The Changing World of Mormonism, A Few Tweets, 90 Minutes

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:32

Well, greetings. Welcome to The Dividing Line. Boy, I tell you, summer's starting. Not, you know, not bad. I can't complain.

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We're finally drifting up above 100 degrees, just barely. And, of course, here in Phoenix, it's so stinking dry.

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You can't really tell yet. I don't see any... Until it hits 110, it really hasn't started.

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But, you know, you can't leave the door open at night now. That's...

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Once that hits, then it's like literally October at the best before you get to have the fresh air coming in again.

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But I have to admit, I just, I was... Babylon Bee is putting a few things out here that distracted me.

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That's true. That's true. You want corruption?

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You want to see how private industry can do for $10 what the government can do for $1 ,000?

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These are the most incompetent. It's not they're incompetent. I remember on one of my first trips to Ukraine, we're driving along and I'm just...

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You're just holding on for dear life. These roads are horrific. They really are.

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I mean, I saw some bad roads in Zambia, but you sort of expect that in Zambia. Here we are in Ukraine and I'm going, my goodness, can't they fix these roads?

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They say, oh, they've fixed them all the time. The money is legislated and it just never gets to fixing the roads.

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It goes to... All the corruption exists in a way. Well, you know, $7 .5

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billion for EV chargers. Well, that ain't going to happen. And I can tell you why it's not going to happen.

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All this information is out there, but you look at what these pinheads in Brussels or WEF, all these wacko leftist organizations are saying would require...

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I saw one recently, just for copper alone. Now, Arizona, hey, you know, they call us the copper state because I think we produce more copper than any other state does.

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I could be wrong about that. But we would have to be... To meet the 2030 goals that these pinheads are literally putting out there, we would have to be opening two new copper mines,

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I think it's per month, between now and then. Do you have any idea what it takes to open a copper mine?

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Do you have any idea what it does to the environment? All you gotta do is fly over one once, you go, you know, it's going to be really hard to fill that thing back up again someday.

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Yeah, you're right. And it's going to happen. It's not possible. The amount of copper that goes into a regular car versus what goes into an

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EV, it's a massive difference. It can't be done. It's just not possible.

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And then I thought... And I could have told you about this. I remember when we went to South...

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I go to South Africa all the time. I'd notice, you know, barbed wire around the bottom of streetlights.

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And it's because people will climb up there and they will steal the copper and the metal out of anything in the middle of the night.

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I mean, if it's not wrapped in barbed wire in South Africa, it will disappear. And so I saw a picture a few weeks ago of a

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Tesla EV charging, you know, the line of charging things that they have.

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And every single cable, as it comes down out of the charger to where it would go down to the thing you plug into your car, was cut off.

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They had gone through and they had chopped off every single one of them to get the copper and sell the copper.

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It's like, what are you going to do? Put guards on these things? I mean, it's just the insanity of it all.

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And who's getting rich and who's getting poor? We're getting poor. The Chinese are getting rich.

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It's like, you all can't see this? Y 'all can't see you're being taken to the cleaners? Every which way?

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Anyway. So yes, report reveals $7 .5 billion in government EV charger spending has purchased one pack of Energizer AA's.

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And then, airline pilot convicted of hate crime for leaving contrail marks on rainbow.

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And that's about... Now, I didn't get a chance to check this, but I saw something.

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Again, I'm just saying I saw this, that someone had literally been given 13 years on a felony for doing donuts on a pride flag on a street.

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Now, I didn't get a chance to check that out. So maybe it's... Because I've seen the video of a guy in a big dually doing donuts on a pride flag on a street.

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Well, I hate to tell you this, but people have been doing donuts all over the place for a long time.

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They didn't need pride flags. It's just something people like to do.

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I understand the temptation, but I'm the one that buys the tires. Just like, yeah, well, thanks.

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But that would not shock me. It would not shock me that the same people who would let the

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BLM protesters from 2020 throw explosive devices at federal buildings, and then when they're arrested, not even press charges, that the same people would try to...

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They're the same people that put January 6th people, that had them locked up in isolation for years now, that they would go after somebody who does donuts on a pride flag because, hey, that's the new...

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You can do anything you want to the American flag, but don't you dare do anything to a pride flag. Oh, I hate to tell you, but June's coming, and I got an email this morning from a company that I do a lot of business with.

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Well, not business, but anyway. I wrote back, and I'm like, please, please stop it.

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So many of the people who subscribed to your service are offended by this. Just please stop it.

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And of course, it bounced back. No one really reads anything at this point. Yeah, it doesn't really matter if you did or didn't,

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I guess. But June is coming, and I don't even know what to say anymore.

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I'm just really hoping that... There seems to be a pushback a little bit.

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There are a lot of companies that have lost hundreds of millions, billions of dollars, and I'd like to think that it's sad when one of the highest motivations you can hope for in a country is greed.

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It's higher than the rest of the motivations they seemingly are giving into.

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So anyway. All right, so let's get into some serious stuff here. I was linked to this.

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What happened was, Protestia sent this to me. I'm pretty sure it was Protestia. Right as I got home, from the last trip, which was not fun,

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I saw that night, as I recall, a conflict online regarding some fellow, some black fellow, inviting

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Glenn Beck to this thing where it's supposed to be a Christian men's thing, and why are you inviting

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Glenn Beck? He's Mormon, blah, blah, blah, blah. And this Mormon webcast, and there are more and more of them,

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I have to wonder what any of them would have been like back in my younger days if there had been such a thing as social media.

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We started dealing with Mormonism long before Al Gore even got a glimmer of thought of inventing the internet.

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And so now they're all over the place.

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And this particular one includes, not in this one, but appearances by Kwaku L.

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And some of you may recall the encounters we had, the encounter we had with Kwaku L on Apologia Radio a number of years ago.

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And I'm going to tell you something, it's so obvious to me, people like Kwaku would have been excommunicated so fast in the 1980s that their heads would have been spinning.

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Things have changed so much. I've seen pictures. Then again, these days, who can trust pictures?

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Who can trust anything? But years ago, before that was becoming really popular, let's just say that that fellow is not long for Mormonism.

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We'll just put it that way. Anyway, this guy named Ward, I think, is the one doing this webcast.

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And he's talking about religious bigotry. And the religious bigotry is that Protestia is protesting that Glenn Beck is being invited as a

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Christian to a Christian men's thing. Now, I sort of doubt this is the first time it's happened.

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I don't really keep track of Glenn Beck or watch Glenn Beck, listen to Glenn Beck, anything like that.

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I don't know how anybody keeps up with almost anything these days. There's so many webcasts and you're sitting there going, yeah, you want to talk about that.

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Hey, look, we were here before any of the rest of you were. You really were.

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We can prove it. We've got the archives. You can go back and look. We were doing webcasting before there was a web to webcast on.

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So it was because we were poor. And so that's how it works. And so I'm not complaining about it.

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But there's just so many. People say, hey, did you hear this? Like last night, someone said, did you hear the conversation on CrossPolitik about the text in Matthew?

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And the way it was said to me, I was like, it sounds like they're saying a question about the textual validity of something.

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And when I listened in, it was actually someone telling the story

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I've told a bunch of times. They were talking about this anti -Semitism legislation that's popping up all over the place now and basically asking the question, could it make the

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New Testament illegal? And the story, they didn't get it quite right.

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Well, of course, I suppose I could be wrong, but I don't think so. I've been telling this story for years. The story they were telling was about, if you recall, when the

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Passion of the Christ movie came out. I had actually heard about it a little bit before it came out.

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And I'd actually preached a sermon on a Sunday night at Phoenix Forum Baptist Church about the subject.

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And there was a little delay in it coming out. And the reason was that there is this huge controversy about it being anti -Semitic.

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And the reason was, it quoted from the Gospel of Matthew chapter 27. I think it's verse 25.

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I don't have it up right now. But to Pilate, the

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Jews cry out, His blood be upon us and upon our children. And what had happened is there had been such an outcry that this was in the film that what they had to do was they had to pull all that video back, all those massive films that they've sent out back then.

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I'm not sure how they do it now, but anyways. And if you remember the film, the actors were speaking in foreign languages.

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They're speaking Aramaic. And then they had English subtitles. And what they said on CrossPolitik was, they took that scene out.

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They didn't. All they did was remove the subtitles. So if you know a little bit, you know,

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I know enough to follow something in Hebrew. Aramaic is very close related.

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If you know the story, what's being said, you could still hear the actors in Aramaic saying,

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His blood be upon us and upon our children. But they just turned the subtitles off at that point.

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So you wouldn't see that in English. And so they had been saying that it had been removed.

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It wasn't. And that was 20 years ago. And of course, I'm really sensitive to that because, like I said,

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I went to Fuller. And if you went to Fuller, even in the 80s, then you are well aware of the whiplash effect that World War II and the

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Holocaust had on New Testament studies and that there are just certain things in the New Testament you're not even allowed to believe anymore.

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That thing that Paul said, you know, you can't really talk about that.

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You can't go with that. So anyway, I'm not listening to these

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Mormons. I was just once again struck with how much things have changed.

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I think one of the advantages, and believe me, I can talk to you a lot about the disadvantages, but one of the advantages of entering into your older years is you have perspective to be able to look back and go, wow,

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Mormonism has changed. And of course, I've been talking about that for a long, long time.

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I mean, you know, when we first start going out to the Easter pageant, going up to Salt Lake City, you would be hoarse by the end of the night or by the end of the day in Salt Lake City from the constant conversations you'd be having with Mormons.

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And now you almost have to offer, you know, $20 to talk to me for five minutes.

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You have to trip people up, do something to get any conversation going at all.

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They do not want to talk to you. And the knowledge, when you do get a conversation going, is amazingly deficient.

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I told the story last year when I was in Mesa having a conversation with a Mormon. He's going,

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I just don't understand why you all are out here. We're all baptized Christians. We accept your baptism.

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You accept our baptism. We can all get along. And I remember my eyes getting big.

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I sort of looked past the guy I was talking to, to a Mormon standing behind him, and I could read his face.

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He's going, oh. He knew they don't accept our baptisms and vice versa.

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That other Mormon knew, yeah, that's not really what we believe. But this poor kid had no earthly idea.

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That's getting to be more and more the case, though, like I say, you have so many so rare conversations, it's hard to even know about.

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Anyway, so uh...

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Someone put too much caffeine in the coffee at Babylon Bee this morning.

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They're cranking them out. Actually, this one came out yesterday. Study finds 100 % of men cooking on grill just kind of moving meat around and hoping for the best.

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I don't even pretend. I do not even pretend. Don't look at me.

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Anyway, so let me, before I play this,

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I started thinking back and I started digging through very, very old stuff.

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I found my old, we called it the Mormon Missionary Masher, and all the old photocopies and stuff that we had before the

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Mormon church admitted that it actually existed. I was carrying around a photocopy of Joseph Smith's 1832 diary where he gives the first account of the first vision and there weren't two beings and completely different and clearly evolutionary and it developed over time.

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Back then, the church is like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Now you can go buy nice hardbound

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LDS volumes with all that stuff in it. That's all changed massively.

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I was digging through it because I know I have over the years, because I started teaching a class of Mormonism at the

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North Vietnamese Baptist Church. Then at some point,

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I turned that class over to Mike Beliveau. I started teaching a

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Christian doctrines class. It was the Christian doctrines class, I think, where we first met a number of years later.

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You also took the Mormonism class with Mike. Then didn't you start team teaching it?

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You took it over. That's funny.

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Go for it, buddy. I knew that over all those years, that there was a section in the class where we had gone over some of the stuff that Mormon leaders have said about Christianity, because Mormonism teaches that the

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LDS church is the only true church on earth. The Book of Mormon says there are saved two churches, the

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Church of the Lamb and the Church of the Devil. They claim that without the priesthood authority, you cannot baptize.

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You cannot preach any message with authority without the priesthood authority. They are the only true church on earth.

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When we would have conversations with Mormons, that was a given.

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You didn't have to convince them of that. They already knew it. They heard that regularly from the pulpit.

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They heard that regularly in the general conference, etc. Well, that's not the case anymore.

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I remember, man, I wish I could remember that guy's name. There was an older Mormon guy. The names in the back of my mind.

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They would come out to Mesa once in a while. He was this, can't we all just get along, ecumenical, let's have dinner together type guy, older fellow.

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I may have actually gotten together with him for lunch once or something, because that's what he was always begging you to do.

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Even Rich is trying to remember it. What made it weird was that that was very unusual.

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That's not yet what you were hearing. Now that's what you're hearing all the time. That's what you're hearing even from the missionaries.

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When I first started dealing with Mormonism, when they would come to your door, what they wanted to do is they wanted to present to you

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Joseph Smith's first vision story. And that first vision story includes within, and they included this part, that, well,

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I might have it. Yeah, okay, here. Let me just read it to you.

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My object in going to inquire of the Lord was to know which of all the sects was right, that I might know which to join.

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I asked the personages who stood above me in the light which of all the sects was right, which I should join. I was answered,

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I must join none of them. But they're all wrong. And the personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight, and those professors were all corrupt.

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That's LDS scripture. That's LDS scripture. That's the current version of the first vision.

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That's not what was in the original versions of the first vision.

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The first visions developed over time as Joseph Smith's theology developed as well.

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But that's what they wanted to talk to you about when they got into the house, was just how far off everybody else is.

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And here's the one true church. And man, they were growing like gangbusters. I've said before, in the mid -80s, when the

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Godmakers film came out, an average Southern Baptist church had 274 members.

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In an average week, 273 Southern Baptists became Mormons. That was one church, one average -sized church wholesale each week converted to Mormonism.

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52 churches in a year. And that's when they were being bold and saying, we're the one true church.

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And then stuff started changing. And that change has continued and accelerated right through to our day.

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Mormonism is changing, big time, no question about it, in many, many different ways.

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But way too easy to continue wandering around here. A part of the

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LDS Temple Ceremony representing the Celestial Kingdom. I grabbed this out of my notebook from years and years and years ago.

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I probably made this photocopy in 1983, probably?

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84 maybe? 40 years ago. The amazing thing is, the best collection of these citations

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I found was from an old, old friend, long gone now, the last man to die in the

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Los Angeles riots. So much of the boldness that we have had over the years in witnessing the

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Mormons came from this guy. His name was Wally Tope. Wally Tope, T -O -P -E. On the front lines, witnessing the

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Mormons, Wally Tope. And he had a little track called, Who's Persecuting Who? And so I had all this stuff in other forms, but this is the nice, easiest to read version.

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So in the LDS Temple Ceremony representing the Celestial Kingdom or the world we now live in.

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And I don't know, I've lost track of how many changes have taken place since this time in the

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LDS Temple Ceremony. This was once in it, and as I argued in the book,

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Is the Mormon My Brother? Mormonism, at one point anyways, represented the

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Temple Ceremonies as a part of Revelation. Divinely revealed by God. They may have removed this by now,

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I don't know. Lucifer is on screen.

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And remember, in the original temples, these were all acted out by actors. Now they're all on video.

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Well, except for Salt Lake, which has been closed for a long time now, because it almost fell down in that earthquake.

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And they're rebuilding it from underneath the ground up. So I don't think it's open yet, but I assume that when it does reopen, they will go back to having actual actors do all this stuff.

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So how would you like to be the temple -worthy

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Mormon guy that has to play Lucifer? How do you get picked for that one?

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That's what I want to know. What did you do to get picked for that one?

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Who did you really get angry with you to do that? Um, Lucifer, oh,

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I see you want religion. You want someone to preach to you. I'll have some preachers here presently.

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And the preacher shows up. My, a fine congregation. Lucifer, oh, are you a preacher?

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The preacher says yes. Lucifer, have you been to college and received training for the ministry?

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Why, certainly a man cannot preach unless he has been trained for the ministry. Lucifer, well, do you preach orthodox religion?

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Yes, that is what I preach. Well, if you, Lucifer, well, if you preach your orthodox religion as people and convert them,

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I will pay you well. The preacher says, I will do my best. Good morning, sir. So the average, the

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Christian preacher is pictured as the hireling of Lucifer, the hireling of Satan.

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Um, and this same doctrine, this same, uh, I'm sorry, the same, um, ceremony attacks the doctrine of God.

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Quote, so great he fills the universe and yet he's so small he can dwell in your heart. Even though, um,

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Alma 34, 36 said that, but Joseph Smith did not believe when he wrote the

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Book of Mormon what he believed when the temple ceremonies were developing and things like that. Then we have this guy.

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When, again, when I started dealing with Mormonism, this is actually yours.

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I, I don't know where mine went. Um, the paperback that I had initially,

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I have a hardback, um, in the other room, but that's sort of hard to hold up. Uh, I think mine's at home.

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Talk, talk about having easy access. Can you imagine if Paul wrote

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Christian doctrine? What, what use that would be if John wrote

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Christian doctrine? In the 1980s, when I was talking to Mormons, they believed that this man,

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Bruce R. McConkie was an apostle of Jesus Christ with the same level of authority as Paul or Peter or John or any of the others.

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And I can guarantee you one thing, that's what Bruce R. McConkie believed, too. Bruce R.

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McConkie believed he was an apostle of Jesus Christ. Bruce R. McConkie believed he had authority to teach as an apostle as well.

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Now we know, we know there were some interesting conversations that took place amongst the

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Council of Twelve and the First Presidency. And what's fascinating to me is this book is no longer in print.

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You can't get it. I know when we would go up to Salt Lake City, we'd go to that big old

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LDS bookstore up there and multiple levels and that, this book was everywhere.

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Now it's nowhere. And shortly after McConkie died, I ran into my first missionaries who were like, well, you know, you know, that was just his opinion.

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And, and I, I think, I think, you know,

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I listened to missionaries today. They don't know one one thousand of what's in this book.

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They don't, they don't. This wasn't the first book I read. I think this one was.

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This was the one I read. So there's lots of, oh, the Mormons and the

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Jewish people. I don't know. Okay. That's one of their publications, but markings all through LeGrand Richards, A Marvelous Work and a

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Wonder, which Wally Taub said it's a marvel, more don't wonder. And the reason

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I'm holding this in my hand, there was a set of, there was a set of books, Articles of Faith by James Talmadge, this,

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Doctrine and Salvation by Joseph Ewing Smith. These would be the books that would be given to missionaries in preparation for their mission trip.

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And so you could, you could normally assume at least a basic level of knowledge, not all.

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I talked to some missionaries that just didn't read anything or listen much either, but this was one.

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And the reason I'm holding it is less than five days ago, there is this guy that pops up in my feed on Twitter every once in a while,

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Harfak Yad or something like that. Who's a Mormon. And he was doing the new

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Sola Scriptura Mormon thing. Now, again, I've stood outside the general conference in Salt Lake City years and years and years, 18 years.

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And heard Mormons saying over and over again, one of the things I love about the church, we receive

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Latter -day Revelation. There's Latter -day Revelation going on right now inside that building. And you don't have that.

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We have apostles and prophets. You don't have that. We we're receiving a word from the

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Lord this very day going on right in there. So here's this guy going, no,

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Mormon theology is only found in the standard works of the church. And I thought back to this book and I didn't bother to, to look for it because it's just all over the place, but pretty much.

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Yeah. Okay. Page 23. Yeah. Okay.

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Page 15. I knew I would mark all of them. It must be remembered, however, that this knowledge, this is of the father and the son, this knowledge was not obtained by the prophet through a study of the

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Bible. The true knowledge of God and his son Jesus Christ has come to the world in this dispensation, not through a study of the

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Bible, but through the actual appearance of these heavenly personages to the young Joseph Smith, as he so eloquently testified.

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And over and over and over again, you will have here in the works of LeGrand Richards, again, an apostle.

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I remember buying this book at the old LDS bookstore that used to be on Northern Avenue around 35th.

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Over and over and over again, an apostle of the LDS church. Joseph Smith did not get this from studying the

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Bible. He didn't get it from scripture. It was a divine revelation. Now, it's all what we've got.

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Back to Bruce R. McConkie. Good old, good old Bruce here. I, I passed, I gave a track on blood atonement.

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I found really ironic. Bruce R. McConkie once, as he was walking into general conference, hence true and acceptable

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Christianity is found among the saints who have the fullness of the gospel and a perverted Christianity holds sway among the so -called

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Christians of apostate Christendom. In these circles, it is believed and taught that Christianity has beginning in the mortal ministry of our

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Lord. Actually, of course, Adam was the first Christian. Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, page 132,

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I'm sure referenced that. Um, the titles,

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Church of the Devil and Great and Abominable Church are used to identify all churches, which are designed to take men on a course that leads away from God and his laws and thus from salvation.

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There is no salvation outside this one true church. There is no salvation outside the church, Jesus Christ, Latter -day Saints, doctrines of salvation.

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I didn't bring my three volumes set from Joseph Fielding Smith in, but Doctrine of Salvation, volume two. And Bruce R.

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McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, pages 137, 138, and 670. Christians speak often of the blood of Christ and his cleansing power.

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Much is believed and taught on this subject, however, is such utter nonsense and so probably false that to believe it is to lose one's salvation.

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Uh, what the Mormons think of Christ, LDS pamphlet, page 31. Uh, we talk about Christianity, but it is a perfect pack of nonsense.

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It is a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. It is as corrupt as hell, and the devil could not invent a better engine to spread his work than the

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Christianity of the 19th century. John Taylor, Journal Discourses, 6, 167.

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They wish to put the cup to your lips and pour the strong drink down your throats, caring only for what is in your pockets.

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They remind me of a Methodist priest in Iowa. After a good collection, the money was on the table and he wished the people to sing, and so he struck up, this is the

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God we adore. Brigham Young, Journal Discourses, 8, 132. But who in this generation have authority to baptize?

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None but those who have received authority in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. All other churches are entirely destitute of all authority from God, and any person who receives baptism with the

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Lord's Supper from their hands will highly offend God. For he looks upon them as the most corrupt of all people.

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Both Catholics and Protestants are nothing less than the whore of Babylon, whom the Lord denounces by the mouth of John the

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Revelator as having corrupted all the earth by their fornications and wickedness. And any person who should be so wicked as to receive a holy ordinance of the gospel from the ministers of any of these apostate churches will be sent down to hell with them unless they repent of the unholy and impious act.

37:46

That, of course, is Orson Pratt from The Seer, and there are people who didn't like that book. But again, he was the leader of the

37:53

LDS Church in the early days. The Christian world,

38:01

Brigham Young said, I discovered was like the captain and crew of a vessel on the ocean without a compass and tossed to and fro with or soever the wind listed below them.

38:09

When the light came to me, I saw that all the so -called Christian world was groveling in darkness. Journal Discourses, 573.

38:17

Brother Taylor has just said that the religions of the day were hatched in hell. The eggs were laid in hell, hatched on its borders, and then kicked onto the earth.

38:25

Brigham Young, Journal Discourses, 6176. The Christian world so -called are heathens as to their knowledge of the salvation of God.

38:34

Brigham Young, Journal Discourses, 8171. Heber C. Kimball was beset by a number of Baptist priests.

38:45

I always love how little people know about Baptists. A Baptist priest who had been attending a conference, he read them all down out of the

38:53

New Testament. With regard to true theology, a more ignorant people never lived than the present so -called

38:59

Christian world. Brigham Young, Journal Discourses, 8199. What? Are Christians ignorant?

39:05

Yes, as ignorant of things of God as the brute beast. John Taylor, Journal Discourses, 625.

39:11

One more. And Christianity at the present time is no more enlightened than other systems have been. What does the

39:16

Christian world know about God? Nothing. Why? So far as things of God are concerned, they are the various fools.

39:21

They know neither God nor the things of God. John Taylor, Journal Discourses, 625. There's so much more, obviously, that could be said.

39:29

The point is that Mormonism teaches that it's the only true church. That it's the only church with authority. That there is a great apostasy, that all the churches are apostate, and that God the

39:40

Father and Jesus Christ in separate distinct personal physical bodies appeared to Joseph Smith in the spring of 1820, which didn't happen historically, but that's the official story, and told

39:54

Joseph Smith he was not to join the Baptists or the Methodists, the Presbyterians, because all their professors would corrupt their creeds and abomination.

40:03

So we don't have authority, and we're not the true church. We're the church of Babylon, mystery, religion, all the rest of that kind of fun stuff.

40:10

So this is the teachings of the LDS Church in the past. Now, has anyone come along and said, all that's wrong?

40:20

No. But are you hearing that in the General Conference anymore?

40:26

No, not really. And so freedom has been opened up for this new kind of Mormonism.

40:36

And so that's why we now have this clip I'm going to play for you. What I'm going to do is they did the take the juiciest parts of the whole program, put them together at the beginning, and then

40:55

I'll grab people, and then they'll listen to the rest of the program thing. I'm just going to let the juicy parts speak for themselves. We're not going to have to worry with all the rest of it.

41:03

So let's... no, no, no, don't do that. Oh, there we go.

41:13

I wanted to get it to where we could actually get it full screen. And so let's listen to what is said here.

41:20

Religious bigotry is alive and well in the United States of America, and the way mainline Protestant Christians speak about Mormons is an absolute evidence of this.

41:30

I really think there just needs to be a protocol in which we engage with this type of so -called

41:36

Christian, where we no longer just tuck our tails in between our legs and walk away and say, oh, they won't invite us to the party.

41:42

But we challenge the Christians and say, no, you are not a Christian. And the reason why you're not a Christian right now is because you are not doctrinally omitting us over any good reason from the body of Christ.

41:53

You're not defending any scripture. You're not defending Jesus Christ himself. And your arguments have nothing to do with Jesus, but all with the man -made creeds.

42:04

Okay. So are there lots and lots of evangelicals who have not done their homework about Mormonism?

42:20

Yeah. Is there material out there that is less than super helpful on Mormonism?

42:29

Yeah. Are there people who exclude

42:36

Mormonism just simply because they've heard that's what they're supposed to do and they don't really know much about themselves?

42:42

Yeah. But the real reason that the

42:49

Christian church unanimously, at least up until well, really only a few decades ago, would not engage in any kind of ecumenical cooperation with Mormonism was because of Mormonism's own teaching.

43:15

Let me say something bold here. It's something

43:20

I've said many times before. I have read thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of LDS material.

43:32

And I'm not talking about books about Mormonism. I'm talking about works from the general authorities of Mormon church.

43:39

I've written two books on Mormonism. I've done numerous debates against Mormons. I have spoken to over 5 ,000

43:46

LDS missionaries personally. And I'm not talking about 10 seconds as they walk by and won't take a track.

43:54

I mean, witnessing situations. And I have been on radio in Salt Lake City with Martin Tanner as the host of the program, two

44:06

BYU professors on the other side of the table, call -ins from all Mormons. I've walked in the lion's den more than once and have been complimented numerous times by Mormons for the accuracy of the focus that we've had upon what really matters in regards to the doctrine of God and salvation, who

44:29

Christ is, what he's done, what salvation is. And my book is more of my brother.

44:36

I never had anyone produce any kind of reputation of it and say, oh, no, no, you're all wrong.

44:43

Because I so carefully documented authority claims and what the sources were.

44:49

And I came up with different levels of authority, again, all backed up from fair citations of LDS authorities.

45:02

And I know, because of Latter -day Revelation, LDS authorities today can be different than LDS authorities were 40 years ago, which is a problem if you're actually claiming to represent an unchanging truth.

45:16

But with all of that said, it is my conclusion, and this is someone who has studied

45:26

Mormonism in depth and studied Islam in depth, that Islam is closer to biblical

45:33

Christianity than Mormonism ever could be. And what happens when

45:41

I say something like that is that people go, but, but, but, but, but, but it's the

45:48

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. That's absurd. No, it's not absurd.

45:55

It's not absurd. In fact, what this gentleman just said is completely missing it. He says it's all based on creeds.

46:03

No, it's all based on Bible. It's all based on Bible. In fact, let me, let me give you a verse that hopefully you can take with you.

46:16

And again, this is in, I know it's back there somewhere.

46:25

There it is. Is it more of my brother? I think you can still buy it.

46:33

I think Solid Ground still has it. I spent a lot of time making sure this was extremely accurate.

46:40

There's a whole discussion in here on this passage as well, if you want to look it up.

46:47

But Jeremiah chapter 10,

46:56

Jeremiah chapter 10. And how far do

47:03

I want to go back here? If I'm going to put it on the screen, I'm going to have to blow this up big time and close this side and maximize and blow it up some more.

47:18

Okay, that should be enough. Let's start here.

47:23

Jeremiah chapter 10, verse 7. Who would not fear you, O king of the nations?

47:29

Indeed, it is your due. For among all the wise men of the nations and all their kingdoms, there is none like you. But they're all together stupid and foolish in their discipline and delusion, discipline of delusion.

47:40

Their idol is wood, beaten silver is brought from Tarshish and gold from Uphaz. The work of a craftsman of the hands of a goldsmith.

47:47

Violet and purple are their clothing. They're all the work of skilled men. But Yahweh is the true

47:56

Elohim. Yahweh Elohim Emeth. Yahweh is the true

48:02

Elohim. Now, just real quickly, in LDS theology, that's not true.

48:11

In fact, that creates tremendous confusion in LDS theology. Because in LDS theology,

48:19

Elohim is God the Father. Jehovah, Yahweh, is his child, his firstborn spirit child.

48:30

In fact, if I had the LSB up here instead, I don't know why this keeps defaulting back to that.

48:36

It's driving me crazy. In the

48:42

LSB, it gives the proper rendering.

48:48

But Yahweh is the true God. He is the living God and the everlasting King. At his wrath, the earth quakes, and the nations cannot endure his indignation.

48:58

So, Yahweh Elohim Emeth. Emeth, is the true

49:06

God. He is Elohim Chaim, the living

49:14

Elohim, the living God, and the

49:19

Melech Olam, everlasting King. So, this contradicts

49:27

Mormonism in a number of different ways. There was a statement put out by the first presidency of the

49:35

Mormon church at the beginning of the 20th century, early 1900s, that clarified some of the confusion.

49:49

Joseph Smith was confused about Joseph Smith's theology evolved. Everybody knows that. He didn't believe at the beginning what he believed at the end, because there was no divine revelation.

49:58

He's just making those stuff up as he goes along. So, there had been confusion as to Elohim and Jehovah.

50:06

There's good evidence that, at times, Joseph Smith identified God the Father as Jehovah. But the official position of the

50:14

LDS church, at least since the early 1900s, and hey, they can change they want, is that Elohim is an exalted man who lives on a planet that circles a star named

50:26

Kolob. He's God the Father. His firstborn spirit child to one of his many wives was

50:36

Jehovah, or better pronounced Yahweh, and that is

50:44

Jesus. So, when it says Yahweh is the true

50:50

Elohim, there's no way to understand that in Mormonism, other than to go, well, okay,

50:56

Elohim is not being used as identifying a certain individual. There's always ways to try to massage this, but you have to fundamentally go beyond where Joseph Smith went, because Joseph Smith didn't understand any of this stuff.

51:12

He was a very ignorant man. In fact,

51:18

I was standing in Mesa just a few weeks ago during the pageant, and you know they've moved the visitor's center.

51:28

It's now that whole building on the corner. So, the visitor's center used to be, it's now part of the temple itself, and I was asked to leave the visitor's center years and years and years ago, because I showed a retired couple from the

51:46

Bible, Deuteronomy 4 .35, who was shown, as you might know, that Yahweh, he is Elohim. There's no other

51:52

God besides him, and they realized that that's not what we teach, and so they asked me to leave, and I was looking down there at that building, remembering that event from long, long ago.

52:05

So, we go back to Jeremiah. So, we have Yahweh is the true God. He is the living

52:10

God in the everlasting King, and then Jeremiah 10 .11.

52:16

This is the one to remember. Thus you shall say to them, the gods that did not make the heavens and the earth will perish from the earth and from under the heavens.

52:36

Now, what's really interesting is, thus you will say to them, is in Hebrew.

52:48

Starting here, you're in Aramaic. The language literally changes up to this point, then it goes back to Hebrew.

52:59

Why? Because God gives to his people the very words in the language of those who have taken them into captivity.

53:10

Aramaic. He gives to them the very words to say.

53:16

Say this to them. Here are the words. I'll give you the words in the language of the people that are trying to get you to worship their gods, and what do you say to them?

53:28

The gods that did not make the heavens. Now, you can see how close. Look at this.

53:35

That looks like Elohim, but it has different vowel pointing and ending, so it looks very close.

53:42

Shemayim becomes Shema 'i, so there's changes in the text.

53:50

Talking about different language, but they are very closely related. Very, very closely related. Lots of the roots.

53:55

The roots are the same, and it's just how you form things. But here's what you say to them.

54:01

The gods that did not make the heavens and the earth will perish from the earth and from under the heavens.

54:08

In Mormonism, God the Father does not have the ability to make the heavens and the earth.

54:16

There is no karatio ex nihilo in Mormonism. If you know anything about LDS theology,

54:23

God has the power to organize pre -existing matter. He does not have the power to bring matter into existence.

54:32

Matter is eternal in LDS thinking. So, you have to say to the

54:39

Mormons, the gods that did not make the heavens and the earth, that's Yahweh, that's Elohim, those are your versions of those things, will perish from the earth and from under the heavens, because they don't exist.

54:55

The true God goes on, it is he who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom and by his understanding, he has stretched out the heavens.

55:04

Even then, even then, that's Yahweh doing this. In the

55:09

Mormon temple ceremony, Elohim, God the Father, sends Yahweh, Jesus, Jehovah as they say it, in company with Michael to organize the earth.

55:21

But this is something that Yahweh does alone in true religion, not the fake version of Mormonism.

55:30

So, the point being this, that the gentleman in the video was saying, you're excluding us based upon creeds.

55:46

Now remember, according to the first vision, which did not happen, the later version of the first vision that became established in the

55:59

Pearl of Great Price, according to that, their creeds are corrupt.

56:08

So, there has been an anti -credalism in Mormonism all along. But what we're talking about here is the fundamental, foundational, basic, long before Nicaea, biblical testimony of the fact there is only one eternal

56:27

God who created all things, and Mormonism denies that. Islam believes that.

56:35

Christianity believes that. Mormonism denies that. In fact, let me just remind you,

56:47

I think you actually have, probably in your office, the

56:54

Celestial Marriage Guide. You know what

57:00

I'm talking about. I thought for sure I had seen it in there, a guide to marriage.

57:06

It's what the students would read before they could go through the eternal marriage ceremony. Yeah, go ahead and see if you can, because I can quote from it here, but it'd be interesting to have it.

57:16

I think I know where mine is in the office, but I thought for sure you had it. We'll see if Rich comes up with it.

57:24

But for 15 or 20 years, to be sealed in the temple to your wife is to be sealed for time and eternity.

57:41

It's different than just a secular marriage in Mormon thinking. And so they just don't let any old person in there.

57:50

You have to have your temple recommend, you have to be worthy, and you have to go through this class. And the officially written and published study material that you had to go through to attend this multiple session class is fascinating.

58:09

It really is. And in the conversation that opens this study guide, that again, the

58:21

LDS Church wrote for its own people. Copyright, First Presidency of the

58:26

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. You can't get any more official than that. And for decades, this is what was taught.

58:33

If you're going to go through the temple, and the only way you can become a god is if you are sealed for time and eternity in the temple.

58:41

This is important stuff. And in that opening dialogue, just the first few pages, there's an older Mormon talking to a younger

58:54

Mormon. And at one point, the younger

59:02

Mormon says, you mean we have always been governed by law? And if you include the first word as a full sentence, in three sentences, it's really only two full sentences.

59:18

You have the essence of what separates Mormonism from Christianity and always will.

59:26

This is why Glenn Beck should not be invited to a quote unquote Christian get together. Hey, I'll admit 99 .8

59:35

% of the Christians attending, that's all right.

59:42

You know where my Mormon stuff is in the office, right? In the first bay here where the light turns on? Just give it a minute, see if it jumps off the shelf and attacks you.

59:53

If you're facing the door, it would be on the left upper side somewhere. In three sentences or two sentences in one word, you have the essence of this.

01:00:07

And like I said, I was admitting 99 .8 % of the people attending that, they don't know what

01:00:13

Mormonism teaches. They don't know enough about what they believe to maybe even recognize how it's wrong.

01:00:20

I get that. I get that. But that doesn't mean that you forget about all this stuff and just go, hey, let's all just get together.

01:00:26

We're all cool. Here's the paragraph. Always. You are an eternal being.

01:00:36

You were never created. I'm not sure.

01:00:43

Doesn't look like it. This is the new one.

01:00:57

This is the new one. Yeah, this is the one that replaced the other one.

01:01:04

Well, just for a second, if you don't want to worry about it, just put that one back.

01:01:10

Always. You are an eternal being. You were never created.

01:01:18

And you cannot be destroyed. But you can advance, progress, and develop by obedience.

01:01:30

You hear that? Let me repeat it. You are an eternal being.

01:01:37

You were never created. And you cannot be destroyed.

01:01:43

But you can advance, progress, and develop by obedience. You see, in Mormonism, God, angels, and men are all the same being.

01:01:58

They're ontologically the same. They're at different places of advancement. You can advance, progress, develop by obedience.

01:02:09

If in this life you are not fully obedient to the law of celestial marriage, you will not be able to advance the position of godhood.

01:02:20

You'll become an angel. But if you're obedient, then you can become a god.

01:02:28

God, man, and angels, same order of being, different levels of advancement, different levels of exaltation.

01:02:37

That is such a fundamentally contradictory view of God, angels, man, creation, everything.

01:02:51

I knew it was in there someplace. Achieving a celestial marriage. Student manual. And the quote that I just gave you was in much larger font on my screen.

01:03:07

Here's the whole section. And there it is in orange. Always, you're an eternal being.

01:03:14

You were never created. You cannot be destroyed. But you can advance, progress, and develop by obedience to law. Right there.

01:03:23

So, how many hundreds of thousands of LDS people had to work through this?

01:03:34

Because there's questions, and there's 18 different chapters, and you had to work through all of this, and this was about questions and answers and things you have to fill out, and everything else.

01:03:48

So, it's a whole manual. And again, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day

01:03:53

Saints. Copyright First Presidency. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. You can't get any more official than this. You are an eternal being.

01:04:02

You were never created. There you go. Mormonism has a completely different God.

01:04:09

Completely different God. Now, is that expressed by creeds? Well, this is a form of a creed.

01:04:17

Whether you want to admit it or not, everybody has a creed. Everybody explains what they believe. And is

01:04:25

Mormonism creedally excluded from Christianity? Sure is. Why? Because the creeds represent biblical revelation.

01:04:33

It's scripture that says, if your God did not create the heavens and the earth, your

01:04:39

God is toast. Jeremiah 10 11. Now, how many

01:04:47

Christians should be able to explain that to these Mormons, to their benefit, and everybody else's? Well, we all should.

01:04:54

We all should. But, let's just be honest. These days, not many.

01:05:01

Not many. Not many. Let's switch topics for a little while, okay?

01:05:10

I've got some other things to show you here. How about that?

01:05:18

Totally shifting gears here. Put the clutch in. All of Gen X and half the

01:05:28

Millennials just went, put the what in? My daughter is very proud of the fact that she can still drive a manual transmission vehicle.

01:05:41

When was the last time you drove a manual? It's been a long time.

01:05:49

Oh, I know. I know. I mean, you have to figure out where the clutch grabs. I mean, first three stops and starts can be a little jerky -herky.

01:05:58

But, I do miss it. Remember, the PT Cruiser was manual. NASCAR? Max.

01:06:10

Can't remember now. I didn't know they still made them. Anyway, I sort of miss them once in a while.

01:06:16

I would not want to have a manual in the truck. Well, with 10 speeds, that would be a little bit, yeah, that's a little much.

01:06:29

A lot of shifting. Oh, yeah. A lot of shifting. Anyway, the state of global fertility, fertility rate by country in 2021 births per woman.

01:06:41

What does that tell you about the future? What does that tell you about Western secularized culture?

01:06:55

Look at the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe, Scandinavian countries, the influence.

01:07:06

Now, fascinating China is 1 .0 to 1 .9, but that's obviously because of the one -child policy for so long.

01:07:15

You can't just turn things around. But the fertility rate of 4 .0

01:07:27

and higher is only in, what is that?

01:07:33

That's not Pakistan. That's Afghanistan and Sub -Saharan

01:07:40

Africa. You know why? One of the reasons that is child mortality.

01:07:49

You have to have lots of babies to have any of them live to maturity. But the more influenced an area is by modern secularism, the lower the global fertility is.

01:08:11

And what that means is all the areas in pink will eventually be taken over by people born in the blue.

01:08:24

So the people in the pink areas, that's including United States, are wiping themselves out.

01:08:31

Everything we've built, everything we've created, we're giving somebody, it's not going to be our great -grandchildren.

01:08:37

How many people in our society even think about their great -grandchildren? Yeah. I mean, the coming demographic collapse is going to be astonishing.

01:08:54

We're all going, oh, there's 8 billion people. We can't handle this. It's going to collapse. It's going to collapse fast.

01:09:01

And the results, I mean, you're already seeing it in Japan. They can't take care of their old people.

01:09:10

They're doing it with robots. Well, that's how I want my last few days to be. Because nobody has a family anymore.

01:09:18

Families don't stick together. Yes. This next generation is so busy putting us in our graves.

01:09:24

The common phrase is, okay, boomer, get in your box. And it's like...

01:09:30

I have not had anyone say that to me. Oh, I've seen it. And it's like, really? Did they not realize we're far better armed than they are?

01:09:37

Well, not only are we far better armed, but we are also more capable and so when you think about, for instance, just looking at medicine, and I happen to know a few things in that particular direction, and you and I are both learning things about how difficult medicine's already getting.

01:09:54

If you take our generation out of the medical providing business, the next generation has nowhere to turn to.

01:10:04

No one. It just won't be there. There's no infrastructure because we're going to take it with us in our little box.

01:10:10

Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

01:10:15

I've joked many times when I wear a bow tie that I'm one of the last people on the planet to possess this secret esoteric knowledge of how to tie a bow tie.

01:10:29

Well, that's not going to change the world, but there's a lot of things that we need. We need people who have basic skills and they're disappearing.

01:10:40

It just strikes me that I have started thinking about, this year hasn't been real easy on me.

01:10:53

I've wanted, from 2020 onward, I've done my best to stay as far away from the medical world as possible.

01:11:02

2024 has not allowed me to do that. I have had a lot of interface with the medical world.

01:11:07

And hey, I've met some good young doctors. I will say that. My experiences have been better than they were back in 2016, as far as just how nice people are.

01:11:21

But the point is, I am now thinking about,

01:11:29

I'd really like to live long enough to see my great grandchildren. What would be really cool is if they could maybe know me or maybe even remember me.

01:11:43

Because this last week, the

01:11:48

Apologia leadership took a, I didn't go, but took a trip over to California.

01:11:54

My wife likes to go on those things. She took our oldest granddaughter. She said to me once,

01:12:02

I'm making memories with my grandkids. That's what they were doing over there. I'm so thankful that my daughter,

01:12:10

Summer, got to make lots of memories with my mom, get to know that older generation.

01:12:18

I'm so thankful that my grandkids will always remember us.

01:12:24

Ransom, if we kicked off right now, okay, really wouldn't remember us much. But we're not quite ready to kick off yet.

01:12:31

Our grandkids are going to spend some time with us. That's one of the advantages of being married at 19 and 18, rather than waiting until 32 or 40, which is happening so much now.

01:12:44

You want to know why the global fertility rate looks like that? You don't get married until you're 32.

01:12:50

That's what's going to happen. I can guarantee you, sub -Saharan

01:12:55

Africa, they ain't wait until they're 32 to get married. So anyway,

01:13:01

I have really started thinking about the fact, and I'm not trying to put pressure on my granddaughter, obviously, but I've got a shot at seeing those great grandkids.

01:13:13

And it really changes how you think about things. It really, really does. And I think one of the reasons that we can become so self -centered and so non -sacrificial in how we live is we're not thinking about the future.

01:13:37

We're not thinking generationally down the road. It's just us and our kids, maybe.

01:13:44

But so many today don't even have the idea that having children has any tremendous value to it whatsoever.

01:13:52

And the result's going to be big, big, big, big, big, big.

01:14:00

All right. Put this one up. Father Dwight Longenecker comes from Twitter.

01:14:13

Why do Protestant evangelicals worship the Bible? All they ever talk about is

01:14:20

Bible, Bible, Bible. Their worship services revolve around a Bible study. They have central in their church a pulpit for Bible sermons.

01:14:29

They don't have Jesus churches. They have Bible churches, Bible colleges, Bible schools, Bible, Bible, everything.

01:14:35

They don't talk about Jesus. They only talk about the Bible. So this is from May 25th of 2024 from Earth.

01:14:44

I'm glad we know that was from Earth. It wasn't from orbit. You know,

01:14:51

I try to think how things like this end up on Twitter.

01:15:01

And I'm not sure if it's some of the

01:15:07

Francis stuff. I'm really not sure where it's coming from. But I'm seeing more and more discussion between Protestants and Roman Catholics.

01:15:19

Part of it's disturbing. The Protestant side, we've tried to provide a sound biblical apologetic over the years.

01:15:36

But a lot of folks today, I mean, let's just be honest, sit down and listen to a two and a half, three hour debate between me and Mitch Pacwa.

01:15:43

They don't have time. They don't have time. But on the

01:15:53

Roman Catholic side, there's this guy named Patrick Neve. It just popped up on my screen just now.

01:15:59

I mean, just right now. I've not even seen this tweet. I looked over and it popped up. When I say

01:16:05

Mary is the mother of God, my reply has become a race to see who can deny the divinity of Christ the fastest.

01:16:13

Patrick Neve says all sorts of really silly things. He throws it out there, just simply to get clicks and stuff like that.

01:16:22

It's hard to take a lot of what he says overly seriously. But there's an interesting example.

01:16:33

Someone yesterday posted a link to Mary and Other Redeemer Kindle format on Amazon and made the comment, how come

01:16:45

I haven't found a papist response to this? I don't remember any papist responses to it either.

01:16:55

It's not a long book, but it certainly helps people. The chapter on Theotokos, or as they say in modern

01:17:03

Greek, Theotokos, I gave a defense of a historical,

01:17:12

Christological use of the term Theotokos, which means God -bearer.

01:17:18

Not mother of God, God -bearer. The term initially had to do with Jesus.

01:17:25

It initially had to do with the hypostatic union. It initially had to do with denying adoptionism,

01:17:31

Nestorianism, Polynarianism, and all the rest.

01:17:41

I gave a defense of that, but I then pointed out that what

01:17:48

Rome has done with that since then has been to take it from being a phrase that has to do with Jesus to a phrase that has to do with Mary.

01:17:58

That is where the real problem lies. But again, how many Protestants would even know what the background of the term was?

01:18:09

Council of Ephesus? Council of Chalcedon? Hypostatic union? No. No. Most people don't know.

01:18:18

Back to Dwight Longenecker here, all they were talking about is

01:18:25

Bible, Bible, Bible. Well, hopefully it's the content of the Bible, Bible, Bible.

01:18:31

We certainly do not worship the Bible. Their worship services revolve around a

01:18:39

Bible study. No. We believe that the

01:18:46

Scriptures are God -speaking. We are the bride of Christ, and we hear the voice of the shepherd, the voice of Christ in Scripture.

01:18:58

We don't hear it from you claiming to be a priest. There's no

01:19:05

New Testament offering of a priest. We don't hear it from a pope. There is no

01:19:10

New Testament office of a pope. It's found in Scripture. The worship services revolve around worshiping

01:19:17

God in spirit and truth. That means communicating his truth to the sheep, which comes from Scripture.

01:19:26

They have central in their church a pulpit for Bible sermons. That was a key issue in the

01:19:32

Reformation. It was the removal of an altar and the centralizing of the pulpit, the proclamation of the

01:19:40

Word of God. Yes, that is definitely a part of the Protestant Reformation, and it is an appropriate and perfectly appropriate correction to what happened in the medieval period.

01:19:52

They don't have Jesus churches. They have Bible churches. The problem is the message of the Bible is who

01:19:58

Jesus is. You have church churches over and over again.

01:20:06

When I hear people talking about converting to Roman Catholicism, they didn't convert to Christ. They converted to the church.

01:20:14

They say very little about Jesus. They say very little about their sins. They say very little about justification or the righteousness that is imputed to them because Rome doesn't teach any of those things.

01:20:24

They converted to the church. When people leave, a large number of people in my church are former

01:20:36

Roman Catholics. They'll all tell you the exact same thing. I grew up in the church.

01:20:41

I never heard the gospel. That confuses Roman Catholics because Roman Catholics don't really understand what we mean by the gospel.

01:20:51

That is the message of reconciliation. That has been turned into all these sacraments and sacrament of reconciliation, for example, and instead of its biblical, hence divinely revealed meaning.

01:21:09

So it says they don't talk about Jesus. They only talk about the Bible. It's just obviously that's bogus. That's absurd, but that does give you an idea of what these folks are talking about.

01:21:23

Yeah, all right. Let's do this one.

01:21:33

I should not have closed that last one. I was going to try to remind myself, keep all these things up so when

01:21:38

I blog it, I can remember what in the world they're talking about. So here's an atheist.

01:21:46

No god in any religious tradition is as consistently brutal and bloodthirsty as Yahweh of the Old Testament.

01:21:52

That includes the various war gods and deities of peoples like the Aztecs. Christianity has lost influence in part because Christians refuse to reckon with it, instead twisting themselves in knots to justify genocide, rape, incest, etc.

01:22:06

Now, obviously, the first two sentences are absurd on their face.

01:22:18

Aztec war gods, if you know anything about Mesoamerican archaeology and religion and things like that, obviously this guy doesn't.

01:22:30

But it's massive hyperbole. Consistently brutal and bloodthirsty as Yahweh of the

01:22:40

Old Testament. You have the redemption of the people of Israel from Egypt, which, if you're going to read it in any meaningful fashion, is going to...

01:22:57

Oh, wow, there was something else I was going to do today. I'm not going to have time. Well, hey, we've got another one coming up on Thursday.

01:23:04

I just need to... I had it cued up. I apologize. I had it cued up and it just hit me.

01:23:10

Hit the old brain. I will try to remember. I'll try to make a note for myself.

01:23:18

I tweeted about 1 Corinthians chapter 1 and the meaning of election.

01:23:25

And I want to be able to have some time for us to discuss this issue in light of the two -part

01:23:34

Romans foolishness and all the other stuff that goes along with that. And Dr.

01:23:43

Garza's insistence that we are to interpret Paul's understanding of election as if Paul is limited to pharisaical categories, the school of Hillel.

01:23:57

This is an idiosyncratic, novel, off -the -wall, a few guys over there type of an idea.

01:24:06

The idea of looking at Paul's background is not. But the idea of limiting and ignoring the fact that Paul says,

01:24:14

I got my gospel by revelation of Jesus Christ, not by limitation to Hillelian categories.

01:24:22

We need to talk about that and demonstrate that. But we're not going to get that today. Yeah, you know what?

01:24:31

It will work perfectly because the other thing I have here was also a response to the same tweet.

01:24:39

So those will work really well putting them together. So our young people, if they go to a community college, if they go to university, are going to hear this kind of thing.

01:24:53

And so the first two sentences, I would say, this is ridiculous. That includes various war gods, deities of peoples like the

01:24:59

Aztecs. Clearly don't know enough about the Old Testament. Don't know enough about Aztec war gods either.

01:25:06

But the last few statements were, Christian has lost influence in part because Christians refuse to reckon with it.

01:25:15

Instead, twisting themselves in knots to justify genocide, rape, incest, etc. And I'm wondering what he means by that.

01:25:21

Because one thing that truly has concerned me for a number of years now are the number of apologists and the number of evangelical, even conservative,

01:25:39

Bible -believing Christians. Partly, they don't spend the time in the

01:25:46

Old Testament. They need to spend the Old Testament. They don't know the Old Testament well enough to be able to recognize misrepresentations, straw man stuff, all of that.

01:25:59

But the fact is, theologically, once you abandon Reformed theology, once you abandon what the

01:26:11

Puritans believed, that heritage that came from Geneva, you end up really struggling with the holiness of God and how

01:26:27

God brought judgment in the Old Testament. And if you do not have an overarching decree,

01:26:36

I was listening to a debate on open theism yesterday while writing.

01:26:45

It drove me crazy. Both sides drove me crazy. At one point, the

01:26:52

Christian side, the open theist, asked about Jeremiah 18. And the Christian side said,

01:26:57

I don't know. I'd have to study it. And I'm like, brother, don't get into a debate on open theism without having worked through Father's Eight Sour Grapes, Children's Teeth Set on Edge, the whole potter's example that is provided in Jeremiah chapter.

01:27:26

If you haven't worked through that, you shouldn't be in a debate on open theism. But I was much more amazed by the things that were being said from the open theist side.

01:27:35

We're trying to arrange debates on open theism for July and August up in Colorado.

01:27:41

And again, if we don't have that understanding of God's self -glorifying decree, the perfection of that,

01:27:57

I don't know how you make sense out of anything in Scripture. I really don't. It's what provides us with those guardrails.

01:28:08

It's what provides us with that overarching framework that gives coherence to Scripture itself.

01:28:17

When I listen to a lot of quote -unquote apologists stumbling all over themselves, and that's why

01:28:26

I'm wondering who he's talking to, but it says instead, twisting themselves in knots to justify genocide, rape, incest, etc.

01:28:32

I'm not sure who he's referring to, but if you don't recognize that and do not have the foundation to be able to say,

01:28:43

God could bring judgment against any guilty sinner at any point at any time and do so with perfect and pure justice right now.

01:28:52

If you don't have the foundation for that, you're not going to be able to engage atheists or anybody else in talking about what's contained in Scripture.

01:29:02

And again, I think one of the greatest warnings to get out to everybody is this.

01:29:15

Be careful to never be put under pressure to adopt a view of the

01:29:22

Bible, any part of the Bible or all the Bible as a whole, that Jesus did not have.

01:29:31

It just needs to be an absolute basic bottom line thing. I am going to view the

01:29:38

Scriptures the same way as the man who left the tomb did.

01:29:45

Even if I'm the only one in my church, the only one in my neighborhood, the only one in my family, whatever the context is, the man who left behind an empty tomb, his view of Scripture needs to be mine.

01:30:03

That will protect you from a whole mess of stuff. It really will.

01:30:09

Take my advice. Use that as your standard. Use that as your standard.

01:30:15

Okay, well, we went jumbo this week, this day, and like I said,

01:30:23

I've got some stuff to do next time around that will maybe make us go as long then, too.

01:30:29

I don't know. We will see. I can now sit, and at the end of the program,

01:30:37

I'm still feeling like a human being. So it's a great feeling. It really, really is. I'm thankful.

01:30:43

I don't know how long I'll have it, but we'll be thankful for it for as long as we've got it.

01:30:50

How does that sound? All right. Thanks for listening to the program today. Lord willing, we'll see you on Thursday.