Final Road Trip DL from Utah Trip

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. We are live from Mesquite, Nevada tonight on our way home.

First time I've stopped here. Actually have an email I need to respond to from a local church here that is planning something

I think in 2026, as I recall. And for some reason they want me involved with that.

I'm not sure why. That's a good way to get rid of people. But hey, we'll see what happens. Nice little area, not real big and huge, but they have a

Cafe Rio within walking distance of the RV park I'm at. So can't be all bad.

So on our way home from Salt Lake City after the debate on Friday, we did

Saturday evening, we did a talk on Christian nationalism up in Ogden.

And then Sunday I preached in Magna, and then down in Provo for my

Presbyterian friends who will still allow me to show up once in a while. And I think there's more of them than there are

Reformed Baptists anymore. Anyway, and so now we're on our way home, one stop on the way.

And some of you are saying, well, you could drive all the way. Yeah, we used to do that many, many moons ago, it was exhausting and somewhat dangerous when you're driving alone and you're 57 feet long and weigh 23 ,000 pounds.

So we're here this evening and we are in our lovely mobile command center and going to do the program from here and then get home.

Hopefully Thursday we'll be able to do our regular program in the regular studio and get ready for another trip in May over toward West Texas area and New Mexico, hopefully.

Just a short trip, not even as long as this one, I don't think. And then a much longer trip in July, August up toward Colorado, Lord willing.

Everything works out for that. So, but the reality is that probably not any more debates until the debate with Craig Trulia in October, because I'm not as far prepared for that as I wanted to be at this point, to put it mildly.

And so just got to say no to those things and go from there.

So yeah, I mean, I'm probably not going to be taking the unit up for that,

I doubt. But Rich wants me to mention, is it even on the website yet,

Rich? June 13th up in Prescott, Arizona. Of course, you know,

Rich is from Prescott. So we're doing something in Prescott. And so Rich is all excited. So yeah, there we go.

All right, so in 1991,

I flew to Toledo, Ohio, to debate a man, now you got to understand, 1991, there's no social media, it's a whole lot tougher to know what people are about, what they're doing, you know, what they're going to be like when you debate them.

In that kind of a context, and a man was named Dr. Art Sippo. And it's hard to describe that debate.

It's hard to describe Art Sippo. Let's just say that over the following years, we ended up with an entire collection on these little microcassette things that we used in the phone machines back then, of long, rambling, insane messages from Art Sippo.

And I mean, nasty, just, wow. That was the first time, and I think there's only been twice now, that the behavior of my opponent was so reprehensible, that when we got done,

I didn't even shake his hand. I would not honor what he had just done, not just to me, but to the audience, to the topic, to the process of debate, by playing buddy -buddy with him.

And so that was 91. I am not certain. There may have been a few times where things happened after a debate, where I just didn't see my opponent afterwards, and hence, we didn't shake hands.

But as far as refusing to shake someone's hand, Friday was the next time that I can remember.

Maybe Algo remembers one out of the 200 some odd, because Sippo was pretty early on.

That was within the first 10, I would say, debates, maybe even less, that we did.

And so, yes, let me start off by saying, I did not shake Jacob Hansen's hand

Friday night. I looked at him in the eye, and I said, sir, that was reprehensible. You know you were lying.

You know that you were misrepresenting what I've written. And what you did was reprehensible.

And I'll document that. The video will document that. Anybody with a copy of The Power of Freedom will be able to document that.

Anybody with the slightest bit of honesty in their mind will be able to document that.

There isn't any question about it. Right now on Twitter, and I'm not certain exactly which direction this goes, one of two things happen.

Either there's an email list to a small number of easily influenced young LDS guys, and what they do is they'll do a social media swarm.

They may not know what they're talking about. They're just given talking points, and go answer this tweet, this

X post. And so they go do it. And that's what's happening. I think there's been 163 responses to my simply providing a explanation of what the word reprehensible means, and then providing a transcript and citation from the

Potter's Freedom. We'll talk about that one in just a moment. One of two things happening.

If these people are real, most of them have almost no followers at all. So there's a really good chance they're bots.

They're not even real. They're fake. Or there's a small number and they have bots to try to make things look better.

Or, like I said, if they are real, then they're responding to this email, and they haven't seen the bait.

They don't know what they're talking about. They're clueless. But it is fascinating.

They don't seem to realize they're all saying the same thing, though they don't have any idea what they're talking about, and so it sort of exposes them for what they are.

And they have no credibility. They have no weight. I don't care what they think.

But it is interesting to see how this type of stuff functions on social media today.

And it's sad to watch. I can't imagine living your life doing this kind of stuff.

You don't have anything more important to be doing? Seriously? Families? Children? Things like that?

I don't know. Sort of sad. Anyway, so here's the story.

I imagine the video will be out soon. I was amazed how fast

Andrew and Wade, the pastors up there at Apology of Utah, did the recording.

And I'm certain that Jacob Hanson has his own recording. I had multiple microphones on.

But I got hold of the audio the next day so that I could run it through a transcript program to be able to get some of the quotations so that we could address some of the more important issues that came up.

So, what happened here is Jason Wallace, the pastor of Prosperity Church in Magna, sent me a

Facebook message a couple of months ago and said, hey, you're coming up.

Jacob Hanson has said he'd like to debate these topics. Would you be interested?

And my immediate response was no, because I have the Craig Trillia debate coming up.

I didn't look to do the Unitarianism debate. I didn't look to do the debate with Shabir Ali.

These were things where people contact, please, please do this. And I was just going to say, no, no, not doing that.

But then I saw that one of the topics, the God of Calvinism is morally reprehensible.

And I'm like, well, that certainly doesn't take much preparation, you know, given the books that I've written, multiple books on the topic over decades, debates we've done with who knows how many different people, how many hours of the dividing line, how many hours of Radio Free Geneva have we done?

Just dealing with every possible, oh,

OK, people are saying it's on Apology of Utah's site already. Good. Excellent. Somebody send me the link and I'll get it on YouTube.

So yeah, good. It's up. That was fast. That was pretty quick. Andrew put a lot of work into that.

Those guys do such a great job. They're doing such a great job at Apology of Utah and encourage them every chance you can.

Doing a great work there. No two ways about it. But anyway, I'm sort of like, should

I do this? I mean, and so I decided, all right,

I said, look. And this is the first thing I said to Jason. I said, if we do that topic, it must be understood.

It must be stated clearly from the start that the LDS doctrine of God is on the table.

That the LDS doctrine of God must be examined to see if it is even sufficient to define something as being morally reprehensible.

That's my whole point. The LDS God is not the ground of all things.

He's not transcended. He has not eternally been God. That's what Joseph Smith said. That's what every leader of the

Mormon church up to the modern period has said consistently. That's the teaching of the LDS temple ceremonies and the publications of the church.

That was denied by Jacob Hanson. He is a Neo Mormon. It's a new religion developing right now.

Who knows what it's going to end up looking like. But that came out in the debate. That's one of the useful aspects of the debate, truly, is to see how fast this new religious movement is developing.

But anyway, that was the first thing

I said to Jason. I said, you must make it clear that his view of God, the

LDS view of God, and he doesn't get to define that, by the way. He is not a prophet.

He's not an apostle. I don't know if he holds any office in the church at all. He may claim to hold a

Melchizedek priesthood, be happy to debate that one. He never will. I can guarantee you that much. There is no way

Jacob Hanson would ever debate the Melchizedek priesthood, because the only way to do it is from the

Christian scriptures. And he ain't touching that one with a 10 foot pole. But anyway, that was absolutely definitional to my agreement to do this debate, despite the fact that during the debate, he literally stood up there in front of the people and told them

I was trying to change the topic of the debate to make it about the Mormon doctrine of God. He knew that was a lie.

He knew that. He can look you in the eye and smile while lying through his teeth at you.

It was astonishing to me. I couldn't believe it. I would have looked at Jason, but Jason was seated behind us, behind the pulpit.

We couldn't see him. But I just couldn't believe it.

And I brought that up. I said, that was part of the essence of the agreement from the beginning.

Don't stand up here and lie to people. And I use that terminology. I mean, after his opening statement, there wasn't any reason not to be just very, very honest about what was going on here.

So here's what I wanted to have happen. And you can listen to my opening statement. It's now up on YouTube. I'll link it.

You can listen to my opening statement. Now I went second because he was affirming the thesis.

So I did start off basically by saying, I'm only here for adults.

I'm not here for people who are going to be influenced by emotional stories.

Because he was doing the emotional stories thing. You know, the standard, his entire presentation made

Dave Hunt look like a Rhodes scholar. It really did. It was horrible.

It showed zero understanding of Reformed theology, zero reading, zero research.

It was horrific. I mean, he should be embarrassed by what he presented.

This was the kind of stuff we've been doing Radio Free Geneva about for decades. And for those who don't know what

Radio Free Geneva is, it's where we go through the worst of the straw man attacks on Reformed theology.

And man, this would, we could get a lot of episodes of Radio Free Geneva out of what was produced

Friday night. It was bad, really bad. So when

I opened my statement, I start off with that. You know, he's done this, you know, he's doing all this emotional stuff and, oh, he's just a mean, terrible, horrible

God and all the rest of this kind of stuff. And I'm like, I'm only here for people who want to know what the word of God says, who can control their emotions and think rationally and can recognize the difference between emoting and reasoning.

So I was pretty straightforward because he was appealing to the other people and I can't reach those folks.

I'm not even going to try. I'm not even going to try. And I said during the debate, you know, the wonderful thing about being

Reformed is God's going to, by his spirit, communicate to his elect people.

He's going to draw his elect unto himself. I don't have to worry about all the people who just emote themselves into a frenzy and think this is just terrible, horrible, and I can't change hearts and minds.

God can. And there's no power in heaven and earth that can keep God from drawing his elect people unto himself, revealing his truth to them, going from there.

That's wonderful. But, yeah, hey, will people yell and scream? Hey, folks, listen, we have, as Calvinists, been passing out tracts of witnessing to Mormons since 1983.

Okay, it's been 43 years. You don't think we haven't heard all this before?

You don't think we haven't seen the scoffing, the arrogant ignorance, the pots calling the potter evil?

Seen it all, believe you me, nothing new there at all. So, then when

I got into my presentation, what I hoped for, which we didn't get, what

I hoped for in the debate was an interaction on whose doctrine of God can provide a solid foundation for ethics and morals and for even making a moral conclusion that something is morally reprehensible.

I do not believe that an exalted man who lives on a planet that circles a star named

Kolob, who himself was exalted to the status of godhood, can provide the necessary epistemological foundation of even saying something is morally reprehensible.

That would have been a useful conversation. That didn't happen. Interestingly enough, part of the reason it didn't happen is because Jacob Hansen does not hold to Joseph Smith's doctrine of God, at least to the

Joseph Smith at the end of his life. He may want to argue that he holds to Joseph Smith's view at the beginning of his life, but that's not what gave rise to Mormonism.

That's not what gave rise to the temple ceremonies. That's not what gave rise to the preaching and teaching of Mormonism for 180 years.

So, that would have been useful. It didn't happen. Instead, we got a sub -Dave

Hunt level attack on Calvinism, interspersed with quotations from my book,

The Potter's Freedom. Now, this is one of the reasons that I am commenting on this debate so quickly.

This is a useful contrast, a very useful contrast, between how

Jacob Hansen handled himself and how I have handled myself in years past.

The Potter's Freedom came out in 2000, I think. Yeah, I think it was late 2000.

I think it was December of 2000, it was the CBD number one theology seller, for like a month.

It might have been 2001, but I think it was 2000. Anyway, when

I wrote that book, I showed tremendous respect to Norman Geisler.

I had read and marked his book, Chosen but Free. It was published, by the way, by my publisher.

I was publishing at the time with Bethany House Publishers. They did the King James Only controversy, the

Roman Catholic controversy. My second biggest book,

Grieving, Your Path Back to Peace, Bethany House Publication. God Who Justifies came later,

Scripture Alone. I've published a lot with Bethany House. Well, they put out Chosen but Free.

I read it. I marked it up, still have the original copy sitting there. And then

I bought a bunch more of Norman Geisler's books. I used something,

I'm going to date myself here, I used something called Interlibrary Loan to track down, out of print books, where Geisler gave further explanations of his unique idiosyncratic views when it comes to the knowledge of God, knowingly predetermining and predeterminately knowing.

And Geisler is one of those folks who felt like he could change the vocabulary of theology because he had the authority to do so.

Anyway, I took a lot of time to understand his views and to accurately represent him.

And anyone who takes Chosen but Free and The Potter's Freedom and compares them, compares citations, references, will find that I bent over backwards to represent him properly.

When there were key passages like John 6, I wrote to him and I asked him, why is there no exegesis of John chapter 6 in Chosen but Free?

Oh, there was. And then I wrote back, here's every single reference to John chapter 6 in the book.

There's no exegesis offered. And that's when he started getting angry. But I did everything

I could because it's called integrity. It's called integrity.

If you're going to respond to someone's book, you read it, you read it carefully.

You go beyond that if you respect the man, as I did respect Norman Geisler at that time. He damaged that respect with his response to The Potter's Freedom.

But for the sake of truthfulness, simple honesty, you have to represent the other side accurately.

And so no one could ever say that when I responded to Chosen but Free, that I didn't know what

Geisler's arguments were or that I did not give his best arguments. I think the term today is steelmanning, to make sure you give the best of the other side's argument.

And so when you quote from the book, you make sure that you give the best of what they have to say, not the weakest, not just what you'd like it to say.

And that's why The Potter's Freedom had the impact that it did. And it had quite an impact and continues to have an impact to this day.

That nothing that I just said about integrity, honesty, truthfulness was exemplified by Jacob Hansen on Friday night.

In fact, I am quite certain, I mean, I can't prove this, but I am quite certain myself that well, he admitted he had not actually read the entire book.

He didn't read the entire book. He read parts. It's sort of like when I lecture on the Quran and I ask people, have you ever read the

Quran? And the vast majority of people will put up their hand and go, parts?

They've read a surah, maybe a few ayats or something like that. And so I think what happened is that some people in his group, he has a group.

He has people who work with him. And I think somebody in his group quote -mined the book and gave him quotes to use.

He didn't read it himself. So maybe that'll be his excuse, because here's what you need to understand.

There was not a single verse that Jacob Hansen quoted in our debate that was not thoroughly discussed, sometimes entire chapters in the

Potters' Rule. And he did not show even the slightest knowledge of what the position the other side was.

Not the slightest knowledge. He quoted from 1

Timothy chapter 2 four times during the debate. He never quoted it accurately. But he never showed any understanding whatsoever of the position taken in the

Potters' Freedom on that text. None. 2

Peter 3, 9, same thing. Matthew 23, same thing. Romans 9, same thing.

He didn't read the book. He has such a massive animus toward what he thinks

Calvinism is. And I've seen this with lots of other folks. I mean, as I said,

YouTube is filled with this kind of simplistic, childlike, strawman -filled, shallow attack on Reformed theology.

YouTube, they have to have 10 server farms just for all the anti -Calvinism stuff they have on YouTube.

And it's easy to produce. And it's easy to appeal to people's emotions. I mean, that's kid stuff.

Serious interactions, far fewer. It's actually enjoyable to encounter someone who actually knows what you're saying and then can interact with it on a meaningful and honest level with integrity.

But there was not a single verse, he quoted, none that was not dealt with in the

Potters' Freedom. And he did not ever show the slightest familiarity with what the answers were.

That's what really angered me. Because I spent months and months and months writing the

Potters' Freedom accurately representing who I was responding to. That's how you have integrity. Jacob Hansen had zero integrity.

None. None. None. It was reprehensible. Reprehensible.

And the funny thing is, all the Mormons who are even right now on X, beating their little drums and thinking that this is so important, even they, if they were to just calm down for a second and think about it, even they recognize that they don't have respect for people who talk about Mormonism, that have never read the

Book of Mormon, Doctrine, Covenants, Prophets of Christ, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Marvelous Work and a Wonder, Articles of Faith, Jesus the

Christ. None of that. They recognize that.

And if they had an ounce of integrity themselves, they would recognize, you know, Mormons shouldn't do the same thing, huh?

Except that's what Jacob Hansen did. That's exactly what he did. And any person with integrity who examines the citation, get ahold of Potters' Freedom.

See if I'm not telling you the truth. You won't. I realize that. But there might be someone who's, you know, all of a sudden goes,

I'm going to check this out. Do it. So that was the issue.

He used emotional arguments, pulling at the heartstrings, constant misrepresentation.

I mean, when he defined limited atonement during the debate, it wasn't even recognizable. And there are multiple chapters on it in the book, and you didn't even have to be reading mine.

There are R .C. Sproul, James Boyce. There are all sorts of introductory works, and they're all saying the same thing.

It wouldn't have been difficult to find out. But he didn't. His representation of limited atonement was laughably childish.

Not even close to the actual doctrine. Didn't even touch on its actual essence.

And so if a Mormon watched a

Christian talking about Mormonism making the same kind of childish arguments to Jacob Hanselman, you'd be embarrassed.

But you're out there defending him now, right now, on X. I can see it. I'm not reading all of them, but there you go.

So what happened is—oh, and here's the rest of it.

Sorry about that. The next thing that was very angering—and by the way, for all of you sitting there going, well, you must have really lost the debate, there wasn't one.

There was no competition. I mean, if you're going to talk about who won the debate, it was a walkover.

He was destroyed completely by anybody who actually knows the field on two different grounds.

First of all, he didn't know the position he was critiquing, so he loses, period. End of discussion. But secondly, secondly, this is the next thing you need to know.

I'm going to try to remember what I was going to say about him, because it was actually complimentary. I'll try to get to it.

What he said about LDS theology—there are Mormons and former

Mormons in the audience. It was pretty packed out in there. It was a little church, but it had a good group up in Ogden, especially given the weekend that it was.

There are Mormons there, and I had people come up to me afterwards, especially former

Mormons. They're like, I was a Mormon for 30 years. Everything you said

Mormonism teaches is what I was taught in all the priesthood sessions, and in the church educational system, and all the manuals, and in seminary.

That's what we were taught. And I'm like, yeah, I know. But he literally would not affirm that God the

Father had been exalted to the status of godhood. He wouldn't affirm it.

In fact, he literally said that God has eternally been exalted.

That he's eternally been God. And then he quoted from Doctrine and Covenants section 20.

And here's, by the way, here is what Doctrine and Covenants section 20 says.

This would be a good thing, I think, to point out. Just to give you an idea. He quoted from Doctrine and Covenants section 20, verse 17.

By these things we know that there is a God in heaven who is infinite and eternal, from everlasting to everlasting, the same unchangeable

God, the framer of heaven and earth, and all things which are in them. Well, there you go. That's LDS scripture. That's it. God has eternally been

God, from everlasting to everlasting, he's unchangeable. Unless you know something about Mormonism.

Unless you know something about the 1833 Book of Commandments, 1835 Doctrine and Covenants. And if you know something about Mormon history, and you know something about even what

Mormon scholarship has recognized forever, is that when this was written, 1829 to 1830, there's some discussion as to the exact dating.

It was section 24 of the 1833 Book of Commandments became section 20 of the Doctrine and Covenants.

This is extremely early, and it's long before there's a

First Vision story. Historically. I mean,

I've personally examined the microfilm of the 1832 diary in the church historical office back in 1983,

I think it was. This is all online now. Back then, a lot of it was hidden away.

Joseph Smith's theology evolved massively between the founding of the church in 1830 and his death, his murder, his wrongful murder in 1844.

Massively. The First Vision story evolved. There was no First Vision story in 1830.

When the LDS church was founded April 6, 1830, nobody had ever heard of the First Vision. They had never heard about two physical beings identify as father and son.

That was all yet in the future. That was still about seven or eight years from really gaining speed, becoming a part of his teaching.

Now, at the end of his life, what does he do? He claims that every time he's taught on the Godhead, he's taught on the plurality of gods.

It was a lie. It was a bald -faced lie that is easily documentable by anybody with the slightest integrity to do the historical research.

To read the documents. And so, can you find stuff like this?

DNC 20? Back in 1830, 1831, stuff like that? Sure. Easy. But let's remember that the single most quoted sermon by the general authorities of the

LDS church in all of its publications, through all of its history, is the King Follett Funeral Discourse.

Now, that may be changing now, but up until 2000, that was definitely the case. I actually checked it out when

I wrote Is the Moron My Brother? And normally they're put together.

The Sermon on the Grove came a little bit later. It was sort of a continuation, defense of the King Follett Funeral Discourse.

These are Joseph Smith's last major public sermons. And they are in defense of his theology of the plurality of gods.

In the KFD, he misinterprets the English grammar of Revelation 1 -6, misinterprets the

Greek. He can't read Greek. He pretends he can, but he can't. Or he talks about God and his father.

So that's God and God's father. Plurality of gods. That's what he presents. That's what he teaches. Indefensible on any linguistic foundation, but that's what he taught.

And it's in that discourse that he says these words. And I quote these in the debate.

We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute the idea and take away the veil so that you may see.

That's Joseph Smith. Now, so is Doctrine and Covenants section 20.

But that is 14 years earlier. And even Mormons will tell you it's the last thing the prophet said, not what was said before, right?

So Smith's theology changed radically. That's why I have said for decades, if Smith had not been murdered in 1844, if he had been given just two more years of life, there would be no

Mormonism. His theology was changing so fast that no one would have been able to make heads or tails out of what he was saying in just a couple more years.

So, yeah, you can quote Doctrine and Covenants section 20, but don't sit there and pretend that that has been the foundation of the

LDS temple ceremony, of the presentations of Elohim and Jehovah. Elohim sends

Jehovah down in company with Michael to organize the earth. And I wonder about all you older Mormons, all you

Mormons that are my age. You know what you believed. You know what you were taught growing up.

You know that's not this. Jacob Hansen doesn't represent what you were taught, and you know it.

And I watched the faces in the audience. Aren't you guys troubled by what's being allowed to be said today?

Can you imagine this happening in the days of Bruce R. McConkie? Yeah. The Danites would be called out for somebody like this, that's for sure.

Especially up in Utah. So what we are seeing is

Neo -Mormonism. I referenced Oslerism. Blake Osler.

A philosopher who has said that Brigham Young was a disaster. His theology was a disaster for the church.

And I pointed out, you do realize that major portions of the LDS population trace their priesthood authority back through Brigham Young, right?

Well, he doesn't have to be perfect. And the other thing is to remember also, and I'll go ahead and get to the complimentary part,

I expected a whole lot more from Jacob Hansen. I really did. What did we do the two weeks before this debate?

We spent a bunch of time on this program reviewing his cross -examination section with Joe Heschmeier.

And he did a good job. Now, I agree with Joe. He did not substantiate his duty in that debate.

He dodged being a real Mormon. A real Mormon would have pressed the priesthood authority issue.

A real Mormon would have defended the historical doctrine of the great apostasy. That's what

Joe expected. Joe was not expecting to do a debate on the papacy that night.

Thank you, Joe, by the way. That's why I knew I needed to be prepared for anything.

And would not let him get away with anything when he kept trying to play games during cross -examination.

But the point is, if Jacob wants to be accurate, if Jacob wants to do research, he can.

He didn't for Friday night. He mailed it in. He accepted the worst of the worst.

And I think it's because he has such a deep, animus, prejudice, bias against what he thinks

Calvinism is. And people that have that kind of emotional disgusting,

I hate this. Mormons, in general, detest a sovereign God because their

God is an exalted man from another planet. So, yeah, that fits. That works.

But this was just on another level. And I think that's why he didn't do his homework. I think that's why he let other people quote mine for him.

I think that's why he didn't do original reading. And gives no evidence of even trying to actually understand why someone would believe the things that we believe.

He could not engage the exegesis, by the way, again, on the debate level. He didn't even try to engage the text

I presented. Didn't even try. He can't. He knows he can't.

He can't do original language exegesis. He's not going to go there. So he's going to try to deflect and use the emotional argument.

Which is what he did. Little babies and little girls and mean god daddy not saving everybody and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

But he For everybody saying, oh, he must have really won. How do you win a debate when you ignore everything your opponent says?

Every scripture he brings up, you just you don't even try. You don't even try. And all the scriptures you bring up, he points out

I address that in the book. And I address that one in the book. And that one, every single one of them.

In fact, I exegeted them in the original language, which you can't do. And yet you presented them anyways.

I mean, to anybody with integrity, to anyone with honesty, you're sitting there going, wow. Why would someone do that to their integrity?

I don't know. But that's how deep the animus is. So he is capable.

His research on the papacy issue was not bad at all. It really wasn't.

But why then Friday night? Why then mail this one in? I don't know.

Everybody else will get to try to figure that one out. One of the things that came up, and I want to use this as an opportunity.

Oh, by the way. Yeah. Find my ex.

The stuff that people are saying, they are exposing themselves massively here. Here's one.

This one just popped up 24 seconds ago from Bring Your Truth. All of 89 followers.

Is this a real person? I don't know. Bots normally have between 50 and 250 followers because bots start following bots.

So is this guy real? I don't know. But he puts up a section and he says this was perhaps the most ridiculous part of the debate.

Thoughtful Saint, Jacob, was predestined to watch in agony as the doctor humiliates himself.

So how did I humiliate myself? Listen to what an unregenerate man thinks. This is useful. This is actually helpful.

If you're going to call yourself a Christian, you should view the Bible the way Jesus did. If you don't view the Bible the way

Jesus did, don't call yourself a Christian. What's the problem with that?

You think you're wiser than Jesus? If you call yourself a Christian, isn't he the ultimate authority?

That's humiliating? Really? So he comments, here I am, a lowly unregenerate soul thinking that Jesus never had a

Bible. Really? Really? What was

Jesus handed in the synagogue in Nazareth? Those are the

Scriptures. Oh yeah, the Scriptures. And when

Jesus was arguing with the Sadducees about the resurrection, what did he say to them? Have you not read what

God... First of all, it says you are not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God.

Have you not read what God spoke to you saying I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the

God of Jacob? Oh! Jesus knew the Scriptures intimately and held men accountable to them.

Wow. Dr. White, please tell us exactly how Jesus viewed the Bible. Was he as sola scriptura as you?

Was this a chapter in your book that I didn't read that you constantly alluded to in the debate? See, the ignorance of these people is astonishing and they're arrogantly proud of their ignorance.

You don't know the centrality of Scripture to Jesus' argumentation. You haven't read

John 10. And yet you are so proud of this. You talk about me humiliating myself.

Bring your truth. You just humiliated yourself on X. Now, you only have, what did

I say there? 80... how many followers? 89 followers.

Again, if you're a human being, which I have a feeling you're probably not. So, bots can't really humiliate themselves.

But if you are, you just humiliated yourself, at least for 89 people and now a number of others. Because your argument is self -refuting.

And so for you to be, you humiliated yourself. No, sir, I'm afraid, or whoever you are, or it.

I don't know. You did the humiliation. And then there was another guy, and I said, here it is, a guy named

Sean. And again, 269 followers from Utah is following almost 1 ,100, but only have 269.

May or may not. Could be a bot farm here, but here you go. Dr. White, I have immense respect for you uploading that debate.

It was an embarrassment for all of Calvinism. Your off -topic ambush of Jacob was no better than Ed Decker and Dave Hunt's arguments that you disavowed two decades ago.

I remember, we documented it was Jacob using that kind of argumentation. It was truly entertaining to watch you cry foul of cheap shots after punching below the belt for the entire duration of the debate.

Uploading this was a brave move, but I now see the purpose of your preemptive damage control. No, you guys are the damage control.

These bots, this email list, whatever it is, you all know what happened. You all know that Jacob got spanked.

You all know that he made a fool of himself by mailing it in. And I didn't let him get away with it.

See, he gets away with it in other contexts because people will not hold his feet to the fire. I did. I did.

I knew it would happen if I didn't. So I told this guy I'd respond to it. And I did. So I'm seeing some other folks respond to this type of stuff right now.

That's good. Now let's try to make this educational. I've got a few minutes here and I want to contrast things here.

I made reference to the Achieving a

Celestial Marriage student manual. Now this is not scripture for the

LDS people. However, this manual first appeared in 1976.

It was revised in 1992 and used until 2001. So for 25 years, a quarter of a century, if you were going to be sealed in the temple in the

Celestial Marriage ceremony, married for time and eternity, this was the student manual that you were supposed to read.

And let's give the Mormons credit. They take marriage seriously. It would be great if all churches had a student manual that you had to work through and answer questions because it has places for answering questions and stuff like that.

Classes you have to take. Give them credit. So for 25 years, now you need to understand something.

This was published under the copyright 1976 -1992 of whom?

The Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints.

That's the prophet. The presidency. That's as official as you get.

This is Mormonism teaching Mormons. This is the church teaching its own people, its own theology.

You don't get any more official than this, and Jacob Hanson can't hold a candle to the authority of something published by the first presidency of the church and used for 25 stinking years.

Can't come close to it. And all you older Mormons know it.

You younger Mormons, you guys think you can do anything. But older Mormons are sitting here going, well, yeah, that's what

I studied too. Yeah, that's what we taught in the war chapel. Yeah, okay.

Yeah. Okay. So remember, we're talking about the theology of God.

This debate was supposed to be about the God of Calvinism and the God of Mormonism.

That's what it was supposed to be about. He lied and tried to change that by saying, I was trying to change that.

I've got the emails. Okay, I've got the Facebook messages. I can prove it. It's not even a question.

And he knows that. He knows that. So when you pick up that manual, and you can still find it in used bookstores here, there, and everywhere, and you start on page four.

It's not the back. It's not in appendix. It's not in a hidden section.

It wasn't written in lemon juice. You have to hold it over a toaster for the magic stuff we used to do when we were kids. No. Page four.

First lesson. Let's listen to it. Well, you know what?

Yeah, I think I can do it. Yeah, I can do it.

Here we go. There we go. And, ta -da!

We still haven't fixed this yet. Gotta fix that part.

Gotta make it bigger. I'm sure Rich will be doing that as soon as I get back. Okay, pages four through five.

God was once a man who, by obedience, advanced to his present state of perfection.

Jacob denied that in the debate. He said he had eternally been exalted. Through obedience and celestial marriage, we may progress to the point where we become like God.

Proclaiming the divine potential within man, John Taylor once wrote, Knowest thou not that thou art a spark of deity struck from the fire of his eternal blaze and brought forth in the midst of everlasting burnings?

The Mormon, 29 August 1857. Elder B .H. Roberts stated, Man has descended from God.

In fact, he is the same race as the gods. Yes, it's capitalized in the original. His descent has not been from a lower form of life, but from the highest form of life.

In other words, man is, in the most literal sense, a child of God. This is not only true of the spirit of man, but of his body also.

Chorus of Study for Priests, 1910, page 35. Can you see the implications of these two statements as they relate to you and your eternal destiny?

Elder James E. Talmadge did. He declared, In his mortal condition, man is God in embryo.

However, any individual, now a mortal being, may attain the rank and sanctity of godship.

Articles of Faith, page 529. By the way, they used to give Articles of Faith to almost every new missionary before he went on his mission.

It was just along with marvelous work and a wonder and stuff like that. How is this possible? What course of action will bring this potential to fruition?

As you study this lesson, look for the answers to these questions. Points to ponder. God became

God by obedience to law. No, he was not eternally exalted. That's Neo -Mormonism.

That's Hansonism. But it's not what was taught by the first presidency for 25 years to everyone who is to be sealed in the temple.

Before I read this, hold on a second. Rich has got me all... We have a number of LDS in chat right now.

There was something else that I saw up here. Where did it go? Here we go.

This is interesting. Someone was at the debate.

Jacob and Hayden Carroll were looking at each other and giggling the whole time like they were tricking the teacher in class.

A note from the chat. Yeah, yeah. I was actually focused on the issue.

There was other stuff going on there. Points to ponder. I need to get through this.

I'm not worried about the time. God became

God by obedience to law. Was not eternally exalted. It was late afternoon as we sat in my office, but I felt the time had been well spent.

He sat silently now, obviously contemplating the ramifications of the things we had been discussing. We had talked of God, of how he had become

God. What? Of how he had what? Become God, and of what that meant in terms of our own exaltation.

If God has eternally been exalted, according to Jacob Hanson, has Jacob Hanson eternally been exalted? If he's going to become a

God? Finally, he spoke. Got to have it on the right thing here.

Notice I'm putting the young Mormon is in yellow, italics, the old wise

Mormon, white. What is this law of exaltation of which he keeps speaking? It involves the whole of the gospel law.

Everything required of us by God is associated with this law, but the major crowning point of the law which man must obey is eternal marriage.

Therein lies the keys of eternal life, or as the Doctrine and Covenants puts it, eternal lives. In other words, an eternal increase of posterity.

Normally when I'm making this presentation, I stop right here. This is a great illustration of how

Mormonese and Christianese use many of the same words, but mean completely different things. But you need to understand, the power of God in classical

Mormonism is the power of the priesthood and the power of procreation. And it's right there.

Eternal lives. In other words, an eternal increase of posterity. There it is.

This is Mormonism. As defined by the first presidency.

A whole lot more authority than Jacob Hanson has. Then what you're saying is that God became God by obedience to the gospel program, which culminates in eternal marriage.

Became God? Or had eternally been exalted? This is not

D &C 20, 17. Because that was 1830.

Maybe 1829, but 1830. Through obedience to law, we can become like our

Father in heaven. Yes, do you realize the implications of this doctrine as far as you are concerned?

I think so. If God became God by obedience to all the gospel law, with the crowning point being the celestial law of marriage, then that's the only way

I can become a God. So again, if God -God has eternally been exalted, then is

Jacob Hanson exalted now? Or is he playing games with the term eternal?

Right. And it is the law that assists us in reaching that potential. It tells us what we must do to gain the ultimate freedom.

In fact, it is by obedience to law that we have progressed to our present position. Oh, wow. You mean we have always been governed by law?

And then I always stop and make sure people hear this one. Always. You are an eternal being.

You were never created and you cannot be destroyed, but you can advance, progress, and develop by obedience.

Do you hear that, folks? Anybody who's read the Bible? Can you stop and listen to this?

You are an eternal being. You were never created and you cannot be destroyed. Who says that?

That's Satan speaking. Straight up. Straight up. Jesus said to fear him who can destroy both body, soul, and health.

And that's not Satan. That's God the Father. You are

God's creature. You are not an eternal being. In Mormonism, you are. You're the same species as God.

Just different levels of exaltation. Then Hamlet's question, to be or not to be, is not the question.

Boy, is that a clinker. Right. Not in the ultimate sense, at least. Order means law, and that law is the law of the celestial kingdom.

Any who come unto that kingdom must obey that law. But I thought

Godhood meant freedom. If I have to do things to become God, am

I really free? Yes, for 25 years. Before you could get sealed in the temple.

This is the stuff you had to read and discuss. It wasn't hidden in a corner.

You have got it wrong. It was the Savior who said, if you continue in my word, that is, obey the law. Oh my goodness.

Really? You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. John 8, 31 -32. Read John 8.

You don't have a clue what's going on in John 8. So by obedience to law, we learn truths by which we become free, but not free from the law.

Can you see that? Listen to this. I think so. I can be a God only if I act like God.

Exactly right. Can you imagine this? Again, I didn't write this. Okay?

Do you know how many Mormons there are sealed in the temple who read this stuff, studied this stuff, answered the questions on this stuff only 26 years ago?

Exactly right. Can you imagine the state of the universe if imperfect gods were allowed to spawn their imperfections throughout space?

If beings who did not have law under their subjection were free to create worlds?

Write it down. Screenshot it if you can't find the book. Is that not astonishing to anyone who has maybe read

Isaiah? I guess that would be pretty disastrous. Yes, space gods spawning imperfections through space would be disastrous.

But I'm not sure I see why celestial marriage becomes the crowning apex of this progression. Marriage doesn't seem directly related to the creation of the universes.

Universes, plural. Oh, but don't be limited by your mortal perspective. God himself has declared his own reasons for existing.

Remember he said, Did you notice why

God exists? For man. Mormonism is the most man -centered religion

I've ever encountered because it turns God into a mere man. The chasm between Mormonism and Christianity is uncrossable.

We saw that. Which involves giving birth to spirit children and setting them on the road to exaltation and if that is to be done, you must have an exalted man and an exalted woman.

Exactly. An exalted man and woman. I need to make sure to tell the LGBTQ club at BYU about this.

Exactly. An exalted man and woman who have been joined together in an eternal marriage. If this man and woman were obedient to all gospel laws except celestial marriage, what would be the result?

They still could not be gods. Now I understand celestial marriage is the crowning ordinance of the gospel.

Right, I said with a smile. With that comment, I think we can end the discussion. I didn't make that up.

I made reference to it. Copyright 1976 -1992.

Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. 25 years! The official celestial marriage handbook.

Approved by apostles and prophets. But now today? Well, you know.

We can go back to something from 1830 before Joseph Smith ever dreamed any of this stuff up. And still call it

Mormonism. I don't know why these guys are being allowed to get away with this.

I have been told that they are actually getting support from the church. I can only speculate.

It does seem to me that the church has lost its way. That its leadership is extremely confused.

Doesn't know what in the world to do. But if individuals like Jacob Hanson are allowed to come up with their own religion their own interpretation

I mean, look how much stuff has been written by all these apostles and prophets.

And yet, well, it's only important what the current prophet is saying. I mean, they're almost solo scriptura

Mormons now. I mean, there's no better oxymoron than solo scriptura

Mormon. The whole foundation of the system is continuing a relation.

You can't have solo scriptura. But that's the problem. Mormonism has never been consistent.

You had massive evolution at the beginning. There's still evolution after Smith. He didn't answer every question and you had the difference between Pratt and people like that.

But you had an orthodoxy established that was maintained for a long time.

And now it almost seems to me like the church leadership has lost the will to maintain any kind of control over their own theology.

You can't have a church that lasts very long if there is not a central core that is passed on from generation to generation.

It almost seems like some of these guys are grabbing hold of liberalism. And this is their own fault.

The church sent their people out to get PhDs at Ivy League universities. They didn't want them doing it at BYU anymore.

They wanted to up how they looked. The problem is those guys came back with critical methodology and they've injected that into the very bloodstream of Mormonism and Mormonism cannot survive that.

So might there be internal struggles going on? I don't know. I don't know. All I know is any

Mormon that I talk to in the first 30 years of my dealing with Mormonism that would listen to this guy would go, who's that?

That's not Mormonism. That's not what we believe. And that's true. That's true.

So, anyway, that made for a good opportunity to remind folks once again when

Joseph Smith said, we have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity I will refute that idea and take away the veil so that you may see when he said that he separated himself and his followers forever from Christianity.

Forever. And I was told yesterday I was in Provo.

I was talking to some fellow believers who do a lot of street witnessing to BYU students, stuff like that.

They said there's this amazing desire on their part to be accepted by evangelical Christians.

They just don't understand why we won't. And I see that online all the time. There's no way to do that.

There is no way to cross that chasm until you repudiate Joseph Smith, repent of his blasphemies and worship the one true

God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ. There's no other way.

There's no other way. So, I doubt most of the bots have been listening this long.

Because I kept seeing, too long, didn't read. I have this much respect for anyone who ever uses the phrase too long, didn't read.

Okay, thank you for telling me that you have the maturity of a three -year -old. Have a nice day. So, I doubt too many have listened this long.

But if anybody has, let me summarize things for you.

The debate was a disaster for Jacob because he embarrassed himself. His representation of the position he denied was childish.

He grossly misrepresented the book that he was quoting from by not reading it and by not interacting with its arguments.

And his theology of Mormonism is simply heretical. If you can have heresy in Mormonism anymore.

Maybe you can't now. I don't know. So, the issue isn't who won the debate.

That's not even an issue. It's obvious. On any meaningful debate level.

The reason that I identify his behavior as reprehensible has to do with integrity and truthfulness.

When you try to influence people by manipulating their emotions while ignoring the truth that's right in front of you, that means you don't have the truth and you are not a person with integrity.

That is reprehensible. And I stand by it. And what's more, anybody with an ounce of integrity and honesty that analyzes what happened and analyzes the sources can't come to any other conclusion.

You may believe Hanson's perspective, but you'd have to sit there and go, but man, that was not the way to do it.

I have to believe that there are some Mormons with integrity that would go, yeah, we need to be more honest about what we actually believe, but especially just do one thing for me and we'll wrap up.

Do one thing for me. I wrote a book somewhere around 1998

Is the Mormon my brother? Hard to get a hold of these days. Is the

Mormon my brother? Look at how I argued that book.

Now you can disagree, but I bent over backwards to provide full, accurate, contextual citations.

I gave extensive discussion of at least back then, a quarter century ago, the current understanding of what authoritative teaching would be.

There's a whole section on the temple ceremony as having revelational authority.

And so I gave first order citations, second order citations, third order citations, demonstrated the consistency, went through the

King Follett discourse. I bent over backwards to accurately represent.

There are people who write books on Mormonism that don't bend over backwards to be accurate. And I remember years ago one of the things

I did hear from Mormons that I had dialogues with was we appreciate the fact that you really do try.

Jacob refused to even make the effort. That's the issue. This isn't spin.

I don't need to spin it. That was a disaster for him. That was a disaster for him. He didn't touch my position.

The issue is simple integrity. Be accurate in what you're saying.

That's all. That's all. That's what it's about. So there you go. Okay. Wow.

Went an hour and 11 minutes or so. Plan right now. I get back tomorrow.

So the plan would be to try to have a program on Thursday in the studio. At least

I think so. I'm not sure when we're supposed to. We need to take this unit in. There are a few little things that need to be looked at and taken care of.

This was a shakedown run. In general, just so thankful it has worked out so well.

I think this unit is going to be just a fantastic thing for us to use.

Anyway. I'm not sure when we're taking it in. I think we might be taking it in on Thursday.

Are we taking it on Wednesday? Really? Okay. I didn't know that.

So we're going to have to get it emptied out uber fast. Okay. All right.

We'll do what we can. Anyway. I'm not sure how to get it in on Wednesday.

Not if I get it in Tuesday afternoon. I'm not sure I can get that done that fast. Anyway. We'll see what happens as to when we can get the program in on Thursday.

I'm sure there will be some interesting things to comment on. I'm not going to waste time. The vast majority of the comments

I'm seeing are from people who are arrogantly proud of their ignorance. They don't know what they're talking about.

All I can do is hope that the Lord will convict some. Draw his people into himself.

That's the best you can do. Thanks for watching the program today.