Critical Theory in the Church, the “Transient Text,” and Open Phones

Greetings and welcome to the Dividing Line, whatever day it is. I had a long day of travel yesterday. It was, loved the folks up in Buffalo, but there is nothing to do at that airport. It's just, and there's a little bit more to do at the Philly airport, but not much.

I mean, airports just really aren't designed for long hours of just sitting around doing almost nothing. But anyway, we got home in one piece and my bag got home with me too, which I really was surprised by that.

But we're here and that's why we're doing a program today and then we're doing a program on Monday. That's what I was thinking when I tweeted what I did a little while ago and I said it was Monday. We're going to be doing a program on Monday.

So in other words, totally unusual days. And then because I'll be driving Tuesday and I know Thursday is going to be ugly, probably going to maybe do a Friday one next week. We'll see. But anyway, just got back from upstate New York.

Some of you saw some of the pictures. We were shooting some material. We didn't want to talk too much about it because we want to get into some places without necessarily being recognized. But the weather kept us from doing some of the things we wanted to do.

We got soaked, but I did get a really great shot. I'll mention this. I told Jeff, I was up there with Jeff and Luke and Carmen from Apologia and we were shooting stuff for a documentary on Mormonism, which we'll continue gathering stuff for in just a couple of months.

We go up to Salt Lake for the general conference, hopefully a debate too. And anyway, I was reviewing stuff on the subject of the first vision and things like that because we went to what's called the Sacred Grove.

And the Sacred Grove is a footpath through trees, that's all it is. But I did see a bunch of Mormons and they were putting their cameras down toward the ground and shooting up through the leaves to sort of get the light coming down on you from above effect type thing.

But man, was that a reminder of how ugly humidity is. Something we do not live with here in the Valley. It may be 106 today, but it's dry as a bone and so it's lovely. But it was like 90 and the humidity, we walked out of that, and we were in shade, walked out of that and just wanted to die.

I mean, got in the SUV, we're sitting there in front of the air conditioning vents, just going, trying to try to try to dry off. Oh, it's horrible. I feel sorry for you folks back there. You see our numbers and go, oh, it's so hot out there.

But it's, yeah, come August, yeah, we sort of get it for a while. But anyway, so we were back there and I got a picture of Jeff. I told him that he needed to lean up against the mantle over the fireplace in the Joseph Smith home.

And I got a picture of it. It didn't turn out real well because there's a light right there and it's sort of focused on the light and it's sort of dark. But anyway, I got it. And because in Joseph Smith's history, when he came home after the first vision, his mother asked him if he was okay and he leaned up against that mantle over the fireplace and he said, I'm, I'm well enough, but I have learned for myself that Presbyterianism is not true.

So I thought, so I thought it was somewhat ironic to have a picture of Jeff leaning up against that, given the same thing anyway, it was funny. So yeah, we did some stuff there. And then we went over, we were in Palmyra where the Book of Mormon was originally published, ran into a bunch of Christians there, had chats with them, shot some stuff with the location of the, of the first publication of the Book of Mormon, the background and, and stuff like that, visited the Hill Cumorah, which is, it's just a bump.

It should be the Bump Cumorah is what, that's what it should be called, the Bump Cumorah. But when you're Joseph Smith, it's the Hill Cumorah and entire armies. I mean, the, the, the forest is still so thick there.

You couldn't even had a decent civil war battle there, let alone what Joseph Smith describes as horses and chariots and swords and all the rest of that stuff. It's just pure, pure fiction. But it was interesting to visit the home and think of Joseph entertaining the family for hours at night with tales of the ancient inhabitants of the, of the, of the Americas, even before he allegedly received the golden plates.

So anyway, we did some stuff on, on Mormonism while we were there. And of course I was in Colorado before that and heading back in a few days to Colorado. We've got a bunch of stuff. I've started mentioning some of the things.

I don't have all the details. Did we put up the stuff I sent you? Because I sent you a text with the stuff on Redemption Hills. Yeah, I sent you, I sent you that text. It has all the information on that.

But I'll be speaking, well, this Sunday I'm speaking at Apologia, and then next Sunday I'll be at Redemption Hills. This, the Sunday after that, I'll be at a Reformed Baptist Church in Colorado Springs.

That Friday, Jason Lyle has posted something about that Friday, the evangelism seminar. I just want to make sure people understand, Jason's going to be doing most of that. I'm the first speaker. I speak first, and then I leave at like 510, 530, something like that, I think 510.

And I leave, I mean, I'll literally have to be running to my car because I have to get all the way back up to Copper Mountain, which is almost a three-hour drive on the other side of the state. And so I'm not going to be able to hang around.

I wish I could, it'd be very enjoyable, but I will be coming back that Sunday morning and preaching at the same church. And I need to remember to send them whatever text I'm going to be preaching on. And then on the previous Wednesday, I'll be in Boulder at South Boulder Bible Church, two sessions there as well.

So I'll be doing some speaking and stuff while I'm up there in Colorado. Redemption Hills is around Littleton, as I recall. It's in the Denver area. And so we'll be busy while we are up there, definitely.

Okay, before we open the phones, a couple quick items. John Harris, Worldview Convos in Twitter, posted some material this morning. And there was one brief story that struck me too, because it starts off.

One story that struck me was from a Southern Baptist church plant in North Carolina. A couple who helped start the church was called upon by their newly hired pastor, who was a recent graduate of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, to apologize to another couple who had started coming to the church.

Why did they have to apologize? Because they had the same last name as the other couple, who happened to be of a different skin color. They were told to repent of their past sins of slavery. So obviously the new couple is black.

They were told to repent of their past sins of slavery, because they, quote, might, end quote, have had ancestral slave owners who, quote, might, end quote, have owned the other couple's family in the past.

They were told that if they didn't repent, they had to leave the church because they would be unrepentant of racism. Since this incident took place, a once healthy church plant has disintegrated, which you would expect.

Now, I don't even know how to start responding to something like this, other than to say, if this is what we've come to, I suppose on one side, the lines will be drawn clearly, and the people who believe this stuff will be marked out very clearly, because people with just plain old common sense will not be able to remain in churches with them.

You want divisive? You want something that is so fundamentally contrary to the gospel, can you imagine, can you seriously imagine walking into any of the churches founded by the apostles and asking what someone's name is, discovering that they are of an ethnic group that 200 years earlier, somewhere in Asia Minor, had been involved in warfare with another ethnicity, had enslaved some of them, and therefore, since there's people of that, don't know, can't trace anything, but since you might, your ancestors might have done something to these people's ancestors, then you need to apologize to them to be a part of this church.

Can you imagine the apostles doing that? The reason the apostles did not do that and would never do that is because of this thing called the gospel, and we're right back to where we started over a year ago at the MLK 50 thing, going to Colossians 3, going to Ephesians and saying, what's the basis of our unity?

And since it's the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ, which wipes all of that out, this idea of telling someone that they should apologize to someone else for what their ancestors might have done, how do you know that that Black couple did not have ancestors that also owned slaves because they were Black slaveholders?

I've heard, I haven't been able to verify this, I've heard that Kamala Harris has ancestors who were, Jamaican ancestors, who held Black slaves. So once we buy into this, once you buy into this, we've got to go back and you've got to apologize for what might have happened at some time in the past without any evidence, we have demonstrated we don't believe in the forgiveness of sins.

We don't believe in redemption. We don't believe in imputed righteousness. We don't believe in the very foundation of the unity of the body of Christ. And there is no end to this. There is no end to it.

It is constant recrimination. It's constant outrage. It's constant offense. And it's constant division. It's all it is. I'm just, apologize, based on last names. You read stuff like this and you just go, how is this happening?

How is this happening? I can't, I don't know, I don't know. No, people, that's not a rainbow. Is that a Colorado pride shirt you're wearing for the dividing line?

Okay.

You know, it's funny. 10 years ago, maybe 15 years ago, if you had worn something like this, no one would have even thought about that. But now anything that has, I guess, I guess all my coogies are now pride coogies and everything else, right?

You're sort of liking that idea, aren't you? I can tell you. You're so anti-coogified. I may have to mute somebody there. Anyway, all right, let's shift gears here. Oh, that was not wise. Let me see here.

I'll just do the kick for now. We'll do a band later on. Anyway, a couple other things real quick. Um, yeah, I saw that the quote-unquote documentary Back to the Greek has been posted by Steven Anderson.

I mean, when you think about all the stuff that we're facing and all the challenges we have coming our direction, the loss of liberty and freedom and the division in the church and people coming into the church teaching just amazing things that are fundamentally contrary to the gospel, the fact that you would even have to spend a few moments on something as inane as, hey, you know, we need to adopt modern pronunciation of Koine Greek and use it to witness to Greek-speaking people.

And we need to tell everybody in the seminaries this. I just, I don't even know what to say. We mentioned on the last program, this documentary with Steven Anderson and the involvement of some ostensibly Reformed Baptist folks.

You'll notice I didn't focus on the textual thing, really, in that discussion. My question was, how in the world can anyone who understands the gospel in a Reformed context, which includes the Lordship of Christ and repentance from sin, cooperate with and evangelize with someone who detests the Lordship of Christ and repentance from sin as a part of the gospel call itself?

That would be Steven Anderson. And it was when I realized in our interview years ago that that's where he was coming from. I just pulled the plug on, so that's enough. This is just ridiculous. But one of the Reformed Baptist guys had said, we saw 24 people led to the Lord by the TR only.

So if you had used, so I don't get it. If you use a different pronunciation, so it's the pronunciation that makes it powerful or something, or is it the TR only that makes it powerful? I'm not getting any of this.

Obviously, if you want to reach Greek-speaking people, they're not a large people group any longer. The days of Alexander are long gone. And so there are a couple nations, Cyprus, Greece, maybe a few of the islands around there that you'll find Greek-speaking people.

The vast majority of them speak English. But, and in that context, you'll want to use a pronunciation that they'll understand, I guess, if that's what you want to do. What does any of that have to do with anything?

I mean, logically speaking, when you're preaching from Colossians chapter two, are you somehow, is there some type of spiritual advantage to being able to use modern Greek pronunciation rather than Erasmian?

So if I say, and if I don't do that in modern Greek, does that change the meaning of the fact that Colossians 2 .9 says, for in him is dwelling all the fullness of deity and bodily form? Does that change, for example, the fact that the King James translation there is inferior to almost all modern translations?

That the term Godhead there is not clear, and the King James was inconsistent in its translation of Theot and Thyat roots. And that's just a fact. How you pronounce it is irrelevant to any of that. I just don't get any of this.

It's a new Greek Gnosticism, and Stephen Anderson is the new Greek Gnostic prophet. I, what is, what does any of this have to do with, if a man cannot read the New Testament with enough understanding to recognize the centrality of repentance to the gospel, what does all the rest of this have to do with anything?

I don't get any of it. I really, really don't. It just seems like a massive waste of storage space on YouTube to put this kind of stuff up there. So I've heard some of these guys, and not just Stephen Anderson, bemoaning the level of Greek proficiency taught in seminaries.

Well, hey, where have we heard that before? I have for at least two decades now been pointing out the fact that in seminary, there has been a tremendous diminishment upon the languages in favor of church leadership, evangelism strategies, financial strategies, entertainment, basically.

And I've told the stories of how some of these seminaries have adopted, well, most seminaries have simply dropped requirements for biblical languages. Those that continue to pretend that they have them, um, many of them have adopted a situation where you can, you can literally qualify for your biblical language requirements in a Jan Term class.

And what that makes it is a biblical tools class. You know, you study Lagos or Accordance or something, you figure out how to use it, and now you're good. I've been bemoaning this for a long time. I've told the story of having 15 weeks, 15 three-hour sessions to bring people through both introductory texts in Greek and Hebrew and how that form, knowing that for most of them, that's all they're going to get.

I've been bemoaning that for a long time, but how you pronounce it is irrelevant to that. Absolutely 1000 irrelevant. It makes no difference. Now, if, if what they're saying is, well, I think, I think seminary students should spend more time reading Homeric Greek or reading the Greek Septuagint, just like, Hey, I think it'd be wonderful to read the Greek Septuagint.

I just, I had, uh, uh, I bought those. I highly recommend they're very nicely done. The Hendrickson two volume Greek Septuagint reader, uh, thing. That is great, but that's not going to change the fact, um, that New Testament exegesis is not dependent upon your pronunciation.

And it's primarily dependent upon your knowledge of grammar and syntax, the context and the size of your vocabulary. And that vocabulary, it doesn't matter how you pronounce theatetos if you don't know what it means.

So I don't, I don't get any of it. And, uh, yeah, I know it's out there. I don't have time for it right now. I, I mean, that is so low on the priority list. It's not even funny. Um, we are, uh, right now talking with folks in South Africa.

It looks like could have as many as three debates in South Africa. I mentioned last time, if you can help us get there, uh, it's expensive trip. Uh, the, um, travel fund link is available on our website under the support me, uh, section.

Uh, if you can help us to get there, we're looking at, uh, debates, uh, two debates on Islam and one debate, Lord willing, there's, there's pressure. Please pray that it happens. Um, you know how this works.

You know how, if we were trying to do this in the United States, what would happen? Uh, but we want to be doing a debate on the subject of the nature of marriage because South Africa has had the profaning of marriage longer than we have.

And so, um, please pray that happens. We could have three debates there. There's at least two in November. Uh, so, uh, we've got a lot of stuff coming on. That's so much more important than any of this silly stuff that, uh, that's why it doesn't really rate too high in a related, but not directly related, uh, development.

Robert Truelove, uh, posted, uh, as a preview, uh, the preface to a booklet or book. I'm not sure what he referred to it as that he has written or is writing. Uh, and it's called the transient text, the canonical crisis of the modern Bible movement.

And so, you know, that there's going to be this, uh, conference, uh, right around the time that, uh, I'll be doing a debate in Atlanta, uh, with a Muslim. Um, and this, it's only two pages. So that's, that's why I, I, uh, want to take a look at it.

I understand the appeal of this, but I want, again, especially our listeners to understand where the problem lies. Um, it talks about the fact that in 2016 Crossway, um, had announced that it was going to basically, basically what they announced is they were going to shut down their translation committee and they were going to put out the final version of the ESV and that was going to be it.

Um, and then very, very briefly after that, about 19 days, I believe after that, uh, there was, uh, the, they had called it the permanent text edition. Uh, but just few days later, they reversed their decision and said in a statement on Crossway's website, they stated that their goal is now not to establish a permanent text, but rather to allow for ongoing periodic updating of the text to reflect the realities of biblical scholarship, such as textual discoveries or changes in English over time.

Then he says, when we look at the history of the English Bible since the late 19th century, we see a sharp break with how the Bible was viewed in earlier church history. The never ending series of revisions is part of this departure and Bible publishers are committed to revising the text of your Bible until the eschaton.

Well, I don't think Bible publishers could care less. I'll be perfectly honest with you, uh, Bible publishers, and at this point we need to be specific, um, Thomas Nelson, Crossway, Zondervan, um, the, the, the folks that own the, the major translations, Lachman Foundation isn't a major publishing house type thing, but they hold the NASB.

Um, they, if they continue to have active translation committees, um, then what they're doing is they're keeping the translate, they're either keeping the translation consistent with updates in the Nessie Ollender UBS text.

And those updates are happening because of the current work on ECM, the additional critical mayor, critical mayor, which is supposed to be done by 2030. And so we've talked on this program a number of times before about what happened with the ESV at Jude five, uh, because of the text, uh, change in the Nessie Ollender text.

And again, when I say text change, that simply means that what was in the textual apparatus as a note, one of those readings was placed into the text itself. And the text main text reading, which had been the 27th edition, uh, was put into the note.

So there are hundreds and hundreds of, of textual notes in UBS thousands in Nessie Ollen. And what the SV did was follow the, uh, editorial decision. It doesn't mean, you know, you know, people get the idea that, well, that means the, this committee is deciding they didn't like what was said here.

No, in that instance, it was simply the ECM has Jesus in Jude five rather than Lord. Um, the Nessie Ollen followed that. And so the ESV consistently followed the next edition of the Nessie Ollen that came out.

That's all there was to it. We had known about the variant that said Jesus for centuries and centuries and centuries. Um, it's not like someone's just deciding to change things willy nilly. The issue is what has the best, uh, pedigree and CBGM had been utilized and to demonstrate that the manuscripts that say Jesus at Jude five, uh, are more genealogically coherent with one another, uh, in their reading, uh, than the manuscripts that say Lord.

So anyways, uh, if there are still current translation committees that are sitting and active, um, then they have to make decisions concerning numerous issues. Now that can be positive. It can be negative.

Um, one of the negative aspects of that is the possibility that a committee that has control over a conservative, good translation can be influenced by societal movements, especially in regards to gender pronouns and things like that.

Um, that's the reality of having English Bible translations. And obviously though there were numerous English Bible translations in the 16th century, uh, 17th century as well. Um, not nearly as many as we have today, nor could there have been just simply the market would not, would not be able to sustain anything like that.

I mean, just economically printing wise, all that kind of stuff that just simply wouldn't have been a possibility, but there were multiple translations and to come up with a new translation did not necessarily mean you were saying that all of the translations were bad or anything else.

Uh, there were just reasons for producing such translations. I've said we have more than enough, don't need any in English, put all that money towards something else. So it's not so much Bible publishers.

Um, the issue is New Testament scholars continue to analyze manuscripts and now with CBGM there will be, we are in the middle of a revolution. I've said this numerous times. I think that's one of the reasons though, to be honest with you, I have not yet seen any real meaningful interaction from the traditionalists with CBGM, um, and with the methodology itself.

I, I don't know of any of them that actually have any proficiency in an understanding of how CBGM works. So, um, but we are in the midst of a revolution and there are going to be big news stories over the next couple of years because Gospels of Mark and John will be published in the ECM, ECM over the next couple of years.

And I don't expect major changes, but for example, variations in the Gospels carry more weight. Most people had never even heard of the Jude 5 variant and almost anything that was changed in Acts was just so minor that it's all flown under the radar.

Um, once you start doing stuff in the Gospels, all of a sudden it's going to hit and everybody's gonna be going, what is CBGM? What is this all about? And it's given how often CBGM is misrepresented even by scholars today, it's going to be ugly for a while.

Anyway, uh, scholars continue to do this type of analysis and at least through 2030, uh, that kind of information is going to continue to come out. Well, you can ignore it. Um, the enemies of the faith won't ignore it, so we can't, but some people will.

And it's just easier for people to say, I don't want to, I don't want to have to think about all this stuff. I just, just, just give me my Bible. I don't want to have to think about all this stuff. That sounds very pious.

There's only one problem. Anyone who has read church history knows that every single generation of Christians in the past has had to deal with this issue. There's lots of discussion in the patristic sources about variants and things like that.

The problem is they didn't have nearly the amount of information that we have. Oh, they can tell us, well, we've seen manuscripts like this, but we can actually document. We can say, here's the manuscript.

Here's a picture. Here's a high quality digital picture of this manuscript. We can provide that. And it's the first time in history that we've been able to do that. No one in the past has been able to do that.

That's, that's just the way it is. So it's not this idea that, uh, we just want to keep changing the Bible until the eschaton, but the serious commitment to knowing what was written by the apostles does require us to take a different perspective than those that would say, we just simply establish this particular text.

Here's our theological reasons for doing so. And so we're just not going to worry about the rest of this type of stuff. Um, I have said before, I don't believe that perspective can be taken out into apologetics.

Um, but anyway, so, uh, last, last two paragraphs here, the Bible as the unchanging word of God has been replaced with what is now a transient text. Well, I, I don't believe that type of assertion could survive debate because I can go to the second century and show you discussions of textual variation.

Justin Martyr arguing with the Jews saying they've changed things. And Justin Martyr wasn't right in all instances in what he said. Um, second, third century filled with discussions of the textual history.

So to pretend that this is some new thing, um, is just historically untenable. It could not survive cross-examination. Um, it is not like, well, up to this point, this wasn't even the perspective of Erasmus or Beza.

You can't read their writings especially when it comes to their treatment of the Greek text and how often they, they left it to the reader. Ah, it could be this, could be that, leave it to you. That's, that's not unchanging word of God position, uh, that is being assumed here.

Uh, because the, there's a vast difference between the concept of the fact that God has preserved his word and that it's not being edited and changed. We agree with that. And then the practical application of actually producing a text.

It's one thing to say, yes, in the manuscripts, God has preserved his word. It's another thing to say, and now give us that in exact forms that we can produce translations and all the different languages of man that we want to produce it in.

Um, on the one hand, you can theologically make grand statements, but your grand, if your grand statements cannot produce a new Testament, um, they're not, they're just grand statements. Um, along with the loss of the Bible as an unchanging standard.

Now, I really think a lot of folks actually do believe the assertion that having textual critical notes in your Greek New Testament means that the Bible has been lost as an unchanging standard, which would mean you can't have any of the notes that, that indicate the differences between the various TRs or even the errors that Erasmus or Beza made or the places where in the Stephanos text, uh, uh, Stephanos puts the beta in and that's Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis, the living Bible of the New Testament church.

You have to ignore all that stuff. When Stephanos put the variant readings in the 1550, did that result in the loss of the Bible as an unchanging standard? No, it didn't then, it doesn't today, if we're consistent, if we're consistent.

Along with the loss of the Bible as an unchanging standard, a number of biblical commitments that were sacrosanct until the modern era are now becoming virtually lost to us. It is my concern that this is leading to a canonical crisis.

This booklet is about why this is happening, its negative consequences, and what it's going to take to make it stop. Well, we will obviously be looking forward to the publication of that because I have said more than once, I believe applying standards of consistency will demonstrate that this form of argumentation cannot survive cross-examination.

It just can't, it can't. 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number you can call today. That is a toll free number for those of you who, you know, I was watching in the USA. I was watching, uh, I love when all these memes pop up on Facebook, um, that show the old rotary dial, uh, phones, which of course I grew up with.

I remember the first fancy dancy beep, beep, beep, uh, touchtone. Yeah, touchtone. That was, that was fun, but my first phones didn't have that. And yes, you could mess that up quite easily. You would think it'd be pretty simple, but it's so much fun to watch the videos of teenagers today trying to figure out a rotary phone.

It's, um, probably not fair. Um, and it's sort of like us, some of us old folks trying to figure out some modern, um, gadget they just come out with, but it's sort of funny, um, to, to watch. And, um, it would take a while to dial because, uh, because there, the, the bigger the number was like, like if you dialed a nine, that would take a while.

So like those, remember those old, uh, uh, radio, uh, contests where you had to dial in or something like that. If you had a rotary phone, you were doomed. Uh, you, you, oh, that was fun. That was now I'm not old enough to remember when you pick it up and get an operator and dial, um, you know, Carbondale six, one, two, or something like that.

But there are still folks, a few folks running around that, um, are in that situation, but I ain't one of them, but I do remember the rotaries. They were, they were lots of fun. Oh, okay. Well, the phone calls, they be a coming in.

All right. Let's, uh, talk to, uh, Anna. Hi, Anna.

Hi, Dr. White. Thank you so much for taking my call. Okay. So my question is about blasphemy, the Holy Spirit. And so kind of where this is coming from is kind of like in the Pentecostal churches, like Bethel church and like Benny Hinn and stuff, you see like the Holy laughter, the shaking, the convulsing, and that's something you see a lot in like the occult from like the Kundalini spirit and the Hindu and stuff like that.

So I guess, uh, my question is kind of like, are these manifestations that you see in these churches, demonic imitation of occult? Or like, did the occult, like you think Satan stole that from the Holy Spirit and is now like manifesting that into the occult?

And then, so like, is attributing like these acts that you see, like Benny Hinn and like Bethel, all these things and calling it demonic, if that's from the Holy Spirit, then it's like, am I borderline like.

Blaspheming the Holy Spirit? Well, uh, you know, when I saw the, uh, the title of the question, the, the New Testament teaching on the subject of the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, Jesus identifies as, as the unpardonable sin, uh, to blaspheme the Holy Spirit.

And that has a specific context, um, that was in regards to the Jews who had the Word of God and they had great light. And yet in spite of that, they attributed to Beelzebub, the Prince of Demons, uh, the actions that Jesus undertook as the Son of God by the power of the Holy Spirit.

And this was described as being unforgivable because of the fact that it is the Holy Spirit who brings conviction of sin. And so if you understand the, the actions and power of the, of the Holy Spirit of God to be that of Satan, then you are putting yourself outside of, uh, the very mechanism whereby you would be granted repentance and brought to repentance anyways.

That's what makes the unpardonable sin unpardonable is because it's unpardonable. That is, it demonstrates a person who has so shut their eyes to the light and loves the darkness that they, uh, will, uh, have cut themselves off from the convicting power of the Holy Spirit of God by that, by that commitment.

But that can only be done by someone who has a tremendous amount of and sins against that. And that's not really, I think, what you're asking. What you're asking is more along the lines of when the New Testament, uh, tells us, um, to test all things, and yet at the same time, for example, the Corinthians are told not to forbid speaking in tongues, for example.

Now, we can contextualize that, we can point out that there's a purpose for speaking in tongues, and that purpose was fulfilled at a certain point in time in history, and therefore that's not relevant.

But we, at the same time, see, um, manifestations, um, the, uh, the coat throw, the coat spin that Benny Hinn uses where he takes his Armani jacket and knocks over the first few rows of the audience, um, this type of thing.

And the question becomes, which is this? Is this demonic, or is this, um, some kind of, um, trickery that, that involves group hallucination or group manipulation and people expecting something to happen and then it does, so on and so forth?

Well, you don't necessarily have to divide those equally apart from one another. Anything that will lead a person to non-dealing with their sin, not dealing with the call of discipleship, whatever else it might be, is demonic, and demonic doesn't have to, the demons are not precluded from using psychological aspects of things to accomplish their purposes.

And so, it doesn't have to be all of one or all of the other. It can be a mixture, depending upon the individual that you're talking to and things like that. And then the question becomes, yeah, but if you say anything that is a spiritual manifestation that might be of the Holy Spirit is not, then are you blaspheming the Holy Spirit?

And I don't think that that's anywhere used in the New Testament in that way. Um, again, the, the specific context in which blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is mentioned was specifically people with tremendous light in the presence of the very Son of God identifying His power as that of Satan.

And we're not dealing with that kind of a, kind of a context today, so I think that kind of an application would be, would be excessive. At the same time, I have seen people who, and, and it, it, I think Reformed or even Fundamentalist types of folks are subject to this kind of thing, where you see something that is different from your experience and define the parameters of what the Spirit of God could do based upon what you have seen Him do, or at least you have thought that you saw Him do.

Your understanding becomes the, the parameters, and I've seen people, um, and I fully understand the mindset that just automatically dismisses anything if it's different from what my experience has been.

So, we have to be very, very careful that we do not make our experiences the standard by which we determine these things, and so there needs to be a balance. It needs to be a mature balance, it needs to be a balance that is derived from consistent exegesis of the text of the Word of God and an application to the things that are happening in our, in the Church and in our culture today.

And unfortunately, consistent, balanced reasoning is not going to sell you a lot of books or make you overly popular, so it's not as prevalent as it should be, but that's, that's what we definitely would need, especially in these days, when we have warnings about those who will use false doctrine to tickle ears and lead people astray.

We have warning after warning after warning after warning of super-apostles and all sorts of stuff like that. One side tends to take that to one extreme and say, you know, some people go to the point of saying the Holy Spirit's not doing anything at all, and then we know what the other extreme is, because they own television stations.