A Bit More Discussion on Theonomy, My Knighthood Attempt, Leighton Flowers and Purpos

And greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. I have a completely black screen in front of me, so I didn't know we were going. Sorry about that. There we go. We are back. Technical difficulties everywhere these days.

It's all pixelated and stuff, and it's great. Anyways, as long as you can hear me, that's the important part, I guess. Hopefully everything else will work out. I had technical difficulties yesterday at the beginning of the Janet Mefford Show when I was filling in.

Part of it didn't even get broadcast, and I couldn't hear them, missed the first break. Oh, it was not the good way to start the program. Worked it out the rest of the time, but did not start out right.

And when it starts off all wrong, you're off the wrong foot the rest of the three hours. But we'll be doing that again tomorrow. I was gonna try to have Michael Brown on tomorrow, but there just ain't no way, because he's on the air at the exact same time that I am.

So he was talking about hooking the two together, and I'd have to look at his clock and my clock, and when they mesh, then we'd talk together, and I'm like, no, can't do it. You may be able to pull it off.

You may be good enough to handle that. I am not good enough to handle that. I have got a bunch of stuff here in front of me, but it's all sort of program stuff. You gotta remember that when you're doing those, well, y 'all have listened to the Jent Mefford Show when I've been on it, and all the breaks, and none of the breaks, the time segment's the same.

So it's challenging. You get done with three hours doing that, and you're fried, and I'll be doing that again tomorrow. Wednesday I will be on, and we'll be discussing homosexuality and taking phone calls.

So that should be interesting. Did y 'all see that Rachel Held Evans is officially now not an evangelical? As if we didn't know that already. Yeah, I just saw, I commented on Facebook that Rachel Held Evans has become a Episcopalian.

Why not? Remember James Price, the guy who debated the Episcopalian atheist? Yeah, he's an Episcopalian atheist. And then you've got John Shelby Spong, who, of course, is just simply John Shelby Spong.

So it fits perfectly. You've got homosexual bishops. I mean, it's just, you know. Welcome to Episcopalianism, Rachel Held Evans. Wow, not like we didn't see that one coming. Yeah, we did. Okay, what are we gonna do on the program today?

Well, I wanna respond to three articles. And it's gonna take some time to go through each one. So get a deep seat in the saddle. One of them I actually have to play a video on, so I've got it queued up over there.

But before I get to responding to Leighton Flowers' last two blog articles, which guess what they're on? Oh, you guessed. Yeah, it's because that's everything that Leighton Flowers writes on is about Calvinism.

John Six and Purposeless Evil, not together. They're two different things. We're gonna be responding to what he said on those. And by the way, folks on Twitter and stuff, when I mention things, do you really think I have all day to Google for you?

I mean, I can open Google, you open Google. It's amazing how many people, where is that? Where is that? And I'm like, I found it on Google. Can't you find it on Google?

I was kind of hoping that you could maybe tell me what the meaning of is is. Well, let's not go there,.

Because that would get us into the Clintons and private email servers and the fact that the Russians and Chinese and everybody know everything about what our government's doing because of things like that.

But that's another issue. We don't need to get into that right now. Please define the word tribble. Tribble? Oh, okay, yeah. All kinds of random things, right? This is a tribble, see? Oh, come on. Uh-oh.

The battery might be dead. Ah, there it goes. Which must mean you're a Klingon because it certainly wouldn't do that to me. Even did it over there. Which is where I'd hope someday to see a Borg cube, but maybe someday.

Anyway, before we go to the Layton Flowers stuff, I wanted to respond to an article that was posted on the website titled Thought Criminal. And it was a nice article. And since it was nice and actually dealt with subjects in a proper way, then I wanted to actually respond to it and maybe push the antithesis.

That'll make some people, whoo, buzz phrase. Move the ball forward, the conversation, the discussion, whatever. It starts off saying some really nice things about the ministry. And as that being said, I have, over the course of my studies in ethics and social theory in the past two years, gravitated towards the theonomic position.

Van Til's maxim of theonomy or autonomy is one that I take very seriously as I find that if I were to be truly presuppositional in my approach to law and ethics, I am forced to say that the scriptures, both Old and New Testament, are the only sure foundation that we can have in questions relating to those issues.

On the specific issue of Old Testament judicial law, I find that there is immeasurable wisdom in those laws that we cannot afford to dispense with. Of course, I agree. And the church today would be much poorer in its witness to the world if it did not draw from those resources to give coherent answers to the sociopolitical and economic problems plaguing the world today.

Again, I agree. I just simply point out that I believe there needs to be a recognition of the purpose of law in a theocratic state and the role that penology and punishment has in a theocratic state, a theocratic state that was specifically messianic in its orientation, that is, the people of God from whom the Messiah was to come, and that that involved certain church-state interrelationship that the New Testament does not teach the church will experience.

And that has to be, must be, and in the vast majority of online theonomic discussions today, takes back seat at best, and for some people, seemingly isn't even there. But again, it's that definition thing, and who are we reading, and which part are we reading, and what decade of what they wrote are we reading, and so on and so forth.

And yes, there is, to some extent, some cultural baggage contained, should be contained in the Old Testament law. I don't even like the phrase cultural baggage. I use cultural artifacts, but what I was referring to was what I just mentioned.

That is, you have a theocratic state. It has a specific purpose in God's economy. That purpose has been fulfilled. Therefore, that has to be just, because there is no biblical warrant, no understanding of the part of the apostles, that the church is going to eventually, maybe after getting rid of its Roman overlords or something, go back to a position of church-state union as you had in the theocracy.

And hence, New Testament does not equip us to be able to do those things. That's the real issue for me. I believe that this is the reason why the Reformed Confession spoke of general equity. Obviously, there's lots of disagreement about that.

It is through that principle of general equity that we are able to filter out those elements of the judicial laws that are strictly for ancient Israel only, and extract the principles from them that are relevant to every culture and every age.

Well, that's what I'm doing, but I don't call that theonomy. I don't, you know, again, every primary writer you're looking at in this relatively new understanding is gonna have differences between themselves.

I mean, obviously, if Rushduni, you know, how do you filter out Rushduni's Arminianism? That's Arminianism, not Arminianism, for those that struggle with that spelling. You know, it's difficult to filter that part out with some of the dietary laws and mixed fibers and so on and so forth.

And yet, I've talked to people who've read Rushduni and says, well, maybe we shouldn't wear mixed fibers. Maybe there is something, you know, inherently wrong about that. And I'm just like, eh. And then others have suggested, well, you know, the high priest did, and so there's something to do with the high priesthood.

It's the mapping and the specifics that are, that's where the details get very, very difficult. There's no question about it. I find it perplexing that you accuse the theonomic position of Judaizing. Where did I ever do that?

It's amazing. Again, I'm sorry, I really appreciate this guy, but I don't know where the filters that you guys are putting on your ears come from. It's just this, ha, ha, overreaction type thing. I didn't.

Where did I say that? I mean, I said there is, if you do not do the filtering, if you force a certain set of laws that include the entire concept of Judaizing, and we've seen people that have gone off into food laws and all the rest of that stuff.

We've seen that happen with some people, right? And you say, well, that's not true. Well, I agree, I understand. But why is it that if I go, well, how do we avoid bringing an entire society and societal norms along with this if we're not doing this, this, this, and if we don't start with these presuppositions, how is that an accusation of Judaizing?

Anyway, when in fact, every theonomic author that I know of recognizes the necessity of contextualizing the principles of those laws, the social situations that we find ourselves in. Well, isn't that the issue?

Isn't that the continuum where evidently if you're farther to the right, you say everyone who's to your left is an anti-theonomist? I certainly ran into people like that, as you all know. My Eastern European theonomist colleagues do not cease to be Eastern Europeans, nor do my African theonomist colleagues give up their Africanness by adopting the position that they do.

Every culture needs to be redeemed under Christ, but nobody is asserting that they have to be changed to some sort of Neo-Israel in the process. To assert otherwise is to assert a straw man. Great, y 'all need to start talking to some of your online advocates then because they're not very good at expressing themselves.

I mean, again, this is just, 99 of this is you don't have a unified position. And so when someone sees Rushduni saying something, well, but that's not really theonomy. Well, what about what Bonson said over here?

Well, but Rushduni said this, and there's the problem, is the definition thing. And it becomes very frustrating after a while. And I've noted that really haven't moved forward since Bonson, haven't moved forward.

At least not in my opinion. If someone would like to show me where, there's been books, there's been popularizations, but on a meaningful scholarly level, I haven't seen any movement forward since, and that's what, 20 years now?

Yeah, 20 years, 95, well, it was late 95. So let's say 19. Anyway, that being said, I must speak on the statements you have made regarding Sharia and its alleged similarity to theonomy. What I said, of course, was that Islam has a body of law that is absolutely definitional to Islamic, not just Islamic jurisprudence, but to what Islam is itself.

And therefore, it is meaningful, relevant, and proper to ask the question of how any theonomist differentiates the assertion of, when you say in every detail, exhaustive application, that does not communicate deriving appropriate principles based upon the recognition of the uniqueness of the theocratic state of Israel, its messianic purpose, and the fact that the function of the New Testament church must be defined by New Testament documents.

You know what? I think that's one of the differences here. Let me just mention this. I think that's one of the differences here. And it was brought out by Sam Waldron too. Sam Waldron actually says in his article that one of the key questions here actually goes back to baptism because, and this will come out a week, two weeks from yesterday.

From my perspective, if the New Covenant documents do not equip the New Covenant church, the church that we see in the New Testament scriptures, if those documents do not equip the church to engage in certain activities, then those activities cannot be said to be constituent to the duties and function in life of the church.

So if someone were to say, well, we've got to go back to the Old Covenant scriptures to define for the New Covenant community what they should be doing in these situations, I go, ooh. So where are our priests?

Where's our Urim and our Thummim? What about the year of Jubilee? There's all sorts of things that take us back to the priestly system, and then you can no longer separate properly between the judicial and the ceremonial and the prophetic and the prophetic's been fulfilled and just so many things start coming up, and I go, so the church, if we start talking about church-state relationship type stuff and the magistrate bearing the sword to guarantee the purity of worship, it might be worth looking at the original form of the Westminster Confession of Faith sometime regarding the magistrate, and you'll understand why a Baptist has a little problem with that because a lot of us spent a lot of time in prison in those days because of that, because of the magistrate who claimed to be a Christian taking away our freedoms under the guise of keeping the purification, the purity of worship.

There's all sorts of issues like that, and I go, well, I wish Paul had said something to Timothy about that, but I don't think he did. So that raises all sorts of questions for me. I have never once on this program said, well, nah, theonomy's wrong because it's too much like Sharia.

If anybody who heard that listened to what I'm saying, please try to be fair. I mean, come on, I'm really trying to help move things forward here. I mean, in comparison, the vast majority of evangelicals, they couldn't tell there's too many, me and a theonomist, anyways, if they listened to my sermons.

I mean, they couldn't. So if we're gonna have this kind of hypersensitivity even to someone that you know is that close but has these differences. As a student of Middle Eastern studies who's in the process of reading the Quran in the original Arabic and has written no less than two university-level papers on the subject of Islamic jurisprudence, I think that I can speak with some level of credibility on the topic of Sharia.

Well, that's good. Perhaps I'm not up to your level when it comes to knowledge and acquaintance in the Islamic sources, but by God's grace, I'm getting there, and ought to be just as effective in that area as you are.

Be that as it may, I do find the comparison between theonomy and Sharia to be both oversimplistic and inaccurate. I would too, if I had made it. As there are many points of divergence between the two.

Well, of course, there are points of divergence between the two. My issue was not that, but that'll come out as we look at this. Number one, first of all, while theonomy is comprehensive, it is not exhaustive.

That is a distinction many people fail to make. Many theonomists online fail to make. And if someone then responds to that, then they're guilty of misunderstanding. See the point? Well, I'm not sure. Recall that there are only 613 laws in the Torah, whereas Sharia has tens of thousands of laws covering all sorts of matters that the Torah does not even begin to touch on.

Well, yeah, sort of. This is because biblical law was never meant to be exhaustive. Biblical law has many areas that are adiaphora, where we can exercise our Christian liberty, whereas Sharia regulates every part of your life, right down to how you go to the bathroom or what positions you may have sex with your spouse.

I've yet to see a theonomic treatise on the proper biblical way to clip one's toenails. That is quite true. That is a difference. And that is a difference that Muslims view as a deficiency. On the part of biblical law, interestingly enough.

But since I never said they were identical to one another, it's their function in evangelism and their function in society and how we differentiate them that was my issue. It's not overly relevant to what I actually said and attempted to communicate.

Number two, many of the Islamic penalties are much more severe than the biblical penalties. For example, thieves must pay back what they stole in the Torah, whereas in the Quran, they get their hands chopped off.

The number of crimes one may be put to death for is also significantly smaller in the Torah than it is in Sharia. These are all quite relevant. I'm not sure how they're relevant to what I asked, but they definitely would be relevant if you were comparing the two systems just on their general merit, or more importantly, I think, pointing out that Muhammad was clearly ignorant of the actual nature of biblical law.

He only quotes biblical law once, the Lex Talionis, and does not have any knowledge, evidently, of the content of the prophets, the minor prophets, where law is applied in those places, things like that.

Islamic law barely, if at all, distinguishes between sins and crimes the way biblical law does. Well, that, of course, is because the author of the Quran did not have a biblical worldview and a biblical understanding of anthropology.

For them, most, if not all, sins must be prevented or punished by the state somehow. Theonomists recognize the Kuyperian concept of sphere sovereignty, which limits the extent to which the state can punish that which is unlawful and leaves it to the spheres of family and church to handle those laws that lack judicial penalties.

Well, again, when you say theonomists do this, you're speaking for a rather diverse group, and not everybody is necessarily on the same page. You will not find any equivalent to sphere sovereignty in Islamic social thought as they tend to mix and infuse the spheres together.

You'd probably find some liberals that do, but what defines Islamic social thought? Is a liberal Muslim from Cambridge the same thing as Al-Azhar? No. The economic systems are polar opposites. Biblical economics is based on free enterprise, which you'll get from reading any number of Gary Norse writings.

That's a funny sentence when you actually think about it. He's not that old. Sharia, on the other hand, is based on heavy regulation, taxation, basically socialism. Every discussion of Sharia-compliant economics I've ever come across talks about heavy income taxation, banning of interest, and welfare statism.

Well, I'm not gonna argue with that. It's certainly an interesting economic system that does not actually exist anywhere in the world, and I don't know could exist anywhere, at least in the modern world, which is interesting.

But that itself raises an important issue. If we recognize that Sharia is stuck in essence in the 7th century, and that it does not have basic principles that can then be applied in different situations, does that not then also mean that when we look at a number of the judicial laws of the Mosaic Code, that we must, take the exact same position, and say that what we do is we take concepts from putting the railing on the roof, from not gleaning to the edges of the field, and we take those concepts and make application in modern situations, but we do not demand the specific laws, let alone the penology that goes with them.

And if you're saying yes, then your argument is a lot of people who call themselves theonomists that say, no, that's for you guys to fight out. I don't think it's fair to say to us, well, until we get everything figured out, you all can't say anything about us.

Or when we do say, well, this guy just said, oh, but he doesn't represent us. Who does? The theonomic movement is very libertarian in its orientation. Rush Juney wrote in the Institutes of Biblical Law, let's see, we've got North, now we've got Rush Juney.

Once we get Bonson in here, now you've got all the differences between them that need to be dealt with. The theonomic movement is very libertarian, so orientation Rush Juney wrote, the theonomy is, I think, as close as one can get to radical libertarianism.

So it's a political philosophy. Didn't you say earlier that it can be translated into Eastern Europe and Africa and so on and so forth? But if it's actually a political philosophy, if it's a form of radical libertarianism, then does that mean that we should be fighting for a particular political position as a part of missionary work?

That's one of the questions that I've wanted to raise. That's one of the questions I was trying to raise and everybody, oh, you're just comparing us to Sharia. No, I'm saying, is there a political system that is a part of the gospel?

That's the question. Sharia has the opposite tendency. It is totalitarian and can only be truly enforced in a state of society where civil government reaches into every area, every area of its citizens' lives.

Well, that's awfully true. I mean, all you gotta do is look at Iran, look at Saudi Arabia, ugly, very ugly. Finally, theonomists being orthodox Calvinists, well, mainly, I don't even wanna get into the federal vision stuff.

Believe that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, that only the Holy Spirit can make the heart desire obedience to God's law. We do not believe in salvation by law as a certain Islamic apologist mischaracterizes us as believing.

There's a link there to an interesting article because the Muslims have picked up on this too. The idea that a perfect law can behavioralistically change hearts and minds may be an Islamic notion, but it is not a Christian one and repudiate wholeheartedly.

Agree, completely. These are just a few of the differences between the two systems that come readily to mind. Here's another article which explains the difference between the two. Suffice it to say, I find the attempt of comparing the two to be totally inaccurate, can only be sustained if one is not well-acquainted with both biblical law and Sharia.

Agree, had nothing to do with what I said, of course, but I agree. Um, then there was a discussion after that of angry theonomists and so on and so forth that we won't need to get into right now. But I appreciated that, but it still doesn't necessarily really address what is needed.

And that is even at the end of his life, Bonson recognized that in the mapping of what is civil, ceremonial, the principles that we're speaking of, which underlie these things, which give us so much light and guidance, how these are applied outside of a theocratic state that had a specific purpose, how to then, and then of course there's all sorts of other issues in regards to theonomic post-millennialism.

And the whole concept of this age and the age to come and what seems to me the clear reality that in theonomic post-millennialism, things that are clearly said to be in the age to come are transferred into this age.

And the problem that creates, because in this age, you will always have the wheat and the tares. You will always have the rebellious mixed together with the true. And if you try to take things that are from the age to come and put them in this age and practice them, the result is going to be disastrous and just isn't ever gonna happen for that matter.

So there's all sorts of those questions to address as well. I would like to see the conversation move forward, really would. I think that's something that really needs to happen amongst theonomists and whatever the next generation is going to look like, need to take it as seriously as Bonson and then move beyond.

And right now what I'm seeing is a lot of backbiting, a lot of territorialism, a lot of this is really cool, but the future will belong to those who are willing to eschew all of that and provide some meaningful, solid, thoughtful progression from where Bonson left off.

And obviously, Bonson recognized his work wasn't done, and therefore, had he lived longer, would he have modified previous statements and positions, things like that? Is there a willingness to modify those things?

That really is one of the questions. Now, let's see. I'm not sure, I'm not sure. Oh, is there actually someone on Facebook saying that? I don't know. Someone just sent me a comparing theonomy to Sharia law thing.

And all I can say after all these programs, is if anyone says that's what I'm doing, they're either deaf or dishonest. That's the only two possibilities left. And I just hope no one would do that, but.

Interesting stuff. A fellow named Derek said, you should stick to your strengths. Arminianism ain't one of them. Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure I would actually agree with that. We've done a lot on that subject.

Theonomy, General Equity, and the New Covenant Church

All right, speaking of which, going directly against Derek's wishes, Layton Flowers has put up, well, again, I know that Brother Flowers is not happy when I say this, but I'm concerned for Brother Flowers because I discuss other things.

We're discussing theonomy and I wanna get back to, I really wish I could find. If somebody out there knows one, I should mention it. Audio note taker. Don't worry. It's gonna be 89, 90 degrees on Monday here.

Everything's flowering. All the stuff is in the air and my sinuses are doing their thing again and that's where the cough is coming from. I'm in fine shape.

I need to introduce you to my allergist. Allergies, man. Nah, I just fight through them. Yeah, I'm getting my shots every week right now. It's crazy.

No, thanks. Anyway, we're gonna be getting, I want, y 'all have seen audio note taker. In fact, I think I've even shown you audio note taker so you can see what it looks like. Perfect for playing stuff, but man, I wish there was a video version of it because I've got this debate that Zaka Hussain did and the amount of time that it takes to play the video of that and then to mark sections, it's just, it's huge.

It's massive. Takes much less time to do the audio. And it's interesting. I listened to the Hall-McDermott debate. I didn't watch it. And unfortunately, a lot of our younger listeners don't know about Nixon-Kennedy.

They don't know about the lessons that we all learned from Nixon-Kennedy or the lessons we didn't learn. And when Richard Nixon debated John F. Kennedy in their presidential campaigns, the first one that was televised, now, of course, this was, you know, the quality of the television, even the television signal would be extremely poor, black and white.

I don't even think it was color at that point.

No, it would have been black and white. I've seen it. Have you seen it? Yeah, and it actually would have occurred probably right about the time I was born. I don't remember when it was, but. It was, I think that was in October of 1960, so.

So, the interesting thing that came out of it was that people who listened to the radio and listened to the debate on the radio gave the debate to Nixon. People who watched gave the debate to Kennedy.

What that means is what people see will impact what they're hearing. And I listened to the Hall-McDermott debate. I heard people say that J .D. looked angry, that he looked mean. And I have certainly experienced the reality that people can't allow their emotional reaction to the individual to determine what they hear and do not hear.

And so, point being, that's a long way to get around to. I want to play Zakir Hussain stuff, but I'm probably just gonna have, I just don't have time to do the video. I'm gonna have to do audio. It's just, that's just the only way to do it.

It's the only way to do it. I was gonna plug a little, I thought into that. I, and I don't know what you just thought of, something just occurred to you. Oh yeah.

Too many things, I cannot, for the next year, folks, I am gonna be an airhead. I'm sorry, but the schedule that I have put together for the next 12 months, and I blame myself completely, I have to learn how to say no.

I'm gonna be an airhead. I had something I had to get done before this program, and I didn't do it. My fault.

Go ahead. What I was gonna say was, when I edit our debates, I do everything I possibly can to present both debaters in the best possible light. So, if I wanted to. Oh yeah. You can take the backdoor insinuation that I'm making, because I'm not gonna be blunt about it, but I'm not gonna be vague either.

If you, if I wanted to, I could take ISO shots on the guy who's sitting down while you're standing up, and I can make him look so bad. I can get facial expressions. I can do all kinds of things, and I saw it in the method that was used here.

I didn't see it, so I can't comment on it.

I did. I don't approve of it. I'm gonna let you, and I will let you.

Yeah, I'll take the heat for it, because I've done this, and again, you'll notice when I edit a video, I try to stay focused on the guy who's speaking. When there's cross-examination, I get both of you in the frame at the same time, because both of you are going at it.

There's techniques that can be done here, and I can make the other guy. Why aren't you using your camera? I can make the other guy. That way people will know. I can make the other guy look as bad as I want to, and I can make you look as good as I want to, if I wanna do that, but the point is, that's not fair, and that's just not how I do things.

Yeah, I hear you, I hear you.

All right, Airhead here, my apologies. I will try to fix this as much as I can as soon as the program's done. Halt, we may have to go a little after, sorry. I was gonna start off the program, since I'm now a week late on this.

We have had major website problems for two weeks or more, and a week ago, it just put up the white flag and keeled over and died, and looks like it's back up and running and fixed, and so on and so forth, and that's great, and that's wonderful, but what that did is kept me from being able to take a few moments and talk about South Africa and Kiev and numerous overseas missions-type trips, where I'm going to be teaching, lecturing, debating, training pastors in foreign contexts to know their faith, and you have to strengthen the local church.

That's how world evangelism is done, is not by me going over there and doing it, but the people that are there, that's how it's done, and this will be the third year we're going to South Africa. I'm gonna have to go for a little longer.

That's gonna cost more, why? Because of Votie Balcombe, yep, because of Votie Balcombe. Votie, as you know, is moving to Zambia. He's gonna be the president of Reformed Bible College there in Zambia, and let's be honest, the vast majority of us don't have a clue where Zambia is.

The only reason I know where Zambia is is because as I'm waking up, generally, when they wake you up to give you your breakfast as you're landing in Joburg, if you look at the, if you've ever taken international flights, you know that they, up on the screens, they'll have where the plane is and the route and so on and so forth, and sometimes it'll zoom in and show you things and stuff like that, and generally, we have breakfast over Zambia because Zambia is South Africa's northern neighbor, borders South Africa and North.

So, Votie has already said, well, if you're going to South Africa, you're gonna have to come to Zambia, so somewhere in the trip to South Africa, we've gotta go from Joburg up to Zambia and then back again, down to Durban or whatever, however we're gonna work these things out, so we're probably gonna have to be there even a little longer.

Sorry, Rudolph. But, be that as it may, it costs money to do this, and we are a small ministry, and so we raise funds, and God's people have always been good. Well, I am combining that need, which we need to start working on, with something that I do that is very important to me.

Most of you know that I pursue a tremendous amount of athletic activity. I do a lot of my studying on the back of a bike or now running as well. Rowing, those are my three sports, riding, rowing, and running.

No, it had nothing to do with R or an alliteration or three points of a sermon. It just happens that rowing helps to counteract what you're doing in the other two. Anyway, I'm gonna be doing something a week from last Monday, so Monday, the 16th of March, that is absolutely insane.

It's crazy. What I'm gonna do, and I'll explain why I'm explaining this. You're all going, get back to Calvinism. Just hold on a second, I will. About two months ago, sometime in January, I think, I saw on Facebook that my good friend, Doug McMasters, Pastor Doug McMasters, New Hyde Park Baptist Church on Long Island was doing something crazy.

He and I both, he living in New York has to do a lot more than I do living in Phoenix, but especially people back east have to do riding on trainers. Now, the old trainers where you took your bike and you stuck it on this thing and the tire rolled on something and it made a lot of noise and you just sat there, did your thing.

That's, you know, back in the 90s, that's pretty much what I did. But people started realizing that, you know, this is a lot more interesting if you have something to watch and so a whole market has developed of training videos and now the next generation of trainer is controlled by your computer.

And so what that means is you can do these training videos and that video then will control the resistance of your trainer. And that means, look out, Katie, bar the door, you're talking about incredibly high quality training.

So there's no place to hide. And the old type of trainer is like, do effort nine, you know, like as if you can know what an effort nine is. One day it could be this, the next day you're feeling real good, it's a lot better.

No, now it says you're gonna be climbing a hill of this grade and that means you have to put out 340 watts. And the trainer says, okay, here we go. And you got to put out 340 watts. That's just, there's no place to hide.

You, doesn't matter if you're feeling good that day or not. There is a series of these videos called Sufferfest videos and they've become popular all around the world. And part of the, part of the mystique of them is that you are riding for Sufferlandria.

You are a Sufferlandrian and you're competing with all these other people. And they show footage from the big races, you know, the big riders that are popular today and people like that. And here I see Pastor Doug and he is doing one video after another video after another video on the same day.

Now let me tell you something, you do one of these videos all out 100%, you get off your bike and almost puke your guts out. I mean, it's just, it's just that difficult. It just, it is a tremendous workout.

You'll burn hundreds and hundreds of calories doing a Sufferfest video. I did one yesterday morning, 40 miles, 1 ,351 calories I covered in just under two hours. And so they're really tough. And here he's just doing one after another and another and I'm like, what's going on?

Well, that's when I found out about this. You can become a knight of Sufferlandria, a knight, K-N-I-G-H-T, not N-I-G-H-T, a knight of Sufferlandria. Now all you get are some decals and the other guys pat you on the back, but it's actually a huge accomplishment.

You can become a knight of Sufferlandria, but this is how you do it. 10 videos in a row with no more than 10 minutes in between all in one day. For Pastor Doug, that was over 12 and a half hours, 6 ,500 calories and 250 .2 miles ridden on the trainer in one day.

That's what I'm doing next Monday. And what they encourage you to do is to raise funds. You know, it's like people who go for a, you know, I'm gonna do a 10K and donate toward my 10K run and la, la, la, la, la, la.

Well, a 10K run takes less than an hour. We're talking 12 and a half here. And so I'm like, well, I think missionary work overseas is good. So what I'm gonna do is, and this, I was supposed to have this up and it went, because I have so many things that other people are asking me to do about all sorts of wild stuff.

What I will put up as soon as I'm done with the program, and hence, if you're watching this later on, it should be there, is an article about this with a link to the travel page in the bookstore. And if you, in fact, there it is, all pixelated on my screen, but there's your donate button right there.

And you can go there. And if you would like to help me get to South Africa, whether I survive Monday or not, but especially if you would like to encourage me in the suffering that I'm going to be doing, the 12 and a half hours of intense working out on Monday the 16th, then you go there and there's the picture on the screen, and we'll keep a running tally of what comes in between now and then.