Hijacking the Scriptures Part IV: The Romans 9 Debate - Rightly Dividing the Word?

And good morning. Welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is Rich Pierce and I've got about three computers going here. I'm trying to control an Apple one at the moment here and try to figure out where the volume is.

And there it is. Oh, let's bring it on down. Let me bring that to a quiet, nice little fade there. How nice. And welcome to the show. If you don't know me, my name is Rich Pierce, as I said, and I am the president of Alpha Omega Ministries.

I don't do this very often, but last January I began a series when James was out of town reviewing the Romans 9 debate from last May, going through, well, what was supposed to be Romans 9. And I did what was called, what I called a remix, where I kind of swapped things around and had the second debater go first in their opening and then walk through that and then follow through.

I actually paired them up. I did it in that particular order, but actually broke it down by the sections of the passage that they were covering and the way that they were covering it. I thought it was a really interesting way of approaching a debate.

But today I'm going to be beginning the next section of this presentation. And as I'm doing things here, I am trying to make sure that I have all my technology right, because I'm engineering the show, both video and audio, and all of the things going along with it here with you today.

And that is one of the things I'm wanting to make sure I have all my ducks in a row here as we begin to dig into this. So if you're looking at me, looking around, I've got three different mice or trackballs over here controlling three different computers that I've got queued up here.

And it was interesting, I thought about the fact that I've got to actually start the show from the other side of the wall and come through the door with an open mic. Now how do you do that when all you have is what's called a cough drop?

It's actually a button you have to push and that keeps you from, you know, if I have to cough, which my timing has already been bad, and I thought how am I going to close that door with a open mic? And then I realized, you know, there's things called paperweights.

I just put them on the button and they held it down. Interesting things that fascinate me. I don't know if they fascinate anyone else, but anyway, that's how I think, that's how I function. I noticed things like that.

Anyway, the plan here today is to begin the cross-examination section of this debate. Again, a little bit more about me. I'm currently attending King's Church over with John Sampson, who you saw do the previous two shows.

I am teaching the Wednesday nights over at King's Church. We're a very small church at this point. We're pretty much just a startup, but we are growing and the Lord is blessing our work. And we meet at the Palos Verdes facility just south of Union Hills on 87th Avenue up in northwest Peoria.

And we would certainly love to have you join us on Sunday. Our service is beginning at 11 a .m. and we kind of gather, start gathering about 1030 for a little fellowship before the service. And as we grow, I think we'll be able to incorporate a Sunday school into the equation, as well as other more commonly known, well-established things that well-established churches do.

And at this point, we're in the process of growing. So with that out of the way, I want to reiterate a couple of things about Romans 9, which was the focus of this particular event, this debate. And the idea was that both debaters were supposed to come in, make a presentation, exegete Romans chapter 9.

They're supposed to walk through it and they're supposed to comment on it as they walk through it. And exegesis is a verse-by verse process. It is the extrapolation of information as you go through the text.

And I believe, without a doubt, I proved in the previous few programs that I did, one debater did that and the other debater ran as far away from that as he possibly could. Now, on Tuesday, at the end of the show, or at the beginning of the show, I made the comment that I'm going to prove that the reason why I say Leighton Flowers is not listening and is not interested in listening.

And this is why I use the...some people feel it's harsh, but you know, there are some people in this world that they're like talking to a brick wall. They're just not interested in hearing what you have to say.

They just aren't. But they want you to hear what they have to say. And you better listen and even if they're just misinformed. And so, again, that was the way in which I laid the program out to begin with here.

I am using Dr. White's Mac and I'm using my Windows 10 machine here, so I need to keep an eye on the time as I, you know, be a good steward of time, just like you're supposed to do in a debate. Remember, the Apostle Paul wrote like a lawyer making an airtight case.

He built...his writing style is to build element upon element. It's a detailed thread, writing with precision. Each point is connected to what came before. And the book of Romans is rightly known as the gospel according to Paul.

Now, in the previous comments that I made on this, in the previous programs I did, I wanted to separate the method. I wanted to focus on the method and separate the topic out so that we don't get hung up on the Calvinism issue.

That is the topic of the debate, yes. But I wanted you to look and take a look at the manner of the handling of Scripture. Is the debater rightly dividing the Word of Truth as he's handling this? And the simple act of contextual reading is what was at play.

And in order to properly understand the text at hand, you must first establish the text itself before you can go off into anything else related. You have to understand what this is saying right here. Whatever that is, whether we're in Colossians chapter 1 and we're talking to a Jehovah's Witness, whether we're in John 1 talking to a Jehovah's Witness, context matters.

We must first establish the text. Now, the debate structure. As I've dug into this portion of the debate, I'm now convinced that the debate structure and the way they laid it out, while it was inventive, it was unique, it was unusual, it was a mistake.

And the reason that it was a mistake, that I believe was a mistake, is that as we dig into this, this first section that we're going through, Dr. White has no idea what Professor Flowers is going to say in his opening remarks.

So as the cross-examination section that comes next, you have Dr. White who simply walked through the text. Now we have cross-examination of Professor Flowers cross-examining Dr. White on his text.

But there are questions that are going to be asked here that Dr. White has pretty much no idea what is coming next as Professor Flowers does his opening remarks. He is oblivious to the fact that Professor Flowers ran away from the text.

He just, we're gone. He did the hopscotch, he did hopscotch, if I didn't define that in the last one, theological hopscotch. Picture the hopscotch pattern on the sidewalk and the idea is, is that you're supposed to jump with one foot, two foot out, two feet in, one foot and da da da da da da, and you're bouncing all over the place as you're going through the text.

And that is what Professor Flowers did in his opening remarks. But Dr. White doesn't know that yet. So as we get into this cross-examination section, you need to recognize that he is at a disadvantage in that regard.

The structure of debate, I want to remind you, you have the opening remarks. The point in doing opening remarks is you are supposed, this is where you make your case. Time is limited and supposed to be limited.

So you got to make it count. Now as we get into cross-examination, that's coming later. The next section is usually rebuttal. And the idea behind the rebuttal is you're supposed to be responding to your opponent's opening statement.

So as your opening statement is laid out, you've made your case, you have a limited time to do it. So you make that count. And then the other guy is supposed to interact with what you said. Now he can bring in new information into this.

If you make a comment, or if you make a point in your opening statement, and you've written a book that completely contradicts what you just said, your opponent, this is where your opponent would bring that information in and then hold your feet to the fire on it.

Say, wait a minute, you just said this, this and this. But in your book, over here, you actually said this, and you contradicted yourself or something like that. This is the kind of new information. But it, again, is supposed to be interactive.

It is supposed to address what your opponent had to say. Now the cross-examination section is where the debate really happens. The cross-examination is where you can directly inquire of your opponent the things that he said in his opening and in his rebuttal.

The problem here is, in this case, they had Professor Flower, or they had Dr. White go first, then Professor Flowers cross-examines the opening, then Professor Flowers gives his opening, and then Dr. White cross-examines that opening.

And by this point in time, cross-examination has occurred without any rebuttal. And this is where I think the mistake was made. I think in this particular case, it may have gone a very different direction had Professor Flowers gotten up and had to face a rebuttal directly after he gives his opening statement.

I think it would have been a different scenario, but who knows? I am guessing on that go from there. So the cross-examination, inquiring into your opponent's opening and rebuttal, this can be very, this can vary depending on the order of presentation.

The structure of this debate was, and I've already covered that, so let's move on. Closing remarks, we are probably going to get to that on Tuesday, and hopefully, if I don't take all this time rambling on myself right now, the closing remarks are supposed to be your summation of your case, just like your opening remarks are making your case.

You've now argued your case in rebuttal and in cross-examination, and now your closing remarks are supposed to be the summation of your case. No new information is supposed to be entered at this point.

So the point would be, if your opponent already did his closing statement, you have the last word. So the rule is, you're not allowed to now suddenly bring in all of this excess information that hasn't been introduced into the debate yet and dump it on him.

He has no opportunity to respond. So that's the whole point of no new information, and these events are timed for a reason, and that reason is no filibustering. Every bit of this, you may sit back and go, okay, all these academic rules and regulations and process, why is that such a big deal, Rich?

It's a big deal because it matters to the audience. It is a structure that is designed for the audience to learn something from you. If you run away from these rules, if you run away from this process, your audience learns less from you than they would have had you held to it.

So keep that in mind as we move forward. Now the first section we're going to go to here, and I need to cue a couple of things up here. We're going to, okay, let's engineer that little shot right there, and then stage that shot, and we can move forward.

So I'm going to play the first clip. Remember, as we get into this, Professor Flowers has not yet made his presentation. So this is the portion, and I am using the, Professor Flowers is posting on YouTube, I'm using that recording in this.

So this clip starts at 20, at the 25-minute mark in that. So if you're watching, you want to go back and watch on YouTube, the time mark for this is 25 minutes into the presentation, and this is the portion that I call pleasantries.

And let's make sure I got this right, and let's begin. Well, first of all, I do want to thank Heath, Dr.

Marion, thank you for hosting us. The Oaks, Jason, and the crew in the back, they got here several hours early to get things set up. Thank y 'all for everything that y 'all have done. Y 'all give the Oaks a hand and thank them for everything.

And also, Dr. White, welcome to the promised land that we call Texas. And a.

Calvinistic friend told me... The promised land has a lot of traffic, that's all I can say. I had a.

Calvinistic friend tell me just this morning, he said, you know, this debate of yours, it proves determinism is true. I said, what do you mean? He said, no one would freely choose to debate Romans 9 with Dr. White.

And I understand that now, going through this preparation process, but I do appreciate you doing this, and I do think this is an important discussion. I do not think Romans 9, or Ephesians 1, or John 6, or any of these passages should be skipped.

I think that's been part of the problem. I think that's one of the reasons that we have misunderstanding and disagreement within the church is because it has been so neglected for so long. And the reason that we do this, I hope we both know, is to glorify God.

And I think we both agree with that. It's not about winning points or making the other look bad, which I know would be very easy for you to do to me. This is my first theological debate, but I honestly, and I haven't felt that from you at all in this discussion since...

We haven't started yet. We haven't got started. Give him time. Give him time. We haven't warmed up yet.

Okay, so this is the portion I call the pleasantries. And the problem with what Professor Flowers is doing here, you may look at it and go, wow, that's as innocent as I'll get out. The problem is, and you're going to see the contrast, when James comes around to his cross-examination, he's going to go right into the first question.

Because in cross-examination, you've got 12 minutes. You are locked into a period of time to get it done. And the goal here is to extrapolate as much information out of your opponent as you possibly can.

This is to be conducted like a lawyer cross-examines a witness. And so you want, you have 12 minutes to get as much information out of your opponent as possible. And so you'll notice that James will dig right into his questioning when he gets there.

And also, you're going to hear, well, he said that his, he's going to explain, I think that's actually coming up, that his understanding of the purpose of cross-examination is clarity. So I'm going to point you in the right direction here.

If he's going to call this clarity, then I want you to to listen to how much clarity he brings out. Let's proceed.

But the reason that there is cross-examination and the questions is to bring clarity to each other's viewpoints. And that's my ultimate goal as a professor, as a teacher at heart. I want you to understand Calvinism rightly, and I want you to understand my perspective rightly.

And you're like, what's your title? What do you call yourself? That's part of the problem. We don't have a title, really. Southern Baptist, traditionalist, they don't like traditionalist, that's for sure.

And there's a lot of different titles out there. And so I'm a non-Calvinistic Southern Baptist. I don't know how else to say that any better. But just a few questions with regard to what you were.

Talking about. Now, I'm going to put a bookmark in this right here. He is now two minutes and 16 seconds into his cross-examination time. And he hasn't asked a single question yet on topic or of any kind.

So the point is he is now down to nine minutes and 45 seconds, 44 seconds of his time to achieve his goal. This is why I keep emphasizing, and I emphasized in the last series, the way you manage the clock is vital in doing this in an effective manner.

So the question then has to be asked, does he know that? I think Professor Flowers is a smart guy. I think he does know it. And I think as we start to dig into or listen as he proceeds, this is a stalling tactic.

I do believe that. It's a stalling tactic. He's already taken this much time doing this, and the first question hasn't yet been asked. So let's go ahead and get and dig into the very first question. And remember, James hasn't heard anything that Professor Flowers will present yet.

So if you went back and listened to the presentation that I gave back in January, there's some things that should red flag your memories here as you start listening to certain buzz phrases that he's using as he asks his.

Question. First of all, you believe Paul is teaching that Jacob was chosen for salvation over Esau, Isaac over Ishmael. And so I want to ask about Abraham's six additional sons that came after Isaac, and I'm trying to understand if you believe they were repubates for the same reason that Ishmael and Esau were repubates, that God predetermined them to go to hell before they were born also because they obviously weren't chosen to carry the promise.

And so what I'm getting to with this question is what I want to understand is do you acknowledge in any way the difference between those descendants chosen to bring the word, like Isaac, and those who may or may not believe that word, like the other brothers, for example?

Well, I need to correct the assumption of the question, which was right there at the beginning, which I tried to correct in my opening statements. To believe that this text is relevant to individual salvation is not to say that it does not have relevance to other aspects of God's dealings with the people of Israel.

And therefore, the issue of, say, the sons of Keturah or whoever else you might have in mind at that particular point in time is not even raised here because that's not the point. The point to illustrate on Paul's part is determined by what's in verses 6 and 7.

Why is it that Israel is rejecting her Messiah? And the answer to that is that has always happened in the past. God has always had his purpose in freely choosing. Because those individuals are not even brought up, there is no discussion of what their eternal state was, and there is nothing in what I said that assigns the meaning of eternal salvation solely to the promises.

So if the promise is not brought through you, that means that you're eternally lost. So Paul doesn't even raise those objections. I don't know if anyone had ever raised them to him, but he does not even raise those objections in this text, and I would say it goes outside the realm of Romans 9 and what it's trying to communicate.

There we have it. Your question, sir, is off topic. It is outside the debate premise. But what Dr. White doesn't realize is Professor Flowers' entire presentation is going to do that. And so he's pointing out, number one, the questions outside of the text and our focus is on the text.

This is where I think he starts to realize that Professor Flowers is going off the rails, and he is going to go a whole different direction. Now, I also want to point out, watch the interaction here, because again, part of cross-examination, and this is where cross-examination is difficult, part of cross-examination is that you ask a question and you get an answer.

Now, the question is to be phrased in such a way as to elicit an answer that you know you're going to get. They say, you know, they tell lawyers in cross-examination, never ask a question you don't already know the answer to.

And so that's what's going on here. You're supposed to be asking a question of your opponent that you already know the answer to, so that you're able to steer the questioning in a particular direction as your opponent gives you answers that you know how they're going to answer.

Now, they're not going to answer exactly the way you're going to predict they're going to answer. And that's the whole off the top of the head thing here. That's where this gets difficult and unpredictable.

So if your answer that comes back is slightly different than you expected, you've got to make note of that. And like I said earlier, the idea, and we actually had this happen in a debate Dr. White did with an atheist a few years back, where he objected to Dr. White introducing and reaching out to a book the man had written, where in fact the book said something completely different than what the man was advocating.

And the irony is the book was for sale out in the narthex of the church at his book table. But the idea is that you're supposed to elicit information and then interact with the answer. It goes back and forth.

Watch and see if that is what Professor Flowers does.

For example, Lot, we know he was declared righteous by Peter. We know that he was saved, but he wasn't chosen for the lineage. He wasn't chosen. Matter of fact, he was a lot like Esau in that his descendants end up rising up against Israel and attacking them.

They were cursed, but Lot was saved. He wasn't chosen for the promise, much like Esau. And so what I'm trying to get to is why do you assume that Esau was chosen for reprobation when Lot, for example, who meets the same criteria, he wasn't chosen to carry the promise.

He wasn't the lineage,.

But he obviously was still saved. Well, again, as I mentioned, the text point is to demonstrate that before the twins had done anything good or bad, God had a specific purpose. Lot was not involved with that.

He would not have been involved with that one way or the other, at least as far as lineage is concerned. But the point is that even when there was a natural the natural choice should have been Esau. He's the older.

Sure. God had the freedom to overturn even the standard tradition of how the promise was to be passed on. And in regards to Jacob and Esau obviously did much more to demonstrate the reality of his freedom to choose than he did with anyone else.

And again, it seems like you're making the connection that, well, the promise is only about salvation. That's not the point. The point again, and I think we need to emphasize this. The point in looking at Romans 9 is God's freedom in the fact that he has chosen to take the gospel to the Gentiles and that there has been a hardening of the people of Israel and that this is not inconsistent with what he has done down through the history of the people of Israel.

It sounds like you're starting from a human perspective and arguing upward from there. I'm trying to say that this text starts from God and that we have to reason down from there. And I don't think that the two perspectives actually end up lining up, which may be why we're here this evening.

Indeed, that is why they were there that evening. And so one thing I want to move back here on my was Leighton interactive? No. The pre-prepared question just simply moves forward and ignores the previous answer.

So whatever you're giving me in the way of an answer in this dialogue, I'm going to just push it aside and ask my next question as I press forward, even though you just corrected me and told me you're off topic.

You're not even in the text. Lot's not involved here. And so James is now forced to respond. Lot's not involved in this text. He tries to get the focus back to the text again, second attempt. He points out that God's freedom is the choice, the point of the text.

And man-centered reasoning versus God-centered reasoning is the issue here. But again, listen as we proceed forward for interactivity in the next question. Are we going to keep pressing the issue on Lot?

Does Leighton even follow up? Does he even hear the answer? Let's move on to.

The next section. You and I both agree that verse 6 is key to understanding the entire discourse. I think we both agree that God has blessed Israel by entrusting the very Word of God to come through them.

I think that's a distinction in what I'm trying to draw between his choice of one brother over the other. The nation is selected for this noble purpose of bringing the world, the Messiah,.

And his message. Yet for the most part, Israel is—. Now I gotta stop there. James hasn't had the benefit of the, quote, noble purpose argument yet from the opening statement. So that's where the first mention of the noble purpose in the cross-examination is.

However, you will find that James will later on ask him about noble purpose. What is this noble cause you keep referring to in your writings? So this will need to get drilled into. This will need to get interrogated, and he's going to do it.

So that's not going to slip away. Let's keep going.

...in direct opposition to their own Messiah and his gospel message, which does obviously lead one to ask, has God's Word failed? And I think you and I would agree that the reason the Israelites are standing in opposition to the gospel and rejecting their own Messiah is because God is actively hardening them.

Like the verb you said, it's active hardening. We both agree with that. He is, as Paul says, sending them a spirit of stupor, just as Jesus spoke to them in parables to prevent them from understanding and believing.

So what I want you to explain is what you feel is the difference between our views on this particular point, because I think we both affirm that God's active hardening of the unbelieving Israelites, but you seem to think that's hardening from birth.

It's a natural condition from birth, whereas I obviously believe it's a judicial act of one who is freely rebelled. It's a judicial act of Israel specifically at this time in order to accomplish a greater redemptive purpose, yet you seem to assume, correct me, you seem to assume it's a natural condition from birth, this hardening, this inability to hear, see, understand, and turn to God.

Well, all right, I'm going to stop it right there again. You need to take notice, and even if you rewind and re-listen to Professor Flower's assumptions in all of the questions that he just laid out.

He used his buzz phrases that he hasn't even introduced into the debate. So this is front-loading the debate with a position that hasn't actually been entered into evidence yet. So this was the exchange where I sat back and went, wait a minute, this was a mistake doing it this way, because Professor Flowers is not asking about what Dr. White just did, and genuinely it's as if he didn't even hear it.

He's got his script, and this is what he's sticking to, and he's going to just simply keep asking these questions, and it doesn't matter what you said before. I'm not even going to engage you on that.

So he's front-loading the debate. The questions are not about James's presentation. Instead, Leighton's questions are from his own presentation, which actually hasn't happened yet. James can't possibly know what Leighton is asking about because it hasn't yet happened.

So his answer, you'll notice, is going to come from the text.

Because that's the prophet's perspective on fallen man. We have a heart of stone, not a heart of flesh. The picture that is drawn is of a valley of dry bones. The psalmist makes it very clear that we have gone astray from our mother's breast.

We were born altogether in iniquity and sin. We can no more do good than the leopard can change its spots, and so this is the consistent testimony. It certainly is how the Book of Romans began. There is no God-seeker.

There is no fear of God before their eyes. This is simply the biblical teaching on the fallenness of man, and where I would say that we disagree with one another, again, because of our starting presuppositions, is in this text.

It's not an issue of, yes, there is a judicial act of hardening that God does in regards to making sure that the gospel goes out to the Gentiles. He's chosen a Gentile. Even the issue of, for example, Paul says that they will hear from a people of strange tongues, and he makes the application that this is to make them jealous, so on and so forth, but one of the things I hear you saying and sort of putting into your presentation here, especially even in the first five verses, was this idea of Israel's being called to be the mechanism of proclaiming the message of the Messiah, and I have a real problem with that because the whole point of the final verses at the end of chapter 9 is that it had always been God's intention to take the message to the Gentiles.

It had always been God's intention that, you know, verse 25, I will call those who are not my people, my people. Those who are called lo-ami become ami, so all through the gospels, you have these prophecies that this is what God's intention was from the beginning, and it sounds to me like you're saying, well, God's intention was this, and now He's changed that, and I don't see that that is actually a sound position to.

Begin from. Okay, I don't know why I clipped that there, but again, James is trying to get Layton to interact with what's in the text, and he even has to extrapolate things from the question itself as it was framed, because again, like I said, Professor Flowers hasn't done his opening yet.

So let's go ahead and listen to some more. Thoreau Sr. wrote, double predestination or equal ultimacy is the view that God works in the same way and in the same manner with respect to.

The elect and to the... Okay, this drove me crazy. I didn't know that R .C. Sproul was in Romans 9. He's not, and so the answer is completely ignored, and now we're going to move on from the front-loading of the opening statement that's coming, and now we're going to start introducing things that R .C. Sproul and Lorraine Botner have to say on these things.

It is becoming and will continue to become more and more apparent that the last place that Professor Flowers wants to be is in the middle of Romans 9 up to his elbows, and the one place that Dr. White wants to be is in the middle of Romans 9 up to his elbows with it.

He wants to grapple with it, and Professor Flowers wants to run away from it, and it's going to continue. Here we go.

In the case of the elect, regeneration is a monergistic work of God. In the case of the repubate, sin and degradation are a monergistic work of God. This clearly makes God the author of sin. Such a view is indeed monstrous as sold on the integrity of God.

It's not the reformed view of predestination. It's a form of hyper-Calvinism, a radical form of superlapsarianism. Yet you, along with several other scholars, have argued, quote, the Bible is clear that just as God chooses some for mercy and salvation, he chooses others for judicial hardening and reprobation.

When he loved Jacob before he was born, he also hated Esau at the exact same time. Does your teaching on God's active work of mercying, as you call it, and then hardening in verse 18, how does that not meet the radical form of superlapsarianism as defined by Sproul?

What is the difference? Be specific if you can.

Well, two things. I thought we were focusing on Romans 9, but we can leave that if you need to at this point. Secondly, I can guarantee you something, knowing R .C. Sproul personally, he's on my side of this debate tonight.

And I think you've misunderstood, and I have, I don't know how many times I have corrected the concept of equal ultimacy. I have spoken against it. Any of you who've listened to my programs know that I speak against equal ultimacy, which is the idea that the action of predestination unto life is identical to the action of reprobation unto death.

There is obviously a massive difference between the extension of divine power and mercy, even seeing the incarnation that is necessary for the salvation of God's elect, massive difference between that and the allowing of an individual to continue in the condemnation that is theirs as fallen sons and daughters of Adam.

There is no necessity of the extension of divine power to cause that to happen. And in fact, I would say that God restrains that evil that would flow from their heart if it were not for God's sovereign decree that they are only to do certain things.

So I think you've misunderstood Dr. Sproul at that.

Point. Now this exchange I thought was interesting because Dr. Sproul and the quote and the words, the characterization that Professor Flowers used as he characterized Dr. White's views is at issue. And I think while Dr. White said, I think you've misunderstood Sproul there, which very well may be the case.

And Flowers actually says, well, all I did was quote him. As I'm listening to this and I've listened to the section over and over and over, I think the point, listen to what James does here. He has to explain, I have said repeatedly over and over and over all these things and he lists it out.

So I think to properly understand the exchange, the correction is you've misunderstood me. Perhaps it's both, but clearly as Dr. White gives his defense, the clarification isn't, well, Sproul said this and Sproul says that, it's I have repeatedly said these things.

So I'm in line with Sproul. I am perfectly in line. And either way you go, you misunderstand Professor Flowers. You're not understanding it properly. And that is the chief point here. Let's see here. Now I need to switch.

Yes, this, I believe I'm going to play a little bit more of this, but I believe we're about to get a, that's it for Professor Flowers' time. At this time. Yep. There's our little alert on that. So I have this set up where I have this queued up to go over here and a whole, oops, sorry about that.

And for those of you who are seeing me, this stuff popping up and popping down, I'm sorry. I did miss the fact that using QuickTime for this, the only way you see the timestamps is if you're hovering, which brings all this other extraneous stuff up here.

And if it doesn't bug you, it bugs me. I don't like it at all, but just a technical point along the way here as I'm having to do a double duty in doing this. So again, keep watching for interactivity.

Is James listening to Layton? This is going to begin the next section. So Professor Flowers has now completed his presentation and we're going to go into the next cross-examination section where Dr. White now cross-examines Professor Flowers.

And folks, I know it's inside baseball. I keep pointing this out, but if you learn anything from this, it's not just about this particular debate. If you listen to any debate, if you're watching any debate, these are things you need to be looking for because the guys doing it know these rules and they know why these rules are important.