Damnable Heresies Come Fast

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Well, greetings. Welcome to the second episode today of the driving line.

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I can't put that up there. I'm going to put this over here. Sorry about that. Move it over there. It may not be quite as loud, but you don't leave your phone sitting in the sun for very long.

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Even in, what, southwest Texas? Southern Texas?

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I don't know. I've still got 300 miles to go before I can rest today, and then

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I've got another eight hours plus of driving tomorrow, so yeehaw. Anyway, a couple days ago,

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I think right as I was leaving to come out here to do this duty, a, well,

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I thought it was a single video. When I first saw it, I thought it was a single video. I thought it was going to be a discussion. I thought there was going to be substance to it.

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What it turned out actually to be, once I finally got around to finding the time to look at it, was

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Mitchell Weigandt, who is gloriously, follically blessed, okay?

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I mean, I've never seen a beard like this one.

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Really, really impressive. Doesn't have anything to do with your, anything, but he's got a great beard.

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He posted, basically all they were were a couple clips, a minute and two minutes, from some fairly recent dividing lines, fairly recent because they were both from the

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RV. They were in the back of the mobile command unit. And along with titles that are accusations of heresy, of canonicism and tritheism.

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And then, I think yesterday, if I recall correctly,

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Tony Arsenault used language concerning me of damnable heresy.

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Now, let's define, well, it's all a matter of definition, isn't it?

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Yeah, we're discovering that it's all a matter of definition these days. Let's start with damnable heresy.

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Now, that's a phrase that, in general, is pretty well known and it means a heresy that damns the soul.

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So, it leads people to hell. So, it is a heresy that fundamentally alters the

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Christian faith in such a way that it is no longer the Christian faith. Isn't it amazing how fast we went from, we're not sure you're really confessional to, you're leading people to hell.

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That was quick. That was really fast. It's just shocking.

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Anyway, so, damnable heresy is a heresy that leads others to hell.

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And if you believe it yourself, it leads you to hell too because it fundamentally changes the

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Christian faith. Tritheism would be a denial of the doctrine of the

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Trinity by saying that there is more than one God because, as I've been teaching forever, the fundamental foundational basis of the doctrine of the

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Trinity is the fact there's only one true God, one true Yahweh, who has revealed himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

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And so, tritheism is a form of polytheism. I mean, there's different kinds of theism.

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You have henotheism, for example, and the guy over at Lagos, he sort of promotes the idea of Christian henotheism in the

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Old Testament and stuff like that. But, it's a, you know, if you want a real clear dividing line, the dividing line is between monotheism and polytheism.

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And then you get all the subspecies in between if you want to start playing games with that. So, a tritheist is someone who fundamentally denies monotheism and believes there are three gods, which everybody knows with a brain that that doesn't fit me, but there are people that are using that terminology.

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And then we have kenoticism. Now, kenosis is not quite as easily defined because there have been, it's a fairly modern term.

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Well, it's not. I mean, kenosis itself is a Greek term used in Philippians 2, making yourself into a reputation, but Paul never uses it literally.

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He always uses it metaphorically, and he does so in Philippians 2. But he also uses it, for example,

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I would not that my labor would be vain amongst, become empty amongst you. And literally, the

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Greek term is to empty. But when it's used metaphorically, you know, be of no reputation, that type of thing.

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So, it's used in the 20th century of the, well, there was a group of differing ideas in relationship to the divine and human in Christ and the exercise of divine prerogatives.

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So, especially in Europe, there is an emphasis upon the

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Son's total dependence upon the Spirit so that he can be a proper example and guide for believers who are in him to be dependent upon the

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Spirit for empowerment and service and things like that. And it's a, it's a discussion of what, you know, it's based on Philippians 2.

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It's based on he made, he emptied himself. But what does that mean?

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And I've given my view on that over and over and over again in reference to being made of no reputation and not that there can ever be a essential alteration of the nature of the

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Son. The Son can't cease to be the Son. He can't cease to be truly God.

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But, obviously, there is in the incarnation, and this was, again, terminology that was utterly unremarkable until just recently, availing of certain aspects of his divine nature in the incarnation of necessity so that he could be the

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God -man. So, he cannot have the

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Shekinah glory of God that would consume any unholy creature that would come by him and be the

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Messiah and to function the way that the triune God had determined that the

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Messiah would function in his earthly ministry.

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And so, there is a, there is a humiliation. There is an entering into human existence and, hence, a veiling of certain aspects and certain prerogatives, really, of the

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Son's glory and power and might. And the issue becomes, well, you know, exactly how far does that extend?

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What's the, you know, and a lot of the discussion, at least back in the 20th century, man, that sounds weird, back in the 20th century.

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Back in the 20th century was really in regards to the incarnate

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Son's relationship to the Spirit. So, how does the incarnate

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Son relate to the Spirit in the sense of empowerment? So, when

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Jesus does miracles, from whence is the power coming?

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Because the idea was if Jesus is our model and we are in him and we are to be like him, we're called to be like him, then we are called to be dependent upon the

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Spirit of God in our lives and, therefore, he had to be dependent upon the Spirit of God in his and so on and so forth. And again, it's somewhat speculative because, you know, there's a couple texts, if I by the finger of God do this, that and the other thing.

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So, you can have a few texts that may or may not be directly relevant, but it is somewhat speculative in its orientation.

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But especially in Europe, the danger of a canonic

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Christology is that there is more of a temptation towards subordinationism in European theology.

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Well, of course, you can find anything in both European theology and American theology, but just in a general sense, there's more of a danger and a temptation toward a fundamental, a willingness to say that there's a fundamental change in the

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Son in the Incarnation. You're not going to get quite as much of that on the American side of things, at least back in those particular days.

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Like I said, I'm driving off the top of my head. I didn't look, but I remember very clearly, it was an edition

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I had anyways. It was a white cover, white paperback cover, and I'm pretty sure the author was

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Fortman, and I'm pretty sure he was Roman Catholic, believe it or not. Yeah, there's a vast difference between reading

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Roman Catholics and benefiting from them and saying that they're the only ones to get the doctrine of God right.

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If you can't tell the difference between those things, yeah, you gotta problem. So anyway,

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I just remember a fairly lengthy discussion in regards to the concept of kenosis that I had to deal with during seminary, and you know, that was when

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I was first dealing with a lot of the Unitarians or Nationists, things like that in my, well, early mid -20s.

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And it was so unhelpful. So anyway, then we have, well, did anybody bring that up?

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Yeah, it is coming up today. In fact, I've seen today just briefly at, you know, pit stops and gas stations and, yes,

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McDonald's just now. Hey, you gotta eat what you gotta eat. And that was actually really good today, and they weren't really busy, so the fact that they had fresh hot food was nice.

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Anyway, I've seen discussions going on about inseparable operations, which again, 99 .99

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% of all Christians never heard the phrase, don't know what it means, wouldn't have the background to understand what it means. And it probably needs to be defined just really quickly.

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I think somewhat, you know, the problem is you can, anybody can say the

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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit act in perfect harmony and unity with one another. That's not enough. That's not inseparable operations.

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That's not inseparable operations. Inseparable operations requires a particular view of simplicity as being definitional, and it's a

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Thomistic view of simplicity as being definitional. It's really where it's driving its force from.

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And I think one of the best ways to recognize it in someone is when they say that the only way to distinguish

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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is ad intra, never ad extra.

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That's what defines inseparable operations. What do I mean by that? Well, ad intra, you have the relationships which have been identified in theology, which are not specifically the objects of revelation, but in a theological understanding of begetting, being begotten, and proceeding, spirated.

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So the Father begets the Son. In the West, the Father and the Son, Spirit proceeds from them, spirated from them.

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In the East, only from the Father. That's the Filioque clause and all that controversy there.

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And that that's the only way you can actually distinguish Father, Son, and Spirit. And immediately, the vast majority of Christians, just common sense everyday believers go, but the

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Son is the only one that became incarnate. So there's an action there that the

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Son does, the Father and the Spirit don't. And they say, nope, that's an action of the triune

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God. And then they default back into further, more speculative theology to say, but we can talk about appropriations, where there are certain actions where a particular one of the divine persons, it's more appropriate, or the appropriation of those particular actions to one particular divine person, which doesn't actually answer anything.

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It's just, it just makes it look like you're getting somewhere when you really aren't.

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You're just adding more complicated terminology to try and make your system stand up. Because the reality is, anybody who reads the

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New Testament for more than a couple pages will encounter text after text after text that assume the distinction of Father, Son, and Spirit that is on its surface level, just on its face, is a distinction in what they have done in the economy of salvation.

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They have taken different roles in the economy of salvation. The Spirit comes to witness of Christ and he's not witnessing of himself, and et cetera, et cetera.

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So the common sense first, it says, wait a minute, something got messed up here. An emphasis has started to override the text of Scripture, and it has, and it's

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Thomistic simplicity. So what's happening now, going back to the accusations, is if you do not buy into the inseparable operations based upon categories of Thomistic divine simplicity type of an idea, which no one has ever even tried to defend biblically.

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You can't. That's not what the apostles taught. This is a later systematization.

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There's no way you could ever walk into a debate and prove from the text of Scripture that the apostles taught that the only way you can differentiate between Father, Son, and Spirit is not by ad extra actions, but only by ad intra relationships.

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You couldn't do it. I mean, I suppose there might be some people foolish enough to think that they can't, but it is plainly, obviously, an extra biblical theological interpretation that requires bringing in all sorts of external stuff, which is why for months and months and months you've been hearing all this stuff about natural theology and all the rest of that kind of stuff, because you're not going to get it in any kind of meaningful interpretation of the text of Scripture unless you buy into something like great tradition exegesis, which is spiritualized and you push past the basic meaning into this special spiritual meaning, at which point you might as well go join origin in the deserts of Egypt.

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So what we're hearing now is if you don't buy into this, if you don't accept this, and it's always because John Owen said, it's not because the apostle

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Paul says, it was John Owen said, then you can't maintain

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Christian orthodoxy. And so that's like, you know, when Craig Carter says you have to become a Christian Platonist to defend the doctrine of Trinity, that's basically what he's saying, is

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Augustine was deeply influenced by Plato, by Neoplatonism, and therefore to hold to post -Nicene

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Christological development, you have to embrace the same philosophical categories that were utilized at that point.

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That's what the assertion is being made. But now it's not just if you want to follow

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Augustine and use his terminology, now it's if you want to be a Christian at all, then the

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Bible just ain't enough. It's just not enough. It doesn't give us what we need, and we've developed what we need by bringing in Plato and Aristotle and categories and development and tradition, and now we've got what we need.

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But obviously, to anyone who thinks through it more than a few seconds, they realize, so that's the end of Sola Scriptura.

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And yes, of course it is. There's no question about it. So the idea is, if it is insufficient to confess that there is one

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God, okay, so I've done entire debates defending monotheism against polytheistic

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Mormonism. There, you know, if you go to the 100 Verse Memorization System, which

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I wrote years and years and years and years ago, you'll see the whole section where we go through the trial of false gods, and we do a pan -canonical, from Genesis to Revelation, defense of the fact that there is only one true

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God. And so that's not enough. That's no longer enough.

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And you can't just go, well, but that one

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God has identified himself with his covenant name, Yahweh. And in the

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New Testament, you know, we know the spirit of Yahweh from the Old Testament becomes the spirit of the

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New Testament. It's the same spirit. And the

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Fathers identify as Yahweh. Isaiah 53, it's Yahweh that places the sins of his people upon the

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Messiah. But then you have the key, key, key texts where Jesus is identified as Yahweh.

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And there are so many, and they're interwoven throughout the text. 1

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Peter 3 .15. A lot of you have heard me speak on, you know, that key text in regards to apologetics, but it's not just that.

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It's a much more key text that it is viewing Christ as kurios, Lord. That's a quotation from Isaiah.

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Look at the Nasiallon text. They even recognize where the continuation of the text continues right in, the citation continues right into verse 15.

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We're talking about viewing Jesus as Yahweh, being the ordering principle of all human knowledge.

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I don't think there's nearly enough emphasis placed upon that. I think part of it, to be honest with you, is because people think

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Peter is not as deep as Paul, and therefore they don't expect something like that coming out of Peter.

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It's like, uh, I think you forgot Peter's own description of scripture. But anyway, the

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Son is identified as Yahweh. So you have all three divine persons being identified with the covenant name of God, Yahweh.

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And, of course, Unitarians dispute this, and there are some who claim to be some kind of Trinitarian who might dispute some of it as well, but it's very, very clear, and it's found repeatedly.

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It's in the Carmen Christi, for example, and it's in John, and it's just all over the place. So you can say there's one true

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God, the Creator of heaven and earth. And because he's, and this is, by the way, this is where a biblical doctrine of simplicity can be derived, is if you want to actually benefit the sheep of Christ rather than pointing them to people where you have to go, this guy was really good on the doctrine of God, but man, he's completely off on the gospel.

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Because most people realize that doesn't make a lick of sense. But if you want to give a biblical argument for the doctrine of simplicity, then what you say is

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God's being is simple, that is, it's not made up of parts, because if something is a part, it is created,

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God created all things, therefore he has to be before all parts, and therefore he must be simple, because everything that is made, he made.

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It's pretty straightforward. It seems, I think the reason people don't like it is because there is a mindset among some people,

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I'll be perfectly honest with you, the people who want to be seen as philosophically astute want stuff to be a little bit more complicated than that.

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It's so, so you've got to, you've got to get into all this other stuff to make it all work, but again, if you want a biblical doctrine,

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God can't be made up of parts, because if it's a part, God made it in the first place, so he has to be before all parts, and therefore he can't be made up of parts, and that's pretty straightforward.

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Anyway, if you don't hold to these formulations, then you must be a tritheist.

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Everything you say about one Yahweh, eternal creator of all things, no other gods before him, doesn't matter, because if you dare say that you can distinguish between Father, Son, and Spirit by anything other than begettal inspiration, then the whole trinity is going to explode into at least three parts anyways, and you become a tritheist.

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That's literally the assertion being made, and when you explain that to people, they just look at you and go, but that's silly, and I go, yeah,

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I know. When people become scholasticized, they start doing silly things, and they start believing silly things.

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That scholastic formula and system becomes the be -all and end -all of all things.

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Now, let me just head off a sideways argument here, because I've already seen it.

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We're talking here about speculative theology. People admit this is philosophical theology, and so some people will say, sounds like what you're saying is everything's just really simple.

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I'm not saying that, and therefore, Mr. Calvinist man, why don't you, you know,

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Mr., Pot calling the kettle, you know, Mr. Pot, kettle's on line one type of argument.

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Here's the problem. Predestination and election are biblical terms. There are entire chapters on the subject.

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There is no chapter on the extended doctrine of dying simplicity. There is no chapter on inseparable operations, and any honest advocate of these positions will say, yep, no, we're not saying that when

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Paul taught the Ephesian elders, this is what he was teaching. This develops over centuries. Here are the external sources that have given rise to this, and that's what you're dealing with.

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So there is no parallel between affirming the clear biblical teaching that there is a divine decree, and that God is absolutely sovereign over all events in history, and there is divine election, and, you know, we've spent years and years and years going through this.

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There is no parallel between these things because none of that is speculative theology where we're having to bring in this category or that category from this philosopher or that philosopher or someone like that.

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So let me just head that one off at the past. So with all that said, when you look at the clips, for example, that the greatly bearded one posted, they are in reference to the necessity to recognize biblical statements, straightforward biblical statements, and what we're hearing, let's use the

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Matthew 24 -36 text. It's astonishing to me, again, after years and years and years of having addressed this subject without anyone raising a whisper, now all of a sudden so many men who will admit,

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I introduced them to Reformed faith, or I was the first one to explain the doctrine of the Trinity to them, now they are so wise because they've read.

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Now they, I'm the one that needs to repent and learn, you see. Never raised an objection before, so I guess they were leading people to hell before, at least from what

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Tony Arsenal was saying. I guess he was leading people to hell before, but he's probably repented of all that, so he's good.

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Anyway, Matthew 24 -36, I've said for a long, long time, look, my concern here is really rather simple.

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This is a very difficult text, and if you can construct a theological -slash -philosophical system that simplifies the difficult text, that is eisegesis, not exegesis.

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And you can get away with that as long as you do not try to export the

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Christian faith outside of the narrow confines of where you are and what you're doing.

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Because I've debated plenty of sharp people who will absolutely nail you, because as soon as you start appealing to your external sources outside of Scripture, they will nail you and say,

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I thought you believed in the soul of Scripture. And see, the reason they can do this is because you're not being consistent with soul of Scripture.

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You've redefined that as well. And so, this text, all

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I've tried to say about Matthew 24 -36, I've always said, for example, that the

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Spirit of God searches deep things of God. Spirit knows, but Spirit's not mentioned in Matthew 24 -36, so even going there is irrelevant.

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Doesn't matter. The point is that you can't affirm or deny more or less than what the text itself says.

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And once you say, well, I'm just going to divide

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Jesus up this way. Look, there are places where it is very clear that Jesus is making, when

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Jesus makes reference in John chapter 17 to the glory he had with the

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Father before the world was, okay, we know who's talking here, okay? We know what the referent at that point is, because the

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Son as a human has not eternally existed. We can get that.

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But remember, we're in Matthew, and when the term

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Son is used, you can't just flip a switch and go, well, this isn't

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Jesus speaking as a unified person. This is this aspect speaking or that aspect speaking.

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Unless there is an absolutely overwhelming reason to have to make that kind of distinction, you don't do it.

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John 17 being an obvious example of that. And in Matthew, into whose name are we baptized?

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The name singular of the Father and of the Son and of the

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Holy Spirit. Is that the same term Father? Why, yes, it is.

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Is that the same term Son? Why, yes, it is. So, if you're going to have the

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Son have one referent in one text and another referent in another text, you can understand why an opponent in a debate, and again, that's always what's important for me, might go, you seem to be being somewhat arbitrary here and just, you know, taking an external system and making it fit your text.

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And if I'm saying that to them, if I'm debating a Muslim, and I'm saying you've developed an external system since the writing of the

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Quran, which is not consistent with actually the text of the Quran, and here's the reasons why, well,

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I need to be consistent, don't I? If you're in a Facebook group discussing this stuff and that's what you do your entire life, you don't have to worry about that.

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I get that. But you take this stuff outside those realms and take it to the straits, take it to the world, and you've got to do things differently, and there has to be consistency.

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And so, all I've tried to say is, look, if you, and I've said this, if you want to say that, well, this is the sun's human nature speaking, you have every right to say that.

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If you believe that's the best interpretation, that that's exactly what Matthew was attempting to communicate, more power to you.

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I simply go, prove it. Prove it exegetically. Don't go, it has to be because of this doctrine.

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Show that to me in Matthew, because I know I'm going to be trying to speak to people who are going to go to those other places in Matthew where the sun is unified and is speaking in a unified fashion, and they're going to go, why not here too?

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What kind of consistent methodology can you suggest? And once you say, well, my consistent methodology is derived by an external system, then that external system is your ultimate authority.

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No matter how hard you might want to try to avoid that conclusion, that is your ultimate authority.

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And solo scriptura is done at that point. That's just all there is to it.

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So, I've simply said this is a very difficult text, therefore, it would seem to me that in the context we are talking about the incarnate one, you do have his functioning as the

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Messiah in this context. And this is not a statement that the sun didn't know before the incarnation, doesn't know today, but that there could be a reason why in the incarnate state, this would be the state of affairs.

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And all I get from people is, no, no, no, no, can't be that. Well, why can't it be that? Well, it just can't be.

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Okay, exegetically, why can't it be that? It just can't be. Oh, okay, fine. That's where we've got the problem.

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As I go, hey, if you want to take another perspective, if you want to say that this is some type of partitive exegesis, and this is human nature, and then later on, baptize the name of the

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Father's Son, now it's the United God -Man or something,

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I don't even know what you do with that one, but you're going to have different appearances of Son in Matthew, and you're going to have to explain that.

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And I have to explain why there would be a reason of why that knowledge would be not attributable to the

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Son as a singular person. It would be appropriate for the Son in speaking of men, angels, the

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Son, but God only, the Father only. I have to explain why there's a, that's an issue.

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But this is, it's amazing to me that instead of with humility and grace, people go, yeah, this is a tough, this is a tough question.

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And of course, the incarnation is tough because it's absolutely unique. There is no, you know,

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I remember being challenged in a debate by a Muslim, can you give us an example of something like the incarnation?

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And I'm like, no, of course not. It's absolutely unique. So there is, there is no example that you can give of the incarnation that would make

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Jesus something other than being the unique Son of God. So no. So instead of going, yeah, this is a really unique situation, this is, we need to be humble and we need to be gracious and, you know, listen to other perspectives.

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Instead it's, oh no, no, no, no. If you dare say that, you canonic, tritheist, neo -Socinian, damnable heretic.

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That's, we got there real fast. I mean, really, really, really quick.

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I guess that type of thing happened in the past, but I think social media provides the skids, the oil and the skids and everything else to push us down the slope into this kind of nastiness a whole lot faster than ever in the past.

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So unlike Tony Arsenault and he of the great beard,

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I'm not kicking them out of the kingdom. I pray that they'll be blessed, that they will, you know,

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I don't know how you can experience joy and peace when you're, for example, recording the dividing line just to try to find stuff to attack.

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I'm not sure how enjoyable that really is, but hey, you stand or fall before your own

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Lord, not me. And so I don't identify,

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I warn against an imbalanced philosophical perspective. In fact, that was one thing

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I did want to mention. I know I'm going along here. There is a vast difference between consistently interpreting scripture and deriving your faith from it and having a philosophical system that provides you the framework for the interpretation of scripture.

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Those are two completely different things and that will come out without question in dispute, especially when that dispute is outside of the narrow confines of an argument amongst

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Christian theologians. So you can have, you know, back in church history, you can have the robber synod where, you know, marauding bands of Egyptian monks are beating each other senseless and to death in the streets and coming up with theological conclusions as a result.

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You can have stuff like that happening, but that's internal. It's when you have

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Christians standing before Muslim caliphs and giving an answer for their faith, that's the kind of pressure that will demonstrate whether you are doing

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Bible as source of truth exegesis or you're doing

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Bible as conditioned by my theological system eisegesis.

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And you can't always see that easily, but it's those external encounters that demonstrate it one way or the other.

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And we don't, honestly, we don't have enough of that external stuff going on anymore, at least not in the big sense, to provide that level of clarity.

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And it's interesting that the vast majority of people I know who are pushing this philosophical system that will fundamentally do away with the sufficiency of scripture are people who, as far as I can tell, have never taken their current emphases outside of the

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Christian faith to some other context. And like I've said many times, I hope they don't because I don't believe that it would be helpful at all in those situations.

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So I probably thought of a bunch of stuff over the past couple of days while driving that I forgot to throw in there as I was going along, as I was watching the bugs getting snatched all over my windshield.

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There's some bug, I don't know what it is, it's sort of a medium -sized critter given by, judging by the amount of guts on the windshield, that is breeding right now, hatching, doing something,

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I don't know. And I'm in, like I said, south, getting towards southwestern

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Texas, and the speed limit here is 80 miles an hour. And I'm doing 80, 8 .0,

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not going over. But 80 is, let me tell you, you hit a bug straight on at 80, and this truck's big enough to not be worried about it.

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But it is getting pretty gross out there. You may have heard a little that was, that was, what was going on in the background?

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We are live on the driving line. Anyway, so I was, there's a bunch of other stuff that I've still got on my computer that's starting to get like two weeks old, but I think

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I still should be able to grab it, and who knows, maybe we'll be able to get some of it, might get some of it on Tuesday, we'll see what

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Rich is doing, what I'm doing. I've got, I'm preaching, like I said, on Sunday, and we'll see how much preparation

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I get done in the evenings between now and then. I mean, I've gotten a lot of preparation done now, but I don't, there's still much more that I would like to be able to do between now and then.

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And we'll just see how that, that works out. But, so I hope this is useful to other folks.

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I try to redeem the time as best I can. It certainly helps keep me awake, if for nothing else, you know, it has a benefit along those lines when you're on these long, long, long, long journeys.

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And, but once I'm done with this one, I've got a whole bunch of podcasts, and I've picked up a couple audible books this morning, a couple,

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I've done, I did an audible book on the Great Schism, another on the history of Eastern Orthodoxy, already as part of what

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I'm doing. And then, of course, I love my history stuff too, and I'm way behind on a couple of those books

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I want to get to. And so we try to, try to redeem the time, be as profitable as possible as we zip along the nation's roads here, and get this beastie home, and get all the stuff taken care of so that the next trip, which will start right after Thanksgiving, will give us an opportunity.

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And I did, I should say that one thing I did on this trip was we will be, we've definitely booked in February, mid -February, we will be in Tennessee with Jeffrey Rice, and now we'll be down there in Louisiana, where I just was, around the

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Lafayette area, for full conferences two weekends in a row. And so this truck that I'm currently driving will be what takes us to those places, and we're gonna, we're trying to get debates, we really are.

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Jeffrey's trying to find a, just a straight -up King James -only advocate that'd be willing to debate, and man,

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I'll tell you, those guys, they talk a good talk in the pulpit, but they won't take me on one -on -one, so who knows.

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And we're looking for a different topic in Lafayette, so we could end up with two debates, we could end up with none, it's hard to say, it's hard, you can't tell, but we're trying.

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And so those are coming up in, that'll be the, that's not, December, and December is

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St. Charles and two churches in Texas will be the late -November, early -December trip, and then

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February will be the trip back to Tennessee and Louisiana, so a southern swing there, and then

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May will take me back to Texas. I'm not sure if I'll be going, you know, exactly what

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I will put together with that. I've got a thought in the back of my mind, but we'll see how all that ends up working out, and what the situation in the world is at that point.

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I mean, you still have to make plans, but it's really, really difficult and challenging in light of things, but as I said in this morning's driving line, let not your heart be troubled, and I try to continue to be obedient to our

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Lord's command in that way. I know I can only do so by the spirits constantly reminding me of the fact that if you are in Christ, you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God, and there is nothing in this universe that can touch you and disrupt that relationship.

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It's something you need to meditate on, pray about, give thanks for, and I think that's an important way toward that peace that passes all understanding.

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So, with all of that said, I hope this recorded. Yeah, I did hit record.

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There you go. We'll see how it goes. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. God bless.