WEBVTT 00:00:37.120 --> 00:00:39.600 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.600 --> 00:00:40.400 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.480 --> 00:00:41.840 Molly. And 00:00:41.840 --> 00:00:43.840 I'm still Wo. 00:00:43.840 --> 00:00:47.760 On today's Stone Choir we're going to be continuing the overarching theme 00:00:47.760 --> 00:00:51.520 that we've had on many of these episodes where we're effectively skewering 00:00:51.520 --> 00:00:52.640 sacred cows. 00:00:52.640 --> 00:00:56.080 We're going to be going after another topic today that is loved 00:00:56.080 --> 00:00:57.840 and embraced by the world. 00:00:57.840 --> 00:01:00.480 Uh it's a big part of conversation politically. 00:01:00.480 --> 00:01:04.400 It's in fact a big part of conversation frequently in our churches. 00:01:04.400 --> 00:01:07.360 Uh that is a man by the name of the Reverend Dr. 00:01:07.760 --> 00:01:11.120 Martin Luther King Jr., also known as Michael King. 00:01:11.120 --> 00:01:13.120 That's the name by which he was born. 00:01:13.120 --> 00:01:16.000 So today is almost certainly going to be a two part episode. 00:01:16.000 --> 00:01:20.320 Uh I did the research on his papers, on his sermons, on 00:01:20.320 --> 00:01:25.040 his speeches, and Corey did the research on his political connections, his 00:01:25.040 --> 00:01:29.360 affiliations, and kind of his later life outside of the immediate sphere 00:01:29.360 --> 00:01:30.640 of the church. 00:01:30.640 --> 00:01:34.160 And so it's almost certainly gonna run long enough that we don't 00:01:34.080 --> 00:01:36.320 want to have a another brutal four hour marathon. 00:01:36.320 --> 00:01:38.880 So I think we'll probably make the call around the hour mark 00:01:38.960 --> 00:01:40.800 that we'll probably split this in two episodes. 00:01:40.800 --> 00:01:43.440 So just so you know, there's a possibility this might be one 00:01:43.440 --> 00:01:45.200 or it might be two. 00:01:46.400 --> 00:01:46.720 So 00:01:48.000 --> 00:01:50.720 for the first half of this episode or the first episode of 00:01:50.720 --> 00:01:54.880 this two part series, however, pans out, we're going to be going 00:01:54.880 --> 00:01:59.120 over things that King wrote when he was in seminary, when he 00:01:59.120 --> 00:02:03.040 was in college, when he was getting his graduate degree, and then 00:02:03.040 --> 00:02:06.560 when he was a pastor, which end incidentally overlaps. 00:02:06.560 --> 00:02:08.320 And so we'll go in a little bit of the detail of 00:02:08.320 --> 00:02:09.840 the timeline there. 00:02:09.840 --> 00:02:13.360 Before I get into the all the specifics, I want to warn 00:02:13.360 --> 00:02:16.400 you up front, we are going to bury you in quotes. 00:02:16.400 --> 00:02:19.200 It is very deliberate this week that we are going to quote 00:02:19.200 --> 00:02:20.240 way too much. 00:02:20.240 --> 00:02:22.320 The quotes are going to be too long and they're going to 00:02:22.320 --> 00:02:23.680 be too many of them. 00:02:23.680 --> 00:02:26.160 The reason that we're going to do that, the reason that we're 00:02:26.080 --> 00:02:30.160 gonna be reading a whole lot more than usual, is that the 00:02:30.160 --> 00:02:33.920 single most common refutation of some of the objections we're gonna have 00:02:33.920 --> 00:02:37.520 in this episode or this half of the episode is well he 00:02:37.520 --> 00:02:39.520 was a good boy, he didn't do nothing. 00:02:39.520 --> 00:02:43.600 Basically they argue when he was young, sure he had some problems 00:02:43.600 --> 00:02:47.600 theologically, but later on he was a really good Christian man. 00:02:47.600 --> 00:02:50.960 And so we're going to bury you in quotes that prove that 00:02:50.960 --> 00:02:53.120 that's utterly impossible. 00:02:53.120 --> 00:02:56.400 So rather than not just name calling and say he's burning in 00:02:56.400 --> 00:02:59.600 hell, which is a fact, we will demonstrate that. 00:02:59.600 --> 00:03:02.160 We're going to use his own words, we're going to use a 00:03:02.160 --> 00:03:06.880 trajectory of his life to demonstrate, beyond any shadow of a doubt, 00:03:06.880 --> 00:03:10.000 that there was probably not a single point there's not probably not 00:03:10.000 --> 00:03:13.520 a single day in this man's life where he was actually a 00:03:13.520 --> 00:03:14.640 Christian. 00:03:14.720 --> 00:03:15.200 That's 00:03:15.360 --> 00:03:15.520 you 00:03:15.520 --> 00:03:18.400 know, uh you probably know very little about him, you know he 00:03:18.400 --> 00:03:21.200 was a civil rights leader, that he was a pastor, that you 00:03:21.200 --> 00:03:23.120 know, he he was nonviolent. 00:03:23.120 --> 00:03:25.520 You probably have a generally good opinion of him. 00:03:25.520 --> 00:03:29.040 Uh people on the dissident right who have gotten more into the 00:03:29.040 --> 00:03:33.120 revisionist history of some of these matters and have seen for themselves 00:03:33.120 --> 00:03:35.520 some of the facts, like, yeah, no, that's nonsense. 00:03:35.520 --> 00:03:38.400 But for most of you listening, you probably have a generally favorable 00:03:38.400 --> 00:03:42.880 opinion. And this episode is not to tear down your opinion of 00:03:42.880 --> 00:03:44.000 a dead man. 00:03:44.000 --> 00:03:47.520 The reason specifically that we're tackling this subject is I said at 00:03:47.520 --> 00:03:54.000 the beginning, in our church it is extremely common for theologians, for 00:03:54.000 --> 00:03:59.680 pastors, for executives of churches, for men who frankly should know these 00:03:59.680 --> 00:04:04.480 things before they quote this man, will use him as a paragon 00:04:04.480 --> 00:04:08.720 of Christian virtue and as a paragon of Christian teaching and belief. 00:04:08.720 --> 00:04:12.320 And so in the spirit of the genealogy of ideas, we're just 00:04:12.320 --> 00:04:13.600 checking their work. 00:04:13.600 --> 00:04:17.680 They're guys who in good conscience say we should be like Martin 00:04:17.680 --> 00:04:21.120 Luther King Jr., we should be like this man, we should have 00:04:21.120 --> 00:04:22.320 faith like him. 00:04:22.320 --> 00:04:26.720 If that's true, then it will hold up under scrutiny. 00:04:26.720 --> 00:04:28.480 So this is that scrutiny. 00:04:28.480 --> 00:04:32.880 And so to begin, I spent the last two days reading this 00:04:32.880 --> 00:04:34.160 guy's writings. 00:04:34.160 --> 00:04:35.920 I that was incredibly painful. 00:04:35.920 --> 00:04:37.280 I don't recommend doing it. 00:04:37.280 --> 00:04:38.880 Um he's a bad writer. 00:04:39.120 --> 00:04:40.400 he's illiterate. 00:04:40.400 --> 00:04:42.880 He clearly had a lot of help when he was submitting his 00:04:42.880 --> 00:04:45.840 papers because when you look at his handwritten notes and compare them 00:04:46.000 --> 00:04:49.120 to the papers that were submitted, it's night and day. 00:04:49.120 --> 00:04:51.360 But that's not the point of this episode. 00:04:51.360 --> 00:04:54.160 What we're gonna talk about, we're gonna begin in one of the 00:04:54.160 --> 00:04:54.960 middle of his papers. 00:04:54.960 --> 00:04:56.880 This is a paper that he wrote, I believe while he was 00:04:56.880 --> 00:05:00.000 at seminary, so to give a brief bio, he 00:05:00.880 --> 00:05:04.560 when he was 15, he went to Morehouse College. 00:05:04.800 --> 00:05:07.040 This was a historically black college. 00:05:07.040 --> 00:05:11.840 It was a preparatory college, basically presem for Baptists. 00:05:12.080 --> 00:05:14.800 After going to Morehouse, he went to Crozer University. 00:05:14.800 --> 00:05:21.200 After Crozer, he went to Boston University, where he received a PhD. 00:05:21.200 --> 00:05:25.440 So the reason that that's important is that much of the writings 00:05:25.440 --> 00:05:28.240 that we're gonna be talking about in this first part are from 00:05:28.240 --> 00:05:28.800 this period. 00:05:28.800 --> 00:05:31.600 They're from a period where he was in school and in some 00:05:31.600 --> 00:05:32.480 cases he was young. 00:05:32.480 --> 00:05:34.720 Like I don't think I have anything here when he was under 00:05:34.800 --> 00:05:37.280 18, but as I said, a lot of people will defend him 00:05:37.280 --> 00:05:40.240 and say, oh, well, he was young, so it's okay because he 00:05:40.240 --> 00:05:41.440 got better later. 00:05:41.440 --> 00:05:44.880 What we're going to demonstrate is that he in fact got worse 00:05:44.880 --> 00:05:49.520 later. But more importantly, as you hear us reading these things, these 00:05:49.520 --> 00:05:52.480 specific quotes from this man, whether he was a young man or 00:05:52.480 --> 00:05:57.360 an older man, think for yourself, if you had said these things 00:05:57.600 --> 00:06:02.160 and then later on you became a Christian, would you have repented 00:06:02.160 --> 00:06:03.120 of them publicly? 00:06:03.120 --> 00:06:05.520 I want you to keep that in mind because that's fundamentally the 00:06:05.520 --> 00:06:09.120 question you will have to deal with when you say to someone, 00:06:09.120 --> 00:06:11.520 if if you're convinced by our argument here, if you tell someone, 00:06:11.520 --> 00:06:13.680 you know, actually Martin Luther King Jr. 00:06:13.680 --> 00:06:14.640 was not even a Christian. 00:06:14.880 --> 00:06:18.960 he had some terrible false theology and it was antithetical to the 00:06:18.960 --> 00:06:22.000 church. If you say that to someone and they know anything about 00:06:22.000 --> 00:06:24.560 the details and the timing, they'll say, Oh, that was in when 00:06:24.560 --> 00:06:25.360 he was younger. 00:06:25.360 --> 00:06:26.400 So remember that question. 00:06:26.720 --> 00:06:29.680 If you had said these things when you were eighteen or twenty 00:06:29.840 --> 00:06:33.200 or twenty three, and then later you became a Christian, would you 00:06:33.200 --> 00:06:34.000 admit it? 00:06:34.000 --> 00:06:37.680 Would you just pretend that nothing had changed, or would you turn 00:06:37.680 --> 00:06:41.040 away from this wickedness that we're about to describe And 00:06:41.920 --> 00:06:44.400 use it as an example of the Christian life and say, I 00:06:44.400 --> 00:06:45.840 used to believe something bad. 00:06:45.840 --> 00:06:47.280 Now I believe the truth. 00:06:47.280 --> 00:06:48.640 Let me tell you about that. 00:06:48.640 --> 00:06:50.080 I know I personally would. 00:06:50.080 --> 00:06:53.360 There's I I we we talk on this on this show sometimes 00:06:53.360 --> 00:06:56.160 about the errors that we made in our own past, not to 00:06:56.160 --> 00:07:01.200 be self-reflective, but simply to say God fixes things, but you have 00:07:01.200 --> 00:07:02.240 to let him. 00:07:02.240 --> 00:07:05.520 And so as you hear these quotes, just remember if this If 00:07:05.520 --> 00:07:08.240 this was your confession and then 10 years later you believed the 00:07:08.240 --> 00:07:10.240 opposite, would you have admitted it? 00:07:10.240 --> 00:07:13.360 And would you have said, yeah, I don't believe that anymore? 00:07:14.080 --> 00:07:17.840 So one of the papers that Mike Michael I'm going to call 00:07:17.840 --> 00:07:20.960 him Mike or Michael or MLK throughout this, because his name isn't 00:07:20.960 --> 00:07:21.840 Martin Luther. 00:07:21.840 --> 00:07:24.800 Uh that was a name his father changed his name to when 00:07:24.800 --> 00:07:26.560 he was a couple years old. 00:07:26.560 --> 00:07:28.640 One of the papers he wrote when he was in seminary at 00:07:28.640 --> 00:07:33.440 Crozer when he was an adult was related to his trajectory in 00:07:33.440 --> 00:07:34.080 the faith. 00:07:34.080 --> 00:07:37.200 Uh the name of the paper, and we're gonna have links probably 00:07:37.200 --> 00:07:38.000 to some of these. 00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:41.200 I'm getting all these from the Stanford Martin Luther King Jr. 00:07:41.200 --> 00:07:43.040 Research and Education Institute. 00:07:43.040 --> 00:07:44.320 You can read them all for yourself. 00:07:44.320 --> 00:07:46.160 You can spend days doing it just like me. 00:07:46.160 --> 00:07:47.440 Like I said, don't recommend it. 00:07:47.440 --> 00:07:49.680 But this first This first one I'm going to quote from briefly 00:07:49.760 --> 00:07:53.200 is an autobiography of religious development. 00:07:53.200 --> 00:07:56.880 So when King describes how he became a Christian, he says when 00:07:56.880 --> 00:07:58.960 he was at the age of five, he went up for an 00:07:58.960 --> 00:08:02.000 altar call because his bigger sister had just done it. 00:08:02.000 --> 00:08:04.800 And so in his mind, that was kind of his introduction to 00:08:04.800 --> 00:08:05.680 the faith. 00:08:05.680 --> 00:08:08.880 And his father was a minister, so he was he was raised 00:08:08.880 --> 00:08:12.800 in the church, but his own first personal experience of engaging with 00:08:12.800 --> 00:08:17.680 that was a superficial altar call in competition with the sibling. 00:08:17.680 --> 00:08:18.400 He was five. 00:08:18.400 --> 00:08:20.960 There's nothing like it was a m it was a mistake. 00:08:20.960 --> 00:08:24.080 I'm not holding a five year old's mistakes against him theologically for 00:08:24.080 --> 00:08:25.120 the rest of his life. 00:08:25.120 --> 00:08:27.760 The point is that that was kind of the high water mark 00:08:27.760 --> 00:08:29.920 of this guy theologically. 00:08:29.920 --> 00:08:34.880 Here's what he said in seminary about his subsequent years. 00:08:34.880 --> 00:08:38.880 He writes the lessons which I was taught in Sunday school were 00:08:38.880 --> 00:08:41.040 quite in the fundamentalist line. 00:08:41.040 --> 00:08:44.320 None of my teachers ever doubted the infallibility of scriptures. 00:08:44.320 --> 00:08:48.000 Most of them were unlettered and had never heard of biblical criticism. 00:08:48.000 --> 00:08:50.880 Naturally I accepted the teachings as they were given to me. 00:08:50.880 --> 00:08:53.520 I never felt any need to doubt them, at least at the 00:08:53.520 --> 00:08:54.480 time I didn't. 00:08:54.480 --> 00:08:58.240 I guess I accepted biblical studies uncritically until I was about twelve 00:08:58.240 --> 00:08:59.040 years old. 00:08:59.040 --> 00:09:02.400 But this uncritical attitude could not last long, for it was contrary 00:09:02.400 --> 00:09:05.120 to the very nature of my being. 00:09:05.120 --> 00:09:08.000 I had always been the questioning and precocious type. 00:09:08.000 --> 00:09:11.680 At the age of thirteen, I shocked my Sunday school class by 00:09:11.680 --> 00:09:15.600 denying the bodily resurrection of Jesus. 00:09:15.760 --> 00:09:20.080 Well, age thirteen, I shocked my Sunday school class by denying the 00:09:20.080 --> 00:09:22.320 bodily resurrection of Jesus. 00:09:22.320 --> 00:09:26.720 From the age of thirteen on, doubts began to spring forth unrelentingly. 00:09:26.880 --> 00:09:29.360 At the age of fifteen I entered Morehouse College and more and 00:09:29.360 --> 00:09:32.560 more I could see a gap between what I had learned in 00:09:32.560 --> 00:09:35.280 Sunday school and what I was learning in college. 00:09:35.280 --> 00:09:38.960 This conflict continued until I studied a course in Bible, in which 00:09:38.960 --> 00:09:41.760 I came to see that behind the legends and myths And myths 00:09:41.760 --> 00:09:45.520 of the Bible were many profound truths with which one could not 00:09:45.520 --> 00:09:48.720 escape. My days in college were very exciting ones. 00:09:48.720 --> 00:09:52.640 As stated above, my college training, especially the first two years, brought 00:09:52.640 --> 00:09:54.240 many doubts into my mind. 00:09:54.240 --> 00:09:58.160 It was at this period that the shackles of fundamentalism were removed 00:09:58.160 --> 00:09:59.200 from my body. 00:09:59.200 --> 00:10:02.160 This is why when I came to Crozer, I could accept the 00:10:02.160 --> 00:10:04.800 liberal interpretation with relative ease. 00:10:04.800 --> 00:10:07.280 It was in my senior year of college that I entered the 00:10:07.280 --> 00:10:10.400 ministry. I had felt the urge to enter the ministry from my 00:10:10.400 --> 00:10:14.480 latter high school days, but accumulated doubts had somewhat blocked the urge. 00:10:14.480 --> 00:10:17.280 Now it appeared again, with an inescapable drive. 00:10:17.280 --> 00:10:21.520 My call to the ministry was not a miraculous or supernatural something. 00:10:21.520 --> 00:10:25.120 On the contrary, it was an inner urge calling me to serve 00:10:25.120 --> 00:10:30.160 humanity. So this is a young man who his trajectory, as I 00:10:30.160 --> 00:10:35.200 said, from that altar call in competition with his older sister, as 00:10:35.200 --> 00:10:39.120 soon as he started reading the Bible, his very first response from 00:10:39.120 --> 00:10:41.920 the age of twelve was I don't believe this. 00:10:42.000 --> 00:10:46.080 The age of thirteen he openly denied the resurrection of Jesus Christ 00:10:46.080 --> 00:10:47.200 from the grave. 00:10:47.200 --> 00:10:49.120 And then he was off to the races. 00:10:49.120 --> 00:10:52.560 Once he went to Morehouse at age fifteen, from fifteen through eighteen, 00:10:52.560 --> 00:10:53.920 it got even worse. 00:10:53.920 --> 00:10:57.600 And so when he's at seminary at Crozier, he continues to escalate 00:10:57.600 --> 00:10:58.560 down that path. 00:10:58.560 --> 00:11:01.680 And so we're beginning here because this is the arc of all 00:11:01.680 --> 00:11:04.160 the other quotes that we're gonna have here today. 00:11:04.160 --> 00:11:07.280 It's not simply that, oh well, he was young and then later 00:11:07.280 --> 00:11:09.200 on he learned something different. 00:11:09.200 --> 00:11:11.840 He was young, he was not a Christian. 00:11:11.840 --> 00:11:15.680 He became more evil as it went, and he became more open 00:11:15.680 --> 00:11:17.040 about it as it went. 00:11:17.040 --> 00:11:20.800 And so down the road, you know, when he's been in the 00:11:20.800 --> 00:11:24.880 pulpit for 10, 15 years, at no point was there a single 00:11:24.880 --> 00:11:28.960 moment when he repudiated any of these earlier beliefs. 00:11:28.960 --> 00:11:31.920 On the contrary, he hid them better. 00:11:31.920 --> 00:11:34.880 Early on when he was at school and then a seminary and 00:11:34.880 --> 00:11:38.080 then working on his PhD, he would play to whatever audience to 00:11:38.080 --> 00:11:40.080 which he was speaking privately. 00:11:40.080 --> 00:11:43.520 So if they were more illiberal in his words, and that's the 00:11:43.520 --> 00:11:46.960 technical term he's using, he's correct, meaning they deny the errandy of 00:11:46.960 --> 00:11:50.960 scripture, they the inerrancy of scripture, they deny the divinity of God 00:11:50.960 --> 00:11:51.520 of God. 00:11:51.520 --> 00:11:53.120 Uh they deny God entirely. 00:11:53.120 --> 00:11:54.240 They deny miracles. 00:11:54.240 --> 00:11:55.440 They're not Christian. 00:11:55.440 --> 00:11:58.480 He was not going to Christian schools and so he made sure 00:11:58.480 --> 00:11:59.680 that he fit right in. 00:11:59.680 --> 00:12:02.320 When he got into the pulpit and he was working with actual 00:12:02.320 --> 00:12:07.520 Christians in his in his congregations, he was more careful. 00:12:07.520 --> 00:12:10.560 So as we go through these quotes, what's going to be established 00:12:10.560 --> 00:12:13.520 is that when he uses a word, it's going to be a 00:12:13.520 --> 00:12:16.400 word that you or I would use, but it will mean something 00:12:16.400 --> 00:12:17.440 completely different. 00:12:17.440 --> 00:12:20.400 That's another theme that's going to run through this entire segment that 00:12:20.480 --> 00:12:23.840 when he says something, when King says something, it's going to be 00:12:23.840 --> 00:12:26.960 a word that Christians use, it's going to be Jesus dust, but 00:12:26.960 --> 00:12:30.000 he will mean the exact opposite when he says it. 00:12:30.080 --> 00:12:34.320 You also did mention his spelling and grammar issues that occur throughout 00:12:34.400 --> 00:12:38.160 his entire life, and that's not just us saying that, that is 00:12:38.160 --> 00:12:41.920 from a number of his biographers and from those who have collated 00:12:42.000 --> 00:12:42.880 his papers and such. 00:12:42.880 --> 00:12:45.520 This is a common critique. 00:12:45.520 --> 00:12:48.400 And one of the reasons that can be relevant is that you 00:12:48.400 --> 00:12:53.360 see a very big difference between certain of his works and say 00:12:53.440 --> 00:12:57.600 certain of his public speeches or the public works and private letters. 00:12:57.600 --> 00:13:00.400 And that's because a lot of times there were ghost writers involved 00:13:00.400 --> 00:13:01.520 for some of this. 00:13:01.520 --> 00:13:06.080 And so for some of the more public materials that sound better, 00:13:06.080 --> 00:13:10.320 if you're trying to pull something that sounds Christian from that, do 00:13:10.320 --> 00:13:13.280 bear in mind it was probably written by someone else. 00:13:13.280 --> 00:13:16.640 You can see the real man in the things that he wrote 00:13:16.640 --> 00:13:20.400 himself, and a lot of what we're going to be quoting today 00:13:20.560 --> 00:13:24.240 will be things that he wrote himself. 00:13:24.240 --> 00:13:26.640 And I agree with you when it comes to the name. 00:13:26.640 --> 00:13:30.080 I was also just going to call him Michael King or MLK. 00:13:30.080 --> 00:13:34.720 Notably, his name was never even legally changed. 00:13:34.720 --> 00:13:38.160 So his father didn't even bother to change his name from Michael 00:13:38.160 --> 00:13:40.160 King to Martin Luther King. 00:13:40.160 --> 00:13:44.000 So he was born Michael King and he died Michael King. 00:13:44.080 --> 00:13:47.040 That's pretty much consistent with everything else about the guy. 00:13:47.280 --> 00:13:52.080 the public myth and the actual facts uh are are just not 00:13:52.080 --> 00:13:53.040 related at all. 00:13:53.040 --> 00:13:56.320 And so again, we're not here to attack a dead guy. 00:13:56.320 --> 00:13:58.000 It's not because he's black. 00:13:58.000 --> 00:14:01.360 It's not because he was even a so called civil rights leader. 00:14:01.360 --> 00:14:04.320 It's that when in our own churches this man is held up 00:14:04.320 --> 00:14:09.280 as a Christian paragon, okay, you say that I should emulate this 00:14:09.280 --> 00:14:11.360 guy, let me go look at what I need to emulate. 00:14:11.360 --> 00:14:14.320 And the very first thing we find is denying that Jesus was 00:14:14.880 --> 00:14:16.880 raised from the dead. 00:14:16.880 --> 00:14:19.200 And so it it gets worse from there. 00:14:19.200 --> 00:14:21.120 That again, that was only at age thirteen. 00:14:21.120 --> 00:14:24.720 We're basically gonna go through some of these papers in chronological order 00:14:24.880 --> 00:14:26.000 as he delivered them. 00:14:25.920 --> 00:14:29.520 so it'll it'll jump around a little bit thematically, but the theme 00:14:29.520 --> 00:14:33.680 that's going to emerge fundamentally is one of again, this man was 00:14:33.680 --> 00:14:35.120 never Christian a day in his life. 00:14:35.120 --> 00:14:36.480 And that's not just us saying it. 00:14:36.480 --> 00:14:39.120 As you hear the things that he says as we read them 00:14:39.120 --> 00:14:41.360 to you, they're all blasphemy. 00:14:41.360 --> 00:14:46.560 Like we're not talking about Lutherans disagreeing with Baptists about the sacraments. 00:14:46.560 --> 00:14:50.320 We're not talking about arguing tulip with the reformed. 00:14:50.320 --> 00:14:54.880 We're talking about the very most basic elements of the Christian faith. 00:14:54.880 --> 00:14:57.680 And when he speaks about them, it's in very open terms to 00:14:57.680 --> 00:14:59.600 say, yeah, that's nonsense. 00:14:59.680 --> 00:15:02.800 And so the the next quote we're going to go over is 00:15:02.800 --> 00:15:06.480 from a paper that he wrote at Crozer Seminary, and it's entitled 00:15:06.480 --> 00:15:08.640 The Purpose of Religion. 00:15:08.640 --> 00:15:10.560 What is the purpose of religion? 00:15:10.560 --> 00:15:13.040 Is it to perpetuate an idea about God? 00:15:13.040 --> 00:15:15.760 Is it totally dependent upon revelation? 00:15:15.760 --> 00:15:18.800 What part does psychological experience play? 00:15:18.800 --> 00:15:21.760 Is religion synonymous with theology? 00:15:21.760 --> 00:15:26.240 Harry Emerson Fostic says that the most hopeful thing about any system 00:15:26.240 --> 00:15:28.800 of theology is that it will not last. 00:15:28.800 --> 00:15:32.240 This statement will shock some, but is the purpose of religion the 00:15:32.240 --> 00:15:35.040 perpetuation of theological ideas? 00:15:35.040 --> 00:15:39.440 Religion is not validated by ideas, but by experience. 00:15:39.440 --> 00:15:42.720 This automatically raises the question of salvation. 00:15:42.720 --> 00:15:47.360 Is the basis for salvation in creeds and dogmas or in experience. 00:15:47.360 --> 00:15:51.440 Catholics would have us believe the former for them, the Church, its 00:15:51.440 --> 00:15:55.760 creeds, its popes and bishops, have recited the essence of religion, and 00:15:55.760 --> 00:15:57.280 that is all there is to it. 00:15:57.280 --> 00:16:00.560 On the other hand, we say that each soul must make its 00:16:00.560 --> 00:16:04.240 own reconciliation to God, that no creed can take the place of 00:16:04.240 --> 00:16:06.080 that personal experience. 00:16:06.080 --> 00:16:09.920 This was expressed by Paul Tillich when he said there is natural 00:16:09.920 --> 00:16:13.760 religion which belongs to man by nature, but there is also a 00:16:13.760 --> 00:16:18.080 revealed religion which man receives from a supernatural reality. 00:16:18.080 --> 00:16:22.720 Relevant religion, therefore, comes through revelation from God, on the one hand, 00:16:22.720 --> 00:16:27.360 and through repentance and acceptance of salvation on the other hand, dogma 00:16:27.360 --> 00:16:31.120 as an agent in salvation has no essential place. 00:16:31.120 --> 00:16:33.360 This is the secret of our religion. 00:16:33.360 --> 00:16:36.080 This is what makes the saints move on in spite of problems 00:16:36.080 --> 00:16:37.680 and perplexities of life that they might be 00:16:38.880 --> 00:16:42.320 This religion of experience by which man is aware of God seeking 00:16:42.320 --> 00:16:45.280 him and saving him helps him to see the hands of God 00:16:45.280 --> 00:16:46.720 moving through history. 00:16:46.800 --> 00:16:50.720 Religion has to be interpreted for each age, stated in terms that 00:16:50.720 --> 00:16:55.680 age can understand, but the essential purpose of religion remains the same. 00:16:55.680 --> 00:16:59.440 It is not to perpetuate a dogma or theology, but to produce 00:16:59.440 --> 00:17:04.400 living witnesses and testimonies to the power of God in human experience. 00:17:04.400 --> 00:17:06.000 And then his signature. 00:17:06.800 --> 00:17:12.800 So when he's talking about religion, he fundamentally sees them as interchangeable. 00:17:12.800 --> 00:17:15.840 Now, you know, if this were just a single paper where he 00:17:16.240 --> 00:17:22.000 was kind of talking the conceptually about how religion is used among 00:17:22.000 --> 00:17:23.040 people, sure. 00:17:23.040 --> 00:17:26.720 Maybe you could have an academic paper that would kind of minimize 00:17:26.720 --> 00:17:30.320 the truth, but it was being more general and so you might 00:17:30.480 --> 00:17:32.880 hand wave it and say, well that wasn't so bad. 00:17:32.880 --> 00:17:39.680 But this first quote is completely revelatory about his approach to Christianity. 00:17:39.680 --> 00:17:44.960 He fundamentally sees Christianity as a human creation. 00:17:44.960 --> 00:17:47.200 And we'll establish that down the road with some of the other 00:17:47.360 --> 00:17:48.800 the other quotes. 00:17:48.800 --> 00:17:53.760 But the fact that to him, dogma as an agent in salvation 00:17:53.760 --> 00:17:55.680 has no essential place. 00:17:55.680 --> 00:17:59.760 Think what that means vis-a-vis the Christian faith. 00:17:59.760 --> 00:18:04.960 If an agent in salvation doesn't come from dogma, doesn't come from 00:18:04.960 --> 00:18:07.680 belief, where does it come from? 00:18:07.680 --> 00:18:12.240 And as he establishes throughout everything he says, it's good works. 00:18:12.240 --> 00:18:14.560 It's being good to your neighbor. 00:18:14.560 --> 00:18:18.880 And that's why he spent all of his time basically externally focused, 00:18:18.880 --> 00:18:23.680 not on the Christian life, but on the sort of social change 00:18:23.680 --> 00:18:27.520 that was repackaged as part of the civil rights movement, and he 00:18:27.520 --> 00:18:30.400 was weaponized to go out and do someone else's bidding. 00:18:30.400 --> 00:18:33.440 That's the second half of this episode, the part two of this. 00:18:33.440 --> 00:18:34.160 But But 00:18:35.440 --> 00:18:40.720 really, it's it's just important to remember he sees religion as a 00:18:40.720 --> 00:18:42.720 man-made thing. 00:18:42.720 --> 00:18:44.560 Is that what Christians believe? 00:18:44.560 --> 00:18:45.520 Absolutely not. 00:18:45.520 --> 00:18:50.720 No Christian believes that that first of all, the religion is there's 00:18:50.720 --> 00:18:52.480 Christianity and there's everything else. 00:18:52.480 --> 00:18:56.400 There's no such thing as competing religions because there's only one God. 00:18:56.400 --> 00:18:59.520 And so there's a God and there's a religion of that God. 00:18:59.520 --> 00:19:02.240 Everything else is fundamentally the teachings of demons. 00:19:02.240 --> 00:19:05.520 Yeah, it's a phrase that we frequently use on this show because 00:19:05.520 --> 00:19:08.080 it comes straight from first Timothy. 00:19:08.080 --> 00:19:12.720 God describes teachings of demons as the source of false false doctrine. 00:19:12.720 --> 00:19:14.480 This is fundamentally false doctrine. 00:19:14.480 --> 00:19:18.720 Even this this very early paper he says salvation and dogma that's 00:19:18.720 --> 00:19:20.640 they're have nothing to do with each other. 00:19:20.640 --> 00:19:25.280 Meaning there's there's salvation apart from belief and apart even from any 00:19:25.280 --> 00:19:27.280 particular religion. 00:19:27.280 --> 00:19:29.440 That is that's astonishing. 00:19:29.440 --> 00:19:29.600 Well 00:19:29.680 --> 00:19:31.600 I just look at that quote right in the middle. 00:19:31.600 --> 00:19:34.800 It's a straight up denial of Christianity. 00:19:34.800 --> 00:19:37.440 On the other hand, we say that each soul must make its 00:19:37.440 --> 00:19:39.040 own reconciliation to God 00:19:40.320 --> 00:19:45.920 That's just a fundamental rejection of Christianity because Christianity is very clear. 00:19:45.920 --> 00:19:49.520 You cannot reconcile yourself to God. 00:19:49.520 --> 00:19:53.520 You can be reconciled to God in Christ. 00:19:53.600 --> 00:19:56.000 That is God acting, not you acting. 00:19:56.000 --> 00:20:01.280 This is just a straight up rejection of the Christian faith. 00:20:01.280 --> 00:20:05.280 With a whole bunch of other errors thrown in, of course. 00:20:05.520 --> 00:20:08.240 I'm glad you picked up on that particular quote because that is 00:20:08.400 --> 00:20:12.400 as we get down further into these, that's literally what he says 00:20:12.400 --> 00:20:13.680 Jesus was. 00:20:13.680 --> 00:20:15.920 And we'll get into where he says that Jesus was just a 00:20:15.920 --> 00:20:18.800 man and was not God at all, but that is what he 00:20:18.800 --> 00:20:20.080 believes that Jesus did. 00:20:20.080 --> 00:20:24.080 That's why he's saying this here to say that on the other 00:20:24.080 --> 00:20:28.320 hand, we say that each soul must make its reconciliation to God. 00:20:28.320 --> 00:20:31.360 He says that that is the life, the Jesus, the man led, 00:20:31.360 --> 00:20:36.320 that he reconciled himself to God as the perfect example to us. 00:20:36.320 --> 00:20:40.560 Now, a Christian would hear that and say, well, that's bad theology, 00:20:40.560 --> 00:20:43.440 but I can kind of make that Christian if I rewarded a 00:20:43.680 --> 00:20:47.280 little. The point to hammer home here is that that's not what 00:20:47.280 --> 00:20:48.240 he's doing. 00:20:48.240 --> 00:20:52.560 He's fundamentally coming from the opposite direction saying there's there's no God 00:20:52.560 --> 00:20:56.880 as we conceive him and what Jesus did was what every man 00:20:56.880 --> 00:21:00.480 can do by interacting with his fellow man. 00:21:00.480 --> 00:21:03.520 The next paper that we're going to read from is also from 00:21:03.520 --> 00:21:06.240 nineteen forty eight at Crozer Seminary. 00:21:06.560 --> 00:21:11.120 It's the subpart is titled This is from uh three essays on 00:21:11.120 --> 00:21:15.440 religion. The subpart is Unreal Worship, Temple and Sacrifice. 00:21:15.440 --> 00:21:19.840 In this, he's talking about the book of Jeremiah, and one of 00:21:19.840 --> 00:21:22.800 the themes that he picked up on that was given to him 00:21:22.800 --> 00:21:25.840 by his professors, the men he read, was that 00:21:27.040 --> 00:21:31.760 the faith of the Old Testament was continuously evolving, that there was 00:21:31.760 --> 00:21:35.760 no direct revelation from God, but it was just men accreting new 00:21:36.240 --> 00:21:39.840 ideas. And so what he's saying here in this quote is that 00:21:39.840 --> 00:21:44.000 the book of Jeremiah and the prophet, so called, in his mind, 00:21:44.000 --> 00:21:50.880 Jeremiah, was fundamentally teaching against what the Israelites had been practicing in 00:21:50.880 --> 00:21:52.480 the temple system. 00:21:52.560 --> 00:21:53.760 King writes. 00:21:53.760 --> 00:21:57.440 Another line which can be added to the column of Jeremiah's contributions 00:21:57.440 --> 00:22:02.000 to religious thought is his stand against artificial worship. 00:22:02.240 --> 00:22:05.520 This This action was started against the temple. 00:22:05.520 --> 00:22:10.320 As we know, the Deuteronomic Reformation culminated in the centralization of national 00:22:10.320 --> 00:22:12.960 worship in the temple at Jerusalem. 00:22:12.960 --> 00:22:16.000 This temple was the pivot of the nation's religion. 00:22:16.000 --> 00:22:21.040 In the course of years elaborate ceremonies were enacted, and priests prescribed 00:22:21.040 --> 00:22:24.960 sacrifices, and the smoke of burnt offerings rose high from the altar. 00:22:24.960 --> 00:22:27.440 The temple was the apple of the people's eye. 00:22:27.440 --> 00:22:30.800 To criticize it was to set aflame the fires of both religion 00:22:30.800 --> 00:22:32.080 and patriotism. 00:22:32.080 --> 00:22:34.880 This was the very thing that Jeremiah did. 00:22:34.880 --> 00:22:38.320 So it might not be obvious if you read that or especially 00:22:38.320 --> 00:22:41.280 if if I'm reading it to you, but what he's saying here 00:22:41.280 --> 00:22:44.880 is fundamentally God did not institute the temple. 00:22:44.880 --> 00:22:46.720 God was not present at the temple. 00:22:46.720 --> 00:22:50.240 It was the priests making up things over time and saying, oh 00:22:50.320 --> 00:22:52.320 well now we're gonna do this sort of sacrifice, and we're gonna 00:22:52.400 --> 00:22:55.280 dress this way, and we're gonna do this And so what he's 00:22:55.280 --> 00:22:58.800 saying in this paper and in this section is Jeremiah came along 00:22:58.800 --> 00:23:02.240 and said, That's all nonsense because it's not in your hearts And 00:23:02.480 --> 00:23:07.840 while on one hand Jeremiah was appropriately condemning the fact that their 00:23:07.840 --> 00:23:12.560 worship was false because they had abandoned God in their hearts. 00:23:12.560 --> 00:23:17.280 You don't need to say that the priests had invented things when 00:23:17.280 --> 00:23:19.840 it was the actually God that did it. 00:23:19.840 --> 00:23:22.880 But this is one of the first quotes we have that reveals 00:23:22.880 --> 00:23:27.440 that in King's mind there is no inspiration of scripture. 00:23:27.440 --> 00:23:30.560 There was no God acting at any point in Scripture. 00:23:30.560 --> 00:23:35.520 God God is not personal and active at any point in the 00:23:35.520 --> 00:23:37.600 Bible as King reads it. 00:23:37.600 --> 00:23:41.520 And so it makes the only way he can possibly understand Jeremiah 00:23:41.520 --> 00:23:45.920 condemning them is by condemning what the priests were doing. 00:23:45.920 --> 00:23:48.160 And if the priests were doing something that the new prophet would 00:23:48.160 --> 00:23:52.240 condemn, well obviously, you know, it's just what they made up. 00:23:52.240 --> 00:23:53.840 It's what men were doing. 00:23:53.840 --> 00:23:56.160 And that's again, that's the overarching theme. 00:23:56.160 --> 00:23:58.000 All religion is man-made. 00:23:58.000 --> 00:24:03.280 All of the Christian religion pre incarnate Christ was man-made, the Christian 00:24:03.280 --> 00:24:06.240 religion in the age of the church was man-made, all of it 00:24:06.240 --> 00:24:07.680 has come from the mind of man. 00:24:08.000 --> 00:24:08.160 And 00:24:08.160 --> 00:24:12.080 the attentive reader will already, or listener in this case, will already 00:24:12.080 --> 00:24:17.600 hear some of the echoes of the social gospel so called and 00:24:17.600 --> 00:24:23.120 the sort of social agitation in which King will be engaging, really 00:24:23.200 --> 00:24:27.120 starting now in his life, but also later in life, and we'll 00:24:27.120 --> 00:24:30.240 mention some of the gentlemen who were responsible for that in the 00:24:30.320 --> 00:24:32.880 the latter half of this episode. 00:24:32.880 --> 00:24:35.680 More likely the next episode, but still. 00:24:35.680 --> 00:24:39.440 The preaching of the first four centuries was mainly apologetic. 00:24:39.440 --> 00:24:43.280 After Christ had failed to return, there had to be some justification 00:24:43.280 --> 00:24:45.840 for the validity of the Christian gospel. 00:24:45.840 --> 00:24:49.040 They were out at every turn to defend the Christian religion. 00:24:49.040 --> 00:24:52.560 Such a man is Origen and Justin were forever attempting to prove 00:24:52.560 --> 00:24:54.240 the divinity of Christ. 00:24:54.240 --> 00:24:57.280 It was his writing is so bad sometimes. 00:24:57.280 --> 00:25:01.120 It was during the period that the Trinitarian doctrine arose. 00:25:01.120 --> 00:25:03.680 It is also significant to know that the preaching of this period 00:25:03.680 --> 00:25:05.600 was mainly scriptural. 00:25:05.600 --> 00:25:08.880 The condition of the age required apologetic preaching. 00:25:08.880 --> 00:25:13.680 Twentieth century preaching on the contrary deals with great social problems. 00:25:13.680 --> 00:25:15.760 That's in the singular, but I'll correct it. 00:25:16.240 --> 00:25:20.320 Moreover, much of our twentieth century preaching is an attempt to adjust 00:25:20.320 --> 00:25:23.360 individuals to the complexities of modern society. 00:25:23.360 --> 00:25:26.640 The problem of the virgin birth and the Trinity is not the 00:25:26.640 --> 00:25:31.680 most important feat features, these plural word should be singular, in twentieth 00:25:31.680 --> 00:25:35.440 century preaching, as was the case in the first four centuries of 00:25:35.440 --> 00:25:36.480 preaching. 00:25:36.480 --> 00:25:36.640 So 00:25:36.800 --> 00:25:38.640 do you hear what just he just said? 00:25:38.640 --> 00:25:41.360 He said that the Trinity was made up in the fourth century, 00:25:41.360 --> 00:25:46.400 the virgin birth is a problem, that these men had to make 00:25:46.400 --> 00:25:51.440 this stuff up and try to justify Christ's failure to return. 00:25:51.440 --> 00:25:53.360 What an incredible presupposition. 00:25:54.160 --> 00:25:56.800 The they believed that Christ was going to return because he said 00:25:56.800 --> 00:25:59.440 he would, and when he didn't, well he was a liar, so 00:25:59.600 --> 00:26:02.320 what they have to do they had to permute the Christian faith 00:26:02.320 --> 00:26:07.760 into something that could still be sustained among believers. 00:26:07.760 --> 00:26:10.720 That if you were a believer in the third and fourth century 00:26:10.720 --> 00:26:15.280 A.D., you had to have some new doctrine in order for you 00:26:15.280 --> 00:26:18.160 to stay engaged, because we got this problems of the Trinity that 00:26:18.160 --> 00:26:21.280 they made up the virgin birth, that's obviously not going to be 00:26:21.280 --> 00:26:25.360 real. So, like this is this is who he was. 00:26:25.360 --> 00:26:27.520 This is who he was in seminary. 00:26:27.520 --> 00:26:30.000 And I think it's important to note 00:26:30.880 --> 00:26:35.680 Lutherans and Baptists, at least some Baptists, have different approaches to when 00:26:35.680 --> 00:26:38.000 a man enters the pulpit. 00:26:38.000 --> 00:26:41.920 King had already been preaching in churches before this. 00:26:41.920 --> 00:26:44.400 He had already stood up in a pulpit and spoken in the 00:26:44.400 --> 00:26:45.120 name of God. 00:26:45.120 --> 00:26:49.440 He didn't yet have a permanent call to a particular congregation that 00:26:49.440 --> 00:26:54.000 would come after he finished seminary, but he was already preaching at 00:26:54.000 --> 00:26:54.640 this point. 00:26:54.640 --> 00:26:58.160 He was well respected, and he was well respected in the very 00:26:58.160 --> 00:26:59.920 congregation where he denied 00:27:00.800 --> 00:27:04.480 that Jesus was resurrected from the dead. 00:27:04.480 --> 00:27:07.600 Now, I don't point this out to impugn all Baptists because I 00:27:07.600 --> 00:27:10.320 know that there are many Baptists who are actually Christians, but what 00:27:10.320 --> 00:27:13.680 was going on in his dad's church that although he shocked his 00:27:13.680 --> 00:27:16.720 Sunday school, he wasn't repudiated. 00:27:16.720 --> 00:27:19.040 He was recommended to go off to seminary. 00:27:19.040 --> 00:27:22.320 Like surely much of the congregation was paying for him to go 00:27:22.320 --> 00:27:25.840 to Moorehouse and Crozer so that he could then get up in 00:27:25.840 --> 00:27:27.760 a pulpit and speak in God's name. 00:27:27.760 --> 00:27:31.440 And yet as he goes along in this career, he gets further 00:27:31.440 --> 00:27:34.320 and further away from the Orthodox Christian faith. 00:27:34.400 --> 00:27:34.560 I 00:27:34.560 --> 00:27:37.840 mean, you really can't be a Christian and say that the virgin 00:27:37.840 --> 00:27:40.560 birth is a problem and the Trinity is a problem. 00:27:40.560 --> 00:27:45.920 Now, as a Christian, you can recognize that the Trinity is a 00:27:45.920 --> 00:27:49.120 mystery. That is distinct from a problem. 00:27:49.120 --> 00:27:51.280 Saying it's a problem is saying 00:27:52.480 --> 00:27:55.200 this is something we can't explain, and so it can't possibly be 00:27:55.360 --> 00:27:56.240 part of our religion. 00:27:56.240 --> 00:27:58.160 That's what he's actually doing here. 00:27:58.160 --> 00:28:03.760 He wants to jettison core parts of Christianity because he is attempting 00:28:03.840 --> 00:28:08.240 to turn Christianity into a social gospel. 00:28:08.240 --> 00:28:13.360 He wants to turn Christianity into a vehicle for societal change, and 00:28:13.360 --> 00:28:18.000 so it's necessary to jettison these various bits and pieces of the 00:28:18.000 --> 00:28:20.880 religion that oh we don't need these because that's not the core. 00:28:20.880 --> 00:28:23.120 It's the experience of the religion. 00:28:23.120 --> 00:28:26.960 It's doing X, Y, and Z, which X, Y, and Z turn 00:28:26.960 --> 00:28:29.280 out to be what the Communist Party wants. 00:28:29.280 --> 00:28:33.840 We'll get into that more when it comes to the individuals around 00:28:33.840 --> 00:28:38.560 Michael King and his political activities. 00:28:38.560 --> 00:28:44.080 But what he is doing here is attempting to transform transform Christianity 00:28:44.080 --> 00:28:47.760 into something that it is not and cannot be. 00:28:47.760 --> 00:28:50.800 Because if you get rid of these doctrines, you don't have Christianity 00:28:50.800 --> 00:28:54.240 anymore. You have something totally alien. 00:28:54.240 --> 00:28:56.320 And he's not the only one doing this, of course. 00:28:56.320 --> 00:28:56.720 This is not 00:28:57.600 --> 00:29:00.640 Michael King's project. 00:29:00.640 --> 00:29:05.920 This is a project of many academics, and King is simply parroting 00:29:05.920 --> 00:29:09.840 those lines, but he made those lies his own. 00:29:09.840 --> 00:29:15.360 And if you believe these things, you cannot be a Christian. 00:29:15.360 --> 00:29:18.320 Think what the Athanasian Creed says. 00:29:18.320 --> 00:29:21.200 If you do not hold these beliefs, if you do not hold 00:29:21.200 --> 00:29:25.120 these truths, you cannot be saved. 00:29:25.360 --> 00:29:28.400 That is the position of the church, that is the position of 00:29:28.400 --> 00:29:31.040 Christianity down through the centuries. 00:29:31.040 --> 00:29:34.000 There are certain things to which you must hold to be a 00:29:34.000 --> 00:29:38.880 Christian, and most certainly that is the virgin birth, the Trinity, and 00:29:38.880 --> 00:29:40.640 the Resurrection of the Dead. 00:29:41.200 --> 00:29:44.960 The same year Mike wrote another paper called Light on the Old 00:29:44.960 --> 00:29:47.200 Testament from the Ancient Near East. 00:29:47.280 --> 00:29:51.680 Uh he was writing about archaeological investigations as they relate to the 00:29:51.680 --> 00:29:53.280 text of scripture. 00:29:53.280 --> 00:29:59.200 He writes, Fortunately through numerous excavations and assiduous decipherings, that door has 00:29:59.200 --> 00:30:00.000 been opened. 00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:02.720 Ever since that time we have been able to get a critical, 00:30:02.720 --> 00:30:06.080 unbiased and scientific light upon the Old Testament. 00:30:06.080 --> 00:30:10.080 No logical thinker can doubt the fact that these archaeological findings are 00:30:10.080 --> 00:30:15.680 now indispensable to all concrete study of the Hebrew hyphen Christian religion. 00:30:15.680 --> 00:30:19.040 These findings have proved to us that there are many striking analogies 00:30:19.040 --> 00:30:22.320 between the ideas expressed in the Old Testament and those found in 00:30:22.320 --> 00:30:25.040 the surrounding cultures of the Near East. 00:30:25.040 --> 00:30:29.440 For an instance, the views of the Old Testament are almost identical 00:30:29.440 --> 00:30:31.840 with those of Babylonian mythology. 00:30:31.840 --> 00:30:35.600 This is not to say that the Pentateuch writers, note per plural, 00:30:35.600 --> 00:30:40.720 Pentateuch writers, sat down and copied these views verbatim, the differences of 00:30:40.720 --> 00:30:42.480 expression attest to that fact. 00:30:42.480 --> 00:30:46.480 But after being in contact with these surrounding cultures and hearing certain 00:30:46.480 --> 00:30:50.400 doctrines expressed, it was only natural for some of these views to 00:30:50.400 --> 00:30:52.960 become part of their subconscious minds. 00:30:52.960 --> 00:30:56.720 When they sat down to write, they were expressing consciously that which 00:30:56.720 --> 00:30:58.960 had dwelled in their subconscious minds. 00:30:58.960 --> 00:31:03.760 This is one of his recurring themes throughout as he describes the 00:31:04.080 --> 00:31:10.880 men who wrote the various books of the Bible, the overarching inexorable 00:31:10.880 --> 00:31:14.560 theme of each of those comments is that at no point is 00:31:14.560 --> 00:31:17.600 does is God's voice present in any measure. 00:31:17.600 --> 00:31:23.680 There's never a moment of consideration of plenary verbal inspiration by God 00:31:23.920 --> 00:31:25.920 of a single word. 00:31:25.920 --> 00:31:29.200 What he does say is that these were just men in their 00:31:29.200 --> 00:31:33.440 times. They were thinking about a god, and that the so called 00:31:33.440 --> 00:31:38.480 Hebrew Christian religion meant that there was some sort of god that 00:31:38.480 --> 00:31:42.160 a group of men scattered across time happened to be sort of 00:31:42.160 --> 00:31:46.000 oriented in the same direction, and so when they wrote these various 00:31:46.000 --> 00:31:51.440 books, they were thinking about the same hypothetical god, but they didn't 00:31:51.360 --> 00:31:53.280 know him with any immediacy. 00:31:53.280 --> 00:31:54.560 He didn't speak to them. 00:31:54.560 --> 00:31:58.720 What they knew was what they thought about, and they were inevitably 00:31:59.840 --> 00:32:02.000 influenced by all their neighbors. 00:32:02.000 --> 00:32:05.600 Whoever was around them at the time, by osmosis they were gonna 00:32:05.600 --> 00:32:11.600 naturally absorb those beliefs from the other nearby religions. 00:32:11.600 --> 00:32:12.880 That's radical. 00:32:12.880 --> 00:32:16.960 That is again, that's a nullification of the Christian faith. 00:32:16.960 --> 00:32:21.120 If God is not present in speaking through the men who are 00:32:21.120 --> 00:32:24.480 writing the Bible, it's all just nonsense. 00:32:24.640 --> 00:32:26.560 it is literally made up. 00:32:26.560 --> 00:32:29.920 That is not only the only possible conclusion of his beliefs, but 00:32:29.920 --> 00:32:32.240 that's that is what he believed. 00:32:32.240 --> 00:32:35.760 And so the reason for laying this groundwork early on is like 00:32:35.840 --> 00:32:39.360 like I said, when we get later on into his his public 00:32:39.520 --> 00:32:43.120 ministry so called where he was pretending to be a pastor, he 00:32:43.120 --> 00:32:45.040 didn't say this stuff as much. 00:32:45.040 --> 00:32:46.160 He didn't get out in the open. 00:32:46.400 --> 00:32:49.040 he only I can only find a single case of him mentioning 00:32:49.280 --> 00:32:53.200 the virgin birth when he was a preacher. 00:32:53.200 --> 00:32:54.880 He would just stay away from it. 00:32:54.880 --> 00:32:58.000 See in college and in seminary he would deny it. 00:32:58.000 --> 00:33:00.640 But he knew better than to deny the virgin birth in church 00:33:00.720 --> 00:33:03.280 because he knew that might cause a riot with some of the 00:33:03.280 --> 00:33:06.720 nice old black Baptist ladies who actually cared about their Bible and 00:33:06.720 --> 00:33:07.520 knew better. 00:33:07.520 --> 00:33:08.960 So he wouldn't do it. 00:33:08.960 --> 00:33:11.760 But again, the the point I made at the beginning, he never 00:33:11.760 --> 00:33:14.400 repudiated a single one of these beliefs. 00:33:14.480 --> 00:33:16.960 At no point in public or private did he say, you know 00:33:16.960 --> 00:33:20.080 what? I used to deny the Trinity and the Virgin Birth. 00:33:20.080 --> 00:33:23.920 Thank God God brought me to repentance, and I now confess the 00:33:23.920 --> 00:33:25.440 true Christian faith. 00:33:25.440 --> 00:33:28.000 If he had done that, he might have emphasized it a bit 00:33:28.000 --> 00:33:29.840 more because it is so foundational. 00:33:29.840 --> 00:33:31.760 And yet we see the exact opposite. 00:33:31.760 --> 00:33:34.960 He condemns it, he says it's fake and made up, and then 00:33:34.960 --> 00:33:36.720 it just vanishes from his theology. 00:33:36.720 --> 00:33:38.000 He doesn't bring it up again. 00:33:38.000 --> 00:33:40.000 And that was one of the few smart things he did. 00:33:40.400 --> 00:33:45.840 These opinions that are blatantly anti-Christian, they just got buried. 00:33:45.840 --> 00:33:49.040 So the reason that we're focusing now in his early life is 00:33:49.040 --> 00:33:51.680 that his early life is the only time he told the truth 00:33:51.680 --> 00:33:52.400 about this stuff. 00:33:52.400 --> 00:33:54.880 But he he never changed his confession. 00:33:54.880 --> 00:33:57.280 He never believed anything differently. 00:33:57.280 --> 00:34:00.000 And later on when he used some of the words, like he 00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:03.040 does talk about resurrection, we'll we'll get to that in a bit. 00:34:03.040 --> 00:34:06.720 When he talks about resurrection later on, it's not of the body, 00:34:06.720 --> 00:34:12.080 it's a completely different figmentary spiritual resurrection that he concocted in his 00:34:12.080 --> 00:34:16.160 own new religion, so that he could have a religion of science, 00:34:16.160 --> 00:34:19.840 a religion of reason that was consistent with what he knew he 00:34:19.840 --> 00:34:21.680 could prove on paper. 00:34:21.680 --> 00:34:24.240 And he wouldn't have to believe any of those mythologies, any of 00:34:24.240 --> 00:34:27.920 the nonsense that these very primitive peoples had made up as they 00:34:27.920 --> 00:34:30.320 were just absorbing things from their neighbors. 00:34:30.400 --> 00:34:30.640 You 00:34:30.640 --> 00:34:34.880 helpfully pointed out that he used the plural for writers, authors of 00:34:34.880 --> 00:34:39.600 the Pentateuch, and for those who are less familiar with why that 00:34:39.600 --> 00:34:44.720 would be the case, in academic circles for a fairly long time 00:34:44.720 --> 00:34:49.120 at this point, long here being a bit over a century or 00:34:49.120 --> 00:34:53.040 so, not long in terms of history. 00:34:53.040 --> 00:34:57.840 There's a theory called the JEDP theory, which is the theory that 00:34:58.320 --> 00:35:02.880 there were at least four authors of the books of the Pentateuch. 00:35:02.880 --> 00:35:04.560 This is not the Christian position. 00:35:04.560 --> 00:35:07.680 The Christian position, the position of the church, the position of Scripture, 00:35:07.680 --> 00:35:10.960 is the Pentateuch was written by Moses. 00:35:10.960 --> 00:35:15.680 Now, there may be some little bits that were not written by 00:35:15.680 --> 00:35:20.240 Moses. For instance, you can be an Orthodox Christian and believe that 00:35:20.240 --> 00:35:25.920 Deuteronomy 34, which is the death of Moses, the mourning for Moses, 00:35:25.920 --> 00:35:30.640 and then the appointment of Joshua as the new leader of Israel. 00:35:30.640 --> 00:35:33.440 You can believe that that was written after Moses because it tells 00:35:33.440 --> 00:35:36.960 of his death, or you can believe that it was Moses writing 00:35:36.960 --> 00:35:41.440 it as prophecy, you're not an unorthodox Christian if you believe one 00:35:41.440 --> 00:35:42.640 versus the other. 00:35:42.640 --> 00:35:48.080 However, if you deny that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch, 00:35:48.080 --> 00:35:51.280 you are outside of Orthodox Christianity. 00:35:51.280 --> 00:35:55.520 And that is the position of many academics when it comes to 00:35:55.520 --> 00:35:58.640 critical theory, which is what we're dealing with here. 00:35:58.640 --> 00:35:58.960 And 00:35:59.920 --> 00:36:05.280 to expand on a little bit, JEDP is Yahwist, which is because 00:36:05.920 --> 00:36:10.800 that author supposedly uses Yahweh for the name of God, then you 00:36:10.800 --> 00:36:17.360 have the Eloist, who uses Elohim, the Deuteronomist, author of Deuteronomy, and 00:36:17.360 --> 00:36:21.120 the priestly writer who would have written Leviticus. 00:36:21.120 --> 00:36:24.160 That is the contention, that's what the theory is. 00:36:24.160 --> 00:36:27.040 There's no evidence for this. 00:36:27.040 --> 00:36:30.880 Their argument is based entirely on the fact that there are some 00:36:30.880 --> 00:36:35.600 linguistic differences and there are different names used for God. 00:36:35.600 --> 00:36:39.920 But that's because Moses was writing about different things in these books. 00:36:39.920 --> 00:36:41.040 You could do the same thing 00:36:42.080 --> 00:36:44.400 with any living secular author. 00:36:44.400 --> 00:36:47.200 You're going to write a little differently depending on the subject you're 00:36:47.200 --> 00:36:49.840 writing. If I'm writing a case brief, I'm not going to do 00:36:50.000 --> 00:36:54.000 the same thing as if I'm writing fiction or an essay on 00:36:54.000 --> 00:36:58.160 scripture or politics, it's going to be different, and so their contention 00:36:58.160 --> 00:37:00.000 is completely insane. 00:37:00.000 --> 00:37:04.320 The reason it's insane is because of the second lack of evidence, 00:37:04.320 --> 00:37:07.680 and that is that no source has ever been found for any 00:37:07.680 --> 00:37:10.400 of these supposed authors. 00:37:10.400 --> 00:37:15.120 Because what the argument is, is that there were these original documents 00:37:15.360 --> 00:37:19.440 that were then either compiled by Moses or compiled by Moses and 00:37:19.440 --> 00:37:23.120 some others or redacted by this person at any rate, there were 00:37:23.120 --> 00:37:25.840 various authors and it was compiled. 00:37:25.840 --> 00:37:31.760 Not one source of these other supposed documents has ever been located. 00:37:31.760 --> 00:37:35.600 This is spun entirely out of whole cloth, out of the minds 00:37:35.600 --> 00:37:41.280 of academics, who are simply seeking to deny the verbal inspiration of 00:37:41.280 --> 00:37:45.360 Scripture. And that is what Michael King is doing, when he says 00:37:45.520 --> 00:37:52.800 writers. And so the next selection from Michael King's writings 00:37:52.960 --> 00:37:57.200 is from Light on the Old Testament from the Ancient Near East. 00:37:57.200 --> 00:38:00.240 This is the conclusion of that paper. 00:38:01.280 --> 00:38:03.840 What now is the conclusion of the whole matter? 00:38:03.840 --> 00:38:07.200 First, we must conclude that the Old Testament has its roots not 00:38:07.200 --> 00:38:09.360 only in the history of the Hebrew people. 00:38:09.360 --> 00:38:13.200 Instead, one must consider the Old Testament in relation to all the 00:38:13.200 --> 00:38:15.920 ancient civilizations of the Near East. 00:38:15.920 --> 00:38:19.040 Modern archaeology has proven to us that many of the ideas of 00:38:19.040 --> 00:38:23.520 the Old Testament have their roots in the ideas of surrounding cultures. 00:38:23.520 --> 00:38:27.120 Many would argue that these archaeological findings have proven to be very 00:38:27.120 --> 00:38:28.960 pernicious to modern religion. 00:38:28.960 --> 00:38:32.240 They argue that archaeologists have robbed the Old Testament of any claim 00:38:32.240 --> 00:38:33.440 to uniqueness. 00:38:33.440 --> 00:38:37.600 Of course, any logical thinker must believe the contrary, for from attempting 00:38:37.600 --> 00:38:40.800 to destroy the usefulness of the Old Testament, archaeolog 00:38:41.680 --> 00:38:44.320 his writing is so hard to read sometimes. 00:38:44.320 --> 00:38:50.000 Far from attempting to destroy the usefulness of the Old Testament, archaeologists 00:38:50.000 --> 00:38:52.400 are attempting to give a better understanding of the contents of the 00:38:53.040 --> 00:38:58.720 Bible. They realize that religion, as far as possible, must be scientifically 00:38:58.720 --> 00:39:02.880 tenable. It is my opinion that biblical criticism and biblical archaeology will 00:39:02.880 --> 00:39:07.120 serve to justify the position of the church in modern culture, especially 00:39:07.120 --> 00:39:09.760 in the face of modern youth who are taught to weigh and 00:39:09.760 --> 00:39:13.760 consider. Second, we must conclude that many of the things which we 00:39:13.760 --> 00:39:18.000 have accepted as true historical happenings are merely mythological. 00:39:18.160 --> 00:39:22.960 They are merely modified links, connected to the wide chain of mythology. 00:39:22.960 --> 00:39:26.160 Again, this conclusion will shock many, but why so? 00:39:26.160 --> 00:39:29.600 One needs only know that a myth serves the purpose of getting 00:39:29.600 --> 00:39:32.080 over an idea that is in the mind of the author. 00:39:32.320 --> 00:39:35.680 Therefore, it becomes just as valuable as the factual. 00:39:35.680 --> 00:39:38.080 Dr. Bevan succinctly stated it. 00:39:38.080 --> 00:39:42.160 We have documents which record actual historical events, with the names of 00:39:42.160 --> 00:39:45.520 persons who lived and acted more or less in the way described. 00:39:45.520 --> 00:39:49.440 Then, as we follow back the story, we find ourselves in a 00:39:49.440 --> 00:39:54.320 past with which the real history is apparently continuous, but which is 00:39:54.480 --> 00:39:59.760 in truth only a work of imagination, a mythical past set behind 00:40:00.320 --> 00:40:05.200 there's a illegible section, the historical events and concealing the real past 00:40:05.280 --> 00:40:09.920 out of which in actual fact the historical process came. 00:40:09.920 --> 00:40:13.440 If we accept the Old Testament as being true, we will find 00:40:13.440 --> 00:40:19.040 it full of errors, contradictions, and obvious impossibilities, as at the Pentateuch 00:40:19.040 --> 00:40:20.480 was written by Moses. 00:40:20.480 --> 00:40:23.040 But if we accept it as truth, we will find it to 00:40:23.040 --> 00:40:26.880 be one of the most logical vehicles of mankind's deepest devotional thoughts 00:40:26.880 --> 00:40:31.680 and aspirations, couched in language which still retains its original vigor and 00:40:31.680 --> 00:40:33.680 its moral intensity. 00:40:34.080 --> 00:40:38.160 As a sort of side note, when I am reading these I 00:40:38.160 --> 00:40:41.200 will correct some of the more glaring grammar errors because they are 00:40:41.200 --> 00:40:43.040 painful to me to read them. 00:40:43.040 --> 00:40:45.680 We can include these in the show notes so you can see 00:40:45.680 --> 00:40:48.640 how bad some of this is if it is not edited. 00:40:49.360 --> 00:40:52.240 Lots of subject verb disagreement. 00:40:52.320 --> 00:40:52.480 And 00:40:52.560 --> 00:40:54.240 this was after three years of college. 00:40:54.240 --> 00:40:55.360 This is in seminary. 00:40:55.360 --> 00:40:57.360 And his PhD stuff is no better. 00:40:57.920 --> 00:40:59.120 he was an atrocious 00:40:59.120 --> 00:41:04.160 speller. And so we see here, of course, he bluntly states what 00:41:04.160 --> 00:41:09.200 was stated previously, what I highlighted with the JEDP theory. 00:41:09.440 --> 00:41:12.240 denying that the Pentateuch was written by Moses, and he's saying that 00:41:12.240 --> 00:41:17.040 scripture is full of errors, contradictions and obvious impossibilities. 00:41:17.040 --> 00:41:21.120 This is something that you expect to hear from an outright atheist, 00:41:21.120 --> 00:41:23.840 particularly a new atheist. 00:41:23.840 --> 00:41:26.800 This is not something that Christians say. 00:41:26.800 --> 00:41:29.520 This is not something that a Christian would say. 00:41:29.520 --> 00:41:34.640 This is not something that was said by a Christian. 00:41:34.640 --> 00:41:37.040 Christians do not deny 00:41:38.000 --> 00:41:39.600 the truth of Scripture. 00:41:39.600 --> 00:41:44.480 They do not deny the inspiration of Scripture, they do not deny 00:41:44.480 --> 00:41:48.640 the consistency of Scripture, they do not attribute to Scripture, and therefore 00:41:48.640 --> 00:41:51.280 to God, because Scripture is the Word of God, they do not 00:41:51.280 --> 00:41:56.960 attribute to God errors, contradictions, and obvious impossibilities. 00:41:56.960 --> 00:42:00.800 This is an academic paper, but it is a paper written by 00:42:00.800 --> 00:42:04.560 an academic who is not Christian. 00:42:04.560 --> 00:42:10.480 And this is just a Just the consistent case with his writings. 00:42:10.480 --> 00:42:13.600 This is what you find from the beginning of his life to 00:42:13.600 --> 00:42:14.880 the end. 00:42:14.880 --> 00:42:19.680 The things that he wrote reject core truths, core claims of the 00:42:19.680 --> 00:42:21.760 Christian religion. 00:42:21.920 --> 00:42:25.440 And so they are not things that could have been written by 00:42:25.440 --> 00:42:29.040 a Christian. 00:42:29.200 --> 00:42:32.400 It's helpful here that he does something that I had pointed out 00:42:32.400 --> 00:42:35.760 in the episode on the perspicuity of scripture, on the clarity of 00:42:35.760 --> 00:42:40.800 scripture. I pointed out how frequently when these men are playing rhetorical 00:42:40.800 --> 00:42:44.160 games, they will say oh it's true but it's not real. 00:42:44.160 --> 00:42:47.600 The n there's a narrative but it's not it's a story but 00:42:47.600 --> 00:42:49.040 it's not factual. 00:42:49.040 --> 00:42:51.440 They play these games and he literally does it right here and 00:42:51.440 --> 00:42:52.560 he put these in quotes. 00:42:52.560 --> 00:42:56.160 If we accepted the old testament as being quote unquote true, we'll 00:42:56.160 --> 00:42:57.600 find it's full of errors. 00:42:57.600 --> 00:43:01.280 On the other hand, if we accept it as quote unquote truth, 00:43:01.280 --> 00:43:03.840 we will find it to be one of the most logical vehicles, 00:43:03.840 --> 00:43:10.240 etcetera. So he literally directly sets true and truth in opposition. 00:43:10.240 --> 00:43:12.560 That is Mike's religion. 00:43:12.560 --> 00:43:16.240 And so the only way he's able to find truth in scripture 00:43:16.400 --> 00:43:20.960 as he's denying everything about it is to just insert all of 00:43:20.960 --> 00:43:24.480 his own views, all of his own ideas, to to hollow out 00:43:24.480 --> 00:43:28.320 the Christian faith, our faith, and wear it as a skin suit. 00:43:28.320 --> 00:43:31.120 And that is what Mike King did his entire life. 00:43:31.120 --> 00:43:33.520 He hollowed out the Christian faith and he wore it as a 00:43:33.520 --> 00:43:34.640 skin suit. 00:43:34.640 --> 00:43:38.160 So again, the purpose of this episode, when you hear someone, a 00:43:38.160 --> 00:43:43.360 Christian, an actual Christian, in good conscience, quoting this man, know that 00:43:43.360 --> 00:43:46.480 this is the baggage that they are bringing along with their views. 00:43:46.480 --> 00:43:49.200 And then ask yourself, how did this man, who who 00:43:50.080 --> 00:43:52.560 denied Christ, he he's burning in hell. 00:43:52.560 --> 00:43:57.040 He cannot possibly be in heaven as this was his confession. 00:43:57.040 --> 00:43:59.680 That we can say that beyond any shadow of a doubt. 00:43:59.680 --> 00:44:02.240 It's not like, well he sinned a lot and so yeah, I 00:44:02.240 --> 00:44:02.560 don't know. 00:44:02.560 --> 00:44:04.480 I th I don't think he's gonna forgive him. 00:44:04.480 --> 00:44:06.080 It's got nothing to do with that. 00:44:06.080 --> 00:44:10.480 This man denied God, he denied scripture, he denied everything that is 00:44:10.480 --> 00:44:13.360 the source of our salvation. 00:44:13.360 --> 00:44:15.920 There's no possible hope for this man to be saved. 00:44:15.920 --> 00:44:20.000 How can such a man be an example of anything in the 00:44:20.000 --> 00:44:21.520 Christian life? 00:44:21.840 --> 00:44:24.240 You may be able to say, well, he was terrible, but he 00:44:24.240 --> 00:44:26.080 did he did this one thing right. 00:44:26.080 --> 00:44:29.120 If anyone actually say that, then we could have that discussion. 00:44:29.120 --> 00:44:30.000 That's the problem. 00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:31.200 No one's saying that. 00:44:31.200 --> 00:44:34.800 No one's saying he was an evil, wicked, damned man, but he 00:44:34.800 --> 00:44:36.480 got one thing pretty right. 00:44:36.480 --> 00:44:39.200 And let's maybe explain how he got that one thing right. 00:44:39.200 --> 00:44:42.480 No. They see he's he's a paragon of virtue, that he was 00:44:42.480 --> 00:44:47.120 a Christian man, and anyone who even questions that is blaspheming. 00:44:47.120 --> 00:44:49.600 And that as I said at the beginning, that's the overarching theme 00:44:49.600 --> 00:44:51.760 of this episode in the next few episodes. 00:44:51.760 --> 00:44:55.920 It is deliberately for Corey and I to blaspheme the gods of 00:44:55.920 --> 00:44:56.800 this age. 00:44:56.800 --> 00:44:58.800 Michael Martin Luther King Jr. 00:44:58.800 --> 00:45:00.560 is one of the gods of this age. 00:45:00.560 --> 00:45:04.320 This religion that he's espousing is the religion of this age. 00:45:04.320 --> 00:45:05.600 There's no doubt about that. 00:45:05.600 --> 00:45:07.920 This is a real religion he's describing. 00:45:07.920 --> 00:45:11.840 The problem is it looks and smells a little bit like Christianity 00:45:12.080 --> 00:45:15.840 if you're an ignorant Christian who's not paying any attention, but as 00:45:15.840 --> 00:45:20.080 soon as you look at this stuff, it just completely implodes. 00:45:20.080 --> 00:45:24.000 The The next brief section here is just a it's from sermon 00:45:24.000 --> 00:45:28.160 sketches. He was doing a sermon on Job 1925, where Job says, 00:45:28.160 --> 00:45:30.400 I know that my redeemer lives. 00:45:30.400 --> 00:45:34.560 And the title of his sermon was The Assurance of Immortality. 00:45:34.560 --> 00:45:37.600 The theme that he had for sermon was we are able to 00:45:37.600 --> 00:45:41.760 attain immortality through the men and women that we influence and through 00:45:41.760 --> 00:45:44.720 the children who are touched by the flame of our spirits. 00:45:44.720 --> 00:45:46.000 And the purpose of his sermon was 00:45:46.880 --> 00:45:50.160 to show that the desire for immortality will not be in vain. 00:45:50.160 --> 00:45:52.720 This is another one of his recurring themes. 00:45:52.720 --> 00:45:57.120 As he inserts his views into scripture, what he will say is 00:45:57.120 --> 00:46:01.440 that there was no notion of the resurrection of the dead until 00:46:01.440 --> 00:46:03.920 very near to Jesus Day. 00:46:03.920 --> 00:46:06.080 One of the things he'll do later on, he'll talk about a 00:46:06.080 --> 00:46:11.120 deutero Isaiah, which is another thing from these critical readers where they 00:46:11.120 --> 00:46:15.920 believe that just as with JEDP, they believe that there were two 00:46:15.920 --> 00:46:17.840 authors of Isaiah. 00:46:17.840 --> 00:46:21.120 One wrote the first two thirds, and then a different guy wrote 00:46:21.120 --> 00:46:21.920 the last third. 00:46:21.920 --> 00:46:25.840 And Deuterone Isaiah is the one who has the prophecies, the one 00:46:25.840 --> 00:46:29.600 who talks about eternal life and resurrection. 00:46:29.600 --> 00:46:34.720 And so his claim, his belief is that those things say saying 00:46:34.720 --> 00:46:38.080 that there's resurrection of the dead, that there's an afterlife of any 00:46:38.080 --> 00:46:43.920 sort, that that no believer in Yahweh in God believed those things 00:46:43.920 --> 00:46:48.320 until very late in the Hebrew period. 00:46:48.320 --> 00:46:52.800 Again, that's that's it's not sub-Christian, it's anti-Christian. 00:46:52.800 --> 00:46:56.320 And so th this is just one small blur, but it's consistent 00:46:56.320 --> 00:46:59.200 with his overarching theme that that pops up everywhere. 00:46:59.200 --> 00:47:03.280 He does not believe that there's any continuity in scripture whatsoever. 00:47:03.440 --> 00:47:07.360 Which makes perfect sense because he denies that it's from God. 00:47:07.360 --> 00:47:11.600 If it's just a bunch of random people scattered across time, well 00:47:11.680 --> 00:47:14.160 sure it's not going to make a lot of sense. 00:47:14.240 --> 00:47:14.480 And 00:47:14.480 --> 00:47:19.600 you mentioned that we're judging the man based on his confessions, based 00:47:19.600 --> 00:47:22.400 on the things that he said, the things that he wrote. 00:47:22.400 --> 00:47:25.760 But of course a tree is also known by its fruit, and 00:47:25.760 --> 00:47:28.560 so we can look to his works, and we'll do a little 00:47:28.560 --> 00:47:33.280 bit more of that in it's going to be a second episode. 00:47:33.280 --> 00:47:33.440 But 00:47:35.600 --> 00:47:39.600 Christians can very well at the least look to how he spent 00:47:39.600 --> 00:47:43.360 his last night on earth, and he spent his last night on 00:47:43.360 --> 00:47:48.960 earth fornicating with two prostitutes and beating a third woman. 00:47:48.960 --> 00:47:52.240 This is confirmed by the FBI, who had him under surveillance for 00:47:52.240 --> 00:47:53.120 many years. 00:47:53.120 --> 00:47:55.520 This is well known. 00:47:55.760 --> 00:48:00.400 That is probably not how Christians are supposed to spend their last 00:48:00.400 --> 00:48:01.680 night on earth. 00:48:01.680 --> 00:48:06.320 That's not how Christians do spend any of their nights on earth. 00:48:06.320 --> 00:48:10.800 Now, can you be a Christian and still sin, of course. 00:48:10.800 --> 00:48:11.120 But 00:48:12.080 --> 00:48:16.000 if you are holding yourself out as a minister, holding yourself out 00:48:16.000 --> 00:48:18.720 as a teacher of the faith, and that is still how you 00:48:18.720 --> 00:48:20.800 are living your life, and that was not a one-time thing, that 00:48:20.800 --> 00:48:26.240 was the That was consistent throughout his entire career as an activist. 00:48:26.240 --> 00:48:29.680 That is not a Christian man. 00:48:29.680 --> 00:48:33.120 But moving on to his next quote, this is from the ethics 00:48:33.120 --> 00:48:39.440 of late Judaism as evidenced in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. 00:48:39.440 --> 00:48:42.640 For a number of centuries it was generally held that the period 00:48:42.640 --> 00:48:46.080 between the Old and New Testaments was a period of silence, and 00:48:46.080 --> 00:48:49.200 that no spiritual development was achieved within it. 00:48:49.200 --> 00:48:51.920 It was believed that this period of silence was broken when the 00:48:51.920 --> 00:48:54.560 New Testament appeared on the stage of history. 00:48:54.560 --> 00:48:58.240 Now the pendulum of interpretation is swinging in another direction. 00:48:58.240 --> 00:49:02.240 Most competent scholars have cast such positions out of the window. 00:49:02.240 --> 00:49:05.840 They would all agree that in reality there was no period of 00:49:05.840 --> 00:49:10.160 silence. To be sure, it was a period of great spiritual progress, 00:49:10.160 --> 00:49:13.200 and in many instances greater than any preceding it in the In 00:49:13.200 --> 00:49:18.320 Old Testament times, even though the Old Testament was its logical prelude. 00:49:18.320 --> 00:49:21.680 To my mind, many of the works of this period were infinitely 00:49:21.680 --> 00:49:24.720 more valuable than those that received canonicity. 00:49:24.720 --> 00:49:28.720 The materials to justify such statements are found mainly in the Apocrypha 00:49:28.880 --> 00:49:30.800 and the Pseudoepigrapha. 00:49:30.800 --> 00:49:35.760 These works, although presented pseudonymously, are of lasting significance to the biblical 00:49:35.760 --> 00:49:41.920 student. I would start out by just pointing out there's a weird 00:49:41.920 --> 00:49:45.280 inconsistency here in terms of saying there's silence and then referencing the 00:49:45.280 --> 00:49:49.200 Apocrypha, which of course was in the intertestamental period. 00:49:49.200 --> 00:49:52.720 But even if you take it to mean silence in terms of 00:49:52.720 --> 00:49:55.840 no scripture, which is the Christian position. 00:49:55.840 --> 00:50:00.320 The Christian position is that there is a period of silence, as 00:50:00.320 --> 00:50:03.840 it were, between the close of the Old Testament and the open 00:50:03.840 --> 00:50:05.840 of the New Testament. 00:50:05.840 --> 00:50:08.160 We have materials written in that period. 00:50:08.160 --> 00:50:11.040 We call them the Apocrypha, and they are useful. 00:50:11.040 --> 00:50:15.040 They are to be read as historical documents, not as scripture. 00:50:15.040 --> 00:50:16.960 That has long been the position of the church. 00:50:16.960 --> 00:50:17.840 There are some contentions 00:50:18.880 --> 00:50:19.200 over 00:50:20.160 --> 00:50:24.400 where exactly certain books belong in the canon, but the Apocrypha is 00:50:24.400 --> 00:50:30.000 a fairly set group of books that are considered historical books, not 00:50:30.000 --> 00:50:31.440 part of scripture. 00:50:31.440 --> 00:50:37.280 This was the position, incidentally also of the Roman Church, until the 00:50:37.280 --> 00:50:43.360 Counter Reformation, when in rejection of what the Lutherans did, because the 00:50:43.360 --> 00:50:48.000 Lutherans just affirmed what the Church had taught for centuries, Rome decided 00:50:48.000 --> 00:50:50.720 they would canonize these books because 00:50:51.600 --> 00:50:54.400 well they were rejecting what the Lutherans had done. 00:50:54.400 --> 00:50:57.680 That was done in response to the Lutherans not for any theological 00:50:58.560 --> 00:51:01.120 or doctrinal reasons. 00:51:01.120 --> 00:51:04.560 Now of course they did do it for some dogmatic reasons, because 00:51:04.560 --> 00:51:07.600 you can get some of their arguments for praying to the saints 00:51:07.600 --> 00:51:11.600 and things like that from the apocryphal books. 00:51:11.600 --> 00:51:15.280 Notably, the apocryphal books themselves state that they are not scripture by 00:51:15.280 --> 00:51:20.080 saying there is no prophet during the time when these were written. 00:51:20.080 --> 00:51:26.160 But that aside, what he is saying here is that there is 00:51:26.160 --> 00:51:31.280 a sort of, and in his words, spiritual progress in religion, in 00:51:31.280 --> 00:51:35.600 Christianity. This is utopianism. 00:51:35.600 --> 00:51:38.720 This is a sort of new age religion. 00:51:38.720 --> 00:51:41.600 The beginnings of it, of course, because it's become what we know 00:51:41.600 --> 00:51:44.160 modernly as sort of new age religion. 00:51:44.160 --> 00:51:48.080 It's the belief that humanity is getting better as we go along. 00:51:48.560 --> 00:51:51.280 That's not the teaching of Scripture. 00:51:51.280 --> 00:51:55.600 Humanity was very good in the words of Genesis in the garden. 00:51:55.600 --> 00:51:58.800 Humanity fell, and we are degenerating as time goes on. 00:51:58.800 --> 00:52:00.880 We are not getting better. 00:52:00.880 --> 00:52:03.120 There is no spiritual progress. 00:52:03.120 --> 00:52:06.640 Now, as an individual, of course, you can make spiritual progress, because 00:52:06.640 --> 00:52:11.600 you can be converted to Christianity, you can be in Christ, and 00:52:11.600 --> 00:52:14.480 therefore you go through the process of sanctification. 00:52:14.480 --> 00:52:17.280 That is spiritual progress. 00:52:17.280 --> 00:52:21.520 But there's no spiritual progress in the terms of religion getting better 00:52:21.520 --> 00:52:23.280 as we go. 00:52:23.280 --> 00:52:24.800 That is not Christianity. 00:52:24.800 --> 00:52:26.720 That is the spirit of the age. 00:52:26.720 --> 00:52:30.160 That's outright Satanism, quite frankly. 00:52:30.160 --> 00:52:32.720 And that is what he's advocating here, and he's saying that that 00:52:32.720 --> 00:52:36.640 is better than the Old Testament, that is better than Scripture. 00:52:36.640 --> 00:52:40.000 But of course that's in keeping with his position, because his position 00:52:40.000 --> 00:52:44.160 is that his project is better than Scripture, all of Scripture, the 00:52:44.160 --> 00:52:46.160 Old Testament, the New Testament. 00:52:46.160 --> 00:52:49.840 Because again, it is that argument that, oh, we're making progress, we're 00:52:49.840 --> 00:52:56.000 becoming better, we're more ethical, we are just all around better human 00:52:56.000 --> 00:53:01.520 beings, better men than our forebears, than our forefathers. 00:53:01.520 --> 00:53:04.080 And that is simply not the case, and it's not the Christian 00:53:04.080 --> 00:53:09.280 position, because again, the Christian position is is that this creation is 00:53:09.280 --> 00:53:12.000 fallen and it is degenerating over time. 00:53:12.000 --> 00:53:13.200 It is getting worse. 00:53:13.200 --> 00:53:15.200 Things are not getting better. 00:53:15.200 --> 00:53:18.880 I'm not saying that is a black pill, as it were. 00:53:18.880 --> 00:53:21.200 That is simply the reality of it. 00:53:21.760 --> 00:53:25.200 Yes, we can work to make a better world than we have 00:53:25.200 --> 00:53:30.000 today, certainly, but we are not going to reverse the fall. 00:53:30.000 --> 00:53:32.640 Yes, in some minor way, you reverse the fall every time you 00:53:32.640 --> 00:53:35.280 work in your garden and you remove the thistles and the weeds 00:53:35.440 --> 00:53:37.200 and things like that. 00:53:37.200 --> 00:53:43.920 But the overall trajectory of creation is downward until Christ returns and 00:53:43.920 --> 00:53:46.400 makes all things new. 00:53:46.400 --> 00:53:50.720 That is the Christian position, not what I just read in this 00:53:50.720 --> 00:53:51.760 paragraph. 00:53:52.160 --> 00:53:52.240 And 00:53:52.400 --> 00:53:56.800 the cash quote from that entire thing is to my mind, many 00:53:56.800 --> 00:54:00.880 of the works of this period were infinitely more valuable than those 00:54:00.880 --> 00:54:03.280 that received canonicity. 00:54:03.280 --> 00:54:05.760 In other words, he's saying the old testament is trash. 00:54:05.760 --> 00:54:07.360 Most of it's really old. 00:54:07.360 --> 00:54:09.280 There's not a lot of value in there, and some of the 00:54:09.280 --> 00:54:14.720 later quotes he specifically goes into explicitly damning the god of the 00:54:14.720 --> 00:54:16.240 Old Old Testament. 00:54:16.240 --> 00:54:20.320 He says that the god of the newer Old Testament is getting 00:54:20.320 --> 00:54:23.200 closer to the sort of God that he likes, still not quite 00:54:23.200 --> 00:54:26.720 there yet, really not until Jesus shows up, but he he very 00:54:26.720 --> 00:54:31.920 explicitly says the earliest parts of the Old Testament are basically trash. 00:54:31.920 --> 00:54:32.880 They're not real. 00:54:32.880 --> 00:54:34.800 They have a God who is evil. 00:54:34.800 --> 00:54:36.000 I reject them. 00:54:36.000 --> 00:54:37.840 I like this apocrypha stuff. 00:54:37.840 --> 00:54:38.560 It's very new. 00:54:38.720 --> 00:54:40.320 It's got a lot of better things in there. 00:54:40.320 --> 00:54:41.920 I think it's much more valuable. 00:54:41.920 --> 00:54:45.120 Now, this is not someone making a claim that's saying, well, I 00:54:45.120 --> 00:54:47.920 think the you know, I prefer reading the Apocrypha to the old 00:54:47.920 --> 00:54:53.120 testament. You have to review such a claim in terms of whether 00:54:53.120 --> 00:54:56.480 or not the Old Testament is scripture. 00:54:56.480 --> 00:54:59.760 If it's from God, if it's the Word of God, for for 00:54:59.760 --> 00:55:03.200 a man to say anything is infinitely more valuable than that. 00:55:03.520 --> 00:55:06.960 is an explicit act of apostasy. 00:55:07.040 --> 00:55:10.720 Next quote I have here is from a sermon called Mastering Our 00:55:10.720 --> 00:55:11.760 Evil Selves. 00:55:11.760 --> 00:55:14.000 It's one of the few times he actually talks about evil. 00:55:14.000 --> 00:55:17.600 He tends to avoid that unless he's talking about racism or nationalism 00:55:17.680 --> 00:55:19.440 or white supremacy. 00:55:19.440 --> 00:55:22.240 There were a lot of sermons about that, but not much sermon, 00:55:22.240 --> 00:55:25.440 not many sermons about the actual sin of the people in his 00:55:25.440 --> 00:55:29.120 congregations. King preached. 00:55:29.120 --> 00:55:33.600 Finally, we may master our evil selves by developing a continuous prayer 00:55:33.600 --> 00:55:34.960 and devotional life. 00:55:34.960 --> 00:55:38.400 Through this process, the soul of man will become united with the 00:55:38.400 --> 00:55:39.360 life of God. 00:55:39.360 --> 00:55:40.800 Yes, this is possible. 00:55:40.800 --> 00:55:42.160 Man can know God. 00:55:42.160 --> 00:55:45.920 This has been the ringing cry of the mystic throughout the ages. 00:55:45.920 --> 00:55:50.320 God is not wholly other, God is not a process projected somewhere 00:55:50.320 --> 00:55:52.320 of the lofty blue. 00:55:52.320 --> 00:55:56.320 God is not a divine hermit hiding himself in a cosmic cave, 00:55:56.320 --> 00:55:59.040 but God is forever present with us. 00:55:59.040 --> 00:56:01.600 The God of religion is the God of life. 00:56:01.600 --> 00:56:04.960 He somehow transcends the world and yet at the same time he 00:56:04.960 --> 00:56:06.720 is imminent in the world. 00:56:06.720 --> 00:56:10.800 And so by identifying ourselves with this knowable God, our wills will 00:56:10.800 --> 00:56:12.720 somehow become His will. 00:56:12.720 --> 00:56:16.480 We will no longer think our selfish desires, will somehow rise above 00:56:16.480 --> 00:56:20.640 evil thoughts, will no longer possess two personalities but only one will 00:56:20.720 --> 00:56:24.000 be true because God is truth, we'll be just because God is 00:56:24.000 --> 00:56:26.960 justice, we will love because God is love, we will be good 00:56:26.960 --> 00:56:30.480 because God is goodness, we will be wise because God is wisdom. 00:56:30.480 --> 00:56:35.280 And as Corey just said, a Christian wouldn't necessarily like some of 00:56:35.520 --> 00:56:37.840 that, but some of that sounds like sanctification. 00:56:37.840 --> 00:56:41.680 A Lutheran in particular would say, Yeah, that's the process of sanctification. 00:56:41.680 --> 00:56:42.800 We become 00:56:43.760 --> 00:56:49.680 greater in terms of our possession of God's qualities in our own 00:56:49.680 --> 00:56:53.440 lives, as a matter of will in the regenerate spirit, it is 00:56:53.440 --> 00:56:57.920 possible to sin less and to do more of God's things, because 00:56:57.920 --> 00:56:58.960 that's a gift from God. 00:56:59.200 --> 00:57:01.520 It's no outgrowth of our own persons. 00:57:01.520 --> 00:57:04.560 It's something that is given to us as a gift, first through 00:57:04.560 --> 00:57:05.840 the gift of faith. 00:57:05.840 --> 00:57:07.360 But he's not saying that. 00:57:07.360 --> 00:57:11.360 He's again, he's when he says religion, it's it's a term of 00:57:11.360 --> 00:57:13.200 art in King's mouth. 00:57:13.200 --> 00:57:16.720 When he says religion, he's talking about a mad-made thing and he's 00:57:16.720 --> 00:57:22.400 talking about again the the personal reinforcement of morality in pursuit of 00:57:22.400 --> 00:57:28.320 tikkanolam, in pursuit of perfecting the world through perfecting oneself. 00:57:28.320 --> 00:57:31.040 And no, he said this has been the ringing cry of the 00:57:31.040 --> 00:57:32.560 mystic throughout the ages. 00:57:32.560 --> 00:57:34.240 That's another big thing with him. 00:57:34.240 --> 00:57:39.120 He sees that mysticism is is part and parcel of the genesis 00:57:39.120 --> 00:57:41.120 of religion and then it's perfected. 00:57:41.120 --> 00:57:44.000 So the mystics early on gave us some stuff and then what 00:57:44.000 --> 00:57:47.120 we do, we refine it, we winnow it down, we turn it 00:57:47.120 --> 00:57:50.560 into something that we can possess as our own religion as we 00:57:50.560 --> 00:57:53.760 go forth in the world and make it a better place. 00:57:53.760 --> 00:57:57.040 And as a Christian listening that, if you're not familiar with some 00:57:57.040 --> 00:58:02.000 of the other non-Christian beliefs, they sound exactly the same, that might 00:58:02.000 --> 00:58:03.440 not sound so bad. 00:58:03.440 --> 00:58:06.880 The problem is that that sounds exactly like some other non Christian 00:58:06.880 --> 00:58:09.360 beliefs and they have evil ends. 00:58:09.360 --> 00:58:14.640 When they say those things, they are ultimately pursuing ultimate evil. 00:58:14.640 --> 00:58:17.280 And that's why we're part of why we're talking about some of 00:58:17.280 --> 00:58:20.720 these things is that Christians need to know how the other team 00:58:20.720 --> 00:58:24.960 talks. You can't just automatically assume that when you hear someone saying 00:58:25.120 --> 00:58:28.560 Christian sounding things, that they're on the same team. 00:58:28.560 --> 00:58:32.720 We've got to get past that because it's clearly a glaring deficiency 00:58:32.720 --> 00:58:37.120 in our defenses against evil, against Satan's wiles. 00:58:37.120 --> 00:58:40.000 If he can just throw something that smells like Jesus at you 00:58:40.080 --> 00:58:42.400 and you catch it and you hold it and you love it, 00:58:42.400 --> 00:58:45.520 all he has to do is just s sprinkle Jesus dust on 00:58:45.520 --> 00:58:48.240 any manner of filth and evil and you're gonna pick it up 00:58:48.240 --> 00:58:49.280 and love it. 00:58:49.280 --> 00:58:51.280 That we have to do better. 00:58:51.280 --> 00:58:56.160 And so by pointing some of these contrasts and and similarities out, 00:58:56.160 --> 00:58:59.520 we're trying to make the case that you will encounter people in 00:58:59.520 --> 00:59:03.040 your lives, you will encounter people who influence you. 00:59:03.040 --> 00:59:06.560 They may not be evil like king, but they will certainly be 00:59:06.560 --> 00:59:09.600 sighting men who are evil like king, and they won't know any 00:59:09.600 --> 00:59:13.920 better. And so as a matter of spiritual discernment, it's not just 00:59:13.920 --> 00:59:16.000 enough to say, yeah, he said the right word. 00:59:16.000 --> 00:59:18.240 We're not talking about shibbolets here. 00:59:18.240 --> 00:59:22.800 It's not sufficient to say, well, if he has the right secret 00:59:22.880 --> 00:59:25.440 keyword, then you let him in because you know you're on the 00:59:25.440 --> 00:59:26.240 same team. 00:59:26.240 --> 00:59:28.400 As Christians, we have to get past that point. 00:59:28.400 --> 00:59:31.600 It's been a weakness that has been exploited for far too long 00:59:31.680 --> 00:59:33.600 and it's it's got us on the ropes. 00:59:33.600 --> 00:59:35.600 We don't have much left because 00:59:36.720 --> 00:59:38.240 even Evil happens after. 00:59:38.240 --> 00:59:40.800 You know, it's not like, oops, I accidentally agreed with a bad 00:59:40.800 --> 00:59:43.440 guy, but okay, you know, I just move on with my day. 00:59:43.440 --> 00:59:46.640 When you agree with someone like King, you have now adopted a 00:59:46.640 --> 00:59:49.040 false religion and you're along for the ride. 00:59:49.040 --> 00:59:54.480 So when he makes his moral pronouncements from his religion, if you 00:59:54.480 --> 00:59:57.840 don't know that it's a different religion than your own, you're probably 00:59:57.840 --> 00:59:59.680 just gonna go along with it. 00:59:59.680 --> 01:00:03.200 And that is that is catastrophic for the Christian faith. 01:00:03.440 --> 01:00:09.840 As anyone who's been involved in either say contract law or formal 01:00:09.840 --> 01:00:17.920 debates knows, you absolutely must define your terms up front. 01:00:18.160 --> 01:00:22.720 Because if you don't define your terms, you can argue past each 01:00:22.720 --> 01:00:23.040 other 01:00:23.920 --> 01:00:27.760 for the entirety of the debate, or you can wind up creating 01:00:27.760 --> 01:00:31.040 a contract in which there's no actual meeting of the minds, and 01:00:31.040 --> 01:00:33.280 so you don't really have a contract. 01:00:33.280 --> 01:00:36.240 Because the one party thought you were talking about A and the 01:00:36.240 --> 01:00:38.960 other party thought you were talking about B and these are mutually 01:00:38.960 --> 01:00:40.320 exclusive things. 01:00:41.840 --> 01:00:46.640 And Christians fall, as you said, into this trap, into this pit. 01:00:46.640 --> 01:00:50.160 Because we think, oh, well, he used the magical words, he must 01:00:50.160 --> 01:00:51.360 be a Christian. 01:00:51.360 --> 01:00:56.640 This speaker said justification, he said grace, he said sanctification, he said 01:00:56.800 --> 01:01:00.880 whatever it happens to be. 01:01:00.880 --> 01:01:03.680 That's not what makes a Christian. 01:01:03.680 --> 01:01:07.680 It is the content of that confession, of that belief that makes 01:01:07.680 --> 01:01:09.360 a Christian. 01:01:09.360 --> 01:01:12.960 And so just because you're using the same terms doesn't mean you're 01:01:12.960 --> 01:01:14.800 saying the same things. 01:01:14.800 --> 01:01:17.200 So we have to be very careful about what these men are 01:01:17.200 --> 01:01:19.360 saying when they use these terms. 01:01:19.360 --> 01:01:25.360 Thankfully in this case, we have a great deal of writing, speeches, 01:01:25.360 --> 01:01:27.520 various other information, where 01:01:28.480 --> 01:01:31.360 Mike tells us exactly what he believed. 01:01:31.520 --> 01:01:35.520 We don't have to look into his mind, we don't have to 01:01:35.840 --> 01:01:39.200 divine what he was really thinking, he tells us, in his own 01:01:39.200 --> 01:01:41.680 words, in many places. 01:01:41.680 --> 01:01:45.520 So listen to what is actually being said by him. 01:01:46.000 --> 01:01:50.480 Don't just latch on to these buzzwords, as it were. 01:01:50.480 --> 01:01:54.560 The terms are important, the terms matter, and Christians have fought over 01:01:54.560 --> 01:01:56.320 the terms for centuries. 01:01:56.320 --> 01:01:59.120 But you have to make sure that the person who is speaking 01:01:59.120 --> 01:02:04.000 is using those terms the way a Christian would, not a secular 01:02:04.000 --> 01:02:10.480 way. The next two quotes will be from a study of Mithraism 01:02:10.880 --> 01:02:11.200 which 01:02:12.320 --> 01:02:16.560 for those who aren't familiar, that is a a Gnostic thing. 01:02:16.560 --> 01:02:20.160 That's a sufficient explanation for now. 01:02:20.640 --> 01:02:22.800 It is at this point that we are able to see why 01:02:22.800 --> 01:02:26.880 knowledge of these cults is important for any serious New Testament study. 01:02:26.880 --> 01:02:31.040 It is well nigh impossible to grasp Christianity through and through without 01:02:31.040 --> 01:02:32.880 knowledge of these cults. 01:02:32.880 --> 01:02:37.040 That there were striking similarities between the developing church and these religions 01:02:37.040 --> 01:02:38.400 cannot be denied. 01:02:38.400 --> 01:02:43.280 Even Christian apologists had to admit that fact. 01:02:43.280 --> 01:02:48.000 For instance, in the mystery religions identification between the devotee and the 01:02:48.000 --> 01:02:51.120 Lord of the Cult was supposed to be brought about by various 01:02:51.120 --> 01:02:52.960 rites of initiation. 01:02:53.040 --> 01:02:57.120 Tarabolium or bath of blood, the eating of flesh of the sacrificial 01:02:57.120 --> 01:02:58.480 beast, and the like. 01:02:58.480 --> 01:03:01.360 Now there was something of this in Paul too, for he thought 01:03:01.360 --> 01:03:05.200 of the believer as buried with Christ in baptism, and as feeding 01:03:05.200 --> 01:03:06.720 upon him in the Eucharist. 01:03:06.720 --> 01:03:09.520 This is only one of many examples that I could give to 01:03:09.520 --> 01:03:14.160 prove the similarity between the developing Christian Church and the mystery religions. 01:03:14.160 --> 01:03:16.640 This is not to say that a Saint Paul or a Saint 01:03:16.640 --> 01:03:20.480 John sat down and copied these views verbatim, but after being in 01:03:20.480 --> 01:03:25.360 contact with these surrounding religions and hearing certain doctrines expressed, it was 01:03:25.360 --> 01:03:27.680 only natural for some of these views to become a part of 01:03:27.680 --> 01:03:29.840 their subconscious minds. 01:03:29.840 --> 01:03:34.480 When they sat down to write, they were expressing consciously that which 01:03:34.480 --> 01:03:36.960 had dwelled in their subconscious minds. 01:03:36.960 --> 01:03:40.480 It is also significant to know that Roman tolerance had favored this 01:03:40.480 --> 01:03:42.640 great syncretism of religious ideas. 01:03:42.640 --> 01:03:46.960 Bar Borrowing was not only natural, but inevitable. 01:03:46.960 --> 01:03:50.560 Think comment on that before moving on to the the next section 01:03:50.560 --> 01:03:54.960 of this, the conclusion from the the same piece. 01:03:54.960 --> 01:04:01.440 Aside from the grammar errors, which still are great fun to read, 01:04:01.440 --> 01:04:05.760 this is just emension syncretism, and really that's what we're talking about 01:04:05.760 --> 01:04:11.760 here. This is false on its face, historically, because in large part, 01:04:11.760 --> 01:04:16.640 the mystery cults that looked like Christianity stole from Christianity. 01:04:16.640 --> 01:04:19.280 These things went in the other order. 01:04:19.280 --> 01:04:23.440 It was not Christianity borrowing from pagans, it was pagans stealing from 01:04:23.440 --> 01:04:28.960 Christianity. You have the same thing with Christmas and Easter, incidentally. 01:04:28.960 --> 01:04:31.920 I know people will try to say that the Christmas tree is 01:04:31.920 --> 01:04:33.760 pagan. It's not, it's Christian. 01:04:34.560 --> 01:04:37.680 The furthest back you can trace it is actually Martin Luther. 01:04:37.680 --> 01:04:43.360 There was a similar rite that was practiced by some Christian monks 01:04:43.360 --> 01:04:47.520 before Luther Luther took it and introduced it to Christians. 01:04:47.520 --> 01:04:49.840 That's just one example of many 01:04:50.720 --> 01:04:53.840 He's so he's wrong on his on the face of this argument 01:04:53.840 --> 01:04:56.080 here. Historically he is wrong. 01:04:56.080 --> 01:04:59.600 But more important really than the historical argument 01:05:00.480 --> 01:05:04.720 is that he is saying that Christianity isn't really different from these 01:05:04.720 --> 01:05:09.760 cults. These are all religions, and all religions are kind of equal. 01:05:09.760 --> 01:05:12.640 Christianity is just another mystery religion. 01:05:12.640 --> 01:05:17.120 You have the Eucharist, that's just another bath of blood, or the 01:05:17.120 --> 01:05:19.280 consumption of flesh. 01:05:19.280 --> 01:05:24.000 He's literally comparing the sacrament to cannibalism. 01:05:24.000 --> 01:05:27.760 This was an accusation that has been leveled against Christians historically. 01:05:28.000 --> 01:05:31.200 This is one of the accusations that sent Christians to the Lions 01:05:31.600 --> 01:05:32.720 in Rome. 01:05:32.720 --> 01:05:36.480 Incidentally also one of the accusations the Reformed have historically made against 01:05:36.480 --> 01:05:38.560 Lutherans from time to time. 01:05:40.080 --> 01:05:44.880 But he is arguing here that Christianity isn't really different from these 01:05:44.880 --> 01:05:47.600 cults, and that actually you should study these cults if you really 01:05:47.600 --> 01:05:52.240 want to understand Christianity, which is the exact opposite of what a 01:05:52.240 --> 01:05:57.440 Christian would believe and what a Christian, particularly a supposed minister, would 01:05:57.440 --> 01:05:58.400 tell you. 01:05:58.560 --> 01:05:59.920 That's literally his conclusion. 01:05:59.920 --> 01:06:01.680 Why don't you just read the conclusion? 01:06:02.160 --> 01:06:04.320 That's exactly what he how he finishes this paper. 01:06:04.400 --> 01:06:06.320 Oh I'll okay I'll I'll read the conclusion then. 01:06:06.320 --> 01:06:06.960 That's funny 01:06:07.120 --> 01:06:07.440 that 01:06:09.840 --> 01:06:11.920 He did the work for you. 01:06:12.560 --> 01:06:14.320 Someone did. 01:06:14.320 --> 01:06:16.160 The conclusion. 01:06:16.160 --> 01:06:20.480 That Christianity did copy and borrow from Mithraism cannot be denied, but 01:06:20.480 --> 01:06:24.400 it was generally a natural and unconscious process rather than a deliberate 01:06:24.400 --> 01:06:25.520 plan of action. 01:06:25.520 --> 01:06:28.880 It was subject to the same influences from the environment as were 01:06:28.880 --> 01:06:32.800 the other cults, and it sometimes produced the same reaction. 01:06:32.800 --> 01:06:36.400 The people were conditioned by the contact with the older religions and 01:06:36.400 --> 01:06:39.200 the background and general trend of the time. 01:06:39.200 --> 01:06:42.720 Many of the views while passing out of paganism to Christianity were 01:06:42.720 --> 01:06:46.400 given a more profound and spiritual meaning by Christians, yet we must 01:06:46.400 --> 01:06:48.160 be indebted to the source. 01:06:48.160 --> 01:06:52.560 To discuss Christianity without mentioning other religions would be like discussing the 01:06:52.560 --> 01:06:56.240 greatness of the Atlantic Ocean without the slightest mention of the many 01:06:56.240 --> 01:06:57.760 tributaries that keep it free. 01:06:57.760 --> 01:06:58.640 Flowing 01:07:01.680 --> 01:07:05.520 I I I just I'm definitely not going to go to him 01:07:05.520 --> 01:07:05.680 for 01:07:05.680 --> 01:07:07.440 hydrological advice. 01:07:07.440 --> 01:07:09.680 But that's why that's why I cut you off. 01:07:09.680 --> 01:07:12.640 Like you you could not have possibly said anything bad to make 01:07:12.640 --> 01:07:15.200 your conclusion that was nearly as bad as what he did for 01:07:15.200 --> 01:07:16.160 his own. 01:07:16.240 --> 01:07:21.040 I that's just so bad. 01:07:21.040 --> 01:07:22.560 I hadn't read that one before. 01:07:22.560 --> 01:07:26.560 That is just alarmingly awful. 01:07:26.560 --> 01:07:30.320 I always like that the people who write this stuff, you can 01:07:30.320 --> 01:07:31.680 tell exactly what they've read. 01:07:31.680 --> 01:07:35.920 I can tell what he read in psychology, I can tell he 01:07:35.920 --> 01:07:37.120 read Bart. 01:07:37.120 --> 01:07:40.160 I know he also commented on Bart, so that that one helps 01:07:40.160 --> 01:07:40.880 along with that. 01:07:40.880 --> 01:07:43.920 But I can tell where he got these ideas, where these little 01:07:43.920 --> 01:07:45.760 things came from. 01:07:45.760 --> 01:07:50.640 And there's no real synthesis, it's just regurgitation of some little snippet 01:07:50.640 --> 01:07:53.680 that he picked up somewhere. 01:07:53.680 --> 01:07:58.480 And so it's Mithraism, because he obviously read someone who was writing 01:07:58.480 --> 01:08:00.320 about the mystery cults. 01:08:00.800 --> 01:08:05.120 Okay, well, if there's some sort of truth in all religions and 01:08:05.120 --> 01:08:08.320 that we have to look to all these old cults and paganism 01:08:08.320 --> 01:08:12.800 to pick up these very why is there no mention of Norse 01:08:12.800 --> 01:08:13.440 religion? 01:08:14.560 --> 01:08:17.520 Do we have to look into the Eddes for truth? 01:08:17.520 --> 01:08:22.560 Do we have to look into Hinduism and Buddhism? 01:08:22.560 --> 01:08:27.520 It always comes out that it's just a regurgitation of whatever men 01:08:27.520 --> 01:08:29.760 like this have read last. 01:08:29.760 --> 01:08:34.240 But of course the more interesting and the more salient point not 01:08:34.240 --> 01:08:37.920 the the less interesting point of it just being parroting, but the 01:08:37.920 --> 01:08:39.600 more interesting point is the fact 01:08:40.880 --> 01:08:46.320 that what he's doing here is just outright denying the uniqueness of 01:08:46.320 --> 01:08:53.520 Christianity, and Christianity, if it is true, must necessarily be unique. 01:08:53.520 --> 01:08:58.000 The claims of Christianity are exclusive truth claims. 01:08:58.000 --> 01:09:02.880 If Christianity is true, every other religion is false. 01:09:02.880 --> 01:09:05.840 And so when you have someone who is arguing for this sort 01:09:05.840 --> 01:09:10.160 of syncretism, arguing to blend the pagan and the Christian, and he 01:09:10.160 --> 01:09:13.520 capitalizes paganism, notably. 01:09:13.520 --> 01:09:16.160 Now I know some people are going to go troll my timeline 01:09:16.160 --> 01:09:21.360 and point oh you capitalized I capitalize neopaganism because I am speaking 01:09:21.360 --> 01:09:25.600 of it as a particular specific religion, and therefore it is properly 01:09:25.600 --> 01:09:27.760 a proper noun. 01:09:27.760 --> 01:09:31.040 Here paganism is used as a collective noun and should not be 01:09:31.040 --> 01:09:35.680 capitalized, that is giving some indication of his underlying thoughts on this 01:09:35.680 --> 01:09:42.000 matter. But we see this, of course, all over Africa and other 01:09:42.000 --> 01:09:46.080 parts of the world where we have this incredible problem with syncretism. 01:09:46.080 --> 01:09:52.400 This is commented on frequently by missionaries where the local populations Lutherans 01:09:52.400 --> 01:09:55.280 have had this experience, for instance, in Madagascar, where there's actually a 01:09:55.280 --> 01:09:58.000 very large Lutheran church now. 01:09:58.000 --> 01:10:03.440 But they have the problem of syncretism where the local population will 01:10:03.440 --> 01:10:05.040 adopt Christianity. 01:10:05.040 --> 01:10:08.480 They'll go to church, they'll be very excited about the church. 01:10:08.480 --> 01:10:12.160 There's dancing and singing and there's a lot more activity in church 01:10:12.560 --> 01:10:16.080 in Africa typically than you would see in a German Lutheran church, 01:10:16.080 --> 01:10:22.080 certainly. But you have these individuals who seemingly have adopted Christianity, but 01:10:22.080 --> 01:10:25.920 then they go home and go right back to ancestor worship, or 01:10:25.920 --> 01:10:28.000 they go right back to offering 01:10:28.880 --> 01:10:31.120 various things at the tombs. 01:10:31.600 --> 01:10:34.880 It's just you have syncretism and it's a huge problem. 01:10:34.880 --> 01:10:37.360 And that is exactly what is being argued here. 01:10:37.360 --> 01:10:43.360 He is bluntly advocating that syncretism should be part of Christianity. 01:10:43.360 --> 01:10:48.240 And if you're advocating that Christianity, so called should be syncretist, you 01:10:48.240 --> 01:10:51.520 no longer have Christianity. 01:10:51.840 --> 01:10:57.280 Because Christ and Baal have nothing in common. 01:10:57.280 --> 01:10:59.360 You can't worship both. 01:10:59.360 --> 01:11:01.280 You must choose one. 01:11:01.280 --> 01:11:04.880 If you don't worship Christ, well, you are worshiping the other by 01:11:04.880 --> 01:11:10.240 default. But if you try to worship both, you're worshiping Baal. 01:11:10.240 --> 01:11:13.440 And that is what he is advocating here. 01:11:13.440 --> 01:11:17.040 This is just incredibly wicked. 01:11:17.040 --> 01:11:21.040 This is again not something that could be written by a Christian. 01:11:21.040 --> 01:11:24.160 And no Christian can hear this, no Christian can read this and 01:11:24.160 --> 01:11:26.240 think, well, of course this man was Christian. 01:11:26.240 --> 01:11:34.160 No. On its face, it is obvious this author was no Christian. 01:11:34.240 --> 01:11:36.000 But he was confessing his faith. 01:11:36.000 --> 01:11:40.240 I mean, he's telling the truth when he says that his Christianity, 01:11:40.240 --> 01:11:44.960 the religion that he called Christianity does come from paganism. 01:11:44.960 --> 01:11:47.840 It does come from worshiping these demons. 01:11:47.840 --> 01:11:49.200 He wasn't lying. 01:11:49.200 --> 01:11:51.680 He was lying about our Christianity. 01:11:51.680 --> 01:11:54.160 He was lying about the faith of our fathers. 01:11:54.160 --> 01:11:57.040 But he was not lying about the faith of his father. 01:11:57.040 --> 01:11:59.680 And as we've said on a number of episodes, that's a really 01:11:59.680 --> 01:12:01.840 hard thing for us as Christians to tackle. 01:12:01.840 --> 01:12:04.560 When someone comes to you and says I'm a Christian brother, I 01:12:04.560 --> 01:12:06.000 hold the same faith as you. 01:12:06.000 --> 01:12:08.000 You should be able to just believe him and put your arm 01:12:08.160 --> 01:12:11.600 around him and said, thank God you're here, brother in Christ. 01:12:11.600 --> 01:12:16.960 Instead, we are faced with an adversary who knows how to exploit 01:12:16.960 --> 01:12:20.160 that. And so as a result, he sends waves of these people 01:12:20.240 --> 01:12:23.760 that says hi, I'm here from Jesus, and I'm gonna tell you 01:12:23.760 --> 01:12:28.320 about Mithraism and I'm gonna help you understand how paganism is such 01:12:28.320 --> 01:12:33.200 a huge influence on the religion that you claim to believe. 01:12:33.200 --> 01:12:35.360 That's how faith dies. 01:12:35.360 --> 01:12:36.240 Full stop. 01:12:36.480 --> 01:12:38.480 that is how the Christian faith will die. 01:12:38.480 --> 01:12:42.160 Unless we're able to detect and root out and destroy enemies who 01:12:42.160 --> 01:12:44.000 attempt to infiltrate. 01:12:44.000 --> 01:12:47.760 The reason that quoting Martin Luther King Jr. 01:12:48.480 --> 01:12:53.520 in Christian churches is wicked is that this is what you're quoting. 01:12:53.520 --> 01:12:56.160 You're quoting a man who believed these things. 01:12:56.160 --> 01:12:57.920 And next week we're going to get to the things that he 01:12:57.920 --> 01:13:00.720 did with those beliefs and they were consonant. 01:13:00.720 --> 01:13:03.440 It's not like oh he preached one thing and then he did 01:13:03.440 --> 01:13:07.360 another. What he preached when you actually understand that he's confessing a 01:13:07.360 --> 01:13:10.240 false religion, that makes perfect sense too. 01:13:10.240 --> 01:13:12.800 Of course he was doing all those wicked things because he was 01:13:12.800 --> 01:13:17.040 openly not Christian and no one wanted to look. 01:13:17.040 --> 01:13:19.360 And s to this day no one wants to look. 01:13:19.360 --> 01:13:22.640 We have been berated in the past in on past you know 01:13:22.720 --> 01:13:26.640 MLK days and all this other these garbage made up holidays. 01:13:26.640 --> 01:13:28.880 When we say, you know, by the way, that guy was not 01:13:28.880 --> 01:13:32.560 Christian, we get shouted down by so-called pastors. 01:13:32.560 --> 01:13:34.000 They say no, he was great. 01:13:34.000 --> 01:13:35.920 He was he was an important leader. 01:13:35.920 --> 01:13:38.720 He was really he was certainly a better Christian than you. 01:13:38.720 --> 01:13:42.000 Well, in their version of Christianity, yes, that's true. 01:13:42.320 --> 01:13:44.880 they hold the same God, the same faith. 01:13:44.880 --> 01:13:46.720 It is not the one that we hold. 01:13:46.720 --> 01:13:49.840 I'm perfectly content with that contrast. 01:13:50.080 --> 01:13:50.240 I 01:13:50.240 --> 01:13:54.000 just want to add quickly a little bit of context for those 01:13:54.000 --> 01:13:59.360 who hear Mithraism and have no idea what is going on here. 01:13:59.360 --> 01:14:02.800 Don't have any real background. 01:14:02.800 --> 01:14:03.760 A modern 01:14:04.960 --> 01:14:10.640 analogue for this, something to which you could reasonably and directly compare 01:14:10.640 --> 01:14:13.600 Mithraism would be Freemasonry. 01:14:13.600 --> 01:14:17.840 And there is an argument that you get some of the rites 01:14:17.840 --> 01:14:22.480 and practices in Freemasonry from Mithraism. 01:14:22.480 --> 01:14:29.120 Mithraism would have been in part derived from the earlier Zoroastrian religion, 01:14:29.040 --> 01:14:30.400 which would be Iranian 01:14:31.360 --> 01:14:37.680 modern Iran, obviously, then Persian, and so Zoroastrianism through Roman mystery cults 01:14:37.680 --> 01:14:42.160 and Mithraism, and then the modern version Freemasonry, just so people have 01:14:42.800 --> 01:14:46.720 some sort of context for what is meant there by that term. 01:14:47.440 --> 01:14:49.680 But when he brought it up, he was basically just being a 01:14:49.680 --> 01:14:50.960 reddit to your atheist. 01:14:50.960 --> 01:14:54.320 I mean that's the level of theology we're dealing with here. 01:14:54.480 --> 01:14:55.520 Very much so. 01:14:55.600 --> 01:14:55.840 The 01:14:56.880 --> 01:15:00.240 The next essay that we're going to quote from is called The 01:15:00.240 --> 01:15:05.680 Sources of Fundamentalism and Liberalism, Considered Historically and Psychologically. 01:15:05.760 --> 01:15:09.280 It's important to note that when he when King uses words like 01:15:09.280 --> 01:15:16.640 fundamentalism, like orthodox Christianity, uh lowercase o, he's referring to the Christian 01:15:16.640 --> 01:15:20.320 faith that we hold, one that says that scripture is inspired by 01:15:20.320 --> 01:15:23.920 God, that all the things in the Bible actually happened, they really 01:15:24.000 --> 01:15:29.280 truly, in truth happened, no wiggle words, no, no room to get 01:15:29.280 --> 01:15:33.520 out of, yeah, that that's a real physical event. 01:15:33.520 --> 01:15:38.240 In contrast, when he says things like liberalism, like modern, like scientific, 01:15:38.240 --> 01:15:39.360 he means himself. 01:15:39.600 --> 01:15:42.880 he is always referring to himself in every one of these papers 01:15:43.040 --> 01:15:45.040 when he refers to things like liberal. 01:15:45.040 --> 01:15:47.760 So when that term is used here, it's not insulting, it's not 01:15:47.760 --> 01:15:51.840 saying, oh, you're a lib, as literally the contrast that he has. 01:15:51.840 --> 01:15:56.320 He writes, The use of the critical method in approaching the Bible 01:15:56.320 --> 01:15:59.200 is to the fundamentalist downright heresy. 01:15:59.200 --> 01:16:02.240 He sees the Bible as the infallible word of God, from the 01:16:02.240 --> 01:16:04.640 dotting of an eye to the crossing of a T. 01:16:04.640 --> 01:16:08.000 He finds it to be a unity and a coherence of parts. 01:16:08.000 --> 01:16:11.360 The New Testament is the old contained and the Old Testament is 01:16:11.360 --> 01:16:12.720 the new explained. 01:16:12.720 --> 01:16:17.360 Upon this first proposition the infallibility of the Bible, all other fundamentalist 01:16:17.360 --> 01:16:18.320 views depend. 01:16:18.320 --> 01:16:21.360 They argue that if the Bible is true, that is so divinely 01:16:21.360 --> 01:16:25.200 inspired as to be free from error, then all other truths flow 01:16:25.200 --> 01:16:29.040 inevitably, because they are based upon what the Bible actually says in 01:16:29.040 --> 01:16:31.360 language clear and unmistakable. 01:16:31.360 --> 01:16:34.960 When the fundamentalist comes to the nature of man, he finds all 01:16:34.960 --> 01:16:36.560 of his answers in the Bible. 01:16:36.560 --> 01:16:39.280 The story of man in the Garden of Eden gives a conclusive 01:16:39.280 --> 01:16:43.200 answer. Man was created by a direct act of God, moreover he 01:16:43.200 --> 01:16:46.160 was created in the image of God, but through the workings of 01:16:46.160 --> 01:16:48.880 the devil man was led into disobedience. 01:16:48.880 --> 01:16:53.280 Then began all human ills, hardship and labor, the agony of childbirth, 01:16:53.280 --> 01:16:55.520 hatred, sorrow, suffering, and death. 01:16:55.520 --> 01:16:58.800 The fundamentalist is quite aware of the fact that scholars regard the 01:16:58.800 --> 01:17:02.240 Garden of Eden and the Serpent Satan and the Hell of Fire 01:17:02.400 --> 01:17:06.640 as myths analogous to those found in other Oriental religions. 01:17:06.640 --> 01:17:10.160 He knows also that his beliefs are the center of ridicule by 01:17:10.160 --> 01:17:12.480 many, but this does not shake his faith. 01:17:12.480 --> 01:17:17.040 Rather it convinces him, the fundamentalist, more of the existence of the 01:17:17.040 --> 01:17:21.840 devil, the critics, says the fundamentalist, would never indulge in such skeptical 01:17:21.840 --> 01:17:24.560 thinking if the devil hadn't influenced them. 01:17:24.560 --> 01:17:29.120 The fundamentalist is convinced that this skepticism of scholars and cheap humor 01:17:29.120 --> 01:17:32.480 of the laity can by no means prevent the revelation of God. 01:17:33.040 --> 01:17:37.440 Other doctrines, such as a supernatural plan of salvation, the Trinity, the 01:17:37.440 --> 01:17:42.080 substitutionary theory of atonement, and the second coming of Christ, are all 01:17:42.080 --> 01:17:45.040 quite prominent in fundamentalist thinking. 01:17:45.040 --> 01:17:48.560 Such are the views of the fundamentalists that and they reveal that 01:17:48.560 --> 01:17:53.120 he is opposed to theological adaptation to social and cultural change. 01:17:53.120 --> 01:17:58.000 He sees a progressive scientific age as a retrogressive spiritual age, amid 01:17:58.640 --> 01:18:02.960 change all around he is willing to preserve certain ancient ideas even 01:18:02.960 --> 01:18:06.160 though they are contrary to science. 01:18:06.160 --> 01:18:10.160 That was a mouthful, but again, we hit fundamentalism is in opposition 01:18:10.160 --> 01:18:11.440 to science. 01:18:11.440 --> 01:18:14.560 So if you're a stone choir listener, if you like you know 01:18:14.720 --> 01:18:17.280 some of the things that we say, if you think that we're 01:18:17.280 --> 01:18:21.440 trying to argue faithfully from scripture, you are certainly someone who is 01:18:21.440 --> 01:18:23.280 willing to preserve certain ancient ideas 01:18:24.160 --> 01:18:27.040 even though they are s contrary to science. 01:18:27.040 --> 01:18:29.520 Now when he says science, it's I don't think I have in 01:18:29.680 --> 01:18:32.640 any of these quotes, but he was very fond, especially in college, 01:18:32.640 --> 01:18:35.200 of saying the Copernican universe. 01:18:35.200 --> 01:18:37.760 He read that somewhere and that sounded really good. 01:18:37.760 --> 01:18:44.880 That meant modern scientific knowledge with cause and effect, with rules 01:18:44.880 --> 01:18:49.120 and order and all the things that we understand about the universe. 01:18:49.120 --> 01:18:52.800 And in his rational mind, anything that would violate any of those, 01:18:52.800 --> 01:18:55.520 anything that would be a miracle, cannot exist. 01:18:55.520 --> 01:18:57.520 Fundamentally, this is against miracles. 01:18:57.520 --> 01:19:01.360 So when he says, as I said, he calls himself a liberal, 01:19:01.360 --> 01:19:03.440 he was describing a fundamentalism here. 01:19:03.440 --> 01:19:06.960 He was describing Christianity and he was making fun of it. 01:19:06.960 --> 01:19:09.600 He was saying that stuff's a joke. 01:19:09.600 --> 01:19:12.480 These people think that when someone says it's a joke, that's just 01:19:12.480 --> 01:19:13.600 the devil attacking. 01:19:13.600 --> 01:19:14.720 That's how silly they are. 01:19:14.720 --> 01:19:16.480 That's what rubs they are. 01:19:16.480 --> 01:19:17.120 Well 01:19:18.000 --> 01:19:21.360 I I'm happy to be a Rube because it is absolutely the 01:19:21.360 --> 01:19:22.240 devil speaking. 01:19:22.240 --> 01:19:24.880 When Michael King speaks, the devil is speaking. 01:19:24.880 --> 01:19:26.480 That is what we have here. 01:19:26.480 --> 01:19:31.360 And just to make that contrast more explicit, he calls himself a 01:19:31.360 --> 01:19:34.480 liberal constantly throughout his writing. 01:19:34.480 --> 01:19:38.880 And so when he says fundamentalist, he is using that as an 01:19:38.880 --> 01:19:42.960 epithet, he is using that as a pejorative, and he is using 01:19:42.960 --> 01:19:44.560 that specifically in contrast 01:19:45.600 --> 01:19:46.880 to liberal. 01:19:46.880 --> 01:19:50.320 Which is to say he is saying that he is an enlightened 01:19:50.320 --> 01:19:54.560 liberal as opposed to these backwoods, uneducated, illiterate 01:19:55.440 --> 01:20:00.320 fundamentalists who actually believe what scripture says. 01:20:00.320 --> 01:20:03.920 And so when he says these are the views of the fundamentalists, 01:20:03.920 --> 01:20:08.320 he is saying these are not his views. 01:20:08.320 --> 01:20:11.680 Because he's a liberal, and as a liberal he doesn't hold to 01:20:11.680 --> 01:20:12.560 those things. 01:20:12.560 --> 01:20:14.800 And so think about that list. 01:20:14.800 --> 01:20:18.880 He basically listed out the core tenets of the Christian religion and 01:20:18.880 --> 01:20:20.640 rejected them. 01:20:20.640 --> 01:20:25.920 Rejecting penal substitutionary atonement is sufficient to declare yourself not a Christian, 01:20:25.920 --> 01:20:29.120 because that is a rejection of Christ, it is a rejection of 01:20:29.120 --> 01:20:32.080 Christ's work, it is a rejection of justification. 01:20:32.320 --> 01:20:34.640 Of course he throws in the other things as well because he 01:20:34.640 --> 01:20:38.640 also rejects the virgin birth, the resurrection of the body, and he 01:20:38.640 --> 01:20:40.240 rejects the Trinity. 01:20:40.240 --> 01:20:44.160 And the second coming of Christ and a supernatural plan for salvation. 01:20:44.160 --> 01:20:45.280 Like exactly what's going on. 01:20:45.440 --> 01:20:47.760 left of Christianity once this man gets done? 01:20:47.760 --> 01:20:50.880 This is literally the entire Christian faith that he indicts. 01:20:50.880 --> 01:20:53.440 And that that that's why we're burying you with these quotes. 01:20:53.440 --> 01:20:56.800 That's why we're reading one after another, and it's it's cumulative and 01:20:56.800 --> 01:20:58.400 it's it's getting long already. 01:20:58.400 --> 01:21:00.160 And it's like we already said that, yeah. 01:21:00.160 --> 01:21:02.000 He always said the same things. 01:21:02.000 --> 01:21:04.560 See, if we had started and just giving you five quotes, you'd 01:21:04.560 --> 01:21:06.720 say, Well, if you gave me five more, I would hear something 01:21:06.720 --> 01:21:09.040 different. So we went from five to ten to twenty. 01:21:09.040 --> 01:21:11.840 We're gonna go two hours giving all these quotes because they all 01:21:11.840 --> 01:21:15.120 say the same thing for years and years and years. 01:21:15.120 --> 01:21:17.200 And this man never repented. 01:21:17.200 --> 01:21:18.560 He never repented. 01:21:18.560 --> 01:21:20.960 He went to hell with this confession on his lips. 01:21:20.960 --> 01:21:22.960 There's no other possible conclusion. 01:21:22.960 --> 01:21:24.400 He mocks this stuff. 01:21:24.720 --> 01:21:26.320 he mocks the Christian faith. 01:21:26.320 --> 01:21:29.120 He blasphemes with every word. 01:21:29.120 --> 01:21:31.760 And the fact that later on when he was pretending to be 01:21:31.760 --> 01:21:35.280 a pastor, he used some of these words in ways that blended 01:21:35.280 --> 01:21:37.360 in makes it all the more evil. 01:21:37.360 --> 01:21:40.800 That's when he says, oh, the devil is mocking these people and 01:21:40.800 --> 01:21:43.200 they think they think the devil's coming for him when they hear 01:21:43.200 --> 01:21:45.760 ridicule, that was mockery. 01:21:46.000 --> 01:21:50.320 that was Satan sneering at us through time through his words. 01:21:50.560 --> 01:21:55.840 It's just it's astonishing that anyone like like I said earlier, if 01:21:56.000 --> 01:21:58.960 okay, assume that when your pastor comes to you and says, yes, 01:21:58.960 --> 01:22:00.560 Martin Luther King Jr. 01:22:00.560 --> 01:22:03.840 is a per paragon of moral virtue, he was a great pastor, 01:22:03.840 --> 01:22:05.920 he was a great Christian, be more like him. 01:22:05.920 --> 01:22:07.200 What are you gonna naturally do? 01:22:07.200 --> 01:22:10.400 You're gonna go read what he said and read what he did, 01:22:10.400 --> 01:22:12.480 and learn from us so you can emulate it. 01:22:12.480 --> 01:22:14.720 Any man who emulates this is damned. 01:22:14.720 --> 01:22:16.720 I can say that with absolute certainty. 01:22:16.720 --> 01:22:17.680 I don't need to know your heart. 01:22:18.400 --> 01:22:22.560 If you say that everything about the Christian faith is evil, okay. 01:22:22.560 --> 01:22:23.360 I believe 01:22:23.360 --> 01:22:23.920 you. 01:22:24.400 --> 01:22:29.120 Lutherans who actually pray the morning office or a shorter version of 01:22:29.120 --> 01:22:34.720 it anyway, and of course many others, will start every day in 01:22:34.720 --> 01:22:38.720 part by praying the apostles Creed. 01:22:38.720 --> 01:22:43.040 That is the summation of what we believe as Christians, and what 01:22:43.040 --> 01:22:46.640 And run through the Apostles' Creed in your mind. 01:22:46.640 --> 01:22:48.880 I'm not going to read it for you here or recite it 01:22:48.880 --> 01:22:51.440 for you here more realistically. 01:22:51.440 --> 01:22:56.480 He is rejecting basically everything in the Apostles' Creed. 01:22:58.160 --> 01:23:03.440 And that is because the religion of Michael King was not Christianity. 01:23:03.440 --> 01:23:06.320 His religion was the social gospel. 01:23:06.320 --> 01:23:08.880 His religion was revolution. 01:23:08.880 --> 01:23:14.400 His religion was progress with a capital P. 01:23:14.400 --> 01:23:17.680 And again, you should be thinking of the Enlightenment when you hear 01:23:17.680 --> 01:23:23.280 that term, because he is a damned son of the Enlightenment. 01:23:23.280 --> 01:23:27.840 And those who follow in his footsteps will spend eternity with him. 01:23:27.840 --> 01:23:33.360 And so our next selection is from Examination Answers Christian Theology for 01:23:33.360 --> 01:23:37.520 Today This is a second year seminary essay from him 01:23:38.720 --> 01:23:43.520 lead two selections from this I feel that the most valid conception 01:23:43.520 --> 01:23:46.080 of God is that of theism. 01:23:46.080 --> 01:23:48.880 God God for me along with other theists 01:23:50.080 --> 01:23:54.240 is a personal spirit imminent in nature and in the value structure 01:23:54.240 --> 01:23:57.360 of the universe. 01:23:57.360 --> 01:24:02.400 This theistic view also means that God is imminent in the world. 01:24:02.400 --> 01:24:08.160 This seem the only adequate way to explain religious experience. 01:24:08.160 --> 01:24:11.680 A God who is totally transcendent and out of touch with the 01:24:11.680 --> 01:24:15.680 world cannot come to man in religious experience. 01:24:15.680 --> 01:24:20.000 Moreover, this view of the imminence of God is more in accord 01:24:20.000 --> 01:24:23.280 with the theory of evolution. 01:24:23.440 --> 01:24:28.240 Some are going to miss perhaps part of what he is saying 01:24:28.240 --> 01:24:34.720 here, in part, and I can see him responding to Bart's theology 01:24:34.720 --> 01:24:37.760 in part here, but part of what he is arguing 01:24:38.880 --> 01:24:46.240 is he is arguing against God's transcendence, God's nature as being wholly 01:24:46.240 --> 01:24:50.800 other from the creation, from man, from everything. 01:24:51.600 --> 01:24:56.800 And that is fundamentally a rejection of God, because God is his 01:24:57.040 --> 01:25:02.960 nature. Now, this gets to be a complicated theological topic fairly quickly, 01:25:02.960 --> 01:25:03.120 but 01:25:04.560 --> 01:25:08.480 God is simple, which is to say God is not composed of 01:25:08.480 --> 01:25:12.640 parts. Because if you say that God is composed of parts, you 01:25:12.640 --> 01:25:17.200 wind up with a real division in God, and you wind up 01:25:17.200 --> 01:25:22.240 with multiple gods, or you wind up denying that God is God, 01:25:22.240 --> 01:25:23.920 by denying the nature of God. 01:25:23.920 --> 01:25:26.320 We will probably get into that more if we do a future 01:25:26.320 --> 01:25:32.800 episode on Eastern Orthodoxy, because that very much ties into why Palamism 01:25:32.800 --> 01:25:34.800 is a problem. 01:25:34.800 --> 01:25:39.760 But what he's saying here is that God is not really transcendent. 01:25:39.760 --> 01:25:41.520 God is imminent in the world. 01:25:41.520 --> 01:25:47.920 This is almost verging on pantheism or panentheism. 01:25:47.920 --> 01:25:51.440 Perhaps not quite there, but he may very well not have understood 01:25:51.440 --> 01:25:56.240 the concept, so maybe he couldn't make that argument. 01:25:56.240 --> 01:26:00.080 But this denies the nature of God. 01:26:00.080 --> 01:26:04.160 And again, to deny the nature of God is to deny God 01:26:04.320 --> 01:26:06.560 because God is his nature. 01:26:06.560 --> 01:26:10.640 And we see why he's doing that with that last sentence. 01:26:10.640 --> 01:26:15.040 Moreover, this view of the imminence of God is more in accord 01:26:15.040 --> 01:26:16.880 with the theory of evolution. 01:26:16.880 --> 01:26:21.280 And so again, he's just doubling down on this idea that the 01:26:21.280 --> 01:26:29.360 only truth comes from empirical evidence, comes from scientific so-called inquiry. 01:26:29.520 --> 01:26:32.800 This is the modern religion in a nutshell. 01:26:32.880 --> 01:26:36.480 This is what many of our fellows walking around our society believe. 01:26:36.480 --> 01:26:39.920 If you cannot prove it with science, then it's not real. 01:26:39.920 --> 01:26:45.520 Never mind that science itself is fundamentally based on logic and reason, 01:26:45.520 --> 01:26:50.560 which are philosophy, which is not science. 01:26:50.560 --> 01:26:53.120 Never mind that problem for them. 01:26:53.120 --> 01:26:58.080 But what he's arguing here is that science should have a capital 01:26:58.080 --> 01:27:03.760 S perhaps, scientism, we might call it modernly, is preeminent, that we 01:27:03.760 --> 01:27:07.440 should interpret Scripture in the light of science. 01:27:07.440 --> 01:27:11.600 And so the theory of evolution is a scientific truth, is the 01:27:11.600 --> 01:27:16.240 claim here, and so God must comply with what we have discerned 01:27:16.880 --> 01:27:19.440 about his creation. 01:27:19.440 --> 01:27:23.440 I'm sure the Christians in the audience, which is most of our 01:27:23.440 --> 01:27:26.400 audience, can see the problem there. 01:27:26.400 --> 01:27:29.440 If you are working from the creation and trying to tell the 01:27:29.440 --> 01:27:33.120 creator you have to fit in this box that you made, you 01:27:33.120 --> 01:27:36.160 have it exactly backward. 01:27:36.160 --> 01:27:38.720 Again, this is not Christian. 01:27:38.720 --> 01:27:39.680 This is 01:27:40.560 --> 01:27:45.520 deism, in essence, even worse than deism, because uh it's not even 01:27:45.520 --> 01:27:51.040 really deism, because at least the deists sometimes will affirm God's nature 01:27:51.040 --> 01:27:52.800 as truly transcendent. 01:27:52.800 --> 01:27:58.560 This even denies that This is almost Buddhist in its conception of 01:27:58.560 --> 01:27:59.520 the deity. 01:28:00.080 --> 01:28:04.480 We will definitely be doing future episodes on Eastern Orthodoxy and on 01:28:04.480 --> 01:28:08.160 evolution because both are at odds with scripture. 01:28:08.160 --> 01:28:09.840 Both are at odds with the Christian faith. 01:28:09.840 --> 01:28:11.520 And we've had a lot of requests for it. 01:28:11.520 --> 01:28:14.160 Uh those are a lot of these episodes we're getting into now 01:28:14.160 --> 01:28:15.120 take a lot more research. 01:28:15.440 --> 01:28:18.240 I probably did 24 hours of research for this one and I 01:28:18.240 --> 01:28:20.560 didn't get through all of his writings. 01:28:20.720 --> 01:28:22.480 It hurt a lot. 01:28:22.480 --> 01:28:25.840 Um but these are important topics, so it's it's well 01:28:25.840 --> 01:28:26.880 worth it. 01:28:26.880 --> 01:28:28.880 You mentioned we'll do an episode of evolution. 01:28:28.880 --> 01:28:30.720 There was one more thing that I did want to say that 01:28:30.720 --> 01:28:32.960 I almost forgot. 01:28:32.960 --> 01:28:38.080 What he's arguing here, there's an underlying current of an argument for 01:28:38.080 --> 01:28:40.160 theistic evolution. 01:28:40.160 --> 01:28:46.160 Although it's not explicitly theistic evolution, because theistic evolution would be God 01:28:46.400 --> 01:28:51.760 set up the conditions of the universe such that life would naturally 01:28:51.760 --> 01:28:53.200 come to be via evolution. 01:28:53.200 --> 01:28:55.680 That's more or less the theistic evolution argument. 01:28:55.680 --> 01:28:58.480 Some will argue that God intervened here and there to make sure 01:28:58.480 --> 01:29:00.480 that it went in the right direction. 01:29:00.640 --> 01:29:03.200 I mean, does it really matter if God set the starting conditions 01:29:03.200 --> 01:29:06.160 or intervened it's the same when you're talking about God? 01:29:06.160 --> 01:29:08.240 That's not how it works, that's not what God did. 01:29:08.240 --> 01:29:10.400 But that's the theistic evolution argument. 01:29:10.400 --> 01:29:13.920 There's a little bit of that underlying what he says here, but 01:29:14.400 --> 01:29:17.520 the This is like the grade school version of it. 01:29:17.520 --> 01:29:18.080 Yep. 01:29:18.080 --> 01:29:20.640 And he's explicit about that in some of his other papers. 01:29:20.640 --> 01:29:23.280 That was that was absolutely his confession. 01:29:23.280 --> 01:29:25.440 Uh there's so many papers here. 01:29:25.440 --> 01:29:27.760 The re part of the reason I'm doing I'm reading the the 01:29:27.760 --> 01:29:29.840 titles of them is we're not gonna link them all in the 01:29:29.840 --> 01:29:31.520 show notes because it doesn't matter. 01:29:31.520 --> 01:29:34.080 This particular one we are definitely going to link in the show 01:29:34.080 --> 01:29:36.240 notes because I think is probably of all of them. 01:29:36.240 --> 01:29:39.200 If you only read one thing that this man ever wrote, this 01:29:39.200 --> 01:29:40.080 should be it. 01:29:40.080 --> 01:29:42.320 He wrote an essay his second year in seminary. 01:29:42.320 --> 01:29:43.280 He'd been in the pulpit. 01:29:43.280 --> 01:29:46.240 He had been ordained as a pastor for years at this point. 01:29:46.240 --> 01:29:50.480 The title is What experiences of Christians Living in the Early Christian 01:29:50.480 --> 01:29:55.600 Century led to the Christian doctrines of the divine sonship of Jesus, 01:29:55.600 --> 01:29:59.120 the virgin birth, and the bodily resurrection? 01:29:59.120 --> 01:30:02.640 Now the entire thing is terrible quotes, but I'm not going to 01:30:02.640 --> 01:30:04.960 waste fifteen more minutes of your time reading the whole thing. 01:30:04.960 --> 01:30:06.640 If you're interested, go read the thing. 01:30:06.640 --> 01:30:10.480 I I would encourage you to because it's it's a master class 01:30:10.480 --> 01:30:11.840 in blasphemy. 01:30:11.840 --> 01:30:14.480 The one particular part that I did highlight which is amusing because 01:30:14.560 --> 01:30:17.680 a couple of minutes ago Cory specifically said he was refuting the 01:30:17.680 --> 01:30:19.360 apostles creed implicitly. 01:30:19.360 --> 01:30:20.880 Here he does it explicitly. 01:30:20.880 --> 01:30:22.400 Listen to his own words. 01:30:22.400 --> 01:30:25.840 King writes In this paper we shall discuss the experiences of the 01:30:25.840 --> 01:30:30.880 early Christians which led to three rather orthodox doctrines the divine sonship 01:30:30.880 --> 01:30:34.080 of Jesus, the virgin birth, and the bodily resurrection. 01:30:34.080 --> 01:30:37.120 Each of these doctrines is enshrined in what is known as the 01:30:37.120 --> 01:30:38.400 Apostles Creed. 01:30:38.400 --> 01:30:41.040 It is this creed that has stood as a symbol of faith 01:30:41.040 --> 01:30:43.360 for many Christians over the Over the years. 01:30:43.360 --> 01:30:46.560 Even to this day, it is recited in many churches. 01:30:46.560 --> 01:30:50.240 But in the minds of many sincere Christians, this creed has planted 01:30:50.240 --> 01:30:54.000 a seed of confusion which has grown to an oak of doubt. 01:30:54.000 --> 01:30:58.240 They see this creed as incompatible with all scientific knowledge, and so 01:30:58.240 --> 01:31:01.040 they have proceeded to reject its content. 01:31:01.040 --> 01:31:04.400 But if we delve into the deeper meaning of these doctrines and 01:31:04.400 --> 01:31:08.560 somehow strip them of their literal interpretation, we will find that they 01:31:08.720 --> 01:31:12.720 are based on a profound foundation. 01:31:12.720 --> 01:31:15.280 That's straight up Satan talking. 01:31:15.280 --> 01:31:16.960 Oh, the Apostles' Creed? 01:31:16.960 --> 01:31:18.240 That's goofy. 01:31:18.240 --> 01:31:19.520 That's just silly. 01:31:19.520 --> 01:31:20.320 But you know what? 01:31:20.320 --> 01:31:21.520 We can rescue it. 01:31:21.520 --> 01:31:24.000 If we say that none of what's in the Apostles' Creed is 01:31:24.000 --> 01:31:27.360 literal, if we take it all as figurative, it's actually rich. 01:31:27.360 --> 01:31:29.200 It's actually bounteous. 01:31:29.200 --> 01:31:32.240 One particularly interesting thing about this, there's a man I think I 01:31:32.240 --> 01:31:34.560 mentioned before, his name is William Campbell. 01:31:34.560 --> 01:31:35.680 He was a r historian. 01:31:35.840 --> 01:31:40.640 He He basically slots in between Jordan Peterson and Carl Jung on 01:31:40.640 --> 01:31:42.640 the trajectory of the 01:31:43.840 --> 01:31:50.320 the modern application of psychology and psychiatry to religion in reverse order. 01:31:50.320 --> 01:31:53.600 So basically what these guys are doing is they're using psychology and 01:31:53.600 --> 01:31:59.840 psychiatry as a lens to explain how religion manifested among men. 01:31:59.840 --> 01:32:02.480 They believe exactly the same thing the king believes, and that he 01:32:02.480 --> 01:32:07.520 said earlier that man created religion as an outgrowth of some inner 01:32:07.520 --> 01:32:09.520 expression of whatever. 01:32:09.520 --> 01:32:12.400 The reason I mention Campbell is that he did a lecture series 01:32:12.720 --> 01:32:16.480 now thirty, forty years ago at this point, where he spends ten 01:32:16.640 --> 01:32:20.800 or fifteen minutes going line by line through the apostles' creed and 01:32:20.800 --> 01:32:22.000 deconstructing it. 01:32:22.000 --> 01:32:23.360 And I found it fascinating. 01:32:23.360 --> 01:32:25.360 I was it was utterly blasphemous. 01:32:25.360 --> 01:32:28.240 And it was basically like a primordial TED talk that he was 01:32:28.240 --> 01:32:28.800 doing it. 01:32:28.800 --> 01:32:30.960 So he's not a a theologian. 01:32:30.960 --> 01:32:34.240 He was doing it for the purpose of saying all the other 01:32:34.240 --> 01:32:37.120 religions in the world, all the other world religions have all this 01:32:37.120 --> 01:32:40.000 beauty. But when you look at the Apostles's creed, look how stupid 01:32:40.000 --> 01:32:40.960 this is. 01:32:40.960 --> 01:32:45.120 And he went line by line telling his cackling audience how stupid 01:32:45.120 --> 01:32:50.080 the Apostle's Creed was, how backward, how fundamentalist, how goofy and insane 01:32:50.080 --> 01:32:51.920 and retarded. 01:32:52.240 --> 01:32:57.600 I I I notice these things because it's just so profoundly seemingly 01:32:57.600 --> 01:32:58.400 out of character. 01:32:58.400 --> 01:33:01.040 You know, like th this is a serious intellectual guy. 01:33:01.040 --> 01:33:06.160 He's not Christian, obviously, but to spend the time deconstructing the apostles' 01:33:06.160 --> 01:33:09.680 creed just if you don't know anything, it's like, oh well okay, 01:33:09.680 --> 01:33:12.480 I guess I guess those Christians have some goofy ideas. 01:33:12.480 --> 01:33:16.240 Here's something that's almost it's close to two thousand years old at 01:33:16.240 --> 01:33:16.880 this point. 01:33:16.880 --> 01:33:18.640 It is the confession of the faith. 01:33:19.120 --> 01:33:20.720 I think that's a seminal thing here. 01:33:20.720 --> 01:33:24.720 Not only is King mocking him, but he says they see this 01:33:24.720 --> 01:33:28.880 creed as incompatible with all scientific knowledge, and so they have proceeded 01:33:28.880 --> 01:33:30.400 to reject its content. 01:33:30.400 --> 01:33:32.400 That means that they're apostatizing. 01:33:32.400 --> 01:33:35.680 If you reject the Apostles' Creed, you're not a Christian. 01:33:35.680 --> 01:33:39.360 There's a there's an insert the my former pastor produced that I'll 01:33:39.360 --> 01:33:42.480 we'll attach in the show notes that shows every word of the 01:33:42.480 --> 01:33:46.080 Apostles' Creed, every word of the Ninecene Creed, and it shows every 01:33:46.080 --> 01:33:48.080 Bible verse that they come from. 01:33:48.080 --> 01:33:51.200 Yeah, it's interesting that we think of the creeds as these man-made 01:33:51.200 --> 01:33:52.080 things. 01:33:53.120 --> 01:33:55.840 they're basically an incredibly dense collection. 01:33:57.520 --> 01:34:00.400 You know, it's it's a a word here, a phrase there, but 01:34:00.400 --> 01:34:02.240 every one of them comes from scripture. 01:34:02.240 --> 01:34:06.320 Now the difference between the creed and the misapplication of proof texting, 01:34:06.320 --> 01:34:09.360 which generally we're opposed to, is that they're faithful 01:34:10.880 --> 01:34:14.080 Distillations of what is in Scripture. 01:34:14.240 --> 01:34:17.280 It's not it's not that they're twisting and pulling out of context. 01:34:17.280 --> 01:34:22.000 The non the Nicene Creed and the Apostles Creed clearly express the 01:34:22.000 --> 01:34:25.200 Christian faith, and they were created in a time when it was 01:34:25.200 --> 01:34:30.240 necessary to confess the God that the Christians were confessing, to say 01:34:30.320 --> 01:34:32.000 this is the God we're talking about. 01:34:32.000 --> 01:34:34.160 Because see, that's the same problem that we're having here with King 01:34:34.160 --> 01:34:36.960 today. And frankly, it's the same problem we're having in our churches 01:34:37.120 --> 01:34:39.600 today. If I say, Oh, I worship God and you say you 01:34:39.600 --> 01:34:42.000 worship God, like, okay, great, we're all Christians. 01:34:42.000 --> 01:34:43.760 Well, which God are you talking about? 01:34:43.760 --> 01:34:49.360 Because as Corey said, Freemasons, they say they believe in God. 01:34:49.360 --> 01:34:51.440 Deists say they believe in God. 01:34:51.440 --> 01:34:54.880 All manner of people who are hellbound so they say they believe 01:34:54.880 --> 01:34:55.600 in God. 01:34:55.600 --> 01:34:59.760 And so the purpose of a creed, and credo, credo is Latin 01:34:59.760 --> 01:35:00.720 for I believe. 01:35:01.200 --> 01:35:02.720 It's not some special thing. 01:35:02.720 --> 01:35:04.960 It's just these are the beliefs that I hold. 01:35:04.960 --> 01:35:11.360 And when they're distilled around what God is as He reveals Himself, 01:35:11.760 --> 01:35:13.600 it's it's a it's a razor. 01:35:13.600 --> 01:35:17.360 It's something that separates true from false Christians. 01:35:17.360 --> 01:35:19.680 If you're a true Christian, you must believe it. 01:35:19.680 --> 01:35:22.160 Now that's not to say that someone who doesn't know what it 01:35:22.160 --> 01:35:24.000 says cannot be saved. 01:35:24.000 --> 01:35:26.000 It's to say that if you see it and you say, I 01:35:26.000 --> 01:35:27.280 don't believe that. 01:35:27.280 --> 01:35:29.520 Well now sound that you're disagreeing with the creed. 01:35:29.520 --> 01:35:32.640 As I said, you're disagreeing with scripture because every word of it 01:35:32.640 --> 01:35:33.520 is from Scripture. 01:35:33.520 --> 01:35:37.120 Every word of the apostles' creed is a quote from Scripture. 01:35:37.120 --> 01:35:39.680 So if you say I don't believe this, this is garbage, this 01:35:39.680 --> 01:35:42.960 is stupid, you're saying God is garbage, and God is stupid, which 01:35:42.960 --> 01:35:45.280 is precisely what King said earlier about the Old Testament. 01:35:45.280 --> 01:35:47.360 He's like, that old testament stuff is garbage. 01:35:47.360 --> 01:35:51.360 There, there's infinitely more valuable text than that. 01:35:51.360 --> 01:35:53.440 That's why this stuff matters. 01:35:53.440 --> 01:35:56.880 If a man says, I don't believe in God, here's the God, 01:35:56.880 --> 01:35:59.840 I don't believe him, you have to believe that man. 01:35:59.840 --> 01:36:00.960 I don't think he was wrong. 01:36:00.960 --> 01:36:02.000 I think he was absolutely right. 01:36:02.000 --> 01:36:03.520 I think his confession was true. 01:36:03.520 --> 01:36:06.080 What his confession was not was Christian. 01:36:07.280 --> 01:36:07.520 And 01:36:07.520 --> 01:36:14.240 so here is the next selection from the writings of Michael King. 01:36:14.240 --> 01:36:17.760 Turning now to our main objective, I begin with a process of 01:36:17.760 --> 01:36:22.400 elimination. First, we may say that any doctrine which finds the meaning 01:36:22.400 --> 01:36:25.920 of atonement in the triumph of Christ over such cosmic powers as 01:36:25.920 --> 01:36:30.000 sin, death and Satan, is inadequate. 01:36:30.000 --> 01:36:35.040 This dualistic view is incompatible with a thoroughgoing Christian theism. 01:36:35.600 --> 01:36:42.480 Such a view impresses the modern mind as mythological rather than theological. 01:36:42.480 --> 01:36:46.720 The objection to the Latin type of theory, the Anselmic theory of 01:36:46.720 --> 01:36:50.720 satisfaction, the penal theory of the reformers, and the governmental theory of 01:36:50.720 --> 01:36:55.120 Grotius, is found in the abstract and impersonal way in which it 01:36:55.120 --> 01:36:58.800 deals with such ideas as merit and Merit, guilt, and punishment. 01:36:58.960 --> 01:37:02.560 The guilt of others and the punishment due them are transferred to 01:37:02.560 --> 01:37:04.640 Christ and borne by him. 01:37:04.640 --> 01:37:07.600 Such views taken literally become bizarre. 01:37:07.520 --> 01:37:10.960 Merit and guilt are not concrete realities that can be detached from 01:37:10.960 --> 01:37:14.240 one person and transferred to another. 01:37:14.240 --> 01:37:18.480 Moreover, no person can morally be punished in place of another. 01:37:18.480 --> 01:37:22.880 Such ideas as ethical and penal substitution become immoral. 01:37:22.880 --> 01:37:26.880 In the next place, if Christ by his life and death paid 01:37:26.880 --> 01:37:30.640 the full penalty of sin, there is no valid ground for repentance 01:37:30.640 --> 01:37:33.920 or moral obedience as a condition of forgiveness. 01:37:33.920 --> 01:37:38.560 The debt is paid, the penalty is exacted, and there is consequently 01:37:38.720 --> 01:37:40.400 nothing to forgive. 01:37:40.400 --> 01:37:43.840 Again, it may be noted that the Latin theory falls short of 01:37:43.840 --> 01:37:47.520 the fully personal and Christian conception of God as Father. 01:37:47.520 --> 01:37:50.640 It presents God as a kind of feudal overlord, or as a 01:37:50.640 --> 01:37:53.840 stern judge, or as a governor of a state. 01:37:53.840 --> 01:37:57.760 Each of these minimizes the true Christian conception of God as a 01:37:57.760 --> 01:38:00.880 free personality. 01:38:00.880 --> 01:38:03.760 This is one of those where you're not even sure where to 01:38:03.760 --> 01:38:09.040 begin because it is terrible from beginning to end in two dozen 01:38:09.040 --> 01:38:10.000 ways. 01:38:10.960 --> 01:38:14.080 But I guess we have to begin with stating again that if 01:38:14.080 --> 01:38:19.680 you deny penal substitutionary atonement, you are not a Christian. 01:38:19.680 --> 01:38:22.080 That is the gospel. 01:38:22.080 --> 01:38:26.480 The gospel is Christ crucified for sinners. 01:38:26.480 --> 01:38:29.280 That is penal substitutionary atonement. 01:38:29.280 --> 01:38:34.960 That is Christ having taken upon himself the punishment for your sins, 01:38:34.960 --> 01:38:39.280 so that you do not have to suffer that punishment, and to 01:38:39.280 --> 01:38:41.920 remind Everyone. 01:38:41.920 --> 01:38:46.640 The debt from sin, the guilt incurred, the cost that you would 01:38:46.640 --> 01:38:48.480 have to pay, is infinite. 01:38:48.480 --> 01:38:50.640 That is why hell is eternal. 01:38:50.640 --> 01:38:53.200 That is why there is no end to the suffering of the 01:38:53.200 --> 01:38:58.160 damned. Because you can never, as a finite being, pay an infinite 01:38:58.160 --> 01:39:02.160 penalty. That is why Christ had to pay that penalty, because his 01:39:02.400 --> 01:39:05.840 death was of infinite value, and so it was the only thing 01:39:05.840 --> 01:39:10.240 that could be set against the infinite debt of sin. 01:39:10.240 --> 01:39:13.040 And that is denied here by Michael King. 01:39:13.040 --> 01:39:17.040 He denies the core of the Christian faith. 01:39:17.040 --> 01:39:21.680 If you deny this, you cannot be saved. 01:39:21.680 --> 01:39:23.440 And that is what he did. 01:39:23.440 --> 01:39:25.360 The short version is really simple. 01:39:25.360 --> 01:39:28.320 The short version is Jesus didn't die for my sins. 01:39:28.320 --> 01:39:29.680 That's his confession. 01:39:29.680 --> 01:39:31.680 Like that's okay, dude. 01:39:31.680 --> 01:39:34.400 He did, but if you reject it, it doesn't count. 01:39:34.400 --> 01:39:37.840 So as Cory just said, he's spending eternity paying for all the 01:39:37.840 --> 01:39:41.040 sins that Jesus paid for because he said that's nonsense. 01:39:41.040 --> 01:39:44.640 There's no math, there's no transference, God's not mean like that. 01:39:44.640 --> 01:39:49.680 Okay. That's gonna be your confession for the rest of your eternity. 01:39:49.680 --> 01:39:51.600 And there is no rest in eternity. 01:39:51.600 --> 01:39:55.200 Yes, God will let you pay for the sins for which Christ 01:39:55.200 --> 01:39:56.240 already paid. 01:39:56.240 --> 01:40:01.040 You can go ahead and attempt for eternity to pay that price. 01:40:01.040 --> 01:40:07.520 You will never successfully pay the entirety of it, because again, infinite 01:40:08.640 --> 01:40:12.560 and again infinite and eternal are basically synonymous here, and that is 01:40:12.560 --> 01:40:17.600 why hell is eternal because the price is infinite. 01:40:17.600 --> 01:40:22.000 And so he's paying the price for all of his many sins 01:40:22.000 --> 01:40:25.840 in this life, because he chose that. 01:40:25.840 --> 01:40:27.600 He apostatized. 01:40:27.760 --> 01:40:31.200 Because he may very well have been a Christian as a child. 01:40:31.600 --> 01:40:32.880 I honestly don't believe so. 01:40:32.960 --> 01:40:34.000 Briefly. I mean brief. 01:40:34.000 --> 01:40:34.720 He may briefly have been 01:40:34.800 --> 01:40:35.520 believed. It 01:40:36.560 --> 01:40:39.440 Yeah, it the first time he ever read the Bible, he said, 01:40:39.440 --> 01:40:41.200 I don't believe any of this. 01:40:41.360 --> 01:40:43.120 Oh that was that was what he said. 01:40:43.120 --> 01:40:46.240 He said like he sort of sat there and listened, but I 01:40:46.240 --> 01:40:47.520 mean yeah, we don't know. 01:40:47.760 --> 01:40:50.400 it is conceivable that he was at some point a Christian. 01:40:50.640 --> 01:40:51.520 Which is worse. 01:40:51.520 --> 01:40:52.800 As soon Yeah. 01:40:52.800 --> 01:40:55.520 But as soon as he engaged with scripture, he said, I reject 01:40:55.520 --> 01:40:58.640 this. And then he devoted the entirety of his life as a 01:40:58.640 --> 01:41:02.480 teenager and as an adult to fleeing as far from God as 01:41:02.480 --> 01:41:04.000 he could possibly get. 01:41:04.000 --> 01:41:07.200 This next quote is even worse than that somehow. 01:41:07.200 --> 01:41:08.960 This is from an essay. 01:41:08.960 --> 01:41:12.720 Again, he's still in seminary, he's still preaching, he's an ordained pastor. 01:41:12.720 --> 01:41:16.880 This essay is titled The Humanity and Divinity of Jesus. 01:41:16.880 --> 01:41:20.400 Certainly this view of the divinity of Christ presents many modern minds 01:41:20.400 --> 01:41:22.320 with insuperable difficulties. 01:41:22.320 --> 01:41:24.720 Most of us are not willing to see the union of the 01:41:24.720 --> 01:41:27.600 human and divine in a metaphysical incarnation. 01:41:27.600 --> 01:41:31.040 Yet among all our difficulty with the preexistent idea and the view 01:41:31.040 --> 01:41:35.760 of supernatural generation, we must come to some view of the divinity 01:41:35.760 --> 01:41:36.880 of Jesus. 01:41:36.880 --> 01:41:39.920 In order to remain in the orbit of the Christian religion, we 01:41:39.920 --> 01:41:42.400 must have a Christology Haha 01:41:43.280 --> 01:41:46.400 at least he knows there's a center of gravity there somewhere. 01:41:46.400 --> 01:41:49.920 As doctor Bailey has reminded us, we cannot have a good theology 01:41:49.920 --> 01:41:51.120 without a Christology. 01:41:51.120 --> 01:41:55.440 Where then can we in the liberal tradition find dimension of Jesus? 01:41:55.440 --> 01:41:59.520 We may find the divinity of Christ not in his substantial unity 01:41:59.520 --> 01:42:03.840 with God, but in his filial consciousness and in his unique dependence 01:42:03.840 --> 01:42:04.800 upon God. 01:42:04.800 --> 01:42:08.720 It was his feeling of absolute dependence on God, as Schleiermacher would 01:42:08.720 --> 01:42:10.400 say, that made him divine. 01:42:10.400 --> 01:42:12.800 Yes, it was the warmest of his devotion to God and the 01:42:12.800 --> 01:42:16.000 intimacy of his trust in God that accounts for his being the 01:42:16.000 --> 01:42:17.920 supreme revelation of God. 01:42:17.920 --> 01:42:21.600 All this reveals to us that one man has at last realized 01:42:21.600 --> 01:42:25.760 his true divine calling, that of becoming a true son of man 01:42:25.760 --> 01:42:27.760 by being a true son of God. 01:42:27.760 --> 01:42:30.880 This is the achievement of a man who has, as nearly as 01:42:30.880 --> 01:42:34.640 we can tell, completely opened his life to the influence of the 01:42:34.640 --> 01:42:35.840 divine spirit. 01:42:35.840 --> 01:42:39.760 The Orthodox attempt to explain the divinity of Jesus in terms of 01:42:39.760 --> 01:42:44.720 an inherent metaphysical substance within him seems to me quite inadequate. 01:42:44.720 --> 01:42:47.920 To say that the Christ, whose example of living we are bid 01:42:47.920 --> 01:42:53.040 to follow, is divine in an ontological sense is actually harmful and 01:42:53.040 --> 01:42:58.400 detrimental. To invest this Christ with such new supernatural qualities makes the 01:42:58.400 --> 01:43:01.280 rejoinder, oh well he had a better chance for that kind of 01:43:01.280 --> 01:43:03.120 life than we can possibly have. 01:43:03.120 --> 01:43:06.080 In other words, one could easily use this as a means to 01:43:06.080 --> 01:43:08.000 hide behind his failures. 01:43:08.000 --> 01:43:11.600 So the Orthodox view of the divinity of Christ is in my 01:43:11.600 --> 01:43:13.760 mind quite readily denied. 01:43:13.760 --> 01:43:17.120 The true significance of the divinity of Christ lies in the fact 01:43:17.120 --> 01:43:21.440 that his achievement is prophetic and promisory for every other true Son 01:43:21.440 --> 01:43:24.240 of Man who is willing to submit his will to the will 01:43:24.240 --> 01:43:25.440 and Spirit of God. 01:43:25.440 --> 01:43:30.320 Christ Christ was to be the only prototype, one among many brothers. 01:43:30.320 --> 01:43:33.840 The appearance of such a person more divine and more human than 01:43:33.840 --> 01:43:38.320 any other, and stand in closest unity at once with God and 01:43:38.320 --> 01:43:42.000 man, is the most significant and hopeful event in human history. 01:43:42.000 --> 01:43:46.400 This divine quality or this unity with God was not something thrust 01:43:46.400 --> 01:43:50.800 upon Jesus from above, but was a definite achievement through the process 01:43:50.800 --> 01:43:54.960 of moral struggle and self-abnegation. 01:43:54.960 --> 01:43:58.320 So this is a continuation of a quote that I pointed to 01:43:58.320 --> 01:44:02.080 earlier. When he talks about Jesus, when he talks about Christ, he's 01:44:02.080 --> 01:44:03.440 talking about a human being. 01:44:03.440 --> 01:44:06.480 He's talking about a man who lived and died 2,000 years ago, 01:44:06.480 --> 01:44:08.720 who was born from a father and a mother. 01:44:08.720 --> 01:44:11.680 In the previous essay he denied the virgin birth, said there's no 01:44:11.680 --> 01:44:12.160 such thing. 01:44:12.160 --> 01:44:13.200 That's absolutely impossible. 01:44:13.200 --> 01:44:14.240 It's just pure nonsense. 01:44:14.240 --> 01:44:15.040 They made it up. 01:44:15.040 --> 01:44:17.200 And they got it from Mithraism, by the way. 01:44:17.200 --> 01:44:18.320 And they got it from Egypt. 01:44:18.560 --> 01:44:24.240 Those were the old Eastern Oriental mystery religions influencing the Christian faith 01:44:24.480 --> 01:44:27.200 because it was all just osmosis. 01:44:27.200 --> 01:44:30.160 He literally says here that he denies the divinity of God. 01:44:30.160 --> 01:44:31.360 That is his confession. 01:44:31.360 --> 01:44:34.720 And so when he talks about Jesus living a good life and 01:44:34.720 --> 01:44:38.080 Jesus having unity of God with God, what he means is that 01:44:38.080 --> 01:44:40.240 he was a prophet, sort of. 01:44:40.240 --> 01:44:42.800 He was he was the best man in history. 01:44:42.800 --> 01:44:46.080 He was the most gifted man of all men in God used 01:44:46.640 --> 01:44:50.400 him for a special purpose of showing that a life of sacrifice 01:44:50.560 --> 01:44:54.480 and of faithfulness and of service to others is possible. 01:44:54.480 --> 01:44:58.320 And so when he talks about not if he ever talks about 01:44:58.480 --> 01:45:01.840 Christ's atonement, when he talks about Jesus as an example, this is 01:45:01.840 --> 01:45:02.960 literally what he means. 01:45:02.960 --> 01:45:03.920 Jesus wasn't God. 01:45:03.920 --> 01:45:04.640 Jesus is dead. 01:45:04.640 --> 01:45:05.520 He rotted. 01:45:05.520 --> 01:45:06.400 He's in the ground. 01:45:06.800 --> 01:45:08.320 he's like any other man. 01:45:08.320 --> 01:45:11.040 Except that while he was alive, he did some really cool stuff 01:45:11.120 --> 01:45:13.440 and it got written down and got passed down to us. 01:45:13.440 --> 01:45:15.920 And so he's an example. 01:45:16.160 --> 01:45:18.720 This is the furthest thing from Christianity. 01:45:18.720 --> 01:45:24.160 Muslims literally have a higher Christology than Michael King. 01:45:24.160 --> 01:45:24.560 A lot 01:45:24.560 --> 01:45:29.680 of this boils down, as is so very often the case with 01:45:29.680 --> 01:45:38.480 heretics. It boils down to having a fundamentally flawed conception of sin. 01:45:38.480 --> 01:45:43.040 If you don't believe in the actual nature of sin, if you 01:45:43.040 --> 01:45:48.480 don't understand what sin is, if you don't realize that again, the 01:45:48.480 --> 01:45:54.560 debt of sin is infinite, the breach between man and God is 01:45:54.560 --> 01:46:01.440 an infinite chasm if you don't recognize that original sin is passed 01:46:01.440 --> 01:46:05.840 down from fathers to their children, from Adam to 01:46:06.960 --> 01:46:12.080 whatever man is born last on this earth, if you do not 01:46:12.080 --> 01:46:12.400 have 01:46:13.280 --> 01:46:18.800 a proper theology of sin, you are going to end up somewhere 01:46:18.800 --> 01:46:20.000 like this. 01:46:19.920 --> 01:46:24.080 Now, of course, there's a bit of mercenary dealing here because a 01:46:24.080 --> 01:46:30.880 man who spends his life fornicating and beating prostitutes, engaging in violence, 01:46:30.880 --> 01:46:33.840 and I could go on for quite some time, and we will 01:46:33.920 --> 01:46:36.240 in the next episode, certainly. 01:46:36.240 --> 01:46:41.280 Perhaps that man has selfish reasons for wanting to minimize the nature 01:46:41.280 --> 01:46:44.560 of sin. 01:46:44.560 --> 01:46:49.040 But if your theology does not account properly for sin, then the 01:46:49.040 --> 01:46:55.920 atonement becomes unnecessary, because if sin isn't infinite in terms of the 01:46:55.920 --> 01:47:00.240 debt and the breach, the separation, then the atonement doesn't need to 01:47:00.240 --> 01:47:01.280 be infinite. 01:47:01.280 --> 01:47:04.880 And if the atonement doesn't need to be infinite, then a man 01:47:04.880 --> 01:47:06.720 can satisfy it. 01:47:06.720 --> 01:47:10.960 Because if there's some finite amount of work to be done, then 01:47:10.960 --> 01:47:14.400 a man can do that given enough time. 01:47:14.400 --> 01:47:18.880 And that always becomes the argument of these heretics. 01:47:19.280 --> 01:47:23.600 And so you have to get your theology right at the beginning. 01:47:23.600 --> 01:47:27.840 You have to understand the fall and original sin and the debt 01:47:27.840 --> 01:47:30.240 that is owed, incurred by each and every sin. 01:47:30.240 --> 01:47:34.480 Yes, some are worse than others, and indeed the punishment in hell 01:47:34.480 --> 01:47:40.240 will be worse if you committed many great sins versus only lesser 01:47:40.240 --> 01:47:43.520 sins in this life. 01:47:43.520 --> 01:47:47.120 But the debt is infinite and can be paid only by Christ, 01:47:47.120 --> 01:47:50.000 and the And so that is why he feels free to deny 01:47:50.000 --> 01:47:54.080 the atonement, to deny all these things, because he does not understand 01:47:54.960 --> 01:47:56.880 just how terrible sin is. 01:47:56.880 --> 01:47:58.560 He understands it now. 01:47:59.600 --> 01:48:02.560 But he did not understand it then, and so that is why 01:48:02.560 --> 01:48:05.360 he writes these heretical things. 01:48:05.360 --> 01:48:07.280 Because he gets sin wrong. 01:48:07.280 --> 01:48:10.880 And there are many Christians today who also do that, and they 01:48:10.880 --> 01:48:17.200 are in danger of ending up in the same place. 01:48:17.200 --> 01:48:22.560 As we keep saying, you do not have the luxury of getting 01:48:22.560 --> 01:48:23.920 any of these doctrines wrong 01:48:25.360 --> 01:48:28.320 Are you necessarily damned if you get 01:48:29.280 --> 01:48:32.480 a particular doctrine in Christianity wrong? 01:48:32.480 --> 01:48:33.440 Perhaps not. 01:48:33.440 --> 01:48:35.120 It depends on the doctrine. 01:48:35.120 --> 01:48:37.920 There are minor doctrines that are major doctrines. 01:48:37.920 --> 01:48:41.680 There are doctrines that are lesser that are more peripheral. 01:48:41.680 --> 01:48:48.240 But if you hold to that error, it never stops there. 01:48:48.240 --> 01:48:53.040 It always becomes a greater error. 01:48:53.040 --> 01:48:55.120 And so move on to the 01:48:56.720 --> 01:49:01.760 next piece here the Christian pertinence of eschatological hope. 01:49:04.720 --> 01:49:09.840 They argue that such beliefs are unscientific, impossible, and even bizarre. 01:49:09.840 --> 01:49:13.840 Among the beliefs which many modern Christians find difficult to accept are 01:49:13.840 --> 01:49:19.040 those dealing with eschatological hopes, particularly the second coming of Christ, the 01:49:19.040 --> 01:49:22.000 day of judgment and the resurrection of the body? 01:49:22.000 --> 01:49:25.440 In an attempt to solve this difficult problem many modern Christians have 01:49:25.440 --> 01:49:29.920 jettisoned these beliefs altogether, failing to see that there is a profundity 01:49:29.920 --> 01:49:33.920 of spiritual meaning in these beliefs, which goes beyond the shackles of 01:49:33.920 --> 01:49:39.360 literalism. We must realize that these beliefs were formulated by an unscientific 01:49:39.360 --> 01:49:43.040 people, who knew nothing about a Copernican universe or any of the 01:49:43.040 --> 01:49:44.800 laws of modern science? 01:49:44.800 --> 01:49:48.400 They were attempting to solve basic problems which were quite real to 01:49:48.400 --> 01:49:51.920 them, problems which to them dealt with ultimate destiny. 01:49:51.920 --> 01:49:54.080 So it was only natural for them to speak in the pre 01:49:54.640 --> 01:49:58.480 scientific thought pattern of their day, they could do no other. 01:49:58.480 --> 01:50:02.320 Inspiration did not magically remove the limitations of the writers. 01:50:02.320 --> 01:50:06.320 It heightened their power, but did not remove their distortions. 01:50:06.320 --> 01:50:10.080 Therefore it is our job as Christians to seek the spiritual pertinence 01:50:10.080 --> 01:50:14.400 of these beliefs, which taken literally are quite absurd. 01:50:14.400 --> 01:50:19.200 It is obvious that most twentieth century Christians must frankly and flatly 01:50:19.200 --> 01:50:25.600 reject any view of a physical return of Christ. 01:50:25.600 --> 01:50:25.840 So 01:50:26.000 --> 01:50:27.840 literally stop being Christian. 01:50:27.840 --> 01:50:30.080 I mean that's that's it. 01:50:30.080 --> 01:50:33.120 I you know these these are these are some walls of text 01:50:33.120 --> 01:50:36.400 that we're reading to you, but the bottom line is no Christian 01:50:36.400 --> 01:50:40.320 can possibly believe even one percent of this. 01:50:40.320 --> 01:50:43.840 Like I said at the beginning, we're not talking about nitpicks among 01:50:43.840 --> 01:50:47.760 denominations. We're talking about the beating heart of the Christian faith. 01:50:47.760 --> 01:50:52.160 There's literally no possible way for any Christian to say that Michael 01:50:52.160 --> 01:50:54.880 King is not damned based on these. 01:50:54.880 --> 01:50:58.080 And as I said, the only possible argument is oh well he 01:50:58.080 --> 01:50:59.200 changed his mind later. 01:50:59.200 --> 01:51:00.480 Okay, prove it. 01:51:00.480 --> 01:51:02.960 Show me a single place where he changed his mind. 01:51:02.960 --> 01:51:05.280 What is he doing throughout all these things? 01:51:05.280 --> 01:51:06.960 All he's doing is 01:51:07.920 --> 01:51:11.760 redefining terms so that he can stand up in a pulpit and 01:51:11.760 --> 01:51:15.840 he can say things like resurrection, knowing that he means this. 01:51:15.840 --> 01:51:18.320 The next quote that I have for later from later on in 01:51:18.320 --> 01:51:22.240 the same paper, the most precious thought in Christianity is that Jesus 01:51:22.240 --> 01:51:25.760 is our daily friend, that he never did leave us comfortless or 01:51:25.760 --> 01:51:30.000 alone, and that we may know his trans transforming communion every day 01:51:30.000 --> 01:51:30.800 in our lives. 01:51:30.800 --> 01:51:35.360 As doclair doctor Hedley succinctly states, the second coming of Christ is 01:51:35.360 --> 01:51:39.680 not an event in space-time, but an experience which transcends all physical 01:51:39.680 --> 01:51:43.520 categories. It belongs not to the sky, but to the human heart, 01:51:43.520 --> 01:51:46.720 not to the future, to put but to whatever present we are 01:51:46.720 --> 01:51:48.320 willing to assign to it. 01:51:48.320 --> 01:51:51.680 Actually we are celebrating the second advent every time we open our 01:51:51.680 --> 01:51:55.120 hearts to Jesus, every time we turn our backs to the low 01:51:55.120 --> 01:51:58.400 road and accept the high road, every time we say no to 01:51:58.400 --> 01:52:01.600 self that we might say yes to Jesus Christ, every time a 01:52:01.600 --> 01:52:04.560 man or woman turns from ugliness to beauty and is able to 01:52:04.560 --> 01:52:08.080 forgive even their enemies, Jesus stands at the door of our hearts 01:52:08.160 --> 01:52:09.840 if we are willing to admit him. 01:52:09.840 --> 01:52:13.280 He is far away if ugliness and evil, we crowd him out. 01:52:13.280 --> 01:52:17.120 The final doctrine of the second coming is that wherever we whenever 01:52:17.120 --> 01:52:21.040 we turn our lives to the highest and best, there is for 01:52:21.040 --> 01:52:22.720 us the Christ. 01:52:22.720 --> 01:52:25.200 This is what the early Christians were trying to say. 01:52:25.200 --> 01:52:28.800 To be sure they got an unscientific realm, because they began by 01:52:28.800 --> 01:52:31.360 saying that Jesus was the promised Messiah. 01:52:31.360 --> 01:52:34.000 But the question arises what led them to say that in the 01:52:34.000 --> 01:52:34.640 first place? 01:52:34.640 --> 01:52:38.800 It was the magnetic personality of this historic Jesus that caused men 01:52:38.800 --> 01:52:42.320 to explain his life in a category beyond the human. 01:52:42.320 --> 01:52:45.920 Here we are one with the unscientific early Christians for all of 01:52:45.920 --> 01:52:48.960 our thoughts and teachings about the second coming, whether it be a 01:52:48.960 --> 01:52:53.040 physical or spiritual, stem from the personality that Jesus whom the Christians 01:52:53.040 --> 01:52:54.800 chose to call the Christ 01:52:57.120 --> 01:52:58.880 This is blasphemy. 01:52:58.880 --> 01:53:02.320 I I I feel like I need to confess my sins just 01:53:02.320 --> 01:53:06.080 for reading this man's words out loud. 01:53:06.080 --> 01:53:09.600 He denies the resurrection, he denies the divinity of Christ, he denies 01:53:09.600 --> 01:53:10.400 the virgin birth. 01:53:10.800 --> 01:53:13.200 He denies the Christian faith. 01:53:13.200 --> 01:53:16.400 We have men in our seminaries, we have men in our pulpits, 01:53:16.400 --> 01:53:19.760 we have men everywhere around us who use this man as a 01:53:19.760 --> 01:53:21.120 Christian example. 01:53:21.120 --> 01:53:23.680 Next week we're going to get into the evil, to the fact 01:53:23.680 --> 01:53:26.640 that not only he was not Christian, but he was a wicked 01:53:26.640 --> 01:53:31.520 pagan. But this alone, any one of these quotes should be sufficient, 01:53:31.520 --> 01:53:36.800 particularly in the current context of this podcast where we're being canceled 01:53:36.800 --> 01:53:39.520 for things that we've said or maybe said or didn't say in 01:53:39.520 --> 01:53:40.240 the past. 01:53:40.240 --> 01:53:43.600 If one word from a man years ago is sufficient to cancel 01:53:43.600 --> 01:53:48.160 him and have his life destroyed today, maybe we should take the 01:53:48.160 --> 01:53:51.840 seminary writings of a man who is confessing a faith that he 01:53:51.840 --> 01:53:52.960 never abandoned. 01:53:52.960 --> 01:53:54.720 This is his faith, again. 01:53:54.720 --> 01:53:56.800 This is Michael King's faith. 01:53:56.800 --> 01:53:58.480 It's simply not the Christian faith. 01:53:58.480 --> 01:54:02.720 It's the exact opposite. 01:54:02.960 --> 01:54:03.200 For 01:54:03.200 --> 01:54:07.040 the sake of contrast, and so that we do hear the word 01:54:07.200 --> 01:54:11.280 of God in this episode perhaps, just a short reading from 1 01:54:11.360 --> 01:54:16.560 Corinthians. Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how 01:54:16.560 --> 01:54:19.120 can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the 01:54:19.120 --> 01:54:22.560 dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not 01:54:22.560 --> 01:54:24.400 even Christ has been raised. 01:54:24.400 --> 01:54:27.840 And if Christ has not been raised, then our preacher is in 01:54:27.840 --> 01:54:30.400 vain, and your faith is in vain. 01:54:30.400 --> 01:54:34.480 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about 01:54:34.480 --> 01:54:37.760 God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if it 01:54:37.760 --> 01:54:40.640 is true that the dead are not raised, for if the dead 01:54:40.640 --> 01:54:45.040 are not raised, not even Christ has been raised, and if Christ 01:54:45.040 --> 01:54:48.800 has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still 01:54:48.800 --> 01:54:50.240 in your sins. 01:54:50.240 --> 01:54:53.760 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 01:54:53.760 --> 01:54:57.920 If in Christ we have hope, in this life only, we are 01:54:57.920 --> 01:55:02.800 of all people most to be pitied. 01:55:03.040 --> 01:55:06.320 And so when you see someone who is rejecting the resurrection of 01:55:06.320 --> 01:55:12.560 the dead, you see someone who is rejecting the core hope that 01:55:12.560 --> 01:55:17.120 we have in Christianity, that we have in Christ. 01:55:17.120 --> 01:55:23.360 Because if we believe, like the Sadducees, that there's no resurrection of 01:55:23.360 --> 01:55:27.360 the dead, then there's no hope. 01:55:27.360 --> 01:55:30.160 Then it's just death. 01:55:30.160 --> 01:55:32.400 And that's the end. 01:55:32.400 --> 01:55:35.120 But the hope of the Christian is that 01:55:35.600 --> 01:55:36.560 I'm only laughing. 01:55:36.720 --> 01:55:39.920 I'm laughing because immortality is literally the last part of this F 01:55:40.160 --> 01:55:42.160 essay that he refutes. 01:55:42.160 --> 01:55:44.720 In the same paper that I just quoted, he ends by being 01:55:44.720 --> 01:55:45.840 a Sadducee. 01:55:46.400 --> 01:55:46.960 of course. 01:55:47.200 --> 01:55:50.960 it's great that wick I can predict wicked men. 01:55:50.960 --> 01:55:54.880 But the the hope of Christianity is the resurrection. 01:55:54.880 --> 01:55:57.520 Because if you if you just die at the end of this 01:55:57.520 --> 01:56:00.480 life and it's over, it doesn't matter what you do. 01:56:00.960 --> 01:56:06.320 the atheists who take the truly nihilist position are at least being 01:56:06.320 --> 01:56:08.160 somewhat rational given their beliefs. 01:56:08.160 --> 01:56:10.560 I mean, insofar as you can be rational at all as an 01:56:10.560 --> 01:56:14.320 atheist But if you die and you're done, if you die in 01:56:14.320 --> 01:56:16.320 your worm food and that's it, there's no hope. 01:56:16.320 --> 01:56:20.080 It doesn't matter what you do in this life, everything is irrelevant. 01:56:20.080 --> 01:56:24.320 But you'll notice, particularly when we get to the next episode, men 01:56:24.400 --> 01:56:30.480 like Michael King never act as if this life is just irrelevant 01:56:32.400 --> 01:56:36.080 because they always pick to go the exact opposite direction. 01:56:36.080 --> 01:56:39.120 Well I'm not going to believe in Christ and I'm not going 01:56:39.120 --> 01:56:43.040 to believe in the resurrection of the dead, but I'm going to 01:56:43.040 --> 01:56:46.960 do everything I can to make this world worse. 01:56:46.960 --> 01:56:52.560 Because as we frequently say, there is an animating intelligence behind the 01:56:52.560 --> 01:56:54.240 other side. 01:56:54.240 --> 01:56:58.800 Nested in between the denial of the resurrection of the dead and 01:56:59.280 --> 01:57:01.840 the denial of the second coming of Christ. 01:57:01.840 --> 01:57:04.320 He also denies the day of judgment itself. 01:57:04.320 --> 01:57:09.200 Orthodox Christianity, again, that's us, that's actual Christians as Orthodox Christianity, has 01:57:09.280 --> 01:57:12.480 held that when a man dies he sleeps until the general resurrection 01:57:12.480 --> 01:57:15.520 on the last day, at which time Christ, the judge, will appear 01:57:15.520 --> 01:57:17.520 to summon all to the bar of justice. 01:57:17.520 --> 01:57:20.720 He will separate them as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the 01:57:20.720 --> 01:57:24.800 goats, sending the former to eternal bliss and the latter to endless 01:57:24.800 --> 01:57:29.440 hell. Needless to say, the average modern Christian finds it quite difficult 01:57:29.440 --> 01:57:31.680 to accept such a view of judgment. 01:57:31.680 --> 01:57:35.840 However, we must agree with the spiritual value of this view held 01:57:35.840 --> 01:57:39.920 by nearly all Christians, all early Christians, for the personality of Jesus 01:57:39.920 --> 01:57:42.080 does serve as a judgment upon us all. 01:57:42.080 --> 01:57:45.920 When we set aside the spectacular paraphernalia of the judgment scene, in 01:57:45.920 --> 01:57:49.520 the literal throne, we come to the real meaning of the doctrine. 01:57:49.520 --> 01:57:52.400 The highest court of justice is in the heart of the man 01:57:52.400 --> 01:57:56.080 after the light of Christ has illumined his motive in his inner 01:57:56.080 --> 01:57:59.360 life. Any day when we awaken to the fact that we are 01:57:59.360 --> 01:58:03.600 making a great moral decision, any day we have experienced nearness to 01:58:03.600 --> 01:58:06.960 Christ, any day when in the light of Christ we see ourselves 01:58:07.120 --> 01:58:09.360 is a day of judgment. 01:58:09.360 --> 01:58:10.640 That's Satan. 01:58:10.640 --> 01:58:14.960 That's saying just go do whatever you want, try to live a 01:58:14.960 --> 01:58:15.440 good life. 01:58:15.440 --> 01:58:16.640 There's no judgment day. 01:58:16.640 --> 01:58:18.320 There's no resurrection of the dead. 01:58:18.320 --> 01:58:20.160 Jesus isn't coming back. 01:58:20.160 --> 01:58:22.320 This life is it. 01:58:22.320 --> 01:58:28.080 I hope that this superabundance of quotes and evidence hammers home the 01:58:28.080 --> 01:58:30.240 point this man was not a Christian. 01:58:31.120 --> 01:58:34.240 What Christian could possibly quote this man in good conscience? 01:58:34.240 --> 01:58:37.600 It is an act of evil to say that Martin Luther King 01:58:37.680 --> 01:58:41.520 junior is anything but a damned heretic burning in hell. 01:58:41.520 --> 01:58:43.680 It's evil to say anything else. 01:58:43.680 --> 01:58:46.400 I will stand before the judgment throne of God and with that 01:58:46.400 --> 01:58:50.880 as my confession, because the only possible way to obey and confess 01:58:50.880 --> 01:58:54.000 God is to confess that this man denies God. 01:58:54.000 --> 01:58:55.520 It's one or the other. 01:58:55.520 --> 01:58:58.320 One of us is going to hell. 01:58:58.320 --> 01:59:01.120 It's just that simple. 01:59:01.200 --> 01:59:01.360 So 01:59:01.360 --> 01:59:08.080 our next selection is from Religion's Answer to the Problem of Evil. 01:59:08.080 --> 01:59:13.280 A second view explains physical evils as a punishment for moral evils. 01:59:13.280 --> 01:59:16.960 Such a view rests on the principle of retribution. 01:59:16.960 --> 01:59:21.280 This view goes back to the old Deuteronomic idea that prosperity follows 01:59:21.280 --> 01:59:26.480 piety and righteous should be righteousness, while suffering follows sin. 01:59:27.040 --> 01:59:30.640 Even in the days of Jesus we find traces of this theory. 01:59:30.640 --> 01:59:34.640 Hence the question is put to Jesus Who sinned, this man or 01:59:34.640 --> 01:59:37.680 his parents, that he should be born blind? 01:59:37.760 --> 01:59:41.840 The most rigorous expression of this viewpoint is found in India's ancient 01:59:41.840 --> 01:59:43.360 doctrine of karma. 01:59:43.360 --> 01:59:45.600 Karma means literally deed. 01:59:45.600 --> 01:59:50.160 Suffering is explained as the consequence of a man's deeds, whether committed 01:59:50.160 --> 01:59:53.840 in this present life or in some previous existence. 01:59:53.840 --> 01:59:58.000 Views of this variety continue to exist in the modern world, but 01:59:58.000 --> 02:00:03.520 such views are repugnant to the ethical sense of modern idealist. 02:00:04.000 --> 02:00:08.480 the modern idealist does a good god harbour resentment? 02:00:08.480 --> 02:00:12.400 Does perfect love achieve its purpose in such cruel ways? 02:00:12.400 --> 02:00:15.360 This crude theory was rejected long ago by the writer of the 02:00:15.360 --> 02:00:19.520 book of Job and by Jesus, according to John nine three, the 02:00:19.520 --> 02:00:23.200 whole theory of punishment as a solution of the problem of evil 02:00:23.200 --> 02:00:28.400 collapses with a series of ethical objections. 02:00:28.400 --> 02:00:33.840 And so undoubtedly anyone who is familiar with modern modern writing from 02:00:33.840 --> 02:00:37.440 any of a number of fields is going to recognize this rejection 02:00:37.440 --> 02:00:39.520 of retribution. 02:00:39.520 --> 02:00:44.880 Because this is a cornerstone of prison reform and criminal justice reform 02:00:45.040 --> 02:00:50.800 and all sorts of other wicked projects like that. 02:00:50.800 --> 02:00:55.280 Contrast that with what God says in the pages of Scripture, where 02:00:55.680 --> 02:00:59.280 he who sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood 02:00:59.280 --> 02:01:03.840 be shed, for God made man in his image. 02:01:03.840 --> 02:01:09.520 God explicitly commands us as part of the unchanging moral law to 02:01:09.520 --> 02:01:16.720 enact the death penalty, to enact capital punishment against murderers. 02:01:16.720 --> 02:01:20.480 And there are a number of other transgressions that are listed as 02:01:20.480 --> 02:01:29.440 abominations to God, for which execution is what God demands as punishment. 02:01:29.440 --> 02:01:34.320 Retribution is the beating heart of justice. 02:01:34.320 --> 02:01:39.280 That there are other aspects that can be considered in addition to 02:01:39.280 --> 02:01:45.600 retribution, but justice is a matter of retribution. 02:01:45.600 --> 02:01:48.240 You must punish the wrongdoer. 02:01:48.240 --> 02:01:52.560 It is not just a matter of restorative so called justice. 02:01:52.560 --> 02:01:53.760 Yes, that's part of it. 02:01:53.760 --> 02:01:56.160 If a man steals something, he must return it. 02:01:56.160 --> 02:01:58.080 That is restorative justice. 02:01:58.080 --> 02:02:01.840 But he must be punished For the theft. 02:02:01.840 --> 02:02:04.560 Because if he is not punished for the theft, you have not 02:02:04.560 --> 02:02:07.680 actually enacted justice. 02:02:07.680 --> 02:02:12.480 He is rejecting justice here, and justice is part of God's nature. 02:02:12.480 --> 02:02:17.200 So again, this is just ultimately a rejection of God. 02:02:17.200 --> 02:02:20.880 It is also an explicit rejection of much of the Old Testament, 02:02:20.880 --> 02:02:26.400 because he is rejecting all the various laws that recommend retributive justice. 02:02:26.400 --> 02:02:29.840 He is saying that those are immoral, those are unethical. 02:02:29.840 --> 02:02:31.920 He's accusing God of evil. 02:02:31.920 --> 02:02:34.960 So we've got Manicheeism here, basically. 02:02:35.040 --> 02:02:38.000 And that's a view that pops up right here in the very 02:02:38.000 --> 02:02:39.120 next one. 02:02:39.120 --> 02:02:43.040 King writes It seems to me that the most untenable conceptions of 02:02:43.040 --> 02:02:46.640 God appear in the pre prophetic period of the Old Testament. 02:02:46.640 --> 02:02:50.000 Here God is looked upon first as an anthropomorphic being. 02:02:50.000 --> 02:02:52.400 He walks in the garden in the cool of the evening. 02:02:52.400 --> 02:02:55.440 He comes down to the tower of Babel, he comes down in 02:02:55.440 --> 02:02:57.360 the clouds to speak to Moses. 02:02:57.360 --> 02:03:00.080 Also in many of these writings the moral character of God is 02:03:00.080 --> 02:03:00.960 quite low. 02:03:00.960 --> 02:03:05.040 He comes down to the tower out of jealousy in Genesis eleven 02:03:05.200 --> 02:03:09.040 seven. He comes to Abraham in a lie, or he justifies Abraham 02:03:09.040 --> 02:03:09.840 in a lie. 02:03:09.840 --> 02:03:13.360 He commands an individual to do something and then scorns him for 02:03:13.360 --> 02:03:16.720 doing it from Numbers twenty two twenty through twenty two. 02:03:16.720 --> 02:03:20.080 Also at this period we find Yahweh presented as a tribal deity. 02:03:20.080 --> 02:03:23.680 He is not a universal father whose love extends to all people. 02:03:23.680 --> 02:03:27.520 So we often find Yahweh justifying all types of immoral actions against 02:03:27.520 --> 02:03:32.080 non-Israelites. Even Yahweh himself is often found to be using deceitful and 02:03:32.080 --> 02:03:36.000 ruthless methods against individuals outside of his tribal authority. 02:03:36.000 --> 02:03:39.040 Finally, at this period, we find that God is only one among 02:03:39.040 --> 02:03:39.840 many gods. 02:03:39.840 --> 02:03:42.560 To be sure, he is the only one worthy of worship, but 02:03:42.560 --> 02:03:44.000 other gods still exist. 02:03:44.000 --> 02:03:47.680 At this period, the Hebrews were henotheist rather than monotheist. 02:03:47.680 --> 02:03:51.760 Certainly they're the utmost untenable conceptions of God found in the Old 02:03:51.760 --> 02:03:55.200 Testament. He damns God. 02:03:55.200 --> 02:03:57.680 He says that the God in the Old Testament is damned. 02:03:57.680 --> 02:03:58.800 He's unethical. 02:03:58.800 --> 02:03:59.760 He's immoral. 02:03:59.760 --> 02:04:00.400 He cheats. 02:04:00.400 --> 02:04:00.960 He lies. 02:04:00.960 --> 02:04:01.680 He murders. 02:04:01.680 --> 02:04:04.000 He's an evil, wicked God. 02:04:04.000 --> 02:04:06.880 Michael King says the God of the Old Testament is not his 02:04:07.120 --> 02:04:08.800 God. Okay. 02:04:15.280 --> 02:04:20.720 Our next selection from the writings of Michael King. 02:04:20.720 --> 02:04:25.360 The suffering servant passage in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah could well 02:04:25.360 --> 02:04:27.600 be applied to Jesus. 02:04:27.600 --> 02:04:31.120 In a real sense Jesus is the only one who fulfills this 02:04:31.120 --> 02:04:35.360 prophecy. Certainly Jesus was a lowly man, a man of sorrow and 02:04:35.360 --> 02:04:37.040 acquainted with grief. 02:04:37.040 --> 02:04:40.720 Certainly the real meaning of the Atonement is that Christ died in 02:04:40.720 --> 02:04:43.680 order that sinful men might be incited to rise out of their 02:04:43.680 --> 02:04:46.800 sinfulness, and be reconciled to God. 02:04:46.800 --> 02:04:51.040 In other words, through his suffering and moral influence, men are reconciled 02:04:51.040 --> 02:04:52.480 to God. 02:04:52.480 --> 02:04:55.600 There has been much debate as to whether this passage refers to 02:04:55.600 --> 02:04:57.760 the nation or to an individual. 02:04:57.760 --> 02:05:02.080 Jewish scholars have inclined toward the former, while Christian scholars have inclined 02:05:02.080 --> 02:05:03.280 toward the latter. 02:05:03.280 --> 02:05:07.120 It is my opinion that the passage refers to an individual, and 02:05:07.360 --> 02:05:10.640 Jesus more than any other fulfills its descriptions. 02:05:10.640 --> 02:05:14.320 Jesus fulfills it in a way that Isaiah could never have conceived 02:05:14.320 --> 02:05:15.040 of. 02:05:16.560 --> 02:05:20.320 And to resist laughing several times, it's so bad. 02:05:22.160 --> 02:05:25.600 Just the initial contention that the suffering servant passage could well be 02:05:25.600 --> 02:05:27.600 applied to G no really. 02:05:27.600 --> 02:05:33.040 That's just the standard exegesis in Christianity forever. 02:05:33.360 --> 02:05:33.600 But 02:05:33.600 --> 02:05:34.000 it's one 02:05:34.000 --> 02:05:34.320 that he 02:05:34.320 --> 02:05:38.880 rejects because this is Isaiah fifty three is of course the he 02:05:38.880 --> 02:05:42.560 refers to this multiple times in other places as deuter Isaiah. 02:05:42.560 --> 02:05:44.080 So this is not the real Isaiah. 02:05:44.080 --> 02:05:47.280 This is the second author who tacked on another third to the 02:05:47.280 --> 02:05:48.080 end of the book. 02:05:48.080 --> 02:05:53.040 That's the modern way that these guys read the Bible, just taking 02:05:53.040 --> 02:05:58.640 it as just an assembled collection of scrolls from history with no 02:05:58.640 --> 02:06:01.200 unifying anything because there's no God. 02:06:01.360 --> 02:06:04.480 If there's no God, it must just be a scrapbook. 02:06:04.480 --> 02:06:06.880 That's basically what they see the Bible as. 02:06:06.880 --> 02:06:10.400 So the reason for him being confused about this is that Isaiah 02:06:10.400 --> 02:06:11.120 didn't write it. 02:06:11.120 --> 02:06:13.200 Some other guy wrote it, and he wrote it a whole lot 02:06:13.200 --> 02:06:15.920 later. That's the important part of Deuter Isaiah. 02:06:15.920 --> 02:06:18.640 He and this is this goes back the reason I included this 02:06:18.640 --> 02:06:21.760 is this goes back to the earlier comment about how very original 02:06:21.760 --> 02:06:25.840 early on, you know, we're talking about Job, we're talking about Genesis. 02:06:25.840 --> 02:06:26.880 None of these 02:06:27.840 --> 02:06:29.440 ideas had been fleshed out. 02:06:29.440 --> 02:06:31.520 There was no notion of resurrection of the dead. 02:06:31.520 --> 02:06:35.440 There is really no Messiah, because why what if a man's dead, 02:06:35.440 --> 02:06:37.200 why would he look forward to anything? 02:06:37.200 --> 02:06:37.920 Who cares? 02:06:37.920 --> 02:06:39.760 He's dead, he's not coming back. 02:06:39.760 --> 02:06:41.840 He the Messiah means nothing. 02:06:41.840 --> 02:06:46.480 The Messiah promise only means something in the context of the resurrection. 02:06:46.480 --> 02:06:48.960 And so the reason that the Deutero Isaiah 02:06:50.240 --> 02:06:55.200 prophecies are considered to be relevant in his thinking is that well 02:06:55.280 --> 02:06:58.720 those prophecies were tacked on right near the time when Jesus came 02:06:58.720 --> 02:07:02.800 back. You know, and even then he says Jesus fulfills this prophecy 02:07:02.800 --> 02:07:05.520 in a way that Isaiah could never have conceived of. 02:07:05.520 --> 02:07:08.480 Well, if you think he wasn't a prophet, and if you think 02:07:08.480 --> 02:07:10.960 God is silent and God doesn't really exist, then yeah, I guess 02:07:10.960 --> 02:07:11.760 that makes sense. 02:07:11.920 --> 02:07:15.360 It just goes to show that he absolutely rejects every word of 02:07:15.360 --> 02:07:18.800 scripture. He rejects the god of scripture, he damns the god of 02:07:18.800 --> 02:07:22.880 scripture, he mocks the god of scripture, and we're told that we 02:07:22.880 --> 02:07:24.640 should listen to this man. 02:07:24.640 --> 02:07:27.280 If this man were alive today he should be driven out of 02:07:27.280 --> 02:07:29.200 town with sticks and stones. 02:07:29.200 --> 02:07:33.200 That would be the just Christian response to this degree of blasphemy. 02:07:33.200 --> 02:07:37.440 Again we're not talking about small disputes among denominations. 02:07:37.440 --> 02:07:39.520 This man is so far outside of Christianity 02:07:40.560 --> 02:07:43.760 that i it it's an infinite chasm. 02:07:43.760 --> 02:07:46.480 He goes on towards the end of the writings that one of 02:07:46.480 --> 02:07:49.520 the we're getting down to the dregs, we're running along here too, 02:07:49.520 --> 02:07:51.680 but again I told you we're gonna beat up on you with 02:07:51.680 --> 02:07:54.560 quotes. This is a point we have to make. 02:07:54.560 --> 02:07:56.000 We're not cherry picking. 02:07:57.040 --> 02:07:58.240 I cut it short. 02:07:58.240 --> 02:08:00.320 I mean this is a small fraction of what I could have 02:08:00.320 --> 02:08:05.280 included. Later on in seminary towards the end, uh he was He 02:08:05.280 --> 02:08:09.520 was discussing the contrast between Luther and Calvin. 02:08:09.520 --> 02:08:12.000 And he writes, we mount now may turn to the criticism of 02:08:12.000 --> 02:08:14.880 the reformers' views of the person and work of Christ. 02:08:14.880 --> 02:08:18.240 Concerning the person of Christ, both Luther and Calvin affirmed the traditional 02:08:18.400 --> 02:08:20.000 two nature doctrine. 02:08:20.160 --> 02:08:23.920 Both were convinced that a perfect divine and perfect human nature were 02:08:23.920 --> 02:08:26.800 united in the personality of Christ. 02:08:26.800 --> 02:08:30.720 This doctrine, however, calls for a reinterpretation and modification Modification. 02:08:30.720 --> 02:08:34.720 It was based on a platonic substance philosophy, which has been largely 02:08:34.720 --> 02:08:39.280 replaced today by a philosophy in which real we see reality as 02:08:39.280 --> 02:08:43.200 active or dynamic on the one hand and as individual and concrete 02:08:43.200 --> 02:08:45.840 on the other On the On the basis of such thinking it 02:08:45.840 --> 02:08:50.000 is a mistake to look upon Christ as having two independently existing 02:08:50.000 --> 02:08:53.840 natures. As Knutsen has so well put it, there were factors in 02:08:53.840 --> 02:08:57.360 Jesus' personality that may be distinguished as human and divine, but they 02:08:57.360 --> 02:09:01.600 were not distinct substances, they were simply different aspects of one unique 02:09:01.600 --> 02:09:05.360 personality. This personality is to be viewed not as a substance but 02:09:05.360 --> 02:09:06.480 as an agent. 02:09:06.480 --> 02:09:10.480 Hence we must affirm that Christ is a unitary personality in this 02:09:10.480 --> 02:09:14.800 unity we find in his ego, there's nothing in rational speculation nor 02:09:14.800 --> 02:09:18.640 New Testament thought to warrant the view that Jesus had two personal 02:09:18.640 --> 02:09:22.320 centers. We must then think of Christ as a unitary being whose 02:09:22.320 --> 02:09:27.680 divinity consists not in any second nature or in a substantial unity 02:09:27.680 --> 02:09:31.360 with God, but in a unique and potent God consciousness. 02:09:31.360 --> 02:09:35.040 His unity with God was a unity of purpose, rather than a 02:09:35.040 --> 02:09:36.800 unity of substance. 02:09:36.800 --> 02:09:41.200 Again, this by itself is a literal absolute denial that Jesus Christ 02:09:41.200 --> 02:09:42.400 is God. 02:09:42.400 --> 02:09:43.520 Full stop. 02:09:43.520 --> 02:09:46.640 If you deny that Jesus Christ is God, you burn in hell. 02:09:46.640 --> 02:09:47.840 The end. 02:09:47.840 --> 02:09:49.920 So we're not name calling. 02:09:49.920 --> 02:09:52.560 We're not picking on a guy we don't like politically. 02:09:52.560 --> 02:09:56.960 This man has no business having a voice anywhere in the church, 02:09:56.960 --> 02:09:59.200 or frankly anywhere in any Christian life. 02:09:59.200 --> 02:10:02.400 'Cause as we get to next week, all of his political activities, 02:10:02.400 --> 02:10:07.360 all of his personal activities, all of his influences were themselves downstream 02:10:07.360 --> 02:10:09.760 from the fact that he's a blasphemer. 02:10:09.760 --> 02:10:13.680 I'm sure some attentive listeners will have heard some echoes of Freud 02:10:14.080 --> 02:10:15.840 because very clearly 02:10:16.960 --> 02:10:24.000 Michael King was reading some theologians who had filtered Freud through 02:10:24.000 --> 02:10:28.080 their writings and then on to Michael King, and that's why we 02:10:28.080 --> 02:10:30.400 get some of these comments here and there that are very clearly 02:10:30.400 --> 02:10:32.640 reminiscent of Freud. 02:10:32.640 --> 02:10:35.760 And so another quote from the same paper 02:10:36.720 --> 02:10:40.400 another phase of thinking in which our two theologians went to an 02:10:40.400 --> 02:10:42.960 extreme was in the doctrine of man. 02:10:42.960 --> 02:10:47.200 Both affirm that man was originally righteous, but through some strange and 02:10:47.200 --> 02:10:50.400 striking accident he became hopelessly sinful. 02:10:50.400 --> 02:10:54.560 Yet it has become increasingly difficult to imagine any such original state 02:10:54.560 --> 02:10:59.520 of perfection for man as Luther and Calvin continually presupposed. 02:10:59.520 --> 02:11:02.160 It is not within the scope of this paper to enter into 02:11:02.160 --> 02:11:04.320 any argument concerning evolution. 02:11:04.320 --> 02:11:08.880 However, it is perfectly evident that its major contentions would refute such 02:11:08.880 --> 02:11:09.600 a view. 02:11:09.600 --> 02:11:13.600 We are compelled, therefore, to reject the idea of a catastrophic fall 02:11:13.680 --> 02:11:17.200 and regard man's moral condition from another point of view. 02:11:17.200 --> 02:11:20.400 Man's fall is not due to some falling away from an original 02:11:20.400 --> 02:11:24.320 righteousness, but to a failure to rise to a higher level of 02:11:24.320 --> 02:11:27.120 his present existence. 02:11:27.120 --> 02:11:31.360 And so here again we see the rejection of original sin, a 02:11:31.360 --> 02:11:36.800 rejection of the clear teaching of Scripture, a rejection of the fall, 02:11:37.040 --> 02:11:41.760 contention that man is on an upward trajectory instead of downward, which 02:11:41.760 --> 02:11:46.080 is the reality, and of course original righteousness is how one would 02:11:46.560 --> 02:11:48.560 describe the image of God in man. 02:11:48.560 --> 02:11:52.480 So this is also a denial of the Imago Dei, incidentally. 02:11:53.120 --> 02:11:53.200 So 02:11:53.280 --> 02:11:55.680 I'm going to read next in part from a sermon. 02:11:55.680 --> 02:11:59.840 The title of the sermon was Expe Accepting Responsibility for Your Actions. 02:11:59.840 --> 02:12:04.800 He preached this in Atlanta, Georgia nineteen fifty three. 02:12:04.800 --> 02:12:09.680 This tendency to thrust responsibility for our actions on some eternal agency 02:12:09.680 --> 02:12:11.360 is by no means a new one. 02:12:11.360 --> 02:12:16.080 The Genesis writers plural found it present in the very beginning of 02:12:16.080 --> 02:12:19.200 history. Remember the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of 02:12:19.200 --> 02:12:22.320 Eden? God had placed Adam and Eve in the garden to dress 02:12:22.320 --> 02:12:24.640 it. They were given liberty to make use of everything in the 02:12:24.640 --> 02:12:26.400 garden with the exception of one thing. 02:12:26.400 --> 02:12:28.800 They were not to eat the tree of good and evil. 02:12:28.800 --> 02:12:31.840 Very soon a serpent appeared on the scene and said, Hath God 02:12:31.840 --> 02:12:34.480 said ye shall not eat of the tree of the garden? 02:12:34.480 --> 02:12:37.040 And Eve answered, We may eat of the fruit of the trees 02:12:37.040 --> 02:12:39.440 of the garden, but of the tree of good and evil God 02:12:39.440 --> 02:12:43.120 has commanded, that we not shall not eat, or nor touch lest 02:12:43.120 --> 02:12:43.840 we die. 02:12:43.840 --> 02:12:47.360 And the serpent answered, ye shall not surely die, for God doth 02:12:47.360 --> 02:12:50.240 know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall 02:12:50.240 --> 02:12:53.760 be opened, and ye shall be lay as gods, knowing good and 02:12:53.760 --> 02:12:58.400 evil. After listening to those cogent words by the subtle serpent, Eve 02:12:58.400 --> 02:13:01.600 yielded to the temptation, and very soon Adam and Eve were found 02:13:01.600 --> 02:13:04.240 eating from the tree that God had forbidden them to touch. 02:13:04.240 --> 02:13:06.880 When God came back on the scene to ascertain why the sin 02:13:06.880 --> 02:13:11.760 had been committed, he found each shifting responsibility on some external agency. 02:13:11.760 --> 02:13:14.400 Adam's answer was what the what the woman caused him to eat 02:13:14.400 --> 02:13:14.960 of the tree. 02:13:14.960 --> 02:13:17.760 Eve claimed that the serpent had caused her to eat the tree. 02:13:17.760 --> 02:13:21.200 Neither Adam nor Eve stopped to really realize that although they were 02:13:21.200 --> 02:13:25.280 tempted by external agencies, they were in the final analysis responsible for 02:13:25.280 --> 02:13:26.800 yielding to the temptation. 02:13:26.800 --> 02:13:31.360 Ultimately individual responsibility lies not in the external situation, but in the 02:13:31.360 --> 02:13:33.200 internal response. 02:13:33.200 --> 02:13:36.320 The reason that I included this is that this is a sermon 02:13:36.320 --> 02:13:37.920 in nineteen fifty-three. 02:13:37.920 --> 02:13:41.040 This is within two years of him saying all the other third 02:13:41.120 --> 02:13:43.520 things we've heard him say about the Garden of Eden. 02:13:43.520 --> 02:13:46.320 He mocked the idea that God walked in the garden in a 02:13:46.320 --> 02:13:49.680 paper. Two years later he's saying God walked in the garden. 02:13:49.680 --> 02:13:51.520 Did King repent? 02:13:51.520 --> 02:13:55.360 No. He's talking to the rubes because he knows it's a myth. 02:13:55.360 --> 02:13:57.680 He knows it's a myth that they believe and he's trying to 02:13:57.680 --> 02:13:58.560 make a point. 02:13:58.560 --> 02:14:01.120 Because remember the thing about true and truth? 02:14:01.120 --> 02:14:04.560 He denies that this is true, but he says it's truth. 02:14:04.560 --> 02:14:08.240 He's minded he's trying to make a moral point to his audience, 02:14:08.240 --> 02:14:12.000 and so he's perfectly content to go along, because as far as 02:14:12.000 --> 02:14:14.720 King is concerned, it's all just parables. 02:14:14.720 --> 02:14:18.480 It's all just made up stories, except unlike Jesus' parables that we 02:14:18.480 --> 02:14:21.440 know are from God's mouth, these are just man-made stories. 02:14:21.440 --> 02:14:22.080 They were useful. 02:14:22.080 --> 02:14:25.600 It's like Aesop's fables or every other religion that has the same 02:14:25.600 --> 02:14:27.200 sort of wisdom literature. 02:14:27.200 --> 02:14:29.600 So when he says that you know God walked in the cool 02:14:29.600 --> 02:14:32.240 of the day, that God spoke with them, that Adam and Eve 02:14:32.240 --> 02:14:35.440 existed, the fact that he would say Adam and Eve existed is 02:14:35.440 --> 02:14:39.600 itself false file by the fact that he denies that Adam was 02:14:39.600 --> 02:14:40.640 created by God. 02:14:40.640 --> 02:14:44.160 He says that evolution is how man was created. 02:14:44.160 --> 02:14:48.880 So the this I'm highlighting this because this man was a liar 02:14:48.880 --> 02:14:50.480 from the beginning. 02:14:50.480 --> 02:14:54.480 One day he's confessing this is nonsense, this is garbage, this is 02:14:54.480 --> 02:14:56.640 myth, this is laughable. 02:14:56.640 --> 02:14:58.400 These rubs eat this stuff up. 02:14:58.400 --> 02:15:01.120 Thank goodness we have this new knowledge, so we know how to 02:15:01.120 --> 02:15:02.960 be more scientific than them. 02:15:02.960 --> 02:15:05.360 And then when he gets up in the pulpit, he doesn't go 02:15:05.360 --> 02:15:06.000 that far. 02:15:06.000 --> 02:15:06.960 He goes a little bit. 02:15:06.960 --> 02:15:11.200 He says the Genesis writers plural, which is obviously denying the Mosaic 02:15:11.440 --> 02:15:14.160 authorship, but he won't delve into that. 02:15:14.160 --> 02:15:17.280 And that is fundamentally why these men sneak into our pulpits as 02:15:17.280 --> 02:15:18.720 God said that they would. 02:15:18.720 --> 02:15:23.360 They use these small deceptions, and so more and more they will 02:15:23.360 --> 02:15:27.360 take things that sound Christian, the Christians recognize and say, yeah, that's 02:15:27.280 --> 02:15:30.000 a Christian up there talking to me about Christian stuff. 02:15:30.000 --> 02:15:31.920 And then they twist it and they turn it. 02:15:31.920 --> 02:15:33.680 You know, a few degrees at a time. 02:15:33.680 --> 02:15:37.600 They're turning a dial so slowly that their audience doesn't realize what's 02:15:37.600 --> 02:15:40.800 happening. That's why it's important to listen to all the other stuff 02:15:40.800 --> 02:15:41.360 he said. 02:15:41.360 --> 02:15:44.560 Again, this is not a sermon from fifteen years later. 02:15:44.560 --> 02:15:46.960 This is a sermon within eighteen months of him saying all the 02:15:46.960 --> 02:15:48.480 things that we'd said previously. 02:15:48.480 --> 02:15:51.440 This man was a preacher, he was a pastor, he was ordained, 02:15:51.440 --> 02:15:54.880 he was seminary educated, he was about to go off to Boston 02:15:54.880 --> 02:15:58.880 University, where he would get his he would be given a PhD 02:15:58.880 --> 02:16:01.680 for plagiarism and other things. 02:16:01.680 --> 02:16:04.720 Every word that he said here was a lie in his mouth. 02:16:04.720 --> 02:16:06.960 It sounds true to us because we're Christians. 02:16:06.960 --> 02:16:09.200 And that's a fundamental point that we need to make here. 02:16:09.200 --> 02:16:13.520 As Christians, we listen to a man talking about Christian stuff, and 02:16:13.520 --> 02:16:15.680 we want to give them the benefit of the doubt, and we 02:16:15.680 --> 02:16:18.880 want to baptize even their mistakes by saying, well, I can make 02:16:18.880 --> 02:16:19.520 that work. 02:16:19.520 --> 02:16:20.800 There's a time and a place for that. 02:16:20.800 --> 02:16:22.480 I'm not saying be ruthless to everyone. 02:16:22.800 --> 02:16:24.640 No one could possibly survive that. 02:16:24.640 --> 02:16:26.080 Even podcasters. 02:16:26.080 --> 02:16:29.360 And yet it is important to note that this man, because of 02:16:29.360 --> 02:16:32.480 his other confessions, we must look with a jaundiced eye at everything 02:16:32.480 --> 02:16:33.440 that he says. 02:16:33.440 --> 02:16:37.440 And so in this sermon, he's just flat out denying his own 02:16:37.440 --> 02:16:40.960 confession, but he can do it because he redefined truth, and he 02:16:40.960 --> 02:16:44.480 redefined God, and he redefined Adam and Eve in the garden, and 02:16:44.480 --> 02:16:46.720 so he does it with a straight face, and he doesn't even 02:16:46.720 --> 02:16:47.520 think about it. 02:16:47.520 --> 02:16:50.000 I don't think he even thinks he's getting away with anything when 02:16:50.000 --> 02:16:51.200 he does these sermons. 02:16:51.200 --> 02:16:54.240 He just knows that he's moving the ball in the direction of 02:16:54.240 --> 02:16:56.800 hell, which is his ultimate goal. 02:16:56.960 --> 02:17:02.880 Our next reading is another selection that is from his PhD program 02:17:03.360 --> 02:17:08.880 days. A final element in the Christian hope is the belief in 02:17:08.880 --> 02:17:14.160 immortality. It is at this point that the New Testament surpasses the 02:17:14.160 --> 02:17:18.000 Old. The doctrine of immortality was very late appearing in the Old 02:17:18.000 --> 02:17:22.000 Testament. The emphasis in the earlier days was on the immortality of 02:17:22.000 --> 02:17:25.920 the nation, but with the Christian the individual will live again. 02:17:25.920 --> 02:17:29.840 This view runs throughout the New Testament, Jesus in his argument against 02:17:29.840 --> 02:17:31.120 the Sadducees. 02:17:31.120 --> 02:17:35.440 There can be little doubt that every New Testament writer, accepted belief 02:17:35.440 --> 02:17:38.960 in some form of immortality. 02:17:38.960 --> 02:17:43.360 The dominant note in the New Testament is a bodily resurrection rather 02:17:43.360 --> 02:17:46.880 than a survival of the soul independent of the body. 02:17:46.880 --> 02:17:49.680 But there are some signs of the latter view appearing in the 02:17:49.680 --> 02:17:51.040 New Testament. 02:17:51.040 --> 02:17:56.000 In the final analysis, this hope in immortality is for the Christian 02:17:56.000 --> 02:17:57.840 given by God. 02:17:57.840 --> 02:18:01.120 Rather than due to some natural immortal state of the soul, the 02:18:01.520 --> 02:18:05.680 Greek view, man will live again because he is of value to 02:18:05.680 --> 02:18:10.560 God. This one is a train wreck theologically, at least on par 02:18:10.560 --> 02:18:12.560 with grammatically. 02:18:13.120 --> 02:18:17.440 Worse train wreck theologically. 02:18:17.440 --> 02:18:20.080 Man's soul is immortal. 02:18:21.440 --> 02:18:23.920 This is great news if you're a Christian. 02:18:23.920 --> 02:18:26.400 This is terrible news if you are not. 02:18:27.200 --> 02:18:29.920 Man is not conditionally immortal. 02:18:29.920 --> 02:18:34.000 The soul is not here for a time and then evaporates or 02:18:34.000 --> 02:18:38.240 is annihilated when the body ceases to be. 02:18:38.240 --> 02:18:39.840 This is just nonsense. 02:18:39.840 --> 02:18:43.440 And then in the other part of it, he is arguing for 02:18:43.440 --> 02:18:49.120 basically the Greek view, the the Gnostic view, that matter is not 02:18:49.120 --> 02:18:54.640 necessarily real, it's the soul, it's the spiritual that truly matters. 02:18:54.880 --> 02:18:58.560 And of course, his exegesis of the Old Testament versus the New 02:18:58.640 --> 02:19:01.360 Testament is also wrong. 02:19:01.360 --> 02:19:02.480 Immortality 02:19:03.760 --> 02:19:07.200 is has always been a part of the Christian religion. 02:19:07.200 --> 02:19:12.160 It is a part of scripture from the beginning to the end. 02:19:12.160 --> 02:19:15.840 And we went over this in commenting on some of the earlier 02:19:15.840 --> 02:19:18.160 quotes, so won't go into depth here. 02:19:19.040 --> 02:19:19.200 I 02:19:19.200 --> 02:19:21.680 think what all this boils down to is that this man just 02:19:21.680 --> 02:19:24.640 continuously denied every tenet of the Christian faith. 02:19:24.640 --> 02:19:27.760 He had every opportunity, every time he had an opportunity to write 02:19:27.760 --> 02:19:33.280 a paper for school, for seminary in his PhD program, every time 02:19:33.280 --> 02:19:37.600 he interacted, he put down in writing things that were antithetical to 02:19:37.600 --> 02:19:39.440 scripture. And he was excited about it. 02:19:39.520 --> 02:19:42.080 He mentioned as we mentioned earlier on, when he moved on from 02:19:42.080 --> 02:19:46.400 Morehouse to Crozer, he was He was excited at the advancement. 02:19:46.400 --> 02:19:49.360 He was excited at the fact that enough of his faith had 02:19:49.360 --> 02:19:52.960 been destroyed at Morehouse that he was ready for the liberalism of 02:19:52.960 --> 02:19:57.040 Krozer. And these were both Baptist institutions in the 50s. 02:19:57.040 --> 02:20:00.400 I'm not picking on Baptist, but like there's no possibility for someone 02:20:00.400 --> 02:20:02.720 to have come out of those places and been a Christian. 02:20:02.720 --> 02:20:03.680 Simply none. 02:20:03.680 --> 02:20:06.240 No Christian could survive in that environment. 02:20:06.240 --> 02:20:11.040 It's just it's not a possibility. 02:20:11.040 --> 02:20:13.440 The quote that we're going to end on here is one that 02:20:13.440 --> 02:20:17.040 was from a paper that he plagiarized himself on, as he did 02:20:17.040 --> 02:20:17.840 many times. 02:20:17.840 --> 02:20:21.440 Uh he re he resubmitted the paper where he talked about paganism 02:20:21.520 --> 02:20:23.840 being a tributary to Christianity. 02:20:23.840 --> 02:20:26.880 And he added on a new paragraph at the very end when 02:20:26.880 --> 02:20:30.320 he resubmitted the same paper in another school that I think really 02:20:30.480 --> 02:20:34.880 summarizes the entire arc of everything from where he was t then 02:20:35.280 --> 02:20:38.800 and where those beliefs are today in the modern world. 02:20:39.520 --> 02:20:44.640 King concludes Christianity, however, survived because it appeared to be the result 02:20:44.640 --> 02:20:47.440 of a trend in the social order or in the historical cycle 02:20:47.440 --> 02:20:49.120 of the human race. 02:20:49.120 --> 02:20:52.240 Forces have been known to delay trends, but very few have ever 02:20:52.240 --> 02:20:53.120 stopped them. 02:20:53.120 --> 02:20:56.960 The staggering question that now arises is what will be the next 02:20:56.960 --> 02:20:59.200 stage of man's religious progress? 02:20:59.200 --> 02:21:03.520 Is Christianity the crowning achievement in the development of religious thought? 02:21:03.520 --> 02:21:06.800 Or will there be another religion more advanced? 02:21:07.040 --> 02:21:08.080 That's it. 02:21:08.560 --> 02:21:10.720 That's what we're talking about here. 02:21:10.720 --> 02:21:12.960 He's n he was never a Christian. 02:21:12.960 --> 02:21:17.840 He was never looking at Christianity as anything other than a skin 02:21:17.840 --> 02:21:22.400 suit that he could wear his entire career as a stepping stone 02:21:22.400 --> 02:21:25.440 to a new, more advanced religion. 02:21:25.440 --> 02:21:29.520 If you're familiar with Revelation, you know how that ends up. 02:21:29.520 --> 02:21:31.920 We're talking about eschatology here. 02:21:31.920 --> 02:21:34.000 There will be a new religion in the end. 02:21:34.000 --> 02:21:35.520 It will be a world religion. 02:21:35.520 --> 02:21:38.400 And for all intents and purposes, it seems as though the whole 02:21:38.400 --> 02:21:40.560 world is headed that way. 02:21:40.560 --> 02:21:45.440 We have every major modern church body, including our own, abandoning the 02:21:45.440 --> 02:21:46.800 faith before our eyes. 02:21:46.800 --> 02:21:48.560 And everyone's going along with it. 02:21:48.560 --> 02:21:50.720 Why? Because they're doing it in the name of Jesus. 02:21:50.720 --> 02:21:53.440 They're saying this is for love, this is for God, this is 02:21:53.440 --> 02:21:56.560 for Jesus, we gotta do it, this is the direction we're going. 02:21:56.560 --> 02:21:59.280 You're not Christian if you don't follow us. 02:21:59.280 --> 02:22:04.080 And their religion is identical to the world religion. 02:22:04.080 --> 02:22:07.600 I omitted all the things that he said in his preaching, in 02:22:07.600 --> 02:22:13.600 his teaching, that was directly related to anti-racism, anti-white supremacy. 02:22:13.600 --> 02:22:17.040 His views in the 50s were identical to the views of our 02:22:17.040 --> 02:22:18.400 churches today. 02:22:18.400 --> 02:22:22.400 And And that's the reason that we have professors and pastors quoting 02:22:22.400 --> 02:22:24.080 this damned heretic. 02:22:24.080 --> 02:22:26.400 It wasn't that he was a good Christian, is that they have 02:22:26.400 --> 02:22:28.480 adopted the same religion as this man. 02:22:28.480 --> 02:22:31.040 And so of course they have to be on the same page, 02:22:31.040 --> 02:22:34.960 because this new world religion that he describes here, that is the 02:22:34.960 --> 02:22:41.680 culmination of the development through Christianity into a final world religion, that's 02:22:41.680 --> 02:22:43.200 what we're seeing today. 02:22:43.200 --> 02:22:49.440 We're seeing CNN and the Pope and Swami's and Matt Harrison and 02:22:49.440 --> 02:22:50.480 you picket. 02:22:50.480 --> 02:22:53.600 Anywhere you look, any direction you look, you're seeing men on the 02:22:53.600 --> 02:22:55.680 same page morally. 02:22:55.680 --> 02:22:59.680 That would be a wonderful thing if they were in obedience to 02:22:59.680 --> 02:23:03.920 Christ, but we know for absolute certainty it is the exact opposite. 02:23:03.920 --> 02:23:06.240 These men are all in rebellion against God. 02:23:06.240 --> 02:23:09.520 Michael King was in a rebellion against God every day of his 02:23:09.520 --> 02:23:12.560 ministry, every day of his college career, whether or not it was 02:23:12.640 --> 02:23:16.000 every day of his living life, at this point it doesn't matter, 02:23:16.000 --> 02:23:19.520 because his fruits are absolutely evil, his teachings were evil, the men 02:23:19.520 --> 02:23:21.200 who follow him are evil. 02:23:21.200 --> 02:23:23.520 There's no other possible conclusion. 02:23:23.680 --> 02:23:25.360 As I said, this is part one. 02:23:25.360 --> 02:23:26.800 This is already gone very long. 02:23:26.800 --> 02:23:29.440 Next week we're gonna do one that just talks about the secular 02:23:29.440 --> 02:23:30.000 side of this. 02:23:30.000 --> 02:23:31.680 What were his political activities? 02:23:31.680 --> 02:23:35.200 How did he take this new religion's advanced morality? 02:23:35.200 --> 02:23:37.440 And what did he do with it in the world? 02:23:37.440 --> 02:23:40.400 Because that is the aftermath we're living in today. 02:23:40.400 --> 02:23:41.360 He died. 02:23:41.360 --> 02:23:43.920 He was a martyr for his religion. 02:23:43.920 --> 02:23:48.480 But what has come in the aftermath of that is a culmination 02:23:48.480 --> 02:23:49.600 of his efforts. 02:23:49.600 --> 02:23:51.760 The men who say that are telling the truth. 02:23:51.760 --> 02:23:55.520 We are living in the culmination of Michael King's work in his 02:23:55.520 --> 02:23:59.360 life. Unfortunately, he served Satan his entire life, and the culmination of 02:23:59.360 --> 02:24:01.600 that work is itself satanic and evil. 02:24:01.600 --> 02:24:05.040 And the world you see today online and on TV and when 02:24:05.040 --> 02:24:07.680 you go down the street and you see parades and you see 02:24:07.680 --> 02:24:11.680 disgusting debauchery everywhere, that is the culmination of his dream. 02:24:11.680 --> 02:24:13.600 That is what we have today. 02:24:13.680 --> 02:24:18.000 Let's contrast his words about a supposed or potential 02:24:18.960 --> 02:24:25.680 and in our experience actual new religion with what scripture says from 02:24:25.840 --> 02:24:30.720 Revelation. I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of 02:24:30.720 --> 02:24:31.600 this book. 02:24:31.600 --> 02:24:35.120 If anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues 02:24:35.120 --> 02:24:36.880 described in this book. 02:24:36.880 --> 02:24:39.680 And if any one takes away from the words of the prophecy 02:24:39.680 --> 02:24:43.120 of this book, God will take away his share in the tree 02:24:43.120 --> 02:24:47.120 of life and in the holy city, which are described in this 02:24:47.120 --> 02:24:54.400 book. After going over so much 02:24:54.400 --> 02:24:58.400 terrible theology in this episode, I think it would be good if 02:24:58.400 --> 02:25:02.720 we end with actual Christian doctrine. 02:25:02.720 --> 02:25:05.840 And so earlier I said I was not going to go through 02:25:05.840 --> 02:25:07.440 the words of the Apostles' Creed 02:25:08.320 --> 02:25:11.280 then but I am going to go through them now and so 02:25:11.280 --> 02:25:14.640 we will close out with the Apostles Creed. 02:25:14.640 --> 02:25:18.160 I do actually recommend that you say it along with me if 02:25:18.160 --> 02:25:24.800 you have it memorized, and you most certainly should have it memorized. 02:25:24.800 --> 02:25:29.200 I believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, 02:25:29.200 --> 02:25:32.640 and in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord, conceived by the 02:25:32.640 --> 02:25:37.920 Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was 02:25:37.920 --> 02:25:42.560 crucified, died, and was buried, he descended into hell, the third day 02:25:42.640 --> 02:25:46.320 he rose again from the dead, he ascended into heaven, and sits 02:25:46.320 --> 02:25:50.080 at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, from thence he 02:25:50.080 --> 02:25:52.560 will come to judge the living and the dead. 02:25:52.560 --> 02:25:57.040 I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Christian Church, the communion 02:25:57.040 --> 02:26:01.600 of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and 02:26:01.600 --> 02:26:03.840 the life everlasting. 02:26:03.840 --> 02:26:11.600 Amen.