Road Trip DL: Conway; Francis, the Future, then Zeitoun as Evidence

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:28

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. We are live on the road, sort of on the road. I mean, I don't want to really call it a divide - the road trip dividing line, but I guess

00:38

I have to. If you don't have the DL, it's just not - the RV. DL, RV, whatever.

00:44

It's just not quite the same thing. Anyway, we're a little bit early today because after this program, then

00:52

I'm going to be joining the apologetic dog, Jeremiah, on his program to talk about the upcoming debates next - this coming weekend,

01:03

Friday and Saturday evenings. The first, he and I will be teaming up to debate on the extent of the atonement, and then on Saturday night,

01:15

I'll be debating Joe Heschmeier of Catholic Answers on, is the mass a propitiatory sacrifice?

01:23

And then I'll be headed to the seminary here in Conway, just going to be popping in on a gospels class with Dr.

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Moore teaching, and he's covering the Jesus Seminar tonight in the gospels class.

01:41

And most of the students are young enough that they weren't around when the

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Jesus Seminar was doing all of its big stuff in the - I think they started in 85, and so they made a big splash there for a few years.

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Though I've been sitting around, I've been going, how was the splash made back then when you didn't have the internet?

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That is interesting. It could not have happened as quickly, but they did it through trying to get their word out through media, but the media just wasn't so different back then.

02:24

So they were doing radio programs and mailers and books and stuff like that, but it was just a different world.

02:33

It really was, and we're going to be playing a section from when

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I was on KFYI Radio with Robert Funk, and he told us all to go to hell and hung up on us.

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So we're going to talk about that tonight, really late, literally past my bedtime, but that's how it works.

02:57

And then tomorrow night for the seminary folks and families and friends, stuff like that,

03:03

I'll be doing a presentation on the ecumenical councils with special focus on the

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Seventh Ecumenical Council in reference to Eastern Orthodoxy and all the things going on regards to that.

03:21

So then on Wednesday, head for Jonesboro. I am very thankful that today

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I found a good chiropractor here in Conway that did a great job for me, so I'm feeling much better.

03:35

I did not have to take a single Advil. Yay. When my neck goes out in a certain way, it's headache city, and that was happening, but I found a good chiropractor, did a good job for me, and I'll actually be seeing him again on Wednesday before I head to Jonesboro.

03:55

Jonesboro is only two hours, and so we'll be heading up there for the debates this weekend.

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I happen to see on my old Twitter account, so I still have my old

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Twitter account. I kept it because I didn't want somebody grabbing it and then posting weird and strange and evil stuff on it, but I saw a

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Roman Catholic who has me blocked on my regular Twitter account about an hour ago posted something that basically said that the insiders in the

04:37

Vatican are indicating that Pope Francis has less than 72 hours to live.

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And of course, the word out of the Vatican right now is really no change, no real worsening of condition, but no improvement either, this type of stuff.

05:01

You know how the press office at the Vatican or places like that, how they are.

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And it's obvious that he has a very short period of time left, and it's also obvious that even if he survives this, that he's going to be resigning because he's not going to be able to continue to do the things that he wants to be doing, and so we are going to be facing a major change.

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In the Roman Catholic Church in the not too distant future, and so this past weekend at the church in Perryville, we actually sort of changed what

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I was going to be doing on Sunday just simply to say to the members of the church, are you ready to have the conversations that might present themselves to you over the next number of weeks?

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There weren't as many conversations when Francis became

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Pope because Benedict hadn't died. Ratzinger was still alive, and so it was surprising and sudden.

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When John Paul II died, like I said, pretty much everybody I had ever debated from the

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Roman Catholic perspective was on Fox News for two minutes and 20 seconds, and that was the highlight of their life, and they're all saying the same things.

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They're all saying the 2 ,000 -year -old church is going to be just fine and la, la, la, la.

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They didn't know what was coming, but that didn't really happen as much when

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Ratzinger resigned because he didn't have a papal death. People didn't really know exactly what to do with that, and so now it depends on how

06:54

Francis goes. Either he's going to die or probably resign and probably not live that long after that.

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It was odd there to have Ratzinger alive at the same time as Francis, two living popes who had serious disagreements with one another.

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They really, really did, which was an interesting illustration for anybody who wanted to see it, and so here we are, and really the question for everybody is do you want to have these opportunities because they're going to present themselves.

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So, for example, I went over Matthew chapter 16 and talked about what the

07:37

Petrine promise actually is, and this rock is different than Peter, and I will give you the keys.

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It's future, so when did that happen? All the kind of stuff that's relevant, and it's not that this stuff hasn't been covered a thousand times before.

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It has, but people tend to forget about it, and I'm just, it's interesting to me that this is happening at the same time that I am seeing a softening of the so -called reformed perspective insofar as how we deal with Rome, and it obviously has not been popular.

08:39

I've joked many times that if you want to keep your ministry very small and poor, then talk about Roman Catholicism and Islam because people are scared of talking about Islam.

08:52

Trying to get reformed people excited about witnessing to Muslims is next to impossible, and that's discouraging.

09:02

I'll be perfectly honest with you, and then as far as Roman Catholicism, you would think the reformed would be the first ones to recognize and understand the importance of the key issues of the

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Reformation, but most have forgotten, and even if they watch a film or something like that, they sort of make a distinction between what was going on back then and what's going on now.

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Obviously a lot of things have changed. Rome's changed, but the fundamental issues of authority and salvation and gospel are still there, and so like I said in the last program,

09:56

I see all these people who were all excited about what J .D. Vance was saying when he presented the mere

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Christianity idea. The central tenet of my faith is that the eternal

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Son of God became flesh and died upon the cross, was buried, and rose again the third day. Well, yeah, but that's not all of Christianity by any stretch of the imagination, and Romans and Galatians makes it very clear that what that meant, what the

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Incarnation, death, burial, resurrection, and Eucharist means, and how the grace that is a part and parcel of that divine act, how do you receive that?

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According to the apostles, that defines one way or the other whether you're talking about Christianity or a false religion, and so you can't just give the historical stuff and go, that's good enough.

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We can all get along, but let's just be honest. A lot of Protestants today are like, let's just all get along.

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Let's not worry about all the rest of this kind of stuff, and let's not worry about justification. Let's not worry about any of that, and when someone has died, if Francis dies, people are loath to criticize someone who just died, and all of a sudden everything that the person had done wrong can be forgiven, and you'll see that amongst

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Roman Catholics, and most of his severest critics within the

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Church of Rome will have to be careful how they handle things for a while.

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Eventually, I think, well, how he is treated by history will,

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I think, in large part be determined by who ends up succeeding him.

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So let's say the next guy is even farther down the left side of the road.

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That might in some ways ameliorate, lessen the criticism of Francis, though it's painfully obvious to anybody really looking at it that if that is what happens, it's because Francis made sure that it happened.

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I would not be surprised at all if Francis' successor is already known within the power circles of the

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Vatican. I wouldn't be surprised by that at all. He wants to make sure of the direction of the

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Church after he goes. It has been his life's work over the past decade to fundamentally change the direction and character of the

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Roman Catholic Church, and he's not going to just waltz off and leave that undecided, and so I have a feeling that's probably—at the very least, he has so stacked the deck in the

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College of Cardinals that it's sort of hard to think that that successor isn't already pretty well known within those circles.

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So anyway, we expect word on something like that.

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We'll find out here in a couple days one way or the other. I'll admit I'm a little bit concerned.

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Let's say Francis were to die tomorrow. Would that have an impact on the debate this weekend?

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I could see it possibly having an impact. I hope it wouldn't. I don't think it's at all possible that there would be a new pope named by then.

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So I'm just thinking back on when

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John Paul II came to Denver in 93, and how

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Catholic Answers told us at the time, well, we don't want to do debates, and the Holy Father's here.

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It's a time for celebration, and la, la, la, la, la. And then as soon as we scheduled the debates with Gerry Matiticks, all of a sudden,

14:45

Catholic Answers scheduled the debates with Carl Keating and Patrick Madrid with two fundamentalist pastors in Denver on the same night that I'm already debating

14:56

Gerry Matiticks. I always found that. I'm not sure why they would say to me, we don't think it's appropriate to be debating when the

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Holy Father's there, and then as soon as I schedule a debate, they schedule a debate as well.

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It's sort of like, you didn't say I don't think it's appropriate to debate with fundamentalists or something like that.

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So yeah, I found that a little bit on the strange side when that happened. But my goodness, that was 32 years ago.

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Doesn't seem like 32 years ago, but I guess it was.

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Did we drive Allen's car up to Denver?

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No, we didn't drive Allen's car up there. Did we rent a car? I'm trying to remember.

15:52

I drive so many more miles than we used to back then. It's not even funny, but I'm trying to remember exactly how we got up there.

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Yeah, here we go. Here comes the—oh, we did take the Sunbird up. Okay, all right. We took Rich's Sunbird up, and that's how we got around Denver.

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That time—that was long before I was doing all my Colorado stuff and everything else, but that was amazing, staying there amongst all those pilgrims and stuff like that.

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Rich says that was a fun car. I don't know, it was the 1990s.

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American car making went into a little bit of a boxy funk in the 1990s.

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Those were little teeny tiny neat neat type cars, but hey, it wasn't as fun as Odie.

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Was that what the name of it was? Didn't we call you Bronco Odie or something like that?

16:57

I think you took it out one day and filled its engine with mud. Mud water, as I recall.

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Anyway, sorry to reminisce again, and it's hard not to think back at Bronco II.

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Okay, it was a Bronco II. Does II make a difference? I guess

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Bronco II was—they were much smaller than the original Broncos, as I recall. Anyway, let's get back to the point here.

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So I don't know if something happens, if that's going to have any impact upon the debate.

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I wouldn't expect it to, but it's possible. You never know.

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We'll find out. But the issues aren't going to change. Well, let me back that up a little bit.

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The Mass as a Perpetuatory Sacrifice is the title of the debate. And what most people don't think about and most people don't understand, because people like to say, well,

18:09

Calvinism kills missions, Calvinism kills evangelism, blah, blah, blah, blah. Calvin's Geneva produced a steady stream of martyr missionaries during Calvin's life and immediately thereafter.

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That is, the school there in Geneva, the church in Geneva, so many people felt called to proclaim the gospel, the gospel of grace, the gospel of justification in Italy.

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So there's a stream of people coming south from Geneva into Italy, and pretty much every single one of them died a martyr's death.

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They knew what they were getting into. They did not have pie in the sky hopes they were going to convert the entire country or something like that.

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But they went where they needed to go to speak to the people they wanted to speak to, and those were

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Roman Catholics. And their strong, high

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Calvinism motivated them to do that. It did not stop them from doing that or diminish their zeal or anything like that.

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And so it's hard today for people to imagine what it was like back then and why people did what they did.

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Remember, I talked to you about the Fritz Erbe story just recently. Again, the Anabaptist that was thrown into the tower there at the castle in Marburg and eventually died in that horrible, secluded cell.

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And people look at that and they go, so if he had just decided to change his view of baptism, he could have gotten out of that cell.

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They would have dragged him out of there and he could have lived. Yes. He left his wife and his children over his view of baptism.

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Yes. What an idiot people would say today. And the ease with which people change their views on baptism today,

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I don't think they have any idea of how central it was at that point in time and the commitment that people had at that point in time.

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It's just not considered that vital any longer. So we struggle to imagine and think about things like that.

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And so most of the conversation that will be prompted by Francis's departure, one way or the other, will be calm and collected and highly ecumenical,

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I would imagine. That wasn't how things were viewed back then.

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And the question is why? Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that we should start religious wars again, just to be passionate about something.

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But it does seem that when it comes to definitional

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Christian teaching, that today we are willing to massively minimize what could be included in the defining, the defining doctrines, the defining teachings of the things that make

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Christianity what it is. And clearly for many non -Catholics today, the gospel, justification, they're just not in that central core of doctrines and beliefs.

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Partly because you don't hear nearly as much preaching on the nature of what justifying faith is, the atonement, how to have peace with God, in serious theological context and format.

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And so because of that, people aren't going to value it.

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You have to, you know, obviously Fritz Erba valued his view of baptism more than his life.

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And when it comes to the gospel itself, we can't do less than he did when it comes to that particular subject.

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So all of that will be sort of in the background of the conversations that will take place that are going to be coming up.

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And I hope that you will pray that God will use you and God will give you those opportunities.

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You may have family and friends, things like that, that this will, that they will actually raise the subject.

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So often people are, how do I get the conversation started? Well, in this situation, the conversation will probably start itself.

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So are we prepared? Are we ready? That really is the question. It wasn't that long ago, staying with Pope Francis for a second,

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I only mentioned this briefly in passing. I do remember talking about it in the program, but when

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I was thinking about him and the things that he's done, I couldn't help, I happened to stumble across a bookmark that I had put in Twitter where not long ago,

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I think it was late last year, if I recall correctly, Pope Francis had cautioned priests against long sermons.

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And specifically, he said that anything that lasts longer than eight minutes will result in people justifiably dozing off.

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Eight minutes, that's not, we're not talking about the introduction here. We're not talking about the first point.

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We're talking about the entire sermon. Or as is more often said, a homily in Roman Catholicism.

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Eight minutes, what can you, look, you can communicate stuff in eight minutes.

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Don't get me wrong. You can. But I don't think

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I've ever even done a debate that had an opening statement that wasn't less than, it might've been a few radio debates somewhere along the line that maybe we had 10 or 12 minutes, but the vast majority of actual debates, minimally 15 minutes to 20 minutes just for the opening statement for both sides.

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So eight minutes. I mean, when I saw that,

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I was like, well, that gives you an idea. And what it gives you, hopefully what it gives you an idea is not that, oh, that's

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Roman Catholicism, that's silly. No, no, no. It's ecclesiology. It's what you believe the church is supposed to be doing.

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And there has often been conversation about the fact that the

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Reformation removed the altar of the church and replaced it with a pulpit.

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You see some of the older style churches where you still have an altar of some kind in the center.

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And then you have normally a place of preaching and then a place of lecturing, a lectern and a pulpit, but they're off to the side.

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So yeah, when I preached at the

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Castle Church in Wittenberg, I was on the, as you're facing forward, I was on the right -hand side where the pulpit is, but there's still an altar in the center.

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Then when I preached at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, what's at the center?

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Spurgeon's pulpit is at the center. And that's really a architectural illustration of one of the major changes that took place.

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The Eight -Minute Homily, or let's just be honest, there were periods of time during the medieval period where everybody in the congregation would be illiterate and most of the priests were too.

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And that's where the stained glass windows came from. They told a story that people could no longer read for themselves.

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And the altar and the Mass and the sacrificial system became central and the proclamation of the

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Word was moved off to the side. And many of those monks and priests were not really able to do anything in eight minutes, even back then, that had any specific value to it.

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So that is a fundamental difference. And so what's happened now?

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What's happening now, even in Protestant churches, but the de -emphasis of the pulpit?

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I've certainly watched it. I remember what Southern Baptist churches used to look like and how

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Southern Baptist preachers dressed. But now what's the big thing?

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You look at J .D. Greer and he's got some small notes in his

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Bible, which he's holding in front of him. And if he uses the same arm, big bicep here, not so big.

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That's a lot of time to be holding a Bible up. And no pulpit.

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I hate the plexiglass. Pulpits, you need to have something to hide behind. But the pulpit is being phased out.

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Look at Andy Stanley. What does Andy Stanley do? He might have a music stand or, you know, sit on a bar stool to be more relatable, more approachable.

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And that represents an ecclesiology that says, this isn't the word of the

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Lord being proclaimed up here. We just want you all to like us.

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And we're going to discipleship you into the faith, but we don't want to make it look like we're actually proclaiming something that has any type of authority to it, anything like that.

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And so that's a shift I have seen. I don't think I ever saw, nah, certainly not in my young years, in my youth, did

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I ever see anybody just getting rid of the pulpit and standing there and very casually, you know, just trying to become part of the audience, in essence.

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That's a fairly modern development there, as far as I can see. So it does demonstrate to us what used to be the fundamental difference.

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Rome, meaningful Protestantism was the centrality of the word.

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Instead of having it off to the side, eight -minute homily, that becomes the essence of how we are worshiping

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God. We are coming, desirous to hear His word, to be in submission to His ways, and His ways and His word will be proclaimed to us in the worship service of the church.

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God's going to be there in His word. He's going to speak. Not the charismatic word from the

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Lord thing, a recognition of the centrality of Scripture and the sufficiency of Scripture to function in that way.

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But we see a lot of that changing. We see a lot of that changing. And I think,

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I think that's one of the reasons, you know, we talk about the interest in Eastern Orthodoxy right now.

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Well, I think one of the reasons that liturgical traditions attract not so much people who've converted to Protestantism from, like,

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Roman Catholicism or something like that, but attracts the people who've grown up in storefront

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Christianity. There's nothing wrong with having a church in the storefront, but plain -Jane, no -smells -and -bells type

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Christianity. Now, if what's being preached in the plain church is the whole gospel and the whole counsel of God, then great.

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But if the Protestant church strays, as it has, and begins trying to entertain, shortening the sermons, not communicating to people that what's going on here is literally a meeting with God.

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It's literally where we are conformed to the image of Christ. So once that high view, and one of the reasons that high view was abandoned is because very often what you'll see in fundamentalism is they'll talk about that high view of preaching, and then, well, you see often what happens.

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Hey, man! Hey, man! Hey, man! You know, this type of stuff. And it's the same surface -level stuff week after week after week.

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So if you put the pulpit in the center, but then you diminish the pulpit, and your theology isn't going to have an altar, oh, yeah, you've got the table down front that says, this doing remembrance of me.

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But how often do you hear meaningful sermons on what the

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Lord's Supper actually means? Once you sort of empty the pulpit of that authority, it creates a vacuum, and I think that's why people are willing to look elsewhere.

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And in Eastern Orthodoxy, you get these ancient traditions, and you get this completely different style of worship that plainly doesn't have any concern at all about what's hip today.

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The music is countercultural and can be very beautiful.

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The chants and things like that. And so it's almost mesmerizing to people.

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And I think that's one of the reasons you see the interest in moving that direction on the part of individuals, is you not only have the things that Rome offers as well, but they're stuck with Francis right now.

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So the antiquity, the flowing robes, the incense, all that kind of stuff.

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But man, an Orthodox worship service lasts forever, and you're meant to be taking things seriously, and it just attracts people over against a surface -level storefront.

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But we don't, you know, we say we believe in the soul of Scripture, and we say we believe in the sufficiency of Scripture, but it's hard to live those things out.

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And I think that's why you see families, individuals being attracted to these other things.

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Really, really dry for some reason. It's not super cold anymore. That's awfully nice.

36:24

But very, very dry. So anyway, eight -minute sermons ain't going to be happening at, ain't gonna be happening at all at Apologia.

36:40

I, you know, I didn't cue this stuff up.

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I might have it here. Let me look just real quick and see if I do.

36:57

Uh, yeah, okay. Well, we looked at the quote -unquote ex -pastor guy, but why didn't

37:06

I, why didn't I save that? I think

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I downloaded it. I have a very strong recollection of downloading it, so I may have it someplace.

37:25

But let's, just for a couple minutes, let me at least raise this issue because it would probably be a whole lot easier to do.

37:35

Yeah, it would be a whole lot easier to do in the big studio back home, so I don't want to do it prematurely.

37:42

But you'll recall, where did

37:50

I, where did I put that thing? Um, you'll recall about, what was it, 2018 -ish?

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Somewhere around there, I think. Um, I did some programs where I responded to the young man who was very plainly being influenced by Roman Catholicism.

38:27

Um, Carmen, I believe, is his name. I was looking for it.

38:33

If I click on this, it's going to start playing, and I don't want to do that.

38:39

Um, well, maybe not. Uh, here we go.

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This video is going to be about... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gavin Ortland put out a video on 10 days ago.

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And he was talking about Cameron Bertuzzi's video, and I'm sure

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I downloaded it. Sorry, it's not popping up. I apologize. But, um,

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Gavin Ortland put out a video called, Do Marian Apparitions Prove Christianity? Protestant Response.

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And I thought it might pop up because there was a brief,

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I've got it in a folder someplace, don't have time to look for it right now. We'll play it when we do the fuller response with the big screen and all the rest of that stuff.

39:40

But Cameron had, some of you may recall, I saw where he was going, and I predicted where he was going.

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Um, he started talking about John 6, and he was, I think he was on with Matt Fradd, and it was really obvious that even though he wasn't a

40:02

Roman Catholic at the time, he didn't know why he wasn't a Roman Catholic at the time. He didn't understand the soul of scripture.

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He didn't understand John chapter 6. He was not Reformed. He was a very strong evidentialist.

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And so I made comments, and I think I went on his program and talked about soul of scriptura, but eventually he did what

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I knew he was going to do and converted to Roman Catholicism. And since then, um, his, uh, since then,

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I've seen a number of times where he's like saying, Hey, you know, we're, we're not me. We're making it, uh, money -wise, you know, and I'm like, dude, you, you convert from Catholicism.

40:51

Um, uh, well, did you really expect the people who used to be supporting you to continue to support you now?

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Uh, that, that's not a wise business model. Um, and you know, who are you in Roman Catholicism?

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You know, I've seen lots of folks make the conversion move and then, you know, just disappear.

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Uh, remember the guy who had, um, drunk ex the drunk ex -pastors podcast.

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I don't think that's still out there anymore. I could be wrong, but, um, you know, he was a convert and then, you know,

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I don't know what he is any longer, sadly, but, um, I hadn't seen a whole lot, you know, once in a while, something would pop up on my feed.

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And then a couple of weeks ago, I see this, I don't know if he created it or someone else edited down a video.

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He was talking about Zaytun and vast majority of people today have no idea what

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Zaytun or Fatima or Lords or, uh, any of these alleged

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Marian apparitions are about. And there's a lot to talk about.

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Um, Zaytun, Zaytun, depending on how you pronounce the E I, um, it's in Egypt.

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And, uh, there were thousands of thousands of people who reported over, over a period of years, uh, late 1968 to 71, as I recall the dates, um, apparitions of a woman over a

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Coptic, not a Catholic, not a Roman Catholic, but Coptic church dedicated to Mary.

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Uh, she doesn't speak. Um, it it's always, well,

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I'm not sure if there's something there or not. There's, there was a lot of stuff. There's a lot of things to be said about the supernatural events, uh, as Zaytun.

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Um, but what really struck me, and this is what I want you to think about.

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What really struck me was the fact that what

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Cameron was doing was he was saying, is there better evidence than ancient manuscripts for Christianity?

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And he, his, his argument basically is, well, you only had certain number of witnesses of the resurrection of Jesus.

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You have more witnesses who saw something at Zaytun.

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So if you, if you don't accept the veracity and the testimony of the thousands of witnesses of the supernatural events in Zaytun, you're undercutting your argument for Christianity in regards to the witnesses of the resurrection.

44:01

And Jonathan McClatchy had responded to that, um, and had rightly pointed out that there's a very different nature to the resurrection appearances of Jesus.

44:12

He's interacting with the disciples. He's open to their minds. He's eating fish. He's being touched. He's walking, he's talking, he's teaching, he's, he's discussing the scriptures.

44:21

And the Marian apparition of Zaytun says nothing, um, says nothing at all.

44:28

Now there have been Marian apparitions that have spoken, and that's the problem because when they speak, they don't speak in accordance with the scriptures.

44:41

Uh, they very often promote horrific heresy.

44:48

Um, the, the Mary who appears in apparitions is very focused on Mary.

44:55

Um, and, and so there, that's one thing when you have an apparition and you have speaking, uh, remember the ugly duckling car dealership

45:07

I've told the story before. And again, we could show this on the big screen if we do it.

45:12

Um, but in Clearwater, Florida, there was a ugly duckling car dealership that Mary appeared in the window.

45:21

And what it was, was reconstituted water stains on the palm trees. They cut the palm tree down and here's this,

45:29

Oh, it's Mary. Actually, it was just the way the water went on the palm tree and came down the window. Um, but very shortly after that, a big

45:40

Marian group bought the building and I went, I went inside it, I visited it. And it was so creepy because there's this room where they'd be praying for Mary to appear.

45:51

And so they'd, you know, they'd, they'd have, uh, visionaries that would come and Mary would speak to them and they would tell people what

46:00

Mary was saying and all this kind of stuff. And it's just ultra creepy stuff really, really is.

46:07

Um, and of course those don't get Vatican approval. So they're not approved apparitions, though thousands and thousands and thousands of people came from all over the place and priests were saying mass and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

46:20

And, um, but I think there's only, what is it? 19? I think there's 19 approved

46:27

Marian apparitions, uh, currently. And how many thousands of unapproved ones, which makes you go, okay, if you've got these thousands and thousands of them, but only 19 have been approved, that would mean there's a whole lot of fake

46:45

Mary's running around out there. Um, I told the story, I think, yeah, I told the story in, uh,

46:51

Mary and Other Redeemer of the, uh, Yucca Mary, Mary in the

46:57

Yucca plant. Was it 16th street? I think it was, I think it was 16th street, like South of Southern in Phoenix, as I recall.

47:07

Um, there was, uh, a Yucca plant and, um, yeah, we have some interesting plants and only certain things grow in the desert.

47:17

And it put out this shoot and the shoot looked to a passerby like Mary.

47:27

And all of a sudden people start showing up and they're having to put down to close the road down, or at least, uh, close that lane down and people coming, taking pictures.

47:39

And then people want to come and get blessings. And well, eventually one late one night, someone took a machete to the

47:47

Yucca, uh, and de -Marianized it. But, you know, you've heard of Mary appearing in toast and cereals and, uh, tortillas in Mexico.

47:56

And it just, anything that can look like a, a, a hooded female figure, which is a lot, um, all of a sudden you're seeing

48:06

Mary. And so there aren't that many that the Vatican has said, yeah, that was actually

48:12

Mary, but there've been thousands and thousands and thousands where the

48:17

Vatican has said, yeah, we don't think either. We don't think so. Or we just don't know we're going to remain, shall we say, somewhat agnostic about these things.

48:27

And, um, so, uh, the apparition stuff is a global phenomenon.

48:36

There are entire books that have been written on all the different apparitions. And then you can buy entire books of Mary's messages to the modern world.

48:45

And it's just blather. It truly is. It's, it's horrific stuff, but people buy into it and it's their proof that God still cares about the world and all the rest of this kind of thing.

48:57

Well, here's Cameron Bertuzzi. He's literally saying we, is

49:06

Zaytun better evidence for Christianity than the resurrection?

49:16

And what struck me in just listening to that is here's somebody who never had a solid foundation.

49:26

And what I'm talking about here is what is the nature of the evidence of the

49:34

Christian faith? And this isn't a Protestant Catholic thing.

49:42

This is a, in essence, what

49:47

I would say is he had always been paddling around in the Tiber river, along with all his fellow evidentialists who, because they do not have a thoroughly biblical anthropology subjugate the truth claims of Christianity to external verification.

50:09

So in other words, and, and they're, they're, and this is why

50:16

I say, if you're reformed, and you reject presuppositionalism,

50:25

I say you're inconsistent. You go, oh, but Calvin wasn't. We're talking within the context today.

50:32

We're not talking within a sacred context. We're not talking within a context where the entire culture is nominally anyways,

50:39

Christian. We're talking about the evidences of Christianity today.

50:45

Now that we are actually a minority in our culture, where does evidence come from?

50:53

What, what, what evidence do you have within that context? And the presuppositionalist says, look, if, if I pick up my

51:03

Bible and I say, this is true because of that external thing and that external thing and that external thing,

51:10

I am subjugating the word of God to the higher authority of those other things, because you don't prove the highest authority by an appeal to lesser authorities, right?

51:27

So how does God prove his authority? He can only swear by himself because he is the ultimate authority.

51:36

He can't swear by his creation. That's lesser than him. He made it. It's dependent upon him.

51:42

And so one of the key issues of thoroughly reformed apologetics is the recognition that while we may want to point people to these other things and we can point people to fulfilled prophecy and the consistency of scripture and all these things are true, but they're only true within a particular framework with presuppositional framework that helps us to understand how they're relevant and how they're consistent with everything else.

52:20

If you don't have that, if you're talking to an atheist, it doesn't have that framework. When you appeal to the number of manuscripts in the new

52:29

Testament, they can go, yeah, so there's lots of manuscripts of, you know, this book or that book too.

52:37

It doesn't make it the word of God. All that kind of stuff. That's why I have to deal with the presuppositions first.

52:45

Presuppositionalism, that's what you're dealing with before you can start doing anything else. So when an evidentialist, you know, he's going, well, hey, you know, when

52:57

I was a Protestant, when I was doing apologetics, our big thing was the evidences for the resurrection.

53:05

Okay. And so it's the William Lane Craig. Now he was in that group of evidentialist apologists.

53:12

They reject reformed theology. They reject presuppositionalism. They call it fideism, though they don't understand what it actually is.

53:21

Oh, by the way, by the way, I don't have, I don't have, you know,

53:26

I can't put any graphics up or anything like that yet, but we just pretty much nailed down that the weekend before G3, so the

53:39

Friday, I think it's Friday, Saturday of the weekend before G3, so that'd be the first weekend of September.

53:48

We're going to have a conference in Franklin, Tennessee. Franklin, Tennessee.

53:57

And I'm really looking forward to this because it's going to feature, right now it's going to feature, yours truly, and big deal, ugly old

54:14

Scotsman guy, but one of the brightest young minds coming up in reformed apologetics, in my opinion,

54:25

Eli Ayala. You can see a lot of his stuff at Apologia Studios on presuppositionalism.

54:33

He's, I think, probably the best at putting the crackers on the bottom shelf, making it understandable, usable, making application.

54:43

He's great. Eli's great. And then another presuppositionalist apologist by the name of Jason Lyle.

54:54

And I've said it before, I'll say it again, smartest man alive. As far as I know, I've never met anyone who is anywhere close to him on the

55:01

IQ scale of any race, by the way. So Jason, Eli, and I are going to be doing a conference in Franklin, Tennessee.

55:14

And obviously, as soon as we get the details, we'll let everybody know. It'll be here before you know it.

55:22

But that will be the weekend before G3. And then the way it looks like right now,

55:29

I will scooch on down from Franklin to Tullahoma that Sunday to speak for Jeffrey Rice at his church.

55:37

Please continue to pray for Jeffrey. He got hit by that truck. The guy didn't have a license.

55:43

He was on a suspended license. He was driving somebody else's truck. The medical bills are going to be really hard.

55:51

So pray for their brother. And if he puts something out as to how people can help,

55:59

I'll let you know how we can help him because we need to. He's a great brother. But shoot down to Tullahoma, preach there, and then off to G3.

56:10

And then the weekend, the week after G3, I'll be with Chris Arnzen for the luncheon he does for the pastors and then preaching at his church in Carlisle the

56:22

Sunday thereafter that. So it's gonna be a long trip. And I will have my

56:28

RV for this one. And that will make me much happier. But yeah, that's coming up. So that's exciting.

56:34

So real quickly, let me wrap this up. I didn't expect to go this long. But the whole idea that Carmen is talking about—there's a

56:48

Carmen that works for apologia, so I keep getting those things mixed up. The evidentialism, the idea that these external evidences are what make

57:01

Christianity true, it's epistemologically incoherent. And that's why

57:08

I've wanted to debate William Lane Craig on this for ever and a day. It's just not gonna happen.

57:14

But here you see the result of it. So even though this young man converts to Roman Catholicism, he still has the same epistemological black holes that he had before.

57:27

But now he's filling them in with Marian apparitions from Egypt and literally going, we have better evidence than you have in the

57:42

New Testament for the truth of Christianity from a vision of a what looks like female figure who never says anything.

57:53

And he even points out, even Muslims are seeing her. Excuse me, can I point one thing out before we do a fuller thing on this later on?

58:00

Can I point one thing out? If that was Mary up there, Muslims love

58:06

Mary. Muslims have a Marian theology. Mary is mentioned in the Quran many times, whole chapter.

58:17

You know what Muslims need to hear from Mary? My son was crucified on a cross, was buried in a rose again.

58:27

That's what the Muslims need to hear because Surah 417 denies that, denies the crucifixion.

58:33

So if that's Mary and there are thousands of Muslims seeing that, why isn't

58:39

Mary telling the Muslims that Jesus is the way of salvation? Instead, you just get this, yeah,

58:45

I think I see something up there. There's light up there. That does look like a woman, but she's not saying anything.

58:52

She's just blessing us all. And the Muslims are going, oh, this is great. And the Coptic Christians are going, that's great.

58:58

And the Catholics are going, that's great. And what does that accomplish? Absolutely, positively nothing.

59:05

That should tell you a little something right there about what's really going on. There is something supernatural going on.

59:15

There really is. And when you look at what the Marian apparition Mary says, you can sort of figure out what that is.

59:25

So anyways. Hey, I'm out of time because I'm going to do another program in a half an hour for another hour.

59:31

And then I've got to zoom over to the seminary and we've got class and we're keeping busy.

59:38

That's why we're on the road. And you get to be a part of that on this program.

59:44

And I don't know when we're going to be doing another program again. Hopefully Thursday, hopefully

59:52

Thursday should be open enough. I can't vouch for the streaming capacity of the hotel that I'm going to be at or anything else, but we'll do our best.

01:00:01

We'll do our best. So anyways, thanks for watching the program today. We will see you next time.