An Incarnation Story (Prologue of John), Family Memories, Debate Challenges

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line, our third Dividing Line for the week. But it's 2020, it's two days after the election, and why not?

They're selling. I just, I want to thank whoever it was on Twitter that has informed me that the special only once a year white fudge -covered

Oreos are now available at Walmart. So what?

Of course, they've been around for years, but only around Christmas time. They're Oreo cookies with white fudge covering, and they're a favorite in our house, and so I know

Summer really, really likes them. They're small little packages, and they're not cheap, but they're about 450 calories per cookie, too.

Could you imagine if they did one of those Max, what do they call them, Max, the Max -stuffed Oreos? With that, that would be like about 750 calories per cookie, and they'd have to include a syringe of insulin in each bag, because it just,

I can't imagine the sugar rush that would come from that. We're all addicted to sugar. I just hope you understand that.

Anyway, but I am excited about that. It's a great thing. I've got to come up with something to be thinking.

Actually, by this weekend, it's going to feel winterish again here in Phoenix. I hope it stays that way, because it is early

November, and we just blew through our heat record for the day.

What's the date today? November 5th. We just set the all -time record high temperature for any day in November in recorded history, and certainly we blew through by five degrees the record high for this day.

The record for this day was 93. We just hit 98 degrees Fahrenheit here in Phoenix, and I haven't looked to see if anything has changed to see if we've managed to, because now they're saying high 99.

I figure let's just go for it. Let's have our first 100 -degree

November day. Why not? It's 2020. That would fit really well, but currently it's 98 degrees in Phoenix, so I've got to come up with something to try to feel like we're only a matter of weeks from Thanksgiving.

Those of us who get to celebrate it, hey, enjoy your Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, because who knows how long the

European -style lockdowns are going to be if Kamala Harris is president come

January 21st or 22nd, whatever that is. I'll bet you if they're elected, they will not attend the pro -life march in Washington like Trump did.

You think? Yeah. In fact, they'll probably try to shut it down. Oh, they'll come, but I could see them doing everything in their power to shut that down because of COVID, of course, unless it was a

Black Lives Matter thing, and then, yeah, it's fine. But anyway. Yeah, so here we are.

Um, I want to, someone,

I think it was Brian on Twitter earlier today, said something like, let's see, tweets and replies.

Did you know, I tried to scroll back in my tweets and it stopped at June 1st. I couldn't get any farther back than that.

I didn't know that. So there you go. I was trying to find something that I had said and I could not find it.

I did just, if you want to watch a funny video, someone brilliantly edited the

Paula White video. If you haven't seen the Paula White video of her standing up there, there's a small number of people in this large room just sort of wandering around doing strange things.

And she's standing up front and she's in a rhythmic way going back and forth between allegedly speaking in tongues and talking about victory and latter rain.

And it's all about how Trump's going to win. And she's, you know, well, someone recognized that she was doing this to a beat, found a song that went to that beat and they found this cat.

They added the cat in who's going to the beat along with her. It's like two minutes long.

And there's this guy, Fred Butler and I both noticed there's this guy just wandering back and forth across the stage.

And it looks like he's reading a book or something. We couldn't figure him out.

He does have his hand up once, so it must be it is just I retweeted it.

If you want to if you want to watch it yourself, it's what are you doing?

How'd you do that? Oh, you brought up yourself. OK. All right. Yeah. That's the that's the video.

OK. Yeah. All right. There's a there's a black lady down front. Looks like she's shooing mosquitoes away.

And then, yeah, there you go. It's it's pretty amazing stuff. You check that out.

No, no, no. We really we don't need to go there. It's it. No, it's

OK. It's all right. Ah, but what I was looking for and got distracted by that, that that was what the problem was.

Someone had said and that's what I wanted to want to find. And there we go.

Brian Hervila had said Christmas isn't going to be the same this year, to which

I responded. I'm praying it will be the best ever focused on the incarnation, focused on meaningful family traditions, a true act of revolution.

We will not bow the knee to Caesar. The Lord has come. And I really meant that.

And so I thought I would start off today with a Christmas story.

Yes, I'm going to start with the Christmas story. It's 98 degrees outside and it's November 5th.

And some of you. Some of you, you know,

I cannot imagine there could be too many people that are going to obey the

California lockdown rules and stuff like that.

And I'd like to think there wouldn't be too many cops in California that would enforce it anyways. But you get into Australia, you get into the

UK, Germany. It's going to be a lot of people that are going to be separated from family and friends because of this stuff.

There's a there are churches that. Well, you know, some of those churches, if they if they do what they can do, which would be sort of secret, in -house, few people quietly singing together meetings, you can still do it.

And I'll be honest with you, it'll probably be some of the most special stuff you could ever do. I'd encourage you to do it.

I really would break the elders up, break the congregation up, make sure not to meet the same time, make sure to arrive in staggered numbers from different directions, learn from the church that survived under the

USSR and how not to attract attention to yourselves. You know, don't go walking down the street with a bunch of stuff and bags that obviously, you know, you got to go all the way back to the hiding place and Kory Tenboom and how they traveled around and made it look like they were doing normal stuff and do your thing.

But get together, meet, worship, pray. And I think

I think Silent Night, Stille Nacht, for those of you in in Germany. Sung quietly together can be beautiful with maybe a single candle going or something, you know.

I don't know, I'm just shooting the breeze here thinking about some of the ways you could do things, but I really do think that it could be a special time if we spend some time preparing for it.

And so I am thinking back. I've been thinking back a lot on my younger years, thinking a lot about how blessed we have been in our country.

You know, you think about what's going on right now and in many countries in the world. What is so unsettling for us, that is uncertainty about elections, whether votes are being manufactured out of thin air, that kind of thing.

That's normal. There are entire groups of Christians in this world that have grown up with that as their every year normal.

We're all upset because we've grown up with the exact opposite of that. All that means is we've been really blessed.

And once we lose that blessing, does that mean we're not blessed any longer at all?

No. We just need to be thankful for how long we had such a system and recognize there are

Christians who have lived under corrupted systems for a long, long time, and we will too.

But anyway, I remember very, very clearly a

Christmas we, in my family, when I grew up, we had, from my earliest days, from my earliest memories, from three years old on up, we had one

Christmas tree. You saw that Christmas tree. Just one Christmas tree, which obviously means it was an artificial

Christmas tree. And it was only like five feet tall, maybe.

If it was that, now that I think about it, it may not have even been five feet tall. It might have been four or something.

And it was two wooden sections that you'd screw together, and then these wire brush branches.

And eventually we had to stick toothpicks down into the holes because the holes got bigger and bigger over the years from putting the thing in and out, and they started, stick toothpicks down there to keep the branches from falling over.

And of course, the wire brush stuff, some of it starts falling out, it starts getting all flattened, you have to try to, every year you have to try to put the worst branches at the back and try to fluff it up a little bit or something.

Pretty much the same star at the top, too. Initially, it was not, when we moved to Arizona, I think is when we got the one that had lights in it.

This was mini lights, primarily. And then the tinsel, remember?

In fact, the original tinsel we had wasn't just like the garland type thing.

The original tinsel we had would be this stuff that would come in a package and you would pick it up in the middle and you'd hang it over branches and it would hang down.

And the reason that the original stuff that we had hung down was because it had lead in it.

Okay, this is the 1960s, all right? Early 1960s. So that was our original tinsel.

It was heavy because it had lead in it. That's what made it. And once they got rid of that, then it wouldn't ever really hang nicely.

It would sort of get all wrinkly and stuff because it wasn't heavy anymore. Anyway, so I remember this one

Christmas here in Arizona. I was probably, well,

I think I had already started taking, I think I was married, actually, now that I think about it.

I think Kelly was there. Well, maybe not.

I'm not sure. I remember there was one year that when

I really started studying Mormonism and hence really started studying my own faith, I mentioned to my dad that I really wanted to have some resources that dug into the original languages.

And I remember he took me down to a Berean Christian bookstore. Remember Berean? Remember when there were a bunch of Christian bookstores around here?

Yeah, Jesus Chapel, and you had Central Christian Supply, then we had

Berean at 35th and Camelback. Central Christian Supply. It was

Central Christian Supply, yeah. That was the store where I went and picked up the book,

Handbook of Christian Dominations, to find out what a Reformed Baptist was. Well, I didn't own it, but I went to Central Christian Supply because I knew they had a copy of it.

And that's when I found out what a Reformed Baptist was, after I picked up a cassette tape from Don Fry at Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church at Berean, because they had a little display at the

Bible counter at Berean. And that was a long time ago. So we went down to a

Berean Christian bookstore, and those were the days when that was—if you wanted to get into a

Bible debate, since there wasn't any internet, that's where you went to Christian bookstores, because you didn't go into the trinket section.

The people in the trinket section weren't going to debate with you, but the people in the theology section or the Bible section, you might be able to get into an eternal security debate or tongues debate or—you hung out in the charismatic section?

So I got—that Paula White thing got rich. That's why he wanted to play it.

He's all—his former charismatic years are coming back to him in a rush, and he's like, ah, stop that.

That cat had more sense than anybody else in that video. Anyway, so we went down to the

Berean Christian bookstore, and he bought me—I remember he bought me Kenneth Wiest's set and A .T.

Robertson's set, which are still in my library to this day. And of course, they're in—now I have them electronically as well.

But those are the first two sets of original language -based commentaries that—not commentaries, but a set of books that I got.

And I don't remember exactly how long ago—how long after that that was, because I'm pretty certain that when we had this conversation,

I think I was in my first year of Greek, so that would be second or third year of college.

And so one Christmas night—now, we were at my parents' house.

So if I was married, then we had gone up there, and the standard

Christmas was get up there. You'd normally have the

Cowboys playing, or was that just Thanksgiving? There'd be some football going on.

And, you know, the smell of turkey, ugh. Just—that turkey and dressing is still the best in the world.

But then sometimes we would—for example, I still have—I found it on iTunes.

Sometimes we'd listen to a Christmas carol that had been recorded back in the 50s.

Well, my parents had an LP record of the

Christmas carols. So the original recording I had had all the pops and hisses and cracks and stuff like that. Then I found it digitally, which doesn't have any pops and hisses, and obviously the quality's better, but it's sort of lacking something about the pops and hisses.

And since it was an LP, you had to turn it over halfway through. So you always got a little break halfway through, which you don't get with the digital one.

Anyway, so sometimes we'd listen to—oh, what was that guy's name?

Chevalier—that wasn't Chevalier. Anyways, famous narrator of Dickens' Christmas carol.

It was really well done, but it was only half an hour, so it was really quick. Well, actually it was less than half an hour. It was like 20 minutes something. It wasn't very long.

But we'd listen to that. We'd just have the Christmas tree lights on, and we'd listen to a Christmas carol or something along those lines.

Well, this one Christmas—I will get to it eventually, sorry. This one Christmas, my—and

I'm pretty certain I had some Greek under my belt at this point in time. My dad started telling me this, and I think he said that he remembered this from Skipper Wiest, Kenneth Wiest, professor at Moody Bible Institute.

I know I've told this story before, but we have a lot of new listeners who are all tuned out by now. Anyways, and Kenneth Wiest taught

Greek there at Moody Bible Institute, and you had to take Greek if you—there were two tracks that you had that were offered back then, the missionary track and the pastoral track.

And you had to take Greek if you're in the pastoral track, but you didn't if you were in the missionary track.

And so the saying at Moody Bible Institute was that Kenneth Wiest sent more men to the mission field than anyone else ever had, which meant he ran a tight ship, a good ship,

Greek, and you had to know what you were doing. And the interesting thing was they used the exact same

Greek grammar in the 1950s that I was using when I learned Greek.

William Hersey Davis was the author of that one. And my dad's Greek grammar that he used, that he learned it from, was the same one that I learned it from many, many, many moons later.

And that's not the one I would recommend today to be honest with you. Malice is a lot friendlier. But anyway, so according to my dad, he had gotten this from Kenneth Wiest, who

I'm sure got it from somebody else for that matter. And we got our Greek New Testaments out and we had this long table that I think he still has that you could pull out.

And we sat at this long table and we looked at the prologue of John and went through the purposeful utilization of Greek verbal forms in the prologue of John to communicate a divine truth.

And of course, I've used that information. It's found in Forgotten Trinity now, if you're interested in taking a look at it.

But it's just a remembrance, part of it being that Christmas tree lights do not produce a whole lot of light, and therefore reading your

Greek New Testament by Christmas tree lights is probably why I can't see anything anymore. Sort of strain your eyes to be able to see that font.

But just an incredible memory of that evening. And, you know, that's sort of passing stuff on from generation to generation and things like that.

I'm sure it was a number of years later that my dad and I got to go to Moody together. I was invited to speak, do some lecturing up there and speak in chapel for a couple sessions.

And so we got to go up there. I think it was in 1995, if I recall correctly. Or was it 2005?

2005, not 1995, 2005. Yeah, that's what it was. Anyhow, I would like to share with you what we were talking about on that Christmas night.

Or it might have even been Christmas Eve now that I think about it. I don't know. There were a number of years where we would have a lot of places we would have to go on Christmas with family on both sides in the valley.

And so maybe it was a Christmas Eve. I don't remember. But it is,

I think, a beautiful thing to note. And that is, if you look at what we call the

Prologue of John, there are certain scholars today who are basically arguing, yes, theology matters.

There we go. T -shirt. Those aren't up yet, are they? Not yet. But soon.

We'll let you know when they're there. But if you look at, there are some scholars that are disputing the identification of the first 18 verses as a prologue.

They would say, well, the early church didn't see it that way. Well, okay. But on a conceptual and logical level, on a textual level, it forms a single unit.

And verse 18 functions as a bookend to verses 1 and 2. So I do see it as a, not self -contained, it's not meant to be taken separately from, but it is very clearly meant to be taken as the interpretive grid through which the rest of the book is to be understood.

And most of the, well, all, obviously, of the

Unitarian interpretation of John just misses, not misses, but rejects the interpretive priority of this text.

Yet John is plainly attempting to craft something.

There is a flow to his thought. We have this idea that gospels are the same thing that you would get if someone had followed

Jesus around with a video camera, with an iPhone, and just recorded every day.

No, that's obviously not what their intention was at all. And there is crafting of not only what stories are told, but the order in which they're told and the reason where they're placed, where they are.

And John's communicating a particular message. He wants to communicate something.

And those first 18 verses provide a lens through which you are to read the rest of his gospel.

And missing the content of that is what leads to so many of the errors of the reading of the

Gospel of John, including the errors of oneness, Pentecostalism, Unitarianism, all those types of things, miss the importance of those first 18 verses.

But what is interesting is in those, in the first 14 verses, let's talk about the first 13 verses, we'll get to verse 14 in a second.

You have basically two primary verbs that are found in the first 13 verses, verbs that refer to being.

So, is, was, am, are, are being verbs in English.

And so you have am in Greek and its various forms.

And then in the Aorist, you have agenita, genomi. And when you have, for example, in verse three, all things came into being through him.

Agenita. So, when you're talking about created things,

John uses agenita. Now, agenita is just, the Aorist is your basic way of affirming something.

And so when it's being used with genomi, agenita, this is just a basic assertion of existence.

And it, it does not make a statement about, it does, it's not open to saying, well, this is an eternal thing, or there is in the idea of the use of that verb, it is, it is harmonious with something being created, coming into being at a point in time.

And so it's interesting there, even in verse six, when John is introduced, it's agenita anthropos.

Apostolaminas paratheou anima alto Ioannes. So, even when talking about John, he uses agenita.

There was a man sent from God, named John. So, if it's created, he uses genomi.

But what's interesting is, when looking at the logos, what

John specifically does is he doesn't use agenita. He uses the imperfect form of aimi, ein, nrk, ein halagas, kai halagas, ein prostantheon, kai theos, ein halagas, hutas, ein nrk prostantheon.

So, the imperfect is an interesting form, because it normally, like in normal narrative, would refer to a continuous action, an action that's just going on in the past.

I was eating. Not just I ate, but while I was eating, such and such took place, or something along those lines.

So, it's talking about an action going on in the past. You can have inceptive.

You can have different emphases, depending on the verb, and the context, and things like that.

But it doesn't refer to a point of origin. It refers to continuing existence.

When we're talking, it's an existence verb. So, this would be one that you would want to use to talk about something, or in this case, someone who is existing in the past without making any reference to an idea of creation or inception of existence, beginning of existence.

And so, you have that three times in verse one. You have it again in verse two.

And then, you have it again in verse three. All things were made through him. And apart from him, nothing was made which was made.

That which was made in him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light was shining in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend or overcome it, depending on how you want, what you want to do with katelaben there.

And then, there was a man sent from God. His name was John. This one came for a testimony. He might testify concerning the light.

All might believe through him. That one was not the light, but came in order that he might testify concerning the light, which is the true light, which lights every man coming into the world.

And of course, is it every man coming to the world or by the light coming to the world?

That's one of the interpretational issues that people go after. In him, he was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world knew him not.

He came into his own. His own received him not. But as many have received him, then gave he authority to become the tekhnatheyu, the children of God, even those believing in his name, who, not from bloods, neither from the will of the flesh, neither from the will of a man, but from God were born.

So, there is a consistency. All the verbal forms when talking about someone other than the

Logos, not suggesting anything about eternality or anything like that.

But the Logos, especially in John 1, the first verse, the

Logos does not come into existence at the beginning. So, you have those first few assertions.

When it says, in the beginning was the word, it's not saying in the beginning the word was created. It does not say that the word's creation marks the beginning.

Whatever the beginning is, the word's already pre -existing it. And this is the key element of the author's utilization of two different forms of verbs.

But I said that was through verse 13, because in verse 14, for a very important theological reason, that changes.

That changes. And the word became flesh and dwelt or tabernacled amongst us, plural us, and we beheld his glory, the glories of the monogamous, monogamous, the unique one from the

Father, full of grace and truth. The word became flesh.

Not, not using what had been said of the word before, because the word has not eternally been flesh.

To become truly flesh, one must enter into the realm of fleshness, which is the created realm.

So creation comes about through the Logos, who himself is not created.

And then at a point in time, the Logos sarks again, the

Logos became flesh. That happened in time, that happened in space.

That is why when the birth narratives are provided to us, they are placed in history.

They're placed in a geographical location. It is not like so many of the

Greek mythologies, where it's literally once upon a time.

Once upon a time, and you don't know where, and you don't know when, and you can't check it out, and you're not expecting it to be a part of any historical records, because it's once upon a time, it's mythology.

That's not what the Incarnation is. The Incarnation takes place in history, and Luke's going to tell us who was ruling and reigning and what was going on and stuff like that, because the assertion of the

New Testament is this happened at a certain point in time. The word became flesh.

Now, if the word had eternally existed, as I believe a fair analysis of John 1 would indicate, if the word became flesh, then is this saying the word ceased being what the word was before and now took on a completely new form of being?

Well, we know that's not what John is attempting to communicate. He doesn't stop to answer all sorts of questions.

His emphasis is on the reality of the sarx, the carne, incarnation, carne,

Latin, flesh. And there seems to be, there certainly is in his first epistle, a real concern about emphasizing the physical reality of the

Incarnation because of the early Gnostics, at least the influx of belief that it would become

Gnosticism that denied that Jesus had a physical body. And so, he says the word became flesh and tabernacled amongst us.

And that does not mean in individuals. That means amongst us.

He entered into human existence and he lived amongst his people.

And so, that idea of tabernacling, that's the term that's used in the

Old Testament, the tabernacle itself. It's a tent. And so, it is the idea not of the logos becoming flesh, but taking on flesh and living amongst us.

The logos does not cease to be the logos. Logos does not cease to be eternal. The logos does not cease being the logos.

But the logos takes on a perfect human nature and dwells among us.

And we beheld his glory. So, he still has the glory of the logos. If he had ceased being the logos, what glory would there therefore be?

That's the question. We beheld his glory. The glory hos monogamous para patras, the unique one from the

Father. So, there is a glory associated with the relationship between Father and Son, which is an eternal relationship, which does not cease.

But it's very plain here. This is the Son who becomes incarnate, not the Father, not the

Spirit. There is distinction here. There is distinction and order here, unlike what you have in Oneness Theology.

It is the logos who becomes flesh and dwells among us. And by the way,

Oneness Theology, likewise, really struggles to deal with this issue of logos and has come up primarily with this idea of the logos as a foreknown reality that God knew about what he was going to do in Jesus.

And so, the logos doesn't eternally exist, because remember, from their perspective, there's only one person.

And so, Jesus was two persons. Jesus was the divine aspect, who we would call the

Father, indwelling the human person, Jesus. But the human person,

Jesus, is not eternal. God knows him in the sense that he knows the rest of us, but he himself does not exist eternally as a divine person, because they are

Unitarians. But the point is that even in the incarnate state, he is full of grace and truth, but he's also glorious.

He's glorious as the unique one, parapatras, from the Father. Not the

Father himself, but parapatras, from the Father. This is the incarnation.

This is the testimony that, and part of the reality brought to us by John's construction of this

Christmas story, it is an incarnation story, it's the Advent story, is found in the contrast between the aorist of Gidomai, Agenata, and the imperfect of the

Greek verb of existence, aine, and that is what is used of the Logos, up to verse 13, then

Agenata comes in, because the incarnation took place in time.

And that's so central to our faith that we tell time by that reality to this very day.

That's what we may be so thankful to see 2020 vanish into the rearview mirror.

But the very fact that there is a 2020 is, in and of itself, a testimony to the fact that the

Christian faith has formed Western thought. Because Muslims don't, well,

Muslims do know it's 2020, they have to. But the rest of the world, every time they talk about 2020, what are they doing?

What is 2020? 2020, Anno Domini, year of our

Lord, 2020. And he is Lord of time. That's why a lot of people want to go this common era, all the rest of us have to try to get rid of that element of the

Lordship of Christ, but he is Lord over time. We tell time by when he was born, by the incarnation, when he entered into time.

So there you have the prologue of John from a Christmas story from my own past.

It may have been Christmas Eve, but I don't remember. But I remember what the room looked like.

I remembered where I sat and where the Greek New Testaments were and all that stuff.

And in a house we don't own anymore, somebody else lives in that now. But I've been thinking about going down memory lane, because hopefully, when we go to St.

Charles, first weekend in December, the next week

I'm going to be driving down to Pryor, Oklahoma, visiting with Derek Melton and the folks down there at the church at Pryor.

And then driving back from there,

I looked at the map and I said, well, if I'm going to be driving, and my grandmother used to live in Kinsley, Kansas, and I have not been back there since we moved to Arizona in 1974.

And I've never been to her grave. She died in 1976. And I'm like,

I wonder if I could find that place. And because, man, it's amazing once you get there.

I'm heading straight for 60 real fast. Rich tells me it's really rough. And man,

I'll tell you, I can really tell. No, he's it's sad.

The diminished capacity, you understand Biden? I understand Biden. I understand.

Yeah, so I know what's coming. So I'm trying to use my memory. No, seriously, the funny thing is

I called my dad a couple of times this week because I was trying to remember.

I bet my mom would have remembered the address to that house.

You know why? You know why? Because she wrote letters, longhand, in beautiful handwriting.

And when you write out because it was it was like 702 and a half is what it was like. It was one half because it's on an alleyway.

No, no, she would have remembered immediately. She didn't get jokes for two days. She would get the other stuff just fine.

But jokes, yes, my mom would call me up. I just got that joke you told over the weekend.

Anyway, so obviously her mind was still running through those things to figure out what was so funny about why everybody else was laughing.

But she's not around anymore to ask. And so my dad didn't remember. But I was using new technology,

Google Earth, because Kinsley, Kansas is barely a wide spot in the road.

So I figured there can't be too many alleyways in Kinsley, Kansas. But this was also, you know, 45 years ago.

It could be gone, you know. And so I'm sitting there looking and looking on, oh, man, it's gonna be pretty tough to find out, find something from Google Earth.

And so I was talking to my dad and I was talking about the memories that I had of walking down the little main street in Kinsley to go to a little drug store there.

They had a little toy section. And I went by myself. Believe it or not, my parents were not terrible, horrible people.

They let me walk down to Main Street by myself in the 1970s in Kinsley, Kansas.

Well, starting could have been as early as the late 60s, but very much 70, 71, that area.

And that was a big deal for me. That actually helped kids to grow up, you know, take responsibility for themselves and all the rest of that kind of stuff, which nobody does anymore.

Anyway, but I remembered which direction it was from the house. And so I'm sitting there going, well, if I could find that Main Street, then

I might be able to figure this out. But I'm talking to my dad. And just in passing, he said something to me.

He said, yeah, on the other end of the alleyway, the alleyway ended at a Catholic church. Bing!

I had been looking. There's the Catholic church. There's the... Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing!

There it was. I see this little... Because she lived in this... It was basically the size of a garage. It was very small.

But I remember how the house was laid out. And there it is. Found it. I know exactly how to get to it.

And so I'm going to try to... On the way back from Pryor. It's out of the way. It'll add hours to the trip, but...

Because I want to visit that. And I also want to see her grave, because I never got a chance to go there.

And just want to... I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Those of you who are sitting there going, I don't care about...

You should just be talking about textual variance. You don't have... You can't have a human life.

There are people like that. There really are. They're sad little people. But anyway. We did

Christmas there. And we did one Christmas at my grandmother's house.

And I remember it clearly. And they gave me this toy.

I think my dad's going to watch this. So he's going to love this. They gave me this toy. And remember, this is the early 70s.

It was probably 71. Something like that. And it was a pretty cool toy.

It was a red... I remember it to this day. A red metal jet type thing.

And it had a hook. Wide hook. Hook type thing on the top.

That you'd put onto this cable. And you'd attach it to a landing thing on the other side.

It had a runway. And I think it had things you had to jump over.

It had wheels. And you would fly it down this cable.

And then try to get points by landing it properly. Something like that. And the cable had bumps on it.

So it would make... It sort of sounded like a plane going down. Well, not going down.

It didn't come out right. And it's the same thing. And I love this thing.

It was great. But while we were there... While we were there, one afternoon my dad decided to take a nap.

It's a very small house. And so this thing was long enough that it started in one room.

And you'd land in the other room. And he was sleeping just way too long.

So I decided I needed to fly my plane. I mean... You know,

I hope if he hears this, he thinks about the fact that when I was like four years old, four or five years old, they bought me a race car set.

One of those electric... Remember the electric race car? And these were big cars. They were like this big.

And they ran on the tracks and stuff. And those were fun. I don't think this was even a

Hasbro. No, it wasn't Hot Wheels. No, these actually had little electric motors in them.

So they were really cool. And there's a picture somewhere. I wish I still had it. There's a picture somewhere of me standing like this, looking up at my racing set with all the adults standing around doing the racing.

Okay? So I was permanently warped by that. So this is my way of getting back, I think, was

I had this plane. It's probably only a few years later. I had this plane. I needed to fly it. Okay? I just...

You have to do it. If it's there and it's silent, you have to do it. I remember I launched that thing.

My dad's eyes shot open because he was sleeping. My dad's eyes shot open.

And the lasers that he fired burned the flesh off of my face.

You know that look? Parents, you know the look? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

I remember that. The only two things other than going down to the store, other things

I remember about that house were this is in the middle of Kansas.

And if you want the world's greatest car on the cob, oh, my goodness.

Oh, my goodness. Buried in butter and salt and pepper.

And oh, you cannot get... You can't...

You've got to be there at harvest time. I mean, it literally had just walked in from the field. And it was that fresh.

Oh, that was just unbelievable. I think my dad did his fried chicken there too.

And oh, put those together. Oh, that was unbelievable. And then the other...

Actually, two other memories. One night, I was scared to death because I thought there was a bear in the house.

And my dad had to take me into my grandmother's house, room, to prove to me that that little woman who was only four foot ten could snore that loudly.

I thought there was... I thought that had to have been. Had to have been.

And then the last memory, last trip down memory lane, sorry about this, a bat got in the house.

And I have clear memories of my dad with like a pillowcase or something like that, chasing this bat around the room while my sister and I are hiding under our pillows and stuff.

And it was, again, a very, very small place.

And he must have eventually gotten it, either that or shoot it out of the room or something. I forget how it was. But I have clear memories of that.

So I'm hoping... I doubt there's anybody living in it or if there is,

I'm not gonna let a weird person from Arizona in, but who knows? You never know. Meet somebody outside, tell them about your experiences.

Maybe they will. I don't know. But I'm gonna try to go by and see that in Kinsley. And somebody in Twitter mentioned that and said, hey, by Kansas standards,

I'm really close by. I'm an hour and a half away. Which out there in the flat, flat, flat, flat, flat areas of Kansas.

Yeah. Long way between civilized places, just lots and lots and lots of fields.

There's no twist about it. So there's my incarnational story. Took the whole time, but hopefully you'll find it to be something that maybe dads you'll share with your families or something like that.

What are you looking at your watch for? What? I know that.

I'm just wondering why you were looking at the watch. I just, I've never seen you doing that before. Is he gonna call this early today or something like that?

He's just gonna tell a Christmas story and then wrap it all up from there? I mean, that's sort of what you were looking like there.

I'm not sure what you're all about there, but... No, I was going to...

You think that... Let's see here. I gotta hit the button. There we are. You talk about how you say you live with Biden.

Well, I live with the two old guys from the Muppets, all in one. Yep. Yep.

Now, we've been... Look, you and I have been sitting around going, Someday we're gonna be in the old folks' home, sitting around talking about...

And we've told that story for 20 years already. A trillion times. And now it's just starting to come true naturally.

I'll tell you what, though. It's good that you can actually find your grandmother's house still.

Yeah. Because my grandparents' house down on Kokopah, the entire neighborhood's been bulldozed.

It's gone. It's just gone. And... Kinsley isn't the type of place that's going to be undergoing a whole lot of renovation.

That's not a growth area. But Prescott. Oh, good grief. Well, no, I'm talking about... Because I was actually born here in Phoenix.

Oh, that's right. So my dad's family moves from here down in a very rough place, town, two -room house, raising 10 kids.

And so, yeah. But that whole place is gone now. Yep. Well, the house I lived in in Minnesota, I did try to find that when

I went back, visited Bethany House Publishers. And it's underneath a parking lot or something like that now.

So that's a little sad. A lot of people in Europe can go visit ancestral homes from 500 years ago.

We don't generally have that. But I'm hoping this one will still be around. And that when

I get there, it will be the same spot. If I can sort of document it or something like that, that'll be sort of cool.

Anyway, as I've been reminded by the powers that be on the other side of the glass, we are not done yet.

We have not provided you with... Well, a lot of you are sitting there going, other than the brief exegesis of John 1 .1,

you haven't provided us with much of anything at all. Now, be honest with yourself.

It's not a bad day to be thinking about other things, so you just aren't overwhelmed.

God's been good to us, so let's be thankful for that. But I was just going to make one other comment.

Last week, what was the day on this? November 1st. So four days ago. I don't know if anybody...

Nobody saw this. It's right before the election, so nobody cares.

Nobody saw this. The Vatican Secretariat of State provides context of Pope Francis's civil union remark.

Okay, so I don't know who these guys are that have the job of spinning

Francis. But when he retires or dies, because that's pretty much the only way out, the books...

I mean, I think Spinning Francis would be an incredibly good... That's a great title. That would sell.

Spinning Francis. The books that they could write about the backroom meetings where all of a sudden everyone's cell phone goes off and all these priests and monks go running across the

Vatican grounds into the special room. And it's like, what now?

Can you believe this? Oh, no! And in this situation, this took days.

And normally, it only takes hours. Normally, when the call goes out, the

Vatican Secretariat of State, their special shock troops, their

SEAL Team 7, they come out with a statement really, really quick because they have to.

Not this time. It took a while to cobble something together and to try to do some damage control and say, well, you know, there were these specific situations in Buenos Aires when he was archbishop there, and all he's really saying is that people who've been together for a long, long time, there should be consideration of medical decisions and visitation in hospitals.

And this is really all he's talking about. He's always differentiated between marriage and civil unions, even though we all know the civil union thing.

Is there anywhere, I wonder, in the world where the civil union thing was where it stopped?

Or is the pretty much universal experience so far is that civil unions is the stopgap point right before Obergefell, basically.

But the idea is, all he was really saying is that homosexuals who live as a couple should have these legal abilities to share properties and stuff like that.

Well, that's still—you still have to sit back and go, okay, can you imagine a pope from any preceding century that would ever have given consideration to this?

The only way, because the honest response is no, and so the only next step to take is to start applying

Cardinal Newman's development hypothesis in regards to the doctrines of the

Roman Catholic Church and start expanding that out to morals and ethics and saying, yeah, it's true, no pope before this pope would have—no pope before this century, minimally, and really, no pope ever would have considered this, but we have to allow the

Church to develop with culture. And the culture's acceptance of what is still officially considered to be a disordered state, a disordered desire, the culture's acceptance of that disorderedness could use a little bit of order, and all we're suggesting is that.

It took a long time to come up with a pretty lame excuse. But they've come up with something, and I'm sure they're probably just waiting for the next explosion and the next thing that will come after that.

But again, for the hardliner who wants to continue to believe that the pope's the infallible vicar of Christ on earth, they're just sitting there going, but he didn't say

I pronounce and define this doctrine, and as long as he doesn't do that—which, of course, makes infallibility irrelevant because popes almost never do that—but anyway.

Which reminds me, one last thing before we wrap up. I mentioned on the

Theology Matters microblog last week,

I think, we are putting the studio together.

Rich is over there each day messing with stuff and putting stuff together, and we're working on it.

In fact, he's leaving now to go do some more, I'm sure. And that's going to, once we have it functional and we really know how it works, and after we fall on our faces a few times, which will happen, after we have a few technological nightmares and figure out how to avoid those types of things, after we get past the

Windows Vista stage—for those of you old enough to appreciate that—then we will be looking at scheduling real debates, not the kind of 15 -minute opening statements back and forth and then a billion questions from the audience on subjects that don't really matter.

Real, serious debates. And it has been pointed out that there are some Roman Catholic debates on the table, including, interestingly enough, an invitation from Jimmy Akin to debate

Sola Scriptura. And Trent Horn mentioned that, and I wrote back, and I didn't see a response to it.

That doesn't mean a whole lot. I try to remember to say, I did not see a response, rather than saying, he didn't respond.

Whether he did or didn't, I don't know. I can't tell. It's really hard to use that.

I mean, I like Twitter. I like—yesterday,

Kofi—did you see that? Kofi posted a picture in the Coogee, which is—I'm sorry?

Yes. And so, I mean, that's cool to be able to have that kind of communication and have other people commenting on it.

And often, the comments are fun and enjoyable. It sort of creates community. It can also create all sorts of other things, too.

Believe me, I know the bad side of Twitter as well. But it's next to impossible to go back very far and find much.

And so, if Trent responded to this, I didn't see it.

Let's put it that way. But my response was, you know, I would think that the real necessary topic of the day would be, is

Pope Francis the infallible Vicar of Christ on Earth? Don't you think?

Why, in light of Pope Francis's interesting statements and the responses, even from Roman Catholics, to his interesting statements, don't you think that would be the subject that needs to be debated today?

Because we've debated sola scriptura. I first debated sola scriptura 30 years ago, back in August.

So, Jerry Matitix and I have debated it. And I think

Robert St. John did. No, he and I did justification. Obviously, Patrick Madrid and I have debated sola scriptura.

Mitchell Pacwa and I have debated sola scriptura. And I still think that Mitch Pacwa, in my debate on that subject, handles the subject just perfectly fine.

But it's the other side. I've debated

Roberts and Genes and Tim Staples, specifically on papal infallibility.

That's a narrower aspect of the other side's claim to sola scriptura.

The Roman Church's claim that the

Pope is a visible head of the Church and epistemologically provides them with absolute certainty, which they say cannot be obtained with only scripture, and that scripture is not intended to function as being both materially and formally sufficient, but that the

Pope is. So, over the past 30 years,

Roman Catholic apologists have honed their arguments and discussed what's called the partum -partum theory, which was one of the views expressed at the

Council of Trent in regards to holy tradition being found partly in scripture and partly written, partly oral.

And then that wasn't how Trent eventually put it. That was in one of the rough drafts, but it was not eventually the words of Trent.

And so, they have, especially in the last century, attempted to, how should

I say, sharpen their definition of tradition in light of the development hypothesis,

Cardinal Newman. And so, you've got to ease Congar's work on tradition being something they point to very frequently and the categories of material and formal sufficiency.

And their willingness to say that while scripture is not meant to provide the sole infallible rule of faith, that implicitly all of revelation is contained in scripture.

And that's a way of trying to get around the real problem, and that is, if you deny sole scriptura, you, in essence, are opening up the reality of continuing revelation within the church in the form of this tradition, which then can only be defined by the living magisterium, and therefore, you're stuck with Joseph Smith, basically.

Obviously, in a prelates hat, but a different concept. Anyway, I would think that a

Roman Catholic would, at this point in time, want to give a firm and clear defense of the positive claims of their church, and hence, a defense of the idea that Pope Francis is the infallible vicar of Christ, and is, therefore, the only true mechanism whereby tradition can be defined.

And, in fact, the only true interpreter of scripture, the only true definer of scripture, the only true definer of tradition, and the only true definer of the meaning of tradition is found in Pope Francis, because that's what

Rome says. You know why that would be doubly useful? Because there are some Eastern Orthodox guys that want to get involved in this, and that would differentiate between the

Eastern Orthodox denial of sole scriptura, and the Roman Catholic denial of sole scriptura, because the

Orthodox denial has to take a different road. And, in one way, the

Roman Catholic position is somewhat easier to define, well, especially in a debate, almost anything

Roman Catholic is easier to define, because you've got the Western mindset of dogma, decrees, canons and decrees of various councils you can just turn to, whereas in Eastern Orthodoxy, it's much more the definition of theology via the liturgy, which is not nearly as definable.

And that's why, in my opinion, most Eastern Orthodox apologists end up sounding like Roman Catholics without wanting to.

When they enter into Western -style debate, there's a fundamental gap between that and Orthodoxy's actual experience, in my opinion, anyways.

But the point is, that would differentiate between the Roman Catholic denial of sole scriptura and the positive claim, because the positive claim of Rome is denied by Eastern Orthodoxy.

The positive claim of the supremacy of the Roman bishop of Rome is denied, and especially when we get into the real issue, which is epistemology.

What is theanustos? What is an actual true word from God? So, my counter -proposal, as we continue making progress on putting stuff together, and not trying to put any extra pressure on you,

Rich, but everybody listening is now saying, come on, Rich, get it done. What? What are you trying to show me?

Oh. Oh, that's what you went and did. See, there. There you go. Now, see that big old board there?

I'm hoping it's going to talk to me when I get in there in a little while, when I get done there. But yeah, there you go.

And the funny thing is, you cannot see the other big screen there, because it's up against the...

There's a very large screen right next to the flipboard right there. So, there's a white...

The flipboard has white, and then there, you can see it now. And that's going to be where the opponent's going to be, right?

So, that's going to be nice and big. And the idea will be to have the opponent basically the same size as me.

So, again, you're trying to create as much as you can the atmosphere of a real debate.

I'll be able to look over at my opponent and stuff like that. And then

I'll have a screen in the back as well, so I can see what's going on the big screen. What?

What are you doing? The box?

Don't you love how it does that? It just doesn't want to go back, does it?

The box is me. Oh, not sure exactly how to take that.

There have been a few people that have considered me to be somewhat square. Yeah. Okay.

So, where the box is, is where I'll be standing. Theoretically. Right.

Right. Right. It's coming together.

Coming together. Yeah. So, that's where we are. Looking forward to it.

It's going to be exciting. It's going to be a lot of work. But like I said in that, and if you haven't,

I haven't been hitting it as hard as I need to. I need to do it more. But the

Theology Matters microblog, make sure you've got that in your RSS feeds. We really, before the end of January, we need to be set up to disappear from social media.

Because I think if the left is victorious in the presidential race, that's going to be the signal to big tech.

It's time to move. It's time to shut all the opposition down. Just silence them.

Because no one's going to come after us now. There's going to be no penalties to pay.

Because they want us to do this. They're hand in hand. And so, we need to have the

RSS feeds set up and alternate posting methodologies worked out.

And it's just, it's got to be done. If we don't have it done, we're going to be the last ones onto the bus when we finally do figure out some way of continuing our way of communication.

And look, given what we've done for over 30 years, coming up on, well, in 2023, we will celebrate

Alpha Omega's existence for 40, four decades, going into our fifth decade.

We never thought back then that we would be leading the resistance.

As a pair of old men, leading the resistance. But that's maybe what we have to do.

Leading the resistance in defending the faith, calling the culture to repentance, calling the culture from its own self -destruction, and encouraging the saints.

But if that's what we got to do, then that's what we'll do. And we need your help to be able to do it.

And right now, the primary way that we have communication with people is this program.

And so, we're obviously putting a lot of thought into, all right, we're going to wake up one morning to a bunch of emails from people saying, all the dividing lines are gone.

All your videos are gone. Your channel's been locked down. Doesn't even show up anymore.

Okay, what are we going to do? How are we going to communicate with folks? How are we going to continue leading the resistance?

And so, those things that we are thinking about. So, even in the worst case, almost worst worst case scenario,

I figure we've got minimally two years with the

Senate acting as a firebreak, as a wall. That's assuming, and this is the scary part, that's assuming

Senate Republicans standing firm. That's a spongy break.

Let me put it that way. That's a spongy break. Though, Susan Collins was re -elected.

How did that happen? That's things swing super left that might not grow a spine in some of these people.

They might see themselves as the resistance now. Anyway, be it as it may, we certainly are thinking about these things and we want to, we're not ready to lay down and go quietly into the night.

It's not our style. So, we're going to do what we can and try to continue to not only encourage you in the cultural issues, but provide you with the foundations to be able to respond to attacks and defend the faith and do all those things that we've been doing, whether we will be able to have as large an audience or whether those in the audience will have to become actively involved in helping to spread that message.

That could be part of our future. If it is, the Lord knows it and he'll give us the grace to get there.

So, there you go. Anyway, thanks for watching the program. Thank you for putting up with a few family stories today.

Again, there are a few curmudgeons who just do not believe that I should have a regular life, but hey,