Tim Keller on Jesus Getting Close to You, DTS and Ephesians 5, the Book of Abraham

Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near?

Why? Just like me, they long to be close to you.

Well, some of you that are older like me remember the angelic voice of Karen Carpenter.

That was 1971, I think. That was a long time. Even I was young in 1971.

I wasn't even 10 yet. But the question that we face at the beginning of the program today is, did

Karen Carpenter have a deep theological insight into the doctrine of the

Atonement? I couldn't get that song out of my mind yesterday.

You know, this type of thing can only happen. This can only happen in the

Twitterverse. It can only happen today. This could not have happened even 10 years ago.

But we ended up having an interesting... Yes, I do have some other stuff over here.

We're going to get to that a little bit later on. Some of you may recognize the documentary, History of the Church, and the triple combination of the

LDS Church. Yesterday, I was looking through Facebook, and I encountered a tweet that had been reposted, unfortunately, by my daughter.

And for those of you who are confused about these things, that's...

Let's see. There we go. There you go. Make the computer do what it's supposed to do here.

Some people expect to find only Summer White. Her name is Summer Yeager.

But she had posted a quotation, a citation, from Timothy Keller.

And she had simply cited it and had just put,

Huh? Or Hmm? I forget which one it was. It was a Huh? Or a Hmm? And I read the citation.

I read the tweet. And I decided I wanted to respond to it.

If it had been written by Joel Osteen, I wouldn't have responded to it.

It sounded like it was written by Joel Osteen, which is what made me want to respond to it. Here is the quotation directly.

The God of the Universe became a wiggling baby in order to get close to you.

This says 411 AM, June 25th, 2018. Now, let me read it again.

The God of the Universe became a wiggling baby in order to get close to you.

Now you know why that song got stuck in my head. Close to you.

And I sat down and I hit the response thingy.

And here is what I wrote. No, sir. The second person of the

Trinity took on a perfect human nature, first and foremost, to bring glory to the Triune God and the redemption of a completely unworthy people, upon whom the

Triune God had decreed mercy and grace in eternity past. That's not getting, quote, close to you, end quote.

That was immediately identified as being a nitpicking of his post.

And very, very little of what ended up coming out over the course of the past 24 hours was anything more than, hey, we shouldn't be talking about these things, you're nitpicking on things, this man's done great work in other areas, etc.,

etc., rather than dealing with the reality of what was actually said. We have a man who is a

Presbyterian. He is ostensibly a Reformed theologian. And I've said more than once, a

Reformed theologian should recoil in horror from making the statement, the

God of the universe became a wiggling baby in order to get close to you. Now, aside from the fact that it's ignoring the need, can we move over here because my stuff's over here, aside from the fact that it's ignoring the need to be specific about who became incarnate, it was the

Son, it wasn't the Father, it wasn't the Spirit, there's a lot of confusion on people's parts about things like that.

And wiggling baby, I don't necessarily like that terminology very well, only because the

New Testament writers themselves show such tremendous respect for the youth of Christ to only give us that one brief insight when he was 12 years of age and it was the

Gnostics that got into all the rest of that stuff. But I didn't make reference to any of that. I was focused in my comments,

I wrote a little Facebook article about it. In order to get close to you, in order to get close to you, the

God of the universe, so this is the incarnation, the God of the universe became a wiggling baby in order to get close to you.

Well, first of all, he didn't need the incarnation to get spatially close to me because God is omnipresent.

So it can't be that. So what is it supposed to mean? What would a

Reformed theologian be stating when saying, in order to get close to you?

Well, first of all, just on the face of it, when it says, in order to get close to you, you would not believe the effort that has been expended by people in the

Twitterverse to try to wring some level of Orthodox truth out of this short sentence.

Rather than just going, yeah, that missed it by a mile. Ouch, must have been early in the morning, something along those lines.

That would have been the easy way. But instead, it's like, well, you know, this gives us insight into the incarnation and the redemptive purposes of God.

No, it says, in order to get close to you. Now, we live amongst a people who are absolutely sold out to human autonomy, to the centrality of man.

And my objection has been, as Reformed theologians, our focus is upon what

God has done, and man is the gracious object of God's activities,

His redemptive work. There needed to be an incarnation to redeem man.

But all of this was not focused upon man. It was focused upon, well, what does

Ephesians 1 say? To the praise of His glorious grace. It's what the triune God chose to do in eternity past.

So, as I point out to a number of people, if Joel Osteen had written this, we'd all go, yeah, that's

Joel. Why? Because Joel Osteen is all about you, you, you, you, you, you, you. God is just a big servant in the sky.

And He's just, you know, there to do for you, you know, make your teeth white and straight and give you health and money and success.

And every Joel Osteen sermon is the same thing. It's all about you, you, you, you, you. So is this sentence.

So is this sentence. You can't avoid it. When you read the phrase, in order to get close to you, what is the focus?

It's not him. It's you. It's you. God wanted to get close to you.

Well, you know, that's not why the incarnation took place.

It wasn't that God was feeling distance. And so He wanted to get close to you. And so the incarnation took place.

The second person of the Trinity entered into human flesh to become the

God -man so that not you individually only, but us as the elect of God, rebel sinners, undeserving, under His wrath, could be united with Him.

And in time, the great miracle of regeneration takes place, the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, the taking out of the heart of stone, giving a heart of flesh, adoption, that union with Christ becomes our experience in time.

And that is how we have salvation. But it is the people of God that are united to the

Son. And this Western, secular individualism, you know, you may be trying to get people through the doors with that kind of thing, but then you're going to have to show them a

Bible that doesn't really present that kind of thing. And so it didn't seem to me to be that big of a deal.

There needed to be a correction. It was imbalanced. It's not helpful in this day and age when we have so many people that are already coming through the church doors with this maddening human autonomy as the central aspect of their thinking.

And it didn't help as well as I thought about it later on.

A bunch of people have posted the picture today. It wasn't that long ago that we had three guys doing ballet in the worship service at Tim Keller's church.

Now, I didn't say anything about that back then. I don't think I did. I think I mentioned it when someone put my face on one of those dudes last year.

I assume they were dudes. I hope they were dudes, anyway. But, you know, that makes you go, okay?

And then, of course, we have Keller's involvement with Biologos, which makes a lot of us go,

I was thinking this morning, I've often said when lecturing on church history, that the great reformers would not have extended a right hand of fellowship to me as a dreaded

Baptist. Let me tell you something.

Calvin would not have taken well to the three dancing dudes in church, either. He may have expelled me, but I think there would have been a stake for somebody for that one.

Yeah, okay. The facts are facts, man.

That's just the way that one is. Just think about what happened.

Just think about some of the conflicts that Calvin had in Geneva, and you'll get the message on that one.

It's pretty clear. Anyway, so I just tried to provide a balanced response that corrected a massive imbalance.

And what I get are people just going to unbelievable lengths to try to rescue this statement and make it somehow fit into some orthodox schema.

Now, were there people that were already greatly opposed to Dr.

Keller that just jumped on that and said, well, see, there you go. Here's just more evidence of just how far off this guy is, blah, blah, blah.

Well, I know a lot of people like to try to hold me accountable for everything that's said on the internet, but I ain't accountable for anybody else than me.

And what I said was biblical, systematic theology -based.

It was consistent with what I've said all along. No one even tried to poke a hole in what

I said. Nobody. Because they can't, and they know it. They know it. They know what I said was true. But you're just nitpicking.

No, I wasn't nitpicking. When you have someone with his status giving such a horrifically imbalanced statement, you say, well, go ahead and say what you really think.

Well, it's Twitter. Who cares? Well, okay, I guess we shouldn't be having any, shouldn't be saying.

I guess what that also means is whenever anyone says anything that is truly theologically significant or helpful or good, well, it's just Twitter.

Let's not worry about it. Let's just turn the whole thing off. Well, maybe we should. But what was really, really concerning to many people and remains concerning to me is that whoever wrote this, maybe he did.

A lot of the big guys have other people that take care of their Twitter feed and they'll hand them something or say something about X, Y, or Z or whatever.

I don't know. It was interesting, I should mention this, it was interesting that this morning there was sort of an acknowledgement of the controversy because responding to me, well, to Jonathan Kuzar, but also to me,

Timothy Keller has, The Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, unable to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk.

It meant love to the uttermost for unlovely human beings that they through his poverty become rich.

J .I. Packer. Now, if that,

I took that, and there was a guy named

Jordan Chase that took it this way as well. Notice what

Jordan Chase said. Keller slow roasted the truly reformed crowd, triggered them first, then threw out

Packer on them. He runs circles around the attack first types. Love it. Yeah, he missed it.

He's been taken in pretty well too. If this is meant to be a follow -up, notice what's missing.

The very point of the objection. What good old Jordan Chase doesn't get is you got gamed, son.

You're the one that got gamed by Timothy Keller if you're taking it this way. Because this is an acknowledgement of the error of the first one.

Now, you may take it, well, see, he's saying Packer said the same thing we did. Packer said nothing about in order to get close to you, which was and is and must be and always shall be.

The objection to what was said. It was the anthropocentrism. It was the making you the focus of the incarnation that should cause a reformed theologian to recoil in horror.

That's not in J .I. Packer's statement because J .I. Packer is a reformed theologian.

And I dare you to find someplace in J .I. Packer's writings where he said that the incarnation took place in order for Jesus to get close to you.

Because he hasn't said that, nor will he. Instead, what you have, and there's a dash here, and it looks like it filled up the whole 280, so I'm wondering where the breaks are and exactly what the quote's from.

No sources given. It meant loved the uttermost for what? Unlovely human beings.

That's not getting close to you. That's recognizing you're a sinner and rebelling against God that needs to be changed.

That was the whole point. That wasn't there. And that's what's missing in the thought and mind of so many of the people who are listening to what we're saying.

And because, again, we're living in the first fully secularized generation in our society.

We are living now with people whose parents totally set aside the heritage that was theirs.

And so that's an extremely dangerous situation to be in. And what it means is they are bringing their secular, humanistic, autonomous man concepts in.

And we do not have the luxury for imprecise language when speaking about Christian truth to people who are going to misinterpret it and twist it because of the context they're in.

That's not the apostolic example. That's not the apostolic example, is it?

Most certainly not. So either this is,

A, an attempt to defense. Well, Packer said it. Well, Packer didn't say that. B, by offering it, there is a recognition that we can't find any reformed person that sang the

Karen Carpenter song. And that's what everybody was focused upon. And that's where the problem lies.

And so there wasn't any threw out Packer on them.

He runs circles around the attack first types. Or he fools people really easily.

Or some people are easily fooled. But then other things came out that were rather interesting.

A guy named Blake Isaac said, There's really nothing wrong with what Packer said.

Well, no one said there was anything wrong with what Packer said. Notice the shift? We weren't talking about what

Packer said. We were talking about what Dr. Keller said. He says, I do have an issue with White saying our salvation was a byproduct of God seeking his glory, though.

If we want to picket communication, that's a bigger one to me than Keller's odd word choice. Well, evidently,

Blake Isaac doesn't understand reformed theology or isn't reformed himself or something. I don't know. Maybe he's a good man centered synergist.

And that would make perfect sense for him. And then we can go to John six or Ephesians one and have a discussion of that issue.

But the point was, Timothy Keller is the pastor of a Presbyterian church, which

I still would imagine has something about the Westminster Confession of Faith somewhere around there.

So, yeah, there you go. Someone just posted something.

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the picture

I had seen about getting close to you. And it is scary. Anyway, I don't want to spend too much time commenting on what issues like this demonstrate about what's going on in communication.

I mean, I am. I am that close to pipering

Twitter. And if you know what I mean by that, Piper just post stuff.

He doesn't have any interaction as far as I can tell. It's just an announcement place. If you want to know what they're doing at Bethlehem or a quote unquote devotional thought or whatever from John Piper, then you can follow him on Twitter.

But there's not going to be any interaction. I've always had at least some level of interaction, though my block list and mute list is really, really long these days.

But it was pretty amazing to see the kind of responses and the emotional responses.

Instead of listening to what is said, everybody now,

Christian or non -Christian, emotes before they think. They're concerned about their being offended.

The emotion comes up first. This is the same.

I've been having some conversations with Fox News. Suspended a guy for two weeks for saying, are you out of your cotton picking mind?

Suspended for two. Are you going to do that to me for two weeks? You could take over two weeks because I said the same thing. Are they out of their cotton picking mind?

I mean, and then to watch folks go, well, you need to understand because, see, this happened 160 years ago.

You weren't around 160 years ago. Why? This all ties in with intersectionality and all the rest of this stuff.

No society is going to flourish or survive when major portions of its people are walking around with a big chip on their shoulder going,

I am going to be offended by anything anyone says to me, whether there's any intention of offense or not.

And if I have to transport their words out of the context they gave them. 500 years in the past, it doesn't matter.

As long as I can do it, then I can claim that I've been offended. There is no way to have meaningful conversation.

When that is allowed, that has to be called out for what it is. We are now at the highest levels of our society and the elites are pushing this.

We are now living in a day where it is enforced kindergarten every day.

It's enforced kindergarten. We went and told the teacher on everybody in kindergarten because that's the level of maturity that we have.

We were offended by everything because when you're born, my goodness, the entire universe surrounds you.

It all revolves around you. Anyone who is a parent knows that a newborn child has zero capacity for thinking about anyone but themselves.

That's just how we're born. And that's a good thing because they're like a black hole of selfishness.

They suck it all out of the parents. It's gone. It's right into that child.

As we grow, we are supposed to mature.

Eventually that day comes when you make the decision, you know what, I could have been offended by what someone just said, but I'm having too much fun doing something else, so I'm not going to be.

I'm just going to go on. That process is supposed to continue on until you get to adulthood when you are in control of your emotions and your mind.

And you have discipline. And you can determine what you're going to be offended at or not.

And you can actually make the choice. I'm not going to be offended at all. I'm going to stay focused upon the issues.

And whatever this person does is not going to affect my happiness this day. Yeah, that's called being an adult.

And unfortunately, in our society today, that's all gone. Nope, nope.

We're just going to emote ourselves right into the middle of next week. And so you can lose your job for using phrases where there is zero intentionality on your part.

But as long as somebody else can transport your words into some completely foreign context and claim offense, you're doomed.

We're doomed. We're doomed in that situation. That's the end of that. You can't have meaningful conversation at that point.

That is how you stifle all debate, all conversation whatsoever.

It's the end of it. And there can be no progress in a society where that is the case.

There just can't be. There just can't be. So I was stunned.

These days, over the past couple of weeks, honestly, when I read something on Twitter, I have to literally sit back and sometimes

I have to try to click. And that's one of the problems if you have to block somebody or mute somebody.

You can frequently just completely lose what the context is when you click back because people are responding to people you can't see anymore.

And it's just a real pain. But I literally have to sit there and go,

OK, which controversy is this about? Because sometimes I can't tell. I'm just being insulted, being told that I'm off the rails or what was the thing the guy is saying this morning?

Coming apart, fraying, something. I don't remember what it was. And I have to sit there and go,

OK, which of the many things that people are coming after me about now is this?

Is this about complementarianism? I'm going to make some comments about that today, but please, hello, let me announce something right now.

Not my area. Not my area. Do I know what the arguments are?

Yeah. Then why won't you debate it? Because I've got a PhD to finish in something that is much more important, in my opinion, in my opinion.

And nobody else gets to tell me what the Lord is going to have me to do as far as what

I'm supposed to have as my priorities. Everybody does that for me.

Even my friends sometimes do that for me. But I'm the one that has to answer for these things. There are men who have written entire books in this subject.

I've never even preached a sermon on it. But the area that I'm working in, in my dissertation, there are only a very small number of people working in that area.

So, there you go. Somebody else is going to have to do that. Not me.

I'll make some comments about it. It's not that it would be an impossible subject to debate.

I would simply have to stop everything else I'm doing. Because if I'm going to do a debate, there are at least half a dozen books that I could come up with in a matter of moments that I would have to read, listen to, lectures to listen to, to do a meaningful job.

I don't want to do a debate and then three years later have to come back and say, You know, I said this once, but now

I've done the homework and I shouldn't have gone there. I don't want to do that. So, is it about the ethnic issues?

Is it about that? Is it about the Revoice Conference, which started today? I don't know if there's a live feed.

I haven't looked. I don't know. I don't have the energy for that right now either.

That needs to be being looked at. It is amazing the stuff where I saw someone...

What was the context? Again, it was one of those things, I tried to follow the thread and the thread gets broken someplace and you're lost.

You can't figure out where it was coming from. But it was someone with the

Revoice Conference who was talking about, Are same -sex attracted? And they use something about transgendered

Christians. And I'm like, Well, I guess we should have seen that coming. Because there is a world of difference between the issues you're dealing with when talking about homosexuality, bisexuality, and then on the other side of the planet is transgenderism.

I mean, vast differences. They may all pretend they're one community, but the only thing that actually joins all those letters that are getting longer and longer and longer is a shared rebellion against a biblical standard.

But logically, transgenderism and homosexuality, there's a huge difference between the two.

Huge difference between the two. Anyway, so you've got that stuff, you've got the racial reconciliation stuff, and then you just start piling on all the other things over time.

And you're like, So why is this person coming after me? I don't know. I can't figure out. But circling back around before I change subject, let me just make sure, because I did change subjects, but I'm just going to circle back around, make sure

I make a closing statement here. My objection was and remains to Timothy Keller's tweet.

It's man -centeredness. It's man -centeredness. The Incarnation was not so that Jesus could get close to you.

The Incarnation, from any balanced biblical perspective, has cosmic transcendent meaning.

It is astonishing to think that the God who created this vast universe, a universe so vast that no human mind can begin to contain it, and in fact, no human mind even had the idea of how vast it was until maybe 120, 130 years ago.

Maybe even less, now that I think about it. That incredible claim of the

Christian faith, that the God who sustains a hundred billion galaxies, a hundred billion galaxies, entered into his own creation.

Now, you say, but yeah, he did so to save me. As a part of God's people, yes.

But my goodness, folks, if you can't see the difference between me as a part of the people of God who've been united to Christ, and me as the focus,

I don't even know what to say. I don't know what to say at that point.

It's a little scary. So, as I read this, it sounded very much to me like a capitulation to the spirit of the age.

It's all about you. It's not about you. It's about him. So, there was that.

Now, then

I run across ChristianPost .com, June 23rd. What in the world is going on in the...

Man, I'm not sure I want to look in channel. I look over there and see odd, strange things. Anyway, June 23rd,

Christian Post. I guess I shouldn't be looking at that. Does Ephesians 5 really tell women to submit to their husbands?

Evangelical seminary professors respond. Now, there have been articles like this forever.

Forever. But not coming from Dallas Theological Seminary.

DTS. DTS? And who do we have responding here?

But Sandra Glahn, Associate Professor in Media, Arts, and Worship at DTS, who teaches a gender studies course.

And Dr. Daryl Bach, Senior Research Professor of New Testament at DTS. Now, everybody knows

Daryl Bach. I had never heard of Sandra Glahn. But they're together on this.

And evidently, in this DTS podcast, Bach referred to Ephesians 5 as a countercultural passage that has been misused.

What makes that passage so famous and a bugaboo for some people is the word submission comes up. Only it's not submission for most people.

For some people, the word submission is a bad word. It's almost a four -letter word, explained Bach. Glahn went on to explain that people reading the biblical passage should pay close attention to the verbs used in the scripture, especially for the husband.

Often, when we look at the verbs, the wife gets to submit, and it gets taught that the husband gets to lead. But that's not his verb.

That verb is not there. His verb is love. It's not phileo love. It's agape love. There isn't any difference between the two.

Glad to mention that. Which looks a lot like submission, said

Glahn. Submission is not a woman word. It's a human word. We are all called to live in submission to our

Creator, and the beginning of that section is submit yourselves to one another. Bach explained that regarding the

Ephesians passage. He has his students take out a sheet of paper, draw a line down the middle, and have one column be for listing power terms in the passage and the other for service terms.

It takes power to serve. I just thought I'd mention that. When it's all said and done, inevitably what

I have is, at least most often is, there will be one term that's on the power side. It's the term head.

And then everything else is on this service column, Bach noted. We have failed to see that what is happening to this term is it's being reconfigured.

It's being completely reconfigured by everything else that's been said over here. So I'm supposed to nurture, care, treat the body of this person as if it's my own body, etc.

Everything is not about what this person can do for me, but about what I can do for this person. Bach's and Glahn's analysis of Ephesians was one of many topics related to gender, the

Church, and the Bible in the podcast. At least as far as a recognition that Ephesians 5 would be abused if it is used as some sort of male dominance power trip passage.

I mean I had one guy, I can't find it, I'm trying to find stuff on Twitter, but I had one guy

I think yesterday, last evening I think, say that all male complementarians, they just want to keep women down.

That's the only reason they hold these views. Did you see

Tom Buck's response to it? Yes, yes, yes.

Because my wife had flown into Dallas last week when I was there, and Tom was sitting, we were sitting with Justin Peters down in the lobby of the hotel.

And so I was waiting for my wife, I kept glancing over, she was supposed to be coming, and so finally she comes in and I went over, and I brought her over and introduced her to Justin and to Tom.

And so it was only just a minute because she wasn't feeling well, I had to get her up to the room and let her get some food and stuff.

Anyway, and Jason Lyle was coming, we ended up having dinner that evening, and I already told you about that, we discovered all the cool stuff about Star Trek.

Anyway, so Tom says, yeah, it seemed like you guys had a normal, loving relationship, up until the point where she followed behind you, 12 faces behind you, crying out, make way for the

Lord and King or something along those lines. As if that's what a complimentarian actually believes or practices.

I was like, yeah, no, that didn't happen, actually. No, I was making sure that she wanted to get to the room, and so we got that taken care of.

Appreciate it, and it's Tom's birthday today, so I should say happy birthday to brother

Tom over there in Lyndale, Texas. He's actually younger than I am.

Then again, most people these days seem to be, except you. Still, somehow stayed ahead of me,

I'm not sure. Yeah, well, you can say that if you'd like, but I could put you on a bike in Idaho Springs in a couple weeks, and we'll see when you get to the top of Mount Evans.

Actually, we'll see about a quarter of the way up alongside the road in the ambulance, is how that would work.

Anyway, what did you say? You got to work? Is that what you're saying? Uh -huh. All right. Got to drive.

Yeah. Okay. Right. Anyway, let's look at Ephesians 5 for a second. I just wanted to respond to this, because maybe the

Christian post missed this or something. Maybe they just got it all wrong. I don't know.

But words are words. Oh, no, that's all right.

Everybody else can look it up. Ephesians 5 .20, Always giving thanks for all things in the name of our

Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father. And the NASB continues the sentence with the translation, and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.

The NASB on 28th actually begins a new sentence.

Be subject to one another in the fear of Christ, wives to your husbands in the

Lord, because the man is the head of the wife, as also

Christ is the head of the church, and he is the savior of the body. So there's multiple ways in which the, because remember, when the new sentence is written, there's no punctuation, there's no capitals, spaces between words, etc.,

etc. So it's editorial and interpretational as to where you make those breaks.

But it is true that the verb to be subject is found in verse 21.

Now, in the NASB on 28th edition, there is no specific verb to submit in verse 22, but that's a textual variant.

That's a textual variant. The majority text does have, well, the majority of manuscripts does have, a form of hupotasso that is found right after wives to their own husbands be subject.

There is another, there is a subjunctive form that is found in Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, it's in the

Syriac, Coptic, let, so it's let wives be subject to their husbands.

So there are a lot of manuscripts that have some form of hupotasso.

NASB on 28th doesn't have that, because P46, Vaticanus, and a couple of other church fathers do not have it.

And the idea is that it was much more natural to see it provided, because it smooths things out, than it would be not to have it there.

I will be really interested in seeing, just, this is sort of in passing,

I'll be really interested in seeing what CBGM, what light

CBGM casts on this particular variant. That's going to be really, really interesting.

If I were to guess, man,

I don't know. I can make an argument for either the forms of hupotasso or for its absence.

So I'll hold off my guess, but I'm, Okay, I'll say this. I think

CBGM will probably end up inserting one of the two forms of hupotasso in 522.

That's my guess. I can't, can't say. It's just a guess, just a gut feeling.

So that aside, wives are specifically instructed to be subject to their husbands as to the

Lord. Now, some might argue, well, and the husband should be in subjection to Christ as well.

So you're both in subjection to Christ. Well, of course. But what you don't have is verse 23.

For the husband is The husband is the head of the wife.

Just as also Christ, Christ is the head of the church.

Now, do we distinguish between Christ and the church? Yes. Is there a incredibly intimate, loving relationship between the two?

Yes. But is there a plain, discernible, authority relationship implied in the word kephalé between Christ and the church?

Yes. So when the same author says, for the husband is kephalé of the wife, and then uses hos as also

Christ is head of the church, he's making, hos makes an equals mark there.

There's a direct connection. So whatever you want to try to do to get around this, the egalitarian, the only consistent egalitarian argument is to fundamentally deny the consistency of the biblical revelation at this point by stating either something along the lines like, well,

Ephesians is deuteropoline or pseudopoline.

That's one perspective that liberals can take. I mean, that would be the easiest way to go.

Or you can try the societal situation, where you limit this specific assertion to Ephesus based upon something you can dig up from Ephesian culture or something along those lines.

You could go that direction. That this was limited only to the

Ephesian church, that this wasn't something that Paul did with other churches.

Generally, the egalitarian attempt is to say, yeah, but we notice that over here in this letter, this was happening in Corinth.

And so that would mean that this couldn't be what was going on in Ephesus, even though I would make the argument that making

Corinth the standard for what's going on in the rest of the

New Testament churches is backwards. Not only from the

New Testament perspective, because Corinth is a mess, you have to have two long, difficult letters filled with discipline and correction to Corinth and Corinth only, but then historically, what's one of the very first letters we have outside the

New Testament? It's the epistle, it's called the Epistle of Clement. It doesn't ever mention

Clement, but traditionally, but it's an epistle from the church at Rome writing to the church of Corinth.

And what has Corinth done? They've kicked the elders out. And Rome is remonstrating with them on the basis of equality, not we're in charge, we've got the

Pope, blah, blah, blah, blah. That never happens. But as a fellow apostolic fellowship founded by an apostle, there is a remonstrance going on there on the part of Rome toward Corinth.

So anyway, there's going to be some of the ways to try to get around this, but the direct statement, in answer, just the way it was, does

Ephesians 5 really tell women to submit to their husbands? Evangelical seminary professors respond.

I think if you had somebody read this article and say, okay, what was their response? What was their answer to the question?

There would be confusion. There shouldn't be any confusion as to the response to the question.

Yes, Ephesians 5 does really tell women to submit. Well, it should be.

It should be. If you're going to use the term husbands, then it should be wives. It really does tell wives to submit to their husbands.

All the stuff about, you know, it's funny, all the stuff that says about the responsibilities of the husband and to love the wife as his own body, it's as if we've just came up with these things and no generation before us ever knew these things.

Yesterday was my 36th wedding anniversary, and I was particularly reminded of that because at our church, there is a lengthy tradition that at some point during that day, you're going to get a phone call from Pastor Fry, who is going to sing

Happy Anniversary to you on the phone. If he doesn't get you, he will record it to your voicemail.

So I got my Happy Anniversary phone call yesterday.

And if your voicemail is full, he'll call you up and tell you to empty it. Oh, okay.

So he can leave that song message. I personally don't do voicemails, so it doesn't really matter, but he got ahold of me and sang for me.

But 36 years ago, we had to take premarital counseling, and we had to read books, and guess what?

Even back then, before computers, we had books back then, all that stuff was being talked about.

All that stuff. People had accurately translated and understood Ephesians 5 for a long, long time.

It doesn't change the fact that it does present an order of responsibility.

A term kephalé cannot be ignored. So, I don't know.

I don't know. What can I say? The Revoice conference is ongoing.

I'm not watching it. When a meaningful amount...

Let me put it this way. If others inform me that in light of my schedule and the things

I'm trying to do, it would be worth my while to listen to presentations X, Y, and Z, then

I will. But I don't have time to be following it right now. I'm not saying...

That does not mean it's not important. What it means is we're in a body, and there are other people who are significantly more involved in that particular area right now that can let me know what's going on there at a later point, and I can sort of try to catch up.

All right. I wanted to do something incredibly, incredibly unusual.

If I can find it here. There we go. Some of you may know...

Now, by the way, and I was going to look. I will have to look.

For the past number of years... Well, when did we do our first debate in Utah?

Man, that was a long time ago. I'm thinking

I'm remembering that guy. He was the convert, if I recall correctly. He had been a

Presbyterian. Was that Keller? Man, it's been a long time, hasn't it?

Yeah. Richard what? Hopkins. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Are those even recorded? Audio, but not video. Okay. Yeah, Martin Tanner.

That is video. Yeah, that one the King James only guy showed up at, so we were a little nervous as to how that one was going to go.

Remember that? Anyway, so we've started doing debates up in Salt Lake City a long, long time ago, and I think from the very start,

Jason Wallace was involved with that. So Jason has been pastoring

Christ Presbyterian Church up in, well, now it's located in Magna.

At that time it was in Salt Lake for many, many years. And a couple years ago started putting out videos on Mormonism.

He's put out a length of video on homosexuality. He did a debate. He got into doing debates from watching me do debates.

And, you know, he moderated so many of them. It's like, I can do that too. You know, that's what everybody does once they, it's like, ah, that guy ain't very smart.

I can do this myself. And so he's been doing, he's done debates and putting out these videos.

And then a few weeks back, maybe even a couple months back, he said, I'd really like you to look at this video we're working on, on Roman Catholicism, because it's not really my area.

And I was like, oh, dude, I've just got so much going on. Well, finally he prevailed upon me and I listened to it.

I didn't get to watch much of it, but I listened to it. And I'm really looking forward to this thing being posted because it's really, really good.

And so once that's up, I will be posting that. But if you can track down Jason Wallace's stuff that's already up there on Mormonism and plea to homosexuals and so on and so forth, really, really good stuff.

We enjoy getting a chance to go up there. I will be up there. I will be up there for a conference, not this coming weekend, but the weekend thereafter.

On the Friday, I think it's the 6th, I'm doing a debate at the church this time. Last time we did it at the

University of Utah, but I guess it'll be at the church this time. With Alma Allred. I just reposted a picture,

I guess a freeze frame or something, from the dialogue that we had, I think it was two years ago, at the

University of Utah, Alma and I. I am convinced that Alma is one of the three Nephites, and so I'm just going with that.

You can try to disprove it if you wish. But Alma Allred is an incredibly well -read, extremely intelligent, very nice Mormon that I met outside the south gate of the temple in Salt Lake.

Wow. That was 87, maybe?

88? I don't remember the year. But we've known each other for many years now.

So what we're doing is, I'm going to present my three issues of Mormonism that I believe demonstrate

Mormonism is false. And he's going to present three issues of Mormonism that he thinks make

Mormonism great. And we're going to dialogue about it. So it's an interesting way of doing things. I think I've picked my three.

I'm not sure how much time we're going to have either, so we'll see. In preparation for that, by the way,

I went to Deseret Book. You know, LDS Book and Supply is gone.

They used to be at Northern and 35th. That's where I got a lot of my books. Then they moved up to Greenway and 59th for a number of years.

Gone. Just don't even exist. Which is interesting, given the huge growth out there. But not enough to sustain a

Mormon bookstore. That's another issue.

I've told the story about buying my LDS books at the LDS Book and Supply on the southeast corner of Northern and 35th

Avenue years and years ago. They put out a new edition of their scriptures.

This is a nice one. This is thumb -indexed, and it's larger print so I can actually see it.

So this is called The Triple Combination, for those of you who are not familiar with it. Book of Mormon, Dr. Conrad's program at Price. I'm actually going to have this rebound.

Kofi mentioned on Facebook. He showed a Bible he had rebound.

Really nicely done. I've asked him to get me in touch with whoever that might be and see if they'd be willing to do it.

Some people wouldn't be willing to do it, but maybe for someone who's using it for what I'd be using it for, he wouldn't mind doing that.

This is actually a nice leather cover. I may not do it. I had to get the new one with the larger print.

I do have the large print quad, but I don't want to have to drag that up the mountains. It's so heavy.

It's a beast. It's a beast. I've been listening recently to Bushman's biography.

It's an LDS biography of Joseph Smith while riding my bike. It's 28 hours long, so it takes a while to get through it.

It's been really interesting to rekindle my studies of Mormonism after many decades.

It is interesting to me, and this is one of the connections

I wanted to make. Before you tune me out because you're not interested in Mormonism, when

I go out, the past couple years I've gone out with Jeff Durbin at least one night out to Mesa. We used to do that every single night, every single year for 18 years.

We only stopped doing it because the King James Only guys showed up. Even when it had been a number of years since I had lectured on Mormonism or talked to the

Mormons specifically out there in Mesa or up in Salt Lake or whatever, I was astounded at how many of my memorized texts from the

Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Proverbs, and Proverbs 2, I think I can still get through section 114 of the Doctrine and Covenants by memory.

David W. Patton, the prophecy about his going on a mission. Brigham Young in Journal of Discourses, take up the

Bible, compare the religion of the Latter -day Saints with it, see if you'll stand the test. What's interesting is a connection that I made while I was thinking about that, either this morning or yesterday.

Remember the Ehrman -Lycona debate? And remember what

Ehrman's argument was? Well, what his argument was at one point.

His argument was that, he said, Do any of you remember what

Barack Obama said in his last State of the Union address? Well, I'm going to answer that no, because I never listened to any of Barack Obama's State of the

Union addresses. But now you could make it Trump's, and I'd have to say the same thing. But he's saying, so 50 years later, 60 years later, making the gospel writing as far later as possible, how could anyone ever remember what

Jesus actually said? So obviously these are not the actual words of Jesus. Now, what was Lycona's response to that?

It was a good response. Remember what he did? Over and over and over and over and over and over.

Remember how he went over the word over so many times that people were starting to bang on their keyboards or their steering wheels or whatever else?

Okay, stop already! But it made the point, and it caused you to remember it, that the disciples told these stories over and over and over again.

Now what's interesting to me, at least, I figured it out before we stopped going up to Salt Lake City.

Between the Easter pageant and Salt Lake City, minimally 5 ,000

LDS missionaries that I've had substantial interaction with, not just a high elder, blah, blah, blah, but actually got into it.

Minimally. We're talking almost two decades. Going to Salt Lake City twice, doing the Easter pageant, out there for hours and hours and hours.

This was back when they actually still talked to you. Has there been changes there? Oh, meeting in people's homes, yeah, for years.

And so, minimally 5 ,000 missionaries over that time period. And many just plain old, and that's the missionaries!

So you're talking 10 ,000 Mormons. You're probably talking 15 ,000 conversations easily over that time period.

And what would I be doing during that time? I'd be saying the same things over and over and over and over and over again.

And guess what? As I'm moving towards 60, 50, 60 years, as I'm moving towards 60,

I still remember that stuff. I can still tell you where in this triple. And I just got this one.

My brown one, my real nice brown one with all the markings and stuff in it, that I had.

Well, I had the little mini brown one, and then I had my nice, what would now be called a medium.

I would never have gotten... I would have scoffed at this, because you couldn't put this in your pocket or in your bag.

Now it's all I can get, because it's all I can see. That's how long I've been doing this. But that one would have all sorts of markings, bright markings in it, especially to make it easier to find stuff under streetlights, because that's often where I'd be using it.

But I remember where stuff is on the page, even in this one. I've looked stuff up even here.

Section 84, verses 20 and 21. Just looked up and said, yep, still where it was before.

That hasn't changed much. That's interesting. So the point is, my own experience verifies the validity of Mike Licona's argument against Bart Ehrman over and over and over again.

Even though many of those quotes were not quotes I would be using at any other point in my life.

They'd only be used in a conversation with a Mormon. That's the only time. Why would I be quoting Brigham Young to anybody else?

Right? Still remember him to this day. Still remember him to this day.

In fact, certain of those conversations, I still remember extremely clearly to this day.

Because I used those conversations as examples.

The guy who, the young Mormon. I remember which way I was facing in Mesa with my little red

King James Bible. And I know where on the page, the verses outlined in yellow, where he reached over and he tapped at his finger and said, that is wrong and I feel good saying that.

Ephesians 1 .11. I remember the look on the face of the missionary that had all these tracts stuffed into his pockets that he had taken from people as they were going in.

Where he was standing. Of course, we took a picture of him, so that helped. But that kind of stuff, it sticks with you.

The guy that came out of the North Gate of the temple. And I had that strong impression to talk to him about archaeology in the

Book of Mormon, which is not a subject that I normally dealt with at all. Turns out that was the only thing he would have talked to me about.

Or the real tall guy that was striding past us at the West Gate. And I did my best

Wally Taupe impersonation and got him to take a tract. And he walked through the gate flipped the tract as all

Mormons genetically do. Saw that it was a Christian tract. You see his shoulders go down.

Because you know he's arguing with himself. I shouldn't say anything to these people. But he stops, he turns around in frustration.

He looks at me. He says, you know what's wrong with you? And I had had a lot of people.

I still have a lot of people. But back then, you didn't have social media. I get it every day now.

But it wasn't the first time someone would say, you know what's wrong with you? They looked at me and said, you think sex is dirty.

Hadn't heard that one before. And he said, you don't believe that God the

Father in the physical body could beget with the Virgin Mary the body of Jesus. And that's why this is a true church and you're the wrong church.

Have a nice day. And turned around and walked in. I'm rarely left speechless, but I was that time.

And I remember that with incredible clarity. Why? Because I've told this story a number of times.

Over and over and over again. So lo and behold, there you go.

That's my application at that point. But anyways, what I wanted to remind you of.

Yes, Mormonism is changing. But there are still believing, faithful Mormons.

They are harder to talk to than ever because of the deep level of subjectivity that has become the essence of their faith.

The back door of Mormonism has been kicked open. And there are a lot of people,

I believe a lot of people, in that multinational, global church that have serious doubts, but they don't know where to go.

And there has never been a time when there was a greater need for compassionate, caring

Christians who know what they believe. Who can be used as gospel light to the

Mormon people, but in such a fashion as to rescue them from the specter of simple, rampant unbelief in God in toto.

Because what's happening with many of these people is they simply abandon all belief in God and figure, well, if Mormonism wasn't it, then

I can't believe anything else. And so there are tremendous resources.

I follow Sandra Tanner on Facebook. She remains faithful after all of these years.

Bill McKeever, another wonderfully faithful brother up there. Tyrus tirelessly ministering amongst the

Mormons. And people continue to write good books. Of course, the subjects have pretty much been exhausted with one difference.

Over here to my right, I guess we can switch the camera here. Over here is that case, the seven volumes plus index case bound set.

It's called the Documentary History of the Church, DHC. And what

I didn't bring in was the 26 volume

Journal of Discourses. I had the journals on my phone, but the people that did it haven't updated it to work with OS 11.

So it stopped working. That sort of bugs me. Yeah, because you've tried to fire it up.

It just says contact the... And they have to...

Oh, I don't know. That's right. You deconverted. Anyway, I didn't bring in the 26 volume set of the

Journal of Discourses, which I brought home in the back of a motorcycle in 1983.

82, 83. Somewhere in there. That's 26 volumes. I had to strap that baby down.

Well, that was my 750, so it had a little bit of room. It was still a wide load.

Should have had little flags on it or something like that when I brought that one home. Anyway, there is a tremendous amount of information about Mormonism.

And I remember clearly, when I first started studying Mormonism, I just felt like there was no way

I could ever learn all this stuff. I mean, when you think about it, you've got the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, Teachings of the

Prophet Joseph Smith, marvelous work in one. You've got the Journal of Discourses, Document of the History of the Church. And that gets you into dealing with the prophecies of Joseph Smith and the history of the

Book of Mormon and Mesoamerican archaeology and Egyptology and prophecies and temple ceremonies.

And, oh my goodness, how do you ever keep it straight? Well, the only reason I ever got it straight was because I very quickly began ministering to Mormons directly for many, many, many hours on end.

And it is that which gets it put into your brain in a proper order, is those kinds of conversations.

But there is a lot to master. And unlike Jehovah's Witnesses, where you have a much narrower spectrum of things, but you need to know it much more in depth, there is a broad spectrum in Mormonism that you can be looking at.

And so, what has changed, though, since my days of studying

Mormonism? I have a few of these volumes in my library, but my goodness, I was looking at Deseret Book.

We could drop a bundle there. We really could. Because over the past ten years, the volumes that have been published by the church historian, well, you know, the picture of the seer stone, and pretty much everything that used to be just in film, microfiche, microfiche, microfilm, you know, that's how we had gotten copies for my

Mormon resource notebook back there, was we had gone to the church historian's department and had microfilmed, taken photocopies from these microfilms back in the 1980s.

You can get all that stuff in full color, glossy plates now, published by the church historian's department.

And back in the day, we were carrying these photocopies around to show these things to missionaries and others to say, this is the history.

This is your history. This is where you're coming from. Now they can all go to the Deseret Book and get it. It is truly amazing how many things that we were telling

Mormons decades ago, and they're going, no, no, no, no, no, no. And now the church is saying, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

You know, I did note a few years ago when the church literally threw

Brigham Young under the bus on the race issue. And I'm just sitting here going, that guy is the one through whom you trace your priesthood authority?

And he, teaching in the general conference, said that the day that the black receives the priesthood is the day the church goes into apostasy?

And you're just going to throw him under the bus and still continue to claim that you have the restored priesthood and priesthood authority?

How does that work? There's been, and as far as I can tell, the trend is going to continue.

Mormonism has been a religion of documentation from its earliest period.

I mean, wouldn't you like to have seven volumes written by the apostles on their history rather than just 28 chapters of full -size books like this?

Now, I mean, don't get me wrong. The vast majority of the stuff in here is boring. I mean, really boring.

But right in the middle of boring stuff comes some really important gems. So, and then 26 volumes of sermons.

Can you imagine having 26 volumes of apostolic sermons from the apostles and their first followers for the first 30, 40 years of the

Christian church? Pretty important stuff. Well, real quickly here, because I need to wrap up in about 11 minutes or less.

One of the clearest... Let's put it this way.

A lot of light has been shed on the claims of Joseph Smith over the past 20 years.

As a result, Mormonism is, I think, is of necessity being pushed toward a spiritualization of its specific, unique revelations.

Specifically here, the Book of Mormon. 535 pages allegedly translated from golden plates the history of the inhabitants of this hemisphere.

And then what's found in the Pearl of Great Price. Especially something called the Book of Abraham. Now, there isn't any question.

There is no question. What Joseph Smith himself taught his followers, he was doing.

He claimed to be translating plates. Not going into some type of a trance and just getting feelings or genetic histories or whatever else.

He was translating the characters on the plates. Those words had meaning.

They had meaning. When he lost those first 116 pages, well, when

Martin Harris lost the first 116 pages of the Book of Mormon, Smith goes into a tizzy because he can never reproduce them.

Because he wasn't translating anything. That was the whole point. That's why he had to go to another section of the plates.

Was trying to find some plausible way around having lost that first section.

Because he could never reproduce them. Because he knew what he was doing. Smith knew. And he knew what he was claiming he was doing.

And that he couldn't do what he was claiming he was doing. Well, one of the most fascinating books in the

LDS scriptures is the Book of Abraham. I picked up a book at the

LDS bookstore. This is by John Gee. Pretty well known.

Yeah, 2017, Brigham Young University. So this is pretty new. An introduction...

An introduction to the Book of Abraham. By John Gee. Not very big.

But it came out last year. And there are some other books from a

Christian perspective. This came out in the 90s, but it's still awesome amundo.

Is by his own hand upon papyrus. Charles Larson. Yeah, big fold out thing here.

Of the Book of Abraham. Papyrus themselves. Full color.

Which is one of the best pictures I've seen. So, there you go.

These resources are out there. But most people have no idea.

Most Christians have no idea what the Book of Abraham is. And most

Mormons don't either. I could have

Mike Beliveau testify to the truthfulness of this, but Mike and I drove up to Salt Lake once.

We stopped along the way in Provo, Utah and we talked to these two missionaries in the parking lot of the Provo, Utah temple.

Which, you haven't seen that temple in a long, long time. But, I drove by it just a few months ago.

I'll see it again in a few weeks. Well, next week, actually. But, man, it is not aging well.

Well, you know what it looks like. It looks like a UFO that got trapped here on Earth. I mean, it's late 1960s architecture and it is so bad.

I mean, it has not aged well. At all. Anyways, we're in the parking lot of that place and we talk to these two

LDS missionaries. We start talking to them about the Book of Abraham. They don't even know what it is. We had to take their scriptures and show them the

Book of Abraham. They had never read it. These are guys being trained to go out on their missions. They had never even read it.

What's fascinating is the story behind this. And we may have to go a minute or two longer or maybe longer than that.

But we'll see here. What's fascinating is, right at this time, it was early

July of 1835. The Mormon Church is struggling.

The aborted military rescue of the saints in Missouri has fallen apart.

Cholera has swept through the land. Things are a little tough for the struggling

Mormon Church. Along comes a guy by the name of Michael Chandler.

Let me just read to you... What? Michael H.

Chandler. Yes, that is what it says. Michael, you all can't hear the interruptions coming from behind the window in the other room.

You always get upset with me, but no one ever gets upset. It's hard to do this kind of stuff.

Let me just read for you. Documentary History of the Church, Volume 2, page 235. On the 3rd of July, Michael H.

Chandler came to Kirtland to exhibit some Egyptian mummies. There were four human figures, together with some two or more rolls of papyrus, covered with hieroglyphic figures and devices.

As Mr. Chandler had been told, I could translate them. The Documentary History of the Church is normally in the first person, Joseph Smith.

As Mr. Chandler had been told, I could translate them. Notice the word, translate them.

He brought me some of the characters, and I gave him the interpretation. And like a gentleman, he gave me the following certificate.

Kirtland, July 6, 1835. This is to make known to all who may be desirous concerning the knowledge of Mr.

Joseph Smith Jr. in deciphering the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic characters in my possession, which

I have, in many eminent cities, showed the most learned. And, from the information that I could ever learn or meet with,

I find that of Mr. Joseph Smith Jr. to correspond in the most minute matters, Michael H.

Chandler, traveling with and proprietor of Egyptian mummies. So, Chandler gave

Smith this certificate. And then, on the next page, soon after this, some of the saints in Kirtland purchased the mummies and papyrus, a description of which will appear hereafter.

By the way, that was for $2 ,400. Now, in 1835, that was actually $2 ,400.

I see people are posting stuff. Yeah, josephsmithpapers .org, Michael H. Chandler.

That's a fascinating website. A lot of this stuff is available online now. Anyway, soon after this, some of the saints in Kirtland purchased the mummies and papyrus, a description of which will appear hereafter.

And with W .W. Phelps and Oliver Cowdery as scribes, I commenced the translation of some of the characters or hieroglyphics, and much to our joy, found that one of the roles contained the writings of Abraham.

Not that one of the roles reminded me of a revelation about Abraham.

Contained the writings of Abraham. Now, think about this. This would be the oldest writings known to man, as far as anything on papyrus.

This would be unbelievable. Another, the writings of Joseph of Egypt, etc., a more full account of which will appear in its place as I proceed to examine or unfold them.

Truly, we can say, the Lord is beginning to reveal the abundance of peace and truth.

And then a little bit later, that's the main part of that particular discussion.

And then a little bit later on, School of Prophets, there was something else on this.

I'm looking for it real quickly here. There we go.

October 1st, this is page 286. October 1st, this afternoon

I labored on the Egyptian alphabet, in company with brothers

Oliver Cowdery and W .W. Phelps, and during the research, the principles of astronomy, as understood by Father Abraham and the ancients, unfolded to our understanding, the particulars of which will appear hereafter.

Now, long story short, long story short, the papyri, the claim that Joseph Smith was making, you need to understand, the

Rosetta Stone had just been found. There were a few people on Earth that were beginning to make heads and tails out of the

Egyptian language in the West. The ancient Egyptian language. But what

Joseph Smith was claiming to be able to do required absolute supernatural agency. So this was an important element of his claim to be a prophet.

And obviously, in claiming to have come up with 535 pages of the

Book of Mormon, from Reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics, should be able to handle a couple pieces of papyrus.

Well, the golden plates allegedly were taken back to heaven, so you can't check them out. The papyri were thought to have been lost in the

Chicago Fire. But in the late 1960s, they were discovered and turned back over to the church.

And now we have the perfect opportunity of testing

Joseph Smith's abilities, supernatural abilities, to translate

Egyptian, which were central to his claims to prophethood.

Because he's called a prophet, a seer, and a revelator. And according to LDS scripture, a seer is capable of translating these languages.

So if he can't translate them, he wasn't what he claimed to be. The saga of what has happened over the past 50 years, since those papyri returned over to the church, that has produced

Christian books like this and Mormon books like this, is a study in religious deception.

It is a study in how far people will go to continue to believe something if they want to believe it.

I'm actually thinking I'm gonna continue this because there's just too much to do here and I'm going too long.

I wanted to go an hour and a half. I've got Greek class tonight. If you would like to see some more on this before the next time

I talk about some of these things on the program, which will be later this week. If you look for our tract,

Men Is Not God, at aomin .org, it'll come up. That'll give you some information about where this is going and just how badly

Joseph Smith did. That tract also gives you some ideas of how

Mormons try to explain these things, too. In God's providence, he provides, right as the church is exploding in size, some of the best evidence.

I know many Mormons who have left Mormonism because of the book of Abraham.

As far as I can tell, it's utterly indefensible. That doesn't mean there aren't defenses offered.

It just means they are not, by any stretch of the imagination, coherent. It is a fascinating area of study.

I'm enjoying looking at it again. It's not like these things are new to me. We were passing out the

Min tract in Salt Lake City many, many years ago. I think it was the priesthood tract that we did that night with the line where we went backwards, remember?

I will tell this story real quick. This is fun. During the

General Conference, we really ought to, before we need walkers, do this again, just for the fun of it.

Though it would be hard to do because they're not wrapped around the thing anymore. The Saturday evening of General Conference is the priesthood session.

It's all guys. Gals don't get to go to this. This line develops and literally wraps around Temple Square.

This was before they had the meeting house on the north side of Temple Square. It would wrap around on the sidewalk.

We had a tract called What is

Your Authority? It was on the priesthood. We decided all these guys claim to be priests.

They're going to be standing here for a long time. But we had gotten smart.

We had learned something about human tendencies.

We recognized that when you had a line coming in, if you were at the front of the line, if people are looking at you and they see other people refuse to take your literature, they will be less likely to take your literature as well.

They will join the group. You'd get in spurts. You'd get somebody who would take it and then maybe somebody else would take it.

It was this strange following the crowd psychology mentality thing.

So we got smart. We took the last of the tracts we had. They had gone pretty well that day.

We didn't go to the front of the line and wait for them to start going in. We weren't going to wait around that long anyways. We were tired and hungry.

We went to the back of the line. We started walking forward.

We were over on the east side of the temple when we started.

The line wrapped from the east side up onto the north side. They were coming in the north side because the old

Mormon tabernacle is on the north side of the property, not the south side of the property. Anyway, we wiped out our tract supply.

We didn't have any left. We literally ran out. Doing it backwards like that worked perfectly.

As we left, as we drove by, we circled through the traffic.

We're so excited because these guys have nothing else to be doing. They're going to stand there a long time before they get in.

They're all standing there reading a tract about how the priesthood that they're about to go talk about is utterly unbiblical.

Utterly unbiblical. That was one of our best moves,

I think, in Salt Lake. That went really, really well. Anyway, someone has found the

J .I. Packer quote. I'll have to track that down after the program. Maybe it'll be something we can add to a future discussion.

We will continue on with this. Oh, it did actually pull two lines from different places in the article.

I had a feeling the reason the ellipses weren't shown was because it looked like it had maxed out the number of characters available.

We'll take a look at it and maybe comment on it. Anyhow, thanks for watching The Dividing Line today.