Four Open Phone Calls, Leighton Flowers Says I Only Use "Biased" Sources

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. We're going to start off with open phones today at 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341.

I would have posted that on Twitter, but I was on a conference call about the

Israel trip and we are moving forward. Obviously there's going to be some stuff we're going to have to deal with, you know, just the world is weird right now, but still going to be happening and lots of time for teaching and could be in Ephesus and all the rest of us, you know,

Athens and Ephesus and all the stuff that we were planning on doing. I'm not sure how you social distance while doing that.

You know what? I hate that phrase. That phrase just, I just,

I can't wait till never having to say it ever, ever, ever again. If there ever is a time when you don't have to say it ever, ever again.

I'm not 100 % certain that that will ever be the reality, but anyhow, so that's what

I was doing. That's why I didn't get out there. Sorry about that. So that will mean that Rich will be rather busy here for a few moments.

We already have, we're only going to take four calls. So last time that took us 45 minutes or more, but 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.

And then we've got a couple other things to get to, to finish off the week. And of course, while we're waiting for the calls to come up, we have,

I can't do that. So I'm going to have to turn this off here. We have the interesting things going on today, including, including the, the president of the

United States saying that churches must open on Sunday and that he will override governors.

Now, obviously I don't think he can do that. I don't know.

It would lead to all sorts, there's going to be all sorts of, that's what everybody's going to be talking about for quite some time.

But everyone is sort of sitting around going, okay, so we heard all the

Romans 13 stuff. So what do you guys do now? You just go, the president said, so we've got to do it.

Even if we don't want to do it, but the president said, because Romans 13, I don't think that's probably going to happen that way, to be honest with you.

But okay. Oh, the world we live in.

If this was a variety type show or a news type show or something, man, it would be so easy to have material every single day.

It would just be, it would just be hilarious. It really, really would be. So I'm not sure what's going on with the, with calls here.

I have some that are, that look like they're ready to go, but for some reason, the first line that I would normally go to isn't available and Ridge isn't listening to me, so I don't know.

Okay. All right. So he finally heard me. Okay. So let's go to someone here.

Let's talk to Dominick in New Jersey. Hi Dominick. Hey, how you doing?

Good. Good. I was just wondering if you had any, any general advice when it comes to witnessing the

Muslims, you know, like if I run into one on campus or something,

I don't know like what the starting point should be or what in your experience is like any general advice you have?

Well all that has to do of course with, with what kind of a Muslim you're talking to.

I mean there are a tremendous number of nominal

Muslims that you will encounter. They are Muslim in name only. Sort of a dividing line honestly would be whether they do the prayers or not.

If they, and you can't necessarily tell that, but if you're getting into a conversation and it comes up, well, you know,

I'm a Muslim, I'm a Christian, you know, I don't think there's anything offensive about asking, what?

That's interesting. So you guys have, you, you folks have five daily prayers. Do you, do you do those prayers regularly or, or, or, or just what?

And that'll give you an idea if, if you're talking about an observant Muslim, a person who actually is practicing the religion, or you're talking about a cultural

Muslim. They come from a Muslim nation. And that still means that they'll have aspects of Islamic theology mixed in with their thinking.

But if they're not actually practicing, obviously they may have far more secular ideas than you would expect them to have.

And hence there might be some topics you don't even want to, don't want to get into because they wouldn't really be relevant because they're not practicing

Muslims. Now, so leaving the non -practicing Muslims aside, then once you're talking to a practicing

Muslim, you're, obviously what you have to do is how much time do I have?

Is this a conversation that might be able to continue in the future? Are you sitting on a bus and you may never see this person again?

Is this person someone you might see again on campus? You have to make, you have to do some thinking, you know, as to, is this a situation where I'm going to open a door for further conversation, or is this,

I've got to assume this is the last shot I've got. And so that's going to change, obviously, how you approach a situation.

Obviously it's more useful to be able to have further conversations down the road, to be able to give and take, learn about someone, communicate with someone.

If you're talking about a one -time encounter, like when

I was in London a number of months ago, back when you could still do things like this, we were witnessing the people coming out of the train station.

And so I'm probably not going to talk to this person again.

And so you want to get into something meaty that they can take away with them, something that they may have never heard of before.

Or challenge them to be looking at the text of Scripture, to try to get them to read one of the

Gospels. It doesn't have to be John, by the way, they're so used to hearing that that you might actually be more successful getting to read

Mark or Luke or Matthew or whatever. Any of the Gospels, if you can get them to read

Scripture. So you want to focus upon the main things, you want to focus upon the fact that even though they've been told about Jesus, the

Jesus that they've heard is not the Jesus of Scripture, you want to try to get them exposed to that real

Jesus over against the Jesus that is presented to them in Islam. And if the subjects of salvation come up, then obviously you want to be prepared to deal with issues along the lines of the cross, the resurrection, the specific areas where Christians and Muslims have specific differences.

So yeah, obviously there's a bunch of things right there that you want to be thinking through so that you can have a meaningful approach.

And if it is someone, if it is a neighbor or something like that, then obviously establishing some kind of relationship that will allow you to, you know, sit down with your

Scriptures and get to know the person, that's really, really, really important because an observant Muslim has been taught certain things about what we allegedly believe that we don't believe.

But they're going to be, if it's just a one -time encounter, they're going to be more likely to question what you're saying.

But if they get to know who you are, they get to know what your life is like and your commitment to Christ, so on and so forth, that can open up a whole lot of wonderful doors.

So yeah, a bunch of stuff right there just to figure out where you want to start at. You obviously want to get to who the real

Jesus is, but probably somewhere along the lines, you're also going to have to be dealing with the issue of the sufficiency of Scripture, the consistency of the

Christian Scriptures, and the fundamental reality that the Koran, the author of the Koran did not understand what was in the

Christian Scriptures or what the Christian Scriptures teach. That's going to come up as well. And so fundamental issues concerning the nature of Scripture and its reliability are always in the forefront in a discussion with Muslims, even if they're not observant Muslims.

They still are going to have that as a part of their thinking. Okay. So you're like, generally a good starting point is like, who

Jesus is and Scripture as well? Well, definitely, definitely.

But then that's going to challenge the issues relating to the canon, the transmission of the text of Scripture, all these things, because if you want to say, who is

Jesus according to Scripture, well, then that's going to raise the issue of, well, what is Scripture? And you're dealing with two different sets of Scriptures.

So that's an inevitable, unavoidable aspect of that particular discussion.

And some people try to get around that by using the Koran as the mechanism of doing that.

I do not suggest that at all. I think the more exposure you can give them to the truly inspired

Word of God, the better. Okay. All right. Great. Thank you.

Thanks, Dominic. I hope you're doing all right over there in New Jersey. That is one of the hotspots these days.

So I hope you're doing well. All right. Thanks. You as well. All right. God bless. Bye -bye.

See you. All right. That's our first of three. We're just going to take the four calls, and I'm just going to try to go with whoever's been on hold longest.

So let's talk to Brandon. Hi, Brandon. Hey, James.

How are you doing? Doing good. You can mark me as another one who, you know, started

Heard of King James Onlyism, went to go research it, found you on Wretched Radio, and then found

Jeff, found R .C. Stroll, and a year later, I'm a five -point Calvinist from an Assembly of God, so...

Oh, okay. All right. It was a conservative Assembly of God, you know, but no tongues, but either way.

My question is, I was talking to someone about total inability, and they used

Acts 10 as evidence that man is in a totally unable to, or totally not able to respond to the

Gospel, or that he was... Basically, their point was that he was seeking God. It was, he's supposed to be not able to do it, but he was a devout man who feared

God, gave alms generously, and prayed continually. Right. So they were saying he was seeking God, so if total inability was true, then how was

Cornelius seeking God? I thought... I don't know, I'm relatively new to the, you know, five points, but I thought, can regeneration maybe happen beforehand,

God change his heart, or is that type of giving alms, praying, not actually seeking God in the terms of, you know, what total inability would say?

Well, remember, total inability does not mean, in fact, that man does not respond to God.

Man does. Man responds to God in many different ways. It is an inability to submit oneself to God in repentance and faith, apart from regeneration that is at issue.

There is obvious... It's a normal straw man to represent what we're saying as if mankind is just senseless and is just stone dead and does not respond to anything.

You have people like atheists who respond to the gospel with tremendous hatred. I mean, just watch the debate from last year in Salt Lake City, you get a real good idea of how that works.

Religion, false religion is a mechanism of responding by suppressing the knowledge of God.

And so, there can be very religious reactions. Now, what you're looking at here is you have a description of him as a devout man who feared

God with all his household and gave many alms to Jewish people and prayed to God continually. So you have someone here who is called a

God -fearer. And there is a fair amount of discussion in New Testament studies concerning the role of the

God -fearers in the book of Acts and how once the gospel goes outside of the land of Israel and starts going into the

Greek world, you have these God -fearers being one of the major audiences that Paul focuses upon in his missions work.

Because they seem to be individuals where there is what you might call good ground. I mean, these are individuals who have been attracted by monotheism.

They recognize the foolishness of polytheism, and so they're not worshiping the many gods, etc.,

etc., etc. The idea that people have here is that if you believe in total depravity, then that means that every person is as evil as they possibly could be.

And that's simply not the case. There's something called common grace. There is something, the simple reality is that there's another example a little bit later on in Acts of Lydia, who while godly, while gathering for prayer, that there weren't enough

Jews to have an actual synagogue, but they're gathering at the river for prayer. Still, what does the scripture say

God has to do? He has to open her heart to hear the message. And so, you can have people who give alms, you can have people who pray and do all sorts of things, but the issue is when the message of the gospel itself is delivered, and this is a message that requires a turning and an acceptance of the risen

Savior, what was Jesus' teaching concerning that subject, even when he was standing in front of people who could see him as clearly as day, still he said, no one can come to me unless it's been granted by the

Father. And so, it's simply, what you have is people who are wanting to try to get around the clear testimony of scripture on that particular subject by implicit argumentation that, well,

Cornelius, I mean, he fears God, and so that must mean that he was regenerate or something along these lines.

Now, this does get you into another area, and that is people have disputation, argumentation about the time frame that exists between regeneration and faith.

For the vast majority of people, there isn't much of a time expression there.

In other words, they come together. But there are people, like Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who gave testimony that there was a period of time in their life when they were greatly troubled by their sin and yet did not come to faith in Christ for a matter of weeks or months, and that this was a very trying time for them and a very difficult time for them.

And this raises questions concerning, well, can we identify the exact point of location of a person's regeneration and what's the nature of that, and so on and so forth.

And there are arguments about that. One thing that has to be affirmed is any person who's been regenerated will believe and repent, unlike what certain people in the early

Church taught where you could actually be regenerated and then eventually lost. That would be a problematic understanding.

But so, yeah, if someone wants to look at Acts chapter 10 and go, well,

I'm going to imply from the description of Cornelius the following things.

Well, if he was all that good, why even have to worry about going through all the effort he did to send

Peter to proclaim the gospel to him? He still needed to believe. There still needed to be a delivery of that message.

And so it's a matter of taking the whole testimony of Scripture and not taking one section and going, well,

I'm going to imply that it means this, and therefore I'm no longer going to believe the plain statements of Scripture that says no one's able to come to me unless the

Father sent me, draws him, and texts like that. So allowing all of Scripture to speak is always the answer to how we come to our conclusions.

Okay, so just to say, I guess what he's taking is a positive disposition,

I guess, or a non -negative disposition and saying, oh, well, that's seeking, but there's a difference between the seeking and just having a kind of friendly disposition towards God.

Well, look, I would say that if Cornelius looked back, he would see the grace of God involved in his life all along.

That's not the same thing as saying, well, as soon as God's grace starts working in a person's life, that means they have to be regenerate.

God can work in someone's life and protect them from making wildly dangerous decisions that would scar them in a way that God would not want them to be scarred so that he can use them in the kingdom in a particular way.

So in other words, God may not choose to bring someone to a knowledge of their own, of who

Christ is, bring them to regeneration until their early 20s, and yet by grace protect them in their mid -teens from doing things that would then result in situations where they wouldn't be able to be used the way that God wants to use them.

So, for example, Paul, God wants to use Paul, but could

God's grace have kept Paul from doing something three months before his encounter on the

Damascus Road that would have fundamentally diminished his ability to function the way that God wanted him to function later in life?

Obviously. So once you start trying to second -guess God's sovereignty, it never works out really well for anybody.

Yeah, definitely. All right. Well, thank you for that answer. Thank you for all you do, and God bless, guys.

All right. Thanks, Brandon. God bless. Bye -bye. Bye. All righty, so line one, and let's talk to Connor.

Hi, Connor. Hey, Dr. White. You're in the People's Republic of California.

Oh, yeah. I'm not a big fan of this state, to be honest with you, but hopefully

I can get out of here. Yeah, well, you're stuck now. I understand they've blocked all the exits, so you have to pay all the extra taxes.

I want to move to Utah. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, I don't want to stay here. What can we do for you?

So, I used to be a Mormon myself. When I was 14, I joined the Mormon Church, and then by the time

I was almost 15, I had actually left the Mormon Church, so I was pretty quick in that, just because of the certain doctrines that they have, so there's exaltation, such as the polytheism, and all that kind of stuff, but they don't teach you until you're about 18.

Right. So when I found out on my own, I was very confused, and then I came upon Apologia, and you guys are just preaching over at the

Mormon temples and stuff. Right. I started learning about it, but now that I'm a five -point

Calvinist, thanks to you guys, I don't know exactly how to be able to preach to Mormons in a way that they understand both the

Calvinist point of view and the mainstream Christian point of view at the exact same time. Ha! Well...

Does that make sense? I don't know how to be able to preach that to them so they are understanding my terminology versus mainstream

Christian terminology. Right, right. Yeah, well, it's interesting.

The tracts that we pass out, that we have passed out in the past in Mesa and up in Salt Lake City, a couple of them we specifically wrote to scratch that itch, to hit that target.

To really cause a Mormon to stop and go, what?

For example, we have a tract called, No Man is Able. Especially given the

Mormon understanding of the nature of man and his abilities and the fact that he's the same species as God and so on and so forth, that really catches their attention.

What do you mean, no man is able? No man is able to do what? And immediately you're into a presentation and some, not many, but some did fairly early on go, wow, that's not what other

Christians have told me. You guys seem a little bit different. And now you've got the opportunity of saying, well, there's this thing called the

Reformation and so on and so forth. So you can jump into it from there. But yeah, that is one of the challenges that we have, is that a

Mormon who has had conversation and encounter with mainstream evangelical

Christians will tend to reinterpret our words in a way that we don't intend them to be interpreted.

So you end up sort of with double linguistic challenges because the

Mormon's going to use their own terminology, their own definitions of words. It's going to be very, very different than the

Christian definition. And then you have the second layer that they're going to assume that you're saying the things that have been said to them by someone they met on the sidewalk or something along those lines.

So there is a necessary level of thought that goes into the utilization of language.

You might want to watch, you probably have watched it, but last October, Jeff and Luke and I had the opportunity of talking to a couple who were leaving the

LDS church. And we were answering some of those final questions that they had.

And you'll see that both of us are putting out an extra effort to listen to what we...

I'm not sure how Jeff would describe it, but for me, I'm sort of running through my mind what

I'm saying before I say it and then listening to it to see if any of the terminology that I'm using could possibly get interpreted the wrong way.

And in fact, there was one point where I think Jeff was speaking and I could tell that something he had said had been picked up by one of the two people through the filter in a way that was not what he had intended.

You'll see me jump in and correct it before he gets too much farther down the road, not correcting him, but correcting the misapprehension.

Because I could see, since I wasn't talking, that I could be observing, I could see that something had triggered a level of confusion just simply because of the translation issues that we all always have to deal with.

So yeah, obviously, that's an extra level of work to be done.

But at the same time, there's almost nothing that will get you past a lot of the standard objections than to go straight into saying or presenting a reformed understanding of the gospel, because the

Mormon is rarely prepared for that. They've heard the other stuff.

They've got their pat answers. But predestination, election, what? What are you talking about?

So that can actually get you straight through to the important stuff fairly quickly.

Yeah, exactly. I had a friend that went on a mission over in Chicago, and I guess they're now allowed to use

Instagram. So he and his companion, they messaged me, and they were asking about what Reformed Baptism means.

I was trying to explain it to him, and he gave me a whole LDS essay about addressing the issues of Calvinism, about 900 pages.

900 pages? It was 900 pages written by an LDS guy, and then one of the chapters was refuting predestination, it was just grace, all that kind of stuff.

And they were only using the Bible, not the Book of Mormon or anything, just trying to disprove our claim.

And I've never actually debated a Mormon on predestination until that day, and then actually today

I'm meeting with Mormon missionaries as well. I want to talk to them about it, too, because they have questions.

But it's really interesting messing with that terminology versus mainstream Christianity and then the

Reformed understanding of the gospel to a Mormon that has such a different gospel than we do.

It's really difficult at times. Oh no, it's difficult but necessary, and it's not difficult because the belief is difficult, it's difficult because Mormonism has such a man -centered understanding.

Mormonism does not have a god in the sense that biblical

Christianity does. I mean, think about it. Fundamental to the understanding of Reformed theology is the absolute holiness of God, and part of holiness means absolute otherness.

But the central teaching of Mormonism is he's not other.

He is the same species as we are. It's a continuum of existence.

We are of the same order of being, just at different levels of exaltation.

And so, yeah, there's a fundamental problem there that has to be communicated, and it's definitely very, very challenging.

So I hope you have a good time with the missionaries. Hopefully they don't have to wear masks. I don't know about you.

This whole mask thing right now is driving me insane because I can't understand what anybody is saying who's wearing one. So you could end up really struggling with the communication if they're wearing masks.

That'd be rough. Before you let him go, real quick, Connor, on our website at the top you're going to see a banner ad for the

Christian Message, and if you're meeting with missionaries today or soon, if you click in there, while you can't get the track in that period of time, there's a

PDF of the content of it. So you can read what it says and have something in presentation form for you to be able to have at your disposal.

Oh, that's fantastic. I'll definitely check that out, because I talk to more missionaries about every week about a variety of topics.

I'm only 16, so I struggle with doing that at times, being able to go places. But recently

I've had a lot of missionaries reach out to me just randomly because they're at home, so I've been doing a lot more. Yeah, they're probably bored.

They're probably bored, too. They called me yesterday. They're like, hey, Connor, how are you doing? Can I share a message with you from the

Book of Mormon? I'm like, sure. And they start going to Moroni or something like that. And I tell them, I'm like, well, by the way,

I'm not a member. I'm actually an ex -member. And then they're like, oh, interesting. And then we start that whole topic and stuff.

And I'm like, yeah, it's going to be fun. All right. Well, thanks for calling, Connor. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Absolutely. Have a good day. All right, bye -bye. All right, one more call here.

I should have mentioned, Connor, if you're still listening, real important. I hope you've got a good church to go to.

I know most churches in California aren't meeting, even though, hey, the president told everybody to do it next week.

So I think now's the time to obey Romans 13. But especially at your age, you need good, solid elders.

They're actual elders, biblical elders, not the elders of the LDS church elders. Highly recommend that to you.

One more call. Let's talk to Willis. Hi, Willis. Hello.

How are you, Dr. Wyatt? Doing good. I could not tell you're from West Virginia at all.

I could not tell that. I would never, ever would have guessed it. Well, I was raised in Kentucky, so maybe that's part of it.

Well, it's all over on the other side of the Mississippi anyways, right? Yeah. I wanted to thank you. I want to thank you and Brother Ridge, first of all, for all you've done.

And did Connor just say he was 16? I didn't have a voice like that at 16, but yes, he said he's 16.

I mean, I was amazed when he said that. And then here's a 16 -year -old that seems to be very grounded in the scripture.

And at 16 years old, I was barely had a baby food, it seemed like. But the question

I have for you, this morning I was reading from your book, The God Who Justifies.

I know Branny points. Um, there, and you was mentioning Ephesians 2, 3.

And Paul, when he was addressing the church at Ephesus about, uh, he talked to believers and he said that, you know, that, that, you know, we were children of wrath, you know, even as others.

And he was talking about by nature. Well, you know, in Romans 9, you know, he was talking,

Paul was talking about how, you know, the elect were taken out of the same clump of clay that the non -elect were.

So, so the elect were never, you know, God's, the vessels of wrath.

So what exactly would Paul have meant by, by the, by the elect being by nature, children of wrath?

Because obviously if we're not in, if we're not in, in Christ, you know, we're in Adam.

So in a sense, it seems like we are children of wrath. But how can I, how can, how can I reconcile this?

You see what I'm saying? Because John 3, John 3, 36 says that, you know, that the children of, the wrath of God, you know, abides upon the children of disobedience.

So when we were lost, we were under God's wrath, in a sense. But yet, he also says the elect were never his vessels of wrath.

So I can't reconcile this. So I'm asking you to reconcile. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think that you were very close to it there when you're, when you're noting the fact that Romans 5 is probably the point of reconciliation, and that is that there the apostle says that we are in Adam, and that's why there is death, that's why there is the fall, that's why there is wrath, is that we are in Adam.

And so, if we are only in Adam, then we can only receive from Adam what

Adam receives, and that would include wrath. And so, notice it says, we were, it uses the past tense there, we were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

So, we truly were in Adam, and now we truly are in Christ, and others remain only in Adam.

That's why there is the distinction between the two. And so, what Romans 9 is looking at is the final outcome, because it talks about how he's expressing his mercy.

Well, that mercy is what brings about a person receiving regeneration, faith, grace of God, forgiveness, adoption, everything else that comes with that, and hence being one of those vessels made by the potter to be in the house, not to be used for common use, but for special use.

But the reality is that there is a period of time in this life before we experience that gracious act whereby regeneration takes place, and we are sensible of repentance, of faith, of the message of the gospel, and never are we held accountable for the eternal aspect of these things.

God made us as time -bound creatures, he holds us accountable only for that which can be understood by time -bound creatures.

And so, there are going to be those texts of scripture that are going to talk about the before and after in our experience.

So, we were children of wrath, we were walking in the lusts of flesh, indulging desires of flesh and the mind, this is where we were.

Now, graciously, in some people's experience, that was a short period of time.

For others, they can testify it was a long period of time. For others, they could say it was, even in their unregenerate state,

God protected them from many things. But others would say, there wasn't anything I was protected from.

And so, there's every kind of person that is going to have that before and after understanding and perspective.

And from the eternal view, either from eternity past or eternity future, we can look back and go, yeah, those were always the ones that God had set his favor upon, and their salvation was certain.

But that's from eternity, and that's not a perspective that we currently are able to inhabit or even begin to understand.

So, when talking about what God's grace has done in our lives and how

God's grace has broken in and changed us and everything else, from our perspective, this is exactly how we have experienced

God's work within us. And we confess that, just as the rest, we were no different in the sense that we loved all these things just like they love all these things.

And that's where our heart was, and that's where our desires were. Because if we say otherwise, then we are really saying that there is something special about us that drew

God's love or drew God's mercy or whatever else it might be. The reality is, until a person bows the knee to Jesus Christ, they're under the wrath of God.

And since we don't know what God is going to do, we don't know what the eternal decree is, that's the only message that we have to proclaim.

We don't have one message, and then we sit back and go, I wonder if that's one of the elect. I'm going to watch real closely, then

I'll give them some more information. No, we aren't called to do that. That's Hartshale -ism.

Huh? That's Hartshale -ism. Oh, yeah, you bet. See, a lot of folks don't know what that means.

Because, like, out here in this part of the country, no one's ever heard of Hartshale -ism. There's a few around here.

Oh, there are. You bet, believe there are. If anyone's wondering what he's talking about, we're talking about a form of Hyper -Calvinism, and it's evangelism amongst those folks involves looking for evidences of regeneration, seeing if someone's elect, so that you can then give them the other information.

No, we don't do that. We don't find the apostles doing that, and so we oppose that.

But anyway, so I don't think it's a matter of having to harmonize, as it is just understanding the differing perspectives.

Romans 9 is giving us that overall eternal perspective from God's perspective as how he sees things.

And then in talking to people about, among them, we too all formerly lived in the lusts of the flesh.

Well, that's the redeemed talking to the other redeemed about what we've been redeemed out of.

And that's a very time -bound understanding, but that's still a very real understanding as well.

Well, I can honestly say, you know, I'm glad that he called me out of that, don't get me wrong. But now, you have to be real, you have to be honest with yourself, and myself too.

I enjoyed it. I enjoyed my life, but then God come to me and show me what the end result of that life was, and he told me that I was looking for fire protection.

Willis, here's the real question. Could you enjoy it again? No. No, definitely not.

There's a difference. No, no, no, no. Yeah, there's a difference. Right, right, right. There is the first two words, first three words of Ephesians 2, 4, but God being rich in mercy.

So that's the, it's not you. It wasn't Willis that did it. It wasn't James that did it. It was God that did that.

And that's why the heart is changed. But I want to thank you for taking my call, and I'll make a quick confession, and I'll let you go.

When you was on the podcast last night with Brother Ramos, when he asked you about, was you doing debates, and then one of you mentioned maybe you could do a debate against each other?

Yes. That was me that said, uh, White versus Ramos, the reformed rumble.

That was me. But that was just because, I mean, I don't know what y 'all would debate, maybe other than eschatology or something.

Yeah, that's about, that'd be about it. Yeah, that'd be about it. But that was me, so, but listen, thank you again for taking my call, and thank you and Brother Rich for all that you do.

You know, you've, you both have blessed me beyond measure, and you've helped my ministry, and that's the main thing, and that you glorify

God, and you brothers have a good day. Thank you. Thank you very much for your call. God bless. Thank you. Bye -bye. All right,

Willis from West Virginia. Thanks to the phone calls today, uh, getting us started on the program with, uh, with all of that.

They're always good, uh, always good calls, and you never know what's gonna necessarily be under those, uh, those blinking lights.

Uh, but, uh, it is, it is good to see. Um, uh, yes, people on Twitter are going, uh, there, there's,

I'm not gonna get into it, I'm not gonna get into it, I'm not gonna get into it, I, I, I, I don't know why

Trump does the things that Trump does. Um, I will say this, let me, did y 'all, did y 'all see the latest, well, there's been a couple gaffes, there's probably about seven or eight gaffes per day, if, if anybody really added them up.

I guess recently Joe Biden said something about, you know, I'm the only one that can really show, show us how to beat Joe Biden.

And, and, and you're sort of like, you know, there's actually an element of truth to that when you think about it.

That's not what he meant to say. He doesn't know that he meant to say that. Um, but there is an element of truth to that.

But, but I was listening to his incredibly racist statement that, that came out today that, you know, if you're confused as whether you're for me or for Trump, then you're not really black.

And look, these people think they own the black vote because they do.

I mean, 97%, they just, they just count on it. But did you listen to him as he was speaking?

He was, he was trying to do a voice just like Hillary Clinton has tried to do the voice and, and Obama did the voice, even though Obama didn't come from that type of a culture.

Um, and it was, it was just, it was so bad and the

Babylon, no, no, uh, Eric Metaxas caught it. He caught that he was doing it.

And so he went right back at him with it, just doing the almost, um,

Jar Jar Binks level bad, um, slaughtering of the English language. And of course,

Jonathan Merritt then responds, that's never funny to make fun of how someone speaks as a

Christian totally missing the, the, the fact that Biden had literally, literally in the midst of being blatantly racist had then done it with a, uh, an affected voice.

It was just like, uh, there's going to be, I, I can not possibly see how that man can run for president from his basement.

He's not leaving. It's going to be somebody else. It's going to be, that's going to be part of the big stuff next month.

Is that next month? Is it June is when there is June when they're supposed to have their convention. Who knows? I don't know, but I, I can't,

I can't see it happening. I did. He's going to come out and say, obviously I've got problems.

Uh, I'm 77 years old and I've got issues. And so we're going to give it to this person or whatever.

And you know who he's reminding me of is the guy that was with Ross Perot as the vice president.

When he went into the debate and he looks to the camera, he goes, who am I? And why am

I here? And that sunk the whole thing right there.

Game over is done. Well, that was a different day because I could see,

I could see old Joe looking at the camera going, who am I? And why am

I here? Yeah, it's the man should be protected by his family.

He shouldn't be running for public office, but there you go. That's, that's what's happening. What a, what a day we live in.

Anyway, I was that, that, that happened today and it's going to be happening pretty much every day, uh, for the next number of months, along with everything else.

Um, okay. I didn't, I forgot to, uh, we haven't had any problems.

Oh, I reset. Oh, drat. Uh, I've, I've been having some computer issues today.

I did at least get, uh, Logos to come up once. That's it. Uh, that, that was, that was really good.

Um, but I had this all queued up. Thankfully. I remember, uh, the time, uh, stamp on it.

So that's pretty unusual. What's, what's the chances of someone actually remembering, uh, an actual timestamp?

Um, did you see this when I posted this on Twitter last night? Right, right, right.

Um, those of you who are regular viewers, the program listeners of the program know that for,

I suppose we should go back and find out when the first time I mentioned this was, but it's, it's been minimally two months, uh, probably coming up on three months, maybe even a little more than that.

When I first started making commentary on Augustan early church issues, topics like this, um, we have been providing a rather in -depth critique of a doctoral dissertation, uh, submitted to Oxford university.

I had someone from Oxford, uh, contact me on Twitter saying, Hey, don't hang that guy on us.

We, we, we actually do good work here. Don't, no, please. Uh, don't, don't do that.

And I'm like, Hey, I, I, I don't have any control over this. This, this is just bad.

It's just, it's as bad as, as, as we've documented to me. Anyway, we have addressed dozens of topics from ancient religions, like Gnosticism and Manichaeism.

And we've looked at Qumran and we've, we've read from original sources, like the secret gospel of John and other materials from Nag Hammadi.

We've looked at, uh, portions from the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran, which is how it's pronounced

Qumran. Yes. And we've, we've dealt with, uh, the language used by Clement, the actual

Clement, the first century Clement rather than the third or fourth century version. Um, and we've looked at, uh, the

Epistle of Diognetus. We've, we've really gone in depth on a lot of things.

And for a lot of what we did, we were just looking at original sources. We weren't using secondary sources.

We're looking at, I'm translating what, uh, Clement said.

I'm translating what, uh, was said to Diognetus. Uh, we're, we're looking directly at what

Augustine wrote. We're not using secondary sources. And when we did, you know, it's, it's stuff like, um, background, uh, summary material on, on Manichaeism, uh, standard textbook type stuff that is, that is utilized.

Uh, we're, we're checking, uh, citations like from Mark Edwards on, uh, culture and philosophy in the age of Platonists in regards to Neoplatonism.

And of course we, we dug out John J. O'Meara, uh, on making it look like Augustine thought that being a

Christian or Manichaean was a small, just very small difference when that's nothing that Augustine said. And it wasn't what

O'Meara was saying either. And so utilize, checking sources, things like that.

Um, so last night someone on Twitter began mentioning that another, uh, yet another video, uh, has appeared from Layton Flowers.

And this video, I guess, uh, just rebukes, uh, myself.

And what's interesting, and I will admit I, I have not even had the time to get into this at all.

Um, but evidently I'm trying to find the, wow, there are a lot of, um, uh, tweets here.

Um, but the, uh, I don't know where it went.

Anyway, uh, it was up here. I hate, Twitter's a little bit easier than Facebook because whenever you click on Facebook, who knows what's going to come back up again.

It's like, at least with this, you can sort of scroll and try to find stuff. But, um, the, um,

Jordan B. Cooper, he goes at Dr. Jordan B. Cooper. So we've,

I guess he called into the program once years and years ago, because I've seen some

YouTube things like that. But Jordan Cooper and Chris Date did a debate recently on the extent of the atonement.

I was, the reason I remember, remember this is that was the last time I got to use the Admirals Club while traveling anywhere while flying.

We, we, we managed to get that access right before it's no longer relevant. Isn't that fun? Anyway, um, and I was really disappointed because, uh,

Chris had not bothered to read anything that Jordan Cooper had said. And so they, there wasn't any, there wasn't any debate going on.

He just assumed it was, you know, sort of universal atonement type thing. And that's not where Cooper's coming from.

He's got this rather unique Lutheran thing happening. But evidently, according to Pink Noise, Layton is calling on me and Dr.

Jordan B. Cooper to repent, even warning of the wrath of God upon them. And I guess he said even

Albert Moeller is on the hit list. Now, I don't, I don't know about that, but I followed, I asked for a link.

And that's how I found this particular video. I did not listen to all of it.

It's about an hour long and I didn't have time to do that, but I was sort of looking for something and I happened upon this little section right here.

And so I would like you to hear what Layton Flowers has to say here.

Okay. Here, here we go. On the term semi -plagian, in other words, um, if you notice we're, we're the only, especially in my discussions with James White and some of the others, we're the only ones who provide unbiased sources to support what we're saying.

Have you noticed this? Go, go listen to all of James White's stuff against Ken Wilson and notice he never provides an unbiased source to support the things he's saying.

Ken Wilson literally cites 80 different sources, all of which are unbiased. Now, I, I don't even,

I don't even know. How, how do you respond to someone? It's possible that Layton Flowers just has listened to very little of what we've said.

I mean, that's possible. It is possible he hasn't understood major portions of what we have said.

Um, but the reality is Layton will go to secondary sources and quote those secondary sources and he thinks that's doing scholarship.

So it's possible he just doesn't understand that what we're doing is we're actually going to original sources and Augustine cannot be a biased source.

Um, Clement can't be a biased source. The Epistle of Diagnosis can't be a biased source.

And when you actually are utilizing the bibliography in Dr.

Wilson's dissertation to check his citations, that can't be a biased source either. Or you just said that he used only unbiased sources.

Well, okay, so that means this is unbiased. Well, no, of course it's biased. Any secondary source is going to be biased.

That's not the point. The point is when I demonstrated that the utilization of this source in the quotation that we examined was completely bogus, indefensible to attribute what he said about a

Manichaean, about someone observing a Manichaean hearer and a Christian in the fourth century and attributing that to Augustine.

Indefensible, utterly indefensible. What does bias have to do with that?

It has nothing to do with it at all. So there just seems to be a level of confusion on Leighton Flower's part as to just how you even do scholarship, how you even engage in this kind of stuff.

But the scary thing is, I think he really believes what he's saying. He really actually believes what he's saying.

And that is difficult to even begin to conceive of, given how much has already been presented.

But it also tells you there are some people so wedded to their conclusions on this subject that it doesn't matter what you present.

It doesn't matter how clear it is. It doesn't matter how compelling it is. They're not going to hear it.

And they're not going to accept it. They're not going to see how all of these issues are related to one another.

And there's nothing you can do about it. That doesn't make what we're doing worthless. I know of believing

Christians who have been encouraged to be reading early church fathers. I've had the opportunity of doing more lecturing over the past couple of months on this program as to how to handle patristic sources in a fair and meaningful fashion within the context of Christian apologetics than I've ever had before.

Never had a reason to go as in -depth and to exhort all of us, no matter what area that we're working in, you may not be responding to provisionists.

You may be responding to a Muslim who is misusing early church fathers.

Well, you still have to be fair. You can't, in pulling on that rope the other direction, become imbalanced over here because when you're done talking to the

Muslim, there might be a Mormon over here that you need to talk to. But now you got to pull this direction and see, you shouldn't have to be changing all the time.

If you're using the same standards of truthfulness and being accurate, not reading things into the early church fathers, not trying to just go to them and find evidences to substantiate your particular perspectives, then you can allow the early church fathers to be the early church fathers and you can be blessed by them.

It's always exciting to me when I talk to people who've gone, you know, I had sort of been afraid to look at the early church fathers because I, you know, you hear about these people that, well, he started reading the early church fathers and now he's a

Catholic or he's an East Orthodox or he's, he's become an atheist or whatever, whatever. And it's like, if you, if you expect them to sound like you in the 21st century, you're going to be freaked out.

But if you recognize that they are men speaking from a context and that they're, they're speaking at a point in time in history, then you find out how much history has determined your vocabulary too.

You just didn't know it. I mean, there are people in this audience, you're sitting there going like, come on, white,

I, my, my vocabulary can't have been determined by someone from the fourth century because I, I've not read anybody from the fourth century.

So my vocabulary could, couldn't have come from them, right? Wrong. Where did your vocabulary come from?

When you become a Christian, you learn to speak Christianese, whether you know it or not, every time you go to church, you're taking language lessons.

You're taking language lessons from the hymns. You're taking language lessons from the prayers. You're taking language lessons from the worship songs.

You're taking language lessons as you're sitting around small group. You're learning Christianese.

Where do you think that terminology came from? Well, the people you're learning from may not know where it came from.

They may not be aware of it, but it came from history. There are terms, even when we say things like Jesus gave himself for us, there's an entire realm of theology that's informing the meaning of those words.

And so, we are dependent upon those who've come before us. And they've had a huge influence on us.

And the more we know about them, the more we can filter that, the more we can seek to be biblical in the analysis of that.

And here's the tough part. This is what we don't pick up from social media. We can learn to appreciate people who actually have different perspectives than our own.

That's where the fundamental is. That's why fundamentalism has never been able to produce meaningful church history, is because that appreciation of someone who looks differently, acts differently, thinks differently, doesn't fit with a central aspect of fundamentalist thought.

And so, you have to struggle with that, and you have to think through it with ramifications that are, without then becoming emergent church.

Nobody knows anything. I'll believe anything. Throw the baby out with the bathwater type of thing. Balance, oh goodness, very, very important to be able to do that.

I have a couple of these things over in my office. I should use them much more than I do. I should just grab one and take it home today, so I will.

But there are these wobble boards. Sometimes it's just one round, sometimes two, but it's meant to help your stabilizer muscles in your legs, your ankles, and things like that.

And of course, your mind, too. But to use muscles you normally don't use, so you don't get injured as easily.

Well, this whole study has been sort of a wobble board for people. To get them to use some muscles they otherwise wouldn't normally be using, so as to hopefully avoid injury.

And that's why we do stuff like this. That's why we get into stuff on this program that almost nobody else gets into.

Not because I'm smarter than anybody else. I'm just dumb enough to go ahead and do it, because I really am convinced that it's important stuff.

And so, we've done textual critical stuff and all sorts of stuff, going in -depth on things. That most people would say, you're just turning too many people off.

That it's just too specialized. They're not going to go into the weeds with you. Well, over decades, we've demonstrated that when we're going into the weeds, there's a reason for going into the weeds.

And there's at least enough people to keep us going that think it's important enough to tromp into those weeds and learn those things themselves.

So, I listen to poor Leighton sitting there going, he never uses unbiased sources.

And I'm just sitting here going, oh yeah, every single one. Every source is a biased source.

So, how many thousands of words of Augustine have

I read over the past number of weeks? That's a biased source?

Let me tell you who's biased. Ken Wilson was biased in his research. And I've documented it. And I'm continuing to document it.

Okay, if you want bias, Leighton, there's your bias. But what you just said is just fantastically untrue.

And I don't think you even understand that it's fantastically untrue. That's what concerns me, Leighton. It sounds to me like you actually believe this.

But you don't seem to understand the difference between secondary sources and what you're doing in reading definitions about semi -Pelagianism and Pelagianism.

And man, are you sensitive about that. Oh, goodness. So sensitive, you can't even hear when you say

Pelagian things. All you can do is just start seeing red and get angry. When you tell people that mankind in and of himself is capable, apart from the supernatural operation of grace, in that person's mind and soul, not in the provision of a gospel message, which is what you say, but in that person's mind and soul, to allow them to believe or not believe, you don't seem to understand that that's where you've gone.

You've made this stuff up in your mind. That's not what I'm saying, because I'm saying that grace was necessary, and grace was necessary to give us the gospel.

But grace isn't necessary for the fallen son or daughter of Adam to have the ability to repent and believe in that gospel.

The gospel is the grace for you. Right? That's what you've said. Maybe you're changing. Maybe you've had people push back, and I don't know.

But that's what you've said in the past. That's what you said in the past. Anyway, I think you really believe this, and it's frightening, because what

I just played just does not make a lick of sense, and it's just simply untrue, and anyone who has listened to even half of what

I've said knows that it's not true. I've been sitting here citing secondary biased

Calvinistic sources against Ken Wilson. When? Where? What have I done? I've actually been going to the original sources.

Either things he's cited, or in the case of the patristic materials, or how is my citation of Philippians 129 biased?

How when I put the Greek on the screen? Is my citation of Dan Wallace on the

Greek grammar and syntax, is that somehow biased as well? I mean, what are you listening to?

It almost sounds like you're filtering such things to give yourself a defense, because you've hitched your wagon to a star that's not going to go anywhere, and that's a problem.

Were you... Oh, no, I was... No, not that one. That one. There we go.

All right. I was just going to say, you know, the book that's on the top of the pile there.

I'm sorry. I was drinking. The what? The book that's on the top of the pile. Grab that. Hold it up. Yes. So let's break this down for just a second here.

Yes. So Ken Wilson takes that book, and what he does with it isn't biased.

But you simply read what the guy actually wrote, and that's biased. But Ken Wilson isn't biased, and Leighton isn't biased.

There is a, for lack of a better word, an errant presupposition going on here. Just a bit.

Just a bit. But I will tell you this. For me, and I've... What? Has it been 30... I don't even want to count.

33 years now? Yeah. I don't know. I just remember you walking up with that craze looking at me.

Yeah, let's go there. It's page 79, by the way, for those of you who are looking. Of all these years,

I've known about your church history, lessons, teachings, all that.

But I've never seen you go this in depth. Right. And I can tell you I'm getting a lot out of it.

I'm getting... I never knew about some of these bizarrities of manichaeism that we won't repeat.

Yeah, well, I did have lunch recently, so... There are things that I think they are very illuminating, and so...

Illuminating. That's funny. If Dr. Wilson has done us any favors, it's that. Oh, definitely. He has caused us to go in and start unpacking this stuff and establish an apologetic.

Yep. So there is that. That's... We're trying... You know, I am one who likes to try to find the quote -unquote silver linings.

I'm looking at the situation with the Great Panic of 2020, and I'm going...

I'll get back to Wilson here, but... The CDC guidelines for children returning to school?

Yes, the homeschoolers' takeover of the government. The homeschoolers' takeover of the education department, because they're literally saying that any child over two is supposed to wear a face mask all day.

Can you imagine what five, six, and seven -year -olds are going to do with face masks? Especially if they have elastic in them.

I wonder how far you can shoot a face mask. I really do. Can you just...

The boys. I'm just watching the little boys, what they're going to do with these face masks. All I can tell you is if it were me when

I was that age, how filthy dirty that thing would come back. Every single day, it would be a petri dish of bacteria.

We were talking about disease like anything here. But there would be fun stuff, too. I mean, because I still remember the day in...

I think it was... Oh, what grade was that? Was that second grade? Is that Mrs.

Anderson's? Might have been Mrs. Anderson's. Anyways, I remember my friend Bobby was across, and he was taking one of those achievement test things, you know, where you fill in the bubbles.

Remember those? Remember those back in the day? We thought they were so advanced, because they could be graded by a machine.

But you had to fill in the bubbles just right. If you didn't fill in the bubbles, you had to have... What kind of pencil did you have to have? Number two, if I remember.

Number two, that's right. Because if anything else, you couldn't read it. So I just remember

Mrs. Anderson was looking at something else, and I managed to take a rubber band, and I fired it because the room was in a this type thing, you know?

And so I'm over here, he's over here. And I fired that rubber band across the center, and he's sitting there.

And I made a ringer on his pencil.

From the other side of the room, I did this, okay? So if I did that... If I did that, can you imagine what they're going to be doing with face masks?

Well, I was the kind of kid that would find horny toads and put them in his pocket. Oh, sure. Why not?

I mean, you talk about all kinds of... You could put french fries, because they're not going to get... They're not even going to be able...

They're going to have to have boxed lunches. There's going to be people bringing stuff, french fries in. I mean, these people coming up with this stuff, obviously don't have kids.

That's the problem. Either that, or they're so old, they've forgotten what it was like to be a kid, or to have kids, one of the two. And it's just like, no, that's not going to happen.

And so I'm looking at the silver lining, and that is, if I was a parent looking at these guidelines as to what school is going to be like for these kids,

I'm going, you know, that homeschool wasn't that bad. Yeah, I'm really going to be really, really interested when fall comes.

Or really, fall 2021. That's where it really, that's where you really find out, depending on what happens between now and then.

How big is the homeschooling movement going to be? And how powerful is the NEA to try to get the government to clamp down on it?

Yeah, and how many people are going to be moving out of the state that bans it? Well, not only that, but my fear is, depending on who wins in November, what's been my prediction for years, as soon as the leftists have the presidency, the

Senate, and the House, homeschooling's done. Homeschooling, well, a lot of the things that we're doing right now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, homeschooling especially. Homeschooling especially. Just done. Anyways, what does that have to do with Ken Wilson?

Not much, other than I do look for the silver lining, and the silver lining, the positive in this situation has been that we have had more and more people recognizing how important it is to know about our history, because this is how we get approached from many different angles, and we don't know how to respond to it, and we struggle to respond to it.

There's no two ways about it. So, Leighton, like I said,

I didn't watch the rest of it, and maybe you don't watch what I'm doing about Wilson either.

That's fine. That's okay. But the reality is that I have not been using, quote -unquote, biased sources, that every single source that I've been using is biased, because my primary sources have been the original writings in their original languages, and Wilson's book,

Interview With You, his dissertation, and his sources.

So, no one really understands what in the world you were just saying. They really, really, really do not.

Okay, with that, let me see what I have here. I did get a little chance to do a little bit more reading.

I did not have the opportunity of expanding on the Romans, I'm sorry, the 1 Timothy 2, 4 section before we wrap these things up.

I'm not sure that I want to dive into these right before the weekend.

We got the calls in. So, I did Chris's article post today.

Let me take a... We're looking at something here.

And is this the seventh one we're putting up here? So, I know the next one is on the

Council of Carthage. No, the last one is still on What If We Were Right Stars.

Let me just make a real quick comment about that, and we'll wrap things up. I made a comment,

I think, in response to Rich, I think, yesterday.

It may have been earlier in the week. A lot of people, when they start reading historical sources, are surprised by the prevalence of astrological material in ancient writing.

Whether Christian or non -Christian, it is everywhere. And you will find many

Christians who buy into various elements of what we would call today astrology.

Initially, there really wasn't any difference between what we call astronomy and astrology.

They're pretty much the same thing. And so, if you, for example, once you start studying some astronomy, everybody's always like, hey,

James, what's that? Some bright spot in the sky, they want to automatically assume you're going to know what it is.

And if you do happen to go, well, that happens to be Jupiter, they're like, ooh, okay. Well, think about it for just a second.

This is a place where, again, you have to learn to lay aside your modern perspective and try to realize what it was like literally only a number of generations ago.

We have not had telescopes. We started getting telescopes. We've had telescopes for less than 500 years.

And so, we've also only had major, major cities for a certain period of time.

And that means almost for the entire history of humankind, the night sky was dark.

Those of you who live in major cities today and have never lived anyplace else, you're the weirdos.

You look up at the sky and all you see is a glowing gray mass at night with a moon in it once in a while.

And once in a while, you might see a bright dot, but you have no idea what in the world it is. That's extremely unusual.

Almost anyone during the history of humankind walking outside at night would be stunned by the literally billions of stars out there, but they didn't know there were billions of stars out there.

I read one study recently that said there's really only just under 10 ,000 visibly identifiable stars to the human eye.

But they would see all these stars. And it was simply a part of human belief and thought to think that those stars that pass so regularly over our heads, so much so that you could tell time with them.

I mean, the people on the seas knew the heavens like the back of their hand.

That's how they could get where they were going. They developed mechanisms long before there was a computer to allow them to navigate the seas by the use of the stars.

But then they also discovered these couple of weirdos up there that don't go the same direction all the time.

They'll go one direction and then they'll turn around and go the other direction. And then another one will go back to them and then chase that one back that direction.

And so these things, the Greek term for wandering is planao.

They planaode. So they became planets. And they were really special because they were brighter.

Well, some of them were. Most of them were brighter than almost any of the stars that had regular motions.

These had irregular motions. And so you could come up with all sorts of theories as to why they had irregular motions.

And it was all of mankind's religions have been influenced by people looking up there and going, look at all that stuff that this must have an influence upon my life.

And so you can find reformers that believed that. Well, give me an example.

The Great Mortality, 1347 to 1351. Over half of Europe dies.

Well, about half of Europe dies. In some cities, up to 70, 75 % of everybody dies. You want a pandemic?

That was a pandemic, OK? That's one where you shut everything down and run. But there really isn't almost any place to run.

No question about it. But almost everyone, including everyone in the church, the

Roman Catholic Church, the Pope, the bishops, cardinals, whole nine yards, the best scientific explanation had to do with the conjunction of planets.

That planets had gotten close to one another, and this released like a miasma into the atmosphere that caused all these things.

These caused these things to happen. And in scientific writings where you'd have a scientist observing before they died, because a lot of them did die, but observing how the disease progressed and the growth of the bulbs on the body and the speed with which a person would die.

And they're making what we would call scientific observations. And then right in the middle of it, they'll go, and I observe this during the conjunction of Mercury and Venus, which may have had something to do with the color of the person's skin.

And you're just going, what? But that's until recent period, the recent period of time.

That was very, very, very much a part of everyone's worldview and their understanding of things. And so we properly differentiate between astronomy and astrology.

What also has come from that is that if you're going to be involved in astronomy, you have to do it as a secular person.

See why? Because the distinction needed to be made.

But then you put that in a secular context, and then it follows that you can't see the purposes of God in how he has created things.

So yesterday, yesterday morning, I ran out to the East Valley and I took my solar scope.

I have a hydrogen alpha solar scope. And I set it up in backyard at my daughter's house.

And the grandkids came out, and we had some friends over, and we had a little solar party.

And it was really, really neat because we got really clear views. We were able to see some of the plasma loops on the disk and verify that with today's current image from stuff.

I talked a little bit about that yesterday. That, okay, you couldn't have hydrogen alpha solar scopes back then, but doing something like that would have been considered astrology only a few hundred years ago.

And there would have been just an automatic idea that that would have some type of an influence upon you.

Well, it does. One of the things I told my kids about was, my grandkids about, was how that fusion of hydrogen into helium way out there is what's striking the leaves of the plant back there in the backyard and chlorophyll and the production of plant matter, which then gets eaten by animals who then you eat when we go to McDonald's and have a cheeseburger.

And there is that connection there, but it's a understandable connection and not a magical connection.

It's not a kind of connection that determines your fate by the stars and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

So when you read church history, you will encounter discussions of constellations and people who are more or less influenced by issues related to what was for them science.

Remember, it was settled science at the time of the great plague that certain things would help you to avoid the infection, which we know today hadn't absolutely nothing, but that was settled science.

Well, we know so much more now. I posted on Twitter and Facebook, did you see that 60 minutes thing?

Wasn't that amazing? From 1976, I got hold of my dad and I'm like, do you remember this?

Because in 1976, I remember the Bicentennial celebrations and all that kind of stuff.

I don't remember any of that at all. You do? Okay. I didn't remember any of that.

We certainly didn't get any inoculations or anything. But the government, the

CDC in Atlanta, yeah, same CDC as today, was pushing this vaccine for the

H1N1 swine flu in 1976. And they were predicting major problems.

Well, A, it didn't happen. And B, hundreds of people died from the inoculations.

And hundreds of others, maybe even thousands of others, were physically extremely damaged, injured by this inoculation that the government was spending money advertising.

And no word did it say flatten the curve, but it was pretty much the same stuff. It was the exact same stuff.

And it's like, oh, that was only 45 years ago. Oh, okay. What goes around comes around.

Here we are again. So yeah, that's much more recent history at that point.

But it just reminded me going, if we could have had TV coverage from 500 years ago, we'd sit there going, really?

Wow, that's pretty amazing stuff. It really is. So anyways, sorry to wander off on that there.

But it's Friday. The technical beginning of the summer.

It's been beautiful here in Phoenix past couple of days. But by a week from today, it's supposed to get right near 110 degrees.

So yep, beginning of the summer for us. And by the middle of July, 110 will be nice.

We'll be wishing that it was only 110. That's our lot in life.

But from what I understand, almost no virus can survive out in the sun here in Phoenix for any period of time at all.

So there is that advantage to that. It's pretty much fried instantly, which is why you have to bathe in sunscreen, because living cells get fried pretty instantly too.

That's why you Easterners come out here, make the mistake coming out in July, and you go out for 10 minutes without sunscreen on.

And then you wonder why you got a sunburn in Phoenix. It's like, how does anybody live on the surface of the sun? You get used to it over time.

You really do. Anyways, thanks for listening to the program today. I don't know what the weekend's going to bring. And I don't know what next week's going to be about.