Marcion Lives Again!

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:32

And welcome to Dividing Line. I got up early this morning, ran up Snowbowl Road in the cold just to make sure

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I could be here. I had to plan that all outright to get back and make sure we could sneak another

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Dividing Line in here for you addicts that get all nervous and jittery like Rich without coffee in the morning and a lot of other people.

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When you don't get your second Dividing Line fix in a week, you know, it just ruins the weekend. It's all your fault.

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Sorry. So here we are on a Friday afternoon and less than a month until we are in South Africa.

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Pray for the arrangements. I'm talking with one of my debate partners about topics.

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As I've mentioned before, we are really trying our best to encourage our

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Muslim friends to – there's two ways you can look at debates.

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You could look at each debate just in and of itself, separate from everything else.

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Or, you can look at debates as part of building blocks of a bigger effort.

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It's sort of like the real frustration that I have expressed from years and years ago when

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I was at a big Southern Baptist church and I was told that every single Sunday school lesson that I presented,

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I should assume that everyone sitting in front of me, this was the first day they had ever been in Sunday school. You can't build on anything.

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You can't lay a foundation. You can't lead to any type of maturing. You can't get very deep because you always have to be assuming milk and no foundation and no ability to build anything up.

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Well, as I'm looking at what we're doing in engaging Muslims around the world, what

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I'm saying to my Muslim opponents and partners in doing this is, you know, we've debated a lot of the same subjects.

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And I understand if you're just looking at it and you're assuming that the people in the audience have never heard debate before, well, okay, you know, you deal with the major issues that separate

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Muslims and Christians. But if we're doing a series of things, then let's get deeper and let's start looking at specific texts.

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Let's start looking at Surah 5 and let's start looking at the prologue of John and let's get in depth.

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And I'm having a little problem getting folks to go with me there. And I came up with what

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I think would just be an awesome debate, dialogue topic.

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And I've thrown it out to one of the men I'll be, and I'm not giving details right now depending on how it turns out.

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But I've thrown that out and I really pray that he'll go, yeah, let's do that. Let's do something that's going to forward the conversation, forward the dialogue, move it forward, do something, you know, like the debate

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I did with Abdullah Kunda, you know, doing a subject that's never been done before in a way that hasn't been done before.

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You know, I want to see that happen. So pray for that. And we're going to be traveling while in South Africa this time, not just in Joburg.

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So pray for the details on that as well. And then, of course, just a few weeks later, Lord willing,

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I'll be teaching in Kiev if there still is a Kiev. Some fellow happened to muse recently, rather publicly, that he could make

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Kiev part of Russia in about two weeks. And so we're just a little bit concerned about that.

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And, of course, the church that I've gone to for years in St. Charles, the pastor there has been building a school, a reformed seminary in Donetsk, which is the center of eastern

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Ukraine, center of what's going on as far as the Russian invasion of Ukraine is concerned.

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And so, obviously, your prayers and support and all these things are very, very important.

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But I just hope that there is still a Ukraine to go to in December, as well as to Berlin, because I'm doing a week in Ukraine and then a week in Berlin, teaching on justification in the

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Trinity. That's going to be a really exciting time. And I'm sort of looking forward to seeing what

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Berlin's like in December. I know what Ukraine's like in December, and I'm going to Norway the next month.

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So if you'd like to, if anybody would like to, you know, get a real high -end thermal jacket shipped off my direction,

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I think I might be getting a lot of use out of it over the next, over this next winter.

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But anyway, one of the things that I'm doing, I was in Flagstaff the past couple of days, because next week

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I'll be in Boulder. And if you are familiar with us in Phoenix, we're at 1 ,200 feet and Boulder is not, and the mountains outside of Boulder, really not.

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So I needed to get some altitude and got a lot of studying done. And one of the things that I want to do is,

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I'm on my fifth time through the Quran, and I really, it's been great to listen and things like that, but I really need to start collating all of my information on the

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Quran. And so I've put a few things, some books on other subjects, but also some items on the ministry resource list.

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Those of you who are familiar with the MRL for years, it was just an Amazon wishlist. But to better keep

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Caesar happy, I guess, and yeah, not in a negative way.

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What we do now is we put those items up on a list on our website and what they cost.

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Then when someone donates that cost, then we go and get it. And that way everything's hunky -dory and you manage everything right.

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And so I've got some items on the ministry resource list right now for those of you who like to help in a particular fashion like that.

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So just some things to keep in mind. Obviously, I'm excited about the upcoming debates.

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I just hope that we're able to make them the subjects we really need. And we're working also, hopefully,

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I need to get Hasim, son of Ramallah, king of graphics, the information on the debate with Shadid Lewis in New York in early

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November. So I've got South Africa a few weeks later, New York and New Jersey.

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One debate with Shadid Lewis, speaking in a number of churches there. A few weeks later, Kiev, Berlin.

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And then about a month later, Norway and then Atlanta with the G3 conference.

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So health would be a good thing too. If you're praying for us, it would be a whole lot easier to do that if I'm not coughing my head off or experiencing flu or anything like that.

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And the Lord's been really good along those lines for the past number of years. I really haven't had much to complain about there.

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But I haven't sat down and added the miles up. But you put

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South Africa via London. Well, or is it Frankfurt? Whatever.

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Right. London this time, Frankfurt with the Kiev Ukraine thing and stuff. And then

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Norway, New York and back, Atlanta. You put it all together.

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It's a long time in sealed metal tubes with other people who are coughing, hacking their heads off.

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So prayers appreciated for all of that. All right. People love throwing things out right as I'm going on the air.

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Chris wants to argue about veggie bacon. But, you know, everybody who hates veggie...

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There's so much anti -veggie baconism in the world that I think there's an addiction to pig flesh.

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I really I think there is an addiction to pig flesh. Because when people even hear that there is such a thing called veggie bacon, they're just so prejudiced.

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They've never even tried it. I mean, on a turkey sandwich, it's awesome. It's really, really good.

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And you don't need to put that microphone up there. You don't even need to comment on this.

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I'm just simply saying that some people have this irrational... It's sad.

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It's almost as bad as Southern Baptists in South Georgia when you mention the term Calvinism. It partakes of the same irrationality.

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It really does. It's a scary thing. But let's move on from there before you decide to flip the switch and say something you will regret in the future.

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So we'll shift gears here. Folks, we live in a day where if you say this is right and this is wrong, you are considered hateful and divisive and not a team player.

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You don't have a heart. And this is true even amongst

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Christians and how Christians relate with one another. But we see in America, in Western culture as a whole, such a massively wide manifestation of what is called evangelicalism that a lot of us are just wondering if the term has any meaning anymore.

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And people like Carl Truman have argued that it doesn't have any meaning and that if you do not have a clear confessional statement as to what you believe, that you're really not going to have any foundation to stand upon to be able to withstand the waves of secularism and the emphasis upon compromise that are coming our direction.

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And while we want to season every word with grace and we want to always speak as individuals who are ourselves redeemed by grace, who are fallible human beings who constantly need grace ourselves, there is a tendency and it's a dangerous tendency on the part of people today to water down the gospel and to go to what

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I've called the LCD form of Christianity, Least Common Denominator.

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The mere Christianity type stuff where you have just a very tiny core of beliefs that you will say, can't compromise on that.

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And you really can't make any application beyond that core because well then you get into disagreement and what we don't want is any disagreement, you see.

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The result is that some of the most important strong language of the

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Bible is just being sacrificed in the preaching of much of what is called evangelicalism today.

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And the result is a tremendous diminishment of the church itself.

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We've used the phrase before, what you win them with is what you win them to. If you think that success for the church is to be measured in numbers of people in Bible study, numbers of people in the worship service, giving levels, and it's all obviously graphed as to what time of the year in your particular neck of the woods it is.

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Because if you're in Arizona, then the summertime is going to be a downtime, but the wintertime had better be up because that's when the snowbirds are here.

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And so you've got all the graphs, you've got all the charts. I would imagine, I don't know, but I would imagine that there are probably entire computer programs that are now available for churches that they will give you your whole area and what you should expect and what the growth rate should be and all that kind of stuff.

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I imagine that stuff is out there. But the point is that for many, many people, given that they have been taught that that's what success is, even in their own seminaries and Bible colleges, that as a result, the gospel that is preached is barely a shadow of the real gospel that is found in the

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New Testament. In the Gospel of Mark, chapter 8, beginning at verse 34, we read,

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And he summoned the crowd with his disciples and said to them, So Jesus summoned the crowd to himself.

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He didn't just find a crowd, he summoned the crowd. So he says, I want to tell you something, come here. If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

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For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it.

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For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what will a man give in exchange for his soul?

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For whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man also be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his

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Father with the holy angels. Now, most of us are very, very familiar with this text and a lot of people like to preach it, you know, around a certain time in the year when you want to give everybody a kick and maybe get them to be a little less apathetic or something.

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But the reality is that so many churches exist in Western culture today where the essence of this text would never, ever be preached in such a way as to say to an individual, if it is not your desire to die with Christ, to deny yourself, then you're truly not a believer in Jesus Christ in the first place.

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Of course, we have those false gospels, the Wilkins cheap grace gospel, which isn't a gospel at all.

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It's a message of condemnation. You tip your hat toward God, get your ticket punched, go to heaven. No repentance.

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It's a false gospel. It's specifically warned about in Scripture. It's been around for a long time, leads to licentiousness and dead churches.

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But then you have those churches that are just so focused upon seats in the pews, numbers, being friendly and warm and welcoming and never offensive to anybody.

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And you see this now in the fact that so many churches are ashamed of the pulpit as a place of proclamation.

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We don't want anybody to feel like they're being preached to. Yeah, we don't want any authoritative proclamation going on here.

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You know, we just want to come out and we want to be all, you know, dressed cash and you just sort of sit back on the bar stool type thing.

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And hey, let's have, you know, bring your lattes in and let's just have ourselves a nice little time here where we're just going to have some pretty music, you know, and everybody's welcome.

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We're just all going to sit around and, you know, it's that's the model today, isn't it?

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We don't do that at Phoenix Reformed, but that's the model.

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And everybody knows that that's your model. There's only so far you can go in that service.

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I mean, you ain't inviting Paul Washer into that context. Ain't gonna happen. He'd mess everything up.

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Just like, you know, just, oh, yeah, I'm talking about you.

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Yeah, not gonna. No, no, not gonna. Not gonna happen. You realize because of the aura that you've created, that there is a severe limitation on what you can actually talk about.

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And you can't preach this topic. You can't do what Jesus did here, because what you're basically saying when you adopt that methodology is if anyone wishes to come after me, then let him do so in any way he chooses to do so.

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We may give you some tips as to more successful Christian discipleship, but it's up to you.

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And once you present God as this helpless, pathetic being in the sky, that is just he's just done everything you can.

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And he just wants to just wants to chat with you and love on you.

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And it's all about you. And it's nothing about him. You've got no.

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These words don't make a lick of sense, do they? If anyone wishes to come after me, he can do so any way he wants to.

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He doesn't need to worry about denying himself. He doesn't need to worry about taking up a cross. Crosses are, oh, you know, if you know anything about the real cross, you know, it's a gory instrument of death and torture and public shame.

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And now we just have the nice, pretty crosses that are just, there's nothing gory about them at all.

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And whoever wishes to save his life can save it. And you can enjoy it and you can live the way the world would have you to live.

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Just gloss a little bit of Jesus on it. Just put some Jesus on it and some praise choruses and you'll be great.

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And that's not what Jesus taught. That's not his teaching.

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And it's okay if you're ashamed of Jesus. Because he'll never be ashamed of you.

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But again, that's not what Jesus taught. And so why is this important?

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Why is it that there are still a few voices out there that say, you know, a part of a gospel really isn't a whole gospel.

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And this whole thing about God being

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God and we are not, we're his creatures. He gets to define things.

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It's all about him. It actually isn't about us. And therefore, to have any kind of balanced biblical presentation, you have to recognize

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God's kingship, his freedom to do as he wishes, the absolute necessity of his powerful saving grace, not some wimpy peanut butter prevenient grace that tries but cannot actually save.

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No, I'm talking about the grace of the Bible, not the grace of the philosophers. When you want to really talk about that grace that saves a particular people, you get this balanced perspective out of Scripture, where it's about God and you've got, you can have the strong calls to take up the cross without it turning into a work salvation system where you've got monks starving themselves to death or beating themselves or crawling up stairs on their knees.

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You don't get all that stuff because you've got the sovereignty of God. You've got the sovereignty of his grace.

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You've got the perfection of the cross. There's a reason why you need all of what the

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New Testament says, why you need to proclaim the whole counsel of God. The problem is when you proclaim the whole counsel of God in a church you've built by packing it with driftwood and reprobates is they're not going to like that.

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They're going to rebel against that. And that's the problem. Now, all of this to get us to an article.

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Now, I've mentioned that there, I have a number of people that I call troublemakers. There's one troublemaker who will ask me to address certain things.

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But this isn't that troublemaker. This is a different troublemaker who's actually local.

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And he works for an organization that I have a feeling someday I'm going to need to call upon. So when this troublemaker says, would you please address this?

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Well, I guess I've got to address it and I had to figure out some way of doing it. And I've preached for 23 minutes almost now just getting ready to do this.

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But there is an article that was put on by Jessica Meisner that was posted on BuzzFeed .com

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titled, Why I Miss Being a Born -Again Christian. Why I Miss Being a Born -Again Christian.

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And Jessica Meisner is the perfect example of what happens when you ignore the phrase, the saying, what you win them with is what you win them to.

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When you've got the big megachurch churchianity where you get people to make a commitment, sign a card, walk an aisle, shake a hand.

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But you do not bring to bear upon them the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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You do not proclaim the whole counsel of God. You do not emphasize the holiness of God, the wrath of God, repentance from sin, holiness, you shall be holy even as I am holy.

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And that's not just Leviticus. That's over in first and second Peter. When you skip all of that stuff just to keep people coming and to make them feel good about themselves, you're not only cheating

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God of his glory. You're not only turning the church into an anemic social club, but more likely than not, you're creating an entire crop of religiously abused apostates.

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And that's what you have with Jessica Meisner. She went off to Yale.

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Now, that in and of itself makes you go, I wonder if there were even elders at this megachurch.

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That would have gone, ah, it's concerning. I mean, there are very few places on the planet that are more anti -Christian in the religious studies department than Yale.

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Are you really prepared for this? What's God calling you to do? You know, maybe do some questioning of this person's spirituality.

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I have a feeling that if there were real elders that had some knowledge of what in the world was going on, they might have been able to pick up on the fact that there was something wrong here.

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Here's just a little portion of the result of churchianity that does not have the full counsel of God being proclaimed.

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During my master's degree program, my plan of going on to do a PhD gradually dissolved. Exhibit A, me working full -time at BuzzFeed.

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Hi. But something else materialized, a swelling doubt about the faith I'd set out to preserve, which hinged almost solely on believing the

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Bible to be the literal inspired word of God. As I learned ancient Greek and Hebrew and pored over the biblical text in its original languages.

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Yeah, I'm sure she did a lot of that at Yale. But anyways, and read it in larger quantities than I'd ever read it at church.

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Mm, mm, er, red flag, ding, ding, ding, ding. Its discrepancies began to shine a hot and uncomfortable spotlight on my personal religious views.

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You hadn't seen that before? Didn't go to a church that made you uncomfortable at times?

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Again, it's that proclaim the whole counsel of God. Remember what Paul said in Acts 20? And this is something that I, I live with and I, I don't hear it said a lot, but I certainly think about it a lot.

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Paul said, I am not guilty of the blood of anyone because I proclaimed the whole counsel of God.

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Think about what that means. If you don't proclaim the whole counsel of God, then it follows logically that you will be guilty.

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And that means if you're a minister, yeah, I don't care if you've gotten rid of your pulpit. I don't care if you got rid of your tie.

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I don't care if you've had to practice how to sitting on a bar stool, how to walk around and look real friendly.

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Wear cardigans during the winter and pretend that you're, you know, on PBS.

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I don't care. If that's a church and you think it's a church, you call it a church.

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You call yourself a minister. Someday you're going to stand before the judgment seat of Christ. And he's going to say, did you proclaim the whole counsel of my teaching?

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All of my doctrine? Oh, Lord, you put me in a position. I couldn't do that.

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I mean, Lord, did you see our budget for that? I mean, we had to take out a huge loan for that family lifestyle.

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And having that multi -site church, just the cost of all the equipment. Lord, that's going to fly real well.

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That's going to fly real well. If you're not getting the whole counsel of God where you are, you need to find a place where you will.

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Just that simple. If your toes aren't getting stomped on once in a while, if you're always just floating out happy and emotional, you're being deceived.

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I mean, your toes need to get stomped on once in a while. You need to be made uncomfortable. The only place that I can think of where everybody that's gathered together is in perfect harmony with one another and there's no toes getting stepped on and there's no disagreement, it's called a mausoleum.

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Because everybody's dead. We send our young people,

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I wasn't going to get into all this, but I'll blame whoever's, I'll get an email and this is all over with.

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Oh, I started all that? Yes, you did. We have to be, if you're going to send people off to Yale or ASU or Glendale Community College or any place else and they go off and they encounter this stuff and they never heard about it before, shame on you.

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And I can tell you one thing, I could bring in the poor folks that sit through my Sunday school classes or the whole blessed congregation right now as I'm trying to figure out some way to preach the holiness code in Leviticus, provide background information.

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Man, last Sunday, here I am trying to make sermons out of some background information on the

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Canaanite gods. Try that sometime. Every seminary, almost every seminary you'd go to today would say, that's not wise.

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That's not going to make people feel good and it's probably not going to help the offering very much. It's true. But I bet you could bring in the people from my

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Bible study class and say, you went off to ASU, you took those classes over there, you did this thing over there.

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Were you ready for those things? Had you heard what they were saying? You know what they're going to say to you? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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We heard that before. Yeah, James White. At first, you know, sometimes at Sunday school,

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I wasn't thinking it was all that exciting, but boy, I know now why that he, oh yeah, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.

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That's where we're living. That's where we're living. So anyway, a hot and uncomfortable spotlight on my personal religious views.

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Pieces of the Gospels contradicted each other, I realized. You hadn't run into that?

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I mean, for me especially, nine years in the synoptics so far. Using a parallel so you can't skip any of that stuff.

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Got to deal with it. Greek words, well, check this out. Greek words, like the ones we've translated 2 ,000 years later to mean homosexuality, didn't quite mean what modern evangelicals want them to mean.

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In other words, you got lied to by a bunch of wild -eyed liberals and collapsed instantly.

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Instantly. Now, by the way, the next line, early

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Christians disagreed of the fifth century on which portions of should even be in the biblical canon. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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In other words, you went to the most liberal place you could go to and bought the lies and didn't know what the real answers were.

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All right. Is that the church's fault? Partly. But I don't believe that Christ select can be deceived.

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So even if she had been given the truth, it doesn't mean that she wouldn't have collapsed on these things.

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I mean, I'm not going to sit here and say that every person that's ever sat in my Bible study class isn't going to someday become a liberal.

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You can have the truth presented to you. You're still responsible for learning it. And there's still something in the spirit that requires you to believe and to hold these things and understand how they're relevant, etc.,

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etc. Well, what does all this have to do? Well, this article came out. What was the date on this?

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Back of May 21st. So it's been out a little while. Well, Andy Stanley tweeted a link to this article.

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And here was Andy Stanley's comment on the article.

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Quote, and I'm reading from Denny Burke's blog here. Here's what he said.

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Why we must teach the next generation the foundation of our faith is an event, not a book.

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Why we must teach the next generation the foundation of our faith is an event, not a book.

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What does that mean? What does that mean? I don't know.

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Well, but Denny Burke takes it along with the story of Gungor.

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It's not the Trinity Hymnal. I never heard of it. But you've all heard about the... I've heard

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Al Mohler talking about this group and Gungor. Where Gungor writes,

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There is a trend in modern society, no more than a trend, a religion, an idolatry that elevates scripture above Jesus.

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And he goes on to talk about the fact that it seems in every generation, people who have been raised in a conservative church, a church that did not warn them that there are other viewpoints out there, and talk about the other viewpoints, honestly, interact with them and not adopt the, oh, it's all the same, you know, we can all believe different things mantra, but actually explain why we don't believe this.

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What happens every generation is somebody goes out and they discover liberalism. And it's like, wow, look at this.

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And they don't seem to realize that there's really not much new to this stuff. Not much new to it at all.

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Gungor has found liberalism. Dead German rationals, that didn't get them very far either.

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It's not getting him very far either, but it's exciting now. You know, it's, oh, this is exciting stuff.

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And I'm not sure what Andy Stanley's talking about, but if this event is the cross, or this event is the incarnation, or this event is the incarnation and the cross together, something like that.

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How do you know the meaning of that event? Well, I suppose you can be like some neo -Orthodox, and it's an encounter.

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It's something you feel, it's all subjective. But I was, one of the things

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I was studying in the writing I was doing the past couple of days, where I just climb this really steep hill up to 9 ,000 feet, and then you ride down, and then you climb it again.

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And most people would find that exceptionally boring, but I got through a couple books and lectures and all sorts of stuff in the process.

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And there were some lectures on Leviticus. And you might go, ooh, even more exciting.

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Yeah, yeah. Well, but when you're preaching through Leviticus, it helps. And the poor fellow who was doing the lecture did his

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PhD in Leviticus. There's, there's, I'm just preaching through it.

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Doing a PhD in it, that's a whole other world. And he brought that up a lot.

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But one of the things that he said that I fully agreed with is that even though most of us will go, oh yeah,

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Leviticus, oh yeah, I'm glad I got, through those 27 chapters. And I didn't stop in my

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Bible reading program. That was great. We look at Leviticus in that way, but the reality is without Leviticus, well, let's put it this way.

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We all assume what Leviticus is talking about when we talk about the cross.

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And without Leviticus, we wouldn't be able to make much sense out of the cross. Holiness, I mean, that's what the book is about.

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God is going to dwell amongst his people. The people have already found out that can be really bad when his wrath breaks forth.

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So we need to know, how are we supposed to live with a holy God in our midst? We're all living in tents and he's living in that tent.

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And we've got the pillar of fire and the cloud and God's living amongst his people. We sort of need to know, what does he expect from a holy people he lives amongst?

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Good questions. Good questions. And if you think that's not a question we should be asking, oh, that doesn't bode well.

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Thankfully, we have the spirit of God who then helps us to understand these things. But anyway, the point is this event, if you separate it from God's revelation, then it becomes only subjectively interpreted and understood and can no longer be communicated across cultural boundaries, linguistic boundaries, historical boundaries, whatever it is.

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That's not how the apostles understood things. That's not how the early church understood things. But, oh, we are much wiser.

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We, we, we, we know so much better. The foundation of our faith is an event revealed in a book.

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An inspired book of God's speech. Which means we can have certainty both in the happening of the event and the meaning of the event and its relevancy for us today.

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I realize that's more than 140 characters. Sorry. Sometimes truth requires more than 140 characters.

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And that's why they invented TweetShort. Which is what I have to use when I need to say something like that.

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Now this dividing up of the, of the word from the work of God, nothing new, nothing new at all.

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And it takes us right back into the subject of where we were last time we were together.

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And we've still got a few minutes left to address those things. Um, since we were last together, remember last time on the program, we were talking about Brian Zond and his crypto -Marsianitism.

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Now what in the world is that about? Well, Marsian, as we've said many, many times before, was the bad boy of the early church.

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And everybody, everybody wrote a book against Marsian. If you wanted to get published, you wrote a book against Marsian, I guess. And he was a

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Gnostic who concluded that the God of the Old Testament, Yahweh, was an evil

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God. Because in Gnosticism, you have the pure, well, and again, Gnosticism had all sorts of different forms.

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But in this particular form of Gnosticism, you have the pure spiritual God up here. And then you have the eons descending down from him.

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All that together is the Pleroma. And then finally you get down to a being that's far enough removed from the pure, all -spirit

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God that he can still create, but he's not as pure. And that becomes the

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Demiurge who creates the physical universe. And this was how they explained the existence of evil in the physical creation.

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And so to get back to that one God, your spark of that divinity would be to be released from your physical body.

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And that's why the Greeks thought resurrection was silly, because real salvation was getting out of this physical flesh and so on and so forth.

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So Marsian, as a result, looks at the Old Testament, the revelation of Yahweh, throws it out.

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Because that's not the God of Jesus Christ. The God of Jesus Christ is that real good spirit God up here. I just realized

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I'm going right out of the frame there. Okay, there we go. The spirit

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God here, that's the Father of Jesus Christ. And then down here, you have Yahweh.

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So they're different. So since the Old Testament is clearly the revelation of Yahweh, you get rid of that. And well, there's a lot of Yahweh language and quotations from the

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Old Testament and the New Testament too. So you got to purge that stuff. And so we end up with this, man, you want to talk about a pocket edition of the

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New Testament. He had a pocket edition of the New Testament. Sort of like, you know, Thomas Jefferson, you know, you cut out the stuff you don't like.

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So when we're talking about Brian Zond, he was making the statement that, don't let anybody back into the corner on the

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Old Testament. The Old Testament is an inspired story about Israel coming to know its

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God, which is a nice way of saying it's not actually God speaking. God didn't command that the people of Israel be his instrument of judgment against anybody because I just won't accept that that could ever happen.

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God can use natural means. I don't even know if they believe that.

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But anyway, God can use natural means. He cannot force his people to recognize the necessity of holiness by being used as his instrument to bring judgment against anybody else, even if it's in a limited area.

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Now, I'm not going to, won't worship a God like that. So I will adopt a completely new, at least amongst

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Orthodox Christians, view of the Old Testament, which is actually much more like Marcion's view of the Old Testament.

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Now, Marcion came to the same conclusion from a completely different perspective that this was a false

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God. These guys are not saying it's false God. It's just that the real God really didn't have anything to do with it. He never said those words.

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Now, there's a word that would be properly used for saying,

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God said this, but God didn't say that, which is what Brian Zond is saying, is what we have in the

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Torah, in the Pentateuch. It's called a lie. But that's not going to go real well.

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So you go out in a different direction. Well, Brian Zond's not the only one doing this. And since last, since Tuesday, when we were last together,

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I was sent a link via Twitter to a conversation that took place last year between Roger Olson, who happens to have been one of the professors of Austin Fisher, who is one of the synergistic proponents in the debate that we would eventually,

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I thought, would get to, but there's so much background stuff here anyways. Have you noticed that there's actually a thread running through all this?

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It's amazing, but there is. And he was asked a question. This is 2013 -07, the

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Old Testament and Contemporary Christian Ethics on Roger Olson's blog, on Patheos. And Tim Reisdorf.

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I love that. I'm going to have to play that video someday, where you have all the people saying the words in their language, and then you got the

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German guy, and it's just always so guttural and spitting in the camera and everything else.

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It's great. But Tim Reisdorf asked Roger Olson a question, and Olson's immediate response was one sentence,

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I am not a biblical inerrantist. Well, we knew that. The primary fundamental line of division between Roger Olson and Calvinists is right there.

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It's the authority of scripture. I don't care what he says, Roger Olson puts himself as an authority over scripture.

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He himself said it. If that's the way God is, I won't worship him. Okay, there you go.

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So he says, I'm not a biblical inerrantist. Tim responds, what is the biblical error that you're referring to?

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Was Jesus an error for calling God good? Was God an error for commanding these things?

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Was the author an error for writing them down incorrectly? Olson's response is, of course, not the first two options.

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So then Timothy Rayner responds, your response appears to imply you do not disagree with the third option, which was, was the author an error for writing them down incorrectly?

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If that is true, on what basis do you determine whether a text has been erroneously recorded or not? If you appeal the character of Jesus as the final arbiter to the truthfulness of the record, how do you ascertain whether those texts about Jesus have been accurately recorded?

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I look forward to hearing your musings about my musings about your musings, Roger Olson's response. This is the old question always put to those of us who do not believe in plenary detailed biblical inerrancy.

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Yeah, there's a reason for this. You've decided that you know better than God. So there's some questions that need to be asked.

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But everyone, even advocates of plenary detailed inerrancy have this issue. What is to be taken literally and what figuratively?

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No, that's not the issue. You're saying some of it's true and some of it's false. That's totally different,

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Dr. Olson and students, than literally versus figuratively.

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Because everything can be true in a statement or in a text, and you still have to deal with literality and metaphor and everything else.

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But once you've crossed the line to the other side where there's stuff in here that ain't true, and they're asking you not about literal and figurative, but about that.

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What is error in all the copies we have, but not in the original autographs, etc.? But also I stand with Luther who said that scripture is the cradle that hold

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Christ and that is especially authoritative for us Christians that promotes Christ. All that pertains to our salvation is infallible.

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That's just what Rome says too, which answers nothing raises more questions than it answers.

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Timothy Rayner, thank you for responding. I would like to clarify my question. I'm not asking what your stance is on certain texts exegetically, your first question.

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Nor am I asking you what your position is in regards to textual critical issues and the preservation of the text, your second question.

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They were both canards. Those questions are of different categories. Exactly. What I am asking is that if you affirm the third question,

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Tim Reistorf raised. And by the way, Tim, you now must pronounce your name that way.

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I'm going to be speaking someplace and some guy's going to walk up to me and go, I am Tim Reistorf.

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He's going to spit all over me in the process. Um, what I'm asking is that if you affirm the third question,

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Tim Reistorf raised, was the author in error for writing them down incorrectly to be true.

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Then what method of judgment do you use to determine whether a text has been recorded accurately autographically by the original author?

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To restate what determines an erroneous recording in the original text of the

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Old Testament and the New Testament. Whilst I affirm with you and Luther that Scripture is a cradle that holds

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Christ, I also stand with Paul who said that the sacred writings were able to make one wise for salvation and that all of Scripture is theanoustos,

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God breathed. He even managed to get the Greek in there. Very good in a comm box. That's very nice. Based on your final statement,

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I can only conclude that all Scripture is infallible, not God breathed.

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Roger Olson. Yes, I believe the authors of the Old Testament texts of terror.

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That's in quotation marks. What would that be? Is that just the places where God commands judgment by his people?

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I can think of a lot of other texts that would fall into that category as well. In Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah.

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Yes, I believe the authors of the Old Testament. Now listen to this. This is political correctness.

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This is the Obama White House. Uh, this is politics.

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Listen to this response. Yes, I believe the authors of the Old Testament texts of terror recorded correctly what the

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Hebrew people believed. Yes, I believe the authors of the

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Old Testament texts of terror record correctly what the Hebrew people believed. Catch that? I hope you catch that.

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If you're a regular of this program, you're going, uh -huh, you see the presupposition.

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Why do you have that microphone up there? You use the O word, and I want to remind you that the IRS and Dan Barker are listening.

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Yeah, just a statement of fact. But yeah, but you know. Yeah, I know. You get my idea here.

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Timothy Rayner, thank you. That helps me understand your position better. Would you be able to tell me how you arrived at your conclusion that the

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Old Testament texts of terror reflect the beliefs of the Hebrew people but not the true character of Yahweh?

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Olson, I thought I explained that in several responses to commenters' questions. The answer is

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Jesus, the full and perfect revelation of the character of God. Here comes

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Marcion again. Marcion is risen from the dead, and he's teaching at Baylor. Here's the problem, folks.

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Well, actually, I think Timothy's going to lay it out here. I'm sorry, but I think you've missed my point. I understand that G is the standard by which you evaluate the biblical data regarding the text of terror.

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What I would like to understand is how do you know that the New Testament texts describing Jesus are a true reflection of the character of God rather than recording correctly what the writers of the

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New Testament believe, whereas a significant number of Old Testament texts do not reflect the character of God and actually present a false understanding of God's character.

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Ask a different way. Why do you trust the validity of the text about Jesus and not the text about Yahweh? Is there something internal to the textual data that decides it for you, or is it something external?

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The reason I ask this is that for those who hold that all the biblical data is God -breathed and thus can be trusted when describing

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Jesus in his incarnation who is identified as Yahweh through Old Testament references and can also be trusted describing facets of the character of Yahweh not fully seeing the incarnation, the position you hold seems arbitrary in trusting one text over against another.

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I'm not trying to be contentious with these questions. I really do want to understand where you're coming from and why.

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Olson, you are asking a question that rests on an enlightenment search for certainty.

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No, it rests upon we'd like you to be honest in your answers. I have never hidden here my pietism which means that my

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Christianity is based on a personal relationship with the Savior Jesus Christ who I read about in scripture.

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It is not based on the Bible as some kind of inerrant and woodenly authoritative equally on all levels textbook about God.

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Notice how all these folks always have to misrepresent and present this simplistic perspective.

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They have to because he knows he has just been nailed to the wall and he has no answer.

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It is completely subjective on his part. He can't answer this question. He owes it.

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So, you've got to throw some dust and sand. You know, that's how you do it. Your question to me could be asked of most

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Christians throughout history including Luther who said that that is primarily authoritative in scripture that promotes

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Christ. My epistemology is not foundationalist as yours seems to be. Timothy responds.

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Run out of time here. I'm not sure whether you would agree but I don't see truth graded on a curve. Neither would

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I agree that our internal experience is able to give any form of certainty as to whether something is true or not just because the

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Mormon has a burning the bosom that confirms their teachings are true. It doesn't affirm their claims. At the root of it, we would answer the question you ask me how

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I know he lives differently. You ask me how I know he lives.

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There's a point here folks. I grew up with that song but that song stinks theologically.

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He lives within my heart. Yeah, okay. That's nice and I'm not saying that there is not an element of truth to that statement but that better not be all of it.

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I would primarily place my trust in the external witness of the claims of a historical document that declares me the very words of God whereas you, based on your responses, would primarily place your trust in an internal witness and affirm with Alfred Ackley he lives within my heart.

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There's the rest of it. From those positions, I would then interpret my experience from the scriptures and you would interpret the scriptures from your experience.

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If I have misrepresented you, please correct me. I have a further question for you similar to the one you have answered in a different context.

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If it was revealed to you in a way that you couldn't question or deny the true character of Yahweh actually is as the

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Old Testament text of Terah described him, would you still worship him? Olson responded, first you answer my question.

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If it was revealed to you in a way that you could not deny that God did not command Israel to do what the Old Testament text of Terah report, would you still worship him?

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It seems to me yours is a book faith that requires you to wait for every issue of biblical archeology review to know whether you can still be a

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Christian. Mine is a Jesus faith like that of the disciples and apostles who didn't have a full

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Bible yet and still knew Jesus was Lord of all. Oh, that is so disgusting. That is so dishonest.

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That is so dishonest. Why is that dishonest? Read the apostles.

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Read how they viewed the Old Testament text. They would have chucked Olson out of the primitive church.

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I mean, I think Peter would have said, Roger Olson, the men who carried Ananias and Sapphira out are at the door.

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Here you go. Wow, that is so dishonest.

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Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Mm, ha, mm, ha.

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Martianitism, it's back. The Gnostics have been risen from the grave and they're writing books and teaching in our seminaries and Bible colleges.

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Folks, we've got to be talking about this stuff in our churches, in the context of faith, now with everybody.

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Whether you're going to be going to ASU, going to the ministry, or walking down the street to the local grocery store, you got to know what you believe and why you believe it.

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And one thing is for certain, the Old Testament was viewed as the very words of God by every single author of the

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New Testament. Anybody who tells you otherwise is deceiving you, leading you astray. So, still didn't get to the debate.

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It's queued up. It's right there. Really, honestly, it's right there. But we'll get to it.

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At least we've got a good foundation now. We'll be able to hear Martian speaking through Brian Zond in the debate on Calvinism, which we'll get to,

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Lord willing, soon. Thanks for listening to Divine Alliance today.

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Next time, we'll at least play one section. We will at least play one section.

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We will get there. Why is there no music? I don't hear any music. Oh, thanks.