Sola Scriptura: Do You Really Believe?

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:36

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. We're back in the regular studio today. We will be in the big studio on Thursday.

00:44

Did you see that the Senate just passed a bill to make daylight savings time permanent?

00:53

And so if the House passes it, it'll go to Biden. Now, Biden may not know what it's about, so who knows what'll happen there.

00:58

But, um, I remember when we started this, but anyway, why not just get rid of it?

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Because what this will do is this will stick Arizona in the Pacific time zone.

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It's just like... But hey, as long as we stop playing with clocks, if we're just stuck in the

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Pacific time zone, fine. We'll be in the Pacific. You might say, well, why shouldn't, why shouldn't you just change your clocks?

01:29

Because if we do it, it will, at 10 o 'clock at night in July, it will still be bright and it'll be a hundred and eleven degrees.

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Okay, that's why. We tried it in 1977 -ish?

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Yeah, somewhere around there. I remember, I lived here, and literally, in July, it would be 111 degrees, and it was still light outside at 10 o 'clock at night.

01:57

It's just dumb. So we said no. So anyway, wouldn't that be fascinating if that, if that passed?

02:06

Don't know what any of that has to do with anything, even though it just, you know, it pops up on the screen. So you go, hey, what's going on?

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Something that did pop up, though, that I want to show you. You got this, Rich? So, where, where do you think this is?

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While you did that, go with, go with the screen. Rich, Rich, is, where do you think this is?

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I mean, I've driven through Northern Nevada before, and that's, that's a sort of scary place.

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This looks a lot like Northern Nevada, where it's just, you know, as far as the eye can see, there really isn't much of anything at all.

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Yes, yes. You expect to see a little plume of dust from someone's dune buggy out there, something like that.

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But as most of you probably realize, this is a, an incredible panoramic shot that was just provided by our

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Mars rover. What is it, Endeavor? Let me see here. Curiosity, the

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Curiosity rover on the, on the surface of Mars. You can take that down. And so, yeah, it's just,

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I, I, I look at something like that, and we're literally looking at the surface of another planet.

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Now, I realize there are a few of you in the audience that don't think we are, but for all the rest of us, you're looking at the surface of another planet.

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One of my favorite shots, actually, pictures, is from when one of our probes landed on Titan, the moon,

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Jupiter's moon, Titan, which is covered in a thick orange cloud. No human eye had never, ever seen these things.

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And, and here we have pictures of these mountains and things like that. It rains ammonia there and just incredible stuff.

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And we get these little glimpses of this awesome universe, and we're just seeing a little, teeny, tiny part of it.

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I mean, there, there's, there's a hundred and fifty billion galaxies out there. And it just, it just makes me, first of all, wonder.

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You know, Pete, I remember, I remember so clearly this Mormon guy. Years and years and years ago, we're out at the

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Easter pageant. You know, they're doing the Easter pageant again this year. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not gonna be here, but I can,

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I can, I can hook you up with some guys that are going, if you know what I mean. You might, you might want to, might want to head on out there and, and yep, they're, they're, they're building, they're building the scaffolding.

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It's pretty much all up and ready to go. So, yeah. I was talking to a guy at the Easter pageant, this young Mormon guy.

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I think he was a missionary. And he was just basically saying, so do you just think you're gonna float around on, on a cloud strumming a harp?

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And, you know, I remember thinking back then, you know, if I thought God was just an exalted man, I would probably think eternity would be pretty boring, but he's not.

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And while there's a lot that he's created, and I, I just can't help but thinking

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God's gonna be showing us all this stuff. And there's, there's billions and billions of galaxies.

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We're just, we're just seeing a little, little bit. And I just got to ask each one of us, um, are we thankful when we see something like that?

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Or this, this little measurement, and I'm, I'm talking to myself here.

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When you see that, does the humanist, scientist side of your mind kick in?

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And all you think about is, you know, the tech that allowed us to land ships on Mars, and the technology of being able to get a signal back.

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And, you know, you just, you're, if your Christianity just goes out the door, you were probably public schooled like I was.

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Let's just, let's just be honest. My hope is those of you who are homeschooling will talk about stuff like this, and then you'll connect it in.

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Because see, to be able to launch a rocket so that you can land a, the

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Curiosity rover on Mars, in one piece, still functional.

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The thing's running a helicopter around. It's awesome. It's incredible what it's doing. To be able to do that, not only requires a knowledge of mathematics, but that stuff's got to be consistent.

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You know what I mean? There's got to be regularity in the universe. Things can't just be random crazy stuff.

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Or you're not gonna land that thing. You're not gonna even get close to it. That, there's the beautiful regularity of nature we should be thankful for.

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And we should be thankful that God has given us, especially over the past 70 years, relative in the

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West. Not so much in other parts of the world, but in the West. Relative peace, which has allowed such progress in science and technology.

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But isn't it the case that with human beings, we progress in science and technology, and the result is we suppress the knowledge of God with our science and technology instead of giving thanks.

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It's amazing. But I see stuff like that and I am amazed, and I'm excited, and I hope you are too.

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And I hope we are teaching our kids to be amazed and excited and to see

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God's hand in all of those things. That's really, really, really important stuff.

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So I've had this JPEG, this image that I picked up a couple weeks ago online.

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This is in a school. I forget where it was.

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Some people have wiped out. Yeah, they've wiped out exactly where it is, unfortunately. So I forget where it was.

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Back East somewhere. Here is a chart. This chart does not include them all.

09:03

Make sure to check out the resources below to practice. I've seen a bunch of these in lots of different schools.

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It's a pronoun chart. They, them, theirs, she, them, hers, he, him, his.

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Those are the last ones given, of course, are the actual English ones. Examples.

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They, them, theirs. Meet Zonder. They are a dog owner.

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Their dog loves playing catch with them. The dog is theirs. Je, jem, jers.

09:42

Meet Sky. Z is a dog owner. Zir, dog loves playing catch with Zem.

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The dog is Zir's. And then Z, here, hers.

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Meet Dominique. Z is a dog owner. Here, dog loves playing catch with here.

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The dog is here's? Here's?

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And then you've got meet, oh, minus 18.

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They didn't wipe this one out. Minus 18 pronouns app. Oh, you can get an app, of course.

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Why not? Get an app. And anypronouns .org, nonbinary .wiki.

10:38

Oh, so I, we, we, everyone's seeing today that one of the nominees for Time's Woman of the

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Year is the old ugly dude from Pennsylvania that Biden put in some minor position of authority someplace that someone made an admiral in something.

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I don't know. And I, we look at this type of stuff.

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You cannot be any more narcissistic than to demand that people change their language and memorize a set of nonsense words and change the grammar of their sentences just to talk to you.

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That is the essence of self -centeredness and narcissism.

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It is absurdity on its face while at the same time we have people literally demanding that we learn new words just to describe them.

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I have said for a while now that I expect there to be a backlash against all the insanity.

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But unless the backlash is accompanied by a corresponding recognition of the need of a meaningful, abiding, communicable, transferable to the next generation worldview based upon the reality of the world around us, which is found, we know, in its creator,

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Jesus, the resurrected Lord, then I'm going to know that the backlash will not last long and those pushing it will succumb to the insanity themselves when it costs them too much to continue the backlash.

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It is not until I start seeing people going, wait a minute, we have to reject this stuff because it does not represent the way reality is because we've been made this way.

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You know, until that happens, there you go. There you go. But let me tell you something.

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The term misogyny has become, you know, just one of those terms, racist, misogynist, homophobic.

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They're just all these words that are just now central to the vocabulary of certain people.

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They rarely have any correspondence to anything going on in the real world, but it's what you do.

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The only truly misogynistic movement that I know of is the transgender movement.

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It is anti -women. When you are literally nominating old dudes for woman of the year, how does it get any more anti -woman than that?

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And when you demand that I refer to an old dude in a wig or maybe even he's grown his hair out, who cares, old dude in a dress as a woman,

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I'm going to look you in the eye and say, I will not do that. And that's not mean.

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That's not. I know what a woman is. This June, we will have been married for 40 years.

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4 -0. Yeah. And I know what a woman is.

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And the dude in the dress is not a woman. The dude in the swimming pool who is competing as a guy, his name is

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Will, not Leah, is a guy. That's why his arms are so much longer.

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And that's why he can outrun any woman in the pool without even trying. Because he's a guy.

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And that's reality. And that's truth. And you're lying to yourself and you're lying about the world around you when you say anything else.

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And that is hateful to the world and to everyone around you. So stop being hateful.

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Sorry, I'm just so. It never crossed my mind when

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I got married that I would have to be thinking about my grandchildren facing this kind of insanity, this kind of immoral, utter insanity.

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But there you go. There it is. That's where we are. That's what we're called to deal with. And so on what basis will we deal with all of these things?

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Well, I have no idea what that is, but oh,

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OK, I should not pay attention to anything going on around me.

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Was it yesterday or the day before yesterday? I posted an article on the

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Theology Matters I'm sorry, was it yesterday?

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On the Theology Matters blog. And if you have the

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Alpha Omega Ministries app, you got a notification of that so that you could take a look at it. And the article was in response to a statement,

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I think it was made on Facebook, but I saw it on Twitter.

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And a number of, you know, when

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I, in August of 1990, traveled to Long Beach, California and did my first public debate against gerrymatitics in a large

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Roman Catholic church there in Long Beach. The topic was sola scriptura. Now, I had grown up in fundamentalist

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Baptist circles, probably never heard the term. That's because there was sort of a hesitation to use

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Latin in that particular milieu of things.

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But by August 1990, I was a graduate of seminary,

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Fuller Theological Seminary, Phoenix campus and a graduate of Grand Canyon College, a

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Southern Baptist Bible College, now Grand Canyon University, which you've probably heard of. It's gotten quite big.

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It wasn't back then, but it was, it is now. Anyway, so I knew what sola scriptura meant.

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And I had been listening to debates that gerrymatitics and Scott Hahn were doing against primarily Calvary Chapel people.

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And so I knew that this was a vitally important issue. And I already knew in 1990 that this for Roman Catholicism, sola scriptura is for Roman Catholic apologists, what the

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Trinity is for Jehovah's Witnesses. So Jehovah's Witnesses go after the doctrine of the

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Trinity at the doorstep because they find that the vast majority of ostensibly

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Trinitarians don't know how to defend their faith. They don't even know how to define it. They're easily misled.

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They're easily led astray. And when it came to the subject of sola scriptura, this is exactly how

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Roman Catholic apologists, Karl Keating, Patrick Madrid, a little later

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Jimmy Akin, and others, Mark Brumley, and the original

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Catholic Answers crowd. They've been joined by many people since then.

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This is where they knew they could go because in reality, most evangelicals who do not rub shoulders with believing

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Roman Catholics, educated Roman Catholics, Roman Catholics who are seeking to bring people into fellowship with Rome, if you're not encountering those people, you're not going to be challenged on these areas.

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And hence, sola scriptura, generally just understood by people as, well, the

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Bible's inspired, nothing else is, and so it's like our ultimate authority.

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So you've got this vague general idea that there's something special about the

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Bible. It's different from anything else. It's our ultimate authority.

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But you really haven't thought through the relationship of the

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Bible to any type of statement of faith, whether it's a confessional statement for a denominational group, whether it's a statement of faith for your local body of believers.

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You really haven't thought through what the relationship between them is. You've probably heard the pastor at some point say that the

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Bible is the ultimate authority and this just sort of explains what we believe about the Bible. But you haven't been challenged to think about interpretational lenses and grids and the vast majority of evangelicals just don't do church history.

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Church history goes back a hundred years, maybe if you've done a little reading back to the

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Reformation, but Billy Graham's enough for most everybody. We don't really need to know much goes before that.

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And so all of the debates and discussions and development and error that has entered into the church and then been repudiated in times past.

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I mean, if you're not a Roman Catholic, you are a part of a group that has repudiated at some point in its past, the errors of the

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Roman Catholic system. I did five sermons on the

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Lord's Supper. I've done 11 so far, maybe 12 on baptism. But sermons on the

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Lord's Supper, we eventually got to the Lenten Baptist Confession of Faith and what it says on the subject of the supper.

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And I've done a lot of reading in Roman Catholic theology. I've debated more

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Roman Catholic apologists, I think still, and I haven't had to debate with Roman Catholic apologists now for a number of years, but I still think

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I've done the most of anyone active right now, at least on any major level. And so I've read a fair amount of Roman Catholic theology and engaged a lot of dialogue with Roman Catholics around the

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United States, around the world. In fact, I think the last one I did was the one in Belfast on indulgences,

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I think about 2017, 2018, something like that, somewhere around in there. So anyways,

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I know a little something about the subject. And so you can't read the language of the

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Confession of Faith on the supper without recognizing these authors reject

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Rome. They are rejecting the mass, transubstantiation, the idea it's a perpetuatory sacrifice.

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I mean, they put it right in there. The language is right there, even when they don't, I mean, you can just tell they're laboring to make sure.

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At the same time, if you've done much reading in Calvin, you're going, they're trying to get as close as they can and pretty much end up landing where Calvin did on that particular subject.

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Anyway, so we engaged these subjects for years and years and years.

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And I certainly think that my understanding of Sola Scriptura grew from those encounters and from those challenges because I debated

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Jerry Manatee on a number of times. Certainly the second time I debated him on Sola Scriptura, I did much better than the first time around.

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I had never done a debate before. And by the time we did it the second time, I had now done six or seven and you start figuring out how this is supposed to work.

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But hopefully I've grown a great deal in my understanding of how important this is because it's not just been in regards to Roman Catholicism.

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Then you start listening to Orthodox rejections thereof. And obviously, Mormonism rejects

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Sola Scriptura as a foundational belief of Latter -day Revelation, though even that's changing.

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Everything's changing in Mormonism right now. So over the years,

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I have met many a former Protestant, former

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Reformed individual who has swum the Tiber, who has gone over to Roman Catholicism.

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Now, I still think, especially globally, that the trend is very much the other direction.

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You look at South America, very, very much out of Roman Catholicism.

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And right now, there's a hemorrhaging going on, thanks to Francis. I mean, everybody knows that this

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Pope, even his most violent defenders, know in those few moments right as you're drifting off to sleep, when honesty overwhelms you, that if Francis and Pius IX were standing in the same room,

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Pius IX would not acknowledge Francis as a

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Catholic, let alone as a Pope. And you know it. Every one of you knows anything about the history of the papacy, especially

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Pius IX, papal syllabus of errors, papal inviolability. You know they don't believe the same things.

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You know that in your heart of hearts. And that vitiates all of your claims.

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You may not want to admit this. Pope Pius IX said,

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I am the tradition. I am the church.

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I am the tradition. Wow. Francis does not say that. He does not say that, and he does not believe that.

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I saw a video from some guy who was saying, we need to recognize that any man that says that all religions are equal, and God wills them all to exist, and you can get to God one way or the other, that person is not a

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Christian, and that's what Francis is. And this guy's Roman Catholic. He's saying that the

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Pope's an anti -Pope. Well, read the papal syllabus of errors.

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The papal syllabus of errors says the exact same thing. The papal syllabus of errors identifies

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Pope Francis as a heretic. So it's a little tough right now to be a

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Roman Catholic and say, hey, this is, we've got the infallible interpreter. No, you don't.

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You never did. I know that when I first started saying

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Roman Catholicism, John Paul II had been there for a long time.

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There was a period of stability. You could try to make those arguments. You can't make them anymore, and you know it.

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You really couldn't make them back then if you knew history, and you knew how far John Paul II was from a

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Pius IX or an Innocent III or whatever. But now, this is with our own lifetimes, we can see the massive difference.

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Just look at the last Pope. He's still alive. Barely, but he's still alive.

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And you read Ratzinger's work and compare it with Francis.

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Don't go telling me these people believe the same thing. They don't. So anyway,

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I have met with these people who have swum the

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Tiber and have abandoned their self -profession of the sufficiency of the imputed righteousness of Christ for the never -ending cycle of penance and forgiveness, penance and forgiveness, and the specter of purgatory.

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And if you're asking, has any one of them been able to look you in the eye to explain how they could do that, no. They don't like when

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I go there. They want to talk about other stuff, mainly Sola Scriptura. So for quite some time,

29:48

Cameron Bertuzzi of Capturing Christianity has been doing the paddling around in the middle of the

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Tiber routine where he will dialogue with Roman Catholics.

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We've talked about it on the program before. We've played stuff and responded to things and pointed stuff out. He hasn't seemed to really appreciate that very much, but that's okay.

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And so he posted this and I responded to it in an article form.

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I was going to do a tweet thread and I had actually written out the first tweet and almost hit send. And I said, nah, that's right.

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I was a text. By the time I got done, I was like, nah, this is too long. So he put it up as an article. Here's what he said.

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I've been thinking more about Sola Scriptura lately. Even if the doctrine can be successfully articulated in a way that's not self -defeating,

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Sola Scriptura entails that divine inspiration has a stopping point.

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You have to have a Scriptura to have a Sola. So yeah, that's pretty obvious. The problem that Protestants face by my lights is that the stopping point they arrive at seems arbitrary.

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Why stop at the Gospels and Epistles? Like seriously, why? The more

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I think about it, the more I've come to realize that my own belief in the stopping point of inspiration is based on, get this, tradition.

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Okay. Now, what is useful about this is that this is an argument, but it is an argument that functions by not clearly making you aware of the fact that it is an argument.

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What do I mean? Let's look at it. Sola Scriptura entails the divine inspiration as a stopping point.

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Well, everybody but the Mormons believes that and the Mormons are coming to believe it, slowly but surely. Rome believes that divine revelation is ceased.

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Is their determination of that arbitrary? Eastern Orthodoxy, it is ceased.

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Now, we could argue that with such amazing doctrines as the perpetual virginity of immaculate conception and the bodily assumption of Mary, which are defined within the past 170 years, that that would require some type of continuing revelation, to be quite honest with you.

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And I think you make that argument. But officially, Rome says there's been no more revelation.

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And that pretty much everybody agrees, at least in the major Christian groups.

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But here's the idea. The argument is you need to have an authority to tell you that revelation is stopped.

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See, that's what's in the background. Roman Catholic apologists are loathe to actually positively defend their own authority claims.

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And they are much, much more interested in attacking

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Sola Scriptura than giving a positive defense, especially right now. You can't with Francis. You just can't do it.

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It's obvious. So the only way to do it is to attack Sola Scriptura so that someone will go, well,

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I can't defend that. So I will have to default into whatever it is you're offering. That's how a lot of religious groups do things without ever actually defending their own position.

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Jehovah's Witnesses do it. Mormons do it. It's standard. So Sola Scriptura entails that divine inspiration has a stopping point.

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And of course, I would say, so God has to continue to give divine revelation.

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God cannot give a perfect revelation that's sufficient for life and godliness in a limited form. Because if it continues on, it keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.

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God could not choose to give this amount of divine revelation.

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This will be sufficient for my people, for my purposes. God can't do that. And what if once he gets done doing that, maybe with some,

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I don't know, amazing, awesome thing like, oh, the incarnation, death, burial, resurrection of Jesus Christ, the founding of his church?

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Maybe. Because, you know, Hebrews 1 says, in times past, God spoke to the fathers, but the prophets. But in these last days, he's spoken unto us by his son.

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There's not going to be anything past that. Oh, but there technically is with the apostles. But that's just it. That's the revelation of the son.

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So is there something more we need to know about Jesus? Remember, I want to point out to Cameron what

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Mitch Pakwas said to me in 1999 in our debate in San Diego. And I encourage people to watch that debate.

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Is there anything that Jesus said, did, or taught, any word that he spoke that has been infallibly defined by the

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Roman Catholic Church that's not found in Scripture? Answer from Dr. Pakwas, no. Is there anything that any apostle of Jesus Christ taught, said, did, that has been infallibly defined by the

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Roman Catholic Church? No. Okay. Good. There we go. So why do you need an external authority to tell you this is enough?

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That's the argument that's being made. See, it's an argument without actually presenting evidence for the argument.

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It's just an argument. This is how Rome does it. Instead of being up front, straight up front, saying this is what you need.

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Oh, there are, I guess, a few of the more hotheads do things like that. But the apologists, they like to do this type of thing.

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So yes, it does entail the divine inspiration at a stopping point. You do need to have a scriptura to have a sola. But we believe that there is a stopping point, and it happens to be the same one you all think that God did.

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You just evidently think, well, I think that because Rome tells me so.

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Okay. Does that have something to do with when God had to stop giving revelation or something?

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It may make you feel more warm at night, but it also sticks you with Francis. Okay?

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It sticks you with the guy who's literally telling people that it's God's will that there be all these different kinds of religions.

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That's not what Rome has always taught. It's not. Read Unum Sanctum sometime.

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The problem the Protestants face, by my lights, is that the stopping point they arrive at seems arbitrary.

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Why isn't Rome's stopping point arbitrary? Just because you claim some kind of massive authority, some big authority that defines it?

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Does that make it non -arbitrary? I don't get it. Why stop at the

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Gospels and Epistles? Like, seriously, why? Because that was all that God gave.

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So you don't think that God can lead his people to recognize what he's given?

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Have you read any of the other works that for any period of time held sway anywhere in the church as being scripture?

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There's only a few of them. Shepherd of Hermas, Epistle of Barnabas. That's almost all of them.

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I'm not even talking about Gnostic Gospels. Gnosticism is a completely different worldview. What else would there be that could even be fit into that category?

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There was a period of apostolic ministry, and very quickly you see, even in the writings outside of the

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New Testament, a recognition of the special authority of those apostles and what they wrote. Very similar to what happened between the

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Old and New Testaments. And there weren't any angels that came down. There was no infallible magisterium that said, these are the books.

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And the funny thing is, the group that you seem to be gravitating toward got that messed up.

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They followed one of two different traditions down through church history and decided to establish a category called deuterocanonical.

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Secondarily canonical? What does that mean? Sort of inspired? Books that the

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Jews themselves never accepted as being canon scripture. The point is, you raise questions and then don't answer how the group that you're gravitating toward answers the same questions.

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So, if it's arbitrary to say God ceased revelation after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ established in the church, then why is it any less arbitrary to say, and I believe that because a guy in a funny hat tells me so.

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Because remember, if you decide to become a Roman Catholic, when did you get your first infallible definition of the canon?

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I know, April of 1546. What did you do before then?

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Every major meaningful doctrine of the faith was well known long before April of 1546.

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So, he says, the more I think about it, the more

40:23

I've come to realize that my own belief in the stopping point of inspiration is based on, now this term tradition is so wonderfully, wonderfully, wonderfully nebulous, absolutely nebulous.

40:45

Let me talk a little bit, because I think a lot of people just don't understand.

40:53

And if you don't like the fact you've got other stuff on the screen there, Rich, you could zoom in on it if you wanted to. The thing

40:59

I'm going to do right now. Because there's nothing that's going to be on the outside, so you could zoom in on it.

41:06

I just can't get it to work any differently. I've put together a little thing here to help us to think about solo scriptura, because my concern is that there are a lot of my brothers and sisters who have heard the term used know that it's allegedly very important, but don't really know why.

41:36

And I believe this is the dividing line. I have always said whether you believe scripture is sufficient or needs outside authority is the dividing line between heresy and orthodoxy and everything else.

41:54

And I continue to believe that, but I think we need to dive even a little bit more deeply than that, because solo scriptura is the foundation of the sufficiency of scripture.

42:05

As Southern Baptists have come to understand, when

42:14

I taught for Southern Baptist Seminary for years, Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, taught for them for years.

42:20

Taught on the main campus, taught in their Denver campus, taught frequently in the

42:25

Phoenix campus. I taught Greek, Greek exegesis, Hebrew, Hebrew exegesis, systematic theology, Christian philosophy, religion.

42:32

I taught a lot in a Southern Baptist seminary. And you are required to sign a statement that said that you believe in the doctrine of inerrancy.

42:43

And that's easy for me to do. I not only believe it, but I've defended it for a long, long time.

42:51

The problem is inerrancy is based in something else.

42:59

It's based in something else, and it's closely related to sola scriptura. So I put together this little thing for you here, and it should be big enough that if we put it down there, yeah, we should be able to read that.

43:11

Sola scriptura means that the scriptures are the sole infallible rule of faith.

43:22

The sole infallible rule of faith.

43:28

It does not deny that we do not have other rules of faith that are secondary to scripture.

43:34

It does not deny that we can summarize scriptural teaching, that we can preach sermons, where we tie together different passages of scripture.

43:47

It's saying, first and foremost, something about what scriptura is, what the scripture is.

43:55

And I believe absolutely foundational to understanding sola scriptura is to understand, first and foremost, its nature.

44:06

It is a claim about the nature of the scriptura.

44:16

The scriptura is sola because there's nothing else like it. It is

44:22

Theanustas. It is Theanustas. It is God breathed.

44:27

There is nothing else that is Theanustas. I have asked Roman Catholic apologists more than once, is your tradition

44:37

Theanustas? Is your church Theanustas? And there's a couple that I know wanted to say yes, but Rome has not yet gotten to the point of actually claiming that.

44:50

This causes a problem. Now I want to say this with all due respect, but I just listened in the hour prior to the beginning of this program.

45:02

To a presentation that was made, I believe, Sunday in a Reformed Baptist church on the subject of scripture and tradition.

45:11

I was surprised. I was surprised because the presentation completely misunderstood

45:23

Rome's understanding of tradition. Completely. Did not even touch on it. Pretended to, but did not.

45:29

The individual does not understand what Rome teaches. Has not read Yves Congar. Has not read any of the historical materials.

45:35

Does not understand the background of the part and party discussion at the Council of Trent. None of that stuff. Stuff that those of us that deal with Catholic apologists need to know about.

45:47

And so the very terminology of tradition that ended up being used, including how we as Protestants allegedly embrace tradition, really didn't have any connection to what really gave rise to the

46:02

Reformation and hence to our confessions. And I would just really think that, you know, it's funny.

46:12

There's this great controversy going on right now in regards to natural philosophy, natural theology, philosophical theology, all the different terminologies that are being used right now.

46:24

And some of us are being accused of being biblicists and stuff like that.

46:32

Most of the best material defending the entire

46:40

Protestant Reformation and the formal principle of the Reformation, sola scriptura, material principle being justification by faith, was written by non -Baptists.

46:54

Okay. We were sort of left on the sidelines, especially thanks to what happened in Munster and things related to that.

47:01

But if you haven't read George Salmon and some of the great

47:13

Puritan works on the subject, I know they're not the most popular books, but I think

47:20

Ligonier is reprinting one of them.

47:25

Is that? I forget which of the publishing houses. They're normally thick volumes.

47:31

They're normally rather expensive, but you know, I've got Martin Chemnitz and Jordan Cooper is undoubtedly doing handstands and hand flips now that I mentioned

47:46

Chemnitz. But coming from a Lutheran perspective, George Salmon's Fallow of the

47:53

Church, Anglican. Grab Webster and King back there.

48:01

Oh, all right. Just move the finger a little bit. Grab Webster and King over there.

48:10

Excellent material. Highly recommend you get hold of that. There are works out there that will help people understand what the arguments were.

48:22

What was Newman arguing? Why is the Partum Partum language that was an original draft at Trent not adopted?

48:33

What's the material and formal sufficiency? This is

48:39

Roman Catholic Apologetics 101, and you need to understand in Roman Catholicism, and this will bring us back to the thing here, because I could go on this forever, and all you got to do is look at the 1900 some odd dividing lines or whatever it is we have up online and search for the phrase

49:05

Sola Scriptura. We've talked about this a lot for decades. When you listen to what

49:15

Rome is teaching, Rome has capital S sacred, capital

49:20

T tradition, sacred tradition. Sacred tradition is made up of written tradition and oral tradition.

49:34

So the scriptures as the written tradition are subsumed under the larger category of sacred tradition, all of which is under the fundamental control of the magisterium of the church as to the interpretation.

49:51

That's why I've said for years and years and years, Rome believes in Sola Ecclesia. Sola Ecclesia.

49:59

Why does Rome believe in Sola Ecclesia? Because they say they don't. Who defines what

50:05

Scriptura is? The church does. Who defines what it means? The church does.

50:10

Who defines what tradition is? The church does. Who defines what tradition means? The church does. You cannot be under the authority of sayings when their definition interpretation is created by the church.

50:21

Sola Ecclesia. That's your ultimate authority. Pope Pius IX would not have argued with that.

50:27

When you say, I am the tradition, I am the church, you got that.

50:34

Sola Ecclesia, you are the church. So Scripture then is a subcategory.

50:43

And the problem is tradition never gets defined. Now, once a dogma becomes defined, then that element of tradition.

50:52

So let's look at the last one that was defined, bodily assumption of Mary, 70 some odd years ago.

51:00

You look back through history and you don't see it in the first half of the first millennium of the church.

51:09

It's not taught, not believed. But then you start seeing a little bit over here, a little bit over there and see, and now in hindsight, with the lens of the dogmatic definition of the church, oh, there's some of the tradition that's apostolic tradition.

51:28

There's one there and there's one there. Now, everybody else looks at history and goes, wait a minute, that's just one little thing there and one little thing.

51:36

If you read everybody in that century, they're not talking about this. They're not functioning on this. Are you seriously saying the apostles taught this and it was being passed down and centuries go by and no one says a word about it?

51:50

Yep. And you better believe it. Yep. You better believe it because we've got the authority. And this is how it works.

51:57

Once you convince someone that they can't trust this anymore, that you need their authority and now their authority tells you, yes, and you better believe it.

52:09

You go, okay, I'll believe it. But entire centuries went by and nobody believed that.

52:16

Doesn't matter. That's what they believed. Oh, I guess that's why you have to be infallible.

52:22

You know, so this tradition and again, in this presentation, tradition was then presented as something that Protestants embrace as if it's a body of interpretation and practices and beliefs.

52:42

And I just go, it has been my experience since I began as a student of church history to read patristic materials and to be so thankful for post -Tenebrous

53:02

Lux after darkness light, there was a, there were things that happened in the early church that had an incredibly negative impact upon the handling interpretation of the scriptures for centuries on end.

53:23

Origin was one worst things that ever happened to the church, as far as the view of the old

53:28

Testament, the unity of scripture, allegorical interpretation, all that stuff.

53:37

And so even in my favorite early church writers, there are times when

53:46

I look at how they use a passage of scripture and I just go, that's tough.

53:52

There is no tradition about a, and in fact, there are many times when there is a very consistent understanding of a text that we just have to admit was wrong from the start.

54:10

And the reason that it was promulgated was because some guy with a big name back there said so, and it lasted for a long, long time.

54:19

But I'm seeing people today who would say, well, yeah, I've never viewed it that way, but you need to read the scriptures in the light of the great tradition.

54:27

Whatever the world that is, you need to know what the original authors wrote.

54:37

You need to know what they intended to communicate, what they intended to communicate to their audience in the context in which they wrote it.

54:44

The rest is fascinating. The rest is important. I teach church history for crying out loud, but it is not the lens through which you then force this book.

54:58

The result of that will be devastating. Devastating, not because it leads to any kind of uniformity.

55:07

It doesn't. But it does lead to a fundamental rejection of biblical categories.

55:15

So back to here, sorry, I'm preaching a little bit, but it's important.

55:22

The central claim of Sola Scriptura is that the nature of scripture places it above anything else.

55:31

It is not simply a subcategory of sacred tradition. It is unique.

55:39

Jesus could literally say in the gospel of Matthew chapter 22, have you not read what

55:47

God spoke to you saying and quote to the men standing in front of him from what

55:53

Moses wrote 1400 years earlier and hold them accountable as if God had spoken it to them.

55:59

There is nothing else in this entire world, this entire universe like this, nothing.

56:07

It is unique because it is Theanostas, and there's nothing else like it. And that's the central thing you must understand.

56:18

That's why it must be Sola Scriptura, not scriptura together with this thing over there and scriptura together with that thing over there.

56:26

Sola Scriptura does not mean that when I take this, I have to throw out all of my understanding of church history.

56:35

That does not follow. But what church history teaches me is that if I take what those men back there said and allow them to become the lens through which

56:45

I look this, I will be led astray. I will be led astray. So the key issue of Sola Scriptura, Theanostas, the nature of scripture, and you must understand, you must understand,

57:02

I hate to have to say this, but right now in this world at this point in time, if you believe that scripture is

57:11

Theanostas, you are in a minority amongst those who claim, claim to be Christians.

57:17

You are certainly a minority in the academy. And that's one of our problems is that we want to have a seat at the table in the academy.

57:32

So when someone as brilliant and bright as N .T. Wright identifies inerrancy as that silly

57:39

American doctrine, then all of a sudden we're like, and by the way, what

57:45

I was gonna say earlier, in the Southern Maps Convention, I started teaching for Golden Gate in,

57:53

I think, 95, if I recall correctly. I was a scholar in residence at Grand Canyon for a while and then started teaching

58:02

Greek for Golden Gate. And I knew beyond all question that there were bunches of people teaching that signed that statement and said,

58:20

I believe in Sola Scriptura, who did not believe in any meaningful definition of Sola Scriptura.

58:28

In fact, I was going to mention it last time. I don't have it in front of me right now, but one of our former channel rats

58:36

I talked about a little while ago, Jamin Hubner, did a thread,

58:43

I think, on Twitter or someplace recently. It was against the

58:50

Chicago Statement, which he once believed now doesn't. This is another one of those, I'm doing my mea culpa for ever having been conservative things.

58:57

But there is a real central germ of truth to what he was saying. And what he was basically saying was he was giving examples of all sorts of people who could sign those documents, who have completely different views of what inerrancy actually meant.

59:17

And he's right. There's absolutely no question about it. I mean, anybody teaching in those schools knew it.

59:25

All you had to do is have a little bit of conversation, sit in on somebody else's lecture, and you'd be going, wow, okay.

59:33

So simply signing a document doesn't mean that you actually share the definition.

59:40

It's got to be some clarity to it. So, Sola Scriptura, Theonisos, the nature of Scripture. Then from the nature of Scripture, we move to the sufficiency of Scripture.

59:52

Ex artissminos, fully equipped to do the work of God, both terms coming from 2

01:00:00

Timothy 3. And many people are repeating right now, especially in the

01:00:08

Southern Baptist Convention, this is where the wheels have fallen off, is that, okay, we may have won the battle over inerrancy, but that requires us to believe in sufficiency.

01:00:28

And that's where so many people, especially in the modern period, I'm not going to have time because I've already gone a full hour and I haven't even gotten to where I want to get to.

01:00:39

But listen to the Andy Stanley introduction to the sermon.

01:00:48

K -dub did a review on it last night. What you're hearing from him is what you will hear in so many churches, this fundamental distrust that ancient documents, as he even put it, by men only, you know what was behind that, could possibly be what we believe them to really be, even though he then says, it's all about who

01:01:20

Jesus is. Well, Jesus taught that about those ancient documents. It just drives me insane, the utter circularity.

01:01:26

But anyway, I was going to talk about it, don't have time to talk about it right now. Sufficiency flows from the nature of what the scriptures are.

01:01:40

If the scriptures were not theanustos, they could not be sufficient to function in the way. And what has

01:01:46

God determined the scriptures to be? Is this actually enough stuff to give me word by word instruction about exactly how to understand genetic coding and CRISPR technology and the abuse of those things and the creation of deadly genetic vaccines that have been stuck in everybody's arms and are causing all sorts of problems that nobody will talk about today?

01:02:19

No, you do not have a text that talks about that. What the text does is connects you to God's revelation of his purposes and intentions in this world.

01:02:32

And this is the only thing it does. It's the only thing it does. It tells you what the church is supposed to be doing, how the church is supposed to be proclaiming that message.

01:02:41

It gives us the content of that message, and it is sufficient to do so.

01:02:47

And as soon as you start going, and it's just sort of out of date, you know, we need a 2 .0. We really need about a 27 .0

01:02:54

by now. Then you don't understand what it means to believe that this is theanustos.

01:03:04

It is the lens for everything else. And that's the danger is that everyone wants to put a lens on top of it.

01:03:11

It can't function the way it's supposed to function if you put a non -inspired lens on top of it.

01:03:19

That's where the problem is. That's why you have to do serious exegesis. Because serious exegesis reveals the lenses that we want to put on top of things.

01:03:30

That's why you have to do hard work is to identify the lenses. That's the point.

01:03:37

If I don't keep going here, we'll never get where we're going. From sufficiency comes its function, its function in the church, its function as the soul and fallible rule of faith.

01:03:50

But you have to understand its nature and sufficiency before you're going to have the foundation for its function, how we see it functioning in the

01:03:59

New Testament. And you say, well, soul scriptura can't function during the time of the New Testament. Technically, you're right because you have to have a scriptura.

01:04:07

So you still have revelation taking place. I agree.

01:04:13

But even in the ministry of the apostles, what are they constantly citing to demonstrate the consistency of what they are teaching with what came before?

01:04:27

And then in the first extra canonical writings, what are they doing?

01:04:34

Citing that. Citing that. From the very earliest ones.

01:04:41

Go read Clement's epistle. We don't know it was Clement, but the epistle from Rome to the

01:04:46

Corinthians. See how much scripture is cited. Sometimes it's almost pages at a time.

01:04:55

Function within the church and then from that function then to the subject of the extent of scripture.

01:05:05

Yes. You see, Rome constantly uses the issue of the canon to try to deny soul scriptura.

01:05:13

And they are very effective at it because the vast majority of Protestants have never thought, have never even given consideration to the issue of the canon, what the canon is.

01:05:24

In fact, in most Protestant schools, and this was the case in my experience, I remember when

01:05:31

I first started really wrestling with this issue. The issue of canon, it's like, how do you give a response?

01:05:40

Because we've been taught, well, the canon, was it attached to an apostle and early testimony?

01:05:50

And it's all this historical examination stuff. And there's lots of books. That's exactly what it's all about.

01:05:55

The problem is what is the canon? It's a theological concept. So you have to have a theological definition of the canon to begin with.

01:06:05

We don't do that. We start with history. Can't do that. I mean, it's important. I'm, Muratorian fragment and Athanasius and all that stuff is really, really important.

01:06:14

And, and go listen to my debate on the Apocrypha from way back when.

01:06:19

And we're, we're talking about intertestamental writings and all the rest of that stuff. Yeah, go for it. But none of that can replace the fact that you have to understand that the canon is determined by inspiration itself.

01:06:36

The canon is simply, and God knows exactly the canon is because God knows he's inspired at least one book and he hasn't inspired every book.

01:06:43

Therefore, the canon exists by nature de facto as an artifact of inspiration itself.

01:06:51

If you don't start there, you're, you're, you're, you're left with nothing. Because even, even if you go the

01:06:57

Roman perspective, the problem is you don't have certainty from Rome's perspective. If it takes you until 1546 to get an infallible definition of the canon, then give it up.

01:07:09

You don't need one. And even then there are differences. There are differences between what earlier councils said and what

01:07:17

Trent said in regards to what the Apocrypha because they weren't sure which ones were which. So don't give me that stuff.

01:07:26

You can hide behind your alleged infallibility all you want. It is a thin paper screen easily punched through as soon as you try just in your through.

01:07:38

All you're doing is you're moving the line back one little bit. You can't tell it.

01:07:43

You can't give us an infallible canon. Well, your claim to give us infallible canon is a bunch of smoke and nothing more.

01:07:53

So now what you're going to do. So the extent of scripture is going to be defined by what

01:08:01

God wants to give to his church. So when, when Cameron is talking about, well, it's an arbitrary thing.

01:08:11

How big do you want to be? You mean it has to keep growing? You sound like a Mormon when you say something like that.

01:08:19

In these last days, he's spoken to us by his son. That's not good enough. You have an explosion of writings.

01:08:28

The Old Testament written over the course of what? A thousand years. The New Testament written over the course of what?

01:08:35

70? At most? Maybe as little as 40 or 30? Might give you a clue.

01:08:45

Might give you a clue. So hopefully this helps you just a little bit to think about the relationship of the nature of scripture, the sufficiency, function, extent, how these are all related to this central aspect of Sola Scriptura.

01:09:03

But what happens when when you abandon that? This is, oh,

01:09:11

I've got the date. September 1986 is when

01:09:17

I purchased this. It was all of $8 .95. You know, this particular one has done pretty well.

01:09:24

I mean, the edges are a little dingy, but the paper has not yellowed. I've got a bunch of my seminary and Bible college textbooks.

01:09:34

The pages are yellowed and everything else, but not this one. This is one of my textbooks in seminary.

01:09:40

History of Christian Doctrines by Louis Burkhoff. And someone quoted from Burkhoff today, this morning.

01:09:51

It might have been last night, but I didn't see it this morning. And in the preface written in 1949, and it's,

01:10:02

I could do it, but this is so much more comfortable anymore.

01:10:09

1949, oh, look at all those letters. But while it is a separate study, this is speaking of the study of the history of Christian doctrines.

01:10:21

But while it is a separate study, it is not one which students of theology can afford to neglect.

01:10:29

The study of doctrinal truth, apart from its historical background, leads to a truncated theology.

01:10:36

There has been too much of this in the past and there is a great deal of it even in the present day. The result has been the lack of a sound understanding of a proper evaluation of the truth.

01:10:45

There was no appreciation of the fact the Holy Spirit guided the church in the interpretation and development of the truth as it is revealed in the

01:10:51

Word of God. The checks and road signs of the past were not taken into consideration and ancient heresies long since condemned by the church are constantly repeated and represented as new discoveries.

01:11:01

The lessons of the past are greatly neglected and many seem to feel they should strike out entirely on their own as if very little had been accomplished in the past.

01:11:08

Surely a theologian must take account of the present situation in the religious world and ever study the truth anew, but he cannot neglect the lessons of the past with impunity.

01:11:17

May this brief study of the history of doctrines serve to create a greater interest in such historical study and lead to a better understanding of the truth.

01:11:25

Now, it was in these pages, for example, that I was first introduced. I wonder what

01:11:32

I spilled on this. I wonder what was going on at that time. It was in these pages that I was first introduced, for example, to many of the strange doctrines.

01:11:53

So, like right here, the doctrine of the atonement or of the work of Christ, starting on page 165.

01:12:06

And it was in that book that I first learned of the recapitulation theory of Irenaeus and ransom theory and of the fact that there had not been a single volume written on the subject of the atonement until the fourth century in Christian history.

01:12:32

And so, when I began to really start to understand that the church would be focused upon particular issues for a particular period of time and maybe not other issues quite so much at that particular point in time.

01:12:51

And so, that helped me to understand why I could read someone in church history. And in one area,

01:12:57

I'm going, oh, that's good. Oh, man, that's how we're arguing today. And then you turn a few pages over and they start talking about something else.

01:13:04

And you're like, what? Where, huh? Where did that come from?

01:13:11

And that's when you start realizing, man, I'm standing on the shoulders of giants and what a blessing to have all of these things.

01:13:20

And that's where you start recognizing that you need to read history with some grace and compassion, things like that.

01:13:32

So, am I in some way, shape, or form compromising solo scriptura to read about the history of Christian doctrine?

01:13:43

Because there's much of what Dr. Birkhoff documented in here, Dr. Birkhoff does not believe.

01:13:51

So, it was believed in history, but it was one of those areas that I remember very well.

01:13:59

I apologize for the name escaping me, but I really enjoyed listening to the professor, the old professor at the

01:14:08

Old Covenant Seminary, his church history classes. Forgive me for the name escaping me right now.

01:14:16

But he would end his classes in one of two ways.

01:14:22

If what they had been studying was encouraging and was about the truth, he'd end it in one way.

01:14:28

If what they had been studying was not the truth and not encouraging and stuff that had had to be abandoned, he'd end it in another way.

01:14:39

And obviously, oftentimes, it was sort of a flip the coin to figure out which one was which, because church history is a mixed bag.

01:14:50

So, only the most independent, fundamentalist,

01:14:56

Baptist, KJV -only style people think that they have no connection to the past.

01:15:09

Anyone who has a confession of faith, you look in the history, you discover that the very language that was used to define those various articles came from where did atonement come from?

01:15:23

How did that get through the various languages into the English language? And there's all sorts of stuff like that.

01:15:28

No one questions that. No one questions that. And yet today, someone called the

01:15:38

Pactum, they have a webcast and stuff, quoted one sentence from what

01:15:45

I just read to you from the preface of Burkhoff's work. The study of doctrinal truth, apart from its historical background, leads to a truncated theology.

01:15:55

Lewis Burkhoff, The History of Christian Doctrines. Is that in any way a denial of any concept of sola scriptura?

01:16:07

Of course not. Sola scriptura does not say there's not a history of the church. Sola scriptura does not say that the history of church is not important to us.

01:16:16

But what sola scriptura does say is that there can be nothing in the history of the church that itself becomes theanustos, and hence becomes the lens through which that which is theanustos is to be observed, understood, or defined.

01:16:40

The parameters of what God has given to us function as a wall, outside of which is darkness, outside of which will be error.

01:16:53

And we should be thankful for that. The problem is that I have for many, many years and you can go back, you can go back 20 years in this program, and you will hear me using the analogy of how sola scriptura is the walls.

01:17:14

And so the people that are in the inside of the church and are satisfied with what they have are studying the scriptures.

01:17:25

It's the people standing over at the windows that worry me. It's the people that are looking outside and going,

01:17:35

I don't know, I wish we had a little more. It's sort of stifling in here.

01:17:43

In fact, as long as we stay in these walls, we're not really going to be seen as the scholars that we could be by the world.

01:17:55

And I've said for years, the people stand at the wall, at the windows. Unless the

01:18:00

Lord does something for them, they're going to leave. They're not satisfied with what God has given.

01:18:09

And I have sat down with so many people that had already climbed out the window.

01:18:19

And maybe some loved ones thought maybe I could just talk them back in or something like that. I'm sorry.

01:18:26

I cannot change hearts. I can ask serious questions.

01:18:31

I can try to correct misapprehensions. But the fact of the matter is once you've decided, you want to believe that stuff out there.

01:18:41

That's a spiritual issue. I can't change the heart. I can testify of the truth.

01:18:47

I can pray that the spirit of God will work. And I've seen it happen.

01:18:52

I've seen people. We have had people come to us. I can't tell you how many people. I've had people come to me and said, you know,

01:19:01

I swam the Tiber and I hated you and I mocked you and I said horrible things about you in social media.

01:19:13

But then I found out that it was empty, that all the smells and bells cannot meet the need of your soul.

01:19:30

And I want to apologize to the things I said. And I want to thank you for having said the things you said.

01:19:35

They brought me back. So I've seen it. I've seen it happen both directions. And it's the spirit of God that did both those things.

01:19:44

Spirit of God has hardened some people in their rebellion. Spirit of God brings people back. God's accomplishing his purposes.

01:19:53

But I know this is the key issue. And we cannot in any way, shape or form ever let down our guard when it comes to the centrality of Sola Scriptura.

01:20:08

So I, my heart has been broken as I see my fellow

01:20:14

Reformed Baptists turn Sola Scriptura into a throwaway joke line as a means of mocking those of us who, for example, are saying, hey, you know,

01:20:29

Aristotelian categories, Thomas Aquinas might want to think about some of the surrounding issues and the authority issues that come with that.

01:20:41

And, you know, there are a lot of reasons to question all of this. And Aquinas didn't function on the grounds of Sola Scriptura.

01:20:49

And here's, I gave, I've given examples and now it has become a game amongst men that some of whom

01:21:00

I know have preached in their church, have taught in their schools. And somebody can quote something like, the study of doctrinal truth apart from its historical background leads to a truncated theology.

01:21:17

And a PhD Reformed Baptist well -known can respond to that by going, wait a minute, what about Sola Scriptura?

01:21:25

And the rest of the comments are about papist. Someone else in the same group quoted something from Gill, papist.

01:21:37

It's all mockery. And it makes me sit back and go, you cannot ever have had to sit in your office with a former member of your church that is now going to a priest for forgiveness because they rejected

01:21:52

Sola Scriptura and make that kind of joke. Don't do it. Stop it.

01:21:59

Stop it. Don't do it. We all,

01:22:06

I thought we all believe this stuff. I thought we were all on the same page. Stunning.

01:22:15

Shocking to me. Vitally important things.

01:22:26

Yes, I know. Rich just, Rich just put this up against the glass.

01:22:34

Said it's 15 years old. Is it? 2004. It's 2004,

01:22:42

Rich. Keep adding. Right. So, 18 years old.

01:22:51

That's okay. I made a comment about math in the sermon Sunday night. And yeah, 18 years old.

01:23:00

Yeah. Look, I'm not, I'm not saying anything I have not said for a long, long time. No question about it.

01:23:07

And the people who used to think this was wonderful, now all of a sudden, not so much so.

01:23:15

Who's changed? Why? And what's the end result going to be? What's the end result going to be?

01:23:20

I know. Why don't you know? Don't know.

01:23:27

Don't know. Okay. Well, we have gone, like I said,

01:23:32

I had, oh, you know what? I had, where'd it go?

01:23:41

I had the papal syllabus. I'll just, I just want to mention it to you guys.

01:23:50

If you read sections 15, statements 15 through 18 of the papal syllabus of errors,

01:23:59

I believe it's 1864. It's so descriptive of Francis, it's not even funny.

01:24:08

How do you, who continue to defend the abiding validity of the papacy, how can you look at something like this?

01:24:19

Recognize that what was taught by Popes for hundreds of years is not being taught by the current

01:24:24

Pope and probably won't be taught by the next Pope. And then tell me this is your infallible authority.

01:24:33

He's not Theanostas. His teachings are not Theanostas. The bishops of Rome have never been Theanostas.

01:24:39

And that's why they will always lead you astray. That's why they'll read through the papal syllabus very sometime and you'll go, that's really not what the

01:24:54

Popes say today. No. And that was only 1864. 1864 is modern history.

01:25:01

That's modern history. That's not ancient history. Yeah. Much, much has changed, but the word of God doesn't.

01:25:09

Thanks be to God for that. All right. Well, thank you for that. Remember on Thursday, Oscar Dunlap, Daniel Constantino, 6 p .m.

01:25:23

Eastern. Right, right. 6 p .m. Eastern. Rich is using his fingers in the other room.

01:25:30

After that problem, he's doing, yeah. We'll figure this one out.

01:25:36

Did a debate with two Mormons at our church a couple weeks ago. I moderated it.

01:25:43

We'll tell the stories about that during the discussion.

01:25:50

Moderation is not easy for me to do, especially when the one side starts quoting me out of context and I can't say anything.

01:25:58

Yeah. I actually texted Zach, Pastor Zach, and I said, somebody please shoot me.

01:26:06

Literally. He can show you. I can show you from it. Someone please shoot me. It was tough.

01:26:13

But anyways, they're going to come in and we're going to talk about the changing, the changing, changing, changing world of Mormonism and how the debate went.

01:26:22

We'll play some clips and respond to some stuff and hopefully that'll be really neat and useful. It'll be the first time that I can think of that we've had multiple people in the big studio.

01:26:33

Rich is rearranging stuff. We'll see how it all goes.

01:26:39

It may crash and burn and be really bad, but we'll hope not. No, Rich is saying it's...

01:26:44

Oh boy. Okay. He's made... I wish you had not said that. But anyways, that'll be this