Catholicism Analysis Aftershow from M2M

CARM

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00:11

Okay, doing an after show, so just hold on. We'll get people in here a little bit. Okay, so doing this will take a little bit for people to come on.

00:33

Sorry about the – I'm listening.

00:51

Okay, bye. All right, okay, there we go.

01:14

For some reason it's not working on Rumble right now. I don't know why it isn't. So this is an after show.

01:20

We'll see if anybody shows up. I said 10 or 15 minutes, so I might just give people some time here before they come in.

01:26

I started right away. I was working on the information to get this so people can come in and talk, and hopefully some

01:32

Roman Catholics will. There we go. Get a little cool air in here because it does get a little warm in this office with four monitors and a bunch of lights.

01:43

There we go. Okay. Laura's in.

01:52

That was not 10 minutes. No, it wasn't, Laura. The Rumble one won't kick in.

01:58

Oh, I think I know why because I have to do something differently with the Rumble each time. That's what it is, and I didn't do that.

02:08

It's been a while since I set up the Rumble, so I guess we won't have the Rumble thing. I'll just do the YouTube here, and that'll be that.

02:19

That'll be good for now. All right. So you want to come on in? We'll see if anybody shows up.

02:26

We'll see if anybody shows up. I don't think they're going to. Did you watch the whole thing, Laura? Were you paying attention?

02:39

You can let me know. I'm correct. Of course I'm correct. I mean, that just goes without saying.

02:47

She wrote in the chat here. I don't know if anybody can see that. She goes, you're correct. Yeah, that's right.

02:57

All right. Got some coffee in here. It's been sitting in this cup for a while, and it kind of clumps up a little bit.

03:09

Yeah, I thought it was interesting. I noticed that some guys have trouble sticking with the time constraints.

03:17

I try and keep it right there what they said. I say, just tell me what time to stop at. I'll quit at that time. That's what

03:23

I tell them. So anyway. All right.

03:31

Let's see. It was great. Good, Joanne and Humble Clay and Laura. I'm hoping some

03:37

Roman Catholics come in. That's right, because I am so slick. You know, when you're slick, you know, what are you going to say?

03:46

It's just how it is. I like being slick. I know.

03:52

You guys are probably tired of that. Like, oh, man. Let's see what he's got here. Let me go over here.

03:59

Not that. And I'm talking and filling things in, and I got the outlines done.

04:06

Oh, that's right. They're going to tell. Let's see. Quick and slick.

04:12

That's right. During the show, you saw me doing stuff? I was working on CARM, and so I got the outlines updated for the schools.

04:25

I did them all. FYI, I'm going to tell Dave. He's going to do some stuff with it, but I did it already.

04:31

I finished all three schools' outline things.

04:39

I did it while waiting on the

04:45

Saturday Catholic analysis conference thing.

04:54

Analysis conference thing. I just did them. Oh, yeah.

05:00

Okay. I see. Okay. Well, you guys are welcome to come in here if you want. I'll put this

05:05

URL here, and you can come in and check it out. If you come in. So get this.

05:12

Okay. I'm going to tell you something. I'm really discouraged about something. I'll ramble here a little bit.

05:19

So you guys know that my daughter's car went on the kaputs. So I had this car

05:25

I've been using for years and years, 2012 Ford. And so long story short, we sold it to our daughter, and then we put the money into getting me another car with some other money we had saved up.

05:37

So we spent three, four weeks looking for a car and finally ended up getting one. We got a

05:43

Lexus RX 350. It's like eight years old. Okay.

05:49

It's been running great. So yesterday, was it yesterday? Yesterday, I go into the garage to get the car and go do an errand.

05:58

It won't start. That's interesting. It won't start.

06:04

And it goes tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, which usually is a sign of a dead battery. I'm going, what the heck is going on?

06:10

Is it because I left the lights on? But it has an auto feature, so it shouldn't do that.

06:16

And it just didn't feel right. It didn't sound right. Okay. So this morning,

06:23

I jumped it with my wife's car, jumper cables, got it running.

06:28

I let it run for an hour. You're only supposed to let it run 20 minutes to a half hour. And then that's when, let me see if I can get audio.

06:37

Yeah, that's good. And then you're supposed to charge the battery. I figured the battery was dead for some reason.

06:43

So I got an hour running, an hour. I turn it off, turn it right back on.

06:50

It won't start. And while it was running,

06:57

I looked at it, and I realized one of the headlights is out.

07:06

I don't know if it's a starter. I don't know if it's the alternator. I don't know if it's the battery. But that has me concerned, obviously.

07:16

And so one of the headlights is out. And okay. So that's not good.

07:25

And then I'm working. I get it started, and I turn it off, and it starts beeping in different ways.

07:35

Beep, beep, beep. Three beeps. And I'm like, what the heck's going on? I tried to open up the latch in the back.

07:45

I'm not going to hit the starter. I used to work on cars. You got to crawl underneath. You got to find it. You got to bang it.

07:51

It started. Something's wrong with the electrical. It's the battery or the alternator.

08:01

So anyway, I couldn't get the tailgate to open up.

08:08

I was trying to get it started. That was interesting. And then I finally got the car started.

08:16

Then it would open up the tailgate. Okay. Then once the car wouldn't start again,

08:22

I'm done with this. This is ridiculous. So I just went into the house and did a few things.

08:27

It came out like 10 minutes later, and I go in there, and the engine's running. I'm like, what the heck?

08:33

The engine's running. But I turned it off. I mean,

08:40

I just dumbfounded. So then I get in the car, and I realize it's not running.

08:47

Something in the engine is just spinning real fast, like the radiator fan.

08:53

Like, what the heck is going on? So I hit the brake and hit the turn off button, you know, start, stop.

09:00

Then everything quits. Look at these beeps. I just said,

09:07

I'm done. And so what we're going to do is

09:12

Sunday night, I'm going to jump start it again, and I'm going to drive it over to a place.

09:19

We already have it scheduled just to have it looked at by our mechanic. And so they're going to look at it.

09:27

And then that night, I'm supposed to drive it over to where I got it, CarMax, because there's a slight ticking in the engine, which can or cannot be a big deal.

09:37

But I figured since I spent that much money on a car, it's fun to just have it checked. That's all. It could be just cold lifters, which isn't a big deal.

09:45

And so I went over there, and we made an appointment. So that's Monday night. I got to take it in because they want to listen to it cold

09:51

Tuesday. So what I'm going to do is Sunday, get it started, drive it over to the mechanics place.

10:01

We have a great mechanics place. Put the key in the ignition. Tell them we're having trouble starting it.

10:07

Then have them look at it. Tell me what's wrong with it. They'll probably see the battery, the alternator, whatever it is. And then

10:13

I'm going to have them say, call me. And then I'm going to say, but don't fix it. Just get it started.

10:18

Because if it runs, it runs. And hopefully I can get it to Carmex. I'll just get my cables.

10:26

Because it ran for an hour. It ran for an hour. So I don't think it's the alternator. I think it's the battery. That's what

10:32

I think. So then I'll just drive it over there Sunday night or Monday night and leave it so that Tuesday they can check everything.

10:43

And I'm going to say, the ticking, maybe the battery, one of the headlights is out.

10:49

Why is it you guys haven't caught this stuff? And I'm concerned that it might be a lemon.

11:01

And I have 30 days to turn the car back in. I'm in my third week, like three and a half weeks. So I have this ability to say, look, you know what?

11:08

I don't trust it. So I'm going to give it back. And then go through the process of trying another car, which

11:14

I hate all this stuff. So that's what I'm dealing with today. Irritating.

11:24

Okay. I feel a little bit kind of almost better, but not really kind of. I hate car trouble also.

11:30

I used to work on cars. I mean, I used to build them. And I mean, I literally have built engines from the ground up where all the parts to the engines are in boxes.

11:40

And you put, you pull everything out, lay it out. And I mean, you put the block, you put the crank, you crank bearings.

11:47

You put the grease. I mean, all the way up and done it. I've been doing if I'd be doing that, if it isn't the batter, the batter doesn't come with a batter.

12:01

You mean pancake batter or do you mean baseball batter? Yeah, it should be good.

12:09

It's a nice car. But what I'm concerned about now is, is it a lemon?

12:16

But this model in this year is supposed to be really good. You know, the reviews say, yeah, it's a good, it's a good model.

12:21

It's a good thing. So it could be just one of those coincidences. So I'm just going to, you know, see, I love working on cars.

12:27

My body doesn't allow that anymore. I used to like working on cars, used to sleep under them. And so we also, we got the car, we got the extended warranty on it.

12:39

So that anything happens, they have to take care of it. Anything.

12:45

So if the engine needs to be rebuilt because of the lifters, praise God. I tell my wife, I say, when something goes wrong,

12:52

I say, just wait. Something usually goes better because of it. So if it goes wrong and I say the lifters, the headlight, the battery, you guys check it out.

13:02

You got to make sure it's right or I'll turn the car back in. I'll just tell them and we'll see what happens.

13:09

So maybe I'll end up something better, which I would not complain about.

13:18

Okay. Looks like none of these guys are going to show up. So let me ask you, what did you think of the presentation that they did?

13:30

They had these guys on, all of us on and talking. Did you like that? I'd like to see that. I'd like to see

13:35

Carm do it. I can arrange the same thing. I just want to know. And Carm, the lady, she did a good job of moderating.

13:44

I was going to have her do mine too. What book did the believers teach out of since the

13:50

New Testament was not completed? Old Testament. And whatever was provided for by the apostles that they had in their local area.

14:06

So did you guys like my presentation of stuff on Mary?

14:11

Oh, man, I didn't listen to other guys, but I get so irritated by Catholicism. Oh, I do not like it.

14:22

Yeah, that's interesting.

14:29

That's interesting. Okay. Seeing a new feature or something on a new program.

14:42

Oh, I get it. Interesting. Huh. Microsoft Meet is, you know, meeting thing is in my phone.

14:53

Enjoyed all the speakers. Good. She's going to replace me. Ernie and Laura and Charlie.

14:59

Not sure who the she is. Wish the Catholic would have joined. Get another few minutes. They don't. I don't come out.

15:06

I'll just bail. Yeah, I know all those guys and I can call them up and say, hey, we'll do something similar.

15:16

But I had to tell him when your time's up, your time's up. Don't just keep going. And because some of them are rather verbose and they just go way beyond.

15:27

I like to be quick and slick. Get it done. Get it done. Yeah, Carmen.

15:33

Yeah, she's great. It's worth with George. And I've met George several times.

15:39

He is such a good man of God. He is so great. And he runs ministry to Muslims.

15:47

I mean, Carmen's going to replace us. What does that mean? She's going to replace us. I mean, all of you guys.

15:53

Nah. Do Catholics have infighting, especially if they disagree with their

16:00

Pope? Yes, they do. Yeah, there are. They keep it under wraps, but there are priests and stuff that don't agree with the

16:08

Pope in a lot of areas. And it's it comes up. It does happen. I haven't documented it, but it does happen.

16:17

OK, what's this? What is this for?

16:29

Anybody want to guess? What is that? It's something special. What is it?

16:37

Michael Conan wants in. I can't see the send link. It's right there, and I'll put it in the private.

16:46

Nobody's in private chat. You can see it, but it's there. So that's it.

16:58

And it is on here. If you go here. It should be. Let me check to make sure it worked.

17:05

You're right. It's a backscratcher. It's exactly right. It's what it is. My mom had it. So it's like 40 years old or 50 years old or something.

17:16

So where's the calendar? See if it did show up.

17:23

I believe it did. Because I sent it to do it after.

17:28

So there it is. See right there to participate.

17:33

Join right there. It's all right there. List it. It's listed.

17:44

They should. OK. Excuse me.

18:02

Pretty cool. I'm waiting. And OK.

18:14

Here I am. Here I am. This is Matt. All right.

18:21

So if anybody in here wants to come in or whatever, there's the link. And you can just join in.

18:29

You don't want to do it. That's fine. Another few minutes. And if no one wants to come in,

18:35

I'll just bail. I've got things to do. As always. How can they uphold?

18:46

How can they? They can't because they can't. You're asking me to tell you how to do something that they can't do. They can't do it.

18:52

So you're saying, how possibly could it? You're saying, you know, I don't know. Lost audio. Did you all? Can you hear me?

19:01

Test 1, 2. Give me a test. I'll check the settings. Test 1, 2, 3.

19:08

No, the settings are still working. And the audio is still working. Good here. Ryan says, that's what

19:14

I was wondering, John. It's like they needed reformation from their heretical Pope. That's for sure. They do.

19:20

You know, I'm looking in the text here in the feed. So do you guys want to find or just throw some questions in on any topic?

19:28

I'll be glad to answer some of them. And if you don't want to, that's fine. OK. And I'll give it a few more minutes.

19:35

Maybe the top of the hour doesn't pick up a little. It's just an offering to the Catholics when they come in. That's all.

19:43

Oh, OK. Oh, yeah. That was good. Yeah.

19:58

You guys ever use these? Ever use this?

20:15

By the way, Ernie, you got enough now to get that computer? Nope. Almost there, though.

20:26

OK. Well, good. So nobody's ever used it.

20:31

I love the Oculus thing. 3D world. You can hit your thumb on the controller and you just walk really fast.

20:39

I like that. Close. OK. Good. All right.

20:49

OK. Excuse me. OK. Top of the hour.

20:56

If people aren't coming in asking questions, I'll just close it. Not a big deal. And Nick's not doing well today.

21:03

So. We can hear you, Matt. Don't worry. Sky apologetics.

21:08

That's really up there. That's good. No. Was my answer to the virtual headset.

21:15

Oh, OK. Yeah, I've shown people some stuff. They have one of the things.

21:21

They had it under construction again. Dinosaurs. And it's automated in it.

21:27

It walks you through. And I mean, they're around you and they're coming within like like this close. You're like, whoa.

21:33

It's awesome. And I have really bad acrophobia.

21:39

I mean, it's ridiculous. I don't like being on the sides of buildings. When I get to hotels, they say, what room do you want?

21:45

Seventeenth floor. No. Down low, please. I really have a bad fear of heights. I got traumatized when

21:50

I was a kid. Never got over it. So sometimes people have these places I go. They'll invite me to go into to chat.

21:57

Right. And they make these things sometimes like the edge of a precipice.

22:03

And I'm like, oh, you can't do it. So I tell people, what are you doing? You know.

22:11

So what's my interpretation of Revelation eight, three, it's a good verse. That's what my interpretation is.

22:18

Revelation eight, three. Another angel came and stood at the altar holding a golden censer and much incense was given to him so that he might add it to the prayers of all the saints of the golden altar.

22:29

The book of Revelation is a very symbolic book. And what Catholics like to do is take aspects of it and then say that it's literal.

22:37

And they'll say they'll say they'll do this. Okay. They'll say much incense was given him.

22:43

So that might be added to the prayers of the saints. I say, see the prayers of the saints that go to heaven and it's related to incense.

22:50

And therefore you can hear everybody. And they just do stuff like this because they're looking to find anything they can to make it fit their heretical doctrines.

23:00

You're terribly afraid of heights. Your name is Sky. Interesting. So that's what they do.

23:07

And, uh, more often than not, someone will say, what does it mean in revelation? I'll say,

23:12

I'm not exactly sure. Okay. No. So, uh, there you go.

23:22

So how many of you have a phobia? Tell me what your phobias are. Write them in. I hate clowns.

23:28

I don't like them. And heights. That's about it. Oh, and heresy. But I kind of enjoy heresy.

23:34

I don't know. Those are mine. I don't like clowns. Do not like them at all. Okay. Needles.

23:43

Yeah, I don't like needles either, but I can handle it now. So needles. Public speaking. That's easy. Public speaking is so easy.

23:51

Um, miss me in clubhouse. Well, okay. Oh, miss me.

23:57

Oh, Sky. Okay. Rats. Don't like rats.

24:03

Okay. Don't like rats. Rataphobia. My wife has claustrophobia, fear of enclosed places.

24:12

And I have, okay, Sky, how are you on airplanes? Because I'm afraid of heights, but I can be in an airplane, in a jet.

24:21

Not rational. That's what it is. How about that, that skywalk they have or something?

24:28

The skywalk, um, uh, over the Grand Canyon where you walk out over a glass thing.

24:35

Not happening. I was in Laodicea when we're doing a tour five, six, seven years ago.

24:42

Laodicea. And, um, they had this, uh, exhibit where you could walk over glass, a plexiglass, uh, ceiling to a room underneath and I couldn't do it.

24:55

I can only get near it. Oh, crap. Oh, it gets in the way. And then, uh,

25:01

Israel last time they had to go to the upper room. Uh, one is just like where Jesus was.

25:06

I couldn't go up the, the, the narrow precipice of a staircase, just swayingly hanging on an edge with all kinds of people cramming in it.

25:19

And you got to go in like a snake, living snake around this edge. I'm like, not doing that.

25:27

Do you have a stroke? And we're doing part of the tour and the bus was leaving one area, going to another area.

25:35

And I had to walk down an edge of a building with a narrow staircase with nothing underneath it.

25:43

And the only way I could do it is, uh, Eric Johnson, who runs the tour, he talked me through, I held onto him and then

25:49

I went down the stairs and, uh, I had to get as fast as I could. It really is terrifying.

25:56

I can joke about it, but there, oh my goodness, it's terrifying. Hate amusement park rides.

26:02

When I was a kid, my brother, friends, duct tape me to a merry -go -round and kept on spinning it. Yeah. See, my wife doesn't like putting closed places because her four brothers would put her under the bed and put a, a bed spread over her and then sit on the corners and it's to offer from getting out.

26:21

So she's traumatized from that. It's interesting how things do this to you.

26:27

So Joanne has a problem with rats now. Look at what came up her toilet. Yeah, that could be, uh, that could be disconcerting.

26:41

Okay. Depending on the situation. Uh, I've already written a lot on Eastern Orthodoxy.

26:47

So yeah, I could do that. Not scared of gophers.

26:57

You're not scared of snakes. Not scared of, not squeamish, but heights, you know,

27:04

I had a problem. It was the devil. All right.

27:10

I think we'll do is just close this up and I'll delete this thing cause it wasn't any good. You know, nobody showed up.

27:17

Thoughts on Jay Dyer? Oh, he's not bad for what he does. He makes mistakes and he, he, uh, he doesn't know, uh, the problems he makes logically.

27:27

And, um, yeah, I'm looking forward to having another interaction with him. I've learned a lot of stuff since I've talked to him lately and others.

27:37

So thanks a lot. What, you guys having fun in here? Having fun?

27:46

Work? Something like that? A wrench? I heard you're going to make some articles.

27:52

I don't make articles, but I do write them. Having fun too? You guys want me to tell you a joke?

28:01

I can tell you a nice joke. And if you've heard the joke, you can't, you can't give the, uh, the punchline though.

28:08

That's the only problem. I love telling this one particular joke. So if you've heard me tell you this joke before, you can't put any information in and ruin it.

28:22

All right. It's called the monastery joke. The guy at the monastery.

28:28

You guys heard that one? How many have heard me say that one? Love the

28:35

Karma family. Yeah. A lot of good people there. Fellowship's always a blessing as it is. So, uh, you've not heard it.

28:45

That's tempting. You haven't. No. Okay. Good. Probably. Okay. If you remember, go,

28:51

I have her. Don't type anything out. All right. All right. So here's, here it is. You ready?

28:57

It's one of my favorite jokes, period, but it takes a long time. It's not a short joke and you'll see why. There's a mechanic, a car mechanic, and he's moving from one job to another job, from one city to another city.

29:10

He's got his tools with him in his car. He's driving along a dark and secluded night, dark and stormy night, as a matter of fact.

29:18

And he takes a detour and he goes down this one road and it turned out to be a bad choice. And all of a sudden his car dies.

29:25

Well, he's a mechanic. He can fix it, but it's dark and very, very rainy and windy. What's he going to do?

29:31

Well, he could sit there in a car and just huddle down all night. But he sees a light through the windshield wipers going back and forth.

29:39

He sees this little light. It's the window. So he goes, I'm just going to go there and see who it is. Maybe, you know, get in, spend the night there.

29:45

And he just gets out and within 10 feet, he's drenched. And he jogs on up to this light.

29:52

And it turns out it's a big stone building and it has a name over it, something like monastery.

30:01

Wow. There's this big honking set of doors, wooden doors, and a big, you know, clanker knocker on it.

30:07

And after about a minute, this door, and there's this hooded man standing there looking at him from the darkness.

30:17

And there's the lights are kind of outside and, you know, and he's, and the man puts his hood back, goes, yeah.

30:24

Are you okay? What? Wow. I didn't expect that. And the mechanic says, you know, I'm, I'm, uh, my car, it broke down back here and I'm traveling.

30:33

I took a detour and I can fix it. I have my tools, but the guy goes, oh, just come on in.

30:39

No problem. And so a bunch of monks are there at this monastery. They're really cool guys.

30:44

And they, they love having the company, unexpected company. And they show him around and they show him, well, they give him a monk's robe to wear because he's drenched.

30:51

So they get him out of the, uh, the, uh, they get him out of the, um, Hey, Anthony, I'm telling a joke, Anthony. And I'll get you in here in a sec.

31:00

And so, uh, then, uh, he says, uh, you know, he said, oh, I can fix the car. So they, they, they, uh, they dry his clothes.

31:07

They give him a, uh, a monk's robe to wear. And he is going through the place. He loves everything. They feed him.

31:13

Everything's great. And he says in the morning, I'll get up and I'll work on my car. And so, uh, right before he goes to bed, you know, they're showing him where they got, where he's going to go.

31:21

It's a small room, just a bed and a little desk and a window, not much, but it's nice. And the head monk says to, uh, the mechanic says, um, uh, is there anything you'd like before you retire?

31:33

And he, the mechanic goes, well, no, it's okay. They go, no, no, really.

31:39

It's okay. What do you, what would you like? He goes, we're here to please. We don't get any guests. He goes, well, it's kind of embarrassing. It's over.

31:44

Nevermind. He goes, no, no, really. And so they kind of argued about it. And finally the monk guy got him to, well, what do you want?

31:51

He goes, well, please. We'd be glad to help. And he looks and he kind of looks around at the mechanic does.

31:57

He says, well, okay. He says, do you have any old cheese?

32:03

Preferably with some mold on it. And I need some barbed wire, but if you don't have barbed wire, I'll take any kind of a shoelace and I need a ladder and some cooking oil.

32:17

And the, the monk goes, well, what are these things for? He says, well, it's a family secret.

32:24

I can't tell you. It's really embarrassing. And you insisted. So that's why I'm out. Okay. So these monks, they closed, you know, he closed the door.

32:33

He kind of hides in his room and amongst, and they go and they get all this stuff. It takes a while, but they, they do.

32:38

They, they come back, knock on the door. He opens it up just a little bit and they slip the stuff in there. And, and they said, what are you going to say?

32:46

The door closes. He's like, okay. So in the morning, you know, they, they get up and he gets up.

32:52

He's a little embarrassed, but he's working on his car all day. You know, he's got the tools with him. He's getting the car ready.

32:58

And the storm had passed. And, uh, lo and behold, that he needs one more half hour or so to work on the car, half hour, an hour, and the lights gone.

33:08

Cause they don't have, they don't have candles in the monastery. So, uh, he's got to spend the night again. So they show him where they fix

33:13

Bibles, where they make wine. They show him this and they show him that and the whole bit, everything. And then it's time to go to bed.

33:19

Is there anything we can get for you? And he looks at him and they said, what is it?

33:25

What do you need? Well, I don't know. I mean, it's okay. What do you need? Well, do you have a right sandal?

33:37

That's fresh. That'd be the right one. And I need a compass, a mirror, and a ladder.

33:47

So they're all staring at this guy and he goes, but if you don't have a ladder, I'll take some Crisco cooking oil.

33:54

Okay. Okay. What do you think's for? You got to tell us. And he goes, I can't, it's just too embarrassing.

34:00

And he closes the door. And it will, they insist it. So what do they do? They're like, what is this?

34:05

They're just bumping into each other, trying to figure out this stuff. So they, they go out to the monastery and they get all these things and they, they get it.

34:12

People are like, well, what did they get? What do you need? We don't know. We don't know what it's for. Next day. He gets up.

34:19

Next day. He gets up. He's working on his car. Their monks are watching them. And he finally gets the car started.

34:25

It's going to work. Okay. He's going to drive out of there. Going to get out of there. He's totally embarrassed, but they're cool guys.

34:31

They give him a basket of fruit. They give him a nice Bible, a monk's robe. Cause he liked the monk's robe, a bottle of wine.

34:37

He's in the car and he puts it in gear. The monk, head monk goes, no, no, no, no, no. You look, you can't go before you tell us what's going on.

34:43

You have to tell us what these things are for. You've destroyed the monastery. We are now gossiping about what all these things are for.

34:51

And when brother Thomas over here, he's been on a vow of silence for five years. We said what you needed. He went, what?

34:57

And you messed him up. There's guys over here. They can't sleep at night. Look, so -and -so over there, brother

35:02

Joseph, he's got a bandage on his arm because he bumped into somebody. He fell asleep. You've destroyed us.

35:08

We're gossiping now. We're thinking that we shouldn't think. You've got to tell us what these things are for because you're killing us. So the monk, he's looking at the monk.

35:16

The monk, baggy eyes, all the guys around him. They want to know, what are these things for?

35:25

He goes, well, please tell us. He goes, well, okay.

35:30

Okay. I'll tell you. I'll tell you. Okay. I'll tell you. But you've got to promise. He's talking to this monk.

35:36

He goes, you've got to promise me, though. You won't tell anybody else. The monk says, I promise. To this day, he's kept that promise.

35:54

I wasn't even here for the whole joke. And I'm thinking, I'm wasting time paying attention because I'm not going to get it.

36:00

I missed the setup, everything else. And that was pretty good. One time

36:07

I told the guy the joke. I love this joke. And he looks at me, he goes, you do realize now

36:14

I have to kill you for this. It's great. So I was at an amusement park and I was doing a youth retreat.

36:23

And it was this ride, just a transport down from the top of the hill down to the bottom of the hill. That's all it was. The youth group is with me, like four or five kids.

36:31

And so this, I think it was like a 10 minute little ride. And so I started telling this joke to these kids.

36:36

And the entire car, the transport car went quiet. They're totally listening to the jokes.

36:42

I raised my voice so everybody could hear it. This kid's going to his dad, what are they for? What's these things for? He goes,

36:47

I don't know. Let's listen. So I got this whole thing. I timed it so that the punchline came in right when the doors opened.

36:56

To this day, he's kept that promise. People are staring at me for five seconds.

37:02

They go, oh, man. And they go walking out. And I started thinking about this the next day.

37:08

Because the people are waiting to get on this little transport that goes like this up the hill. And people coming out were all moaning.

37:16

Oh, man. Oh, jeez. I just wonder what they were thinking. Okay, Anthony, sorry.

37:23

I was just going to shut it down. I said, you guys want to hear a joke? Joke in the meantime. And here you are. Yeah, I mean, whatever you are interested in doing.

37:31

I don't want to throw anything up. I just thought maybe some lingering questions were around.

37:38

Maybe there's some interesting festivities going on. Other than that, I'm happy to fix myself some food.

37:46

So you did soteriology, right? No, I talked on the clarity of Scripture. Oh, that's right. Perspicuity of Scripture.

37:52

That's right. And it was my intention to pull no punches. Good. Good for you.

37:59

I talked about a great number of things. One of the things that I talked about, and I thought, you know, this needs to be addressed.

38:06

It annoys me to no end, is you've probably run across this. Roman Catholics, in order to prop up the magisterium of Rome, its necessity, and so forth, they, of course, attack the clarity of Scripture.

38:17

And they'll say it's even unclear on cardinal doctrines like the

38:22

Trinity, the personhood of the Spirit, the way of salvation. I mean, I read this over and over again.

38:29

It makes me want to go crazy every time I read it. Most recently, I was looking at this book by Catholic Casey Chalk called

38:37

The Obscurity of Scripture. And he talks about how he was reading the works of N .T.

38:42

Wright and a bunch of other people, and he was all confused about salvation. So this led him to doubt the clarity of Scripture.

38:49

Well, anyways, I quoted a number of Roman Catholics, Carl Keating, Patrick Madrid, a lot of these guys saying

38:55

Scripture is not clear on the Trinity. And so one of the reasons I wanted to do this is because, number one, it's not true.

39:04

Number two, it undermines. It's not a slight matter. It undermines the confidence or the basis that Christians can have for confidence in this is true and from God.

39:14

Number three, it actually gives some oomph, if you will, to the cults.

39:20

A lot of cultists will quote these things from Rome and say, see, it's a man -made doctrine. Rome is admitting it's not in the

39:25

Bible and that it comes from their authority. And of course, that's irrelevant to us because we don't accept it on Rome's authority.

39:32

We don't think it's absent from the word or unclear in the word. But they also like to blame us for the proliferation of sex.

39:39

When they say there's all these Protestant denominations, they're including JWs, Mormons, Christadelphians, all these heretical groups that are just like them.

39:48

They deny the clarity of Scripture. You need to listen to their prophet. You need to listen to their group. And they're following Rome and believing that the

39:56

Trinity is not clearly in the Bible. So I'm thinking this needs to be exposed just for the sake of that. And then

40:01

I also thought, you know, it'd be good to challenge a Roman Catholic who believes this sort of thing. I'd be interested in debating a

40:09

Roman Catholic on whether or not the Trinity is in the Bible. Wouldn't that be an interesting debate? That would be. Or maybe you could defend how it's not clear.

40:16

Well, if it's not clear, how do you know it's there? Yeah. So that's one thing

40:21

I thought. It was just a small part of it, but it was a significant part, I think, because I think every Christian ought to look at that and just recoil from it and be like, this is, you know.

40:31

If you're a Christian and you see the Trinity in the Bible, then you know Rome's doctrine is in error. I was a

40:37

Christian. I became a Christian in 1993. I think you've heard my story. I was incarcerated.

40:43

I was running with gangs, got in trouble, started reading the Bible. And the Trinity was all over it to me.

40:49

I believed it. I'm not pretending I was an expert in all things biblical, but it was there.

40:55

I understood that this is who God is and many other things Rome says are unclear. And so I'm thinking

41:01

I didn't have to hear from a Roman Catholic priest to know these things. It was later that I talked to a

41:07

Roman Catholic priest for the first time and heard about it. I mean, prior to that, I did come from a

41:12

Catholic family, but we never participated in anything. I didn't know anything. So anyways, I'm just saying that it's incredible to me, you know, for people to say this sort of thing when

41:21

I know that it was clear enough to me to believe it. And it was clear enough that I was always capable of defending it against cultists without any need for the

41:32

Roman church. You know, since I was 17,

41:38

I was a believer. I'll be 67 here next month, so almost 50 years. But the

41:45

Trinity, I don't remember ever having to learn it. It's just like, you know, someone told me what it was,

41:52

I'm sure, at one point. I went, yeah, that makes sense, because you read the Bible. You know, you read the

41:57

Bible, and that's just what it says. It's just, yeah, he's God, and Jesus is God, and the Father is God, and the Holy Spirit is

42:03

God, and they're divine and all these things. That's it. You know, I have a friend that reminds me.

42:09

I asked him once, we've been friends for years, and I said, are you Reformed in your theology? He goes, oh, yeah.

42:14

I said, well, where'd you learn that? He goes, from the Bible. No one told me. I just looked at it, and it all made sense.

42:20

I think that's the case. I remember other things. I won't be too specific, but I remember people, at times,

42:26

I'd say something, and they'd put a label on it, and I'm thinking, who's that? Right? They'd mention some person's name.

42:32

They'd mention something, and I'm thinking, I don't know who you're talking about. I've never read this guy in my life, never even heard his name.

42:37

I just believe this, because I read it here in the Word. And, you know, so even apart from hearing the word

42:45

Trinity or hypostatic union, I'm not saying there's no usefulness to these terms.

42:50

Or there's no benefit from learning these things from others in history. I think that's all legitimate. It's just pretending that you can't get this from the

43:00

Word, when that's where these people all claim to have gotten it. So, yeah. Yeah.

43:07

I liked what you said, though. I was listening, and going, those are good points about the clarity of Scripture.

43:13

It's there. And how I liked what you did, using the Scripture to interpret the Scripture, and so many citations of that.

43:19

It's great. But I always tell people when they say the Bible's not clear about this, you need an authority. Well, where'd you get that?

43:25

What interpretation of Scripture did you use to say you need an authority to interpret Scripture? Because if you think about that, you're submitting everything to your own personal opinion about what authority has to be.

43:36

Where do you get this from? They don't realize that they, you know, they undo their whole argument just by asking the question.

43:43

Yeah, that reminds me of another point that I didn't make, but thought of including before I realized

43:49

I don't have enough room for all this stuff. But I thought of how often

43:54

Roman Catholics will turn right around and pretend that certain doctrines distinctive to them are clearly in the

44:03

Bible. Right? So, for example, the Mass, or transubstantiation. They'll say, this verse is clear.

44:09

This is my body. Right? And I'm thinking, here's a group that attacks the clarity of Scripture because its doctrines aren't there.

44:16

Then it turns around. It wants to try and get a Protestant to believe these things. So, they use the

44:21

Bible as an authority, but they know they can't do that unless they can claim it's clear. So, for a moment, they set aside their

44:28

Romanist assumptions and, you know, run with it being clear, not realizing what they're doing.

44:35

In fact, this is funny. So, I mentioned this book. This is one of the first things I mentioned in this book, or I noticed in this book.

44:42

I was reading the blurbs. It has a number of Catholics celebrating how good the book is. Right? So, there's

44:47

Father Cajetan Cudi. There's Eduardo Echeverria, Paul Figpen, a number of Roman Catholics.

44:58

There's five that are given here. There's a forward and so forth. What's interesting is four out of the five celebrate how clear this book is.

45:07

They're like, this is one of the most lucid, clear books. I'm thinking, what in the world?

45:14

So, God's Word, the God who made man's mouth, who made man's ears, who made man's tongue, he can't speak clearly.

45:22

But this guy, I mean, he's God's gift to clarity here. Well, you know,

45:29

I don't know if you mentioned it, but Mark 4, 10 through 12, why do you speak in parables?

45:35

So, you will not believe and be forgiven. So, sometimes people, when they bring that issue up, well, it's not as clear as it needs to be.

45:41

And sometimes I'll say, maybe it's because you're not predestined to be one of God's sheep. And he wants to make sure that you're not going to understand, because only the sheep of God can hear his voice and understand what it's meant.

45:52

And I go to that verse for it, and it shakes them up. One thing I would point, I think

45:57

I made the point. I don't know how I made it exactly. But it certainly occurred to me to do this.

46:04

And I did say something about the parables. But the interesting thing is, so sometimes people mistake an account of somebody being confused in the first century with the scriptures being unclear as they tell us about the event.

46:22

So, for example, the parables, the parables tell us that Jesus said these things and he said them so that those without wouldn't understand.

46:28

But in the account of the parables, Jesus interprets them, right? So, in scripture, we have the interpretation.

46:37

It's sort of like the book of Job, right? If all you had to go on is what

46:43

Job and his three friends had to go on, you'd be at a bit of a loss. But we don't.

46:48

We have the introduction to the book. We have the first two chapters telling us about Satan and his challenge and the test and all that kind of stuff.

46:56

So we're not running into this blind. It's the same thing with John's gospel. It's not like we're not in the same position that Nicodemus was in or the woman at the well was in or the

47:07

Jews in John 8. We have the whole gospel. We have the prologue introducing the theme of the book.

47:14

We have the epilogue. We have the thesis statement at the end. These are written so that you might believe. So just because it records somebody on an occasion being confused doesn't mean that scripture leaves us confused.

47:27

It disambiguates itself. You know, I just thought of something. One thing you said reminded me of something else.

47:34

So this is a little off topic but not. I put in chat a Church Fathers cross -reference thing.

47:39

I don't know if you've seen that. It's an incredibly valuable resource. If you go to that,

47:46

I put the link in there. You can open it up. Like, for example, if you go to John 3 .16, whatever, and you type it in, it's brilliantly done.

47:54

It's done by Catholics. And what it does is it finds basically every reference in the

48:00

Church Fathers to that particular verse and what they say about it. I just want to pass that along as a neat find.

48:09

I've been using it for a couple of years. So if you type in, like, John 3 .16, and then it gives you a whole bunch of stuff.

48:16

I'll put it in for everybody else, too, if you want to see it. But it is really useful. Very useful.

48:22

Yeah. I've been gathering up. I kick myself for not starting this a long, long time ago.

48:31

I've been gathering up quotes for different things to have them handy. So, for example, when we were doing the thing,

48:36

I had a lot of things at my disposal. But I should have been doing this 30 years ago. I have always been able to rely on being able to remember things

48:47

I read. So I can easily pick up a book that I read 20 years ago and find what I'm looking for. But I should have been.

48:54

It's a lot of work now. Like, if I write an article, I got to go grab this book. And I got to try and hold it open while I'm typing. And do all this other stuff that I'm sure you've done 100 times, 1 ,000, 10 ,000 times.

49:05

But I'm thinking, man, if I was just busy long ago writing, collecting all these things,

49:11

I'd have so much easily at my fingertips. And I know, actually, now that I'm thinking about it,

49:17

I'm talking to you about this. You're the guy that's actually made reams of books and other things for notes and all that kind of stuff.

49:24

But I really wish I had done that. Because 30 years of reading, it would have been really handy to have all that just at my fingertips.

49:34

Well, heck, my notes on Catholicism, everything. And there's a lot of repetition in there. But it's 179 pages in Word.

49:42

I'd send it to you. Because it's all, hey, this is what it is. And I just put things logically and put it in order and repetition and just list things.

49:50

But I'm always looking for quotes. Who was it saying some stuff? It's like, oh, I didn't know about those quotes.

49:56

There's so much. I've told people, I said, you could spend your whole life studying Catholicism.

50:01

It's so vast. It's so deep. There's so much stuff there. But it's horrible.

50:08

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, it's interesting, too. I'm sure you know that. Well, you mentioned being,

50:14

I think you said Mexico. You mentioned somewhere where you spoke Spanish to a lady. When you go to these other countries where Protestantism has had less of an impact, the

50:24

Catholicism there tends to look a good bit different. So I was considering with my wife as I was getting out of seminary, going and helping with a church plant in Italy.

50:37

My family background's Italian. Oh, you speak Italian? No, I was going to learn it.

50:43

I mean, a little bit, but nothing good enough to do all the work

50:50

I'd need to do. So it'd be a lot of work, but I was willing to do it and eat the good food while I was there learning it.

50:57

But we went there, and what changed it is our youngest daughter had gotten sick, and we had to provide care for her, and we knew we couldn't go over there and get that care for her.

51:07

So we stayed back here, and I started doing prison work. But anyways, we went there initially, spent several weeks there, and we were going into these churches.

51:17

And I was like, I have never in my life seen some of this stuff in Roman Catholic churches back home.

51:24

I mean, obviously, I haven't been in every Roman Catholic church. I can't say that there's no church here that has it, but it was like, if some of these people could see this, they would be mortified.

51:33

This is like ghastly, some of this. Like there's dead bodies and sarcophagi, you know, right up there in the church.

51:40

Like you're sitting there in the middle of the church with these dead skeletons and stuff, you know, like sitting there on either side of the supposed altar, all sorts of things.

51:51

Mary's larger than life, of course, huge statues of Mary, always an itty bitty Jesus in her arms and dependent and all that.

51:59

But everything is just, you're inundated with it. And you could see how this dominates their whole life.

52:05

And, you know, and of course, Mary is the central stage of everything.

52:13

Yep. Yeah, there's a Catholic church here I've gone into a couple of times before.

52:19

And you walk in and to the right are statues of saints. And you go through and you do stuff and to the left, there's pictures and stuff like that.

52:27

In the middle, you go up, there's a big statue of Mary, that's central. I mean, of Jesus, excuse me, that's central.

52:32

But just off to his right is Mary, a big statue of Mary, not as big as him, but Mary.

52:39

So that when you're up there worshiping Jesus, you're seeing Mary next to him.

52:46

And, you know, I remember once I did prison ministry and I was talking, we had to go for two hours.

52:52

And the Catholic priest was preaching and teaching for an hour. Then he had to sit while I was preaching and teaching for an hour.

53:00

Well, you know, yeah. And so the Catholic prisoners were there. Then we'd swap.

53:05

And this is how it was. You had to take it. You know, that's what it works in prison ministry. So this guy, the

53:12

Catholic priest, he offered a prayer to Mary. He prayed to Mary, you know, Oh, Mother Mary, blah, blah, blah, this and that.

53:18

Please be with us. Please help us. Please, you know, and the whole bit. And so on the way out, we're talking,

53:23

I'm never going to forget this. And I said, so I'm just curious. I'm trying to be very polite.

53:29

Why did you pray to Mary? We didn't pray to Mary. But I thought you did.

53:37

And he said, no, we didn't pray to Mary. I said, well, what'd you do? We showed her veneration. I said, so if you were to say,

53:46

Jesus, please help me. Please. I repeated the sentence. He said to Mary, Jesus, whatever it was.

53:53

I forgot now, you know, is that praying to Jesus? He goes, well, yes. I said, you said the exact same thing, except to Mary.

54:01

It was, you weren't praying to Mary. I was done at that point because it's just the incredible irrationality.

54:09

That reminds me of, so I mentioned my context. I was converted in prison.

54:17

So I was reading the Bible. I read the Bible through repeatedly while I was there. So after a year of reading the

54:23

Bible. Now understand, I'm talking about having a lot of time on my hands. So I read my, you know, my

54:29

Bible every day, many hours a day. I got through it many, many times after a year had ended.

54:36

So this was the first time in the location I was at that a Catholic priest was coming out. And I don't really know much.

54:43

I don't know much about Rome from my Italian background. And I just assume he's like another pastor.

54:50

So I was eager. I was eager for him to come out. I'm going there with full expectation of hearing good, you know, preaching and so forth.

54:57

And we go in there and he gives this 10 minute little homily. And I was like, well, that was a letdown.

55:05

You know, I'm excited somebody's come out here. It's eight hours in the middle of nowhere. And he gives this little 10 minute homily.

55:11

And then he stops and he starts to ask questions. And here was his question. He said, how does a person get faith?

55:18

And I thought, oh, that's an easy one. I know this one. I thought this to myself. And I said, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

55:26

And he said, without any hesitation, he said, no. And he starts looking around the room. And I'm over there flabbergasted.

55:33

I'm like, what are you talking about? I just quoted Paul. I literally just quoted Paul. How do you tell me no?

55:40

And as he's looking around, he's finally exasperated. And he says, through baptism.

55:45

And I thought, what are you talking about through baptism? You know, set aside the question of infants and that question, right?

55:53

There's debate among Christians. But how does an adult coming to baptism presuppose his faith?

56:02

Why would he come unless he already believes? It's an assumption of the activity, right?

56:08

But it explains, in part, if you know anything about church history, I don't mean you, but like anybody, right, in general, why some

56:16

Roman priests and so forth forced baptized people, because they thought they were giving them faith through this act.

56:24

Well, anyways, I was so flabbergasted. I was like, I don't understand how this guy just disagrees with me. Well, then he got to the real business.

56:31

I didn't understand at first that the reason the homily was only 10 minutes and then a few minutes of questions, I didn't understand it was so short, because the real business was when he was going to do the mass.

56:43

So he gets up and he starts to do all the hoopla. And I'm looking at this thinking, well, this is an interesting sight to see.

56:51

What do all these things mean? And so I'm watching him. And at one point, you know, besides moving the little thing around, it's got smoke coming up and doing all this other stuff.

57:01

He raises the host, the wafer, right? He raises it up and then he bows down.

57:09

And I think I'm misunderstanding what's going on here, because it looks to me like he's bowing down to a piece of bread.

57:15

So, I mean, I don't get it. I'm looking at this, I'm like, what in the world? It just looked extremely odd to me.

57:23

And, you know, again, I knew my Bible. I had read my Bible many, many times over, and I saw nothing of this in there.

57:30

So I don't know what's going on. I leave there. I'm thinking this is absurd. I'm not likely to go back to this sort of thing again.

57:37

And then I go back to my bunk and I continue to read. I picked up a book I had been reading, Foxe's Book of Martyrs.

57:43

I'm sure you're familiar with it. And I happen to be just getting to that section where it's talking about how

57:49

Protestants were persecuted by Romanists for refusing to partake of the mass because it was idolatry.

57:55

And it was there that I learned for the first time that Roman Catholics believe that when the priest utters the words of consecration, hoc est corpus meum, this is my body, they're actually causing the bread and the wine to turn into not only the actual body and blood of Christ, but also his soul and his divinity.

58:17

So that when you chew on these elements, you are literally gnashing Christ with your teeth and ingesting him and, you know, the rest of the process.

58:26

And I'm looking at this. I'm like, that's what that guy, that's why that guy was bowing down. That's why he was doing what looked to me so hideously idolatrous.

58:34

I couldn't believe it. It is. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I remember once I got asked to to be in a

58:43

Catholic wedding. It's an interesting story. But I was in a Catholic wedding and I told the guys, I said, look, you know,

58:48

I'm a strong Protestant and I'm not going to do a lot with rituals. I'll be in your wedding to help this guy out a great deal.

58:53

And he really is appreciative and he really wanted that and blah, blah, blah. And so I was in this wedding party and they were all

59:00

Catholics and they went over to bow before the Statue of Mary and give thanks and have

59:06

Mary bless the thing. And I just stood there by myself as they all went over and they're all staring at me.

59:13

Why am I why is this guy not going with everybody else? The guy wasn't offended. He knew. But it's just more ritual, more symbol, more paganism.

59:23

That's what I call I call Catholicism. I call it a pagan religion. It's so full of paganism.

59:30

And but one of these, I think, is it's just ridiculous. Our sacramentals, these devices, these objects that people will bless, you know, the bishop might bless one or the cardinal might bless one or whatever it is is blessed and you wear it and you get grace through it and it protects you from evil.

59:50

That's a talisman. That's what a talisman is in the occult. You have a certain object that you wear upon your body and then it protects you from evil.

01:00:01

That's what the Mormons have. They're sacred garments. I said, it's a talisman.

01:00:07

It's because you're pagans. Oh, man. And it's rampant.

01:00:16

It's rampant. And there was a lot of good stuff in the conference.

01:00:21

That's why I was encouraging people at the end because I'm thinking, you know, this is a four hour, five hour thing. A lot of people probably didn't spend their whole

01:00:28

Saturday sitting there and popped in here and there. And I thought, I got to make sure people go back and listen to all that because, you know, there's a lot there to digest.

01:00:38

There is. And I'm thinking of, I don't know what you do with this sort of stuff, but I usually go back.

01:00:44

If I've participated, I think I have some rights to it. So I go back and I take the video and I'll make other videos out of it.

01:00:51

You know, I'll splice it up and take, you know, portions of it and make smaller clips for the people that don't have the stamina to listen longer or don't have the time perhaps.

01:01:05

So I'll probably do that. I'll ask George if we can do that. I mean,

01:01:11

I just like to ask him. If he does, I want to take my segment and put it someplace too. What we've been doing for the radio show,

01:01:17

I sit right here and do the radio. And now we've got a guy who'll take segments of what I say in the radio and make it tremendous stuff.

01:01:24

So that's nice. One of these days, I'll get a guy that can do that. Well, yeah, it's evolved.

01:01:30

We've got a lot of people who are helping. In fact, we've got people in here who help. There's Ernie and there is

01:01:37

Joanne and there's Laura. And they've been with us for a while and helping a lot.

01:01:44

And I'll tell you, I don't know if you know what it's like to be in ministry because there's a lot to do.

01:01:50

I don't know if you're aware of that. And, you know, I'm hoping tech gets into cloning.

01:01:57

I approve of cloning because I want to clone myself. My poor wife couldn't handle it, but I want to clone myself to be able to do all this stuff.

01:02:07

My wife just goes, I don't know, maybe she will. I mean,

01:02:13

I know part of why it's hard is because it's kind of like, you know what you want to do.

01:02:21

And telling somebody else that takes the same time of you doing it in a sense.

01:02:26

I mean, it just, it, you know, so it's, it's kind of hard, you know, just delegating things.

01:02:34

But you know, and then there's other stuff. I mean but for me, here's part of the problem.

01:02:41

So I, I have sort of a, my mind can focus on certain things and it's worthless when it comes to other stuff.

01:02:50

So if, if it comes to reading, love to do it, do it every chance

01:02:56

I get writing, teaching that sort of thing. But there has to be some medium, right?

01:03:03

There, you know, so like this using this, I'm thinking of if we're doing it online or something and anything that involves me learning the steps for editing a video, like I'll do that to some degree, but I hate spending a lot of time on that watching videos.

01:03:22

I could make great videos if I just take some time to figure out how to do that, I bet. But anytime

01:03:28

I get doing it two minutes in, I'm like, I don't want to do this. I want to read this book. I'd rather teach people this stuff than edit a video about it.

01:03:37

Do you have a newsletter list? No, I've never done that. I should.

01:03:43

You absolutely should. It's one of the most helpful things, a newsletter list. And so each Tuesday I do a newsletter and we have a few thousand on it.

01:03:52

And one of the things someone suggested is a wishlist for Karm. And when it's empty, people actually contact me and say, put something up there.

01:04:04

So, you know, I've got stuff that I've ordered, you know, like this right here is just some wipes, you know, and someone sent them, but you put a wishlist up and you get the newsletter and it helps.

01:04:15

Not that we're trying to get that for that, but I mean, people really want to help. There's a lot of people want to help. And so with your website, you should get a newsletter, a signup thing, and there's different ways of doing it, but that's, it's just, it's worth it because the benefits are great.

01:04:29

Sky says, uh, if he needs clips, I'm your guy, you know, he's talking to you.

01:04:35

So how could he get ahold of you? Let me tell you though, I've learned this over the years.

01:04:42

Always check them out. Always vet them because a lot of times they don't know what they're getting into and you got to know something else too, but you know, you got to know this.

01:04:51

I warn people, you want to work with Karm? You're asking for trouble, spiritual trouble. You're asking for trouble.

01:04:56

You better know what you're getting into. Pray about it. But how can they get ahold of you? Yeah. So let me see.

01:05:02

I don't know if I'm able to put links in there. You probably haven't blocked like I do. I can put it in there in the chat or the main or put it in private and I'll do it.

01:05:12

Yeah, I put, okay. I'll put it in private. I just put my email. So see, part of it is, uh, Oh, what is that?

01:05:20

Um, Oh, so I, um, I haven't, that's, that's just my email where he can contact me, but I haven't, um, put my email out there generally because it's,

01:05:33

I know how busy I get and I've tried. It's not that it's impossible for people to get it.

01:05:38

I just think, you know what, I'll, I'll sort of, I'll make it a little difficult to the people that just want to troll and send me evil, nasty comments.

01:05:47

We'll have to work at a little bit. It'll, it'll get rid of some of those. And then the people that really do want to contact me for a legitimate reason will, you know, won't have a problem looking at it.

01:05:57

But I, I gave the, I gave my email, I'm fine on this. Yeah. On this, you know, it's, uh,

01:06:03

I'm not on my channel. People would have to really be looking for it to come over here and get it.

01:06:08

Right. I mean, they're not going to do that. So, and I'm just saying, I'm not opposed to having it out there.

01:06:14

It's just, I'm sure you get a lot of hate mail and I, I get so busy.

01:06:20

It's hard for me to keep up with certain things. So I just try to limit it when I can. There's nothing to do.

01:06:26

What I've done is, um, cause I'm a computer tech kind of guy, but I have 20 email addresses of all different kinds and in Outlook, Microsoft Outlook, I can access them all and then

01:06:40

I can drag from one place to another place and it will transfer among those email accounts.

01:06:45

So you can have Yahoo, you can have, uh, AOL. I don't know if you can have AOL, you can have

01:06:51

Hotmail and Google Mail and things like that. So I actually have an email address that is for private and I only give it out to certain people.

01:06:58

Like I'd give it out to you and I give it, and you know, a few other people. And that's one of the things I have.

01:07:04

And so you can make private ones and you can say, only use this one. And then I can show you if you wanted how to use

01:07:11

Outlook and you access all of them. It is awesome. And you can search through every one of them for a particular word or phrase and they'll go through every single email account that you've got.

01:07:25

Hmm. So I have an Outlook email. I have too many emails as part of the problem because of different stuff

01:07:32

I've done over the years. Like I had a blog one time and then that had an email that came with it.

01:07:37

And then I had an AOL one. That one's from like 30 years ago or so. I had,

01:07:42

I still have it. I didn't want to get rid of it because I have old friends. What if they, after 10 years of silence, decide to contact me?

01:07:49

I, you know, so I got that. Then, you know, every time I've had to get a new computer or something, at least it used to be that it would come with like some email or something.

01:08:00

Like when I got an Apple, I got an Apple product and it came with an Apple email or I do prison ministry.

01:08:09

So I have a prison ministry email. It's just too many emails. They all add up and they're all over the place.

01:08:16

And then some of them I have sitting there that I forgot the email passwords to. You can get those reset and you should use,

01:08:25

I don't know if you know this, but I was a computer tech for years at Hewlett Packard so I can build them.

01:08:31

I can do all kinds of stuff. So you don't like Mac, I bet. I just don't use it. I'm a PC guy.

01:08:37

I just don't use it. But I know it well. Every person I know that knows something about computers tends to not like Macs.

01:08:46

With Mac, I've just never worked it. But I use PCs and I can build them from the ground up and I know all kinds of tricks.

01:08:54

I know all kinds of stuff. But I could always, if you were on a PC, I could help you. I could tell you what to do, what not to do and all kinds of stuff.

01:09:01

But I love computers. I had a job just fixing computers for years. But the thing about Outlook is

01:09:09

I think you can do it at Outlook .com also. You can put all your accounts in. But if you have Office 365, for example, you can get the feature or just order it and then you can go in and put all your email accounts in there.

01:09:21

I'm telling you, it is super easy. In fact, when I was trying to find the link for today's show,

01:09:26

I put in George's name and I went through every account looking for his name and I couldn't find the link.

01:09:32

So I have his phone number and I texted him. And I have on one of my screens, I have four 27 -inch monitors.

01:09:38

And one of them, I have my connection to my phone. See, I'm a tech guy. See this phone right here? Okay. So I got one of those.

01:09:48

And so it's connected to my computer. I just typed it in on my keyboard and then he responded.

01:09:53

Oh, here it is. Here it is. And that was it. So and then this right here, this is

01:09:58

I have a speech recognition program. I paid hundreds of dollars for it. And this is a $200 setup because I can go 180, 200 feet with it and I can talk.

01:10:10

And it's free. I mean free from the Accord. So I can go all over the house and have a conversation with you.

01:10:19

And so I'll use that in my program for text. So I can just talk like this and it will go into the text.

01:10:27

And I can write books with it. I can do whatever I want. I just hit enter. And it goes into the text that fast.

01:10:36

And so and I do all my books now in Kindle.

01:10:42

I've got like 600 books in Kindle. I used to have a lot of books like you do. And I've had thousands.

01:10:49

I'm like, I don't use them and I don't know where to find something in them. I got to sit there and go through the index. But if I have it on Kindle, I open up a book to a phrase within two seconds.

01:10:58

I'll find it constantly. And that's why I go to Kindle and stuff like that.

01:11:06

So I had a hard time getting into some of the digital stuff.

01:11:13

Being so used to just holding a book and stuff like that. And part of the difficulty is for me, every page looks different.

01:11:21

Every page looks different to me. So I can remember where I read it. I could open a book

01:11:26

I read 20 years ago, like I said. And I'll pretty much know where it's at on the page.

01:11:32

I'll know if it's in the first 10, 20 pages or in the middle or in the end.

01:11:38

That just sticks with me. And what happens with digital devices, when I look at them, the page is always different.

01:11:44

It changes on you, right? You turn it one way, it changes. You turn it another way, it changes. But having said all that,

01:11:52

I see the value in having the digital stuff and wish I could get into it. There have been times when I have broken down and gotten a digital book.

01:12:00

One, because it's so quick. I wanted a book quicker than it was going to come in the mail. So I broke down and got it on digital.

01:12:06

And then I was able to skip around. I was able to, I mean, in the sense of like looking things up and just, obviously you could thumb through a book if you have it.

01:12:16

But it was more like I could skim around with some,

01:12:24

I knew what I was, I could look for something deliberately, right? I could put it in like you're saying. And I could just tell from this that there's so much that's useful about this that I really wish

01:12:34

I was more inclined to that. But yeah, I don't think it's going to happen.

01:12:40

People are used to what they're used to. I used to know a guy named Perry Pellegrini. What was his name?

01:12:47

He's an apologist down in Southern California. Oh, I hate it when I remember, forget his name. He used to read a book a day and then review it in his dream.

01:12:56

In his dreams, he'd go over it. It took him years to develop that habit. It took him years. He told me he did that.

01:13:02

You review it in his dream? Passantino. Oh, Gretchen Passantino and Bill or Bob?

01:13:10

The guy, he told me. His wife's name is Gretchen.

01:13:16

Yep. I do remember them from CRI back in the day. What's his name? But he told me that that's what happened.

01:13:24

He also told me a good story once. I think it was Machen. I'm trying to remember which name it was, but Gretchen Machen, I think it was.

01:13:31

The Greek scholar was over his house. I think it was him. I may have got the name wrong, but that caliber, that level.

01:13:38

Maybe it was Machen. Anyway, the Jehovah's Witnesses came to his door.

01:13:46

Well, Machen or whoever. What's the other Greek, old Greek book they were using? Prokoine, Dante.

01:13:53

Mouse? No, way before that. Way before that. Like 40, 50 years ago.

01:13:59

Anyway, I can't remember his name. It's a green book. I can see it. I got it when I'm in the garage. I do believe Machen has a

01:14:04

Greek text. Okay. Yeah, grammar or something. Maybe it was Machen. I don't know.

01:14:10

I'll just use him as the example. Bob Passantino. Bob. Bob said that Machen, I guess it was

01:14:17

Machen, was over his house one Saturday. Knock, knock. The JWs are there. Bob goes to the door and there's

01:14:24

Jehovah's Witnesses. Here's the Greek scholar right here. Maybe this guy could talk to you about this stuff.

01:14:30

He comes up. Bob told me, he said, the JWs actually quoted

01:14:36

Machen. I'd be great. Bob's going, just watch it.

01:14:45

And he said he couldn't believe it. It was just too perfect. And Machen goes, no, that's not correct. He goes, yes, it is. We've quoted a scholar,

01:14:50

Machen, who says blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they're actually going to fall here. But he just reeled them in as far as he could.

01:14:57

He goes, well, I know for a fact that that's not correct. It's taken out of context. Well, you can't because our scholars, blah, blah, blah.

01:15:02

He goes, I'm Machen. That's me they're quoting. And he then proceeded to tell them why.

01:15:09

And the whole bit. It was a great story. It was just a great story. I love that story. Yeah, I imagine he probably had opportunity for, well, not that that exact thing would happen very often, but it probably was quite surprising every time somebody popped up on his door and he could pull out his own grammar and say, here's a great scholar that says this.

01:15:37

I remember this one JW group. You know how they used to do it? I don't know if they still do. I live in an area where there's not a lot of JWs, so I haven't been able to keep up with new tactics.

01:15:49

Yeah, same here. Back in the day, the opening used to be for a lot of them, one of the openings would be something like, do you know

01:15:57

God's true name? We know God's true name. We use God's true name. Other Christians don't and so forth.

01:16:04

And then they'd quote all the passages where it talks about the name and how it would be your name and this sort of thing.

01:16:10

And so one of the things I started doing when I would meet Jehovah's Witnesses is I would say, do you guys know the name of the

01:16:18

Holy Spirit? And they'd say, what? And I'd say, yeah, the name of the Holy Spirit.

01:16:24

And they'd say, what are you talking about? He doesn't have a name. He's not a person. And I'd say, well, wait a minute.

01:16:30

You guys are supposed to be Jehovah's organization and you don't know the name of his spirit? That's a problem,

01:16:36

I think. And I'd drag them along a little bit.

01:16:41

I'd like to just five minutes maybe where I'm saying, really? You don't know the name? Just so they're like on the edge of their seats.

01:16:49

And then I would quote Matthew 28 to them, where it says baptize them into the name of the

01:16:55

Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit. And I say, well, look, it says right there he has a name. So I'm playing their game now.

01:17:01

It's always a lot of fun because I just know it's eating at them because this is their tactic.

01:17:08

And here's this guy doing their game. And they're used to doing this at people's doorsteps.

01:17:14

We could do this sometime. Let's just do a get together. Invite people in. And you and I just share, for example, approaches for the

01:17:21

J -dubs, approaches for the Catholics. You got one? We could email each other.

01:17:26

Okay, let's go back and forth between these. All right, here's this one. Like, that's a good one.

01:17:32

And I've got something I use for them as well. And we could learn from each other. But I always love to hear the different approaches different people use.

01:17:40

I think they're awesome. See? It's a great idea. Yeah. I'm often – sometimes you have this experience where you're talking to somebody and then you say something.

01:17:51

And as the words are coming out of your mouth, you're like – in a sense, you know that you're saying it, but you're thinking

01:17:58

I never even formulated that thought in my own mind, much less articulated it.

01:18:04

And it's almost like in this very moment you're saying something and learning it at the same time.

01:18:11

You know what I mean? Well, how about when you say something you didn't know you knew?

01:18:17

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's sort of like that. So I'm saying I often hear people and I think, man, that's another reminder of God's spirit at work.

01:18:26

I mentioned Fox's Book of Martyrs the other day or earlier, and one of my favorite stories in there is of a woman.

01:18:33

I think her name was Miss Pruess. And it talks about how she was a wife of a

01:18:39

Catholic guy. She became a Protestant. And everybody starts ridiculing her, her husband, her older son, townspeople, and they're calling her stupid and just making fun of her.

01:18:50

And so John Fox says, I'll just record the story for you and you decide for yourself if this woman was stupid or not.

01:18:59

And he gives this account. And I'm like, man, that woman would put a lot of us to shame.

01:19:04

She was so brilliant in her responses. It's worth looking up, but there's a couple of parts

01:19:11

I remember that I looked at and I thought, man, that was brilliant as a response. But at one point, she's brought before the

01:19:20

Inquisitor to answer certain questions. And he says to her, how can you deny that Jesus' body and blood are really received in the sacrament, that it really turns into Christ's body and blood?

01:19:34

And she says, how can you deny your creed, which says he sits at the right hand of God, not on earth in a piece of bread?

01:19:40

And it just goes on and on. And she's just a brilliant woman. And I'm like, man, but I say that only because it just reminds me of how much wisdom

01:19:49

God gives to people. You could have your own way and it could be very effective, very useful, and altogether legitimate and still learn tremendously from other people.

01:20:01

I had that happen about two months ago with a rabid anti -Calvinist.

01:20:07

And I was debating in a chat place, I was debating a Catholic. This rabid anti -Calvinist, we've gone at it.

01:20:14

We've, you know, like snarling dogs with a fence between us kind of thing. This guy is, he's an obstreperous anti -Calvinist.

01:20:21

And at any rate, he taught me something. And it was like so good, so brilliant that it actually had an effect on some stuff.

01:20:30

But anyway, the whole context was people were talking, Catholics were talking, and I said, you're not supposed to bow down before idols.

01:20:36

You're not supposed to have these instruments that have grace in them. And these Catholics would say, well, what do you do with the

01:20:42

Ark of the Covenant? What do you do with the serpent on the thing? And what do you do with the handkerchiefs in the

01:20:48

New Testament? And I gave a good answer. I did, I gave a good, competent answer.

01:20:54

But he gave a better one. And he said, he jumps in and he says to the guy, he goes, look.

01:21:01

He said, those are the things God commanded that you build. The Bible says, don't build for yourself this stuff.

01:21:11

And the light went, ding. Of course, because there's a huge difference between what God commands and what men do for themselves in their own idolatry.

01:21:19

And it was a subtle thing, but it was really an important thing. It was a good example. And I even told the guy, I told him later when

01:21:25

I met him a week later, I said, look, I want to thank you for that part. That was really good. And I learned from it. So thank you. He wasn't used to that from a

01:21:31

Calvinist, a rabid anti -Calvinist. I'm a rabid Calvinist. He's a rabid anti -Calvinist.

01:21:37

Yeah. So I bring up the observation. So the Roman Catholics, of course, they proliferate statues.

01:21:46

Eastern Orthodox do their icons and so forth. And then they'll point to things like what you mentioned, the

01:21:53

Ark of the Covenant, imagery of cherubim and stuff, pomegranate trees, things like that in the temple.

01:22:00

And this is supposed to warrant that. And I say, imagine this. Imagine if Moses said, you know what?

01:22:06

I think it'd be a good idea if I make a picture of myself and Aaron and put it up in the temple. How do you think that would have gone over?

01:22:12

Do you think they had that liberty just making a flat image? I don't care what you want. You want it to be a statue.

01:22:18

You want it to be a flat image, whether it looks like an icon. Imagine Moses thinking he could just do that at a whim.

01:22:25

What would have happened? Well, Aaron and Nadab tried out a similar experiment. When I read the account of Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, I think, you know what?

01:22:34

These guys are like a lot of contemporary people. They thought, my motives are genuine here.

01:22:40

I want to bring to God something that I think will be pleasing to Him. But they didn't bring to Him what

01:22:46

He commanded them to. They brought what they thought without any divine warrant, and that was reputed.

01:22:52

It was not accepted. And so what we learned from the whole tabernacle system is you've got to do things God's way in worship.

01:23:01

And, of course, the images that even with the cherubim on the ark, for example, there was no –

01:23:09

God didn't give them an image of Himself above the ark, right? So there's no image of God there.

01:23:17

Secondly, they weren't supposed to bow down to the cherubim on the ark. There's no command given there.

01:23:25

But the whole idea is this does symbolize God's presence. So when you have people bowing down towards the ark, it's not because the ark itself is a fit object of veneration or prostration, but because it signifies the presence of God.

01:23:40

God is present between the cherubim. And, of course, the incident with the serpent on a pole is counter -evidence against their whole thing.

01:23:50

They were told to make this serpent on a pole for a particular purpose, and once they started to venerate it, it was ordered to be destroyed, right?

01:24:02

So – Sorry. I smell something burning. I had to go check.

01:24:08

Hopefully it's not those tacos you're making us. No, it got stronger and stronger.

01:24:14

I'm like, okay, something's really burning. I have a window open. I went to smell out the window, and I couldn't smell it out there.

01:24:20

And I'm like, now I have to go check out the house. But there's nothing burning, so that's why it was gone.

01:24:27

But I was listening to everything you said, and you're right. Yeah, with the Ark of the Covenant, God's presence was actually there.

01:24:32

And so you can bow to the presence of God. But, yeah, there's so much.

01:24:39

You know, I have a t -shirt that says, so much heresy, so little time. Yeah. You know what

01:24:44

I just saw the other day that I want to get that was interesting? I don't know if you've ever seen the

01:24:49

Roman Catholic Michael Lofton. I forget the name of his program. He has a

01:24:54

YouTube channel. But he's kind of – I think he's bounced back and forth between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, and he's currently in a

01:25:03

Roman Catholic phase. But he wrote a book responding to Eastern Orthodoxy.

01:25:11

And I always like watching – it'd be like watching a modalist and a

01:25:16

Mormon argue, right? To me, it's interesting watching these guys. They're both wrong, and they're both pointing out error in the other side.

01:25:26

So that, to me, is a little interesting. But also, you get some devastating, useful statements.

01:25:37

So one of the differences between Rome and the East is that Rome is comfortable, as you know, asserting doctrines that have no precedent in earlier history.

01:25:47

Right. So Rome is comfortable with some of her Marian doctrines, the bodily assumption of Mary.

01:25:54

You can't find that for centuries. Nobody's even hinting in this direction for centuries in the early church, much less is it predominant or official, right?

01:26:05

It's just not there for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. So Rome, at one point, wanted to say, well, our doctrines are what were handed down by apostolic tradition.

01:26:16

Well, you have to tinker with that once you start accepting doctrines that have no precedent. So they talk about the development of doctrine, right?

01:26:24

Cardinal Newman talks about the development of doctrine. And development ends up looking less like what you think of as development, where, you know, like a child growing.

01:26:35

And it's more like Goldschmidt's hopeful monster thing, right? Where he, remember

01:26:41

Darwin? Darwin had the gradual evolution idea, but Goldschmidt was the guy who said, you know, a chicken lays an egg and out pops an alligator.

01:26:49

There's this sort of sudden thing that wasn't there before, not even in initial, you know, stages.

01:26:56

So what they try to say is, well, the logic for these things is there, but people don't end up making the connections until later.

01:27:07

And so you don't expect to find certain things in the fathers, but you can find some things that will be building blocks for this.

01:27:14

Well, the Eastern Church, on the other hand, says, no, these things are all there from day one explicitly, and the

01:27:21

Church is doing this. So that if you read like the idolatry council, the second council of Nicaea, not the

01:27:28

Orthodox council, but the second council of Nicaea, they not only say that you're to worship icons or can worship icons, they say you must worship icons.

01:27:37

And this is what the fathers always taught. And so you have to, if you're an Eastern Orthodox person, find this in the early fathers, which you can't, it's not there, right?

01:27:47

Origin repudiates it, Tertullian repudiates it roundly. Like they don't even like, many of them don't even like pictures, right?

01:27:54

Some people will say, well, you could have pictures, but you can't make pictures of God, they'll say, the father at least.

01:28:00

And none of them can be used for veneration. That's just out of the question. And many of them would make a distinction and say, okay, you could have a picture, but not in the church, because you don't want to confuse people.

01:28:10

So, but in any case, there was never any objects in the church with pictures that would confuse the worshiper.

01:28:17

So you've got these two different views. Well, Michael Lofton, I saw some quotes from him that made me interested in this book.

01:28:25

He has this quote where he's saying, he's trying to argue against the Eastern view of tradition and for the

01:28:32

Catholic view of tradition. And so he points out the early fathers didn't worship or venerate idols or icons.

01:28:40

So he's using this against the Eastern view in order to prop up the Catholic view and say that tradition doesn't have to be supported by the early fathers, it can just be based on the say -so of the

01:28:53

Roman church. But he's admitting when he does this, that there's no endorsement of idols and icons in the early church.

01:29:00

And so I'm thinking he's arguing against this Eastern guy, but what he's saying is just pure gold, because I can use this against both of them, right?

01:29:08

So I want to get his book and find out more, more stuff that he's admitting in there.

01:29:14

Well, that's the way of the cult mind. You know, it's what's it called?

01:29:19

Cognitive dissonance. It's just what happens. And it's ridiculous.

01:29:25

I was talking to a Muslim last night for a couple of hours, and we're talking about Surah 86, 5 -7.

01:29:33

Let man but think of what he's created. He's created from a drop emitted, proceeding from between the backbone and the ribs.

01:29:40

Well, that says a man's seed comes from his chest, hence chesticles. And I said, no, no, no.

01:29:46

And he's actually studying medicine. He actually was starting to become a doctor. He goes, I know about this.

01:29:52

And he started making this convoluted argument to justify this, because it's Surah 42. If there's any discrepancy in the

01:29:59

Quran, then the Quran's false. So that's what the Quran says. So that's how you prove

01:30:04

Islam is false. It's one of the many ways. But at any rate, so I said, look, is that where the seed forms? And anyway, the point is all the irrationality and illogic and justification to make something work, and then they can't see their own problem.

01:30:19

And then we went to Surah 4, 157, where God deceived people into thinking Jesus was crucified when he was not.

01:30:26

And I said, that's your God doing that, right? And he said, yes. I said, so he deceived people. You know, he only deceived the deceivers.

01:30:33

And I said, really? So then you admit he's a deceiver. And I said, no, you're not a deceiver, and therefore deceived by your

01:30:42

God. I mean, it's just so easy. And they can't see and won't see or not able to see, because we know

01:30:50

God has to open their minds. And it's sad. But, you know, as a friend of mine said, we're in sales, not production.

01:30:59

So, you know, it's true. But yeah, the irrationality of the cult mind is so bad.

01:31:07

You know, Surah 7, 99 says, nobody considers him safe from Allah's deception, except those who are perishing.

01:31:14

So if you're a Muslim, you have to fear that Allah could be deceiving you. Otherwise, you're automatically one of the perishing, according to the verse.

01:31:23

That's a hopelessly bad position to be in, isn't it? Oh, yeah. Go ahead.

01:31:31

You reminded me of another thing. So one of my favorite stories of the silly

01:31:37

Quran and the Hadith, the traditions of Muhammad is, so we believe, as Christians, that God reveals himself to all people through nature and conscience, right?

01:31:48

He's made his existence known to all things, to all people. And Muslims superficially do too.

01:31:57

They would say everybody comes into the world knowing God. But their reason for saying it is so bizarre.

01:32:03

And most people don't know this. So they'll mention just superficially, yeah, we think all people know that God exists and so forth.

01:32:10

But the good stuff is getting down to where that comes from. Well, according to Muslims, it says in Surah 7 that Allah brought forth

01:32:22

Adam's descendants at the beginning of history. And the Hadith fill this in. The idea is that Allah stroked

01:32:28

Adam's back and he brought out all of his progeny and made us stand before him and acknowledge him as the only

01:32:35

God. And then he put us all back into Adam. And then history comes along so that when we're born into the world, we've already had some acquaintance with Allah.

01:32:46

And some sources would even say we were even told at that time that Muhammad would be the final prophet and all the rest.

01:32:52

But here's the reason I bring it up. It's humorous. Why do you suppose in order for Allah to get out all of Adam's descendants, he stroked

01:33:02

Adam's back? It's because... You see where it's going?

01:33:09

It just reinforces the silly idea of the Quran that semen proceeds from between the backbone and the ribs.

01:33:16

So Allah's addressing the right part of Adam's anatomy to get out his progeny. I need to know where that is because I would like to put those together.

01:33:26

It's wild. And this whole thing gets even worse. I mean, think about it.

01:33:32

So here's Allah stroking Adam's back. Well, in Christianity, we believe that God can condescend.

01:33:41

So he's infinite. He's not limited or constrained by anything. And precisely because he's not limited by anything, he's able to reveal himself in our experience, right?

01:33:53

That doesn't limit him. It's because he's unlimited that he can do that. Well, Muslims often balk at that.

01:33:59

They don't believe that God can condescend. They don't believe in the incarnation. God can't enter into the world, that sort of thing.

01:34:06

So you got to ask yourself, what in the world's happening here that Allah's stroking Adam's back? How's that happening?

01:34:11

Where does he get the hand to do that with if he can't condescend? This seems to suggest if there's no condescension on God's part, then

01:34:18

Allah must just be like this, contrary to their... If any

01:34:24

Muslim says he's infinite, this would be contrary to it or else you're admitting that he condescends, right?

01:34:29

Which you don't want to do because you want to argue against Christianity and the incarnation and all the rest. So when

01:34:35

I started thinking about this, I started thinking, man, I wonder what else these sources say about all this.

01:34:41

And one more funny story from the Islamic sources. So there's a story.

01:34:47

Catch this. There's a story in al -Tabari, a famous Islamic historian and traditionist.

01:34:57

He taught various traditions. Well, Tabari tells this story of how

01:35:03

Allah made Adam as a... He formed a statue of Adam.

01:35:09

And before breathing life into it, he caused it to stand upright for a long extended period of time.

01:35:15

So we're talking many days. I don't remember if it was 40 days or 40 years, but it was a period of time.

01:35:22

And then we're told that a group of angels was coming along and they saw this statue of Adam and they were afraid.

01:35:31

So imagine it. There's these angelic creatures and they see this statue of Adam and it frightens them.

01:35:36

Well, why are they frightened? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense if you are thinking of these supernatural beings.

01:35:42

Why would a statue frighten them? Well, then we're told that Satan joined them at some point and in their fearfulness,

01:35:51

Satan decides he's going to allay their fears. He's going to go over there and inspect the situation and then come back and tell them what the deal is.

01:36:00

So Satan goes over to this statue and it says he entered in through its mouth and exited out through its rear.

01:36:10

And then it came back to them and he said, or Satan came back to them and said, don't worry, fellas.

01:36:17

That's my paraphrase. I don't think he called them fellas, but don't worry. He said, that is hollow, but your

01:36:25

Lord is solid. In other words, because he was able to go in through its mouth and out through its rear, that proved it's not

01:36:33

Allah because Allah is not a hollow statue. He's solid. Now, this is bizarre.

01:36:40

It seems to suggest that Allah is a physical being of some sort. Now, what makes this even wilder, if you look at Surah 112 of the

01:36:49

Quran, so the third to last chapter of the Quran, one of the shortest, the most memorable, it has this statement there, say he is

01:36:58

Allah, the one, the eternal. He doesn't beget, neither is he begotten, and there's nothing like unto him.

01:37:04

Well, Muslims, they think this is such a grand text, proving monotheism, refuting the trinity.

01:37:10

Well, here's what's interesting. So the occasion for the revelation of that is that a group of Jews and pagans had asked

01:37:20

Muhammad, what is your Lord made out of? They want to know the stuff of Allah. And this

01:37:25

Surah is supposed to be addressing that. Well, when you look at the translations, when it says in some translations, he's eternal, say he's

01:37:33

Allah, the one, the eternal, he doesn't beget, nor is he begotten. The word eternal is wildly translated in all these, like there's no consistency in the translation.

01:37:42

And it's because none of them want to say what the word actually says. If you go back to Tabari, the word is actually the same word that means solid.

01:37:52

So it's saying he's solid, and that's why he doesn't beget and isn't begotten. It's not because he's not a physical being or something like that.

01:38:02

It's because he's not hollow. There's no cavity. There's no way he can, he doesn't go to the bathroom because there's no hollowness there.

01:38:11

He's plugged up, if you will. The semen can't flow from between the backbone and the ribs out of Allah.

01:38:19

That's why he can't have a son. Muhammad was a pagan to the core. And so they try and forget all this stuff and make us forget it.

01:38:28

It's just pure paganism. Yeah. Have you heard of a

01:38:33

Christian prince? Yeah. I haven't listened much, but I've heard of him.

01:38:39

He's told me some things in the Hadith and what it says in the Arabic. One of the ones

01:38:44

I remember is that a woman's rear is two miles wide in one place.

01:38:53

And that either Muhammad or somebody had to go from one to the other to the other or two.

01:39:00

And I was like, are you kidding me? So there's all, I mean, it's so obvious that he's pagan.

01:39:06

Oh, yeah. Paganism. Crazy stuff. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And Saeed knows a lot about it.

01:39:15

But we got some questions, I think. Let's see. Catholics, let's get back up a little bit.

01:39:20

Don't put them together. Something's going to break. Sam Shimon has so much hatred toward his ex -wife.

01:39:28

Yeah, that's another issue. Question. Catholics believe propitiation happens in mass because of present tense.

01:39:34

Why is this taking so long? Present tense to make propitiation. Jesus' ongoing work with the high priest.

01:39:41

Any response? Okay. So let's see if I can find that.

01:39:48

Put that in here. I'm just trying to pull up Hebrews 5.

01:39:56

Here we go. All right. Okay. So part of the problem here is that Hebrews 5 .1

01:40:06

isn't talking about Christ's work. Right? So it says, For every high priest being taken from among men on behalf of men is appointed in things relating to God that he should offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.

01:40:22

And unless I'm missing something, I don't see the word for propitiation there, to make propitiation.

01:40:35

But in any case, Hebrews 5 .1 just isn't talking about Christ's work. It's talking about the priests of old.

01:40:43

And that's one of the - Continues to make intercession and holds a priesthood. Okay. I'm going through them.

01:40:51

Oh, 5 .1 through 2. I'm sorry. I see he says 2. So being able with those being ignorant and going astray, since also he himself -

01:41:00

Well, that didn't help. Yeah, I'm going through the other ones. It doesn't say that.

01:41:08

So Hebrews 9 .23. Necessary for the copies of things in heaven to be cleansed with these, but the heavenly things themselves are better sacrifices than these.

01:41:20

Yeah. Not very good. Yeah, they don't have to do with the propitiatory sacrifice of the mass.

01:41:29

But that's interesting. Okay. So maybe in 7 .24 through 25, there might be some confusion over what's still true, what's still ongoing and what isn't.

01:41:42

In 24, it talks about Christ being able to intercede for those who draw near to God.

01:41:50

And there it's a present and so forth. We agree. His intercession is ongoing, but it's on the basis of the once -for -all sacrifice, his propitiation on the cross.

01:42:02

So the propitiation isn't ongoing. So I see there's a reference to St.

01:42:09

Genes. So I guess maybe St. Genes mentioned this. I'll have to check his - I don't know. It's probably in his book.

01:42:16

Not by faith alone. I'll have to see if that clarifies the argument any, but propitiation is clearly presented as a once -for -all thing.

01:42:27

And that's part of the contrast that the author of Hebrews is making, that these priests have to make these continuous sacrifices because they're not adequate.

01:42:36

But Christ is able to sacrifice himself once for all, and it's a done deal. Right. You always like their argument.

01:42:43

I mean, I like to get them and know exactly what it is they're asking. And in my file, like I just put it in my

01:42:49

Catholic file, and I go, okay, so what I'll do is go through and see what the context of these verses are, try to understand what's being said, and see if they come up with a response.

01:43:01

I've learned over the years, if I don't have a good response already practiced, I generally don't like to ad lib.

01:43:08

But, you know, but still. By the way, as an aside -

01:43:14

Go ahead. No, go ahead. Oh, you mentioned it is finished.

01:43:24

The other day I was talking about Psalm 22 online, and it's interesting.

01:43:31

A lot of people skip past the superscriptions of the Psalms and think they're not overly relevant.

01:43:39

And unfortunately, some of our translations aren't great here because they assume certain things because of their own difficulties in making sense of certain things.

01:43:55

So anyways, often in the superscriptions, it'll say in some translations things like, to the chief musician, or for the chief musician, upon the tune, or something like that, of so and so, or of such and such.

01:44:10

But interestingly, when you look at ancient Jewish interpretations of this, so if you look at the

01:44:16

Septuagint, you look at the Targums, you look at the various midrashes, there are two different ways that they understand the first expression for what we sometimes translate for the choir master.

01:44:26

In some cases, they think it's a way of saying for the leader, not specifically a choir master, somebody who leads in music, it could be used that way, but just for the leader, more general.

01:44:38

Other ways they translate it is as for the end. So the Septuagint, for example, says eis tatelos, meaning unto the telos, the end.

01:44:49

And the reason I think this is interesting is, well, and by the way, the midrash, sometimes it says for the leader, sometimes it says for the eternal one.

01:45:01

So it's taking the leader to be, when it says the end, they're taking it as meaning like the beginning and the end, the title for God.

01:45:10

So when you read it this way, it already sets you up in the psalm to think of this messianically. If this is for the end, if it's for the telos, the future, or for the eternal, or the one who is the end, then you're thinking messianically.

01:45:25

The reason I bring it up, I'm not trying to say this is how you have to take this, but it's very interesting because the word telos is the word from, out of which we get the word tetelostai.

01:45:39

Tetelostai. When Jesus says on the cross, it is finished, if you read the psalms this way, it's almost like he's saying, this is it.

01:45:48

This is the fulfillment of all of that. There's like 50 psalms that have that in the title, 50 psalms.

01:45:54

And so it'd be like Jesus saying, you know, all that stuff that's written in the psalms, it's written about me. And at the end of Psalm 22, it has the expression.

01:46:03

I mean, I think he is saying that, even apart from this observation, he's saying everything's fulfilled in me and it's been paid for, right?

01:46:10

But at the end of Psalm 22, which begins with this expression, it says of God, it says he has performed it or he has finished it.

01:46:26

That's how the psalm ends. And of course, Jesus quotes Psalm 22 on the cross. Just interesting thought came to mind.

01:46:34

I cross referenced that with Colossians 2 .14, that says he canceled the certificate of debt, the kairagraphon, consisting of decrees, which was hostile to us.

01:46:43

He took it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. That to me is one of the best verses for Calvinism.

01:46:49

It necessitates a predestination election, limited atonement, eternal security.

01:46:56

Because if he canceled the sin debt, the kairagraphon, then he only did it for the elect because you can't go to hell for a debt that doesn't exist anymore.

01:47:05

It implies election predestination and limited atonement. And so anyway, but it goes along with John 19 .30,

01:47:13

you know, to tell us that it is finished. It has been done, it's taken care of, no more, it's it. But we know, here's the other thing that reminds me, just a side note.

01:47:21

Sometimes I'll do this with Catholics and I'll be talking, I'm trying to lead them down a road. And a lot of times, about half the time they fall for it, about half.

01:47:29

I'll say, well, so let me get this straight. So you're saying, you know, say, so you're, you're telling me then that you're saved by grace after all you can do?

01:47:39

And I'll go, well, yeah. And I say, well, that's, I just quoted you third Nephi, 1918, the book of Mormon.

01:47:48

I love doing that. It says, I'll quote the Watchtower, 1983, page 12, April 1st, about the second requirement for salvation, which is keeping commandments.

01:47:59

And I'll quote these to these guys without them knowing I'm coding. And they say, yeah, we, we, it's just a small thing, but yeah.

01:48:06

Yep. That reminds me. I mean, I, I do like, I, you know, you know how the game goes, right?

01:48:12

So if you, if you quote something from the Bible to a person and they don't know where it's from, then they'll just flat out disagree with it.

01:48:20

Right? Yes. If you tell them it's from the Bible or they already know it's from the Bible, that's not what they're going to say.

01:48:25

If they're trying to appear Christian or whatever, they're going to say, oh, you're misinterpreting that. Right. So, I mean,

01:48:31

I learned this a long time ago. I had this Mormon friend and I was only a believer for a short while.

01:48:37

And every time I pointed to him, you know, pointed him to something in the Bible, he'd always say, that's just your interpretation.

01:48:43

And I was thinking, how do I respond to this? Because in a sense, yeah, obviously that's my interpretation, but it's not like I did something clever here or something.

01:48:51

I just took it for, you know, if, if my dad, when I was a kid said, take out the trash and I took out the trash.

01:48:57

Yeah. I'm interpreting him in a sense. Right. But I'm not, not, I'm not doing something weird or esoteric here.

01:49:02

I'm just, I'm processing his words and understanding what it means. There's, there's no hijinks going on.

01:49:09

So I just didn't know how to respond to it that early in the game. And so anyways, I, one day he was coming up to me.

01:49:15

He was so mad from our prior conversation that the first thing out of his mouth, not even hello or anything else, he said,

01:49:20

Jesus is not God. And I'm like, in my mind, I'm like, well, hello to you too. And, but then

01:49:26

I, but I quoted John 1, 1. I said, in the beginning was the word, the word was with God and the word was God. And he just, he fired back and said, you're, you're misinterpreting that.

01:49:37

He goes, Jesus is not God. And I said, wait a minute. I said, I didn't give you my interpretation.

01:49:44

I gave you a quotation and said, and I said, by you responding that way, you've just showed me, you know what it's saying as much as I do.

01:49:52

Right. So I learned from that. That if, if at any time I could quote something without the person knowing what it was,

01:49:59

I could get their honest reaction. And so it doesn't work as much if, if a Catholic is familiar with certain statements or whatever, but, but I'll tell you something as a little aside, there are some things

01:50:10

I said in my statement about the clarity of scripture, where I, at points I quoted early church fathers, but at other points

01:50:18

I made some pretty clear, you know, statements that could have been almost verbatim from church fathers, because I'm setting up our, our, our

01:50:28

Roman Catholic critics when they come along, they're going to, you know, Roman Catholics are going to take that video and they're going to respond to it.

01:50:34

And I'm thinking, this is how I'm going to catch them because I've got hundreds and hundreds of quotes from patristic sources on the clarity of scripture.

01:50:43

And so I thought, you know what, here's, here's one way to get them is I'll make a statement about the clarity of scripture.

01:50:48

That's almost verbatim, what a church father says and I'll watch them attack it. And then I'm going to quote them and say, you know, so I, it's strategically, it's grand, isn't it?

01:50:59

I think you muted yourself. Huh? I guess I did. Yeah, I do that with Proverbs 16, four, which says

01:51:05

God makes all things, even the wicked for the day of evil. And I'll say, you know, I, I, you know, defending

01:51:11

Calvinism, I think God makes everything for his own purpose. Even, even the wicked for the day of evil, that is not right.

01:51:20

He would never do that. And you know, do that. Or I like it when they say, I took it out of context.

01:51:26

I say, okay, took it out of context. That means you know what the context is. So you can tell me what it is. Please tell me what the context is.

01:51:33

And they, they, they don't know, you know, there's just, well, I'm amazed at, and I'm grateful for God that he is, is enlightened and saved me and you too.

01:51:42

And there, but for the grace of God go I, but it is amazing how blind people choose to be, want to be.

01:51:52

It's amazing to me. Yeah. Yeah.

01:51:57

Well, I do have to go help my wife now. I was just going to say, I got to go to help my wife.

01:52:05

Yeah. Yeah. It was great though. Great conference. Great being on with you.

01:52:12

Yeah. Well, I'm thinking about doing things like this as well, because there's a lot of followers and stuff with Carmen and that'd be great.

01:52:20

You and I just rambling together back and forth. I think it'd be good. We have a little topic. Let's just ramble.

01:52:26

Yeah. I mean that, you know, it'd be great. I've always thought it would be great to have a, well, some people do this sort of thing.

01:52:32

They pull it off well, but like, you know, you've been in, I'm sure countless discussions just in your living room or somewhere you're sitting around talking.

01:52:40

Those are great conversations. It'd be great. If you could get a something like that going, I mean, it's hard to be to sort of lose sight of the fact that you're online.

01:52:51

Right. And just have a conversation in a sense. I just think that would be really good if you could sort of get into the, that mindset where just a bunch of guys are talking because, you know, those are where a lot of good, good conversations take place.

01:53:07

I would like to do something like say you and me, I don't know if you know who Eli Ayala is. Yeah. Oh yeah.

01:53:13

We were on together the other day. Oh, that's right. Am I thinking? Okay. So Eli, you, me, maybe

01:53:18

Cy again. And, and we just go, oh, you know, we could pick a topic out of the hat, you know, literally here's a hat.

01:53:25

Okay, here we go. We're talking about, you know, and then we just see how it goes. We each will have our strengths and weaknesses.

01:53:32

I think that would be fun out of a hat theology, you know, and we don't know.

01:53:37

People send in, I just get this idea. People send in comments about all kinds of stuff. We put it up into a hat, draw it out.

01:53:43

Here we go. That's what we're talking about. That'd be fun. Yeah. Yeah. Good idea.

01:53:49

I'm game. Yeah. Okay. I'll see if I can. That's a good idea. We just talk about whatever we get.

01:53:55

If we run a ground on one of them, we go, here's another one. You put all kinds of stuff in a little bowl. I can just reach in and grab them and we can disseminate it out of karma and other stuff like that.

01:54:03

I think it'd be fun. How about is premarital sex a sin? Yes, it is. I also did a bit on that and extracted out of the radio show.

01:54:12

I did that last week. Anyway, hey, God bless, Anthony. God bless you, too.

01:54:18

I appreciate you. I can go help my wife, too. In fact, I just texted her how she's doing because she's having medical problems.

01:54:24

Good stuff. Okay. All right. God bless. God bless, all. Okay. All right, everybody.

01:54:31

I hope you enjoyed that impromptu discussion with Anthony. He's a great guy. I hope you enjoyed the joke

01:54:36

I said earlier. Just remember that joke. The key is make up anything you can, any few things that are unrelated.

01:54:44

I'll take a dead cricket. If you don't have that, I'll take a radio. What? It's a lot of fun.