And greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line on a Wednesday. We're normally not here on a Wednesday. Well, is there any normal for us anymore? We just sort of do it whenever we want to. So it's a Wednesday and we're doing this because I leave tomorrow for St. Charles. Those of you in the St. Louis, St. Charles, Missouri area, we will be with you over the weekend, Friday and Saturday. Did we have a, did we put anything up about that? It's up. It's in the calendar. Well, okay. Yes, there is a graphic up. Yes. King James Line Controversy, Reliability Test of Documents, and then next week in Pirate, Oklahoma, the Five Solas of the Reformation. And I'm just watching the things go by here. And then January 3rd through 5th in Owensboro. Hey, wait a minute, it's going too fast. I can't keep up. Um, uh, yeah. Uh, whoop, it clicked on. Um, oh wait, boy, if you click on it, it, uh, pops your right over to the other page, which I didn't want to do. Um, so yeah, we'll be a covenant grace church this coming weekend, uh, talking about new test reliability. That's going to be some new stuff because I sort of have to. Sneaks and cbgm stuff in and that's the first times i've tried doing that that's gonna be tricky and then the five souls the reformation grace life church one ten east graham prior oklahoma. And that'll be Wednesday, December 5th, then Saturday, December 8th, and Sunday, December 9th. So that'll be right at the end of my trip. I've got one stop in between the two that is not a public thing, but I'm going to be recording some material on marriage and human sexuality for later distribution. and so I will be busy during that time. And then, I've had a lot of people asking about this, January 3rd through 5th, I will be teaching at CBTS, Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary in Owensboro, Reliability Test for Documents and Textual Criticism. That is a full-blown master's level class, so 8.30 in the morning to 5 o'clock at night, three days in a row. That is absolutely Exhausting, but I will be that is available for auditing for $100. I believe and so Yeah, the audit link is there I guess and then I'm preaching the following Sunday morning 1030 There in Owensboro. I'm not sure that's on there, but same location so It's on the other page, yeah then March 1st through the 3rd, a conference on the Trinity in Mechanicsville, Virginia, at Knox Reformed Presbyterian Church. You have to have a discussion with Jeff about Knox. He was quite the interesting fellow. Too bad we didn't get to him in church history. Maybe I'll have to add something because When when you are so politically incorrect That you make John Calvin go when you when when you make John Calvin facepalm What when Calvin's going oh you didn't say that did you when Calvin says that oh Yeah. Okay. There you go. But conference on the Trinity coming up March 1st to the 3rd. And then we've got another one. You're gonna be getting lots of contacts and people. Because I'm just, I've just decided to leave for the next year. Because then I'm going to be up in the, believe it or not, I'm going to sneak across the border into California, Stan. And all of my civil rights will be suspended the whole nine yards. But Yes, yeah, yeah, how did I get here? It's easier to get in and get out, I guess, but we have a conference that we're putting together right now. I just saw the website is not quite ready yet, but that'll be, I think, pretty much the next, yeah, the first weekend in April in the San Francisco Bay Area. So we'll need to get that linked up here fairly soon. Fairly soon too. So lots and lots and lots of stuff going on and that's not even including the stuff at G3, which reminds me, I just was putting out on social media and stuff. Social Justice and the Gospel, G3 pre-conference, the day before G3 begins, so I believe it's on January 16th. Um, and, uh, so there's a website up on that. Uh, the speakers are, uh, I don't know why they have me there first. I'm the least of these, but, um, Tom Askell, Vody Balkam, Josh Bice, Phil Johnson. I don't see Tom Buck there, but I'm hoping he'll be there. Um, And you may recognize those names as the primary writers, contributors, defenders of, discussors of the Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel. So that's going to be interesting to have the primary folks in one room again, as we were last June. But with an opportunity of interacting with other people and getting questions and things like, are you cold in there? You're doing the, I'm freezing thing. Like I said, it's almost December. So I think you may still have some long sleeve shirts left somewhere in the closet and then pants. Pants would be good. Pants would be good. There are just some folks. I asked a good brother at Apologia last week. I said, do you own long pants? So he wore long pants on Sunday just to prove. They were a little wrinkled, but he hadn't been worn in a long time. Now let's not give folks the wrong impression. I am wearing shorts. Yes, I know you're wearing shorts. You're always wearing shorts. It's just you live in shorts. I live in Phoenix. It's the desert, man. And I work with Mr. Freeze over there who dresses like... I mean, there's no reason to, okay? I mean, it's like six months out of the year, it's ugly sweater day. I don't know what the deal is. I'd let you... I'd bring coogies in for you to wear. They do keep you nice and warm. So anyways... That's coming up before G3 if you were wondering about. If you're on the fence about attending, keep in mind the pre-conference and I think that'll be most interesting. I'm not sure how the title of this came up. I'm blaming O'Fallon on this one. An Exegetical and Historical Examination of the Woke Church Movement. Actually, I'm just gonna be dealing with... We were talking on the phone while I was driving somewhere. I know I was on I-17 somewhere. And I said, well, I can do these two topics. I said, I can do the exegetical thing I've been doing from the start, you know, Ephesians 4, Colossians 3. And then I mentioned one other, he said, I think you should stick with the exegetical thing. So that's what I'm talking about. And everybody else is going to be, Phil Johns is going to be talking about virtue signaling, the new evangelistic strategy. Tom Askel is doing white privilege, the new original sin. Then Josh Bice is doing brave new religion, intersectionality. Now these are not long presentations, as you may notice. Because that's 435, 530, and 615. So these are going to be moving along fairly quickly. And I have basically 40 minutes for mine. So there you go. So Mike just said, that's basically what you said. And I said, no, actually I was just talking about the, I think the other topic I was going to talk about was the woke church thing. And so he just conflated them. We'll just blame the bad reception on a telephone or something like that for the title. woke exegesis well there is that too because there is there is that out there uh as well um so anyway uh so that's coming up you might want to uh i just put that out on the uh social media stuff look at my twitter if i still have a twitter account uh that's the next thing uh right before we went on the air i mean two or three minutes why does this always happen two or three minutes right before i start My good friend and brother, Michael Brown, linked to an article that he, Skyman just said, when did Dr. O ever reduce anything he says to 40 minutes? That hurts! Because I remember very clearly preaching at a certain person's church, And I think I was spot on time with the amount of time that I was given. But am I recalling correctly that when he spoke at a certain conference that we did? Oh, you are. Oh, yes, you are. I am, huh? Remind me about that. In fact, I also remember a couple of G3s where you had to comment about the fact that you were the one trying to get the schedule back on track. Yeah, G3, that's true. You know, it's just you seem to be the one that keeps I don't know why that is, but at most conferences I do feel some kind of a moral necessity to get us back on track. Timeliness is stewardship. Yeah. I just think it's showing respect for your audience, personally. And so when other people go over, I just take the time out of mine. And I figure the reason I can do that is I grew up doing radio. So look at the debates. I mean, this is totally off topic, but how many times do my opponents completely blow the timing in their opening statement? They're in the middle of a point someplace and they have to stop. And it just ruins everything. Everyone's just left going, uh. If they stop. If they stop, yeah. Does that ever happen to me? No, it doesn't. And why doesn't that happen to me? Because I grew up doing radio. By my sophomore year in high school, I was on the air. And the UPI news came on at the top of the hour. You had to be ready for it. And there you had to do commercials and stuff at the bottom of the hour, and I just sort of learned that that's how it works. Now I don't have to worry about it. Now I don't have to worry about it. Yeah, so anyways, I'm seeing what's going on in channel right now and it's sort of funny. So, what was I talking about Michael Brown? Michael Brown posted an article on the stream and, you know, we've been saying it's coming, it's coming, it's coming, it's here and it's passing us by. Twitter has updated its terms of service. It added further information in the category of repeated and or non-consensual slurs, epithets, racist and sexist tropes, and other content that degrades someone. Now, I can guarantee you, as far as Twitter is concerned, that does not include slurs, epithets, tropes, and other content that degrades Christians. That's perfectly fine. All the profanity in the world, everything else, that's perfectly fine. That's okay. Free speech. We are progressives, right? Specifically, Twitter explains, we prohibit targeting individuals with repeated slurs, tropes, or other content that intends to dehumanize, degrade, or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category. And what's a protected category? A protected category is the category of people that leftists will use to destroy Western culture. Period. And they're only protected as long as they're useful for doing that. Once they're no longer useful for doing that, they will be dumped by those same progressives. Protected category. This includes, ready folks? I'm reading, quoting. This includes targeted misgendering or dead naming of transgender individuals. So I read that to Rich. And Rich's first response is, what on earth is deadnaming? And that was the first thought I had, too. We've all figured out what misgendering is now, right? You know, the great sin of misgendering, which means not going along with the insanity of the transgender movement. Because it is insanity. It's insanity on the part who's suffering it, and the part of the people promoting it. More on the part of the people promoting it, to be honest with you. But now we have a new name it when you have to keep coming up with new names to explain your insanity and your destructive absurdities You know things are bad dead naming would be calling Bruce Jenner Bruce Jenner Because that name is dead Names now die. Oh my goodness. I We have lost our collective minds. This is insanity. I don't even know how to even address it. I mean, how do you address babbling morons? I mean, once we've degraded to the point where there's not the slightest bit of adulthood left in the thought process of what's going on in the society around, how do you even address it? How do you even address it? I don't know. I don't know. But now we have misgendering Which, you know, I guess that was a term that had meaning when I was young. You'd look at a baby and go, oh, how old is he? It's a she. Oh, so you misgendered. Okay. All right. But that's not what's being talked about here. That's, that's not, that's not the issue. And dead naming, dead naming. Wow. I didn't have time to look it up. Let me grab this real quick. That's what I thought. Okay. Do you know how long ago the Obergefell decision was? Do you remember? 2015. June of 2015. Three and a half years ago. And the fact of the matter is that transgenderism, it was there. There were people who called themselves transgender. That was a side issue. The big thing was homosexuality and gay marriage. And it was like a switch. It was so clearly a pre-written script. Literally within a week of Obergefell, transgenderism came to the center of the movement. It hadn't been till then, because it is just so natural. It is right, it is logical, it is rational, it's sane for us to recognize the goodness of the gender binary, the necessity of the gender binary, the reality of the gender binary. that we exist as men and women, and that this is a good thing and it's a proper thing. So they kept that to the side. And then as soon as they had Obergefell, right into the center, right into the center. And now you have stuff like this. It's a script. It's absolutely a script. And it's only been three and a half years, three and a half years. And here we are. If you identify Bruce Jenner for the man that he was and is, you can be kicked off of Twitter. You can be kicked out of one of the primary means of communication in our society. Well, there you go. The inmates are running the asylum and this is the stuff that is being absolutely shoved down the throats of our children and our grandchildren. And given, you know, the other, you know, another story going around right now. A lot of people have linked today to the InfoWars article and everybody's going, InfoWars, but it's sort of on a topic that isn't a conspiracy thing. And that is, um, More than 100 churches will close this week across the United States, and next week, and then the next week, and then the next week. Between 100 and 200 a week, churches are closing, just buildings left standing. And there's been a lot of commentary on that, as there should be. Now, I'm not sure that what that means is that there will be more than a hundred less churches in total, because the article, as far as I could see, did not take into consideration new startups. And I've seen church buildings standing around. You go to Italy and there's church buildings standing around all over the place. Europe, lots of empty church buildings turned into nightclubs and shopping things and all sorts of stuff. But most of the church buildings I see that have been abandoned, boarded up, are of the old mainline churches, which are dying. We've been saying that they've been dying for a long, long time, and there's a reason they're dying. They lost the gospel. They're not Christian churches anymore, and they're just going the way of the world as they should. But that doesn't mean that there is not, very clearly, a deep secularizing of the next generations of Americans. and that the percentage of Americans that attend church service is declining greatly. And then, of course, you have to look at that and go, what percentage of people attending church service are actually truly Christians? Certainly, the lie that this is a Christian nation is being exposed, hopefully. I just looked at my timeline on Twitter. Let me see here. Yeah, there he is. Uh-huh. There we go. 20 minutes into Prospergatory. There we go. I just took the trash out. in the chat channel. Anyway, what was I saying? Yeah, the decline in the church. We do see it surround us and we have to be preparing our young people to not expect to be a majority perspective in their society. Even down south in the good old Bible Belt, things are changing rapidly, and we as parents and grandparents must help these next generations, Christians who are Millennials and iGen, XGen, whatever they call them, to not buy into majority arguments, to recognize that they are going to be and should be and should embrace and find joy in being the marginalized unless something happens, unless there is a huge change. And biblically, historically, That kind of repentance and change has always followed after national disasters, wars, and plagues, and all sorts of things like that. Hey, a guy in China just announced the first CRISPR babies. We knew that was coming. The first genetically modified human beings where the genetic modification will be passed on. Evidently, nobody has seen all the movies, telling us that this is how mankind ends up turning into zombies and living underground and only coming out of dark and all the rest of that stuff. And you chuckle, but there is a warning there, because it is incredibly foolish for mankind to go, if we can, we should, without knowing what the results of that will be. It is, um... Well, it's a... It's a terrible time for us to have the kind of technological power that we have when we are the least in line with or sensitive to our own creator's guidelines for how we should live than we've been in a very, very long time, at least in the very nations that now have this capacity. So anyway, Wow, there's so much going on. I've commented more than once. I think I commented Sunday evening, the sermon. If I did not believe in the sovereignty of God, I would have to be on prescription meds to stay calm. I would probably be watching the news far too much and just be waiting for the next major disaster. Is it going to be nuclear? Is it going to be biological? Is it going to be genetic? Is it going to be fires or earthquakes or tsunamis? What's going to get me? Because something's going to. And if I'm just a genetic mistake already, just a random mutation, then this merciless, pitiless universe does not care. about what's going to happen to me in any way. That's all there is to it. So deadnaming, yeah, deadnaming. Like I said, I saw that from Michael Brown. Deadnaming. So if you call someone by the name that they had before they quote-unquote transitioned, which doesn't work by the way. There's no such thing. But before they transitioned, then you can lose your access to the Twitterverse. There you go. Wow, I'm just left going, what is coming our direction? I just don't know. I just don't know. Okay, other things I need to get to today. There are so many things. Just looked over and saw someone complaining about having been cast into prost-purgatory for 20 minutes. I need a longer one of those just for that one guy. Have had some questions asked about an article that was put out by the Center for Security Policy. Now, I don't know anything about these folks. A few Google searches didn't give me a whole lot of really positive stuff, but I don't know. Whatever. But it's entitled, Michigan Faith Communities in the Crosshairs. So, specifically, about what's going on in Michigan and especially Dearborn with the large number of Muslims in that particular area. And basically, it was talking about interfaith dialogues. Quote, interfaith dialogue is a term that has been developed to describe efforts to bridge theological distinctions between religions, especially Christianity and Islam. The U.S. Institute of Peace describes it as follows, the term interfaith dialogue refers to cooperative, constructive, and positive interaction between people of different religious traditions and or spiritual or humanistic beliefs at both the individual and institutional levels. Well, I'm not really sure what that's exactly supposed to mean, but this whole thing was, hey, the Muslims are using this to silence criticism. And unfortunately, the only people they talk about in these building bridges projects are individuals or groups that are ecumenical, non-gospel oriented, they do not maintain an evangelistic purpose, and this, of course, has prompted, again, believe it or not, there's stuff going through my Twitter feed right now, going back over everything about the interfaith dialogue. I mean, back to the basics that were corrected two days after it all started. There are certain people who just, it doesn't matter how many times they see the evidence, hear the video, see the video, hear the audio. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. They're absolute broken records and there's just no No dealing with them. But the groups that were specifically mentioned, nothing was mentioned here, of course, in regards to Yasir Qadhi and myself. When you look at the people that are listed, just look at these. American Baptist Church is liberal. Christian Church, Disciples of Christ. Christian Methodist Episcopalian. Episcopal Church, ELCA. PCUSA, Progressive National Baptist Convention, United Church of Christ, UCC. I mean, these are either barely marginally Christian any longer, or like UCC, gone. I mean, completely out of the fold. Mary Lynn was ordained United Church of Christ. So these are way out there ecumenical liberal organizations has absolutely positively nothing whatsoever to do with a honest, open, meaningful dialogue where both sides recognize that what we're saying is that the other side is not walking in truth. Let's try to understand what all that means. You know, everything that took place in the dialogues that we had and will again have in the future at some point in time. I've spoken with Dr. Khadi about that. He's got some moves coming up in his own experience, I think, in teaching and stuff like that. So it's. We're going to try to do something very soon, but we're going to have to put that off just a little ways, just simply so that it can be done properly and in order. But anyway, anyone who watched those, any honest people who watched those with an open mind, without a whole lot of bigotry and bias and everything else, could tell that there is a very clear recognition and understanding of the fact that both sides have very different views. and that we need to discuss those things, especially because Islam believes itself to be a continuation of truths that were delivered through Moses and through Jesus, but that have been altered and changed over time, by the Christians and the Jews. And that means that as long as you take the Koran seriously, you've got to deal with Christians and Jews in light of what the Koran says. So that's why there's always a vital and important area of discussion there. And that, to me, is the contact point and entree, if you will, into the criticism of the Quran and of the Islamic faith as a whole is to recognize that it does represent Since it comes last, chronologically, they believe beforehand, but at least on a historical, chronological level, it arises after Christianity and Judaism, then you can ask the question, if the Quran is divine, then it will accurately represent Christianity and Judaism, because God has no reason to be untruthful. and to misrepresent anything. And so if there are misrepresentations of both Christianity and Judaism in the Quran, this would indicate a human authorship of the Quran rather than a divine authorship. And yes, there are more and more... Does the term liberal Muslim really carry the the proper meaning, but there are more and more westernized Muslims who are attempting to develop some kind of view of the Quran that would be somewhat commensurate with liberal Christians. I don't think liberal Christianity works, and I can't imagine how liberal Islam would work either. Both require a fundamental redefinition of the core beliefs of both faiths. That's why I've always criticized my Muslim friends who glom onto the quotations from quote-unquote liberal Christians, whereas they would never accept that kind of thing from a quote-unquote liberal Muslim. I think there are some on the Muslim side that are starting to see that and go, man, we are getting more and more of our own sort of weird folks. Maybe we shouldn't be making fun of sort of the weird Christian folks over there either. Anyway, I realized that there are some people going that direction, but Yasir Qadhi and I did not do that. There was a very, very, you know, I thought one of the most useful parts first night was, you know, what's the main thing that you want for the other person? Anyways, that's not what this article was about, whoever wrote it. It wasn't dealing with anything along those lines. It is interesting that it tried to connect all of this to cultural Marxism and the Frankfurt School. And I can see how that would work with liberals and those denominations. Again, those nominations have abandoned the faith for a very, very, very, very long time. I mean, the Barry Lynn debate was, what, 2001, as I recall. So that's coming up on 20 years ago. You could look at the UCC and go, really? So yeah, no connection there. I don't know if any of you saw this. I'm just catching up with all the articles I've got here. If you go to dts.edu, Dallas Theological Seminary, toward a biblical theology of unity, diversity, and community, if you want to read a truly woke statement, Um, you can find it. It is filled, uh, with, uh, and it's, it's long, but it is absolutely filled with the, the new buzzwords. Uh, I've just been stunned at how quickly the social justice woke movement has made incredible inroads within what would be generally called Christian scholasticism. It's not that there are not people in many of these institutions that are trying as best they can to remain faithful and to hold on, but it just seems to me that in a large number of schools, the leadership has already been deeply compromised. And I don't know what could change this. And what that means, of course, is that the next generation of preachers coming out are going to be very deeply committed to this same kind of social justice perspective. And I I see a connection, and I think, unfortunately, the next 20 years is going to bear this out, but I will hate to sit there and say, I told you so, if the Lord gives me another 20 years. But I see a connection between this movement in its broad spectrum. and a fundamental degradation in the view of the scriptures as the unchanging, always relevant, perspicuous, authoritative revelation of God. The willingness and ability to put an absolute lens of interpretation over the scriptures based upon these social justice categories cannot help but eventuate in a fundamental degradation of the view of the authority of scripture within those particular denominations and churches. And I think that's what we're going to see, I think that's what we're seeing happening, and it's going to accelerate. And so the places we never thought it would happen, it is happening. We never expected to be living in a day where if you called Bruce Jenner, Bruce Jenner, you could lose access to talking to people publicly. That's a form of public shaming. It's a form of public shaming. And that's, but that's where we are. That's where we are. And it is an amazing thing to observe and to to recognize, but it's, wow. I don't know. I don't know. Anyway, so a tremendous amount of stuff going on in the world today that I don't want to be the sky is falling guy. The sky isn't falling. God's throne has not been overthrown. We are just being reminded, however, that we have so little knowledge of what's really going on in the world that our modern arrogance and hubris born of the false assumption that because we have access to so much information, so much technology, therefore we know, when the reality is we don't know, there's much that we do not know. And we do have to throw ourselves in childlike faith upon the promises of God. when we look at what's happening and what could happen in the future. It's that sin of worry, and it is a sin, and it's one I'm certainly guilty of. Maybe no one else in the audience is, but I can't help but think about what could happen in the future and to be concerned about this, not only for myself and my wife, my children, my grandchildren, And it's easy to understand how people can commit that sin of worry and concern because we're not casting these things upon the Lord and meditating upon His goodness, taking advantage of the means of grace as we reform folks, whether you want to call me that or not, it doesn't matter to me. We Reformed folks refer to the means of grace, the things that God has placed into our lives, if we're being obedient to him, that can be the mechanisms whereby these tendencies toward worry and distraction can be fought and battled. The regular exposure to the Word of God and the fellowship of the saints and the Lord's Supper and baptism and all of these things. need to take advantage of them and be thankful for them, and indeed to be thankful for the fact that we have the freedom to continue to worship as yet in this nation. I'm certainly looking at a lot of very young people today that I have no confidence As I listen to them speak, knowing how they have been raised and what has been taught to them in the public school system, I have no confidence that when they come into positions of public authority in 30 years from now, that they will have the slightest hesitation to do away with religious liberty and freedom, if things continue in that fashion. I don't know what the future holds. All I know is we as Christians are called to be faithful in the midst of all of these things. So as you see this stuff coming, as you, as you, and we're all the same, you fire up a program, it has updated, and there's this thing that says to continue, click this button. Who reads it? And yet, you click that button, okay, I agree not to call Bruce Jenner, Bruce Jenner. That's what you're clicking now. It's amazing. It's amazing. I'll admit, I'm still surprised that I have a Twitter account. And we're gonna have to make decisions. Is it better? to never talk about Bruce Jenner and be able to coordinate events, communicate, direct people to non-controlled websites where you can have these conversations? Or is it just stick it in their eye and get yourself completely banned instantly as a martyr? Do we seek cyber martyrdom? These are issues that our brothers and sisters in other places in the world have actually been addressing for quite some time, and we might learn from them. Though some of this stuff, as far as the global communication ability we have today, some of that is pretty new. And so we're all sort of going, how do we handle this? Well, we need wisdom. Well, here toward the end of the program, I want to address the issue floating around, unfortunately, out there in the Twitterverse and the intertubes, however we want to talk about it. up until Sunday had been a member of exactly two fellowships in my entire adult life. Depending on when you consider yourself an adult. I mean, if you want to make it, I'll push it a little bit away. It was only one. But anyway, I had been, in fact, I was ordained at the North Phoenix Baptist Church. which back in those days was the largest church in the Valley of the Sun, I believe. At one point, boasted 20,000 members, as I always say, as soon as I say that, you can never find more than about 6,700 of them at any one particular point on a given Sunday. But 20,000 members, mega church, it's where I met my wife, It's where I was married, served on staff there as a staff assistant, not as some full-fledged minister. I was young in those days. I was going to Bible College, Grand Canyon College back in those days. Now the rather well-known Grand Canyon University, which has grown. It's not even recognizable to those of us who went there. But in 1980, late 1988, I graduated from Fuller, the Phoenix Extension, in 89. I'd been introduced about two years earlier, I think it was 86. to reform theology and messed up Rich's life and a few other people's lives in the process in introducing them. I can still remember what Rich looked like the first night I started talking about this stuff. He was like, what's happened to you? What's going on here? What? Hmm? Huh? Yeah. Oh yeah. But what about, but, but what about, but, but what about? Yeah. Yeah. He still got a little bit of a crick in the neck just from all the stuff like that. Anyway, I had been introduced to Reformed Theology and I had encountered a cassette tape. Remember cassette tapes? A cassette tape display at Berean Christian Bookstore, back at the Bible desk, where you get your name imprinted thing, for Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. And it just so happened, providentially, that when I saw it, the front tape, or maybe all the tapes that were in it, I don't remember, was on election. And I'm like, ooh. And they were free. So I took one, and I had a cassette tape recorder in the car. That's how you did things back then. And I was really impressed. I was like, whoa, what is this? And so I remember going, there used to be a Christian bookstore on 7th Street and Osborne, I think, the South of Indian School. Christian, what was that? I don't remember. Anyway. I remember going in there and at that point I used them as a library because I found the Handbook of Denominations. I had never heard of a Reformed Baptist in my life. So I looked it up and I went, Oh, I didn't know about this. This is cool. And so sometime in 1989, No, late 1988. I visited for the first time. I was extremely impressed. Just the preaching and it was great. Well, to make a long story short, interestingly enough, the Lord orchestrated something that, you know, I was married at North Phoenix. I've been on staff at North Phoenix, sang in a group called Liberation at North Phoenix. A lot of really important memories. I still have a lot of dreams of North Phoenix, even to this day, because that's an important time in your life. And so something had to happen to disconnect me from that commitment to that church, and something did. And so in 1989, we started attending Phoenix Foreign Baptist Church, and it was that year that we joined. That was almost, that was 29 and a half years ago. It's a long time in one place. And it's surprising to me that there are so many people who have, in their own history, moved from one place to another, and yet when When I do that one time, the sky is falling. But the reality is that sometimes in your life you need a new start, you need a new beginning, just for your own spiritual health. And obviously, for I think almost 20 years, over 20 years, I had served as an elder at Phoenix Reform Baptist Church. You have to have, I believe, okay, I have to have, I'm not going to make this universal for everybody else, but I have to have the proper foundation to function as an elder in a body, because I believe, and this is, this actually, I mentioned this a few weeks ago, and I'm not going to go into it right now, but I think one of the key issues in the egalitarian, complementary, complementarianism stuff, you know, male-female roles and stuff like that, I think one of the key issues in all of that is that when the Word of God is preached in the Church that it is to be preached with authority as the very Word of God, therefore the commands of Scripture become commands for the people being brought by the Word of God through that presentation in the body. That's where the authority comes from. It's not just people sitting around going, well, I sort of feel like it might mean this, but you might feel it's… No, that's… That's not an authoritative proclamation. And when I travel and speak in other places, in essence, I am borrowing the authority of the elders of that place. They're the ones that have invited me. They're the ones that have put me in that position. But when you're in your own church, you have to have that foundation. upon which to minister the word of God and then deal with all the things you deal with in churches. They may be the fellowship of the saints, but we are still living, we are still pilgrims in this world and there is sin and everything else that takes place. And so, when the time comes when you feel like you are no longer in the proper position to be able to do that rightly, then you need to, for the sake of yourself and the others, to have the ability to follow the Lord's leading elsewhere. And that took place over the past number of weeks, and so it was announced on Sunday evening, basically right after I finished preaching, that my wife and I have joined Apologia Church in Tempe with Brother Jeff Durbin, Brother Luke, Brother Zach. There are three elders, Jeff, Luke, and Zach. I am not an elder in that congregation. And when I had spoken with them about that, they have been very open over the years. Jeff had only a few weeks ago, long before I had contacted him about any of this, had mentioned on Facebook how I have been a primary source and part of his own theological formation. I'm 15 years older than he is. And so, because of that, there is a recognition that I don't exactly do well slipping in the back door and sitting in the back row. Not only does a coogee make that hard, but how many times have I preached an apology over the years? Many, many times. Jeff has sat in this seat. He sat in that seat wearing a coogee I gave him once. There's pictures of that. He's filled in for me. I've filled in for him. I've preached at his church. I can't hide there. Everybody knows who I am and what I do. And so we sort of said, well, you know, we want you to have time to get to know folks and to become comfortable. And I told him my travel schedule is going to be really insane. That means I'm going to be gone a lot and all this type of stuff. So he said, well, We need to recognize that you are who you are and you've already done what you've done here. So we'll sort of use the language of a scholar in residence. When you're here, we'll do special studies. I just did an Apology Radio day for yesterday with Joy, my daughter Summer's partner in the Sheologians crew. And I mentioned, for example, the study of Munster and what happened at Munster. And she's like, you know, we have a special thing on Sheologians where we tell stories. You gotta come on and tell the Munster story on Sheologians. Okay, we'll do that. Do that kind of special thing, but not be one of the regular elders in the sense that You sort of want the elders to show up once in a while. And I'm not going to be doing that for a while. But I preached there Sunday evening and I linked to the sermon. Let me just describe what that was like. The reason that I spoke, most of you know that a week ago yesterday, I had just had lunch with Jeff and Luke and Zach that day, and that evening Jeff had that seizure, and they're still not sure why. The Coogee sweater I was wearing for lunch was not nearly bright enough, I think, to be blamed for that particular incident, but you never know. And so I had rushed down to the hospital when I was informed about this, and in speaking with Luke and Zach, I had said, well, look, let me do one thing, and that is take any pressure off regarding Sunday. I will be here, planned to be there, so let me preach. and they were very happy to allow me to do so, and so that's why I was preaching. I hadn't been scheduled to for a long period of time, but that's why we did. So to add last three Sundays, I've preached at Apologia. And so I gave one of my favorite studies, one that most of you have probably heard at some point or another, the messianic prophecies, the sort of how to figure out what was being discussed in the Road to Emmaus study that I do out of Isaiah 6 through 11. And so, the service begins, it's a family integrated church, so there's no nursery. And so, there are And there are lots of children, and that's how they do things. I've always known that. And so, you start off with some music, and then there's a catechism portion, where we're working through the catechism and scripture memory verse. Right now, it's the Golden Chain. Romans chapter 8 is relevant to that particular catechism question. There were announcements, and in this particular instance, Brother Luke, Jeff had mentioned there was going to be a big announcement, i.e. my joining Apologia. And so that announcement was given, and then I spoke for a little over an hour. on that particular subject, as I said, linked to the sermon. You can listen for yourself and determine for yourself whether it's a fluffy type thing or whether it is a solid exegetical study. And then what you don't see is I transitioned directly from that sermon into the Lord's Supper. And having been there the week before and listening to Jeff do that, I had done it before, but I'll admit it was easier to do having been there the week before to make sure there's some consistency in how it was handled. And so I did the instructions and so on and so forth. One of the things that's different at Apologia, which I like, have always liked, is that instead of what we might call passive distribution of the elements, there is an active reception of the elements. In other words, instead of just sitting there and having the elements distributed, you go forward and receive the bread and the wine after a period of prayer. So, you can take time to prepare yourself. I like that because of the fact that in 1 Corinthians, when it says, when you partake, you are proclaiming the Lord's—you're doing something actively. And so when you stand up in front of the people and you're going down there, I see a consistency there. Obviously that's not how we'd ever done it in any other church I was at, so obviously I'm not saying there's something wrong with one or the other, it's just I like it. It's a very... special time that was followed again by some more music and then a I guess you would call it sort of the Aaronic benediction I don't remember whether it was the Aaronic benediction or whether it was the one out of Jude or just one of the benedictory things and and that was the service and I think it is a God-honoring way of doing things you have a group of people and focused upon the Word of God, people focused upon, you know, the Church has baptism, Lord's Supper, Church discipline, proclamation of the Word of God, absolute belief in its consistency, inerrancy, inspiration, authority, That's what you want and that's what you need. And so I'm not going to be there the next two weeks because I'm going to be doing similar things elsewhere. But it's sad for me that there are people who want to try to Utilize something like this as some means of making points or causing division or doing whatever. It's sad that anyone would even think of it along those lines. There have obviously been lots of folks that have, I think, answered appropriately and saying, well, we'll pray for both PRBC, as I certainly do, as well as Apologia, but both need to be prayed for if they have anything to do with me. Apologia is not a perfect fellowship, and if it was, I just ruined it by joining it. And so I'm well aware of that. I just want to invest what I can, what knowledge I have, what experience I have. That's why I met with the elders first and said, hey, I want to, there's lots of stuff to talk about. There's going to need to be real openness amongst us in talking about things. People are going to come to me and ask questions. You know, we were, we were upfront about all of that. And so that's what has happened there. I have a lot of people asking questions like, so are you still a member of Phoenix Reform? No. I have never heard of dual membership before. Well, I'll take that back. I suppose I have. But it's been like college students who would be members of one church during a semester and then they go back to their home church type situations. That's not what we're talking about here. I am no longer a member of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. I am not an elder of that congregation. I stepped down about a month ago. People say, well, that means you're not an elder anymore. Well, I'm not functioning as an elder right now. I'm an ordained minister. There are people who take sabbaticals, take time off, whatever else it might be. I don't know what the future's gonna hold, but none of that has changed. And obviously, the people at Apologia have been extremely warm and welcoming, because we already knew each other. I mean, it's not like I'm going to some place that I've not known. The fit is perfect because of the fact that I've had so much input in forming the overall perspective. That doesn't mean that we agree lockstep on everything, and I feel sorry for people who think that you have to. I really, really do. I mean, I've seen people, well, how can you go there? He's an amillennialist, and they're postmillennialists, and there are amillennialists in the congregation. We don't shoot each other over that. Hello. I guess there might be some people that demand that kind of absolute... Well, yeah, all those folks with the... That's one of the things I forgot to get to today. I was gonna play clips from the... Oh, you haven't seen it yet, have you? Have you seen the trailer to the new Calvinism Doctor of Demons thing that Steven Anderson and all the independent KJVO fundamentalist wacko guys have put out? Well, I know that, yeah. Not everybody at PRVC agreed about everything either. But anyway, let me just be straightforward. I need to be in a fellowship where I have full openness with the rest of the leadership because of who I am and what I do. Jeff and I have that kind of relationship, and that's a wonderful thing, and I'm sad for people who can't see that or could dare to complain that the Lord would work something out to where I could be in a place where I feel that I can flourish and get a fresh start and do the things I've been called to do And why does anybody think that means you have... I guess this is because everybody else is... this is a common thing. I guess because most other people have the experience that when you leave a place, you have to hate the place. Yeah, I have said to many people, we've seen this, we saw this at Phoenix Reformed, we'd have people come into the fellowship, And if you come into a fellowship and all you can do is bad-mouth where you were before, I'm not sure I want you here. I'm not sure I want you here. That probably means you left for all the wrong reasons. You're not going to hear me say a single negative thing about PRBC because I don't have anything negative to say. That's not why I needed to make this change. And so, I feel for you. I really do. If you think that this is in any way, shape or form a repudiation of, rejection of the staff or members of PRVC, it has nothing to do with that at all. They are wonderful people. I love them. I would love to have the opportunity if there was a need to fill in, to have the ability to fill in in the future. There's nothing hindering that from my perspective. And so maybe it's just people normally have those negative church-leaving experiences that they just project that on everybody else. But don't do that. It'll only make you and every church you join miserable in the process. Oh, by the way, I don't know why other people can't find it, but if you do enough looking around at the Apologia Church website, you will discover that the church discusses, will you be teaching Sunday school at Apologia? They don't have Sunday school, so the answer is no. If you look around enough, you will discover that the church utilizes the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith as a confessional document, plus certain distinctives in light of especially the fact that they are not only a church planting ministry, they have planted a church in Kauai, got to find some way of getting out there to sow into that church as well. But they're well-known, literally around the world, for their anti-abortion work. And so there's material in regards to, you know, especially application to issues along those lines on the website as well. And so you do not have to engage in senseless speculation. My hope is that Mature believers, anyways, will simply pray that the Lord would bless PRBC, bless Apologia, would make the transition one that is a blessing to everybody. We have far more important things we worry about than one aging fellow of Scottish ancestry and questionable sweater tastes going from one fellowship to another. And it's sad when people, I think, waste their time with that kind of thing. Now there are people, obviously, who simply detest both me and Jeff Durbin and Apologia that none of this is going to be relevant. I get that. Nothing you can do about that. You at least leave that to the Lord. and move forward from there. But for those who have questions, hopefully those questions, the relevant questions, to be honest with you, there are certain things that just simply hurt anybody else's business. But the relevant questions that would be relevant. Yes, were you waving at me? Oh. Oh, oh, okay. Well, it's out of the corner of my eye, so I can't tell. We're gonna have to put lights, you know, when you make the changes you're talking about doing. I'm being told I don't know when it's gonna happen. You know, like I said, I was at a church 29 and a half years, and in all that time, in 29 and a half years at PRBC, a overhead projector from the early 1960s sat in the corner of the Bible study room covered with a gray plastic cover for 29 and a half years. It was never used, but it never moved either. And so some of us don't mind not having much in the way of change. You might call us fossilized in some fashions, but then there are other people that like to change stuff up once in a while. And so you might see some changes coming to the studio in the not too distant future. I don't know exactly what that's going to mean. I am I am concerned about my books and my Star Trek memorabilia and things like that. I don't want anything, you know, damaged. But something tells me that they're going to be in different locations. We need to keep the lava lamp around. I think that's just sort of a necessary aspect, but who knows what's going to end up happening. So we'll find out. But if things change, then we're going to need to... I think we could probably get a groundswell of demand for a rich cam. We had one briefly. But I think there'd be a groundswell of support out there for a RichCam. And I think the RichCam should be something that I control, so I can reach over and hit it and catch you in the way that you currently catch me. I think that would be... Yeah, see? I think that'd be a really good idea, that I'd be able to do that. Yeah, and I'm sure that the technology exists to be able to. You think you control the horizontal and the vertical until, until the, yeah, see in channel, we want a RichCam, we want a RichCam. Uh-oh, something's about, yeah, there's another, yes, RichCam, see? See what's going on here? We've got, we have a ground swell of support for the RichCam in the channel, even as I speak. So, there you go. It's done. The people have spoken. And just as I predicted, it would take place, so. Anyhow, so as I said, I'm going to be gone. Gave you the schedule at the beginning of the program. Might have some time next week to try to maybe do something. I don't know. It rarely works overly well from hotel Wi-Fi. But I did, and I forgot. I even saved. I just forgot to queue it up. That's why I even saved the file. I thought about looking at the trailer for that video because it's just what let me just second let me at least give you the name so you can look it up. Calvinism documentary teaser and let me see here. Faith Baptist Church presents Calvinism, A Doctrine of Devils. There it is. Calvinism, A Doctrine of Devils. So, you can look that up, and I'm in this, and I mean, it's so childish. It's so... uh... seventh grade level and a sixth grade low uh... that day they have a clip of uh... macarthur on the blood issue again and we're talking we're going back a quarter century on this uh... and they even do the slowdown thing you know when they were It is so bad. You can just tell what's coming. Yeah, wow. Yeah, we'll take a look at it. It's only two and a half minutes long, so it wouldn't have been difficult to actually have gone through it. But what are you looking at? You're not plugged in. Were you looking for the video? It's probably not going to come out for a while, so there will probably be plenty of time to go over it when we don't have more important things to do. Believe me, this is the lowest level of Radio Free Geneva you could ever do. I mean, we've done some bad anti-Calvinism stuff in Radio Free Geneva, but this would be stretching it just a little bit. But this kind of stuff's out there. It's out there. So, got to deal with it when you got to deal with it. But we'll get to it. I was going to do that today and I forgot and I apologize. So, once again, real quickly, St. Charles this weekend, prior to the weekend after that, coming back to Theological Seminary, New Testament reliability, textual criticism, Owensboro, 3rd through the 5th of January. and all that is at aomin.org. We actually, shockingly, have the calendar and the graphics of upcoming stuff fairly accurate, except we didn't include the stuff from G3, I don't think, at the moment. But the G3 pre-conference on social justice, I'll be speaking at that. And then part of the panel, because Voti and Josh and myself and Tom Askel, that whole group, Phil Johnson, we're all going to be doing a panel at the end of the evening. So that's another reason, I think, that would be worth coming. And it is interesting that one of the criticisms we're getting is, well, why don't you have the other side? And it's like, excuse me, have you noticed that every weekend, all over the place now, people are presenting this kind of stuff in churches and the other side is never represented? So, you can do 50 conferences, we do one, and you want to be involved with it. But you won't give us a voice in any other. Yeah, that makes sense. And by the way, that was the other thing, and now I realize why... Well, I don't know about that. Um... I don't know where it went. That's why I didn't cover it. Um... Oh, that's why. Didn't scroll far enough. Sorry. And next time we will address, because I've mentioned this, so I'm just putting this out there. Next time I also want to address an article written by Ed Shaw at livingout.org called, What's Wrong with a Permanent, Faithful, Stable, Same-Sex Sexual Relationship. uh... living out is doing uh... presentations uh... especially southern baptist churches all over the place and there are serious fundamental foundational problems with what is being presented and there are big names big names that are promoting living out and they're not only doing it publicly but they're also doing it behind the scenes uh... getting them into these churches and it is It's bad. So we'll be looking at that. And I wanted to look at another article that I was going to get to. I wouldn't have gotten that much of this today. I would have had to talk a lot faster. The lawsuit that ADF is involved with regarding a Professor Merriweather and his being forced to utilize to not misgender, not just on Twitter. You know, it's one thing to say, hey, Twitter owns the, you know, you're using Twitter services. So Twitter gets to tell you what you can and cannot do on their services. How about in the classroom? How about in the classroom when you're a professor? And someone demands, this is what happened with Peterson, demands that you use pronouns that are disconnected from reality. What do you do then? All of this, folks, is to make sure that Christians are totally marginalized from the public sphere. That's what is going on. That's what's happening. So, if we get a chance to do something while I'm traveling, we'll look at those. If not, when we get back immediately, I'm sure there'll be about four dozen other things that have been added since that particular point in time. But we will get to them at that point in time. So, thanks for watching the program today. Lord willing, we'll see you in about 12 days or so. God bless.