Deedat, Adam Hamilton, ERLC, and the Pope

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:36

Well, good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line. We have a lot to get to today. Twitter's burning down.

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The ERLC is burning down. It's, and it's all my fault, evidently. If you, you point these things out, it's, it's all, it's all your fault.

00:57

Been an interesting 24 hours on, on social media. One of those, do we really have to do this type things?

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But, there you go. But before we get to all of, of that stuff, there are apologetics things that would be good to get to today.

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And by the way, I'm not sure why there are so many people who think that this is their, their prerogative, but you know, you know,

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I could ask Rich right now. So what am I, what are all the topics I'm going to do today? He hasn't got a clue.

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I don't, religious stuff, religious stuff. That's true. I don't,

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I don't run things by people. I put together what clips

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I'm going to play and, and that's just sort of how it is.

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And I, there's nobody on Twitter that I need to run my topics by. But there are some of you who think that, that you're in charge of what we should address.

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And, you know, been doing this for over three decades, didn't need the help of Twitter for the vast majority of that time and aren't looking for it now.

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Aren't looking for it now. So for those of you who want to offer your expertise, not really interested, not really interested.

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I couldn't be looking for that. Anyway. So where are we going to start off? We're going to start off. Some of you might remember, wow, we probably 2008, nine, 10, around that particular area.

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I spent a fair amount of time on the show, playing clips from what's called the

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Dean Show. Now Dean in Arabic means religion. So it's the religion show, but the Dean of Islam and got, we pretty much got the sense during that time period that the

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Dean Show sort of goes for the low end of things.

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They had people on, you know, they like to have experts on Christianity on.

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And then when you dig into the experts credentials, you know, they were a United Methodist youth minister for one summer or something.

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And that makes them an expert on these things. By the way, Dr. Bolt, it's

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Dean, D -E -E -N, not D -E -A -N. I'm not sure what they're teaching people in PhD programs anymore, but anyway, picking on people in the chat channel.

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I just happened to look down there. Not the Dean Martin Show. This is a different Dean, D -E -E -N.

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Anyway, we played a number of programs, you know, they had Zakir Naik throwing them these little softballs and he's doing his thing.

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And so, you know,

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I haven't played anything from the Dean Show for a while because it's clear that Eddie, the primary interviewer guy on the

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Dean Show has no interest in himself coming out and actually dialoguing and doing it.

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It would be really interesting to find out if he is aware of the dialogue that Yasir Qadhi and I had and we'll have more in the future.

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And if he, you know, if that would change his mind about anything. I just don't get the feeling that the

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Dean Show is interested in anything, but it's just presenting its one perspective. But anyway, they put out a video.

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It's a four and a half minute video. And I clicked on it and I just, it was one of those facepalm moments because the voice, it came out.

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Now at one point, I don't know, I don't know what happened in the recording, downloading something.

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I don't know, but there's a bit of a portion where the sound gets all messed up. It doesn't really impact anything else, but it was none other than Achmed Didat.

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Achmed Didat. And, you know, sometimes

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I started thinking, you know, one of the positive impacts that we've had on the

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Da 'i, the people who do Dawah amongst the Muslims, some of them have really tried to pick up their game.

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And I just think that some of them, you know, they may not want to say it within their groups, but they've come to realize that Didat's material is just, it's not repeatable.

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It's just not honest. It's bad stuff.

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He was not a scholar. He did not do his homework. He was a showman, not a scholar. And it just seems that at least some have abandoned that.

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But then many others, he still remains the most listened to Muslim in the world, even though he has been dead for a while.

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And so they put together, and I had not heard this particular clip before.

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So they put this together and I wanted to respond to it before we got to the juicy stuff about Catholic vegans and things like that.

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And this is not working. Okay. So there's nothing there.

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I can't hear nothing. And I can't hear myself here. So, you know, we didn't adjust the volume thing.

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So maybe the volume thing is all messed up. I don't know. But there's nothing coming through that. Anyway, let's listen to what

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Achmed Didat said here. And again, you might say, well, why play this? Well, because he is so incredibly popular, which means that his presentations like this impact much more of the broad audience

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Muslims that we would be interacting with in the workplace and things like that.

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And again, I believe that we as Christians need to be ready to give an answer, if you're desirous of entering into conversation with the

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Muslim people, you might say, I live in a place where I'll never run into a Muslim. Well, that's changing all over the world, but even in the

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United States. So if you're praying for them and praying to God would give you a love in your heart for all people, but especially for Muslim people that you might share with them patiently and so on and so forth, then you want to be ready.

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So let's ask yourself the question as you listen to this, how would you respond in talking to a

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Muslim who has been influenced by this kind of conversation?

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But Allah took him up to himself. We Muslims believe that God almighty took him up, saved him from that ignoble death and nakedness of the cross, because the people in the cross were absolutely naked.

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They didn't expect you to put a little loincloth around the man, the messenger of God. You say the son of God naked and bare before the world, you know, flies buzzing around him.

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God almighty didn't allow that to happen to his servant, his messenger, Jesus. God saved him and took him up.

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And I say he's coming back to just you. He is coming back to do what?

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You know, we Muslims believe and we claim that Islam is the culmination, the fulfillment of all of God's revelation to me, all true guidance, all guidance is given to us.

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We don't have to learn anything new from Jesus or Moses or Muhammad anymore. Whatever God wanted to give, he's given it to us.

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So what does Jesus come and do? He says no, he's coming along to rectify you.

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And he's telling you in the gospel of St. Matthews, he says many will say to me on that day, in his second coming, on his return, and many will say to me on that day,

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Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in thy name and in thy name cast out devils and in thy name do many mighty works?

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They're going to ask Jesus, didn't we do all these things? We built hospitals, you know, orphanages. And we looked after the aborigines and we looked after the

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Moorish and we looked after the Indians. Yes, yes, all these things we did. We educated all these fools, you know.

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We civilized them, we cultured them. Yes, yes, yes, we did all the things. So did we not prophesy in thy name and in thy name cast out devils and in thy name do many mighty works?

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What does Jesus say to that? He said, I never knew you. Depart from me, foot sack, get away, you rubbish, get away.

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He said, depart from me, ye that work iniquity. You are evildoers, you are evil mongers.

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Amazing. You who are working in the name of Christ, looking after the lepers, looking after orphans,

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Mother Teresa, wonderful work she's doing. By God, I tell you, you know, I bow my head down out of respect for her.

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All the wonderful things you people are doing. The way you look after the animals, you know, animal conservation, to preserve life, fantastic things you are doing.

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But for human beings as well, what you are doing. And that's what you are going to say to Jesus. Didn't we do all these things for you, in your name?

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And he's going to tell you, foot sack. Foot sack. I don't know, this is

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African's word. It means get away. Get away, you rubbish. Like you say to a dog, shh, shh, shh.

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He's going to do that to you. Why would he do that to you? When you did all these things for Jesus.

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Come, come. I am asking the Christians, he's not going to tell the Jews foot sack. He's not going to tell the

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Muslims foot sack. He's not going to tell the Hindus foot sack. He's going to tell you. Why would he tell you foot sack?

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Get away, you rubbish, I don't know you. I'm asking the Christians, answer. You know why?

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You know why? Because you call him Lord. He's not your Lord. He's not your

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God. That's the reason.

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That is the reason. You make him into a God. That's the reason you did all this. You bloody rubbish,

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I don't know you. Get away, you're not mine. You don't belong to me. Not to the Muslims. Not to the

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Hindus. Not to the atheists. But to the Christians. To the Christians. And those who are claiming to be his followers.

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He's going to tell you, get away, you rubbish, get away. I don't know you. Because you have made him into a Lord God.

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When he told you to worship the Father in Heaven. He's telling you, come, come, come. I'll teach you how to pray.

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And pray like this. And he puts the words in your mouth. Like a little baby. Like a little child.

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Pray like this. Oh, our Father. Our Father. Which art in heaven. And hallowed be thy name.

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Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done. On earth as it is in heaven. Where did he say the Father of Jesus Christ is in heaven?

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Or Jesus Christ my Lord in heaven? Where? He said this is how you pray. But you have forgotten that.

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You are worshipping him instead of worshipping the Father. Therefore he says, fat sack, get away. I don't even know you.

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So, like I said, Achmed Didat was a showman, and what you just heard was how he would speak to his people.

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Because he would know that his people are going to be ignorant of the context of Scripture.

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He just twisted and distorted the

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Bible in a way that if I did that to the Quran, I would be personally embarrassed at what

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I've done. But Didat showed no embarrassment in his ability and willingness to absolutely twist the

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Christian Scriptures. What do I mean by that? Well, you know, Jesus himself said, you call me

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Lord, and I am! There is no way that any honest person can look at Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and say, what

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Jesus was talking about there is, if you call him Lord, you're going to go to hell. Because that's what he would say. You've exalted him!

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And that's not what's going on in Matthew 7, but he knows that 99 % of his audience is not going to look that up.

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In fact, back in his day, back in the late 80s, most of his audience might not have even had the ability to do so.

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Now, we all grab our phone and you can just throw a few words in and track down verses fairly easily.

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You don't even have a Bible program. You can just do it on Google. But back then, you could get away with it.

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What's he quoting? He's quoting from Matthew chapter 7, and Matthew chapter 7, verse 15, where the false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing and really ravenous wolves, you'll know them by their fruits.

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Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles, are they? So every good tree bears good fruit, but bad tree bears bad fruit.

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A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown in the fire, so then you will know them by their fruits.

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So Jesus is talking about how one lives and the consistency of one's life, that if you are a good tree, you will have good fruit.

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Warning is against false prophets. We're in the midst of a whole section on kingdom living and kingdom morality and the whole nine yards.

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And it's in that context that Jesus says in verse 21, "...not everyone who says to me,

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Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven." Now notice he does not say, if you say, Lord, Lord, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

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That's not what he said. That's what D -Dot represented as saying. Not everyone who says to me,

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Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. The only way to make sense of that is that to enter the kingdom of heaven, you have to say,

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Lord, Lord, which is what D -Dot's telling people not to do. He's teaching against Jesus, but notice what it says, "...but

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he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven will enter." Now stop right there. No Orthodox Muslim believes

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Jesus spoke like that. He didn't call God his father. That's inappropriate terminology, right?

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He didn't mention that. Jesus is here saying that if God is going to be your father,

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Jesus is going to be your Lord. And if he's going to be your Lord, then you are going to do the will of his father, which, by the way, in one gospel, the will of his father is that you believe in him whom he has sent.

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That is Jesus. "...but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven will enter.

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Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name cast out demons and in your name perform many miracles?

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And I will declare to them, I never knew you, depart from me, who?"

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You who say, Lord, Lord, that's what you would think if all you had done is listen to D -Dot, but that's not what it says.

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"...I never knew you, depart from me, you who practice lawlessness." So you see, there's a fundamental contradiction between saying to Jesus, Lord, Lord, and practicing lawlessness, which is how this fits into everything that came before and comes after.

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There's this thing called context. It's a thing called honesty in dealing with a text.

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Now, Achaemen D -Dot was a smart man. And if he had wanted to deal honestly with this text, he could have, but he didn't.

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Now, D -Dot's gone. But why are groups like the

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Dean Show repeating his horrific misrepresentations of the

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Christian scriptures? Why is that? That's a question that is,

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I think, needs to be answered by those who support the Dean Show and support this kind of rhetoric.

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This is not how the conversation between Muslims and Christians is to be undertaken.

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That's just pure showmanship based upon misrepresentation. The words are plain.

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Jesus was not for a second saying that calling him

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Lord is what's... that he's going to come back and judge people for calling him Lord. He is going to come back and every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is

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Lord, the glory of God the Father. That's the consistent teaching of scripture of Matthew and Philippians.

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There's a consistency that the Muslims simply cannot engage with because the author of the

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Koran did not know what was in Philippians and what was in Matthew. That's where the problem lies.

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That's where the problem lies. So this kind of thing, again, it just keeps coming and coming and coming from the

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Dean Show and it is a true shame that they have an opportunity to push the conversation forward in the proper way, but they just won't do it.

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They just won't do it and it's a shame. There really is. Okay, that's topic number one.

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We managed to get through that with introduction. In only 20 minutes, that's pretty good.

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That's pretty good. Topic number two, you should type these up so that when we get done...

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Not beforehand, no. As you're listening, you're not doing anything out there, not even taking phone calls today.

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You're just trying to keep yourself awake. I mean, I would understand if we had phone calls, but we're not even taking phone calls.

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So, you know, come on. As somebody said in channel, pay attention,

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AOMN. Yeah, someone else in the channel said, Zacher Nyke is Achmed Ddot light.

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Yeah, he really is. Ddot at least was an original. Nyke is just a 3D printed version of Achmed Ddot and that's pretty sad.

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That's pretty sad. Anyway, where did

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I see this? I think I saw it on Facebook. In light of the upcoming debate in September on the subject of homosexuality, it said mega church pastor explains his view on acceptance of gay marriage, etc, etc.

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You clicked on it and it is a

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United Methodist Church. I'm not sure there are that many mega United Methodist Churches left, but I guess there are a few.

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This seems to be an intelligent, well -read individual, but he's saying that he has a high view of Scripture.

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A high view of Scripture has to have a corresponding relationship to theological practice and to the supremacy of biblical teaching.

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In other words, if you're going to say that I have a high view of Scripture but then allow societal norms and movements to be the primary soil out of which you bring the categories of your theology and pastoral practice, then you don't have a high view of Scripture.

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This is somewhat related to a topic

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I'm going to be addressing here in a moment when I when I talk about the ERLC thing. I have a hard time, you might want to call it a character flaw, if you want to, but I have a hard time dealing with irrational people.

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I have a hard time dealing with people who do not think with clarity, or even try to think with clarity, or think that thinking with clarity isn't all that important in the first place.

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So emotive people who primarily reason with their emotions rather than their minds,

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I struggle to show a whole lot of patience because from my perspective, it's an adult -child thing.

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When you become an adult, you put the brakes on your emotions, you control them, you're to be discerning, you're to be rational, logical, seek to think in such a way that you're consistent throughout your life.

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And yeah, I struggle big time when I start trying to deal with somebody that just has no discipline in their thought life.

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And I probably, sinfully, am willing to engage in sarcasm and mockery of someone who's 35 but has the mental capacity of reasoning of a 10 -year -old.

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I struggle in that situation. And my character flaws aside, as Christians, I think

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I can make a real strong case that the scriptures tell us to act like men.

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Don't even try to transfer that into some gender -confused Western culture thing.

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What it means is to be disciplined, willing to give up things, to do the right thing, to be strong, to be consistent, not to be ruled by emotion.

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Well, man, over the past 24 hours, the stuff I've seen on Twitter and the stuff that people have written back to me, even on subjects like how to treat your doggy and your kitty,

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I'm just like, oh my, where did the Christian worldview go? If your worldview does not impact how you think about things and how you respond to things, you don't have a

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Christian worldview. You've got the world's worldview. You may have slathered a little bit of religiosity on it, but it's not a

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Christian worldview. If you're not seeking in all things to take every thought captive under the obedience of Christ, if you're not seeking to arrange everything under the lordship of Jesus Christ, you're not looking through the lens of God's revelation, don't call it a

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Christian worldview. It may be a religious worldview, but it's not a Christian worldview. Anyway, this fellow is, like I said, well -spoken,

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United Methodist, claims to have a high view of scripture. I want to play just a portion of his comments because he responds to Mike Huckabee.

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He responds to Mike Huckabee. I'm looking at something in channel.

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Dr. Bolt, if you would be so kind as to post said rant in channel, then

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I could see it, huh? Live programming is always much more interesting than deadcasting is, but I guess there's something interesting going on in Twitter or something, which

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I wouldn't be able to see because I'm blocked from that particular person. Anyhow, is everything okay out there? No invasions?

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Were you able to keep the protesters out? Did you just use some of the spray?

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A few shots in the air and they scattered? Okay, somebody will do something with that one.

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Hey, isn't that, but wait a minute, that's what the vice president said to do. A few shots in the air and anybody will run off.

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Okay, that's what I said. You still call him Mr. Vice President. Yes, I'm aware of that.

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But anyway, what were we talking about? Oh yeah, back to this subject. Maybe while I play this, someone will post some of what's going on about Southern Seminary.

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By the way, let me just mention this since the topic of this conversation is homosexuality.

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Let me just mention this. Once again, I mentioned this in the last program. I made a single tweet after the

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Revoice conference in light of the comments that were made there and the relationship between Dr.

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Collins and Southern Seminary that Southern needs to be very, very clear in its response to this.

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Well, that conference took place during the

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July hiatus of the briefing. If you don't know what that is, the briefing is the

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Monday through Friday, except for holidays, examination of current events, about 22 minutes long or so.

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I noticed that last season when it started off, it was about 16 minutes long. It eventually got back out to about 22 minutes long by Dr.

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Albert Moeller, who, of course, is the President of Southern Seminary. Even he commented when it starts up again

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August 1st, so it started yesterday. Even he commented on the fact that this

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July there had been a huge amount of culturally relevant, biblically relevant developments that had taken place in our culture.

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Anyway, today, Dr. Moeller spent quite some time criticizing

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Revoice, saying many of the same things we said yesterday. Obviously, he has a much shorter program, so he can't go into quite as much depth as we did in listening to what

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Dr. Collins said, but he specifically criticized the fundamental paradigm that was being presented by Dr.

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Collins. It is very, very good to see that. It is necessary to see that.

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That needed to happen. Evidently, I haven't seen anything yet, but evidently

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Kyle Howard is going off after Southern, which is sort of strange because he's a student there. I'm not sure what that is all about, but maybe while I'm playing this, someone will post some of that for me so that I can see that.

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It's sort of difficult to look things up, especially when you're banned or blocked from certain people. Anyway, so let's listen to Adam Hamilton.

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He's the keynote speaker at the 2018 Uniting Methodists Conference.

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This is fairly recent. He's interacting. He's going to play a clip.

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I want you to hear how he responds to Mike Huckabee's statements.

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Now, I want to begin with a little video clip that captures how some traditionalists—and this person is a

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Baptist, not a Methodist—but how some traditionalists, when they start thinking about same -gender marriage, how hard it is for them to see beyond the way that they're looking at Scripture.

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This is Mike Huckabee. A few years ago, he was asked about same -gender marriage, and this is what he had to say. Take a listen. I'm not against anybody.

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I'm really not. I'm not a hater. I'm not homophobic. I honestly don't care what people do personally in their individual lives, but I tell you the reason when people say, well, why don't you just kind of get on the right side of history?

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I said, you've got to understand, this for me is not about the right side or the wrong side of history. This is the right side of the

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Bible, and unless God rewrites it, edits it, sends it down with his signature on it, it's not my book to change.

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Folks, that's why I stand where I stand. Now, with the black screen there, yeah,

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I agree wholeheartedly with that statement. That is just a basic—now, look,

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I understand, you know, Stephen Anderson says that, and uses that to defend wacky, crazy stuff.

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Okay, I get that too. But there is in those words by Governor Huckabee an implicit recognition of the supremacy of Scripture and the completedness of Scripture.

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What you're going to hear reminded me a lot of what we heard from Daniel Kirk in his debate with Bob Gagnon two years ago.

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If you don't remember that, it took place here in Phoenix. I was in the audience, one of the few debates

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I've ever attended that I wasn't actually involved in. And that was where Dr.

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Kirk enunciated this idea that, well, just as the early Church had to struggle with the idea of the inclusion of the

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Jews—I'm sorry, the Gentiles by the Jewish Church—that's where we are today.

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And so when the Holy Spirit guided the early Church to recognize that the

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Gospel is for all people and that you didn't need to keep kosher laws and, in other words, provide an understanding of what the function of the law was, we're in the same situation today, but now what the

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Holy Spirit's doing is revealing to us the goodness of the homosexual lifestyle and the necessity of the acceptance of homosexuality within the

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Church as an accepted relationship, vocation, life, etc.

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And that's when he made the comment, Dr. Kirk did, that we need to rethink, you know, just as we have had to rethink things

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Paul said because he was a first -century Roman citizen, we need to be willing to rethink the things that Jesus believed because he was just a man.

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Okay, and I talked about my conversation with Dr. Kirk afterwards as a result of that.

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What we're going to hear reminds me of that, and this seems to be the primary when you listen to the people who have collapsed on this.

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They've given in. They once recognized what the

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Bible taught, but now they're doing same -sex marriages and the

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Holy Noirs. This seems to be the argument that is winning them over, and so we need to understand it and see where it's coming from, what ground it is born out of.

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And so here, listen to what Adam Hamilton has to say.

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What it feels like for many people. This is not my book to change, and unless, you know, I'm not going to be—I don't care about being on the right or wrong side of history,

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I want to be on the right or wrong side of God, and who doesn't want to be on the right side of God? We all should want that. So the question is, you know, he says, so unless God comes down from heaven—I think that's how he said it,

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I can't remember exactly the words—and rewrites it, then I have to stick with this. But imagine if Paul had said that when it came to circumcision or the kosher laws.

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Now, let me—I'm going to back that up just a second, but I was just—I guess I was aware of this, but did you know,

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Rich, that if, on YouTube, you have restricted mode on, you can't watch

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The Dividing Line? We have been marked as a something—been a long time ago, and it's—you sort of wonder who—what brilliant person came up with that.

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I say things. I say Christian things. I know, I know. Should want that.

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So the question is, you know, he says, so unless God comes down from heaven—I think that's how he said it, I can't remember exactly the words—and rewrites it, then

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I have to stick with this. But imagine if Paul had said that when it came to circumcision.

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Okay, let's stop right there. What—in watching this and in watching the

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ERLC video in a few minutes, what I want to try to communicate to the audience today, and I realize probably everyone who actually watches this show and does so for the proper reasons already knows this, but what

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I certainly saw on Twitter over the past 24 hours is that there are very few people who live this.

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When you analyze an argument—and this is an argument—see,

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I think one of the problems is a lot of people go into things like this, they've been disarmed, they don't think they're getting an argument. They are getting an argument.

37:54

Almost all communication is an argument. An argument is not a bad word. An argument's a good word.

38:03

Amongst mature individuals, it's a good word. When you get an argument, when you're being presented an argument, you don't have to be being yelled at.

38:19

In fact, the best arguments are presented without any of that. The most persuasive arguments are presented by people who can get you to agree with their position without you ever realizing that you've just been argued into a position.

38:33

Those are the most dangerous people in our day because we no longer teach people the basics of communication.

38:40

Rhetoric. That's why our society is so easily swayed one side to the other.

38:47

That's why the social media is a morass of absolute immaturity and stupidity.

38:58

It's because we no longer know how to think. I mean, how many adults today have actually taken, seriously taken, a class on logic?

39:08

A hundred years ago, that percentage would have been huge because it was just a general part of even public education.

39:18

But not anymore. Not anymore. No, no, no, no, no. Logical fallacies abound.

39:24

I mean, people responding to what I said about the ERLC video with so many logical fallacies and so much absolute abandonment of basic categories of logical thought that it was astounding.

39:40

I mean, I pretty much gave up on Western culture yesterday, watching these responses from people just going, because there's no way to correct this rampant ignorance of basic thinking properties.

39:58

And on Twitter. I mean, Twitter, just it's not possible to do. So you're getting an argument here.

40:08

And the wise person is going to be the person who is going to want to be able to identify properly what is being argued to them and why it is being argued to them and to be able to challenge the foundations.

40:36

Because very often, if someone's presenting to you a weak argument, they will present you with all sorts of emotional elements that do not go to the argument itself.

40:49

And today, what happens is people are like, well, you know, it made me feel good.

40:55

So, you know, that's good enough for me.

41:03

And you end up buying an argument that is completely erroneous, but you're doing it because of the fact that you're not really analyzing it.

41:14

So we're being presented an argument here. What was the argument? What if Paul did that with circumcision? Okay, so back up.

41:25

What is the foundational presupposition of that statement? That we're in the same situation the apostles were in.

41:34

That there's revelation going on. That there's a new era in church history and in revelational history.

41:45

That the Spirit is still speaking. Remember how wacky it seemed in 2001 when

41:51

Barry Lynn, United Church of Christ pastor, in our debate, claimed the same level of inspiration and revelation the

42:03

Apostle Paul had? And we're all like, really? Right, okay.

42:10

Here it is again. Oh, no, he's not as crass as Barry Lynn. But the only meaningful presupposition that can make those words relevant is that we are in a period of doctrinal revelation where the

42:25

Spirit of God is adding to the scriptures, just as during the time of the

42:34

New Testament. And the New Testament writings. So the presupposition is what we have ain't enough.

42:42

Paul could rethink the Torah and the Nevi 'im and the

42:47

Ketuvim and evidently by himself come up with this new idea.

42:55

And so we can do the same thing, except now we're rethinking not only the

43:01

Torah, the Nevi 'im, and the Ketuvim, but the apostolic writings as well and the pastoral epistles and all of that.

43:09

Now, for the parallel to hold, then our resultant decisions should be tacked into the

43:15

Bible someplace. Because we're talking about revelation here. Now, he's not going to say, oh, no,

43:24

I'm not saying we need to expand the canon. Yes, you are. Yes, you are.

43:30

You're basically saying, no, there needs to be a sort of a new revelational period. I can't put that together with this professed high view of scripture that he's already claimed to have and to be functioning from.

43:47

Or the kosher laws. Or a whole host of other things that Paul said. Jesus didn't say this.

43:53

Remember, Jesus said, not one jot or iota will be taken away from the law before all is fulfilled.

43:59

But he doesn't explain what that means. So Paul's theologized about this, right? He's interpreted and theologized about this to say that this means that God is doing this new thing, and we see the

44:08

Holy Spirit working among the Gentiles, and even though it's in the Bible—because remember, Paul doesn't have a

44:13

New Testament— Okay, so what you're going to get here is, we're seeing God working amongst the

44:19

Gentiles in the apostolic period, which results in the writing of the

44:24

New Testament. And so now, in our day, we are allegedly—I certainly don't, but they say—they are seeing

44:32

God working amongst homosexuals, and then the next thing will be married homosexuals, and then pedophiles, and then, you know, there's no end to any of it.

44:44

But working in these, you know, transgender and all the rest of that stuff, God's working in these communities, and therefore that's just like God working amongst the

44:52

Gentiles. Now, of course, that work amongst Gentiles, well, if I recall correctly, was supernatural and directed by the

44:58

Holy Spirit of God and sent apostles amongst these people. And, you know, when you read Acts chapter 15, there's this, wow, it seems like the apostles gave all sorts of scriptural foundation and prophecies about the gospel going to the

45:13

Gentiles, and there certainly are a number of passages like that. I can't think of a one about homosexuality, because there isn't, obviously!

45:22

But you ignore all that, and you're going to try to create these extremely weak, ridiculously childish connections.

45:32

But you hope that if you do it in such a way that you can cover over the weakness of the boards with a nice thick amount of, it feels good, that you're going to get away with it.

45:50

But you've got to listen to the presuppositions of what's being said. You've got to listen fairly, you want to actually hear what's being said, but you can't let the presuppositions go by.

46:06

You've got to examine them, you've got to catch them as they're being woven into the fabric of the argument.

46:14

This Bible is the Tanakh, right? The Torah, the Nabi 'im, and the Chet Hashim, the writings, the prophets, and the law.

46:21

That's all he has. And everyone agrees the most authoritative part of the scriptures is the

46:28

Torah, and yet he's setting aside major sections of the Torah. By what authority does he do this?

46:34

I mean, you can understand why there were people who followed him around and thought he had a low view of scripture, and thought he didn't take seriously scriptural authority, and he was missing

46:41

God's will. And they were serious, they cared deeply about the scriptures, and they were Christians too. They wanted people to follow

46:46

Jesus, but they thought these rules are God's will, they're inscribed, and unless God comes down from heaven and he rewrites them, we've got to still do them.

46:55

Okay, and you see what he just did? He just drew a parallel between Governor Huckabee's position and the

47:01

Judaizers. I thought the Judaizers were big on tradition, not scripture, and they were.

47:11

What was their accusation? That Paul had a low view of scripture? No, their accusation was that he was breaking the law of Moses and the traditions of the

47:18

Fathers. So that was an inaccurate presentation, first of all. He calls them

47:24

Christians. I'm not sure that the Apostle Paul would have agreed with that particular identification of those that were trying to get him killed, but notice the attempted argument here to make the parallels is that the traditionalists are the

47:44

Judaizers. There's no revelation here. You don't have

47:51

Jesus doing what he did with the Samaritan woman. You don't have Peter and James and the

48:02

Apostles, Acts 15, all the Old Testament scriptures that they bring to bear.

48:09

You can't even begin to pretend to be talking about how the

48:15

Apostles dealt with the new reality of the gospel going to all people.

48:21

The new covenant is going to be for all people. You can't even pretend that you're dealing with that if you do not deal with those texts that they themselves pointed to.

48:30

You just can't do it. He's managing to do it because there is no way that you are going to be able to then provide the necessary parallel, and that is, okay, let's see the

48:43

Old Testament texts and the New Testament texts that give us a positive view of same -sex relationships, same -sex marriage, bisexuality, transgenderism.

48:55

Where do you get that? It's not there, and they know it. So they can't give you the actual parallel.

49:02

They're creating a false parallelism so that you can fill in from sociology or just whatever feels right, and you don't want to be on the backside of history and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

49:13

This is not having a high view of scripture. This is being more subtle, but doing pretty much the same thing

49:23

Achmed Didot did. Strange way of looking at it, but that's what we just covered, so there you go.

49:32

But Paul and the Council of Jerusalem managed to sort of work through that.

49:38

On what basis? On the basis of—how many times did they quote the

49:43

Old Testament scriptures? They quoted numerous texts. They saw a complete consistency between the recognition of what they had been taught by Jesus and what they are now seeing in the experience of the

49:59

Spirit of God, Philip, Ethiopian eunuch, Peter, vision—don't call what

50:06

I've called clean, unclean. Where's the apostles today, sir, that have had the visions about homosexuality?

50:17

Where is the scriptural text? There aren't any, obviously.

50:23

And there was still room in the Church for some differences there. I do wonder sometimes if Paul had been a little more diplomatic and maybe a little more careful, if the

50:30

Church might have looked a lot more Jewish, and he might have held on to the folks on the right who ended up leaving

50:36

Christianity altogether, it seems, because they struggled with where Paul was at.

50:42

Paul was constantly dealing with this tension, though, right? Between the libertines and the legalists. So you read Philippians, and you're going to find that there's this tension, and he's trying to walk this careful balancing line between the libertines who want to go too far and the legalists who want to hold things back, and he's saying, no, there's this middle way somewhere in here.

50:58

Ah, so Galatians—hmm, remember Barry Lynn on that one?

51:06

Galatians is over the top. Paul is over the top in Galatians. We're getting the same thing. We're getting the same thing.

51:13

I'm sorry, he did not have a high view of the Scripture, and I'm sorry, Adam Hamilton does not have a high view of Scripture.

51:21

My experience of United Methodists who are traditionals is they care about gay and lesbian people just like any of you who are centrist or progressives.

51:31

I know some who have gay and lesbian children, you know, and they're sort of figuring out, but here's this book.

51:39

The first book I ever wrote was a book called Confronting the Controversies, and it's come out in a second edition since then, but the first edition came out in,

51:45

I think it was 2000 or 2001, and the chapter on what then we spoke of as homosexuality,

51:52

I articulated the argument on both sides, and I came in—you know, this is the year 2000, and I came in at the end of that, and I said,

52:00

Church of the Resurrection is going to be a church that's going to welcome and love gay and lesbian people, but the

52:07

Scripture says this, and I just can't figure out what to do with that. When you get to the point of saying,

52:13

I just can't figure out what to do with that, you've already lost the battle, because the meaning of those texts, the meaning of Scripture as a whole hasn't changed.

52:26

And after 18 years, you can find a way around it if that's what you want to do, but I don't want to do that.

52:35

Governor Huckabee didn't want to do that, that's why you used that clip, but that's what you have to do.

52:40

You have to find a way around it. The person who can give serious testimony of believing

52:48

Scripture is the person who doesn't want to find a way around it. They want to be founded upon it.

52:56

That's the difference. You derive your beliefs directly from that text.

53:04

That's what is vitally important. Much more, obviously, to be said about that, but there you go.

53:15

I think it's a vitally important thing. Just listening and being able to hear those things.

53:26

All right, let's go ahead and do the ERLC thing, and then we need to talk about the

53:32

Pope today, because that'll be what we'll finish up with. We need to talk about the

53:39

Pope and how the Pope has changed Catholic teaching, and how this is a fundamental revelation, once again, of the circularity and the irrationality of the

53:53

Roman Catholic epistemology. The very argument that Roman Catholics make all the time against Sola Scriptura is actually an argument against Rome, and this will be a great example.

54:06

I'm going to use Peter D. Williams' argument about the canon, and by analyzing the nature of ultimate authorities, we will be able to see that Peter D.

54:16

Williams needs to convert if he's going to be consistent. It's a hard thing to do, but we can pray.

54:24

Okay, so before we go there, this video was pulled down, and this is a bad copy of it, but it was from an archived source, so I apologize for that.

54:45

But let's take a quick listen. This video was not up for very long, and yes, I am well aware of what

54:52

ERLC has said. Whoops, we didn't need to put that up there. We'll talk about that in a moment. We'll also talk about what was said, because for me, whether the

55:02

ERLC intended to put it up or didn't intend to put it up or all the rest of that stuff,

55:10

I can't prove that the statement that has been put out is in error.

55:15

I've had people who work in this field contact me and say, no way, that's not how things work.

55:23

I can't prove it one way or the other. I don't know. People have come after me, sir, you shouldn't have said the things you said, because they put up a wacky video, and I said, hey, that's a wacky video.

55:34

Oh, we didn't mean to. You're a bad man. That's social media for you. If you want to find a way to blame somebody for something, you'll be able to find a way to blame somebody for everything.

55:49

That's just unbelievable. Look, this is not the first time something has happened recently with the

55:55

ERLC, where everybody goes, it seems anymore that if they were a plane, they'd have two left wings.

56:05

This isn't the first time. They're the ones that put it up, and we all went, lefto wacky stuff, and then they go, oops, we didn't mean to put that up.

56:16

See, you're a mean man. Okay, if that's how you think.

56:21

Like I said, too many irrational people in the Twitterverse these days.

56:29

But what is the Christian's responsibility with respect to animals?

56:36

According to the statement that was put up, they went to a pro -life conference.

56:47

And they interviewed a bunch of people, and then they take that footage back, and then they work through it to see what they can use to post on the website.

56:57

But I have a simple question. Don't you vet who you're talking to?

57:03

I mean, do you just, hey, we got an empty chair here. Anybody want to sit down and talk to us?

57:09

Is that what's going on? Are you telling me that they didn't realize that they had a

57:17

Roman Catholic vegan who's on record elsewhere lamenting

57:26

Jesus as having eaten fish? Seriously trying to argue that vegetarianism, veganism, is the biblical perspective.

57:37

That's how things should be. I mean, I seem to remember something about a sacrificial system and the priests eating meat and fat.

57:51

It's really hard for me to even understand how people come up with these views. If you want to be a vegan for dietary reasons, more power to you.

58:00

But don't tell me that's what the Bible teaches. That is just dumb. There is no way.

58:08

It's as bad as flat -earthism, okay? I mean, there's no defense of that kind of thing.

58:15

I can poke holes in anything you come up with from every which direction. It's just silly.

58:21

Like I said, you've got the freedom to do that. Fine. Go for it.

58:28

But don't tell me that that's what is positively being taught because it clearly isn't.

58:37

Anyway, so you didn't realize that you had a

58:43

Roman Catholic. Did you notice there was a Roman Catholic who spoke at the Revoice Conference? And so this guy is a

58:49

Roman Catholic, Fordham University. Roman Catholic, vegan. And you're asking him specifically about his area and something about the pro -life movement and animals?

59:04

Isn't this the same organization that has been trying to connect illegal immigration with the pro -life movement?

59:13

I mean, once you start taking the focus off of the humanity of the unborn child and start attaching pro -life to all these other things, your argument being, well, if you're going to be consistent, then you have to do this, you have to be consistent, you have to go there, etc.

59:33

You are diluting. It's a very effective way of diluting the actual arguments of the pro -life movement.

59:41

You are helping the abortionists. So you're at a pro -life conference and you ask a

59:49

Roman Catholic vegan about animals and the pro -life movement.

59:56

And that ends up on your website. And I've had some people tell me, with post -production editing having been done, hmm, okay, let's see what was said.

01:00:10

Well, it's one of those more interesting issues that the pro -life movement doesn't generally take up. But I've done a little bit of my own work on this.

01:00:19

And I think non -human animals, they're obviously not as important as... Okay, is there a problem in showing this one? Oh, what were you doing during all the rest of the time when

01:00:30

I was talking? Oh, yes, I was. Because this is the same page.

01:00:37

It's just blank. There's nothing there at the beginning. So, okay, we're going to try it again here.

01:00:44

All right, here we go. Well, it's one of those more interesting issues that the pro -life movement doesn't generally take up.

01:00:52

But I've done a little bit of my own work on this. And I think... Okay, could I just point something out?

01:00:59

Oh, wait, keep it up there. Do you see that's his name, and that's his school, and that's his location?

01:01:06

You don't do that when you're doing the hot interviews. That's post -production.

01:01:13

That's post -recording. Yeah. Okay, well, I just thought I'd point that out.

01:01:20

Sorry. Well, it's one of those more interesting issues that the pro -life movement doesn't generally take up.

01:01:26

But I've done a little bit of my own work on this. And I think non -human animals, obviously not as important as human animals, merit our serious attention.

01:01:36

They're also vulnerable. They're also voiceless. They also are pushed to the margins because they're inconvenient, interestingly, just like prenatal children are.

01:01:43

And there's a growing number of people who are pro -life in that they're anti -abortion, but also pro -life, and they want to stand up for the dignity of non -human animals.

01:01:53

And that's a leading edge, a growing edge, if you will, of the pro -life movement in 2018.

01:02:01

Okay. Now, the ERLC has put out a statement saying this does not represent our views.

01:02:10

It's good to know. Yeah, good to know.

01:02:18

And this was put up. Somebody got thrown under the bus, and we weren't given any names, but somebody got thrown under the bus.

01:02:23

They weren't supposed to do this. They did it. Bad, bad, bad, bad person. This is not how we view things. Okay.

01:02:29

I don't know. It just seems weird to me that you'd even be talking to somebody like this in the first place.

01:02:37

But that issue aside, what was really, really bad was all the people on Twitter yesterday going, what's all that?

01:02:46

Do you want to torture animals? And that's when

01:02:52

I realized the vast majority of people who call themselves Christians are listening to what the world says, and they have no filters running at all.

01:02:59

It's just whatever the world says, I'll accept those parameters. That sounds good to me.

01:03:08

It's only 40 seconds long. Let's listen to the buzzwords. Let's take them apart.

01:03:14

Well, it's one of those more interesting issues that the pro -life movement doesn't generally take up.

01:03:21

The pro -life movement generally doesn't take up. Maybe that's because the pro -life movement needs to stay focused on the real issue, which is the humanity of the unborn child for which we have more evidence than we've ever had before.

01:03:38

And the fundamental worldview of what that means when people start killing off their young just so they can have a better retirement account, what this means for a society.

01:03:51

Does why would the pro -life movement even want to take up anything like this? It goes beyond the bounds of what the topic actually is.

01:04:02

I mean, an animal is alive, but we're not talking about animal rights.

01:04:08

We're not talking about any of that kind of stuff. We're talking about humans using the murder of preborn children as a mechanism of birth control.

01:04:18

So sexual ethics, marriage, society, et cetera, et cetera.

01:04:23

Is this a moral issue? Yeah, but it's a separate moral issue. So trying to drag it into the pro -life thing is a mess in the first place.

01:04:32

Done a little bit of my own work on this, and I think non -human animals, though, obviously not as important as human animals.

01:04:40

Okay, non -human animals, though, not as important as human animals.

01:04:47

Now, I had sort of hoped that when I linked to this, that I wouldn't have to write a paper and link to it on Twitter, that most people would be able to listen to that and go,

01:05:02

Whoa, did you catch that? That is a major linkage on the ontological level between men and animals that is being placed within the context of dignity and life.

01:05:24

So this is that whole realm of, you know, there have been people who have actually sued on behalf of orangutans to have them freed in courts of law.

01:05:35

You know, the free willy type stuff where, you know, people complaining about speciesism as if thinking your species is better than another species is a bad thing.

01:05:52

Now, folks, you just need to realize something. Could we get real here for a second? If you look at the

01:05:58

Bible, the Bible has no room for this kind of stuff. No room at all.

01:06:05

I mean, I suppose about the only thing you could do is Balaam's donkey did talk once. But we all know that that was an abject miracle.

01:06:13

The whole point that it was a miracle was that donkeys don't talk and they don't have spiritual experiences.

01:06:18

And so that's what made it unique. So other than that, there be a whole lot of dead animals in the biblical history.

01:06:29

I mean, you just figure out, you just think about the plumbing that had to be installed around the altar in the temple to drain the blood.

01:06:44

Okay? It wasn't pretty. There were animals dying left, right, and center.

01:06:49

You could smell it everywhere. I know you've had a nice clean version of these things, but that's the reality.

01:07:00

When the high priest brought the blood into the holy place, the bowl was still warm.

01:07:07

Hello? I know we live in Western society. We don't even have to prepare our own food anymore.

01:07:13

But we are the newbies on the block. Mankind has existed from creation with blood on its hands.

01:07:26

That's how you lived. Okay? And so only this pampered generation with all of its blessings and eases living like kings and queens can even begin to come up with this wackiness.

01:07:47

And let the economy collapse, let there be another world war, and everybody's going to forget about all this stuff because it's going to be back to survival again.

01:08:01

Sorry if I'm a little blunt, but how in the world you can put this non -human animals and human animals confusion of categories together and try to pretend it has some type of biblical basis,

01:08:21

I cannot begin to understand. You just get rid of the

01:08:27

Bible, okay? Whatever your religion is, it ain't a biblical one. So we see that our

01:08:33

Roman Catholic vegan friend has a serious category problem because fundamental to biblical anthropology and to a biblical doctrine of the creation is that man is unique as the creation of God.

01:08:56

And hence, in that realm, when it floods, we die, animals die.

01:09:03

We eat same food animals eat. We eat animals as food.

01:09:08

That's what other animals do too. Every single day. Red in tooth and claw.

01:09:16

And what makes man distinct and different is that we are made in the imago

01:09:23

Dei, the image of God. Animals are not made in the image of God.

01:09:30

The dignity of mankind is due to the imago Dei. The dignity of creation is simply because it comes from God's hand, but it's a different thing.

01:09:43

The whole basis of the death penalty, which we'll get to at the end of the program with the

01:09:49

Pope getting rid of these things because he knows better than God, the death penalty is based in scripture on the fact that man has taken the life of an image bearer of God.

01:10:05

There is no murder of an animal. You can't murder an animal. You can kill an animal, but killing and murder are not the same thing.

01:10:13

They are not synonyms of one another. Yes, there are biblical passages that say that a man should care for his flock.

01:10:21

He should take care of his animals. There is a basis for enjoying the companionship of the dog or the cat, or if you're really odd like Pete up in Nova Scotia, a snake, which you see on his

01:10:40

Facebook feed every day. But be it as it may, it is appropriate to enjoy these animals.

01:10:52

But they are not our equals. We live in a day where I'm just going to be honest.

01:10:59

I'm going to offend a bunch of people. I shouldn't say this. This is why we're on restricted mode on YouTube.

01:11:11

We've entered into a time period where there are people in our society who have replaced children with their pets.

01:11:21

They've replaced children with their pets. They treat their pets like children rather than as pets.

01:11:31

It's a dangerous thing. While there's everything right, and I've had pets, but you know what?

01:11:44

When my current pets get to that point, I'm the one that's always got to take them to the vet.

01:11:52

And unlike grandma or grandpa, I don't have any guilty feelings whatsoever about having them put down, because that's the merciful thing to do.

01:12:05

I mean, there are people that will spend tens of thousands of dollars, as much money as they'd spend on a human being, just trying to keep a pet alive for another six months.

01:12:16

I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to make them suffer. But I have zero, zero guilt about putting that pet down if that's what needs to be done.

01:12:29

Totally different world than dealing with another human being. Is this not just basic Christian belief?

01:12:41

It seems like a lot of people today have the idea that, well, it may have been basic Christian belief before, but we just didn't know back then what we know now.

01:12:47

Really? We knew a lot more back then. I'm coming to the conclusion that we have so much more common sense in the history of the church than we have in this modern situation, really.

01:13:01

Basic category issues here. And that's why I was just stunned by the comments that came back to me on Twitter from people with clearly no ability to draw basic category distinctions.

01:13:15

Just none. And it may be because they have certain pets and they've crossed those lines, and so it's blurred and everything.

01:13:22

I don't know. Our serious attention. They're also vulnerable. They're also voiceless. They're also what?

01:13:30

What? I don't know what his jacket's made out of. I doubt it's made out of leather.

01:13:39

Suede? I don't know. I don't know. Vulnerable and voiceless. Aren't those words that have specific meanings as to injustices in the world, the

01:13:59

Jews under Hitler, the killing fields in Cambodia, this kind of stuff.

01:14:10

And we're applying it to animals. Yeah, they're voiceless because they can't talk.

01:14:17

I'm vulnerable. Well, suppose. But but those are terms that have specific meaning within a human context.

01:14:26

And this is this is being transferred outside the human context. Which makes sense if you just think all animals are just we're all just animals.

01:14:36

And so we're just having to you know, we don't want to be speciesists. They also are pushed to the margins because they're inconvenient.

01:14:42

Interesting. Push to the margins because they're inconvenient. Is this not the very rhetoric of the critical, you know, critical theory, social justice warriors, the whole nine yards now being applied to animals?

01:14:58

Say what? What's the basis of this from a Christian perspective?

01:15:03

I get the basis of this if you have a wacky, wild, weird, non -speciesist, unbiblical worldview.

01:15:13

But what what on what on earth? Just like prenatal children are.

01:15:21

Prenatal children are pushed to the margins. OK, I guess that has something to do with the pro -life movement.

01:15:28

But but you see what happens when you combine this? When you start combining stuff into the pro -life movement that has nothing to do with it, you end up not only diluting it, but you provide means of of escaping the actual argumentation that demonstrates the humanity of the preborn child.

01:15:47

Who cares if it's human? All animals are equal, right?

01:15:53

There's no basis here. Look, a pro -life movement without a biblical view of man is worthless.

01:16:00

It's just one political view. It doesn't have any moral or revelational authority behind it.

01:16:06

And there's a growing number of people who are pro -life in that they're anti -abortion, but also pro -life, and they want to stand up for the dignity of non -human animals.

01:16:16

There you go. There you go. When pro -life becomes standing up for the dignity of non -human animals, you've missed the whole point.

01:16:29

You have missed the whole point. You have provided a Trojan horse refutation of the pro -life movement.

01:16:42

Stunning. And that's a leading edge, a growing edge, if you will, of the pro -life movement in 2018.

01:16:51

So again, the backstory, how it got up there.

01:16:59

Oops, we made a mistake. Whatever. I don't care. It was up there.

01:17:07

And Tom Askell said something about it. I said something about it. Within half an hour, it was gone. That, we will leave to you to decide as to why that is.

01:17:21

For me, the real key issue here was, once I linked to it, the number of people that are coming back, so you want to torture animals?

01:17:35

You missed the point. If your response, and if you're watching this and you know who you are, if your response is, you want to torture animals?

01:17:43

You've completely missed the whole point. You're not listening. You are not hearing the presuppositions.

01:17:49

You're not hearing worldview issues. And as such, you can be controlled by anybody that can simply access your emotion.

01:17:56

That's all I got to do. Just access your emotion and it's done. They've got you.

01:18:03

I don't want you to be so easily manipulated. If you call yourself a Christian, you need to grow and learn to think and analyze what is being said.

01:18:14

Or you will be tossed about by every wind of doctrine. By every wind of doctrine. It's just all there is to it.

01:18:21

And you do not want that. I haven't even been looking at Twitter because I don't know if anyone has responded to any of that stuff.

01:18:29

But I don't even want to look at it right now. Okay. What has been

01:18:38

Peter D. Williams' argument starting on the unbelievable radio broadcast and then into both of the debates that we've done?

01:18:56

Well, it's the standard argument. Sola Scriptura says Scripture is sufficient, but Scripture can't give you the canon, and therefore

01:19:05

Sola Scriptura is refuted. You need the Church to give you the canon. And even when you point out that the

01:19:12

Church didn't do that until 1546, that there were errors in Rome's definitions, demonstrate that popes argued against the modern, allegedly infallible definition of the canon.

01:19:26

It doesn't matter. It's all just a presuppositional argument that for Scripture to be sufficient, it has to be able to give you its own table of contents.

01:19:37

And therefore, if it doesn't, it's not sufficient. And I was going to try to queue it up.

01:19:43

I didn't get a chance to do it. I'm sorry. But in the discussion with Peter D.

01:19:56

Williams in Belfast a couple of weeks ago, well, a couple of months ago now, I guess, I pointed out that the fundamental error in Peter's argument is that he's not dealing with the nature of ultimate authorities.

01:20:16

That is, that an ultimate authority cannot appeal to something outside of itself for any element of its authority.

01:20:30

And therefore, epistemologically speaking, any ultimate authority fundamentally must be circular when it comes to establishment of authority.

01:20:43

That is, that authority must possess within itself, as a part of its nature, sufficient grounds for its standing as an ultimate authority.

01:20:55

It cannot have to borrow something from someplace else to do that. Peter's argument fundamentally denies that there can be such a thing.

01:21:06

Because Scripture is God speaking, and God cannot appeal to any other—he can't appeal to the heavens, he made them, he's not going to appeal to the temple, he made that—anything that he can appeal to is lesser than himself.

01:21:20

So, if Scripture is theanustos, then it cannot, by nature, make reference to any other source of authority than itself.

01:21:33

If it does, that next authority has to be a higher authority, and therefore, that becomes your authority.

01:21:39

It's sort of like when we critique Molinism, and we point out that the

01:21:44

Molinist has a card dealer. God's got to deal with the cards he's been dealt, because there is something called middle knowledge, the form of which is not a part of God's decree, and yet it limits

01:21:57

God's actions. Whoever made that middle knowledge is the ultimate authority, because God's actions are circumscribed by the content of that middle knowledge that he did not himself create.

01:22:12

And so, as I pointed out in Belfast, the fundamental assumption being made by Peter D.

01:22:19

Williams is that that which is theanustos cannot, in and of itself, be authoritative without appeal to external authority, which, of course, if you just follow that line of argument just a little bit farther, okay, if Scripture is dependent upon the testimony of the

01:22:37

Church, then the Church must be the ultimate authority. Okay, what is in the nature of the

01:22:43

Church that allows it to be an ultimate authority? It is not, in and of itself, theanustos. It's never described as being theanustos.

01:22:49

In fact, in this world, it is in a fallen state, and in fact, in this situation that Peter D. Williams finds himself right now in regards to the current

01:22:57

Pope, who he himself admits is contradicting the ancient teaching of the

01:23:06

Church, the diachronic, as he used this morning in a tweet, teaching of the Church over time, then it cannot be trusted in what it has to say on this subject.

01:23:21

And there is no universal, consistent testimony within Roman Catholicism, what

01:23:28

Rome defines as its historical swath of tradition, in regards to the canon.

01:23:36

I can show you Popes, and if Popes are not containers of tradition in the ancient context, then what is?

01:23:44

And if you just want to go with the early Church Fathers, I can find—it is an established fact that there are a minimum of two major streams of view in regard to the apocryphal books, the deuterocanonical books, in the history of the

01:24:02

Church. So there is no diachronic, consistent testimony at that point.

01:24:08

So the system doesn't work. But here is the ultimate example of it. And what I refer to is

01:24:14

Pope Francis. We first mentioned this back in May, April or May, when the news came out.

01:24:22

Pope Francis, the catechism of the Catholic Church—I now have the outdated version.

01:24:37

The catechism of the Catholic Church contains a section on the subject of the death penalty.

01:24:47

And that has now been changed. So revised number 2267—so

01:24:58

I wonder how much of this got changed. Um, yeah, okay.

01:25:13

If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority should limit itself to such means because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.

01:25:31

Um, hmm, you've got legitimate defense. I'm not sure if they renumbered things here or just what.

01:25:43

But infanticide, fratricide, so on and so forth. And then abortion comes after that.

01:25:51

So this section, anyways, has been changed. Um, what it now says is,

01:25:58

Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority following a fair trial was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good.

01:26:15

Yet today, the addition is, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost, even after commission of various serious crimes.

01:26:24

In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state.

01:26:30

Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens, but at the same time do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.

01:26:40

It's for this reason, the lie of the gospel, the church teaches that the practice is now inadmissible. Together with the revised number 2267 of the

01:26:49

Catechism, the Vatican released a letter by Ladaria addressed to the bishops. And so, it is in itself contrary, this is what

01:27:00

Francis said on October 11th, it is in itself contrary to the gospel because the decision is voluntarily made to suppress the human life which is always sacred in the eyes of the creator and of whom, in the last analysis, only

01:27:12

God can be the true judge and guarantor. Now, the point here is that there is a long history.

01:27:24

I mean, can you imagine so many of the popes, so many of the popes who used the death penalty frequently over and over again?

01:27:42

And what this means is they were acting contrary to the

01:27:47

Christian gospel. Evidently, they just didn't have enough light or revelation. I'm sure there's some way that you can come up with all this, but indulgences were given to crusaders who were going to be ending human lives.

01:28:02

I mean, there's just so much in the history of the church, not just on the theoretical concept of capital punishment, which has a long history of being defended, but even just war theory and so on and so forth.

01:28:18

It seems that the pope doesn't believe any of that. He is outside the realm of the traditional understanding of the church, of the

01:28:29

Roman Catholic Church. So, now what we're being told, we're told a lot of things.

01:28:38

Some of you have listened to the debates that we've done. And from the beginning, what are we told over and over again by Jerry Matitix, Patrick Madrid, Robert St.

01:28:50

Genes? The list goes on and on and on of Carl Keating and Jimmy Akin.

01:28:57

And what are we told? Well, you know, we have unity in the church because we have the living voice of Christ and the pope.

01:29:06

And we don't have all this confusion about interpretation because we have the living pope and we have a final authority and solo scripture, blueprint for anarchy, blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:29:19

We've always said it's a bunch of hooey because it doesn't work that way. You can't call the pope up and get some infallible interpretation of scripture.

01:29:29

I mean, there might be seven verses that have been infallibly interpreted. And then there are all sorts of people who don't think that even those seven have been infallibly interpreted.

01:29:38

So you don't have an infallible interpreter. And then when it comes to the content of tradition, please, please, please, please read the papal syllabus of errors.

01:29:48

If all you do is read the papal encyclicals that have been released over the past 250 years, the evolution, the change, the contradiction in those papal syllabi is patent and clear and compelling to any rational person.

01:30:11

You can not sit there with a straight face and say that the current pope teaches in accordance with the papal syllabus of errors.

01:30:20

Or even John Paul II did. They didn't. They did not. And yet these are the interpreters of tradition.

01:30:28

And so we're told on the one hand, well, we can't interpret tradition. You know, I'll quote early church fathers.

01:30:34

You know, we do debates on the papacy and I'll quote this early church father. That was just his personal opinion. Oh, so when it contradicts what

01:30:42

Rome teaches, it's the father's personal opinion. It's not really tradition. But when it's on your side, then it's tradition.

01:30:50

Who gets to say that? Well, Rome does. The pope does in the final analysis.

01:30:59

And so, you know, we've, we've debated papal infallibility and we've gotten completely different defenses.

01:31:06

Remember, we debated Tim Staples and Roberts and Jennus. And we talked about Honorius. And well, yeah, he was a heretic.

01:31:12

No, he wasn't a heretic. Popes can be heretics. Popes cannot be heretics. That papal infallibility doctrine, utterly irrelevant because what it boils down to when you really, really, really, really look carefully at it is the pope's infallible except when he's not.

01:31:29

That's all it means. It's irrelevant. You cannot know during the lifetime of a pope whether what he's teaching is true or not.

01:31:36

You have to wait 50 years or 100 years. Unless truth changes, which

01:31:43

I think may be the next direction that we're going to have to go with this type of stuff that the people try and defend this. But the point is that, you know,

01:31:52

Peter recognizes that this pope is a train wreck. And we've known from the start, we've sat back and gone.

01:32:04

Life as a Catholic apologist today means you get up in the morning and you get us, you no longer just have a stiff drink of coffee.

01:32:12

You put a shot of vodka in it just to find out what it is that the pope said overnight while you were sleeping, not restfully.

01:32:20

That's the life of the Roman Catholic apologist. And it's a desperate life.

01:32:28

And you are getting, as you would expect, different ways of dealing with it. But what's interesting is

01:32:35

Peter's ultimate authority in his epistemology does not have within himself or itself, as in the papal office, the necessary attributes to be an ultimate authority that scripture has.

01:32:56

Scripture has that ability, does not need appeal outside of itself. The pope does not.

01:33:05

Well, the pope doesn't define this. There's the thing that's so nice to say, would have gotten you killed a number of years ago, but you can say it now if you want.

01:33:14

I'm hearing more and more Catholics doing this. They have to. What else can they do? But they're never going to be able, let's say you get a conservative in next time.

01:33:23

Not sure how it's going to happen, but let's say you get a conservative in next time. Are you going to go back to saying, well, we have the pope and the pope can give us this infallible work?

01:33:32

Once you've started saying the things you're saying now, now we have this nebulous, wonderful thing of this tradition of the church.

01:33:41

Well, who gets to define that? Well, does Pierre D. Williams get to define that? I thought that was the

01:33:47

Bishop of Rome's job. Well, the ship will right itself.

01:33:52

Really? Let's compare this ship over the past 250 years. It's doing this number.

01:33:59

Okay. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. You need an ultimate authority that has within itself.

01:34:10

And by the way, saying that scripture has within itself sufficient authority to answer these questions is not saying that the canon has to be revealed within scripture itself.

01:34:24

An ultimate authority to function as an ultimate authority has to be divine in its origin and function as God intended it to function.

01:34:33

That's all. The scripture does not have to contain its own canon. When God gives that scripture to his people, that's a function of how

01:34:41

God wants us to interact with what he's given to us. He didn't have to give a scripture, but he chose to do so.

01:34:48

And he chose to do so in such a fashion that that entire argument that Peter makes is a bogus argument because it's assuming that God has to do something that God nowhere says he has to do.

01:35:02

But now we're seeing when the shoe's put on the other foot that poor Peter, and he's not the only one who makes this argument.

01:35:09

I hear this argument over and over and over again. They're having to come up with a lot of really inconsistent, contradictory, incoherent ways of dealing with the fact that the current infallible

01:35:25

Bishop of Rome stands way outside the tradition of even the past 50 years, let alone the past 250 years, let alone the past millennium.

01:35:36

And given that he's the one installing a bunch of Cardinals and the Cardinals get to be the ones that pick the next

01:35:43

Pope, I'm not the only one going, Rome's going to look just a little bit different 50 years down the road than it does today.

01:35:53

And what are you going to do then? Peter and I could be around 50 years from now. Somebody else could be debating this.

01:36:00

But one thing is for certain, Peter's argument against Sola Scriptura in light of what he's willing to accept as the

01:36:10

Roman epistemology doesn't make any sense. So fascinating developments taking place in Rome and things like that.

01:36:25

Somebody in channel looking at the coffee and vodka thing.

01:36:34

What's this? What's this thing up here? Have you looked at this? This YouTube thing?

01:36:45

Someone posted something. That reformed Stratton in the... Sorry about that.

01:36:54

James White listener thinking of converting to Catholic, rejecting Calvinism from February 15th.

01:37:02

I have no earthly idea what that... Well, it's all just me talking.

01:37:11

So we got a second. This definitely proves that it's a live program.

01:37:19

Let's find out what this is about. Formed Strata in the... Even amongst the

01:37:24

Southern Baptists. But it sounds like what you've been exposed to is the much more disconnected from history version.

01:37:34

Oh, okay. Take the time to even... Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. That was the guy that called in that we talked to twice, at least twice so far.

01:37:48

Which I think would be really interesting how he would deal with this change on the part of the current

01:37:55

Pope as well. So things be a happening and we managed to get through all of them in only an hour and 40 minutes.

01:38:04

That's pretty good. That's pretty good. So I would imagine that we have managed to offend a very large number of folks today.

01:38:17

But my biggest concern, honestly, for today is to just so strongly encourage

01:38:25

Christians, don't think like the world. Do not think as a child.

01:38:34

Do not think with your emotions. Do not be so easily swayed and taken over by bad arguments.

01:38:42

There was a day, if you want to see one positive impact that Christianity had upon Western culture, there was a day when we taught people not what to think, but how to think.

01:38:57

And they recognized that they were honoring God and honoring his creation to seek for consistency of thought and reasoning.

01:39:09

That needs to be something we instill in our children because it's not going to be instilled by anything they watch on television, by anything in our society, certainly nothing in public education.

01:39:20

There are a few Christian schools that still try to do the trivium and things like that and teach rhetoric and teach logic.

01:39:28

We have to instill that in them. As parents, call them to something higher than what this world offers.

01:39:39

But like I said, in watching Twitter burn down and just seeing the incoherent thinking patterns of people who call themselves

01:39:56

Christians, it's not glorifying to God, my friends. It's not glorifying to God.

01:40:03

So anyway, there you go. Talked about a little bit of everything today. I hope someone wrote all that down.

01:40:11

And if not, then we'll just go. Interesting program today. So Lord willing, we will be back next week and we'll see you then.