The Great Divorce, Provisionism and the God-fearers, NT Wright on Abortion

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:29

Well, greetings, welcome to the Dividing Line on the day of the great breakup, the nastiest public divorce we've seen in a while.

00:41

Oh my goodness, I asked on Twitter, are there any adults in Washington?

00:47

I really, you know, because I mean, the stuff flying back and forth here, for those of you outside the

00:55

United States, then again, you don't have to be in the United States to know what in the world's going on here.

01:04

But you know, over the past couple of days, you know, Elon Musk leaves his position at Doge and then, you know, it's sort of quiet and people are wondering what's going on.

01:18

And then he's like, you know, this big, beautiful bill adds $4 trillion to the debt.

01:26

And our interest payments on our debt right now are larger than our military budget.

01:33

A lot of people don't understand that. And if something were to happen to just shot the interest rates to the ceiling, there's no way we could pay it off.

01:42

We'd have to default. And if we default, China defaults, Russia defaults, the entire, it's dominoes, the entire economic system around the world collapses in a big cloud of dust and people die.

01:57

People starve, people in the margins, you know, people living in the

02:04

United States would probably, you know, survive it. But there are a lot of third world countries that are completely dependent upon economic trading with the

02:13

United States. And if that all comes apart, and of course, there's a lot of people who want just that.

02:19

I mean, you're whacked out, WEF globalist nut balls want 500 people, 500 million people living on the entire planet.

02:31

And so they're all excited about the coming demographic collapse and economic collapse is something, you know, they've got their stores already, you know, they've got their bunkers ready to go.

02:44

And so they think it's cool. But anyway, yeah, it's getting stinky.

02:51

You know, when Trump's saying, well, we just ought to cancel all the stuff we're doing with Elon Musk. It's like, how stupid is that?

03:00

Who else are you going to do it with? Remember when, remember when the United States stranded astronauts up in space forever?

03:11

And who went up and got them? We don't, we don't really have a first world space program anymore.

03:20

Sorry. We farmed that out, everybody else, just like we farmed out manufacturing and everything else to everybody else.

03:27

Um, so, and then Musk comes back with, well, okay, how about this?

03:36

Trump's in the Epstein files, mark, he said, mark, mark this tweet. Um, you'll, you'll see.

03:43

And it's like, yeah, oh, um, you know, a lot of people are sitting around going, didn't we hear a lot of promises about releasing all the

03:55

Epstein files and, you know, all this stuff, uh, for a long, long time and nothing's happened.

04:02

And uh, you know, some of these, you know, the guys at the FBI, um, the guy who always looks like he's going, um, and then

04:13

Bungino or yeah, you know, they were just all the time talking about how there needs to be transparency and all this stuff.

04:24

How long have they been in office and what have we learned? Nothing. Um, so it's pretty obvious that there are, are lots of people on both sides of the, is there, is there an aisle?

04:37

I mean, okay, there is an aisle. I've been in the Senate chambers and the house chambers many, many, many moons ago.

04:45

Um, and yeah, there are aisles, um, and that's what it's talking about.

04:51

But is there really, are there really any aisles? It seems to me you can take the most idealistic based, um, person and elect them to Congress and somehow in two weeks they are conformed to the image, shall we say, of the corrupt politician.

05:14

You know, um, they get there having been, having been making, uh, $50 ,000 a year.

05:23

And now they realize, uh, they, they do this right and their retirement is, is, is all paid for and it's not going to be a, a bad retirement at all.

05:37

Um, and, uh, so is, is there anybody, I mean, I can think of one of two, you know, mavericks, uh, that, that try to go,

05:46

Hey, we, we can't sustain this kind of spending and stuff like that. But in general, you know, it just seems to me that the

05:56

Democrats are united in their desire to destroy the constitution, United States and the nation as a whole.

06:02

And the Republicans are cowards. Uh, they say one thing, but they don't do, um, they get there and they sort of look at you like,

06:11

Oh, you don't know what I know now. And no, we can't do that. I know I got elected on the promise to do that, but no, we can't do that.

06:17

Uh, and you don't know why, but we can't tell you why. And you'll never know why. Or if you do know,

06:22

I will kill you. Um, yeah, it's, it's, there's this judgment everywhere. And uh, as I said on Twitter today,

06:29

I said, look, there's lots of stuff that Trump Trump's doing that I don't like. Um, once the other side takes over and they will, um, they'll use the exact same stuff and they'll come after all of us.

06:43

Uh, censorship. Um, yeah, uh, it's, it's not good.

06:50

And, but then I said, however, we didn't have much of a choice because the other choice was an airheaded mannequin who would just be another

07:02

Joe Biden, which as we now know, and as some of us knew the whole time, and as some of us said in 2019 was a senile sock puppet and look, even the left had missed that now it was a senile sock puppet.

07:19

So who was running him? So what was the choice? There really wasn't one. Oh, third party.

07:25

Yeah, right. I know. Yeah. Uh, maybe I'll, after all this comes tumbling down, but, um,

07:31

I don't even want to think about what that's going to look like if it does and when it does and how fast it'll happen.

07:37

I don't know, but, um, yeah, the honeymoon is definitely over.

07:43

Kevin Sorbo just asked on Twitter. So will the Dems go back to buying Teslas now?

07:49

And of course, Babylon B has a, uh, has an article with, uh, uh,

07:55

Donald Trump throwing Molotov cocktails at a Tesla dealership. Um, maybe, maybe, uh, maybe

08:05

Donald should drive his shiny red Tesla that Elon gave him onto the front lawn of the white house and burn it.

08:12

Um, I mean, Hey, that, that's the kind of thing that that's the level of really weirdness that, that we're experiencing right now, you know?

08:24

Um, so, ah, I don't know.

08:31

I, I, I don't know. I'm not going to pretend to have all the answers.

08:36

I mean, I can give you grand theological realities. Um, you know, if, if there was still a serious commitment to the future judgment, um,

08:53

I don't think a lot of these guys could get away with what they get away with. They wouldn't be doing the things they're doing, but there isn't a such commitment a longer.

09:03

So, um, yeah, uh, this isn't entertainment.

09:09

It's, uh, it's serious. Um, you know, I don't think

09:15

Elon Musk would say that Trump is implicated in the

09:21

Epstein files if he wasn't, that'd be stupid. And you can say a lot of things about Elon Musk.

09:27

He's not stupid. My problem is Elon Musk is his worldview and what's driving the

09:34

Neuralink stuff and transhumanism and, Hey, I grew up with Mike Mars, anybody, no one remembers

09:42

Mike Mars, only all the old guys in the, in the studio, um, all the old guys in the audience are going,

09:53

I remember Mike Mars. That was great. That was, you know, space and space exploration and the

10:00

Apollo missions and all that fun stuff. I grew up with all that. So, Hey, if someone's talking about sending men to the men, to Mars, and it seemed to me the first thing to send to Mars would be some of them there.

10:14

Um, well they call them, which what's the name of the robot there? I was telling Kelly, I was saying, you know, okay, so Tesla's making this, uh, this robot.

10:26

Uh, and I forget the name of it. And I'm like, did they just like purposefully make it look almost identical to the robots in the movie?

10:37

I robot, I mean, did you watch the movie?

10:42

It didn't turn out real good. You know? I mean, um, it's just like, they, they look almost identical to what was in the film where they then tried to take over, but, uh, you know, it, it, it would now be possible seriously to send a spacecraft.

11:08

We know we can land on Mars where, you know, we can land on Mars safely. Um, uh, what

11:16

Lee did it, uh, if you haven't seen the Martian, you don't get that one, but anyway, uh, and they don't have to breathe.

11:24

So, so, Hey, send, send them up there and have them, you know, build us a little station and then you can send the humans up and, and the place is already built and they can live there and then try to come back or whatever it is.

11:41

I don't know exactly how all that works, but, uh, yeah, so, so I don't think he's going to risk all that by saying something that would just be completely disprovable once the documents were released, which

12:01

I don't think they ever will be. I don't think they ever will be. Um, so who knows?

12:07

Who knows? Hey, I'm just sitting here with all the rest of you watching this. Um, Chris Hanholtz, um, who, uh, got, got in trouble yesterday, um, by responding to something that I said, um, oh yeah, believe it or not, um, he, he, he just, he just made a, made a comment and somebody who will remain nameless cause

12:36

I don't want to help his clicks. Uh, made it, took a shot at him, but, um,

12:43

I appreciate that Chris is defending me right now because some really mean lady on Twitter who

12:50

I thought was my friend, but actually she's obviously a mean lady, uh, was making comments about my fashion choices.

12:59

And um, so Chris has just said, uh, uh, that he thinks my fashion sense is perfectly fine.

13:06

Love the world war two aircraft shirt. And you know, Chris is geeky enough that he recognizes that.

13:13

I wonder how many people really do even recognize it. You know, I've had a couple of comments.

13:20

Yeah. I'd, I'd like to, the, the one that I'm really disappointed, I mentioned it before that there's no Corsair on the front.

13:27

Uh, that was, that was such a tremendous aircraft. Uh, but someone actually zoomed in on it once and pointed out that there's a

13:35

Nazi symbol on your shirt. Well, there were Nazi airplanes in the air and they weren't necessarily

13:43

Nazi, uh, either. Um, I've, I've talked to, I've mentioned this in the past, but there were people that fought for Germany that were not

13:52

Nazis and in fact opposed Nazi ideology and that were well worth and earned the respect of their opponents.

14:03

And the main one that comes to my mind is field marshal Rommel, Erwin Rommel, um,

14:12

George S Patton jr thought he was the most brilliant military mind, uh, that he ever faced.

14:19

And um, if the Germans had listened to Rommel, they would have repulsed the

14:27

Normandy invasion, the anniversary of which is tomorrow because he knew where they were coming.

14:34

But the generals and Hitler, uh, in Berlin rejected his analysis and didn't give him what he needed to defend

14:48

Normandy. And um, so there you go.

14:53

Um, in fact, if they had supported Rommel in North Africa with more fuel, the entire war could have been completely different.

15:02

They, everything might've turned out differently. Um, the German generals were frequently overridden by Hitler to their detriment.

15:12

We it from a, from a non God is in control perspective, uh,

15:19

Germany could have won that war a number of different ways and, and almost did and almost did.

15:25

They had much better equipment, much better design. Um, they really did.

15:31

But Hitler was nuts and, uh, thought himself a military genius and he wasn't

15:38

Rommel was and his opponents in North Africa, they all said the same thing.

15:44

Not only was a military genius, um, but he also made sure that prisoners were as far as he could, um, treated, uh, with respect and, uh, you know, they were all sort of out there in the desert facing the same trials and tribulations.

16:01

So it sort of created an interesting dynamic between the, uh, the Brits and the

16:07

Germans and then the Americans, we showed up, um, it was, uh, fascinating.

16:12

There's a lot, there's lots of good books, lots of them that I haven't read on that time to read, but lots of good stuff there that if you're interested in looking at, but, uh, you know, they had the first functional jet fighter aircraft, uh, was it the measurement was it two 62.

16:28

Is that what it was? And um, so, you know, but if, but we were just bombing them day and night, literally the

16:38

Brits at night and weeding the day. And so they, they never got enough of them up in the air to do a whole lot of make a whole lot of difference.

16:46

Um, but, uh, you know, they had the first ballistic missile and there was, you know,

16:53

Germans are amazing people as far as their ability to design and, uh, and things like that.

17:01

And I've mentioned before, it was sad when I visited Germany, Germans don't know anything about that because they don't talk about world war two and public education in Germany.

17:12

And so when I started telling them, but you've never seen a tiger tank. Uh, I mean, they were so far ahead of anything we had.

17:23

Um, that's funny. If you've seen the movie fury, the, um, the tank battle, the main primary tank battle between one tiger and three or three functional, um,

17:40

Sherman's really unbelievably well done. And um, that was the way it was anyways, how did it get under that?

17:50

Oh, it's all Chris Honholz's fault. Um, but yeah, I'd like to, I'd like to get a couple others.

17:55

I was looking at one fact. I may have even ordered one. And I think about it, a lot of these shirts on Facebook and they arrive next year, like you open this package and you go, oh,

18:08

I, I can't believe I'd forgotten I'd even ordered this thing. You know, it was, it, it, it came from, you know,

18:15

North China, you know, by donkey. And uh, but I, I think,

18:21

I thought I did order one, uh, I'll have to check on that. I think I did order one.

18:26

It had the, uh, Corsair it's, it's one of the most, um, best looking aircraft ever.

18:32

Anyways. Sorry. I, you know, I, yep. I know. Uh, Hey, it's for me, it's a lot less depressing than talking about, you know, the fact that doge identifies all this astonishing waste and the, and the

18:51

Congress doesn't have the backbone to do anything about it.

18:58

It's I don't know that the corruption seems so deep that the only thing that I could possibly see fixing it is from a human perspective, utter collapse and you start over again, um, war or what

19:16

I would love to see. And that would be a massive move as a spirit of God. But that normally comes after great acts of judgment and, um, in the face of impending doom, how many, what, what caused

19:30

Israel to repent over and over and over again, being taken over by their enemies, um, having their sons carted off their daughters, carted off to another land.

19:40

That'll bring about repentance, you know? Um, and, and it did. So, so there you go.

19:46

Um, so yeah, it's an amazing thing to be watching all this, but, uh,

19:52

I don't think it's a good thing. I don't think it's a good thing at all though. And for some reason,

19:58

Tesla stock is crashing as a result. Um, and I'm like, yeah, but doesn't this mean that they're not going to be being keyed and burned now?

20:10

And the answer is probably no, they'll keep doing that even though Musk is firing missiles literally, um, at, at Trump and back and forth and, uh, all the rest of that stuff.

20:25

Um, Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,

20:32

National geographic, the earth's axis is shifting and our water consumption is to blame.

20:47

Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. This seriously, this is what happens when you apply a secular mindset to scientific inquiry.

21:01

Um, what you get is absolute absurdity. But there you go.

21:09

So did you see the poll I put on Twitter? Um, I, I don't,

21:14

I honestly don't recall ever having done a poll before I've seen them, but I, I don't remember ever having done a poll before.

21:23

So just, I don't know what I was just sitting there thinking, Oh, you know, um, I think

21:29

I had just been seeing some responses to some of the comments

21:34

I've made where again, being perfectly consistent,

21:41

I, everything that I've taught on this program about church history for decades has been perfectly consistent on this subject.

21:54

And I think it came out because there have been, we've gone back and forth a couple of times, um, various online debate for format people, um, who would very much like to have me debating someone on their thing, because that gives them exposure, um, have tried to arrange a debate with Stephen Wolfe.

22:24

And I'm always like, about what would you, would you debate about what? I'm always like,

22:31

I, if it was, if it was something that would be worthwhile, I'd really rather do it in person.

22:38

Um, it's not that online debates aren't totally, it's not that they're utterly worthless.

22:45

I think the Mahler debate was useful. Um, but that was primarily due to its context, but yeah, you know, if, if it worked out to where it had to be done digitally,

22:59

I think that's a strike against it, but that doesn't mean that it's not the only way to have it actually happen.

23:07

I think there's something about the personal interaction, about being there, having to look somebody in the eye that's, um, changes the dynamic in a positive way normally for a debate, but the issue has always been topic, topic, topic, topic, topic.

23:23

So, you know, he always comes up with these bland, um, topics. Um, I think the first one that he suggested to somebody was, uh, some long lines of would a majority regenerate populace be enough to build a government or something along those lines.

23:43

It was some demonstration that again, he does not understand our concern.

23:52

Um, and where I'm coming from, this is his criticism of what he calls revivalism.

23:58

The idea that, uh, to truly have a Christian nation requires the work of the spirit of God to make

24:08

Christians real ones. Um, not, not the nominal, I'm still a pagan, but I've just renamed all my idols to saints type nominalism.

24:21

Um, that kind of thing, but actual real Christians that you have to fulfill scripture.

24:29

You have to fulfill Isaiah's prophecy about the coastlands seeking after the Torah of God and the fulfill the promise of the father speaking to the son, ask and I'll give you the nations as your inheritance.

24:45

And you know, the last enemy to put under Christ's feet death, but all the other, other enemies have to be subjugated first and he must reign until that happens.

24:55

All that kind of stuff. This, he identifies as revivalism because he's a sacralist and because he believes that you can have

25:01

Christian princes. And so we can go back to the medieval situation. We go back to the reformation and I've said over and over again, the reformers were sacralist.

25:12

They, they imbibed that, um, from their, uh, predecessors.

25:21

And this is really weird. I don't see your truck.

25:37

Well, I understand that when I pulled it, I noticed, but I, but from, from, from what you've got here,

25:43

I can't see it. So I can't keep an eye on it. So, and, but, and you can see that that'd be, it'd be really, really nice to be able to see these cameras on my phone, but, um, that doesn't work for me, um, because no one loves me.

25:59

So anyway, just, just want you to know, uh, that I cannot see your truck. I can see my truck, uh, but I cannot see your truck.

26:07

So, so there you go. Um, what were we talking about? Oh yeah. Uh, so, and then

26:15

I think the most recent one that he suggested was the state, uh, can or should enforce the first table, which in other words, the first table of the law, that is the first three commandments specifically, um, in regards to true worship.

26:38

So the state should suppress heresy, false religions, um, things like that.

26:46

And my response was, well, that boils down to an

26:52

Amill versus Postmill argument. Well, why? Because the post -millennialist would say, yes, after the work of the spirit in drawing the nations to Christ, that then that's exactly what they will do.

27:05

But that's after we're not there. We're not even close to there right now. So that just becomes an

27:11

Amill versus Postmill argument. And it doesn't actually get to the reality of the, of the topic.

27:19

Um, so what I had suggested was sacralism. What was the specific,

27:25

I need to give the exact thing here. Uh, did he, did he, did he, who did

27:32

I, here we go. All right.

27:38

Uh, sacralism has damaged the witness of the church and the gospel. Now, I don't know how anybody could actually debate that because it's so obvious that it's true.

27:51

Um, I could just spend all my time giving example after example, after example of the state inserting itself into the church and into theology in contradictory ways.

28:12

Um, we wouldn't even have to necessarily deal with Nicaea though. We, we could, because I mean, it's, it's the exact, it's the greatest example because Constantine weighed in on two different sides, you know, so he's here at first.

28:27

And then 15 years later, he's over here and now everything changes. And what, you know, ask

28:36

Athanasius, what it's like to get kicked out of your church five times. He, why was he kicked out of his church five times?

28:42

Because of sacralism, it was a sacral action because of the, the, and it's certainly

28:49

Nicaea wasn't anywhere near what it would eventually be. I mean, eventually in the medieval period, the, the church could turn people over to the state for punishment of theological issues, but the state didn't have any choice because if the, if the magistrate refused to punish, then they could be considered a heretic as well.

29:14

Or even at the higher levels where you've got the, you know, the times where the

29:21

Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor or various kings of powerful kingdoms are fighting with one another.

29:29

And the Pope would use the interdict where he would tell all the clergy in a nation that they could no longer perform sacraments.

29:40

So, you know, your baby's born and isn't looking good. And so you want to get them baptized and get last rites, but all

29:48

I can't because your king is in rebellion against the Pope.

29:54

Well, that brings some pretty serious pressure, really does. Uh, but then again, there are times when those emperors then invaded

30:01

Rome and took the Pope captive until he changed his mind. And so this fighting back and forth with the church involved in stuff that she is not qualified to be involved with and the state involved with stuff that the state is not qualified to be involved with.

30:19

And we got nothing in scripture about how this is supposed to, what are the qualifications?

30:26

You know, we've got qualifications for elders or qualifications for deacons. We got no qualifications for any of this stuff, how it's supposed to be done.

30:35

What's the standards? And you go, well, isn't that a true way down in the future?

30:41

Yeah. But from my perspective, look, from my perspective, there will not be arguments about this stuff.

30:48

There won't be stupid memes and a non armies that, um, that, uh, rush to vote in a poll to make sure that, uh, what was it?

31:03

54 % of all the people who voted think that it was good that you took a

31:09

Russian, uh, Russian, a German peasant, in essence, a German farmer, um, and who read the new

31:19

Testament. Thanks to Martin Luther having translated it at the

31:24

Wartburg castle as Junker Jorg, hiding from the state. And he reads the new

31:30

Testament and comes to the conclusion that a lot of the rest of us have come to as well, that baptism is for believers in Jesus Christ.

31:40

And so he refuses to have his children baptized when they're born. So he's arrested and he's, um, put in prison.

31:50

So he starts preaching out the window of his prison and converting people. And so they take him up to the

31:58

Wartburg castle and they drop him in a 40 foot deep hole with no windows or doors for seven years until he dies.

32:07

And the Anon army thought it was really funny to get everybody to go online and vote for the execution of Fritz Erba.

32:17

But that was, that was cool. And not a one of these children, uh, could make a meaningful biblical argument, um, that would actually go, well, here's where the

32:31

Bible says that it was appropriate to separate Fritz Erba from his family and to imprison him in a hole, 40 foot deep hole with no windows and, uh, no doors.

32:47

There's this thing up the top, um, until he died over the issue of baptism and who is to receive baptism.

32:58

Uh, and that's perfectly fine. And, and so the vast majority of the people who voted for that had never heard of Fritz Erba before.

33:07

They, they've, they've read nothing about the Reformation. And so their opinion is utterly and completely worthless, has no value whatsoever.

33:17

What we should be concerned about is about the maybe 10 % that actually do know the context and know the background and they still go, yep, that's what should have happened.

33:29

That's what needs to happen. That's what needs to be happening today. Now, Cory Mahler, of course, responded to some

33:35

Baptist who said something about paedo -baptism saying these people need to be given their third baptism. And again, most people don't know what the third baptism is, but third baptism was the mechanism whereby you, uh, executed

33:49

Baptists, um, back in the early period of the

33:55

Reformation. Uh, so they, they had gotten, they had been baptized as an infant and then they are re -baptized, anabaptist, baptized again upon profession of faith.

34:06

Uh, and so the third baptism would be where you take them and you tie them up and you drown them as the means of execution.

34:15

Normally you didn't do it, just plunk and leave them down there 20 minutes and pull them up. Uh, they had more fun than that.

34:21

Uh, they would drop them down and pull them up and let them spit and sputter and gasp and everything else.

34:27

And then just do it until they became so exhausted that they drowned and died. Um, it was, it was great.

34:33

And so I even posted a picture that I myself had taken on the bridge in Zurich, uh, where that kind of execution took place.

34:44

And immediately people go, oh, those anabaptists, they were, and they start talking about Munster and all the rest of this stuff.

34:49

I even had one guy go, hey, have you ever heard about what happened in Munster? And stuff like that.

34:54

And I was like, yeah, yeah. I teach church history and yeah, it's an amazing story. And yeah, actually

35:00

I went on my daughter's, um, uh, webcast theologians and did a two part series about the bloody streets of Munster, uh, just to let everybody know what actually happened back then.

35:11

But, um, so they're, they're going after all that stuff. But the fact of the matter is there were, Fritz Erba was not a militant, uh,

35:20

Fritz Erba was not trying to, uh, uh, overthrow governments. He just wanted to live his life in peace and follow his faith.

35:29

And the government, uh, decided that they knew what that faith should be and, uh, therefore executed him for disagreeing with the governmentally approved perspective.

35:41

And if there's anybody listening to me that thinks that it'd be a good idea, uh, for us to have government approved

35:51

Christianity, then I just don't think you know anything about history at all. And, you know, it's really easy.

36:00

We can sit here and go, well, you know, the Chinese have talked about, you know, you have, you have the approved Chinese church, and then you have the underground

36:08

Chinese church. And if you want a church that can actually proclaim the whole counsel of God, you're, you're not going to get that from almost any, um, from, from almost any government that exists today.

36:29

And, you know, what, what if, what if, uh, Trump were to go that direction and, um, turn to his

36:39

White House office of faith to determine the standards of the enforcement of this sacral state?

36:48

You want Paula White running stuff? Um, you want

36:53

Bible translations that need to be approved by the government? Because that, that's why, why do you think, why did

37:01

Erasmus have to dedicate the first edition of his Novum Instrumentum in 1516 to Pope Leo X?

37:11

Why? Because back in those days, if you're going to publish anything that had to do with religion, in essence, it had to go through all these, all this bureaucratic red tape.

37:25

And he wanted to beat Cardinal Jimenez and the Completentian Polyglot to the market. And so he skipped the tape and just dedicated it to the

37:38

Pope, hoping that would keep him from being tied to a stake and turned into a firecracker.

37:44

And it did. But that's what you've got. You wouldn't have, you wouldn't have the free access to Christian literature and Bible translations and things like that.

37:54

You've got to control that stuff. That's what sacralism is. And it was bad enough back then.

37:59

Can you imagine how bad it would be now with digital control?

38:09

I have a large Kindle library and I know they could do this right now. They can go in and they can edit those books that I have sitting on my computer.

38:18

It's a part of what you agreed to, what I agreed to, to have the convenience of having that tiny little device, which truly is convenient, but there's a price that comes with it.

38:32

And so do you want your theology books to be edited by government censors? Do you want the government to be determining

38:41

Bible translations that you have access to? I mean, we live in a digital age now.

38:47

It was one thing. And what was one of the main things that cracked the foundation of sacralism?

38:53

The same thing that helped the Reformation to take place, the printing press. We're way beyond the printing press now.

39:03

So anyway, so this is the topic. My, you know, I'm like, how about we debate that? He won't, he won't do it.

39:10

So it's like, well, what are we going to debate? And I also said, I'd be happy to debate whether presuppositionalism is the necessary necessary application of biblical and Reformed epistemology, especially

39:30

Calvin's epistemology and worldview in our modern day, because Calvin wasn't dealing with the secular world we're dealing with.

39:38

Now that's where we are. And so we have to make application. And I believe that presuppositionalism is the way to do that.

39:50

No interest in that either. That's not his field. And I've also mentioned Jeff Durbin, be happy to debate

39:57

John Theonomy. That'll never happen. He's not going to do that. So all he's ever suggested are these sort of vague stuff about political theories.

40:06

And that's what, that's, that's his thing. He's not a theologian. He's not an exegete. He's not, you know, that's not, that's not his stuff.

40:13

So that's, that's where all that stuff is, is coming from.

40:18

And there you go. All right. I just looked at the clock and went, okay.

40:26

I did want to look at this. And again, it's just that this stuff illustrates, we're shifting gears here.

40:40

We're not talking about Elon Musk or governmental stuff or secularism or anything else at this particular point in time.

40:51

Layton Flowers posted a tweet today, this morning, in fact.

41:00

It says, the forgotten people of the New Testament, many modern Bible students seem to forget about a very significant category of individuals who existed when

41:08

Jesus came to accomplish his mission on earth. God -fearing believers who generally trusted in Yahweh, but who had not yet heard the specific news about Jesus and his mission.

41:16

Simeon, Cornelius, and Lydia are examples. These people of both the

41:22

Jews and Gentiles would have belonged to God, been set apart, appointed by God to believe the gospel, favored by God, etc.

41:30

Many mistakenly read passages with this category of people in mind and interpret it as if it supports unconditional election and irresistible grace.

41:37

And the fact is the condition of faith was already met. And the irresistible means of their coming to Christ is merely the

41:45

Father drawing believers in him to also believe his Son because they are one.

41:51

Again, this is not something new. This came out in the debate last year.

41:58

This is the provisionist idea that the reason the

42:05

Father can give a people to the Son is that those people have already given themselves to the Father. And so now he's talking about the

42:14

God -fearers. And again, if you went to seminary

42:22

Bible college and had a good seminary Bible college education, this has already been a topic that you have heard lectures on and there are articles about it and probably entire books, though I'm not exactly sure.

42:40

And, wow, I hope that doesn't mean that somebody was in a car accident. But it looks like someone was in a car accident.

42:52

Well, we'll find out more about that. Anyways, and so you know about the

43:00

God -fearers and there's a lot of discussion as to the spiritual relationship between God -fearers and relationship, subject of regeneration, things like that, in the articles and books that have been published.

43:19

So it's not anything new. But I just want to, he mentioned

43:26

Simeon, Cornelius, and Lydia are examples. Simeon clearly had had a promise that he was going to see the

43:36

Lord's before he died. Cornelius is a good example of a

43:43

God -fearer. And Lydia is specifically identified as a sebumene, a worshiper of God.

44:00

And so does it not follow that what you have going on here is that these are individuals who, in and of their own free will, their autonomous will, outside of the provision of any kind of Holy Spirit -produced miraculous work.

44:28

Because that's the whole thing of provisionism. They reject the historic

44:34

Arminian perspective. I'm sorry.

44:44

Okay. Well, when someone's kneeling right next to your truck, you just sort of start wondering what's going on.

44:50

But it's homeschoolers packing up books that I assume they're probably bringing back to sell to get next year's books.

44:57

But they're awfully close to the truck there, and I think that one kid's actually up against it.

45:04

But let's just hope when they start pushing the cart that it doesn't go right down the side of the truck. Sorry.

45:11

We live in Phoenix, folks. And it's been a while, but these cameras, not these cameras, these are really, really, really fancy cameras.

45:22

We had old, old, old cameras years ago that still allowed me to see that guy trying to break into your car.

45:30

And, oh, yeah, pop the lock. And I looked up there and saw that. And I got on.

45:36

We had this loudspeaker. It sounded like a police helicopter. It really did. Step away from the car.

45:42

And this guy dives headfirst into the van that they had. And they took off with his feet hanging out the door.

45:52

That was great. So we have to keep an eye on things. It's not the best neighborhood.

45:58

And there aren't a whole lot of really good neighborhoods anymore, at least in the city.

46:04

That's just that's just how it goes. So anyway, what were you talking about here?

46:10

So she is a worshiper of God, Lydia. So upon the provisionist perspective, she does not need to be raised to spiritual life to be a worshiper of God.

46:29

She has freely chosen without any electing on God's part to believe in the one true

46:40

God. And so all she needs is further information, more data than she currently has.

46:53

And that's what the proclamation of the gospel does. And so you can't have anything that would differentiate the elect from the non -elect or those who believe from those who don't believe.

47:05

Everybody has the ability to believe. Nobody's dead in sin in the sense of not having the ability to believe.

47:15

You can evidently be dead in sin and still do spiritually good things. And so these

47:23

God -fearers, then, by their free embracing of God, the

47:30

Father, become those that are given by the Father to the

47:36

Son. Because the reason he has the authority to do that is because they've already given him that authority by believing in him.

47:46

So they are the ones that are believing in him. Now, I got the feeling that they haven't really thought through exactly how this works down the road, because a lot of times it's tied in with blinding the eyes of the

48:04

Jews so as to bring about the crucifixion. What do you do after that? What happens when that's already all taken care of?

48:14

I'm not sure. I don't know. But I would just point out to you that Acts 16, 14 says,

48:21

And a woman named Lydia in the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics, a worshiper of God, as I mentioned, was listening, and the

48:35

Lord opened her heart to hear or to pay attention to the things spoken by Paul.

48:47

Okay. So there needs to be a... I mean, there are other people there that the

48:52

Lord didn't open their heart. So something specifically happened with Lydia, and yet we're being told, but she didn't need a supernatural act of opening her heart because she already did that for God the

49:09

Father. So I think this came up once during the debate.

49:16

At least I know I thought about asking it. Maybe it never got asked. And certainly afterwards,

49:21

I did point this out. But, okay, so you can freely believe in God the

49:30

Father, but you need to be given by the Father to the

49:35

Son to believe in Jesus? Isn't it the same thing?

49:41

I mean, if you didn't need a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit, and they'll say, oh, yes, well, the

49:47

Spirit's involved in revealing the one true

49:53

God, but that's everybody. It's not that the Spirit of God actually opens the hearts of individuals, except that's what happened to Lydia.

50:05

Her heart was opened to believe the gospel. So if she was a worshiper of God, but she had to have her heart open, then how can it be that she didn't need to have her heart opened to truly worship the one true

50:26

God, but she needed to have her heart opened to pay attention to the things spoken by Paul?

50:36

How does that work? How do you, I mean, so the natural man can undo the slavery of idolatry by just simply an exercise of the will.

50:53

Jesus said, he who sins is a slave of sin, but, and the Son has to set you free, but no, in provisionism, he who sins is not the slave of sin, because he can still do spiritually good things, and you do not have to be set free by the

51:08

Son. Well, wait a minute. Did the Son set Lydia free to believe in the Father? And then once Paul shows up and proclaims the gospel, then because she's been set free by the

51:24

Son to believe in the Father, now she can believe in the Son? Is that what? I don't know.

51:33

Good question. I don't know. I had actually, oh, and that sort of ties in, honestly, well, where'd it go?

51:51

Oh, there it is. That ties in, honestly, with this one. So yeah, I mean, let me just play this real quick, respond to it, then we'll do one other thing and we'll wrap stuff up.

52:00

I'm not going to get to Calvin today. Sorry for those of you who find that significantly more encouraging, a lot of other stuff.

52:08

I'll just do audio on this. Here is another good follow that you might want to do on Twitter is

52:18

Soteriology Assistant. It's at Soteriology A1, and they do a lot of good stuff.

52:32

And he, she, I don't know, does a lot of good stuff in responding to Layton Flowers.

52:40

Uh, yeah, I don't see any names specifically mentioned.

52:45

So I'm not, I'm not trying to be disrespectful or something. This is someone who listens to Layton Flowers a lot, which that's a calling in and of itself.

52:53

But anyway, here's, here's what Layton had to say.

53:03

What? I know, I'm getting a spinning, spinning circle. I got,

53:10

I got nada, got nothing. I've noticed that many atheists side with the Calvinistic interpretation because it makes

53:17

God look so bad. And atheists are hell bent oftentimes on making God look as bad as possible.

53:23

And Calvinism does the job for them in a lot of ways, because all of the things they're saying about how God is evil and all the bad things that atheists are saying about God, Calvin has just come along and go, yeah, all that's true.

53:34

But who are you to question God? And if you were elect and chosen and regenerated, you would believe in him anyway.

53:41

And then they asked, did you hear that? Because all of the things they're saying about how God is evil and Calvin has just come along and go, yeah, all that's true.

53:50

And of course, all that's true. And the screenshot says, why would

53:56

Layton say Calvinist say that that is true? God is evil. Unless Layton is seeing through the same naturalistic lenses as the atheist, which is, that's, that's true.

54:06

But of course we, we don't say God is evil. And of course, what we say is, how can you talk about evil at all?

54:14

If you're an atheist, because you don't have a worldview that makes that meaningful. So we, we challenge on that level, obviously.

54:23

But for me, the real issue here is, Layton really is concerned about what atheists think about God.

54:34

And he must struggle with those texts. You know, God sits in the heavens and laughs at, at mankind's rebellion and things like that.

54:42

But it is a major, major, massive difference to actually be concerned about what rebels are going to think about God and therefore forming your theology and expression of it in light of their rebellious tastes.

55:03

That's, that's massively different than having an unchanging word of God that says, you know, this, this is the same attitude that's behind the people that love to, you know, they love to say that stuff that happened in the

55:25

Old Testament didn't really actually happen. God didn't command the destruction of those people. This miracle thing, because it's embarrassing to us.

55:33

So we, we don't, we don't want to believe that. And we don't want people to think that, you know, we're backwards and that kind of thing.

55:41

And to a rebellious and sinful generation, the gospel is always going to be offensive.

55:49

And when you try to take that, that offense away, you're going to end up fundamentally having to change the gospel.

55:56

And that's, that's what's going on there. Um, so, um, oh, wait, what did

56:05

I do there? Last thing here that I want to, I want to sneak in real, just real quick. Uh, N .T.

56:13

Wright. So I had a little discussion with N .T.

56:18

Wright years ago on Unbelievable, on, New Perspective on Paul.

56:26

And he has written voluminously. He is a highly respected scholar, but he's also, you know, former

56:42

Bishop of Durham, part of the Church of England. And, you know, he's, he's the one that, at least according to Sinclair Ferguson, I think it was

56:52

Sinclair Ferguson who said it, referred to inerrancy as that silly American doctrine. There was a posting of a video.

57:04

And again, any video today, especially now with the Google stuff, where you can make these videos that just, you know, you can put anybody doing anything.

57:13

Uh, you have to be careful and go, um, uh, if this is real, if this really happened.

57:22

And a lot of people said, oh yeah, here, here it's on YouTube. And here's when it was posted and stuff like that. So he and the, that other guy, um,

57:33

Nate Collins, um, did a collaborative,

57:39

I guess, across the pond song about Genesis and evolution.

57:47

Okay. And you're just like, just so bad. Uh, so, so, so bad.

57:54

So you can, you can know a whole lot about the New Testament and not necessarily have an overly consistent application.

58:03

In fact, I, I believe, I believe N .T. Wright and William Lane Craig share one thing in common.

58:11

Uh, I think they both view themselves as being so intelligent that there's no one who can challenge them or correct them.

58:21

And that's why they're willing to go off. That's why Craig is willing to go, well, yeah, I'm a Neo -Apollinarian and, uh, yeah, you know, original sin.

58:28

No, I don't, you know, and, and go off and Trinity the Kerberos dog, this just, uh, dance off into heresy, uh, because I don't really think there's anybody as sharp as I am that's going to say anything about it.

58:47

And, uh, I think Tom Wright's in the same, in the same boat, to be honest with you.

58:54

And so not only is, did this stuff on Genesis, but the big thing is, um, there's a guy named

59:00

Pope Respector, yeah, Pope Respector. And he says,

59:06

N .T. Wright is perhaps one of the greatest Protestant biblical scholars alive, a very smart man who knows the Bible and its original language and context amazingly well.

59:14

But here he is saying abortion is okay in some cases. Now we could respond to him on each one of these cases and demonstrate that he's just buying the leftist line and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

59:30

But here's what Pope Respector says. Can we all agree that the Bible alone is insufficient?

59:38

And I remember looking at that going, did you think this through?

59:45

And for Roman Catholics, the answer normally is no, they have not thought it through.

59:52

So, you know, I can send a picture of Pope Francis glad handing with Father Martin, who is an

01:00:00

LGBTQ promoter in the Roman Catholic church. And, you know, the handwritten notes of hoping that their conferences are going to go well, all this kind of stuff.

01:00:10

I can post that and they don't see that their solution to what they think is our problem here doesn't work.

01:00:25

You know, the next Pope can come along and do this and do that and change the death penalty and stuff like that.

01:00:32

So their position does not offer a response. But N .T.

01:00:39

Wright is not an example of a failure of solo scriptura. And I don't know why you'd think that it is.

01:00:46

Because, again, notice he says Protestant biblical scholars, they always want to compare Protestantism with Roman Catholicism.

01:00:54

Protestantism isn't a thing that can be compared with something else. That's a canard.

01:01:03

There is no specific thing that there is no one Protestant church.

01:01:10

And so their idea, I guess, is if solo scriptura is true, that you would never have anybody who thinks they're so smart that they would have an erroneous view on the subject of abortion.

01:01:24

There are Roman Catholics that are pro -choice and you've got the Pope. Does that disprove the papacy?

01:01:31

They don't even think about that. No, that's just a one off. Oh, it's just a one off what?

01:01:37

What's an aberration? Oh, really? Okay, so why wouldn't that be the same here?

01:01:48

I've never heard Tom Wright speak on solo scriptura, defend solo scriptura, promote solo scriptura.

01:01:59

But I certainly would have a solid ground for arguing with him on this subject from scripture, unless what the

01:02:09

Pope respecter is saying is scripture isn't clear on this. Well, but Rome is.

01:02:16

Fiducia supplicans, you sure? Well, it wasn't about that. Yeah, but the point is, next month you could have something come out that says something similar about this.

01:02:25

You have no way of responding to any of that stuff. You have an ultimate authority and whatever the ultimate authority says, you have to believe it, whether that's what was taught before or not.

01:02:35

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. They can't just change stuff. And who are you to judge? Who are you to judge?

01:02:43

Every single time I point out that historically what the Pope's saying now is not what the Pope said 500 years ago.

01:02:49

Who are you to judge the church? You don't have a leg to stand on, Pope respecter.

01:02:56

What N .T. Wright is doing there has to do with the traditions of men, not with the teaching of scripture.

01:03:04

It has nothing to do with soul scripture, but you all think it does. And so whenever you're dealing with Roman Catholics, you need to be aware there's going to be that kind of mischief going on in the background.

01:03:17

So anyway, I'm sure I'm sure that the rest of the evening is going to provide some really fascinating memes and everything else as to what's going on between Trump and Musk.

01:03:35

But let's let's hope I'd like to say it would be nice if mature minds would sort of, you know, intervene and stop this, but it's

01:03:43

I don't think it's going to happen. So there you go. Okay, okay.

01:03:53

Chris Hanholtz called somebody a goober. Oh, oh, look at somebody, somebody doing the racial stuff on someone's a racist on Twitter.

01:04:08

Well, that's really not unusual. Anyways, there you go. Went a few minutes over, but got through most everything we're going to talk about there.

01:04:16

Hopefully useful commentary. And let's see.

01:04:24

I think. Oh, yes. I know I cannot do a program on Tuesday of next week.

01:04:32

So we will have to change the schedule next week and avoid Tuesday.

01:04:38

So we'll figure it out from there. Just let everybody know it will be on the app and stuff like that. All right.