Australian Birth Crash, Gospel Names, Exegesis and Theology

Well, greetings. Welcome to The Dividing Line. It's a Monday. We're getting to start early because I have a leadership thingamabobby to do Thursday, Friday, Saturday with Apologia Church. And so got to move things forward just a little bit.

Have a lot to address just within the past hour. I saw a tweet from the Cauldron Pool down in Australia, one of the few media outlets down there that stood firm and tried to expose things going on, the horrific tyranny that has taken over.

I guess there's brand new abortion law, horrific abortion law in New Zealand as well. They really have a tin pot dictator in New Zealand. Sorry, I realize you Kiwis have always been down there and you have this amazing attitude toward your government.

And as a result, you're being enslaved. And it's like, OK, that's fine with me. It's like, grow a backbone, guys. Come on. You know, you've got a, you know, you've got the all blacks, but there was about the only men left.

Come on. Don't you see what's going on? It's astonishing. Anyway, the Cauldron Pool posted live births in Australia. And remember, Australia doesn't have nearly the population we do. So they're a little bit better at keeping track of such things.

And it's interesting that you look at the numbers and for December from 2015 to 2020, I'd say the average is about 23 ,500. It goes everywhere from 25 ,214 to 22 ,695. And then you get to 2021. And the vaccines rolled out in February of 2021 in Australia.

So nine months later, approximately. Well, yeah, actually, you look at it, starts in November. So the November average, about the same, 23 ,000, 24 ,000, 18 ,186. And October was 23 ,000. But the December number, the December number, 6 ,659, 70 drop.

I see something like that and I go, I wonder if there's going to be a follow-up later on. Who knows what you can trust these days. But I can't help. Sorry. This is my son-in-law, Eric's fault. There's a lot of things that are my son-in-law, Eric's fault, when you think about it.

But I don't know when it was earlier this year. I think it was earlier this year. He posted a meme and it was talking about woke sci-fi and how in woke sci-fi, you encounter some alien species and you're always honoring their deities and stuff like that.

And then it had, Stargate SG -1, we're here to destroy your idols. And look, I was around back when SG -1 was, Stargate SG -1 was airing, but it was on cable and we didn't have cable. We were really late to the cable game.

And now, you know, we have subscriptions to things. We can never find anything. There's a lot of older folks sitting around and in the living rooms going, well, search, honey, search. No, go up there and see that little search.

Rich is busy with something else. He's just completely ignoring me. He doesn't care. Yeah. Well, okay, fine. Anyway, so I started watching SG -1 and I'm really enjoying it. I'm in season five. I do it all, you know, writing or something like that.

And there's been some classics. I mean, there's a, there's one classic scene in SG -1 that's, that's as good as the Troubles, Trouble Troubles on Star Trek. It really, it really, really was good. It's just great.

But anyway, sorry. What it reminded me of was there's this race, I forget what their name is. So far in my watching, they've run into him twice, but it was a time thing. So they don't know they've run into him twice, but anyway, uh, they, uh, they befriend us and they come along and they have a vaccine for us that doubles the human lifespan.

Doubles? There's only one thing. They discover that it also destroys fertility. It makes you infertile. It makes you sterile. And I can't help, this was, I think that first episode with them aired like about 2001, 2002.

What? Uh, see, I've got this great story going on and Rich comes along and...

Rich Well, see, we've got Twitch here. And there is no audience that we have that is more in tune with what you're talking about right now. So I've been told to inform you that they were called the.

Aschen? Uh, yes. Yes. Uh, not sure if it was quite, uh, pronounced that way, but yes. Well, yes. Aschen or something like that. Yeah. They were not... Yes. They were... See, the lead guy for SG -1 just saw through them from the start.

He just realized there was something wrong with these people because they had no sense of humor. Yeah. That's actually been.

Discussed here as well. Yes. Yes. Richard Dean Anderson had quite the sense of humor in this.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Well, okay. You're right. Yeah. Well, thank you very much for that. See that people on Twitch play video games and watch sci-fi. There you go. So there that's, that's how it works.

That's fine. Whatever. Uh, I couldn't help but think about it because it, if you go read, uh, This Perfect Day, exact same thing, exact same thing. And then I sit, I sit here and look over here and I'm just looking at the numbers.

And if these numbers are correct, wow. And then you look at the people meeting wherever it is they're meeting today, you know, the global climate zombies. Um, we're going to have to, you know, I did something on years ago because I have a science background and there are a few things that are, that are less scientific.

I saw, I wish I had grabbed it. I hope I can find it again. But I, I saw a, um, a graph on the data reported from a particular Island and it showed the actual data. And then it showed the national data, which showed a slight warming trend.

And then it showed the NASA version of it, which was this, this huge straight up stuff. I would think Christians, especially would recognize that when you, when you throw money at science, it's going to cause twisted results.

And we have the amount of money, literally trillions and trillions of dollars that has not only gone missing, but has been wasted on the already on the green agenda. The fact that the current president says, no more drilling, no more drilling.

We'll ask Venezuela to drill. And we'll ask, we'll let the people down in South America, destroy their, uh, entire environment down there. We don't care. As long as we can keep getting elected to do more, no more drilling.

And eventually you will not have a personal vehicle. It doesn't matter if, you know, there are places you can live without a personal vehicle. You know, if I lived in London, I can get around London without a personal vehicle.

Yeah. But the vast majority of humanity doesn't live in London or Singapore or places like that. You live in places where your freedom, your ability to gather together with the saints on the Lord's day, uh, is dependent upon your having transportation and you're not going to be allowed to have it.

That's just, that's what these people are saying. You're not going to have it. We will not allow internal combustion engines. First of all, the combustion engines we have today. I wasn't going to talk about this, but real quick, the combustion engines we have today are so much cleaner.

And in comparison to what China puts out, we are a minor player on the stage. So switching us all over to EVs in the United States, if that could even be done, and it can't, we can't recharge them. We can't build them.

We can't make enough batteries. It would just destroy South and Central America to make that many batteries, just environmentally speaking. Um, there's just, it's absurd. The facts are against it. 1000%.

But Biden and his cronies or whoever it is that controls him and drugs him up and brought us him out and makes him say things. Um, they don't care that that's irrelevant. Um, they will always have transportation.

You don't have to have it because you don't have to have freedom. They will have freedom. They will have liberty. You will not. That's what these people are all about. And it's, it's just so obvious. I sometimes sit here and go, you can't see this.

And funny thing is my wife, my wife gets very, very perturbed and very, very upset when we start talking about this stuff because she's like, why are people so dumb? It's like, I don't know. But anyway, all that stuff, uh, all the, all the EV stuff, um, we are well past the carbon dioxide level where carbon dioxide can cause any temperature variation whatsoever.

We're well past it. Um, and I've said, I've said long, long time ago, I told a story on this program. I was in church history class in seminary when my seminary professor pointed out, he said, by the way, it's just really obvious.

The earth used to be considerably warmer than it is now. And I'm like, and he's like, uh, yeah, I mean, uh, there are all sorts, there's all sorts of evidence of like vineyards or there are places in Scotland named after vineyards.

You can't have, you can't have that in Scotland today. It's too cold. And the reality is in the, uh, 12th century, it was considerably warmer than it is now. And you know what the result was? More food and more people, more food and more people.

And then it reversed. Did that have anything to do with mankind that have anything to do with SUVs? No, had nothing to do with it at all. It has to do with solar cycles and solar activity. That's, that's the big glowing ball in the sky.

It shoot stuff at us and it make us warm. So, so you have what's called the Maunder minimum. It's, it's a part of the cycle of the sun. And once it started cooling off, guess what, guess what the result that was the plague, the plague hits and you have a massive contraction in human population in a short period of time.

But plants love CO2. It's that's plant food, man. And as far as a gas that controls temperature, it's, we are past where it has any relevant impact any longer. It doesn't matter, but they're all over it because it works.

They've used public education to turn people into zombies. They just believe it because they've every teacher they've ever had has been scared to death, uh, about, you know, what we've only got, what about nine years left, according to AOC, uh, how long we have left depends on AOC political future.

That's what, oh, Al Gore is Al Gore. No one talks rich. Come on. No one talks about Al Gore anymore. Every single prediction he made tanked and everybody knows it, but he's still got the Nobel peace prize.

So there you go. Yeah, it's 2 .0. Does anyone talk about windows 1 .0 anymore? No, get with the program. Come on. Yeesh. So anyway, all of this to completely control you to completely determine what you'll eat, what you wear, what you think, uh, the entire social credit score, uh, system is the, it is ab it is slavery writ large and you had to prepare people to willingly vote for slavery.

You had to do it and they did it. They've been doing it for decades and doing it for decades. You just turn people into a bunch of status. You want, you want, uh, it's not getting into that. Um, yeah, I know we're on the border of being able to post to YouTube.

Yeah, I'm aware of that. Um, but anyways, look it up. Uh, look up cauldron pool. If you don't follow cauldron pool on Twitter, do that. They're great folks down there. Uh, but you can, you can just see, um, 6 ,659, uh, in, um, in, uh, 20, uh, 20 is 22 ,695.

So what did Australians just simply forget how to have marital relations? Don't think so. Don't think so. Um, we will, we will see what will come of that. Okay. Um, thanks to Chris, um, with a K, uh, K Dub true at K Dub true on Twitter.

He posted, he posted this video. Um, and I need, I forgot to send it back to the proper, there we go. Should work now. Um, post this video and said, wow, lol, so profound. Well, guys pack it up. Christianity has taken its death blow.

And, um, it's this really sharp looking young lady, uh, doing one of those in the car, uh, routines, you know, where you record stuff. And, um, so I just, are you ready? You ready? This, this is sort of a quiz.

How would you respond to a person making this objection to Christianity? And the problem is most of us have never heard this kind of objection before. And as a result, your natural reaction is that's just dumb, but you have to explain why it's dumb without just going.

It's dumb. And then maybe have a positive direction to go or something maybe for this poor person, because she obviously thinks that it's just really bright, but here, here it is. I hope it works because it's been sitting here a while.

And sometimes in Twitter stuff stops working. It's only 15 seconds long. So we'll find out soon enough. Well, I'm not going to try. I'm not going to slide over here. Audio is all that matters.

So here you go. Okay. Okay. So this losing my religion trend has got me on one. Y 'all mean to tell me that these disciples in the middle East were named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Nah,.

Make it make sense. Make it make. So see now rich, rich had the exact response that we all have. And it's just like, really you, you, you think this is a good argument. Okay. I, I get it. I get it. We all struggle with that.

That doesn't change the fact that you have to answer the question because in her publicly educated mind the names of the disciples were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. She does not understand that those are the English versions of Matthias and Ioannes and Marcus and Lucas and so on and so forth.

And those are even the Greek versions of probably the Aramaic Hebrew versions of the names before that. So a lot of people really struggle because sadly, the vast, vast, vast majority of Americans are monolingual.

Only speak, only speak English. I've never translated another language into English. Hence they don't know anything about, you know, the, the difference between names and how names come across differently in different languages and things like that.

Nothing like that. So what could you do for someone like this who is actually really confused, really doesn't get it? I mean, those sound like English names to me. So how could they have come from the Middle East?

So what you might do after explaining, well, those, those are English translations of the original Greek names, which themselves are translations of the Aramaic or Hebrew names themselves. So for example, James is actually Jacob.

And it's even Jacob in Greek, things like that. So you can, you can point out the language issue. And then what can you do? Well, my suggestion would be to go, well, you know, what's, not only is that why they have those forms, but you know, what's really interesting.

The Israelis are really good at keeping records. And in Israel, this is what I would do. This is how I would do it. And if you've been to Israel, you, you can do the same thing. Cause you've seen the same, same stuff I did.

The one time I got to go, thank God for that one time. And I do mean, thank you God for that one time. For example, when I, when I visited the synagogue in Migdal, the first century synagogue in Migdal, which probably that there's a 99 chance Jesus taught in that seminary, seminary, in that synagogue because Mary Magdalene, Mary of Migdal, you know, he went around Galilee.

And once you start walking around Galilee, you realize Galilee is not that big. That was the one thing that hit me like a ton of bricks. In 2018, we visited Israel. Was it, you, I stood on the seashore at Capernaum and I can see the shore on the other side of the lake.

Now it's way off there. It's a big lake, but they first took us up on a, on a mountain next to the lake. Let's just see the whole thing. Israel is so small. And so when we visited that, you walk underneath a hotel because see, every time they try to build something in that area, as they're digging the foundations, you know what happens?

They run into something that's extremely archeologically significant. And so they have to redraw all the plans and build the building around whatever it is they found. And that's what happened here. You literally walk under this hotel to visit this synagogue.

And so they have been collecting, the Israelis have been collecting, you know, pottery sherds and any type of documentation and especially bone boxes, bone boxes. And they all go to a central area and they all get cataloged.

And eventually it's all put into a computer. And you know what they've discovered from that? They now have a list of the most popular names given. So, so they have, you can, you can say, what were the most popular names in the first century in Galilee, the second century, first century BC, and you've got entire databases.

And what's fascinating is when you look at the names in the New Testament, they track the data from the computers perfectly. People have noticed, and it's been a point of criticism, there are a lot of Marys in the New Testament.

And it creates confusion because you got Mary from here and Mary from there and the first Mary and the second Mary, and there's three different Marys over here. And, and, and some people have said, man, couldn't the authors have come up with some other names?

Well, not if you're actually reflecting the people who lived. And what was the most popular woman's name in first century Israel? Mary. It was so popular that there would have been times when you could have yelled out in a city street in Jerusalem, Mary, about 40 of the women would turn around and look at you.

So the point being, here's someone making an objection. And they're going, these are English names. Well, actually those are just the English translations of Miriam. But what's interesting is since you brought up the issue of names, the New Testament authors, when they talk about the stories of Jesus, get the names exactly the way that the archaeologists have discovered the names existed at that time in that place.

And if, if the New Testament was actually written by people later on, how would they have known that? If New Testament was written in Rome, how could someone in Rome who hasn't been to Israel have gotten the names right?

The locations right? How many porticos in pools in Jerusalem? I mean, there's just so much evidence like that, that demonstrates that these documents actually are what they claim to be. That does not make them inspired.

It does make them what they claimed to be and coming from the timeframe they claimed to come from. So that would be my suggestion as to how you might respond to someone in that context. Because yeah, when you first hear it, you're just sort of like, wow, really?

It's just one of those many things you see on the internet every day. It just makes you shake your head. But it's nice to be able to turn around and go, Hey, let's, let's actually think about that because that actually, you know, doesn't work that way.

And so yeah, that's something I would suggest everybody to do. And there you go. Okay. I have been a few days away from getting back to this and I apologize. And again, it is useful. Please don't just automatically bail when I start reviewing an article or something like that.

Because we're going to have a lot more to say in the future about reformed biblicism, faithful hermeneutics, grounding the people of God in God's truth without directing their hearts and minds outside of scripture to that, which is not inspired as if that's required.

I mean, there are so many people today saying, for example, that if we are going to understand the Christian God, you must understand Aristotelian principles. You must have Aristotle. You must have Aristotle.

And remember, Aristotle's long before the New Testament. So the New Testament writers, if they had thought we needed Aristotle, they could have given us they didn't. We are, at Alpha Omega Ministries, very concerned about the degradation of the downgrade that is taking place amongst Reformed evangelicals in regards to the sufficiency, inspiration, and ultimate authority of scripture.

And so a couple programs ago I began, well, I responded to, started responding to some articles posted by Baptist Dogmatics. And this, the second of the articles, I think was posted October 21st. So yeah, it has been a little while.

And I started, I responded to the first, pointed out the problems with it, misrepresentation. And then I pointed out that all of this, shockingly, honestly, to me, given there's an entire chapter on the Holy Spirit in the Forgotten Trinity, we, this is all written in response to an article that I put on our microblog where I basically said, this is too long for a Twitter thread.

And so we're gonna put it, I'm gonna just put it in here. So it's clearly, you know, it was much, much smaller than any one of any one of the four or five, I think they said there would be five articles.

I've only seen four so far, articles that have been put up. And what's amazing is I was talking about Matthew 24, 36, and I said, quote, I put in parentheses, parenthesis, bracket, there is no reference to the Holy Spirit and bringing the Spirit into the text is invalid.

Likewise, on a basic theological level, we must affirm in any context that the Spirit searches all things, even deep things of God, 1 Corinthians 2 .10, and that since the day and the hour is part of the divine decree from eternity past, Father and Son and Spirit fully know that day and hour, all is have and all is will.

We confuse exegesis with theological formulation. When we skip the one step just to get to the next. So there is a difference between exegesis and theological formulation where you take the results of your exegesis and given faith in the consistency of scripture, which is not overly common today, but those of us who are believers do this, we create our theological systems based on what scripture teaches.

And so that was all I said. And so what I said was, there is a reference to the Holy Spirit and this isn't a text that addresses that issue. Okay? So that's all I said. That was all that was said about the Holy Spirit.

And yet this entire thing is focused on two sentences. No, three. Three sentences. Just three sentences. Okay. Well, all right. So I quote what I said and now quoting from the article, let it be said that we agree with and appreciate White's statement that the Spirit fully knows the day and the hour as well as the assertion that he always has and always will.

We find this to be clearer than his statements made elsewhere. Then there is a link to a YouTube video. I followed the link. It says around 117 colon 30 mark. There's nothing at 107. There isn't even 117, 30.

I don't even know what it means. It's an invalid reference. So I can't respond to that because it was, it was not provided in a meaningful fashion. We continue. However, we believe that greater clarity can be achieved by a clearer articulation of the word alone.

While the Spirit remains unnamed in the text, it is not invalid to ask whether or not the Spirit knows the day or the hour based on Jesus's word choice. Now watch, I want you to hear this. While the Spirit remains unnamed in the text, it is not invalid to ask whether or not the Spirit knows the day or the hour based on Jesus's word choice.

This is what, this is, if you remember back, they were saying there is a form of exegesis that gives us access to the mind of God. And so what I was hoping for was, okay, how does that work? I'd like to, I'd like to see specific rules for identifying the mind of God in your exegesis.

And so, you know, and I say this, I retweeted this morning, Dr. Klassen, Klassen, sorry, at Masters has been posting stuff on exegesis. Did I keep that? That's still one problem with trying to keep it as in an exegesis.

No, I didn't. I must have closed it. Wait a minute, it's still up at the top. So this was, this was, like this morning there was a section on, actually posted November 5th, so Saturday, from Calvin's introduction to his commentary on Romans in 1539 and his discussion of the need for the interpreter to understand what the writer intended to communicate.

And this is what makes, you know, I said to another thread today, this is what makes Calvin so useful. And my, my, my go-to commentary, if I want to look at something, something quickly, I'm going to look at what Calvin had to say, because Calvin's going to get straight to it.

He's going to deal with it in context. He's going to deal with what the author's saying. And unlike a vast majority of stuff that's written today, I'm not going to have to dig through three pages of irrelevant stuff about current controversies and stuff like that to get to what the text is actually saying.

And this was something he was evidently convinced of very early on, because, I mean, it was published in 1540. And so Calvin is a relatively young man. And that's what is amazing, given the kind of interpretation he would have been exposed to out of the medieval period, which again, allegorical, origin, multiple meanings, great tradition exegesis, you know, all this kind of stuff.

And Calvin comes along and says, let's actually talk about what the Bible actually says and does it. And it's, so it's relevant, extremely relevant to where we are, where we are today. So we have a situation here where I have said Matthew 24 -36 is not where you go to find out what the Holy Spirit does or does not know, because the Holy Spirit's not mentioned.

Now, after you deal with the meaning of Matthew 24 -36, then you can ask theological questions and say, is this text relevant to an overall question? But that is, as I put it, that is your theological formulation.

That's not exegesis. That's dealing with the results of exegesis and coming up with theological formulation. But when you confuse those things, this is what you get. So, you actually end up finding out whether or not the Spirit knows the day or the hour based on Jesus' word choice.

Not by anything in the context, but by word choice. In other words, in order to determine the meaning of alone, one must engage in dogmatic reasoning. So, if I say to my grandkids, because she won the spelling bee, Clementine alone is going to get to go with Nani and I to Peter Piper Pizza.

That term alone would be defined by the context of who was involved in the spelling bee. And since my grandkids are homeschooled, that could be just the rest of the grandkids, it could be part of the homeschool co-op.

It would depend on what the context was. But now we're being told that we can determine what my granddaughter Cadence's understanding of geometry is by the word choice that I made. Okay? So, dogmatic reasoning.

Now, just telling you, my understanding of this means you go get your theology and you back into the text. You are supposed to get your theology out of the text, but now we're going to have it over here someplace, not sure how we got it, because whatever text you're in now.

And see, I've dealt with this with Roman Catholics and anti-Trinitarian Unitarians and all sorts of religions that I've dealt with over the years that will bring their conclusions in and plop them into the text and say, there it is.

And I have to go, no, it's not. And so when my Reformed Baptist brothers do the same thing, I have to go, you can't do that. And if I get canceled for that, fine. But the reality is if anyone takes this stuff and tries to take it again outside of the narrow confines of our discussions, once you are debating someone who's doing the exact same thing, but drawing from a different theological set, you're going to go, oh, ah, hmm, what do we do now?

Good question. Back to exegesis. Okay. Does alone mean the Father exclusively as a person of the Godhead? Now, remember, in the original text, we have no man knows, not the angels of heaven, neither the Son, but the Father alone.

That's the extent of the discussion in Matthew chapter 24. So there's your data set. If you want to expand the data set out from there, you're going to have to give us a, well, again, in the old days, you'd have to explain what in Matthew chapter 24 gives you a warrant for doing that.

Once you embrace this idea, you don't need a warrant in Matthew chapter 24 because what Matthew chapter 24 is saying isn't really the issue. It's what your dogmatic theology says that is the issue. And then what that means you're going to do with Matthew 24.

Does alone mean the Father exclusively as a person of the Godhead or does alone include the Spirit? Or must we remain agnostic since the text does not name the Spirit? Agnostic is a fascinating way of putting it, I would say.

Or do we allow the text to define its own parameters rather than trying to insert something from outside? How does 1 Corinthians 2 .10 bear upon Matthew 24 .36? It doesn't, except in theological formulation, which comes after exegesis.

That's in my three-sentence summary of just throwing it out there as a tweet, part of a tweet, I specifically did that. That's our theological formulation. Is it allowed to inform our reading of Matthew 24 .36?

It's allowed to inform any conclusions that we come to in regards to the theological issues raised by Matthew 24 .36. But that's not exegesis. Matthew was not trying to tell us about the Holy Spirit. And see, as soon as I say that, people go, you don't know what Matthew is trying to do.

And it's like, okay, prove it. There's the words, prove it. Don't just speculate, prove it. This speculative theological stuff, right. Oh, Rich is saying that argument goes both ways. They don't know.

But when you claim to know God's mind on the basis of a formulated theology, then there you go. And I go, but once we take that formulated theology out into the world and try to present to other people, it has to have a foundation.

And the foundation is what? And the other people are going to recognize you people are arguing in circles. You do realize that. You can't complain about us when you're doing it yourself. And it's like, yeah, I know.

That's why I don't do that. Okay. These questions are neither invalid nor an imposition on the text. They're both. Rather, they are questions that seek to discern the meaning contained within the text, enabling greater precision and fuller answers more suited to the organic nature of theology.

Okay. Again, I've heard this a thousand times before from people who have all sorts of forms of authority that they're bringing in and placing upon the text. And you may have all of the great desires in the world to have a good, sound, systematic theology, but the question that we are facing amongst Reformed men today is, what is the foundation?

What is the basis? And you seem really frustrated, Mr. Pierce.

Well, I'm going to let you finish drinking before I say this.

Hey, it just gives me an opportunity to whet the whistle, man.

I hear them saying, but Jesus wasn't specific enough. They're interrogating the text. They're looking to extrapolate the text, and they're looking for information that isn't there, and they're frustrated that it's not there.

And they want it to be there, so they're going to basically extrapolate it from the text. And therefore,.

They're not extrapolating from the text. No, they're extrapolating from their theological system.

Yeah, exactly. But the argument is, Jesus wasn't specific enough, and that's your fault.

No, they're actually going to say that Jesus was functioning on their theological system, and therefore, he did answer the question, if you just start with their fully formed theological system. We'll get to it.

Turn the thing on its head and start from there.

Yeah, so here's the idea. Enabling greater precision and fuller answers more suited to the organic nature of theology. The only theology that the Spirit of God will write upon the hearts of the sheep of Christ is a theology that is derived from and organically derived from the words of Scripture handled with respect.

And I don't believe that taking our theological system, and I would say these men have a wonderful theological system, and then reading that back in to the text so that Matthew 24, 36 now addresses subjects it was never intended to address.

And he's going to quote from Gill and others who are going to pull it in there. Okay, fine. I've always objected to that. But even they are fundamentally saying there is we're now going to talk about fully formed theology.

So how do we make the possible interpretations of this verse and the possible interpretations of this verse, how do we put them together in a coherent theological statement? Now, like 1 Corinthians 2 .10, there's not nearly as much difficulty with that text you have in Matthew 24, 36.

It's a tough text. We've said that over and over again. And you can't make tough texts easier by simply theologizing them away. People will be able to discern that. They'll detect that. So we go on. We are not the first to raise these questions and attempt to arrive at clear exegetical and theological answers.

Exegetical and theological are not the same things. John Gill commenting on this text reasons that it excludes all creatures but excludes neither Christ according to his divine nature nor the Spirit. He contends that Christ's ignorance refers to his humility I'm sorry, his humanity and also affirms the Spirit is not excluded by Jesus' words.

Of the phrase, but the Father alone, Gill writes, to the exclusion of all creatures, angels and men, but not to the exclusion of Christ as God, who as such is omniscient, nor of the Holy Spirit who is acquainted with the deep things of God, the secrets of his heart, and this among others.

This is theologizing. This is not exegesis. It's theologizing. It's not exegesis. If you can't tell the difference, and it's perfectly fine to do theologizing, but you have to know the difference between your theologizing and your actually handling the text because there's nothing in the text that says all these things.

And again, I know you guys don't seem to do this very much, but this will become clear to you if you get out of the bubbles and start interacting with people outside the Christian faith that have their own text of scripture.

So, for example, if you just want an illustration of this, a number of years ago in London, I debated Bassam Zawadi on whether the Quran misrepresents the Christian scriptures in the Doctrine of Trinity.