Future Predictions, Social Issues, Refuting Bradly Mason, Erasmus, and Steven Anderson Chapter 3

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00:43

And greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. It is going to be a packed program. We've got a lot to get to, and it's going to be exciting.

00:52

At least exciting for me, I suppose. Maybe not for you, I don't know. But we try. I suppose, in passing,

00:58

I should mention I said something on Facebook this morning about 2025 and what

01:08

I see coming in our society. And one of the things I mentioned was the drawing of the target right on the forehead of all homeschooling in the

01:18

United States. And I made the assertion that fundamentally by that time period you will have people – you already have people doing this, but you will then have the foundation for people calling for universal educational standards like they have in Europe.

01:43

And getting rid of homeschooling – because they have to have your children. They have to have your children from the smallest age to inculcate them properly in secularism to get rid of the negative religiosity that is passed down from parents to children and grandparents to grandchildren and so on and so forth.

01:59

They've got to have that time to cram all the insanity of transgenderism, homosexuality, everything else in their minds.

02:07

And so some people had commented on that and had mentioned how often there are homeschoolers that watch

02:19

The Dividing Line as part of – almost part of their curriculum. And maybe that's why we cover some of the stuff that we do and some of the topics that we do.

02:30

Again, we don't sit down and go, okay, here's our audience, and our audience is made up of this percentage of this and this percentage of that, and I would stop doing this if we did sit down and start doing that anyways.

02:41

But because we don't do that stuff and do what

02:48

I find to be – yeah, that's sort of like Rush. We talk about what's interesting to me. Sorry, that's just the way it is.

02:55

If you don't like that, start your own program. If you can do a couple hours' worth of talking by yourself or taking phone calls or switch from textual criticism to church history to Trinitarian theology or Islam or whatever, hey, go for it.

03:12

No one's stopping you. Do your thing. No skin off my nose. But the point being,

03:18

I'm glad we've had that opportunity, but as I mentioned in that Facebook article, I was thinking very, very, very seriously this morning, when is the last time we're going to get to do this?

03:35

Because we see – yeah, okay, once in a while we'll see a little step forward and then it's 50 yards back and then a little step forward and then 50 yards back again.

03:45

Yeah, I don't just spend all my time thinking about how bad things are, but I have to be a realist.

03:54

I have to recognize what's going on around us. And I know that there are – we're seeing people just banned from Facebook, groups closed down.

04:05

You see it happening and I don't see any evidence it's going to get any better. And in fact,

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I would think once the attention of the leftists is no longer on a man by the name of Donald Trump, who right now seems to be the focus of the vast majority of their hate, once there is a leftist socialist in the

04:32

White House, whether that's 2020 or 2024 – I can't see it being held off any longer than that, to be honest with you.

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Then they will be emboldened and the tech companies will be emboldened, the

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Googles and the Facebooks, to just get rid of any dissenting opinion. They don't want it.

04:54

It's not inclusive. It's hateful. And all these hate crimes laws – I remember – I'm old enough to remember when those things started.

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And I'm old enough to remember that there were a number of us going, I'm really uncomfortable with people trying to read hearts.

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I mean, the law says X, Y, Z, and you can't see inside someone's heart.

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So I can see this being abused and everybody's, oh, no, I think it's a great idea. It's wonderful. It's great.

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Add a little punishment in there. And now it is the sword of Damocles hanging over our heads because once you establish in law that you can't misgender somebody – and there's already places that are putting that in law.

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First it's in the civil. Then it becomes criminal. Then you can use that as a basis of hate speech and you can shut down that speech.

05:52

And that's what's coming 2020, 2024, whatever it might be. I put 2025 so it would be the year after the regime change, and that's exactly what it would be.

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I don't think we should – I don't even know if we should talk about administrations anymore.

06:11

Administration was back in a different day. That was back in a constitutional day. I think we're in a post -constitutional

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America. You might say, well, no, no, but we've got two good Supreme Court – well, I don't know how good they're going to be.

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I don't know that yet. And Ruth Bader Ginsburg is going to die in office.

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It is going to be her final act of leftism.

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She just – I have taken my stand in trying to change the

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United States into a leftist stronghold. And her final act is going to be to – whether she's functional or not, she's going to keel over on the court.

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And that's – you can just tell. That's what she has – that's going to be her final legacy is what she's going to do.

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And so I don't know if there will be a third. And even if there was, I'm sorry, but it's scary to see people thinking that Supreme Court justices are our salvation.

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They're not. If the Constitution is that malleable and that liable to gross misinterpretation, so much for recognizing that our rights actually originate in God, in our creator.

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Hey, once a society stops thinking there is a creator, there aren't any stopping places.

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I haven't watched it yet, but I'm going to try to at some point. But what is the – is it

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Thin Air? What's the name of that documentary they did, the guy who climbed – the free climbed – oh,

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I've forgotten the name of the thing. Somebody will mention a channel here a second, but there is a bunch of discussion about the morality of their recording this because he's climbing – it's not the

08:10

Matterhorn. It's that thing up in – you're not helping at all here. You're standing there staring at me with your mouth hanging open.

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It's one of the most famous climbs up – what? No, it's not in Everest. It's in the United States.

08:27

Obviously, you don't have a clue what I'm talking about. Anyways, I've just completely lost the name of both the movie and the vertical wall that they climb.

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Anyways, they had a – yeah, obviously, you ain't helping me at all.

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They had all sorts of moral problems, quandaries and stuff like that about whether they should document this because the guy climbed without a rope.

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It's a 3 ,000 – yeah, El Capitan. El Capitan up there and the guy climbed it.

09:01

I have a hard time watching those things. I'm afraid of heights. It's called

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Free Solo. Thank you. Who was that? Oh, Ken Gontaros. Thank you. Kenny G is out there.

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Free Solo. I don't know if I can watch it. I mean, some of those things they show on Facebook and stuff where people are riding bikes on these teeny tiny little – my legs just start getting wobbly.

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I'm like, oh, no. I can't do that. So anyway, that movie.

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I was getting connected to something. See? I know you don't know nothing.

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You didn't do nothing. That's the point. Where were your Google skills? Anyways, I was going to make a thing about that, and then somebody posted a picture of Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a robot, and that was it.

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It just lost me. What was I going to say about that? I was just going to say I can't watch that type of thing, but what was

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I going to make the connection? Anyways, never mind. Let's just start this thing all over again. Yeah, we –

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I can't say that. That would get me in too much trouble. I'm not going to say that.

10:28

I was getting connected in here somewhere, but I'll figure it out after the program is over and go, oh, missed that opportunity.

10:34

Anyways, let's go back to this here. It sort of connects in. Yeah, Free Solo.

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Yes, I realize that. 2018 documentary. I can't watch it.

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I want to try it, but there was some connection.

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I'm just going to – I have no idea. I have no idea. I'm just going to move on. I've got too much to go to.

10:57

It had nothing to do with Colorado because it's not in Colorado, but I do have two Colorado stories, one of which is –

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I guess in a sense, both of these are sort of counterbalances to the overly negative stuff that I've had.

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Yeah, a guy named Alex Honnold, he made it. And I suppose that should help me to watch because I know he's not going to fall.

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But it's just astonishing to me that anyone would climb that thing with ropes or anything else, let alone –

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I mean, it's just stunning that anybody could do that. It's great. Sorry, Matthew.

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We don't have interaction. That's why we don't have comments on the YouTube stuff either. Oh, sometimes we do.

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But anyways, there are two stories that have come out just recently that at least are somewhat positive.

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So I thought it would be a little bit of a counterbalance to all the negativity.

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And it's also the illustration of what I was saying. Sure, there are – sometimes there's one step forward.

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There's a little bit of a pushback. But when I look at the

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Millennials and the I -gens or Z -gens, whatever they're being called these days, I don't know. There are a whole lot more

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Ocasio -Cortezes than there are the good guys. And so they will eventually outnumber the people who have any idea what this nation was supposed to be about.

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So there you go. One of which – both have to do with Colorado, which is interesting.

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I love Colorado, but – and I love certain people in Colorado. But I do not love the state government of Colorado, which is thanks to places like Boulder, just ultra -leftist.

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And the state's beautiful. The government's nuts. And the

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Colorado Civil Rights Commission – now remember, it's the exact same type of group that you have up in Canada that has been persecuting

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Christians for decades now. Now we've got our own in certain states, and Colorado being one of them.

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Announced Tuesday, it will dismiss its most recent charges against cake artist Jack Phillips in the wake of newly discovered evidence of the state's ongoing hostility toward religious freedom.

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The state of Colorado is dismissing its case against Jack, stopping its six and a half years of hostility toward him and his beliefs, said

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ADF Senior Vice President of U .S. Legal Division Kristen Wagoner, who argued on behalf of Phillips at the U .S. Supreme Court.

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Jack's victory is great news for everyone. The fact that one commissioner called

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Phillips a hater on Twitter was already publicly known, but a Colorado state legislator recently disclosed that he spoke in November 2018 to a current commissioner who expressed a belief that there is an anti -religious bias on the commission.

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Shocking. Really? And just last week, ADF attorneys uncovered statements from a 2018 public meeting in which two commissioners voiced their support for comments that a previous commissioner,

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Diane Rice, made in 2015. Those comments, which the U .S. Supreme Court sternly condemned in its ruling in favor of Phillips last year, called religious freedom a despicable piece of rhetoric.

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And so, okay, the Supreme Court ruled. And pretty much the same day, they went right back at it from a different perspective.

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Totally set up call. Nobody's rights have been violated. It was complete garbage.

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But this is what happens. This is why the founders were wise.

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They could not see the level of corruption that would come with secularism.

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The founders were writing from a Christian worldview. And so they couldn't see.

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They would have made the system even weaker, I think, with more controls in it, controlling the power of government and the size of government, if they had any idea of what was going to be coming.

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But when you put secular people who do not believe that they are under the judgment they will ever stand before the judgment of God in positions of power and then multiply that power, this is what's going to happen from a

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Christian worldview. I do not understand any Christian who says, I'm reformed.

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And then you're going to support this kind of stuff. I guess you haven't read Romans 1 recently. You don't have a biblical anthropology.

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That's for sure. So they got caught. Do I think this is going to be the end of it in Colorado?

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No. They're just looking for another way to go because, oh, man. All right.

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Let's let this blow over for a year or so, and then we'll go this direction. The goal will always be to limit or destroy the rights of religious people because there can only be one religion, the religion of the state.

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You must bow down to us. You must kiss the ring of Caesar. But it's also interesting that it's in Colorado.

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You heard the story. A Colorado Springs wrestler made history when he knocked himself out of the state tournament rather than wrestle a girl.

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And so once again, you have a young man by the name of Brendan Johnston, a

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Christian who basically says, I do not believe it would be appropriate to do to a girl on a wrestling mat what would cause me to be arrested out anyplace else.

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18 year olds with significantly more common sense and significantly deeper morals than the vast majority of the progressive elites in the

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United States today that are forcing this insanity upon all of us. He's exactly right.

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He would have to touch her and grab her. Look, in wrestling, everything's fair game.

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There's no place you can't grab in wrestling. And so the whole idea of males and females wrestling is absolute insanity.

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It's just as insane as transgenderism. It's just as insane as profaning marriage. It's moral and ethical insanity.

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And this young man is not the first young man to have done this. There are others who have done it. My hat's off to all of you.

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You are the true champions. You need to know before God you're the true champions. But the whole point is, why should young Christian women train hard for track and field when the reality is that you are probably anymore going to come up against a male pretending to be a female who is going to leave you five seconds behind?

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Women cannot compete with men in track and field. That's a fact. There is not a female body on the planet that can outrun

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Hussein Bolt. It's not possible. It's called physics. It's called testosterone, muscles, bones, connective tissues.

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Can't happen. This is the stuff we talked about with Martina Navratilova. She knows that Pete Sampras would blow the serve past her.

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Roger Federer. I know Sampras is older, but she knows it. It's a fact based upon gender.

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And she may be confused because she's a lesbian, but she still knows what a woman is and knows what a man is and knows she likes one more than the other.

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It's confusion, but at least she knows what they are. So all of this stuff, our young women, why bother?

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Why bother training for track? And parents, oh my goodness, what? Mueller talked about this on the briefing, and he said back years ago, he did a commentary on the briefing about girls wrestling against boys.

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And the parents of girls that went after him, he said, was incredible. I don't care.

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Well, first of all, I don't care because Rich answers the phone. But secondly, and I don't think

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Rich cares either. But secondly, I don't care because I think you're nuts.

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If you OK, Rich says he does, too. So if you're so nuts that you would degrade your daughter in that way, that you would put her in a situation where she is going to be handled by a sweaty young man in that fashion.

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You're nuts. OK, I don't respect you as a parent to begin with. So to that,

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I don't care. It's just like, where did common sense go? It has been banished.

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It's gone. There needs to be a male wrestling championship and look at the genetics and a female wrestling championship.

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Look at the genetics. And that's it. None of this transgenderism.

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None of this crossing over. Make it fair. That's the only way to do it. Period. End of discussion for that.

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So two things out of Colorado. Once again, my hat's off to Brendan Johnston.

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You are a champion in the eyes of anyone who understands morality or ethics.

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And I think you will have a wonderful life ahead of you, except that you're in the

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United States that because of its cultural degradation isn't going to reward your kind of moral and ethical stand.

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But eternity is a long time, Brendan. And so hats off to you and to the others whose names

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I don't have who have likewise done the right thing in that situation.

21:34

Very, very, very, very good to all of you. Okay. Saw a tweet this morning from Beth Moore.

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And there are a lot of people who see the handwriting on the wall and are predicting that in the very near future,

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Beth Moore will be president of the Southern Baptist Convention. A lot of people saying it.

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A lot of people saying it. And she wrote to Denny Burke, who evidently agreed with this tweet.

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This is great. Somewhere along the way, Denny, we have to reckon with the fact that we, myself included, went too far.

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We put limitations on women that exceeded what Christ demonstrated.

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We did it instead of wrestling—no connection there—we did it instead of wrestling with the tension between the

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Gospels and epistles. We're watching a backlash.

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Now, I commented on this tweet because I have seen this language for a long, long time.

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I first began to get accustomed to the language of tension while a student at Fuller Theological Seminary in the 1980s.

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Late 1980s. Graduated in 89. And so, you know, part of the conversation there was it hadn't been all that long since Fuller had abandoned

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A View of Inerrancy and they were moving left quicker and quicker. And so, when you would encounter a situation where non -Christians would say there's a contradiction in the

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Bible, the language they would use is, will we sense a tension in the text? Now, we have to recognize there are people who propose straight -up contradiction between Paul and James based on Romans 3 -4 vs.

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James 2. And they make the accusation that James is arguing against Paul's position.

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Even though there might be a chronological issue there, that's the accusation that's made. And people make that—Muslim apologists make that argument.

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Lots of people do. I addressed that rather fully in The God Who Justifies, if you have that book, and went through rather painstakingly the passages in James and Paul, and demonstrated that that is a shallow and errant reading, generally based upon not actually having exegeted the relevant text.

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Anyway, so we recognize there is a proper use of the term tension because different writers have different things they're attempting to address.

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And so, you can have a focus of one writer in one context, say 1

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John dealing with a form of proto -Gnosticism, Colossians doing the same thing in the form of proto -Gnosticism.

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And that might create tension with other texts that are not addressing that particular issue.

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That tension is not a contradiction. It is due to the fact that the New Testament writers addressed different issues at different times and different contexts.

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And proper categorization, proper exegesis, will relieve those tensions as long as you believe that all

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Scripture is theanoustos, and not that there's one human author of Scripture, because there isn't.

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There are different styles, different times, writing to different audiences, but that there is one supernatural author of Scripture, and hence that there is an underlying unity and harmony that is to be found in Scriptures.

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If you believe that, you are in a minority. I hate to have to mention this to you, but if you really do believe that Scripture is itself supernatural, and that there is a harmony and a consistency to it, and that therefore exegesis should take that in consideration, you're in a minority.

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You're in a minority in the Western world. You're not so much—well, sort of depends on where you are,

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I suppose. But here in the United States, amongst those who call themselves Christians, you are definitely in a minority.

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But that's not what we have here. That's not what we have in the Beth Moore tweet. Instead, we have a tension between the

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Gospels and epistles in reference to women. Now, in a matter of just a few words, a whole theology has been smuggled in there.

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First of all, a theology that posits that Paul's restrictive ecclesiastical statements in regards to the

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Church, and Jesus said very little about the form, function, and proper ordering of the

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Church. He left that to his apostles. And in the work of the

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Holy Spirit, one primary apostle, though there are others who wrote, who wrote the most on that subject?

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That would be Paul. And so, the idea is that you can look at Jesus' interaction with women, and the fact that he broke social norms, and that he—his talking with the woman at the well in Samaria, and his appearing to the women after resurrection, all of these things certainly go against cultural norms.

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But what people want to do is they want to then exaggerate that, and create a tension, and say, well, the trajectory of Jesus' actions is this way, but the trajectory of Paul's is this way, see?

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And they go different directions. There is a fundamentally flawed view of the unity and harmony of Scripture in those words, and hence in Beth Moore's perspective.

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What I said on Twitter this morning is this is the language that is used by people who are just about to throw out biblical standards.

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And that's how they cover it. Well, we're just—we're wrestling with the tension.

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Yeah, I've been hearing that for a long time. How about wrestling with the unity of the text?

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Wrestling with the divine calling of the Apostle Paul as an apostle of Jesus Christ?

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And how about realizing if you think Paul's trajectory can be ignored on that subject, why not ignoring his trajectory on justification, or sanctification, or adoption, or the atonement, or any number of other issues?

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Yeah, well, because he was pretty clear on these issues. Really was. Now, how do people get around that?

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Oh, it's simple. It's easy. There's an easy way around this. All you've got to do is come up with a minimized

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Pauline canon. Remember, we've talked about that before when we were reviewing—and

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I haven't heard a lot of—about a lot of debates with Bart Ehrman recently.

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He was doing a lot of them for a while, and I haven't heard of one for a couple years now. Oh, he's very expensive.

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That we know. Yeah, no kidding. Maybe that's how he's dealt with it. Anyway, we point out that Ehrman has a minimized seven -book

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Pauline corpus. Six or seven are all he accepts. And so, that way you can get rid of the pastoral epistles.

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They're not Pauline. And so, once they're pseudepigraphal, or pseudonymous—at least pseudonymous—obviously, their authority is diminished thereby.

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And that way you can start prioritizing your texts and coming up with just a way to pretend that you're still believing the

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Bible when you really don't. That's how you do it. Am I saying

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Beth Moore's going to do that? Well, I don't know. It's possible. There's certainly a trajectory on her part, that direction.

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And, of course, all the others that are a part of promoting her stuff. And so, yeah, there you go.

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Okay. I've been looking forward to this. It was posted—it doesn't seem to show this here, unfortunately.

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At least it's not showing it in my—oh, it says, okay, created

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February 27th. I think I said I was going to deal with it when I got back from Virginia.

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I had a great time there in Virginia with Jeff Downs, who's a longtime figure in the apologetic community in the

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United States. He's really good at collating information and gathering information. He used to publish an index of relevant apologetics articles in scholarly journals and stuff like that.

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He's pastoring now at a PCA church there in Mechanicsville, Virginia.

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We had a conference on the Trinity and got to meet a number of you folks there.

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Again, can't tell you how many former King James -only independent fundamentalist

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Baptists came up to me, even at a conference which is a whole lot smaller than G3.

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But still, there were a number of people that came up to me during the breaks and after I spoke and stuff like that and said, you know,

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I was in the King James -only movement, and I was an independent fundamentalist Baptist, and ran across your stuff, and wow, changed everything, and now

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I'm in trouble because I'm a Calvinist. Almost always there's somebody who will say, you know, now my whole family just won't have anything to do with me.

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We've been shunned, which unfortunately often happens.

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But anyways, so we had a good time there. I thought I'd mention that because I said this came out beforehand, and I said we'll get to it when we get back.

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Because of the fact I didn't have time to, because we had the Michael Brown program, which got a lot of nice reviews.

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I didn't see a whole lot of uber -negative stuff. I saw a lot of positive, wish -all -the -conversations -were -like -that type stuff.

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Didn't see a whole lot of uber -nastiness in response to it. Well, yeah, there's some hotheads out there, but that's what you get.

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Somebody told me that Service Christy guy put up that nasty video a couple days ago.

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What was it? Calvinist Hucksters or Scammers or I don't know what it was that he had talked about.

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But I didn't even bother taking the time. I don't think he's done enough to be worthy of my investing time.

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So Bradley Mason is a social justice warrior who's been – we've talked about before on the program.

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And he decided to try to take a shot at Colossians 3.

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And one thing I can at least be thankful for is he did quote from my response to Thabiti Anawili.

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So at least there's some truth in it. And maybe somebody will pick that up. And of course, I'm looking over the other direction now.

34:51

Of course, thank you. The points that I made in what was quoted, he doesn't refute.

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A lot of the guys in the social justice stuff, they're so dedicated and they are so biased and they are so sold out that they just don't even hear the other side.

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So they don't even realize when they're not actually refuting what you said. The nice thing is there are still people who are listening to both sides and they see that.

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And they go, well, wait a minute, but he said this and you're talking about this guy over here and stuff that happened back then and you're not even getting to his point.

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And it's like, yeah, well, don't know why he can't see it, but there you go. So he starts off by saying,

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I've become more and more baffled how passages like Galatians 3 .28 and Colossians 3 .11 have been used to oppose advocates of racial justice and reconciliation in the church.

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Well, the quotation he then gives is from me. So let's read it and see if that doesn't explain it in a way that Bradley Mason doesn't seem to understand.

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Quote, I've walked through Colossians 3 and argued that within the fellowship of faith, the singular lens by which we are to view each other is found in our common redemption, our common faith, our common and dwelling spirit, and the common renewal that is being worked out in us whereby we are being conformed to the image of Christ.

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I argue that the apostle specifically and clearly denies that there are any distinctions in this renewal based upon one's history, one's ethnicity, or social standing.

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The unity of the body is found not in the noting and prioritizing of such things, but in recognizing that in light of the redemptive work of Christ, those distinctions are no more.

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In this renewing work, there is no Greek and no Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian,

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Scythian, slave, freeman, but Christ is all, and in all. The phrase, but Christ is all, should not be overlooked.

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There is something utterly unique in the Christian faith, found in the uniqueness of the God -man in the incarnate one,

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Jesus. The reason every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, that's Revelation 5, can be one is that they are focused not upon themselves, but upon another,

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Jesus. I assert this means that my relationship with each and every true believer in Jesus must, by nature of who

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Jesus is and what he did, transcend and eclipse any other human relationship, and that includes ethnicity, history, or skin color.

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Dot, dot, dot. That new man looks forward to the consummation of all things, not backwards, to sources of hurt and animus between ethnic groups.

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This is why, again, the Christian church can bring peace in the most horrific of human conflicts, but that all ends when we import the lens of race into the body.

38:02

This is why I have stood against this woke movement, and its unbiblical attempt to insert a lens the apostles nowhere demanded, direct quotation, from my response to Thabiti Anubili, the racialist lens disrupts true

38:16

Christian unity. Now, once again, they can't hear this.

38:23

They won't hear this. They refuse to hear this, or they lack the ability to hear this, or they're plugging their ears and going, la, la, la, la, la,

38:29

I don't know. But for those who aren't doing that, what I'm saying is that the reason that the

38:37

Christian community could exist as the Christian community did in the apostolic period was because the relationship that is formed by the common faith, the common confession of one

38:52

Savior, the common forgiveness of sin, the common imputation of one righteousness.

38:58

So there is a renewal in which there is no, and in Colossians 3, political, sociological, or religious distinctions in this renewal.

39:10

The reason that you could have unity in that church, the reason they could all gather around one table, including slave owners and slaves themselves, was because of the reality of that truth, that divine truth that gave rise to the body in the first place.

39:30

And so, to drag into the body, and hence to begin segregating the body, having black church, white church, demanding that one group be held accountable for what their forefathers did over against another group, about their forefathers, even if you can't actually trace the forefathers, either one back there, but hey, they look like it and they look like that, therefore, there needs to be this constant penance, there needs to be constant talk about reparations and all sorts of leftist political ideology, which is what's being snuck in the back door using terms like racial reconciliation.

40:11

When races aren't reconciled, people are reconciled. Tribes, tongues, people, and nation have already been reconciled.

40:19

That's what makes the body the body. To say there's something that still needs to be reconciled is to ignore the reality that already exists, what you're really saying is, we want to keep looking backwards, keep digging up the things of the past, and saying, everybody, this group has to be in constant penance toward that group, and the whole reason for it is to divide.

40:40

That's the only reason for it. People have said, I'm sorry, sorry, sorry, a thousand times, and it doesn't make any difference.

40:46

There is, therefore, now much condemnation in the woke church, because the woke church doesn't have a finished work.

40:54

So there will be constant recrimination, because the whole point of it is to divide. That's why it exists.

41:00

That's the whole purpose behind all of it. And so you've got to keep looking back, looking back, looking back, yeah, but this was terrible back then.

41:07

We can all agree it was terrible back then. But it's not terrible now. Oh, there it is, there it is. Yes, it is, just as bad now.

41:14

That's why we talked about Jim Martisby's book. That's why we quoted the section from it just a couple weeks ago, and said, don't you realize what this book is doing?

41:23

It left being a work of history and went straight into leftist socialism toward the end, well, really halfway through, because of its definition of racism now.

41:35

And now the new definition has nothing to do with your personal attitudes. It can't be defined as sin because of that.

41:44

But now, if you support the current president of the United States, you're complicit with racism.

41:50

If you don't want reparations, you're complicit with racism. It's a whole new definition that is absolutely designed to make sure that the divide continues to get wider and wider and wider.

42:04

That's wider, not whiter. So, this is what we've got in the woke church.

42:10

This is what we've got going on all around us. And so, what is the answer to that?

42:17

The answer is a theological answer. And the answer is to say that there can be no white spaces, black spaces,

42:24

Asian spaces, Hispanic spaces in the body of Christ.

42:30

That that's wrong, it's sinful, and it's a direct violation of what these texts state as they have been exegeted clearly and fully.

42:40

I do notice that in the articles that Bradley Mason has put up so far, exegesis is not the central aspect at all, because what these texts actually mean is pretty straightforward.

42:55

Instead, this one is specifically and clearly filled with the poisoning of the well fallacy, which works for a lot of folks today, unless you've studied logic and things like that.

43:11

Then it doesn't work for you, but you're in the minority these days. So after quoting that, the very first sentence, after the quotation, the first thing that comes to mind upon reading such claims is that these very same passages were used to defend quote,

43:28

Christian, end quote, slavery and segregation in America. On any meaningful logical scholarly level, you can stop right there because Bradley Mason just shot his credibility to death in the first sentence.

43:47

Let's use an illustration. Some of you know the

43:55

Unitarian Anthony Buzzard. I believe the name of one of his books is

44:03

The Trinity, Christianity's Self -Inflicted Wound. There are a number of people who make the argument that we should not be

44:14

Trinitarians because it diminishes our ability to reach out to others.

44:20

There's just so much bad history that Trinitarians have done, and there's just been so many bad things done in the name of the

44:27

Trinity that we should just abandon it. Because if we have as our highest goal, reaching out to the

44:33

Muslim people, if we abandon the Trinity, we'll be able to really reach out to the Muslim people in a much better way, because there's just been so many bad things done in the name of the

44:43

Trinity. These passages that have been quoted by people to defend the Trinity, there were some bad people that did that.

44:49

There were inquisitors that were quoting passages of the

44:54

Bible while torturing people. We just have to get rid of this stuff.

45:00

You see the error in the argument. It's so plain and obvious that it's stunning. It's amazing.

45:06

I've seen people pointing at it and say, that's great work. Really? So what you do is, instead of dealing with what the text says and dealing with what

45:20

I made the application and saying this is why there can't be black spaces, this is why there can't be white spaces, this is why we can't divide along these lines, this is what's coming in, this is what's being demanded.

45:31

No, based on this. Instead it's, well, let's give you lots of examples of people in the past who misused these texts.

45:42

That's what it is. That's what this article is. It is a case study in bad argumentation, violation of the fundamental rules of logic, and ignoring what the real issue is.

45:57

And yet, in our day, because of the emotions and because, you know, like I said,

46:03

Bradley Mason has just sold out this stuff. I mean, it is just central to everything he does. Maybe he doesn't even see it.

46:10

Maybe he thinks this is good argumentation. Maybe he really actually believes it. Well, hey, as long as you, if somebody ever misused this text, then it can't mean that over there, even though what you said was totally different than what these people, but hey, you both used the same verse, so you're just as bad as them.

46:30

Wow. People actually go, great stuff, and then they retweet it.

46:39

So, for example, after a bunch of citations, just as with Christian advocates of slavery, we could fill many pages with segregationists in the church, employing

46:48

Galatians 328 and Colossians 311 to similarly oppressive ends, but a couple will have to suffice here.

46:55

Yeah, because we got to get to the exegesis eventually, right, to actually provide a response. Well, of course, that's never provided.

47:01

You want to get all the emotions going so that someone thinks you actually respond to what was being said when you didn't respond to any of it.

47:10

The problem, Bradley, is we've got this. It's called a microphone, and we can still respond to you.

47:17

Not too distant future. They can be coming after you at first, but they'll eventually get around to you, and, you know, you might get away with it for a while then, but right now, we can just come straight back and go, wrong, and here's why.

47:35

So, notice then the transportation of context. A little bit later on, it says,

47:43

I ask then, did African slaves have the right to agitate for justice in the church to seek the

47:49

God -given rights withheld based on skin color? Well, if you're in a church,

47:55

Bradley, that is a segregationist church, then they would have that right, and I would say, no matter what the predominant skin color was, that if people are dividing based upon skin color in the church, that other people in the church should stand up and say it's wrong, which is why

48:14

I would say that the movement right now on the part of alleged victims in our culture to create black -only churches so that we can have our black experience is sinful and wrong, and I'm standing on the exact grounds you just provided for me to do that.

48:30

Thank you very much. What I am getting at, quoting again, is that these passages really have nothing to do with opposing the current movement toward racial and ethnic reconciliation.

48:42

Well, congratulations, Bradley, we just exposed the fact that you haven't dealt with the argument yet.

48:48

You misled people by citing all sorts of stuff from the past about things were happening then which are not happening right now.

48:57

You want to try to pretend they are, but they're not. There are plenty of sound

49:04

Christian fellowships where there is no racism.

49:10

Oh, let me take that back. Real racism. Your faux racism, your we'll define anything so that you can't get away with it.

49:20

You can't get away from it. You're going to be a racist no matter what. It doesn't matter how sincere your intention might be.

49:26

We can come up with ways of defining racism that will cause everyone to violate that, and then you can say every church is filled with racism.

49:33

You do that, I can't talk to you. I can't deal with you. It's patently false on its face, but that is what some people are doing.

49:44

I hope you won't do that, but anyway. Current movement toward racial and ethnic reconciliation.

49:51

There's the big issue. The racial and ethnic reconciliation has already taken place at the cross of Calvary.

50:01

That's the point. That's the point. If you just want to keep saying, yeah, but every year you need to apologize for what people who look like you did 60 years ago or 160 years ago, then that means that in every place around the world where there has been ethnic strife, where a

50:23

Christian church exists, there has to continue to be divisions. There'll be different divisions. Sometimes it'll be black people that persecute white people.

50:30

Sometimes it'll be one tribe versus another tribe. Black on black. All sorts of different Asian divisions.

50:36

Anywhere you go in the world, you're going to find this. The only result of this foolishness is the constant division of the

50:45

Christian church. That's all it can do. It has not within it the end game, the conclusion, the finishing.

50:53

There is no finishing. It has to be redone over and over and over and over and over because the past isn't going to change.

51:01

The past isn't going to change. As long as you can't get past the past, you're going to be living in the past and demanding that everyone apologize to you for the past in which you live, even if they're not in it anymore.

51:16

That is nothing to do with opposing the woke movement that James White and others speak of. The truth is these opponents simply believe, based upon their own interpretation of, now notice this, sociological and economic data, personal experience, and political commitments, hmm, didn't find ex -Jesus in there, did we?

51:35

No, that there are no widespread current racial injustices to be addressed.

51:41

Well, if you're talking slavery, there is some in some places, but it's not based upon that.

51:48

That has been dealt with. It is illegal to discriminate. And, I don't know,

51:54

I would be doing a whole lot better if I got even the minimum average for any black

52:02

NBA player, NFL player. There doesn't seem to be some law that says that they don't own all the houses that they own and the big fancy cars that they drive around in.

52:15

You say, but what about police? As long as you want to find something.

52:22

Anyone who wants to be a victim in an intersectional society can be one.

52:28

Anybody who wants to be. Well, except maybe white, cisgendered, middle -aged, educated males.

52:37

Maybe, we gotta come up with something. Maybe I can do something with my

52:42

Scotch heritage. That's the only way I can go. I really, that's all

52:48

I've got. But pretty much everybody else. If you're Asian, you can find, look at how they've been treated in the past.

52:57

Any immigrant people will be able to come up with something. I mean, intersectionality allows you to divide yourself from anybody you want to.

53:05

So, there you go. Then, here's the kicker.

53:12

These passages are just being exploited to grant a veneer of biblicism to their own sociological views on the state of American society and churches.

53:22

You know what, Bradley? That's the difference between you and me. I drive my beliefs from the Bible. You drive your beliefs from sociology and politics.

53:30

That's what you're doing, not me. I didn't, this whole movement that you all are a part of was not derived from scripture by any stretch of the imagination.

53:46

And the fact that your arguments take them one eight -hour airplane flight to the east from here and they become absurd proves it.

54:02

My arguments are true in South Africa, in Russia, in Australia, in China.

54:08

Yours are only valid within one particular area. And they're not even valid there, but at least are understandable within that context.

54:17

That's the difference between us. That's the difference between us. Right there. The biblical veneer, sir, is yours.

54:24

Not mine. You are the one trying to slap a thin level of biblical veneer on a sociological and political movement that is divisive to its core.

54:37

Divisive to its core. So I ask, he says, please just make the sociological case if you can and quit pretending these passages can be used to preemptively shut down the conversation, grant exegetical authority to your sociological opinions, or claim justice advocates are the source of these hundreds of years of racial division.

54:59

See, I look at the church today. I look at what we're going to be facing in the next couple of years.

55:07

The persecution, the shutting down of our freedoms. And you are looking backwards.

55:14

It's like you're driving your car. I just got a new car. Finally. I loved my little 2011

55:21

HHR. It had a lot of room in it. It had no tech, man. It had nothing. This is the first vehicle that I've owned that has a backup camera.

55:31

Woohoo! Every time I've rented a car, it's had a backup camera. And I've just sort of felt like driving around backwards.

55:39

It was really cool. So I know, after a while, it's just like, well, it's a backup camera.

55:44

But it's new. What Bradley Mason is doing, and what the social justice warriors are doing, is they are driving down the road staring at the backup camera.

55:53

Because that's all they can see. They're not looking forward. They have no way of even explaining what this racial reconciliation looks like.

56:03

I mean, for Jamar Tisby, it's a bunch of leftist reparations, quotas.

56:10

Yeah, that's worked real well, hasn't it? No, it hasn't. That's never worked. Every single society that has experienced racial prejudice and persecution in its past, that has remained focused upon those incidents in the past, has never healed from it.

56:28

Only those societies that said it was wrong, it's done, we're moving forward, can ever experience healing.

56:36

I thought that was the Christian message. I thought that's what repentance was. There is no justification.

56:43

There is no redemption on the left. Can't be. You have to constantly be in a state of penance.

56:52

And that's all they've got. Now, will persecution burn this out?

56:57

I don't know. It just might make us so weak that we'll be very small, scattered groups. I don't know.

57:04

I think that's definitely the intention of the other side, is to divide and conquer in that way. But that's the issue.

57:13

Bradley Mason, his ilk, looking backwards, always dragging us backwards. Look back there. Bad stuff happened.

57:19

We all go, we know that. Well, we need to stay there and we need to foster all the feelings that come from that bad stuff back there.

57:28

And the rest of us are going, what happened to forgiveness? What happened to reconciliation? Well, we need reconciliation.

57:34

But we already have it. It's accomplished. How about we all get together and move forward now? No, we can't do that.

57:41

We got to keep looking back. I keep looking back. Backwards, backwards. Well, those backup cameras are nice, but they were not designed for allowing you to get very far.

57:54

Not designed for you to get very far. Ah. Okay.

58:01

So, by the way, just in passing, I saw an article.

58:14

I'm looking at something on Oh, yeah. Okay. I saw a tweet and I read an article.

58:25

Summer wrote an article for Founders Ministries on the lies of feminism.

58:35

And the only reason I knew about this response to it is because Bradley Mason retweeted it.

58:43

And I happened to see it as I was looking at stuff because I have him blocked, so I don't even want to see his stuff, so I have to go looking for it when it does come up.

58:54

But this fellow wrote this attempted response that is a study in how to completely miss the point or at least convince other people that you are so brilliant that the other person missed the point when you're actually not even addressing their point.

59:09

And it was a tremendous study in how, when it comes to terminology as used today, if you want to obfuscate, if you want to make it look like you've got an argument when you don't, what you do is the current wealth of scholarly articles

59:30

You know the three folks that got in trouble because they kept submitting proposals for junk articles proving that as long as you were as long as you were promoting the wildest, most insane nutcase leftist ideas you'd get published anywhere.

59:49

And now they're in trouble for having done that, though I think it was brilliant. What that points out, what that pointed out

59:58

The news story about that broke real late September of last year, as I recall.

01:00:07

What's brilliant about that, what it illustrates is that there's such a glut of scholarly journals and stuff out there that anything can get published as long as it fits into the new orthodoxy.

01:00:26

And so if you want to obfuscate on something, what you can do is you can go into current scholarly journals and find almost anything.

01:00:33

And that's what this guy did. Sommer gave a definition of intersectionality as it is functioning in society today and as it is functioning on every single university campus in the

01:00:44

United States today. We've all seen it. We've watched the lectures. We've watched the students operating on this definition.

01:00:53

The whole article is just how many different ways you can define intersectionality today.

01:00:59

Well, yeah, that's easy. But the one that's actually functioning in our society was the point.

01:01:06

But there are actually people who think, well, you know, if you can demonstrate that there are numerous different ways of defining intersectionality, then that one particular point invalidates everything else that was said.

01:01:17

I can see why Bradley Mason liked it, because it was doing the same thing he's doing. Let's not actually deal with the issue.

01:01:23

Let's make it look like we're dealing with the issue, but let's not actually deal with the issue. And that was what was going on.

01:01:29

Wow, I've still got two big things to get to. Okay.

01:01:34

Okay. Shifting gears. Put the clutch in.

01:01:41

Here we go. I tweeted the cover of this book, and I put it on Facebook, too.

01:01:51

I described it as a one -volume destruction of textual traditionalism, ecclesiastical textism, and everything else.

01:01:57

Why? This is Ian Kronz's 2004, I think, dissertation on the

01:02:07

Oh, I forgot to grab it. Drat. I don't think I have it in here. No. I don't. I was going to grab it.

01:02:15

I'll try to grab it next time. Erasmus' Both Erasmus and Beza, you have when we talk about the

01:02:26

Textus Receptus as a group of texts, we primarily look at its origins in the five editions of Erasmus in the work of Stephanus.

01:02:44

So Erasmus is between 1516 and 1535. Stephanus is in the early 1550s. And then

01:02:50

Beza starts doing work in the 1560s, but up through the late 1590s is 1598 edition, the final edition being the one that has the biggest impact on the

01:03:01

King James Translators. Anyway, so this is a doctoral dissertation looking at the it's called

01:03:15

Beyond What Is Written, Erasmus and Beza as Conjectural Critics of the New Testament. And so to look at how they handled the manuscript evidence that was available to them and produced the printed editions that they did, both of them produced extensive writings.

01:03:34

Erasmus produced his annotations. And what's fascinating is that Erasmus was not all that concerned about what he printed in his

01:03:47

Greek New Testament. There are numerous times in the annotations he says it could be what we've printed, it's more likely this, but he didn't change it.

01:03:59

He fully expected that anyone he cared about was not just going to look at his

01:04:06

Greek New Testament, but was going to read his notes, which became a large amount of material in itself, and then make their own decisions.

01:04:17

He's literally saying, could be this, could be this, here's the arguments, leave it up to you.

01:04:24

He did not have a focus on what was actually in the readings.

01:04:32

In the second edition, the second edition varies the most from the others, where he tried to make some changes, but then

01:04:39

I think he just gave up on that and turned his attention primarily to the annotations.

01:04:46

There are a number of places where his judgment as to what the original reading is, is not what's actually printed, even though that's what's picked up by Stephanus and Bayes at a later point.

01:04:56

What is fascinating is when you read this book, you realize these men were doing textual criticism.

01:05:02

So many of these textual traditionalists. I'm still going to try to get to Anderson today.

01:05:09

We're against textual criticism because this, that, the other thing. You can't be against textual criticism.

01:05:16

Your Greek text required textual critical work to exist. Erasmus did it.

01:05:22

Bayes did it. The question is, how much information did they have? What were their methodologies in comparison to what we have today?

01:05:29

We're in a better position than they were. In a much better position than they were. They did textual criticism.

01:05:37

We do textual criticism. We can look at what they did. There is one example in the annotations.

01:05:44

It didn't impact the reading in the text, but from Erasmus' perspective, where Erasmus' dislike of the doctrine of predestination is clearly seen in the choices for his final reading.

01:05:57

What do you get to do with that, Brother Calvinist? The point is, they did textual criticism.

01:06:07

And so often, I hear both King James Only advocates and TR advocates and ecclesiastical text advocates making the same kinds of arguments about this naturalistic textual criticism, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:06:21

How many of you have read any of the annotations? The annotations are normally only available in Latin.

01:06:27

Hey, at least if you read this book, you're going to get to read what Erasmus said and if you're honest, you'll be sitting there going,

01:06:36

Erasmus sounds just like Brutz Mesker. Yeah. That's exactly right.

01:06:43

He does. Except, I think Mesker had a higher view of the text of Revelation than Erasmus did.

01:06:53

Let me just read a couple things here and then we're going to go to Anderson.

01:07:01

This is chapter 4, page 67. At the top, there's a quote from Jerry Bentley.

01:07:12

It says, Erasmus clearly anticipated modern scholars by developing and employing the method of inference.

01:07:17

In other words, he was doing textual criticism just like we do. If you object to it being done today, then you should object to him doing it and you should reject his text.

01:07:25

But you won't because you can't. Because you have to have textual criticism. The text does not simply float down out of the air.

01:07:34

The work's got to be done. Erasmus did not make a thorough recension or revision of the

01:07:42

Greek text. He merely provided one. I've told you before, that was not his focus initially.

01:07:49

It became more of his focus later on, but it was not his focus initially. Although he chose to print the

01:07:57

Greek text as he found it, with some emendations, mainly from other manuscripts than the ones he used as printer's copy, he regularly raised questions about the quality of its text.

01:08:09

Erasmus regularly raised questions about the quality of the

01:08:15

Greek text that he himself produced. Sometimes these questions became conjectures on the text.

01:08:25

Their place, as we will see, is mostly in the annotations, not in the printed text. Why not in the printed text?

01:08:32

It was not Erasmus' goal to produce a text that could bear the weight that is placed upon it by modern textual traditionalists.

01:08:41

You are misusing Erasmus. You are abusing Erasmus. Once again, just like King James Only advocates have to ignore the preface from the translators to the reader, because it is so painfully obvious that King James translators did not hold the principles of King James Onlyism, textual traditionalists have to ignore

01:09:04

Erasmus and others in their perspectives as well, because they were not trying to produce what their texts have been turned into by textual traditionalists.

01:09:15

Now, one of the things that I found fascinating, I found some answers.

01:09:21

I've had this book for a while, but I've used it like most books use it for referencing. You look up particular citations, references, stuff like that, but I took it with me so I could get through it.

01:09:32

Because when you fly, you frequently have time for things like that. One of the questions that had always dogged me was in light of Erasmus' having translated the last section of Revelation from Latin back into Greek because of the defective nature of the manuscript of the commentary that he had on Revelation.

01:10:03

In other words, he had pitiful material with which to work. Well, okay.

01:10:09

We know that's true. This book verifies that. We know that's what happened.

01:10:17

But why would that keep him from not fixing it later on once the pressure was off once the first edition was out?

01:10:27

I mean, why didn't he just... That's 1516.

01:10:33

He's got 19 years before the last edition is going to come out. Plenty of time to find some good manuscripts of Revelation in there somewhere, right?

01:10:42

So why didn't he fix it? The answers have come forth.

01:10:55

Alright. Here's...

01:11:00

The sources themselves indeed show that the most important aspect is the editorial responsibility felt by Erasmus, but in the case of the final verses,

01:11:07

Revelation 22, 16, 21, there is more, as becomes clear from what he writes in his answer to Lee's criticisms.

01:11:13

And Lee was one of his biggest opponents. And is one of the ones behind the eventual insertion of the

01:11:21

Kamiohanim. There was no doubt that some things were missing. This is what Erasmus writes.

01:11:26

And it was not much. Therefore, we completed the Greek from our Latin texts so that there might be no gap.

01:11:34

We did not want to hide this from the reader, however, and acknowledged in the annotations what we had done.

01:11:40

In order that, if our words differed in some respect from those that the author of this work had provided, the reader who obtained a manuscript could restore them.

01:11:50

Notice, hey, we'll leave it up to the reader to restore them. I'm not trying to provide some inspired text that will be the basis of all future texts.

01:11:59

And even this that we did here, we would not have dared to do so. Now listen to this.

01:12:05

We would not have dared to do in the case of the Gospels, nor indeed in the apostolic epistles.

01:12:16

The style of this book, Revelation, is very simple.

01:12:22

And its contents are mostly narrative, let alone the fact that its author has long since been unknown.

01:12:29

Finally, this place is only the ending of the book. So, Kranz writes,

01:12:40

From these remarks, several elements deserve attention. The editorial responsibility to leave no gap in the Greek text, the reader's responsibility or latitude to amend

01:12:48

Erasmus' text when this is possible on the basis of other Greek manuscripts. Erasmus has no problem with that. And above all,

01:12:55

Erasmus' lack of interest in the book of Revelation. He doesn't care.

01:13:03

I wouldn't have done that in the Gospels, I wouldn't have done that in the epistles, but it's Revelation. It's a simple book. You know, it's, we don't know who wrote it.

01:13:11

He clearly has a minimally deuterocanonical view of the book of Revelation itself.

01:13:17

It's just like, well, it's a Revelation, you know. Erasmus was clearly aware of the provisional nature of his

01:13:24

Greek text, and listen to this. Here's the answer to the question I've had all along. He is clearly aware of the provisional nature of his

01:13:33

Greek text, and even ordered the proof readers of his second edition, that's 1519, to supply the final words of Revelation from the

01:13:44

Aldine edition of the Greek Bible, which had just appeared on the market.

01:13:53

Since he believed that this was done, he regarded the matter as closed.

01:13:59

So he never checked it again. Here's the problem. There's a footnote. Footnote 16.

01:14:05

Erasmus writes, Thus, when I sent the revised copy to Basil, I wrote to my friends they should restore this place from the

01:14:10

Aldine edition, for this work had not yet been purchased by me. It has been done as I had asked.

01:14:18

So, Erasmus sends second edition in, says, um, that last part of Revelation, copy it in from Aldine.

01:14:26

And he thought it was done. So he never returns to it. Here's the problem. You ready for this?

01:14:32

I think this is fascinating. I think this is great. It seems Erasmus never realized that the text of the

01:14:39

New Testament in the Aldine edition is derived from his own first edition.

01:14:46

He may have been misled by the few instances in which its editor, Asulanus, followed

01:14:53

Venetian manuscripts and which made the Aldine text diverge from the Erasmian. But in Revelation, they had just used

01:15:01

Erasmus' first edition. There was nothing to change. There was nothing to change.

01:15:06

He didn't know. And he never went back. So, his low esteem for Revelation is not only clear from the statement just cited, but also from the positivity of his annotations on it, as well as from the remarks he made concerning its barbarous style.

01:15:26

He even concluded, quote, there are differences even among jewels, and some gold is more pure and tested than other.

01:15:35

Also, in sacred matters, one thing is more sacred than another, end quote. Erasmus had a very low view of the book of Revelation.

01:15:44

That's why he just didn't care. With Delitch's finding in mind, Rudolf Pfeiffer writes that, quote, three centuries were to elapse before it was discovered that there was no authority for the

01:15:59

Greek wording of Revelation 22, 16 through 21, the TR, except Erasmus' knowledge of the

01:16:06

Greek language. Wow.

01:16:14

Wow. Wow. Now we know why. Now we know why 300 years pass before somebody goes, hey!

01:16:26

Hey! There are no manuscripts to read like that. What happened?

01:16:32

And somebody goes back, reads the annotations in Latin, oh! Oh! Hmm. Okay.

01:16:39

Which also makes you go, well, what about Stephanus and Beza? How come they've got the same problems?

01:16:47

Hmm. Oh, oh, my friends, that's just the beginning.

01:16:53

There's so much more in here. So many texts to look at and to examine in regards to what

01:17:02

Erasmus and Beza did and the final readings found in the Texas Receptus.

01:17:08

As I said, I cannot conceive. I know, there's a guy on Twitter, Texas Receptus.

01:17:17

Facts are irrelevant to the man. He is no different in thinking than any

01:17:24

Mormon I've ever met who cannot for the life of them examine any factual refutation of any error in the

01:17:35

Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is just right. This is the way it is. That's it. And archeology doesn't matter.

01:17:43

That doesn't matter. The text doesn't matter. Citation of the King James doesn't matter. The Book of Mormon is true.

01:17:50

And you can do the same thing with TR. And that guy on Twitter, that's what he is. Just whatever.

01:17:56

It doesn't matter what the facts are. There's always a way to do it as long as you're willing to be circular in your reasoning.

01:18:08

So, with that, believe it or not, real quick, well, not real quick, some responses to Stephen Anderson, Chapter 3.

01:18:20

He's done all ten chapters. We've got to get to him eventually. One of the reasons I'm doing this is because, sadly, you're going to hear

01:18:26

Stephen Anderson saying many things that are frighteningly parallel to the textual traditionalists.

01:18:34

Frighteningly parallel. I've seen stuff posted in the past five days on Facebook by Reformed men that, epistemologically, is no different than what

01:18:44

Stephen Anderson is saying in a number of these criticisms. And that's frightening. It's just frightening.

01:18:51

So, dive in. Stephen Anderson's response to Chapter 3 of the King James Only Controversy. And he starts out by kind of just insulting people that are

01:18:59

King James only. He says, the KJV only controversy plays upon the fact that most Christians today are more than slightly fuzzy on the particulars of how we got the

01:19:07

Bible, how it was passed down through the years, and how it has been translated into the English language. So James White always likes to act like he's so smart, and everybody else is so dumb, and people that are

01:19:16

King James only aren't smart, and blah, blah, blah. So, obviously, that's not really an argument. It wasn't an argument. It was an observation, and it is a painfully true observation.

01:19:25

The fact is, the King James Only movement is based upon the use of double standards. Anyone who would know what the standards were for the translation, collation of the manuscripts, translation of those manuscripts into languages would recognize those double standards, and hence dismiss

01:19:38

King James Onlyism. So, it is a factual observation. For example, John 6, 47 in the King James says,

01:19:55

I just noticed something. Do you hear a piano in the background? Listen to this again.

01:20:02

And I'm going to see if you hear. So, anyway, this is a textual difference, obviously.

01:20:29

The underlying Greek text of the modern versions leaves out on me, whereas the

01:20:34

Textus Receptus has the on me. There's someone practicing piano in the other room. I didn't hear it when

01:20:42

I was listening over speakers, but one of his kids is practicing piano in the other room, which is fine. I think that's great. Okay, John 6, 47

01:20:50

Notice what he said, that if you have the reading that is in the

01:20:58

Oh, man, I had this queued up, and for some reason it lost it. I don't know why it does that. John 6, 47

01:21:05

Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life. And in certain manuscripts, specifically in the

01:21:14

Byzantine textual tradition, starting with Codex Alexandrinus, most of the Byzantine uncials and minuscules, number of lectionaries and early translations, including

01:21:25

Latin, Syriac, Sahitic, Boheric, so on and so forth, you have

01:21:30

Ais Emi, believe in me. It is not found in P66, P75, Sinaiticus Vaticanus, CLTW, Theta 892, and some others.

01:21:42

So his argument is that this is a textual difference.

01:21:47

It is. And his argument is that if you don't have Ais Emi, that means just believe anything.

01:21:53

That's what's absurd. That is what is just simply ridiculous. Because all you have to do is look back just a few verses, and you will have the very same term being used of believing in me.

01:22:11

That is in the context. It's already been used in John 6. In fact, let me see, you have

01:22:18

John 6, 35, the one believing in me will never thirst. John 6, 40, the one believing in him will have eternal life.

01:22:29

It's found in John 7, 38, it's found in John 11, 25, 11, 26,

01:22:35

John 12, 44, and this is the whole point. The whole point is the standardized form of hapistion, the act of participle to believe, is followed by Ais Auton, in him, or Ais Emei, in me, when it's

01:22:51

Jesus speaking. And so the point is, given that that's the standardized form in the book, then a scribe who is copying is more likely to look over and see hapistion and write hapistion

01:23:08

Ais Emei because they've already done that a number of times than to delete it, than to get rid of it.

01:23:16

There's no reason for getting rid of it, and even if you go, yeah, well, but I just want to go with majority text reading or whatever else.

01:23:25

The point is that to say that it would mean believes in whatever, believes in anything, is just absurd.

01:23:33

There is no way that the reading as it stands in the Nessie Olin text today could possibly be exegeted as meaning anything other than believe in me.

01:23:45

So, just another example of the imbalance, the lack of care, the lack of anything on the part of Stephen Anderson in handling information like this.

01:24:00

Then he gives another example, John 3, 36. This is a translation dispute. It says in the King James, he that believeth on the

01:24:05

Son hath everlasting life, and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.

01:24:13

So then the New American Standard, you know, representing the modern versions, says he who believes in the

01:24:18

Son has eternal life, but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.

01:24:25

So, one of them says that you're not saved because you don't believe, and the other one says you're not saved because you don't obey.

01:24:32

Alright? So, here you have a translational issue, and of course, for King James only, it's like Anderson.

01:24:41

They have their theology, which is not overly textually derived, but then it's forced on anything that doesn't fit, so they're anti -lordship guys, they don't believe in repentance, they don't believe in obedience.

01:24:54

Those are good things to do, but, you know, they have a very shallow, unbiblical, grossly deficient view of what faith is, they don't believe faith's the gift of God, etc.,

01:25:04

etc. So it results in this mess that you see in many of their groups.

01:25:10

But, here is the issue, and let me add the texts...

01:25:18

New Testament... Where did Texas Receptus go?

01:25:27

Vaticanus... Why isn't this in alphabetical order? I have so many texts that I could throw up here on the thing.

01:25:40

There it is. It's under GNT. Okay. Yeah, I didn't think there was a variant.

01:25:46

There is no variation here between the texts. The question is the translation of opithon.

01:25:56

And it's interesting that the word means to obey.

01:26:04

It just... It's fundamental meaning is...

01:26:11

Well, opithon means to disobey, but the root means to obey.

01:26:20

And so, you have hapistion aiston huion, the one believing in the sun, ecaizoen ionion, has eternal life, hade opithon to huio, but the one not obeying the sun shall not see life.

01:26:37

So, the question is what you have here is an example where you have someone who creates a theology, and then even though the original text uses a different word, why doesn't it say pistuo?

01:26:50

Why doesn't it just say opistuo? Opistuo, the one not believing.

01:26:56

I mean, it's a perfectly good word, but that's not what's even in your TR. So, why not render it accurately?

01:27:04

It's just a matter of rendering. But they can't render it accurately because they think it would be contradictory to a theology they've already derived.

01:27:12

So, you see, it's not being derived from the text. They've already got it. What the text has to say is what their theology says it has to say.

01:27:22

That's a very dangerous position to be getting into, and unfortunately, it's a temptation for all of us.

01:27:31

Translation. Now, he is right about this, okay? I like playing things where he kept saying he's right about this. There were a number of times in this where he said, well, he's right about this.

01:27:38

He's right about this. And that's nice to hear. He explains that when it comes to translation, there are literal methods and then dynamic equivalence methods.

01:27:48

Now, this is what's different about Anderson from a lot of these other guys, is that he's a translator.

01:27:54

Not a biblical translator, though he claims to read those languages as well, but he's a professional, has functioned as a professional

01:28:00

German translator, and he says in this that his wife has been a translator as well. I don't know what language. Maybe some of my friends might know.

01:28:08

But so he knows you cannot function as a translator without understanding the difference between formal equivalency, dynamic equivalency, form, function, so on and so forth.

01:28:22

You just recognize these things. This separates him from a lot of the

01:28:28

King James Only guys who don't know anything about that. They don't know about how translation is done.

01:28:36

Now, here's where a lot of King James Onlyists have been wrong over the years. They know that the new versions are wrong.

01:28:44

They know they're bad, but sometimes they don't know exactly why or what's wrong with them. Sometimes what you'll hear

01:28:49

King James Only people say is well, you know, the King James is a word -for -word translation, and it's very literal, whereas the new versions are just these really loose translations, dynamic equivalence.

01:29:00

They act like dynamic equivalence is bad, and literal is good. And they do.

01:29:07

He's exactly wow, the birds are singing, and the bears are sitting with the lambs.

01:29:15

It's because of the piano. The piano is causing us all to be much more loving and stuff.

01:29:23

They're wrong about that, because of course, as Dr. White pointed out here, the King James uses dynamic equivalence in many places, and the modern versions are literal in many places.

01:29:31

In fact, many times, the modern versions are too literal, and that's sometimes why they sound so stupid.

01:29:37

You know, when you listen to the modern versions, he hath told thee, O human one, you know, they call you human one instead of man.

01:29:44

They get so clinical. That's one time I don't object to his utilization of a funny voice.

01:29:51

Yeah, that's right, there's some bad translations out there. And so literal in their translation that they sound wooden and awkward, and they're bad translations.

01:30:02

So the King James is not I just had not noticed until now that there's a musical background to this entire thing.

01:30:10

This super literal word -for -word translation that a lot of people believe it is. Now, it obviously is accurate, you know, and it is correctly translating what's there.

01:30:21

I believe it's perfect, it's excellent, but it's not word -for -word because a word -for -word translation is a garbage translation.

01:30:28

If you want a word -for -word translation, just type a bunch of stuff into Google Translate, and look how ugly it comes back at you when it just translates word -for -word.

01:30:38

Now, I've actually worked as a translator, my wife has worked as a translator, and when you're doing translation, the way you can tell that it's a good translation is that if someone read the finished product, they wouldn't even know it's a translation.

01:30:52

I agree, I agree. So all you King James Only people that have been attacking me for years for that, go attack

01:31:00

Steven Anderson, and go from there. God says don't add or remove a word, okay, but obviously when you go from language to language, there are going to be words added and removed, which is why there are words in italics, but you're not removing the substance of anything.

01:31:15

You're not removing any meaning. Obviously when you translate into another language, you can't go word -for -word. If you did, it would be a horrible translation.

01:31:20

It would sound horrible, and it would not make sense. I agree, but that's the whole problem.

01:31:28

So many of the arguments that King James Onlyists use are based upon ignorance of that very reality, and he repeats those arguments.

01:31:37

It just doesn't make any sense. Like I said, the

01:31:42

Steven Anderson of these videos is not the same Steven Anderson we were watching last

01:31:47

December with these other guys doing all the slander and not the same

01:31:53

Steven Anderson we see kicking his pulpit, saying on his pulpit, calling people idiots, and kicking them out of his church, and yelling and screaming at the guy he was firing, and acting like a complete idiot.

01:32:04

It just really makes you wonder which Steven Anderson is the real Steven Anderson, or if there is a real

01:32:09

Steven Anderson. Now, why are we as King James Onlyists against textual criticism? Well, the reason why is that we believe in staying with the traditional text that has been passed down.

01:32:25

Now, why are we as King James Onlyists against textual criticism? Well, the reason why is that we believe in staying with the traditional text that has been passed down.

01:32:39

I've heard that somewhere. I'm trying to think. Not changing the

01:32:45

Bible to go with modern discoveries. So what the textual criticism does is it digs up something new in the 20th century and then changes the

01:32:55

Bible to go with that new discovery. It discovers new manuscripts in the 1800s. Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, right?

01:33:03

And then it changes our Bible. Before I forget it, just in case, Erasmus knew about Vaticanus.

01:33:13

Erasmus was not opposed to utilizing Vaticanus. When the controversy of the Communionium came up, he wrote to his friend

01:33:20

Bombasius in Rome and asked him to look at Vaticanus. So, this idea that, well, 1800s, blah, blah, blah.

01:33:28

Again, these people don't know anything about the history of the text.

01:33:34

This stuff just gets repeated over and over again until it becomes accepted fact. To match those new discoveries.

01:33:40

Well, again, I will never believe that the true Bible was buried under the earth for centuries.

01:33:46

So if it's something that was buried for over a thousand years, it can't be the true Word of God because we believe that God preserved

01:33:52

His Word and that people have constantly been copying, preaching, reading, using God's Word. And so textual criticism is constantly digging up new scraps of paper and changing the

01:34:02

Bible because they're constantly trying to get the Bible closer to what it actually was written. They're constantly trying to bring the text closer to what

01:34:10

Hey! He heard! Think about what this is being said. He's saying we want the received text.

01:34:19

We want the traditional text. But textual critics want to get as close to what was written as possible.

01:34:29

Yeah! Some of you in the audience are going, Haha! No! Stephen Harris is on our side!

01:34:36

Seems like it. Apostles actually wrote. We believe that we already have what the apostles actually wrote.

01:34:42

We believe we've had it for the last couple thousand years. So we don't need to go digging it up somewhere. We already have it.

01:34:48

Okay, so that's the problem that we have with so -called textual criticism. Okay. Yeah, well, thank you,

01:34:54

Stephen. Unfortunately, the text that you have is the result of textual criticism.

01:35:03

The text from any period in the history of the

01:35:09

Church is the result of textual criticism. Textual criticism was being done by Origen. Textual criticism was being done by Jerome.

01:35:15

Textual criticism was being done by Melito Sardis. Textual criticism has to be done because we're dealing with handwritten manuscripts.

01:35:26

We're dealing with multiple languages. We're dealing with translation. That's the factual reality.

01:35:33

And so anybody who objects to textual criticism just simply hasn't a clue what they're talking about.

01:35:40

They just don't. They have no idea. None. They just don't know.

01:35:46

They could never produce a text on their own because to do so would require textual criticism.

01:35:53

Erasmus did textual criticism. Stephanos did some. Beza did textual criticism.

01:36:01

They didn't have the materials that we have today. There is something good and positive in scholarly interaction to sharpen, to detect.

01:36:15

Especially when only one person is doing the work, it's always better to have a committee because a committee will round out the corners.

01:36:23

There will be prejudices that anyone has that a committee will help to filter out.

01:36:29

So we have advantages as far as the numbers and availability of manuscripts today.

01:36:36

And we also have the growth of understanding that derives from scholarly study and interaction.

01:36:44

But every text that exists is the result of textual critical study and material.

01:36:52

That's just all there is to it. You can't get away from it no matter how hard you try.

01:37:00

All right. I don't have a lot left, but I don't want to rush it. So I'm going to save a...

01:37:09

I'm going to put a little mark there to save where we are so that I can come back to this.

01:37:16

And we can continue the response. This is as far as I've listened. Now I've got to throw the next three chapters on the iPod and suffer through them.

01:37:26

But we will. We'll get it done. What? Channel's covered by a

01:37:33

Bible program at the moment. I don't have that information in front of me, so I really can't.

01:37:47

All right. So I was speaking with those gentlemen last week. While the

01:37:54

South Texas conference is sold out, the Coram Dale conference is not.

01:37:59

South Texas is sold out. How do you... I didn't know it was even for sale. There is a banner on our website with all the information folks need to know.

01:38:12

I believe it's the San Francisco area. And so if you're in the San Francisco area, the

01:38:17

Coram Dale conference will be coming up what is that, April 4th? Am I right?

01:38:24

5th and 6th. And all the information is there. They can click on the banner. It'll take you to the

01:38:29

Coram Dale website. And you can sign up, etc. But they are looking for us to bring some attention to it, and that's what

01:38:38

I'm trying to do here. There's that. You had not indicated that to me. It's in Morgan Hill, California, which is,

01:38:47

I think, if I recall the map, south of San Jose? Yeah.

01:38:53

And even farther south from San Francisco. But Morgan Hill, California.

01:38:59

And we're going to be looking at Sola Scriptura, Sufficiency of Scripture. And I will be addressing this topic at the conference.

01:39:10

So I'll let you know about that. And obviously the reason the

01:39:16

South Texas Bible Conference is sold out is because Justin Peters is there. So that's, you know, he's a rock star.

01:39:25

Though he did chuckle a little bit that the picture that was used is how shall we say it?

01:39:34

Somewhat deceptive as far as the passage of time wreaking havoc upon him.

01:39:42

But that's I realize that the reason the South Texas Bible Conference is sold out is because Justin Peters will be there.

01:39:49

That's just how it is. This will be the first time that Justin and I have spoken. Well, we both spoke, obviously.

01:39:57

No. No, we were in Dallas together. So anyways, this is one of the first times we've spoken at a conference together.

01:40:09

So that'll be March 29th and 31st. But I can't tell you about that because it's already sold out anyways. And they'll have big armed guys at the door to keep you from getting in.

01:40:18

Actually, I'm sure you'd contact them and see if you could get, you know, standing room only tickets or something like that.

01:40:23

I don't know. But then the very next weekend is April 5th through 6th and that's up in Morgan Hill, California.

01:40:30

And then I think about two weeks after that maybe a little bit, yeah, right about two weeks after that is when we head for the

01:40:36

Netherlands and stuff going on in London. So it's going to be a busy, busy travel time.

01:40:42

So just to remind you there is a link on the donate page that will allow you to designate gifts for the travel fund.

01:40:53

That is always very, very helpful to have that assistance from folks to be able to do these, especially not so much these inside the

01:41:02

US trips, but once you start going overseas, that's when it can get a little on the pricey side.

01:41:08

And we want to be available to do extra things and to engage, we want to engage the

01:41:16

Muslims and debate in London. And we don't want them to have to carry any of the costs for those things.

01:41:21

We want it to be something that we're doing as missions work. So keep that in mind as well.

01:41:27

Well, thank you very much for joining us on the program today. Lord willing, we will see you on Thursday.