Vaccines, Lindsay, KJV Onlyism, Roman Catholic Apologetics Arguments

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:35

And greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line, last program before Christmas. I hope you have a wonderful time,

00:41

I hope you will even have the opportunity of being around your family. Who knows? Many are not in that situation.

00:49

Rich is just telling me that someone down in Australia was telling us, writing to us, that I would assume this is a proposal.

01:02

I would hope that it's not yet something that's absolutely written in stone. But it wouldn't surprise me, given how

01:09

Australia has responded to all of this, that vaccinations will be mandatory in Australia.

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And so, you know, I spent a fair amount of time this morning, in fact,

01:24

I tweeted a link to an article from a

01:30

Christian creationist ministry, I think it was Creation Ministry International, something like that, anyways, defending the

01:39

RNA technology. And certainly, if it works the way it's supposed to work, the way it's advertised to work, which unfortunately we don't yet know, and can't know, technology like this could literally give us a mechanism of addressing any number of permutations of coronavirus or viruses like it.

02:05

It would be wonderful. And that comes from the regularity of nature, it comes from the complexity of biological life that could not have arisen on its own, all those things.

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It would be wonderful. But if we were doing this within a Christian worldview, we wouldn't be doing it in six months.

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Not based upon the data as we have it today, in regards to the danger of the COVID -19 virus, we would not be doing it this quickly, we would not be, we are literally endangering hundreds of millions, if not billions of people, out of a politically induced panic, politically and media produced panic.

02:44

And so, Rich tells me there's some people out there saying I'm an anti -vaxxer. If you can listen to what

02:50

I've said, how many times I've said I hope this stuff works, I love the tech, it's amazing, it's awesome, but it has to be done carefully.

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It has to be done slowly. Not at warp speed.

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Someone suggested I watch the THX 1138, it's another one of those dystopian things.

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And there's this one scene where, it's actually a hologram, he tries to get this car going, he finally gets it going, it's a jet -powered car, and he hits it, and he might have gone 15 feet and plowed directly into a massive concrete pillar.

03:39

And that's sort of what we've got. Warp speed, wham! We got warp speed, but it didn't really get us very far.

03:48

If you've been listening to what I've been saying and you think I'm an anti -vaxxer, you are a horrific listener.

03:53

You probably can't get along with anybody because all you hear is what you want to hear. It's horrific.

03:59

I haven't said anything even close to that. But what I have said is that we are playing with fire.

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And that it takes much more care and concern than is being demonstrated by anybody, including

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President Trump. I hold him accountable for the speed at which this has been done. And it's all politically motivated.

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And that's the real—it should never, ever, ever be politically motivated. This tech should never—and that's the problem.

04:29

Right now, this is all politics, it's all money, it's all the elite.

04:36

I'm doing some reading. I haven't gotten all those sources that I want yet. Doing some reading about what happened in 2014 with the vaccines that Fauci was associated with.

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I think it was in the Philippines. 800 dead. A coronavirus situation.

04:53

Yeah. If that pans out, that makes you go, hmm. And so, look,

05:00

I've linked to the positive side, I've linked to the negative side. People talking about how—what probably happened in the

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Philippines was—and what happened in animal studies. Because we haven't done animal studies. We skipped that part.

05:16

Oh, well, okay, great, wonderful. We used to do that, but anyway. Anyway, what happens is you actually develop antibodies in accordance with the vaccine, but it doesn't actually work against the wild virus, the virus that would actually come into you from outside.

05:38

But your body thinks that it does, and so it makes you completely defenseless against it.

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And so you go from a 0 .05 % fatality to a 30 % fatality rate.

05:49

Because you're defenseless against it. Yeah, well, great. Are we certain that that will happen?

05:54

Of course not. But are we certain that it will not happen? Well, certainty, you're never certain. I mean, life is a weird thing, and life can throw you curves.

06:05

So you never have 100 % certainty. But the normal time parameters that would have been utilized were not.

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They just weren't. And they weren't because this was forced upon us by the lockdowns that don't work.

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So there you go. There's the situation with that. So those of you lying about me, stop lying about me.

06:36

I mean, I'm used to it. It happens every day. But you will be judged for that someday, so you just might want to stop lying about that.

06:44

It's sort of silly. So yeah, you got that stuff going on. Check out the tweets that I put up.

06:51

I loved reading the pro side. It did a really good job explaining a lot of the tech, the delivery systems, why the

07:03

AstraZeneca vaccine sort of got oopsed. Didn't hear a lot about that, but they were using an actual virus as the delivery method, which is interesting, over against Moderna and Pfizer.

07:18

Man, it's hard for us to even imagine the amount of money. I mean, we've got this absurd, funny money spending bill, $600, and now they're going to say, we're going to up it to $2 ,000 per person, $4 ,000 per couple.

07:33

Well, that's actually a chunk of change that might keep you going for a month and a half. But it would be a whole lot better if you could just go to work.

07:43

Long -term thing. Get all those businesses back in business, back to where we were in 2019, maybe.

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But that's not going to happen, because that's not what people want. Well, that's not what the people in charge want, anyways. So I don't care if it's $4 ,000 for a couple.

07:59

You're still talking chicken change. You're talking nothing. And, you know, have a few bags of peanuts, aren't we beneficent socialism, is here on our doorstep.

08:12

It's right in front of us. Sad thing. Anyway, so there you go.

08:18

I wasn't going to be going there. That was what was going on this morning. A couple things before I get to it.

08:24

I forgot two things yesterday. I forgot two things. It would have been a very, very long program if we had done all of that.

08:34

But I forgot two things. I've got to get to them. I've apologized to those that I was going to be responding to. They may not think that's a bad idea, but bad thing that I didn't.

08:44

But one thing, just really quickly, is before it just completely passes off the radar screen of anybody.

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But last weekend, late last week, evidently,

08:56

James Lindsay, who is an atheist, was writing on critical theories with Helen Pluckrose.

09:04

He wrote cynical theories. I've met the gentleman.

09:12

We had dinner one night at the G3 conference last year. And I would love to see an opportunity someday.

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It may have to be electronically. Most things will be in the future. To maybe

09:30

Jeff and I take on he and another on the subject of atheism, epistemology, evidences of the existence of God in creation around us, etc.,

09:44

etc. But I was really surprised because Jacob Denhollander was going after James Lindsay.

09:54

And he was going after James Lindsay because Lindsay had posted a tweet where he had assumed that the

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Moores are married. Beth Moore and the head of the ERLC both have the same last name.

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And I'm sure he's not the first person who has wondered if there is a connection there. But most people know that Russell Moore and Beth Moore are not married within the

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Christian church. Those outside the Christian church... Okay, so he made a mistake.

10:32

He made an assumption. And Denhollander just went after him.

10:38

It was... I've just never seen anything like it.

10:44

He called him a paltroon. You might want to look that one up.

10:51

It's not really common in our vocabulary, but it's out there. And just dismissed everything that he's got to say about everything.

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Because he didn't Google it. And I was just like, there's something else going on here.

11:09

And so I asked. And if he answered, as is the case with so many things,

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I didn't see it. I looked. But I did not see.

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Because I asked a simple question of Dr. Denhollander. Well, he's at least an attorney.

11:29

So he's at least got a Juris Doctor. But anyway, I asked a question of Jacob Denhollander. I said, have you read

11:37

James Lindsay's book to be able to interact with it?

11:47

To be able to... I mean, when you're calling somebody a paltroon, when you're saying that you're so shallow in their thinking.

11:56

And James Lindsay is not shallow in his thinking. That much I know if you've listened to the interviews that he did with Michael Fallon, Sovereign Nations.

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This is not a shallow thinking person. So obviously, even in -depth thinking doesn't do you much good without the spirit, does it?

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If you're an atheist. But the point is, he's just such an overreaction.

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It made me wonder, what is prompting all of this? And so I challenged that. I didn't see any responses.

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I could be muted or blocked. I don't know. I didn't take the time to look. But if you don't like what

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James Lindsay is saying, try responding factually in a reasoned fashion, rather than just with this flood of invective.

12:43

It would help a lot. It would help a lot. And anyway, so I wanted to mention that real quickly.

12:50

Now, two things that I wanted to make sure that we got to today. Lots of other things that we could be doing.

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But the two things, I had half of it queued up, and I was just relying on memory for the other half of it yesterday.

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And I didn't get to it. It's easy to get into the program. You start rolling with the topic, and everything else sort of goes away.

13:13

And you don't look at all the tabs on your browser or whatever else it might be to remind people. And I would remind you that some people who are well -known for doing, well, now webcasts, but used to be radio broadcasts and things like that, often had a producer or someone sitting right over here with piles of books and notes and outlines and everything else.

13:36

And that way you can make sure that you actually get things done.

13:42

Oh, okay. Well, I thought it was. I've just been told that Jacob Denhollander is not an attorney.

13:49

I thought that they both were. But anyway. Huh? Yeah. Okay.

13:58

Oh, you've been looking? Yeah. No, I don't.

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But I asked the question. I asked the question, have you read the book? And can you respond to it?

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And can you interact with it? And if I got a response, I didn't see it.

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Anyway. But I thought he was an attorney. Anyway.

14:21

So I'm sorry. Oh, well, okay. Congratulations. He's gotten a promotion today.

14:28

A little early Christmas gift. Didn't know that was coming. Two items that I had queued up, and I'll start with this one because I invited the guy, even invited the guy to listen, and then

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I spaced out. So I apologize for that. There is, I don't know how

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I got tagged on this, basically. But if someone

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I'm following gets into a conversation, if they tag me, then stuff happens.

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And I believe it was Ken1689 that got into a conversation with a fellow that calls himself,

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I think it was Paleobaptist. I'd click on the thing, but then I'd lose the main thing

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I want to respond to. I've already got three Twitter tabs open on my browser already.

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I'm going to lose something. And there was going back and forth, back and forth with Face ID.

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I hate Face ID. The worst thing Apple ever did is they started Face ID like two months before COVID broke out.

15:45

So he's a PhD student at Southern, huh? Okay, well, I'm not sure what he's doing otherwise, but PhD student at Southern.

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But I got tagged with this fellow, I guess he's a

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Paleobaptist or something like that. I've gone to his Twitter feed, and we seem to agree a great deal on a lot of stuff, especially in regards to what's going on in the

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US today. But he evidently is a King James only advocate. And so there was this long back and forth, back and forth.

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And he kept asking, where can I buy the infallible

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Word of God? I want to have the infallible, inerrant Word of God. So I thought, you know, we've covered this so many times.

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And I was told that he says that he's actually read my book, which means this is going to be of no good to him because I've already answered this question, though.

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None of his asking of the question actually shows any understanding of the categories that I laid out in my answer.

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But I thought, you know, there's always new listeners. This is a basic catch that is used to try to grab people into this movement.

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It is not a coherent argument, as we'll demonstrate now, but it is an argument that is made with sufficient frequency on the

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Internet that it is appropriate to be prepared to give a meaningful response and to help others to avoid falling into this trap.

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So at one point, he posted a little graphic that had six questions in it.

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And here's the six questions. Number one, the idea that—well, this actually isn't a question, is it? The idea that older manuscripts are better is an inherently unprovable presupposition.

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Number two, is the inspired infallible Word of God in our possession today? That's the common one, question mark.

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Number three, where can someone purchase the inspired infallible Word of God today? That's just a—it says

17:55

ISBN. Number four, if the Bible we have today is not without error, then why refer to it as infallible?

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Five, doesn't calling any Bible today infallible require a similar leap of faith as is required to embrace some forms of KJVO?

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And six, can Bible preservation be miraculous? I don't know why throughout all of this, Bible is never capitalized.

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I'm not sure why that is, but there you go. So, I think every

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Christian should be prepared to give an answer to this set of questions. If you are prepared to do so, it means that you have a fairly in -depth and historically situated understanding of the transmission of the text of Scripture over time.

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And I can guarantee you that none of the King James translators would have answered these questions the way the

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King James onlyists do today, which in and of itself is, I think, something fairly important. Number one, the idea that older manuscripts are better is an inherently unprovable presupposition.

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Well, if that is an admission that the

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King James is based upon manuscripts, all of which were written over a thousand years after the original, and hence did not have access or utilize the few that were available to the manuscripts that were written much closer to the originals, we'll take that as a given, because that's true.

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The King James translators did not do new textual critical study.

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They did have to compare various of the printed editions that they utilized, including the 1550

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Stefanus back there. Let's see, right there. They did have to compare printed editions because there were differences between the printed editions and in the 1550.

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There are marginal notes with variant readings, and so at some level, no matter what, almost what you're translating, if you are translating from multiple sources, you're going to have to be doing some level of textual criticism.

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But they were not going to manuscripts, collating manuscripts, comparing manuscripts with one another.

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They were using only printed text as their source, primarily because, especially in the New Testament, they were just copying

20:11

Tyndale anyways. And Tyndale, of course, had access to much less than the

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King James translators had. In his work, all he had was Erasmus. I don't think he had any of the other minor

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Greek texts that were printed. No, he wouldn't have had anything other than Erasmus, I think.

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There was one or two between 1516 and his death.

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I'm not sure how widely distributed they would have been. I don't think he had access to the

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Completentian in his writings. I think he was primarily using Erasmus. And then probably the 1525

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Blomberg would have been the biggest Hebrew edition that would have been available to him. Anyway, so the

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King James translators primarily utilizing printed texts, all of which were based upon much later manuscripts.

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However, it still remains generally true that a manuscript that is 200 years removed from the original is, all other things being equal, going to be more accurate in general than one that is 1400 years removed.

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Why? Generations of copying. Generations of copying. Now, you can come up with exceptions to the rule.

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You can come up with Codex Vesey Canterburgiensis, which is from the 5th century, which plainly the scribe of that diglot text was editing.

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He was making improvements as he went along. He was making up readings. He wasn't trying to just simply copy a manuscript.

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And maybe he never thought anybody would ever see what he was doing. It just survived. I don't know. But there are texts copied a thousand years later that are more accurate than Codex Vesey Canterburgiensis.

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So you can come up with examples like that. But in general, non -intentional scribal errors multiply over generations.

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Generations being how many times the text is copied. And a text such as P75, or P66, or P46, or P45, for that matter, such as P45, right there, from John chapter 2.

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These are written less than 200 years after the originals, which means there can only be so many steps of copying between the originals and these.

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And if you have the same number of generations of copying between the original and something in the year 1400, then the number of opportunities for errors of sight or hearing, if it's in a scriptorium, multiply greatly.

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And so it is logical, it is obvious, that we want the earliest manuscripts that we can obtain.

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You want manuscripts from a wide dispersion, a wide variety of places, and you want the earliest manuscripts.

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And so that does not mean that a papyri manuscript that is from the year 300 is automatically better than an unsealed manuscript from 1000.

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Because we have a couple from around 1000 that clearly didn't have a bunch of generations between them and the earliest ones.

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1881, 1739, specifically, are examples of manuscripts like that.

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But the very reason that I can just give you those numbers is because they're so rare. So the rare instances, we can point to them, but the general reality is that the text that we can obtain from the year 200 from the papyri has a better chance of being traceable directly to the apostolic period than if all you had was the text of Byzantine manuscripts from the year 1200.

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So the first assertion isn't really an assertion about King James -only -ism. It's really the idea that older manuscripts are better is an inherently unprovable presupposition.

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Well, I'm not sure what this individual or whoever wrote this would take as proof one way or the other.

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But you can make a very logical, very obvious argument that would be relevant to every single other work of antiquity.

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Every single other work of antiquity. So unless you're going to make the New Testament different than every other work of antiquity, and many

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King James -only -ists do, then the earlier is better is a generally true statement with exceptions that we know about.

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Exceptions that we can document. Exceptions that we go, oh, hey, look at this. And the reason that we know those other exceptions is because we have earlier manuscripts to compare them with.

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So, number two. Is the inspired and fallible word of God in our possession today?

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Yes, it is. What do you define as inspired and infallible?

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Because if you're a King James -only -ist, there are numerous questions that, since this is coming from the

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King James -only perspective, this is where I insist that the fatal flaw of King James -only -ism is so plainly seen.

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King James -only -ism cannot survive an examination based upon the standards that it places on everybody else.

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So when you turn the arguments that King James -only -ists use against other translations around the

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King James, it fails. Therefore, it's a self -refuting argument, and should that therefore be used.

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So, did the inspired and fallible word of God exist in 1610?

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If you say no, then stop arguing because you're being foolish. Did it exist in 1610?

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The King James translators would say that it did. I would say that it did. Tyndale said that it did. Wycliffe said that it did.

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But none of their translations, none of the manuscripts they had access to, would read identical to the

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King James version today. Therefore, if you make the King James a standard, then the answer to number two you would have to give is,

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Yes, it is in our possession today, but only has been since 1611. Because there's nothing identical to it before then.

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And, of course, you should be using the 1611 King James version. Not the 1769 Blaney revision, or you should be able to differentiate.

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You should know automatically the difference between the Cambridge and the Oxford editions because there are differences in the readings. They don't say the same thing.

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I document this in the book, and this gentleman says he's read the book, so he must know about this and must have an answer to that.

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And I'll be looking forward to what that is. But there is an assumed meaning of inspired and infallible that the

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King James onlyist will use against everybody else, but they won't turn around and use it against themselves.

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And we're at least consistent here. We have said for a very, very long time, if you're going to use an argument against the

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Mormons, or against Roman Catholicism, or against Islam, if you're going to use an argument outwardly, then you can't, if you can turn that argument around and refuse your position, you shouldn't be using that argument.

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We are consistent about that. We have for decades decried when people violate that rather truthful standard of consistency.

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And so I call upon King James onlyists to be consistent with this as well.

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Therefore, obviously, since there are differences between all the

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English translations that existed before the King James, differences amongst the various editions of the

29:12

King James, and then differences between the King James and other translations since then, we have to define what you mean by inspired and infallible

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Word of God. And obviously, when, for example, the

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Council on Biblical Inerrancy, the Chicago Statement was released back in the 1970s, there was a fair amount in that particular statement that dealt with the reality that God did not photocopy the original and start distributing photocopies.

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Photocopying didn't exist until 1949. So that's not the mechanism that God chose to preserve

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His Word. That's not the mechanism that God chose to preserve its inspiration, or its inerrancy, or its infallibility, or anything along those lines.

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There is a conceptual difference between inerrancy and infallibility. And so, the

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King James translators themselves, in their introduction to the King James version of the Bible, said that any mean translation of Scripture, as long as its true intention is to convey the meaning of the original, is liable to the name, the

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Word of God. And so, they recognized that, you know, you had the

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Geneva Bible, you had Wycliffe, you had Tyndale, you had the Bishop's Bible, you had all these others that had been printed before the

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King James version, and they were not saying that these were wrong, they were not saying that they were inferior, they were certainly not saying that their own work would not have to undergo revision and editing over time.

30:53

They didn't say any of those things. They didn't say any of the things that they should have said if they were King James onlyists, which of course they were not.

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So, when you say, is the inspired and infallible Word of God in our possession today? Yes, the manuscripts tradition of both the

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Old and New Testaments, in their multiple languages, not just Hebrew and Greek, but in the Greek Septuagint, in Aramaic, etc.,

31:16

etc., contain the inspired and infallible Word of God. The presupposition of the question, however, is far too simplistic to actually address the history of the transmission of the text.

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God's way of transmitting the Bible to us so that we can have confidence in it is so much better than the simplistic presuppositions of King James onlyism.

31:40

That's one of the reasons I've spent so much time opposing King James onlyism. From as early as my

31:48

Bible college days, I saw that King James onlyism is a fundamental attack upon the validity of the

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Word of God and the proper mechanism of defense of the Word of God. And that's why we have been focused upon this type of thing ever since then.

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So, when I hold...

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This is the first text

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I had bound. I've been having Bibles bound for a long time. This is done...

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I don't even know how old Jeffrey Rice would have been when this was made, but he was probably about seven, you know, something like that.

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This is... I wonder if I have a date. I mean, check this out. See? Do you see what's taped inside there?

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That's the verbal form chart for Hebrew. So, that shows you how long ago I was studying this one.

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And then, oh, yeah, and then what's taped up front? Syntax categories,

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New Testament Greek. There's my little card there. I could probably review that.

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That's good stuff. Modes, tenses, participles, adjectival, attributive, predicate, substantive, circumstantial, tele -temporal, yeah, there you go.

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But this is the old... And what's weird about this one, by the way, is...

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It's hard to see, but to make the UBS... This was United Bibles...

33:32

This is probably UBS 3rd edition, I think. That would give me an idea of the date on it.

33:40

Yeah, this is 3rd edition correctness. This is 19... Probably mid -80s,

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I would say, is when I had this done by this fellow who was a Jehovah's Witness.

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One of the reasons we were doing this was an opportunity of having contact with this guy and things like that.

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So, here's the beginning of Biblia Hebraica Stutgartensia. And so it goes that way, and then the

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Greek New Testament goes this way. So the two beginnings of each book meet right in the middle.

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Well, not right in the middle, but right about right there. Which means you can see a little bit of discoloration there. He had to trim some of the

34:19

Hebrew... Not the Hebrew text, but notes off to get them to fit.

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That was the only way you could get them to fit together in one size and bind them together that way.

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Anyway, so there's Biblia Hebraica, New Testament of Greci. Here's the

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Bible in its original languages, primarily. And so, is this the

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Word of God? Yes. Are there textual variants listed in here? There are.

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Does that mean it's not inspired and infallible? Well, if it means that, then there is no such thing as an inspired and infallible

34:58

Word of God anywhere. And if you go, aha, then stop in your tracks and listen.

35:05

If you can't answer this question, then you need to stop using bad arguments if you call yourself a Christian, okay? You look me in the eye, and you explain to me why, when the inspired writer of Hebrews quotes from Jeremiah chapter 31, he quotes a variant that's not in the

35:28

Hebrew text. Well, that's not the reading of the Masoretic Hebrew. So, you go to your

35:34

King James Bible, and you will read in Jeremiah chapter 31, Though I was a husband to them.

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You go to the same quotation in Hebrews chapter 8, quoting the very same section of Jeremiah chapter 31, and the writer will quote,

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Though I did not care for them. Now, in the Hebrew, it's the difference between ba 'al and ga 'al. The ba sound and the ga sound look a lot alike.

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The gimel and the bet, they look a lot alike. There's a textual variant there.

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It exists in the inspired text. And if you don't have an answer for that, then you have no basis for arguing the point that you're making at all, because you're contradicting yourself.

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So, I believe I have all the original readings right here. Are there some where I have to go, it might be this, it might be that?

36:22

Yes, just like the inspired writers did in the New Testament. And if you want to have a standard higher than the inspired apostolic writers did, more power to you, but that's absurd.

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And you're making claims you should never make. How's that? Okay. So, the issue is, when you ask the question, is the

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Inspired and Fouled Word of God in our possession today? Number two, and number three, where can someone purchase the Inspired and Fouled Word of God? By the way, this is not up for purchase.

36:55

It's not available. It's the only one of its kind. It truly is. But you can buy a

37:01

Greek Hebrew whole thing. The diglot is available. I think Hendrickson makes a reader's edition.

37:07

It's nice and big and easy to carry around if you want to do that. I don't have the ISBN, but you can look it up on Amazon, quite easy to do that.

37:15

Or if you just want to get the Nessalon 28th edition, the Bibliobreak, the Stuttgartentia, you can get the two ISBN numbers there, and voila!

37:22

You will have, I believe, all the original readings that are found there. What? Right! You can send it to Jeffrey Rice, and he can give you that, and then you'll feel much better.

37:41

Who? How do you know that? Well, okay, but I'm afraid to click on that, or this will disappear.

37:47

No, that's why I did it for you. Oh, okay. All right. So someone named

37:53

Joshua, huh? Joshua Winslet, huh? Okay. All right. So, number four, if the

38:00

Bible we have today is not without error, then why refer to it as infallible? And again, we have to define what error means.

38:05

Do you mean a textual variant, or do you mean an error in the original writing? Because I do not believe there are errors in the original writing.

38:14

Of course, the term error would also have to be defined, because what do you mean?

38:21

I mean, atheists have gone so far as accusing the

38:26

Bible of error when a biblical writer will use a synonym in one place, or will paraphrase in another.

38:35

The King James is accused of error. For example, in Matthew it says you shall not kill, in Romans it says you shall not murder.

38:43

It's the same commandment, so it's contradicting itself, because murder and killing are not the same thing. The underlying

38:49

Greek text is identical, oof, on you, size. So it was just an inconsistency on the King James translation. Does that make the

38:55

King James errant? There are errors in the King James version. In Acts 5, when it talks about whom you killed by hanging upon a tree, is the proper translation, they said whom you killed, whom you slew and hung upon a tree.

39:11

They didn't kill Jesus and then nail him to the cross. It's just, it's a bad translation. It's an error at that point.

39:17

And there are errors in the TR, we've already documented that. Ephesians 3 .9 ends up in the

39:24

King James version of the Bible. So, once you hang your hat on that kind of literalism, then it's pretty easy to knock both your hat and your head right off your shoulders.

39:35

So you have to, when you talk about error, you have to define what do you mean by error.

39:44

Is the fact that the size of the circular laver in the temple only comes out to about 3 .14

39:56

instead of 3 .141592654 on and on and on, value of pi. Is that an error? I've had atheists make that argument.

40:03

So, what's the standard by which that kind of error is being addressed? And then, if error means error as in textual transmissional error, then the more information you have, the better the position you're in to address that alleged allegation.

40:23

And we have been blessed with a plethora of information. As Bart Ehrman said in our debate in 2009, the

40:32

New Testament has far earlier attestation than any other work of antiquity. Far greater attestation than any other.

40:38

He didn't say this part. He said the first part. Now, moving on from there, it has far greater numerically attestation than any other work of antiquity in that same earlier time period.

40:50

And I would say as far as quality of manuscripts, far better quality of copying in the manuscripts that are extant to us today.

40:59

So, all this comes back to certain presuppositions that underlie this way of thought that assume that it was

41:09

God's intention to transmit the Bible to us in photocopied form. It wasn't.

41:15

It was God's intention that the last word of inspired writ would be written in the first century after the birth of Christ.

41:26

And that means God knew that there was going to be another 1850 years before the photocopier was printed.

41:32

God knew that there was going to be approximately 1350 years before the first printing press would be invented.

41:41

And especially back then, the setting of type and things like that was liable to errors as well.

41:48

Remember, there is a version of the King James called the Adulterer's Bible that in the giving of the

41:55

Ten Commandments, the word not was left out in the commandment against adultery. So it says, you shall commit adultery.

42:02

Yeah, and the printer got chucked in the hooscow for that one. Things were different back then.

42:08

Well, I think we're getting back to that, to be honest with you. That's sort of what's going to be happening today.

42:14

So anyway, so the question then really is, who's being consistent in defining what error is, differentiating between text and transmission, the original language intention, the original author's intention, all these things in answering these questions.

42:35

Number five, doesn't calling any Bible today infallible require a similar leap of faith as is required to embrace some forms of KJV -onlyism?

42:42

No, not by any stretch of the imagination. King James -onlyism requires you to believe of a translation what its authors would have found laughable.

42:54

So no. Besides that, calling any Bible today, what do you mean any Bible? There's only one Bible. You mean

43:01

Bible translation? In what language? There's just so much lack of precision and careful critical thought underlying and presupposing these particular types of arguments that it's sad.

43:18

And number six, can Bible preservation be miraculous? Bible preservation would have to be miraculous.

43:24

But the question is, how did God do it? I think it's miraculous the Bible survived the persecution of the

43:30

Roman Empire. I believe it's miraculous that the Old Testament manuscripts survived. I think it's miraculous the

43:35

Qumran caves held those manuscripts for all those centuries with all those people walking by, going back and forth to the

43:43

Dead Sea and everything else. That's miraculous. So generally what's probably behind that is, well, couldn't

43:52

God have just re -inspired the Bible in 1611? That means that he didn't care as much about the people before 1611 as he did the people after, isn't it?

44:00

The Bible's for all the church. Church existed back then. The church had to have the Bible, the Council of Nicaea. And the church did.

44:07

But the church didn't have the King James. And didn't have the King James readings either at that particular point in time.

44:16

So let's keep all that in mind. So hopefully all that will be of consideration and usefulness to you.

44:23

And that's interesting. Because I just clicked on that too.

44:31

And I don't see any name associated with it. Did you go to a website?

44:39

Yeah. Not on my end.

44:47

Yeah. Not on my end. Not on Twitter anyways. Yeah.

44:53

There's no names here. There's theearstohear .com. A Lone Palaeobaptist Perspective on Pop Culture and Theology.

45:03

Teth. That's it. There's no names. And the website doesn't come up either. So I'd...

45:15

Oh! Oh! Oh! I have been deceived. I have been misled. That was a rumor.

45:21

Sorry about that. You want to make that a public apology? Or just a...

45:28

You were responding to somebody. He was responding to someone. He was responding to Joshua Winslet.

45:35

So that's my bad. I misread the... I clicked onto the reply to name instead of Teth.

45:42

So I don't know who this fellow is. I don't either. And so, yeah, I was just trying to be helpful here.

45:49

And you blew it. You just blew it. Just right, left, and center. Okay. All right. Shifting gears a little bit.

45:56

Though, in some ways, the mindset... All due respect, Jeremy, the mindset of followers of the papacy can be very much like King James -only -ism.

46:09

Everything you see just automatically is to be interpreted in a certain way.

46:17

There's a Roman Catholic on... And by the way, he said Roman Catholic is an anti -Catholic phrase. There are all sorts of Roman Catholic documents from the

46:25

Magisterium that use the term Roman Catholic. So I guess the

46:31

Vatican is anti -Catholic if you use that reasoning. It's so weird. But Roman Catholic is a perfectly appropriate descriptor, even though it is, in and of itself, an oxymoron, katahalos meaning, according to the whole universal

46:46

Roman particular, it's those in communion with the

46:53

Bishop of Rome, or the self -claimed Bishop of Rome, that is in description here.

47:01

But a while back, we had tangled for a while on something in regards to the early

47:07

Church, and it came back up again. I forget what prompted this particular thing, but there were just so many standard

47:14

Roman Catholic apologetical platitudes that were flowing across my screen.

47:21

I was like, it takes longer to respond on Twitter than I have to invest this point in time.

47:35

So I just wanted to respond to a few of these things, and hopefully give you some insights as to how you can respond to people who start throwing these things out there.

47:46

There are just so many things that I— and I'm just going through all this, and there's so much that I don't even know where to start.

48:02

So, all right. Let me just jump in here. Okay, first, where did

48:07

Jesus— he's actually not writing to me. He started doing— well, it is me, but someone else jumped in.

48:14

And I didn't even get back to— let me see if I can find it real quick.

48:21

I pointed out at one point that, for example, he's talking to a guy named

48:28

Howard. Okay, this is the basic time period here.

48:40

All right, I'll just jump in here. The Greek word presbyteros is commonly rendered into Bible English as elder or presbyter.

48:46

The ministry of Catholic priests, as we understand it, is that of the presbyters mentioned in the New Testament, Acts 15, 6 -23.

48:52

And I just simply responded, that's just not true. It is true that 250 years after the birth of Christ, you have a movement away from the apostolic writings to where presbyteros becomes identified with hierous, priests.

49:20

But those are not the same two words. They do not have the same meaning. And, more importantly, and this is why solo scripture is so important, and why

49:28

Jeremy Darling demonstrates that his errors in exegesis are because he doesn't believe that he has to worry about being consistent with the scriptures.

49:37

Because he's got this infallible authority over here someplace that won't tell him infallibly what any of these verses actually mean, but they will tell him infallibly what conclusions he has to come to.

49:47

That's one of the really frustrating things in dealing with Roman Catholic apologists, and I've certainly pointed this out for years.

49:53

I remember before Tim Staples and I debated 20 years ago in California on the infallibility of the

50:00

Pope, I remember listening to him on Catholic Answers Live while we were driving around in Los Angeles, and he was saying, there are certain infallible interpretations of Matthew 16 you have to accept, but the

50:14

Church has not infallibly interpreted Matthew 16. So you have to accept dogmatically their conclusion, but they're too cowardly, to use a blunt phrase.

50:30

They have too much cowardice to come out and say, this is the actual meaning of the text.

50:35

The reason they can't do it is they know, looking at history, that that's not how the early Church interpreted these things.

50:42

That there are all sorts of other interpretations, and far more likely interpretations, of what

50:48

Jesus is referring to there, than what Rome has demanded, has it encrusted in gold around the cupola of the dome at the

50:56

Vatican. So, you have to come to this conclusion, and this verse might point to that, but we're not going to tell you what the infallible interpretation of the verse is.

51:08

So, the fact of the matter is, any New Testament, meaningful

51:13

New Testament exegesis will tell you, the apostles used presbyteros and episkopos for the same office.

51:25

The same office. And none of those was a sacerdotal priesthood. There's nothing about an alter

51:32

Christus. There's nothing about another Christ. There's nothing about not marrying.

51:37

In fact, just the opposite is said. I mean, they have turned that one completely upside down. Scripture says this.

51:44

Rome says this. 180 degree contradiction. A presbyter and a bishop are the same thing.

51:56

That was the primitive form of the Church, because that's what you get when you read the

52:02

New Testament documents. And of course, when you read specifically the New Testament documents, they're talking about the formation of the

52:07

New Testament Church, which you're not going to get out of the Gospels. That's not there. The offices aren't given to us.

52:15

And so, when you allow the scriptures to speak for themselves, rather than looking at them anachronistically, and this is what

52:23

Jeremy does. He has these massive anachronistic lenses, and he looks backwards through the dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, and he sees what those lenses allow, and when those lenses don't allow it, they just distort it out of view.

52:33

You just can't see it anymore. But when you ask, what did the apostles teach? Then you see very clearly, presbyter, bishop, same office.

52:43

Same with pastor. But they are used interchangeably. Take it up with Paul. If Rome wants to remove that interchangeability later on, that just proves that Rome is not walking in apostolic tradition.

52:58

It's not walking in succession with the apostles. That's the only way you can know apostolic succession, is it's an apostolic succession of truth.

53:07

And if you will no longer teach what the apostles taught, in the only documents that we know came from them, despite the fact that Rome has forever used forgeries that they claim came from the early church, and then now are known to be forgeries, but the beliefs still stand.

53:22

That was central in the development of the papacy. There would be no papacy today without forged documents.

53:28

None. But the papacy still exists, despite the fact that the forgeries are now admitted by everybody to have been forgeries.

53:33

Donation of Constantine, pseudo -Isidorean decretals, well known in history, it's just a fact. So the ministry of Catholic priests is that of the presbyters mentioned in the

53:47

New Testament. No, it's not. You will not find any presbyter anywhere doing what a Roman Catholic priest does.

53:53

There are only two sacraments in the New Testament. There are not seven. They're not doing all the rest of those things. It's not there.

54:00

It's just, you look at it and just go, wow. As for apostolic writing, priests were ordained by laying out of hands.

54:07

No, elders were. They preached and taught the flock. Yep, and they administered sacraments.

54:13

Right, only two. These are the essential functions of the priestly office as we practice it.

54:18

No, it's not. No, it's not. You know it's not. What is the primary glorious power and sacerdotal authority of the priest?

54:27

Transubstantiation. Nowhere in the New Testament. Nowhere in the early church either. Why even do this type of thing?

54:35

You know that that's not the essential office at all. For the record, in Exodus 19, 6,

54:46

Moses said, and you will be my kingdom of priests, my holy nation. Okay, so?

54:53

That doesn't help your position. You have a sacerdotal priesthood. In the

54:58

New Testament, we have one high priest, one offering that is not represented ever, and we are called a kingdom of priests.

55:08

That means everybody. No sacerdotal concept at all. And why are we kingdom of priests?

55:14

Not because we're doing anything to gain our relationship to God. Not because we are being perfected by an imperfect representation of a never -ending representation of a non -bloody sacrifice.

55:27

But because we, in Christ, have His righteousness, and we therefore offer up what?

55:35

Sacrifices of praise. Not an unbloody sacrifice. Sacrifices of praise.

55:41

But it's everyone. It's every believer. Every believer, not a sacerdotal priesthood. You just destroy the sacerdotal priesthood when you look at something like that.

55:52

Then, the Council of Nicaea came up. This is rather important. Council of Nicaea.

56:00

I don't remember if he said to me. Yes. No, he said to somebody else, and I just happened to tap in. I just couldn't resist.

56:08

Because one of the arguments I've made for many, many years is there, and this demonstrates why

56:14

Rome has to deny the sufficiency of Scripture. Because Rome has fundamentally changed the teaching of the

56:22

Christian church. What Rome demands of you as dogma today was unknown to the primitive church.

56:34

That's why Newman had to come up with the development hypothesis. He had to. Because he recognized...

56:42

He was the one who said, to go deep into history is to cease to be Protestant. No, to go deep into history is to realize that Rome is not the primitive church.

56:49

That's what going deep in history does. And that's why Newman, who came up with that silly phrase, had to do what he did, and then had eggs thrown in his face when having opposed papal infallibility, then submitted to it after the

57:02

Vatican I Council. So much for respecting history at that point.

57:08

But, here's the point. Here's an argument I've made. And here's an argument for you, Jeremy. Show me one bishop who believed dogmatically everything you believe to be a

57:19

Roman Catholic today that was at the Council of Nicaea. There is not a one. Not one. Not one.

57:25

And you know it. You absolutely know it. There is not a single bishop in Nicaea that believed what you believe as a

57:33

Roman Catholic today, as dogma. They didn't believe in the infallibility of the Pope, or they wouldn't have been there. Or let's just ask the

57:39

Pope. Right? And even when he sent representatives, did they just say to the

57:48

Council, this is what you're to believe? Of course not. No one had that idea. Okay? So they didn't believe in papal infallibility.

57:55

They didn't show me a single sermon proclaiming as dogma the bodily infallibility of Mary by anyone at the

58:02

Council of Nicaea. Immaculate conception, maybe? It's not there.

58:08

You know it. I know it. Every honest historian knows it. They did not believe the things about purgatory that you believe.

58:17

They did not believe the things about Mary that you believe. They did not believe the things about the priestly ministry that you believe.

58:24

They did not believe the things about transubstantiation that you believe, and that you believe as dogma.

58:30

Not just as, well, you know, we've gotten a little deeper in our understanding. No. They didn't believe it.

58:38

So when he brought up the Council of Nicaea, I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. You don't want to go there. I mean, let's go 20 years after the

58:48

Council of Nicaea to the Bishop of Rome, Liberius. What did Liberius do? He signed the

58:55

Arianized Sermium Creed that compromised the Nicene faith. He wasn't the one who stood firm.

59:01

Who did? It wasn't the Bishop of Rome. It was the Bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius, the one who said,

59:10

Scripture is sufficient for all things. And who, when he argued against Arius, did not argue based upon apostolic traditions outside of Scripture.

59:20

Even when he used that phrase, when you look at it in context, he was identifying the basic teachings of Scripture itself.

59:26

His arguments against Arius were scriptural, not traditional. He wasn't quoting some catechism someplace.

59:33

You do not want to go into history. To go deep into history is to stop believing the lies of Cardinal Newman.

59:43

That's what going deep into history is going to do for you. We as Catholics do not adhere to the unbiblical man -made tradition of Sola Scriptura, so I'm not bound to prove everything from the

59:54

Bible. That's because you can't. That's because you can't. You can't go to apostolic testimony. You are actually, you're on the one hand claiming, well, the can was closed, and there's no revelation after that.

01:00:04

But let's be honest. Let's be honest. The reason you deny Sola Scriptura is because you believe so many things the apostles never taught.

01:00:11

And you call it tradition. You call it development. But there are a lot of people that recognize, especially with the bodily assumption of Mary, that this requires revelation after that point in time, because that's what it is.

01:00:25

You don't believe in Sola Scriptura because you do not proclaim the same message as the apostles. That is the issue.

01:00:32

So you call a man -made doctrine that which says that the highest authority for the

01:00:41

Christian church is that which is theanoustos, God -breathed. You subject that which is theanoustos to that which is not, because you make

01:00:49

Rome not only the definer of what the Bible is, but the interpreter of what the Bible is, the definer of what tradition is, and the interpreter of what tradition is.

01:00:56

That means Sola Ecclesia. That's what you believe. There's no way out of that for you. Go ahead and try, but there's no way out of it for you.

01:01:03

Because no matter how many handstands you do and everything else, you will always be affirming that Rome is infallible as in the person, the one person of the bishop of Rome, which right now is extremely problematic for you.

01:01:21

Extremely problematic for you. It's a tough position to hold these days. I get it. Which, by the way, we're out of time, and we've got something coming up.

01:01:29

That's why we've got to hurry here. But I just last night started hearing the rumors.

01:01:39

So maybe I'm just a little slow on stuff. But did you hear the rumors? I heard it from you.

01:01:45

You heard it from me. I saw it on Twitter. But you saw it on Twitter from me? Yeah. Oh, right. Yeah, I heard it.

01:01:50

Yeah. Yeah. Bunch of rumors going around that Francis is going to resign.

01:02:01

He said early on, a lot of people noted when he was first elevated to that office that he did not expect his pontificate to be very long.

01:02:15

Now, if you're going with the old way of doing things, that means

01:02:20

I expect to croak soon. But if you are trying to establish a new way of doing things, what would be the best way to do that?

01:02:33

Have two popes do it in a row. Now you're establishing a precedent and a tradition.

01:02:41

Pontifical term limits. And you know who else would be thinking about doing the same thing? The Mormon Church.

01:02:48

Because think about it. What two major religious organizations are always stuck being run by doddering old men?

01:02:56

The Mormon Church and the Roman Catholic Church. How about have a way of bringing somebody in who's still alive, can actually do some things, might get some people excited, accomplish some stuff, have some energy, and then step down.

01:03:14

Step down when you can't step down a step any longer. Makes sense.

01:03:21

So wouldn't that just make 2020 even more 2020 -ish than 2020 has already been?

01:03:28

I mean, can you imagine, say December 29th, December 30th, news comes out of the

01:03:35

Vatican. Pope Francis has resigned. And so you get to have the conclave and the white smoke and the whole thing to kick off 2020.

01:03:44

Why not? That would just be talk about entertainment. It would be...

01:03:50

Yeah, off into retirement. He probably would go RVing someplace across Europe, you know?

01:03:58

I could just see him doing that. But they're going to start the Pope's old folks home where you can have all the

01:04:04

Popes. Reality TV. Reality TV. You have the Pope come over and you've got the other two

01:04:10

Popes and they sit around and talk theology. You said that a little bit wrong. It's the old Pope's home.

01:04:16

The old Pope's home. The old Pope's home. I don't know if you saw on Twitter, somebody responded to you after you put that up yesterday, basically saying,

01:04:26

I wonder if Joe's interested. If Joe's interested? Yeah, yeah. We might be able to convince him he's the former

01:04:33

Pope and then that would be really interesting. That would be fascinating. He's up in those same range of years and mental faculties too.

01:04:44

Wow. Sad. But, Blair, we could keep an eye on this. Because why? Because Francis has...

01:04:51

Okay, we use the term pact a lot these days. Packing the court. Francis has packed the

01:04:58

College of Cardinals. And he's packed the College of Cardinals with leftists.

01:05:04

And so, you may be expecting, and it could still happen, but you may be expecting a swing back to the right.

01:05:13

It's possible. But in all probability, the swing will continue left.

01:05:20

Remember, the Pope's the one that chooses people to the papal biblical commission and vitally important who has leadership as to what the future direction is of the

01:05:33

Roman Catholic Church. Big time. And so, who knows? But man, he did.

01:05:41

He was the one who years ago was saying, oh, maybe four or five years.

01:05:48

And I think it was, what, 2015, 2014, something like that. Who knows?

01:05:54

Who knows? Could be very, very, very interesting. Very, very interesting indeed. Well, I had to hurry up a little bit toward there.

01:05:59

There's so much more to be said. There's so many things that I was looking through these things.

01:06:09

Yeah, actually, really quickly, he made comment about the debate with Pacwa on the priesthood.

01:06:15

Okay, I got halfway through the debate and had an epiphany. Sola Scriptura is the make -or -break topic. That's not an epiphany. I've said that for 20 years, 30 years.

01:06:25

Of course, it determines everything. Everything either comes back to it's not in the Bible, that is, it is not from Theanostas' revelation given by God to the

01:06:33

Church, or that's not what that verse means, or your belief that Scripture is hard to understand.

01:06:40

And that's why I would encourage you to see my debate with Mitch Pacwa on Sola Scriptura. Because at the end,

01:06:48

I walked up to the podium and I started stacking up all of your key doctrinal texts until it was about Yatol.

01:06:59

You know, Universal Catechism, Documents of Vatican II, Compendium of Documents, Cited by Vatican II, Cans and Crees, you know, about Yatol.

01:07:09

And then I took my Bible and I said, so what we're being told tonight by the other side is that Romans 5 .1

01:07:18

is not clear in here, but it's made clear by this. But this actually doesn't make it clear at all.

01:07:26

Far clearer here than it is in that. That remains the case to this day.

01:07:32

And you are in a position where you can't even argue it right now. Because if I said, okay, what is the interpretation of Romans 5 .1?

01:07:40

You can't tell me. If I go to Boston College and ask the professors there, I get one answer, and you can't go to the

01:07:46

Pope, you don't want to be asking this Pope. He's probably a Universalist. You don't want to be asking this

01:07:52

Pope. Sort of where your system breaks down, doesn't it? Now, I like Jeremy Darling.

01:07:58

I do. He's a nice guy. We've had some private conversations about other stuff. And it's one of those situations where on other things, we happen to really see eye to eye and a lot of cultural issues and stuff like that.

01:08:10

So I like Jeremy. But, so Jeremy, I just said, I just opened myself up to all the attacks

01:08:16

I'll get for daring to say that there's a Roman Catholic I like. There are actually a lot of Roman Catholics that I like.

01:08:23

And I've been talking about this for a while, that as the social space for us to inhabit gets smaller and smaller, we're going to be forced more and more together, and we have to make a decision.

01:08:37

I think most people can make the decision to stop talking about these things. I think you and I both agree. That's not possible.

01:08:44

So the Roman Catholics that I can like and respect are the Roman Catholics who see that and recognize we can't compromise on this stuff.

01:08:53

We have to debate it. And we have to do it openly. We have to do it honestly. We can't be misrepresenting each other, etc.,

01:09:00

etc. It's the Roman Catholics and the Protestants who go,

01:09:06

Eh, let's not worry about all that history stuff. Let's not worry about define... I just go,

01:09:12

What? That's... It's really disrespectful, I think, for a

01:09:20

Protestant to not really understand what Rome's claiming, and vice versa. And I don't think you're respecting your own faith, and you go,

01:09:27

Eh, eh. Maybe not so definitional. You know, that type of thing. I think that's what's coming for a lot of folks.

01:09:32

I really do. So, Jeremy, on those other issues, good job. On this one, dude, you know, you really, really need to rethink your arguments.

01:09:43

But, hey, I know this is what you've heard. This is the standard stuff that's out there. It just doesn't hold together.

01:09:50

Just doesn't hold together. Anyways, all right. That all being said,

01:09:55

I hope that despite the fact it's 2020, and despite the fact there's a temptation to look back on 2019 and go,

01:10:04

Wow, it's almost like the golden years already, that you will be able to set aside concerns about what's coming in the future, a very, very close future, and once again recognize that everything we're going to experience in 2021, and everything we experienced in 2020, and everything we experienced in 2019, and maybe just didn't see it with as much clarity because of where we were, only makes sense in the light of the empty tomb, and that light cannot be extinguished.

01:10:44

No rising global socialism can extinguish the light of the empty tomb, and that that light will continue to guide us even into 2021.

01:10:54

So I hope you have a wonderful time with family and friends. I'm going to be with grandchildren and children, and I'm looking forward to that, and we will see you all next week.

01:11:06

So I was just going to say, I want to wish everybody a Merry Christmas too, and for us, we got the call last night that our son is going to come over Christmas Eve, and he'll be spending the night with us.

01:11:19

He's got some other places to go Christmas Day at the end, but this is going to be a really special Christmas because we haven't been able to do this in a while.

01:11:27

So it's ironic that of all the years where he's going to be able to come over and stay overnight with us, it'd be this year.

01:11:35

Yeah. So anyway, but yes, I too want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, and keep your eyes on Jesus because He is our hope.