Modalism Destroys the Gospel, Church History Continued, Response to Jordan Hall’s Unhinged Diatribe

Well, greetings. Welcome to The Dividing Line. I'm here. Just drove from Las Vegas down to Phoenix and had to get everything out of the rental van and then get that turned in. So we've been moving, been driving a lot, a lot of hours on the road the past 10 days and came the closest to an accident about three-quarters of a mile from my house.

That was great. Crazy, blonde, and a little teeny tiny two-seater that decided that switching lanes and slamming on brakes in front of large vans is a good thing to do. Just avoided that one. Anyways, hopefully she's not a listener to The Dividing Line.

Anyway, so here we are. Got a lot of things to get to today. And let's start off diving right into scripture if we could. I'm going to leave the unpleasant stuff for the end of the program and do the positive stuff at the beginning.

And then if you don't want to listen to the unpleasant stuff at the end, then you don't have to. That's certainly understandable. Didn't spend a lot of time. I did that brief little program from the church up in Gardnerville.

That's the church where we had the wedding on Saturday and where it snowed like anything Sunday afternoon into the evening. So we just dodged that just very nicely by less than 24 hours, I would say. They needed the snow.

Everybody in the West right now needs any type of precipitation. Anyway, did that little brief program and I talked just very briefly a little bit about the encounter with Sean McCraney. Obviously, many, many things were brought up during the course of that discussion.

Full preterism and how it's utterly destructive of any meaningful biblical exegesis. It destroys the reality of the church and just a horrific impact that that has and is used by a lot of folks that want to avoid the wisdom that God has given us in the establishment of the church.

The idea that the church only existed until the late 70s, I think is one of the most absurd things I've ever heard. Yeah, throughout all ages, the world ended in 1870. Anyways, you can do anything with that.

But one of the things that I didn't get to expand on is the problem that modalism creates with, and I guess a lot of folks just don't even think about this aspect of Christian theology. I'm not sure why as I'm sitting here thinking about.

I'm really not sure why this is not, there is that one beautiful song that we love to sing before the throne of God above, but it just doesn't seem that a lot of Christians have a real solid grasp of the reality of the intercessory work of Jesus as the mediator, the intercessor, as the God-man, as the one to whom the elect of God are joined.

We are in him, and so he is that predecessor who's gone into the holy place in our stead, and hence we have that anchor for the soul. Hebrews 6. And when you think about that and try to fit that into a modalistic scheme, it just doesn't work, especially if there is some lack of clarity, as there certainly was with Sean, as to the nature of Christ after his resurrection.

I mean, he's no longer the God-man from his perspective. He no longer has a resurrection body. Talk about making a mess out of 1 Corinthians 15, but what is the nature of this one who intercedes? And so, you know, I've said this normally in regards to the deity of Christ.

We let people get away with murder when we dialogue with them on the subject of the deity of Christ because we never force them to give a positive presentation of who Jesus really is in light of the verses we're looking at.

Most Christians allow themselves to be put into a completely defensive position where they're simply defending the deity of Christ, and they never go, hey, wait a minute. You just brought up that verse.

What about your view? Your view doesn't fit this verse. How do you answer that? We normally become hyper-defensive, and we don't put the shoe on the other foot. And the same thing is true with modalism.

I haven't really talked about that very much. Normally, it's in regards to the deity of Christ, but the modalist really has to try to fit this strange view of Jesus as two persons. And then, see, here's the problem is after the resurrection, you have the coming of the Spirit.

If that's the unipersonal deity, if that's the one who was the Father, who indwelt the Son, and is now indwelling us, then what happened to Jesus? I mean, what is Jesus now? Is he no longer the God-man?

What's the nature of the mediator who is at the right hand of the Father and who, together with the Father, sends the Spirit? When you're a Unitarian modalist, this doesn't make any sense. And so, we look, for example, at Hebrews 9.

Hebrews 9, beginning of verse 24,. For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us. So again, the writer to the Hebrews, for his own reasons, utilizes the tabernacle, not the temple, as his prototypical, his typology.

So, the reality is the heavenly tabernacle of which the earthly is just but a shadow, a representation. And so, Christ enters into the holy place, which is into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.

Now, that makes perfect sense in a Trinitarian context. We have the Son eternally in the form of God, equal with the Father, does not consider the equality something to be held on to at all costs, lays that aside.

Death, even the death on the cross, highly exalted, given the name which is above every name. Now, he enters into the presence of the Father in our behalf. His sacrifice is accepted. His sacrifice is completed.

And so, he now is the intercessor in the presence of the Father. Same picture you have in the Book of Revelation, the Lamb standing as if slain. So, that makes sense, but how does this work in modalism?

And again, there's different brands. I didn't get the feeling that Sean really has a fixed theology of any of this. But who is this one who appears in the presence of God for us? If you have the idea that Jesus was two persons, the Father and the Son, and the Son is only the human being, so is this now only a human being who stands in the presence of the Father?

Well, how is he in the presence of the Father if the Father has taken on the role of the Spirit and the Spirit now indwells us? Nor was it that he would offer himself often as the high priest enters the holy place year by year with blood that is not his own.

Otherwise, he would need to suffer often since the foundation of the world. But now, once, at the consummation of the ages, he has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And so, again, this makes sense when we have a divine Redeemer who is truly divine, the Son.

In classical modalism, the Son, well, in modern modalism, the Son is not divine. The deity that dwells in the Son, but the Son came into existence at his birth in Bethlehem. And I think, I sort of wonder if that's where Sean gets confused and actually was like, well, you mean Jesus hasn't always been in flesh?

And I was really struggling. I guess I made a strange face toward the camera or something. You're there, somebody photoshopped something. I saw a meme. I don't know. But I couldn't even follow what he was talking about.

I've never heard anybody suggest that. But that's what Trinitarians have told me. Well, in all probability, that's what you misunderstood Trinitarians saying, not that Trinitarians actually said that.

And inasmuch as it is pointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment, so Christ also, having offered once, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time to salvation for salvation without reference to sin to those who eagerly await him.

And so, the one who is coming is the one who will appear, is the one who once offered himself to bear the sins of many. If the nature of Jesus has changed, this doesn't make any sense. Because very clearly, the one who will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin to those who eagerly await him is the same one who had been offered once to bear the sins of many.

If somehow Jesus has gone from being the God-man to just simply a man, then there is no second coming anyways. Even if you pull it off to AD 70, it still wouldn't make any sense, which is using the Preterist thing.

So, there's just so many problems. When people try to argue that the doctrine of the Trinity is just some later accretion or something along those lines, they don't seem to realize the doctrine of the Trinity is what makes the theology of the New Testament.

You cannot connect the gospel and its effects with the nature of God without the doctrine of the Trinity. The gospel is Trinitarian, and you can't have the Christian gospel without the God-man. You can't have the God-man in a modalistic sense.

They may say, yes, he was a man indwelt by God, but he was a man indwelt by God who was truly deity and who referred to his Father and distinguished himself from the Father and from the Spirit. And in the application of the gospel, has a particular function, continues to have a particular function to this day as mediator.

Makes me wonder. I don't know, and I don't know that I really want to spend time finding out. I certainly don't have the time to do it right now. But what does a Preterist do with the intercessory work of Christ after AD 70?

I don't know. I don't know. But for Christians anyways, it's a beautiful truth. It is a vital truth. And I just don't see how anyone can maintain the biblical doctrine of the gospel without it being Trinitarian in its manifestation, in its very essence.

It's just right there. And so, I think I did at some point say to Sean when he was saying, well, I don't understand it. I said, well, my kids did during high school. It wasn't meant to be an insult. It's just the reality that that's not an argument.

You know, if I said to, you know, I don't get the various forms of Buddhism, but my not getting it is not an argument against the various forms of Buddhism. And so, turning around and saying, well, I don't get how Jesus can be the God-man, that's not an argument against it.

It's an observation, but it's not an argument. You say, well, it should be simpler than that. Well, I'm sorry, but the very fact that God is eternal is pretty much beyond my experiential understanding.

So, that doesn't fly either. So, just some thoughts on, we could have, we obviously could have expanded the topic widely onto a bunch of different things, but we didn't do that. We only had a certain amount of time, obviously.

And I did try to keep it focused, even though he said, oh, you're changing the subject. Well, you know, I raised an issue. He's like, yeah, but that's irrelevant because there is no church anymore. That's where all that came from.

I keep telling people, and you might say, why don't you just take notes? Well, because normally, right as I'm finishing up the program or right as I'm finishing up teaching at PRBC, isn't a good time for me to take notes.

We are, like I said, unfortunately, at the exact same point in my notes on church history. And so, I'm going to, I'm recalling that we are looking at, here on the program, we're pretty much at the exact same spot as in the PRBC presentation.

And that is that we looked at Jan Hus, we looked at Wycliffe, we looked at the Lollards, and then we are looking at the factors that had to exist. Because I kept saying, I would have picked Wycliffe, I would have picked Jan Hus, but it was too early.

It wasn't the right time for the Reformation to begin. Because there were certain things that had not yet, that were just about to develop, just about to come on the scene that would be vitally important in the Reformation succeeding, and taking root, and surviving the incredible counteroffensive that Rome launched against the Reformation.

And so, I think, I recall us going over what's called the Babylonian Captivity to Church. I think, and see, what I'm avoiding doing is, now see, someone says, factors contributing to the Reformation is where you stopped last time, but did we get into them?

Did we look at the first one? See, I know that at PRBC, we are at the second factor. That's where I have to be. I'm not sure if I'm doing it Sunday morning or not, because I'm preaching both services on Sunday.

But did we cover that here? I don't think we did. I don't think we did, as I'm pondering it. So, yeah, you know, I don't remember reading through all of this stuff. Yeah, Guy in Channel says, I don't think so.

So, let me summarize the first one, just in case I did. And if you want more information, you can go listen to the fuller discussion from the church history classes at PRBC. The first of the factors that we need to cover is the Babylonian Captivity to Church.

It is a century-long saga of the papacy at one of its nadirs, one of its lowest. And so, what happens, I'm just going to summarize this real quickly, what happens is that in 1305, the French cardinals had gained control pretty much of the papacy.

And in 1305, so this is before the Great Mortality, the Black Death, which is going to take place in 1346, 1347. As someone has once said, the 14th century really was rough on many levels. How Lindsay would have loved the 14th century.

Anyway, could have come up with lots of cool stuff at that point. So, in 1305, the Archbishop of Bordeaux, which is French, was elected as Pope, and he took the name Clement V. Remember, Clement means merciful, merciful.

There have been a lot of Clements who weren't overly merciful, but that's another issue. It's sort of like when popes take the name innocent. I've always found that to be just a...who's going to take...anyway.

But he never went to Rome. Clement V never went to Rome. Instead, he was the first Avignon Pope. He moved the papacy to Avignon, France. And for most of the rest of the 14th century, no pope lived in Rome for the majority of that period.

Now, toward the end, there's going to be an establishment of a Roman papacy again, in contrast to the continuing Avignon papacy. But for many, many years, the papacy...there was no pope in Rome, period.

I suppose the only way that the Roman Catholic can explain this is to say that the successors of Peter temporarily moved to Avignon and then came back at some point. I don't know. But it is not till the very last two decades that this split takes place, where you now have a Roman papacy and an Avignon papacy.

And what happens during this period of time, for a number of decades, is you have two popes who anathematize the other pope and anyone who follows the other pope. And what happens in Europe is you have, fascinatingly enough, a division right along political lines as to which pope you're going to support.

Now, when you think about it, for the nation states at that time, this was pretty cool because you could play the two popes off each other. And so, obviously, this incredibly damaged the power of the papacy.

But eventually, what takes place, there was what's called the Council of Pisa in 1409 attempted to heal the schism. However, both popes refused to attend, so the cardinals deposed both popes and elected another, Alexander V.

But neither of the first two popes accepted the third, so now there were three popes. So the Council of Pisa meets, they assign a new pope who tries to depose the other two popes, but they don't accept that.

So now you have three popes who are anathematizing each other. That's in 1409. Well, this also raised the subject of conciliarism. And that is, what is the ultimate authority? It's really easy for modern Roman Catholics to look back and go, well, it's always been Rome and it's always been.

No, that's something that's developed over time. Roman bishops started making grand claims long ago. It doesn't mean that everybody believed them at all. And so conciliarism was the idea that councils have the highest authority in the church.

And so only a few years, about five years after Alexander V's election, the Council of Constance was called, and that was in 1414. And so it met for four years, 1414 to 1418. And obviously, lots of politics and backroom deals and everything that goes with that.

The burning of Jan Hus was also in 1415. But in 1417, a new pope, Martin V, was elected. And I can't prove that there was any money changed hands or anything else. And what happens is all the other three popes acquiesce to this new pope, Martin V.

And so now the schism has been healed. And you would think that in light of this, in light of the fact that the papacy had not had within itself the ability to bring about its own healing, that conciliarism would be by de facto established by this because you had to have a quote-unquote ecumenical council.

It wasn't ecumenical, but they would view it as such. You had to have a council to heal the mess that the papacy was in. But it's not a matter of decades before the popes are again proclaiming their own ultimate authority, even over councils.

And many a person died over the next number of centuries for promoting the heresy of conciliarism. Now, why is this vitally important? Well, it's simple. This really shook the confidence of everyone in Europe in the divine establishment, infallibility, authority of the papacy.

Literally decades went by, decades went by with multiple popes. Decades went by with a pope only in Avignon, not in Rome. Decades went by where the popes are anathematizing each other. This obviously had a huge impact upon the thinking of individuals in Europe in regards to the divine nature of this hierarchical system of the papacy.

And so that was vitally important in the development of the Reformation. Another thing was the fall of Constantinople. The fall of Constantinople, a fascinating story in and of itself, a sad story, literally.

Constantinople had been weakened. I mean, Constantinople had stood holding back the tide of Islam for centuries. And then in their stupidity and in their greed, one of the crusades had sort of hung a left and went and sacked Constantinople for money from certain Italian city-states and really contributed to the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

Now, there were many reasons why that was relevant, but especially important was the fact that as it became evident that Constantinople was not to be able to hold out, it was going to fall finally after all these centuries, many of her scholars, her Greek scholars, fled westward.

And so they brought their learning and they brought their manuscripts with them. And many European libraries today, many of their treasures would find their origin in the exodus of Greek scholars out of Constantinople toward the west in light of the oncoming Ottoman Turks and the Muslim invasion that they brought.

And so it's highly probable that the manuscripts that Erasmus uses in producing his Greek New Testament probably had their origin, their genesis, their origination in the fall of Constantinople. And so it had a huge impact.

And of course, the Muslim invasion of Europe at this time ends up having a major impact on the course of the Reformation, especially as we will see in regards to Anabaptists and the combined unified sacral rejection, sacral, state church.

The Reformation was a sacral Reformation. It was a state church Reformation. And the Reformers and the Roman Catholics agreed together that the Anabaptists were a huge danger because they were not sacralists.

And the fact that Europe was under such pressure from the east by the Ottoman Turks ended up being very important in how all of the Reformers reacted to and responded to the Anabaptists. I think anybody who's studied Anabaptist history would admit that is the case.

One other thing real quick. We'll go ahead and cover this. Printing. Obviously, when most people talk about what were the big deals, and I'm going to magically make the camera come over. What were the big deals?

What were the things that were absolutely necessary for the Reformation to flourish? Printing is obvious. That's the one big thing. Not only printing in the sense of the ability of the Reformation to get its message out.

I've mentioned before, I think, that for two centuries in Germany, Martin Luther held the record for the most copies of his works. For two centuries after his life. That's amazing. But that just demonstrates how Luther and the Reformers recognized the absolute vital importance of the printing press and the ability to distribute what they're really saying.

It's interesting if you've read, most people skip it, but if you've read the introduction, the preface to the King of France in Calvin's Institutes, you can see that he's another Reformer who recognizes the necessity of getting out accurate knowledge about what the Reformers are actually saying, because there is so much misrepresentation of what it is they're actually saying.

But aside from getting the message out, what was also fundamentally and foundationally important was the existence of scholarship, the existence of Greek and Hebrew lexicons, the ability of the Reformation to utilize its strongest argument, which is the exegesis of text of Scripture.

So you needed to have the Scripture, you need to have translations of Scripture, you need to have the original languages. That's why, really, the strong emphasis upon the original languages continues to exist in Reformed circles today, and in many others, but in Reformed circles especially goes right back to that time period where the Reformers were able to make their argument by throwing off so much of the shackles of medieval allegorical interpretation and to appeal to the direct Word of God itself.

And so there had been printing before Johannes Gutenberg, but it was done by block, so it wasn't any faster in producing one book anyways than writing because you had to basically carve out each page.

And so once you got it done, then you could produce multiples, but it took forever. It really wasn't—you could make many multiple copies, but if it was a large work, it would take so much time to create the blocks that it wasn't worth the money.

So Gutenberg developed the concept of movable type, at least we recognize in the West, which allowed setting and printing entire books very cheaply, very quickly, relatively speaking. I mean, in comparison, what we can do today, obviously, not quickly at all, but for that day, massive increase in the speed at which something could be published.

And when you think about putting letters into a block and then tightening them down and then putting—once you got the whole page done and you put the ink on it and then you make the impression, he used mirrors to do the typesetting because it's got to be backwards because it's making the reverse impression upon the page.

So you have to use mirrors to do it. In 1455, the Bible was printed at Mainz. It was 1 ,282 pages long. Till then, the process was a highly guarded secret, but Mainz was sacked in 1456, and when it was sacked, that resulted in a spread of the technology all over Europe.

So there you go. I guess they didn't have the copyright office or anything like that, and war is war. And truly, in Western history, the invention of the printing press, movable type, I don't know how—if you were to make a list, as people have done, of all the great massive cultural developments, that's got to be in the top five.

It just has to be. It's interesting that we're entering into a period where you could argue that the advent of the computer and the digital book rivals that. But I'll be honest with you. I don't think as many people read digitally as they've read paper in the past.

I think we're actually less literate today because of the electronic form of books than we were when we only had paper books. I think we're less literate. Certainly, as I look at the next generation, in general, I do not see a high rate of literacy.

When I say literacy, I don't mean just the ability to read. I mean actually reading works of antiquity or books that have helped to shape and form our thought. I don't see the next generation as particularly literate at all.

That began generations back. Printing, absolutely necessary. Had to be there, wasn't there for Wycliffe, wasn't there for Huss, so it wasn't time. It was necessary. The three today we covered, the Babylonian captivity of church, the great schism in the papacy, the fall of Constantinople, and printing.

I'll try to remember next time, next issue. Maybe someone can write it down out there. Maybe I can just remember it. But since I may be at the same spot someplace else, that's what's causing the problem.

The Renaissance. The Renaissance was vitally important for the survival and the form of Reformation. Some would argue the Renaissance was in itself what we would call a slow-acting poison in the bloodstream of the Reformation.

We'll let you figure out which one of those you think might be the case or maybe just think about why that would be. It is interesting to consider those particular things. So there's the first two of our subjects.

Now, I mentioned that while I was driving up, I drove up to Salt Lake via Las Vegas, which I guess it's because we didn't have Google back then. We never thought about going through Vegas, did we? Did we?

Yeah, it is longer, but speed-wise, 21 minutes. Yeah, we just determined that it was shorter and we went the other route. There was one time I went through Vegas going up. I remember I was with somebody, I can't remember, maybe my first or second time.

It's a much easier drive. Yeah, that was what we discussed at the time. It's in four lanes. You don't have that stuff through the mountains and Page. It's not nearly as fun, though. I'm sorry? It's not nearly as fun, just going on a straight-line highway.

It depends on whether you like getting there in one piece or not. We like to live dangerously. I mean, all the close calls and stuff were with deer and stuff down there in southern Utah. Obviously, things have changed in 30-some-odd years, so maybe the are better now.

Anyway, I went up through Vegas, saw two of my granddaughters real quickly, brought them lunch and stuff like that. That was sort of fun. Went up to Salt Lake City. While I was driving up there, I received a Facebook message.

It was from a friend that said, hey, I got mentioned that he got mentioned on the polemics report, but he hadn't heard it yet. I was like, oh, okay. It was from a couple days earlier. Interestingly enough, no one had said anything to me about this program.

I'm not sure what that means. I started listening to it only because, and I think this was the February 6th edition, I started listening to it only because this friend of mine was mentioned. He didn't get mentioned until the very end, and I didn't realize that this was one of the most lengthy, extended attacks upon me personally that had ever been posted.

I described it briefly either on Facebook or Twitter or both. I think it was on both. After I got done listening to it, I described it as unhinged because it is. It is. I mean, unhinged means without control.

The hinge of a door is supposed to keep it within a certain area. Once you become unhinged, you just go every place. This was Jordan Hall at his worst. It was childish, invective, insulting, arrogant.

It was everything all at once. I mean, it was just embarrassingly bad. I called it what it was. It was unhinged. Accusations of sin and just all sorts of stuff. As I listened to it at one point, I just started chuckling.

It's either chuckle or cry. I made a comment very, very quickly. Again, it was on Twitter. I briefed the whole thing on Facebook. I was far too busy with speaking and doing the thing with Sean McCraney and then traveling over to Nevada and everything we had over the weekend.

This is really the first time I've obviously just got back a couple hours ago. The first time I've really had an opportunity to expand upon anything, which of course didn't keep Mr. Hall from responding to it.

I mentioned that I would respond to it and that I would point out some serious problems with his argumentation, especially regarding the London Baptist Confession of Faith. Mr. Hall is a Reformed Baptist.

He has not been a Reformed Baptist all that long. It is amazing that he can mock the entire Reformed Baptist Facebook group, which I'm not a part of, by the way. He can mock all of these people, many of whom have been Reformed Baptists much longer than he has, who are much more studied than he is, have much more experience teaching than he has, but he knows what you have to believe.

He can talk about, what are you smoking in there, this kind of language. He will say, I ooze arrogance, but doesn't realize just how wildly arrogant it is to be as untaught as he is and unstable, and yet to chide entire groups of people who have confessed his faith longer than he has for their not being as insightful, evidently, as he is.

And so I made mention of something from the first chapter of the London Baptist Confession of Faith, and so as I listened, on the way up, I listened to it again on the way down today, making notes of time indexes, so we don't have, certainly, I'm not going to listen to all that one, to be able to play a few portions for you, but there were two teachable moment issues.

One is in regards to the nature of the actual arguments of cessationism, which evidently he just doesn't understand or was so out of control, unhinged, that he just doesn't care about making careful category distinctions, being accurate, any of these types of things.

And so I want to look at some of that in regards to, well, what is the issue with cessationism? Is cessationism simply the idea that the canon is closed, there's no more biblical revelation? Or when you actually consider and actually take time to listen to what the other side is saying, does cessationism require you to be much more careful in your argumentation and focus upon the nature of the gifts of the Spirit, even to the point of making distinctions between the gifts of the Spirit that are intended for the edification and building of the Church throughout the existence of the Church and those that are given a specific purpose related to the establishment of apostolic authority and the reality that the gospel is to go out into all the earth, i .e. apostolic sign gifts?

The whole issue of cessationism is considerably more complex than the vast majority of its advocates seem to think that it is and seem to understand that it is. It's very evident to me that a number of cessationists have never, ever engaged a meaningful continuationist in actual debate on the basis of Scripture.

They just assume it, they make it the standard of orthodoxy, and that's it. And if you disagree, well, for many, functionally, you're just not a Christian. We'll see some of that in this. But to confuse the end of divine revelation in Scripture with the cessation of, and then you have to, all special gifts of the Spirit?

Only some? There are some cessationists who really do believe that basically it was the closing of the canon. Even gifts of discernment and pastoral abilities and helps, all of it ended. There are some people who go that far.

I don't, which means there are different perspectives. And some people don't care that there are different perspectives. It's very clear that Jordan Halder could care less that there are different perspectives.

Category issues, thinking clearly? No, no, no. That's not going to help his audience. But if you really engage these folks in a meaningful fashion, you have to recognize there are issues to be discussed here.

And simply going, see? Chapter 1 says these things have ceased. Well, what things have ceased? Chapter 1 doesn't make any distinction about apostolic sign gifts or works of the Spirit in that way. It's talking about divine revelation.

So what do you do with a charismatic that says, well, of course, divine revelation in Scripture ended with the apostles. Nothing's to be added to that. We're not claiming anything does. Oh, yes, you do because, no, no, no, I don't.

You're a liar. There's the end of that discussion. So if that's as far as these people can go, I leave them to that. But for those of us who actually want to seriously interact with people, you can't stop there.

You have to recognize what the issues are. And so even though I was being insulted right, left, and center, I recognized, wow, he's conflating categories and just not even beginning to make meaningful argumentation that would have any impact.

But he doesn't care if it has any impact upon those people because that's not what his polemics is about. I'm about reaching other people. He's about nuking other people. There's a huge difference in how you're going to understand things and do things when you have totally different motivations in how you're doing stuff.

So with that, I hope everything's still hooked up. And then we'll find out soon enough. Okay. You know, I actually do have the notes that I took here. So I can actually use this. Okay. So let's jump in just a few little clips here.

I need to turn this down to the actual speed. No reason to play it at any high speed. All right, let's start with this.

Why do we think that's a primary issue and that Dr. White is out of his ever-loving mind for acting as though cessationism is some kind of secondary or tertiary matter?

So here's what happens when you don't think clearly and you don't use proper category thinking. When I say cessationism is a secondary matter, what I mean by that is it does not define the Gospel. What he's done is he has redefined cessationism as having something to do with the ending of divine revelation.

That's not my definition. That's not the definition of anybody I've ever talked to who is engaging charismatics in regards to their beliefs regarding the ministry of the Spirit in the Church today. You see, a serious charismatic scholar is going to believe that divine revelation in Scripture is different than any other activity of the Spirit of God today.

Now, are there some who think there's a 28th book of the New Testament, a 29th book? Okay, then deal with them where they are. I'm dealing with the serious people, and they say, no. That's why I asked Michael on the program, is there anything other than Scripture that's theionistos?

And he says, no, only Scripture is theionistos. And we've been going back and forth a little bit on this, and I've been pushing on, okay, what about this? What about that? What about this? They make distinctions.

Are these distinctions defensible in debate? Well, that's one of the issues we have to deal with, but you can't debate something when you deny that the other side actually holds to that position. And so, is the canon and the closure of the canon absolutely central to Christian theology?

Of course. Have I written entire chapters on the subject? Of course. Have I defended that in debate before? Of course. So, what does Jordan Hall do? Ignore it all. That's how you do it. Redefine, make false accusations that go against everything that the person has done for longer than Jordan Hall has been in ministry.

That's Jordan Hall's way. We see it over and over again. So, I'm out of my mind, but the reality is it's just redefining things, and that way you can make accusations. Now, one of the things that came out very clearly in this, back last year, one of the difficulties that we struggled with in regards to the Yosser-Kadi dialogue was how many people were unwilling to even allow Yosser-Kadi to define what Yosser-Kadi believes.

There are a bunch of people that said, we don't care what Yosser-Kadi... Takiyah, lying, and it's impossible to even begin to have a meaningful conversation when you can just simply say, you believe this, and if you say anything other than what I say you believe, you're a liar.

There's no discussion. There is no ability to have any type of communication at that point. You've ended it all. Well, that's exactly what Jordan Hall does with Michael Brown. We're going to hear a number of times in the few minutes of stuff that I have marked here where the argument is basically this.

Yes, Michael Brown denies that he's endorsing these things, teaching these things. No, Michael Brown, despite the fact he does a national radio program, we don't have any audio of him promoting sneaky squid spirits or Michael the archangel wearing wrestler tights or we'll get into that.