Why Calvinism: Dr. James White, Andrew Rappaport, & Jeremiah Nortier DMW#209

Dead Men Walking

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Sounds good. Here we go. Exploring Theology, Doctrine, and all of the

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Fascinating Subjects in Between, Broadcasting from an Undisclosed Location, Dead Men Walking starts now.

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What's up, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of Dead Men Walking Podcast. I'm your host, Greg Moore. You can find me at dmwpodcast .com.

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We're coming live from the Why Calvinism Conference in Tullahoma, Tennessee. And just met a gentleman that I didn't know personally.

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We were in a group chat for a few weeks before that. Opened up the pre -conference yesterday on the dangers of full preterism, is

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Jeremiah Nortier. Hello. If I'm saying that correctly. Yes, sir. You got it. Welcome to the podcast.

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Yeah. Greg, thanks for having me on. In our Facebook group chats, there was just so many memes, so many gifs and jokes,

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I would just kind of scroll through and I'm like, oh my goodness, there's a lot going on there. Yeah, so it is funny because my joke is

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I'll meet people that I've kind of communicated with on Facebook or Instagram and go, you know, you're a lot bigger in person.

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It's just that little icon in the corner. It's hard to get to know people. But tell us a little bit about yourself real quick.

01:19

I know we're not going to stick around here too long, but I want you to touch on full preterism because it's what you talked about last night.

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It was absolutely unbelievable. I know you have a YouTube channel. Remind me. The Apologetic Dog.

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The Apologetic Dog. One of the coolest logos in the game. The angle was, we've got to have a dog with a beard, but what dog is going to fit that beard?

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It went with a pit bull. It went with a pit bull. And you know, it kind of goes hand in hand with kind of defending of the faith and theology and discernment, right?

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Yeah, and that logo, you'll see 1 Timothy 6 .20, which is an incredible verse where Paul says, oh, Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you.

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So the Apologetic Dog is really all Christians guarding the gospel of grace.

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And then we see the offensive nature. He says, Timothy, avoid irreverent babble by avoiding pagan philosophy, irreverent babble, and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge.

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It's on the way we get knowledge. I'm a student of Greg Bonson and Cornelius Van Til, and we stand on the word of God, presuppositionally.

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So that's the only place you get truth and knowledge. So that's how we contend for the truth of God and how we guard the gospel of grace.

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I'm rereading Against All Opposition right now. Just going back through it and just remembering, wow, gosh,

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I love Greg Bonson and that school of like, you better be informed, you better understand, you know, when you're talking to a

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Muslim or a Mormon or a Jehovah Witness, like, be learned about those things because they know what you believe and be ready to defend the faith.

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So awesome, I love you mentioning those two names. We're on the same page here. But for the listeners, we wanted to make this kind of a shorter little snippet, and I know we're not going to be able to cover everything in that amount of time, but give us a definition of preterism for those listening that might not know.

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Yeah, so preterism just on its face is preter, Latin for past, past fulfillment, and so preterism on its own is not a bad term.

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If you're a Christian, you believe some prophecies are in the past, like the virgin birth, the incarnation happened in our past, but where full preterism comes in and says all biblical prophecies have been fulfilled in the past leading up to 70

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AD. Yeah, and we're talking about eschatology here, the end of things, the end time. So if you're listening to that and you haven't heard that term, that's what he's talking about.

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So we have, and you have a couple things within there, you have like a partial preterism view, you have a full preterism view.

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What's a partial preterism view and then maybe tell us the full preterism view and why maybe one might be harmful and one might not, or are they both not great to hold to?

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What are your thoughts on that? Absolutely. Partial preterism affirms like the book of Revelation and the

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Olivet Discourse that a large majority, you heard Dr. Frost speak last night, that 95 % of the scriptures have been fulfilled, maybe leading up to 70

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AD. And so like the destruction of the temple is meaningful for what Jesus was prophesying to occur.

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But if we could say the 5 % that is in our future, our wonderful blessed hope, is the future bodily return of Jesus Christ, the resurrection of the dead, and the restoration of all things.

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That's still not yet, that's future. But a partial might say, hey, look at what

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Jesus was talking about in parts of Matthew 24, that was the temple and that's been fulfilled.

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And that necessarily influences how you interpret the book of Revelation or vice versa. That's partial, orthodox, healthy, and good, and we can continue the conversation.

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Full preterist says all of the Olivet Discourse is talking about one unit and that was in the past.

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Dispensationalist might look at that as one unit and just put it all in the future. So it's a similar hermeneutic going on.

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And the partial, or I'm sorry, the full preterism is where we can really get into some heresy and some weird stuff.

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I mean, because we're essentially saying, and you touched on it last night, maybe you can give us those three points if you remember them, or three or four points, of it's all been fulfilled.

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There's no resurrection of the dead. There's no bodily return of Christ. These are the things that a full preterist believe, or they have to believe, right?

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Yeah. The mixed bag of full, and we say hyper -preterism because it redefines Christianity, they all unify on these three points.

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They believe that Jesus' return already happened, the resurrection of the dead already happened.

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They believe everything already happened but the restoration of all things. That's everything that we unify for our blessed hope, and they look at that as, no, we're going to redefine that until Jesus' second coming was spiritual, it was covenantal.

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It happened at the destruction of the temple. And you heard me touch on 1 Corinthians 15. Paul makes a strong argument.

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No, Jesus' resurrection and ascension and necessarily his parricy, his return, it's all bodily.

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Yeah. Does that make sense? So, and Paul says he's the first fruit. So if we ask what kind of resurrection will we have, it's not merely spiritual.

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It's bodily as well because Jesus is the first fruits. He's the example. He's the rule, not the exception. So we expanded more on that last night, and so that will be released to everyone before too long.

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I feel like it's not that hard of an argument because, I mean, Paul's arguing against all kinds of Gnosticism and spiritualizing all these physical aspects, yet we're sitting here talking about hyper -preterism and full -preterism because it seems to be not growing in popularity but more people are considering it or talking about it.

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Why do you think that is, and how long has this heresy been around? The heresy that's full -fledged articulated is not even 30 years old and began with Max King, a

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Church of Christ minister, who started codifying covenant eschatology in the early 1990s.

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Wow. So I'm just saying it's really new on the scene, which should cause red flags. Yeah. Right? Now you ask me why. This is a little bit controversial, and perhaps there's many reasons, but we've seen an uptick in post -millennialism, which is orthodox and good and healthy and we can continue the conversation, but there are people that will take post -millennialism and tweak it and twist it slightly, and then it pumps out into full -preterism, and I'll tell you what

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I want to cause my post -millennialist brothers to just be mindful of, and it's how we articulate this age and the age to come.

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Okay. And so if we do not see this age as this temporal, perishing, evil age, and we look at that as the mosaic

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Jewish age that ended in 70 AD, well now we have issues with the

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Olivet Discourse where the parrhesia is to happen at the end of the age, that Jesus would be with us, and lo, even to the end of the age.

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And so if we put that back at 70 AD, well now we're in a pickle with the parrhesia.

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And so I'm saying post -millennialism, love Jeff Durbin, Dr. White, and I've got to talk with Doug Wilson, really had a lot of respect for R .C.

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Sproul, like to me post -millennialism, healthy, contend for the kingdom, preach God's law, preach God's gospel, but we have to be careful of how we articulate this age and the eternal state of the age to come.

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You're saying that, but I think everyone you just mentioned and most of the post -millennials that I know, they almost all interpret it that way.

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I would think so. I think if I talked to, if I'm remembering correctly, Doug Wilson, Jeff Durbin, some of the people you mentioned, they go, that is the

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Jewish age, the animal sacrifice stop, that was, that's their partial preterism because for post -mill to work, you kind of have to have that partial preterism, don't you?

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I mean, I guess you, I think you do. I don't know, I'm thinking this out live on. Yeah, that's okay. And you're right, you do have to be a partial preterist, but what you don't have to be committed to is how you understand this age and the age to come.

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And what I'm saying is, be post -mill to the bone, but this age

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Jesus defined in the gospels, and you heard in my presentation, this is a temporal age where temporal things like marriage are going on, we're eating, we're drinking, we're being married with one another, in this temporal age that's perishing.

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And so this is much more, check this out, this to me, this is the right mindset. This includes the Jewish aeon, it includes the age of the

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Gentiles, if you will. Both of those fall under this age. So we need to be, and we can be partial preterists with affirming that this age is all the way till the end of time.

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Wow. Does that make sense? No, absolutely. That's just the caution, because I've been in a lot of conversations, and trust me, a lot of healthy post -millennialists affirm exactly what

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I'm saying, but I've noticed the trend with some of the men we've mentioned that kind of see that a little bit differently, and praise

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God, they know where to be very careful. And I've had Doug Wilson on my podcast, and we talked about the dangers of hyper -preterism, and he did a fantastic job.

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Yeah, yeah. I don't know. For me, it's, well, I do know, for me, as an optimistic amillennialist.

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I thought you were maybe post -mill, since you're Presby, right? No, I'm just, yeah, I am, but I'm just, look it, look it, and I love

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Durbin, and I love Doug Wilson. He's been on the podcast many times. I do Fight, Laugh, Feast. I'm on the Fight, Laugh, Feast network with CrossPolitik.

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I just haven't heard a more convincing argument for me, scripturally, than amillennialism.

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It's just usually the, I'd say, simplest. It's not that it is the simplest, but it's just so congruent with the rest of the

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Bible that we have a redemption plan, a death, a resurrection, an ascension, and a return.

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Here are the two things that have convinced me of all -millennialism, for today, I tell people, you know, because I want to be charitable in these conversations, but the all -mill seems to consistently affirm that Jesus can return at any moment, just like the parable of the ten virgins, be ready, be watchful, have your wicks trimmed, right, as where post -mill seems to be committed to say, we're in the early days of the church, and we got a lot of work to do, implying that Jesus can't return now, and I know there's different views within that, but like Doug Wilson, some of them would say, yeah, we're in the early days of the church, not the last days when he's going to return.

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So that's something I think falls in favor for the all -millennial position, and we can get to some more of those details.

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Like I said, maintaining that this age and the age to come is very important in this conversation, for sure.

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Yeah, so anyone out there that comes across that or might be talking to someone and they bring up preterism or partial preterism,

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I would say, you know, reference this, do a little study, make sure you understand what you're talking about. We've had an influx of new listeners, so we've covered this, you know, years before, we're going into year four right now on the podcast, but I thought it was a good opportunity just to sit down with you and kind of cover that.

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The other point I was going to say, because it just left my mind, but post -mill, and props to them, it's, they kind of say this winner's mentality, winner's mentality, right?

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Jesus gave us marching orders not to fail, but to conquer, and I want to take a step back and say, but it seems like Paul's mentality was victory through suffering.

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Yeah. That's what I'll be preaching on here in a little bit, Calvinism in Tribulation. There you go. So throw out your socials, tell people where they can find you, and get ahold of you.

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A couple things I want to say, two main things, is I serve as a pastor and elder at 12 .5 Church. You can find us at 12 .5church

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.com. This is a church plant in Jonesboro, Arkansas, so if you're in the northeast Arkansas area, we'd love for you to come check out our fellowship.

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We've just leased out a new building in our downtown area. So blessed.

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And so I serve as a pastor and elder with Nathan Hargrave, who is the other elder and son of Roy Hargrave, who was a wonderful man, passed away just a few years ago, but had a big reach and impact, had a big impact in Keith Foskey's understanding of the doctrines of grace.

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So good connection there. So 12 .5 Church, number one, that's a Bible verse, by the way,

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Romans 12, verse 5. Even though we are individually one of another, we are one together in the body of Christ.

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Sure. Ephesians 2 here, dead men walking, right? Once dead, now arise. Amen. Now live. So my church family has said,

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Jeremiah, we see your heart and love for apologetics, and we need to support you in that. And so my apologetics ministry is

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The Apologetic Dog, and you can find me mainly on YouTube. That's where kind of all my content is coming from.

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But I have big plans to reach all the other social media platforms. Look at the website, because it's really bad, but it's about to get revamped, so you got to see that before.

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It's about to get real good. Yeah, it's about to be real good. Well, Jeremiah, thanks for sitting down with us. Looking forward to your next session.

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And guys, remember, chief end of man is to glorify God, enjoy Him forever. We'll be back with more.

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God bless. So we heard you this morning in your first session. You mean you were awake for it?

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You know, that's the tough one, because I'm not a morning person. The first 15 minutes,

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I'm going, okay, stay awake. Let's get that coffee flowing in me. But it was good stuff, man.

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The conference so far has been, I mean, we're only halfway through day one, and it's been pretty awesome, hasn't it?

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A lot. There's a lot of great content. Yeah. Touch on what you talked about a little bit. Well, I mean, a lot of it was the history of Calvinism.

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Get right up on that microphone, too, if you don't mind. So the history of Calvinism, right? This was the topic assigned to me, which, as I said,

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Dr. James White, a history professor, why am I doing this subject? Talk about the pressure.

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If you say anything wrong, that fear of that look, that glaring look of, you got that wrong.

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Make sure you pronounce Augustus' name right. But a lot of people don't know all the history, a lot of the history that folks don't value, especially when it comes to theology.

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A lot of people think like, oh, we're in the 21st century. We got it all figured out. And it's always been that way. And don't think through the development of the theology over time.

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You're looking at the great debates we've had that we've discussed, right? You had Augustus and Pelagian, but that didn't end the debate.

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Then you had Luther and Erasmus, and we talk about Calvin and Arminius, but really the debate that happened was their followers, because by the time they ended up, really what we consider

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Calvinism today, when we talk about the tulip, both those men were long dead before the five points, really the five points of the remonstrance, and then the counterpoints from the counter -remonstrance.

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Yeah, and you did a really good job of kind of talking about the history of the points. A lot of people outside of the

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Reformed or Calvinistic tradition don't understand. It wasn't like Calvinists came along and said, oh, here's our five points.

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It was in response to Arminius. Yeah. And you did a really nice job of showing that, kind of giving the history of it.

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And this conference so far, which of course, right now we're at the Why Calvinism Conference in Tullahoma, Tennessee, and going through the history of Calvinism, going through, we just heard

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Keith Foskey talk about the Calvinism of Luther, Claude Ramsey was earlier today.

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You started the conference, which I thought was awesome, to have someone with your energy and knowledge right up front, get us going, lay the foundation, right, so we can build on it.

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But some of the stuff, you know, I've been in the Reformed camp for, since 25 when

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I really first started digging into it and been learning ever since, but just in this first day, I'm already learning some things that I didn't know.

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It's unbelievable to me that we have so many believers with so little knowledge of not only

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Scripture, but church history. Sometimes I'll talk to someone who's been sitting in a pew or a church seat for 30 years, and they don't go beyond their kind of three or four talking points of their non -denominational

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Baptist light, or maybe it's an SBC, or maybe it's an AG church, and when you really start talking to them about church history and what do these guys believe and that believe and these arguments and debates they were having, they'll look at you with a blank face and go, geez,

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I don't know, and this conference is so rich with that. I mean, every guy, talk to you or, like I said, Keith or Claude or Dr.

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White or any of these guys, just a wealth of knowledge of not only scriptural history, but church history too, which

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I think it's important to know that. It is important because people think that the theology was created in a vacuum.

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Right. Just came out of, one day just presented to you on a platter. Correct. And it didn't. It came, this is one of the things

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I tried to bring out, was there is fruit from Pelagius. There's fruit from Arminius.

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There's fruit from Erasmus. The fruit is that because of what they taught, we had people correcting that.

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People that had to think through, okay, how do we answer this? And later, other people come up and try to find different ways to explain error.

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So it needs to be clarified again. That's what refines our theology. And when you look at it through history, and I kind of mentioned this, in the early church, they weren't worried about end times.

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This is a big discussion we have around this conference, a lot of joking with that. But their concern was, was

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Jesus Christ truly God and truly man? How do we explain that? Because their argument was, if he's not truly man, he cannot be a substitute for other humans.

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But if he wasn't truly God, how could he pay an eternal fine? They were wrestling with that.

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So really, at the heart of it was the doctrine of salvation. But it started with the nature of Jesus Christ.

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That's the first thing that had to be debated. But then shortly after that, by Augustus' time, was the nature of salvation.

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Because once you've defined, okay, this is who Jesus is, why did he come?

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Now that you've addressed that, as church history ends up happening, you get into more of, okay, what is the church?

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So now we have a lot of our theology nailed down 2 ,000 years later, so we could debate end times.

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Right. And that's why I think that is such a debated topic, is because the history is kind of nailed down all the other topics pretty good, and we have just a plethora of men who have battled it out, good side and bad side, to address.

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And we've seen the truth bubble up and rise over and over again. And that's why, when we go through the history, we look at, it's not just, okay, what did

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Calvin believe? Did Calvin believe Calvinism? Well, it depends how you define it. Have you defined it by tulip?

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No. Because he never, that wasn't even, the five points of the remonstrance were actually responded with, and I mentioned this, with eight points of the counter -remonstrance.

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It wasn't a, it ended up being a five, in the end, the tulip that we would refer to is a response to the five points of the remonstrance, those that were the followers of Jacob Arminius.

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But they developed, I mean, within those four years of coming up with the counter -remonstrance, their first eight points got filtered down to the five points, one for each article of the followers of Arminius.

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And so, it's not something that Calvin came up with and said, okay, here's the five points.

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That developed in a response to addressing the errors of other people. And so, you ended up seeing how, you know,

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Calvin goes, Calvin and Arminius may not have been that far off, at least in the early life of Arminius.

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Later, as Arminius kept fighting staunchly against Biza, it caused the division, but their followers went even further.

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And so, we have to be aware of church history, especially when we're looking at theology.

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It's a big mistake to just think that these things happen in a vacuum and not... Yeah, we're standing on the shoulders of giants, truly.

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I mean, I brought up the point with, you look at Augustus, everyone looks at him. The Catholic Church can look to him, the

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Protestants can look to him, millennials can look to him, premillennials look to him. Because he wasn't, he was not clarifying the doctrines the way we have them listed today.

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Right. Right? We've had to refine and refine and refine because error keeps popping up over and over and over.

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And where it's enough to say, for early century, the church, ecclesia, and I have this in my book,

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What Do We Believe?, I give a history of the church. You look at ecclesia. It was enough to say, this is a group of people that are gathering together for the worship of God.

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Yeah. But that didn't stay for long. Eventually you had to say, okay, we've got to clarify this.

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Now we have to say that this is a visible versus invisible church. Oh wait, now we have to say during the time of the

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Puritans, no, no, no. The church is not just a gathering for the worship of God. It's not just a visible versus invisible.

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But now it's also the fact that this is a group of people that have three things. The preaching of God's word, the sacraments or ordinances, and then, which surprises people, church discipline.

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If it doesn't have those three, it's not a church. Right? So the idea of church, just that word, had to be refined through history to be more and more precise because of the fact that error kept cropping up.

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Yeah. You know what? One of the things that really just really threw me when

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I was young in my faith and going back through church history was how many of, not only the disciples and the early martyrs, but right up through the reformers were martyred for something as simple as the freedom of,

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I get to say, salvation is by God alone, through grace alone. And you go, we just say that, like, yeah, it's settled.

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We know that. And yet you've got reformers being burned at the stake, sliced in half, right? All these things for going against the

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Catholic church and just stating these biblical things. Yeah. I have a...

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It's crazy. I had the opportunity to see a Bible. And I know you may not agree with this part of it, but a pastor had a

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Bible that he cherished very much. And when you open it up, you see the bloodstains of an

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Anabaptist who was killed because he believed that you should be baptized only as believers.

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And he was slain over his own Bible because of the fact that he had re -baptized someone.

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Wow. And you sit there and go, like, what? Like in our day and age, we wouldn't think of killing someone over that.

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And yet they held the doctrines, right or wrong, they held their doctrines so strongly that they would literally take people's lives over.

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But to think that here's someone who gave his life, how easy would it have been to say, you know what, okay, we don't have to baptize, re -baptize, right?

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But you also... So not only can we say, well, people held strongly enough they would kill someone, but they held strongly enough that they'd say, you can kill me.

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They're going to hold to these convictions so strongly. And I think that...

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It's so foreign to the modern age. That's what I was going to say. Most Christians either don't even know those doctrines or if presented with them go,

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I don't care either way. You know, and then you've got reformers that were sitting in prison with wives and kids at home for years and all they had to do, the

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Pope just goes, hey, just say you don't believe in faith alone. That's all you got to do.

25:52

You know? No. And they held it so strongly. I mean, could you imagine if we had a true remnant of men, and I think we're starting to see that here more in America even, that held those convictions, those that closely.

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Willing to stand up for the truth. Yeah. You know, the fact is that Christ gave his life.

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He died on a cross that we could have forgiveness. And then we seem to be more concerned about living a comfortable life on earth.

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Yeah. Right? I mean, hello? What did he sacrifice? We could never make up for that sacrifice.

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How do we not be a people who are willing to give our life for Christ? Now, I think a time is coming in America.

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I think we're two to five years away where there will be people that are going to have to make the decision of giving their life for Christ literally because I think the government's going to require it.

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The reality is we're going to see a separation of those who say, hey,

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I just want this comfortable Christianity and those that say, I'm standing up because this is true.

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We need men of conviction, men and women, but we need people that are going to,

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Christians that are going to stand up and say, thus says the Lord, and I'm going to stand on this. And hey, if you're going to kill me over this, you're going to kill me over this because this is what scripture says.

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And that is lacking. I think you are right. I think that we're starting to see, and this is the value of persecution, and I know even in my talk that I gave, people probably, when

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I said the fruit of Pelagian, and everyone was probably like, I saw people looking at me like, what, what fruit of Pelagian?

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There's fruit from Pelagian, there's fruit from Erasmus, there's fruit from Arminius, and that fruit is the truth.

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But there's fruit from persecution. The fruit from persecution is that we're going to have men that are going to stand for the truth.

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We're going to have men that are going to stop being willy nilly and being like, well, okay, let me just, let me see if I can get a big following on social media.

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God's not impressed with people's social media platform, okay? But we need to stand up, and I believe that men that stand up for truth are contagious to other men that want to.

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And what we need is, you know, there's a guy, Dan Bongino, he talks politically, but he mentions the second person to dance, and what he means by that, he plays a video of a guy that's dancing by himself, and everyone just watches him.

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But then it's when the second guy gets up and starts dancing that everyone else follows. We need men that are willing to not only stand up to be first, but stand up to be second.

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We need people that are willing to stand up and say, I am willing to die on the hill of Christ, and if you want to kill me, so be it.

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We need people that are going to stand up and say, this is what God's word says. One of the things I love about this conference is we have so many people, you and I, for example, disagree theologically.

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Many folks here disagree theologically. But we all believe in core doctrines of salvation,

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Christ, and anyone, you, anyone of the guys here,

29:12

I would hope that I'd be willing, I have to say I hope, because I haven't been in the situation, but I'd hope I'd be willing to die for any one of us here for the sake of Christ.

29:22

But the thing is that we need people that are willing to do that. We can sit here and joke around about our differences.

29:30

You know, I gave a good plug for Presbyterian view. You weren't there for it. You walked out of that.

29:36

Just the two minutes. I'm sorry. I had to take a real estate call. That's the unfortunate part of being, yeah, it's kind of being on call, but yeah.

29:44

But it's like we could, we could, you know, the thing I love about this conference, we respect one of those differences.

29:51

We joke about it, but on the core issues, we'll die for one another. We're going to sit there and defend one another.

29:58

You know, the conference, why Calvinism, posted a picture of one of the speakers.

30:05

You know, someone, someone had a negative thing to say. I'm like, okay, I'm deleting that because, you know, and I'm about to delete you.

30:13

You know, it's like, you know, it's, it's a thing where I'm going to defend any one of these guys, even though I don't agree theologically with him a hundred percent.

30:21

Yeah. Right. Maybe, maybe not agree with the Bigfoot, but you know, he wants to believe that that stuff.

30:28

Okay. But look, we're going to have, we'll have Layton Flowers is going to come here at a why

30:34

Calvinism conference. I believe that most people will be nice to Layton. I, yeah,

30:40

I believe Layton will be in heaven in my conversations with him. Do I disagree with him on things?

30:46

Obviously. Do I think that, you know, there's things I wish he would, he would take to heart that we would share with him.

30:54

Obviously. Right. But he's a brother in Christ. Yeah.

31:00

I would, I would stand alongside him when it, when it comes to a shooting, when the shooting gallery of the government comes in.

31:06

Sure. Right. But I wish that we'd have more men that are willing to say, you know what?

31:12

I may not be, it may not win me accolades from my followers or those who are in my camp.

31:19

Right. But maybe we need to put down the tribalism. Yeah. And stand up and say, no, we, we gotta be one.

31:26

I think a big reason why the government feels they can come after Christians, and this is way off topic of why

31:32

Calvinism, but when I know that you're interested as well. But I think a big reason why, why they can is because Christians don't unite.

31:40

They're so divided. Yeah. Yeah. And we're, we're more interested in our division than we are in our unity. Now, I'm not saying we give up our convictions.

31:47

Clearly none of us are doing that here. Yeah. But we have to recognize who the real enemy is.

31:52

And I think too many Christians treat each other as the enemy. Yeah. I know having, you know, as soon as I announced that I was going to be speaking at this conference on the topic, why

32:01

Calvinism, I started to get hate emails and messages and all that from different people because like, well,

32:09

Calvinism is just a heresy. But do you understand it? No, you don't. Right. You have a wrong definition.

32:15

Yeah. And if you're going to argue that, then, you know, you're just causing division. Yeah. Right. And there are people who, that, they're, they're perfectly happy to cause division.

32:25

You see it on social media all the time. Sure. And I would argue that we had that in history as well.

32:31

I mean, I think that you, you see, I mentioned in the message, you know, Erasmus in his writing of Freedom of the

32:37

Will, he's, he's, he's basically saying like, I don't even get the issue. It's not a big deal to me, but all my friends, like everyone's kind of poking them.

32:44

Like you're the guy, you got to take on Luther. You got to be the one because someone's got to do it. Right. They should have found someone that was actually interested in doing it because Erasmus just didn't do a great job with it.

32:55

Right. But this is where we are in,

33:01

I think, a unique place in history. And we have more access to great theology than ever before.

33:12

And rather than digging into that and seeing where we are in, you know, in history and where things are seeming to go, we should be doing that.

33:22

But instead everyone's like, you know, oh, let's, let's fight amongst ourselves. Not only that, but geez, you know how many even believers will, you know, just doom scrolling for hours and hours.

33:33

And I've been guilty of it, you know, laying in bed when it's like, dude, I could be in the word right now. I have access to many versions of the

33:40

Bible. I have access to systematic theology books. I have access to writings of the forefathers and early church fathers.

33:48

And, you know, you had guys pre -printing press where you weren't even able to get written copies of scripture and yet still said, oh,

33:58

God will hold me responsible for A, B, or C. Yeah. How much more are we going to be held responsible this day and age when the

34:06

Lord's like, it's right at your fingertips. You're telling me you can't. Keith Foskey mentioned, if you pick this up, that Martin Luther was basically publishing every two weeks.

34:18

That's crazy. Like, that blew my mind. I did not realize that. I mean, to think about the fact that here you got someone who, it's not like he's producing fluff.

34:28

It's not like these blog articles where people are just trying to, oh, I got to print something every week. So here it is. Here's some fluff. With some click bait on it.

34:34

Yeah. He's doing rich theological content every two weeks.

34:41

Yeah. You look at a guy like John Calvin who basically preached every day. And what are we doing?

34:49

I got my social media to get to and I got to make sure I snap. I got my selfies.

34:55

I posted a really cutting meme. Yeah. From the guys I don't like. You know, the other tribal group.

35:01

I mean, whatever. We're producing great bumper sticker theology. Yeah, bumper sticker.

35:06

Oh, great. Right? You got some great memes. It really is a thing.

35:13

You know, it's interesting. There was someone that pointed out, you think about years before, just generations before us, even just one generation before us.

35:23

Think about the people that were the people that you think were very successful that made major shifts in culture.

35:31

You think of a Steve Jobs. You think of, you know, Elon Musk and all these different people.

35:37

When did they do all the stuff that we credit them for? In their 20s. Yeah. Right? Where are those people today?

35:45

They don't exist. You know why? Because people are too busy like, well, we got to talk about transgender.

35:51

They're not thinking what to create, what to use, what their God -given ability to invent things and be innovative to further things.

36:04

And if they are, they're in a minority field. So they do pretty well, actually.

36:10

Like the entrepreneurial inventor kind of, not just only in tech, but if you have that kind of, let's build something or let's create something.

36:19

They seem to do very well because we've seen a shift with Gen Z to where they did an interview like three years ago with Gen Z, which is, you know, 19 years and under, basically 21 and under.

36:32

And they said 65 % of them, they said, what is your profession going to be? And they said, social media influencer.

36:38

I'm going to be a millionaire by influencing on social media. Okay. You know, news alert here, but being a social media influencer does not bring any value to the market.

36:50

Correct. It does not create anything. It doesn't give economic stimulus. It doesn't create jobs.

36:56

It doesn't solve a need in the market. And that's a tough way to go in the next generation.

37:01

65 % of them are going, oh, I'm going to amass followers to hear me talk or take pictures or whatever it is on social media.

37:09

And I think to your point, like you said, like in the 20s, like, man, that's the time that God has given us to really get after it.

37:17

20s and 30s. Men should be building things and inventing things and building businesses and creating families and all those things that are good and godly.

37:26

And do that while learning and understanding history.

37:32

You know? You know that if you look, there's an interesting study done, the Nobel Prize winners in all the different areas.

37:41

Yeah. All the work that they did, where they got awarded in their 50s, 60s, but the time that they did the work was in their 20s.

37:52

Yeah. And so this is the time, this is a period of time for people to be using all that they're learned to innovate, to create.

38:05

And in our camp, right, we're talking Christianity, this is the time for people to be thinking rich, deep theology and producing more content like a

38:16

John Calvin did, like a Martin Luther did, to figure out this theology and make it more precise.

38:21

Instead of saying, hey, how can I sell a book? How can I get attention here? You know? Right. We've shifted where people are more focused on producing videos or content, trying to build platforms, rather than getting deep into the

38:38

Word of God to see how are we going to influence. Look, I believe, I'm not shy about saying it, right, it'll probably get me in trouble, but I believe that Christians are going to be suffering a great persecution in America within less than a decade.

38:53

Yeah. Okay? I think that we'll have another Holocaust, it just won't be with the Jewish people, it's going to be with Christians in America.

39:00

You have political forces that are getting into power, just like Hitler did.

39:06

He got into power by making the Jews the scapegoat, but what you get in power with, you stay in power with.

39:12

You have people that are getting into power by blaming everything on Christians. And as that happens, Christians are going to be persecuted.

39:19

The issue is, we don't have the men that we had in the past rising up to give that rich theology that is going to be something that people are going to be able to take into persecution and say,

39:34

I'm going to stand against this because the Word of God says. You've got to have deep roots, man, if you're going to be persecuted.

39:40

You really do. And that, I mean, we're going to wrap this up here because we've got to get back to the

39:49

Great Falling Away and these things kind of, that language comes to mind when I look at Western Christianity and go, oh my, we saw it with COVID.

39:56

We saw how many churches just folded. Correct. Oh, we're not open, we're not gathering, we're not, and you're like, what are you doing?

40:02

But out of that, in that persecution, like you said, we also saw those with a deep theological and doctrinal root strengthened even more.

40:13

And I saw some churches, the true churches grew. That's right. That's right. And then we shut down the

40:19

YouTube churches. That's fine. And the true churches grew and it was pretty crazy. Yeah. I think there were a lot of people that were in churches they knew were bad.

40:28

And COVID was a chance. So they would go somewhere else and it's like, you know what? I found, I got a new church and this is where I'm going to stay.

40:37

I mean, I saw so many pastors that would say that, but you know, this is the thing. We need men that are going to stand up for the truth.

40:44

And I think a conference like this, we're seeing it. I'm encouraged by the number of young guys that are here.

40:50

Yeah. I think you can hear them in the background right now. I mean, a lot of young men who want to discuss theology.

40:58

Yeah. And know God. Yeah. And we need them to rise up and prepare this next generation because there's persecution coming.

41:06

Guess what? We need to stand up for the truth. Yeah. Cool. So where can people follow you and find you?

41:12

So strivingforeternity .org is the one place that you can find everything. Our blog articles, our academy courses.

41:20

Books. Books. And then also, you know, on the podcast, you can go to christianpodcastcommunity .org,

41:26

find all the podcasts there. But mine are Andrew Hort's rap report. So it's rap with two

41:31

Ps. And Apologetics Live. I mean, I tell people every Thursday night, 8 to 10

41:36

Eastern. That's a fun show, man. You just get on there. You just start, hey, let's answer some questions, start some fights. Yeah.

41:42

Well, I never know that I'm getting into a debate. Like, you know, people come in and they're prepared to debate me, and I don't know if I'm ready for a debate.

41:47

Okay, it's on. All right. You know, Black Hebrews really comes in. Okay, I have, you know, Orthodox rabbi comes in and wants to say that Jesus wasn't the

41:55

Messiah. Okay. They're all prepared. I'm not, you know. And so Apologetics Live is a fun one.

42:01

And people can just check that podcast out. Or if they want to join Watch Live, just go to apologeticslive .com. It's a lot of fun.

42:07

Very cool. Andrew, we got to get back to it. Guys, thanks for listening. Thanks for being here and jumping in. And it's been so much fun just hanging out with you so far.

42:15

And I know we're going to have a fun couple extra days here. Yeah. Guys, as always, remember, chief end of band is to glorify

42:20

God and enjoy Him forever. And we'll be back with some more segments for you. Stick around. So let me ask you this.

42:26

And we're rolling here. I'm going to chop this up into a couple of segments. Yeah, we're not going to play any of what we just said. Yeah, that's true.

42:31

Okay. How do you determine who to debate and who not to?

42:37

Because no offense to anyone who's just starting or if they're not, you know, it's not that professional. But my time's valuable.

42:44

I know your time's valuable. I would really want to vet that and go, look, if I'm going to dedicate travel and time and resources.

42:50

And I got to imagine there's people, and we had this last year, honestly, at the conference.

42:55

Some people just want to debate James White because it can go on their resume, right? It goes on the resume, yeah.

43:01

So what is that process like? It's different from context to context.

43:08

Obviously, online stuff's very different than in -person stuff. In -person stuff, people have traveled.

43:15

You expect some little higher level of professional behavior and something like that.

43:22

But it also depends on the topic. I mean, there are some topics. You know, I've been trying to get

43:29

Jeffrey to find a good old rock ribbed

43:35

Peter Ruckman style King James only guy to debate. They won't do it for love nor money.

43:43

And in fact, there's a guy sitting in the other room right now who puts amazing videos out against Reformed theology that are just horrific.

43:54

Right. But he's King James only. And when we tried to get him to agree to a thesis topic, he wouldn't agree to anything that didn't only use

44:06

King James English. Right. So, you know, what do you do in a situation like that?

44:12

That's the only inspired word of God. Yeah, there you go. So it really depends.

44:18

There are lower level debates. There are higher level debates. Right now, for example, we're sitting on our thumbs waiting for a very major Catholic organization to finally get somebody in gear to give us a final answer on two debates coming up.

44:38

And we've been trying for months. So you sort of have to go, what's the value of this going to be when

44:46

I'm dead? And not every debate that I'm doing right now is necessarily, you know,

44:53

I've done this. The one this afternoon will be number 185. Yeah. And so I've covered a lot of topics in 185 debates.

45:05

And you might say, well, why would you even bother to repeat a topic? Yeah. Some of the reasons we, you know, sometimes things have changed.

45:14

I mean, dealing with Roman Catholicism right now, everything's changing. Okay, yeah.

45:19

In fact, the last two debates I did with Catholic Answers in Houston last week have been amazing in what they have revealed about what's going on in the crisis within Roman Catholicism and the new directions that Catholic apologetics are having to go.

45:39

Which is really quite groundbreaking if people follow that. If they understand what the

45:45

Pope can and can't do. Most people have no idea what's going on. Most Catholics don't. Most Catholics don't have a clue what's going on within Roman Catholicism.

45:54

Though, a fellow who helps, he lives in Houston. He used to be a member of our church in Phoenix.

46:03

He helps, you know, like he picked up some grocery stuff for me and things like that on this last trip.

46:09

Also sort of serves as my bouncer. Anyway, he has Catholic, it's an offshoot but it's still communion with Rome, Catholic family members that have just never been willing to listen to anything.

46:26

Just real animosity and just real anger. They contacted him because of what's happening with the

46:37

Pope and with the blessings of individuals in irregular relationships.

46:44

The IRS language of Rome. He got to meet with them and without pushback and anger present the gospel.

46:57

They were really interested. It was Francis's weirdness that pushed him in that situation.

47:05

Interesting. I see people looking at Eastern Orthodoxy. If they won't even think about any other perspective, they have to have the liturgy and the ceremony and stuff like that.

47:18

That's why I think it's one of the reasons you see a lot of movement toward Eastern Orthodoxy right now is because of Francis.

47:25

But those who are willing to listen to much more, it's quite interesting.

47:32

Anyway, back to the question. Obviously, now at my age and experience,

47:40

I'm under zero pressure to debate anybody. Anybody who goes, well, you're afraid,

47:47

I'm just like, really? Seriously? I mean, look at the breadth of topics that I've covered in debates.

47:54

Bart Ehrman, John Dominic Crossan, John Shelby Spong debating in mosques in South Africa.

48:00

Anybody who goes, you're afraid, I just look at them like, okay, what color is the sky in your world?

48:07

So I don't have to really think about that. I want to, again, add to my life's work.

48:15

But also when I'm in a situation like a smaller conference like this one, Jeffrey wants to do something that will be of real interest to the people that will be attending this particular conference.

48:27

And so the topic of this one, actually, I'm really looking forward to.

48:34

Yeah, me too. But I also know that a lot of people will say, yeah, but you're debating someone who's never debated before, who cares?

48:42

It's like, okay, I'm going to have an opportunity to make a real positive presentation of the finished work of Christ in atonement and then answer most of the common objections, because I pretty much know where those objections are going to be coming from.

48:57

And, you know, it has its place in this context, and it may be helpful to someone down the road. You know, I don't, the thing is,

49:05

I don't know how this debate is going to go, because I don't have any way of knowing how my opponent is going to handle it.

49:13

Right. And that's true whether you're facing an experienced debater or not, right?

49:19

No, actually, you know, like when I debated Trent Horn last week, I know where he's going.

49:25

I know how he's going to handle things. Kind of go look at the past stuff. Yeah, well, not only that, but I've debated him before, and he has a large body of work online.

49:35

Right. You know what his form of argumentation is going to be. And we even did two hours and 15 minutes on the

49:40

Ali Best Ducky Show in Dallas three days before our debates.

49:46

So, yeah, I knew where he was going to be going. And some of the weirdest debates have been the ones where I was debating someone that I just had no way of knowing where they were going to go.

50:00

Last year, the debate here, I could have guessed it, but I hoped for better. In fact,

50:05

I had met with the fellow and tried to encourage him to not imitate the late 1980s

50:14

FedEx commercials where the guy is sitting there talking really fast.

50:20

Like a machine gun. And I'd even said to him, you need to bring your audience along.

50:27

You need to debate for the audience sitting in front of you. All that was wasted breath on my part.

50:36

So, I want to ask this question, and I'm going to give you a compliment. In my early 20s, I basically lived in your debates, because even back then, 15, 18 years ago,

50:47

I could just type in James White and then a subject, and you had a debate on it. I mean, it was Roman Catholicism, right?

50:53

What really bugged me and annoyed me is I would get into these debates, and I would realize that generally your opponents, and you were very good at doing this, they would never answer.

51:05

I feel like they get away with never answering the question directly. They obfuscate it.

51:11

They jump around it. And you would come back and go, okay, now I want everyone to notice he has not answered the question.

51:17

How can you call yourself a debater when you can't even answer? And it feels like it happens so often, James. And it's frustrating to the viewer, because I go,

51:25

I would like a good answer to this. And I can count on you when they get, hey, what about this?

51:31

You go right to it and go, okay, directly, this is the answer to that. There's not a lot you can do about that.

51:38

I'd be frustrated halfway through the debate. That's why, for example, when you look at the

51:44

Roman Catholic debates we've done, I direct people to the five debates

51:50

I did with Mitchell Pacwa. Because Mitch would always answer the question, and he wasn't playing debating games.

51:57

So there are people that you will debate who play the debating game.

52:04

And so they aren't really there to win on substance.

52:11

They're there to win on style and gotcha moments and things like that. And I could run down the list.

52:20

Has that gotten better or worse over the years? Or has it stayed the same? I'm wondering if social media and video and all that has, you know, people just want to get in there.

52:30

That's a good question. You know, that's how Jerry Matitix always was. He was the first guy that I debated.

52:38

Trenthorne tends to be that way. He really does. He does the gotcha stuff. And, in fact, it's interesting. I sent him a tweet.

52:47

I still call them tweets. Two days ago, where I basically said, you know, a couple questions from our debate, and I asked really honest questions.

52:58

He made arguments that Rome has never made before, borrowed from Protestants.

53:07

And so I'm just sort of like, have any church fathers or popes or anybody on your side made this type of argument before?

53:15

He would not answer. And, in fact, his response was, well, you know, you brought up a fake papal bull, so the debate's over.

53:26

I just think we should leave it there. And, you know, in my response, I was like, I think an answer would have been really helpful.

53:32

And, by the way, you're missing the point in what I did bring up. I brought up what's called the Sabbatine privilege. Ever heard of it?

53:38

No, I have not. I figured somebody wearing a jacket like yours may have heard of it. Well, you know what assuming is.

53:44

Well, there you go. But the Sabbatine privilege is something the

53:50

Carmelite ordered primarily. And I bet there were people wearing the brown scapular in the audience when we were doing this.

53:59

But if you wear the brown scapular showing your dedication to the Virgin Mary, on the

54:07

Saturday after your death, Mary will descend into purgatory and release you.

54:17

And you're actually allowed to believe that. They allow the Carmelites to believe that.

54:23

But there are a lot of people who say, no, that wasn't a real, the

54:28

Pope never really said that, blah, blah, blah. So it's an internal thing. My point wasn't that.

54:33

My point was he's actually opening the door to the idea that purgatory might be instantaneous.

54:40

There may be no time in purgatory. And the fact of the matter is indulgences, everything that the church taught and did for hundreds of years, was based on the idea that purgatory lasts for a long time.

54:55

Right. It has to have time to work. There were so many visionaries and saints and mystics who had visions of popes who had died hundreds of years earlier, who were still in purgatory, that they're just willing to throw all that stuff out the window now.

55:14

And that's why I had brought it up. I wasn't saying, I think that's a valid thing or whatever else. I was saying, it's so obvious that people believed in time in purgatory.

55:25

But he's saying something totally new. Well, now under Francis, it's, well, you know, the church has not necessarily defined the nature of the fire.

55:39

In fact, he twice had quoted. I mean, that's a huge thing to redefine in the Roman Catholic faith.

55:45

You would think so. But hey, Francis is doing it and he's making it so it's going to keep happening.

55:52

And so that's going to have an impact. Anyways, so obviously debating the best the

56:01

Catholic answers has to offer is an important thing to do. But it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be getting the most representative

56:09

Roman Catholic perspective. So there's this guy named Taylor Marshall out there that's a

56:15

Latin mass traditionalist type guy. And I follow him on Twitter because he actually believes in Roman Catholicism.

56:24

Right. Francis is driving him absolutely nuts. And so I actually can interact with someone like that more easily because they really believe.

56:36

It's like Mormonism has changed so much. Trying to talk to a modern day Mormon is like trying to nail jello to the wall.

56:42

It is just frustrating and it's just not a whole lot of fun to do. And so this

56:47

Taylor Marshall guy, he's got some weird views, but he's a conservative. I even suggested him as maybe being willing to debate.

56:58

Well, I even sent him Christmas greetings on Christmas Eve.

57:04

And you could tell he could barely bring himself to even respond to me. He detests

57:10

Protestants. And when I said, would you be willing to consider a debate?

57:16

I will not appear at any Protestant event. I mean, he's just...

57:25

We've got this thing coming up in Louisiana. There's lots of Roman Catholics in Louisiana. They tend to be very conservative

57:31

Roman Catholics. We're going to have a Catholic answers guy come in, we hope. And I just don't know how representative he's going to be of the

57:42

Catholicism that the Catholics that will be coming to the debate...

57:47

That's happening right now. ...will necessarily believe. When I first started debating in August of 90...

57:58

And what led you into that? Was it, hey, I might be good at this, or I enjoy this, or I'm interested in this? How did you get into that first debate?

58:04

Well, it's interesting because the high school I went to didn't have a class on debate.

58:12

The closest thing I came to that was I was the prosecuting attorney in the trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, my senior year in high school, which

58:20

I really got into, by the way. But even my college didn't have debates, so it wasn't something

58:26

I had done. My experience, actually, was as a radio announcer.

58:32

I started my sophomore year in high school, I started working Saturdays live on the air, spinning records the whole nine yards.

58:42

This was before digital and all the rest of that stuff. So you'd literally have records start skipping and stuff like that, and the old way of doing things.

58:51

But what that meant was I had to multitask, I had to do commercials, I would be doing my schoolwork in between records,

58:59

I'm always watching a clock. UPI World News starts at the top of the hour, and that last record

59:08

I cue up, it's called back timing. And you have to start it so it will be finishing up at the top of the hour.

59:16

It may be playing while the other record's still playing, and then you have to fade between them, and then you do the ID. You have to watch the clock.

59:25

Yeah, it's live, it's one take. There's no editing. You mess it up, and everybody gets to hear it.

59:33

So I did that all the way through high school and into college. And so that's always been my advantage in a debate, is that 85 to 90 % of the people

59:43

I debate have no earthly idea how to get their opening statement in without having to rush at the end or say,

59:51

I'll finish this up later. And it makes them look like they don't know what... I was going to mention that. I've watched a lot of your debates with the other guys, like, oh, what, two minutes?

59:59

And you're like, oh, well, this is very beneficial for your position. And every moderator will tell you,

01:00:05

I don't have to worry about him. He's going to finish it up within six seconds or less before.

01:00:13

And part of that's just to respect the process and to respect the audience and the topic.

01:00:20

But how did that start? Well, we were already doing apologetic ministry with Mormons and things like that.

01:00:26

And then in the late 80s, one of our guys, one of our vice presidents, who was a former Roman Catholic, he really started pushing me to, you know, yeah, we say this about the

01:00:36

Jehovah's Witnesses, but have you looked at what Rome does with this? There's a lot of parallels. Well, how about Mormons?

01:00:43

And so back then, there was no internet. There was something called

01:00:49

Fidonet. It was a bulletin board system. Sure, my dad was into bulletin boards.

01:00:55

I remember him. Oh, yeah, yeah, the BBSs. And I started encountering

01:01:01

Roman Catholics and debating them electronically in that context. And so I started writing a book, and we ended up choosing to break it into two books because the appendices were longer than the primary book.

01:01:17

So I wrote a book called The Fatal Flaw and then Answers to Catholic Claims. And I was also listening to Scott Hahn and Jerry Madetich.

01:01:29

Now, Scott Hahn is still a very well -known Roman Catholic guy. He'll never debate me.

01:01:35

Believe me, he and I have had some interesting exchanges. But anyways, he was close friends with Jerry Madetich.

01:01:43

So Jerry Madetich was, at the time, doing his PhD at Westminster in Philadelphia.

01:01:49

And he was the favorite student of R .C.

01:01:58

Sproul's mentor, John Gerstner. So Madetich's favorite student,

01:02:05

John Gerstner. He is the first ordained PCA minister to become

01:02:10

Roman Catholic. And so that really, really upset

01:02:16

Gerstner a lot that his favorite student became Roman Catholic. And so Catholic Answers hired

01:02:24

Jerry Madetich. And in fact, I showed this picture on the dividing line, last dividing line

01:02:29

I did. I found it in my... I like having all my stuff digitally available, but when you have 22 ,600 pictures in your library, trying to find something is actually impossible.

01:02:39

But I found it. It's a picture of him sitting in church, young guy. And I remember what the caption was.

01:02:46

It's, I'm the one who stole your loved ones from the Catholic Church. And it was, you know, it's an educational thing.

01:02:53

And they followed up after that debate with two debates in Phoenix in December of that year.

01:03:00

One at a Protestant church on Perseverance of the Saints. And the second night was at a

01:03:08

Roman Catholic church on the papacy. And what's really interesting... And this is 1990.

01:03:15

1990, December of 90. City of the Lord. They had never run into anybody who knew anything about church history.

01:03:23

And the debate went really well for our side. It was being moderated by Scott Hahn, who couldn't say anything.

01:03:32

And when it was over, well, first of all, there were Catholics leaving during the debate.

01:03:39

And when it was over, Hahn, before all the people could get up onto the stage or up front where we were, he sort of gathers me and Jerry, and first he rebukes me.

01:03:53

He said, you brought up papal infallibility, and that's not what this debate was about. As if you're not supposed to mention what

01:03:59

Rome teaches about the Pope. And then he turns to his good buddy, Jerry Matitix, in front of all these people, and says, and you used the

01:04:11

Bible as your only source of authority, and you can't do that. And he simply turned around and stalked out of the room and left

01:04:21

Jerry standing there with all these really excited Protestants coming up ready to do a feeding frenzy shark thing.

01:04:28

And that, I guess, was sort of the beginning of Jerry...

01:04:34

I think 91 is when he left Catholic Answers. Wow. It's heaven forbid,

01:04:41

Sola Scriptura, huh? Well, he eventually, Jerry eventually became a Sedevacantist.

01:04:47

And that's a person who does not believe there is a valid Pope. He's an ultra -conservative.

01:04:54

He's gotten into some really weird stuff. The last I knew of Jerry, he was meeting with four, five, six people in the back room at a holiday inn.

01:05:04

Around the United States. Somehow raised 14 children.

01:05:10

His wife just has to be in abs... I don't care what her religion is. She gets to go to heaven just for surviving that.

01:05:17

And... In fact, honest with you, the last time

01:05:22

I saw Jerry Madetix was on Jeopardy. He was on Jeopardy? With Alex Trebek.

01:05:30

He lost. Didn't even win one round. But he was on Jeopardy. It was the last

01:05:35

I saw of him. Was that years ago, though? Oh yeah, that was a number of years ago. I have no idea what he's doing any longer.

01:05:43

But he and I have debated, I think, 13 times since 1990.

01:05:49

On a lot of different topics. Perpetual Virginity of Mary. At the

01:05:55

University of Utah. I always found that a rather humorous relationship to be in polygamous

01:06:03

Utah debating the Perpetual Virginity of Mary with a Roman Catholic. I'm not sure how that fits.

01:06:08

But we did. For a long time, Roman Catholicism was the big major topic.

01:06:17

But then, Jason Wallace, the pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church up in Magna, Utah, he started arranging

01:06:25

Mormon debates in the Salt Lake Valley. And the last one we did was with Dr.

01:06:37

Dennis Potter. And he comes walking in and he's got a backpack with a sign on it that says

01:06:45

No War in Iraq. And he's got an earring. Just like one?

01:06:52

Yes. Okay. And I'm like... And we were debating something about Adam, as I recall.

01:07:00

And it was... Something wasn't quite right in this situation. Was it like a marine green hippie...

01:07:06

Yeah, it was. He came back from Nam? What's going on here? I could not really figure it out.

01:07:12

Rambo One walking in. And when I was coming off the stage when it was all over with, this

01:07:19

Mormon comes up to me who I had seen at most of my other debates. Yeah. And he just very seriously says,

01:07:26

I want to ask you to stop debating us. He says, we don't have anyone who can beat you.

01:07:34

It doesn't make you right. But we have no one who can beat you. So I want to ask you to please stop debating

01:07:40

Mormons. And I'm just sort of like, well, no. Right.

01:07:46

But they did pretty much... The Mormons put the word out. Stop. Like, just don't. Not worth it.

01:07:51

Not worth it. We haven't done it up there in a long, long time now. And what's amazing is

01:07:57

Dr. Dennis Potter is now Dr. Kelly Potter.

01:08:04

Transgender. Yes. Yes. And is an agnostic. You debated him at the tip of his transition with that earring.

01:08:12

Oh, no. And is now a socialist agnostic. Oh. Right.

01:08:19

So... And in fact, I'm starting to get so old. There's quite a list now of people that I have debated who are dead.

01:08:30

And it makes you go... You know, because obviously not everybody I debate is not a

01:08:36

Christian. But the majority of them aren't. Right. And some of them are pretty well known.

01:08:41

John Shelby Spong comes to mind as someone that's...

01:08:46

Wow. So... Yeah. So we've covered the gamut.

01:08:52

You mentioned the debate with the... I didn't see that coming. I didn't see that. I debated a guy, and he transitioned.

01:08:57

Yeah. I didn't think that's the way the conversation was going to end. I remember when Jason first contacted me and told me that.

01:09:03

I said, at first, it's like, you've got to be kidding me. And then you sort of look back and go, mm -hmm, okay.

01:09:09

Yeah, I might have been able to see that. Yeah. About the Mormons, though, I feel like they've gotten...

01:09:15

They had this, like, push in the 90s and early 2000s, where their PR team was everywhere. And then the last...

01:09:21

Maybe even right before Romney ran, they kind of pulled everything back in. They've become a little more secretive.

01:09:27

Kind of what you're saying with your debating. I'm not saying you caused that. Totally. I'm saying... I wonder if it's a push by the church to go, okay, let's just pull it back in.

01:09:36

A little more Scientologist -y to where it's more private. I just don't see them out there like they used to be.

01:09:42

Well... Or is that just my wrong perception? You know more than I do on that. It's your wrong perception. The...

01:09:48

That's why we have you on. You gotta shoot me straight. Yeah, the LDS church is changing. It's changing a lot.

01:09:55

Conservative, believing Mormons are really feeling lost. You know, there are now

01:10:02

LGBTQ groups on campus at BYU. The majority of the

01:10:09

Salt Lake City Council is LGBTQ. Oh, I didn't know that. The City Council of Salt Lake City. Utah has no idea what to do.

01:10:17

You would think that any religion that would stand firm on these subjects, it would be Mormonism.

01:10:23

Because their God is literally a physical man who begets children. I mean, the whole priesthood issue is only for men.

01:10:31

I mean, they have a gendered God. He has male body parts. Right. And...

01:10:38

Yet... No. They are... They're inwardly collapsing on all of these issues. And...

01:10:45

Most of... You know, when I first started talking to Mormons, we first started going out to the Easter pageant of the LDS church.

01:10:51

That the 10 -year -old kids would come up and argue theology with you. Now the adults don't have a clue what they believe.

01:10:59

I would have huge groups of young people around me the first years we went out there.

01:11:06

And they wanted to talk. They wanted to have conversations. You almost have to trip them up and hold them down to get them to talk.

01:11:14

So is it just apathy within the church? Is it... I mean, because the evangelical church were seeing that.

01:11:20

They believed they were the one true church then. Yeah. And that was central to Joseph Smith's first vision testimony.

01:11:29

Now, starting in the late... Very, very late 1990s, they started to try to mainstream.

01:11:37

You know, back in the 50s, 60s, every Mormon would have said, we're not Christians, we're

01:11:43

Mormons. Right. That's not what they say now. We're all together in this and we have much more in common and blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:11:52

And it has... Their numbers are not just flat, they're negative. The back door is much larger than the front door.

01:11:58

The only reason there's still any growth, really, is natural family size. Sure. Just lots and lots of kids.

01:12:06

But you can just tell... Back in the 1980s, when I first started witnessing the

01:12:11

Mormons, one of the statistics was that, at one point anyways, the average

01:12:17

Southern Baptist church had 274 members and in an average week, 273

01:12:25

Southern Baptists became Mormons. Wow. So that was one church per week, wholesale, 52 churches per year.

01:12:32

Okay, so yeah, so it has dwindled. Yeah, that's not the case anymore. That's not happening anymore. So they still have a ton of money.

01:12:42

Yeah. I mean, when that earthquake hit Utah about five years ago and Moroni fell off the

01:12:50

Salt Lake Temple, they weren't honest about this, but that building almost came down.

01:12:56

Okay. And they are literally rebuilding it without taking it down, if you can imagine what that requires.

01:13:03

Right. The money that they are spending on that is astonishing.

01:13:10

And it just is the tip of the iceberg. So it's not like they're going to disappear, but I've said many, many times, all it would take would be one charismatic prophet.

01:13:22

Because they don't have... They've stuck themselves in a situation where the oldest, the person with the most seniority on the

01:13:30

Council of the Twelve Apostles becomes the new prophet when the old guy dies. Well, what that does is mean you will always be led by someone who's at least 93 years old.

01:13:42

Right. So you're on death watch constantly. You don't have vibrant young leadership or anything like that.

01:13:48

And so there aren't any exciting people leading the

01:13:54

LDS Church. And if someone arose, they could get quite a following because things have changed so, so, so, so much.

01:14:03

And I don't know what that's going to look like long term, but I do remember standing at the north...

01:14:11

No. No, south, east, southwest corner.

01:14:16

I'll get there eventually. Southwest corner of Temple Square during the General Conference. We're talking to this Mormon, older Mormon guy.

01:14:23

And he's telling us about how the church is going into apostasy. We're sort of like, you run into a lot of weird stuff in Salt Lake City, believe me.

01:14:33

Okay. But I'll never forget him pointing up to Moroni on the top of the temple and going, within 20 years, there will be a cross up there.

01:14:43

Now, I don't think that's going to happen, but he was onto something.

01:14:49

He saw something I didn't see at that point in time, that there were fundamental changes taking place within Mormonism.

01:14:56

And a lot of Mormons are just really... They don't know what to do.

01:15:03

They don't know where to go. And it's sort of like witnessing the Muslims. A lot of evangelicals are afraid to even try because of ignorance.

01:15:11

They don't know. I'm going to say something stupid. They're going to ask me a question I can't answer, et cetera, et cetera.

01:15:19

And so, you know, we've planted a church in Salt Lake. It's doing real well. And they do a lot of outreach and street witnessing and stuff like that.

01:15:27

But there needs to be a whole lot more. Salt Lake City is a pagan area.

01:15:34

It really is. Every kind of religious wackadoodlism takes root in Salt Lake City and always has.

01:15:41

Always has. Two nights ago, some of the guys were out to eat and Jeffrey Rice and Braden Patterson were walking out.

01:15:49

And two LDS were walking in and sat down and talked to a couple. Are you guys

01:15:54

Christian? Yeah, we'd like to talk to you. Braden said they both about -faced and sat down right with them.

01:16:02

Hey, yeah, we're Christian too. Can we talk? Two hours later they said, I think we saved that couple 40 years of Mormonism because they were like open to it.

01:16:12

Yeah, let's listen. And Braden said, do not listen to those. Kind of gave them their testimony. So they sneak in everywhere.

01:16:18

They got a couple out here in Tullahoma still walking around. A question

01:16:24

I wanted to ask you. Do you have a subject that you go,

01:16:29

I wish I could debate someone on that, but it hasn't come up? Something that piques your interest that you might go,

01:16:36

I haven't heard a lot on this. There's not anyone talking about it, whether it be a new or old subject, but a subject that goes, yeah,

01:16:43

I don't think I've really touched on that. And I think that would make for a good debate. Do you seek after that?

01:16:49

Or do they just, as the subjects come, you go, if I can contribute something valuable to this, I'll do it.

01:16:55

There are topics I won't debate because it wouldn't be worthwhile as far as I have no more knowledge than anybody else does.

01:17:05

So I try to debate on subjects that are in my wheelhouse.

01:17:11

And so might there be some people that I would like to get to debate because I think more people would end up watching the debate or something like that.

01:17:20

Yeah, I suppose. But no, I can't think of anything off the top of my head. I'm like, man,

01:17:25

I've just always tried to find somebody. Like I said, here from Tennessee South, what

01:17:32

I'd like to do is find some of these loud mouth, Peter Ruckman -esque, King James only guys to demonstrate that they actually have the courage of their own convictions and debate the subject.

01:17:45

They know who I am. And they just run for the hills whenever anybody says, hey. You have more experience with them than I do.

01:17:51

My limited experience, and we kind of talked back and forth about this guy on Twitter last year.

01:17:58

But man, came out of the gate, yelling at me, telling me, your constituents as an elected official should know that you think all

01:18:05

God sends people to hell and doesn't love, right? And I go, I don't know who this guy is. And someone private messaged me and said, that's the pastor of the

01:18:12

King James only church around the corner from you. Now from the outside, it does not look like a small Stephen Anderson kind.

01:18:18

It's a big, beautiful church, 750 people. Everyone seems normal. I don't mean, but the whole point was, is

01:18:26

I called him up and I said, hey, I'd be happy to sit down and have coffee with you. I don't need to talk to you.

01:18:32

And it's like, and then they shrink back anytime anyone asked him a question and it's just too, and come to find out three months ago, him and his whole elder board got removed.

01:18:42

He was physically abusing his wife for eight years. So clearly the man had a temper and I just say that because there were some issues there.

01:18:50

It was actually the clip of the guy that I sent you six months ago and said, I'd love to see you debate this guy.

01:18:56

But he wouldn't do it. It wouldn't have nothing to do with not even talk to me and I'm a nobody. So it's like, it's tough for, it's just so tough at the

01:19:03

King James only crowd because I've known him and man, it's very cult -like. It can be.

01:19:09

There is a cult at King James only and they're the ones that tend to yell the loudest. Are you at liberty to say what names you'd love, you'd like to debate?

01:19:17

Or no, you keep plate close to the vest. Who's someone that you would like to sit down? You mean these? Or like you said, just maybe another name that would get some more viewership or something.

01:19:28

Oh, I don't know. I'll put my call in to Jordan Peterson. Oh, yeah.

01:19:35

I'll call Joe Rogan's people and see if I can get you on the podcast. Someone actually tried to. Gosh, I'd love to see you on Rogan.

01:19:43

Someone actually tried to do the Peterson thing and I said, yeah, good luck. I know people who know him.

01:19:50

In fact, he spoke at a conference in Washington, D .C. in November of 2017 that I and my daughter spoke at.

01:20:01

Okay. And in fact, I was just finding out who he was. I had to find out from my daughter who he was and it was fascinating to listen to him but my daughter spoke right before him and he was in the audience while she spoke and I think at least three, maybe four times in his talk, he made reference to her.

01:20:23

As the previous speaker said, dah, dah, dah, dah. Okay. And so that was sort of like, way to go,

01:20:28

Summer. Good job. That is pretty cool. I just feel like he understands intellect and I think someone like you and him that if you guys were to sit down together,

01:20:38

I think he's close to being a believer. I think he's searching but he's letting some things get in the way.

01:20:44

Yeah, his wife, I guess, has had some spiritual experiences regarding a healing due to the rosary now.

01:20:54

Ah, okay. And so there's Roman Catholic stuff going on there and so I don't know. He gets a little bit into mysticism and stuff so I could see how he could fall into that, unfortunately.

01:21:04

But okay, so no Jordan Peterson debate. I just thought, I didn't know if you had some names out there you were going, yeah, that'd be a fun person to debate.

01:21:11

And people have talked about Rogan and stuff like that and look, he's obviously a sharp guy but it's all celebrity.

01:21:23

I know it's celebrity but it's also, if you listen to some of his stuff in the last six months, he's seeking. And sometimes, sometimes

01:21:32

I think he's an intellectual kind of guy in the way of he wants to try to understand something intellectually first and I believe the

01:21:40

Lord can use intellectualism to then save someone through the actual changing of the heart and I don't know.

01:21:47

I think it'd be a fun episode. So, you know, I'll be the first one listening if you ever get on Rogan.

01:21:53

Well, with that jacket, you might be the first one. All right, so let's finish up here.

01:22:00

Give us, just the listeners, a little two or three minute preview of what you're debating tonight and maybe, don't give away any of your secrets.

01:22:07

This is before the debate. It's not a... But where are we going with it? Give us a synopsis of it. Like, what are we trying to...

01:22:13

There's nothing secret. I'm not exactly sure what the fellow I'm debating is going to say.

01:22:19

It's his first debate. Gosh, that's good. He's a former Calvinist and that was the only reason I found out about him is someone sent me links and I watched a few things one night in my

01:22:30

RV and made some comments on the dividing line and when this conference stuff came up,

01:22:39

I was just trying to find people who would be willing to debate. The guy that we had last year, I didn't want to debate again.

01:22:45

I just didn't feel like it was worthwhile. And so I threw out one fellow who is here, but like I said, evidently only wanted a thesis expressed in King James English.

01:23:01

And so we didn't go there and then contacted this fellow and he said he'd be willing to do it. So I'm just going to present a hopefully compelling

01:23:10

Biblical argument for particular redemption of the harmony of Father, Son, and Spirit in bringing about the redemption of God's people.

01:23:20

My assumption is I'll be spending a lot of my time on the standard texts of 1

01:23:28

John 2 -2 and 2 Peter 2 and a few passages that are always thrown back our direction without a whole lot of interaction with the actual thesis that I will present.

01:23:43

But I could be wrong. We'll find out. That's something we didn't really touch on, which is really people need to realize too if they're not really big in debates.

01:23:51

It's not like you guys go over each other's notes. Hey, by the way, I'm going to be coming from this text. You have to respond on your feet.

01:23:57

They could be bringing in something that, okay, maybe didn't think of that or a verse that they're construed.

01:24:03

I mean, it's okay. They present. I instantly back up, respond, or well, sometimes later in the debate, responding to that.

01:24:11

For me, that would be a little unnerving, just going, I'm kind of going into it blind. They could throw a wrench anywhere.

01:24:17

You could throw a wrench into his plans. So there's got to be a mutual respect there to be able to respond to those things.

01:24:23

In this situation, he has the advantage of obviously knowing exactly where I'm going because I've written books and there's years and years worth of stuff.

01:24:32

And now you can search on my website for everything I've said in every dividing line, sermon, church history class, debate, for literally 20, wow, 98.

01:24:46

So yeah, we're talking 26 years now for a quarter century. Yeah, that's crazy. So it's easy to know where I'm going. Well, we'll be praying for you.

01:24:52

We're looking forward to it. And we're going to have everything linked up. You know, Alpha and Omega Ministries, Dividing Line, all that good stuff.

01:25:00

It'll be linked up here, guys, underneath the episode. Make sure you click on it if you're not already following and listening and all that good stuff.

01:25:06

You guys know how influential James has been in my life and I'm sure yours too. So Doctor, thanks so much for sitting with us for a little bit, discussing it.

01:25:15

Guys, as always, remember the chief end of man is a glorified God and enjoy him forever. God bless. Be sure to check us out at dmwpodcast .com

01:25:22

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