Demythologizing Scholarship and Calls on Today's Dividing Line

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Bored everyone to tears the first part of the program by discussing two books I read yesterday, one by James D.G. Dunn, the other by McGrath, both on pretty much the same area of study. Tried to speak about the necessity of demythologizing scholarship. Included a brief clip of what those books "sound" like while riding. Then we took two good Skype calls, testing our set up (it worked!) and dealing with such topics as presuppositions regarding creation and the JW's use of Revelation 5:9-10.

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On a
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Tuesday here in Phoenix, Arizona, beautiful, beautiful day out today, and welcome to those of you on the
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East Coast. Back to the normal, actual time after your seven and a half month experience of fantasy and delusion, and so we're glad that for the next four and a half months you will be where you should be and all the world will be right, and then come the spring you all will leap off into your fantasy once again.
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So it's good to have you with us on the program today. Today I'm going to be talking about demythologizing scholarship.
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I'm not sure if we're going to get the calls later in the program or not. We'll see. We might. This might take 10 minutes. I don't know.
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We will see. I have a feeling it might take a little bit longer than that, but knowing the ways things go.
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Let me read to you some words I heard yesterday. I went out yesterday and I had a goal, and the goal was not so much in miles as books.
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I wanted to get through two books, two particular books. I wanted to get them read from beginning to end, and so I just wrote until I got that done basically.
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And here are some of the words that I listened to on that ride.
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The New Testament writers are really quite careful at this point.
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Jesus is not the God of Israel. He is not the Father. He is not Yahweh. The identification of Jesus with and as Yahweh was an early attempt to resolve the tensions indicated above.
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It was labeled as modalism, a form of monarchianism, the one God operating first as Father and then as Son, and then counted a heresy.
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Now just listen to that and ask yourself, who's saying these words?
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Because there's clearly confusion here. There is a presupposition of Unitarianism. There is a
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Church historical confusion with the identification of Jesus as Yahweh with modalism, which would not be the case because, for example, as early as Justin you have that, and Justin certainly wasn't a modalist in that sense.
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But just keep that in mind. Let me read you some more from this particular author.
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My second reservation follows from the first, for classic Christology has always seen the need to affirm a paradoxical both and, summed up in the traditional confession of Jesus having both a divine and a human nature.
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The distinction between functional and ontic is a more modern attempt to hold together, however unsatisfactorily, the same two divergent or apparently contradictory sets of data as summarized above.
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Okay, so there the author seems to have a little bit of a problem with the idea of confessing that Jesus has two natures, and this is viewed as a later development, not something that is actually relevant to the biblical text.
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A little bit later on we have, equation seems to be a better way of saying that if Jesus is
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God, he is not Yahweh, he is not the Father, he is not the source of creation, he will finally be subject to God, so that God alone will be all in all.
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Equation allows a fuller recognition of the other emphases in the New Testament writing such as Jesus as Jesus of Nazareth praying to God, Jesus as last
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Adam and eldest brother in God's new creation family, Jesus as heavenly intercessor, God as God of the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Okay, I continue on, let me read you some more, just to give you a good sense.
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So, when we transpose our findings into an answer to our central question, the dominant answer for Christian worship seems to be, the first Christians did not think of Jesus as to be worshipped in and for himself, he was not to be worshipped as holy
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God, or fully identified with God, far less as a God. If he was worshipped, it was worshipped offered to God, in and through him, worship of Jesus in God, and God in Jesus.
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And the corollary is that, in an important sense, Christian monotheism, if it is to be truly monotheism, has still to assert that only
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God, only the one God, is to be worshipped. The Christian distinctive within the monotheistic faith is its affirmation that God is most effectively, catch that word, effectively, worshipped in and through, and in some real but finally unquantifiable sense, as revealed in Jesus.
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Okay? I find that very, very interesting.
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There is a note in this book, connected to that, that, yes,
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I actually, believe it or not, listen to the footnotes too, which can sometimes be really exciting.
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Here's one of the notes. Balcombe gives it due attention, and notes its novel exegesis and novel claim, though he regards that the right hand of God's throne is sharing
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God's throne, Jesus and the God of Israel, pages given. Oddly enough, however, on Balcombe's argument, earliest
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Christian use of Psalm 110 .1, very important passage, Psalm 110 .1
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does not constitute a Christology of divine entity, since it assumes some distinction between Yahweh, Hakodias, and the
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Lord Christ. I just mentioned that footnote, because clearly this author functions upon a
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Unitarian presupposition in regards to the nature of Yahweh. Yahweh cannot be anything other than Unitarian.
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And likewise, in another note, hence presumably John had no qualms in depicting
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Jesus as defending himself against the charge he was making himself God, by citing the fact that Psalm 82 .6
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called other human beings God, John 10 .33 -35. And so you have the utilization of one of the standard
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Jehovah's Witness arguments at this point, which completely misses the background of Psalm 82, in this particular individual's thinking and presentation.
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A little bit later on, we're getting toward the end here, what I had marked off that I wanted to read for you.
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It remains a question whether divine agency is adequate or sufficient to express the full weight of this emphasis, just as the question remains whether divine identity is adequate or sufficient to sum up the full range of imagery and language used for Jesus in the
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New Testament. Now, I'll probably try to come back to this one. I hope that, let me see if I can bookmark it as well so that I can come back to it.
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Because what you have here is one of the standard, just an excellent example of the kind of scholarship that is lauded in our day, which leads you to no conclusion at all.
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Other than orthodoxy isn't the answer, but what should be the answer, nobody knows.
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Really don't have any idea. It's important. Some of you already know who I'm talking about, because you've
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Googled some of the phrases. I was actually going to say, call in and let's guess about it.
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You can't do that anymore. That's not even fun anymore. Oh, that's bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, because you went to Google and you filled it out and it was easy to find.
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But I continue with a few more citations. If what has emerged in this inquiry is taken seriously, it soon becomes evident that Christian worship can deteriorate into what may be called
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Jesus -olitary. That is, not simply into worship of Jesus, but into a worship that falls short of the worship due to the one
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God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. I use the term Jesus -olitary as in an important sense, parallel or even close to idolatry.
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Okay? A second point to be noted takes up the complementary issue of whether worship of Jesus constitutes a denial of Christianity's claim to be a monotheistic religion.
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As noted at the beginning of the introduction, such a critique of Christian worship is made by the other great monotheistic faiths,
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Judaism and Islam. But it has become increasingly clear from the inquiry that the understanding of God as one of the unity of God is not so readily defined as such critiques generally assume.
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It then goes on to present what I can only call is a rather squishy view of monotheism, which is not uncommon in a lot of modern scholarship.
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It goes on to say, The one God made himself known in or through angelic form as spirit, as wisdom, as word, without detracting from his otherness, his transcendence, his being as the one and only
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God. So definitions of monotheism, of God's oneness, should not be so tightly drawn as to exclude the
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Hebrew Bible slash Old Testament and early Jewish reflection on the subject. Christianity can make the case that its evaluation of Jesus begins with that reflection develops from it, but does so without calling in question that monotheism whose complex reality such reflection was attempting to articulate, however inadequately and however open to misinterpretation of the monotheism espoused.
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Yeah, that's the kind of stuff I was thinking about. In fact, I was going to do this. In my backpack, in the same outer pocket where there's a hand sanitizer thing, there is a little iPod.
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I need it. See if you can grab that for me. I forgot to bring in here. I apologize. I was going to play something that would illustrate a point here, but I just wanted you to catch that.
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We continue on. And in the light of such reflection and conclusion, the particular question, did the first Christians worship
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Jesus, can be seen to be much less relevant, less important, and potentially misleading. It can be answered simply or simplistically, even dismissively, with a mainly negative answer.
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No, by and large, the first Christians did not worship. I can't see that. Thank you.
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No, by and large, the first Christians did not worship Jesus as such. Worship language and practice at times do appear in the
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New Testament in reference to Christ, but on the whole, there is more reserve on the subject.
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So our central question, can it be answered negatively, and perhaps it should be, is the final conclusion that this author comes to.
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Now, why in the world would I start off the program with such exciting stuff? Some of you have already fallen asleep and have no idea why in the world
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I am babbling about the things that I'm babbling about. Well, the whole reason
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I went out yesterday and wrote as far as I did is I wanted to listen to two books.
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The second book that I finished right toward the end of the ride that I've been quoting from is by James D .G.
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Dunn. Now if you've not heard the name, then you're not a person who spends a whole lot of time keeping up with the big names in New Testament scholarship today, because Jimmy Dunn is one of the big names, along with N .T.
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Wright and Larry Hurtado and Richard Balcombe, and the big names. You've got to know the big guys.
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Those are the big names. Now, of course, every generation before us has had the big names, and it's only rarely that one actually transcends their own generation as far as their long -term impact goes.
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But all these were quotes from James D .G.
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Dunn's book, Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? And what I wanted to do is
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I wanted to listen to that right after I listened to a book called
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The Only True God, Early Christian Monotheism in its Jewish Context by James F.
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McGrath. And McGrath utilizes, I'm sorry,
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Dunn utilizes some of McGrath's materials in his work. The reason being that these are individuals that are being utilized not only by Muslims, but by Unitarians.
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There's a small but vocal Unitarian movement. You can see it in Anthony Buzzard and his followers around the world.
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Again, a small movement. Unitarianism in and of itself never creates a vital
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Christian. It just doesn't. History shows that to be the case, and I don't think it ever can.
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It's far too rationalistic and really has to present to you a
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Jesus that is, well, just simply does not excite the heart and mind of believers.
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So anyway, these folks love to quote from Jimmy Dunn. Unfortunately, in the vast majority of our seminaries, these are also the type of works that are going to be studied.
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Now, in conservative seminaries, Dunn's going to be cited alongside conservative works. Conservatives want to know what the liberals are saying and how to respond to it.
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But in liberal seminaries, all you'll have is Dunn, Ehrman, that kind of stuff, and you'll still get debates.
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I mean, Dunn and Wright will disagree over certain things. Wright is to the right of Dunn, if that makes any sense, on a lot of things, is more conservative than Dunn on a number of issues.
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So you'll still get some debates. But especially when it comes to the central aspects of the faith, the starting point is what is missing.
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Now, you need to understand, from the world's perspective and from the
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Academy's perspective, these are the greatest scholars alive today. And so I guess we just have to ask ourselves a question.
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How do you determine what real scholarship is?
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What's the definition of scholarship? I've said many, many times we need to demythologize scholarship, because I have heard it.
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The phraseology can be so horribly abused, absolutely horribly abused.
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You know, I think Shabir Ali abuses the term scholars. Scholars have shown. You can say that about anything.
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For example, this would be a good time to mention this, then we'll come back to it. Okay, thanks a lot.
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Somebody on the channel has just completely and totally thrown me off my game here. Have you seen the new book by Andrew Lincoln on denying the virgin birth?
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Andrew Lincoln, a New Testament scholar, recently published Born of a Virgin. Lincoln is a supernaturalist who accepts traditional
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Christian concepts like the deity of Jesus and his resurrection, but rejects other traditional positions such as biblical inerrancy and historicity of the virgin birth.
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He thinks Joseph was Jesus' natural father. On the back cover, James McGrath of Butler University calls
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Lincoln's book groundbreaking, excellent, sure to be considered the volume to turn to on this topic for many years to come. Yeah, St.
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McGrath. And I think Dunn would probably agree. I think
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Dunn questions the historical validity of the virgin birth stuff too, which is one of the reasons why my
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Muslim friends should sort of be really careful, but they don't seem to want to be really careful, in who they quote.
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But no, I haven't seen that one. I will have to put that on the to -be -listened -to list.
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Not because I want to, folks. I don't enjoy reading these things. It's not enjoyable. It's really not.
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Part of the reason that I do it is because I figure someday in a debate, well, for example, and I haven't even mentioned this, but in the debate with Shabir at the
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University of Pretoria, he raised a question. He raised the name of a scholar in regards to the
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Son of Man material. And I should have put this, I was going to put this in my written response, I still didn't get around to it. Maybe I'll add it a little bit later.
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But in my notes, you'll see I scribbled. I had just finished going through one of a
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Hurtado edited book, responding to that guy. And it was a number of articles put together from various people, responding to that particular take on the
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Son of Man stuff. And I just, I don't know, had gotten that book about,
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I don't know, two, three weeks before I went to South Africa. So maybe one of the reasons
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I do it is just to be prepared. I never know, given the context of places
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I go and taking questions and things like that, you just never know. But primarily the reason
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I do it is so as to have a wealth of examples of how you, as an individual believer, while we, you know,
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I'm doing this now, while we still have, we can still do these programs. We can still reach out to the entire world. We've got our guys over in Ukraine are listening in right now, and we're, you know, reaching out across the world.
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We can still do this for now. We're not going to be able to do it forever. You can just see it coming.
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You can see Western cultures falling so in love with death that they will silence any of the voices for life.
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And that includes, obviously, the only way of truly experiencing life, which is through the gospel. And you can see the totalitarianism in the eyes of the people on the left who are just, they just want to shut down any kind of ministry like this and any kind of voice like this.
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So while we can, what I want to do is try to instruct, try to warn, try to give you as many examples as possible so that when my voice isn't there to say it anymore, you will already be prepared to be teaching others and so on and so forth as we seek to deal with the new situation we'll be facing and that you will be able to demythologize scholarship.
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That you will be able to listen to someone who has studied an area much more deeply than you have and still be able to recognize where they themselves have started at the wrong point.
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They've started with the wrong assumptions. You need to learn to think presuppositionally.
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And if you think presuppositionally and you listen carefully to both of these books, you will see that they start at the exact wrong place.
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They do not start where Christian theology starts, which is why they come to conclusions that are at odds with Christian theology.
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Now that's not to say, well, as long as you start there, it's a nice tight circle you've got going there. The reality is that I've said many, many times, and these books just illustrate to the nth degree,
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I've said many, many times, if you do not have the highest view of Scripture, you will not believe in the highest expressions of Christian theology.
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I mean, these folks don't believe that the highest expressions of Christian theology have any validity or meaning.
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That they are just later developments, and they don't want to say they're wrong. They just want to say they're ahistorical, or that's not really what the...
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They don't really have a foundation. They're saying they're wrong. But they don't want to say anything's really right or wrong in the field of religion because it's all just a matter of predilection and what you like over against somebody else anyways.
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And so they start at the wrong place. They start with the assumption that whatever the truth is, it can't be what the
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Christian church has come to that position. It can't be that. It can't be orthodoxy.
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And if you do not have the highest view of the Bible, you will not believe in the
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Trinity, you will not believe in the deity of Christ, you will not believe in the hypostatic union, you will not believe in the atonement, and you will not believe in the gospel of grace, you will not believe in God's sovereignty, you will not believe in election.
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Why? Because all of these beliefs come from the same wellspring. They come from believing
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God has spoken with sufficient clarity and purpose that his people can know what his truth is.
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And none of these people believe that. They don't believe that. Presuppositionally, they have rejected the only firm foundation upon which any kind of meaningful systematic theology, any type of meaningful
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Christian theology can be built. They don't believe there can be any. Any Christian theology is just your opinion.
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Don't you see how many different views there have been out there over the centuries? And who are you to think you've got it right?
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It is a fundamentally hyper -skeptical perspective that is based upon the idea that there is no revelation from God that is consistent with itself.
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Any one of these books, if you dig in, what they're saying is, well, you know,
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I emphasize this part, and I emphasize that part, and I emphasize this part over there, but I de -emphasize that part over there, because they're under no obligation to believe what
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Jesus taught or what Paul taught, that all scripture is theionistos. They can't hold anybody accountable like Jesus did, have you not read?
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Because fundamentally, while they may attribute some kind of religious significance to a particular set of ancient documents, that significance comes from them.
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It is not intrinsic to the documents themselves. There was no historic act of revelation that makes these works special, that gives them a transcendent meaning.
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It's just not there. It's just not there. And so, these guys write huge books.
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I mean, I've put on the ministry resource list has some things on it right now, and one of them is
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Lagos is doing a pre -pub on the new N .T. Wright work on Paul.
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His magnum opus on Paul, 1 ,700 pages long.
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That's why I'm getting the e -version. Just the shipping on a 1 ,700 page long book would be absurd.
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And there's probably 3 ,000 footnotes in 1 ,700 pages, maybe more.
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I don't know. If you look at N .T. Wright's stuff, it's massive. It's huge.
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The guy is brilliant. And we sit back and go, wow, he must be right.
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No, no. John Dominic Crossan has produced huge books too, but he thinks
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Jesus was crucified, taken down, buried in a shallow grave, dug up and eaten by dogs. Doesn't make him right.
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I mean, there are brilliant people, but because they start at the wrong place, all their brilliance is absolutely wasted.
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Absolutely, abjectly wasted. Now, I'm not saying that everything
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N .T. Wright has said is wasted by any stretch of the imagination. He has some great insights. But he also seems to think that, well, he's figured out what nobody else has.
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And that's one of the things that really bugs me about both Dun and Wright, is they both have that same, I don't know, is there something in the water at, you know, there in England, they've both served in the same spot.
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They've both served as Bishop of Durham. And so there must be something in the water at Durham that makes you think that I have insights that no one else has ever had.
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And I can prove it by writing 1 ,700 -page books or one of Dun's books.
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Geez, remember, 990 pages long. They're massive. They're huge. These guys do a lot of reading. Yep, they do.
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But that doesn't change the fact that they seem to be absolutely presuppositionally challenged and so often miss the very presuppositional nature of their argumentation.
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And you, as a faithful follower of Jesus Christ, living in a day where the term scholarship is used to beat you over the head, must demythologize scholarship.
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May I suggest to you, the only scholarship—scholarship is a wonderful thing. I speak as a person who engages in scholarship all the time, and I seek to do so to the glory of God.
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But the only meaningful scholarship for a Christian is scholarship that is under the lordship of Jesus Christ.
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Any other scholarship can be seen as nothing more than—there's no difference—if you're a scholar in some other field, every
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Christian must recognize. I don't care if you're a scholar in physics, you still do your scholarship under the lordship of Jesus Christ because it's
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Jesus Christ who created that realm. And so you do your scholarship under that.
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But the point is, everybody who does anything—if you work at Walmart, if you work at a
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Starbucks or McDonald's, or you work paving roads, or you work in a bank, or you work in a school, or whatever your calling might be in that sense—your secular employment, as it is often called—you do that under the lordship of Christ.
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You do that as a servant of Jesus Christ. That's the command of Scripture. But nowhere is that more important than when you call yourself a
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Christian scholar, because your only reason for existence is to edify the body of Christ. That's your only reason for existence.
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And whenever Christian scholarship loses that perspective, it becomes a poison in the bloodstream of the
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Church. Always has. Always has. Always will. And so, how do you determine
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Christian scholarship? Is it by the size of the book? No, because,
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I mean, there have been great Christian scholars who've written huge books. That's not the issue. That's not the issue.
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In fact, to be perfectly honest with you, 1 ,700 pages seems a little excessive to me.
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You can't make your point a little bit more succinctly than that? I mean, look,
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Jesus didn't seem to have a whole lot of respect for the kind of scholarship in his day where, well,
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Rabbi so -and -so said that Rabbi so -and -so said that Rabbi so -and -so said something. Well, anymore, to be considered a scholar in the academy, you have to have two -thirds of your page of footnotes discussing what unbelievers have said about this text.
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That's what's considered scholarship. I mean, anything in the
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Jesus field, if you just go back and read The Quest for the
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Historical Jesus and all the rest of this kind of stuff, you've got to spend half your time just going back over what the big names have said, and the vast majority of them were not
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Christians. They were not believers by any stretch of the definition.
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They may have gone to some state church or something, but there was no evidence of faith or repentance on their part.
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They didn't believe in the deity of Christ, the resurrection, or whatever else it might be. And yet you've got to spend your time just, you know, well,
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Schleiermacher said this, and Bultmann said that, and if you don't, then you're not a true scholar, because you're not taking into consideration all these things.
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And so the books get longer, and longer, and longer, and less accessible to the people that they should be accessible to.
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Another one of my pet peeves along those lines. I think if you're a Christian scholar, if you can't take your field and explain it to people in the church to edify them, then, you know, maybe you ought to think about that just a little bit.
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Just a little bit. Anyway, what I was getting to. When you examine these works presuppositionally, you fairly quickly discern where they went wrong at the start, and how that then determines their handling of the data.
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And you may not even know where some of the data is coming from, but again, a man with common sense, a man who thinks with clarity, presuppositionally, from a proper
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Christian worldview, it's amazing how quickly they can cut through the fog of all the multitude of facts in the mind of a person who doesn't think clearly.
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And unfortunately, the Academy does not necessarily honor those who think clearly over against those who do not.
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So what I was going to mention was, just to give you a really interesting example.
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I got up this morning, and Chris from Pirate Christian Radio had sent me links to, he just did a debate, and when he first mentioned this guy to me,
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Atwill, I'm sitting there going, who is that? Had to look it up.
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Had to look it up. And then I was reminded who it was. Remember just a few weeks ago, it was just a few weeks ago,
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I mentioned the big announcement that was made that in England, they were going to be revealing a new discovery.
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A new discovery that the Romans had made up Christianity.
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And the way it was presented was, there is a papyri someplace, there was something, and that the
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Romans had made up Christianity. And I told you at the time, this just stinks of somebody, some looney tune, trying to make some money.
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Well, remember back when the Jesus tomb story hit,
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I jumped on it. In 17 days, had to book out. Absolutely debunking the absurdity of the
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Jesus family tomb story. Because it was on ABC News, and it was on Good Morning America, and it really, over here, got the big press.
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This hasn't gotten almost any press over here at all. Maybe it's bigger in England, I don't know, because it took place over there, I don't know.
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But I started listening to Chris's mini debate with Atwill, and it was hilarious.
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I only got through the first hour, but it was hilarious. I mean, this guy, the thing to me that was just like, really?
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Was Chris goes, so what do you do with what Richard Balcombe said about Jesus and Yahweh witnesses?
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Who's Richard Balcombe? He didn't know who Richard Balcombe was. Now, I can especially laugh about that, because I wrote the review of Balcombe's book back in, what, 07 or something like that, the
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CRI Journal or something like that. So it's like, I mean, if you're going to publish in this field and come up with an allegedly huge revelation, that all it is, folks, is he says that there are amazing similarities between Josephus and Jesus' life, and therefore,
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Jesus was made up. And that the evidence is found in this code found in Josephus.
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And it's absolutely nothing more than, I forget what the guy's name was.
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I've got the book on my shelf, but there are these books that this one guy's put out saying that Mark, for example, is borrowing from, who was it?
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Some Greek poet somewhere. It is so easy to create parallels.
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In fact, have you all seen, I wanted to have this queued up and I forgot. I'm sorry. I was going to queue this up.
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Look this up on YouTube. If you want to see how easy this is, what this at will did with Jesus, coming up with the idea that Jesus is a fake, go on YouTube and search for the video that parallels
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Toy Story with The Walking Dead. According to this video,
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I watched this video, I think yesterday, day before yesterday. It is this really well done video on YouTube that says, actually, they're the same story.
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They're the same story. And if you just watch that, you'd be forced to go, yeah,
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I mean, you know, like in one of the Toy Stories, there's this bearded guy with a cane and you've got the veterinarian.
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They cut off his leg. So he's got a cane type thing. And you got a sheriff. Rick is the sheriff.
35:21
And you've got, Woody's the sheriff. And Shane was Buzz Lightyear.
35:28
And the sheriff tried to get rid of Shane. Well, actually accomplished that. But you can't push it too far.
35:36
But and you've got these creatures that destroy the little band.
35:44
Of course, they're zombies in The Walking Dead. I'm sorry, the walkers. But in Toy Story, they're little kids that tear stuff up and blow up toys and do all that kind of stuff.
35:55
And so there's this great video demonstrating that if you want to find parallels, you can even find parallels between The Walking Dead.
36:08
And Toy Story, all three Toy Stories. Oh, and then the governor, the governor.
36:16
Yeah, the governor. I didn't see I haven't seen Toy Story three, so I was sort of a little out on that one.
36:22
But there was some fluffy teddy bear type thing that ended up being this terrible, horrible thing.
36:28
And that was the governor. And my son was saying, I tweeted that link to you months ago. Well, maybe you did.
36:35
I just saw it yesterday. Oh, you know, we our kids grow up and we stop watching these things. Well, I didn't
36:41
I didn't see Toy Story three. I'll have to get caught up on that. But anyhow, the point is, you can make parallels out of anything if you want to.
36:50
And that's what this at will is done. Now, the problem is when you start looking at the dissimilarities, well, that doesn't matter.
36:56
Well, we don't have to worry about that. And then you start running into the facts that demonstrate your theory doesn't make any sense.
37:01
And this guy is just imploding all over the place. I mean, Chris just made him he didn't have to even have to work very hard to make the guy just expose him for the money grubbing fraud that he is.
37:15
It's just it is amazing. But there's always going to be people out there. They're going to be doing this stuff.
37:20
They're going to they're they're in it for a buck. And the religion area is a great place to go.
37:26
And, you know, the guy might just the sad thing is the guy might actually believe what he's saying. He might actually believe that, you know, that he's saying what he's saying.
37:34
It's it's sad. But if you get a chance. Go listen to a pirate
37:40
Christian radio. I think it was yesterday's program and listen to Chris.
37:46
Just it was enjoyable. It really was enjoyable. I'm going to I'm going to try to put that on there.
37:53
But it is it is it is really fun. I did want to do one other thing here. And did you want to try to test this today?
38:00
Yeah, let's go ahead and open the phones and stuff. And we are going to invite you to contact us via Skype today.
38:14
Dividing dot line, I think, is the is the name dividing dot line. If you'd like to call in via Skype.
38:20
We haven't done Skype in a long time. We're going to need to do Skype on Thursday. Well, and part of our test here is that we haven't actually done
38:28
Skype since we started the YouTube channel in September. So, yeah,
38:34
Skyping live, YouTube being live. So I may go, let's talk to so -and -so in Skype. And then everything dies.
38:41
We all bolt of lightning. YouTube dies and the feed dies and we'll go,
38:48
OK, we'll see how this works. So dividing dot line is the is the address, the
38:55
Skype address. If you would like to call in today. I want to do two other things before we take any calls. I thought about doing this.
39:03
I almost killed myself yesterday. I was, as I said,
39:10
I did a I didn't mention it was it was an 88 mile ride. And I was listening to these books.
39:16
And here is my iPod. See there for the in the studio audience, my little iPod that I use.
39:25
And I was I was stretching my right. I had my arm behind my back.
39:31
I was about 65 miles in the ride. And I back in my big, stupid lifting days, tore up this right right elbow.
39:41
I've got soft tissue damage there that I've never had fixed. And the right rotator cuff. And so you're leaning on a bike for hours and hours.
39:48
And after about three hours or so, the right arm starts bothering me. So I I'm stretching it out.
39:54
Well, I started off in the cold. And you might say, oh, 43 is cold.
40:00
Yeah, going 20 miles an hour into a five mile an hour headwind. I looked I looked up the windchill thing this morning.
40:07
That's 29 degrees. And when you're wearing riding shorts, 29 degrees is cold. OK, so I had a little
40:14
I had had some stuff on my legs and that was stuffed in my jersey now. And so there's a lot of stuff in my jersey.
40:20
So make a long story short. This poor thing fell out while I was going north on Pima Road.
40:27
So it falls out, swings forward and goes right into my front tire. So it grabs it.
40:36
And very, very quickly, my my headset comes flying out of my ears.
40:42
That didn't feel really good. Those earbuds. And thankfully, it didn't crash me.
40:51
Um, and believe it or not, it still works. I had to clump about 20 yards back on Pima Road, reach down, pick it up.
40:58
There's a nice big dig there and there. And but other than that, screen's not broken.
41:05
Nothing. It's still it's still working, which is which is an amazing thing. It really, really is an amazing thing.
41:12
But what I wanted to do for you all today, and that is if if Rich can make this work on the other end, is
41:20
I wanted to play. And it's a little bit harder now to get the thing in because it got a little bent.
41:26
But I wanted to play for you. What I listen to, what
41:32
I what I hear. Because you may be wondering, how do you get through two books on one ride?
41:38
Well, I want to I want to play for you. And Rich is is taken up doing something else at the moment. So he can't really help us do this right now.
41:48
But if he were not busy right now, then he would have the volume up so that you could hear what
41:58
I'm trying to do. But OK, I still can't hear that. OK, let me find.
42:18
Here we go. Here's the beginning of Dunn's work on worship. I didn't say.
42:42
Here we go. So that's what
42:56
I listened to for four hours and 45 minutes. That's how I got through two books.
43:01
And you go, that's not possible. It is when I first started doing it. That would have been pretty hard to do.
43:09
It would have been hard to understand that after how many years I've been doing this now. I don't know, five, six years.
43:15
No, not even that long. Four or five years. I can actually understand that, follow it and remember it and even find that spot in the book.
43:25
So there you go. Just like some of you have wondered, how do you do it? That was actually those
43:31
I got on Kindle. So that was Kindle reading at high speed and then the iPod playing that at two times speed.
43:42
So that's high speed recording, two times speed from the
43:48
Kindle. I can do the same thing with the TechSpeech Pro program that I use for the other stuff, if it's PDF or something like that.
43:54
I can output that at a higher speed and then play it at higher speed on the iPod as well.
44:00
But I gotta admit, I'm happy that thing survived. I was going to make some comments here about McGrath.
44:06
I think I'll hold that off. I want to address what he says about John 118 and about John 2028, but we'll get to that if someone will remind me.
44:16
I may forget about it. We'll get to that in the future because we do have some calls to get to and we don't want to miss them.
44:23
I did want to just do one other thing. I'll have to plug this back in. I hope I didn't make a lot of noise.
44:30
It didn't. I'm starting to put the chapter stuff marks into The Wheat and the
44:37
Tares, Chris Pinto's movie in preparation. It looks like we're going for December 11th.
44:44
Let's see what. I see it. It looks like we're looking at December 11th for that.
44:56
I've listened to it a number of times and I'm going through the actual video footage putting in chapter stuff and things like that.
45:06
I just want to play a little section for you here, just to give you an idea of what we're looking at here.
45:14
This is a chapter I put in called Scary Music Conspiracy Theory.
45:21
Scary Music Conspiracy Theory. Here's what I mean. Within less than 20 years after the
45:36
Oxford Movement, another movement began in the world of biblical scholarship that would almost completely transform the understanding of the
45:46
Bible. This transformation would be affected by men who were of the
45:53
Protestant profession, but strangely worked in cooperation with Rome.
46:00
Now says the higher critics.
46:36
Prior to the 19th century, Protestant scholars depended on a collection of Greek manuscripts that had come into Europe after the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
46:50
Collectively, these manuscripts would form the foundation of the New Testament Greek used by the reformers.
46:58
By men like William Tyndale, Martin Luther, the Geneva Bible translators, and the translation team for the
47:08
King James Version. In other words, the Byzantine manuscripts, the later manuscripts, the ecclesiastical manuscripts, and they didn't just come in from Constantinople.
47:20
These are the manuscripts that were already present in many of the monasteries in the world and were utilized by the
47:29
Roman Catholic Church as well. Might want to include that information, but it really wouldn't fit the theory of what's going on here.
47:36
Of 1611, these Greek manuscripts were collated first by Erasmus of Rotterdam.
47:45
No, he collated about six manuscripts, maybe seven, and distrusted the oldest ones he had.
47:54
Erasmus would lay the foundation for the traditional text and further the belief that the scripture should be read by all people.
48:04
He certainly would have, and he wrote some great stuff. He also wrote In Defense of Transubstantiation, which you might want to have included that too.
48:13
Then a little bit later on, just really quickly, because I do want to get to the calls real quick, but check this phraseology out right here.
48:20
1598 Greek New Testament was chiefly used for the King James Version of 1611, but it would be some years later that the
48:32
Elsevier brothers in Holland would publish the work even further and give the
48:37
Reformers Greek its official name. In the introduction of their 1633 edition, they wrote,
48:46
What you have here is the text which is now received by all, in which we give nothing changed or corrupted.
48:56
Hence, the Greek of the Protestant Reformation would become known as Textus Receptus.
49:02
And notice the attempt to forge as strong a link as possible, as if the
49:09
Reformers had specifically chosen this Greek text over against any other.
49:16
That's the mindset that is being inculcated. Now, that's not a historical perspective.
49:22
In fact, Calvin corrected the readings of Erasmus at times, and it was the default text.
49:31
It was what was available to them. It was not a choice on their part that rejected some other.
49:38
But that's not what is communicated, unfortunately. So, anyway, I'm putting the chapter stuff in, and we'll probably be playing some more clips in the future and trying to provide a little bit more balanced viewpoint there.
49:54
All right, let's get some of the calls in here. We only got a couple real quick. So let's, now again, I'm going to say, let's talk to Rob in London, and if everything goes black at that point, the video feed ends, the audio feed ends, you will know that Rich tried really hard.
50:11
He's running back and forth out there, but it didn't work. So let's try it. Let's talk to Rob in London.
50:16
Hi, Rob. How's it going? Oh, sounds wonderful. What can we do for you?
50:24
Yeah, I was listening to the show pretty much from the beginning, and you're talking at one point about certain leaders, prominent leaders, theologians, being somewhat presuppositionally challenged.
50:37
Especially over in your neck of the woods, unfortunately. Oh, absolutely. I wanted to get your thoughts on what you think about the chaps, the people over at BioLogos, and how that comes into it, and if it indeed does.
50:53
Well, of course. But they're right up front about it. Their fundamental assertion is that we have to make
51:02
Christianity intellectually acceptable in our day, and therefore there are certain scientific conclusions that everybody agrees on, which isn't the case, but everybody agrees on, and therefore that has to become the lens through which we do our work, and through which we view the scriptures.
51:24
And so that's about as presuppositional as you can get. Yeah, thank you for that.
51:31
The reason I'm asking the question, it's become, in the last sort of month, I've had a number of chats with different Christians, and sort of,
51:40
I don't want to use the term run -ins, but something a bit like that, with people disagreeing quite sharply on this issue of literal creation as seen in Genesis.
51:52
And coming at me quite hard at times, saying that I'm being divisive when
51:58
I say that this is a very big sticking point, particularly when it calls into question the truthfulness of the
52:07
Gospel, and how it can undermine the Gospel. And it's been really sad on my part, at least the way
52:13
I see it, that certain people are, particularly over here, like you say, my neck of the woods, are willing to be quite concessionary on this.
52:24
It's been really hard, actually, seeing that. And I had a strong,
52:29
I had a good Christian friend come at me hard about it as well, which made it even harder. Yeah, there does seem to be a mindset amongst many
52:36
Brits that you have to be willing to accommodate.
52:41
You have to be willing to compromise, as if all areas can require compromise.
52:52
And if you would think that the history of the Anglican Church in England would be enough to be a rather large warning, there are things you can't compromise on, or you're going to end up, well, looking like that.
53:06
Yeah, no, absolutely. And what's interesting with my friend is he, I can definitely say to you that he exhibits a strong, strong passion for the
53:15
Gospel in the souls of men. That, I think, is not in question. But I think he takes it to the point where we've got to be all about the
53:24
Gospel to such a degree that these peripheral issues, what he would call peripheral, can be damaging to the cause of the
53:34
Gospel. And it's all about working together with other Christian evangelical, so -called evangelical leaders, even if they are squishy on Genesis, because it can effectively hamper the
53:47
Gospel. But I think what he has a blind spot to, and this is what I've been trying to bring over to him, what
53:53
I think is a huge blind spot is how they don't see that it undermines the
53:59
Gospel to take the position that they take. Well, and not only does it undermine the Gospel, but you also ask the question, what is the purpose of the
54:07
Gospel? What is the Gospel supposed to lead us to? What is the end result?
54:12
I mean, you can say, well, we have to see souls saved, so as to do what? Well, glorify
54:18
God, yes, but what about those individuals? Are they just, now they've got their tickets punched and all is well?
54:26
Or is there supposed to be a growth in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that's when you start asking these questions, and that's where you have to start creating a
54:33
Christian worldview within them, and getting them to think after the way of Christ.
54:39
And if you've compromised on those fundamental things that are going to allow you to do that, you're left with nothing.
54:46
You're just left with the shallow evangelicalism of, well, we got everybody saved, but we can't really say much beyond that.
54:53
Right. So you're basically saying that it's the wrong starting point, and they've made concessions right off the bat.
55:01
Well, once you've got to, I mean, if you're going to listen to the authority of Christ to save your soul for eternity, maybe you might want to ask some questions like,
55:13
I wonder what his view of the Bible was? I wonder what his view of Scripture was?
55:21
Did he have an accommodationist view? He lived in a context where there is a tremendous amount of pressure upon the
55:31
Jewish people to accommodate and to get along ecumenically with all the religions around them.
55:37
Did he buy into that? Did he come to think that the worship of God was a secondary issue, that, you know, let's put that to the side so that we don't, you know, so we can get together there?
55:48
I mean, these are, it would seem to me to be fairly obvious questions that unfortunately don't always get asked.
55:53
Right, absolutely. I think that because evolutionary thinking and the propaganda behind it, and the way that it's put forward is so pervasive, and it's so entrenched in Western thought,
56:11
I know when I go out in the street witnessing, and I get into a conversation with somebody, and let's talk to the guy for about 30 minutes, and that's actually quite nice.
56:20
And he's given me time to speak and everything like that. And as soon as it comes up that I'm a six -day creationist, he's like, whoa,
56:31
I can't talk to you anymore. You must be a bit slow of thinking, or you must be retarded even.
56:38
Or it's amazing how their demeanor just changes at that point. They've given me 30 minutes, but all of a sudden they have to walk away because I believe in creation.
56:46
And I think that sometimes, and dare I say it, I don't know if this would even be along the lines of somebody like Tim Keller, who was an incredibly clever man, knows his stuff, knows the
56:59
Bible, but takes this position as well. Is it fear? Is it along the lines of the world will think we're stupid?
57:09
The world will think that we don't believe in science? Yeah, I can't comment on motivations, but I can say that if that were to happen in a situation with me, and well,
57:20
I'm going to have to walk away because obviously you can't think straight, I'd say, wait a minute, I was just talking to you about the
57:25
Resurrection of Jesus Christ. You're telling me that a God who can raise them from the dead could not create this universe?
57:31
Right. You don't see the consistency there? And try to grab them at that point and say, you know, again, you're presuppositionally missing the issue in this discussion.
57:45
But yeah, let's face it. We are cultural heretics. And Paul, hang on the line because we're going to get to you.
57:52
We're going to go a little later. We are cultural heretics.
57:57
Right. And there you're seeing what happens is when you violate that cultural heresy.
58:03
Well, what happens when, well, and it's getting to this point where culturally you cannot address the subject of morality or ethics or sin.
58:14
What are we going to do then? Stop talking about those things? Well, some people are doing exactly that, which then results in no inability to even talk about repentance, no inability, you can't talk about the cross, you can't talk about what
58:27
Jesus did because the, well, the fundamental incapacity of the culture itself is allegedly allowed to get in the way and to keep you from doing these things.
58:40
We have to, you know, there were a lot of things that the prophet said that immediately caused people to put their hands up to their ears.
58:51
And I will not listen. Shut up, Jeremiah. But it was still a fire in his bones and he still had to say it.
58:58
Yeah. He still had to say it. There wasn't anything to do about it. So I think what we can do is think about some snappy comebacks that are not just comebacks, but actually meant to cause people to think.
59:09
You know, we're talking to a person who's made in the image of God. How could I respond to their acting on the way they have been trained by society to think to make them to step back and start critically examining the presuppositions that are theirs?
59:25
That's certainly something that's worthwhile doing. That's often what I do, is to ask them to account for how their presuppositions can make sense of the fundamental elementary truths of life, you know, how their presuppositions can account for things like moral absolutes and things like that.
59:43
Yeah, so absolutely. No, that's helpful. Thank you. Yeah, I just thought
59:49
I'd ask the question because it's been something that I've been dealing with lately. Well, we're all going to be dealing with it, and much more so.
59:58
As you know, our freedoms for even having those opportunities are going to be much diminished in the future.
01:00:04
Oh, I know that very much. Yeah, yeah. All right, thanks, Rob. No worries. All right, God bless. All right, bye -bye. Now this is going to be interesting because I seem to recall that in the past, we need to take just a few moments between Skype calls, because there has to be a transfer thing.
01:00:22
And so let's see if we can get Paul in London on the line. Hello, Paul. The look on Rich's face was not a good look.
01:00:36
Well, we're going to keep trying here. Paul, are you there? Paul's not there. The one good thing about doing it this way is that I don't think
01:00:45
I have seen Rich getting this much of a workout in a very long time. I mean, because the
01:00:50
Skype computer is sort of, I don't know, about seven or eight yards over there. And the speed at which he's moving from one to the other is very, very impressive.
01:00:59
I'll have to admit that. And there's Paul. Hi. Hello, Paul.
01:01:05
How are you? I'm good, Dr. White. How are you? You're going to have to give a lot of kudos to Rich, because I think he just burned about 127 calories just to get you on the line today.
01:01:17
Well, me too. Trying to turn off all the sound and crank up eSword and everything, just getting ready for this question.
01:01:25
All right, good. You're in Revelation chapter five, I think. Yeah, this is going to be a quick question,
01:01:31
I hope. I hope that my position as a pre -mill advocate won't impact this.
01:01:38
And I know you're a mill. Most of the time, it's the premillennialist who is saying that I'm missing it, not the other way around.
01:01:48
So I doubt it'll have much of an impact. The problem is, by the way, I do not have on this unit the new...
01:01:56
Oh, wait a minute. I think I have it in... I thought I put it in my Dropbox here.
01:02:01
I was going to try to find the new NWT, but I think I only have it on my other computer. So if it's different from the old
01:02:07
NWT, I'm going to be sort of out to lunch here. Okay, it's a very quick question.
01:02:13
Basically, the last three words in Greek of that verse, 510, you know, the old
01:02:20
Jehovah's Witness position that the... They will rain upon the earth. Well, yeah, they basically believe they're going to be raining in heaven over a group of people on earth.
01:02:31
Right. Every translation I've ever read says, upon the earth, even their own Kingdom Interlinear Translation, if you look at the
01:02:37
English underneath the literal English underneath the
01:02:43
Greek, it says upon the earth. I don't want to put myself in a position where I'm, you know, just trying to win an argument for the sake of winning an argument without being grammatically correct here.
01:02:56
Can we assume that the use of that preposition in that particular place mandates that that word means upon as opposed to over?
01:03:11
Well, first of all, let me just mention that there... In fact, one of my students in Berlin, I think, wrote a paper on this exact text.
01:03:24
And the... A good paper on this text. And the only textual variants have to do with the form of the verb, basilio, to rain.
01:03:33
So the preposition is the same in each case.
01:03:41
So there's no textual issue. I just want to mention that because there will be different translations.
01:03:46
They will rain on the earth. They rain on the earth. Or we will rain on the earth.
01:03:52
Um, the normative translation of epi with the genitive, as it is found here, would be upon...
01:04:09
You would have to... I would assert that you would have to find something in the context, and specifically in the usage in the
01:04:22
Book of Revelation, that would go against that normative translation to come up with the translation over.
01:04:30
Um, but... Could they... Sorry. No, no, go ahead. I was going to say, does that include their assertion that they just believe that the 144 ,000 are going to be in heaven and a certain amount of people are going to be on earth?
01:04:46
Could they just... Could it be as wide of the mark as that? Does it have to be?
01:04:51
You know what this is reminding me of? And it's very, very interesting. Um, what this is reminding me of is, um, a conversation that I had, uh, many years ago with a good friend of mine.
01:05:10
And generally, uh, you know, you can translate it as over, on, at the time of, at, or to, depending on whether it's used with, uh, genitive, dative, accusative, et cetera, et cetera.
01:05:25
Yeah. We were discussing some other text. It wasn't this one, but the context was, interestingly enough,
01:05:31
Jehovah's Witnesses. He said, well, I've been having this conversation with Jehovah's Witnesses, and he says that the Greek here can be translated this way.
01:05:37
And how do I refute that? And fundamentally, what
01:05:43
I had to say was, you can't. That doesn't make him right. Because the truth of scripture is not found in a possible way you could render one verse, or in this case, in this verse, a preposition.
01:06:01
The truth of the scripture is found throughout all of the scripture, and not just in one particular part.
01:06:10
So in other words, there are verses that, well, okay, yeah, you, you could argue that, and there's no way of saying that in this one instance, you're absolutely wrong.
01:06:21
What you do is you challenge that on the basis of the entirety of what the scripture teaches, not just on one particular place.
01:06:29
And that bothers some people. Some people feel like, well, unless I can demonstrate that it's absolutely impossible to ever understand a verse in another way than the way
01:06:37
I understand it, means I can't know what it really means. That is linguistically invalid.
01:06:43
That's not true. That's not a proper way of looking at things. Unfortunately, we have this verse -by -verse mentality, which normally is a good thing because we're talking about preaching verse -by -verse, which simply means we're handling the text as a whole.
01:06:57
But there were no verses when this was written. And so we've broken things down to where, well, if I can't refute a heretic's interpretation of one sentence, then that gives him a validity that I don't want him to have, and therefore
01:07:12
I don't like it. Well, the reality is you could make an argument, and someone might be able to make an argument from the other uses, and this is what you have to look at, you'd have to look at all the uses of a
01:07:24
P with the genitive in the Book of Revelation to see if you can come up with a foundation for saying over in the sense of the realm of where the people who are ruling is, is other than and is above that upon the earth.
01:07:45
So that's what you would have to challenge them to do. Can they do that? I don't know. I've never done a study of a
01:07:51
P in the Book of Revelation. It wouldn't be difficult to do at all, but you'd have to do that and then look at what you come up with and do your study from that point.
01:08:06
In fact, I just did a search for it, and there's, let me see, one, two, three, there's a lot of P's in Revelation.
01:08:14
That would be a, that looks like one of the, oh my goodness, there are many of them. Many, many, many, many, many of them.
01:08:21
So you'd want to look at a P with the genitive over against the others, and that's how you come to the conclusion.
01:08:29
But we have to be careful that we don't get in the mindset that, well,
01:08:34
I have to have a refutation of every abuse of Scripture, because there isn't such a thing.
01:08:41
The refutation comes from the wholeness of Christian truth, not necessarily from an individual part here, there, and everywhere.
01:08:49
So that's just something that I, that may have had almost nothing to do with what you're actually asking, I'm sorry.
01:08:54
No, no, that's good, that's good. But I mean, generally, I wouldn't even, you're absolutely right,
01:08:59
I wouldn't even generally go there. I mean, there are loads of verses like the, you know, the kenosis, the absolute corruption of that, and all kinds of verses that you don't really necessarily want to go to just to prove a point.
01:09:15
But this in particular, this struck me as being significant, because when you look in the
01:09:20
Kingdom Interlinear translation, it does say in their book, their understanding of that term in their book.
01:09:27
So it says over, it says over the earth? No, it says upon. Really? The literal English underneath the
01:09:35
Greek, it says upon. And I've shown this to Jehovah's Witnesses, and I've always got like, you know, you get that stare, you know that.
01:09:44
Well, let's just look at this. I'm looking at a P here, Revelation 5 .1.
01:09:51
You have seated upon the throne in Revelation 5 .1. That wouldn't be seated above the throne or over the throne.
01:09:59
Revelation 5 .3. No one in heaven, neither epitase gase, exact parallel, on the earth, neither under the earth was able to open the scroll or look upon it.
01:10:14
So clearly epitase gase in 5 .3 is clearly upon the earth. It's not, it's, that would, you know.
01:10:20
Um, upon the throne, 5 .7. Uh, 5 .13 again is epitase gase along with heavens and under the earth.
01:10:31
So you could make a real strong argument that in the context of just chapter five, every use of a
01:10:39
P, especially in the phrase epitase gase, clearly means upon the earth, not over the earth. Okay, can
01:10:45
I just ask you one more quick question? Sure. Um, how, how have you responded to the, um, the new position that they've taken with the, um, governing body being the, uh, faithful and discreet slave only?
01:10:59
Oh, sorry, the governing body being the faithful and discreet slave, I should say. I've not been able to keep up with, with recent developments.
01:11:05
And so, um, I, I, I can't answer that because there are things happening there and I no longer have my subscriptions active and I'm really no longer in touch with people who keep a, keep a finger on the heartbeat, uh, as, as to what's developing.
01:11:23
I mean, all I know is that obviously they're, they're undergoing some major changes because they've got to get rid of the role that 1914 played.
01:11:31
They've got to get rid of the, um, uh, of the anointed class as far as a, an actual class, because that's next year, 100 years.
01:11:40
They're just, why do you, why do you say that? I've heard you say this a couple of times. Why do you say they have to get rid of 1914? Well, because of the teaching that they've always associated with it.
01:11:48
And that, that was that, that, uh, well, first of all, the teaching was that the generation that saw the events of 1914 would not pass away before Armageddon took place.
01:11:57
And, uh, But they've changed, they've changed that though, haven't they? They've said they've come up with this overlapping generations thing, which has bought them another 90, 90 years or whatever it is.
01:12:06
Yeah, well, the problem is they can't, see, the problem that they have now is the same problem that was just pointed out recently.
01:12:15
Was it a Time Magazine article? I forget who did it. Someone just did an article about what's going on in Mormonism.
01:12:22
And both of them have the parallel problem. It's called the internet. You see, it used to be the society could really, uh, isolate its people.
01:12:31
Um, but now that they've, you've got the Watchtower CD -ROM library running around. And now that you've got the, the internet with fully searchable stuff, they cannot any longer really isolate their people from how intimately connected so much of their teaching was to the 1914 prophecy, to the calling of the anointed class, uh, which ended in 1935.
01:12:52
Um, I mean, every time they go to the, um, memorial supper, they've got another reminder right there in front of them as they're passing the plate past themselves of what this used to mean to the earlier generations.
01:13:05
And they're really struggling with how to handle, um, giving themselves more time.
01:13:10
And I think they're just doing it sort of in this long torturous way, almost as a distraction.
01:13:17
So that they, you've got people thinking about these other things rather than the fact that, man, when I go, when
01:13:22
I go back and look at the 1980s Awake magazine, every single banner, every single publication, 1914, 1914, 19, it's all there.
01:13:30
And there was nothing about overlapping generations. There's nothing about any of this kind of stuff. Um, and I think they're just scared to death, rightfully so, that any thinking person who wants to go back into their own history is going to realize this, this just isn't what we used to believe.
01:13:48
This is an evolving, changing thing. Uh, and is that really what I want to be a part of? So, um, anyway, uh, yes.
01:13:55
Maybe they can try a line like, if you like your old Jehovah's Witnesses, you can keep them, period.
01:14:02
Paul's not going to know what that is. Do you know what that means, Paul? No. See, how's he, you gotta remember,
01:14:08
Rich, we're an international program now. Uh, there's a big controversy over here about the fact that the president for years has been saying, if you like your insurance policy, you can keep your insurance policy.
01:14:20
And he said it over and over and over. And now he's saying, no, I never really said that. So it does sort of fit with the 1975 prophecy too.
01:14:28
Anyway, but, uh, I'm sorry that I, I have not kept up the way that I should with that Paul. That's fine.
01:14:34
By the way, you're spot on when you said, um, that the weakest area of their defense is their satirical.
01:14:40
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It's, it's just, it's absolutely stunning watching somebody who comes up to you on the street or knocks on your door.
01:14:48
Try to show the show that number one, their resurrection in the, in the Bible.
01:14:53
Number two, that how they're going to get saved without being part of a covenant. It's absolutely stunning.
01:14:59
Just watching them stumble through it. Well, especially, especially because that very same person could probably sit there for an hour and argue with you on the
01:15:07
Trinity. Exactly. Or on the crucifixion or on birthdays or all sorts of other stuff like that. But then you get to the really heart and matter of how they know their relationship with God is sort of like, you know,
01:15:21
I've told the story over and over again. This guy that, that I started corresponding with, I mean, just an expert in attacking the doctrine of Trinity.
01:15:27
And then one day I said, are you in Christ? And, and he was just buffaloed. He had no, I, why are we talking about this?
01:15:33
Let's talk about something that's more important. It's just amazing because it's just sort of, so, so far outside of their experience. Anyway, thank you so much.
01:15:41
There you go. Both of those sounded really good. And of course it's not really smart because they're both
01:15:47
British. It was a great test and you probably didn't see it on your side of the glass, but you know what happened right around noon sharp?
01:15:56
No. Suddenly all these new people got connected to the live stream.
01:16:04
I have no idea. Apparently they didn't adjust their dividing line clocks. Oh, well, but when was the last time we actually did the dividing line on time?
01:16:14
I mean, seriously, I can't remember the last time we did it on time. So you're dividing line time.
01:16:19
You can keep, well, there's that.
01:16:24
Yep. There's Farshad in channel. I missed the first hour cause the Saturday, Saturday messing with the clock scam. Well, and I hate to say something, but that was the only hour.
01:16:32
We just went 15 minutes long so we could test Skype. So thanks for listening to watching the dividing line, whatever it is you did today.
01:16:40
I, what was that? Oh, that, that was illegal music. Oh no.
01:16:49
Hey, I got a note from a gray level. They're already working, man. So we've, we're going to have, we're going to have stuff. We're going to have stuff on Thursday of this week.
01:16:56
We are hosting a debate, um, between, uh, Sam Waldron and Michael Brown.
01:17:02
I need to blog something about that. So you can know when it's gonna be happening and know how you can hook up.
01:17:07
You can watch, you can listen. And, uh, it's going to be very, very important on the subject of the spiritual gifts, supernatural sign gifts as what