Apologia Radio | James White on Deity of Christ, Jehovah's Witnesses, and More

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00:01

Greetings and welcome to Apologia Radio. Yes, I'm getting $20 per mispronunciation of the term.

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Jeff promised me that, and so I'm counting on it. So, Apologia Radio, I'm up to $40 already, right there.

00:17

It should be Apologia, but I'm just going with the flow, and when people promise me money,

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I just go with it. So, we're good. Welcome to Apologia Radio. That's $60.

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My name is James White. Still getting over a little bit of what everybody got last week.

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Did you notice that? Everybody got the same stuff. I'm starting to wonder about the black helicopters, personally, because when everybody gets at the same time, it's just a little strange.

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But I'm here in my Kuji vest in honor of the ninja. He has a

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Kuji. I think maybe some of you have seen the pictures of he and I in my studio when

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I gave him a Kuji sweater to wear. And I am so honoring of the ninja that today

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I wore my Kuji shoes, too. So, Kuji shoes,

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Kuji vest. It's too warm for the Kuji sweater quite yet. Once there's a seven at the beginning of the temperature, for those of you who use

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Fahrenheit, then we can go for the Kuji sweater, too. I just didn't want to end up as a puddle here in the ninja seat at Apologia Radio.

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I'm filling in because Jeff and the crew have headed off to, let me tell you something, one of the toughest flights you'll ever take.

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I regularly fly from the United States to South Africa. That's a nine -hour shift.

01:54

It depends on what time of the year it is. Somewhere between eight and nine hours, normally, time shift there.

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And that's rough enough. But for some reason, going across the Pacific, the other direction, ends up being 17 hours, but you're a day ahead or something like that.

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It's really, really confusing. And by about the second day, you're just completely lost as to what time it actually is.

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The first time I went to Australia myself, I made the mistake of allowing them to schedule me to speak the night of my arrival.

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So I got there sometime in the morning, which was in the middle of the night for me or something. And by the time

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I spoke that evening, the Sydney atheist showed up. And I didn't have a clue what

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I was saying. I don't even remember what I said. It was bad. It was very, very, very bad. So hopefully they won't do that.

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But they're down in Australia. I think they're going to be in Brisbane and Sydney, two of the places

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I go to. By the way, it's Brisbane. Make sure you say that. They can tell when you're a foreigner, when you say

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Brisbane or something like that. Brisbane and Sydney, Melbourne, places like that. And I forgot to mention to Jeff, try to use as many rugby references as possible.

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It will help with the natives, all the natives there in Australia.

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In fact, once, I shouldn't mention this, but once at one of the churches I was at, we moved the entire service an hour forward so that we could watch the

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Rugby World Cup match between the All Blacks of New Zealand and Australia, who of course are mortal enemies, on the big screen after the service was over.

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That's just what it's like in Australia. Just get used to it. So they're down in Australia. I guess in Queensland, and this really surprised me, they just legalized abortion in Queensland.

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I've been down there a number of times and I was not aware of that. It surprises me because the churches in Australia would tell you it's hard ground.

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It's very secularized. And so I would have expected that abortion on demand was already the reality there.

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But sadly, that's not the case. They've gone down there to do the right thing and to start helping the churches down there with end abortion now and stuff like that.

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So that's where they are. And that's why I'm sitting here filling in for the

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Ninja himself in the Ninja seat. There is a little known tradition, and I'm surprised that Jeff does not do more with this because it would help him out.

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But there's a little known tradition that when you fill in for a Ninja, you have to bring an offering for the

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Ninja, a gift for the Ninja. And so part of the gift is this particular mosquito here that is exceptionally...

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You know, Desiderius Erasmus, the early Greek scholar and humanist back in the 1500s, believed that mosquitoes were demons.

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Which is understandable in the summer in Basel, Switzerland, why you would think that mosquitoes were demons, but he did.

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And so maybe that's what we've got going on here, but I just exercised that one. Anyway, you are supposed to bring an offering for the

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Ninja. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to leave these right here. This is a set of Ravencrest Tactical balanced throwing knives.

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And I'm going to leave them right there for the Ninja as my offering for sitting in the

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Ninja seat. Because I figure if you're a Ninja, you probably already know how to use those.

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And all I can use them for is buttering my bread, which is not what they were designed for initially.

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So to allow them to be used in the proper hands, we leave that there for the

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Ninja. He's done some pretty strange things when he's filled in for me on the

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Dividing Line, which is my program. And we don't have any problem.

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I talk about Apologia all the time on the

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Dividing Line and they talk about the Dividing Line. It's really neat that there is no competition here.

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I suppose if it was a zero -sum game and we were competing for funds and stuff like that. And sadly,

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I have to report, there are people in Christian ministry who think that way and view others as competition and stuff like that.

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Never crossed my mind. I hope it would never cross Jeff's mind or anybody else's mind. First of all,

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God owns the cattle in a thousand hills. You don't want to use a fundamentalist interpretation of that because there are

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Texans who own more than the cattle in a thousand hills. But it refers, of course, to God's unlimited supply and his ability to take care of his people.

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And so we're all on the same page. It's wonderful that Jeff can come over and do the

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Dividing Line. I can come over here and do Apologia Radio. There's no sense of competition.

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He has his areas of strength. I have my areas of strength. And we're not in competition with one another.

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We encourage others to support the other's work. That's the way it should be,

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I would think. Certainly in our days, with the culture and its hatred of the

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Christian faith so clearly manifested, I would hope that more and more that would be the case.

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I just realized, wow, that actually tore right through the edge of that thing. That's a very sharp little thing.

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I wanted to think I was trying to kill him or something like that. Anyway, what in the world are we going to do on Apologia Radio today?

08:03

Well, I brought the text. Some of you know this is the post -Tenebrous

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Luxe Rebind of my Nestle All -in -28th Edition Greek New Testament.

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It is unique. It is beautiful. It changes color. I don't know how in the world that works, but it does.

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There is just no question that it does. I brought my Greek text today, and I thought one of the most enjoyable things that I can do...

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Sometimes I'll just sit down with a chapter, and I'll just read it fresh and comment on it and things like that.

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That's really enjoyable to do. By the way, I do have a brother,

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Jeffrey, at post -Tenebrous Luxe. Sort of an advertisement here, I guess. Jeff has an

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ESV from PTL as well, so we're all on the, we love his work, bandwagon.

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I just sent him a new project, and I'm not sure how it's going to work out.

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It may be too big to put into one volume. It may end up being the two volumes that I sent him. Hendrickson has just come out with an edition of the

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Greek Septuagint called the Reader's Edition of the Greek Septuagint. There is a Reader's Edition of the Greek New Testament if you've taken

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First -Year Greek. You have what's called the 50 -word vocabulary. All the words used 50 or more times in the

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New Testament. There is a Reader's Edition, which will give you the less frequent vocabulary and rare forms.

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You can just sit there and read without tapping on something or looking something up in a lexicon.

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Back in my day, we had something called Seikikoubo, the Seikikoubo Greek lexicon,

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Reader's Greek lexicon, which you'd sort of have open next to your Greek text. It functioned the same way. Someone said, hey, why don't we make one volume out of this?

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You've got the Reader's Greek New Testament. Now there's a Reader's Greek Septuagint. If you don't know what the

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Septuagint is, the Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Old Testament. The Septuagint was the Bible of the

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New Testament Church. When John quotes from Isaiah, he's quoting from the

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Greek Septuagint. He's expecting his audience to be reading that same text.

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He can make references even to places where there are textual variants between the

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Greek and the Hebrew. Hendrickson has just come out with a

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Reader's Edition of the Greek New Testament. I want to initially just read through the

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Psalter, but eventually see how much of the

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Old Testament I can get through in the Septuagint itself, just as a devotional reading type thing.

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It is a little bit different than Koine Greek in the New Testament. There's about two centuries worth of development there, but ancient languages didn't change as quickly as, for example, modern

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English is. Think of the number of words that now exist in our vocabulary that did not exist in our vocabulary 50 years ago.

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It's astonishing. That wasn't quite the same thing in the ancient world.

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There are subtle differences, stylistic differences, in the grammar of the Greek Septuagint.

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Of course, not all the Greek Septuagint is of the exact same quality. The Pentateuch, for example, very, very well done.

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Obviously, exceptionally good translators that were working on that 250 to 200 years before the time of Christ.

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But some other portions, not so good. It is a fascinating thing.

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I just thought I'd mention that for those of you who are maybe looking for something to get your local

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Bible study professor at the college, something for Christmas or something like that.

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You could look up that Hendrickson Greek New Testament. What I would like to do is to just work through a few passages, primarily out of the

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Gospel of John, and talk a little bit today about the deity of Christ, and make some applications toward the end.

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I know Jeff has been doing something called

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Cultish, where you're dealing with various of the cults and things like that. Most people know that the person of Christ, the deity of Christ, is a central aspect of the focus of false religion.

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The focus of the cults is to present a different Jesus. For many, many decades, believing

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Christians have at least taken the time maybe to attend a

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Wednesday night class on the cults, to sort of, you know, when those little Mormon missionaries come by, at least

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I want to be able to say something nice to them, or something along those lines. Most people have at least the general concept that there are certain aspects of Christian truth that are normally under attack.

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People take the time, and maybe they'll flip to the back and find a blank page before the maps someplace, and make a few notes, some verses to share with Jehovah's Witnesses, or with Mormons, or Muslims, or whoever else it might be.

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Unfortunately, that has been pretty much the extent of our knowledge of the cults and related issues for many, many decades.

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That's not deep enough. That does not go deep enough to be an effective witness. Certainly today, with the internet, attacks upon these fundamental beliefs go much, much wider and much deeper.

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So, with that in mind, I would like to invite us to go a little bit deeper into the text.

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I will simply be translating and commenting on the text. So, if you're asking, what translation are you using?

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I'm not using a translation. Especially on this subject, if you're dealing with Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, they will frequently raise original language argumentation.

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Almost no Jehovah's Witnesses I've ever encountered were actually fluent in any sense, or trained in any sense in Koine Greek, but a lot of them have done some reading.

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So, they will at least allow you to think they are, even if they are not.

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I have told the story a number of times before. I think I was only in second year

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Greek at this time. This would have been somewhere around 1983 or 1984, probably.

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That sounds really long ago to some people today, doesn't it? It really doesn't feel that way, honestly.

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I was meeting with some Jehovah's Witnesses in someone's home. I used to get to do that a lot before YouTube.

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YouTube, in some ways, greatly expanded our ability to communicate and witness to people in other lands.

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But here in the United States, I can't get away with anything anymore.

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I used to role -play for churches and stuff. Come in and pretend I was a Jehovah's Witness or a

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Mormon, or something like that, and role -play with them. They didn't know, because there wasn't a YouTube. I can't do that now, for obvious reasons.

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Come on, we know who you are. We've seen you on YouTube before. Same thing in meeting with Jehovah's Witnesses in people's homes.

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It's not as common as it once was. Some of the best witnessing encounters

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I've ever had were in that particular context. I was meeting with some

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Jehovah's Witnesses. The lady, as far as I could tell, was a housewife.

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There wasn't anything special about her, in the sense of her making any claims to scholarship or training or anything like that.

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But she went through the standard pre -memorized speech on John 1 .1. The New World Translation of Jehovah's Witnesses renders that particular text, and the word was,

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She was talking about definite articles and indefinite articles, and pre -verbal, anarthristic nouns, and all the rest of this type of stuff.

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I had my, back then, Nessie Olland 26th edition.

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It's the 28th. That's how long ago it was. It has no

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English in it. When she got done with her little speech,

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I handed it across to her. I said, Could you show me a definite article?

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She didn't even know which way to hold the text. She couldn't even tell which way was up with it. It was a pre -memorized speech.

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She didn't know whether it was right or wrong. There was no way she could verify it one way or the other. Give her credit that she had taken the time to pre -memorize it.

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We can't get most of our folks to go door -to -door, let alone memorize stuff to use in that.

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That's one of the reasons you have to get a little bit more deep into things with individuals like this. They have that kind of argumentation.

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Some of their people, they're not the norm that you're going to meet at the door. Some of their people can be quite challenging.

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There have been a few times, mainly in the earlier years, when the only reason that I was able to do what

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I did, in the sense of keeping a person from becoming a Jehovah's Witness or answering their questions, the

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Witnesses ended up leaving and I was left the person, was because I had knowledge of the original languages.

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That's how good they were. It was a draw on the exegetical side, but the languages allowed for something more than just a draw.

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Looking at John chapter 1, I do not suggest that you start with John 1 with a

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Jehovah's Witness. They've heard it before, and with Jehovah's Witnesses, what you want to try to do in the limited time you have, is to get them thinking independently from the

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Watchtower Society itself. Using a text that they've heard a thousand times before, they know all the answers to, is not what you want to do.

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At the same time, at some point, if you've been successful in presenting other evidences of the deity of Christ, you're going to have to deal with it one way or the other.

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I'm not looking just at dealing with Jehovah's Witnesses. It's a key passage. It is meant that the first 18 verses of the

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Gospel of John, called the Prologue of John, is intended to function as the lens through which you read the rest of the

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Gospel. If you get that right, if you get the lens right, then so much else in the

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Gospel is going to come into much clearer and sharper focus. If you don't have that lens, then you're going to be missing a lot of the important stuff that comes at a particular later point.

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The Prologue, you've got to get that down. When you explain something to someone, maybe they're just a believer that just hasn't been well taught.

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Maybe they go to church where the sermons do not illustrate exegesis.

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That's the best way to teach exegesis, by the way, is by consistent exegesis of the

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Scriptures from the pulpit. You don't have to have a class on hermeneutics.

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It's fine to do that. It's fine to teach people about context and original language and all the rest of the stuff that goes into meaningful hermeneutical process.

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But the best way to teach it is to do it.

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Week in, week out, consistently. That's what matures a people, and that's what grounds a people in trust in the

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Word of God. When you look at the Prologue of John, the first 18 verses, what we find in the

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Prologue is something called bookending. Now, this doesn't mean as much today as it did back in my day.

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But back in my day, you would have books on a shelf, and if the books didn't fill up the width of the shelf, you would have something called bookends.

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Normally, they had a little thing that you would sit the books on that would hold it in place. Sometimes it would be a horse head or something like that that would be decorative.

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They would prop the books up and hold the books in place if it wasn't in a situation where you were filling the whole shelf.

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Hence, there was a way of holding the books in place. Well, bookending is a stylistic writing technique, a literary technique, where you start and end by presenting and repeating the same concepts but in different words.

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Then that creates a literary whole out of everything that's in between. What I want you to do is look with me at verses 1 and 2.

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Just in passing, I know the vast majority of people in this audience know this, but let's remember, chapter and verse divisions are a modern innovation.

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I know I just bummed out some of you that are into Bible numerology and things like that, but they are a modern innovation.

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The chapters were introduced first. Then the verse divisions, at least in the

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New Testament that we utilize today, were first provided in 1551 by a man by the name of Robert Estienne, or as he was better known by his

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Latinized name, Stephanus. In the 1550

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Stephanus Greek text, there are no verses. In 1551, they have been introduced. Let's give

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Stephanus the benefit. He did a pretty decent job, but not a perfect job.

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Look, sometimes it's really hard to know exactly where to break things off. It wasn't easily done.

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The point is they're artificial. They are a great help in being able to find things and discuss things in Scripture.

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But I wish we talked a little bit more about the dangers of them. There are dangers to verse divisions.

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When you memorize half of a sentence, that's dangerous.

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Given that, for example, you have pretty much just one sentence in the first 10 verses of Ephesians or so, you end up memorizing portions of sentences.

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Well, better to memorize something than nothing at all, I guess, but you can see the danger.

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If you're memorizing only a portion of a sentence, you should at least be pretty familiar with what the rest of it is.

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In the same way, when we look at the prologue of John, I was saying, well, verses 1 and 2, that's an artificial division.

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What is the proper breakdown of the thought from the author?

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In John 1, 1, we have, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the

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Word was God. This one, the Logos, the Word, was in the beginning with God.

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Then you go to verse 18. No one has seen God in any time.

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I'm just going to give you the Greek, and then we'll talk about the translation of it. Now, these are your bookends, and there's all sorts of vitally important stuff in between.

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For example, verse 14, Yeah, there's really important stuff in between.

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But what I want us to see is the bookends, and how verse 18 sheds so much light on verses 1 and 2, but of necessity, how verses 1 and 2 first shed light upon verse 18.

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You can't expect things to go backwards overly well, obviously. So, there are three clauses in John 1, 1.

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Normally, they're called 1, 1a, b, and c. Now, in the

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Greek language, you have things called tenses. Tenses refer to aspect and time.

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Aspect is first, time is second. Aspect talks about the kind of action.

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Time talks about the when of action. It's fascinating, and I will credit my father and beyond him to Kenneth Wiest, longtime professor of Greek at Moody Bible Institute back in the 40s and 50s, under whom my dad studied, for pointing this out to me for the first time.

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But when you look at the prologue of John, John will use two forms of the verb of being.

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In English, is, was, am are verbs of being. These are being verbs.

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And it's primarily, I, me, and again, it's all in the aorist form in the

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Greek language. And so, in the Greek language, when speaking of the logos,

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John uses the word ein, which is the imperfect form of I mean.

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Now, why is that relevant to you? The imperfect form refers to continuous action in the past.

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Continuous action in the past. Over against an aorist, that is an undefined action, normally a point action, but it's undefined.

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It's a much more basic means of expressing the aspect of a verb.

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So, when referring to, for example, John in verse 6,

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John the Baptist, John uses the term agenita, he uses the aorist. And so, there was a man sent from God whose name was

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John. But when he refers to the logos, he uses the imperfect form of I mean, which simply talks about continuous action in the past.

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It does not have an emphasis upon or even contain the element of the beginning of that action.

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This is what's very important. Because in John 1 .1, in the beginning was the word, does not mean in the beginning the word was created.

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If he used agenita, that would imply that. But he didn't use agenita, he uses ein.

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So, as far back as you want to push NRK, the logos is already in existence.

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This is a mechanism of communicating to us the eternal nature of the logos, the word.

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The word was already in existence prior to the

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RK, the beginning. So, what does 1 .1a tell us? That the word is eternal.

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Then, and the word was with God.

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Again, same word was. Now, you have the word being in the presence of, having personal relationship with God.

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God is not defined here. The only consistent way in context to define this is

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God the Father, but we're not told that yet. That will basically come, especially in light of verse 18.

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This is where the bookend really helps us to understand this. And so, the word was,

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So, the word has eternal relationship and personal existence.

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Relationship with the Father and personal existence in and of himself. The word is eternal.

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The word is in eternal relationship with the Father. Third phrase, Here, of course, is where you have the argumentation with Jehovah's Witnesses and with some others that follow after them.

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And a God was the word. Well, it is a truism amongst everyone who teaches

31:45

Greek that one of the struggles you have is that the

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Greek article, the word the, is so much richer and so different than the

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English article the. And the tendency of the

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English -speaking person is to bring that background in and hence misinterpret the, a, the indefinite article, which leads to how

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Jehovah's Witnesses argue about John 1. Whether a noun has an article or not, does not determine whether that noun should be translated as a or the.

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Names can have articles and we would never, why would a name have an article? We don't even think that way.

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Sometimes the presence of the article will actually influence the translation of the word and what it's referring to and what it's called.

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It's semantic domain, it's range of meaning. In this instance, if the third clause said, chi ha theos, putting the article in front of God, ein ha logos, we would have heresy.

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If both nouns had the article, then they become interchangeable. And so everything the theos is, the logos is, everything the logos is, theos is, they become interchangeable.

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The distinction which was introduced in the previous clause, that the word was with God, is destroyed.

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So John couldn't put the article there or communicate the wrong thing. But by placing it before the verb, basically what he's emphasizing is the nature, not the identity of the logos.

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He's not saying the logos is the God with whom he just said he was. He's saying the logos is as to his nature, deity, theos.

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And always has been, because again, he uses that verb that he used before. Then he sort of, in verse 2, in essence, what he does here is he restates the primary emphasis of verse 1.

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This one was in the beginning with God. So this one, the logos, was, again, the imperfect form of I, me, continuous action of the past, in the beginning with God.

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So really, he summarizes the first two clauses primarily, in a repetitious way, to emphasize this one was in the beginning, eternally, in relationship with Tantheon, God.

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Now, if you've seen the debate that I did about a year and a half ago now with Representative Iglesia Ni Cristo, a cult group in the

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Philippines, you know that they think that the form of theos changes the meaning.

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They don't read the original languages, they don't have scholars in the original languages, and so ha -theos and Tantheon to them would be, there's a great difference between the two.

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Those who read the languages know that's the difference between the nominative and accusative forms of the exact same word. And all that tells you is how it's functioning in a sentence.

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It doesn't change the meaning. It's just simply nominative subject form and accusative, normally the direct object form.

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And Prost takes the accusative, and so in verse 2, this one was with God, hence it could be in the accusative.

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They get all excited about what Tantheon is over in John chapter 17, not really knowing anything about the original languages.

35:57

Now, keeping in mind what we just learned about verses 1 and 2, let's look at the bookend in verse 18.

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No one has seen, now interesting here, at the end of verse 2, it's

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Tantheon. Here, it's just simply Theon. No one has seen God at any time.

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Now, is that true? Well, there are places in the

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Old Testament. I mean, Abram walked with God. Isaiah saw Yahweh sitting upon his throne lofty and lifted up.

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There are a number of places that you could make a fair argument that people saw

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God. And yet John says no one has seen God at any time. Well, I would argue that John 1 .18

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would be contradictory with the rest of Scripture if you don't interpret John 1 .18 correctly. If you do not have a

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Trinitarian exegesis of this text, yeah, I would say it would be contradictory.

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But it's not, if you really understand what John is saying. And that's what's going to give you the key to seeing everything else in John in a consistent fashion.

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Let's say that God, the

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God who has not been seen, is the Father. Let's keep that in mind and see if John substantiates this.

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No one has seen God at any time. Then you have this very interesting phrase that has once again become exceptionally controversial in our day again, only over the past year and a half, two years.

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It became controversial again because of an interesting perspective on the part of a minority of Christian scholars that promotes what's called the eternal subordination of the

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Son. It's the idea that there is a definitional element of subordination between the person of the

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Father and the person of the Son. And not a voluntary subordination, but an ontological or on the level of being subordination.

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And what it ended up casting light on is the relationship of the

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Father and the Son and what those words mean when you take them out of what we might call human language use.

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And the term monogamous, as a result, has come in for some further analysis.

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It had been generally accepted, and I have yet to see a really strong rejection of this.

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I know what the arguments are, but I don't know that a survey of related forms in patristic literature can overcome the specific

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Johannine use of this term, the use in the Gospel of John. Monogamous theos.

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Monogamous is translated in the King James Version, only begotten. It's translated in most modern versions as unique or one of a kind.

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So, what is it? Which is it? Only begotten,

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I find to be a less adequate theological translation for a couple of reasons.

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First of all, it is our tendency to hear the phrase begotten and to temporalize it.

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We put it in time. We don't have any way of really avoiding that, because that's how our language works.

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The problem is, when applying it to God and putting it outside of temporal categories, outside of time categories, what does it mean to be begotten outside of time?

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Because for you and I, begettal is a time category. It's a time event. It's a singular event. Also, because of the fact that the spelling of monogamous tells us that, when you hear that phrase monogamous, generation in our language comes from the

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Greek. And genoto, to beget, and genos, kind or type.

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The problem is, genoto has two nous in it. Kind or type, genos, has one.

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And monogamous has one. So, it's drawing from the kind or type aspect, not from the begetting aspect.

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And so, the word itself, in its formation, monogamous, one kind, would have more of an emphasis upon uniqueness than monogamous, if it had two nous, because that would be monos and then genoto.

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Hence, more only begotten. Now, monogamous can be used of an only begotten child.

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So, if you put it in a particular context that shoves the meaning to that side of the semantic domain, the range of meanings that the term has, that's fine, but you don't have that here.

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Instead, you have monogamous theos. How can you have an only begotten God? Is that not a contradiction?

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Unless you recognize it's talking about the unique God. Then you have ha -on -ai -ston kal -pan -tu -pa -tras, the one being by the side or the bosom of the

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Father. So, here I think you have John identifying the

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God that he's been talking about, who has never been seen, the God with whom the word was, is the

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Father. And now we have this unique God, who is in the bosom of the

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Father, who is the logos. And this one is the monogamous theos, unique God.

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So, it's important to keep these distinctions in mind and to remember, and we're going to see this a little bit later on, unless I need to talk faster,

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I guess. But the phrase ha -on, the one being, monogamous theos ha -on, the unique God, the one being in the bosom of the

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Father, that again is a present participle, and so it's emphasizing continuous action.

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And so, it's not the one who came into existence by the Father's side, or who was created by the

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Father to give him company, or something like that. No, this monogamous theos is the one being.

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And what's interesting is, again, I mentioned at the beginning of all this, the beginning of my rambling, that in the

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Greek Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, there's a fascinating phrase that you've undoubtedly heard of back in Exodus 3 .14,

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I am that I am. How Yahweh identifies himself to Moses in the burning bush,

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I am that I am. And a lot of people, mistakenly, I think, but honest motives, will grab hold of the use of I am in the

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Gospel of John, and just run straight back to Exodus 3 .14 and say, see, I am that I am, Jesus is claiming to be the

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I am. That's a pretty weak argument, and Unitarians can tear it apart fairly easily.

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It is a valid teaching, but a weak argument. You say, how can you have a valid teaching but a weak argument?

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It misses something. One of the things that it misses is that in the

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Greek Septuagint, when it says, I am that I am, Anahu, Asher, Anahu, what was the,

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I don't have the Hebrew in front of me, but the Greek is

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Ego, I, Me, Ha, On. Ego, I, Me, Ha, On.

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And so I myself am the one being. And so the real strong affirmation part is

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Ha, On. Ego, I, Me, is not as strong as Ha, On is in that phrase.

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Now we're gonna see, Ego, I, Me, is still a divine name. It's just, you don't go to Exodus 3 to prove that. You go to Isaiah 43 and places like that instead.

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But it is significant to me, and it should be to all of us, that the same

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Greek phrase that is used in Exodus 3 .14, Ha, On, of the very being of God, is used here,

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Menageres Theos, Ha, On. The unique God, the one being in the bosom of the

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Father, this one has made him known. And so what John 1 .18

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is telling us, is that no one has seen the

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Father in any time, but the unique God, the one who's in the bosom of the Father, this one has made him known, has explained him, has exegeted him.

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Now, once you put 18 and 1 and 2 together, it's a pretty full teaching about the eternal nature of the

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Logos. Logos is not created. What we know of the

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Father, we can have confidence in, because the one who has revealed these things about the

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Father, has eternally been in the presence of the Father, is not just a highly exalted, created being, but has eternally existed in the very presence of the

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Father. This one has exegeted him. This one has explained him. Could you ask for a better means of explanation than one such as this?

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But don't forget the rest, because in verse 14, then, and the word became flesh and tabernacled, it's literally the term to live in a tent, tabernacled amongst us, and we beheld his glory, the glories of the monogamous para patras, the unique one from the

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Father, full of grace and truth. Now, what is interesting is that at verse 14,

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John reverses or changes purposefully the use of verbs that he has been using up to this point.

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Because remember, we had emphasized that, speaking of the logos, he uses the imperfect to refer to the ongoing action in the past, the eternal nature of the logos.

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And then of everything else, he uses the geneta, the heiress, which came into existence. But in verse 14,

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Kaiha Logos sarks a geneta. So now he switches verbs and applies a geneta to what?

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Not to the creation of the logos, but to the point in time when the logos enters into flesh.

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He enters into flesh at a point in time. The logos has not eternally been enfleshed.

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The logos has not eternally been incarnated. There was a point in time when that embryo began to grow by divine power.

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And nine months later, Jesus is born in Bethlehem. And so the word became flesh and tabernacled amongst us, dwelt amongst us, as living in a tent.

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And so this logos, whose eternally existed, took on flesh. This is the incarnation.

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That's a Latin word. It would be nice if we used the

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Greek version of it or something like that, but that's the way our language has developed. So here's the incarnation.

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And yet he's still the logos. He's still the logos because it says, we saw his glory.

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The glory is of the unique one from the Father, full of grace and truth. And so the logos did not cease being the logos.

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And this is, of course, this is, of course, where we run into our biggest challenge in reaching out to our

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Muslim friends is simply by definition, the

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Muslim theology cannot allow for this verse.

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Still to this day, my favorite debate that I've had, and I hope someday to have a debate that I'll like better.

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But still to this date, my favorite debate at this point was some 2011 Muslim debate with a wonderful young man by the name of Abdullah Kunda, who's a friend of mine.

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I think he would call me his friend as well. We don't get to talk as much as I would like, but we debated in the

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Sydney area. And the debate was, can God become a man?

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We skipped all the stuff that normally people end up talking about.

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And we got down to the real issue. And the real issue is, is it presuppositionally impossible for God to enter in his own creation, which is where the

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Muslim is coming from? Or is that not what the very New Testament teaches?

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And I would highly recommend it to you if you just put James White, Abdullah Kunda, K -U -N -D -E, into the

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YouTube search box. It'll pop right up right at the top. It's a good, I don't know, two and three quarters hours, two and a half, two and three quarters, something like that.

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Audio's not as good as I wish it was. But other than that, it's certainly usable.

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And you might find it interesting because we went over a lot of this stuff. But this is really where the

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Muslim struggles terribly is right here. The word became flesh.

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They say, no, that's just simply not a possibility. So the prologue of John begins by establishing a lens that directly asserts the eternal nature of the

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Logos, his unique relationship to the Father, and the fact that he is monogamous theos.

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And so it's not overly surprising, then, that when you turn to the end of the book, that we have the confession of Thomas at the

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Resurrection. You know that Thomas was not present at the first appearance of the

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Lord, and he has expressed his doubts, hence the phrase doubting

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Thomas. And so when Jesus appears again the second time, he says to Thomas, stretch forth your finger, put here my side, my hands, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.

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So Jesus gives evidence that he knew exactly what Thomas had said, hey, unless I put my finger in the wounds, so on and so forth,

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I won't believe. By the way, there's nothing in the text that says he ever did either of those things. He was invited to do so, but there's nothing that says that he then did.

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Instead, when Jesus says, do not be unbelieving, but believe, Thomas answered and said to him.

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Now, let me just emphasize the Greek term auto means to him.

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It is singular. It does not say to them. Why? Well, you'll see in a moment.

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There's really only one way to try to escape the weight of this passage, and it doesn't work.

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But it's tried all the time. Thomas Ann said to him,

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Hakuriasmu kaihathiasmu. Hakuriasmu kaihathiasmu.

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Now, there isn't any question about the text. It's not a matter of textual variation. You don't have some manuscripts say this, some manuscripts say that.

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I remember one Muslim apologist who argued that this reading was not reliable in light of the fact that it doesn't appear in a particular manuscript of the

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Gospel of John which is called P66. Well, the problem is P66 is fragmentary.

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When you get into these last chapters, as what happened in a lot of books in the beginning and the end of the book, it could become damaged because those are the outer pages.

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It's fragmentary. We don't have all the pieces. There's no reason to believe it didn't read this way.

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What's called a lacuna, a hole in a manuscript, is not an argument against a reading, at least not a scholarly argument against a reading.

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Every other early papyri contains it, so there's no truly scholarly question about this reading.

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It says, Ḥaqorīyāsmu kāi haṭhāyāsmu, My Lord and My God. My Lord and My God.

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That's what Thomas says. And again, I emphasize, it says, Ḥaqorīyāsmu kāi haṭhāyāsmu, and he said to him, Ḥaqorīyāsmu kāi haṭhāyāsmu.

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There is no place, there is no way to break this up into, My Lord, My God.

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But that's what people do. You want to see an example of it? Go catch the video of the debate

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I did at the University of Johannesburg about four years ago, maybe, with a

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Muslim apologist, and that was his explanation of John 2028. What we've got here is,

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My Lord, My God. But what would that mean? He said, My Lord to Jesus, and then, upwards to heaven or whatever else it might be, he says,

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My God. But what did I emphasize? The Greek term, auto, is singular. What was said was to Jesus, and what was said was, Ḥaqorīyāsmu kāi haṭhāyāsmu, because the next word is, Ḥaqorīyāsmu kāi haṭhāyāsmu.

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Jesus said to him. So, the entire quotation of Thomas is Ḥaqorīyāsmu kāi haṭhāyāsmu.

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There's no way to break that up, there's no way to say, part of it was said to Jesus, part of it was said to somebody else. No. One person was addressed, what he said was,

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My Lord and My God, and Jesus' response then was, Because you have seen me, have you believed?

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Blessed are the ones who though not seeing, have also believed. And so, on any fair basis, any fair basis of reading, language, interpretation, exegesis, what is said here, is when

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Thomas says to Jesus, My Lord and My God, if Jesus was a

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Muslim prophet, then he would have to rebuke

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Thomas, and say, No, no, no, no, if he was Michael the

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Archangel, pretending to be in flesh, because at this point, in Jehovah's Witness theology,

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Jesus' body has been put off, and so he's only manifesting a body, basically to fool his disciples.

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Then likewise, he could never accept this description as My Lord and My God. But Thomas identifies him as My Lord and My God, and Jesus' response is,

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Blessed are you. You've believed? He identifies Thomas' confession as an act of faith, as an act of belief.

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That's a highly significant reality. He does not rebuke him. He blesses him, and says,

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Even more blessed are those who did not see. You've believed because you've seen. Blessed are those who not seeing, yet will believe, is what

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Jesus says. And so, beginning and end of the gospel, you have these clear references to the deity of Christ, but there is then a constant weaving of threads through the gospel of John.

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I've often likened it, and it's one of the reasons I like my coogies. I love multicolored stuff.

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I always have. And it lends itself to a neat illustration that I like of the fabrics, the threads in a fabric that are woven together to create all these beautiful patterns.

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And, you know, in my vest here, there's red, and then there's orange, and there's blue, and some of these threads come up over here, and some of the blue disappear, and it'll change emphasis and what color predominates, but then some of those threads will still continue on.

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They'll just become somewhat muted. When you look at God's truth as a whole in any individual book in a singular fashion, you learn to identify the threads of meaning and topic as they're woven together.

01:00:08

And this is certainly the case in the Gospel of John. And if you want to see a particularly really cool aspect of this, then let's go back to John chapter 8.

01:00:23

I was tempted to pop into John chapter 6 for a while because just a few weeks ago,

01:00:29

I led a Bible study on John chapter 6 on the shore of the Sea of Galilee at Capernaum, only a matter of yards or meters, depending on where you live, away from where John 6 took place, the synagogue at Capernaum.

01:00:45

And that would have been the very beach that Jesus and the disciples would have pulled the boat up onto after walking upon the water.

01:00:55

And that was a real blessed experience, but that's not the best place to go to establish this particular fact, so we will not go there.

01:01:05

In John chapter 8, there are a number of times in the

01:01:10

Gospel of John where John utilizes a particular phrase that we mentioned earlier.

01:01:19

I mentioned that in Exodus 3 .14 at the burning bush, Yahweh identifies himself to Moses as Ego Aimee Ha 'on,

01:01:26

I am the one being, I am that I am. That's how that ends up coming over into most

01:01:32

English translations. So that phrase,

01:01:40

Ego Aimee, in a lot of your study Bibles, for example, will be identified at least at John 8 .58.

01:01:52

Unfortunately, the other places that it's utilized in the Gospel of John will often be, not hidden, but not brought out as clearly as they should be because of a concern for a stilted or uneven translation.

01:02:12

But the reality is that the Apostle John uses this phrase in a number of different contexts to point us to the connection to the

01:02:23

Old Testament. And what do I mean by this? Well, look at John 8 .24. John 8 .24,

01:02:29

Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins, for unless me pestuseta hati ego aimee, you will die in your sins.

01:02:42

So unless you believe, that's in what's called the subjunctive, so unless you believe hati ego aimee, that I am, you will die in your sins.

01:02:54

Now, most translations will say that I am he, and it'll put he in italics or something along those lines.

01:03:02

But simply, hati ego aimee, you will die in your sins. Now, we sort of need to know what that means because we don't want to die in our sins.

01:03:11

And so, since dying in your sins sounds very, very final to me, this is a non -negotiable, this is a definitional aspect of Christian truth that we are going to be looking at here.

01:03:25

And we are. So, in verse 24, we have the use of ego aimee,

01:03:33

I am. Now, if that's all we had, you couldn't build a whole lot on it, but keep that in mind.

01:03:40

Keep that in mind, because only a few verses later, verse 30, while speaking these things, many believed in him.

01:03:53

Now, it's interesting, that term believe there is in the aorist, and that's not the normal terminology that John uses for saving faith.

01:04:05

He uses a present participle for real faith. When he uses the aorist, it's almost always false faith.

01:04:13

It's a surface level faith. And this becomes obvious because Jesus then says to them, if you continue my word, you are my disciples indeed, you shall know the truth, the truth shall set you free.

01:04:24

And as soon as he intimates to them that they need to be set free, that's offensive. And so by the end of the chapter, these same

01:04:33

Jews who believed in him are picking up stones to stone him. So much for true saving faith.

01:04:40

But, Jesus, in verse 56, has said that Abraham, our father, rejoiced to see my day.

01:04:55

Rejoiced to see my day. And they're like, uh, you're not yet 50 years old.

01:05:02

How could Abraham have seen your day? And Jesus answered and said to them, truly, truly,

01:05:07

I say to you, before Abraham was,

01:05:13

I am. Before Abraham came to existence, I am. Same phraseology he used in verse 24.

01:05:20

I am. But now he's saying that before Abraham was,

01:05:25

I am. And what's the Jewish response? Therefore they took up stones they might cast upon him, might stone him.

01:05:36

But Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple. So, the Jews immediately understand exactly what he's claiming.

01:05:44

He's claiming to be the I am. To be before Abraham.

01:05:54

Now, if you have John 8, 58, and they pick up stones and stone him,

01:06:01

John 8, 24 then says, unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins. So a

01:06:07

Jesus who is less than the Jesus of the New Testament will, of necessity, not exist and therefore leave you in your sins.

01:06:16

Right? Right. Now you probably know one other fairly famous reference in the

01:06:26

Gospel of John to this issue of I am.

01:06:32

And it's found in chapter 18 verses 5 and 6. And there at the arrest of Jesus, the soldiers come and Jesus says to them, who are you seeking?

01:06:53

And they answered him, Jesus the Nazarene. And he said to them, Ego Aimi.

01:07:00

Ego Aimi, same phrase. They say, ah, yeah, but he's just identifying himself. Hold on.

01:07:06

Ego Aimi. And there was standing with them Judas, the one who was betraying him.

01:07:13

Therefore, when he said to them, Ego Aimi, they fell back upon the ground.

01:07:25

When Jesus said, Ego Aimi, they fell over. They fell over.

01:07:33

Now, I've heard some incredibly horrible excuses on the part of Unitarians, be who deny the deity of Christ, subordinationist, whatever.

01:07:48

Well, you know, the soldiers were just the soldiers were taken aback by his moral purity.

01:08:00

Yeah, soldiers fall over in the face of moral purity every day. Happens all the time. In fact, they've developed some special protectors for when they fall back.

01:08:09

It's ridiculous. It's absurd. They fell back because Jesus said,

01:08:14

Ego Aimi. I am. And the soldiers fell on the ground. You tie this together with John 8 .58,

01:08:22

John 8 .24, you're starting to get the pattern. You're starting to see what's going on here. But this is where even good study

01:08:30

Bibles, I haven't checked all of them. I'm not a big study Bible person. And I would imagine that it's probably in the

01:08:39

Reformation study Bible, maybe the ESV study Bible. I don't know. I've never looked. But, when most people talk about the

01:08:50

I Am sayings, they pretty much just focus on John 8 .58. They don't tie in 8 .24. They might talk about this one, maybe.

01:08:59

But the one that cinches the deal, that is so important, is normally skipped over.

01:09:06

And that is John chapter 13. John chapter 13.

01:09:12

The night of Jesus' betrayal. When Jesus is specifically stating that Judas' betrayal is going to fulfill

01:09:26

Scripture. Verse 18. But in order that Scripture might be fulfilled, he's talking about Judas' betrayal of him.

01:09:37

Then he says in verse 19, and it's because we're focused upon the betrayal of Judas and the whole story, we rarely see this.

01:09:45

Yet we should. But from now on, I'm telling you, before it comes to pass, in order that you may believe when it happens, that I am.

01:09:58

That I am. Now, I've told this story many times before, so I'll be brief.

01:10:06

I remember years ago when

01:10:12

I was in I think I was still in Bible college. Had my first computer.

01:10:20

Compact, portable. Weighed 35 pounds. Size of a singer's sewing machine. And 6 -inch green screen.

01:10:28

It was great. But hey, you gotta have respect for us folks that worked with those things.

01:10:35

I remember, and I don't remember whether I was looking at the Old Testament text or the

01:10:40

New Testament text, but when I looked at that phrase, in order that you might believe when it comes to pass.

01:10:48

Hinnah Pestusetem. I was like, I've seen this somewhere before.

01:10:53

This is ringing a bell. And that night, by the flickering lamp, it's one of those old lamps, those bulbs that never quite seated right, and so they flicker on you.

01:11:06

Some of you don't know what that is, but some of you have only lived with LED bulbs. I made the connection and realized, and if I had just looked over at the side margin,

01:11:20

I'm sorry, it gives the reference. Jesus is quoting the

01:11:26

Old Testament text here. Again, and he's quoting, with great irony, the verse from which

01:11:36

Jehovah's Witnesses get their name. This is the verse that Jehovah's Witnesses get their name from.

01:11:43

Isaiah 43 .10, which most of us have memorized. Before me there is no God for him, there shall be none after me.

01:11:48

But before it says that, you are my witnesses, declares Yahweh, my servant whom

01:11:54

I have chosen that you may know and believe and understand that I am he. Before me there is no God for him, there shall be none after me.

01:12:01

When you look at that in the Greek Septuagint, Jesus is quoting it here.

01:12:08

And the I me of Isaiah becomes the I me of John.

01:12:14

That's where the connection is. That's where the link is broken when you try to jump from John 8 .58

01:12:20

back to Exodus 3 .14. You've missed the proper step. You've got to stop in Isaiah first.

01:12:27

Because that's what Jesus does. He makes the application. Quotes from the verse from which

01:12:32

Jehovah's Witnesses get their name. You are my witnesses, says Jehovah, my servant whom I have chosen.

01:12:38

That's where they get Jehovah's Witnesses, Isaiah 43 .10. So, here, and remember in Isaiah 43, the context of this is

01:12:52

Yahweh revealing future events. Because he's in control of what happens in time. That's what makes him the true

01:12:58

God over against the false gods. And so, that's what you have in Isaiah.

01:13:05

Now, in John, Jesus is revealing the future event of Judas' betrayal.

01:13:12

And in that context, identifies himself as the I Am. So, now that you see the

01:13:19

John 13, you can trace 8 .24, 8 .58, 13 .19, 18 .5

01:13:25

-6. Here are the threads. And they're not in every chapter. You know, in my

01:13:32

Coogee here, there's a little bit of a red thread here, but it's primarily blue in this area. But, you know, you get up here and the red just explodes out.

01:13:41

That's how you make material that has different patterns and yet comes together to make something glorious.

01:13:52

And that's what John's doing. 8 .24, 8 .58, 13 .19, 18 .5

01:13:58

-6. The I Am passages being used of Jesus. Now, again, you go into a

01:14:04

Christian bookstore, and you look up commentaries, and they may make some reference to this.

01:14:11

But you need to understand, most of the commentaries being written today, not all, most of the commentaries being written today, do not treat the

01:14:20

Bible as a whole, the New Testament as a whole, the writings of a particular writer as a whole, or even any particular book as a whole, as being a self -consistent, woven tapestry of divine revelation.

01:14:36

And so very often, they will not make these connections, or will argue against them, because they don't believe the

01:14:43

Bible should be viewed as anything other than just simply some piece of ancient literature. That becomes highly, highly problematic, and that's what's going to happen.

01:14:52

Now, one last thing, as we're running out of time, on the program today,

01:14:58

Apologia Radio, 140, one other evidence of the deity of Christ from the

01:15:07

Gospel of John, just simply to give you something else to consider, if you want to see again how these threads come together.

01:15:20

In John chapter 12, which is not one of, I'd say John chapters 7 and 12 are probably the least popular in the

01:15:27

Gospel of John. John chapter 7, the unbelief of the brothers. John chapter 12, these

01:15:34

Greeks come seeking Jesus, and Jesus doesn't meet with them. How weird is that?

01:15:41

How can that be? Jesus would have to meet with anybody that sought after him, right?

01:15:49

Well, he didn't. He hid himself from them, and this leads to the commentary from John on the subject of the end,

01:16:02

John chapter 12, is the end of Jesus' public ministry, and the beginning of his private ministry in chapters 13 through 17 to the disciples.

01:16:14

And in commenting on the end of that public ministry, two texts are quoted, between verses 37 and 40, both from Isaiah.

01:16:29

Isaiah 53 is quoted, and then

01:16:35

Isaiah chapter 6 verse 10 is quoted. And this is in the context of judgment, blinding, hardening of hearts.

01:16:46

Maybe that's why it's not the most popular chapter to memorize from, or preach from, in the

01:16:52

Gospel of John. But what's fascinating is, I honestly think what frequently happens is we see an

01:17:03

Old Testament text being cited, and we sort of lose focus. Sometimes because we don't know what the context was, or, okay, yeah,

01:17:12

I've read that before. We lose focus as to what's really going on in the New Testament text. So, blinding their eyes, and hardening their hearts, and all the rest of this type of stuff.

01:17:24

Or we start thinking about what that might mean. It sounds really judgmental, and it raises questions about justice, and stuff like that.

01:17:31

So our minds go that way. And so, I just think the vast majority of Christians just sort of blow on by verse 41.

01:17:40

These things Isaiah said, because he saw his glory, and he spoke concerning him.

01:17:48

Hmm. Okay. Ever thought about what that means? These things

01:17:54

Isaiah said, because he saw his glory, and he spoke concerning him.

01:18:03

Well, hmm. Isaiah? Who are you talking about?

01:18:10

Well, when did Isaiah say these things? Well, some people say, well, there's two quotations from Isaiah.

01:18:17

In verse 38, you have Isaiah 53. In verse 40, you have Isaiah 610.

01:18:25

And the best Unitarians try to get away from acknowledging that the citation, verse 40, is what's being talked about.

01:18:38

But we can prove that it is. These things Isaiah said, because he saw his glory.

01:18:44

Now, what's interesting to me is, again, my critical edition, Greek New Testament, Nation 28th edition, has

01:18:49

Isaiah 61 in the margin, right next to verse 41. The editors there recognize what's being referred to.

01:18:58

But can we prove that it really is Isaiah's temple vision that John is making reference to here?

01:19:04

And the answer is yes. See, here's what verse 41 is saying.

01:19:10

These things Isaiah said, because he saw his glory, the glory of Jesus. That's the only him in this context.

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Even the next verse. Even some of the high priests, or the leaders, actually.

01:19:26

Not the high priests, but the leaders, believed in him. But because the

01:19:31

Pharisees, they were not confessing him, nor they might not be put out of the synagogue. So, there were Jews who were believing in who?

01:19:37

In Jesus. That's the only him in the context. So, what

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John's argument is, is these things Isaiah said, because he saw

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Jesus's glory, and he spoke about him. Well, where did Isaiah see

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Jesus's glory? Well, that was

01:20:00

Isaiah 53. The coming of the Messiah. Messiah would be glorious. Maybe, but there's a much more obvious and truthful answer to that.

01:20:13

If you remember Isaiah 6 .1, Isaiah 6 .1 says, in the year that King Uzziah died,

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I saw the Lord. It's not Yahweh there, it's Adonai. I saw the Lord lofty and lifted up, and the train of his robe was filling the temple.

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Remember? I'll never forget the day when I stumbled onto the reality that the

01:20:38

Greek Septuagint does not read identically to the

01:20:43

Hebrew Masoretic text at Isaiah 6 .1.

01:20:49

There's what's called a textual variant there. The Greek Septuagint, which would have been, at the time of the writing of the

01:20:57

Gospel of John, the version of the Hebrew Scriptures that John's audience would be reading from, and it's what he's quoting from.

01:21:09

He quotes from the Septuagint. When you read the Greek Septuagint, it says, in the year that King Uzziah died,

01:21:18

I saw the Lord lofty and lifted up, and his glory was filling the temple.

01:21:25

Not the train of his robe, but his glory. There in Isaiah 6, the only place where I saw, and then the very same term glory that is used here, his glory.

01:21:39

Isaiah 6 .1. What does that mean? Isaiah, who did you see?

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I saw Yahweh sitting upon his throne. John, who did Isaiah see? John says,

01:21:52

Jesus. Because doesn't that fit perfectly with John 1 .18?

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No one has seen God in any time, but the monogamist Theos, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has exegeted him.

01:22:05

He has made him known. That's why in Genesis 18 and 19, when

01:22:12

Yahweh and two angels come to visit Abram, and then

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Abram and the two angels go to Sodom and Gomorrah, and Abram goes off with who? Yahweh.

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Even though he does the 50, 40, 30, 20, 10 type thing, you still can't find 10 righteous people in Sodom.

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In Genesis 19 .24, it says, Yahweh rained fire and brimstone on Sodom from Yahweh in heaven.

01:22:48

Two Yahwehs? Well, there was the one that was walking with Abram, and then you have that one raining fire and brimstone from Yahweh in heaven.

01:23:00

Who was walking with Abram? Who was seen by Isaiah? Who has exegeted the

01:23:06

Father and made him known? The Son, Jesus. So, these texts, they're right there in front of us, but very often, either because our minds are focused upon other things, or because we might not be aware of some of the historical, translational, exegetical issues.

01:23:31

There's so much evidence for the deity of Christ in the

01:23:37

New Testament, that it is, that for anyone who accepts this as the

01:23:42

Word of God as a whole, there can be no question of that teaching.

01:23:49

You have to atomize it. You have to break it up. You have to break it up into parts, and place the parts at contradiction to one another, to try to get around that, and that's what modern leftism does in the academy.

01:24:04

What does this have to do with us today? Well, very, very briefly, I just simply point out, a couple years ago, about three years ago now,

01:24:11

I was asked to be on the Dr. Drew show on CNN on the subject of transgenderism, with some transgender people.

01:24:20

And at one point in discussing why

01:24:27

I would say that there is a God - ordained norm in regards to gender,

01:24:34

I went to Matthew chapter 19, and I said, you know, what you need to remember is the one who taught these things left behind an empty grave.

01:24:47

The point being that unless there is an authority above polls, governments, whatever's popular in pop culture, we will have absolute anarchy.

01:25:03

But there is a standard, and it's been revealed to us.

01:25:11

I would say its greatest bulwark is the fact that the one who said, this is the word of God, this is that by which you will be judged, left behind an empty grave.

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And no one else has ever done that. That's the ultimate proof, that's the ultimate authority, that's the ultimate power.

01:25:34

That's the Jesus that we've been talking about. And so when we try to bring His word to bear upon all the important things going on in our world today, we can't allow ourselves to be put in the position of thinking, well, this is just my personal choice versus your personal choice.

01:25:53

No, we're talking about the I Am who entered into human flesh. And His authority is absolutely ultimate.

01:26:02

Thanks for watching Apologia Radio today. 160?

01:26:08

Somewhere around there? I have enjoyed sitting in for the

01:26:15

Ninja. I'm leaving the... I left them there, and we have proof.

01:26:21

So if Jeff never finds them, it's somebody around here, and I think

01:26:26

I might know who it is. So, I left them there. It's been an honor to sit in for Jeff.

01:26:34

I believe that John Sanders is going to be helping out along one way or the other in filling in during this period of time.

01:26:44

I know I'm traveling to Germany in just a matter of days myself. My frequent flyer miles are really healthy.

01:26:52

I never use them, though. That's strange. And so I'm going to be doing some traveling myself, but certainly praying for the gang as they head down to Australia.

01:27:02

It can be a very challenging place in which to minister. But some great Christians down there, too. I always enjoy my trips down to Sydney, Brisbane, New Zealand.

01:27:12

They're going to New Zealand as well. I've only been to Wellington. I haven't been to Christchurch yet, but I would love to do that at some point in the future.

01:27:18

I'm sure that'll work out eventually. But pray for them as they continue to press forward the claims of Christ in this world.