James White - 2 Corinthians 5:21

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to find an answer to as with Vatican II they sought to open up the doors and let the dust blow out.
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Well they did that, but certainly I know many in the church and I have still some some very good strong relationships still with folks that are in the
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Roman Catholic Church that they when it comes to Vatican II and Lumen Gentium they almost wish that it didn't occur which is why
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I think you have a lot of folks right now that are going to the traditionalist movement and it's something that's occurring quite often but without further ado six years ago
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I had received Christ I had come out of Catholicism was given all sorts of books at the
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Baptist Church that I was in from really great titles that were helping me in my my seeking for the truth like a woman writes the beast which
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I thought was like comic book literature as a Catholic I said you've got to be kidding me most of this is you know just trash it was like picking up something in the in the supermarket line if you will but then
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I went to a website that someone recommended Phil Johnson's bookmarks and in Phil Johnson's bookmarks there was a blue light special next to this alpha and omega ministries and I clicked on at that time and I finally found someone that would not misrepresent the
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Catholicism that I came from and was truly taking the Word of God seriously and holding not only
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Catholicism but so many other aberrant beliefs up to that light and exposing them for what they are but also in the same time who had a passion to share the gospel and to teach that is so rare and for so many of us that are here tonight and we're here last night this man's ministry while it's been criticized by so many and the main reason they can't stand this gentleman is because he continues even though the criticism comes to still stand for the gospel alone and never wavers and for so many of us out here that are
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Timothy's he continues to be that Paul and would you welcome please
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Dr. James White thank you
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Michael I don't want any of you to to panic first of all I am going to be brief it is late in the afternoon and I'm not going to make any comments about how preceding speakers went on and just shared their hearts with you
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I just want to point out that that's Eric Svensson finished exactly on time and so that's that's good for Eric and I appreciate that I appreciate the fact that he had a much nicer clicker than I have
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I just really am now experiencing a tremendous amount of techno envy as a result of that and so I'm going to be brief because we have a certain time we need to be out of here they're already setting up for a bar mitzvah outside I think so we need to be careful as we're leaving and we obviously the the folks in the back have to have time to pack up and I would like to spend the first few moments of my time however thanking some folks when you come to a conference you just figure well you know what what does it really take to set up some chairs and to do a few things like that I have resisted doing anything like what we have done today for many years the reason is
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Alpha Omega Ministries is a very small ministry we are a small band of folks and my experience years and years and years ago was when we would take on trying to do something and it didn't get done
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I'd end up doing and I just have resisted to the death the idea of doing anything like this because I know how many details there are in getting tickets done and websites and all the organizational stuff and when you get here
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I don't care how well you plan there's there's a million things you have to million fires you have to put out as soon as you get here well if you have benefited from hearing
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Pastor King this morning from hearing from Tom Askell and from Phil Johnson and from Steve Camp and Eric Svensson if you've learned things if you enjoyed the debate last night the people that you see running around in the looking a little bit like a group of people who would be on the streets enforcing the laws the folks in the black shirts they're the ones to thank for the tremendous amount of work
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I think about a third of the membership of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church is currently here it's gonna be very quiet in our church tomorrow morning
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I'm sort of feeling badly about that but the the folks that you see here the the vast majority of them are all volunteers and they have all worked very very hard to put this together and so I wish to thank them from the bottom my heart and I want to acknowledge their their tremendous amount of work they kept me out of the loop they they just said you show up do your thing and we're gonna take care of everything else and that's exactly what they did so I would like to thank them for the amount of work that they have that they have put in to make this available now
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I would only wanted to in in the time that I had piggyback on what some of the other folks had said and since we have just a brief amount of time what
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I wanted to do is really to pick up on just one element of what was said I've appreciated everything that was presented there's much
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I would like to say but the the the temptation is to start talking about stuff and then not have time to really finish it and so there was much that was said just now there is one thing
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I will say I will give into one temptation it was just a couple of years ago that I I sent an email to a
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Roman Catholic apologist and I pointed out this particular individual the contrast between some of the statements that Eric had just posted and something that the
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Pope had just said in a recent talk that he had given there is a tremendous amount of inclusive linguistic language being used in in Rome these days and he had made a statement that was just so obviously contradictory to an allegedly infallible statement previously that I just you know put it in an email and sent this particular individual and it was fascinating the response
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I got the response was James who are you to interpret what the church has said in the past you see only the church can fallibly interpret what the church has said in the past see and so if the church says that what the church said back then in plain words in in a language that anyone can understand it does not mean what those words actually mean but they're actually consistent harmonious with what the church is saying now then that's that's what you do the church has the ultimate authority it's sola ecclesia to the max and in in trying to to deal with those types of issues many people will testify that's what you encounter over and over and over again is the original context it's you know original intent you know something like looking at the
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Constitution like the Constitution was intended to be looked at something that the judiciary is supposed to do but that's become unfashionable now same type of thing with with anything we can simply revise what was understood what was believed we can look back in those days we can look back at what innocent the thirdly we can look at it we can look at the context and the application and when you do so the meaning was clear but well you know if the church now says this then that needs to be consistent because our starting point is what our starting point is the infallibility of the church and that's where you get sola ecclesia the church is the ultimate authority and so I've experienced it myself it's a it's a clearly a circular argument at that point but it just was reminded reminded me of everything that I had experienced as I was listening to to Eric's presentation but the main thing
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I want to address in just a few moments was something that Phil Johnson did not get an opportunity to expand on I don't know if you walked in here like many people do wondering what in the world is going on with people today concerning the doctrine of justification
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I thought we were all on the same page I thought the issues were fairly clear you had you had the
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Roman Catholic belief and you had the Protestant belief and we get together we have debates and and we sit around and and open the
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Bible and we talk about things and and that's how things went but now I'm hearing all these odd things and of course
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Phil did an excellent job in summarizing for you I think one of the most important books by the way fans of NT Wright don't tend to like to use that particular book because it is the simplest book it is the most easy to understand book and so when
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I just like Phil have used that as the standard representation of rights materials as I've presented seminars on on his beliefs
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I've heard people saying well you know that's that's not the best book to use there's there's articles over here and and all this scholarly material but in reality it's very clear that that is the book that is making the most impact that is the book that was specifically written to communicate to people in the pew and that is really where you can see the essence of what
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NT Wright is saying now one thing that Phil didn't get to do was he didn't get to get into some of the scriptural passages and some of the interpretations that NT Wright offers obviously if Wright's perspective is as Phil presented it and I would agree with everything that he said is in his representation of what his his viewpoints are then there are certain passages of scripture that you might have been sitting there going well you know
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I Phil did cite 2nd Corinthians 521 but how would
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NT Wright understand something like that if you think that the righteousness of God is only
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God's covenant faithfulness and if you don't believe in imputation then 2nd
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Corinthians 521 becomes rather problematic he made him who knew no sin to be sin in our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God in him now that has been a passage that's been understood by generations as as involving the great exchange our sins imputed to Christ I mean when you think about he made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf what does that mean well the father treated the son as I think
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John MacArthur well put it he was treated as we deserve so that we might be treated as he lived that perfect holy life and we get to have that righteousness this the great exchange our sins imputed to him his righteousness impute us that's how it's been understood but how would someone who follows this perspective
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NT Wright understand 2nd Corinthians 521 I think by trying to explain this to you taking just a few moments to help you understand how
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NT Wright understands this passage you'll be able to see really the impact of adopting this perspective and in essence forcing it upon the text of scripture and I do say forcing
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I really do believe that NT Wright's view of justification this is the term I've used is monochromatic monochromatic remember those some of you are some of my when
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I mentioned this to my kids they sort of chuckle at me but remember the the first PCs that came out and they had those wonderful monochrome screens they were green or or if you're really fancy they were amber which
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I to me looked like orange but anyway and they didn't have much in the way of resolution and there wasn't much in the way of graphics there though I do remember learning to play flight simulator on amber screen that was really cool trying to land that thing on that little amber screen and a monochrome monitor doesn't display in color and so if you displayed a color picture it just was different shades of the same whether it was green or amber or whatever it was and so his view of justification
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I've described as monochrome it is it is flattened out it's one -dimensional instead of being the rich colorful beautiful image of justification that we've come to understand from the scriptures those those those colors are taken out the depth is taken out and you're left with this this husk of what it is we've we've always believed and that is illustrated
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I think very very well when we listen to what he believes 2nd Corinthians 521 means what does he what does he say well he says we look at the context and of 2nd
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Corinthians chapters 3 4 & 5 are all about the apostolic ministry it's about the ministry you know you've got
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Paul and Apollos and and you've got the Corinthians who were arguing about which side they were gonna be on and things like that and you you have these these ministers who are going about and they're ministering in the church and he says the whole context here is the apostolic ministry and he says if you turn this into a passage about justification and righteousness and the atonement this is just some sort of little isolated passage that's just floating around all by itself as if Paul never ever ever once in his life while talking about something else would just all of a sudden break into some discussion of the gospel and say praise be to God for his glorious grace
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Paul would never do anything like that right that never happened anywhere in all the rest of his epistles and so we couldn't let that happen and so what what he understands the passage to mean is this and remember righteousness of God for right means
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God's covenant faithfulness so his understanding of 2nd Corinthians chapter 5 is this he made him who knew no sin that is
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Jesus Christ to be sin on our behalf our is the Apostles this is not a statement that really in essence has anything to do with you today that wonderful pace statement he made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf the hour there is not the hour we see so often in Paul that is the people of God he's talking about the
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Apostles and so what happens is is the atonement has empowered the
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Apostles he made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we the
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Apostles might be made the incarnation the fleshing out of God's covenant faithfulness so even though we
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Apostles seem to have failed even though we Apostles do not have a glorious ministry in the eyes of men in reality our apostolic ministry will succeed and we become the in the enfleshment of God's covenant faithfulness he remains faithful to the
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Apostles in the apostolic ministry and as such that's a demonstration despite what it looks like to the world that's a demonstration of his covenant faithfulness to the
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Apostles now I don't see a lot of you going amen because the fact of the matter is you listen to something like that and you go what the the apostolic ministry is a demonstration of the faithfulness of God well that's a true statement
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I guess wouldn't it be true I mean God was faithful to the Apostles he was faithful to their work there's no question about that so it's not like that's a lie but is that really what
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Paul's talking about what amazes me is is I've taken the time
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I mean he presents this in his book and he says I've elsewhere demonstrated unfortunately he forgot to put a footnote there and so you got to go digging around through all of his articles and stuff and I finally dug up after a fair amount of work the scholarly article wherein he allegedly demonstrated this and he actually didn't go into much more detail there than he did in the book but what amazes me is when it when someone of his obvious intelligence of his obvious abilities will look at a passage of Scripture like that and there are entire concepts right there in the text that just go flying by why in the world would
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Paul say he made him who knew no sin to be sin in our behalf if all he's simply talking about is that God is going to bless the apostolic ministry and the apostolic ministry is going to be a demonstration of God's faithfulness isn't there a whole lot of sacrificial language here there's why even mention the fact that Jesus knew no sin what does it mean to what does it mean when it says he made him who knew no sin to be sin in our place there's no connection between that and the demonstration of God's covenant faithfulness in the apostolic ministry we have always thought wow here you have the sinless one who is made sin that doesn't mean that his nature was changed we have here the very a very important element of what it means to impute righteousness our sins were imputed to Christ that did not make
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Christ less than God it did not defile him in that sense
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God as judge treated him as if guilty of those sins that did not change him in the sense of making him guilty of those sins and making him impure in that sense and ceasing to be
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God or something like that but he bears he is treated those sins are imputed to him in the very same way that his righteousness is imputed to us we are treated as if we have fulfilled the law of God perfectly we are treated as if we have done what
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Christ did in the fulfillment of that law and that is why we can have peace with God and the same way
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Christ is treated as if he has been guilty of all the sins of his people that are laid upon him and so the wrath of God falls upon him he made him who knew no sin to be sin in our place so that what and people say was so we might be and they don't understand that the language is not expressing doubt there the language is expressing purpose the purpose of the cross the purpose of the atonement the purpose of the fact that Christ a sinless one experiences the wrath of God the purpose of that transaction was so that we not might in the sense of hope not might is in the sense that they came out in the debate that took place a few years ago on Long Island when going through the same passage that brother
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Steve read earlier in Romans chapter 4 verse 8 I asked father Peter Stravinsky's who is the blessed man and he had never been asked that question before it's a question
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I ask a lot of Roman Catholics who's the blessed man of Romans 4 8 is something
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I would recommend you ask Roman Catholics and I know we have some Roman Catholics here today so I'll ask you who is the blessed man of Romans 4 8 there in discussing that wonderful truth of imputation once again of the righteousness of Christ you have this blessed man to whom the
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Lord will not impute sin well if you're a Roman Catholic or a former
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Roman Catholic ask yourself a question you commit a venial sin to whom is it imputed well it's imputed to you the temporal punishment of that at that sin is borne by you is it not that's why there's such a place called purgatory because there's temporal punishments for those sins and you bear them nobody can bear them in your place but if you commit a mortal sin to whom is it imputed to you you commit a mortal sin you lose the grace of justification become the enemy of God you have to be read justified you have to go to the sacrament of penance confession so there is no such thing as the non imputation of sin within the
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Roman Catholic theological system and so who is the blessed man to whom the
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Lord will not impute sin and father Pierce Ravinskas his initial answer which he sort of had to give up on later on because I don't think he'd ever been asked this question before was
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Jesus think about that one for a moment less is the man to whom the
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Lord will not impute sin that didn't work too well Jesus isn't the blessed man being discussed in Romans 4 8 and so I pressed the issue a little bit more and eventually said
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I hope to be someday I hope to be a blessed man someday and I can only hear someone say that and my heart is broken for anyone who would have possession of the
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Word of God and yet would say well I I hope someday to be the blessed man
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I understand why he said that he said that because he does understand what
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Ludwig Ott said years before when he said the uncertainty the state of grace lies in just this that no man without a supernatural revelation can know whether he has fulfilled all the conditions which are necessary for achieving justification that would be in my opinion the best example of bad news that I could ever hear if I have to fulfill conditions which are necessary for justification and I know the holiness of God and I know my own heart that's bad news that's not the gospel
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I am so thankful that as Paul says in 2nd Corinthians chapter 5 someone did fulfill the necessary conditions for my justification that someone is my
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Savior Jesus Christ and it's only in his righteousness that I can stand who is the blessed man
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I had one Roman Catholic tell me it's the person who is just baptized before they leave the church
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I'm serious and that one at least made sense they've been baptized sins been washed away they haven't walked out the door of the church yet where the you know someone can drive by and splash them with water and they commit a venial sin because they're mad that person and there is your blessed man doesn't last very long but that's the blessed man is that really what
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Paul is talking about of course not the blessed man is every single believer in Jesus Christ bar none that's what that's what the whole message of the gospel is and so when we look at second
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Corinthians chapter 5 he made him who knew no sin to be sin in our place on our behalf so that we would be made the righteousness of God but only in one way in him you see one of the reasons the justification by faith is under attack is a justification by faith is an anti pluralistic document doctrine what do
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I mean by that it's always only in Christ you see justification by faith talks about sin it talks about wrath it talks about the necessity of atonement and there is only one place where that exists according to Christianity and that is in Jesus Christ and all these folks who want to be pluralistic all these folks who want to say oh you know the the
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Muslim worships the God of Abraham the Muslim is we're together in the one faith no you're not you haven't read surah four and five in the
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Quran if you think that you have no concept of what Islam believes or really what the
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Bible believes if you can actually make statements like that the doctrine of justification precludes us from being pluralist it precludes us from denying the centrality and uniqueness of Christ because the doctrine of justification by faith is based upon the finished atoning work of Jesus Christ and it's only in him that we can have the righteousness that justification speaks of and so it's not a popular doctrine these days because in the church today there is this fear of offending anyone
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I had the opportunity last is that last weekend I'm starting to lose track of what weekend it is
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I was at Bradley University in Peoria Illinois and they set up a
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Q &A session for students there on campus I didn't know what I was walking into you know you know folks at college campuses see they tend to be a little bit on the odd side especially the ones in ministry in college campuses and and so they named this get -together stump the chump and until we got there
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I had no idea we find I finally pick up the flyer literally here's what the flyer that's been distributed all over this campus stump the chump it says it has and underneath it says think you can you can prove
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God doesn't exist do you like just to argue and it says free pizza now there's a combination it's
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I'm doomed you know so I'm the chump okay and we filled the place up you know it worked it was a pragmatic approach and it worked and boy did we have some conversations there
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Wow we had some real some real conversations with some folks and in fact be honest with you
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I'm carrying in my PDA case back there a question answer asked by a young man there in Peoria Illinois by by the name of Eric and I sat down afterwards and talked with Eric for quite some time we were surrounded by most of the people and had it had a real wonderful conversation with Eric Eric had some epistemological problems and how can we know anything how can
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I know that my jacket exists and you know some of that basic kind of stuff and and we had quite the conversation and and I let him talk until he finally see see just in passing you might say how do you talk to someone like that how do you talk to someone who who's not sure that their their jackets there or not you know
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I mean that's a little bit of a challenge it was there's no two ways about it what
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I did is is I recognized this is this is how I do apologetics like that there is no neutral ground between me and Eric this is saying is neutral ground you see if God create everything and everything exists because God created the way that he created it any fact that exists exists because God made it that way and so I can't prove the
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Christian God by starting off by denying the Christian God to admit neutrality to admit there is an exact there is a fact that exists outside of God's creative command is to deny the
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God I want to try to prove so there I don't believe there's a neutral ground but I do believe this every single person
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I'm talking to is created in the image of God that's the connection and every single person because they're creating the image of God when they live in rebellion against God's truth is living inconsistently with that image and eventually they're gonna prove it eventually they're gonna slip up eventually they're gonna say something that demonstrates that they're not living consistently with their worldview they're actually borrowing from mine and I just had to let
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Eric talk long enough before he hung himself and he did I point out to him look you don't live consistently with your own worldview you're you can't walk out the door and drive down a street or walk down a sidewalk in a way it's consistent with the worldview that you're talking about and then then he said this he said well
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I know I should try to be consistent gotcha
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I said why what do you mean why should you try to be consistent and I pushed that in fact he started getting a little upset and I calmed him down eventually the the end of the conversation
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I said I said to America said I'm gonna be praying that every time in your life you speak and act inconsistently with your own worldview
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God's gonna convict you he's gonna remind you of that silly -looking bald man that you talked to that one night and he is going to just chase you with the hounds of heaven until you stop suppressing the truth that you know about the
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God who's there and I've kept the question that he asked he asked a number of them he started off by reading from the
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Atheist Manifesto but he turned in a note card with a question and I have it in my
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PDA case and so I would I would invite you to join with me in seeking the hounds of heaven upon 19 year old
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Eric in Peoria Illinois but what I was the point a whole reason I said that was here we are doing this presentation and there are so many worldviews being thrown at me there's so many questions being thrown at me
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I mean I would literally have a question how can we really know that the Bible is true and is there really anything wrong with gay marriage you know as if that's those are the two in the person thinking they're the same question in some ways it's true they were but one of the consistent questions it came up more than once was how can you
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Christians think that you're right and other religions are wrong and I was so thankful that I've always been very very consistent
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I've been very very consistent in resisting any kind of pluralism and in resisting any kind of compromise the fact that Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation
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God has the right to save the way God chooses to save it's amazing how people think that we can tell
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God how his grace is going to be manifested how he's going to save what an amazingly arrogant creature we are the doctrine of justification is the single greatest bulwark against the diminishment of the centrality and uniqueness of Jesus Christ that God has given to us and that's why in those denominations that have become all ooshy -gooshy feel -good with all the religions of the world and they're out there
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I remember years ago I was asked to I used to do what these two guys are doing except that the cameras were a lot bigger and I used to do it professionally
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I was I was a cameraman I learned at the large church we were at and I did professional camera work where I actually got paid got paid good money doing shooting
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I've shot some television commercials and stuff like that and learned how to run a television camera and things like that do television engineering
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I've done a lot of stuff in my life and we one day I got called up and it had been years since I had done it
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I had stopped doing I was already involved ministry guy said I really need a cameraman we're doing the Episcopalian National Convention in Phoenix and I said well okay it's been a long time put me on the camera farthest away because you know
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I mean you got a nice wide shot no one can see if you're sort of jerking a little bit but if you're real close up you know any little movement it's exaggerated this is gonna be live uplinked to Episcopalian churches
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Anglican churches all over the world and so we're there for the the warm -up the the practice run through session and guess where they put me right down front and they were in a situation where there were four four microphones in the room representing north south east and west and first of all they had
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American Indians come in and do a dance which was which was nice except it wasn't to you know
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Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so it was a pagan ritual to bless the building and I'm just sort of going home brother now remember we've got those little microphone to those little headset thing he's on you know and whenever you see some of someone doing their type thing they're normally saying something very funny and you wish you could be listening and so I kept my mouth shut but then they had these people come up and practice the prayers that they were going to use and in every single one of the four there was something along the lines of Lord bless us heterosexual and homosexual straight and gay lesbian in this and all the rest of stuff and finally
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I just could not help myself and I got on my little headset and I said okay gentlemen when the roof comes in get under the tripod of your camera we might make it
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Oh the pluralism well is it not surprising is it really surprising to any of us that that kind of attitude exists there because folks the doctrine of justification got nixed in that place a long time ago and so once you're no longer preaching justification by grace through faith in Christ alone that it's easy to start bringing the pagans we can bring in the
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Wiccans I mean the the Anglicans in in England are well known for the fact that they at their conventions they'll have all sorts of these these
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Wiccan prayers and just just this week someone sent me a URL to a female Anglican minister
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Episcopalian minister in Pennsylvania that wrote a mass using
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Druid prayers for women and this was on the the Episcopalian website they pulled it eventually but someone of course archived it once you put on the internet you're dead that's just all there is to it so it's just amazing how does it how do you get to that point well you threw out the inerrancy and inspiration of Scripture a long time ago and you threw out the gospel a long time ago and so you know nature abhors a vacuum something's gonna come rushing in something's gonna come rushing in and so when we think of this doctrine as we have thought about it today and I'm gonna wrap up with this when
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Paul said he made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf he was not limiting that to the
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Apostles thank God it's true of the Apostles but thankfully what he was talking about was the great exchange the great gospel that Jesus Christ is our substitute he bore in his body upon the tree our sins the wrath of God due to that that is why that is why
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I find so heartbreaking that prayer that I have mentioned many times in my debates that prayer to Mary where the the the suppliant says protect me from the protect me from my sins and protect me from Jesus my judge and I've said many times off anyone who could pray that has no idea of the
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Christ of the New Testament if you think you need a mediator with the mediator you haven't met the mediator yet and so this doctrine that we have talked about today
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I hope you know there are people running around saying all you folks you just you just think these doctrines the solas are these these these truths that flit about above your heads and they never touch down to earth and you never experience them in your life these truths define the very way we live and the gospel we preach
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I hope you've listened well there are brothers and sisters of ours across this world that would have given almost anything to be where you are today they don't have the freedom to gather in places like this they don't have the
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Word of God to be able to open it up as we've been able to look at it this day we are a privileged people and I thank you for being here today let's pray together indeed father we thank you that we have this freedom we thank you that we have the opportunity to open your word and to consider your truth and most of all we thank you for your mercy and grace toward us we ask that you would bless all of those who have come that you would bless them with traveling mercies if they're leaving now or if they're remaining with us for the rest of this experience
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Lord whatever it might be thank you for all who have been here who were here last evening and especially
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Lord I thank you for all those who have made it possible for this to take place may you bless them in the way that only you can for the service and ministry that they have been to all the rest of us we thank you for your love toward us we pray in Christ's name amen would you please give a hand to dr.