Lewis’ “Prophecies,” Cosmic Reconciliation, the Beauty of Creation

Holiday Banter and the Uncertain Political Moment

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. It's a Monday, and it's a holiday week. As Jeff Durbin described it last evening at church, this is first Christmas, and then second Christmas is next month, and then third Christmas is January 1st.

I'm not sure if there's a fourth Christmas. Maybe that would be January 6th, something like that. I'm not sure. I really wasn't able to quite follow the reasoning there. But anyway, it is a holiday week, and it is Thanksgiving week, and so everybody and their third cousin will be doing some type of a program about Eucharist and Thanksgiving in the New Testament, and all of those things are very good and proper and appropriate to be doing, and I might do some of that as well.

Our plan right now is to do today and tomorrow and Friday, maybe Friday. Well, that's supposed to be Black Friday, isn't it? Isn't it? Yeah, you know, because Thanksgiving is so late this year, I think they've tried to do it last week or something.

At least my email box seemed to indicate that was what was going on. But I think, I don't know, I think everybody's just sort of sitting around waiting for space aliens or something because it's 2020, and there's just, yeah, I mean, who's really looking forward to going, Happy New Year?

Because everybody wants to go, Man, 2020, finally! But I think most of us are sitting there going, what are the chances that 2021 is going to somehow turn all this around? None, especially given the results of the election.

Yeah, zero, actually. I think most of us are sitting there going, January 21st, huh? Okay, well, what's going to happen January 21st? Well, there's going to be a flood of executive orders, and every little patch and every little encumbrance that has been granted over the past four years, for example, not suing the sisters, the poor, the little nuns for providing contraceptive coverage.

The brakes come off on that, you go back after the nuns, and freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, protections for doctors and pharmacists, that all goes. And yeah, all the defunding of any kind whatsoever for Planned Parenthood, I can guarantee that all goes.

And yeah, it's, of course, between now and the 21st, you have January 5th, that's a pretty important date there in Georgia, where the Senate is determined by that one election. And if those two seats go blue, which given how everything else has gone, I wouldn't be shocked at that at all.

Then, wow, what a time period we are looking forward to. So it's a strange time of the year. Normally focused upon preparations, and there is that, we're having, I don't care if Gavin Newsom knows this, because I don't live in California yet, in the sense of Arizona is moving that direction very, very quickly.

Unfortunately, that river over there, the Colorado River used to be a nice border, but it's gotten quite leaky over the past number of decades. And way too many Californians now live in Arizona. And of course, thank you to all the Californians who moved from Arizona, who then vote the same idiotic policies here that you did in California, make this state stink as bad as California does.

So we appreciate that very much, those of us who've been here for many, many decades. But anyway, we're going to have folks over for Thanksgiving. And not just our family, which would be big enough with the grandkids and stuff, but some folks from church as well.

And so yeah, and no, there will not be any masks whatsoever. And there'll be no social distancing, there will be lots of hugging. And even amongst I'm just the William Wallace in me says, Ah, who cares, we should hug now.

Because Scottish people are natural, social distancers already. I mean, it's just sort of like, keep your distance. But hey, if someone then tells you to do that, it's like, yeah, I'm gonna hug you now.

But so there's still that going on. But it's all got this cloud cover over it. You know, it's you, you're, you can't help but thinking about what's, what's down the road and, and making plans, wise plans, you hope.

But yeah, that's, that's where we all are. So just a couple things at the top in events, and then I want to get into, into some of the scriptures with you today on the program. It's actually only supposed to be in what, like 78 or something here today.

And I'm actually seeing some 60s next week. Only need another 30 degrees before we can get snow. It's just been that that year here in, in Phoenix. And, and has it rained almost at all? Yeah, I, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, I'm gonna tell you, the cacti are dying in Phoenix right now. They really are it. I had one, there was one survivor from all those cactuses, cacti that we put back there, and it, it gave up the ghost a few, few weeks ago.

And because it just, it just hasn't rained. It's, I think it may, I think maybe in 2020, it may have rained for 10 minutes, grand total, the whole year in my backyard. So that's, that's all there is to it.

So it's pretty dusty. I'm not sure how I got onto that. Oh, but still, I'm still, I'm still sporting a Coogee today, just because it's my way of rebelling. I'll sweat through it and try to have some sense of normalcy in the midst of all this stuff.

C. S. Lewis on Technocracy and Enslavement

I have a, an article up here that I think we all need to be thinking about. I was, I was reading some quotes actually to, to Rich earlier. And some of you may have seen some of the articles, there've been a number of articles recently, Dwight Longenecker published an article, and other people have seen a number of them, on the, the prophecies of C .S. Lewis.

You have to be careful utilizing that kind of terminology, obviously, but the prophecies of C .S. Lewis. And Lewis lives in the same time period as Orwell, and hence is seeing a lot of the same things, especially over in the UK.

And some of the things that he wrote were fascinating. Let me, let me read a couple of them to you. I think you'll find them very, very interesting. I dread the government in the name of science. That is how tyrannies come in.

In every age, the men who want us under their thumb, if they have any sense, will put forward the particular pretension, which the hopes and fears of that age render most potent. They cash in. It has been magic.

It has been Christianity. Now it will certainly be science. He's right. I mean, in every age, the men who want us under their thumb, and there are people whose greatest desire in life is not their own ease, their own fulfillment, as far as money and homes.

And there are men and women whose greatest desire in life is power over others, control over other people. And you have the real crass people who, because they got a lot of money, just tell this person that and that person that.

But then you have the more dangerous people who are willing to give all that up to have ultimate power over the largest number possible of people. And so in every age, the men who want us under their thumb, if they have any sense, will put forward the particular pretension, which the hopes and fears that age render most potent.

And so what are the hopes and fears of this age? What has proven the most potent? Well, sadly, we have proven, the world has proven, we just want to be safe. We just want to be safe. And we are willing to give up everything, just the promise.

It can be a completely empty promise too, but the promise of and we'll turn in our neighbors. Everybody just keep me safe. I'm good. I'm good. They cash in. The magic worldview did it. Christianity certainly was used to do it during the Middle Ages.

Now it will certainly be science. He also said, we have on the one hand, a desperate need, hunger, sickness, the dread of war. We have on the other, the conception of something that might meet it. Omnicompetent global technocracy.

Now this is written back in the fifties, I think. So think about what technocracy would have meant then. And then think about it now. I mean, think about the ubiquitous dependence we have upon this. Most of us don't even have a landline anymore.

If you turn this thing off, you're cut off from the world. You know, I mean, you can't find your, who has a map anymore? You'd have to be digging out here in Phoenix. You'd have to dig out stuff that we used to use back at North Phoenix to go out on outreach visits and think how much those would have changed.

And I mean, there'd be whole parts of the valley wouldn't even, wouldn't even be covered. Yep. So the omnicompetent global technocracy. Uh, and here's, here's where it really quote, is this not the ideal opportunity for enslavement?

This is how it has entered before a desperate need in one party, a power to relieve it in the other in the ancient world, individuals sold themselves as slaves in order to eat. Perhaps the terrible bargain would made again.

We cannot blame men for making it. We can hardly wish them not to yet. We can hardly bear that they should. So you have the technocracy that comes along and offers the ultimate answers and all at once is your soul, your freedom, your Liberty, your responsibility.

And I am seeing a large portion of the modern population that is simply willing to say, okay. And interesting, like I said, I've been reading some of these dystopian novels just to see what people have been saying.

Cause most of us, look, most of us in the 1980s read 1984 and we read brave new world. And a few people read Fahrenheit 454. That was about it. What? 451? Oh yeah. Okay. Um, but that, that was about it.

You know, I mean, uh, and you've sat around English class and discussed it and why it could never happen here. That kind of thing. Um, and thought, wow, why do people even think of such things, that type of thing.

But there are a number of others of them. And as, as you dig into them, you run across the exact same things over and over and over and over and over again. And the, the role of technology, the role of computers, the role of some type of medical treatment, you know, uh, soma, equilibriums, uh, uh, dose and, and, uh, all that.

It's just, it's almost in every single one of these that wasn't in 1984. Uh, but it wasn't brave new world. I don't recall it being in Fahrenheit, the Fahrenheit one, uh, whatever the last number is, um, the, the temperature at which paper burns or whatever, whatever that, that was.

Um, but it is in, in all of it. And, uh, here Lewis is, uh, is talking exactly about this idea. This 70 years ago, 70 years ago, C .S. Lewis saw the threat of an omni-competent global technocracy 70 years ago.

He also saw the threat to human freedom that such a global technocracy presented. I guess we can sit around and go, I'm glad we've got 70 years. Cause we did cause we did so, huh? Right. Right. Yep. Uh, I didn't, I didn't enjoy that one.

That one didn't, didn't do anything for me. Um, but anyway, um, rich is talking to me across sometimes you can hear that sometimes you can't, I don't know. Um, there you go. Uh, but C .S. Lewis, and again, this isn't some spiritual capacity.

Uh, it is an observation of what's going on in the world and it sort of kicks in with this, I suppose. Let me, uh, this has been all over the place. So I, I want to go ahead and, and, um, and take a look at it.

Transgender Ideology, Child Abuse, and the Rejection of Creation Order

Um, evidently HBO has put out a documentary on transhood. You know, you got childhood and now we've got transhood. And I have mentioned a number of times, a number of you have taken my suggestion and have read irreversible damage by Abigail Schreier.

Again, I tell you it's not a Christian book, but it's a well-researched book, well-written book. Um, you can come to your own conclusions on things and that's obviously something you need to do. But, uh, it is a well-written warning about the craze and it is a craze.

It is, it isn't, these people weren't born that way. In fact, she goes through and she documents how many, uh, videos you can find online of people coaching you on how to get testosterone injections and coaching you on how to say, oh, I've always felt that I was this way, even though there's zero evidence they did.

It's lie. And there are a lot of these people who have gone through it. They're now ruined for life physically, mentally, sexually, uh, saying, I just, this started when I started seeing it on the internet.

I, I, I, I told the doctors I'd always felt this way. It was a lie. It was a lie. And so, uh, this is a part again of this worldview that is at the center of the great reset. Just get, we need to, we need a much better term than the great reset.

I mean, it's, it's social, it's global socialist, uh, techno totalitarianism, but you can't even say that three times slow, let alone fast. So big brother is, is probably copyrighted somewhere. Um, and besides that's so sexist.

Um, anyways, so, I mean, they wouldn't even want to use that. So the copyrights expired. Okay. Um, but this global movement that is enshrined in the, the, the green deal and the most radical of the environmentalist, uh, initiatives, the destruction of economies, transportation, and of course, the radical diminishment of the human population of the earth.

The, these folks want to stop reproduction, uh, or at least minimize it and limit it. They're, they're eugenicists to the core. Uh, they want to limit it to the right kind of people. Um, the children of the elites, uh, not us hoi polloi out here that would dare to have, uh, more than two children or really more than one child.

Um, and so, uh, this whole worldview that is out there, uh, destroying young girls, uh, having them, uh, inject themselves with testosterone, uh, so as to neuter themselves to, as to destroy their ability to reproduce.

Um, this is their dream come true. I mean, they, they want to encourage this craze and that's why now, uh, around the world in, in majority of countries now, if except for Africa, um, if you dare say something against, uh, transgenderism, uh, you can literally face criminal prosecution.

You can say anything you want against Christianity. That's, that's fine. That's okay. But, um, if you, if you say this is a natural, this is improper, this is destructive, this, this leads to these kinds of medical complications and there's no need for this, no, can't do it anymore.

So this, uh, documentary, uh, which I have not seen, uh, on HBO, a clip of it has come out. I just want you to, to look at it. It's only a minute long. This is a clip from obviously some kind of apostate church.

And you'll notice, um, that, uh, everyone running this, uh, alleged service, uh, is a woman. It's one of the clearest obvious signs that it's apostate from the beginning, from the beginning. Um, but what are they doing and, and what, what does this tell us?

Well, most of you have already seen this. Let's take a look at it and.

Comment on it. Good morning. Today we choose to recognize, honor, love, and celebrate anyone here who would claim their identity publicly as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning intersex, pansexual, asexual, or any category that I've left out.

This is Phoenix.

You're a little shy. Do you want to tell your phone? If you're a boy or a girl, I just want to tell them that I'm a girl. Okay. You can tell them that. Phoenix would like you to know that she's a girl and she prefers she and her pronouns.

May you be well, safe, and whole. We honor you exactly as you are.

So here you have a, probably, you know, it looks like, you know, ELCA, uh, United Methodist, PCUSA, who knows, some type of ultra leftist, uh, liberal, um, type, quote, unquote, church. And, uh, they are celebrating the violation of, rejection of God's created order and Jesus' teaching in Math chapter 19, that God created men and women and that this is a good thing.

The abuse here, of course, is being promulgated by the parents, uh, by the mother who is abusing the children. Uh, these children have no earthly idea whatsoever, uh, of what sexuality, gender, anything else is.

And they are being used to, uh, affirm the perversions of their parents is what they're, what they're doing. And then you add to it the affirmation of an apostate Christian group and you have what we were seeing on HBO.

Um, there was another picture. Um, yeah, here, here's here, uh, Matt Walsh put this out and, uh, I think it's same woman, uh, looks, looks the same. Uh, but here, uh, a mother puts her four-year-old son in a dress and reads him LGBT propaganda.

Uh, you're literally watching her brainwash the child and thinking she's a girl. It's no mystery how children end up trans. This is it right here. And it's true. Uh, there's no question about it. This is, uh, this is child abuse in its fullest sense, in its complete sense.

And, uh, every single person watching this right now knows that we are risking very much, um, the, uh, posting of this program and the posting in the future of this program by daring to say that, but these children are worth it.

The truth is worth it. Um, no society that promotes this kind of thing on a wide scale basis can, can long survive and will not long survive. Um, there is no question about it. Uh, you'll notice they're not doing this in China because the Chinese know that's not going to fly.

Uh, that's not gonna, that's not going to give you an army, uh, that you can then predominate. You can dominate everybody else with. Um, and, uh, but they certainly are giving lots of money to promote it being done here because that's much more efficient to destroy your enemy from within than to have to try to them from without.

And they are, they have succeeded. They succeeded only a few weeks ago here in the United States. They really did. I mean, the, the, the Chinese communist party is absolutely ecstatic, absolutely ecstatic, ecstatic as well with their evangelical cohorts and the people that worked with them, uh, to bring that about.

They are so, so, so, so, so happy, but this, uh, this transgender, um, ideology, again, I just highly recommend everybody, uh, that book and there are others that, uh, that are likewise very helpful in understanding what in the world is going on with this transgender movement.

It is, it is truly astonishing and what's, what's happening there. Okay. Let's, uh, let's put aside some of that stuff, which is just, I don't know. We have to warn our children. We have to, um, we certainly have to be doing what previous generations have not done, and that is, uh, affirming in our children God's creative role in having made them as they are.

Um, parents, you need to communicate with such clarity and force and repetition. The fact that God has made each one of your children the way that they are, given them the gifts that they have, and calls them to serve him with those gifts in the capacities that they can find to honor and glorify him, and that to seek to avoid and rebel against his providence in their life will result not in their happiness, but in their fundamental disappointment.

That is the way to not ever experience true fulfillment. The only true fulfillment is going to be found in seeing exactly what God would have us to do in light of the gifts we were given. That was a given when I was a kid.

When I was young, that was, you know, even in the Southern Baptist Church that I was in, there was a tremendous amount of discussion about, well, what's God's will for my life? And of course that frequently became, who is God's will for my life?

But before the who, there really was a serious discussion of, what is God's will for my life? And the question was never, you've missed the boat because you're a boy or a girl. That never even crossed anybody's mind.

The idea was, in light of who I am, where I am, what my gifts are, what is God's will for my life in seeking to serve him? There was a healthy emphasis upon that. It was an appropriate emphasis upon that.

Well, now it needs to be done not just on the side as a little thing to help the kids out, but has to start earlier and has to start, has to be done so much more firmly. And while we still have this brief window to be the primary sources of instruction, I truly am.

I hope and pray that I'm wrong. I hope and pray that I'm wrong. But given what's going on elsewhere, like I was going to say, I'm sorry. I started something there and I stopped. I apologize. There is a trial going on in Bremen, Germany.

Pastor Olaf Latzl has been charged with sedition by the prosecutors representing the government of the nation of Germany. Sedition, that sounds pretty serious. Well, it is. It is a serious charge. What did he do?

He did a family and marriage conference in Germany, in German. And in the course of his teaching, he made reference, for example, to something that is called the, I think it was called, well, wait a minute.

I've got to get the German up here. There it is. He made reference to the, I will find it here eventually. It, there it is, Christopher Street Day. And I didn't know what Christopher Street Day was, had to look it up.

It is the equivalent of a gay pride day. It's based on Stonewall. America has exported this. We bear the brunt of the guilt of this. There's no question about it. But it is a day, and I don't suggest that you do this, but if you absolutely have to document this, search on Christopher Street Day and turn the safe filter off, and you will find public nudity, public sexual activity, debauchery of every kind parading down the streets of Europe.

Hide your children. This is what Christopher Street Day is. And in commenting on this, Pastor Olaf Lotzel described this as gender garbage, as destructive. Believe me, I've heard much stronger language that would be perfectly appropriate to describe this kind of, this kind of behavior, and this, the worldview that's driving this kind of stuff.

Well, he might have gotten away with it if he had just done it in his church, but he posted it to YouTube. And it wasn't, it wasn't YouTube that even took it down, but it was the government of Germany that, utilizing hate crimes legislation.

And what's in Europe under the EU, any member of any minority that is made to feel any kind of discomfort by your words, that's sufficient to bring the hammer down on your head. Now, we all know that a lot of this stuff parades under the name of social justice, but that it actually promotes social injustice.

And this is a social injustice. This is a situation where the state gets to determine who is the protected minority and who is the unprotected minority. Believing Christians are a small minority in Germany.

Germany is one of the most secular states in the world, especially the Eastern portion, the former East Germany. And so the state gets to say, hey, you can't say anything about these people that might hurt their feelings.

We all know how this works. We know that in Islamic countries, all you got to do, you know, if your Christian neighbor is working harder than you, and hence is making more money than you, and you want to destroy them and take their business, just accuse them of having said something against Muhammad or burning a Quran or whatever, and you take them out.

Everybody knows exactly how that works. That's how this is working under these regimes. So it should be mentioned that Olaf Lotzel is part of the state church, which is highly unusual. The state church just goes on with the state.

That's what probably also got him in trouble, is he's in the state church, and he's really outside the norm. And of course, state church is now coming after him for what he said. Of course, they got to get rid of him.

But his church loves him and supports him. And so you don't expect this from the state churches, whether it's in Denmark or Belgium or the Nordic countries, whatever. I mean, those state churches have been apostate for generations and generations.

They left the faith long, long, long ago. So they just go along with everything, and they're the same people doing the same sex stuff that we just saw in that apostate church we just showed on the screen.

So this is what's out there. And we look at the EU, and we rejoiced, briefly, when Brexit took place, because a lot of the people in the United Kingdom were like, we're sick and tired of having bureaucrats that live far, far away from us determining everything we do in our life.

Well, that's what the EU is all about. And basically, the result of the American election is going to be a global EU, because that's where Biden and Harris are. And national sovereignty is simply going to be sacrificed, and very, very quickly, especially if those two Senate seats are stolen up, you go blue.

The national sovereignty will be sacrificed very, very quickly. But one other thing is, I don't know if you noticed, but the people pulling Biden's strings, I'm not going to say Biden, because I'm sorry, he doesn't know what day of the week it is where he is.

But the people writing stuff for him as president-elect had him attack Poland and Hungary, and liken them to totalitarian regimes. Why? Because they resist the totalitarian regime that is the EU. You always project on somebody else what you yourself are doing.

And so here you have totalitarians accusing people who want to keep their borders and want to resist the global sexual revolution of being totalitarians, when they're simply trying to protect who they are and what they are, instead of just going along and just capitulating and becoming just a nameless, faceless blob, along with all the other nameless, faceless blobs that used to be nations with histories and stories and morals and ethics and things like that.

So the global reset cabal that runs Joe Biden is already using him to attack those who would dare stand against the coming rise of the global big brother, whatever he's going to call himself. I'm not sure what he's going to call himself.

But there will be a name eventually. I just hope it's not something like Google or something. I mean, that's just...Skynet was sort of cool. But Google, man, who came up with that? It does not make any sense to me at all.

Thanksgiving, Gratitude, and the Christian Life

Okay, all right. Now, let us turn to a subject that I have said over and over again. I'm going to minimize Twitter there, so I don't see what's going on there. Back to a subject that I have to get to.

I will try to leave the discussion of Colossians 1. Why is it doing that? I don't know. Oh, it's looking for the word confusion. I don't want the word confusion as the only... It'd be really interesting to try to do a Bible study where the only verses you could possibly bring up in your Bible program contained the word confusion.

That would be very confusing, actually. We'll look a little bit more, I promise, tomorrow at the subject of Thanksgiving. It is, in my opinion, I've said this many, many times before, probably if you were to ask me what Christian character trait would be the most important to cultivate so as to produce contentment, peace, and godliness in a Christian's life, I would say it would be Thanksgiving.

I would say it would be thankfulness, I think. And I'll be honest with you, we'll wait for tomorrow on this, but let me just throw this out there. We've talked many times in years past about how secularists struggle to even begin to contemplate what a real Thanksgiving attitude is, because they have no one to be thankful to.

When you're a meat bag, when you're an ugly bag of mostly water, when you're stardust, when your chemical's fizzing, whatever naturalistic explanation of mankind you want to come up with, Thanksgiving has no meaning, because Thanksgiving has to have an object.

You're giving thanks to someone. Trying to give thanks to some thing doesn't make any sense. And so, we've talked about this, but this is the one holiday per year that is so distinctly Christian that the secularists just can't even begin to grasp it.

And of course, the secularists therefore would be like, and that's why if we ask you to give it up just for one year, you really think it's just for one year? You really think it is? You hearing the people talking about even after vaccines, continue masking well into late 2021?

You've heard that by now? And you think they're ever going to give that up? Once you hand them the power, do you think they're going to give it back? Come on. Wake up. Hello. Anyway, this is the one that they're like, well, you know, there really isn't any reason for it.

And just think of the turkeys that will be saved, you know? It's just something you like to do, but you can do without it, because there's no foundation to it. There's no way of understanding it. And so, it is a very, very, very, very important topic for Christians, I think, to give consideration to.

And certainly when I think of the most godly people that I've known in my life, Thanksgiving was a constant characteristic of their lives, of their speech, of their interaction with others. And when you think about the people who have caused the most division and dissension in churches, are they ever people that are marked by being thankful?

Nope. Nope. Nope. Never. Never. So, we'll think about that, and that's certainly something to be thinking about this week. But can we wind the clock back? I hate doing this, because I know it's not the efficient way of doing it.

But remember, what was it? Three weeks ago? A month ago now? I listened to the debate back... I should have brought it up. I wasn't gonna be playing of it. But anyways, it was on limited atonement, and our brother from CARM was debating Sam Shamoon, and it was one of those online affairs where you have a lengthy period of time where they started going back and forth.

And I didn't finish listening to it. I didn't finish listening to it, because it was just kind of repetitive, and there was talking over, and the same question was being asked over and over again, and the same answer to a different question was being given.

And I never even got to the audience questions, because those end up normally providing even more cover in the sense of getting things way off topic as it is. What I was trying to do is I was trying to explain, because the big subject, the big takeaway that came out of it, was everybody was saying, did you hear that Sam Shamoon believes that Christ died for Satan?

And that sounds pretty creepy, obviously. And so that was what I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear what context was, and so I was trying to explain and go into the scriptures to explain what the argument was.

And hopefully I've accurately represented it to you, and that is that Sam Shamoon is looking at Colossians chapter 1, verse 20, and through him to reconcile all things to himself, having made peace with the blood of his cross, to whom I say, where are things on earth are things in heaven.

And so, in the context of Colossians chapter 1, what he's saying is there is a seamless context between 1 .15 through, well, 19 into verse 20, so that the tapanta that is created by Christ in verse 16 is the exact same tapanta that is reconciled, having made peace with the blood of his cross, in verse 20.

Therefore, if the cross in and of itself accomplishes anything, then you're stuck with universalism. But since we know universalism isn't true, then the cross is a part of a system that requires faith and repentance to be actuated, in essence.

Or there may be more than faith and repentance, we don't really know where Sam is these days. As to his views of these things, moving toward a Catholic, a Syrian Catholic type of a perspective in his understanding.

And so, but the idea was that since tapanta in Colossians chapter 1 is all things, that has to include Satan because Satan's a creature. And so, there has to be a sense in which Satan is reconciled according to Colossians 1 .20.

So, the pushback was an appropriate pushback to what Sam said because it pointed out the nature of the kinsman redeemer, the reality of the hypostatic union, and hence the nature of the atoning sacrifice because there has to be an appropriate connection, correspondence between the life that is given and the penalty that is being paid.

So, on so many levels, the position that Sam has taken violates so many different categories of what atonement actually is. And it requires a naturalistic or mechanistic understanding of what reconciliation means in verse 20.

And so, what we did is we walked through Colossians 1, we jumped over to Ephesians 2 and 3, the only other place where you have in this correspondence, and remember we said at the time Colossians and Ephesians are parallel texts, they're written at the same period of time, sent to the same area, they have a lot of the same type of language and topics, there's parallels between the two of them.

Less conservative scholars do not accept their Pauline authorship. Because of that, I think that their argumentation is circular. There is certainly no physical evidence, manuscript evidence that would in any way point to a later origination as soon as the Pauline epistles appear in history, these are right there.

There's nothing from that time period that is reflected in a later time period to where there would be a basis for saying these are written after Romans, Galatians, things like that. And so, we looked at the fact that there is a transition, there is a shift in Colossians 1, beginning of verse 18, he is also head of the body, the church, he's the beginning, the firstborn of the dead, so he might will come to have first place in everything, and of course, what it would mean to have first place in everything is something that should be considered, especially in light of the fact that this same author preaches on Mars Hill that someday this is the one who will judge the living and the dead, the one who was raised from the dead by the operation of the father.

So, he would have first place in judgment, but also we see that it was the father's good pleasure for all fullness to dwell in him and through him to reconcile all things to himself. And so, the key issue to get to, I'm not going to revisit everything that we said in the previous programs, the key issue to get to is this, what does reconciliation mean?

And we saw that this is a Pauline term, we've seen that, for example, it's used in the Corinthian correspondence to be reconciled to God, and that's in the context of the church. We see it used here, we see it used in Ephesians of the reconciliation of Jew and Gentile, one body.

So, we see it being used in a lot of different ways. And one of the great dangers that we have here is the same danger that we face when we look at hagiadzo, the term to sanctify. Most Christians are aware of the fact that when we talk about sanctification, we are talking about two different aspects of a divine action.

There is a positional sanctification, there are uses of that term, where we have been sanctified, we have been made holy, there is an accomplished, this already exists aspect to that term. But then, this is the will of God for you, your sanctification.

Well, but if we've already been sanctified, how can the will of God be our sanctification? And so, it's not just the now and the not yet, which is always present in Paul's discussion. But there is the positional and the experiential, a recognition that in Paul, for example, we've already been seated in the heavenly places, and yet, what are we doing?

We are awaiting the redemption of the body. So, we're seated in the heavenly places, but we're not seated in the heavenly places. Positional, experiential. Sanctification, we've been sanctified, set apart.

We are being sanctified. We are being set apart experientially as this body of flesh fights against the new man, and there is that conflict that exists, and we read about it in Romans 7, and that's the situation that we find ourselves.