Dr. Licona

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.

The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll -free across the

United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

James White. And welcome to the Dividing Line on a Thursday afternoon, just, oh, you know,

I forgot to open that up. Oh, you know, I did all that work to get over here and I forgot to open it up. Let me open it up very, very quickly here.

I remembered to get the information for where I will be next week. Now this is for some of you, you may just want to be complaining that we're not doing

Dividing Lines. We're going to, what are we looking at out there, gentlemen?

Because the only day I'm going to be here next week is Monday. Monday the, what, the 19th or something like that?

Yeah, 19th. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for verifying what the calendar says there.

What's the, man, you try to open up a Microsoft thing and there's 47 ,000 update things.

Oh, and then it shuts down. That's cool. That's sweet. Let's try

Keynote. Maybe Keynote will work better. We're good on Monday? Probably need to do it like at about two o 'clock,

I would say. Two o 'clock our time. Because I've got to pack and everything else.

So this is live radio, folks. Actually, we're not on radio at all. So it's not live radio. It's live webcasting,

I guess is what it's called. Live webcasting. Anyhow, we will put something up about that and let you know on about Monday because we have some people become very unhappy and upset if we did not have any dividing lines at all for a week.

I mean, I think there would be great weeping and gnashing of teeth and unhappiness and darts thrown at pictures and things like that, and that's not a good thing.

Where will I be? Well, September 21st, 22nd, and 23rd, this is the most interesting named place.

I was just looking at it. I'm going to be at 2228

Highway 88, Hephzibah, Georgia.

H -E -P -H -Z -I -B -A -H. Hephzibah, Georgia.

Phone number is 706 -592 -2904. Pastor Jody Boulinot is my host.

And this will be the second time I will have been to a Church of God.

I remember Jim Capo. Probably the church I think I have spoken at more often than any other church other than PRBC is the

Church of God on Long Island with Jim Capo. And so now,

Pastor Jody Boulinot, I met him and a group from his church at a church in Georgia.

Was it February of 2010? That sounds about right. It was either right before or right after the trip to London, so I think that was about right.

Anyway, he had asked me then if it was possible that we could schedule something to come out to his church, and so that's where I'm going.

And on Wednesday, we're talking about dependability in the New Testament. On Thursday, the

New Testament versus the Qur 'an. And on Friday, the importance of context in Scripture.

We're going to be looking at a number of, well, we're going to look at the Big Three, and we'll look at some others, probably

John 1030. Just doing the standard context is king discussion, not one that I've done before, so I'll have to put new graphics together for that.

But anyways, that'll be next week for those of you in the Georgia area. I do not have the slightest idea where Hefzibah, Georgia is, other than I'm flying into Augusta.

Is that where the U .S. Opens played, Augusta, Georgia? Oh, you're a real big help, rookie.

Gee, I'm asking the rookie who's running the board today, and he's looking at me like, wow, is that sport?

I'm an engineer, man. Is that a sport? Do you sweat while doing that? Poor guy comes in after work, and what do

I do? I start picking on him immediately, but that's just, that's what happens when, I should call you, in light of one of my favorite

TV dramas, I should call you Probie. Yeah, that's what you are, you're

Probie. But anyhow, that's where I will be, and there's a phone number you can contact the folks at and get more details and stuff like that.

And so that's where I'll be next week, and invite you out if you're in that particular area.

Now, I have in my never -once -stained -by -nicotine fingers,

I can assure you of that, Oh, that smells disgusting.

Anyway, oh, you're not familiar with that one either? Oh, good grief, how can you not know that one?

Have you never listened to Rush Limbaugh? Occasionally. He always says, I am holding in my formerly nicotine -stained fingers.

And I said, in my never -nicotine -stained fingers, because I just,

I've always, I remember getting in trouble with my mom once. This shows how old

I am. We were standing in line at a Walgreens -type place, if Walgreens existed back then. And there was a guy standing behind us in line smoking.

And I almost got my mom into a fistfight, because I turned around and gave him just the dirtiest look. And I was probably like 10, so 9 - and 10 -year -olds can give really dirty looks.

And I've just always found cigarette smoke to be just the most reprehensible and disgusting thing.

But then, of course, I was department fellow in anatomy and physiology, and I got to do not an autopsy, but we had a cadaver of a guy who died having smoked his entire life.

Everywhere you cut in his lungs is black as pitch. Oh, my goodness. And that's, yeah,

I just really, really wish I had taken pictures. Back then, it would have had been Polaroids.

But, man, to have some digital pictures like that, to whip them out, that would have been great. Oh, okay, let's see.

Augusta is 15 .7 miles or 25 minutes from the church. Which church?

Whatever church I'm going to be at, I guess. Yes? Maybe? No? I suppose I should scroll back here and see if there is anything.

No, just Ralph giving me the information that Augusta is 15 .7 miles or 25 minutes from the church.

I'm not sure. It's 1960 miles drive from Phoenix. Well, thank you very much. So I should be getting at least 4 ,000 more frequent flyer miles on this one.

I got about the same last week. So I'm moving. I'm going to make my gold preferred yet one more time for this year, that's for sure.

All right. Anyway, back to where I was. In my never -ever -once nicotine -stained fingers, a 718 -page book from IVP Academic.

This makes a thud. See, that's a thud. That's the thud test for how thick a book is.

Then again, I've got a bunch of books in here that thud that are absolutely not worth anything. I've got Dan Korner's The Believer's Conditional Security.

Let me see how thick this one is. Oh, this one's bigger. This is a bigger book. This one is seven.

Whoa, there's 801 pages. But if I drop this, it would make no noise at all because there's nothing in it.

Anyhow, 718 -page book. This book is really making the rounds on the blogosphere right now.

Really, really is. And I was just reading a further response from its author,

Michael R. Lycona. It's called The Resurrection of Jesus, A New Historiographical Approach from IVP.

And as you know, it is making a big splash, primarily because a few weeks ago,

Dr. Norman Geisler began posting some open letters to Michael Lycona regarding Matthew chapter 27 and the story of the graves being opened and bodies of saints coming out and entering into Jerusalem, that little, just little short pericope there in Matthew's recording of the events surrounding the crucifixion.

And Dr. Geisler does not like what Dr. Lycona has to say at this particular point in time on this particular subject.

And I understand that. I would tend to be on Dr. Geisler's side in light of the article that I put up in regards to the whole subject of Matthew 27, which we'll be looking at here in a moment.

Let me first just mention the irony that I cannot help but make reference to when it comes to Dr.

Geisler's laser beam focus upon interaction with Michael Lycona.

And in fact, somewhat of an expression of some impatience with Dr.

Lycona, who keeps mentioning that he's very, very busy. I guess he's going over to Europe. And I'm sure he is very busy.

I understand that very much. I'm headed to Australia in a few weeks myself. Two debates down there.

And I'm supposed to have this book done by the end of the year. I don't know how I'm going to do it because the more

I work on the book, the more disorganized it gets and the more quotes there are that aren't quite connected to where they need to be.

And I've got information overload going on. And yet I'm really excited about it.

I can see it's going to be a very useful book to folks. But the big challenge is making it understandable to people who do not have a background in Islam.

And that's pretty much everybody outside the Muslims. And that's including a large portion of the

Muslims too. But be that as it may, no, pericope is not the word of the day,

Thaddeus. But that's not my Thaddeus. I've got a son -in -law named

Thaddeus now, but I don't think it's the same Thaddeus. That's a different one? Pericope would be a good word of the day.

But anyway, I keep looking and channeling getting distracted.

It does seem very odd to me that Dr. Geisler is so concerned about the speed with which

Dr. Laicona has responded to his open letters. When Dr.

Geisler has a number of open letters, shall we say, published challenges to himself that he has just decided to completely ignore for, well, since July of last year.

And they are not on the subject of the resurrection. Someone might say, oh, well, see, this is just a much more important subject.

Well, I guess if integrity of ministry is a less important subject than the historical viewpoint of two verses in Matthew, I certainly would not want to argue that anything's more important than the resurrection of Christ.

But it does seem that the real focus here for Dr. Geisler is not so much the interpretation of the text as it is

Dr. Laicona's membership in the Evangelical Theological Society, of which Dr. Geisler is no longer a member,

I think. Didn't he resign because the ETS could not get rid of open theists?

I recollect that. Has he undone his resignation? I don't know. But it really seems the primary issue is

Dr. Laicona claiming to believe in inerrancy when

Dr. Geisler is basically saying his position precludes that. Now, I've criticized

Dr. Laicona just last week in regards to his appearance on the

Unbelievable Radio Broadcast, and it certainly identified him as the reluctant inerrantist.

That's quite the case. But I find it just incredibly ironic that Dr.

Geisler would be so focused upon this particular issue when in just a few weeks he's going to be appearing with Dr.

Ergin Kanner at Skip Heitzig's Calvary Chapel in Albuquerque.

And then a few weeks later, he's going to be at the Mama Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa for the big

Veritas National Apologetics thing. And there he's going to be with Ergin Kanner.

And so he has put his entire credibility on the line in defense of Ergin Kanner.

And yet everything that he has posted in defense of Kanner has been shredded, has just been made to look for the foolish, shallow, ridiculous argumentation that it is.

And it just seems like there's a real disconnect there, doesn't it?

By the way, keep your eyes open on the blog. I don't think it'll be till next week at the earliest.

But, you know, we've been talking about a certain kind of T -shirt to design, you know, that says, what is

Hadith 2425 on it? Let me just let me just give you one name to let you know how excited you should be about what should be coming next week.

Angels. Yes. Angel Contreras. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Some of you know what I'm talking about. One of the best satire cartoonists in the business.

And I got a hold of Angel a couple of days ago and said, you know, you know, and he said, blah, ha, ha, ha, ha.

That's a direct quote. Blah, ha, ha, ha, ha. I think I think there may have been a few more extra ha ha's in there, but it started with blah.

So. So, yes, we are going to be putting together an excellent T -shirt and I will personally pay to send a

T -shirt. This is what we need to do. We need to send these T -shirts to Dr. Geisler and to Eric and Kander.

What do you think? Yeah. Yeah.

This is going to be too much fun. Nice, subtle way of reminding folks that, hey, you know what?

We're not going away. You think we're just going to become silent? We're not. We ain't going anyplace. We our memories do not fade.

And as long as you run around talking about Veritas, you need to Veritas, guys.

You know what I mean? Just just got to do it. You can't you can't keep dodging this stuff.

It's there. And if you keep inviting that man, you keep putting him out there as an expert on Islam when when he can't figure out how long

Ramadan is. There you go. There you go. That was the other thing

I was going to do. That was the other thing I was going to do. I'm sorry. Maybe I can get to it on a blog, but I was going to link.

I was going to post the link. I was supposed to do it. Just too many things going on. I need to post the link to James Boyce's Abstract of Systematic Theology, give you the specific chapters.

So those of you who want to get a head start on reading the background reading for that program we want to do, which probably probably will be the last week in September, maybe the first week in October.

I need to do it before we go to before I head to Australia and I head there the 12th, I believe.

So to give you the background reading on the Christology, super -duper DL.

I don't know how long it's going to last. It'll be a long one. But a class on Christology.

We'll be going over the Athanasian Creed, the Chalcedonian definition and the various errors.

What is Nestorianism? What is Eutychianism? What is Apollinarianism?

Et cetera, et cetera. And I wanted to get those things put up there, and I forgot. I apologize, but we will get that up there.

I knew I had opened a browser up for some reason. It's just one of those situations where you're sitting there staring at a blank browser.

It's like, okay, I had a reason why I was going to do it. Yep, yep. Oh, man. Or some shiny thing went floating by and I ran off after it.

That is unfortunate how it works. Okay, how did I get over there? Oh, yes. Okay. So that's the first ironic thing here is that, you know,

Dr. Geisler is not backing down. But it's funny. He really picks and chooses what he's going to do.

If he really thinks that what he's posted is defensible, then

I wonder why he's been silent for coming up on, let's see, July to August.

14 months. 14 months of silence. I think Mike Licona responded to him a whole lot faster than 14 months.

So I just wonder if there's real consistency at that point for Dr. Geisler.

Now, as to the actual issue itself, as I said, I think it's a very, very important issue.

And I have expressed my understanding of the text in Matthew chapter 27.

What I wanted to do is, first of all, find my reading glasses because, unfortunately, Mike Licona's book is in very small print.

And that was my hand hitting the purple microphone in front of me. And so now I have to put on my reading glasses because it's next to impossible to read this thing without it.

He's talking about the harrowing of hell. And on page 548, he says, this brings us to that strange little text.

In Matthew 27, 52 through 53, where upon Jesus' death, the dead saints are raised and walk into the city of Jerusalem.

During Jesus' crucifixion and upon his death, Mark and Luke report two phenomena that occurred. There is darkness and the temple veil is torn in two.

John is silent on the matter. Matthew, likewise, reports the darkness and tearing the temple veil, but adds four more phenomena.

The earthquakes, the rocks split, the tombs are opened, and the dead saints rise up and walk into Jerusalem after Jesus' resurrection.

Matthew 27, 51 through 54. Then we have, and I'm going to try to be brief about this.

But this is one of the things that bothers me and concerns me about the educational system that we have established for theological education, even amongst conservative evangelicals.

There is everything right in knowing what is being said out there in the world and interacting with scholarship that is not our own.

We need to know what's being said. I'm not a close -minded fundamentalist that thinks that even having these books in your library is going to bring some spiritual curse upon you or any of the rest of that stuff.

I'm glad that I did my first master's degree at Fuller. I'm glad that I had to read all sorts of people with whom

I disagreed. I think that if you do not read other perspectives as part of your education, it's not much of an education.

Don't get me—don't misunderstand anything that I'm saying along those lines, okay? Well, people will, but I'm just putting it out there for the honest folks.

However, there has been a loss of balance. It seems to me that for many people today to write a meaningful book, a scholarly book, say on the resurrection of Jesus, justification, deity of Christ, scriptural authority, you name it, maybe prophetic fulfillment in New Testament scriptures of Old Testament texts.

There's lots of important areas that we can be writing in. But it seems that for the majority of Christian scholars today, especially when writing biblical commentary, the idea now is you have to interact with all the big names, even if those big names were so far removed from biblical

Christianity that on any meaningful theological level they were not even Christians. That's what bothers me.

It's such a waste of time—and paper, for that matter. Well, when it's a paper book anymore.

Skipping over page after page of interaction, when what

I'm looking for is not a recitation of what the liberals think on the text. It seems like when they're actually getting around to making theological application, if you're making theological application, shouldn't you be filtering your sources to where you're only dealing with those people who would have a meaningful theological thing to say now?

For example, why is it that there are entire feet of my bookshelves taken up with paper in commentaries interacting with Rudolf Bultmann?

Now, I know who Bultmann was, and I know what

Bultmann's perspective—I went to Fuller for crying out loud. But when it comes to commentary on the text of Scripture, hey, if you want to know what

Bultmann says, go buy a liberal commentary. Why do we need to be interacting with that in a conservative commentary where you would think there'd be some filtering of sources so that at least what you're dealing with has some consistency in the worldview?

There's some consistency in at least, well, let's look at what people think who actually believe that the Bible is the Bible. What a concept that would be.

And yet so many people, they go in, they buy a commentary in a Christian bookstore, they go home, they have no idea what they're reading, have no idea why this is relevant, and they're having to read all sorts of stuff from people who really do not for a moment believe that the

Bible is actually inspired in any meaningful sense. And so when

I, you know, clearly Raymond Brown, for example, is a big writer in this area, considered to be this great, great

New Testament scholar. Okay. I know I've got his works in my library.

I have to. Shabir Ali quotes him all the time. But it just strikes me as somewhat odd that in seeking to, there just seems to be the idea amongst many people today that unless you interact with these sources, and this isn't a doctoral dissertation, maybe it is his dissertation distilled down and printed out,

I don't know. But if you're trying to edify the saints,

I'm not sure how much quoting Raymond Brown is going to be edifying to Bible -believing saints, unless that's not your audience.

Maybe he's got just a completely different audience than mine. I don't know. But it just seems that the attitude is if you don't interact with these things, then you're just a nobody.

You're just, you don't even count. You're not even in the game. And for a lot of people, that's the way it is.

That's just the way it is. So he mentions, Raymond E. Brown notes that similar phenomena were reported to the death of Romulus and Julius Caesar, confining himself only to those who wrote within 100 years on either side of Jesus' death.

His examples include Plutarch, Ovid, Cicero, Virgil, Josephus, and Pliny. In a clearly poetic account,

Virgil reports that the following 16 phenomena occurred after Caesar's death. This is interesting. Check this out.

Prolonged darkness. Dogs and birds acted unusually. Well, that happens at my house every morning.

Etna erupted. Fighting in the heavens was heard. How could you tell? The Alps shook near Germany.

That never has happened before. A powerful voice was heard in the groves. Fido! Fido! No, he doesn't say that.

Sorry. Pale phantoms were seen at dusk. Well, pale phantoms are seen at the local bar every day.

Cattle spoke portents. Well, we have cattle on TV telling us to eat chicken all the time, so that must mean something.

Streams stood still. Well, in Arizona, that happens all the time. That's the only stream we have is one that's standing still.

The earth opened up. Ivory idols wept, and bronze idols were sweating in the shrines.

Well, again, Phoenix happens all the time. Usually they call that brazing.

Brazing! Oh, okay, thank you. Dark intestines appeared outside of animals in their stalls.

Blood trickled in springs. Wolves howled. I've never heard that one happen before. Lightning appeared in a cloudless sky, and a bright comet was seen.

So there's the 16. This one I really liked. Going more than 100 years after Jesus, we may add that Dio Cassius reported six phenomena connected to the death of Claudius.

Now, this one caught my attention, because if this was true, we might be able to clean up Washington.

Check this out. These include a comet, raining blood, lightning striking the

Praetorian standards, Jupiter's temple opening by itself, bees swarming in the camp, and an incumbent of every political office dying.

There you go. I'm just reading it. Page 549. I did not make it up.

Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria! Well, there you go.

There were comets, apparitions were seen, images frowned, and the image of the bull deity

Ares lamented and wept. Have you noticed that having statues and stuff like that weeping and doing stuff?

It's not just Mary that gets in on this act. This has been going on for a long time, and I just sort of wonder if people take that as evidence of something.

I wonder if they saw Caesar in the toast. Caesar in the toast! A little bit of an anachronism there, because we didn't have toast back then, but it's okay.

Alright, so then he goes on with Lucian and stuff like that, and he goes on with Josephus, and he says that Jesus, the son of Ananus, went around Jerusalem for four years predicting the impending destruction of Jerusalem and its temple.

Josephus reports that even the strangest of these things actually happened. Why go through all of this?

Well, he's establishing what has been Dr. Lycona's defense for his position.

His defense for his position has been, when we look at the genre of first century literature into which we can fit

Matthew, are there examples of apocalyptic utilization of, shall we say, non -historical events?

So to establish that, on page 550 he says, that the biblical writers were familiar with and employed this type of language seems clear.

Now, I want to stop here for a moment and question the connection that's being made here.

And that is, I will agree with much of what he says following this in regards to the use of apocalyptic language in judgment texts.

But I'm not sure that the connection is overly strong between that and what we just heard about in regards to events at the death of Julius Caesar or something like that.

I don't see those as, just simply stating that there's a connection doesn't make there to be a connection.

He says, the sun goes down at noon in Jeremiah 15 .9. No, it actually says, that's not what it said.

Actually, I looked it up, I put it in channel. It talked about the sun going down while it was yet light.

That might be at noon, I suppose. I'm not sure why he put it that way. In Amos 8 .8 -9, the earth will quake and the sun will go down at noon.

In Zephaniah 1 .15 -18 in Joel 2 .2, the day of the Lord is described, among other things, as a day of darkness and gloom.

Later in the passage, Joel then has the text that Peter applies to events at the time of Pentecost.

It will come about after this, I will pour out my spirit on all mankind. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, and your young men will see visions.

Even in the male and female servants, I will pour out my spirit. In those days, I will display wonders in the sky and on earth, blood, fire, and columns of smoke.

The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon into blood before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. It will come about that whoever calls on the name of the

Lord will be delivered. For on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, there will be those who escape, as the Lord has said, even among the survivors whom the

Lord calls. Now, very, very important text. I mean, when you have whoever calls on the name of the

Lord will be delivered, and we know how often that's used in the New Testament. Okay, important stuff.

But one of the problems I have here is when it says, the sun will be turned to darkness and the moon into blood before the great and awesome day of the

Lord comes. I do realize that there is a genre of fundamentalism that is so literalistic that it actually thinks that the moon will be turned into a big drop of gooey plasma out there in space.

Obviously, that's not what's being discussed. I have seen situations where the sun was darkened, and I have seen situations where the moon looked like it was blood.

Both in its rising after, for example, a period of storm, or especially during periods of fire when there's smoke in the heavens, you can have a very different look to things.

I've seen pictures. For example, we had that huge – how big did that fire end up being? Remember this past summer?

I forgot the name. I've already forgotten the name of the fire. It was in June. It looked like it was going to be larger than Rodeo Chetisky.

So I think it did over 500 ,000 acres over there. It was huge. And I saw the smoke in New Mexico.

I mean, it was coming all the way – because I remember I was over in Santa Fe. I was doing some riding over there, teaching over in Santa Fe.

And you can see it changes the way everything looks.

And I remember once there was a fire as I was leaving New Mexico heading back here.

There was a fire that just – it made it look like it was nighttime. It was just that thick. And when you would have cities destroyed and things like that, that's what these are referring to.

It's judgment language. But I don't see that anywhere in Matthew 27 at that point.

That's the question. We'll look at it here. Anyways, in Acts 2, 15 -21, Peter quotes from this text and indicates these things are being filled in their presence.

Brown and Gundry observe allusions in the text to other Jewish texts. The earth is shaken in divine judgment in Judges 5, 4 and Psalms 77, 8, lots and lots of other texts.

The rocks are rent. In last, the rocks are rent and the sun darkened. The tombs are opened in Ezekiel 37, 12 -13.

Now this one, I questioned the utilization of this text because listen to what Ezekiel 37 says.

Behold, I'll open your graves and cause you to come out of your graves, my people. I will bring you into the land of Israel. Then you will know that I am the

Lord when I have opened your graves and caused you to come up out of your graves, my people. That's in the

Ezekiel 37, 38, 39 regeneration, born again, valley of dry bones stuff.

And I don't think that that's what Matthew is making a connection to, though I suppose someone might make that argument.

So there's the material he puts forward. Then he says, page 51, I'm getting to the context here.

On the other hand, in favor of the historicity of the phenomena reported by Matthew, the darkness reported in all three synoptics is also apparently reported by the secular historian

Thallus. Moreover, destructive earthquakes were common in the region and can explain four of the six phenomena, tearing of the temple veil, earthquake, rocks splitting, tombs opened.

A number of sources may report that there were real persons who were raised by Jesus. Ignatius may refer to them when he refers to the prophets raised by Jesus.

But it is uncertain how this report was intended to be interpreted. Quadratus reported that those whom Jesus had raised continued to live for a considerable period and some even still lived.

However, he is more likely referring to those whom Jesus raised from the dead during his earthly ministry. Acts of Pilate 17, 1 reports that Jesus raised

Simeon and his two sons and that their tombs could still be seen open and they were alive and dwelling in Arimathea and that people had gone and talked with them.

However, the authenticity of this source has long been questioned and is likewise possible this was a reference to one of Jesus' activities during his earthly ministry.

Finally, we get to the text that has been quoted a number of times. And one of the reasons I'm doing this is because Al Mohler has now weighed in on this subject along with Norman Geisler.

So that's given the presence of phenomenological language, this is page 552, in a symbolic manner in both

Jewish and Roman literature related to a major event such as the death of an emperor or the end of a reigning king or even a kingdom, the presence of ambiguity in the relevant text of Ignatius and that so very little can be known about Thales' comment on the darkness including whether he was even referring to the darkness at the time of Jesus' crucifixion or if so, if he was merely speculating pertaining to a natural cause of darkness claimed by the early

Christians. Here's the quote. It seems to me that an understanding of the language in Matthew 27, 52 -53 as, quote, special effects, end quote, with eschatological

Jewish texts and thought in mind is most plausible. There is further support for this interpretation and this,

I had not seen this and maybe I just missed it. It's not like I've been living my life on this particular subject.

But here's the further support. If the tombs opened and the saints being raised upon Jesus' death was not strange enough,

Matthew adds they did not come out of their tombs until after Jesus' resurrection. What were they doing between Friday afternoon and early

Sunday morning? Were they standing in the now open doorways of their tombs and waiting? Then there's a footnote.

And you know where that comes from? John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg. John Dominic Crossan, 1995.

Borg and Crossan, 2006. Not folks that I would use as a source unless that's where he's gotten this argument from.

And then I guess you have to give the source. But boy, think about for a moment what that means.

Moreover, Crossan and Borg themselves note a major difference from the harrowing of hell in Matthew 27, 52 -53.

The saints are liberated by God's earthquake, not Jesus' presence, and they do not appear with him in the resurrection, but only without him after his resurrection.

They suggest that Matthew is making a fine attempt to fit the harrowing of hell into the resurrection narrative he had borrowed from Mark, etc.

Now, here's my problem. It sounded to me last week when

Mike Licona first responded to Norman Geisler that he was backpedaling, that he was saying, well, you know, upon further examination,

I think there's more evidence of the historical reading of this, etc., etc. But then today, just a few hours ago,

I read a response that included Al Mohler.

Evidently Al Mohler has made comment. I don't know where. I didn't see it. I didn't hear it in the briefing, so it must be on a website someplace.

And it seemed to me that Licona is defending the position he took in his book now, rather than saying,

I think there's better evidence for the historical perspective. So I really don't know how to put together what he has said.

I really don't. But I simply want to state that I think

Matthew does use language from destruction texts in Matthew 24.

There's no question about that. He quotes directly from Hosea and other texts in regards to the destruction of Jerusalem.

Have you ever noticed that up through verse 35 of Matthew 24, there's a lot of details.

When you see this happening, get out. Get out of what? Get out of Jerusalem.

Not get out of Paris or London or anything else. It's specifically about a specific location, a specific event that the people of this generation are going to see.

And here's all the details. Because remember, the disciples asked two questions.

And they may have thought that the answer to their two questions only had one part. But that's not the case.

They said, what will be the sign of the destruction of Jerusalem? Because he had said not one stone will be left standing on another.

And when are you going to return? And so when – hey, there we go.

Thank you, Scott in channel has just – well, actually Hebrew student got to it first.

So I need to give Hebrew student the nod in channel. But Scott got it as well. But AlbertMoller .com,

the devil's in the details, biblical inerrancy, and the Lycona controversy, which

I am bringing up on the screen here. And it is dated yesterday.

So there you go. That's on his – evidently didn't make it into the briefing because I did listen to the briefing this morning.

And there's a picture of the book. So there you go. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but you can go read it for yourself on Al Moller's website.

Again, Jesus gives a lot of detail in answering the question of the fall of Jerusalem. And then when it comes to when he's coming, all of a sudden there's no detail at all.

In fact, it's – that's only for the father to say. So Matthew – there's no question.

Matthew could draw from that kind of vivid imagery of destruction.

No question about it. And when Jerusalem was destroyed, it was ugly. It was ugly.

The loss of life, the destruction of really just the wiping out of what had been the locus of God's activities amongst his people, which has all sorts of ramifications that we really should think about today.

But anyways, there's no question Matthew could do that. But the real question is, is that what he's doing in Matthew 27?

Because let me read it to you. And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.

And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, and the earth shook and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.

And coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many. When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, truly, this was the

Son of God. There were also many women there, looking on from a distance, who had followed

Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him, among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.

Now, it strikes me, my friends, that that text flows.

I don't see any major breaks there. I don't see a stepping aside to bring in all sorts of apocalyptic language.

We go from a quotation in verse 49, but others said, wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.

And then Jesus cries out again with a loud voice and yields up his spirit. All historical events.

And then skip over to verse 54.

When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake, pulling from the section we have skipped over, the earthquake, and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, truly, this was the

Son of God. Now, what that means for Matthew is very different than what people, a hundred years after Caesar's death, were saying about Caesar.

To be the Son of God for Caesar and to be the Son of God in the lips of a centurion in Israel, very different things.

Very different things. But then you immediately have the naming of people and quoting of people.

That's not what you have in the application of apocalyptic language. This is not a judgment text in that way.

And that's why I noted the difference between the secular sources that came up with these odd, you know, dogs barked.

Ooh, yeah, there you go. That kind of stuff. And the apocalyptic language found in scripture.

You didn't find that kind of secular stuff around the death of David or Solomon or Isaiah.

There's nothing like that. Nothing like that at all. So while Matthew will use apocalyptic language in 24, here,

I see no reason to make this application whatsoever. And to look outside of the biblical materials to those things that we read.

Not only makes me very uncomfortable, not because I'm not willing to look at those things, but because I see no connection between the motivations of those who wrote those things, the kinds of signs that we're seeing or anything like that.

And the further evidence argument I find to be extremely weak.

What do you mean they're just standing there waiting? It says their tombs were open, but it says, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they went into the holy city.

So Matthew doesn't tell us that they were standing in the doorways or anything else. The tombs were opened.

And when Jesus rises from the dead, I would argue a select, probably small number of people who had recently died.

I just cannot fathom how you can say anything other than that, because how else could they be recognized?

Unless they were the zombie apocalypse, like I said, and they're walking around going, somebody free me from my grave, close type.

Yeah, exactly. So if they were recognized, appeared to many, then they had to be recognized as having died.

That means they died recently. So there was evidence given of the conquering of death at the very same time that the word is beginning to spread amongst the

Jewish people. His tomb is empty. Did you hear? His tomb is empty.

The one who said he'd rise from the dead, they can't find him. His disciples are saying he's alive.

And people who had never claimed to be the Messiah. Did you hear?

So I just don't see any reason outside of an embarrassment, because this text is often mocked.

The zombie apocalypse is really stupid. But that's normally just done on the basis of naturalistic materialism.

And what's new about that? There's nothing new about that. So I just don't see the connection.

I do not believe that Dr. Lycona made the meaningful connections, contextually, usage -wise, to the secular sources, and the biblical sources do not substantiate this kind of use of language connected to the death of a great man or something like that.

So at least when I address this, at least I've got... There it is. See the book,

Rookie? There it is. There it is. Only a few books can make a thud like that. And you see it says the resurrection of...

You got that right there? Okay, he sees it. Okay, he's nodding his head. He says yes. And I had it before this whole thing started, too.

And so there you go. On one level, I'm saddened.

I mean, obviously, there's a lot of good material in this book. I mean,

Mike Lycona has done a lot of work. Now, I disagree with the apologetic methodology that is based upon a non -biblical anthropology that thinks that piling the information on is how you convert people.

I just don't think that's the case. But there's a lot of really neat stuff in here.

Now, unfortunately, I think if you're looking to it and you are coming from a really conservative perspective, you're going to wonder why it spends so much time on certain aspects of things and source criticism and things like that.

And I remember back when I debated John Dominick Crossan. Remember, I played Crossan's debate with William Lane Craig.

And I criticized Craig's acceptance of various source critical theoretical concepts at that time.

That was back in 2005. Some of you are new listeners since then, but I did that.

And I've been consistent on that point. And you'll find a lot of the same kind of material in Lycona as well, which diminishes its value.

But still, there's a lot of good stuff in there. It's not a major portion of the book, but it does illustrate,

I think, some of the fundamental issues that give rise to very troubling statements, not only by Lycona.

But a lot of people were shocked when we played Craig's debate with Shabir Ali.

And Craig basically threw original sin under the bus. Well, that's the doctrine of original sin.

You don't have to believe that to be a Christian. Just that kind of thing. And people wonder, how can you do that?

Well, it all goes back to a particular mindset and perspective on issues like inspiration and herency.

Our view of God, our view of man, there are fundamental issues. And that's why we address those particular things.

All right. Did not intend to spend 50 minutes. But, of course, I kept digressing.

So it really wasn't a full 50 minutes. But 45 minutes or more on that particular subject.

Are we good for 40 out there, guys? 40 minutes?

Because we're going to get complaints if I stop in eight minutes. We're good on that? Okay. We'll make it a jumbo.

I was this close. I was this close. Okay. Rich just fainted.

Okay. Avoiding mouth -to -mouth, could you get him going again?

Don't worry about the oxygen, but just get the ticker going again. He'll be all right. Yeah. Use a compressed air can.

That'll be great. Because that probably doesn't have much oxygen in it anyway, does it? That would be a good way to make sure that when he came out of that one, he'd be a different man.

Oh, man. Now Ralph and Channel's going, just a jumbo? Just a jumbo?

Oh, sorry. Had to kick him. Love Ralph, but had to kick him. It's just how it works.

All right. We do have fun on the program.

It drives some of you nuts, but why is the phone ringing? Who said I was taking phone calls? Let's see if the topic is so absolutely astounding and amazing that it would be worthy of being put on the air.

That is the question. But up until then, hopefully the computer is queued up,

Mr. Rookie Man, and let's at least get a few minutes here with Roger Perkins as we press on with our review.

God's anomaly present, invisible spirit. Now, if God died as God, I'd like to know if he ceased to be eternal on the cross.

Did God stop being eternal? This would be a denial of the fundamental attribute of deity, and it compromises the immutability of God.

I will say again, God did die in his human experience, rather human existence, but not literal dead deity.

And I'll tell you this, ladies and gentlemen, where in the world are we coming to when we compare the unblemished blood of the

Messiah to an animal sacrifice? I'm going to tell you that's a sin against God. He mentioned the prayers of Christ.

Again, Hebrews 5 -7 says that he prayed from the standpoint of a man. He prayed in the days of his flesh.

It says he prayed in the days of his flesh, not from the standpoint of a man.

That's not the same thing. But now this is very interesting, the prayers of Christ, from the standpoint of my opponent.

You would have God the Son, who has his own mind, who is not the same as God the

Father. There's a radical separation in God. You have God the Son, who is the Almighty, praying to God the

Father for help, who is also the Almighty. Presupposition of Unitarianism, asked and answered, assumed, but not proven.

How can God pray to God and still be God, and still be co -equal? How can God pray to God and still be

God and co -equal? All that is, is given my assumption of Unitarianism, I reject your position.

That's not an argument, that's just a restatement of your thesis. The question is, you must prove, or how can you prove, that the being of God can only be shared by one person?

For clearly, the one speaking to the Father, is other than the

Father, and speaks in such a way, that he demonstrates his own divine self -consciousness.

So you have the data. That is why the church has believed this. We have the data in front of us.

We either choose to accept all of it, and construct our theology based upon that, so that our theology is truly synthetic.

Now let me explain what the term synthetic means, when we talk about a synthetic theology. You know, we have synthetic motor oil blends, and we have, most of the time synthetic means fake, made up.

But that's not what we're talking about here. A synthetic theology is one that takes into consideration all of the sources from which we should properly derive our theology, and which accurately represents the whole of divine revelation.

And so to have a properly synthetic view, is to take into consideration, without presuppositions filtering out the data, taking in everything that Scripture reveals to us.

Now since Scripture is not revealed to us as a systematic theology, it's not revealed to us in five volumes, with a exhaustive subject and verse index.

That's not what Scripture is. There are a lot of people in the West that would prefer that. That is not how

God has chosen to communicate with his people, and there have been many, many generations, and many, many cultures where that would have been, well, less than ideal.

All right? So, all Roger Perkins is doing here, is saying, my presuppositions do not allow your position,

I'm going to keep repeating my presuppositions in all sorts of different rhetorical ways. That doesn't actually accomplish anything, as far as real argumentation is concerned.

You can't. That's why Jesus said he was the Almighty, not a Almighty. The Almighty wouldn't need help, is what

I'm saying. Then Luke 23, Luke 23, 46. Now let me stop right there, I was taking a drink, which is, at least

I didn't try talking while taking a drink this time, I learned foolishness of that last time. The Almighty would not need help, unless the

Almighty chose, in the person of the

Son, to enter into human flesh, and to be the perfect man, and therefore he would, with the psalmist, cry out to God, and he voluntarily made himself dependent upon the power of the

Spirit, and all sorts of things like that. Presupposition is that God could never do that.

The second person of the triune Godhead could not enter into human flesh, and live in such a way that he showed his dependence upon the

Father and the Spirit. But the question again would be, why? Especially in light of his repeated citation of Hebrews chapter 5, where it says exactly that, that that's exactly what he did.

He cried out in the days of his flesh. Prayers and supplications, that's what a true man does.

Unless you think the God -man would become an atheist upon incarnation, then that's exactly what we would expect.

He referenced Thayer, and he referenced the vital principle by which the body is animated.

Yes, a human body, that's exactly our position. Not just a human body.

The death of a human body would not atone for anyone.

The giving of a perfect human life, which transcends merely bodily existence, is what we're talking about.

And that person, that one person with two natures, it's the identity of who that person was prior to the incarnation that is the key to the refutation of the oneness heresy.

If that divine person existed prior to the taking on that human nature, oneness is refuted.

That's all there is to it. Not in some ideal pre -existence as a plan, but a true, real existence of a divine person, whom we call the

Son. John 15, 26. Well, first let me say this regarding Luke 23, 46.

My opponent has said that each divine person in the Godhead, God the Father, His own mind,

He's omnipresent. God the Son, His own mind, He's omnipresent. God the Holy Spirit, His own mind, they're not the same as the other.

Now, again, for those of you who are just tuning in, maybe haven't heard, we've been reviewing this debate between the

Oneness Pentecostal Roger Perkins, who I'll be debating in Brisbane, Australia, in a matter of weeks, and a

Church of Christ representative by the name of Bruce Reeves, with whom I've been in contact, and we're going to try to arrange something for 2013,

I believe, or 2012, one of the two, as far as the debate's concerned. But we have already heard this assertion in his debate with Matt Slick, and we have identified the numerous, numerous category errors where he will attribute to being elements of personality and to personhood elements of being, mixing it all up.

It reminds me, honestly, of the tactic used by Jehovah's Witnesses at this very same point, because for many years they used the little red

Life Everlasting book as their study book when they come in and they want to set up a quote -unquote

Bible study. It wasn't a Bible study. It was a book study, their book. And there was the infamous black page, where they used a black background and white lettering.

And on the black page, they would, at one place, accurately represent the doctrine of the deity of Christ, and then, on the same page, misrepresent it.

And the whole purpose, clearly, was to engender confusion in the minds of the people with whom they were studying.

Not unusual for this to happen at all. And that is very much a part of the rhetorical flourish that Roger Perkins uses at points like this.

Each are omnipresent, so you have three divine persons with their own mind. Each of them are omnipresent.

See, omnipresence is a category of the being of God.

And he's applying it to the persons to try to create the essence, try to create the implication of tritheism.

And then he tells us that deity commended itself to deity on the cross, so you have omnipresent deity being commended to omnipresent deity.

How in the world does that work? When the Son voluntarily takes on a human nature and prays to the

Father. Continues that eternal relationship that has existed before time itself began in the triune

Godhead. How's that? Pretty straightforward. And why didn't the Jews pick this up, by the way, which I'll be dealing with here in just a minute?

Well, the Jews did pick it up, actually. In fact, they... I don't think this is what he intended to create a pun off of, but they picked it up in the sense they picked up stones to stone

Jesus after Jesus said, my father's working until now and I am working. They did not accuse him.

You notice this? They did not... I hadn't thought about this one in this context before.

They did not accuse him of making himself the father. They accused him of making himself equal with God, but they recognized that he was distinguishing himself from the father.

They did not pick up stones to stone him for claiming to be the father. They pick up stones to stone him for claiming to be equal with the father.

No confusion. They did pick up on exactly what Jesus was saying more than once. John 15, 26,

Jesus sends the helper again. We have omnipresence being sent somewhere where it's not already at. Okay, but the father sends the spirit as well.

The spirit proceeds from the father. You say the spirit is the father. How do you proceed from yourself?

And this whole idea of sending in light of omnipresence is just silly. I'm sorry, but it is.

That is not a meaningful argument to say that the son was sent from heaven.

But while God's omnipresence, that can never happen, is just simply say that God can never act in time and space.

He cannot act in his own universe. Because, I mean, if you say that God is going to do something tomorrow, well, if he's eternal, then he's already done it, and therefore you're denying

God's eternality. I mean, see, it's really easy to come up with this kind of false conundrum. It's not meaningful argumentation.

And, again, it revs up your base. You know, I mean, this is language we're using these days because it's political time.

And, man, I tell you, it's going to be a long time between now and November of 2012. Time just gets dragged out, and, oh, it's just going to be so ugly.

But right now that's what they're talking about is that, well, the candidates during the primary season have to move to the left or to the right to get their base excited.

And then once the primary is over, then they move to the middle to try to get the independence. And, you know, it's just, well, you've got rhetoric going on here from Mr.

Perkins that is specifically meant to excite the emotions of his base.

And, believe me, I know how to do that. I've done enough public speaking.

I've done enough preaching over the years. I've got enough snow on the chin here now.

Yeah, you don't got no snow on your chin. To know how to do that.

And that's what he's doing. I hope that that's not what happens in our debate.

It's easy to rev your base up. It's much, much tougher to actually communicate with the other side in a way they can understand.

That's the real challenge. I don't know how you're going to do that, but John 15, 26 mentions the spirit of truth.

And the spirit of truth was already identified in chapter 14 and verse 17 through 18, ladies and gentlemen.

Jesus said, listen to this. Jesus said that, identified the spirit of truth.

He said, the world doesn't know him, it doesn't see him, but you know the spirit of truth.

For he dwells with you and he shall be in you. Then he says,

I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. But that was the son, not the father speaking there.

So you have such clear differentiation of the father, son, and spirit. And yes, the son makes his abode with us through the presence of the

Holy Spirit. But that does not make the son the spirit, which even

Mr. Perkins doesn't believe. He believes the father the spirit. So either

Jesus is speaking in total distinction from his divine self all the way through 14 through 16, or he's not.

You've got to be consistent in how you read these things. So Jesus in John 14 had already identified the spirit of truth as himself.

It was the same conversation. No, he did not identify the spirit of truth as himself. Where did he say that?

Where did he say, I am the spirit of truth? He said, I will send you the spirit of truth. It's another comforter of the same kind, yes, but still another.

Every time there is any type of unity, oh, they're all the same. But then distinctions are just simply dismissed as irrelevant.

It was the same book of John, anointed by the same Holy Spirit, the same context, the same conversation.

Jesus said already he was the spirit of truth. If you and I were having a conversation, and if I said to you,

I identified myself as Roger Perkins, and then a few minutes later I said the name Roger Perkins again, you're not going to think, oh, he's talking about a third person.

He's talking about somebody other than himself. No, I had already identified myself. And Jesus in this same conversation had already identified himself.

But look at this now, Jesus sends the helper, John 15, 26, he brings up.

So the second omnipresent divinity is sending the third omnipresent divinity from the first omnipresent divinity.

Again, even in his own position, I mean, this is just unbelief of the text itself. That's all this is.

I'm sorry, I can't see how else to take this. From his own perspective, this is a mere human being.

Not an eternal divine person, a mere human being. Sending the father in a different mode as the spirit.

How does that work? How does that work? I'm sorry, I don't see that as even semi -rational reading.

I'll tell you again, omnipresence, ladies and gentlemen, is not sent anywhere, it's already there. And John 17, 18,

Jesus said, as you God have... How does he answer this question? Jesus talks about sending the spirit.

In his own perspective, the spirit is omnipresent. So, answer the question for yourself.

I mean, if you're raising an objection to somebody else's position that's actually an objection to your own, I don't know.

Sent me into the world, so have I sent them, the disciples, into the world. Were the disciples preexistent?

Of course not. Major, major, major logic fail.

Okay, let's... Mr. Perkins, Mr. Perkins, Mr. Perkins. That is a massive logical fallacy.

Let's listen to what he just said. Let's back it up just a second here. And let's listen to what he just said here.

Omnipresence, divinity. I'll tell you again, omnipresence, ladies and gentlemen, is not sent anywhere, it's already there.

And, John 17, 18, Jesus said, as you, God, have sent me into the world, so have

I sent them, the disciples, into the world. Were the disciples preexistent? Of course not. Now, can you identify why that's not even a semi -rational argument?

Well, first of all, no one is asserting that because X is sent by God, X must be preexistent.

You see, we do believe that one who was sent by God, the

Son, was preexistent. But we have never said that to be sent by God proves that you're preexistent.

Isaiah was sent by God, David was sent by God, Jeremiah was sent by God. So he's assuming that our argument is,

Jesus was sent by God, therefore Jesus was preexistent.

All things sent by God are preexistent. Jesus was sent by God, therefore Jesus is preexistent.

We've never, ever made that argument. It is not a part of Trinitarian belief.

And therefore, to refute that argument as if it is our argument is a wonderful example of empty rhetoric.

A violation of the, not only rules of debate, but the rules simply of logic itself. Catch those.

I mean, they're fairly easy to identify if you keep your emotions under control and maybe slow down the speed of the tape a little bit or the mp3 these days, something like that.

But for the disciples, persons in the God, of course not. John the Baptist and the Apostle Paul were sent.

This language is being sent on a mission. It's from Strong's number 649 and does not demand preexistent persons.

Which, of course, no one has ever argued that it did. It does not, however, no matter how dependent you are upon second and tertiary sources like Strong's, it does not preclude the eternal preexistence of one who is sent.

It's not the second omnipresent divinity sending the third omnipresent divinity from the first omnipresent divinity.

By the way, before we go on, I've just happened to look over to my

Twitter feed. And I thought I would, I'm going to have to jet right after this. I told my wife we're going to grab something to eat right after the program.

And now we're going half an hour late. So yeah, I'm going to have to get hold of her as soon as I'm done here.

We have Stone to Flesh says, Dr. Oakley69, listening from Japan. Now, would it be earlier in Japan?

It would be earlier in Japan, I think. And then in the middle of the dividing line,

Taylor Matthews asks, do you have a recommendation for reading listening on the evil? Question mark.

On the evil. I don't even know how to respond to that. The evil what? It's the evil in that one place at that one time during that other thing.

Yeah, that's what I think you're right. I think I'll let you respond to him. Taylor, I have no idea what that question is.

Sorry. Just don't know. But I just thought I'd acknowledge that. So maybe you could look at it and translate that into a language

I can understand maybe. Probably the problem of evil, I assume. On the problem of evil.

And no, not off the top of my head. I mean, there's all sorts of theodicies out there, but most of your reformed systematic theologies will have a section on it.

And there's Taylor there. Hey, Taylor. Isn't that neat to have a chat channel? People can just pop on in there, you know.

And he's probably going, oh, man, I can't believe I sent that tweet. But actually, did

I not spend? In fact, isn't it what launched all these jumbo

DLs was the very long time I spent responding to someone on the subject of theodicy.

So I really, really did spend a long, long time on that and would recommend that you take a look at that.

All right, let's get back to it here. There were times, ladies and gentlemen. Ah, did you see what

Half Dime said in channel? Please never do a Japanese accent ever again. As your brother in Christ, I implore you.

Did I do a Japanese accent? I don't think I did a Japanese accent. I don't even remember doing it.

I don't do Japanese accent. I can make a sound like I'm doing an Asian. I mean, because the accenting or the rise and fall of the voice is very easy to do.

But I don't remember doing that. Now, I could do a British accent. I do an excellent British accent.

Everybody says that I do an excellent British accent. But I don't remember doing that. Okay, anyway, let's press on because Mr.

Perkins is probably— Rich is going to come and try to cut off the microphone before I start doing my

British accent. I have to hit the mute key. Let me say this.

Simply quoting I, me, subject, object, pronouns do not prove eternal persons in the

Godhead. Quoting where Jesus specifically differentiates himself from the

Father in context relevant to his preexistence as a divine person most assuredly does.

And I would simply ask Mr. Perkins, what evidence would you accept that would demonstrate a plurality of persons in the

Godhead? Eternally. If their own self -referential, self -identification isn't enough, what would be?

What would be enough? I submit to you that given the argumentation

Mr. Perkins has put forward, there is nothing that could be enough to answer that question.

You have to define those distinctions, listen, from the text itself. And he's not done that.

We've heard a lot of assumption tonight. There were times that Jesus was distinguished from God altogether.

And on the cross he cried out, My God, my God, which don't ask me to explain how

God the Son, co -equal, can have a God. He said that there are... Did you catch that? I mean, one of the reasons

I'm doing this, obviously, with the debate coming up with this gentleman, how many people do you know, honestly, who would spend hours publicly revealing everything that they're going to say in the debate, clarifying the issues.

This is how I'd respond to every one of your arguments. I mean, not very many people would do this.

But I hope you also understand. You might go, you know, I just don't really have a lot of interest in dialoguing with oneness folks.

I don't know very many of them, and it's not a large group. But folks, have you heard that argument that we just heard before?

I hear it from my Muslim friends all the time. All the time.

Jesus is speaking from the cross. Now, of course, how does...

I guess Mr. Perkins understands this as just the divine nature saying, My God, my

God, why have you forsaken me? I guess in his perspective, the divine nature forsook the human nature on the cross. That's what the

Gnostics taught. That's what the Gnostic dualists taught. The Docetics. But, of course, that's not what

Jesus is saying there anyways. Elo, elo, lama sabachthani is the beginning of Psalm 22. And if you have such a shallow view of those words, that that's all you think is going on there, then

I would suggest you read the rest of the 22nd Psalm. You know, one thing, preaching through Hebrews, and then today

I posted on the blog, and my many thanks to Ralph in Channel and his lovely wife

Nikki. They were my ride around Ohio, and we went to Olive Garden, had a wonderful dinner, and he was willing to come back and get me when

I checked into the hotel in Worcester. I was in my room for two minutes when the fire alarm went off.

And, you know, at first it's like, oh, you know, because it would go on, it would go off, go on, go off, call down, nothing to worry about.

Then I opened the door of the hallway. Not only is there smoke, but there are firemen in the hallway for crying out loud.

So I'm throwing my MacBook back in my, and I'm running down the stairs, you know, and we ended up spending an hour down in the lobby.

It was a dryer fire in the laundry. I thought it was a non -smoking hotel. Yeah, it wasn't for that weekend, let me tell you.

It was bad. And then the next morning when I left, I always check this.

Little hint here for travelers. Check your door to make sure it locks, because all I do is push hard, and it'll pop right open.

So I have to go down and say, um, room 333, um, door.

I get back, and it locks. Except when you go inside the room, you know the bolt you're supposed to turn?

It won't turn anymore. So the last night I'm there, the door finally works.

You know, I got it all set up for the next guy to stay in that room. It was great. But anyways,

Ralph was, yes, he says, I'm a medic, Doc. Rescuing people is what I do. Yes, Ralph was willing to come back and get me, but I ended up having a wonderful conversation with some of the

Psalm 119 folks down in the lobby about Bart Ehrman and biblical inerrancy and textual transmission, and it was all good.

But, you know, we all got through it, but it was sort of interesting. But Ralph sat there with a camera and videotaped my 1

Peter 3 .15 presentation. And that was posted on the blog earlier today.

Lane is hosting it, and so I put that up there. Why do

I mention this? Real simple. Listening to this statement here and listening, thinking about 1

Peter 3, and the, I've never had enough time to really go through everything in that text very slowly.

But I then doing the, I mentioned that if you listen to Michael Brown's stuff, his

June 23, 2011 program on Matthew, and Matthew's use of the Old Testament. Highly recommend it.

All of this has really been convicting me. It's one of the reasons I've put on the ministry resource list the commentary on Matthew that Dr.

Brown suggested, which is not cheap. It's 2 ,300 pages long, and unfortunately, most of it's out of print.

And the first volume's not overly expensive, but I've put it on there because he highly recommends it for its discussions.

I think there is a treasure house of information to be found, not in looking for surface -level prophetic fulfillments.

There is another level that few of us ever get to because we do not interact with the

Old Testament text to the depth that would allow us to do it. In fact,

I said on the last Dividing Line, I criticized Abdullah Kunda because of his very shallow reading of Matthew and his accusation of Matthew's misreading of Old Testament text that gives absolutely no credit to Matthew at all as having any knowledge whatsoever of the

Old Testament text to any depth. Folks, do not look for surface -level harmonization of the text of Scripture, either between the

Synoptic Gospels, Old and New Testament, Paul and James. The harmony is to be found at a much deeper level.

It is to be found in the interweaving of themes and concepts.

And I have been forced to see that and probably only to a very limited extent in my preaching through Hebrews and trying in preaching through Hebrews to not skip over the tough stuff.

Because believe me, there is a strong temptation to do that. It takes a lot of work, not only to work through the hard issues in Hebrews, but you know what's really hard?

Try to turn that into a sermon where people who are sitting in front of you who do not have seminary -level educations, who represent a wide variety of backgrounds and perspectives, keep them interested, make them see the relevance of why they should work through all these difficult things.

Like, you know, the beginning of Hebrews chapter 10, a body you've prepared for me, what's a textual variant? Now part of the reason

I do that is honestly, you know, and I feel sorry for the poor folks at PRBC, but there's a consistency issue on my part.

I don't want them to ever be put in a situation where they would say, oh, you studied through Hebrews, well, did you ever take the time to realize this?

And they'll be able to say, yup, sure did. I remember. I don't remember.

They wouldn't be able to say, oh yeah, I remember all the details of that particular textual variant. But if someone were to bring that up, they would go, oh yeah, you know what?

When James White went through that, he did mention that. And I may not remember exactly what he said about it, but he specifically brought that up.

And maybe they will remember what I said about it. But I really think that I have a responsibility to be honest and to do that kind of work.

And it means we've been at it for a long, long, long time now. And I've still got a long ways to go before we finish off.

I mean, we've only got a few more chapters, but I just think that's absolutely necessary.

And I really think that the level, the depth of the beauty of the harmony of Scripture and the consistency of Scripture is to be found at a much deeper level than we are normally looking.

In fact, when people call in or when people contact me and they write to me or I listen to conversations and channel, or people will see us all the time.

People will pop into channel. And they will throw out a question.

And sometimes they're not happy with the response I give, if I have time to respond. By the way, if you pop into channel, please keep something in mind.

I'm a busy guy, you know. I mean, sometimes I'll pop into channel right as I'm leaving to go on a ride.

And people go, yeah, you spend all your time writing. That's when I do my studying. That's when I prepare for this program. So if you like what we're doing here, realize that's when

I do it. I'm putting two things together. Sometimes I don't have time to answer every question that you have.

I remember getting, I got up early. It was about 3 .10 a .m. And I changed my nick and channel as I'm putting the bottles on the bike, you know, doing the stuff you got to do to get ready to go out.

And this guy asked me a question. 3 .10 a .m. in the morning. Hey, Doc, this is, and I forget what it was.

It had something to do with, hey, can I ask you about this textual variant in such and such and such at 3 .10

a .m. in the morning. And I just stand there just staring at the screen like, okay.

Small request here. Ask this question. Do you have time for a question?

Because many times I just don't. Even if I'm just sort of chatting and channel, throw something in there, that doesn't mean that I'm actually paying much attention to it, let alone that I can stop doing what

I'm doing and devote, you know. Anyway, we'll have people come in, and sometimes they don't like the response to my question because my question goes to the fact that they're looking for a simplistic answer to a question that has no simplistic answer.

I remember, and we're almost out of time, but I remember a friend once saying, how do I respond to this one well -known Jehovah's Witness?

He says this about this verse, and he says that the grammar can be read that way. And I said, it can.

And he was like, really? It can be read that way? I said, yeah. You see, the truth of Scripture is not found distilled down in every single verse.

It is the harmony of the verses coming together that testifies of the truth.

The refutation of his error is that while that text might say that, it can't say that in light of its necessary grounding and harmony with everything else.

You see? And that's where the beauty of biblical consistency, inspiration is to be found.

I'll put on the blog when we're going to exactly do the program on Monday because that'll probably be the only dividing line we get in next week.

As I said, I'll be in Hephzibah, Georgia, Tuesday night through Saturday morning, basically.

So Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday evening, speaking on the topics we mentioned before, and we hope to see all of you in that area at that time.

Otherwise, we'll see you on Monday, Lord willing. God bless. ♪ I believe we're standing at the crossroads ♪

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