Humanzees, Jordan Peterson, Parallel Gospels, and Open Phones

Alpha & Omega Ministries

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

Comments are disabled.

00:43

And greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. It is Tuesday, and I'll admit to being a little distracted.

00:51

I'm looking at pictures that my daughter's posting from a car accident she was just in.

00:57

She's been released from the hospital with crutches. My granddaughters are okay, but man,

01:04

I'm looking at this one. Some stranger is, she's laying on the sidewalk, and there's just, it's like the car's exploded.

01:13

I mean, there's just plastic and glass and everything all over the place. Somebody ran a stop sign, must have been at full speed, and three cars, and so we, oh man, so much for her van, that's for sure.

01:29

But the girls are, the grandkids are okay, obviously shaken up, and I'm sure

01:36

Summer's going to be feeling stuff tomorrow that she doesn't feel today. I've never been in a major accident, but when the bags deploy, it's like getting beat up is what

01:52

I've understood. And I guess other people are significantly more injured than Summer was, so ambulances and quite a mess up there.

02:05

And of course, they don't live in the Phoenix area anymore, so all you can do from afar is look at pictures and just be thankful that everyone's still with us.

02:18

So rather, anyway, rather distracted by that.

02:24

But do need to get to a subject today. This morning, someone in Channel sent a link to an article, and Rich reminded me sort of that we do need to, you know,

02:46

I get these series going, and it's just easier for me to focus on those things, but we'll try to get to some phone calls today.

02:52

So hold on, I'll let you know when we're getting close to that, and we'll go from there.

02:59

But someone sent me in Channel a link to an article by David Barash, Professor of Psychology Emeritus at the

03:10

University of Washington. Okay, so you got a psych prof at University of Washington, which is so far to the left that if they didn't have it chained to where it is, it would just simply almost fly to North Korea and China, because it's pretty much infested with communists.

03:36

Okay, so we're talking as leftist as you can possibly get.

03:43

And this article is it's time to make human chimp hybrids.

03:56

It's time to make human chimp hybrids. And the reason is pretty straightforward.

04:08

It's expressed here. Looking favorably on the prospect of a human

04:13

Z or chimp human will likely be not only controversial, but to many people, downright immoral.

04:20

But I propose that generating human Zs or chimp humans may not only be, would be not only ethical, but profoundly so, even if there were no prospects of enhancing human welfare.

04:32

Why? Why do something like this? Why completely violate any normal standard of morality or anything?

04:43

Well, how could even the most determinedly homocentric, animal denigrating religious fundamentalists maintain that God created us in his image, and that we and we alone harbor a spark of the divine distinct from all other life forms once confronted with living beings that are indisputably intermediate between human and non -human?

05:10

That's his reason. That's his reason, his hatred, consuming hatred of God as our creator.

05:23

In any event, the nonsensical insistence that human beings are uniquely created in God's image and endowed with a soul, whereas other living things are mere brutes, has not only permitted, but encouraged an attitude toward the natural world in general and other animals in particular, that has been at best indifferent and more often downright antagonistic, jingoistic, and in many cases, intolerably cruel.

05:44

It is only because of this self -serving myth that some people have been able to justify keeping other animals in such hideous conditions as factory farms, in which they are literally unable to turn around, not to mention prevented from experiencing anything approaching a fulfilling life.

05:58

It is only because of this self -serving myth that some people accord the embryos of Homo sapiens a special place as persons in waiting, magically endowed with a notable humanity that entitles them to special, legal, and moral consideration unavailable to our non -human kin.

06:16

It is only because of this self -serving myth that many people have been able to deny the screamingly evident evolutionary connectedness between ourselves and other life forms.

06:25

When claims are made about the right to life invariably the referent is human life, a rigid distinction only possible because of the presumption that human life is somehow uniquely distinct from other forms of life, even though everything we know of biology, lie, demonstrates that this is simply untrue.

06:40

What better clear and more ambiguous way to demonstrate this than by creating viable organisms that are neither human nor animal but certifiably intermediate?

06:49

His whole purpose, the whole reason is to demonstrate that we are not created in God's image.

06:58

Now, the depth of madness in this

07:14

Professor Emeritus is fully consistent with what we read in Romans chapter 1.

07:27

It is something that we have only started seeing over the past 30, 40, 50 years in Western culture because of,

07:39

I would suggest, the withdrawing of God's hand of restraint upon the innate insanity of man that results from his rejection of his own nature as the creature of God, and specifically the creature of God that bears the image of God.

08:03

You need to understand this type of thinking was what was behind the gas chambers.

08:09

This is what's behind the mass sterilization of populations.

08:15

I mean, this, any type, the worst types of dystopian movies and novels you could ever think of.

08:21

These people, David Barash, these people have been given over as image bearers, but given over to this kind of absolutely destructive, self -destructive way of thought.

08:43

And the sad thing is this article is based upon a chapter that will be in a book that will be published this summer by Oxford University Press.

08:58

This is where the intelligentsia of Western culture are going.

09:04

And the only possible outcome of the continued pandering to this kind of insanity, evil insanity, this is evil insanity, let's call it what it is.

09:19

This is not just insane. This is not just some crackpot psychology professor. This is evil, absolutely morally reprehensible and evil.

09:31

The only outcome, if there is not a major fundamental change in the spiritual perspective of Western culture, is the fundamental destruction of that culture because this is self -destructive thought.

09:50

This is the end of civilization as we know it being expressed by these kinds of individuals.

10:01

Now, what's interesting is I had not intended, I was only going to do two subjects and then we can go to the calls once we open up the phone lines, don't worry about it yet.

10:14

But it fits rather well with what I was going to be talking about first anyway.

10:23

And so it's actually a good introduction, a good lead -in, in essence, to what we're going to be talking about.

10:36

I mentioned on both

10:41

Facebook and Twitter yesterday afternoon, I explained a little bit more of it on Facebook because you have more room to do so.

10:50

Sometime last week, someone, and I don't remember who, but someone forwarded to me or sent to me a link to a video of Dr.

11:08

Jordan Peterson teaching. It looks like he's teaching in his class. It looks like this is a classroom setting and looks like his class.

11:24

And I think it was titled Jordan Peterson's Greatest Moment or some moments or something like that.

11:29

I don't remember. But anyway. And so I watched it and I heard

11:37

Dr. Peterson speak last November in Washington. And he's a brilliant guy.

11:47

I don't know how many views that interview he had on British television had back in what,

11:57

January? I think it was probably around January, where he just took apart this poor liberal interviewer, this lady.

12:10

And, you know, it's become extreme. It's almost become an internet sport to post videos.

12:24

Dr. Peterson destroys liberal on, you know, it's sort of like Ben Shapiro videos.

12:30

You got Ben Shapiro videos, and you've got Jordan Peterson videos. And it's always the term destroys, you know, which

12:37

I have gotten really tired of over the years.

12:43

But anyways, destroys. And, you know, someone just posted in chat channel, you know,

12:50

Jordan B. Peterson on the wage gap and patriarchy and blah, blah, blah, blah. So as I'm listening to all this,

13:02

I'm thinking, you know, there's so much that Jordan Peterson says that we resonate with as Christians.

13:14

We are not exactly certain how to respond to, quite simply, the insanity that is invading our society.

13:30

He became famous because of the fact that he refuses, as I would refuse, to utilize preferred pronouns.

13:42

I'm sorry, your sexual confusion does not mean I have to learn new language. And that's what you're telling me

13:48

I have to do. I mean, just simply to learn sets of pronouns is so absurd.

13:58

It's so insane. It is so beyond the rational. It's so indefensible that we don't know what to say.

14:06

And that's nuts. And so here's the guy from that bastion of conservatism,

14:15

Canada. It ain't anymore. Stand up and saying, yeah, this is nuts.

14:21

And here is why it's nuts. And so when he takes on these social issues and just tears apart the fundamental stupidity of so much of the cultural noise today, you know, we're thankful for that.

14:47

And it's like, yeah, go get them. Expose this alleged patriarchy thing.

14:57

Expose this neo -Marxist white privilege foolishness that's even coming into churches, conservative churches, conservative reformed churches.

15:07

There are brothers who, I don't know why, maybe because they interpret culture in a fashion disconnected from the lens of scripture or they just use scripture to try to substantiate being in the in group.

15:28

Maybe there are some that just really think this is a good thing to be involved with. We need to, you know, this is how

15:34

I show compassion. I show compassion by falling into Marxism.

15:41

And it's so obvious to me that's what's happening with the gender issues and sexuality and marriage and race.

15:52

If you just scratch a little bit, just blow a little dust away.

15:58

There's Karl Marx waving back at you. Hi. It's the same old stuff that we use to murder 120 million people last century.

16:07

Forgot about those folks. But you dust it over and you listen to today's millennials, by and large, they don't know anything about history.

16:20

120 million? What? Stalin? Who? I have no idea. Mao? I have no idea.

16:27

And so we just get to repeat it all over again and again over and over and over.

16:33

Here we go with the over and over thing. He does such a good job.

16:42

And I think it's just the deadpan expression. I mean, I've had professors like Dr.

16:50

Peterson in the past, and it's that deadpan look that they hit you with that you're sort of afraid to open your mouth and say anything because they just, he can get away with saying, no, that's stupid.

17:07

That's insane. That's ridiculous. I saw a clip, more of these brilliant, intelligent, 20 -year -old social justice warriors interrupted a talk.

17:22

And they're climbing up on stage, there are little signs, there's this guy screaming from the balcony, and eventually they get dragged out.

17:28

And Peterson just goes, what you just saw was narcissism at its best.

17:35

And he just tore them to shreds. And he didn't do the thing that unfortunately we do see a lot of people doing today.

17:42

And that is going, well, you know, I'm so thankful that those young people are so involved in trying to make this a better world.

17:50

No, they're narcissistic morons. They're screaming.

18:00

There's no reason to respect that kind of thing. And he doesn't, plainly. So he's become a, you know, an internet star,

18:09

YouTube and this book and stuff. No, I haven't read the book. And so there you go.

18:19

And so I started listening to this video. And I go, you know, what he does is he addresses,

18:33

I know his background. He is a psychologist.

18:42

He's deeply influenced by Carl Jung, rather than Sigmund Freud. He is an evolutionist.

18:54

He views Christianity as one of the world's religious myths.

19:03

All religion is mythological and has connections to man's psychological makeup.

19:12

And it's a go across cultures.

19:20

And so you can pick up the mythological chain here and in this religion, that religion, that religion, so on and so forth.

19:28

And he's obviously been around a lot of Christians of late. And I saw a clip just a little while ago where he was being asked about the historical claims of Christianity and the resurrection.

19:47

And he said, you know, I need at least three years to be thinking these things through. And what I clearly heard was, from his perspective, this is simply a scholastic concept to be worked into the broader spectrum of scholarly work that he's doing.

20:18

And he did a series on Genesis. And again, it was all, you know, mythology.

20:24

We can learn this from this, but you can also learn that from all sorts of other religious expressions and mythologies as well.

20:36

And what brought all together is in this clip, you've got a lot about suffering. And he talks a lot about, you know, life stinks and you suffer a lot in life.

20:50

And so he takes Jesus' words, take up your cross and follow me and transmutes that into take up your suffering and basically grow up.

21:05

Make the world a better place despite your suffering. Use your suffering to make the world a greater place.

21:12

And, you know, in a postmodern millennial generation dominated world, you know, that can echo just like Stoicism can echo.

21:27

And Stoicism has certain traits that intersect with the

21:32

Christian message. But when you're being pounded in secular society with the, you're just an accident, you get to determine your reality and everything's about you.

21:54

It's nice to have someone come along and say, it's not all about you. And you need to be a good person.

22:00

You need to pick yourself up by your bootstraps. But as a

22:05

Christian, as I hear this, my motivations for saying, for speaking about suffering, my motivations for speaking about why man has responsibilities, why a young man should seek to improve himself, should seek to be self -disciplined, should seek to get as far as he can in life and provide for his family and to be a good father and a good husband.

22:36

We have different motivations. It comes out differently because we have very, very different starting places.

22:44

And so, if we are directing people to these videos, then we should do so with some level of consistent addition and subtraction.

23:00

Subtracting out that which is untrue foundationally and presuppositionally and adding in that which is missing, which is the fundamental need of man.

23:12

I mean, what we have here is a real difference in anthropology. And isn't that what this is all about?

23:20

That when we talk about being created in the image of God, there's no place for that full

23:29

Christian understanding in a Jungian evolutionary construct.

23:37

And I appreciate Dr. Peterson being willing to examine the historical evidence, but the gospel is not just a historical examination.

23:48

It requires a response. There can't be neutrality.

23:54

And you can't take the claims of Jesus and go, I'll go ahead and I'll take this element of that and I'll reinterpret it in an evolutionary sense and plug it in and see what we can come up with.

24:15

That's what scholarship does, and we've all seen what the result of that has been down through the years.

24:23

And so, let's take a look at this. Now, I need to warn you ahead of time, there's something else you need to know about Dr.

24:31

Peterson. He's a little salty. He uses the Lord's name a number of times, and I'm not sure why, but he does.

24:43

And so, just so you're aware, what? Oh, I thought you had said you were going to do it the other way.

24:52

And so, let's listen in.

24:58

Big problem here. The problem is, it's true. You're oppressed, you're oppressed, you're oppressed.

25:04

God only knows why. Maybe you're too short, or you're not as beautiful as you could be, or your grandparent was a serf, likely, because almost everybody's great grandparent was.

25:15

And you're not as smart as you could be, and you have a sick relative, and you have your own physical problems.

25:21

And frankly, you're a mess. And you're oppressed in every possible way, including your ancestry and your biology.

25:29

And the entire sum of human history has conspired to produce victimized you, with all your individual pathological problems.

25:37

It's like, yes, true. Okay. But the problem is, is that it is true.

25:43

And so, if you take the oppressed, you have to fractionate them and fractionate them. It's like, you're a woman.

25:49

Yeah, okay. Well, I'm a black woman. Well, I'm a black woman who has two children. Well, I'm a black woman who has two children, and one of them isn't very healthy.

25:56

And then, well, I'm a Hispanic woman, and I have a genius son who doesn't have any money, so that he can't go to university.

26:04

And, you know, I had a hell of a time getting across the border. It was really hard on me to get my citizenship. My husband is an alcoholic brute.

26:10

It's like, well, yeah, that sucks too. And so, well, so let's fix all your oppression.

26:18

And we'll take every single thing into account, and then we'll fix yours too. We'll take every single thing into account.

26:23

It's like, no, you won't, because you can't. You can't. It is technically impossible.

26:30

First of all, you can't even list all the ways that you're oppressed. Second, how are you going to weight them? Third, who's going to decide?

26:37

And that's the bloody thing. Who's going to decide? That's the thing. Well, what's the answer in the

26:43

West? It's like, in free markets, oh yeah, Christ, we'll never be able to solve this problem. No one can solve it.

26:49

What are we going to do about that? We're going to outsource it to the marketplace. You're going to take your sorry, pathetic being, and you're going to try to offer me something that maybe

26:58

I want. And I'm going to take my sorry, pathetic being, and I'm going to say, well, all things considered, as well as I can understand them, maybe

27:08

I could give you this much money, which is actually a promise, for that thing. And you've packed all of your damn oppression into the price.

27:16

And I've packed all my oppression into the willingness to pay it. And that solution sucks. It's a bad solution.

27:23

But compared to every other solution, man, it's why 10 % of us have freedom. And so, there's a tremendous illogic at the bottom of this.

27:32

It's like, you have to fractionate the oppressed all the way down to the level of the individual.

27:39

Well, that's what the figured out. You know, there's a couple of figures who at the mythological roots of our culture.

27:46

And, you know, people get upset with me because I bring in religious themes, but I understand some things about mythology and religion.

27:52

And it's not an accident that the axiomatic Western individual is someone who was unfairly nailed to a cross and tortured.

28:01

It's like, yes, right, exactly. Okay, so let's just stop there for a second.

28:11

Totally agree. Up to this point. All the stuff about oppression, you know, this whole idea, intersectionality, all this absurdity that is running rampant in our society today.

28:30

It leads to what he's calling fractionation. Everyone being fractionated.

28:37

Because you can't just have women who are oppressed. You end up with Black women who are oppressed.

28:44

And then it's not just Black women, it's Black women lesbians who are oppressed. And then it's Black women lesbians who are left handed.

28:51

And then it just keeps dividing and dividing and dividing. And eventually, it comes down to the individual because there's nobody that has the exact setup that you do.

29:02

The exact set of problems that you do. So it ends up dividing us from everybody.

29:09

There can't be a meaningful functioning society when we're all sitting here going,

29:15

I'm being oppressed by everybody else. Everybody else has a different set of these issues.

29:21

And so that's what he's addressing. But then you just had the archetypal person. Jesus is the archetypal person, the primitive standard in Western civilization.

29:32

He gets nailed to a cross, except that's not the

29:39

New Testament message. No one takes my life from me. I lay it down of my own accord.

29:49

If you don't have a resurrected, if you don't have an empty tomb, okay, let me put it this way.

29:56

If the light of the empty tomb does not shine upon your understanding of Jesus and his work and his mission, it will remain abject darkness.

30:07

And as such, you will be able to mold it into anything you want. I mean, liberation theology in South America deeply influenced the current

30:17

Pope, liberation theology in South America. The suffering Jesus is central to liberation theology, but since it's been disconnected from its biblical definition and root, its centrality upon the purpose of God in the gospel and things like that, it can be perverted into anything.

30:40

And so making the connection between the suffering of this life and Jesus misses

30:51

Jesus' own teaching as to why the Son of Man came and why the Son of Man lays down his life.

30:58

That's not what it is. Now, given that Western culture historically has been deeply influenced by the architecture of the church, by the constant presence of the cross, by forms of Christianity, you can see that imprint all over the place and you can see how unregenerate men have tried to find a way to work it in and redefine it.

31:33

But we as Christians should hear these things and go, well, that wasn't

31:38

Jesus' view. That's the world's attempt to appropriate

31:46

Jesus' words and actions without actually accepting his own authority.

31:54

That's sort of important, and that's going to end up entering into the discussion of suffering that's coming up.

32:01

What do you do about that? Well, I thought about that for a long time too.

32:07

It's like, well, you don't get together in a damn bob because all that does is allow you to be as horrible as you can possibly imagine and suffer from none of the consequences.

32:17

That's a bad idea. So how about we don't do that? Well, there's a deep idea in the

32:23

West too. It's pick up your damn suffering and bear it and try to be a good person so you don't make it worse.

32:35

Well, that's a truth. I read a lot about the terrible things that people have done to each other.

32:42

You just cannot even imagine it. It's so awful. So you don't want to be someone like that.

32:50

Now, do you have a reason to be? Yes. You have lots of reasons to be.

32:55

God, there's reasons to be resentful about your existence. Everyone you know is going to die. You know, you too.

33:02

And there's going to be a fair bit of pain along the way, and lots of it's going to be unfair. It's like, yeah, no wonder you're resentful.

33:09

It's like, act it out and see what happens. You make everything you're complaining about infinitely worse.

33:16

There's this idea that hell is a bottomless pit, and that's because no matter how bad it is, some stupid son of a bitch like you could figure out a way to make it a lot worse.

33:25

So you think, well, what do you do about that? Well, you accept it. That's what life is like.

33:31

It's suffering. That's what the religious people have always said. Life is suffering.

33:38

Yes. Well, who wants to admit that? Well, just think about it. Well, so what do you do in the face of that?

33:44

Okay, so let's just comment. Life is suffering, but there's no question that, and this is one of the disconnections,

33:56

I think, with some of the odder expressions of modern Christianity, that central aspect of the fact that it's

34:07

God's intention and God's purpose that His people will suffer, and that He's with them in their suffering, and that that suffering is in some sense glorifying to God and redemptive for us.

34:22

Not redemptive as in adding to the sufferings of Christ. But you do have Paul's own statement that we are filling up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ.

34:31

He says to the Colossians, well, that's not a redemptive context, but it is the context of the people of God united with Christ, and He suffered.

34:43

He was a man of sorrows, and so it's obvious that His people will as well. But Christians have always believed that there's a reason for that suffering.

34:52

God didn't create it to be that way initially in the sense that suffering is just simply the default.

34:58

There's the fall. It's all seen within the context of redemption. It's all seen, again, it just becomes a dark shell if it is not illuminated by the light of the empty tomb.

35:17

The purposes of God demonstrated in Christ, in Him, and so take up your suffering.

35:28

Well, that's not really a biblical phrase. It is bear patiently your suffering, knowing that there is a purpose in God's sovereignty, knowing that you as an individual possess eternal life.

35:50

God will use this to make you more like Christ, that you are an ambassador for Christ, that you're bringing the kingdom of God into this kingdom of darkness.

36:01

It's much more the issue of suffering and light and the reaction of rebel sinners, regeneration, that kind of thing.

36:16

Where do you place that psychologically? Where do you place that evolutionarily?

36:25

There isn't a place to put it. It can't stand consistently within, again, we're dealing with worldview stuff here.

36:39

There are times when in God's grace, what we call common grace, at least some of us call common grace, that unregenerate men can see what's best for all men.

36:55

That's what Dr. Peterson's doing. Nothing's accomplished by constantly whining.

37:01

We tell our kids that. Well, we used to. Evidently, that's a minority activity any longer.

37:09

Quit complaining and make it better. That was common in my day. Now you just pander and make everyone bow down to the one who's screaming and whining.

37:23

That's where you have someone such as Dr. Peterson who sees what the issue is, but his current worldview, which obviously,

37:33

I think we as Christians need to be praying God will reveal himself to Dr. Peterson and he would see the

37:40

Lord of glory and bow the knee to him. There's an inconsistency here.

37:47

And what you end up with, what I'm going to hear here in a to be honest with you, doesn't quite make it all the way up to Pelagianism.

38:00

But it's pretty much... Hey, Pelagius had a very high moral standard.

38:06

Pelagius had a very high moral standard. He just wasn't a Christian standard because he didn't have a

38:13

Christian anthropology. And he had a very high moral standard. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

38:20

Come on, man. But so does the Marine Corps. How many people have we seen that were really helped a lot by the discipline of the military?

38:34

That didn't change their hearts. That can't change their hearts.

38:41

Something to keep in mind. Suffering. Try to reduce it. Start with yourself.

38:48

What good are you? Get yourself together for Christ's sake so that when your father dies, you're not whining away in a corner and you can help plan the funeral.

38:56

And you can stand up solidly so that people can rely on you. That's better. Don't be a damn victim.

39:02

Of course you're a victim. Jesus. Obviously. Put yourself together.

39:09

And then maybe if you put yourself together, you know how to do that. You know what's wrong with you, if you'll admit it. There's a few things you could polish up a little bit that you might even be able to manage in your insufficient present condition.

39:22

And so you might shine yourself up a little bit, and then your eyes will be a little more open. Then you can shine yourself up a little bit more.

39:28

And then maybe you could bring your family together instead of having them be the hateful, spiteful, neurotic, infighting batch that you're doomed to spend

39:38

Christmas with. See, that's why it's so popular. Everybody hears that.

39:45

Everybody understands that. But at the same time, what did you just hear?

39:52

The salty language aside, what did you just hear? Clean yourself up. Be the kind of guy that helps out at the funeral.

40:01

This is basic Greek philosophical, ethical, and moral exhortation commonly seen down through the centuries.

40:15

It's shocking that this is considered to be something new along those lines, because this was the standard stuff not that long ago.

40:25

It's just been banished by the communist left in our society.

40:31

But you and I both know, and I'm saying you and I to Christians, you and I both know you can't do that.

40:40

I'm not saying that there's surface level moral and ethical changes you can decide.

40:47

There are people who decide, you know what, I'm sick and tired of being overweight and constantly sick.

40:54

I'm going to get myself in shape. And as a result, instead of stopping by McDonald's and getting that quarter pound of cheese, large fries, and a

41:05

Coke, you actually eat half the quarter pounder, three fries, and get a water, which would probably be more than enough.

41:15

And people can do things like that. But we know as Christians that there's something missing here.

41:22

And that is, what's your motivation? You can't address here issues of selfishness and self preservation.

41:31

How do you have a basis for really addressing true Christian morality, where you do these things out of service to your creator?

41:43

Where's the creator here? Where is the ultimate true purpose for what you're doing and why you're doing it?

41:55

It's great to call people to act like human beings. But the

42:00

Western concept of what a human being is, is not a Jungian concept of what a human being is. It's the creature.

42:09

Remember the story we started off with? It's what that guy at the University of Washington hates, loathes, because he knows it's true.

42:20

He knows it's true. And he knows he lives in rebellion against it every day. I'm not talking about Dr. Pierce. I'm talking about that other guy,

42:25

Barash, or whatever his name was. He loves it. And so he wants to destroy it.

42:33

But that's what's missing here. That's what needs to be there.

42:39

So then you fix yourself up a little bit, kind of humbly, because you know, God, you're a fixer upper if there ever was one.

42:46

And then you got to figure out, well, can you figure out how to make peace with your idiot brother? And probably not, because he's just as dumb as you.

42:53

So how the hell are you going to manage that? And so then maybe you get somewhere that way, and your family's sort of functioning.

42:59

And you find out, well, that kind of relieved a little bit of suffering, although it reduced the opportunities for spiteful revenge.

43:05

And that's kind of a pain in the neck. And so then you get your family together a little bit.

43:11

And you're a little clued in then, at least a bit, because you've done something difficult that's actually difficult.

43:16

You're a little wiser. And so then maybe you could put a tentative finger out beyond the family and try to change some little thing without wrecking it.

43:25

It's like, our society is complex. And we teach our students that they could just fix it. It's like, go fix a military helicopter and see how far you get with that.

43:34

It's like, what are you going to do? You're like a chimp with a wrench. Whack. Oh, look, it's better.

43:39

It's like, no, it's not better. Things are complicated. And to fix things is really hard.

43:45

And you have to be like a golden tool to fix things. And you're not. And that's the other message of the

43:54

West. It's like, how do you overcome the suffering of life? And I'm not saying it's only the message of the

44:01

West. How do you overcome the suffering of life? It's be a better person. That's how you do it.

44:07

Well, that's hard. It takes responsibility. And I think, you know, if you said to someone, you want to have a meaningful life?

44:16

Everything you do matters. That's the definition of a meaningful life. But everything you do matters.

44:22

Okay. Just as a Christian, why? I mean,

44:29

I agree. Everything you do matters because God has made you in his image and he is accomplishing his purpose.

44:35

And there's going to be a day of judgment and everything you do matters because it's a part of that fabric that God is weaving to his own glory.

44:42

I get it. But as an evolutionary secularist, what do you mean it matters? You die, you go to dust.

44:53

Secularism has no foundation for bearing up this appropriate and right exhortation by one human being to other human beings.

45:11

Buck it up, man. Grow up. Stop whining. Start serving others.

45:18

Do something meaningful with your life. Quit playing video games and start serving the community. Do something meaningful.

45:25

Don't be a burden to other people. Be a man. Be a woman. It's good to be a man and good to be a woman.

45:33

Those are good things. All of these things are right and appropriate things to say, but there's only one worldview that can ground that consistently all the way through.

45:47

And it's not an evolutionary Christianity is mythology worldview.

45:56

The statements are true, but what makes them true? What will keep them true, even when the other side, when the communists and the socialists and the leftists and everybody else trying to divide everybody from everybody else, when they get enough time to, you know, they can't do it on TV obviously, but they get enough time to think through some objections, it's got to be consistent.

46:19

And who has that consistent answer? Well, there's something to think about. You're going to have to carry that with you.

46:26

Or do you want to just forget about the whole meaning thing and then you don't have any responsibility because who the hell cares?

46:33

You can wander through life doing whatever you want, gratifying impulsive desires for how useful that's going to be.

46:39

And you're stuck in meaninglessness, but you don't have any responsibility. Which one do you want? Well, ask yourself, which one are you pursuing?

46:49

And you'll find very real quick. So you either take responsibility, and find out that's hard, and make a difference in the world.

47:00

Or they just go through life selfishly. You know, just spread your genotype around as much as possible. But since there's no purpose, then it's meaninglessness.

47:08

So which is it going to be? Well, think about that for a second.

47:18

How do you get meaningfulness out of the mere attempt to be morally good, however you define that?

47:29

What makes that meaningful? If when you die, you turn back to space dust, and that's it, there is no judgment.

47:36

There is no impact upon the future. Where is the connection there?

47:43

That's why, again, I say you can hear all these truthful things, but truthful statements have to have a foundation that holds them up when the pushback comes.

48:00

And it's only the Christian faith that provides that. Rapidly, that it isn't the majority of your soul that's pursuing the whole meaning thing.

48:08

Because, well, look what you have to do to do that. You have to take on the fact that life is suffering.

48:14

You have to put yourself together in the face of that. Well, it's hard. Christ, it's amazing.

48:20

People can even do it. I'm stunned every day when I go outside, and it isn't a riot with everything burning.

48:28

Really, God, you talk to people, it's like... Now, you know, I'm stunned too, but the reason that I'm not overly stunned when

48:38

I walk outside is because there is one who's restraining the evil of man.

48:44

But I also know that when he withdraws that hand of restraint, that's exactly what it will be outside.

48:52

There's a difference in the approach. I knew this guy, he'd been in a motorcycle accident, and it really ruined him.

48:58

And he was like a linesman, you know, working on the power. And he was working with someone who had Parkinson's disease, and they had complementary inadequacies.

49:07

And so two of them could do the job of one person. And so they're out there fixing power lines in the freezing cold, despite the fact that one was three quarters wrecked with a motorcycle accident, and the other one had

49:18

Parkinson's. It's like, that's how our civilization works. It's like, there's all these ruined people out there.

49:24

They've got problems like you can't believe. Off they go to work and do things they don't even like.

49:29

And look, the lights are on. My God, it's unbelievable. It's a miracle. It's a miracle.

49:36

And we're so ungrateful, college students, the postmodern types. They're so ungrateful.

49:42

So ungrateful. You know, every Thanksgiving, we talk about this. But grateful to whom?

49:49

Who are they supposed to be grateful to? Why should a random collection of molecules that is going to become an even more random collection of molecules to the point of death, why should that random collection of molecules be grateful?

50:07

You see, there's so much borrowing from a meaningfully theistic, personal theistic, creator -based religious system here that goes against the psychology and the evolutionary stuff.

50:27

And the evolutionary theory can't give you a meaningful basis for why you should be grateful. You know, they don't know that they're surrounded by just a bloody miracle.

50:38

It's a miracle that all this stuff works. That all you crazy chimpanzees that don't know each other can sit in the same room for two hours sweltering away without tearing each other apart.

50:48

Because that's what chimps do. So anyways, so what happened?

50:58

Well, I made some videos and I got to the bottom of some things, at least as far as I can tell. So I told you what the bottom is.

51:05

And then I got this idea about what you might do about it. Which isn't my idea. It's like, it's not my idea.

51:11

It's an old, old, old, old idea. It's far older than Christianity. It's old. It's the oldest story of mankind.

51:19

Get yourself together. Transcend your suffering. See if you can be some kind of hero.

51:26

Make the suffering in the world less. Well, that's the way forward, as far as I can tell, if there is any way forward.

51:33

That's what's under assault by the post -modernists. So look out, because they know exactly what they're doing.

51:39

And they know exactly why they're doing it. And that's what it looks like to me. So that's it.

51:51

So you can take that down. There we go. So there you go.

51:58

Put yourself together. Well, yeah. You know, I like the idea of telling folks, put yourself together.

52:08

But when I do that, I'm saying, God made you in his image.

52:13

You are responsible before him. And he is going to judge you.

52:23

There is going to be a day of judgment. That's what's missing there. And that's what's in Jesus' teaching.

52:31

But it's not there in Dr. Peterson's worldview.

52:38

And so what do we need to do? We need to pray for Dr.

52:45

Peterson. I really hope that his interactions with Christians will be with such serious

52:57

Christians that they will challenge him and they will do so consistently and with serious insight into what they're saying.

53:08

He's obviously tremendous intellect. And so he needs to have interaction with folks that can really hold him to a consistent position.

53:21

And we need to pray for him. I mean, I'd love to see him consistently taking those folks on.

53:29

I recognize, look, I recognize, you know, if he became a

53:35

Christian, might he lose the platform he currently has?

53:43

It's possible. It's possible. I don't know. It's possible. But what must be our prayer?

53:52

Our prayer must be for his salvation. I am in no way, shape, or form saying you shouldn't watch the next

53:58

Jordan Peterson video that comes out. But I do think you should watch it prayerfully and understanding the fundamental worldview issues that are presented there.

54:08

Take the good and recognize how it could be better, how it could be more consistent, how it could be more

54:13

God -honoring. You know, listen to what he says about the foolishness of this stuff that's creeping into our churches.

54:30

Just because big names promote it doesn't mean you should listen to it, doesn't mean you should accept it.

54:38

And so there you go. There is just some thoughts as you're listening to that.

54:46

All right, I'm going to do a few minutes on Irma and Laikona, and then we'll do 20 minutes of phone calls.

54:58

So we'll open up the lines at 877 -753 -3341, but we're only doing 20 minutes.

55:05

So I will try to be good in being brief in the answers.

55:12

I know I'm not very good at that at all. And please try to be direct with your questions, 877 -753 -3341.

55:20

Real quickly to what

55:26

Bart Ehrman says, all I wanted to cover real quickly today is sort of a fundamental foundational thing which will help us all the way through the examination of what is said.

55:42

And that is, basically the argument is, from Mike Laikona, the

55:48

Gospels were written by ancient standards.

55:56

They were not meant to be modern MP3 recording transcriptions.

56:04

They are not based upon video records. The writers had a specific message to communicate.

56:16

And Ehrman's going to basically say, that may be, but they're still inaccurate. And the one side is trying to argue for a different standard of accuracy than the other side is.

56:30

And I think that comes out in this statement. And here's where I think

56:36

Ehrman has the advantage against Mike Laikona, because Mike Laikona has said, yeah, there are errors in the

56:43

Bible. There's not that major. And here's

56:49

Bart Ehrman at the beginning of his presentation, after he did rather, well, someone's got to suggest to Bart that Bart stop asking how many people in the audience want to see him get creamed in the debate.

57:05

I mean, how many times can you do the same thing? It's just amazing.

57:13

But anyway, and after he made a humorous comment about his debate with Laikona when he had laryngitis, he got around to sort of stating his primary argument.

57:25

And here's, oops, you don't want to listen to it at that highest speed. There we go.

57:32

Standard speed here is short. So here's what Bart Ehrman said. In this debate, we're not really debating whether the

57:41

Gospels of the New Testament were reliable by ancient standards. We're not asking how they compare to ancient historians, how they stack up against Plutarch or against Livy or against other authors from the ancient world.

57:55

We're debating are the Gospels historically reliable? I'm taking that question to mean something pretty basic.

58:03

Do the Gospels describe what actually happened in the past accurately? If you read a book today, if you read a biography, you read a history, suppose you read a study of Abraham Lincoln or Marco Polo or Julius Caesar, and you ask yourself, is it accurate?

58:19

What you mean is you're not asking, is it accurate in comparison? Like, is it about as badly accurate as some other book written at the same time?

58:27

You're asking, is it accurate? Does it describe the things that this person said and did, or are there mistakes in it?

58:35

You're asking with respect to the Gospels, do they actually describe what Jesus said and did?

58:43

Now, theirs, in a nutshell, is where Barth is going.

58:50

And obviously, I think he realizes this is rather problematic for Mike Licona, because, for example, later on, they're going to discuss the famous incident in Matthew at the resurrection, where the tombs are opened and the bodies of saints are raised up, and they go into the city and are seen by many.

59:21

And one of the saddest things for me in this debate, to be honest with you, was that this was called the zombie section.

59:28

The zombie section. There's nothing in this text about zombies. And the sad thing was,

59:37

Licona never corrected Ehrman. He went ahead and adopted the terminology of the zombies, even while giving an incredibly difficult to follow and wholly unsatisfactory presentation of the idea this is some type of eschatological apocalyptic language, which no one understood.

01:00:01

In fact, and I think the reason is because Mike Licona does not understand what that means either.

01:00:07

But be it as it may, it's that kind of thing. Since Ehrman knows that, then he doesn't really even have to worry about the outcome of this debate, because he already pretty much won it.

01:00:25

As long as he just establishes this as his criteria, and says, this is the standard

01:00:32

I'm going to use, and you admit their errors, so I win. And Licona's put in an almost impossible situation at that particular point.

01:00:46

So it's not that Ehrman does not recognize that these works are ancient works that have a different standard of historiography.

01:00:55

It's just that he's saying, yeah, okay, fine. But they say X, Y, and Z.

01:01:02

Did X, Y, and Z actually happen? And you can dance around that question all you want, but you eventually have to get to the point in answering the question, did

01:01:12

X, Y, and Z eventually happen? Now, it is interesting that later on, Ehrman will basically give a pretty strongly fundamentalistic argument, because he comes from a fundamentalistic background, obviously.

01:01:27

But he will basically say, okay, Mike admits that certain things in the

01:01:34

Gospels are in error. But he says they're small things. I just simply ask you, if the

01:01:40

Bible can err in small things, why can't it err in large things? Now, of course, this is from a man who says, now,

01:01:46

I'm not trying to deconvert anybody. Yes, yes, actually, actually, you are.

01:01:53

Now, one of the common claims of Bart Ehrman is that we all read the

01:02:04

Gospels incorrectly. We read them incorrectly. Because we don't read them in one of these.

01:02:12

Now, this is the Greek version, but it's available in English as well. You've heard them called harmonies of the

01:02:20

Gospels or just simply the Gospels in parallel. Synopsis quater euangeliorum, the

01:02:26

Greek version. Wow, look at that. June of 1986.

01:02:35

I wish I still... That's one bummer about Kindle books. And I don't do it much with the paper books to get any more either, because I don't put my little thingamabob in there.

01:02:47

But it's sort of cool to see when something came into your library.

01:02:54

So we're talking, yeah, 32 years ago. Not quite 32 years

01:03:00

I've had this one. It's still in pretty good shape. I try to take care of myself. Anyway, when

01:03:07

I taught through the Synoptic Gospels at PRBC, we used the

01:03:13

English version of this volume. There are a number of different versions available.

01:03:19

And what's interesting is any version of a volume like this, and they're available electronically.

01:03:25

Accordance has it. I don't know if Olive Tree does. I don't have it in Olive Tree. I know Logos does, where you can electronically get the same thing, basically.

01:03:38

But what it allows you to do is to see what are supposedly, anyways, parallel accounts in the

01:03:48

New Testament in parallel. Now, remember, notice I said supposedly. There's always editorial stuff.

01:03:58

In fact, even here, what they'll do is when the editors are like, this might be the same story.

01:04:06

Might not. We're not sure. They'll put the one they're not sure about in smaller font, real small font, and just say, you might want to look at this.

01:04:18

And we had some people in the Sunday school class that brought their own

01:04:25

Harmony of the Gospels. I had a Harmony of the Gospels. I should bring it in sometime. It's in the other room. But I had a

01:04:30

Harmony in my first year at Grand Canyon.

01:04:38

We had that. So you couldn't skip this stuff. It's not like... I know most of my students weren't focused in upon where there were differences.

01:04:47

I was already dealing with Mormons, and so I was already involved in apologetics. It was already important to me. But yeah, a lot of folks will skip over that.

01:04:55

But it's not nearly as rare as Ehrman would like to pretend that it is.

01:05:01

But it is the only way to engage in this study in a meaningful fashion on our side.

01:05:12

I would highly recommend, if you're a binding and paper type person, you can get the ones from the...

01:05:24

Well, this is the German Bible Society, but the

01:05:29

United Bible Society's version. You can get other ones.

01:05:35

They're going to differ a little bit. Like I said, we had some people bring their own in, and it really wouldn't match up exactly.

01:05:43

And then, like I said, look into the... If you've got a Bible program, a lot of them will have a module that you can add in or something along those lines that will give you the parallels.

01:05:55

If you can read Greek, it is fascinating to me to see the textual notes from...

01:06:03

I think this was back in NA25 or NA26, but I think it was NA25. But the textual notes, because when they're placed in parallel like that, you can really, really, really see what's called parallel corruption, where someone's familiarity with a text in Mark, for example, will almost always mean that over in Luke, you're going to have some textual variant that's going to try to make

01:06:30

Luke sound like Mark or Mark sound like Luke or both. It is fascinating to be able to see that.

01:06:40

And this is the only form I've really been able to see that in. Now that I think about it, I don't think

01:06:48

I could do electronically what this does in paper. I don't think I have a module set up to be able to do that.

01:06:56

It probably can be done. I'm not exactly sure how it would be done. But anyway, it is well worth the investment.

01:07:05

I don't know what they cost anymore. They were a little bit pricey even back in the day.

01:07:11

I haven't looked. But I would recommend if this is a subject that you want to engage in and you recognize the importance of, good to have that as a resource.

01:07:23

Good to have it sitting on the shelf to be able to look at. And so the question is going to be when we compare

01:07:33

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, he's going to go after birth narratives, genealogies, nothing new about any of that.

01:07:43

He's going to go after some examples in the life and ministry of Jesus. And then he's going to go after the resurrection appearances.

01:07:51

It's been doing this for a long time. If you just can't wait for us to get to all that information.

01:07:59

I know that I've at least twice publicly given presentations on Ehrman's presentation.

01:08:06

And for example, I've focused on his dating of the day of the crucifixion. That's one of the issues he gets into here is

01:08:15

John versus the Synoptic Gospels, different dates of the crucifixion. And again,

01:08:21

Laikona goes, yeah, I agree. I was like, no reason for that whatsoever, but I know

01:08:31

I did the one at Covenant of Grace Church in St.

01:08:37

Charles, and I did it at one of the First Jeremiah Cry thing that I did in New York.

01:08:45

So maybe that might give you enough Google material to track those down or something.

01:08:51

I don't know. Well, there you go. So that's where we'll be picking up. And like I said, you might get a little bit more out of it when we're dealing with some of the synoptic issues, if you have a resource like that available.

01:09:04

Okay, let's get to our phone calls here. And let's talk to Joshua.

01:09:13

Hi, Joshua. Hello? Hello. All right. My question, it was regarding Galatians chapter 2, specifically

01:09:24

Paul's opposition of Cephas. And I wanted to know why it is that in verse 8,

01:09:32

Paul refers to him as Peter, but then he switches the name to Cephas. Have you come across anyone who indicates that, you know, like, because of that difference, that it's a different person?

01:09:44

Oh, I'm sure somebody comes up with, someone will come up with every kind of wacky thing.

01:09:49

But the fact is, it would seem fairly obvious to me that Cephas is used in verse 9, because you have the three names in a row.

01:10:02

So since you're using a Hebrew form of Jacob, it's actually

01:10:10

Jacob, and there are a lot of people, I know Mike Brown doesn't refer to the Book of James, he refers to the

01:10:16

Book of Jacob, because that is what it says. It's an anglicized, Germanicized pronunciation to use

01:10:22

James, but it's using Jacob and Cephas and Ioannes.

01:10:30

So that's probably just simply the forms of those names that when they were used together was common.

01:10:41

But there's no reason, given that Petras is used in 7 and in 8, to think there's somebody else there, especially in light of Barnabas's name and things like that.

01:10:54

So no, he's known by both names, just as Paul. You know, just because you have

01:11:01

Saul and Paul doesn't mean they were two different people. Okay. Yeah, I was just wondering about that, that does help a lot.

01:11:08

I recently came across a documentary by a Roman Catholic that was making that unique—I've never seen that argument before.

01:11:15

Well, you know, if you watch enough television, you'll be confused about everything.

01:11:23

Yeah, it was those same fellows that accused you of being demon -possessed. Well, that should have answered your question before we got started.

01:11:31

But then again, I'm not sure which of many groups that is. I'm assuming you mean the

01:11:37

Diamond Brothers. Yeah, they made a lot of arguments trying to say that Cephas was a different guy based on Peter and Axe was challenged by the circumcision party and didn't end up changing his behavior.

01:11:53

You know, they've just got a lot of extra time on their hands. They really, really do.

01:11:59

I can't imagine them being overly busy, you know, caring for the poor and stuff when they've got so much time.

01:12:05

If you're going to be going through all of my videos in slow motion to try to find some type of demonic hand signals, that's pretty much all you're doing in life.

01:12:15

Yeah, it's a sad thing. All right, Josh, thanks. Yeah, thank you. All right, God bless.

01:12:20

Bye -bye. All right, let's talk to Bryson. Hi, Bryson. Hey, what's going on?

01:12:28

I'll get straight to it. You were talking a lot about Jordan Peterson, and I want to know what the most effective way of reaching the

01:12:34

Jordan Petersons of the world through evangelism would be. Am I going to have to start trying to meet them on their own level with learning a lot of different psychology and all this type of history, or do we want to focus more on the historicity of the

01:12:46

Gospels, resurrection, and things like that? Well, there aren't too many

01:12:53

Jordan Petersons in the world, first of all. So if we want to differentiate between Jordan Peterson and then people who are enamored with Jordan Peterson, I would say the majority of his followers do not have the same barriers that he himself would have.

01:13:15

So if I were to be talking to Jordan Peterson, about these issues,

01:13:21

I would approach him very much in a presuppositional mindset, and that is,

01:13:26

I'm going to be dealing with the grounds of his epistemology and how he knows what he knows, because he already recognizes the importance of presuppositions in dealing with the other side.

01:13:41

And so therefore, since he's made the image of God, holding him to a presuppositional standard would be what

01:13:50

I would do. You wouldn't necessarily be following the exact same path with devotees who embrace his call to make something of yourself and man up and so on and so forth, but don't have the same rather complex web of presuppositions in their background.

01:14:15

I mean, I'm assuming if we're talking about non -Christian individuals who are just experiencing a moral reformation,

01:14:26

I'm a presuppositionalist all along, so you always have to be looking at what their what their background is, what their assumptions are, things like that.

01:14:36

But I would just recognize that there would be a number of barriers with Jordan Peterson himself that would not be present in the others.

01:14:47

I mean, when someone sits there and says, it's going to take me at least another three years just to think through this one aspect, most of the people who listen to him are not going to be responding that way.

01:14:58

So I would see that you'd have a little bit of a approach there, but you're going to have to deal presuppositionally with the consistency of, well, just in that video

01:15:08

I was saying, okay, that's great, but why? In light of what you believe man is, why would you say what you just said?

01:15:17

Not to the point where it would just be some type of philosophical discussion.

01:15:23

I would want to bring in the very strong words of Jesus in regards to the

01:15:29

New Testament testimony as to who he is and the impossibility of maintaining a neutrality toward his claims.

01:15:39

That would be where I'd want to go, but it would all depend on what prompted the opportunity that I would have to speak to him.

01:15:48

How much time do I have to chat with him? Are we sitting waiting for different flights?

01:15:55

That's going to change everything. Just that kind of thing. Okay. Right.

01:16:01

Because, oh, okay, cool. Okay. Hey, thanks for the call, Bryson. Thank you.

01:16:07

All right. God bless. Bye -bye. Well, this is interesting.

01:16:13

Hello, Joseph. Hello, Dr. White. Yes, sir. My question is, what is the best way to respond to someone who believes in apostolic concession, asking you where the

01:16:24

Church was before the Reformation? Say that you believe in apostolic succession and the only meaningful apostolic succession is a succession of truth, that is, teaching what the

01:16:33

Apostles taught. Historically, it is simply impossible to pretend to create an apostolic succession.

01:16:41

Anybody who knows history knows that in the earlier years there were gaps in the

01:16:47

Roman papacy, but in the bishopric of Rome there were competing names.

01:16:54

You have the pornocracy in the 9th century where it just, you know, I mean, it's even hard to describe the degradation of the

01:17:02

Roman Sea at that point. In the 14th century, you've got the

01:17:08

Babylonian captivity of the Church, the Avignon papacy. You have three popes anathematizing the other popes because of the

01:17:17

Council of Pisa all the way to the Council of Constance in 1415. Historically, it is a laugh for someone to say, ah, but we have the unbroken apostolic succession.

01:17:30

Positively, my initial response was really what I do say, and that is,

01:17:36

I believe in apostolic succession. I just recognize that what that means is to walk and to teach in the truth that the

01:17:45

Apostles themselves taught, and the only examples we have of apostolic teaching is that which is in Theanoustas' God -breathed scripture.

01:17:58

And that's why I asked Mitch Pakla years ago in our debate in 1999 in San Diego when that issue of apostolic succession and the necessity of the

01:18:08

Church's interpretation and stuff like that, when that stuff came up, I asked him a question during the

01:18:14

Q &A session. I said, can you give us a single word that Jesus said that is not found in the canon of scripture that's been defined by the

01:18:28

Roman Church with its apostolic succession and so on and so forth? Can you give us a single word that Jesus ever said that has been foully defined by the

01:18:36

Roman Church that's not in scripture? And he had obviously never been asked that question before.

01:18:42

And he thought for a second, said, well, no, there isn't anything. He said, okay, how about any of the Apostles, since we're talking about apostolic succession?

01:18:49

No, no, there's nothing there at all. So the only meaningful definition of apostolic succession today is to teach what the

01:18:59

Apostles taught, and the only way to do that is the hard work of rightly handling the inspired

01:19:06

Word of God. Now, the early Church in the 2nd and 3rd centuries used that term in a number of different ways, but one of the issues that they were facing in that primitive period was a lack of a finally constituted, finally, not finally, finally constituted

01:19:32

New Testament. And so there were some men who, for example, arguing against the

01:19:38

Gnostics would refer to either apostolic tradition, which is different. That's a definable thing.

01:19:46

It's always sub -apostolic. In other words, every time they actually define what apostolic tradition is, it's found in scripture.

01:19:51

The whole point is, it just goes back to the Apostles. But they also used that term of apostolic succession, and part of that was during the period of time when you do have very clearly the evolution of and arising of Church offices that had no biblical warrant to them at all.

01:20:10

So you've got to come up with some grounds for doing that. And so it's interesting. It continues to happen to this day.

01:20:18

How does Mormonism come along without any history and establish all of its teachings and its offices and things like that?

01:20:26

Well, you've got to have apostolic succession. But from their perspective, it's from the reintroduction of that authority after a period of apostasy.

01:20:36

But anybody who wants to get past what the New Testament says, you're going to have to get around that completed canon somehow, and that's one of the ways they do it.

01:20:46

Okay. I think that'll help me not to strawman the Protestant position. So I'm just trying to understand the position on where the

01:20:54

Church was. I think that's really helpful. Well, no, I didn't actually address where the

01:20:59

Church was. I don't believe the Church ever ceased to exist. I mean, for example, when

01:21:06

Ignatius writes to the Church at Rome around 107,

01:21:12

I mean, this is early. He doesn't address the Bishop of Rome because there was no bishop in the

01:21:18

Church of Rome at that time. They had a plurality of elders. And they never thought that they needed one, that this whole concept of a successor of Peter and all the rest of this stuff is much later.

01:21:26

And yet I can see that both in Ignatius, now Ignatius in Antioch has a monarchical episcopate.

01:21:34

He has the idea of a single bishop over an entire church in a city that doesn't exist in Rome.

01:21:43

I see them both as part of the body of Christ. So you don't have to have absolute unanimity for the

01:21:53

Gospel truth and the Church to exist. We can say there's one Lord, one faith, one baptism.

01:21:58

That does not mean we're zombies and are absolute carbon copies of each other. And anybody who looks at the

01:22:04

New Testament sees the same thing happening there, too. So just so you catch that, okay? Okay.

01:22:10

There's also a difference between the Eastern Orthodox position and the Catholic position, slightly so. On what?

01:22:19

On papacy. Oh, of course. Of course. Oh, yeah. Believe me, I know. All right.

01:22:24

Thanks, Joseph. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, the Eastern Orthodox, definitely.

01:22:30

Yes. Okay. Let's talk to Virginia. Hi, Virginia. Hi, Dr.

01:22:35

White. How are you? Good. I'm the one who made you the Coogee Christmas cookie and the divided wine one.

01:22:42

Oh, okay. My question was about Mormon. I hope it tasted good. Yes, they did.

01:22:47

Okay. My question was about Mormons. I've read letters to a Mormon elder, and I met the local

01:22:54

Mormon missionaries and invited them over. I write to them on Facebook, they're not coming over anymore, but I'm still sharing the gospel with them and everything.

01:23:03

But I know that you've seen a change in witnessing to the Mormons and that they used to defend their beliefs, but what is your advice for witnessing to the more modern

01:23:12

Mormon missionaries who don't want to even admit to or defend what they believe? Yeah, you know, it is extremely, well, you have to be careful even assuming that they know what they believe anymore.

01:23:28

I mean, it is very true that in the early 1980s, when you talked to young Mormons, not even missionaries, 13, 14 years of age, they knew what they believed, and they would argue what they believed.

01:23:47

They believed that they were the true church, and they knew Joseph Smith's first vision, and they knew they didn't believe in the doctrine of the

01:23:55

Trinity. And today, are there still

01:24:01

Mormons like that? Yes, of course there are. But in general, the missionaries that are coming to the door are significantly less doctrinally knowledgeable, and you can't even anymore assume that they do actually know.

01:24:20

I mean, I met some even back in my young days that didn't know.

01:24:27

I mean, they just didn't know. Mike Beliveau and I were in my 1964

01:24:33

Dodge Dart, ran into two missionaries in the parking lot of the Provo LDS Temple.

01:24:40

I saw the temple, by the way, Rich, when I drove up there a few weeks ago. I saw the Provo Temple, and it looks like that spaceship that landed over there.

01:24:50

I mean, it's like 1968 architecture. It just looks horrible today.

01:24:58

I mean, it really, honestly, it looks... Did you see that video I linked to where in Indonesia, they launched that thing up into...

01:25:05

That looks like what it's about to do. I mean, it's just that bad. Anyways, not really relevant there. But anyway, we ran into these two missionaries in the parking lot and started talking to them.

01:25:16

And honestly, these poor guys did not know what the Book of Abraham was. They didn't know there was a

01:25:22

Book of Abraham in their scriptures. And this was back, I don't know, mid -80s. So there's always been the missionary that, you know, elder clueless, sort of, you know, just sort of out having a good old time.

01:25:36

So it's always been necessary to try to find out where somebody is.

01:25:42

And you can still run into a missionary today that, you know, is willing to go to the mat with you and talk with you.

01:25:50

But you have to find out. And honestly, dealing with the standard perspective missionaries now where it's like, well, you know, we have our truth.

01:26:01

We just like to share that truth with you. We don't want a Bible bash. It's all about feelings and emotions and things like that.

01:26:08

Yeah, it's really hard to get through to someone like that. I mean, you can try to go to the scriptures. You can try to quote from, you know,

01:26:16

Brigham Young or Joseph Smith or anybody else. They've just sort of been trained not to even think about that kind of stuff.

01:26:22

And so there isn't any bulletproof methodology other than, you know, to appeal to the fact that, well, it sounds like what you're saying is

01:26:33

I just need to accept your version of truth. But you're not really interested in comparing that with what other people believe.

01:26:42

Or it's, you know, you can, they are made in the image of God.

01:26:48

So you can press the antithesis. You can press the fact that they are fundamentally denying any meaningful nature of truth.

01:27:00

But unless they're willing to hear that, unless the Spirit of God opens a door, it's very, very difficult.

01:27:07

It was honestly much more easy to witness to Mormons in the past than it is today.

01:27:13

That kind of liberalism closes the door to meaningful communication. It really does. Yeah, I try to talk to them, but they're like, just keep reading the

01:27:23

Book of Mormon. Yeah, and pray about it. If you're convinced that the Spirit's told you otherwise, then I'm not going to argue with you.

01:27:29

Right. And applaud me for sharing the gospel. And it's like, but we don't agree on this.

01:27:35

But they don't actually want to defend what they believe. Yeah. All right. Got one more call to sneak in from overseas.

01:27:41

So well, thank you for your call, Virginia. Okay. All right. Have a great day. All right, let's real quick talk to Julio.

01:27:49

Hi, Julio. Hello. Hello, Julio.

01:27:57

Go on once. Go on twice. This is Julio. Ah, there we go.

01:28:03

Oh, that was close. Sorry. I was talking to myself. Well, that's an interesting...

01:28:08

I've never heard that one before. I've listened to a lot of talk radio. I've never heard it.

01:28:13

I said, sorry, I was talking to myself. And the conversation was so fascinating that I could not possibly break away.

01:28:20

Yeah, sorry about that. I had it on mute. I understand. Yeah. It's so great to be here because you have influenced my

01:28:27

Christian thinking for so long. That's so great to talk to you, finally. Oh, good. Thank you. So I had a question.

01:28:33

It's kind of a tough question for me. I hope that you would help me with it.

01:28:39

It's about inerrancy in consideration of Matthew 27, 9.

01:28:45

And let me read it for you in the NASB. Yeah. Well, I've got it.

01:28:50

I've got it up. Okay. So how does that affect the definition of inerrancy, for example, the one that we hold in the

01:29:00

Chicago Declaration? It doesn't.

01:29:06

Because, you know, I don't know if you've seen this little book.

01:29:12

That's why I grabbed it off the shelf as soon as I saw the phone call. It's Gleason Archer's Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties.

01:29:20

There's a section on Matthew 27, 9 that'll go into more depth than I will here.

01:29:27

But what you have here is a conflated citation.

01:29:34

There's a couple of things to keep in mind. You have the greater portion of the citations from Zechariah 11, 12 through 13.

01:29:44

But there is material from Jeremiah 32, 6 through 9, 18 -2, 19 -2.

01:29:52

These are some of the backgrounds for some material there. There are a couple things. When an

01:29:58

Old Testament text is being cited, the fundamental mechanism the

01:30:10

Jewish people would use would be to utilize the greater prophet's name rather than a minor prophet's name.

01:30:19

It's not just because that makes it more important. It made it easier to find. Remember, they were reading from scrolls.

01:30:28

And so the scrolls would be broken up into having the major prophet at the beginning.

01:30:35

And so it's sort of a practical thing in simply being able to find something.

01:30:44

For us, it's real easy. We whip open a book. They didn't use the codex. They used a scroll.

01:30:49

So in some situations where we have Old Testament citations, the major prophet's being used because it was easier to find the citation.

01:31:01

And when you have a mixed citation, and Matthew is more prevalent in doing that because it's a

01:31:08

Jewish way of argumentation. It sort of shows that the Old Testament, the Tanakh as a whole supported your position.

01:31:16

It's not the kind of argumentation we're accustomed to. But Matthew's writing for Jews. And so he's going to use argumentation the

01:31:22

Jews are going to find to be the most relevant. He conflates to, and it's going to be natural for him to use the greater of the two in the citation.

01:31:33

So the Chicago Statement would recognize that in the sense that I seem to recall there's even a section that talks about citational issues, but would recognize that the citation methodology of that day is different than what we have today.

01:31:54

And that it would not constitute some type of a, you know, the person just didn't know where it was, or was an error or something like that.

01:32:01

It is a common way for the Jews to cite their own scriptures to go with the major prophet rather than the minor prophet.

01:32:10

Okay. Thank you very much for your answer. Okay. Yeah. And like I said, Gleason Archer, Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties.

01:32:16

It is available in electronic form in various of the Bible programs and stuff like that.

01:32:23

It'd be a good thing to put on the wish list and put in your library. Okay. Thank you very much,

01:32:30

Dr. White. Thank you. Thanks for calling. God bless. Bye -bye. All right. Well, we got done fairly close to on time.

01:32:38

When you do open phones, that is the problem if we were like syndicated or on a network or something like that is you'd have to, we either wouldn't have been able to take that call, or we've been able to answer it, or, you know, probably would have had to cut it off before he actually got around to come.

01:32:56

Oh, yeah. Are you kidding? Just if we had commercial breaks, I wouldn't have gotten halfway through the second topic today.

01:33:03

So, yeah, that's just how it works. All right. Thanks for watching The Dividing Line today. Lord willing, we will be back on Thursday.

01:33:11

Be careful driving out there, folks, as my sort of beat -up daughter will tell you, unfortunately.

01:33:18

Hope you're feeling better quick, honey. I'm glad you're still well.