Isaiah 44:24 and the LDS View of God, More on the Book of Abraham, Open Phones

And greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line on a Thursday afternoon. Lots to get to today, of course.

I'm going to hold off on some of the current events type stuff until we can get through what

I feel is important to do. We try to get some teachings, some information out, and then we'll look at a few interesting tweets.

Rachel Held Evans has tweeted in the spirit of Margaret Sanger today.

When they go down, they go down fast. I mean, they really do. And then we'll discuss a little bit about the big

Supreme Court day yesterday. Wow. And the repercussions to today and why there are some people who feel pain today because Anthony Kennedy is retiring from the

Supreme Court. I. I don't understand that. I mean, I understand why people, for example, who support gay marriage might be upset about that, because he wrote the

Obergefell decision, which was the 21st century version of Dred Scott. It was just it was the worst decision ever handed down by anybody.

I mean, we talked about it after it was given and I read portions of it. It's just it's childish. It was absolutely childish.

I mean, anybody who who who puts their name to something like that nails the coffin shut on their own judicial legacy.

I mean, but there are there are people who who are upset in the church has something to do with Trump, I guess.

I guess there are people who actually think it would be better if you had leftist ideologues packing the court now.

Can you imagine what the it would be? It would be what? With this one coming up, 7 -2 with leftist ideologues.

Woo hoo. That would be the end of that. Abortion, LGBTQ, transgenderism right through the door.

That's great. As long as it supports our politics. But anyways, we'll get to that a little bit later on,

I guess, though, that leaves me completely befuddled as to how people actually think.

But anyway. I remember years and years ago,

I've told the story that many moons ago, we there was a guy at the church we were going to that started a print screening business where you could do

T -shirts and stuff. And so we started going up to Salt Lake City regularly, and so we had these shirts made.

Well, first we had these satin baseball jackets made. I remember the first year we all wore our

Alpha and Omega Ministries satin baseball jackets. Unfortunately, the Alpha and Omega didn't last forever.

It didn't wash well. After a few years, it was not much of an

Alpha or Omega left. It faded. But hey, that first year, you gotta admit, probably the first two times we went up there, they were really cool.

We stood out. You could see us from a mile off. I think the first time up, the guys had gold ones and the gals had almost purplish ones, and then

I think we got red ones. I think we were able to expand the colors a little bit the second time around, if I recall correctly.

But anyway, boy, those were the days. Those were the days. I'd be driving my 1974

Sunbug, my VW Beetle up there. Yeah. Anyway, sometime around that time period, we had a

Witnessing with the Word T -shirt made. I wonder if anyone still has one of those.

I don't know. It's possible. There are some strange people that went with us up there that might have packed it away and sealed it in vacuum seal or something.

It's possible. I'd love to see one again. I could probably reproduce most of it.

It was this color fade thing, and it had Greek and Hebrew. It was all Greek and Hebrew. At the time,

Alpha and Omega only dealt with two groups, Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses. And so all the verses had to do with issues directly relevant to those particular subjects.

And I know Isaiah 43 .10 was one of the verses in Hebrew.

Deuteronomy 6 .4. And did we have Isaiah 44 .24? I thought we did. Yeah, I think so.

And so I remember I wore it one night when I went to pick up a guy named Tony from the airport at 2 o 'clock in the morning in Salt Lake City.

And this Jewish guy sees the Hebrew and starts talking to me. And as I go,

I sees the Greek and realizes it's Christian and just was so really, really offended that I would have

Hebrew on my shirt. Anyway, the reason that we had

Isaiah 44 .24 on the text is what I want on the t -shirt is what

I want to make sure everyone understands today. And it will sort of help us to transition back into the topic.

You can see the documentary History of the Church still sitting here. Back into the topic of Mormonism, I have a debate coming up with Alma Allred.

Debate slash discussion. I mean, it will have equal time stuff. So I guess it is a debate of some form.

But coming up on July 6 at Christ Presbyterian Church in Magna, Utah, which is over to the west of Salt Lake City, one of the suburbs there out toward the mountain.

And so hopefully if you're in that area, you'll be able to come along with and visit with us.

Anyway, Isaiah 44 .24, Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb,

I, the Lord and the maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by myself and spreading out the earth all alone. Now, it's very important, and I know the majority of the people in this audience are already fully aware of this reality.

But when you see the word

LORD in all capitals, not the same font size, but each of the letters is in a capitalized form, this is the

English Bible Translator's way of communicating to you the fact that you are reading the

Tetragrammaton. Specifically, Ko Amar Yahweh.

Yahweh. The four -letter name of God, which we slaughter in English as Jehovah.

And so, keeping that in mind, it says, Thus says—let's go ahead and use Jehovah, because we're talking about Mormonism today, and Mormonism uses the slaughtered version of the

Tetragrammaton. Thus says Jehovah, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb,

I, Jehovah, and the maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by myself and spreading out the earth all alone.

Now, you know, I didn't look at my quad to double -check to make sure.

If you look up Jehovah in the Bible dictionary in the quad, they'll tell you that L -O -R -D is

Jehovah, in case a Mormon questions you about that. Just keep that in mind. Why would we put this verse in Hebrew on a t -shirt with other verses?

Well, it's because of what modern Mormons—notice I said modern Mormons—believe about the words

Jehovah and Elohim. Jehovah and Elohim.

Now, the word Elohim is simply the

Hebrew word for God or gods, depending on what verb it's used with.

El, singular form, Elohim, plural form, but it can be translated as singular when it's used as a singular verb.

In the understanding of modern

Mormons—I keep saying that because there's good evidence that Joseph Smith didn't hold this view, that it's a development later on, but it is the official position of the church.

At least at the beginning of last century, early 1900s, the first presidency put out a statement about the identity of Jehovah and Elohim and identified specifically

Elohim as the Father and Jehovah as the Son. And when you understand

LDS theology, then you know that Elohim, in a physical body, begat the body of Jesus, and that Elohim, his first begotten spirit child in the spiritual preexistence, was

Jesus. And hence, in LDS theology, minimally since the early 1900s,

Jehovah and Elohim are separate and distinct gods. Now, anyone who reads the

Old Testament knows that Jehovah Elohim, Yahweh Elohim, Lord God, is used over 500 times in the

Old Testament. The two terms are used interchangeably. No one reading the

Old Testament would come to the conclusion that Jehovah and Elohim are separate, unless you chop the Old Testament up. And that's what liberalism has done, and that's why you have an

Elohist source and a Yahwist source and a priestly source and so on and so forth. Chop it up on the basis of usage, you can come up with whatever you want.

Joseph Smith didn't do that and did not have those categories, did not have the categories of liberal, unbelieving form criticism to be drawing from.

Though his offspring today certainly do. BYU and places like that, problem being, if you think that creates a mess out of the

Old Testament, yeah, see what it does to the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Progress, Price. Those scriptures are utterly incapable of survival without being completely spiritualized upon analysis.

Anyway, so you can see why Isaiah 44 -24 is relevant. Thus says

Jehovah, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb, I Jehovah, the maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by myself and spreading out the earth all alone.

Jehovah is the only creator, but that's not the case in LDS theology.

And let me prove this to you. Now, I could just give you some quotes, but it's a little bit easier to listen to something.

And most of you have never heard this before. I'm going to listen in too. We left this sitting here on since I'm sure it's deader than the proverbial doornail.

Probably about three o 'clock Wednesday morning, it was in here talking to itself. I can no longer connect.

Anyway, many years ago, when those little teeny microcassette recorders were designed, an individual went through the

LDS endowment ceremony. Actually, I had to go through it a number of times because little cassettes only lasted so long, and recorded all of it.

And so I remember back sometime, was it in the 80s? May have been in the early 90s that I was able to listen to the entire endowment ceremony for the first time.

Well, since then, they have developed micro cameras. And so you can go on YouTube and watch the entire

LDS endowment ceremony, which Mormons will say is sacred, not secret.

Well, I'll let you judge that for yourself. Anyway, the point is that this is from the recording of the current

LDS endowment ceremony, which has changed many times. It's fascinating just to analyze that because there's good evidence that many

Mormons have believed that the endowment ceremony is revelational. That it's a part of revelation itself.

Be that as it may, early on in the creation scene, you hear a dialogue going on involving three separate personages.

Elohim, Jehovah, and Michael. Elohim, Jehovah, and Michael. So let's listen to a few moments so you can get the feeling of all of this.

I've got maximum volume here, so hopefully we'll be able to hear it. Well, Jehovah, Michael, go down again.

Gather the waters together and cause the dry land to appear. The great waters call you seas, and the dry land call you earth.

Form mountains and hills, great rivers and small streams, to beautify and give variety to the face of the earth.

Call your labors the second day and bring me word. It shall be done, Elohim. Come, Michael, let us go down.

We will go down, Jehovah. Michael, we will gather the waters together.

Okay, so, already heard enough there. You have one voice saying, go do these things.

Then you have another voice saying, we will go down. Come, Michael. And the other voice responds and calls the second voice,

Jehovah. So you have Elohim, and Elohim commands

Jehovah and Michael to go down and organize, not create, organize the earth.

Because in Mormon theology, God cannot create. He cannot simply say and something comes into existence.

The Mormon God organizes pre -existing matter, because in Mormonism, intelligences and matter are the only two eternal things.

And so, there you have, being presented in the temple, three personages.

Elohim sends down Jehovah and Michael. So Jehovah and Michael are subordinate to Elohim.

In the LDS temple ceremony. And that continues to be the case today.

This is the modern endowment ceremony. Now, with that in mind, I draw your attention back to Isaiah 44, 24, where Jehovah says,

I, Jehovah, am the maker of all things, stretching out the heavens, what? By myself and spreading out the earth all alone.

Not Mormonism. Jehovah was sent down to do this by Elohim, and he was accompanied by Michael.

So, when you know what the

Bible is actually saying, you discover over and over and over again, that Joseph Smith was massively ignorant of the fundamental teachings of Scripture.

Massively ignorant. The Bible is not central to the definition of LDS theology at all.

And neither is the Book of Mormon, to be perfectly honest with you. The central elements of LDS theology developed well after the period of time when the

Book of Mormon was written. And as Joseph took the role of prophet, seer, and revelator,

I'd really start seeing some of the major changes around 1834. Then, 1835 with Michael Chandler, Book of Abraham, Papyrus.

By 1838, things are starting to get really wild. And by his, as I've said many, many times before, if he had not been murdered in a

Carthage jail, there would not be any Mormonism today. There just wouldn't be. You would not be able to make heads or tails out of it.

It would have become so massively self -contradictory that there would be no

Mormonism at all. So, one of many, many texts where the

Biblical text, in fact, I was asked, when I asked this question in the

Visitor's Center of the Mesa Arizona Temple many years ago, talking to the elderly folks who were at the front desk,

I was asked to leave, to leave the Visitor's Center. Because, well,

I was just considered to be causing trouble there, I guess. Which takes us back to what we were talking about on the last program, and that is in reference to Joseph Smith's claims regarding LDS Scripture, current

LDS Scripture. I showed you my triple combination that I just picked up at the

LDS bookstore. And if you're concerned about that, here's the

Book of Abraham. There you can see one of the facsimiles in the Book of Abraham. It's still right here in the

LDS Scriptures that are being sold this very day at Deseret Book or wherever else they might be.

And this is part of the canon of the LDS Church.

And I told you the story of what had happened back on July 3rd in 1835.

And why do I have that mark there? Let me see here.

Yeah, this is July 1835, July 3rd.

Michael H. Chandler came to Kirtland to exhibit some Egyptian mummies. There were four human figures together with some two or more rolls of papyrus covered with hieroglyphic figures and devices.

As Mr. Chandler had been told, I could translate them, which is one of the powers of a seer, prophet, revelator, and seer.

He brought me some of the characters, and I gave him the interpretation. And like a gentleman, he gave me the following certificate.

And so we have the content there. And then, page 236,

Volume 2, Soon after this, some of the saints at Kirtland purchased the mummies and papyrus, a description of which will appear hereafter.

It was for $2 ,400. Someone sent me the modern equivalent was like $87 ,000 or something like that.

A description of which will appear hereafter. And with W. W. Phelps and Oliver Cowdery as scribes, I commenced the translation of some of the characters or hieroglyphics.

And much to our joy, found that one of the rolls contained the writings of Abraham, another the writings of Joseph of Egypt, etc.,

a more full account of which will appear in its place as I proceed to examine or unfold them. And truly, we can say the

Lord is beginning to reveal the abundance of peace and truth. And then, at a later point, we had read this portion that discussed the continuing work of translation and the working on the

Egyptian alphabet and grammar on the part of, this is from October 1st of 1835.

This afternoon, I labored on the Egyptian alphabet in company with brothers Oliver Cowdery and W. W. Phelps.

And during the research, the principles of astronomy as understood by Father Abraham and the ancients unfolded to our understanding, the particulars of which will appear hereafter.

Now, it seems that this translation work went in two spurts.

Here in 1835, then it was laid aside. And nothing much is said about it all until 1842, when all of a sudden it is finished up and the book of Abraham appears.

I mentioned some of the books. Oh, great. I left Guy's book and Larson's book in the other room.

But I mentioned some of the books last time that are available. I have another one here from fairly recently called the

Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri by Robert K. Rittner from Signature Books, which

I sort of expected to be LDS Signature Books. But it really isn't.

It's critical and recognizes the fact that basically

Joseph Smith had no earthly idea of what he was talking about when he did this. In fact, just to give you a taste of it, on page 265, in the book of Abraham, Smith provided an explanation for 21 figures, a term he used haphazardly to include both images and text passages.

Although it could be argued that his explanations were not intended as translations, Smith did specifically label them as such in his concluding remarks in the explanation of facsimile 2, the above translation is given as far as we have any right to give at the present time, emphasis added.

One of the keystones of the modern defense of the book of Abraham is to try to attack the idea that it's translation, because it's not.

We now have the papyri in our possession, and there is no translation going on here.

Not in any meaningful use of that word translation, and certainly not as Joseph Smith himself represented it at the very time of this.

Since Smith provided a common explanation for numbers 12 to 21, etc., etc., then it says, as will be seen,

Smith's numbering indicates that he could not recognize the usual order of the text, right to left.

So he didn't recognize which way Egyptian was read. Nor could he distinguish text written upside down and oriented to the inverted scene below them.

So he goes the wrong direction, and when the text is inverted to actually refer to an image below it, he doesn't recognize that and has things upside down.

Upside down and backwards is what is found in the Egyptian alphabet and grammar and things like that.

And in the facsimiles. Since facsimile 2 contains distortions clearly introduced by Smith, so in other words, as you can sort of see, let me see if I can do this.

You can sort of see, yeah, that's a good look at the cover. You can sort of see here, the brown is what we have of the facsimiles, and then you can see what has been added in as it appears in the

LDS scriptures. And what has been added in is a distortion. There wouldn't be a human head on that.

These are scenes from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Book of Breathings. These are common funerary documents that were buried with individuals to give them guidance and power in the afterlife.

And the scenes that they contain have zip to do with Abraham, the time of Abraham, have nothing to do with Abraham.

They're not from that time period. They are clearly and plainly in reference to other items that come from long after the days of Abraham.

Standard Egyptian funerary documents from around the first century.

And so there's no issue there whatsoever in what these things actually represent, what they actually are.

So, couldn't tell whether it was written upside, backwards, whatever. So, since Facsimile 2 contains distortions clearly induced by Smith, who further added revelatory translation explanation for the artificial insertions.

So, he messed up when he tried to restore what was missing and then gave translation of what he messed up.

Apologists are caught between reproducing the false but traditional image or defending its flawed content.

Given the obvious discrepancy revealed between the

Smith and modern interpretations, Rhodes' conclusion is startling from any scholarly perspective.

So, here's a, you know, Michael Dennis Rhodes, the Mormons have been struggling for many years now to come up with some way of explaining the fact that once these papyri became available, there had already been criticism.

As soon as people began to understand, you know, the Mormons left and went to Utah.

And man, they were sort of out of sight, out of mind. They had their own little kingdom out there and they're out in the middle of nowhere.

And so, they can sort of develop on their own.

And that's when polygamy flourishes and all sorts of things like that. But even with that, they still sent missionaries back into more populated areas.

And once you get into the later half of the 19th century and Egyptian starts becoming understood, there were a few people who encountering the

LDS scriptures and seeing those images, who knew what they were, are going, that's not what any of that means.

All these explanations are completely wrong. The facsimiles have been altered and changed and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

What are y 'all talking about? And so, there had been criticism for a long time, but most of the

Mormons were insulated from that, being out in the inner mountain west. It was not until the papyri were found that you now had the evidence from the papyri that went together with the evidence from the facsimiles.

And you could have a full testing of Joseph Smith's claims to be able to translate only five chapters of the

Book of Abraham over against 532 pages of the

Book of Mormon. If you can't get five chapters, you certainly didn't get the 530 pages right either.

And since Smith didn't get a word right, I mean, other than,

I guess you could say that, you know, there are certain hieroglyphs that would be taken as containing a definite article and he got the word the in.

But literally, he would literally take one symbol and end up with 60 -70

English words from a single symbol. He had no earthly idea what he was doing. And, you know, if it was the word the and you get the in there, that doesn't count as having gotten it right.

So, what they've done is they've come up with, well, obviously Joseph Smith wasn't intending this to be seen as a translation.

Yes, he was. It's silly. This was a mnemonic device to, you know, he just got all this by direct revelation from God, just like his other revelations in the

Doctrine and Covenants. And the papyri were just sort of a, you know, cool thing to show people, but really didn't have anything to do with the revelation.

None of which would fit. Nobody in the early church believed that. Nobody at that time believed that.

That's not what was what was believed at the time. But since we now can test

Joseph Smith, we've got to come up with a way to make it unverifiable one way or the other so you can maintain belief in Joseph Smith.

So with that, you've got Rhodes's, you have the quote here, Rhodes's conclusion is startling from any scholarly perspective.

And what did Rhodes say? Quote, it should come as no surprise to members of the church that as we gain more understanding of Egyptian matters, we find an increasing number of Joseph Smith's explanations of facsimile too are in accord with that increased understanding.

End quote. That is the voice of very gullible faith that flies in the face of the facts as they, as they exist.

And that's what, that's what they have to do. Because the book of Abraham is one of the, absent having golden plates to look at, the book of Abraham is as close as we're going to get to any kind of test of Joseph Smith's translating abilities, which were his claim to be able to translate those languages was central to his claim of authority, absolutely central to his claim of authority.

And it's not like the book of Abraham is a, the central doctrinal teaching of, of the

Mormon church. But if you did take the time to look at the tract that I mentioned on the last program,

Men Is Not God, you may have seen the images that were included in that.

I actually haven't looked at it for a while to, to see here.

And I didn't bring this up. Let me see if I can grab it real, real quick.

And it's loading and there it is. And this is the facsimile.

So you have that there? This is the facsimile, facsimile number two.

I guess I need to, well, I thought I had, oh, it is. As it appears right here in, in the, in the

LDS scriptures, even, even today. And you will notice the explanation that is provided.

Kolob, signifying the first creation nearest to the celestial or the residence of God, first in government, the last pertaining to the measurement of time, the measurement according to celestial time, which celestial time signifies one day to a cubit.

Yeah, figure that one out. One day in Kolob is equal to a thousand years according to the measurement of this earth, which is called by the

Egyptians Jah -oh -eh. Sounds Klingon to me, but we'll move on from there.

Stands, then figure two stands next. So what was figure one? Here's, here's figure two right here.

Here's figure three. There's four, there's figure one. So there's Kolob.

Now is that Kolob in Egyptian, in Egyptian lore or magic? No, of course not. These, these are each identifiable gods and identifiable situations doing certain things that are specifically allowed, allowing a person to have passage through the realm of the dead.

There's no Jah -oh -eh or anything else in any of, of this material whatsoever.

Figure two stands next to Kolob, called by the Egyptians Oliblish, which is the next grand governing creation near to the celestial or the place where God resides.

Now we understand that according to the book of Abraham, God lives on a planet that circles a star named

Kolob. And so this is why this is important.

And so you go through this and, and eventually you get down to what we focused upon in our tract, which is figure seven.

Figure seven represents God sitting upon his throne, revealing to the heavens, the grand keywords, the priesthood, as also the sign of the

Holy Ghost unto Abraham in the form of a dove. Now, what is that? Well, figure seven,

I get it centered up here, is, is right here. It's upside down from our perspective.

This is supposed to be God sitting upon his throne, revealing to the heavens, the grand keywords, the priesthood.

And this is the Holy Spirit approaching with the, in the sign, the form of a sign of a dove.

Now, when you actually know something about Egyptology, you know that this is all incredibly idolatrous material.

And that the God represented there is actually a sexually aroused male deity named

Min. And that's the widget, what widget I, what, why did

I, I forget what it was, but I'm sorry. Yeah, it was anyway, being presented to, it has nothing to do with the

Holy Spirit, priesthoods, well, I suppose, Egyptian priesthoods, pagan priesthoods, but nothing to do with, with what was connected to the text of the book of Abraham.

And just, just quoting Mormons, trying to explain this stands as its own self -refutation.

I mean, to anyone who wants to critically examine things. And here's, here's the point I want to make. There is nothing, nothing that corresponds to this kind of thing in biblical

Christianity. Nothing. In other words, what I'm saying is, I know

I've, I've pretty much encountered the, the toughest questions and arguments about, you know, from source criticism and form criticism, and alleged contradictions and, and world religions theories and borrowing from this and borrowing from that, all the rest of that kind of stuff.

There is nothing in the Christian faith where we have to deal with something like this.

Where you, you have, when you take the claims of Joseph Smith in their normal language, and as how they were understood by everyone around them.

And when you analyze that, you discover very, very clearly that Joseph Smith had no idea what he was doing, what he was saying when it came to being a translator.

That was obvious, even his comments on other things, biblical translation illustrated that as well.

But the fact is that this was central to his claim as prophet, revelator and seer.

And yet to see entire books written today, trying to gloss these things over and say, well, you know, this is, you know, revelation is a, is a tricky thing.

You know, it's very subjective. Here's, here's the problem. If Mormonism keeps going this direction, once you spiritualize the book of Abraham, you've got no way of avoiding spiritualizing the

Book of Mormon. That's already happening because we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the

Olmecs and Mayans and Aztecs and all the rest of them had nothing to do with the Book of Mormon story.

That the Book of Mormon story of horses and chariots and bows and arrows and steel swords and all the rest of that stuff didn't exist on this continent.

That's a fact. And so they've already had to shrink the

Book of Mormon area down to a teeny tiny little spot so that no one would ever be able to find it.

So there wouldn't be any material remains of this entire civilization.

Even though, you know, I'm reading Bushman's biography of Joseph Smith right now.

He tells the story of Zulf, the white Lamanite. He didn't duck it.

I mean, he's spinning it. But he tells the story of Zulf, the white Lamanite, where Joseph Smith, after the publication of the

Book of Mormon, traveling with some of the brethren, they come across a burial mound, which were quite common given the presence of the native populations at the time.

They dug down, found a corpse. There was allegedly an arrow through its ribs.

And by revelation, Joseph explained that this was Zulf, the white

Lamanite. Now this is way out in the east. What that means clearly is that Joseph Smith believed the

Book of Mormon story took place over a vast area. A vast area.

Extending all the way into upstate New York. I mean, Moroni is the one that hides the plates there.

And so to try to say, well, you know, it probably happened in a couple square miles, somewhere down Mesoamerica.

And given the conditions there, you know, we wouldn't expect to be able to find any material remains, blah, blah, blah.

That's Mormonism's utter retreat. And once you spiritualize the

Book of Abraham away, and these were just things that Joseph Smith experienced, and seeing these pagan papyri made him think of Abraham, next step is to do it with all of the

Book of Mormon. And all you gotta do is look what's happened to what used to be called the

RLDS church, which became the Community of Christ. Deeply influenced by Protestant liberalism.

And like every denomination that becomes deeply influenced by Protestant liberalism, it's dying away.

Dying away, they all do. Liberalism is the kiss of death. And is that what's going to happen with Mormonism?

I don't know. I've said more than once, if you had a real charismatic leader rise up right now, the system that Mormonism has adopted for leadership makes sure you can never have charismatic leadership anymore.

Plainly not what Joseph Smith intended. Plainly not what Joseph Smith intended.

But that's what they've got. And so every time you've got a new president of the church, he's older than dirt.

And not able to be any kind of mover or shaker. And so, could that happen?

Yeah, I could see a lot of those conservative, old -time Mormons down there in southern

Utah have a good enough leader come along, but it would shatter the entire thing.

And there's a lot of money. A lot of money involved in that church.

Powerful forces. So, who knows what's going to happen there.

But anyway, so we'll be having a discussion on Friday night,

July 6th. Magna Utah, Alma Arad and I, one of the Three Nephites. And if you don't know who the

Three Nephites are, then you probably don't get why that's sort of funny. We met the Three Nephites at General Conference.

And they claimed to be the Three Nephites, remember? Were you there?

You saw them? Yeah, they had the robes and the beards, walking around Temple Square.

There were three of them, the Three Nephites. And if you're not familiar with that, Mormonism used to believe—

I'm not going to say that all Mormons believe this anymore, but it's certainly part of Mormon lore.

The Book of Mormon certainly says that three of the twelve apostles that Jesus chose, when he came here, because he didn't ascend back to heaven after his resurrection.

He came over here and established his church in the Americas. And managed to somehow preach the

Sermon on the Mount from the King James Version of the Bible. And then sort of did the

I Dream of Jeannie thing with the twelve apostles and said, ask anything you wish. And three of the twelve asked to remain until he returned.

And so good old faithful Mormons believe there are three guys running around somewhere in America who are currently over 2 ,000 years of age.

And so they're called the Three Nephites. And like I said, they showed up in Salt Lake.

I'm not sure why there's any question about it. And I just think that Alma Allred looks very much like he's one of the

Three Nephites. Because he didn't have all that white hair when we first met him in Salt Lake.

Why would they have white hair? Because they're over 2 ,000 years old.

So it doesn't say how they'd be kept or preserved. It doesn't say like their clothes wouldn't wear out or something.

I don't know. But he just looks like one of the Three Nephites to me. So that'll be on the sixth.

So I dragged this over here. Yeah. Okay.

Here, let's do it this way. Hold on a second. Let me try to find stack real quick.

And let's get ready to open what? You don't want to do phone calls?

Folks, I'm not sure Rich wants to do phone calls. And if, you know,

I mean, I want to. I tell people routinely, they ask me, is

James going to take calls today? And I tell them every time. I find this out about 30 seconds before you do.

And this is proof of it. This is proof, folks. If you don't believe me when I tell you this, this is proof.

Suddenly it's like, oh, we're going to take calls. Oh, okay. I better get moving. You know,

Rich used to say he used to, you know, back when in the day, he used to say, hey,

I'm good. I can do this. You know, as he's been getting older, it seems like the confidence level is slipping just a little bit.

Just going down just a little bit. 877 -753 -3341.

877 -753 -3341 is the phone number if you'd like to get involved with the program today after we talk about some of this odd stuff.

Now, the real tough thing now is I'm going to be trying to show you something at the same time he's screening calls.

So this will be a little bit tricky for him. But we'll see what we can do.

So I mentioned the Rachel Held Evans tweet, which I've read somewhere else that she eventually deleted.

But hey, you know, once you hit send, as I well know, it is there.

And so there are like 21 comments, 82 retweets, 615 likes.

I'm sorry? Yeah. Rachel Held Evans.

So when I see conservatives celebrating the millions of lives that will be saved if Roe is overturned,

I wonder if they realize a significant percentage of these lives would be in poor communities of color, communities this administration has actively oppressed.

Once you go off the rails and fly headfirst into apostasy, there aren't too many things to grab onto on the way down.

You know, it's a pretty much straight cliff issue. And I mean, aside from the communities, this administration is actively oppressed.

I'm not sure what that means. As far as I can tell, professional sports is still predominated by black athletes.

And I think there is still a whole lot of, well, there's folks in Congress, and I think there's still an

African American on the Supreme Court. I haven't seen the camps being set up and stuff like that, but, you know, it's a narrative you're supposed to use.

But I'm just wondering if good old Rachel recognizes that she's sort of channeling the spirit of Margaret Sanger because that's what

Planned Parenthood was all about, was bringing about the Holocaust of, as Sanger put it, human weeds.

The lesser peoples. And of course, at the bottom of that list were black people. That's what

Sanger just wanted. Genocide. And there's been a genocide, continues to be a genocide.

And what's amazing, it does sort of fit in here, is, you know, now there's all this discussion about the overthrow of Roe v.

Wade. Call me a non -post -millennialist,

I guess, but I don't see it happening. My prediction is there is going to be thermonuclear political warfare.

You need to remember that Anthony Kennedy's seat, the first person that was nominated to fill that seat, was a man by the name of Robert Bork.

And if you want to see how the left can be utterly destructive of liberty, truth, personal behavior, morals, ethics, and everything else, just look at what they did to Bork.

The second person was nominated, had to drop out for other reasons. And then the third was

Anthony Kennedy. Kennedy has been a disaster, and I can't believe that people on Twitter tried to defend him.

One word, I even had a guy just recently, there's only one word that ends any, let's see, what was this?

I mean, I only saw it scrolling by while I was talking about Mormonism. Yeah, Christ is the only word that closes a case.

Well, that's nice, but has nothing to do with what I said. Zero to do. Talk about completely missing the point.

I had said to this fellow, there's one word in regards to Kennedy's legacy.

Obergefell. Case closed. Trying to spiritualize that, do the

Christianity juke thing, irrelevant. I can simply say to any human being on the planet, read a

Obergefell, read it from a position of knowing something about history, and weep, not only for the nation, but for the man who put his name to it.

I will not honor someone who has done the things that Anthony Kennedy has done to this nation.

I'm going to be taking this down, by the way, thank you. So, his retirement, some people say resignation, it wasn't resignation.

His retirement does, and I'm sorry for those of you outside the

United States, even though most folks outside the United States still follow these things. His retirement opens the possibility of getting someone in there that would be a great jurist.

The left, the absolute ownership of the

Democratic Party by Planned Parenthood, and the culture of death, it is so complete that this will be scorched earth, we will destroy the nation if we have to.

We will take the nation down to keep this from happening. They'll do it. I don't think anyone has any idea how far they'll go here.

They'll do it. They were dreaming, they were dreaming of minimally a 6 -3, and maybe a 7 -2, complete control of the judiciary, and hence the end of constitutional protections for religious liberty,

I mean, there you go. That's what they were hoping for.

And now they're seeing the possibility, because they can't do it through the legislative branch, they've locked the legislative branch up, they've made it non -functional.

There isn't anybody on the left anymore who will do anything that's right for the nation. They just won't do it. They're sold out to it.

And so what they do is they do it through the judicial, they control the judicial. This is a complete overthrow of the intention of the

Constitution. Don't even glance at me and try to pretend that you honor the

Constitution, you honor the founders, you don't. Everybody on the left, you don't.

You know you don't. So I'm looking at this situation, and looking at the decisions that have come down, and going, well, this is really fascinating here, boy, that was a close one there.

And of course, everyone has had the same thought, and that is, in the last election,

I did not feel like I had any choice. I lamented at the time that I could not, in good conscience, give my support to either of the major candidates for very different reasons.

It was a personal integrity issue with Donald Trump, primarily.

And then, I can't begin to conceive of voting for a socialist, pro -LGBTQ, transgender, profaning marriage, owned body and soul by Planned Parenthood.

Corrupt to the core candidate. So I didn't, it was a mess,

I said at the time. But we're sitting here now. And you look at Judge Gorsuch, now you look at this situation, with another candidate coming up, another appointee, and all you gotta do is go, what if Gorsuch was a wild -eyed revisionist, which is what we've gotten from Obama, and, you know, an ideologue, leftist ideologue.

What if Gorsuch was there? Almost every decision that's come down over the past few weeks would be the opposite, with a few exceptions.

And then with this one, you'd have a 7 -2. You'd have almost nobody left that has any meaningful grasp or concern about the meaning of the

Constitution of the United States. And so, as I look at it,

I see, again, somewhat of the possibility of a brief hiatus from the trend of off -the -cliff, with -the -accelerator -stuck toward totalitarianism.

And as such, given that Kennedy was not only a turncoat as to who appointed him, but just such a disaster in the decisions that he wrote.

Even in the Cake case, if you read what he said, he left open the destruction of religious liberty.

If you just don't tip your hand, I mean, it's just bad, really, really bad.

He's retiring. In the whole, that's a good thing.

That's a good thing. So, I don't get, I don't understand,

I'm sort of lost by Kyle J.

Howard's tweet. And here's what it says.

Today, many Christians will celebrate the potential fruit of their 2016 moral compromise.

SCOTUS. So, I'm assuming that what he means here is that by voting for Trump, which

I didn't, but by voting for Trump, that was the 2016 moral compromise and that the potential fruit is

SCOTUS. That is the justices on the

Supreme Court. This isn't how our government was supposed to function, but that's how it was developed. Today, many

Christians of color who were the collateral damage of that compromise are feeling fresh pain as they witness evangelical world rejoice.

God, have mercy on your church. Evidently, that's the same mindset that is behind Thabiti Anyabwili's article this morning in,

I believe, it was the Washington Post titled

Overturning Roe v. Wade Isn't Worth Compromising with Trump, My Fellow Evangelicals.

And when you read through it, there is a narrative that has to be accepted.

And the narrative is a highly disputed narrative where you tie together sort of an open borders idea and you're upset that Trump could actually identify certain countries and say that these countries have to have stricter standards as to people coming in.

That somehow is a terrible, horrible, racist thing. You have to totally accept the idea that Trump is a racist.

They don't bother with the evidence. It's always, you know, hearsay type stuff. And then you have the drug penalties thing, which

I go, that doesn't have any impact upon people who don't deal or do drugs.

Okay. All right. That would seem to be the solution to these issues. But evidently, when you put all that together, somehow that creates this evil, ogre people on the right, which is supposed to,

I guess, convince you that it would be better if Hillary Clinton were to be choosing these

Supreme Court justices. I don't understand that. But the tweet, the tweet leaves me going, okay, so the guy who wrote

Obergefell, and I don't know if Kyle J. Howard read

Obergefell. I have. I read you portions of Obergefell on this program when we got back.

But the guy who wrote Obergefell, who profaned marriage, is retiring.

And if the quote -unquote evangelical world rejoices that someone that we could identify as an evil ruler,

I mean, the judiciary has taken a ruling position, shouldn't have it, but has, then evil ruler is being removed.

This causes Christians of color fresh pain. Now remember,

Kennedy has been horrific on abortion, which has murdered countless millions of POC, people of color.

But his retirement is supposed to cause feelings of fresh pain.

You have to have adopted an intractable position of constant offense to even be able to understand what's being said here.

There is no reason, there is no logical or rational reason for anyone to feel pain here, except for Planned Parenthood.

But the idea that Christians of color, a Christian would find it problematic that a man who has promoted ungodliness in the land will no longer be able to do so?

What are the ultimate priorities here? It's amazing.

It truly is amazing. Many Christians of color, who were the collateral damage of that compromise,

I don't understand that. I mean, I didn't vote for either one. Am I collateral damage?

No, wrong color. You can't see the racism there? You can't see the filters?

It's obvious to me. It just seems like there are some people who have a vested interest in making sure there is constant, regular refreshment of sources of pain and trauma.

He is a trauma counselor, a racial trauma counselor, so as to maintain the categories of division.

So we can't even rejoice at something that we should all rejoice at.

I don't care what your color is. A man who presented infantile argumentation in defense of redefining and profaning marriage, the gift of God to the people, has been removed.

And if you can't rejoice at that, then your politics have overrun your biblical categories.

By a long shot. By a long shot. You're seemingly just living your life to find reasons to be offended at anything, and you can't even rejoice at what should give you reason to rejoice.

And then, if the rest of us don't get on board, then we are bad people for that.

Okay. Well, look at that.

We've got all the lines filled up. So let's, let's get to the calls and get through them here.

And just looking at them, I'm just going to start at the top and go with Josh in Houston.

Hi, Josh. Hello there. Thank you for taking my call. And my question is on John chapter 5, verse 32, and it's about free will.

So it's the best argument I've heard for libertarian free will from this passage because Jesus basically says, oh no, sorry, verse 34.

I say these things that you may be saved. And then after saying a few other things, in verse 40, yeah, verse 40, he closes by saying that his audience is refusing to come to him that they may have life.

And he says that people, you know, he's trying to save them, but that their free will is overriding his attempt.

And I just want to know your response to that. Well, aside from the fact that that would make

John 5 and 6 completely contradictory, and therefore we should give up on all of this because of Jesus' plain statement about the will of man being enslaved in John chapter 6, and going with mere implication from John chapter 5,

John chapter 5 specifically is saying, but the testimony which I receive is not from man, but I say these things that you may be saved.

We all believe that God provides the means by which individuals are saved.

I would assume that not only just as there were in John chapter 8, but in John chapter 5, there are people there in that audience who would eventually come to salvation, whether it was that day, whether it was six months later, whether it was after resurrection, whether it was at the preaching of the apostles, there were individuals there who were going to be saved.

Every time the apostles went out preaching, when Paul goes to Mars Hill, the majority of people, they scoff, they laugh, they dismiss him, but there were that small number who attached themselves to him, there was that small number who believed.

Every time you go out and proclaim the gospel, your intention is your desire to see people saved, but there is no promise that every time you speak the word, even when

Jesus spoke the word, that you give forth the gospel, that gospel message, that truth about God, that truth about Jesus Christ is used by the

Holy Spirit to bring people salvation. Who are the ones who are brought to salvation?

Well, the Bible addresses that. Ephesians chapter 1, Romans chapter 9, Romans chapter 8, there's all sorts of places that specifically talk about these elect of God.

There's Paul's statement, he endures everything for the sake of who? The elect of God. It's not because of you that you're in Christ Jesus, it's because of him that you're in Christ Jesus.

That's why you boast only in him, 1 Corinthians chapter 1. So when you have direct statements on the subject, you have the existence of the elect brought forth, and you have the inability of man to do what is pleasing before God, and all these things are brought forth and hence need to be harmonized together.

So a Reformed person sees verse 34 and says, yep, that's the only way

I was saved, is that the words of Jesus were given so that I might be saved. Does that mean that the person in hell is going to be saying, ah, see, the purpose why those words were given was for me to be saved, and therefore

I've frustrated God by not doing that. It'd be nice if the word free will appeared in the

Bible somewhere that was relevant to that kind of understanding, but it doesn't appear anywhere.

And so then you have 39 through 40 just preached on this passage recently to PRBC.

You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. This is actually a judgment passage if you take it as descriptive.

In either case, it's a judgment passage. Actually, Jesus is either saying you search the scriptures or search the scriptures.

Both forms are identical in Greek. Because you think that in them you have eternal life, these that testify about me, but you are unwilling to come to me as you may have life.

That's the condemnation. These individuals have the scriptures. The scriptures testify of him.

They are opposing him. In fact, by the 8th chapter, they're going to be picking up stones to stone him.

By the 10th chapter, they're going to repeat these things. By the 19th chapter, they're going to be standing in front of Pilate saying we have a law, and by that law he had to die to get his way through John at that point.

But, yes, they are. It's kai ou thalate, el theim pros me.

You are not willing to come to me. That is the statement of Reformed theology concerning the will of man.

You are not willing to come to me. That's why John chapter 6 says the exact same thing, but then introduces the beautiful reality of the drawing of the

Father. The only one that can come to the Son is he who is drawn by the Father. He draws you, you come to the

Son infallibly, perfectly, there you have the elect, there you have the overcoming of that resistance, that heart of stone, all the other images that the

Scripture uses. So John 5 is in perfect harmony with what's going to happen, continue on in John 6 as long as you don't isolate it and remove it from everything else the

Scripture says. Thank you so much.

God bless. 877 -753 -3341 and is it

Jorge? Yes. Yes, Jorge. Hey, thanks for taking my call.

Long time listener. I've seen a lot of your Mormon debates and lectures and talks. I'm excited about the upcoming conversation with Alma.

Yeah. My question is, I've been engaged with some local missionaries and I've met with them about three times now.

I've brought up the book of Abraham. Well, let me ask you, are these the stake missionaries, the older people, or the young guys?

Young guys. Okay. And so they were basically telling me that, well, they weren't trained in Egyptian and neither am

I, and, you know, it must have been an act of God. And I said, well, but, you know, we do have

Egyptologists who have identified this stuff as funerary text.

And so I guess my question is, how would you approach that kind of resistance from the

Mormons? you can't create a desire in the heart and mind of a young missionary if what you're saying is true.

You have to remember, especially in talking to missionaries, most of the times the effective ministry to missionaries will take place as they remember the things that you've said to them after they get off their mission.

They're under so much pressure. There's always somebody else around. They're under so much pressure to perform that it's really rare to see a missionary crack on the mission field as far as actually recognizing that there are problems with Mormonism.

I have seen it happen. I've been involved in making it happen. But it's a it's a fairly rare thing.

And so you're planting seeds. And so you want to plant factual seeds.

You can direct them to, you know, books like this that are published by Signature Books that can provide them with that information.

And place it within a larger context of basically saying, you know, 530 pages of the

Book of Mormon, five chapters of the Book of Abraham. If you don't get a word right here, then what confidence do you really have that the translation of the golden plates which you no longer have was an accurate translation, especially when, as I mentioned,

Joseph Smith couldn't identify when a letter was upside down or right side up. He couldn't read it the right direction, right to left, left to right.

He assumed the English, not knowing the Hebrew and Semitic languages and languages over there go the other direction.

And, you know, whatever it might be, he wasn't even close on anything.

And so what you hope is going to happen eventually is that the person is going to be brought to a position of really wanting to know is there a core of truth in what

I have been taught. The sad thing is that there are a lot of Mormons who, once they get to that point, they haven't been given a a clear gospel message so they can so they know there is another way.

There is another perspective. And so I remember very, very clearly the missionary that I ran into years and years ago who was really he had a badge that said

Elder Hollywood. That wasn't his name. He was he was a big, tall, good -looking kid and he knew it and he was rather aggressive in his approach.

And he and I had quite the conversation over a couple nights in Mesa. Over a decade later I ran into him in Salt Lake City and he was no longer a

Mormon. But sadly, he was no longer anything. Wow. He was just part of the religiously burned out.

And so, unfortunately, I know the Book of Abraham has been one of the major issues that has opened the back door of Mormonism.

But, in general, if that material is not presented within the context of a

Christian witness, all that does is destroy the person's belief in all of the supernatural and turns them into the religiously abused rather than a

Christian. And so, that's why the when you when we've said for many years and this is true whether it's

Mormonism, Islam, or anything else, if you're going to take falsehood away, you have to be offering the truth in its place.

If you just take the one away, you leave a vacuum. And it's not going to be faith in general.

I mean, God can do anything, but it's not going to be faith in general that's going to be put back in that place. yeah, you can't create that desire for truth in someone's heart, but you can certainly pray for them and give them the truth and pray the

Lord will draw them to it. Thank you so much. That was extremely helpful and I will use that in my discussion with them next time.

All right. Thank you. God bless. Appreciate it. All right. Bye -bye. That's great to hear. Looking at time, we'll probably only have these calls that are here now.

Unless we can go through here really, really quickly, let's talk with Joshua. Hi, Joshua. Hey, Dr.

White. How are you doing, Doing good. Good, good, good. I just want to say thank you so much for you and Rich and Alpha and Omega Ministries.

I've been looking for a long time. I know you've heard it a million times, but I have to put my input in to say

I've just been very blessed by the way you guys communicate to other religions and stuff like that, showing them the love of Christ.

Well, thank you. Anyway, my question, it's going back to the guy who was calling before on the same topic, free will and stuff.

I always listen to what you talk about as far as the difference between descriptive and prescriptive, and we know that it's the elect, it's the called of God that it's describing, but at the same time there's a prescriptive of a general call to the world.

And I guess I'm just kind of confused on a better way to explain that,

I guess, getting out of the ivory tower and just trying to get more personal,

I guess, to somebody who's trying, maybe not understanding Reformed theology. Well, I assume what you're saying is that what you find in Scripture is primarily a prescription as to how you are to somehow gain a right relationship with God versus descriptive being these certain texts are describing those who are right with God, not how they become right with God.

And the only way to quote unquote simplify that is to start with the

Bible's own teaching about who God is, who man is, and who man is in sin because that really is the issue.

If you will allow God to be God in the scriptural categories of accomplishing

His own will and doing what pleases Him in the heavens and the earth, and if you take seriously the

Old Testament text as to how God relates to His people and accomplishes

His purposes and things like that, and then if you include with that what's often missed, which is

Jeremiah's description of man as, you know, he has, you know, sin has impacted him in such a way that he cannot change his, the leopard can't change his spots, and so on and so forth.

If you start with who God is and who man is in sin, the rest of that's obvious. The rest of that is the foundation has been laid.

The problem is in the vast majority of conversations you have, all that stuff is not something you can assume.

You can't even assume that with Christians and churches. So in light of that, then what you have to do is, you know, if you're in a short conversation, that happens.

You can't just lay the foundation. If it's going to be a longer situation where it's your neighbor or a new roommate at school in the dorm or whatever it might be, then you want to start with laying the foundation before you even get to those types of things.

Then you've got a way to handle it. But simply trying to jump into it in a short conversation at the gate, at the airport or something like that, it's not easy to do.

I guess one example that I thought of that maybe I haven't heard you reference before is the story of Esther.

I've heard a pastor say before going along with that descriptive of, though God told

Mordecai talking to Esther saying you better step up to what

God has appointed you for, but he could maybe get someone else. I guess it would be getting into philosophy or theorizing or whatever of what that could mean.

But that always struck me as interesting to me, that line in Esther.

Well, I guess maybe a Molinist might speculate about something like that, but I'm not sure it has anything to do with approaching the passages that speak of our actions and activities as either being descriptive of those who are already right with God or prescriptive as to how we become right with God.

I'm not sure what the connection would be there. Yeah, I guess it would just be going back to him saying, you know,

Esther, you know, step up like you're gonna do this, and I guess Esther's going to because God called her, she did it because she was called, but I guess the point of them making that point would be to say there's a potentiality of if they don't do what

God called them to do, that God can just use somebody else. Well, to accomplish

His purposes, yeah, but normally what we're talking about is like, you know,

He who endures the end shall be saved. Right. Your endurance is what causes your salvation or is descriptive of your salvation, one of those two, so, but I appreciate your phone call,

Joshua. Thank you, boss, appreciate it, God bless. All right, God bless, bye -bye. All right,

I'm sorry? Okay, Steven, hello. Hello, Dr.

White, how are you? Good. Good, thank you for taking my call. My question is, well, let me give you 10 seconds of a backstory.

I teach Sunday school at my church here in Virginia, and we taught on the

Trinity this past semester, and one question that came up was, isn't the

Trinity a contradiction because of the transitive property of equality in mathematics?

So, A equals B, B equals C, therefore, A equals C, and if we're saying that Jesus is God, excuse me, the

Son is God, the Father is God, and the Spirit is God, therefore, we're somehow making a contradiction based on a transitive property law in mathematics.

Yeah, except that law in mathematics wouldn't be dealing with the categories of being in person, because when we say

A, B, and C, we're talking about three distinct persons, that's one category, who are fully participating in and sharing a completely different category, which is the being of God.

So, I suppose you might, well, even in the category of person, we're not saying

A is equal to B, which is equal to C. A, B, and C have properties that distinguish them from each other, so we're not using an equal sign.

The only time we use an equal sign is that each one participates fully in a different category, so the transitive property wouldn't have anything to do with that because it's not speaking of multiple categories.

Okay, and that's what I thought. My friend who teaches with me, we kind of put our heads together, and that's pretty much what we came up with.

the being -in -person distinction has to be understood and maintained, and that's where a lot of people get confused, there's no question about it.

Yeah, and funny enough, I remembered you during the class because the guy who was really pushing this was saying that modalism is the only answer to this contradiction.

And he's in your church? he's been a Christian longer than I've been alive,

I think. But he's a modalist. And so he's a modalist. And I was really shocked, like I heard you say that Christians are just walking around modalists and they don't know they're modalists, but this guy actually said it in class that modalism is the only answer to this.

I would make sure the elders were aware of that situation. Yeah, that's a good point.

I think the elders, because if someone is openly utilizing that language within the fellowship, the elders need to be aware of that.

That's my suggestion. Okay, thanks, Steven. Thank you, Dr. White. God bless.

All right, let's talk with our last caller for the program, and it's Jack. Hi, Jack.

Hey, Dr. White, how are you? Doing pretty good. Great. My question was on early church government structure, and kind of how the role of presbyter or priest kind of turned into what we have in the

Catholic church as like a man -centered mediator versus Jesus being our mediator to God.

Okay, you mean how did that happen? Yeah, how was that? I guess that's my big question, how that happened.

Well, did a debate many years ago, early 2000s,

I think, with Mitch Pacwa on the subject of the priesthood, and he admitted that it was a slow development over a few centuries for presbyteros to be disconnected from episkopos bishop, and made into a lower, first of all, a lower office, which biblically it's not, they're the same office, and then over time to morph into a priest, because he admitted that in the

New Testament itself, you do not have that development, you do not have the presbyteros being looked as a hieros, a priest, and so it is a development over time, and I would say it's the natural development of human religion to insert intermediaries between the believer and God that fundamentally destroy the uniqueness of the intercessory work of Christ, and so it, you know, just as Israel wanted to have a king, and God granted them their wish, in the same way the early church as it moves farther and farther away, especially once you have, after the period of Constantine, the acceptability of Christianity within the culture, then you have a lot of influences coming in that are not biblically based whatsoever, and you end up with this mixture of things, and so there's certainly nothing in the

New Testament that laid a foundation for allowing people to go that direction, but there was, you know, the religions of the day had priests, and so that was the only way to make it work was to identify it in that way, and to begin to, that long process of undercutting the sufficiency of biblical revelation itself, which is why solo scriptura is so important.

Yeah. Yeah, I've just been hugely blessed by your early Church series there on Sermon Audio.

Yeah. That was kind of a question that I had lingering in my mind, that transition of presbyter or priest, as we see it in the early

Church, is not the same within the Catholic Church. All right, thanks,

Jack! Okay, thank you, God bless. God bless. Now, speaking of the Roman Catholic Church, yesterday, we got posted the video from Belfast and All Saints Church, my debate with Peter D.

Williams, and I've seen a lot of real positive comments from folks about that debate on indulgences, and so that's up at aomin .org.

Well, it's up on our YouTube channel, but we probably did... Did we put anything up on the blog about it?

Oh, yeah, we need to do that. We need to get that up there at aomin .org,

but it's on our YouTube channel, so a lot of... We mentioned it on... I posted it on Facebook and Twitter and stuff, and so people have been looking at it, and I had specifically asked for prayer about that because that was the last day.

I flew home early the next morning, very short night, flew home early the next morning, and that was a 20 -day...

So that was day 19, which included Johannesburg and Lusaka and Loughborough and Glasgow and then to Belfast.

So I was a little concerned, but it went well and was very useful and I'm sure in the providence of God that won't be the last time that Peter and I engage each other, and of course we're all hoping and praying that Peter will come to realize that he no longer has a

Pope, and therefore there is no reason to continue in that system. So, again, listen to what we've been saying all along and come to know that wonderful grace that is found not in sacraments, but in that all -sufficient work of Jesus Christ upon the cross.

That's certainly our prayer for him. So, with that said, that's up.

Hope you get a chance to see it. Next week, not sure what's going on yet.

If there is a program, it's going to have to be from via Skype, and so we'll see.

Things can happen that will make it something I really want to try to do, so we'll see.

We'll just see how it ends up working out. But as I said, it's next week on Friday night is the debate with Alma Allred there in Magnus, so keep that in prayer as well.