Rebuttal of Hank Hanegraaff on the Perpetual Virginity of Mary

Greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. It is a Tuesday, I think, and we are in the

AOMAX studio because today we need to provide a response to a video that Hank Hanegraaff posted promoting the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary.

But before we do that, I wanted to note a tweet from Dr.

Joe Boot, who was our guest in this studio within the past couple of weeks. We discussed a lot of what was going on in Canada and other issues in relationship to his book,

The Mission of God, and the issue of God's law and culture and things like that.

So Dr. Boot posted a tweet that says, 15 armed police in riot jackets and anti -stab vests burst in on my church

Sunday morning and entered without a warrant handing out tickets to several of my fellow elders. That's Canada in 2021.

Criminals are let out and pastors are fined for public worship. And so, of course,

Westminster Chapel in Toronto was expecting this eventually. It's sad that, as he mentioned at that time, there is a small minority of Christian churches that are standing against what has now become so blatantly obvious is a governmental, purposeful, intentional, coordinated grab of liberties and powers on the most narrow of pretenses.

The production of COVID panic is getting to the point now where it's so desperate and it's so sad.

When you see children on playgrounds, when you see children...

The one that really caught me was when you force tennis players in high school to wear masks, you have demonstrated you are an idiot.

Okay, that's just all there is to it. There isn't a virologist on the planet that could back up the idea that there is any benefit whatsoever.

There's no benefit outside at all. That's now been admitted by even the New York Times. But especially...

I don't know if you ever noticed, but I was a tennis player in high school. I played two years.

I went to state as a sophomore, in fact, then I got involved in my church. Didn't have time for it anymore. The coach was really unhappy about that.

But anyway, in case you haven't noticed, you generally don't get very close to the other player because that could be very dangerous to your health.

That ball can be moving really, really fast. And if you both end up in the net at the same time, it's not going to last very long and you're still going to be at least 12 feet apart.

So the whole thing is obviously stupid. If you haven't figured that out yet, then you need to take your mask off and get a little more oxygen because something's been going on there.

This is what's going on. This is what's happening. 15 armed police in riot jackets.

They think they're going to do, beat you to death a Bible? Right. And anti -stab vests.

Oh, there you go. Without warrant, handing out tickets to several of my fellow elders.

So this is Canada. This is the

United Kingdom. This is Germany. This is totalitarianism.

It's tyranny. And it's based on lies. And there you go. And so we pray for Westminster Chapel.

We pray for Joe Boot and for all the Christians there in Canada as they face these particular issues.

I would like to read you some ancient writings.

They are not actually Christian writings, though they pretend to be. There are documents that were somewhat known thanks to some of the early fathers.

Many of the early fathers engaged in apologetics and a defense of the

Christian faith and hence would make reference to writings that for many, many centuries we did not actually possess.

With the discoveries at Oxyrhynchus, the Nag Hammadi codices, finds like that, in many instances we now possess the originals.

Well, not the original, obviously not the original writing, but copies of these original books that were being made reference to by Christian writers.

And that has greatly enhanced our understanding of the battles that they were engaging in at that particular point in time.

In the process, we have encountered books such as the

Odes of Solomon. Some of you may recall that about four or five years ago we did a whole series of story times with Uncle Jimmy, which a lot of people still make reference to, at least when

I was traveling anyways. And we read through major portions of the

Nag Hammadi library and things like that. Obviously some of the books are so long it would take multiple programs just to read them, but ones that were most important.

Let me warn our homeschooling parents, we will be talking about the perpetual virginity of Mary, and hence there will be references to human anatomy in some places because the sources do it, and the dogmatic teachings of the

Roman Catholic Church do it. So there's no way to get around that. I will attempt to be somewhat circumspect, but not so much so as to leave confusion for anyone.

As I mentioned, three sources that I want to look at to start off our response to Hank Hanegraaff, the

Odes of Solomon, the Ascension of Isaiah, and of course the Protevangelium of James, all of which we did read, as I said, years ago in story time with Uncle Jimmy.

The reason we did is because these writings have had such an impact on the development of this theology.

In ode number 19 of the Odes of Solomon, and again, when we are talking about ancient works of literature, there are some that are 100 %

Gnostic, but what does that mean? How do you even define that?

What would be 80 % Gnostic? What would be 60 % Gnostic? So many of these books are a mixture of so many different perspectives and things like that, but these are coming from a very different worldview than that provided by Scripture.

And this comes out fairly plainly. When we read ode number 19, a cup of milk was offered to me.

Sorry, this is coming off of a website, so I don't have any control over the font size.

A cup of milk was offered to me, and I drank it in the sweetness of the Lord's kindness. The Son is the cup, and the

Father is he who was milked, and the Holy Spirit is she who milked him, because his breasts were full, and it was undesirable that his milk should be ineffectually released.

The Holy Spirit opened her bosom and mixed the milk of the two breasts of the

Father. Then she gave the mixture to the generation without their knowing, and those who have received it are in the perfection of the right hand.

The womb of the Virgin took it, and she received conception and gave birth, so the

Virgin became a mother with great mercies. And she labored and bore the Son, but without pain, because it did not occur without purpose.

And she did not require a midwife, because he caused her to give life. She brought forth like a strong man with desire, and she bore according to the manifestation, and she acquired according to the great power.

And she loved with redemption, and guarded with kindness, and declared with grandeur. Hallelujah. So here is ode number 19 of the

Odes of Solomon, and here you have the assertion that the

Virgin became a mother with great mercies, and she labored and bore the

Son, but without pain, because it did not occur without purpose.

And she did not require a midwife, because he caused her to give life. Now all of this, the female spirit, the

Holy Spirit is a she, the breasts of the Father, this is all straight out of standard

Gnosticism, not Valentinian Gnosticism, which attempted to look as Christian as possible.

This is your more standard version of Gnosticism, and you have these concepts.

Then we move over to the Ascension of Isaiah, the Ascension of Isaiah, where you have more of an attempt to make this sound like a biblical text, a biblical story, and less of the utilization of specifically

Gnostic language. All right, so here is the Ascension of Isaiah chapter 11.

All right, chapter 11. After this I saw, and the angel who spoke with me, who conducted me, said unto me, understand

Isaiah son of Amoz, for this purpose I have been sent from God. And I indeed saw a woman of the family of David the prophet, namely

Mary and Virgin, and she was espoused to a man named Joseph a carpenter, and he also was of the seed and family of the righteous

David of Bethlehem and Judah. And he came into his lot, and when she was espoused, she was found with child, and Joseph the carpenter was desirous to put her away.

But the angel of the Spirit appeared in this world, and after that Joseph did not put her away, but Mary, but kept

Mary, and did not reveal this matter to anyone. And he did not approach Mary, but kept her a holy virgin, though with child, and did not live with her for two months.

And after two months of days, while Joseph was in his house, now listen to this, after two months of days while Joseph was in his house, and Mary his but both alone.

It came to pass that when they were alone, that Mary straightway looked with her eyes and saw a small babe, and she was astonished.

And after she had been astonished, her womb was found as formerly before she had conceived.

And when her husband Joseph said unto her, What is astonished thee? His eyes were opened, and he saw the infant, and praised

God, because into his portion God had come. And a voice came to them, tell this vision to no one.

And the story regarding the infant was noised abroad in Bethlehem. Some said the virgin

Mary hath born a child before she was married two months. And many said she has not born any a child, nor has a midwife gone up to her, nor have we heard the cries of labor pains.

But they were all blinded respecting him, and they all knew regarding him, though they knew not whence he was.

And they took him and went to Nazareth in Galilee. So here you have the ascension of Isaiah giving a birth story.

And please note the reason why this is appearing. Gnosticism is a dualistic system.

I wasn't going to call it a faith. It's not a faith, even a religion. It's a system. And it is dualistic in its understanding.

That is, you have the material world, and you have the spiritual world. The material world,

Gnosticism attempts to explain where it came from, and it comes from a demi -urge. And some identified that eventually with Yahweh, with Jehovah of the

Bible. But it is evil, and the spiritual realm is good. And so if Jesus is to be good, then he doesn't really partake of the spiritual realm.

So there had to be an explanation as to how Jesus came to be understood as having been a man, and having a father and a mother, and things like that.

And so notice that just as in the Odes of Solomon, you had this supernatural origination from the father's breasts in the womb of the virgin.

Here, Mary is alone, and she looks with her eyes and sees a small babe.

And she was astonished. Why? Because there was no normal birth.

There were no birth pains. It belabors the point later on the story there as we read.

There was no midwife. There were no labor pains. There was no crying out. The baby just appeared.

And spiritual beings can just appear. And her womb is just as it was before.

That's not how babies are born. A woman's womb is not as it was before, once she has had a child.

And that child has to come out of the body. And there is only one way to do that until they develop the

Caesarean section, which is a fairly recent innovation. And so Joseph comes in, and he too.

Wow, the baby's here with no birth.

So this is not a child being born unto us, a son being given unto us.

This is, I've used the illustration before, this is very similar to beaming the baby out.

The Enterprise came by, said, there you go, we're done. And the derivation of this is found in the dualism of Gnosticism.

That's where these concepts are coming from, is to give you a

Jesus who is not truly of the seed of David. I have been teaching a church history class, and we've been spending a fair amount of time.

We just finally finished up Ignatius. And there were so many times in Ignatius's letters where he emphasizes the reality of the birth of Jesus, the reality of the physical nature of Jesus, the reality of his ancestry, and everything that goes with it, as the

New Testament does as well. Why? Because these people were around fairly early on.

And we see this in these sources. So one more to look at, and this one actually will be readable.

And this is the most important. This is the Protevangelium of James. Now, I grabbed a new translation that was,

I just happened to notice yesterday on Twitter, that a new translation had just been put out of all of this literature.

And so I grabbed it. I'll give you the title here once we read it. I'm not sure how long it would take me to get back to it, is the problem.

But obviously I'm not reading the whole thing. I want you to read the most important section, section 19, the birth of Jesus.

I saw a woman coming down from the hill country, Joseph continued. Where are you going, she asked me. I'm looking for a

Hebrew midwife, I replied. Are you an Israelite? Yes. And who is the woman giving birth in the cave?

She is my betrothed, not your wife. Mary was brought up in the Lord's temple,

I told her. I drew her as a wife by lot. She is not my wife, but is pregnant by the

Holy Spirit. Really? The midwife said. Come and see. So she went with him.

They were standing by the cave when a dark cloud enveloped it. My soul is magnified today, the midwife said, because my eyes have seen wondrous things.

Salvation has come to Israel, immediately the cloud withdrew from the cave and a great light, unbearable to look at, shone inside the cave.

Then the light softened little by little until a baby appeared. He took the breast of his mother,

Mary. The midwife gave a great shout. What a wonder today, she said, that I have seen this extraordinary sight.

And now I just stop for a moment, want to emphasize, just as we see in the others, this is not a normal birth.

There is no birth at all. This is Jesus beaming into the world.

This is a non -natural birth of a non -human being,

I guess. But you have the dark cloud, and then you have this bright light.

And man, I think that lots of people who've done various sci -fi movies have read this book too, because this is something

I've seen over and over again. Bright, bright, bright, gets softer and softer. I mean, this original

Star Trek happened all the time. Softer and softer and softer until now you see whatever the object is.

In this case, until a baby appeared. What a wonder today.

The midwife went out of the cave and Salome met her. Now parents, this is where, got to read what it says.

Okay. Salome, Salome, the midwife said, I must tell you about this extraordinary thing that I have seen.

A virgin has given a birth, something impossible for her to do. Surely is the

Lord my God lives, Salome swore. Unless I insert my finger and examine her hymen, I will not believe that the virgin has given birth.

So the midwife went in and said, Mary, get dressed. A great argument has arisen about you. When Mary heard this, she got dressed.

Salome came and placed her finger in Mary's hymen. Then Salome cried out, woe to me for my sin and unbelief.

I have tested the living God, and now my hand has been burned off me. Then Salome kneeled before the

Lord. Oh God of my fathers, she prayed. Remember me for I'm a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Do not expose me to disgrace before the sons of Israel, but place me back among the poor laborers.

For you know, oh Lord, that I have accomplished healings in your name and have received my wages from you.

Just then the angel of the Lord stood by. Salome, Salome, the Lord of all has heard your prayer. Present your hand to the child and lift him up.

Then he will bring you healing and joy. Now joyful, Salome approached the child and lifted him up.

I'll worship him because he is born King of Israel, she declared. Immediately Salome was healed and left the cave justified.

Just then a voice sounded, Salome, Salome, do not announce these extraordinary things you have seen until the boy has gone to Jerusalem.

Now, this is from the apocryphal gospels, and this is, here is the cover.

It's Penguin Classics, the Apocryphal Gospels, and why isn't it giving me the, hmm, that's interesting.

There is nothing on the front as to who the translator was. There's a penguin, that's nice.

Here we go. Translated with an introduction by Simon Gathercolt, the Apocryphal Gospels just came out. You've got the

Protoevangelium of James, the Birth of Mary, the Apocryphal Book of Seth on the Magi, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, etc.,

etc. There's a lot of stuff that is found in it. You might find it to be a useful resource to have.

Now, what is the point of all this? The point of all this is fairly obvious. The point of all this is, when you come to the

New Testament and you read the New Testament in a non -gnostic context, its teaching is very clear and very understandable.

It most definitely teaches the virgin birth. There are those who deny that, of course, today. There are a number of New Testament scholars out there that deny the virgin birth, attempt to turn it into various mythical aspects.

But be that as it may, it plainly teaches that Jesus Christ entered into this world as Isaiah prophesied.

A son has been given to us, a child has been born to us. That term, yelad, has been yeladed to us.

This is how children are born. There is a strong emphasis in Matthew and Luke on the virginity of Mary, the purity of both

Mary and Joseph, the visions of the angels, and the fact that Joseph kept her a virgin until she gave birth to her firstborn son, which was

Jesus. So the narrative of the

New Testament then goes on to utilize certain language and to talk about, in the same context, the father, mother, brothers, and sisters of Jesus.

And while Joseph does not appear in the ministry of Jesus, the assumption always having been that he has passed away,

Mary is frequently in company with a whole host of named

Adelphoi brothers. And there are the feminine form,

Adelphi, is also used for his sisters. So in the same context where your mother and your brothers are outside, these, this type of language is utilized numerous times in the text of the

New Testament, without any embarrassment, without any confusion. And if you're simply to read the

New Testament, you would come to conclusion, not that Mary was running around with this strange group of men who are not her offspring, or maybe were

Joseph's offspring by a previous marriage, though that's never mentioned, or who are cousins.

Have you ever encountered a situation where a woman runs around Galilee with a group of men who are not directly related to her?

You wouldn't come up with these kinds of things by reading Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

You're not going to come up with reading Paul, he makes no points about any of this. You're not going to come up with it by reading any of the early church fathers in the first century.

You're not going to come up with reading Ignatius. You're not going to find it in Clement's epistle to the church at Corinth.

It's just not there. If you allow the

New Testament documents to speak, it's very straightforward as to what they teach.

The language is not confusing. It's very straightforward. But, as most people know, and I recognize,

I've met Roman Catholics who did not understand the difference between the virginity of Mary, the immaculate conception of Mary, and numerous other elements of Marian teaching.

And so if you've never been a Roman Catholic, I fully understand why you might find, or Eastern Orthodox, though the

Orthodox are not as dogmatically specific, I guess is the best term to use, dogmatically specific as Roman Catholicism has become over the past number of centuries on the issue of the concept of the immaculate conception specifically, but as well the perpetual virginity of Mary.

The perpetual virginity of Mary is only tangentially related to the fact that Mary was a virgin at the time of the conception.

The perpetual virginity of Mary in current

Orthodox Roman Catholic teaching is that Mary remained a virgin her entire life.

The specific assertion... Well, let me, let's not have this because these are just notes, but thank you.

The specific, here's the specific definition given in the Universal Catholic Catechism.

The deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the church to confess Mary's real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the

Son of God made man. In fact, Christ's birth did not diminish his mother's virginal integrity, but sanctified it.

And so the liturgy of the church celebrates Mary as I, Parthenos, the ever virgin.

That's from the Universal Catechism of the Catholic Church. So there's their own definition.

Now, a less specific definition would simply be to say that Mary did not have other children.

The idea, the argumentation being that a womb that had carried the sinless

Son of God would be degraded by carrying a sinful child, even though he came to redeem sinful humanity.

But anyways, that's, that was the idea. And so as monasticism developed in the early church, especially after the period of the desert fathers, beginning as early as the end of the second century, numerous concepts that are fundamentally anti -biblical regarding gender and sexuality moved into what

I would call the bloodstream of the church from monasticism. Now, monasticism is not something you see the apostles going, you need to be like this.

There's, they set up no monastic orders. They do not give any qualifications for monks or monasteries or pillar saints or anything else.

But it develops, especially during periods of persecution, and has a major impact upon the organized church.

It is that impulse joining together with the popularity of works such as the

Protevangelium of James that gives rise to the idea over time of the perpetual virginity of Mary.

Now, the immaculate conception of Mary, the idea that Mary was conceived without the stain of original sin, that there was a preemptive application of the merits of Christ to her to protect her from that stain of original sin, was developed long after, was rejected by many for a long period of time.

To call that an apostolic tradition is to demonstrate that apostolic tradition has no meaning, not in any historical sense.

It's a mythological phrase. It's a how I explain why I believe something when there's no revealed reason why

I should believe it other than my church has told me to believe it. So we could muster numerous people to argue against the immaculate conception, but there are numerous people likewise who do not believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary.

And these are acknowledged. You can pick up resources like Theotokos, the encyclopedia on the information about Mary, and Ludwig Ott is honest enough to talk about certain, even of the

Cappadocian fathers in the fourth century, who plainly did not believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary.

It really is late fourth century when this becomes something where a great focus is put upon it, and it becomes something you dare not begin to question.

But where did it come from? There is nothing in the New Testament that even begins to hint at it.

So where did it come from? Well it came from the protevangelium of James. I was reading a book, I read a book by Jimmy Akin.

I was told that, well this is the book you need to read. This is where he's come up with this new argumentation. And by the way, read the whole thing, and there's no new argumentation at all.

Everything is stuff that we have dealt with over and over and over again. I mean, standard canon arguments and stuff like that.

We'll talk about that a little bit later, maybe not in this program, but later on, because I want to respond to it. But when he described the protevangelium of James, I was really surprised, because they're stuck.

Whether they want to be stuck or not, they are stuck with having to have a less than honest viewpoint of the protevangelium of James, because they know how important that source is to the development of their own theology.

And yet when you read it, that's why we've taken the time to read the whole, we read the whole thing, didn't we?

I think, because man, I thought that was a long program. Did we read the whole thing? I think we read the whole thing. But it's available online for free, anybody who wants to go read it, and it is a mishmash of weird, ahistorical mythology.

But Jimmy Akin says, it may preserve some traditions about Mary that we don't have preserved anywhere else.

No, it is a hopeless mishmash of silliness that has given rise to a tradition that then becomes the lens through which you then turn around and you look at the

New Testament, and I know it says father, mother, brothers, sisters, but what

I'm going to do is I'm going to interpret father and mother in one way, and then I'm going to interpret brothers and sisters as cousins.

Why you're going to do that? Because my church tells me to. No serious historian is going to say that a fair analysis of the history leads you to this conclusion.

That's not going to do it. Now, there are devotees all over the place, and if you want to see how a tradition can absolutely, positively take a person's mind over and cause them to apply one standard over here and a completely different standard over there, this is where to look.

This is where to look. This is where you will see it, and you will see it in glowing terms.

Hank Hanegraaff of the Christian Research Institute put out a video over the weekend,

I think it was from Friday if I recall correctly, where before going into Matthew chapter 2, probably because of the end of Matthew chapter 1, you have a key text that we'll look at, and he basically gave an apology, both in the classical use of that term and the modern use that term.

It was an apology in the modern use of that term, apologizing for the teaching he had given on this subject throughout his adult life prior to his conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy.

I learned only today that one of the most important people that directed

Hank Hanegraaff this direction was

Rod Dreher, author of Live Not by Lies and other works that a lot of us have read who is

Eastern Orthodox, and I found that interesting. I had not had any personal contact.

My recollection is, I remember the timeline here, just to give you reason as to why would respond here.

Well, when Hank Hanegraaff had Roman Catholic apologists on the

Bible Answer Man broadcast, specifically Tim Staples twice and Jimmy Akin once, who did he have on to oppose them?

Me. I've sat in his office, and they had catered food for me and Jimmy Akin with Hank and other high -ranking folks, the

CRI. This was when CRI was a fairly large organization that it's not any longer. But this was back during the heyday, because the

Bible Answer Man broadcast was a huge element in Christian broadcasting in the 1990s and into the 2000s.

And then the internet came along, changed everything. But I was first on it sometime in the 1990s.

The first program I did was on the King James Only Controversy, and we broke all records. I remember the energy in the studio was amazing.

You could look outside and you could see people coming in, and you could just see people going, this is incredible.

The phone banks were melting down. It was three hours, and it was one of the most popular programs they ever did.

And I've forgotten how many times I was on, but it was over a dozen. And for a period of time,

I was a regular guest and a regular contributor to the

CRI Journal. Wrote some good stuff for them. My article on Philippians 2, 5 through 11 is still one of my favorites, and it's still out there.

What Really Happened to the Council of Nicaea? Very important article, I thought. Very useful. Certainly got the

Roman Catholics' attention. But we had a good relationship for that period of time.

Really did. And if I wanted to contact Hank, I could contact Hank. I had the ways to do that, and I'd send him information, and I'd listen to the program, and so on and so forth.

Like I said, when we tackled Roman Catholicism, I was the one he had on. Then, around 2003, somewhere around there, the issue of Reformed Theology came up.

And Hank had always, Hank admitted, he danced around it. He had a

Reformed history, but not a real Reformed commitment. And we talked about it.

We really did. And there was, at one point, there was going to be a big confab over there at the headquarters to have it, sort of have it out on monergism versus synergism.

And I was going to come over. I volunteered to come over. I'll be happy to present the monergistic side.

That didn't end up happening. And when it did happen, it was primarily overseen by Gretchen Passantino, who is rabidly anti -monergistic.

Rabidly so. That led to the famous incident with George Bryson.

The Read My Book, a three -hour Bible Answering and Broadcast, where it was 20 minutes in.

I had a friend with me. Eddie D 'Alcour was with me. And I found this notebook.

It's in my office someplace, where I wrote down so Eddie could see it.

It's on the first page of notes that I was taking. It said,

I will never be on BAM again, or I'll never be invited to be on BAM again.

So I moved it over for him to see it. And he's like, and I was right. It's the last time

I was ever on. Because it was plain as day to anybody who was listening to that program, that this was a setup.

That Hank had met with George Bryson. Hank was visibly upset that Bryson's book turned out to be what

Bryson's book turned out to be. And that it was sort of like a Kinko copier version when

Hank thought it was going to be a published work that they were making available and stuff like that. And he was likewise visibly upset for two other reasons.

First of all, George Bryson did not work with him very well. And George was too honest a few times, to be perfectly honest with you.

With his responses, Hank was feeding him questions to get him to go a certain direction.

And he wouldn't always go that direction. So Hank was upset about that. And then of course, Hank was upset with me because I didn't just roll over and play dead.

I challenged Bryson. At one point, I pointed out that if Bryson's words were to have any meaning, that I'd have to wonder if he was an open theist, because if you're going to be consistent, that's what it would lead to.

Oh, was he angry about that? Like, well, be angry about it. Try refuting it.

And so, three hours, three days. Now, I'm at least thankful because people think, you know,

I didn't go to the studio for three days in a row to do that. Obviously, we did three hours in a row, and then it was played over the course of three days.

I had the thought that they might bury the second two days, because the first hour is live.

Not much you can do about that one. But it got worse. The last two hours were even worse.

And so, but they put all them out. And I don't remember how this exactly worked.

But that was, I believe, 2003. And basically, that was it.

I didn't, that was, that was pretty much the end of things. And then in 2010, so seven years later, was the next time

I saw Hank in person. I saw him down in Mexico, and then I saw him very briefly at a funeral here in Phoenix.

I think that was, Mexico was 2010, I'm pretty certain. Someone might be listening who would be able to tell me specifically.

Was it May? Okay. Yeah, well, yeah. And at some point,

I don't remember how it worked out. You were more involved with it than I was. Had they just not made it available anymore?

You couldn't buy it? Is that what was going on with it? Or, we wanted it available.

It was only available through them. Right, right, right. So, part of the deal we made for me to speak at the 2010 thing and do the debate with Robert Price was that we got to have that available.

Yeah, it was 20, it was 11 years ago. Who cares? And so, if you've heard it, it's probably because we made it available, and we got the rights to do that.

It's on our sermon audio channel. The Read My Book of Debate? Is that what it's called? Okay, all right.

And I didn't name it that. Anyway, so, that was the last communication

I've had. Somewhere, 2015, 2016, somewhere in that time frame,

I was informed that Hank was considering conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy.

And I had been concerned about where Hank was going once he made that decision in 2003.

And that really was the same time period where things started really changing for that broadcast and for CRI as a whole.

And I had always been concerned about the theological influences in Hank's life.

I had tried to be a positive one myself. But his primary assistant, who would always be there in the studio, and would be handing him books and handing him citations and quotes and stuff like that, was a fellow by the name of Stephen Ross.

And Stephen and I had clashed even during lunches before doing a number of those

Bible Answer Man broadcasts. He was into the New Perspective on Paul and odd things like that.

And so, I was always a little concerned about where that was going to lead.

And of course, it eventually did. So anyway, we have more than once responded to especially

Hank's attacks on Sola Scriptura. I mean, when the Bible Answer Man attacks

Sola Scriptura, someone should give a response. Because that spinning sound that you hear is

Walter Martin in his grave every time Hank Hanegraaff promotes Eastern Orthodoxy on what's called the

Bible Answer Man broadcast. And so, Walter's not around to do it.

So the rest of us... And I personally think, given the history, what

I've written for the CRI Journal and the programs I did, I feel a responsibility to respond when

Hank begins to attack the very truths that I defended on the

Bible Answer Man broadcast. So, we have been doing that.

We did a couple programs when he announced his conversion and he was baptized and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

Well, chrismated, sorry. Got to keep the Orthodox viewpoint in here.

But over the weekend, as I said, Hank put out a video presenting arguments for the perpetual virginity of Mary.

Now, as I said, he apologizes for having taught otherwise. And then he apologizes in defending, that gives an apology, in defending the concept of the perpetual virginity of Mary.

And so, honestly, if you were to go listen to my opening statement against geromatics in the four -doctrine debate that we did on the perpetual virginity of Mary, we covered the perpetual virginity of Mary, along with immaculate conception, bodily assumption, and other things.

And then we did, that was in the 90s. And unfortunately, the sound quality has always been bad on that one because it was recorded off room sound.

But then in 2003, I debated geromatics again, but this time at the

University of Utah in Salt Lake City. And that one is titled, Did Mary Have Other Children?

And so that's a fuller debate. You will find in those two debates recorded decades ago, every point that Hank brings up is refuted in those debates, every one of them.

Now, do I think for a second that Hank has ever listened to those debates? No. No, I don't. I just get the feeling having known

Hank those years, I don't get the feeling that he actually took the time to listen to the other side.

And that's, it's actually very, very common in my experience. For people who decide they're going one direction, they cut off those who would make that conversion more difficult on them.

And that certainly would have been me. He never certainly contacted me and said, what do you think about this?

Or what do you think about Eastern Orthodoxy? And so on and so forth. So I want to listen to what

Hank has to say, but let you know that if you want a rather full refutation that lasts longer and even has a representative from the other side, not

Eastern Orthodox, but Roman Catholic, those debates are out there. We have debated this publicly.

And that's available to anybody who wants to look it up free on YouTube, for now, anyways.

So let's listen to what Hank has to say, and we will interact with it.

I still want to move into Matthew chapter 2, but before I do that,

I want to say just a word about Mary, the mother of Jesus.

And that is that for most of my Christian life, I have to confess that I lacked a proper appreciation for the grandeur and glory of the mother of my

Savior. And here's what I mean when questions on the

Bible Answer Man broadcast arose, and not just the Bible Answer Man broadcast, questions about the

Virgin Mary. I would inevitably remind my audience that Mary was a sinner, just like all of us are sinners.

And I can't help but think of the distinct contrast between that statement or those statements on my part and what

Elizabeth said about Mary. Let's think about that for just a second.

He talks about the grandeur of Mary, the glory of Mary.

Things, of course, the New Testament says she's blessed amongst women. And the grace of God toward her had to do with the role that she got to play in bringing the world.

It was not something that was reflective of her as an individual, as if she possessed something outside of grace.

But when Hank would give that answer, there was a reason why he was giving that answer.

There's a context. And the context that he really doesn't seem to either recognize or want to get into here is that he would have many people calling who have been taught something like the immaculate conception of Mary.

Now, the immaculate conception is dogmatized by Rome in the 19th century.

It is taught against by at least seven different popes down through history. To call it an apostolic tradition is to make a mockery of both terms, apostolic and tradition.

Okay? And so if you want to see how unserious Roman apologists are, they'll talk about apostolic tradition, try to connect that to what

Paul says the Thessalonians, and then they'll promote something as apostolic tradition that at least seven different popes argued against.

So it gives you an idea of why it's challenging at times to take seriously that kind of utilization of language.

But that's the background. And so why would Hank emphasize the fact that Mary was a sinner like the rest of us?

Because so many of his scholars had been taught wrongly about that. Is he now saying that he, as an

Eastern Orthodox person, accepts the Roman dogmatization of immaculate conception?

Because immaculate conception, there were many people who believed in the perpetual virginity of Mary who never even dreamed of the immaculate conception of Mary.

They're that different a doctrine. And especially historically, so far separated from one another.

So I don't follow this argumentation unless what he's saying is, yeah,

I've actually not only come to accept the perpetual virginity of Mary, but the immaculate conception of Mary as well.

And by the way, I have seen many a person move from Protestantism, vague category,

Protestantism to Orthodoxy to Rome.

I have seen people who went Protestant to Rome to Orthodoxy.

So it does make you wonder, to be honest with you. And obviously,

I've been very concerned from the start because it seems like Hank wants to say, I still believe all the things that I believed before.

I just have refined these things. No, that's not the case. That simply is not the case.

There's a level of self -deception going on with a man who calls himself the Bible Answer Man, who is now answering very, very differently than he did before.

And he's admitting it here. He's admitting, well, this is, yeah, this is one area where, yeah, but it's actually so many others as well, whether he wants to admit it or not, that's the reality.

And everybody knows it. That's why I forgot how many views there were, but my recollection was there was about 150th the views that we'd have on a regular dividing line broadcast, something like that, maybe even less.

So that's the situation that has developed. But that was the background.

That's why you have to emphasize that Mary shares in the fallen reality of humanity.

When Mary says, I rejoice in God, my savior, the response from people.

And again, this is mainly have to do with the immaculate conception, not perpetual virginity, but the response from people is, well, you just don't understand what it is.

No, I do understand what it is. I fully understand the idea of keeping someone from falling into a pit is saving them the same way as pulling them out of the pit when they've already gotten covered by mud.

I get it. I've been debating this for decades. I get it. But the point is that it remains absolutely absurd to think that when

Mary said, God, my savior, that she had her own immaculate conception in mind.

It's absurd. It is biblically absurd. It's historically absurd. So when people respond that way, they think, oh,

I've got a good response here. And for a lot of people who don't follow argumentation really well, oh, I hadn't thought about it that way.

So what? It still allows a response. That's not what Mary was thinking of.

So that's why you had that kind of emphasis. And so it really makes me wonder, is

Hank saying that not only has he embraced the perpetual virginity of Mary, is he saying he's also embraced the immaculate conception?

Because I'm not sure why he would go here. But anyway. Remember that following the

Annunciation, Elizabeth called Mary blessed among women.

And she wondered how she was so privileged to have the mother of God come and visit her.

Now, of course, she said nothing about the mother of God in any way, shape or form.

And that's obvious. But the context is completely different. Hank's trying to say,

I just told people that Mary was a sinner, but I wasn't like Elizabeth. Well, Elizabeth's in a completely different situation.

It's completely different context. You're not answering questions with people calling in who've been given a false teaching.

There's no following of context here at all, which Hank was fairly good at doing at one point, at least on certain subjects.

So Elizabeth had a great appreciation for the mother of our

God, an appreciation that that many of us lack, certainly an appreciation that I lacked.

Okay. So just so very briefly, the

Greek term theotokos, which you can translate as mother of God or God -bearer, there is an orthodox utilization of that terminology, as long as you recognize it is a

Christological title, not a Mariological title. What do I mean by that? When the term is first used, it is emphasizing the reality of the hypostatic union, that Jesus Christ is truly the

God -man at his birth. He's not adopted later on. It's not like the spirit comes in and dwells in him and so on and so forth, that the one born of Mary was truly the

God -man. That's what theotokos meant. And so to call Mary the mother of God was to say something about Jesus, not something about Mary.

That has changed, obviously, and hence the utilization of mother of God in Roman Catholic piety with the expansion of all the

Marian dogmas, which the apostles knew absolutely nothing about, communicates something very different.

And for most Roman Catholics, theotokos has nothing to do with Jesus at all. I don't know how many

Protestants I've met that could give you an accurate definition of the hypostatic union, but I can guarantee you one thing.

The number of Roman Catholics I've met that give you an accurate definition of the hypostatic union is one -tenth that of the

Protestants I've met that could, which isn't saying much. And so that type of thing.

But look, let's be directly clear here, and of course,

I wrote a book on this subject prior to the turn of the—excuse me while I get my geritol out here—prior to the turn of the century,

I wrote a book on the subject of Mary, and I had a whole section where I talked about the fact that Protestants are afraid of Mary.

And they're afraid of Mary because of the complete disruption of a biblical narrative about Mary that is represented within Roman Catholicism.

They have seen Mary so turned into an idol, the idolatry of Rome, that as a result, they just, you know, it's like the term

Eucharist. Beautiful term. Thanksgiving. It's been stolen from us.

I've said it over and over again. It's been stolen from us because of its utilization within Roman Catholicism, and so there's an overreaction.

Same thing with Mary. No one should ever hesitate to preach on Mary, but the fact of the matter is there's just not that much about her in the

New Testament. And so if you're going to have an apostolic emphasis,

Mary is just not going to be the centerpiece that she is in Roman Catholicism.

Few things illustrate how far Roman worship and theology has gone from apostolic succession than the rise and the establishment of Mary as the very center point of what you see when you go into so many cathedrals in Mexico and places like that, where Mary is the center of all things.

That demonstrates that apostolic succession is not something that Rome has actually succeeded in accomplishing.

But are there Protestant ministers who would actually feel uncomfortable preaching on the

Magnificat? Probably. Shouldn't be. We shouldn't blush to use the term

Eucharist, either. If it's there in the Scripture, then deal with it.

But none of that changes the reality of the idolatry that Rome has introduced in regards to Mary.

But more serious than my lack of enthusiasm was a continual denial on my part of the perpetual virginity of the mother of our

Lord. Whenever the question arose, whatever the occasion,

I would point out that the Bible explicitly tells us that Jesus had brothers and sisters, that Matthew's Gospel records the rhetorical questions of those acquainted with Jesus's immediate family, like, isn't this the carpenter's son?

Isn't his mother's name Mary? Aren't his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas, aren't they all with us, and aren't all his sisters with us as well?

It's a good question, isn't it? Why would you, if you don't mean to communicate the idea that Jesus had brothers named

Simon and Joseph and so on and so forth, why would you not make that clear?

Because you talked about father, mother, you're using that in the normal human relationship context.

And there are other terms, nepsios, syngenis, that you can use in Greek to indicate kinspeople, cousins.

Yes, syngenis is actually that word. I found that, I always found that to be very, very ironic in light of a number of debates

I've done. But yeah, why the lack of clarity?

Well, there is no lack of clarity. The utilization of language in those texts is clear, it's obvious, and there is nothing in the context to even begin to cause a person to question what is being communicated at all.

At all. Where, then, does the lens come from to change the meanings of these words?

We read it at the beginning. That crazy stuff? Yes, that crazy stuff.

It's not like, it's not like you had well -known religious leaders trying to get the protevangelium of James put into the can of scripture.

That didn't happen. What you had, and this happens a lot in church history, what you had is the rise of a popular belief that becomes seated in the mind and in the hearts of people that's extremely powerful.

And that then pushes people toward seeing that in the text of scripture.

It's not the first time it happened. Well, it's been one of the earliest times it happened, but it's not the only time it's going to happen in church history.

Let's put it that way. And that there's no biblical precedent for the rendering of the

Greek word Delphos, or its feminine form Adelphi, as cousined.

And had the New Testament writers wanted to designate the siblings of our

Lord as cousins, they would have used the word Anepsius. Listen to the most interesting, informative, and inspirational unplugged podcast.

Click on the i above. Well, this I now freely confess was an egregious error.

An egregious error. An egregious error to say that when we interpret the

New Testament, the normative meaning of words should be taken first, and we should not allow external traditions from the enemies of the

Christian faith to override the standard meaning of language. This is an egregious error.

This is what we just heard from Hank Hanegraaff. It's an egregious error. The argument is plain.

The argument is, well, it could mean something other than brothers and sisters.

I mean, it's possible. There are places where it doesn't literally mean a brother or sister.

And so there's this possibility, and that becomes a certainty, a dogmatic certainty.

Now, they never want to present it that way, because if you're presenting it as a dogmatic certainty, then you know what the standard of proof is.

You have to prove it can't mean brothers and sisters. And anybody who reads it goes, yeah, but that's the standard meaning.

That sort of seems to be what's being communicated. Right. Right. So the idea is you need to try to crack the door open just enough to let the possibility in that maybe it means something other than that.

So at this later tradition, you've already denied sola scriptura. You've already given to the church this nebulous concept of tradition, the ability to develop this tradition into all sorts of other things.

You crack the door open so you can get it in there, you see. So here you have

Hank Hanegraaff saying, it was an egregious error of me to teach you sound hermeneutics.

You know what's the tragedy about this? Because once you buy this, then when we go to texts on the deity of Christ, the resurrection, salvation itself, you've got to start opening the door to all that wackiness that's out there in those areas too.

Oh, he says, I don't have to because I have the church. I have the tradition.

I have the liturgy. That's how they'll say, see,

I don't have to worry about all that. I don't have to worry about the fact that I've now become wildly inconsistent in my exegesis because that's not where I get my truth from anymore.

That's why the Orthodox and Roman Catholics, the first thing they go after, first thing to go after, soul scripture, because they believe things that the apostles never taught.

Have it right here. And I say that because both in Hebrew and in Greek, the designation brother, or for that matter, sister, is appropriately used to refer to relatives as well as to brothers and sisters.

And I'll give you an example. Jacob in the Old Testament and Laban, they're called brothers, though Laban was in fact the uncle of Jacob.

So you have, here's how you do it. It's easily understandable.

We know that, for example, when we deal with Muslims and they go to Deuteronomy and try to deal with the issue of who is being prophesied in the

Old Testament, they're trying to turn it into Muhammad and the

New Testament identifies these prophecies having to do with Jesus. They try to play this game as well. There is a specific utilization of brothers as in fellow covenant members, even when it is not a specific brother in a family.

But is that being used in the context of talking about family relationships as you have in the

New Testament? Is it putting you in a position of having to take the literal meaning of father and mother and the metaphorical meaning of brothers and sisters in the same sentence?

Hank Hanegraaff should realize that's an inconsistency. Why doesn't he? Well, I think the answer is clear.

And Abraham and Lot, they're called adelphoi, or brothers, in the

Septuagint, or Greek rendering of the Old Testament, that which was used by the

New Testament apostles, and therefore the point is there is a biblical precedent for viewing the

Greek word adelphos as referring to a relative rather than a brother.

Okay, so once again, I hope you're seeing—because we gave you the materials you needed to be able to see through this kind of argumentation at the start.

And that is, it is not enough to say that there are wide uses of a term.

Those who have studied these things, you're talking about what's called a semantic domain. A semantic domain is the range of meanings for a word.

And so, all they're establishing is, is that adelphos has a wide enough range of meaning to allow something other than a literal sibling.

That does not change the reality that the normative use in a context where you're talking about family relationships is a brother and a sister.

But they think that's enough. They think just simply establishing, well, hey, it's possible, maybe, just break that that door open just a little bit, this is what these types of groups have to do.

It's like, well, it's like I was listening to some of my debates with Jerry Matotix, hadn't listened to him a long time, and his utilization of Solomon bringing a throne for his mother, and that this somehow becomes relevant to Mary.

Once you have an overriding necessity to prove something, you can find anything to do.

And once you have an external teaching that says Mary did not have any other children, then all you've got to do is find some way to get around the biblical passages that say otherwise.

Whether that's the natural meaning, whether that's forced upon you, whether that's the result of exegesis, none of this is exegesis.

The Bible Answer Man is not doing Bible here. He's doing how to get around the

Bible. This is what cults and false religions do, and you're now seeing it from someone who used to expose that.

That should be a sobering reality for everybody. A sobering reality for everybody.

Well, I got another confession. I also wrongly argued that because Matthew tells us that Joseph did not have sexual relations with Mary until she gave birth to a son, we're justified in believing that Mary did have sexual relations with Joseph after the birth of Jesus.

Now, once again, this is the—and again, there's nothing new here.

I guess you could say in the sense of the modern situation, there's some new argumentation.

Not this, but this wasn't a big issue, for example, at the time of the

Reformation because, well, Rome hadn't even defined as a dogma such things as the Immaculate Conception, the

Bodily Assumption, and Mary at that particular point in time. But the point being that this has been gone over, over and over and over again.

This is what you—and if you will listen to Catholic Answers, every single one of Catholic Answers presenters all have the same script, and it's going to go like this is going to go.

And so what you're going to hear is the Greek term haos does not mean that after the point until, that that means that they then had children afterwards because Michal did not have children until the point of her death, and obviously she didn't afterwards.

I think that's a particularly really bad example, but it's the one they use all the time because it's in the Septuagint because nobody has children after death.

I mean, it's just—that's sort of like a duh moment. But if you'll go back and listen to the debates with Jerry on these subjects,

I present the fact that haos in Matthew 1 is in a phrase haos hu.

Look it up. All you got to do if you've got accordance, you've got logos, if you've got olive tree, whatever, those are sort of the three big biggies.

But if you've got them, outline haos hu, do search for lexeme, and then read through all the appearances of haos hu.

You can do it in the Old Testament as well if you want, but especially relevant in Matthew because he's the one using it.

And you will see over and over and over again the normative use of haos hu means that the action of the main verb either ceases, is changed in some manner, or is reversed at the point of the until.

So what these—what Hank's doing and what Catholic apologists do is, again, you want to go, well, it doesn't necessarily mean that, rather than, well, the normative usage would indicate that.

And when you put this text together with this text and that text with that when you allow the text to speak together, it's a unanimous consent that you have the

Holy Family and it included Jesus's brothers and sisters. Real obvious, but when you don't have sola scriptura, that's where things go.

And this, again, was simply wrongheaded. And I say that because in 2

Samuel 6 .23, and this is just one example, we read that Michal, the daughter of Saul, had no child till the day of her death.

Now, quite obviously, this is not meant to imply that she had children following her death.

And of course, you know, you hear this, and you're just left going, how does someone go from where they were to finding this kind of thing to be a meaningful argument?

Let me show you something. Let me just pull back here to the relevant text.

Matthew 1 .25. And he did not know her, haos hu, until she gave birth to a son, and they called his name

Jesus. Now, it is not the intention of Matthew to address a doctrine that would come out of Gnosticism and become dogmatized hundreds of years later, so as to give us a whole discussion.

But the point is, the emphasis, he kept her a virgin. He did not know her until she gave birth to a son.

And the normative use, so here's what I did, is

I popped over, oops, that's, oh, I did another search afterwards.

All right, I'll just show you how this works. Go back over here, you go to haos hu, come on, it doesn't want to,

I hate Windows, I detest, stop, go away, thank you.

Let's try it again. It knows what

I'm thinking up here. Okay, well, on a

Mac, I could just, I could select haos hu and do a search for you, but not on Windows for some reason.

Okay, there we go, only third time for it. Search for inflected, there we go.

Haos hu is now found in each one of these places, all right? So let's see how it's used here in Matthew.

Let's just look at Matthew. He told another parable, the kingdom of heaven is like leavened that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour till it was all leavened, haos hu, until it was all leavened.

So obviously, it's a process of leavening that had an endpoint.

It doesn't, the leaven doesn't just destroy the bread, it goes to the point where it has now gone through all of the loaf and that's the end.

Okay, well, all right, Matthew 14, 22, immediately made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side while he dismissed, while he dismissed the crowds.

Well, he wasn't dismissing the crowds forever, was he? Once they were dismissed, they were dismissed.

That's just a type idea, but it has an endpoint at which point he stopped dismissing the crowd once they were gone.

Matthew 17, 9, as they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, tell no one the vision until the son of man is raised from the dead, haos hu.

So that's the transfiguration. Do you know about the transfiguration? Did you read about the transfiguration?

That means they eventually told somebody about it, huh? And so the command was up to a certain point and then it actually switches to where now, make it known.

And they did. That's the haos hu that we have in Matthew 1, 25, isn't it? That's logically what it would be.

And this is in Matthew's usage, right? Matthew 18, 34, in an anger, his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt.

So he's going to be in jail up until the point where he's to pay his debt. And then what happens?

He gets out of jail. It changes. See, one of the problems here is that a lot of people, and Hank demonstrated this,

I don't remember now and I don't have time to go back and listen, but it would be interesting to go back and listen because there's this little faint bell telling me this did come up with Tim Staples, but I could be wrong.

But it would be really interesting to find out if on the Bible Answer Man broadcast, this issue came up, because I'm going to be perfectly honest with you.

On a number of the programs that we did, Hank was really involved. Like he found the

King James program very, very interesting, really did. But I'll be perfectly honest with you.

He really seemed bored with the Roman Catholic stuff. He didn't really engage it.

I could have had a discussion about this, and I don't think he'd remember it.

And what is interesting as well is that Hank has started to, well, when he converted to Orthodoxy, one of the big things was we've got to learn

Greek. Me and my family were learning Greek. The problem is when you learn a language, and this is one of my problems with the very, very brief way in which people are taught

Greek in seminary now. When you learn a language, if you do not read it, you will end up knowing it on the basis of singular words rather than how they're related to one another.

So people very easily can focus in on haos. Oh, that means until, and so I'm going to go look at other places.

The one with Mikal is not haos who. So you're looking at just one word, not a phrase.

And phrases have meanings. They do in English. We have all sorts of phrases. One of the reasons

English is so hard to learn is we have all sorts of phrases have very unique meanings. So this is your standard error.

He's talking about making egregious errors. Well, now he's made another one. Now he's made another one, but it's in defense of tradition rather than in defense of biblical teaching, which is a sad, sad, sad thing.

The other examples could be given, but I'm sure you get the point. There's no warrant apart from theological prejudice for holding that Mary and Joseph had sons and daughters following the birth of our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. There is no warrant outside of theological prejudice.

No, there is no warrant for questioning the natural meaning of the words, the natural flow of the language that is found across the

New Testament aside from accepting the heretical teachings of Gnostics.

Now Hank's not going to talk about the protevangelium of James. He's not going to talk about that kind of stuff. He's not going to read you that kind of material.

We start with that so you can have the background, so you can know what's going on. But here is the exact opposite of truth.

The natural reading of these texts does not substantiate his position.

All he can do is say, well, maybe, possibly.

Why didn't he give you other Methean uses of heosu? Because he doesn't know about it. It's not supportive of the tradition, and that tradition is not an apostolic tradition.

Now, whether Joseph was a widower who had a child by a previous marriage, and therefore, sons and daughters referred to in Scripture were stepchildren, or the children referenced in Scripture were the children of Joseph's brother,

Cleopas, who died and left him in the care of Joseph. I don't know. I can't say that with certainty.

See, this is the other thing, because Rome hasn't said for certain either.

Well, some of the popes sort of have, and so depending on what authority you put on certain papal pronouncements, but there's all these theories they've come up with.

Because let's be honest, it's laughable.

It's laughable that Mary is running around Galilee with a whole group of adult men that are not her son.

Well, because if they are Joseph's, by a previous marriage, his wife died.

That's very, very common. Wouldn't require a divorce or anything. Probably would have been a death.

No one's arguing with that. But still, they would have all been older than Jesus.

So think about that. So all these older guys who are a decade older than Mary are running around with her, but they don't believe in Jesus.

And they're telling Jesus, go show yourself and go reveal yourself and all the rest of this stuff, but they're not even actually brothers and sisters.

And of course, the crowd, when Mary and her non -son male retinue that is going along with him, along with her, show up at the house in that other story, they say, your mother and your brothers are outside.

When in point of fact, they actually should have said your mother and your, did they have any idea?

Cousins? Something? I don't know. But who knows? It's just laughable.

That's why they've had to come up with cousins. That's why they've got a previous marriage. Brothers from someplace. Absolutely.

Positively amazing. But it's theological prejudice if you read the text in its normative sense and meaning.

But let's not talk about that protevangelium of James's, especially that Odes of Solomon thing about the, yeah,

I don't want to talk about that. But what can be said with a great deal of confidence is that if Mary and Joseph did have other biological children in concert with Mosaic law, our

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ would have commended his sacred mother into the care of those children.

Now, this is another, I think, just incredibly weak argument. I mean, again, addressed for decades.

But in case you're wondering what the argument is, in John chapter 19 at the cross, Jesus entrusts

Mary to John. And from that point forward, he took her into his home. And the idea is that by Mosaic law,

I'm not sure exactly what interpretation of Mosaic law they're utilizing here, or they're just simply saying, you know, the natural children are required to take care of the parent or something like that.

But by Mosaic law, if Jesus has younger brothers, that he has to entrust

Mary to them. Now, just think for just for a moment, okay?

We already know from John chapter 17, do the brothers believe in Jesus or reject

Jesus? They reject Jesus. Are they eventually going to believe in him? Some of them do. But right now,

John chapter 7 has already made clear they reject. Secondly, where are they?

In John chapter 19, Jesus is on the cross. Who's at the foot of the cross?

Mary and John, the beloved disciple.

So who in the world is he going to give her to, to entrust her to?

The believing disciple that's there or the unbelieving brothers who aren't there?

Are you serious that this is an argument? Yes, Hank is making this argument.

Has he thought it through? I don't know. I find it a horrifically shallow argument.

It's so obvious what Jesus is doing.

It's so obvious it has to do with belief in him and the rejection of his brothers.

It's so obvious that it's talking about new relationships that will result from his death, burial, and resurrection.

Instead, as Mary stood by the cross of Jesus, Jesus entrusted the ever -virgin

Mary to the care of his beloved disciple

John. And from that hour, that disciple, says scripture, took her to his own home.

Are Christians guilty of blind faith? Read Hank Hanegraaff's book, Has God Spoken? Click on the i above.

I wanted to try to edit him out, but... Now, while I have never supposed that Mary was not a virgin before the birth of Christ, I have both preached and I have written that Mary conceived children after the birth of Christ.

Let me simply say this, and this from the bottom of my heart, for that,

I am truly sorry. The reality is this.

The entire history of the old covenant from the first Adam and Eve forward is preparation for the incarnation of the last

Adam, the last Adam conceived through the final

Eve. So while the dogma of the Immaculate Conception is completely foreign to the

Eastern tradition, the nature of the mother of God was wondrously purified by the

Holy Spirit, thus throwing open the way of union with God to the whole of creation.

Okay, so there you have, it's foreign to the Eastern tradition. So why did you bring it up at the start?

And what is this supposed to mean? Did anyone really understand what was just said? That this one...

thrown open to all of... what? What was that supposed to communicate?

I have no earthly idea. It just seems like words strung together that doesn't flow from anything that came before.

I mean, he's apologized for having taught consistently with the means of exegesis that he utilized in everything else.

Okay, so I apologize I was not the tradition answer man back then, but I am now, so I apologize.

But then you have this... What was that? Was that an acceptance of the result of the

Immaculate Conception without accepting the idea of the dogmatic necessity of the

Immaculate Conception? Because it's obvious, I mean, Orthodox writers recognize that Rome's dogmatizing of that and the way that they did goes against history, just as they recognize that First Vatican Council, papal infallibility, bodily assumption, all that stuff, that kind of dogmatic stuff.

The Orthodox aren't really big into that, but I have no idea what that was supposed to mean.

It sounded flowery, but it didn't really accomplish anything. Now with that said, when

I come back from the break, I want to get into chapter two.

Yeah, well, fine. We'll go ahead and pull the plug on that and just complete the analysis of what was being said.

It is sad, obviously, whenever you see someone moving farther and farther away from truth and promoting error and apologizing for having said the truth in the past.

That's sort of the toughest part, I'll be honest with you. Apologizing for having spoken the truth in the past.

I am thankful that the reach of this is relatively small and you say, well, you're helping to get to more.

Yeah, but we're doing it in the context of providing a refutation of it. There are many

Protestants who just wouldn't even know where to start looking for information to respond to this kind of thing.

I am very thankful that over the years we have been able to engage this subject and debate this subject and get that information out there and do it in such a way that we, since it's in a debate, it's not just us saying this and them saying that.

We get to ask questions, we get to do the cross -examination, and that helps tremendously.

But there you go. This came out, like I said, just this past weekend. I felt it was very, very appropriate to provide a response.

Are there not all sorts of other things that we can be getting to going on right now?

Well, we talked about the one with Ezra Institute up in Westminster Chapel up in Canada.

We did have to sort of mention that at the start. But yeah, we'll get back to those things as the opportunity arises.

And as I mentioned, I want to provide a response to the relatively brief comments that Jimmy Akin made in his book.

By the way, I listened to the book. And interestingly enough,

Jimmy Akin narrated his own book. And that's not always a good idea.

But he did an excellent job. He has an excellent voice for narration. It's very clear, paced properly, did a very, very good job.

And there were two or three times where he said things, and I'm like, yeah,

I'm glad he went there. I agree. It especially had to do with dating and stuff like that on some of the

New Testament books and post -New Testament books. And so there were things. But obviously, there was a lot of other places where there was just this unnecessary

Roman Catholic overlay to the material.

I don't think he's going to be shocked that I would say something like that. But anyways, I do want to look specifically at the comments and the arguments that he made because the whole idea has been, let's do this debate because I've come up with these arguments.

And I'm like, but you didn't come up with these arguments. They're old arguments. In fact,

I wonder, to be honest with you, I didn't look in the back. Well, I don't think there was a bibliography.

I'm going to have to check on that. I'm going to have to check on that. But anyone who has read

Michael Kruger or even watched the conversation that Dr. Kruger and I did on the early church and the canon at G3 a couple of years ago would know that I just didn't get the feeling that Jimmy Akin is up to speed on those issues.

So we'll find a time to get to those things and to numerous other subjects as well.

Thanks for watching the program today. We will, Lord willing, see you next time unless the

Royal Canadian Mounted Police are about to bust in here and take Rich and I out. But Lord willing, we'll see you next time.