Debate Tour REVIEW w/ Dr. James White @AominOrg

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Well, hello everybody out there in Facebook world and YouTube land. Thank you for tuning in to The Apologetic Dog, where it's our heart's desire to contend for the gospel of grace, and we do this by standing on God's Word.

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If you look for the logo of The Apologetic Dog, hopefully you see 1 Timothy 620, where Paul tells

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Timothy that we are to guard the gospel entrusted to us, and we avoid pagan philosophies, irreverent babble, and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge.

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I believe Jesus had something to say about that. He said, oh yeah, your Word is truth. And so we stand on the

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Word of God when we're engaging in apologetics, when we're engaging in truth, we engage the lost and dying world, and we trust

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God with these endeavors. And so I'm a pastor and elder at 12 .5 Church in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

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12 .5 comes from the Bible verse Romans 12 verse 5 that says that the true saints, we are one together in the body of Christ.

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And so one quick announcement that I just want to make y 'all aware of real quick is coming up April 5th, we are having a live debate at 12 .5

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Church with yours truly and Mike Hisaw. And so Mike Hisaw is a

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Church of Christ preacher in Texas, and he called up The Apologetic Dog one day and said, hey, how about we schedule a debate for baptism since you like to do that kind of thing?

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And I said, let's do it. So we're really looking forward to that. I would love for you to come in person. Admission is absolutely free.

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Like I said, it's at 12 .5 Church in Jonesboro, and it'll also be live streamed here at The Apologetic Dog as well, so you can catch us there.

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Now that we got that out of the way, I have a special guest that I just have to go ahead and jump right in since we're talking about debates.

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And we have the debater of the age. Is that okay to say, Dr. White? Can we use that phrase?

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I don't remember if Paul had a positive light in 1 Corinthians 1 when he said that. How are you doing?

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I'm on my way home, looking forward to getting home very, very much.

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And my wife's leaving the same day I get back, but I should be able to at least wave to her. And my kids and my grandkids, and I think

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I'm actually preaching Sunday too. So it's straight back into the fire,

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I guess you might say. And 35 days on the road, way too much. Really, really challenging trip physically.

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I've never had to visit ERs and urgent care centers and stuff like that before, but we're still here.

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Every once in a while, I'll have to hit the mute button and do some coughing. Haven't gotten rid of that.

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Yeah, it's been a challenge. We'll see if we can get to 200 debates, and then we'll retire and let the young people whose bodies are getting old continue the work.

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The younger ones with the beards that don't have as much silver. That's true.

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Jeff's trying to catch up to me over the past six months. The bottom edge of his beard is definitely going white.

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And I think all the late -night feedings with their two new adopted twin girls probably have a lot to do with that.

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But now a lot of it's just simply pastoral ministry.

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And we just attract a lot of enemies. There's some nasty people.

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Apologia does church discipline. And if you do church discipline, you end up with people that if they remain unrepentant can get pretty nasty.

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And yeah, we get to deal with stuff like that fairly regularly.

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Yeah, ministry will put white in your hair and beard, or used to be hair. But hey, that is a sign of wisdom, though, if I recall.

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And I'm just gonna embrace it one day, so I look forward to that. Dr. White, you've done a few debate reviews on The Dividing Line, and I've even engaged with giving some of my reviews of your debates as well.

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So I figured today we could just kind of do a highlight reel, a debate tour review.

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Tell us some of your favorite highlight moments in your debate tour. Well, man, it seems like a lifetime ago that I debated

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Trent Horn. Actually, it seems like a lifetime ago that I was on the Allie Beth Stuckey Show with Trent Horn.

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And what's really weird is, as far as I know, that has started to air on her show.

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I have not had anyone say anything about it. I've not seen it. I've not seen any commentary on it.

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You gotta pay that money. I'm sorry? I said you might have to pay to see that interview.

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I don't know. Oh, Blaze TV? I'm honestly not sure.

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I don't know either. But anyway, that's how it all started. That was on a Tuesday.

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And then the debates with Trent Horn were on Friday, Saturday. And I think, and I did not plan this, but I think the real value of those two debates was the fact they were back to back.

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So Roman Catholics use Sola Scriptura the same way

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Jehovah's Witnesses use the Trinity. It's their brick bat. It's their big topic.

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They consider it always to be a winner for them. And it's because it addresses ultimate authorities and people haven't thought through ultimate authorities.

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They'll never defend their claim. I mean, Trent Horn, so I was willing to defend apostolic succession.

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That's not Rome's modus operandi. If they're going to defend their ultimate source of authority, it's

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Pope Francis. And they won't do that for love nor money right now. None of them will. So they sort of get away with that right now.

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And having the purgatory debate the next night was extremely useful because his arguments were almost completely, were biblically completely drawn from Protestant interpreters.

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And he was going, well, you know, purgatory could be this, could be that. It could be instantaneous. It could be this.

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And you're like, wait a minute. Every Catholic in the audience who's been a Catholic for almost any amount of time at all, well knows that's not what they believed only 20 years ago.

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And why is there such uncertainty? Given what had been claimed the night before about the deposit of faith and all the rest of this stuff, you should have clear and compelling arguments for a dogma of Rome.

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And he's relying on Protestant marginal interpretations of texts to substantiate his position.

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And I had Roman Catholics contacting me going, I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

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And I'm like, I really couldn't either, to be perfectly honest with you. So that was not my plan.

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I just wanted to have something where the gospel would be central. But it turned out real well to have it work that way.

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And by the way, you get to, the sun's down here so I can look out.

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Oh, it's a pretty sunset. You get to host my announcement of my next two debates that I have not announced anywhere else.

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Not on Twitter, Facebook, on the Dividing Line. This will be the first announcement of two debates coming up at the end of April in Lafayette, Louisiana.

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And we have been literally struggling since November to get this worked out.

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And I'll tell all the story about that later on. Not today, but after the debates are over.

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But two more Roman Catholic debates. Now, this is what's really interesting.

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We have been trying to get a representative of Catholic Answers to debate the subject, how does a man have peace with God?

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That shows how old I am that I say man, you know, but you know, that's really how the

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English language worked for a long time. How does a man have peace with God? And you see that way both sides have to make a positive presentation.

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It's not just one side denying the other side. Both sides have to, you know, do something meaningful in the course of the debate.

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And the topic of the conference I'll be doing there for about seven churches that are cooperating together is on evangelizing

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Roman Catholics, presenting the gospel of peace for Roman Catholics. So it works perfectly. When we contacted

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Catholic Answers, we mentioned Tim Staples and some of their other,

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Carlo Broussard, and some of the other people, we specifically said,

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I'm debating Trent Horne. I'm doing all this stuff with Trent Horne. And so we'd like to maybe have a new face, you know, involved in all this.

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So they said, well, about the only person that we could offer would be Jimmy Akin. Okay.

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I did three hours. I did three days on the Bible Answer Man broadcast with Jimmy Akin back in the nineties, as I recall, which is ironic given what's happened with Hank Hanegraaff.

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And we did a radio debate once on, I think it was on John six, ironically.

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But we hadn't done debates back in the nineties. Chris Arnzen had contacted him a number of times to try to get him to be a part of great debate series.

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And he wouldn't fly. And this was long before COVID. So he just is afraid to fly.

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And so that had never ended up working out.

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And so we've been struggling to get this to work out. So I debate

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Trent Horne, those two debates we were just talking about, soul scriptura and purgatory. The next

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Monday, the pastor who's been arranging all this stuff, contacts them and says, look, we've been really trying to get an answer one way or the other here.

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April's coming. We need to be able to advertise. Could we get this worked out? And he's told that Jimmy Akin will debate.

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How does a man have peace with God? Only if I will do a second debate at the same time, not the same time as that debate, obviously.

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Right, right. Commit to a second debate. A two night thing. And guess what?

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Jimmy Akin demands that I debate him on in April.

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Are you talking about which passage of scripture? No, topic. All right.

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You got to tell me. It's around having peace with God? Nope. All right.

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Soul scriptura. Again, he wants a crack at it. Now think about that.

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This was on the Monday after I just debated Trent Horne on soul scriptura.

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I wonder how Trent Horne feels about that. That was the first thing across my mind.

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They're all working remotely now. They're not in the same office in Catholic Answers in Southern California.

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But that might be good right now. I was just like, OK, this will be the fifth time

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I have debated that subject against representatives of Catholic Answers. Five times.

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Twice with Jerry Madetix. They might say, yeah, the second time he wasn't with us anymore.

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Well, he had been a representative for a long time. Patrick Madrid, Trent Horne and now Jimmy Akin. Five times.

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So I'm like, why? But OK, if that's if that's what we've got to do to make this work.

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I know his arguments are there. They're published. I've refuted them on the dividing line. I've put his books and his arguments up on the screen in the big studio in Phoenix and and displayed his arguments right there and refuted them.

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But if we need to do that in a debate format, OK, if that's where we've got to go, then that's what we got to do.

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And so we finally, after all that time, got confirmation today that that's what's going to be happening.

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And I didn't hear back about the cross -examination stuff.

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You got to give Trent Horne credit. The church there in in Houston.

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Wants to have lots of interaction, and so there's a total of 40 minutes of cross -ex, 20 minutes from each side.

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And Trent Horne did not bucket that. And he's willing to do that. And if if I'm known for almost anything,

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I'm known for being able to do cross -examination, both asking questions and making points during cross -ex as well as responding.

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That's something that. I learned to do early on, learned that was really where the debate takes place and have a lot of experience in that in that area.

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And Trent, Trent doesn't hide from that. You may have noticed that Dale Tuggy, there was only 10 minutes on each side.

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There was half as much cross -examination. And I had forgotten until I sat down on the stage on Saturday night that one of Tuggy's demands to do the debate, aside from we had to exchange opening statements, was to only have 10 minutes of cross -ex.

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So you can tell how confident someone is by how they deal with the issue of cross -examination.

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So looking at what they sent us today for an outline of these debates, they only wanted eight minutes of cross -examination for each side, grand total, less than half of what we did with Trent Horne.

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I don't know what came of that. I requested an increase in that. But anyway, so there's what's upcoming at the end of April in Louisiana is we will be debating

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Sola Scriptura. And then how does a man have peace with God?

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Well, those would be exciting, because that's very gospel, right? I mean, I thought you were gonna say, he said, y 'all could debate it as long as you didn't read

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Romans 5 .1. Because that really does get,

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I mean, it reminds me of your past debates about, you know, who is the blessed man? I mean, definitely. Didn't Trent Horne, wasn't there a wager going on?

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Was it in the first or second debate on how? It was the second debate.

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And yeah, it was something along those lines. I forget exactly what it was.

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But his answer to the blessed man question was the only answer that they can give.

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The blessed man is the individual who was just baptized before he walks out of the church. The way he put it was, you know, gone to confession or something like that.

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But that actually doesn't work either. Because if you've gone to confession, you've received absolution for the sins, you still have penances to do and you have temporal punishments.

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And they are, they're imputed to you. So you're not the blessed man.

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The blessed man of Romans 4 .8 does not have his sin imputed to him because it's been imputed to Christ in his place.

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And they have no non -imputation of sin. And so no matter how hard they try, what they're going to end up having to say is,

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I can only be the blessed man as a child when baptized as an infant.

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And there really isn't any other way. Because if you've committed a mortal sin, there's temporal punishments.

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If you've committed a venial sin, there's temporal punishments. And it is fascinating that today's representatives of Roman Catholicism do not want to use terms like temporal punishment.

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That's dogmatic language of Rome. That's in their dogmatic definitions in the Catholic catechism and everything else.

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But they are softening all of that. And it really makes me wonder, you know,

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Catholics who've been Catholics for a long time, they have to go, man, stuff's changing.

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And yeah, stuff is. So anyway, yeah, that'll be very, very interesting.

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And I'm looking forward to it. I wish it hadn't been so hard to get it set up.

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But now that it's set up, I hope that the format of the debate will be enough to allow for at least some meaningful exchange and interchange.

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So there you go. Yeah, so that's coming up in April. So you'll get a few good night's sleep after this trip, between now and then.

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And so you're approaching 200 debates. These next two will be how many in total? I'm sorry?

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How after these next two debates? Yeah, the next two, I'm at 187 right now.

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So that'll put me at 189. I've been telling people that I think when

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Dr. White hits the 200 mark, he may retire. But I tell people Michael Jordan came out of retirement once, you know, he was watching everybody else in the game.

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So we'll see. Yeah, that's not always, that normally does not work out real well.

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Look what happened to Tom Brady. So, well, hey, it doesn't normally work out well.

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So Michael Jordan could pull it off, but I'm not sure that I could.

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So yeah, we'll see. 200 would be a nice number. 225 would be a nice number.

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You might do online debates, who knows? Yeah, I actually, that is one of the reasons we built the big studio.

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And I actually sort of threw out on the last Dividing Line, the idea of doing an online debate with Dale Tuggy on John 1 -1.

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I don't think he'd ever do it, but I'd like to throw that out there. He's published a book on the subject.

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I'm published on the subject. But I just cannot imagine him doing a biblical topic with me.

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He knows he can't do it. It's not his thing. So I would like to try to find someone to do something along those lines.

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So yeah, I think that would be a helpful way. And I don't have to drive as much to do all that.

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But back to your initial question. I haven't mentioned the

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Jason Bretta debate. Because honestly,

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I can't think of any highlights in it. Oh, I can. I can think of a couple. So I was there.

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I was there in person. So this was also a part of the Why Calvinism conference. And so I always try to look for nice things to say about people.

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I usually got to say the nice things before I talk about the harder things next, right? So, you know, he was stepping in.

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Everybody's nicer than I am. So I don't bother with that kind of stuff. So you got to think, from Jason's perspective, he's coming to the

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Calvinism line then to attack essentially limited atonement. I'm over here like, good luck, sir.

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You know what I mean? And one of the highlights for me, you know, you give a strong opening statement.

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Romans chapter eight, Hebrews chapter seven, the Trinitarian harmony, right between Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

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It was really good. It was just you could tell this isn't your first rodeo. You know what I mean? And then

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Jason Breda. Am I saying his last name right? I've been emphasizing that bread, you know, that Breda.

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As far as I know. And then, Dr. White, this probably, you'll probably remember this.

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He says something almost heretical in his opening statement as though the

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Jews are saved differently than the Gentiles about Romans eight, the golden chain of redemption.

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We've misunderstood that. The emphasis is for the Gentiles. So when he said that, you could almost hear a gasp in the crowd.

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We were like, oh, and we, there's some, there's probably so many memes of you,

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Dr. White, just in the side over there, like, what is going on? And so here, here's the highlight for me.

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Here's the highlight for me. You come up in the rebuttal, you basically look over your shoulder and you're like, that's either heresy, or you might want to soften your stance in your rebuttal time.

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And of course, he softens his stance. And so Keith Foskey, what is it?

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He's essentially the Harper Freight, Doug Wilson. He says, all right, don't mess with the debaters.

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You're gonna have a little bit of time to stretch your legs, use the restroom. And so, you know,

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I'm chilling in the back. And then Dr. White comes to the front and points to me and says, come here,

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Jeremiah. And I'm like, me? And you're like, hurry, come here. And so it felt like you needed to check your sanity with somebody of saying, did he really say what

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I think he's saying up here? And I'm like, oh, Dr. White, we're hearing it. And, and then do you remember

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I told you, I pointed to Dr. Flowers, I said that, that man over there, that's his same argument. And you said, you're kidding me.

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And then I love telling the story. But I said, then I tell Dr. White, I said, Dr. White, as much as I appreciate this man's boldness over here, he is really undermining everything that we stand for and is causing utter confusion.

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And I said, please expose everything of what he's doing. I felt like I was revving the engine right before your cross examination.

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And you said, it's not gonna be pretty. Well, and the cross examination, the obviously the big, really, the only thing

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I remember of the debate that sticks out my mind that there is conversation about afterwards was when

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I'm going to the text, I'm trying to get him to deal with the text.

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That's what you do during cross examination. And I say, so in Hebrews 7 .25,

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why is it, what's the relationship between Christ being able to save completely and his intercession before the father, his entrance into the holy place?

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And he says, I don't see one. And, and so I'm like, well, then you need to tell me what

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Hebrews 7 .25 says, because that's, that's what it says. That's, that's, that's sort of, hey,

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Dr. White, it's, it's what the, it's what the Bible says. And that's when he said,

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I won't do that. That would take too long. Hey, I made a, I made a picture of that moment.

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Tell me if you can see this on your end. This picture shows that exegetical stare that you're known for.

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Oh, that, okay. But that, but that, that picture is from my debate with Greg Strawbridge.

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Yes. But you're given Jason Breda, the exegetical stare saying, hey, can you please exegete

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Hebrews 7 .25? And he essentially like, you can't make me. No, and, and the, the, the absurd excuse that has been offered is, well, he thought you meant do exegesis, which for Jason Breda is open up blue letter

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Bible and look on words and copy, you know, what the

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Greek is and all the rest of the type of stuff. And, and I'm, I'm sitting, I'm sitting here going, what's going on here?

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I mean, isn't this obvious? This was part of my, the central part of my presentation.

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And I'm taking the positive. So if you're going to say that, if you're taking the negative, you've got to deal with what

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I've presented. And he's going, no, I'm not going to do that. And it's like, I knew that the people that were cramming this stuff into his mind,

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Leighton Flowers, I knew that they were going to tell him, stay away in cross -examination from the text because he'll, he'll take you apart.

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And Leighton tried to do that too. And it didn't work for him either. But actually everybody tried to do that and it didn't work for any of them.

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Because as long as the one side knows how to ask questions and knows how to on the fly, ask meaningful, exegetical questions, you're not going to be able to escape it.

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You're stuck with it. So yeah, that was the main thing. I'm sitting here, honestly, looking at the clock going, do

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I even, how do I even fill the rest of my time? Because if my opponent won't tell me what a biblical text that is central to this issue means, then why are we here?

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I don't, I don't, I don't understand it. I don't get it. So yeah, and so that started a bunch of stuff online.

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And, you know, I got pretty sick after that. Like I said, I taught at GBTS and oh, that was one of the hardest things

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I've ever done. I, people have no idea how exhausting it is for a professor to teach from nine o 'clock in the morning until 430 at night.

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Even with a break for lunch in there, it is absolutely exhausting.

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And to do that, when you are absolutely, you know, I had just gone to urgent care.

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I had gotten a shot. I was just feeling horrible.

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And to try to be coherent and insightful, it was one of the hardest things

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I've ever done. Really, really was. And, and then I left from there. I went to a seminary in Jacksonville, Texas.

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And I was supposed to speak at 10 o 'clock in the morning, two o 'clock in the afternoon. I got through the 10 o 'clock presentation, but I was feeling lightheaded.

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I knew there's something really wrong. And to make a long story short,

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I had to bail and get to an ER. And I even packed the bag.

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I even packed this, this bag back here, because I assumed I was to be hospitalized.

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And that was going to mean that the Flowers and Tuggy debates weren't going to happen.

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I, I had my phone. I had already contacted Evan McClanahan, the pastor at First Lutheran.

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I said, I'm in the ER. I may be hospitalized. He said, do you want me to contact

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Tuggy and Flowers? And I said, let's wait and see what happens. Well, I didn't get hospitalized.

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I was given more drugs and stuff like that. But I made it to Houston and somehow made it through those debates without,

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I certainly felt a whole lot better than I did when I was teaching at the seminary, let's put it that way. I think it would have been really obvious if I had been at that level, but I had improved at that point.

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And so, yeah, but it was, it's been a long trip. It's been a, it's been a challenge, you know, no two ways about it.

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And so as far as what happened last week, I've never, well, there are

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Unitarians on Twitter. I have not seen word one from the

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Unitarians about the debate. Rich says he's seen some stuff.

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I have seen nothing. And I, is it just because it's been completely overshadowed by what

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I call now the provisionist playground? Maybe. But I've heard almost nothing about the debate with Dale Tuggy, which

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I felt was long -term one of the most important things we did on this trip.

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And so, but what has just, you know, Elon Musk has had to put an entire whole section of servers online just to keep up with the provisionist onslaught since last

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Thursday night. Yeah, that one, the response, I think,

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I think I can say pretty fairly that I've never done a debate that had the kind of response that that debate has had.

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Now, part of that is just simply due to the fact that, you know, a lot of the earlier debates, well, when

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I first started debating, there was no internet. There was no live stream. The only way that people saw debates was literally buying

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VHS tapes that were shipped to them through the mail. I've heard legends of those. Yeah.

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Yeah. That's how it started. And then, you know, eight or nine years in,

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DVDs were invented. And so it was a little bit easier, but, and then

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YouTube shows up and everything starts changing as far as that goes. But so that would obviously diminish response back then, because there, you couldn't have response.

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I mean, there was no internet. There was no, you know, it was even before AOL. So it's a different context that we're in now than back then.

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But yeah, I've just been astonished at the damage control, spin, immaturity, childishness that I've been seeing online.

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It is beyond anything else I've ever seen. Would it be coming from this crowd?

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The provisionist playground? Oh, yeah. So something else

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I was wanting to say is, you know, everybody on their side is talking about how you got waxed, you know, and really patting

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Dr. Flowers on the back. And what was neat, what was neat though, is those same people when they watched your debate with Del Tuggy, they're like, oh,

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Dr. White wiped the floor with Tuggy. And I'm like, my goodness, you know, they can't see the consistency from one topic to the next.

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And that's something you brought out in this debate is the type of exegesis that you're providing for John 644. You also have to be consistent when you debate a

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Unitarian on a different set of doctrines, but you're still going to use the same hermeneutics and the same exegesis.

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I remember you stressing that point really well. Yeah, I did. And, you know,

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I have seen people like Warren McGrew saying that Leighton Flowers won, but it strikes me that you would not be doing so much spin and damage control if you really actually believe that.

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You would not be posting AI exegesis. Man, that was the first time I'd ever seen that.

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I knew it would happen someday, but Leighton Flowers himself asked an

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AI bot to deal with the Greek of John 6. I didn't even know there were

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AI bots that could do that. My experience with AI bots has been when it comes to theology and history, they are currently really worthless.

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We need an AI bot with James White's voice telling us the exegesis. Yeah, there you go.

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That's not going to happen. But you don't do that if you felt like you had done that properly in the debate, and he knows he didn't.

35:48

He knows he doesn't have that capacity. He is not Greek literate. There was even some

35:56

Septuagint scholar, some young guy I'd never even heard of before, that they did a two -hour thing and I started listening to it.

36:05

They couldn't even represent what I had said right. It didn't even sound like they had done any homework at all.

36:11

But again, why be posting this stuff unless he's just really hurting over the fact that the cross -ex went badly for him when

36:23

I was asking questions, then he tried to go off into Ba 'al Gate and infant damnation and all the rest of this foolishness stuff.

36:32

Everybody knows why he was doing that. My theory is, honestly, that somebody else, probably from the school he teaches at, had texted him.

36:51

And people were texting me too, but not in the way they'd be texting him. My friends were going, we were sort of doing the

36:59

Maximus Gladiator thing via text message with a group of guys that we used to lift together.

37:07

And I taught them all Greek and Hebrew and stuff like that. And we were having some fun with Maximus memes and things like that.

37:16

But I think someone texted him and said, hey, this stuff he's saying about passive, he's wrong.

37:27

Those are active verbs. He was talking about John 644, the one hearing, the one learning.

37:35

And when he threw that out during his closing statement,

37:40

I'm just sitting here going, because they're substantival participles.

37:48

There's an article sitting right there. I mean, if you know anything about Greek, and if you know anything about John 6, you know that substantival participles are the one believing, the one seeing, the present tense participles are talking about the ongoing action of coming to Christ and so on and so forth.

38:07

And he just can't read the text. And it just seems to me that what happened was he got into trouble and someone tried to help him.

38:21

He trusted what they said and he threw that out there. I don't think he would have touched that with a 10 foot pole if he didn't trust the people that were presenting it to him.

38:30

I just don't think he would have done it. I remember Dr. Flowers brought up Michael Brown. And I can't remember he was starting to quote saying, so I've experienced this in debate.

38:40

People say, well, other scholars disagree with you. I'm like, okay, do you mean start asking them questions?

38:45

They're not here. I would ask them the same questions. And our ultimate authority is the word of God.

38:52

And that's where we're trying to get back to with soul scripture. Tuggy did that,

38:57

Flowers did that. And I'm like, well, okay, I've debated Michael on this.

39:03

And I think those debates went fine, but he's not here, A, he's not here to cross examine and B, all you're saying is he disagrees with you.

39:14

You're not making a specific point. You're not saying Michael Brown said this about participles because I know

39:22

Michael well enough. He wouldn't do that against me. I know Greek better than Michael does.

39:27

He knows Hebrew better than I do. So we sort of, when we work together, we play off of each other's strengths.

39:35

But when we debate each other, I ain't going after Hebrew with him and he ain't going after Greek with me.

39:41

So - That's a good point. We're part, we figured this stuff out. So you can throw that out there all you want.

39:50

You're not actually accomplishing anything because there can't be any cross examination and you're not being specific.

39:56

Give me specifically what was said. When was it said? Where was it said? If you don't do that, you're, again, in a debate, if you're being judged by debate judges, you're pretty much disqualified.

40:13

But when I was walking over to Greek people, excuse me, with Rudy Jabouri, Rudy's the

40:23

Assyrian guy sitting over to my right. Well, actually he was there for all the debates, but he was sitting over to my right in the last two debates and he and his son were the ones moving the screen to get it out of the way so that it wouldn't be sitting in front of us.

40:39

Rudy and his family, they were members at PRBC when I was an elder there back in 2010, 2011, 2012, somewhere around that timeframe.

40:51

Anyway, they live in Houston now and brought me food and sort of helped take care of me while I'm there.

40:58

Anyways, we're walking together over to Greek people after the debate. And I said to Rudy, I said,

41:04

Rudy, if you ever hear me talking about debating

41:09

Layton Flowers again, punch me in the nose. Okay. And I had already said that to Rich.

41:16

If you ever hear it, just punch me in the nose because I remember back in 2015, after that debate, and he wasn't nearly as poorly behaved in 2015 as he was in this debate.

41:36

I remember saying to Rich, man, I'm never going to do that again. This guy has no earthly idea what a debate is supposed to be about or how to interact.

41:45

And he's wandering off into this subject, that subject. He's clearly just using Romans 9 as an excuse to get into responsibility and total depravity is false and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

41:58

That's all he wanted to get into. And that was pretty much the same thing with John 6 too.

42:05

Everything but the kitchen sink is being thrown out there. And it's very frustrating if you actually honor debate and you try to do it right.

42:16

There are certain rules that clearly, A, he doesn't know about, and B, he's not going to follow even if he did.

42:22

So, yeah, I told a number of people, yeah, never, ever, ever, ever again. There's no reason to.

42:31

And that's why I said, we could literally debate 1 Chronicles 2618 and he would find a way to make it about Calvinism.

42:41

And people are going, 1 Chronicles 2618, yeah, it says, they're four at the par bar, two at the par bar, four westward and four at the par bar.

42:50

It's about where Levites were stationed. But I'm sure he could find a way to make it about Calvinism.

42:57

We'll give him credit for being able to do that. I hear he's going to be doing Soteriology 101 full time soon.

43:03

So we're about to see even more content cranked out. Well, and two things about that.

43:09

I told people before the debate, I told people he's going to be under pressure tonight because he just announced he's doing that.

43:17

And that means he needs clicks and followers and support and everything else. And so I think that was one of the reasons he was as out there as he was.

43:29

And then the other thing, I want to mention this. I don't know if you've, I'm sure you have seen it.

43:35

I had made an offhand comment four years ago where I said,

43:41

I'd say minimally 40 % of Layton Flowers videos are about me. I just, and I just threw that out there.

43:49

And then after the debate or before the debate recently, well, before the debate recently,

43:57

I had asked some of my guys, including the guy who does our transcript, the tab transcript on our website.

44:06

It has all of my debates, all of my sermons, all the dividing lines, my church history class, pretty much everything

44:15

I've said publicly since 1998. So a quarter century of my stuff, this is the guy that put it all together.

44:25

And so I'd asked him to look at Layton Flowers public stuff. This is stuff he's posted publicly.

44:31

So you can do that. And I said, I'd just like to know how often has he mentioned me?

44:38

And so he, he has the software. He knows how to do this stuff. And he came up with,

44:47

I think 47 .9%, 48%, something like that. And so I had said one out of every two of his videos talks about me.

45:00

And if you, if you just put Calvinist or Calvinism in it's almost 92 % of everything he's posted is on that subject.

45:11

So, you know, ding, ding, ding, one thing Benjo, one thing, you know, it's, it's just, that's all he does.

45:17

It's just, you know, well, the provisionist perspective guy, whoever that is, you know, called me a liar and he's some recent videos from, from Layton Flowers and stuff like that.

45:34

And, and it's not every, it's not one of every two. It's, it's less than that, even though there's entire sections where my face is just one after the other.

45:44

And so Namor PV posted the data.

45:51

He gave, put the whole thing out there. Here's, here's the readouts from the software, the, the software analysis, all the transcripts and the videos and so on and so forth.

46:02

And you know, there it is. And in fact, when he added something other than,

46:10

I forget what it was, he added another way of identifying me. It went up, it went up to 49%. And so I'm just like, why are we doing this?

46:21

I made a comment. I knew what the numbers were. But these folks, it doesn't matter right now.

46:28

I could literally say the sky is blue and they would do a three hour response video about how terrible and horrible

46:35

I am. It's, it's, it's an amazing, it's an amazing thing to observe. And I, you know,

46:40

I'm sitting here looking at the world collapsing around us wondering, is this where you'd be arguing about as the nuclear bombs start going off?

46:47

I have no idea because Iran's getting really scary. But anyway, that's another subject. So you mentioned this on your dividing line, this, the quote,

46:55

Born Again RN kind of brought this out. One of the last audience questions basically asked

47:02

Layton, and I've thought through this a number of times, and I come out of the Southern Baptist, which I believe the Southern Baptist preached the right gospel, have a lot of dear brothers over there, but there's nothing miraculous about our conversion.

47:14

And that was one of the pivotal moments, you know, in light of the debate. And it's interesting that Layton didn't just outright say, well, no, we're all, we all have this libertarian categorical ultimate ability to,

47:28

I don't know if you remember this, he debated, him and somebody else debated two hyper -Calvinists years ago.

47:35

And in Layton Flower's closing argument, he said, just as God can speak the world, ex nihilo, from nothing, we too, being made in the

47:43

Imago Dei, can speak our faith into existence from nothing. You know, Cornelius Van Til says, you know, you cannot blur the creator -creation distinction, as you've also echoed throughout time.

47:55

And so when you unificate the will of God and the will of man, the choice, then you have all these problems.

48:01

But if we let God be God, understanding that we reflect His image, we do make determinations and choices.

48:08

It's just not on the same level as God. And you've been saying that for years, but I really think you were able to bring that answer home of saying, of course, it's a miracle, right?

48:20

Someone who's dead in their sin to newness of life by the Spirit, that is the miracle that we see happening today, you know, in light of the book of Acts and so forth.

48:30

But that I really appreciate. Keep something in mind, that question was asked of him.

48:36

So he had 60 seconds. I had 30 seconds. And as I was listening to his response,

48:44

I realized he was really struggling. And he was struggling because he did not want to have to say, no, it's not a miracle.

48:56

So what he did is he started, well, you know, got the miracle, the gospel and this thing and that thing and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, dancing all around it.

49:06

Because he doesn't, he does, he does believe we have that innate capacity to simply be the choice meets.

49:16

It's what his position is. He may be ashamed of it and should be, but we're the choice meets.

49:23

And so I've got 30 seconds to basically say what the

49:29

Bible teaches about the fact that conversion is taking out a heart of stone and giving a heart of flesh.

49:35

It is raising the spiritually dead to life. Everybody in this room knows that their conversion to Christ was an absolute miracle.

49:45

Got 30 seconds to do that. And yeah, it was very telling, and a lot of people caught that.

49:51

They really did. So I don't like the misrepresentation that Flowers does when he just says, if God determines, you have absolutely no say in the matter.

50:03

And we're saying that's a misrepresentation of our side. Now, we don't always get into the philosophy, but I study a lot of compatibilism, understanding that, like you said, we're not flattening out the decree of God.

50:17

As it's happening in real time, and I like how you always bring out, well, I guess that means the incarnation is meaningless.

50:22

But your whole point is saying the decree matters as we're making choices according to our heart's desire.

50:28

Not only is true, but it's grounded in meaning because of God's eternal choice.

50:34

So when they just, it's an external critique. It's a straw man when they say, well, if God predetermined, then your choice doesn't matter altogether.

50:43

And the thing is, Dr. White, he knows, but he does it anyway, because I think for maybe the layperson, maybe that's new to the conversation, that's very persuasive to them.

50:53

Well, I guess if God has predetermined, then I don't have any choice in the matter. Yeah, I did get the opportunity.

51:00

The question was asked, if there is a sovereign decree, then why do we bother with evangelism or prayers like that?

51:09

And those are common questions. You've answered them 10 ,000 times if you've answered them once.

51:14

So I did have the opportunity of addressing some of those things. But the reality is that that's

51:22

Flowers' big thing. And it's that flattening out. And it's simply, if you listen to the debate that he did on Unbelievable, I think it was on Unbelievable.

51:39

And I think it might have been with Chris Dade, I'm not sure. Because I think it's the same school.

51:44

I don't remember. Anyway, he just fell flat on his face trying to deal with Isaiah 10 or Genesis 50 or Acts 4.

51:59

Dr. White, the Assyrians were already rebels of God. Right.

52:06

He can't let everything that Scripture says enter into the testimony.

52:14

And it's really, really painful to listen to, honestly.

52:20

It really, really is. So people who wanted to catch that, they were still listening at the end of the debate.

52:32

That was good. That was helpful because they heard those questions. You know,

52:38

I think about two nights later and Dale Tuggy struggling to do

52:47

Cross -X. I really wonder how many people had any idea what was really going on with a lot of his, not only his responses, but even his questions.

53:02

Because he's so enslaved by his system and his philosophical system, and he's just not good at doing impromptu give and take.

53:17

He's just not. At least Leighton and I were going at it fork and tongue.

53:29

I mean, look, Dr. Tuggy's opening was, you know,

53:35

I can see the audience and they're just sort of like, not really following along very well.

53:43

You know, going, where is he going with all of this? You know, they're getting all this stuff.

53:55

Remind me of this. Something you've said for years, and I always enjoyed this point when I finally understood it. You know, you start in Isaiah 6 about Yahweh.

54:04

His glory fills the heavens essentially there. Then John chapter 12 identifies

54:10

Yahweh with Jesus. I was in the car listening to the debate, and he just said, yeah, that's the glory of Jesus or something like that.

54:18

I've never thought that they have a good reply to what's being communicated by John.

54:25

Yeah, their fundamental answer there is just Jesus is representative of God, and in his mind, the key argument is

54:36

Yahweh's Unitarian, and Yahweh does not have a God above him, and therefore

54:42

Jesus can't be Yahweh. So these passages just have to be explained away. There is no overriding desire on the part of Unitarians to make sure that what they believe is being derived specifically from Scripture.

55:06

Sicilianism is a rationalistic thing. It's not very spiritual, and that's why it always dies out.

55:15

It's cold. They definitely struggle with that because they're not trying to hold all of Scripture together.

55:27

They've decided the passages that show that Jesus was a man, which no one disputes.

55:34

They are the key, and all the rest of these are just obscure passages. We don't really know what that means.

55:40

We don't really know what this means. His means of trying to get around Hebrews 1, 10 through 12 was pathetically weak, just pathetically weak.

55:51

I was stunned by that one. I wondered where he was going to go, because I know where Anthony Buzzard goes with it, but he didn't even go there.

56:01

He literally tried to say, this isn't about the Son. Okay, I didn't expect that one, but anyway.

56:09

Hey, someone out there in Facebook land, you may know him. Eric Yeager said, we might have to just do a debate on John 3, 16 to help out the

56:18

Flower Patch Kids. Well, I think Mr.

56:23

Yeager should do that himself. That's right, Eric. I would gladly volunteer him, since he does have experience doing debates.

56:33

I would volunteer him to do that with a provision, whether it's lighten flowers or whatever.

56:43

I'd really like to see that. I get to volunteer him, because I have certain connections that he can't escape.

56:56

I'm his kid's grandfather. Has he persuaded you to the -

57:05

Let me just go ahead and say this. I've said this in other contexts, but I've said to him, you are the next generation.

57:17

I'm not going to be able to do this forever. My hearing's not as good as it used to be.

57:24

I struggled a few times. Tuggy was not enunciating, and it almost sounded like mumbling to me.

57:33

He needed to speak up. That's only going to get worse as time goes by.

57:41

Jeff Durbin, Eric Yeager, they need to step up.

57:47

I can help them arrange the debates, but they need to get in there. Eric did great in a debate he did last year up in Utah.

57:57

Let's do it. If he'd like, maybe he and I could team up for a debate, just to get the feet wet and stuff like that.

58:11

That would be a whole lot of fun. I'd be honored to do that. I contacted Eric in light of his last debate, because I've been exploring the world more of Reformed Baptist covenant theology.

58:21

You might concede this, but I come from the Johnny Mac world of dispensationalism.

58:27

I love Johnny Mac, but I've left that world.

58:34

I had to message Eric more questions, and I got to interview

58:40

Jeffrey Johnson. I read his book on the

58:45

Kingdom of God, just mind -blowing, mind -shattering realities, and seeing the beauties of the covenants, how they relate together, and how they distinguish from the

58:55

Presbyterian. My question is, has Eric persuaded you more of some of that 1689 federalism terminology?

59:05

He's a wise man. There are times we go over to their house after church on Sundays, normally anyways.

59:17

There are times I can tell he really wants to try to get into some deep theological waters.

59:25

I just want to have spaghetti and yummy garlic bread, and have fun with the kids.

59:35

I don't know if there's that huge of a difference as far as application is concerned, but no, we'll leave that to the

59:48

Jeff Johnsons of the world. Dr. Johnson, he doesn't want to do debates.

59:53

That's not his thing. You do have to have a particular set of skills, and that includes multitasking, the ability to listen, take notes, prioritize what you're doing, keep track of your own presentation, bring your audience along with you.

01:00:18

There's a lot of stuff that goes into it, and I don't think Dr. Johnson wants to go there.

01:00:25

Someone else at GBTS I think probably would be really good at that, and that's

01:00:30

Dr. Jeff Moore. He's just a fantastic young guy, just super high -quality people, really super high -quality people.

01:00:43

He was very, very helpful in getting me through this past weekend.

01:00:49

He was there, and he was always, what can we do for you, and things like that.

01:00:54

I just have tremendous respect for Jeff Moore, but Dr.

01:01:02

Johnson has made it clear that when it comes to debates, he'll leave that to me. I do want to tell you about something that's in the works.

01:01:11

There is somebody in Pine Bluff, Arkansas that is trying to orchestrate a two -on -two debate, and Dr.

01:01:17

Jeffrey Johnson has agreed to team up with me against Sonny Hernandez, the hyper -Calvinist.

01:01:24

Really? Yep, it's still in the works. We're trying to maybe do it for the fall time, but Dr.

01:01:30

Johnson, he published a book on the well -meant offer of the gospel, and Sonny wrote a rebuttal book to that, and so that'll be the central theme of the debate about if common grace exists.

01:01:41

That really surprises me. I know! That really surprises me. Everything that JJ has said to me has been...

01:01:53

I'm not into all that. I think you're rubbing off on him, though. Well, that would be cool, but we went to dinner after the class was over, and I was asking about what kind of response the book had gotten when it came out just a few months ago.

01:02:17

I had him on the dividing line, and we were talking about stuff like that right after he crashed on his mountain bike.

01:02:23

We talked about that, too. I remember you talking about that. Oh, gosh. You hit the front brake?

01:02:30

What are you thinking? But anyway, part of that discussion had been, you go out there and get those folks.

01:02:41

I'll write the books. You go do the debate. So he's thinking about doing a debate. Well, very, very interesting.

01:02:48

We'll see how that goes. Dr. White, thanks so much for coming on my channel.

01:02:54

I just want to encourage the audience. Check out Dr. White's books, debates, and people already kind of know those things, but I just want to thank you for your work, for contending for the kingdom, and like you said,

01:03:06

I know it's a little bit of your post -meal creeping in there, but you're thinking about the generations to come, and I love that because I think you mentioned it on the dividing line before.

01:03:17

We're going to get into an age where we can't even trust the media. We can't even trust the internet with going on, so we have to do these endeavors while we can.

01:03:27

We're already there. Yeah, we're already there. Well, Dr. White, I want to give you the final word.

01:03:32

Is there anything that you'd like to say to the audience? Well, just pray that I get home one piece, and the upcoming debates are only a matter of weeks away, and so I sure would like to be recovered, not coughing, not dealing with the other stuff that unfortunately

01:03:55

I'm having to deal with right now, and we need to get this RV fixed.

01:04:01

We've got roof problems, and they've only gotten worse on the trip.

01:04:07

She had been doing so well. Everything had been working great, and then the roof peeled back up here, and we had an

01:04:15

RV group come out, spent a lot of money to have them put a patch on it. It was garbage.

01:04:22

It lasted 135 miles and blew off, so I had to get another mobile

01:04:29

RV group to come out where I was last night, and that is holding, but we've got to get that done before I head for Louisiana, so I would rather have that than the guy that was testifying against Boeing and talking about how they're taking shortcuts and making their planes, who was just found in a motel parking lot in his truck having a self -inflicted gunshot wound.

01:05:03

Right. I'll take my roof issues over people not making airplanes right any day, so yeah.

01:05:14

Yeehaw. There you go. Well, all right, Dr. White. Until next time, hopefully

01:05:20

I can make it. I know you only maybe have so many more debates. I don't know how many more trips I can make it out to Texas, but hey, just keep on keeping on, and we'll keep praying for you.

01:05:30

Can't wait for you to come back to 12 -5. We have a new building, and when you come to Conway, you just got to include us in on that trip next time.

01:05:40

There you go. We'll look forward to it. All right, Dr. White. Take care. All right. God bless.

01:05:47

All right. Let's see if I can fix my screen over here. Thank you all for tuning in to the

01:05:54

Apologetic Dog. We had some technical difficulties, but that's okay. We kind of fixed it on the fly.

01:06:01

If you're able to tune in just a little bit after the beginning, I just want to once again remind you all of an announcement

01:06:09

I had at the beginning. Let's see if this pops up. I got a debate with Mike Hysaw coming up April 5th, 6 p .m.

01:06:19

on a Friday evening, and if you're in the Northeast Arkansas area or are within traveling distance, come check us out.

01:06:27

Come check it out in person. It's free admission. We'd love for you to be a part and just see a good old baptism debate between Reformed Baptist and the

01:06:37

Church of Christ. I've been interacting with Mike Hysaw, very much a gentleman.

01:06:44

I really look forward to this debate being professional and us getting into Acts 238.

01:06:49

I've been listening to his video content, and it's so funny as I've been listening to him. He's like, yeah,

01:06:55

Jeremiah's keeping his cards pretty close. I'm like, yeah, man. I'm not a Greek scholar like you over there.

01:07:01

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to that. If you've benefited from the apologetics ministry here at the

01:07:09

Apologetic Dog, please like and subscribe. That really helps this content be circulated and pushed out more into the world of YouTube and share this content.

01:07:19

This is exciting times. I'm really looking forward to just utilizing this studio here at my home.

01:07:26

Quick shout out to the babe of all babes, my smoking hot wife. She gave me this mug, by the way, but she made the coffee, so she gets to choose the mug.