Gary DeMar Said What?? | Discussion w/ Dr. Sam Frost & @answeringadventism

The Apologetic Dog and Guarding the Faith

Hello and welcome to The Apologetic Dog, where it's our heart's desire to contend.

For the faith. And so hopefully as you're starting to see The Apologetic Dog more and more, you see that beard, right? That's a beard letting you know that the dog means business. And this dog is a guard dog.

And so this really represents all Christians are supposed to guard the gospel of grace. And so in the logo, you kind of see 1 Timothy 6 verse 20 that says, O Timothy, guard the deposit that is entrusted to you.

Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge. And so here at The Apologetic Dog, that's our aim, is to do apologetics to contend for the faith. And we do that by exposing those worldviews that try to rival the knowledge of God.

And so we do that by standing on God's Word at every point in. And so before we dive into our very special live episode, by the way, I have a few announcements that I just want to bring to your attention.

Really exciting. This coming Monday, just a few days away, I will be participating in a debate at Donnie's channel at Standing for Truth. I will be debating with Gavin James. He represents the Church Christ.

And so we're going to be debating on the topic of justification. And let me tell you, it's either by faith alone or faith plus works. So you do not want to miss that. Like I said, that's coming up Monday in just a few days at 7 p .m. at Standing for Truth.

Another announcement is I will be speaking at a conference in September on basically the whole theme of the conference is how should we live because eschatology matters. And so this is a long way away in time.

So you'll be seeing this kind of advertised more and more. And I'm really excited to be able to speak on the resurrection of the dead. We're gonna have many other guest speakers there as well. And so I really look forward to be able to speak on this topic of eschatology.

I never really was super passionate about eschatology. I thought, you know, I'm hashtag pain meal. It's all gonna pan out the way that God wants. I'm totally fine with, you know, the pre-tribulation rapture stuff.

Big John MacArthur fan. And so I just was kind of coasting along. And you, just as God would have it, me serving as a pastor, there then there was heresy starting to creep up in my hometown saying that Jesus already returned.

Saying things like, there's no resurrection of the dead in the way that we've been taught that we're gonna be received resurrected bodies fit for eternity. No, that has something to do with Israel. That's in the past.

It's 7 AD. And you know what? God's not going to restore all things. And so as I started to hear all of these things, I couldn't believe it. I had to actually start taking eschatology serious. And praise God.

A lot of times that's how we see how he works throughout church history is the church unifies together to war against heresy. And so that heresy I'm talking about is called full preterism, hyper preterism.

And I've had guests on before to really go more in depth about what that means. And so today, I have a couple guests I want to introduce here in just a minute. But I want to talk about where a lot of this heresy spawns out of.

They will claim sola scriptura. We just want the Bible and the Bible alone. And many of us are like, that's actually not sola scriptura. That's something else when you try to divorce yourself from this historic faith.

And so I want to talk a little bit more about this principle. But I have a couple guests that I want to introduce you all to. And one is blank, but that's okay. We're about to bring him here momentarily.

But we got Myles. Myles, if you don't care, introduce yourself and tell us about your ministry and how.

Sola Scriptura, Restorationism, and the Role of Church History

People can find you. Yeah, I have a channel called Answering Adventism. The stream tonight is obviously not specifically about Adventism, but we may get into that a little bit seeing as there's a lot of similarities between what we're hearing from some of these folks and not just Adventists, but other Restorationist movements.

So if you're interested and you're a Christian and want to learn more about Adventism, how to reach Adventists with the gospel, check out the channel. You can just YouTube Answering Adventism. Thanks so much, sir.

All right. Oh, Dr. Frost, where'd you come from? Well, I've been here. You're in that.

Green room, weren't you? I had to, you know. I finally figured out. Oh, wait a.

Minute. Well, hey, you made it. And you're a frequent guest on the Apollo Jet Dog. In fact, you are the one that I called. I said, Dr. Frost, I've had people calling me trying to get me to buy this idea that Jesus isn't coming again.

And I honestly didn't know what to do. I was like, in my heart of hearts, and for what I do know about Scripture, this is attached to our blessed hope. But I don't know how to speak the lingo. And you were a guest on Eli Yala's channel probably over a year ago talking about this.

And so I started messaging you, and you were very kind. And you let me call you up and ask all my weird questions. And you're like, hey, I got your back. And the more we started talking, we were like, hey, why don't we do an episode on this?

And the more you and I talked about this, and this relates back to Myles, is a lot of this spawns out of a misunderstanding of.

What Sola Scriptura is. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, it does. You know, you've talked about that restorationist Barton Stone, Campbell, what was going on with all of that and the way they were utilizing Quakers.

George Fox was the same way. A lot of these groups were the same way, kind of mystical groups, movements, German mystical movements, where it was just, you know, it was really anti-authoritarian to, you know, Reformation was a reaction to authority, hierarchy, church, you know, all of that kind of stuff.

And so there were many that were going in the direction. We still see this particularly in America, where you just need inner light, the Bible, and, you know, mystical contemplation and that kind of stuff.

And you don't need classical education or any of that kind of stuff. That's nothing new. This has been around throughout church history, to have these little offshoot movements.

Yes. Before I kick it over to Miles, I want to hear his side of things with how he studies the restoration movement and any particular movements in particular within that. But I want to remind our watching audience that if you have any questions for any of us about—we're going to be mainly focusing on full preterism and a lot of the recent events that have been transpiring over the past couple weeks.

You may be new, don't know what we're talking about, but we have a lot of things to cover. But send your questions in the comments, and we're going to set aside some time at the end to talk about any good comments that we see or any questions that you may have.

And maybe you identify with this realized eschatology and don't know why it's bad and why it's wrong, and we'd love to speak to that if you have any questions. And let me just say this. We have Dr. Frost in the building, so you definitely utilize this time.

I don't go a true live feed like Miles does over there from time to time, so now is the time to do it. But Miles, I want to hear from you about why is solo scriptura important, and what are some groups that really pray into twisting.

What solo scriptura means? Yeah, so, well, it's important because—and Sam got to it a little bit there earlier—I actually just engaged with a guy yesterday who was kind of having the same sort of, I have the Holy Spirit within me, I just need that in the Bible.

And this guy was also telling me that the King James Bible itself is ontologically the Holy Spirit. And so that's a perfect example for you of why a properly understanding solo scriptura matters, because history gives us proper guardrails to navigate within, so that we're not completely unhitched and derailed, while at the same time representing the sole infallibility of scripture, but then not thinking—because a lot of this, I think, stems from the idea of thinking too highly of yourself in relation to those who came before you, thinking we're smarter than all the people that came before us.

They were either confused by Greek and pagan mythology, or insert whatever sort of thing. And so I particularly deal with a lot of these restorationist groups, specifically the Seventh Adventists, because that's the tradition I was raised in.

And they essentially just have their own flavor of this, where they just put their own veneer on it, but they do use the terminology solo scriptura to try and pass off this same sort of idea of—well, we saw it with the Sassanians.

They're really just repackaging what the Sassanians were saying. For those that don't know, Sassanians were an anti-Reformation or a counter-Reformation movement to the Reformers, who used some of these same things we hear from the restorationist groups, like true Christianity went off the rails after the Apostles, and Greek and pagan mythology is what crept in, sending the church apostate.

We just need to get back to just the bare text of Scripture, and every group that does this ends up in some sort of Christological heresy, some.

Way or another at some point. So, you know, we're talking about restorationist groups, and I see someone in the comment—shout out to Blue Light there—they said, Grandma's Church. Grandma's Church. And that's a reference to a video that I did in reference to the Church of Christ.

So that is a restorationist group, and they are unashamed to say, you know, basically, no creed but Christ. It's me, my Bible, under a tree. And it sounds pious until you start reading that Bible, and you realize that Jesus said, I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against him.

And what he's getting at is his bride is going to be ever-present. He's not going to abandon his bride. So when we look in church history, we should expect the true gospel to be present, and Jesus promised the Holy Spirit to guide his church into all truth.

And so, point is, Sola Scriptura recognizes Scripture as the ultimate authority that God has inspired that we test all things to, but it's not going to be detached from history. I have to explain to many students that the Bible didn't just float on a cloud down to us, but God has spoke in time and in history and preserved his Word to us, and so there's a there's a rich history of that.

And so does that make sense? So we're trying to say, Sola Scriptura, the key word is infallibility. It's the sole infallible rule for our faith in practice, but that assumes that there's other roles, there's other standards that we can practically look to, but it's going to have to bend the knee to Scripture.

What.

Do you think, Dr. Frost? Did I get that right? That's right. What Miles was saying, you see this even in, you know, God's dealing with Israel. He's constantly reminding them of the past. There's constant, you know, recitals of the past.

How many times do you need to be told, you know, I brought you out of Egypt? It's like, okay, I got that. We need to be reminded of the past. I think this was God saying to them, don't forget your past.

That's who you are. That's, I'm building something here. And Israel would go off the rails. They would go off into this, these other nations, or that's not their past. It's the, they all worship was not who delivered them out of Egypt.

So they constantly need to be reminded because we're just dull of hearing. So it's very easy to forget the past or to not associate with what we're doing today with in the present is going to be built off of what is being done, what has been done in the past because God is a God of providence.

He's doing something. He's building something. And so with eschatology, you know, where are we going? See that thought alone changed the cyclical idea of going into nowhere or going into some sort of a conflagration that will eventually burn out or maybe some eternal return kind of thing.

And there was all kinds of different ways of viewing history, but Augustine viewed history linear in the sense that, you know, God started, had at the beginning and there's also an end. And so there's a goal, a teleology to be reached and that's eschatology.

That's that's the basic structure of what eschatology is. So with preterism, you remove that and throw it all into the past. And then we have this wide open, unknown future. Boy, now we're crossed.

If you would, I would like for you to tell people a little bit about your past, just briefly about where you've come from, because I've had you on the channel before and you've talked about that. But if you would talk a little bit about your history in relation with preterism and just kind of give people a general idea of what that means, maybe even what partial preterism means in relation to the term we're going to keep talking about, full preterism.

Yeah, I, you know, Bible college back in the late 80s, early 90s, reading a lot of what you would call post-millennial partial preterist, that kind of stuff, where the focus is really on 70 AD, largely reactionary to dispensationalism, which is I grew up in that in the Foursquare Gospel Church.

I grew up, remember Hal Lindsey and watching the movie Late Great Planet Earth as a child. You know, so that formed my mind. So in college, and rightly so in college, you're exposed to all of these ideas of preterism was one of them.

And certainly post-millennialism, David Chilton, Gary DeMar, Ken Gentry and all of these guys, James Jordan, Lorraine Bettner, I could go down the list. And so in that, but following preterism and having a dispensationalist background, it was very easy to make the connections that if all of this is fulfilled, or if 90 is fulfilled, the 10 is easy to add to it.

Not that difficult. The only thing you really got to get around is the creeds. And I can just refer back to, you know, creeds and councils from May Air. So they really didn't know what they were talking about.

So we have kind of more insight today. Here's your, progressive kind of thing going on. We know more than what they did. I know more than what Erneas and Justin Marder. I know more than they are. I'm smarter.

I'm better. You know, that's a progressivist kind of a mentality.

But Dr. Frost, we don't need the creeds and confessions. Just give me the Bible.

Yeah, I didn't know what they were talking about. Yeah, it's strange because, you know, post-millennial partial preterism is an intellectual. You study history, Josephus. You study all this Roman culture.

So you have to study all of this. And you're even looking at the translations, you know, it says into the age, not into the world. You know, it's sort of a different thing. You make those kind of distinctions.

So on one hand, it is doing that. And yet, on the other hand, it's assuming a progressive that we just simply know more, that there's this development that's going on of doctrine so that we may, the Holy Spirit may, what once was foundational, you know, a few hundred years ago or a thousand years ago, may not be foundational anymore.

And so that's kind of going on there, too, because it's constantly stated by these fellows that nobody has done the work. No one's really exegeted 1 Corinthians 15. That's just totally not true.

Now, Dr. Frost?

It's probably the one that was thoroughly exegeted.

Right. And I definitely want to get into 1 Corinthians 15 in a little bit. So full preterism is this eschatology that's new on the scene. And it kind of comes out of the restorationist movement a little bit further down the line that I want to get into.

But you come out of the movement full preterism. So this has a lot. You have your heart invested in this, right? You've lived it. You've experienced it. You've taught on it. And so I feel like you have a lot to offer with how the full preterist thinks, right?

Oh, I get it. I empathize with it. Certainly empathize with it. I know how people can get there. It's not that difficult when you're looking at it totally from the outside, having never really been into it.

It's very difficult for people to say, well, you know, this is a new heavens, a new earth. You've got to be kidding me. But when you come at it in bits and pieces, the way that I was coming into it, it's just a step by step process.

And eventually you get there. Um, so I was in it and being in seminary, the way that I was associated with seminary, you know, I was one of the few ones in seminary, if one of the only ones. And so the next thing I know is I'm, my book, Misplaced Hope was published by Tim and Max King and they were the guru, one of the main gurus in the, in the movement.

And the next thing I know, 2002, I'm being asked all around the country to come to these lectures and speak. So it's, it was kind of a thing, you know, that I was brought into, totally unexpected, but yeah, I was in it.

I mean, I was speaking with all of the major leaders and teachers and we were formulating ideas and dealing with it as how, how to apply post 70 AD life and church and what we're supposed to be doing now.

Uh, we had to wrestle with all of that. And I had a good background in philosophy, um, you know, having a master's degree now. We got to build, can we build a full preterist.

Worldview? Right. Hey, and I do want to get more into how it is a worldview. It's not just a spinoff within Christendom where we can just kind of talk about awesome differences. We can look at that a little differently.

No, you're, you're talking about something altogether brand new and you've been instrumental in helping me understand that. And so real quick, um, as I've got to know Myles, um, it's funny cause we, you know, our past couple of episodes, we've talked about the supremacy of scripture, right?

Everything does derive from scripture, but it's a part of a historic faith. And so as we were chatting about everything that's been going on over the past couple of weeks, uh, you, you seem to express to me how like flabbergasted you were with some of the things that you were hearing about that's going on in the eschatology world.

Well, so I've heard some of these people in the past before, and full preterism is not something that, until here more recently, I've really done deep dives on. And so some of these individuals that I heard, I didn't know, you know, is this person a faithful representative of this position?

Is this person just some fringe, whoever? Um, and so I didn't really think a ton of it. I kind of thought, you know, that's a little wacky, um, just at the first hearing. And so it just seems so contrary to everything I've about the, the hope of the faith, um, and the promises of God and those sorts of things.

And so when this stuff started buzzing around on the internet about, um, some individuals starting to flirt and toy with these ideas, at least publicly, um, I started looking into it more and it's just, yeah, it's like, this is so bizarre to me, this idea, um, of like, we're there, we made it.

Um, Jesus doesn't have a physical, he doesn't bear the scars anymore of the, like those sorts of things are to me just immediately goes, um, this needs to be examined very, very, very, very carefully.

Let me interject with him saying that it's very good because he's coming at this, you know, kind of, kind of new. And so for, you know, miles that's showing, um, the utter contrast and that's, see, that's the thing is that it's, it's nothing you've ever heard before.

It's so contrasting, but to those that have been in it for a long time, they, they, it's, it's very, they're very comfortable with it. And, but I like what he's saying because he's noting how contrastive and opposite this is in, uh, the way you think and perceive, uh, the world around you as a full preterist or as a non-full preterist.

And that I love hearing this because that it's, it's demonstrating how vast and far apart we are. And that's good to see that.

It's very good to see it. It really sounds like a, um, a paradigm. It's, it's not just an eschatology. It's like the way that you, it's almost like you're hermeneutic. It's the way you see the world. It interprets everything.

It reminds me of what the Adventist called the great controversy theme. Um, it's this extra biblical thing that was given through Ellen G White, um, that the Adventist church calls essentially the, uh, the answer to the everything particle.

Um, that's the language they've used referencing Stephen Hawking and that it's this thing that's been given to them that answers all of the hardest questions about life and it's how you properly interpret the Bible and all this sort of stuff.

Um, this sounds very much similar to that in the way that it seems to impact and everything is funneled through it.

Yeah. Yeah. Cause that's something you told me Miles was what you're hearing more and more about full preterism is you're like, this sounds a lot like, um, seventh day Adventism in a, in a lot of respects.

And, um, when more you and I talked about this, we're like, this spawns out of a, out of a distinct, I failed to distinguish between solo scriptura and new descriptor or solo scriptura. And what I tell people is the solo scriptura is you're divorcing yourself from church history.

When people say things like the creeds don't matter. They're not the ultimate authority. We're saying, of course they're not. Uh, but they, uh, they are like safety rails of what the church has continued to study and look upon before us.

Like Dr. Frost was saying, like the Christians that come before us, we're not dumb, right? They've been looking at the same passages, probably more in depth than what we have right now. Praise God for technology and better correspondence.

And we're all, see, this is where I'm totally for people asking good exegetical questions, right? But we have to do that within a worldview that glorifies God and doesn't detach themselves from the historic faith.

Does that make sense? Yes, certainly. Yeah.

I think kind of a Colton, you've done more work in, in Colt work. Um, but you know, one of the signs is that it is, it's going off, it's, it's going off the track and it, your perception is different.

It is a worldview. It's a different way of looking at almost everything. Um, and that's when you know that you're probably off into, now I can be a non-millennialist and get along with pre-millennialist, post-millennialist because we're not looking at the world different.

Um, we're all looking at the world through, oh, this is not the new heavens and new earth. Yeah. We get to new heavens and new earth may vary with millennial schemes and post pre-trib rapture and all that bunch of other, but for the hyper-preterist, uh, this is the new heavens and new earth.

And this, this goes on for infinity and it, and the Bible is read with, uh, you take these glasses off and you put on your 70 AD glasses and that's your, it's a completely different way of reading it.

So if you talk to a Mormon and you go through the Bible and I've experienced this, where you go through Bible passages with them, they're not reading, yeah, they're reading the same words on the page, but the interpretive mechanism going on is we're, we're two worlds, two different worlds, um, passing in the night kind of a thing.

So this person may be just.

Joining us. Um, but I thought this was, we've been touching on this a little bit already. So Orange, huge fan of the apologetic dog. Thank you, Orange. Um, but he's saying, so basically sola scriptura doesn't mean scripture alone.

And so, uh, uh, sola scriptura has a rich history, Orange, and it does mean on the bare, you know, from the Latin scripture alone, but the meaning is that scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith.

So infallibility is what the reformers were saying against Rome. No, we don't look to, um, tradition as being infallible. We don't look to the magisterium as being infallible. Of course, those are authorities within the Roman Catholic paradigm, but the reformers are saying there's only one being, one being who's infallible and that's God and his revealed word.

And so the reformers never wanted to divorce their interpretation, understanding of scripture from, uh, the saints of old, right? So this is a common, um, I think a misunderstanding. I think Miles has been doing some episodes in reference to this, but do you want to speak any to this, to Orange when he says basically sola scriptura doesn't.

Mean scripture alone? Well, the problem is, is you need to clarify what alone? Um, I know you're saying scripture, but what about it? What do you mean scripture alone? Um, because the term sola scriptura, like you've said is shorthand for scripture alone is the sole infallible rule of faith and practice for the church.

Um, you can read Charles Hodges systematic theology. Um, I think his chapter on this is really, really, really solid and just basic to understand in terms of what the position is. And that's actually what he starts it with is, um, scripture alone is the sole infallible rule of faith and practice for the church.

So you have to include that final part on there. You also need to understand the context in which this statement was said in and what it was being said in response to. Um, a lot of the reformed catechisms and confessions, for example, you need to understand Roman Catholicism in order to understand why it has the things in there worded the way that it does those types of things.

And so in this case, it's no different. You need to understand what the term was in response to. And it was that, um, church history and tradition does have a level of authority, but it is subservient to the ultimate authority, which is scripture, because that's the only God breathed resource we have.

Mm. It's also not, it's, it's, it's the supreme authority, but it's also not the only authority. And that statement is not saying that scripture is the only authority. There's no other authorities, um, because, uh, Luther's catechism was framed after each, the way he structured it was the apostles creed.

Those were the chapter markers, uh, institutes of the Christian religion is the chapter markers or the apostles. Chris, that's what they're following. So why wouldn't the world, but they make these catechisms and structure these appealing to the nice scene and appealing to the apostles creed mainly if they were anti cradle.

And these are the guys that were understanding what the solo scriptural was because, and they, and they actually, you know, there were a lot of, uh, movements that were so low or new to scripture in Luther's and Calvin's day.

And they condemned them. They said that these guys are operating renegade, uh, just, uh, and you read some of the stuff going on, like in Germany, um, 16th century, later 16th centuries, that some of those wacky and bizarre what people were doing, you know, with just them and their Bible and these mystical experiences.

And they were all condemned because they're just making stuff up now. It's just, you know, God told me, um, and how do you, how do you know that God did not tell you that? Well, we have these, uh, structures, scripture being the Supreme, but there's these others that are there as well.

These are guard wells, um, that, you know, and they're very general. We're not talking about every nook and cranny jot and tittle of doctrine. Um, the apostles creed is very broad within that. There's a lot of room, um, to have differences of opinion on different doctrines and stuff, but this is the general broad outline.

And if you're going to go outside of that, the homework and the challenge and the onus, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate not us. I don't have to demonstrate that the apostles creed represents these boundaries.

You have to demonstrate that at these fundamental levels that, that the church went, basically what they're saying is that the church on eschatology went off the rails very early on and got it, got it 180 degrees, totally wrong.

Well, that's a serious charge. I'm not saying Irenaeus is wrong because he may have been chileastic. I can deal with that, but we're saying the whole church is wrong in that they looked forward to life in the age to come and he shall descend from heaven and raise the dead.

That's a wholesale that boy, what else did we mess up? Um, maybe Jesus is not God, you know, maybe we messed that up too. So that's what it does. That's what it begins to introduce.

Full Preterism as a Worldview and the Problem of a New Hermeneutic

Dr. Frost, I read an article recently written by Douglas Wilson, who he just has a way with words. He is a wordsmith and a half and I love reading this stuff. Um, even if you disagree with him, we love, I love my Presby brothers, you know, um, I can have them on my channel and we can discuss so many things that we unite on.

And he wrote a wonderful article recently and it's everything that you're saying, Dr. Frost. He talks about, look, with the pre-millennial view, all millennial view, post-millennial view, we have the same bookmarkers, Genesis to Revelation.

We may differ with how some of the books are ordered, meaning we agree on the essentials and we may take different steps to get there. And I love how it's semper reformanda. I love it's, um, iron sharpening iron, but it's within the same worldview, right?

And so Doug Wilson wrote this article because of everything that is going on with Gary DeMar. And so I want to kind of bring people up to speed. Maybe y 'all can speak a little bit to this, speak a little bit about this.

But I believe within a couple weeks ago, there was a letter released to Gary DeMar. It was initially a private letter asking Gary to affirm fundamental truths of Christianity, namely that Jesus is going to return in the future bodily.

And then he's going to judge the living and the dead along with being resurrected unto eternal life to rule and reign with him, and that there will be a resurrection or a restoration of all things. And so just asking Gary to affirm these, and he admitted on these podcasts we're going to talk a little bit about because apparently, Dr. Frost, y 'all are best friends, I learned.

And Gary DeMar, he just said on his podcast, he just chunked it over his shoulder like, I don't have to answer to anyone. And that's true. But we love Gary DeMar. He is someone that many people, myself and Miles, look up to.

I've read a lot of his work. I'm sure Dr. Frost has too. But to just totally disregard something that everybody is asking questions about, you know, kind of upsets my stomach a little bit. And so, but that's not just me.

That's everyone within Christendom that we deem as, you know, commendable and we look up to and very scholarly. And so this letter went public, okay? This letter was released urging people to pray for Gary DeMar, that he wouldn't abandon these essential truths of Christianity.

And so that forced Gary DeMar to do some podcasts. And I want to say this real quick too. Apparently, there is this website called Hyperpreterism, basically giving people opportunities to sign their name to it, saying that we stand against what this movement, full preterism, and all of its many different shades of names, we stand against it.

We affirm the truths of, you know, orthodoxy essentially. And so then Gary DeMar put out five podcasts. And so were y 'all able to listen to most of those, or if not all of them? Yeah. So what are some initial thoughts?

I want to start with you, Myles. Was some of this eye-opening to you, listening to Gary DeMar go into some of how.

He reasons with the questions that were posed to him? Yeah, so it was... there's just a lot to try and, like, wrestle with, because I was hoping that at some point there would be answers. And I know he started the podcast by saying, it's not about the questions because it's not about Gary, it's about what does Scripture say?

Show me some verses to interact with. But I still basically feel like he didn't even really interact with them, and the only... well, the only interaction that he did have with them was to basically criticize and say, well, good exegetical work hasn't really been done on this, and to point at the people who have posed the questions and say, well, look how, for example, Ken Gentry and Doug Wilson seemingly contradict one another.

Well, Gary, how is that relevant to the questions that people have? It kind of begs the question to say, well, these are difficult questions to answer. There's a lot we could say, I guess, on that, but the whole time I'm thinking, like I've told you, this is the same sort of reasoning that Seventh-day Adventists use and other groups like that, and who's to say the Trinity is not up for debate then, Gary?

Who's to say that the deity of Christ, because there's groups out there that are saying the same thing. They're saying, so is Scripture, but Jesus is not God. The Father alone is God. These all sorts of Unitarian groups out there.

What all is up for debate? Because with this level of reasoning, it's a never-ending revolving door with no real firm baseline to go to as any sort of guardrail. The other thing I think about the entire time I'm listening to this is, I don't know of a single group outside of even this position, a group that affirms this position, who is actually Orthodox, isn't some sort of Christological heretic.

That seems to be the road that this leads to, is you then start to affirm all sorts of other heresies, which that tends to be how heresy is. Heresy begets heresy. And so there's just a lot there, but at the end of it, I ultimately don't feel like really anything was resolved.

He didn't really interact with what people were saying. He more so just pointed the finger at the signers and said, well, look at you guys. You guys contradict one another. You haven't given any verses to interact with.

And then when it came time to interact with them, it was kind of just downplaying them in the sense of, well, we haven't had good answers to the questions we have about this, but then I never heard any of the questions.

So it just seems like a real beating around the.

Bush. That was my experience listening to the podcast. It's like, Mr. DeMar, you have some very pointed questions. Do you affirm a future body of the return of Christ? Will the resurrection of the dead literally happen to believers at the end of history, and will Christ restore all things when he returns?

What Gary does is say, I don't know, but I want you to tell me the verses you think support that. And what I've noticed him do is look at those verses, and he would basically, in my opinion, sound exactly like a full predecessor and says, that doesn't necessarily mean that.