Remembering LDS Outreach, Cyprian to the Martyrs in the Mines, Further Ken Wilson Exa

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Green welcome to the dividing line. It's a Tuesday I think it's sort of hard to remember what day of the week it is right now to be perfectly honest with you

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Especially for me Because Tuesday Thursday was just sort of helped me to figure out what day of the week it was now

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It's just all Monday through Friday. It's just all dividing line all the time. So yeah, that's hard I've had a card here that I I wanted to read to you for a while and I'm I was just looking at it

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This is from a young fellow by the name of Josh Hatch, and I'm not sure if he makes cards or just what.

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I don't know, but it's got a nice cross on the front. It says, Hello, Dr. White.

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I wanted to send a little note and thank you for your continued work in preaching the biblical word. About three years ago,

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God began to radically change my life after serving an LDS mission. Within the last couple of months,

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I have watched every debate you ever did with anyone LDS. Well, we don't have since I...

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Many of the debates that I actually had with the 5 ,000 of you guys, LDS missionaries, that I had over the years would not have happened if Jeff Durbin had been standing nearby or more like Marcus with a camera.

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So there were a lot of those debates that will only be seen on the big screen in heaven, shall we say.

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But anyway, I have watched every debate you ever did with anyone LDS. I have hoped that someday God will bring my family out of the

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LDS church, and that I can share the gospel with them as you do with boldness and complete Christ -centered love.

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Thank you for being a positive influence in my life. May God bless you, Josh Hatch. Josh, I can't tell you what that kind of thing means.

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That's why we do the things we do. And it got me thinking because I started...

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You start getting... Josh, you're young. You won't understand this. But you get to my age, you start reminiscing.

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The wife and I actually... My wife hasn't lost her job, but she's on a month -long unpaid leave.

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And so we've actually had more time. And of course, our grandkids are here now. So where is she now?

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She's with the grandkids. Where else? That's where Nani needs to be, is with the grandkids.

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But we have had more time to sit...

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I guess it's sit on the front porch. It ain't a porch. But you sit out front. And did you know that you can see the

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White Tank Mountains now? Almost every single day. I'm not saying that's a good thing, because that means a lot of people are hurting as a result.

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But you try to find the positive out of it. And every time

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I turn west on almost any road, look, there are mountains out there.

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In other words, you never see them. Except after a real nice rainstorm for a day or two, maybe you could.

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In fact, I may put everything aside tonight.

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No manikin presentation. Nothing. And go by the storage room and pull my good scope out.

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I haven't set up a scope in a year. And... What?

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Oh, there's still light. But it's not nearly as bad when you don't have all the dust to reflect it.

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So the viewing is much better even in the city right now. And so I might see what there is to see right now.

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It's been a long time. And looking at the heavens is a wonderful thing.

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But anyways, I started reminiscing. And so the wife and I have been sitting out there talking about, well, once you get to my age,

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I'm not going to mention her age, but once you get to my age, there's lots of stuff to think back upon. And so when

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I was looking at the card again, I ran into the room right before it got started, and I grabbed my triples.

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And you'll notice there's two sizes. I was noticing there's not nearly as much in the way of sizes when

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I was at Deseret Book up there in Salt Lake. I'm not sure they have the... I didn't see the little mini ones.

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This, I could carry in a pocket. And it's a triple. Book of Mormon, Dr. Carlos Pereira Price. And you'll see it's got tabs in it.

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Up front, purchased May 18th, 1984, at the

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Deseret Bookstore in Salt Lake City on my second mission trip. So 1984,

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I bought this one up there. And so this would be the one. Now, even with these, this is tough.

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I'd have to have the proper... But for example, if you look at the...

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Here, if you look at the Book of Abraham section here, you see all the writing down below?

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Down here is blank space, but you'll notice mine's filled with writing. And that's actually pencil, which is still readable, amazingly.

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But what I have there is the... And later on in the other facsimiles...

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I'm not sure what I've got on the pages here. But the other facsimiles as well in the

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Book of Abraham, I've got stuff written in here as to what... Like figure number six that Smith says is

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Olimla, a slave belonging to the prince, is actually the god

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Anubis, and who Isis is, and who Maat is, and the real interpretation of the

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Egyptian images I have all written in there. And unless I am forgetting something,

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I have a feeling... Yeah, yeah, yeah. That when you go to section 84 of the

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Doctrine and Covenants, you'll notice I marked when it allegedly was given.

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September 22nd, 23rd, 1832. And then you start seeing all this orange marking in section 84.

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There's some yellow in there. There's some more orange in here. And what

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I had done is I had marked this stuff in this little edition.

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And this is the one that... In fact, I remember... Mike Balavo and I were in Motel 6.

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And I had these... I think I still have these, believe it or not, from 1984.

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The non -bleed -through color markers. Orange, yellow, green, and blue were the four colors that you could buy.

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You bought them at Berean Christian Bookstore at 35th Avenue in Camelback. Had them with me, bought this, and we're sitting in our luxurious suite at Motel 6 after eating at Taco Time.

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And I'm feverishly marking stuff in here. And this was what

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I had in my hand when we went to the...

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There's section 114 all marked up with dates and stuff like that in there. This is what I had in my hand when we went into the

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Missionary Training Center in Provo. And this is what I was showing the missionaries. When President Bishop ushered us out and had us kicked off campus by the

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BYU police many, many years ago. This is the one that I had. And I think

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I had... I'm sure I had my... They both have imprints on them, I assure you. I didn't get that at the oldest bookstore.

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I had to explain it to probably somebody at Berean Christian Bookstore why they were putting my name on something like that.

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But yeah, this was put into many... Many...

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There's the yellow. Many a pocket for Salt Lake City, Mesa, so on and so forth.

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That was the carry one. And then we had the reading one. And Rich was mentioning that he ran and got his triple when

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I started talking about stuff. And of course, yeah, here's false prophecies, changes in the

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Book of Mormon, all stuff written. I don't... It just simply says property of me, but it doesn't have much.

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But I opened it up, and lo and behold, the same stuff that Rich was playing with, that he has in his, again, the font on this stuff is absurdly small.

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Absolutely absurdly small. But I've got most of the King Follett funeral discourse in here.

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I do remember making this one especially. These are quotes from Bruce R.

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McConkie on the topic of justification. This was specifically for one general conference in Salt Lake City.

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We were passing out a particular tract that had to do with justification. And so here's

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Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, page 408. What then is law of justification?

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It is simply this. All covenants, contracts, bonds, obligations, oaths, vows, performances, connections, associations, or expectations in which men must abide to be saved and exalted must be entered into and performed in righteousness so that the

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Holy Spirit can justify the candidate for salvation in what has been done. That's nowhere near what biblical justification means by a long shot.

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And all of these quotes just demonstrate that Mormonism really has no connection, at least historically didn't have any connection to the biblical concept of justification at all.

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And it just was not a big issue for them at all. But, of course, there's the translation of the facsimiles in the book of Abraham.

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I am Jot B. in the house of the Ben -Ben in Heliopolis, so exalted and glorious. I am a copulating bull without equal.

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I am that mighty God in the house of the Ben -Ben in Heliopolis, that mighty God. Just slightly different.

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I think the word the appears in both, but that's about the left middle.

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O God of the sleeping ones and the time of the creation, O mighty God, Lord of heaven and earth, the netherworld and his great waters, grant that the soul of Osiris Shishank may live.

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May this tomb never be desecrated. May this soul and its possessor never be desecrated in the netherworlds, etc., etc.

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And that's from Michael Dennis Rhodes. That's from BYU Studies. That's why I liked using that particular translation because, actually, it's a

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Mormon that translated that. But, yeah, all this stuff was sitting in there. Osiris shall be conveyed in the great pool of cons, and likewise

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Osiris who are justified, born a tiki bat justified, after his arms have been placed on his heart, and the breathing permit which

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Isis made and has writing on his inside and outside has been wrapped in royal linen and placed on his left arm near his heart. The rest of his mummy bandages should be wrapped over it.

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The man for whom this book has been copied will breathe forever and ever as the Boz of the gods do. Klaus Baer, Dialogue, Autumn 1968.

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So much we can say about the book of Abraham and all that fun stuff there.

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Yes? Yeah, well, I don't have mine here, but, yeah, we had these mini -carriers.

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So let me... Wait a minute, what happened there? You went to the wrong camera. Yeah, I did. Go back to that.

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Hit that one and then hit that one. There we go. So since he's showing off his, these little pouches you could get at Deseret along with your triple, so...

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I don't think they have them anymore. No, no, they haven't sold these guys, this size for a very long time, as I recall.

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That's sad. So there's mine. Now, I did have mine engraved at the LDS bookstore. You did?

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I did. Braver than me. And then in here is also, this is, look at how big that thing is.

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Oh, yeah, sure. So that was, I didn't want to do a quad because it was too much to carry around.

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Oh, yeah, quads are huge. And I think the quads were just coming out for the first time when I got this set. I liked this better, so I did that.

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But what I did was I also, there was room in here to have, here's my little pocket

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King James. Right. And do you have Articles of Faith? Articles of Faith, very good.

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James Talmadge. Okay, that was in there. And then, of course, as you're showing off the little laminates that you did way back when,

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I've got mine right here that I'd have handy. I had some cardboard notes that I could use along the way that you had made up.

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You made all these up. And all kinds of little quote sections you wanted to refer to.

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Oh, yeah, yeah. I had this one, and it's like, what is this?

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Can you see it? No. The Prophet's Letter to Governor Carlin on the

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John C. Bennett Affairs. Oh. Oops! That was, wow. You were carrying that around?

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I was carrying that around. I don't think I've ever had a conversation about that with somebody on the side.

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Oh, hey, I wanted to be prepared for everything. I guess you were. Well, no, what I did is

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I carried a camera bag. I started carrying a camera bag for a while. Yeah. And literally,

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I'd have Mormon doctrine and teachings of Prophet Joseph Smith and a little library there.

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And again, folks, the reason we did this is we didn't have smartphones back then. You didn't have something like this to be able to put all that kind of stuff on.

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And sometimes people would challenge what you had to say, and it was good to be able to back it up.

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It was good to be able to back it up. Check this out. Check this out. All of these things actually fit in here.

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It's a little snug, but it actually fit. And that's what I carried with me. And then

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I did my tracks somewhere. Backpacks were real handy. Those are the days.

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And it is pretty amazing to be sitting here going, despite the pandemic panic and stuff, all those pageants are going away anyways.

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That's what's truly amazing to me is they've stopped all that stuff.

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And I think about how they were so aggressive. That was the main way they got contacts for the whole year was through the

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Easter pageant here in the local Arizona Tempe Mission. And I don't know what they're doing now.

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I really don't. But, yeah, it was neat to go back and to...

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Those were big investments for us back then. I mean, you've got to understand, when this ministry started, we had nothing.

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And I've told the story about when I bought the Journal of Discourses, the 26 volumes in the case -bound paperback set of the

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Journal of Discourses, as a college student, and literally bungee -corded it to the back of my motorcycle on my way back home from class, living in the converted garage at my parents' house, having just gotten married at 19 years of age, and how we used those for years.

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It was $69 .99 to buy that set. And I don't know what it would cost now.

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But then they went out of print for a while after that. And, man, did we use... That was a great investment.

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But I was scared to tell the young wife that I had just spent a third of two weeks of our income on...

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You can't eat the Journal of Discourses. They're not very tasty. So...

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And then to get these things. But, yeah, we've still got them. That was purchased in 1984.

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So we're talking 36 years ago. Got that. Still have it.

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It's not in bad shape. I take care of my stuff. I really do. But, yeah, it just got me thinking about all those years and, honestly, getting a little sad that we didn't get to do what we were planning on doing in April.

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Let's hope and pray we get a chance to do that again. I think a lot has fundamentally changed in how a lot of things are going to be done in the future.

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But we will see. We will see about all of that stuff. So a little bit of reminiscing there as we get started.

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Now, let's see if I can find this here. Where did it go? There it is.

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I said that I would read this for you. This could technically be a part of story time with Uncle Jimmy, but it doesn't really fit into a funny parameter.

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So we'll just leave that at there. But I said yesterday,

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I said, please make a note so I would remember to read this epistle.

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Let me talk to you a little bit about a great Christian man that most of you don't know anything about.

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That's not meant to be insulting. It's just the reality. I think if we were to take a poll of professing

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Christians in the world, the number who would know of, have read anything by, and be able to place in the proper century,

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Cyprian of Carthage would be very small. Very small percentage. And that is to our detriment.

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I'm very glad that the new president of Phoenix Seminary has written an entire book on Cyprian.

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In fact, I attended a lecture he gave on Cyprian along with Peter Gurry was doing some stuff on CBGM.

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So it's good that there are people who know. Obviously historians know, but I'm really of the opinion here at the

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Dividing Lines Seminary. We're going to have to do something with that. That all of us as believers would be enriched if we were to know better those in whom the

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Holy Spirit has worked in the past. It does not mean you exalt them. I don't agree with everything

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Cyprian said. But unlike so many people, and I have especially in mind there people like Dave Hunt, who was so vitriolic and nasty toward people of the past, because that's the fundamentalist mindset.

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The fundamentalist mindset is I will only honor those in the past who look like me and dressed like me.

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Which is why fundamentalist church history pretty much ends with the last century.

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Because you're not going to find much before then of anybody who looked like a modern -day fundamentalist.

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So, when you look back at those who came before us, and if you don't know what their context was, it's very easy to anachronistically judge them upon what they should have known rather than what they actually did know.

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At the same time, I'll be honest with you, I think a lot of the

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Christians of the past would have good reason to look at us with raised eyebrows.

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How much in love we are with the things of the world. How attached we are to the things of this life.

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And I think they could say some pretty strong things to us. And if you don't know about them, you can never have that dialogue.

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You can never even think those thoughts. One of the beautiful things about church history is that it's the conflicts in our own experiences, our current experience, and what's going on with a particular virus and things like that.

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We get so focused upon the minutia of right now that having any means of having perspective and stepping back and seeing things in the long term is just lost.

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Church history is the one time when you can actually hold a mirror up to yourself in a certain sense and have some perspective.

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Cyprian really helps us a lot in this way. I could not help but thinking...

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I mentioned... What was it? About... I'm not sure it was a full two years yet.

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But not the last time. I popped up to Inverness just a couple months ago. Thankfully you still had the ability to do that kind of thing.

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But about a year before that or so, I was up there and I team -taught a class on Cyprian with my dear friend

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Nick Needham, who is a church historian par excellence. I think that's one of the reasons he and I get along.

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We can throw out all sorts of strange references to obscure weirdness in church history.

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And the other one goes, Ah! Everybody else in the restaurant is looking at us like, Who are those people?

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Anyway, he and I team -taught a class on Cyprian.

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It was one of the most enjoyable things I've ever done. I think he enjoyed it as well. The students seemed to really enjoy the interplay between the two of us.

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And I have threatened to have Nick on, and we could do that again, but for you all. And maybe we'll really need to...

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It's not like Nick has a lot to be doing right now. So we might be able to ask him to join us in that way.

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But... Looking at Cyprian reminded me of one particular thing.

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Cyprian was only a Christian for 12 years. Maybe 11, depending on where you put the conversions.

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Conversion dates are always notoriously difficult. But just over a decade, Cyprian was a

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Christian. And I could not help but think of a modern -day

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Christian that reminds me in many ways of Cyprian. Not in his theology, writing books, but in having been such a shining, brief star.

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A meteorite flashing across the sky for just a brief period of time.

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And one of my heroes of the faith, Keith Green, who was a Christian for only 7 years before his tragic death.

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Cyprian did not die a natural death. Just some background here.

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Cyprian was probably born around the year 200. He was a wealthy

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Roman. Well -trained, well -educated. He speaks in one place of the wearing of purple clothes.

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Now, purple linen, silks, and things like this in purple were extremely expensive and were a sign of high social standing.

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And Cyprian knew what it was to wear these things. He was a wealthy man.

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He had position and status in the Roman community. There in Carthage.

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Now, of course, he had traveled. And, of course, the history of the Roman -Carthage wars is fascinating.

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I really want to spend some more time on that because I've not read as deeply into that period as I would like.

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But when he is converted, he's really converted.

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And, you know, in our day, when someone's converted, it's like, well, give them a few years to get started, you know?

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And you've got the... There's not much expected. Life expectancy wasn't as long back then.

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There were diseases and plagues. And people died much younger, on average, than they do today.

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And you didn't have as much time. Cyprian used his physical wealth to bless the church.

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Not by building buildings. You were taking care of people. He was converted right at the time when the greatest period of persecution was beginning in the history of the church.

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I've mentioned it many times before, but you need to be aware of the fact that from Nero on, you have intermittent periods and localized periods of persecution of the

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Christian church. Then, starting in the middle of the 3rd century, you have empire -wide, imperially mandated persecution of Christians that lasts for over six decades until the peace of the church in 313.

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Cyprian is converted right at the beginning of this time period. Just before it starts.

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And in those days, in light of the social situation and how many

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Christians would be not of the higher classes, maybe of lower classes, whatever it might be, his ability at rhetoric, speaking, reading, led very quickly to his elevation to the position of bishop there in Carthage, which was a very important position.

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When that first wave of persecution hit, he chose to follow

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Jesus' advice and he left Carthage and he sought to govern the church by epistle from hiding.

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And, of course, and I wasn't intending to get into all this, but as a background, it is important.

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My lectures on church history are available online. They're available with sermon audio at the Phoenix Foreign Baptist Church website.

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They're part of the sermon audio thing. So there's a whole lesson on all of this. One of the greatest forces that tore at the very fabric of the ancient church was how to deal with apostasy.

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You had people who had been beaten, tortured, imprisoned. They were missing an eye, a limb.

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Their bodies were scarred with lashes and they had not denied

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Christ. They were called confessors and martyrs.

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Martyr doesn't mean you just have to die. Martyr means to give witness.

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Sometimes living people would be called martyrs as well. But then you had people who did give up the scriptures, who did commit types of acts of apostasy.

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And the church struggled mightily what to do with someone who repented and came back to the fellowship after the period of persecution had ended.

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This had been tearing at the church for a long period of time.

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You had the Novatian Schism, the Adonis Schism, which was developing at this time. These schisms were extremely this was what took up the vast majority of social media.

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The emails of the day obviously had no E in them, but the emails of the day were taken up with these things.

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The issue of re -baptism, baptism of heretics, all of these things were central.

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Cyprian inherited all this stuff. Remember, he's a Christian for maybe at most 12 years. You think you can find in your heart someplace to be at least somewhat gracious toward where someone ends up when they're only a

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Christian for 12 years. I'm not talking about he had been a Christian for 12 years and became a bishop. No.

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He had been a Christian for 12 years when he was executed as bishop. He became a martyr. He had only been a

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Christian for a few years when he became bishop. It's not like he could go to the library and get all sorts of different perspectives and get taught all the biblical backgrounds and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

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He had to come at it at high speed. I think you might want to cut the guy some slack as a result when it comes to a number of different things.

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The point is he tried to run the church and that's why we have so many of his epistles is he tried to run the church through epistles.

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That first wave died down a little bit, he returned and when the second wave came he decided he couldn't leave again.

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He had to stay. He was of course criticized for leaving and maybe because of that criticism who knows he does not flee at the second rising of persecution.

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He is in 258 arrested and he is executed.

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He is brought before the proconsul. He confesses to all of his crimes of following Jesus and believing in him and refusing to recant and he is taken and he encourages the poor centurion whose job it was to execute him and he is beheaded by the

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Roman state and becomes one of the most famous martyr bishops in the early church and just in passing you need to recognize that because he was a martyr bishop his views on sacramentology became very important in North Africa and so when

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Augustine comes along approximately a little over a hundred and a couple decades later as Augustine struggles with the

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Donatist controversy he has to very carefully disagree with Cyprian's formulation in regards to ex opera operato and ex opera operante and he really had to walk a very careful line at that point because Cyprian's memory was held in very high esteem and because he had been faithful unto death

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Cyprian then what he wrote is given a higher status of authority in the minds of the

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Christians there in North Africa for obvious reasons so that has an impact upon how

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Augustine has to deal with issues and things that he faces as well because even though Augustine is a hippo it's not like it's on another planet from Carthage still

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North Africa and therefore it's still very important in his development too so the point is that Cyprian is ministering in Carthage at the beginning of a six decade period of time of imperial persecution of Christians many

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Christians lost their lives many a church then experienced what churches in China are experiencing now being razed to the ground, being dynamited whatever else you might want to say this is a very difficult time the church has experienced this many times before we might want to be reading more about how

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Christians have handled this in the past and one of the epistles that he wrote

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I don't remember when I first read this I don't remember what prompted it but one of the epistles he wrote was to Nemesianus Lucius, another

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Felix Lydias, Pallianus, Victor Yader, and Dativus his fellow bishops, also his fellow presbyters and deacons and the rest of the brethren in the mines martyrs of God the

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Father almighty and of Jesus Christ our Lord and of God our preserver everlasting greeting in the mines this is an epistle that Cyprian writes to believers who have been instead of executed by Rome they have been enslaved by Rome and forced to work in the mines now if you think working in mines today is dangerous and deadly to your health try it in the middle of the 3rd century without oxygen without lights without all the safety stuff that is at least far more prevalent today than it was only 200 years ago it was a death sentence without being a direct death sentence and of course you were bound, you had chains you weren't going to live long, let's put it that way you are a living martyr

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Cyprian would have had in his church the family members of some of these people who were in mines working in mines some might eventually be released others would never see their families again this was a situation that you are facing as Cyprian writes to those who are in the mines and so if you really want to enter into this think about what it would be like to be chained to have wooden stocks to be caused to work for 12 hours a day in stifling heat or cold, depending on the season smoke from the lamps choking your lungs no safety equipment, no breathing equipment always every swing of your pickaxe could result in your death as something might collapse on top of you and you are there because you refused to deny the name of Christ do we have fellow believers in situations like that?

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there are many today who are facing situations because they will not deny the name of Christ they could have freedom in China, in certain

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Muslim countries if they would but give in and there were those who did but many others did not and so Cyprian writes this epistle, it is epistle number 76 if you want to look it up I'm sure it's on ccel ccel .org

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if you want to look it up it's in the 5th volume of the

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Antonicean Fathers set the old Erdmann's current Hendrickson set if you want to grab it there your glory indeed would demand that I myself should come to see and to embrace you if the limits of place appointed me did not restrain me banished as I am for the sake of the confession of the name so I stopped just for a moment to say that would seem to indicate that this is written while Cyprian himself is in hiding, in banishment away from Carthage during that first period of persecution but in what way

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I can I bring myself into your presence and even though it is not permitted me to come to you in body and in movement yet in love and in spirit

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I come expressing my mind in my letter, in which mind I joyfully exult in those virtues and praises of yours counting myself a partaker with you although not in bodily suffering yet in community of love could

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I be silent and restrain my voice in stillness when I am made aware of so many and such glorious things concerning my dearest friends things with which the divine condescension has honored you so that part of you have already gone before by the consummation of their martyrdom to receive from their lord the crown of their desserts parts still abide in the dungeons of the prison or in the mines and in chains exhibiting by the very delays of their punishments greater examples for the strengthening and arming of the brethren advancing by the tediousness of their tortures to the more ample titles of merit to receive as many payments and heavenly rewards as days are now counted in their punishments

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I do not marvel, most brave and blessed brethren that these things have happened to you in consideration of the dessert of your religion and your faith that the lord should thus have lifted you to the lofty height of glory by the honor of his glorification seeing that you have always flourished in his church guarding the tenor of the faith keeping firmly the lord's commands in simplicity, innocence in charity, concord modesty in humility diligence in administration watchfulness in helping those that suffer mercy in cherishing the poor constancy in defending the truth judgment in severity of discipline and that nothing should be wanting to the example of good deeds in you even now in the confession of your voice and the suffering of your body you provoke the minds of your brethren to divine martyrdom by exhibiting yourselves as leaders of virtue that while the flock follows its pastors and imitates what it sees to be done by those set over it it may be crowned with the like merits of obedience by the lord but that being first severely beaten with clubs and ill -used you have begun by sufferings of that kind the glorious firstlings of your confession is not a matter to be execrated by us for a

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Christian body is not very greatly terrified at clubs seeing all its hope is in the wood the servant of Christ acknowledges the sacrament of his salvation redeemed by wood to life eternal he is advanced by wood to the crown but what wonder if as golden and silver vessels you have been committed to the mine that is the home of gold and silver except that now the nature of the mines is changed and the places which previously had been accustomed to yield gold and silver have begun to receive them moreover they have put fetters on your feet and have bound your blessed limbs and the temples of God with disgraceful chains as if the spirit also could be bound with the body or your gold could be stained by the contact of iron to men who are dedicated to God and attesting their faith with religious courage such things are ornaments not chains nor they bind the feet of the

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Christian for infamy but glorify them for a crown O feet blessedly bound which are loosed not by the smith but by the

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Lord O feet blessedly bound which are guided to paradise in the way of salvation

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O feet bound for the present time in the world that they may be always free with the

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Lord O feet lingering for a while among the fetters and crossbars but to run quickly to Christ on a glorious road let cruelty either enviance or malignant hold you here in its bonds and chains as long as it will from this earth and from these sufferings you shall speedily come to the kingdom of heaven the body is not cherished in the mines with couch and cushions but it is cherished with the refreshment and solace of Christ the frame wearied with labors lies prostrate on the ground but it is no penalty to lie down with Christ your limbs unbathed are foul and disfigured with filth and dirt but within they are spiritually cleansed although without the flesh there the bread is scarce but man liveth not by bread alone but by the word of God shivering you want clothing but he who puts on Christ is both abundantly clothed and adorned the hair of your half -shorn beard seems repulsive but since Christ is the head of the man anything whatever must needs become that head which is illustrious on account of Christ's name all that deformity detestable and foul to Gentiles with what splendor shall it be recompensed this temporal and brief suffering how shall it be exchanged for the reward of a bright and eternal honor when according to the word of the blessed apostle the

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Lord shall change the body of our humiliation that it may be fashioned like to the body of his brightness but there cannot be felt any loss of either religion or faith most beloved brethren in the fact that now there is given no opportunity there to God's priests for offering and celebrating the divine sacrifices yea, you celebrate and offer a sacrifice to God equally precious and glorious and that will greatly profit you for the retribution of heavenly rewards since the sacred scripture speaks saying the sacrifice of God is a broken spirit a contrite and humbled heart

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God doth not despise you offer this sacrifice to God you celebrate this sacrifice without intermission day and night being made victims to God and exhibiting yourselves as holy and unspotted offerings as the apostle exhorts and says

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I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice holy acceptable unto

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God and do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God for this it is which especially pleases

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God it is this wherein our works with greater deserts are successful in earning

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God's good will this it is which alone the obedience of our faith and devotion can render to the

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Lord for his great and saving benefits as the Holy Spirit declares and witnesses in the Psalms what shall

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I render says he to the Lord for all his benefits toward me I will take the cup of salvation and I will call upon the name of the

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Lord precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints who would not gladly and readily receive the cup of salvation who would not with joy and gladness desire that in which he himself also may render somewhat unto his

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Lord who would not bravely and unfalteringly receive a death precious in the sight of the

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Lord to please his eyes who looking down from above upon us who are placed in the conflict for his name approves the willing assists the struggling crowns the conquering with the recompense of patience goodness and affection rewarding in us whatever he himself has bestowed and honoring what he has accomplished for that it is his doing that we conquer that we attain by the subduing of the adversary to the palm of the greatest contest the

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Lord declares and teaches in his gospel saying but when they deliver you up take no thought how or what you shall speak for it shall be given you in the same hour what you shall speak for it is not you that speak but the spirit of your father which speaks in you and again settle it therefore in your hearts not to meditate before what you shall answer for I will give you a month it should be a mouth and wisdom which your adversary shall not be able to resist in which indeed is both the great confidence of believers and the gravest fault of the faithless that they do not trust him who promises to give his help to those who confess him and do not on the other hand fear him who threatens eternal punishment to those who deny him all which things most brave and faithful soldiers of Christ you have suggested to your brethren fulfilling in deeds what you previously taught in words hereafter to be greatest in the kingdom of heaven as the

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Lord promises says whosoever shall do and teach shall be called the greatest in the kingdom of heaven moreover a manifold portion of the people following your example have confessed alike with you and alike have been crowned associated with you in the bond of the strongest charity and separated from their prelates neither by the prison nor by the minds in the number of whom neither are there wanting virgins in whom the hundredfold are added to the fruit of the sixty fold and whom a double glory has advanced to the heavenly crown in boys also

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I courage greater than their age has surpassed their years in the praise of their confession so that every sex and every age should adorn the blessed flock of your martyrdom what now must be the vigor beloved brethren of your victorious consciousness what the loftiness of your mind what exultation feeling what triumph in your breast that every one of you stands near to the promised reward of God are secure from the judgment of God walk in the minds with a body captive indeed but with a heart reigning that you know

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Christ is present with you rejoicing in the endurance of his servants who are ascending by his footsteps and in paths to the eternal kingdoms you daily expect with joy the saving day of your departure and already about to withdraw from the world you are hastening to the rewards of martyrdom and the divine homes to behold after this darkness the world the purest light and to receive a glory greater than all sufferings and conflicts as the apostle witnesses and says the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us and because now your word is more effectual in prayers and supplication is more quick to obtain what is sought for in afflictions seek more eagerly and ask the divine condescension would consummate the confession of all of us that from this darkness and these snares the world

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God would set us also free with you sound and glorious that we who here are united in the bond of charity and peace and have stood together against the wrongs of heretics and the oppressions of the heathens may rejoice together in the heavenly kingdom

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I bid you most blessed and most beloved brethren ever farewell farewell in the

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Lord and always and evermore remember me well they wrote back they wrote back and it's a brief note but here's what they wrote back gives the names to their brother

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Cyprian and Lord eternal salvation you speak dearly beloved Cyprian in your letters always with deep meaning as suits the condition of the time by the assiduous reading of which letters both the wicked are corrected and men of good faith are confirmed for all you do not cease in your writings to lay bare the hidden mysteries you thus make us to grow in faith and men from the world to draw near to belief for by whatever good things you have introduced in your many books unconsciously you have described yourself to us for you are greater than all men in discourse and speech more eloquent and counsel wiser and patience more simple and works more abundant and abstinence more holy and obedience more humble and in good deeds more innocent and you yourself know beloved that our eager wish was that we might see you our teacher and our lover attained to the crown of a great confession for in the proceedings before the pro consul as a good and true teacher you first have pronounced that which we your disciples following you ought to say before the president and as a sounding trumpet you have stirred up God's soldiers furnished with heavenly arms to the close encounter and fighting in the first rank you have slain the devil with a spiritual sword you have also ordered the troops of the brethren on the one hand and on the other with your words so that snares were on all sides laid for the enemy and the severed sinews of the very carcass of the public foe were trodden underfoot believe us dearest that your innocent spirit is not far from the hundredfold reward seeing that it is feared neither the first onsets the world nor shrunk from going into exile nor hesitate to leave the city nor dreaded to dwell in the desert place and since it furnished many with an example of confession itself first spoke the martyr witness for it provoked others to acts of martyrdom by its own example and not only began to be a companion of the martyrs already departing from the world but also linked in heavenly friendship with those who should be so therefore they who were condemned give us with us give you before God the greatest thanks beloved

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Cyprian that in your letter you have refreshed their suffering breasts you have healed their limbs wounded with clubs have loosened their feet their feet bound with fetters have smoothed the hair of their half -shorn head have illuminated the darkness of the dungeon have brought down the mountains of the mind to a smooth surface have even placed flagrant fragrant flowers in their nostrils and have shut out the foul odor of the smoke moreover your continued gifts and those of our beloved corinthians which is sent to be distributed by heranias the subdeacon and lucian and maximus and emantius the acolytes provided a supply of whatever had been wanting for the necessities of their bodies let us then be in our prayers helpers of one another let us ask as you have bidden us that we may have

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God in Christ and the angels as supporters in all our actions we bid you lord and brother ever heartily farewell and have us in mind greet all who are with you all ours who are with us love you and greet you and desire to see you you notice the reference and have shut out the foul odor of the smoke i can just imagine what it would be like to be in those minds lit by torches um i i i don't know how long i could even survive to be honest with you or how many of us would survive for a very long period of time so they are either in exile or bound in prison working in mines and their minds are focused upon heavenly things could not you cannot you cannot read this type of thing without feeling convicted you cannot you cannot consider the utter deprivation that was theirs of any of the world's goods freedom their families bare necessity of food and yet continued faithfulness and yet focus upon christ redemption they know the faith well enough for for cyprian to use the the metal the nails the wood of the cross silver and gold he can quote scripture to them and it's meaningful to them and we face trials and challenges in our day and i am not diminishing the fact that they are trials and challenges but it hasn't yet gotten to this point for us in the united states one of the greatest concerns we have is that the trajectory is toward that which is being happening in china that's the trajectory and my suggestion to everyone might want to spend some time not in worldly entertainments and maxing out netflix but maybe finding out how christians before us endured what we may very well be called to endure the time to be doing that is not once your freedom is gone the time to be doing that is now not then cyprian is very often brought up in an important way in regards to the development of sacramentology and his writing on the unity of church in regards to the claims of the roman papacy and all of those things quite true in my experience especially in survey presentations of church history which is what all most of us have had and in fact almost anybody in seminary you have so many things to learn and to do in a short period of time i'm not saying that's wrong i'm just simply saying that's the experience we know names we know some theological positions we rarely know anything about the people in their lives themselves reading their epistles very often helps with that and certainly this one in a rather special way so if you have never heard or read cyprian's epistle to the martyrs in the mines then i am honored to be the one to introduce you to it do me the favor of introducing others to it parents maybe you might want to talk with your children give them the background talk to them about who this man cyprian was who willingly laid his head upon the block to become a martyr for christ as a testimony to who jesus was and who wrote this letter and who so brilliantly recognized that in the context that these believers found themselves there was much to see that pointed to christ and in light of just this past weekend couldn't we say that this is an illustration of how all of the future is illuminated and given meaning in the light of the empty tomb because what made all of those comparisons similes, metaphors that he utilized meaningful was that these martyrs whose feet were now fettered would be free to run to christ in the kingdom of god straight road none of that is meaningful without the resurrection and so here in the middle of the third century and there are so many other centuries since that stone was rolled away where god has in his sovereignty allowed his people placed his people by his divine decree in mines in prison someday we will see as a tremendous testimony to who he himself is his goodness, his power his justice, his mercy, his love it will all be seen in a way that we cannot in this life possibly imagine so there is

01:01:37

Cyprian's epistle again it is number 76 Cyprian to Messianus and other martyrs in the mines if you are googling and searching that will be helpful to you okay what do we want

01:02:03

I've got a few things lined up here a reminder of course on Thursday Lord Willing will be joined by Seb Goldswayn and if you weren't with us yesterday

01:02:22

Seb is a virtuoso on the guitar the jazzy

01:02:33

South African Segovia is what I refer to him as and so he's going to join us

01:02:41

I have ministered at his church the church where he's a member and does a lot of music and stuff there just outside of Durban, South Africa and in a way that has more meaning than it has had in the past I truly hope to get to visit again right now

01:03:05

I'm not so certain about all those things but I truly hope that in the future we will have that opportunity to do so so on Thursday and then did we verify assuming

01:03:18

Google and Facebook hasn't shut us down for any controversial things any thought that goes against I never do that I am fully submissive to Big Brother but we have managed to sneak into the still busy schedule of the rock star himself the sort of cow farm rock star but the rock star himself

01:03:56

Milo Hotzenbuehler who has graced us with his presence a few times in the past those are always the most popular programs that we have you don't say it right it's rock star

01:04:15

I leave let us not talk about your accents because that would be a bad thing to do anyway

01:04:31

Milo is going to be with us to tell us about how he is surviving with the cows and the other farm animals out there on the farm and that will be on Monday so make sure to tune in for that so looking at what

01:04:54

I've got here I guess what I really do need to do if we are going to be pressing on at all

01:05:01

I need to finish the interview from 2018 so that we can the next step logical step aside from the fact that as I have time and I'm not going to do it tonight my intention right now is to get my telescope out of storage and enjoy

01:05:30

God's creation unless a bunch of clouds move in I'm not sure when

01:05:39

I'm getting up in the morning I've been told that there is going to be a very close conjunction of the waning moon

01:05:45

Jupiter, Mars and maybe one other which is pretty cool to see but there are other stuff to see

01:05:52

Albireo and I'm not sure I don't think

01:05:57

Ryan Nebula is not visible right now unfortunately, but will be eventually we'll take a gander at those things if you're a city dweller and you've never looked up because there is nothing to see might be a time to fix that there is a glorious glorious creation above you and the scriptures tell us that it testifies of God's power and it most certainly does anyway, the next step in the analysis of and response to the highly unique one -off theory of Dr.

01:06:40

Ken Wilson regarding Augustine and Manichaeism and Calvin and Reformed theology there is where the issue is it's not the first time people in Augustine's day were accusing him of smuggling

01:06:55

Manichaeism into his Christian belief it's the idea that nobody before Augustine and then this straight line to where modern

01:07:09

Reformed theologians are just going, whatever Augustine says we will simply repeat him without him that whole thing is quite the mess the next step is in providing the meaningful background obviously if what you're saying as it has been summarized by Dr.

01:07:32

Wilson is that Reformed theology presents the Manichean God we need to know who the

01:07:37

Manichean God was now there's already a few memes and videos bopping around the internet where I have introduced you to certain elements of Manichaean cosmogony that people have found startling or entertaining or a combination of the two

01:08:07

I was sitting out front as the daylight was fading last night working through a scholarly work on Manichaeism and going wow, this is a mess trying to make it understandable you might say, do you really want to put that much effort into it?

01:08:31

I have to but it is worthwhile to understand some of the religious context into which the gospel came

01:08:47

Manny lives over 200 years after Christ but the church is struggling with Manichaeism Gnosticism as well as internal strife in regards to schisms so in other words,

01:09:05

Manny is contemporaneous to Cyprian so you could put it that way but he's not in the

01:09:10

Roman Empire he's farther east but time -wise, he's contemporaneous to Cyprian in fact, he dies 19 years after Cyprian but was born almost the exact same time he lives longer than Cyprian he is martyred somewhat not by having his head removed from his body anyway so it's helpful to know these things and of course, the main reason that we're doing this is seeking to help as many believers as are interested in these types of things to recognize the importance of doing history accurately and without prejudice allow the early writers to be who they were don't try to turn them into mirror images of yourself that will result in a distortion of them and a distortion of you so that's really important with all of that said

01:10:24

I know that I have played preemptively out of order a couple of these quotes that I have left so if I realize that then

01:10:42

I'll go, okay, we're at a common end and I'll just move on from there but this is the last start here,

01:10:50

Mark, I had so I just gotta start someplace and so let's jump into it and you know,

01:10:56

Phariseeism, you've got the Sadducees and you've got the Essians I've read in some places that the

01:11:02

Essians tended to, of those three groups tended to side on the deterministic ways of thinking and the

01:11:11

Essians were more popular even in Nazareth and the surrounding area where Jesus was actually known in his teaching and it's interesting,

01:11:21

I read this too that the Essians it said they kind of went silent for a while there but it actually connects them to the formation of Gnosticism and so talk,

01:11:32

I don't know if you did much study on the Essians, but it seems like of all the lines of deterministic thinking it would have been through that line of the

01:11:40

Essians which interestingly in the historical were the ones with their Dead Sea Scrolls and things like that were found in their

01:11:48

Quam the area that they oversee I just wondered if you studied any of that that far back in the history of it

01:11:58

Now, aside from clear evidence that Dr. Flowers has not read the

01:12:04

Book of Discipline or any of the other scrolls from Qumran and really any of the original occupation of the

01:12:11

Essian community the literature that has been spawned by the discovery of the

01:12:17

Dead Sea Scrolls is huge and of course what that means is there are a lot of different takes

01:12:27

Obviously in the immediate decades right after the discovery of the scrolls you have people jumping to try to get their place in the analysis of these things and then as more of the scrolls would come out then you'd have a little bit more idea

01:12:43

It's obvious that since this was a library that it does not have a single just one single

01:12:52

I mean there's some astrological stuff in there and things like that It doesn't have just one single perspective on everything

01:12:57

You can't just assume that I mean there are people and I'm sure that the

01:13:03

Essians in the Qumran community are co -extensive So there's lots of things to be discussed but what it sounded like, what was being said there by Dr.

01:13:17

Flowers was some idea, it almost sounded to me like he was saying that the

01:13:23

Essian community might have had something to do with the development of Gnosticism Again, Gnosticism is not just one thing

01:13:32

That's why calling anything a Gnostic interpretation is just simply inaccurate

01:13:37

It demonstrates you're probably not really familiar with what's going on But there are wide varieties of understanding amongst

01:13:48

Gnostics and here's something that's important One of the questions that immediately is raised is

01:13:56

The Apostle Paul and the Apostle John both write against Gnostic concepts or at least concepts that are found within the more fully formed

01:14:11

Gnosticism of the 2nd century So what was

01:14:18

Paul warning the Church of Colossae about? What is the nature of the denial of the physical body that is inherent in what 1st

01:14:26

John is warning about? That the Antichrist is saying that he did not come in the flesh Was that some of the bad assumptions have been that what he's writing against is full -blown developed 2nd century

01:14:48

Valentinian Martian type Gnosticism And it's not. It's a mixture

01:14:54

What's clear, at least in Colossians is that what he's responding against is a mixture of Judaism and early

01:15:03

Gnostic at least Easternized thought And so maybe what

01:15:11

Flowers is talking about here is where would that have come from? Of course, there's next to zero possibility that the

01:15:22

Qumran community would have had anything to do with a movement coming into Colossae in the 5th or 6th or 7th century 6th or 7th decade of the 1st century

01:15:34

So, I don't I'm not aware of anyone who can meaningfully comment on the breadth of the influence of the specific teachings of the

01:15:48

Qumran community Anything there is pure speculation

01:15:55

But what's obvious is what is the greatest influence in the

01:16:03

Qumran community Is this a difficult question to ask? What are they most known for?

01:16:12

Well, things like the Isaiah scroll and the Leviticus scroll Isaiah! Oh! The prophet that has that whole section word for word identical to the way it is today about God's sovereignty over time and tell me what's going to happen in the future tell me what happened in the past and why it took place and all this stuff

01:16:38

And so you sort of go, hmm What might have influenced them to believe things like all my days have been written in your book before they ever were or you know my thoughts before I ever speak them or maybe yeah, it must be where would they have gotten that while they're writing scrolls of Isaiah I don't know

01:17:08

So just as in so much of the rest of the stuff in what we're looking at here the biblical foundation the biblical influence is just ignored it's just like, gotta be, has to be something else out there might have just been spent so much time with you know, the scriptures might have had something to do with all that but anyway

01:17:33

Oh I did, I went all the way back to ancient Sumer in my thesis, so I spent quite a bit of time on the

01:17:41

Qumran community because of that and they believe that God controls the very breath rate, the heartbeat everything, every little minute thing is controlled by God in that Qumran community

01:17:55

There's actually look it up for yourself if you look up various scholarly articles on the subject of compatibility compatibilism determinism and free will just put those in plus Qumran dozens of articles where it's not just a single, oh they just believed one thing because they didn't they recognize as we recognize because I believe in the exhaustive nature of God's decree and so I believe what

01:18:42

Ephesians 1 .11 plainly teaches and yet I believe that God is just to judge anyone based upon their actions, fulfilling the desires of their hearts, so you can dismiss compatibilism, you can mock it if you want but none of you will ever be able to consistently interpret key passages of scripture as long as you do so and listening to you doing handstands trying to get around Genesis 50 and Isaiah 10 and Acts 4 and confessing that you have to use a different form of hermeneutics to deal with them than you have to deal with anything else is one of the reasons why we don't find your argumentation overly effective and guess who influenced them

01:19:30

Stoicism Stoicism There's a very definite connection with Stoicism and the only other

01:19:36

Jewish person who we know that dealt more with the deterministic fashion was

01:19:42

Philo of Alexandria Guess where he was influenced? From Stoicism So, Stoic determinism and the sovereignty of God found in the book of Isaiah are not the same things by any stretch of the imagination, anyone who thinks they are is trying to create connections that are not there

01:20:06

They're not fair, they're not being balanced and, you know in this group of people now all you have to do is say, that's

01:20:17

Stoicism So, did Proverbs come up with so much of what it says from Stoicism?

01:20:26

Because there are major portions of the

01:20:32

Proverbs and material in the Psalter that are perfectly consistent with Stoic philosophy

01:20:39

Why? Because Stoicism by God's common grace says a lot of very true things

01:20:48

So, unless you buy into the history of religions garbage where all all religions just simply are patchwork quilts of all other religions then you have to recognize that in certain areas such as in the expression of wisdom you're going to find similarities across religious bounds and Stoicism especially was exactly right when it encouraged self -discipline, self -control and long -term thinking in its adherence

01:21:27

But its view of the world did not have a personal God who was accomplishing his own self -glorification

01:21:36

You can keep flattening out determinism all you want into just something that isn't meaningful, which is what you've got to do but honest people are going to look at what

01:21:48

Stoicism believed and what Reformed people believe and go, that's not the same thing when it comes to the issue of the nature of God's sovereign decree by any stretch of the imagination

01:22:02

Now, people who don't want to get into all that, they just want to have a bat to throw at Calvinists so you don't have to actually deal with the ex -Jesus

01:22:09

That'll work that way The debate between foreknowledge and free will and God's sovereignty was going on long before Christ and Cicero was one that definitely influenced

01:22:23

Augustine and he had to reject foreknowledge in order to get there So, I make it pretty simple when

01:22:29

I tell my students that the real question is is foreknowledge causative? Now, this is a we have discussed this for decades since Radio Free Geneva started whatever it might be, we have discussed the assertion that God can have passive foreknowledge of future events

01:22:57

So, in other words, the assertion you're going to hear is that you can know something is going to happen without causing it to happen and the example that's going to be used is human knowledge

01:23:13

Okay, so Hank Hanegraaff would argue like this back before he went off into Eastern Orthodoxy Many people who promote, for example, a simple foreknowledge will say this is the nature of God's knowledge of future events as well is that He knows things so well that He knows future events but He did not determine future events which then leads you inevitably to the question who did or are they all uncaused?

01:23:55

And if they are uncaused, how can God have future knowledge of them?

01:24:01

The open theist says He can't The open theist recognizes this doesn't actually work, that you're asserting something but you've removed its foundation

01:24:12

The foundation for God having infallible, exhaustive knowledge of future events is that God is the creator of time itself and everything therein

01:24:27

That's the one thing that these folks cannot possibly believe

01:24:33

They reject that But as a Southern Baptist Now I don't know what

01:24:40

Ken Wilson's current church membership is and I don't honestly care that much but Leighton Flowers is a

01:24:47

Southern Baptist and the Southern Baptists have specifically determined that open theism is outside the bounds of the

01:24:59

Southern Baptist convention He can't go there. He has to confess that God has exhaustive knowledge of future events including the events of free creatures

01:25:15

But why? How can God have that knowledge? God just looks down the corridors of time

01:25:22

You can't look at something that does not exist. You can't look at something that is theoretical

01:25:31

And so when you press the issue, you go, okay so God knows infallibly what you are going to have to eat for dinner on Christmas Eve 2021.

01:25:51

Yes or no? Now, if you say

01:25:59

No He only knows big events

01:26:07

He only knows there's not going to be a nuclear exchange that's going to wipe you out between now and then

01:26:13

Well, how does he know that? Because something like a nuclear weapon if one of them is to be triggered, there's going to be many, many, many, many people involved with that There's going to be all sorts of decisions that have to be made on the part of human beings

01:26:32

There's a lot of free will going on there And if he knows what

01:26:39

I'm going to have for dinner then he knows all of the surrounding things

01:26:44

Think how many free will actions I and tens of thousands of other people, hundreds of thousands of other people will have to experience before Christmas Eve of 2021

01:26:59

You say, like what? Let me give you an example I remember years ago

01:27:05

I was riding northbound on 51st Avenue on my bike and I was passed by an elderly couple in a little pickup truck

01:27:16

I think it was a Saturday morning There wasn't a lot of traffic And as I watched the pickup truck and I saw the upcoming light

01:27:26

I all of a sudden realized they're not slowing down He hasn't realized the light is red

01:27:32

And my eye sees a full -size construction dump truck going westbound

01:27:40

They're going north And it's amazing how fast your mind can do math Trigonometry There's nothing

01:27:51

I can do I'm on a bike I have a horn to honk And I watched those two vehicles plow into each other

01:28:00

I'm not sure the couple survived There was a lot of blood, so I don't know Now, I will,

01:28:10

Lord willing but in the normal course of events will ride my bicycle through and drive a car through many intersections between now and Christmas Eve of 2021

01:28:26

And if I do not get hit there are all sorts of free will choices that have to be involved to keep me from getting hit

01:28:42

So, what if someone chooses in their free will to get drunk and to run the red light while I'm going through on the green light then

01:28:52

I don't live to have dinner on Christmas Eve So, that free will action could falsify

01:29:03

God's knowledge of what I'm supposed to eat on Christmas Eve in 2021 There are all sorts of those types of choices that will determine whether I live to Christmas Eve of 2021

01:29:21

And so, if you say God does know what I'm going to have for dinner on Christmas Eve of 2021 that means

01:29:29

He knows all those decisions and no one can make a decision other than the one they made which will result in my having that dinner on Christmas Eve of 2021

01:29:40

That means the entire fabric of time has been woven by creation itself

01:29:51

So, it is not the foreknowledge that causes the action

01:29:58

The foreknowledge flows from the act of creation that God is the creator which includes not just the primordial condition of the universe but that's what gives

01:30:15

God the right to be able to say false gods can't tell you what's going to happen in the future

01:30:22

I can't That's what makes Him God and us mere creatures

01:30:30

So, foreknowledge isn't causative but it flows from the one cause

01:30:36

God's creation So, when someone says we don't need that decree

01:30:42

God just has foreknowledge That's not an answer

01:30:50

That's a duh, I know Because philosophers and Christian philosophers have been writing and talking about this stuff from the beginning

01:31:07

From the beginning So, if you're just repeating the surface level God just knows what's going to happen in the future

01:31:13

You haven't even gotten into the topic yet The question is how

01:31:22

How does that work? How does He have that knowledge? If all you can do is say it's a mystery then you have no ground for criticizing someone who says, actually we know more than that Here's the revelation that says that But if you say it's a mystery you have no basis for criticizing someone who says

01:31:42

Well, the basis is given in scripture and it's in God's sovereign decree Because you're out of the game

01:31:51

You said, I don't know And once you say, I don't know then you've got to stop telling people that they're wrong about stuff that you don't know about So, with that in mind here is the simple causation argument

01:32:09

Notice that what it requires is that God's knowledge partakes of the same nature as our knowledge does

01:32:15

And that is dangerous and is dangerously untrue Is it causative?

01:32:22

Because somebody knows something's going to happen Does that make it happen? Does it cause it to happen?

01:32:29

And so, I take a book or I take my glasses and I say Alright, given all that gravity is going to work and there are no exceptions in this case

01:32:37

If I let go of these glasses, what's going to happen? Well, it's going to fall

01:32:43

And so, I said, you're right, I drop it And I said, you just caused those glasses to fall

01:32:51

And he goes, wait a minute Something's wrong with that picture And they're right, something's wrong with that picture

01:33:00

Foreknowledge is not causative, it's simply foreknowledge Well, I loved John Lennox's Foreknowledge is not causative, it's just simply knowledge

01:33:13

Okay, well, there you go Yeah, there you go

01:33:21

Very important to distinguish that omniscience I like to point out that God is atemporal, octemporal

01:33:26

That he is living in the past, in the present, in the future All simultaneously, there is no foreknowledge to God I mean, that's a human anthropomorphism, it's a term we use

01:33:35

I don't have foreknowledge He's living it all So, again, when you look at does

01:33:43

God cause something to happen Nobody believed he caused everything to happen except the

01:33:49

Stoics And the Gnostics and the Manichaeans Okay, seeing this now

01:33:56

That he caused all things to happen There is no

01:34:02

Connected Coherent concept Of a personal, self -revelational

01:34:10

Triune deity That exists between Stoicism All the multiple forms of Gnosticism And Manny's wild Conglomeration of Iranian, Zoroastrian Buddhist Christian mishmash

01:34:31

Stuff To connect them in that kind of simplistic fashion

01:34:39

Is foolishness It is misleading

01:34:46

It is inaccurate It is indefensible But you're listening to it, you're hearing this

01:34:56

Right? Okay, just want to make sure The idea of God As creator

01:35:09

Monotheistic God Triune revelation Revealing His glory

01:35:18

Honor and power Is not found in Stoicism It is not found in Gnosticism It is not found in Manichaeism In any way, shape, or form

01:35:28

To say otherwise is to engage in sophistry In its worst level

01:35:36

Those groups Christians, again, held to a general sovereignty That He didn't plan every detail of the universe

01:35:45

To happen as the way He wanted to happen He gave freedom That He gave, this is going to happen

01:35:50

I'm going to prophesy this through my prophets This will happen Here's a good example

01:35:59

Here's a good example What is one of the key prophecies

01:36:07

That in Modern Old Testament studies Is taken as evidence

01:36:14

That the book in which it is contained Was written after the events are prophesied I'm referring to the fact that the prophecy of Isaiah Specifically mentions

01:36:25

Cyrus As the king who will free the people

01:36:31

Gives a name How can that be? That's impossible God can't know that Now, I don't know what

01:36:40

Wilson's view on that is There are a lot of people Again, you go to the Christian bookstore You discover this

01:36:45

That believe that's second Isaiah And that was written after Cyrus So that's what you're going to find

01:36:53

A bunch of commentaries I don't know what his view is on that But let's take the prophecy

01:37:05

Isaiah says Cyrus is going to do this Can Cyrus do anything other?

01:37:15

And you might say In that one instance Then God He can't do anything other than that So in that one instance

01:37:26

God's sovereignty is going to overrule human freedom But in everything else, God just lets things happen

01:37:32

Do you really think that Cyrus' Letting the people go

01:37:40

Was just simply a one day One person decision Uninfluenced by anything else

01:37:48

Uninfluenced by what's going on in the world By what wars he's fighting The political situation

01:37:55

And so I've used an illustration over the years Came up with it probably right after my

01:38:01

First kid was born And you start dealing with the reality of toys left on the floor

01:38:10

What if one morning Cyrus The great king Gets out of bed and one of the little princes

01:38:19

Has left the ancient equivalent Of a Lego block You know all the real sharp ones

01:38:26

On the floor next to the king's bed And the king's royal foot comes down Upon the

01:38:34

Lego block And the royal anger Is greatly aroused

01:38:42

And he picks up The ancient equivalent of the Lego block

01:38:48

And he looks at it and realizes It was made by one of those Jewish slaves from Jerusalem And so he was that day going to Let them go

01:39:01

But now he's mad And so he decides not to And turns

01:39:08

Isaiah the prophet Into a liar Not possible Someone else couldn't come and influence the king

01:39:18

Against that decision They make the free will decision to do that You see all these decisions

01:39:25

All these acts in time Are complicated webs of free will decisions

01:39:31

And so if you're going to say God can prophesy what's going to happen amongst men You can't do that and then say

01:39:39

But everything else is just freedom This general sovereignty

01:39:45

Is a non -working sovereignty That's the problem with it It just doesn't work

01:39:51

You haven't thought it through But everything else,

01:39:56

I'm going to give some flexibility here That was the view that was held So just because, as you said, omniscience does not imply

01:40:04

Ordaining, foreordaining, or planning Everything that's going to happen So we're being told that there's another book coming out

01:40:12

From Dr. Wilson, I'm sure that's going to be Really, really interesting along those lines

01:40:18

It doesn't even exist hardly Which is also just It's like that first 300 years or 400 years of church history

01:40:26

This debate can't be found really I did play this, but let's go ahead and listen to it real quick And in Eastern Orthodoxy, it's almost the exact same way

01:40:34

You don't find this parsing of Romans 9 And back and forth and determinism

01:40:40

But in Western Christianity, you find it all over the place Why is that?

01:40:47

Why is Eastern Orthodoxy, though it has its other issues Obviously every stream of Christian thought Because it's made up of human beings and sinful human beings

01:40:54

That that's going to have its problems But why is it that Eastern Orthodoxy, it's just like this debate or this issue

01:41:00

Almost virtually doesn't exist Good question, Layden It's because they didn't

01:41:06

What do you think the answer to that is? We've spent a lot of time

01:41:16

Talking about Eastern Orthodoxy recently And I'm pulling up something

01:41:22

I've been intending to read here We've spent a lot of time talking about The emphases in Eastern Orthodoxy You've got the concepts of theosis

01:41:31

And tradition And all the rest of this stuff So what do you think the answer to this question is going to be?

01:41:42

It's pretty interesting Oops, wrong thing here Good question,

01:41:48

Layden So it's because they didn't incorporate Augustine If we took

01:41:54

Augustine out of Western Christianity We would not be having this debate It's that simple

01:42:01

So all that stuff I read in the last program From the epistle to Diognetus That was ignored

01:42:12

None of that there So they did not recognize him as a church father

01:42:18

They kept all the first 300 years Of the teachings on who God is And the human free will and how he relates

01:42:24

Now listen to this I want to deal I didn't intend to, we're going to four

01:42:37

I'm going to talk a little bit about the East And Augustine Because I think it's important But I want you to listen to this

01:42:49

And ask yourself a simple question If you hear what's said here

01:42:58

Why shouldn't these guys be Eastern Orthodox? Because what you're about to hear him say

01:43:04

Is they just kept believing the same stuff That had been believed by everybody for 300 years

01:43:11

All the way back to Christ Then why don't you believe what the

01:43:16

Eastern Orthodox believe? Because you don't You're some form of Baptist I can guarantee you something

01:43:22

Dr. Wilson The Eastern Orthodox are not Anti -Lordship, free grace evangelicals

01:43:31

That's not where they're coming from So What is going on here?

01:43:38

I remember when I first heard this I'm like, really? Here, just listen for yourself

01:43:48

So they did not Recognize him as a church father They kept all the first 300 years of the teachings

01:43:56

On who God is and the human free will And how he relates with the general sovereignty

01:44:01

And so there's never been a problem They're still reading the scriptures as the earliest

01:44:06

Christians read them We're only in the West having trouble Because we're reading them as the

01:44:12

Manichaeans read them Through Augustine Do you hear that? Western Christianity Is reading these texts

01:44:24

Through a Manichaean lens But Eastern Orthodoxy isn't That's Ken Wilson Grace Theological Seminary, I think

01:44:39

Professor of Systematic Theology, I think And Church History, I think Wow, who knew?

01:44:51

But is it true That the East Does not consider

01:44:57

Augustine an early church father Whatever that means No, it's not. He's wrong Augustine And this information was sent to me again

01:45:09

By a well -credentialed, experienced, highly published Church historian

01:45:16

He was officially ranked as a true church teacher By the 5th Ecumenical Council Which was a basically

01:45:22

Eastern council I'll give you a quote from that My friend had an

01:45:29

East Orthodox friend Who in commenting on an Eastern icon of Augustine Said, thank

01:45:36

God for the beautiful icon of St. Augustine I am constantly dismayed by the hagiomachy Of those who demonize the great bishop of Hippo Now, hagiomachy

01:45:46

Hagios is saint So this would be a detestation of Or argument against a saint

01:45:55

And this specifically being the great bishop of Hippo In other words, what was just done By Ken Wilson So there are

01:46:07

A number Instead of him being called The doctor of grace

01:46:14

As he is in the West, Augustine The East honors him as the doctor of piety

01:46:21

And so you have Some quotations here Here's from An East Orthodox source

01:46:47

He has an official Saint day In the

01:46:53

Greek Orthodox church And he's ranked Here's the quote from the 5th

01:47:00

Ecumenical Council We further declare That we are That we hold fast to the decrees of the four councils And in every way follow the holy fathers

01:47:06

Athanasius, Hilary, Basil, Gregory the theologian Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose, Theophilus John Chrysostom of Constantinople Cyril, Augustine, Proculus, Leo And their writings on the true faith

01:47:25

For with us The holy multitude Of the supernal spirits

01:47:31

Adorn one Lord Jesus Christ Moreover, several letters of Augustine Of most religious memory Who shone forth resplendent among the

01:47:38

African bishops Were read, showing that it was quite right That heretics should be anathematized after death

01:47:43

And this ecclesiastical tradition And the other reverend bishops of Africa have preserved

01:47:48

And the Holy Roman Church as well had anathematized certain bishops After their death, although they had not been accused of any

01:47:54

Falling from the faith during their lives And of each we have evidence in our hands That's called the Sentence of the

01:48:00

Synod from the 5th Ecumenical Council And so while there are

01:48:06

Very anti -Augustinian Eastern Orthodox today

01:48:13

It's more of a modern tradition Rather than ancient tradition And it probably has a lot to do

01:48:20

With the fact that since 1054 In the conflict that has existed

01:48:28

Between the East and the West Augustine would be frequently cited

01:48:33

By those on the West And therefore that probably has diminished

01:48:38

His being viewed amongst those Just so folks don't think

01:48:47

That maybe this is an ancient secret That they don't really follow today Every time the subject of Augustine comes up on the show

01:48:55

We have Eastern Orthodox listeners And they go on our

01:49:01

Facebook page And they get upset Because they acknowledge Augustine And they want us to know that they acknowledge

01:49:09

Augustine So just saying Alright, and I've had that queued up I don't know how many times

01:49:16

My sincere thanks to my I have a good friend who knows a lot about Eastern Orthodoxy And we have good conversations about those things

01:49:25

I'm going to go ahead and go to four I'm going to sneak in the rest of it And I guess it would help if I reactivated the program

01:49:44

So all of you in the Provisionist camp that are angry That that's what

01:49:49

I'm doing That I am going deeper Than Dr.

01:49:55

Wilson did I'm just doing what Leighton told me to do I had that queued up I just had to play that part

01:50:05

The problem is there's no There's nothing else that's been written like this This is the first time that that's come out

01:50:11

And this being exposed in this way In a scholarly manner That's dangerous

01:50:19

When you encounter someone Who thinks

01:50:25

That they are the first ones to have found something Especially when it's in a field

01:50:33

Where tomes Have been written Be very careful

01:50:40

I think this man thinks he's the first person Who read all of Augustine in chronological order He is not We were talking about the development

01:50:52

For centuries people have been talking about The development in Augustine's theology

01:50:57

And he may have some interesting point On the editing of a particular

01:51:03

Sort of changes a date some place That's not relevant to the final thesis

01:51:11

And so when someone really thinks Yeah I'm the first one that's ever done this And then they come up with a conclusion that to my knowledge

01:51:19

Nobody else has either come to Or is sitting here going

01:51:25

That's pretty good I'm not seeing anybody saying it Only the provisionists Nobody else

01:51:30

I don't see it impacting anybody And I don't think that it will Not from what

01:51:36

I've looked at It's not going to be impacting anybody So be really careful

01:51:43

When you run across somebody that says Hey I've got something brand new here I had this trouble with James White in my debate

01:51:51

Where I quote from Clement of Rome And he says well Clement speaks of the elect several times

01:51:58

As if speaking of the elect Automatically makes you a Calvinist I'm not sure how that flows

01:52:06

Not laughing anymore are you Dr. Wilson Yeah because that wasn't

01:52:14

Clement of Rome was it No it wasn't And actually

01:52:20

Clement does speak of the elect In a way utterly inconsistent with your own theories

01:52:26

How did that happen It's fun to laugh when you're all on the same side

01:52:32

And you're throwing stuff out And misrepresenting me as if I was saying Clement was a Calvinist Because he talked about election

01:52:38

And I pushed him on that But if you hadn't said that Leighton I never would have gone back and discovered that you were using secondary sources

01:52:47

And had never read the actual singular epistle of Clement of Rome And were using other stuff

01:52:54

But How many phone calls did you get from people

01:53:00

Saying we need to deal with this book A lot of people So you can talk to them about it

01:53:06

But speak to that What about those who do have lists of quotes from early church fathers

01:53:12

That claim they're Calvinistic supporting Well they're not And if you go back and read the entire work

01:53:19

You'll understand that Now listen to what he's going to say here

01:53:24

Because I agree with him It's just not what he himself does

01:53:32

When you read the whole thing Like we did with the epistle to Diognetus Instead of taking just little snippets

01:53:39

Which is exactly what he did That's what he did to the epistle to Diognetus We've documented this now

01:53:47

It's out there. Have you seen any meaningful response? I haven't seen any response at all I haven't seen any response at all

01:53:55

So we documented this I would challenge

01:54:00

Dr. Wilson Go ahead and respond to that article on our website

01:54:05

I am so confident Of the data

01:54:12

And the text This would be really really good. You know why? Because you have a narrow field to look at You don't have a 400 page book

01:54:24

You've got a 10 paragraph epistle So you can really get specific

01:54:32

So we documented this He did to the epistle to Diognetus What he's now saying

01:54:38

Calvinists do to early church fathers They can't say anything Just like using the word predestination

01:54:46

A lot of them use predestination That doesn't mean they're Calvinists They understood biblical predestination

01:54:53

So we're incorporating our own understanding And meaning into those terms

01:54:58

When they weren't at all And they were absolutely not If you read the whole context

01:55:08

There's nobody who can come away saying This person was a Calvinist You cannot find them before Augustine Before Augustine So you're not going to be able to find anything in Ambrose You're not going to be able to find anything in Clement You're not going to be able to find anything in Diognetus Nothing Now obviously,

01:55:31

I agree None of them were Calvinists We don't have to say they were Calvinists We understand that they had differing views

01:55:40

You're the one saying they all had the exact same view That's the difference And that's a huge difference

01:55:50

That's what the callers kept calling me about Saying, hey, this guy's got all these guys

01:55:56

Thinking the same way And that was my red flag immediately Because I'm like, no way No way

01:56:02

I've heard you do so much in reference to Rome on this

01:56:07

That I know better Again, we go back to the white man's burden

01:56:13

That was the chief linchpin in that In that they didn't think monolithically

01:56:19

And Rome needs them to And needs to take everything modern and read it back into them

01:56:26

Every word we use today That's what they thought about that word, too Rome does the very same thing

01:56:32

And these guys, he's just grabbed that concept And he's ran his own way with it So if you do that, if you're really honest about it

01:56:44

Actually read the whole section And understand it in its context And learn

01:56:49

Latin, learn Greek So you can read it and not get a translation And then you'll see that those quotes are misrepresented

01:56:57

It's very simple once you understand it It's very simple once you understand it And none of those Calvinist guys, they've never done anything that I've done

01:57:05

Did you find yourself having a bias To say, I'm looking for the free will stuff I'm just going to skip over anything that doesn't sound like it supports my view

01:57:12

Or were you objective in really studying both sides From both perspectives to try to find

01:57:19

The true meaning and intention of the author Sure, I didn't know when I started this

01:57:24

I had no clue what these guys were saying and what was going on We're out of time

01:57:30

But I don't want to rush past that I played that before That's very troubling to me

01:57:38

I had no idea what these guys were all about So you were accepted into a

01:57:45

PhD program In Church History or was this in the Philosophy Department Because I've got the sneaking hunch this was in the

01:57:53

Philosophy Department Not in the Church History Department I cannot conceive of the

01:57:58

Church History Department allowing this I really can't But you're telling me

01:58:05

That you got an MDiv at Golden Gate And you had no idea what the background

01:58:11

Because I don't see any acknowledgement On Wilson's part of the fundamental differences

01:58:17

The contexts that would change Between an origin

01:58:24

And a Tertullian Tertullian is moving the West toward Latin Origin is still in Greek There's all this stuff about the different meanings of words between Latin and Greek That had very key issues

01:58:39

In regards to the East and the West In the 4th century in regards to Christological controversies

01:58:44

The point is If you really know Church History Then you know there are complexities

01:58:50

That I do not see reflected in any of the commentary that Ken Wilson gives So maybe he didn't have any idea

01:58:58

Then he shouldn't be trying to pretend to write about something like this That's what is really concerning I'm not going to push past the hours

01:59:08

We have maybe 30 seconds worth of quotes left to do We'll get to them Like I said,

01:59:13

I'm not pushing on with this tomorrow I'm going to stargaze tonight

01:59:20

That's all there is to it There you go Lots of heavy stuff today

01:59:26

Man, if you like Church History You got absolutely overwhelmed

01:59:35

But I hope the last stuff doesn't Keep you from really, really, really thinking

01:59:43

About Cyprian's words to The Martyrs and the Mines I would be really encouraged

01:59:51

If I saw sometime over the next couple of weeks Some of you homeschooling parents You had taken the time

01:59:58

Tracked it down I'll link to it online When I write up the description here

02:00:04

Tracked it down, did a little reading And then, you don't have to read the whole thing

02:00:10

But especially that section about the wood And the gold and the silver And things like that And had talked to your kids

02:00:20

About Christians who were faithful unto death For the name of Jesus Could someone do that?

02:00:28

How about a bunch of you do that? I think that would be awesome Thanks for watching today We're supposed to come back again tomorrow