A Program for the INC: John 1:1, 17:3, and Other Biblical Issues Post-Debate

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White, and I would like to address the many members of Iglesia Ni Cristo who have so kindly been sending me things via Twitter and Facebook and things like that.

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I noticed an article that was reposted by one of the official

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INC websites, INC Facebook pages. This was an article by Marlex Cantor.

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Now the one thing I would like to thank Mr. Cantor for is he did include a video where I specifically laid out my reasons for wanting to be able to have this book.

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And this is Fundamental Beliefs of the Iglesia Ni Cristo by Arano G.

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Manalo, the 1998 version.

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This is what's given to ministers. It is more simplistic than a children's catechism in most

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Christian churches. It truly is. I am well aware that most of you have never encountered serious

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Christian theology or serious works of Christian theology, systematic theology, things like this. But the reason, well, this article, by the way, this article likens me to Simon Magus who tried to buy the

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Spirit of God. Some of you have been offended by the fact that I have utilized the terminology cult of the

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INC. And yet you need to understand, I realize some of you are not going to listen. I realize many of you have shown yourselves just utterly incapable of even starting to begin to apply any kind of critical rational thought to your own faith.

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You use double standards. You have one standard for the INC, one standard for everybody else. This is irrationality.

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This is not how God made us to think. It's not being truthful, honest. And so I realize some of you aren't even going to listen.

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But for those who have begun to see that there are problems in the INC, that there's a problem with just simply turning your mind over to the executive minister and just doing whatever you're told and believing whatever you're told and asking no questions, you're the ones that I actually want to try to communicate with and try to encourage you to continue thinking these issues through.

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The reason the day after the debate that I went and spoke with Joe Ventilacion was real simple.

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During the course of the debate, he accused me of misrepresenting Iglesia Ni Cristo.

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I hadn't. That specific issue was on the idea that Jesus is a mere creature.

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I know you're told to worship Jesus. You're told a creature. Really weird. Very strange.

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Unbiblical. The highest angelic creatures in the Bible say, do not worship me. Worship only God.

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So you're violating the Bible there. But you're just doing what you're told to do. And you just follow along.

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That's cultic, by the way, to do that, just so you understand why it is we see so much cultism here.

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We're giving you a lot of examples of how INC behaves as a cult. And this is one of them.

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When I went to Mr. Ventilacion, I specifically said, you have a book.

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I've been informed that you have a book, Fundamental Beliefs of Iglesia Ni Cristo. If you want to accurately represent me in debate, you can do so.

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You have my books. You have the statement of faith of my church. We're not hiding anything.

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If you ask me to direct you to certain systematic theologies, for example, these are major works.

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Here. This is one of the systematic theologies

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I would direct you to. Robert Raymond's, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith. It's, I don't know, this is around 1 ,200 pages long.

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Small print. That would make it, probably print size, probably right around 24 times the size of your little book.

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Okay. Much more in depth. And I can hand this to Joe Ventilacion.

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I can say, now, it doesn't mean I believe every single thing he says. We would have some disagreements. In fact,

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I actually had a written debate, a published written debate with Dr. Raymond before his death on the issue of the plurality of elders view of church government versus the

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Presbyterian view of church government. But we're not hiding anything.

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We're hiding nothing. We're straight open with everybody. You're not.

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And so, if you're going to say, well, let's have another debate, which he did. And if you're going to say, don't misrepresent us, then you've got to give me your official statements.

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And so, this whole idea about Simon Magus, who is a false teacher trying to buy the power of the

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Holy Spirit, is the same thing as someone trying to obtain what's found in a little booklet like this, which has got no more depth to it than a children's catechism.

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Really? That's cultic. That's cultic thinking. And yet, the INC posted that and they didn't post the original.

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They reposted. They linked to it. You share stuff on Facebook. They shared it. There's a guy right now,

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Eldreds Unciano, who's just flooding my feed, as everyone's seeing, with questions

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I've already answered. I wrote him a big long thing just a few minutes ago. He can't seem to see it.

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And when people say, well, you didn't show us the word Trinity in the Bible. We don't claim it's in the

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Bible. So, why are you worried about it? It's a word that represents the teaching of the whole Bible. These kinds of objections are the kinds of objections we get from people in cults all the time because they're not listening to what is said back to them.

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I point out to you that the Bible teaches there's one being of God. And yet, the Bible identifies three persons and then identifies each one in different ways as Yahweh, the one being of God, three persons.

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I gave the foundation and it's like, oh, I don't care. You can't show me the word Trinity in the Bible. That's irrelevant, at least to a thinking person.

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But I'm not seeing a lot of INC people who actually think. You've turned off your critical thinking capacity and you accept this kind of behavior.

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It's amazing to me. It really is amazing. And it's scary. Why can't you step back and do what the

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Bible says? Well, wait a minute. You have to admit, you may not even know what the Bible says at this point.

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Because so many of the people from Ecclesiastes to Christ, so you ask them, do you read the

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Bible? Well, of course, read it. What did you read? I read John 17 .3. So in other words, you just read the text you're told to read?

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How about reading the entire Bible? How about checking out what the executive minister says against what the

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Bible actually says? If you believe the Bible's word of God, why did you give us so much of it if you only read so little of it?

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That's what happens with cults. We are given an example in Acts chapter 17.

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After Paul has been driven out by, Paul and Silas have been driven out by individuals who are opposing the gospel message.

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In Acts chapter 17, verse 10, we read, the brethren immediately sent

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Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. And when they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. Now, these were more noble -minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.

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So here come the apostles, and they are proclaiming the message, and the

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Bible commends the Jews in the synagogue of Berea. Why?

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Because it says they were noble -minded. Do you want to be described by God as noble -minded?

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Don't you think that's a good thing, to be noble -minded? Simply following what

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Iglesia Ni Cristo tells you to do is not noble -minded. That's close -minded.

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That's cultic behavior. They received the word with great eagerness.

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So they put up no artificial barriers to proclamation of God's truth, but they were not gullible.

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They were not gullible. Why? Because it says examining the scriptures daily to see whether those things were so.

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Do you do that? When the minister in your congregation gives the sermon, do you examine the scriptures, the whole context, before and after, or do you just believe what you're told?

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There are lots of cults in the world, lots of cults in the world, and there are lots of people that will come along and say,

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I represent God. You're a part of a religious group that goes, 1914?

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Nothing new about that. The Jehovah's Witnesses had the 1914 thing going long before you did.

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Y 'all stole it from them. You don't know that? Yeah, you stole it from them.

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But wasn't anything special about 1914? There's no prophecies, all that stuff about, you know, bird of prey, that was

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Cyrus, that was completely long, long ago. I mean, wow. All that stuff.

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Do you hold your leaders accountable to the Bible itself? I don't think you do.

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I don't think you do. That's not what I'm seeing. The gullibility of your being able to believe anything that's being told you is a frightening thing, and it's not biblical.

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It's not what the Bible tells us to do. That's not a biblical attitude. Don't blame this on the

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Bible. Don't say, all our beliefs come from the Bible. No, they do not. Every cult can quote the

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Bible. Big deal. Unless you are handling the

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Bible aright, unless you're, remember the things? Sola Scriptura, Tota Scriptura. INC doesn't believe that.

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Unless you're looking at only Scripture as your ultimate authority and all of Scripture.

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You know, I was just talking to this guy. He's got all sorts of false beliefs about church history.

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Oh, Constantine made it all up with the council. That's just a lie. There is no one who knows anything about church history, honestly anyways, who actually goes to original sources and things like that.

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Nobody who knows original sources would ever say that. I know there's lots of folks who lie on the internet.

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Warning, warning, there's stuff on the internet that isn't true. They haven't perfected the truth filters for the internet.

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And if they ever start them, 99 .9 % of Facebook and everything else will come to an immediate halt, especially when it comes to church history.

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The willingness to just believe anything and not check things out for yourself fairly and honestly is a frightening thing.

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Now, what I want to do today after responding to the Simon Magus article and letting you know, saying that you're in a cult, it's not an attack upon you.

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It is a warning to you. If you say no, then prove me wrong by showing some level of willingness to engage in critical thought.

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Show some willingness to recognize that you have to use the same standards in the defense of your position as you use criticizing somebody else.

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Show some recognition. Any rational person watching

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Joe Ventilacion and his team of guys up there should be sitting back going,

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I wonder why they have to keep using different translations. Huh.

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Why can't they just use one and just be consistent? Why is it they always have to go for the weirdest translation?

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Why not go for the majority translation? I mean, okay, so maybe they're not big in the biblical languages. Then just find one and stick with it.

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But they'll go with Moffat over here and Lamza over there and New Living Translation over there and this over there.

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Even though I posted a bunch of quotations from the New Living Translation, plainly teaching the deity of Christ.

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I just simply have to ask, if you're part of the INC, would you buy a used car from your leadership? What I mean by that is, if they're always dodging the question, well, you know, when was the last time this thing had an oil change?

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Well, look at those tires. Aren't they great? Don't ask us those questions.

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I wouldn't buy a used car from the INC leadership. And if you're wise, you wouldn't either.

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What if this was, what if you had a major operation? You had, you really needed, you needed a valve replaced in your heart.

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Aren't you going to want to make sure that the person doing the work is qualified to do it?

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And if you start asking questions and you're just simply told, just trust me, just trust me.

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Don't, don't worry about the fact that you actually see a veterinarian license on my wall. That's okay. Don't worry about it.

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You see, it's amazing what people will do in their spiritual life that they would never do out in the real world because they have enough common sense to realize this doesn't make a lot of sense.

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Y 'all need to wake up. You're being misled. I sense the debate.

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I have seen a lot of amazing arguments being used by people.

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And I've even seen Christians who didn't seem to be able to understand how to respond to some of the more egregious errors that Joe Ventilacion made in his presentation.

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And so, I would like to go through some texts, nice and slow. And I hope you don't have the sound up, but I don't have it plugged in anyways, because I think this is just a meme.

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Thanks, Kofi. There was a rather funny meme that was just posted on Twitter. I would like to go through some of the key texts that came up and make sure that all of us, if you're an

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INC member, I just invite you to look at what the scriptures actually state. If you're a

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Christian, I'm primarily going through this for you because there were things that Mr. Ventilacion said that it concerned me that many of my fellow believers didn't didn't seem to just naturally recognize what's wrong with the argumentation that he was making.

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So, let's start with John 1 -1, okay? Because here is something that I've seen from a number of INC people.

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They are focused upon tantheon, the tantheon.

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There is no such thing as the tantheon. Tan is the article. So, tantheon is simply the neuter, singular,

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I'm neuter, the singular accusative form of the masculine noun theos. And so, it just simply means

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God or the God, depending on how it's being used. So, there is no the tantheon.

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What happened was during the debate, it seemed that because the word theos, which means

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God, is used in the accusative in John 1 -1b with an article, specifically, kai halagos ein pros tantheon, and the word was with God.

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And then theos is used in the accusative with the article in John 17 -3 that Mr.

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Ventilacion was trying to make a connection between the two as if the form, the accusative makes that connection.

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Now, no one who actually reads the language, who can actually sit down with it and read through Romans or read through Colossians or Mark or whatever, no one actually reads the language would ever come to that conclusion because if you could read the language and you know how to translate it and you understand grammatical forms, you understand how they function in various contexts and things like that.

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But that seemed to be the connection he was trying to make. And I challenged him on it.

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When we look at John 1 -1, and I'll provide you with the text here, here is, do you have

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John 1? Okay. So here's John 1 -1, and a number of folks from the

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INC actually said, I came to the debate without a Bible. I didn't bring it with me, but what

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I had was the large print edition of this book right here.

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This is actually, yeah, there we go. The large print edition of this, Leather Bound, the Nessian 27th edition of the

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Greek New Testament. That's what I was bringing up to the pulpit with me. That's the New Testament. We weren't arguing about the

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Old Testament. When we needed to go to the Old Testament, I projected what's called the Greek Septuagint, which is the

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Greek translation of the Old Testament up on the screen. But this is what the

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New Testament was translated from. So if I have this, then I have the New Testament.

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This is a Bible. It's just the New Testament portion of the Bible. I had the New American Standard sitting there, the whole

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Bible, but I didn't have to use it because there weren't really overly challenging things that were presented.

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But there are actually people who said, well, you didn't even bring a Bible. And did you watch the debate?

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I mean, are the glasses so thick upon the face that you couldn't even recognize that, yes,

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I was using, I used a lot of the Bible in the discussion? Well, back to the screen here, that's what we have over here on the right -hand side.

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This is the Greek original language of the New Testament. And then over here, you can put different translations.

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I have the NASB 1995, the New American Standard Bible. And one of the reasons for that is that I, at a time in the past, worked as a critical consultant on the

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NASB. It's my preferred English translation. When I use an English translation, I'll use the

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New American Standard Bible, primarily. Sometimes I'll use the ESV, especially if I'm going to be writing a blog article or something because it's easier to quote.

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It doesn't use all caps for Old Testament citations, which is very difficult to format when writing electronically.

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So anyway, here in John 1 .1, we have the famous statement, in the beginning was the

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Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And so, generally, you break this up into three sections.

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In the beginning was the Word. That's John 1 .1a. John 1 .1b is then this here, and the

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Word was with God. And then that's John 1 .1b. And then here's John 1 .1c. So three different clauses that begin the

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Gospel of John. Now, if you want to actually handle the

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Word of God correctly, then you don't skip over material.

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You read it as the author intended it to be read. So, for example, when I walked through Philippians 2, and I pointed out that Mr.

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Ventilacion was skipping verses 5, 6, and 7, he admitted he was. I don't want to talk about verses 6 and 7.

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I want to go talk about verses 8 and 9. That's called twisting the

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Scriptures. You don't go to the second sentence and ignore what the first sentence says.

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That's twisting the Scriptures. If you're a parent and you tell your young teenage kids, after you clean your room, we will go and get pizza.

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And all they want to look at is, we will go and get pizza. And when you do the same thing to the

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Bible, you're not showing God respect. And so,

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Mr. Ventilacion wanted to jump into 1 .1b and ignore 1 .1a

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and 1 .1c. Well, that's twisting the Scriptures. That's what cults do.

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That's what he had done with John 14, 28. Let's take the last few words of the sentence, ignore the rest of it, and come up with our belief.

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The first phrase, Enarque en halagas. In the beginning was the

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Word. Now, this word was, you know, in English, was is was.

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It's not all that exciting. But what is fascinating and I think beautiful to a person who actually believes that the

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Bible is the Word of God, is that in this prologue, what's called

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Prologue of John, the first 18 verses, it's his introduction. And if you're a writer, you use the introduction to set the stage, to give your audience clues as to what you want them to hear in what you're saying.

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And in the prologue, when the first 13 verses, when

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John refers to halagas, he uses one verbal form. And then when he refers to everything else, whether it's

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John the Baptist or the created order, whatever it might be, he uses another word and he differentiates between the two.

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Why might that be? Well, you can see, right, for example, right here in verse 3,

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Ponta Deo to Ageneta, all things were made or came into being through him.

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So, there's Ageneta. And Ageneta is what's called the aorist form of Ginnemi.

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But if you compare that with the verb that's used for the halagas, it's always ein, which is the imperfect form of the verb of being,

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I mean. And the imperfect form points us to continuous action in the past without a point of origin.

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It's not talking about a starting point. Whereas Ageneta, Ginnemi in the aorist would be referring to something that came into existence at a time in the past.

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That changes in John 114 when the word becomes flesh because the word entered into human existence at a point in time.

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One of the many indications that the INC is teaching falsehood when it denies the pre -existence of Jesus.

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The Bible plainly teaches that the Son, as a divine being, pre -existed his birth in Bethlehem.

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There's no question of that. So, the first phrase is saying that the lagos, the word, was eternal in the beginning.

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As far back as you want to push the beginning, the lagos is already in existence. There's nothing about creation.

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It does not say lagos came into existence. Right here, you have the INC refuted because they don't believe that the lagos has eternally existed.

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They say the lagos was a plan. Well, there's a problem with that because the very next phrase, 1 1 b, says kai halagas ein pros tan theon.

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And so, the same word that has eternally existed, it was in existence at the beginning and beforehand, was, same verb, and then you have here, pros tan theon.

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Now, one of the problems in dealing with people who don't really read the language, who don't understand the grammar, don't understand something called syntax, is, you know, if all you have, you know, there's a lot of Bible programs you can buy today that give you interlinear stuff.

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And back when I was teaching Greek regularly, I'd have a lot of people contact me and say, should

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I buy an interlinear? And I say, well, sure, if you want to waste a lot of money and have a doorstop. Because interlinears,

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I think, at least the printed ones, are a massive waste of paper. And they are so because if you know enough to actually get any benefit out of an interlinear, then you don't need it.

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And if you don't know enough, then it becomes simply something that's dangerous. And people who can use

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Bible programs and can look up words and learn how to pronounce a few words, they can become very dangerous.

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And one of the things they don't understand is prepositions and how prepositions govern cases.

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And so, when you put, for example, the preposition pros with the accusative, then it has a certain range of meaning.

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And where it falls in that range of meaning depends on the context in which the author places it.

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But very often, the reason that you have the case of the noun that follows is because the preposition.

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Many people don't understand that. They don't understand that there are Greek prepositions that will take their objects in different cases to communicate different things.

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It can be quite complex, and it's very unlike what we have in English.

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And so, it's one of those things that's sort of tough for beginning students to really understand. And so, what are we told in John 1 .1b?

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The logos was a same eternal term here because that's already, the context has already been given to us.

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Before, whatever, however far back you want to push the beginning, the logos is in existence.

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So, the logos is eternal. And that eternal logos in the same time frame is pros tantheion, face to face with tantheion.

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That's why when Mr. Ventilacion kept saying, so tantheion is the true god.

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Well, there is only one true god, so yeah. And then he assumes Unitarianism, the very thing that I from the very start said, if you assume

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Unitarianism, you're not really even in this debate, so he wasn't from the start. If you assume

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Unitarianism, then the logos is distinguished from the one true god, therefore the logos can't be god, if you assume

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Unitarianism. Now you got a problem because you've got something that's eternal that is in face -to -face relationship with tantheion, and plans and purposes are not in face -to -face relationship with god.

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So, in the beginning was the word, and the word was in eternal relationship pros tantheion.

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Now, Mr. Ventilacion wouldn't allow this, but a person who really wants to actually know what

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John is saying might want to know that John 1 -1 is the beginning of the prologue.

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The end of the prologue is verse 18 right here, and there we have no one has seen god at any time.

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Notice, interestingly enough, Theion there does not have an article, so it's not tantheion, but it's still the same god.

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No one has seen god at any time. Monogenes theos, the unique god, haon, the one being in the bosom or at the at the side of Tupatras, the father, that one has exegesata, he has explained him, he has interpreted him.

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That's where we get the term we get exegesis from, and so this is something, this is a literary method called bookending, and yeah, yeah,

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I've got bookends here. I've got a bookend over here, and I've got a bookend over here, and that's what's keeping these books, which are going to disappear very quickly because we're, these are all my text critical books, they're all going to be going one spot in my office.

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We'll have something underneath. I might, I might, that'd be a good spot for the swords. That'd be a good spot for the swords.

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It would also open up some space to put that and the other thing up there on the wall instead of, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Well, anyway, okay, look, focus. You're missing, you're missing, you're missing the point here.

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Yeah, you're missing the point here. I was able to get right back to the subject. You're the one going all over the place about plans now, so let's just stop, stop, cease.

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Bookends, yes, so John 1 -1 and John 1 -18 are the bookends of the prologue, and so what you do when you bookend something is you restate the important thing you said at the beginning and expand upon it in light of what's come in between.

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So what you have in John 1 -1 is when it says, when the word was with God, who is the

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God with whom the eternal logos is? John 1 -18 says the Father in close personal relationship with the

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Father. The Father and the Son have eternally existed in close personal relationship with one another.

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That's what John has attempted to communicate to us, and so we go back, and so tantheon is differentiated in this clause from the theos of the next clause, and the word was

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God. Now, I've had many Jehovah's Witnesses or Muslims or Mormons or whatever say, well, that doesn't make any sense.

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How can he be the God with whom he is? Assuming Unitarianism and not listening carefully to what

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John himself is attempting to communicate. He has said the word is eternal.

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He has said the word has been eternally in the very presence of the

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Father, pros tantheon, face to face with, and then he uses theos without the article, and if you've ever done any reading on this, you know that there is your verb.

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It's kai theos ayn. So, when you put, this is called a predicate nominative.

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This is the nominative form of theos. This is the nominative form of logos. Well, Greek has a way of telling you what the subject is by the use of the article.

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So, logos has the article. Theos does not. If it said kai ha theos ayn ha logos, then logos and theos are interchangeable.

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That's not what the New Testament teaches. And so, by putting theos before the verb,

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John is explaining to us the nature of the theos, which flows perfectly with what he said before.

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The logos is eternal. The logos is an eternal relationship with the Father, and the logos is as to his nature theos, deity.

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Not a god, deity, true

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God. That's what's described in Colossians 2 .9, here in John 1 .1, et cetera, et cetera. So, this is what

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John 1 .1 teaches, and then you have the reiteration in 1 .2, hutas nrk prostantheon.

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This one was in the beginning prostantheon. So, you really have a, John 1 .2

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is sort of a, I don't know, abbreviation of the preceding verse.

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This one, the logos, was, same eternal timeless ayn, nrk, in the beginning, prostantheon.

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So, that eternal relationship has always existed. That's how

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John wants you to begin his gospel. That's the same gospel where he's going to identify Jesus as the

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I Am in 824, 858, 1319, 185 -6. I haven't seen any of these folks sending me all sorts of notes on Twitter even try to deal with that, even seem to show an understanding of it.

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Calls him the I Am. The Jews pick up stones to stone him. John 5 .18, he claims the same prerogative that God has to work on the

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Sabbath. So, the Jews understand this, that he's making himself equal with God, want to seek to destroy him.

37:06

Even at his trial, we have a law, by this law he must die, because he committed blasphemy, claimed to be the

37:11

Son of God, shows what Son of God means in Gospel of John. Finishes with Thomas' confession, hakuriasumukaihathaiasumu, my

37:20

Lord and my God. And Jesus blesses Thomas' confession. This is

37:26

John. This is allowing John to be John. Now, so everybody's going, well, what about Tantheon?

37:34

Well, there's Tantheon, and that's being used, the preposition, pros Tantheon. So, it means face to face with.

37:40

All right. Well, what about John chapter 17?

37:48

Now, what's amazing here, the first thing that Mr.

37:58

Vintalaccion said to me in the first cross -examination was, was John 17 .3

38:04

the first verse you used? And anyone who is listening knows that what

38:10

I had said was, if you argue from John 17 .3 by just assuming

38:16

Unitarianism, you're not even, you're not even in the debate. I had said, let's not waste our time on irrelevancies, and he spent the rest of the debate on those irrelevant.

38:28

So, at one point during our exchanges, he goes, of course,

38:38

John 17 .3, and he talks about Tantheon again, and tries to connect

38:46

John 1 .1 and John 17 .3. But let's, you know,

38:52

I think it's, I think it's pretty important to once again demonstrate just how utterly without care for the context of the

39:04

Bible itself, INC presentations are. Let's go back.

39:10

Jesus spoke these things, and lifting up his eyes to heaven, he said, Father, the hour has come.

39:16

Glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you. That's how this starts. This is the high priestly prayer of Jesus, and he is addressing the

39:27

Father. We do not believe the Son is the Father. The Father did not become incarnate.

39:33

It was the Son who became incarnate. But please notice something.

39:39

Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you.

39:45

There is this interconnection, which has been all the way through the

39:50

Gospel of John for the careful student. And may I suggest something to the

39:56

INC folks that are very active in social media, Facebook, Twitter, and things like that.

40:02

May I suggest this to everyone in the audience? If you are going to argue about the meaning of John 17 .3

40:16

from either direction, in other words, from a historically

40:22

Orthodox Christian perspective or from the INC's perspective, and you have not actually read the

40:32

Gospel of John and have not actually invested any time in considering the themes of the

40:39

Gospel of John. In other words, if you have not shown John the respect that you would have to show a secular author in high school.

40:53

Well, I hope they still do this in high school. But when I was in high school, when we read a book assignment, whether it was

41:02

Shakespeare or a modern writer, we were expected to listen to what the author said, to be able to identify themes of various chapters, and how that author brought his themes together.

41:19

That was how you actually read a book and studied a book. And may

41:27

I suggest a person has absolutely no business pretending to talk about what

41:33

Jesus is actually meaning in John 17 .3. If you don't realize that the theme of the union of the

41:42

Father and the Son and their harmony in all things has been a theme that has come up over and over again in the

41:50

Gospel of John already, that it's central to an understanding of John 5, soteriologically in John 6.

41:59

It's right there at the end of John 10, almost gets Jesus stoned. It's seen in John 11.

42:05

It's all the way through. It's been illustrated in numerous ways. You are not dealing with John's words in John 17 in an even slightly fair way.

42:20

And even a slightly honest way, let alone respectful way, if you haven't taken the time to know those things.

42:28

They're not hidden. I'm not talking about some secret book that tells you this stuff. This is just handling the word in an honest fashion.

42:38

That's all. And so when Jesus gets to John 17,

42:45

John doesn't expect you to just jump into the middle of this and ignore how many times the

42:50

Jews have picked up stones to stone Jesus. He wants you to read

42:56

John 17 in the light of what already has been said in John 1, verse 1 and John 1, verse 18.

43:04

And if you don't, then don't deceive yourself and think you're actually handling

43:09

John aright. That's why when you INC folks tell me, all of our beliefs are just based on the Bible.

43:15

No, they're not. No, they are not. Just because you can take a verse out and quote it doesn't make that.

43:23

Go you and do likewise. There's two biblical texts. Don't take that as biblical teaching.

43:31

Anybody can do that with any book at all. So Jesus spoke these things, lifting up his eyes to heaven.

43:42

He said, father, the hour has come. Glorify your son that the son may glorify you.

43:49

Now I realize that for some odd reason, you all believe that you should worship

43:57

Jesus, a mere creature. Now I say mere, let me explain something about mere creature because you misunderstood.

44:02

Well, Joe Ventilacion misunderstood it and I would imagine the rest of you did too. There is a chasm between the one who is uncreated and anything that is created.

44:20

Huge chasm, infinite chasm between eternal uncreated being and anything that's dependent for its existence upon someone else.

44:33

And no matter how highly exalted you want to make Jesus, you are saying he's on this side of that divide.

44:40

He is a creature. There was a time when he did not exist. He is dependent for his existence upon someone else.

44:50

That's what you're saying. And to say that you should worship, should actually worship a creature is utterly unbiblical.

45:04

And you'll notice Mr. Ventilacion did not even try to respond to the fact that I point out in the book of Revelation, when

45:10

John fell down to worship the angel who had shown him all these incredible things, what did the angel say?

45:18

Do not do that. Worship only God. Didn't even try to respond to that.

45:25

In fact, Mr. Ventilacion did not respond to the vast majority of the things that I said. Anyone really following the debate closely saw that.

45:36

And so how would a Jewish person in the period of the second temple, the time of Jesus' life, have understood these words as blasphemy?

45:53

This is exactly why the Jews picked up stones in John chapter 5, John chapter 8, John chapter 10, and why they're going to betray him to the

46:00

Romans in John chapter 18 and 19. So here

46:09

Jesus says, glorify your son, that the son may glorify you, interpenetration, the perfect unity, father and son, even as you gave him authority over all flesh, that to all whom you have given him, he may give eternal life.

46:27

Now, I don't have time to expand upon all these things. We've certainly addressed them in other contexts. But you have a number of themes in the gospel of John coming together here in chapter 17.

46:38

This goes back to John chapter 6. No mere creature could say these things.

46:43

This is the same thing that Jesus was saying in John chapter 10. No one can snatch them out of my hand.

46:49

No one can snatch them out of my father's hand. The father has given to me is greater than all. No one can snatch him out of his hand. I and the father, we are one.

46:59

And the Jews picked up stones to stone him because they knew exactly what it was about, exactly what it was about.

47:08

So when he said, yeah, but he was given authority. Yes, he's the incarnate one. In what's called the economy of redemption, in the roles, the father, son, and spirit have taken different roles in bringing about the salvation of God's people.

47:24

They've taken different roles. Yes. And the son laid aside the equality he had with the father,

47:32

Philippians chapter 2, took on human flesh, became a being unto death, even to death on the cross. Therefore, God highly exalted him.

47:39

He skipped over the preceding part when we talked about that in the debate for obvious reasons. So when

47:49

Jesus says that to all whom you have given him, look at my language here.

47:57

Dose altois zoein ionion. Dose. This is arist and it's who's giving, who's doing this.

48:10

It's Jesus. How many of you, now be honest with me.

48:16

If you've even survived this long, I'm talking to you in the INC.

48:21

Listen to me. I'm challenging you. Listen to me. How many of you in the INC have ever given a second thought to the fact that the very words that immediately precede

48:31

John 17 three, a text, which is pounded into your brain. How many times has the

48:38

INC ever talked about what the preceding words actually say?

48:44

Who gives eternal life to God's people? Isn't it somewhat ironic that it's a creature?

48:56

Jesus is the one who gives eternal life. And you see, that's what prompts the statement in John 17 three.

49:06

When you have haute, this is eternal life. For John, that's always a dead giveaway.

49:12

He's mentioned something before and now he wants to define it for us. So this is eternal life. Wait a minute.

49:19

It's something Jesus gives to his people, right? Because Jesus is the one who's revealed the father and God's people are united to the son.

49:31

It is in him that we have eternal life. It is in him that we have forgiveness of sins.

49:39

And so you want to know what eternal life is? This eternal life, they might know you, the only true God and, and, and, and, y 'all skip that part, and the one whom he sent,

49:52

Jesus, the Messiah. Two people, two, not one, two.

49:58

That's how I have eternal life. That part gets skipped. Y 'all don't listen to that part.

50:08

And I suggest to you that knowing God, a mere creature, that's not what he's talking about. Now, here's, here's the phrase.

50:24

In order that they may know you, the, it doesn't say tantheon, it's the, manan, alathanon, theon.

50:37

So the article is holding together a phrase because it's, it's primary referent is theon.

50:46

So it is tantheon, but there is a description, manan, alathanon. Now, the primary reason that it's accusative is because it's functioning, this phrase is a punct, is functioning a positively.

51:05

It is identifying you, seh, who are you?

51:14

The only true God. You assume monotheism, you assume Unitarianism and say, oh, see, that means only the

51:22

Father's God. That's not what Jesus is saying. What he's saying is there is only eternal life in knowing the true

51:29

God, in the way that the true God has ordained himself to be known.

51:36

And what's amazing is we can know him and know him with assurance because his son, who is said to be the exact express character is the term, the very character, the imprint of his person has taken on human flesh.

52:00

He's entered into human flesh. That's why you have to know father and son. And by the way, the only way you can do that is through the

52:08

Spirit. But the reason that it's in the accusative is not because of some connection to John 1 .1.

52:19

Again, you just, you can't understand the Greek language and come up with that kind of argumentation.

52:27

It's in the accusative because it is the object of knowing you and then the description, the apposition, the phrase is functioning appositionally to describe who you are.

52:39

So, salvation is only found in knowing the true God. False gods will not bring you salvation.

52:46

There is no question that this text doesn't fit well with universalism, with pluralism today.

52:53

It's not popular. It's not politically correct. Any of those things. That's quite true. In other words, they might know you, the only true

53:01

God, and Han, the one you sent, the one you sent,

53:08

Jesus the Christ. Jesus the Christ. So, John does not make any kind of connection between 17 .3

53:20

and 1 .1 as far as grammatical forms, accusatives, nothing.

53:26

And yet I had people tweeting me, you couldn't answer the tantheion. And I realized the people tweeting me, you have no idea what a tantheion is.

53:37

But that's why again, I see this incredibly cultic mindset.

53:44

He said something, we don't know what it was, but rah, rah. It reminds me of the, how many times

53:52

I've had conversations with Mormon missionaries over the years. And we'll have a long conversation and I'll ask them all sorts of stuff.

54:00

I'll show them false prophecies of Joseph Smith and I'll show them Isaiah 44 .24 and how it clearly contradicts the

54:08

Mormon temple ceremonies. And they don't have any responses. But as they're walking away, they'll turn around and say, and by the way,

54:17

I just want to tell you that our conversation has strengthened my testimony in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day

54:22

Saints. And I just smile. And I've frequently looked up and said,

54:28

I hope that made you feel better because I can tell it's utterly untrue. You know,

54:34

I think they've been taught to say that just sort of as a, you know, pump themselves up and, you know, it's a self -defense mechanism.

54:41

And I realize what I'm seeing is a self -defense mechanism on the part of the INC. I'm not patting myself on the back, but any person who understands debate and understands the facts of what was said in that debate knows it was not even a competition.

55:06

No person sitting there and following the facts in a flow chart would go, oh yeah, drove into last show and won that one.

55:15

It was extremely lopsided. And so if you're sitting there trying to say, you know,

55:21

I've had a bunch of people saying this, oh, you know, quit talking about all this stuff, just accept your loss and move on, blah, blah, blah.

55:28

It just, you know, it's, it just reminds me of certain fans of certain football, basketball, and baseball teams that just live in a fantasy land.

55:40

And when it comes to your eternal soul, you don't want to be living in a fantasy land. And yet many of you, sadly, are very much doing exactly that.

55:51

So there's John 1 -1, John 17 -3.

55:58

I want to show you one more thing. And what I'm going to try to do here, if I can, is

56:06

I'll just simply try to slide this over that and see if we can sort of make it work better.

56:18

Maybe you could zoom in on the slide or something there while I wet the whistle.

56:31

I've been talking rather forcefully for 56 minutes. I need a quick drink of water there.

56:40

I had put together a nice little keynote on 2nd

56:47

Peter 1 -1 and 2nd Peter 1 -11. And I don't know where it went.

56:59

It'll show up in an archive someplace. You know how it is. I have to admit that first computer

57:07

I had that had that 20 megabyte hard drive, it was a lot easier to keep track of things when all you had was 20 megabytes.

57:18

And I remember thinking to myself back then, I could never fill this up. Anyway, once you've got a computer with two terabytes on board, and then you've got offline storage and stuff, it's really easy to lose things.

57:32

I've had something ready for the debate for this. I could not find it for love nor money. But here it is anyways.

57:40

During the debate, I asked Joe Ventillacion about 2nd

57:48

Peter 1 -11. And then I asked him to show me why consistently he understands 2nd

57:58

Peter 1 -1 differently. And as most people could tell, he really struggled at that point.

58:05

He knew at the Granville -Sharp construction was. I give him credit for that. But he really, really struggled.

58:12

And so I asked him 1 -11 when it says, Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And by the way, the same construction is found in 2 -20 and 3 -18.

58:25

So there are four Granville -Sharp constructions in 2nd Peter. And translations like the

58:31

New World Translation, which is a mistranslation of the Bible for Jove's Witnesses, will accurately render 1 -11, 2 -20, and 3 -18, just won't do it for 1 -1.

58:39

And Joe Ventillacion did the same thing. What you have, very clearly, is a consistency issue here.

58:49

Because here you have, at the bottom, you have the English. In the middle, you have a transliteration of the

58:57

Greek in English characters. And then at the top, you actually have the

59:02

Greek. And so what you need to understand is if you're more comfortable just looking at the transliteration,

59:13

I just realized, that's weird. It's spelled. Oh, that's right. That's because it's in the editing screen.

59:19

It's got the misspelled word lines. How'd that get into the actual screen?

59:24

Well, it didn't. This is still in the editing screen. Sorry about that. Anyway, if you're a little more comfortable just looking at the transliteration, it communicates the exact same thing.

59:34

Because you can see that from the third word onward, everything's the same.

59:42

Hamon, our, Chi, Soteros, and Soteros, Lord, Jesu Christu, Jesus Christ.

59:51

So everything is identical. And the first word's identical, too. Two. Two Theou, then two

59:57

Kuria. The only difference is Theou and Kuria. And you can tell by looking at the transliteration, they both end with OU.

01:00:05

And the OU, as you see up in the Greek, is the genitive singular form.

01:00:15

Theos, Theou, Theou, Theon, Kurias, so on,

01:00:21

Kuria, which is what we have here. So what we're saying is that grammatically and then syntactically, these are identical constructions.

01:00:37

There's no difference between the two. So for those who wish to say, no,

01:00:46

Peter would never have said our God and Savior, Jesus Christ, their argument has to be, and he probably shouldn't have used this form here.

01:00:57

Because if you have an epistle where you have four identical constructions and it has meaning

01:01:07

A in three of them, and you want to say something else in the fourth, but you use the same construction, you're not a very good writer.

01:01:16

And so the vast majority of the argumentation is, well, I just, you know, I just, when you really think about scholarship today and the people who try to avoid what 2

01:01:24

Peter 1 was actually stating, they all base their arguments once you dig down through.

01:01:30

And that was one of the reasons I'm glad that I had to go to a fairly liberal seminary for my first master's.

01:01:38

I learned how to dig through liberal verbiage to get to what's actually being stated.

01:01:46

And when you do, the assumption is, ah, that deity of Christ thing developed a later point in time.

01:01:55

And so now actually, and I knew this wouldn't come up in a debate with INC, but what you'll normally get here is a dismissal of this being apostolic at all.

01:02:06

2 Peter is not written by Peter from their perspective. That's how a lot of people get around now.

01:02:16

Well, you know, yeah, the writer of 2 Peter may have said that, but he's writing, you know, end of 1st century, beginning of 2nd century type stuff is how it's handled by most liberals today.

01:02:28

What was Joe Ventilacion's response to this? We don't drive our doctrine from grammar.

01:02:35

Really? The same man that has been pounding away on Tan Theon for half an hour in this debate doesn't get his doctrine from grammar?

01:02:50

Did anyone else feel like laughing at that point? I mean, the inconsistency, the hypocrisy of it was astounding.

01:03:03

The fact is he had no response. He couldn't respond to it.

01:03:08

So, well, you know, compare spiritual with spiritual, which is a nice way of saying,

01:03:14

I have no idea. I don't have a response. Some people on channel said they did laugh.

01:03:23

So, okay, there you go. But hopefully you can see right here, you know, right on the screen, if you want to tell me, yeah,

01:03:35

Lord is different than Savior in 1 .11, then you can tell me God is different than Savior in 1 .1.

01:03:40

But his response, of course, was to go, yeah, but over in Acts chapter 2, God made him both

01:03:47

Lord and Savior. What's the context? Resurrection.

01:03:53

Same context, Philippians chapter 2, exaltation. What's that all after? Jesus having humbled himself.

01:04:00

He had laid aside his divine prerogatives, so on and so forth. And then there is the proclamation of who he is in the resurrection.

01:04:12

Wow. Very clear, very straightforward, very straightforward stuff.

01:04:18

So, there you go. I hope those of you in, you know, there was one other text, maybe somebody in the channel, maybe

01:04:31

Taco or CCO3, there is one other text.

01:04:36

Oh, oh, okay. One other thing I did want to address because it has come up a number of times.

01:04:46

You didn't say anything about the Holy Spirit. You didn't say anything about the

01:04:51

Holy Spirit. Actually, yes, I did. My, you know, my opening statement was pretty much ignored.

01:05:05

I mean, John 17, 3, I said, if you even quote this, you show you're not. And then it's like they shut down at that point and didn't even bother to listen to the rest of it.

01:05:15

Didn't even bother to try to deal with the rest of it all. When I pressed him on Hebrews chapter 1, he just, oh, that's not about the

01:05:21

Son, and engaged in all that silliness. But what

01:05:26

I stated, I stated the doctrine of the Trinity, the very thesis statement of the debate came straight from my book.

01:05:34

And what I said was that the

01:05:42

Father, the Son, and the Spirit are differentiated from one another.

01:05:51

The Father is not the Son. The Son is not the Spirit. The Spirit is not the Father. They have taken different roles, and they are differentiated from one another.

01:06:00

So we're not oneness Pentecostals. We're talking about divine persons here. And then, as my proof of the doctrine of the

01:06:11

Trinity, I said, therefore, if we see these distinguished persons, these people who are distinguished from one another, being identified as the one

01:06:23

God, as Yahweh, then this is the doctrine of the

01:06:29

Trinity, because you have one being, Yahweh, three persons distinguished from one another.

01:06:36

Now, if Mr. Ventilacion wants to dispute that the

01:06:43

Holy Spirit is distinguished from the other persons, then he could have brought that up.

01:06:51

If Mr. Ventilacion wants to argue that the

01:06:57

Spirit is not identified as the Spirit of Yahweh, he could have brought that up. But the fact is, he never raised these issues.

01:07:09

He didn't bring them up. So how can I be faulted for focusing upon what he himself raises as the arguments of the debate?

01:07:25

If you want to know why I believe in the deity of the Holy Spirit, what's called the Forgotten Trinity, there's a whole chapter on the subject.

01:07:35

But fundamentally, the proof of the doctrine of the Trinity that I presented is you have three persons distinguished from one another, and yet each is described as Yahweh.

01:07:43

And I focused upon the identification of the Son as Yahweh, because that's what's specifically denied by INC.

01:07:49

But there's another thing that we should probably look at, another thing that probably should be taken into consideration at this point in time.

01:08:02

And that is, look, I told the guys at South Dakota Apologetics, I told the guys in my chat channel who are with trueeglacia .org,

01:08:19

look, I'm out of time to become an expert in this group. I've already spent more time on it than I expected to. And we'll probably have to end up spending more time on it in the future.

01:08:27

But one of the things that I wasn't certain of, because nobody was certain of, was exactly what does

01:08:40

Iglesia Ni Cristo believe about the Holy Spirit in the first place? And when I asked

01:08:46

Conley and Nick about that, I was like, we're not sure.

01:08:52

We've gotten a lot of different answers on that. There seems to be some confusion. Well, now we know why.

01:09:03

Now we know why. Do you have it? I believe, oh man, why did

01:09:10

I go and, I put the reference on it before. Ah, look at that.

01:09:17

Page 80. This is page 80 from Fundamental Beliefs of the

01:09:23

Iglesia Ni Cristo. There it is. Here's, that's pretty much it.

01:09:32

When you can, when your entire pneumatology fits in less than a page, you can see why there's a lot of confusion.

01:09:41

The Holy Spirit, question, is the Holy Spirit God as taught by the Bible? Answer, no, but is sent by God, John 14, 26.

01:09:52

Question, who else sends the Holy Spirit? Answer, Christ also sends the Holy Spirit, John 15, 26.

01:09:59

Question, how many spirits, notice that even in this English version, and I don't know if this was originally written in English or another language, but spirit is no longer capitalized and it's now plural.

01:10:15

How many spirits are sent by God? Answer, he sends seven spirits,

01:10:21

Revelation 5, 6. Question, what is the source of the teaching that the Holy Spirit is

01:10:26

God? Answer, the Council of Constantinople, Apostolic Creed, page 206.

01:10:33

Quotation, in 381 of the Council of Constantinople, it was defined that it is an article of faith that the Holy Ghost is God, end quote.

01:10:39

Reverend Clement H. Crock, Discourses on the Apostles' Creed, Nihil Abshad, it's a

01:10:45

Roman Catholic book from 1938. Conclusion, therefore, we should not allow ourselves to be deceived by the teachers who say

01:10:54

Christ is the true God, even if they use biblical verses to back up their contentions. This is because we cannot read from the

01:11:00

Bible any verse that states that Christ affirms He is the true God. Why then are they able to use some biblical verses?

01:11:06

These verses are given erroneous meanings or false interpretations by false teachers, or they are translated incorrectly.

01:11:12

Where have we heard that one before? Eighth article of faith of the Mormon Church. So, the conclusion wasn't even about the

01:11:21

Spirit. So, all you have is, is the Holy Spirit God? No.

01:11:27

The Holy Spirit is sent by God and Christ, and there are seven spirits.

01:11:37

And then, stuff that, again, ignores the reality of, it's really common.

01:11:47

I attack these books when Christians use them too. But it's really common for you to pick up books that say, well, such and such a belief started at such and such a time, and so on and so forth.

01:12:02

This council made up this belief. Like, no one believed it before they came to that council or something.

01:12:08

It's just, again, an extremely ignorant view of church history, but unfortunately, it's extremely common.

01:12:21

There's probably not a hundred words on the Holy Spirit there.

01:12:27

So, it's not overly shocking that Iglesia Ni Cristo doesn't have a new mythology.

01:12:35

They really don't know what the Holy Spirit is. Because if this is what they're going back to, so maybe that's why

01:12:45

He didn't go that direction or didn't challenge me on it or something.

01:12:51

I would have been happy to look at Acts chapter 5 and look at the personality of the Spirit and the fact that in the church, the

01:12:58

Spirit gives the gifts as He wills, demonstrates not only the sovereignty of the Spirit, but the power of the

01:13:03

Spirit. And then, of course, the places where the Father, Son, and Spirit are associated together in such a way that this would be utterly inappropriate for a mere creature or some impersonal force to be associated with them in this fashion, etc.

01:13:19

But He never brought it up. So, it's ex post facto argumentation saying, well, you should have said more about this or you should have said more about that.

01:13:27

I can only respond to what the guy I'm debating is actually saying. And I think that's rather important to do.

01:13:36

So, maybe that's why they didn't go that direction. I don't know. But it seems to me, at Glacian to Christo, I don't have a clue who the

01:13:46

Holy Spirit is. There was one other. I want to look at one other. Hold on just one second.

01:13:51

And let me see if I can grab real quick because I did find it somewhat humorous.

01:14:01

Yeah. I'll just slide it over top of this one. Well, it's wider.

01:14:06

How'd that happen? How does it get wider? Well, here. This thing just does not update with anything.

01:14:19

Preview and that one. There you go.

01:14:24

That should be it. Got that one?

01:14:33

Okay. This one, the scan isn't real clean on, but it looks like page 148, 149.

01:14:41

And I'll read it for you. About the church founded by Christ in the first century. The church established by Christ in the first century fell into apostasy.

01:14:49

Wow! I'm sort of wondering if this guy hadn't like had the more missionaries pop by or something, you know?

01:14:54

Yeah, a little bit from the JWs, a little bit from Seventh -day Adventists, a little bit from Mormons. Let's throw it all together. The church established by Christ in the first century fell into apostasy.

01:15:02

Most of the members were led astray from the truth by the false prophets who arose in the church with the passing away of the apostles.

01:15:07

The rest, those who remained faithful, were put to death by the ravenous wolves, those who were forewarned as the false prophets who would mislead the church from none other than the

01:15:16

Catholic priests. They introduced false beliefs into the church until it ceased to be the true church and became the

01:15:21

Catholic church, a religion vastly different from the church of Christ according to the Bible. Thus, the Catholic church is not of Christ, definitely not of God, and there is no salvation in it.

01:15:29

Now, I think one of the things that's a little bit tough for the

01:15:35

INC guys is, I've written multiple books against Roman Catholicism.

01:15:42

I've done dozens of debates with Roman Catholics. I'm doing one in less than two weeks in London, and so they can't go that direction, even though I just had a guy in Twitter say, well, you just borrowed all their beliefs.

01:15:58

What? Anyway, but I posted this on Facebook, and I said, here's where ignorance of church history can be used as a weapon by cultists.

01:16:13

And I think I'm just going to focus on this and one other thing, and then we'll do the textual critical stuff.

01:16:19

I want to talk about Brother Truelove's response to me on the ecclesiastical text stuff, but I'll do that tomorrow.

01:16:26

We're going to do a DL tomorrow. I'm going to be briefly out of town toward the end of the week before leaving at the end of next week for three weeks, over three weeks.

01:16:35

Please pray for that. There's been some new complications that come up that I won't go into right now that just make it all the more challenging.

01:16:42

But anyway, and we can still use your support, by the way, in the travel fund because I've got a lot more traveling to do this year.

01:16:49

If you like that, for example, this debate took place, that travel fund is really helpful.

01:16:57

Got to get me places if we want to keep doing this kind of stuff. So we need your help.

01:17:03

And believe me, we don't make a whole lot of friends these days by being focused on stuff like this.

01:17:08

We ain't schmoozing and doing stuff like that. So we need your assistance. Anyway, they don't know what to really do because I'm obviously firmly opposed to Roman Catholicism, hopefully graciously and accurately.

01:17:23

I did appreciate, did you see Peter Williams' graphic that he put up on Facebook? That's pretty nice.

01:17:30

Even though the papyri behind me was an early Marian prayer, though how early,

01:17:36

Peter and I will have to argue about because there's dispute about that. Anyway, so look at what is said here.

01:17:47

First of all, they're ignoring the biblical teaching of the perpetuity of the Church of Christ.

01:17:54

Now, I realize the vast majority of INCP will never read Ephesians chapter 3, but you need to read it and you need to realize that you are absolutely throwing the promise, oops,

01:18:07

I'll bring that back up in a second. You are absolutely throwing the promise of Scripture under the bus.

01:18:13

I mean, aside from Jesus' own teaching that the gates of Hades do not prevail against the

01:18:22

Church, that He would build the Church. You're ignoring Ephesians 3 .21.

01:18:29

You've probably never read it. My experience in talking with INC people, you don't read the Bible. You only read what you're told to read.

01:18:38

Listen to what it says. To Him be the glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever.

01:18:49

Amen. Well, except for all the generations between the last of the apostles in 1914.

01:18:58

No. So, you go directly against teaching in the

01:19:03

Bible. That enough, that right there, INC, flee from it. It's not biblical.

01:19:12

Then it says, most of the members were led astray from the truth by the false prophets who arose in the church with the passing away of the apostles.

01:19:20

Well, Paul warned us in Acts chapter 20. He even talked about those who remained faithful were put to death by the ravenous wolves.

01:19:28

Hmm. If you know something about church history, the vast majority of Christians who were, well, actually all the

01:19:35

Christians that were killed until the end, well, until the peace of the church in 313, that's long after this period, that was the

01:19:44

Romans that did that, not the false teachers, not the heretics. So, you got that one wrong.

01:19:51

But here's where this just goes off the rails. Those who were forewarned as the false prophets who would mislead the church were none other than the

01:20:01

Catholic priests. What? It's sad to me that, you know, there are a lot of Roman Catholics, the really weird ones, that will call me an anti -Catholic.

01:20:19

So, I guess I'm an anti -Catholic, anti -Mormon, anti -Muslim, anti -Jovah's Witness. It is defined by the anti stuff.

01:20:31

Those who really are bigoted anti -Catholics, and there are bigoted anti -Catholics, they will often grant to Rome so much more than she actually deserves.

01:20:46

So much more than she actually deserves. What do I mean by that? Well, uh, you know, this guy in Twitter was saying, well, is the

01:20:55

Roman Catholic Church helping Constantine? Like there is a Roman Catholic Church in 325?

01:21:01

No, there wasn't. Well, there was a bishop in Rome. Well, by then there was. That doesn't mean Roman Catholicism existed.

01:21:08

And the priesthood developed over time, not in the first generation, by any stretch of the imagination.

01:21:17

There were no priests. That's a sacramental development over time.

01:21:24

Go watch my debate with Mitch Paco on the subject. So, here you have a cult attacking

01:21:33

Rome and giving to Rome considerably earlier existence and authority and, and credibility than Rome actually deserves.

01:21:44

All because its founders are ignorant of Church history. And boy, are they ignorant of Church history. Wow. Um, this is, and, and you're not, this is how childish and simplistic this, this book is.

01:22:01

And you're not even allowed to give it to your people. But this, no, no, no, no, no, no.

01:22:09

I watched and, uh, uh, Nick and Conley were there.

01:22:16

And when I was asking for this book, one, the, the guy, the other fellow,

01:22:23

I don't remember his name, but it was not Joe Ventilacion. He said, well, the reason that we can't give that to you is because it would be like walking into the, the cockpit of a, of an airliner and asking to read the manuals when you're not a pilot.

01:22:41

You just couldn't understand it. No, I'm afraid

01:22:50

I understand it just fine. And, um, and, uh, it's bad.

01:22:57

It's, it's really bad. It's, uh, filled with errors.

01:23:02

Big time, big time. That's what we were told. That's what you're told. Uh, yes, yes, yes.

01:23:09

One other thing here. I wonder if it's, uh, still in here.

01:23:15

Yeah, it is. And I'll still have to do this.

01:23:22

Got just a couple minutes. We'll go ahead and make this a jumbo. Okay. Instead of, instead of a mega, uh,

01:23:28

I don't know how long it'll take tomorrow to cover. Well, let me, you want, you want a little hint as to what tomorrow's going to be about?

01:23:55

I'm Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to be looking at like the Kamiohanium and a few things like that.

01:24:02

Um, but, uh, once again, back into the breach when it comes to, uh, the issue of, uh, the ecclesiastical text.

01:24:14

Um, let me switch over to this one now. And, uh, I, I promised to address this.

01:24:21

There is a rapper on Twitter who identifies himself as a traditionalist.

01:24:29

Yes. As a Southern Baptist traditionalist, a follower undoubtedly of Layton Flowers.

01:24:38

And we've been having a little exchange going back and forth. And I thought this was a good illustration of what happens when you have hyper traditionalism.

01:24:52

So you got this one? What do you mean?

01:24:58

It's just a tweet. Uh, no, no, that is, that is not, that is not it.

01:25:08

You must've had it zoomed in or something. So this is a rapper by the name of Kevlar at Kevlar Debates.

01:25:22

And he was responding to that, uh, video that a Presbyterian minister had posted a couple of weeks ago.

01:25:32

And, uh, it says, 1 .20,

01:25:38

I think would be an hour. I'm sorry. One minute and 20 minutes, 20 seconds into the video. The Presbyterian minister said he goes into mosques and preaches the gospel end quote.

01:25:49

Then he says, I have never heard James White tell anyone Christ died for their sins.

01:25:54

He has no gospel. So here's what you get when you become a hyper traditionalist.

01:26:12

Many people have commented on how encouraged they were, how blessed they were, that I've had the opportunity to stand in mosques and to present the gospel of Jesus Christ, but for the traditionalist,

01:26:31

I didn't. Why? Because I didn't present to those people an opportunity to make

01:26:37

Jesus a failure because to them, that's what the gospel is. Repentance?

01:26:44

Let's not worry about that. Faith in Jesus? No, you see for the gospel to be there, there has to be the hypothetical possibility that Jesus is going to try to save that person and fail.

01:26:59

Without that, you don't have the gospel. There's what hyper traditionalism will get you.

01:27:08

And I'm not sure how hyper it actually is because I've said more than once, isn't it sad when we see these people, when we see

01:27:17

David Allen, Leighton Flowers, and these other guys ransacking the scriptures, looking for any text they can come up with that clearly would allow them to say,

01:27:33

Jesus tried to save this person, but it was all up to them and he failed.

01:27:41

That's what they do with the weird stuff they do with Judas and weird stuff they do in John chapter 10 with the other sheep and it all has one purpose and that is we must have

01:27:56

Jesus' atonement as a hypothetical thing that can fail. And so if I stand in a mosque and I say to the

01:28:07

Muslims, God commands men, women, and children everywhere to repent and to believe in Jesus Christ and that anyone who will repent and believe in the name of Jesus Christ will find him to be a perfect savior.

01:28:25

That's not the gospel. That's not the gospel. The gospel is

01:28:31

Jesus died to save you. Now do something nice for him because he did something nice for you.

01:28:40

Yeah, I remember the apostolic use of that one and it's sad, but theology matters.

01:28:49

Theology matters. And I wanted to address that even though it was sort of off the topic.

01:28:57

I didn't know where I was going to fit it in if I went ahead and tried to do the textual stuff today, and I still could in the next half hour, but I don't want to.

01:29:07

I want to try to come at it fresh. We've already been talking about a bunch of stuff here and it would be a major shift.

01:29:16

So hopefully, that material is useful to folks. I was concerned because I did see a lot of Christians that were going, well,

01:29:25

I'm not sure how to respond to that. We need to know our texts really well in context, handle them in a way that's honoring and glorifying to God.

01:29:38

So tomorrow afternoon, probably around the same time, another dividing line, probably just as long, but then we won't be back around until the next week.

01:29:49

And then after that next week, three weeks in Europe. So I'm sure you'll be bringing somebody in to do something during that time.