Dinesh D'Souza on Calvinism, Jenna Ellis Gets Nasty, the PMBC/G3 Debacle

Well, greetings, I guess. It's two o 'clock. Time to get started. Caught up with me there pretty quickly. I was enjoying being back in X. A different browser now. I don't understand any of it, but we managed to find a way around.

It's not ideal, but we're there. And as you may or may not be aware, things are strange in social media these days. I guess they always are, but then they get really stranger. And they'll calm down again in a few days.

Dinesh D'Souza's Anti-Calvinism Crusade

But right now, if you're a Calvinist who likes to explain stuff on a very basic level, you've got all sorts of opportunities. I don't have time for that. I have been posting what I can, but I suppose we should just put out a general call.

Everybody with basic knowledge of Reformed Theology, you'll have lots of people asking really basic questions because they do not understand the issues at all. It's like everyone's piling on at the same time and going, yeah, what about these really basic questions that have been answered 10 ,000 times?

Let's ask them again. Okay, well, you have the opportunity. Going into X, maybe it's spilling over to Facebook. I don't look at Facebook, but I imagine since Dinesh D'Souza is the one who has launched this anti-Calvinism crusade, that it's probably happening there too.

I don't know. For those of you blissfully unaware, a couple of days ago, Dinesh D'Souza, and I've appreciated some of the stuff that D'Souza has done. It's been interesting documentaries and stuff like that, but I don't even know what his religious background is.

Rich says he saw something, he was born Roman Catholic and sort of did the Calvary Chapel thing for a while. I don't even know where he is, but he all of a sudden decides to start repeating every objection to Reformed Theology, to Calvinism.

And in fact, I've thought about doing this. I didn't grab it, but the first book I wrote on the subject back in 1990-ish had an appendix that had answers to common objections to Reformed Theology. And I may still do it.

I mean, I don't think I still have those files anywhere. Well, I'm sure I do, but they're inside a zip file, inside a zip file, inside of an archive. They're on floppy disks someplace, yeah. But I'd love to pull that out.

Is God's Sovereign Grace on Kindle? Sovereign Grace of God, yes. I think it was God's Sovereign Grace when we started, but anyways, that got changed. But anyway, maybe I can pull it out that way. But I've thought about posting it because every single thing Dinesh D'Souza has said is addressed in that appendix.

Now, I'm not the first one who did that. Everything Dinesh D'Souza said was addressed by John Calvin, by the second generation Reformers. Can you imagine Francis Turretin looking at this stuff going, have I been completely forgotten?

Yes, by the majority, I'm afraid. Wow, there's just so much to say here. Here's what happened. People immediately started throwing my name out there and saying, do a debate, do a debate, do a debate. And I'm looking at what he's saying, and it is very plain to me, he has never read a single book by a Reformed author.

Not a one. Now, he read The Holiness of God by R .C. Sproul. He said he loved it. Yeah, I read that in one sitting. But I also recognized the theology that underlies The Holiness of God, because I read Chosen by God before I read The Holiness of God.

And so he even told somebody else, yeah, I just, I liked R .C. Sproul's book, The Holiness of God, so I've ordered his book, Chosen by God. Now, just hang with me here for a second. He just ordered Sproul's book.

He hasn't read it yet. It probably hasn't even arrived. And R .C. would tell you that's the most basic introduction he ever produced. So that's a self-admission. I don't have a clue what I'm talking about.

And I am so disrespectful, the other side, that I will opine on this subject from my ignorance and expect you all to respect my ignorance, because when it comes to religion, all opinions are equal. That's sort of how social media works.

If you can post a post, that needs to be given the exact same weight as anybody else's. I read the Bible? No. I read anything in church history? No. But my opinion's equal to everybody else's. I mean, that's just the American way.

No, actually, it's not. At least it wasn't. It is now. But it wasn't, and it can't be, because that's absurd. Nobody lives that way. When you go to the hospital because you've had a heart attack, you want a cardiologist who's actually, you know, studied cardiology?

You don't want a veterinarian who primarily treats tropical fish. Do you? Is his opinion equal? It should be. Well, no, it's not. And you're not going to go to your car mechanic, either. I mean, he may understand something about a fuel pump, but that's not going to help your heart that much.

So we can't live that way, except when it comes to religion, where everybody's opinions are the same. So what I did is I tried to give Dinesh D'Souza some good advice. And I want to thank the people who responded to that and said, man, I've saved that.

Thank you. So rare for that type of thing to happen in social media. Where instead of going after him, I attempted to give him some advice. My advice was, I would back off this subject, let it die of its own.

Here are some resources. And I gave him a wide variety of resources from the institutes, through Luther. You know, here's sort of a basic list of, well, of course, I listed turrets and that's not basic for anybody.

But, you know, he was making statements that Calvinists cannot answer these questions. And they are questions that we've answered with thousands of pages for hundreds of years. This is the thing that has troubled me the most, is that numerous people who claim to be Christians are willing to say, these questions have not even been answered.

They dodged these things. They can't answer these things. And yet when you press them, they haven't even tried to find out if we have, let alone accessed the literally thousands of pages where we did exactly that.

And they're proud of it. That's really the contagion of social media. It rewards simplicity. It rewards inaccuracy. It rewards laziness, is what it rewards. And then after I did that, after I said, and he acknowledged it.

And I had hoped maybe, because I literally said, I don't think it debates the proper thing to do right now. I mean, here's a bunch of debates I've done. So I'm not saying debate's wrong. It's just, if you don't know what the other side is saying, and has said for literally centuries, the debate isn't going to accomplish anything.

It's not going to edify anybody, let alone yourself. And honestly, one of my biggest concerns was that he will be pushed into taking a position by the speed of social media. And he'll go to his deathbed holding that position, no matter how silly it is.

I've seen it happen over and over and over again. And I think that is what's happening because he rejected my advice. He's already scheduled a debate. Now, the fellow he's debating, sharp fellow, kind Frenchman, very soft-spoken, primarily a philosopher, so this will be a philosophical debate.

It will not be a biblical debate, which would be what I would do. That's one of the differences between us. And that's fine. There's room for everybody. God uses all sorts of different people. And he'll do fine.

But the problem is he's going to have to be correcting so many misapprehensions that it really detracts from the value of the debate. The best debates, let's be honest, are where both sides know what the other side believes.

I mean, look at the Tassie debate. Why was that such a debacle? Because he didn't have a clue what I believed. Well, I don't know about that, but he didn't have any idea. So that's my concern here. He's pretty much rejected my advice.

I tried to offer it. I was being sincere. People need to understand. I'm looking at this. I'm just simply going, okay, the man has no theological standing. He's not an exegete. He's not a historian. He's not a theologian.

So if he just harangues against Calvinism, it's just yet another of the many, many people that harangue against Calvinism. That's an everyday thing. That's no big deal. And I should say to my fellow Calvinists, you've got to understand, I remember very well when Chosen but Free came out.

And I was 26 years younger then. But I was concerned because Norman Geisler's name would lead to confusion. People would assume that he's using words properly, which he didn't, that he's not just changing the whole grounds of debate, which he did, all that kind of stuff.

And yeah, I was prompted to begin writing The Potter's Freedom because I was concerned about the confusion the book would produce. Now, in hindsight, I think we all can recognize God was behind all that.

I mean, The Potter's Freedom has had more impact in a wider audience than almost any book I've written. I mean, the King James Only controversies, that's my biggest selling book, but it's a little bit of a different genre and context, stuff like that.

I mean, The Potter's Freedom hit hard and continues to help people a lot. Now, I couldn't see that at the time, but now with hindsight and greatly advancing age, Rich is laughing at that, but it's true.

And that's part of the laughter is he knows it's true. Um, I look back and I go, God is behind all of that. God's behind this. Um, we don't have to panic. We don't have to, you know, my responses to all this have been quite calm.

It's amazing how many people read in all sorts of, you're going crazy. No, I'm not. I'm actually almost comatose here because you're asking questions that I've answered 10 ,000 times. I've addressed these things.

We've, we do this thing called Radio Free Geneva. Look it up sometime. We've addressed everything in depth in the original languages that he can't read. So none of this is challenging to us. We're all like, yeah, I've been there, done that, got the t-shirt, you know, um, not that that means it's less important, but it's like, no, you're not raising new issues.

And when you start off saying these are things Calvinists can never talk about, well, we know you don't know what you're talking about. Now, there are some others of you, you know, I saw Pritchett from Trinity, um, popping off, uh, actually supporting what he's doing.

And, and I took a shot back at him and said, I can't believe you're doing this. I had sort of hoped that they would be some of the people out there. Because like the evangelical Arminians are sort of going, oh, wait a minute.

Arminianism, Cisgender, and Historical Accuracy

Um, some of the stuff that's being said here is really weird. Um, because, uh, some of the stuff that, that, uh, uh, what's his face is saying are, is pretty weird. Like, for example, I think this is, yeah.

Yesterday, D'Souza said this. To me, the term Arminianism is like the term cisgender. These are terms invented by deviants to make normal people seem to have their own form of deviancy. A belief in the human capacity to choose God is not Arminianism.

It's biblical. It's what it means to be human. Now, cisgender is a made up term and that's, see, this is the thing that this does bother me. Um, he recognizes, yes, cisgender is a term invented by deviants to make normal people seem to have their own form of deviancy.

That's true. That's true. Where he has absolutely destroyed his credibility. I mean, face-plantingly bad and doesn't realize it. Evidently doesn't have anybody around him to tell him this. Is that, that, that laughter we hear in the background?

No, it's not rich. Uh, though he does have his microphone on, so if he wanted to, he could do that. But the laughter you hear in the background, that's Jacob Arminius. He's laughing because that's not where Arminianism came from.

This wasn't deviants trying to make other people look like deviants. There is a history of something called the reminiscence. Well, there's something called the Reformation. There's something called the first debate between Erasmus and Luther, which clearly he doesn't know anything about that either.

And then you have the reminiscence, and then you have the Synod of Dort, and, and you have the development of Arminianism and Jacob Arminius, and there is history here, and there is no connection on any logical or rational basis to connect cisgender with Arminianism.

That is absurd on a level that should be laughed at. I mean, here's the problem. The people online are like, well, you know, we shouldn't laugh at that, you know. No, we should. Adults should laugh at silly things, because this man should know better.

And he had been warned. I said to him, you're not reading primary material. When I point out the books, have you read this? Have you read this? He didn't even, didn't even pretend to have touched any of those things.

But he knows how important that is. So this one topic, and I use this as an illustration, I said, what if this was the Trinity? What if this was, you know, you got some Unitarian, and unfortunately they use these types of arguments, which is why it's hard to take so many of them seriously, but, but what if, what if a Unitarian, because we're all Trinitarians in this conversation, right?

What if a Unitarian comes up and pops off and says something along the lines of, well, the Trinity can't be true because Jesus referred to the Father as a, as someone other than him. So clearly the Trinity is not true.

And we're all sitting there going, except the Trinity teaches that Jesus isn't the Father. That's basic Trinity theology 101, and so if you think that refutes it, then probably you don't know what the doctrine of the Trinity is, and therefore what you're saying doesn't really carry any weight.

And we'd all agree with that, but when it comes to the blessed idol of man's free will, anything is fair game. Anything is fair game. And I'm literally watching people who are proud of their ignorance.

So I write that whole thing for Dinesh, and what do I see? All sorts of people, and I have not even read the hundreds of comments, but I see a bunch of people going, well, there you go. There's not, there's Calvinism, it's Gnosticism.

Can't give the Bible, you got to give all these books to read. I saw that one over and over and over again. What was the primary thrust of the power of freedom? Biblical exegesis. Okay, biblical exegesis.

And I've taken that biblical exegesis into debate with numerous people, and they have not been able to even touch it. And I'll say to those Trinity guys, tell you what, Pritchett and all you guys, you guys are nice guys.

I travel around in an RV. I will take on your entire staff, me against however many people you want. Four, five guys, I don't care. We'll do Calvinism's understanding of the Bible. Key biblical texts.

Shall we do the sovereignty of God? Shall we do compatibilism? The decree of God? The meaning of predestination? Ephesians 1, Romans 8 and 9. Happy to do it. You can bring your whole student body if you want.

You see, when it comes to the biblical text, that is our foundation. All the philosophical stuff, fine, wonderful, great. That's not why I'm Calvinist. That's what you talk about to answer certain questions of the person over there.

But the reason to believe is because this is exactly what the inspired writers intended to communicate to their audience at that time. And this is what it means today. So yeah, so the question is not what the Bible teaches.

The question people keep saying, Calvinism can't answer this. Calvinism can't answer that. And we've answered it with thousands of pages. And so when you cite the thousands of pages, see that's Gnosticism and you're arrogant.

I'll tell you what's arrogant. Arrogance is addressing a topic where there have been many thousands of pages printed and you are too stinking lazy to even start the reading. But you want everyone to take your conclusion seriously.

That is arrogance. And I've been seeing that online in spades. Oh my goodness. And no one even seems to recognize. No one even seems to recognize. It's astonishing. It really is. And Dinesh used the Gnosticism thing, which again, okay.

Gnosticism and the Historical Meaning of the Term

It's very common for people to misunderstand what Gnosticism was. I get that. But it's still a misuse of the term. Most of these people do not know Gnosticism. They've not read the Apocrypha of John or anything else.

They don't know the different forms of Gnosticism. They don't understand the difference between the earlier developmental stage of Gnosticism and Valentinian Gnosticism, which became such a danger to the early church and the differences.

And they've probably never even looked at a list of all the eons and the relationships and all that stuff, which we did during COVID. We laid that foundation and then looked into Manichaeism and all the Ken Wilson absurdity.

And here's what's going to happen. You want my prediction? He's going to have to latch on to something. Dinesh D'Souza is. That's what he's going to latch on to. That's what he's going to latch on to.

Can you imagine Dinesh D'Souza giving a platform to Leighton Flowers and Ken Wilson? Here we go again, you know, and we'll just keep reposting the URLs. Here it is. Here it is. Because we tore Wilson to pieces during those programs.

I mean, we gave, I got his dissertation. We are sitting there quoting him directly. Chris Wisson and I are just, you know, tag teaming this dude because Chris was knee deep in Augusta at the time. And so he would check every citation out.

And we found him so horribly, I don't know who read that dissertation, but it makes a mockery of the PhD program at Oxford. Because we found error after error after error after the most clear and obvious contextual, whoa, wrong errors.

Just embarrassing. Thankfully, that's all still available. But that's my guess. That's the kind of thing that I see coming here. So anyway, that's a lot of stuff that I probably, I did actually have most of that written down here to talk about.

There's still time for him to reverse course. There really is. But I sort of doubt that's going to happen. Now, interestingly enough, interestingly enough, in all, in the midst of this, all of a sudden, a name pops up.

Jenna Ellis's Criticism and the Question of God's Love

I'm, let me give you the background here. You all get to get on the inside of this particular story, which is perfectly fine. That's, I don't remember which year it was. I had the grand design. That would have been 22.

We got in 21, didn't we? Yeah. So, so it's either fall of 21 or sometime in 22. It wasn't during the winter. So I don't know. If you throw G3 regional Washington DC at Google, I think it would pull up what date that was.

So the Washington G3, you think it was? Well, because it was regional. It wasn't the national one. It was that one I drove all the way back to Washington for. Anyway, that was the one where Google tried to kill me and routed me onto a road that almost destroyed my RV.

Anyway, G3 had a regional thing. I remember I went to the Museum of the Bible, gave an impromptu tour there. I wasn't allowed to, but I did it anyways. And they had a Q &A, moderated panel question answer period.

And I'm sorry, the gentleman's name is escaping me right now. Delano Squire, something like, yeah. Black fellow, real nice fellow. We've talked a number of times. Real sharp. And Jenna Ellis. Now, what was Jenna Ellis famous for?

She was one of Trump's attorneys. I didn't know why she was there, but I was asked to do this Q &A. And sorry about that. I didn't mean to play with the microphone. Um, what was amazing, Virgil Walker moderated it.

And what was amazing is I generally don't like those Q &As. Got it? September 22. Okay, that may have been the trip around the way home. I had the idea about converting and we went to the Jayco. Oh, that's probably what it was.

See, I'm thinking all these things based on what Arvio is pulling. Anyway, I generally don't like these things, but this one went really well. It was fast paced. The questions were good. The answers were good.

The three of us worked together well. Didn't really know her at all. And what was amazing was we get to the end of the hour. And the audience is like, keep going, keep going. That had never happened before.

That had never happened before. Um, and I think it was that night that the speakers walked to a restaurant over near, well, we were looking over a body of water toward, oh, was that the Jefferson Memorial?

Or was that the White House? You're looking right over toward, you're probably right next to Potomac. Anyway, it was one of those restaurants where you've got the room in the back, you know. And if you've ever spoken at these conferences, generally what happens is you go in and they have a special room for larger groups.

And they give you a single sheet of paper, a single menu. And it's the stuff that they can prepare for a group. So it doesn't have as much choices, but they can make it faster. And I remember Josh Bice is sitting here, and Virgil is across from me, and Jenna Ellis is right here.

And Steve Lawson's at the head of the table right here. And what I remember most clearly, and I bet you Virgil will remember this. I wonder if he still has this, I'm gonna have to ask him. We're doing the Trulia debate at the church he's at.

So we'll be bumping into each other here coming up. Anyway, maybe, I mean, he may not be there on a Saturday. But anyway, Steve Lawson had and probably still has interesting culinary habits that have made him famous and made him famous long before other things made him famous.

And the poor, the poor waitress, she must have had to come and speak to him 10 times. And he's sitting there with one of his famous Mont Blanc fountain pens. And it's a sheet of paper about, it's got the choices on it.

He, I think I've told you a story. He filled all the white space around the menu with his specific instructions for his meal. It was so amazing that once he got his food, Virgil asked for his menu. He asked to keep it.

That's why I'm gonna ask him. You still got that? It could be framed someplace. Yeah, for other reasons now. Um, and so, and by the way, what comes when he gets his food? Because we're all sitting here going, what is this gonna look like?

What is going on? Because she has to keep coming. Would it be okay if we did it? Would it be okay if we did it? She finally shows up. You know, we've gotten our food already. We're all waiting for him.

Uh, I don't even remember what I ate. Um, but she comes and she has a plate. It's a decent sized plate. On one side is a petite filet mignon, open space, pile of plain french fries. That's it. That's it.

Nothing else. Other people confirmed this for me. His food cannot touch his other food before he eats it. We're all thinking the same thing, aren't we? It's gonna be touching here in a minute or so. Yep, doesn't matter.

Can't touch. And I just, I just remember the looks of all of us are sort of looking at each other like, that looks like something you get at McDonald's. I mean, you know, that's, that's my type of thing.

Anyway, I sat right across from her. We had fine conversation. We talked about all sorts of things. No problems at all. So I had, you know, a positive impression of Jenna Ellis when I left Washington.

Over the next couple of weeks, I discovered that that Q &A will not be posted on G3's website. And I came to the conclusion, I didn't contact somebody and say, hey, why give me the inside skinny and stuff like that.

But I saw some back and forth. And that was September. Something happened. I forget what it was. But it had to do with churches taking a Sunday off or something like that. And I think Josh Bice said something about it.

This is not how you do church, stuff like that. Well, she took exception and they clashed. And her stuff didn't get posted, including the Q &A, which I was disappointed because I thought it was a really good Q &A.

It worked out real well. And so I still had a fairly positive impression, but I also knew that there was some conflicts and I didn't give it much thought. You know, it was after that, I think, that she was convicted in court of election fraud in Georgia, as I recall, making improper claims for Trump or something like that.

And I sort of dismissed that as politics. I mean, this was during the Biden regime. So, you know, they went after everybody. So I didn't really give it much thought. So what does that have to do with this?

All of a sudden, Jenna Ellis pops into the Dinesh D'Souza stuff and comes after me. Comes after me for having dared to offer him meaningful advice. And the first thing I do is I respond. And again, her assertion demonstrates that she has not done any reading.

Now, the funny thing was, there's pictures of her online with John MacArthur. There's pictures of her online with Votie Baucom. And I'm just sitting there going, do you have any idea what Votie would say to you about stuff you're saying?

I mean, he would be just as bold as me, maybe more, you know. And so I'm going, this is weird, but clearly she has done no reading in this area at all. And so she just, you know, makes this... Calvinists could never explain why if God could save everyone, why he doesn't.

And she uses an infinitely loving God. Okay, how many hours have we spent on this program talking about delineation, the love of God, the fact that we delineate in our own love, my love for my wife is different than my love for somebody else's wife?

I mean, all this stuff. And again, they're just making these broad, sweeping claims that are just so easily refuted and demonstrate they've never taken a moment to think about this stuff. It's embarrassing to them.

And so I try to ask a biblical question. And so I said, in light of your infinitely loving God comment, could you name the prophets that Yahweh sent to the Amorites and the other Canaanites to bring about their repentance before he had Israel destroy the man, woman, and child?

Question mark. I haven't gotten an answer and I won't get an answer. I saw right before I left to come to the office today that she had made another statement about, I'm not going to debate, and these people are just un-Christ-like, and this vague stuff.

But she's not going to engage. It's a simple question that demonstrates that her presuppositions are not biblical presuppositions. They cannot be forced into the text. She's not deriving this from reading Tota Scriptura and Sola Scriptura.

These are her traditions. And I wanted to try to bring that out, but not going to happen. But in the process, she gets nasty. I mean, she's a piece of work. She gets nasty and starts saying, I was on a panel with this guy, and he said I was, she said I was bloviating off topic.

Bloviating off topic. Being disrespectful to the moderator, which is Virgil Walker. So I sent her comment to Virgil. I'm not going to tell you what he said, but he indicated that her recollection was absurd.

She said I took up all the time, all their stuff. She just made stuff up. I mean, it's just, it's just not true. It's just absurd. And I almost wonder, I almost wonder if there might be somebody in the audience watching this program that was there, that saw that Q &A, that would be willing to, you know, drop Rich a line or something like that.

I was there. I saw it. That would be sort of fun. We'll see if you get anything. I mean, the chances are rather small, but you never know. But she just goes scorched earth. And it, it's really made me step back and go, wow, these are the kind of people that Trump's surrounded with, huh?

Well, they can change history like that. I guess that's what happens in the court of law these days. So anyway, well, looking at the time here, I've got some texts I might look at. Let me talk about this first.

The PMBC Eldership Resignations and G3's Ministry

If we have time toward the end, I will. But there is something else going on that I felt we needed to talk about before too much time passed. You know, I've just mentioned Josh Bice, just mentioned G3, just mentioned the Washington stuff.

Protestia reported last night that all four elders of the Praise Mill Baptist Church offered their resignations over the weekend. The further information that I've been given is that the deacons of the church spent many hours, I think, like Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday nights, something like that, many hours interviewing people, investigating the allegations from the Protestia article.

And as a result, asked for the resignations of all the eldership of the church, and were given those resignations. My understanding is there was some delay with one of them. There was some conference going on or something.

I don't know all the details on that. Anyway, now, of course, all sorts of people who love to insert themselves in everything or writing substack articles and everything else. Some people who shouldn't be writing on any of these things ever, ever again, given what they've done.

But they're doing their thing. And that's exactly what you expect from them. But, you know, I think about all those hours spent at the G3 conferences, not just the big, big, big ones. But, you know, I forget how many years I did before it went real big, when it was still just at Praise Mill.

And the place was packed out. I think the first year I was there, Summer was there. She lived in Georgia at the time. And we had, I think they were Subway sandwiches. You know how, well, maybe you don't, but I've been to a lot of churches and churches have been around for a while, have these little rooms in the back that are filled with stuff from every kids play and Christmas musical for the past 30 years.

And they'll never be emptied out. And they're tight and they're cramped and they're dark. But when you need some place for people to sit down, that's where you end up sitting down. And Vody and me and Summer and some other folks were in this tiny little room, just having a wonderful conversation, just talking about all sorts of fun stuff there at Praise Mill early on.

And all the good conversations that were had there. And then once we moved to the convention center, the lines that we would have, the pictures, the handshaking, the signing of the books, the answering of questions, and especially hearing about how the ministry had impacted people for years and years and years.

You can't take all that stuff away. No, we may not get to do it again. This is a crushing blow, really, for Reformed Baptist, because that was our annual meeting. But you can't take that away. You can't take the ministry away.

You can't take those sermons away. You know, I still think of, and in fact, Chris sent a picture from, I think it was 2015, he said it was from 2015. And that was when I gave the thing on Jesus and inerrancy and the synoptic gospels and stuff like that.

And you know, I think that stuff is still really important. The thing that Michael Kruger and I did on Canon has helped all sorts of people. Um, the second to last, or was it the last? Here's the last, the second to last sermon that I gave there from Isaiah 41.

Rich said he really liked that one. That was the best sermon I've ever heard you deliver. Well, there you go. And, you know, you can't change that stuff. And there does seem to be an attitude. You know, Steve Lawson was normally there.

If you see pictures of the panel conversations, there's Steve, there's Voti. And people have the idea, well, you know, that sort of ruins its value. And I go, why? Let me use this as an illustration, because I've brought this up a few times briefly.

Truth Is Grounded in Scripture, Not the Messenger

And it's just something that really bothers me. It does seem something that I'm in the minority on. But let's use the Isaiah sermon. If what I said in that sermon faithfully reflects the text of Isaiah, and I think it does, it was, I had purchased this large print Hebrew text, and Jeffrey Rice had found it for me.

It's beautiful. Purple edges on the pages. It was just gorgeous. And that's all I had. I did not have any notes. I had the Hebrew text, and I think I might have had an English text, but it may have been the Septuagint.

I think it was the Septuagint. Anyway, if what I said was true that day, is it true today? Well, yeah. So, the truth of what that text says is not dependent upon the person delivering the message. The truth of what I said that day is dependent upon fidelity to the text itself, because that reflects the nature of the text.

The nature of the text, it's theanoustos, it's God breathed. And so it communicates divine truth, and it's not dependent upon who's communicating it. It's dependent upon what is communicated. And that's why it remains true to this day.

And so I would be upset if that became unavailable, because, well, but, you know, G3 fell apart. Okay, yeah, that's sad, but what G3 did at that time shouldn't be taken away. And here's the question. Will it be true after I die?

Well, of course. But was it true before I was born? Well, yeah. So, you see, truth doesn't depend upon the person who presents it. And so let's say that someone says, yeah, but Steve Lawson was there.

Okay, Steve Lawson was there. Are you telling me that everything Steve Lawson ever said is untrue? Well, but he didn't adorn his profession. Okay, all right, I don't know all the details, but let's say all that's true.

When he gave a historical lecture about Spurgeon or Knox or something like that, and he told the truth, was it true at that point in time? Is it true today? Was it true before he was born? Yeah, it's still true.

And that's where I'm concerned, that there is a attitude amongst Christians that's sort of like, you know, if somebody messes up, what they taught becomes untrue. And I've seen people almost make shipwreck of the faith because that guy's the one that introduced me to justification by faith.

Let's say Steve Lawson introduced you to the reality of justification by faith, and then you become disappointed in Steve Lawson. Should you question justification by faith because you are looking at the screen up there for some reason that it's not what I'm talking about?