Return Road Trip DL from the Middle of Nowhere
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I am in western Oklahoma, just shy of the Texas panhandle, and I am truly in the middle of nowhere. But, we set up Starlink and got the job done! Pretty much went through a Twitter thread from a fellow named BG Apustaja and replied to his assertions about how I have become "unhinged," which led to a discussion of a lot of different topics. Rich said he enjoyed the show, so, there's that! Oh, and I mentioned this book https://biblicalscienceinstitute.com/shop/falling-flat/ and how you should get it from Jason Lisle's ministry!
- 00:30
- Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. I am in the middle of absolutely positively nowhere.
- 00:39
- I was even, I was talking to the very bored KOA employee lady.
- 00:45
- She made a good cheeseburger. That's one of the places, one of the reasons I stop at this particular KOA on the 40 in western
- 00:53
- Oklahoma is they make really good cheeseburgers. So that's something good.
- 00:59
- But there's nothing around here. I mean, you just look around and it's even the name of the
- 01:07
- KOA is one town that's like 15 miles that way and the other town that's 15 miles that way.
- 01:12
- It's just out in the middle of absolutely nowhere. It really is. And actually it's the second time
- 01:18
- I've had, we call our new, our relatively new RV Big Red because it's big and red is in the name of the brand.
- 01:28
- But anyway, second time I've had her here and the first time
- 01:34
- I got hit with one of the worst thunderstorms I've ever been in, in an
- 01:40
- RV. I mean, you'd see the flash of lightning and the thunder was instant.
- 01:46
- It was right on top of you. I mean, there was lightning hitting all over the place. And we actually, that's when
- 01:52
- I found out we had a leak in one of the vents up there, we've never been able to, they've been up on the roof with hoses and the whole nine yards trying to find,
- 02:03
- I haven't been able to redo it, but it only happened like 20 minutes into it. Absolute deluge. But anyways, as she pointed out, we're right next to the freeway.
- 02:15
- And so it was probably really cheap land, I suppose, but middle of nowhere.
- 02:22
- I could probably get home faster if I made longer days, longer driving days, but I don't want to simply because it's not really safe.
- 02:35
- You know, I'm driving alone and I'm comfortable driving a certain number of hours.
- 02:42
- And you know, today wasn't as bad as on the way out. I had a really bad wind day on the way out and the wind just blows my hair.
- 02:54
- Yeah. Actually, sometimes it's so windy, I'll feel my beard moving around, but yeah, no.
- 03:01
- Had a little wind today, the gas mileage, you can always tell. I did almost 10 .3
- 03:06
- yesterday. Miles to the gallon is like 8 .4 today. So you never know what you're going to run into.
- 03:13
- You know, you can be tootling along and all of a sudden you're in a construction zone with super narrow lanes and guys in full size tractor trailers trying to pretend they're driving at the
- 03:25
- Indianapolis 500 going by you. You never know. So anyways, I could probably get home faster, but I get home again in the week and we'll probably try to sneak another program in as we're going along, as issues require it, shall we say.
- 03:43
- So I was, as normal, I'm looking at Twitter X and Joshua Hames, who has interviewed me a few times, just posted something that it's relevant to one of the various topics.
- 04:05
- You know, you're driving along. I've been listening to a, well,
- 04:12
- I hope this comes up. I have a new computer. And I don't know why, but sometimes you'll have things set up in a particular fashion on your old computer.
- 04:32
- And you just don't know why things don't work the way that they were supposed to work.
- 04:39
- I'm listening to a book and I'm going to get back to this, but I want to at least mention it.
- 04:46
- I'm listening to it on the road. It's called
- 04:51
- Falling Flat, A Refutation of Flat Earth Claims. And I hesitate to go to the cover because it'll mess up where I am.
- 05:04
- And I will mention this for folks because people, for years, people asked me the same question over and over and over again.
- 05:11
- How do you listen to books while you're riding your bike? Most people are starting to figure that out.
- 05:18
- But one thing that I have certainly found extremely useful, and I was doing it today as I was listening to that book, using an app called
- 05:33
- Speechify. Now, Speechify is not an overly cheap subscription thing, but I've mentioned to you before, it really works well.
- 05:45
- I mean, yeah, you know, okay, sometimes there's a glitch here or there, but that's the program where I've actually created an
- 05:52
- AI version of my own voice. And so for people who spend a lot of time on the road or have jobs that can allow them to be listening to things regularly, it's really useful because I can listen to all my
- 06:13
- Kindle library on it and I can just throw a URL at it.
- 06:19
- And if it's a document file or something, it'll just start reading it to you. It's pretty cool.
- 06:27
- It's for someone who does what I do and I don't have a staff to do research for me and stuff like that.
- 06:35
- It's great to have. It really, really is. So that book,
- 06:42
- I'll just go ahead and say this now, that book is really, really enjoying it. It's sad that we have to have people writing books debunking flat earth claims today.
- 06:56
- But as I've mentioned, I'm noticing a connection. All these people that are jumping on the everything's now everything's a conspiracy.
- 07:08
- Because, you know, we found out that we were being lied to during COVID. Yep, we did. And therefore all conspiracy theories were created equal.
- 07:18
- Nope, they're not. Not by a long shot. Well, who's to know? Well, thankfully we have scripture to help us with things like that.
- 07:29
- But scripture doesn't... yeah, yeah, yeah, never mind. It is interesting that a lot of the people who are pushing the, you know, the red avatar, blue eye guys,
- 07:40
- I'm seeing flat earthism popping up amongst them too. And for many years,
- 07:47
- I just said, I'm sorry, I can't. Go listen to Jason Lyle. I can't. I can't talk to you.
- 07:53
- That's just not even going to bother. But it's nice to have this new book. Well, you know, it even if it does, no, no, no,
- 08:02
- I can do it this way. I'll do it another, another direction. So I can, and I should have.
- 08:11
- There it is. It is by Dr. Danny Faulkner.
- 08:18
- Falling Flat, a Refutation of Flat Earth Claims. It came out in 2019. I only saw it because Jason Lyle is carrying the book.
- 08:28
- So if you want to actually buy the paper book, let me suggest that you just go ahead and buy it from Jason Lyle's website, biblicalcreation .com,
- 08:38
- biblicalcreationinstitute .com, I think. And that way you can support
- 08:45
- Jason Lyle at the same time you're getting the book. Um, Amazon doesn't need your money. Now, if you want in Kindle, and you're sort of stuck with that, but, um, uh, you might find it really useful.
- 08:59
- I confess. I still have a really hard time even talking to someone who's a flat earther because, and he says in the book, he says there are certain, he says there are certain advocates of flat earthism that even he doesn't, you know, he, he tries, he'll, he'll get a little bit into the conversation and then realize it does not, with this individual, it doesn't matter.
- 09:29
- And the fact of the matter is there are people like that advocating for everything. Um, there are
- 09:35
- Mormons who it doesn't matter what you show them about the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, and there isn't any way to get through that.
- 09:47
- The Spirit of God can, but you can't. And if the Spirit of God isn't working in that person's life at that point in time, you're, you're going to be just smashing your head against the wall.
- 09:59
- And, um, same thing here. So Falling Flat by Dr. Danny Faulkner, highly recommend that you get ahold of that if for some strange reason you have people in your family or whatever else that, you know, get into that stuff.
- 10:14
- So back to after that little, uh, detour, uh, which sometimes you have to take, um, back to Joshua Hames here.
- 10:25
- He, uh, just posted something. Well, I don't know if he just posted it. It's not telling me when it, when it was here.
- 10:31
- Oh, wait a minute. December 10th, 628 PM. Oh, okay.
- 10:36
- Just a few minutes ago. Um, that's probably why it just popped up. Calling someone a
- 10:41
- PWC adherent is quickly becoming the right -wing version of the left calling someone racist.
- 10:49
- Apparently calling men to honor their elders makes me team PWC. Um, PWC, post -war consensus, which we've talked about recently.
- 11:01
- Um, and I'll just mention for the moment that most of the people who are talking about the post -war consensus were introduced to the phrase by Reno's book,
- 11:18
- Return of the Strong Gods. And which I'm also, I also have in Kindle, uh, some of the terminology that Speechify is a little confused by, but anyway.
- 11:30
- Um, and what's interesting is,
- 11:36
- I think Reno himself would be embarrassed by, or find embarrassing, how a lot of people are using his book.
- 11:47
- And because they don't understand when, when he talks about post -war consensus, he's talking about basically global, the global push away from nationalism toward transnationalism, open societies, um, you know, full -on globalism, uh, as a means to try to avoid what it is assumed gave rise to Hitler and the third
- 12:17
- Reich. It couldn't have given rise to the
- 12:22
- Japanese, uh, situation. Uh, so I'm not really sure how that even connects up there.
- 12:31
- And there's, there's, there's a lot that went into World War I and World War II, which were really two major spasms of the same reorientation.
- 12:45
- Um, uh, the, the, the victors in World War I created
- 12:52
- World War II. They did. If, if, if that, uh, if that had been handled better, if we didn't have
- 13:01
- Wilson, um, things would have been, you know, might've been able to avoid
- 13:08
- World War II. Um, who knows it, it's, it's so easy to speculate about stuff like that.
- 13:14
- But anyways, the point is, um, most of the people running around yelling about post -war consensus and accusing anybody who's not, you know, anybody who's over 60 with, uh, being
- 13:33
- Sola PwC. Someone literally said of me that I'm Sola PwC.
- 13:41
- Uh, the strange things that happen in this world, uh, they, and they, they truly are strange things, um, has nothing to do, honestly.
- 13:52
- Uh, I'm not a globalist. Uh, I'm, I'm not pushing those agendas in any way, shape or form.
- 14:01
- And in fact, you know, until a year ago, we were all pretty much saying the same things and go in the same direction and speaking at the same conferences and wow, how things change so very, very quickly.
- 14:16
- Um, maybe at the end of the year, we can, we can, uh, think back, we're almost there, but we can think back on just how much has changed not only in 2024, but, um, you know, uh, do a five -year thing.
- 14:33
- You know, what did the world look like at the end of 2019? And what does it look like at the end of 2024?
- 14:43
- That, wow, that's, that's amazing to think about. And for us older folks, the speed with which that has happened is troubling.
- 14:55
- It should be troubling for everybody. The younger generations is so used to things changing so fast, they don't really notice it.
- 15:00
- But the reality is when things change that fast, very rarely does a fast changing situation produce stability and a firm foundation for the future.
- 15:17
- And so it's not just, ah, you're just, you're just old. You don't like how things change. No, there's, there's actually a problem when, when things change that quickly and that fast, the result will probably be temporary.
- 15:35
- It's not going to provide long -term stability and a foundation for building a godly society or culture.
- 15:47
- One thing you've got to, you got to admit is that when you look at God's law and you look at what
- 15:55
- God says about economics and culture and stuff like that, constantly looking around for some new way, new way to do things, that's not, that's not, that's not
- 16:07
- God's way. There is, there's certainly the ability to adjust to the natural development that takes place in history, but societies that are wedded to a constant, massive change, that's, that's not, that's not the same.
- 16:31
- Oh, I just, I doubt you can hear the little sounds, but I was walking, like I said, they make good cheeseburgers here.
- 16:46
- And so I was walking back to the unit and I saw a little kitty running across the
- 16:55
- RV park in the section they're not using right now, because it's not exactly high volume traffic time.
- 17:03
- And so I, I went, you know, and she came running straight over to me, almost tripped me up.
- 17:14
- I, I petted her for a while and then I started walking toward my unit and she's getting under my feet.
- 17:20
- She wants me to stop and pet her. I said, come on, I've got some turkey. I've got some turkey in the refrigerator.
- 17:25
- Come on. And so she, she came back and I gave her some turkey.
- 17:31
- And then later I found my temptations, cat treats. And so I went out and found her again.
- 17:38
- And so here's, here's, I have no idea what her name is. She's wearing a collar with a little bell on it.
- 17:45
- So I guess that's how they keep anybody from swiping her and just driving off with her. But I got the distinct feeling
- 17:52
- I am not the first person she has mooched off of. She was sort of looking for, looking for more handouts.
- 18:02
- And so yeah, a little, the little kitties from, from these
- 18:08
- RV parks, there are a lot of them. You, you will encounter them every once in a while. And they, they're, they're a whole lot of fun.
- 18:15
- Very nice and sweet and want to be petted and all that kind of stuff. How'd I get onto that?
- 18:20
- I don't know how I got onto that from there, but how'd you get to it from the post -war consensus to that?
- 18:26
- I don't know. Anyway, lots of stuff going on, you know,
- 18:34
- I'll, I'll, I'll see things coming by. You put most of text messages on the screen.
- 18:43
- You can't necessarily see all of it unless it's short, but you can sort of see stuff without necessarily, you know, picking up your phone and fumbling around and stuff like that.
- 18:52
- You just sort of go, Oh, okay. That whatever sort of a safety thing at that point, so many things going on.
- 19:01
- I well, yeah,
- 19:07
- I did want to mention something about that last topic, about what Joshua had said. For a lot of people, there's a, there's a narrative that has been created and I don't think it was created by my side, whatever my side is.
- 19:23
- There's a narrative that's been created that we are somehow opposed to.
- 19:38
- So evidently Summer's actually listening and she says, you got there because Nani texted you and said, you can't steal another cat.
- 19:46
- I've never stolen a cat. Okay. Cats have, have adopted us.
- 19:53
- And I don't, but, but she didn't jump up into the unit. So she wasn't trying to, trying to come home with me.
- 19:59
- I think she, she has a family here, but anyways, yes, I know how I got distracted and how you just now distracted me now.
- 20:07
- It, you know, where, where, where was I even going? One side has tried to create a narrative to where, you know,
- 20:15
- I've actually had people and did I, I have to check real quick. Did I bookmark this?
- 20:23
- No, I didn't. That's a shame. I was, there was a fellow,
- 20:31
- I even asked him how to pronounce his name and maybe
- 20:41
- I, maybe I can still find it. Yeah, there it is. Yeah, there it is. There's a, this actually touches on this.
- 20:49
- There's a guy named BG Avustaha, Avustaha, I guess.
- 20:56
- I, I asked him how to, how to pronounce it. And he did, he did respond to that.
- 21:03
- And technically I think the international phonetic alphabet notation is
- 21:10
- Avustaha, Avustaha, but he didn't capitalize the thing that tell me where the accent is.
- 21:20
- Anyway, someone had listed some people that would be good to follow on Twitter and they put me in there.
- 21:32
- And he commented on that and said, well, maybe a year ago, but not anymore.
- 21:39
- And so the person said, why not anymore? And so he explained, Dr. White has gone somewhat unhinged, unhinged, between in the past years or two frequently talking past or lying about people who've long looked up to him, such as, what specifics want to give, if you're going to make that kind of accusation, it would be appropriate, mature, proper,
- 22:17
- Christian, to be specific, but um, frequently talking past or lying about people who've long looked up to him.
- 22:26
- So that's just a general swipe without providing any evidence. A few months ago, deciding he needed to condemn with more vitriol than we'd seen him express toward almost anyone or anything else, um, before some guy's appreciation of anything pertaining to any of the
- 22:51
- Crusades. So guys is plural there. And so evidently there was a tremendous amount of vitriol and condemnation in my discussion of Crusaderism.
- 23:10
- Um, nothing mentions, you know, the historical realities of the
- 23:16
- Crusades. Um, the information that I provided about that, the issue of Urban II and indulgences, even though indulgences were still developing, uh, as a theology at that particular point in time and how in reality,
- 23:35
- Urban and then his successors ended up really sort of breaking ground in giving what would eventually become known as plenary indulgences and just basically promising eternal life, uh, to anyone who would take up the cross.
- 23:55
- And of course, redefinition of that, uh, completely unbiblical redefinition of that. And so we've talked a lot about that type of stuff and there's a lot more that could be discussed.
- 24:05
- We could talk about, you know, specific incidences, um, between Richard Lionheart and Saladin.
- 24:13
- And, uh, you know, we could talk about all stuff, which we've talked about, but it's interesting that it's, uh, you know, described as more vitriol than we'd seen him express toward almost anyone or anything else.
- 24:28
- It's unhinged. Really? Okay. I really don't think that the people who actually listen to the program and do so regularly and have for a while and don't have ulterior motives, uh, has come to that same conclusion, but, uh, there you go.
- 24:53
- Uh, uh, appreciation of anything pertaining to any of the crusades.
- 24:59
- And of course that's not, that's not true. Uh, there were brave men on both sides of the battles.
- 25:08
- There were cowards on both sides of the battles. Um, but the point is that my criticism has been of men who would claim to be reformed and who would claim to recognize the vital reality of defending the reformation understanding of the gospel and hence are aware of what
- 25:36
- Rome teaches today, what Rome was teaching then, how that's all a matter of development.
- 25:43
- And in fact, there's some really interesting stuff. I'll never remember this 15 minutes from now, but, um,
- 25:52
- Pope Francis, uh, has just finished,
- 25:57
- I think, packing the College of Cardinals with his acolytes. He, he's been doing it for years and he just, they, they called him, he's, he's, he made, he made a number of new princes of the church called
- 26:11
- Cardinals. One thing I'm absolutely certain of, there isn't a single apostle of the
- 26:17
- Lord Jesus Christ that have any idea what a prince of the church, uh, what that would even mean, what that would, what never conceived of such a thing.
- 26:30
- This is why Rome has to deny sola scriptura because she functions every single day in denial of in the elevation of human traditions to positions that obscure the biblical revelation of what the church is to be and how it's to function.
- 26:53
- And so anyway, Francis, uh, these
- 26:58
- Cardinals that he has elevated now, I think they said 100 and 110 out of 140 of the
- 27:08
- Cardinals that are eligible to vote. In other words, if you're past 80, you can't vote. Oh, okay.
- 27:15
- Um, anyway, he is making sure that the next
- 27:24
- Pope will continue the revolution that he has brought to the
- 27:35
- Roman Catholic church. And that's why the synod and synodality did the stuff that it did.
- 27:41
- Um, and it's happening right before our eyes. So here's, you know, that that's happening right now.
- 27:53
- And that's, takes us back to that. If you're reformed, then you understand that the issues that define the reformation, the, the, the principle, the principles of the reformation, the formal principle and the material principle, formal principles, soul scripture, the material principle, justification by faith.
- 28:23
- These are just as relevant today as they ever were, except the majority of people on both sides of the
- 28:31
- Tiber don't care much about it. And one of my primary concerns has been that it's very obvious to me that the crusader guys are not maintaining that balance.
- 28:54
- You know, it's one thing to say, well, you know, we need great masculine
- 28:59
- Christian examples, and I'm not sure how unhinged it is on my part to sit here and go, okay, well, if you ask me and maybe you don't want to, but if you ask me, if you're going to compare
- 29:22
- Richard the Lionheart with somebody else, who have
- 29:28
- I suggested as an example? There's lots of people we could suggest as examples, but I think, and partly
- 29:36
- I'm just trying to get people to read his biography and see for themselves, but compare
- 29:42
- Richard the Lionheart with Adoniram Judson. Adoniram Judson was a man of peace.
- 29:52
- He never killed anybody. He saw lots of people die, wives, most of his children, most of his friends.
- 30:01
- He was imprisoned, beaten, starved, and Richard the
- 30:08
- Lionheart was a fantastic warrior, leader of men, inspirer of armies.
- 30:16
- His enemies revered him. He was famous during his life.
- 30:27
- Adoniram Judson labored in obscurity. It was only because some people left the mission field, went back to England and America and started telling stories about what he had been doing and the sacrifices and tragedies that he endured and things like that, is the only reason that when he did leave the mission field, that there was interest in him and people knew who he was, but most of his life was spent in obscurity.
- 31:05
- He certainly never had all of the laud and popularity, money, power, all that type of stuff that Richard had and had earned from.
- 31:20
- He was a great king, but which one should be the example?
- 31:29
- Well, both. We can use both. As a
- 31:35
- Reformed person, I would think that we would recognize that one of the primary differences between Richard and Adoniram Judson was the gospel.
- 31:56
- Not just the fact that Adoniram was dedicated to the proclamation of the gospel, that he faithfully proclaimed that gospel and taught that gospel for years before the first convert was brought to the feet of Christ by the
- 32:15
- Spirit of God. Years. Years. He had to translate the scriptures into a complete...
- 32:24
- He had to learn the foreign language and then translate the scriptures. Talk about brilliant. Talk about brilliant.
- 32:31
- He was a brilliant, brilliant man. He really was. But he never killed anybody.
- 32:42
- Probably couldn't swing a sword and literally cut someone in half with one shot.
- 32:47
- That was said that Richard could do that. But the difference between the two is the one served
- 32:57
- Christ's kingdom for the sake and purity and proclamation of the gospel, and the other had been given a lie as to what the gospel was.
- 33:09
- And here's what happens. When you see people saying, ah, he was so fantastic.
- 33:18
- Yeah, he was a little off on the gospel. What that communicates to you is, but not enough to really make any difference.
- 33:28
- And so I'm going to be on a webcast,
- 33:34
- I think on the 19th, hopefully in the evening. That's the only time
- 33:39
- I can do it. And the topic of conversation is going to be, you know, why are we once again, and this has happened numerous times over the decades, in a period where we at least hear about a lot of young men going to Eastern Orthodoxy or Catholicism.
- 34:03
- It certainly has happened with Catholicism in the past. I don't think it's ever gotten to the point, honestly, where the flow has reversed and gone back into Rome.
- 34:16
- The number of ex -Catholics in evangelical churches, I think, demonstrate that.
- 34:23
- But we're at this time in our society, and this is not the time to be minimizing the character and nature of the gospel so as to provide allegedly masculine
- 34:47
- Christian examples for people. This is not the time to be doing that.
- 34:56
- You can look at, and really it also speaks to how you define a man of God.
- 35:05
- Timothy was called a man of God, but Timothy was timid. He had to be reminded that he had the
- 35:11
- Spirit of God and that he needed to speak boldly. But he's called a man of God.
- 35:20
- What is a man of God? And how do we define that? You know, there's a subject for debate, because certainly you can look back at David, and there's a manly man, quite a warrior, ask
- 35:45
- Goliath. But is that the example that we are given as Christians that we are to follow?
- 35:58
- Aren't we to live peaceably with all men? Aren't we to live quiet and godly lives?
- 36:05
- Isn't that what we're called to? Yeah, well, things are different now.
- 36:10
- Well, okay. I can see that if someone wants to make the argument that we are in extremis now, that this is an extreme situation, okay.
- 36:26
- But is it really any more extreme than what the early church faced under Rome?
- 36:39
- You know, in the 10 years of most extreme persecution, there were periods of extreme persecution before, but they were normally mainly local.
- 36:54
- But empire -wide, 303 to 313, I have to wonder how a lot of people today, including reformed guys, how they would say the church should have responded to the all -out attack of the
- 37:18
- Roman Empire. And yet, it was the fact that Christians, when one of the
- 37:30
- Caesars fell ill, he asked Christians to pray for him. The very fact that he could think that Christians might do that tells you something about how the
- 37:40
- Christians had responded to this persecution. And so, what is a godly man?
- 37:52
- And how much of the definition of a godly man are we pulling from culture, and are we pulling from Scripture?
- 38:06
- And are we allowing culture to be the lens that gives us what we see, or should see, in Scripture, is one of the questions.
- 38:19
- So, anyway, so going back to the quote here, be it the aesthetic, the concept that some of the millions of people involved had some commendable motives,
- 38:36
- I mean, talk about trying to find something here. The aesthetic, painting a cross on your armor while you chop the infidel to death, while at the same time everybody admits you're not even interested in the conversion of the infidel except at the end of a sword, which is not conversion from the
- 38:59
- Christian perspective. What aesthetic? Hiding your face in a metal helmet?
- 39:12
- What aesthetic? Well, watch the kingdom of God, it's great, the knights, and okay.
- 39:21
- I live in Phoenix, you'd last about three seconds in that armor, unless you had air conditioners installed, probably get pretty heavy.
- 39:31
- Maybe solar powered, that would work. You could really come up with an interesting looking thing there. But the concept that some of the millions of people involved had some commendable motives.
- 39:44
- Okay, who cares? That's never been my point. My point is that it started in 1095 with Urban II on the wrong ground.
- 39:58
- You can't defend it biblically. You can't say that, yes, the apostles intended that the church would eventually be led by an infallible head who has the ability to say, if you will invade another land, by the way, if you'll open up pilgrimage routes to cities that the
- 40:25
- New Testament gives us no indication have some type of sacred spiritual, we're looking for the
- 40:32
- New Jerusalem, not the one that got trashed by the Romans in 8070. We're looking for a
- 40:38
- New Jerusalem. It's a spiritual thing. It's not that city over there. It's not all the relics in Constantinople or Jerusalem or any place else.
- 40:46
- It's not the the true cross or the true spear or all this other stuff that was a part of the
- 40:52
- Crusades, which they were. It's none of that stuff.
- 40:59
- That's not what we're talking about. My whole point from the beginning is it started un -biblically, anti -biblically with a false, deceptive, gospel -denying promise that if you take up the cross, not the biblical definition of take up the cross, but if you take up the cross and die in battle, you will gain heaven.
- 41:36
- I know another religion that promises the same thing, and that's the problem.
- 41:44
- They ended up crossing swords, both hoping that if I die at the hands of the other one,
- 41:51
- I'm going to heaven and vice versa. What a mess that created. I continue, or the idea of defending
- 41:59
- Christendom against hostile pagan invaders. Well, okay. Yeah, I definitely do not like the phrase
- 42:09
- Christendom, and I utterly reject the identification of Christendom with a false, anti -biblical, papal system.
- 42:21
- But could I point something out to you? And this is hard for people to grasp looking back at history, but there was no major threat from the
- 42:32
- East, and really from the West at that point, when
- 42:37
- Pope Urban called for that first crusade. The Muslims were divided, they were fighting each other.
- 42:46
- The expansion into Europe had been stopped 363 years earlier.
- 42:54
- And the Reconquista was already taking place, slowly anyways. It was going to take a long time, obviously.
- 43:03
- Things moved a lot more slowly back then. But the reality is that the sermon that Urban II preached was filled with disinformation, fake news.
- 43:21
- CNN was around and working for the government. There was lots of stuff that he said that just simply hadn't happened.
- 43:32
- And the thing to remember is that Jerusalem had been conquered by the armies of Islam in the middle of the 7th century.
- 43:49
- So Jerusalem had been under the control of Islam for over 400 years by the time
- 43:59
- Urban called for the first crusade. So let's put it this way.
- 44:08
- If some American Indian tribe came to your church building and said, hey, this land was ours only 300 years ago.
- 44:21
- That's less time than Jerusalem had been under Islamic control. So you're going to give your land back to the native
- 44:28
- Indians and knock your building down and try to find someplace else to go? Doubt it. I really doubt you will.
- 44:36
- So nearly half a millennium had passed. This was not some new thing.
- 44:46
- People in Europe had known that Jerusalem was under Islamic control for many centuries, for nearly half a millennium.
- 44:56
- So this idea of or the idea of defending Christendom against hostile pagan invaders. Look, if nations, it's fully understandable why a nation could look at, well, what has just happened in Syria?
- 45:14
- I don't know and anybody knows. But it looks like the primary faction that has gotten rid of Assad in Syria is related to Al Qaeda and ISIS.
- 45:31
- That's not good. That's not good for the Christians in Syria at all. So it's fully understandable why a nation would want to not be under the control of Al Qaeda or ISIS or whatever else it might be.
- 45:48
- Fully understandable. But where do you get the idea that it is the church's role to engage in offensive warfare based on the promise of salvation to people who engage in that offensive warfare?
- 46:14
- Because these were offensive. These were offensives. They were not, this wasn't defensive.
- 46:21
- This was offensive. This was invasion. That's why a number of the
- 46:26
- Crusades, well, most of the Crusades failed. Is because it's hard to invade.
- 46:36
- It's hard to move large bodies of men and supplies and horses and food and armor 1 ,500 miles through mountains and opposition and everything else.
- 46:51
- That's why later Crusades, they try to go through Egypt. And that always turned out bad.
- 46:59
- Came close a few times, but it always turned out bad. So this was an offensive war.
- 47:07
- And once the Ottoman Empire arose and conquered
- 47:12
- Constantinople, now you had a number of nations getting together. And yes, they called themselves
- 47:18
- Christendom, even though they were highly divided, but they called themselves Christendom and they fought against the
- 47:26
- Turks. And again, you had the same concepts coming forth.
- 47:34
- And I just, it truly breaks my heart to realize that for so many ostensibly, well,
- 47:51
- I'll even say ostensibly Christian people, that the first thought is kill the infidel, not
- 48:01
- Lord use me to bring the message to the infidel that would cause them to no longer be the infidel.
- 48:15
- The fact is reformed churches are having minimal impact in the
- 48:26
- Islamic world. Evangelical churches are having minimal impact.
- 48:34
- And the primary reason is the vast majority of evangelicals, whether reformed or non -reformed, fear
- 48:44
- Muslims. They fear Islam and hence are not willing to self -sacrificially risk themselves to reach out to those people.
- 49:00
- That's why when we had the opportunity and took the opportunity for a number of years while traveling to South Africa, to stand in a mosque where prayers were just offered and to explain the gospel, to defend the deity of Christ, not only those tremendous opportunities, but you could tell by the look on the
- 49:30
- Muslims' faces, they had never seen anything like it. Shouldn't be that way.
- 49:40
- And the greatest weapon that we have in that war is the very reason
- 49:52
- I have opposed crusaderism. It's the gospel.
- 49:57
- The very thing that's being compromised to exalt someone like Richard the
- 50:05
- Lionheart is the very power that actually allows us to have victory and to make advances and bring the gospel to those people.
- 50:19
- So yeah, or the idea of defending Christendom against hostile pagan invaders requires us to define
- 50:24
- Christendom. And I'm reformed.
- 50:32
- And so papalism, no. Papalism I reject as being
- 50:40
- Christendom. And if you're going to call what existed in the year 1100 in Rome Christendom, why isn't
- 50:57
- Francis the head of Christendom today? I thought we rejected that.
- 51:06
- That makes me unhinged. And most recently, I'm continuing this thread, and most recently his throwing his full support behind an explicit violation of the biblical process for church discipline as part of his collaboration with a completely unnecessary turf war.
- 51:24
- That's just simply a lie. It's quite possible that he's never listened to the other side.
- 51:35
- A lot of these people, it really is amazing how fast a narrative based on a lie can become just simply accepted because it's been repeated so often.
- 51:49
- And people are like, well, no, I don't need to hear the other side. I know what happened.
- 51:56
- And it's like, but you've only heard one side. Yeah, but I know what happened. That's been a pretty sad thing to observe.
- 52:04
- And the simple fact of the matter is this statement, an explicit violation of the biblical process of church discipline as part of this collaboration with a completely unnecessary turf war, which
- 52:17
- I'm assuming has something to do with the Webb and Riemenschneider situation, just demonstrates this person has no clue what they're talking.
- 52:27
- And they never will. And part of the reason why they never will is because of the nature of that particular controversy and situation does require that there are, and this is, you know,
- 52:47
- I don't know if this person has anything to do with the church, is in a church, has ever been in leadership or anything like that, but anybody who has knows that so many times there are massively important context, background and contextual facts that can never be discussed publicly, can never be discussed publicly.
- 53:11
- And you just have to keep your mouth shut.
- 53:17
- And if people lie about you, they lie about you. You just know, God knows if they're a
- 53:22
- Christian someday, they'll know. And, you know, justice will be done, but it's just a lie that what is being said here, culminating in the debacle that was the
- 53:36
- Antioch Declaration. Again, more lies. This is part of the narrative. The Antioch Declaration did not derive from that.
- 53:45
- That's a complete lie. It's completely false. There had been concern about this before that interpersonal pastoral situation arose, despite all the stuff that's been said about that.
- 54:04
- And those issues not only pre -exist, they're relevant to motivations and concerns in that pastoral situation.
- 54:19
- But culmination, it's a complete lie. You know, this person may just believe whatever he's told, maybe that naive,
- 54:28
- I don't know. But that's just a complete falsehood.
- 54:34
- Even though he says, alas, everything I've said here is true. Well, you may think that. Oh, and then he says, the debacle was the
- 54:42
- Antioch Declaration, and through all of this, a staunch refusal to repent of anything, such as?
- 54:48
- Be specific. Such as? You know, you just throw that stuff out there.
- 54:55
- You've not given any specifics. When you've tried to give specifics, you've been completely wrong. And that's why
- 55:01
- I was saying, it's amazing how fast social media allows false narratives to become established in the minds of many people.
- 55:13
- That is highly problematic.
- 55:19
- Highly problematic. Especially for Christian people to see that kind of thing.
- 55:28
- So I had wanted to respond to that particular thread because it sort of touched on a lot of this stuff, but I didn't think
- 55:38
- I'd go the whole hour on it. I did just want to comment on a major thing that took place yesterday,
- 55:47
- I think, with the acquittal of, was
- 55:54
- Daniel Penny, is that his name? The Marine that subdued the individual on the subway, and that individual passed away.
- 56:06
- My understanding is, and this is where general equity theonomy would really, really bless a culture.
- 56:17
- My understanding is that the man who died had been arrested 44 times before this.
- 56:28
- 44 times. Attempted kidnapping of a child. Assault on especially elderly people.
- 56:36
- Punching them in the face. Trying to push a woman onto the tracks in the subway.
- 56:44
- And he was threatening, not just white passengers, but black passengers as well.
- 56:51
- And a United States Marine detained him and kept him from,
- 57:01
- I mean, his history was clear. There never should have been a trial.
- 57:12
- And only a few decades ago, there wouldn't have been. And really, when you think about it, this is the fulfillment of when you don't take
- 57:28
- God's law seriously. And you don't take law seriously. Law is just something to be played with now.
- 57:35
- Alvin Bragg, there in New York, what a debacle that man is. What, oh my goodness, what a complete blight on justice.
- 57:45
- A complete political pawn. I mean, oh, it's just horrific.
- 57:52
- But this is what happens. Once law is simply the function of politicians, your society is cooked.
- 58:02
- Because the only way to get people to obey that kind of law is by force.
- 58:11
- No more liberty. It becomes totalitarian. We're no longer a nation of laws. We're a nation of people.
- 58:19
- The beauty of this nation when it started was its respect for God's law and the fact that God existed and that our laws are to reflect that.
- 58:35
- That was the beauty. And we've lost that. A man who has assaulted other people 44 times should not be walking the streets.
- 58:47
- And I would say should not be enslaved either. That's what prison is.
- 58:53
- Prison is a form of slavery. The biblical understanding of a recalcitrant, constant, constant, violent man is execution.
- 59:11
- Well, I suppose you could say in some contexts it would be expulsion, but expulsion to where?
- 59:17
- These days, that's a little bit difficult to make application of.
- 59:24
- But there's no respect, since there's no respect for life any longer because of because of Darwin, first of all, abortion.
- 59:36
- Since there's no respect for life, then you don't respect those who threaten others' lives and respect them to the point of holding them accountable for their actions.
- 59:51
- And so this will happen over and over and over again because there is no serious recognition of how serious it is to attack someone, punch an old woman in the face, to try to throw somebody onto the railroad tracks.
- 01:00:13
- Those are acts of assault and attempted murder, and there should be appropriate punishment, but there isn't anymore.
- 01:00:22
- That's all part of the culture of death itself and its impact upon our nation.
- 01:00:28
- So I'm listening to these people, literally listening. I didn't know
- 01:00:34
- BLM still exists. How can BLM still exist?
- 01:00:40
- Everybody knows that the people who started BLM bought mansions. They never used a dime to help.
- 01:00:48
- They never did anything in Chicago or any place else where blacks are killing blacks right, left, and center.
- 01:00:54
- They ran off and did their thing. And I thought everybody had figured out by now that BLM was the biggest scam.
- 01:01:03
- I mean, remember 2020? Every website you logged onto had that big black thing, the big black box, and all this stuff.
- 01:01:13
- But there's some guy claiming to be a BLM leader out there, basically calling for vigilantes to start beating up on white people in New York, and telling this guy he can never walk the streets in New York again.
- 01:01:29
- This is our town. I mean, it was plainly threats of violence that were taking place there.
- 01:01:40
- And that's what you expect in a nation of men rather than a nation of laws.
- 01:01:47
- And that's all secularism can offer you. So secularism takes away the transcendent, takes away the value of life, says, be autonomous, do your thing.
- 01:01:58
- That results in chaos and anarchy, and people cry out because that falls apart very quickly, and it swings right into totalitarianism.
- 01:02:12
- Which is exactly what the globalists, who are part of the post -war consensus, as Reno defined it, which ain't me, that's exactly what they want.
- 01:02:23
- That's exactly what they want. So anyway, there's a lot of things we can talk about.
- 01:02:29
- Like I said, we're gonna try to get another program in as we're traveling along, especially in regards to...
- 01:02:38
- And those of you outside the United States, I hope you don't mind me talking about this, even though I've commented often, many times you folks outside the
- 01:02:45
- United States are more interested in what's going on than many of us inside the United States. But right now,
- 01:02:54
- I will tell you one thing. This is a unique thing in my life, and all of you who now hate boomers and think boomers should just die and stuff like that, you can just tune out anyways.
- 01:03:06
- But I've been alive long enough to... And of course, I was observing politics and things like that as a young child,
- 01:03:14
- I've mentioned that too. This is the first time in my experience where the current president is already completely irrelevant.
- 01:03:27
- Now, of course, I would say Biden was irrelevant to start, even though the pardon of Hunter was one of the most disgusting, self -serving...
- 01:03:38
- Everybody, oh, he was just pardoning his son. No, he was covering for himself. I cannot think of a single thing about Joseph Biden his entire life that is in any way honorable.
- 01:03:53
- He's been a lying, cheating politician from day one.
- 01:04:02
- Just how in the world that man ended up in the White House is definitely the stuff for history to document.
- 01:04:11
- But this is the first time I have ever seen a situation. Donald Trump is running this country in the sense that he's meeting with foreign leaders, they're lining up to talk to him.
- 01:04:30
- He's saying, you all need to do X, Y, and Z by January 20th, or this is going to happen.
- 01:04:38
- It is obvious who's in charge right now. And it hasn't been
- 01:04:44
- Joe Biden for a long time. It's certainly not Kamala Harris. Maybe it's the ladies from The View, that would explain a lot.
- 01:04:54
- That's why we're collapsing. Wow, what a mess that is. It's such a tragedy that one of those people had anything to do with Star Trek at all.
- 01:05:03
- But anyway, it is fascinating to see
- 01:05:12
- Trump acting as president before he's president. Now, it's also only the second time,
- 01:05:18
- I think, in U .S. history where a man has been elected twice, but not consecutively, to the office of president.
- 01:05:28
- So he's been president before, he's been elected to be president again.
- 01:05:37
- The lame duck has been a lame duck. He was a lame duck four years before he was elected as president.
- 01:05:44
- So I guess that sort of explains some of it. But it is fascinating.
- 01:05:50
- The last thing I'll mention, I even texted Rich while I was driving. Well, I voice texted him.
- 01:06:01
- What's with these drones in New Jersey and Staten Island and Delaware, that area there?
- 01:06:10
- What on earth is going on? I mean,
- 01:06:15
- I happened to tune in Fox News when Jean -Pierre, he's so thankful when that woman is no longer on the television screen.
- 01:06:30
- Oh, my goodness. Whew. But she said nothing.
- 01:06:40
- Everybody's like, we need to know what's going on. And she said nothing. Is it seriously possible that the
- 01:06:54
- Chinese, because there was a, evidently there was a
- 01:07:00
- Coast Guard cutter in the ocean off the Atlantic seaboard with 12 of those things following it.
- 01:07:10
- And these are big drones. These are full size. No, they're already saying the size of a car or an
- 01:07:17
- SUV. 12 of them following a U .S. Coast Guard cutter? And they did nothing?
- 01:07:27
- Can someone explain to me? Okay, I get if it's over a city, you know, the
- 01:07:34
- Chinese spy balloon that was allowed to float all the way across the
- 01:07:39
- United States doing its thing, collecting data and all that kind of stuff. The whole excuse back then was, well, we didn't want to shoot it down over populated areas.
- 01:07:50
- There's a lot of unpopulated areas in the United States. There really are. He might have killed a cow or two, but, you know, you could have taken care of it.
- 01:08:00
- So, you know, well, if it's flying over people's houses, you don't want it crashing into their houses. Okay.
- 01:08:07
- Why hasn't at least one of these things been shot down? They have navigation lights on.
- 01:08:15
- Have you seen the little red, you know, just like just like their aircraft? It just I cannot conceive of the idea that this is a foreign power.
- 01:08:28
- I know that our nation is in a world of hurt.
- 01:08:34
- Over after four years of gutting the nation by the
- 01:08:41
- Biden regime, I get that, I understand that. I just if if those are
- 01:08:46
- Chinese or those are Russian or something, we might as well just invite them in to take over. We're done.
- 01:08:54
- If they're our military, then they need to explain what on earth they're doing and explain it now.
- 01:09:07
- Because it's not going to it's not going to be long. You know, if they were doing that in Texas, even in most parts of Arizona, anywhere in the
- 01:09:18
- South, I mean, even if we knew that they were American, the good old boys in the
- 01:09:24
- South would be going, Yee -haw! I got my 338 wind mag. I can take that thing out two miles up, you know, and they'd be coming back to their secret base full of holes all over the place.
- 01:09:41
- Yeah, that's that's where they're that's why they're flying where they are. They ain't flying down in Alabama, Oklahoma.
- 01:09:48
- They'd never be seen again. Never, never happened. So I don't know.
- 01:09:55
- This is one of the weirdest stories I've ever heard of. And I have to I have to say,
- 01:10:01
- I think if Trump was already, you know, had full, you know, was was inaugurated,
- 01:10:09
- I just I can't imagine that his future press secretary chick would be standing up there going,
- 01:10:19
- What are you? Well, no, it's just there's all over the place, but we don't know what they are.
- 01:10:27
- I cannot possibly imagine that would that would happen. It just it's just not possible.
- 01:10:33
- I can't see that happening. So anyway, I'm I'm really looking forward to finding out what on earth that's all about, because that may be the weirdest story
- 01:10:44
- I've seen. If it had happened in 2020, it would have been something else.
- 01:10:51
- But now in 2024, it's I'm certainly looking forward to finding out what it's all about.
- 01:10:58
- And I just hope it doesn't just disappear and just, you know, we never get told because that's really freaky.
- 01:11:04
- Okay, anyway, I'm heading home. I'm real quickly.
- 01:11:12
- I'd really like to see if I could work out. I mean, I do this at the end of the program.
- 01:11:18
- That's why no one ever hears it. Since I wasn't making a lot of plans for 2025.
- 01:11:26
- I'm trying to put things together now. I've been asked to teach an apologetic class at the seminary during the summer.
- 01:11:34
- I'm going to try to work that together with my Colorado trip.
- 01:11:39
- That's gonna make for a long trip, but it normally does. But I really want to put together that one.
- 01:11:49
- We've got one Louisiana in April debate, I think.
- 01:11:55
- I think it's the same weekend as that conference in Texas, which
- 01:12:01
- I will not be at, but will be interesting to listen to on King James Onlyism in Livingston.
- 01:12:10
- And so obviously we'll try to build out some stuff in the area with that. Maybe get up to Brother Rainbow's church.
- 01:12:19
- I haven't talked to him yet, but Brother Rainbow, if you're listening, I'd like to get back. Your folks are so friendly and I enjoyed the fellowship there so much.
- 01:12:27
- Maybe we could work something out up there after we do stuff in Livingston or before.
- 01:12:33
- Something along those lines. But it's not all that difficult to get to Amarillo and Tulsa.
- 01:12:44
- And so if some of my folks in Lubbock, eastern
- 01:12:51
- Texas, all the way over to Tulsa would like to get in touch with me about something, sort of a fairly quick intensive trip in February or something, please get in contact with me about that.
- 01:13:15
- Twitter or something like that. And it's the end of the year, and Rich and I were talking about the various repair projects for the
- 01:13:32
- RV when we get back. You find this thing, you find that thing. Some things I can fix on the road and some things
- 01:13:38
- I can't. Some things you just do without or make do with how it's functioning or whatever else.
- 01:13:44
- But so obviously the travel fund, that's how you keep the program going while we're on the road, doing this kind of stuff.
- 01:13:56
- But of course, just the ministry as a whole, what was it? Was it Giving Tuesday last week?
- 01:14:02
- Something like that. And I don't know how long it takes me each morning to delete all of the emails out of my inbox.
- 01:14:13
- And I'm not condemning all the people at all who send out a lot of giving letters and stuff like that.
- 01:14:23
- I understand that. We just don't do that. That's just, I think part of it is when you're in apologetics, you have to have a certain level of integrity.
- 01:14:39
- I've told the story before about how I got turned off to high pressure donation stuff by a guy named
- 01:14:49
- Bob Larson, which almost nobody today knows anything about unless you're getting up in years.
- 01:14:55
- And how he would make you feel like, if you don't give to my ministry, these people are going to be going to hell and they're going to get lost and no one can do the stuff that I can and blah, blah, blah, blah.
- 01:15:07
- So you can count on one hand, the number of times each year, we talk about the fact that we don't have big donors that just take care of everything for us.
- 01:15:21
- And I'll be honest with you, almost every ministry that I've known that had those big donors ended up going directions you never expect them to go to maintain those big donors.
- 01:15:41
- So I've always been thankful. We are small, we're lean, we're mean. We have a big footprint for a small ministry.
- 01:15:52
- And what that means is our support comes from individuals.
- 01:15:59
- And it's not big, massive donations. It's the regular monthly stuff from moms and pops and people that realize that we do some pretty unique stuff and have stayed consistent in doing that unique stuff for a long time.
- 01:16:17
- And so December is an important time of year for every ministry.
- 01:16:26
- The summers are always lean and rough. And very often December is where you get
- 01:16:33
- Black Friday for businesses.
- 01:16:39
- December is the black month. If you're going to end up in the black for the year, it's probably going to happen in December.
- 01:16:46
- So as you think about year -end giving, if that's something the Lord has blessed you with, obviously, we'd love to be considered in that.
- 01:16:58
- And despite the fact that I'm not fully certain about everything I'm gonna be doing in 2025, I know
- 01:17:04
- G3 in September, I've talked to Jeffrey Rice about combining that trip to Atlanta with a trip there to Tullahoma.
- 01:17:14
- And they've got their new building. And that's gonna be really cool. And I'd love to get to preach in the pulpit there in Tullahoma.
- 01:17:23
- And again, just getting into lots and lots of churches and try to be an encouragement, a voice of biblical reason and consistency in the midst of, who knows, all the challenges are gonna be coming our direction in the next year.
- 01:17:42
- So please remember us and pray for us, support us if the Lord leads you to do that.
- 01:17:48
- And we will very, very much appreciate it. So, all right. Well, as far as I can tell, and again,
- 01:17:58
- I'll be interested to know, Rich, if we had any dropouts, because I'm not sitting here staring at the cash thing, but I've not seen any interruptions whatsoever, as far as that goes.
- 01:18:10
- And I knew when we stopped at this RV park, because there's trees everywhere. You want to know why the majority of guys who do speak at big conferences,
- 01:18:24
- I've certainly spoken to a few myself, would never travel the way I travel. Because when
- 01:18:30
- I got here and I set up, I asked them to move the slot that I was in, so I could find an open space to the northern skies.
- 01:18:41
- Why? Because I knew I'd need to set up Starlink. Because like I said, we're in the middle of nowhere.
- 01:18:46
- This is not even 5G here. We're in the middle of nowhere. And so the slot
- 01:18:53
- I ended up in worked perfect for Starlink, but I'm right next to a tree. It was really windy when
- 01:18:58
- I got here. And there's branches. And I was literally on a ladder outside this thing.
- 01:19:07
- I've asked Rich to buy for me now one of those extending things, because I've seen them in guys at RV parks, where you can snip branches way up high.
- 01:19:18
- You go up there and you pull on the thing and you can snip the branch. We're going to get one of those and I'm going to carry it in here.
- 01:19:25
- Because what I had to do today was get up on a ladder right outside this slide out with tin snips.
- 01:19:32
- That's all I had. Tin snips for cutting metal. Well, they cut branches too, amazingly.
- 01:19:39
- And I'm up there cutting these little things because they're scratching against the side of the unit.
- 01:19:45
- And I'm like, nope, I'm going to let that happen. Yeah, that's what that's. How much do
- 01:19:50
- I enjoy getting into into the churches? Well, it's going to my epitaph found dead under ladder.
- 01:20:02
- When Gus finally took him out and all the Muslims and the
- 01:20:07
- Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Roman Catholics and the King James only guys there. And the now the radical
- 01:20:13
- Steve Wolfie and Christian nationalists will all be rejoicing. We got him.
- 01:20:19
- The wind got him. God. God finally got rid of that guy. I'm sure that's how it's going to end up going.
- 01:20:25
- So anyway, a few hiccups at first. Man, I just don't see him. And last time it just stopped in the middle of nowhere.
- 01:20:33
- And we have no idea why that happened. And it wasn't on this end. So anyway. All right. Thanks for watching the program, kids.