Road Trip DL from OKC

Well greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. It's a road trip Dividing Line. In fact,

I just realized almost all the light on me right now is sunlight reflecting off the back of another um

RV. It's same company as mine and they tend to have very flat white back ends and it's the sun's that way it's that way it's just like blinding me.

I guess I could have pulled that shade but oh well here we are we're on the road. I'm in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

I figure I can tell you where I am because I mean if there were bad people trying to track me down um they probably aren't watching this program first of all and secondly by the time they get here

I'm gonna be gone anyways. It's funny I'm getting to know all of the KOAs along the 40 and the 10 and a few others that are not

KOAs but you know KOA works you know it's always the same and I like same.

Same is nice and when you're traveling you don't get a lot of same so I'll take what I can

I can I can do. We're gonna try out a satellite connection today and it does work but it has latency issues.

You can get really super high speeds but for continuous broadcasting on our side we'll have to keep tweaking that and seeing how how that works.

Besides that literally 10 feet through this window is a 5G

Wi -Fi tower so I'm getting irradiated here. I'll probably be dead by the end of the show.

It's right there so it's like might as well use that. So here we are on our way to G3 in Washington DC and looking forward to seeing everybody there to talk about the

Bible and I have been I am preparing for the debate the next week with Dr.

Peter Van Cleek Jr. on the subject of well the

Van Cleeks senior and junior have interesting views and I've been listening to their books.

I will have read four of their books by the time the well probably by the time

I get to G3 I would assume. You know there's a lot of similarities between their position and Jeff Riddle and some others but differences as well and it'll be an interesting debate.

I listened to a smaller book that Van Cleek Jr.

did. It's just basically a long the only thing

I can compare it to I'll be honest with you is to Itzhar al -Haq. No we did not have a

I did not choke and we did not have an internet hiccup. Itzhar al -Haq of course is the

Muslim apologetics book that was written by an Indian Muslim scholar in the 1860s and very very important in for example getting

Ahmadiyyat to go into doing dawah. It fundamentally changed how

Muslims around the world look at the Bible and what the guy did is he just took all this negative stuff about the

Bible from German rationalism and and liberal theology and stuff like that and crammed it into one book and this was

Dr. Van Cleek's book was was basically a hyper skeptical attack on all of textual criticism.

And I mean the category errors historical errors just astonishing blew me away but the thing that I'm just driving down the road just sort of really getting frustrated with is the text that he promotes was created by textual criticism couldn't exist without Erasmus practicing textual criticism.

Now Erasmus didn't do it consistently but Erasmus did not use not use a methodology anywhere near well

Van Cleek doesn't have a methodology outside of direct divine revelation as to what is scripture you pray about it so you know that'll come up but I was

I was really amazed to be honest with you at how that played out and so it's going to be interesting debate very very interesting it's gonna be a long evening

I can tell anyway that's coming up in and I don't think

I'm not sure if we've even grabbed what

Chris has put together yet and put it up on the website or and we should do that yes we should uh so professional here anyway that's coming up the week after and then

I preach there at the church in Laysville I think is what it's called and then

I head for Conway and Grace Bible Theological Seminary and be teaching church history the following weekend an intensive

Thursday Friday Saturday course really looking forward to that though there's not near enough time to cover like I said uh the the church that I've been teaching church history for the member last it was last week

I believe uh Tobias Reimann -Schneider I heard somebody say

Tobias Reimann -Schneider on a webcast and I'm like no Tobias Reimann -Schneider um that's the same church so the

Frankfurt Declaration he was central in putting the Frankfurt Declaration together same church that I've been teaching church history for for a couple years now and um we haven't gotten to the

Council of Nicaea yet so uh we're getting there we're getting close we're right around the corner we will finally get there but I've got to uh almost 300 years past Nicaea which means

Ephesus, Chalcedon, Constance, Melbourne um yeah and the

Antiochian School the the oh there's just so much it's complicated complicated anyway looking forward to that it's going to be uh it's going to be great um so that's that'll be the rest of this trip and then uh we're going to be heading in December of course to St.

Charles we'll be talking about the Trinity in light of current controversies um that was their suggestion not mine and I'm more than willing to do that so we'll be laying out a biblical case for the

Doctrine of the Trinity well I'm a biblical Trinitarian um and uh gonna be speaking in Texas uh

East Texas on the way back um that following week the second week in December as well and then it looks like this just right now uh there's something possibly going on in February um possible debate in there and then

I know I'm supposed to be back in Texas again in May so we'll see if you know you're still allowed to travel without the 47th

Omicron booster shot um you know maybe they'll be injecting people from drones by then who knows um the the world has the world is absolutely going crazy and uh some people are noticing it like this guy um there's only one person that's gonna watch this program is gonna know what that was but just just for him anyhow so um saw the news this morning um about grave concerns about the queen's health and so as I was driving uh from Amarillo here uh news came um

I turned on Fox News in the truck so I could hear it and you know

I've I've I'm a little stunned I I made one comment on Twitter and there's just just these vile nasty people um out there that um are spitting on the queen's grave

I don't even understand it I I blocked them all I I don't want to have anything to do with you just just go away um

I'm not stop following me I'm not I'm not interested um I've got nothing for you you know about three or four years ago

I think um I remember watching the queen's

Christmas address and I was just so thankful for the clear

Christian testimony that she gave the centrality of the cross and the work of Christ and um all the things that went along with it and of course you know she represented the the very end of that last age that last era you know the great generation

World War II it's done it's over with and I could not help but think about the leadership we have in the world today uh not just in our nation but in in the vast majority of nations and and just just thinking about duty and honor and self -sacrifice and and self -control and uh you you compare the queen to someone like Nancy Pelosi and they're not even the same planet we're not even on the same planet um

I knew it was gonna be a really sad day uh because there's there's really no one coming along Charles is a mess um he really is he's a globalist fruitcake nut case cheated on his first wife and all the rest of that stuff uh royal royal consort and um so we all know it's coming the dear lady was 96 years of age she had survived

COVID that picture of her alone masked up at her husband's funeral uh that would have been enough for most people to have gone much faster to be perfectly honest with but I remember back in 2016 the meme was going around instead of make

America great again it was uh make America uh British again I had a picture of the queen and it was like oh yeah

I'd take her over either one of these two people any day um so that does not mean that she was a roiling conservative she she really politics it's a figurehead position it's not a political position um it obviously once had a tremendous amount of authority it doesn't anymore she stayed out of a lot of that stuff and I just uh she finished well

I mean good luck to any one of you uh being under the microscope for 70 years 70 years oh my um

I see all these videos that people post of young people today that don't know

I saw one where they're asking young people about what's the holocaust they didn't know what's

Auschwitz don't know and I would imagine other than today if you had asked a lot of people who the queen was when she became queen they they wouldn't have known and they don't care you know connection to the past that's um that's the public education system for you designed it's specifically designed uh to make a people much easier to uh to control because you don't know history don't know what came before you can't learn can't learn when you don't know what came before so my condolences to everyone in the united kingdom and its protectorates and nations and commonwealth and everything you know to uh to colin smith um who you know colin you did renounce fealty to the queen so um there is that but I think today it's okay to be sad even though you you did do that um and I know

I know she was very sad about that I'm sure sure she was but uh to all of my uh

British friends and and um you know I I spent a lot of time in London when

I was still traveling the world um wonderful incredible city and um

I never saw the queen but I went by you know a number of important places uh so maybe

I ran by once while she was looking out the window who knows um but um yeah a major day a major major day no two ways about it and um again if you on twitter are going to make some kind of comment uh about about the queen to me uh if if you're looking for getting blocked uh that'll be a that'll be a good way to do it really will be

I'll be happy to do that for you if that's what you're if you if you need some twitter martyrdom we're good um we'll we'll take care of it um all right let's uh let's look at what you know what

I forgot to do uh I I got here just a little while ago like I said

I was trying to set up various things um but I had uh grabbed well

I really can't it probably wouldn't look all that good

I am very thankful that um

I had the opportunity my daughter was due on September 2nd and I was due to leave

September 6th so I figured okay I mean enough time but that little booger decided he liked it in there and um so time's going by time's going by and I I figured when

I went to bed Monday night knowing I had to pull out Tuesday morning uh that I was probably gonna not get to see the little little little guy until I get back a month from now and um so he made his appearance on Labor Day and for some reason my daughter does not think that's funny but everybody else does thinks it was appropriate to be in labor on Labor Day um and uh just under eight pounds 20 inches long

Ransom Vance is his name and already they're calling him

Ran Van Ransom Vance okay um so I got a chance to go by on my way out of town

I just routed myself a different direction and got to go by and hold the little booger and um inform him he was very quiet sleeping but I informed him um of a number of things uh but first I informed him of was that he was going to have four mommies because he has three older sisters um all of whom are more than six years older than he is one is 12 years older than he is so they're yeah now he does have one older brother to sort of help uh but yeah three older sisters that much older than you yeah yeah yeah it's gonna be gonna be a challenge for that little booger and um but it was great to hold my fifth grandchild and I sent a picture to Jeff Neal co -author of the same -sex controversy we were chatting about other things and uh well

I had contacted him because a professor that he and I both had at Grand Canyon College back in the day

Dr. Clark Youngblood had gone to be with the lord basically during my sermon on Sunday evening and um we had known he was he was gonna have major heart surgery and it was dangerous and he did not survive and so I was letting him know and so we were exchanging pictures he sent me pictures of his grandkids

I sent him pictures of my kids and it's like yeah we are really getting old aren't we we were

I don't know if I've told the story but I look back on it now I'm somewhat embarrassed but he worked at Green Christian Bookstore there was a

Green Christian Bookstore right next to Green Canyon College and when

I was building my library I can't believe I did this but I marched in there with the

CBD flyer CBD catalog you know I think they still send it out but it's a newsprint thing big huge all these books and I had all these books

I wanted to get and I basically sat down with the bookstore manager with well actually bookstore manager had

Jeff do it and say can you beat him that's not fair I'm embarrassed

I did that now but I did it I was that was what started my my library long long ago there was no such thing as Kindle back then and that means your library looked a whole lot better than it does now and but yeah

Jeff and I knew each other when we were at Grand Canyon together and he was a year ahead of me and then some reason he didn't start seminary at Fuller until a year after me so I was a year ahead of him at Fuller and so we went through a lot of stuff together he took

Hebrew after I took Hebrew and oh the memories but so we've known each other since we were both fairly young and to now be exchanging pictures of our grandkids and stuff like that it's it's good to have friends you've had for a long time because one thing

I've learned is you can think you've got friends but it's the ones who stick with you that really are your friends and you don't you don't have many of them you don't have many of them and so you better you better appreciate them while you've got them appreciate them while you've got them so little ransom is is now here and I'm going to have the real privilege and I do consider it very much privilege not sure why his wire is attacking me today but things bounce around in the this poor little thing can you imagine what it's like to experience like 20 earthquakes per day that's what that's what this thing has to do

I am going to have the privilege when I get home of baptizing one of my grandkids

I've already baptized the two of them upon professional faith and so there will be another baptism to perform when

I get home and I'm very much looking forward to that and that is a of course a a great privilege by the way

I have continued uh it made sense to continue the baptism series at Apology of Church uh we covered first corinthians 7 14 and uh mark chapter 10 suffered little children to come into me um we did those texts uh on sunday night if you've been following the baptism series that's of any assistance to you then that is available up there as well so hopefully you can take a look at that um let me um just mention just on a real practical level hopefully a benefit to especially you younger people who are uh seeking to prepare yourself apologetically be prepared to give an answer for the faith uh whether that be to people who are part of false religions or simply to the wildly and angrily secular world that is all around us now um there are certain texts of scripture that when you memorize them you can you can utilize them in many different contexts you may uh for example when when

I memorized Isaiah 43 10 as a young person the motivation for memorizing it it's part of the hundred verse memorization system for dealing with Mormons um which

I wrote but I mean so I my initial context was dealing with uh

Mormonism now that's perfectly fine necessary if you live in Utah you know and the danger there is when you memorize the text of scripture and you have a particular group in mind it's probably even more important to make sure that you look at the context context and realize that the the contextual meaning of the verse before you then make application to a particular group so if you do go back and look at uh my hundred verse memorization system for dealing with Mormons you will see that my goal there was in providing those verses to let you know what the context and meaning of each one of those verses was so you'd start there and then make application the danger is when you memorize verses within a particular context dealing with a particular group but you don't really understand what the verse is saying as a whole and we've always that has always been a central aspect of my uh teaching and apologetics and and theology and everything else is starting with that sound contextual biblical basis and then making application as the need arises to whatever group it might be that's why i remember uh reading isaiah 43 10 or maybe it was john 13 19 but reading one of the two and when i realized what the connection between the two was that jesus was quoting the first portion of isaiah 43 10 of himself in regards to his prediction of the betrayal of judas and thereby identifying himself as Yahweh and his knowledge of the future and all that other stuff when i had memorized isaiah 43 10 i had focused upon the end of the verse i had memorized all of it but when you're in salt lake city when you're standing out in mesa you're mainly going to be quoting you're going to you know when talking to a more a missionary or a group more a missionary something like that you're probably not going to quote the whole verse because by the time you get to the part you really want to get to they've already moved on so before you know as god said in isaiah 43 10 before me there was no god form there should be none after me well there's something before that uh you're you're my servant i've chosen you may know and believe and understand that i am he that's the section of jesus quotes of himself and that's why it's important to look at all of these texts in their actual context to see how they fit together and how they present to you um divine truth and so all of that is a really long introduction hey i drove a long ways there um but i didn't drive nearly as far today as i did the last two days and i mentioned the rich for the program starts and this is a lot easier uh it's it's nice to get where you're going and still feel like you're human um and most of the rest of the legs are are about this length i i don't know why i did it the other way i could have left a day early but if i left day earlier i wouldn't have seen ransom so there you go um it all it all works out in god's sovereignty all of that to say that there is the verse that i would highly recommend that you have memorized for many reasons and you're familiar with it we've talked about it recently but it's colossians 2 9 but there's a context obviously of colossians 2 9 and everybody knows colossians 2 8 as well see to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception according to the tradition of man according to the elementary principles of the world and not according to christ for in him all the fullness of deity dwells bodily and in him you have been filled who is the head over all rule and authority in whom you are also circumcised the circumcision made without hands and the removal the body of the flesh and the circumcision of christ center etc um just realize something i want you all to see i want you to stare at this window for a second because i'm not gonna be in the camera for a second um you might be able to still hear me i'll start to yell back there as i grab something there we go and you're back and i think jeffrey rice would be unhappy with me if i didn't um show you this has nothing to do with colossians 2 8 well i guess in a way it does but um i am very very thankful to have notice the blue the blue stamping there um no this does not mean i'm a denver broncos fan uh i'm not if you know your colors you know that orange and blue are optical opposites and so that's strongest contrast i just always love that and i asked jeffrey months and months ago i said if i sent you an lsb block you know this block of text um could we find a buttery soft orange leather and this is this is as soft yeah it is as soft as my mom's red king james was i still have that one too and um so this arrived last week so this is what i preached from on sunday and oh yeah that smells wonderful uh as as normal you see the uh number of ribbons that uh uh jeffrey always does and you may be wondering what it says people were asking on facebook when i posted pictures uh bebe aran logon is from peter the more sure word or the established word or the certain word the grounded word is what's on the front with the cairo and the alpha and omega around the cairo cairo being the first two letters of the term christ uh and on the spine uh you have his uh post tenebrous lux logo oops sorry and um it uh it says die out on basel you line it is necessary necessary that he reign from first corinthians chapter 15 that he reigned until his enemies made a footstool under his feet so uh once again post tenebrous lux comes through uh jeffrey rice beautiful job uh i have my nestle on 28th over there i think i still have my yeah i think that's my i forgot to take out my um nasb 77 there's no reason me to drag that along with i've got this here but um i have a number of my ptl rebinds with me and um so very thankful for uh jeffrey's uh skill and craftsmanship in um and putting these uh together and uh so i'll be preaching from that when i i'll have that with me on the desk and the debate and uh all the rest that fun stuff i may not bring it into washington dc because i've just seen too many videos about what goes on in all of these cities these days uh it is it is amazing all right sorry for that it crossed the mind and when you're my age you you you act because you're gonna forget it anyways uh and i would have left it over there well actually it's two nine um in a day where man's philosophies uh are taking many captive the traditions of men taking many captive the elementary principles the world man um that was probably a spiritual concept in paul's context but in our secular world you could make some application there the point being that all these things are not the standard the standard is christ and the only way for christ to be the standard is if he's something more than just simply an ancient religious teacher which is what the vast majority of people in our society think he was that's all they know the day when you could actually assume some level of knowledge on the part of people in our society about christian theology concerning christ is long past us and so when paul says don't be taken captive by these ways rather than according to christ so all these things are not according to christ so christ the standard all of man's philosophy all of his traditions all the elementary principle they all are subject to the the higher standard which is christ that's an amazing statement to make and in our day to the secularly minded secularly educated brainwashed um american european german the idea that an ancient religious teacher who's been dead for over 2000 years from their perspective could it all be relevant to us is is just utter foolishness and so it is in that context the apostle says for in him all the fullness of deity dwells bodily in him all the fullness of deity dwells bodily now that term deity is the term theatetos it is different than theates which is found in romans 120.

the king james translates both of them as godhead um and confuses things as a result so i think the king james at colossus all the fullness of the godhead dwells bodily or something along those lines most people have no idea what godhead is supposed to mean um but theatetos is that which makes god god the the very essence of god and so paul's assertion here is that the the play roma the the gnostics had a whole concept the play roma the in greek top play roma taste theatetos the fullness of deity which i don't know if the gnostics had already developed this theology or if this is almost prophetic that that's a that i've brought that up before paul's use of the language of the gnostics there are some who would argue i think a mosquito got me there are some who would argue i'm not used to that in phoenix okay it's just you go outside and these things flying around um i'm amongst trees there's green trees and there's no irrigation it's amazing uh the the gnostics most most people don't believe the gnostics had fully developed their theology by the time of paul well we don't know we don't have some kind of documentation to know but one thing is for certain gnosticism was the greatest challenge to the church in the first uh 300 years of the church's history and so it would not shock me and would certainly not be outside the paradigm of scripture for scripture to prepare the church even before that threat arises i mean paul's dealing with a form of proto -gnosticism here we know that much you can tell by the use of language but he actually used that term play roma the fullness of deity dwells somaticos bodily now when you understand gnosticism you understand greek dualism um the idea of anything having to do with the with the play roma which is the the fullness of well remember back when we were demonstrating that ken wilson's book is really silly uh we we talked about gnosticism valentinian gnosticism and manichaeism and it's extremely complicated we're not going to go back into that right now but remember the play roma had and again it depended on what kind of gnosticism it's not like there was a single systematic theology of the gnostics but it had these eons the lowest eons was wisdom sofia remember that she had a demi -urge she she cut she tried to contemplate the highest god separate from her male counterpart and that caused her to become pregnant and she gave birth to yaweh yaldabaoth in the term that they use um anyway it's really really weird stuff uh that's what the play roma is in uh in gnostic language and here it's being used by paul saying that in christ all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form and if the emphasis in somatic coast is bodily form that that is like that is like slapping a gnostic right across the face last thing they could ever believe because it seems like they were making room for jesus gnosticism did that is as it would roll along it would make room for the various deities that it encountered because it really wasn't making a claim about objective truth and if that's what we're doing with jesus then paul's saying you can't do that um he is the fullness of deity in bodily form so when you memorize this first of all just on a practical level um jehovah's witnesses this is not one of the primary verses that they are accustomed to dealing with i've heard they're starting to go door to door again they must have just been dying during covet um because the vast majority of their group their their growth has always been from their door -to -door encounters uh running into people that are hurting at that point they've been they've had a falling out with their church man i ran into so many situations like that in years past um so when they stopped going door to door sending letters to people uh that their numbers must have just crashed badly anyway uh drover's witnesses don't spend this is they're used to hearing john 1 1 they're used to hearing john 10 30 they got memorized responses to all of them this is not one of them they're hearing and so when you can explain the text in its context so you're not just going well this is just all about you no here's what it actually says positively and say to a jehovah's witness how could how could paul say that all the fullness of deity dwells in christ that that makes him the standard of all things when you believe that jesus is michael the archangel a created being this is also relevant to mormonism mormonism's polytheistic system cannot deal with the exalted status of christ but now today when dealing with the religion of secularism and if you haven't caught how very religious the secular system is sacraments and religious terminology and religious activity and they are very very religious uh when you think on the authority systems within secularism you can see how this is directly relevant again so many times i find myself in conversation with those the world now and they're asking why should i care about what this jesus guy you're telling me about said and i like to just go well because he left behind an empty grave and he's the only person that ever has he predicted it then he rose to the dead and he ascended into the presence of father and he's gonna come to judge living the dead that sort of gives him the authority to say yeah god created man male and female and that trumps your yale trained gender studies phd by a long shot and so we we need to have an answer to the the secularist who asks why do you put such authority in the words of christ and i think colossians 2 9 just if you're prepared to deal with joe's witnesses mormons secularists and and it's a nice short verse it just flows off the tongue and i don't suggest you memorize it in greek unless you can read greek uh but it rolls pretty well in either language and whatever translation you use um in the assertion of the supremacy of christ so grab that one memorize that one there are lots of them uh the hundred verse memorization system and i was there one for jehovah's witnesses too i think there was and i think there i think if you put 100 verse into the search engine at aomin .org