Catching Up on Topics on Today’s DL

And good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line. I have absolutely no monitor whatsoever, so I don't know what's going on, but it's good to have you with us. Oh, there's the monitor. It's all pixelated and the music's still behind me.

I don't know why we're doing. You just having a slow day out there? Just too much stuff at you at once? Two things, huh? I haven't gotten into that multitasking thing yet. That's good. All right. We're off to a good start here.

That's better. There we go. We got this working. I know we haven't done this very often, so it's new stuff to you. Just a quick note to everybody. I've seen a few people on Twitter going, where are you gonna be in Spain?

We wanna come see you and stuff like that. No, you'll be able to see me, but you don't have to go anywhere than to turn on your television, because this is the exact same situation that we had last February, 2014, when Michael Brown and I flew over to Spain to record the two debates we did on healing and on the extent of the atonement.

So the debate with the Jesuit scholar, I believe is live. Well, of course it's live, because they're taking phone calls. It has to be live. So it'll be live on Revelation TV, April 15th. That'll be a good thing for you to feel better after sending Uncle Barack all that money that he'll use to promote all sorts of evil in the world.

Be a good thing to get your mind off of that. So of course, if you're watching in Europe, you didn't do that, but you have just as much taxes going to other stupid stuff. So anyways, that'll be on live on Revelation TV.

And of course, they eventually post that on YouTube as well. And I am going to be doing some other stuff. In fact, I'm a little worried. They've got me doing a late night thing and an early morning thing.

And I'm not sure where the sleep part goes in between the two of them. But I'll be recording some other stuff while I'm there, but I don't know when that airs or stuff like that. So heading to Spain on Sunday, get back next week, might be able to sneak a program in on Friday, possibly, maybe, but probably not from over there, I would assume.

Skepticism About Sensational Archaeology Claims

So also one other quick note I've gotten, a lot of people have sent me the most recent Simca-Yakovovich story. What's this one called? Geologist claims stats and science prove Jesus buried in Jerusalem with wife and supposed son.

Then of course you read the subtitle, Canadian Israeli filmmaker, oh, warning, journalist and geo-archeologist claim they've reached a scientific and theological breakthrough. Well, you know, Simca-Yakovovich, remember back in 2007, where is my, there it is.

Back in 2007, yep, 2007, I wrote an entire book in, what was it, 16 days? I put the, somewhere in the, yeah, 16 days, writing a book in 16 days is a challenge. So yeah, 16 days and it's only 152 pages long, something like that, so yeah, 152 pages long.

But yeah, there it is right there. But from Toronto to Emmaus is what it's titled, the empty tomb and the journey from skepticism to faith. And it thoroughly debunks the Talpiot tomb stuff, demonstrates that it's based upon using third and fourth century Gnostic gospels that's as absolute linchpins in the argumentation.

It's just, it's just dumber than a bag of rocks. I mean, it's just, so we did this long ago. And remember, you know, the reason I put out all that effort was because they appeared on Good Morning America with, what was the guy that did Titanic and the blue people thingy movies?

James Cameron, it appeared with James Cameron and they're showing these ossuaries and stuff like that. And I mean, oh, it was big, you know, until you bought the book and then started reading it and realized it was just a massive pile of hooey.

But he made his money, he has popped up with other silly, stupid stuff over the years since then. And now I guess he figures pretty much like most of our politicians figure that eight years, who remembers anything from eight years ago?

I mean, wow, wow, eight years happens to be two electoral cycles. Well, that's presidential electoral cycles. That seems to work. So he's back and with a, you know, I don't know how you could get any more discredited than Simca Yakubovich, I really don't know.

I don't know how you could do it. But there's always a market for gullible people. And so when you see that kind of stuff, just keep that in mind that there's always a market for gullible people. I was gonna say, are you sure that wasn't subtitled wash, rinse, repeat?

It seems to be, seems to be. And he'll make some more money off of it. Maybe he needed to plan stuff out. The mortgage payment wasn't gonna make it. So we come up with a new spin. But just be aware of that kind of stuff is out there and be ready to be skeptical, be very, very skeptical.

Cultural Collapse and the Attack on Reparative Therapy

Since we did two Radio Free Geneva's last week and then Tuesday of this week had all sorts of this incredible cultural collapse stuff to talk about, which is ongoing. Again, I don't get to scoop Dr. Moller very often.

I don't know if you've heard, but yesterday, I think it was yesterday morning. It was yesterday morning. I mean, he said theology matters, always matters. It always, always, always matters. I mean, it was just, you know, obviously has decided that my copyright claim on that is utterly bogus and hence is just gonna run with it, just run with it.

So that's the way things are in a Genesis Three world. And I'm not really sure that that's gonna lead to human flourishing, but we can tune in to that. Drew can play that game, let's say that. But anyway, if you wanna keep up with stuff, you've got to listen to the briefing because I don't know when he records that thing.

I mean, I've downloaded it at 4 .30 in the morning. So even earlier than that, so he must, he just doesn't sleep but he was noticing that he was noting the Time Magazine issue and just the reality that we have moved so far beyond anything that from most of our perspectives is even repairable.

I mean, it's to the point where you, well, he mentioned and I could tell it was tacked on right at the end of the briefing. You can almost hear the edit to expand it. The Obama administration are coming out and saying that they were going to be proposing legislation to ban reparative therapy in regards to homosexuality.

Now, no matter what you think about that, it just amazes me how many people there are in this country that have completely lost any sense of what liberty is. Any sense of freedom and are willing to say the government should be able to force you to think this way and think that way.

And everybody needs to walk lockstep. I mean, it's like, when do we start calling each other comrade is what I need to find out. I mean, it's just, I don't even know what to say. It is amazing. I mean, fundamentally this attack upon reparative therapy is motivated by the fact that homosexuals are nothing, nothing angers homosexuals more than an ex-gay.

And more and more of them are popping up. More and more of them are putting out videos. There's all sorts of testimonies of people. And they just, they just, they can't allow for that. They cannot allow for that.

It's a complete denial of their fundamental assertion. And that is God made me this way. I cannot be changed and I will not be changed. And anyone who changes is challenging my story. And so there are a few things that make homosexuals more angry than someone who says, you know, I've been there.

I know what you're feeling and yet there's a way out. And no, no, no, can't, cannot be, cannot be. So the very idea, the very idea that someone would even want to seek assistance, even want to seek help.

No, no, no, you can't, you can't do that. These people are complete totalitarians. You just need to understand that. They have no problem using the force of law to force everybody to celebrate their lifestyle.

They have no problem with it at all. And the gullible, simplistic millennials that go along with them don't realize that when you allow that for somebody else, oh, I don't mind that. Yeah, go ahead and force those Christians to celebrate homosexuality.

I think it's great. You need to realize once you've given the government that power, then they can do that to you too. And eventually they will. But these folks probably couldn't identify the Stasi or the KGB or anything like that.

Their life depended on it. Anyways, that requires you to take history classes. Anyway, had to deal with that stuff on Tuesday. And like I said, even more stuff has developed since then, which meant that we did not have the opportunity to look at the Kenyan story.

It's amazing how fast these things pass now. Have you noticed that? How many people can even remember where the little children, the mass killing of the little children was and how long ago it was? It was only a matter of months ago, it was in Pakistan.

The Kenyan Christian Students Massacre and the Shahada

But it's just, it's so often now, it's so common now that you get a week out and it's like, oh, we moved on to something else. Maybe somebody will dig something up about some more deleted emails from Hillary's private email server or something, but we just move on to something else.

147 students, Kenyan students, shot by al-Shabaab terrorists, almost every single one of them, shot in the back of the head. And as soon as the real story started coming out, I knew, as soon as I saw a couple mentions of this, I said, I'll bet you anything.

Some of the news outlets said they asked students to recite a Muslim prayer and if they couldn't, then they executed them. And I knew what it was. They demanded the shahada. And so I started digging around for news sources that might have some knowledge of Islam.

And lo and behold, that's exactly what happened. There's a horrific picture online taken from up on the second floor of a particular room where there's at least 70 people sprawled out on the floor and they've all been shot in the back of the head.

Close range, execution style. And they had all been asked to repeat the shahada. And if they didn't know it, they died. That's it. And they were specifically targeted for being Christians. Now, as with all of these, the automatic response is anger and disgust.

And sure, I'm glad they went to their reward. You know, their bodies have been found and they were shot and they were killed. And, oh, well, at least there's some justice. There's not really, but the reality is what bothers me, I mean, there's so many things that are just so completely wrong about this.

But what bothers me is, imagine for a second, just imagine for a second, if a situation developed where gunmen went into a school in, Saudi Arabia, and lined students up and stood behind them and said, quote, John 316.

And if they couldn't, splattered their brains all over the place, like they did to these 147 students. Now, I'm not talking about the hypocrisy of the world's press, because, oh yeah, that would be all over the place.

There would be massive coverage of that. I'm not talking about that. What I'm asking you to think about is, if that happened, if a group of four or five gunmen went into a school in Saudi Arabia, killed 147 Muslims because they couldn't quote the Nicene Creed or John 316 or something like that, and they used a specific biblical, something that's central to Christian experience as their means of detecting their victims, what would the result be amongst Christians around the world?

The blogosphere would explode. It would explode with all sorts of Christian leaders and lay people, not only condemning the action, but very strongly saying these individuals were not Christians. No believer in Jesus Christ is going to behave in this fashion.

This is not Christian behavior. These men were not Christians. They were hate mongers. They're under the wrath of God. It would be everywhere. Could we imagine a time, however, where it's not happened once?

It's not happened twice. It's happened 5 ,000 times. It just, it's every few weeks. Another slaughter, another massacre, another atrocity. Might it get to the point eventually where the response would become less and less and less?

Well, I suppose it could, but I could not imagine a time when it would be overly difficult at all to Google the most recent massacre and find clear, compelling condemnations of those types of outrageous activities.

Now, the fact is that there are many Muslims, and I don't get any brownie points for this, and we aren't gonna get a single donation from anybody for my pointing this out, but there are many Muslims whose stomachs are turned by the idea of using the Kalima, the words of the Shahada, as your test case before you blow people's brains out.

I am thankful that they are disgusted by that, and I just have to assume that the reason I don't see more outrage is because this kind of thing just has been going on for so long now, and so many tens and hundreds of thousands of people have died at the hands of these militant Muslims that I think a lot of the non-militant Muslims are like, we've condemned all this before.

Though again, I can't imagine how you could ever get to the point, to be honest with you, where especially upon hearing something like this, that you would not be just completely incensed by this activity, and there needs to be an acknowledgement on the part of many of my Muslim friends that there are far, far, far too many people who claim the name of Islam who would never engage in this type of activity, they'd never do it.

However, they do not condemn the ones who do. They do not condemn the ones who do. To my Muslim friends who say, no, this is not appropriate, this is not right, where are the entire videos? Where are the entire books providing clear, compelling, powerful refutation of the theology of the fiqh, the interpretation of Hadith and Sharia that are utilized by ISIS and Boko Haram and al-Shabaab and all these militant, murderous, satanic groups.

That's the only way to describe them. Why, and some of you will have to confirm this because I've said it to you, why aren't the most popular books on the shelves of Islamic bookstores today refutations of this kind of activity?

I think it's something y 'all need to be talking about, doing something about. I know y 'all say, well, sure, this group over here condemned it, there's always the condemnations. Well, where are, I linked a little while back when the Coptic Christians were killed on the seashore.

I linked to a Sunni cleric arguing against ISIS and the few of you who maybe made it all the way through had to be pinching yourself to do so because it was boring. It was not compelling, it was not exciting.

It was clearly not the kind of presentation that's gonna have any impact at all upon the target audience at all. The closest I've seen anything was something from Norway that Yasir Qadhi did. I mean, at least Yasir Qadhi is passionate and he's bold and that was what, over a year ago?

How many attacks have taken place since then? It just, as I looked down at that floor and they were all sprawled out, they had been shot in the back of the head, people, the body lands in a certain way when that happens and you just know that they had been asked to say the Shahada right before they died and I could say it, but I wouldn't, by God's grace, I can say it and say it properly.

But the use of that kind of, I mean, I've heard entire sermons on the glory of the Shahada, the glory of the Kalima, how it's the very essence of Tawheed and so on and so forth and yet, where's the passionate denunciation of these things?

Denunciations are there, but they're not passionate. If they were passionate, they would have results. It's one thing saying bad, bad, bad, if you don't do anything about it, what does that accomplish?

Where's the books? Where's the videos? Where's the debates? I mean, I know people who shoot people in the back of the head aren't gonna be debating about anything, right? But they have their supporters.

I'd like to see what's going on there, which by the way, that reminded me of something. I listened to the opening statements of the debate from yesterday. Unfortunately, the debate from yesterday at Wayne State College, and I'm pretty certain, Wayne State College, I could, someone verify, this is outside of Chicago.

If someone could verify that for me, I think that's where I had my encounter with Eric. If it's the same one, what's Wayne State coming up as?

Does it say it's in Illinois? I'm showing this in Northeast Nebraska. What? No, uh-uh.

Ha, wouldn't that be ironic? Wayne State College. Shabir finally gets to Nebraska, huh? The, uh. Was it, I think that's what it was. I'm pretty sure it was Wayne State College. Why don't you just look up the Shabir-Nabil Qureshi debate, see if you can find the location and just let me know.

Anyway, I got to see, to listen to just the opening statements this morning while I was doing a 15-kilometer row. And so I can't comment too much more on it than that because the debate doesn't.

Okay, this is Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. As in Detroit, okay. So university would have been the key thing. Okay. Okay.

Debate takes place after the opening statements. The opening statements were interesting. I certainly heard a number of arguments that I would utilize from Nabil. One or two that I wouldn't. I'm not a big Elohim, plural, fan.

I don't know what that one gets anywhere. But from Shabir, we're writing a book on this subject. So pretty much already had his outline, shall we say. And was exactly what I expected. And it's scattergun, all sorts of different topics.

You can never get to all of them. You're trying to inculcate doubt. And the constant cytoliberal scholar, as so-and-so says, quote them, and two minutes later, repeat that point as an established fact.

Listen to Shabir's debates. Shabir, it's what you do. You know that that's what you do. You've done that. I've pointed this out over and over and over again, especially in our cross-examination periods or crossfires or whatever we call them.

That's what you do, is you will say, as this liberal female Roman Catholic theologian said, and then two minutes later, and as we've shown, scholarship has proven. Mere assertions are not scholarship and proving anything at all.

But I haven't finished it. Obviously, the give and take afterwards is where debates really take place. So everybody was saying, you need to review this, you need to review this. We'll see, we'll see. We'll try to get to it eventually.

Bart Ehrman on Paul and Matthew

All right, boy, I'm not getting through this as fast as I thought I would, but that's the way I am. Real quickly, on March 26th, so a while back, Bart Ehrman, remember old Bart? Yeah, good old Bart. Bart Ehrman gave us yet another example of the fact that Bart Ehrman's PhD is in the early development of the Alexandrian text type, and it is not in theology.

It is not in theology. And me, me, me. Right? You know, when you change the time of the dividing line, you can't expect your wife to remember what you changed the time of the dividing line to. And when she's at work, that ain't gonna do you any good.

Missed call, yes, I know I missed that call. Anyways, Bart Ehrman, he's a fascinating fellow because his narrow range of expertise is in textual criticism. He has left that field and now is doing the church history thing, but even there, he gets involved in theology every once in a while.

And people just go, well, if you're an expert in the early development of the Alexandrian text type, you must be an expert in everything, as long as you're an unbeliever. Anyways, and so he writes an article, it's Paul at Odds with Matthew, and he's talking about Paul and his opponents in Galatia, and he says, Paul was incensed at this interpretation of the faith and assisted with extraordinary vehemence that was completely wrong.

Gentile followers of Jesus were not, absolutely not supposed to become Jewish. Anyone who thought so rendered the death of Jesus worthless. It was only that death and the resurrection that made a person right with God, nothing else, certainly not following Torah.

Well, that was part of it. Anyway, I often wonder whether Paul and the author of the Gospel of Matthew would have gotten along. Matthew's Gospel was probably written about 30 years after Paul. He puts Matthew in between 80 and 85.

I certainly would not put that far back, but of course we're talking about Bart Ehrman here. Matthew, like the other gospel writers, did not produce his account simply out of antiquarian interest to inform his readers what happened 55 years earlier in the days of Jesus.

He is not a disinterested biography or an objective history. It is a gospel. In other words, it is intended to proclaim the good news about Jesus and the salvation that he brings. When Jesus teaches something in his gospel, Matthew expects the teaching to be relevant to his readers and they will want to do what Jesus says.

There is no doubt that Matthew would agree with Paul that it was the death and resurrection of Jesus that brought salvation to the world. The gospel is not entirely about Jesus' death and resurrection, but it is largely about that.

It is 28 chapters long, and at least eight chapters are focused exclusively on what happened during the last week of Jesus' life in Jerusalem, including the crucifixion and resurrection. This is clearly the climax of the story.

And for Matthew, and as for his predecessor, Mark, the death of Jesus is seen as a ransom for many. It is through his death that he will save his people from their sins, Matthew 1 .21. So Matthew would agree with Paul here, but so would Paul's opponents in Galatia.

The controversy with the Galatian opposition was not over whether Jesus' death brings salvation, it was over whether the followers of Jesus who accept that death need to keep the Jewish law. Well, immediately, we see how surface level Ehrman's understanding of the theology of the New Testament is, the background of the New Testament, the book of Galatians itself.

Again, being a textual critical scholar does not make you a theologian by any stretch of the imagination. It just doesn't. And so it wasn't a matter of needing to keep the Jewish law. It was whether you had to enter into the covenant via circumcision and that whether the covenant promises were limited to those who first entered into that covenant, and then it was just for them afterwards.

And this is why you had the separation between Jews and Gentiles when the people from James came. It wasn't just a keeping the whole thing. Now, Paul's argument is gonna be, if you keep one part, you're gonna have to keep the whole thing.

But that's just because his opponents were picking and choosing which part of the law had to continue to be kept in making you right before God. By making circumcision prior to, it isn't faith alone that saves.

That's only available to a person who first obeys these things, which, wow, sounds a whole lot like the Seventh-day Adventist doctrine of investigative judgment. But anyway, I digress. I continue on with Herman.

And it does seem to me that this is where Paul and Matthew split company. Again, remember that when Matthew decides what to present about Jesus' life in the gospel, it is not simply so that people can know what really happened in the past.

It is so that the life and teachings of Jesus can direct the lives of his followers in the present. And what does Jesus say about the Jewish law in Matthew? He says that his followers have to keep it.

One of the key passages is something that you will never find in the writings of Paul. And then he quotes, "'It is not supposed that I came to destroy the law "'of the prophets who came not to destroy, "'but to fulfill,' et cetera, et cetera.".

Again, totally misunderstanding how often Paul said exactly that. I mean, right in the middle of proclaiming justification by faith in Romans chapter three, what does he say? Do we therefore nullify the law?

No, we establish the law. And then he explains what the purpose of the law is. I mean, it's just amazing how the opponents of the Christian faith, especially in this area, have such surface-level arguments.

At least go and grab some good new perspectivist stuff and throw it at us. It's not like we haven't heard that before either, but it just shows such an incredibly shallow understanding of the whole state of New Testament studies right now.

And that shouldn't shock us, because Ehrman's last book was about the various views of Jesus on the part of the authors of the New Testament. And he confessed in that book about how he had had major changes in his understanding of things just in the study and writing of that book.

And the stuff he came to understand was basic, simplistic stuff. Stuff that, I'm sorry, anybody who calls themselves any kind of New Testament scholar should have known this stuff a long time ago. And he's changed since then.

A lot of people would applaud him. Yay, you've changed since then. I mean, he's now said on his blog that all the gospel writers consider Jesus to be divine in some fashion. Everyone, it used to be his view was, oh, no, no, no, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they didn't believe in Jesus being divine anyway.

It's just John. Now he says they all did on different levels, but they all did. They all viewed him. In fact, to all my Muslim friends out there, if you're still using Bart Ehrman, you're not even understanding what Bart Ehrman's currently saying, which is a shame, but not overly surprising.

So he's even changed since then. So I just, why does the world give such weight to what this man says? I mean, the books that he's written, just the books that are most popular are just that. They're popular-level books, especially when it comes to theology, New Testament history, so on and so forth.

And so I really don't think Matthew's Jesus did not mean what he says. He gives no hint that following the law this closely is impossible to do. He seems to think it is possible. God gave a law. You should follow it scrupulously, even more scrupulously than the righteous scribes and Pharisees.

If you don't, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Again, amazing even interpretations of Matthew. Again, you can make any of the New Testament writers say almost anything you want, as long as you can separate them from one another.

There is no New Testament theology. You can't have Matthew and Mark and Luke, or you can't, you know, it's easy to come up with any type of theology as long as you can atomize the text of the New Testament.

And Ehrman's been doing, been making a lot of money off of that for a very, very long time. But none of this shows any serious understanding of Paul's view of the law, the concept of good works, any of these things.

The concept of the law as our schoolmaster bring us into Christ. Doesn't even worry himself with such things. You're just feeding the flock with this, feeding the people who want to hear you say what you've got to say.

Why Calvinism Is Not Defeated by Molinism

All right, I want to leave enough time because I told the author of this article. I don't, all right, I'm gonna go ahead and give this guy some free advertising. Radio Free Phoenix. Remember he showed up on Twitter last week and talked about being under our bunker and there is a storm coming?

I don't know who Radio Free Phoenix is. I have no earthly idea. I don't even know who Dr. Oakley 1611 is on Twitter. So it's a channel rat, I can tell that because stuff we're saying in channel will all of a sudden appear in obtuse fashions on Twitter.

But wasn't Wayne State also where Shake a Wall's last minute fill in? No, we do not even talk about him. That is the name that shall not be mentioned. And the debate that never happened, which I do not even include in my debate list.

Anyway, Radio Free Phoenix just posted a meme. It's a picture of Shabir and it says Nebraska? Nope, I've never been. So we know he's listening. He might be in the bunker underneath, because he says he's in the bunker underneath our offices.

And so he just might be getting a headstart because he can listen, he doesn't have the 30 second delay. I have no idea, but Nebraska, nope, I've never been. Yeah, I don't think he's ever been there either.

Anyway, who was it that sent this? Oh, Tony Costa sent this to me first, and then a couple of other people sent it to me. It was an article from Freaking Ministries. Ministries, F-R-E-A-K, capital E-N-G, all one word.

Never heard of it before, sorry. I found the Twitter address, got in contact with the person. He said he didn't write this. It was one of the contributors, put me in contact with the guy who actually wrote it.

And the guy was very nice and said, I'm traveling today, so I can't really interact today, but I'll be interested to hear what you have to say, et cetera, et cetera. And I think before I left this morning, I saw an invitation to go on their webcast.

Well, I've said I'm gonna be covering it on mine, and so we'll see. But it was an article called, The Pedals Drop, Why Calvinism is Impossible. Not why it's a, you know, not why I would take an Arminian view, right?

He's a Molinist, a Molinistic view, but why Calvinism is impossible, absolutely impossible. Well, I've been called a Calvinist a few times in my life, so that caught my attention. And I started looking through it, and here's a guy who claims to have once been a Calvinist.

Now, I'll be perfectly honest, I'm not gonna go through and mention what the guy's name was, because I don't even have the app where we had the conversation. I'd have to go looking for stuff in Facebook or something to pull this up right now.

But I can tell, I'm gonna take a wild guess here, just a wild guess, but I've been doing this a few years, actually a few decades, well, more than a few decades. And I don't think you really were a Calvinist.

You may have, for a brief period of time, thought you were, bought into a couple, bought a few roses or tulips or some other kind of flowers. Maybe you liked bacon as, there's the bacon acrostic as well.

Huh? And maybe you grew a beard. Yeah, it's possible, possible. But just like certain other people who have written books about being former Calvinists, anybody who claims to be a former Calvinist, I'd like to know what church you went to, how long you went, how long you taught, and how many funerals you did as a Calvinist.

And if you weren't in a reformed church that had reformed worship, if you haven't had at least three debates with friends about exclusive psalmody, not a Calvinist. Yeah, not a Calvinist. If you really don't, if you've not read the Institutes and at least one Charles Haddon Spurgeon sermon, at least one, it's just required.

Even Presbyterians have to read at least one Spurgeon sermon. Seriously though, if you can be removed from your conviction by one of the most basic arguments that every Calvinist has already thought of and responded to a thousand times, then you probably weren't really a Calvinist.

What, did somebody say Cervetus? Yeah, Cervetus! Oh, I'm out, I'm out. That's it, yeah, no. That's not what it was. Here's, well, let me just read. After teaching these points to my youth group students, several years ago, this philosophy started to seem unsettling.

Moreover, around that time, I really started getting into apologetics. Ironically, a Calvinistic pastoral colleague of mine introduced me to the work of Dr. William Lane Craig. I started watching his debates in November of 2010.

I watched a video of Dr. Craig debating Christopher Hitchens at Biola University. I was starting to love this guy until he made a passing comment that he didn't agree with Calvinism. Remember, we've shown this one.

And when Hitchens asked him to identify a false Christian view, the only thing he could come up with, he couldn't come up with a papacy. He couldn't come up with Mormonism. Jehovah's Witnesses, it's the Calvinist.

It's the Calvinist. Anyway. Whoa, he says, stop the presses. Did this guy who is systematically destroying all of these atheistic arguments just announce Calvinism? Now, immediately, I just want to say to our author here, you obviously didn't know Greg Bonson, did you?

He hadn't really dealt with the apologetics issues at that point in time. I immediately did what any good aspiring theologian would do and turned to Google. Pretty soon I stumbled upon the doctrine of middle knowledge, Mullenism.

I guess he didn't stumble upon my responses to that or my many challenges to William Lane Craig to debate that. No, probably didn't. In a nutshell, this view basically attempts to logically reconcile God's sovereignty with human freedom and responsibility by stating, God chose to create a world in which he knew with omniscient certainty how human beings would freely choose.

Well, yeah, we've been down that road many, many, many times before. Keep Googling, my friend, and find where William Lane Craig likewise said that God has to deal with the cards he's been dealt and then figure out how that works.

And then listen to some of your Mullenist friends trying to explain what William Lane Craig means. Or what they'll do is at that point is saying, yeah, well, William Lane Craig isn't the only Mullenist.

Yeah, yeah, oh, yeah, yeah. He's not the only. At that point, I would prefer this guy over here or that guy over there. And I've got my pile of Mullenists down here. We could pull them out. Well, on that, I like that guy.

And on this, I like that guy. That's what ends up happening when you get into it. So anyway, it soon occurred to me that the dichotomy between Calvinism and Arminianism is a false one. That is to say, there are other possible options to consider, namely open theism and Mullenism.

Open theism and Mullenism? You do realize those are on opposite ends of the spectrum. Right? Okay. I began saying all four of these views and comparing and contrasting all their claims and affirmations.

Initially, I was bent on disproving these other views because of my commitment to Calvinism. I honestly studied them almost every single day for over a year to demonstrate they're wrong and why Calvinism is true.

And one day I was driving home from the church office after scrutinizing Mullenism all day. That's a problem. And I called my wife and said, I think I'm losing my faith in Calvinism. I freely chose to label myself a bonafide Mullenist.

Well, okay. Let's look at the argument because time's running out here. Here is, I have developed several logic-based arguments demonstrating the fallaciousness of Calvinism. There's your problem, my friend, because there's almost nothing in here exegetical.

A couple of Bible verses, but exegesis. You know, if you spend all day studying Mullenism, that's a problem, that's a problem. I've spent a lot of time studying Mullenism, but I'm gonna spend a whole lot more time in scripture than I am studying Mullenism.