DR. JAMES WHITE & JIM HUNTER: Scriptural Truth and Kingdom Wealth at Fight, Laugh, Feast

Hello, my name is Will Spencer and welcome to the Will Spencer Podcast. This is a weekly show featuring in depth conversations with authors, leaders and influencers who help us understand our changing world. New episodes release every Friday. This is episode two of my three part series from my podcast booth at the Fight Laugh Feast Conference in late October. If you haven't listened to my first episode with Isaac Botkin and Logan Reiser, definitely go do that now.

Those two men kicked off my weekend at the conference in style, talking about the impact of faith on both commerce and art. Those interviews will set the stage for you for how things generally go out there at flf. Today's episode brings together two journeys, one from the heights of secular finance to Christian precious metals trading, and another a distinguished career in Reformed apologetics, which he's now taken on the road, literally.

For my regular listeners, one of these two guests won't need an introduction, so we'll save that particular guest for after so first up, we have Jim Hunter from Alps Precious Metals. Jim and I were talking privately in a sort of green room for sponsors and speakers, and he had an intriguing story of his awakening to the corruption of the financial industry after a career in high finance.

Since then he's transitioned to running Alps Precious Metals Group, which offers physical precious metals trading and storage in the United States and Europe, among many other services. Jim is one of those rare believers who has put his lifetime of experience in an important industry to bear for the benefit of fellow Christians. That is a trend that I'm thrilled to see.

Professionals of all stripes like doctors, lawyers, software engineers and more are leaving their mainstream professional worlds to serve their brothers and sisters in Christ, putting their knowledge and experience into service for the Kingdom. Jim is doing just that from a place of scriptural awareness and faithfulness, which I think you'll hear, and perhaps that's why he also appeared on Cross Politic as well. You can find that link in the show notes then.

The second guest on this episode is none other than Dr. James White, the legendary apologist, author and debater who has conducted close to 200 moderated public debates with Roman Catholics, Muslims, Mormons, the LGBTQ community, and more. As it turns out, Dr. White has also been my most requested guest on this podcast.

And not just by y'all, but also me, because early in my exploration of Reformed theology, It was his 1990s debates with men like Jerry Matatics that helped me determine for myself that Reformed theology was the place to be. In our wide ranging hour long conversation, Dr. White and I explore his new RV lifestyle.

We dive into the latest biblical criticism tools as we try to make our way into a discussion of the resurgent Roman Catholic Church, though that last topic will have to wait for a future episode. Along the way we get a surprise visit from Keith Foske, host of the popular your Calvinist podcast. Keith ducked in to share the story of how he and Dr. White met, and it's one of those moments that I wish I had caught on camera so you could see the face he makes, but you'll just have to imagine it.

Thanks especially to Dr. White for sitting with me for an hour. A man like him at an event like that, his time is very valuable. I was blessed for the chance to meet and talk face to face with a man that I esteem highly and I hope our conversation blesses you as well. Again, this is episode two of a three part series.

The third and final episode next week will feature a discussion of Christianity and film with Parker Brown of the Watchwell podcast, plus interviews with the father and son duo of Andrew and Samuel Bornman. Andrew is a missionary farmer with wild stories of his work with a native tribe in Mexico, and his son Samuel is the author of a young adult novel about Christianity and transhumanism. That was one of my most memorable conversations of the conference.

Now friends, we're not just recording conversations here. We're part of a restoration project for Christian civilization in the west, and I need you in this fight with me. There are a couple ways that you can join this mission. First, when you stop by Spotify or Apple Podcasts, take a moment to write a review about how these conversations impacted you. Your words might be exactly what someone else needs to hear to give this show their first listen.

And you know those conversations that hit you right between the eyes? The ones that shifted your thinking? Share those. Not because I'm chasing download numbers, but because we're in a war for the soul of our culture. And these conversations are ammunition for the right side. For those ready to go deeper with us, head over to willspencerpaw.substack.com and become a paid subscriber. You'll get access to ad free interviews and exclusive content.

But here's what really matters when you see our sponsors names, remember, they're not just businesses, they're allies building Christian economic strength for generations to come. Supporting them isn't just opening your wallet, it's investing in an American Reformation. Because this isn't just about entertainment anymore. This is economic warfare in service of the kingdom.

And please welcome our guests for this week's episode first up, a man who traded Wall street wisdom for kingdom wealth building, Jim Hunter. And sitting down with us for a full 60 minutes, a voice that shaped reformed thinking for a generation. You know him from the debate stage, the pulpit, and probably your own Theological Journey, Dr. James White. Jim, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast Connect Talk. Yesterday, briefly about gold.

I had to run to go on my own podcast with Reformation Red Pill. But tell the people a little bit about what you do and the blessings that you share with the Christian community. Sure. I am in the physical gold and silver trading and vaulting business.

Okay. Our company is based in Pensacola, Florida, but I have partners, two partners in the United States, one actually in your hometown, Phoenix, Scottsdale Monetary Metals, which is a. That partner focuses on getting return on gold and return on silver. One of the biggest pushbacks for physical gold and silver is like, well, gee, I just put it in my house and I don't get any cash flow from it. Sure. But monetary metals is essentially, they have not made a new mousetrap.

It's just going back to the way things were. Sure. 100 plus years ago it was standard operating procedure. You have gold bonds, gold leases, and that's all they've done is brought that back. Typically the borrowers are a small gold mine that needs to build a small refinery outside the mouth of the mine. Jewelers, gold dealers, etc. Firms that need to lease gold and they like to stay away from banks because banks will handcuff them from what they like to do.

Okay. My other partner in the United States is Texas Precious Metals, based in Shiner, Texas, which we're here in Fort Worth. It's about three, four hours to the southeast of here. Okay. Christian family from top to bottom. The original patriarch of the Casper K A S P A R family was a Lutheran missionary to the prairie land of Texas in the late 19th century. Okay. Now, he did nothing but preach the gospel in open Lutheran churches.

But his son got in the wire business right when barbed wire came in. Okay. And his wire business eventually evolved into the shopping cart. Okay. And then after that, many of your listeners may not know of these things, but not that long ago, when newspapers were ubiquitous, to buy one on the street, there was a kind of a wire ish canister that you would open, put in a quarter or two quarters and open all of the wire. And all of those boxes all over the world came from Casper.

That's a good business. So needless to say, they've become a very, very, very wealthy family. Sure. And then after the 0809 crisis, the family was like, we need to figure something out. That evolved into Texas Precious Metals. Okay. And they're one of the largest private dealers in the country and certainly one of the largest private vaults in the country. And that's the whole key to what we bring to the table is the ability for Christian families and especially will the churches.

I've been on sessions, vestries, et cetera. When most church sessions are thinking we're going to be conservative. That translates into I'm going to put a CD in a bank, buy treasury bills, et cetera. But normally it's CDs in a bank. Those CDs after the Dodd Frank law has come into existence are not sacrosanct and they would be in jeopardy if we do 0809 again. Yeah. Without getting way into the weeds, it's simply title two of the Dodd Frank law.

If anybody pulls that up, they'll be shocked at how the corporate structure has changed. If you get into another insolvency bankruptcy of the Wall Street. Got it. So that's how we add value, by converting dollars to physical gold. We're not asking people to light their hair on fire and turn go 100% gold. Sure. But we are saying what gold does is it rallies in chaos. Best vignette and I can give you others.

But on September 11, 2001, when the planes hit the towers in the gold was traded at $275 an ounce. 23 years later and we have essentially 10x gold over that period of time. That blows away the S and P 500. That blows away. Now, are there certain. Did it beat bitcoin? Well, no. There are certain things that come along, but if we look on market averages, there's no comparison. Absolutely. So the question simply at this stage of the game is simply, well, gee, should I get into gold now?

Because we're at a nominal high. Right. It really comes down to the question of chaos. Do if we saw the chaos going forward should be less then you would tend to want to get out of gold and go back into risk. Right. More riskier ventures. Or if I could trust the banking system. I think neither one of those are true. If I end up being wrong, let's say either not wealthy family or a wealthy family took a 10% position in gold or a church 10% position ago.

If I end up being wrong and the chaos goes down and everything's great and the stock market keeps going higher, well, okay, you bought some gold and went down, but it's going to be More than made up for in terms of what you're rallying. But if I'm right and the chaos continues, if a 10% position over 20 years protected your entire portfolio. Because it's up 10x. Right? Right. 10% up 10x. I covered the whole thing, even if it all went to zero. Yep. That's where we're coming from.

That's where we think we have money. So we were talking, you and I, yesterday. Hello, ma'am. You and I were talking yesterday about some of your background in high finance and the things that you saw. You're like, talk a little bit about that because you've had a unique window into a particularly corrupt part of society that impacts everybody. But not a lot of people come out of that world and say, hey, it's a mess in there. Right. So if you could talk a little bit about that.

Sure. Started in the institutional fixed income business, which means the bond. The bond world. The book. The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolf. Yes. 80S. Yeah, that's. That's what. Where I was, okay, I worked for Merrill lynch and I worked for Lehman Brothers over about a 15 year period. And then in 03, excuse me, 05, I started a structured credit hedge fund with a partner of mine in a little town called Fairhope, Alabama. I was born and raised in Alabama.

My partner was on the very first credit default swap desk for CIBC in New York. Oh, wow. He had moved back to Pharaoh, as I did, to kind of get out of that game. Credit default swaps were bad. They were great until they got levered. Oh, okay. The concept of credit default swap is fine. What is not fine is when you lever that credit default swap over multiple times, whether it's a credit default swap or filling the blank futures contracts, et cetera.

Once you start levering those because you've got free money from the central banking system, that's where you get into trouble. Got it. Okay. So the. So the film, the big short. Yes. Even a better one is Margin Call. Have you ever seen Margin Call? I've heard of both of those. Margin Call is. Having been in some of those rooms, Margin Call absolutely nails it. Okay. And it gives you a great picture of, in a very condensed two hour film of what happened in 08. Okay. But we were.

We were a small structured credit hedge fund. We were short investment grade credit risk. And when the credit world fell apart, our fund did very well. Okay. The problem was, is the denouement of that. One of the ways we competed with Wall street was we said to our Accounts, we will give you three day liquidity. We will not have any trap doors or gates or all a lot of the nonsense that happened with the hedge funds during that period of time.

Well, as a result, we did what we said we were going to do. And we went from 35 million in assets under management to 2. Well, because we were a source of liquidity, that was the right thing to do. And a lot of our accounts were like, you're the only guys that will give us liquidity. You're the only ones that have done the right thing. So we did the right thing. Long story short, the. Our swap counterparties were some of the investment banks on Wall Street.

They were having trouble paying us, even though we were a little bitty nothing in fourth quarter of 08. Fast forward the clock. Nine months. Same guy, totally different attitude. In the summer of what would have been 2009, we went from where we were helping them to, oh, y'all aren't big enough. Y'all don't get to play anymore. And we were sitting there saying, this is rich. These guys should be out of business. We shouldn't even be talking to this guy. And yet we're being told that we can't.

We're too small to do this trade. Now, that was sort of a. I mean, I'd already worked on Wall street, but this was kind of the crowning event. Right. And I had. You were just invited out of a room that you had just helped a lot of folks out in? Yeah, yeah. Just surreal. Yeah. Were we cool, like five minutes ago? So did some independent stuff. And eventually there was a family office that was one of our clients in the structured credit hedge fund.

And they were contemplating building a vault in the Northern hemisphere. But the patriarch of the family hired me to go do the due diligence. So I went to Europe, talked to Lloyds of London, talked to Julius Baer, one of the big bank gold dealers in Zurich, but ended up meeting a company that was brand new called Liechtenstein Precious Metals. Tiny little country of Lincoln's time, okay? Two families, two families took their own capital, built this thing from scratch.

Their own capital, own, building, own. Insured by Lloyds of London. So you are able to store and trade your gold and silver not dealing with a bank, not dealing with the government, and not dealing with a brokerage company. This was the answer. So I started my little company in Pensacola because these guys in Europe were like, sure, we'd love to have a partner in the United States and help us, you know, build out our clientele. We are eight years old. We're over eight years old now.

And over that time, how the Holy Spirit directs things, I mean, I've ended up talking to a lot of Americans that are like, okay, we love the concept, but we really don't want it offshore. We'd love it onshore. And through a series of events, that's how I met the guys in Shiner Texas. Okay. And thanks be to God, you know, only he could have directed me. Right. To a family that is some of the most robust Christians you're going to meet. Got it. And that's who your partner is.

So when the churches Christian individuals are thinking of, how do I. I'm not sure things are right. Right. What can I do? And that's where we step in. Okay. And so the people who partner with you, they're not some offshore gold company. This is here in Texas with a family of Christians. So that you can be assured that the people that you're partnering with share your values. Correct. That's not some fly by night, some sort of. Okay, great. I mean, what a blessing for families.

You've probably seen it touch a lot, a lot of lives that way. Absolutely. Yeah. So what has it been like for you to go through that? I guess maybe personal or even spiritual evolution to have been within the high finance world and to be putting your foundation on gold and on faith? Like, what has that been like for you personally? Sure, it's. Well, it's, it's been just. I spent a lot of time. So starting, as I said, Starting in 1989, I had a hedge fund that was great because I was at.

My partner was Christian. So what we were doing, doing in our office was outstanding and blessed by God. But it's who you're dealing with in this situation. Now, I'm coming from the position of, well, we are. We are the bank. We are quote, unquote, the bank, but we are the direct partner and without counterparties. This is. This, these families. If, if one of our listeners wanted to be offshore or is offshore, we can do that in Europe.

But most of your listeners are probably in the United States. I mean, this is. We don't have to talk to anybody else. This is going directly to the people that built it. And I'm dealing with a Christian brother. So it has been nothing but a gift from God. Praise God. Yes, I can see the enthusiasm.

That's the thing that comes across because I know a lot of people, they get themselves embedded in industries that are, we'll say, theologically diverse, whether they're Atheists or whether they're pagans or materialists or whatever. And so to some extent it's necessary as Christians to work with the outside world. We can't completely separate. But to be able to do things on our own terms is such a blessing.

And so I can tell the way you're nodding and the way when we were talking yesterday, it's like this was a big step that you needed to take in this world that you had come up in to something that can support you and offer blessings to more people. Right. And I had a conversation in our booth today and it's like, why did you do it? Or whatever. And it really comes down to the fact that I, as opposed to selling 25 million worth of a commercial mortgage backed security.

Yeah. That was issued by a government agency. Okay. Well I don't believe in the government agency. I do believe in helping my clients that wanted to buy those sort of bonds. But at the end of the day you're not. But I don't believe in this. Yeah. This is a totally different story. If Will Spencer and his family get involved, I. It is not only is it clear conscience, it's like I have truly added value. Yes, I may not see you again for a year, but I know, but I know that I added value to it.

And what's even more interesting now is that some of the, at least one bank, large bank, the cibc, Canadian Imperial bank of Commerce. And this, this is a real value add for a church, for a family. You can have your deposit with us in gold, in shiner. But CIBC is going to treat that deposit as if you had the deposit with them in their bank. Meaning you can have the full suite of financial services if you want them.

You need a home equity loan, you need a line of credit, you need a building loan, you need a whatever, they're going to give it to you. But they never get the deposit. And that's the key of what we were talking about earlier relative to the Dodd Frank law. The Dodd Frank law is going to allow what is essentially a claw in of the defunct bank to go after the deposits of their depositors. It is a, it's terrible. It's not very good. Oh no, it's really. How does it feel like that get passed?

Because a lot of times congressmen don't even know what they're doing. They don't understand, they don't understand capital structure. If you go back to Cyprus in 2013 and look at the meltdown of those two banks over there, this is exactly the model that's being used, I see by the ecb, by the Fed and the US Government. It's terrible, but it's true. Got it. Now is it a tail risk event? Yeah, it's a tail risk event. But if it. But so is 0809. So was the Great Depression. So you got it.

For this not to be a material risk, you have to say, I don't believe that's ever going to happen again. Dangerous bet. I don't think that's wise. Right, so you're being wise as a serpent is innocent as a dove. And you're. And again, think of it this way, you're coming with, not lighting your hair on fire, not going 100% gold. 10, 15, 20, some number. Yeah. But now you've got the deposit where you're in the position of strength.

Not the bank, they don't have your deposit, they can't muck you around with it. Right. They can't 90% lend it out and keep 10% for you. Right? Yeah. This is all you. And you face this now. You're facing the system in a position of strength. Got it. You can do the same thing with IRAs. Now, IRAs, you still have the government claw on them, right? Because of the fact that it's a tax free instrument, et cetera. But at least you're in physical gold and silver. Got it.

So there are lots of different ways where a family, a church, a corporation that has God's given them assets. You do not have to be beholden to a system which is sadly one that needs to be bulldozed and start over again. It does. You know, if, if, if the system was a true capitalist system, JP Morgan wouldn't exist. Neither would Goldman Sachs, neither would Citibank, neither would bank of America, neither would Morgan Stanley. That's right. All five of those guys were functionally insolvent.

What should have happened is they should have been sold for pennies on the dollar. And there were plenty of other institutions around the country that didn't have their exposure. Right? But we didn't do the way we should have. And so we've got guys flying around in airplanes that are very important, quote, unquote, and they shouldn't be in the airplanes. The malfeasance, the mismanagement, the incompetence, the corruption. And this is, it's, it's not just rewarded, it's just sustained.

And you have smaller players that can't even. How can you compete in an environment where corruption is rewarded and smaller players have to play by the rules. Right. It's completely upside down. Rules for thee and not for me. Correct, Correct. And everyone feels that. I think they can feel the sense of like wait a minute. So I try to be a good person, I play by the rules financially, pay my taxes on time, etc, etc. Right. And like I now there's what, 70,000 additional IRS agents chasing after.

They're chasing. There was some law passed. They're chasing after, what is it? Non realized gains. Something like that. Oh, which is. You want to kill the. You want to kill American. I mean that's the dumbest thing that ever came down the. Yeah, it should be criminal. And you look at the top of that, you see corruption being rewarded at the highest levels. It's hard not to get discouraged in that environment. But if we're wise as serpents and as doves, we'll go, okay, there's the playing field.

How can I maneuver around that player playing field? The one way, one of the, one of the ways to do it is get to a position of strength and keep in mind if I, you know, will you and I probably discussed five or six, you know, different reasons rationale for why you want to be long. Go. Yeah, forget them all and remember the one, the one crowning argument. What is the number one physical or tangible asset outside of the real estate of every government in the world? It's physical. Physical gold.

88,133 tons is the size of the US government Federal Reserve position. That's value right now is 700 billion. Okay. It's their fail safe. Right. What if I don't let the futures market fool around with gold anymore because I've run out of options and I just let gold fly. Well, gee whiz, if I move the decimal one to the right and gold's not 3000 or 2900 ounces, 29,000 ounce. I went from an asset of 700 trillion to 700 billion to 7 trillion.

Yeah. Let it move twice and now I don't got a debt problem. That's right. I'm just saying I just want to be on the same side of the trade as those guys are. That's a good point. It's very compelling. Well, thank you so much, Jim. This has been great. Where can people find out more about you and the business that you're running? Sure. There's a lot of people here to talk to as well. For you as well. Absolutely. Preach this gospel. This has been a great.

It's the second year we've been at Fight Laugh, Feast. It's great to be with brothers and sisters in Christ, period. And then to tell the story. And so it's on the web. It's www.alps.pmg. so a L P S P M G dot com. Yep. And my phone number is easy too. 251-377-2197. Okay. And I will text back or call back or whatever it is, but that's, that's the best way to get in touch with. All right. Fantastic, sir. I hope a lot of people get in touch cuz I think people will hear what you just had to say.

We want to be in that pot. Yes, sir. Thank you, Will. You're very kind. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Pastor James White, thanks for joining me on the podcast today. Good. Good to be here. Even though we're not in Arizona, we're in today rainy, rainy Texas. So, okay, about that. You're glad you're not flying anymore. So RV life is suiting you. I listen to the dividing line. You talk about the troubles of RV.

Life and the challenges that you look, you're dragging a house down interstates that are not always overly well maintained. Texas does a fairly decent job. New Mexico, not so much. Louisiana doesn't even try. Alabama does a great job, interestingly enough. It's very interesting how different each one is. But look, that poor little house experiences like 20 earthquakes a day. What would your house look like if it had 20 earthquakes a day? Probably not. Well, so, yeah, you've got to repair stuff.

You've got to tighten up screws and stuff breaks, and that's the way it is. But it's my bed, my pillow, my clothes, my shower, my food, my refrigerator, and my portable webcasting studio with two 4K cameras, Atem and Starlink and 5G and everything else in the back. So, yeah, it's been a learning curve. But when you all are banned from flying because you won't stick poisonous stuff in your bodies, you're all going to be coming to me going, okay, how do we do this?

And I'm going to start my own webcast on how to attach sewer hoses without getting all sorts of stuff all over your hands. And yeah, there's little things you learn. Yeah, definitely. Well, I've been traveling, I've been on the road this week. And I can understand and definitely empathize with the desire to have my own bed instead of an Airbnb bed or something like that.

I tell you, at my age, that's a game changer because I have arthritis, kidney issues, heart issues, all Sorts of stuff like that. So having regularity is very, very important and not having to deal with TSA is a great blessing. Yes. Yeah. I took a bus, actually. I flew into Houston to visit a friend and then took a luxury bus down here from Houston to Dallas. And that was so much nicer.

It was a little bit more expensive than a flight, but I didn't have to worry about TSA or security or all of that whole dance. Just get on the bus and work for four hours. But I did the same drive from Spring, which is just north of Houston, up here on Wednesday, and it was my worst heart day of the year. I drove four hours in supraventricular tachycardia. Oh. So my heart was in a completely unusual rhythm over twice normal speed all the way. Driving from just north of Houston up here to Dallas.

Okay. That wasn't fun. No, that doesn't sound fun. Didn't make it a fun trip. So, yeah, there are some things like that. But most of the time, you know, as I nod off, what I really love is when it rains because the sound of the rain on the roof of an RV and a little bit of rocking back and forth, a little bit of wind. Man, talk about knocking you out. It's. It's awesome. You're selling me on RV life.

Well, depends on what happens in the election as to whether there's going to be an RV industry in the future because really. Well, think about it. Oh, environmental standards. Not only environmental stuff, but it's the fossil fuels. You can't pull an RV with an electric vehicle. No, you can't do much of anything. I have a 6.1.6 liter turbo diesel with a 10 speed Allison transmission pulling that sucker. So, yeah, we'll see what happens in the future. We'll see what happens in the future.

I've said, and I feel selfish saying this, but I've selfishly said I hope for a certain outcome in the election, not just for my grandchildren and my great grandchildren, but so I can get another at least four years worth of traveling in. Okay. Because if Trump wins, this will probably air after all that, I would imagine. I don't know. Yeah, most likely, you know, if Trump wins, I assume I'll get another four years where I'll be able to afford. Afford fuel and travel around if he doesn't.

I don't have any guarantees of that. That's true. So is that selfish? Yeah, I suppose. But I really enjoy doing what I'm doing. I get into so many smaller churches. Sure. You know when you. When you do the flying routine, you know, people have to come see you when I'm driving, you know, like on Sunday, I'm going to speak at a little missions church for a friend of mine about 50 miles from here. I don't get.

You don't get the chance to do that because, see, mine's called a fifth wheel, so I can detach from it. And now I've got a truck to go wherever I need to go. Okay. So I'll be driving down to. I think it's called Granbury or something here in Texas. Old friend that. He and I went to seminary together. I mean, we've been friends for many, many, many years. And I don't get to do that if I'm flying. You know, I have to be renting vehicles and doing all sorts of stuff like that.

And rental car stuff was so much fun, too. Oh, no, it's a blast. Those lines. Those lines at the airport to get a rental vehicle, and then you get into it and you can't find anything. You don't know where the turn signals are. Oh, it's. Believe me, I did it for years and years and years. So anyways, no one cares about my. Well, I'll take that back. Somebody might be going, you know, that might be how I need to do things in the future. So maybe that'll be helpful to them.

But they're more important things to talk about. Well, I like the idea, just quickly, I like the idea that you're able to stop into these small churches along the way that you otherwise wouldn't be able to visit. You're coming up on 200 public debates now, right? You know what's horrible is I did a debate a week ago today, and I don't know how I'm gonna go back and fix this, but I have forgotten which debate it was. It was either one.

It was either 194 or 195, and I'm not exactly certain which one. And I just feel like my memory is going. I can't keep track of stuff like that. But, yeah, that is another way that you can get to do debates in certain areas, like I'm supposed to. I've been really struggling to schedule things 2025, because I just didn't know what the nation's state is going to be. And so I have scheduled a King James only debate in Louisiana, I think, in April.

And so on the way, we have a email address, roadtripomn.org and if a church wants to have me in sort of Informally, in the sense. Sure. I'm gonna be driving by. I'm gonna be staying near you. It might be a Tuesday night. I'm not gonna be wearing a suit and tie. Maybe we'll just do something with the elders or something like that. Whatever they send in that contact information, I have this whole map with pins all over the United States. Amazing.

Of churches that have said, hey, whatever day it is, just let us know. We'll work something out. And so if I. Honestly, if I wanted to be doing something almost every night while traveling, I could. I can't do that. Right. I'd be exhausted. But it has been so neat because Alpha Mega has been going for over 41 years now, praise God. And we've had a lot of impact over the years. And now I get to meet a lot of those people in these little churches. I stopped at a little.

I spoke at a little church in Montana, and I'm talking little church, no air conditioning. Okay. Yeah. And this woman comes up to me after I speak. I'm soaked in sweat because they're having a heat wave. There's no air conditioning. There's just fans. And I'm sitting on the front row with this lady, and she says, you need to understand. My son told me that I need to come hear you speak. I didn't know who you were, but my son told me he's in South America. I think he was.

No, no, he's in the South Pacific. He had joined, like, a cruise line. He had gotten on a ship. Yeah. And then he jumped ship. And he was just out there living the life in the South Pacific and somehow ran across Jeff Durbin and I on YouTube and was converted in the South Pacific, praise God. And so he's talking to his mom, and his mom tells him, hey, I've heard this church. This guy named James White's guy. You've got to go see him. And tells him the whole story.

So here I am in Montana talking to the mom of a guy that was converted through Jeff and I's ministry in South Pacific. How does that even happen? And that's. And she'd never get to go to, like, G3 or something big like this to sit around and tell me this stuff. Right. So, yeah, I'm enjoying it. So this experience, you meet all these people that you get to see firsthand the impact of your 40 years of ministry. 40 years. And sometimes it was a long, long, long time ago.

I mean, sure, the things that the Lord has done was stuff that we did back when we had nothing and it could be very discouraging. I mean, you know, my wife had to work full time. Sure. Until just recently. That's the only way that she and I had health insurance. Yeah. All those years was that she was. She worked in the airline industry. She didn't fly, but she worked in reservation. She worked in luggage. When she went to work in luggage. I have to admit, that was sort of cool. Why is that?

Because you lose your luggage. But I knew who to call. Oh, got it. I just called the wife, and she has access to. There's this computerized thing that all the airlines use. And she's like, I'm on it, you know, and she'll call me back to me. Okay, it'll be delivered such and such and such place. And she first started doing that, she was so excited to get to do it. And then she took a flight, and she calls me and says, well, my luggage is missing. I said, well, do you know what to do?

No. No sympathy out of me. You seem to enjoy when mine gets lost. So, yeah, it was. It was. It was sort of fun to have that kind of connection. So, anyway, I'm sorry. No, I'm babbling on. No, that's okay. Like, so we're talking about the. The opportunity to meet the people that you've impacted over your 40 years of ministry. And I know that the Apologia channel has over 500,000 subscribers.

There are people, possibly likely hundreds or even thousands of people watching one of those videos right now. Yeah, that's true. Sort of. It's sort of difficult to imagine, to comprehend that, you know, 6, 7, 8 billion, 8 billion people on the planet. Yeah. And then around the world. What. What is happening with your words right now? When I. When I. When I first visited South Africa, which I visited many times, I miss those folks down there. There's great, great Christians down there.

Hard to get an RV down there. Very, very hard to drive there. That nation's in trouble. It's really struggling. But when I first visited, I went to Pachasroom, South Africa, and I just. I think, just did a debate with a Muslim there. And this homeschool family comes up to me, and the dad's talking about, you know, how long they've been listening. The dividing line. I'm on the other side of the planet. I mean, you don't get much more on the other side of the planet than Pachas. From South Africa.

Yeah. Actually from Phoenix, Arizona. And there's this teenage daughter standing there. And you know how teenage daughters are with this really deadpan look, she looks at me and she goes, I've grown up listening to your voice. I'm on the other side of the planet. You know, it's just like, wow, what a day we live in that we've had this type of opportunity. And that's one of the things that a lot of us are so worried about with censorship and stuff like that. Sure. Is to see that end.

Because it's been such a blessing, but had the time. Still trying to use the opportunity, feel a little bit more pressure to make it work right now because you realize, man, there are people that really want to shut that down. They don't want us to be able to have this type of freedom to. Talk about these topics. Yeah. To preach the gospel globally like this. I mean, censorship is a real, real AI and stuff like that. Gotta, gotta, gotta pray about what the future is gonna look like. So anyway.

Yeah, well, what's so interesting about that is for a long time, podcasts were a very difficult medium to censor because it's recorded audio. Right. But now there are all these AI companies that produce podcast transcripts. You have to pay for it still. It's not expensive. But I think there's going to be potentially a push to censor podcasts now that they've all been. Now that you have the transcript so easily produced, they can find what you're talking about. That's how YouTube does it.

They've been doing it for a while now. Yeah, it's. It's a little scary. It's neat to have that capacity and that ability, but, yeah, it's. It's a little bit scary. Nothing, Nothing. When we first started podcasting, we did it because we were so poor. I mean, we are pioneers. I don't know if anyone. The dividing line has been going for. Well, we went. We went Digital in, like 2000, 2001. There wasn't even MP3. We were using something called Real Audio. Yes, I remember.

Okay. I mean, that's how long ago it was. And the only reason we did it was not because we had some prophetic vision that this is where everything was going to go. The reason we did it is because we couldn't afford to pay the Saturday air rates on a local terrestrial radio station. Sure. And they had started doing Real Audio. And what we realized was because we were doing it, but it was. It was killing us. All of our calls were coming from people listening to the Real Audio stream. Amazing.

Okay. And so Rich is like, I'm gonna look into this. And he found out, you know, we can. We can do real audio ourselves. Yeah. And code it. The Internet had just started. You know, we had our website, I think our first website, in 90. 97. 98. Somewhere around there, Texas 387.net I think was the URL back then or something like that. And so Rich is like, I think we can do this. And we're not spending $700 a month for a radio station where obviously no one's listening to us on a Saturday anyways.

Right. So that's how the dividing line went digital. And we switched over to the MP3 stuff and stuff like that when it became available. But, yeah, that's why we started really early. And I'm looking right now at a guy standing over there who approached me almost two years ago now and said, hey, I want to help you guys make all of your dividing lines. Debates, sermons, church history lectures, everything you've done. Oh, yeah. Available to be fully searched.

I remember you announcing this in the past year. That's the guy right there standing about 30ft away that did it for us. And so it's an advantage. But at the same time, just imagine how different. Anything I've basically said for a quarter century is fully searchable to anybody who wants to find it. Sure, my friends use that, but my enemies do too, of course. But no generation had before ours had ever even dreamed of that kind of thing. It's frightening.

So what are my great grandchildren gonna be facing? I don't know. I don't know. It could be great. It could be. Because that can be used for good or evil. Sure. Of course it can be used for good or evil. And the other stuff that's going on now is like. Do you know the program Speechify? Yes, yes. It will read you PDF documents, web pages, whatever I can. I have recorded my voice model of your voice. The model of my voice.

Yeah. And it's amazing how easy it is for me to listen to a book in my own voice. A lot of people don't. I talk so much. Sure. It's just sort of second nature. And now that I'm so old, I'm wearing hearing aids, now I hear myself even more. But I can listen to my own voice. And I remember when someone posted something on Twitter, it was video of me and my mouse moving, but I'm saying things I've never heard me say before. Right. And it was the beginning of AI modeling of. Of voices.

Yeah. And I think. I think applying God's law is going to become more and more of an issue, because by the mouth of two or three witnesses. And it can't be a computer because the fact of the matter is you can do. You could take what we're recording right now, and if you have the proper software and knowledge, you could change what I'm saying. Of course, yeah. It's all of us. It can happen to every one of us. It could change the question you asked. It could change my answer.

And the video version is not far behind. Oh, it's already. It's already there. Well, I know we see it. I remember when I saw a movie called Alita Battle Angel. Have you ever seen that? I've heard of it. I haven't seen it. I was sitting in a pizza shop and I'm watching this and the sound wasn't up. And the lead character, I'm going, her eyes are way too big. Her eyes are. But she looks real.

I was really freaked out about it, and I went home and looked up what the movie was and watching it, I actually ended up loving the movie. But the point is, she's completely cgi, but looked so incredibly real that as they keep pushing that forward, we will not, as Christians, we will not be able to accept that kind of thing as witness, as testimony. Correct. Because it can be manufactured and there's no way for you to know. But people will get away with stuff. Exactly.

I have said this for years. Now. God's law will allow the guilty to get away because it's so concerned about convicting the innocent and the reason for that. And see, in our world, we have to have justice now because in the secular world, there will be no justice after death. Yes. But in the biblical world, we do the best we can with justice now. Yep. And if that means guilty people get away with stuff that they. Because look at. Look at the stuff in the Bible.

You know, if a rape takes place and it's out in the wilderness and no one can hear the woman crying, there's not enough witnesses to do anything about it. And you say, well, that's injust. But the point is, the biblical idea is they will be punished. That's right. There's a day of sin coming eternally. So, yeah, it's only temporary. And it's more important that you do not convict and execute an innocent person than it is. You catch all the bad guys. Because the bad guys are going to get caught.

Right. But the bad guys aren't going to get caught anymore. And that's why you have this MeToo stuff that took place. The stuff that happened with the Supreme Court guy, you know, well, yeah, okay. The statute of limitations expired 47 years ago. Right. But we're still going to go for it because if we don't, he might get away with something. Right. Because from their perspective, once you're dead, that's it. That's right.

And that's something a lot of Christians have not thought about that, you know, in Acts 17:31, God has ordained a day when he's going to judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has chosen. And he has given evidence to all by raising him from the dead. And this is. I know, we're going all over the place. I apologize. It's just fun. We're on a road trip. We're on a road trip. That's right. And there's all sorts of people walking around anyways. That's right.

For years and years and years, I read Paul's sermon on Mars Hill as an apologist, as a biblical scholar, the whole nine yards. And I had. Not until about 2021 did I actually hear what Acts 17:31 was saying. Because when I saw. And he has given evidence to all by raising him from the dead. I'm thinking he's given evidence of the resurrection. He's given evidence to everybody. Jesus is the Messiah, and I've proven it by raising him from the dead. That's not what it's saying at all.

What it's saying is he has given evidence to all that there will be a day of judgment and Jesus is going to be the judge. And I'm giving evidence of the day of judgment by raising the judge from the dead. It's not about the resurrection. It's about the reality of judgment coming. And that is something that impacted common law and thought in Western countries up until that which flushed it, which is Darwin. Okay, say. Say more about how Darwin specifically flushed that idea. You can.

Doug just talked about a little bit from the stage. Exactly. And I did. And I think. Not sure if it was last. I think it was the year before last, somewhere around there. I actually spoke up at New St. Andrews and I spoke on how Darwinism is central to the degradation of our society. And when you think about what Darwin did, up until Darwin, you just couldn't get rid of God because you have life. Yes. Once you have Darwin, you can get rid of God and therefore you get rid of judgment.

Yes. You get rid of that judgment day coming. You get rid of the transcendent meaning of human life. You get rid of everything that stopped racism. Darwin was a horrible racist. He was the original subtitle of the Origin of Species. Right, right, exactly, exactly. So that people don't realize what a radical shift that was. That's right.

You know, my grandkids struggle to even have any idea of how it was that my generation thought foundationally down at the bottom, maybe not even at the consciousness level. We still had so much of that Christian morality, day of Judgment idea down at the bottom. And now we're looking at generations that have none of that. That's right. And Chocolate Knox was just talking to me. You know, I said, in many ways, I feel a disconnection with the younger generation.

And I think that's part of what it is, is they haven't had that and I did. And it's almost subliminal. It's almost below the level of thought. It's presuppositional in essence. And so it's really hard to address that kind of stuff and to go, hey, this is where we're missing stuff. This is why we're not communicating the way. And I feel like I'm not able to communicate the wisdom that hopefully I've gathered over seven decades in life to the next generation.

Sure. Because they're not interpreting my words within that. Within that context. And I try and certainly succeed with some people, but other times it's beyond my capacity. I have to. Thankfully, I've got people like Jeff Durbin and others that are still a little bit younger. I'm 16 years older than Jeff and Luke loves to. I don't know if you ever heard Luke say when you were there that the reason I know so much about church history is because I was there. I've heard them say that. Yeah, yeah.

It's like, thanks, guys. Appreciate that. Appreciate that. One of my. One of my favorite things was the James and Jeff comedy hour when you guys would pick at each other from the pulpit. And the videos we did. That one video we did when they were having the online poll competition between Miss Me, the online poll. Did you get that? Yes. Okay, good. Because I. The first president I ever got to vote for was Ronald Reagan. So I'm proud of that. That's a great clip from him. Yeah, yeah, it was.

But. But that. That video that we did where, like, he was. He was doing the ninja thing and we were playing the little fold up football thing together. And. And that was a lot of fun to do. Yeah, that was a lot of fun to do. We had. We had a lot of fun doing Ask that stuff. I love those guys. You know, Luke and Zach don't get the Name recognition that Jeff and I do. But there's a. A real rough situation going on right now.

And I. I know Pastor Zach has basically lived this past week holding stuff together. I mean, just investing himself in such a difficult situation. And I just. I get to see that kind of stuff. A lot of other people don't, but the heart that especially, you know, Zach and Zach and Luke do a lot of stuff because Jeff and I are gone a lot. Sure. You know, Jeff, end abortion. Now me with. I'm the. I'm the quote unquote lay elder because I'm not full time with. Sure. I don't get paid by apologia.

I. Alpha Omega. But Jeff would say without Alpha and Omega, there would be no apologia. Right. He's said that many, many times. So we are sort of joined at the hip. But he has to travel so much. And I don't know if you're aware of the situation with his twin daughters. Now that he had adopted. Yeah. That, I mean, were landed on them like the stork flew overhead and just dropped them in. Yeah. Later. Late 20. About a year ago. 20. 23. Right. Yeah. And I mean, they have specialized special needs.

They were incredibly preemie drugs on the part of the parents. I mean, so he has to not only do the end abortion now stuff, but he's got Durbin Family 2.0. Yes, he does. Augustine's, I think not quite four yet. I think might get in round four. Augustine. Sorry. And the girls. I mean, Candy. Oh, my goodness. Give that woman sainthood right now. So Jeff and I are. I'm getting older. I'm slowing down. So Luke and Zach, God bless them. I love these guys and I'm honored to.

I'm honored to serve with them. I really am. You've seen quite an evolution in Jeff and Zach and Luke and in the church over your time there. And I know that you guys have mutually influenced each other. Yeah. And I think that's one of the things that comes across as the genuine bond that all of you have that wouldn't necessarily be obvious, like the bond of brotherhood that you all share. I could feel it and I had a great appreciation for it. Well, you know, I taught.

I preached at apologia many, many times before we went there. I never expected to be there. And so I had that connection all along, but I. So years and years ago, I know we're never getting to the topic at this rate, but years and years ago, I was driving in a car with Dr. Norman Geisler. Okay. Well, well known. It was right before he wrote his book against Calvinism. Chosen but free. Yes. And he made some comments to me. He said, I'm 65 now, so I can write my systematic theology.

And I sort of went, you have to be six. Oh, yeah. Nobody below 65 knows enough to write a systematic theologist. And so what about Wayne Grudem? Waste of paper. Waste of paper. Wow. Okay. And it became clear to me that Dr. Geisler's view was he could not learn anything from anyone younger than himself. Oh. And so I was much younger than him, and obviously.

And I looked at that and I. I don't know that I ever said a specific prayer, but I. I think I probably said something along the lines that, Lord, never let me. Never let me go there. Yeah. And that's why I love to learn from Jeff. And people would say, well, but he says he calls you his spiritual father. I mean, he credits you for, you know, the first.

The first Christian book he read after he's converted was the King James Only Gone version, which I would not recommend to anyone as the first book to read as a Christian. But. So how can you learn from him? You can. You can learn from those that are younger than you are.

And I'm not saying that there are times that I don't look at a 20something guy who doesn't have any experience in life, no experience in the pastorate who comes along and, you know, pops off some comment on Twitter and just go, you know, you roll your eyes and go, yeah, whatever. I do. But I learned from Jeff because Jeff has proven himself capable of learning himself. Yes. And going in depth on things that I haven't gone in depth on. Yes. And I do worry about older guys like me, who.

Yes. In some instances there's situations where I look at somebody and go, you just haven't been through what I've been through in this subject. I've seen this happen 47 times before. Look out, you're in trouble. And they won't listen, and then they end up getting in trouble. Yeah, I. Okay, I get that. But when it's. When it's. Somebody who's really doing the work, there's just so much to learn these days. Yeah. You know, I mean, there are topics that I. Look, I'm not the Bible answer man.

I'm not gonna pretend to be. There are. There are things that I will. I will never know. There are areas I'm like, I'm leaving that to you. I'm not going to debate eschatology. I'm leaving that to Jeff. Jeff's pretty. Pretty darn good at that. He's fantastic. I'm not. I'm not even going there, but when it comes to cbgm, I'm your. I'm your guy. You know cbgm. I didn't want to ask. I had to ask. Oh, you have to ask. I have to ask. CBGM has. Okay, that's yours. You got an nasb?

Yes. It hasn't really impacted. Impacted that one. If that was an esv. The esv. I've got a LSB over here. That is this actually. Is this actually the lsb. Is that perfected? In my opinion. Oh, interesting. Okay, okay. Because it is. The LSB is the NASB with edits, so it's not a whole new translation. Okay, okay. So it is the nasb, but with specific changes.

And the fascinating thing is, when I was using the NASB and I was a critical consultant in the nasb, every change that I would make while reading the English is made in the lsb. So when you read the Old Testament, you read Lord in all caps. I would read that as Yahweh, because that's tetragram time. LSB reads Yahweh doesn't say Lord, it says yahweh. And Romans 9, 5, somewhat ambiguously translated in the Nesbitt, very clearly in the LSB, et cetera, et cetera.

But the difference between these two, that'll explain cbgm. We're never going to get to our topic. We don't know. That's okay. Jude 5 in the NASB will read, the Lord delivered a people out of Egypt. Okay. The LSB reads, jesus delivered a people out of Egypt. Now think of the theological ramifications of saying Jesus delivered a people out of Egypt. That's a passage on the deity of Christ.

Yes. Yes. Okay. Now we've known for centuries and centuries and centuries, millennia that there were some manuscripts that said Lord and some manuscripts that said Jesus. So that's not. We didn't hide that. That's in the textual footnotes and in the Nesalen Greek text. It's something that's been known. So why did they change it? Cbgm, Coherence Based Genealogical Method, which was obviously named by a German. Yes. Okay, I can almost hear it. Yes. Kohinan is the best genealogical method.

And because it was designed by a German. And so we knew computers would eventually be used to help in textual critical study, but we didn't know exactly how. Okay. Simplifying a lot of stuff, because honestly, there probably aren't 200 people in the United States that really understand CBGM. And that includes all the New Testament professors. Okay. All right. So that's how new. And you have to read really in depth stuff. Do it. I was doing a PhD program in South Africa.

It didn't end up being able to be completed, but that's where I had to start working on cbgm. Basically what it does, computers can see patterns in large bodies of data that you and I can't. Sure. Large language models. Exactly. So they can look at. They can. So what they do is they collate. What they did is they collated pretty much all the manuscripts of Jude around the world.

Okay. You put it into a computer database and the computer is able to see where certain manuscripts are related to other manuscripts. In having the same readings at like 50, 15, 20 different variants. I can do that for two or three variants. I can remember that this manuscript and that manuscript in these two or three major places, they agree. But the computer can do it with all of them. Right. And go. These have coherence. They are related to one another.

And basically what CBGM does is what it recognized at Jude 5 was that the manuscripts that said Jesus, their closest relatives also said Jesus. So there was consistency in transcription. Okay. But for many of the manuscripts that said Lord, their closest Manus, their closest relatives said Jesus. So there had been a disruption because. Which is easier if you're reading the Old Testament, you're going to. The Lord delivered people out of Egypt is second nature.

Yes. Jesus delivered people out of Egypt is not second nature. No, that's. Does that really say that? Exactly, exactly. And so what CBGM does is it says there's more coherence for this reading than there is for this reading. It's just another tool. Yes, you can reject it, but it's a tool that you have to go, well, why am I rejecting it? I have to now argue against that. It's a massive database of information.

Only 30 years ago, we basically had to say, well, you know, there's only about 1% variation. You know, this scholar says that this. Now we can pull the whole stinking thing up online and there's the database and it can tell you exactly which ones are related to what, how often they agree with one another. It's. There are a lot of people that are scared of it because it looks like a big black box that's going to tell you what the Bible actually said. Sure. That. Yeah. But it's not.

That's not what it is at all. It is instead, in my Opinion a tremendous step forward in being able to defend the text of the New Testament. It hasn't been done for the Old Testament yet, but it could be. It just takes a lot of money to enter all that data and collate all the manuscripts and do all the rest of that kind of stuff. So right now, what they are doing, when I say they, it's the New Testament center in Munster, West Germany. Well, West Germany. See how old I am. Munster, Germany.

They're the ones that print the United Bible Cited Texts and ESRI Allen text, which have been used for all the Bible translations for years. They're putting out what's called the ecm, the Edicio Critico Mayor. It will be the most massive scholarly Greek New Testament ever produced. Oh, wow. I just got word that my copy of Revelation just shipped a month and a half late. $700 just for revelation. Is this a print thing? In print. Four volumes, over 4,000 pages. Oh, okay.

Okay. So. And Revelation has the wildest textual history of any book in the New Testament. I don't doubt it. Well, and you can understand why it had to fight for. Agree. It had to fight for a position in the canon. Because it's a little weird. It's a little weird. Okay. You know, thankfully the early church wasn't running around going, we don't have enough books with 10 headed monsters in it. Let's see if we can find some more. You know, they're doing that. You know what this is missing.

Exactly. So we have the fewest manuscripts of Revelation than any other book in the New Testament because of that. And hence the variation is the widest in Revelation, like the book of Hebrews, almost no textual variation at all in it. So it's a very, very different thing. Anyways, so my ecm, the ECM has been published for Mark, Acts, the general Epistles and Revelation. Okay, so the rest of the Gospels, the Pauline corpus, they're still working on that. And so yes, the printed edition will.

Probably be 50 volumes of everything. It'll take shelves, sure. But they're putting it all online. They're not hiding anything. Yes. Open source, sort of. And the neat thing is you can literally go on their website, you can go into an app that they've produced and you can go into. I'm sure Revelation will come out here soon, but Mark right now, or Acts, and you can change all the variables in the programming. So you can, you can like.

Because they'll say, well, we're going to base our judgment on coherence based on 5, 5 degrees of removal, you can change that to 2 or change it to 10, or you can go the other direction. In other words, you, if once you learn how to use it, you don't have to agree with what some, some scholars are telling you to do with it, you can vary it yourself and go, what's the result? What is the computer now going to say in regards to this variant?

So it's not because I understand why people would not want a computer generated biblical text. The computer told us, I get that that's not what it is. It really is a massively positive thing for the defense of the Christian faith. But I can understand why a lot of folks are a little standoffish about it. And part of the reason is there might be a dozen pastors in the US that actually understand CBGM and could explain it.

So it's going to take some work and I don't think revelation is going to do it. But once I think John comes out, because there's an important textual variance of John. John118, is it monogenes Theos the unique God, Monogenes Huias the unique son. That's an, that's important. Once John comes out and once Paul comes out, Romans 5:1, all sorts of textual variants in Paul, that's when I think the press is finally going to pick it up. And unfortunately the press doesn't understand any of this stuff.

And so it's going to, you know, but there's a number of us that are willing to step up and go, okay, no, that's not what's happening. This is really what's. What's going on. So that's cbgm, that makes sense. And it's, it has. So, so there's a difference between this and a difference between that and the whole difference is cbgm. Got it. Because what happened was they changed from the Nest 27th edition that, that was based on Neste all in 28th edition, they changed the text reading.

Now if you looked at the one this was based on the nasb, nasb. The reading Jesus is at the bottom of the page in the textual apparatus. It has been there for years and years and years. Now Lord is in the apparatus and Jesus is in the text reading. They're all still both there, right? You don't have to accept that. I mean, you know, there are many times, even when preaching, there will be times I read the text apparatus very easily.

And so there are times I will change the text reading if I feel that this variant down here has a better case. So it's not like we're hiding anything or you're changing the Bible. No, we're dealing with what is in the text. And so the nestle all in 28th edition says Jesus, and that's what the LSV was based on. Okay. Okay. So. And the ESV, their, their translation committee still exists, and so they're making edits or revisions. They will make. They will make changes every few years.

And when the Es, when the NASA changed to Jesus, the current ESV reads Jesus, the original ESV said Lord. Got it. That's the reason. There's always a reason. It's not just their I want to change the theology. It's never that. So I'm not sure if you know, but I grew up in a Jewish family in Phoenix and I went to Brophy. Brophy. Brophy. Oh, that's pretty strange. Yes. Good Catholic. Good Catholic school. Yeah. But I didn't actually learn anything about the Gospel.

Well, all that I remember from my education of Brophy was about textual criticism. Really? I remember, yes. My sophomore year I took a class with a Jesuit priest and I remember learning that there were three Isaiahs. Isaiah 1, 2 and 3. Three different guys. Right. You're rolling your eyes. And then the other thing that I remember learning was that all that Mark wrote the first gospel and the others were based on Mark. Right. None of which is textual criticism. Oh, okay.

I have only heard it referred to as that. I understand. But none of that is textual criticism. That's the problem is textual criticism is based upon. They didn't call it that at the time either. They just said, this is just how the Bible works. Like form criticism is the stuff with Isaiah, deutero, Isaiah and all this other stuff. Because textual criticism deals with manuscripts. It deals with factual stuff. Okay. And you don't have that kind of stuff. We are at fife laps, feast.

So when Doug Wilson walks by, you salute properly. Hey, Doug. Good to see you. We got to sit down for at least five minutes sometime today, sadly. All right, so text criticism is a fact based study. You have to be able to demonstrate the existence of manuscripts. Whereas when you're talking about form criticism, you can theorize and say, I think Isaiah 1 through 39 was written during such a period of time. And then Isaiah 40 and following is written later because it names, name.

It names prophetic names. And we know that people don't know the future and therefore it had to have been written later. Okay. And so you're doing form criticism, but you're not having to worry about having manuscripts. And the other Stuff you're talking about in the Synoptic Gospels is, you know, what's the synoptic problem? Who's related to whom? Was Mark first and then Matthew and Luke edited him, and then John was just off on an island someplace doing something weird?

Or are they all written separately from one another? Right. Was Luke written first? Was Matthew written first? I mean, that is a huge, huge, huge area of conversation and discussion. But it's not based on manuscripts, because the earliest manuscript, the earliest. The best attested gospel that we have with the earliest manuscripts is John. Oh, wow. Okay. And nobody says John was first.

Okay. And yet the earliest, in fact, probably the earliest papyri fragment we have of any New Testament book is called P52. Okay, I've heard you speak about this before. And P52 is from John, chapter 18, verses 31, 34. Would you go to visit P52 in a museum or something? No, I've seen. Yeah, I've seen a number, P46. And maybe that's the one. Stuff like that in various. But P52 was over in Europe. I didn't get a chance to see that one. But yeah. So it's not based on manuscripts. That is a whole.

The whole argument about Matthew priority or Mark and priority or Luke in priority. Yeah. That comes not from manuscripts but from theory. So I guess my question then would be, so these were the things that I was learning from the Maybe to try and transition to the topic we were going to talk about. These are the things that I was learning from the Roman Catholic Church, from Jesuits in the 90s.

And so you're talking about this large language model processing of Scripture that's going to say, oh, this comes from this, and this comes from this. And it seems to me that something that can actually be used to undermine sola scriptura. Like, well, are there all these flaws? And now we can see them in high resolution. And so you need someone to interpret them for you so you don't end up interpreting these things for yourself using AI tools.

No, no, no. And really, the CVGM is not so much an AI tool as it is a massive database that you're connecting manuscripts to one another and allowing the computer to do that. Oh, so it's not something you can send a query to. No. And then we all know. Okay, got it. It's just. It illustrates connections. Right. But it doesn't have any intelligence. It can take two manuscripts and look at their agreements and disagreements at every single point, and our minds can't do that. Okay, okay, okay.

And they can. And that's why we're able to use it in that way. That's what CBGM is about. But no, I don't think it undercuts Sola Scriptura at all. I understand why people try to say that because they assume that sola scriptura means all you can ever talk about is the Bible. You only have to use biblical language. You can't talk about computers. You can't talk about cbgm, you can't talk about. No, that's not what Sola Scriptura is about.

Sol Scriptura is simply affirming the unique nature of scripture as being the. That's why I found it somewhat interesting. I've done five, at least five Roman Catholic debates this year. This year? Yeah. Two with Trent Horn, two with Trent. Horn, two with Jimmy Akin, and one with Tom Riello a week ago today.

And so what was interesting is something that Trent had started doing in his debates on solo scriptura was questioning the meaning of theanustos and saying it doesn't actually mean God grieved. I heard him do that in one of the debates. Yes. And Jimmy Akin didn't do that because he knows he can't defend it. And Trent didn't do it when he debated me on it because he doesn't want to get into the Greek in that context.

So. And I think some other people have pointed out to him that it's grossly inconsistent for him as a Roman Catholic to take that perspective, because Rome has always accepted that every Roman Catholic I debated, Mitchell Pacwa, Pat Madrid, none of them had disputed the meaning of theodostas at all. So I think he sort of tried it and got a lot of negative pushback on that. But the issue of sola scriptura is the nature of scripture. It's not the transmission of scripture over time.

Because when you look at when Jesus is talking to the Sadducees, how does he refute their story of the woman with the lever at lost? She has to marry the seven brothers and they all die. Who is she going to be married to in heaven? You do error. You err not knowing the scripture in the power of God. Have you not read what was. Have you not read what was spoken to you by God? That's Jesus view of what Scripture is.

And he based his argument on the tense of the verb, I am the God of Abraham, the God of I was. I am the God. So Abraham still exists. So Jesus believed that it could be transmitted over time. Yes. Without falling apart and being corrupted. And he believed it was God speaking and he held men in his day accountable for what was written 1400 years earlier, as if God spoke to them. So when people challenge me on that, I go, you know what? I just want to take Jesus view of Scripture.

I mean, seriously, I did an entire sermon. We had to cancel services about two months ago at Apologia. And, I mean, we went through Covid without ever closing. Yeah. But we had to cancel service one Sunday, and I had to record a sermon in the studio, and it was on Jesus view of Scripture. So you might find it interesting, the reason we did it is that they painted the floor in the gym. Yep. So we would have been heretical charismatics within five minutes. You say that like it's a bad thing.

Oh, no, I said heretical character. I mean, it was bad. I mean, the fumes were unsurvivable. And so Covid couldn't take us down. But paint. Sherwin Williams did. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. But I did it on that, because I think that's something every Christian needs to know, needs to be convinced of, is that I'm holding Jesus view of Scripture. Got it. If you want to come up with something else, fine. But you didn't rise from the dead. So I think he's got the best position for.

And it's not impossible at all to determine what Jesus view of scripture was. It's pretty straightforward. It's pretty clear. So I know you've got a ton of people to talk to, so we can talk about some of the other issues later. But just, I think then the last question that I want to ask is, so you've had such a distinguished career of advocating for the Reformed Protestant position of sola scriptura and so many other issues.

Who do you see coming now that can mount such a strong defense in an era that it seems like. And again, this is another topic, where Rome is resurgent or Eastern Orthodoxy is resurgent, who do you see coming following after you who can mount such a defense in the public square in the ways that you have done over the past 40 years? A lot of folks ask me, why aren't you doing special training of people and stuff like that? And I'll be honest.

You have to be born with the ability to multitask to do debating. When you're in a debate, you are listening to the guy talking. You're taking notes. When you take notes, you're prioritizing. You might have 10 points, but I only have half the time he had. That's right. So I have to prioritize them in order. So you're doing that while still listening, while taking notes. When you're up there speaking, you can't be distracted by time, but you have to keep an eye on time.

I don't know how many of my debates you've heard, but most of my opponents, dozens, will be halfway through a point when they run out of time, which the audience isn't impressed by. That it ruins the point he was making because now he's got to stop and he's going to come back later and address it. It's too late. It doesn't work that way. I always finish on time. I'm always finishing my point on time. Yes. I grew up doing radio, so the clock was always on the wall. I had to back time my music.

So UPI world news starts at top of the hour. You know, this song has to stop if it's halfway through. People don't like this. So I learned to do all that kind of stuff as a youth. But you have to be wired to do that. There are scholars so much smarter than I am that should never debate because they look like idiots when they do. They look like they don't know what they're talking about. It's horrible. But they shouldn't. But that's just. It's just a skill. So obviously I look at people like.

Who are we clapping for? I have no idea. It's for him. Yeah, it's for Harbor Freight. Doug Wilson, standing ovation. Keith Foskey. Yeah, Keith Foskey, who bought me a cheeseburger years and years ago. He went to McDonald's for me and got me a Quarter Pounder of cheese. And he will admit this. Hey, Keith. Keith, I want you to show. I want you to show my friend here. What do you look like when you're staring at a man who's eating a Quarter Pounder of cheese?

See, I wish the microphone could capture that look. How much of. How much of your quarter pound of cheese are you going to enjoy exactly? Is sitting in your hotel room watching you eat? Invited me in. He told me, what am I going to do? Accept the food, the door and kick him out? I would have. I would have been like you. Look at that face. He said, entrez vous. He looks. Which means enter. Yes, I think in German, maybe. Doesn't he look like he needs friends? Yes, I'm desperate for friends.

This is all just to get friends. That's all. The whole Harbor Freight Doug thing, it's all I'm desperate. Gonna be. My friend, Keith Foske. Nice to meet you. Nice to Meet you. We're friends now. Thank you. How long have we known each other now? 20 years. Okay. I was at John Dominic's or. I'm sorry, John Shelby Spong. Okay. That was Florida, 2005. I don't remember. It was around that same time. That's when we met. Okay. All right. Yeah, it's somewhere. And I did the cheeseburger thing.

Did he say what that means? The cheeseburger. Quarter pound of cheese. Yeah, that you bought him a. You bought him a burger and you sat in the hotel room. I sidled up to him because I was. Yeah, I was 25 years old. He was who he is. And I just pretended like I knew him. I just sort of stood there and got closer and closer and he. And he happened to say, you know, guys, I'm hungry and I don't have a car. And I said, I have a car. I will go get you food. And I went and got his food.

And he told me his hotel room. You don't give a stranger your hotel room. But he did. And I ended up at the hotel room watching him eat. Yeah. And feeling awkward but not wanting to leave. I don't know what to do in this moment. Like, I don't, I don't. I had the same moment with Doug a few minutes ago. I was out there waiting because, you know, we both went on stage together and I'm standing there with him. I'm like, I want to say something. Yeah. But I don't want to. I don't know what to say.

Awkward silence is the worst. So I said something stupid. Something stupid is better than nothing at all in some. There's, there's, there's Keith Foskey. There you go. Great. Yeah. Special guest appearance. Special guest appearance by Keith Foske. Yeah, I remember we were. Oh, we were talking about. Oh, what's the. Who's. Who's coming up? Who's coming up? Special. Special Yoda esque training on Dagobah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll be honest with you.

That's something the Lord. The Lord has to call you to do, that kind of work. The skills related to the debate really do. You know, obviously Jeff and I work real well together. We've done a couple debates together. Andy Freeze debate. The antifreeze debate was classic. My son in law, Eric Yeager, is just sharp as attack. And I could see him. He's done one debate. I could see him doing future debates. That would be really, really good as well. But, you know, I think we're.

I think we're Going to be facing some challenging times, and I'm hoping there's a lot of young men walking around here that will take up the. Take up the challenge, take up the mantle. I think the thing that's most striking about your debate style is that you don't resort to, like, personal comments. You keep it completely above. Try to. This last debate was a little bit tough because he was doing it, but. But, yeah, once you go there, the debate's over. You've lost the subject. Absolutely.

So that's a problem. So just one question about your Trent Horn debate, and we can cut this out. So in the first Trent Horn debate you did about Sola Scriptura, he leaned in and said, do you think I'm a Christian? Right. And I felt listening to that, that was so far over the line and unnecessary that I actually lost a lot of respect for Trent Horn because I didn't feel. Feel that that was nothing new. It's nothing new. Okay. Nothing new. No, that's. That's standard. That's.

That's a way of getting some emotional stuff on your side. Okay. So it was what I thought it was. Yeah, it was. And. And a similar thing had happened at Boston College back in 1993 about praying together, and that was after the debate. So the issues were already out there. Okay. And so I was like, look, look, we've made it clear that we don't believe in the same gospel here, so I'm uncomfortable with this and stuff like that. So. No, that's not unusual at all.

I knew what he was doing, but that's not the first time I've debated Trent. I did learn something, though, when we were talking, and that is that my debate with him at G3 was his first public debate. Oh, wow. He's a sharp guy. He really is. But what's really interesting is watching the divergence of Roman Catholic apologetics under Francis. Oh, yes. Because they have to spend so much time Popesplaining. Yes, they do. And that's.

I feel for them, but I would, you know, my word to them is you took the wrong turn back there with the papacy to begin with. Come on back and everything will be fine. So, you know, but it is interesting that when I first started doing debates with Roman Catholics, I was still such a fundamentalist that I would have struggled to be overly nice, personally to them, because I would have felt it was compromise. Oh. But I don't have that issue any longer, and I can sit and talk with Trent.

We don't compromise anything. Sure. You know, I've Actually contacted other Roman Catholic apologists from my past. I said, you know, if I ever said anything in the past that was just ridiculously in your face type of a thing, I apologize, and I don't want to do that kind of thing. And his response was, same thing. That's so gracious.

And so we'll have interesting conversations about what's going on in the world, but then we'll always end up parting company at the end, because you get to the end, it's like. And so we need to pray to the Immaculate Heart of Mary to solve this. And it's like, maybe not. Yeah, yeah. It's heartbreaking. It really is heartbreaking to me. I guess that would be the one thing I would say is, how have you changed over the years? Is. I'm much more.

I do want to see the person I'm talking to come to know the truth. Yeah. There are some situations if the. If the person's an apostate, if the person once knew. So when I debated John Dominic Cross, I was like an alien to him. He had spent the entire decade of the sixties studying the Gospels in a cell as a monk. You know, I mean, a Reformed Baptist. I'm like an alien from another planet. Oh, sure, yeah. And he was just the nicest, as he. I always said, you're the nicest heretic I've ever met.

And he embraced that. He thought that was a pretty cool statement. But at the same time, there was a guy that we debated on that cruise who had been evangelical and now denied the resurrection, denied everything. And I just can't have the same relationship there. Of course, Biblically, John Don McCrossen has never known what I believe. Right. So I can reach out to him.

And, you know, you're not talking about someone who knew and denied, but sometimes this last debate I did was someone who did know. Graduate of Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte. He's heard the truth, and now he's chosen to deny it. And that means I'm not going to be eating at Whataburger and just having a cheeseburger. Right. But for, you know, like, my Muslim opponents, they just don't know what to do with me because I'll have dinner with them and I'll show them love, and I can.

I'm concerned for them. I remember talking to this one guy. How old are you? I'm 31. Married? No. Why not? And he's like, yeah. And I just did the father thing. The father. I care for you. You need to get married. He did. But they don't know what to do with me because I understand Islam. I don't compromise. I hold to my perspective and I care for them. You know what the sad thing is? They meet so many, so few Christians. They care for them. That's right. Don't get me going on that one.

I've got a whole sermon on that one. Besides that, we've gone for about an hour. An hour. Praise God, sir. There's much more for us to talk about. We started out talking about the blessings that your work has had on many around the world. I'm one of those. Listening to your debates, listening to your dividing lines. It blesses my faith. And I think about the things that I've learned from you every single day when I talk to Roman Catholics or when I interact with Muslims on my Twitter timeline.

So your work continues to bless me. I'm one of those people. So thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you for. It was a very enjoyable conversation. We'll have to do it again sometime. Absolutely. Thanks. Sa.