Bob Larson

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. It was just a couple of months ago, I was up in the Denver area and actually

Barry was driving me to the airport and as we were driving down from the

Edwards area, I remember asking the question,

I wonder what ever happened to Bob Larson? You know, I remember the picture of Bob Larson's big monstrous mansion house up there in Colorado and I remember back in the 80s when we first got started, he was on here in the

Phoenix area and I'd listen in the afternoons and he was at a lot of the cult stuff and he'd have some of the standard folks on and he'd deal with Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses and stuff like that.

And then, one day, someone called in and they had a voice like this,

I am Satan, something like that, you know. And it went, he had always, you know,

I had watched the progression and when I first started listening to him, maybe 15 % of the program was fundraising.

And I'm bad at that. I confess, I need to let people know, hey, you are the folks that keep us going, we don't have some rich person out there that throws money at us, it's all individuals, and I mean you, yes, the person on the treadmill or the rower or whatever it is you're doing, that's how we keep doing what we're doing is individuals, rich people do not like us for some reason.

So that's just all there is to it. But at the same time, you know, part of the reason that I very rarely talk about finances is because of what we do.

I mean, we do apologetics and when you do apologetics, you expect you're not going to be treated overly fairly by the people that you are aiming your apologetic toward.

And so, you know, that's the way it is. Well, when I first started listening to Larson, you know, maybe, you know, 15 % of the program was fundraising and then it was 20 % and then it was 25%, and a third of the program was just how desperate things were.

And if he didn't continue doing what he was doing, then, you know, the whole kingdom of God was just going to, you know, right down the slope into oblivion.

And it started getting, you know, wearing on you. And right around that time is finally when this demonic stuff started happening.

And you've got demons calling up and on the air exorcisms and they just get wilder and wilder.

And, you know, I don't remember what it was, why he eventually went off or off the air or anything.

But pretty soon he's he's showing up on TBN and all this stuff and and just off into off off into NaNa land and, you know, no more doing evangelism to Mormons.

I mean, that's not that's not really exciting or Jehovah's Witnesses. I mean, that's not exciting either.

And so I wondered, you know, is he is he still up there in Colorado someplace still doing what he's doing?

Well, I went and visited Dr. Keith today. Dr. Keith is my one of our ops in our chat channel and he's also my dentist.

And in fact, I know someone else who's going to see Dr. Keith. The whole family. That's what they they mentioned that he said that the alpha had come in and you'll make it was coming later.

So I just had a had ye olde dental cleaning this morning. And that means my tongue is going to the back of my front teeth going, ooh, this is fun.

You know, we all know what that's about. Anyhow, everybody's going, oh, too much information. But I I sit down in the waiting room.

I was there for like 12 seconds, but I look down and here is this is called

North Scottsdale Times, October 2012. There's a stack of these newspapers and I look at it and the cover story is called

Satan Slayers. These Valley exorcists want to save your soul by Shanna Hogan.

And here's this picture of what look like three models. I mean, they're just drop dead gorgeous girls made up to look drop dead gorgeous.

And then there's this and they're holding they're in the position of prayer. Their hands are together.

One of them's holding a Bible with a silver cross and then staying behind them is this older guy in all black with a dog collar on.

Sorry, those of you who wear a dog collar, you know, the clerical collar. And he's got a silver cross.

He ain't smiling. And they're all at the cameras way up above him looking down at him. This freaky looking thing.

I'm like, who would ever allow themselves? I mean, this is so staged. It's so meant to look like this that who would ever allow them.

And I remember Keith comes walking. I go, that's Bob Larson. I'm pretty sure that's Bob Larson.

And so I took it with me. I'd have time to, you know, I didn't want to hold them up. Excuse me. Just just hold on. Hold your entire schedule up for the day.

I need to look at this. But as I was leaving, I thumbed through it and I found the article.

And there was this. Here's I'll show it to see. Rich, there's there's picture. Satan slayers. Arizona exorcist.

Reverend Bob Larson. He's in Scottsdale now.

He is now our problem. It's not the Denver's problem anymore.

There he is. I mean, check that. Check that picture. Is that not just I mean, wow. These unconventional exorcist fight on the front line in humanity's

Holy War. OK. All right. So and I guess one of these beautiful young ladies is his daughter and then two sisters that are friends of hers that compete in beauty pageants.

But they're also involved in exorcisms. So that. Yeah. Yeah.

I'll let you. Obviously, you'll probably want to take a look at that one. And they go, whoa. OK. So if one of them is competing in a beauty pageant and realizes that someone's in their way.

That they're going to get beat. Do they bring Bob along and. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Well, Bob would be pretty frightening. Yeah. There's no two ways. No two ways. He has definitely. He don't look like he used to look.

He looks that's that's those are scary pictures. No two ways about it. But there I was. And I'm like, well,

I got the answer to the question that I was asking just a few months ago. I wonder if Bob's still in Denver.

Nope. He's in North Scottsdale. Great. Wonderful.

Scottsdale does seem to attract a lot of a lot of odd, odd things out there.

It does. So anyway, I don't know. I don't. I didn't. I scanned through the article.

So I got here fairly. I had things going on, but I didn't see anything.

Yeah. See, the the teenage exorcists have been busy kicking evil's bleep in the past year.

Bryn Larson, 18, Tess Shurkenbach, 17, and Savannah Shurkenbach, 20.

Estimate they've purged about 100 demons from the possessed. And there's a picture of the three.

See the three girls. They're all holding these ornate crosses up. And then there's even a little box here.

Could you be possessed by a demon? Ah, here we go. Here's how you get your spiritual advice from what is this again?

The North Scottsdale Times. Here we go. Do you sometimes exhibit uncontrollable outbursts of anger or violence?

Well, that could mean you're a Dallas Cowboys fan. Number two, have you experimented with two or more forms of the occult?

Now, how many people reading this would even know what a form of the occult is, is the question. Three, do you commit immoral or illegal acts contrary to your customary values?

Number four, do you know of ancestors who committed murder, suicide, or sexual perversion? Oh, there you go.

And fifth, have you experienced emotional or physical abuse from your biological parents?

Oh, great. Now half the world is demonically possessed. Take Reverend Bob Larson's complete online demon test.

I'm going to go ahead. I'm going to tell everybody about it. Why not? www .demontest .com.

It's not even .org. It's not even .info. It's .com for crying out loud. Oh, my.

I saw nothing in here at all that indicated that our erstwhile reporter had any knowledge of the funny stuff financially that went on up at Bob Larson Ministries up in Denver and stuff like that.

No, no, no, no. It's just, oh, boy. There you go.

There you go. See what happens? I mean, it's really weird what happens right before the dividing line. I'm sitting in the dentist's office, and I look down, and Bob Larson's staring at me and holding a cross up in my face.

What can I say? That's just how things happen. Very, very strange. I've got a couple things queued up here, and, in fact,

I have them queued up. Some of you, Algo and a fellow that I met in Germany might be the only two people.

I met a young couple in Germany, a very fine -looking young couple in Germany, and he's a big, tall guy, and he insisted he may be the next

Algo, that he might be able to compete with Algo. Algo, I think, is a little miffed by that, personally.

I think he's feeling a little challenged by this. Anyway, unless you're one of those two folks, you may not remember this, but about three years ago, maybe somewhere around there, most of you know that what we do a lot in the program is

I will play stuff. I have two things queued up. I've got some more Paul Williams queued up, and then we never finished off the

Wallace -Urman debate, and I apologize for that. Every once in a while, I forget to finish up stuff.

I'm sorry. I think most people forgive me for it because they know I start getting prepared for I've got a book to finish or a debate's coming up or something like that, and my mind just goes off that direction.

Hopefully, as I get older, I get a little bit more leniency from the audience for being absent -minded and things like that, but sometimes just other things take precedence.

We very frequently will play something, and I remember,

I think the last time that I used this program was when

I reviewed Bassam Zawadi's comments on, what was that? It had something to do with the

Bible or the history of the Bible, something like that, because I remember it. There is a program called

Audio Notetaker, and I had it on my

Lenovo little teeny tiny thing basically, and when

I moved up to my next MacBook Pro, I wanted to bring the other

MacBook Pro in here because I have better Bible programs on it and things like that. I've had three

MacBook Pros so far, and they're all still working. The first one is immediately to my right. The second one is in front of me.

Both of them have extra monitors attached to them, and I have four monitors sitting in front of me as I do the dividing line here.

I think I've shown pictures of this on the blog at some time in the past. Anyhow, Algo says he was playing the

Bible as contradiction game. Okay, thank you, Algo. See, Algo does. I think he feels a little challenged by the possibility of a

German Algo, so we'll see what happens then. Anyhow, so I went to look and see if they had this program for Mac, and they didn't at that time.

It was only for Windows, and I tried to get it to work under Parallels and Wine and all these

Windows emulators for Mac. Some programs work really well that way. Other programs, not at all, and it's just not a real science there, so I wasn't able to use it anymore.

Audio Notetaker, what it does is it breaks audios up.

Instead of a waveform, it breaks it up into segments, into lines, and you can mark the lines.

You can change colors. You can basically put notes next to stuff, and it's just a whole lot easier if you're going to be reviewing something to use this

Audio Notetaker program. Well, lo and behold, I don't know what got me to think about this, but I went looking a couple days ago, and I found that they've come out with a

Mac version, and already someone has been kind enough to, well, we're working on getting it to work.

I put it on the Ministry Resource List, and we're going to make it work, and I very much appreciate

Larry for helping us with that. Right now, I have it in front of me, but it's the one -month trial version, but I'm sure it's going to take us a month to get this figured out, and I'll have the registered version.

We do try to follow laws along those lines. Anyway, so I'll have the registered

Mac version of Audio Notetaker because I've missed having it because someone had actually given me, a fellow back in,

I think, St. Louis, as I recall, had given me the Windows version, but it doesn't just swap straight over to Mac.

Anyhow, so that's what I have in front of me, and I have the Wallace -Ehrman debate queued up, and I'm just ready to launch right into it, and we're going to look at that.

But first, I'm going to go ahead and clear the phones, and go ahead, and we've got one call.

Hold on on other calls. I want to get this one through, and then I want to at least get some things. If it looks like I'm moving fast enough, maybe we can have some toward the end, but I do want to get through some of the

Wallace -Ehrman debate and some more Paul Williams stuff because there's not much left in Paul Williams' opening statement. But let's talk with George in Virginia.

Hi, George. Hey, Dr. Wayne, how are you doing? Hello. I was just wondering how you would answer the objection of,

I was witnessing this on Facebook, and they said, well, I see you don't have a beard, so I was talking about hell, and he was like, well,

I guess I'll see you there with me, because he's trying to bring up the objection that, I think, based on Matthew 5, 18, for truly

I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter of stroke shall pass from the law until all is accomplished.

So I guess that would also go with the same objection that homosexuals try to bring up, like where the Old Testament says homosexuality is abomination, but if you're going to follow that, then you have to follow all the

Old Testament laws. So I was just wondering how you would answer someone that would bring up an objection like that.

Yeah, I had an opportunity to listen to my response to Matthew Vines, because I went through that rather explicitly and extensively, because that is the standard argumentation, is if you're going to accept any moral law of the

Old Testament, then you are automatically placing yourself under every law, including ceremonial law and everything else, and it's just an obvious act of ignorance on the part of the person making the argument that they don't understand, that, for example,

Jesus himself made all meats clean in the Gospel of Mark, which means clearly that there were elements of the law that were ceremonial, there were elements of the law that were specifically addressed to the people of Israel, and then there are moral laws.

And I've met a handful of people who have made that objection, who could then follow up and say, and yes,

I can make an argument that homosexuality is cultic in nature, it's a ceremonial law, not a moral law, but then they have to throw

Paul out and basically the New Testament. The vast majority of the people making that kind of argument have never read all of Leviticus, they don't realize.

If you see the video that I did in response to Dan Savage, I went through the Holiness Code of Leviticus 18 through 20 and pointed out how much of that material has nothing to do with mixing of cloth or beards, trimming the edges of your beard or anything like that.

A large portion of that material has to do with respect for the aged, care for the poor, prohibitions against incest and bestiality and rape and all sorts of other things along those lines that everyone would accept as clearly being moral and abiding in their relevance and in their authority.

And so generally when someone makes that kind of argument, they've just found that it's very easy to get rid of Christians that way because most

Christians have never actually read the book of Leviticus and as a result have never thought through the relationship, the law.

If they've ever heard a sermon on the nature of the New Covenant out of Jeremiah chapter 31, they've never actually given thought to the fact that the law that's written upon the hearts of the

New Covenant believer is the Old Testament law. It's the revelation of God's character found in His law, but that that involves some level of interpretation and exegesis to honestly deal with the nature of the law and how the

New Testament writers deal with it. The New Testament writers clearly make differentiation. They recognize that they do not have to be going to the temple and offering bullocks and heifers and the like because even though that law was described as being eternal, even as Gia said in the section that you quoted from, there is a fulfillment in Jesus Christ and they don't understand the relationship of that law to the

New Testament and sadly most believers think that the Old Testament law, whatever that is, without making any proper distinctions, has simply been abrogated by Christ.

It's gone. We're not under the law, we're under grace. So all that's gone. Ignoring the fact that what that does, the law actually shows us our sin, that law actually reveals

God's holy character. It is used by the Holy Spirit to bring about conviction of sin and as such we do need to look at what the law says and when it is something that was specifically related to the people of Israel, then we need to ask ourselves the question, is this an abiding moral principle?

Is there something that we can derive from this? One of the most standard examples of this is the Old Testament law that you are to have in essence what we would call a guardrail or you're to protect people who are on the roof of your house because that's where a lot of people would go during the cool of the evening.

They'd go up on the roof of the house and it's not like they had central air conditioning back there or something like that and so there is to be protection of life and the fundamental issue is the protection of life.

Now is it now irrelevant because none of us sit on the roofs of our houses? Well I guess I suppose if you do sit on the roof of your house then you should be careful to make it so that people don't fall off the edges of your house but the idea is to protect life and so I think that would be relevant to having a fence around your pool so the kids don't fall in or doing what is necessary in construction and in your life to protect the lives of others because life is a gift from God.

So there you have a general principle that can be applied in a moral sense even on those laws that might not have a direct cultural connection to us.

Obviously for anyone who takes the Bible as a whole revelation the apostles take the prohibition against homosexuality very, very seriously and there is no question that Paul has that in mind in Romans chapter 1 there is no question that arsenokoites the term that Paul uses in 1

Corinthians 6 and in 1 Timothy 1 that these are terms that derive from his reading of the holiness code in Leviticus 18 and 20 and as such

Jesus' teachings themselves in Matthew chapter 19 would likewise be based upon these same teachings we know that historically at this point in time there was no one in the centuries before Jesus and no one for many, many, many centuries after Jesus in Judaism that was promoting the idea of homosexuality being a good or proper thing and so it would have been a given to everyone everyone recognized what the

Old Testament's teaching on this subject was it wasn't even a question it was not even a point of argumentation and so the context of Jesus' teaching when people say

Jesus never said anything about this is absurd it is an argument out of abject ignorance made only by someone who has no interest in knowing what the truth is about Jesus' actual teachings there's no question about that so that is how you'd respond to that but it obviously helps when we ourselves have left the group of evangelicals who've never read

Leviticus and we actually read it and actually have some understanding and actually can open know where the holiness code is and be able to handle it with some level of acumen and understanding because simply repeating what

I say doesn't really help I think if someone actually reads that section and struggles with it and thinks about it and goes wow, there's some incredible stuff in here how much better would our society be if we would take seriously the exhortation to show respect for one's elders and care for the poor and recognize the moral foundation of why it is that the law says there's not to be a bestiality that there's not to be incest why is that?

are these just random laws just thrown together or is there something that unites these things together in regards to the fact that we're created in the image of God and that God has

His laws are what demonstrate that He is the source of life and He knows how life is to be preserved and how life can be destroyed and that as we engage in these behaviors that go against His word we do not experience life and it's a part of the culture of death that we see all around us and so I think people can tell when we're just repeating something we've memorized or when we've actually dealt with these texts and we are actually passionate about saying actually have you thought about what this says?

because remember the person you're talking to even behind the Facebook screen it's a whole lot easier in person by the way in this instance but when you can look someone in the eye you know you're talking to someone who's created in the image of God and so you can look at them and you can bring that law to bear and say you know that what

I'm saying is true you know that a person who respects their elders and recognizes that they too someday will be older and that it's good to be around people with age and with wisdom and you know that these things are wrong you know that bestiality is wrong even though your world view can't give you a reason why it is you know they're wrong because you're borrowing from my world view you can really make progress there which unfortunately

Facebook or online forums of whatever type provide a layer of insulation where you cannot necessarily make that kind of a connection but you can at least make the statements so that's the direction

I'd go the Vines audio is on the very front page of aomin .org if you haven't had a chance to listen to that and to refer it to folks it's still there and lots of people have listened to it

Okay and that verse from Mark you mentioned earlier you know where that was you mentioned that verse from Mark talking about something with the law sorry my memory no that's alright off the top of my head

I didn't have my Bible program up I'm firing it up but I'll pull it up for you and let you know in a little while okay thanks a lot alright thanks for your call alright even though I said we wouldn't be taking calls for a while the phones continue to ring and maybe somebody in the channel off the top of my head

Mark 7 is crossing my mind or something along those lines I'll have to do a search here real quick and looking for verses and words and this is you do it very slowly and there it is

Mark 7 19 you should go with what you're thinking Mark 7 19 but it does not go into his heart but into his stomach and thus he declared all foods clean

Mark 7 19 is the text now it has been quite some time since we last looked at the debate that took place a number of months ago now between Dan Walsh and Bart Ehrman I apologize for that I'm constantly listening to stuff

I'm constantly working on things and obviously finishing up the book whatever

Christian needs to know about the Quran started taking priority and focus of my mindset at that particular point in time and will probably remain that way as the next book that we're going to be working on also with Bethany House is likewise on the subject of Islam so I'm going to be focused on it for a while however just mentioning this we haven't put anything up on the website yet but we will be and I guess

I'm letting Haseem king of graphics son of Ramallah king of graphics know that we have two ads we need to be putting up in January and let me fire up my calendar here so I can make sure that we've got things correct here in January January 2nd through the 5th 8 .30am

to 3 .30pm Vieja California around the

Oakland San Francisco Bay Area Northern California Cornerstone Seminary I'll be teaching a class on the cults

I'll be teaching in essence the identical class the very same class the next week

January 7th through 11th at the Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary Arizona Campus which is in Scottsdale Arizona yes the same

Scottsdale Arizona where Bob Larson resides now not sure how long he's been there

I've got a faint ringing of a bell in the back of my mind that actually tells me that I had heard that he had come down here at some point but it's that very faint ringing of the bell the bells just don't ring as loud as they used to it's a hearing thing

I don't know but that's just the way it is anyways so two opportunities the class will be dealing with Mormonism Jehovah's Witnesses Islam Buddhism and Hinduism yes you heard me say it

Buddhism and Hinduism and so world religions cults and isms etc etc and those are intense classes they are 8 .30

to 3 .30 each day including Saturday makes for a long day and I believe the time is 5 .30

to 10 each night Monday through Friday for the Golden Gate class the second week so these are seminary level classes and so one of the things that I'm doing right now is

I am refreshing and expanding my studies of Hinduism and Buddhism and I've felt the need to do that this just gives me the reason to do so you've got these classes coming up so I don't

I know that you can take I haven't gotten information back yet from the folks at Cornerstone but I need to sort of clarify the question but I know that you can audit the class at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in the

Arizona campus I would assume you can do the same thing Cornerstone, every seminary that I know of would love to have people come and audit a class just to find out what the class find out what the school is like because that's how they get a lot of students long term so my assumption would be that you'd be able to do that but I am not 100 % certain so I'm just letting you know that and then

I just made contact with a church in the Sacramento area which is about an hour's drive what

I've been told and I can't give you specifics yet but it looks like I will be doing something probably on Islam on the night of the second

Wednesday night January 2nd in the Sacramento area and I've got a good friend up there,

Figgy Figgy's church up there I am however very demanding

I am very demanding and he knows it because my my

I'm going to turn around and drive back to I'm going to leave Sacramento if when

I get there we don't get to have chips and salsa it's a necessity it's just the way it is first time that Figgy and I had lunch together

I said chips and salsa so we had chips and salsa anyways that's coming up in January and I that's going to be my first time away from grandchild at that point so that'll be interesting and by the way for those of you interested

I will be in St. Charles and as I always am the first weekend in December as I have been this year for 12 years and I've been at Covenant of Grace Church so many times now that as I told them last time

I am now not just an honorary elder I am an elder and so as I was making my flight plans the return flight on Sunday afternoon has been moving up and it moved far enough up in time now that I would have to finish preaching and just rush straight to the airport to get back and I really don't like doing that and you don't know what the weather is going to be like it's snowed on us and been freezing cold at times stuff like that so I thought you know what let's change things up this time and why don't

I stay through Sunday and I'll preach Sunday night we normally just have a bible study and I said you know what we're going to do something on Advent we're going to do something on the

Incarnation I mean it's going to be it'll probably be significantly colder in St.

Charles on Sunday December 2nd than it will ever be in Phoenix for the rest of December so yeah they might have snow it'd be great, it'd be wonderful so I'm going to, what?

It's cold, yes it's very cold why would I want that oh brother I guess you're not much of a four seasons guy are you not really and while I'm giving you travel arrangements here

I will be in Delaware this Dover Delaware this coming

Saturday and Sunday details are on the website I don't think we ever got any details from the

Detroit conference that I'm going to be at basically the 21st to the 26th at Brien Baptist Church in is it

Livonia? Livonia outside of Detroit and that'll be the 21st to the 26th and then we do have on the website the

Sound and Pound conference on the 1st of November and then

I will be in Zinnia, Ohio at the Christ the Word Bible conference on the 9th, 10th, and 11th

I don't have to click on something here but that's coming up 9th, 10th, and 11th of November so those are the that's my travel through actually there is one other

I suppose I should since I'm doing this I'm going to be at Providence Community Church in San Antonio the first weekend in February first weekend in February Providence Community Church San Antonio I love

San Antonio I just hope I get a chance to visit the Riverwalk while I'm there I probably won't I've only gotten to it once and I really liked it, it's gorgeous oh yeah, it's wonderful, it's beautiful but that's pretty much most of the most of the stuff

I have listed coming up and people do like to know about that and then they start burying you with questions about specifics that you may or may not have but you tell them all the same thing which is what you don't know

I tell people that all the time I don't know why alright, I have wasted half the program and we will press on here

Wallace Erman, this was the debate where Dan Wallace made the announcement about the and this is interesting at the time it was what 11 months or something

I think this was back in March and now we're only talking a few months out Anessialan 28th is available now and now we're only talking about a few months out before the new papyri book hopefully will come out from Brill though I should have

I should warn you Brill is known for not being overly Brill when it comes to release dates so don't get too upset if February comes and goes and we still don't have the new information on the fragments of Mark and Luke and the first century fragment that has been claimed and stuff like that and also don't get overly upset if the mainstream media for some reason doesn't show nearly as much information

I'm sorry, as much interest in this as they did the what was it the gospel of Jesus' wife was that what yeah, there you go

I really sort of doubt that CNN is going to be all over this can you believe this this just makes the

New Testament the most amazingly document no, that's not going to happen might happen here it's not going to happen on CNN not going to happen

I actually have kept track of exactly where we were exactly where we were in this debate we were at 1 hour 18 minutes and 23 seconds and so when

I loaded this into the audio note taker guess what, at 1 hour 18 minutes and 23 seconds there was a break between phrases and it was very easy to find and there it is so having said all this

I'm probably going to hit play it's going to make this terrible screeching sound and we're going to have to go somewhere else

I don't know but let's pick up we were listening to Bart Ehrman let's pick up what he had to say he says we have 124 manuscripts within the first 300 years and the

New Testament is replicated many times in those manuscripts I'd like to see the evidence of that actually by the way,

Dan did not say that the entire New Testament is replicated in those manuscripts he didn't say that in fact, he's been very specific in indicating exactly what percentage of the

New Testament text is well, ok, I'll take this back since it's been a number of months maybe he's talking

I thought, did he just say and this is what's nice about this I can just go back like this and go he says we have 124 manuscripts within the first 300 years and the

New Testament is replicated many times in those manuscripts ok, I would agree I was thinking he said for a century there's no question that the entirety of the text in the

New Testament is discernible documentable in the manuscript tradition at that point and I don't know why the only thing

I could possibly think of why Bart Ehrman even raises this issue because remember, he raises this issue against me

Dan had made this statement in their first debate and he never challenged it now is that because well, why is that?

I think it's because Bart Ehrman is devolving, not evolving but devolving he's shedding his

Metzger concepts he studied under Metzger and Metzger was not some radical guy that would say, well

I need to have 10 copies of the Gospel of Mark notarized that they are written within a week of the original before I know what the

New Testament says he wasn't like that and it seems over time that Ehrman is moving farther and farther and farther away

I don't think he could move all that far away from Metzger at first even after Metzger's death because his fame his popularity was so directly linked to his famous mentor but now that he has developed his own perspectives

I think he's moving farther and farther away so maybe the reason that he's now challenging this is exactly that rather than there being any real solid evidence behind it

I'd like to see the evidence of that actually, that we have the entire New Testament replicated many times in those manuscripts, but even if it's true what are our earliest witnesses?

How many do we have before P45 in the year 220 for the Gospel of Mark? It's 150 years after Mark was originally produced what manuscripts do we have before that?

Now, if you were not listening, what, six months ago was probably well, was it six months?

It could have been six months because this was in March so it was four months ago or so that we were reviewing this and we have been going through his comments rather thoroughly to be perfectly honest with you,

I mean for a lot of folks too thoroughly a lot of folks like, ah, that's just, dividing line is boring today because all they did was they talked about Bart Ehrman and they talked about manuscripts and I'm never going to have to worry about that Actually, I think the vast majority of folks who listen to this program already know that you need to worry about that I think you're already convinced the fact that we live in a day and age when if you're going to be an active

Christian, you're going to be one who is salt and light, you're going to be one who is out there counting the cost and spreading the word that you're going to need to be prepared for what is said by these people and the arguments they're going to present and this is, this guy is their source man this is the source of the vast majority of it

I mean, they may not even know it I've told the story many times of my daughter's encounter with Dr.

Carter the wild -eyed anti -Christian bigot who used to teach at Glendale Community College but now teaches someplace else

That's, he's the one I learned that the use of profanity and mockery of Christians in the classroom is called academic freedom but anyway you know there might be people who studied under Carter who repeat these arguments to you

Well, where did Carter get it? Well, he may have gotten it straight from Ehrman but he might have gotten it second or third hand from Ehrman too but you're talking to the source guy here and so if you go to the best source it's amazing how many times people ask about can you give me some practical practical hints about about keeping control of a conversation because I've listened to you talk to folks and you seem to be in control of the conversation most of the time

Yeah, I am, and there are some practical things You want a real practical hint? When you're in a conversation with somebody and they make an objection and you can correct their objection and say, well, actually the alleged problem is this and you're wrong about this and this and then the response to the actual objection is this they're really going to hesitate going that direction with you again they really are because you've just demonstrated that you know more about the objection and have been more honest about the objection than they themselves have because they know they're just repeating something they heard somebody say once and they've never really checked it out themselves and so when you can tell that someone has misrepresented or in a shallow or inaccurate way repeated an argument with errors in it, when you correct the errors before you then correct the argument you actually have purchased for yourself a certain period of time of credibility you can waste it you can squander it you can make yourself feel better about it or something

I don't know, or you can use it to actually make progress in the conversation but that's one way that you do so that's one way you do so anyways, we continue on with the good

Dr. Ehrman Dan stresses that we have many more manuscripts of the

New Testament than we do have for classical authors and that if we reject the idea that we can achieve the original text for the

New Testament then how much more for the classical authors so we may not know what Plato said or Cicero or Suetonius or Tacitus and he's absolutely right we may not know now as I said if you've not listened to this before our primary objection to Dr.

Ehrman is that he presents a radical form of skepticism, it is a form of skepticism that was not held by his mentor

Bruce Manning Metzger it is not held I think by a large portion of the historical community but it's becoming more popular in light of the new atheism and the advance of secular humanism even though I don't think from that perspective there's anything in those outside of their prejudices against Christianity that gives it a grounding for this radical form of skepticism but what he's saying is yeah we don't know what

Suetonius said, we don't know what Cicero said, we don't know what Plato said, yeah we don't know now that's not what historians have said historians have recognized that when you have especially as you have in the

New Testament a manuscript edition with a wide variety of sources and dates on the manuscript and origination and so on and so forth and that you get a manuscript from one part of Europe in one century and you get a manuscript from another part of Europe in another century and lo and behold they say pretty much the same thing with standard copyist errors that gives you a tremendous amount of confidence that what you're dealing with is the original text and there hasn't been massive revision and things like that but that's not where Ehrman's coming from here and so he's charting his own path and Bart Ehrman does believe his own advertisements that he really just in and of himself has the ability to make that kind of statement and to overturn all those centuries of consensus on the part of scholars because they just didn't know what they were talking about or they were biased or whatever else it might be and so this is a form of radical skepticism that would overthrow basically all knowledge of antiquity now it's rather fascinating that Ehrman would then come out with a book defending the historical existence of Jesus.

Now that book is a backhanded attack on Christianity if you've seen it I hope that everyone who quotes

Bart Ehrman as one defending the historical existence of Jesus realizes that the book in which he does so is a rather full -throated attack upon the existence of Jesus as a divine person and the accuracy of the

Bible and things like that it's merely someone named Jesus existed he's not just a mythological figure but we can't really know much about him because we know that anything supernatural just simply has to be dismissed and so there's the problem that you end up with that but this is a form of radical skepticism and he seems to be going more and more that direction as time passes

But how does that mean that we do know about the New Testament? It doesn't address the question

Dan argued that only 1 % of our surviving variants matter for anything only 1 % are meaningful and viable

I don't know if that's true it might be 1 % suppose it is 1 %

You know, if he had any evidence to the contrary and we're talking here about again, you know the distinguished professor of religion at the

University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill I mean, this is the man everybody goes to and he's considered this greatest living expert on textual criticism.

Well, actually he probably knows a whole lot about the proto -Alexandrian text type, that's what his dissertation was on but be that as it may you know, if he had counter evidence

I think this is when he'd present it I think this is where he would say no, actually, my studies have indicated that textual variants actually impact 17 .1

% of the text of the New Testament as far as casting doubt upon it. No, and in fact what he does if we and again, if it's been a few months

I'm just refreshing your memory here what he does is basically say that's not the point the point is, what about the variants that took place before our earliest manuscripts?

And so what he wants to do is he wants to make the inevitable but for the

New Testament shortest time period between the original writing and our first manuscripts he wants to put all the questions there and say, see if CNN wasn't on the scene we'll never know and his fundamental argument is if it was inspired

God would have had CNN there I mean that's really what it boils down to when you take all the fancy verbiage away his idea is, if it's inspired then basically we'd still have the originals and they would glow maybe only on an alternate

Thursday maybe only when it's raining maybe only when the Red Sox win the

World Series, I don't know there could be some miraculous thing associated with it, but there would be some type of supernatural manifestation of the fact these are the originals and since we don't have them, then we can't know.

That's the idea which of course that's why I have said, and I stand by this that Bart Ehrman's argument is fundamentally this

God if he desired to reveal himself in such a way as that there would be a written mechanism whereby the message could be distributed to all people to all people the only way he could have done that would be to do so after 1949 that's why

I said that, why? everybody knows what happened in 1949 now that was when the photocopier was invented, now they weren't very good photocopiers, but they were photocopiers alright, they were functional not as good as we got today, we got a real nice photocopier out there, it can do lots of stuff but evidently what

Bart Ehrman wants us all to believe is that if God wanted to reveal himself in such a way that his message could go to all people he could not do so before 1949 because that's the only way that we could take the originals we could put them on a photocopier and make sure that what's passed around is what the originals said and that is a radical form of skepticism, now he's not going to be challenged on this on NPR for crying out loud whether Big Bird's dead or not

Big Bird's not going to challenge him on it either we're the ones that have got to challenge him on it and we are certainly seeking to do exactly that my question does not pertain to the 1 % my question pertains to the textual variants that were introduced into the manuscript tradition before our surviving manuscripts see, that's exactly what

I just said if I had let it go further I wouldn't have had to repeat myself, but there's the idea now this should catch everyone's attention my

Muslim friends, hello Muslim friends who love Bart Ehrman apply his methodology if you're going to be honest you're going to quote this guy

Shabir, Abdullah Bassam if you're going to quote this guy then apply his methodology what he's saying is it doesn't really matter what variants we have in surah 2, 222 in the palimpsest of the sa 'ana manuscripts it doesn't matter the razm differences that are documented in the early tafsir literature in regards to Ubay ibn

Kabir ibn Masud, no, no, no what really matters is what was in the manuscripts

Uthman destroyed that we'll never see, we'll never know we'll never know make the application, do you agree with him?

if you don't agree with him about that why would you agree with him about the new testament unless you're using a double standard and if you're using a double standard you're admitting that you're not following the truth that's how that works that's what you gotta do that's the question how many additions were there before our manuscripts how many omissions were there before our manuscripts and if he tells us that we know the answer then

I'd like to know how we know the answer well I gave him the answer when I debated him and Dan has as well he knows what the answer is when you have something other than a single stream in the tradition then if you have an addition of what?

a whole story for example good example here

I've got right at three and a half minutes to sneak it in why is it that we recognize that Codex Beze Cantabrigensis Codex D is the living bible of the ancient church why do we why did

Metzger and and others say that when D has a reading all by itself don't trust it because its author has gone off and done his own thing remember

Codex D is the one that for example when Paul's released from prison Peter's released from prison by the angel

Codex D tells us exactly how many steps he went down to the street from the prison it's the only manuscript that does now that's because the author wanted to fluff it up, make it nicer make it more sellable maybe,

I don't know but it's the living bible of the ancient church how do we know that if the manuscript tradition was not so consistent, if the manuscript tradition was not so clean and pure we wouldn't know that but since it stands since there has been clear editing and changing in Codex D it stands out like the proverbial sore thumb that's why

Beza when he donated it basically said this manuscript is better for storing than for reading well how could he say that because the manuscript tradition is so consistent that when there are manuscripts that have that kind of change they stand out like a sore thumb and that would not be the case if there really was a grave concern with the accuracy of the manuscript tradition in the way that Bart Ehrman is suggesting and that's why

I call this radical skepticism I mean, just keep something in mind folks we've listened to Bart Ehrman affirm that the

New Testament is the most widely geographically and numerically represented work of antiquity we have also heard him admit say, affirm, that the

New Testament is the earliest documented work of antiquity so we're talking about the best example of anything in the ancient world as far as a document is concerned earliest attested most widely geographically attested most widely numerically attested nothing else even comes close remember the term he used when

I asked him the question the time period between the writing of the other works of antiquity and their first ginormous ginormous, remember?

so if this is the best attested work of antiquity and now he's saying, oh, it's not the actual variants that we possess that's the issue, it's the ones we've never seen that are the issue you starting to see just how radical and biased this really is if you are you're amongst some of the few, sadly who do see it because he gets away with it but you see it because you're one of the strange people that listen to the dividing line which will return,

Lord willing on Thursday at its regular time, we'll see you then, God bless music I believe we're standing at the crossroads let this moment of slip away we must contend for the faith above us fought for, we need a new reformation day it's a sign of the times the truth is being trampled in and the way it's bearing down won't you lift up your voice, are you tired of plain religion, it's time to make some noise

I'm a wettingbird I'm a wettingbird

I stand up for the truth won't you live for the Lord because we're pounding pounding on the wettingbird the dividing line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries if you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at PO Box 37106

Phoenix, Arizona 85069 you can also find us on the world wide web at aomin .org

where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates and tracks join us again this