When Technology Melts Down

Alpha & Omega Ministries iconAlpha & Omega Ministries

8 views

Kent Hovind, the Pope and the Lutherans, CAIR on worship, AMC Pintos and a YouTube meltdown all on today's audio only Dividing Line.

Comments are disabled.

00:24
Well, greetings and welcome, and unfortunately I don't have anything on my screen, so I didn't know I was supposed to be up, and that's why
00:29
I was sitting there waiting and wondering, because I don't know what's going on, but hey, anyways, hey, there we go.
00:35
Welcome to the dividing line. I'm going to make sure this stops, because it's going to start talking there. There we go, because I may have to show that a little bit later on.
00:43
I forgot to queue that up. Anyways, hey, welcome to the certified cage -free
00:52
Calvinist show. I was seeing that other people had gotten their
00:57
Adam Ford, which is, you won't find it, there's a million Adam Fords, but Adam 4D, that's how you find them on the web.
01:06
Got their shirts, and of course there's five little tulips, which makes it cool.
01:15
Certified cage -free Calvinist, that's who you want to shoot for. You caged
01:22
Calvinists, you're embarrassing to us, but we all were there at some point or another, and if you'll just put down your copy of Pink's Sovereignty of God, quit whacking people over the head with it, it'll be better.
01:35
But anyway, I'm glad to be with you today.
01:42
Allegedly being told the video's not working, is that where we're working on? Okay, great, so I'm talking about the visual thing when no one can see the visual thing.
01:54
That's great, that's wonderful. I thought we had this all ready to go.
02:02
We're all fine here now. How are you? Yeah, uh -huh, uh -huh. Well, the
02:07
Stormtroopers could come get you, because now you just ruined my advertisement for... According to YouTube, it's all good here.
02:14
Uh -huh, okay. It's... Yep, yeah, it's weird listening to GL rather than watching...
02:20
It's rollercoastering, woo -hoo! Uh -huh, okay, there you go, all right. Well, hey, we thought it was working, and do we know why it's not?
02:31
Nope, we got no earthly idea. It worked fine last week, and now...
02:39
But evidently they can hear us, just not see us. That's really weird. I don't know how that works.
02:45
But that's going to be a little difficult, because I want to be reviewing stuff on video, so we hope that...
02:51
It's at least recording, so this will eventually be out... Yeah, that's good. Oh, well, that's just how it works.
02:58
This technology, not our strong suit at times, and it just doesn't always work.
03:05
Sometimes Skype works real well, sometimes it doesn't. I've promised over and over again that I was going to start the program with a discussion of the
03:16
Pope, and I keep skipping over the Pope, and we'll get back to the Simply Syrah video, and Wael Ibrahim, and other stuff like that.
03:26
But I did want to talk about the fact that I have the very, very distinct feeling that if you...
03:37
Well, I was just watching a video somebody had posted on Facebook, just some students walking around their campus asking fellow students who won the
03:48
Civil War. And most of the people were like, well, who was in it?
03:56
Was that in the 1960s? We did. And, you know, we live in a day where people don't have a clue about history.
04:10
I mean, the public education system, sorry to all you teachers out there, but it's a systemic thing.
04:16
It's a systemic thing. It's a societal thing. It's not just you. You can't teach if you don't have a family structure and all the rest of that kind of fun stuff.
04:25
It's just the way it is. And as a result, we have the 500th anniversary of the
04:34
Reformation coming up next year. Now, I know,
04:40
I know, I know. It's just an arbitrary date, and it is. It is. And I know, and I've talked about it before, that when
04:49
Luther posted 95 Theses, he wasn't trying to start anything. He wasn't trying to start a Reformation, far as I'm saying from his mind.
04:57
It was literally in those days the groups would, the universities, they didn't have football teams.
05:05
They didn't have soccer teams. They certainly didn't have rugby teams. And so they would do their competition through debates, all day long debates.
05:17
Can you imagine that? I can't get people to sit still for two and a half hours, and they would be doing it all day long.
05:25
And so all Luther was trying to do was to arrange a debate against another university as a professor at Wittenberg.
05:37
Now, I'm not saying that he didn't believe what he was saying in the theses. He did. But the idea that he was going, now, this is the day, this is when it's all going to begin.
05:49
No, obviously that simply was not the case at all. So with that in mind, still, history anyways has marked the
06:02
Reformation to October 31, 1517. So we're coming up on 500 years.
06:09
There were all sorts of movements before that, vitally important. Erasmus was vitally important. Wycliffe, Huss, rise of nationalism, printing press, universities,
06:19
Renaissance, increase in knowledge of the original languages. You know, all that kind of stuff.
06:25
All vitally important. I understand it. But anyway, who cares about what happened 500 years ago?
06:33
I mean, the vast majority of Roman Catholics don't care. The vast majority of non -Roman
06:39
Catholics don't care. If you do care, you're going to be looked at like you're just a little bit weird.
06:44
Because the vast majority of people, even in Protestant churches, if you say Martin Luther, they're expecting you to finish the phrase,
06:51
King. Because they don't know who Martin Luther was. They know almost nothing about his life.
06:59
And the relevance that he has to them? None. Absolutely, positively none.
07:06
So, given that, and given the collapse of mainstream Protestant denominations that have entered into liberalism, that have collapsed.
07:19
Excuse me. I'm sipping my tea today, because I was trying to record a one -minute promotional video beforehand.
07:32
It took us three shots, because I couldn't get through one minute without my throat going nuts. So, I'm going to have to stop every once in a while.
07:39
I feel fine, but something's going on to where my throat and my voice is a little bit today.
07:48
So, anyway, the vast majority of Protestant denominations have collapsed on their view of biblical inerrancy, inspiration.
07:58
They don't care. If you don't believe that the
08:03
Bible is truly the word of God, if it's just simply men's thoughts about God, then you're going to think that what they did in the
08:11
Reformation was pretty much a joke anyways. I mean, can you believe people were willing to die for stuff like this?
08:19
Justifications, Zola Scripture, really? So, all that to say that it seems like the perfect time for the
08:30
Bishop of Rome, Frankie, to come along and go,
08:37
Hey, let's all get together. We're all on the same side here.
08:44
There's plenty of room here in Rome. You can fly on my jet and basically proclaim the
08:55
Reformation to be over. And I've talked about the rumor going around about that Parker guy that had written that document, basically saying all those anathemas don't have anything to do with...
09:12
Now, I know, I know. The people he's going to talk to.
09:21
Well, what is this, January 26th? Pope Francis asked Protestants and other
09:26
Christian churches for forgiveness for past persecution by Catholics as the
09:31
Vatican announced on Monday he would visit Sweden later in the year to mark the 500th anniversary of the
09:36
Reformation. Well, that's next year. So I'm not sure what you mean by that.
09:41
Speaking at annual Vespers service at St. Paul's Basilica in Rome attended by representatives of other religions, he asked forgiveness for the un -Gospel -like behavior by Catholics toward Christians of other churches.
09:57
He also asked Catholics to forgive them who had persecuted them, because there was persecution of Catholics, too.
10:05
The Vatican announced that on October 31st, Francis would go to the southern Swedish city of Lund, where the
10:11
Lutheran World Federation was founded in 1947 for a joint service with Lutherans to launch
10:16
Reformation commemorations that will continue throughout the whole next year. Now, the Lutheran World Federation is amazingly liberal.
10:26
He's not talking to conservatives here. He's not talking to conservatives. Notice another article says,
10:37
The surprise move will see the head of the world's Catholics worship alongside the heirs to a religious tradition founded in opposition to the
10:44
Church of Rome and which once regarded the Pope as the Antichrist. But then check this out.
10:50
This really gives you an insight. The modern -day Lutheran Church in Sweden continues to uphold principles that are anathema to all but the most radical
10:59
Catholic theologians. It has had a female archbishop since 2013, has ordained women pastors since 1960, and embraces homosexuality to the point of having both lesbian and gay bishops.
11:12
Oh, joy. But what was weird there was, continues to uphold principles, as if this was what the
11:22
Reformation has always been about. It wasn't. That's not what it was about.
11:28
And good luck finding almost any meaningful press coverage of the real issues of the
11:34
Reformation. But I just have, I mean, this is not exactly an amazing prediction on my part.
11:45
You know, if I had predicted yesterday that, what was that guy's name,
11:51
Mallory? Was he the, did he used to be the third Democrat? You got the two socialists and Mallory, right?
11:57
Was it Mallory? O'Malley. O'Malley, okay. Martin O'Malley, thanks. You can tell
12:04
I was really focused on his message. The local nickname for him is
12:09
Seamus. Oh, okay, all right. Seamus O'Malley. Seamus O'Malley, he's dropped out now.
12:15
But if I were to have predicted yesterday that Seamus O'Malley was going to win the
12:22
Democratic side of the caucuses in Iowa, that would have been an amazing, amazing prediction.
12:29
To predict that Francis is going to say and do things over the next year and a half that are meant to communicate the idea that, hey, we're all in the same boat together, you know, let's all get together, is not overly shocking.
12:49
However, however, what we do need to keep an eye on and what we do need to be thinking about is how many
13:00
Protestants are going to go, hey, I think he's got some,
13:05
I think there might be something to this. I mean, I don't want to make a direct connection, but Francis seems to be somewhat of a populist.
13:15
And I'm thinking of another populist that seemingly recently has attracted quite the evangelical following as well.
13:28
In other words, there seems to be a lot of people who aren't concerned too much about the side issues as long as someone has a popular message.
13:41
And so it does seem like an opportune time for Francis to make overtures and say, hey, why don't you check out, you know,
13:52
Wade on across the Tiber. The Tiber River seems to be at low ebb right now. And, you know, he's not like the other pope who's still alive.
14:04
He's not a scary. Emperor Palpatine like looking dude, like.
14:13
Like the last guy was Benedict Ratzinger. You know, when you see when you see the current
14:20
Francis, you don't hear that. You know, that's not the first.
14:26
That's not the first time the song comes to mind. It's more like, won't you be my neighbor?
14:32
Isn't that the difference between Benedict and Francis? The difference between, you know, your unbelief is troubling to me, you know, versus, you know, you know that underneath that thing he's wearing, he's got he's got, you know, a nice little cardigan sweater on.
14:52
And and so I just I just get the feeling that he's going to do.
14:58
He's just going to keep. Someone tells us he's an evil Mr. Rogers.
15:03
Yeah. Can there be an evil Mr. Rogers? I mean, seriously, come on. Who's who's afraid of Mr. Rogers? Well, you know, he could spike your rubus tea with.
15:12
If we went back to those old videos, could we find Fred Rogers making demonic faces?
15:19
Oh, I bet you if you if you played him slowly enough, slowly enough. Yeah. See, here's here's here's a fellow in.
15:31
Here's a fellow in Sweden. OK, this is Tim in Sweden.
15:36
Actually, a priest in the Swedish church once invited a mom and later said Martin Luther would have clapped. I almost died as someone who lives in Sweden.
15:44
I can tell you that Francis is quite popular among evangelical Protestants here. Sadly enough. Well, no question about it.
15:49
I was in Norway last year about this time. The quote unquote, you know, the state churches in those countries.
15:58
Bear almost no resemblance whatsoever to biblical Christianity. I mean, it's just a given. Everybody knows that.
16:05
So he's talking liberals. But what I'm thinking more about is remember how
16:11
Copeland and the word faithers responded to the video that he sent?
16:18
You know, it's just like, oh, and then you've got Saddleback, you know, Warren, our pope.
16:25
I mean, Warren's this close to just, you know, hey, let's all go get baptized and start following the pope type stuff.
16:35
So if you're not if you're not aware of why there was a reformation or why the map, the issues still matter.
16:45
Why shouldn't you get together with the Catholics? Why not? I mean.
16:52
The secularists are going after us and they're going after the Catholics, too. So it's all just get together.
16:58
Right. And I've said those of you who've listened, you've heard me say over and over and over again. That as we become more and more marginalized, pushed to a smaller and smaller space, we're going to be closer and closer.
17:13
In proximity to Roman Catholicism and Roman Catholics. And what
17:20
I predict is that there will be more and more people. Who will simply say, you know what?
17:28
We all believe in the triune God. We believe in the deity of Christ. We believe in the cross.
17:35
We believe in the resurrection. We believe in divine revelation. We believe in heaven and hell.
17:43
Well, OK, we believe in the afterlife. How's that? We've got enough that we don't have to worry about the other stuff.
17:51
And with the. Mere Christianity movement that is so popular.
18:02
Where you have this this minimum, at least common denominator Christianity. I think it's it's preparing the way for this reality that there's going to be a lot of people that are just going to go, you know what?
18:16
I really don't think that this stuff that we've been talking about all this time really matters. You know, infusion, imputation, you know.
18:27
When when the government's taking your livelihood away and you're just trying to live, does that stuff really matter?
18:34
Does it really matter anymore? And that's what we're up against.
18:41
Yeah, it does matter because it determines what you believe the gospel is. It matters greatly, but there's going to be a lot of people.
18:51
They're just going to go. Yeah. I mean, look at the people. Ask yourself a question about the.
19:00
Twelve, 13, 14, whatever thousand people that head into that former basketball arena called
19:07
Joel Osteen's church. OK, you know, they've been given no foundation, none.
19:16
About church history, anything like that, why they're not Roman Catholics or anything else.
19:21
They're just there to see somebody smile and to be made to feel better about themselves. And and really, you know, it seems like they.
19:31
They don't have the Doctrine and Covenants, but they believe the section of the Doctrine and Covenants. It says it's it's
19:36
God's man's immortality is God's great purpose and all that kind of stuff. God's all about us and blah, blah, blah, blah.
19:46
Do you really think those folks are going to stand firm?
19:52
Against papal wooing. When it becomes. Easier just to get together and to get ecumenical, let's get ecumenical.
20:07
No, of course not, because there's nothing in their foundational beliefs that would cause them to go.
20:14
No, there's a problem with this. There's a problem with the idea of getting together with Roman. No, that's not going to happen.
20:20
Not going to happen. So I have a feeling. Homosexuality.
20:27
Gay marriage. Standing from the gospel. These are all areas where.
20:36
People who stand firm are going to be under more and more and more pressure.
20:43
And if you don't know why these things are important, if you don't know why these things matter, if you don't see how these things are related completely to the gospel itself.
20:55
You know, if you're a standard American evangelical. That has never been challenged.
21:01
To see how your doctrine of God. Christ spirit Bible revelation.
21:09
Salvation church ministry service missions. If you've got all those things just spread out and you never are challenged to bring them next to each other and see if they're consistent.
21:19
Then it's really easy for people to come along and pick off one at a time. And say, well, you know, you've always believed this, but.
21:26
What if it's like this? And the reason that people can change so easily. Is, you know, it would be very difficult to change my perspective.
21:35
Because. On. Missions. Because I've thought through the relationship of my perspective on missions.
21:45
To the church, which is related to my understanding of the gospel, which is related to my understanding of theology proper sovereignty of God.
21:53
It's all it's all connected together. The vast majority of American evangelicals never challenged.
21:59
And in fact, in the vast majority of theological seminaries, not all, thanks be to the Lord, but the vast majority of them.
22:07
The idea of systematic theology, the coherence of scriptures as a divine revelation.
22:14
That's been lost. And so you go in, you take all these classes and. You know,
22:20
I had one professor said one thing, another professor said another thing. And I don't know why.
22:26
And, you know, I've told the story of the man I knew and at Fuller Seminary that we both started about the same time, graduated about the same time.
22:36
He he came in pretty, pretty solid, knew what he believed, and he graduated with a master's degree in confusion.
22:46
He had no idea what he believed once he graduated. He had much a much clearer, firmer grasp on doctrine when he came in than when he graduated, which is.
23:01
A sad thing to consider. It really, really is. So anyway,
23:08
I see stuff coming, and especially if he does the big full document.
23:15
How many churches, the liberal churches are already there. They're, you know, that's there's like, oh,
23:23
I agree. I'd be wonderful. Are you are you well trained enough in church history and in soteriology?
23:35
To understand why the Reformation is still a current necessity and an ongoing movement.
23:46
How much would you be willing to give up? To continue believing that. Good question.
23:53
Good question. That's why I want to talk about that. And you just watch. You just watch. There's more and more of this.
24:00
Now, the thing to remember here is, you know, when it says specifically to ask forgiveness, let's remember something.
24:13
The actions of the Roman Church. Prior to the
24:19
Reformation, during and after the Reformation. Especially in, for example, the promulgation of indulgences for crusaders, the
24:31
Inquisition. These were not simply things along the side. These were things that were performed directly under papal authority by the power of the keys.
24:43
The claim at the time, go read the documents yourselves. The papacy at the time claimed the very authority by which she has now defined doctrines since then, such as the
24:56
Marian doctrines. Since, you know, Immaculate Conception, bodily assumption, all that.
25:03
This goes directly to the authority of the Roman. See, and I know no one can ever disprove papal infallibility.
25:14
It is a non -disprovable statement. Because in Roman Catholic theology, the
25:21
Pope is infallible, except when he's not. Okay? He's always right, except when he's wrong.
25:29
And we've all seen it. I just tell you, go back, look at the debate with Tim Staples and Robertson Jennings.
25:41
They're the same year. They're within months of each other. I think they're within 12 months of each other.
25:47
So they may not have been the exact same calendar year. But they're pretty close to each other.
25:54
Listen carefully, and what you'll hear is two contradictory defenses of papal infallibility, but the primary thing is the
26:05
Pope's infallible, except when he's not. And so I get that. But for anyone seriously thinking that the papacy can provide you with this kind of, oh, isn't it great that we don't have to be divided and we can have a living voice to tell us what
26:25
Scripture says and blah, blah, blah. It is, to be honest with you, when
26:32
I hear Roman Catholic apologists doing that thing now, what
26:38
I hear is a used car salesman selling me an
26:47
AMC Pinto with 198 ,000 miles on it and won't show me the car facts.
26:57
Yeah, that's what I hear. You just can't know history and believe any of this stuff, at least not in any meaningful fashion.
27:08
But that's the point. If our college students don't know who won the Civil War, they certainly don't know what it was about either.
27:15
Huh? No, they don't. So they ain't going to know anything about Martin Luther or any of the rest of that kind of stuff either.
27:22
So that's why I wanted to talk about that, and that's interesting. Real quickly, on the 21st of January, before this gets so far old that it's...
27:33
You mean Gremlin, Pacer, Javelin? AMC was Gremlin? What did I say? AMC Pinto?
27:39
That's right, Pinto was a Ford. Yeah, sorry about that. Yeah, it was AMC Gremlin. My sister had... Clearly, Dr.
27:45
White is not a car guy. No, I am not a car guy. But I do remember my sister's Gremlin.
27:52
It was Vomit Green. It was literally...
27:57
I saw those cars. Oh my goodness. And that was... Wow. That was...
28:04
And it broke down about every three weeks or so, I would say. It was...
28:11
That was bad. But no, I am not a car guy. By any stretch of the imagination. Though I did... Did you see a picture
28:16
I posted of the Dart? It was black and white.
28:24
Maybe that was after I had gotten it painted. Because I did get it painted eventually. But when I first got it, no two body panels were the same color.
28:32
It was lovely. Lovely car. We were poor.
28:38
We were poor. Anyways, before I get back to the video here, back on the 21st of January.
28:46
CARE, the Council on American -Islamic
28:51
Relations, Nihad Awad, National Executive Director for the
28:57
Council on American -Islamic Relations, wrote, Our religion is one.
29:03
Muslims and Christians worship the same God. Here's what it says.
29:08
A Christian professor at an Illinois college should have said, at a Christian college.
29:15
Not just Illinois, it doesn't have anything to do with it. Is now facing being fired by that academic institution because she sought to show solidarity with American Muslim women by wearing an
29:24
Islamic headscarf or hijab. Perhaps her greater sin, and of course this was the issue, in the eyes of college officials was the professor's repetition of a quote by Pope Francis saying that Christians and Muslims worship the same
29:36
God. Well, that comes straight out of the universal
29:41
Catholic catechism. We adore the same God. As we've mentioned a number of times before.
29:48
But, in case you, again, Muslims tend to, well, if the Pope said it, then why are you disagreeing with it?
29:55
You know, not really recognizing the differences that exist between us.
30:01
Wheaton College in suburban Chicago recently began termination of college proceedings against Professor Larisha Hawkins, a
30:11
Christian and an associate professor of political science at the college. I thought she was an English professor. Professor Hawkins on paid administration leaves since December of last year.
30:21
In a statement, the college said, in part, Dr. Hawkins' paid administrative leave resulted from theological statements that seem inconsistent with Wheaton College's doctrinal convictions, which she voluntarily agreed to support and uphold when she entered into an employment agreement with the college.
30:35
It is clear that Wheaton College has the right to its own theological stance on the nature of God. Do you really believe that? But from an
30:41
Islamic perspective, there is only one deity worshipped by Muslims, Christians, and Jews. In fact, the
30:47
Muslim Declaration of Faith, the Shahada, states there is no god but God. Now, one might claim, now, of course,
30:54
I just have to stop right there. What does the Shahada have to do with this? Well, in the Muslim mindset, there's only one
30:59
God. So, if you're worshipping God, then you must be worshipping the true God? I mean, do you all believe
31:06
Mormons are worshipping Allah? Because they claim to be
31:11
Christian. They talk about their God as the Father of Jesus. Now, of course, they mean that literally.
31:16
I mean, they mean that in the Surah 5, verse 116 way. Okay? They make the term shirk look like it is utterly insufficient to express what they really mean.
31:34
Do you want association? The Mormons make Hindus look like monotheists.
31:43
Okay? It's that bad. It's that bad. How about them? Are they worshipping the same
31:48
God? That's a question I'd have to ask you. Anyway, now, one might claim that Muslims worship
31:57
Allah, not God, but that would be in woeful ignorance the fact that Allah is merely an Arabic translation for God and that all
32:02
Arabic -speaking Christians refer to Allah in their prayers. I don't make that argument. I get it.
32:08
I know what Allah is. Muslims commonly use either God or Allah when referring to a single deity.
32:14
Islam's prophet Muhammad said, both in this world and the hereafter, I am the nearest of all people to Jesus, the son of Mary.
32:21
The prophets are paternal brothers. Their mothers are different, but their religion is one. Well, if I could determine, having read the
32:33
Qur 'an in multiple translations and sections of the Qur 'an in Arabic, having read all of Sahih al -Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, sections of Jami 'at
32:45
Tirmidhi and Sunan Abu Dawud and other hadith collections, having read through lots of early
32:53
Tafsir literature, Ibn Kathir and Al -Qurtabi and so on and so forth, if I had any reason to believe that Muhammad had even the beginning of a meaningful knowledge of what was taught by Jesus in the
33:12
Gospels and what was taught by Jesus' apostles in the pages of the
33:18
New Testament, then I might have some basis for this.
33:25
But to say that I am nearest of all people to Jesus when I don't see any evidence that Muhammad knew who
33:32
Jesus was is one of the main reasons that we have to continue to have the dialogues that we want to have.
33:40
In the Qur 'an, Islam's revealed text, God clearly states the unity of monotheistic faith. In Surah 2,
33:47
Surah Al -Baqarah, Ayah 136, Say we believe in God and that which has been bestowed on high upon us and that which has been bestowed upon Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and their descendants and that which has been vouchsafed to Moses and Jesus and that which has been vouchsafed to all the other prophets by their sustainer.
34:05
We make no distinction between any of them and it is unto him that we surrender ourselves. But practically
34:12
Islam does make a distinction. Because anytime you quote anybody but Muhammad, if I quote any biblical verse as teaching something other than what is found in the
34:29
Qur 'an, that becomes corrected by the Qur 'an and by Muhammad. So you do make a distinction because of the fundamental idea of the corruption of what has come before.
34:43
God also states in Surah 262, Rest assured that those who believe in the
34:49
Qur 'an and those who follow the Jewish scriptures and the Christians whoever believes in God in the last day and performs good deeds will be rewarded by their
34:56
Lord. They will have nothing to fear or to regret. Well, yeah, that's a very, very important text.
35:03
But unfortunately it immediately raises all sorts of questions about abrogation and how many people in Islamic history has taught that this has been abrogated by what came after it.
35:16
And the deep influence that the doctrine of abrogation has had upon the development of the various strains of Islamic theology.
35:24
Obviously if your favorite theologians abrogate that text, then the resultant stream is going to be very different in its conclusions than somebody over here who doesn't abrogate it and hence has to make room for it.
35:37
Nothing is mentioned by this article about that. But here's the key issue.
35:44
Of course there are theological differences between Christians and Muslims. But worshiping God differently does not mean we worship a different God.
35:51
How does that sound familiar? Heard that recently? Yeah, Miroslav Volf from Yale.
35:59
So Miroslav Volf and the Muslims are basically saying the same thing. Well, these
36:05
Muslims. Because thankfully I know of Muslims that think, to be honest with you, this is going to sound condescending,
36:14
I'm sorry, I'm not trying to insult anybody here, forgive me, but this is just shallow thinking.
36:21
It's shallow thinking. And it's shallow thinking on the Muslims' part too. I'm sorry,
36:27
I just have to say it. And I have to keep hitting some ribos on the vocal cords down there.
36:37
It's shallow thinking because the theological differences are not merely in practice or in methodology of worship, but in the identity of the one being worshiped.
36:56
And if the article is we worship the same God, then the issue must be focused upon that matter of who that God is.
37:13
Since I know Muslims who have thought that through and go, yeah, there is a fundamental difference there.
37:21
I have a hard time then with intelligent Muslims who seemingly don't want to think through what the end result of that is.
37:31
That's troubling to me. It really is. So, anyways, this was an article that I found somewhat troubling.
37:46
It did go on to say, throughout history, rigid and inaccurate theological positions on the nature of God and on the beliefs of other faiths resulted in conflict and lost opportunities for mutual understanding.
37:58
Okay, what do you mean by that? How about some examples? Well, we see such extremism today in the anti -Islamic actions and beliefs of ISIS and its ilk.
38:10
So, does ISIS identify
38:15
Christian worship as shirk? Yes, most definitely.
38:22
Most definitely. Would I think that the majority of Salafi Muslims around the world would identify
38:32
Christian worship as shirk? Yes.
38:40
When Sheikh Yasir Qadhi addressed shirk 15 years ago, did he have any hesitation in identifying
38:51
Christian worship as shirk? No. Does he now?
38:57
Seems to. So, I respect someone who will stand up and say,
39:11
Tawhid is so central and necessary to true worship of God that if you deny it, now, of course,
39:18
I would argue we're not denying the oneness of God by a stretch of the imagination, but in the
39:25
Islamic interpretation of what Tawhid means, radical, unitarian monotheism, then if you say
39:36
Tawhid is necessary for the true worship of God, so much so that those who commit shirk, there is no forgiveness for them in the afterlife.
39:47
And the Quran says it. And I've never heard anybody make an argument that that text in Surah 4 has been abrogated.
39:56
Never heard anybody make an argument for that. On what basis? What meaningful doctrine of abrogation would allow you to abrogate that text?
40:05
If it's unforgivable, then I have respect for a
40:10
Muslim that will say, You're emotionic. Because I, obviously, on the other hand, say, given that you come after the revelation
40:21
God has made of himself in Jesus Christ and reject it, you are rejecting God's self -revelation of himself.
40:30
That is not acceptable worship in God's sight. You bunch of radicals.
40:36
Well, that's how it seems to be, what they're saying. Interesting, it says,
40:42
We also see similar forms of religious and political extremism in the statements of public figures like Donald Trump and Ben Carson.
40:51
Interesting, because I certainly, you know, I have tremendous differences with Ben Carson as a
40:57
Seventh -day Adventist, but good grief, I see a huge difference between Ben Carson and Donald Trump when it comes to this type of stuff.
41:06
The purveyors of different forms of extremism feed off each other to reinforce their own bigotry and to gain unthinking and uncritical support.
41:13
It is up to the mainstream followers of all faiths to reject rigid and extremist ideologies and to come together to marginalize extremists of all stripes.
41:20
So I guess CARA would want to see me marginalized because they would identify my stance as extremist, because I believe what 1
41:30
John 2 says. There you go. Let me see if I can,
41:36
I wanted to have this up in a different format, and I apologize for that.
41:43
But I do need to briefly address the issue of Kent Hovind here.
41:54
Yesterday morning, a bunch of people started sending me stuff concerning what
42:03
Kent Hovind had said on his Kent Hovind official YouTube page where he answers emails and stuff.
42:13
Dr. Dino is back at it, and I responded with a
42:22
ScreenFlow video yesterday, because basically what Dr. Hovind did was he punted.
42:30
Well, here, do you have it? Yeah, I plugged it in.
42:37
Let's hear what he had to say. I unfortunately took note of your recent comments accusing me of dishonesty in regards to the radio encounter
42:48
I had with Mrs. Ripplinger in November of 1993. I wonder, sir, have you listened to the recordings of the encounter that have been posted literally for decades on the
42:57
Internet? James, I have not. I'm sorry. Have you inquired of the host on the program whether the recordings are accurate?
43:02
I don't know that. Now, did you catch that? No, he has not inquired of Pat Shaughnessy or anybody else.
43:13
He hasn't listened to the encounter. And so what I did yesterday, and what he does here is he made, well, it might have been a different encounter.
43:21
There weren't any other encounters. If Gail Ripplinger was talking about an encounter between she and I, that's the only one there's ever been, because after that, she wouldn't debate anybody.
43:32
So what other encounters could there be? He hasn't listened.
43:38
He hasn't done his homework. And basically he just punted and said, well, here, here's
43:44
Gail's number. Give her a call. I had to replay the video from before where he was saying
43:50
I was lying. He didn't say Gail Ripplinger says he was lying. He said that I was lying in the previous video.
43:58
So he's just trying to duck responsibility for doing the right thing in this situation.
44:04
Well, evidently, we've gotten some e -mails. You didn't send me any of them, did you?
44:11
No, I didn't. No, okay. Well, we've gotten some e -mails from folks that just feel that I'm just being terribly unkind to Ken Hovind.
44:20
So if someone can go on publicly, accuse you of lying, not just lying, okay, you've got to understand something.
44:30
Editing the tapes, do you realize how seriously
44:35
I take something like that? Given what I do, the idea of,
44:43
I mean, I've had people edit my stuff. Peter Lumpkin has edited my stuff, remember? And we've had people try to suppress stuff.
44:50
We had Barry Lynn try to suppress the debate we did with him. And Scott What's -His -Face is still sitting on the –
45:00
Scott Butler is still sitting on the videos of the first two PACWA debates. And, you know, we had
45:08
St. Joseph Communications set up a camera at the Tim Staples debate on paper infallibility but wouldn't give us recordings.
45:15
It wasn't really for distribution. It was just so that Tim could, you know, practice how he presents stuff.
45:25
We've had a bunch of things like that happen. And so the accusation against me that I would edit my encounter to make someone look bad is an absolute repudiation of everything
45:42
I've ever done, everything I've ever stood for. Everything. That would be like me saying Kent Hovind is a secret evolutionist.
45:49
Okay? And he thinks he can get away with that. And I should just sit back and go, Ah, well, you know, whatever.
45:56
Hey, if you're too busy, don't worry about it. Get real. And so, beyond that, evidently, there seems to be –
46:10
One of the reasons I wanted to bring this up was Rich tells me that one of the e -mailers chided me, rebuked me for having made reference to Kent Hovind's incarceration.
46:27
Go back over everything I said on the dividing line and everything I've said in the video that I posted.
46:33
Never said a word. Never said a word. Well, okay, you know what?
46:39
At one point I said he seems to have become even more focused or something after getting out of prison.
46:49
Maybe that's what they're referring to. I never made it an argument. I never made it an argument. I think what happens in many of these situations is you get people who are fans, and they hear somebody say something, they believe it to be true, and they start repeating it without checking things out for themselves.
47:08
That's what Hovind did. That's what Hovind did. He believes whatever
47:13
Gail Ripplinger tells him. If Gail Ripplinger tells him something, must be gospel truth,
47:18
I'll go with it. I'll go with it. So, obviously, a number of other people have picked up on one of the other issues that's rather important here.
47:29
If Ken Hovind cannot be trusted with an issue like this where the facts are readily available, he could have contacted us, he could have done a little
47:45
Googling around, and then he's faced with the facts but doesn't care enough to even listen.
47:56
If that's how he is when it comes to Bible translation and transmission issues, if he can sit there with someone as completely unhinged as Gail Ripplinger and just, oh, we got another book here?
48:12
Well, let's sell that one. I've not read it, but it must be good. There is a discernment gap here that is very, very large.
48:26
There's a problem. There's a real problem. And I don't know if there are people around Ken Hovind that can say to him, brother, you are really out of control here.
48:44
But somebody needs to. Somebody needs to. They really, really do. So if you think
48:50
I'm being mean, then you don't seem to understand what the issues are. Show me where I've been wrong in my facts, and I'll listen to you.
49:04
But if you're just a postmodernist who operates on the basis of emotions and feelings of, well, I like Ken Hovind, you're being mean to him, get off the playground.
49:14
Grow up. Grow up. You're acting like the world.
49:21
You're acting like the world. All right, we only have a few minutes left. Yeah, and I'm going to have to interrupt. What now?
49:27
We are having a complete meltdown over here. I don't know what's going on. Suddenly it's decided that it wants to pick up the stream that I shut down about a half an hour ago.
49:37
And now I'm seeing meters. I know that our live audio over here is still working, but we're not recording that.
49:44
And where we are recording seems to have just frozen solid. So what does that mean?
49:52
It means we've got to shut everything down and maybe try again on Thursday.
49:59
Okay. And see what's going on here, because I don't even know what we've recorded now.
50:05
Lovely. So your last five minutes may be completely gone. Okay. Well, Scott S.
50:12
In Channel says I'm recording, so. Oh, well, I may have to have him send me that in e -mail or something, or Dropbox a copy of that to me.
50:22
Yeah, it's possible. All right. Well, folks, it died. See you next time. We're just going to sign off here.
50:29
Bye. Hasta la vista. Have a good one. You're the weakest link. Goodbye. Goodbye. You're the weakest link.