specifically says they can't.

01:10:24

They are not able. John 6, Romans 8. The leopard that is, you know, can change, as much change as spots, as a sinner who is accustomed to sin can do what's right.

01:10:36

It can say it, doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. This is what happens when you have a philosophy that overrides your theology and goes from there.

01:10:49

What? You were lifting it. Okay, so what I found is that the—and

01:10:56

I thought you had told me this originally, but I know that the Mormons actually stole that.

01:11:02

Well, I don't remember. That was so—the original was called the

01:11:08

Christus Consolator, as a 19th century Carrara marble statue of the resurrected

01:11:15

Jesus by Bartel Thorvaldsen, and has been located in the

01:11:21

Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark's Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen, Denmark.

01:11:28

And so, that was the source of this. So, it's ironic, though, when you Google Christus statue, all kinds of LDS listings come up, where you can get little ones, you can get—and it's all—but this is the source.

01:11:44

But yeah, it is the same one in the LDS church, but they very well could have taken the picture in Denmark.

01:11:50

I don't know. Yeah, well, okay, there's our information on that. All right, so we continue.

01:11:57

Nature and conscience, on the basis of their knowledge of God and the moral law, they can turn to God for forgiveness and new life.

01:12:05

Okay, can turn to God for forgiveness and new—how do they know this? Are you saying that the gospel is in the creation, that it's in the conscience?

01:12:16

How can they know? The natural knowledge of God simply tells us we should honor

01:12:21

Him as God and give thanks, not that He's going to be forgiving. So, how do you know this?

01:12:28

It's in Christ that we know that God will be forgiving. So, how does this—I don't know, it's not what the apostles taught, but—

01:12:39

Just like people who lived prior to the time of Christ, they can be saved through Christ, even though they haven't heard of Christ.

01:12:46

So, that's the argument of inclusivism. Now, obviously, the people that were saved before Christ were saved because God revealed

01:12:56

His truth to them and gave them the promise. Abraham was saved by faith in the promise of God, but it still required direct revelation from God to bring that about.

01:13:09

This is being used to say, yeah, you don't need to know about Christ. You can just have this vague religious sense or something.

01:13:18

But see, that doesn't fit with the Molinism. That's why, up to this point, I'm going, okay, go in that direction, and whoa, then it's all of a sudden, it's weird.

01:13:27

But what about people who don't respond to God's self -revelation in nature and conscience? Granted, they freely separate themselves from God by rejecting

01:13:36

His self -revelation to them. By rejecting His self -revelation to—is that the same thing as suppression?

01:13:42

But everybody does that. That's the universal condition. That is rebellion, but it's not like they're—see, what's being presented here is, well, but they were moral, neutral agents.

01:13:53

They didn't really fall in Adam. You know, they weren't born sinners under the wrath of God, even though the penalty of sin is death, and everybody dies.

01:14:03

Paul would just be going, what? Was I not clear? Do I need to try Romans again?

01:14:09

And God won't force them to believe if they don't want to, but maybe they would have.

01:14:14

Big, big God hand. Squish, squish. Oh, yeah, certainly the

01:14:24

Mormons would be going, yeah, yeah, I like this. Yeah, it's

01:14:30

Satan's idea. That's right. Everybody get forced into heaven thing. Yeah, that's true. But maybe they would have believed in Christ if only they had heard about him.

01:14:41

But maybe they would have believed in Christ if only they had heard about him. Now, this is where the middle knowledge stuff and Molinism starts coming in.

01:14:51

Are they just victims of bad luck, born at the wrong time and place in history? No, for according to the

01:14:58

Bible, the times and places that people are born is not the result of accident. Rather, God decides where and when each person will live.

01:15:07

Now, this is the weirdness of Molinism, is that Molinism has absolutely specific providence, meticulous providence, because God determines everything that's going to happen.

01:15:28

But he does so based upon middle knowledge. So it's not to his glory, it's not his free will, it's not his autonomous will.

01:15:37

It is based upon the cards he's been dealt, middle knowledge, I run the worlds, and bingo, this is the best

01:15:45

I can do. And what immediately came up in my mind when I saw that is, oh wait a minute, does

01:15:50

God really—is he really the one that decides? Well, at the end, it's all in our—

01:15:56

He just simply picked the best— World. World. He's not really the one that decided this, it's just how it spun out.

01:16:06

He decided—well, the only freedom left to God, at least in William Lane Craig's, as far as I can understand it, is, does he decide to save the maximum number of people, or bring the maximum amount of good?

01:16:28

Because the two may not be the same thing. So he gets to decide what his overarching parameters are for examining possible worlds.

01:16:39

That's where his freedom is. But then which world he ends up creating is dependent upon that decision, and then everything that happens within it is freely done by us, but not freely done by us.

01:16:58

Which— Because middle knowledge says exactly what we're going to do. Which turns him into a great big cosmic statistician.

01:17:04

Yes. Oh, big time. Oh, big time. Yeah. Oh yeah. So it's possible that God has so ordered the world that anyone who—

01:17:12

You know it's a William Lane Craig video when you hear, it's possible. It's possible that maybe it could have been this way.

01:17:21

And that's what you're getting here. I need to roll this back so you can get it. So it's possible that God has so ordered the world that anyone who would believe in Christ, if he heard about him, is created at a time and a place in history where he does hear about him.

01:17:37

Thus, no one is lost through historical or geographical accident. So you go from, it's possible, to a statement of fact.

01:17:47

No one is lost. How do you go from possible to that? It's possible that maybe

01:17:52

God did it this way. Therefore, no one. If you're just going to give a possibility, you can't then give an absolute, hey, this is the way it has to be as a result of that.

01:18:05

That's just not going to work. But this is this idea that, well,

01:18:13

God knows who would have believed had they heard. And so maybe he actuates a world where all those who would do hear.

01:18:23

But that's not what the inclusivistic thing beforehand about general revelation and conscience was saying.

01:18:30

So it's almost like, let's cover all of our possible bases. Every possible base that affirms what?

01:18:37

Human autonomy. That's what all this is about. Have you heard anything about God's sovereign will in any of this?

01:18:43

No, no. You have God decrees where we're going to be born based on what? In Mullinism, it's based upon the parameters provided by middle knowledge that does not come from God's decree.

01:18:56

So anyone who wants or even would want to be saved will be saved.

01:19:03

Our eternal destiny truly lies in our own hands. So how about you?

01:19:11

God made every nation of men that they should inhabit the whole earth, and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.

01:19:20

God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.

01:19:29

So again, Act 17, dealing with idolaters, dealing with people from all over the

01:19:36

Greek and Roman Empire who have all of their gods and they're worshipping all their gods.

01:19:43

And what does Paul do? He uses what they have and then proclaims to them the resurrection, at which point they shut him down.

01:19:52

But some people believed. That's where the quotation is being derived from here in Act 17.

01:20:03

Well, where did the... Okay, I missed it. There it is. I'm sorry. Our eternal destiny truly lies in our own hands.

01:20:14

There you go. There is...

01:20:20

Is this not up? Yeah, you got to put that up so people can see it. Um, yeah.

01:20:28

Our eternal destiny truly lies in our own hands. Um, what do you say?

01:20:37

Um, I'm awful glad that my eternal destiny lies in the hands of Christ and the

01:20:44

Father. John chapter 6. Um, John chapter 10. My sheep, hear my voice, my hand,

01:20:52

God's hand can't be lost, et cetera, et cetera. But man -centeredness, um, that's what you get.

01:21:01

So yeah, this is the first thing I saw this morning. And, um, that was pretty, um, again, very, very well made.

01:21:10

Very, very well made. Uh, no complaints about that at all. Uh, but there you go.

01:21:16

All right. A few more minutes and let's get a... Poor Jay. We only do we only do a few seconds, go off for 10 minutes, and at this point he's going to be bald by the time we get done with this response.

01:21:33

He might be under that cap. I can't tell that. Um, let's just say the production value of the

01:21:39

William Lane Craig video is significantly higher than the Jay Dyer video. That's just how it works.

01:21:45

But, um, we, uh, have been listening to Jay Dyer talking about, uh, 10 reasons he's not a

01:21:50

Protestant. And the first one is solo scriptura. We've been looking at that. I meant to get to some yesterday. Uh, let's get to at least a few minutes, uh, well, it's not going to be a few minutes of his, but a few minutes response as we continue.

01:22:00

If you recall, uh, Jay Dyer is a former, uh, reformed individual, became

01:22:06

Roman Catholic, now Eastern Orthodox. Um, and I believe the last thing that we specifically had dealt with was, uh, the first Thessalonians citation and what is actually going on there and that there is no external oral, um, uh, tradition that contains something other than, uh, what you have in the written, uh, scriptures, but it's commonly cited by both

01:22:32

Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox in, uh, seeking to say otherwise. When he tells

01:22:38

Timothy to pass on all the things that you heard from me, there are multiple then injunctions to pass on the oral teachings.

01:22:48

Yes. Uh, and that is a, one of the key, uh, texts in regards to what

01:22:53

Christian education is to be. Uh, Timothy is to pass on these things to, uh, men that he knows that he's examined.

01:23:00

This is within the local church. Um, this is not an indication that what

01:23:05

Timothy is going to be passing on to them is something other than what is found in scripture. In other words, the assumption that is being made is that there is

01:23:13

Theanostos revelation. That then becomes the foundation of, well, when

01:23:23

Roman Catholics use this argument, that becomes the foundation of dogmas as wildly ahistorical as papal infallibility or the bodily assumption.

01:23:34

Uh, with Eastern Orthodoxy, it's not so much, uh, the content as liturgy, prayers, forms of worship that become the mechanism that give rise to Eastern Orthodox worship,

01:23:50

I guess. I mean, it's not that they don't have other doctrines that are unbiblical, but again,

01:23:56

Orthodoxy doesn't have the dogmatic infrastructure that Roman Catholicism has because of the

01:24:07

Eastern mindset versus the Western mindset and where truth is to be located, observed, and how it's communicated.

01:24:16

Keep telling people that's why this is such a, a tough, uh, topic to address.

01:24:23

The apostles, as well as the written texts. Some of those written texts we no longer have, they pass away into history.

01:24:30

Letters that Paul wrote that we, again, don't have access to anymore. Which means that in God's providence, they were not intended to be scripture.

01:24:37

Um, I don't know how else you could come to any other conclusion other than the assumption that, well, as long as an apostle is writing it, that makes it automatically something that God has intended for the church to possess.

01:24:48

So why, why bring this up? Um, there were, um, in all probability, other letters that the apostle wrote, but that were not, uh, kept by the church and viewed by the church as, uh, scripture.

01:25:04

Um, what does that have to do with solo scriptura? I don't know. But again, if we think about the fact that for many, many, many centuries during the time of the patriarchs, right?

01:25:15

Noah, all the way to Abraham, up to Moses, we don't know what that textual history was, if it was even written down.

01:25:23

Okay. Once again, solo scriptura is the assertion that the scriptures are the sole and fallible rule of faith of the church.

01:25:33

Solo scriptura is not a principle that you attempt to cram into history during periods of revelation.

01:25:39

We're talking, we're answering a simple question. What does the church possess that is theanoustos?

01:25:47

If it is theanoustos, by its very nature, it is of a superior authority to that which is not theanoustos.

01:25:56

Since man's traditions are not theanoustos, then they have to be subject to that which is theanoustos.

01:26:05

And this is what Jesus taught us in both Matthew and Mark, when he taught us to examine the traditions that were delivered to us, even traditions, as we see in Matthew 15, uh, even traditions that the

01:26:17

Jews claimed to be divine in origin, to be, have found their origin in God himself.

01:26:25

We are to test those things by the written revelation in the graphe, in the scriptures.

01:26:33

And so what, uh, Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox will do is they will say, well, but that couldn't have worked before the

01:26:42

New Testament was written. Well, we're not talking, we're not living before the New Testament was written. Well, what about that?

01:26:47

Well, we're not living then. Sola Scriptura is a claim that after the apostles die, what is the sole infallible rule of faith of the church?

01:26:57

Not what was, was it when the apostles were alive, when prophets were alive, when scripture was being written. Now, scripture is not being written now.

01:27:04

So now, today, and this is where the battle must be fought because it's, especially in Rome, but in Orthodoxy as well, you have unbiblical offices of authority that are being pressed upon Christians.

01:27:21

And so they can't allow those offices to be examined on a biblical basis because there's no biblical basis for them.

01:27:31

And so what they do is they will transport you back into a period of time of revelation and say, oh,

01:27:38

Sola Scriptura doesn't work here. We're not in a period of revelation. Revelation has finished. God has given us everything we need to know for life and godliness in what he has revealed in and through Jesus Christ.

01:27:50

And so the question is today in 2020, what do we have that is theanustas?

01:27:59

And the answer that we normally get from folks like this is, well, you can't know apart from us.

01:28:06

That was not the answer that was given originally. But all of that, keep your eye on the ball.

01:28:16

When listening, especially to people who have left and gone away, keep your eye on the ball because they have now accepted another source of authority and they don't want to have to defend that source of authority.

01:28:33

They will put you on your back foot and demand that you defend your source of authority, but not on the same foundation that they're going to assert their own.

01:28:46

And so it's, when you're talking about ultimate authorities, it's always a situation with these guys where they draw a line and then they just sort of wipe that out with their foot and draw a little bit farther back.

01:28:56

You push them a little bit farther, a little bit farther, and they can't answer the authority question for themselves in the way they're demanding that you do.

01:29:04

Unfortunately, most Bible -believing Christians have not dealt with this issue and hence don't know how to recognize this and are subjects being caught up in this kind of thinking.

01:29:17

So we will, we'll just continue this. I mean, it's the same stuff all the time.

01:29:23

So we'll just continue responding to it as time allows as we go on.

01:29:29

So hopefully the program has been useful to you today. We covered a lot of topics. I hope

01:29:34

Rich remembered to write them down because I don't remember what all of them were and I have to write it up. So thanks for watching the program today.

01:29:41

Who knows? You know, who knows what? I'll take it.

01:29:52

Oh, you've got to get me a hat. I thought he was volunteering to get me the hat. You know what? We're going to have five hats arrive in the mail next week.