November 8, 2005

The God Who Wasn't There and the Problem of Anti-Christian Bias

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us.

Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence. Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation.

If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602. Or toll free across the United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is James White.

Good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line, or good morning if you happen to be in the west coast, or here in the mountain west, or wherever in the world you are. Morning, afternoon, whatever time it is, welcome to The Dividing Line.

And I just finished watching that new movie. Yeah, I've been hearing a lot about it and even my dear friends over in England had asked me to address it when I come over there the beginning of next year, early next year actually.

And so we ordered in The God Who Wasn't There. If you have not heard about this film, you probably will. It's a Michael Moore style film. A fellow by the name of Brian Fleming, a former fundamentalist, has put this together.

And don't worry about there being anything serious in it as far as anything new. There really isn't. Don't worry about there being any fairness in it. Don't worry about there being any balance. Don't worry about there being any, providing any opportunity for response.

In fact, I think the guy who got the most time on camera was a fundamentalist, premillennial dispensationalist who runs raptureletters .com. Seems like a nice guy, but not really a television personality.

And he got the most time in providing a response. And of course he was just there to be mocked and to make people scared, that you can send letters to your loved ones that will be delivered to them after the rapture.

And so, bad, bad stuff. Standard, it's the lower level Jesus seminar stuff. It's not even the upper level. It's not even John Dominic Crossan level stuff. It's even worse than that. Jesus didn't even exist.

Just the bland, you know, it's just Dionysius hero stuff. Made it all up. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Throw Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John even farther down the road than Crossan does. Crossan looks like a conservative compared to this stuff.

But they don't bother trying to prove any of it. They don't bother trying any of that kind of stuff. It doesn't work. So anyway, the sad thing is, at the end of the film, it really starts getting very personal.

Because the guy went to like village Christian school or something like that in California. And he goes back to that school. And there's been all sorts of, you know, how scary it is that Christians who believe this silliness elect judges and blah, blah, blah, blah.

Typical left-wing radical wackoism. And he sets up an interview with the current principal of the school. And the principal ends the discussion because it's obvious that he didn't expect this was going to be some sort of an apologetic thing.

Evidently he did know that this guy had gone to this school at some point. Something along those lines. So the guy ends the interview. And then, I'm just going to play the last section. It's the very last section of the film.

You know, he's been going after this school for a long, long time now. It gets, like I said, very personal. This is where he was taught that the scariest... He said that the greatest sin in Christianity is thinking.

And that the only sin that he was tremendously scared of when he was there at Village Christian School in the chapels on Fridays was the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Okay? And so he finishes this interview.

And then he says, as we were leaving, we noticed the chapel was open. So he goes into the chapel and he's shooting with his camera. It's just he himself. He's shooting with his camera. And this is how this film ends.

Dr. Sipis wouldn't talk to me on camera anymore, so there wasn't much reason to stay. But then, as I was leaving, I noticed the chapel was open. This is the chapel where I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior.

I sat right here on this bench once and did that. Also sat over here and did it again, because I had backslid. And then in a later grade, I sat back there and did it yet again. I was born again at least three times, I think.

Let me just stop there and just sort of make the rather obvious comment. Theology matters.

I've got to hold up the camera myself. Here in this chapel, where I first accepted Jesus as my personal savior, I just want to say one thing. I deny the Holy Spirit.

And that's the end of the film. Well, actually, there's some stuff during the credits that gets rather nasty. But that's the end of the film. Now, you think maybe, possibly, sort of, you think there's any chance at all that maybe there was a little bias involved here?

Maybe just something going on, possibly? Yeah. I would say that there's a fairly decent chance that there was something going on there. Yeah, no question about it. Well, anyway, we'll be talking a little bit more about it.

Robert M. Price, who is a Jesus Seminar Fellow, was in there. Richard Carrier, Sam Harris. What they did was they would go back and forth between Sam Harris, who wrote The End of Faith, this very well-spoken skeptic, and this guy from rapturedletters .com.

They're obviously just trying to make this massive, huge contrast between someone who's obviously not overly well-studied and not well-spoken versus this brilliant person demonstrating you have to be pretty stupid to be a Christian, and so on and so forth.

Shabir Ali’s Inconsistent Standards for the Quran and the Bible

Well, I mentioned on the blog that I was listening to a debate, again, while writing, between Shabir Ali and Robert Morey, and I've ordered in Shabir Ali's books. I don't know, is 42 pages a book? I guess I've written a couple that were like 60, so I guess that's more like a booklet type of a situation.

But I was listening to some portions of the debate, shall we say, and like I said, it's always odd to me when you're listening to a debate and you're writing or you're hiking or something, you always remember exactly where you were on the road when certain things were said.

It's very odd the way the human mind works. It's very interesting to me. I could probably discover something there that would allow my memory to be a lot better than it is. Maybe I just need to learn while moving.

Maybe the problem is if you're sitting at a desk studying, there's no way to track things like that. I don't know, maybe that's a possibility. Anyway, again, I keep talking about almost riding off the bike trail, but it's because at times I'm just like, what on earth did I just hear?

Did I really hear what I just heard? I'm listening to a discussion between Robert Mori and Shabir Ali on the issue of Muhammad and the Koran. Mori's made the argument that the Koran is, in point of fact, explainable on the grounds of pre-existing materials that Muhammad could draw from, Christian materials, Jewish materials, Arabian myths and legends, etc., etc., etc.

And Shabir Ali responds, first of all, by one of the big things that Muslims do is argue that the Koran presents certain scientific things that couldn't be explained naturally, etc., etc. And then, I guess the way it was designed, Mori went first, then you had his rebuttal, then you had Shabir Ali's opening statement.

So he's already done a rebuttal before he does his opening statement, and then Mori gets a rebuttal of his opening statement. I guess that was the format. I understand how that would work, though. It could result in some small amount of confusion.

Anyway, in his opening statement, Shabir Ali starts after the Bible, as he always does. He's quoting from Magnus Magnusson's work and the Bible's history and all the rest of that stuff. And then he says the following.

Now, if you've not heard the other programs, this isn't going to make a whole lot of sense to you, I'm afraid. But if you listened to the debate between Shabir Ali and Sam Shimon, and if you've taken the time to track down some other debates as well, it's going to strike you even more strongly.

And that is, Shabir Ali, his constant methodology is to utilize liberal Christian, or at least liberal theology and historians, naturalistic, materialistic stuff that questions the existence of the supernatural, it's based upon a completely different worldview, all the rest of that stuff, to attack the Bible.

He loves especially liberal Christians, who he can at least still call them Christians, but then he can say, and they admit that this isn't right, and that isn't right, and blah, blah, blah. And so to hear what we're about to hear, when you've listened to him misusing those sources, remember over and over again as we were listening to that, I kept saying, gross inconsistency of sources.

He's using sources here that if they were applied to the Quran would disprove the Quran. He's using people here who, not only is he taking them out of context, and he's not applying it correctly here, and there's all sorts of responses to be given, but the fact of the matter is, these people would laugh at his own views of the Quran.

And so, why is he doing this, etc., etc., etc.? He does all this, and then, once you attack the Quran, and it's really funny, later on, I don't have this one queued up, but later on, he attacks Maury's book and said, you made a mistake in alleging an error in the Quran, and I really tuned in at this point.

Because you said that, you assumed that what's down here in verses, you know, ayah 30 or something like that, in this certain surah, is relevant to what's up here in ayah 70, in verse 70, and there's all sorts of stuff that came between.

In other words, his whole argument was, you weren't reading the Quran in context. In context, the Quran's not making the connection you made. So, he recognizes, very clearly, the necessity of reading a document in its context, of honestly dealing with the text.

And yet, did we not hear him say to Sam Shamoon, I don't have to deal with the Bible. I'll accept the Bible as being the perfect Word of God, so I don't have to do that. I can take one verse, and if the verse before or the verse after says something different, and it changes the context, who cares?

I don't have to do that. So, in dealing with the Quran, one set of standards. Dealing with the Bible, a completely different set of standards. And on any logical or rational grounds, Shabir Ali is completely disqualified from any meaningful apologetic role at all, by that fact.

Unless he had come out and said, you know what? I was wrong. I apologize. I retract everything I've ever written or said based upon that. I will now treat the Bible the same way I treat the Quran, in the sense of, even if I don't accept it as being the infallible Word of God, I will at least treat it as a document, and I will interpret it in context.

Which, of course, we shouldn't really expect that to be happening anytime soon. But listen to what he says, now that he's having to defend the Quran.

Muslims and Christians will no doubt reject the conclusions of these men. We believe that the creation and the flood are not ancient myths, but God-given truths. However, ladies and gentlemen, Muslims and Christians will agree that just because a certain truth was known before the Bible, or known before the Quran, that does not mean that God did not reveal it to a certain prophet like Moses or to Jesus.

We will not agree with these men in saying that the commandments which Moses gave to his followers, that these commandments Moses somehow borrowed it from the Law of Hammurabi, or that the flood story in Genesis is a myth that was copied from the ancient Babylonian flood myth, the Epic of Gilgamesh, or that the creation story was one of the Babylonian creation myths, as Isaac Asimov has already said.

What surprises me, however, is that some Christians feel that they can attack the Quran in this particular way, and they don't realize that they're shooting themselves in the foot when they use this method.

Because the same method disproves also the Quran. However, Dr. Morey, you have an interesting way of going about this. Because when Dr. Morey uses this particular method, Dr. Morey says that he's a Western scholar.

But he forgets for the moment that he's also a Christian. Does he wear two hats, once as a Western scholar and then as a Christian? I would like Dr. Morey to wear one hat so we can pin him down and say, this is what you should believe in.

If you say that this is your method, then believe neither in the Quran nor the Bible. We have already seen, too, that Dr. Morey disparages the miracles. For example, is Camel coming out of a rock? No, that's foolish.

But do we disparage the miracles that are mentioned in the Bible, too? If we believe that miracles are true, then we should find some other way of denying that a certain miracle took place or not. Not that we disparage a miracle.

So we have to make up our minds. If we are believers in God, then we cannot deny that these things are true. We cannot use that particular method by which the Western scholars disbelieve in both the Quran and the Bible.

I'm sorry, but consistency, you cannot define the word truth without using categories of consistency. And Shabir Ali has just demonstrated, beyond all question, that he simply cannot be consistent in any way, shape, or form.

He can't do it. His arguments that he's relied on, I mean, I listened to one debate where he must have quoted Raymond Brown 147 times. I mean, over and over and over and over and over and over again. It was his primary source, and maybe it was because of who he was debating.

Maybe he just changes his entire debate tactic depending upon who he was debating. But the fact of the matter is that this is how he has debated in the past, and now he just said that everything he did in the past was all wrong.

Of course, he doesn't admit that he did it in the past. And he'll do it again, I can guarantee you. I don't have, I need to construct, if I could somehow figure it out, a chronology of exactly when each one of these took place.

Because I bet you anything, after making this statement, we will find him again using those same sources against the Bible in other debates. That's what I mean by gross inconsistency. Constantly misusing the sources that he is utilizing.

As far as there being any kind of credibility left after making that kind of statement, I honestly just don't know what to say about it. Now, then later, I typed this one out. I actually took the time to transcribe this and put it on the blog because I just couldn't believe it.

Then I found out right after blogging this that he has a little booklet out, and I ordered it in. I ordered all the stuff that's available from islamicbookstore .com. I've ordered it all in. And basically taking the same approach that was taken by Hamza Abdul Malik in our debate in regards to the deity of Christ.

Does the New Testament teach the deity of Christ? I think it was the book. Something along those lines. So at one point he decided to just go off on a tangent for a while in this particular debate. It wasn't on the actual topic of the debate, but he likes to throw this one out here.

And I guess it's because he finds this to be useful. Maybe he finds Christians to be incapable of responding. I don't know. I don't know why he finds this. But this is not the first time I've heard him do this.

Listen to what he says, not only in regards to the incarnation, but then listen to what he says about the deity of Christ. ...to tell her that she will have a son.

However, when Mary asked, how can I have a son when no man has touched me? According to the Quran, the answer she got was, so it will be. For Allah creates what He wills. When He has decreed something, He says to it, only be, and it is.

The Quran, Surah 347. Now according to the Bible, the answer is different. And you must wonder, how come Muhammad did not copy that answer from the Bible? Listen to the answer. The Holy Spirit will come upon you.

And the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God. Luke chapter 1, verse 35. The benefit of the Quranic expression can be clear when you realize that many of the lay people make a confusion when they read the Gospel of Luke here.

They imagine that God replaced the male element in the birth of Jesus. And then they have a further confusion as to who exactly is the Father of Jesus. Is it the Holy Spirit that came upon Mary and fathered Jesus?

Or is it the Father in Heaven who is the Father of Jesus?

That level of confusion is pretty similar to what you find in Brigham Young. I mean, that's, but that's not the point. Here's the section I put on the blog.

But I cannot help you with this sort of confusion, ladies and gentlemen, except to invite you to the truth that God has revealed to correct all of this confusion. Ladies and gentlemen, I noticed this confusion here today as well, when during the prayers we noticed that some people were praying to Yahweh and some were saying, yes, Jesus, praise be to Jesus.

Because Yahweh and Jesus, according even to the Trinity, are two different persons. They're not one and the same. If you say that Yahweh is Jesus, then how can you say that Yahweh sent His Son? Then who is His Son?

Not Jesus?

There's the section I put on the blog. And has anyone ever seen, because I'm sitting here thinking about it, I'm thinking about, for example, a lot of publications that are put out for witnessing the Jehovah's Witnesses.

And interestingly enough, I was shocked, he has a book, again it's about 42 pages, on responding to the Jehovah's Witnesses at your door. Wouldn't that be fascinating to see Shabir Ali in a Jehovah's Witness debating?

Well, actually, there's something similar to that. Anthony Buzzard, he and they did a quote-unquote debate, which doesn't really make a whole lot of sense anyways. But anyhow, all the publications I've seen on the doctrine of the Trinity, have you not seen sections that talk about the reality that the one divine name is used of the Father, the Son, the Spirit?

Is that not the standard? Is that standard in almost every publication you're going to see explaining the doctrine of the Trinity? There's a whole chapter on it in my book. And I'm thinking of this one, sort of 8 1⁄2 by 11, sort of 11 by 17 folded over type book.

Very popular on the doctrine of the Trinity. On the very back, it's got one of those pinwheel type things, where you've got Jehovah on one side, and then you follow the line across, and the fulfillment in Jesus on the other side, and all the rest.

Isn't this just really basic stuff? How come Shabir Ali doesn't know it? Or if he does know it, why would you lie about it? I mean, this guy's not stupid. You can tell, he can quote sources, and he can do the research.

How could he have missed this? How could he not realize? Is it just the overwhelming, overriding assumption of Unitarianism that the name Jehovah has to be attached to only one person? Are we looking at the exact same thing that we saw with Greg Stafford?

In Tampa, two years ago, next month? Is that possibly what's going on here? Is it Jehovah has to be just the Father? And we're not talking about the use of the name Yahweh of Father, Son, and Spirit. Is that what we're dealing with here?

Does he know that there are many Christians, and there are many passages? Has he ever dealt with Hebrews 1, or John 12, or any of those? I've ordered his books, and we'll find out. Maybe. Maybe. But if so, why make a statement like this?

It just absolutely makes no sense. And for me, again, the frustrating part... And by the way, the phones are open. 877 -753 -3341. We said Thursday. How many weeks have we been doing this now? About three weeks with some breaks?

I have responded to a very wide range of claims made by Islamic apologists, specifically by Shabir Ali, but I've also played Osama and Nadir Ahmed and Sabil Ahmed and others. Was there another one? There may have been another.

In the course of the past number of weeks, I've responded to a number of issues, lots and lots of misrepresentations of Christian belief. Now's your time. 877 -753 -3341. I had lots of folks calling me, saying how scared I was of this person or that person.

None of them ever were able to really do any correspondence, because when I'd respond, only one guy actually wrote back to me once or twice and had nothing meaningful to say. But, hey, 877 -753 -3341.

Sort of hard to hide when you have a toll-free phone number. If I'm so wrong about all this stuff, then it's real easy to call in and demonstrate that. But one of the things that, for me, really, really bothers me, is you can ask the powers that be here at Alpha Omega Ministries.

I've been building my Islamic library. You've got to have original sources. And I thank all of you who support the ministry so that we can do that. I just ordered in the nine-volume Sahih al-Bukhari set, which is English and Arabic.

Why do that? Because you have to have the original sources. There was an issue that came up in this debate, where it went back to what is the Arabic term that's being translated here. You've got to have it.

You've got to be able to go to those sources. I mean, that's what people depend upon us to do, and so you've got to have the materials there. Yesterday, I think I ordered in, let me count them, eight, nine, 17, 18, 19, plus four, 23 books.

Yesterday. All in this area, to provide that kind of documentation. And we've done that with Arabic. You've got to look around the shelves of my office here. If someone publishes a book on a subject, I'm not going to debate that person without, I mean, there's a whole section here of John Dominic Crossan, right?

Marcus Borg, Jesus Seminar. A whole section the year before from Federal Vision, Douglas Wilson. Please, I am not putting Doug with John Dominic Crossan. I'm sure that Doug Wilson would have enjoyed my debate with John Dominic Crossan and probably would have been jumping up and down wanting to get involved with it.

But the point is, if you're going to debate a subject, you've got to study it. And if someone has published on it, you want to address exactly what they themselves are saying, right? That's why there's multiple copies of the multiple printings of the multiple editions of What Love Is This on my shelf.

I don't want to have to get all that stuff, you know? And once the debate's over, I'm probably not going to be sitting there thumbing through that again. But you've got to do that kind of research. It's just required of you, isn't it?

Doesn't truth demand that? Well, why are we the only ones that seem to do that? Okay, I take that back. We're not the only ones that do that. And I'm not talking about Christians at all. There are just so many people that I debate.

They don't do that. They don't do that. They absolutely, positively refuse to take the time to find out what, you know, Peter Stravinskis knew he was going to be debating me. Did he read anything that I wrote on the subject of Purgatory?

No. You listen to that debate. It was very one-sided. Why? Because I had everything he had ever published on the subject of Purgatory in my handspring visor in front of me, and he had not even bothered to read anything that I had written on the subject.

That doesn't make for a really good debate, to be perfectly honest with you. Or it may make for a very good debate, depending on what the situation is, but the point is that it puts me at a real advantage and him at a real disadvantage.

And I just don't understand the mindset of somebody who will address issues and either just completely misrepresent it, just absolutely positively go, well, I know they say this, but I'm going to take this direction, or just simply don't even take the time to find out what the person actually believes.

Now, at least one thing was clear, and that was that Shabir Ali had read a couple of Dr. Maury's books on the subject of Islam. It might have helped him if he had read some others on the subject of the Trinity.

He might not have made the same mistakes, but is this just one of those situations where overriding tradition, overriding Unitarianism, whatever it is, so blinds the person they just can't see something on the page?

I guess that's a possibility. That's certainly the case. There's no question about that. In fact, that is the case with a lot of folks. That is the case with a lot of Muslims. When we look at the video of the debate with Hamzah Abdul-Malik, the questions were asked afterwards very, very clearly.

That's where that was coming from. They hadn't heard what I had said. Of course, most of them had left their prayers anyways and hadn't heard my major presentation, but it didn't matter how many times I repeated the same thing.

Nowheres to hear. Just not interested, not really dedicating much in the way of thought to that particular issue. You're wrong about this. I'm just going to repeat that you're wrong about this, and I'm not going to listen to what you're saying in response.

So I know that's possible, but is that the possibility of someone like Shabir Ali, who obviously spends much more time in this kind of an environment, this kind of a discussion? I just don't know. I just don't know.

I know, though, that to honor the truth properly, you've got to do work. Is studying the Arabic alphabet and the vowing system and initial forms and medial forms and ending forms, is that fun? No, not particularly.

It is interesting to me to see the connections with Hebrew and the Semitic languages and things like that and the triliteral roots and things that I'm accustomed to from Hebrew. Yeah, okay, that's interesting, but it's not as interesting as some other things could be.

But why do all that? Because if you're going to address the issue properly, you need to do so in such a way that it's honoring to the truth. That's what we try to do around here anyways. 877 -753 -3341.

The phone lines are open for anybody. If you would like to talk about the guy who wasn't there, the Islamic situation, stuff we haven't talked about in a while, we come back, maybe we'll chat a little bit about the big debate next year.

That's been the big topic on various Reformed boards, the fact that there is going to be a quote-unquote debate prior to the pastors' conference at the Southern Baptist Convention between Al Mohler and Dr. Patterson on the subject of Calvinism.

Maybe we can chat about that. 877 -753 -3341. We're going to take a break and be right back.

The Trinity, Christian Publishing, and the Need for Original Sources

The Trinity is a basic teaching of the Christian faith. It defines God's essence and describes how he relates to us. James White's book, The Forgotten Trinity, is a concise, understandable explanation of what the Trinity is and why it matters.

It refutes cultic distortions of God, as well as showing how a grasp of this significant teaching leads to renewed worship and deeper understanding of what it means to be a Christian. And amid today's emphasis on the renewing work of the Holy Spirit, The Forgotten Trinity is a balanced look at all three persons of the Trinity.

Dr. John MacArthur, Senior Pastor of Grace Community Church, says, James White's lucid presentation will help layperson and pastor alike. Highly recommended. You can order The Forgotten Trinity by going to our website at aomen .org.

More than any time in the past, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals are working together. They are standing shoulder-to-shoulder against social evils. They are joining across denominational boundaries in renewal movements.

And many Evangelicals are finding the history, tradition, and grandeur of the Roman Catholic Church appealing. This newfound rapport has caused many Evangelical leaders and laypeople to question the age-old disagreements that have divided Protestants and Catholics.

Aren't we all saying the same thing in a different language? James White's book, The Roman Catholic Controversy, is an absorbing look at current views of tradition in Scripture, the papacy, the Mass, purgatory and indulgences, and Marian doctrine.

James White points out the crucial differences that remain regarding the Christian life and the heart of the Gospel itself that cannot be ignored. Order your copy of The Roman Catholic Controversy by going to our website at aomen .org.

Has anyone figured out what the fascination of everybody in the channel is.

With the name of the young lady who recorded those commercials a number of years ago? Has anyone figured that part out? I haven't figured that part out. I gotta know who that is! Who is that lady? Who is that?

Is that Dr. White's wife? It's just like... anyway. I don't know. Hey, Rich, is this thing working in here? I see some lights on. Hmm. There's six lines. No, we don't have six lines. How many lines do we have?

Do we have four? Four. Four lines? Actually five. We have five, but I'm using one for the dial-up right now, right? Yeah.

Did the lights burn out? No. No? No. The time changed. The time changed? You know, we have all those Eastern listeners and, well, you know.

They'll be calling in in an hour? Is that the idea?

No, I think it takes them about two or three weeks to get caught up. Yeah. And to actually realize that something's going on. You know, right now, or actually an hour from now, they'll all be sitting at their computers complaining that real audio won't work.

That's right. And then sending me emails wondering why the link is bad.

Right. Right. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, but, you know, there's still certain people out there that would be, you know, ready to call if they really had something to point out about all the errors that I've made.

Oh, well, there's no doubt about that. Don't you think? I mean, we didn't block anybody from calling, right?

Oh, no. The phone lines are working good. They're working good? Yep. Yep. Yep. Sure enough, you know. Just checking. I didn't want to, you know. You know, if you can use certain terms, you know. I don't know if we want to.

We may want to get one of those, like, you know, time delay things. You know what? Inviting one of these kind of callers. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know how that used to work. You know, honestly, before the digital delays and stuff, what you used to do. Oh, I remember the reel-to-reel thing. Reel-to-reel. That was the weirdest thing I'd ever seen.

Yep. Yep. You'd actually play off of the tape of your own program. And when somebody did that, you just stopped the tape, passed it, and kept going.

Well, I saw something. When we were over at KHEP years ago, I saw something that was like this. It was like a ten-second tape. Yeah. And it just kept going and going and going and going. And it was, like, constantly feeding what you'd said ten seconds ago.

Right. And re-recording it and then feeding it. And it was the weirdest thing I'd ever seen.

But that's how you did it back in those days. I worked at a radio station. We had something called Tradio on the radio. It was back before eBay. So everybody today who's an eBay fanatic was a Tradio fanatic.

And you'd call in. It really did work. I mean, I even used it once. I called in and I said, I want a 40-channel CB. If anybody has a 40-channel CB, I'd like to sell. And by that afternoon, I was out in Whitman someplace buying a really nice 40-channel CB.

And you know how many people are listening right now have no idea what a CB is. Isn't that sad? I think it's very, very sad, personally.

How many that do remember CBs. Remember when you had to have a license to have a CB?

Oh, KZI 3581, Arizona Wood Pusher, right here. Yep, yep. I won't tell you what mine was. Okay, well, hey, I said Arizona Wood Pusher. But KZI 3581 was my official FCC-assigned license. I had one, too.

Yeah, cool. I had a third-class radio telephone certificate, actually. Because I worked radio stations, so I had to be able to operate the transmitters. What are we talking about? I don't know. It's good to sit around and have a good old time.

You have digressed. We have digressed a little bit, yes. That's because I'm just waiting for all those phone calls. Eight, seven, let me try it. Maybe have I said it wrong? 877 -753 -3341. There you go.

That'll get it. I just must have said it too fast. I'm waiting. Okay, excellent. Breaker 1 -9, we got ourselves a convoy. That's right. I got that song, believe it or not. I have the rubber ducky in my music match.

I really do. I can play it. But I'm not going to afflict anyone right now. And we all thank you. Yes, yes. Toll-free. Yes, it is toll-free. Thank you very much. There's a Smoky on I -95. That's right.

The Southern Baptist Convention, Calvinism, and Public Accountability

I mentioned before the break, before we totally lost control of where we were going here, the fact that the big discussion, and I've known this, I don't know how long, a month and a half, whatever, the news first broke.

It sort of broke amongst a small number of us. I didn't really say much about it. And then Tom Askew put it on his blog, and everybody has been telling us all about the fact that as a part of the pastor's conference next year.

Now, remember what happened this year at the Southern Maps Convention. If you're not familiar with this, before the big, big, big, big convention. And where is that going to be again? I forgot. I've seen it.

Where it's going to be. All I know is it's not going to be in Phoenix. But before the big, big convention, you have the pastor's conference. And, you know, getting asked to speak at the pastor's conference is sort of, I don't know, it's sort of like how people get rewarded for being on the uptick.