Roadtrippin' in Buffalo, Wyoming

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:42

Well, greetings and welcome to the Dividing Line. I forgot to put my, we were working so fast, I didn't even put my headset microphone on thing.

00:50

We're just have to go with it. I don't even know if I'm gonna go a full hour, but hey, it's

00:55

Road Trippin' Dividing Line, and that means it starts when it starts, it gets over with when it gets over with, it blitzes out because you're in the middle of nowhere, whatever, that's what road trippin' is all about.

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And I am, since I'm only gonna be here for a few hours, I can tell you where I am. I am in Buffalo, Wyoming.

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No, I had never heard of Buffalo, Wyoming before. I will tell you one story.

01:27

It was interesting getting out of Golden, Colorado this morning, had a few challenges.

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That's what this is all about. This is about learning and getting better at stuff and overcoming problems and difficulties.

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And yeah, that's not been my life as far as doing this kind of stuff, but here we are.

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I'm sort of proud of myself. The unit is in perfect shape.

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I'm not sure, I'd have to look at my app, how many miles we've covered so far, but we've covered a few.

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And so I'm in Wyoming. You know what, folks in Wyoming are very nice. I'll tell you why.

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Most of you know that there is one Mexican food place, which a lot of people wouldn't even call a

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Mexican food place, because it's really on the level of Taco Bell.

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It's called Taco Time. Now, some of you have written in to say,

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I went to Taco Time, it wasn't anything special. I'm not interested, don't care. You gotta understand,

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I think, and I think Rich might agree with this. I think the reason that I have such a special place for Taco Time in my mind is due to the fact that that was a place that there were at least two back in the 80s and 90s, right near where we would stay when we went to Salt Lake City and did our outreach at the

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General Conference of Mormon Church. And so I think a mental link was forged in my mind between the taste of crisp meat burritos and the joy of missions work amongst the

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Mormons in Salt Lake City. That's my decision, I'm sticking with it.

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That's my story. I think that works. Anyway, but I love crisp meat burritos and Taco Time sauce.

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And in fact, I told the story, I think on the dividing line that a few months ago, I pulled out a

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Taco Time sauce bottle at the office and it had an expiration date of 2018 on it.

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It says 2021. And I just opened it up and used it and I was just fine.

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I figured it's hot sauce. Anything gets in there is gonna get eaten by the acid anyways, we're good. And I was good,

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I didn't have any problems. I just bought one bottle at the new Taco Time place. So the point is,

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I saw that there was a Taco Time in Casper, Wyoming, which is on my way here.

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And so I didn't even follow the routing, it's the same routing, but I didn't use that program that I'd be using to get here.

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I put into Google that Taco Time. And I looked at it and I knew it was gonna be a tight fit, but the funny thing was, they saw me coming in and I found a place in the back to sort of park without blocking anybody in, but I was gonna have to back out of it, which if you know these big beasts, that's a bit of a challenge.

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But anyway, so I go in there and I think, I'm pretty sure it was the owner is taking orders and I'm just talking to him and they are just, everybody up there, everybody

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I've run into so far has just been, how you doing? What can I do for you? Hey, you know, if you go this way, that'd even be better for you.

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And you know, I've got a fifth wheel too. And it's just, it's like, you know what it's like when we moved from Pennsylvania in 1974, when we arrived in Arizona, that's how people in Arizona were.

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People in Arizona were that nice and would talk to you. People in Pennsylvania didn't.

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They were too much like New York. And so I'm just sort of like, so I mean, there's this guy saying, well, if you go over this thing, it'll be easier to get out.

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You don't have to turn so far wide. And as I got, it backed out and got around to where I was next to the people who were in line at taco time.

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I saw these two guys in the truck looking at me. And so I rolled the window down and they started talking to me.

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And I'm like, man, people up here are friendly. They said, where are you from? I said, Phoenix, Arizona. The heat'll kill you down there.

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Come on up, we've got plenty of room. And so I got two wonderful, yummy crisp meat burritos.

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I was hours ago, so I need to report to Rich that I'm just fine. And so anyway, it was challenging because I ended up having to go, man, have

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I had to go through some construction. And it was right there because I went to taco time, I had to go through some of the narrowest, teeny tiniest little lanes that I've gone through so far.

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But no damage to truck or vehicle so far to report. And I've even got a brand new bottle of taco time taco sauce.

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So I'm doing great. All right, so why in the world did

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I do a quick rush job getting set up? I'm only here for the night. I leave first thing in the morning.

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I didn't even unhook the truck, just stabilize stuff and just could go with this.

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Why do a dividing line so quick? Well, it's been a little while, first of all. And there's a couple of things that I would like to address.

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Last week, toward the end of the week, Jonathan Merritt on his

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Instagram page posted, in 2012, just days before my 30th birthday,

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I was publicly and painfully outed by a person who had earned my trust only to betray it. It took many months and a boatload of therapy to process the trauma of that experience and to learn to love the delightful human that God made when

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God made me. And so for years now,

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Jonathan Merritt, son of a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, has been a writer and a liberal.

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And when I first started encountering his material, certain big names in Big Eva had done their best to cover over the reality.

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Everybody knew it, but it wasn't a upfront thing in the sense of him saying it.

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But everybody knew that he was a homosexual. Everybody knew that he was a homosexual.

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Okay, thanks, hey, we're road tripping and the park Wi -Fi went road tripping.

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Just didn't bother to tell us it was gonna leave. Left us that connection. So technologically,

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I'm running through my cell phone right now. So, well,

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I don't know. That looked like it was a pretty solid connection to me. Anyway, that's life, you work around these things.

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And so we're gonna continue. So, Rich is gonna edit out, hopefully not the first story.

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I guess that worked. But edit out the beginning of my talking about Jonathan Merritt, and we'll go ahead and start with that there.

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And that is that last week, Jonathan Merritt came out on Instagram, literally came out on Instagram, and basically made the claim that he is a homosexual, that he confirmed that his words were in 2012, just days before my 30th birthday.

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I was publicly and painfully outed by a person who had earned my trust only to betray it. It took many months and a boatload of therapy to process the trauma of that experience and to learn to love the delightful human that God made when

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God made me. That, to me, it is amazing that anyone with a level of biblical literacy could be so self -deceived as to use that kind of language.

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But it's necessary. I mean, that is the life that these individuals face is a life of trying to, in essence, argue that their lifestyle, despite the universal approbation, condemnation, not approbation, condemnation, of that lifestyle by scripture, that this is something that God has done, and this is a gift, and it's good, and so on and so forth.

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Now, as I said before we lost connection, everybody knew, but there were some big names and big

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Eva that used their power in the publishing industry and things like that to cover this over.

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Jonathan Merritt is the son of a former president of the SBC, and so that's basically what happened.

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Everybody knew. I didn't know about this 2012 thing. I mean,

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I don't sit around digging dirt on people and stuff like that. I feel sorry for people who do sit around digging dirt on people.

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But it was obvious from the positions that he takes on all sorts of issues, it was obvious that he was in the

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Rachel Held Evans trajectory out of any kind of historical position as far as the evangelical church is concerned, inspiration of scripture, connection to the early church, all those things.

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And so it was sort of hard to interact with him because you knew why he was saying the things that he was saying.

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He just wasn't honest enough to be open about it. And now he is, I guess.

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And so it's interesting that shortly after this, he tweets, let me see if I can do this here.

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Let's see, share screen. And here we go and share.

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So notice what Jonathan Merritt says. Young evangelicals,

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I suppose this is a lesbian couple walking along here. Young evangelicals are leaving church.

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Resistance to LGBTQ equality is driving them away. And it's a link to an

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RNS article. I responded to this, of course, and I responded rather straightforwardly with a reference to 1

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John 2. They went out from us, so it might be demonstrated they were not truly of us. True believers in Christ are obedient to his word.

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And then I quoted 1 Corinthians 6 from the

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Greek language and said, Jonathan, you need to repent. If there are any responses to that,

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I didn't see them. Twitter is a hit and run type place, to be honest with you, in the sense that long -term conversations just rarely able to take place there.

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But this kind of, you know how often

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I have addressed Arsene Coytes, Arsene Coyte. We've talked about the 1946 movie coming out.

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I've spoken with some folks yesterday at the two different churches that I preached at, and there were folks who mentioned how important that is because they're encountering it.

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You're going to be encountering it. We will be doing more on it in the future. I've written to the 1946 people, challenged them to public debate on the subject, not even a response.

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So that whole area remains not the focus, but very much a part of the crowbar that's being used to bring about separation within the church and division within the church.

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And it will come to your fellowship as well. It will come to your fellowship as well.

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If you love your fellowship, you need to be listening to what people say, not in some type of inquisitorial sense.

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But, you know, I think back on 2018,

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I did not hear it. And remember we played the clip from Jarvis Williams from 2018, just filled with critical race theory and all the woke stuff.

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And if that was later in 2018, I might've recognized some language by then, but honestly, if that had been 2017,

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I would have been wondering what in the world he was talking about. I would have been very hesitant to have said anything about it because I'm not really sure what the background is.

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And so this stuff came in and a lot of us just didn't see it coming.

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We didn't have the vocabulary and it got past us. And now we're paying for it.

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I can't tell you how many church splits, how many people are leaving churches, the fundamental changes and shifts in churches as a result of all of this.

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It is amazing. So there's a balance to be had. You want to hear what people are saying.

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And when you hear certain buzzwords, you want to find out, do they really mean that? Or they just heard that from some place? Does it just sound good?

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Just trying to be loving, whatever, this kind of thing. What's the story?

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We need to keep our ears and listen and consider what is being said.

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I think it's a vitally important aspect of things. And it's a way of showing love for the church.

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And it's interesting. I had a lengthy conversation while driving today with Michael Fallon, who heads up Sovereign Nations.

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And of course, anyone who's watched any number of my debates has seen

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Michael Fallon introducing them, moderating them. He had a major part in a lot of the real big ones with Bart Ehrman and John Dominic Crossan and John Shelby Spong.

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Some really interesting ones along the way, Shabbir Ali and the resurrection debate on a cruise and all these things.

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But I've said, and I said to him on the phone today, I, this is not my area.

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Certainly I'm addressed. Anybody who's been listening carefully knows that I've addressed it primarily as a theologian.

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I don't claim to be some expert. I, Jacques Derrida, reading the

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Frankfurt School stuff is just not a part of what I wanna be doing in my life.

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It's depressing material. Somebody's got to do it. But we've all been dependent upon other people to give us a warning and to learn from them.

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And there were other people who saw these things coming a lot earlier than I did. And I don't want anybody saying that, well, go talk to James White.

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He's an expert. No, I don't make that claim at all. I've learned from others.

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And do I have some level of some expertise to add in the biblical aspect of things?

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I suppose, but you gotta stay in your wheelhouse. You gotta, don't try to pretend like you're something that you're not.

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Don't try to try to convince people that you are all that when you're new to the game.

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And most of us are new to this game. So stick with your strengths, learn from others.

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People are always bragging on me. You are so arrogant. I'm the guy that has said more than once that when

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I ran and crossed the term intersectionality for the first time, I called my daughter. Because I knew she'd know.

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She's been doing stuff on feminism and first and second and third wave. And I don't know what the fourth or fifth wave or whatever else, all that kind of stuff is.

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I've learned from a lot of folks and we all do.

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And just be honest about your sources and about where you got your information. That's all.

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That's I think important. And then get back to the battle. And this is part of the battle.

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All of that simply to come back to, merit's really not on the tip of the spear as far as the cutting edge topic any longer.

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Because I've observed many times, it just seemed to me that after June, it was June 26th,

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I believe of 2015. It was the day after my anniversary. A switch was just flipped.

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And the emphasis went from homosexuality. That was the Obergefell decision. Supreme Court travesty, joke, absolute joke.

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I can't even mention it without expressing heartfelt disgust at that decision.

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Because it is written, Anthony Kennedy wrote it on the level of fourth grade.

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It's emotional. It's emotive. And it's a betrayal of everything that made

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Western culture successful. And it gave us so much freedom and gave us so many of the things we're doing now, but we'll lose in the very near future because of men like him and worldviews like the one that he embodied in the

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Obergefell decision. Go back to 2015. When I got back from the trip I was on at that time,

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I read portions of it on the dividing line. Grab them while you can because eventually they won't be there.

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But so merit isn't cutting edge anymore. I mean, homosexual, hey, you've got a

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Republican transgender dude running for office in California.

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Homosexual Pete Buttigieg, big deal. All the rest of that stuff.

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All of that to normalize and to move past normalization so quickly that you're always keeping the same people off balance basically is what's going on there in those situations.

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So there you go. Young evangelicals are leaving church. Buy sheep or not.

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There is a purification going on. No question about it. It needs to happen. And young evangelicals who were a part of the church for entertainment, advancement, comfort, tradition, we don't need them in the church.

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They need to be converted. That's the reality. They need to be converted. And if they're gonna tell

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God, I don't like your law. Oh, there you go. There's a problem.

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Now, I'm gonna try something here. And we did not, because we did this fast, I did not have time to test this out.

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So I'm hoping that the sound will be good enough. I'm gonna make sure the sound is up on my end because the recollection is the sound here isn't all that good.

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Sort of interesting. I should bring this up on Twitter, but again, while driving up here,

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I listened to this because someone on Twitter, I did stop a few times, you have to.

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I think, by the way, Rich, I think on the first leg up here, 11 .2

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miles per gallon. Woo -hoo. It's funny because the truck, when

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I don't have the trailer on the back, it got 23 .5 and I was climbing mountains. I was going up to Evergreen and stuff like that.

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Just doing a lot of up and down. So it can get 24, 25 easy, but man, double the weight, half the gas mileage.

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It's sort of how it works. And it happens to be the most expensive gas I've ever seen.

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Thank you to the Biden regime that we are spending 75 bucks a fill up right now.

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Thanks to the Biden regime. Inflation through the roof, gas prices through the roof.

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And who does that hurt the most? Well, and right after shutting all the businesses down. Well, I will never, ever, ever, ever believe that 80 some odd million people believe are voted for this insanity.

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But certainly a lot of people did and I hope you enjoy what you're getting. And some of you do, I know you do, but very few of you watch this program.

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Anyway, so I listened to this one too. I also listened, I retweeted a guy who spoke before a school board meeting, a medical doctor, loved it.

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I love when someone is confident in their position and can just rip and snort the facts and he did.

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And I retweeted that, look it up. It's well worth taking a look at. It was really, really interesting.

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But anyway, here's a video that illustrates everything wrong with apostate

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Christendom. Because that's what this woman is. She pretends she's a minister, she's not.

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She pretends to be a Christian, she's not. I'm sure she's TLCA, I imagine.

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But this is the Walker Seminary. I've talked about this kind of stuff that ceased being

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Christian long, long, long ago. And yet for some reason, these people continue to, for some strange, odd motivation, pretend to be

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Christians, even though they've gutted the faith. And so here is this, quote unquote, woman, minister, false teacher, fraud, all the way along.

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I'm just gonna be honest with you. Some people, you're just so harsh. Well, listen to what she's gonna say and you'll go, okay, you were being nice.

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And I think the reason that it was sent to me on Twitter only a few hours ago, how do you like this for service?

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I'm hoping that the person that sent this to me is going, man, I sent that tweet a few hours ago and boom, we're doing a dividing line.

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How's that? Yeah, okay. So the whole thing in the background, this chick could be in Sedona and she'd fit in real well if you don't know what

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Sedona is. Sedona is one of the most beautiful places on the planet. I'll be honest with you.

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Really, really is. Red rock country up in the middle of the state of Arizona. But the new age wackos took it over for their harmonic convergence.

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I don't even remember what year that was. But they took it over and they decided to stay. And so if you want crystals and every kind of new age woo -wooism, you can find it in Sedona.

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And this chick looks like she lives there or something. The background and everything else, it's, phew.

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But the reason it was sent to me is, if I recall, she's some kind of super leftist liberal

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Lutheran up in Canada. And she makes a claim about the text history of the ending of the

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Gospel of Matthew. Now, what's interesting is a lot of groups will make claims like that.

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The one that's Pentecostals will make claims about the ending of the

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Gospel of Matthew, the Great Commission, and baptizing, especially their concern, the

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UPCI, the one that's Pentecostals, their concern is baptizing them in the name of the

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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit because they baptized in the name of Jesus only. And so there have been people who have advanced the theory that the ending of Matthew is a later edition.

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This woman loves to talk about New Testament scholarship.

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She's a little bit like Shabir Ali in this way. Shabir Ali will quote any scholar, no matter how wildly out of bounds they are, no matter if they're a plane that have two left wings, whatever, and he'll quote them.

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And then within 30 seconds, that's now scholarship has spoken.

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This happens a lot. I'll leave out anybody else for now, but certain recent people

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I've had interaction with have fallen in the same category. But New Testament scholars have determined this, that, or the other thing.

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This works with a lot of people because most Christians aren't sitting around reading New Testament scholarship.

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And if the church that you are normally serving in, notice

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I didn't say attending. I said attending. If you're in a church and you'd be serving them and you say, well, my schedule doesn't allow me to serve.

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You can always find a way to serve. Let me tell you something.

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This is a free sermon that has nothing to do with what I'm about to show you. If you go to your church with the attitude that today

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I am going to serve Christ by serving others in this body, you know what's going to happen?

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You're going to find out that you are not easily offended by everything everyone says and does around you.

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You're going to become one of the people that's an encouragement to the pastor, not a discouragement.

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And you're going to spread joy and love everywhere you go. Just a little suggestion there.

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Before you go to church next time, pray, Lord, you know, hey, if you want to use the old, make me an instrument of your peace, go ahead, but just put legs on it.

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Let me serve you today amongst your people. Changes everything because there are those people who do come in, to be perfectly honest with you, with a chip on their shoulder going,

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I dare you to offend me. Or say to those of us who have to bring the word of God, I dare you to bless me.

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And then at the end, you didn't bless me. Okay, yeah, that was sort of expected.

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That works. Anyhow, what were we talking about? Oh yes, crazy lady here.

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So she quotes New Testament scholarship and literally says that the end of Matthew was added around the time of the

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Council of Macea. Okay. So we have at some point in time,

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I don't remember, this was probably before we were doing the tag,

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I know it was before we were doing the tagging stuff. And so I do remember, and maybe

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Rich can pull something up, but I remember a dividing line we did where I addressed this rather fully and had,

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I brought up the textual data and all that kind of stuff.

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And we talked a little bit about it. But the reality is that it's really, it's real easy for people to make accusations about textual changes to the beginnings and especially the ends of books.

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And there's a reason for that. This is one of those opportunities where, again, I get to talk about textual criticism and I get to,

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I get to do what I think the Lord has called me to try to do for a lot of people.

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And that is give you a foundation that you're generally not gonna get anyplace else, not that I'm the only person that knows this stuff, but I'm the only person dumb enough to think it's entertaining on a webcast.

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So that works. I'm sitting in a fifth wheel in Wyoming talking to you about this.

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So put that all together. Anyway, why would the beginning and the end of a book be the easiest ones to make accusations about?

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Because of the nature of the transmission of texts over time and specifically Christian texts.

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Think about a scroll. A scroll, you could see some way in which the beginning and the end of a scroll could be endangered depending on how the scroll was rolled up.

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If you roll it up where the beginning to open it, it's right there, then yeah, that's now the outer part of the scroll and that could be damaged.

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But some scrolls you read all the way through and then you left it there. And so now it's the end that's the outer part because it's been rolled between the two staves.

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And so you could have damage there too. But the thing that I think you all should know, and I don't care if you're a new believer,

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I talked to a couple, they're just brand new believers. I talked to a bunch of really brand new believers and can you tell it is encouraging to me to get out again and shake hands and see people and hear their stories.

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And a fellow said that my stuff, my material is so important to him in his

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Roman Catholic background and then coming out of the UPCI, coming out of one that's Pentecostalism. And, oh, by the way, we don't have them yet, but there's now a

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Spanish edition of the Forgotten Trinity. We probably need to get some of those.

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We need to have some of those available to give to folks because I can't, I don't know how many times

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I've had people requesting that one. Looks real good too, so that's exciting. But anyway,

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I think even new believers need to have these basic foundations underneath them.

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And if you're not getting it at church, then

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I'm really happy to help try to provide it in this context, really, really am.

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So here's the issue, Christians didn't like scrolls.

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We've only found about half a dozen of them of Christian scriptures. And we don't know why.

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There are theories, fascinating stuff that you can read about why this may have been and stuff like that.

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But the reality is the vast majority of manuscripts of the

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New Testament are codices. It's in the codex form, the modern book form.

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That was not the most common way of doing books in that day at all.

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So the fact that Christians for some reason seem to do this, like I said, has caused a lot of consternation and theorizing and everything else in the process.

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But when you think about a codex, it's real easy to understand how, especially a papyrus, a papyri codex, which is what you have almost, for the first three centuries, almost completely just that.

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And they go, we have papyri that date into the eighth and ninth centuries, actually, before they're pretty much completely replaced by parchment, vellum, that type of thing.

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But when you think about ancient, ancient books, when you think about, think about books you own.

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If you're, well, as old as I am, and were buying books when you were in your teens, a lot of the paper back then is yellowed and edges have been damaged.

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And of course, the problem we have is the cheapness of the way that we bind our books together.

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So, I'm thinking about one of my early chess books. There was a really good,

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Reinhardt, was it Reinhardt? Anyway, Thinking Ahead in Chess, I think it was what it was called.

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And the spine broke and it was that cheap glue. So you'd have an entire section of edges that would just fall out.

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And similar things happened with the codices as well, historically.

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But what we discover when we look at our early papyri is even, and I've shown this picture before,

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I'm not gonna do it right now, because I have shown it on the program before. But when you look at P66, for example, which is one of our earliest papyri manuscripts of the

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Gospel of John, we have the beginning of the Gospel of John, but the end is extremely fragmentary.

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Remember when I responded to that one Muslim apologist that was saying, hey, P66 doesn't have John 2028 in it.

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Well, it has portions of it, but P66 is extremely fragmentary at the end of John.

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But we have the beginning, we have John 1 .1, but that's because it had material before that.

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It wasn't just a copy of John. You had Luke and it was all four

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Gospels, initially, anyways. And so obviously then the first part of the book would be safe inside if there was a book before it.

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Or the reverse situation would be the end of the book might be safe because there's a book coming after it.

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All of that to say that we don't have papyri materials yet.

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There's always interesting discoveries being made, but we do not have papyri materials for Matthew 28, 19 and following.

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So the earliest we have is Sinaiticus and Sinaiticus is 325 to 350.

40:47

So some of them might say, oh, so maybe it was added. What is wrong with that kind of argumentation?

40:56

Well, it should be fairly obvious that if you're trying to be honest and fair in your analysis of an ancient document such as the

41:11

Gospel of Matthew. And we do have papyri, early papyri of other portions of Matthew that read just as Codex Sinaiticus reads.

41:25

And we do, for example, I call it mine, but it's not mine personally, but we've spent a lot of time talking about P45.

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There are portions of the Gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Acts in P45, but not the beginnings or ends of any of those books.

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All that has survived was internal to those particular individual books, even though they were once one codex that had five books in it.

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And why that is, just think of all the different ways to destroy papyrus in 2000 years.

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Humidity and water and fire and war, all highly effective ways of destroying manuscripts.

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And the Romans, Romans did a real good job, especially between 303 and 313 in destroying tens of thousands of manuscripts and copies of the

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Christian scriptures during the great persecution at that time. And had been doing that earlier as well, but really got professional at it at that particular point in time.

42:44

So when you look at Matthew 28, we have earlier manuscript evidence than almost any other work of antiquity would have for its text.

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But critics don't care about that. They are not going to allow the

43:13

New Testament to be compared with other books of antiquity because that's not gonna fit their purposes.

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So Sinaiticus, very, very early. And Alexandrinus, maybe 75 years later.

43:36

But again, extremely early. But we do have papyri that contain portions of the

43:43

Gospel of Matthew that read just as Sinaiticus does. So the burden of proof is upon the theorist who is theorizing that anything has been taken out or added in.

43:59

Now, there's more to this than that.

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Don't have time to go into it right now. Again, because we just, I pulled in, put the struts down, connected up the water and electricity and got in here and we got to it.

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It's fascinating. Dan Wallace has some articles on this, as do others.

44:28

And I don't, there's something telling me that in the book that Peter Gurry was involved with about two years ago now on common errors that apologists make in regards to New Testament stuff, either that or something related to that, there was a discussion of how you can, even in an incomplete manuscript, and it's fascinating, but unfortunately involves a whole lot of math, figure out what might or might not have been in a particular finished codices, given the number of pages.

45:17

If you can figure out what the number of pages, and sometimes you can because the pages may be missing, but some of the spine is still there.

45:26

And so you figure out the average number of letters that this particular scribe utilized and how much that would take up.

45:37

And it's fascinating, really is fascinating. It gets quite complex, but there are some super geeks out there that that's what they do.

45:46

And they work through this stuff and go, yeah, this probably was not a part of the reading of this manuscript because we know it picks up here and there just wasn't enough space for it to have been there.

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Or vice versa, that there was plenty of space for it. So this particular manuscript can't help us one way or the other.

46:07

It depends, but fair people do that kind of analysis.

46:13

What you need to understand is that when liberals, I haven't even played this chick. When liberals make these kinds of claims, they're normally not talking about what's called lower criticism, which is what text criticism is, where you're dealing with actual manuscripts, where you actually have something to look at.

46:36

You can collate manuscripts and you can check out readings, things like that. They're normally talking about, quote unquote, higher criticism, which is all theoretical.

46:45

You don't have to have any facts. You don't have to have any manuscript. You just theorize that it once read such and such.

46:57

So I do need to at least play some of this for you. It's eight and a half minutes long.

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I don't think I can play all that, though the whole thing's sort of worth listening to, but at least this thing,

47:10

I want you to hear it. So share screen and share.

47:18

And Rich, let me know if this is gonna work. Here we go. This prescribed reading is known by the church as the

47:28

Great Commission. Now, I deliberately did not read the

47:33

Great Commission. And indeed, I doubt that I will ever again read the Great Commission and publicly claim it as the gospel.

47:44

I'm not gonna bother with the share screen thing. Just don't have time to. Did you hear that? I will never read it again and claim it to be the gospel.

47:55

Claim it to be the gospel. Yeah, I know it's still on share. I'm not just gonna bother going back and forth. Just don't have time to.

48:03

I'm not gonna claim this to be the gospel. That's absolutely astonishing. I mean, you are listening to the voice of apostasy.

48:14

You should have known that from the start, but here is what apostate Christianity looks like and how it speaks.

48:22

Many years of study. I have come to believe that - Many years of study.

48:28

I can guarantee you this woman couldn't collate a manuscript if you put a gun to her head. No way.

48:35

She has no textual critical background at all. Called great commission is anything but the gospel.

48:45

Indeed, I have come to believe that this particular ending to the gospel, according to Matthew, may be the source of the systemic racism which permeates not just the church, but also all of the

49:00

Western cultures and institutions which arose out of what history has dubbed the

49:05

Holy Roman Empire. Okay, here you go, folks. Hey, let's do text criticism and determine what the

49:12

Bible should be based upon your ideas related to the

49:20

Holy Roman Empire and white supremacy and critical race theory.

49:28

Wow, this is an explosion of a mess, isn't it? Here are the words prescribed for this

49:36

Trinity Sunday. As I said, they come from the very end of the gospel, according to Matthew.

49:43

And this reading has been dubbed the great commission.

49:51

The 11 made their way to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had summoned them.

49:58

At the sight of the risen Christ, they fell down in homage, though some doubted what they were seeing.

50:07

Now, I can guarantee you this is a translation that has two left wings, too. In homage, oh, okay, all right.

50:17

Jesus came forward and addressed them with these words. All authority has been given me, both in heaven and on earth.

50:28

Amen. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations. Baptize them in the name of Abba God and of the

50:44

Holy Spirit. Teach them to carry out everything

50:50

I have commanded you. And know that I am with you always, even unto the end.

50:58

End of the world. Or the age. Here ends the reading, not according to the anonymous gospel storyteller, which we call

51:09

Matthew. No, no. See, and folks, the vast majority of seminary graduates, that's what we were all taught, even back in my day and back in my, the anonymous gospel storyteller.

51:25

And if you go into seminary not knowing what you believe, or if you go in as a woman thinking you're a minister, now you see what that ends up resulting in.

51:34

I don't think this is the gospel. It results in rank apostasy.

51:41

Get out of first year New Testament classes and not learn that the vast majority of New Testament scholars agree that this particular ending of this anonymous gospel was added much later.

51:57

Now you've got to understand. You've just, you've got to understand something. She's probably right.

52:08

If you allow New Testament scholarship to include the vast majority of unbelievers that practice

52:17

New Testament scholarship. That is what you get when you go to seminary in the vast majority of school.

52:26

No question about it. Now, do those scholars ever engage the other side?

52:34

Nope, nope. I've told you this story before.

52:40

Remember what happened when I debated John Shelby Spong, who's the exact same worldview as this lady.

52:46

And the topic of the debate was, is homosexuality consistent with biblical

52:53

Christianity or with the Bible? And I had to lend him a Bible because he didn't bring a Bible to that debate.

53:02

Bart Ehrman never listened to anything that I had to say about the topic of the debate because he doesn't think that he needs to.

53:12

People on the left honestly believe that if you don't agree with them, you are that rager guy, the big

53:28

King James only dude, screaming and swinging your

53:33

American flag around and some kind of wild eyed fundamentalist. They do not engage conservative

53:44

Christian scholarship. They don't read, they don't read it. They don't debate it, nothing, they don't.

53:51

So for her, she's like, well, yeah, the vast majority. She wouldn't know what to do with the refutations.

53:59

She wouldn't know what to do with the challenges that I've already taught you about in regards to how you examine ancient manuscripts.

54:06

No clue because they just don't even bother listening.

54:13

Been doing this a while now, I can tell you. They just don't listen. Not something that they're interested in doing.

54:22

Reality is that Jesus in all likelihood never actually said these words.

54:30

Let me be clear, the so -called Great Commission was added to the gospel by the

54:37

Christian community sometime around the year 325. Now, did you catch that?

54:43

Did you catch how that works? Well, scholars have theorized about this and within two sentences, now it's a fact.

54:55

She's not the only one that does this. Like I said, that should be our least thing all the time. And a lot of people do it.

55:04

All you gotta do is quote some scholars someplace. Don't worry about how whacked out or outside the mainstream they are.

55:11

Don't worry about the fact that they never interact with criticisms in their position. And then three sentences later, pretend that that is now the established fact.

55:20

That happens absolutely positively all the time.

55:27

To bring this gospel into line with the brand spanking new creed which the church had just written, which we know as the

55:36

Nicene Creed. Oh, so the idea there, of course, is that that's some new thing that had never been believed before.

55:46

Now you know why. What have we been looking at? And we'll get back to,

55:52

I'm not gonna, because it's too enjoyable to look at. What have we been looking at? Gregory's confession from before the

56:02

Council of Nicaea, which very much sounds exactly like the Council of Nicaea and what it said.

56:08

Remember that? Now you know why we're doing this kind of stuff. It's not just to respond to that particular realm of Unitarians and things like that, which prompted that.

56:18

But here you see the leftist liberals doing the exact same weird, strange, goofy stuff.

56:25

And yeah. Now, whether or not you agree with the preponderance of evidence unearthed by New Testament scholars.

56:34

There is no evidence unearthed. It's pure speculation.

56:41

There is no evidence to look at because they've never found a complete manuscript of Matthew that doesn't have the longer end, the quote -unquote longer end, the ending of Matthew.

56:51

You do not have any complete manuscript of Matthew that doesn't have it. There's nothing that's been unearthed.

56:57

It's pure speculation. A very real possibility that Jesus never actually issued the

57:03

Great Commission. You still must begin to understand that. You need to understand that this woman hates what

57:10

Jesus said in those words. She hates. That's why she's doing this.

57:16

Because Jesus said he has all authority. Well, well, well. Her worldview doesn't have any room for that.

57:22

Words, whether Jesus said them or not, these words became the justification for the doctrine of discovery.

57:31

In 1493, Pope Alexander VI issued the papal bull which would give license to European Christians to colonize the world.

57:42

The church granted white European Christians the authority to claim, to seize, to conquer, and to Christianize any and all lands inhabited by people who were not

57:57

Christian. Colonizing became Europe's preferred method of evangelizing.

58:02

And in Jesus' name, indigenous people were slaughtered or enslaved.

58:09

The doctrine of discovery not only justified the dehumanization of the peoples who lived in lands beyond Europe, the doctrine of discovery -

58:18

Let me just real quick, because I'm trying to wrap this up, but real quick, I just want to get this one part where she says this one thing, and then we'll stop there.

58:27

But could I point out that these quote -unquote indigenous people were very much involved in colonizing each other, killing each other, enslaving each other, eating each other?

58:44

That part you're not allowed to mention anymore, but I'm just hearing all these people, you're all living on stolen land.

58:50

Well, so were they. How do people not know history?

58:58

I mean, this whole idea that all the indigenous peoples were living in peace and harmony with one another, and they would pet the little deers and they were in perfect harmony.

59:14

The naivete of the leftist mind is what makes them perfect drones for Big Brother.

59:21

I mean, we are looking at Big Brother's perfect religious drone here, are we not? Wow. But, oh, it's just so far removed from reality.

59:33

Hi, press on quickly. Birthed by the Great Commission, solidified the notion of white supremacy in the so -called civilizing of North and South.

59:44

By the way, the Great Commission was given by a brown -skinned guy to a bunch of other brown -skinned guys.

59:53

This whole, hey, it's all white supremacy, even though I guess they just took it over later.

01:00:01

America, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, Asia, and far too many points in between to enumerate here.

01:00:10

The roots of today's civil unrest run deep into the very

01:00:15

Bible the colonizers used to ensure the privileged status of their descendants, that's you and me.

01:00:23

And all the other white privileged folk who continue to thrive as settlers on lands stolen from indigenous peoples.

01:00:31

I'm only beginning to learn the contours of my own white privilege. While there is so much more for me to learn, one thing is becoming clear.

01:00:40

It is long past time for me to listen to the cries of all those who have felt the weight of my knee of privilege pressing down upon their necks.

01:00:53

It is time for me and my privileged white sisters and brothers to learn about the ways in which the institutions in which we have thrived have perpetuated systemic racism.

01:01:06

It is long past time for us to set aside our defensive denials of our own white privilege and accept the truth of our participation in the racism which is perpetrated on our black, brown, red and yellow sisters and brothers.

01:01:23

All lives will not matter unless and until black lives matter, brown lives matter, indigenous lives matter and Asian lives matter.

01:01:34

No place is our white privilege more evident than in the church which has fostered us, nourished us, grounded and sustained us in our white privilege.

01:01:48

While all the while claiming authority from none other than Jesus himself to baptize all nations in his name.

01:01:57

So on this Trinity Sunday, when the church celebrates its creeds, let us not look to the

01:02:02

Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed or God forbid, the Athanasian Creed. There, did you catch that?

01:02:08

Let us look to the very first creed. Sorry about that. She goes off into wackiness and glaciance at that point.

01:02:15

And God forbid, the Athanasian Creed. Are we shocked that this woman's not a

01:02:24

Trinitarian? No, we are not shocked that this woman is not a Trinitarian. We shouldn't be shocked at anything.

01:02:33

But do you see the intimate connection in the leftist mind with CRT, white supremacy?

01:02:41

And hey, let's just change the text of the Bible already. They are all connected.

01:02:47

They are all connected. So in answer to my

01:02:53

Twitter correspondent on a textual critical level, what she said was laughable.

01:03:00

She has no evidence whatsoever. And all the evidence that exists is against the theoretical redaction of the

01:03:12

Gospel of Matthew. Given that the same...

01:03:20

Well, I linked to one of them, but yesterday

01:03:25

I preached, interestingly enough, on John 17 and on Matthew chapter 11.

01:03:32

And in that process of working through those two texts, I was reminded of the connection that exists between all the

01:03:41

Gospels and especially the theme of Jesus's sovereign authority that of course is found throughout

01:03:49

John, but it's found in Matthew as well. And they're in Matthew chapter 28.

01:03:54

So what Jesus says in Matthew chapter 28 is echoed to what he says in Matthew chapter 11. This idea that it was made up by the

01:04:02

Nicene Church and added in, just so ridiculous. Because I've only been talking about manuscripts.

01:04:08

Let's look at some of the early church fathers who quoted these materials before the Council of Nicaea.

01:04:14

That's when you get into all the patristic stuff. Didn't have time to pull up all those citations for a quick program today, but make long story short, unbelieving false teacher apostate, misrepresenting everything that we know about the history of the

01:04:30

Gospel of Matthew and pretending that it's sound scholarship. There you go.

01:04:36

So it's out there, it's all over the place and we have to be prepared to be dealing with this stuff because it's coming after us big time.

01:04:44

Now, again, since we be road tripping, maybe again tomorrow, we'll see.

01:04:53

I think I actually have a shorter leg tomorrow than I had today. I mean, I covered most of,

01:04:59

I covered from Denver to the Northern part of Wyoming. So that was, this was a long trip.

01:05:04

I think tomorrow is a little shorter. So we may be able to do something a little bit earlier. Then again,

01:05:12

I may be at a place that has dial -up. I just don't know.

01:05:18

I have no way of knowing where it's gonna be and so you just run with it.

01:05:23

So Rich is gonna have to do a quick edit job, slap the two things together so that we have one program to upload.

01:05:31

But so I appreciate his diligent hard work. I appreciate your watching and you're supporting us.

01:05:40

Let me just mention that I wasn't joking when I said that the fill -up that I did, the first fill -up

01:05:48

I did on this leg was $75. I was just, and it's because it's the

01:05:55

Biden regime. We're paying over four bucks a gallon now. Yay, isn't that fun?

01:06:00

Yeah, that's great. So support us. We appreciate that. I really appreciate.

01:06:06

There have already been some folks who've met me and have helped support the trip in the process.

01:06:13

So that's great. Rich is working on some stuff right now. We're switching over some of our financial stuff.

01:06:21

And so please be patient with him. He's doing that as fast as he can and working with folks and I very much appreciate your continued support.

01:06:28

I think most of you understand why we're doing what we're having to do as far as processing goes because of the day we live in.

01:06:37

And so thanks again for watching. Thanks for supporting. Lord willing, and I keep.