Submitted Scholarship

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:34

Well greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. Hope we sound all right today. You will notice that once again,

00:42

Rich has gotten the the technology itch and so now We have new microphones

00:50

Every time they're the greatest Then a year later. Yeah, not so great.

00:56

You know, it's sort of like, you know iPhone 6 awesome iPhone 6s awesomer and that's the sort of how it works, but well, we'll see how of course that always means things gonna change and and I I don't know how things gonna sound but We're here.

01:17

And as long as you're there, that's the that's the important part. I Am not a hundred percent certain how to address what's on my heart today

01:31

I listened some of you May recall I think

01:36

I mentioned I'm pretty sure I mentioned that There was a very interesting encounter coming up on the unbelievable radio broadcast

01:48

Justin Brierley premier hair Christian You're a

01:54

Christian when you live in in London the rest of us are Christians But in London, there's a cut above Where they're everyone uses crest and so they're

02:05

Christians. It's really odd. Anyway There is a two -part which we all know was a one -part divided into two programs but two -part

02:20

Exchange between Bart Ehrman and Richard Balcom now

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Richard Balcom wrote a very very well -known book, which

02:31

I Until recently had sitting down there someplace. I'm not sure where it went.

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But anyways, GS and the eyewitnesses, I guess a a new version is coming out a expanded version and In fact,

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I wrote the review of it for the CRI Journal years ago when it when it came out and It's very interesting.

02:56

There's you know Issues in it like which John wrote the

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Revelation and the epistolary literature versus the gospel and was it the

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Apostle John or was it a John who lived in? Jerusalem and So on and so forth

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We are we already have one person on Twitter saying they sound much better. So I'm hoping you feel much

03:21

I have a number of them in the YouTube chat telling me the same thing I do hear little anomalies here and there that I'm trying to correct.

03:29

Okay. All right. Good. All right anyway, um And I think that's the same fellow that has asked me about going to Peoria, Illinois Which I haven't gotten back to his email on but of course,

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I'm folks of this year Anyways, so that's sort of why but anyhow that I just I just responded to a tweet via the program without anyway anyway, the

03:53

The program aired over two weeks and I listened to the first week as I was starting a

04:02

Century ride 103 mile ride and I was I I had been a little concerned

04:09

Dr. Balcombe is not known as a debater and His voice is very it's very

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Scottish and very but very soft very breathy hard to hear especially on a bike

04:23

But not a lot of experience in going back and forth in a in that kind of a context and So I was actually very pleased with the first half of the encounter

04:44

But there were there were big blocks of presentation and so it wasn't a lot of What I would call cross -examination where you're going back and forth immediately

05:00

Second Encounter second half where they went more into the issue of memory and Things like that.

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I did find interesting Bart did make the claim at one point that for the past for two years

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He did nothing but read books on the subject of memory. I think it's gonna come back to haunt him someday

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Because I'm sure he did other things we will have a wonderful example of How some people misinterpret statements because I'm sure he did other things

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I'm sure he ate during that period I'm sure he slept during that period of time but anyway, uh

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And he said he read over 200 books, I don't remember the bibliography being quite that big but anyway, that's neither here nor there

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Once they got into a situation where there was a little faster exchange. I Knew that eventually the issue of one's fundamental bibliology would come up because you've got to understand with Ehrman that's

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That's the thing. I mean if you looked at the books, he's he's written recently his popular books He hasn't written many really scholarly books recently

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He's making his name and he's making his money on popular

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New York Times bestsellers And he doesn't have to do what certain people do and have well

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He doesn't have a church to buy, you know, 200 ,000 copies to make him a bestseller like some other people do but Which is why

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I've never been on the list and never will be on that list personally. Um Look at the books he's been doing when you think about it this last book that he just did

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What is it Remembering Jesus or something like that? It's it's about the issue of memory he started off with misquoting

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Jesus and There he's going after the idea that we can't trust the textual transmission of the scriptures then he goes for forged

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Well Jesus interrupted then forged And so now we we don't even know who wrote

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At least some of the books of New Testament. We can't know whether they've been transmitted to us accurately

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And now what he's doing is and even once they wrote it It was so long after the events and memory is so bad

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That even if we could know what they wrote we couldn't trust that. Anyways, do you see a pattern here?

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he is He is constructing an Argument of utter skepticism at Every single point in the history of the text of the

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New Testament in particular So you can't trust The original witnesses

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You can't trust The retelling of the stories over a lengthy period of decades prior to the writing of the

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New Testament books You can't trust the writers because they're changing and editing as they go along even with the materials they have which are already corrupted and Then you can't trust that we even know what they wrote

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Because of the changing of the transmission of the text over time as well

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So in other words there he knows That the only way to validate

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What he himself has done in his apostasy is

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To totally invalidate the scriptures and our ability to actually know

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That they represent what Jesus said or or anything like that. So he's gone after Every single element of The transmission of the text of scripture most of which most

09:08

Christians have never given much thought to anyways so this is The absolute recipe for unbelief.

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That's that's what he's he is defending unbelief Because that's what he's become

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And for some reason you're not allowed to say that but if some reason there was oh, he's a great scholar great scholar well

09:29

Okay in his area, he certainly left the area of his initial training and in fact, one of the things

09:37

I'm gonna be doing down in South Africa at Northwest University in Potter's room is we're doing a two -session lecture on the errors of Bart Ehrman and I Was just shown a on Facebook.

09:52

Someone had asked Ehrman whether he would Ever debate whether the

09:57

New Testament authors Identified Jesus as Jehovah. He says no, I don't think I'd ever do that. It doesn't bother me as if that's

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Evidently once you're Bart Ehrman, you can just debate on what bothers you You can you can totally misrepresent the doctrine the

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Trinity in public debate, but as long as it doesn't bother you, that's cool That's that's all right anyway,

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I I just remind folks Dr. Ehrman's training is as a textual critical scholar

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His doctoral dissertation. I was gonna bring his dissertation in today. I was looking at it again And I was gonna bring the printed edition in today

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Like I said, I think I'm one of the only people in the planet other than his own his own Committee that's actually read it

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But it was on the development of the of the early that the proto -alexandrian text type and certain

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Egyptian Patristic writers and As far as it goes, that's great.

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That's you know, it's very focused. It's in one particular area That doesn't mean you know anything about the doctrine the

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Trinity It really really doesn't How does that qualify you it qualifies you to know how to do research in a very specific area?

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But I'll be honest with you doing textual critical research is very different than doing than doing research in other fields of human study

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Sources are different the way of collating your information is different. So anyway

11:27

Getting back to the unbelievable program. I knew that if Bart got into a faster paced

11:39

Exchange that would focus on the issues of The fundamental foundational issues

11:47

I am obviously well to dr. Balcombe's, right? And as I listened to dr.

11:56

Balcombe and as I listened to the wheels start coming off of dr.

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Balcombe's arguments in the second part the reason why they came off became so blatantly clear to me and I wanted to address this because this is an issue that we've talked about in this program many times.

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For example, I have criticized the William Lane Craig Mike Laicona evidentialist school because they will seek to minimize the target of Their opponents by saying well look

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I'm not gonna we're not gonna argue issues of Inspiration or inerrancy or anything like that.

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You don't have to accept the Bible as an errant revelation from God we can just simply take these texts as reliable historical witnesses and Go from there.

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Well, I've pointed out That if all the

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New Testament documents are are somewhat reliable historical witnesses

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They are insufficient to give us the Christian faith because the

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Christian faith says Absolutely amazing things

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Amazing things when you when you're claiming

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That God in the person of his Son entered into his own creation and The Jesus the deity of Christ the resurrection

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The second coming that Christ is going to judge all all men those are amazing statements and Merely reliable natural maybe sort of contradictory to one another

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The historical documents are Insufficient To be the foundation for that kind of claim they really are

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So anyway as I was listening I Knew what was coming.

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I just didn't expect to be so quickly because coming so quickly because to get a seat at the table of Of quote -unquote critical scholarship today there are certain

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Payments you must make to sell and buy during the days of the

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Roman persecution in the first few centuries the Christian era you had to get a libelous a

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Certificate that indicated you had offered sacrifice to The Emperor you had said

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Kaiser Kurios Caesar is Lord Well to get to the table in academia

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To be accepted as a critical scholar There are certain

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Payments that must be made to the gods of the Academy one of those payments is you must embrace and accept

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The concept that we can be morally neutral that we can be we can be epistemologically neutral as well that there

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That there are things That we can start with without reference to God without reference to Jesus Christ and That's just the cost that's just it's just what you got to pay to get into the club

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If you if you say no Jesus Christ created all things There is no fact that is a fact that he did not make

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If you say that I first and foremost bow the knee Before Jesus Christ as Lord in all areas not just and see this is where We're seeing this more and more in Western culture

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We're being told you can have religious liberty But it only exists between here and here and only when you're in your church or in your home and you can't let it come out of those areas or we will make it cost you it will cost you to do that and Already the foundations this have been have been laid in the pressures that have been put upon us to accept the myth of neutrality

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Except the idea that what we believe about Jesus Can be kept out there and it it can be believed as a statement out there but what its ramifications mean cannot be brought into our

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Scholarship, it cannot be brought into our historiography. There has to be a secular

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A Historiography that everyone can agree upon and you have to buy that To get a seat at the table, and if you dare say no

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Jesus is also Lord of history There is this thing called God's decree that he's working out in history and Things happen for reasons and I Will not embrace the idea that all history can do is look blankly at chaos and Do its best to say

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This happened and that happened, but there's no relationship. There's no purpose. You can't you can't allow for any of those things and certainly there is an

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Absolute unbreakable barrier over all of this history where God is excluded.

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There can never be any Recognition he doesn't he doesn't act in this world.

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You can't you can't believe that and of course they make the

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Argument. Well, if you don't do that Then you can have anybody saying that this happened because God did it not happen because God did it and they go for these simplistic you know

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Canard Over here rather than a recognition a meaningful recognition of God's providence use of means blah blah blah

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But it's it's all an attempt to protect the idea of an absolutely naturalistic historiography and view of history

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Well, I I don't know Richard Balcom he seems like a fine man.

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Hey, he's Scottish that that that's a that's obviously a Major major a positive thing

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But I Don't know what his theology is. I don't know what church he goes to I don't know how he deals these things, but he obviously embraces a critical methodology that allows him to create his

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Perspective Without laying the Appropriate Theological foundation

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You know, someone said William and Craig already get argued against that position is debate with Herman I've listened to all those debates with Herman They utilize the

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Minimum facts approach for example the minimal facts approach Where well, you know and and this this one

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I've got to say Even some really sound folks use this and they've just got to stop the minimal facts thing where well

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You know the majority of people working in New Testament history and theology agree on these minimal facts

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Come on Don't make references to Opinion polls of opinions of people

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There's Just so many there's so many flaws in that I mean obviously you're gonna have far more

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Christians working in the field and non -christians working in the field and and The bias and and of course in so many places we have to go

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We stand against majority opinion We will always stand against majority opinion when we say something like God's gonna judge this world

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By the one that he has selected to be the judge's world who he raised in the dead that's never gonna be a popular thing

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So we're hypocrites When we go well, you know 78 %

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I believe Come on, that's that's just there's so many holes in that kind of stuff.

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It's it's ridiculous. But anyway back to the point I Mentioned I forget when it was

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I think is I'm figuring two years ago or so I responded to a particular blog article

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About the issue of the lordship of Christ in Scholarship and What we have to stand firm upon and The price we have to pay to be faithful to what we believe about who

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Jesus Christ is and so yesterday I Utilized a phrase in one of my tweets

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Subjected scholarship. I was sitting there going What how can you describe?

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Scholarship that begins with the lordship of Christ Knowing what that's going to cost from the world's perspective

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Begins with the lordship of Christ is unashamed of that and Inconsistently seeks to always remain under the lordship of Christ in all aspects of life and in all aspects of my scholarly inquiry

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So I'm not gonna be I'm not going to be a naturalist. I'm not going to Embrace the idea that this world is just a chaotic spinning mess

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In other words, I'm going to approach history the way Jesus did now some of you go

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Now immediately many of you go well, we we have no earthly idea We have no earthly idea how

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Jesus approached history because many people have already embraced the idea that You can't really know what

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Jesus thought or said because everything is mediated by flawed sources So since Jesus didn't write a book we can't know

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That wasn't even Jesus's view of the Tanakh That's not Jesus view what we call the

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Old Testament Jesus saw Jesus believed God was speaking.

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Well, then again You again the skeptic always has a way around anything

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Well, you mean Matthew representative was saying that and John or you know, if you want to be skeptical about everything

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You can you can destroy all knowledge. There's there's there's no question about it but in each of the

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Gospels In each of the Gospels and we only have four That any sane person believes goes back to the first century.

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The Gospel of Thomas does not go back to the first century You have to be Really prejudiced to even begin to think that Yeah, it's just it's just painfully obvious anyway

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Jesus his own view of Scripture in all the Gospels is that God is speaking in those words

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That there is such a thing as divine revelation now Bart Ehrman functions upon the presupposition that there is no such thing as divine revelation and My assertion is as long as we play that game

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We will always find ourself in the situation that we found ourselves at at the end of this encounter

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I Think a lot of folks listen to the first half. Oh, that's interesting second half is sort of like what happened

25:14

Everything we thought we were hearing in the first fell apart in the second and I want to play a segment and I'm gonna go ahead and Take it all the way up to 1 .4.

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So you will actually be able to tell that They're talking faster

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But it's still fully understandable unless you're already listening at 1 .8 and And that that it's gonna become chipmunky for you, but let's let's listen to this portion of the exchange all right and Well, I don't have anything to show you here because it's not a it's not video but There we go.

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I asked my students, you know, so we have the State of Union address two months ago I'd like you to reproduce it for me. Well, of course, they can't reproduce it for me

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So you say well, but they weren't really don't try to memorize it or well Suppose they were trying to memorize it as Richard said memories were no better in the ancient world than they are today

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So so suppose suppose Obama or Cameron or anyone else gives a speech for an hour and you try to remember it and then

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Say a week later you try to reproduce it What are the chances that you're going to reproduce it correctly? And now suppose you don't wait a week suppose you wait 50 years and you reproduce it even if you were there

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What are your chances of getting it anywhere near right? And what if you haven't in fact heard the speech? What if you heard about the speech from somebody who heard it from somebody who heard it from somebody who heard it from somebody who

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Heard it from somebody and then you try to write it down 50 years later What are the chances that you're going to get it? Right? I'd say the chances are extremely remote now

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Let me just stop right there. If you embrace the these are simply reliable historical records perspective.

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He just blew you out of the water That's not we believe the Gospels are and if you if you buy that perspective it's indefensible it is inefficient for its tasks if if you cannot as a part of your fundamental understanding and defense of the

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Christian faith Do what the Apostles and Jesus did they said

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God has? Spoken. Oh, but everybody says that fine

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Fine, they lots of people say that There are fundamental inconsistencies

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Between the people who say these things you have to examine those things, but that was the same case in the days of the

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Apostle every city every Roman city that Paul entered into Had temples that had oracles in them where God was quote -unquote speaking.

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So what? that's what people claimed doesn't mean that it was actually happening and Unless you're gonna embrace the absurd idea that well if one person or if Dozens of people claim to speak for God and God isn't actually speaking to them.

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That means God's never spoken If you thought about the logic of that once Most people don't

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Well, we can't know Well Christians say you can know there's this thing called fulfilled prophecy this thing called consistency or things called empty tomb

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And there's this thing called The fact that you're creating the image of God. There's all sorts of these things that are part and parcel of The mechanism that has been given to us to be able to differentiate between all of these alleged revelations

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But just because there are false revelations does not mean that there is not a true revelation it does not follow logically, but if you start off with the these are just Historically reliable accounts so we can sort of cobble stuff together and and you're either gonna end up with a very

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Shallow Type of Christianity. It doesn't have much in the way of supernatural revelation to it

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Or you're gonna have to grab hold of something else to fill in the gaps Which normally becomes some kind of religious tradition?

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Some kind of religious superstructure a hierarchy to try to fill in the gaps There's been lots of ways in which has been done but Obviously from as mine as I understand it

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You have the Apostles Preaching from day one the message of Jesus Christ.

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You do have eyewitnesses and They're not just writing these things down ages and ages later.

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You can see why You see why Ehrman has to try to make the writing of the

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New Testament as late as possible Because if in fact it's

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Earlier than the the time the time gap becomes Difficult though.

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He will say hey stories get changed the day after it happens And and by the way,

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I hadn't thought about this we just had an illustration of this In a rather famous statement from one of the presidential candidates just yesterday,

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I believe Who decided that the Attacks upon the

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World Trade Center took place at a 7 -eleven So there you there you go

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Memory has a way of getting away from you. And of course, he has all these stories. He tells about People being studied, you know one day after events and then they're re

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Interviewed a year later and all the changes that have taken place and look folks if all we've got if there is no if God has not spoken if there is no spirit and Remember, what's the constant testimony of the

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New Testament writers? David by speaking by the Holy Spirit said It's just a given

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It's it's just it's just what's there you can't get away from it as much as you might want to and as embarrassing as it is in modern -day academia

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Well that modern -day academia is also giving us the inability to know what bathroom to go into So that's not really for me from my perspective these days that big of a deal.

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But the point is he's He's right If this is a naturalistic process, if all we've got if the best we can hope for is a reliable Historical document, it's not enough

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It's not enough won't do it. Hmm. Well, let's talk about the Sermon on the Mount Richard How do you approach that because I've heard different people say different things about what exactly this represents in terms of is it a sort?

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Of a useful collection of Jesus's teachings and these things that would have been committed to memory in a sort of you know

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Systematic way by his followers. I don't know what your take on Yeah, I mean, I think it's a compilation of sayings of Jesus made by the evangelist I mean, I don't think

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I've ever thought Jesus stood up and said to someone on Mount like that Actually, I was once present where somebody as it were performed the

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Sermon on the Mount now I I just slowed it down because you can't do Balcomb at one point And I wanted you to hear what he said there

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Let me back up a second think it's a compilation of sayings of Jesus made by the evangelists I mean, I don't think I've ever thought

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Jesus stood up and said to someone like that Actually, I was once present where somebody, as it were, performed the

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Sermon on the Mount. It was very interesting, because you find it just doesn't work if you try and perform it. It's far too concentrated.

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You know, it's all these little sayings, which mean a lot, and they come thick and fast, one after the other. You can't follow it. In that sense, it's one of the worst sermons ever preached, because it doesn't have a beginning, middle, and end in the way that...

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You see, what was remembered... Now, let me stop right there. If that bothers you, listen more carefully.

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That's not the bothersome part. Because I've said the exact same thing, very clearly.

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I believe there was a Sermon on the Mount, but Matthew does not provide us with an MP3 copy of it.

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Compare Luke's Sermon on the Plain, which has many of the same elements.

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Jesus didn't preach completely different sermons everywhere he went.

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And there were obviously many themes, many parables, many stories that he repeated many times.

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And if we're talking a full three years' worth of ministry, you can read all the

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Gospels together in just a matter of hours. You could read all the

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Gospels in less time than we know Jesus spent preaching just on the day in John 6, where they had to try to find some food.

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So, very clearly, there isn't any question, the Gospel writers are picking and choosing their material.

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Now, what Ehrman likes to do is say, they're changing the story. Well, if you have literary dependence, where all you've really got is

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Mark. John is an ahistorical yahoo out in the woods someplace, a raving madman out there, we don't have to worry about him.

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And Luke and Matthew are just simply editing Mark. Then you have one stream, and it's real easy to argue for the corruption of that.

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If you recognize the existence of the eyewitnesses, the preaching of the Church, and the existence of oral tradition, then you've got

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Matthew, Mark, and Luke drawing from that oral tradition, and it actually ends up answering more questions.

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The singular literary dependence concept, which is primarily forced upon people by naturalistic materialism, because they can't believe there's such a thing as inspiration or anything like that in the first place, but taking that perspective ends up raising more questions than it answers.

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If you recognize the existence of an oral tradition, it answers more questions than the other perspective does.

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That may not be the popular view today, but it's very obvious to me. Anyway, what you have then is, and it was interesting, it came up in this segment, in this second half.

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Remember when Ehrman's book first came out just a few months ago, one of the things

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I immediately jumped on was he utilized Jairus' daughter as an illustration here.

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We've covered this many, many times. We have covered the relationship of Matthew and Mark in their telling the story of Jairus' daughter.

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I covered it in the G3 conference the year before last as well, as an example of how we need to understand the sources that we're utilizing, and how we can do so fully believing not only in the inspiration of Scripture, but in the inerrancy of Scripture.

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But that came up, interestingly enough, in this conversation. But that shouldn't bother you in the sense that he's exactly right.

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Justin was exactly right there. He had the exact same thought process there that I did.

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Look at the Sermon on the Mount. Beautiful, wonderful Scripture, but very plainly, it is a concentrated summary of points that Jesus preached many times and in many different ways.

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What's the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount? How did

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Jesus make application at the end? How was Jesus' transitions? If you really think that this is someone sitting there feverishly writing as fast as they can, not only was it a very short sermon, but it wasn't a very good one.

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And nobody believes—well, I'll take that back. You shouldn't believe that it's an

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MP3 transcript. It obviously isn't. And so, yes,

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Matthew is taking what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, and he's forming it.

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Does that mean he's changing it? See, I don't like using that term. If what you mean by change is anything other than knowing shorthand, which

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I don't think had really developed to that day, but anyway, then you can use the word change, but that's not how

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Ehrman's using it. Ehrman equivocates on the use of that term. And certainly the people reading him appreciate his equivocation.

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If you recognize it as Matthew taking what was delivered that incredible day on the mountainside and putting it in an understandable, summarized form over the course of three chapters,

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I mean, that's a major portion of his book. You can only put so much into a book.

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They didn't have 16 gigabyte jump drives to just pass out to people in those days.

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You had to make it something that would actually be able to be communicable to other people. So you had to make choices to what you're going to include.

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And maybe because Matthew included so much of the Sermon on the Mount is why he had to telescope the story of Jairus and his daughter.

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And that's why Mark, who doesn't even give us the Sermon on the Mount, can give us more information about what happened with Jairus.

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They had to make decisions as to how much material they're going to put in. But when you have a

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Christian doctrine of inspiration, that is, and may I just mention,

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I think us Reform folks really got the leg up here because we function within a proper recognition, a biblical recognition, that God has a purpose in everything he's doing in this world.

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And it was God's purpose from the beginning. And this is taught in Romans 15 and other places in the New Testament. God had a purpose in giving

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Scripture in the way that he gave it. And if we believe that God has a purpose in the giving of Scripture, in the form it's in, remember the assertion of our theology.

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A lot of people miss this. All Scripture is theanoustos, the end result.

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The end result is what is God -breed. The form that it takes in the pen from the quill of the author or from the quill of the scribe of the author, as we know in a number of situations.

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So I believe that I have a solid biblical foundation for believing that God wanted, intended, as a

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Reform person must believe, that God intended Matthew's version,

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Matthew's understanding and presentation of the story of Jairus' daughter to be shorter than Mark's.

40:56

And that John wasn't dimensioned at all. And that in fact,

41:01

I can then learn. In fact, I've learned a lot from comparing Matthew and Mark. It's helped me to defend the nature of the

41:11

New Testament Gospels in debate with Muslims all around the world. I have a feeling it might come up in a couple weeks.

41:20

I have a feeling. But the point is that God has a purpose in giving us

41:31

Scripture in the form that we then receive it. That's what is theanoustos.

41:40

And if you don't have or if you're not willing to openly affirm, and I know what

41:51

Bart Ehrman will do. I heard the laughter, the scornful laughter of Bart Ehrman on the phone prior to our debate in 2009 when the term theanoustos was even mentioned.

42:13

Why should that surprise us? Well, if your greatest desire is a seat at the table, if you want to be viewed by people like Bart Ehrman as, if you want to sip lattes with French textual critics, and if you don't want to be mocked for not sipping lattes with French textual critics, then you're going to be pretty quiet about things like this.

42:41

And you're not really going to want to talk about things like this. But you know what? I don't care what Bart Ehrman thinks. Bart Ehrman is a creature of God, and he's going to stand before his creator someday and answer for everything he has said and done and for every single dime he's earned, destroying the faith of Christian people.

43:00

And I wouldn't want to be in his shoes then. But I don't care.

43:08

I'm concerned about what God thinks. I'm concerned about the fact that in the

43:16

Bible, it says that if you're ashamed of Christ and his gospel, he's going to be ashamed of you in the day that he comes as holy angels to judge the living and the dead.

43:24

I think that's a little more important because I'm never going to be judged by Bart Ehrman. I've already been judged by Bart Ehrman. I've already been judged by the world.

43:33

I need to stop worrying about it. Wow, we are really, really going long here because I had a bunch of verses to read, and we haven't talked about this coming up this weekend.

43:46

We haven't talked about, man, a lot. This is terrible. I am apologizing all over myself, but I've still got to play some more of this.

43:54

...sayings of Jesus were these short sayings, a long parable like the parable of the

44:00

Good Samaritan. You know, those long parables are about the most that people would remember. What people remembered were these,

44:06

I think, what Jesus deliberately did was to encapsulate his teaching in these pithy sayings and parables, and he didn't fill an hour with one after another of them.

44:14

They're the kind of bits that you're supposed to take away, the way of remembering it. So I don't think we have in the

44:20

Gospels anything like a reproduction of an hour's sermon by Jesus. We have these pithy encapsulations of his teaching, which people deliberately committed to memory.

44:30

And, yeah, and so in that sense, that was where the memorization took place, that they weren't attempting to, you know, it wasn't like someone set a tape recorder going and just reproduced everything that Jesus said in that sense.

44:40

I mean, so it sounds like you're somewhat in agreement with Richard on this point.

44:45

Well, you know, I'm glad to hear. I mean, Richard's saying that Jesus did not deliver the Sermon on the Mount, and I'm glad to hear him say that because that's what

44:51

I think. And so we're agreed on that. But I suppose the question is, did he say the things that are nevertheless recorded in the

44:57

Sermon on the Mount? Well, he might have said some. I think he probably did say some of them, yes. And I think you have to go case by case to do an analysis, which is what people like Richard and I do.

45:04

We go through each line to see, is this plausibly something that Jesus said? Now, just by the way, is this plausibly something that Jesus said?

45:11

So you create your view of Jesus, and then judge what he did or didn't say by what you think

45:18

Jesus would have been like. And, of course, your Jesus always ends up looking like your ideal

45:23

Jesus. This has been the canard of all of this, and that's why all of this naturalistic, quote -unquote, critical scholarship, and there's a proper use of that term and an improper use of that term, has not given us anything, anything that has increased our knowledge of Jesus, nothing.

45:49

It's always a diminishment. It's always, we can't really know. We're not really certain.

45:55

We can't really know. Who knows? Well, maybe that. But then there's a scholar over here. He doesn't think

46:00

Jesus said. You're left with nothing, because once you start with the assumption that these documents are not

46:09

God -speaking, you're never going to get to the conclusion that they are. They're insufficient once you view them that way.

46:18

I think that the problem is that many New Testament scholars have such kind of narrow vision, and so they ask, you know, is

46:25

Matthew 6 .33 something Jesus said? Well, that's fine. You do need to ask that. But what about Thomas 1 .14?

46:31

It's clear Christians are making up stories about Jesus, and they're making up sayings of Jesus. Nobody doubts that.

46:37

I mean, Richard certainly doesn't doubt that. Gospel of Thomas 1 .14 has a very pithy saying of Jesus. Every woman who makes herself a male shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.

46:46

Now remember, Ehrman is absolutely wedded to the

46:51

Bauer hypothesis, even though the Bauer hypothesis has more holes in it than Swiss cheese. He is absolutely wedded to it.

46:59

And that is the, well, he's written books, the faiths we never knew. You know, this wild, and that's why he calls these, see,

47:07

Christians were making up stories about Jesus. And so all the Gnostic stories get to be thrown in there.

47:13

There's no reason whatsoever to believe that that document comes from the first century or from anyone that was around Jesus.

47:20

There's every reason to believe everything about that from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But he just throws them all in there and mixes them all up because that's part of the process.

47:29

That's how you get where he needs to go to explain what he's done. Well, is that something that Jesus really said?

47:36

Probably not. It's a pithy saying. It's in an early source. Did somebody memorize Jesus saying that?

47:41

Well, no, probably not. Probably somebody made up that saying. And so the question's not whether Christians were making up sayings of Jesus or making up stories.

47:49

See, so now, as long as the Gnostics were making it up, so was Matthew. Because everybody's on the same level, because there's no truth, there's no error.

48:02

It's just proto -Orthodox versus proto -unorthodox, and there really isn't any truth here.

48:08

You've started with your conclusion. And it's no wonder, then, at the end, you go, well, of course, there was no divine revelation, and no message of Jesus, and Jesus didn't come for a specific purpose, and so on and so forth.

48:18

Sermons of Jesus, they certainly were making up both sayings and sermons. The question is, how do you know in a particular case that this is something

48:24

Jesus really said or not? Richard? Well, I actually think the attempt to take an individual saying like that, which is what scholars have been trying to do since form criticism, because form criticism gave us the situation where all we can do is assess each saying individually because they're sort of independent traditions.

48:42

And I don't think you can do it. I mean, I agree with Bart about that saying in Thomas, but why do we think that?

48:48

Because it appears to be Jesus saying something very different from anything in earlier records of Jesus' sayings,

48:55

I suppose. I mean, there are other sayings in Thomas which are not in our Gospels, which are quite sort of coherent with what we have in our

49:01

Gospels, and maybe Jesus did say them. But how on earth do we tell? It's extremely difficult to assess a single saying.

49:08

Can I just respond to that? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, just two points about it. One is that I thought,

49:14

Richard, I thought you were bringing up the point of individual sayings because I said that Jesus couldn't have delivered the Sermon on the Mount the way it's given, and you said that it's the individual sayings that he said.

49:21

And so my question is, which are the individual sayings that he said? And now you're saying you can't decide that. So if he didn't deliver the

49:27

Sermon on the Mount and you can't decide on the individual sayings, I don't really know what you're left with. No, no. What I think is that what we can do as historians is make general judgments about the reliability of a source.

49:38

And we may decide that Matthew's a pretty good source of remembering the teaching of Jesus.

49:44

And we just have to go with that. We just have to go with that. Matthew's a pretty good source.

49:52

Well, I'm sorry, but that ain't going to get you to Christian orthodoxy. And he may say, that's fine.

49:58

That's as far as history can take you. History is insufficient in of itself, and you have to go beyond that.

50:07

Okay, I think you start there. Don't tell, don't, see, this is, again, a fundamental issue.

50:18

Epistemology, so on and so forth. Don't tell the unbeliever he gets to judge these things. And then give him an argument that's supposed to impress him.

50:27

And then at the end go, but you really don't have a basis doing that because there's something beyond that you need.

50:34

And that's where some of the texts I wanted to get into were in. Let me just play just a couple more seconds and we'll press on.

50:43

We can't say, well, you know, most of the time he's okay, but this particular one really doesn't look authentic. That's really kind of the point, is that in your book what you argue is that the eyewitness were guarantors of the tradition.

50:55

And so it sounds like what you want to argue is that they guarantee that the tradition is accurate. But now you're saying that the

51:01

Sermon on the Mount is not something that Jesus delivered, and that we can't decide on individual sayings. And so I don't see in what sense these eyewitness reports are guarantors of the tradition.

51:10

Well, I never meant to say that they guaranteed that Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount. It never occurred to me that Jesus preached the

51:15

Sermon on the Mount, actually. I think it's very obviously a device of the writer of the gospel to collect

51:21

Jesus teaching and to make a useful collection of stuff. Just as, you know, Mark has a whole series of Jesus miracles.

51:27

They didn't necessarily happen, you know, one after the other on that day. He's just collected them in order to present them to his readers.

51:34

So the way in which the material is selected and compiled in that sort of way is not something the eyewitnesses have very much to do with.

51:42

So there you go. I think a lot of folks at that point said,

51:49

I guess I didn't really understand where this guy was coming from initially. And don't get me wrong,

51:58

I do take the time to read a lot of critical scholarship. I have to. We've talked about it on the program.

52:08

And look, every time someone contacts me and says, hey, I'm going to seminary, I go, well, I hope you can keep your faith.

52:15

And they look at me like, well, huh? And I've told you, even back in the 80s, when Fuller Seminary was very different than it is today.

52:24

I mean, I don't think Fuller had. Well, I could be wrong. But, you know, today we know Fuller specifically has heretics teaching for it.

52:32

Probably did back then, too, just not as open, I guess. But I've told you a story before when

52:38

I went to Fuller Seminary that I knew this guy. I can still see his face. Can't remember his name.

52:45

I knew we both came into the program at almost the exact same time. I think we graduated the same year. He might have been one year ahead of me.

52:52

Point was, I knew him from the beginning. I watched the process. I tried to even help slow the process, but I watched the process.

52:59

When he came in, pretty solid, knew what he believed, wanted to get better to help serve the church.

53:07

By the time he left, he left with a Master's of Divinity degree in confusion. Abject confusion.

53:17

And I've said over and over again, you know,

53:23

I learned a great deal from professors in seminary who were far to my left.

53:31

I learned to filter out the stuff that had the wrong presuppositions and find the gems, find the gold.

53:43

There's good stuff in there. There's good stuff in Richard Balcombe's material. I appreciate what he had to say about, you know,

53:50

Mark chapter 10. He has the eagle eye to be able to see what was really going on when Jesus is speaking with the rich young ruler, so on and so forth.

53:56

But you have to recognize the state of the academy.

54:03

And to recognize, especially in Europe, you're never going to get anywhere in Europe if you actually believe the

54:13

I word. Well, two I words. Would it be a double I word?

54:19

Inspiration and inerrancy. I mean, when N .T. Wright can identify inerrancy, is that what is it?

54:27

Annoying American doctrine? That's just the state of things.

54:33

That's just that's just the way it is. And. About the only people can talk about are people like me that know

54:40

I'm never going to get anywhere anyways. I'm not trying to trying to get myself some highfalutin positions.

54:48

I'm not going to not going to do it. I got completely different goals in life.

54:56

If you recognize. The assumptions and presuppositions that are operating.

55:02

You can still get some tremendous insights from folks like Richard Baucombe or Larry Hurtado or people like that.

55:09

But then don't be shocked. Remember, I played you the clip. What was it that Hurtado said?

55:14

You know, just a basic critical scholar thing. Well, of course, Jesus didn't do that. Of course, we don't know that.

55:21

There are things that, quote unquote, critical scholars simply cannot affirm because the worldview will not allow them to do so.

55:30

Well, a historian can't really tell you if there's ever been a miracle. So God doesn't really act in time and space.

55:37

He can't break in and leave evidence of that. Our methodologies won't allow us to even affirm something like that.

55:45

You have to know where they're coming from. Now, in light of that, let me explain what

55:52

I meant. Let me explain what

55:57

I meant. By this phrase, subjected scholarship.

56:07

I've mentioned what we're told in Colossians chapter 1 about Jesus being the image of the invisible

56:18

God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him, all things created, whether heaven and earth, visible or invisible, principalities, powers, dominions, authorities, all things created by him, for him.

56:27

He is before all things. In him, all things hold together. He is the very embodiment of the wisdom of God.

56:34

All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in him. A lot of people want to say, well, that's just spiritual wisdom and knowledge.

56:43

They want to limit that area to just spiritual things.

56:50

But Paul hadn't done that. He had just said that Jesus Christ created all things. And he pretty much exhausted the prepositions and everything else to say,

57:01

Ta Panta, created by him, for him, in him, that Ta Panta, it holds together.

57:10

You can't just then go, but the wisdom and knowledge in Jesus is just this part over here.

57:17

And all the rest of human knowledge and the great scholarship of the modern day, that's outside the lordship of Christ.

57:24

No, there's no way to read it that way. That's a radical claim.

57:32

It is radical. And you must understand, it is one of the primary objects of the hatred of those who are in rebellion against God.

57:44

And since one of the means of expression of rebellion against God is the claim of wisdom.

57:50

Isn't that what Romans 1 says? Professing themselves to be what? Fools? No, professing themselves to be wise, yet their foolish hearts are dark.

58:02

And so it should not be surprising to us that the history of man's intellectual activity is a history of rebellion.

58:16

It is a rebellion against the creator. It's rebellion against him who made us. And so it should not, that's why

58:25

I say to people, especially, well, I say to all believers. I mean, if you're someone who actually watches this thing, listens to this, for you, this is a given.

58:35

And so I say it to you. But for any believer who wants to be meaningfully active in our world today, you need to read 1

58:46

Corinthians 1, 18 through about the end of chapter 2 pretty regularly.

58:53

I mean, at least once a month. And meditate upon it.

58:59

Yeah, meditate upon it. That's actually a biblical thing. Not just read through it and then move on like you read your

59:06

Facebook feed. Okay? That ain't gonna get you anywhere. Meditate upon what it means for God in his wisdom.

59:16

By his wisdom, he has ordained things in such a way that man by his wisdom will not come to know

59:22

God. That has certain meaning to it. And God has made foolish the wisdom of the world.

59:38

And especially if you're involved in apologetics, if you're studying in seminary, or if you're taking the one course of study that basically requires you to spiritually drink arsenic every day.

59:52

That is studying philosophy. You need to realize the wisdom of this world is moronic in God's sight.

01:00:03

And you will never prove yourself more foolish than the day when you try to change the wisdom of God so that it becomes acceptable to mankind.

01:00:18

So that the wisdom of man and the wisdom of God become, they coalesce. The day you do that is the day you've gone into apostasy.

01:00:28

We need to have a fully orbed understanding of what it means to submit to the lordship of Jesus Christ in every aspect of our thinking.

01:00:44

And the only way for that to be true is if God has spoken and Jesus is who the Bible says he is.

01:00:49

If those two things are untrue, we are wasting our time.

01:00:58

We are absolutely wasting our time. If those two things are not true, if that grave is not empty, if he is not at the right hand of the father, if he was not the one through whom all things were made, then meaning, purpose, history, it's just all a grab bag.

01:01:19

Just throw it out there. Who knows? But when

01:01:26

I speak of submitted scholarship, what I'm speaking of is submitting every aspect of my heart and mind and being open from the start that in opposition to the scholarship of the world that puts man at the center and puts

01:01:45

God as an object of knowledge out here, I am going to proclaim my servanthood to Jesus Christ and I am going to submit everything under his lordship and hence

01:02:06

I am going to seek to see his creation in light of his creative purpose for his creation.

01:02:14

And that means when I look at history, I'm going to see it as the written record of my

01:02:20

God glorifying himself and accomplishing his purposes. You can't do that.

01:02:28

I can hear it now. They'll laugh you out of the academy.

01:02:36

Yeah. And any one of us could die this very day and stand before Christ to be judged.

01:02:42

Which is more important? Which is more important? I think we need to be straight up front and let the

01:02:57

Bart Ehrmans mock. And then as soon as they start, point out that the emperor has no clothes.

01:03:08

Bart Ehrman knows that on a philosophical level, by the way, you know, one of his quote unquote popular books, it was a real bomb as far as his book on God and evil.

01:03:18

Because he says that's why he apostatized. It was horrible. It was horrible. It demonstrated that he slept through most of his classes at Princeton.

01:03:25

The classes at Princeton were pretty bad then. I'm not sure what. But it was bad. It really, really was.

01:03:31

It was just in comparison to the other books he's done, really, really bad stuff.

01:03:38

And he knows, you know, when we debated, the last thing he wanted to get challenged on was the fact that he knows he makes theological assertions.

01:03:48

He just doesn't want to be held accountable for the foundation upon which he does so. He's got holes big enough to drive a

01:03:57

Mack truck through when it comes to worldview issues. He really does. And I think he knows it.

01:04:03

I think he knows it. So he is careful to avoid getting himself into those situations.

01:04:10

But if he wants to mock, let him mock. Turn it around.

01:04:16

Let Christ glorify himself by making a meaningful application of Christian truth in that situation.

01:04:25

And folks, you've got to realize something. We are living in a day of darkness. We are living in the same kind of day when there were only 7 ,000 left who had not bowed the knee to Baal.

01:04:39

And you've got to change your standards to match a

01:04:46

Christian worldview that recognizes what's going on in the world around us. Or you're going to be constantly disappointed and constantly unhappy.

01:04:57

You really do. At the end of the day, does it matter what's being said in Twitter, Facebook?

01:05:09

Or at the end of the day, do you take the time to stop and ask a simple question?

01:05:21

Did I this day seek to live consistently in light with what my Lord has revealed

01:05:26

I am to be as his servant this day? Changes everything.

01:05:33

Changes everything. You might have to turn off Facebook and Twitter if you need to. But even if you want to stay there as salt and light, who cares about the likes?

01:05:45

Who cares about the comments? There's only one person you should care about. You should have an audience of one.

01:05:52

Did I this day reflect the fact that I am seeking first and foremost to be a faithful servant of Jesus Christ?

01:06:01

And I don't care what your calling is, that should be the first thing you're thinking of.

01:06:07

That should be the first thing you're thinking of. So when I think of subjected scholarship, what

01:06:15

I'm talking about is scholarship under the subjection of the Lordship of Christ and all things, and that is not embarrassed by that.

01:06:26

Allows that to determine everything else. That's what

01:06:32

I'm referring to. And obviously you can see that has a huge impact when it comes to the issue of apologetics itself.

01:06:44

Again, if Jesus isn't who he said he was, if all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are not hidden in him, if he's not the creator, if he is not the exalted

01:06:52

Lord who's risen from the dead, if he is, then we need to live in light of that.

01:06:59

We really do. Now, a couple things before we wrap up here.

01:07:08

By the way, by the way, I almost forgot. Greg Kokel over at Stand to Reason had

01:07:15

Mike Kruger from RTS Charlotte on right after the

01:07:23

Ehrman book came out. His program is called

01:07:30

Stand to Reason. I listened to that episode right after listening to the Unbelievable episode, and it was ironic.

01:07:39

Dr. Kruger, we've had him on the program before. I know he's extremely busy.

01:07:46

I got to teach an apologetics class at the campus in Charlotte back in January.

01:07:59

We had dinner toward the end, and it was interesting to hear what books he was working on.

01:08:05

He's a busy guy, and so I don't like to contact him all the time. I'm sure people would love to have him on more often than he is, but I'm sure he has a limitation as to how much he can do about that.

01:08:17

I've talked about his material on the Canon many times. Excellent stuff. He's really an expert in all these areas.

01:08:23

In fact, I've started rereading, once again, The Heresy of Orthodoxy, which we have in the bookstore at AOMN .org.

01:08:33

You've just got to get that book. If any of this stuff, you've got to get it. I mentioned the

01:08:39

Bauer hypothesis, and I said Ehrman's wedded to the Bauer hypothesis. Well, you might not know what the Bauer hypothesis is. Well, that's the central aspect of The Heresy of Orthodoxy.

01:08:48

It's a book you need to get. You need to read. It may not be the most exciting thing you've ever read in some areas, but here's where the practical application, here's where the rubber meets the road, as they say, is in this very stuff right here.

01:09:03

Anyway, if you go over to STR, find the one with Michael Kruger on. They did about an hour, because Mike Kruger actually was in Bart Ehrman's classes.

01:09:12

He was an undergraduate student, which shows you how young Michael Kruger is.

01:09:21

Excellent stuff, and that'll be useful to you as well in addressing some of the issues we didn't address in this particular discussion.

01:09:29

By the way, it was not my intention to even begin to interact with everything that was being said. I just think a lot of people heard that portion, how everything concluded, and went, how did we get from last week to this week?

01:09:44

And if you don't understand the fundamental assumptions of the

01:09:49

Academy today, and the price you have to pay to have a seat at the table, then you'll understand.

01:09:55

Another thing. As you know, a lot of stuff coming up.

01:10:02

Here in Phoenix, I'm speaking Saturday night and then all day

01:10:09

Sunday. I'm not sure if we don't have anything up on that. I'm going to throw a quick blog item up on that.

01:10:16

Okay. As far as the listeners go, you're going to be at Fellowship of Grace in Northwest Peoria, 7825

01:10:26

West Deer Valley Road at 6 p .m. on Saturday. That's just past the

01:10:32

QT. The only reason I know that is because I ride Deer Valley Road on my way.

01:10:38

It's one of my routes. I'm a cyclist. Sorry, guys. Landmarks are everything.

01:10:44

It's a landmark. That's right. Actually, I normally have to dodge crazy people coming out of QT. That's the other reason. And then you will be at Sovereign Grace Bible Church on Sunday.

01:10:54

You'll be doing the 930 to 1030 Sunday school on the historicity of the

01:11:00

New Testament. And then you'll be preaching the sermon that day. And then Sunday night, those who are in the

01:11:07

Sunday school class are to write questions down. And then Sunday night will be a Q &A where somebody reads you the question and then you answer it.

01:11:16

Roger, dodger. Then the next week, headed to South Africa.

01:11:23

We do have an email from Rudolf Buschhoff that we need to get up on the blog, which will give the details of where the debates are going to be.

01:11:34

We'll be with Bashir Varnia again. When I'm going to be speaking on Bart Ehrman at Northwest University in Patrasum.

01:11:45

The conference in Cape Town. Right now, the last thing to get nailed down is exactly where I'm going to be in London.

01:11:56

I mean, I know where I'm going to be Friday night. But what

01:12:01

I'm going to be doing Sunday is sort of up in the air yet. He who in London has contacted me about that.

01:12:10

We need to hear from you. And then I do have the information about cold rain.

01:12:16

I think it's cold rain. I don't have it in front of me right here, but the town outside of Belfast will be on the 17th,

01:12:24

I believe. 16th of May. I'll get that up there as well. So, debates.

01:12:31

Lots of speaking. Lots of traveling. Lots of lecturing. Two weeks overseas. So, your prayers for that would be much appreciated.

01:12:39

In fact, what I want to do before I head out there is

01:12:45

I want to do a program where we get a little bit more specific about each of those things and ask your prayers for that.

01:12:52

And then, of course, just a reminder, September, not 7 -11, but 9 -11,

01:13:00

September 11th of this year, we will be going on our cruise.

01:13:08

And it's directly relevant to what we were talking about today. You may recall the title, Apologetics in the

01:13:14

Sight of God. And the focus is going to be upon the fact that the reason we defend the faith is not because it's fun to do.

01:13:29

We have a long history of having emphasized the fact that theology is what gives rise to our apologetics.

01:13:43

That if your theology is not directly the source of your apologetic, it's a bad thing.

01:13:55

If they exist as two completely separate things, that's a bad thing. One should flow from the other.

01:14:04

And as a result, if we believe in the doctrines of grace, if we believe that we couldn't even embrace the things we do outside of God's grace, what does that mean when you do apologetics?

01:14:19

Why does that actually close doors to certain approaches? Why does that make pragmatism something that should not be the standard of our success when it comes to apologetics?

01:14:36

There are few more beautiful places in the world, honestly, than the

01:14:44

Inside Passage and the coast of Alaska. But that's where we're going to be.

01:14:54

Look, if you've never been there before, I don't even know how to describe it.

01:14:59

I mean, all the video and pictures in the world can't begin to explain what

01:15:06

Alaska is all about. And if you look at the pricing and stuff, it's pretty hard to beat.

01:15:17

We're just plain old folks. We don't do the super duper expensive type thing.

01:15:26

And that's just not the kind of people that generally watch this program or listen to this program in the first place.

01:15:33

So that's coming up in September. It's going to be a great time. Check out the link on the webpage for that as well.

01:15:43

Obviously, the earlier you sign up, the better. And really looking forward to that time that we'll have then.

01:15:51

So those are the major things coming up. Was there anything else I needed to mention there? No, I think that nails it down.

01:15:58

We just need to make sure we got the two items. And I will be including what information we have this afternoon when

01:16:05

I post the stuff about this weekend on the South Africa trip. Like you said, we're hoping to hear from the folks in London and Belfast to get finalizations nailed down there.

01:16:14

And I'll then shoehorn those in to that same post so that folks will know what your schedule is. And, yes, as you said, don't forget to click the link.

01:16:23

Look for the banner ad on the cruise on the main page of the website.

01:16:28

If you're teeter -tottering on it, you're not sure, click in and find out more information and see what your schedule might actually fit.

01:16:36

Sounds good. Oh, one other thing. One other thing. One other thing. I was, every few years

01:16:46

I have to clean my office. And I was, I don't know where I found this.

01:16:53

I don't know what I was looking through. Is that the maze of Mormonism?

01:17:00

That's the maze of Mormonism. Oh, my word. Wow. Throwback. Now, you'll even see it has, see there, see the sticker on it?

01:17:11

Yeah. I was really into those multicolored rainbow stickers in high school.

01:17:17

You shouldn't have put that out today. It should have been throwback Thursday. You should have done it on Thursday. Anyway. This was the first book

01:17:26

I read on Mormonism. This was the first book I read on Mormonism. Now, God bless him.

01:17:37

Walter Martin did a lot of great things, but this wasn't the best book on Mormonism. It wasn't the best first book to read.

01:17:44

Remember, okay, here's a test for you. What was, what was the name of the guy that Martin quotes in here that launched the career of Brown over in Mesa in attacking

01:18:03

Martin on the issue of the book of Abraham and Egyptology?

01:18:10

Remember, Martin quotes from a guy in here that wasn't all that.

01:18:15

Turned out to be somewhat of a fraud. Derek Evenson? Who? Derek Evenson?

01:18:21

No, no, no, no. DJ Nelson. Oh, yes. Remember DJ Nelson? Yes, of course. DJ Nelson. And so I had not seen this thing for ages.

01:18:35

And it was interesting to go back. I mean, there's a lot of good stuff in it, obviously.

01:18:41

But over the years, I learned, well, pretty quickly, I learned to check your sources.

01:18:50

And in fact, it was because of books like this that I ended up spending so much time at the LDS bookstore buying, well, it was reading books like this.

01:18:59

I kept seeing references, for example, the Journal of Discourses. And so I'll never forget.

01:19:05

And I've told the story before. I know Algo could tell the story for you all. But I'll never forget the day after class at Grand Canyon College.

01:19:12

I was on a motorcycle. And I went by the LDS bookstore, which used to be at 35th Avenue and Northern.

01:19:17

It's not there anymore. You know where it is now. I think that one moved out.

01:19:23

The last I knew, it was at Greenway and 59th. It may have even moved further. But isn't it interesting how everything...

01:19:30

Pushes north. Pushes north here in the Valley. Anyway, I walk in and I ask

01:19:38

Mary. Her name was Mary. Real nice lady. I've been buying books there. I bought the

01:19:44

Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith and a marvelous work in a wonder. You know what's weird?

01:19:51

I remember right where they were on the shelves in that store. Isn't memory strange?

01:19:58

I don't think the point is that that is weird. No. I think it is.

01:20:05

I think you're weird. Honestly. How is it that I can open a browser on my computer.

01:20:13

And by the time it opens. I forgot what I opened it for. And yet I can honestly remember.

01:20:21

If that store still existed. I could take you right over to the exact bookshelf.

01:20:27

And which of the shelves. Marvelous work in a wonder was kept at. When I bought it.

01:20:34

And I remember where Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith was. And I remember what color they were.

01:20:40

And this was 1982 or 3.

01:20:47

Alright. So we're talking a while ago. But that's why I went there.

01:20:52

And I remember going in and I asked Mary. Do you have something called the Journal of Discourses? And she gets this look on her face. Well, yes we do.

01:20:59

And she points and it's on the top shelf. Because it's in a slipcover. It was huge. We have to have them around here somewhere.

01:21:08

Do you think it's in some of those boxes over there? Maybe. That makes sense. Because you don't have the journals in your office, do you?

01:21:16

No, I don't. I got rid of those a long time ago. Because I have them all digitized. And I don't think

01:21:23

I have the journals out in my office. I think they're online now. Well, they are online. Oh, I have them on my phone.

01:21:30

There's journaldiscourses .org or something like that. The website. But not back then. Not in the early 1980s.

01:21:39

And it's a 26 volume set plus index. In a slipcover. So it's yay wide.

01:21:46

I think we need it a little bit wider, actually. I think it was... $69 .99. $69 .99.

01:21:55

Now you might be going... But you've got to realize, that was the 1980s. And when

01:22:01

I bought that, that was half my weekly salary. And I had just gotten married.

01:22:08

And I had to strap them onto the back of a Yamaha 750 to get them home, too.

01:22:14

Which was interesting. But boy, did we use those. You even used them for a long time, didn't you?

01:22:20

Yes, I did. Did a lot of photocopying. Oh yeah, we used them for a long, long time. But that's why I went and got them. A lot of research.

01:22:25

Reading books, and I kept seeing references, and I went... I need to look up the originals of these.

01:22:32

I need to check. And I'm awful glad I did. I'm awful glad I did. This was the first book that introduced me to the fact that even

01:22:38

Christian apologists can make mistakes. As I have. And as Walter Martin did.

01:22:44

And that doesn't invalidate everything they say. But we want to obviously minimize them as much as is humanly possible.

01:22:51

But I found that. And I still like those stickers. I think I still have a few. Somewhere.

01:22:57

I love that rainbow stuff. There's a couple of three ring binders around here that you've got just covered with that stuff.

01:23:04

Oh yeah! Yep, yep, yep. I probably have... Probably this one has some on it, but I'm not going to dig them out right now.

01:23:10

But yeah, I... By the way, one of our YouTube chat members has said he did not find the information on the cruise.

01:23:20

And again, you're looking for the banner ad at the top of the page. And if you have ad blocker on, you may not see that.

01:23:29

So... Folks, that's where the link is. So you need to be able to look to those... The banner ad at the top of the page.

01:23:36

It's the very first one that pops up. Thank you for that information. Well, hopefully the program's been useful for you today.

01:23:43

We went a little over time, but that's okay. I didn't want to have to rush. Many other things to get to next time on The Dividing Line.