Just a Little Conversation on the Pope, Lindy West’s Hatred of Life, and a Call from Chris Arnzen

And greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line on a unusual Thursday, Friday afternoon, whatever day it is.

Notice I'm wearing my South African Springboks rugby jersey, and I evidently didn't wear it the right day, because they lost to Japan the first round, which is really unexpected and sad.

But I'm heading to South Africa, so let's do our best.

Yeah. All right. So, yeah, why are we here again?

No, I didn't listen to the presentation today at the

United Nations, but did the Vicar of Christ remember to mention Christ this time? Did you happen to hear?

Well, as most of you are aware, in the address to joint session of Congress, the

Pope sort of forgot to mention Jesus. You know, I don't know. I have a hard time thinking that, you know,

John MacArthur would sort of forget about mentioning Jesus in,

I mean, give John MacArthur that amount of time and Jesus is going to get in there somewhere.

I really think so. But you know, plenty of time for global warming and every socialist movement on the planet and plenty of time to say he spent his entire ministry working toward being able to call for a global ban on abortion.

No, that's not what he said. No, that's not what he said. A global ban on capital punishment.

I didn't say anything, no. A part of me actually sort of feels bad for so many

Roman Catholics who have been out on the front lines at abortion clinics for so long.

And then the Pope comes to the United States and it's like, well, this global warming thing, you know, we just, you know, got to, you know, sad, sad, very sad.

And if I hear one more reporter talk about the

Holy Father, I'm, I'm shooting a TV. That's just all there is to it. I, I had no idea that everyone who works at Fox News was a glowing

Roman Catholic, but evidently that's Holy Father, this

Holy Father, that, and I just want to pull, I was gonna say pull my hair out, but that really didn't, didn't work too well.

But yeah, yeah, I suppose I could do that somehow, but yeah, the, the coverage of the, of the papal visit, well, you know,

I remember when John Paul came in 1993, I didn't see a lot of the coverage cause

I was there. We were up in Denver when the

Pope came to Denver in 1993 and we passed out tracks along the pilgrimage route to a

Cherry Creek State Park and came up with some of the most imaginative track distribution lines ever.

Remember, you know, my favorite one, special lightweight tracks, remember? Cause everybody was, oh, I can't carry anything more.

Well, these are special lightweight tracks. Oh, okay. That was, that was definitely one of my favorite lines and now here, let me stick it in your pack for you.

Okay. All right. So, you know, we got a lot of them, got a lot of them passed out, but that's, that's also we did the, the debates with Jerry Matitix.

That's when the Carl Keating and Patrick Madrid pulled their destruction of Bill, was it

Bill Johnson's Bill Johnson and Ron Nemec were the names. Oh man. That was one of the most lopsided debates

I've ever heard is horrible. But that led to the debate with Patrick Madrid later in the year in San Diego anyways.

But yeah, that was, that was a long time ago. Wow. 20, 22 years ago.

Yeah. Wow. Wow. Wow. And neither one of us have changed a bit since then, have we?

And you know what? Those debates still live up on Sermon Audio in the Roman Catholic section.

In the Roman Catholics, I do know. They're even dated right. They're even dated right. Yes. That's good.

I guess. Well, I mean, a lot of the recordings for some strange reason, way back when we decided it was a good idea to write the dates on a lot of these when they happened.

So I was able to give accurate dates. It's kind of really bizarre to realize that it happened on that exact day of that exact year and a long, long time ago.

All debates took place on an exact day. Well, yes, I get the point. But it's kind of cool when you start putting it all together in a row and you start seeing it unfold.

Yeah. Over those many years. Many years ago. I know. Started in August 90. So if everything goes off well in South Africa.

It looks like I'm not sure what the schedule is, but I think either way it goes. My hundred and fiftieth official moderated public debate will probably be in in the mosque down there.

So that'll be that'll be great. But much preparation to do before then.

I did this morning comment on Twitter. About a.

A picture is do we have. Let's see here. I wonder if we have this picture.

Well, this is the wrong computer anyways, and I don't have it set up to do anything, but someone put a picture of the

Pope says we'll only come to America when Dr. James White is away in Zurich. Well, that didn't work out that way.

I'm back, but that really wouldn't matter. There it is. This morning I reposted a picture.

Where'd it go? It was. Oh, maybe this doesn't show mine. Yeah, it doesn't show mine.

That's silly. Sometimes tweetbot is strange.

But I wonder how I could find that. I guess

I have to find me and then go into all that. I don't have time to do the picture of Rick Warren.

And I I'm trying to figure out which should be the most offensive part of this picture. The fact that he's all dressed up far better dressed than you'll ever find him at Saddleback preaching.

That's for sure. All dressed up. Standing outside the

White House. Waiting to fawn all over the

Pope. Or the fact that he's chumming around. There we go.

Yeah. Or the fact that he's got his arm around TD Jakes, which which is the most offensive part?

I'm not sure. But. I reposted that picture.

And. I talked about compromise. And then

I realized, you know what? That's that's not the proper term. Compromise is not the right term here.

That that represents an absolute betrayal.

Of the responsibilities. Of a pastor of a flock.

He's howling around with a non -trinitarian. And immediately I had somebody respond, well, didn't he say he was a

Trinitarian in the elephant room? And I was like. And then I have to remind myself that a lot of folks didn't listen to the dividing line back then that listen now.

We did an entire program, maybe more than one. We we played his comments in depth, analyzed them in depth.

And the man is not a Trinitarian. He is a modalist. That's all there is to it.

And. So you're you're putting your arms around a modalist.

There's even better picture here. And like I said, that's they're both. Well, Jake's is always dressed up.

Huh? Yeah, I know that. So I said outside the White House waiting to bond all over the pope.

And so it's bad enough that you're hanging with the heretics. But both of the both of you are waiting to hang with another heretic.

And you're and you're you're going to be fawning all over the guy and bowing down and kissing his ring and doing all the rest of this stuff.

And it's like, are there any Protestants left in the United States? I mean, you know,

I'm not talking about being some of the nutcase people out there that are trying to.

Trying to come up with 666 from Francis's name or something, I'm not. I don't even remember what his pre coronation name was.

But I'm not talking about that weird stuff. But I did also tweet.

Did you know that? Is it tonight? Is tonight the eclipse? There's a there's a super moon tonight, which means it's the closest that it gets in its orbit.

And then there is a full lunar eclipse. So you've got blood moons, a full super super moon eclipse and Southern Baptists hanging with heretics while waiting to fawn all over the pope.

And I said, maybe Jack Chick was right, maybe. I mean.

It what do you say? I mean, it's just wow. So I'm not talking

I'm not talking about the wild eyed folks out there. Is there anybody left who understands why?

This is troubling, understands why papal pretensions were rejected by by everybody who took the

Bible seriously. No, there's there's there's not too many, but but.

I got on the bike yesterday morning. And before I took off, I was in a hurry.

I had an appointment, so I had to cut it back to a 50 miler, but I started to get started fairly early and I took the time to throw the briefing onto my iPod so I can listen to it right at the beginning of my ride, which

I normally do if I'm going to do it that way. And so. The first 10 minutes of the briefing.

Were like a summary of the dividing line from the day before. I mean, it was about the papacy, it was about the titles of the pope, it was about why

Protestants have historically taken the stance they have of all this stuff.

And I was like, yeah, all right. This is this is good. It's good to good to recognize that, yes.

There are still people out there who understand why this matters and hence are deeply troubled by the fact that the vast majority of people that I see are just going, well, he seems like a nice guy.

Well, what's he doing today? Well, he's saying mass and Madison Square Garden.

Really? Do you know what the mass is? Well, it's just a fancy Catholic Lord's Supper.

You know what? Not even the Romanists say that. Not even the Romanists say that.

They recognize that the Eucharistic sacrifice is the central act of their worship and that in the

Eucharistic sacrifice by the sacramental power of the priest, Jesus Christ is rendered present upon the altar of the

Roman church, body, soul, blood and divinity in an unbloody manner, but yet still a propitiatory sacrifice that will never perfect anyone.

Well, I saw it was like their Lord's Supper. No, it's not. No, it's not.

That's why I say vast majority of non -Catholics today are non -Catholics of convenience, predilection, taste, but not conviction, not prejudice, bigotry.

There's all that kind of stuff too. You know, the Jack Chick, Alberto Rivera, King James only, wackoism.

You got those folks too. But people who reject Rome because they're absolutely convinced that the gospel defines the church, that a religious organization that stands against the gospel of Jesus Christ, and if you have a unfinished work of Christ that perfects nobody, if you have a

Eucharistic sacrifice that's under the control of some man who thinks he's an alter Christus, another Christ, if you think that that ordained man somehow has the power to forgive sins and to assign penances and all the rest of that stuff that comes along with it.

If you think that he can make a decision between whether you've committed a mortal sin or a venial sin, even though if you go right down the road to the next church, that guy's going to give you a different answer as to what is what.

If you believe that that baptism puts you into a state of grace, but then committing a mortal sin takes you out of the state of grace and so you got to go through the sacrament of penance and all the rest of the stuff to get back into the state of grace and purgatory and indulgences and all the rest of that stuff.

That my friends has never been, never will be, and cannot be the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And if you present that as your gospel, then you are an antichristos. You are opposed to Christ and to his kingdom.

That's not a matter of prejudice or bigotry. That is the necessary, rational, logical conclusion of holding the biblical theology.

That's all it is. How many people hold that position anymore?

Well, I am convinced by looking at least that element of information available to me that the number of us is rather small.

It is rather small. But we do this program to try to increase that number, increase that number.

Anyway, I'm not going to spend the whole hour talking about that despite the fact that it's all around us right now and there doesn't seem to be much we can do about it.

What I'm going to do is, like I said yesterday morning, I was listening to Dr. Moeller and this, was it this morning?

I got up at three something this morning to run with my wife. We did the 5k and then I went to another 5k after that, do a 10k inside.

I'm not sure if it was this morning or another morning. It could have, no, no, no, it wasn't.

Well, it could have been yesterday morning. Anyway, at some point in time, he, at the end of a program.

No, it was yesterday morning. It was yesterday morning. This was toward the end. Yeah, this is just toward the end of the ride.

Spoke about the woman by the name of Lindy West, who began the hashtag movement on Twitter called shout your abortion.

Shout your abortion. The title from the,

I think it was the Guardian in London that contacted about this.

The title is I set up shout your abortion because I am not sorry and I will not whisper.

And as you read through this article, suddenly last week in the thick of the right wing misogynist crusade to defund planned parenthood.

Misogynist crusade. The twistedness of Lindy West's mind is so complete.

Is so she has been so given over in her rebellion that to her, what is good is actually evil.

What is evil is actually good. She is the fulfillment of one who has been given over.

And that creator creation twisting is not just slightly out of line. It is completely gone.

I mean, when you, when you listen to these folks speaking and you hear what they're saying, the tendency on our part is to become inflamed with anger at someone who can be so evil.

And yet think it's good to be so evil. We just want to go, oh,

Dr. Mengele. Nice to see you again. But we need to get past the emotional response.

We cannot do. We just can't do what the world is doing in substituting emotion and gut reaction for rational thought based upon a clear, decisive chosen worldview.

We must go against the flow and we ourselves must practice purposefully to think with clarity, to think purposefully, to constantly be repairing our worldview in light of the word of God.

And we need to teach others and encourage others to do the same thing. Encourage others to do the exact same thing.

We have to do this. And that means parents teach your children about worldview issues, teach them to purposefully stand against the way that everyone else thinks, honor

God and honor their own createdness in his image by using their brain first.

I mean, I'm going to take this out because I'm not using it again. Anyways, I think that we should have basic logical thinking training in our homes and in our churches so that we can stand against this cultural slide where the image of God is being replaced with pure emotionalism, pure emotionalism.

Anyway, as a result of that, you start reading through this and you realize you are just talking to someone who is absolutely given over in their rebellion, in their detestation of everything that's good, honest, just, pure, holy, law.

But then you, some of it you couldn't even read. I couldn't even read on the air because they like to, you know, this is your standard in -your -face feminist who loves their evil.

You know, you can just tell that the editor had to take out a lot of from in here just to make it work.

But you listen, you listen through, you read through, and this is what

Moeller did here.

Well, for example, the truth is that life is unfathomably complex.

People with uteruses own their bodies unconditionally.

And every abortion story is as unique as the person who lives it. Now, of course, the reality is it's also as unique as the person who dies in it, but they can't allow that part.

No, no, they can't allow that part. That's why once you get to presenting the reality of the humanity of the pre -born child, um, that's when they start yelling, screaming, throwing things, and so on and so forth.

Uh, but here, listen, listen to this. This is the part that Moeller focused in on.

I'm unashamedly stealing it from him. There are no good abortions and bad abortions because an abortion is just a medical procedure.

Reproductive health care is health care. And as a fact, without caveat, that a fetus is not a person.

You just, it's a fact. I mean, we live in a day where there is more evidence available to anybody than ever before.

We have 3d imaging. These people are so twisted in their evil.

So given over by God in their rebellion that despite the clarity of the facts, it is an absolute fact, a fact without caveat that a fetus is not a person.

There you go. I own my body. This sound, this sounds familiar. Well, if I own my body, then

I can, I can decide that I'm a gold medalist or something. Not, never will be, never could have been.

But, but that's reality and reality doesn't matter because I own my body.

I am in charge. I am autonomous. I have all authority.

I own my body and I decide what I allow to grow in it. What if you want to see how worldview is absolutely central?

Why this is not just something for geeks to sit around and talk about, but here it's a life and death thing.

Listen to that. I own my body and I decide what I allowed to grow in it. When you realize that this evil self -centered woman was once that little child in her mother's body, the foolishness, the evil of this woman and this worldview thrusts itself upon you, just thrusts itself upon you.

And the, the sheer deception, the, the, the, the perverted thought is shocking.

Telling our stories at full volume chips away at stigma, at lies, at the climate of shame that destroys the lives sometimes literally.

Now, before I finish that, the climate of shame, remember, remember the little old lady with the cross.

Proposition eight, California, the gays knocked the cross out, stomp on it. And what are they, what are they, what are they yelling at her?

Shame, shame, shame. And I was pointing out to so many times that's projection. They feel it.

So they projected on others. They feel better. This woman's

Lindy West's whole idea is she knows that she experiences shame.

So you project it on others. Shame on you for pointing out that I actually feel shame.

Telling our stories at full volume chips away at stigma, at lies, at the climate of shame that destroys the lives sometimes literally.

Now, listen to this. Here's of women and girls and anyone, anywhere on the gender spectrum who can become pregnant.

Did you hear that? Oh, caught you, huh? You're an old fogey, Rich. That's why

I caught you. Let me, let me read it for you again. So you can catch up with your society of women and girls and anyone, anywhere on the gender spectrum who can become pregnant.

Welcome to the insanity, the insanity of Western culture that has decided to completely cut itself free, completely cut itself free from that, which made it great from that, which allowed it to develop science and law and one of the most advanced civil as well, the most advanced civilization we've ever seen.

But it's doesn't want any of that anymore. And so now you literally have the line women and girls and anyone, anywhere on the gender spectrum who can become pregnant.

And this is advancement. This is progression. Yeah, it's progression straight off a cliff face first into the rocks below.

That's the progression that the progressives are leading us on. No question about it, especially those living in poverty and rural areas and hyper religious and conservative households.

There's the enemy. There is the enemy there. There you go. Um, absolutely amazing.

There's a next paragraph. There's a reason why shot your abortion has been getting mountains of positive mainstream press attention.

Um, it's called you're all part of the same movement.

You, you bought them. They bought you. This is surprising to you while the people terrorizing us.

Notice the terminology terrorizing my feet is clogged with pictures of bloody fetuses and death threats.

This is Twitter after all are ignored on the fringe. It's because we are right.

And however glacially society evolves, it is evolving in the right direction.

Abortion is common. Abortion is happening. Abortion needs to be legal, safe and accessible to anyone. Abortion is a thing you can say out loud.

I am not sorry. I wonder how many copies of this exist in the world on hard drives and printed form.

And I wonder if every single one of them will be enumerated before the throne of God.

When Lindy West in light of Jesus's own words, that every word you speak, every word you speak, you'll be held accountable.

Well, I am not sorry. Echo in her ears throughout all of eternity.

Amazing. Absolutely amazing. What I said, uh, on Twitter, well, actually

I said on a Facebook article, this little brief thing I put up is that this is such an illustration of the fact that most of us, myself included at times,

I, I will rightly criticize myself here. We slip into thinking like the world.

And because we see, you know, this silly blood moon, what was

Shemitah? I didn't even get into this stuff. I, I, I didn't even, I even know what it means. I didn't even take the time to read enough articles to go,

Oh, that's weird. Uh, I, I left it for others. There's, there's just only so much lunacy you can deal with at one shot, but we see this stuff or we see the, the constant abuse of the spiritual realm, uh, by charismatics who are, you know, so far removed from having a biblical theology and a biblical grounding.

And, and so we tend to lose our balance, the other direction and tend to not recognize how important the spiritual realm is and how it's there and how biblically we can't avoid the connection that is there.

It's easy for us to, you know, uh, to look at even,

I still had up on the screen from the last program, Paul's words to the

Ephesian elders and, you know, he very clearly focuses upon their responsibilities and what they need to do.

But it's always in the context of the spiritual realm.

He says, uh, uh, verse 22, and now behold, bound by the spirit.

I am on my way to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit solemnly testifies to me in every city saying that bonds and afflictions await me.

Uh, the next verse, I do not consider my life of any account as dear to myself so that I may finish my course and ministry, which

I received from the Lord Jesus to testify solemnly of the gospel, the grace of God.

So there's this, well, how'd you receive this ministry? Well, it was, obviously it is a spiritual thing.

It wasn't, you know, Jesus sent a, you know, certified package to Paul and said, here's what you're supposed to do.

This was spiritual. Um, and so, so while he's talking about, you know,

I, I am free of the blood of all men. I did not shrink back from declaring the whole counsel of God, everything else.

But then even when he says be on guard, why? Because it's the Holy Spirit who has placed you in that position, which is by the way, why

I said what I said about Rick Warren this morning is if you take seriously your position, then the

Holy Spirit puts you there. It's a spiritual thing. Um, we tend to sort of pass over some of the spiritual stuff, but we can't, we have got to listen to what's going on in our culture and realize, you know,

I've been saying it for years. Judgment is behind what we're seeing. This, what we're seeing doesn't bring judgment.

It is judgment. This is, this is so, Lindy West, Lindy West is doing everything in her power to obliterate the imago dei, the image of God within herself.

And is that not what I've said is the essence of punishment?

The punishment that I believe people experience in hell. I don't, I do not believe that God has to sit there and be expending energy to, you know, to put demons down, to poke people with pitchforks or any rest of that silliness.

But what happens when you're created in the imago dei, in the image of God, and then your relationship to the very source of life is twisted by sin to where you become not only the enemy of God, but once he lets you, once he removes the restraint, what happens?

You become consumed in your hatred of everything that represents

God. That's what the culture of death is about. God is life. Therefore, the culture of death celebrates everything that will separate from life and separate from God.

That's why the culture of death is spreading and becoming all pervasive around us.

That's, that's part of rebellion. And it, a person in that situation, once, once that restraint is removed, which in hell, that's exactly what takes place.

The restraint's gone. All right. Now you are allowed free reign of expression of your absolute hatred of God.

What are you going to express it on? There's not gonna be a creation around you to destroy, to express your detestation of God.

I don't believe that there's gonna be anybody else around you. You know, everybody who's talking about me and my buddies are gonna have fun in hell together.

No, I, you're no self -service there. Sorry. You ain't, you ain't, no,

I think you'd be alone. Absolutely alone. The only thing left that bears the image of God is you.

So it's self -destruction. It's self, self -detestation.

And I can't even imagine what that looks like. I don't know what that looks like. I really don't. Nobody does.

But when we see it now in this life, it's frightening. It's frightening.

And when I look at Lindy West and I see this kind of love of death and absolute rejection of anything that is good or right, it's a, it's a frightening thing.

Frightening thing. But it's spiritual in its origination. And we have to develop a thoroughly biblically oriented and balanced way of looking at what's happening around us.

Because unless God grants major repentance, this is just the beginning folks.

And these folks, I, you read that article. This woman would vote in a second, in a second to have every one of you and I thrown into a concentration camp.

In a second. The detestation, the seething hatred.

Because remember in this life, they can lash out at God by lashing out at those who are in submission to him.

That's what has brought up. If they hated me, they're going to hate you as well, is what

Jesus said. So keep that in mind as we consider these issues.

I'm going to go ahead and, I'm going to go ahead and open the phones. We've got, we've got 15 minutes left, uh, 40 minutes left on the program, uh, 877 -753 -3341.

Maybe you'd like to comment on that or on the papal visit and things associated there with 877 -753 -3341.

I know one person that will not be calling is, uh, is book in channel, uh, because he just said that, uh, he might lie down for about 15 minutes.

Wake me up if I mentioned him on the dividing line. So, um, I thought

I would do that and, and, uh, make him feel badly that he abandoned the program just to go lay down for a while.

Um, instead of finishing listening to, you know, I had to say, so there you go.

877 -753 -3341. Um, I was spending, it's a, it's a long flight between from Zurich to Heathrow.

Heathrow here, long flight, lots of time to read lots of stuff. And, oh, where's that book?

Um, gentle answer. I, I want to introduce you all to a book that we are, have we, we're going to get in it, but it's international.

Oh, okay. Well, we're gonna, we're working on getting this. We're working on getting this.

You can, you can order it on Amazon, but I'd rather you order it from us. Um, the gentle answer to the

Muslim accusation of biblical falsification by Gordon Nichol. They could get it through smile .amazon

.com and list us as their, yeah, they can do that. Yeah, just as long as we're the ones that, yeah.

Well, yeah, that's the only reason they could do that though. Uh, I'm glad that I saw you talking to me since I took the earpiece out.

I guess I need to put it back in if I'm going to talk to callers, huh? Um, anyway, uh,

Gordon Nichol wrote a, looks really funny. Gordon Nichol wrote a fantastic book, which

I don't have in here on narratives of tampering in early, the early

Tafsir literature of the Quran, um, which I found to be tremendously useful, tremendously useful.

And when I heard he was doing this, I was quite interested. And then lo and behold, out of nowhere, he contacted me.

And I am working through this book right now and have found it tremendously useful.

Um, the gentle answer to the Muslim accusation of biblical falsification. That's not a small book. As you can see, it is just under 500 pages.

Um, but it is, uh, really an excellent and purposeful.

I, it says this right in it response to the Atsar al -Haq, which

I've mentioned this program many times. Atsar al -Haq is the 1864 book by, uh,

Cairo, Cairo. Now we Cairo oney, I have trouble with his last name at times, a, um,

Muslim scholar that that's the book that became, has become the source of the vast majority of Islamic Dawa in the world today.

Uh, Akhmed Ddot was deeply influenced by it, et cetera, et cetera. Muslim apologists continue to use it to this day, despite the fact that it's not only extremely dated, but has been rather thoroughly refuted in various forms.

But, um, it's still very popular and this would be an excellent book, uh, to give to a

Muslim, but especially to a Muslim. Obviously at this month, number of pages, um, probably not to the

Muslim who isn't going to be serious in researching things, but in talking to a serious

Muslim who has serious questions about the Bible and its transmission. Um, great, great book.

And I'm going to be telling you a little bit more about it in the future. And like I said, we want to make it available. Um, we're going to try to make it available anyways.

And, um, it's very gently written. It's called the gentle answer. Uh, but very thoroughly, very, very thoroughly, um, researched.

So, uh, want to get that information out to you. And, uh, let's go ahead and, uh, uh, take a call from back in Pennsylvania.

Surprise. This man has time to be calling us because, uh, he, he, he's got two hours every day to fill on his own program, uh, called, um, uh, uh, copper sharpens copper.

Uh, what is it? Um, uh, steel, steel on steel, uh, rusted iron.

What, what is it again? Yeah. As you will know, it's iron sharpens, iron sharpens iron.

Oh, that's right. Okay. Well, I, you know, it's, it's hard to remember sometimes.

And I, I figured you'd probably, I think I've heard you mention it once or twice in the past, uh, at various debates and things like that.

Uh, so I, I thought I'd let you, you know, do a little, you know, a little advertisement there.

Yeah. Well, anybody who wants to listen to the show, ironsharpensiron .com Monday through Friday four to 6 p .m.

That's Eastern time. Yes. Yes. That wouldn't be working right now, uh, if it was mountain time, but, uh, or Pacific or anywhere.

Anyways, Chris. Steel on steel was already taken by a Salem program, by the way.

Oh, it is. Okay. All right. Well, uh, that's, we, we don't want to get, we don't want to mess with Salem.

No, that's, that's not, I mean, I mean, it'd be like standing in front of an audience and talking about all the different people that I've debated and then saying, it sounds like a

Salem media, uh, broadcasting meeting or something like that. I mean, that would be really dumb to do.

So we wouldn't want to do that. Yes. I remember that debate.

Well, but I heard you mentioned that unless I misunderstood you, that a

Swiss guard converted to Christ after hearing one of the debates and I was wondering it, it was one of the

Long Island debates. Well, no, what it was was a, a young man came up to me, uh, while I was teaching in Hebrews, teaching

Hebrews in Zurich, he had made the selection to become one of the Swiss guards and had not yet left for the

Vatican. And I guess in, as part of his religious preparation or, uh, whatever it might be to, to be there had stumbled across, uh, the debates, uh, that I had done.

And he specifically mentioned the debates that I did with Robert Fastigi, um, in the middle, middle 1990s, actually,

I think that was where some of the first debates that I did that were done in a studio.

In fact, that was the first, yeah, that's the first time I had ever done a debate, uh, a live debate in a studio, uh, with anybody.

And it was with Dr. Robert Fastigi. And we, uh, debated, I think we did three debates, if I recall.

And one of them was on Mary, one was on Sola Scriptura. And I've told the story about how during one of the breaks, he came over and was chatting with me.

He was a, he was a nice fellow, very chatty fellow. Um, but I made reference to how many different, uh, viewpoints on tradition and things like that there were in Rome.

And I don't know if he meant to say this to me. Um, he was sort of saying it under his breath as he was sort of turning away, sort of absent mindedly saying it.

But when I pointed that out, he said, yeah, it's been a problem since the Inquisition since the

Inquisition ended. And I was sort of like, okay, I would sort of challenge you to say that on camera.

I think that would be rather interesting. But he specifically made reference to the Fastigi debates. So, um, it was,

I don't even know. I mean, I have seen them. I know they're on YouTube.

Um, but man, did I look different back then? I mean, even more so than the first Long Island debates.

Um, this is even before then. So it was a long, long time ago, but that's the, um, that's the way, uh, video works as long as you can get it out there.

It still keeps talking long after you're gone. Well, that's why

I, that's the response that I give to everybody who says to me, are these things really productive?

Are they really worth it? Do you see people like, uh, coming forward to receive

Christ at the end of them? And I tell them, uh, no, I've never seen that happen, but these things are, uh, viewed and listened to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times over after the fact over the internet or DVD or whatever medium that people are listening or viewing them on.

Yep. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And now that we've put everything on, uh, sermon audio, it's there too. In fact, Algo and Channel, uh, you've met

Algo, um, said that there are four debates with Fastigi. These were all from Austin, Texas in 1994.

And so they were on Mary, papal infallibility, indulgences, and justification.

Those are the four that are available. And, uh, so they're on sermon audio. Do we, are they on YouTube as well?

Uh, to my knowledge, I believe Larry Wessels would have put them up there on their channel,

Christian Answers on their YouTube channel. So we've got them in audio. I should have them linked on our

YouTube channel because I try to link to as much, uh, other stuff that we don't have control of, uh, as I can.

But they're from 1994. So those are, those are specific ones that he mentioned. I, I didn't ask him if he had seen any others.

He might've, but those are the ones that obviously caught his attention specifically. Well, uh, we have in Carlisle here, a 900 seat movie theater that has given me permission to have debates.

So whenever you're ready to come out here, I'll definitely bring you something. Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Um, I, I, I know well, uh, I think that's the, my, my dad worked at a, uh, mobile home sales lot on the primary road between Harrisburg and Carlisle.

I don't know if it's still there or not. Probably not. But, um, he worked there selling mobile homes while studying to get his first class radio telephone certificate and eventually became the, uh, is there still a

WHP out there? Uh, television station. I think it may have recently gone out of business, but I remember people telling me to apply for work at WHP.

Yeah. Yeah. He was, uh, he was, uh, chief engineer there for the television stuff.

And then we also, I have fond memories of walking the towers, uh, with my dad.

You have to walk from each of the, they had like six towers or four towers for the radio station. You have to walk between each one to take readings and stuff.

And it was, it was, it was fun, especially, especially cause they had all this old equipment in the radio station that wasn't connected to anything.

But man, to a kid my age looked just like the Starship Enterprise. That was, that was a lot of fun.

Chris, I just want to get this straight. Are you saying that the people were telling you to apply for a job at a television station that had gone out of business?

Is that how life is for you? No, I'm talking about,

I thought it was a radio station that had those call letters and people were asking me or encouraging me to apply there.

But then after that, I heard that they had gone, that they had sold to another ownership.

And that's his story. He's sticking to it, folks. That's right. Well, it was, it was both.

It was radio and it was radio and television. It was, WHP was both. They, it was, the station out here is

WGAL. Okay. That's ABC television out here.

Well, anyway, I know the area well. I'd love to, I'd love to get a chance to visit the Gettysburg Battlefield again.

It's been, been a few years since I've walked through Devil's Den and walked Lee's Pickett's Charge and sat around on Little Round Top and stuff like that.

So yeah, we'll get back there again sometime. And it'd be the only debate that I ever organized where it was actually advertised on marquee.

So people in the general public walking around would see the debate information if you follow.

So it'd be really cool. Yeah. That was weird when they did that in South Africa. Literally, there were, there were road signs over freeways with my picture and Yusuf Ismail's picture for the debate and stuff.

And I was like, wow, okay. I'm not in, I'm not in the U .S. anymore. So, so anyway.

Well, I can't tell you Robert Syngenis is itching to debate you if you ever want to. Yeah. You know,

I never did get around to reviewing your discussion with him because there were things

I wanted to address. It ended up being more about him than it was about the

Pope, to be honest with you. He said some, some pretty interesting things, but, you know, as, as much as, as Bob wants to protest his, his orthodoxy, the rest of his buds out there aren't so convinced.

And, you know, especially with the, the geocentrism stuff.

I mean, I, I certainly am not interested in doing a debate on that. That's for sure. Oh, of course not, no. But I, I would love to see some of the folks at Catholic Answers do that.

I'd love to see a Jimmy Akin, Patrick Madrid type person taking on Robert Syngenis on some issues like that.

That would be, that'd be something I'd, I'd buy some popcorn for. Well, just give me the word and I'll arrange something with somebody out here and we'll get it done.

All right. Thanks, Chris. All right. Thanks for your help. All right. God bless. Bye -bye. 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753.

3341 is the phone number if you'd like to get in right here toward the end of the program.

Maybe you had some comments on the PayPal visits or comments on the article from Lindy West that we looked at that truly, really amazed me.

Oh, okay. Ethan Holden was the one who made the thing with the

Pope with his thumb up going, we'll only come to America when Dr. James White is away in Zurich.

But actually, I got back while he was here. So I must have, the

PayPal spies must not have read the plane tickets correctly. Oh, well, this is interesting.

Let's head on down to Australia here toward the end of the program and talk with Charlie. G'day, mate.

Hey, g'day, mate. How you doing? Oh, very good. You got it. Well, what are you doing? You got something on the bar before us?

Sorry? You got something on the bar before us? Oh, yeah. We got a shrimp.

We got some chicken. We got, uh, what else do we have?

We have some, uh. You got a blooming onion? We have. Sorry?

You got a blooming onion? Uh, no, not really.

Anyway, Charlie, you didn't call in to try to decipher my bad

Australian accent. You've got a question about the early fathers. What can I do for you? Uh, yeah.

I'm just wondering about Ignatius. I'm not sure how much you know about Ignatius, but.

I assume you're referring to Ignatius of Antioch, not Ignatius Loyola. So you're talking about the apostolic father who dies in about 107, 108, writes seven genuine letters.

Numerous other letters are ascribed to him, but he writes seven genuine letters that we have today.

Yeah, yeah. That's the seven letters. That's right. Yeah, the seven letters of Ignatius.

I'm just wondering, um, the seven letters. Um, I heard that they were, um, um,

I heard they were spurious or they were, you know, made up or they were.

Well, there are other letters. There's many more than seven that are attributed to him. So there are seven that scholars believe were genuine to Ephesus, Philadelphia, places like that, one to Papias, um, one to Rome.

Um, but there are normally two versions of each one, one, a Latin and one, a Greek. The Greek is the shorter, the

Latin is expanded. So there are, uh, what might be called later expansions in the genuine epistles.

There are, there are a number of, um, critical additions of Ignatius's letter that would go through what the differences between the

Latin and the Greek are. But those seven letters are, are generally accepted as, as going back to 107, 108.

And they're very important for our insight into what the early church looked like at that particular time.

The fact that no Bishop is mentioned in the letter to Rome, uh, is very important. Uh, even though the

Bishop of all the other churches were mentioned. So there's a, there's a more primitive form of church government in Rome at that time.

He's writing against the Gnostics, all sorts of stuff like that. Yeah, I know.

Um, so, so basically you're mentioning the long versions and the, uh, and the short version, the, the short version, something like that.

Yeah, that was the, generally the, the Greek version is the, is shorter. The Latin seems to have a longer character to it.

Um, coming for a little bit later time has some additions, but we have, we have good manuscripts of both.

And like I said, there, uh, there are critical editions published of those today where you can sort of look at the differences between the

Greek and the Latin and, uh, make your decisions from there. But, um, uh, excellent source.

Uh, I'm not sure if it's still on the website, but I, for example, I wrote a paper a number of years ago on Ignatius's testimony to the deity of Christ, uh, on our

YouTube channel, my YouTube channel specifically, there's a, uh, a couple of videos, um, taking on Roman Catholic misuse of Ignatius.

So yeah, we've, we've addressed Ignatius a number of times. I even addressed him in my book on the Trinity. So is, is, is there like, um, so, so basically, basically the, the, the long version is, uh, different from the short version or it's, it's, it's just, just like, just added, added words?

Well, yeah, yeah, there's some, there's some, the Latin has some additions to it, but since we have both the

Greek and the Latin, we can, we can determine what those are. And the Greek could have some, some subtractions too.

So, I mean, it could go either direction, but generally most scholars would say the shorter

Greek is more representative of what Ignatius wrote originally. And, um, like I said, excellent, excellent, uh, versions available if you want to, to track those down.

But hey, Charlie, we're out of time on the program today. I appreciate you calling all the way from Australia. Would love to get back down there again.

I just don't know when, but it'll happen. It'll happen eventually. Just hopefully not when Australia is playing

South Africa rugby, because then I'd be torn. It'd be terrible. Um, but by the way, um,

I'm just, I'm actually listening to one of your debates at the moment. So yeah. Oh good.

Well, there, there are a few of them out there. The one versus the one with you and, uh, uh,

Abner Rashid on the, um, on the, um, on the, um, uh, manuscripts and...

Yes. Yes. From London. The two part on the New Testament and the, and the Quran. Good. Excellent. Yeah, yeah, that one.

Yeah. All right. All right. Thanks, Charlie. Thanks for watching, listening, and we'll talk to you again in the future.

And thanks for listening to The Dividing Line today. Lord willing. Uh, next week should be normal.

And it's the week after that where everything goes kaflooey for South Africa again. So maybe we'll have a summary of the papal visit next week or something.