Australian Birth Crash, Gospel Names, Exegesis and Theology

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:33

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

00:44

Thursday, Friday, Saturday with Apologia Church, and so got to move things forward just a little bit.

00:52

I have a lot to address just within the past hour. I saw a tweet from the

00:59

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.

01:17

I guess there's brand new abortion law, horrific abortion law in New Zealand as well.

01:24

They really have a tin -pot dictator in New Zealand. Sorry, I realize you

01:29

Kiwis have been down there, and you have this amazing attitude toward your government, and as a result, you're being enslaved, and it's like, okay, that's fine with me.

01:44

It's like, grow a backbone, guys. Come on. You know, you've got to you know, you've got the all -blacks, but there was about the only men left.

01:55

Come on, don't you see what's going on? It's astonishing. Anyway, the

02:00

Cauldron Pool posted live births in Australia, and remember,

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Australia doesn't have nearly the population we do, so they're a little bit better at keeping track of such things.

02:18

It's interesting that you look at the numbers, and for December from 2015 to 2020,

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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.

02:55

So nine months later, approximately. Well, yeah, actually, you look at it.

03:02

It starts in November. So the November average is about the same. 23 ,000 to 24 ,000.

03:09

18 ,186. And October was 23 ,000, but the

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December number, the December number, 6 ,659.

03:25

70 % drop. What do you...

03:36

I see something like that, and I go, I wonder if there's gonna be a follow -up later on. Maybe there's, you know, who knows what you can trust these days.

03:48

But I can't help. Sorry. This is my son -in -law Eric's fault, okay?

03:55

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.

04:08

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.

04:29

Then it had Stargate SG -1, we're here to destroy your idols. And, I'm, look,

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I was around back when SG -1 was, Stargate SG -1 was on, was airing, but it was on cable, and we didn't have cable.

04:49

We were really late to the cable game, and now, you know, we have these subscriptions to things, we can never find anything.

04:57

It's just, there's a lot of older folks sitting around in the living rooms going, well, search, honey, search, no, go up there, see that little

05:08

Mac, search up. Rich is busy with something else.

05:15

He's just completely ignoring me. He doesn't, he doesn't care. Yeah, hey, well, okay, fine.

05:21

Anyway, so I started watching SG -1. And I'm really enjoying it.

05:27

I'm in season five. I do it while, you know, riding or something like that. And there's been some classics.

05:35

I mean, there's a, there's one classic scene in SG -1 that's, that's as good as the

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Troubles, the Trouble for, Trouble Troubles on Star Trek. It really, it really, really was good.

05:47

It's just great. But anyway, sorry, what it reminded me of was, there's this race,

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I forget what their name is. So far in my watching, they've run into him twice, but it was a time thing.

06:00

So they don't know they've run into him twice. But anyway, they, they befriend us and they come along and they have a vaccine for us that doubles the human lifespan.

06:18

Doubles? And there's only one thing. They discover that it also destroys fertility.

06:27

It makes you infertile. It makes you sterile. And I can't help, this was,

06:35

I think that first episode with them aired like about 2001, 2002.

06:41

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

06:48

Well, see, we've got Twitch here. Yeah. And there is no audience that we have that is more in tune with what you're talking about right now.

06:56

So I've been told to inform you that they were called the Aschen? Yes. Yes.

07:04

Not sure if it was quite pronounced that way, but yes. Well, Aschen or something like that.

07:12

Yeah, they were not, they were, see, the lead guy for SG1 just saw through them from the start.

07:20

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.

07:27

Richard Dean Anderson had quite the sense of humor in this. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Well, you're right.

07:33

Yeah. Well, thank you very much for that. See that people on Twitch play video games and watch sci -fi.

07:40

There you go. So that's, that's how it works. That's fine. Whatever. I couldn't help but think about it because if you go read

07:50

This Perfect Day, exact same thing, exact same thing.

07:57

And then I sit here and look over here and I'm just looking at the numbers. And if these numbers are correct, wow.

08:06

And then you look at the people meeting wherever it is they're meeting today, you know, the global climate zombies.

08:16

We're going to have to, you know, I did something on climate years ago because I have a science background and there are a few things that are that are less scientific.

08:28

I saw I wish I had grabbed it. I hope I can find it again. But I saw a graph on the data reported from a particular island.

08:41

And it showed the actual data. And then it showed the national data, which showed a slight warming trend, and then showed the

08:50

NASA version of it, which was this this huge straight up stuff.

08:58

I would think Christians especially would recognize that when you when you throw money at science, it's going to cause twisted results.

09:14

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.

09:29

The fact that the current president says, No more drilling, no more drilling. We'll ask

09:36

Venezuela to drill and we'll ask, we'll let the people down in South America destroy their entire environment down there.

09:43

We don't care. As long as we can keep getting elected to do more, no more drilling.

09:49

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.

09:59

You know, if I lived in London, I can get around London without a personal vehicle.

10:04

Yeah. But the vast majority of humanity doesn't live in London, or Singapore or places like that.

10:11

You live in places where your freedom, your ability to gather together with the saints on the

10:18

Lord's Day is dependent upon your having transportation, and you're not gonna be allowed to have it.

10:26

That's just that that's what these people are saying. You're not gonna have it. We will not allow internal combustion engines.

10:32

First of all, the combustion engines we have that I wasn't gonna talk about this, but real quick, the combustion engines we have today are so much cleaner.

10:40

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

10:48

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 destroy

10:56

South and Central America to make that many batteries, just environmentally speaking. There's just it's absurd.

11:03

The facts are against it 1000%. But Biden and his cronies or whoever it is that controls him and drugs him up and brought him out makes him say things.

11:14

Um, they don't care. That's irrelevant. They will always have transportation.

11:20

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.

11:27

And it's it's just so obvious. I sometimes sit here and go, you can't see this.

11:33

And funny thing is my wife, my wife gets very, very perturbed and very, very upset.

11:41

When we start talking about this stuff, because she's like, why are people so dumb?

11:48

It's something I don't know. But anyway, all that stuff, all the all the

11:54

EV stuff. We are well past the carbon dioxide level, where carbon dioxide can cause any temperature variation whatsoever.

12:05

We're well past it. And I've said, I've said long, long time ago,

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I told a story on this program. I was in church history class in seminary.

12:18

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.

12:26

And I'm like, and he's like, yeah, I mean, there are all sorts, there's all sorts of evidence of like vineyards or their places in Scotland, named after vineyards.

12:40

You can't have you can't have that in Scotland today, it's too cold. And the reality is in the 12th century, it was considerably warmer than it is now.

12:51

And you know what the result was? More food, more people. More food and more people. And then it reversed.

13:00

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.

13:08

That's, that's the big glowing ball in the sky. It shoot stuff at us and it make us warm.

13:19

So, so you have what's called the Maunder Minimum. It's a part of the cycle of the sun.

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And once it started cooling off, guess what, guess what the result that was? The plague.

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The plague hits, and you have a massive contraction in human population in a short period of time.

13:40

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.

13:55

It doesn't matter. But they're all over it because it works.

14:01

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

14:16

How long we have left depends on AOC's political future. Oh, Al Gore is

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Al Gore. No one talks. Rich, come on. No one talks about Al Gore anymore.

14:31

Every single prediction he made tanked and everybody knows it, but he still got the Nobel Peace Prize.

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So there you go. Yeah, it's 2 .0. Does anyone talk about Windows 1 .0

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anymore? No. Get with the program. Come on. Yeesh.

14:50

So anyway, all of this to completely control you, to completely determine what you'll eat, what you wear, what you think, the entire social credit score system, it is slavery writ large.

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And you had to prepare people to willingly vote for slavery. You had to do it.

15:15

And they did it. They've been doing it for decades. They've been doing it for decades. You just turn people into a bunch of statists.

15:24

It's not getting to that. Yeah, I know we're on the border of being able to post to YouTube.

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Yeah, I'm aware of that. But anyways, look it up. Look up Cauldron Pool.

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If you don't follow Cauldron Pool on Twitter, do that. They're great folks down there. But you can just see.

15:44

6 ,659 in 2020 is 22 ,695.

15:55

So what, did Australians just simply forget how to have marital relations?

16:05

Don't think so. Don't think so. We will see what will come of that.

16:10

Okay, thanks to Chris, with a

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K, Kdubtrue, at Kdubtrue on Twitter.

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He posted this video, and I need, I forgot to send it back to the proper, there we go, should work now.

16:33

Posted this video and said, lol, so profound. Welp guys, pack it up.

16:39

Christianity has taken its death blow. And it's this really sharp looking young lady doing one of those in the car routines, you know, where you record stuff.

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And so I just, are you ready? This is sort of a quiz.

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How would you respond to a person making this objection to Christianity?

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And the problem is, most of us have never heard this kind of objection before.

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And as a result, your natural reaction is, that's just dumb.

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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.

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Because she obviously thinks that it's just really bright, but here it is.

17:44

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.

17:53

Well, I'm not going to slide it over here. Audio is all that matters, so here you go. Okay, okay, so this losing my religion trend has got me on one.

18:02

Y 'all mean to tell me that these disciples in the Middle East were named

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Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? Nah, make it make sense, make it make - Okay, I get it.

18:34

I get it. We all struggle with that. That doesn't change the fact that you have to answer the question.

18:40

Because in her publicly educated mind, the names of the disciples were

18:49

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.

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And those are even the Greek versions of probably the Aramaic Hebrew versions of the names before that.

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So a lot of people really struggle, because sadly, the vast, vast, vast majority of Americans are monolingual.

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

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Nothing like that. So what could you do for someone like this, who is actually really confused?

19:51

Really doesn't get it. I mean, those sound like English names to me, so how could they have come from the

19:57

Middle East? So what you might do after explaining, well, those are

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English translations of the original Greek names, which themselves are translations of the

20:13

Aramaic or Hebrew names themselves. So for example,

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James is actually Jacob, and it's even

20:25

Jacob in Greek. Things like that. So you can point out the language issue, and then what can you do?

20:34

Well, my suggestion would be to go, well, you know what? Not only is that why they have those forms, but you know what's really interesting?

20:45

The Israelis are really good at keeping records. And in Israel, this is what

20:53

I would do. This is how I would do it. And if you've been to Israel, you can do the same thing because you've seen the same stuff

20:58

I did. The one time I got to go, thank God for that one time. And I do mean thank you,

21:05

God, for that one time. For example, when I visited the synagogue in Migdal, the first century synagogue in Migdal, which probably there's a 99 % chance

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Jesus taught in that synagogue because Mary Magdalene, Mary of Migdal, He went around Galilee, and once you start walking around Galilee, you realize

21:36

Galilee is not that big. That was the one thing that hit me like a ton of bricks in 2018 when we visited

21:44

Israel. I stood on the seashore at Capernaum, and I can see the shore on the other side of the lake.

21:58

Now, it's way off there. It's a big lake, but they first took us up on a mountain next to the lake.

22:08

Let's just see the whole thing. Israel is so small. And so, when we visited that, you walk underneath a hotel.

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Because see, every time they try to build something in that area, as they're digging the foundations, you know what happens?

22:30

They run into something that's extremely archaeologically significant. And so, they have to redraw all the plans and build the building around whatever it is they found.

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And that's what happened here. You literally walk under this hotel to visit this synagogue.

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And so, they have been collecting, the

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Israelis have been collecting pottery sherds and any type of documentation, and especially bone boxes.

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Bone boxes. And they all go to a central area, and they all get cataloged, and eventually it's all put into a computer.

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And you know what they've discovered from that? They now have a list of the most popular names.

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You can say, what were the most popular names in the first century in Galilee?

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The second century? First century BC? And you've got entire databases.

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And what's fascinating is, when you look at the names in the

23:51

New Testament, they track the data from the computers perfectly.

23:59

People have noticed, and it's been a point of criticism, there are a lot of Marys in the

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New Testament. And it creates confusion. Because you've got Mary from here, and Mary from there, and the first Mary, and the second

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Mary, and there's three different Marys over here. And some people have said, man, couldn't the authors have come up with some other names?

24:24

Well, not if you're actually reflecting the people who lived. And what was the most popular woman's name in first century

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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!

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About 40 % of the women would have turned around and looked at you. So the point being, here's someone making an objection.

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And they're going, what the heck? These are English names! Well, actually, those are just English translations of Miriam.

25:10

But what's interesting is, since you brought up the issue of names, the

25:16

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.

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And if the New Testament was actually written by people later on, how would they have known that? If the

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New Testament was written in Rome, how could someone in Rome who hasn't been to Israel have gotten the names right?

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The locations right? How many porticos in pools in Jerusalem?

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I mean, there's just so much evidence like that, that demonstrates that these documents actually are what they claim to be.

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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.

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So that would be my suggestion as to how you might respond to someone in that context.

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Because yeah, when you first hear it, you're just sort of like, wow, really?

26:28

It's just one of those many things you see on the internet every day. It just makes you shake your head.

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But it's nice to be able to turn around and go, hey, let's actually think about that because that actually doesn't work that way.

26:45

And so yeah, that's something I would suggest everybody to do. And there you go. Okay.

26:53

I have been a few days away from getting back to this and I apologize.

27:01

And again, it is useful. Please don't just automatically bail when I start reviewing an article or something like that.

27:07

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.

27:31

I mean, there are so many people today saying, for example, that if we are going to understand the

27:38

Christian God, you must understand Aristotelian principles. You must have

27:43

Aristotle. You must have Aristotle. And remember,

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Aristotle's long before the New Testament. So the New Testament writers, if they had thought we needed

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Aristotle, they could have given us Aristotle, but they didn't. We are, at Alpha Omega Ministries, very concerned about the degradation of the downgrade that is taking place amongst

28:20

Reformed evangelicals in regards to the sufficiency, inspiration, and ultimate authority of scripture.

28:26

And so, a couple programs ago, I began, well, I responded to, started responding to some articles posted by Baptist Dogmatics.

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And this, the second of the articles, I think was posted October 21st.

28:48

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

28:58

I pointed out that all of this, shockingly, honestly to me, given there's an entire chapter on the

29:04

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

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Twitter thread. And so we're going to put it, I'm going to just put it in here.

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So it's clearly, you know, it was much, much smaller than any one of the four or five,

29:35

I think they said there would be five articles. I've only seen four so far, articles that have been put up.

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And what's amazing is, I was talking about Matthew 24, 36, and I said, quote,

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I put in parentheses, parenthesis, bracket, there is no reference to the Holy Spirit and bringing the

29:58

Spirit into the text is invalid. Likewise, on a basic theological level, we must affirm in any context that the

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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,

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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.

30:26

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

30:49

Scripture teaches. And so, that was all I said. And so what

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I said was, there is a reference to the

31:00

Holy Spirit and this isn't a text that addresses that issue. Okay?

31:07

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.

31:19

No, three. Three sentences. Just three sentences.

31:25

Okay, well, alright. So, I quote what

31:31

I said, and now quoting from the article. So, let it be said that we agree with and appreciate

31:39

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 than there is a link to a

31:49

YouTube video. I followed the link. It says around 117 colon 30 mark.

31:56

There's nothing at 117. 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 not provided in a meaningful fashion.

32:08

We continue. However, we believe that greater clarity can be achieved by a clearer articulation of the word alone.

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While the Spirit remains unnamed in the text, it is not invalid to ask whether or not the

32:25

Spirit knows the day or the hour based on Jesus' word choice.

32:31

Now, I want you to hear this. While the

32:37

Spirit remains unnamed in the text, it is not invalid to ask whether or not the

32:43

Spirit knows the day or the hour based on Jesus' word choice. If you remember back, they were saying there is a form of exegesis that gives us access to the mind of God.

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And so what I was hoping for was, okay, how does that work? I'd like to see the specific rules for identifying the mind of God in your exegesis.

33:14

And so, and I say this, I retweeted this morning,

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Dr. Klassen at Masters has been posting stuff on exegesis.

33:30

Did I keep that? That's still one problem with trying to keep it as in.

33:38

No, I didn't. I must have closed it. Wait a minute, it's still up at the top.

33:48

So, this was, like this morning there was a section on, actually posted

34:00

November 5th, so Saturday, from Calvin's introduction to his

34:06

Commentary on Romans in 1539 and his discussion of the need for the interpreter to understand what the writer intended to communicate.

34:22

And this is what makes, you know, I said to another thread today, this is what makes

34:29

Calvin so useful. And my go -to commentary, if I want to look at something quickly,

34:38

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 is saying.

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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.

34:59

And this was something he was evidently convinced of very early on because, I mean, it was published in 1540.

35:08

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.

35:36

And Calvin comes along and says, let's actually talk about what the Bible actually says, and does it.

35:41

And it's, so it's relevant, extremely relevant to where we are today.

35:48

So, we have a situation here where I have said Matthew 24 -36 is not where you go to find out what the

35:56

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?

36:13

But that is, as I put it, that is your theological formulation. That's not exegesis.

36:19

That's dealing with the results of exegesis and coming up with theological formulation.

36:29

But when you confuse those things, this is what you get. So, you actually end up finding out whether or not the

36:40

Spirit knows the day or the hour based on Jesus' word choice. Not by anything in the context, but by word choice.

36:50

In other words, in order to determine the meaning of alone, one must engage in dogmatic reasoning.

36:57

So, if I say to my grandkids, because she won the spelling bee,

37:12

Clementine alone is going to get to go with Nani and I to Peter Piper Pizza.

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That term alone would be defined by the context of who was involved in the spelling bee.

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And since my grandkids are homeschooled, that could be just the rest of the grandkids, it could be part of the homeschool co -op.

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It would sort of depend on what the context was. But now we're being told that we can determine what my granddaughter

37:53

Cadence's understanding of geometry is by the word choice that I made.

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So, dogmatic reasoning. Now, just telling you, my understanding of this means you go get your theology and you back into the text.

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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,

38:30

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.

38:52

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, hmm, what do we do now?

39:26

Good question. Back to exegesis. Okay, does alone mean the

39:37

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

39:48

Son, but the Father alone. That's the extent of the discussion in Matthew chapter 24.

39:57

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.

40:19

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.

40:26

It's what your dogmatic theology says that is the issue, and then what that means you're going to do with Matthew 24.

40:35

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

40:45

Spirit? Agnostic. It's 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?

41:00

How does 1 Corinthians 2 .10 bear upon Matthew 24 .36? It doesn't, except in theological formulation, which comes after exegesis.

41:10

That's in my three -sentence summary of just throwing it out there as a tweet, part of a tweet,

41:18

I specifically did that. That's our theological formulation. Is it allowed to inform our reading of Matthew 24 .36?

41:28

It's allowed to inform any conclusions that we come to in regards to the theological issues raised by Matthew 24 .36,

41:37

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

41:45

Matthew is trying to do. And it's like, okay, prove it.

41:52

There's the words. Prove it. Don't just speculate. Prove it.

41:58

This speculative theological stuff, right.

42:05

Oh, Rich is saying that argument goes both ways. They don't know. But when you claim to know

42:10

God's mind on the basis of a formulated theology, then there you go.

42:20

And I go, but once we take that formulated theology out into the world and try to present it to other people, it has to have a foundation.

42:27

And the foundation is what? And the other people are going to recognize, you people are arguing in circles.

42:34

You do realize that. You can't complain about us when you're doing it yourself.

42:40

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.

42:50

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.

43:04

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.

43:13

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

43:29

Reformed men today is, what is the foundation? What is the basis?

43:38

And you seem really frustrated, Mr. Pierce. Well, I'm going to let you finish drinking before I say this.

43:52

Hey, it just gives me an opportunity to whet the whistle, man. I hear them saying, but Jesus wasn't specific enough.

44:01

They're interrogating the text. They're looking to extrapolate the text. And they're looking for information that isn't there.

44:07

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.

44:13

They're not extrapolating from the text. No, they're extrapolating from their theological system. Yeah, exactly. But the argument is,

44:20

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.

44:41

We'll get to it. Turn the thing on its head and start from there. Yeah, so here's the idea.

44:48

Enabling greater precision and fuller answers more suited to the organic nature of theology.

45:00

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.

45:21

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.

45:40

And he's going to quote from Gil and others who are going to pull it in there. Okay, fine. I've always objected to that.

45:46

But even they are fundamentally saying there is, we're now going to talk about fully formed theology.

45:56

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?

46:14

Now, like 1 Corinthians 2 -10, there's not nearly as much difficulty with that text you have in Matthew 24 -36.

46:26

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.

46:36

People will be able to discern that. They'll detect that. So we go on.

46:43

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.

46:52

John Gil, commenting on this text, reasons that it excludes all creatures but excludes neither Christ, according to his divine nature, nor the

47:00

Spirit. He contends that Christ's ignorance refers to his humanity and also affirms the

47:08

Spirit is not excluded by Jesus' words. Of the phrase, but the Father alone, Gil 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

47:20

Holy Spirit, who is acquainted with the deep things of God, the secrets of his heart, and this among others. This is theologizing.

47:26

This is not exegesis. It's theologizing, 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.

47:48

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

48:02

Christian faith that have their own text of scripture.

48:10

So, for example, if you just want an illustration of this, a number of years ago in London, I debated

48:18

Bassam Zawadi on whether the Quran misrepresents the

48:23

Christian scriptures in the Doctrine of Trinity. And what was fascinating was, I provided an exegesis of Surah 5 that was actually based upon the idea that the

48:36

Quran is consistent with itself. And the argument from Bassam was, you can't do that.

48:43

There's stuff in the Quran that we can't understand. So you can't really assume that even in one single

48:49

Surah, that what is said about three up here is still going to be relevant about three down here.

48:59

So it fascinated me that it was the Muslim arguing there is incoherence in actually trying to exegete the text of the

49:08

Quran, because that's really not something that Muslims do a whole lot. But I think it's vitally important that it's the same

49:18

Surah that has the section on Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, the

49:24

Torah, the Injil, the Quran. And again,

49:29

I've gotten four or five different understandings of that section of Surah Talmaidah, Surah 5, from bright

49:40

Muslims. They can't allow the text to speak coherently for itself.

49:47

So if I'm going to use that type of argumentation and hold them to that standard,

49:52

I can't do this. I can't go there. It's just not possible to do.

50:01

And I really think if you all would do a little apologetics, get out of the neighborhood, you'd probably start coming to understand, yeah, we can't really...

50:15

We've adopted a lot of traditional stuff we do inside that we can't really do outside. And yeah, that's true.

50:24

Gil references 1 Corinthians 2 .10 and utilizes it in his interpretation, allowing him to say that creatures are excluded.

50:31

Again, his interpretation here is his theologizing outside of the direct meaning of the text.

50:38

The person of the sun is no creature, but he assumed to himself a created human nature with a finite mind.

50:45

According to his divinity, the sun eternally knows the day and the hour, and he does not set aside this knowledge during the incarnations.

50:50

That's the big thing right now. There's been lots and lots and lots of people. They've talked about veiling, which is what

50:58

I've said all along from the beginning. This is their big thing. Well, that can't happen.

51:06

At least not with knowledge. It can with glory, but evidently glory is not essential to the person of the sun in their thinking.

51:14

I don't get that part, but that's where they are.

51:21

He speaks not of his uncreated divine mind, but of his created and finite human nature. Okay, that's your theologizing.

51:28

And I've said, if that's what direction you want to go, more power to you. It's not what Matthew was talking about, but more power to you.

51:35

And if you're going to say it's what Matthew was talking about, you need to do something more than doing here. So far, this was supposed to be where we find out how to do this exegesis, where you somehow access the divine mind.

51:47

We've gotten none of that so far, but we are getting quotations from other people. From commentators.

51:53

That's not enough. Not even close to enough. Not even in the ballpark. Okay, let me just stop right there.

52:16

Love Francis Turretin, but that's not a valid use. It's not a valid use.

52:23

Why? Because again, I sit here and think, if I was trying to debate this point with a sharp person on the other side, how would

52:35

I respond? And that ruins a lot of sermons. Where I'm just sitting there listening, going,

52:45

But, in this context, no one knows the Father, save the

52:51

Son, and those to whom the Son will reveal Him. Nor does anyone know the Son. And it's a reciprocal, revelational issue based upon election.

53:01

So, that seems like a real stretch. When, in that really incredible section, called the

53:10

Gospel of John and Matthew, it's Johannine language, it's Johannine concepts, it's wonderful.

53:17

They're in Matthew 11. But in that text, it's a different context than what you have here in Matthew 24.

53:25

So, I think it's a little unfair to make the application. Anyway, the word only, therefore, does not absolutely exclude all, but those in a particular genus for whom it was better that they should not know it.

53:39

Hmm. So, there's a hiding of this knowledge. I guess it couldn't be from the

53:48

Son, but during the Incarnation. That is, men, so that they might always be prepared and watchful, lest that day should surprise them, sleeping and unprepared.

53:59

Okay. So, they go on and say,

54:04

The Spirit is not of the genus excluded by Jesus' words. Now, notice where this genus of Jesus' words has come from.

54:17

It hasn't come from Matthew. It's come from, quoting Gil and Turretin so far.

54:24

So, did anybody know this before Gil and Turretin? I mean, they're not exactly ancient church history figures.

54:31

Further, we might ask how or why the Father knows the day and the hour.

54:39

Okay. I mean, again, that's theologizing. That's not what

54:44

Jesus is attempting to communicate in Matthew 24 -36. But, if we want to go, okay, we're leaving ex -Jesus now.

54:52

We're going to theologizing. And so, why does the Father know the day and hour?

54:58

Because He said it. He set the day and the hour. I mean, isn't that Ephesians 1?

55:08

You know, election flowing from the Father, accomplished by the Son, applied by the

55:14

Spirit. I suppose that's probably not supposed to do that with today's

55:20

Greek philosophical stuff either. But, anyway. Further, we might ask how or why the

55:30

Father knows the day and the hour. Exegesis of the text lends itself to this kind of question.

55:37

One should answer that the Father knows because He is the omniscient God. I disagree.

55:44

You know why this is really problematic to me? Because it makes the fact of the day and the hour something that just floats around out there, that God has to know because He's omniscient, rather than being the result of His own personal decree as to how things are going to take place.

55:58

It impersonalizes it. I've got a real problem with that. I really do. Are there not other persons who are the omniscient gods, such as the

56:07

Spirit? Although the persons... So, notice what you've got here. You can't have the idea that it's the

56:16

Father that, for example, determines what people to give to the

56:21

Son. And then the Son brings about the union of those people with the

56:31

Son at the will of the Father. This is where you really start getting biblical categories that we thought weren't up in the air are really up in the air now.

56:44

That's why you've actually got people out there going, No, the Father doesn't love the Son. What? Well, it's inseparable operations.

56:51

Oh, okay. Although the persons of the

56:57

Father and the Spirit are distinct, the Father's essence is not distinct from the Spirit's. They are the same omniscient

57:03

God. Nor is the Father's knowledge distinct from the Spirit's. Thus, the exclusion offered by Christ cannot exclude every person except the

57:12

Father. For the Spirit, a person, knows all that the Father knows. Okay, that's theology.

57:21

That's not Matthew 24. And if you can't tell a difference, you've lost exegesis.

57:28

It's gone. You have no means any longer to verify, examine, or test your theology because your theology has become the

57:38

Word. If you can't tell a difference between your theological system that you build up from properly exegeted texts, then we've got serious, serious problems.

57:53

We really do. Rather, it must refer to persons who have finite natures, such as angels in heaven and men on earth, which happen to be directly mentioned in the text itself.

58:04

We could have skipped all of that to get there. Christ excludes all that is not

58:09

God. The Spirit is God, therefore the Spirit is not excluded. The Spirit's inclusion is due to the reality that He is the omniscient

58:17

God which can also be said of the person of the Father. The same reason that the Father knows applies to the

58:23

Spirit as well. They are the one God. The reason the Spirit knows cannot be said of the angels, which are finite created beings.

58:30

All wonderful, spectacular theological reasoning that has nothing to do with Matthew 24.

58:38

I mean, if you're going to sit there and say, and this is what Matthew intended you to be thinking, that's where you...

58:49

Now you start understanding great tradition, exegesis, pushing through to the deeper spiritual meaning, you see?

58:59

White affirms the Spirit knows the day and the hour, but how that fits with the exegesis of Matthew 24, 36 is unclear.

59:06

I'm sorry, but I read this for the first time. Okay, so you take a

59:13

Twitter thread that has a three -sentence, bracketed, parenthetical statement.

59:22

And the main point of the parenthetical statement is the whole topic of the Holy Spirit is not relevant to this text.

59:29

And then write, White affirms the Spirit knows the day and the hour, but how that fits with the exegesis of Matthew 24, 36 is unclear.

59:37

Let me clear it up for you. It don't got nothing to do with it at all, which is what I said. It's like, wow!

59:47

We have sought to offer an interpretation. No, you've sought to offer a theology.

59:53

Not interpretation. You haven't interpreted the text. We have sought to... You've quoted two guys, and you've brought your theology in.

01:00:02

That's not an interpretation of a text. That's the theologizing of a text. Okay, that's what

01:00:10

Rome does. When Rome quotes, Jesus is saying, that wisdom is justified by her children.

01:00:18

That's the term, Dikaio. And Rome builds an entire concept in regards to the denial of justification by faith based upon taking that text and theologizing it.

01:00:31

If you do what you're doing here, you got nothing to say to them. Nothing to say to them you're doing the same thing yourself.

01:00:46

We have sought to offer an interpretation that pays close attention to persons, natures, words, and the substructure of the text.

01:00:52

Yeah, but you didn't pay attention to what Jesus was communicating in the context of Matthew 24.

01:00:59

That's the problem. That's the problem. This substructure is present in the text as ectypal theology and allows us to better understand

01:01:14

Jesus' use of the word alone. Jesus does not seek to exclude every person, for this would exclude the spirit.

01:01:22

Rather, Jesus excludes the class of finite minds, which the spirit does not possess. The spirit is omniscient, knowing all the

01:01:28

Father knows, for they possess the same undivided divine essence. This interpretation of scripture is consistent with those offered by Protestant Reformed theologians, such as Gill and Turretin.

01:01:38

Theology was neither foisted upon the text, nor were exegetical steps skipped to arrive at these conclusions.

01:01:43

End of article. It's not exegesis, gentlemen. You failed completely.

01:01:51

Utterly. I'm sorry. I wish I could say, oh, wow, there's a new option.

01:01:58

There's a way of understanding. Here's how we access the mind of God.

01:02:04

What we just got was, you have your theological system. You read the scriptures through your theological system, and all of a sudden, it's like they're 3D glasses, and now you can see deeper into the text.

01:02:18

And what Matthew intended to communicate doesn't matter. You've got your system, and here, look, this supports your system.

01:02:26

Wow, it's amazing how that works. It's not exegesis.

01:02:35

You don't care about what Matthew was trying to communicate. You don't care what the context was. And so, yes, you have.

01:02:43

Theology was foisted upon the text because it was the lens that you used to look at the text.

01:02:50

And there were all sorts of exegetical steps skipped to arrive at these conclusions. People are asking, what brought all this about?

01:03:05

I don't know. At first, when people were asking me this, part of my response, and it may still have some level of validity, part of my response was, well,

01:03:24

I think Reformed Baptists have gotten tired of being the red -headed stepchildren, and they want to be accepted as scholastics, and so they're taking the steps to get there.

01:03:48

I don't know. But it involves a fundamental downgrade of our view of the sufficiency of Scripture.

01:03:55

There's no question about it. There's absolutely no question about it at all. Yeah. So, let me wrap up here.

01:04:12

There's another article. I've already got it. We'll get to it. But we've read every line so far of the first two articles.

01:04:24

And guys, we haven't gotten anywhere. The first article completely missed things.

01:04:31

We just walked through the rest of the second. There's nothing there. And here's an illustration of why this is important.

01:04:41

We mentioned that next week, we've been mentioning this for months, for more than a year.

01:04:51

When did we first go into the studio over there? When did we... No, it was not three years ago.

01:04:58

Because that was after COVID. I don't think so.

01:05:07

Anyway, one of the first programs we did...

01:05:13

We just do things. We just find things, make things go. Anyway, we're the pack lids of theology.

01:05:22

There you go. That's certainly what these guys think we are. We're the pack lids of theology. One of the first programs we did was on the...

01:05:35

Homosexualism isn't supposed to be in the Bible. Ars Inquietes has been mistranslated. Argumentation.

01:05:41

And then we warned people. There's a movie coming out. They're fundraising for it. It comes out next week.

01:05:46

The Daily Beast just put an article out.

01:05:53

Thank you, Brother Greg, for sending this to me. The word homosexual is in the

01:05:58

Bible by mistake. The explosive documentary that is under attack. Well, it better be under attack. Obviously, once this is available, and I don't know when that's going to be, once it's available, we will absolutely take it apart.

01:06:26

Frame by frame, claim by claim. We have challenged the people behind it to debate.

01:06:34

Michael Brown and I, both, more than happy to take on any two people they want to put up against us.

01:06:44

We'll do it. Be glad to. Because the facts on the meaning of Ars Inquietes, Ars Inquietae, its origination in the book of Leviticus, in the original

01:07:00

Hebrew, translation in the Greek Septuagint, is not even questionable. And what it refers to, what it means,

01:07:10

I remember, this would have been probably year 2000,

01:07:16

I think it was around 2000, I did a, well, it was,

01:07:26

Jeff, Neil, and I went into the studio at KPXQ with two homosexual guys who claimed to be

01:07:33

Christians. And during the midst of that conversation, the meaning of that term, obviously, it always comes up, has to come up.

01:07:45

And Jeff's discussion of it was, it comes from the two words that mean men and what you do in bed.

01:07:55

So he says, it's what men do with other men in bed and that ain't eatin' crackers.

01:08:02

That was the exact quote that Jeff used live on the air. And it was that program that was heard by Steve Lobby, who at the time worked for Bethany House Publishers.

01:08:16

He contacted us. Jeff had worked for him at Berean Christian Bookstore back in, when

01:08:21

I was 19. Long, long time ago.

01:08:29

And he said, hey guys, this is a subject that needs to be addressed, would you guys do it?

01:08:35

And so Jeff and I wrote The Same Sex Controversy at that time. But it's coming, folks.

01:08:41

No one's gonna be able to say if you listen to The Dividing Line, wow,

01:08:48

I'm stunned about this new movie. Because we've been talking about it for a long, long, long, long time.

01:08:56

And we've already dealt with it. We've already gone through it. We need to find the second time we did that.

01:09:02

Because first time we did it, we had some tech issues. The second time we did it, it went really smoothly.

01:09:08

We need to find that. And if I did other stuff in that program, we need to pull just that material out and make just it available.

01:09:17

And get it into social media and linking to all the stuff. Because there's gonna be a lot of discussion of this.

01:09:26

And I don't want anybody in this audience to find themselves sitting in an airport gate, if you put yourself through that kind of stuff, talking to somebody and this issue comes up, and you're left going, oh man,

01:09:45

I didn't listen to those episodes. I'm not prepared. I've been saying all along we need to be on the offensive here.

01:09:55

The truth and the facts are on our side. And now we have an entire movie kicking the door open for us to deal with this subject.

01:10:08

In fact, I am 95 % certain that I did a sermon at Apologia on this too.

01:10:18

I'm gonna have to look for that. Because if I didn't, I am preaching on the 20th. So maybe we'll do it if we didn't do it before.

01:10:28

I'm pretty sure that I have. In any case, folks, be prepared.

01:10:34

Know that these opportunities are gonna be coming to you. And go from there.

01:10:41

We've tried our level best to make sure that you have access to all the information you need to be able to debunk the 1946 movie.

01:10:52

All right. There you go. Right now, I think the plan is to get together again on Wednesday.

01:11:02

And then, like I said, I'm gone after that. And I'm sure there'll be much, much more to talk about then.

01:11:10

Oh, by the way, a week from today, a week from this morning,

01:11:18

Doug Wilson and I will be recording another sweater vest dialogue. And it will be on the subject of Christian nationalism.

01:11:27

And so obviously, I have a feeling it's gonna be focused on the meaning of the term

01:11:34

Christendom. Because that's a phrase that Doug uses a lot.

01:11:42

And I said in the last program, and people made memes out of it and everything else, I said

01:11:50

Christendom without Christ is just dumb. There can't be

01:11:56

Christendom without Christ. Without the Christ. For Christendom to have any validity, there has to be the work of the

01:12:09

Spirit in changing hearts and minds. Now, I think Doug would agree with that.

01:12:16

But we'll find out how that works out. We'll find out how that works out. We'll be recording that a week from today.

01:12:22

I'm not sure when it'll drop. It normally drops within the week that it's recorded. Not necessarily.

01:12:28

When I've gone up to Moscow, that hasn't necessarily been the case. But normally, it does.

01:12:34

So, we'll see. But we will be addressing that subject as well. So, thanks for watching the program.