Well, greetings and welcome to the dividing line. I'll turn the monitor back on in here. I had that monitor on. I know I had that monitor on. That monitor was on when I came in here, and now it won't turn on. So... And you walked in here since I was here live. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you did. And notice it won't turn on now. So it's all your fault. Okay, there you go. Well, it came up. Now it wants terms and conditions. You know, I'm old enough to remember, you know, okay, I actually have something now. You can't get through the gate. You can't operate the TV. That gate is a mess. Uh, it, it truly, truly is. But I remember, I remember TVs that, you know, you just walked up to it and you, uh, click and it, and it came on and it, it didn't ask you for things. You didn't have to do setups. It just, it just came on and showed you Gilligan's Island and other stuff in black and white. Um, and, uh, that was, that was fun. That was how, that was how it worked anyway. All right, welcome to the program today. We're going to do a little, um, got some history to get to, uh, eventually here. Um, I did, I don't know how much time to spend on this because I wrote something, I don't know, four or five days ago about the Andrew Tate stuff and I posted it. And it actually got a fair amount of traction. I think I even posted it on the Theology Matters blog, if I recall correctly. And interestingly enough, Andrew Tate saw it. And despite everything that it said, and the fact that it included pretty straightforward discussion of the judgment of God and the fact that living the kind of life he's living will lead to fundamental disappointment, emptiness at the end of his life, loneliness. Because these relationships, whatever relationships he has with thousands of different women and children by all sorts of different women and things like that, doesn't produce family. produces a lot of legal headaches, but doesn't produce family. And they're empty relationships. They're relationships that, well, God didn't design us to live that way. And so they bring heartache and things like that. His response was, so I guess I win. You know, it's just his attitude. He doesn't take anything overly seriously other than himself. And of course, I responded to that too. And I'm like, hey, here's a neat opportunity. Because I got up one morning and I start seeing these responses and they're clearly not from Christians. So how did they see them? Well, because he had responded to me. And so that means there are non-Christians reading this. Well, great. Man, if the Lord would use that just to bring one of his people to himself, it'd be worth all the nastiness that comes along with it. So, I've tried to think back to, you know, the years when Alpha and Omega started back in the 80s, and if there had been anyone like him. We had people similar. And when you think of Magic Johnson and what came out later, when he was playing, they may have talked about this quietly, that he was having relations with anything that moved. But he wasn't talking about that. He wasn't making that a part of his persona. So we know that men have acted like this for a long time. You may be aware of the fact that genetically a large portion of Eastern Europe has one man genetically in their background as Genghis Khan. And that evidently, after a day of war and pillaging, he spent the whole night with captured women. And from a Darwinian perspective, he's the biggest winner of them all. Because from a Darwinian perspective, you win by getting as much of your genotype into the next generation as possible. That's the only concept of victory in a Neo-Darwinian perspective. And so, wow, he won because he has multiplied hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people carrying at least a part of his genetic code. because of what he did. Now, he's also abiding under the wrath of God and will for eternity, so there's that. That's not really winning, but from a Neo-Darwinian perspective, you can't beat that. There have been lots of people in the past. Julius Caesar, and you think of Alexander the Great, and yet you read up on them and a million people dead, a million people enslaved. I'm not sure that's how that makes you great. It's just so obvious that, especially today, people do not have the perspective to identify greatness from God's perspective, from God's view. And what that tells you, especially in our modern day, is that we tend to look at, well, we've talked about this before. Remember, it's about 10 years ago or so, some books came out, there were some fairly well-known theologian, apologetic type people, and they were addressing the problem of the Old Testament. And specifically, the problem of genocide, the problem of the judgment of God coming upon the nations. Remember in Genesis 15, I think it is. No, or is it Exodus? It's one of the early books of the Bible. Genesis. This sort of cryptic little comment is made. about the children of Israel being in Egypt for so long because the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full. Okay, now obviously this is a comment that's made later on once you have an idea of who the Amorites were and what was going to happen to them and they're going to be wiped out and stuff like that. But the whole idea was that the judgment that was going to come upon them was a just judgment. And it was an appropriate judgment. And of course, the Bible does tell us a lot about what their idolatrous worship was, but archaeology has filled in a lot of the blanks. And it was bad, man. I mean, it was what had caused the flood in the first place. It's amazing how fast mankind can descend into the abyss of Horrific, nasty behavior. And so people are really uncomfortable. And especially today, now that we live in a very secularized world. The idea of God's wrath being expressed, judgment taking place, submission to God's wrath. I mean, this is where we have a disconnect when we read history because we look back at what Christians used to say and how they used to interact with, say, natural disasters. And the first reaction, and this wasn't all that long ago, first reaction was, what have we been doing that's brought God's wrath? You know, you can't even say that now. You can't even think about it, let alone say it out loud. And you can't even say it out loud in the church. That's where everything has changed so much. And so, you know, like I said, there was this period of time where everybody's coming up with ways of trying to explain the commands of scripture for the Israelites to wipe out a particular people, man, woman, and child. And the general way was to just deny that it ever happened, this isn't really scripture, this is just men writing what they think God wanted them to do. It all ends up with a view of the Old Testament that Jesus didn't hold, the apostles didn't hold, and therefore we shouldn't hold. But, and I've warned you before, you go to almost any Seminary or Bible college in the land anymore. And that's the perspective they're going to be holding anyway. I mean, the number of schools today that you could go to where you would get a believing education when it comes to the Old Testament, very small, very small. So you need to realize When you look at churches, it's one thing to see the rainbow stolled priestesses in the United Methodist Church, or in the PCUSA, or in the liberal Lutherans, or United Church of Christ, for crying out loud. Talk about the walking zombie church. It's one thing to see that, but when you look at what were once anyways supposed to be conservative denominations and you still see this real discomfort, it's primarily because the idea that we should have the same view of the Old Testament that Jesus did has been abandoned. Don't ask me how they explain that. I mean, it seems so obvious. You know, we're Christians here. But Jesus's view of the Old Testament was foolish. I don't know. I don't pretend to understand how that works, because it clearly doesn't, but that's what's out there. Anyway, back to what we've got here. People looking at Andrew Tate are looking at him in a way that only 40, 50 years ago, would have been completely impossible, even in broader society. I mean, there were lots of whispers about John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe and stuff like that, but they were meant to be whispers. It wasn't that he's coming out and saying, I'm having a grand old time here as President of the United States. I'm sleeping with everything it moves. That wasn't considered manly. That was considered to be like the junkyard dog. That's like the alley cat. No morals, not really human, not controlled, not disciplined. And it didn't matter how big your muscles were or anything else. So, things have changed radically and they have changed within the church. And so when some old boomer like me comes along and, you know, I just open up my Bible and I quote scripture, it's sort of like, who do you think you are? And do you really, do you really, I got a lot of comments like this when I posted that stuff about Andrew Tate, and I quoted scripture. I quoted Acts chapter 17. about the coming judgment. Or I said to individuals, you know, I pointed them to passages, you know, Titus chapter 2, for example. Yes, I know there is no Titus 2. Thank you very much. There's supposed to be space there. Paul says to Titus, but as for you, speak the things which are proper for sound doctrine. Older men are to be temperate, dignified, sensible, Sound and faith in love and perseverance. So I say to my fellow old men, temperate, dignified, sensible, sound and faith in love and perseverance. When it uses the term sensible, that's one of my favorite terms. Sophronos. Sophronosmos. Discipline. Self-control. Being sensible. The stuff that the society doesn't care anything about anymore. There to be dignified. Sound in the faith. Where do these things rate in our thinking? When you get up in the morning, And once you get past all the stiffness, and the aches and the pains, and you make all those noises as you're getting out of bed, where does this come in our thinking? Sound and faith, sound and love, sound and perseverance. Wow, there's where we get finishing well. Finishing well. And I don't want to be, I do not want to be the next example of someone who didn't finish well. We're all thinking about the same guy right now. And one of the main reasons we're still thinking about him is because we don't have any closure. We don't have any conclusion. We are left with multiple theories and multiple stories and the truth hasn't been put out there quite yet. And it's like, hey, it's one thing if this guy owned a grocery store chain and went to a particular church in a single state. Okay, that's for that church to deal with. Okay, I get it. But when you're traveling all over the place and you're speaking at everything, I mean, I can't think of a major conference he didn't speak at. I really can't. And he was tied in with big, big, big names, you know, and made big, big, big money doing the things that he did. Yeah, there's got to be accountability and closure so that other people can be warned. That's what perseverance is. So that's what older men are to be shooting for. That's given to us by scripture. This shows it. This is for Christians. I get that. This is for Christians. But that would also seem to indicate that for a non-Christian, these would at least be things that would help them with whatever amount of life they have left, right? Older women, likewise, are to be reverent in their behavior. Not malicious gossips. Paul. Telling that to Titus too. I can just see Titus seeing that going, I'm going to have to actually talk about this. I'm going to have to preach about this. Except by now he already would have known how malicious gossip can tear a church apart. Nor enslaved to much wine. Teaching, what is good? Well, who are they supposed to be teaching? Well, young women. So that they may instruct the young women in sensibility. To love, and what are the young women to be taught? To love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, same term as up above, disciplined, self-controlled. This is, if this is God's word, then he doesn't want us acting like animals. Okay? Pure, that's holy, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be slandered. Oh, you mean there's something more important than just our personal happiness? More important than our 401k? It's so that the word of God will not be slandered. Yeah, if we don't have these behavioral goals, and this isn't the only place in scripture where this is said. It's common, not only throughout the New Testament. I mean, you find this in Timothy and Titus and Ephesians and Colossians and Hebrews. Whenever you're addressing the church, there is exhortation as to how we are to live. It's not left up to us. But how many of these are quoting to us from the Psalms, giving us the same principles we see in Proverbs? Foundational concepts found the prophets. It's consistent all the way through. So, the word of God will not be slandered when the people of God do not listen to the exhortations of God. and do not live in that way. The Word of God will be slandered, and oh, have we not seen that take place over and over and over again? That's not fair. We're held to a different standard. Uh-huh. Yep, we are, as we should be. Likewise, urge the younger men to be Same term. It's used so far three different times in this text. Self-discipline. Sophronismos. Self-discipline. To be in the right mind. It is controlling the way you think. It's a worldview thing. It's a way of thinking that I'm going to put all of my life under the Lordship of Christ. Younger men are to be disciplined in how they act, how they speak, how they think. In all things, show yourself to be a model of good works with purity and doctrine, dignified, sound in word, which is irreproachable. You mean how we speak. That would include what we type, who we follow on social media, the movies that we watch, The world sees us doing these things. We are to be a model of good works with purity and doctrine. That doesn't mean spending your entire day arguing on Facebook or Twitter. But it does mean that you want to be sound and disciplined in what you believe because it honors God. Purity and doctrine, dignified, again, same thing that is said to the older men is said to the younger men. That means the way you behave, the way you dress is to be dignified. Just because the world doesn't care about stuff like that doesn't mean that we don't. And then sound in word, which is irreproachable. We all know the day of judgment is going to come and every spoken word is going to be judged. And that's a frightening thing, especially to those of us who've, I mean, how many tens of thousands of hours of me speaking are there? Sound in word, which is irreproachable. so that the opponent would put to shame having nothing bad to say about us." Well, look, don't start arguing with Paul, because I know what people will say. Oh, but look at how often we're lied about, even as it is. People slander us. Okay, that's true. Leave that to God. Paul's point is you don't give them basis for saying bad things about us that actually has a basis in truth in how you yourself have been speaking. So I realize it's like, yeah, but this is all about Christians. And the Tate brothers are not Christians. In fact, Andrew Tate became a Muslim about what, about two years ago or so. I remember when I first saw that, I was just like, really? I know far more about Islam than Andrew Tate will ever know about Islam. And I know that the things he says, I saw stuff that he said, I think it was right at the end of December, I saw a quotation from some of the stuff that he had written. So only a matter of weeks ago. The terms vile, you know, if you want to see misogynist fulfilled, true hatred of women, true denigration of women, the reduction of women to nothing but a sexual object, that's what the man's all about. Always has been, still is. Yeah, but he's a four-time world champion kickboxer. Okay, uh, put that on your resume before the judgment seat of God. See how far that gets you. It's astonishing to me how many Christians are like, yeah, but wow, he's just done so much stuff, man. And you know, you know, it's just, you know, he had to be disciplined to be able to, you know, be a kickboxer. Okay. There are people. who are more than willing to discipline their bodies for what end? To what end? Pride, arrogance, the man's most narcissistic person I think I've ever seen, and he celebrates it. So, I guess yesterday, I saw some of it live, I guess yesterday there was a, live webcast on Twitter from some folks who are East. And one of the things that was said, you know, oh yes, he does lots of vile things and he promotes vile stuff. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, all that stuff. Yeah, sure, sure. But at least when Andrew Tate is sinning, he's sinning in the right direction. sinning in the right direction. And the idea was, and look, I've seen the picture. I probably could have asked Grok to pull it up or something like that. I like Grok. Grok is, I've gotten used to, you got to check stuff out. But in almost every technical conversation I've had with Grok, we were talking about something I know about. It's been spot on. It's been very, very interesting. Especially in textual critical stuff, church history stuff, things like that. Not so much theology, but when it's historical stuff. I guess I could have asked Grock to pull it up. There's a picture I saw just recently, somebody had posted it, and the whole idea is to The guys that are really pushing all the masculinity stuff and the big beards and crusaders and all that stuff that they're trying to make a niche for themselves and carve out an audience and get followers and things like that. The thing they like to put out there is that we're the ones standing against this. And then they have this picture of Matt Chandler and these three women. And look, there's I don't remember now. I think she's been doing this for 10 years now. Yeah, I think it's been about 10 years. But my daughter, Summer, has a webcast called Sheologians. It's part of the Apologia family of webcasts. And she and her partner have been going after feminism from the very start. That's basically why they started, was to be responding to feminism within evangelicalism. So they know all about first wave, second wave, third wave, know much more about than I even ever want to know. So I'm not going to be studying any of that. But anyway, they've been going at this stuff for a long, long, long, long time. And you better believe that feminism is battery acid to biblical Christianity. It is battery acid to biblical ecclesiology. It has gotten people into so much trouble. I remember, I was thinking recently, back in January of 2019. So it was, wow, that was six years ago? Wow. Six years ago, right now, basically, I was in Munster, Germany, meeting with some folks there at the Institute for New Testament Studies. That's when I got those great pictures of the cages up on the Munster Cathedral. I remember going running, and it was snowing. Which, for Phoenicians, Price wasn't all that wise. I knew it was dangerous. I could fall and break something. I'm overseas. That was stupid. But I went running anyways. I didn't fall, thankfully. And what I was listening to was J.D. Greer. And it was when he, remember when I did some programs and I came back, especially, he was talking about how he had quoted, was it Jen Wilkin, I think is what it was. what I think's in his church about how God whispers about sexual sin. And that's when I came back and I did a whole series on Romans 1 and how it actually functions in Romans 1 and God isn't whispering about anything here and all the rest of that stuff. But those are the type of people. So there's this picture of uh matt chandler and these three women and they're all wearing matching pink fluffy sweater shirts type things and they're matching and it's just it it is about the least masculine looking picture you can possibly ever come up with oh yeah yeah they're matching Yeah, and I saw someone post it recently. Maybe somebody will pop it into your little channel thingy, Bobbery Whopper thingy that you all have that I never see and have no idea what goes on there. But anyway, that's what they try to throw out there. And what they ignore, and this is what I had said recently, is I'm so sick and tired of all these people that are just, they just whitewash all of. Yes. Oh, my, my watch tells me that Chris just said something in our, in our element channel. So maybe you'll have to look and see if maybe he's provided it. I don't know. Um, but did he as Chandler's family? All Maxine did. Okay. All right. That's what they threw up there. And so they're just whitewashing. Everybody's like this. All pastors are like this. Unless you're in our cigar smoking, whiskey drinking, um, gun shooting, beard growing, weightlifting, um, um, cadre, then this is what you are. And they're ignoring all of the faithful pastors who labor in quietude and in small towns and over the decades who just want to finish well and do well for the kingdom. And it bugs me to no end that this is the kind of thing that's going on. Now it's It can't last forever. We may have to go through it. They're going to turn on each other eventually. And since it's so imbalanced, but I'm just sitting there thinking about sinning in the right direction. Okay, so you've got a guy. who would never be caught dead in a matching pink thingy with the ladies, because he's a four-time world champion kickboxer, who it's well known has raped endless numbers of women, degraded them. And that's sinning in the right direction? How does that sin in the right direction? I don't get it. I don't understand it. I'll never understand it. I'll never understand it. There was a... Only five years ago, everybody that called themselves biblically conservative and reformed would have said the same things about Andrew Tate, and that's not the case anymore. What does that tell you? Anyway, I wasn't gonna go into all that. Turn the big boat around here. I was in Albuquerque. Yeah, I was in Albuquerque. I was trying to get to a specific gas station in Albuquerque. We had this fleet cart so that I can get diesel and DEF back with the big trucks because I'm a big truck when I'm on the road. I think 57, 58 feet long and 13 and a half feet tall and 23,000 pounds qualifies as a big truck. I had gotten blocked into my lane to where I had to go right instead of left. And so I had to get turned around. And do you know what it's like to try to bang a UE when you're that long? I mean, I'm astonished that I found a road wide enough and the traffic wasn't coming. I made it, but it was... By the way, you still need to repair the CB antenna. Rich was telling me, you got to turn it harder. You got to turn it harder. We were trying to park the thing at the RV park. You got to turn it harder. And I'm like, no, we're already farther than I want to go. I'm going to destroy the CB. Well, we did. And so Rich says, I can fix it. And I'm like, OK, we'll see. We'll say, let it be said, let it be done, as someone used to say. And he's not with us anymore, and we sort of discovered that that's not really a wise saying anyways. But anyhow, banging the Yui here on the topic of the program. You know, I've heard so many people, and this is a huge topic shift, sorry. I've heard so many people say over the years, well you know, in our church or in our denomination, we hold the first seven ecumenical councils. I've heard Protestants say this. And I've always gone, no you don't. Ever heard anybody say that? They're trying to sound sort of Catholic with a small c. And they're trying to go, well, you know, uh, yeah, we're, we're connected with church history. And, and so we, we, we like the undivided church and the seven, first seven ecumenical councils, last, last ecumenical, the seventh ecumenical council, at least as it's counted today, um, was in 787. So, hey, 800 years after Christ sounds like a long time ago. So we'll go with that. And I hear people saying this. I can't prove this, but man, I have a strong recollection of Norm Geisler saying that, which would surprise me. He should know better. But I do have a memory of that at some conference we were at. But anyway, it's a common enough statement. And yet the vast majority of all Christians All Christians have never read almost any first-hand material from any of the councils. Obviously the earliest, Nicaea, since it was so unique, it was right after a period of persecution, we don't have a lot of first-hand stuff. As you get farther down history, record keeping improved, shall we say, and we've got a whole lot more. So, for example, sitting over here, I have the standard work on the Seventh Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, 787 by Richard Price. This is sort of considered the go-to resource for all of that stuff. And there are other books here like Leo Donald Davis, the first seven ecumenical councils, obviously significantly. I mean, if you're covering seven councils and this is one, you can sort of tell the difference between the depth into which these go. But still, there's not... Most people have very little idea. I mean, I would think, especially people who listen to this program, you know what the first Council of Nicaea was about. You know it was in 325. Everyone who has ever... Why are you looking at me like that? I didn't... Oh, I think Nicaea and S-I-R-I sound similar to certain nosy, well, a couple of nosy things here. It's ubiquitous. Oh, call it what it is. It's a spy. It's a digital spy. It's a digital spy. There's no two ways about it. I can just take this thing and stick it up to my mouth. I don't even have to say S-I-R-I. It knows by the wrist turning that it's up at my mouth. And so anything I tell it to do, it will then do automatically. So, hey. You're thinking about a smart alec comment and you're not going to interrupt the continuing discussion. Okay now you are. No i'm just thinking about a particular movie called terminator and yeah. Nice i wouldn't be thinking of terminator i'd be thinking of. Oh, something like Minority Report or something like that. That's even scarier. Or iRobot, you know. Yeah, iRobot. Those are all... You just keep on going there. Yeah. Hey, look, when they insert this into you, that's when it becomes a problem. when it when it's connected to your body to where it's you know it's in your brain or something that's when it becomes yeah so you've had that moment where you're looking on social media and the thing you just thought of didn't say out loud pops up yeah okay yep yep yep that's when it gets a little scary no two ways about it all right well thank you that's it for the dividing line today uh no Back to anybody who's taken my church history class, you know that I tell everybody, you need to know that the Council of Nicaea took place in 325. It will be on the final examination, free points for you if you can remember to do that. But we have lamented many times over the years. The Council of Nicaea, the first Council of Nicaea, 325. Most people don't even know there was a second Council of Nicaea. They don't even know that 462 years later, that's a long time. That's almost half a millennium. See, we squish stuff together when we think about time in history. So we think of, we hear of 787, we think of 325. It's just a few numbers off. But no, that's almost a half millennium between those two councils. And I cannot think of a wider chasm as to the quality of the decisions, argumentation, than you have between Nicaea I and Nicaea II. There are no Athanasiuses at the Second Nicene Council at all. And the biblical argumentation is laughable. The historical citations are laughable. The things that are cited are just, so many of them are fraudulent. They're forgeries. People just didn't have the capacity at that point in time. It's not because they were dumber than us. It's that anachronism was already starting to develop, and tradition gets in the way, and it was all political. I mean, Nicaea started the influence of politics with Constantine. But by the time you get to Nicaea II, it's all politics. And it's not just, quote-unquote, secular politics. Sacralism is developing at this time. The church-state relationship has become completely entangled. At least Nicaea, yeah, Constantine's there, but he's not telling everybody what to do. That changes over time, over the course of the councils. So you can see a degradation. as the politics become more and more central as you go from Nicaea to Constantinople and then Ephesus and Chalcedon and going hundreds of years down the road. So, all of that to say, the vast majority of Christians, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestants have never read anything like what you would have in a book like this. Because, I mean, how long is this baby? About 750 pages. Okay and you know I've got a bunch of stuff marked here and I'm gonna be marking a whole bunch more stuff here but you know here the seventh session with all the anathemas and I think I've read through the anathemas at some point in the past we may have to do that again because that's why this is that's why this is important is that this second Council of Nicaea as the first is as well is considered an ecumenical worldwide representation of the entire church in all the world council and therefore it has infallible authority in roman catholicism and eastern orthodoxy this is before 1054 this is before the split if you ask rome today well okay if you asked rome 10 years ago 15 years ago, you might get a different answer than you get out of Francis today. Who knows where Rome's coming from now? But if you ask Roman Catholics to enumerate the ecumenical councils and you ask Eastern Orthodox, they will give you different lists. And you might even get differences depending on who you're talking to in each group. as to what an ecumenical council is. But Second Nicaea, 787, is agreed on by both. That means they're bound to what those documents say. Now, we live in a day of postmodernism, and so one of the arguments that we must have, is how do you know what they said? Remember, I, back during John Paul II's years, I compared and contrasted something he said with what had been said by, I forget which early, earlier council, Roman Catholic council, like Trent or something like that, And I had a Roman Catholic apologist, who I've named in the past, so I'm not going to get into that right now. I had a Roman Catholic apologist write to me and say, who are you to tell the church what those documents meant? Only the church can interpret those things. So, if you put the church in charge of the interpretation of these earlier materials, then they get to interpret it any way they want to, to maintain their current authority. this the words that were written and spoken in 787 had a meaning in 787 just like the words that john wrote in the first century had a meaning in the first century and if you're going to be honest with history or with yourself then you're going to go for that first You want to find out what did the authors mean when the Second Council of Nicaea anathematized people and said that they were separated from the church. What did they mean by that? It ain't what Jimmy Akin believes today, I can guarantee you that. Even Roman Catholic apologists today recognize that Jimmy Akin is sort of on a little boat by himself out there with his cowboy hat on with the strange views he has and that kind of stuff. So what they meant then led to people's deaths okay it wasn't just oh you're not with us anymore it's that you're not with us anymore and you're gonna die now and we're gonna cut your hands off then we'll rip your tongue out and then we're gonna burn you um so it was had a little bit of a different flavor to it than that it seems to have today but the second council of nicaea of all the first seven is without a doubt the worst in political influence, completely ahistorical assertions, biblical argumentation of just, it's just horrible. It's really, really, really bad. But it's an infallible council interpreted rather differently between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. They both hold to it. But the impact it has and how it's been interpreted historically is rather different. And one of the statements made in this particular text that a couple of people, Jason Wallace has done a tremendous job. The videos, if you go to www.orthodox.video. So www.orthodox.video. that will bring up the videos that Jason has put together, and they're hours long. Remember we did, I still got this, the Make Lucaris Great Again program that he and I did, we talked about Cyril Lucaris and the Calvinist patriarch of Eastern Orthodoxy that they're really, really embarrassed about. But he has other videos where, you know, he's using this as well. And you'll find other folks, Gavin Ortland talks about this kind of stuff a lot in his videos as well. And both he and Jason quote the same material from Richard Price here, who's sort of considered to be the expert on this subject. He's Roman Catholic, by the way. He says, the iconoclast claim that... Okay, let me back up a second here. Iconoclasm. What percentage of people at your church this coming Sunday do you think know, would be able to even get close to identifying the term iconoclast, or the iconoclastic controversy, or iconoclasm, or what an iconophile is. The vast majority could not, would have no idea. And that's not putting anybody down, that's just simply a recognition that if people do have almost any interest in church history, it's either in the first 300 years or from the Reformation onward, and the rest of it is just a big black hole. Just who knows. Radbertus, Radtramnus, what? Gottschalk, huh? Got no idea. um fascinating stuff was taking place there that does have impact today but that's true people don't think about it the iconoclastic controversy um took place over about 150 years ish uh depending on where you are i guess remember ancient history doesn't move at the speed of the internet okay so so you can have stuff developing in one part of the empire that's not heard of over here for years, because it just takes time. Anyway, the iconoclastic controversy had to do with the veneration of images. Now, you know, they even came up with a rule at one point, you know, if you could pinch the nose then that made a statue, not an icon. So you could have an icon that had some texture to it, but you can't pinch its nose. So anyway, the iconoclasts were saying, no, you're not to have images in worship. There was this thing in Moses's law about this. And look, there were arguments about the incarnation, And both sides accused the other side of being Nestorians and denying the real nature of the incarnation and all the rest of this kind of stuff. And people died, people were killed, people were imprisoned, people were tortured. On both sides, the iconoclasts did it to the iconophiles, the iconophiles did it to the iconoclasts. wasn't good, but it was also deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply influenced by politics. Who the emperor was, who the emperor's wife was, whatever else it might be. And so the second Council of Nicaea settled and ended the iconoclastic controversy in favor of icons. even though that's going to be interpreted differently east and west as far as statues and all the rest of that kind of stuff. But the Iconoclasts were defeated, finally, in 787, the Second Council of Nicaea. So one of the things that's said in this book is, quote, the Iconoclasts claim that reverence towards images did not go back to the golden age of the fathers. So 325, 451, that was only a couple hundred years earlier. still less to the Apostles, would be judged by impartial historians today to be simply correct." Now, realize this is a Roman Catholic, so he has to accept the Cans and Decrees of the Second Council of Nicaea as dogma. But they said that they were defending the ancient faith of the Church and the apostolic tradition. But even he goes, um, actually the iconoclasts claim that reverence toward images did not go back to the golden age of the fathers, still less to the apostles, would be judged by impartial historians today to be simply correct. And that's because it's true. And so what you had happening here is you had a traditional development taking place. And it was motivated especially by the monks. And if you get all the monks on one side, it's really hard to win a battle because they're willing to die for stuff. And if they're all deceived, they're willing to die for deception. And they're very much in love with icons and iconography. And so here comes this council that says, this is what the apostles have always taught. We are holding to the ancient faith. Every council says that. But what people don't know is that in 754, so 33 years before Nicaea, there was another seventh ecumenical council. Now, it doesn't have an official name. The area is where it was held, even though it wasn't always held there. It was in the area of Constantinople. The last session wasn't held, was actually in Constantinople. But it doesn't have an official name today because it was an iconoclastic council. But when they met, they met with the emperor's approval. There were more bishops there than had been at Nicaea I. um they they claimed to be the seventh ecumenical council and they came to decisions and they anathematized the makers of icons and they made their arguments from history and from scripture and for 33 years This is what I want to try to communicate to you. We're not going into a bunch of stuff on this. We will eventually, I think. I think we need to. Because you're seeing it, I'm seeing it. All these people are becoming Orthodox. And nobody knows anything about Orthodoxy. And back when Hank Hanegraaff converted, we talked about stuff. We didn't go into the in-depth about the Second Nicene Council and things like that. But we talked about justification and sola scriptura and tradition and things like that. But now there's this move toward orthodoxy. And look, again, you see this kind of thing over and over again. I've seen it happen normally in the west is more toward roman catholicism because orthodoxy until recently was almost unknown in the west especially in the united states now the internet has changed all of that and i think this is just the next normal role of people looking for the ancient church And the reason it's not necessarily resulting in a bunch of conversions to Roman Catholicism is because of Francis. Everybody knows that Francis has two left wings. And so it's like, well, is there another option? And now the internet goes, why there is. It's called orthodoxy and it's very mysterious. It has beautiful music. and great incense and you stand for three hours during the church service and uh and it's the ancient church you see and nobody has a clue it's it's it's like no idea what church history is about where it came from what the great schism is about you've never heard the filioque clause nothing like any of that um it's It's just this big new mystery, and wow, it looks really cool, you see. But here's what I want to get to. We may have to go a few minutes beyond here, but I just looked over. What you mentioned to me was on my screen. Just in, FBI closes its Office of Diversity and Inclusion, and a wonderful lady from the seminary who kept us all working there for a long time. She was sort of the one who made everything work. She made just a brief comment. It was going to be closed anyway. Yup. That's true. Um, but you know, keep the letterhead around because you never know what's going to happen four years from now or eight years, eight years from now. Uh, those folks aren't, aren't done yet. Uh, they, they still hate, um, everything. Anyways, here's what I want to communicate to you, just having given you all this background information. So, 754 to 787, 33 years. How did you know what to believe? How did anyone between those two time periods know that the more than 300 bishops that had met with the emperor's approval had actually produced a robber's synod? a false council. How do you know? What standard do you use? Who are you supposed to turn to? You see, that's the problem here. After Nicaea won, before the Council of Constantinople later in that century, the Aryans took over and they had all sorts of councils. Ariminum, Seleucia, and most of those councils had more bishops at them than Nicaea did. And yet today, everybody looks back at those as false councils with no authority. Their canons and decrees are null and void. Why? How could you know at the time Well, evidently, from the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox perspective, you couldn't. You could not know. There's no possible way to do it. And so, I look at what happened with Athanasius. Wrote an article in the CRI Journal. Too bad Hank didn't read it. But wrote an article in the CRI Journal, what really happened to the Council of Nicaea. And I made the point that Athanasius who was driven from his church five times during the Arian Resurgency, made the argument that what the Council of Nicaea had said was true because Scripture says it was true. And he said Scripture is most sufficient for the teaching of all things. I just, the entire church was against him. Even the Bishop of Rome collapsed. That's where you've got the phrase, athanasius contra mundum, athanasius against the world. But he was right. And his argument was because that's what scripture teaches. That's called sola scriptura. That's what it is. And there are many times in church history were years and decades past, where if you had referred to the official, whatever you decided was the defining people of the church, they were wrong. If you say this is an ecumenical council with dogmatic authority, then for 33 years, nobody knew. Nobody knew. I think I might have, and let me see if I can grab it. Yeah, so. Yeah, we'll probably, I probably do want to look through some of these things because some of the quotations from the council, people refer to it as the Council of Hieria. and it met on February 10, 754 in the palace of Hieria just north of Chalcedon. So, a lot of these things took place in the same general area. Present were 338 bishops. By tradition, there were 308 or 318 at Nicaea. So, it was bigger than Nicaea 1. Same general area, you know, And it meets from February 10th, 754 to August of 754. All right? So, 33 years pass before the Second Council of Nicaea, which repudiates the Council of Hieria and does a complete 180. Just exact opposite conclusions. Based upon the same data? Well, that's because neither one of them were really functioning on that. And unfortunately, by this time in history, like John of Damascus, for example, had defended icons, and he's considered the great defender of icons. The vast majority of citations he used were either fraudulent or he misunderstood them. You know, you can respect the man, but we have significantly better opportunity to evaluate statements today historically than they had at that point in time. and they would only get worse in the medieval period so that the pseudo-Isidorean decretals I've referred to too many times in the past, you know, were like 98% forgeries and yet they were considered authoritative and theology was determined and ecclesiology and everything else on the basis of this type of stuff created quite a mess. So if you reject solo scriptura What are you going to do? What are you going to do with history? What are you going to do with the Aryan resurgence? What are you going to do with the 33 years, similar time frame, between Hieria and the Second Nicene Council where everything gets flipped on its head? How are you supposed to know? These are questions that need to be considered and it's worth going into those things. And I know some of you are like, I don't know. Hey, look, like I said, there are a lot of people making a decision. There's a woman on Oh, someone just let my friend at the seminary know that I mentioned her on the radio. Why radio? Man, talk about being old. On the webcast, they might be on a radio station someplace, who knows? Now, that scene, that made me completely jump my train of thought where I was going to go there, but oh well. If you reject sola scriptura, then you have to recognize that in these interregnums, in these periods, because remember when Nicaea I was held, no one knew what an ecumenical council was. That's something that developed over time. The persecution of the church had only ended a few years, 12 years, 13 years before the Council of Nicaea, depending on where you were in the Roman Empire. So no one knew what an ecumenical council was. No one had this theology that said, well, once an ecumenical council speaks, then it's unquestionable. Because they overturned Nicaea at Ariminum. But no one has ever heard of Ariminum today. It doesn't have any authority. It did then. How would you have known then? You couldn't. Not from that paradigm. Not from that paradigm. You couldn't. Of course, our argument is, obviously, the teaching of the deity of Christ is the objectively concluded doctrine of the revealed scriptures. If you apply the same standards of hermeneutics to the New Testament and Old Testament scriptures, they will teach you that the New Testament writers identified Jesus as Yahweh. All right? So, the Council of Ariminem can meet, and they can't change that. They can't change that objective reality. In the same way, when it comes to images in worship and the idea of veneration, well, remember years and years and years ago, Patrick Madrid did some commentary about the debate that he and I did on the veneration of saints and angels. And so, I think it's the only debate I've ever done this, but we went back over it on the program, did like three or four programs as I recall, responding to everything that he had said. And one of the things we emphasized is, The argumentation used at Nicaea II by Roman Catholicism today, by Eastern Orthodoxy today, is simply a gross misrepresentation of the original language. Oh, it can't be the Eastern Orthodox, they speak Greek. I don't care. Tradition can make anybody say almost anything, and the reality is that when you look at the Hebrew term ahav, it's translating the Greek septuagint as both to serve and to worship. So you can't say, well, I'm only serving the image. I'm giving Dulia to the image and not Latruo. That is not sustainable in light of what the Bible itself says. And all you can do on the other side is say, yeah, but a council said otherwise. So what? The council was told what conclusions to come to by the empire, by the governmental authorities. And maybe by, you know, the monks all got together and they wanted to do their thing and yeah, you know, at Ephesus they actually beat each other up and so they had different views, but not the case here at Second Isaiah. So it's not a matter of exegesis. It's a matter of all the stuff that comes outside. And that's where the problem is. That's where the problem is. That's where it lies. He had never really discussed all that stuff before. And that was just simply a quick outline of this is what happened. No one's ever heard of Hieria before. So they don't know that it took place. Because once you lose later on, and look, how many people who were at Hieria are still alive 33 years later? Lifespans were not as long back then. The people that eventually win get to write the histories. And so all this stuff just disappears. Remember what Augustine said to Maximus the Arian? He said, I cannot quote the authority of Nicaea to you, and you cannot quote the authority of Ariminum against me. Let us go to what's common to both, the testimony of scripture. Remember that? Yeah, there's a reason why that's important. And there's a reason why both Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox reject Sola Scriptura. Because Sola Scriptura would correct both of them. And since they both claim infallible religious authority in slightly different ways. The claim of infallibility for Orthodoxy is significantly mushier. than the real blatant claim of Vatican I or something like that. But it's still there. And scripture would correct them and correct their tradition if they'd allow it to. But once you establish these things, then you don't want that to happen. So anyway, all right. little church history, educational stuff today. You probably weren't expecting that. And how do you go from Andrew Tate to the Second Council of Nicaea? That was a big jump. That was a big jump. No choice about it. The clutch may never, never survive. May need to have that replaced very, very quickly. All right. Anyways, thanks for listening to the program today. We'll see you next time on The Dividing Line. God bless.