Episode 939: Going Deeper - 5/3/2026

Father God, I thank you for this morning. I thank you for your word. Father, we're thankful that we can trust it. Father, I thank you for those early church fathers that had no argument about who wrote what gospel yet yet there were those that challenged some of those same men. And Father, we thank you however it played out in 325. Father, it was the first time an emperor of Rome had become a believer. And Father, whether he was doing it to consolidate strengthen his nation or whether he really was a devout Christian, we don't know that for sure but but Father, he had to have been moved. And we thank you for that. We thank you for the wisdom of those men that debated back and forth. And Father, today we have a holy Bible 66 books that gives us assurance that these were the inspired words that you you breathed into these authors and how they could come from so many different places and so many different times. And yet Father produced the same result that they were talking about your son Jesus. So we thank you for that. I thank you for Malcolm and I thank you his commitment and his boldness really. Intentionality of moving this forward in our own convention. Father, we see things around the world right now and it's not good. And we know that Satan's alive and well and just having the field day but Father, we pray for our own strength and thank you for Malcolm's teaching as we look forward to it today. In Jesus name, amen. Amen. One of the things I wanted to do there was an interesting one of the one of the items you wrote that was published that you sent me. I thought it was really good. But he quoted, there's in there in the article was quoted might have been the guy that interviewed you, not you. But a guy quoted a fairly recent survey that said 49% of Americans believe that Jesus was a great teacher but that he wasn't divine. He wasn't God. Well, that's bad enough. Almost 30% of those supposedly who took the survey were evangelical Christians that did not believe he was God. They believe as a great teacher. You know, in what's interesting is from 2020 that count was about that 30% and in 2022 the Christian, the Christians who felt that Jesus was a great teacher but not God had jumped up to 48%. And I know you and I talked about this, I seem like within the last month or two. What I'd been shown known is how many of those were pastors and you could address that later. I don't want to ruin your bubble for that. But I wanted to do a couple of things before I said them up. Would you turn to the book of Jude? Malcolm wrote a very interesting long piece or literature that he sent me a copy of. And one of the verses in there, I just was struck and I got to say, I'm selfishly, I'm looking at this for an idea for a paper. I'm going to write this book in the summer. In Jude, and actually, Jude's just one chapter, right? So what we have in Jude, look at verse four. For certain people have crept in unnoticed. Who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only master in Lord Jesus Christ. Gen Z's, who a lot of us know what the Gen Z title is, most of you have either grandkids or great grandkids. We no longer have any in that age group as kids, but their Gen Z's are someone in the neighborhood right now about 17 to 18 to about the early 30s. They've aged a few years ago since the name was first given out. And this is what's interesting. The Gen Z's, I did a I did a little deep dive on that. 40% of the Gen Z's that were surveyed believe Jesus was a good man, good teacher, but not God. This is the movement really of the of the TPUSA, the Charlie Kirk movement that he created with these college kids. And we see all these unbelievable turnouts at these schools. And yet 40% in the entire generation, the forecasting, do not believe that Jesus was God. Malcolm, you what I'd like to do before I turn this over to you, I copied the nice scene key creed. And you got it in your hands. And I just all lead, but go ahead and read with me. Let's just kind of, we haven't done this a long time, maybe ever. In this class, let's just get it, start. Let's read the creed. Very tough. We believe in one God, the God Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth of all things visible and invisible. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages. God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father. By Him all things were made. For us and for our salvation, he descended from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary and was made man. He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered death and was buried. On the third day, he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures and ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father. And he shall come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom shall have no end. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life who proceeds from the Father and the Son and who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified. He spoke through the prophets and in one holy universal and apostolic church, we acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins and we look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen. Malcolm, you did, and one of the items, I think you did write this, you did, I thought was a cool transition through three passages in Colossians. Yeah. And you start off with Colossians 1 and talk through to develop that 15 through 17, then you went from there to 18 to 20. Then you jumped over to chapter 3 and you don't have to necessarily, maybe you've got that work done in your thoughts, but anyway, but it was an interesting transition the way you set that up. And I really, that's what really, that's when I reached out to you said, we need to do this. And this would be a good Sunday to do. Can you give us your thoughts on the nice, in Creed and give us some input, obviously, on why should it be something that we formally have incorporated into our convention? Yeah. Such a great question. Let me say first of all, this, I love what Jude has to say here. The reason I keep coming back to the nice and Creed is because of heresy and error that I see within evangelicalism, within even the Southern Baps convention. And the verse before the one you read, verse 3, ends in this way, I found it necessary to write, Jude says, "Appearling to you to contend for the faith that was delivered to the saints once for all." So we have one faith that has been delivered to the saints once for all. And that faith, I mean, Pastor Mark, preaches about this every Sunday when he concludes the gospel. But even within the sermons, you'll hear him like today, he mentioned about how Jesus is the I.M. Right? So the I.M. is the name of God. So Jesus is saying I.M. God when he does that. And of course, this is why the Jews wanted to crucify him because they disagreed with his claim of who he is. And so this is very important. Jesus claims he's God. Well, how is he God? And yet he's man, that's what the nice and Creed works through. So every statement in the nice and Creed comes out of Scripture. And the form of it comes out of your baptism. So when you were baptized, the Christian form of baptism, according to the Great Commission, is to baptize a disciple, a new disciple in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, right? So the name is the singular. And that's, in other words, the identity of this God is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And that's why it has three parts to it because we are confessing that he is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Most of the controversy in Christian history, early, even to today, has focused in on the second one, who is Jesus Christ. Areas really one after it, didn't he? He did. But he's not alone. No, that's right. There were also those that are known as semi-areons that are really just as bad as he is. So in, let me just kind of review his history a little bit that Brad spoke about. Jesus told us, Jude told us. Second Peter tells it. Paul repeatedly comes back to it, for instance, in the book of Galatians. There are false teachers. There are false prophets. There are false Christ's, Christ warned us that they would come and they would lead a stray if it were possible, even the elect. Now that means they're trying really hard to lead a stray. And the thing is, is that they never come and say, and have a sign that says, "Hi, I'm a heretic." They never do that. They always present themselves as orthodox. How do we know whether they're truly orthodox or not? That's what the early church had to struggle through because they had a teacher who was well equipped. He's very bright, this fellow by the name of the areas. He lived in Alexandria, which Alexandria in that day was the New York, if you will, the center of all commerce, really, for the Roman world, for the world, while Rome itself was the capital, so Washington, D.C., New York, it's the New York of the day. He was almost like a motivational speaker. He was very popular. So popular that his bishop tried to get him under control and he just rebelled against the bishop and started going around it, just as people often do, talking bad about his pastor and created a furore in Alexandria and then extended it throughout the Roman Empire. So it became a big issue. This is why Constantine stepped in because he's like, "All right, Christians are no longer persecuted and what do they do? They conflict with one another." For Constantine, he wanted to know what really is true Christianity. Is it truthful or is it true to say, "Arys was then the creator of the Arianism that we talk about." Yes, Arianism was creator of the Arianism. Right. And Arianism teaches Arianism taught that Jesus, "Well, he's sort of like God, but not really. You can worship him, but not really." So he's always diminishing Christ as God. He's the Muslim's belief today. Oh, the Muslims. The Muslims were influenced in their theology by a type of Arianism, believe it or not. This is what Muhammad adopted and that's why I mean they'll agree that Jesus is a teacher, a great teacher, but they won't agree that he's God. Well, that's why they agree that he's a monogod, but that means he has no son. That's right. Yeah. And so we believe that God the Father has a son and that God the Father and the Son have the Holy Spirit. One God, three persons. That's the place of claim. That's what this creed sets out. And it does it in such a way that a heretic reads this and says, "No, I can't say that because it takes the deity of Christ in particular." And it puts it before them and says, "You either agree with this or you don't." So a Jehovah's Witness could not read this creed. A Mormon cannot read this creed honestly because they'll look at it and say, "I can't believe that." And yet every clause and the structure comes out of the biblical text. And so that's what the early church fathers like Athanasius really kind of saved the day in a way. He did save the day, but it wasn't a quickly one thing. Actually, Athanasius was kicked out of his, his leadership in the church in Alexandria six times. And one time he was fleeing before, and this was under another emperor, he was fleeing before an imperial naval cruiser that was looking for him. And they were catching up with him as they were both cruising up the Nile, up to the headwaters of the Nile. And Athanasius just said, "All right, we can't outrun him. So just turn the boat around." So they turned the boat around. And as the imperial cruiser pulls alongside, they yell out, "Have you seen Athanasius?" And Athanasius hollered back, "Yes." And they doubled their speed to keep going. And he escaped. I mean, it was that it was that type of providential things that could have ended in his life. And so this was a hard one battle. And it didn't, it actually didn't get really settled for centuries, but it didn't reach a crisis point until 381. So between 325 when the Nicene Council met, and 381 when the Council consented and opal met, there was a back and forth where the heretics almost won the day several times. And it's because they were using the military to enforce their false teaching. And Athanasius and others had to set back and say, "You know, you can take our lives, but we've got to preach the Jesus of the Bible." And so the Nicene Creed comes out of that, and it has across all denominations been Christian redundant emanations, not Muslims, not Mormons, not Jehovah's Witnesses, because they're not Christians. It has been universally recognized as true teaching, as taking what Scripture says and giving you a form by which you can, as Jude argues, contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Now the structure of it, if you'll just look at it real quickly, again, we believe in one God the Father, Almighty, maker of heaven and earth of all things visible and invisible. That is pretty non-controversial, although there were heretics even before areas who disagreed with that. The second part is where you get areas giving a lot of kickback. So we believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God. Begotten of the Father before all ages. God from God, light from light, true God from true God. Begotten, not made. He couldn't take that. He couldn't take all of that Jesus was created. He thought Jesus was created. Now Jesus in His humanity is created, but as the Son of God who became a human being, as the Son of God, He is not created, He is begotten. Now what does that mean begotten? When you have a child, and I have a child, we begot our children. Our children, we don't actually create our children. Our children come out of us and they're just as human as we are. And so Scripture uses the language, I mean John 3/16, right? He says he's the only begotten Son, right? So it's Scriptures using the very language that we understand means one person is just like another person. The Son is just like the Father. He actually is one with the Father. Jesus says, I and the Father are one. Jesus also said everything that the Father has is mine. So if you think of His sovereignty, if you think of Him as the Creator, if you think of Him as the Redeemer, as the one who controls all things through the universe and brings them to their proper conclusion, this is as true of the Son as it is of the Father. And that type of language forces the heretic to see His error and that's why a lot of false teachers will not read this creed. They will not agree with this. Now I'm not asking churches, although our church's staff affirms this, I'm not asking churches that they be required to have this. But I am asking that the teachers in the Southern Baptist Convention be required to be nice in their theology. And there's some kick back on it because we do have teachers that affirm various errors and heresies that you can actually trace in the nice scene period. One of them is a form of arianism known today as eternal functional subordination or eternal relations of authority and submission. And this is a huge problem because they say, well, no, no, we believe Jesus is God. He just is less an authority. Well, Scripture does not say that. Scripture actually says that Jesus is the power of God, 1 Corinthians 1, 24. So you cannot separate the authority of the Father from the authority of the Son. And Jesus said everything that the Father has His mind, all authority has been given to me on heaven and earth. Well, then up comes a second heresy that has become popular today. And that is known in ancient period as Markellianism. And this is the idea that Jesus will give up his authority in the end to the Father. And he will no longer have that kingdom that only the Father has the kingdom. But the Bible says repeatedly that his kingdom shall have no end. And that's why this in the second part of the creed it ends. But why are they so, and they continue to be the critics? Is it, I'm only left to think that it's just something that they don't want to see. It's a power thing. It's a power thing. Okay. You nailed it. Almost with all human beings, it's a power thing. some of you. And this heresy, Markeleonism is focused in that because we, Scripture teaches us that we are made in the image of God. Right? Yes, absolutely. And so then our question is as well, what does the image of God mean? And Scripture tells us that it means that the first human beings were given rule over the earth. And that's what it means. And also that we're made in his image so he is all knowledge, we have knowledge. He is spirit and relates, we can relate because we have spirit. And so there are various truths about God that are also true about us, not in the exalted way that they are about God, but they're still true about us. Well for some of them they want to read it backwards, they want to hierarchy in society, and so they'll say, well this one person is greater than another, and then they'll come back and they'll say, look, the Father is greater than the Son. Now Jesus does say in John 1428, soon after he says in John 10, 30, I and the Father are one, he says the Father is greater than I. But what he's referring to there is his humanity in comparison with his deity. Well that's what Bart Erman and all these guys go after that. Jesus even admitted, well if he can't, if he's not as good as God, if he doesn't know all that. So no one thinks or. Herman is also an Aryan, in addition to all of his other Aryans. Yeah, Bruce Metzger's turn over his grave. Oh yeah, yeah. I met Bruce Metzger once. You're a really amazing man, and I think he is because he was actually a genuine believer, but Bart Erman is not. Well anyways you see, and Erman by the way was an evangelical. So there are evangelicals who start out right, but then they go astray and it's often about the power, or it's because they can't reconcile these two basic truths about Jesus Christ. He is God, the Son of God, and he is a human being. But stop right there, that's the mystery. That's the mystery. That's the mystery. This one person is truly God and truly man, and their minds are like, well you can either be God or man, you can't be both. And so then they try to come up with all sorts of compromised solutions, and this was the problem with Aryus. Aryus was like, well he is a God. You hear by the way, Jehovah's Witnesses talk like this. Oh he's a God. Or Mormons, he is one among many gods, and you can be a God too. Which sounds bizarre and funny, but it's actually what they believe. And that itself is a great error. The reason I want the nice and creed is because there are a lot of pastors who aren't teaching the truth like what Mark teaches. And that is that yes, he is God who became a man who died on the cross and arose from the debt to the bone. The SPC, because they're meeting again this summer. Yeah. Will you be pushing this again this summer? Yes, in a different way. Don't share it. We don't want to get the secrets out to the enemy. But why is there, why is there pushback on this? This is so clearly they don't come out and usually they don't come out and vocalize why their real reason is because they know that it's a failure if they do that. And so what they do is they often will say, well it's unnecessary is one way they respond. So this is the first time we have the Baps' faith and message. Baps' faith and message as Pastor Andy Davis pointed out, pastor of First Baptist Church of Durham, North Carolina. The Baps' faith and message, everything it says is right, but it doesn't have the strength of the nice and creed in responding to these false teachings. And this has this strength that you can't be a heretic and use this. So that's one opposition. Another thing I've often heard in opposition from Baptist is where it says in the third article in particular is where some people come to. So where it says we believe in the Holy Spirit and in one holy universal and apostolic church. Nobody really has a problem with apostolic or one or holy where they fall down is on universal church. And there are two oppositions that I've heard to the universal church. One, one way to translate that is Catholic. Well this is not Catholic and the creed came about before the Roman Catholic church, even before Augustine started his teachings that led into the Roman Catholicism of today. So it just means universal is what it means. It means you believe that there is a church that will return with Christ in his glory to conquer the world that we read about in Revelation 19. And I experienced that personally as a teacher years ago in Kansas because the pastor, who was a pastor, who was over the Sunday schools, I was going to teach a three week class on the nice and creed. He thought I was trying to convert people to Catholicism because it said Catholic. Well, but yeah, but I used this, right? And he got upset with the universal and I said wait a second, I said John before you go on before I just go talk to the pastor. I mean the pastor tells me don't do it then I won't do it. But I said I don't see it. And he looked at he says no dude teach it. We need to be teaching more of this. And so the other guy kind of ate crow for a little bit and it wasn't like a great victory. But the point is there was a guy within our own denomination that wasn't the head pastor, but he was a pastor, been a seminary like that stuff. And he was almost threatened by anything, Creedle form because he felt like it was you're just. And that's another opposition you often hear is that Baptists are not a creedle people. The founder of Southwestern Seminary, BH Carroll had a great response to this. He said a creed is what you believe. Everyone has a creed. And a confession is you saying what you believe. So for to say you have no creed is to say you have no belief. That makes that's just nonsense. And so I agree with Carol that to say you have no creed but the Bible is to just try to avoid saying what you really believe. And for Carol, he said that false teachers will often come in under the the the the same. I have no creed but the Bible. But what they're really doing is they're trying to bring something else. And they're trying to not let you know exactly what they're saying. And so having a creed for Carol was necessary. And I agree with the founder of my seminary in that. A fourth thing that you'll often hear people object to is the statement about baptism. We acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. In our day, we have been affected by the doctrine of Augustine and then by the doctrines of the Churches of Christ. Two different doctrines that we often have to respond to. And just as a note. This statement baptism for the remission of sins is a direct quotation from Acts 2 38 which was the first Christian sermon ever preached by Peter. So it comes straight out of the biblical text. Now what do we mean by that is a different issue. Notice it comes under the article on the Holy Spirit. Baptism in the Holy Spirit means one has been born again or one has been converted. Scripture uses different ways to talk about the beginning of the Christian life. So baptism in the spirit means you have been born again. But where things became difficult was with Augustine who argued that water baptism of an infant is what regenerates them. So he separated faith from being born again and made being born again and the act of water baptism. So his belief was that you could make an infant a Christian by baptizing them in the water. Well that's a false teaching. By the way Augustine came up with that after the Nicene Creed. So that's not what the Nicene Creed was intended to say. Bosel of Cessaria and even greater early Church Father argued that baptism for the remission of sins means baptism in the Holy Spirit. So it's scriptural, it's correct meaning. But then we also have in our area churches of Christ argue that all you had to do is believe that confession and then be baptized in water and that and it can be just a mental confession, not a heart confession. And they have difficulty with this as well. And so Martin Luther agree with this. Now Martin Luther had an unusual position. He knew better than to go with Augustine on this. For Martin Luther he believed the infants actually do have faith. Which is a unique move. I think he was trying to avoid Augustine's problem but he just created another problem. Out of respect for the image of Augustine? He was on Augustine. I mean Augustine, understand Augustine is the premier Church Father in the Christian West. There's no other theologian that has the influence of Augustine. Yes sir. If I'm right the Mormons believe they can save their answer. - Right. - Is this like an extension of your child and then my great, great, great grandfather that I can have them save? - Yeah, so Mormons believe that they can baptize themselves for any of their ancestors. And that's why they're so big into genealogy. Now, I love genealogy, but not because I think I'm gonna go back and save somebody, but baptizing myself for them. So they misread First Corinthians 14 on this. And of course, Mormon, that's not, that's by the way, that's just one of their strange doctrines, but it is an important one to them. Yeah, interesting. Any other questions? That's good. - This is one of us little funny story about the Mormon Jikes. And here's a go, I thought of college, I think for 12, everyone wants to read the text. And we're doing genealogy. We went to a Mormon library. - Yeah, yeah. - So beforehand, the other than I can read it are all none of the Mormons. So I thought, I think we probably do some interesting things. So I told them, and I was fairly young, so I learned my lesson here, but because I told them I said, now we're gonna hear some things that might be unusual to you. And don't at crazy about a group of state substance, do you wanna say something like that's very interesting. You know, or something like that. Well, no 12 of them when the ladies started saying something, they didn't thought it was weird. I'll 12 said, that's very interesting. And it was obvious I had seen that. (audience laughing) Well, good for you. - I never did that again though, but it never happened. I think we wore topics for the two years. (audience laughing) That was the first time I mentioned one of the libraries, but I knew when I was going for it. - I have to be careful because Karen can tell you, I was in a non Baptist church once, and they were baptizing a baby, and the priest proclaimed to everybody that, we welcome you into the family of God. And before I knew what I was doing, I was standing up saying, that's wrong. (audience laughing) And people turn around and look at me, and I felt this bicep on my knee. (audience laughing) And it was Karen's, and she says to me, Malcolm, sit down, we are guests here. (audience laughing) And she was right, I was out of order, but there are things that are true that we have to uphold. More than even the baptism issue, for me, it comes back to the Trinity, and it comes back to Christology. Do we believe in one God who is the father and the son and the Holy Spirit as our baptismal commission of Jesus Christ commands us to affirm? That's our first confession, our first act of worship. And do we believe that he is truly God who became a human being, who died on across, who rose from the dead, and will one day come back to judge the living in the dead, and he will reign forever? If we don't believe these basic truths about the Christian faith, then we are teaching falsehood. And I think it's important in the Southern Baptist Convention to get this right, because this church, along with many others, supports theological education through our cooperative program dollars. So we have skin in the game on this, and it matters. - What is, would it be honest to say, are there as much as 30 or 40% of the voting members of the association that is not in favor of signing onto this? - We've never seen it come to a vote. And it's because behind the scenes, there are important and powerful voices that don't want this to come to a vote. Just as happens with many things. - For fear of everything breaking up. - Because some things will become known, and it will become a scandal. And that's why I'm gonna continue pushing it, not because I want it to become a scandal, but because there's one thing that's more important than unity and that is truth. And that one truth that is more important than any other is who is God in Christ by the Spirit? Who is this God that we worship? If I have teachers who are not teaching that God is Father and Son and Holy Spirit, without qualification, I mean, they will try to dice it and reduce the Son in particular and the Holy Spirit. I teach and I have this deep conviction that we do not ever, never do we diminish Jesus Christ the eternal Son of God. He became a human being, doesn't mean that he lost his deity, as Pastor Mark said, in our service to him. - Well, but some of those same ministers, I think, not by name, 'cause I think I know a few that probably would vote in that camp, but they don't even necessarily believe that Jesus really was the one on the cross. I mean, if there is some like that. - I know, and I just, I, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, how do you stand in the pulpit, but if you have folks that support that or allow that? - Well, I think it comes back to something that you said before. We have these truths about Jesus Christ, this one person, Jesus Christ, he is the eternal God, the Son of God, who became a human being. And that confession is, by the way, is the basic Christian and confession. No one can come before the Father, unless they believe Jesus is Lord. To say Jesus is his human name. To say he is Lord is to say he is God. So you're saying he is man, he is God, he's the same one person. That truth, which, as you mentioned, is a mystery, 'cause in our minds, we don't know how to hold together that he is truly God and truly human at once. And so we begin to massage it, and often what happens is people diminish his deity so that they can try to make sense of him, rather than recognizing that the mystery is a cause for worship. If you could get your mind around God's Trinity and around Jesus Christ as truly God and truly human, you would be greater than God. But we can't get our minds around it. What we do is we receive it because Scripture teaches it. We receive it by faith, and that is our salvation itself. Amen. - That's enough. - Yep, that's right. That's right. Let me read just shortly the passage and collotions, and then you can kind of close this out. Yeah, he's on a diet, he can eat, he's gonna give it to his dog. (laughing) And in collotions one, chapter one, verse 15, he is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation, for by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him, and he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church, he is the beginning, the first born from the dead, that in everything he might be permanent, for in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to recognize, reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. - Would you read chapter two, verse nine, up from collotions as well? - Sure. - For in him the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, and who is the head of all rule and authority. Everything that is true about God is true about the sight of God. The fullness of the Godhead dwells substantially, or bodily, or essentially in him. - But some of our modern day, and correct me, you know some in the past, some of it starting with Barth, not, well Barth probably too, but Bauer and all that. - Oh yeah, Walter Bauer. - Yeah, yeah, bad guy. But anyway, the point is, is that, is that they, it was like, when did the light go on? Was truly the enlightenment period that they thought they were? - Well, so, heresy begin to die off in the Middle Ages, and by the time of the Reformation, there are not that many heretics around, but with the enlightenment, with the turn towards measuring everything in a scientific manner, or in a physical manner, it's a better way to say it. All truth became mathematical, and the mystery became unacceptable. And that's why in the enlightenment, there begin to be a lot of doubt. Furnang Christian Bauer, it's probably the Bauer you're referring to, he taught that Jesus is really just a man. - Yeah, exactly. - And so not that he is God come in the flesh. And it's because in the enlightenment, naturalist, historicist mind, you cannot have God becoming human being. - Well, and the other thing that, if you can give some definition for, they'll be great and then we'll start closing out. It is amazing how, and Barthas, one of them, I'm not Barth, I keep saying Barth, or Erman, is one of those that says, the synoptics. They struggle with that because nowhere in the synopsics says it does Jesus say I am God But Jesus does everything and in fact others say he is yeah, yeah, and I'm going Any reason reading in context and he receives their worship. Yeah, and so we blast with me if he wasn't that's right and so he I think with Bart Irman is you've got to recognize here's a man that doesn't want to see the truth though You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make the horse drink it You can show people from an apologetics perspective what is the truth? But they will reject it. He says he was led to the lake and was drinking the water He just found out the water didn't taste very good. So that's why he left. I must have must have been drinking from a different lake Polluted lake. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Close us out Father, we thank you for your word We thank you for scripture which teaches us of your word the eternal Son of God The Lord Jesus we thank you for becoming a human being We thank you for dying on the cross to a tone for our sins being the substitute And Jesus Christ we thank you for arising from the dead so that those of us who believe in you can have eternal life We look forward to your second coming And we know you will reign forever and we thank you for the free offer of eternal life through faith in you Holy Spirit of God we thank you for convincing us of the truth of the Holy Scriptures and for leading us into truth and guarding us against false teaching We pray Father and Son and Holy Spirit that you will preserve your people from heresy and error And that you will glorify yourself through our teaching and through our witness at Lakeside Baptist Church We pray these things in Jesus name amen