And greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. Got a lot to get to today, if we're going to be able to open the phones at all. So I need to jump right into it. And that's what most people want me to do. Anyways, we get a few people complain about less than the first few minutes, because it's just it's just you talking about whatever. So we'll just skip past all of that human stuff. Just get to just, you know, I don't want much to think we're, you know, human beings or something. We're just bots anyways. So Yeah, the uninteresting human interest stuff. Yeah, for some people. We won't get into who has said that in the past. But anyway, I had the opportunity yesterday, and I mentioned on Twitter or Facebook or both, I don't remember, but mentioned finally having had the opportunity to actually watch, mainly listen to, but watch, there wasn't a whole lot to watch. The exchange between sean mcdowell and matthew vines now of course most of some of you may remember. We did a five-hour, I think five-hour response to Matthew Vines, what, about 2012, maybe? It's been quite some time. When his initial video, about hour-long, hour- and ten-minute-long video, sort of went viral, we did a very full response to it. Matthew Vines then founded the Reformation Project, which its fundamental purpose is to change the theology of the Christian Church. It is, that's, That's what they want to do. Their perspective is that just as the church has been wrong on geocentrism, which his argument wouldn't work with Bob's and Jenna's, I suppose. But anyway, that'll be an interesting debate. I'm not sure I want to necessarily watch that one. Just as the church has been wrong on scientific things or something in the past that the church is wrong on the issue of homosexuality well the whole LGBT even you know when homosexuals. throw in polyamory, which he doesn't. He talks about monogamy. Why, I don't know, because the only meaningful concept, the only reason that you have two is the gender binary, the created gender binary of male and female, which is under such horrific attack. in Western society today. It's evil to believe that's a good thing in our society today. But the idea of bisexual just by itself cannot be fit into a meaningful, monogamous, covenantal concept. homosexuality can't either when you really understand what a covenant is and the necessary aspects of what a biblical covenant would be. And transgender is... In fact, I saw a new word today. What was that word? Oh, where was that? It was... I think I guess I heard it on... Oh yeah, I heard it on the briefing. It was Trans and Miseo, something. It's hating of transgenders. It was the Harvard Christian group that's on probation until they change their theology, basically. And Harvard founded to proclaim the glory of Jesus Christ, now in doing everything it can to banish the name of Jesus Christ from its buildings, which were built all by people who believed in Jesus Christ. But anyway, the utter secularization and the totalitarian nature of secularization, the two go together. cannot allow for freedom, liberty, expression of other opinions, anything like that. Secularism is totalitarianism in its total essence. Anyway, so Vines presents this stuff. It doesn't flow together in the sense that the arguments for homosexuality are different for transgenderism, which is different for bisexuality, which is, you know, the whole nine yards, let alone all the questioning and everything else that goes into those various terms. But anyway, we had responded fully to his arguments at that time, and he was aware of that because our video had been watched many times as well, so he was certainly aware of it. So when he mentioned he was going to be writing a book, He had actually said on Twitter that once the book came out, he would want to do a debate with me. And once the book came out, that was the last thing he wanted to do and has yet to do so. Though our challenge has been out there for quite some time, we would love to do a two-man, myself and Michael Brown versus himself and maybe Dr. Brownson, if you'd like to have him along. I did find it interesting that in Vines' book, He shifted the emphasis from the arguments that he had initially used in the talk that he had given in Kansas over to Brownson's material. But in this dialogue with McDowell, it was a mixture of stuff. Some of his old stuff, which we had refuted long ago, comes back, which isn't really consistent with some of Brownson's stuff. There's just a lot of confusion. And it does seem to me, I haven't been spending much time over the past couple of years since his book came out, focusing much on listening to Matthew Vines, especially when he went, nah, I'm not going to do that debate. But it seems to me that the range of argumentation that he'll draw from depends on what audience he's talking to. And so he'll craft his – and I don't mean that necessarily in the sense that obviously when I'm teaching the young people, I'm going to use different vocabulary than when I'm teaching in a seminary. It's the actual arguments you use. I've said many, many times. This was the truth at the beginning of this century when Jeff Neal and I wrote The Same-Sex Controversy, the large amount of literature available from the pro-homosexual side at that time, which was nothing compared to today. even at that time, was an incoherent, self-contradictory mass of stuff. Most of the books would use numerous arguments that contradicted other arguments in it, as long as it was an argument for homosexuality or, in a better way to put it, as long as it was an argument against traditional Christian teaching on sexuality. Use it. It doesn't matter if you're contradicting yourself. Use it. And that seems to still be the case with the pro-homosexual side. And why shouldn't it be? They have the media. They have the social conversation. It's not because they won. It's because the other side utilizes totalitarianism, suppression of speech, the Hawaiian Yards. That's just what the left is all about. So anyway, once you get into the Q&A part, at the end of the dialogue, there were a couple places where I was not on board with some of the things that Sean McDowell said, but especially his opening, and then the cross-examination. Spot on. I mean, really, I was extremely impressed. He recognized in only 20 minutes. There was no way to cover what the other side calls the clobber passages, stuff like that. He was presuppositional. Sean McDowell, he was presuppositional in the sense that he very wisely chose to go directly at Matthew Vine's primary initial argument in his book and then give a devastating Jesus-based response and just do that. He didn't go to Leviticus, he didn't go to Genesis, he didn't go to Romans 1, he didn't go to 1 Corinthians 6, didn't go to 1 Timothy 1. He very wisely, I thought, given the context, laid out Vine's central argument and then blew it out of the water. And Then, in the Q&A, he dominated the Q&A section, and he would not allow Vines to drag him off subject, and openly said, you're twisting the scriptures, you're reading things in, you're twisting the scriptures, that's not what it says. He was very straightforward, and I really appreciated that. There were just a couple things during the Q&A I would not have answered in the same way he did, but other than that, it was I was just amening all the way through it. And so I noticed that Michael Brown had complimented Sean McDowell. Well, Michael tends to be complimentary toward a lot of folks. So now I know exactly why he was complimentary to a lot of folks. It was a great presentation. It was very focused. It's a good addition to the materials that are available out there. I did want to play just a section and briefly respond to one of the elements of Vines' presentation. If you go back, and we have a lot of new people, if you go back in the archives, look up terms like vines, homosexuality, Gushie, G-U-S-H-E-E, Dr. David Gushie, look up some of the really long series that we've done, many, many hours, series. We have really gone in-depth on this subject. We really, really have. We don't do it all the time. I don't know that anyone can survive listening to something like this. It's a difficult topic. It really, really is. But we have many times addressed the fact that in amongst those who try to present the idea that a homosexual lifestyle, gay marriage, transgenderism, this revisionist perspective is actually respectably Christian, will speak of covenantal, monogamous, loving relationships. That's how they just sort of just completely dismiss, well, Genesis 18-19, that's irrelevant because that's just gang rape, and we're talking about covenantal, loving, monogamous relationships. There's no parallel here. And then they will admit, and Matthew Vines admits in this dialogue, there's nothing in the Bible that says anything positive about gay marriages. There's nothing in the Bible that even hints at such an attitude. I wish it had been pointed out, because this is something I have pointed out many times before. If Jesus is truly God, then when Jesus uttered the words that he uttered in Matthew 19, From Matthew Vine's perspective, he would have to have known that there are people standing in front of him who were closeted, but themselves, naturally, and God-ordained, homosexuals. And so, how could Jesus, you know, the idea is, well, you know, the church hasn't, let's leave the, okay, the church has done dumb things in the past. This is Jesus we're talking about. You're telling me that Jesus said words that were hurtful to your people, weren't your people around back then? If this is a natural thing, they were. So, Jesus had the opportunity to set them free at that point, didn't do it. Hmm, that didn't come up. That didn't come up. But this idea of this covenantal monogamous relationship. Nothing in Scripture about this. It is a total violation of the concept of what a Christian covenant or any type of covenant, biblically, would be. You cannot covenant with another man who is not an etzer konegdo to you. Etzer konegdo is a term in Genesis 126, a helpmate suitable of the same but opposite of one another. There is a fundamental proper relationship that exists between male and female. There is a complementarity that exists between male and female, and it's a part of the created order. It's a part of the created order. You can't get around it. And it does not exist with a mirror image. There is something wrong with the idea of trying to create in a mirror image your complementary person. It's not biblical. It's not a part of the Christian worldview. It will never be a part of the Christian worldview. You can try to force it in there, but it will always be foreign. It'll always be foreign. So you have that, and then you have this form of argumentation. And I'm just sort of starting almost probably in the middle of a sentence here, but let's just catch some of it and we'll go from there. How we felt about things, that's a pretty subjective grounding to Decide our opinions based on in our beliefs based on but I do think that experience plays a role sometimes in leading us back to the biblical text to look at it more closely and As Sean talked about Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount he's talking about false prophets and false teachers and I think that the principle the offers is applicable to teachings as well that a Good tree will bear good fruit and a bad tree will bear bad fruit and I don't think it's as subjective as a person's, you know, just somebody is having a hard go with something. I think we can look to biblical definitions of what is good fruit. Yes, it is obedience, but I also think it's... Now, let me explain something. Sean had short-circuited him here. He had taken this argument and he had said, Matthew is wrong. He's twisting what Jesus said here. When Jesus talks about good fruit, he's not talking about good feelings. Because the argument that Vines uses is, well, look, if Christian teaching causes people to commit suicide, or to leave the Church, or to have hard feelings toward the Church, then that's not good fruit, and therefore the Church's position can't be true. Now, there are so many logical problems there that it's astounding. I mean, there are many thieves who over the centuries have been angry with the church because the church said stealing other people's property is wrong. Well, where is the wrong there? It's in the thief, not in the church. There are many people who have left the church because they committed adultery, because they love having sex with lots of women. not unnatural desires, but an unnatural, excessive desire. And so they commit adultery, they commit fornication, and then blame the church for, quote-unquote, rejecting them. The reality is, all of the promises in Scripture for people who are in Christ are for repentant individuals. Repentant individuals. Once you take the position that you can determine what aspects of God's revelation you're going to believe and what you're not going to believe based upon your own personal experience, the whole concept of repentance goes out the window. You can't repent. You can only make God repent or the church repent. You become the standard. It becomes subjective. And so, Sean had already taken that out. And so you hear him say there, well, yeah, it is obedience, because Sean has said, hey, the point here is false prophets are going to be recognized in that they're going to be disobedient to God's law. And they're going to lead you into disobedience. There is a standard here. And the good fruit is this, and the bad fruit's that. And that destroys Vine's entire argument. You know, when you get to go first, but the other guy has the argument you're going after, it's almost unfair. I mean, you know, but he took advantage of it. And when you take out the other guy's primary argument from the start, then this is Vines trying to sort of repair that, and you'll see how it goes. Monogamous committed same-sex relationships, and those were not the result that I was seeing of the rejection that people experienced at the hands of the church. At the hands of the church, the church that's being faithful to the revelation that has been given to that church. Are we frozen up there? Oh. Okay, I'm just looking up there and Matthew's just Oh, that's okay. We just got Rich daydreaming. Evidently, he just wandered off into the Na-Na land. Matthew is not in sync. Oh, I'm not sure why Matthew's not in sync. I'm not either? Oh, you're not either. Okay, I got you. Anyway, so what he wants to do is, and again, this is a a common exegetical error. I think this is why Matthew won't debate against those of us who've known his positions and know Brownson's positions and do exegesis, is because his exegesis is indefensible, and that came up in the cross-examination with Sean. Sean pushed him on it, and Matthew folded up. I mean, he could not provide any meaningful exegetical basis for what he was saying. It was very, very well done. I don't know. I sort of wonder if Matthew expected Sean to be quite as strong as he was, but that's... I have no idea. I don't know Sean McDowell. Never talked to him. I don't know anything about him, but he did a great job on this. Anyway, he wants to just go, well, since it's fruit in Matthew 7, and it's fruit over in Galatians 5, and Sean took him to Galatians 5 and said, hey, look at everything that Paul says in Galatians, and in Galatians 5 in particular, and you're not going to get the idea that when he talks about goodness and meekness and self- I mean self-control, From Paul's perspective, homosexuality is out of that category. I mean, there is no way for you to honestly look in a camera and say, yes, I think if Paul were sitting here today, that he would say that our monogamous, covenantal, faithful relationships are described by the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5. Because Paul's entire category is provided by God's law. And so the idea that you can have a covenantally faithful slanderer doesn't fit, let alone the fact that Paul specifically refers to the arsenokoitai. And again, the revisionists have lots and lots of excuses to try to get around the meaning of these words, but when you can allow the New Testament or the Bible as a whole to speak consistently, there's just no way around these things. There's no way around these things. But this is how you hear it being argued. And so the idea that is being presented is we can't hold to a biblical perspective because those who are impacted by it will claim to be hurt by it. And of course, the only meaningful response to that is to say, if it is truly the biblical perspective, if it is truly God's truth from Scripture, then those who are violating his standards are the ones who are being destroyed by their non-repentance. To blame God's truth for hard feelings or, you know, when people say, he quotes the number, these people are 8.4 times more likely to commit suicide. Well, I've said before, I would love for somebody to do a study What's the percentage of suicide amongst pedophiles who are identified and captured, or at least identified? And immediately you're not allowed to say that. Well, you're comparing. .. No, I'm saying here is what is identified as an unnatural, disordered, desire amongst mankind. Here's two different versions of it. It's not the same desire, but with different objects. And if you apply the logic that we're hearing from this side, the result is that the church should embrace our LGBTQP pedophile brothers and sisters, right? Because if they're hurt by their being rejected by the church, and the only reason that they would have a higher suicide rate is the church's fault, not that there might be anything in this behavior or in these disordered desires that actually represents something fundamentally wrong in the person, fundamentally disordered in the person. No other generation prior to ours would have ever struggled to understand this. It's only our day. Every generation up to now. And of course, our generation now, this younger generation, just simply goes, well, that's because no one back then had any heart. They didn't have any compassion. That's baloney. The reality is that compassion without morality, ethics, and a meaningful worldview becomes sticky sentimentality that will destroy any culture. It's the end of any meaningful cultural advancement and experience. But this type of an argument appeals to those who make decisions based upon emotion, rather than rational thought, having a formed worldview. This emotes, but when it's examined, and anymore, I mean, just look at our university campuses. You're not even allowed to examine the thought behind, the arguments behind this kind of thing. You're not even allowed to examine it. And there's a reason for it. The left knows they cannot survive. They cannot survive if their arguments are actually examined. So I would highly recommend that if you want to catch it, it's called, What Does the Bible Say About Homosexuality? Sean McDowell and Matthew Vines in Conversation. While it was a conversation, it was much closer to a debate than most conversations end up being. And I think you would find it to be very, very useful. And so I highly recommend it to you. Next thing, need to talk to... Those of you, we know, and if you're recording this to try to find me making a hand sign that you can identify as demonic or whatever else it might be, using it for whatever purposes, we're not talking to you, talking to our brothers and sisters who tune in because they're blessed and because they support what we're doing, need to come to you again because we have a major trip coming up. And it is a missions trip. It is a trip where we'll be doing debates. We're certainly going to arrange a debate in London with Peter D. Williams on Roman Catholicism once again. We're going to be down in South Africa. I'm going to be doing my best to do as I've been requested to do. And in fact, we're building the whole In fact, I haven't heard back from him from yesterday. But anyway, we're building the whole thing around going to Zambia and teaching for Vody Balcombe there at the African Bible College. And so once we get that nailed down, then we'll figure out on which side of it we can do stuff in Johannesburg, Potsdam, and then going and coming. I would really like to try to work this one out to where we... One of those two is London, one of those two would be up in Scotland. I would love to see Nick Needham. I haven't written to Nick yet, but hey Nick, can we work something out? I'd love to get to Inverness. Glasgow, I'd love to see Jim Handyside again, if he'd even see me. It's been so long. But try to arrange, I've always wanted to get a debate arranged up in the Glasgow area. There's a lot of, there's a very strong Islamic presence up there, so I'd love to try to arrange something up there. But obviously, we're once again talking about nearly three weeks. While I'm down in the Joburg area, you know, it's wonderful. We've been down there enough times now that it's almost not like traveling, because when you have tremendous friends and brothers and sisters in the Lord, you know, part of what gets people sick and stuff is the stress they're under. And traveling can be incredibly stressful. There's no choice about it. But when I'm in South Africa, most of the time I'm with Rudolf. And Rudolf is one of my Timothys around the world, you might say. Dear brother. It's like being with family. It is being with family. And there is a family that I stay with. in the johannesburg area and it's sort of like oh hey james the room's ready you know uh dinners at such and so you know got laundry to do you know it's just sort of like you've just been away from home for a while and and you're back again and uh you pet the bunny for a while they've got a little pet bunny and uh and uh you know i'm gonna go for a run now and i i I know all the paths around the neighborhood. I know where the things to jump over to not trip and fall while running in the dark are. I've done it so many times. So that really helps tremendously. It really, really, really does. And London, oh man, I'll tell you. It's just an incredible place. It's neat to be at, and we've got good friends there. The last time I was there, I spoke at a church. I'm going to try to work with them again, and we've got stuff going on. So anyways, yeah, it's a long time to be away. And I've always said I sort of have a about a two week, you know, sort of like when you buy a carton of milk, after about two weeks, you're not really sure you want to be drinking that anymore. But I'm getting better at this. So we can we can push it back a little bit longer. So Anyway, it's expensive. You all have always been there to make it possible for us to do this. Again, we're talking about a number of possibilities of some really cool debates and dialogues and teaching opportunities in South Africa, Zambia, and the United Kingdom. And we're looking at May, so we've only got about two months. to come up with the funds to make this happen. It is expensive, especially staying in London. Even with some folks that have helped us out in the past finding the good places to stay, it's still, you know, hotels in London are hotels in London, and transportation, and of course, flight tickets are the primary things. We don't do much in the way of fundraising. We're not big fundraisers along those lines, but we let people know. And I think a lot of folks like to help support something like this because when the debates come out, the videos come out, a lot of folks are like, I helped make that happen. I had something to do with that. And I think that's pretty cool. So anyway, If you go to the website, there's a link for the travel fund somewhere. It's under the donation section. There's a travel fund there. And if you want to help us get pretty much halfway around the world, because when you go that far south, I'm not sure how, you know, exactly how that... It's only nine hours. I think it's nine hours. Depends the time of year, obviously, because here in Phoenix, we don't play with our clocks, but by May, I think it's... Yeah, it's nine hours, I think, to Joburg. So that's not quite halfway around the world that direction, but it certainly is down there, because May will be going into the winter down there, which is the best time to go. No two ways about it. So... We'll let you know more about as we get stuff firmed up. It's going to take a lot of work to get this trip put together. But we'll let you know more about it's firmed up. But we need your assistance in getting there. So I needed to let you know about that. Appreciate someone sent me Dr. Kruger's new book, Christian at the Crossroads, even though I did humorously rib him about the fact that I didn't have it, and he still didn't say that to me. Someone else did, thank you very, very much. And I just happened, I was doing something, I think I was transferring a file or something, and so I had it in here, and so I started looking through it, and I ran across this section. We've talked about this before, but it's sort of neat to read it from somebody else and make a quick application. And then we've got one other thing to cover, and then we'll look at opening phones. Looking under the chapter called alternative pathways, in other words, some of the earlier movements, Evianites, so on and so forth, under the early proto-Gnostics. Number two, Basilides. Listen to this. This is page 126, for those of you that might want to be getting this. Again, it's called A Christian at the Crossroads. Michael J. Kruger, if you Watched or listened to the session that Dr. Kruger and I did at G3 last month. And we were talking primarily about canonization stuff, but he mentioned his new book on the second century church and I'm not sure if it's technically out yet, but I think it is. Anyway, you can order it and I would highly recommend it. Basilides. Irenaeus provides our earliest reference to Basilides, a Gnostic teacher from Alexandria. who taught from the reign of Hadrian, 117-138, into the reign of Antonius Pius, 138-161. While it is unlikely that he was the very first Gnostic, as Eusebius suggests, he is one of the earliest Gnostic teachers we know about. The later followers of Basilides claimed he received his teachings from Glaucus, an interpreter of the Apostle Peter. However, this claim is almost certainly an imitation of the earlier tradition that Mark was an interpreter of the Apostle Peter. Basilides offers his own complex version of the familiar Gnostic creation myth, with myriads of emanations from the true God even suggesting there were 365 creator angels. But Basilides is perhaps best known for his Christological views. While agreeing with his fellow Gnostics that Jesus did not suffer physically, Basilides offered his own twist on the crucifixion event. He taught, at least according to Irenaeus, that Jesus switched places with the person who carried his cross, Simon of Cyrene, transforming himself to look like Simon and transforming Simon to look like him. Thus, the Romans crucified the wrong man, while Jesus escaped laughing at them. A very similar shape-shifting view of Jesus shows up in one of the Nag Hammadi texts, the Second Treatise of the Great Seth. Now, when you hear that, and we've read a number of these Gnostic works on the program, and for some reason it still bothers me that people like when I read weird Gnostic stuff. says something about our audience, but yeah, I know, I know. But it's just the way that I intone it, I guess, and can't help but chuckling at a few points. But anyway, we've looked at a number of these things, and when you listen to that, somebody else took his place, made to look like him. This is sometime in the second century, about the middle of the second century, and this is coming from a Gnostic perspective. So it's coming from someone who, for example, doesn't believe in a creator God, believes the creator God of the Old Testament is a demi-urge, an evil deity. These are individuals who are They believe that that which is spiritual is good. They're called dualists. They believe that which is spiritual is good and that which is physical is evil. So in other words, they have a worldview utterly unlike any of the prophets. Moses, Abraham, just total disconnect. They don't view those individuals as really having any type of spiritual authority. And certainly those writings don't have any spiritual authority either. And yet they come up with this substitution theory, the crucifixion, and the reason being, obviously, the Jesus doesn't have a physical body to be crucified in the first place. And so if somebody was crucified and the evidence of that, there wasn't any question of it. It was overwhelming. So you had to come up with another explanation of it. Jesus couldn't have been crucified, and so somebody else was crucified in his place. Where do we hear a similar story about, oh, I don't know, maybe 400 years later or so? 350, 400 years later, oh, the Quran. Yeah. And isn't it interesting that the Quran, uncritically, as far as I can tell, utilizes all sorts of sources, including Gnostic sources, as if it's all a part of the Injil. The author of the Quran shows no familiarity whatsoever with any meaningful canonical knowledge as to what is and what is not the canon of the New Testament. So, what's interesting to note is that the author of the Quran knows much more about non-canonical mythological stories from centuries after Jesus than it ever shows evidence of knowing anything about Paul or Hebrews or anything else like that. And yet this is supposed to be the continuation of what God, Yahweh, who then becomes known as Allah, has revealed. Because it says the Quran and the Injil were Natsal, they were sent down. And modern Muslims like to say, well that's not the New Testament you have. Well, when the Quran addresses the Christians of their day and says, go read your Injil, there's only one Injil that they have. And my Muslim friends have never come up with anything else. Oh, well, we've got the Ebionites. No, you don't. You don't even know what they believed. I mean, it's next to impossible to figure out what these people believed. There's so little evidence. So, it is fascinating that these concepts end up being mirrored in the Quran. And I think it says a lot. I think it says a lot. I'd like to arrange a debate in London, and I've got someone in mind that I'm going to contact, who's been rather voracious in his criticism of me, so it's like, okay, let's go toe-to-toe. Did the Quran utilize external, ahistorical, erroneous sources in its representation of the past? I say it did. So we'll see. We'll see. Okay, one other thing before we go to our callers. I've hesitated a little bit to even mention this for fear of seeming self-serving, but I was thinking about this morning, I was listening to a part of it again this morning on a little 5K I did. Given what has happened since this was put out, it doesn't really matter whether I talk about it or not. It's not going to really change anything one way or the other. But when I went up to Salt Lake, I mentioned as I was driving up, I listened to that unhinged polemics report that attacked me. And it was, I think, within a day or two of that, that I was directed to a podcast that had been posted by Todd and Aaron Harding, the X in a Helo podcast. I began listening to it while driving into Salt Lake to go to the Taco Time downtown that we used to go to way back in the 80s, which GL Culliver identified as Taco Time Bomb. Yeah, it fulfilled that for me this year, too. It may have been just because I ate at the one in Nephi, and then the next day, too much of a good thing. Anyway, I did come home with nine bottles of taco sauce this trip, so I won't run out. But I'm going back in July, so I'll actually be able to resupply things in July. What? No? Oh, you decided not to? Okay. All right. Didn't want to ruin things. Okay. Anyway, so I was listening to it while I was eating and driving around Salt Lake and stuff. And, you know, I mentioned on Twitter and Facebook briefly that I really, really appreciated it. It was very encouraging. It was really, at the time, I didn't say too much about it because I knew if I did, that would result in all sorts of nastiness for everybody who was associated with it. I mean, that's just the way things are in the net these days with certain people. Then I find out a couple days later that the nastiness was there anyways. And so I didn't really accomplish anything by just only saying a few words of thanks. But it really did mean a lot to me. the fact that there were people who would write in, there were a number of written testimonies, and it is sort of nice. This is the 35th anniversary of the founding of Alvin and Megan Ministries. We've been around for a little while. I noticed that, by the way, today is Jeff Durbin's birthday, so that means we were founded when he was five. Because he's he's 40 the big 4-0 today. Happy birthday, Jeff but you were just a little one when we started doing this kind of stuff and So it was it was sort of cool for you know on our I've said we ought to do something like we did for 30 where we had this email address that people could send something in that where they wrote about know, how the ministry has helped them and stuff like that, and we still haven't done anything. So anyway, we've still got a little time. But what the Hardings did was they invited people to write in or send in an audio thing, which one person did, and then they had a guest on. And I really appreciated the fact that Pastor Tom Buck actually joined them because I knew that Tom was going through a pretty challenging time when he did this. So for him to take the time to go on this program, when he had a bunch of other stuff going on, that no one would have blamed him if he had begged off on this. Believe me, if they knew the situation, they would not have, for a second, blamed him for begging off. But he didn't. And it was, again, A lot of people sort of think, well, if you do this for a living, then you just must have gator skin. And we're all human beings, you know? And yeah, you do this for 35 years, and the list is long of people down through the past three and a half decades who've done their best to take us down. And yeah, you do... If I can't handle this better now than I could five years in, then there's probably something wrong with me. But it doesn't change the fact that it can wear on you. It can become, and especially, it's one thing when it's opposition from people outside the faith. In these days, the real wearing part is that it's from opposition from people who claim to be within the faith. That's the real essence. And so I've always known that our supporters, the people who appreciate what we do and how we do it, they don't tend to be the loudest. bell-ringing, screaming, screeching type people. They tend to be the quiet, consistent type folks. And so that means you're going to hear the critics much more loudly than you're going to hear the supporters. But I know that, but that's still intellectually. It's still not the same thing. So what I want to do is I'd like to play, and I wish there was It seems weird to have the camera on me while we're listening to somebody else, but maybe you've got a beautiful sight, ocean view or something, I don't know. Or just the red thing, I don't know. But I'm going to play a couple minutes, and I'm going to play it a little bit fast, 1.2 again. Just a couple minutes from the... comments that Tom Buck provided, because I thought this was really encouraging when he talked about the impact that the book that I wrote in 1996, The Roman Catholic Controversy, had in his ministry in a church there in Florida. So let's listen to that, and then one other thing, and then we'll Before I start the second one, we'll open the phones and go from there. So let's listen to Pastor Tom Buck from Lindale, Texas. So when I would interact with Roman Catholics, I would basically attack them on all the ways that I had been misinformed about what they believe or exaggerations of what they believe. For example, that they just believe they're saved by work. I began to really not be able to have much of an impact at all with the Roman Catholics that I was engaging with. And my desire was to see them come to Christ. But they weren't coming to Christ. In fact, they weren't even wanting to have conversations with him because they said I was misrepresenting them. And I just, rather than trying to listen to them, I just continued to use the rhetoric and the argumentation that I had believed was the reality of what Roman Catholics believed. So I came across Dr. White's book regarding Roman Catholicism and began to read and to understand what Roman Catholics actually believe. And one of the biggest impacts that Dr. White made on my life as a pastor was to help me to understand that if I am going to engage others, whether they be Mormons or whoever, and in this case Roman Catholics, that I need to be rightly represented. And that even in my interactions with them regarding things that they were incorrect on or heretical. But I needed to be fair-minded that there was plenty to deal with of what they truly believed wrongly than to misrepresent them and to say things about them that are unhelpful in your attempt to try to get them to come to Christ. You just immediately alienate them because you're attacking them and insulting them and not respecting them enough. to represent what they truly believe. Now, we expect them to do that a lot. Yes, we do. But we're paying them the same favor, as if, because someone is a heretic, if you will, of course, I'm not trying to say this specifically about every Roman Catholic, but if someone is heretical in their doctrine, that they don't deserve to be treated like a human being who has been created in the image of God. And so I read his book and I began to understand how to engage them rather than attacking it. It was because of Dr. White's ministry. In that church in Florida, it was around 60% of our conversions after we started moving in that direction, understanding how to engage Roman Catholics. Around 60% of our conversions were Roman Catholics. Wow. That's a high percentage. But there were a lot of people in that area that were Roman Catholics. I remember one guy in particular, Jim's his first name. His last name began with a P, so I'm not going to say what his full name is online without having asked his permission. But he was a co-worker of my wife, and he called us born-agains. He would constantly make fun of my wife. One day my wife just said to him, she said, Jim, my belief in God, my faith, how I live is very dear to me, and the one thing I don't appreciate is you making fun of it. But she continued to love him, continued to interact with him. He stopped doing that. But his wife got brain cancer. When that happened, you know who Jim reached out to? I'm betting you or your wife. I reached out to my wife. He didn't know me yet. Who did he want praying for his wife? He wanted my wife praying for him. Long story short, Jim started coming on Wednesday night Bible studies. He had never been exposed to the Bible before, just teaching the Bible. He finally became a Christian. You know how it happened. He approached me and I was teaching a passage on Mary's other children and it caused his head to explode because he came up and said, Mary didn't have other children. Long story short, through the process of this, he became a believer. It was really funny because whenever any of his Roman Catholic family would come over, he'd say, wait a minute, I want to show you. Mary had children. They've been lying to us. He came to the Lord. His wife came to the Lord. He eventually died of brain cancer. It was just a wonderful blessing. I did his wife's funeral. That's one story of a Roman Catholic family. Another one was we had a lady who was a nun who would visit her sister, who was a member of her church, and she would come and she hated it at first when she'd hear me preach, but eventually, through hearing the word preached and interacting with her, and I dress Roman Catholic, so that's what would make her angry, when it was appropriate in the past. And she became a believer and we baptized her. She moved down, became a believer. We baptized her. A former nun now in our church. Awesome. I was gonna say, side note, some Southern Baptist. There you go. There was just the reality that the book had that kind of an impact, allowed for individuals to come to the Lord, and then the reality that The impact of needing to be consistent, accurate, et cetera, et cetera. Very, very important. Then later on in the program, they read a number of things and then Kofi. Formally of London, formally of Milwaukee. I hope Kofi visits Milwaukee. I would love to get a message from Kofi in Milwaukee at some point. That would be really cool. He sent in a audio testimony, something along those lines. And I just want to thank him for that and also play that real quickly. Also, again, this is a little quick because most Londoners don't speak this quickly. But here's what Kofi had to say. Hey, it's me, your local host, Kofi Edward from Medford, Oregon here. So I hear that you're putting together a little show to encourage our beloved friend and brother, Dr. James R. White. And so I thought I would share something of a personal story that, I don't know, Dr. White probably doesn't want this being out there, but hey, the story involves me, so I'll share it. In 2013, I tragically lost my brother in an accident. He was 15 years old and, you know, that was one of the most difficult periods I've ever been through in my entire life. I'd experienced the loss of friends and people close to me but I'd never experienced grief in my immediate family before and so, you know, it was a tough road to walk on and I'll never forget that one of the first people who reached out to me when that happened was Dr. Wyatt. He reached out to me on Twitter and reminded me that, as a believer, I had never been more loved in that moment than I was maybe tempted to forget in a moment like that. He reminded me of the love of God shown to me on the cross of Jesus Christ and that love was being extended to me even in the moment of my most bitter grief. About a week or so later, I logged into the ProSapologian chat channel. And Dr. White was in there at the same time, reached out to me in a private message. I'm not gonna repeat what he said, but he had some very comforting things to say, took my address, and very kindly, out of his own time and money, sent me a copy of his book on grieving. That book proved invaluable to me in helping me with my own grief. I gave that book to my mother, who I left that with when I moved over here back in April. It's hard for me, on a personal level, to hear people slander Dr. White and call him all manner of names when Dr. White basically did for me what very few people did at that time, which was simply remind me of the truth, reach out to me as his brother in Christ, and from a few thousand miles away at that point, put an arm around me and let me know that it was gonna be okay. That's the Dr. James White I know. And I wanted to share that story as an encouragement to him. Thank you so much, Doc. I appreciate that. And as an encouragement to those of us who have followed his ministry and have been blessed by it, that despite the continual negative comments of those on the internet who feel that they have the self-appointed role of the Holy Spirit and feel that they need to set us all straight on every possible issue, in all honesty, there are some things which are much more important than proving yourself to be right in every sort of internet squabble. And I think Dr. White has been an excellent model of that. So thank you so much, Doc. Really appreciate it. Well, we appreciate all of that, the effort that went into it, everything that was said by everybody who wrote in or sent things in. And again, like I said, we know that those who support us are by far the majority. They just don't yell and scream as loud. That podcast came out, however. The response to it from the people who were rebuked by it was pretty amazing. And unfortunately, we mistakenly put it up during the call. I just wanted to have it ready. So some of you in Twitter are going, what in the world is that? Sorry, I needed to give the background to it, which is my understanding is that this comes from. that bastion of internet childishness and immaturity known as the Pulpit Bunker. But up at the top, you have Tim Hurd, who is the Bible-thumping wingnut, posted Rich's own tweet. I would like to thank Todd and Aaron Harding for doing this program, still wiping tears away. And If you notice, Len Pettus, who used to be of Bible-thumbing wingnut and I've heard is coming back, I don't know. Notice what he posts in response to what we've heard about people being saved, edified, Roman Catholics being saved, etc., etc. That's what Len Pettus thinks. of that. So there you have the essence of the Pulpit Bunker. It is, as I said, the very center of Internet childishness. There you go. So, yes? Well, first of all, my apologies for misunderstanding and putting that up during the show, but I meant every word of what I said there, and there was so much I didn't say that I couldn't say. I was just thankful that I was here alone when I'm listening to that program, because it did touch me deeply. And we don't get to hear things like that very often. No, I get to hear it more often than you do, because I get to go out. You were sitting here and answering the phone calls from the Bible-thumping wing nuts and people like that. The constant barrage that we have been under for over a year now, it does take its toll. And we are human. We have, despite what some would like to think, we have feelings. And when you use the term slander in reference to what some people do, it's It's one thing when it's out there, and you're seeing it being done to someone else. It is altogether different when it's coming your way, and it's coming your way with both barrels. And all I can do is thank Tot and Aaron. It was very sweet of them to do it. And Tom and everybody that was very, very kind, very, very encouraging. And so we wanted to say thanks for that. We had said thanks briefly, but The brevity of my thanks is partly because I was sitting there going, oh, man, I know what's going to happen if we even mention it. But that happened anyways. There's nothing you can do about it. You just do what you can do. OK, phone calls for half an hour. So when we get close to the bottom of the hour, we just wrap them up from there. I guess I do need this. I just threw this away. I can't do this via hand signals. We were trying that, and it didn't work. So, all right. Let's go to the phone calls and talk with Mike in California. Hi, Mike. Hey, Dr. White. I want to thank you, you and Rich. I mean, those encouragements were great, and you've really blessed a lot of people through you guys' ministry. So thank you for that. Thank you. Yeah. So my question is actually, I know you're not an expert in Biblical Hebrew, at least that's not your focus, but do you have any idea, like, where I can start looking into studying Biblical Hebrew? I really have no idea, and I'm a layman, got a family with four kids, don't have a lot of time to get into it, but I do want to get into it. Well, normally I'm asked more about learning biblical Greek, and I think it's pretty much a parallel answer here. I know a few people. who have managed to utilize, there's great resources today. Zondervan has, for Greek, the Mounts series, where you have the textbook, the workbook, lectures, computer programs, the whole nine yards. And I forget the name, it starts with a P, as I recall, of the author of the parallel for Biblical Hebrew. I think it starts with a P. But Zondervan has a Biblical Hebrew textbook, workbook, stuff like that. I don't know if that individual has recorded the lectures that would go with that, because that really is helpful. But those are the best things that you can use if you're going to make the attempt on your own. I'll just be absolutely straight up honest with you, of all the people who over the past, I don't know, 25 years have asked me about this, I know of one who took my advice, got the materials, was disciplined, did it. I think he didn't have kids yet, that sort of probably helped, but he did it and tested out of Biblical Greek at the Master's Seminary, which means you have to really be good at it, and hence was able to do two Master's degrees in the time it normally takes to do one. And so I know of one person like that, mainly because most of us Really need a class structure. We need the regularity of the quizzes and the ability to ask the professor questions and it's just unless we sort of have natural capacity and ability in language. which mainly sort of ends when you're about 15, it can be very, very, very, very challenging. And the other thing, you know, when I've had people, when I was teaching Greek at a local seminary here, I'd have people contact me before the class started, what can I be doing beforehand to help increase the opportunities that I'm going to survive this? Because in seminary, you have 15 weeks to do the entire course. So in seminary, you basically get taught to hate the languages, not to love the languages, because you do them way, way too fast. But yeah, it's Van Pelt. Thank you, someone in channel. It's Van Pelt. I knew there was a P in there, but yeah, Van Pelt. Biblical Hebrew grammar. And my answer always was that most of the people who fail in learning the biblical languages, but I was speaking of Greek specifically, but it would be true of Hebrew as well, is because they're trying to learn two languages at the same time. They're trying to learn the biblical language and English. And so reviewing biblical grammar, I'm sorry, English grammar, these days, a lot of people aren't even taught it. Sadly, most people can get through the public education system with a minimal knowledge of the English language. And so if you're trying to figure out what a participle is in English, at the same time you're trying to memorize participial forms in Greek, or the same thing with the mem performative in Hebrew, it's no wonder it can become extremely, extremely difficult and people suffer. The other thing to remember is it's not difficult to learn the Greek alphabet. But the Hebrew alphabet is very mystifying to people. It takes a lot longer for most people. I do know people who have found Hebrew to be easier than Greek, because linguistically, Hebrew is easier than Greek. It is a Semitic language, and so the parallels to English are almost non-existent. There's almost no vocabulary crossover, anything like that. And the thing that gets you eventually, if you're doing it really quickly, which you wouldn't necessarily be doing, but it still wears on anybody, is that most of the vocabulary learning in Hebrew is triliteral. There's three letters to it. So, you know, your Greek words would be all sorts of different numbers of letters. Long words, short words, etc, etc. But in Hebrew, when you're talking verbs. .. It's always three letters. And after a while, they just all start looking the same. You know, I mean, until you can start actually reading and, and, and, because that's where you really start learning a language is reading it. If you're just trying to memorize vocabulary and all the verbs are just three letters, and a lot of the nouns are too, uh, it's just like, oh. But for me, I took Hebrew toward the end of my seminary experience, right when I had two young kids, and I think that had an impact. So I don't want to make it sound like it's absolutely impossible, but It is really challenging, and 99 out of 100 don't make it. So I'm just, unless you can, you know, obviously the best thing to do is to find, you know, a class locally, even if it were a class that met only once a week, you know, maybe talk your wife into letting you have that amount of time. But structure helps. Yeah, structure helps. You're welcome. Okay. God bless. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. All right, 877-753-3341, David in Chicago. Hi, David. Hey, how you doing, Dr. White? Doing good. Yeah, we met down in St. Charles a couple years ago as the ex-Mormon that showed you my resignation letter. Oh, okay, yes, uh-huh. Yeah, so I had a question concerning, as an ex-Mormon now, about Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. And I see some of the commentaries concerning his suffering there, and I've heard them actually comment that... I've heard some Christian commentators say that at the Garden of Gethsemane, that the Father places on the Son, or infuses Him with all the sin, whether it be the elect or the whole world, depending on who you're listening to, and He takes that to the Cross and completes the suffering there. It's sort of akin to the Mormon view. I just wanted your commentary on this, to clarify it in my mind, coming from yourself as a study so well under... with the Mormon theology. Well, I've not encountered that in conservative circles. It's certainly in more mystical interpretation or more liberal quote unquote mainline. I hate that term mainline. Mainline doesn't mean anything anymore. It's the mainline over the cliff. So we need some other term, but the dying. former mainline denominations, you'll get that kind of stuff where you're looking for some new way of looking at things. But the reality is, when you look at the discussion in the New Testament, and you look at the great burden that Jesus is under, as described by Luke and Matthew in his prayers, and the repetition of the prayers, and let this cup pass from me, This is not fear on Jesus' part of death by any stretch of the imagination. It is in reference to his becoming sin in behalf of his people. But nobody, I would think that somebody, in the New Testament, if in fact there was some salvific sin-bearing taking place in the Garden itself, that somewhere in Romans, somewhere in Galatians, or in the final analysis, it would have to appear somewhere in Hebrews, which just addresses so many of the sacrificial aspects of our Lord's intercessory work and so on and so forth, but nobody says a word about it. So to try to read into the prayers of the Lord and the the literally inter-trinitarian, yet incarnational insights that can be gathered from the Garden of Gethsemane, there's nothing there that, you know, Jesus doesn't get up and say, don't worry about it, guys, it is finished. No, it wasn't finished. It was about to begin as far as the actual act of the self-giving. And so while it is appropriate to say that the son demonstrates his utter submission to the Father and his dedication to his task as the Redeemer in what takes place in the Garden of Gethsemane, that's not the giving of the life. That may be the final, you know, Jesus said earlier, it is necessary that I go, but when he said, it's necessary I go, nowhere does it say anything, and suffer in a garden. It is necessary I go and be betrayed in the hands of men and be crucified and rise again the third day. There's the salvific acts. So even in Jesus's own teaching, that's not there. There's much to be learned about the submission of the Son to the will of the Father, and everything else that goes with that, but there's nothing there that says this is where the union of the elect with the Christ takes place. All of that is pure speculative theology, and unfortunately there is a lot of that stuff out there. Thank you, Dr. White. I appreciate your conversation with Sean McCraney. You yourself have taught me quite well the trinity coming out of Mormonism, and I pray for your ministry. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. God bless you. Thank you. Well, you know, remember all those trips up to Salt Lake City? Remember eating in Kanab? And so we're only taking two more? You think they're going to take up the rest of the time? Well, you know, we'll just see. We'll just see. If, you know, I was going to give the number again, but, you know, we'll see. Because this next one looks really weird. So let's talk to Kurt. Kurt in South Carolina. Proportional atonement. What on earth is that? Yeah. So this might be in the category of how many angels come out of a pen. And I realized that scripture warns us against vain speculation. So I obviously don't want to go there if that's the case. But when it comes to defending penal substitutionary atonement or even particular redemption, depending on the answer to this question, there are certain arguments that you can or can't use. So basically, the test question would be, hypothetically, if there had been one more elect person in the world, would Jesus have had to suffer more? I'm not sure what you mean by suffer more. You mean longer? More intensely? What does that mean? For a second longer? A little more pain? That would be kind of the critique. that you can see in Dr. Brown's debate with Brian Zond, he brings up that sort of mockery. Well, Brian Zond, that's a whole other universe there. But I would have to answer no in the sense that it was the nature of the life that was given, not the length of the self-giving or anything along those lines. I mean, you know, we affirm the absolute sufficiency of the death of Christ to redeem all mankind, if all mankind had been joined in the will of the Father with the Son. So it's the nature of the God, it's the nature of the life that is given, which is the nature of the life of the God-man, that gives it the efficacy, the idea of Trying to sort of apply a – well, proportional amount of saying – coming up with a unit of suffering over a unit of time type thing is what brings forgiveness. It's the nature of the life that's given, not anything else that I think – is really in view in the New Testament. So my answer would be no, because it doesn't address the issue of who Christ was and the perfection of the giving of the life of the God-man. So I would hesitate to get into the idea of assigning amounts and things like that. Right. Okay. That does make a lot of sense. Because this also comes up when it comes to forming doctrinal statements. For example, I was looking at one just this morning, and the whole doctrinal statement is not particularly well-worded, but here's one sentence. God treated Jesus as if he had personally committed every sin committed by every person who would ever repent and believe the Gospel. You know, for me personally, I always try to, as a Trinitarian apologist, I wish we would Especially when we're talking about inter-Trinitarian activities, differentiate between Father, Son, and Spirit more clearly. I mean, I know what is being referred to there, that is the Father treated Jesus in this way, but a lot of people that don't think that way get confused and end up subordinating and almost denying the deity of Christ because they use that terminology. That's not really relevant to your question, but I would prefer saying that the Father treated the Son as the perfect substitute who can bear all the punishment that is due to all of God's elect. any of the sins of the elect are born by the Son. But again, it's not a matter of amount, it's a matter of the quality and kind of the life that is given that is what avails for the sins of the elect. So, you know, because if you don't go that direction, then you have to go, well, Jesus didn't suffer long enough. The cross should have lasted for 3,000 years or, you know, whatever. That's not the issue. The issue is the gracious self-giving of the life of the God-man. that's what avails before the judgment of God. I don't think you need to put all the numerical categories. This is really where us Westerners tend to, I think, sometimes wander off the reservation a little bit, because we are reading a book that was written by Easterners, not Westerners primarily, and this is one area where I think sometimes our our focus upon spreadsheets and stuff like that can sometimes bring us into asking questions that I think the original New Testament writers would have been going, uh, why are you interested in that again? That type of a thing. I'm not sure they really would have understood some of the categories that we bring into it. Yeah. Well, thank you. That's very helpful. Okay. All right. Thanks. Thanks. Good morning. I woke up and thanked God for you and Rich and ministry and asking God to give you wisdom and strength for the different controversies you deal with. Okay, I appreciate that, Kurt. All right, God bless. All right, bye-bye. Bye-bye. All right, let's go to State College PA. Is that the home of the Nittany Lions? Yeah, it is. Okay. All right. I lived in Pennsylvania for six years, but I was young so I really wasn't into sports too much. Yeah, I remember you talked about that on one dividing line a while ago. Yeah, Camp Hill and Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, in the suburbs of Harrisburg. Yeah, Mechanicsburg isn't that far from where I live. I go to school in State College, but I live just like a half an hour away. Oh, okay. Lancaster direction? No, the other way. I mentioned this once before to people, but I went back to Pennsylvania in 1993. So I had been gone, we left in 74, so I've been gone for 19 years. And of course I left when I was 11, so I'd never driven, obviously, in Pennsylvania. And I'm in a rental car, and I drove into Harrisburg. And I wanted to find my old schools, and my old houses, and my old church, where I was baptized. And 19 years later, after leaving 11 years of age, I never made a wrong turn. I could drive, I went everywhere, first shot, remember where everything was, including the McDonald's that I almost grew up in. It's amazing I'm as healthy as I am at my age, given how many McDonald's cheeseburgers I've consumed over my life, but not nearly as many over the past number of years. But yeah, it was fascinating. And I got there the year before they tore down my first elementary school and rebuilt another one. So at least I got to see it before it disappeared. So that was fun. Anyways, that's not why you called. No, no. I actually, I'm calling because I was in a discussion with one of my Muslim friends, and we were discussing just some passages in the New Testament, and one of the questions that he asked me was, how can the New Testament, how can we say that the New Testament is reliable if we don't really know what language the original authors were speaking compared to the fact that they were writing it in Greek. His main argument was that, well, if the New Testament is written in Greek, but if the people, like let's say Jesus or the other apostles, spoke mainly Aramaic or Hebrew, how do we know that things weren't changed in between that? And I thought I would maybe ask you that. Well, a couple things. Especially the major doctrinal portions of the New Testament, the didactic portions, the epistolary literature, etc., etc. Basically anything outside of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts is written by Greek speakers for Greek speakers. And so there's just, if you're writing the church at Ephesus, the language they all have in common is Koine Greek. So it was written in Greek, and so there's no question about any of that. Even when you get into Acts, clearly it's written by a very educated Greek speaker named Luke. But then you have the issue of, yeah, but when Peter is preaching to the Jews at Pentecost in Acts chapter 2, he's not doing that in Koine Greek. Then again, who's speaking supernaturally and people of all different languages were understanding him, so that raises a whole other issue. But it is common for Muslims to go, well, you know, Jesus would have been speaking Aramaic, and this is all written in Greek, so who's to know? Well, I always find that a little bit odd on the part of Muslims, because Muslims do believe in an absolute concept of literally MP3 style dictation inspiration. So they don't even believe that Muhammad needed to understand what he was saying. There's not a bit of Muhammad in the Quran. So there's stuff that would be in the Quran that Muhammad never would have even understood. They are supernaturalists when it comes to the Quran, but then when it comes to the New Testament, all of a sudden they become naturalists again. It's a strange double standard that they have at that particular point. And if... Yeah, yeah. In a lot of your debates, I don't remember what his name is, but I've noticed that inconsistency, or at least things like that. Oh yeah, it is a regular part of dealing with Muslims, that they will use one standard for the Quran and a completely different standard for the New Testament. It's not that there aren't Christians that return the favor. I try not to, as best I can. But yeah, we do need to sort of hold their feet to the fire at that point. But if we believe. .. You have to sort of look at this as an opportunity, because what this can allow you to do is to say, well, let me explain to you the difference between your understanding of inspiration and ours. Because they'll listen to Paul saying something like, I, not the Lord, say this, and say, see, Paul was denying his own inspiration, etc., etc. When in point of fact, he was simply referring to the fact that he knew of Jesus' teaching about divorce, and now he was giving something that Jesus hadn't given, but didn't mean it was uninspired or anything. But it is an opportunity to explain the difference. We don't believe that God simply takes people over and turns them into mp3 recorders. the language of Paul, the language of John, the language of Luke, very, very different from one another. Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit, but that didn't destroy their personalities, their experiences, their history. As the Psalter itself demonstrates, God can use men in all sorts of different situations to communicate to us His will. and to give a scripture, and Jesus then affirmed that as scripture. So if they believe Jesus is a prophet, they're sort of stuck saying, well, you know, he was wrong about the salt or whatever else it might be. So I would take that as an opportunity to explain what inspiration really is, because I think we have a much higher view of inspiration than Islam does. I think a an MP3 style dictation theory of inspiration is significantly less than the idea of men speaking as they're carried along by the Holy Spirit, so that God uses Peter to communicate his message through Peter, and he uses Paul, and he uses James, and they use different words, and they have different experiences and backgrounds, and yet what comes of all of that is exactly what God wants us to have. And it's so much richer and fuller than if it's just simply a monotone, one voice, no differences in experience type situation. And so I just use it as an opening to explain that and to say, isn't God big enough to use a number of different men? Because that's one of the big issues is the Quran has one author from their perspective. Well, Allah, but still one author as far as a human intermediary is concerned. And we have multiple, and in some cases we don't know who the author is in regards to Hebrews. They just find that impossible to understand because they take later standards, the Isnad chains and stuff like that, and read it back into the New Testament context. So yeah, that's the direction I would go, is to try to say, hey, you know what? We actually have a much higher view. And you don't have, as a Muslim, have a consistent reason to reject the supernaturalism that's the very foundation of our beliefs. Sure, sure, yeah. I think I'll probably do that next time I get a chance to talk to him. I mean, hopefully I can meet him soon, and we go to the same university, so I'll probably see him sometime. Well, good. All right, we'll stay warm back there. Yeah, yeah. We've actually had some warm days lately, but yeah, I'll do my best. Okay. Thanks a lot, Nate. All right. God bless. Yeah, thank you. Bye. Bye-bye. All right. One last call real quick here. Let's finish off with Brian in Tennessee. Hi, Brian. Hello, Dr. White. Yes, sir. How are you? I'm doing good. Good. Well, I'm outside working here. Oh, okay. I very rarely am able to call live. I kind of decided to take advantage of the opportunity. I don't really have a question. I just wanted to encourage you. The ministry has been really helpful to me, really encouraged me and built up me in the faith. I was raised in the faith, but really, it's helped me in a lot of ways. And for one thing specific, I think you have probably done more than anyone else to make John chapter 6 my favorite chapter in the Bible, in a lot of ways. And also, I spent a lot of time in Zambia. I lived there for about eight years. My parents were missionaries there, and so I'm really excited. Actually, and I married a Zambian. Well, do you know where the African Bible College is? I do. I've never been there, but I do know. We mostly lived in Lusaka, so I know. Okay. I know. Well, I've never been there before, so it's going to be new for me. I'm a little scared of the food, to be honest with you. I'm not a big adventurous eater type person. So, you know, I'm going to be looking for the golden arches or something, but I don't think I'm going to find them. Well, I know that they have Subway there. I don't know if you like Subway. I love Subway. I love Subway. Subway will save me. Subway does breakfast, too, so we'll be good. If Odie's hearing this, he's just going, oh. The people are very friendly. I'm sure you'll be well cared for. Yes, I'm sure I will. I'm actually working on getting my wife to be, she's still over there. Oh my. I got married last year and it's taking a while. But anyway, I'm hoping, if possible, that I may actually plan a trip to visit there and may actually see you. I'm hoping it'll work out. Well, there you go. I'm supposed to be there somewhere around the 23rd of May. So there you go. All right. Well, thank you, Brian. I appreciate that. And I hope the stuff works out with your wife, that she's able to join you very soon. Well, thank you. And I just wanted to say that if you are able to go The people in Zambia need the same thing everyone else does, and that's God's word. I'll do my best. I appreciate it. All right. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thanks, Brian. Thank you. God bless. For those of you who only joined us, He was referring to the fact that we are trying to get funding for our trip in May that will include, right now, London, Johannesburg, Zambia, the African Bible College with Voddie Balcombe, and then on the way back, hopefully up into Scotland on the way back, We are playing the debates and things that go along with that in nearly three weeks in length, but we need your help to be able to make it all happen. So there's a travel link in the donation page on the website aomin.org if you can help us to sort of get around, about halfway around the world and back again. It's good, the back part is good. There's a lot of people who would like to see me go only halfway and then stay there. We realize that. But the second half would be nice to come back. I've got grandkids here that would like to see me once in a while, other than on FaceTime. So that's what we're referring to there. All right. Thanks for joining us on The Dividing Line today. We'll see you later in the week. God bless.