Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. Going to be a crazy one today. It's all Rich Pierce's fault. It was going to be pretty straightforward, just a live call-in today. But no, Rich got a little uppity today and decided that he's going to be taking Zoom calls. I don't know how any of this works. I was actually having to reinstall the phone application. And I was just happy to have that. uh... but hey look you know phones You know, I mean, we were using phones when they were still attached to a wall, you know? And there'd have to be this wire thing, you know? And so I guess from his perspective, that's just too much a reminder of just how old we are, especially him. And so he wants to go with the techie stuff. So evidently, there is a Zoom link in the A&O Ministry Twitter feed. And therefore, you can, what? Okay. Okay, so this is how this is going to work. Today's show brought to you by Rich Pierce. I need to do some reading here. Hi, Jack. There we go. That's that. So this is how this is going to work. You just simply follow the link on Twitter, and when you hook up, it's going to ask for your name. Put your first name in, and then dash, and then put the topic that you want to talk about in there. That's going to tell me, because unfortunately I can't actually talk to you while you're holding her in the waiting room, but it's going to put you in the waiting room, and I'm going to look and go, hey, that looks interesting. James, talk to this guy, and I'm going to put you on the air. Okay? So we're going to try this first time. We're going to take it slow and see what happens. So we're not taking any on the regular phone line? Oh, we have a couple of those guys there, too. I've got to go string them. No, we don't. According to mine, we don't. Well, you might want to log back in, because I've got three here. Well, that's great, because there's nothing on my end at all. So maybe, did you reset it or something? I don't know. No, I did not. I reset nothing. So but we do have some Zoom guys ready to go here. They're not following instructions very well. Oops. All right, so I'm going to, OK. There you are. Yep, boom. There you go. Well, that's not good that it just sort of disconnects you like that. Yeah, that's not cool, which is why the old analog tech Are you having issues with Mac not liking the system here? All right. Well, we'll see if this works. There's no names or anything or topics on stack on this end. Okay. So, yeah, I haven't had a chance to screen them yet. I've got a few balls in the air over here. Okay. But I'm about to send you a message here, so hang tight. Okay. Well, I'll give you a few moments to get them screened while we do the video real quick, but you're going to have to be doing the video too. So, yeah. Hey, you're making it much more complicated for yourself than than I need to be, but that's okay. So while Rich is doing his thing, I want to briefly, very briefly, a video came and I just saw on Twitter that there's another one that was just posted by Bad Preacher Clips, which I haven't even had an opportunity to listen to or look at. anything here. And of course, that's what I hate about Twitter. It was just there a second ago, and now it's gone. You scroll, and all I find is Adam Schiff. We are, this nation is run by some of the most incompetent weird, strange people I've ever seen in my life. There's just no twist. But anyway, so there's another one that has been posted that I cannot find for love nor money now. And that's just sort of how it works. So let me look here real quick. And maybe I can find it real quick. Yeah, so 29 minutes ago, another one from Pastor Brandon Bowser was posted, and I haven't even had a chance to listen to it. So I'll just run through this really, really quickly while you all are queuing up on the phones and on Zoom, and this may all just burn to the ground. This could be one of those that ends up on YouTube as, hey, remember that webcast where everything just collapsed and we never heard from either James or Rich again. Yeah, they tried to do a little bit too much. Anyway, so we've got another IFB King James only out there doing his thing. And this is just a two minute little thing, so that way we can do it quickly. But I just wanted to, I just felt badly for the young guy. He does have a nice beard, so he can't be super young, super, super young. But I saw somewhere he was a youth minister, and I always feel for youth ministers. I won't go into that particular discussion right now, but anyway, he's attempting to tell people about biblical history and just had some real problems getting it all straight. So I want to help provide some corrections. So let's listen to what he has to say. I'll stop and start and we'll then go to your calls. Okay, there's our first. Whoops. That should have gone to me. I'm sorry. I didn't get the audio on that. Yeah, I know. Okay. Yeah, here's the problem. First thing. Meeting. Zoom. Quit Zoom. So I cannot be in Zoom, or that will happen. Let it be on the record, that was not my fault. You said that if I went in there, maybe I could see stuff, but I can't, and so there we go. So there's the first thing. And then the second thing, evidently, is that you need that, I hope. We'll see if it works. Let's try it again. Like I said, we're trying to do a lot today. Let's talk about where the King James Bible came from and where every other version came from, okay? There's two different texts, Greek texts, Greek and Hebrew texts, that every single Bible in modern, that we use modernly, came from. Okay, first correction, he says Greek and Hebrew text. That's simply not true. The Textus Receptus is not a Hebrew text. The Textus Receptus is a Greek text. This is what most people call the Textus Receptus. There is no one Textus Receptus. edition based upon the King James translation, but there is no one TR. But this is what most people are thinking of, and it's English. There is no Hebrew in it. The difference between what would be considered the standard Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia today, and what was used at the time of the King James, I think adds up to exactly eight differences. between them, they're pretty much identical to one another. So that's first correction, the Texas Receptus is Greek only, it is not Greek and Hebrew. Every Bible either came from the Texas Receptus, who was written by Erasmus, or the Okay, the textus receptus is not something that's written by someone. When you have a Greek text where you are using multiple manuscripts as he did, so not as many as this guy's gonna say, but multiple manuscripts as he did, you're compiling, you're editing, you're not writing, and he's later gonna use the term translated. That's not it either. So he was actually, working on a diaglot and his emphasis initially in the first few editions was upon the Latin because that's where there was a little more danger in that because he was altering the Vulgate text and the Vulgate was considered the sort of the official text of the church and so that was pretty dangerous to do. But it's not written by somebody. And of course, even the one that we have today also went through editing by Stefanos and especially by Theodore Beza. So none of that terminology would be accurate. Sinaticus and Vaticanus, which was written by Westcott and Hort. Okay, so here again is King James only, especially who will read berg on or what's what's worst with king james only folks is they read someone who read someone who read someone who read someone and by the time it gets down to that level you get this kind of of almost gibberish uh where it just doesn't make any sense anymore um but like i i keep saying these guys are a hundred years behind um the the modern you know here's here's modern greek text It's the Tyndale House New Testament. This is not just a reproduction of Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. And especially when you look at ECM, which is still being produced, but Mark and Acts and the General Epistles are out, you have thousands of manuscripts that are being utilized. by these texts. And so the idea that it's just Sinaiticus Vaticanus totally ignoring the papyri, totally ignoring when the papyri... Key texts like John 118, where P66 and P75 have demonstrated that the readings found in Sinaiticus Vaticanus are extremely ancient and early, back to the beginning of the first century. This kind of material just is completely lost. These folks just don't know what this is all about because they're reading somebody who read somebody who read something who read something from Dean Burgon at the end of the 19th century. And they're literally over 100 years behind where things actually are. And so their descriptions just have no connection to reality at all. Now first let's talk about the Texas Receptus. The King James Bible is the only current English Bible that comes from the Texas Receptus. Which is Qazi. All the poor good men who worked so hard on the New King James Version of the Bible to go, hey, what about us? No, the King James is not the, well, you could make an argument, but there is no way that he knows this is Scrivener. Okay, first of all, but you could make the argument that at least as far as this is concerned, this is based on the King James. But no, the New King James likewise is based upon the text of Septuagint as its base text. So yeah, no. Now, here's a little bit about the TR, the Texas Receptist. Erasmus, the way he translated the TR was he gathered approximately 5,000 manuscripts of scripture. I mean, he gathered them far and wide, everywhere he could. Erasmus, right now, is very happy. Erasmus is like, yay, I did. Um... Again, this does illustrate something that I think is somewhat important and that is that the work that we can do today where you literally can catalog almost 5,800 fragments of the New Testament and know where they are and massive collation work has been done for the ECM, the CBGM databases, things like that, but that could only have happened in the past 20 years. It could not have happened before then. information technology was not such that would allow the collation and the collecting of all that much information. In fact, you know, people think about Trigellus, Tischendorf, they think about some of those early texts and how few manuscripts were actually involved. And then you look at the work that Hoskier did on Revelation, and that was the first, at the time anyways, complete collation of one book. And then, of course, more discoveries are made, and it's no longer a complete collation. But the point is, Erasmus had between 6 and 12 manuscripts, not 5,000. There was no place in the world, no one in the world in Erasmus' day had any earthly idea how many Greek manuscripts still existed at that point. Some of those Greek manuscripts have been destroyed by fire, flood, war since then. And many others have been found that were not known at that time. And so, the only guess I can take, because again, he's got some notes over here on his right hand side. My guess is he's, again, you heard somebody say something, who said something, who said something, and you're three or four you know, steps down the road now, and things start getting muddled and confused. My guess is he's heard someone say that the Textus Receptus represents the Byzantine text type, which it does generally. It's not the best. It's not the earliest form of the Byzantine. It's not even the best form. It's sort of one thread of the Byzantine text type that's really based in the 12th century or so. So it's really not even the best representative of the Byzantine by any standard, but he probably heard somebody say that the Byzantine represents 5,000 of the 5,800 manuscripts. And so he somehow not having obviously read any of Erasmus or anything like that, hasn't read Erasmus complaining about how many manuscripts he thought he'd find in Basel, Switzerland in the library and didn't find and so on and so forth. He's probably conflating all this stuff together and saying, oh, if it represents 5,000, then Erasmus had 5,000. Can you imagine a single person collating 5,000 manuscripts. We've got some of the best computing power in the world working on it, and still we haven't actually done that in a total fashion. I mean, the ECMs could be close to that. But one guy who complained that as he stood working on what he did do with his 6 to 12 manuscripts at most, was complaining that the fleas were biting him and that they were actually demons? Yeah, no. The very idea that you could collate 5,000 manuscripts at that time gives you an idea of what's really going on here. And everywhere he could find them. He compiled about 5,000 different manuscripts. And what he did was he compared every single one of them. every single one of them. We're talking it would take one person three, four lifetimes to actually do that to any meaningful level. And he had help with this, of course, and he found about 2% of them didn't line up together, didn't match identically. And so what he did with those 200% or those 2% was he threw the 2% out, which obviously human error and corruption, obviously there would be a percentage of them that didn't line up. Okay, so I think what's happening here is he's hearing, well, the older texts, quote-unquote Alexandrian texts, so on and so forth, only represent like 2%, and so Erasmus identified... Erasmus had no earthy idea about any of that stuff. None! There's the... If you say he did, prove it. There was no way on the small number of manuscripts he had that he could have identified text types and any of that kind of stuff. This is pure mythology based on ignorance of the historical sources and stuff like that. But then this gets repeated over and over and over again. And once you get three or four steps down the road, It starts getting a little rancid. But that 98% of the 5,000 manuscripts that he got, which contained the whole Bible... Notice, notice, the whole Bible. So now, poor Erasmus, man, this guy never slept, he never ate. He's doing the whole Bible. He's doing the Old Testament, too. So he had Old Testament manuscripts, somehow. Maybe it was the Greek Septuagint. I don't know. I'm not sure. Most King James onlyists don't think the Septuagint existed, but that's the only thing you would have had. But hey, I don't know. Lined up exactly. Word for word exact. And that's where we get the Texas... Word for word exact. Now, the fact is, we've identified almost all the manuscripts that he used, and they are not word-for-word exact. That's the problem. He had to do textual criticism. This is where you get the same kind of, you know, in the early church, when people thought the Greek Septuagint was the standard, they told stories about how, you know, the 70 scholars went into their caves and they came back out and they had a word, it was word-for-word identical, which means God inspired it, so on and so forth. That's how stories like this happen. There are no two manuscripts that are word-for-word exact, and none of the manuscripts that he used were word-for-word exact. Remember, he only had one manuscript for Revelation. It wasn't even a manuscript. It's commentary in Latin. But still, he had to make decisions, even between his own manuscripts. And the scary thing was, the best manuscript he had was the one he trusted least. It was the oldest. It was the best. And the TR would be a much better text if he had actually trusted it. But he didn't. So, there you go. So, notice what happens here is instead of recognizing that Vaticanus has been known even in the days of Erasmus, and that Erasmus himself asked Bombastius, his friend in Rome, to look things up in the Vatican manuscript. They don't ever want to admit that. It's just a lapse of, no. Erasmus knew that there was a very ancient manuscript. They didn't know how ancient. They didn't know how exactly how old it was. But it was known in the days of Erasmus. So that's in the Vatican Library, and that's a long ways from St. Catherine's Monastery. So he's conflating Vaticanus' Sinaiticus and the story of the finding of Sinaiticus with evidently Vaticanus being with it or something, I guess. It's hard to say because, I mean, anybody who knows the history is just going, What? Where did this come from? They were found with 14,800 alterations and corrections within the document itself. So this is probably in reference to either marginal notes, corrections between lines, and given that these are both, now I'm not sure if he's just talking about it because he seems confused as to whether he's talking about the New Testament, Old Testament, but given the number of not only pages involved, but then how long these were used. That makes perfect sense and that's why entire books have been written on the various scribes of Sinaiticus and the different inks they used and how many hundreds of years after the original writing you have editing being done. And this is what this whole, at least, at least, well maybe later on he goes into it, I don't know, but I only have this one clip, but at least he didn't go into the stuff about Sinaiticus being a forgery and Simonides and all the rest of that silly stuff that people are throwing around today. When they found these, when Westcott and Hort, when they found these, they had... So when Westcott and Hort found these... Westcott and Hort... Well, Scott and Hart, of course, compiled a Greek New Testament in the 19th century, and this was after Tischendorf, long after the finding of Vaticanus. They were not involved in the finding of Sinaiticus and things like that. So, again, we have just a whole lot of historical mythology. Flowing together here scribbles. They had erasures they had They had fourteen thousand eight hundred different issues contradictions Okay, they were not contradictions, but I guess the idea being well, they're they're variants and therefore there you go, so There. We'll have to listen to the next one and see what comes out of that and see if there's more fun, interesting stuff to encounter. But this is one of the things, real quickly, and I know we've got callers. We're going to go to them right away. This is one of the things that's a little bit scary about the IFB King James Only stuff, is that these guys, since they're afraid to listen to what's outside, then they just keep regurgitating their own stuff and it ends up losing accuracy over time. It doesn't become more accurate. They're not, it's not iron sharpening iron. It's water dulling iron and turning it to rust basically. And you end up with this kind of just really, really, really bad information. So I'm hoping the brother might think through some of his claims and maybe do some reading outside the IFB world. And that would be helpful at that point in time. Okay, so I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do here. Okay, so in the order that you put it? Okay, all right, so let's talk to Nick. Hi, Nick, in calling via Zoom. Hi, Nick. Dr. White, a privilege to talk to you. Yes, sir. So you're doing the series on baptism at Apologia Church, Apologia, and Full disclosure, I'm a minister in the Churches of Christ. However, thanks to James White University on YouTube and The Dividing Line, I am leaning toward Geneva quite a bit these days. Well, then I hope you're using an anonymous name, Nick. That's all I can say. I understand. Because even thinking those directions can be, yeah. Okay, anyway. So with that preface, Colossians 2, baptism, I mean, we place a very high premium on baptism in churches of Christ. And so that's, for me, a big deal. And so I was listening to Colossians 2, and I was wondering about what you would say to, you went through verses 11 and 12. the unhandmade circumcision of Christ. You were circumcised. Also, they were buried together with Christ in baptism. They were also raised together. by faith in the powerful working of God. Sort of, sort of. I didn't, I went long as it was. I was stunned when we got done. I'd gone an hour and 12 minutes. I apologize for that. But one thing that I did not emphasize that I should have or had thought of doing is it is interesting that that phrase you just looked at, in which you were also raised up with him through faith and the working of God who raised him from the dead. That enho could be attached to Christ or so in whom, but normally it's attached to the closest antecedent, and that's baptism. right? So, that would be interesting to discuss. I would say it is that, I think it is baptism. And so, again, that emphasizes the fact that we're talking here about a description of union with Christ and hearkening back to regeneration and not to a, I mean, baptism becomes the picture of it. That's what I understand when he talks about being buried and then raising from the dead. I think That's one reason why there is a proper mode of baptism, too, to maintain the picture of union with Christ and His death, burial, and resurrection. So, that I think is lost in a lot of forms of baptism that are popular today. But I still think that that's the whole point, is that when it talks about the working of God who raised Him from the dead, that would be one of the places we would have a very different understanding than the churches of Christ, primarily because of the foundation that we're bringing to everything that God does in salvation. In other words, I'm holding Paul together because this is Colossians. Colossians and Ephesians are very closely related to one another, very similar themes, things like that. So I'm not seeing Colossians 2 separated from Ephesians 1, 3 through 11. And so I want to hear Paul saying the same things, especially, and I didn't bring this up last night, but especially because of Colossians 4.16, where Paul says to the Church of Colossae to read the epistle that's coming from Laodicea. And I think very clearly that is Ephesians. That was a circular letter that was to be passed around the churches in the Lycats River Valley. And so that would only emphasize the themes that are concurrent between the two letters, which includes, clearly, the summing up of all things in Christ and a clear clear presentation of predestination election in Ephesians 1 and following. So that provides the background and instead of it being a human, God-ordained, but humanly What terms do I want to use? Initiated action in baptism. Baptism becomes a picture of something that God has done. And my whole emphasis last night, wasn't last night, sorry, Sunday night, was the fact that what we have here is, all the way through, is a focus on Christ and what Christ accomplishes. So I just wanted to add that in there because when you said that, I just wanted to point out, in which you were also raised up with him. And so that's right with baptism. You better have been raised up with him or you'd be bubbling pretty quickly. It's a picture of the fact that this Christian circumcision is pictured in our union with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection. Go ahead. So then, what would you say about, because these, the verbs, the participle as well, they're in verse 12, right? These are all aorist, in tense. Could we see these as then contemporaneous with one another? The circumcision that's taking place is taking place when we're buried together and when we're raised together in baptism? Well, when you're looking at participles, their syntax is always, especially when you're talking about their time frames, they're always playing off of the main verb. And so when you have these participial phrases that are describing these things, what you want to do is you want to ask, where is this coming from? And that really goes back to the circumcision made without hands. and that was in him, and if we're correct in understanding of what this akairapoi eto action is, a circumcision made without hands, if that is indeed regeneration, then that's your controlling verb. And then the participles that are to come after that are going to be either contemporaneous or sometimes there is not an emphasis upon time as there is upon description. So there's been a bit of a revolution, not revolution, but Basically, if you read Greek grammars that have been written in the past, about 15 years, there's been a somewhat of a de-emphasis upon some of the time element in Greek verbal aspect and it's been replaced with much more of a relationship between what's found in the context, the flow of the narrative, and then participles themselves likewise have become impacted by that as well. So there isn't as much of an emphasis upon asking that Assuming, as older grammarians did, that there was a very strict time connection between participles and their controlling verbs. In other words, what they're saying now is if I was writing a commentary and I wanted to emphasize that this was concurrent or prior or after, depending on whether you're talking heiress and presence and all the rest of that stuff, now it would be required of you to substantiate That observation was something more than just simply saying, well, this is the narrowest participle with this kind of a finite verb. You would have to actually come up with something from the context to say that the author was specifically attempting to make that emphasis. That's something I'm obviously well aware of, but haven't spent a lot of time talking about in the program because that sort of limits the number of people in the audience that are interested in what I'm saying. But notice in Numeris Seris is having been buried with him, and again, would that be in reference to the simple fact that when you're writing to a Christian congregation, This is, one thing that's very obvious, and I've been emphasizing this in my series on baptism, is when you write to the Christian congregation, you can assume that the Christians in the congregation have been baptized. The idea of an unbaptized congregant is just simply not present. It is a common experience, and it is therefore used as a description of what we have experienced, not only are we in Christ, and therefore, His righteousness is our righteousness, so on and so forth. But it's also what gives unity to the body as well, is that fact that by baptism we are saying He and He only is His death, His burial, His resurrection, is all that I can ever acclaim for myself. Which, interestingly enough, was the application I made as soon as the sermon was over, which you wouldn't have seen, because we have the Lord's Supper each Sunday, and I emphasize that in my introduction to the Supper as well. Very good. I did have a follow-up. It's been almost two months since you did the Radio Free Geneva responding to the guys over at GBN who are part of my fellowship, the Church of Christ, and you invited them to debate John 6 or something along those lines. Did they ever respond? I don't know, to be honest with you. No one has told me that they did, but I've I've been traveling since then, and I don't have time to necessarily be running around. If they have, I'd like to know about it, but normally someone will point that out to me. They'll say, hey, did you see that so-and-so said, yeah, they'd be happy to do that. No one has. If they have, I would invite them to make sure that I see that because I don't have anybody who does social media stuff for me and things like that. And especially when it comes to things like Twitter, I'm just, I am just absolutely convinced that Twitter's had me shadow banned forever. And I just, Rich will see things 15 minutes before I see it. And then sometimes he'll see things I will never see. Because I'm just using the the web interface. So I would love to do that So you could reiterate that but I haven't heard one way or the other and it's it could be just because I don't I didn't go out looking for it, but I just assumed someone would say oh, hey, this is great Let's let's get this set up, but I didn't hear anything Well, thank you for your time, okay. All right. Thank you Nick All right. God bless. Bye. Bye. All right, so Okay, and you want me to do it on this end? Okay. Okay, let's talk with Caleb. Hi, Caleb. Hey, God bless you. How are you? I'm pretty good yourself. I'll be to the point because I know lots of other people have questions. My girlfriend and I are getting interested in passing out tracks and doing evangelism and that's something new to us. And I know you have obviously been in this for a while and you have a lot more experience than I would. And so I'm just looking for general advice on what to include in tracts and how to approach people and passing those out. That sort of thing. Well, one thing I can say is that we have a tremendous amount of material on doing that and examples of doing that at Apology at Church, because there's almost no day of the week that there's not some group from Apologia out doing exactly that, either at Mormon Ward chapels or Mill Avenue. You can see, for example, all sorts of videos of the outreach that takes place in Mill Avenue, which is, by the way, that's sort of downtown Tempe right near Arizona State University. So it's a university town. So lots of conversations with lots of people that take place down there. And there's hours and hours and hours and hours of material there that could help you to feel like you're better prepared. And obviously, just last week, I did a Mormonism training thing on Tuesday night, and I went through the basic stuff, like making sure the person can see the title of the track. Don't hand it to them upside down, backwards. Don't make them step out of their line of path. to try to get it because a lot of people won't do that. You know, there's some real practical things along those lines. It's really helpful to make sure you know you're tracked real well, you have some lines ready to use. Don't use the same line all night long, especially if there's a lot of people walking by. They may have heard you say that to the person in front of them, and so it sounds like you're just repeating the same thing over and over again, sort of like a robot. Other little things like if there is a line of people going by and someone toward the front rejects your tract, that's when it's good to have a second tract. and pull the first one back, try to use a different one, maybe let someone walk by and then try again because just human nature is when someone sees someone in front of them rejecting a tract, they're more likely to do it themselves. So just there's all sorts of little things like that. Obviously the smile on the face and it doesn't take long to realize what the title of the tract may cause people to say in response. And so you want to have thought through maybe the first few exchanges as to why are we out here, what this is about, things like that. But yeah, it's just a matter of getting your feet wet. And I'll just tell you one story, then we've got a bunch, bunch, bunch of people. So I'll just tell you one story. We were up in Salt Lake City years and years ago, and my son came up with me the first time. He was just a little kid. And this, I turned around just in time to see this Mormon take a tract from him. and he reached for my son, so I started moving at that point, but he reached for my son and he took the track and he pulled, my son was wearing a nice little white shirt and a Rush Limbaugh tie, a little 14-inch one for kids, and he pulled the front pocket open and shoved the track into it and then patted it and walked away right as I arrived. And my son had this look on his face, like, wow, what just happened? And I said, well, son, you just got your first rejection taken care of. The rest will be nice and easy. So there really is a sense in which once you get the first angry getting cussed out by somebody, it sort of gets a little bit easier after that. Because a lot of people go out and, I don't want that to happen. Well, it's gonna. So once it does, then it's sort of like, okay, I didn't die, and so there you go. So you press on from there. But it is always helpful to have a group. Even if someone's just standing by praying for you, it's always good to have somebody out there keeping track of stuff. And these days, honestly, it doesn't hurt if that person standing off to the side has a video running. There's all these cameras that are available that will run for hours and hours and hours now. It's always good to have video proof of what's really going on out there because People can say, I heard this person saying X, Y, or Z. And it's like, well, the fact of the matter is the video was running and so we can prove whether we did or didn't. So that's pretty wise too. Okay. I appreciate it. God bless you. And may God keep you from the communist cookie monster. Okay. Thanks, Caleb. God bless. Bye-bye. All right. So I'm looking at, oh my goodness, 12 waiting on Zoom. So where do you want me to go next then? Go back to Zoom and talk to Jordan. Hi, Jordan. Hi, Dr. White. Can you hear me all right? I can. How are you? I'm good. My question has to do with soteriology as presented in the synoptics. Not a subject I would suggest that you use on your first date or anything like that, just so you know. Because it'll probably be the last date. All you have to do to verify that is ask Rich, because he did that for a long time. Oh no, that's not the topic of conversation right off the bat, for sure. And if it were maybe I would know right away. That's the one but anyway, that's true. That's true. There you go Okay, so John seems pretty clearly to be about faith in Christ for salvation At least on a cursory reading like compare that to the synoptics It seems like the synoptics talk a lot about following You for example the rich young ruler Sell all you have come follow me And so in John, it also seems like it's clearly tying into the propitiation that Christ is going to go and offer for his people. In the synoptics, is that present there? And I'm just not seeing it, and this is also kind of going into some evangelism stuff with Muslims that I've talked with who say, look, in the synoptics, it's all about the Kingdom of God for Jesus and following Him and stuff, and it has nothing to do with His death and resurrection and Salvation has nothing to do with that kind of thing. And so maybe you can help me out, understand this. What is soteriology about in the synoptics? Is it any different than it is in John? Is it presented any differently than it is in John? Or is it just using different words, pretty much? Wow, there's obviously a lot there. I spent nine years going through the synoptics at Phoenix Foreign Baptist Church, about over a decade ago now, and was very thankful, in fact, that we – well, actually, it was more than that. It was a decade and a half. I think there's a couple things to keep in mind that are often difficult to communicate to our Muslim friends because they've been fed a straight diet of Shabir Ali for a few decades now. And so they get a pretty skewed view of the synoptic gospels and the issues related to it. Part of the question has to do with why is, why do we have the gospels the way we have them? Why is John not one of the synoptic gospels? And I think part of that probably has to do with when John is written and does John know about the synoptic gospels? Is he aware of the content of the synoptic gospels? There's all the assumptions that people make about the relationship of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And yet there are clearly differences between the Synoptic Gospels as to the audience. that the writer is writing to and the emphases that the writer is going to have. And our Muslim friends seem to think that those things should not exist, that there should not be – Luke should not be concerned about a Gentile audience, Matthew should not be concerned about a Jewish audience, Mark should not be seeking to present a shorter story that's a little bit faster paced and doesn't have as much of the teaching of Jesus and all of that's going to end up changing the the overall emphasis of any one of these books and If you believe and the funny thing is a Muslim cannot argue this point because I don't know if have you ever seen the debate that Shabir and I did on Oh, what was it? What was the title? I remember where the church was. I remember what the church looked like. But what was the topic of that debate? I think it may have been on whether Muhammad was prophesied in the New Testament. Might have been no, I have not seen that. Okay, um, but uh, We did a debate and i'm not sure if this picture is i've seen a picture of this of this i'm not sure if it's part of the debate itself but during the break, uh shabir came over I had presented I had Made as a part of my argument the fact that there are four different places in the Quran where the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is presented, always in different phraseology and context and wording. And so, they have to believe because, you know, you think about it, if a law, if these are the words of a law, then shouldn't every description of Sabna Gamora be the same? Because how could it be any, it couldn't get any better if it's perfect the first time. If you do it differently, then it's worse. So, how do you, there has to be a recognition on their part that it's appropriate to tell the same story in different ways with different emphases because the Quran does it. And it's amazing, he literally came over during the break and said, what are those references? And there's a picture somewhere, I don't remember who took it or if it's in the video or something, there's a picture somewhere of him kneeling next to my desk as I'm giving him the Quranic references. where Sodom and Gomorrah, and it's in whatever a Christian needs to know about the Quran, if you have my book, there's a discussion of all of that in there. But the point is, they have this thinking that sometimes we end up with. A lot of Christians really struggle to handle the synoptics and to use a parallel in studying the synoptics, because they're thinking that each one of these authors should be choosing the same elements of the story and phrasing things in the same way. These should be transcriptions of an mp3 recording, all the rest of that kind of stuff. None of which anybody in the ancient world would have had any way of understanding or even any concept of why you would think that way. And so, when you look at soteriology as a whole, you also have to remember that if what those Gospels are saying is true, then the God who gave us those Gospels had already begun giving of the rest of the New Testament revelation, even before the Gospels were written. So, in other words, God did not intend – okay, I'm getting something coming back in my earphone, Rich. I'm not sure what it is, but God did not intend those Gospels to just stand alone without Romans and Galatians and everything else as part of the New Testament. So, I think it's appropriate to ask questions about the general. perspective of emphasis in a gospel, but I get concerned when we separate the gospel out and try to make it stand on its own because I don't think that's what God ever intended it to do. And so, I do see, for example, in, like, the way you put it, faith, believing in John, following, but the problem is real faith in John is a ongoing present tense For example, the one looking and believing present tense participles over against, and this is where in opposition to the preceding caller, not preceding caller, the caller before that, this is where there is something in the context that emphasizes these things. When John refers to false faith, Like in John 2, where it says Jesus was not believing himself to them, he was not entrusting himself to them, and in John 8, when they said that they believed in him, but by the end of the chapter they pick up stones to stone him. used an aorist form of believing, whereas whenever Jesus talks about saving faith, it's in the present tense. So, for John, he is giving us that contextual evidence that there is a following element to this belief, there is an ongoing element, there is an obedience element to this faith. And so, I don't think it's a – it's meant to be a massive contrast, but if John is writing with knowledge, of what Matthew, Mark, and Luke have already written, he clearly is seeking to do something to emphasize some other aspects that are needed at that particular point in time at a later point in church history, whether it's only a decade later or much longer, depending on where you put John. Some people put him before 70, some people put him as late as the 90s. And so, I would, instead of trying to find differences, I would go, okay, in light of Mark's brevity, hence not a lot of teaching passages and hence actions, Matthew's focus upon the Jewish audience, Luke's focus upon a non-Jewish audience, all being early with Luke writing in connection with Acts where you're gonna get so much more of the soteriology laid out in the sermons that are coming, you don't have that with Matthew or Mark. If you put all those things together and keep those things in mind, then I think you can end up seeing the commonalities more than emphasizing the differences. And I think a lot of people try to emphasize the differences rather than going, well, actually, no, there's – it's sort of like when people say – my favorite example is when people say Mark and John have completely different views of Jesus as far as Christology goes. You know, so even Bart Ehrman will say, oh, John, yeah, Jesus is God, you know, eternally existed, incarnation, yeah, that's obvious for John. But Mark has no concept of these things. And then you start carefully going through Mark and you get to Mark 1460 or so, and Jesus is speaking to the, you know, the high priest says, are you the Son of the Most Blessed One? And Jesus' response is to weave together material from Psalm 2 and Psalm 110, saying, I am! He says, ego, I am me! I am! And then he quotes Psalm 2 and Psalm 110, and the immediate response of the high priest is, you've heard the blasphemy! So you have, that's one of the clearest testimonies from Jesus' own mouth that I can think of, and yet it's in Mark. So I think It's allowing those contexts to exist that would allow us to see more of the continuity and not so much a concept of contrast. And so, I think the faith and trust that you see people giving to Jesus in doing what he commands Or even in the demons, recognizing who he was in Mark 5, is not some world away from what John records for us. There are two different pictures giving us the same truth. But just focusing upon, I mean, think about it. You can read Mark in how many minutes? I bet we could look it up on the web and there's those calculators and stuff like that, how many minutes? How much of Jesus' teaching is actually captured there? income, you know, none of you read all four of the gospels and you're still just scratching the surface and So it's it would be easy for those authors to be choosing to communicate what they wanted to communicate because they weren't trying to do they weren't trying to be a 20th century and notice I said 20th and not 21st century journalists because I'm not sure there are any 21st century journalists, but That they weren't following those those parameters Right. Yes That makes sense. Thank you very much. And I did think of the verse in Matthew, anyone who causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin. So, we do see kind of that intermingling of the language. Oh, well, look at Matthew 11. Matthew 11, 27 is the Gospel of John and Matthew. I mean, even people say that's Johannine language. And so, yeah, it does, there are those places where it's like, hey, there's your connection right there. Yeah, definitely. Yep. Yep. Okay. Thanks very much brother. God bless you. Thanks. Uh, what is that supposed to mean on the, uh, okay. All right. Thanks. And let's talk to Andrew. Hi, Andrew. Hi, Dr. Yes, sir. Nice to talk to you. Let me get you a Bluetooth here. Cause I'm listening to myself. Yes. Can you hear me? Yes, sir. Okay, so my question is regarding church history. There seems to be a lot of churches, and rightfully so, that embrace the idea of church authority or churches starting churches and yet i are awfully would uh... out at the same time today they would uh... rejected and seems rightfully so on the perpetuity that spoken of in for example the trail of blood and i'm wondering exactly where that line get drawn a if i were to ask that question and and go to my bible with a question how the church to be started i would be churches started by you know church started by jesus in that church in jerusalem starting other churches So, historically, we can debunk things like the Veil of Blood, but how biblically would you answer that question of what is the proper way for a church to be started, considering whatever the Bible has to say about authority? There are good ways to start churches. There are less good ways to start churches. There are bad ways to start churches. Many of the churches, for example, the churches to which the letters were written in Revelation no longer exist functionally. That's a Muslim area, primarily. Some lasted longer than others. I've always found it historically interesting that within two, less than three decades after writing such an important epistle as the epistle to the Church of Colossae, Colossae no longer existed. It was destroyed in an earthquake. And God knew that was going to happen. And so, there is no, there is a, And this requires a lot of different things to come together in our thinking that, unfortunately, a lot of evangelicals are not asked to think about with regularity. And that is our ecclesiology, our view of church history, and our understanding of God's purposes over time. And so, when I say there are better ways for a church to start, I think that, you know, the best way is for an already established church that has deep roots in sound biblical theology, that recognizes where it stands in church history, is appreciative of those who've gone before us, I think there's – I think one of the – and you're talking to the choir leader here. I mean, I've taught church history for decades and have always emphasized that I think that we cut off our nose to spite our face when we do not study church history and appreciate what Christ has done amongst His people before us. At the same time, I recognize, well, I was just thinking about this. There was an old-time church history professor at the old Covenant Seminary, not the new Covenant Seminary, but Covenant Seminary in St. Louis back in the olden days. There was a church history professor there. His name is escaping me at the moment, but I loved listening to his stuff. It was put in Apple iTunes, iTunes U, I think is what it was called, years ago. he would close each of his lessons either with a positive quotation from an ancient church father or with a sort of a little prayer that was sort of like, let us learn from the mistakes of those who went before us when he was covering bad stuff in church history. So there's a recognition that People have been sinners, and there have been errors, and there have been mistakes, and there have been movements that have lasted for hundreds of years that took people in the wrong direction. We also have to recognize that, for example, I think it's fascinating that Calvin, his favorite person to cite is Augustine, but you know who his second favorite person to cite is? Bernard of Clairvaux. In other words, there is an appreciation even when there would be a disagreement. So, when the Reformers quote Augustine, they're quoting Augustine primarily in his doctrines of grace, and the Roman Catholics are quoting Augustine for his doctrine of the church, and they both can do it because Augustine wasn't consistent with himself. And that's one of the greatest lessons that we can learn is if someone with a theological mind like that can have blind spots, so can we. Every time I've taught church history, this is what I've tried to teach people to understand, that you can appreciate people and you can learn from people even when you disagree with them over in another area or an area over there, or maybe in a bunch of different areas. It doesn't mean they didn't say things that did not have validity and can be a blessing. So having said all of that, that means church history is going to be a mixed bag. And it was in the days of the apostles. I mean, you get the real sense that Ephesus pretty much had it together. I mean, Paul trained the elders there and they had a good foundation, but then you go to Corinth and it's just sort of like, these guys can't get it straight for nothing. And you look at the first epistle of Clement to the Corinthians and years later, they still aren't getting it straight. They still have a big problem. So, that doesn't mean that there weren't good, solid Christians in Corinth either. And so, that's the reality that we face all around us. And so, I think the best way is for a church to be started, you have an eldership over them, They can give them guidance and get them going and raise up leadership from within and there's consistency and that's the way to do it, but not all churches have started that way. And there might be lots of places in the world today where churches get started and almost nobody has any clue what in the world's going on, but they're the only ones there. And so they have to do the best they can with what God's given them. And you don't want to come in there and say, oh, y'all just messed everything up, y'all just shut it down. If you get the opportunity to bless them and edify them and strengthen them and stuff like that, great, fine, wonderful, do it. But don't do it in such a way that, oh, you just totally messed everything up because you didn't do it the way that we said to do it. So, yeah, there needs to, on the far side of the Protestant experience, you have people who honestly think the church history started with Billy Graham, and they're disconnected, they're disconnected from history and everything that goes with it. And then on the other side, you have people who have actually gotten to the point where they have turned the viewpoints of those who came before them into the lenses through which they read scripture itself and hence cannot experience reformation. Those are two catastrophic ditches you do not want to fall into. And so, the challenge is balance, it's always recognizing the unique authority of scripture, but also recognizing that Christ has been building his church and he's going to continue doing so, and therefore to ignore what he has done in his people before our time is to cut off your nose to spite your face. And so that's where you find the balance, I think. And obviously, some people are going to balance that to the left of me and to the right of me, but I think that's where at least we can have a meaningful conversation as a good starting place. So if I can just add on to that, and I appreciate it so much, I'll try to be quick. I'm in a congregation, actually, that's lovely people. who believe in this Briderism, you might call it, to where if you were not started by authority all the way back to the Apostles, you don't have a church. And I can see that pattern, but I don't see necessarily that principle, and I just wonder, biblically, where would you take somebody in the Scripture to show them that, whereas it is ideal to be started from an existing church, somebody started out by other means, by whatever means they had, trying to follow the Lord the best they could, they're still a valid church. Well, you know, it's interesting, no one, I'm unaware of any information that tells us that the church at Colossae was started with some type of apostolic commission. Instead, what Paul did is he plants a healthy church in Ephesus, and the natural result of that is going to be evangelism upriver, and that's how Colossae was started. And so, there may have been another church, there may have been a believer at Colossae who goes upriver far from that and a church is planted there that we don't know about. And certainly, if persecution then all of a sudden cut off that brand new small body of believers, does that mean Christ can't build a church there? Of course not. Now, I had a hard time understanding, did you say bridalism? What did you say? Yeah, some people refer to it as Briderism, some people say Successionism or Perpetuity, Landmarkism. That's a lot of names. Yeah, see, the Church History professor guy is sitting here going, how does anyone make that meaningful argument? Because I look at Rome, Rome obviously makes that argument, and I know that that is an absolute joke. I know far too much about the history of the Roman Church. to take seriously the idea that there's some type of unbroken line of succession that is to be found there. And so, for someone outside of that to say, oh, yeah, you bet, our church, we can trace ourselves right back to the apostles. And, you know, they do it through the trail of blood through various Gnostic groups and everything else in the process, like, whoa, you do not want to go there. And here's what I would say, this is something that's very important, And that is, apostolic succession sounds like such a wonderful, wonderful thing. But what's been my emphasis down through the years? Apostolic succession must be a succession of truth, not a succession of names. So, you can claim all the apostolic succession and put together your little lists like Rome does, If the result of that is that you are not teaching the same things the apostles taught, what good is that? And the only way that we can know what the apostles taught is that we have one thing from them, and that is scripture. to say that as soon as you start going into it, yeah, you have to have this extra stuff. Now you're getting into an area where there's never going to be any certainty because we don't have anything from the apostles other than what is specifically found in Theanus' revelation. That's all there is to it. So, all right. I agree with that. Thank you very much. I appreciate your time. All right. Thanks a lot. Thanks for the call. God bless. I guess we'll go to the bottom of the hour? I mean, we could probably do this for all day. We really could. Oh, goodness. Okay. All right. I'm sorry. Yeah. Okay. So where am I supposed to go now? You're in charge of this. Oh, really? Okay. All right. Let's talk to, let's talk to Chris on Zoom. How you doing, Dr. White? I am fighting the temptation right now, Chris. I'm going to tell you. I really, really am. That's the whole point of why I'm calling. I'm just curious how much torment we're going to have this season. Well, anybody who has followed me on Twitter for a while knows poor Chris. Chris is the object of our abuse. It's actually our love, but it's also abuse. It's an abusive love, but I was... I was going to ask if you were a happy little elf today and and and things like that if you if you needed a hug and And uh, but yes, chris, uh chris with the Voice of reason radio though. I'm not sure, you know, i've been thinking about the name voice of reason. Where'd you get reason from? I mean, are you a rationalist? Uh, are you know, I mean just you know, where is this coming from? we actually phrased it that way for a particular reason because reason is a word that tends to be abused by the cultures. There's really only one true voice reason that's God's word. Okay. Everything else stems from that. Okay. The intent is to get everybody to focus back on that. So yeah, okay. I just couldn't Yeah, so some of you have seen Ultraman in the background on a couple of my videos from the Mobile Command Center. He was deposited there by Chris when he visited when we were up in the Nevada area a number of months ago and so so good I appreciate you're out there listening and I honestly I'll be honest with you I've got another trip coming up and so it's it's it's gonna be hard for me to really come up with anything overly imaginative this year as far as uh buddy uh and helping i thought buddy was a was a good start i'll have to i'll have to see if there's some other way of of helping you out with that so so there you go but we'll do our best we'll do our best well i i think you did quite well considering by the time i was done there was an entire plethora of paraphernalia in my house i know i know i know i know i just wish i just wish i'm ready I just wish that your family at night would put up some of those cutouts at the foot of the bed. That's the first thing. Or in the darkness, you see this person staying at the foot of your bed. I bet you your sons could do that. I'm giving them, because I'm an elder in a church, so I'm giving them elderly permission. Of course, you are a Leo, so we could end up with an interesting picture of Buddy with bullet holes. If that happens. So anyway, hey man, I appreciate your call. Yeah, that might be a good way for... Yeah, the cops end up visiting you. That's true, that's true. You're starting to break up a little bit on us, this first breakup on Zoom, but thanks, Chris, for your phone call today, and it was the easiest response that I've, so far, all the questions have required fairly maximal effort to put out here. So, on the phone? Okay. All right, let's talk to Rupert. Hi, Rupert. Hi, Dr. James White. Nice to meet you. How are you doing? Taking a drink, actually. Oh, okay. So I guess I wanted to ask you, as I've been kind of personally dealing with King James-only-ism from some different friends of mine and even people I don't know very well, but one claim that I've been hearing recently that I just don't know what to think about is, I keep hearing them say that, you know, the older texts, like the Alexandrian manuscripts, are corrupted, and that the Church Fathers condemned them, and instead used the Byzantine texts, which they thought were superior, and I don't know, I also hear about the demonization of Westcott and Horta's horrible, evil, cultic men, and also, this guy, he bought me a book from called the Unbroken Bible by Dr. Phil Stringer. And anyways, I was reading through it, and it seems to just be kind of the traditional King James-only arguments, pretty much. But yeah, I guess my specific question is regarding, how do we know that, like, the texts like the Nephil on the UBS and stuff like that are, you know, truly pure? Because I'm just wondering where they get these claims that they're corrupt and that they remove the claims of Jesus' blood and stuff like that. Yeah, well, again, it's quoting and then quoting and then quoting, and you can never find out where the original fact behind the quote allegedly came from. Everything that was just said there, when you talk about corrupt manuscripts, what they're saying is they're different than the manuscripts that Erasmus had access to, which, again, were between 6 and 12 manuscripts. And it's not like they're some different book. They aren't. Even a skeptic like Bart Ehrman will admit that whatever New Testament manuscript you're going to be using, it's still going to have the same message, the same general thrust. There's just going to be differences at specific points. And so it's an accusation of corruption. When they say the early church fathers condemned one side and the other, that's just a lie. It's just not true. No one in the past knew even what text types were. It's not like, well, you had people who knew, well, we have these manuscripts and we'll only use them. We're not going to use those over there. It's just not true. You just simply ask them, okay, show me where the early church writers identified manuscripts in the way you're identifying them and said the things you're saying. They can't. They're quoting somebody who heard somebody in a speech 20 years ago said something and that's where it's coming from. The reality is that you simply have a manuscript tradition and you do end up with one very clearly identifiable family of manuscripts called the Byzantine manuscripts, and there's an obvious reason for this. And that's because of what happened between 632 and 732 in history. In 632, Muhammad dies, and over the next 100 years, uh... islam spreads uh... out of the arabian peninsula up through the holy lands out toward uh... the east all across north africa and across into europe until it finally is halted uh... at the battle of tours in seven thirty two so for a hundred years all those places that it spread to were christian areas prior to the rise of islam and so the language, the ecclesiastical language in the West, in Rome, so Italy, places like that, had already become Latin starting in the late 2nd into the 3rd centuries. Tertullian, the father of Latin theology, is key for that. And so, where is Greek manuscript production going to be centered? after the rise of Islam? Well, primarily around a place called Byzantium, Constantinople, and hence the popular text that had become established in that particular area by that time in history is going to be the primary manuscripts that are going to be being copied. And so, the majority text is Byzantine, But when we go back to the earlier centuries, I think it's vitally important when the Church was fighting against the early forms of anti-Trinitarianism in the form of oneness teaching, not oneness, modern oneness, but Sabellianism, modalism, dynamic monarchism, etc., etc., when it was dealing with Arianism and the denial of the deity of Christ, what what manuscripts were they using? What did they read? And when we can actually now, over the past hundred years, actually find manuscripts that are older than that time period, what do they say? And when you look at P66, P75, the two earliest manuscripts we have of the Gospel of John, they are not of the Byzantine family. That does not mean that they teach something different than what you would have in, say, Codex Alexandrinus a couple hundred years later, Codex Washingtonianus, early, early representatives in some parts of what would become the Byzantine text type. If you use the same rules of hermeneutics, you're going to be coming up with the same beliefs. But as far as the readings are concerned, the farther back we go, this same series of readings is found in the papyri and then in the great unseals like Vaticanus and Sinaiticus and things like that. And so history doesn't bear out the accusations that King James only us make when they talk about corrupted scriptures and stuff like that. They just, they're making it up. They're saying, well, you have manuscripts that came from Antioch and you have manuscripts that came from Alexandria. Prove it. Prove it. They can't. They can't even begin to prove it. It is pure speculation. It is pure assertion. You can't document it with actual manuscripts at all. But it takes on a life of its own amongst the King James Only-ists, and it becomes an echo chamber. This guy writes a book, that guy writes a book, and then somebody quotes those two people, and it sounds like now you have three people saying the same thing, when it's the same lie just being repeated over and over again. And uh, that's that's the problem. Uh, so uh There were there were some other things I think oh and real quickly, uh Because we do have some other people. Um, even though come to think of it, uh, one of the callers on uh, Oh, no, it's same one. Okay. No, no, uh, Is there someone on zoom? Oh, it's also king james only Oh, okay. I thought someone on Zoom was. Anyways, you had mentioned taking the blood out. Yeah, or bad guys and like it being a part of right, right, right, right, right, right, right? Well, the fact the matter is no one's using the Westcott and Hort text except Jehovah's Witnesses to be perfectly honest with you. They're still using it because it's royalty-free. Again, these folks are a hundred years behind the times. The Nesjalland 28th edition is not the Westcott and Hort text. Westcott and Hort were Anglicans at the end of the 19th century. So, Hort was less conservative than Westcott, but if you read Westcott's commentary on Hebrews and compare that to anything that would be produced by anything other than the Sydney Anglicans today, any other Anglicans anywhere, it's more conservative than anything that could be found anywhere. It's an excellent commentary. So they are accused of all sorts of wild and crazy stuff. People put ellipses into their quotes, and I even document in the King James Only controversy where they tried to change Hort's words to make it sound like he was worshipping Mary and all the rest of the stuff, and it was the exact opposite when you actually look at what the quotation was. But they're doing this because they're that far behind. They can't deal with modern textual critical materials, and so they're that far behind, so they're attacking stuff that's no longer relevant at all. And the whole accusation about taking the blood out is all based upon a single variant that I actually talked about in Twitter two days ago, and that is in Ephesians chapter 1, you have the phrase, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our sins. And in Colossians, when Paul uses the same phraseology, he says we have forgiveness, he doesn't include through his blood. Well, some scribe about nine centuries after the birth of Christ, either because he knew it was in Ephesians or he had it memorized and so just assumed it was there, inserted through his blood into the relevant passage in Colossians 1. There were no manuscripts for nearly a thousand years that had that reading. But it appears later on there are a small number, handful of manuscripts that have that reading, but Erasmus happened to use one of them. So, it's in the TR, even though the majority text doesn't have it, it's not really the Byzantine reading for that text, and it's unknown in the early church. And so, that's not taking it out, it was added in by mistake by a scribe nearly a thousand years after the birth of Christ and all of a sudden we're supposed to take that as the standard. That's why I say the fundamental issue is what did the apostles write? That is what we must be focused upon, and when you stay focused upon that, you'll reject King James-onlyism, and you'll reject TR-onlyism as well. No question about it. Yeah, and if I may very, very quickly insert this last thing, So, a lot of people will point into the Nestle Island and say that, like, hey, look, it says the Vatican supervised this, so that means the Catholic Church corrupted it. Would you say that is false, or what is the whole deal with that? The editorial committee is drawn from a wide, wide, wide variety of folks because it's published by Bible Society, and that Bible Society is involved with every kind of Christian church that's out there. So remember, you've got everyone from believing Protestants through scholarly Roman Catholics and a few people in between that are involved in the committee, but since it is a critical text, their decisions First of all, there's a commentary, Metzger put the commentary out a long time ago, it's dated now, obviously, by a long shot, but that gave you the original reasoning for why certain variants were viewed the way they were. Most of the stuff that's done today is really based upon what's called the ECM, the Dicio Critico Mayor, which is being done by the folks at Munster. The Vatican is simply using this stuff. In fact, we should see that as a victory, to be honest with you, because the primary counter-Reformation attack of Rome was to attack the Greek text. and to assert the supremacy of the Latin Vulgate. They lost that battle. They've given that up, and so there you go. If all we were handed was a text like the TR that has no notes in it, and they said, here, believe this, I'd have a problem with having Roman Catholics on the committee. I have all the documentation right in front of me because of the way they publish it, so I can analyze those readings myself and come to my own decisions and I don't have to worry about that. So that's something to keep in mind. Okay. Well, okay. Thank you. That was very helpful. Okay. To me and these discussions. Okay. Thanks, Rupert. Appreciate it. We're gonna try to get to some other folks here. And I have no idea where I'm going. Going to Andrew on Zoom. Hi, Andrew. Hello, Andrew. That's the first person we've lost on Andrew. What's that? Oh, going to unmute him there. There he is. Yes, I can hear you now. Fantastic. First things first, I just got to ask this question really quick. I know you're moving your mobile command center all over the great country of Texas. When are you going to visit the People's Republic of Austin? You know, my understanding is that the CCP has already started building a wall around Austin and is in full control of everything that happens in Austin, so I'm not sure I'd get back out, to be honest with you. Because, I mean, let's face it. What's the deepest blue spot in all of Texas? It's Austin. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of... so is that where you're located? I'd rather not reveal my location to the CCP right now, but all I'll say is that I have to climb over that wall every time I go to and from work. I gotcha. I fully understand. The trip that is scheduled, and I am reminded by bodily weakness that these things are all just scheduled right now, but everybody pray that we'll be able to do it. Right now, I am supposed to be in Amarillo. for a Sunday and then a following Monday. I've got something really big going on there that I hope folks would pray for. I'll tell everybody about it later on. And then, on the way back, I'm popping down to Lubbock for uh... the last weekend that i'm out uh... so this particular trip is more northern on my way through cuz my my terminal destination is saint charles missouri so i've got a sort of go north easterly uh... but obviously I've got a lot of friends in Dallas. I know San Antonio is a deep blue spot too, but I love the Riverwalk there. I got to visit San Antonio during Christmas one year and just fell in love with the Riverwalk. It was gorgeous. Again, I don't know if I could even... be allowed in. I'm sure the unvaxxed are considered to be persona non grata in places like that. But I've got a trip, hopefully, headed toward Florida in late January, early February, and if that goes the southern route all the way, then coming through The Houston, that lower portion of Texas is definitely in the plans and definitely very doable because the I-10 is one of my return routes. I can get through New Mexico really fast that way. Awesome, awesome. So, my actual question has to do with the topic of theosis. Ever since I heard Hank Canegraaff, who was my, honestly, my first introduction to apologetics, move over to the Orthodox side, I've just been studying that whole movement. And haven't found a whole lot from evangelicals, have you? I'm telling you, people keep telling me, and we'll get to theolysis in a second, but people keep telling me, you've got to address orthodoxy. If you've been studying it, then you know how complicated and difficult that is, because real orthodoxy does not think in a Western fashion. It thinks the liturgy is the mechanism of the communication of the theology and the doctrine. And one of their criticisms of the West is that we are far too forensic in our thinking as it is. So, mystery, energy, I do actually, I'm so thankful that years and years and years and years and years ago, I had the opportunity of dialoguing with a, I believe, a convert to orthodoxy. This was before, this was at the early time of the internet. This was either in some of those early, early, or it may have even been on a BBS. I'm not 100% certain, but that's how long ago it was. But the point was, he was a guy who could communicate with me And hence, I was able to understand what these things are, but I'm not sure that I'm smart enough to bridge that chasm. I'm not sure that anyone ever has, to be honest with you. It is a huge chasm. And I don't know about you, but when I look at what Hank's doing, I find it fascinating that he can't avoid the pitfall for Eastern Orthodox apologists, and that is adopting a westernized version of orthodoxy. because you end up sounding like a Roman Catholic rather than an Orthodox person in the stuff that you're saying because you are trying to do apologetics in a Western context. And I've just found that fascinating, too. But let me explain what theosis is before you ask your question, because nobody, let's be honest with you, what percentage of you evangelicals have even heard the term? And by the way, I did address theosis in one chapter in my book, Is the Mormon My Brother?, because Mormon apologists and scholars and writers make reference to theosis as if it has parallels to the Mormon doctrine of exaltation to godhood, which I can assure you Joseph Smith had no earthly connection to any of that. But theosis is the concept that you see developing fairly early on in the Eastern Fathers. There's some shadows of it in Athanasius, and then it certainly grows far beyond that so that by the 7th, 8th, 9th centuries, which I would say is the seedbed of the tradition that is orthodoxy today is that time period, that John of Damascus, Maximus, all those folks. And it's the concept of that glorification involves the And I have to be very careful here, because Athanasius would have bristled at the idea of an ontological confusion of the creature with the Creator. But Theosis can, in especially mystical expressions of it, almost sound like there is a blurring of the line between the creature and the creator so that when Peter says we partake of the divine nature, that's the key text as far as in the New Testament, that this is taken to mean that there is a sense in which men become godlike not God's in competition to God, not eternal in the sense that God is eternal, but that there is a fundamental change that takes place in glorification. And again, it depends on which author you're reading as to exactly how they make applications. So anyway, you may want to change that to fit specifically what you're reading about theosis or go from there. Well, I guess the real question was, is that has there at least within the Western context, whether it be within the Roman Catholic context or even within the Protestant context, has there ever been any sort of theosis idea put forward? Because I hear it occasionally. I'm brought up or kind of given a pat on the head from certain out there Protestants, but I I just don't really ever see it in the West. I have a friend who does listen regularly who If he wasn't what he is, I know he would be orthodox. He knows exactly who I'm talking about and there's something in the background that he and I share. And he is a dear friend and I love you, brother, and I continue to pray for you. And I mean that in the sense that I learn much from him and stuff like that. I'll bet you he'll send me some stuff and maybe I'll remember to mention it on the program next time around if he does. But I smiled a little bit when you asked the question because what's interesting is one person who has been, and it would not be because, to my knowledge, he had no knowledge of orthodoxy, but there is one person who has been identified as having a similar concept in his thinking and in his writings that you may have heard of and you might be do you know who i'm do you know who i'm hinting at no who jonathan edwards what jonathan edwards yeah jonathan edwards um you read some of the things that edwards um wrote on glorification And you sort of go, huh, was he reading some Eastern fathers? And I don't see any evidence that he was. Now, Edwards did speculate about a lot of stuff, and sometimes it got him into trouble. His speculations on Adam's will prior to the fall, prelapsarian stuff, got him into trouble. But yeah, what's interesting is I have heard various writers, and I see what they're saying, say that Edwards said some things that would move in that direction, but without having been influenced by those writings specifically. So that's about all I, I mean, obviously some of the medieval mystics will, but mysticism is going to connect with mysticism all across the board. It doesn't even, the thing that's scary about mysticism is that you'll find Christian mystics that sound just like Buddhist mystics that sound just like Muslim mystics, because mysticism is the connection there, and that's why mystics end up abandoning in general, the objectivity of revelation, whether it's the Quran or Bhagavad Gita or whatever. And so, mystics could be put into that list someplace, but I'm not sure that it's a real meaningful connection because obviously, at least in the early centuries where Eastern writers are developing a theotic concept, they're doing so especially within the context of the rise of Islam. And so, they are still connected to scripture in a meaningful fashion in that way. So, that's different than some of the later mystics. But yeah, no, outside of that, I I'll be interested in what my friend has to say. He might have some interesting stuff that I could throw out there for you, but that's the only thing I would be able to put out there. Oh, trust me. I grew up around Boston. I'm very aware that mistakes, they... float together, regardless of whether or not they're Muslim, Buddhist, or Christian. That's true. That's true. There's just something about that city. I don't know. Anyway. Best Mexican food in the world. God bless you, Dr. White. Okay. Thanks a lot for your phone call. I appreciate it. Gotta go. Bye-bye. All right. Hey, I went... Honestly, we went 37 minutes longer than I thought we were. And so I'm sorry, guys, if there's anybody... Oh. Oh. Oh, man. Okay, Rich... I wish you all... The Rich cam was not turned on when Rich was going... But that's what he was doing. That's exactly what his watch... He is so, so proud of himself. Something tells me that we'll be doing this again in the not-too-distant future. Now, what would be really interesting? What would be really interesting? This guy seems to think he's got it together now. He's doing this number. What's the topic? Well, now that you've mentioned him, the poor guy, now I'm stuck. I've got to. It's your fault. But here's what would be really interesting. We'll do this real quick. I'm gonna have to really quick, James. Hold on a second. But if he's really good, then we should be able to do this in the other studio. Oh, Rich is going. Oh, yeah. No problem. No problem. All right. Okay, James, real quick. We've gone way, way long. I'll have to brief. Hit me up. Hey, Dr. White, sorry I'm using a pseudonym, but hey, I have a question on dispensationalism. Is there any way to reconcile the kingship of Christ now within a dispensationalist framework? Because I had a conversation with someone, and I mentioned, you know, that Christ is King, and this person said, no. He's not, not yet. He's Lord, but he's not King. And I really don't want to talk about the context in which this conversation happened. I hear you. I hear you. I understand where you're coming from. I hear you. Okay, so I'm going to try to contextualize this to where it's obvious that you are right now, because there are obviously forms of dispensationalism that are moving away from the historically defined categories, but it sounds like you're dealing with more of the rock-ribbed, old-style, maybe even looking at Schofield with a bit of concern that he's not quite as strict as he needs to be, kind of dispensationalism. And in that context, my understanding would be that there is a fatal conflict between the recognition of the full-orbed exaltation of Christ right now and the hope for future manifestation of that, though I'll be honest with you, in my experience, most dispensationalist writers of old struggled with the unity of the person of Christ in his offices. In other words, if you look at the Westminster Confession, London Baptist Confession, you look at the catechisms, there is an emphasis in covenant theology, Reformed theology, on Christ as prophet, priest, and king. and that he not only fulfilled these things in his life upon earth, but he does so now as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and the irony of that is Christ's kingship is just as central to the reality of his resurrected personage as his mediatorship is. So, how can you, because I mean, most dispensationalists that I know obviously believe that Christ is interceding before, is at the right hand of the throne of the Father and he's interceding. That's a clear, direct biblical teaching. But that's part of the same reality of lordship and kingship and priesthood and mediatorship and this is all the one Christ. And so, the idea that there are certain very important aspects of Christ, what is, really, it's Christ's exaltation. The irony is, right now, the catechism question that we're using at Apologia, and we need to get to the next one, but this is what we've been using for a while, is talking about Christ's exaltation, and what's interesting is It asks in what is Christ's exaltation? What is involved in that? And yes, it's his exaltation, right hand of the Father, but it's his kingly reigning in that role and submission of enemies under his feet and everything that goes along with it, which would not fit into the old style forms of dispensationalism. But like I said, Outside of the IFB, where is that kind of dispensationalism actually flourishing and growing? Because there just seems to be so many today who have recognized there needs to be a fundamental reorientation of a lot of that stuff to where it becomes leaky dispensationalists and things like that over time. But yeah, there would seem to be a a contradiction there, and I would encourage any of my dispensationalist friends to consider well the glory of the reality that Christ must reign until all his enemies are put under his feet. And if we see his enemies being put under his feet now, and we do, we have seen many of Christ's enemies put under his feet, and there are more to be put under his feet, that means he's reigning. That means he's reigning. The fulfillment of Psalm 2. Put forth that righteous scepter. Reign. That's what Christ is doing, and it's a glorious thing. So, and don't worry about the pseudonym. You picked a fairly decent name there, so. All right? Greek. I'm sorry? That was something I picked up on in Matthew chapter 28, and seeing a connection between Matthew chapter 28 and Daniel713. Yep. There's definitely a connection there. Sorry I cranked up the question on you. I heard someone else talking about the Trail of Blood, and so I apologize for that. Okay, no problem. We appreciate it, and I'm glad we got to you. Okay, thanks, James. Bye-bye. All right, there we go. Almost a mega edition. Yikes. Those do go faster, don't they? Wouldn't you agree? Those go fast. You didn't have the opportunity of writing any of those down, so I'm not going to remember those. Oh, you did? Okay, good. Those are all we got to? Man, I thought we got to a lot more than that. I guess I talked a lot. Mine stops with Nick at Colossians 2 and ends with Trail of Blood. Well, okay. Yeah, okay. All right, folks. I do need to continue on. We are going to be continuing on looking at middle knowledge. We have not only Dr. Craig's presentation to really make sure we've walked through it completely, but we have other folks to look at as well. Who, though, since they are associated with Craig, are not going to contradict Craig, but have different takes that might be helpful in examining. So much other stuff to be talking about that takes place every single day. It's amazing. You don't do the program over the weekend and stuff that happened after the program on Thursday by the next Tuesday is old news. It's just the speed is astonishing. We need to continue to pray that God would protect his people because that is a great need. Anyways, thanks for listening to the program today. I hope those answers were helpful to everybody. Thanks for all the calls. They were great calls. And Lord willing, we'll see you next time. God bless.