Pope Francis on Conservatives, LF on Being "Good," and Adoniram Judson's Letter to Ann's Father

Well greetings welcome to the dividing line it is a Thursday Tuesday didn't turn out to work.

Well for doing a program. I apologize for that just reminder that Next week's up in the air

Hopefully by the end of next week we can get back to somewhat of a regular schedule. I hope we'll see

Have surgery on Monday, so I I Hope that's the last one for a while, but I hope the last two were the last one for a while, so I'm proving to be a challenge to to the doctors so there you go

So Just a lesson hour ago. I was sent a link to 60 minutes

With a brief clip there's going to be an interview with Pope Francis on 1060 minutes and I'm not gonna bother trying to throw.

Oh hello. I'm not gonna bother trying to throw Video up we'll just have the audio.

It's just the Pope talking so that's you know what he looks like anyway this is a

Interesting exchange and I think it gives you a good idea of The mindset of Pope Francis, it's a mindset that those of us who have been observing the

Degradation of mainline Protestants nominations for decades Are very very familiar with There has been just as much degradation within Roman Catholicism during that time period there are all sorts of Well As I've said over and over again, you can you can find conservative

Roman Catholics and You can find the entire spectrum that you have within any kind of rational definition of Protestantism within Roman Catholicism, so you can go to Boston College and see everything there

But a lot of Roman Catholics don't recognize that they don't understand that This is the first Pope who has just openly embraced that perspective and that worldview and If he is successful in doing what

I think he's been trying to do for a number of years and that is to Determine his succession and his successor

It's going to result in a major shift within Roman Catholic theology

Within your lifetime anyways, depending on how old you are Within the next couple of decades most definitely

So here's the question and here's the obviously These questions were written out first and Went from there

But here's here's Pope Francis There are conservative bishops in the

United States that oppose your new efforts to revisit teachings and traditions

How do you address their criticism? You used an adjective conservative

That is conservative is one who clings to something and Does not want to see beyond that.

It is a suicidal attitude Because one thing is to take tradition into account to consider situations from the past But quite another is to be closed up inside a dogmatic box

Okay again Fuller seminary grad here

We've heard all this before and I Can't help but think there was this there was this

I think they I think Protestia calls them Pastrix Let me see, where did

I oh, sorry about that Where did I put that one?

Yeah, here it is there's this undoubtedly

PC USA chick Okay, who pretends to be a pastor of a church and I had

PC USA pastors of the pastors. I had PC USA professors in Seminary that One I had for five or six classes

I learned a tremendous amount from them But I always knew that we were

Really far apart on a lot of things a lot of foundational things But it was different in the 80s than it is today 40 years have passed and The the mask has slipped let's just put that way so The Pope is trying to be he has to be he recognizes that he's leading a multifaceted group

You can only go so fast without creating irreparable schism

But he wants to go particular directions. He wants to take the Roman Catholic Church particular directions and They are directions that are very much different than his predecessors

They're there. I don't know how anyone can argue this. I don't know how anyone can say.

Oh, no. No, that's not what's going on. No, it's is It's so obvious that you have to be

Twisting reality to not see it. So how long is this one?

I don't even know if I want to give this chick You know so many people miss it's it's two minutes long at Maybe hold on just a second.

Um my experience in Seminary my experience in academia my experience in doing debates is

That what we used to call liberals Which I don't call liberals anymore

I call them leftists because liberalism Speaks to an openness to other perspectives and and things like that Which they don't have

Leftists do not believe That quote -unquote conservatives have anything meaningful to say and and that was what

Francis said it's clinging it's suicidal it's clinging on to something and All you have to do is go back look at the debate

I did with John Shelby Spong he

Had not even asked You know if he had asked us we would have provided to him

Links to programs things that I had written on the subject of homosexuality

He didn't ask Because he didn't care he doesn't believe we have anything meaningful to say

I stole theirs to it and so Bart Ehrman Could care less

Even when I told him I was gonna be giving a presentation on some of his favorite texts

You would think someone want to go might be good to know where he's coming from him didn't care

Didn't care The people over there. They do not believe that conservatives. They just think we're all

King James only fundamentalists and Say don't care So they don't listen and they don't they don't take the time and that's that's what the

Pope was saying. It's a suicidal attitude Now that what that tells me is he doesn't believe that the traditional

Dogmatic structure the Roman Catholic Church is divine in origin. He holds to the same kind of thinking that People have when they go well the

Constitution is the living document and you know It has to change it has to grow it has to evolve

That's that's where Francis is and that's the end of Roman Catholicism Historically speaking it really is

If if you get two or three or four of those guys in a row What's gonna be left?

I I have I don't know schism after schism after schism, but that's the attitude and so when

I was listening this past past past past Rick's chick

Couldn't help but going I recognize everything she is saying from my seminary education, but back then they were never this bold as To say it the way she's saying it they

You know the constant conversation was the constant terminology was

Well, that's a tension in the text That's a tension in the text

Not a contradiction they don't want quite say it that way I would imagine there was already professors on the campus that would do that, but the

I Took all my classes here in Phoenix is the Extension campus and everybody knew

Extension campuses tend to be significantly more conservative Than the main campus in Pasadena would be

Because you have more pastors people actually involved in ministry actually believe the

Bible. That's really what it's all about So yeah, let's

I'll go ahead and do this. Why not I'm wearing my my

Fox shirt today, so well, it's not Yeah, you can sort of see it. There you go. There's there's

Fox. There's there's this little cute little face Yeah, there you can see Fox a little bit better so I think

I had Deenie on last time and I have a shirt with with Sophie too, so Yes, I have my my kitty shirts

So we hadn't we hadn't had Fox in there yet. So anyways let's

Let's try to survive listening to this this is This is the domination that when it was started traced itself back to John Calvin and I cannot begin to imagine

What Calvin would say Listening to this What this woman is going to be saying and I look back at the people in the background and I just go

Why are they there? Is it just the leftovers of tradition or why are they even there?

I Don't get it. But all right Here we go, well

I You know so many people mistake God's law with societal laws that were outlined in the

Bible And this happens all the time the scribes of these stories all the stories that we have in the

Bible. They never Anticipated that their manuscripts one day would be included in our

Bible and considered the sacred end -all be -all Now again, it was it was a common element of discussion in In classes to ask the question, what did the authors of Scripture?

Understand their role to be did they understand they were writing Scripture and Those are those are appropriate questions that fundamentalism doesn't even want to think about Fundamentalism Goes to the other side and says never ask these questions never think about these things because they've seen what's happened when people do and They make the connection.

Hey thinking about that leads to apostasy Therefore we don't think about that rather than we need to think about it better than the people who apostatized

That would be the way to do it. But anyway And so It can be uncomfortable for us to ask the question

How much knowledge did the authors have They couldn't have known what the

Bible was gonna look like two thousand years after them, obviously so duh

But how much knowledge did they have to have? Did they have to know they're writing

Scripture You know, I think of the writer of the Hebrews where he says that someone said somewhere da da da da

Okay, so from his perspective the fact that God has preserved it and given it to the church and to God's people is enough

It's not It didn't matter who said it it was in Scripture So there it is

So there's a lot of stuff to think through You know, does Paul know when he's writing?

I think he does when he's writing Romans and things like that does he know that when he's writing to Timothy I Don't know nobody does but you have to be careful how much

Theorizing you end up doing in the process, but we continue on. Oh Okay you know so many people mistake

God's law well, it's just and Anticipated but their manuscripts one day would be included in our

Bible and considered the sacred end -all be -all and There's so much written that only pertains to certain people in certain circumstances

Bound in time in ancient contexts that were never ever meant to be permanent law

For example laws that do not permit a woman to speak for example, first Timothy 2

Let's do you think God was behind the fact that when she said that she went big Now let women do speak

Okay, I cannot for some reason X will not allow you if I'm playing the video if I pause it if I hit

Start it puts the window back in and then you have started all over again That that make

I don't think that's ever happened before must be some new feature I am getting a little frustrated with X because with Twitter because I Will see something pop up my feed.

I start to read it and then just disappears It's gone and I can't find it again, and I'm halfway through a sentence and it was really interesting and I want to gone

And it's and now you can't play the video Because there you go

Anyway, alright fine, I will not press forward with that. The problem is the other video that I have is also

In Twitter and I'm wondering if it's gonna do the exact same thing to me It probably will so I guess

I just have to play it all the way through and hope that I can remember There's a there's a fellow on Twitter Manny R.

Jones Manassa R. Jones is the longer form and I I had said to him.

I mean he goes after flowers You know he judges his soul he's a reprobate he's this is that he's just He's willing to make the this issue

Without knowing him Enough to I'm going to judge him as a reprobate and I Tried to kindly write to him and say you know

You might want to leave that to God. You might want to stick to the arguments and you know but he quoted a

Section and I guess I'm not sure if Layton's doing it right now. I saw Earlier that he was going to record something today live

In response to me, I'm sure it's in response to the last program where we played a section from him on the nature of grace and Again, just you know remember he cannot say that conversion is a miraculous act

Because he does not believe in original sin he does not believe that man is Dead in sin slave to sin

I Don't know what he thinks heart of stone and heart of flesh means You know

I it would be a good question to ask Do you believe that a heart of stone?

can choose To remove itself

But you still have to have someone to give you a heart of flesh. I didn't I Don't know there's so much in the

Bible I can't understand how any sinner just understands any of it to be perfectly honest with you, but anyway There are just so many of these

Things he doesn't you know just doesn't have a biblical anthropology at all and therefore you get all this weird stuff and so we were talking about his view of grace and Prevenient grace and All this kind of unbiblical stuff, and I made the statement that What he's presenting is sub

Roman. It's beneath Rome's view of grace It's certainly not

Consistent with the Reformation by any stretch of the imagination and it is beneath even what

Rome Taught and is teaching today if we can figure out what

Rome teaches today with Francis, so let's Leave him off to another side, but I just got distracted.

Sorry. I looked back at the screen and There's someone called the office

Calvinist. I Guess they use memes from the office which summer loves love the office

And it says my week after finding the trove of James White debates on sermon audio and So it's three of the office people in an elevator and the first one says hey

Kev How is your week and he responds good? I listened to 22 hours of James White debates

Okay, well Normally when someone tells you something like that when someone tells me

I'm The Indiana Algo or something like that. I just go. I'm so sorry I Feel for you.

I hope you find some better people to listen to in the future, but I appreciate it good I listened to 22 hours of James I'll at least hit the little heart thing there because it'll probably

I'll probably never see it again knowing how Twitter works these days Anyhow back to Leighton flowers

And so this this Manny fellow who I think needs to you know, I I get what he's saying

But he needs to take a chill pill Posted this thing from Leighton flowers.

So my problem is If I stop it then I Have to read what?

No, no, these are these are things that are They're just in post. So when do you hit them?

They open up over here and When you start playing it if you hit pause when you unpause it

It closed the window and puts it back in the original tweet. So you have to start it all over again Or question begging by I don't think the other one had that in the middle, so I think there's different formats

I Think I think it's a matter of you know, what kind of format it was originally because I stopped that one and I think on this one

Yeah, I'm looking at the player the players completely different on this one that it was last one So I think it depends on what format you use when you upload it

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know so I might be able to start this is only 22 seconds long. So who cares? it doesn't matter on this one, but the the liberal

Presbyterian chick Just it wasn't I was not going to invest the effort to listen to a

Heretical chick blab blab blathering on it. I just want to use it as an illustration of how much things have changed

Since I was in seminary and I had PC USA professors that I could learn a lot from now

Never mind just Ichabod glory is gone. Bury that one. Okay, so Here is a and I did respond to this on Twitter today

I said this is Layton has always struggled with category errors

He just he mixes categories badly theologically linguistically

Church history. Oh my goodness, please. It hurts. It's painful But here's here's an example of it and Like I said, it's only 22 seconds.

So here we go Our question begging by assuming a person must be better in order to believe

When the truth is that God created us all in such a way that anyone can put their trust in Christ for salvation

You don't need to be turned into a better person in order to believe in Jesus You come to Jesus in order to be turned into a better person by him.

Anyone can come to him for salvation okay, so this is the and this came up in the debate and I think

I made a comment about it and someone actually Responded to me and said they're hearing this over and over and over again from Layton's followers and People like that That this is that we are literally saying that Someone has to get better Before they can get safe.

Okay, and so we've already responded to this But I want to make sure it's very clear

Very obvious when you hear someone saying this Being spiritually alive is a different category than becoming a better person now

I would think that that that sounds so obvious and So basic and so duh level

That I wouldn't have to say it But we have to say it

When we say that a person needs to be freed from the shackles of sin

You know, what what does Jesus what does Jesus mean in John 8 if the Sun sets you free you will be free indeed

Okay, so if so being set free is Not being made a better person

Okay, that's a that's a fundamental obvious in -your -face

Category error We're not talking about just doesn't say you've got to be better to follow me

He says if the Sun sets you free, you'll be free indeed freedom is a different category

It's talking about being removed from the shackles of sin and death That's not being made better That's a that's not that's not the proper context

Is it appropriate to say that in the valley of the dry bones That once they come together as living bodies, they are better than they were before That's not an appropriate term,

I mean I suppose in some way you can say well it's better to be alive than dead Okay, but that's not that's completely different use the term better a

Resurrection has taken place. Is it better to have a heart of flesh and a heart of stone?

Well again, is That a meaningful question Are you saying to some that the person the heart of stone has to get themselves better?

No, it's a It's as silly as saying is it better for Lazarus to be in the tomb or to be alive?

It's just such a it's it's a It's a category issue that we learn when we're children

You know two -year -olds will make that kind of error But we grow we grow out of it by reading by dialoguing with others by thinking issues through we we come to to think more rationally and we learn to recognize for example the use of various forms of irony or sarcasm or things like that But for some reason on this subject the provisionists don't get it and so they're literally saying

If you if you have to be born again Regenerated then what you're saying is you have to be made a better person before you can come to Jesus Okay.

Yes, sir. You've raised. I'm having a Just trying to make sense of the thinking

When we say that the when the scripture says the natural man cannot please God we will point out that the question of is is

God pleased when we Come to Christ Well, the answer to that is yes is he may be equating that to The better person comes to Christ the natural man cannot come to Christ and then he's trying to somehow

Meander his way through that conflict we're not saying that the

The one who comes to Christ is a better person. We're saying that person's been made spiritually alive.

God's invaded their life He's granted them grace and mercy. He's done things to them they're still

They haven't been made perfect But without it, but without a biblical anthropology without an understanding of the deadness of man and sin, right?

Without understanding of what it what it means to have a heart of stone. It can't make any sense to them, right?

And that's that's why I I just I get this the sense here that he's he's tripping over this idea

It's a natural man cannot please God and he's trying to somehow Grapple.

Well, what is it that pleases God then? How does the man please God and he's not grabbed.

He's not finding it No, he's there his assertion is that the natural man can please

God He has to he has to say that because he doesn't believe in spiritual and spiritual death.

Yeah, there's just no way around so Blunt and plain I I agree.

So when you hear someone Pulling this this Canard up and saying oh you're saying you have to make yourself better before you can come to Jesus Jesus will make you a better person

We're The idea that spiritually dead and spiritually alive are

Categories that are described by better. It's just silly it's it's

I Don't know how you get there. I don't know how someone can't see how this is this language is

Has no meaning I don't I don't get it. I really really honestly don't get it

But but there you go there there it is And so I'm sure there'll be a two -hour video coming on that too but Yeah, yeah, there you go okay, um

There is a move going on in the United States right now. It's happening right here in Arizona.

It happened in Pennsylvania it is the result of The overturning of Roe v.

Wade the Dobbs decision Where The forces of death are

Utilizing their massive amount of financial backing to be promoting in many of the states in the

United States Constitutional amendments to state constitutions to enshrine Not just Roe v.

Wade, but you know at least Roe v. Wade had some pretense of restrictions

Here in Arizona, there are people going around they are They they are not giving full information as to what you're signing when you

Get your name on you know put it on the ballot All that kind of stuff, we're hoping for some legal redress in regards to that But it's it's happening all over the place

And it seems to me that a lot of Christians are surprised The idea was well once Roe v.

Wade is overturned it goes back to the states And so, you know, that's where we have the grassroots and everything else and I'm like You know for years there was the idea that because of ultrasounds

Because you you you see those pictures on the refrigerator of you know The babies that are coming

That it's it's really hard for people to To deny the humanity of the pre -born child because No one can dispute what i'm about to say.

We we have more evidence Of the individual humanity

Of the pre -born child today than we've ever had before The womb has been open to us now photographically

For a long time. I mean it was back in the 70s that they did that life I think it was life or time somebody did that That that thing where they had all the incredible color pictures of the developing embryo and stuff like that Now those were invasive you had to go in to get those now we have

Not just ultrasounds, but but you know 3d full color ultrasound video

Uh that you can get you can watch the child moving you can hear the child

I was just before this program started uh I follow a lot of accounts that have

Cat and dog stuff on it. Yep. Believe it or not. I do. They're cute. Believe me with all the garbage flowing through twitter

It's nice once in a while to have something to stop and go. Oh, you know, isn't that sweet? But here is this uh husky

I think And his mommy human mommy is pregnant and her belly's there and the huskies, you know, so and then all of a sudden it goes

You know how huskies are and The the dog can sense there's somebody in there.

There's somebody in there moving around And he's like looking for where they The dog has more common sense than a large proportion of american voters do

And I think that's what we need to understand We we have more evidence Of the humanity pre -born child we've ever had before And yet Despite that what you need to understand and I I just I just I just I think this is vitally important the next voting generation

Is the product of the public indoctrination system Which has been utterly corrupted for decades

And if you go through the public indoctrination system, you do not come out as a critical thinker

You do not come out with any sense of the necessity Of being consistent in your moral and ethical thinking if you have any moral and ethical thinking left

Anyways in my day, I remember in the 1970s in high school

I was in some of the advanced classes where You would talk politics

And things like that in the class And I remember the the number two

Person in the class on the honor roll. I was number one there was a young lady named laurie daniels

And laurie daniels was an atheist And so laurie daniels and I crossed swords regularly

In those advanced seminar classes and stuff that you took

You got more credit for and stuff like that anyway But even then

There was still such a weight of cultural momentum

From our christian heritage and background That there were certain givens in regards to the nature of life and the value of life

That you just couldn't quite question yet, even though i'd keep going. Hey, you keep going that direction

And this is no no, no, no. Well now now it's not only their way past their

Christians tend to shy away from recognizing the truth of the proverbs that When wisdom speaks in in proverbs 8

He who hates me loves death If you hate the wisdom of god if you hate the revelation of god you love death

And you are going to want to see the promulgation Of that which you love

And so you're going to want to see the increase in death And so we are seeing

And we will see this fall in the elections we will see states maybe my own right here extending their public middle finger toward the heavens and enshrining

In the constitutions of these states and maybe this state as well the right to murder unborn children up to the point of birth and of course

We all go why stop there? It's arbitrary

There's no reason for it Why stop there? And they're not going to Because it's the culture of death.

They love death And so we're surprised by this

But we shouldn't have been surprised by this If we had thought it through Um The everyone seeking to rescue

The perishing those who are being put to death unjustly Need to recognize that we are now dealing with a society

Where the vast majority of child -bearing age people Have come out of this utterly corrupt mind control system

And it's not a matter of reasoning with them any longer It is a matter of full -on prophetic

Warning of god's judgment upon murderers And see the pro -life movement will do that.

They won't talk about murder. That's that they're They that's that's the whole issue there they won't call it what it is

The whole thing about the woman she's a victim Um They won't call it murder.

And so there's no prophetic warning Who's saying you know, I say to the state of arizona

You put this on the ballot and you enshrine in the constitution of this state The murder of pre -born children

Don't ask for a second for god's blessing upon this state You need to realize in this country in this in this state

We are so completely dependent upon god's mercy in sending something called rain

This is a desert The vast majority of the population state of arizona lives south of what's called the mogollon rim

And hence in the sonoran desert and if there is not sufficient rainfall

We're toast That's just all there is to it. I'm, not sure where we'd be going, but we're toast

And we're just simply saying to god Hmm bring it dude We pass something like this bring it it is we will be morally culpable

For what comes as a result of this? That's all there is to it But that takes prophetic that takes a prophetic perspective the roman catholics outside the abortion mills won't do it

And the established pro -life groups won't do it You know, it's funny

I I could have seen this coming Because I was involved with operation rescue in the 1980s.

I was their spokesperson when we shut down brian finkel's, um

Abortion clinic I was arrested And I debated their people on local radio stations and crushed them

No mercy at all Um when I say their people

I mean the the abortion movement people But I had to Stop my association there

Because of the clarity with which I proclaim gospel to roman catholics When it wasn't allowed you could not have that clear gospel element

In the pro -life movement, even in the 1980s That was late 1980s 1989 actually

But Anyway, what we're seeing, you know check what's going on in your state

But it is the inevitable Result of the use of billions of dollars of our tax money

To promulgate the fundamental culture of death. That's what secularism is secularism is the culture of death

The lgbtq movement culture of death abortion movement culture of death euthanasia culture of death

Um, it's it's literally all around us, um, and it's

Uh, it's what it's what we have to be battling it's what we have to be battling now

I um, I mentioned That on this last trip

Between surgeries, um Oh, yeah, yeah, um,

I uh Was listening to a biography of adeniram and ann judson while driving

It's not that I had not it's not that I didn't know these names or things like that. Obviously I did but The books that I read and I have another book that I have not read yet It's called to the golden shore by courtney anderson the life of adeniram judson

It's a much more substantial sized one I'm gonna get my jim kirk glasses out here

I'm just gonna start i'm just gonna start getting up in the morning and putting these around my neck.

I have four or five pair at home and it's just That way they're always there, you know it's just You don't have to look for them, you know

Yeah. Yeah, where'd they go? Where'd they go? Yeah, that's and and these work. Well, they they really do anyway um

I wanted to To read you I and I I just got this and so I knew i'd be able to find it very very quickly

Even though I didn't know the book and I did it took me just a matter of moments we have

I don't know how exactly to describe it the ease of life

That we've all grown up with now Everybody who's live today Has had a pretty easy life in comparison to People who were

Living on the frontier people who are living before modern medicine people who did not have electricity telephones any type of telecommunication

Um, if if your way of communicating with people far away would take weeks to months

Sometimes years. Okay, you know, we don't We've never experienced that We've had we have lived like kings and queens

In comparison to pretty much the entire history of humanity And we've become accustomed to it we think it's a right it could never go away

And we have been absolutely spoiled by it all of us myself included And so when you read about what life was like in the past I think personally

And i'm speaking to myself you can you know, maybe this isn't true of you I think that when

I read about Ancient People lived in in ancient contexts in rome and an athanasius or a gregory or someone like that There's almost a disconnect

You know, it was so long ago That it's it's hard to see where the connection is

But when you read about people in the 1600s 1700s 1800s now we're getting

Up to the modern period and you can make the connection a little bit easier and adnaram judson

Is going into ministry at the beginning of the 19th century. So the early 1800s And so for me anyways, maybe that's where the where it clicks more because you know, my mom used to take me out of school and take me to gettysburg and and and so those people

Grant lee They're a little bit more real to me Because you know, i'm only a few generations removed from them

Um, maybe that's what makes it More along these lines. I don't know but at an hour

I I have a feeling someday i'm going to put together a a keynote presentation Because there's just so much his conversion

Um The fact that a man he met

In college who converted him to deism Adeniram's traveling

He's sort of lost as to where he's gonna what's he's gonna do where he's gonna go He's sort of been disconnected from his family his fat dad's a pastor

He has told them he's a deist now He's not finding any satisfaction even though he

Extremely brilliant person brilliant mind I mean he will eventually translate The entire bible into burmese and it's the only english translation to this day

Not english translation bible translation into the burmese language He did it

He learned that language on his own And then translated not the english into burmese.

He translated the hebrew and greek So he knew greek. He knew hebrew. He knew latin Brilliant man, but he's just sort of wandering around And he stops in this inn this tavern slash inn

And the only room they have for him is a room that's divided by a curtain and they said Really sorry, but there's a man dying in the other half of the room.

He's deathly sick. He may not get much sleep And he stays the night and Around 4 a .m

in the morning it gets quiet and he gets sleep after that he comes down finds out That's when the guy died

And in the conversation with the innkeeper He finds out that this fellow had gone to the same university

And when he inquires about his name It was emes the guy who introduced him to deism

His friend Had died Moaning and groaning in a horrible fashion on the other side of that room.

He has happened happened At an arm judgement Was no open theist.

He was no provisionist. He was no arminian And his very conversion involved the death

Of his friend his young friend And I just stopped for a moment and ask everybody does god have the right to do that Where do you think that disease came from That took emes e -a -m -e -a -m -e -s last name

Where do you think that disease came from? You see if you don't believe in the decree of god

If you don't believe in the sovereign decree of god which results in providence that god's decree

Is involved in the actions in time Then this was pure happenstance God was sitting in heaven going.

Oh, look at that. Whoa, who could have seen that? right That adniram judson

Who god has given all these gifts to but if you're an open theist, he doesn't know he's gonna go to burma

Why do you give him all those gifts I don't know But he just happens to stop at that inn

While traveling he's exhausted And ends up in the same room

With emes as he's dying You don't think god has

I guarantee you one thing adniram judson knew god had everything to do with that and he lived the rest of his life

In light of the fact that god had everything to do with it And then he gets this wild and crazy idea

To become the first foreign missionary Overseas To the people of burma and everyone looks at him like he's nuts

We are so used to overseas missions concepts that we cannot understand how

Rare that idea was in the early 1800s Everybody figured you'd throw in your life away

Let alone could you find find a way of getting support for it He has made the decision this is what he's going to do and he's invited over to a deacon's house at a church

And the deacon's young daughter anne is sort of entertaining everyone And he's smitten

Now i'm not talking smitten the way that we talk about smitten in our day

Where love is just all this It's just pure emotions and once the emotion stops you just get a divorce and go on to somebody else

He sees in this young woman What he needs in a companion and what he's going to be doing and so you didn't just Go out on some dates and do stuff like that courtship was very different at that time

And once he had started communicating with her Talking with her He writes to her parents

To ask for her hand in marriage You go there first I did too.

I talked to kelly's dad before I asked her now we were talking about marriage, but You know,

I don't remember my parents telling me this is what you need to do it just sort of got communicated to me somehow and But he's going overseas

He's going to burma And you got to realize that's not getting on a plane and flying to burma

That's not a two -week missions trip um ships sank regularly

They sprung leaks. They had diseases. They became plague ships And it took months months

To get across the ocean to go that far months so he

Writes a letter To ann's Now interestingly enough her nickname

That he would actually call her normally would be nancy later on but ann ann's parents

Um nancy hasseltine ann hasseltine but Normally called nancy

He sat down and wrote to nancy's father And I wanted to read you What he wrote and part of what he wrote in that letter

I have now to ask Whether you can consent to part with your daughter early next spring

To see her no more in this world Whether you can consent to her departure and her subjection to the hardships and sufferings of a missionary life

Whether you can consent to her exposure to the dangers of the ocean To the fatal influence of the southern climate of india

To every kind of want and distress To degradation insult persecution and perhaps a violent death

Can you consent to all this? For the sake of him who left his heavenly home and died for her and for you

For the sake of perishing immortal souls for the sake of zion and the glory of god

Can you consent to all this in hope of soon meeting your daughter in the world of glory?

with the crown of righteousness brightened with the acclamations of praise Which shall redound to her savior from heathens saved through her means from eternal woe and despair um

I'm, just happening to look at the um Commentary that comes afterwards. Like I said,

I haven't read this book yet There's a different book that I read. It was a letter that must have made john hasseltine's eyes pop nearly out of his head

One would have expected him to agree with the father of a friend of nancy's one of the numerous kimball clan Who when he heard that young judson was paying court to nancy hasseltine?

Declared stoutly that he would tie his own daughter to the bedpost rather than let her go on such a harebrained venture

Because remember there weren't any missionaries yet This guy was doing something that was completely out of the norm now if you're wondering

His response was we will leave that up to her and she

Knowing What she was heading for Agreed Married at an iron and shortly thereafter

They left everything They did not get on that ship with the idea that we'll be back in a couple years

They knew that was not the case even though they could not have the kind of preparation that we give to missionaries today

They understood Just simply from the travel time That it would be

Years before they would ever return if they ever returned at all and the idea was they never would

They did not expect to live and many of the missionary couples came over there they would

They would lose they if the woman was pregnant she'd lose the baby on the ship She'd die on the ship.

He'd die on the ship only she would arrive. I mean there were so Many of these stories

That Judson himself experienced in In people being sent over The amount of death just the number of missionaries who died but What a what an amazing commitment and he hadn't even met these people

There were no videos to watch You know, there were no movies No, no marketing campaigns nothing like that at all

And yet he had that commitment that he stuck to He did come back to the

United States she had long died and his second wife had died

All of his children to Anne had died Some of his children to his second wife had died

Then she died He met a woman when he was back here in the

United States Who was a great writer? And he got in touch with her to write the biography of his wife

Anne They ended up marrying But then she died

And then he became deathly ill And while on ship he had gone back and the doctor said the only way that you're going to get over this is if you get out of this

Environment and get out out to sea and stuff like that. And so they didn't have drugs. They didn't they didn't know

And like eight or nine days into the trip. He died at sea and was buried at sea No, no grave to go to anything like that And yes by the time he did come back 30 some odd years down the road from when they left

He was now famous why because Anne had come back for a while And had written a book about their experiences and it had been republished and republished and republished

After that period of time And so when he he stepped off that ship

The one time he returned briefly to the United States There was a huge crowd and He was speaking all over the place and certainly helped to Expand missionary efforts as a result of all of that But then he went he went back to what was now his home

The things he experienced there The degradations the persecutions

The imprisonment Well, that's why it's a pretty thick book

I highly recommend them to you. I bought copies the book that I listened to for my Grandkids, I bought a children's version for my youngest who can read.

Um, and I I quite literally bribed them Read it write a four -page review for me and you get real cash

Um Because I want them I want them to be exposed to a

Mindset that is all too often not ours today It is not that adeniram judson never questioned

What was going on in his life there were Weeks and months of great depression after the loss of children and loss of ann

But he remained absolutely committed and faithful Because he believed in the absolute sovereignty of god

He believed that everything that came to him came from the hand of god and therefore it had a purpose

That changes everything That changes everything And I have not gone through anything anything in comparison

To what he went through And i'll be honest with this it's almost make almost makes me nervous

Because I go I can't see how I could have endured

I can't see how I could have endured Endured The the the things that he went through the loss of every physical possession and pretty much everyone you loved

All of these missionaries Experienced death all around them. It changes how you view things and we don't we just don't know what that's like Um, but it one thing that's absolutely certain much of the theology

That infects the broad spectrum of american evangelicalism

Could never Have given birth To the modern missionary movement

Those men were calvinists They were calvinists.

They weren't arminians No open theist can begin

To even have a glimpse of why adeniram judson Or carrie or any of the others did what they did

Their theology of god is so small and so pitiful That they could never understand it could never understand it

Just couldn't But can you imagine writing that letter? Being a young man

She was I think when they Stop top my head. I think Because on the on the front here, you can see

They're going up the gangplank to the boat there's adeniram and ann I think

I could look it up, but I don't have time to I think he was 23 and she was 22 23 and 22

To have the guts to write that kind of letter I'm sure ann saw it

And there they go Saying goodbye to everything that they knew um, that's the kind of uh

Commitment That um What's coming our way may produce again

How how what what is that worth? What is that worth questions questions to think about so um

Again, I I I can't tell you What the schedule is going to look like next week

Um, I have surgery on monday If if all goes well

What oh if all goes well, um We we could have a program on tuesday we literally could

I wouldn't be counting on it, but it's possible. We will see um

But we will do the best we can to get back to some sort of regular schedule Uh And of course my my hope and prayer is

I won't be going And the next surgery is two weeks after that, uh, let's let's hope that's not the case.

Yes, sir You certainly hope that's not the case because you're tired of having to do everything Well, there's that yes.

Um We have been having behind the scenes discussions regarding Moving forward with a fundraiser.

Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I'm sorry. Um We're you know, we're we're very very new to this is not something that we do often let alone

Ever in the next uh permutation I did a uh, um

Survey last week as to whether or not people preferred that we do a raffle or another.

Uh, auction And it was overwhelmingly in favor of a raffle and now we're trying to work out the details behind doing that but It's coming up Um, maybe uh, take a moment and hold up the cross that I finished yesterday that now has is right in front of you

Right there right there. You have to second laptop but um, we're um

Oh, we're going to be auctioning. I I guess the The idea is going to be we're going to try to do it simultaneously the bible's on the uh,

Thing over there the uh, the high Stool yeah, so so explain the idea there

So this is your multi -layer cross uh, it's now been stained so all the different kinds of wood have

I'll let him do that Oiled sorry Mineral oil. Okay. All right So this is this is uh handcrafted um

By the president of albany mega ministries. That's the thing that should make you all go gotta have that Uh, so that's uh, rich's contribution and then of course we have jeffrey rice's, uh, esv um creeds and confessions, uh volume with the uh, uh sort of rustic um leather cover, uh brown and Deep burgundy type stuff and we will eventually have a blade from Uh, derek melton as well.

So yeah, so essentially, you know, we're the idea generally right now is that we're going to do them all

Simultaneously, we'll have three different auctions. You'll be able to purchase multiple as many tickets as you want and we're just trying to determine a how long should it go and what the prices should be based on what the market value would be of those items and so uh, we're still working out those details and in the meantime, we're

Going to be looking to derek to find out what his time frame is for The uh the knife coming in and then we're going to put all all those up Yeah, that's that's that's outside of my realm of expertise that's for sure.

Um, but um Yeah, we'll be letting everybody know. Uh because I know

We Yesterday morning, uh What we've decided what we're doing now

Is we've found an rv park. There's actually two of them We haven't used the other one yet, but we you know might need to at some time in the future

But there's some rv parks in sun city And what we've done up until this point in time is

I would take the rv to my house and park it on the street in front of my house and plug it in and that's the way you get the

Refrigerator cooling down and stuff like that This this beast is too big.

Um, it doesn't fit on the street um, you can't put the slides out because then no one can get around you and um

It just wouldn't work to do it. So what we're doing now is we're actually going to an rv park and I back her into a slot and Then we can have everything hooked up and the air conditioning running the slides out we can load get everything loaded

And then I leave from there So yesterday morning, I picked the unit up from the rv park ride parked it

And we took it into our it's not a repair facility it's a it's a dealership with But it's where we take it for all of our maintenance and stuff like that And this was her first run so there are a bunch of things that need to be addressed and then

We're also going we really need to have as reliable An internet capacity as possible

So a roof mounted um system I'm, sorry 5g system

Um rather than just the little modem that we've been carrying around Which has always driven me insane.

Um and starlink But we need to run some wires in the unit to be able to do that, right?

So they're gonna be doing stuff like that And then we had the little things that you need to do. Uh, you take a unit out for the first time

And stuff happens, uh, it's the break -in run and that's that's what happened with this one.

So we had I had a leak one night um Downpour huge downpour in west texas.

It took about 20 minutes and then it started leaking one bad But you know, we took care of it, but needs to be addressed and Some slide out issues not quite where they need to be and so anyways the poor guy

Sitting sitting back there rich and I are going through stuff and he's he's typing all this in he's only got like 10 slots on the form and I think he had to go to a second form because We're like and then oh that oh, remember that.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, then we gotta And I think there was something that You had forgotten that I actually remembered because it was sort of toward the beginning of the trip um, so yeah the point being

The uh, the bill on that is going to be substantial um, and so the things we're doing here are just to help the travel fund and defray those things, uh,

I have I pull out two months from today So i've got two months home

And I pull out for colorado two months from today and so those will help with that And be praying that we can arrange the

Two debates that we're attempting to arrange, uh one in colorado springs one denver I have some thoughts about that.

I may given the importance of the subject. Um Be willing to debate some folks that otherwise

I would not want to for behavioral reasons, but I will see i'm thinking i'm thinking about it.

Um We'll we'll see we'll see but so we'll be letting you know next week

Lord willing about all that stuff in regards to the uh raffle how we're going to be doing it and uh

You too can have how tall is this? 12 inches, okay 12 inches.

There you go All right, that'll do it. Uh lord willing see you the earlier next week we see you

The better things go on monday. How's how's that sound? Um you know, i'll probably have black and blue marks on my arms again from Getting poked and stabbed and all the rest of that kind of fun stuff, but that's just how it goes