Good Impressions from Peter Stravinskas Debate and legal threats over Barry Lynn Deba

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On this “jetlag version” of the Dividing Line, Dr. White returns from a speaking and debate tour, saying that the recent debate with the Roman Catholic Peter Stravinskus was the best of all six “Great Debates” so far, and made very clear why Rome was in error on purgatory. Barry Lynn, who normally champions free speech as a lawyer with the ACLU, performed so badly in their debate on Gay Christianity that he has threatened to sue the ministry if they release the tape of the debate.

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This is the Dividing Line broadcast. The Apostle Peter commanded all Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us.
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Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence. Your host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the
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Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation. And now, webcasting live from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, direct from his
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Long Island tour with a short stint through Louisiana, Mr. Protestantus Apologeticus Maximus himself.
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Here he is, Dr. James White. Oh, brother. Well, only sort of live, actually.
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Only sort of here, too, trying to get rid of all that. I'll turn John's hat down. I can't hear myself.
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Thank you very much. That's much, much, much, much better. I'm trying to get rid of all that humid air out of my lungs right now.
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That stuff is not good for you. That's all I can say is humid air is not good for you.
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I think that's why we moved out here originally is to get rid of that humid air. And I have seen so much rain over the past 22 days that I confess
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I am sick of rain. It rained the whole time
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I was online. OK. All right, there were two days on Long Island or something like that when the sun came out for a little while.
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And then I just happened to get to New Orleans at the same time the tropical storm Allison decides to come visit
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New Orleans and then sit there. And it's still sitting there. It's not going anywhere right now. It's beating up on Houston. Very, very strange.
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And never saw a humidity below 93 percent in New Orleans.
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93 percent. It never gets to 93. I don't care if it's raining cats and dogs in Phoenix. It doesn't get to 93 percent humidity.
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It just can't. It's illegal or geographically impossible or scientifically impossible or something. I don't know.
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Oh, my goodness. Well, yes, landed landed at Sky Harbor International Airport less than four hours ago.
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And but duty calls and I had just gotten so many emails begging me, please come back and do the program, please.
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That's I just had to, you know, respond to the the cries of those who were asking that we do something.
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No, I hadn't gotten any emails about that at all, actually, none whatsoever. What a incredible 22 days.
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I I've often commented, I have to wonder what would have happened if I hadn't been here that day that Chris Arnzen called from Long Island, New York, and said, you know,
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Jerry Matitix is coming out to Long Island and they want to set up a debate. I'm wondering if you'd like to come out and do that.
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That was 1996. That was the first debate that we did on Long Island, arranged by Chris Arnzen, went out there for three days that time, about a week the second time, two weeks, a third time, three weeks.
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Then I said at three weeks is too long. Cut it back. And it's been two weeks each time since then. But I started going out in January, not real debt next year, because Lord willing,
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I'll be in Israel. But January out there for two, two weeks, two weeks, this time, incredible, incredible folks there on Long Island, just wonderful, wonderful people.
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I've gotten to meet such neat Christians on that people that will bend over backwards.
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I mean, man, I think of Mark and Christine and they know who they are.
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Mark and Christine would get up at all hours of the morning and take me and everybody else to airports.
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They took the kids and Warren to the airport. They took Kelly to the airport. And then moron me sent them to the wrong airport with me last week.
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I thought I was flying out of MacArthur. It was JFK. And if any of you know Long Island and what it's like to be standing in line at MacArthur airport, look at your tickets and realize you're supposed to be a
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Kennedy. Then you know the sinking feeling that I experienced. But still, Mark and Christine did valiantly to get me over to JFK.
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Missed the flight. Of course. I mean, if there was such a thing as traffic moving, we would have made it.
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But that's New York, man. What do you expect? It's just all one big parking lot. We didn't make it.
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But I got there anyways. What an experience that was. But those folks will do anything for you. Chris Arnzen, of course, who just works himself to death arranging these debates, arranging these trips.
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And the poor guy, he goes to everything I do. Well, almost everything. He didn't go to New Jersey with me. I went to New Jersey.
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I preached in New Jersey. I have hit the big time. I mean, back in January, I went to Connecticut.
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This time I went to New Jersey and preached in New Jersey. And it was a lot of fun.
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And the people there thought I was really weird because they said, where do you want to go eat? I said, let's go eat at McDonald's. And they thought, boy, this guy is really, really strange.
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But anyhow, we are back. And what I'd like to do today is I would like to give you a report on the subject of the past three weeks of ministry because it's encouraging.
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It's exciting. I look back over it and sometimes I cannot imagine what really has taken place over the past number of weeks.
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The Lord truly, truly blessed everything that we did.
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And I suppose what most people want to hear about are the two debates. So I'll start with that.
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But there are all sorts of other neat things that I'll try to remember as we go along.
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We did do two debates. And you've heard, I would assume, I don't know, I guess,
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I know that Warren talked a little bit about the Lynn debate, the debate against Barry Lynn on the subject of homosexuality that took place at the
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First Presbyterian Church in Huntington, Long Island, on the 24th of May, which seems like a long time ago now, but it really, really wasn't that long ago.
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I've done so much speaking since then. I don't know how many times I've spoken since then, a couple dozen, that it seems like it was a long time ago, but it wasn't, only a few weeks ago.
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And that particular debate, as I think most of you know, but if you haven't, let me bring you up to speed.
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People are going, when can we get the tapes of the debate with Barry Lynn? The debate was on the subject of homosexuality.
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Barry Lynn is a well -known liberal activist, United Church of Christ minister. He is a board member of the
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ACLU, used to be legislative representative for legislative council for the
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American Civil Liberties Union, and he is currently the head, the director of Americans United for the
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Separation of Church and State, a left -wing, leftist organization that has similar goals to that of the
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ACLU, the Anti -Christian Litigation Union. And Mr.
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Lynn and I did a full -length debate on the subject, is homosexuality compatible with biblical
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Christianity? And people have been asking, when can we get the tapes?
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Well, we would love to be making the tapes available right now. But Mr.
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Lynn has made it very clear that though he was fully aware of the fact that the encounter would be recorded, that it would be videotaped, and that both sides would be provided with a master tape that would be used as we see fit, things went so badly for Mr.
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Lynn. He was so unprepared and so lacking in capacity to respond to the biblical argumentation on the subject that he has informed us that if we make them available, he will sue us.
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He has reneged upon his agreement to engage in this debate and have it taped.
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And if you would like to encourage him to do the right thing, you can get hold of the email address,
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I believe it's au .org, is americansunited .org. And please feel free to drop him a line and encourage him nicely to do the right thing and to make the tapes available, to drop his threat to sue us if we make them available.
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People are asking, well, can't you, you know, what are you going to do about this?
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Well, it's real simple. We're contacting legal counsel and we're going to find out what we can do.
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But we're a small ministry. This man's an ACLU attorney, obviously has a whole lot more in the way of resource than we do.
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And I would hate to think that only the five or six hundred people that were there that night will be able to hear
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Mr. Lynn try to respond to the biblical argumentation and not be able to, to hear the standard arguments that pro -homosexual apologists use, responded to.
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Obviously what we would do is if the attorneys say, look, there's really nothing you can do about it because of X, Y, or Z or whatever, then what
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I would do is we'd set up the cameras and we'd probably put a group of people together and I would re -present the materials
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I re -presented in the debate and then I would present the arguments that homosexuals use.
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Maybe get Jeff Neal to work with me on it. We'd put together a video. I think at least the arguments themselves need to be made available, even if we can't make the tapes of this available.
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But I would like to see some pressure put upon Mr.
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Lynn to explain why he is suppressing the tapes of this encounter when he certainly saw the video cameras there.
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He has admitted that he knew that it was being videotaped. He well knew this long before the encounter ever took place and yet only afterwards, all of a sudden, ah, well, you know, maybe we shouldn't make those available.
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In fact, maybe I'll sue you if you do. You know, there are some interesting parallels to what happened last year with St.
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Joseph's Communications and the Tim Staples debate, the fact that they videotaped it and they're suppressing the videotapes of Mr.
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Staples' performance in that particular debate, except they're in possession of it.
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We're now in possession of these tapes, but the only reason we can't distribute them is because someone will sue us if we do.
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Isn't it interesting that we're the ones that always want to have the widest audience possible to get to hear these things and it's our opponents who, for some strange reason, don't want these things out.
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That's generally not how people who think they want a debate act.
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And that's because Mr. Staples lost the debate last July and Mr. Lynn lost the debate badly on May 24th as well.
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And so we obviously will keep you apprised if there's any movement, if there is any movement on the subject, and if it finally is decided that we simply are not going to be able to make them available, we'll let you know that too.
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But please pray about it. Pray that we'll have wisdom. I'm not going to expose the entire ministry to some sort of major difficulty simply over the tapes of this debate.
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If we just simply have to say, you know, we debated Barry Lynn on the subject, but he refuses to allow these tapes to be distributed, we wish we could.
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Here's his email address. Here's the phone number to Americans United. If you don't like it, talk to them, not to us, because we'd love to do it, but there's just nothing we can do about it.
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If that's all we can do, then that's what we'll do too. We'll see. We certainly hope that we are told by legal counsel, hey, he can't stop you from doing this.
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Here's the law, et cetera, et cetera. That'd be nice, but we don't know. I'm not an expert in those things, and we will find out.
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I can simply tell you that those who were there that evening recognized that Mr.
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Lynn was not able to answer the simple biblical argumentation that was presented there.
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Well, we have had some kind folks who have taken the time to call in today and help a weary traveler out, shall we say, given the fact that, as I said,
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I've only been able to be in for a specific period of time of about four hours.
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I got up at two something this morning, at least as far as my body is concerned. Since I'm coming back to the
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West, time changes and all the rest of that fun stuff. And so some kind folks have called in, and the first caller
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I'd like to talk to is calling from the wettest place on earth.
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The wettest place on earth, and it's so humid and hot there that the only thing people can do is go,
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POOYAH! Was that pretty good? You're on, you know. Well, how do you say it?
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You do it right for me. How do you do it? POOYAH! POOYAH! There you go.
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All right. Now, I want to tell you something, brother, and I'm not going to tell people where to find your house or anything, but you and I got to break bread together only yesterday, didn't we?
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Yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess that was bread. It was Arby's. It's a Nutria sandwich.
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Nutria. Nutria. Tell everybody what Nutria is, because people aren't going to understand what that is.
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Oh, I need to turn off my speakers, don't I? Thank you very much, CDS, who just played a wave sound over the entire program.
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Anyways, you can tell them that you did that. You were threatening the whole time I was there to slip me
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Nutria. Right. What is Nutria? Well, it is a type of water rat.
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It looks like a beaver, but with bigger teeth, I think, and it's a little ...
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A beaver is a cuter, I think, and these are big, ugly Louisiana water rats that I think were introduced here during some
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World's Fair or something, and they've plagued many of the coastal areas because they eat the vegetation, which promotes erosion.
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Did you not tell me that the government is promoting the eating of water rat there in New Orleans?
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Oh, yeah. In fact, the local sheriff of Jefferson Parish, Harry Lee, is already authorized to take them out.
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His deputies and sharpshooters can take them out whenever they want. Of course, some of the animal rights activists have shown up, you know, trying to preserve the rat, but a lot of people want it open season, like you would hunt any other animal.
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And it's also been shown at the restaurant shows where people can eat this rat, and I had the opportunity to actually eat some, and it tastes like dark turkey meat.
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Now, you did not succeed in getting me to eat any of that, correct?
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I'm sorry, I got static on the line. Now, you know,
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I was mentioning, I don't know if you were on the line yet, but I was unpacking my clothes after I got back this afternoon, and I honestly,
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I took one of my shirts, which I had not worn, out to my family. I said, feel this.
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And they're like, oh, gross. I mean, like, were you working out in that or something?
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I said, no, I never wore it. That's just how things are down there.
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So I just thought I would say, you know what? I'm never going to complain again about our monsoons here, because I've never experienced that level of humidity in my life.
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So you win. You win. Even at 122 degrees, I'll take 122 over 85 degrees with your humidity any day of the week.
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I really will. I tell you what, I would agree with you big time, and you lucked out because normally it's much worse.
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Although, you got to see the deluge. I mean, we had something like 18, 19 and a half inches of rain while you were here.
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So that was pretty crazy, but that did keep a lot of that humidity down a bit. That's amazing.
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The humidity was down because it was raining and flooding the place. That should tell you a little something about what it's actually like around there.
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Well, it's like living in the terrarium, you know? Yep. Well, that's probably not why you called, though. You actually got a chance to listen to some presentations that I made this weekend, didn't you?
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Sure did. And I've been knowing you for, I don't know, a couple of years,
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I guess, online, and read some of your materials and books and things. I was raised
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Roman Catholic, as you know, and was in the faith for about 18 years. And part of me was like, well,
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I don't need to go to a conference on Roman Catholicism. You know what I'm saying? Hey, I grew up in it.
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I don't even know what they say. I know what they say. And that's partly true.
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I mean, it wasn't like I heard some, I didn't feel like I was going to hear anything that would say, oh, I've never, ever heard that before.
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However, I was immensely blessed by the presentations, because what you've managed to do is put a lot of it into its historic context and to give me a lot of good reference points.
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Like, I've already bookmarked the Indulgentarium Doctrina, and I read a lot of that the other night, and my jaw was on the desk.
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Isn't that amazing? It's just, look at this anti -biblical statement. It's incredible, isn't it?
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Yeah, it is. And that type of thing, I've already used it with two
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Roman Catholics I know, already since you've left. Really? Oh, yeah. Just in conversations,
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I say something to them, and you know, as you know, my father -in -law has been diagnosed with liver cancer, and so that topic of when you die and what's going to happen after, and so it's just come up.
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And it's not that I'm trying to use some sort of death as an evangelical springboard. I mean, that's a delicate issue.
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But it just came up, and they said something about saying a prayer for him, or saying something.
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And so I said, well, you know, we certainly can pray that the Lord would change his heart and open up his heart like he did
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Lydia, so that he could believe. However, you know, that's not what saves a person.
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And they were like, what do you mean? And boom, there you go. And it's just, you have maybe 30 seconds to tell them the truth.
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Right. And my friend talked to me, and he said something, and he said something about Purgatory.
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And I mean, I was just in amazement, and I said, well, what do you know about that, actually? And next thing you know, we talked a little bit about it.
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So, you know, one thing is I'd like to just say thanks again, because I think,
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I know you've put a tremendous amount of work into that material, and to be able to have it come to us,
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I don't think the average person understands the value of that. You follow me? Yeah, but I will say this.
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It was extremely encouraging, not only that you were there, I did appreciate that a lot, but also the fact that there were,
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I can't tell you how many of the people, I suppose we should give a context so people know what we're talking about.
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I spoke to the National Southern Baptist Seminary Workshop on Roman Catholicism.
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Myself and Dr. Danny Sanchez were the primary speakers. I did six sessions, actually
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I did seven sessions, six in one day, and it was so stinking hot under those TV lights with that humidity, that not only did
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I go through four shirts, but the only reason I had four shirts to go through is because you were kind enough to drive me to the mall to buy some more of them during the dinner break.
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That's how bad things were. But we basically,
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I focused upon, I did the presentation on Mary, on Sola Scriptura, and then three sections on justification, which included purgatory, indulgences, and then the doctrine of justification itself.
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And so those were the main presentations, then we did a question and answer, and what you didn't get to see yesterday morning, which
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I think you actually probably would have enjoyed, was I role -played with the room as a believing
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Roman Catholic, as sort of a This Rock aficionado, and I started with Dr.
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Kai Kerrigan, who I got to meet this weekend, and he's a fascinating fellow.
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He's the only person I know who's gotten a PhD, and his doctoral dissertation was on Mormon Christology, which
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I really think is really neat. There's so much more work that needs to be done in that area, so I'm very thankful for him.
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But he started off, and then at first, and you've never seen me role -play before, but people hide behind other people just so as to not have to be dragged up there.
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I mean, people start needing D -pens just because they're scared. The intimidation factor.
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Oh, the big intimidation factor. This one fellow comes up, then Dr. Gonzalez, who is the head of the
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Interfaith Witnessing board for the North American Mission Board, came up, and then all of a sudden,
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I've got people raising hands all over the place. I've got folks who want to come up there. They are so excited about the workshop.
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They want to come up there. I had a lady come up there, and it was like she was whipping out a sword when she pulled her
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Bible out. I mean, it's like, well, let's talk about that. I mean, it was really, really neat how many people not only wanted to do it, but then afterwards, people coming up to me and saying, oh, you just wouldn't believe.
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And then in the afternoons, they went and visited some of the seminaries you have around there. And they were witnessing to these
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Roman Catholics, and they're coming back saying, man, you just wouldn't believe how exciting it was. You got us so jazzed about this.
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And man, everything you said, that's what they were saying. They were talking about purgatory, and they were talking about other stuff. And we were able to go into the
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Scriptures with them, and they were just as excited as could be. And it was really, really encouraging to see that, and to see folks getting excited about the non -imputation of sin, and such things as that.
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So it was a really, really neat opportunity to get to meet these folks. And I got to make,
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I think, some good contacts. I've already had a contact with someone who wants me now to go to Kansas City, to one of the seminaries there, and speak in the chapel there.
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And it was a really, really neat opportunity. And of course, the other nice thing is, once I make a
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PowerPoint presentation, it's made. It can be used again and again in the future. So some of that stuff was brand new, and we'll be using it in the future.
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Well, I think one of the things that I really saw was the fact that a lot of people criticize
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Reformed individuals for being too intellectual. You know, the idea that we're all dry and washed out, and we just sit upon the pontification platform with our
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PhDs, you know, and puffing smoke pipes with leather patches on the arms, you know. And we don't actually talk to anyone, because after all, it's predestined, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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I can say from my own personal testimony, my church became Reformed by the exposition of the
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Book of Romans and that alone. And we have never felt more of a zeal to proclaim the truth of the
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Gospel than we did when we were an Arminian. We know it's the power of God unto salvation, and the
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Word of God is that, and the Gospel is that, and that is what needs to be protected.
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And we need to proclaim that loud and clear, and what your ministry does is help us to stay on the clear end, and to say, okay, yeah, like, you know, this isn't it.
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And you mentioned in the seminar about how upset Paul got in Galatians about adding one little bitty thing to the
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Gospel, which was the circumcision, and how unbelievable you can just see, as you mentioned, even from the way he wrote, that he was very upset.
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Today we have so -called Christianity, which falls under the guise, too, of those who say you may have to speak in tongues to be saved, you might have to do this to be saved, and of course the whole dozens of lists of Roman Catholic qualifications.
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And you can really just see so clearly that the Gospel is indeed a very simple message, direct from God to His elect.
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And for us, at our church, we're very much focused on practicality.
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And that would be my big thing to people these days, is once you learn the theology, get out there and do something.
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That's right, that's right. Don't just sit around and say, hey, I know all these four points and five points and six of this, and I can quote the councils.
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Well, what we do if you never bother in love to open your mouth and be a vehicle to be used?
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That's right. And that's one thing that you've done, and I know the Lord has blessed you in that area, and it was great to see you live doing it.
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It really was. I was so fired up. I called my pastor on the way home, and I was hooping and hollering, and he's like, man, oh man, you know?
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Because I told him, I said, man, we've got some good stuff, and that's the way I think the faith was meant to be.
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We pass on from baton to baton, you know? Right, right. From person to person. Well, I said to the folks there,
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I said, look, if you leave this place unchanged and untouched, then I've failed, and if you've learned something here and you don't use it, then you've failed.
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And I really don't think, from the expressions on the faces, that everyone there was accustomed to that kind of direct personal challenge on issues like that.
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But I don't know how else to teach it. That's just the way I am, and if you can't teach with passion,
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I'm not sure really why you're teaching it in the first place, to be perfectly honest with you. Anyways, thank you very, very much, sir, for everything you did, including the trips to GNC to get protein drinks and the nutrient -laden
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Arby's roast beef sandwiches. But I'm going to tell you something. You ever send me anything in the mail and call it turkey or whatever,
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I ain't touching it, okay? It's going to sit, huh? The dog will get it, okay?
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I've got a nice big dog, she'll eat anything. There you go. I wish I could have done more.
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It's great to be able to do things, and only those in Christ can understand how it works.
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Even though we hadn't met when I met you, I felt like I'd been knowing you for quite a while. Isn't that the way it is, though?
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The folks in the chat channel will tell you that when Enielson, CDS, and C777 came walking into the room at the church
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I was at in normal Illinois, about a month and a half or so ago now, it wasn't like, oh, hi, nice.
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It was just like, hey guys, let's go grab a bite to eat. Oh, hey, did you talk? It was just like just picking up where you left off before.
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It really is a neat thing to get to travel and meet folks, brothers and sisters in the Lord you've known for a long time, and you just pick up.
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The Lord is building His church all over the place, even when you're below sea level. It's amazing that God can build a church below sea level.
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Amen to that. Real quick before you go, how is the support drive going?
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Well, you know, I actually haven't talked with Rich to find out what's been going on since...
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Oh, okay. As soon as you said that, amazingly, up in the chat room pops the current information.
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We're about two -thirds of the way there. About two -thirds of the way to the level that we need to be at, which is very encouraging.
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That's great. That represents a lot of folks because most of the folks who, for some reason like us, aren't rich folks.
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So that means that's a large number of folks. That's very, very encouraging. Thank you for...
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Well, since you don't like to plug it, I can plug it. And for all the people I know that will be listening to this archived, this is just one way you can put your faith into action is by supporting the ministries that support you.
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I can say that since you don't have to feel that way. I appreciate that, man.
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God bless. Thanks a lot, man. Alright, 866 -854 -6763. We're going to take a break.
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We've got some other folks online and we'll be continuing to talk about the last few weeks and just taking your phone calls.
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We'll be right back. And welcome back to the jet lag version of The Dividing Line today.
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My name is James White and we're talking about My Little Jaunt back to Long Island which
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I figured out before I left. And over the course I think
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I figured it out. Basically it worked out to speaking once a day for a month in essence is what it worked out.
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Some of those days, though, I had off. So that means other days I spoke much more than once. For example, this last
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Thursday I spoke six times, a total of six hours. And then of course some of those speaking engagements involved speaking for three or four hours in regards to the debates.
32:28
Things like that. And we had talked a little bit about the Barry Lynn debate already.
32:35
Before we take our next caller, the second debate took place
32:41
May 31st and I believe this is already, yes it is, available on the website.
32:48
You can order it. And it was the debate with Fr. Peter Stravinskas on the subject of Purgatory.
32:54
Now let me tell you I am really encouraging people who are involved maybe in doing training
33:07
Bible studies, Wednesday night Bible studies in churches, whatever it might be, to obtain the videotapes of this debate and show them in your church.
33:19
I honestly believe this was the best debate of the six debates we've done on Long Island.
33:27
Well, we've done more than six debates on Long Island. We've done, I don't know, over ten or twelve, but the six debates that we have done on the subject of Roman Catholicism on Long Island I believe this was the best of the six.
33:43
Fr. Stravinskas has two earned doctorates. He teaches for Seton Hall and Drew University and the
33:49
American Catholic Seminary I believe is the other one. He's written more books than I have.
33:55
I think it was said 21 books he's written. He has edited the
34:02
Catholic Answer for a number of years. We debated the issue of Purgatory and quite simply what happened in that debate was so far the clearest demonstration of the difference between what it means to be justified by grace through faith to have
34:25
God impute the righteousness of Christ to a person and the sacramental system of Roman Catholicism.
34:37
I truly believe that anyone who watches this debate will see clearly the difference between the
34:47
Biblical Gospel and the Gospel of Roman Catholicism and so I would recommend it to those who are looking for something to present in their
34:59
Bible study classes, in their churches It was not a debate that was marked by nastiness or anything like that.
35:07
It's a fast moving debate. The cross examination I think went very very well.
35:13
It was not only that but I'm going to brag here for the first five years we utilized shall we call it local talent there on Long Island to videotape this particular event.
35:32
We didn't do that this time. Last December I'm not sure if Rich Pierce just felt it was a challenge he wanted to take on or just what.
35:43
But last December Rich took equipment and went out to San Diego when we did the debate with Mitchell Pacwa on Sola Scriptura and not only did that was a two camera shoot
35:58
I think that we did in San Diego wasn't it? Two cameras? I think it was a two camera shoot in San Diego brought over the character generator and Mitchell Pacwa walked out of the church building that night with the tape of the debate with subtitling with telling who's who and what part of the debate we're in and all the rest of it.
36:24
He walked out with in his hand the master to be used as he saw fit. And of course we had it as well.
36:32
And that was pretty impressive. Now what has happened over the past five years that we've done these debates is we've paid a group of professional videographers to come in and they do a one camera shoot.
36:46
Now one camera shoots are boring. Let's be honest. I used to do videography.
36:51
I was paid to do videography. I was a cameraman. And I know how to do it.
36:57
I know how to do the engineering part. I know how to run the cameras. And I've been paid good money to run a camera.
37:04
I've done it professionally. That's one of the things I used to do to make ends meet. And a one camera shoot, there's just only so much you can do.
37:11
You zoom in and then you zoom out. And then you pan over this way and then you pan over that way and then you zoom back.
37:18
That's about all you can do. You try to avoid the lady with the big hair that comes walking right in front of your camera and walks down the middle very slowly and you can't see what's going on and stuff like that.
37:31
We did... Well, I didn't do it. Rich flies out to New York and does a three camera shoot for the
37:41
Stravinskis debate. And local folks there from I think everybody...
37:49
Both the folks that helped were from Grace Reformed Baptist Church and had the little headsets, little wireless headsets and the character generator and three cameras.
38:01
Now you can do a lot with three cameras. You can really do a professional looking job with three cameras.
38:09
But when you've got to run the sound, you've got to make sure things are connected up, that is a huge job.
38:16
Believe me, I know. And Rich pulled it off. Not only did
38:22
Rich pull it off, but if Father Stravinskis had wanted them, if he had just waited a few more minutes, he could have walked off with the tapes himself.
38:31
The only reason he didn't was because we had to label them and he said, ah, don't worry about it, just send them to me. So they're already available.
38:39
Right now you can log on to aomin .org. You can order the videos. I'm not sure, have we done the audio?
38:46
Have we dubbed the audio off yet or is it just the audio's ready too?
38:53
Great, perfect. They're all ready to go. And this was just last week. And if a lot of you may recall, oh, you audio taped live too?
39:04
Oh, okay, of course. Duh, of course you did. I should have realized that. We ain't going to make the mistake that we made in the other debate where it wasn't audio taped live.
39:13
Duh, I should have realized that. So they're both available. And I really, really think that you should get hold of this.
39:21
I normally, those of you who've listened to this program, you know that over the past five years what has frequently happened is there's this big, long time between when we do the debates and when the tapes are available.
39:40
And that's just been because we were working with folks back there in New York. Well this time, no delay.
39:46
We've got it ready to go right now. And I cannot more highly recommend this debate to you because it went really, really well.
39:58
And I'll have to admit, and we'll take a call right after this, but let me just mention something. A lot of folks asked me when
40:07
I was on Long Island, a lot of folks who are just now starting to find out. We had about a 50 -50 audience for the debate on Purgatory.
40:13
It was about 50 -50 Roman Catholic Protestant. And a lot of those folks for some reason didn't know about these debates we've been doing over the past number of years.
40:25
And a lot of folks are really excited about next year. I think we're going to have a packed house next year.
40:33
And a lot of the Roman Catholics weren't really excited. Even though I have to remind me to go back to my point, but I have to tell you about something that did happen.
40:45
Michael Fallon, one of our faithful folks, he and his wife saw, they actually live in Florida, but they were in Pennsylvania.
40:54
They drove over from Pennsylvania to man a table for Alpha Omega Ministries. And after the debate was over,
41:00
Mike also helped. He ran sound. He ran the PA system there, and he helped. And after it was all over and people are milling around, there's all the discussions going on, of course.
41:12
There were a group of about four Roman Catholics that had been sitting in the back.
41:21
And Mike had told me they had been chatting all night. They had been sort of mocking me. And they're the hardcore type, young, radical
41:27
Catholic type guys. And at one point he's sitting there listening to them talking, because they're staying right in front of the table.
41:35
And one of them goes, Oh, when Father Stravinskis would come up to the podium, you could just feel the truth coming forth.
41:46
It was so clear. But when White would get up there, you could see the demons dancing around his head.
41:57
Well, Mike couldn't handle it.
42:03
And he looks at him and he says, Man, what debate were you guys at? Because you obviously weren't the one
42:09
I was just at. And then they were off. And I saw them back there, four guys on Mike, just going back and forth.
42:17
Of course, by the end of doing three and a half, four hours worth of debate, I was tired, and I just sort of let him enjoy himself and have a chance to talk with him.
42:25
But it was fascinating. You could see the demons dancing around his head.
42:31
I thought I was a separated brother! Well, anyways, it was a lot of fun.
42:37
It was very, very enjoyable. And like I said, of all the ones that we've done, I honestly think you would find that this one would be the one that would draw the clearest distinction.
42:50
And what I was going to say was, all these people kept coming up to me on this trip and saying, Boy, sure would be nice if you would debate
42:57
Scott Hahn. And I keep chuckling and saying, Yeah, sure would be. Oh, you mean you've talked to him?
43:04
Uh -huh. Oh, yeah. He's had a standing challenge from us for a full decade now, and starting on year 11.
43:12
Really? Well, why won't he? Well, he's used a lot of different excuses, but the most recent one we've heard is,
43:19
Well, you're not scholarly enough. Well, Father Stravinskis make is scholarly enough.
43:40
Well, anyways, I doth be waxing long, and we have callers online.
43:46
So let's go back toward the heartland of the nation and talk with Dave.
43:53
Hi, Dave. Hi, James. How you doing, man? I'm doing fine. Well, we're back.
43:59
Yeah, I heard. So anyways, aside from the fact that I've been telling people in the chat channel to call, what brings your sonorous tones to the dividing line today?
44:15
Oh, well, I caught a little bit of what you were saying about the Barry Lynn debate tape.
44:21
Yes. Still having some difficulty with that. Now, I should have warned you.
44:29
I could have told you how Barry Lynn was like. But I forgot to tell you.
44:35
Well, you know, I suppose in hindsight I might have been able to predict some of this, but honestly, it seems extremely unusual to me that a person who is in the limelight, he's on Larry King, he's on Crossfire, he's on NBC, ABC, CBS, it just still strikes me as extremely unusual that he would attempt to suppress the tapes of this debate, especially given the fact that he, as he himself says, is a great advocate for the freedom of speech.
45:13
So it just truly is amazing, but certainly, yeah, it would have been nice to have maybe approached it a little bit differently and gotten him to stand up in front of the videotape, ride the bat, and say,
45:27
I promise and swear that I will not do anything goofy here to keep this debate from being made available to people,
45:34
I suppose. That would be a nice thing. Anyways, we certainly hope that once the attorneys can get back to us and say, okay, here are your options.
45:45
If there is some... If they say, yeah, some public pressure would help, you've mentioned folks in the past who might be interested in knowing about this.
45:57
I'd like to think that there would be a lot of interest in the head of the Americans United, Separation of Church and State, threatening to use the power of the state against a church group to suppress a theological debate.
46:10
I mean, nothing is more obviously self -contradictory and hypocritical than that. But at the same time,
46:17
I also recognize that even many conservative commentators, political commentators, would not want to touch this one with a 10 -foot pole simply because of the fact that it is a conservative
46:29
Bible -believing evangelical that is doing the debate. I mean, they may go, yeah, okay,
46:37
Lynn lost the debate badly. Yes, so on and so forth. But, since it's religious, in that sense, we don't want to touch it.
46:47
And many of these folks, many of the conservatives, are Catholics. And so, I just don't know.
46:53
I don't know what's going to happen with it. I'm just letting people know. We're just wide open saying, hey, here's what happened.
46:59
Quite simply, we won the debate. We won the debate big time. Anyone who watches it will see that.
47:06
And that's why the other side doesn't want it out there. Feel free to contact them and get their story, but one thing in the things, the emails that have gone back and forth between myself and Barry Lynn, I have mentioned to him,
47:20
I have made it very clear, we won that debate. He's never disputed it. He has never disputed, not once, my claim that the reason he's doing this is because he lost the debate.
47:33
So, you know, we're just letting folks know and hoping and praying that right will prevail and people will get a chance to hear these debates.
47:45
Yeah, I mean, that's what I was thinking, too. I mean, he would not be doing this if he had won the debate.
47:51
Of course not. In fact, can you imagine if it was reversed? Can you imagine if I was a slobbering, you know, backwoods person that sat there and just made stupid comments, and then once it was all over, he would just love to use this.
48:08
He would get miles of use out of this, and I'm the one that would go, well, I'll sue you if you make it available.
48:16
You know what he'd say. He'd say, oh, really? Well, make my day. We'll see you in court.
48:22
Yeah, and it'd be a First Amendment issue. Of course it would. Of course it would. And he would put it all over his website, and he'd be selling it.
48:29
Yep. He would be selling it. Yep. I think you're exactly right. Well, obviously the most we can do is we can pray that God will allow us to make it available, that he will give us wisdom as to how we're to deal with the legal issues.
48:47
But other than that, we're just going to let folks know, look, we did this debate on the exact same basis that we do all the other debates.
48:55
And he knew it. We want to make it available. We've never done a debate where we then suppress the tapes.
49:02
It's never happened. And there's a reason for that. And I think the pressure needs to be put on him to explain why he's doing what he's doing, because it seems to me to be grossly inconsistent with the public stand he has taken on these particular subjects.
49:20
So, not only that, but you know, it's interesting. There were people in the audience.
49:26
One of the people, at the beginning of the debate, Barry Lynn said, is there anybody here who has not already made up your mind on this issue?
49:34
And only a very small number of people put their hands up. But one of the people who put their hands up is a professor at Hofstra University.
49:42
And at the end of that debate, that professor, Chris Arnzen, gave him his business card and said, would you please have
49:52
Dr. White contact me? I would like to see if he'd be willing to participate in a project that I'm doing that will result in a new textbook for the religion courses at Hofstra University.
50:04
Now, if we in any way, shape, or form misbehaved, were unscholarly, were unfair to Barry Lynn in that debate, would that professor, who himself said he had not made up his mind, come to me and ask me to be involved in a project that would be involved with Hofstra University if he thought we had somehow misbehaved?
50:25
Of course not. So, Barry Lynn was treated absolutely positively, fairly.
50:32
And you know what? That's the problem. Is that Barry Lynn is accustomed as a liberal in the liberal media of not being treated fairly but of being given the advantage.
50:42
And when it was one -on -one, moderated, it was moderated perfectly. The gentleman who moderated that debate also moderated the
50:50
Stravinskis debate. And Dr. Warren Frasina, who also teaches at Hofstra, did a wonderful job.
50:58
He really, truly did. He was the perfect, neutral moderator. And he made, in fact,
51:04
I'll go beyond that, he gave Lynn more time. During Lynn's rebuttal, we were supposed to have 10 minutes and all of our timers went off and Lynn kept going and Dr.
51:17
Frasina let him finish his thought. He went well beyond his time. I never did. So, no one can say that this was not an absolutely fair one -on -one debate on the subject.
51:30
The simple fact of the matter is, in a fair, moderated, scholarly debate, Barry Lynn lost.
51:37
And he lost on the merits of the argument, nothing else. This man is a board member of the
51:44
ACLU. He is a trained attorney. I'm a Baptist minister and he could not believe that a
51:50
Baptist minister could cross -examine him and force him to recognize the errors of what he was saying.
51:57
I honestly think that when he heard two words, Baptist and Arizona, he assumed
52:02
I was going to show up and I'd have half my teeth, I'd be barefoot, and I'd be married to my first cousin and have my hound dog
52:08
Bo with me. I honestly think that's what he expected and he was taken by surprise that that's not what he ran into.
52:15
And so, that's sort of what happened. But pray about it because we really do want to make those tapes available.
52:21
Okay? Thanks for calling, ma 'am. Hey, thanks. Alright. God bless. Alright. 866 -854 -6763.
52:29
We have a number of folks still online and one line open. We've still got half an hour to go.
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We'll be right back. Millions of petitioners from around the world are imploring
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55:06
This Coming Lord's Day. Our morning Bible study begins at 9 .30 a .m. and our worship service is at 10 .45.
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.org Welcome back to Dividing Line.
55:53
My name is James White and we are talking a little bit about what took place over the past 22 days.
55:59
Two debates, dozens of churches, a big seminar for the North American Mission Board of the
56:05
Southern Baptist Convention on the subject Roman Catholicism and all sorts of neat, wonderful, positive things along those lines.
56:13
And we have callers. I think we're probably headed up toward Salt Lake City or so now, are we not?
56:21
Is this John? Hello, John. Doing good.
56:29
What was the name of your favorite debate? I caught it on the back end of the telephone.
56:37
You said there was one that was really good. Well, the one we just did on Purgatory with Fr.
56:43
Peter Stravinskas of the six that we've done on Long Island I think was definitely the best and I think it would also be best suited for showing in a church.
56:54
It's really hard for anybody to argue that Fr. Stravinskas is not a trained apologist or is not scholarly enough or whatever else it might be.
57:05
And certainly the debate was fair. It was done in the way it should be done.
57:11
There wasn't a bunch of ad hominem. I think at one point Fr. Stravinskas did not like my handspring visor edge.
57:19
There was one point in the debate where he asked me didn't
57:26
Peter say such and so? And I honestly think that what he meant was that was a quote from Paul not from Peter.
57:38
And so I asked him for the reference. And he seemed to be frustrated and he simply said well why don't you just look it up on your gadget there or whatever it was.
57:51
I forget what term he was using. But basically he didn't like my handspring visor edge for some reason.
57:59
Gizmo. Thank you. Look it up on your gizmo there. And so I think I should probably now call my handspring visor edge the gizmo.
58:08
But that was about the only time when anything like that happened. So it is definitely one of my favorite debates.
58:16
Is it on the website right now? It is available already available for order on the website in both audio and video form.
58:25
Yes. Okay. I just have a really quick question. It came up in my church that somebody suggested that we were created in the image of God and that every man has a spiritual void.
58:45
I don't know if everybody has a spiritual void.
58:50
What's your take on that from a reformed position? Well certainly I do believe that we're all created in the imago
58:58
Dei, the image of God. It depends on what void you're referring to.
59:06
If that phrase means that every person outside of Christ lacks spiritual life and is in need of regeneration, well certainly, of course.
59:19
Normally, when that phraseology is used, it is used in reference to the person perceiving that they're missing something, quote unquote.
59:33
Yeah, that's the context that was used. I object to that just because if man's born spiritually dead,
59:41
I mean, they would have to notice that they do have a need.
59:48
Right. Yeah, I think that there are those who are not aware of their, quote unquote, spiritual void or their spiritual need because they are not being convicted.
01:00:02
They are so wrapped up in their sin and so rebellious against God that they would not even be aware of their, quote unquote, spiritual need.
01:00:13
The void is still there, but their conscience is, they're working so hard to suppress the voice of their conscience, they're not even aware of it.
01:00:21
So I think it depends on the context in which you're putting it. The assertion is that everyone's searching for God and everyone's trying to fill a
01:00:31
God -shaped vacuum or whatever it is. No, I think there are people who are doing everything they possibly can about suppressing that particular thing and there are people,
01:00:47
I think, that have dead consciences as far as the sense of, like the person who commits the unpardonable sin, the very religious person who calls white black and black white.
01:00:58
I think there are people who God gives over in their sin. But in the context of saying that everyone has a spiritual need, that of course is true.
01:01:07
Whether that means that they then are actually seeking to fill that with, you know, seeking after God and stuff like that, no,
01:01:16
I wouldn't believe that that is the case at all. Okay? I just wanted to make sure, because Eli, I really enjoyed your debates,
01:01:25
I guess, over the past month or so. Who was the
01:01:31
United Methodist? Oh yeah, John Swamley. Yeah, that was really funny. Yeah, you know, it's amazing.
01:01:38
Over the past, a little bit more than a month, we've done two radio debates and two formal debates and I don't think that anyone who listens to all four of those debates would argue with me or certainly people will call me arrogant for saying this no matter what, but the simple fact of the matter is, we're 4 -0.
01:01:56
I mean, when one of your opponents says, I'll sue you if you make the tapes available, another one of them hangs up on you.
01:02:03
The third one, when you cross -examine goes, well, you got a point there. And I think we're 4 -0 over the past month and that's wonderful to have the opportunity of dealing with, think of it twice on homosexuality, once on abortion, once on purgatory.
01:02:19
I mean, that's what an opportunity. I think I just wonder why the
01:02:24
Lord has given us the opportunity of doing this. It's a wonderful thing that we've had the opportunity of defending his truth.
01:02:30
Okay, man. Thanks for calling in. God bless. 866 -854 -6763.
01:02:38
We press on to Southern California. We need to get to Southern California quickly before the lights go off.
01:02:45
So, hi, Johnny. How you doing? How you doing? I can barely hear you. Well, you know, it's probably not due to me.
01:02:50
It's probably due to the fact that the lights are starting to dim there in Southern California, and I won't say who
01:02:58
I think is responsible for that, but you know how it works. Well, it's getting better a little bit.
01:03:04
Alrighty, man. What's up? I'm calling about a debate that you had with Jerry Manatee, I believe it was 1993 on the papacy.
01:03:12
Oh, yes. In Denver. Yes. Oh, I'm sorry. The seven -hour two -night marathon, yes.
01:03:19
That's right. One of the points that Jerry Manatee made, and I just wanted to clear something up because I wasn't sure what you were saying.
01:03:28
Jerry Manatee said that you denied that... Or let me put it this way.
01:03:35
That you questioned whether Peter ever went to Rome. And Jerry said in the second night of the debate, he said that Mr.
01:03:45
White did say that, and if Mr. White was in a room of scholars and historians, he would be left out of court.
01:03:51
He said all of the church fathers are unanimous in saying that Peter went to Rome and died there. I wanted to know, are you denying that or questioning that?
01:04:00
Well, what he's referring to there, I always... One thing that has fascinated me over the years is that many of my opponents, especially
01:04:09
Jerry Manatee and Patrick Madrid, the one time he did debate me, always wrote their debate notes to respond to either the last debate that I did on a subject, or to a book
01:04:22
I had written years and years before, rather than whatever the most recent thing I had done on it was.
01:04:28
Which I found very, very interesting. At least they read some things I had done before.
01:04:33
A lot of my debate opponents won't even bother to do that. And what they're referring to is the fact that I raised the issue in Answers to Catholic Claims, that there is a lot of reason for questioning the accuracy of this tradition regarding Peter going to Rome.
01:04:48
I'm sorry? Okay, yeah, well it did seem to clear up there.
01:04:54
Somebody did something, either Richard Warren went, I wonder if I turn this... Oh, look at that!
01:04:59
Anyways, I raised the issue because of the fact that Peter, in the
01:05:05
New Testament, speaks of being in Babylon. He speaks... There's all sorts of really difficult historical issues that, interestingly enough,
01:05:14
Mr. Matitix didn't even attempt to address during that debate. For example, Paul writes to the
01:05:20
Romans. If Peter was there, why would Paul write to the Romans? That would be a usurpation of Peter's authority. And he testifies in Acts, and Luke does in Acts, and Paul in some of his letters, that when he stood before Caesar, no one stood with him.
01:05:35
That everyone abandoned him. That would be a tremendous attack upon Peter if Peter, in fact, did not stand at Paul's defense.
01:05:44
There's a number of issues that they can... Mr. Matitix can say scholars laugh at that, but until he deals with those issues, the only people laughing are the ones who are looking for a meaningful argument.
01:05:57
I never, ever said that tradition, whatever that is, questions
01:06:03
Peter's arrival in Rome. What I did point out is that some of that earliest tradition, for example, from Irenaeus.
01:06:11
Irenaeus also informs us with the exact same level of certitude that the apostles likewise taught that Jesus was more than 50 years old when he died.
01:06:27
And Matitix would have to recognize that that alleged tradition that Irenaeus records was corrupted.
01:06:36
Well, if it was... if that tradition was corrupted as early as Irenaeus, then what other tradition can we say is without...
01:06:43
is with certainty not corrupted? It's amazing. They never want to talk about those things. They never want to be fair in looking at the whole spectrum of church history and recognizing that their arguments are two -edged swords.
01:07:00
And so, you know, when he says, oh, he'd be laughed out of a room of scholars. If I said that tradition does not record that Peter went to Rome, I would be.
01:07:08
If I said that tradition is questionable in its earliest instances, I wouldn't be.
01:07:14
Well, I don't know the exact dating on some of the epistles of Paul, but is it possible that maybe...
01:07:22
and I'm not a scholar, but I would just take a guess that maybe when Paul wrote the book of Romans, Peter had not yet gone, because wasn't he like the...
01:07:30
Well, there's a problem with that, because the actual argumentation from the
01:07:36
Roman Catholic perspective would require that Peter go there significantly earlier than when
01:07:45
Paul would have written that epistle, or when Paul... especially when Paul writes to Timothy much later in his life.
01:07:54
So there's just a number of issues that you run smack dab into that you have to come up with basically you have to beg the question.
01:08:02
You have to say, well, you have to come up with extremely imaginative ways around these not reflecting very badly on Peter.
01:08:14
And the simple fact of the matter is you have to, when you ask the question, alright, we're looking at a tradition basically, let's say
01:08:21
Irenaeus is the earliest, so we're still looking at 120 years after the events, after the martyrdom of Peter.
01:08:30
So you've got 120 years there of before you come up with this alleged tradition, and is it not the case that Irenaeus also records a number of other traditions that are already corrupt.
01:08:44
And so you can talk about a unanimous tradition after that point. But the simple fact of the matter is there's far more weight to the original documents that are written at the time than there is to a tradition that's recorded 108 years later.
01:08:57
Especially when you keep in mind that there is no consistency in the succession list of the bishops of Rome, including the one that Irenaeus offers.
01:09:06
There's just a lot of stuff there, and that's why there's such a difference between Roman Catholic scholarship, historical scholarship, and their apologists.
01:09:14
And that's why you'll hear people like Tim Staples and Jerry Matitix and others, when you raise the names of historians like Tierney and others, they'll immediately dismiss them as being, oh, they're liberals, they're not even
01:09:25
Catholics. The reason for that is because their actual scholars recognize these things, but the apologists are more conservative than the scholars are, and so there's a rift between them.
01:09:36
I do remember that you pointed out that in many of the listings, they did not list Peter as one of the bishops of Rome.
01:09:42
Not only that, but they have different beginning bishops of Rome after Peter, and also
01:09:47
Peter, in at least one of the lists, is not listed as the bishop of Rome. The first bishop of Rome is the person that he then assigns.
01:09:53
And so, there's contradictions, and the reason for the contradictions is simple. There was no monarchical episcopate in Rome until about 140.
01:10:04
Well, yeah, you said that there were sometimes four? Well, there's a plurality of elders. And so, if you have a plurality of elders, how do you attempt to draw a single line when there are actually four or five people who were elders at the same time?
01:10:23
But is it safe to assume that maybe, you know, let's say he's not the bishop of Rome on the basis of certain evidence that may incline us to believe in the opposite direction, but is it safe to assume that he did go there prior to his death and get martyred there with Paul?
01:10:39
Again, he may have, he may not have. The simple fact of the matter is we do not know, we cannot prove that in any way, shape, or form.
01:10:47
Tradition says that he did, but remember, that tradition is almost unanimously from those who had a vested interest in having
01:10:56
Peter go there. Antioch claimed him there. There are other traditions that didn't end up having unanimity and a lot of weight because Rome is the one who ends up having the authority and ends up writing the history.
01:11:08
You have to go back to the earliest sources. The earliest sources simply don't decide it, but here's the issue.
01:11:15
Rome has to have him there. Rome can't give any weight to those other traditions because without Peter there, you don't have the papacy.
01:11:25
It's just one of the many, many, many things they have to have work for the papacy to end up being the final thing.
01:11:32
I just wanted to say this before I go. You were talking about how there were some people saying that if only you would debate
01:11:38
Scott Hahn. Well, I just spoke on the phone a few days ago with Jesse Romero from St.
01:11:44
Joseph, and he told me that he spoke with Bob St. Genes, and that he thinks that Bob St.
01:11:50
Genes is a great apologist, and that he also spoke with Scott Hahn, and Scott Hahn says that Robert St.
01:11:58
Genes is the greatest Roman Catholic apologist probably on the planet, and that all other
01:12:03
Roman Catholic apologists are eating his dust. Wow. So according to Scott Hahn, you have faced pretty much the best there is.
01:12:10
Interesting. According to Jesse Romero. Well, Jesse Romero told me he spoke with Scott Hahn.
01:12:16
They're friends. So Peter Romero was telling me that Scott Hahn has spoken together about Bob St.
01:12:23
Genes because, I mean, I've listened to several of your debates, not all of them, but I was speaking to Jesse Romero and I was telling him that of all the
01:12:33
Roman Catholic apologists, I said, with all due respect to you, Jesse, and Tim, and all those guys you got there,
01:12:39
Bob St. Genes is one tough cookie. I think he's the most impressive I've seen so far. And he said, oh, yeah, he's awesome.
01:12:47
He's absolutely outstanding. Scott Hahn told me that he believes that he is the best out there, and that everyone else is eating his dust.
01:12:54
Fascinating. Alrighty, well, I appreciate that information. Alright, thanks very much. God bless. Alrighty, I can't keep up with, let's go to real quick,
01:13:05
Brett in Deerfield, Florida. Hi, Brett. Hello, Brett. Hey, there you are, man.
01:13:15
Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Listen, my question is,
01:13:22
I guess I'm going to get off the beaten path a little bit, but my question for you is, how do you think that we should deal with the call for national repentance via the problems with Sodom and Gomorrah and everything, from both a reformed perspective and in local cities like my place,
01:13:39
Deerfield Beach, Florida? Well, when you say the call to national repentance, is there something I missed while I was traveling?
01:13:45
Oh, no, no. Not really. Just, you know, I guess the burden that's been on my heart here, and we've been actually been spending time at my church on Wednesday nights praying, is just,
01:13:54
I don't know if you listened a little bit, some problems with China, and just concerned about the sin in our nation and so forth.
01:14:01
And, you know, we should, or maybe I should ask you, do you think that we should be concerned about trying to let our nation know, whether it be a city at a time or some national way, about repenting?
01:14:15
We don't have any choice about that. We have to, we have to speak out. We have to let people know that there will be consequences to this kind of evil.
01:14:26
The problem, of course, is, as you know, that when we make that kind of a statement, we are going to be upbraided to an incredible degree.
01:14:36
We're going to be marginalized ever more unless God is merciful to our nation and grants repentance.
01:14:44
Otherwise, we're going to see the same kind of incredible attacks upon us, personal attacks upon us, upon our churches.
01:14:56
I think that there are many people who definitely want to use the power of the government, quote -unquote, hate crimes legislation, to silence us.
01:15:09
I can see the day when there will be civil penalties attached for saying what you're saying right now, for saying that we need to repent of the sin of homosexuality.
01:15:19
I can see the day when that will cost us our church buildings, cost us our personal incomes.
01:15:25
I think that's a... I think most definitely. I think that's not as far down the road as people think it will be.
01:15:34
I mean, right now, let's be honest. There's a bill that's already been passed in the
01:15:40
Senate. It hasn't been signed yet, but that would make it illegal for people to mention politicians' names within a certain distance, a certain time frame of the elections in regards to how they voted on homosexuality, on abortion, on things like that.
01:16:00
That's right. Our freedom of speech is under direct attack, and you put that together with the dumbing down of the
01:16:09
American populace, the undercutting of people's understanding of what freedom is and what it's based on, and the liberalism.
01:16:16
I mean, sure, there's going to be a day when we make those statements, we're going to have to pay for them, and that day is not far around the corner.
01:16:25
So, I don't think we have any choice. We have to be salt and light, and we have to speak honestly and say, look, when a nation openly and with now in film and in TV, not only puts up with this kind of sin, but promotes this kind of activity.
01:16:52
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all ungodliness of men.
01:16:59
And that's ongoing, and that is absolutely certain, and we have to be that prophetic voice that says, this is going to happen.
01:17:08
One of my concerns within that is that some professing Christians want to be real quick to point out how when
01:17:15
Abraham petitioned God, if there was 50 on down to 10 faithful people, and Sodom and Gomorrah, we spare them, and then people say, look, we've got thousands upon thousands of Christians in the
01:17:26
United States, but I'd like to point out real quick, number one, the abortion problem, which probably did not exist to much of a degree back then, and also the percentages and how much more population we have here.
01:17:37
Yeah, most definitely. I don't think we would truly have 10 % that truly bow the knee to Christ.
01:17:46
I know that that puts me, oh no, no, no, look at the Barna surveys or whatever.
01:17:52
Well, let's put it this way. Make it to where you're going to be financially hurt to show up at church next
01:17:59
Sunday morning, and we'll see what percentages we get. Amen. I just, it may sound really negative, but that's what
01:18:07
I see. One of my last comments is that one of the local papers here, the Deerfield Beach Times, they're owned by Sun Sentinel here in South Florida, and I did recently send in a letter to the editor to them, and they were real quick, of course, they put their little clauses in that they have a right to edit for space and for things that are considered not good taste.
01:18:27
So when I sent my letter in, they were real quick to take out the sins that I actually mentioned.
01:18:33
Now they left the rest of it in about repenting of sins, but they would not leave the sins. They wouldn't let you know what the sins were that I mentioned.
01:18:40
So I thought that was very interesting. Do you have any other advice on ways to reach out locally? Well, I really think that that's something that local churches need to decide what they're being led to do and how they're being led to be involved with that.
01:18:55
I think it's just a personal thing that Christians themselves, we can't look to the organized church to do what we're supposed to do as the living church.
01:19:05
I think that all of us have opportunities in conversations with the people around us to bear witness of the need for repentance and what
01:19:12
God's truth is, and that's really where it's going to happen. I don't think we can sit back and say, oh, well, my church is going to put an ad in the newspaper or something like that, and that fulfills my responsibility.
01:19:24
No, I think that responsibility still remains upon us. Amen. God bless you.
01:19:31
866 -854 -6763. Well, time for one more phone call today, and I want to thank everyone who has been so kind in helping me through my jet lag and the fact that it's, let's see, what time is it?
01:19:47
My body thinks it's sometime after 530, I guess. I don't know, because I went to the
01:19:53
East Coast, and that's three hours, and I went to Louisiana, and that's... I don't want to really offend
01:20:01
Louisianans, but that's two hours and a half or something. They're just a little bit off down there.
01:20:07
But anyways, we have one more caller here on the dividing line today, and that's...
01:20:15
I think we're going to stay here in the state of Arizona, where... Let me click on my little thingy here.
01:20:20
It's... Oh, it went down to 104 degrees. Oh, I thought it was...
01:20:25
It was 105 a few moments ago, and it was supposed to get up to 110 today. Do you happen to know what the temperature is out in the east part of the valley,
01:20:34
Katie? I'd say it's probably close to 105. 105 right now? Because I think you have the same little thingy on your computer that I have on my computer.
01:20:43
Mine says it got up to 106, but now it's only 104. And let me tell you something. 104 dry beats 84 with 95 % humidity any day.
01:20:53
Oh, I can imagine. No more complaints from me. In fact, I'm going to say it to the world. You're all going to hear this on Real Audio.
01:21:00
You're hearing it from me. If you hear me complain in August, go ahead and say, you said you weren't going to complain anymore, because I tell you, that fellow down there in Louisiana, I don't know how he does it.
01:21:12
I do not know how he does it. But anyways, that's probably not why you called, is it? Not particularly. Actually, I don't know why
01:21:19
I called. Well, I do know why you called. It's because of people putting pressure upon you to do so.
01:21:26
I watched it, and I think there are certain people that you and I know as E Nielsen, CDS, that I think need to repent for the way that they treat their fellow
01:21:36
Christians. Don't you think that needs to be happening? Well, especially since I'm the weaker vessel. That's right.
01:21:42
And they took advantage of that, actually. But now, actually now, we do have a connection there that I was, one of the books, you'll find this very interesting, one of the books, well, the book, that all those folks at the
01:21:57
Seminary Workshop, and these were people from all six of the Southern Baptist Seminaries, they all had to read the
01:22:05
Roman Catholic Controversy. And I was signing that thing right and left, all through the thing, and as you know, in the
01:22:12
Roman Catholic Controversy is a certain song that I got permission to put into the book from some folks you know.
01:22:22
Yes. And in fact, you get an opportunity to sing with them and back them up and do fun stuff like that, so there was a connection there.
01:22:31
They all got to read the words to that song because they all had to read that book as one of their assignments for this.
01:22:37
Actually, they got seminary -level credit, graduate -level credit for attending this particular thing and reading that book, so I thought you might find that interesting.
01:22:45
You might want to share that with some folks when you get a chance to sometime. Sure. Anyways, I heard some of the things that were going on in regards to the debates.
01:22:55
Did you have anything you wanted to ask about those debates, or is that what you were thinking about?
01:23:02
I was a little bit curious about the Stravinskis debate. I hadn't heard a lot about it, and I'm not sure, obviously, what you've already said about it.
01:23:13
Just curious how the audience was during that one, as opposed to previous great debates that you've had.
01:23:20
Well, that's a good question. This time around, a fine
01:23:25
Christian man on Long Island paid, he donated the money for us to buy a full -page ad in the
01:23:33
Long Island Catholic. And since it was Peter Stravinskis, who's fairly well -known, 21 books, teaches for Seton Hall and Drew University, and since we advertised in the
01:23:47
Long Island Catholic, and so on and so forth, we estimated it was about a 50 -50 audience. And that's what we wanted.
01:23:53
We've always wanted to have Roman Catholics there, and one of the things that disappointed us over the years is the first year with Jerry Matitix when we debated the
01:23:59
Marian dogmas, it was about 50 -50. And each year it had slid. And over the past few years it was probably down to maybe as low as 15 %
01:24:09
Catholic, probably along those lines. And so to go back to 50 -50 was really neat.
01:24:16
And it did result in some, there were some comments made, and there was applause when maybe there shouldn't have been applause on both ends.
01:24:27
In fact, Rich was telling me today that at one point, at one point Father Stravinskas even stops and says something to someone in the audience saying,
01:24:36
I forget exactly how he put it, but some long lines of, you know, you shouldn't have said that, that wasn't funny. And I had not heard what was said.
01:24:44
I heard someone say something. And when I heard him say it, I assumed they were razzing me.
01:24:50
But he responded to it, so my assumption was, no, they're razzing him. Well, actually, Rich indicated that Michael Fallon felt that it was against me, and Stravinskas was embarrassed by it.
01:25:01
And so he had publicly rebuked this person for basically making the Catholic side look bad.
01:25:08
But I did mention earlier the two, the four Roman Catholic guys at the end of the debate, when everybody's standing around talking to each other, who were standing in front of the
01:25:17
Alpha and Omega desk, table, who the one had said, one very loudly says, oh, when
01:25:25
Father Stravinskas would come up, you could just hear the truth clearly coming from him. But when
01:25:31
White would come up, you could see the demons dancing around his head. And I have to chuckle at that one.
01:25:39
First of all, because where would the demons hide around my head anyways? I mean, I got nothing left up there.
01:25:45
What little I've got is really short anyhow, so they couldn't hide anywhere. And then as a church history guy,
01:25:50
I think about the fact that when Martin Luther debated
01:25:56
Johann Eck at Leipzig at the beginning of the Reformation, Luther had a little vase of flowers on his desk.
01:26:05
And every once in a while, he'd sniff these flowers, and that started the rumor amongst the Catholics that the demons were hiding in the flowers and giving him his answers.
01:26:15
And so nothing has changed. Over 400 years have gone by, almost 500 years now, and still you have the
01:26:21
Catholics when the debate doesn't go well saying, there are demons dancing around his head. So it was certainly the crowd was under control, and it was respectful.
01:26:32
It wasn't anything like the Catholic crowd at the Staples debate in Fullerton. Nothing like that.
01:26:38
That's never happened on Long Island, and I don't think it ever will. So it went really well, and I think y 'all will really enjoy watching this one.
01:26:46
It's a keeper. It's the type you take and you show in the church because it's really good. Thanks for calling!
01:26:53
Well, that'll do it for our little post -trip wrap -up.
01:27:00
There was so much more that I could have talked about. So many people I'd love to thank. People down there in Louisiana, people on Long Island, Roland and Marion Bloch, who let me stay in their home for 18 days.
01:27:12
All these wonderful folks that did so much to make this whole trip worthwhile.
01:27:18
The best thing you can do, pray about the Barry Lynn debate, and get on aomin .org
01:27:24
and get the tapes of the Stravinskis debates. Show them in your church.
01:27:29
I think you'll find them to be very, very useful. Lord Willen will be right back doing the dividing line again, and we will be addressing all sorts of important subjects in the future, as long as you keep praying for us that the