Report from Around the World, “First Century Mark” Fragment That Isn’t, the Mockumentary, & the SBC

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:36

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. It is a Wednesday, and let's see,

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I landed, what, 22 hours ago from, well, it started in Belfast at 3 o 'clock in the morning and through Heathrow to Phoenix.

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So this trip was Phoenix, Heathrow, Joburg, Lusaka, Joburg, Heathrow, drive to the

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Midlands, fly to Glasgow, back to the Midlands, from Birmingham to Belfast, Belfast, Heathrow, Heathrow, back.

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Wish I'd gotten miles for all that. The big segments I did, but the shorter segments, not so much.

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So let's just say I've had enough of security lines for a while, putting those liquids in the bags and did run into one really, really overzealous security guy.

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Evidently a whole group of security guys. You know, it's really funny, you'll run into particular airports where, thank you, where, wow,

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I mean, they're just like, we are in charge. Do as we say.

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This one guy, he emptied my bag. I mean, if there wasn't,

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I had to repack the entire thing. Except for the one thing that I think he was looking for, which were my connection cables, because I have to connect all sorts of different projectors and sound systems and I've got a bunch of different things

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I have to recharge with different, you know, it'd be nice if we all use the same connector, but no, it doesn't work that way. And the funny thing is, you know, he found all my vitamins and my

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Advil and, you know, my Mucinex and, you know, sinus stuff.

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And he found all that, didn't find what he was looking through, still put it through and it flew through.

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It's like, oh, this is great. I get to repack the entire bag and it did not do any good in finding anything at all.

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There wasn't anything to find, but at least it would have been nice if they had looked at what they were supposed to be finding. Anyways, that's neither here nor there.

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We are here in one piece. Just really quickly, just thanks to everybody.

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I mean, there's just so many people. If I started taking the time, all the different churches that I spoke at, and I mean,

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I'm thinking back at the first weekend in Johannesburg, in Davyton and Benoni and places like that.

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And that seems like half a lifetime ago. It's weird how time, you know.

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Though the Sunday afternoon debate, the first Sunday with the

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King James only guy at the pastor's house, I started talking at seven thirty that morning.

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I almost had no voice left. That was definitely the longest Lord's Day of my life.

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But where that King James only guy came from, I have no earthly idea. I found out after that he's a big

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Steven Anderson supporter. Yeah, great. I wouldn't have really wasted my time on that.

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But anyway, everybody down in South Africa, I had a great meeting with Dr.

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Yordan on the P45 PhD project. And that was exciting.

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And man, have I did two primary topics this entire trip.

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I mean, I gave over and over and over and over again, all my

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Islamic stuff. And I've never given my Jehovah's Witness presentation more often in a short period of time.

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They're everywhere down there. They're everywhere. And in the townships, you know, in the real poor areas of South Africa, Zambia, same thing.

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They have township type cities where you don't really have paved roads.

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Most of the housing is shacks made of metal. Frequently, the roofs are held on with worn out tires, that kind of thing.

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A lot of people live in those township type things. And the

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Jehovah's Witnesses are on almost every corner. And it's every time

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I've been asked to speak at a church in those areas, and they know I know something about Jehovah's Witnesses. That's what I'm asked to address.

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It's really, really interesting. Almost nothing about the Mormons, though I think I did see some

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Mormons someplace. But anyway, so really busy time, though when

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I'm in, especially in South Africa, when I stay with the family in Randberg, there's two places in this world where I have other homes, where I'm just as comfortable there as I am at home.

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And one's in Randberg, and the other is in Evergreen, Colorado. So you put those those two together.

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And those are two places I can just, you know, yeah,

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Rich is in the other room going, and nowhere else. Yeah, it's a whole lot easier for me to stay in a hotel than in a home.

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But those are two places where it's actually flipped around. That's pretty unusual, but that's the way it is.

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Anyway, so great time down there. Zambia, wow. I now realize what a blessing sidewalks are, because they don't have sidewalks in Zambia.

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As I was flying in, I'm looking down out of the plane, and I'm sort of looking at the roads going, most of those are not paved.

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And African Christian University is actually on an unpaved road. And I drove over it a number of times in a

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Land Rover type thing. And just about, I mean, you have to be strapped in and holding hard and hope that your neck doesn't get broken.

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I mean, it's just, whew. I guess people like to go on four -wheeling.

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I don't, no way. Four -wheel drive is not my thing. And just a very different culture.

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Great people. Loved the guys down there. Had a great time with Votie Balcombe.

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Had dinner the first night over at his house and got to meet his dog. His dog got to meet a gate, which then met

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Votie's toe. That's a whole other story I'm not going to bother to tell right now, even though it hurt. Anyway, had a great time with him and all of that.

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And enjoyed doing the lectures for the Scholars Week at African Christian University.

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Great students there. Some young guys there did a podcast with me, and they were asking about my family and stuff.

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And once I started talking about Summer and I mentioned Sheologians, the guy interrupts me. He's like, wait a minute, Summer's your daughter?

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I listen to Sheologians all the time. And I'm like, well, it has come to the point where I am

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Summer's father. That's all I am now. Who are you? I'm Summer's father. Oh, cool.

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Yeah. Nice to have you here. So that's pretty much how that works. And even in Belfast, on Monday morning when

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I was speaking, there was an audience question about women and stuff like that and teaching and things like that.

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And I made reference to Summer and I did it in such a way as I wanted to see who knew

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I was talking about. And she had a bunch of fans in the audience there in Belfast. So yeah, that was pretty cool.

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But I spoke at Lusaka Reformed Baptist Church. And by the way, do not even bother.

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If you ever have the opportunity of speaking in Zambia, you're doing public speaking, do not concern yourself about attempting to get any type of response from your audience, because it is

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Zambian culture to sit respectfully, pay attention, listen well and don't react at all to anything that is said.

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You just sit there. And I'm not even talking about Reformed Baptists are normally the chosen frozen.

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I'm talking way beyond that. I mean, you will not get an amen. You can drop the best humor on the planet.

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No response. None. And in fact, I was at one church in the morning and I was doing something on the early papyri.

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And I always do this thing where I show

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P46, which contains Paul's epistles.

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I always talk about Hebrews and I say, now, given this is Paul's epistles, what do you think?

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Do you think it contains Hebrews or doesn't contain Hebrews? And I always take a poll. And normally what happens is you'll get about two thirds of the people will vote one way or the other, but there's always a group of people in every audience just sit there and you can't make me vote.

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And it's like, nothing's going to happen to you. No one's taking pictures and going, look, you got it wrong.

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But there's just certain people just sit there. Well, guess what? In Zambia, I went, so how many think it contains

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Hebrews? No hands go up. How many think it doesn't contain

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Hebrews? No hands go up. Nobody. Obviously, I violated a cultural taboo by asking someone to actually respond during a presentation.

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So I did actually get used to that because I use humor, believe it or not.

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People are shocked by that. I actually had one guy, I forget where it was, I think it may have been in the

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UK, say, I'm amazed you have a sense of humor. It's like, we do do some funny stuff on the program once in a while.

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But anyway, so yeah, that was interesting. That was a real interesting thing. But they're doing a great, great work down there.

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But yeah, I'm very thankful to have sidewalks. Even though somebody said, even if they invented sidewalks and installed them, all people would do would be to build huts on them to sell things.

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So you'd still be walking in the street anyways. It's just a cultural thing. And yeah, people get hit all the time, but they have no rights.

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They have no pedestrian rights there. So you get hit, you get hit. Tough luck.

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It's like, okay, yeah. And I did manage. It has been more than seven days since I left

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Zambia and I do not have malaria. Vody Balkan talked me out of finishing the malarial meds.

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They weren't killing me. I did take the good stuff, but it definitely puts you off your game.

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And if I had to take them for the seven more days afterwards, that would have been really ugly.

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That would have caused problems. So he says, I've been here for two and a half years. And besides that was dry season,

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I don't remember seeing any mosquitoes. Though I did use the netting at night just in case.

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But yeah, that was definitely the farthest I've gone that direction.

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We generally have a rule around here that I don't go where you can't drink the water. But we definitely broke that rule on this trip, but it was great to meet everybody there.

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And then off to England and Johnny Woodrow, who just obviously has fantasies of being the big boss.

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Just crush the guy. Work him until he's drooling and then ship him off to somebody else.

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We did a lot of videotaping and teaching and stuff like that.

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And yeah, we did a lot of that. I've been to Lethbra, a little town.

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There's a university there. It was interesting to see. I've never been to the Midlands before.

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And then we flew up to Glasgow and did a fair amount of teaching there.

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The nice thing was I did get to go see Jim Handyside, a wonderful pastor there from Annie's Land.

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They really enjoyed getting to meet Jim. He's a treasure. He's a great guy.

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And then back to there. And then we spoke in Leicester and then flew out of Birmingham to Belfast, where we had already had to ask the church there, please, we didn't realize that you had scheduled an entire day of teaching on a completely different subject with the night being the debate on the last night of a 20 -day trip overseas.

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So we cut that back to just the morning. So I did teach that morning, but at least I had the afternoon, could take a nap, could get some rested.

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The video of the debate will be up eventually. That's all up to All Saints Church in Belfast.

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I thought it went real well, well attended. It was enjoyable.

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I did a little live Facebooking for the stuff where I could. It was helpful.

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And then yesterday's trip home, hey, my bags didn't get lost and my flights were on time.

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That's all you could ask for, because everything else did not work. Everything we tried to do to make it an easier trip backfired on us.

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And I got to wrestle those, even the checked bags, up and down lifts and onto trains and all the stuff we were trying to help me to avoid doing, we ended up doing anyways.

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So yeah, it was a tiring trip, but in the future, we've just got to try to cut back on how many times you go through airports.

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Go to one place, you can do a little traveling around and stuff like that. But if you can hang your clothes up for a while, it really does help because packing, repacking, packing, repacking, packing, repacking.

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Some people enjoy that. That's not my thing. That's not my thing. But it was enjoyable. It was great to meet the saints all over the place and looking forward to seeing the video of debate number 162 with Peter D.

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Williams on indulgences and his rather strong statements. You all heard it during the,

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I guess we could call it the second debate because it was a second debate. We basically did a second debate during the questions that left indulgences and started dealing with appeal substitutionary atonements and issues like that.

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So that's rather fascinating. What happened while I was gone? Well, I will confess,

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I'm glad that I had an excuse not to be involved in all the

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Twitter wars and all the other stuff going on. Since I wasn't doing the dividing line and things like that, most of the social justice warriors went off after somebody else to attack.

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Maybe they realized that when the guy's lecturing in Zambia, that might not be the best time to be attacking him for his white privilege.

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It doesn't really look real good in that situation. So we'll wait till it's a better time to do that.

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But certainly as I was observing stuff, the one thing that really caught my attention, of course, was right as I'm leaving,

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FCM hits the news, first century mark. This is something we've talked about in this program many times before.

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We played years ago the debate between Dan Wallace and Bart Ehrman, and we discussed the announcement on Dan's part regarding a fragment of Mark from the first century.

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Now, what's fascinating is I just read through a couple of articles on this subject that have updates and secondary updates and tertiary updates and so on and so forth.

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There are still an awful lot of unanswered questions here. I mean, you had all this stuff about how this fragment had been found in an

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Egyptian funerary mask. I even remember that Bart Ehrman was like, how dare they destroy an

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Egyptian funerary mask just to get papyri out of it and stuff like that.

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And lo and behold, there was stuff about fragments being for sale and there were other fragments from Hebrews and it was a collection and all this stuff that was running around for years.

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And then when the fragment finally is published, and I guess you're not supposed to show the from what

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I'm reading. I have it. I guess you can't get it anymore, but I got it. But there's 28 letters.

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There's 28 letters. Don't get me wrong. Evidently, it's a valuable find because it's from Mark chapter 1 and we did not have any papyri from this time period of Mark chapter 1.

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P45, the papyrus I'm working on, doesn't contain anything from Mark chapter 1.

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So P45 was considered the earliest. As far as paleography goes,

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I'm not an expert, but I am doing graduate level work in papyrology and textual criticism.

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And given my rather minimal skills in that area, it does strike me that there are fundamental similarities in the letter formation and style of this small fragment and what is found in P45.

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But there's 28 letters. So it's useful.

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It again confirms the general reliability of the text in that there's nothing outrageous here.

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It doesn't tell us anything shocking. It's now one of the two earliest papyri witnesses to the

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Gospel of Mark. But as far as the first century stuff, how it was found, this actually isn't all that unusual.

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The Indiana Jones thing is sort of how things were for quite some time.

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Antiquities dealers and wheeling and dealing and unfortunately, that kind of stuff actually does take place.

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And here I think we have an example of it. And hey, on this program,

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I said when that announcement was first made, A, you don't present something like that in a debate where the other side has never even heard of it and cannot respond to it.

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And it has not been vetted on a scholarly level. I said that from the start. I said that when Jay Smith presented as yet unpublished material in his debate with Shabir Ali.

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I said, that's not fair. The other side may do that to us. That does not give us the right to return the favor.

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That was just not fair. So that was a no -no. But then

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I said, look, folks, until this stuff is published and vetted and analyzed and debated,

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P52 remains our earliest papyrus. You might want to argue about one or two of the others, but you just don't go there.

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You don't jump into these things. We have to be consistent. It doesn't matter if the other side is not consistent.

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We have to be because we're not being judged by the other side. We're being judged by the one that we're serving.

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So the first century mark is out there. It's just not first century. It's the beginning of third century. Maybe end of second, but probably beginning of third century, just like P45.

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I think I saw which papyrus number it's going to be.

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And so in Nessie Allen 29, whenever that comes out, there in Mark 1, there'll be a few little references to P whatever it is, 137 or 139 or 140.

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I don't even know which one it is. And it'll be there. And that's good as it should be.

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But yeah, that was a big story that ended up not being so much a big story.

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Okay, let's get ourselves in complete trouble here, but I don't think it is in complete trouble. Starting a few weeks ago,

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I guess about 20 days ago, a series of videos began to be posted on YouTube, put out by David Wood, Volcab Malone, a gentleman that I do not know, a third individual,

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Sam Shamoon is involved in a tertiary, well, somewhat in a tertiary sense.

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I don't know if exactly how he was involved. Sort of looks like he recorded his stuff someplace else.

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But then there was the one in the mosque and Sam was there for that one, allegedly in a mosque.

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Anyway, it's called Islamicize Me. And obviously, it was meant to be released during the month of Ramadan.

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Ramadan is wrapping up. And so it was meant to be coordinated with that as far as the timing is concerned.

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And so my feed follows lots of stuff on the subject of Islam.

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Interestingly enough, I have not seen any Muslim comments on it as yet.

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So I started watching these things. And most of the time, you're just left sitting there going, did that just happen?

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Did I just watch that? David described it as a mockumentary.

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Not a documentary, a mockumentary. And that's what it is. This is the most mocking material since the

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Jack Chick style cartoon books that Bob Morey put out a long time ago.

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Because it's the same material. The comic book stuff that Morey did was primarily focused upon stories in the

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Hadith. And I have mentioned on this program many times before that there are all sorts of things in the

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Hadith that need to be analyzed in light of the

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Islamic claim that Muhammad was the best of all creatures, that he's the example, that the analysis of his life, that it is actually

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Allah's intention that his life be lived in such a way as to provide us with the example that all people are to use in all cultures.

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There is so much deeply cultural stuff in the Hadith that has almost no meaning outside of that culture.

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It's very backwards looking, very backwards in its orientation.

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And of course, to Westerners, much of this will strike us as absolutely insane. One of the things that Morey mentioned in his entire video on this was the

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Hadith where if a fly lands in your food, you are to submerge it because it has a disease on one wing and the cure for the disease on the other wing.

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Well, what can we say about something like that? That's obviously untrue.

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And if a Muslim were to try to defend that and say, well, yeah, here's an example of it.

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That's why you should submerge the fly in your food. I suppose a person that would go that far is then worthy of being mocked if they end up puking their guts out, which is what happens in the films, because you get sick from the food.

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But it just strikes me that from a Christian perspective, if you're going to address something like this, the best way to do it is to keep, first of all, you don't need to be producing videos showing projectile vomiting as a result.

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There have been so many things that I think it was number 19 about the breastfeeding.

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It was just indefensible, absolutely indefensible. I mean,

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I've read all of Bukhari, I've read all of Muslim, I've read major portions of Jami 'at,

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Tirmidhi, and Sunan Abu Dawud, and I know there's all sorts of stuff that if you just wanted to be really king of mockery, there's, you know,

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I've commented to people, I learned more about Muhammad's wife's menstrual cycles reading the

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Hadith than I ever wanted to know, I can assure you of that. And so if you want to go there, there's plenty of material to go around, plenty of material.

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I just don't know what that's supposed to accomplish. I don't think that the gospel is actually promoted by the use of mockery, and yes, the other side does mockery, but that doesn't give us the right to use it.

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The prophets used mockery, but they were speaking from God, and when you become a prophet, let me know.

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The temptations on that level are high. Far too great for me.

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Maybe you guys are much more mature, grounded elders in the faith than I am, but too great a temptation for me to indulge in the sins of the flesh.

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And certainly what I've watched in a number of these videos, far, far, far over the line.

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I don't know how anyone involved in the videos can expect any serious -minded Muslims to ever engage them again in debate or anything along those lines.

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But the other thing is, and this is a real problem in my perspective, and that is, this could be used in reverse.

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One of the things that keeps me from addressing, at least certainly in that type of fashion, so much of what's found in the

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Hadith is the fact that I know that we have to be able to consistently provide an answer for materials, for example, that are found in the

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Old Testament that many people find to be extremely troubling. This is one of the reasons

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I'm, again, very thankful that I don't just do apologetics.

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As some of you know, over a couple years ago, I did a whole series of sermons at PRBC on the

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Holiness Code, and I tackled some of the hardest texts in the

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Old Testament that are incredibly offensive, backwards to the modern mind.

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I even addressed the one where, if a woman reaches out and grabs a man's manhood when two men are fighting, her hands would be cut off.

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Now, an atheist could very, very, very easily produce the kind of mocking, deriding video about the

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Bible that are being produced about the Hadith. We would have to ask for fairness and balance in analyzing the background, placing it in its historical context, and then making a meaningful discussion about modern application in our day in light of our understanding of the nature of God's law.

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In the same way, the serious -minded Muslim can make the same appeal to contextualize and make modern application.

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Now, there are some pretty amazing stories of what goes on in Al -Azhar, in Egypt, in Saudi Arabia, in Pakistan, where you get some really interesting imams that are still in the 7th century

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Arabian mindset that will argue that you should immerse the fly and will argue that the breastfeeding stuff...

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There was a discussion, a completely, utterly indefensible video, and then further references afterwards to temporary marriages in the

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Hadith. There's a situation where you have a wonderful opportunity to accurately represent what was said in the

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Hadith, what Muhammad did, what he allowed his men to do, and then to contrast that with the

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Christian perspective on marriage. Because just as in the nature of God, Islam represents a

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U -turn. You have Judaism, you have what happens with Christ in history, in the incarnation, and then

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Islam comes along and does a U -turn and says, nope, nope, we're not going to accept that awesome stuff that God did because they didn't understand it, didn't know what it was about.

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In the same way, in regards to marriage, what you have in the New Testament is just this high, high

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Christ in the church, and oh, it's awesome. And then Islam does a

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U -turn, back to polygamy, ease of divorce, whole nine yards.

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Again, total ignorance of what Jesus taught. Well, here's an awesome opportunity to exalt

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Christian teaching, to exalt the Christian doctrine of marriage and to contrast it with what's in the

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Hadith and just how far from anything revealed by God this would be. You don't do that by mocking it and representing it and talking about getting

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STDs and fuzzing out genitals. I can see atheists doing this.

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I don't understand what has gotten into these guys' minds. I just,

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I don't get it. I cannot imagine any time in my entire adult life that I would have gone, yeah, that's a good idea.

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I think I'll join up on that. No, no, no. So, here are opportunities to do good things, to approach the subject in a meaningful fashion and to make good points.

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I mean, everything they've brought up, I was predicting, well, I bet you'll go for this and they'll go for that. And I was predicting where it was going to go, because again, you know, you read the

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Hadith, you run into this kind of stuff and it strikes you as very strange. And, you know, if any

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Westerner, any modern Westerner reads the entire section about how you cleanse yourself after you go to the bathroom with an odd number of stones, not an even, it's the same thing with eating dates.

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You should only eat an odd number of dates. Well, okay, so Muhammad had some weird ideas.

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Okay. When someone pushes him as being the example of all things, then instead of mocking him and opening up the door for a mockery of the

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Old Testament and any of its antiquities and things like that, contrast him to Jesus.

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Draw somebody higher. But whatever is true, honest, just, good, lovely, good report, think on these things, that alone would be enough to keep you from even writing the scripts to this stuff that is being put out right now.

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And so, you know, I've done work with David Wood in the past.

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I've been on programs with him. We've done debates, not he and I, but been involved in debates, he and Nabeel, and BoCab has been in this studio a number of times, not very long ago.

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Like I said, I don't know the other gentlemen. Sam's continuing on his wild -eyed campaign against me.

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The man's even, not only has he been posting Steven Anderson, just recently he was promoting Gregory Boyd, open theism.

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I don't even know what's going on there. But I just have to be just very straightforward saying to everyone that I cannot see how any

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Christian elder, how any Christian leader, how anyone who has been set aside to gospel ministry can look at these and go, yeah, that's how we should approach other folks.

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Even in the text, even in the Classicus Locus, 1st Peter 3 .15, when we are told to give an answer to the hopes within us, don't you see the rest of the sentence, yet with gentleness and reverence?

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There is nothing gentle or reverent in these videos. And so I must not only distance us by the fact that we have done work in the past.

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And the thing that really bugs me here, I look at David's testimony video, so well done, just brilliance.

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And to then sully that, because that's the only way I can see it. It just saddens me.

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It just really, really saddens me. There is a way to approach these subjects that allows you to look a

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Muslim in the eye and say, I really do care about you. And I honor the fact that you're made in the image of God.

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And I call you to truly the highest standard in analyzing the truth, because when you do follow that highest standard in analyzing the truth, you will find that Islam is inconsistent and Christianity is true.

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You can't do that when you approach somebody with this type of mockumentary.

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And so I don't know how long it's going to be going. I saw a video today about how at the end of this, they're going to actually made it a vote, an internet vote as to whether the guys are going to succeed or not in killing

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Robert Spencer. That's how I guess it's going to end. And I guess

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Robert Spencer's going to be involved because he does a lot of stuff with these guys. And so there you go.

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Needed to address it. No one had actually contacted me as yet.

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I'm not sure if anyone, no one. Okay. I think everybody in our audience already knew where we would stand on this.

39:50

But I think it needs to be put out there directly. We do not support mockumentaries.

39:58

We had nothing whatsoever to do with this and would never promote the idea that this kind of mockery is consistent with the

40:12

Christian profession, that we follow him who is the truth. And so that's why we don't do that kind of thing.

40:20

And we will not. So did you wish to, or are you just listening carefully? The only thing

40:26

I want to contribute here is that some of the comments in the comm boxes,

40:35

I recognize some of the names.

40:43

And I'm not going to give you a context as to how I recognize some of the names. And I'm just personally,

40:51

I watched one episode, episode 13, and was utterly floored that professing believers were doing this.

41:03

And then to read the comm boxes of people that I know to be professing believers who found it so humorous and thought it was so great and couldn't stop applauding,

41:17

I don't even know what to do with it. I just didn't even know what to do with it. I didn't either, but I felt it needed to be addressed.

41:25

So there you go. Okay. Two more things. We only have 20 minutes left. Well, actually 19, because somebody has to get out of here today.

41:34

I imagine, I hope it's because you've got a dinner or something planned. That's going to be Friday.

41:39

Oh, okay. Okay. Well, someone has been married for 20 years today. And I'm sitting back going, that was 20 years ago.

41:47

Wow, man. I still remember that day. And I was really concerned that your knees were so tightly locked.

41:54

Because I think I said something to you about bend your knees, bend your knees, because I just didn't want to see the eyes cross.

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And I've seen this before. Okay. I did not want to see that happen. So congratulations on 20 years.

42:08

We're only a few days away from 36 for me.

42:14

But I was never called Jim the Tingle, as Rich was called Rich the

42:19

Tingle by my kids. So that's great. Anyways, two more things.

42:31

You are not allowed to be balanced and try to be unbiased and fair and look toward the future.

42:42

Anything you say on Twitter. I don't remember checking a comm box that said, only radicals may post here.

42:51

I made a comment when the first news came out about the Supreme Court decision about the

42:57

Baker. And it called it a narrow decision. All I'd looked at was the title and the first two lines, and I realized they were saying narrow, as in the decision has a narrow field of coverage.

43:12

From the court's perspective, this is not setting a precedent. There was a specific mitigating circumstance in the behavior of the

43:25

Colorado authorities that shot them down. The scary thing is, given what

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Kennedy said, if that stuff wasn't there, it could have gone the other way. And even with the other justices, even with Gorsuch.

43:41

And so it was almost like, hey, come on, quit being such a downer.

43:47

Let's party. Let's be happy for just a day. And I'm like, I'm sorry, but I'm a realist.

43:56

And fantasy football, not into that.

44:02

And fantasy Supreme Court stuff, not into that either. I actually want to know what the decision was, what its scope is, narrow or broad, and what the arguing was.

44:16

If Thomas had to write what Thomas had to write, then Thomas saw it too. Listen to him.

44:23

I was just shocked at the people shooting back at me, conservatives shooting back at me, when

44:31

I'm just sitting going, facts, please? Logic? Consistency?

44:37

Something? Maybe? I just see this as a temporary quote -unquote victory, but I don't see it as a defense of our religious liberties.

44:53

And I don't have any reason to believe that if the socialist -communist, also known as Democrats, put forward a charismatic, if they have one, charismatic candidate for the next presidential election, every one of those leftist old fogies will retire the day after a

45:24

Democrat becomes President of the United States. And a Democrat will become President of the United States. Now, if Trump gets another term or something like that, those old folks will start injecting themselves with formaldehyde just to preserve themselves until he's out.

45:39

And you know it. And so I'm sorry if I'm a realist, but we've entered into a time period where words don't have meanings anymore.

45:50

And the whole reason that we are hoping for conservative judges is a recognition that words don't have meanings anymore.

45:58

That the guarantees of the amendments of the Constitution mean nothing to those on the left.

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And you're not going to have 50 years of Republican Presidents.

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It's not going to happen. So sorry for pointing out the fly in the ointment, to use something from the last conversation, which we can submerge completely in this stuff and it won't make any difference because it's all poison anyways.

46:32

But I was just really surprised at some of the responses to that.

46:38

It's a brief respite. Nothing more. It just isn't anything more than that. I'm sorry, but I've not seen anyone provide any documentation from the actual decisions themselves and the comments from the justices to substantiate any kind of anger toward me for going, well, it's better than going the other direction in light of the obvious reality of the

47:03

Colorado abuse of this man. And there was. So on that level, it's great that they slapped those people around and said, you people are idiots.

47:14

But all that does is it teaches the leftists that they have to hide their animus toward Christianity.

47:21

And then they'll get away with it, as long as they cloak it in the right language. That's what's dangerous about it.

47:27

Sorry to have noticed it and to call it to your attention, but that's the way that is.

47:33

My son calls me Debbie Downer, but I'm sorry, Debbie Downer is normally right about her facts.

47:41

Just not really good about when she expresses them. So if you don't know who Debbie Downer is, don't worry about it.

47:48

Okay, last thing. Wow, it's interesting for those of you who are

47:54

Southern Baptists these days. Hi.

48:02

I knew a little ahead of time what was coming down with Page Patterson. I won't tell you how I knew that, but I did.

48:08

And look, I'll be perfectly straight up here.

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I'm not a Southern Baptist anymore. I was ordained in that denomination. And I've got lots of good friends in there.

48:22

They're some great men who are Southern Baptists. There's no question about it. But there's a lot of problems there.

48:31

A lot of the problem has come from the convention trying to pretend that it's bigger than it actually is.

48:38

When you can't find half your members most of the time, you probably shouldn't project on the basis of an unregenerate membership.

48:48

Obviously, the divisions between Armenians and Calvinists is important, but it's been there all along.

48:55

It's just become sharper and more understood in the not -too -distant past. But Page Patterson's detestation of Reformed theology is well known.

49:07

Page Patterson specifically utilized his significant power to have me removed from teaching in a

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Southern Baptist institution only a few years ago, actually. So I am not a not a

49:22

Page Patterson fan, and I know things that Page Patterson has done that you don't. I can't be unbiased as far as that's concerned.

49:38

As far as Page Patterson being involved in political maneuvering, the man is the master of it in the

49:48

Southern Baptist Convention. The master of it. But what you've got going on right now goes beyond Page Patterson.

49:56

What you've got going on right now is, you've heard of the

50:01

Deep State stuff, the sort of shadow government within the government of the

50:07

United States. You want to know where Deep State is? There's Deep State Southern Baptist. There are political power brokers in the convention that don't have to be in office, and they still control things.

50:23

And everybody knows it. It has long been known, the 11th commandment in Southern Baptist life is, thou shalt not criticize a

50:31

Southern Baptist leader as a Southern Baptist. That's the 11th commandment. It's the third rail. You don't touch it.

50:37

I've known that for decades. I got in horrible trouble.

50:44

What was that, 2003 -2004, when I did the Mark Seyfried stuff? I had contributed to a book that he edited, and he just straight up told me,

50:59

I will never work with you again, because you, even though you teach in a Southern Baptist institution, spoke out against another

51:04

Southern Baptist. All I had done was completely factual, is on the doctrine of justification for crying out loud.

51:10

It doesn't matter what it's about. It doesn't matter. As long as they're a Southern Baptist, that is the 11th commandment.

51:17

Thou shalt not do it. And that has been allowed to stand, and both sides, both sides, it depends what the side is, but Calvinists and Arminians have, traditionalists, have pretty much observed that until now.

51:39

And now very clearly, the people, the George Soros -funded open borders guys that have taken up shop in the

51:51

SBC were behind all this. Just take that one to the bank. And they are clamping down.

52:00

I've seen lots of evidence. If you say anything, back during the

52:08

MLK thing, you say anything negative in social media, and you get a phone call, and your funding will be held over your head, your job will be held over your head.

52:23

And that is continuing to this day. And it's continuing on this subject, and it's aimed in only one direction.

52:32

So I'm not sure how they pulled it off, but it seems to me that it may already be too late, as far as the power brokers are concerned.

52:45

Though, to be honest with you, I cannot see how the Southern Baptist Convention can go the direction these people want it to go without major diminishment of numbers and lots of splits, because Baptists know how to split.

53:03

I've told the story before, I was going out to visit the

53:10

Confederate prison at Andersonville from the Civil War. And as we're driving through the rural

53:17

Georgia countryside with a Presbyterian pastor friend of mine that was taking me there, you'd pass the

53:27

First Baptist Church, and then you go around the corner, and there's the Second Baptist Church. You go around the next corner, there's the Third Baptist Church.

53:32

And I think I saw a Seventh Baptist Church somewhere along the lines. If we know how to do anything, it's how to split.

53:40

And especially with this stuff, I could see a major fracturing of the

53:49

Southern Baptist Convention as a whole, especially if the folks that are behind this insist on telling everybody to shut up.

54:01

Eventually, they will tell the wrong person to shut up. And when they decide not to and speak out, everybody else that has been cowered in the silence is all of a sudden going to start speaking at the same time.

54:14

And it'll be explosive. It'll be explosive. I think a lot of people know this.

54:21

Obviously, Al Mohler knew with his article that he put out while I was in Zambia, the wrath of God has come upon the

54:29

Southern Baptist Convention. A lot of people are going, like, that's a pretty over -the -top claim and article.

54:38

And wow, what's, you know, really? But he knew what was coming. There were other people who knew what was coming and how much depth there is to it in that particular subject.

54:51

So they're well aware of what's going on and who's pulling strings.

55:01

The convention is going to be interesting, but the convention is for show.

55:09

Yeah, there's gonna be people coming up to microphones saying some pretty interesting stuff. But the people who are in control are still in control.

55:17

And so the public, it could change.

55:25

Maybe this one will be the one that changes. But there's normally an attempt through the control of the committees to keep the undercurrent an undercurrent and to put on a nice front.

55:39

But there are tremendous powers clashing. And I think what you saw with Patterson is which direction, who's getting the most funding and who has the most power.

55:54

And I am not a prophet, nor a son of a prophet.

55:59

I can't tell you which direction it's going to go. But it's truly troubling to watch.

56:08

And by the way, not only are the social justice warriors, the racial reconciliationists having their way, but have you noticed what's flying through the door right on the heels of this stuff?

56:27

It is complementarian, hat -tipping egalitarianism.

56:36

It's people saying, oh yeah, I'm a complementarian. But that doesn't mean we can't do all this new stuff.

56:47

And then when you start talking about what this new stuff is, it's always in the context of power, oppression, same stuff from the ethnicity side now being attached to gender.

57:04

And of course, the Christian scriptures view of the offices of the church, we are only given qualifications for, well, three offices.

57:15

Apostle, and since one of them is having seen Jesus in the flesh, not continuing today as an apostle of Jesus Christ, we only have two other offices in the church for which we are given inspired biblical qualifications, the elder and the deacon.

57:35

And you can stand on your head and spin in circles and play every hermeneutical and lexicographical game you want.

57:46

But the elders especially, and deacons seem to go that way, but I can see how you might find a way around that with elders there to be married to one woman.

57:59

And that means, plainly, it's a male position. But we thought, naive people we were, we thought that exegesis was the boundary that would keep all this neomarxism out of the

58:19

Reformed community. We all thought that being Reformed meant you were actually committed to actually doing that.

58:27

If we had looked closer at liberalism and how liberalism entered into all the seminaries, we would have known how the door was not actually locked.

58:38

The door was not locked when we thought it was. And it wasn't. And it wasn't. So anyways, much more to be said about all of that stuff, but we are done for the day.

58:52

I stayed awake and actually feel pretty good. I'm a little concerned about tomorrow, because in my experience, the first day after I get back,

59:00

I normally feel really good. Tonight is when I generally can't sleep, and hence tomorrow becomes an absolute bummer.

59:09

We'll see. We'll hope that that doesn't happen, because I'm teaching in Southern California starting

59:14

Monday night. Since I've been announced, I'm teaching a World Religions class at the

59:21

Master's Seminary starting Monday night the whole week in the evenings. Looking forward to being over there.

59:27

And so those of you in that area taking that class, we'll be seeing you then, and hopefully seeing you tomorrow,