Series to Begin Next Week, the Ebionites, and Open Phones on a 95 Minute Dividing Line

And greetings welcome to the dividing line. I'll hopefully have a monitor up eventually so I can see what's going on up there.

I'm sorry, you don't want me to see. Okay, all right, that's fine. A couple things and we'll go to calls.

Everybody seems to be enjoying having more phone calls, which means you just don't want to hear me talk all that much.

So just, you know, hard sometimes. Anyway, many of you heard the discussion, and every day we could come up with a different example of this, but you heard the discussion on the briefing yesterday of the

Harvard Christian group that has been suspended, I'm sorry, put on probation. And the only way they can get off probation is to stop being

Christian. And it's become cliche for us to recognize that the

Ivy League schools, the state universities have become zones of anti -Christian bigotry.

We recognize that the leftist totalitarians scream about inclusivity, but don't believe in inclusivity or redefine it in some way that is incomprehensible.

But this is what is coming. And I was thinking to myself when I was listening to Dr. Mohler speaking about this,

I thought to myself, why is it that so many Christians still have such a high view of secular education?

Oh, you went to Harvard. What that has meant for a few decades now is you have no clue about worldview, or you're a mind -numb zombie when it comes to worldview issues.

I mean, unless you went in with eyes wide open, firm foundation, had other reasons.

And it's so obvious to me now in hindsight, you had a constitution that enshrined in its words, the essence of a worldview that would always be resistant to totalitarianism, to the destruction of the family.

It was too deeply steeped in a Judeo -Christian worldview to be overthrown unless it wasn't perfect.

It contained within itself the seeds of its own self -destruction, and the seeds of its self -destruction came about through the rise of the judiciary and the ability of the judiciary to fundamentally overturn the intention of the writers of the constitution in the first place by no longer doing their job.

Their job is to interpret it as it was intended to be understood, not as a quote -unquote living document.

And so when you think about it, just think of where do judges come from?

They don't drop down out of heaven or pop up out of hell. They are normally attorneys who take that position.

And where are the vast majority of attorneys trained today? In the very universities that have become so rabidly anti -Christian, so rabidly secular, left, totalitarian, et cetera, et cetera.

And so you look at the judicial decisions, and these are not decisions.

They are activism. They are a fundamental overthrowing of the intention and purpose of the constitution of the

United States. And so it shouldn't shock us when these institutions are now just wide open.

We don't want Christian groups on this campus. How long from we don't want

Christian groups to we don't want Christians? It won't be long. So why do any of us sit around going, oh,

I sure hope my kid can get into Harvard. What, so he can become a mind -numb statist robot? We've got to stop.

We tend to be, for understandable reasons, we tend to be behind the curve on these things.

It's sort of an inertia, momentum. And it takes, especially us older folks, a little while to change our ways of thought.

And yeah, that's what's going on there. So we see that kind of thing, and it will eventually be the consistent, at first it'll differ from state to state.

Before long, all of California, Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts, Maine, New York, you know, the east and west coasts will go first.

Obviously, everything around Illinois and Chicago, so on and so forth. But it'll spread over time, normally with federal assistance to where, you know, to not be engaged in hate speech means you simply can't be a

Christian. Which, by the way, a thought has crossed my mind, but I just don't think

I can get away with it. I'll be honest, I just don't think I can get away with it.

I've been watching the public discussion of guns in the

United States. And over the years, I remember very clearly,

I think it was on my first trip to Australia that we had some type of outdoor lunch type thing going on.

And one of the brothers at the table, while we were eating, was a

Kiwi. And just out of left field, he said to me, the one thing

I just don't understand about you Americans is your love of guns. All the Christians in America love guns.

Well, it's not true, but I understand what's being said. And as I listen to what's going on right now, the level of ignorance is astounding.

I mean, just see that one news report, the power of the

AR -15. And this guy, they've got this guy with a television camera out there in somebody's field, and they've got a watermelon,

I think. Grapefruit, probably a watermelon. And this guy's going to shoot this watermelon with an

AR -15. And up comes the gun, and it's a 12 -gauge shotgun.

It's a 12 -gauge shotgun. Anybody who knows anything about guns knows it's a 12 -gauge shotgun. But the power of the

AR -15, the guy blows away the watermelon. And by the way, I have a really cool video

I should show of what happens when you shoot a watermelon with a Smith & Wesson M500.

Well, I'll tell you, that just, I mean, it did better than the, a lot better than the shotgun did.

But anyways, it's just, you know, and the scary thing is the politicians that wouldn't know how to use terminology.

They don't know the difference between a cartridge and a bullet and a primer. And the big stuff, they can't tell the difference between an automatic or a semi -automatic or a bolt action or a single fire.

They're clueless. They've never fired it on their life. They have no idea what they're talking about. And the more clueless you are, the easier it is to deceive you.

And that's what I'm watching. And, you know, the temptation has been, I could do a really good 15, 20 -minute segment to educate everybody.

These are the issues. Let's take a look at what is actually going on. And then we could make application.

We could talk about, you know, the theological implications of who is the strong man?

What does it mean to bind the strong? It has nothing to do with demon stuff, by the way, in that context. It's talking about, you know, how are you supposed to be able to protect personal property?

What about, does a man have a responsibility of protecting his family and his home? What does that mean in a changing culture?

There's all sorts of things we've talked about, I just don't think I get away with it. I just don't think I get away with it. I really don't.

I mean, I could do a good job. I could do a really good job. When I was 16, 17 years old,

I had a reloading bench in my closet. It was only my closet because that was the only place in my room to put it.

And I actually reloaded my own rounds. It was very enjoyable. It really was. I mean, yeah, a little bit on the repetitive side.

But if you did it well, there was a real sense of accomplishment and you had to know what you were doing and so on and so forth.

So, yeah, I've been around, you know, I could bring in, still have the, it wasn't supposed to be a single shot, but it's from 18, it's inscribed on the octagon barrel.

18, I forget whether it's 1860s or 1880s. I have a little .22

short rifle from my great -grandfather, grandfather, great -grandfather,

I forget which one, should find out. And, you know, I started shooting that thing when

I was, I don't know, about 12, 13 years of age. And so, that's not the only gun

I've ever shot, obviously. In fact, I've got some funny stories, given the size of some of the beasts that I've fired over the years.

But I just don't know if these days, even in our context, I can get away with it.

I really don't. There is so much emotion. There are so many people that have an irrational mindset.

As soon as they see a gun, they're just, there's like, their minds just turn off, become completely emotional and can't even think past that point.

It's just, so I don't even know if I could get in that. But the only reason I mentioned that is yesterday, what

President Trump said was frightening. Just frightening. Those of you who are big

President Trump fans, you should be shaking your boots from what was said yesterday.

Let's not worry about that due process thing. That's, that takes too long. Let's not worry about that.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, somebody's insane, take the guns away. And exactly how do you determine that?

Because sadly, what I'm seeing a lot is in the people, the cultural elites believe that what we do here is to be involved in hate speech.

And they question our mental stability. I mean, there are people today, honestly, on all over university campuses, all over the

United States, that if you were to enunciate a fundamental

Christian worldview of sexuality, that there are men and there are women, the male and female binary is a good gift from God, that they would question your sanity.

They would question your mental health. And all you got to do is get enough millennials into positions of being even low level judges.

And there you go. No more due process. Not only no more rights to defend yourself, but what's the next step after that?

I mean, if you're not allowed to possess firearms, then maybe you should be locked away for your own good, right?

Not hurt the rest of society. It's amazing how many people have missed the reality.

I mentioned it on Facebook today that the wisdom and one of the primary evidences of the influence of the

Christian worldview on the framing of the U .S. Constitution was to limit.

It functions as a limitation on the power of government because they all knew once you get a bunch of depraved sinners together and give them power, guess what they're going to do?

They're going to abuse it and want more. And so we live in a day now where this next generation just wants the government to take care of them from the cradle to the grave.

The time has really, really come to begin considering, again, the truth of what

John Adams said. The Constitution is only intended for the governance of a religious and moral people.

We are no longer religious people. We are no longer moral people. We are an irreligious, immoral people.

And so what does that mean? What's that going to mean fundamentally? Good question.

Good question. And as people around the world look at us, they wonder, goodness, what in the world is going on?

A couple things for next week. We're going to be looking at two things.

First, right now, something fascinating is happening in South Africa. And I don't mean the — you need to pray for South Africa.

What was just done by the bad, bad things.

Look it up for yourself. The instability is only going to become much worse.

It's scary. I'm very, very concerned for my friends in South Africa.

The government is in trouble. And I mean, aside from what you've got going on in Cape Town, the water, that's a natural disaster happening.

This is going to be starvation -type stuff. It's that bad.

And we need to pray for those folks. But there is, aside from that, something spiritually fascinating.

I've mentioned it to you before very, very, very briefly, but we basically are watching the birth pangs of a new cult.

And I liken it to — I should have grabbed that book, but I've got a little blue book called

Mormonism Unveiled by E .D. Howe. And it's from — that's all right — it's from 1834.

So it was written four years after the official founding of Mormonism, April 6, 1830.

And we have the exact parallel situation right now in a group called

Christ in Me. And Christ in Me is a cult group that is — you can watch the evolution of its theology right now.

They're four and a half years old. Four and a half years old. So we're in the same place E .D. Howe was at in observing

Mormonism. But, of course, we have so much more information because they put all their stuff out online — well, not all, but they put their stuff out online and can grow so much faster because of that.

And they are an extremely odd mixture of all sorts of past errors.

I mean, there's a little proto -Gnosticism in here, and there's some New Age stuff, and it's all slathered together in an odd fashion.

And back around Christmastime, they put out a series of — well, two sermons,

I guess, by two of their major leaders. And we're going to be looking at some of the comments they make about Isaiah 9 -6 and John 1.

And it's sort of hard to follow, to be honest with you, to try to — because they divide Jesus and the

Christ. Nothing new about that. Christian science has done that for forever and a day. But they divide

Jesus and the Christ, and Christ in me. And so the Logos was just in Jesus, but he wasn't

Jesus the Christ. He had a message. The word was in him, but the word can be in you like it was in Jesus and all this.

It's really, really hard to follow stuff. But once again, having a firm grasp upon the methodologies of meaningful interpretation of Scripture and knowing background and stuff like that helps you to be able to recognize these things and to avoid the problems.

And so we'll be looking at the CIM. And then the other thing is we will start —

I'm going to do the best I can. I know, I know, I know you've done things like this in the past. You never finish them up.

Normally what happens is you start a series of things, and then I end up going overseas for a period of time.

When you get back, there's a bunch of stuff you have to try to catch up on that has happened. Or, you know, the season of slander starts like it did last year, and you never get back to what you wanted to do.

And I apologize for that. But last week, yet another debate took place between Michael Icona and Bart Ehrman, and it was posted to YouTube last night or this morning.

I had seen a link to it on the Kennesaw State website of whatever group had sponsored it, and I tried to record it, but the audio and video didn't work.

So I eventually just recorded the audio, not knowing when it was going to get posted. And of course, within 12 to 16 hours, it's posted on YouTube where I can easily grab it.

But anyway, I recorded the audio. I had the volume turned down while most of it was running because I was doing other things.

And I did listen to the closing statements and the audience questions, and heard some portions of the opening statements.

But what was really interesting, and so what I'm going to do is I'm going to try to break that up into more bite -sized portions.

In the past, we've reviewed a number of Icona -Ehrman debates, Ehrman versus William Lane Craig, Ehrman versus all sorts of people over the years.

And that normally is an entire program. Sometimes it's 90 minutes long, sometimes it's two hours long, sometimes it's a couple programs of a number of hours.

And a lot of people don't just have time to cover all that, to listen to all that.

And so what I thought would be maybe more useful would be to break it up into bite -sized chunks and cover a topic at a time, maybe a particular alleged error at one time, and just spread out over time to once again provide a rather full response to Bart Ehrman.

The one thing I did want to mention today, though, was really interesting to me.

I'm sort of sitting back, I'm doing other stuff, and I'd sort of look over at the screen while it's recording.

And the one thing that really struck me was how very different Ehrman and Icona looked as they spoke.

Dr. Icona stands behind the podium and he reads his opening statement, just reads it.

Ehrman sometimes is behind the podium, but then he comes out behind the podium and he walks across the stage and he's gesturing and he's got his hands up in the air and he's not using a single note.

Having listened to as much of it as I did, I'm going to listen to all of it straight through on a very long ride on Saturday, Lord willing, it just strikes me that, especially if you did not have a firm foundation, especially if you have not heard

Bart Ehrman speak before, you've not been exposed to the differences between the

Synoptic Gospels. If you're just sort of an evangelical that has had your head stuck in the sand and that was the first thing you ran into, you would be devastated.

Because Icona is saying, we're not talking about inerrancy, I'm just talking about general reliability.

And we've talked about Dr. Icona's definitional and fundamental abandonment of inerrancy, at least by any meaningful definition of that term.

And in this debate, it just seemed to me, as I was watching it, even without the sound up and then listening at the end,

Ehrman knows he's got this. He doesn't even have to have notes.

He's just, I've got this. The only difference between us is how far you take it.

That's really all there is. And so, yeah, there'll be a lot to look at.

And it'll take us a while to do so. But I think it'd be very useful to provide that kind of response.

One last thing. Oh, we do have a bunch of calls.

Look at that. I read from Dr. Kruger's new book,

How the Second Century Shaped the Future of the Church, Christianity at the Crossroads. And someone commented, boy,

I'm really glad that you read such and such a thing on that, because I had never heard that before. So I want to just read one of the sections, hopefully to encourage you to take the time to purchase the book.

I'm not sure if it's on Kindle yet or not, but the paperback's out. And this one is interesting.

We may read a couple sections later, not today. But one of the big issues that we get into, especially with our

Muslim friends, the Muslims love the Ebionites. The Ebionites, we know so little about them.

We just have some vague references to them that a lot of groups that are looking for a group to try to snag on to say, oh, there's our people.

We know that your Orthodox people are all wrong, but there's our people. And Muslims especially like to grab on to the

Ebionites at that point. And so I thought I'd read you real quickly the section about the

Ebionites under the chapter Alternative Pathways in Dr. Kruger's book here on the second century.

One of the central flashpoints in early theological debates was whether a person needed to follow distinctive aspects of the

Mosaic law, circumcision, Sabbath observance, dietary restrictions in order to be saved. In other words, did a person first have to become a

Jew before he or she could become a Christian? Apparently, this is not the only issue that led to the

Jerusalem Council Acts 15, but also the issue that Paul addressed in his highly polemical epistle to the

Galatians. Apparently, there were groups of Christians even in the first century, which Paul labeled the circumcision party, that answered this question with a yes.

When we come to the second century, we learn of a group that held beliefs very similar to the opponents Paul battled in his letter to the

Galatians, the Ebionites. This is not to suggest that the

Ebionites existed in the first century. The evidence suggests that, quote,

Ebionism originated probably sometime in the second century, end quote.

That's from Richard Baucom, The Origin of the Ebionites, in Peter J. Thompson and Doris Lambers Petrie, The Image of the

Jew Christians in Ancient Jewish and Christian Literature. But the

Ebionites, like the Galatian circumcision party, were Christ followers who refused to abandon the

Jewish system of law observance as they knew it. The origin of the name is a bit of a mystery. Some say the group's founder was a person named

Ebion, while others suggest it comes from Hebrew word meaning poor. Regardless, Irenaeus tells us that those who are called

Ebionites practice circumcision, persevere in the observance of those customs which are enjoined by the law, and are so Judaic in their style of life.

As a result, and not surprisingly, they repudiate the Apostle Paul, maintaining that he was an apostate from the law.

You can see why our Muslim friends like to turn the Ebionites into early Muslims, basically.

Likewise, Hippolytus affirms the Ebionites believe they are justified according to law, and Justin Martyr, while not using the formal name, appears to refer to the beliefs of the same group in his dialogue with Trifo, quote, and Trifo inquired again, but as someone recognizing that this man is the

Christ, and has believed and obeys him, wishes, however, to observe these institutions, will he be saved? I said, in my opinion,

Trifo, such a one will be saved if he does not strive in every way to persuade other men to observe the same things as himself, telling him they will not be saved unless they do, end quote.

In addition to their rejection of salvation by faith alone, the Ebionites held a number of other beliefs that stood at odds with traditional

Orthodox Christianity. Most notably, they rejected both the virgin birth, so much for them being the early

Muslims, they rejected both the virgin birth and the divinity of Jesus, opting for more of an adoptionist

Christology. Jesus was just an ordinary human being, they claimed, who was born physically from the union of Mary and Joseph, again, not

Muslims, are they, and was later adopted as Messiah by the Holy Spirit due to his holy and righteous life, again, inconsistent with Islam.

However, it should be noted that some scholars attribute more of a separationist Christology to the Ebionites, where a heavenly

Christ inhabits the man Jesus and leaves him before his death. Such scholarly disagreements are not uncommon given the ambiguity of the patristic sources and the overlap between adoptionistic and separationist

Christologies, which sometimes makes them difficult to distinguish. The Ebionites also had their own writings.

In addition to accepting the authority of the Old Testament, the Ebionites may have used a gospel which some called the gospel of the

Hebrews, which was possibly a modified version of the gospel of Matthew. Scholars have dubbed this mysterious gospel the gospel of the

Ebionites. Noteworthy among the features of this Ebionite gospel, at least according to the excerpts from Epiphanius, is the fact that it did not contain the account of the virgin birth, which would make sense, obviously.

This fits quite well with the historical testimony mentioned above that the Ebionites rejected the virgin birth and viewed Jesus as the natural offspring of Joseph and Mary.

Just as Paul rejected the Judaizers of his day, the major voices of early Christianity roundly condemned the teachings of the

Ebionites. Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian origin, and later Epiphanius, all regard the

Ebionite doctrine as out of sync with the apostolic faith that had been handed down to them. Jerome even tells us that Ignatius and Polycarp also opposed the

Ebionites, but there is no mention of the Ebionites in their extant writings. Most strident in his criticisms was

Irenaeus. He compares the Ebionites to heretics like Cyrenthes and Capricates. He condemns their rejection of the apostle

Paul, and he pronounces judgment on them for denying the divine identity of Jesus. Quote, God will judge also the

Ebionites for how can they be saved unless it was God who wrought out their salvation upon earth, or how shall man pass into God unless God has first passed into man, end quote.

The existence of such groups of groups like the Ebionites also raises complex questions about how they should be labeled or described.

The term Jewish Christianity has typically been used to describe movements that follow Jesus and still adhere to some degree to Jewish law observance, but scholars have rightly criticized this label as far too imprecise and even misleading.

It leaves unclear whether one has to be ethnically Jewish to be regarded as a Jewish Christian or whether one just needs to follow

Jewish practices or both. The problems with this definition are also exacerbated by the obvious overlap between Judaism and Christianity.

From one perspective, all Christianity is Jewish since it follows a Jewish messiah. Nevertheless, the term

Jewish Christianity still has a broad usefulness as a way to describe Christ believers who maintained a faithful adherence to the law.

When it comes to defining groups that seem to share both Jewish and Christian traits, Carleton Paget defends the traditional terminology, possibly we should admit that the word

Jewish Christian remains the best, even if in an inadequate way, of doing such a thing. It is worth noting, however, that not all

Jewish Christian groups were the same. Also active during the second century was a group of Jewish believers known as the

Nazarenes or Nazareans. Although the Nazarenes continued to observe the Mosaic law, they did not require its observance for salvation.

Indeed, unlike the Ebionites, they embraced the Apostle Paul in his mission to the Gentiles and appeared to be generally orthodox in their

Christology. However, the reliability of this profile of the Nazarenes is complicated by the fact that they are only mentioned by name in later sources, namely

Epiphanius and Jerome, and sometimes even these writers seem confused. Nevertheless, some scholars have made the case that it was the

Nazarenes and not the Ebionites that can be traced back to the first century and to the earliest Jewish believers in Jerusalem. If they are correct, then the earliest

Jewish Christian groups appear to be of the orthodox variety and the divergent factions like the were a later second century development.

But the patristic sources that describe these various Jewish Christian groups are often contradictory, making it difficult to determine which groups they have in mind.

Regardless, it is clear that groups like the Ebionites represent one end of the theological spectrum in second century Christianity, one that retained a deep commitment in some fashion to the

Mosaic law and insisted that salvation was contingent upon its observance. We might say that these groups, although professing to follow

Christ, viewed their primary identity as Jewish. For them, it was the Jewish identity markers that would define the boundaries of the community.

So the Nazarenes, the Ebionites, you'll hear that terminology being used a lot.

The fact of the matter is pretty much everything we know, especially about the

Ebionites, well, of both, comes solely from secondary sources. We just don't have primary sources.

And as I would point out, the Ebionites, one thing we're fairly certain is they denied the virgin birth, something that Islam confesses.

So when you find these Muslims who are sort of trying to turn the

Ebionites into early proto -Muslims, you might want to remind them of that particular problem, that particular issue.

Okay. So again, the book is Dr. Michael J. Kruger, Christianity at the

Crossroads, How the Second Century Shaped the Future of the Church. And so those of you who like to read such things, that is available.

All right, let's get to the phone calls and let's talk to Russ.

Hi, Russ. Hello, Dr. White. I'm delighted to speak to you. Yes, sir.

I've been listening for quite a long time, and I learned a great deal from you. And I enjoy it when you go off on the rabbit, or should

I say squirrel, chases, because you always bring up things that make me start researching again.

Well, good. And I enjoy the go -around you and Rich have there.

And I also like it when he fills in for you when you're gone, so. Oh, well.

Kind of nice. Okay. I've got about three of your books.

I should get some more. You've mentioned some now already today on this program, but you mentioned the

Nomina Sacra. And then when looking at that, I saw the Tau Rho. Are there any of those in your

P45? Well, the Nomina Sacra, most assuredly, is found in different forms in P45.

I'm not certain. I think there might be a

Cairo. I'd have to look at that. I was just going to bring up my section of P45 images and had to restart.

I'm having problems with my Macs all of a sudden. I'm having to restart Finder all the time. You know, when I switched to Mac, I kept saying to everybody, it's because it just works.

Well, they unfortunately have gone the way of Microsoft, and so it doesn't just work anymore.

But the various forms of the

Nomina Sacra, and for people who aren't familiar with it, the Nomina Sacra are the abbreviations of the sacred names.

And so God, Christ, Lord, Jesus, Spirit, it depends on how long the list is for each individual manuscript.

But early Christian manuscripts will abbreviate those words, sometimes into a two -letter form, sometimes into a three -letter form, and place a line over top of it.

And there are a number of three -letter Nomina Sacras in P45.

In the Prologue of John? Well, P45 doesn't contain the Prologue of John.

Oh, terrible. Yeah, it would be nice. P45's section on John starts in chapter 10 and ends in chapter 11.

So that's actually the largest fragments we have as far as page size is actually from the section on John.

There's some good ones in Acts too, but it starts in chapter 10, ends in chapter 11. So there's one tiny little fragment of about 32 words containing a portion of John 4 and a portion of John 5, but nothing with the

Prologue in it. Which you just spoke on last Sunday. I did, yeah.

But when you look at P66, P75, that contain the

Prologue, they will use the Nomina in the Prologue there. And what does that do to my

JW apprentices who are incredibly stubborn, hard -headed, and won't listen to reason? As far as the

Nomina Sacra go? Doesn't that prove the Trinity and the deity of Christ, basically?

Well, I think John chapter 1 does, but the use of Nomina Sacra, I'm not sure what the argument there would be other than because sometimes even

David is abbreviated in the Nomina Sacra, so you wouldn't be using that as a... Just because it's abbreviated doesn't necessarily mean that makes it an argument that the author thought that that word was always used in reference to deity.

So need to be careful at that. It's just, we're not sure what the origination of the

Nomina Sacra was. We don't know why. It just was incredibly consistently widespread in Christian documents that that's what they did with those particular words.

But I've never used that as an argument in regards to dealing with Jehovah's Witnesses.

So I'm not sure where you'd go with that. And all the trouble you have trying to squeeze everything in.

I'm sure if we put it to a vote, everyone would want a third three times a week instead of twice for your program.

Yeah, right. That's easy to do. Okay. Thanks, Ross. I appreciate it.

Have a good day. Thank you. Bye -bye. That's easier said than done, my friend.

Let's talk with Sam in Texas. Hi, Sam. Hey, Dr. White. How are you today? Doing good.

Okay. Well, I just wanted to let you know I really enjoyed both your talks at G3.

I was there. I drove all the way from Braggsburg, Texas. I did not make the debate. And also ran into Dr.

Askle when I was there and told him I wanted to meet you, but you were very busy after your talks. Yeah.

Well, I ended up leaving early because Rich is supposed to be there.

And his immune system isn't quite as robust.

He's getting up there in age. So thankfully, he's screening a phone call right now, so he's not hearing any of this.

Otherwise, my microphone might turn off. You never know. Like I said, I appreciated it.

I wish I could have gotten to meet you. My question is in reference to the regular principle and the normative principle.

I'm personally an Anglican. I think I was the only Anglican at G3. Probably. But within the groups that I deal with on a daily basis,

I'm a part of the Anglicanism as established page. And the topic of where Cramner fell on the regulative and the normative and the way

I read some of the stuff, I know he didn't have a lot of time to develop it because he died too soon.

I feel he's like somewhere in the middle. Would that be a correct assessment? And with your church history background, would you agree with that?

Well, I may have a church history background. It doesn't make me an expert on Cranmer. I... Time for one of those opportunities to remind everybody that I'm...

When it's something I don't know anything about, I'm going to tell you about it. I have no... I've never read anything on Cranmer's view of regulative, normative or anything else.

I certainly know who I would ask on that subject. I would ask

David Old about that, who you probably know, if you're familiar with him down there in Australia.

I've heard you speak about him before. He's been on the program. I'm not running to him on any of the pages that I run. Really? Well, you may not be running on the conservative enough pages.

I don't know. Well, I don't know with the way ACNA is going right now, but, you know, hey.

Yeah, yeah. Well, he's down in the Sydney area. And if you look him up on...

He's on Twitter and Facebook and stuff like that. And I see he's quite active. But he'd be my Anglican go -to guy at that particular point in time.

He's, you know, more college and stuff like that. Right. Those would be the guys that I would ask about that.

But I've never read anything about his particular views on that subject. So I couldn't be of any help to you.

I guess a little offshoot. Would you say that anybody's fully regulative or anybody's fully normative?

I mean, I'm trying to... I guess what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to talk to people about that. My point is, is that we use a regulative principle in increments, not so much fully as...

because there are normative practices within all churches. The Adorafia type stuff is what

I'm trying to understand. We have three streams within Anglicanism, and part of it is the

Anglo -Catholic side that tend to be more papist and Romanish in their practices.

Yeah. No, I don't think... well, I suppose you eventually find somebody that is as regulative as you possibly could be.

They would probably worship alone without anybody else that's around, probably.

But, you know, you get into... one example of how regulative are you is the issue of psalm singing and exclusive psalmody.

And I've heard exclusive psalmists say, hey, we are more consistent with our regulative principle than you are in allowing for non -inspired music.

And then you have the issue of instruments, and that becomes... you know, there is obviously an element of interpretation as to what you're going to make to be the regulation by which you regulate.

And so, yeah, you're going to have differences, and some groups are going to view themselves as being more faithful to it than others, while others would say you're not being regulative, you're going into a form of legalism.

And so, you know, you end up with that kind of argument. And I personally think that should be something, at least amongst

Reformed Baptists, we can come to those decisions for our particular fellowship without demanding that every other

Reformed Baptist fellowship adopt exactly our position. So, for example, in our fellowship, we use the

Trinity Hymnal, which has psalms. We do sing many psalms, but we don't only sing psalms.

We're not exclusive psalmody. But I know a lot of Reformed Baptist churches that do a lot of traveling that have songbooks that they use to supplement the

Trinity Hymnal, which would have more modern stuff in it. Now, I would have no problem with that, but we don't do that.

So, does that make us more regulative than somebody else? You know, I suppose we have a piano once in a while, but we only have one regular piano player in the congregation.

And so, we end up doing a lot of a cappella stuff. I hate it when I'm preaching on a Sunday night and the piano player is not there, because it is a whole added level of stress, believe me, when you not only have to preach, but you also have to lead the singing.

Because they always try to give me easy hymns, but haven't you ever looked at a hymn and you know you've sung it a thousand times before, but the melody, the tune, just goes right out of your mind?

How do I start this again? How do I start this? And I can read music, but still. And once, it was really embarrassing, because the song we sang beforehand was really similar.

I couldn't get that one out of my head. And I started all wrong and we crashed and burned.

I mean, you know, grind to a halt, just the worst way it can go. It was, yeah.

So you would appreciate a pitch pipe in the ministry resource list. You know, look, at our church, what we could really use would be a metronome, because I've wanted to,

I've been so tempted, but I can almost guarantee that there is at least a 6 % drop in speed between the first and last stanzas, verses of each one of the hymns.

It's just like, come on, folks, they're not all whole notes. Come on. You know, I want to just stand up and start waving my arm and let's do this.

Come on, you know. I grew up with Christ and I've made the journey. Church of Christ?

Yeah. I called you when I was in Iraq about, I think it was in 07. Oh, yeah.

Oh, Rich says he remembers it. Yeah. And then I called again, I was the truck driver driving through Illinois asking about the

Uthmanic revision. Okay. All right. Well, good. So I've kind of made a little journey. I guess so, yeah.

I guess so. Just from studying stuff, and what brought me to Anglicanism was actually my study in Revelation, the worship service in Revelation.

That's what really got me looking into it. But so I've had the ultra -regulative and I've gone all the way to a middle way between normative and relative.

So that's kind of what I was... So I'm kind of... I fight myself on certain things. I'm like, okay, whoa, wait a second.

That's too much. Okay. All right. Well, like I said, the only

Anglican churches I've spoken in were down Australia and one in Alaska, which I think since then has left the

Anglican community and has joined one of the more conservative groups because of what's happening in Canterbury and stuff like that.

But if I have any questions about that, I just send them off to David and we go from there.

And it's David Orr, right? O -U -L -D. Old. Old. Okay. He's actually... The poor guy, he's actually

British, but he's been in Australia so long now that he's really a man without a country. So the

British don't want him back. Because he's been amongst the convicts so long. But he's...

There's a certain term they use of Brits in Australia. I'm not going to repeat it here, but he's one of them.

Yeah. I can ask him whenever I get in contact with him. All right. Thanks for the call, Sam. Thank you,

Dr. White. I'm going to hear about that. Okay.

Let's talk to Adam. Hi, Adam. Hello, Dr. White. How are you doing? I'm doing great.

So this will probably be old to you, but it's new to me. I stumbled across some videos about some atheist skeptics talking about how

Paul has invented Christianity. And I'm just wondering, I don't see any difference between any of the

Gospels and any of Paul's epistles that would cause them to come to a conclusion that he's teaching anything different.

Oh, you haven't talked to enough Muslims because they love the exact same thesis. They really do.

Where are they getting that from? Okay. Well, when you read

Paul, you're probably reading Paul within a context that allows you to harmonize what he's saying.

But if you don't have that context, or if you reject that context, then a really good example of this would be to watch the debate

I just did with Adnan Rashid in Georgia, because Adnan's primary argument was that the

Apostle Paul and Jesus were on completely different pages in regards to how it is that you're saved.

So you sort of want to see how that fleshes itself out, watching that debate and listening to Adnan, and then recognize that Adnan's not getting that from the

Qur 'an. The Qur 'an has no clue who Paul was. The Qur 'an has no direct textual interaction with the

New Testament. The author of the Qur 'an had never read it, didn't know anything about it, and so there's no direct textual interaction and no acknowledgement of any of the

New Testament writers. So it's not coming from that. In the modern period, Muslims who are constantly attacking the

Apostle Paul are borrowing directly from the large realm of anti -Pauline writings that are widely available in liberal or, quote -unquote, progressive – and of course, progressive to me means right off the cliff into the abyss – progressive theology today, where you deny the consistency of the

New Testament, and so you place Paul over against Jesus, and so that way you can say Jesus says that you're saved by keeping the law, you talk about the rich young ruler, you're saved by – there's no need for his death, it's just simply repentance, so on and so forth – over against Paul's entire discussion of the deadness of man in sin, the necessity of the atonement, etc.,

etc. So all you have to do is not harmonize what the

New Testament teaches, and you can set not only Paul against Jesus, Paul against James, and in fact, a lot of the writers today set

Paul against Paul. So Paul in his earlier epistles says this, but in his later epistles he says this.

As long as you're willing to chop the New Testament up into parts, which is what everybody does these days – it's the only way to get published,

I guess – as long you're willing to do that, you can come up with almost any thesis you want. And so you just put

Jesus into a work salvation box, you forget about – you don't have to worry about the Gospel of John because the

Gospel of John isn't historical, according to most of these folks, and you just pick and choose what you want, you skip

Matthew 11. Look, everything I'm doing here is twisting these texts, I know that, but that's how it's done.

And the skeptics are borrowing the exact same type of argumentation. You know, the idea that Paul invented

Christianity, though, is so laughable. I mean, what an amazing thing that you would make up a religion that would be the most vulgar, offensive idea to the

Roman elites, and within a couple centuries – well, within a couple decades it turns the world upside down, and within a couple decades after that, a couple centuries after that,

Rome declares itself to be a Christian state. But the idea of taking a crucified

Jewish Messiah and making him a king of kings and lord of lords as if that was somehow made up by the

Apostle Paul is just so outlandish to me, and yet it is extremely common on your university campuses.

And when you send your young people off to community college, that's what they're going to hear from some history of religions professor their freshman year.

That's what they're going to be told. Yeah, I remember actually seeing some Lutheran satire cartoon about Paul proposing to Peter, we're going to start this religion with no social power or monetary gain to control people.

Right, yeah. It's laughable. Oh, it is, it is. It is completely laughable, but there's a lot of very laughable stuff today that is now the absolute dogma of the university.

I think the most obvious example of that being you are what you think you are. That means that I am a six -foot -eleven center for the

Boston Celtics. Well, sorry, not going to happen. Yeah, so one more, two more quick things.

I'm actually considering using the Heidelberg Catechism to start going over that with my son. Would you recommend that as a good idea, or would you have some other?

Well, I'm a Baptist, so I think the Baptist Catechism is just as good, but we went through the

Heidelberg in our Sunday school openings a couple years ago, and so we expose our folks to all the different perspectives.

And when you get to the baptism section, you go, well, okay, this is what the Heidelberg said. We take our leave here, but so sure, that's great.

You can put it in its proper historical context and stuff like that. I'm just saying, Baptist... Minus the child baptism, of course.

I'm sorry? Minus the child baptism, of course. Well, no, we still read it. We're not ignorant.

We're not going to hide anything from anybody, but I just think the Baptist Catechism is really good, too.

Spurgeon used it, and so there are other options, but you can compare and contrast, combine, all sorts of stuff you can do there.

But yeah, I would have no problem with that at all. Okay. Now, one more quick thing.

Real quick now. So I'm the guy from Houston that called in last week, and he told me about Taco Time.

Okay. It's an hour away. Is that worth a trip? Well, what you do is you find something you want to go see, like at a movie theater, something that's 45 minutes that direction, and then you swing by and eat there, and then go watch the movie or go to the zoo or something like that.

Just for Taco Time, probably not, but if you combine it with something else, then yeah, that would work.

Hey, I spent two and a half hours in the car yesterday just driving around the valley.

So yeah, I understand. You guys are right ahead of us on the list. You're just a little bit larger than we are.

Not much, but a little bit larger. So we probably have, I don't know what your traffic is like, but we do have a lot of people coming to Houston.

A lot of transplants come to Houston, so traffic is horrendous. Traffic's really bad here, too. There's no two ways about it.

It's all the top ten, it's that way. So all right, Adam, thanks a lot for your call. Thank you, sir.

I think Taco Time would be worth it personally, but you never know.

Okay, let's talk with Jacob in California. Hi, Jacob. Hi, Dr. White, how are you?

Doing good. I just finished The Forgotten Trinity a couple days ago. I'm about halfway through King James Only controversy.

You have to say you've gotten me quite interested in biblical Greek, and I have a quick question on John 1030, and I've heard you say on The Dividing Line and in the books as well, that could be translated as,

I am the Father, we are one. So using that as example, how come some texts that seem they can be read more clearly, how come they're not translated that way?

Because that sounds horrible in English. And every translation before it reaches its final state is subject to the torturous machinations of English stylists.

And so they take what the Greek guys have given and they turn it into something that will actually sell, basically.

And so we don't speak English that way, but the

Greeks did speak that way. And so it says, ego kai hapater hen esmen.

And so there is a, in Greek, when you express a verb, even the verb of being, such as aimi, or here, esmen, you can just tell by the form that it's in, whether it's singular or whether it's plural.

And that's understood in the Greek language, whereas it can be less clear in the

English language. And that's why we always point out to people, even though people chafe against this, that given that we are studying the scriptures in a secondary language that did not exist at the time of the writing of the

Bible, we tend to forget that. That is why, at least up until this generation, it was a given that if you wish to be a well -trained pastor or exegete, you would learn the

Bible in its original languages. It was just a part of every, I keep pointing this out to folks, but I remember being stunned a number of years ago,

I was reading a book on the Puritans, and in the late 17th century, to get your master's degree in England in divinity, you had to be able to debate in Greek by your second year.

Not read Greek, but actually debate in it. I can't debate in Greek. I don't know, almost anybody can.

And obviously, in all sorts of other areas of human study, I've always used the example because I've studied a little bit of German, and we just had a family come to our church that just moved here from Germany, and they both speak fluent

German, so my German might be better next time I go to Germany. But anyway, since I've read this,

I've read Goethe's Faust in German. And so obviously, if I went to a local university and I wanted to get a master's degree in Faust, one of the obvious things

I would have to be able to do would be to read it in its original language. No one would question that. I mean, in decades past, that was just a given.

If you're going to do that level of study in something that was written in another language, you have to know the language.

We've lost that. And amongst some fundamentalists, it's a pseudo -spirituality, to be perfectly honest with you.

It's an anti -intellectualism. It's a pseudo -spirituality. You don't need to know the original languages to know what

God's Word says. Well, in the sense of being able to understand what God's will for your life is, that's exactly true. But we're talking about standing before the people of God and accurately handling the

Word of God and answering in -depth questions and so on and so forth. And up until the modern period, it was pretty much a given that everyone understood.

Yeah, you know, that's a huge advantage. You sort of might want to be able to need to do that. So when you look at John 1030, you look at the verb, you go, ah, esmen.

That's the plural form of I, me. And we are one. So those people who then try to smuggle something into the less clear, smooth expression of English, that's the only way you can really detect that issue, is to go the original language.

Now, sometimes the original language and English are identical. And it's still, you know, there isn't people all the time come to me and say, hey, you know,

I've always wondered about this text in, you know, what does this text say in Greek? And 98 % of the time, it's exactly what it says in English.

And they're disappointed by that. They were hoping for some gnostic influx of light to help them.

But in this case, it is, I think, very important to see that it doesn't say,

I and the Father, we is one, it's we are one. There is the distinction between I and the

Father is maintained. Yeah, so I somehow got in a conversation with a

Oneness Pentecostal and King James Onlyist. Oh yeah, a lot of Oneness Pentecostals are

King James Only. Yeah, yeah, I came to find out very quickly, and he refused, refused, refused to try to look at the original language.

He kept citing one of the proverbs, I believe it is, that says the gospel will be, you know, made known in every language.

And I'm like, that's not really an excuse to not look at the original language. And so yeah, it was really frustrating to say, look, the

Trinity is pretty clear, even though it doesn't say the word Trinity, all that stuff, it's pretty clearly in the Bible, especially when you look at, you know, the

Greek, and he refused that. And very quickly, is John 10, 30, a verse used to support

Jesus -only baptism? It's used to support

Jesus -onlyism and modalism. So, but as far as that establishes it, then they might use it for Jesus -only baptism, but not primarily.

Normally, that is argued for by just looking at the descriptive sections in Acts, where it describes

Christian baptism. So I've not had somebody use John 10, 30 in that way. I was really taken aback when they just flat out would not say that they baptized in, you know,

Matthew 28, 19 to 20, baptized in the three names. So anyways, well, thank you very much.

That cleared up a lot of things for me. And thank you for your ministry. I've actually gone back to 1998 and started listening there because I couldn't get enough.

Got a lot to catch up on there. Yes, I do. I've gotten through, I think, 1998 through 2000 in the past month.

So yeah, it's been a huge help and talking with Mormons and with my own family and my church as well.

So thank you to you and Rich and all you guys do. All right. Thanks a lot. Thanks for your call. All right.

God bless. Bye -bye. Hey, before I go back to the calls here, I asked a guy on Twitter.

I asked a guy on Twitter, I actually looked up this, reading stuff like this makes me want to take the blue pill.

Okay. And we're talking about the difference between the blue and the red pill here in case you don't know the matrix, not the other blue pill. This is real.

This is from the Jackson Summit Baptist Church website, which is this week's pick for the

Fundamentalist website. What was the date on this? It's all the way back to 2010. So, okay, it goes back a ways.

But Fundamentalist website of the week. That's the blog Stuff Fundies Like. Okay, here's,

I'm just gonna read this to you. This is why sometimes I just want to open up a tire shop in Alaska, stay in the matrix, whatever.

One thing a lot of them do, this is a King James only thing. One thing a lot of them do is change the spelling of words that end with the letters

O -U -R to the more modern American spelling of O -R. For example, a behavior

I -O -U -R becomes behavior I -O -R. Endeavor becomes endeavor, favor becomes favor, honor becomes honor, labor becomes labor, and valor becomes valor.

So, what's wrong with that? Remember what the scripture said about a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?

The worst of this battle of our versus or comes when dealing with the only begotten

Son of God. The modern day counterfeiters have changed savior,

S -A -V -I -O -U -R, to savior, S -A -V -I -O -R. They have given us a six -letter savior in place of a seven -letter savior.

In the Bible, that's why the matrix is nice sometimes.

In the Bible, seven is the number of completeness, purity, and spiritual perfection. On the other hand, six is the number of man and is earthly, not heavenly.

Everyone has heard of 666. The seven -letter savior is the only begotten

Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. The six -letter savior is the Son of Perdition, the Antichrist. He wants to be like the

Most High and not in a good way, but in an evil way. The new versions along with the

New Age Movement and some of the King James Bible counterfeits are preparing the way for this six -letter so -called savior.

That's the way he will spell his name, S -A -V -I -O -R, not S -A -V -I -O -U -R.

No, thank you, Satan! I'm sticking with the seven -letter savior as portrayed in the old black book that I inherited from my forefathers.

Thanks to Paul Wilkinson for linking me to that.

I don't even know what to say. That's King James -only -ism, though. That's King James -only -ism.

That's the way it works. Let's talk with Micah in North Carolina. Hi, Micah.

Hi, James. How are you? Doing good. I appreciate you taking calls.

You've been doing that of late, so I figured I'd jump on the train while I got a chance. Okay. I've got a question about Romans 5 .1

and the variant that's there. I've heard you, and I think it was with Mitch Pacwa, you used

Romans 5 .1 sort of as an apologetic way by asking him if he could truly say he had peace with God.

Right. And while I was at the

Museum of the Bible in January, I noticed they have a manuscript there that has a whole at Eckermann, and I went back and read some of the history and didn't realize that there was a variant there at that spot where we have peace with God, and I didn't realize that the actual external evidence was actually for the subjunctive, which is, let us have peace with God.

So I've used Romans 5 .1 as an apologetic, especially in my encounters with the people with the

Church of Christ who adamantly claim you can lose your justification, and so I've used that by saying, you know, can you truly say you have peace with God?

I've never had any one of them, because usually they're King James -only, if they ever come back and say there's a variant there, you can't use that.

I haven't had any Roman Catholics do the same thing. Okay. So I guess my question is, should

I continue using that as an apologetic, or should I not press too heavily on that verse for our justification?

A couple things. For those who are interested, what's being referred to here is that, and I do address this in The God Who Justifies, there's a fairly lengthy endnote on the textual reading at this particular point, but what is at stake is whether you spell ekamen, digaothentos un ekpistaos aireinnein ekamen or ekomen, prostantheon.

So it's whether you are looking at what's called the indicative use of we have or the subjunctive use of we have.

And what is the difference between the two? Well, that's one of the important issues to raise is we have peace with God, and then people would say the subjunctive would automatically be let us have peace with God as if we don't have that.

Now, the problem is that that's not necessarily what the subjunctive is saying. It could be exhortative.

That is, let us live in the peace which we have with God. So it's not the difference between something that you possess and something you hope to someday have, because the rest of the sentence wouldn't make any sense if you understood it in that way, especially when you look down at hesekamen in verse 2, which is the same sentence.

So we stand in grace and we exalt in the hope of the glory of God.

So you wouldn't have the next finite verb that is utilized by the apostle be a perfect indicative if the idea of the primary verb at the beginning of the sentence was unfulfilled, hoped for, wished for fulfillment.

And so even on an exegetical basis, if you take ekomen, if you take the subjunctive, and I'm just emphasizing the long quick explanation here for people who are not familiar with this,

I use what's called the Erasmian pronunciation of Greek. It's not the modern pronunciation of Greek. We don't know exactly how people in the ancient world pronounced

Greek. But here's a good example where if you're using modern Greek, no one's going to know what you're talking about, because the subjunctive and the indicative are pronounced identical.

So in this Erasmian pronunciation, which some people think Erasmus came up with, obviously that's why the name's there, you can tell a difference between ekomen and ekomen, because the difference between the

Omicron and the Omega. The Omega is the elongated form of the

Omicron as far as pronunciation in the Erasmian. So anyway, the issue is, even if you have the subjunctive, in light of what the rest of the sentence says, it would have to be taken in the sense of to enjoy or to enter into or to experience fully what you have, not that you don't have it.

So that'd be the first thing. And so the fundamental answer to your question is yes, you should still use it.

The second thing, though, to make note of, and I mentioned this in passing, I don't know of a single

Roman Catholic scholar. Now, I'm sure there's some out there someplace, but I've looked. Rome does not take the subjunctive here.

Roman Catholic scholarship recognizes that on external grounds, you can make a pretty strong case for the subjunctive, but on internal probabilities, ekomen definitely is the favorite not only of Protestant scholars, but of all the

Roman Catholic Greek scholars that I'm familiar with, just on internal probabilities and the function of the sentence and so on and so forth.

So one thing that I'm certainly looking forward to is, I don't know when, there's no schedule for these things.

It could be five years from now, it could be 20 years from now. But when the

New Testament Institute in Munster gets around, if world events allow this type of work to continue, to be perfectly honest with you,

I mean, wow, did everyone hear Russia's announcement yesterday about all their new nuclear weapons that cannot be stopped by, you know, what a wonderfully safe world we live in.

There's somebody over there that wants to rebuild the Soviet Union, by the way, just mentioning that in passing. But if it continues to come out, peace continues to exist, it'll be really fascinating to see what happens when the

ECM applies what's called CBGM, the coherence -based genealogical method, to the

Pauline corpus and examines this particular text.

Because I'm going to say right now, I'm going to guess, I'm going to do a little textual critical prophetic prediction here.

My guess is that when you apply CBGM to Romans 5 .1,

CBGM is actually going to argue for the indicative. And the reason

I say that is,

I just get the feeling that the manuscripts that have the indicative are going to have a higher coherence to them than the ones do not.

I think echo men could arise more easily than the echo men. But we'll find out once the collations are done and the computers grind it out.

We'll find out. We don't have access to that information at this moment. But as I said, unless there's a war in Europe sometime over the next five to 15 years, that section of the

ECM will come out and it's going to shed some light on it. Very good.

That actually answers my question. I think I did read your section here in your book,

The God Who Justifies, which is by the way, my favorite book of all time. On an exegetical level, it not only proves

Paul's point and your point of justification, but just laying out an example of how to execute

Scripture, it is the best, and I am really grateful for it. Well, thank you. But I need to digest everything you've just said, but I think you've answered my question, and I really appreciate it.

Okay, thank you very much for your call today. Yeah, thank you very much. All right, God bless. We'll just be going to the bottom of the hour, so we'll probably just take the calls we have right now, and let's talk to Graham.

Hi, Graham. Hey, so I go to University of South Carolina, and I have my best friend from high school.

He goes to College of Charleston, so we don't see each other very much. And we both kind of got, like, into a deeper understanding of theology and kind of the stuff at the same time, like right around freshman year, just kind of after we already kind of, like, separated paths.

But I found out that he is a Oneness Pentecostal, and...

Has he always been, or just converted? He always has been. He's been raised that way, and his entire family is, or immediate family,

I should say. And so he and I have had several discussions about it.

I probably can count them on two hands the amount of times, actually, because we just don't talk that often, on the phone at least.

I mean, we'll text or whatever, send each other articles, like we're still in contact. But I guess,

I mean, I pointed to your debate with Roger Perkins, stuff like that, and he, though it kind of seemed to go just in one ear and out the other, kind of the point he made, which obviously

I thought were great, and like he just said, like, you guys got too bogged down in minutiae,

I think, was the way he kind of dismissed that. And like, when I talked to him about it, we kind of similarly get bogged down in minutiae when we talk about it.

And so I just, I'm not sure how to approach him about this,

I guess, is there some sort of broader perspective I can take outside of being like, hey, you know, this is definitely not an orthodoxy, because I mean, obviously he knows that.

Yeah, he obviously does know it, and until that is some concern to him, you know, as long as he's satisfied with what he's growing up with, and things like that, you can't birth a desire in someone's heart to be able to know these issues.

I mean, you can obviously raise the subject of 1 John 2, and, you know, sort of put the bug in his ear that, you know, what if this is wrong?

And, you know, what if the Son has eternally existed as a divine person, and so on and so forth.

But as long as someone remains happy with a religious tradition they've grown up with, those are some of the hardest people to make unhappy with it.

And sometimes it just takes a real, you know, work of God in their life as far as some type of tragedy or something like that, that causes them to see that what they have isn't enough.

So, but no, you know, if it goes in one ear, out the other, then, you know, you remain ready if the opportunity comes, but there's no special magic bullet to somehow get the

Holy Spirit to do something the Holy Spirit's not doing. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And the weirdest thing about this is he's super, like,

Reformed in every way, but obviously the Trinity, like, he loves listening to R .T.

Sproul and John Ferguson and stuff like that. It is very weird, I don't understand it. That is very weird, yeah. And so, like,

I feel like there should be some way to connect, like, their, like, where they are.

Yeah, I mean, if you like Sproul, you know, Sproul would have just looked him in the eye and said, son, you're a heretic!

And, you know, when I think of almost anything R .C. wrote, it was really entrenched in a

Trinitarian theology, so that doesn't make any sense at all. I mean, if he really likes a book like The Holiness of God or something like that, you know,

Sproul would say, well, who was being seen by Isaiah in Isaiah 6?

Well, it's the one who is revealed as a son, and, you know, there's a real inconsistency there.

So, but hey, if he's listening to good stuff, maybe that'll open up the door for him to realize that, wow,

I don't get any of this stuff in the Oneness Church, because you're not. You're not going to get that kind of deep theology, so.

That's what I've been hoping, and he hasn't been struggling recently in his church. I know he's not been feeling, like, super fed there, obviously.

Well, yeah. Yeah, so I'd say there's some hope there. Yeah, and just real quick,

I guess one thing he said to me that I've had a hard time kind of addressing is he maintains that God doesn't progressively reveal

His character. He progressively reveals His plan for salvation, but he says He wouldn't progressively reveal who

He is, and throughout history, like, he says, like, God wouldn't just all of a sudden, you know, just be like, oh, look,

I'm completely different than I was before. But he's, yeah, that's a misunderstanding of what progressive revelation is.

It's not, I'm completely different than I was before. I am the same that I've always been, and here is a greater revelation of what that is.

But I mean, when you look at the prophetic elements of the Old Testament in regards to Emmanuel, who

He's going to be, that's not an appropriate way of looking at, you know, it's not that God changed.

It's that the Incarnation is indeed a tremendous thing in and of itself, but you have to allow

God to determine how He's going to fulfill things. You can't just say, well, whatever it was in the Old Testament, that's all it can be.

The shadow, the fulfillment cannot be greater than the shadow. That's really what basically is being said there.

So we're running out of time, so I appreciate the call. All right, thank you. Thanks, Graham. All right, bye -bye.

All right, we got two more calls to get to. First, we talk to Michael. Hi, Michael. Hi, Dr.

White. How you doing? Doing good. Great, thanks for taking my call. My question is really quick, and I apologize.

I told Rich it was Isaiah 4310. It's actually 4311. Reading my different translations,

I was hoping you could shed some light, maybe if the Greek explains it better, but it almost seems as if there's an argument with, yes,

I, even I, or henceforth, even I am the Lord. Especially reading that in light where Jesus quotes it in John 13, it almost seems like there's an argument there saying, yes,

I, even I, am Yahweh. Well, what

Jesus quotes is the first part in John 13, 19, is the portion from the middle of 4310, so I'm not sure what you're referring to.

When he says, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am He, he uses note and pastuseta, or maybe suneta,

I'd have to look at I'm looking at the Greek Septuagint right now. But when he speaks to the disciples, he said,

I'm telling this beforehand, so when it takes place, you may know and understand and believe that I am He. That comes from Isaiah 4310, so I'm not sure what you're referring to in 4311.

And do you feel like he's drawing attention to that and it stops there, or starting with 4311?

I noticed, I think it's the New American Standard, and the NIV says, yes,

I, even I, am the Lord. I guess I could be just reading into it, but it even sounds like there's another argument there, saying, even

I am Yahweh. Well, the reason 4311 would say that is because you have

Anokhi repeated twice, so Anokhi, Anokhi, Yahweh. And that's just a standard

Hebraism to emphasize when you say, when you use repetition like that in the same way, parallelism, it's an emphasis issue.

So, I, even I, am Yahweh over against anyone else. So, it's a strengthening thing, and they're basically trying to bring that across by saying,

I, even I, am the Lord in the English translation. But that doesn't change, and in fact, in the

Greek Septuagint, it's just ego hatheos, I am God, and there is no other

Savior beside me, so the connection, the reason that Jesus quotes what

He does in John 13, 19, is it's parallel in the prophetic context.

There is a prophecy of future events that Yahweh is in control of, and that's in Isaiah 4310, and Jesus is prophesying about His betrayal in John 13, 19, and He draws from the same language of Isaiah 4310 in so doing.

So, that's where the connection is. Okay, I appreciate that.

I even noticed it in Deuteronomy. I'm sorry, I'm driving right now, so I don't know the exact text.

When Yahweh is saying, no one can snatch Him out of my hand, He even says there, yes,

I, even I, am He. So, it just seems like it kind of runs through. Well, yeah,

I mean, it is common when Yahweh is emphasizing

His uniqueness as God to utilize those, that form of Hebrew repetition to emphasize, it's a mechanism of emphasis, but I don't see how you connect it to John 13, 19, though.

Okay? Got it. Okay, thank you, sir. Thanks, Michael. Okay, take care. Bye. All right, one last call for the program today.

Let's talk with Jibreel in Florida. Hello? Hello. How are you?

Doing good. Okay, so I was preparing for a Bible study, for conducting a

Bible study on Sunday, and I was going to go have a topic on election, specifically in John chapter 6, and I wanted to go to John chapter 10, and shortly go to this verse in John 10, 29, and I've listened to your material on sermon audio, and I noticed that there is a variant.

The main text in the NASB reads, "...my Father who has given them to me is greater than all..."

and a footnote notes that one of the early manuscripts reads, "...what my Father has given me is greater than all."

What I want to know is if it can still refer to that group of people whom the

Father gives to the either variant you have.

Well, yeah, the variants...

I don't know if... If I put this over here, would...

Is it something that... You've got that?

Let me move the thing over here so that it's in... Basically, what you want is this section right here.

Not that he can see this, but he can look at it later on, is this section right here, if we could put that on the screen.

So basically what you have is the vast majority of texts simply have "...my

Father who has given them to me is greater than all..." and then you have an early papyri manuscript,

P66, that...

and I'm not sure why... Okay, it's because they have Family 13. Basically, all you have here are

P66 and Family 13. Okay, we just put it up on the screen so you can go back and look at this.

You'll notice that there is a number...

There's actually a number of variants. The NASB footnote is just cluing you in that there is...

Well, let's see here. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.

There are 11. I can count what you could argue to be 11 distinct possibilities for that one particular line from who has given...

What has been given to me is greater than all. The one who gave them to me is greater than all.

There's a bunch of different ways and it's all just a small number of words and just how you render it.

So it's one of the more complex variants that I've ever seen, to be honest with you.

And so I would imagine that, not having worked through the whole thing, the reason that they go with the simplest text, which

I just outlined down here at the bottom, which is the original hand of Vaticanus.

It's found in most Latin texts and the Boheric texts. The reason they go with that is it seems, just looking at it very quickly here, that the other variants that are present here seem to draw on each other and build on each other.

And so what you do in that situation is you basically go for the what is most likely the simplest reading, when the rest of them seem to be expansions upon that.

So that seems to me to be the reason that they did that.

It is interesting that most of this is word order stuff.

So when I say there's all these different variants, that doesn't mean there's all sorts of different words. It's just the order in which they're placed leads to slightly different translations.

So it's really a difference between the Father's given to me is greater than all versus what has been given to me by the

Father is greater than all. Now that is two different meanings, but that's pretty much the range of the variants.

And I would assume that part of the confusion came up with the scribes when someone transposed some of the endings of these words, and you end up, what's been given to me is greater than all, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

It'd be difficult to interpret. So yeah, that's a messy one.

No two ways about it. When you take a look at the textual data that we just now took down from the screen, you'll see that's a messy one.

It would probably be easier, actually. Let me see if I can do this real quick.

John, just so you can, because I'm not sure if you're watching live or anything like that, but you can always, when you grab the screen, you can sort of look at it.

What I'm doing here is I'm putting up what's called a textual interlinear.

And yeah, you can sort of see up here the various options between the different manuscripts and the differences between them.

Metzger's commentary on this, by the way, which just popped up, I'll go ahead and read it for you. In sorting out this nest of variant readings that present all possible combinations of the masculine or neuter relative pronoun and the masculine or neuter comparative adjective, only those readings need be seriously considered, which involve the sequence, my father, for the sequence, my father whom, if original, would almost certainly not have been altered.

The reading of a certain number of manuscripts is impossible Greek and cannot be construed. This leaves the reading of B, which is supported by the old

Latin, Vulgate, Boheric, Gothic, Ambrose, and Augustine. The difference of sequence of Meid's own pontoon and the versions may be accounted for as translational variation.

It thus appears that the reading, my father who is given to me is greater than all, because the unexpected sequence of neuter relative pronouns after ha pateramu, my father, best explains the origin of the other readings.

So I didn't have that up on the other screen, but the conclusion was exactly what

I said, that that is the reading that seems to best explain the origin of the other readings.

That's what Metzger says. And I don't know. I think it's sort of funny. My doctoral advisor did his

PhD under Metzger and we came to the same conclusion without having it on the screen. So there you go. It's just sort of when you look at it, that's just sort of glancing at it.

What I like about what I have up on the screen is the Accordance program.

You can put all these different readings side by side and you can see where they vary. It's a lot easier.

I think most people who looked at what I put on the screen initially and then see the interlinear, it makes a lot more sense in the interlinear than it did in the other part, even though that's not normally what scholars of the subject are looking at.

It does sort of simplify it some. So hopefully that'll be, you ran into a, as he called it, a nest of variants there.

And it's not an easy one. So it's not really possible to give you an easy, simplistic answer.

But hopefully there's enough data there to give you something to go on. Well, I'll look through it and I think it'll be very helpful to me.

So thank you very much. Okay, thanks a lot. All right, have a good day. Bye. All right. Well, there were a few.

Again, I don't want this to sound self -serving, but we've got quite an interesting audience.

And I don't mean that sarcastically. I mean, you come up with some really interesting questions and there aren't too many people that would feel comfortable even answering that last question on the air simply because you don't want to completely lose your audience.

And I realize there are some people just aren't interested in that or that's too complex. But a lot of you guys really do have that interest.

And I was just reminded while doing that Bart Ehrman's behavior toward our audience in 2009 after I gave my presentations.

Like, that's a very intelligent presentation, James. I doubt anyone could understand what you said. And he wasn't saying that.

He understood what I said. But you all just are not smart enough. And I never want to treat folks in that way.

So anyways, so there's the program for today. Thank you for watching, Lord willing. And please remember before you start...

Wait, good. Before you start the music, please remember what we mentioned on the program last time.

We need to hear from you to put together the financial wherewithal to be able to head down to South Africa, Zambia, and also

London and hopefully Scotland going and coming to set up debates on numerous different topics that everyone always finds very useful.

But we got to get there to be able to do it. So if you can help us, the travel link is under the

Support Us donation page on our website at aomin .org. And it'd be very, very useful to have those funds to be able to put this together.