GREAT DEBATE: Christian vs. Mormon on the Bible

Apologia Studios

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Good evening welcome If you could find your seats, please You will notice it is exactly 630, which means we will be timely this evening.

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I am the moderator And if any of you have seen any of my debates, you know that I am a stickler for that I consider it the means by which you show respect to your opponents and to the audience as well

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So we will start on time. Welcome to a real Debate this is not going to be something like you watch on television.

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They don't have debates on television any longer Especially if they have anything to do with politics and that's not what this is going to be about This evening.

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We will be talking about ultimate authorities. And so a few words to Admonish you from the beginning you are here to listen not to participate

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Your participation will be done through questions. There will be Baskets put at the back of the room and if you have questions you basically have the first half of the debate to formulate them on the

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Note cards in the back and place them in the appropriate box so if you want to ask a question of the

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Protestant side or the LDS side then Put them in the proper box for the side

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You want the question to be asked of during the Q &A at the end? Myself and another individual will be going through them there will only be a

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Matter of minutes for questions. So please do not get too upset if yours does not get asked

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But you need to be formulating the questions in the first half of the debate So we have time to go through them and be prepared to ask them at the end of the debate.

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Please remember a Question ends with a little squiggly mark.

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It's not a sermon It's not time for you to announce that you think you should have been doing the debate not the bozos that were up there

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That's when you ask the actual question that way it may actually get get asked

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Okay, so we do not participate in the debate by applause by booze hisses deep loud sighs giggles laughs

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Or loud amens or anything along those lines, okay? If there is interruptions you're taking the time from your side in the first place, okay?

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So keep that in mind. We are here to listen and to observe and to learn from there Not to participate in any other fashion leave that to the folks who have already done the work to be prepared

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To present their material to us this evening I would strongly encourage you to have something to write with and write on other than your neighbor that is and I would encourage you to draw a line down the middle of your paper and as one side presents

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Write down what you would consider to be relevant points to the thesis of the debate

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Not stuff that doesn't really matter But stuff that actually supports their position relevant to the thesis of the debate in regards to what the ultimate authority for us is

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In this day in religious matters Then when the other side gets up do the same thing on their side when rebuttals take place

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Remember you cannot rebut everything the other side has said you know why? Because they're gonna have 15 minutes of opening statement, and you have half that amount of time to provide a rebuttal

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So it's just not possible, but you should check off. Okay. They thought this is important.

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They responded to it Don't write down emotional things don't write down rabbit trails stay focused on the subject of the debate and Mark on your sheet what points are answered whether they're answered well where they're not answered well on both sides as well as during the cross -examination all the way through the closing statements and By the end of the time you should have a decent mechanism whereby you can judge how the debate went

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That's not how most people do things today, but it is the way it should be done. It really really is so let me introduce our debaters this evening

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We will announce before each of the sections What the time frames are going to be basically we'll be starting with 15 minute opening statements

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And then before each of the rebuttals cross -examination second rebuttal cross -examination and closing

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I'll give you the time frames for those as they are about to begin You'll forget them unless you're writing them down between now and then anyways, so representing the

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Protestant perspective No applause, please once again Oscar Dunlap was born and raised in Ypsilanti, Michigan He currently attends

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Whitfield Theological Seminary in pursuit of his Masters of Divinity degree He has been wedded to his bride

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Teresa for eight years and his father to three children He serves as a deacon at Apologia Church teaches in various capacities and participates weekly in evangelistic and apologetic community outreach

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Daniel Constantino was born and raised in San Diego Daniel is currently going to school for his

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Masters in Divinity attending Whitfield Theological Seminary He has been married to his wife Kimberly for three years

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Daniel leads the LDS outreach for Apologia Church where he also serves as a

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Deacon now representing the Latter -day Saint perspective Hayden Carroll was born and raised in Gilbert, Arizona After serving a full -time mission in the heartland of Mormonism Salt Lake City, Utah He obtained a degree in communications with Southern Utah University.

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He is currently pursuing a master's degree in professional communication Hayden serves in various leadership roles within his faith congregation

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He enjoys teaching theology hosting his faithful perspective podcast and spending time with his wife and son

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Jacob Hansen is one of eight children born and raised in the Latter -day Saint family from Sparks, Nevada Jacob served a two -year mission in Argentina Graduated from BYU's Hawaii campus always tough to go there

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With a degree in supply chain and operations management and while running his business and helping his beautiful wife raise four children

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He writes and podcasts on matters related to his faith on his website thoughtful faith calm

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Now Jacob and Hayden want to make it clear that tonight They are not acting as official representatives of their church and the opinions expressed are

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Their own so they want to make sure to make that clear to you So also at the beginning of each of the opening statements

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Each of these speakers is asked for just a few seconds to Give some greetings before the official time begins

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I will make it clear when the timer has started so both sides have exactly the same

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Amount of time. So once again, thank you for being here this evening very very important subject to address and so let's get to it and we had a first time

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I've ever experienced a Digital coin flip I Did not know that you could ask

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Alexa or Siri or whoever is listening to all of your private conversations and reporting them

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Reporting them to the proper authorities You're laughing You're laughing because you know, it's true.

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That's why you're laughing I did not know you could ask Siri to do a corn coin flip for you

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It's not nearly as exciting as the real thing, I'll be perfectly honest with you, but we had a digital coin flip and Our Protestant representatives,

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I believe are going first this evening And so I will take a seat and whoever is going to do the opening statement

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Please feel free to come forward make your greetings and then I will let you know when the time begins

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Cool, this is on All right, so it's good to see all you guys here. Really it means a lot

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We want to give a quip a quick couple of thanks one to our elders as soon as we brought this idea to them

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They had our back and Oscar and I know you can't find that everywhere So thank you to Luke Zach Jeff and James for having our support in this we want to thank our opponents tonight

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Oscar and I do evangelism weekly. It is not easy to get people to come and talk to you about their beliefs

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Especially when you're talking about God So the fact that they agreed to come to our church and not only discuss their beliefs

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But actually have them debated it means a lot and we respect these guys as men So we hope you guys know that shake their hands afterward.

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Give them a quick. Thanks We have a couple gifts from them. So for them. This is a book. It's called the impossibility of the contrary

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This is for Jacob. This is for you. We have another book called Canon revisited by Michael Kruger.

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This is for Hayden. So And Lastly I'd be remissed if we didn't think our moderator tonight for those of you guys who know pastor

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James I don't have to say anything He's the greatest when it comes to this type of thing. The fact that we have him here in this room.

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It means a lot He's a hero of mine. I mean I even wore a bowtie for him.

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I'm not I don't think he liked it But I wore a bowtie. So thank you. Thank you. Pastor James for agreeing to do this

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We We're excited for tonight's debate and we're excited because the topic tonight is a very very important topic

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All right. This is essential to all of life We're not here to debate secondary issues.

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Like how should we baptize somebody? Which city has the best Mexican food San Diego?

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The Topic that we're talking about is one of the most important subjects there is to talk about especially between Protestants and Latter -day

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Saints So our topic is what should be our ultimate authority? That is to ask what should be the rule or the standard for our lives?

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We decided upon this topic because we had conversations prior to this debate Where we spoke about the person of Christ the nature of God the gospel and salvation and we quickly agreed

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That the reason why we disagree so heavily on these other important issues was because of the lens or the foundation that we determine our beliefs from as Our final authority tonight.

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We're holding to the scriptures alone commonly known by the Latin phrase solar scriptura

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Our opponents will be holding on to what they call the collective witness model and I'll let them explain what that is

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But tonight you the audience are the judges of this debate And so what's important to recognize is what's going on?

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you have two very different foundations being presented to you as your ultimate authority as your standard for how to live and so what you should be asking is is

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What happens if you take your foundation to its furthest conclusions? Okay, if this is how you decide how you live what you believe on all the big questions of life

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Ask yourself what happens if I'm consistent with this? I Urge you tonight as as the judges to watch both sides of the debate see if anybody's being inconsistent to be inconsistent is to lie and Surely you don't want a foundation that's built on a lie

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Watch out for arbitrariness If any of us give an answer tonight like because it works for me or because I think so That's not an adequate answer

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Especially again when we're talking about the foundation on which we believe everything else Our prayer tonight that you walk away from this debate asking yourselves a couple questions

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Ask yourself. Why do I believe my ultimate authority? Because your mom tells you because your dad tells you because it's comfortable.

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It's what you know Ask yourself. Why do I believe my ultimate authority and then ask yourself is my ultimate authority solid ground?

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Since it's what you stand on I'll begin stating and defending our position the scriptures alone by reading to you guys two quotes first But you take an occasion by this if you light upon the text of scriptures

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By genuinely applying your mind to them will learn from them more completely and clearly the exact detail of what we have said

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For they were spoken and written by God through men who spoke for God and quote that's at the nations of the fourth century

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Next let us not hear this. I say or this you say But thus says the

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Lord surely it is the books of the Lord on whose authority we both agree in which we both believe

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There let us seek the church there. Let us discuss our case and Quote, that's

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Augustine of Hippo from the 5th century So why am I quoting 4th and 5th century church fathers?

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Because the doctrine of scripture alone is not a new one It's not one that came from the

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Reformation this doctrine has been defended and believed throughout all of church history and Tonight we come to you

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Holding the same convictions as these ancient men So let's let's define scripture alone and let's start off by saying what scripture alone is not

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This is going to be important if at any point tonight our opponents Argue against what we say scripture alone is not that should be noted and dismissed

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It's to argue against a straw man a position. We don't really hold Let's let's go over this list

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Scripture alone is not a claim that the Bible has exhaustive knowledge The scriptures don't claim to reveal everything there is to know

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Scripture alone is not a denial that there were times of revelation We acknowledge and we know that there were unique periods in times of history where revelation was being written

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What we're arguing for is what is normative for the church now, what should be your ultimate authority today?

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Scripture alone is not a claim of unanimity Meaning that because we hold the scripture alone.

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We're always gonna agree on everything That's not the claim. We see the Apostles had disagreements amongst themselves and What's important to note is the scriptures never make this claim for the church

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You never read for example now that you've been delivered the Word of God you will always agree and have perfect unity

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That's not what we're told but we're actually told to find unity in Christ himself So tonight if we hear the

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Reformers held to solar scriptura, but they disagreed That should be dismissed if we hear what about different interpretations

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We're not arguing about the interpretation of the text. We're arguing about the authority of the text.

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It should be dismissed Scripture alone is not a claim of personal inerrancy

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Okay, we've actually heard this that you guys are saying you're inerrant. No, we're not Okay, the

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Bible doesn't teach that Daniel and Oscar are inerrant what the Bible does teach is that God is inerrant

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God can reveal himself and God has revealed certain truths to his creation

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So our basic claim is we're taking God at his own word Since God cannot lie and since there's no one above God when

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God speaks. He speaks authoritatively. It's true You can take it to the bank Scripture alone is not a claim that there are no other authorities

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We're not saying that the scriptures are the only authority in existence. We're saying those are only infallible authorities

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Oscar and I submit ourselves to the elders of apologia, but why do we do that? Because the

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New Testament consistently teaches us to do so and the book of Hebrews We're told to obey and submit to our elders because they watch over our souls.

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So we acknowledge there's other rules But the ultimate one the one by which we test those and submit to those by is the scriptures alone

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So let's talk about what scripture alone is. I have a definition The Bible is the sole infallible and sufficient rule of faith for the

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Christian Church The scriptures are not in need of any supplement and their authority comes from their nature as God breathed revelation

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Their authority is not dependent upon man church or council The scriptures are self -consistent self -interpreting and self -authenticating

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The Christian Church looks to the scriptures as the only infallible rule of faith and the church is always subject to the word and is constantly reformed thereby

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Couple things to note. Okay again scriptures are the sole infallible rule the only thing that the church possesses today that is infallible is the scriptures and The reason why is because of their nature

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Their breathe out by God by very definition the revelation from God. This is how

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God has spoken to his church Let's look at a couple of biblical texts to support this idea

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The first one is a common one a lot of people know about 2nd Timothy 3 16 and it's important to consider the context of this scripture because it's always thrown out

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And I don't think we consider the context enough. Okay, Paul in chapter 4 of this Letter to Timothy Acknowledges that he knows he's dying.

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He says he's being poured out his time for departure has come. He's ran the good race And he starts off this letter by Telling Timothy that he's his son in the faith.

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He loves him. He's praying for him day and night So do you think Paul is gonna write something important to his son in the faith?

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Kind of understanding this could be his very last letter to him I think he would and in the immediate context of chapter 3 where we're quoting from Paul tells

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Timothy on men he should avoid he said these men oppose the truth These men are imposters going from evil to worse and then he goes to verse 14 he says but as for you continue in what you have learned and firmly believed knowing from who you've learned it from and How from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus listen to this verse 16 all

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Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching for a proof for correction for training and righteousness

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That the man of God may be completely equipped for every good work What is

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Paul just said? He said the scriptures are breathed out by God and that they have a purpose.

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They're meant to do something What are they meant to do? To completely equip the man of God notice what

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Paul doesn't say he didn't say hey use your own God -given reason He didn't say hey your feelings as you as you pray to the

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Spirit for a testimony go on that He's literally telling Timothy on who to avoid and he tells

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Timothy remember what you've read since you were little the scriptures Second Peter chapter 1 is another important verse

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Peter has just talked about how they were with the Lord Jesus on the mountain and How they heard the voice of God audibly but he says we have the prophetic word

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More fully confirmed than us actually hearing the verbal audible voice of God At verse 20.

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He says knowing this first of all that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation

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No prophecy was ever produced by the will of men, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the

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Holy Spirit So you have Paul saying the scriptures are breathed out by God and here you have

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Peter saying the scriptures never came from men to begin With this wasn't man's intentions men spoke, but they spoke as they were carried by God That's two people now that say the scriptures are

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Their nature comes from God What about the Lord Jesus? well in Matthew 4 he goes to his temptation in the wilderness and Satan begins to tempt him and it's interesting to note every time he's tempted.

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What does he do? Does he pray? Does he go for his reason he goes to the scriptures and what does

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Jesus say on the very first temptation? Satan comes to him and he says look you see this stone turn it into rock because you see this stone turn it into bread you're hungry, right and then

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Jesus says Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

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He says this as he's quoting Scripture So what does Jesus think the Word of God is in John 17 as he's in the garden and he's praying for his sheep to the father.

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What does he tell the father? He says sanctify them in truth. Your word is truth

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So Jesus believes that the scriptures come from the mouth of God and that they're true He believes that they're so true that in Matthew 22.

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He did something very interesting He's posed with a question about the resurrection and he tells his audience

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He says have you not read what God said to you and then he quotes the scriptures written 1400 years earlier

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Why does he do that? I mean he says have you not read what God spoke to you?

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Jesus is telling his audience that God spoke to you and he spoke to you by what was revealed 1400 years earlier

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Jesus believed that the scriptures came from God He believed that they were true. And the question to ask is when

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Jesus said sanctify them in truth. Your word is truth What did he mean? Did he think that the

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Word of God was true sometimes? maybe when it's translated properly

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They think that some parts of it were fallible and some were infallible No, he believed the

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Word of God was infallible. It was perfect Now our opponents tonight may not want to say this but they disagree with the

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Lord Jesus Because they don't believe that God can reveal himself to us

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And if they don't believe that God can reveal himself to us, then how can God speak to us and tell us things? They don't believe that the scriptures that we hold to in the

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Bible are true the way Jesus says they're true in order to win this debate tonight

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Our opponents are gonna have to show us How their ultimate authority that they admitted to us can be wrong is actually the authority that can teach us the will of God Why does this why does any of this matter?

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We're not here just for the sake of argument and debate again, there's two foundations being posed and What we're saying is we're taking

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God at his word when God gives revelation. He means it and So when we read things in the scriptures, for example

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Jesus takes our record of debt and he nails it to the cross in Colossians chapter 2 or that the the gospel is the power of God unto salvation

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Romans 1 We we believe those things are true because God said them and If you can't clearly define the gospel if you have to look at the scriptures and say this is not true

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It's it's fallible Then you don't have a gospel to point to you don't have a gospel to save you

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This is not just for argument again. We respect our opponents tonight But our urge to you is to not build your foundation on the words of mere men

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That includes us as well Build your foundation upon the Word of Christ.

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This is what he says in Matthew 7 He says those who hear my words and do them are like the wise man

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Who built his house on solid ground? But to the ones who hear his word and don't do them.

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They're like the fool who build their house on sand Don't be the fool tonight. Thank you

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Before we start our time Jacob and I would like to give our thanks to apology a church to dr

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James White to Oscar and Daniel and to those of you who've shown up today because you guys really make the debate So thank you for being here now

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Just want to just quickly say and kind of echo what Daniel's already told you We have become really good friends by discussing gospel topics with each other

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We've had over six hours of a recorded Well distributed to three episodes, but it's over six hours of conversations on different topics including this one

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And I know Daniel and I have had probably hours worth worth of messages sent back and forth to each other

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So we just want to say how much we respect them and we want to thank you guys for having us tonight Before we begin we'd like to point out that our opponents have one great advantage over us as Calvinists who believe in predestination or the idea that God has determined every single event in the history of the earth if We end up winning the debate tonight

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At least they can rest assured knowing that it was God who decreed it to be so before the debate even began

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The question tonight is on what authority should we believe? It's important for you to understand that our opponents have taken the more

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Difficult position in their response to tonight's question. It's a position that you will observe to be impossible to defend

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We'd like to begin with an analogy that we hope you'll pay close attention to Imagine that all of us here tonight walk into a room which has two books on the table

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We'll say book a and book b Both of these books claim to be the word of God Suddenly our debate opponents grab book a hold it in the air and proudly proclaim

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This is it This book a is the infallible word of God, that's great.

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How do you guys know that book a is the word of God rather than book b? Book a is the infallible word of God because it says it is it's self -authenticated

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So book a is true because book a says it's true. Yes. It's the standard of all truth

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Hold on. What about book b book b also claims to be from God Well, it can't be true because it contradicts our understanding of what book a teaches you see

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God has given us the gift of faith which causes us his elect to recognize and acknowledge

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That book a is his word So God gifted you with the ability to see truth and not us.

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How is that possible? Doesn't he want to save all of us? Oh, no. No God actually if God actually wanted to save everyone

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He would have given everyone the gift of faith So you too if you had the gift of faith would recognize that it's his infallible word

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You see God actually created some people for dishonorable use and therefore it is actually his will that some people

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Are left in their blind state and are eventually to suffer an eternal torment in hell. It's part of his plan

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You actually believe that how'd you arrive at that conclusion? Because book a says so Some of us have read book a and we do not agree with that interpretation of what it teaches

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Well, that's to be expected You guys are suppressing the perfectly clear message

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You obviously have not been given the gift of faith that we the elect have perhaps one day

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He'll give you the gift of faith in Which will cause you to agree with our interpretations

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This sounds a little weird How did you arrive at the conclusion that you are the elect who can see this perfectly clear message of scripture that you're referencing

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Because book a says that people who understand book a are the elect Why again, do you believe that book a what book a says over book b they both claim to be from god?

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We presuppose the truth of our interpretation of book a That's our starting point.

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That seems like a poor starting point. Why do you presuppose the truth of book a over book b? Because without book a we wouldn't be able to make sense of the world

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The rest of us don't really feel comfortable just assuming that book a is true or that you guys are interpreting it correctly

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If you if we aren't sure if book a or b is from god, why don't we just ask him?

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No. No, don't do that That would be subjective and leaning to your own understanding

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He's already chosen who will believe it and who won't you need to go with our presuppositions in our interpretation of book a he chose us

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Interesting the rest of us believe that god is the ultimate authority not you We're going to place our faith in his ability to reveal which of these books are his and which interpretation of them is correct

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Doesn't this seem more reasonable? No, you're obviously suppressing the truth now.

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Let's bring us out of this analogy I'm sure that our opponents will say that this is a straw man way to present their arguments

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But listen carefully to what they say tonight and you'll see that this analogy is essentially what they will be advocating for only using fancier words

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Our opponents embrace the false doctrine of sola scriptura This is the presupposition that every word in the 66 books they chose for their authority and their way of understanding those words

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Constitutes the perfect inerrant word of god It's the idea that every single word in the books.

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They chose were placed there intentionally by the greatest conceivable communicator And thus is perfectly clear.

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It's as if god wrote the bible with his own hand This is what they mean when they use the term god breathed scripture

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Any objective scholar of religious history knows that sola scriptura was not the doctrine of historical christians

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But rather was invented in the 1500s by protestants so they could reject the authority of the catholic church but catholic clergy would simply look at those reformers and say

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Who are you to challenge the authority of god's church? What authority do you have and with the release of the bible via the printing press?

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Christians were finally able to hold up their bibles and say this is my authority

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And it's a greater authority than you have. It's the word of god and those reformers were right

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The bible does contain the word of god It is an authority but their zeal went too far and turned their interpretation of these 66 books into a seemingly

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Infallible idol known as the doctrine of sola scriptura Tonight we will focus on three main problems with sola scriptura any one of these even alone will be devastating to our opponent's position

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These are the problem of interpretation the logical problem and the problem of canon starting off with the problem of interpretation

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When our opponents say the bible says what they should be saying is our interpretation of the bible says

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However, our opponents will do all they can to avoid this by taking themselves out of the equation

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So instead they will say god is working in them to make them understand and believe these 66 books and god can't be wrong

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Do you see this little trick they're playing? Are we really going to pretend that the rest of us are interpreting the bible, but they are not

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They will say they merely acknowledge what the bible says and they are not interpreting it But what they really acknowledge is what they think it says

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They seem to presuppose that they are the elect who can see this perfectly clear message of scripture because god is working in them

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They presuppose that everyone else is suppressing the real truth, but not them Thus the 66 books they chose and their particular interpretation of them is the is the final word for what is true

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It's their answer. This is their answer to tonight's debate question It doesn't matter what reason says what your experience says what your heart says what your conscience says what history says what science says?

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What the spirit says or anything else? It's the ultimate trump card. It's true because we say it is

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Our opponents believe that the bible's the bible's message is perfectly clear to any person who give who god gives the gift of faith to But that he doesn't give that gift of faith to all of us

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Even though he could he doesn't want to they say the bible is perfectly clear that we are not all children of god

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And that he doesn't hope for everyone to be saved in their mind God has created some people like anne frank, for example for dishonorable use

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In other words, they think the bible is clear that god intentionally denied little anne frank the gift of faith as a jewish girl

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So that she would not only suffer in this life But when she finally starved to death in a concentration camp god was waiting on the other side to say anne

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You should know that I planned for your life to be as it was I made sure that you'd be sent to the camps along with all those there with you

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And now i'm sending you to hell So that I might be glorified in your suffering.

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It's nothing. It's nothing personal though. Remember you had no choice in this But it doesn't mean that you aren't innocent.

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You never were you can blame adam for that one Some people call that original sin My nature and my will requires that you burn in hell forever and you were damned before you were even born

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Our opponents believe the only reason you disagree with them about this is because you are suppressing the perfectly clear message of the bible

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But that god is making them believe and understand the bible Because of this they believe they cannot be wrong about the infallibility of those 66 books

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Next is the logical problem. This is when our opponents say that the bible is true because the bible says the bible is true

33:58

But what they are really saying is that the 66 books we chose in our interpretation of them Constitutes the infallible word of god because we think we are the elect

34:07

And believe that god is working in us we can see the truth that everyone else is missing because god chose us

34:14

Every time our opponents open the bible to make their case, which they've already done They are trying to prove the bible by using the bible

34:21

But a debate about whether or not the bible is the ultimate authority cannot be settled by appealing to the bible

34:29

So what's their answer to this? They would say that they simply presuppose the bible is infallible

34:34

It's the same as saying book a is true because book a says it's true and simply ignoring other books and other people who make the same claim

34:43

This circular reasoning is the incoherent foundation upon which they are trying to build It's really a catch -22 on one hand if they try to use the bible to prove that the bible is infallible

34:52

They've fallen into their own self -dug trap of circular reasoning, which is destructive to their case

34:58

On the other hand if they if they even once point to an authority outside of the bible They've defeated their own premise and it's likely that they'll do both tonight

35:07

The final problem is that of close canon This is when our opponents say that god's revelation regarding salvation is complete

35:13

And that god can't or at least won't give us any more truth Not only is this not taught in the bible.

35:19

It's logically impossible for the 66 books to teach it Just think about it if a certain book in the bible actually taught close canon what would happen?

35:28

We would have to reject all revelations after that book was written. Do you see the issue here?

35:34

Shockingly, we have our moderator tonight. Dr James white a prominent member of our opponents reform community who at least at one time agreed with us

35:41

He wrote an article which is still published today in his on his website saying quote Protestants do not assert

35:48

That sola scriptura is a valid concept during times of revelation How could it be since the rule of faith to which it points was at that very time coming into being end quote?

36:00

In other words those who wrote the bible couldn't teach close canon because the canon was open

36:08

So where does the idea of close canon come from? Not the bible which is funny because sola scriptura teaches that all truths regarding salvation

36:16

Must come from the bible which itself doesn't sola scriptura is self -defeating

36:22

The idea that the canon is closed is and must be an idea that came from outside of the bible

36:27

Or at least after the bible we have today was compiled Our opponents will argue that the concept of close canon is taught within the pages of the bible

36:34

We agree with dr White sola scriptura or the idea that the bible is the only authority of god on the earth was not taught in biblical times

36:43

And therefore was not taught in the bible. Do you hear that? Our opponents are teaching things that are not biblical.

36:49

Remember catch 22 So what do we think is the ultimate authority our answer is this?

36:56

God God is the ultimate authority and he can reveal truth to us directly

37:03

The bible even teaches this He has not constrained himself to any amount of books on the earth today.

37:08

He can and continues to speak. Why would he stop? Now I can hear our opponents ready to jump up and say but Can god tell you something that contradicts the bible?

37:18

But what they are really asking is if god can tell us something that contradicts their interpretation of the bible

37:24

So our answer is yes, we do believe that god can reveal that your interpretation is wrong

37:30

We don't place that those kind of limits on god and on his word We let him speak and it's up to us to listen

37:36

Who are they to say that god himself can't or won't reveal truth to you? What if what god teaches is truth and their interpretation of the bible contradicts the truth?

37:45

Then why should we accept their interpretation? You see this is not just a matter of feel of knowing god's will by the way of feelings

37:53

He has given us our bodies that we must use to interpret and compute everything around us including his word

38:00

He has given us reason that we can detect things like the faulty logic of our opponents He has given us hearts that scream inside when we are told that god intentionally sends his children to hell

38:11

He gives us our very being which through which god reveals truth in our life experiences He gives us the holy spirit which teaches and testifies of truth to our spirits

38:21

And of course god gives us prophets and apostles to declare god's general mind and will concerning the world

38:27

Just think for a second about how extreme the presuppositions of our opponents are God himself could come down into this room

38:36

And tell them that they were wrong and they would deny that it was god who told them because their interpretation of the bible

38:42

Tells them that god cannot contradict their interpretation Do you see who's actually in charge here?

38:50

If god himself Cannot convince our opponents that their interpretation is incorrect is incorrect

38:57

You know that this is idolatry The our opponent's particular interpretation of the six books.

39:03

They chose has become the our gods The opponents sorry our opponents particular interpretation of the six books.

39:10

They've chosen has become their god. Excuse me We believe the by we we love the bible.

39:16

It is an authority of god. We study it often But when you presuppose that fallen humans long ago could write

39:24

Infallibly as they did their best to dictate revelations from god and that modern humans could interpret these writings infallibly

39:30

You end up placing mortal men in the throne of god. The truth is from him

39:36

Our invitation is to seek it wherever it is and with all of the tools god gave you he loves you

39:43

He loves all of his children every single person here tonight He has not predestined anyone in this room to a life of deliberate ignorance

39:53

Of his word and eventual damnation in hell Know that he is calling you

39:59

But you must be willing to open your heart and your mind by the power of his grace and with that I yield my time

40:14

All right, we will now have seven minute rebuttals from each side All right

40:44

Unfortunately What you just heard was a rebuttal and not an opening statement

40:50

Much of what was presented to you all was a rebuttal against calvinism and the debate is about the ultimate authority of scripture so That's odd That said i'm going to begin on discussing their worldview which just for a snippet there at the end they actually cared to discuss

41:11

Part and parcel of their methodology of arriving at truth is the caveat that you can never be sure.

41:17

It's true This is a self -defeating and therefore a rational theory of knowledge that should be utterly rejected

41:24

According to their worldview there exists. No infallible or transcendental standard of truth that humans are capable of knowing and of course when

41:32

Making an absolute statement such as that you're defeating your own position once again It therefore follows that being bereft of a definite epistemic foundation by definition the tools that they

41:45

Present it to you are inadequate to arrive at truth It is like arbitrarily electing three tools to help you reach a specific destination whose location you are unaware of No matter how high quality or useful you think

41:58

These tools to be if you don't know for certain the location of your desired destination. It would be illogical or irresponsible

42:05

To have any hope of arriving there. That's what our opponents are here telling you tonight. They're saying We cannot know infallible truth.

42:12

We cannot know transcendental truth But these tools here which we acknowledge are also fallible are going to help us find that truth

42:20

You talk about illogical that is illogical So is this epistemology of our opponents here tonight?

42:27

They tell us here is the means by which we arrive at the true faith yet by their own admission They can't be certain as to what the true faith actually is

42:36

Jacob in your youtube video the collective witness model you said because humans are fallible We always must recognize that we could be wrong

42:42

However, this method allows us to be more or less certain about the mind and the will of god on any given matter

42:49

My question is how? when the when the tools when the tools you chose

42:56

Cannot arrive. I mean the truth that they arrive at are doubtful Because they're of their fallibility the conclusion of their utilization is also inescapably doubtful again

43:06

We're going to arrive at truth With tools that are fallible and that's going to help us find truth.

43:12

That doesn't make any sense. I'm sorry. It just doesn't How do you know that the prophets are right? They say we don't we test them by the teachings of the other prophets by the spirit and by reason

43:21

Well, how do you know your reasoning is proper? They say we don't we test it by reason and the prophets or by the spirit and the prophets

43:30

I say, okay Then you must be certain of your ability to receive revelation from the spirit as as it sounds like they were certain right?

43:36

And build your epistemology upon that correct wrong Because of the of the fallibility of man according to their worldview

43:43

We can never be sure of the truthfulness of the revelation received from that spirit either

43:49

We got to test it by the voice of the prophetic teachings and by reason Which they have acknowledged could be wrong.

43:55

You see the problem The problem with this model is although we have three witnesses We have no reason to believe any of them to be trustworthy

44:01

Why not because each of their testimonies are dependent upon the validity of one another and all of them are fallible

44:06

Therefore, it's impossible to prove any of them as useful in this discussion If all three were lying witnesses without an objective standard, there would be no way for you to know

44:17

We don't reject their theory of knowledge or lds theology because it's circular in reasoning They say oh you guys have circular reasons.

44:22

So do you? We don't reject it because it's circular. We believe all epistemology is circular by necessity

44:27

We reject it because it's insufficient to infallibly define truth and therefore it follows that it's logically unable to discern it

44:36

In their worldview absolute truth cannot be ascertained because their god lacks the power to reveal through fallible man, that's the truth

44:42

And it is here that we come to the very root of the issue Their view of truth pertaining to faith and practice is inevitably bound to their perception of god

44:52

If god attained god Godhood by obedience if he if he's obligated to law external himself as we are

45:00

If he exists within time and space with a body of flesh and blood as we do Then he can give no more assurance of the truth than we can give one another

45:09

For he too could be wrong being nothing more than a man himself If their god and his word is is the very or is not the very origin of all truth

45:18

But rather truth exists apart from him then he can give us nothing more than an opinion when it comes to the truth faith And if you ask me we have enough opinions on the matter.

45:27

We need absolutes. We need a god that knows In jesus high priestly prayer.

45:33

He asks god to sanctify his people in the truth That is his word and in another place. He proclaims without condition or caveat that he is the way the truth and the life

45:43

I encourage you all And all that will hear this build your life on that truth for it is an immovable rock that shall not be shaken

45:50

It is a sure foundation that shall not be moved In their opening statement. You heard a rebuttal to that which wasn't even presented

45:57

Did we come here presenting calvinism or did we come here presenting scripture as the ultimate authority?

46:03

There there are plenty of christians who don't hold a calvinism that recognize scripture is the ultimate authority. Do we have differences or disagreements with them?

46:10

Sure, but can we all as evangelical christians acknowledge that god has breathed out a word and that word has imposed itself on the church

46:18

Throughout history. It's been acknowledged and interacted with from as early as the second century We just heard that that sola scriptura is a doctrine that came from the reformation

46:27

When my brother daniel just read you will quote from the fourth century What was it? What was the reformation?

46:34

16th century we're talking about Years centuries and centuries beforehand that the church recognized this truth

46:41

We heard an attack on calvinism. We had an attack on our on us Presupposing the validity of scripture.

46:47

Well, how else do you come to truth if if your theory of truth does not start with truth?

46:52

It will never arrive at truth Truth must always be the reference point for the pursuer of more truth

46:58

Otherwise you're starting with doubtful terms and you're going to end in a doubtful place And alas before we end there was a conversation of closed canon

47:10

Canon is inherently closed because it only involves god breathed scripture

47:16

So when we say that the canon has been closed we say the books from which the apostles Presented to us throughout their time walking the earth

47:26

When they pass the way the books pass with them. Those are the men who were presented to us by christ to speak authority authoritatively on his behalf with that all in my tongue

47:52

All right. Well, this has been great and thank you all for coming. So, uh My our opponents just were talking about this idea of closed canon and that you know, there's no more god breathed scripture

48:04

Did god stop breathing? Is god dead? Is that what we're going to assume here? I'm, not i'm going to assume that god actually still lives

48:14

And that god is the ultimate authority and that he can speak to you He can talk to you

48:22

See Truth must be the starting point and they're right truth must be the starting point and for them

48:28

The truth is what they say the bible says Right, but we're we run into an impasse here

48:36

Because there's a lot of different interpretations of the bible out there and our opponents have already admitted that their interpretation of the bible

48:42

Is not necessarily correct They could be wrong So We have fallible people over here interpreting the bible

48:51

We have fallible people over here interpreting the bible even if the bible is the infallible word of god

48:56

It is human beings who are interpreting it And so we run into a problem.

49:02

How do we adjudicate? the question Well, we could actually look at the bible which says in james 1 5 if any of you lack wisdom.

49:12

Let him ask of god Why would god say that He wants us to go to him to seek the truth

49:23

And he can reveal the truth to you through his spirit now

49:32

Make no mistake tonight The bible is an authority ladies and gentlemen.

49:37

We do not reject the bible. We love the bible okay Okay but Our opponents say, you know, our opponents are out there saying that you know, god spoke to the writers of the bible

49:48

Yes, absolutely. We agree But we also say that god can speak to you

49:56

See what's interesting is this is why do they even believe in the scriptures in the first place? Well, we could go right to the westminster confession, uh, westminster and london baptist confessions of faith which say

50:08

The full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof referring to the bible

50:14

Is from the inward work of the holy spirit bearing witness By and with the word in our hearts

50:24

So the confession of faith is saying That the reason that you believe in the bible is from the witness of the holy spirit in other words

50:32

The thing that is the only reason you believe in the bible in the first place is because god told you it was true In the analogy in the beginning where you have book a and book b and you're not sure

50:41

Well, it's god that will reveal to you that that is the truth and then once you have it

50:46

He will help work in you to understand its message and the proper interpretation

50:52

The question tonight is what is the ultimate authority? They're close

50:58

They're real close with the bible, but they're not taking that extra step to say Why do

51:03

I believe in the bible in the first place? You say well the bible's true because it says it's true it's like no it's not it's true because god told you it's true

51:11

And the only way you can get around that is if you say well i'm out of the equation What it is is it's god who makes me believe thus presupposing a particular interpretation of predestination

51:27

See the problem So Also Also, they brought up quotes from church fathers.

51:33

Okay. Let me tell you guys something They don't want you to go and look deeply into the quotes from church fathers on the record of sola scriptura

51:40

Because I can tell you guys right now no serious historian thinks that sola scriptura has been taught all throughout the history

51:47

I mean even athanasius who they brought up themselves Athanasius said of the council of nicaea.

51:52

He said the confession arrived at nicaea. This is him We say more sufficient and enough by itself for the subversion of all irreligious heresy

52:03

And for the security and furtherance of the doctrine of the church So in other words, he wasn't pointing to scripture alone athanasius was pointing to the creeds as well

52:12

You can also go and look at uh, st. Basil. They didn't mention him. Well, let's see what he said He said of the dogmas and messages preserved in the church some we possess from written teaching and others

52:24

We receive from the tradition of the apostles handed down to us in mystery in respect to piety

52:31

Both are of the same force So we can quote mine all day and find the quotes that support us

52:38

But i'm telling you guys right now go out and google about the early church fathers on sola scriptura And you're going to find a list of quotes from the early church fathers that debunk the idea that they all believed in sola scriptura

52:47

Okay, it arrived in the reformation and it's very clear. Why? It was the way that protestants could challenge the authority of The church because all of a sudden the bible was all over and they're right

52:59

The catholic church, by the way, we're on your team. The catholic church was really corrupt And they and the bible was a higher authority than the corrupt doctrines.

53:09

You can use that authority to challenge uh false teachings

53:17

So they and now they're and they've attacked us in saying like that our our perspective is is arbitrary and subjective, okay um, really

53:25

Their interpretation of scripture is the objective truth But our use of reason and the witness of god directly that's all subjective so The reality is

53:44

Is that our opponents are trying to force us into limiting what we can accept to their

53:50

Subjective interpretation of the bible for them if they interpret the bible to say two plus two equals five

53:56

They're acting like we are obligated to accept that Despite what our minds say what our hearts say what our experience says or if what god himself says

54:05

I want to reiterate If god himself came into this room and told our opponents you guys got it wrong.

54:11

They would say that could not have been god Because our interpretation is that you see how they've replaced god himself with their interpretation of scripture their admitted fallible interpretation of scripture

54:29

So when they want to say that we don't have an infallible source Well, i'm sorry, but our opponents are not an infallible source and with that I yield my time

54:39

All right, we are now going to have a period of Cross -examination

54:44

There will be 10 minutes for each side to cross -examine the other cross -examination requires you to ask questions

54:54

Not to make speeches not to catch up with the points. You didn't get to in your opening

55:00

And not to argue points by Responding to what someone says with your own arguments after that it is one side asking questions the other providing

55:12

Concise answers that do not begin to Filibuster the time basically is what we're looking for We'll try to keep that controlled and keep it going the right direction.

55:23

It doesn't always work Okay, so um Since uh, we are going this side first this side second.

55:31

We might as well keep that going through the course of the debate and so we'll have you asking your questions first and then

55:38

That'll be 10 minutes and then 10 minutes for you all to do the same thing And so the time will begin now

55:46

First question for you guys Is God omnipotent and if so, can you explain what you mean by that?

55:54

He's got a what sorry omnipotent omnipotent Okay Yes, God is omnipotent in that God can do all things that are possible

56:07

Okay and What do you make of psalm 115 and 3?

56:13

Could you our God 115 3 our God is in the heavens and he does all that he pleases

56:20

That God does all that he pleases right so he's so he's he has sufficient power to do all that he pleases

56:26

Yes, okay Would you agree then? Would you agree that the conception of the god of mormonism is ontologically and potentially speaking inferior to the conception of god of judaism?

56:40

I'm not sure what that has to do with the debate Well, what has to do with the debate is that this is a theological topic

56:47

You just told me that god is able to do all that he pleases You're disputing you're disputing that god is able to sufficiently reveal himself in scripture

56:57

So that's why I prefaced the first question. Is he able to do all that he pleases? Is he able to communicate?

57:04

with perspicuity to people through scripture Yes, god is able to he's able to communicate but that doesn't mean we're able to receive that infallibly

57:13

Or we may reject the message that he's trying to send us. So god's infallibility is hindered by our fallibility

57:20

No, it's hindered by our free will So he cannot do all that he pleases He can do all things that are possible and it is not possible for god to violate the free will that he gives us because He gives us free will so that we can freely choose to enter into a relationship with him

57:37

Because if we did not choose to enter into a relationship with god, it would not be a relationship. It would be bondage bondage

57:45

What I heard from your opening statement i'm questioning regarding that Uh, you you said that even if the scriptures were infallible

57:55

Right because of our fallibility. We cannot properly interpret them or that would hinder his fallibility, correct?

58:03

That would i'm sorry that would hinder his fallibility in uh, revealing himself in scripture god's fallibility god's infallibility

58:11

Okay, so our fallibility hinders god's infallibility No, it's it's that god has given us a gift of agency so that We can choose to enter into relationship with him because that is part of his purpose

58:26

Okay, if you're asking if god can force us to believe the answer is no That's not what i'm asking. Okay. I'll move on.

58:32

What do you interpret? God breathed or the anus does to me? That god has spoken through scripture

58:39

Clearly has he spoken clearly with perpiscuity Define clearly

58:45

Has he spoken in the way that we are able to understand and receive? We're able yes.

58:51

Yes, but because of our own fallibility we will we will suppress the truth at times

58:57

So we are not able to understand we are able to but it doesn't mean we're going to get it right every single time It doesn't mean that we're going to choose to So Let me get this straight is is the word are you claiming that the word is infallible?

59:10

But it's because of our interpretation that it can't be deemed that so what i'm saying is is even if the word of god were infallible

59:18

I Am fallible meaning I can be mistaken. I can choose to reject

59:24

What god is trying to communicate through scripture? I can misunderstand what he's trying to communicate through scripture

59:29

So it isn't god that has the problem. It's me I agree So i'm gonna ask you plainly then is the word of god infallible?

59:39

Are you talking about the bible the 66 yes, no Why not because it was because it was written by man

59:49

Okay god worked god worked through those men we do believe that we believe the scriptures are inspired by god

59:55

And we do believe that we don't hold the same interpretation of god breathed that you do

01:00:01

But we do believe that because god was working through those individuals to create those books, but there's a lot of Interpretation as to what exactly does that mean and if it is indeed perfect infallible in every single letter

01:00:16

So god is unable to infallibly communicate to man through scripture He can communicate perfectly we cannot receive it perfectly

01:00:26

God could communicate perfectly to me and I could muffle up the message because you have two You have two fallible people involved here

01:00:32

You have the person who wrote the scripture receiving the revelation from god who's fallible And then you have the person who's interpreting what that person wrote and so anytime you interject human beings

01:00:42

Into the equation you have inserted fallibility into the equation gotcha

01:00:48

Does the bible in your opinion teach or imply its own fallibility? Yes, in the sense that it teaches that man is fallible

01:00:59

So in that way it teaches its own fallibility Once you know that men are involved in the creation

01:01:06

Transcription selection of which books are involved in the bible and the interpretation thereof. It's just a logical conclusion if god speaks

01:01:15

He can speak perfectly to me right now And I could because of my own Brokenness I could get the message from him and miscommunicate it to these people and then they could then misinterpret what was said so you see nothing from the authors of scripture that implies that you take from the fallibility of man and Impose that upon scripture no,

01:01:38

I would say that it is the The fact that the scriptures teach that human beings are fallible

01:01:47

And then you find out that human beings are both involved in the creation of scripture and the interpretation of scripture

01:01:53

Like i'm, sorry Fallibility has been introduced into the equation by logical necessity based on what scripture actually says

01:02:00

About the nature of man. So you're saying it's implied, but you don't see it taught in scripture What is implied it's implied that the bible is fallible, but it's not taught in the bible

01:02:11

Yes, I would say that is it is an implication of the fact that human beings are involved in that process both in the

01:02:17

Creation of scripture and the interpretation of it that that process it isn't that god is fallible It is that we are and therefore you're not going to get a perfect.

01:02:27

Um You're not going to be able to Like it isn't going to be a hundred percent certain we can be very very confident in what the scriptures say don't get me wrong like you don't have to have a

01:02:36

Like a confidence level of it's not zero or a hundred Right if if we didn't believe that we had free will or that god

01:02:45

Was making us believe or making those people write the bible. We may believe that but we do not gotcha

01:02:53

Can you see from a plain reading of the text? That can you understand why someone would believe the infallibility of scripture?

01:03:03

I would say that as I read the bible and interpret it within all the contexts and things like that Not you i'm saying could you understand how people come to that conclusion?

01:03:14

Based on I don't think people come to that conclusion or are mentally deranged or something. Like I think there's a lot of Ideas out there that may be plausible, but I don't think that that one ultimately wins out

01:03:25

Do you see that? Do you see the scripture teaching that it is fallible? I mean that it is infallible.

01:03:31

I'm, sorry Do I see that the scripture is teaching that it's infallible? Yes. No, okay

01:03:39

Does the well i'll say this I see scripture teaching that That god's word is infallible

01:03:47

But in the transcription process, like I said, even if god had a book that was written by him.

01:03:53

There's no guarantee that We're all going to understand it properly because we're we're flawed. Well, that's good.

01:03:58

So you said you see that scripture teaches that god's word is infallible Yes, but god's word you have a very particular interpretation of what that means

01:04:08

And I would say that god's word is truth That which is true is infallible by definition.

01:04:16

So scripture teaches that god's word is infallible Do you see that scripture teaching that the bible is the word of god?

01:04:25

We would differentiate between the word of god and god's words We would say that if god was to speak to us

01:04:33

That would be infallible in its sending to us in his communication to us Like if he came down right now and he talked to us we would say that that is infallible.

01:04:42

I understand i'm saying do you see in scripture? That the teaching that the bible is the word of god that the actual written books of the bible are the word of god

01:04:53

Yes, it does use that phrase and I do believe that god God does inspire scripture and I believe that it's highly reliable And I but I don't think that it is infallible.

01:05:04

That's just another jump So just one more before we end you said that you see that scripture Teaches that the word of god is infallible and you also see that scripture teaches that the bible is the word of god, correct?

01:05:15

I'm, sorry One more time you see that scripture teaches that the word of god is infallible And you see that scripture teaches that the bible is the word of god

01:05:23

Can we differentiate between? God's we do not believe that the bible contains the infallible word of god

01:05:31

I understand what you're saying. I asked you two questions, and I wanted the answer to those questions, but it looks like that's our time there.

01:05:37

Thank you. All right. Now, the other side has ten minutes to ask questions, and your time begins now.

01:05:47

All righty. Why do you believe that the Bible is true? Because the

01:05:53

Bible says it's true. It's the Word of God, and God is Creator, has authoritative power to speak that way.

01:05:59

So you believe the Bible is true because the Bible says it's true? Because it's God's revelation, and God has, again, the power as the

01:06:06

Creator to tell us what is true and what is not true. So do you presuppose the truth of the Bible?

01:06:11

We do. Okay, so if you walk into a room and there are two books on a table, and both claim to be the

01:06:16

Word of God, would it make any sense for me to presuppose that book A was true and that book

01:06:22

B was false and just presuppose that? I mean, you would have to give us the context of the content inside the book.

01:06:27

For example, if you give me the Quran, if you give me the Bible, I can show you why the Quran is wrong. If you want to spend all night and we can go through every religion,

01:06:34

I'd love to do that, but you have to give me the content of the Bible, the content of the book A and the book B. When we look at the content of book

01:06:41

A that you guys keep asserting, we see that it is the triune God that has revealed Himself, and everything, the book we gave you is the impossibility of the contrary.

01:06:49

So when you reject this revelation, any standpoint you take now outside of God's revelation is reduced to foolish thinking and absurdity.

01:06:59

Okay, so you have to see the content of the books to decide which one is the true one.

01:07:06

So it's the content of the book itself and how that maps onto reality that determines its truth, not just the fact that it said it?

01:07:12

It's not simply the content. If you're using this analogy to apply to Scripture, Scripture is not simply self -attesting.

01:07:20

As you mentioned, the Quran is also self -attesting. But we see the books of the Bible agreed upon throughout history and formally agreed upon and interacted with throughout church history long before any council declared it, long before Council of Trent in the 16th century.

01:07:35

The 2nd century, I believe you have 22 books of the New Testament already being interacted with. We have the apostles and we have the books that they hand it down.

01:07:44

So it's not simply that it's self -attesting. It starts there, but it's also supplemented with the fact that the church is interacting and acknowledging the books, as well as the apostles have sent these books down to the church.

01:07:55

So you don't believe that the Bible is true just because it says it's true. There are these other things that you're talking about that attest to its truth, and that's why you believe it?

01:08:03

So God will put His fingerprints upon His Word. When God tells us what His Word is meant to accomplish, what its purpose is, we see that played out in history.

01:08:12

If you're asking me to just—the way you presented Book A and Book B is as if I walk in and I don't know what they say.

01:08:18

I do know what the Bible says, and God says that His Word has a specific intention and purpose.

01:08:23

Again, God declares— And what does that have to do with the truthfulness of the book? Isn't the

01:08:29

Bible true because the Bible says it's true? Yes. There's no other thing outside of that that we have to look to? We don't need the evidence.

01:08:35

Again, it's God's fingerprint. It's almost like putting icing on the cake. We didn't need it, but the fact that we see it is a testimony that God is not a liar.

01:08:44

Okay, so you receive it. What's the relevance of that testimony then?

01:08:50

If the Bible is true, we believe that the Bible self -authenticates itself, and if it's true, it will impose itself upon the church.

01:09:01

We will see the church interacting with it and acknowledging it. Old Testament revelation prophesies of New Testament revelation, so if the

01:09:11

Bible is true, we would expect new revelation. We would expect apostolic works. That's exactly what we see.

01:09:18

So we see that the Bible is self -authenticating, and then we see the outworking of its contents manifested in time and history.

01:09:24

So when you actually see things happening in time and history, that's validating that the Bible is true? That's showing that what the

01:09:31

Bible already claimed to be truth, it's manifesting. For example, there's no,

01:09:37

I think, big evidence that Peter had the book of Revelation, right? He didn't need that book to know that the

01:09:43

Scriptures were the Word of God. What we're arguing is the Scriptures have a certain nature. Every book in the 66 books of the canon of the

01:09:50

Bible, they have a distinct nature that intrinsically makes them God -breathed revelation.

01:09:56

So whether you're in the first century church, and maybe you just received Paul's letter to the

01:10:01

Romans, right? And you don't have the rest of the epistles. You don't need the rest of the epistles to look at those and know that they're the

01:10:08

Word of God. So are you saying that you can test the Bible? The only way you test the Bible is by itself.

01:10:14

You test the Bible with the Bible, self -interpreting, self -attesting, self -authenticating. When God tells us he cannot lie, when

01:10:20

God makes revelation, if we receive something that contradicts what

01:10:26

God already said, we can know it's not revelation of God because God cannot lie. Okay. So let's go into something else real quick.

01:10:33

Is God the greatest conceivable communicator? Is what? Is God the greatest conceivable communicator?

01:10:40

The greatest conceivable communicator? What is... I don't even... If God is the greatest... God can communicate. Yes, clearly.

01:10:45

Yes. So can anyone communicate better than God? No. No. Okay. No. Okay. Could he have made the

01:10:51

Bible any more clear? We don't really think that matters. God chose how he was to reveal his

01:10:57

Word, and we don't think that us as the creatures get to tell God how you should reveal your Word. So I would assume that...

01:11:04

Okay. Okay. So is the Bible perfectly clear? In the means, in the matters concerning salvation, in the will of God for men, yes.

01:11:15

And it's perfectly clear. Jesus thought it was perfectly clear in Matthew 22 when he quotes from Scripture written 1 ,400 years earlier, and his audience didn't respond with what you guys are saying.

01:11:24

They didn't say, Jesus, well, what interpretation? He held them accountable because he believed that God could speak and that God spoke clearly, or else you would have to say the

01:11:32

Lord Jesus is wrong for holding them accountable for what he said that was in Scripture. So is the

01:11:37

Bible perfectly clear on how long the creation process took? I said the

01:11:42

Bible is perfectly clear in what it intends to convey, right, for the means of salvation.

01:11:48

Is the Bible intending to convey clarity on every specific topic mentioned in Scripture? Of course not.

01:11:54

So why would God put things that are unclear in his book? Well, we're talking about the intention of Scripture.

01:12:00

God intended Scripture to say a certain thing. We see that in the Scripture mentioned in 2

01:12:05

Sympathy 3 .16, right, make us wise unto salvation. We see in Romans chapter 3 that the law was given that every mouth may be stopped before God, that everybody may be made guilty before God.

01:12:15

There is intentions in Scripture. So I guess I'm just wondering, like, God, why would

01:12:23

God include all this extra stuff that seems unclear and seems to cause all this confusion if he's the greatest conceivable communicator?

01:12:29

So Scripture tells us in Deuteronomy 29 that the secret things are kept for Yahweh our God and the things that are revealed to us are for us and our children.

01:12:37

What do you mean by that? Okay, there are things that God does not choose to reveal to us that we can know perfectly.

01:12:43

There are things he does reveal to us that we have in Scripture and we can say, hey, this is a consistent testimony of what

01:12:49

God has said. So when God reveals something, we can know that clearly. When you look at 2 Peter, he talks about people who distort the word.

01:12:56

What does he say about them? He says they're unstable and they're ignorant. So someone who comes to the Scriptures and is ignorant of what they teach or is unstable is probably going to abuse them.

01:13:04

That's what Peter says. Okay. So what is, according to the Bible, what is necessary for salvation? Faith alone in Christ.

01:13:12

So why doesn't the Bible just be like a one -page document that just says that, and then why would the greatest conceivable communicator put all of this stuff in there that's causing all of this schism and problems?

01:13:22

You're questioning God and I'm not God, so I can't give you the answer to that? I'm questioning your guys' interpretation of Scripture and the way that you approach it and that Scripture itself attests that.

01:13:34

I'm sorry. I'll go back to the questions. Is it perfectly clear on the issue of infant baptism?

01:13:45

There's much dispute about that. So we wouldn't say, again, we wouldn't say that that's a salvific issue. That's not an essential issue.

01:13:51

So you guys would say it's a salvific issue, but do other people think that it's a salvific issue?

01:13:56

Certainly. But the people that think that are contradicting what Scripture says. Faith alone is the means by which we are saved, not baptism.

01:14:08

I have something here real quick that I just want you to look at. It's in our common language.

01:14:14

It says, I never said you stole money. Is this perfectly clear?

01:14:22

The statement? I mean, there's no context to it, sure. I guess the statement is clear, but if there's context behind it that you're leaving out, then

01:14:28

I would say it's not clear. So text alone without all the context is not perfectly clear.

01:14:35

No, God gives us the context to each text that we need to understand what He wants us to understand. So we could go to God or we could go to the person who wrote this and ask them, what did you mean by this?

01:14:43

Or we could go to the other things that they wrote and we could parallel those things to come to a better understanding of what they wrote there.

01:14:49

So you could, and I wouldn't necessarily disagree, but are you saying that we go and interpret other things they say and we interpret other things they say, we interpret

01:14:58

Scripture A, we interpret Scripture B, and then use those to help us interpret Scripture C? We're saying the things that are clear, the things that are clear, so we use those as a means of understanding the things that are less clear.

01:15:08

Who determines what's clear in the Bible? Who determines? God breathed out the

01:15:15

Scripture, so ultimately He would determine that. So He could reveal to us the things that are clear and that are not?

01:15:21

I think your question is assuming that the Scriptures aren't clear, and I would disagree with that. I would say the Scriptures are clear.

01:15:27

Perfectly clear? Perfectly clear. This is what Jesus said in Matthew 22 when He held people accountable for the Word of God. So is it perfectly clear about the time that creation took?

01:15:34

I would say yes. Okay, seven days. Yes. Yes, that's what it says. Six days. And so if anyone thinks…

01:15:39

Six days. That's the last day he rests. Exactly. It's not perfectly clear. If someone said otherwise, they would be misinterpreting Scripture?

01:15:45

Yes. Yes. One thousand percent. That's the time. All right. Thank you very much for that. Now, here's what we need to do.

01:15:51

I have not seen… You may have snuck up back there, but I have not seen anyone…

01:15:57

Can someone hold up the… Where are the baskets back there? Okay, they're right there in the middle.

01:16:04

Matt's holding them up. Are they marked as to which one is for which? Okay. I have not seen anyone going back there with your questions.

01:16:13

So now is the time to do that, or I get to ask all the questions.

01:16:22

So one side's really hoping you'll have some questions. Let's just put it that way. Now's the time to get your questions back there, and I'll tell you what we'll do.

01:16:32

I'll tell you what we'll do. Listen up. We have two five -minute rebuttals now.

01:16:40

That's ten minutes. So if you've been sitting there going, oh, I've just been watching too carefully or been listening too closely,

01:16:47

I still want to write a question down or something, we'll give you this next ten minutes.

01:16:53

Go ahead and stand up and walk back there. But at the end of the next ten minutes, then those baskets need to be brought to me.

01:17:02

And where's your friend, by the way? Oh, Andrew. He's in the back. Hand up. Okay. Andrew, hand up. So the questions will be asked this side.

01:17:10

Andrew will be working through. I'll be working through the others. I'll be multitasking. And we'll have enough time to be able to do that before the

01:17:19

Q &A starts with the closing statements and cross -examination and stuff like that. But if you've got questions, now is the time to get them written down and get them into those boxes back there, okay?

01:17:32

So next up, we have two five -minute rebuttals.

01:17:39

That will be followed by another segment of cross -examination, and then we will finish with closing statements of ten minutes on each side.

01:17:50

I can assure you, I've done a few debates, and when the other side is speaking, your timer is going very slowly.

01:18:02

Very slowly. And then you get up to speak, and it goes really fast.

01:18:08

So that's just how it works. You want to get all your information in. So we've got that amount of time left in the debate.

01:18:16

We want to make sure everyone has the opportunity to get their questions in. So next, we'll have the five -minute rebuttals, starting with the

01:18:23

Protestant side, then the LDS side. Instead of seven minutes last time, it's five minutes this time.

01:18:44

Yes. All right. So I'm sorry I lied to you guys. I told you you would hear two different foundations.

01:18:52

Unfortunately, you've only heard one. We asked our opponents to send us material on how we can properly represent them, what would they be saying.

01:19:01

They gave us one YouTube video, and that was great, but they haven't said much of what was said in that video.

01:19:07

They haven't said much of what was said during our conversations that are recorded and posted on YouTube.

01:19:13

A couple of things they've said, and these are quotes from them, you can go check this myself, is we can be wrong about anything.

01:19:20

Because we're human beings, we're fallible, we don't possess any infallible truth.

01:19:26

They say this while making truth statements the whole time. It's self -defeating. This debate is not just on sola scriptura.

01:19:35

There's a side they have to present that we haven't even heard yet. If you guys walked out of this room, could you tell me what the collective witness model is?

01:19:44

Could you tell me what tools you have to use to use the collective witness model? I understand there's a tendency to attack sola scriptura and we're ready to defend that, but this is a debate where we're supposed to both be presenting our foundations, and they haven't engaged with that yet.

01:20:01

This is not a debate about Calvinism, although we are proud Calvinists, let me say that. This is not a debate about Anne Frank.

01:20:09

So when they say things like that and try to tug at your heart and make you feel like, oh, look at this evil

01:20:15

Calvinistic God, what does that have to do with your ultimate authority? What is their position?

01:20:22

We still don't know. The question is, can God speak clearly? They keep asking us, what about interpretation?

01:20:29

Is this clear? How do you know your interpretation is right? A fallible man wrote this book and now you have fallible interpretation.

01:20:36

What they're assuming without saying it, is God can't speak clearly. And I told you in my opening, they're not disagreeing with us, they're disagreeing with the

01:20:44

Lord Jesus. Now, of course, they won't get up here and say, I disagree with the Lord Jesus. Maybe they will. I don't know.

01:20:51

But when Jesus says in Matthew 22, have you not read what God spoke to you saying, and then he quotes from the scriptures, what is he saying?

01:21:01

How often does Jesus in his ministry quote from the scriptures and you never hear from his people, well, what's the canon,

01:21:08

Jesus? It's almost like the canon was understood by the people at that time. So why do they have these objections that the people

01:21:17

Jesus spoke to didn't give? It's because they're assuming something that Jesus didn't assume. They're assuming

01:21:24

God can't speak clearly. They'll say, no, he can, we just can't receive it. If God cannot communicate to you something through scripture, he can't communicate clearly.

01:21:35

They talked about circular reasoning. Book A says it's true because Book A says it's true.

01:21:41

Guys, what's the debate about tonight? Your ultimate authority, by definition, it has to be circular reasoning.

01:21:49

If I tell you I have this as my ultimate authority, and you ask me, Daniel, how do you know that's true?

01:21:54

And I point to you somewhere else, then the something else becomes my ultimate authority. Yeah, they want to try to convince you guys, oh, look at these, look at them.

01:22:03

It's illogical to use that. You can't use the Bible to prove the Bible. This is a debate about your ultimate authority.

01:22:09

If you guys knew what theirs was, I would ask them, does your ultimate authority attest to your ultimate, to your own standard?

01:22:17

Unfortunately, we don't even know what it is yet, so hopefully they present it at some point in this debate. Tonight, without the highest view of Scripture, we can't claim to know what

01:22:28

God has said. We can only give you our opinions. Tonight we hold the view of Scripture that the

01:22:34

Lord Jesus held. They claim that in our sinfulness and in our fallen state that we can actually thwart

01:22:43

God's inspiration of the Scriptures, that God wants to save all his children, but God clearly doesn't want to communicate, because if he wanted to,

01:22:52

I think he would. Embedded to each of our foundations, which I hope they present theirs, is the

01:22:59

God of each foundation. And the God of our foundation is the God in Psalm 115, who sits in the heavens and does as he pleases.

01:23:08

He's the God in the book of Daniel, where you have a pagan king saying, who can stop this

01:23:13

God? Who can stop his hand? No one can thwart him. He's the God who saves the rebel sinners and saves them perfectly.

01:23:21

But the God embedded in their foundation is the God that Joseph Smith imagined and supposed was just like him, a

01:23:29

God who is just a man. So it makes sense that from their perspective, God can't communicate clearly.

01:23:36

But it also follows that if he can't communicate clearly, he can't save perfectly. Just a reminder, five minutes left for the last questions to be put into the boxes, so we can start looking at them, please.

01:23:57

So just to respond to what Daniel just said, I know it's really stressful to be up here on the stage, but if you were listening, we did give our position, and it was at the end of the opening.

01:24:07

I'll repeat it again. You see, this is not just a matter of knowing God's will by way of feelings. He's given us our bodies, reason, our hearts, our beings, the

01:24:17

Holy Spirit, prophets and apostles, the collective witness of all of the ways that God chooses to speak to us.

01:24:26

They would also say that we disagree with Christ. No, we disagree with your interpretation of what

01:24:31

Christ has said. Another point, they're saying that we have not presented our argument. Why didn't they ask us anything about our argument in the cross -examination?

01:24:39

They didn't ask us a single thing about what we believed in regards to the collective witness model, which they know we believe. We've talked about it at length.

01:24:45

That being said, I'd like to share one little thing here on something that they've touched tonight. Our opponents have accused us of not being able to know anything for sure, or that our understanding of God's mind and will is subjective and therefore wrong, and that we can't justify morality because we can't say we know we can't be wrong as they would.

01:25:08

The trick here is that they're leaving the definition of the word no open to interpretation. It seems that we don't share the same exact definition of what it means to know something.

01:25:16

We do believe we can know things, but there's a difference between knowing something rationally and being able to explain it rationally, and knowing something spiritually.

01:25:27

We would say that we do believe that by the power of the Holy Ghost, we may know the truth of all things.

01:25:33

They would say they know things because the Bible says it. In a debate with Michael Brown in 2013, Dr.

01:25:38

James White, when asked if he was sure of his election and if it was ever possible for him to fall away from the faith, he stated, quote, well, this is verbatim, by the way, while you're confusing,

01:25:48

I think, creaturely categories of knowledge, rational, and divine categories of knowledge,

01:25:54

I would take infallible knowledge as a divine category. In the sense that the Holy Spirit testifies to me of my sonship as certain as a person can be at that given point, given our human limitations, yes, unquote.

01:26:10

When asked again if he's not 100 % sure of his salvation, James says, quote,

01:26:16

I'm not divine. So I have to recognize that as far as the Holy Spirit testifies to my heart, yes, unquote.

01:26:27

To say it simply, we are as sure of our knowledge from God as James is of his election.

01:26:34

And I'm sure our opponents as well. We are not divine. But the

01:26:40

Spirit has testified truth to us, just as James believes the Spirit has testified to his heart of his election.

01:26:46

Our opponents have accused us of not believing in absolute truth and not being able to justify it. We do believe that absolute truth exists.

01:26:53

One of our current church leaders recently said, quote, absolute truth does exist in a world of increasing disdain that dismisses absolutes.

01:27:02

Moral relativism is the view that ethical or moral truths are relative, that they depend on the attitudes and the feelings of those who hold them, and that no one can judge the validity of someone else's truth.

01:27:14

You hear a lot of talk these days about my truth or his truth or her truth. Moral relativism just doesn't work if there is to be order and justice in society.

01:27:24

Can murder be wrong for some, for most, but right for some? There are, in fact, moral absolutes.

01:27:31

Truth and moral concepts exist apart from personal whim or preference. The only question really is what they are and how far they extend.

01:27:40

Our calling is to teach the truth of moral concepts. We prize the truth on any subject from any source but eternal truth, especially as it bears on the meaning and the purpose and the conduct of life.

01:27:53

We must obtain from God. Moral relativists generally see no role or relevance in God in this discussion and typically doubt that he even exists.

01:28:02

It would be most inconvenient for them if he does exist, and even more so if he speaks to man.

01:28:08

One can only think about truth as relative if God is not around. That being said, remember that our debate tonight is not about whether or not absolute truth exists, but rather how do we come to know what the truth is?

01:28:20

When we see another human beating a child, our opponents would say we should point to the

01:28:26

Bible to say that beating is wrong. And we would, but we would also point to God because his witness, the witness he gave us, is the only reason we believe the

01:28:35

Bible to be true in the first place. Therefore, making his witness to us most fundamental and the ultimate authority.

01:28:42

We are just as sure of that moral wrong as they are. We know because God has told us. God has spoken truth to us.

01:28:49

He has written it on our hearts, a point that I think our opponents would agree. With that, I yield my time.

01:28:59

All right. Now, that means it would probably be a good idea if we got the questions, at least the ones that I'll be looking at up to me before we start the next section here real quick or someone's going to have to just sort of look like they're sneaking up here, but they're not really sneaking up here because everyone's looking at them anyways.

01:29:21

So if we could get the baskets and then get ready for cross -examination.

01:29:41

So which one's mine? I'm picking the questions for LDS and they're picking the questions for the

01:29:50

Protestants. Okay. All right. Okay.

01:29:59

So we have 10 minutes. Do we want to keep the order going the same direction?

01:30:05

You want to? Yeah. Okay. Okay. So gentlemen, your time begins now. So I'm going to read to you guys a couple of quotations from our podcast interviews that we did with you guys.

01:30:14

Jacob, you said, because humans are fallible, we must always recognize that we can be wrong.

01:30:21

However, this method allows us to be more or less certain using these tools. And again, later you said,

01:30:26

I could be wrong about anything. Do you still agree with that statement? So if you watched in the interview itself that we talked about later in the conversation, we actually made the distinction between spiritual knowledge, those categories of knowledge as Dr.

01:30:40

White had talked about, and then rational knowledge. When I talk about rational knowledge, that's what I'm talking about somewhere you can't be certain.

01:30:47

But you can through spiritual witness is perfect certainty because it comes from God. Okay. So there's things that you know infallibly.

01:30:57

No. No. Okay. So next question. There's things that you don't, you just admitted that there's things you don't know infallibly.

01:31:02

Can I explain? Can I respond to the question? Go ahead. So there are, so are there things that I can know infallibly?

01:31:10

No, because I'm always fallible. Okay. But there are things that God can witness to me. And when God witnesses to you, that is true regardless of what

01:31:18

I think about it because it came from God. But it's not infallible. No, it is infallible. So there are things that you can know that are infallible.

01:31:25

There are things that can be communicated to me by an infallible source. That are infallible. Those things that are communicated to me by God.

01:31:32

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So what has God communicated to you infallibly? Like I would say, for instance,

01:31:40

I would use this analogy. If someone pours a pot of boiling water on a baby, I truly, like God has witnessed to me that that is wrong.

01:31:50

And on a spiritual level, I would say I know that is wrong spiritually. So how did God reveal to you that pouring hot water on a baby is wrong?

01:31:58

Through the spirit that's within me and the revulsion that I feel in my heart. So someone who says, God told me through the spirit that putting hot water on this baby is right.

01:32:07

How do you know which one's right? I would look at them and simply say, God told me in my deepest heart that it's right.

01:32:14

Yeah, and they would say, hey Jacob, God told me that burning this baby is really good. Yeah, and they're wrong. How do you know which one's right? How do

01:32:20

I know? Yeah. Sounds kind of subjective. Because God told me. Huh? Because God told me. And God told them that it's okay.

01:32:26

So how do you know? I can only say what God told me. I think that they are lying in that case. Say it again.

01:32:31

Or deceived. Lying or deceived, we would say. They're either lying or they're deceived. And you know for sure that they're lying. On a spiritual level, yes.

01:32:38

Okay. On a spiritual level, yes. And you know that because God told you spiritually? Yes. God revealed it to us by his spirit.

01:32:44

He wrote it on our hearts, we would say. Okay. So then you would take back the statement when you said we would have, you said in our interview, and they can go check this themselves, that we can be more or less certain about things.

01:32:56

Rationally. Yeah. Okay. Let's move on. Your model, what are the three, or what are the tools to your model?

01:33:05

Your collective witness model. Essentially is this. Anything that helps us to understand the truth.

01:33:12

I can use mathematics to learn the truth about things. Okay. That is a, which essentially is just mental reasoning.

01:33:20

That's what mathematics is. God gave me a mind to help discover truth. He also gave me a heart so that I can watch someone pouring on a baby and he can reveal truth through that.

01:33:29

He can reveal truth through the word of his scriptures. Is it possible you're deceived and it's actually Satan who's telling you these things?

01:33:36

Yeah, of course it's possible. It's possible. It's possible. Okay. Is it possible tonight that Joseph Smith is a false prophet?

01:33:42

Sure. It is. Okay. Is it possible? Is it possible or do we believe that? Is it possible? Oh, sure.

01:33:48

Okay. Is it possible that when a mother takes her child and she's pregnant to be killed via abortion, that it's a good thing?

01:33:55

Is that possible? No. It's not possible? It's not. Well. Why? I would say that it's not possible because of the witnesses that I have.

01:34:03

I can only speak the truth as I have received it. So it's subjective. So it's subjective. No. It's not anything outside of yourself.

01:34:09

It's what the Spirit told you. It's been revealed to me by an outside source. Okay. Is it possible tonight that as you guys sit there, you guys are actually women and not men?

01:34:17

Is it possible? Yeah. Or no? No. No, it's not possible? No. Okay. So then there are things you guys know for certain.

01:34:23

No. And that's all based upon. How do you define woman? In our day to day, you gotta define that. So then

01:34:29

I'm just trying to understand though. If you say, it is a definitional thing here. If you say, you know, can you know that you're not a married bachelor?

01:34:36

It's like, you just said something that makes absolutely no sense. So I just want to be clear then. The way you guys do know things infallibly is because the

01:34:44

Spirit told you. We have received what we would call spiritual witness. Okay.

01:34:50

Do you see the problem? And the fact that I had, no, hold on real quick. When I've had an experience with God, like,

01:34:58

I can't deny that I had that experience. The experience is real. But it could be Satan. It's possible.

01:35:03

It is possible. Okay. Again, I'm asking you one more time. What models, what are the tools in your model?

01:35:09

Do you have a certain amount or is there any? In your YouTube video, you gave us three to consider. Can I have the time to give the, because there's five of them that I personally.

01:35:18

Okay, go ahead. And I need a little bit of time to actually give them. Can I have that? Try to make it as quick as possible. I'll try.

01:35:23

I just want to know the five. That's it. So, one is going to be obviously like my heart, my intuition. Someone pours something on a baby.

01:35:29

I don't need the Bible to tell me that that was wrong. Okay. God can witness to me directly. That's one. Number two,

01:35:35

I would say, is my empirical experience. Like, I can see you right now. My eyes are revealing the truth about who's in this room right now.

01:35:42

I don't doubt that. I don't need the Bible to tell me who's in this room. So, it witnesses the truth and the truth is reality in God's word.

01:35:48

Number three, the third one, I would say is reason. Okay. Two plus two equals four. Like, I don't need the

01:35:54

Bible to tell me that. I can discover that truth through the rational process.

01:35:59

God gave me a brain for a reason. Number four, I would say, is what Jesus talked about as the fruits.

01:36:05

He said that you can know a prophet is true by the fruits that come from them. In other words, the experiential things that come out of it, right?

01:36:14

If my marriage gets way, way better because I'm living in certain principles, those principles are morally true.

01:36:20

It witnesses to me that it is. And number five, to make the last one, is the witness of God's apostles and prophets.

01:36:27

That they also act as a witness to reveal truth to the world. And so, I don't limit the truth that I take to a particular creed or interpretation of the

01:36:38

Bible. I use all of the tools that God has given me. Okay. Is there a reference point that you can point to that tells you you should use these?

01:36:45

Or is it arbitrary? God. God told you. Yep. Okay. You guys reject Adam -God theory, the theory that Adam was

01:36:52

God, correct? Depends on what you mean by that. There are so many interpretations that— Okay. Do you believe Adam was God? No.

01:36:58

Depends what you mean— The way Brigham Young taught it. No. Okay, you don't. Well, it depends— You don't, okay?

01:37:04

And in your video, you said the reason you reject it is because it's theologically inconsistent with the past prophets.

01:37:11

Do you hold that statement still? Yes. Yes? Okay. Okay. So given that Joseph Smith comes along thousands of years later after the prophets, and he's inconsistent with them, why do you accept

01:37:20

Joseph Smith as a prophet? Because I don't believe that he's inconsistent, and I think that the— You don't believe he's inconsistent with what was taught?

01:37:26

Are you talking about Brigham Young or Joseph Smith right now? Right now I'm talking about Joseph Smith. You don't believe that Joseph Smith was inconsistent with the test in Deuteronomy in terms of not giving a false prophecy or not leading people after different gods?

01:37:39

No, because I don't believe— Joseph Smith never had a false prophecy. We don't— Next question. Next question.

01:37:44

Can we answer? It's impossible to prove— Can I answer, James? Let him answer. Go ahead. We don't believe that—because we do not believe that humans are infallible, we don't believe the

01:37:53

Bible teaches that prophets are infallible. Okay. Cool. So you also said it's impossible to prove sola scriptura using the text of Scripture.

01:38:02

Do you still hold to that statement? What was that one more time? Repeat it again. It's impossible to prove sola scriptura using the text of Scripture.

01:38:10

You can't prove closed canon using the text of Scripture. Okay. Can we prove sola scriptura by using the text of Scripture?

01:38:17

It depends if closed canon is part of sola scriptura. Yes, it is. Okay. So no? So no.

01:38:22

Okay. Can you show me anywhere in the Bible where we're told to obey any teachings taught outside of the

01:38:27

Scriptures? The Bible doesn't define what Scriptures are. No, that's not my question. Can you show me anywhere in the

01:38:34

Bible where we are taught to obey teachings taught outside of Scripture? But in your question, it presupposes that we know what constitutes the

01:38:42

Scripture. The 66 books. Okay. If we just use the 66 books, do the 66 books tell us to obey anything outside of them?

01:38:49

We don't presuppose that those 66 books are the only books that God has revealed to the world. Let's move on.

01:38:55

You guys said you believe that God can communicate to us, but as soon as we essentially touch it, it's tampered because we're fallible.

01:39:02

Is that correct? Yes. We don't believe in infallibility of human beings, and we believe that we ultimately always walk by faith, and I can't help but feel like this desire for something that is perfectly infallible that you have, because if you have that, then you're no longer walking by faith.

01:39:18

You're walking by perfect certainty, and we always walk by faith. So when missionaries get ready to leave their house on a trip, and they're spending a couple years in a different city, and they knock on a house with the

01:39:30

Book of Mormon, do you tell them before they go that that book is fallible? Yes. The book says it's fallible.

01:39:35

You tell them that. The book claims it. It's in the title page. It says if there are errors, they are the mistakes of men, and to not deny the things of God because of the mistakes of men, essentially.

01:39:47

Okay. Let's try to get one more in. Augustine says, What more shall I teach you than what is in Scripture, than what we read in the

01:39:54

Apostles? Scripture fixes the rule of our doctrine, lest we be wiser than we ought. What do you think he meant by that?

01:40:01

That's Augustine of the 5th century. Read the quote one more time. What more shall I teach you than what we read from the

01:40:07

Apostles? For the Holy Scriptures fixes the rule of our doctrine. That's okay. You can finish reading it, and he can answer.

01:40:14

Yeah. Okay, so I'm going to read it one more time. Yeah, go ahead. What more shall I teach you than what we read in the

01:40:20

Apostles? For Holy Scripture fixes the rule of our doctrine, lest we dare to be wiser than we ought.

01:40:27

That's Augustine of the 5th century. What do you think he meant by that? That is Augustine saying that the Scripture is a reliable authority that we can follow, because if you read the early church fathers, you're going to find a bunch of them, like I already quoted earlier tonight, who point to sources outside of Scripture.

01:40:40

The early church fathers did not hold to the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, and people could just Google online and find all the quotes.

01:40:46

Thank you. All right, ten minutes going the other direction. Ready? Yes.

01:40:52

Here we go. Do you believe that you interpret the Bible? Do I believe that I interpret the Bible? Yes. I believe

01:40:59

God speaks and I receive his revelation. Do you believe you interpret the Bible? Do we believe we interpret? Yeah.

01:41:05

Do you believe you interpret the Bible? You would have to define interpret, because when my wife sends me a text saying she loves me,

01:41:12

I don't interpret that. I know what it means, and I clearly receive it. Okay. So do you interpret the

01:41:18

Bible at all? I read the Bible, and God communicates to us through the Bible. So you don't interpret it?

01:41:24

No, God speaks to us through the Bible, and the way Jesus says in Matthew 22, we would agree with that.

01:41:30

So you would agree that you don't interpret the Bible? I would say interpretation is to understand clearly what the

01:41:36

Scripture is reading. So if you just read a text at face value without context, then you would be wrongly interpreting it.

01:41:43

So we interpret the Scripture according to Scripture. So you do interpret the Bible? Yes. Sure. And you are a fallible human being?

01:41:49

Say it again? And you are a fallible human being? A fallible human being, yes. Do you believe you can be wrong about your interpretation of the

01:41:56

Bible? There are things that God reveals, and it is the Almighty God who reveals these things to His creation.

01:42:02

He communicates them clearly. So like I said in my opening statement, we take God at His own word. So whatever

01:42:07

God says, we can't be wrong about. We could be wrong about things that are not essential, the things that God has revealed to us plainly concerning His will, concerning salvation.

01:42:16

Those things are plain in text, and that's what we see Christ holding people accountable to.

01:42:22

The law can be interpreted. What do you mean when you say God reveals it to you? God reveals to me?

01:42:27

Yeah. No. God speaks in His Scriptures, and so this is what the church has. Okay. So you're saying

01:42:33

He's sending a message to you, and— He's not sending a message. He speaks to us. Again, in Matthew 22,

01:42:39

Jesus says, Have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, this is what God said? Okay. Do you believe that God makes you believe the

01:42:45

Bible? God makes me believe the Bible? God makes me believe Him? And by that, maybe you could follow that conclusion.

01:42:52

Do you have a choice in your belief in the Bible? Do I have my choice? Can you reject the Bible? The Scripture says that we are dead in trespasses and sins, right?

01:43:00

And it says that the natural man can't understand the things of God. He cannot discern the things of God. He cannot submit to the law of God.

01:43:06

So, yes, we believe that God must endow us with the faith that we have. We believe that by the Spirit— Can you reject your belief of the

01:43:12

Bible? Can I reject my belief? Do you have a choice? Do you even have a choice to reject it? Jesus says, My sheep hear my voice. If you're

01:43:17

His sheep, you're going to hear His voice. You can hear it, but can you reject it? Jesus says that all those that the

01:43:23

Father has given to me will come to me. So can you reject it? Yes or no? If we were given to Jesus—I mean, we were given to the

01:43:29

Father. I mean, we were given to Jesus by the Father. No, we cannot reject it. So you cannot reject it. Okay. Would you agree that you have to be chosen by God to believe in the message of the

01:43:38

Bible? To believe in it in terms of bringing about saving faith? Yes. Of course. Yes. Okay. Does Reformed theology teach that we can and do know who is and is not elect?

01:43:49

Say it again? No. Does Reformed theology teach that we can know who is and who isn't elect in the room? No. Okay. Would you say that you know that you are one of God's elect and are regenerated?

01:43:58

Well, in 1 John it tells us that he's written these things so that we may know that we have eternal life. But you just said we can't know.

01:44:04

No, you said people. Yeah, but we're talking about other people. We can't look out into a crowd and say you're elect, you're not.

01:44:09

But you can know for yourself? Yes. Yes. Okay. So because you are regenerated and his elect, you believe the

01:44:17

Bible's message. Is this correct? Am I understanding that correctly? Say it again? Slower down. Because you are regenerated and elect, you believe the

01:44:24

Bible's message. Is that correct? I would say yes, that's correct, but that doesn't determine whether or not the

01:44:30

Bible is correct. Whether or not we believe it would be correct. So you think that you are the elect? Correct.

01:44:36

If you were not the elect and were void of the gift of faith, would you be able to understand and believe in Jesus Christ, his gospel, and his word?

01:44:43

We wouldn't want to. It's not if we're able to. It's we wouldn't want to. And not salvificly. Okay. Have you ever known someone who was assured of their election?

01:44:52

Just as sure as you are of yours right now, but who has since fallen away? I've never heard him put it that way where they say

01:44:58

I'm assured of my election. But I've heard people say, yeah, I'm a Christian. I'm going to heaven when I die and then walk away from the faith. Sure. What about a

01:45:04

Calvinist? Have you known a Calvinist who thought they were? Okay. What makes your assurance of election different from someone who was also sure of theirs, but later fell away?

01:45:15

They didn't have saving faith. But they thought they did, right? Yeah. They thought they did, but they didn't. So what makes yours different?

01:45:20

That doesn't determine. I would actually have saving faith. That has nothing to do with sola scriptura. Okay. It absolutely does.

01:45:26

How does it have? Go ahead. I'm just here to ask questions. Can I respond to that? No, you're just here to ask questions. Go ahead.

01:45:32

Questions, please. Let's see here. Is it possible, is it even possible that you are not one of God's elect?

01:45:39

Is it possible that I'm not one of God's elect? Given what I read in the scriptures, I would say no. It's not even possible.

01:45:46

No, God would have to lie. Since I believe upon the Lord Jesus with saving faith, if I were able to believe on Him that way and me not be elect,

01:45:54

God would be lying. And so since I do believe in Him that way. So you can't be wrong about that? No. We can't be wrong about what

01:46:00

God revealed, which means God can't be wrong. Can you be wrong about your election? We're saying God can't be wrong. We're saying we received that revelation.

01:46:06

But you have to make the decision on whether or not you believe you are elect. No, we're taking God at His own word. That's what we're doing.

01:46:12

God speaks. We believe Him. But you know other people who have believed that and then fell away later.

01:46:18

So what makes you different from them, let's say? I'm going to answer. That doesn't determine the veracity of that statement.

01:46:24

Just because a person believes it, that doesn't mean that that's what it is. 1 John 2 .19 tells us that those that were a part of the body of Christ, they were a part.

01:46:31

It says they went out from us to show that they were never really of us. So just because they claimed faith, that doesn't mean they were actually of the faith.

01:46:38

So you are 100 % sure, without a doubt, that you are God's elect?

01:46:44

I would say based on what God revealed, yes. And you can't be wrong about that? No. God would have to lie if anybody could believe upon the

01:46:51

Lord Jesus with saving faith and not be saved. He would have to lie. And that's not just your opinion or something that you feel.

01:46:56

It is the way that it is. As far as what the gospel is? We can open up the Bible and read that if you'd like. So you would agree that there have been people who have genuinely, in their own minds, had a sure election as you have, but who were not actually elect?

01:47:07

No, no, no. They claimed. Well, in their own minds, I mean. They didn't believe. No, no, listen. They claimed that when they died, they thought they were going to be the

01:47:14

Lord Jesus. But you're saying they didn't actually believe it? If they reject him and they're not God's elect, that's not true. So I would say they never really believed on the

01:47:21

Lord Jesus with saving faith the way we do. Okay. The scriptures teach that's impossible.

01:47:26

Fair enough. Okay. Do you believe that the Bible infallibly teaches that we are not all children of God?

01:47:34

Yes. Do you believe the Bible is in— Wait, hold on, hold on. Yes. We are not all the children of God. What was that question? So you do not believe that we all are children of God?

01:47:43

We don't believe that. The Bible doesn't teach that. Okay. Just making sure that that was clear. Sorry, I'll slow down. Do you believe the

01:47:48

Bible infallibly teaches that God does not want to save everyone? Correct. Do you believe—

01:47:54

Wait, hold on, hold on. So you're saying, again, you don't believe that God wants to save everyone? Yes. We're saying that if God wanted to save everybody, that God that sits in the heaven and does all that he pleases, he would.

01:48:03

So he has intentionally—like, I want some people in this room to go to hell. God is omnipotent.

01:48:09

God is sovereign. If God wanted all people to be saved, they would. You're also assuming that people don't want to go to hell.

01:48:14

The people that reject God, they don't want God. They don't want to go to heaven. They actually want to go to hell. How do you know that? Because God tells us that.

01:48:20

God can't be wrong. Okay. Okay. God tells you that. In Scripture. In Scripture. Not by the

01:48:26

Spirit. In Scripture. In your interpretation of Scripture? No, in what he said in Scripture. Ephesians chapter 2 says that we are dead and trespassed as a sin.

01:48:33

Psalm chapter 14 tells us that no person seeks after God. Isaiah 53, all like sheep have gone astray.

01:48:39

The Bible speaks clearly of man's denial of God apart from saving faith, apart from the Spirit of God. Do you believe the

01:48:50

Bible in Falwell teaches that even little babies who die will go to hell if God doesn't choose them?

01:48:55

Say it again. Do you believe the Bible infallibly teaches that even little babies who die will go to hell if God doesn't choose them?

01:49:02

The problem with your question is you're assuming that the Scriptures give us the prerogatives to make that decision or to know that.

01:49:08

The Scriptures don't teach that. Does God have to choose every baby to go to heaven? God has to choose whoever is his elect.

01:49:14

Do you believe God has chosen every baby who has ever died to go to heaven? God doesn't reveal to us who he has and hasn't chosen, but he's free to save babies the same way he's free to save everybody else.

01:49:24

Do you believe he 100 % has saved all of them who have died in infancy? Do I believe?

01:49:30

No, I don't believe I'm given the knowledge. I wouldn't have a problem with that, by the way, just so you know. Let me answer that in another way.

01:49:39

When David is grieving over his child and his child dies, he says, he shall not come to me, but I will go to him.

01:49:45

Now, Scripture gives us hints regarding certain things, but it does not speak clearly on this thing, so we would not presuppose or pre -presume upon Scripture to say that which it does not say.

01:49:54

Okay, so what you're saying is, do Scriptures say that you have to have faith in Jesus Christ in order to be saved?

01:50:02

Yes, but faith in Christ is not something that we create in ourselves. So God gives faith to little babies.

01:50:09

I didn't say that. I said we don't create faith. But if he didn't give faith to little babies, then that would mean that they're dead.

01:50:15

That's the only way a little baby would be saved, if God gives them his saving grace and his saving mercy, the same way it is for all of us here tonight.

01:50:22

Do you believe the Bible infallibly teaches that when God chooses to elect someone and work in them, that they cannot reject this election?

01:50:30

Yes, it says we work out what he worked in us. Do you believe the Bible infallibly teaches that God decided before we were born who will go to heaven and who will go to hell, and that we have no real choice in the outcome of our salvation?

01:50:46

We wouldn't say that we have no real choice. We say that those who sin are slaves to sin.

01:50:52

They choose sin each and every day. Now, does the Scripture say that God has ordained from all eternity all those who he would choose to elect and place in Christ and adopt?

01:51:01

Yes. So he has decided. Okay. We're done. Time's up. All right. Cross -examination is over.

01:51:08

We have closing statements from both sides, and then the questions.

01:51:14

It looks like my counterpart is ready to go down there. I'm ready to go here as well.

01:51:20

There will only be 20 minutes of questions, so we have to keep them succinct and work through them as quickly as we can.

01:51:28

Ten -minute closing statement, and let's go ahead and get started. Ready to go.

01:51:38

So let me start off by thanking our opponents for taking the time to partake in this debate and thanking you all for arriving.

01:51:46

We hope that it has been fruitful in highlighting the differences in our worldview. We hope that it has been also fruitful in showing the necessity of an absolute standard for proper orthodoxy and orthopraxy.

01:51:58

Every discussion about epistemology and ultimate truth is a discussion about one's view of God.

01:52:05

These are matters of theology, first and foremost, that must inevitably start with the nature of God. Our opponents here tonight have openly admitted to worshiping a deity lower ontologically and potentially than that of Judaism, the religion from which

01:52:19

Christianity is birthed. This God of the old covenant and also the new, the God whom we evangelicals serve, by the word of his power called all things into being from nothing.

01:52:28

They don't believe that. Their God organized matter that preexisted from all eternity. Our God sustains all things in heaven and earth,

01:52:36

Colossians 1 and 17. They also don't believe that. God cannot do all that he pleases. God is subjected to our free will.

01:52:45

And our God works all things according to the counsel of his will, according to Ephesians 11.

01:52:51

And again, they don't believe that because they say all people, God wants all people to be saved. And my question is, well, why are not all people saved?

01:52:58

If you believe that God wants all people to be saved, you should be a universalist. And they deny that.

01:53:04

And God, we move and live and have our being. In his light do we see light. By his testimonies are fools made wise.

01:53:11

And by his word are the dead brought to life. I encourage you all and our opponents alike, build your life upon this word, upon the word made flesh and his testimony recorded in Scripture.

01:53:22

For there alone are the words of eternal life. And in Scripture, the very mind of God is revealed to us.

01:53:29

And in it we find the eternal and infallible truth of all things concerning faith and conduct as his servants.

01:53:36

Truth is not fluid. Truth is not plural. Truth is not subjective. And our opponents here, they made that same statement, generally speaking.

01:53:45

They said, truth is not pluralistic. And then we say, how do you know what you know? And they said, well, the spirit testifies to me. Well, what about the spirit testifying to someone else something totally different from you?

01:53:53

That is the definition of subjective. We, as evangelical

01:53:59

Christians, make no claims whimsically. But we have the self -attesting standard of the truth of God's God -breathed word.

01:54:06

Which have authoritatively been recorded by the prophets and apostles. And acknowledged uniformly by the church, by the people of God throughout redemptive history.

01:54:15

We serve not a God of confusion. But according to Hebrews 1, a God who has spoken with perspicuity. And passed times in many ways by the prophet.

01:54:22

And these last days by his son. There is only one uncompromising and absolute transcendent source of truth that undergirds all of reality.

01:54:34

And this truth is available to you in the person and the work of the Lord Jesus. It is not a matter of autonomously choosing this truth.

01:54:41

For according to Romans 1, the true and living God has endowed creation with his revelation.

01:54:46

So how do we know what we know? We're not saying that without the Bible you cannot know anything. We're not saying without the Bible you cannot know pouring scalding hot water on a baby is wrong.

01:54:55

We're saying that God has revealed himself in nature. And God has revealed himself in scripture.

01:55:01

Romans chapter 2 says, the works of the law are written on our hearts. And they're there to convict us of the truth.

01:55:07

So it's not a claim that, as my brother Daniel mentioned earlier. It's not a claim of exhaustive knowledge by scripture.

01:55:13

And that we can know nothing apart from it. It's saying all things are known by God's revelation. But man in his sin, man in his sin has had his heart darkened and his thinking rendered foolish.

01:55:26

Therefore Christ was sent into his own creation to be the light of man. And by him,

01:55:32

God's nature and will for man was more clearly exposited. It is for this reason that epistemology is ultimately a matter of authority.

01:55:40

Either we come to know what we know through the submission of two divine revelations. Or we come to know what we know through our own autonomous reasoning apart from God's word.

01:55:50

And we remain fools. Church Father Hippolytus of Rome puts it this way in his refutation of all heresies.

01:55:56

There is, brethren, one God, the knowledge of whom we gain from the Holy Scriptures. And from no other source.

01:56:02

For just as a man, if a man wishes to be skilled in the wisdom of the world. Will find himself unable to get at it in any other way than by mastering the dogmas of philosophers.

01:56:11

So also, all who wish to practice piety will be unable to learn its practice for many quarter than the oracles of God.

01:56:17

Whatever things then the Holy Scriptures declare, at these let us look. And whatsoever things they teach us, let us learn.

01:56:24

What our opponents presented to you was pragmatism. They said, oh, we will be known by our fruits.

01:56:29

Our prophets are known by our fruits. And so what they're claiming is that based on their lives and what we can observe from them, that's how we know whether or not they're right.

01:56:39

That's a poor standard. Scripture gives us a clear standard. If a prophet prophesies something that is wrong, he's a false prophet.

01:56:45

If he leads you after another God, he's a false prophet. If he denies Christ coming in the flesh, he's a false prophet. That is an absolute standard.

01:56:52

That is not a standard based on how well the person interacts with you. That's not a standard based on your experience with an individual.

01:56:59

That's a standard based on the unchangeable Word of God, the irrefutable

01:57:05

Word of God. The God of Mormonism is not the thrice holy God. Instead, he is a man.

01:57:12

He's a man himself, simply higher up the ladder of exaltation than his spirit children. In Mormonism, God is not the fountainhead and standard of all goodness.

01:57:20

Instead, God is only God in as far as he obeys eternal law and continues doing good. The God of Mormonism cannot be further from the

01:57:27

God of Scripture. When juxtaposed with one another, they are categorically different in every way. That is, revelationally, ontologically, theologically, and relationally.

01:57:36

When a fallible God is the ultimate reference point of your claims of knowledge, you can know nothing for certain. They will say, our God is infallible.

01:57:42

Our God is infallible. Yet if you ask them, can your God disobey eternal law?

01:57:49

If you go and watch our videos, you will see they say yes. And they say, if he does that, he will cease to be

01:57:55

God. Those are not my words. Those are their words. That is a fallible God. And that fallible God cannot give you infallible truth.

01:58:04

If your theory of knowledge does not start with absolute truth, there is no way it can end with truth. Absolute truth must always be the reference point.

01:58:11

Therefore, we conclude the worldview presented by our opponents tonight to be bankrupt. For one is not able to deposit from it that which is necessary to have knowledge of saving faith and the

01:58:20

Christian life in light of God's revelation. We spend six hours, six hours on all these matters with these guys.

01:58:26

And they almost disagreed with each other as much as they disagreed with us. And that's what you would expect from a fallible standard.

01:58:34

That's what you would expect, right? Even amongst the adherents of this worldview, disagreements all over the place.

01:58:40

And they say, oh, the nature of God is not an essential issue. How? How is that the case? Our faith is only as good as the one we put our faith in.

01:58:50

Right? So one of them says God was God for all eternity. He's the head of the council of many gods.

01:58:55

Another one says, no, God was a man. He lived on another planet. He possibly sinned. Right? That is chaos.

01:59:03

That is chaos. That is sand. You cannot build a worldview on that. We believe in a

01:59:09

God that is true, a God that has been God from all eternity. And our standard is him. Our standard is the

01:59:15

Logos. Our standard is the Lord Jesus Christ. And he undergirds all of reality. Truth is truth based on it being shown and shown to be true by the word of God.

01:59:32

Therefore, whether it be the words of theirs considered prophets or the promptings of the spirits or your own reasoning,

01:59:38

I urge you, do not lean on your own understanding in your evaluation of these things, but rather test them by the ultimacy of God's written word, as we are told in 1

01:59:47

John 4 and 1. Beloved, I do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets go into the world.

01:59:56

The Scripture warns us of false prophets. Even Brigham Young, he tells us, take up the Bible, compare the religion of the

02:00:02

Latter -day Saints with it, and see if it will stand. We're here to tell you, unequivocally, it fails.

02:00:07

It does not stand the test. The Scripture also warns of the influence of spirits, not the Holy Spirit.

02:00:13

Well, how do we discern if it's the spirit of God or another spirit? Well, the spirit of God in 1

02:00:19

Peter is told us, we're told that the spirit of God is the spirit that authored the

02:00:25

Scriptures. Numbers 23 tells us that God is not a man that he will lie. Therefore, we can be sure that that which the spirit gives knowledge of, that's what the spirit reveals, shall not contradict what is written in the word of God.

02:00:37

And what of man's autonomous reasoning ability? The heart is said to be deceitful, above all things, and desperately wicked.

02:00:42

The man who trusts in his own mind is a fool. Yet it is he who has made the

02:00:47

Lord his confidence that is blessed, Psalm 40 and 4. Ultimately, LDS faith seems to be predicated upon the presupposition of the validity of personal revelation from God.

02:00:58

Our friends presuppose the dependability of their ultimate standard as we do. The problem is your ultimate standard is doubtful, as they admit it is.

02:01:07

The conclusions you reach, therefore, are also doubtful. What can the Mormon say to the

02:01:12

Jehovah Witness, the Muslim, the Hindu, the Buddhist? All those who make personal claims as to this has been revealed to them, and they know it to be true as well.

02:01:19

All they can say is, well, God told me, so what God told you, obviously, is wrong.

02:01:24

We have an objective standard that we can point to, and absolutely said this is the word of God, and we rest our case on that.

02:01:31

Thank you. Closing statement.

02:01:40

Sorry about that. Ten -minute closing statement. So, Hayden and I occasionally have a few little differences in doctrine that we'll discuss sometimes, and I am glad to hear that within Protestantism that there isn't any disagreement ever.

02:01:57

Now, the question we are debating tonight is about the ultimate authority for determining the mind and will of God for believers.

02:02:04

Now, for us, the answer is really simple. God is the ultimate authority, and he can speak to you.

02:02:11

In fact, it is the witness of God's Holy Spirit that is the only reason that we believe in the

02:02:17

Scripture in the first place, and therefore the Spirit of God witnessing to us is the most fundamental.

02:02:24

On the other hand, our opponent's starting point is that the 66 books that they chose and their particular interpretation of them constitutes the ultimate authority on all matters, and this ultimately is because they believe that they are the elect.

02:02:41

They are the chosen ones who can see what everyone else can't see. I actually felt bad for our opponents trying to have to argue this position.

02:02:49

It's a trap, because if they say that the Bible is true because the Bible says it's true, they engage in circular reasoning.

02:02:55

And if they point to anything outside the Bible, like God himself speaking to you, then that thing would be a higher authority, and therefore they would lose the debate.

02:03:07

Our opponents have failed tonight, because they have failed to address the three problems that we began with.

02:03:13

First, the logical problem. They say the Bible is true because the Bible says it's true. It's like finding two books that are on a table.

02:03:20

They both claim to be the Word of God, and then someone grabs one and says, this is the infallible Word of God, and when you ask why, they look at you and say, because it says so.

02:03:29

And then they put all sorts of verses in there to validate that. It's absurd. So, number two is the closed -canon problem.

02:03:40

They claim that the 66 books that they chose, that's it.

02:03:47

They can't be anything else. Well, not only is that impossible, as we pointed out, but they ignore the fact that those 66 books talk about books like Nathan the prophet, the missing epistles of Paul.

02:03:58

How about the writings of the prophet Enoch? If we found those, would the canon still be closed? The third is the interpretation problem.

02:04:08

See, even if we have the infallible Word of God, we are under no obligation to think that they are better at interpreting it than any other fallible and human being.

02:04:17

They can say they're the elect all they want. And what they think the Bible really says is that we are not all

02:04:24

God's children and that God does not want to save us all. Their interpretation says that the little

02:04:30

Jewish girl Anne Frank was created for dishonorable use, and this is the idea that God wanted her to starve to death and then for her to endlessly be tortured in hell afterwards.

02:04:44

Now, you can believe that interpretation, which they say isn't their interpretation. That's what God is saying. Or you can listen to God witnessing in your heart that their interpretation is wrong.

02:04:56

But they will tell you to ignore that witness from God and to go with their interpretation.

02:05:03

They will say it is you who is suppressing the truth, not them. They're the chosen ones, the elect, and God has given them the ability to properly understand

02:05:15

Scripture. We say something different. We are pointing out the obvious.

02:05:21

It's God's ability to speak to us that is the very reason we believe in the Bible in the first place, and thus it is more fundamental.

02:05:28

Does this mean that we believe feelings alone determine the truth? No. Let's be very clear.

02:05:36

We recognize that we are fallible, and the notion of feelings alone is just as false as the idea of Scripture alone.

02:05:45

God's Word is truth, and His Spirit works to manifest the truth through the witness of our hearts, the witness of our minds, the witness of our experiences, the witnesses of our eyes, and, of course, through the witnesses of His prophets and apostles.

02:06:05

Could we even understand the Bible without eyes that see, without a mind that reasons, without a heart that feels, without life experiences that manifest the truth of Scripture in our lives?

02:06:22

It is this collection of witnesses from God, through the endowments that He has given you, that gives us our basis for confidence that something is true.

02:06:33

It's how God speaks to us. But you have the ability to say, no, God, I don't want to, because you're a fallible human being, and He gave you the gift of agency.

02:06:43

But our opponents, they say the measure of all truth is their interpretation of the 66 books they chose, because some of the verses in some of those books, they interpret to say that.

02:06:54

Are they really after the truth? Or are they worshiping their own image as the chosen ones who can see what the rest of us cannot?

02:07:02

We offer something different. We offer a religion that is after the truth, and are willing to use all of the tools that God has given us to find it.

02:07:12

The first president of our church said, the most prominent difference in sentiment between the Latter -day

02:07:18

Saints and the other sects is that other sects are circumscribed by a particular creed, whereas the

02:07:25

Latter -day Saints are ready to believe all true principles that exist as they are made manifest.

02:07:32

The contrast should be obvious. One side of this debate says they're the chosen ones and demand that you conform to their narrow interpretation of the

02:07:39

Bible, which says we're not all children of God and all that, but we're here to say something different.

02:07:45

We're here to say that you're all children of God, and that he loves you beyond all comprehension.

02:07:53

He did not create any of you to be damned. He created you to be one with him, but it's us who reject that freely offered loving relationship.

02:08:05

We're here to invite you to join with us in gathering together the truth from wherever it may be, using all the tools that God has given us, including those 66 books of the

02:08:17

Bible. We follow the model of the early

02:08:23

Christians. Paul says in his letter to the Corinthians that the church was, quote, built upon the foundation of the apostles who were living and the prophets, the writings of the prophets in the

02:08:38

Hebrew Bible, with Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. So who was the ultimate authority?

02:08:45

The words of the dead prophets alone? No, that's not what he said. It was the living Christ guiding his church via living servants who held the keys of his kingdom.

02:08:55

Jesus Christ himself said to the living Peter, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church. He did not say upon your interpretation of these 66 books that I gave you,

02:09:03

I'll build this church. The church was founded on living authority by a living God who is guiding his church through living revelation.

02:09:14

I want to sincerely say, despite our clashes today, Hayden and I have developed a real friendship with our opponents and we will continue to be friends.

02:09:24

Our message tonight was not to destroy many of the wonderful truths that you all have, and they are significant, but we are here to seriously question notions that may be constricting your ability to see a bigger picture.

02:09:43

God has given you more than John Calvin's biblical interpretation. Remember James 1, 5, which says,

02:09:49

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God. That's our message tonight. How can

02:09:55

God answer if we limit his ability to answer to the interpretations of men? God can speak to you.

02:10:02

Don't be afraid of the truth. Don't be afraid if you have to do a little spiritual and theological remodeling.

02:10:07

That's how we grow. God exists.

02:10:15

Jesus Christ was the Savior of the world. By his grace, we are saved through faith, not of works.

02:10:28

Not because of all that we can do, but despite all that we can do. We are not here to boast of ourselves as the chosen ones, but to testify of God's ability to speak to you.

02:10:46

And we invite you to drop all of your preconceptions about what us Mormons are and what we believe.

02:10:54

We invite you to come and see, to talk with us, to serve with us, to be our friends. Tonight we have rigorously challenged certain ideas, but please don't misinterpret that as an attack on any of you.

02:11:06

Unlike our opponents, we believe that you all are children of God, and therefore you are our brothers and sisters. We love you.

02:11:14

Come join us in seeking the truth using all the faculties that God has given you. And I testify that the

02:11:19

God of truth will bless you in that noble quest. And I leave that with you in the name of Jesus Christ.

02:11:26

Amen. All right, I do have a question of our sound people, and that is how is our friend going to use the microphone?

02:11:37

He'll get them to you, and you just read both. You just alternate. Oh. So he picked the ones you'll read.

02:11:44

I did three. Three's fine. Only three? Just grab four. In 20 minutes? There's more. There's more?

02:11:50

I thought maybe you could just take the microphone. It's got a long lead there. You can take it, yeah.

02:11:57

If you wanted to sit back down down there or whatever. It's like twisted up, yeah. Because you've already read them and can see them, and I haven't read them.

02:12:07

And some of them are, as you will testify, you have to look rather carefully. Not all of you excelled in penmanship in first grade.

02:12:16

That's just how it is. It's not all Theano stuff. Another note, it looks like some of these might have been mixed up.

02:12:25

I don't know if it was completely understood that there might be some questions in here that were directed to the other side, but they still fit.

02:12:34

Just go with the ones. They still roll, so they're good. Okay. So since we started with this side first, you go ahead and ask a question of them, then

02:12:43

I'll ask a question here. And we decided on, what was the time frame? It's going to be 90 seconds to respond, and then they'll get a 60 -second rebuttal.

02:12:51

That's a long time, but okay. I don't think we'll use it all. We don't have to use the whole time, right? We're not going to necessarily need it.

02:12:58

All right. You know what? Since we're doing two different time things here at the same time, that'll prove to be fun.

02:13:07

So I will do this one here and then this one for 20 minutes, and that way we have a good idea of what's going on.

02:13:14

All right, go ahead, sir. Where does it say in the Bible that the

02:13:20

Bible is the Scripture and the only Scripture God breathed? So the

02:13:26

Bible doesn't have explicit verses for everything we believe in that manner. The Bible teaches us what books are, what a book would need to be considered theanoustos, the nature of God.

02:13:38

So given what we have, all we have is God's revelation. We wouldn't have a verse, for example, to point to that gives us an order of 1 through 66.

02:13:48

We don't claim to have that. No one has ever claimed to have that. Just to add to that really quick, we have

02:13:55

Scripture, what we read in 2 Timothy, identifying itself as God breathed, and they would say typically that's regarding the

02:14:02

Old Testament. But we also have Peter referencing the writings of Paul, the letters of Paul, and identifying them as Scripture as well.

02:14:11

Okay, all right, and 60 seconds. So in other words, the

02:14:16

Bible doesn't establish what is canon and what isn't. That ultimately happens outside the

02:14:21

Bible because there is no golden table of contents. And what they assume is that just because it's in there, that means other things we can't receive a witness from God to help us know that other things outside the

02:14:32

Bible are Scripture. We're going to get through more questions than we thought we would. We're not having any filibustering here.

02:14:39

All right, for the LDS side, did Elohim have any foreknowledge that His spirit daughter

02:14:46

Anne Frank was going to end up in a concentration camp in the preexistence?

02:14:53

Yes. Archon? Archon?

02:14:59

Gentlemen, you have one minute to comment. I think it's important to understand what's being pointed out.

02:15:06

This whole time we heard how the Calvinistic reformed God was so bad because of what He knew was going to happen to Anne Frank.

02:15:12

Our opponents just admitted that their God created Anne Frank while knowing this was going to happen to them.

02:15:18

That's called using an argument on a side that doesn't work for yourself. God is ultimately responsible.

02:15:25

If God has the power to stop her from dying in the Holocaust, then He's responsible for not stopping it.

02:15:34

We are going to get through a lot of questions soon. Either that or we're going to run out of the questions we chose and we're going to get out of here early.

02:15:41

Your turn, sir. A quick question on my end. I was trying to sort through, was it supposed to be relevant to infallibility of Scripture?

02:15:51

Well, if it came up in the debate primarily, but I put a number of them away. How many wives can we have?

02:15:58

That might be one. Or why do you talk so fast? Sorry.

02:16:04

I skipped those. Go for it. Okay. There are many

02:16:12

Christian churches that proclaim their interpretation is correct but may differ than yours.

02:16:18

What makes your interpretation correct and theirs incorrect? Well, the thing that we have to recognize is that Scripture has spoken with perpetuity.

02:16:27

The issue is not the Scripture. The issue is people. So there are disputes about, like we said, preferential issues, issues that are not essential.

02:16:36

But when somebody is denying Christian orthodoxy as far as doctrine that is essential for salvation, essential in terms of being a

02:16:50

Christian, those things we would say, they are not only disagreeing with our interpretation, they're disagreeing with the interpretation of the church throughout redemptive history.

02:16:58

I would just add to that, it's important. What's being assumed is that the Scriptures aren't clear. I said in my opening statement that Sola Scriptura is not a claim of unanimity.

02:17:08

We never said that we would always agree on everything. The question is, how do we know which interpretation is right? And we tell that by the

02:17:14

Scriptures. If you have an interpretation that's inconsistent with the Scriptures, that's how you can know it's wrong.

02:17:19

If you have one that's consistent, that's how you know it's right. You guys are so fast.

02:17:25

Okay, one minute. So in other words, if it's consistent with their interpretation of the

02:17:30

Scriptures, then it's right. So that is at the heart of the problem.

02:17:38

Just as a side note, we have a very different understanding of foreknowledge. Just as a side note.

02:17:44

That's it. Are we allowed to respond to past questions if we didn't use all of our time? You have a certain amount of time.

02:17:52

Then I can say whatever I want. How much time do we have left? It would be good to continue answering the questions.

02:17:57

You want to shout out to your mom or something. I will. It might not look all that good, but you can do that if you want.

02:18:07

Okay, question for your side. I think I know what the background here is. In light of Matthew 22, where Jesus quotes from 1400 -year -old text of Scripture and holds men accountable to it, do you believe that Jesus' epistemology reflects your argumentation that you've used this evening?

02:18:30

If it's different, why? Absolutely. Jesus Christ very clearly...

02:18:36

A good example would be Peter. He looks at Peter, and he didn't say that Scripture revealed it to you that I am the

02:18:43

Christ. He said, My Father in Heaven revealed it to you. Jesus Christ also said that the

02:18:51

Spirit will teach us all things. Jesus pointed to the fundamental nature of God's Spirit revealing to us it as the foundation of his church.

02:19:00

That's what he was saying to Peter. It's easy to pull out one verse to make an argument out of context.

02:19:09

That's called proof texting, which is what just happened. Is it our turn now? Yes. One minute.

02:19:19

I would say, if you noticed, they didn't even answer the question. The question was, does

02:19:24

Jesus' epistemology reflect theirs and why? He took us to Peter, which this whole time for the debate he had a problem with God choosing people.

02:19:32

The text he gave us from Peter was God revealing something to Peter. I think it's important to point that out.

02:19:38

The point is, Jesus' epistemology was God could speak clearly in Scripture, and there wasn't this question of, is that your interpretation?

02:19:46

The question to them was, do they share that same epistemology that the Lord Jesus held? I think you guys heard, the answer tonight is no.

02:19:53

What you see there is Christ's epistemology is the

02:19:59

Word of God. It's the Word of God in the sense that we expect exactly what we see happen to Peter, what he says to Peter.

02:20:05

We expect that from Old Testament revelation concerning the New Testament. We see that in Jeremiah 31. We see that in Ezekiel 11 and 36.

02:20:13

We see exactly what we should see, what we should expect according to Old Testament revelation.

02:20:20

Okay. Sir? Sorry, I had to look up a

02:20:26

Scripture. I'm not a Scriptorian. So, in regards to limited atonement, what is your understanding or your truth that you find in 1

02:20:44

Timothy 4 .10? I found the Scripture. If you have it. You can read it.

02:20:51

So, 1 Timothy 4 .10 in regards to limiting atonement. For therefore we both labor and suffer reproach because we trust in the living

02:20:58

God who is the Savior of all men, especially of those that believe. I guess

02:21:05

I'll allow it even though we're really starting to stretch the topic range. Sorry, it was just a question about limited atonement.

02:21:11

Go ahead. Are you going to read it? Regarding limited atonement, again, what we were pulling from is

02:21:18

John chapter 6. He said, all those that the Father has given to the Son will come to Him.

02:21:24

And further on he says, He will not fail to raise them up on the last day. So, when we're seeing the same as what we see in John chapter 3.

02:21:32

John chapter 3 and 16. All those who believe will be saved, right?

02:21:38

The question is who will believe? The question is who will come? So, when we're understanding limited atonement, it's regarding man by nature, right?

02:21:48

Being hostile to God, not being able to understand the things of God, and being influenced in his slavery to sin.

02:21:56

Being dead in trespasses and sin. And I would say to the person who gave us that text, go read chapter 2.

02:22:03

Paul tells us in 1 Timothy chapter 2, who the people are in chapter 4. He gives the list. What Paul is trying to say is

02:22:10

God is the Savior of types of, all types of people. Which is why Paul gives us that list. I would also ask the person, why did they take

02:22:17

Paul's word in 1 Timothy chapter 4 and not in Romans 9? When it tells us that salvation is not based on man's will, but on God's election.

02:22:27

Not will or exertion. So, bringing this back to the debate, that verse was so clear from the greatest conceivable communicator on the issue of salvation, that it required that giant explanation from them, from their interpretation of it.

02:22:46

Okay? So, when they say that the Bible is perfectly clear, yet all of a sudden there are these verses that seem to contradict and need all this stuff.

02:22:53

If you're going to hold the idea that this book was written by the greatest conceivable communicator, it seems awfully unclear.

02:23:01

But they don't think that. They say, well, the only reason you can't see, it is perfectly clear, but you can't see it because, you know, you're not elect.

02:23:09

And that's why within Protestantism itself, you get all these divisions. You have like, what, 8 ,000 different Protestant denominations or something like that?

02:23:16

That's because every time someone comes up with a new interpretation, a new church pops up. Here's a few verses to chew on. How much time are we on?

02:23:21

10 seconds. 1 John 2 2, and there's 10 of them I could share if I had time. And He, Christ, is the propitiation of our sins, and is not ours only, but also the sins of the whole world.

02:23:34

Alright. I have two questions here that are so closely related that I'm going to fold them into one. So I'll actually read both of them, but you'll see they're basically saying the same thing.

02:23:44

If I have a burning in my bosom that testifies the Book of Mormon is not true, can I trust that message from the

02:23:50

Holy Spirit? And the methodology presented by the

02:23:55

Latter -day Saints reminds me of that which led me away from the LDS church. Would you say that this is valid?

02:24:02

So they're both asking the same thing. How can they know whether the testimony that they're referring to is valid when it opposes what you're saying?

02:24:13

Ultimately, what's happening here is that I can only testify for what I have received as a witness from God. Okay?

02:24:19

And if other people feel something different, yeah, okay. But the thing is is I would say that they're ultimately

02:24:27

God speaking to you. It doesn't mean that God, just because you feel something doesn't mean it's God speaking to you. And I think that through these various witnesses from God, we can arrive at the truth that this particular set of doctrines and ideas is from God.

02:24:44

Even despite the fact that it may contradict their interpretation of Scripture. We do not subscribe to the idea of feelings alone.

02:24:51

This burning in the bosom, which I would bet that person doesn't even know where that phrase comes from.

02:24:56

I'd be very surprised if they did. It's in our Scripture. But using the collective witness, not just this burning in the bosom, can we come to know

02:25:06

God's will, spiritually? You do need to understand that Scripture plays into the collective witness.

02:25:12

It's not like we just ignore it. It's definitely part of this. We just say that that's not the only thing. And specifically because they want you to adhere to a very specific interpretation of Scripture.

02:25:22

And we're saying, yeah, take into account the Scriptures, but don't just blindly follow them and not ask God for yourself.

02:25:29

One minute. So, what we would see there, again, is subjectivism. We would say when you're saying that this is real to me, this is what's been testified to me, but something different has been testified to someone else, they are just as valid as you are.

02:25:46

There is no opinion or view that's more valid than the other one. And that's what you have when you don't have an ultimate standard of truth.

02:25:54

The Spirit testifies to you one thing, it testifies to someone else another thing, and therefore you have no real claim against Buddhism, Islam, or all the rest.

02:26:02

And even, let me say really quick, Brigham Young fails all of these tests admittedly to you, and you still hold him as a prophet.

02:26:10

I'll just add really quickly, to try to bring this back to the debate, what they needed to do to win this debate was show that their collective witness model, the collective witness model is the authority in how we can know

02:26:23

God's mind and will. Part of that model is the testimony of the Spirit, which is that question here. But the problem is they've told us that God can try to communicate to us, but we can't receive it.

02:26:35

Sir? I probably have a lot less questions than you do. If God wanted to, can

02:26:41

God add to the Scriptures to help us? Example, Law of Moses, God changed to help them.

02:26:47

If then, why not now? Well, Scripture in Hebrews chapter 1, it tells us in past times

02:26:52

He spoke in many different ways through the prophets, and these last days He spoke through His Son. His Son has come,

02:26:58

His Son has spoke, and His Son sent apostles into the world, and they spoke authoritatively as representatives of Christ.

02:27:04

When those people died out, that ceased. Yeah, the Scriptures again, they don't have a verse explicitly that says the canon is closed.

02:27:13

When you take the teachings of the Scripture, you come to realize it's saying the canon is closed. God spoke to us in past times to the prophets, and these last days

02:27:20

He's spoken to us through His Son. Now, I bet you our opponents are going to say that we decided the canon. We don't believe that.

02:27:26

That's never been a claim of ours, and we don't use any counsel or decisions of men to base our canon.

02:27:32

It's based on what the Scriptures tell us can be identified as canon, that we know and trust what is canon. One minute.

02:27:40

I just want to say that that is their subjective interpretation of the

02:27:46

Scriptures that is disputed by the vast majority of Christians now and all throughout history.

02:27:53

Yet they want to say, oh, well, this is what it object—remember, they say that this is what the Bible says. They're really saying this is what we think the

02:28:01

Bible says, and because they're the elect ones, you know, they can't be mistaken on that.

02:28:07

They already admitted that tonight. All right.

02:28:15

Question for your side. Two minutes to respond. In the Joseph Smith translation of the

02:28:20

Bible, Joseph added a prophecy in Genesis 50, 24 -26 that is not found in any Hebrew manuscript in existence.

02:28:27

So why should we accept 2 Nephi 3, 4 -22, which contains pretty much the same material, or anything

02:28:34

Joseph Smith said at all? So, I'm sorry, read the question one more time.

02:28:44

I actually struggled with that one. In the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible, Joseph added a prophecy in Genesis 50, 24 -26 that is not found in any

02:28:51

Hebrew manuscript in existence about himself. So why should we accept 2 Nephi 3, 4 -22, which also speaks of Joseph, or anything

02:29:01

Joseph Smith said at all? Okay. So first of all, I'll just point out the fact that because we believe that human beings are fallible, it's perfectly possible that he mistranslated that.

02:29:12

That's a possibility. I'm not saying that that's what we believe. But I'm just pointing out here, bringing it back to the debate, because this is obviously a question questioning

02:29:20

Joseph Smith, which, by the way, just so we all know, if Joseph Smith was not a prophet and was a total fraud and all that stuff, that doesn't validate their argument.

02:29:27

Okay? It's a separate debate. Okay? But what I would say is that because Joseph Smith is fallible, he may have made mistakes.

02:29:38

No, that was his. Oh, okay. You had plenty of time. You were sabotaged by your own side there.

02:29:44

Sorry. It was by 9 p .m. Check your times. 9 p .m. timer. Okay, so...

02:29:50

We're your children at 9 p .m., right? Sorry, I need to collect my thoughts. How much time do we have?

02:29:56

30 seconds? Let's just go. It's not relevant to the debate. Yeah, that's fine.

02:30:02

Sorry. Well, I think what the question was stating is that that which he added to the

02:30:08

Scripture is not found in any Hebrew manuscript. So it's not a matter of mistranslation. It isn't there.

02:30:15

Right? And so the question is, should we, why should we believe him? We shouldn't. He fails the test of Scripture.

02:30:20

Deuteronomy 13, Deuteronomy 18. And I think what needs to be understood is that, again, when we approach the

02:30:28

Scripture from a worldview that is contrary to Scripture, then we can say things like, well, even if he's wrong, that doesn't mean that these guys are right.

02:30:37

Yeah, I would just add their whole collective witness model is based on the testimony of Joseph Smith, that the

02:30:45

New Testament was missing parts, that he needed to restore the Gospel. And so I think the question is trying to get at, if Joseph was wrong there, and he could be wrong about restoring the

02:30:53

Gospel, doesn't that destroy your whole collective witness model? Which I would agree it does, and I think it has. All right.

02:31:01

How about we try to get one more question for each side, because we started over here, so we'll get one more for them, and then one for, and we'll wrap it up.

02:31:13

So Daniel 2 teaches that God will establish his kingdom in the latter days. If you believe this prophecy is true, how do you expect

02:31:21

God to do this without communication to men, and shouldn't this communication be considered Scripture? When we see that term used last days of Scripture, we see it used in the

02:31:31

New Testament time, and when you take a consistent teaching of what that meant, it's the last times of the

02:31:37

Jewish age, right? That Jesus was doing away with that covenant, he was bringing in and establishing the new covenant, which

02:31:43

Jesus did bring. He says, if I cast out spares by a demon of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

02:31:49

So Jesus brought in, he inaugurated his kingdom, and he's building it till he's done.

02:31:54

I wouldn't have a problem with that verse, given what all of Scripture says. If you isolate it by itself, then sure you could twist it to make it look like it's saying something it's not.

02:32:05

Just to add to that, Scripture tells us that Christ is, the fulfillment of these messianic prophecies is to build the kingdom in these last days.

02:32:17

Matthew chapter 24, this is all regarding this situation, and Christ is saying, before some of the people who are alive today die, they will see him coming in his glory.

02:32:26

We say they did see him coming, and he came and he judged Israel. That was the end of the age. Ultimately, what they're saying is that God used to breathe, but he doesn't breathe anymore.

02:32:40

It's this idea of a dead God. God was breathing Scripture all this time, and all of a sudden he just stopped?

02:32:46

There's nothing in Scripture that said that he was going to stop, and that all revelation would cease. In fact, Jesus Christ himself said that prophets will come in the future.

02:32:53

Jesus could have just said, hey, any other people after this, like, they're all false prophets. That isn't what he said.

02:32:58

He said, you'll know them by their fruits. You will know them by their fruits. Right?

02:33:04

And so, ultimately, what you have here is the

02:33:09

New Testament model of the church, living apostles and prophets who hold the authority from God.

02:33:15

They're not infallible, but they do hold the authority from God to speak authoritatively and to adjudicate these questions in matters of general revelation to the church.

02:33:28

Okay. Last question for your side. Since the Book of Mormon teaches one God in Alma 1127, the

02:33:35

Pearl of Great Price and the Doctrine and Covenants teach multiple gods, was it God contradicting himself, or was it

02:33:42

Joseph, the author of those three books? So, I would—I'll just say this first and then

02:33:48

I'll respond to the question. I would challenge anybody in the room who believes that Joseph Smith wrote the

02:33:55

Book of Mormon to put together some presentation and give it to us and let's have a conversation on whether or not

02:34:03

Joseph Smith was the author of the Book of Mormon. You will lose. It's been tried again and again and again.

02:34:08

So, if anyone wants to take us up, maybe that's our next debate, is the validity of the Book of Mormon. That being said, sorry, remind me of the question.

02:34:15

I lost my train of thought. About— Oh, yeah.

02:34:22

This is simple. So, with what we've coined as the First Vision, we would know that when the word one is used, as it's used in John 17 in the

02:34:33

New Testament, when Christ says that you may be one as I am one with the

02:34:39

Father, he doesn't mean he wants the apostles to all become one person. He wants them to be one— you've probably heard the phrase— in unity, right?

02:34:48

In purpose. We wouldn't— it depends on the context. I would say as well, in the

02:34:55

Psalms, you can find references to multiple deities within the Old Testament. The hard monotheism was a creation after the

02:35:03

Old Testament. If you actually look into the scholarship, there's a lot of good reason to believe that the Old Testament authors actually had a polytheistic view of the world.

02:35:13

One minute response. I would just say, I'm pretty sure you guys are going to get that slide that you're looking for, and if you guys can tell our audience after this is over, any one scholar, give us actual evidence for the claim you just made that scholarship says that monotheism was a creation after the

02:35:32

Old Testament, given that the Old Testament consistently teaches there's one God. I think that the point of the question is, Joseph claimed one thing here and claimed another thing there.

02:35:42

He's contradicting himself, and since your worldview is based upon the revelation that Joseph gave about restoring the church, your worldview is built on sinking sand.

02:35:50

It collapses right at the beginning. Because Joseph Smith is fallible. Again, I want you guys to understand, winning this debate is actually losing.

02:35:58

They're saying you can't know anything for sure. Everything that they're stating and defending, they could be wrong about it all, and they're acknowledging that.

02:36:06

You don't build your worldview on that. All right. I would like to give you all opportunity to express your thanks to our debaters for the presentations here.