Welcome to the Protestant Witness. This is Pastor Patrick Hines here at Principal Heights Presbyterian Church in Kingsport, Tennessee. And today I'd like to post a program I did yesterday with my brother in Christ, Ryan Kaiser, who's also a seminary student that we're overseeing his education here at our church through LAMP Seminary. And we're going to be reading through J. Gresham Machen's excellent and highly relevant book called Christianity and Liberalism. And we had a great discussion of it yesterday. We had a good time doing that. Machen was a first-rate scholar. He was really the leader of the Calvinist Christian resistance to the rise of modernism. Towards the end of his life, Machen really didn't like the label fundamentalist. much. He always described himself as a Calvinist, and his book, Christianity and Liberalism, I've described it before as 120 proof Christianity, and Machen was a dear saint, a dear man of God, and so I hope you find this discussion as edifying as it was fun for me and Ryan to do it, and there'll be more of these coming. This is Pastor Patrick Hines today here with one of our seminary students, with Ryan Kaiser. And Ryan's been doing seminary work for how long now? Just a few months? A little over a year now. That's been over a year? Yes. We've been doing this for years? Well, I did some time down in North Carolina. Ah, that's right. I took two classes down there before we moved up here. Okay, alright. I was going to say, man, it cannot have been that long. We've been meeting on Saturday mornings to do stuff. But anyway, so he's one of three. Ryan has a big heart for the faith and for the truth. And one of the things I try to do at our church here is keep really, really great books dirt cheap so lots of people can buy them. And I have a special heart for seminary students to build, help them build a library. So I've made sure that they get really good books in their hands. And one of those books is Christianity and Liberalism. I'm looking at Ryan's copy. It's got all the little sticky tabs all over it. So, that's good. Did you get all the way through the whole thing? Oh, yes. I got through this copy once. I'm through an audio copy. Halfway through. Yet, this has been one of the most foundational books that I've ever read. How so? Because he doesn't mince words. He's very fair to his opponents. But really, he gets at the heart of Christianity. What is Christianity? And it's more than experience. It's more than emotionalism. It's more than all these things. It's a message. It's a historical message founded on doctrine, sound doctrine. And if we lose that, we really lose the Christian faith. And he argues that the whole book. Yeah, and this book is, I mean, what year is it published? Is it 1924? Is that this was first published? I believe that's correct. I mean, I know, I believe it was lectures that eventually were submitted for publication. When was this first put out? Does it say? November 3, 1921. 21? The author of the present book delivered before the ruling elders association. Wow. Yeah. Okay, so that's three years after World War One ends. Yes. That he writes this. So, I mean, you're looking at, I mean, in two years from now, it'll be 2021. So just about a hundred years ago, this was published and it's, would you say it's relevant to what we're seeing today, Ryan? Oh, absolutely. What's incredible about this book, it, when I started reading it, I had to go back and look at the date because it could have been written yesterday. That's what's incredible about it. And really, he had a pulse on what was going on in his day. And he could see what was coming so clearly. And that's what makes this book so timeless. Because now what we have We have all of his issues that have come true. And then we're seeing the next wave of issues coming through because we've already given up so much. Yeah. Yes. I remember years ago, one of the very first series of lectures I listened to from, or actually I probably shouldn't call them lectures, but it was, it was, this was before podcasting. It was when the Whitehorse Inn first started. the 1990s and I used to listen to the White Horse then and you'll love how I did this. I had a one of those old cassette recorders and I would set it in front of the speakers on my computer and I would just push record and let it record and I would listen to those in my car and that car I still drive that 97 Saturn still has a tape deck in it. So, I used old tapes and recorded those and listened. They did a series on the great debates and they went through debates between, you know, in Scripture between the Judaizers and the Apostle Paul, the Pharisees and Sadducees. They did Anselm and Abelard in the Middle Ages. They did Athanasius and Arius, Pelagius and Augustine. And they did Luther and Erasmus, which was great. And see, every time I'd listen to another debate, a historical debate, they would mention a bunch of books that I would have to go buy. But the last debate they covered in the Great Debate series was the Fundamentalist Modernist Controversy, and they highlighted Machen versus Harry Emerson Fosdick. And Fosdick was one of the main proponents of the liberalism that he's responding to in Christian liberalism. And of course, they recommended this book, and they said, you know, this book is just outstanding, and it's great, and so I picked it up. And I remember noticing this was published in the 1920s, and I kept, like you said, I kept having to go, like, wait a second, this is not someone that wrote this last year, because what he describes as, quote, modern liberalism, end quote, is very similar to the evangelical fundamentalist church I grew up in. I mean, he says things like, according to modern liberalism, Faith is simply committing your life to Christ. You go, okay, I heard that a million times. So-and-so committed their life to Christ. They committed their life to Christ. And I used to wonder even then, what does that mean? What does that even mean? You hear all this rhetoric that religion is bad, but Jesus is good, relationship is good, when Paul clearly talks about a one true religion that is good. And it's that kind of rhetoric that has really done a disservice to the Church, and has been destructive to the Church. Yeah, people say, I don't want all this doctrine, all this theology, I just want to love Jesus. And the thing is, you know, you can't talk about Jesus apart from divine revelation. You can't talk about Him apart from propositions in Scripture. And so there's no separation of the two things and that's another thing like you already said I caught some of the phrases that he uses a lot in some of your comments We're talking about real historical facts and events. He talks about that a lot in the book This is this is connected to actual historical events and just real quick. I remembered The White Horse Sim, when they discussed this, one of them, I can't remember who it was, it might have been Michael Horton, might have pointed out that a brilliant atheist critic at the time, a fellow named H.L. Mencken, read Christianity and Liberalism. and wrote an article about it and basically said any human being with a functioning brain knows that Machen has destroyed his opponents. And even though he's an atheist and he's looking from the outside like this is a joke anyway, he also said that he himself was moved by the power intellectual arguments and by how clear and forceful Machen's presentation is of recognizing that the liberalism that he was addressing was not another species of Christianity, but rather, the title of the book says it all, Christianity and liberalism, that the two things are completely incompatible with one another. And what we have now, his issues, what he was dealing with, was considered liberalism. But now, really, a lot of what he's talking about is considered conservative. That's right. So, most of the churches in America, or at least a majority of the churches, have already embraced these things and have gone on to other liberal notions and other liberal theologies. Yeah, that's right. And I think, too, especially for our time being in the PCA, with the rise of revoice and the things that took place at the General Assembly with some of the speeches that were made, I think that it's profoundly naive. If people look at that and think, well, I'm sure that, you know, they're confessional and they hold to everything else the Bible says except this one thing. The fact that they had Roman Catholic speakers at their conference demonstrates that's not the case. This is connected to an entire matrix of errors. And it's the same thing here with with Machen. It was never the case that, well, you know, these liberals, they've got some questions about the virgin birth of Christ. But they've got some questions about how we're supposed to understand the deity of Christ. No, this is just the camel's nose. The sexual stuff and all the compromises that are going on with that and what they're wanting to push for having a place for quote-unquote gay, celibate, side B Christianity. That is not by itself. That's gonna be connected to a whole host of errors. And that's why there's been very little talk about the fact that the ecumenical agenda with Roman Catholicism was front and center with the whole conference. And it has shocked me, even though we included it in our presbytery report, it has shocked me that not more people have pointed that out. And even, as you said, the ecumenical movements that are out there, Their idea is, well, at least we have unity in service. If we don't have unity in doctrine, but that is destructive to the truth. You can't sacrifice truth for unity because if there is no truth, there can be no unity. And the thing that's exactly correct, and the thing is, if you do make social causes and social justice kind of the thing that unites you, and you set aside your doctrinal commitments, your theological grandchildren will be pro-choice. Your theological grandchildren will believe in gay marriage too. And that's exactly what happened. The liberals that Machen was facing back then, today, no longer hold to any of those social causes anymore. They don't. They've jettisoned all of them. Because you lose the doctrinal foundation, you no longer have a basis for morality or law or anything like that. It's a package deal. You take all of it or none. Alright, well that's a fairly decent intro, I think. I think it's important for people to know, you know, Machen was a was a churchman. He taught at Princeton. Eventually, when the seminary turned liberal, he left and founded Westminster Seminary. There's been other seminaries that have come out of that, or Reformed Theological Seminary, the seminary I went to in Jackson, Mississippi, is definitely in that stream of old Princeton, having the confessional Commitment but Machen was eventually thrown out. I mean he was excommunicated He was he was tossed out of the denomination for I can't remember if it was Specifically for being a disturber of the peace or something like that It was something really lame and he really wasn't even allowed to make a defense of himself But this book has got so much good discussion fodder in it. So let's go ahead and we're just gonna read through this will probably take pardon me a number of programs to get through but it's well worth of the book is worth its weight in gold and His answers to the problems of the time are timeless because we're seeing these same issues now. So why don't you go ahead and read the first paragraph there. The purpose of this book is not to decide the religious issue of the present day, but merely to present the issue as sharply and clearly as possible in order that the reader may be aided in deciding it for himself. Presenting an issue sharply is indeed by no means a popular business at the present time. There are many who prefer to fight their intellectual battles in what Dr. Francis L. Patton has aptly called a condition of low visibility. Okay, stop there. Has it ever been popular business? Never. It has never been popular business. Especially in our touchy-feely, sentimental, effeminate culture. I'm sorry, go ahead. And you'll notice a lot of the arguments we have against modern-day liberalism, it's always shrouded in clouds or in low visibility. No one No one can know what everyone believes and says. So it's just like, well, we can't really say everyone's intentions. We just know that this is kind of an umbrella thing. And we hear that all the time. And really, it's just smoke screens. It is. Clear-cut definitions of terms in religious matters, bold facing of the logical implications of religious views, is by many persons regarded as an impious proceeding. But it's so important, isn't it? We have to be precise with our wording. And I've heard you say from the pulpit, why does language matter? Why do phrases matter? Because The Bible was given to us. The Bible was given to us in words and phrases. That's right. People say, I mean, during all the John Piper acid that people have thrown in my face for that, you know, one of the Reformed Brotherhood guys, well, you just don't like his phrasing, you just can't get past his phrasing. And I had to say, look, if you phrase the Gospel wrong, you are wrong. Okay? So, go ahead. And it's also sinful to treat words that way. That's right. To misrepresent what someone else is saying or to say something to be disingenuous. So may it not discourage contribution to mission boards, may it not hinder the progress of consolidation and produce a poor showing of columns of church statistics, but with such persons we cannot possibly bring ourselves to agree. Like we may seem at times to be an impertinent intruder, but it is always beneficial in the end. The type of religion with which rejoices in the pious sound of traditional phrases, regardless of their meanings, or shrinks from controversial matters, will never stand amid the shocks of life. In the sphere of religion, as in other spheres, the things about which men agreed are apt not merely, and not even primarily, to current experience. but to certain ancient books, the most recent of which was written some 1,900 years ago. I think that's something. Did you miss a page? Oh, I'm so sorry. Yeah, I missed a page. I'm like, you started speaking in tongues, man. I'm sorry. Let me, let me restart that. Yeah, read that sentence again. In the sphere of religion, as in other spheres, the things about which men are agreed are apt to be the things that are least worth holding. The really important things are the things about which men will fight. Yeah, that makes a lot more sense. But that's absolutely true. The things that men are willing to give up quickly are typically not the things that are worth fighting for. And basically today, what are the things that we can agree on that we should all be nice? Yeah, that the Bible's God's Word, that Jesus is cool. I mean, seriously, it's usually stuff that, like you said, are things that are the least worth holding. The really important things are the things about which men will fight, like the gospel and the law and the gospel. All right, next paragraph. In the sphere of religion, in particular, the present time is a time of conflict. Has there ever been a time when that was not the case? No. I mean, seriously, even the whole New Testament is like, most of it's a polemic against false doctrine. Absolutely. Yeah. Nazism, yeah, I mean. There are always darts being fired toward the church. That's right. Different angles may come in different forms. Yeah. But there's always something that we have to combat. Yes, always. Okay, so he's saying, in particular, the present time is a time of conflict. So this is 1921. The great redemptive religion, which has always been known as Christianity, is battling against a totally diversive type of religious belief, which is only the more destructive of the Christian faith because it makes use of traditional Christian terminology. This modern, non-redemptive religion is called modernism or liberalism. Notice he calls it a non-redemptive religion. Okay, because what's missing from it is the idea that men are sinful. I forget, I think it was, it might have been H. Richard Niebuhr, some theologian said that he summarized liberalism with one sentence, a God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without grace through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross. Both names are unsatisfactory, modernism and liberalism. The latter, in particular, liberalism, is question-begging. The movement designated as liberalism is regarded as liberal only by its friends. To its opponents, it seems to involve a narrow ignoring of many relevant facts. And indeed, the movement is so various in its manifestations that one may almost despair of finding any common name which will apply to all its forms. But manifold as are the forms in which the movement appears, the root of the movement is one. the many varieties of modern liberal religion are rooted in naturalism. That is, in the denial of any entrance of the creative power of God, as distinguished from the ordinary course of nature, in connection with the origin of Christianity." It's exactly right. It's exactly right. The anti-supernatural bias of German higher critical scholarship, which is what gave rise to liberalism, remember what someone said America is where old German heresies come to die. Yeah, that's absolutely true. So they come here and they die here, but they had been picked up and they had made their way into the mainline church at that point through the seminaries. And we see that with all denials. You look at the virgin birth or the resurrection of Christ. It always comes from a naturalistic worldview. Because if there is no God, of course these things would not be possible. But if there is a God, which there is, the God of the Bible, these things are most certainly possible and did happen because he has given testimony. And that's why really in all of our dialogues or discussions that we ever have with unbelievers or with atheists, you've got to cut past some of the rhetoric and get to the underlying worldview issues. Because if their starting point is that there is no God and that all reports of miracles are ipso facto ruled out of bounds from the get-go, you can present all the evidence that you want from scripture. It's not going to make any difference until you've challenged that naturalism. Okay. The word naturalism is here used in a sense somewhat different from its philosophical meaning. In this non-philosophical sense, it describes with fair accuracy the real root of what is called by what may turn out to be a degradation of an originally noble word liberal religion. The rise of this modern naturalistic liberalism has not come by chance, but has been occasioned by important changes which have recently taken place in the conditions of life. The past 100 years have witnessed the beginning of a new era in human history, which may conceivably be regretted. but certainly cannot be ignored by the most obstinate conservatism." It's absolutely correct. It's much regretted now that we see the fruits. The change is not something that lies beneath the surface and might be visible only to the discerning eye. On the contrary, it forces itself upon the attention of the plain man at a hundred points. Modern inventions and the industrialism that has been built upon them has given us, in many respects, a new world to live in. We can no more remove ourselves from that world. then we can escape from the atmosphere that we breathe. He's right. And it's again, it's strange to think, okay, this is a hundred years ago. Yeah. That was a time of, of great technological advancement and everything else. But I mean, think, think about how much the technology has changed from Machen's day in 1921 until 2019 and the things that we have now and how much of an impact that's had on people's worldviews and how atheistical and secular people are now. It's really incredible how technology has united the world. You have access to so much information now. All the Puritans really had to work for their stuff. They couldn't hop on Google or go to Puritan library and download books from the other Puritans. They had to work hard. Now we have such a vast amount of wealth. Yeah, it is, of resources. I think Jonathan Edwards only had 300 books in his personal library. Wow. And yet you think, look at what he accomplished. I know Bunyan's library was even smaller. But you're right, these guys were Bible men. But yeah, the modern technology and the inventions have really cause people to have a quote a so-called scientific, you know, I just want to have a naturalistic understanding of everything because Naturalistic science has given rise to all these inventions, but that comes into the church's unbelief. Yes Yeah, but such changes in the material conditions of life do not stand alone. They have been produced by mighty changes in the human mind As in their turn, they themselves give rise to further spiritual changes. The industrial world of today has been produced not by blind forces of nature, but by the conscious activity of the human spirit. It has been produced by the achievements of science. The outstanding feature of recent history is an enormous widening of human knowledge, which has gone hand in hand with such perfecting of the instrument of investigation that scarcely any limits can be assigned to future progress in the material realm. The application of modern scientific methods is almost as broad as the universe in which we live. Though the most palpable achievements are in the sphere of physics and chemistry, the sphere of human life cannot be isolated from the rest. And with the other sciences, there has appeared, for example, a modern science of history, which, with psychology and sociology and the like, claims, even if it does not deserve, full equality with its sister sciences. No department of knowledge can maintain its isolation from the modern lust of scientific conquest. Treaties of inviolability, though hallowed by all the sanctions of lifelong, or I'm sorry, age-long tradition, are being flung ruthlessly to the winds. In such an age, it is obvious that every inheritance from the past must be subject to searching criticism. And, as a matter of fact, some convictions of the human race have crumbled to pieces in the test. Indeed, dependence of any institution upon the past is now sometimes even regarded as furnishing a presumption not in favor of it, but against it. So many convictions have had to be abandoned that men have sometimes come to believe that all convictions must go. Yes, isn't that incredible? So 100 years ago, 1910s and then 20s, people are so fascinated by the progress of science that they think, well, anything from the past is just really not worth much. And the same attitude is today, don't you think? Yeah, we don't need this anymore. We are more sophisticated now than those sheep herders or whatever. We hear that, yeah, we hear that all the time being thrown against us, how mentally superior we are to them, which I don't buy that for a second. But there's this notion of We're smarter, we don't need this anymore, we have science, science is our god, is pretty much what it is, and we will allow science to rule the day. Right, so supposedly, the findings of science. Yes. If such an attitude be justifiable, then no institution is faced by a stronger hostile presumption than the institution of the Christian religion, for no institution has based itself more squarely upon the authority of a bygone age. And that's absolutely correct. We have a historical faith. It's a faith rooted in history. And that's why we're always called conservatives, because we believe in something that's fixed. Not only is it unchanging, it is unchangeable. It will never change. Yeah, go ahead. We are not now inquiring upon such policy as wise or historically justifiable. In any case, the fact itself is plain, that Christianity, during many centuries, has consistently appealed to the truth of its claims. not merely and not even primarily to current experience, but to certain ancient books, the most recent of which was written some 1900 years ago. So you're already hearing what he's saying. It's not in our experience. It's something that has been rooted in history. 2,000 years ago. Yeah, and yeah, that's right And that's what the liberals at the time have been pushing really since the the Enlightenment was was pushed Theologically by Schleiermacher and then that comes over more and more into liberalism and they define Religion basically as the feeling of dependence. Mm-hmm You know, I think that it's a famous Schleiermacher quote where he says, yeah religion the essence of religion is is like the child falling backwards into its mother's arms and being held close to it. That kind of sentimentality, rather than rooted in divine revelation and propositions that are anchored in historical facts. That's what he's trying to differentiate it from. All of our thoughts, all of our feelings. All of our actions are rooted in Scripture, not apart from Scripture, and not over Scripture. And that comes out even in a lot of hymns. A lot of people will say things like, we need to go back to the good old days when we had the great hymns like, in the garden. And you think, that's not a good hymn. That's like a Gnostic manifesto. I come to the garden alone, and the joy we share as we tarry there is like nothing that anyone's ever known. Now, one of the things that the old reformers used to say is that if it cannot be said of all Christians, then it's not real Christian experience. So, I don't have this gnostic sort of inner experience of God that is uniquely mine and is divorced from divine revelation. My feelings always have to come under the scrutiny. My experience comes under the scrutiny. How relevant is that today? Oh Tremendously relevant because especially of all the gay stuff people are saying my experience is this I can't get rid of this orientation Your experience is not relevant. Yeah, and on the other side The charismatic movement that we see it's well the spirit says this right, but we know that the spirit always speaks in One, back to Christ, and always according to the word. They cannot be divorced, so any experience that we have must be tested. Any feelings that we have must be tested. It is no wonder that the appeal is being criticized today, that that appeal is being criticized today, for the writers of the books in question were no doubt men of their own age, whose outlook upon the material world, judged by modern standards, must have been of the crudest and most elementary kind. Inevitably, the question arises whether the opinions of such men can ever be normative for men of the present day. In other words, whether 1st century religion can ever stand in company with 20th century science. really came as a really strong conviction, especially after I was done with seminary, was just being really committed to six-day creation, and really just getting rid of every last remain of, you know, I was taught the framework hypothesis when I was in seminary, and the impetus behind that is to kind of safeguard the Bible from being, you know, challenged seriously by science, and really have just gotten rid of that altogether, and I believe that the earth is, you know, only about 6,000 years old, give or take a few hundred years, The reason that that's so important is because those two things, creation and evolution, are just as incompatible as Christianity and liberalism. They are oil and water, you cannot mix the two together. Everything about the evolutionary worldview is contrary to Christianity. But one of the things that we've talked about a lot at my house with my kids over the years, and we've watched a lot of Answers to Genesis and Creation Ministries International and basically everything out there that's really toeing the line about the creation issue, is we've talked about the cumulative degeneration of animals and genomes and human beings. We definitely have not gotten smarter. Human beings are not getting smarter. We're not evolving upwards, we're devolving because we're just piling on more and more genetic mistakes and mutations and everything else. One of my kids eventually said, do you think that's why people believe in evolution today? Because we're so much dumber I was kind of like, you know I don't I don't know that the idea would have gotten much traction in the first century like my opinion nation was dealing with you How could how could anyone that goes to the dentist and has these amazing? Technological tools and electric lights and everything and drives cars. I mean, how could they possibly, you know, look back to the first century, but now I mean I I really think they were a lot smarter in the first century than we are today. Because they would never have gone for the idea that dirt became life all by itself. And the premise of Christianity and of what Machen is arguing is authority. That has been lost today. There is no more authority given to scripture. But that really is the basis of all these issues that we see now. These liberal readings or eisegesis that's being read into scripture, it all comes back to authority. Is it, thus saith the Lord? Right? And that was the first lie, right? Did God really say? And you can apply that to everything that we see today. You know, did God really say that he created the world in six days? Absolutely he did. That's what he said, and that's what we believe. But it all comes back to an authority issue. Man wants authority. Man wants to be autonomous. Yeah. You know, during the New Perspective, when the New Perspective controversy was really hot, you know, when N.T. Wright was, you know, when he first published what St. Paul really said, that was in 1997. And then you have the explosion of all the other books, and then some older books that have been written, Paul and Palestinian Judaism by E.P. Sanders, that was a book published in the 70s, and all that stuff starts going forward. And I remember thinking to myself, how can these guys read the Apostle Paul and not understand this? You know there was a there was a famous. I think it was Krister Stendhal was a Lutheran Theologian that responded or was or no excuse me Stendhal was the new perspective guy and Stephen Westerholm was the guy that wrote Paul or Paul and Paul what was it? I can't remember what it's called. I've got the book over there. But he turned a great phrase in there. He said, anyone who thinks that Martin Luther did not understand Galatians needs to take up a career in metallurgy. And James White, I'm pretty sure it's his book, The God Who Justifies, in the early introduction to that, he made an argument that I just thought was outstanding. It's in one of his books. I'm pretty sure it's The God Who Justifies. that he says basically, sound exegesis, sound biblical exegesis can only be done by those who are committed to biblical inspiration and inerrancy. Because if they're not, then that means that they don't see themselves as servants to the text and under the text. If they don't hold to divine inspiration and inerrancy, they're going to be trying to force this to fit something else. And I remember thinking, that is exactly right. That's the problem, is people do not bow. to the Word of God. They don't see it as something that their thoughts, ideas, opinions, experiences, and liver shivers and everything else has to come under the scrutiny and correction of Scripture. Yes. Yeah. Do you remember where I started preaching? However, the question may be answered, it presents a serious problem to the modern church. Attempts are indeed sometimes made to make the answer easier than at first sight it appears to be. Religion, it is said, is so entirely separate from science that the two, rightly defined, cannot possibly come into conflict. This attempt at separation, as it is hoped the following pages may show, is open to objections of the most serious kind. But what must now be observed is that even if the separation is justifiable between religion and science, it cannot be effected without effort. The removal of the problem of religion and science itself constitutes a problem. For, rightly or wrongly, religion, during the centuries, has, as a matter of fact, connected itself with a host of convictions, especially in the sphere of history, which may form the subject of scientific investigation, just as scientific investigators, on the other hand, have sometimes attached themselves, again rightly or wrongly, to conclusions which impinge upon the innermost domain of philosophy and of religion. For example, if any simple Christian of a hundred years ago, or even of today, were asked what would become of his religion if history should prove indubitably that no man called Jesus ever lived and died in the first century of our era, he would undoubtedly answer that his religion would fall away. By the way, I asked a youth group that question one time. Really? Yeah. I asked the youth group at a church. I was a youth director for just for the one year I was on campus in Mississippi. Would you guys still want to go to church if you knew that Jesus never lived, died, or rose from the dead? And out of the 12, 10 of them said they still would. Really? Yeah. 10 of them. And the other two were sharp enough to recognize, well, if he didn't live or die or rise from the dead, then everything that we believe is false then. And I just thought, man, ten of them did not understand that. That we're talking about something that is inextricably connected to actual history. And what does that passage, what does it say in 1 Corinthians 15, 12, if Christ is not risen? Yet the investigation of events in the first century in Judea, just as much as in Italy or in Greece, belongs to the sphere of scientific history. In other words, our simple Christian, whether rightly or wrongly, whether wisely or unwisely, has, as a matter of fact, connected his religion in a way that to him seems indissoluble, with convictions about which science also has a right to speak. You know, and that's what we've always said. It's open to investigation. Look at the eyewitness accounts. Look at what the Bible says. Look at what it says about what happened to Jesus and the people that saw him after he rose from the dead. It is, in principle, falsifiable, right? Obviously, we don't believe that it's going to be falsified, but in principle, it's falsifiable. It's actually testable. It's one of the things that makes the faith unique, is that it's connected to those historical events, and it's strictly connected to them. If, then, those convictions, ostensibly religious, which belong to the sphere of science, are not really religious at all, the demonstration of that fact is itself no trifling task. Even if the problem of science and religion reduces itself to the problem of disentangling religion from pseudoscientific accretions, the seriousness of the problem is not thereby diminished. From every point of view, therefore, the problem in question is the most serious concern of the Church. What is the relation between Christianity and modern culture? May Christianity be maintained in a scientific age? That is one of the most crucial questions that is coming against the Church today. And it's amazing, as we said, this was written in the 1920s. How relevant is this? The fact that We are told we don't need the religion of these ancient people. We don't need these things. We're much better than they were. It is this problem which modern liberalism attempts to solve. Admitting that scientific objections may arise against the particularities of the Christian religion, against the Christian doctrines of the person of Christ and of redemption through his death and resurrection, The liberal theologian seeks to rescue certain of the general principles of religion, of which these particularities are thought to be more temporary symbols, and these general principles he regards as constituting the essence of Christianity. It may well be questioned, however, whether this method of defense will really prove to be efficacious. For after the apologist has abandoned his outer defenses to the enemy, and withdrawn into some inner citadel, he will probably discover that the enemy pursues him even there. Modern materialism, especially in the realm of psychology, is not content with occupying the lower quarters of the Christian city, but pushes its way into all the higher reaches of life. It is just as much opposed to the philosophical idealism of the liberal preacher as to the biblical doctrines that the liberal preacher has abandoned in the interests of peace. Is that what he's saying? I mean, the liberals, one of the whole enchilada, you can't even have Christian experience. So we're going to attack not only the historical foundations and the divine inspiration of scripture and the miracles of the Bible and the historical Jesus, we're also going to attack your experiences as being psychological wish fulfillment and everything else. But what he's saying is that their attempt to defend the faith by abandoning history and saying it's just about me and my personal Relationship with Jesus and my personal experience. He's saying they're not going to be content with that either They will not be yeah, and that was asked of William Lane Craig. Yeah, if you recall recently As you know he he holds that Genesis 1 through 11 is It's not narrative, it's poetic. Really, all of it? The whole thing? One through nine or one through eleven. Up until the historical... All the way through the Tower of Babel? Yes. Okay, so that's one through eleven. Wow, I didn't know that. So he was questioned. Well, if you take that as being poetic, Where do you stop? Why not the rest of the Old Testament? Why not the New Testament? Why not the resurrection of Jesus? Couldn't that be poetic or just be a metaphor for something else? And there is no answer to that. You can't say anything. It's just really at that point you just have to be arbitrary and say, well, because I believe. This isn't poetry. That's all you can do. It's totally arbitrary. I've actually been working through Robert Raymond's systematic theology again, just kind of my personal devotions. He is great. I just love that guy. Because he has a whole section defending the historicity of Genesis 1-11. And I actually did a whole sermon on that, like, looking at Christ's view of Genesis 1-11. Because he seemingly, purposefully, focuses in on the events that are the most accursed to the modern mind, and sees them all as historical. And the thing is, if you look at Genesis 1-11 as poetic and not necessarily historical, So, the first Adam, did he live and exist? Why should we believe in the second Adam then? Why should we believe in the last Adam then? Why isn't he a poetical anti-type to a non-existent thing? See, you can't give up that kind of ground to the secularist just because he has a problem with the supernatural. I mean, yeah, you just can't do that. And even the attempt to pull the first Adam away from the second. You say the first Adam didn't really exist, so you don't have Original sin right how can you? How can you accept the righteousness of Christ? You can't because those two are compared. You can't have one without the other. But of course, natural man doesn't want the sin part, but will take the grace, of course. It's almost indescribable to think about how much damage has been done by the various other interpretations of Genesis chapter 1. In the name of apologetics, these other interpretations have been embraced. And by giving that ground to the secularists, we cannot give history to the secularism. Because the Bible starts at the very beginning and goes to the very last day of history. It is the story of the history of the whole universe. Just because the prevailing ideas of the time have taken control of the modern masses, that is a ship that is doomed to sink. It will sow the seeds of its own destruction. And we have to hold fast to the authority of scripture on that, especially in those areas where it's being compromised the most. And that's where we should expect an attack. Genesis 1-1, authority. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. That's where we're going to attack. It's at the beginning. Well, there's no authority here. No, there is authority. Yeah, that's right. And Jason Lyle's got an excellent lecture. It's on YouTube, and I think it's also on Sermon Audio, called Big Problems with the Big Bang. And I used to think, no, you could hold to Big Bang cosmology and still believe that's just the way that God created it. And he points out, scientifically, him being an astrophysicist, that there's really almost nothing in common between the idea of the Big Bang and the creation of the universe as described in Genesis. I mean, even the order of everything is wrong. Because the Bible puts the formation of the earth prior to the formation of the sun. I remember thinking, when I was studying Genesis, one of the commentaries that I read was Henry Morris's The Genesis Record, which is really good. It's a really good kind of scientific commentary. I didn't agree with everything he said as far as some of his theology, but on those early issues, I mean, he brings out so many great points. There are no points of similarity between the way that God, it's almost like God created on purpose so that there's no way of harmonizing a naturalist, materialist, evolutionary understanding of the origin of of the universe, the sun, the earth, and all forms of life, and what the Bible says about it. They are as incompatible as oil and water are. Correct. Once again, to continue, and I expect we'll say this many, many times, that when we sit down to read scripture, how are we sitting down to read it? That's a great point. Are we examining it? Are we putting God on trial and we're looking out around his creation and charging him with lying to us or being false with us? Or do we come to it in submission? I mean, he is the only one who was there, right? That's right. He's the only eyewitness on it. That's right. Yeah. What is this passage? It's cited by, yeah, listen to this from Isaiah 66, the last chapter of Isaiah. Chapter 66, verse 2 says, For all those things my hand has made, and all those things exist, says the Lord. But on this one will I look, on him who is poor, and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at my word. He who opens this book and does not hear the voice of the Creator, that supersedes, I don't care how many PhDs or whatever people have after their name, you bow to the authority of the Word of God, no matter what people may say at the time. Give them enough time, they'll eventually start seeing. that things are not as they seem. And I just want to put another plug in for a good book. Evolution's Achilles Heels is worth its weight in gold. The DVD, I've watched that DVD at least 10 times, and the book is outstanding. Because what the book does is it goes through all of the hard sciences that have developed since the time of Darwin. Many people don't realize that Darwin knew nothing about genetics. Absolutely nothing. I mean, that science hadn't even started yet. People weren't even thinking about things like that yet. the fossil record. We did not know much of anything about fossils. The idea of radioisotopes and all that kind of stuff. All those, there's eight different scientific disciplines that they go through and point out how what we know to be true in all these areas now really mitigates against the theory of evolution. What they thought they would find has not been found. Genetic mutations do not add information to genomes. And in fact, the idea of genetic entropy, the idea that everything is just getting worse and worse and worse, and it really looks like at one time there was a very solid pool of genetic information that has slowly deteriorated over time, that is a fact. That's just a scientific fact. How does that fit? with the idea that things started simple and got more complicated. Well, no one's ever seen any kind of additions of new genetic information. Sometimes things are useful because they get broken, but that's not new information. And that book is just fascinating because it really shows you that the more we understand the hard sciences, the more these ideas are absolutely false. Absolutely. Not to get too presuppositional on you, but even science has to be based on the Christian religion. Because you can't have uniformity of nature. Who knows that tomorrow will be like the past? And I think it was Bonson who argued that he could prove the Christian faith with a tube of toothpaste. You'd squirt it, and you'd expect it to come out. The only way you can do that is if there is uniformity of nature. Who knows if you squeeze it and an elephant pops out, or a weasel, or whatever. It's just ridiculous. But really, apart from the Christian faith, you cannot have that worldview. You can't hold to it consistently. And that's one thing that a lot of philosophers that are not Christians have pointed out for centuries. that the attempt to build up human knowledge has failed miserably. Because you really, at the end of the day, every form of epistemology, whether it's strict empiricism or strict rationalism, and every variation in between, They're always completely and totally self-defeating. And at the end of the day, men like Bertrand Russell, who really did believe at the outset of his life that he could overcome the skepticism of David Hume and some of the Enlightenment thinkers, he really thought he'd be able to overcome it. But reluctantly, at the end of his life, I mean, he had to admit most of what passes for knowledge is open to reasonable doubt. And like you just said, we don't know that the future will resemble the past in terms of its law-like characteristics. We don't know that, and there's no way of proving it. And I remember reading his little book, Problems in Philosophy, and just thinking, does anyone realize what this man just said? I mean, he's basically saying that when it comes to the most foundational principle of doing science, that the idea that the laws of chemistry, matter, physics, and all that stuff is gonna carry on into the future, that at best, all we can do is be arbitrary in assuming it. And you think, well, you know, he had the little Sunday school child that raises their hand. I know why the future will resemble the past, because God governs it by his providence. And he said, seed time and harvest will never cease until the end of time. And it's also part of man being able to subdue the created order. But you're exactly right. The science as it developed after the Reformation was a distinctly Christian way of looking at things. It really was. And people have, you know, I remember being asked questions about, like by my kids, why are people in India so poor? Why Why is that nation so devastated? I said, it's because of its religion. I said, kids, it's not because they're not smart people. They are smart. I've worked with Indian contractors when I was a computer programmer. They're some of the smartest people I've ever met in my life. It's their religion. Their religious beliefs about their Hinduism. doesn't believe the universe even exists. So why would you study it and try to subdue it and take dominion over it if you don't even think it's there? So it's not that, it's their worldview is wrong. It's the Christian doctrine of creation and seeing man as a dominion taker, as being charged by God to be fruitful and multiply, which is why we have children. We love our children. That's why all this sexual revolution stuff, I tell my kids all the time, what is going to be the legacy of all this sexual revolution? Same thing it always is. Death. They have no descendants. They hate children. It's all about sexual narcissism. Let me ask you. You have one child. Has that been pretty tough so far? Does it take a lot of energy and time? It takes energy. Are you able to read as much as you used to? Not as much. Well, try it with ten sometimes, my man. You look at atheism, all they can do apart from Christian faith is to be arbitrary. What is life? Right? We look at that. It's just arbitrary. Well, you know, a child in the womb, that's not life. Survival of the fittest, I guess. You know, the people who survive, that's, that is a human being. Who knows when you get old? Maybe by the time I'm 70 or 80, I won't be considered a human anymore. But it's reduced to arbitrariness. And it's really the Romans' one effect, that they have become futile in their thinking. They can no longer reason. Even though they can't completely leave the Christian ground or I would suspect Insanity would would occur. Yeah, you just you would lose all thought Yeah, but it cannot cannot part. That's right And that's what the scriptures even tell the world, those things. I think of Psalm 34, 21, evil shall slay the wicked. God doesn't have to act in judgment. He doesn't have to reign fire and brimstone. Just let the evil do their thing and they'll die. I mean, even that generation that lived in Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18 and 19, they would have been dead in a generation anyway, because they hated life and they were perverts. Yeah, I mean, they don't have kids. They hate all of that. And also Proverbs 8, 36, the last verse of Proverbs 8, where you have wisdom speaking the whole chapter, and it simply summarizes at the end, all those who hate me, all those who hate God's wisdom love death. So that's what they all do. The denial of God's existence, man being God's image, and therefore being precious in and of himself. That's why we love all unborn human life and we seek to advocate for the rights of the unborn and protect them. And we also, we love children and we embrace them. We have children. You know, this church is crawling with children. It's unbelievable. I mean, seriously, we have like 55 covenant children here. It's incredible. It is amazing. I always tell people not to walk backwards because you're going to trip over someone's kids. That's absolutely true. But all these ideas, human value, human dignity, all of these things, strictly and explicitly Christian. Yes, that's right. Distinctively and strictly Christian. That's right. Very good. Okay, let me see if I, hang on, this is where I left off. Mere concessiveness, yeah, therefore will never succeed in avoiding the intellectual conflict. That's right, so the modernists, by conceding history, they didn't get rid of the conflict, because the atheists won it all. They didn't even want your religious experiences either. In the intellectual battle of the present day, there can be no peace without victory. One side or the other must win. He's right, he's exactly right. As a matter of fact, however, it may appear that the figure which has just been used is altogether misleading. It may appear that what the liberal theologian has retained after abandoning to the enemy one Christian doctrine after another is not Christianity at all, but a religion which is so entirely different from Christianity as to belong in a distinct category." And he's absolutely correct. you start giving away Christianity, you don't have Christianity. One of my favorite pastors, Joe Moorcraft, always says, Christianity blended is Christianity prostituted. It ceases to be Christianity. So any concessions of the Christian faith, it slips and slips and it does not retain its Christianity. It becomes a distinct category. That's what he's setting it up. That's what liberalism is. Correct. It may appear, further, that the fears of the modern man as to Christianity were entirely ungrounded, and that in abandoning the embattled walls of the city of God, he has fled in needless panic into the open plains of a vague natural religion, only to fall an easy victim to the enemy whoever lies in ambush there. Yeah, you're like a city with no walls. City with no walls. You're just vulnerable to everything. Alright, two lines of criticism, then, are possible with respect to the liberal attempt at reconciling science with Christianity. Modern liberalism may be criticized, one, on the ground that it is un-Christian. He doesn't mince any words, does he? I mean, imagine how offensive this was to... I mean, you're talking about a denomination that had, like, what? Probably even back then, like 11,000 congregations. He's telling them that the majority of them are not even Christians. And two, on the ground that it is unscientific. We shall concern ourselves here chiefly with the former line of criticism, that it's unchristian. We shall be interested in showing that despite the liberal use of traditional phraseology, modern liberalism not only is a different religion from Christianity, but belongs in a totally different class of religions. You know, I remember, I think it was Robert Godfrey on the White Horse Inn years ago, said that when we were in seminary, we were forced to read Friedrich Schleiermacher's sermons, or sections of them would be read to us out loud, and we were told to try to guess who the preacher was, and it sounded so Christian. I mean, he talked about the cross and the resurrection, and yet every one of those terms had been radically redefined. You know? And it is sufficient for those men who teach that way. If you merely put on the sheep's clothing, you don't have to believe what Christianity teaches. If you look Christian, if you accept just enough, that's fine. Yeah. Setting, making the bar as low as possible. As low as possible. Just as few things as possible. Wouldn't you say that we really want to be maximalist in our understanding of Scripture, not minimalist? Absolutely. Yeah. Definitely. I was going to say something else. I will come to me later. But in showing that the liberal attempt at rescuing Christianity is false, we are not showing that there is no way of rescuing Christianity at all. On the contrary, it may appear incidentally, even in the present little book, that it is not the Christianity of the New Testament which is in conflict with science, but the supposed Christianity of the modern liberal church, and that the real city of God, and that city alone, has defenses which are capable of warding off the assaults of modern unbelief. Even the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. All we need to do is stand on the authority of scripture and defend what God's word says. We have everything that we need right there. However, our immediate concern is with the other side of the problem. Our principal concern just now is to show that the liberal attempt at reconciling Christianity with modern science has really relinquished everything distinctive of Christianity. so that what remains is in essentials only that same indefinite type of religious aspiration which was in the world before Christianity came upon the scene. You see what he's saying? He's saying they've reduced it to just generic religiosity. I just have a religious experience of some kind. In trying to remove from Christianity everything that could possibly be objected to in the name of science, in trying to bribe off the enemy by those concessions which the enemy most desires, the apologist has really abandoned what he started out to defend. That's why this book is so timeless. This is 120 proof of Christianity. I mean, it really is. Here, as in many other departments of life, it appears that the things that are sometimes thought to be hardest to defend are also the things that are the most worth defending. That's absolutely true. Exactly right. Absolutely true. Biblical creation, the virgin birth of Christ. I mean, think about the things that he was forced to defend. The deity of Christ. I mean, the modern liberals did not want to believe Jesus really was the incarnation of God the Son. They just didn't want to believe that. The virgin birth, the substitutionary atonement, the divine inspiration of scripture. That's right. Those are the things that are most worth defending, for sure. Absolutely. In maintaining that liberalism in the modern church represents a return to an unchristian and sub-christian form of the religious life, we are particularly anxious not to be misunderstood. Unchristian, in such a connection, is sometimes taken as a term of approbrium. We do not mean it at all as such. Socrates was not a Christian. Neither was Goeth. Yet we share to the full the respect with which their names are regarded. They tower immeasurably above the common run of men. If he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than they, he is certainly greater, not by any inherent superiority, but by virtue of an undeserved privilege which ought to make him humble rather than contemptuous. So we're not denying that there are smart people, right? But we know why, right? Why they are smart. Because they have been gifted by God. Yeah, and he's right. Socrates and other religious leaders were not Christians. Yeah, we certainly regard them as being intelligent men, and they towered above the common men, and so on and so forth. But we're not just saying we have a guy that's like a sage that we follow or whatever. It's a very different claim. Such considerations, however, should not be allowed to obscure the vital importance of the question at issue. If a condition could be conceived in which all the preaching of the church should be controlled by the liberalism, which in many quarters has already become preponderant, then we believe Christianity would at last have perished from the earth and the gospel would have sounded forth for the last time. Can you see why this is so offensive to the liberals that would have read this? If so, it follows that the inquiry with which we are now concerned is immeasurably the most important of all those with which the church has to deal. Vastly more important than all questions with regard to methods of preaching is the root question as to what it is that shall be preached. That is so vital because we can't get to preaching until we know the root, right? The root, thus saith the Lord. That's what we do. When we stand up, we say, this is the Word of God. This is what He says. This is not my vain speculation or opinions. This is the Word. We exegete what he says. His divinely given explanation of the redemptive historical events that actually took place. I personally, I mean, I know everyone's wired differently and God makes preachers that are different, some are much more soft-spoken, but I can't be anything other than passionate. When you think about the fact that Jesus is alive right now, that He rose from the dead, and that the whole of our salvation has been accomplished perfectly with nothing left in my hands. I don't know how you can get up in the pulpit and talk about that without some pathos, and I don't know how you can listen to people denying it or chipping away at its foundations without having a passionate response. I don't understand that, and I pray that I never do. I pray I never do understand that. Yeah, I never want that. Yeah, and I know you already are. Many, no doubt, will turn in impatience from the inquiry. All those, namely, who have settled the question in such a way that they cannot even conceive of its being reopened. Such, for example, are the Pietists, of whom there are still many. What, they say, is the need of argument in defense of the Bible? Is it not the word of God, and does it not carry with it an immediate certitude of its truth, which could only be obscured by defense? If science comes into contradiction with the Bible, so much the worse for science. For these persons we have the highest respect, for we believe that they are right in the main point. So they are correct. They have arrived by a direct and easy road. at a conviction which for other men is attained only through intellectual struggle. But we cannot reasonably expect them to be interested in what we have to say. Yeah, and that's an important theological question. the rightness of doing apologetics. I've learned from reading Bonson and Van Til and Gordon Clark and others that men as great as Abraham Kuyper actually thought that apologetics was a waste of time. Did you know that? Kuyper thought it always fails to yield results because he did understand the presuppositional conflict. He said there's two different ways of science. They don't even see everything that the one side that unbelief sees tries to cancel out everything that the other side sees. So apologetics is really just a waste of time. But we don't believe that because we know that it's a biblical injunction. And you see the apostles do it constantly. Paul would stand up and make his apologia, his defense. And he argued for it. They reasoned from Scripture with people, that kind of thing. Okay, yeah, but the pietists just basically said we don't want to engage in that because we just, you know, that's kind of an easy way out, but that's not at all what we would advocate. Okay, let's read one more paragraph and we'll try to stop it. Another class of uninterested persons is much more numerous. It consists of those who have definitely settled the question in the opposite way. By them, this little book, if it ever comes into their hands, will soon be flung aside as only another attempt at defense of a position already hopelessly lost. There are still individuals, they will say, who believe that the earth is flat. There are also individuals who defend the Christianity of the church, miracles and atonement and all. In either case, it will be said, the phenomenon is interesting as a curious example of arrested development, but it's nothing more. Yeah, so that will be like H.L. Mencken who read this and wrote a review of it. So yeah, Machen understood, you know, his audience and who he was going to be reading, or who was going to be reading his book and everything like that. But what's really great though is when, like, when you get past the introduction of just kind of what's at stake here, which is, has already given us plenty to talk about, as he gets into each of the specific doctrines, like, look, look at, what are the chapter titles? Like, doesn't it start with the Bible? The doctrine. Okay. Doctrine. God and man, the Bible, Christ, salvation. And the church and all of these things are at the core of what we profess to be true. That's right Really the loss of any of them. Yeah, you can't what is Christianity without doctrine? Yeah Christianity without Christ, you know without the Bible. Yeah, it's it's a Not Christianity. As he said, it's un-Christian. Yeah, it's anti-Christian. If we embrace that, then the last trumpet of the gospel has been heard. It's going to be gone. And the reason we're passionate about these things, the reason we argue about these things, the reason he wrote this book, Simple, because we love God. We love His truth. We're passionate about His truth. We believe the gospel, that it will go forth to all nations. He will subdue all people. All will be subjected and placed under His feet. We believe that to be true. And that's why these are things that are worth defending and they're worth dying for, too. And they're worth paying whatever price we have to pay to defend and hold to these things. Because you and I, as Christian men, would look at our own lives and probably remember the days when we weren't converted. and we think about how much it means to us, how important it is to us that the God of heaven and earth would intervene in our lives. We don't, you and I don't rejoice in our religious experiences, although there's times I'm moved to tears by the hymns. There's times that the chills go down my spine and everything else, but I know those are effects of God's anchored truth that never changes. Yes, because some days I feel spiritually cold and there's depression and there's issues going on with my kids and there's things that are really troubling me. But there's other times that experiences are very, very high. But the thing that's always, that never changes is God and His truth, the doctrines He's taught us. To live by experience, to live by your feelings, is to be tossed to and fro. Because tomorrow I may not feel saved. I may sin so wickedly tomorrow that I know that I'm not deserving of such a great salvation. If it's just based on feeling, there's no anchor. There can never be an anchor. And that's really what this is, is liberalism was really the attempt to free people from being anchored to that which is fixed and unchanging. The historical events themselves are fixed and unchanging. God's divine revelation, the word of God is fixed and unchanging. So really, there is an impetus in Christianity that we have to be conservatives, in the sense that we conserve what never changes. And that's what our culture doesn't like today. And what he speaks, what he says about something is what it is. He created six days, six day creationism, about human sexuality. What he says is what's true, not how we feel. On the murder of babies, all these things is based on the God of the Bible, His revealed truth. And the thing is, the thing that we can rejoice in and take comfort in too, the thing that I think about a lot, is that passage in John 6, 44 and 45. He tells the huge crowd that came across the Sea of Galilee wanting more free food. He tells them, no one is able to come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him as it is written, and they shall all be taught by God. Yes. Remember thinking, for the true believer, the true Christian, they're taught by God how to hate their sin and how to put it to death and how to stay at war with it. They're not going to want to make concessions to various types of sin for which Jesus bled and died on a cross to set them free. And that's what's so upsetting to me is I know in my life even now as someone who's been a Christian for over two decades, that there's still a lot wrong with me. There's much work to be done in putting sin to death and in cutting things off and plugging them out and taking every precaution to live a holy and godly life, especially with so many eyes looking at you, especially if you're a minister and I'm married, I have a big family. I have got a lot that's riding on my walk with God. And so, I'm always looking to Him to help me. I don't want to compromise on holiness. I want to be godly, and yet I still fail. I still sin. But the thing that's true of a Christian, like you said, is they listen to what scripture says, and they bring their experiences into subjection to it. There was a time, when I was 18, when really first God got a hold of me, I used to think, it's not fair. that God puts these raging hormones in us and expects us to be perfectly chaste. I went to a secular college with 23,000 students and the girls there didn't exactly dress modestly. I remember thinking, God, what is up with that? Why would you give us these desires? We're not even allowed to think about them. And yet, you know, once you get married and that part of your life comes to fruition, you understand it more then. But that's just an example of how, well, things might not make sense to you, but you just live by faith. You bow to the Word of God, right? That's what we're all called to do. Okay, good stuff there with Machen, Orion. It always edifies my soul to sit and talk. I know we do our Saturday morning stuff with your seminary work and we have to like I have to make sure we don't just spend the rest of the day talking theology. And we both have family. All of us have families to give back to. That's right. So it's good that we can do that. But I really appreciate you, and I'm looking forward to plowing through more of Machen. All right. You take care, my brother. You too, thanks. This is Pastor Patrick Hines of Bridewell Heights Presbyterian Church, located at 108 Bridewell Heights Road in Kingsport, Tennessee, and you've been listening to the Protestant Witness Podcast. Please feel free to join us for worship any Sunday morning at 11 a.m. sharp, where we open the Word of God together, sing His praises, and rejoice in the gospel of our risen Lord. You can find us on the web at www.bridwellheightspca.org. And may the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.