Memorizing Scripture and Various Other Topics

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:29

So, it was the summer, spring of my, uh, soph, no, oh, what year, well,

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I was a sophomore in high school. And so it was January, February of my sophomore year.

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So halfway through. And there was a large church in the

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Phoenix area then, still there, just not very large, called North Phoenix Baptist Church. I'd eventually start going there, um, in just a matter of months.

01:03

But they had a, I think what happened was they had somehow hooked up with, um, the radio station my dad was a manager of in Sun City.

01:18

And I know that, uh, their, their services were being broadcast and they had, what was that guy's name?

01:27

Oh, I can see his face. He went Pentecostal later, Robinson, Robinson, Robeson, right,

01:37

James Robeson. That would have been 1977,

01:43

I think, or 78, yeah, probably 78, uh, he came to do a revival at the

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North Phoenix Baptist Church. And this was back when the pastor of the church,

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Richard Jackson, he was in the very upper echelons of the Southern Baptist Convention, always trying to get as many baptisms as possible because basically if you want to be president of the convention, you needed to be in the top three or four, um, in baptisms.

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And that normally sort of got you in. He never did, uh, become president of the

02:19

SBC, came close. Anyway, so I don't remember how it happened.

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I just remember sitting in my room at my desk. I was a good student, but my freshman and half of sophomore years in high school,

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I didn't look any different than anybody else really. And James Robeson, I listened to James Robeson preaching on the radio and I'm talking, these were, these were, you know, we had something called dials, okay, and it, it moved this little thing back and forth and that's how you tuned in radio stations.

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That's what tuning in meant back then. And uh, I listened,

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I don't remember what he preached, I don't remember what he preached, but I listened to James Robeson and the

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Lord used that. And I, um, that summer, uh,

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I worked at the radio station at night and recording music and stuff.

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I think, I think it may be the summer I started working on the Saturdays, uh, live on the air and playing big band music for those who haven't heard that story before.

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And that's, that's when I started memorizing scripture. That's when I started memorizing scripture and I had a little bit of money.

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I mean, I was working, it wasn't, it wasn't much, but I had a little something and I'd go down to the old

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Berean Christian bookstore that used to be next to Grand Canyon college back then. And that's when

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I started buying Bibles. That's when I bought. Yeah, there it is. That's when

04:16

I bought this Bible. It's still, I didn't put a date in this,

04:22

I don't think, or did I, I haven't looked for a while. Yep.

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There it is. Um, just put 1979 as the date on it, but this is,

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I just opened it up for the first time in a long time and, uh, just open it up to the

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Psalter here. And I, yep. Mm hmm. Yeah. It's well marked.

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It is a new Schofield reference Bible. It still has one of the best, even after all 1979, this is 45 years old and the leather is still supple.

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I should use some of my post -Tenebrous Lux Bible butter on it. I really should.

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I'm going to, I'm going to leave it out so I can, I can get it through another 45 years.

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Um, that's the one I first read through as an adult teenager. First read through the

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Bible, got up every morning early. I had an early class. I was a honors student and that, that January I started driving to school, um, because my school was, it was,

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I won't go into all the details, but it was far, far, far away from where I lived. And that summer

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I should have grabbed this from the other room. I was, I only started thinking about doing this right before the program started, but I started memorizing scripture and I was getting very serious about my faith.

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And during the days I'd have the house pretty much to myself. And I remember very small house, um, walking up and down the small little hallway between the various bedrooms, three bedrooms, yeah, three bedrooms.

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And I'd be memorizing a passive scripture. So I'd had, I'd write it out on a, on an index card, there weren't any computers yet.

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I think maybe within a year, as my senior year is when I think I first saw the super geeks in my class taking a computer class and the, the drive, the data drive for the computer they used was a, uh, cassette tape player, you know, like a, just a standard cassette tape type thing that dandy something.

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Yes. Yeah. It was a Tandy. And, uh, so you didn't have, you know, I've got accordance up in front of me and, you app that allows you to focus in on like, uh, just Hebrews or Hebrew it's by chapter.

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So like just Hebrews chapter seven or something like that. And just make sure you've got the really, really super usable.

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No one had even dreamed of anything like that yet. Back then what I would do, and I still have it, I still have another room.

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I have a note card file that I bought and I initially was doing color coding as to the topic of the, uh, of the verse.

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And then I drew out a graph and put the things and how many times

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I reviewed it. And, and I had quite a little system going, but I just remember the sincerity, the purity of just wanting to memorize scripture.

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And let me tell you, do it when you're young, do it when you're young, there comes a time.

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Maybe some people just have better genetics than I do, but it would be very difficult for me to do anything close to now, what

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I was able to do back then. And in fact, when I first met with those two first, those two more missionaries, elders reading reason,

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I remember, I don't know why, but I remember I had 167 verses memorized that particular point in time.

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So in other words that I had listed out that I could give you the topic that it was in and stuff like that at 167 verses memorized.

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And, uh, within six months after that I had 654 because I had come to realize going out to Mesa, things like that.

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You have to, if you want to control the conversation, then you, you have to have scripture memorized.

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And so we did, we wrote up the a hundred verse memorization system for Mormons. I did a hundred verse memorization system for Jehovah's witnesses.

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Those are still on aomin .org somewhere. If you just put in a hundred verse, I'm sure it'll pop up.

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Everything I've ever said on this program will pop up when you go to the transcripts page at aomin .org.

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But anyway, you know, I think of those mornings you get up, you didn't, you didn't want to, you're retired and I'd get this

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Bible out and I had all I had put on the front, God's word, it's all it says,

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God's word. And you know, do I, do

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I agree with the footnotes and the reference and stuff? No, I don't. Um, but do

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I detest them or I want to burn them? Um, I just had a hunger for the word of God and let me encourage young people.

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We were used to having access now here and this, look,

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I'm, I am not anti -tech. Um, I think this is an absolutely fantastic thing to have, uh, with me.

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Thank you for that picture of a cassette tape recorder, Rich. I appreciate that. It's very, yes, that's, that's what it says.

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Yes, that's, um, that's what they were using. Yes. So Rich sent me a picture of a cassette tape recorder that was also used for Tandy was the company, uh,

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Radio Shack. Was that Tandy Radio Shack, TRS? So as I was saying, um, um, young people, we,

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I'm not anti -tech. I'm not saying that you're more spiritual if you have something like this in your hand, but, and I'm, and I'm not saying that don't, don't take advantage of the memorization programs that are now available that obviously we're not even dreamed of when

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I was a kid. Uh, use everything you can, but don't let the ease of access to this fool you into thinking that, well,

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I'll always have that. You may not. You may not. One of the, I preached a sermon a couple of years ago during the height of the lockdown stuff.

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And it looked like everyone was, you know, look, there was a period of time when in 2021, where a lot of people in media were saying, if you wouldn't accept the vaccines that you should be locked up in prison camps and they were building these places in Australia and stuff like that.

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And we saw what was going on in China and it was, uh, pretty wild.

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And so I preached a sermon and one of the, one of the things that I emphasized and part of it's part of us do the fact that I've told the story before where I got to tour the

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Stasi prison in East Berlin and the

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Stasi were these East German secret police. And this was an infamous prison. Very few people ever came back out of it.

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Once you went in, you generally disappeared and you were kept isolated.

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The only people you ever saw was your guard and your counselor.

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And they even had, I remember looking up at the corners, they had, I guess you could call them traffic lights because what they didn't want happening is if you were being taken to your brainwashing session with your counselor, they're trying to break you.

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They never wanted you to see another prisoner. So they use these lights to make sure that if one prisoner was being taken one direction, you wouldn't just walk past another prisoner because just seeing another human being like that could put them weeks behind in breaking it.

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That's what isolation was. You were alone. And one of the things that I brought up in that sermon, what are you going to take into a situation like that?

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I don't wish that on anyone, but it has happened over and over and over again.

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You're not going to have your phone. You're not going to have a Bible. So if you don't memorize scripture, what are you going to have?

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A lot of regrets? Well, I wish I had, but it's too late now.

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Yeah, basically. I would say to everyone, all younger people who can still do these things, have the mental acuity and so on and so forth, look, sit back, take a piece of paper or open a file.

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You know, one day, normal, regular day of your life, get to the end of the day and go back and look at what you did and how long it took you to do it.

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How much time did you spend on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, don't know anything about Tik Tok or Instagram, but people use them.

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Whatever else, I guess there's something LinkedIn, which I've never ever been on. People send me their

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LinkedIn information all the time and it's like, whatever. I'm clearly not LinkedIn.

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And how much time bathing, dressing, walking the dog, feeding the cats is one for me.

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Put it all together with how much you normally sleep and that kind of stuff.

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And look at how much time during the day you have exposure to the truth of God.

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Now, it's gonna be different on a Lord's Day, I would hope, but just on a regular weekly basis.

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And then I'm not saying you have to go read Jonathan Edwards.

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Incredible, he was, I think, still a teenager when he wrote out his, what do you call them?

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His priorities, the things that he was to do. It was, oh,

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Rich, do you need to go to the front door? And I mean, it's super convicting to read

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Edwards, whatever the term was that he used, his commitments for his life and things like that.

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And most people read them and just go, oh, I can never do that. This is unreasonable, I can't go there.

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But still, ask yourself the question, what has the most eternal value?

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Because what you're gonna do is you're gonna make time for the things that have the most value to you.

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And if they are things of this world, if they are things like that, then you're gonna find time to do those things.

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But if they are, have eternal value, they have eternal value, that will, you'll find time to do those things.

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Because that's what's, that's what your heart is set on. And the nice thing about memorizing scripture is you can do it while doing other things.

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You know, I try to multitask, and so, you know,

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I've been reading, like I said, thousands of pages on crusades and issues related to that.

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And so I've got a trip coming up starting on Saturday, and hours in the truck, and I'm going to be very, very focused upon getting as far as I can through many, many more books.

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I could work on some memorization while driving that might be a little bit, not dangerous, but challenging.

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But maybe, I mean, I certainly can concentrate while listening to books while driving, so possible.

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But there are other things if you have repetitive activities, if you're weightlifting. My daughter's gotten into weightlifting, and I told her, she doesn't remember it,

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I don't think she remembers it, but I know that I told her long, long ago. I said, you wait till you get in your mid -30s, you're gonna,

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I'm telling you, you're gonna be like your mom and dad. You know, her mom's still an aerobics instructor, taught two classes yesterday,

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I think one this morning. And we're, I'm in my seventh decade,

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I won't mention anything about where she is. But, you know, and I'm trying to get to 7 ,200 miles on bike this year with over 300 ,000 feet of climbing.

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And despite that going down, I'm still fighting the battle. And I said to her, it's gonna happen to you.

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Well, it did, it did. And she just loves lifting weights. And she's really transformed herself.

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She looks great and really loves doing that. You could, you can memorize scripture between sets.

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You could, that would not be outside of something you could do. Everyone's different, by the way.

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And I know there are people, I can't memorize anything. I, I think you can. I still remember the locker combination.

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My first locker in high school at Independence High School. I think you,

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I think you can. It may require differing methodologies for different people.

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Sure. It may require differing review schedules for people.

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But I think everyone can memorize scripture. Some people easier than others. No two ways about it.

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But I just think it's extremely valuable. And in our day,

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I just think, you know, most of us have some emergency food stashed away.

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Not necessarily like the Mormons, but we've got some, we could see how the local grocery store could get overrun in certain situations.

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And so we've got some food laying around and stored up. We make preparations.

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We may not be preppers in the full sense of that term, but this would be spiritual preparation.

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And you can always pray. But if you haven't exposed yourself to all of the word of God, may

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I highly suggest that? You know, it's, it's not January 1st, but who cares?

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You don't have to start a Bible review program January 1st. You can pick up in the middle of something. It's okay that the world will not end.

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Make sure you've read all of scripture more than once. But then memorize scripture.

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And do it the way that works best for you. You know, for some people, there are computer programs that will give you a few words.

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You fill it in and it takes some of those words out. You fill it in again. It's a review type thing.

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All of that's great, fine, wonderful. However you do it, you can do it the old style.

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I did it, you know, writing it. Yes, writing. It's just using a pen and paper.

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What an amazing thing. You don't have to use a Mont Blanc pen. In fact, I don't think that that helps the memorization at all.

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But if it helps you, cool. Go for it. Do it. But memorizing scripture.

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And I also remember that same summer when I started doing that between my sophomore and junior years.

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And by the way, starting that fall in my junior year, I made the commitment to carry a

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Bible on top of all my school books. And I started doing that my junior year.

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And a lot of people saw a big difference in me. And I became known as Billy Graham White at the school.

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And that was good. That's fine. No problem with that. But it was during that time.

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And I know, I don't know why I remember this, but I have a brown leather

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Ryrie study Bible right over there. NASB. This would have been the 77.

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Yeah, that would have just come out. Oh, right around then. NASB. Maybe even earlier than that.

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I think about it. I'm not sure. Anyway, I know I used that Bible that I still have to memorize

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Psalm 121. I can still see the poetic typesetting of Psalm 121 in that Ryrie study

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Bible. And because of that, that it's always been one of my favorite texts.

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And I think probably a lot of you have memorized it as well. It's not long, but it's a song of a sense.

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It was one of these songs that the people of Israel would sing as they're going up to Jerusalem.

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I will lift up my eyes to the mountains. From where shall my help come? My help comes from the

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Lord, Yahweh, who made heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to stumble.

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He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber. See, it's coming out in NASB.

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And I've got the LSB in front of me. He who keeps Israel will not slumber and will not sleep.

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I'm pretty sure the NASB had will neither slumber nor sleep. It's just small differences.

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But once you've memorized it in one, it tends to come out in that. Which is why a lot of my verses come out in King James.

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Yahweh is your keeper. Yahweh is your shade on your right hand. The sun will not strike you by day nor the moon by night.

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I remember looking up a commentary to try to figure that one out. Yahweh will keep you from all evil.

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He will keep your soul. Yahweh will keep your going out and your coming in from now until forever.

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So there are a few differences between the LSB and the NASB. It's only eight verses.

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And it wasn't like there was a specific attachment in my life that I put it with or something like that.

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I never figured that I'd ever visit Israel. I only got to do it once. So I wasn't thinking about any of that stuff.

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It's just the ever -present help of God promised to his people.

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He made heaven and earth. That was important to me. That was really important to me because I fought the evolution -creation battles all the way through school.

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I always went to a public school. And so I was always in the middle of that.

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And then went to a Christian college and was still in the middle of that. Because I was the only biblical creationist in my

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Southern Baptist school. At least in the biology department. Probably in the

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Bible department there were plenty. But I was a double major, Bible and biology. So I lived in a different world.

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But my help comes from Yahweh who made heaven and earth. So that assertion of Yahweh's creatorship.

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Very important. So fathers, encourage your sons.

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Encourage your daughters. I've always enjoyed seeing some of these homeschooled daughters and sons.

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And they'll do these things where they'll stand before their church. And they'll recite

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Ephesians. The whole thing. Hey, if that gets anybody to memorize almost anything.

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That's fantastic. Do it. Do it. There are so many things we memorize.

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So much music. And that's another thing. That's another thing. It was, what, about 20 years later.

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Maranatha music. I think it was a Calvary Chapel thing. Started coming out with these scripture memorization songs.

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They did a lot of stuff from the Psalter too. Even though, when I listen to it,

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I love doing it. If I go for a walk, I'll turn on. I've got a Psalms playlist type thing.

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Half the time they get it right and half the time they get it wrong. Psalms 23. No, it's

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Psalm 23. Doggone it. Half the time, you just have to overlook it.

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But man, for some people, that's the key. That's the key is to put the music.

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And that's for the Psalms especially. That's perfect. That's what they were supposed to be done. But dads, moms, encourage your kids.

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Maybe do it with them. But make them, give them the direction to recognize how eternally useful the memorization of scripture is.

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Not just in the horrible possibility that down the road, you may be in an isolation cell.

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But man, I'll tell you, if you ever are, they're not going to let you have a

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Bible. You're going to need to have what you have. So regular exposure, not just a quick glance at the screen on the phone, will be very, very helpful.

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Yes, sir. You go into this, and it occurs to me that as I think about how the apostles shared their faith, and they witnessed to thousands, and they weren't carrying scrolls around.

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You know, every bit of what they were preaching was spirit -driven, and it was

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God's word from memory. The vast majority of it was because very few

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Jews had the scrolls outside of the synagogue. But the

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Christians, from the start, pushed away from that.

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And that's why the Romans were trying to destroy the Christian scriptures, especially between 303 and 313, because they knew

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Christianity was a religion of the book. But Christians wanted their people to have the word of God in their own hands, and they tried to make that available, even though a full -size

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Codex Sinaiticus -type thing down there would be incredibly expensive.

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But they had readers that would then take these around to people. There's been all sorts of argumentation about what the literacy level was and things like that.

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But yeah, possessing scripture, reading scripture, get your kids a real

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Bible. I still have the first two Bibles my parents gave me, and every

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Bible after that I bought for myself. And I still have the vast majority of them, including one beautiful one that a particular white cat that we didn't have for very long got hold of and just destroyed the spine.

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It was decided that was a wonderful scratching pad and just tore it to pieces.

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Thankfully, this one did not suffer that type of a thing. Get them some good

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Bibles, good paper Bibles. Can't take it to the gulag, but until then, it's good to have them.

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I know there are people who say, yeah, there's just something about when you feel it open in your hand.

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It's like, oh, okay, yeah, that's true, there is. And when I sit here and look at this and I see,

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I open up to Psalm 46, God is our refuge and strength, the very present help in trouble. That's underlined in orange.

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And then down in verse 10 in green, be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations.

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I will be exalted in the earth. Psalm 47, oh, clap your hands, all you people, shout unto

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God with a voice of triumph, underlined in red. So, you know, all the way through this Bible, and unfortunately is red letter.

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So in the Gospels, I had to only use black, but everywhere else, just underline, underline.

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I've spent a lot of time. And even after almost 50 years, it still has a little bit of nice Bible smell to it, which is pretty amazing given how old it is.

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But anyway, how in the world do we get onto that? I don't know. I was thinking about Psalm 121 and I started thinking about when

32:54

I first memorized it, and that just led to all the other stuff that goes along with that. Who knows what has happened in the past 33 minutes since we started all of this out in the world.

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There are a lot of crazy, crazy things happening in the world right now. I'll put it this way.

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Brief comment on what's going on politically. I'm hearing that the

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Democrats are actually talking about having Harris do

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Joe Rogan and an interview on Fox with Bret Baier.

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What? Yeah, it's scheduled. Yeah. That's desperation. That is desperation.

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I had heard about the Joe Rogan thing on the radio today and the commentator was kind of marveling at the idea of, okay, this guy goes for three hours.

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His numbers surpass so many different TV shows, network

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TV. She's going to sit there with him for three hours?

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She doesn't have three hours worth of things to say. My hope would be he'd call it what it is.

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It's Joe Rogan. I know. I know. I know.

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I know. I don't get any of it. They own the media, and now they're going to talk to the only parts of the media that she doesn't actually own?

34:48

She has bombed every interview. They had to edit things.

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Joe Rogan's not going to edit anything. You know what I mean? And her cackling isn't going to get anywhere with Joe Rogan.

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I can just hear that moment like J .D. Vance had on Sunday with Martha Raddatz.

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Do you hear yourself? You really thought that through, didn't you?

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Is that thing in your ear working? Take the earring off for a second, dear, and let's actually have a conversation, just you and me.

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Yeah, if Joe's smart, what he'll do is he will make sure that his studio there, they'll install lead around the outside, so once she walks in, the earpiece doesn't work anymore, and she's toast.

35:38

Yeah, frequency jammers. That'll do it.

35:43

That'll do it, yeah. I don't know. We'll see. I mean, look, two things.

35:49

If I had the level of trust in our elections that I had 30 years ago,

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I would say that there is a 99 % chance that Donald Trump would be elected president and that the

36:03

House and the Senate would be in Republican hands if I trusted elections. I don't, but it seems to me like the

36:13

Democrats are now in full panic mode. They really are.

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Pennsylvania's going away from them, and every time she tries... I mean, that Tim Walz commercial?

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Ha ha ha! Oh, man! Oh, wow.

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Okay, all right. I guess you could sit here and say, well, you know, they haven't had a whole lot of time to practice.

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They just sort of got thrown into the... Woo -hoo! Yeah, okay.

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Oh, and I just looked over right now. Now Kamala's talking about reparations.

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That's a good way to get everybody... Oh, my goodness.

37:04

I don't even know. But I just did a program up in Canada, and a lot of it was discussion of voting, and it was interesting to have to try to compare the differences between where we are here and where they are up in Canada, and the fact that people overseas always know much more about what's going on here than we know about what's going on there.

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I told you that when I was in Australia. It was astonishing how much people knew about the...

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That was the 2016 election, about Clinton versus Trump in 2016.

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They knew... They don't get to vote yet, but yeah, and most people here couldn't tell you anything about Australian politics.

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I couldn't right now. I haven't been down there for a number of years, other than the fact that a bunch of tyrants are in control.

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That's pretty straightforward. But anyways, yeah. If I had trust in the elections, it's not even going to be close.

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And then the other thing that just... In the back of my mind, I've said it.

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It just seems to me that the more the polls separate...

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Because I think Trump's at the highest level right now he's been since she was announced. Above her, like 16 points.

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It's not even close right now. The more likely he's going to get himself killed.

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I said it after the first... I said it after the first thing in Pennsylvania. I said if he lives to November and manages to pull this off,

39:07

I don't think he'll live to January to be put in office. The power of the people in charge that have had four years of making bank, they will stop at nothing.

39:21

They will stop at nothing. I pray. I'd like to get another four years of traveling.

39:30

I think we can keep that trailer going for four years and keep that truck going for four years.

39:37

I'd like to be able to do that. If this body keeps going for four years, I'd like to see that happen.

39:45

But it's in the Lord's hands. It is in the Lord's hands.

39:52

A couple of interesting things. Next April, down in Tucson, not here in Phoenix, down in Tucson, we're going to have

40:07

ReformCon 2025. If you're wondering why it's in Tucson and not in Phoenix, it's all a matter of money.

40:16

I guess the last time we did ReformCon was at 2023. We did it at this hotel off the 202.

40:25

We got destroyed financially by that hotel.

40:32

They hit us with so many hidden charges and costs. It was ridiculous. Evidently, it's all a matter of a good place to be able to get together that is not going to bankrupt us in the process.

40:49

Bankruptcy is not a good thing. We're going to be going down there. There are people grousing about who's going to be speaking there.

40:59

It's a joint effort this time. ReformCon has always been an apology to church.

41:06

Both Jeff and I are fellows with the Ezra Institute, which used to be up in Canada.

41:15

Ezra Institute still has offices in Canada, UK, and now in the U .S. Joe Boot, author of The Mission of God and numerous other books that I've recommended.

41:27

We've had him as a guest on the program many times. Joe Boot's the head of the

41:32

Ezra Institute. Another one of the fellows of the

41:38

Ezra Institute is Andrew Sandlin. Andrew has spoken at ReformCon in the past, as has

41:44

Joe, but Doug Wilson has also been invited and will be a part of ReformCon.

41:52

There are a lot of people who have Doug Wilson derangement syndrome. They have deep fundamentalist streaks in them.

42:03

You can't talk to these people. You can't consider them

42:09

Christians. You can't do nothing. I was being attacked by a guy yesterday for being the primary.

42:19

I was being blamed. If I don't identify someone as someone to be marked and avoided, then that means

42:32

I'm platforming them, promoting them. Even though I talk about the maturity that is required to recognize your differences with others, not compromise on those points, but to have open discussions and to be able to prioritize beliefs.

43:00

Here's our belief on baptism. Very important. But it doesn't make the gospel.

43:12

It takes maturity and it takes energy to maintain relationships with people with whom you share the core of the faith, but then the fundamentalist mindset is to say everything is the core of the faith.

43:30

They don't make distinctions. For example, I haven't commented on this yet.

43:41

I guess I will in passing. I hope I'm not getting a sore throat. That's always an indication of sickness coming, but I've been talking for two and a half hours already, so I think that's probably what it is.

43:55

Steven Anderson, you've heard the news, started hearing it a couple months ago.

44:05

Steven Anderson's adult children who have left the home, I think there's four, have all come out and made public statements documenting and accusing the

44:19

Andersons of abusive behavior within the home.

44:29

And I'm not going to go into all of it. You can look it all up and listen. I haven't listened to all of it.

44:36

I've listened to at least two of the things that have been recorded.

44:43

But then news came out last week that as far as I can tell, someone in the church made an accusation of maybe a possibility of self -harm or something.

45:02

Anyways, Pastor Steven Anderson of the

45:08

King James Only Baptist Church. It's not its name, but over there in Tempe. Yeah, Faithful Word, but it's

45:15

King James Only. And IFB. Remember when they left, they split off the IFB and became the new

45:21

Independent Fundamentalist Baptist. And Anderson's sort of the head lead guy and all that.

45:27

They've all sort of scattered now and run away from him. And they're all doing damage control now.

45:35

But Steven Anderson was involuntarily committed for 24 hours.

45:45

I don't know the details of all of that, but obviously when you have four of your kids accusing you of various forms of abuse, things aren't going real well over there.

46:05

And look, this is a guy who has attacked everyone. He has railed at everyone.

46:11

He's threatened to destroy everyone. And the reason I even thought of him was

46:17

I was talking about how the fundamentalists define everything as a defining doctrine. Right through that wall,

46:24

I forget what year it was, we did that recording, the two hours and 20 minutes of Steven Anderson and I talking for this film they were doing.

46:36

I was shocked rich to no end when he said, you know that Steven Anderson guy, he wants to come over and record something.

46:45

I said, okay. He was like, what? I said, okay. And so we ended up doing it.

46:53

And when we got done with that interview, he was talking about some guy and said, now obviously he's not a

47:05

Christian because he's a mid -tripper. And if you don't know what that means, within dispensational premillennialism, which is just one of many views, now that may shock some people if you're new to the program, that there's a view of eschatology other than dispensational premillennialism.

47:31

But amongst dispensational premillennialists, you have pre -trib, mid -trib, and post -trib rapture theorists.

47:39

When's the rapture going to happen? Before the seven years, in the middle, three and a half years into the tribulation, or at the end of the tribulation?

47:48

And he just nonchalantly identified this guy as a heretic because he differed with him as to the timing of the rapture in a very modern eschatological system.

48:05

That's the very essence, really, of what I mean by you take everything, all of your theology, from the

48:14

Trinity out to the wildest, weakest speculations in eschatology, but it's all definitional, and you have to believe just like that.

48:24

That's what fundamentalism is all about. It's groupthink. It's fear -driven groupthink.

48:30

You're not allowed to think anything other than what is being taught and thought by your leaders at that point in time.

48:41

And so I just remembered that part of that conversation. That's 10 years ago? Okay. So 2014, okay.

48:50

I still think more people ended up watching that interview than watched the film that they used 10 seconds of it in, something along those lines.

49:01

So look, I am not at all shocked and surprised by what has been alleged and things like that.

49:10

I'm not a part of any of that. I'm not sitting here going, oh, let's all talk about Steven Anderson.

49:17

No, it's sad to see this kind of stuff happening. And I pray for the kids.

49:28

What a life, you know? But are we really all that shocked?

49:34

When we saw the videos of how he treated his own church members?

49:42

And, you know, he went after Jeff over and over again, went after me.

49:48

It's just how he is. Sad, the whole situation's sad.

49:56

So anyway, all that to say that next

50:03

April, a ReformCon 2025. I don't know what I'm talking, speaking on, to be honest with you.

50:10

But we will find out. And I will hopefully have a few moments to sit down with Doug Wilson coming up in Fort Worth in just a couple of weeks and talk a little bit more about the fact that just over the past month or so, he's getting attacked just like I am in the exact same way.

50:44

You led us down this path, and now you're turning on us. And it's like, no, I never led you down this path.

50:52

You've always had to reject the central affirmations of my own theology to adopt the perspectives that you have.

51:02

So don't tell me anybody led you down this path. You went running down what you thought was a path that I had laid out, but you were ignoring not only my warnings, but a bunch of other stuff that I've been teaching all along.

51:17

And I'm saying that as Doug or as me, we're both in the exact same boat at that point.

51:27

So hopefully we get a chance to sit down, chat a little bit about things.

51:33

And I'd like to have a little chat about Stephen Wolfe's book. And personally,

51:43

I think a Thomistic, sacral, natural law,

51:52

Christian nationalism breeds mono -ethnicity and all of the ethnic issues that come along with that.

52:06

Or as a post -millennial, regeneration -based, theonomic, presuppositional perspective does not.

52:16

And can't, for that matter. Because one's New Testament theology and the other one isn't.

52:27

So maybe we'll have some conversations about that. Conversations about the Crusades or something like that.

52:33

Just for the fun of it. We'll see. Had not mentioned this fellow for ages and ages and ages.

52:43

But Jacob Brunton. Eli Ayala, a couple weeks ago, did a video response to some stuff that Jacob had said.

52:53

Jacob Brunton, these are the new Christian intellectuals. Remember he and the other guy?

52:59

There's only two of them. They've always been extremely imbalanced in their detestation of presuppositional apologetics.

53:10

I mean, if you were to listen to these guys talking about presupp, and you know something about it.

53:17

Let's say you've maybe read Bonson, maybe read Ventile, maybe read Frame or whoever else.

53:24

If you just start listening to them talking, and they didn't use the term, but they were talking about presuppositionalism.

53:31

You'd never guess what they were talking about. The disconnection between the reality of presuppositional apologetics, its foundation, its practice, and what these guys present is

53:46

Grand Canyon size. I mean, it's just, you really wonder how did someone get that far off?

53:54

I mean, it's, you know, we've got Doug Wilson derangement syndrome, and then we've got presuppositional apologetics derangement syndrome.

54:03

And Jacob Bruton has presuppositional apologetics derangement syndrome.

54:10

And so Eli had done, and Eli is so much nicer than me. You all need to be happy that there are

54:15

Eli Ayala's out there because then you got me. So that's just sort of how it is.

54:21

Eli is much nicer than me. And so he took on like this list of like four, five, six,

54:28

I forget how many it was, statements that Jacob made about presuppositionalism and just very kindly and nicely tore them to shreds as they need to be torn to shreds and demonstrated that he just, what he was arguing really wasn't any type of consistent form of argumentation at all.

54:51

Well, I have this. This is from two days ago. This is

54:57

Jacob Bruton again. Okay. Just one of many, many, many, many tweets like this. Presuppositionalism is low

55:04

T. Testosterone. It is an effeminate abrogation of the duty to base one's convictions on reason.

55:17

It denies the efficacy of man's mind, declaring him epistemically impotent based on empty pietism and virtue signaling.

55:30

It is fundamentally anti -mind and anti -man. Now, you just sit back and you just go, did he think of this after getting up off the bench?

55:47

Because he's a big weightlifter guy. Is that what made this happen?

55:53

Was this right rage taking place or just what? But it's just so disjointed and just so childish.

56:01

It really is. It's, you know, the football players in junior high school yelling at each other level stuff from a intellectual.

56:13

It is an effeminate abrogation of the duty to base one's convictions on reason.

56:20

Could you explain? No, I'm not even going to ask him to explain how effeminate is connected to any of that.

56:29

It denies the efficacy of man's mind, declaring him epistemically impotent.

56:35

That declares him epistemically corrupted by sin. And the one time you could look it up,

56:42

I did do something here on the program where I directly respond. He did a debate a while back on Romans 1.

56:48

He has to because he's not holding to Romans 1, at least not as Paul argued it. Paul's argumentation in Romans 1 destroys his position.

56:57

And so that's, you know, declaring him epistemically impotent based on empty pietism and virtue signaling.

57:06

That's just, that's Kamala Harris level cackling rhetoric.

57:11

That's what that is. That's word salad in defense of some type of intellectualism.

57:20

It's not intellectualism. It is fundamentally anti -mind and anti -man.

57:25

No, it is fundamentally God -centered and recognizes the fallenness of man and the fallenness of his mind.

57:32

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. That's what it is.

57:39

So yeah, you will encounter this kind of stuff out there and you just have to go, to me, there seems to be a tremendous amount of emotion behind this.

57:52

Did you look it up or something? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

57:58

Oh, goodness, no. No, no, not even, not in the same galaxy, not in the same galaxy.

58:07

Even though he did just put out, I think, like part number nine or something. Remember, we looked at the first two, totally decimated it, and he's still going.

58:18

It's just, yeah, the foundation's gone, but we're having fun up here. No, this is a completely, completely, completely different guy.

58:29

Like I said, it's been years since I last encountered him or mentioned him or something like that.

58:36

Last thing real quick here, we're running out of time because I've got another program to do after this. So, Soteriology 101.

58:53

Leighton Flowers, this is back from March and somebody responded to it, so that's why it pulled up, that's why it pulled it up.

59:06

So this, going back to the timeframe of the debate,

59:12

I enjoyed the debate on John 6 and the rigor of preparation. I was even able to compile a book from what

59:17

I learned in the process. Would have been better to learn that beforehand. Overall, it was a blessing.

59:23

Now, when is a notable Calvinist like White going to debate a text of our choosing instead of always one of their favorite proof texts?

59:33

Has White debated 1 Timothy 2 or 2 Peter 3, for instance? I'd like to see if he is willing to confine himself to those chapters alone in a debate.

59:41

I seriously doubt it. Now, the reason I wanted to address this was, again, it just demonstrates the emptiness of Leighton's rhetoric and his position.

59:56

John 6 is the longest chapter in the Gospel of John. It is a focused narrative.

01:00:06

It is a singular presentation by the

01:00:11

Lord Jesus on a particular topic. That's what makes it so central, just as Ephesians 1,

01:00:19

Romans 8 and 9 are lengthy. If we were debating justification, then you're going to be doing

01:00:26

Romans 1 .18

01:00:32

through 5 .10 as a block of didactic text on a particular topic.

01:00:43

So John 6 is a block of teaching text on a topic that you must be able to exegete in its context.

01:00:56

And Dr. Flowers cannot. We've demonstrated that. And what he did after the debate and floundering around trying to find somebody to defend his errors and making mistakes in the process, has proven that to be the case.

01:01:17

So when someone says, you know, has

01:01:24

White debated 1 Timothy 2? Well, I've certainly written on 1 Timothy 2. And 1

01:01:32

Timothy 2 is relevant. That's why I've addressed it in the context of the potter's freedom.

01:01:44

But the problem is, 1 Timothy 2 is not a didactic text on a particular subject.

01:01:56

The one line that they would want to debate is, this is good and acceptable, verse 3, this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our

01:02:05

Savior, verse 4, who desires all men to be saved to come to the full knowledge of the truth. Okay, that's all they want to do.

01:02:14

But this is not, 1 Timothy 2 is not a chapter on the subject of soteriology.

01:02:25

You have a sentence that you are then reading into.

01:02:33

Now, again, I could present a very strong case and did in the potter's freedom, that if you put 1

01:02:46

Timothy 2 into Paul's theology and deal with, you know, for there is one

01:02:53

God, one mediator also between God and men, so mediatorship needs to be brought in. But see, his whole thing is, yeah, but you say you don't go outside of John 6.

01:03:03

Yeah, you don't go outside of John 6 to provide the exegesis of John 6.

01:03:08

You start there and then make your applications outside, which he can't do because he doesn't believe what

01:03:17

John 6 actually says. But if you're looking at a letter written by Paul to Timothy that is taking into the, you know, just functioning on the assumption that all the rest of Paul's theology is already in the possession of Timothy, then you have to be able to do that because it's not the purpose of the chapter to be introducing new things.

01:03:41

The purpose of the chapter is to remind Timothy of things he already knows. See, this is the basic incapacity of Leighton Flowers as an exegete.

01:03:50

He's not done the work to learn how to do exegesis. And he's never going to do it as long as he spends all of his time doing nothing but haranguing on Calvinism, which is not what the rest of us do.

01:04:06

I don't spend all my time, what am I studying right now? Am I studying Stereology 101 and Provisionalism?

01:04:13

No, it's irrelevant. It's going to pass from the scene. It's a shallow, modern mimicry of Arminianism.

01:04:20

It's nothing more than that. Okay, so I, no, I'm, vast majority of days, never even crosses my mind.

01:04:30

Never even think of it. There is not a day that passes that Leighton Flowers is not thinking about Calvinism.

01:04:38

There's not a day that passes. You know that. And so it precludes him from being able to recognize just even the nature of what, you know, 1st, 2nd

01:04:50

Timothy and Titus are different than the epistles of Paul to the churches.

01:04:57

Because he's writing to someone he's trained. He's not introducing them to new information.

01:05:05

And so, of course, you have to make the connection to stuff outside because Paul expects you to.

01:05:12

It's just like, ah, hmm, ah, hmm. So, you know,

01:05:18

I can make a strong argument that this portion of 1st Timothy chapter 2, it's just a few sentences, is to be understood, you know, when it says, the man

01:05:31

Christ Jesus who gave himself as a ransom for all the witness for this proper time, what does it mean to be a mediator?

01:05:36

Who is Christ's mediator for? How does this, how do you, where else did Paul talk about mediation?

01:05:42

Well, Romans chapter 8. What's going on there? So what's interesting is the passages that he cites, 2nd

01:05:50

Peter 3, 1st Timothy 2, they are all texts that are no more than two sentences long, the relevant portion.

01:06:01

And they all require you to place that particular text within a broader context because there's not enough in it.

01:06:10

They're not from texts that are specifically on the subject of soteriology. You are assuming that, reading that into it and making it one of your key texts.

01:06:20

That's one of the things that's always important to me is that those who promote a man -centered gospel do so off of texts that are not specifically about soteriology to begin with.

01:06:38

It's like when Roman Catholicism tries to defend justification by going, well, wisdom is justified by her children.

01:06:45

That's not what Jesus is talking about. So trying to derive your doctrine of justification from a statement like that demonstrates you can't go to the clear texts and start there.

01:06:56

Same thing with provisionism. That's the same thing. That's the same thing. So yeah, there you go.

01:07:05

There you go. So yeah, that just popped up. Again, it's from back in March. I don't remember what the date, the debate was in what,

01:07:13

February? Somewhere around there. So just after that. But you know how it is when someone goes back and comments on something that you were involved in that thread, all of a sudden, it pops back up again.

01:07:26

So I've got another program with Marlon Wilson to record here. I'm not sure if we're recording or if it's gonna be live.

01:07:32

Now that I think about it, I forgot to ask. I know this morning's one in Canada, the one a few hours ago, was recorded.

01:07:40

And they'll let me know when that drops. But this could be live. I don't know. You might want to check Marlon's YouTube channel and see if it's gonna be live or whether it's gonna be recorded.

01:07:51

You know, given how Marlon does stuff, it'll probably be live now that I think about it. He did say right at five o 'clock my time, eight o 'clock

01:07:58

Eastern time. So that will be coming up. That will be coming up. Okay, so here's the plan right now.

01:08:07

Thursday is gonna be a busy day. Lots of things can get in the way. But the plan is that I'm going to go get

01:08:14

Big Red, our beautiful fifth wheel RV. When I got back off the last trip,

01:08:21

Rich spent hours and hours and hours in it before I took it over to our dealership to have work done on it.

01:08:32

And then put it in our storage spot. So it's been under covered storage for,

01:08:38

I don't know, a month and a half or so now, somewhere around there. But this will be our first time to check

01:08:44

Rich's work. So I'm gonna go pick that up, find out how early

01:08:53

Rich can sneak us in on Thursday to the RV park where we, we have to park it someplace that we can get it prepped and get my stuff.

01:09:03

I can't park it in front of my house. It's too big. We wouldn't be able to put the slides out. It's just not practical.

01:09:09

It doesn't work. So we have to have someplace to put it. So we reserve a slot in an

01:09:16

RV park that's about six miles or so from the storage place. It's not very far away.

01:09:22

And I park it there and we can get the refrigerator running and I can put my cold food in there and do all that kind of stuff.

01:09:29

But the plan right now is do that in the morning. I've got to take my wife to the airport for a trip and then get back and we want to do the dividing line from the unit.

01:09:42

There's a bunch of stuff we need to be testing. I had a background made just today.

01:09:50

One of our volunteers sewed it so that we can hang it up on that window back there. The one

01:09:57

I had up there, I was literally just shoving on top of something and hoping the friction would hold it. Now we've got an actual way to hold it up there.

01:10:05

And so we'll have a nice rock wall background again like we had in the Jayco. And Rich has put places to put the lights up because he would always get mad at me because it took me so much time with the lights up.

01:10:18

I wouldn't put the lights up and he didn't like the way that it looked. So now he's got it up there and I can't complain about that anymore.

01:10:25

So I have to put the lights up, the cameras up and it's just a completely different situation.

01:10:32

So we need to make sure it's all going to work. And so we're going to get everything hooked up.

01:10:39

Yes, sir. You only brought the microphone halfway up so that doesn't really tell me a whole lot. Just in the way of letting folks know, the debate in Mobile, Alabama, according to the website, it's sold out.

01:10:54

It's been sold out. If you have not registered and gotten tickets and you're wanting to drive to Mobile for the debate, you need to call the church.

01:11:04

You need to make sure that you can still squeeze in. So that's kind of just suddenly hit me.

01:11:11

I saw somebody in the channel say, hey, Mobile, Alabama, and I'm like, make sure that you actually are expected.

01:11:19

Or hey, could be standing remotely. I don't know, but go from there. I don't know either. I don't know either.

01:11:26

Yeah, well, that'd be worth making sure that you can get in. That would be a bummer to make travel plans and then can't get in.

01:11:33

So yeah, check the stuff. There's a link at aomin .org so you can go ask them about that on the front page.

01:11:42

So the point is sometime Thursday afternoon and it will depend on making, we've got everything working right.

01:11:52

And it should, we should be able to get it put together fairly quickly now. But we will be doing that one from the

01:12:00

Mobile Command Center, even though we will not really be mobile yet because I won't leave till Saturday, but we're going to do it from the

01:12:07

RV. Double check, make sure everything's working. And that's how we'll do the program.

01:12:14

So who knows what will happen between now and then? I don't know.