July 15, 2003

Desert Metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is

The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602, or toll free across the

United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

James White. And good morning and welcome to The Dividing Line. We didn't think we were going to be here this morning, but a particular little trip

I was going to take really didn't work out as far as schedule goes, so we'll be here, Lord willing, Thursday evening as well.

Get another week's worth of The Dividing Line in and hopefully have some interesting topics for you.

Today, just a couple things and allow you to sort of drive the topic of the program today by calling 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.

That is, if the electricity stays on, we didn't have, I didn't hear about any brownouts or anything yesterday here in Phoenix.

I did see my little weather bug thingamabobby down there in the system tray get up to 117 degrees yesterday.

It got up to 123 in Arizona at a little town, a

God forsaken little town along the Colorado River called

Bullhead City, I think it was Bullhead City, I think it was Bullhead City, someplace up there anyway, that hit 123 degrees.

That's not the worst. The worst is 122, but can you really tell the difference? I could tell the difference because I'll tell you what, 117 with a little bit of humidity is considerably worse than 122, which

I also experienced, that had 2 % humidity. You knock that humidity up to about 15%, increase the amount of moisture by about tenfold or something like that and wow, it's hard to breathe when it's 117 degrees with a little bit of humility, yes, a little humility coming in.

We need the humility, not the humidity, actually we need the humidity too, we need the rain, but anyway, it's only a measly, at 11am, a measly 107 degrees at the moment here in Phoenix, so if we all of a sudden disappear, it's because the electricity finally just gave up the ghost and died.

I imagine those transformers gave just a tad bit on the warm side on days like that. Right now is the time of year where all you folks back east are going, yeah, yeah, yeah, you live in Phoenix, but you know, start in November, we start doing the yeah, yeah, and all the way through May, so that's just sort of how it all works out.

Hey, I got a chance to see the cover for Debating Calvinism, that is now at least,

I think, completely officially the title, the title of the book from Multnomah, which is currently scheduled for release in February of 2004, is entitled

Debating, why do I say entitled, because entitled is not really the way it should be titled, not entitled, but anyway, titled

Debating Calvinism, 5 Points, 2 Views, Dave Hunt and James White.

I saw six covers yesterday, and it was funny, I put them on a little website that we have for our chat channel, and there were about,

I'd say about a dozen people, grand total, who voted, and I said, you tell me what you think, because I'm not a graphics person, you know,

I mean, okay, I guess I have some idea of what looks good and what doesn't, but frequently folks won't agree with what

I think looks good anyways, and so we put them up there, and I looked over the six, and I picked the one that I thought looked best, and, but I didn't say anything about it,

I just sort of threw it out there for everybody else, and for quite some time, the one I wanted didn't get a single vote, and in fact, the one

I wanted was number four of the six, and number one, and I think number five, and number five looked very much like number four, so I guess we should throw those together actually, had the most votes, and so I found out during the day that they contacted

Dave Hunt's office, and all his people got together, looked at them, and about the only thing, the only thing where Dave Hunt and I have agreed, in regards to this book, other than the format, was that independently,

Dave Hunt's folks, Rich Pierce, and myself, all chose the same cover, and so if, we can't, we can't say that we had complete disagreement in this book, because we all decided that cover number four was the one to go with, and so that's the one we are, we are going with, is cover number four, now that doesn't tell you anything, but when you see it, you will know what cover number four was, well at least

I hope so, I have actually gotten books, only one, but I have gotten books in the mail, and I thought

I knew what they were going to be, I thought they knew what they were going to look like, and when it arrived, it didn't even have the same title, so it does, it does happen, and it could arrive and look completely different, you never know, but February will be here before we know it, and then let the games begin.

In fact, just this morning, I got an email about a possibility,

I can't say much about this at the moment obviously, but I am going to pursue the possibility of, of, since, since Dave Hunt has chosen to not follow through with the public debate concept, saying that, hey, you know, the debate we have done is enough, in written form, we don't need to do this in front of cameras, we don't need to have cross -examination, we don't need to be able to get into that kind of stuff, and since I wrote to T.

A. McMahon, and I didn't even get so much as a response to my invitation to him to debate, there is another individual, not necessarily directly associated, but somewhat like, somewhat associated, with the same camp that we are going to look into the possibility of doing something along those lines, as far as the possibility of a debate goes.

And by the way, before we start taking our multitude of phone lines, the phone lines are burning up today, just exploding, well actually,

I just think we only have one, but before we start taking our phone calls, it's probably a good idea to open up a window here for the person who is telling me about the phone calls, so I can actually see what he is saying, but some of you, many of you have taken advantage of the special offer that we had in regards to the reprinting, the republication of God's Sovereign Grace, now called the

Sovereign Grace of God, and Drawn by the Father, two books that I wrote, oh, back about 89, 90, 91, somewhere around there, and, great, okay, and anyway,

I just love getting these little messages, and we were offering a special offer, as long as the supplies lasted, we had a case of each of the original books, and when you purchased one of the new books, you got one of the originals along with, so you'd have more than one.

Well, we are completely out of God's Sovereign Grace, and we have about eight to ten copies at max of Drawn by the

Father left, in other words, the original printing. You can still order the

Sovereign Grace of God, of course, but it just doesn't come with a second, earlier edition along with it, and after the next eight or ten orders for Drawn by the

Father, the same thing will be true as well, so if you would like to get that special on that particular book, you need to get that order placed

ASAP, because they won't last very long, obviously, and so if you do order Drawn by the

Father, the next number of people, however many, manage to sneak in there, we have eight to ten copies left, and you'll get the original edition along with it, two books for one, and that one especially is one that you need to, that one is especially one that you need to have available to give to folks, it's almost booklet length, 60, 70 some odd pages, hence it's not intimidating to individuals, it's not one that, you know, oh man,

I'm going to have to read a 500 page book, and it just simply, the reason that Drawn by the

Father has been so well received over the years is it's focused upon a passage from the

Gospels, and let's face it, we live in a society where a lot of folks suffer from hyper -red letterism, and they really believe that if it's in red letters it's somehow more inspired than if it's in black letters, and that's obviously not true, but to get past that prejudice that does exist, it is useful to be able to give them a book like Drawn by the

Father, so that's a good book to have available, to have, I guess most folks in the world can actually stick books in their trunk or something like that and have them available, that doesn't work real well out here, in fact, you leave anything inside of a vehicle out here that is made of plastic or paper or any combination thereof, and it's going to be history after one day like yesterday, or today for that matter, oh it's up to 109, isn't that nice, so it's just, it's just not something you want to do, so you might want to get those last few of the special edition of Drawn by the

Father, the original one, along with the newly printed one, 877 -753 -3341, let's head up to Detroit and Ashraf with a question about methods of apologetics, hello!

Hi, how are you? Doing good. Well, I just wanted to talk about the method of apologetics, in particular

Roman Catholicism, because I know you do that a lot, and I come from that background, or came from that background, but listening to your debates, which

I've done quite often, I've been listening to your program obviously for a while, maybe, well not too long, but three years, maybe two years, and I've called in before,

I don't know if you remember me, but... Yes, the name's familiar, yes, uh -huh. Okay, well, it's quite obvious that you're a presuppositionalist, and I've been reading

Van Til and Bonson, and have listened to a lot of Bonson's works on transcendental argumentation, and it's really obvious that you point out people's presuppositions in the beginning of the debate, and you make sure that the audience can recognize, you know, that you have an ultimate authority, and that authority is scripture, and it's

God -breathed, so it's authority is derived from the very being of God, and that's where you rest your standard in, and the

Roman Catholic, you try to point out, is, uh, he believes in soul ecclesia. Yeah, and before you continue that, that's all true, and I'm certain that there is an element of how this all connects together in the sense of recognizing presuppositions, that's just a part of being a good debater.

As far as the transcendental argument, I know that Greg Bonson argued that in any apologetic encounter, what you're doing is seeking to demonstrate the inconsistencies, the internal inconsistencies of your opponent's position, and to demonstrate the consistencies of your own, given the presuppositions from which you're functioning.

I don't really specifically or purposefully attempt to apply a quote -unquote transcendental argument, especially in a debate that is based upon the alleged application, we might need to close my door there,

Mr. Pierce, I'm getting a lot of noise in the background. I don't specifically attempt to apply a transcendental argument within a context where the individual is accepting a scriptural authority, or at least professes to accept a scriptural authority, and when

Greg said that within the context of Mormonism or Jehovah's Witnesses that you use the exact same form of argumentation,

I'll be honest, I've never really seen how that works when you're dealing with a theistic system, because as I understand the transcendental argument, it is primarily an argument for theism over against atheism, not necessarily for a particular form of theism over another particular form of theism, especially when you talk about Roman Catholicism, where we're not even dealing with a difference in regards to the doctrines of the

Trinity, maybe how we obtain the knowledge of the doctrines of the Trinity, but that's not part of the debate.

You just hit the heart of the matter, that's exactly where I wanted to go, and I did want to provide some examples in which

I think you could actually do it and you have done it, but I don't think you've made it the primary focus or the issue of the debate, but to be honest with you,

I think you've done it, and you've done it well. For example, there's a

James Aiken, the Bible Answer Man broadcast, is that who you discussed it with? We covered every topic known to man, unfortunately.

I know you have, and I remember listening to that, and you made one comment in that, and it was that Roman Catholics, if they were consistent, could not do exegesis.

Now, I thought that should have been the primary focus after you had said that.

I never even thought about that until you mentioned it, but to be honest with you, doesn't that not rip the foundation underneath their feet?

If you can say that they're not allowed to do exegesis within their own system, that means that they can't know

God, or because God cannot reveal Himself to them, and they cannot exposit

God's Word and His revelation and understand who He is, therefore they can't understand the world the way

God sees it, which is the way we should see it. Well, let me play the devil's advocate for just a moment.

My assumption would be, if you were speaking with a Roman Catholic who is familiar with the issues that we're raising in regards to epistemology and the ultimacy of the revelation of God in Scripture and things like that, if they're familiar with that, and Jimmy Aiken might be familiar with some elements of it, having been

Presbyterian for a particular period of time, their response would probably be somewhere along these lines.

First of all, they would obviously deny the assertion that I make, however,

I'm not sure how consistently they could do so. Let me explain for folks who didn't hear the program and haven't heard me address this before.

When I said that a consistent Roman Catholic cannot engage in exegesis, what I was saying is that the ultimate knowledge of what

Scripture teaches and what Scripture is saying for the consistent

Roman Catholic does not come from the exegesis of the text of Scriptures on their own.

In other words, it's not their encounter with the text, it's not their examination of the text, it's not even, in many senses, their learning from someone else who is exegeting the text and explaining the process of exegesis and things like that.

It is fundamentally through the formulations of belief on the part of the church that a person comes to have knowledge of allegedly what the

Scriptures teach, and I think it's important to emphasize why I say that. Think about, for example, in the definition of the

Immaculate Conception, you have a use of Genesis chapter 3, and many Roman Catholic theologians to this day have admitted that the argumentation that the

Pope used from Genesis at that point is itself on a textual level flawed.

You can read this in Ludwig Ott's Fundamentals of the Catholic Dogma. He makes the assertion that it is not the process by which a conclusion was come to that is infallible, it is the conclusion itself.

So in other words, a person could utilize completely bad argumentation, argumentation that is completely fallacious on a textual level, and yet the result is still infallible.

And so that demonstrates, I think, the real problem there, and that is that their knowledge of what the text is saying is mediated to them through the dogmatic assertions of the

Catholic Church. And so, given that that's what I was talking about, that they really can't do exegesis, they can't engage that particular issue.

I think, and let me see what you think of it, Jimmy Akin's response or someone like that's response would have gone somewhat along these lines.

Well, I do know what God has revealed of himself through the means that he has chosen to do so, and that is, rather than giving me, and this is offensive to me too, but this is the type of language

I hear, rather than giving me a dead text that cannot speak from generation to generation in a living fashion, he has given to me the living church indwelt by his spirit who, honoring the sacred text, makes that text to come alive for each generation.

I think that that would probably be... And that's what they would say, because I've listened to a lot of your debates, and that's what

I would expect them to say, but that's still, I think, very easily refutable, because...

Oh, well, to begin with, I was reading excerpts from Defense of the Faith, and Van Til made the comment that the epistemological question of how do we know can never be separated from the ontological question of what do we know.

And basically, we know God because God reveals himself. Now, we have the theophanists that you mentioned, the very breath of God, as our standard.

They want to use any other source, no matter what it is. In this case, it's the papacy.

It's, like you said before, a man thousands of miles away as their ultimate standard. But they would, of course, and I'm, again, playing devil's advocate so that we can place ourselves...

My point would be that their choice is arbitrary, whereas ours is not. They would say that it's not so much arbitrary.

They would say it's not arbitrary in the same way... Well, you explain to me what you think. When you say arbitrary there, what do you mean?

What I mean by arbitrary is that our ultimate authority resides in the ontology of God or the very being of God.

We have a reason why we can judge the world, and that reason is because God is the creator of the world, distinct from the creation, but not separated from it in that he sustains it, and conditions it, and whatnot.

Okay, but wouldn't they say that they too have the same foundation?

All we're arguing about is the means by which that knowledge is mediated to us, one, through a direct encounter with the

Theanoustos revelation of God in Scripture, and they would say that it's not God's will for the individual to encounter the revelation that way.

Instead, God is the one who has chosen to give us the living body of his church, indwelt by his spirit, which gave...

that's the noustos part of Theanoustos, so that a higher level of certainty could be obtained.

So the question becomes, which is of a higher authority, God speaking to us, or the

Pope interpreting for us? Because in either way, I understand they were going to say that that's the means, the means that God has instituted is the papacy.

But the question becomes, which is of a higher authority, God speaking to us directly, which is what revelation is, is it not?

Quite true. Otherwise we'd be equivocating on what Scripture is, and what God breathing,

God speaking to us is. No question about it. They would say, though, the only way that you can have knowledge of what is Theanoustos is through the

Ecclesia. So they can have knowledge of God only through man. I would guess that they would argue that the church is not human in origin any more than the

Bible is human in origin. In other words, since it's a divinely created institution, even though it's indwelt by men, that doesn't any more make it merely human than the fact that the

Bible was given to us through the mediation of man, as far as mankind was used in its writing, in the writing of the...

as a mediating source, a mediating means by which the Scriptures came to us. I think what you're seeing here, hopefully, is the incredible exaltation of the

Ecclesia. And this is why, at the time of the Reformation, the argument that exists is between...

well, you've heard... I'm sure you've heard the argument. It hasn't come up a lot in my debates, but certainly has in written form.

The difference between believing that the Scriptures are the offspring of the church, or that the church is the offspring of the

Scriptures. Again, it illustrates... I would believe it's contradictory, taking our definition, and I believe

God's definition of what Scripture is. Because if God's definition of Scripture is

Him speaking, that is a direct authority. Now, the reason why

I bring up how do we know, and we know what we know on the basis of who we're getting it from, or the ontology, that is

God Himself, is because they have to go through a filter to understand

God, and then to understand the world. Well, that filter is arbitrary. Because I could point to myself as saying,

I'm the Pope. I'm the one who defines what Scripture is, and everybody has to go through me.

Now, they're going to make the claim, well, no, John Paul's the Pope, and everything has to go through him.

Now, there's no more reason to go to history, or to go to any other means to judge between who's the real

Pope, me or John Paul, because I'm going to give you a view of history, John Paul's going to give you a view of history, and neither one is going to be objective, because they're both going to be arbitrary.

Now, if we go to Scripture, whose direct source is God, and is actually

God speaking right now, as we as Protestants believe, and you've made that so clear, there is no arbitrariness.

It's objective, and the proof of that is in rejecting that, you lead to absurdity, which would be the case that I brought up, that I can consider myself the

Pope, or my pastor the Pope, or anybody the Pope, and it would be just as objectively true as I'm claiming

John Paul II to be. I have a few more examples if I'd like to work with you on.

Sure, but before you do that, before we get too far down the road, because I'll probably forget what you had said,

I think that one of the arguments that we made at that point, however, is, well, if you're saying that it's arbitrary to pick

John Paul II over yourself, and that both have the equal claim to such a position,

I think they would say historically that that makes all of history irrelevant, and then they might turn, and I'd be interested in knowing how you'd respond to this, they might turn that around and say, okay, but there is more than one book of Scripture that claims to be

Scripture, there's more than one, you have other books of Scripture, you have the Koran, you have the

Bhagavad Gita, you've got the Book of Mormon, how are you not being arbitrary in choosing one of the many books that claim to be

God's word? I think, I think Bonson, I've been listening to him, and he made a pretty good point that the

Bhagavad Gita, first of all, in and of itself, doesn't claim to be

God -breathing, God -speaking, and if we were to, I'm obviously not equipped to talk about the

Bhagavad Gita, or the Koran as well, but let's use the Koran as our example, and the

Koran, for instance, will negate knowledge of God by not only being contradictory to itself, but also claiming that God cannot be known, so the

Koran destroys knowledge of Allah himself, and therefore destroys the point of the Koran in a particular verse, so all of these particular religions fall upon themselves.

But Ashraf, aren't you, in essence, using a form of judgment, that is, you're interpreting the

Koran, and on the basis of that interpretation, disqualifying it, isn't that the same as someone using history and disqualifying your claim to being the

Pope based upon history? Well, history can't be considered an ultimate authority, whereas the

Bhagavad Gita and the Koran can be, because you can't point to history without pointing to it within a particular authority, or within a worldview.

So the Roman Catholics wanted to give us a view of history, now you know in your debate that they have a totally different view of history,

I mean, in your debate with Jerry Matatix on the Assumption of Mary and all the other doctrines of Mary, he looked pretty silly to me, and you showed him that there was no sense of trying to point to or toward the

Church Father or Church Council that believed in the Assumption of Mary within the first six centuries of the

Church, and he looked really silly to me, but he didn't look silly to his people nor himself, because he's going to interpret that differently than we do.

He has a view that's been given to him by the Magisterium, and he arbitrarily accepted that view of history.

Right. Yeah, no, two ways about it. Ashraf, hold on just a moment through the break, we'll look at those other examples, and take your phone calls at 877 -753 -3341, we'll be right back.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. And interestingly enough, if you've heard the story, and I've mentioned it more than once on The Dividing Line before, at the end of the papacy debate in December of 1990, in Phoenix, at the

City of the Lord Catholic Community, that Scott Hahn moderated, you may recall that at the end of that debate, at the time,

Mr. Hahn was very, he was livid, he was very angry, and he turned to me, and this is in front of everyone,

I mean, the debate was over, but numerous people were coming forward to ask questions, primarily of Jerry, and with many people listening, he turned to me and he said, you blew it, because you brought up papal infallibility, and that's not what this debate was about, so since I had dared to mention the concept of infallibility in my closing remarks,

I had blown it. But then, and that didn't surprise me, he turned to his good friend, his good buddy, his fellow traveler into Roman Catholicism, Jerry Matatix, in front of all these

Protestants, and he says, and you blew it, because you use scripture as your only authority, and you can't do that.

And he turned around, and in a huff, walked out of the room, and never came back.

Wow. And within less than one month, Jerry Matatix was no longer with Catholic Answers.

Wow. I don't remember you mentioning that. Oh, really? Yes. Well, it's one of those stories

I will never, ever forget, seeing Scott Hahn turn to Jerry Matatix, who wasn't looking overly happy at this point anyway.

I mean, this was the first time in their experience that they had encountered someone who could actually argue back, in essence.

And I had used the early Church Fathers, and they just simply were not accustomed to anyone making a historical response.

They were used to sort of the Dave Hunt perspective, which is, don't worry about the early Church Fathers, they're irrelevant, just don't get into that stuff.

Well, not only had I done that, but I think the thing that got Mr. Hahn, now Dr. Hahn, so angry at that time, was that during the course of the debate,

Mr. Matatix brought up Isaiah 2222, as he had in all his previous debates on the papacy that I had listened to.

And of course, that is an argument that was primarily developed by Scott Hahn. And Hahn had transcripts of his talks on Isaiah 22 and all that stuff floating around the internet already, even at that early period of time.

And so I had an answer. I had pointed out, during the debate, that not only had

I never heard Jerry mention that Isaiah 2222 is quoted in the

New Testament, but it's quoted in Revelation 3 -7 on the lips of the Lord Jesus, the resurrected Lord Jesus, not in reference to Peter, but I also said in all the talks that I've heard by Jerry Matatix or by Scott Hahn, I've never heard either one of them say that this passage is cited in Revelation 3 -7.

I think that's what started the slow boil, shall we say, that resulted in the explosion at the end of the debate.

But yeah, it was quite interesting, and he was making basically the point that you just made, and that is, from his perspective, you can't make the kind of argumentation that Jerry tries to make, and his ministry at least was,

I'm not sure if it still is, I think it is still called Biblical Foundations, where he tries to make the argument only from Scripture.

And that's obviously, it's very attractive when you're speaking to Protestants.

Let's not undersell it, as far as a rhetorical tool, it is very, very attractive.

But from an epistemological perspective, if you understand what Rome is saying, it's inconsistent. Right, that's why

I believe wholeheartedly, and that's why I could never become a Roman Catholic, or anything but Christian, is that Roman Catholicism presupposes

Protestantism no matter what. And if I had wanted, with all my heart, to become a

Roman Catholic, I wouldn't know where to start. If I wanted to use the

Roman Catholic standard, I'd search in vain to find it, because how am I going to judge what an ex -cathedra statement is?

I'm going to do that autonomously, and lead to subjectivity, which leads to skepticism.

And that's how everything happens when you lead away from Protestantism. Well, and that's what you have in the vast majority of, especially,

American Catholicism today. And since I'm telling you stories about what happened between breaks and after debates, if you want a really good illustration of exactly how that works out in reality,

I'm not sure if you've heard or seen the debates I did with Robert Festigi in Austin, Texas a number of years ago.

But after one of the debates,

I had quoted a well -known Roman Catholic scholar and historian, who, because he actually does decent scholarship, is not the most conservative

Roman Catholic around, and I had quoted some of his conclusions in the debate itself.

And after the debate was over, during the break, we took some breaks because this was being done in a television studio, in essence.

And he came over and he said, well, you know, a lot of folks don't hardly even consider him to be a

Catholic. I mean, he's so liberal on this issue and that issue and things like that. And I said, well, we're talking about historical facts here.

Do you have any response to that? So I went back and forth a little bit. And so then I made this comment, and this is what connects to what you just said.

I made this comment. I said, well, there certainly are a large number of opinions expressed within Catholicism today.

Now, he was still close enough to the microphones that the people in the control room heard this.

And they'll testify that they heard him say this. Now, I was looking at him, and he was sort of looking down.

He looked a little bit, if you've ever seen Robert Festigi, a little bit absent -minded. He wasn't looking me right in the eye and trying to communicate something to me.

He was just sort of making a comment. So keep that in mind when you hear what he said. So I said, yeah, there's all these different opinions expressed in Roman Catholicism today.

And he said, and this is almost a direct quote, yeah, that's been the way it's been ever since we ended the

Inquisition. And I look in the control room, and the people in the control room are just standing there with their jaws on the floor.

But you see, what he said was exactly right. The only way that they avoided skepticism was through the force of the

Inquisition. It was through the force of military suppression of dissent. That's a perfect example.

So it's a great example, yeah. You hadn't heard that one before either, had you? No, I haven't.

See, now everybody in the chat channel is talking about, man, we've never heard this. I thought for sure I had told these stories.

No, I've never heard them. Oh, well. What I would suggest, and I would love to see you do this, is in a debate, tell the

Roman Catholics that you want to become a Roman Catholic. And I don't see how you could lose the debate, because there's no way for you to become one.

There's just no standard on which you can stand on and objectively know that you are a

Roman Catholic. Well, you know,

I have a feeling that no matter how often my opponents hold up crucifixes during the middle of debates, or call people up to stomp on it, or engage in other theatrical activities like that,

I would never be allowed that freedom. That would be the one thing.

I, unfortunately, have to live on a completely different standard than my opponents do.

That's just all there is to it. I know what you're saying. I think if you made that point, the primary issue, you would end the debate in five minutes.

I'm afraid the only way those debates end in that way is in the minds of the audience.

I mean, Bosch couldn't do it with Stein and Tabach, and he's the one who... Right, right.

I mean, he made them look stupid in front of me, and all those who could understand the argument. Well, not dumb, particularly stupid, but the position, being foolish.

Yeah, the sad thing is, you look at situations... For example, in the debate with Hamza Abdel -Malik, that debate was over halfway through.

And it was pretty funny. And it was, but then what happens? Here's good debate attendance 101 for anyone who attends one of my future debates.

Just because the debate has pretty much been over with in the formal debate itself, doesn't mean that you, as a

Bible -believing, solid Christian in the audience, should then sit back and go, well, that was easy enough, because there's this thing called audience questions at the end.

And if you remember the situation in New York with the

Muslim debate, because the Christians figured this was a no -brainer, this was all over, most of them, not all of them, but most of them just sat back, and, you know, why bother asking a question?

Isn't this obvious to everyone? Well, it wasn't obvious to everyone. It wasn't obvious to the Muslims, because unless you were there, you may not be aware of the fact that about five or six minutes into my opening statement, all the

Muslims in the audience got up and left. Now, try to imagine this. You can't see it on the video.

And the reason you can't see it on the video is, amazingly enough, I didn't lose track of what

I was saying. I didn't respond to it. I mean, I can't even tell, watching myself, exactly when it happened.

But at some point, imagine you are going along, you're giving your presentation, and all of a sudden, half the audience literally gets up, and they walk out.

And they leave their backpacks, briefcases, and everything else behind.

Now, think for just a second, in post -9 -1 -1 America, what that would have resulted in. Oh, yeah.

You know, the infidel is about to die, you know, it would have gone through. And even before 9 -1 -1, that thought is going through people's minds.

So they're gone for about ten minutes for prayers. They come in right as I'm finishing up. So they didn't even hear my presentation.

All they've heard is Malik's presentation, my opening statements, and then my responses to him.

They've never even heard the positive presentation. So they're getting up, and they're throwing questions at me, because from their perspective, their side won, because they didn't hear the other side.

They got up and left. And so I end up sitting there for half an hour or more, fielding questions, and 75 % of the people in line were

Muslims, and another 10 % were not Orthodox Christians. And so you only had a couple decent questions that were thrown

Malik's direction. And that ends up giving the advantage to the other side to sort of try to patch over things, and they don't go well.

So for anyone who's listening who plans on attending a debate in the future, keep that in mind.

It doesn't really matter what happens in the debate. If the audience questions are going to happen, I could use the support of having some decent questions asked.

And most of the time, people do come up with real good questions. I mean, I'll never forget the guy who asked Stravinskis the question out of Tobit on Purgatory.

Have you seen that one? I'm not familiar. At the end of the debate with Fr. Peter Stravinskis on the subject of Purgatory.

Oh, I have that. I just haven't listened to it. Well, you've got to. It's better. There are a couple debates that are better to watch.

The Malik debate is a good one to watch. I listened to that one. And there's stuff you see that's surprising, that communicates things that just the audios do not.

The Stravinskis debate is definitely one to watch on video. It's definitely worth doing so.

And in the audience questions, we were still doing it where we had actual audience questions at that point, where a person would stand up and ask the question in the audience, rather than going to the written form, which

I think does work a lot better. But this was an excellent question. In fact, this fellow had talked to me before the debate and said, what do you think of this question?

I said, yeah, it sounds like a good one. So he gets up and he reads some statements from the book of Tobit, which is canonical scripture for the

Roman Catholic. I think it's Tobit 410, which says the giving of alms covers over many sins.

Something along those lines. So he asked, up to this point, if you're watching

Stravinskis, Father Stravinskis at this point wanted to be anywhere other than where he was.

He wouldn't have minded walking along a dark alley in Northern Ireland at this particular point in time.

He didn't want to be where he was. He was rocking back and forth. He was pulling at his collar, looking at his watch.

He wanted to get out of there so badly that it was patent. It was very, very obvious. And he was getting a little snippy.

I mean, he misquoted some passage of scripture. He said Peter said something that Peter never even got close to saying.

It was a conflation of one thing Paul said, and I don't know where he got the rest of it. And so I asked him, well, where is that?

And he's like, oh, we're playing games here. I'm not playing games. How can I respond to a passage when Peter never said what you said?

Well, look it up in your gizmo there. I had my handspring visor with me. Yeah, that's where the gizmo term came from.

And so we're now in the audience questions. Like I said, he wants to get out of there. And so this guy asked based on Tobit 410, so is this saying that I can like basically write a check and get out of purgatory?

And I expected, you know, somewhat of a minor explosion. How dare you say such a thing?

You know what the response was? What? Well, pay me now or pay me later.

Wow. And you should have heard the gasps in the audience. And I don't think it was just the

Protestants in the audience that were gasping. Pay me now or pay me later.

And that was basically all he said. Wow. And I then got to respond to that. And you could look at me.

I am rarely caught without something to say. And I'm just like,

I don't even know how to respond to that. I mean, it was just absolutely amazing.

And to see it, and, of course, from my perspective, I'm looking out at the audience.

And the audience, interestingly enough, divides in the sense that Protestants sit in one area and Catholics sit in another, especially during the question and answer period.

You can start telling by that point in time, I know where my, quote, unquote, fans are and I know where the folks who would like to throw something at me are.

And so you can sort of tell where the noises are coming from. And even the Catholics at this point were not happy campers.

And when that answer came out, I mean, eyes are rolling and they're just like, oh, man, is this ever going to get over with?

And it did fairly shortly after that. But some of these are worth getting the video just simply to watch the reactions of folks and things like that.

But anyway, hey, you know, I think you're the first caller we've ever had who has gone the whole program.

Except for maybe Pierre, our Mormon listener, or guests,

I think this is the first time we've ever had one caller that just went the whole program in and of themselves.

That's fairly good. That is pretty cool. You can send me those Oakleys at the address that I... Well, you know what?

That would be fine. You said Folkley's? Yes, I can get Folkley's for $2 .29 down at Swap Mart.

And they look just like the real thing from about 10 feet off. I got a pair of Folkley's in the mail once and I thought

I had purchased Oakley's. And that wasn't a pleasant experience either. But anyway, well,

I appreciate your comments. I appreciate the fact there are folks out there that listen very, very closely and very, very carefully.

And I'm just thankful that we've had, well, as of, I think it's October of this year, 20 years of ministry here at Alpha Omega Ministries.

We began in 1983. And believe me, when we started this ministry in 83 with one photocopied track and a set of LDS books, and that's basically all we had.

We had no idea that 20 years later we would be talking about these. Yeah, we had a phone machine that 20 years later we would be discussing.

No, we got the phone machine later, actually. We didn't even have that much. All these debates, 46 debates we can look back on and all the things that took place after and in the middle of and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

It's an amazing thing. So anyways... I really appreciate you taking my phone call. Okay, thanks a lot. God bless.

I'm not going to repeat the phone number because we're just about out of time, but we are coming up on our official anniversary.

I think it's October, I think is what it is, right? October of 1983 officially,

I think, is 20 years that Alpha Omega Ministries has been in existence. We've seen a lot of quote unquote ministries come and go during those 20 years.

And I can guarantee you there are ministries that are less than 20 years old that are a whole lot bigger than we are.

But we continue doing the things that we've been doing for 20 some odd years and I hope that you'll continue to pray for us.

We have a lot of things coming up, a lot of work that we continue to do and a lot of things we would like to be doing.

And there's just not enough time and certainly not enough people to be able to keep up with it all.

But we do the best that we can and trust the Lord to give us the strength to continue pressing on and doing the things that we need to do.

The next big thing on my calendar anyways, as far as debates goes, is October. And I'm not even sure with whom as yet because I needed to move it to a

Friday night. I'm hoping it's with Jerry Matatix. I'm hoping it's on Mary or something related to that.

He wants to do a different subject but we haven't really gotten to that point of getting all that ironed out.

We need to obviously as time is passing us by. But then don't forget December 5th, the big debate in Tampa, myself versus Greg Stafford on the subject,

Jesus Christ, God or a God? That will be coming up and of course that will be a major, major, major debate.

And our crews the day after, December 6th and following on the Zondom. We've had some folks who've had to fall out so I'm not really certain what that means as far as rates go, what's available.

But you might want to click on the link on the website, talk to Mike O 'Fallon, see what's there.

And I'm not sure if there's a waiting list right now or whatever but we're still going and we're still going to have a great time.