Advent Traditions, Anti-Reformed Rants and Arguments

Oh, greetings. Welcome to the dividing line. We are live on Christmas Eve. Eve, I guess, is

I think that's the date. Yeah, I am. I'm going to I'll confess openly.

This Christmas has snuck up on me. I've been just too much stuff going on, too many things happening and too much stuff going on next week.

And then, you know, goodness, I I just realized just now sitting here,

I haven't made the reservations for the trip in January yet. Well, there's one of them, but not that most

RV parks are overly busy in January. I don't I probably wouldn't even have to make reservations, actually.

But just trying to keep up with everything. And this Christmas has just, you know,

I tell everybody, you know, don't let don't let the busyness of Christmas, you know, catch up with you and you don't get to, you know, really enjoy the season.

Yeah, well, I did. So there you go. Just being just being honest about it. And I think a lot of the rest of you are probably going, yeah, me too.

And then there's those of you who think you're actually Puritans who are just going, yeah, a bunch of pagans anyways.

Yeah, this is don't even worry about those folks this time of year. The rest of the year, we're like,

OK, we're fine. But, you know, this time of year is just like, you know. Anyway, so here we are.

And, you know, the thought. Did cross my mind to do something seasonal.

I will mention one thing. I will do one semi seasonal thing here.

How's that? I saw a bunch of discussion and it's sort of been happening every year for the past two years.

But I saw some discussion about the manger stuff.

OK, and if you don't know what the manger stuff is. It's been a number of years since.

There have been articles and stuff starting to sort of hit the mainstream and things. And it is it is actually a very interesting topic when you when you think about it.

Archaeology has assisted us. In translation of the

Bible and an understanding of words in the Bible. And and I'm just thinking about this off the top of my head, so it's not a matter of I'm not going to put stuff up on the screen and do some in -depth thing.

I mean, we can do that. There are articles out there and and graphics and things we can do.

But fundamentally. There are a lot of.

Christmas items, advent items. That came long, long, long after the time of the

New Testament. Here in America, most of our traditions go back to Europe.

Most everybody who came here initially anyways, came from Europe and brought those traditions with them.

And understandings as well, so. You know, there's a lot of Christmas hymns that have some of the some of the deepest

Trinitarian theology I've ever heard have been in Christmas. You sometimes it's normally in the verses that don't get sung.

But, you know, what was once said, the loneliest thing to be is the third stanza of a hymn in a

Baptist church. And except at Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, where every every verse was treated equally.

Didn't matter if there were 10 or 12. They'd all get sung. You sung them all. But anyway, so then there would be the really bad

Christmas hymns with, you know, little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.

What? What do you mean, no crying he makes? What is the Gnostic write this?

But of course, Jesus cried. What are you talking about? And then there's something about what was the one about?

How white Jesus was, you know, this type of stuff. And, you know, it came from Germany or Ireland or, you know, something like that.

And you just have to be aware of that kind of stuff. So anyway, you've got those types of traditions.

And the same thing with how you would understand certain words in the

Bible. And Europeans, obviously, in the

Middle Ages, things like that medieval period, you would have farm animals and things like that right outside the door of your house.

If you had a house, it might have been a hovel, you know. But the idea was there was no room for them in the inn, you know.

And so Jesus was laid in a manger. And so you've got this picture of and, you know, it's on 70 million

Christmas cards and everything else. People still do Christmas cards anymore where you have the manger scene and it's out in a stable yard.

And, you know, there's a home to be seen nearby. And, you know, this is where Joseph ended up, things like that.

Well, we mentioned last year, maybe the year even before that. There's a lot of problems with that imagery.

And the problem is you mention problems, that imagery, and everybody gets mad at you for mentioning there's problems with that imagery because it's what you grew up with.

It's it's all around you. You may have a manger scene out in your front yard right now, maybe at your church.

There's, you know, the little manger and Joseph and Mary and all the rest of it. And the little drummer boy, what?

Where did that one come from? I've always wondered the little drummer boy.

Drummer boy, what? Yeah, that's when Jesus cried was, yeah, you bet.

Brum, brum, brum, brum, brum. And then I saw a meme today. Oh, was it Babylon Bee that said, man,

I'm glad the drummer boy's gone. Oh, no, here comes the bagpipe boy or something like that. It's like, yeah,

OK. Yeah, that's pretty weird. Anyway, you know, all that stuff, accretions over time, traditions, everything else.

So we start, you know, putting together a view of what a home, a house looked like.

In Bethlehem. In the first century. And the reality was that many of them had were built in such a fashion that the and, you know, we talk, talk about farm animals and again, we keep transforming things outside of ancient

Israel to Europe. OK, and so you've got cows and you've got all this type of stuff.

The the animals that would be dependent upon by someone in Bethlehem in those days would not necessarily be, you know, a big steer or something like that.

They would be a little bit smaller in size, smaller farm animals type thing.

Anyways, babbling too long here. What we've discovered is that many of these homes were a single unit and that many of these animals would be kept in a particular part of the house.

It was actually under the same roof, but that's where the animals were kept. So it would be cordoned off, you know, as they weren't just wandering around.

But it would be cordoned off. And if you had heat during the winter, you know, that would help with keeping your animals alive because they were a major source of your food.

Eggs and things like that. Milk. And so.

You would, in all probability, when you think about it.

When Joseph and Mary go to Bethlehem. They have family there.

That's the city of David. So. It would be in those in that culture, even a remote relative is still a relative.

And there was a much, much, much higher emphasis on taking care of people on a hospitality, especially within families, that it would be almost unthinkable that Joseph would take his pregnant wife to a city where they don't know anybody and they wouldn't know anybody.

And so she has to give birth in a cow stall. In all probability, what happens is.

Because of the census, because of the registration, may not have been a census registration.

You have a lot of extra people in town. And so there's no room as in a separate room in a in the house to have the child.

And so she would have had the child in the main area of the house and then would have been laid in a manger, which would have been inside the house.

There wasn't another bed to put the child in or something like that. This would have been something where, you know, cloth would have been laid down.

And and it may have been may have been used as a manger so that the animals could feed from it.

But it was repurposed in this instance to put a child there.

And the point was that they weren't in their own home. It was not that they were refugees.

It's like, oh, please. It was that they were not hyper wealthy.

Jesus wasn't being born into, you know, into wealth and power and privilege.

And he was born a regular family. It wouldn't have been. It wouldn't really have been an indication of deep poverty either.

Because there would have been someone that would have brought them in, a family member within their tribe, within their family group.

At least had somewhat of a home. And of course, a carpenter.

And would have been sort of middle class. It wouldn't have been it wouldn't have been on the very edges of society.

They would have been somewhere in the middle, sort of just normal people, which in those days would still not have nearly the comfort or the stability that we would have today as as a middle class

American. And certainly the threats of war and.

Everything else that would come along with that would would be much more prevalent, as would be proven only 40 years later when

Judea was ravaged by Titus and Roman legions. So in all probability, then all that stuff about.

Camels and that stuff, and hopefully everybody knows that the wise men come at a completely different time period, they're not there at the time of the birth, they're probably two years later.

But so much, you know, tradition develops that. You end up reading the text through the lens of that tradition.

And that happens, happens to all of us. That is not a thing that is at all unusual.

We're all we're all guilty of it. And the danger comes when it ends up creating theology and doctrine.

And that's certainly something that. In my studies right now.

Looking at how. Well, just give me an idea.

One of the big issues that we will be discussing that I will, I'll be putting

I'll be putting, you know, presentation together and we'll we'll talk about on the program and and you're probably going to go,

I don't know if I want to listen to all that kind of stuff.

There is a. And I'm not diving into it right now, I'm just using this as an example.

There is a corpus of literature of that is attributed to today.

Pseudo Dionysus, Pseudo Dionysus. And you might go, man, you hear about Pseudo Melito and Pseudo Ignatius and Pseudo Iron.

Why, why was everybody naming their kids Pseudo? Well, well, they weren't.

Oh, I woke you up, huh? Good. I'm glad, glad that Rich, Rich caught that joke.

All right. Given his advanced age, we have to keep testing for Alzheimer's.

Anyway, so Dionysus. The biblical

Dionysus in Acts 17, Dionysus the Areopagite. Is one of the converts that Paul makes with his sermon at Mars Hill, the

Areopagus. We're told nothing more about him. It's just the name is mentioned.

And, you know, Luke did that. Luke wouldn't mention names because as a historian, he sort of focused on that kind of stuff.

Well, there is a body of literature written by a man that claims to be

Dionysus the Areopagite. And starting from around the year 550 to 580, this literature starts having an incredibly deep and broad impact within what's called

Christianity. And it influences both East and West.

What most people don't know is that Thomas Aquinas had started writing the

Summa, and he basically rewrote entire sections of the Summa. Once, yeah, so this is either a floater or it's a little, little,

I bet you we had the doors open. And yeah, the air conditioning unit was replaced. This is the time of year to replace air conditioning units.

So we have the little things floating about, flying about in here because it hasn't cooled off in Phoenix yet.

OK, it's going to be like 70. What's it? 77 degrees in my house right now. I'd like the days are already starting to get longer as of two days ago.

Could we have at least some cool weather for a little while? Please, please. It's just the prayer of every

Phoenician. Anyways, back to Dionysus. I've mentioned before,

I wasn't going to get into all this, but I've mentioned before the concept of anachronism. And I've talked about how if you look at paintings from the medieval period of of, you know,

David in Israel, how's he portrayed? He's portrayed like a king or a knight on a horse with armor living in a castle.

Because that's what people thought things had always been. They didn't recognize the passage of time, and hence they did not recognize what's called anachronism.

That is looking at, for example, the

Donation of Constantine, the Pseudo -Isidore and Decretals. These are documents from church history that had huge impact on the development of theology that everybody today recognizes is.

Completely bogus. And it's easily recognized to be bogus because the documents make reference to things existing back in the fourth century that didn't exist in the fourth century.

They didn't develop for hundreds of years after that. But that was not something that in European culture was understood during this period.

And so even during the period of Thomas Aquinas, that's Lorenzo Valla is going to be one of the primary people that starts recognizing this stuff in the middle to late 1400s.

So but this is that's after Aquinas. And so Aquinas has started writing the

Summa. He basically rewrites entire sections when he encounters the writings of Dionysius, what we call

Pseudo -Dionysius today. In the Summa, he quotes

Dionysius the second most often of anyone, 1700 references.

Now, that's astonishing. But think about the impact that that has had.

The entire Christian mystic movement of the late Middle Ages was deeply influenced by Pseudo -Dionysius because they thought, well, think about if this guy was converted under Paul, then he is an immediate disciple of the apostles.

And the Eastern Orthodox Church canonized Dionysius. He is considered a canonized saint.

And while the vast majority of scholarship, Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, whatever, no longer believes that these books were written by anybody in the first century.

There are still Eastern Orthodox that defend the idea. As we'll be talking about later on, not today, but we will.

The reality is this work is written around the year 500, and it is Neoplatonic, it's

Neoplatonism. It is a it is Christianity expressed in Greek philosophical language from from people like Proclus.

OK, so you're talking later developments of Greek philosophy.

Being being the the milieu in which Christianity is then pressed and expressed.

And this has massive impact. On the entire Christian mystic, the entire experience of it's it's really hard to overstate.

How deeply this influenced later generations, but it's.

It's written 500 years after Christ. And you you you start seeing how in history.

Things, little things. Can be built upon, then built upon and built upon and built upon.

And it and. And you know how this works when you're, you know, laying a foundation for your a new porch in your backyard,

OK? One small mistake in measurement. Can end up having a a huge impact down the line.

So I saw I saw a picture once of. A bridge they had built somewhere,

I forget where it was. And it was coming from they built it from the two sides of the gorge.

They got the center. It's like this far off. I mean, they they can't even put together.

Now, the mistake that was made was was probably. A half inch over on one side.

But as you build upon it and build upon and build upon it, it ends up. Becoming nonfunctional, it's it's huge.

Same thing happens with tradition. That's why Sola Scriptura is so important. And that's why

Semper Reformanda is so important. Because it's one thing to say

Sola Scriptura and not allow scripture to be subjugated to a traditional framework that's going to end up fundamentally changing its its meaning and its content.

But. We have to be constantly examining. The conclusions that we have come to in the light of scripture.

So it's not a big deal that you have a nativity. But are you willing to look at it and go, oh, that didn't really happen?

OK, or do you just glom onto it, grab onto and go, we've had this in our family forever.

I'm going to get mad at you for daring to tell me that that's probably really not what happened. That kind of stuff happens all the time.

You run into people like that all the time. They get mad at you for going, well, you know, probability, you know, it wasn't really that way.

And and and they just they just become very, very angry. So. It is a relevant connection, you know, to the to the advent season and to what happened in the in the nativity and the incarnation.

All these things are vitally important. But it also sort of gives you an illustration of how and why we have to hold to the authority structures that we do and why, why and how certain doctrines and beliefs have developed over time that the apostles never dreamed of.

And yet now they are vitally important, one of which would be. I'm going to get you.

Now it's in front of my screen. Why can't I get this guy? It's not like he's moving fast. It's just one of those little gnat things like a little fruit flyer probably ended up in my computer someplace going to fry it eventually.

I don't know. Very interestingly.

I have a video here. And you know what?

It'd take too much effort to try to try to play it. It's it's in a tweet. So trying to get that onto the screen, all this stuff,

I won't. But I was having dinner Sunday.

I believe it was. And Michael Fallon told me about what had happened at AmFest.

And no, I was not there. Yes, it's in Phoenix. No, I've never been to one. It's not that I'm simply trying to be antisocial.

It just seems especially when you're involved in apologetics, you have to be somewhat careful about.

Connections and things so that you can say what you need to say when you need to say it, basically.

And so I have never gone to it, never gone to any of those types of things, had a bunch of people that I know that were there that did attend various things, a couple of people

I know that spoke. Okay. I don't know all the players in the names.

I do not keep up with all that stuff that may disappoint some of you, but only so many hours in the day and so much interest that I can manage to muster, especially for all the political stuff.

And all the division and nastiness that's going on right now.

What was going on there for that matter? You know, I sort of figure anybody that can't recognize you need to hold your nose at someone like Nick Fuentes.

I don't have much to say to someone like that. It's just like, okay. And at my age,

I just don't have the energy anymore to want to argue about it. So anyway, O 'Fallon shows me this video of Jack Posobiec.

That's how he pronounces it. See, I don't even listen. Coming out on stage.

Now, they did this for everybody. Okay, so you've got pyrotechnics going on and stuff flying up in the air.

And that's another reason why I'd never do anything like that. Anyone does that with me? I'm going to turn around and walk right back off the stage and turn that stuff off.

Then I'll go back out there. No, not doing that. But he comes out on the stage before he's going to speak.

And he lifts a rosary up in the air. He's got a rosary in his fist.

And he's doing this number to the crowd with a rosary. And I made comment,

I retweeted O 'Fallon's tweet that said, you have a front row seat to watch steroidal

Roman Catholic integralism normalized within what was a political movement that was once characterized by its loose

Protestant evangelical affiliations only a few years ago. And yes, Roman Catholic integralism, particularly in its more radical traditionalist expressions, frequently intersects with anti -Semitism.

That's true. So most people have never heard of Roman Catholic integralism.

But in essence, it's the Roman Catholic version of the

Christian Nationalist movement, except it's much more historical in the sense that we've already done this before.

And the most accurate term to describe it is mocked and derided by all sorts of people in the

Christian Nationalist movement, based on utter ignorance, but they do it. It's called sacralism.

Yep, there it is again, sacralism. We've already done this once before. We've already did Christendom 1 .0.

We already did the Inquisition. And we already did the state under the control of the church and all the stuff that came from that.

But the Roman Catholics want it back. They want that power back. And so that's the

Roman Catholic integralism. And if you want to find them, they're online.

So I dared make a comment. When I retweeted it, and I gave the background.

I said, look, 99 % of the non -Catholic young people attending such an event have been given zero foundation upon which to recognize what he is doing and why he is doing it.

How many non -Roman Catholics who are not former

Roman Catholics and really how many even Roman Catholics have any idea what the origin of the rosary is?

Where it came from, what it means, the connection to Mary. It's alleged power to wipe out the heretics and stuff like this.

Very, very few. So I said given zero foundation upon which to recognize what he is doing and why he's doing it.

They think the rosary is just some thing Catholics do. They have no idea how it's related to Roman Catholic spirituality, sacramentology, and especially

Mariology. Even most reformed today just don't care about all that old stuff anymore.

And those that do tend to be so harsh, so fossilized, no one wants to stay in the same room with them. You know, which quote -unquote reformed people

I'm talking about there. And so here we are. Roman Catholic integralism, the

RC version of Siennism, on full display at the TPUSA event. Please do not confuse a biblically defensible concept of Christ as Lord over the nations and the centrality of God's law, etc.

with integralism. They are not the same thing. The Roman Catholic gospel cannot bring the peace between men and God that is necessary for peace itself to flourish on Earth.

And with Rome moving ever more clearly toward ecumenical unity with the East and embracing more and more simply non -Christian concepts in the

Magisterium and amongst the Cardinals and Bishops, what the final amalgamation will look like is hard to say.

But I can guarantee you one thing, it won't have the gospel, and hence it won't have the power of God.

So when we see ostensibly reformed guys hugging and mugging with Roman Catholics or even semi -Catholics like Calvin Robinson, realize they clearly have no idea where Rome's theology actually leads, let alone how empty that cooperation will prove to be.

And I'm talking about pictures posted by the individuals themselves on social media just a few days ago, mugging with Calvin Robinson, who of course would be there doing his thing and pushing his brand, all the rest of that stuff.

And these were men who call themselves reformed. And they're sitting there with the guy that thinks that this thief on the cross was saved at the intercession of Mary.

And they don't care because that's not what matters anymore. It's the political alliances.

That's what matters. There's what this brand of Sianism is going for. They're tapping into the victim mentality on the part of young people that are being convinced the same thing's happening on right and left.

You're always a victim wherever it is. So you're tapping in to that on the right. And it's like, you know, all that,

I never really did understand what the problems with all that Roman Catholic stuff was anyways. That just seems to be rather, you know, arcane and, you know, we just, we're either going to stand together or we're going to hang separately.

So, you know, we all just got to get together. We don't have to worry about this stuff anymore. There you go. Once you hold to a form of Christian nationalism where Christ isn't the center anymore or a form of Christian nationalism where, hey, we all talk about Christ.

We just can't talk much about Christ. We can't define who we're talking about and especially we can't define what he did.

It's okay to talk about Christ. Everybody can talk about Christ. We can get together with everybody on that.

But we just can't talk about what he actually accomplished. That's where things go south.

And that's what the mere Christianity movement was about. You know, we believe in the

Trinity and the death, burial, resurrection of Jesus. And outside of that, we don't have a clue what we have in common, but that's enough.

No, it's not enough. Galatians wouldn't be in the New Testament if that was enough, but it's there.

Most of Romans wouldn't be in the New Testament. Most of the New Testament would be in the New Testament. But that's the idea.

That's as far as we can get. And so we start running into, well, we have to start denouncing human tradition at that point and that's going to divide us.

And so we lose our political power and therefore it goes. That's what we're seeing.

That's what we're seeing. It's right there in front of us.

It's right there in front of us. So yeah, there you go. All right. I guess

I'll go ahead and play this. I already have it queued up. So that's the best way to do it. Wow, 35 minutes.

Okay. All right. I talked for a while there. I guess I can go ahead and put this over here because I do have it as a separate video and therefore do it that way.

And we did test the sound, so the sound should work. So this is a, how did somebody put it here?

This is one of my favorite Pritchett rants against Calvinism. This was posted on my birthday,

December 17th, by a guy named Eric. Eric Theobrov.

I don't know what that is. But anyways, happened to run into it. And these are all the guys from Trinity.

And this is sort of a, you know, this would, we could have fired up the

Radio Free Geneva theme here. But it's only two minutes long.

And we're only a matter of weeks really away from the debates in Dallas.

And I will not be able to attend the debate that Jeremiah Nortier is doing with Layton Flowers because that'll be the second day.

And I've just, I planned on being there, but I just made the decision in light of what had happened down in Livingston, Louisiana, to try to get down there to preach at the new

Reformed Baptist Church that a large group of people left the one church, joined with the

Reformed Baptist Church. Now, they've got a much larger group there. But I just wanted to get down there.

It's going to be an eight -hour drive to get there, but I still want to get down there and be of encouragement to them at this early period in their development, especially because the church with the rebellious deacons that got rid of their pastor over the issues of Reformed Theology brought in, yeah, brought in other people to speak, shall we say.

And certain people who wouldn't debate me if their life depended on it because they know better.

Well, Rich says we're back. Whether we are or not is a matter of opinion,

I imagine. Well, it's probably actually a matter of reality, one way or the other. Okay, where were we? I was about to play this clip, this anti -Calvinism rant, as someone put it, diatribe, what was the term they used?

Anyways, so let's just go ahead and listen in here.

I'm not sure whether I'll start and stop. I probably will start and stop. That's sort of necessary, but all right, we'll see if this is going to work.

Here we go. I was just going to say, you could give that same response to any passage, not just Romans 9, though, which means that there are essentially no passages that are particularly strong for Calvinism, from our perspective.

Of course, they're going to disagree. Yeah, there are no passages that are particularly strong for Calvinism. What? I mean, just from a historical theological perspective, you look at the debate and the in -depth materials written for centuries, even before Reformation, on the issue of the knowledge of God, God's providence in time, things like that.

It was understood that God was sovereign over the events in time.

And if you don't believe that, then you have to come up with other theories.

And a lot of the modern theories that have been come up with, that people have come up with, didn't exist for a large portion of church history, thankfully.

Process theology, open theism, this kind of stuff, so much of that is just modern stuff.

But yeah, there are no biblical passages that are particularly strong for Calvinism.

Okay. A way that you could disagree about anything with it, it's not really the text. Everyone agrees on what the text says. We all differ on what the text means.

So you have to do a lot of, you have to show your math. So you can't just get out a calculator and give the answer that your systematic theology tells you that is the correct answer for any given meaning of a passage.

You actually have to show your work. Yeah, and that's why Leighton Flowers has lost the two debates we've done so badly.

He can't do the work. If you have to be running around for weeks after the debate, trying to track down some scholar to try to repair your comments during the course of the debate and make stuff up about Eris and stuff like that, that wasn't even there.

You probably shouldn't be doing debates. And when I look at the best commentaries on Romans, John, Hebrews, they tend to be

Reformed. People doing their homework, showing their work. That's really the strong suit.

I would say that today, the other side is much more dependent upon meme theology, much more dependent upon emotion, and not showing the work.

But instead, doing what we're going to look at here in a second, what these guys do.

So it's one thing to say, well, we're showing our work. It's another thing to actually do it, especially when it comes to exegesis.

I'd imagine, and once you show the work, I mean, you see that you have fundamentally different starting points, and not the kind of starting points that you hear from Pop Calvinists, who's like, we start with God, and you start with, shut up.

That's lame, pious pouting. We don't care. It moves the needle not one bit. It's mock -worthy at this point. Settle down.

It's mock -worthy. No, it's foundational. It's fundamental. Absolutely fundamental.

You call this Pop Calvinism. This goes back to the Reformation. These men are not Reformed, and they don't really go back to the

Reformation. They would fundamentally, on foundational issues, agree much more with Rome than with the

Reformers, especially when it comes to anthropology and theology proper.

There's no question about it. But no, the reason that he just dismissed that is because that is foundational, where you start.

And if you look at Scripture, if you grab this book, and you start with your presuppositions about man, and use that as the filter through which you read all of this, you're going to come to completely different conclusions.

That's not what the authors did. That's not the worldview of the prophets and apostles.

You're going to tell me that Isaiah's primary filter is what makes man able to accept

God? I'm not going to worship a God that would do something like that. You find that in Isaiah?

You find that in Jeremiah? Ezekiel? Really? No, of course not.

You don't. It's not there. It's utterly absent. The key element of these men's theology is the autonomous will of man, which is nowhere in the

Scriptures. Nowhere. God's kingly freedom to do with man as he pleases, it's everywhere in Scripture.

So, it's astonishing that someone can literally sit in front of a camera, and not recognize that yeah, actually, if you start with God, and then see man as the creature of God, and you have your theology first, and your anthropology derivative from your theology, it makes all the difference in the world.

And that's not what you guys do. That's not where you start. And so, what's mock -worthy is what was just said.

That is what deserves to be mocked. That's amazing.

You're being a child. Okay, we all start with God, and God's word, and blah, blah, blah. Okay, I mean, I just, I'm over the pseudopiety pass at this point.

But I'm talking about different starting points. Okay, all of that was vacuous words. It had no meaning.

And, you know, everybody's sitting there, oh, yeah, that was great. There was no meaning to any of it. That doesn't touch on anything.

That's just throwing sand in the air, going, look how wise I am. There was no wisdom in it at all.

You can't see the vast difference between starting with, we need to start with God, and what

God's purposes are. And then in light of that, see what Scripture says about man.

Starting with man has led to everything you see in the modern period. Everything you see in the modern period.

These guys are modernists. They may not recognize it, but they are. And if you can't see that, that's childishness.

That's pseudopiety. Yeah, this is a rant, but it's not a rant that has any meaning to it.

On background, what is the context? What is the sociocultural context? Not just the historical context.

What is the theological context? What is the ideological context? Excuse me? The what context?

The theological context? You mean theology proper? You mean as in the doctrine of God? You mean that you have to start with that?

Yeah, exactly. Bing, bing, bing. You got it. What is the political context?

What is the economic context? All of that. And there may be a political context.

There may be an economic context. Those are rarely the primary context in the exegesis of almost anything in the

New Testament, or in the Bible as a whole. There are some places where you deal with the intersection between, for example,

Rome and the people of Israel and stuff like that. The economic and political things are obviously important there.

And obviously when Israel deals with Nebuchadnezzar, the

Assyrians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, whatever. Sure, there's stuff there.

But the vast majority of the key texts, that's not central to what's going on there at all.

Once you start putting the text that we often debate within the context.

Context doesn't mean the first few paragraphs and the before and after whatever proof text you want to pontificate about and give an opinion.

No, the context is a huge thing. Actually, serious exegesis begins with the actual words, begins with grammar and syntax.

It is a sentence and then a paragraph and then a section of a work and it grows from there.

And so you want to look at how a word is used by an author in a particular work, in all of his works, if you have more than one work.

These are all foundational and central and they are things that Leighton Flowers frequently fails at because he doesn't know the language is well enough to handle it and he has to pull from everybody else and he chooses to pull from people who just believe what he believes and not check his work.

He doesn't do his work. It's all there is to it. You employ him. You let him teach. You get to answer for stuff like that, too.

So when you talk about these big macro issues, well, that's all fine and dandy, but what we have seen in European theology for centuries now is when you create these macro contexts specifically so as to silence the testimony of the scripture that was written in the ancient context itself.

That's done every day in progressivist seminaries across the land and Europe, all around the world, sadly.

So the immediate context, original language, original context, author and audience.

That's where you have to start. If your theories can't survive that, you're just making stuff up.

You don't care what was originally written. You have a conclusion you're going to go to and that's it.

That's where you, who wrote it, to whom they write, what language they write in, what time they write it, what did he attempt to communicate to his audience at that time.

Now, if you want to bring in other stuff later in application, or if there's unclear words, might the context of a political context or something like that, shed some light on that.

Okay, fine. But that's almost never the real situation. That's almost never the real issue that you're dealing with.

Entire milieu from which this document emerged and you see the fundamental different starting points with just basic words like what does grace mean in the ancient

Mediterranean, right? What are the dynamics of that? What are the dynamics of the theology and the disposition of the author and his audience?

Is he trying to correct something? You know, is he trying to expound upon something, right?

Those are two different things, right? It had to be read two different ways. So when someone says to me, context, without taking into consideration, what kind of cultural context is this?

Yeah, well, real quick, like a Roman context, what is the more narrow localized context of say Asia Minor versus Jerusalem?

They're both Hellenized, but in different ways. So, you know, what kind of rhetoric is being used? All of them. No disagreement with almost any of that.

No disagreement with almost any of that. And I would say that when that is balanced with serious exegesis of the text itself, that the original statement about there are no strong passages for Calvinism sounds even more crazy than it would otherwise.

That has to go in. And so it just seems to me that that Calvinists have not done a lot of the legwork required.

They have, you know, to parse all of those things out. I was just going to say. Now that is absolutely positively amazing.

You can take it down. That's it. I mean, what what commentary is this guy even looking at?

I mean, when I compare a

Reformed commentary on Hebrews to what certain Baptists have written on Hebrews, the level, the depth of the

Reformed commentary in comparison to the non, there's not even a comparison. There is no way to compare.

Just incredibly shallow stuff that is out there. And yet, how do you deal with Murray's commentary on Romans?

Mu's commentary on Romans? What's better than those? I mean, you might find some more classically liberal commentaries that are bigger, but that's only because they're talking about all sorts of ancillary issues outside of the text and especially its application.

It's just self -deceptive, in my opinion, to actually come to the conclusion that Reformed exegetes don't, haven't done their homework.

I would turn that back and say, let's see your work. I don't see anything coming from you that has much way of depth to it.

Where's your work? Strange stuff. Strange, very, very strange stuff. So it was in that context that a comment was made that a bookmark.

There it is. Okay. Yeah.

So this is the other guy. He was, this is the guy that was on the other side of the screen. Didn't say anything in that. This is Braxton Hunter.

So it's not Pritchett's Hunter. But like I said, these three are the primary people there at that school. But if Soteriology 101 is a

Pelagian, isn't that because God determined he'd be one? Okay.

So here is, here is this. It's so repetitive, but it needs to be looked at and we're going to go a couple minutes over because we lost a couple minutes and that's how it works.

Or are you saying he's got that wrong? If you roll your eyes at it because you think he's not taking secondary causes and so forth into consideration, he doesn't think that resolves the underlying problem of determinism.

It's not that he is unaware of all the nuance Calvinists present. He's more fluent than the vast majority of Calvinists. That is simply not true.

You are deceived if you think that. I mean, you're deceived if you think this man was ever truly reformed.

I've had many people who knew him back then who have contacted me and said, you need to understand he was not. It's instead that by making the kind of statement you don't like, he is pointing concisely at what he and non -Calvinists see as the remaining problem when all caveat and nuance has been discussed.

So in other words, it says the TwitterX version of what I just said is, sounds like you're saying, not interested in hearing about the most glaring problem with my position.

So what's the most glaring problem with my position? For these guys, it's that there is a decree of God. They are anti -decretalists.

So there's no decree of God. So this is why they cannot come up with a coherent theory or understanding of the knowledge of God.

That is why when, when Leighton Flowers tried to deal with this subject with Genesis 50, it was embarrassing.

Absolutely face -plantingly embarrassing. Because one of those texts that Calvinists don't have in the

Bible is so clear. You meant this for evil. God meant it for good.

Here is an evil event, betrayal of Joseph, selling him into slavery, deceiving their father.

The intention of the brothers, evil. The intention in the same event of God, good.

It's clear. It's plain. We do agree with the text is clear and plain.

And it's meaning is obvious. Unless you have a tradition that says it can't mean that.

And that's where you guys are. That's not where we are. So when it comes to this idea, well, okay.

So if he's a Pelagian, hey, God decreed it. That somehow is meant to be an argument.

Why is that meant to be an argument? Isaiah chapter 10.

Well, two texts. Just first of all, what would, I wonder what a certain pagan king would have thought of it.

Because in Daniel chapter 4. In Daniel chapter 4, we have the interpretation of the dream.

And also Daniel says, speaking of Nebuchadnezzar, let his heart be changed from that of a man and let the heart of a beast be given to him and let seven periods of time pass over him.

This edict is by the resolution of the Watchers. And the decision is the command of the

Holy One. In order that living may know that the Most High is the powerful ruler over the kingdom of mankind and gives it to whom he wishes and sets up over it the lowliest of men.

So we have the observation of the spiritual realm looking at what

God is doing upon Earth. How he is, how he is justifying his creative act.

And there is a decree that is revealed by the dream of what's going to happen in Nebuchadnezzar.

And it is in order that the living may know that the Most High is the powerful ruler over the kingdom of mankind.

Not that mankind is the ruler of the kingdom of mankind. Not that God's realm of freedom is limited to what he can do as the result of what mankind allows him to do by their sovereign actions.

That's not what it says. That's not the perspective. And when that dream comes true and Nebuchadnezzar loses his mind basically.

Period of time takes place. He lives out there amongst the animals. But at the end of those days,

Daniel chapter 4 verse 34, I Nebuchadnezzar lifted up my eyes toward heaven and my knowledge returned to me. And I blessed the

Most High and praised and honored him who lives forever. For his dominion is an everlasting dominion and his kingdom endures from generation to generation.

And all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as the deciders of all things?

No, as nothing. As nothing. All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing.

But he does according to his will, not their will, his will in the host of heaven.

All that's fine. He can do that in the host of heaven. And among the inhabitants of earth.

And no one can strike against his hand or say to him, what have you done? Is it this one of those texts where we can all agree about what's being said, right?

And what it means? What it means? So. Here's a pagan king who comes to understand the sovereignty of God is amongst the inhabitants on earth.

It's not theoretical. It's not just out there someplace.

It's real. And you want to see how real it is? Okay, again, there aren't any passages, strong passages for quote -unquote

Calvinism in the Bible. Remember, we just heard that from a distinguished professor, right?

In Isaiah chapter 10, we have these words starting verse 5.

Woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger and the staff in whose hands is my indignation. I send it against a godless nation and commanded against the people of my fury to capture, spoil, and to seize plunder and to trample them down like mud in the streets.

So Deuteronomy 28 and 29. We've even found an ancient inscription, a small one, but from the mountains there where the curses and the blessings were were announced in God's law for the people of Israel.

And so Assyria is described as the rod of God's anger and the staff in whose hands is my indignation.

But it's a woe upon Assyria for being used by God in this way. I send it against a godless nation and commanded against the people of my fury to capture, spoil, and to seize plunder and to trample them down like mud in the streets.

God's going to bring Assyria against Israel to punish Israel in accordance with the promises he already made.

But it does not intend to act in this way and it does not think in its heart in this way.

Rather, what is in its heart is to destroy and to cut off many nations Oh, God's intention and man's intention, two different things.

Christians are told to have as their intention sound theology. Being in accordance with the revelation of God, but God might have a different intention for someone.

And God's able to do that. Man's intention, God's intention.

They're not necessarily the same thing. Right here in Scripture. My, my,

I guess that is what was happening with the crucifixion. Herod's intention, Pilate's intention, the

Jews intention, the Romans intention. And yet all of them accomplished what?

What God's hand had predestined to occur according to his own will. It's right there on the page of Scripture.

Do we find some economic context to try to get around that? Some political context to try to get around that?

Or do we let it say what it says? Hmm. For it says, that's

Assyria, are not my princes all kings? Is not Chalno like Carchemish or Hamath like Arpad or Samaria like Damascus?

These are all cities that have already been taken by the Assyrians and so on and so forth. As my hand has reached the kingdoms of the idols whose graven images were greater than those of Jerusalem and Samaria, shall

I not do to Jerusalem and her images just as I have done to Samaria and her idols? So there's the boast of the

Assyrians. There's their intention to destroy. So it will be,

I'm going to get you, so it will be, so it will be that when the

Lord has completed all his work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, he will say, I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the pomp of his eyes which are raised high.

You're going to punish the Assyrians that you used to punish the

Israelite. Why? For he has said by the power of my hand and by my wisdom,

I did this for I have understanding and I removed the boundaries of the peoples and plundered their treasures and like a mighty man,

I brought down their inhabitants and my hand reached for the wealth of peoples like a nest. As one gathers abandoned eggs,

I gathered all the earth and there was not one that flapped its wing or opened its beak or chirped, me, me, me,

I, I, I, I, I, and what is God's response? Verse 15, is the axe to boast itself over the one who chops with it?

Is the saw to magnify itself over the one who wields it? That would be like a rod wielding those who lift it or like a staff lifting him who is not wood.

Do you hear that? God uses men as his instruments and then holds them accountable for the intentions of their hearts.

It's right there on the pages of Scripture. And your humanism will not allow you to see it.

So when you sit there and say, well, you know, hey, come on it.

It doesn't God decree that he be a Pelagian. So it doesn't matter.

What if God decreed that he'd be an Assyrian? And then he uses the Assyrian and then he punishes the

Assyrian. You see, if you don't start with God, you end up making stupid, ridiculous statements.

Like those that we see online all the time. All the time.

Uh -oh. You're just letting us know how long it's going to take you to edit the video?

Not at all. No, I was just going to say, I mean, just take it, extrapolate it out. If God decreed that Latan was going to be a

Pelagian, Latan will be a Pelagian and God will hold him accountable and responsible for it and for all the false doctrine that he has spread abundantly.

And all the numbers, the great numbers of people. That's not fair. Yeah, well.

That's why they don't like Romans 9 because that's the exact same thing you've got there. I raised you up for this very purpose.

Yes. That you might deceive. Well, that's not in Romans 9, but that's the application that he made.

Send the emails to him. Not to me. Okay. All right. All right. Okay. So we went,

I think we probably went over an hour there once we got the oops fixed and I don't know if anyone's, are we actually streaming live?

At the same link, huh? It just came back up. So what happened here, and I realized

I've got some things I got to fix over here. Some of the mechanisms that I have here are on battery backup.

They stayed alive. The computer over here stayed alive. It kept streaming.

Even though our modem obviously was also on the battery backup, so it kept streaming, but my stuff here all went black, right?

So I got to put, I got to get more battery backups in here is what I'm saying. Gotcha.

Gotcha. I understand. I understand. All right. So didn't talk a whole lot about Christmas or anything today, but I do hope that you and your family have a wonderful time.

I've got a hundred and fifty miles to drive on Christmas because my grandkids moved 75 miles away.

So it's going to take a while to while to get out there, but it's well worth the trip. And so we'll get a chance to see them and hopefully you'll get a chance to see your family.

Obviously, this will be it for the week for us and we'll try to get back together with you next week.

I would imagine that given what we just did for 20 minutes that there will be about six and a half hours of video that will be posted by Layton Flowers and by the folks there by next week and I can guarantee you,

I won't watch any of it. See it all before eventually you just like, yeah, we're, we're, this is getting tiring.

Anyways, thanks for watching the program today. Have a wonderful time celebrating the