A Wide-Ranging, Important, Jumbo-Sized Dividing Line!

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:34

Greetings, welcome to the Dividing Line. We have a tremendous amount of stuff to get to today and I have been working pretty much all day to get all this stuff put together so let's get to it.

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I've got a wonderfully pixelated screen unfortunately but that's not overly relevant.

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I want to start off just mentioning yet another example of the discrimination, bigotry, and bias of the tolerance police.

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The firing of Fire Chief Kelvin, which is an interesting name for someone who is in fire stuff.

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Kelvin Cochran, a Christian man who wrote a book, and this is the big thing he did, it's on Christian morality.

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It quoted from Romans 1 and that's not allowed.

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That's discrimination, that's bigotry, so much for religious freedom, so much for the founders, so much for all that stuff.

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In our society today if you're going to hold any position of responsibility you must bow and kiss the ring of the

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LGBT community. You have all rights, you must be celebrated, we are wrong for holding to biblical morality,

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I mean that's what you got to do. If this isn't reversed then folks it's over with.

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This is just going to keep happening and happening and this is exactly what they want. They want to marginalize, marginalize, marginalize, and then they use this as an argument, well look at all the scientists that agree with us, there's no but.

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It's an amazing thing and here's the horrific thing, less than half a page in a 160 page book, uncleanness, he's describing uncleanness, whatever is opposite of purity including sodomy, homosexuality, lesbianism, pederasty, bestiality, and other forms of sexual perversion.

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Wow, that's just historical Christian belief. You can't hold that anymore.

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No, no, no, no, you're a bigot, you're discriminating if you hold that view. That's all there is to it. They won't debate it but they will demand it.

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Then it says naked men refused and obviously naked men means Adam was naked before God because he was morally pure and so on and so forth.

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Naked men refused to give in, so they pursue, naked men refused to give in.

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Okay, maybe it's not what I thought it was. Anyways, naked men refused to give in, so they pursue sexual fulfillment through multiple partners with the opposite sex, the same sex, and sex outside of marriage, and many other vile, vulgar, and inappropriate ways which defile their body, temple, and dishonor

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God. So it covers the whole range but because it mentioned the one, the one that shall not be mentioned, the one that has uber rights, the one that has entire groups that will absolutely blackmail, blackmail a corporation, a politician.

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This is what they live for. It's all they live for. It defines their essence.

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If that isn't enough to show you that there's something completely wrong and unnatural about this, I don't know what is.

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I don't know what is. Certainly hope and pray that this will be reversed, but I doubt it.

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I doubt it. I just, we've, we've gone past the tipping point and that's, that's just, that's just the way it works.

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Did you notice, very quickly, Peter Enns. Ah yes, Peter Enns, people were wringing their hands.

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Oh, what's going to happen to Christian scholarship if we fire Peter Enns? Well, he's turned out to be the loopy heretic that we thought he was, and guess what he's done now?

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Um, he has, uh, has, here, here's what he said.

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He's weighed in on the Kurt Eichenwald article. Kurt Eichenwald's Christmas missive in Newsweek, the

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Bible, so misunderstood as a sin, has predictably gotten its share of strong reactions. As others have pointed out,

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Eichenwald's rhetoric is inflammatory. His grasp of the issues is secondhand at points, rather naive, at least in the point of view of those who have been around the block a few times on the issues he raises, and especially those who work with the

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Bible for a living. But he's still basically right.

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So he says, he's still basically right. There's old

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Pete Enns for you. You enjoy it out there in la -la liberal land,

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Pete. Hasta la vista. See you. See you later. Um, everyone, of course, is talking today about what happened yesterday in Paris.

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And, um, there are just so many things, uh, policemen without guns.

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Uh, uh, the, the, the, the proper term for a police without a gun is called a target.

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Oh, the, the, the, the stupidity of, of, I don't know.

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Um, yeah, the, uh, the newspaper was vile, is vile.

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Um, the cartoons aren't even hardly cartoons. They're just, I mean, they're not even,

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I mean, there are some good satirical cartoonists out there.

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These, these weren't even good. These were just vile. These were just, how far can we push?

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I saw one yesterday attacking the Trinity in vile sexual ways. I mean, these, these, these were nasty people, but it doesn't change the reality of what we see here.

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Um, this group did not fear having a bunch of Christians running through the front door with guns, shooting them up, yelling, hallelujah, praise

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Jesus. They didn't have that fear. And they did not fear a bunch of Jewish people running in, doing the same thing, shouting, well, hallelujah would work there too,

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I suppose. Um, whatever. Um, don't that, that was not their fear. They had one fear and it turned out to be the one that was the proper fear, which they obviously had not dealt with in any meaningful fashion.

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Uh, and that is people running through the front door of the AK 47s yelling Allahu Akbar. Now, once again, um,

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I heard Shepard Smith on Fox saying that anybody who would call these people

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Muslims is way out in left field. I can guarantee you they call themselves

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Muslims. I know what he's saying. I know what he's saying.

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Uh, he's recognizing that there are all sorts of Muslims in the world that are embarrassed by this and find it to be absolutely reprehensible and they throw up their hands in frustration.

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And I understand that. Uh, sadly there are a lot of other Muslims in the world that while they would never do it themselves are glad somebody else is doing it.

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So once again, we face the real problem with modern

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Islam and it, my friends is an inherent problem. And I, and when

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I say my friends, I'm talking about my Muslim friends. Uh, some of whom

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I am way behind on email correspondence with, I'm sorry. Um, my wife can send me emails and not get responses quickly.

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So it's just, it's just what happens when you don't have a secretary and things like that. Uh, it, you just, you just get behind on stuff.

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Um, but to you, my Muslim correspondence and friends and debate partners and so on and so forth.

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I've been talking about this for a while and I have to think that some of you are hearing at least, or at least maybe a couple of you will actually try to hear what

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I'm saying. I understand that the vast majority of you are repulsed by these men and what they've done.

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And I understand the arguments that are being made. I saw a post yesterday from Yasir Qadhi just pouring out his, his frustration at this kind of behavior and activity.

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Okay. I hear you. I got you. But why does it keep happening?

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Well, it's a lack of education and there's these young men and they're, they're running off and they're, they're taking, you know, this little thing here and that little thing there and they, they run off it.

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Okay. But why is that not something that happens with believing

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Christians? Why is there such a huge difference? I, I, some of you have actually tried to say, well, actually

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Muslims are only responsible for a small percentage. That's ridiculous. That's ridiculous.

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Any meaningful collation of the numbers, 98 % of it comes from Islam.

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And sadly, at least 90 % of the victims are Muslims. That, that alone should be resulting in significantly more.

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I mean, it wasn't the case in this instance. Well, I've heard that it's possible that some of the police might've been

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Muslim. They had very Muslim sounding names. So who knows? Who knows? But at least 90 % of the carnage being wrought by Muslims today in the world is on other

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Muslims, which is a tremendous tragedy. And I would think would result in significantly more conversation on the subject than what we hear, but that's the way it is.

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But guys, do you all sit back in your more, when you're not doing dawah and there aren't any

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Christians listening and you're just talking amongst yourselves, do you sit there and go, wow, why does, why does our religion result in all this?

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What, why, why does this happen all the time? Why are there so many people killing other people while shouting our slogans?

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Why, why is it that they were bowing in prayer next to us and we didn't see this coming?

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They, they were next, their prayer rug was next to mine. They went to the same mosques.

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They heard, they, they, they heard the same presentations from the same imams, the same sermons.

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Do you all sit around and maybe in your more quiet moments, at least think about that? May I suggest once again, what

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I think the problem really is, um, there was a time when

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Christianity as a, as it's viewed historically, not what

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I would call true Christianity, but there was a time when there was such thing as Christian sacralism.

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It was the church, the state church, the church and the state intertwined. And as I understand

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Sharia, um, that is pretty difficult to avoid for you.

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It's, in fact, you can't, it's definitional. It was never definitional for Christianity.

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Never. You, I'm sorry. You cannot go to the New Testament text and come up with a state church.

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You can't do it. Um, and every time we've had it, it's been a mess.

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It has been an absolute unequivocal mess. The reason for that is that a state church requires

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Christianity to be something that can be passed down genetically over time, um, that you can be born into Christianity and you are born into Islam.

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And the vast majority of Islamic nations, you're born that nation, you're a

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Muslim, uh, which is why you can have the laws that you have against leaving

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Islam. And through infant baptism, people were taught that they entered into the church and into relationship with God by something that happened that was totally separate from their own act of will.

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And the result was you had massive nominalism, people who are Christian in name only, and people who are

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Christian name only will use that name to do all sorts of things. And you just look at the Crusades and you look at, uh, you know, uh, they're, they're going over to ostensibly free

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Jerusalem and, uh, we'll hang a left and sack Constantinople while we're at it, from which

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Constantinople never really recovered. Um, and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

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And, and we had that phase. When I say we, I'm speaking very generally there. I don't recognize that movement as a specifically biblical or Christian movement, but Christianity, biblical

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Christianity recognizes there's no such thing as a genetic passing on of the

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Christian faith. When we talk about a person confessing faith in Christ, we recognize there are false professors.

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There were false professors in the new Testament period. The apostles had to deal with false professors. Um, but conversion in the

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Christian faith is, is a life changing thing. It is a dying to self.

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It is a dying to your own dreams and desires and a submission of all that you are to the

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Lordship of Jesus Christ. Jesus himself said in the gospel of Mark, if any of you would come after me, you must deny yourselves and take up your cross and follow me.

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You as a Muslim would never believe you could have said that because you deny the cross anyways, but he did say that.

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And everyone knew what he meant to take up the cross was to, was to join the death march, to be willing to undergo public humiliating execution, the worst death possible.

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And that's what Jesus told the crowds. If you want to be an eye disciple, that's what you must do. And that's why

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I can say that anyone who would love father or mother, sister, brother, child, anything in this world more than me, not worthy of me.

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Why? Because if you've died to all of that, so you can only live to him, that's a radical thing.

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And biblically, we must call our own children to repentance and faith.

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That's why I resist all of those systems that assume regeneration on the part of children so that you do not call them to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, no matter what form that might take.

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And so it's a, it's a radical, radical thing to be a true follower of Jesus Christ and nominal

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Christianity. I think you Muslims can recognize nominal

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Christianity. You know the difference between someone who truly believes, who makes their life decisions in light of the lordship of Christ, you know, there's between them and the, the folks just go through the motions.

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Just like there's an obvious difference between a, a real believing Muslim and the many, many, many nominal

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Muslims that fill the streets of Muslim nations. But the problem is how do you become a

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Muslim? Because you don't believe in original sin.

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You don't believe in the fallen nature of man. You don't believe in the need of a mediator.

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Because of these things, you become a Muslim by saying, la ilaha illallah wa muhammadun rasulullah, with the seven proper conditions and so on and so forth.

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But it's just a matter of saying the words. And I continue to find a tremendous hesitance, a tremendous hesitance on the part of Muslims, even

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Muslims that are really disgusted about what's going on, a tremendous hesitance to identify as non -Muslims, people who engage in these types of activities because they've said the shahada, you know, as a, as a

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Christian, I am given a, a standard and I can, I can go in the

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New Testament and someone, you know, first John says, those who are born of God do not love sin.

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They do not, they do not continue in the practice of sin. And so someone who's running around lopping people's heads off, um,

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I've got really good ground saying that is not a Christian.

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What ground do you have to say that is not a Muslim? Um, where you go?

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It's a, it's, it's frustrating to me that I don't hear more discussion of this amongst my very serious minded

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Muslim friends. And maybe it's just because you don't want to have that conversation in front of us. Okay. I get that.

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But I'd like to see some evidence that it's taking place. Anyways, uh, because as much as I want to try to keep telling people that the vast majority of Muslims don't want to kill you, they keep seeing this stuff and they see these people and you saw the video look like a police officer shot him down the street.

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He's moaning and groaning and they come right up near him and shoot him again, right at point blank range.

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And you know, the guy wasn't even armed and it's, it's pretty hard to get around the savagery that Islam is producing in these people.

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And I said, Oh no, no, no. It's not Islam that's producing this. Well, if you don't believe in original sin, what is it? I mean,

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I understand what it is. These are unregenerate individuals who don't know

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God and they're using a religion as the excuse for the expression of their unregenerate nature.

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I can say that as a Christian, what's your excuse? What's your answer?

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What's your explanation? I just don't think that Islamic anthropology,

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Quranic anthropology can explain this. Especially when you look at the war is the prophet from your language, from your perspective,

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I certainly don't believe he was a prophet, but that's an evil book. And you look at what he did and there is some real violent stuff in there, isn't there?

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Yeah, there is. There is. So I think there is every month and really every week, but pretty much every month these days brings a big worldwide recognized thing that makes us once again go, well, it seems that these are

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Muslims doing these things, huh? Why? Raises the question yet once again.

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One last thing before I go into an explanation of something, show a video, and then we're going to be joined a little bit later on by the famous Turretin fan.

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I suppose I should fire up. Oh, actually, where did it go? Oh, it is there.

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Yes, sir. What are you? I don't care about complaints.

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Y 'all look, I don't want to have to look up into super bright lights.

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Okay. That's just all there is to it. I don't want to go blind while doing this. It makes it very difficult to screens. So I don't care.

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Just, you know, it doesn't have to, you know, be perfect like that. As long as it's viewable, um, you know, let's just, let's just, let's just go with it.

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Shall we? Okay. Uh huh. Yeah. Right. Okay. One last thing before, uh, like I said, the, the infamous

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Turretin fan is going to be joining me. We're going to be start starting to talk about Devin Rose's book.

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Cause by the way, I should, uh, let you know that, um, on this coming

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Saturday, Lord willing, um,

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I will be debating, uh, Mr.

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Rose, who is a convert to Roman Catholicism on the up for debate program, 8

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AM central standard time on the Moody, uh, radio network.

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Uh, that's the same program that Michael Brown was on with, uh, Matthew Vines, if you recall, and we are going to be debating, can a

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Roman Catholic be an evangelical? And, um, obviously if you want to redefine evangelical and take out the evangel, but, uh, hopefully the issue will allow us to actually focus upon what the gospel actually is and the vast difference between a gospel that includes, uh, an imperfect, incomplete sacrifice of Christ that perfects no one priests who are called altar

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Christos, uh, a place called purgatory, uh, something called indulgences, um, venial sins and mortal sins and so on and so forth, uh, that that does not constitute the event, the biblical evangel.

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And hence you cannot be an evangelical if you do not hold to the biblical evangel.

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So that's this Saturday. And, uh, turds and fans going to join me here in a while after we do this next segment to talk about Mr.

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Rose's book, which he wrote a tremendous review of, uh, posted yesterday morning.

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Um, but for our last program, uh, I was informed

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I hadn't seen this, but, um, got something in the, in the, uh, mail without a, without a note.

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It is a, uh, it's a shot glass and, um,

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I'll, uh, put it up here. It, uh, says, uh, drunk

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X pastors and it says drunk X pastors .com on it.

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And it's a, uh, shot glass for drinking alcoholic beverages. Obviously now

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I'm not a teetotaler, but I don't drink alcohol. Um, I don't drink alcohol cause

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I cannot stand the taste of alcohol. And, um, it, it seems that even when you're trying to mask it, it, uh, does funny things with my heart rate issue.

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So it's a no go for lots of different perspectives. So I suppose

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I could, I could put, um, some hammer heed or something like that in there, but you normally drink more than that.

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This of course was sent to me by Jason Stelman, who I guess is on, uh, the air right now with Mark Shea on his new program on the, um,

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Immaculate Heart Network, I guess. Anyway, I don't know.

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I look at that phraseology drunk

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X pastors. Now I know that the other of the two, we talked about this briefly, uh, the other of the two, and no,

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I won't be leaving it in here, um, is also an X pastor who now is an agnostic or atheist or something like that.

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And of course, Stelman is ostensibly some kind of Roman Catholic, even though, as he says, it was the worst thing he's ever done even if it, even if Rome is true, it's still the worst thing he's ever done.

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Um, yeah. Turgeon fans listening to Jason Stelman on the radio at the same time, Turgeon fan is a tremendous multitasker, isn't he?

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I couldn't do that while typing. Yeah. It's pretty, pretty amazing. Um, I don't even know what to say to Jason.

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Jason, I, I told you, uh,

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I told you when we met that you were, uh, you were playing with your soul and anyone who could have once held a truly reformed understanding of what it means to be a pastor who could then have a website and a program called drunk

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X pastors. How great is the fall of the one to whom much light was given?

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How great is the fall? And, um, it just seems the more you do, um, the more you provide evidence that what all of us have been saying all along was true.

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I could, uh, I could hope for your repentance, restoration of your family.

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There'll never be a restoration of your ministry. It's not going to happen, but we can hope for the restoration of your family and, and, um, certainly hope that you would find your way out of that, that system that will never, ever give you peace, never, ever give you peace.

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You know it, you knew it when you were in that room, right through that wall.

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But anyway, there you go. Um, now the next thing

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I am going to try to do and notice, I said, I'm going to try to do, um, this is fascinating.

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Um, you should have a quick time player feed coming in. Okay. At some point,

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I think yesterday in a conversation with someone on Twitter, um,

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I was asked if I had read or I had watched the new

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Sam Gip video. You may remember I'd responded to the first four with videos of my own.

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The fifth one I skipped cause there just wasn't anything in it worth responding to. It just, it really was not worth even putting a response up to.

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And I had heard a six when I come out. I hadn't, uh, hadn't taken the time to look and see it.

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So somebody asked me about it and I'm like, yeah, you know, I, I forgot to, um,

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I forgot to do that. I'll, you know, so I, so I looked it up and I started watching it.

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I started shaking my head and going, all right, okay. Okay. I'll do it because you see last week, one of the topics that I wanted to get to, but decided not to do it because it has taken a lot of time to prepare for it.

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And part of that was because I wanted to use keynote to use it and keynote just refused to cooperate with me as I'll show you in a moment.

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Um, I was going to address the issue of who killed

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Goliath. When you look at the comparison of first Chronicles chapter 20 verse five and second

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Samuel 21 19. Why was I going to look at that? Because Eichenwald raised it as a contradiction in the

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Bible. And I was going to include it in my response.

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And when I started thinking through how much material

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I would have to cover and how I could cover it in a webcast, I said, nah, forget it.

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Well, lo and behold, guess what? One of the central parts of this video from Sam Gip is exact same thing from a different perspective, obviously, but it's exact same thing.

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So in this particular video, again, it's not much of a relevant argument from, from Gip because allegedly the, what he's dealing with now as well, the

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King James has words in italics as if that's relevant. And he does completely dismiss the idea that the

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King James corrects the Greek and Hebrew by saying, it's not the original

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Greek and Hebrew. It's the Greek and Hebrew we have now. Well, that's the whole point. Um, remember

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I sat in the exact same studio. He was not any farther away from me than riches for me right now through that window.

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When Sam Gip himself looked into a camera and response to John Ankerberg asking him, if I'm in Russia, do

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I have to learn English to, um, have the word of God, my own language today?

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He said, God has promised us only one infallible and inerrant translation in one language at one time.

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And right now it is the King James version of the Bible. So whatever else you say, that seems to indicate the radical idea that the

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King James corrects the Greek and Hebrew trying to get around that by saying, well, no, it wouldn't correct the original

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Greek and Hebrew. Just the Greek and Hebrew we have today is not changing anything. It's still saying that the

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King James translation is the standard and that the Greek and Hebrew, which we have today from which the

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King James was translated should be corrected to whatever the King James itself says.

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So anyways, let's take a look at what Gip says, and then we are going to look at the

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Hebrew and we are going to look at a very difficult textual issue in Hebrew.

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For those of you listening via podcast on audio, you're probably going to have to look at this in video because I'm going to be showing it on the screen.

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I'm going to be talking about it. What, what's the date? I don't know what the date is.

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I guess it's Thursday, the 11th. I guess if they're listening to it, it's right there in their podcast.

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Why should I repeat that? That's silly. Anyway, Rich just had a, just wandered off for a few seconds there.

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All right. So let's take a look at what Sam Gip said, and this will help us to understand why we need to address this particular subject.

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So question, who killed Goliath? David. You think? Yeah. You really believe that?

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Because I believe it. Okay. Well, one of the classics and one of the most devastating things that happens to modern translations is pulling those italics out.

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Look at 2 Samuel 21. And look at verse 19. And there was again a battle in Gob with the

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Philistines, where Elhanan, the son of Jerorogam, a Bethlehemite, slew the brother of Goliath, the

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Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's beam. All right. Now, what do you notice about the brother of?

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It's in italics. Okay. You know, modern translations take those words out because they're in italics.

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But here in the, the ESV, it says this, Elhanan, the son of Jerorogam, the

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Bethlehemite, struck down Goliath, the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's beam.

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So they took the italicized words out. And by doing that, they inserted a double problem.

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Have you ever heard anybody say this? Lost people say this. Well, the Bible has contradictions in it.

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Okay. Well, the King James Bible doesn't have contradictions in it, but modern ones do. You were told that David killed

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Goliath. Well, you were told David killed Goliath because in 1 Samuel chapter 17, it says David killed

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Goliath. And in the ESV, in 1 Samuel 17, it says David killed Goliath.

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But then you get to 2 Samuel chapter 21 verse 19, it says Elhanan killed Goliath. That's a contradiction.

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But it doesn't put a contradiction in the Bible. It puts two contradictions in the Bible. Go to 1

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Chronicles chapter 20. And 1 Chronicles chapter 20 is a parallel to what you just read.

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In other words, it's just a second accounting of that battle. And look at verse 5.

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And there was war again with the Philistines. And Elhanan, the son of Jer, slew Lami, the brother of Goliath, the

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Gittite, whose spear staff was like a weaver's beam. In this ESV, this English Standard Version, it has two contradictions.

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It says David killed Goliath and Elhanan killed Goliath. Then it says it's a contradiction. It says

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Elhanan killed Goliath. And it says Elhanan killed the brother of Goliath in the same battle at the same time, double contradiction.

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It's kind of like this. I got a little story coloring book for one of my grandkids.

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This coloring book has a mistake in it. It says David threw a stone and hit

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Goliath right in the forehead. But we know from the ESV that it wasn't

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David. It was Elhanan. And I think this, if they can scratch words out of the Bible and put different words in,

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I guess I can correct a scratching words out of the

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Bible. Well, is that what's going on?

38:09

Well, we need to take a look at it. And we need to take a look at it in the original language in which it was written.

38:19

So I have put together, now again, I wanted to have a real nice, pretty graphic here. But let me tell you something.

38:26

Keynote and PowerPoint and programs like that do not like Hebrew.

38:35

They do not want to work with Hebrew. They do not like the fact that Hebrew goes from right to left instead of left to right.

38:45

And they don't like final forms. And they just really, maybe they're specifically

38:52

Hebrew versions out there someplace. I don't know. So what I did is I just dumped it into a standard text file here.

39:06

And it's nice and big, pretty easy to see, I think. It's pixelated on my side, but that's life. Hopefully it won't be on your side.

39:15

And here we have the two texts. 2 Samuel 21, 19, 1

39:21

Chronicles chapter 20, verse 5. Now, let's read the

39:26

New American Standard at 2 Samuel 21, 19. It says, There was war with the Philistines again at Gob, and Elhanan the son of Jaar Urigim, keep that in mind, the

39:39

Bethlehemite killed Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver's beam.

39:45

Then we need to look at the parallel text to that. In 1 Chronicles 25, it says,

39:51

And there was war with the Philistines again, and Elhanan the son of Jaar killed Lami, the brother of Goliath the

39:58

Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver's beam. Well, they sound almost alike, but there's a real difference between the two.

40:10

Now, what the King James has done, and someone this morning in Channel put a reference, a link to the original,

40:26

I guess the original 1611 is available online, so you can look at it.

40:33

And it had the brother of in a font completely other than the

40:40

Gothic font that was used for the rest of the text. In fact, it looked like our modern fonts.

40:46

It almost looked like a plain old Times Roman or something, but that was how they did italics evidently at the time.

40:53

And so from the beginning, the King James translators have recognized that there is no the brother of in the

41:03

Hebrew and that they are providing it. Now, did the

41:09

King James translators know about this issue between 2

41:15

Samuel 21 19 and 1 Chronicles 20 verse five? Probably. Did they know about the most probable explanation of it, which

41:27

I'm going to provide to you here in a moment? Brilliant men. Maybe they did. Maybe they did.

41:33

I don't have commentary from them to give you that information, but maybe they did.

41:42

I agree with the interpretation that lies behind the rendering in 2

41:51

Samuel 21 19. When you have parallel texts, you have to allow them to speak.

41:59

I mean, I've pointed this out. Not only do you have parallels, you have parallels, for example, in between Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

42:09

Very important to bring the parallels in. There are obviously parallels here between Samuel and Chronicles.

42:17

Obviously, the studies of the of the Synoptic Gospels. That's the primary issue you're dealing with.

42:23

But even in in books like Ephesians and Colossians, it's important to bring the

42:29

Colossian parallel into Ephesians and vice versa. There's reasons for that that we could discuss.

42:36

But. When you have more than one rendering of a story.

42:44

Of a narrative, something. It is always good to allow the light from the one to shine on the other and vice versa.

42:54

And given that 1 Chronicles 20 verse five is in perfect harmony with.

43:02

The entire narrative that has already been given and only 2

43:08

Samuel 21 19 is out of that harmony of the narrative. Then we have to ask ourselves a question.

43:16

Is there a reasonable. Fair. Understanding.

43:24

Of how someone at some point in time. Could have miscopied.

43:32

What was originally found in 2 Samuel 21 19 in the form that we have today.

43:38

Now, let me show you. Let me see if I can bring this up.

43:49

I don't know if I can. That's interesting.

44:02

It's not showing it. Let's see if it shows it now. There you go. Bring that up. All right.

44:09

Here is. One of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Isaiah Scroll.

44:15

And let me. Zoom in here and then move around a little bit.

44:22

You will notice, especially along seams. You have places like right here.

44:29

Look at that word right there. Right here you have smudging.

44:36

You have darkening of the material there. You have darkening over here. I mean, these scrolls are in excellent, excellent shape, but not all scrolls are in excellent shape.

44:48

And you can see here how some like right here, it's gotten into the writing at this point, gotten into the writing at this point.

44:56

This is just a part of dealing with ancient writing materials and and things like that.

45:04

That's just something that you're dealing with. And so the question is, is there a way of looking at these two texts in Hebrew that would explain how

45:20

Second Samuel 21, 19 arose from the text of First Chronicles 20, verse five, because First Chronicles 20, verse five is in harmony with the entire full narrative of what happened in regards to David and Goliath.

45:37

Because see, what Gip is doing is he's taking the easy way out. And my concern here is this.

45:45

What Gip is doing is once again hamstringing any meaningful apologetic defense for the inspiration and even preservation of the

45:58

Bible. Because he is locating the authority for this reading in 16, between 1604 and 1611.

46:11

And other than a very small little group of wild eyed fanatics, that's not going to fly in doing meaningful apologetics.

46:23

I mean, you know, if you want to say, well, yeah, you know, but the Bible was re -inspired in between 1604 and 1611.

46:31

It needed to be re -inspired? Really? Did the authors say they're re -inspiring? I mean, it just, it only works in a monologue in very small, independent, fundamentalist

46:41

Baptist churches in certain areas. It just doesn't work anyplace else. So is there a way to understand what happened here?

46:52

Well, this is one of the toughest things I've ever tried to explain on The Dividing Line, because the vast majority of my audience does not read

47:03

Hebrew. I will be outlining what I'm talking about. I'll try to explain it as best

47:10

I can. Sometimes serious apologetics is not using the easiest argument.

47:21

Sometimes. Sometimes there are easier ways of doing it. I don't know of any easier way that is defensible and consistent than to look at this right now.

47:33

So let's, let's take a look at, let's go to this full, full screen. Thank you. All right.

47:39

So what we're saying is, is this is the true text and would have been the text that was originally also in 2

47:50

Samuel 21 19. So when we look at the differences, there are primarily three differences and we can understand on the basis of difficulties of sight.

48:05

You could have had damage to the manuscript. You could have had bad penmanship.

48:11

You could have had bad eyesight. Uh, certainly as I get older, I certainly recognize that my arms aren't nearly long enough anymore.

48:19

Um, there's all sorts of issues that could come up here to where this becomes the foundation of the

48:26

Masoretic reading in the Hebrew here. The first is that the sign of the direct object, which in Chronicles comes just before Lami.

48:39

So right here, uh, right here, here is, here's what is being referred to these two letters right here.

48:48

F this is the sign of the direct object. And what would the direct object be in here?

48:54

Well, uh, this is where Elhanan killed who? Uh, well the brother of Goliath, the

49:04

Gittite. So here is the direct object

49:11

Lami. And what is happening is that the copyist mistook this, this word right here for either

49:29

BT. I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll use English equivalence here or BYT or this, it becomes this word right here.

49:40

You can see similarity between this and this. And hence you end up with Baith right before Lami.

49:53

And if you put it together, it's Baith Lahami, which becomes Bethlehemite, Bethlehem, house of bread.

50:04

And so instead of the direct object and then the man's name, uh, you end up with Bethlehemite.

50:16

That's the first misreading. Then the copyist misread the word for brother.

50:27

Here's brother in first Chronicles as the sign of the direct object, which is what he's already confused beforehand, right before Goliath.

50:41

So this becomes this, there's the sign of the direct object.

50:48

There's Goliath. So by putting the direct object right before Goliath, Goliath now becomes the direct object of the verb, which is to kill.

50:59

So now you have a guy and it's interesting his name, you'll notice his name in, um, the new

51:11

American standard. Let me get back to Elhanan, the son of Ja 'ar

51:21

Oregim. Ja 'ar Oregim. Ja 'ar

51:28

Oregim would actually mean the son of the forest of weavers. The forest of weavers is what

51:38

Ja 'ar Oregim means. It doesn't make any sense. Now you notice Oregim is also, we need to keep the

51:45

Hebrew up there. They don't need to see me. We'll just keep this up. Um, here is

51:50

Oregim in first Chronicles. It's at the end, a weaver's beam, but it's been moved up to here in second

51:59

Samuel. I'll talk about that in just a moment. So what you've got is here, you've got the direct object.

52:06

Now it's Goliath instead of brother of Goliath becomes

52:12

Goliath. That's how Goliath becomes direct object of killed. And then you have the copyist misplacing the word for weavers.

52:20

So as to put it right after Elhanan. And so you have, uh,

52:29

Elhanan son of, and then you get Ja 'ar Oregim, forest of weavers, which makes no sense.

52:37

The weavers belongs here, shaft of weavers down at the bottom of first Chronicles 20 verse five.

52:45

Um, so we can see that by seeing how this and this were misread by the, which are in their right places, make perfect sense of first Chronicles 20 verse five, but they don't make much sense here.

53:04

We can see how the corruption in the Masoretic text took place.

53:10

And because we have preserved for us the parallel in first Chronicles 20 verse five.

53:16

And of course we have the entire story given to us elsewhere in the scriptures.

53:22

Then we can recognize what happened in regards to the original reading of second

53:27

Samuel 21 19. So, um, we can, there we go.

53:37

All right. Now you might go, well, that still bothers me. I'm sorry.

53:44

Um, I realize that it would be much simpler, safer, um, to just go, don't worry about it.

54:01

God re -inspired the Bible in 1611 and that's all you need for a lot of folks.

54:09

That's more comforting. They forget that we're talking about a handwritten text that has been transmitted to us over the course of what?

54:22

2 ,700 years or so at this particular point. Um, and that we have so few places like this that we even have to look at this is the actual amazing part, not the other way around.

54:44

I mean, for the vast majority, well, there, there aren't almost any written texts.

54:49

I mean, we have written texts from clay tablets from that far back, but we, we hardly have almost any, uh, copies to where we would even be able to start doing textual criticism on those things.

55:03

There's just, there's just almost nothing that has the kind of textual history that, that the old Testament texts have.

55:11

I don't think that the reconstruction that I just provided to you, uh, is outlandish.

55:21

It's not begging the question. The forms, the words are similar.

55:26

It's very easy to understand in light of a damaged manuscript or just simply, uh, carelessness on the mind of part of the, uh, individual, uh, to see how this could have happened.

55:41

And in light of the parallel, that is what happened. But when you take the

55:52

Sam Gip approach, you might say, well, you get to the same thing because what you're saying is

55:59

Elhanan killed Goliath's brother. Yes, he did. He did kill

56:05

Goliath's brother. But when you come to that conclusion based upon an interpretive line inserted in italics in English translation, and then you invest that insertion with divine inspiration, rather than doing the work you need to do, which the

56:31

King James translators may have done. But the point is you need to know this part.

56:37

You need to know the tough part. You end up destroying any foundation for someone to be able to meaningfully defend their faith against a very hostile world today.

56:57

They might say, I could never repeat that. Well, okay. But at least, you know, there's an answer for it and you could dig it out.

57:06

I mean, Archer has it in his encyclopedia, Bible difficulties. It's found in various commentaries. You'll find a discussion of it.

57:13

You could direct people to it. At least know the parallel in first Chronicles 20 verse 5.

57:22

It's good to know that there is that parallel passage there. But the fact of the matter is,

57:29

I do not believe it's honoring to God's truth to take what we might call the easy way out, especially because fundamentally when you get down the road, that's going to end up completely handicapping you in being able to give a meaningful response and defense of your faith.

57:52

So there you go. That may be one of the more challenging things you ever tried to do on the dividing line before, but it's what we do and hopefully it was helpful to you.

58:06

All right. I've pretty much broken this up into half hour segments, pretty much.

58:13

That's pretty good. We still have half an hour to go. We're doing a jumbo edition today.

58:21

And so what we're going to do now is yesterday, Turretinfan posted a very lengthy review of Devin Rose's book,

58:41

The Protestant's Dilemma. And I played for you at the end of the last program, a portion of Devin Rose's article,

58:53

I'm sorry, video that had been direct, I'd been directed to, which is what sort of brought all this about.

59:00

And as I mentioned earlier in the program on Saturday morning, and I said earlier, it was the 11th, it's just the light in my watch.

59:09

It is Thursday, the 8th. Okay. That's the date today. So on the 10th of January, 2015, if you want to go back into the archives, what?

59:25

Do you remember a number of years ago, a fellow from Texas called you up and said that he had arranged a debate between whoever, whatever

59:33

Protestant you could find and Scott Hahn. Yeah. And you told the fellow he needed to call

59:39

Scott back and get an answer from him? No, I told him that I'd be happy to engage in the debate, but that I had a feeling that Scott Hahn would not.

59:51

And the next day he called back and very apologetically had to withdraw his invitation for me to come because Hahn's statement to him was, if White's there,

59:58

I am not. Moody Radio called about 25 minutes ago.

01:00:05

And the phrase is from Devin Rose, I will not go on the air with James White.

01:00:15

So what are they going to do? They've asked that you give them a call after our show is over.

01:00:21

They are, this says she put it, put her in a very difficult spot at the moment as to what to do, but he made it clear that he will not go on the air with you.

01:00:34

Wow. So since you were announcing that, I figured

01:00:40

I'd throw a stick at these folks. This is the same guy that wants to debate the cannon?

01:00:48

Yeah, but not with you. No, no, no. That's what he said. He said he wants to debate the cannon.

01:00:54

All I know is what she said. And it, the quote is, he will not go on if you were on with him.

01:01:03

That is the quote. Let me put

01:01:08

Turretinfan on the air here. Are you with me Turretinfan? I'm here.

01:01:14

Can you hear me? I can hear you. Um, so what are you doing

01:01:20

Saturday morning, Turretin? I think it would be quite shocking if he would, if you'd agree as well, not, not

01:01:29

Dr. White, but Turretinfan. Usually there's even more, uh, excuses made that, you know,

01:01:34

I don't have a name and there's an anonymous person and so forth. And I understand some of that concern, but I would be very surprised.

01:01:41

I have a feeling he just doesn't really want to engage in a serious debate, but I, I'm happy to, you know, you can, you're welcome to offer that.

01:01:48

Okay. All right. Well, I, well, I will, because I, it, it's an important subject.

01:01:54

It does need to be, uh, addressed. And, um, I would simply say

01:02:00

I have proven over, um, 25 years of debating that I can engage in, uh, scholarly respectful debates.

01:02:13

I don't think that Devin Rose has proven that, has he? I'm not aware of that.

01:02:19

I've seen him contribute a few things in, in blog comment boxes over the years.

01:02:25

And he is, uh, his book reflects that he's followed this called to a communion website.

01:02:33

Right. But I don't know of any debates he's done or, or really any kind of serious engagement with scholarly work on the other side.

01:02:43

Yeah. Yeah. Well, there certainly isn't any of that in his book. So, um, how fascinating, um, did he not think that Moody would go find someone who might actually be able to respond to him or was he, uh,

01:02:57

I guess he was hoping for some kind of, um, you know, liberal that might go, well, yeah, you know, we can all just have a, but, but his book is not, is, is not promoting a liberal perspective.

01:03:10

It's, it's a pretty old style, uh, Catholicism that he's putting out with infallible

01:03:17

Popes and everything else. So I, I don't know why he would expect, uh, uh,

01:03:22

I don't know. I'm when, when do they call three 37?

01:03:28

Okay. So only, only 20, uh, 25 minutes ago. Okay.

01:03:34

Well, certainly puts a different spin on our conversation here. Doesn't it?

01:03:40

Yes, it does. And of course, if, uh, if, if they want me to come on and role play him,

01:03:46

I could read the parts of his book, but there's some remarkable claims, things that I can't imagine too many kind of scholarly

01:03:56

Roman Catholic folks arguing like the idea that Protestants think that the

01:04:02

Pope had authority and lost it somewhere along the line. Right, right. Yeah. There's some pretty amazing stuff.

01:04:07

Well, let's go ahead and get started on this. Uh, whether he, uh, uh, our, uh, our encounter, uh, set for Saturday or not, um, doesn't change the fact that the book is out there and the book is published by Catholic answers press.

01:04:26

Um, my, I, um, I can remember the day when Catholic answers was, um, quoting

01:04:33

Eve's Kongar and people like that. But, uh, it, it seems they've fallen on hard times.

01:04:39

Um, uh, especially because they're, they're not only, uh, doing this, but they're also doing stuff with people like Dave Armstrong as well.

01:04:46

It, it, it almost seems to me like they're wanting to really become much more of a populist rather than a, um, well, have they ever really been, you know, overly frontline in their, in their approach,

01:05:00

I guess. I, I don't know. I I've been, I've been reading them since the 19, late 1980s.

01:05:06

And, um, they have put out articles that were on this level before.

01:05:11

So I guess we shouldn't be overly shocked, but the point is the book's going to be getting a, um, um, you know, some level of play on that level.

01:05:19

So it is worthwhile responding to because we'll be talking to many

01:05:25

Roman Catholics, uh, who will adopt these perspectives because let's face it, they're easier to enunciate than a lot of the more nuanced material, uh, put out by some of the, um, well, some of the call to communion articles, um, they're, they're just difficult for people to even get through without falling asleep.

01:05:45

So it's, it's, it's also hard to, uh, to then try to repeat it in any type of, uh, uh, thing like that.

01:05:52

So, um, let's take a look at it. Your, um, your article is, uh, very, um, fascinatingly, uh, titled review of Devin Rose is the

01:06:01

Protestants dilemma. Um, but, um, and this is a available, uh,

01:06:07

I'm looking at it in ever, ever note, uh, if they just put in turrets and fan and Devin Rose, that'll probably come up, right?

01:06:14

I think so. It should, should come up. Okay. Um, so, uh, just on a, on a general, uh, general basis, um, let's talk a little bit about the, the format of, um, of, of the book.

01:06:29

Um, describe it, describe it for us. There's a forward, uh, an anonymous forward.

01:06:37

I don't know who wrote it. It's phrased in the third person as though it's by someone else. I'm not sure who it's by, uh, actually written by.

01:06:45

And that kind of talks about this need for dialogue, which in one sense,

01:06:50

I'm, I'm glad for, I think it's good when Roman Catholics will talk to us. So otherwise there's no way for us to, you know, to discuss these issues.

01:06:58

And the fact that he calls for dialogue in the front of his book, and then if he, if this is, it turns out that he ducks out on the debate, that's kind of remarkable.

01:07:06

Yeah. But then, you know, it proceeds to a brief introduction, which is sort of biographical, autobiographical, talking about his personal encounters, and then breaks out after that into 34 points that he, on the video,

01:07:21

I think, calls them arguments. Uh, they're, they're various topics kind of loosely arranged into a number of different foreheads.

01:07:30

The first of those, he titles it divine authority. And then under each of the uh, arguments, he actually makes a, if Protestantism is true, then this thing follows.

01:07:43

Right. And, uh, that's, that's then halfway through the chapter, he has a, because Catholicism is true, and then something that follows.

01:07:53

I decided when I was reviewing this to kind of focus more on the, if Protestantism is true side, rather than the, because Catholicism is true side, simply because in, uh, in the vast majority of the cases, it's pretty quickly resolved.

01:08:11

That essentially his premise is flawed. Right. You know, if it's okay to jump into the first one.

01:08:17

Yeah. Well, let me, before, before we dive into that, I just wanted to mention that what struck me and I've, I've not finished all of it yet.

01:08:26

I've, I got through a big portion yesterday. Um, and then trying to get ready for that, uh,

01:08:33

David and Goliath thing, uh, took most of my time today, but, um, what really surprised me as, cause

01:08:41

I've finished all the section on authority and I've moved into other areas is in the video, he presents this as destroying, uh, my book, uh, scripture alone.

01:08:52

And so I expected, uh, numerous citations, um, footnotes and an interaction, especially with my, uh, presentation of the

01:09:06

Canon as an artifact of revelation, uh, Canon one, Canon two,

01:09:11

Canon one being that known by God as a result of his act of inspiration, Canon two being the derivative knowledge of God's act of inspiration, the part of the church and, and the relationship of inspiration to all of this and, uh, all that kind of stuff.

01:09:27

I get the book. Um, I got it here on, uh, those watching my, uh,

01:09:32

Kindle voyage. Very, very nice unit. Let me just mention by that. Um, and I, I look through all the notes and I'm not referenced even once.

01:09:45

And I get through the entire section on solo scriptura, Deuterocanonicals, uh, all the rest of that kind of stuff.

01:09:52

I've done multiple debates with multiple Roman Catholic apologists on the apocryphal books at Boston college with Gary Machuta.

01:10:02

Um, not a single reference, no interaction whatsoever with my presentation on the issue of the

01:10:13

Canon. He focused solely on R .C. Sproul's, uh, phrase, uh, fallible listing of infallible books and, uh, one quotation from Calvin, but never dealt with my presentation whatsoever.

01:10:29

So in his video, he faults me for not responding to his arguments in a book that was written 10 years before his, but then

01:10:40

I get his book, which allegedly destroys mine. And there is no interaction, not even seemingly a recognition of what my arguments in my book written 10 years before his actually were.

01:10:54

And I was just left going, what is going on here? Maybe that explains why he doesn't want to debate.

01:11:03

Cause it doesn't want to have to explain why that is. I don't know, but I was, um,

01:11:08

I was shocked at, uh, at that fact, because obviously I picked up the book thinking, okay, you know, here's gonna be somebody who has, uh, you know, interacted and, and that's not what

01:11:19

I got. That's not what I got at all. So I just wanted to point that out that it's, um, it's, it's very, very interesting.

01:11:26

So let's go ahead and dive into, uh, point number one. So his first, right out of the gate, this is how he chooses to set the tone.

01:11:35

If Protestantism is true, Christ revoked the authority that he gave to the church when he founded it.

01:11:42

Now, that's not a premise that I can, there may be some Protestant somewhere. There's so many

01:11:48

Protestants, but that's not what reformed churches teach. And it's certainly not what Protestantism as a whole teaches that Christ revoked the authority he gave to church.

01:11:58

Well, I mean, a big part of it is we don't think that Christ gave the authority that he, meaning

01:12:05

Devin, thinks that, that Christ gave. And in the form that he thinks it was given in the idea of a monarchical

01:12:13

Episcopate and, and all the rest of that kind of stuff, the, a meaningful argument, uh, would have to first establish the

01:12:22

Roman Catholic concept of authority from some type of, of meaningful source, either from a citation of, of a series of scriptures, meaningful exegesis, history, et cetera, et cetera.

01:12:35

But yeah, presuppositionally, he simply, uh, presents the

01:12:41

Roman Catholic perspective and then expects us to formulate our, uh, theological paradigms in light of accepting, or at least in light of, the

01:12:52

Roman Catholic position. Yes. And, and his choice of text to establish his position was, was rather strange.

01:13:00

In this particular case, he goes to Matthew 10 .1 and talks about how the authority over unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal every disease and every infirmity, which isn't the most obvious place to go for talking about church authority.

01:13:17

No. Especially when the, you know, the popes don't, uh, heal diseases or infirmities or cast out demons.

01:13:24

All on that. Now, remember, uh, Pope John Paul II has been sainted because, um, some nun someplace prayed to him and got healed.

01:13:33

So, you know, maybe, okay, nevermind. I'm sorry. I just mentioned that. The whole process by which that happens is, uh, something that, that people should actually pay attention to.

01:13:45

I mean, the, there are, the, the process involves them explicitly praying to God to take action, not on the merits of Christ, but on the merits of this person.

01:13:55

And if that, then if the prayer comes true, then it's taken that this was, that the person's merits are sufficient to qualify them as being saint.

01:14:05

That's kind of the procedure that's followed. And it's an example of not praying through Christ, but praying through another intercessor rather than praying through Christ.

01:14:14

And it's, it really should be shocking, and it should be obviously wrong to people who are familiar with the

01:14:22

Bible and realize this is, we're always encouraged when we pray through the intercession of anyone that it's through Christ intercession.

01:14:29

Right. Obviously they get around that by saying, well, of course, anybody who is a saint is because of what

01:14:37

Christ has done. And so it's just a secondary way of getting around it. But, uh, it, it's rather obvious, um, how that actually, that actually functions.

01:14:45

So if Protestantism is true, Christ revoked the authority that he gave the church when he founded it. And of course, the reality is if you're accurately representing the

01:14:54

Protestant position is that the argument is on the nature of the, not only the ecclesiastical structure, um, but the relationship between scriptural authority and ecclesiastical authority, uh, uh, what is, what is an infallible authority versus a fallible authority, uh, et cetera, et cetera.

01:15:14

But he doesn't start where he needs to start. He starts assuming the end of the argument and then the rest becomes rather circular at that point.

01:15:24

Yes. And, and the idea that, uh, the way he summarizes it is that the authority must have been lost when the visible church became morally and doctrinally corrupt.

01:15:35

And that way of looking at it will tend to make people, if someone starts looking at it that way, that the church had this great authority and just lost it because it corrupted, then, then you can kind of see where he goes in part of the rest of the chapter where he, he tries to say, well, it might be hard to pick out when it is, is it trend?

01:15:53

Is it some other time? Uh, and that, you know, I can understand if you start going down that road, but that isn't the strongest, it's not the correct way of looking at it.

01:16:04

And there's a difference between having some authority and having no authority.

01:16:10

We wouldn't, if you were a Christian and you live, you know, in the late 1400s, you have a church authority over you, even if that church is very corrupt.

01:16:21

And even if, uh, there's good reasons why you should not have communion with the people who are in charge of the church, if you're in that church, there's a authority system in place.

01:16:34

It may be unbelievable in many ways, but it may be corrupt in many ways, but it doesn't mean that there's no authority at all.

01:16:41

It's just the whole, uh, trying to create a dilemma where there isn't one is, uh, is the theme of the book, obviously.

01:16:49

Well, and I think what it also completely ignores is, uh, he, he doesn't seem, uh, to recognize his own, uh, debt in the modern period to the development hypothesis and the popularity of the development hypothesis.

01:17:05

And if you're to be honest, um, about what Newman himself recognized, then the issue is what is legitimate development and upon what basis can development take place and what is illegitimate development.

01:17:20

And obviously, uh, uh, many people have argued, um, that if you look at, for example, the first ecumenical council, which at the time, nobody knew was an ecumenical council.

01:17:32

And that is only looked back upon as an ecumenical council in light of later definitions that there was nobody there who held dogmatically to the things, uh, that Devin Rose would hold dogmatically to as a

01:17:47

Roman Catholic today as absolutely necessary, uh, to the very definition of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

01:17:52

And so what is the foundation for this development? What is the nature of this development?

01:17:59

I just didn't see any evidence of, of any meaningful, uh, understanding on his part of, of that aspect that even

01:18:08

Roman Catholic historians take as a given. Yeah, it's really, uh, we see that in the example of the, the papacy.

01:18:20

There are some, uh, that's his second topic that there are some Roman Catholic, uh, uh, apologists out there who are very dogmatic at the papacy from the beginning, but, and there may even be some

01:18:32

Roman Catholic historians that try to make an argument that it was from the beginning. But increasingly, we find frank admissions from Roman Catholic historians that it wasn't from the beginning, and then they try, as you pointed out, to appeal to some kind development hypothesis or, you know, seed to the acorns, the oak tree type of thing.

01:18:55

And so some, I think, uh, Sullivan may be an example, basically says it developed, but that's

01:19:01

God's providence that it developed therefore from God. But that's, that's a completely different position than the idea that, that Christ instituted the papacy and Peter was the first Pope.

01:19:11

Which is not only the obvious teaching of the papacy, at least for the past 200 years, uh, and is absolutely necessary for even understanding, uh,

01:19:24

Vatican one and the concept of infallibility. I mean, it's, it's just basically stated in infallible documents.

01:19:32

Um, even though you have to wonder today, uh, exactly where the current

01:19:37

Pope is on some of these things, but, um, it is, it is obviously the, the historic perspective for the past number of hundreds of years, but that requires a foundation of certainty that many in Roman Catholicism just simply don't have today.

01:19:55

And I, I, uh, I think one of the things that strikes me as, as interesting about Devin Rose's book is that it, it, it seems so out of a step with where Rome is today.

01:20:10

And when I say today, within just the past number of months, because of the obvious realization, the part of so many people that we currently have two living

01:20:21

Popes and the differences between the two are painfully obvious.

01:20:27

No one I think can ever imagine Ratzinger saying to someone about homosexuality, who am

01:20:35

I to judge? Okay. I mean, there's no way that the

01:20:41

Pope who put out the papal syllabus of errors would ever have said, who am I to judge? He would have said,

01:20:46

I am the one to judge. But now we've got a Pope who says, who am I to judge? And I know,

01:20:51

I know the conservative can go, well, that wasn't an infallible statement and blah, blah, blah, blah, but they're having to do so much of that today that, uh, this kind of old style triumphalistic, we just take ourselves as granted as the 2000 year old church perspective.

01:21:13

Um, yeah, you know, I know these folks are still out there. They always have been. Um, but it just, it just clangs in light of what's, uh, going on, uh, in, in, uh, with Francis and, and, uh, the situation in the

01:21:28

Roman Catholic church today. Yeah. The, the traditionalist Roman Catholics, of course, the sit of a contest think, you know, are, are just crazy about this development because it's just proved them right that these increasingly liberal papers, uh,

01:21:43

Popes and their papacies are, are coming. So that proves them right in their view.

01:21:49

Uh, the, the very traditionalist folks that are just really not happy. I posted it to my own blog of video from this remnant forum,

01:21:58

Michael Madden, Christopher Ferrara, who you debated, I think, for recently. Yeah. I remember we did a program afterwards where we talked about his, uh, faux

01:22:06

Augustine quote. Yeah. He's, um, he, he was bemoaning this.

01:22:14

And I think it was either he or his cohost who actually said that they thought that Francis is worse than Alexander the sixth, the

01:22:20

Borgia really thought that he's much worse and much more dangerous and that they're just hoping that the other cardinals can somehow rope him in and prevent him from doing the damage that he has the power to do.

01:22:33

Yeah. Yeah. These are not good days, uh, for, for Catholic apologists, um, especially when they're, they're running from, uh, uh,

01:22:42

Moody Bible Institute. Now, uh, that's, um, that's, that's pretty fascinating. Um, I'll find out more about that here in just a little while.

01:22:49

Okay. Argument number two, uh, we have a couple of minutes here. We can get it. We can at least cover argument number two.

01:22:55

If Protestantism is true after centuries of its existence, God decided to eradicate the office of the papacy.

01:23:04

Now, when I first started reading your review, I'm like, wait a minute, at least

01:23:12

Jerry Madita ticks and Patrick Madrid and, and these guys, at least they recognized the necessity of actually having to, to give some kind of a meaningful argument first.

01:23:26

You know, I mean, I've debated Madita ticks on the papacy and I, and, and Pacwa on the papacy.

01:23:32

Um, and, and they all tried to, you know, they didn't just start here and yet that's what's behind this kind of a statement.

01:23:42

And, and I'm left going, huh? How does that work? Yeah. It, I was the wording that he chose that after centuries of existence,

01:23:53

God decided to eradicate the office of the papacy. I was almost left stuttering. Does he seriously think that's what we believe?

01:24:01

Does he really think we thought there was a papacy and it got obliterated because of some problems? Well, there certainly were some problems.

01:24:08

I mean, uh, he didn't, I, I, I, I may have missed it, but I haven't heard him so far and he's already passed the, in, in my reading, he's already passed the authority stuff.

01:24:19

So maybe it comes later on, but I don't know why it would, but I didn't hear anything about the Avignon papacy, uh, the pornocracy, um, you know, the stuff that you read in standard historical sources about the role of politics and the emperors in the choosing and selection of Popes and things like that.

01:24:39

He certainly seems to be aware of at least some of it. Um, I didn't hear any defense of Liberius, um, and, uh, the

01:24:48

Aryanized Sermium creed and, and all sorts of stuff like that. It was just sort of like, we don't have to worry about that.

01:24:55

We have this 2000 year unbroken chain of infallible

01:25:00

Popes and you've just got to deal with it. It's, it's almost sort of a, it's sort of a fantasy view of the church because doesn't he realize that, that there would be all sorts of people at Boston college that would pick this book up and would just start laughing because it doesn't even represent a

01:25:22

Catholicism that they could even begin to understand themselves. I would, I mean,

01:25:28

I don't know how aware he is of these things. He seems, I mean, he seems to hang out with this called to communion crowd, which tends to have a more traditional mindset.

01:25:38

And, uh, and it's not really clear how much he gets out. He doesn't seem to be citing a lot of other

01:25:46

Roman Catholic sources for his positions. I don't know to what extent he's read them. It just doesn't show up.

01:25:53

But you know, when he, when he says things like the Pope is not needed because Protestants have the Bible, I mean, that's partly true from the standpoint that we have a sufficient authority in the

01:26:03

Bible. But also, I mean, more importantly, we don't have the Pope because we have Christ. He's the head of our church.

01:26:11

That's the fundamental, as far as that papacy goes, we don't need a universal head of the church, not just because we don't need a human teacher that would replace the

01:26:20

Bible. And it's interesting that he sees it that way, but it's because we have Christ as our head. He's the only head of the church and there's no second head.

01:26:32

But even his historical stuff, for example, he says, quote, the historical fact of the papacy throughout every

01:26:38

Christian century makes a compelling case that it was intended to be a perpetual office within the institution that Christ built.

01:26:44

Now there, it just, there are so many problems with that statement. I mean, if you're talking about a bishop in Rome, first century, he seems to think so.

01:26:57

There are elders in the church at Rome, but there's the whole problem of a lack of a monarchical episcopate in Rome up until about 140.

01:27:06

And then just, it's just painfully obvious from any perspective that the power of that office grew in proportion to the denigration of the power of the

01:27:19

Caesar in the West, especially to the point where the center of authority moves to Constantinople.

01:27:28

And especially after the fall of Rome in, in the fifth century, I mean, these are just givens in almost any historical survey of the papacy in Roman Catholic schools.

01:27:41

It just, it just strikes me that there is this massive chasm between Roman Catholic historians and Roman Catholic apologists, especially this kind of naive apologist as, as Devon Roses.

01:27:58

Yeah. It's rather frustrating, and it's, I don't know whether it just tells me what, it kind of tells you what

01:28:07

Catholic Answers thinks is good quality material when this is what they're publishing.

01:28:14

It makes me wonder, what do they do with their own scholars? There are

01:28:19

Roman Catholic scholars that exist. Why is Catholic Answers unable to attract their works, or why are they unwilling to publish their works?

01:28:27

Is it because of their view on social issues that doesn't line up with what Catholic Answers views as the one true position of Roman Catholicism?

01:28:37

Is it, I mean, what is the reason? Are they too frank? Are they too candid? I think you've had some criticism of, say,

01:28:45

Professor Moss's view of martyrs in the early Church. But her, and she may play some kind of games as far as into describing what counts as persecution, but she's a professor of,

01:28:59

I think it's, I want to say it's New Testament, at Notre Dame. She's in the

01:29:05

Roman Catholic scholarly tradition. Maybe she has some problems, maybe she's too, maybe she plays some games with words.

01:29:14

But there's a reason that they're never going to publish what she's writing, and that's because what she's writing is the polar opposite of this story.

01:29:22

He talks about missing saints, I think, towards the end of the book. He wants to color this as, you know, every martyrdom story is true, there's no myths or fables, these are all the way things were, and no hagiography at all, just historical facts.

01:29:43

Like I said, there's a huge gap between the apologists and the vast majority of the scholars, and that, of course, destroys his entire, we are all unified, we all believe the same thing, we're all on the same page argument.

01:29:59

So it really causes a problem that maybe that's why they won't publish that stuff.

01:30:05

Well, look, Turreted Fan, we will want to continue this in the future with picking up with ecumenical councils, as your schedule allows, and as my schedule allows, we'll try to do that.

01:30:16

Obviously, I'm heading to Norway in just a couple of days. But once we get back, we'll continue this and continue looking at that.

01:30:23

Thank you very, very much for joining me today on The Dividing Line. My pleasure. All right, thank you, sir.

01:30:29

God bless. Bye -bye. All right, we went a little bit over there, but we're gonna wrap things up here, because I guess

01:30:34

I have a phone call to make. I don't know what's happening Saturday, guys. We'll see.

01:30:41

We'll see. I have proven, without a doubt, the ability to engage in meaningful dialogue, even with someone who themselves has not proven it.

01:30:52

So we'll see what happens. We'll see what happens. But just keep checking the website, see what they have to see, see what's going to happen with it.

01:31:02

Don't know when the next Dividing Line is going to be. I'm going to try to do one from the G3 conference at some point.

01:31:08

We'll try to make it work with Vody Balkan or something like that. But we'll see. God bless. Pray for us as we travel.