Debate Aftershow 4-22-2022, Trinity Slick Otis

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Debate Aftershow 4-22-2022, Trinity Slick Otis

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00:01
All right, so we're live, and I have to do something here, go talk to my wife briefly, and giving time for people to come into the room while I walk away from the camera, but I have a portable
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Bluetooth headset so I can talk while I'm walking so you know that something's not wrong.
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So hold one thing, let's see, and let her know. We have a guest coming over, and he's at another location, he's going to come over here later, let's let my wife know that.
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So that's why I'm talking, and when I get back up I'll let you guys into StreamYard, and those of you on YouTube can text and stuff like that.
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He's at a friend's house in Napa, believe it or not, and so he'll come over later when we text and stuff like that, doing an after show.
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Okay? All right. All right, now I'm going to walk back to the office where the computer is, and my monitors, and chair, and everything else.
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There's a lot going on, a lot going on. All right. Am I talking to nobody? I don't know.
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We'll find out when I sit down. Let's see. Yep. Talking to nobody. Oh, people are watching and listening.
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Good, you can hear. All right. You guys want to come in? You can. That's the
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StreamYard link. That means if you come in here, I'll let you in. You can talk, interact, or if you don't want to do that, all you got to do is type something in and where you were, and I can react to that.
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If people come in and we talk, we stay for a while. If they don't come in and talk, then I go do something like eat, and my wife and I can go watch
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TV and relax a little bit before company comes over. Yeah. Nobody.
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I said nobody was here, or I was talking to nobody, so hopefully somebody's named nobody there. So there you go.
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What did you guys think? What did you guys think of the debate? All right. There's...
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Oh, Brittany, you can't get in because your devices are not connected. You'd be able to...
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You need a microphone and or a camera, so if you have either one, you can get in, but to hear you, you need a microphone.
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So you're trying to get in. It says devices not connected, so you have to add those in, and then you can talk.
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And then we have James Dare. I dare you to say something good, but hey, maybe his camera isn't working.
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I caught the tail end of your debate, and I thought you did well, but it's obvious from the
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Bible. The Trinity starts out in Genesis and goes all the way through the end. I don't know.
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Can you hear me? Yeah. I can hear you. Yeah. The Trinity is definitely true. Absolutely. Yeah. I enjoy talking about these major Bible doctrines.
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I think that if you have the right Bible, and I know this isn't about manuscript evidence, but I think if you have the right
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Bible, you'll have the right doctrine. I agree.
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Well, it helps. Yeah. It does help. Okay. Hold on one second. I'm going to put you on mute.
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This is the guy's coming over. So I'm going to mute. Just give me a second. Okay. Sorry about that.
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He'll be here in five minutes. I may have to go say, hey, come on up here. You'll hear me talking to him. When he comes up, he'll sit in the chair right over there.
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So 1 Corinthians 2 .14, you must be born again because of 1 Corinthians 2 .14, right?
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All right. Brittany, you need to add a microphone or a camera in order to get in and be able to let you in.
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So I don't know if you can hear me. Matt, can you please debate Trenthorne and baptism? Yes, that's right. I would like to. You must be born again.
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That's actually John 3, 3 through 8. Lots of noise from your guests tapping.
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Yes. That's another thing. People, a lot of times people, what they'll do is they'll come in and start making noises. Sometimes I do the radio.
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People are on their phones in the kitchen. Clank. I go, hey, what's going on? They don't do that. So for example,
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I'm going to mute you. There. So now you have to unmute yourself in order to talk.
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Or do I have to unmute you? I can't unmute your guests because they chose to mute themselves.
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Okay. There we go. There we go. That's right. I think we're tagging back and forth. Hey, I'm new to this stuff.
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So if I make some mistakes, like typing with my thing not muted, just say, hey, stop typing.
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Okay. Yeah. And a lot of people know this already. I'm autistic and I have trouble with too much sound.
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And so when I'm talking to somebody and there's sounds like the sound of the background, it's actually disturbing. But for the most part,
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I can control it and I can handle it. But when it gets too much, I say to people, I'm done. You know, and then my apologies.
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It's just what I've got, you know, just an issue to deal with. So great job,
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Matt, on SFT. Oh. Good. Yeah. I saw
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Brittany mentioned that no one seemed to mention the Godhead, which
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Godhead speaks of the Trinity. I came in late, so I don't know if it was mentioned. There's a lot that wasn't mentioned.
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That's just a nature debate. You can't get through everything. There's a lot of stuff I would like to have discussed, but we couldn't get into it.
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So here we go, Karen. Karen says, I'd like to hear.
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Great job, Matt. There you go. Love your hair, Karen. I want my wife to do that with her hair. All right.
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Let's see. How about I'd like to see you have a discussion with Bishop Jerry Hayes. I really enjoyed the discussion between you two.
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Learned a lot. Good. Animal lover. Animal lover. Are you oneness or Trinitarian? Good debate. Laura says he couldn't get past Jesus was not a man.
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That was weird. That was weird. That threw me. What?
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I wasn't expecting that. I've got to get into this a little bit more. Did he say Jesus was not a man?
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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
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How does he explain the verse, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us?
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That's the father who inhabited the human body. It's zombie or it's like possession.
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I don't get it. Yeah. And then when he said he's not really human. Wait a minute.
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How can Jesus speak? You know, and is he the flesh speaking?
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Is he breathing? Yeah. But that's not the will. Right. But yet Jesus says, we will come and make our abode with you.
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How does that work? You know. Well, Jesus said, I hunger.
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He said, I thirst. He was weary from a journey. That was the flesh that the father was indwelling.
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That's why that was like that. There's some background noise. It's tough too. It's like scraping. I'm not typing.
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Not me this time. Let's see. I'm listening. I heard a noise of squeak.
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Okay. Maybe because sometimes people, they'll take their phone, they rub it on their beard or their chin or like that and make noises too.
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Okay. Let's get to Nicholas. Hey, Nicholas. How you doing, buddy? Hello.
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Good to see you. Oh, there we go. I'm good. You're good. No man's good. Romans 3, 10, 11, and 12.
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Sorry. You asked me how I'm doing. I'm doing well. Okay. All right. So did you watch the debate?
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I saw the latter half of it. Okay. And I've seen Otis debate before the topic.
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I've seen you debate the topic before. Okay. Yeah. So nothing new really. But had you heard him say before that Jesus was not a man?
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No. And I don't remember if I've heard him say before that Christ is merely flesh. But it occurred to me that the flesh profits nothing.
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So then he's saying Christ profits nothing. And that's a quote from Christ himself.
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Wish I'd have thought of that. That would have been great to throw in there. Good for you.
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But the flesh profits nothing. So answer that. I like that. That's good. Yeah.
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I guess I should have made that a question. Maybe Donnie would have asked that one if I had asked it. You should have. That's a good question.
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Yeah. I just put it out as a refutation in side chat. But I did ask a question that I can ask you now.
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And that was I was going to ask you is that the strangest argumentation you've ever had to adapt your arguments to?
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Yes. Yes. When he said Jesus was not a man. What? Because then you got to define humanity.
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And then you got to get it. But then I go to First Timothy 2 5 where it says the man Christ Jesus. Well, it says
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Christ, but he ignores the word Jesus. It's right there. So it was just he did not have as all his logic and theological pause in the litter box.
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Do you know which Bible he uses? I think he quoted the
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ESV. I remember I was checking. It looked like an ESV quote. That's Kevin's. Hey, Kevin.
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Hey, Matt. How you doing? Good. All right. Hanging in there. Just did a debate. I may have to walk down and let a guy in and say, hey, come on up here and sit.
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You know, we talk. So a little bit. I'll put the speaker.
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Instead of here, we're on the computer. I hope you'll get any feedback. Yeah. Oh, is
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SFT in here? Oh, yeah. There you go. Same for truth. Good.
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So, Matt, I actually wanted to ask you. Sure. So I'm a Trinitarian as well.
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You're a what? I'm also a Trinitarian. Okay. Now, when you were talking about the will of the
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Father and the will of the Son, I don't fully understand that. Like, I always thought they were in unity in their wills.
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Like, are you saying a different will? Can you explain that? Yeah. Now, just so you know, when
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I begin to explain this, there is a bit of mystery. Some people will say, oh, the mystery means it's not true.
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But that's not the truth. A mystery means that there are certain aspects of God's nature and essence that we can't comprehend.
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When we talk about the Incarnation, what we're talking about is a human nature and a divine nature.
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We know that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, John 1 .14. And so we call this the hypostatic union.
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What this means is that Jesus has two natures, a divine nature, a human nature.
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Right. But if he's human, he has to have human will. Otherwise, you're not human. That's what designates humanity.
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This is why when he said Jesus is not a man, then there's no humanity there. I haven't got into it, but the problem of the crucifixion.
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But anyway, we'll get into that. So Jesus has a will of the human nature and a will of the divine nature.
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The Greek word for will is thaleo. To will. Thaleo. So di means two.
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Di -thalatism. Thaleo, will. Di -thalatism, two wills. Means that in the one person of Christ are two natures and each nature has a will.
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Hence di -thalatism. There's an error that was developed called monophysitism.
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Which says that the divine nature and the human nature became a new third thing.
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The divine man. I've never heard of that. It's called monophysitism.
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And along with monophysitism is monothelatism. That since the two natures became a new nature.
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The God -man nature. Then there's one will. So what they're trying to do is try and solve the problem of, or the paradox we should say.
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It's not a problem. Of how can you have one person with two natures. Now the
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Lutherans go into it with a thing called perichoresis. With the two natures indwelling each other. I don't know, but that's another thing.
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And so with a reformed perspective, because I'm reformed. We would say that the di -thalatism is that each will has a, or each nature has a will.
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But yet in the one person of Christ. We only have one will.
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And that's demonstrated by Jesus saying, I am thirsty. I will be with you always even to the end of the earth.
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The I is identification of one. I, not we, our wills.
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Because he does that with the father. We will come, not my will, but your will, et cetera.
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So what we see in the hypothetic union. Is the two natures of Christ and each has a will.
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Di -thalatism manifested as one will, hypothetic union. When we see
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Jesus say, I am thirsty. I'll be with you always. That's called the communicatio ideomatum.
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It's called the communication of the properties. So the properties of the divine nature and the properties of the human nature are ascribed to the single person.
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So Jesus says, I am thirsty. That's claiming the attributes of humanity. I will be with you always.
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That's claiming the attributes of divinity. The single person says, I am thirsty.
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I'll be with you always. The same person, I says both of those. So the person, the one person is claiming the attributes of both natures.
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Now when he says, I don't want to do this or I that, we see the manifestation of the one will.
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And so this is a paradox. It's a mystery. How does that work? I don't know.
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How is it that God can ordain all things from all eternity? I don't know.
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How is it that he can indwell all places at all times and yet specially indwell certain individuals? I don't know.
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Just because we have mystery in the nature of God does not mean that it's not true. If someone wants to say it's not true, they have to be able to demonstrate that it violates coherence or violates the laws of logic and say this can't be because of this.
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So, for example, a square cannot also be not a square at the same time in the same sense in the same way.
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That's a violation of the laws of logic and it cannot be true. But there's nothing in logic that any laws or any syllogistic thing, whatever, that says that you can't have one person with two natures where the attributes are ascribed to the one person who speaks as one person.
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It may be mysterious, but it doesn't mean it's not true. So when someone says it can't be true, I say, show me the logic.
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They say, oh, I'm not going to do philosophy. Well, then you don't have any argument. It's not an issue of philosophy.
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It's an issue of logic. Show me the argument. Just saying it's not true doesn't work.
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So these things have been wrestled with for centuries. So we have hypothetic union, one person, two natures, monophysitism, one person with one nature.
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That's the new God -man who is neither God nor man, but a God -man. We have Nestorianism in that the body of Christ are two separate natures, two separate persons, where each nature is a person.
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That's called Nestorianism. So Sinianism says there was an emptying, and there was only the
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Father manifested, and some other stuff is what she was kind of going at. So there's just all kinds of heresies and errors and stuff.
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I've never heard of that. That's all. That's what it is.
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Okay. And there's a lot of stuff. Do you have any teachings on that kind of stuff, like on your channel, where you go into depth on those things?
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Do I have any teachings on that? Man. Have you ever heard of this website called
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Karm? Yeah, yeah. Okay. So you can go there.
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And so what I'm going to be doing is, I'm just thinking out loud here,
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I'm going to be doing some video work. I'm trying to get to that point where I can start converting a lot of things to video, where I will sit with my articles, and I'll read them, but comment.
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And go through them, and I'll highlight things, because I don't have anybody to do post -editing work.
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I do everything myself. So I'm going to try and do it that way, and go through and explain things, so that people can listen to audios as well.
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I think that'd be really good. I appreciate that, yeah. Yeah. It's got to get the lighting right.
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And because of someone who looks like me, you have a face for radio, so I've got to make it look good. Okay. And I have something
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I want to bring up, but also looks like there's someone named James who's being patient, who wants to ask something.
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Sure. Yeah, if you don't mind, it's back a little ways in the discussion about the human nature of Jesus, and Otis saying that Jesus wasn't flesh or something like that.
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The doctrine of substitution hangs in the balance if he was not flesh, because he had to become one of us in order to pay for our sins.
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Somebody had to step in. Our redemption hangs on that. So you can't remove the humanity of Christ.
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That's right. It's a whole other issue. How far are we going to get into stuff? Because then you don't have a true incarnation, and then you don't have a true divine sacrifice, because what he would probably say is that the
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Father is the one in Christ, and the life is in the blood. He might go to Leviticus 17 11, and the life is in the blood.
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And so therefore the blood is really the sacrifice, and therefore it can be divine. But then that is saying then that the divine nature or the human nature itself is what is the sacrifice, and there's no humanity in it at all.
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But if there's no humanity in the sacrifice, then how is it atonement for people?
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That's the bridge. That's the problem. It becomes a huge problem.
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But even in Acts 20 28, it says that God bought the church with his own blood.
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His blood was not from the Adamic race. The whole incarnation, he came from his father.
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I mean, even chemistry tells us that your blood comes from your daddy.
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That's why you have his surname. It doesn't come from mama. It comes from daddy. And that's why.
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My surname is just too awesome to give up. Look at mine.
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Dare. Dare you to misspell it.
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That's right. But that's what I was thinking anyways. It's very, very important that that Bible is so divinely woven together.
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You can't get rid of any of it without destroying it. It's got to stay together. And the humanity is you can't get rid of it.
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Yeah. Can you post a link from this debate that just ended? Just go to cure. Just go to here. You'll find it.
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A car .org calendar. Okay, you'll find it there. Jesus says, unless you believe that I am, you'll die in your sins.
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Now, was he who was speaking? The father. But here's the problem. It's one of the things
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I was thinking about how to articulate this, because I've never had to think about this on the fly like this.
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That's why I asked. Was Jesus breathing? The reason I was asking that, was he breathing?
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Was he walking? That's the human nature. But if Jesus says, unless you believe that I am, who's the eye?
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That's the father. Well, that would mean then the father is only indwelling that body.
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Well, then there's no unification in there. And it also would have meant that any human could have been indwelt by the father.
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Any. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to answer the door.
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Let's say hi. Hold on, guys. In case anyone slightly missed what
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Matt was saying, he was saying that Otis's model would be that the eye is the father.
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Come on in, Russ. Come on in. Hey, come on in. I'm on. I'm doing an afterthought.
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You want to just come up and sit in the room? Come on up and sit in the room and I'll put a speaker so you can hear it. Yeah, I'll introduce you.
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Everybody's listening. People are listening to this. Come on up. Just bring that up too. You might as well.
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Just get you jumping right in here. This is for those who don't know. Hey, Nick, you want to meet him? This is
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Russ. I'm going to tell the people in the thing. Russ is the guy who runs the radio stations in Salt Lake City and the whole area of Utah.
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He's here for something. Come on in here when you want. Sorry, folks.
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I know it's. Okay. Hey, life at the slicks.
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Okay. So let me change the audio settings here so I can put it on my.
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Let's see. Okay. Okay. Now say something. Somebody say something.
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You're talking about the other people in the room, right? There we go. I'm here. Okay. You're here.
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Good. Can you hear the feedback? Can you hear the feedback from the speaker? No, sir. No feedback here.
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Good. Matt, an empty chair is not a good idea. You're talking. It sounds like Matt. Yeah. My wife is showing
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Russ around. So Russ is going to be here. We're having a evangelist, not week, but evangelism thing is going to be happening tomorrow.
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And Greg Laurie's thing and here in Boise, Idaho. And I love Boise, Idaho. Oh, I'm so glad I'm out of California.
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And so Russ is in Utah, which is five and a half hour drive, five hour drive, roughly. And so he just came up.
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He has a friend in the area. He's staying with him eating dinner. Now he's come on over. I told him, hey, you come on up.
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You got a place to stay. And so unless it was Nicholas, because I don't know, that beard makes him look kind of suspicious.
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But, you know, I probably let it go. And so he's just got here. And he's the guy who runs the radio stations in Utah.
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My show's on in Utah. So he's a great guy. He's a good guy. So you're going to come in here.
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So now they can hear you talk. You want to say hi here. I'll introduce you. This is Russ. There you go.
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Whoops. There you go. That's Russ. OK, so I'll do this kind of changes so you guys can watch a little bit of whatever.
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All right. Now you guys want to ask. Hey, there you go. Oh, that's because I was. That's a delay. This is the delay feed.
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This is the live feed. And we just did the debate. So how did the debate go? Go ahead.
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Let's go, James. I dare you to say how it went. And then we'll go to Nicholas. I caught the tail end.
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Probably last 15, 20 minutes, maybe a half hour. I'm not sure. I didn't pay attention. But I thought you did quite well.
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Of course, I'm kind of biased because I believe in the Trinity. And really, his arguments didn't hold water.
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No. One thing that I think the Unitarian people can't grasp is the fact that, as humans, we will never, never grasp all there is to know about God.
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It's impossible. And it's beyond us. He's the creator. I mean,
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I've asked people to explain the Trinity to me, and nobody's ever been able to explain it.
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And that's why the Bible says that we're supposed to walk by faith and not by sight. Just trust the Bible. The Trinity is fact.
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I mean, it's there. I mean, right at the baptism of Jesus, where's God the Father? He's in heaven.
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Where's Jesus? He's in the water in Jordan, two separate places. No, no, no.
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Don't you know it's ventriloquism? Come on. It's right out of the book of 2
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Moronicals, next to the book of Deuterectomy. Yeah, right by the book of 2
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Hezekiah. Yep, that's right. The first opinions. Yeah, it's right. Yeah, I look at Hebrews 1 .8,
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and God the Father is talking to God the Son and calling the Son God. He says, thy throne,
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O God. Right. He's not talking to himself. Yeah, I quoted that to him.
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Yeah. So if you go with Unitarian, then all of a sudden you've got contradictions in the
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Bible. You got major problems. So the only thing that makes sense is a
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Trinity. But go ahead. I'm sorry. No, no, no. How about when he said there's no place in the
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Bible where God refers to himself in the plural? Genesis 1 .26,
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let us make men in our image. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was bad.
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Yeah, this guy was debating, and he actually said Jesus was not a man.
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He's only the flesh, and the Father was in the flesh, and he wasn't really a man. And I said, well, wait a minute.
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Well, exactly. He said Christ is only flesh, but Jesus is the Father. So he was making a distinction between Christ and Jesus.
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But I did ask him, is Jesus a man repeatedly? Remember? And then I went to 1 Timothy 2 .5.
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There's one meter between man and God, the man, Christ Jesus. And he goes, see, Christ. Well, wait a minute.
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Don't just stop with one word. It says two. You know, so that's remember that. Yeah. Yeah. And my view of it is that, well, first,
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I want to mention that Otis said that Trinitarian's cherry pick. But John chapters 14 through 17, that's four chapters.
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That's not a cherry pick. And I think that's a really huge example of Trinitarianism right there.
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Well said. And I think you did. You are exceptionally well prepared for the topic,
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Matt. And being thrown all those really weird semantical tricks and stuff really gave a chance for you to have to show off how you had to remember.
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You know, you couldn't just go by the script. You had to go by all the prep. I didn't prep anything for today.
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Well, not prep for this, but the prep you've had over the course of your life on the topic that you are prepared.
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And, yeah, so that really showed more so than in the past. When you go in knowing what you're going to do, that doesn't show as much of you having to dig around in your mind.
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So I think it was quite the showcase of what you have learned over the years. Praise God.
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Definitely. And there is one more thing I was mentioning on this was that I'm slipping my mind now.
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So, okay, well, I'll just chime in when I remember. I posted that verse there,
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Deuteronomy 6, 4. Yeah.
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And Lord in the Hebrew is Jehovah, right?
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With all caps. Did I get that right? Let me look. And then
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God is Elohim? Yes. That's Yahweh.
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And God is Elohim. Okay. So you've got the
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Lord, singular, if I got this right.
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Our God Elohim, plural, is one Lord, singular. Yeah, but you got to be careful with that argument.
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Okay. The word for face, F -A -C -E, in Hebrew is panim.
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Panim. The I am ending. And it's also plural, but it means one thing.
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So you have a composite unity as a singularity. It may or may not work in that argument, but I understand what you're saying.
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When they go to Deuteronomy 6, the
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Lord is one. Actually, one what? That's the question.
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And, excuse me. I didn't mean to cough into the mic. Yeah, he used the
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ESV, which I think is essentially a good version. E is essentially it's good.
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It's not the one Paul used. Definitely didn't come from the
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Texas Receptus, but anyway. Yeah, it sounds like you're a
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Texas Receptus guy as well. Dare, Mr. Dare. I prefer Dare over James. I hope you don't mind me calling you
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Dare. No, that's fine. Even though I don't call Matt Slick, maybe I should. But that can sound kind of like I'm trying to be derogatory.
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Hey, Slick. Well, he was pretty slick. He did a good job. What's that?
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I said in the debate tonight, you were pretty slick. You did a good job. Thanks. He made a lot of mistakes in logic and stuff.
31:34
But you see that kind of a discussion. Let's just say someone said, a publisher said,
31:42
Matt, we want to take a transcript of what you said. We want you to write a book of responses to it. I said, great.
31:49
But in order to do that, there'd be certain areas we'd say, these are the laws of logic. This is what personhood means.
31:56
This is why it's used here. This is his statement. This is why these don't work.
32:02
Then you can do it little by little. But it takes a lot of time to train people.
32:09
Coincidentally, this Thursday here at the house, I'll be starting a series on the
32:14
Trinity. And my definition of the Trinity or the paragraph I've been working on the
32:20
Trinity is about 450 words. So I'll be going through that in depth on the doctrine of the
32:28
Trinity. So if you guys ever want to watch it, you can. But anyway, there's a lot to it.
32:33
And you do need to know some logic. You need to know some stuff. That makes a good segue to what
32:39
I wanted to bring up that came back to my mind. I don't know if I've run this by you before when
32:45
I've come on. But I have a very simplified way of explaining why we refer to them as three persons, the one
32:55
God. And that is that they have personal relationships with one another.
33:01
So there are three personal relators. And so that's what the three persons refers to is that there are three personal relators.
33:09
If you don't if you want to say they're not having personal relationship, you're defying the scriptures. If you say they do have personal relationship, then the word persons is a good representation for that, because a lot of people object to it on semantic basis.
33:25
Right. So what do you think of that explanation of the semantics? Yeah, it works. What you're doing is you're ferreting out an aspect of that truth and working with it.
33:35
Absolutely. And I just checked, it's not 450. I toned it down 308 words because I saw some repetition and a little bit of stuff up.
33:47
But anyway. Yeah, that'll be on YouTube. So if we're keeping up with your channel, we'll see it.
33:54
Yeah, I think I put up on Karm or Matt Slick and I forgot which one I normally do stuff.
33:59
I'll probably put up on the Matt Slick YouTube if I want to get some more followers in there as well.
34:06
But yeah, when I searched your name, that was the one I found. And I was like, I'm not finding the live stream. So maybe it's Karm. But by then the link came up.
34:13
So I just followed the link. Yeah, I'll put it on the calendar. I'll put the information up there. I got to get a better video feed.
34:19
I don't know what's going on lately. It's just been so bad. Tomorrow I meet with a guy who they're having fiber optics put in the area.
34:29
And I called up the company and they're not ready yet, but they're having it installed. And the guy called me back. He goes, I know who you are.
34:36
What? He goes, yeah, you're Matt Slick. I know who you are. He's listening to you. And he goes, I'm here in the area. I go to church.
34:42
I go, whoa, really? He's a Christian. So he's going to come over tomorrow and we're going to talk a little bit of theology and fiber optics.
34:48
And hopefully then eventually get this this this feed video feed problem going.
34:55
Solved. Solved, as Pink Panther would say. Anybody else want to come into the room?
35:02
I want to link up one more time. Anybody see the last week's debate
35:08
I had? I missed that one. Yeah, I didn't see that. That's worth going into for learning the relationship between determinism, libertarianism and compatibilism in the issue of free will.
35:22
Oh, nice. We've been dealing with that topic a lot. Myself and a couple of close brothers.
35:28
One of them was Kevin, who was in earlier. And Anthony Rogers is here. Hey, hey, this guy knows his stuff.
35:35
Anthony is the man around here. I thank you for giving us the opportunity to relax by handling things inside chat for us.
35:45
What did you see the debate, Anthony? So what happened was I was on Tony Costa's channel and I didn't realize you were debating at the same time or else
35:55
I might have said to Tony, hey, can we first stall this or something? But it just so happened we were already locked in.
36:02
So anyways, I was able to come in right towards the end when you guys were talking about John 8.
36:08
And no surprise there when he answered the way that he did. And that,
36:14
I think, was a window to the rest of the debate, what I could have expected. I suppose I wouldn't have expected what
36:20
I heard you say about his description of the flesh as Christ and so forth.
36:28
But for the most part, I think I can probably understand what he would have said elsewhere, given how he responded to Johnny.
36:35
But one thing I was going to say, just because that's the one thing I saw, is when
36:40
Jesus distinguishes in John 8, when he speaks about two witnesses, the requirement of the law, that two witnesses are necessary to judicially establish a matter.
36:54
His answer was, in effect, that the two witnesses are the
37:00
Father and the flesh of Christ. So you have either two natures serving as two witnesses, or you have one person and another nature serving as two witnesses.
37:13
Now, obviously, that's not what Moses is talking about in the law. Otherwise, a person could say,
37:19
I'm two witnesses, my body testifies to this, and my soul or spirit testifies to this as well.
37:27
In which case, I'm always going to be two witnesses, which means, suppose Matt and I go to court and I say,
37:33
I'm two witnesses, Matt's just one, right? Of course, Matt would be slick enough to say, no,
37:40
I've got a body and soul too. But in any case, there's even something more. If you look at John 8,
37:46
Jesus doesn't draw a distinction between the person of the
37:51
Father and his humanity. He draws a distinction between two personal subjects.
37:58
It's painfully clear throughout the context of John 8. But just looking at that one part real quickly,
38:06
Jesus said in verse 18, I am he, personal pronouns, right?
38:13
I and he. I am he who testifies about myself. So now he's used three different personal pronouns, right?
38:20
First person, personal pronouns in reference to himself. And then he says, and the father who sent me testifies about me.
38:30
So the father and the speaker are being distinguished as two subjects, not simply two natures, two personal subjects.
38:41
And then verse 19, so they were saying to him, where is your, they use a second person pronoun for the son.
38:47
So they were saying to him, where is your father? Jesus answered, you know, neither me, personal pronoun, nor my father.
38:56
If you knew me, you would know my father also. But now one other thing is Jesus. Let's mention he was not talking about his, you don't know his flesh or his father.
39:06
That would be really silly. Right, right. So the one other point that I was going to make is that Jesus, while making this distinction between himself and the father using personal pronouns, he refers to himself as the one who was sent, right?
39:23
Verse 18, I am he who testifies about myself and the father who sent me testifies about me.
39:30
Anybody who's read the Gospel of John knows how that term sent is being used, right?
39:37
Obviously, I mean, sometimes it can be used to refer to a person who's in the world and is being sent on some particular mission.
39:43
But in the case of Christ, he regularly refers to his being sent as ascending from heaven, from the father, from above.
39:54
And so the one who is distinguishing himself from the father distinguishes himself from the father using personal pronouns, and by identifying himself as the one whom the father sent from above, which presupposes that the distinction is antecedent to Jesus taking on a human nature.
40:14
But he wasn't sent from heaven with a human nature. He took on that nature in the womb of his mother.
40:21
And so the whole attempt to make this text, you know, dance to the oneness tune just doesn't work at all.
40:31
I agree with you. You don't want to share the screen and show you something, because you and I have had discussions about this before.
40:39
And you can see this is part of my notes. That's what I do. So he who receives you receives me.
40:47
Well, who's the me? Anyway, get down here. This is one of the ones I've found to be very useful in discussing stuff with oneness people.
40:55
And I'll go through this and say, OK, please tell me, although the father gives me, who's the me? The son, the father, the spirit, the flesh, the what?
41:04
Whatever it is, I'll ask him and I'll write it in here. That's what those extras are for. And I'll do this.
41:09
And so I have them telling me what it is. And then it just doesn't become it doesn't get very difficult.
41:18
Like this guy tonight, Anthony, I don't know if you heard that part where he denied that Jesus was a man.
41:25
It's like, what? That threw me for a loop. There's not many things that will do that. It's like, what?
41:33
And so what he had said here was the father gives me.
41:38
This is Jesus will come to me. That's Jesus. And the one who comes to me, Jesus, I, Jesus, will certainly not cast out for I, Jesus, have come down from heaven.
41:46
Now, wait a minute. How could that be possible? Because he's Jesus. But he's not a man to do the will. My will.
41:52
That's the will of the flesh, he said. We ran out of time, but hold on.
41:58
But you can see this is very useful. And I've been doing this. I want to do this more and more.
42:03
And then I just this is what you said. And then you start bringing it against them. Wait a minute.
42:09
So the flesh is now not this, but that it ties them up. So actually,
42:15
I think it was you, Anthony, who about a year ago, you said, hey, go look at John 639. I think it was.
42:21
Huh? Well, I don't remember that, but 38. You reminded me of something
42:28
I used to do with Mormons. I used to live in Las Vegas and would go to Utah a lot to witness to Mormons at various events.
42:36
And I would usually focus on the issue of polytheism and so forth or their finite godism.
42:43
God's a exalted man, that sort of thing. And their expectation to become gods themselves.
42:51
So one of the things I used to do is I would say, so wait a minute, what's your name?
42:57
And they tell me their name. And then I would pick some psalm that's praising the
43:03
Lord. And I would say, OK, if that's true, that you're going to become a god in the same sense that God himself became a god, then someday you're going to have spirit offspring who eventually get their own bodies and inhabit a planet.
43:17
And they're going to be saying this sort of thing about you. You know, oh, oh, Dave, you have searched me and known me.
43:25
You know me inside. You know, you've had me in behind and before. Your thoughts are too wonderful for me.
43:31
And it was it was always funny to watch the reaction on their faces. A lot of these people would blush because as you're saying that, they just know that's not true.
43:41
Right. They're they're uncomfortable when you bring that out. Obviously, we're, you know, different thought world here.
43:47
But what you're doing, I think, is great because it forces them to to plug their thoughts into the text.
43:55
And I one thing I found with oneness people is everyone is person I've debated.
44:00
I there was at some point in the debate where I started thinking, is this person actually oneness?
44:07
You know, maybe I didn't research this person enough because it seems like they switched positions on me mid debate.
44:13
And it's just because their thought can't possibly be systematic, that they'll jump ship.
44:19
They'll do an about face. They'll start arguing a different thing. Like when this guy says things like.
44:26
Jesus and his father are two witnesses, and it refers to the two different natures or what have you. That just sounds downright
44:32
Nestorian. Right. And if you were to listen to somebody like David Bernard, he would adamantly deny that they're
44:39
Nestorians. So more and more, there's the oneness people are are affirming Nestorianism as it's redefined now.
44:46
Right. So, I mean, it's just I don't think their position is apart from being unbiblical.
44:52
I mean, it's unbiblical, but I don't think it's systematic. And so these guys will just, you know, jump from pillar to post and they don't see it.
45:02
That's one of the things that sort of amazes me is is that they can in one breath interpret something along one trajectory.
45:10
And then suddenly jump on another trajectory that's at odds with it and not even realize that they're doing it.
45:17
And the point you're making is a really good point, because if you take the scriptures and you're systematic on the topic, you can only end up with the
45:26
Trinity. That's why they're not systematic. They would like to be if they could be. Yeah, absolutely.
45:33
One of the things I've also noticed dealing with oneness is they don't generally, very infrequently, they have a good understanding of what the
45:39
Trinity really is. Even this guy tonight said what one God talked to another God. It's not our position, you know, and so he misrepresented it.
45:49
I don't think his ability for understanding logic was very, very fine -tuned, let's just say.
45:57
But nevertheless, I have noticed that this happens a lot, is that they don't understand the doctrine of the
46:03
Trinity. They really don't know what it is. Yeah. Another thing is, obviously, we don't believe in more than one
46:10
God. So casting our view as though it were one God talking to another is illicit.
46:17
But even if that were our doctrine, notice that that is at least coherent as a concept, one
46:23
God talking to another. What isn't coherent is one nature talking to a person.
46:29
So the Father is a person and the humanity of Jesus is something impersonal or what have you.
46:36
Natures don't communicate. They don't have fellowship. They don't relate in that sense. So, you know, worst -case scenario, if we were polytheists, we're coherent, and whatever he's got is just incoherent.
46:52
But, you know, obviously, and I don't want to just leave it there, we obviously don't believe in multiple gods.
46:59
If somebody wants to argue against our doctrine, then it should at least be the doctrine we hold. And, you know, one thing
47:05
I found is sometimes I'll find people that will accurately define the
47:10
Trinity, but then when they start arguing against it, it's like they forgot the definition that they provided, which was accurate.
47:18
I see that in Jehovah's Witness literature all the time. Sometimes they'll misdefine it, but sometimes they'll accurately define it.
47:25
So, for example, you know, you could read in Reasoning from the Scriptures with Jehovah's Witnesses.
47:31
That's a wonderful book. Oh, it's great. Yeah, but they'll say things like, you know, the Trinity is belief that the one
47:37
God is or subsists in three persons. That's an accurate definition. But then it'll say, but does this make sense?
47:45
How can Jesus speak to the Father if this were true? And I'm thinking, well, wait a minute.
47:50
You just defined the Trinity as belief in three persons. Persons talk to each other. Why do you think there's anything inconsistent about that?
47:58
What they've done is they've moved from an accurate definition of the Trinity to making an argument against modalism.
48:06
Right. Right. So sometimes they just misdefine things. Sometimes they'll define it accurately, but then quietly shift how they're understanding the
48:15
Trinity when they craft their argument. That's right. Anthony, I mean, this occurred to me a few weeks ago.
48:25
I was thinking, wait a minute. If God is one person and he knows all things.
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I haven't worked all this out yet, but I was thinking God's all he knows all things. He's one person then for forever.
48:38
There's no condition in which his mind does not know all things, which includes all decisions he would have made because they're already known.
48:48
So there would be a decision that would occur in time because it's already known. Nor could there be contemplation about what he knows, because that contemplation would be part of the total set of all things known.
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The implication is then that God's mind in that condition must be static. That doesn't necessitate that, but the implication is a static mind.
49:11
I was thinking about this because in the Trinitarian concept, the static condition wouldn't necessarily exist because there's a communion of mind and perichoresis.
49:21
But in the issue of oneness or Unitarianism, there'd be a static mind condition.
49:28
This is something I've been thinking about and working on and just working through. You ever heard anything like that before?
49:36
No, I haven't heard anybody say that. My thought immediately goes to, as you know, usually error begets error.
49:48
You got that right. Sometimes people will adopt an error, and they might still have a lot of other beliefs that are otherwise true.
49:58
But over time, they'll realize having changed their view on this issue, they now need to change their view on these other issues.
50:04
Sometimes that takes a while for people. That's why a lot of these groups eventually morph, like even
50:13
Jehovah's Witnesses. I use them as an example. Early Jehovah's Witnesses believed it was appropriate to worship the sun.
50:20
Later Jehovah's Witnesses don't teach that. They become more consistent in their error.
50:27
I was just thinking, as somebody who saw the implications that you just made, I would imagine what they might do, which is the way of all these cults, is deny
50:40
God's omniscience or something like that. In order to evade that. Open theism.
50:45
Right. Progress theology. What's it called? Process theology.
50:52
Process theology. That's where the Sassanians went. They recognized that rejecting the
50:58
Trinity entailed that they needed to reject all sorts of other things.
51:04
They didn't just reject God's exhaustive plan with respect to the world.
51:13
They even rejected God's foreknowledge. They saw the implication that if we try and do away with predestination, but still affirm foreknowledge, we still have a problem on our hands.
51:28
We've got to account for how this can be a free action if God has already known it.
51:34
That's another issue. How does God know what he knows? That's an interesting discussion.
51:40
I'll tell you something interesting that I haven't had time to really sit back and reflect on.
51:48
We often will make reference to Genesis 126, where God speaks in the plural.
51:55
Prior to the creation of man, God says, let us make man in our image according to our likeness.
52:01
At that point, we say, here we have already in Genesis a foreshadowing of the fuller revelation of the doctrine of the
52:10
Trinity. But what's interesting is in some fathers, they actually see the fact that God spoke long before 126 as itself indicative of a plurality of persons.
52:25
I don't think they're necessarily reflecting on the sort of thing you and I might like.
52:33
A solitary being speaking doesn't even make sense.
52:38
It doesn't enter into the picture. Speaking is a means of communication, and so it presupposes a plurality of subjects.
52:47
I would push back that he's speaking things into existence. The into existence is still a purpose to speak.
52:55
In fact, are we even talking about, quote, a voice as in physical vibrations? Or is it the fact that he is willing things into existence?
53:03
There's his speaking. Which is analogous to the word become flesh.
53:09
Genesis 1, John 1. It's all there because those are the words he chose for that reason. What I was getting to, though, is that some fathers reflected on.
53:19
So in Genesis, what you have is it says God said, followed by whatever he said, and then it's followed with and it was so or it became.
53:32
This is actually the point. This is what John is picking up on in John 1. When John says in the beginning was the word, the word was with God.
53:39
The word was God. He uses the imperfect tense. The word was right, meaning he already was.
53:45
He didn't come into being. But then he goes on to say all things and literally in the Greek became through him.
53:51
And without him, not one thing became that has become. So there's a pointed contrast between the word that was and everything else that became.
54:01
So when you look at Genesis, God speaks and then it says and it became right. So there's this speech becoming thing taking place all throughout the chapter.
54:13
So what some fathers of the church said is, you know, the way they're understanding it.
54:21
And I'm just saying I'm just throwing this out there. It's not something I really sat back and thought a lot about. But already in this, what they're seeing is, you know, who's
54:32
God speaking to? And the idea is that God is speaking and somebody is performing the action.
54:39
So I'm just throwing that out there because I thought it was an interesting thought. Certainly at one at one twenty six,
54:46
God is speaking to someone. Right. The Lord said God said, let us make man our image.
54:52
Earlier, would you say God is speaking and then someone's doing the action, quoting this concept from the church fathers?
55:01
I'm like, what do I usually call them? I don't remember now. Well, sometimes I might refer to them as the church children, because there's a lot of value in the fathers, but they're also limited.
55:13
And in many ways, I think their understanding is is quite imperfect. We have much better tools than they were building on their shoulders.
55:21
So the church matures. Yeah. So in some sense, they're church children, but there's there's some value in the father.
55:29
But you were saying that he speaks and someone does the action. But if the statement is the
55:37
Lord Jesus, then the words themselves, the word himself is doing the action.
55:44
The speaking himself is doing the action then. Yeah, I don't think so. It's interesting.
55:51
Genesis doesn't actually use the I've heard some Unitarians. They'll say that Jesus is just.
55:59
They take word in the sense of an utterance and then sort of further say, well, it's like his plan or his thought, and then they'll say when the word becomes flesh, it means that his plan is brought to fruition.
56:14
Well, the exact etymology of that is it's like a set forthment. So that's why
56:19
I use the word statement to translate logos, because it means something that's spoken and you're stating something into place.
56:27
So it makes for a perfect translation. And so it's something is being set forth. So it's not merely a thought.
56:33
I think that's an etymologic fallacy that people do because logic comes from the word logos.
56:39
But I don't think it's appropriate. Yeah. The point that I'm driving at is that Genesis one doesn't actually use the phrase word, not the
56:49
Hebrew form tabar or anything else. It's it says God said.
56:55
And if you look at the Targums, which I think has more to do with where John's getting the language from, you do have in the
57:05
Hebrew text numerous places where it ascribes personal action to God's word, to his tabar.
57:12
Right. So, for example, Genesis 15 says the word of the Lord appeared to Abraham and said.
57:21
And that's that's significant. It's not. It's not saying that Abraham heard the word.
57:28
The word is singular. Abraham heard a plurality here of many words, but it's the word that appeared and spoke to Abraham.
57:36
Right. The word of the Lord appeared to Abram and said. So the the subject performing the action of the verb is the word.
57:46
And then later it says he took him outside. So the word takes Abraham outside. Well. In Genesis, it doesn't actually use that phrase, but the
57:57
Targums pick up on this language found elsewhere. I have to ask what that is.
58:03
I'm not familiar with the Targums. Oh, sorry. So the the Targums were
58:09
Aramaic interpretations of the Hebrew Bible.
58:14
So when the Jews were taken into Babylon, they came to speak Aramaic. And later, when they came back to Israel.
58:21
I just have to ask, are you choosing the word carefully, interpretation instead of translation deliberately? Well, yeah, because they were a little loose in their rendering.
58:31
So what would happen is in the synagogue, a reader would stand up and would read a portion of the
58:38
Torah or a portion of the prophets. And then he would translate it into Aramaic.
58:44
And usually it went beyond translation. He would explain it to some degree. He wasn't necessarily the person giving the sermon or whatever.
58:54
But in the very act of sort of conveying what he had just read in Hebrew, he would often explain things.
59:03
And so it's sometimes it's it's just a translation, but it it differs from verse to verse.
59:12
Sometimes it expands on things and interprets them. And so it's it's kind of like a translation at points and a paraphrase at points and and that sort of thing.
59:22
Well, the Targums use the phrase Memra, which is the Aramaic equivalent of Debar for word.
59:28
And all over the place, the phrase Memra appears. So, for example, if you look at Genesis 16, where the angel of the
59:40
Lord appeared to Hagar at the verse 14 or 13, it says, she gave this name to the
59:48
Lord who spoke to her. You are the God who sees me. That's how the Hebrew text reads. The Targum says she gave this name to the
59:56
Memra of the Lord who spoke to her, to the word of the Lord who spoke to her. So the Targums basically take every theophanic appearance of God and identify that appearance as the word.
01:00:11
So here's the here's the point now with respect to Genesis. Genesis in the
01:00:17
Targums ascribes the speech, the utterance to the word.
01:00:23
So the word is not what was spoken. The word is the one who spoke. Or alternatively, in some cases, the word is the one who performed the action expressed by the words.
01:00:36
So sometimes it'll say the Lord said and then it'll say the Memra did. So there's this interesting thing going on there.
01:00:44
And, you know, whatever you make of some of that, it does show at the very least, these Jews are reflecting a belief in a plurality of persons.
01:00:53
And so when John comes along in John 1 and he uses this word, it wasn't he didn't pick it up from the
01:01:00
Greeks. Yeah, I've been trying to correct people on that, but I haven't known really enough about it.
01:01:06
So this is rather helpful. Yeah, I mean, it's not like it wouldn't have been. And, you know, it would have caught the attention of the
01:01:13
Greek because they used the term Lagos, but he didn't derive his understanding of it from the
01:01:20
Greeks, but from the Old Testament. I'll give you one other example real quick that John was familiar with the
01:01:25
Targums. John, there's actually a great book written by. Gosh, well, it's called the
01:01:35
Johannine Lagos or John's Lagos theology, and it's written by I'm going to have to think of the guy's name.
01:01:43
Oh, John Ronning. John Ronning is his name. And he shows that there are a number of expressions that John uses that are only found in the
01:01:56
Targums. So it's something that every Jew would have been familiar with from going to synagogue.
01:02:03
And so as an example, when John says in Revelation one, four, when he refers to God as him who is and who was and who is to come, that's how the
01:02:13
Targum renders God's I am declaration. When God says, see, now that I am, there's no
01:02:21
God besides me in Deuteronomy 32, 39. That's interpreted as meaning the one who is and who was and who is to come.
01:02:29
And so John is taking that phraseology right out of the Targums. So it doesn't ask you for a detailed point.
01:02:36
Is it is it exactly who is to come or is it more exactly who is going to be? Well, it would be.
01:02:43
So in the Targums, he is and who was. Or like sometimes it's it's cut off like it's just he who is and who was.
01:02:53
Or it's he who is and who was and who will be. Right. So there is a bit of a variation.
01:02:59
I'm just I study the Greek really closely. So I just. Oh, exactly.
01:03:05
Wait. So you're asking in Revelation. Well, I could check that for myself.
01:03:10
So I was more asking about the Targum. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So one other thing real quick, not to steal
01:03:18
Matt's show, I'll make this my last comment. I'm giving him a chance to be a good host.
01:03:30
I'm trying to I kind of forgot my point now, but I guess that's that's for the better.
01:03:38
Well, it must not have been very important or very. No, that's not. Oh, I know what it was.
01:03:44
One of my. So if you look at Targum Neophyte, so there are different Targums on the
01:03:50
Torah. Targum Neophyte is one Targum. So you had
01:03:55
Targums that were made by Jews in Babylon, Targums that were made by Jews in Palestine. And so you have the
01:04:02
Palestinian or Jerusalem Targum. You have the Targum of Onkelos, which is a
01:04:07
Babylonian version, and you have Targum Neophyte. And in Targum Neophyte, when it interprets
01:04:14
Genesis one twenty six, it's God is speaking to his word.
01:04:20
And to his shekhanah, his his glory. And this is really fascinating because.
01:04:27
So it interprets the us and our there as a reference to the
01:04:33
Lord, to his word and to his glory, his shekhanah. And then when you go to Genesis two one, immediately following that, it says when they completed the heavens and the earth.
01:04:46
Right. That's how it continues. So the the the Lord, his word and his shekhanah are not only called us and our in the
01:04:55
Hebrew text, according to the Targums, but they add they when they completed the heavens and the earth, referring back to the
01:05:03
Lord, his word and his shekhanah. Yeah.
01:05:09
So then that shows that. The Trinity fits well with what may be expected.
01:05:21
Yeah. Then. So there was one thing that I wanted to mention from quite a bit earlier, that's with the matter of one
01:05:33
God. I like to really simplify things. So I told Matt earlier, I ran it by him.
01:05:39
I when people object to the semantics of the word persons, I refer to the personal relationship and then there's personal relators.
01:05:48
And I'll usually start with the father and the son because that personal relationship is so obvious. So then if you're going to agree that they have personal relationships, the personal relators, then you should not object to the word persons because that's what it's referring to and signifying.
01:06:04
And with one God, it's not like one of them is, you know, the
01:06:11
God, you know, there's different gods like the God of the harvest, God of war, this and that.
01:06:16
They're one God in that they're all the one only true God of truth. Or the one only self -existent
01:06:25
God. So that's a way to explain three persons and one God and keep it pretty simple.
01:06:31
And I think I can that those simplicities put people in a place where they can't really dodge it so easily.
01:06:40
You know, like you can in a you can kind of make it look like you can dodge it when you get into a deep philosophical debate.
01:06:50
Yeah, I mean, for me, I don't mind to some extent getting into philosophical waters, but I do think people need to face hard facts.
01:07:03
Christianity is a religion of divine revelation. And whatever we might think we can figure out philosophically, you can't determine what the
01:07:11
Bible says philosophically, meaning it's not like I can sit here and determine what this book means over here on my shelf simply by philosophizing.
01:07:23
Right. The way I know what this book is saying is by looking at the book, right, reading the book and applying sound rules to it.
01:07:30
And so if somebody wants to say they're Christian, what they need to do is show that their position comports with Scripture.
01:07:37
And so my goal in every debate is usually say, what does the Bible say? If you want to talk later about philosophical stuff,
01:07:45
I'm happy to do that. I actually think that all anti -Trinitarian thought looks hopelessly foolish and false philosophically.
01:07:53
But my ultimate conviction is based on what the Bible says. And I don't have any right to determine what
01:08:01
Christianity is merely by autonomous speculation. That just doesn't make any sense.
01:08:09
And, you know, one way I like to bring this out to people, though, to see the necessity of it is, you know,
01:08:17
Plato, just to be philosophical for a moment. He told us the his allegory of the cave.
01:08:22
You remember where the maybe you've heard this, where the you have people that are in a cave and they're kind of chained and they're facing this wall.
01:08:31
Yeah, fire behind him. And they're seeing shadows on the wall. Someone came and told them the truth.
01:08:36
They'd kill him. I can't help but be reminded of the Lord. Yeah. Yeah.
01:08:43
Well, the way I like to represent it is like this. Turn it around a little bit, just make my own illustration out of it.
01:08:51
But imagine these people are chained to this wall. They're not necessarily facing it, but they're chained to this wall.
01:08:57
And let's just say they're prisoners. I guess I'm completely reworking his little allegory. But the warden comes, who's responsible for watching them and so forth.
01:09:11
And imagine one of the prisoners trying to reach out and strike the warden, but he can't because he's chained to the wall.
01:09:19
Now, imagine them all standing around saying, well, therefore, the warden can't reach out and strike us.
01:09:25
Right. That wouldn't make any sense just because we don't have the means to, as those chained to the wall, make contact with the warden doesn't mean he can't make contact with us anytime he pleases.
01:09:36
And that, in effect, is how Scripture sets things up. Scripture says that Jesus in Matthew 11 says, nobody knows the
01:09:47
Son except the Father. And nobody knows the Father except the
01:09:53
Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. So revelation is a matter of divine initiative, divine prerogative.
01:10:03
If God did not want to make himself known, then nobody would know him. The fact that we know him is all because of his voluntary self -condescension, his self -revelation.
01:10:13
And that means we are utterly dependent on his choice to do this. We don't know him.
01:10:20
We don't have the ability to know him. It's all a matter of divine initiative. I'm glad you're saying this because I've been dealing with the deep soteriology and God's sovereignty and how people struggle with those matters.
01:10:36
And yeah, if it's all a matter of divine revelation, then in order to be persuaded of the gospel and believe it and know the
01:10:42
Father, it must be on the divine revealer and not on us in that way because we're saved by belief.
01:10:52
Yeah, and none of this is to suggest that this is irrational.
01:10:58
That's not my point. In fact, I think the way this is set up is it makes divine revelation the very paradigm of rationality.
01:11:11
This becomes then the criteria by which we, you know, not only know
01:11:17
God, but everything else in light of him. But anyway, sticking with this point, really, is we know who
01:11:27
God is because the one who knows who God is has told us about him. Only he knows himself and knows himself.
01:11:35
Another thing that might bring this out for people is, think about it this way, the more you know about something could fundamentally change what you thought you knew about it.
01:11:45
So if I set up a scenario, if I say, imagine you open a door and you look in this room and you see two men holding down a younger boy.
01:11:55
And, you know, one man's holding him down and the other man is shoving a sharp object into him. You might recoil at this and think, oh, this is horrible.
01:12:04
Now suppose I add detail to it and I tell you one man is a doctor, the other man is the boy's father.
01:12:10
The boy has just been bit by a venomous snake, needs a serum, but he's deathly afraid of needles.
01:12:18
So the father's holding his son down and the doctor's applying the remedy. Now I've introduced details into this that completely changes your assessment of it.
01:12:28
One of the things that this entails is that you can't know this thing truly without sufficient detail.
01:12:37
And so more detail could possibly alter what you had previously thought you knew. Who's the only one in all of existence for whom that is not a possibility?
01:12:48
You know, for us, there's always another detail, another fact around the corner that we don't know. There's only one being in all of existence who's never going to encounter a fact he didn't know anything about.
01:12:59
That he now needs to incorporate into his thoughts and determine what these things mean now in light of this.
01:13:06
It's God, right? Which means if he reveals something to us, we can be certain that there are no other factors that could possibly come along later that will render that false.
01:13:21
Because the one to whom nothing is a mystery has told it to us. And so, you know, when
01:13:28
I hear people making objections to the Trinity and this kind of thing, I'm thinking, number one, you don't understand the fundamental basis upon which we claim to know anything about God, which is his revelation.
01:13:40
Number two, you don't understand the implications. Hey, guys. I need to get going.
01:13:47
Well, thanks for coming on the show, Matt. I want to thank you for being here. I have one moment to share with Anthony and anyone else who happened to come up later.
01:13:57
The quick thing I gave you at the beginning, Matt, that Otis said that Christ is only flesh, but Christ himself said the flesh profits nothing.
01:14:08
Yeah, I like that one. I did hear that. I did hear you say that before I came on.
01:14:14
Thanks, Matt, for letting me ramble. All right. I'm actually thinking about calling you and we do some discussion so I can do them on Patreon.
01:14:23
And we just pick some topics and go. I'm going with some other people right now. And just do some stuff.
01:14:29
Yeah, anytime. You got my number. I want to encourage everyone to just trust
01:14:35
Messiah. That's right. Amen. Crucified Christ. All right, brothers.
01:14:41
Got company. Got to go. We'll see you. Nice talking to you. And thanks for watching the debate. All right.