This is the transcript of Restitutio episode 670: I Almost Became a Jehovah's Witness, Then I Found Biblical Unitarians with Will Turner This transcript was auto-generated and only approximates the contents of this episode. Audio file 670 Will Turner.mp3 Transcript 00:00 Sean Finnegan Hey there, I'm Sean Finnegan and you are listening to Restitutio, a podcast that seeks to recover authentic Christianity and live it out today. 00:12 Sean Finnegan Will Turner grew up in a Presbyterian church, but when the Jehovah's Witnesses came calling, he had to admit they made a lot of sense. 00:20 Sean Finnegan They got him to question the Trinity and heaven at death among other doctrines. 00:24 Sean Finnegan In fact, he almost joined, but there were a few issues that made him keep his distance. 00:30 Sean Finnegan Find out what they were and how encountering the work of biblical Unitarians online, like John Shainheit and Dustin Smith, helped Will tremendously in his journey of faith. 00:41 Sean Finnegan Today, he's an avid biblical Unitarian apologist defending God's oneness and engaging in scriptural conversations with people from different backgrounds on his YouTube channel. 00:52 Sean Finnegan Here now is episode 670. 00:54 Sean Finnegan I almost became a Jehovah's Witness, then I found Biblical Unitarians with Will Turner. 01:08 Sean Finnegan Welcome to Restitudio, a podcast seeking to recover authentic Christianity and live it out today. 01:14 Sean Finnegan I'm your host, Sean Finnegan, and today with me is Will Turner of the Will Waukee YouTube channel, Power Tools Apologetics. 01:24 Sean Finnegan Welcome to the podcast, Will. 01:26 Sean Finnegan So glad you're here. 01:27 Will Turner Dude, Sean, thanks for having me. 01:29 Will Turner Big honor, actually, because 01:31 Will Turner I've known of you and your podcast for a long time. 01:35 Will Turner Super honored that you invited me on. 01:38 Will Turner It was fun meeting you last year. 01:39 Will Turner So now it's just, it's like coming full circle. 01:42 Will Turner It's awesome. 01:43 Sean Finnegan Glad to have you on and it was cool to meet you at Converge last year. 01:47 Sean Finnegan And there's just like so many people at that event. 01:50 Sean Finnegan What a great opportunity to meet other biblical Unitarians, especially folks who, you know, you don't see every day, right? 01:58 Sean Finnegan Let's start with your journey of faith. 02:01 Sean Finnegan Like you grew up in a Christian home. 02:03 Sean Finnegan Did you take your faith seriously as a kid or was it like not till later that you really started getting passionate about it? 02:10 Will Turner Oh, not till later. 02:11 Will Turner Yeah, so I grew up in a Presbyterian home. 02:15 Will Turner We went to a Presbyterian church. 02:17 Will Turner My dad and the pastor, his name was Pastor Art, they shared an office. 02:23 Will Turner My dad was, it was a big church too. 02:27 Will Turner My dad knew everyone. 02:29 Will Turner Everyone knew me. 02:30 Will Turner I was always known as Scott's son. 02:32 Will Turner And he was the director and he played the organ. 02:36 Will Turner He had the music always set up. 02:38 Will Turner My mom always did Sunday school. 02:41 Will Turner So I grew up in it. 02:44 Will Turner But I definitely did not really care about it. 02:49 Will Turner was church was like, hey, I get to go hang out with my friends. 02:52 Will Turner Kind of that's everything that we did. 02:54 Will Turner And 02:57 Will Turner really, my faith really got serious later on. 03:02 Will Turner So even kind of growing up in it, I believed in God. 03:06 Will Turner And this is actually one of the interesting parts too. 03:10 Will Turner I would always consider myself, I guess, a Trinitarian. 03:15 Will Turner There was a even a video game back in the day. 03:18 Will Turner It was called Kingdom Hearts. 03:19 Will Turner It was like a Final Fantasy, Disney game, action RPG. 03:23 Will Turner And there was a move there called Trinity Limit where you had like the main character and you teamed up with like Sora, that's his name, Donald and Goofy. 03:30 Will Turner And it was like all three of them. 03:32 Will Turner So even when I heard Trinity, I'm thinking, okay, so it's like 3 people who are united like together, right? 03:40 Will Turner So 03:41 Will Turner when you hear the Trinity, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, that's kind of how I interpreted it. 03:46 Will Turner I was never actually explained the Trinity and anything like that. 03:51 Will Turner So when we're driving one day, because I always hear there's God and then there's God's Son, which is Jesus, and then you hear the Holy Spirit. 04:01 Will Turner I remember driving with my mom and we hear 04:06 Will Turner the days of Elijah song, where one of the bridge part towards the end is there's no God like Jehovah. 04:13 Will Turner And I remember even asking my mom, who's Jehovah? 04:15 Will Turner Because even our modern day Bibles, God's name, the Tetragrammaton, is not even in there. 04:23 Will Turner So that always stuck with me of, okay, there's God's name is Jehovah. 04:30 Will Turner Kind of going on then, 04:33 Will Turner That was kind of like my belief is like, hey, there's God, his name is Jehovah, there's Jesus. 04:38 Will Turner You know, we have the Holy Spirit. 04:40 Will Turner Never read the Bible, never really gave it a thought or anything. 04:44 Will Turner And there, even in coming into high school, one of my good friends, I think was slowly becoming either atheist or agnostic, questioning a lot of things. 04:55 Will Turner And he would bring things up to me of, well, in the Bible, you know, God allows 05:03 Will Turner sexual immoral things, rape, really some slavery. 05:09 Will Turner There's some really big sensitive things specifically in the Bible. 05:15 Will Turner And he's like, well, how do you deal with it? 05:17 Will Turner And I really couldn't, but I always believed. 05:20 Will Turner I'm like, yeah, but God is good. 05:22 Will Turner And God sent his son and his son died for us. 05:25 Will Turner And 05:26 Will Turner even coming across some conversations I would have with people where they would quote like Ezekiel 18 or Psalms 49 of, well, Jesus died for you, but the Bible says that a man can't die for another man's sins. 05:38 Will Turner So how did Jesus die for your sins? 05:41 Will Turner And there was a lot of questions that really affected me. 05:45 Will Turner And my faith was a little bit uneven. 05:48 Will Turner So I'm still living my life. 05:49 Will Turner I was someone who very 05:57 Will Turner I would have a bunch of girlfriends. 05:59 Will Turner I would cheat on girlfriends. 06:01 Will Turner I would smoke. 06:02 Will Turner I would get drunk. 06:04 Will Turner And I was not sure even after high school where I wanted to go to college. 06:08 Sean Finnegan And are you growing up in Cleveland or outside in a suburb or were you? 06:13 Will Turner In the suburbs. 06:13 Sean Finnegan In the suburbs. 06:14 Sean Finnegan And you're going to a public high school and it's probably a lot like my high school that I went to. 06:21 Sean Finnegan over here in New York where it's like most people are kind of skeptical or just like not Christian in their practice. 06:30 Sean Finnegan Was that pretty much the case or was it a little bit more, Midwest? 06:38 Sean Finnegan Like, sorry if I'm like imposing this on you, but like as a New Yorker, we imagine the Midwest is just like fairytale land where all the people are just like nice all the time. 06:49 Sean Finnegan I don't think Cleveland is really that far out there. 06:52 Will Turner No, but I definitely went to a high school. 06:56 Will Turner It was a national blue ribbon school. 06:58 Will Turner So I think that they really push you to think and really try to think outside of the box, not just necessarily just 07:09 Will Turner kind of answer the questions correctly so you can move on. 07:12 Will Turner They definitely wanted you to be able to critically think for yourself. 07:16 Will Turner And because of that, you definitely had a lot of people questioning their religious perspectives. 07:23 Will Turner A lot of people I remember were, I think starting in sophomore year, were getting very political. 07:29 Will Turner Like this is with 07:32 Will Turner Barack Obama becoming president and Ron Paul for the Libertarian Party, that was gaining a lot of speed. 07:38 Will Turner And a lot of people were really talking about a lot of these big questions. 07:43 Will Turner And sometimes the idea of Christianity, is it good? 07:47 Will Turner Is it bad? 07:48 Will Turner Is the Bible reliable? 07:50 Will Turner Is it false? 07:50 Will Turner Is God secretly an evil monster that we've had been praising without actually looking at the evidence to support that he actually does love us? 08:00 Will Turner So 08:02 Will Turner There was a lot of that going on. 08:03 Sean Finnegan So the fact that you had these questions drove you to study apologetics or what happened next in the story? 08:13 Will Turner I hit a spot in my life where I was just, I think, depressed. 08:22 Will Turner Kind of being with different girls was not fun for me anymore. 08:25 Will Turner Getting drunk was getting very old for me. 08:29 Will Turner Waking up just kind of 08:31 Will Turner hammered and sick the next day was getting really old and I was only 20. 08:39 Will Turner Wow. 08:39 Will Turner so and this is kind of something I did all throughout high school and it was just becoming very, very old very quickly. 08:48 Will Turner I know I was probably at the age where people would start doing these things. 08:52 Will Turner And with me, that was one of the big things. 08:55 Will Turner And I came to 08:58 Will Turner a big crossroad in my life where I kept kind of thinking about the Bible and I'm like, what? 09:04 Will Turner I remember I prayed and I never prayed, and I was like, all right, I don't think my life is being fulfilled. 09:14 Will Turner I don't think I'm doing anything proper, perspective, anything in my life right now. 09:21 Will Turner Like, God, I'm going to read your Bible. 09:23 Will Turner I'm going to kind of see for myself 09:25 Will Turner what the commotion is about right now. 09:29 Will Turner And ever since I started to actually pick up and read the Bible, I never set it back down. 09:39 Will Turner I was learning so many new things. 09:42 Will Turner I know one thing that we've already kind of talked about, and this is a huge thing for me, was reading and understanding 09:52 Will Turner like the flaming sword that we see in Genesis chapter 3. 09:56 Will Turner I was blown away by that. 09:57 Will Turner I'm like, that's such a weird thing to mention and I've never heard of that before. 10:03 Will Turner Jacob having a daughter named Dinah who got in trouble. 10:06 Will Turner The story of David with Samuel. 10:09 Will Turner I had no idea who Samuel was. 10:11 Will Turner But when you read Samuel for the first time, it tells you him growing up with Hannah, the struggle she went through. 10:18 Will Turner And then him selecting 10:21 Will Turner Saul, Saul not working out, having David come up. 10:26 Will Turner David had a bunch of struggles. 10:29 Will Turner Reading a lot of the Psalms that David wrote, especially with a lot of the prayers that David had, you know, because one thing I was always taught was when you pray, dear God, thanks for this nice day we have together. 10:40 Will Turner Thank you for this food. 10:41 Will Turner In Jesus' name, amen. 10:43 Will Turner But his prayers were so like 10:47 Will Turner he really wrestled with God. 10:48 Will Turner He was angry with God with a lot of his prayers. 10:50 Will Turner God, why would you allow these things to happen to me? 10:53 Will Turner I'm angry, I'm disappointed. 10:55 Will Turner But then it would always go back to, but you are a great God, merciful, slow to anger, filled with loving kindness, who will never let your anointed one be within Sheol. 11:06 Will Turner You will always rescue me and bring me out. 11:09 Will Turner It was like God became more real for me, not just this like 11:17 Will Turner idea that I feel like a lot of churches promote of we all pray to God, we all thank God, we all move on. 11:23 Will Turner Like I noticed David having a raw, real relationship with God. 11:31 Will Turner And it was just really interesting because I've never thought of it like that. 11:38 Will Turner So as I'm reading the Bible, I'm kind of struggling to 11:45 Will Turner kind of understand a lot of the historical aspects of it. 11:49 Will Turner There was a guy I met at one of the parks. 11:57 Will Turner He was a Jehovah Witness and he introduced himself as that. 12:00 Will Turner And I remember, oh, that song Jehovah, like, who are you guys? 12:06 Will Turner So we talked for a little bit and kind of what we believe about, you know, 12:10 Will Turner One of the things that he told me was, we believe that we're going to live on a perfect earth. 12:14 Will Turner I'm like, well, that's crazy because, I mean, we're going to go to heaven, right, when we die. 12:19 Will Turner And we're going to get the white robes or we're going to get our wings, our halos, all that fun stuff. 12:25 Will Turner And he actually showed me a lot of verses that seemed to say something different. 12:29 Will Turner And he gave me a book which really started me on my journey. 12:33 Will Turner It was a little yellow book called What Does the Bible Really Teach? 12:38 Will Turner and introduced who Jehovah was, his son, what the Holy Spirit is, and all these things. 12:46 Will Turner And I remember we were talking, he answered a lot of questions even about Revelation, about like 144,000, their input and everything like that. 12:56 Will Turner And just as a disclosure, I don't believe everything that Jehovah Witnesses teach. 13:02 Will Turner So I never became a Jehovah Witness, but I did study with them for two years. 13:07 Will Turner And I remember we were talking about the Trinity one day. 13:10 Will Turner And Sean, it's kind of funny because he was like, we don't believe in the Trinity. 13:16 Will Turner I'm like, wait, so you don't believe in the Father, Son, Holy Spirit? 13:18 Will Turner And he's like, no, we don't believe that they are three persons within the one being. 13:23 Will Turner And Sean, it's funny because I thought he was lying. 13:29 Will Turner I'm like, Oh, really? 13:31 Sean Finnegan You just didn't believe him at all. 13:33 Will Turner I didn't believe I'm like, dude, I'm like, dude, that's like no offense, but that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. 13:38 Will Turner Like nobody actually believes that Jesus, like Jesus is the son of God. 13:45 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 13:45 Will Turner Like, and I remember even talking to my parents about this. 13:48 Will Turner I'm like, you're Scott. 13:50 Will Turner You're my dad. 13:51 Will Turner I am Will. 13:52 Will Turner I am not you. 13:53 Will Turner are not me. 13:54 Will Turner We're not persons within the one being. 13:57 Will Turner Like, that's stupid. 14:00 Will Turner And I went to my parents and I'm like, are we Trinitarians? 14:05 Will Turner Yes, we're Christians, we're Trinitarians. 14:08 Will Turner Okay, so wait, We believe that there's one God who is 1 being and within the one being there are three persons. 14:18 Will Turner Like, yes. 14:20 Will Turner And I'm like, I was so confused and now I'm questioning the Trinity and actually it was funny because they asked me if I spoke to a Jehovah Witness. 14:30 Will Turner And I told them, I did. 14:32 Will Turner And I, see, that's the problem. 14:36 Will Turner You spoke to a Jehovah Witness. 14:38 Will Turner And like, you're thinking about becoming a Jehovah Witness. 14:40 Will Turner And they straw manned my entire argument. 14:43 Will Turner And I'm like, no, I disagree. 14:46 Will Turner with some of the arguments that are around the Trinity. 14:50 Will Turner And by this time, they've done the typical John 1.1, John 858, John 1030, John 2028, First John 57, First John 520, Philippians chapter 2, Colossians chapter 1, all those things. 15:04 Will Turner But I was able to read and understand a lot of these arguments. 15:09 Will Turner Actually, probably during this time, I discovered John Schoonheit, 15:15 Will Turner and Dustin Smith from biblicalunitarian.com. 15:20 Will Turner And really reading their common verses that they had on there, I was able to explain every single thing. 15:29 Sean Finnegan To your parents? 15:31 Sean Finnegan Is that what we're talking about? 15:32 Will Turner Yeah. 15:33 Sean Finnegan Okay. 15:34 Sean Finnegan So let me just back up. 15:35 Sean Finnegan So you met the Jehovah's Witness and you 15:40 Sean Finnegan agreed to meet with them. 15:42 Sean Finnegan When you were meeting with them, where was that happening? 15:44 Sean Finnegan Was it at the Kingdom Hall or at your house? 15:47 Sean Finnegan Okay, at the Kingdom Hall. 15:48 Will Turner Yeah, Kingdom Hall. 15:49 Will Turner And then there were different guys I got to know and we would all study together. 15:56 Will Turner So we would either go out to like Wendy's or something. 16:01 Will Turner We'd go to a restaurant or whatever. 16:02 Will Turner We'd meet in park. 16:04 Will Turner We would do like our daily Bible studies. 16:06 Will Turner I went through a lot of their literature. 16:10 Will Turner And one thing that really bothered me was I agree with them about soul sleep. 16:16 Will Turner I agree with them about the one God and everything like that. 16:20 Will Turner I disagreed about Michael. 16:22 Will Turner I disagreed about Michael. 16:24 Will Turner I did think it was cool how they did connect it. 16:26 Will Turner I did, you know, I thought that was cool. 16:29 Will Turner I disagreed too about this idea of the governing body and it's essentially they're like the popes and everything. 16:37 Will Turner And 16:39 Will Turner Even now, they have changed so many things because I remember I would have a beard and one of the guys in the organization was very upset with me because I had a beard. 16:49 Will Turner He wrote into a letter to the governing body, they wrote him back and they said, and Sean, you're a pastor, you'll get a kick out of this. 16:57 Will Turner Explaining how us as the governing body, people need to submit to us. 17:01 Will Turner They brought up Romans 15, submit to the governing authorities. 17:06 Will Turner And then they said, just as Joseph shaved his beard when he went in front of Pharaoh, how much more so as us of servants of Jehovah should we shave our beard when we enter his presence at the kingdom hall? 17:21 Will Turner I wish I had a copy of the letter, but I remember it verbatim. 17:27 Sean Finnegan It's just the crazy thing about the Bible, right? 17:29 Sean Finnegan Is that you can have whatever belief, whatever position, 17:35 Sean Finnegan And you can find some verse somewhere, because there's just like so many verses and so much language in the Bible. 17:42 Sean Finnegan You could find like half a verse here, half a verse there, or some sort of reasoning to come up with justification for your pet theory. 17:52 Sean Finnegan And when they said to you, no beards, like, did you shave or what did you do? 17:56 Will Turner Oh no, I kept the beard. 17:59 Will Turner I told them that is the, I mean, respectfully, that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. 18:05 Will Turner Just because Joseph shaved his beard, that's now a law that's going to be distinguished. 18:11 Will Turner Because my response to them was in the Torah, it says not to shave. 18:16 Will Turner So how do, like obviously it's not going to, the Bible is not going to contradict itself because we have one spot in the Torah where it says it shaves, the other says in the Torah where it says you shall not shave. 18:27 Will Turner Where specifically, I think you can, my interpretation of that specifically is you can trim your beard, but a razor should not touch your face. 18:34 Will Turner So, how do we, Joseph was in prison for a long time. 18:39 Will Turner Maybe his beard was 6 to 12 inches long. 18:42 Will Turner And maybe when it says that he shaved his beard, he trimmed it. 18:45 Will Turner You know, maybe he never did break the Torah. 18:47 Will Turner So maybe we're allowed to have a small beard like I have right now. 18:51 Will Turner Maybe not just a, like there's so many things that are there. 18:54 Will Turner And for you to 18:56 Will Turner and they told me, we're not going to baptize you unless you shave your beard. 19:01 Will Turner I didn't say this, but I thought to myself, I don't care because I'm not trying to get baptized anyways. 19:06 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 19:07 Sean Finnegan It's interesting because you had this incredible desire to understand the Bible and you were struggling with that. 19:14 Sean Finnegan I don't know, struggling with it. 19:16 Sean Finnegan You were. 19:18 Will Turner No, I was. 19:18 Sean Finnegan That's the place you were at when the Jehovah's Witness came to you and said, hey, 19:24 Sean Finnegan We are the people that study the Bible. 19:26 Sean Finnegan We want to study the Bible together. 19:27 Sean Finnegan You're like, of course you do. 19:29 Sean Finnegan So, it seems like it kind of a perfect fit. 19:32 Sean Finnegan But then when they started coming up with some of these like weird theories, I don't know if you came across blood transfusions as well at this time. 19:42 Will Turner So that was another thing. 19:44 Will Turner And I remember the whole thing with the blood transfusions and actually have an update on that with you too. 19:50 Will Turner Because now you are magically allowed to have beards. 19:53 Will Turner I think beards were changed back in 2024. 19:56 Will Turner I think that actually was changed. 19:59 Will Turner So I was studying with them back in 2014 to 2016. 20:05 Will Turner That's when I was studying with them. 20:08 Will Turner And with that, with the whole blood transfusion, I remember them saying if 20:14 Will Turner Because also in the yellow book, which started me on this journey, but also there were things I disagreed with, they had a picture, a diagram of if a doctor tells you not to drink alcohol, would you pump it into your bloodstream? 20:30 Will Turner And I remember even talking to the others, I'm like, well, that's a terrible example because we can drink water. 20:36 Will Turner Water is healthy for us. 20:37 Will Turner If you start pumping water into your bloodstream, you're going to die. 20:42 Will Turner So that is a terrible connection. 20:46 Will Turner And I've said that from the get-go of, again, the whole blood transfusion thing is a very stupid idea. 20:54 Will Turner It's wrong, it's incorrect. 20:56 Will Turner And people kept saying to me as a response, well, Will, this is what Jehovah's governing body has established for us. 21:02 Will Turner Jehovah has given the governing body the proper nourishing food at the proper time to give to his 21:09 Will Turner people through his faithful and discreet slave. 21:13 Will Turner That's the language that they would use. 21:16 Will Turner Well, recently earlier, I want to say March of 2026 this year, they actually came out with a statement saying that, you know, through prayerful 21:31 Will Turner discretion, we are now allowing the person, if they want to, now have a blood transfusion. 21:39 Sean Finnegan Oh wow. 21:40 Sean Finnegan That's phenomenal. 21:42 Sean Finnegan That's so great that they changed on that. 21:46 Sean Finnegan Because people probably died. 21:49 Will Turner Let me say this. 21:50 Will Turner So back in 1994, so they have two wet magazines. 21:54 Will Turner They have an A Watchtower magazine and they have an Awake magazine. 21:56 Will Turner In 1994, I want to say, 22:00 Will Turner I think it was October. 22:03 Will Turner It praised all these children on the cover of this magazine of ones who gave their life for Jehovah. 22:12 Will Turner And they talked about how all these people were facing death and they could have gotten a blood transfusion, but they chose not to. 22:23 Will Turner They chose to listen to Jehovah's direction and Jehovah will remember them during the resurrection. 22:32 Will Turner That was a big thing too. 22:32 Will Turner And that was kind of hard for me to see because Sean, I have a five-year-old son and a four-year-old daughter and my kids are my world. 22:40 Will Turner Love them to death. 22:41 Will Turner Little Elijah and Salamia or Mia for short. 22:47 Will Turner Then fast forward in 2011, 22:50 Will Turner 2011, or it might have been 2001. 22:54 Will Turner In the Watchtower magazine of that year, there was a question of like, ask the elder, I forgot what it was exactly called, and they said, we know we can't get blood transfusions, but can we store our blood and later use it if we know that we're going to have a major surgery? 23:15 Will Turner And their reasoning behind that was, no, absolutely not. 23:19 Will Turner And they gave all the verses talking about, if blood comes out of your body, it must be poured out. 23:26 Will Turner And their reasoning was, if it must be poured out, it can't be stored. 23:30 Will Turner So not even against blood transfusions, like Sean, if we're the same blood type, I can't take your blood, but I can't even store my own blood and use it. 23:40 Will Turner Now they have said that through prayer, 23:45 Will Turner they think that now you can store up your blood and everything like that. 23:50 Will Turner And this is very frustrating for me because people have lost their lives and the governing body's response to this is if you're on an airplane and there is a medical doctor and someone like faints or whatever, you're going to trust this medical doctor. 24:07 Will Turner Even though this medical doctor might not be able to save the person, you're still going to put your faith and trust into them. 24:15 Will Turner How much more so should we trust the governing body, the faithful and discreet slave, whom Jehovah has appointed to give it to us? 24:24 Will Turner So now they're actually admitting that we are wrong when it does come to things, but we will make the corrections at the correct times, but you still need to listen to us without question. 24:35 Sean Finnegan So there's an inconsistency there where 24:42 Sean Finnegan On the one hand, they want to have they want to retain total authority, but they also want to admit that they were wrong. 24:50 Will Turner Yes, and it's not just authority here because one of the other. 24:54 Will Turner Yeah, and part of it too is, you know, you're a pastor, right? 24:59 Will Turner You know, you can encourage people. 25:01 Will Turner And Shawn, like if you were to give me advice, I absolutely would listen to you, know, because you're a pastor. 25:06 Will Turner But I would also kind of think about it. 25:08 Will Turner But what they have done is they have said that Jehovah 25:12 Will Turner tells us stuff through Jesus and then we tell you guys. 25:17 Will Turner So then my question is, how do you get this wrong? 25:22 Will Turner And I've brought up to them Deuteronomy 13 and 18 and Jeremiah where it talks about how to identify a false prophet when they make a prophecy and it does not come true or if it's wrong, they are a false prophet. 25:32 Will Turner And 25:34 Will Turner A lot of my JW friends did not like when I brought that up. 25:37 Will Turner But it's at the point now where beards are a little silly, clinking the glasses, like giving toasts. 25:44 Will Turner They said that you're not allowed to do that because of Isaiah 6511, but now you can. 25:48 Will Turner But this idea of the whole blood transfusion, people have lost their lives and they honestly don't seem to care. 25:54 Will Turner And people of Jehovah Witnesses have told me, well, it doesn't matter because they're going to be resurrected at the end of the day. 26:01 Will Turner Well, then. 26:03 Sean Finnegan That's way overstating it because you still died and the people that loved you still suffered that loss and you could have lived another 20 years, right? 26:14 Sean Finnegan So it's not nothing. 26:16 Sean Finnegan That's ridiculous. 26:18 Sean Finnegan So you studied with them for two years. 26:20 Sean Finnegan You spent a lot of time at the Kingdom Hall, reading the New World Translation, taking a look at the Awake magazine and what's the other one, Watchtower. 26:30 Will Turner Yes. 26:32 Sean Finnegan At the end of that two year period, you decided not to join. 26:38 Will Turner It got to the point where they were being very pushy with me of like, what are you doing? 26:45 Will Turner And a lot of the, I would really **** heads with a lot of the guys. 26:53 Will Turner And it got to the point where I'm like, I just can't do this anymore. 26:58 Will Turner It got to the point where 27:00 Will Turner I do think Jehovah Witnesses do know the Bible better than your average Christian. 27:06 Will Turner Your average churchgoer, I do think Jehovah Witnesses have a better grasp of the Bible. 27:11 Will Turner But it got to the point where I can't even think for myself. 27:16 Will Turner I have to rely on what the governing body is telling me to believe and how to go in these specific directions. 27:24 Will Turner And it just got to the point where 27:27 Will Turner I realized this for a while. 27:29 Will Turner I did end up fully leaving, but Sean, everybody else was Trinitarian. 27:35 Will Turner And my options were either I go to a Trinitarian church or I go to a Jehovah Witness church. 27:40 Will Turner And it's just like, I agree with these guys so much more. 27:44 Will Turner You know, like if I need a blood transfusion, I'm going to get a blood transfusion. 27:48 Will Turner I disagree with them, you know, whether they kick me out or whatever. 27:51 Will Turner But 27:52 Will Turner I can't get behind the idea of the Trinity and it really, I struggled deeply with it. 27:59 Will Turner And then that's when I came across biblicalunitarian.com with John Schoenheit and Dustin Smith when he was working there at the time. 28:10 Will Turner And one thing, it was actually kind of funny, I struggled with this for a long time because I saw their stuff, I thought it was amazing. 28:22 Will Turner I struggled because they did not believe that Jesus pre-existed. 28:26 Will Turner I didn't think Jesus was Michael the Archangel, but I definitely thought Jesus did pre-exist. 28:31 Will Turner And I got discouraged again because I'm like, oh great, here's another organization that I just, I agree 99% of with their stuff, but I don't agree with everything. 28:44 Will Turner And I just, I was like, you know what? 28:46 Will Turner I'm just gonna stop going to church. 28:48 Will Turner Continue to do my own Bible studies. 28:51 Will Turner continue to do everything kind of on my own. 28:55 Will Turner And I actually was, I was from, when did I, trying to think when I found your podcast. 29:05 Will Turner I want to, what was it? 29:12 Will Turner I can't remember if it was before or during the middle of COVID, but it was about that time. 29:16 Will Turner I've known of you for a few years. 29:20 Will Turner And I was disappointed because every other biblical Unitarian person I found was far from me, states away from me. 29:29 Will Turner And it's just like, I can listen, but I can't interact with anyone. 29:37 Will Turner I've tried to even look up like Messianic Jewish places. 29:42 Will Turner Like there was one by me, but 29:45 Will Turner They were also like Trinitarian, which blew me away. 29:48 Sean Finnegan That's so that still blows me away. 29:50 Sean Finnegan It's like, what? 29:53 Will Turner I'll be honest with you. 29:55 Will Turner And I'm not just saying this to sound mean or hurtful, but they're saying they believe in the Trinity just to not be offensive to Christians. 30:05 Will Turner They don't know the proper definition of a person. 30:08 Will Turner They don't even know. 30:09 Sean Finnegan They're just going with it because they know if they don't, they're going to be called a cult or something. 30:15 Will Turner They don't know the early doctrines of it. 30:17 Will Turner They don't even know what homoousia is, hypostasis. 30:20 Will Turner They don't know a lot of these terms. 30:22 Will Turner And they just, I mean, they're almost like kind of lazy with the apologetic side of it. 30:28 Will Turner They just kind of say, yes, I believe in the Trinity. 30:32 Will Turner So it was just annoying and frustrating. 30:34 Will Turner And I just, I was like, I didn't know what to do, where to go or anything. 30:45 Will Turner And I've actually from there to basically now I've happy to discover the UCA with you. 30:57 Will Turner I know we already talked about it with the Converge event. 31:00 Will Turner It was like within an hour from my house. 31:03 Will Turner I was like excited to go to that. 31:05 Will Turner And even before this though, constantly listening to Dustin. 31:11 Will Turner Dustin, Dale Tuggy, those are two people who I've really gravitated towards. 31:16 Will Turner I've actually, and even Dr. 31:20 Will Turner Steve and Nemesh, watching debates online, doing apologetics, everything like that. 31:27 Will Turner That's really what pushed me. 31:29 Will Turner While I was alone in my solitude, these are things that I really pursued and really tried to get a better grasp of. 31:36 Will Turner And I actually 31:38 Will Turner started to really consider the idea of, I think Dustin and Dale and John, you, everyone has a point about if did Jesus pre-exist? 31:51 Will Turner Because obviously he could not be the angel of the Lord. 31:54 Will Turner Because I, that was actually my first debate back on YouTube. 31:59 Will Turner I think it was in 22. 32:02 Will Turner I had a debate with a guy regarding the angel of the Lord is a Jesus. 32:06 Will Turner And Hebrews shuts that whole thing down because there's a conversation, the angel of the Lord has with people, but we know that Jesus never spoke, right? 32:17 Will Turner Because Hebrews chapter one verse. 32:20 Sean Finnegan God spoke in many ways in the times before, but he has not spoken through Jesus. 32:25 Sean Finnegan Or in the last days he has spoken through Jesus. 32:28 Sean Finnegan Or through his son. 32:29 Sean Finnegan Does it say his son there? 32:30 Will Turner Through his son, I believe, I think that's the exact verbiage that she used. 32:34 Will Turner So I think that really shuts it down. 32:36 Will Turner So then you just, honestly, I really thought to myself, okay, if Jesus did pre-exist, like what was he doing? 32:42 Sean Finnegan Yeah, why was he so quiet? 32:44 Will Turner Right, like was he literally chilling up there? 32:47 Will Turner And I'm like, that just, you know, I definitely think, because 32:51 Will Turner One thing with Dustin is he kept saying he's a genuine human being. 32:55 Will Turner He has a lineage. 32:56 Will Turner He's from Joseph and Mary. 32:58 Will Turner He has this line that we can trace back to. 33:03 Will Turner And I'm just like, yeah, he's definitely a genuine human being. 33:10 Will Turner And even constantly reading the gospels over and over and over again is you get the sense of these 33:19 Will Turner limits that Jesus has, right? 33:22 Will Turner Doesn't know the day or the hour, doesn't know why the fig tree shriveled up, doesn't know who touched him. 33:28 Will Turner Father is greater than I, why do you call me good? 33:30 Will Turner No one is good except the Father. 33:32 Will Turner And that has just really solidified this like, yes, this human Messiah figure. 33:38 Will Turner And I think that makes it even the more wild to be a Christian and to live like this individual. 33:47 Will Turner Because 33:49 Will Turner If he's just a normal human being and he obviously he was elevated to Lord to Lordship. 33:59 Will Turner So he is he's greater. 34:01 Will Turner He's greater than us. 34:02 Will Turner Like I'm not saying there's nothing about special about him, but it makes it so much more worth following. 34:12 Will Turner You know, like I played basketball all throughout middle school, elementary school, honestly. 34:17 Will Turner and to high school, I played basketball. 34:20 Will Turner Michael Jordan was my favorite player. 34:22 Will Turner And I appreciated just how much he has done. 34:27 Will Turner We're thinking how much more Jesus, our Messiah, has done for us. 34:33 Will Turner Even the whole thing with Lazarus, you know, Jesus wept for Lazarus. 34:39 Will Turner He is praying to the Father at the Garden of Gethsemane. 34:45 Will Turner And 34:46 Will Turner some of the Bible translation says that he was sweating blood. 34:49 Will Turner Or it's interesting if you look that up, it's actually possible for someone to sweat blood. 34:55 Will Turner If they are under enough stress, somebody could actually sweat blood. 34:58 Will Turner That was amazing to me. 34:59 Will Turner I'm like, wow. 35:00 Will Turner So it might have been a description of how much he was sweating, or he could have been sweating blood. 35:10 Will Turner And 35:12 Will Turner He knew the crucifixion that was coming his way. 35:15 Will Turner He said, Father, if it's possible, let this cup pass for me, but not by my will, but of your will. 35:20 Will Turner So no matter what, he was still willing to do with the Father's will, no matter what temptation he was under. 35:27 Sean Finnegan And would you say that if you, like back when you believed in pre-existence, like you didn't really make that connection as much? 35:33 Sean Finnegan Or like how did you think about it when you believed in pre-existence? 35:38 Sean Finnegan Where you were like, oh, well, yeah, I mean, 35:40 Sean Finnegan Of course, he's great at righteousness. 35:42 Sean Finnegan He's been around for a long time. 35:44 Will Turner Yeah, it was weird. 35:47 Will Turner I never, so honestly, I never really gave it a lot of thought. 35:49 Will Turner I just, with the Jehovah Witnesses, they made the connections of, we know he pre-existed because of verses like in John where it says, no one has ascended or descended to heaven except the Son of Man. 36:03 Will Turner Or he'll make another comment in John where it says, 36:08 Will Turner I have come down to, from, I think it just says, have come down to do my father's will. 36:15 Will Turner and I'm like, okay, cool, he pre-existed. 36:16 Will Turner Like, I never questioned it. 36:19 Will Turner And I believed it for so long that when the opposition was brought up to me, it was, you know, it was going against the grain, right? 36:28 Will Turner I never gave it any thought. 36:30 Will Turner It was just something that I accepted. 36:32 Will Turner But through the years of just kind of thinking about it having it in the back of my head, 36:36 Will Turner I was definitely like, Dustin has a point here. 36:40 Will Turner He really does. 36:41 Will Turner I don't think I was mature enough to listen until now. 36:47 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 36:48 Sean Finnegan Okay. 36:48 Sean Finnegan So when you shifted on that, it kind of opened up this connection to Jesus where you were like, you know, I'm a human being. 37:01 Sean Finnegan He's a human being. 37:03 Sean Finnegan I can follow his example. 37:05 Sean Finnegan Would you say that that's true? 37:07 Will Turner Yeah, absolutely. 37:09 Will Turner And definitely understanding the Torah also helped play a big role with it too. 37:17 Will Turner That obviously doesn't mean I'm going to be perfect like Jesus. 37:20 Will Turner I'm still going to fall and stray away from the correct path. 37:27 Will Turner Now, when it comes to original sin or ancestral sin, I'm not 37:33 Will Turner sold on a specific idea regarding that, but I do think I am a sinful person, but through accepting Jesus as my Savior, which I actually think is a big, it is a big thing because a lot of Trinitarians will say that the Trinity is a salvation issue. 37:54 Will Turner I would actually argue, and I just want to pull the verse out because I don't want to misquote it. 38:00 Will Turner I believe that Romans 38:02 Will Turner chapter 10, specifically verses 9 and 10, that's a salvation issue. 38:07 Will Turner And it says, and this is from the NASB version, that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, 38:18 Will Turner Not God, not the second person of the Trinity, anything like that, just as Lord. 38:22 Will Turner Remember, this Lord is also in reference to that God made Jesus both Christ and Lord. 38:29 Will Turner So he was elevated to this higher position and he was granted it. 38:34 Will Turner And believe in your heart that God raised him, Jesus, from the dead, you will be saved. 38:39 Will Turner For with the heart a person believes resulting in righteousness and with the mouth he confesses resulting in salvation. 38:47 Will Turner Okay. 38:48 Will Turner So with this confession and this belief that, and I think this more plays a role with Unitarianism, that there's this one true God and this one true Lord that Paul mentions all the time in the beginning of his letters, right? 39:02 Will Turner Like, I thank the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ for X, Y, and Z, right? 39:09 Will Turner That God and Father that's being mentioned there, it's not 39:13 Will Turner It's not like a triune person. 39:15 Will Turner It's one person who is being identified as God with this one Lord Jesus Christ. 39:20 Will Turner So that's playing the salvific role right there. 39:24 Will Turner And then it talks about the righteousness. 39:25 Will Turner It says when a person believes resulting in righteousness, which there's going to be a different way that you're going to have to live. 39:33 Will Turner And my Messiah followed the Torah. 39:35 Will Turner I believe following the Torah is a very great thing. 39:41 Will Turner just you were on my channel earlier and I know in Victor's book, it talks about, observing the Sabbath, fasting, doing these things. 39:51 Will Turner They're so beneficial for you. 39:54 Will Turner And even one of the episodes I was with Will Barlow, even talking about, 40:01 Will Turner abstaining from certain foods, not wearing certain type of clothing. 40:05 Will Turner These are all benefits to you to make you better, which makes sense because if our father has created us, this is going to be a benefit for us. 40:15 Will Turner because he knows that he knows our bias the best because he created it. 40:18 Will Turner Just like whenever I construct a house, right? 40:22 Will Turner Sean, if I build a house for you and I tell you, Sean, on this wall, don't put any nails in there. 40:27 Will Turner I don't I shouldn't have to tell you why. 40:30 Will Turner Just listen to me, Sean. 40:31 Will Turner I built your house. 40:32 Will Turner If you don't listen to me, you put a nail through there, you're going to hit a water line or something. 40:36 Sean Finnegan You know, this actually just happened in our house. 40:40 Sean Finnegan Oh, did we had we had a renovation done in 40:44 Sean Finnegan in one of our bathrooms, they were doing the drywall and they screwed through, PEX, which is like, if it was copper, it would have been fine. 40:56 Sean Finnegan But and it was like such a puzzle to figure out what was causing the leak. 41:03 Sean Finnegan Because of course, like what do you check? 41:05 Sean Finnegan You check like the faucets and all like the connections. 41:07 Sean Finnegan You're not you're going to like take the wall out and check in. 41:11 Sean Finnegan So like we actually eventually did find it. 41:14 Sean Finnegan the contractor did, but I totally resonate with what you just said there. 41:18 Sean Finnegan Yeah, don't nail through the pipes. 41:22 Will Turner Yeah, but with our bodies, our bodies are so much more complex. 41:30 Will Turner there have been so many doctors who have actually said that the dietary laws that are brought out in 41:36 Will Turner the Torah are to such a benefit for us. 41:39 Will Turner And even scientists have discovered that when you mix the two fabrics together, it actually lowers your immune system. 41:45 Will Turner So there's so many benefits to following it and to living as Jesus lived. 41:53 Will Turner So to me, going back to Romans 10, 9 and 10, that's a salvation issue, not believing in the Trinity and anything like that. 42:02 Sean Finnegan Wait, so that's. 42:04 Sean Finnegan What's the salvation issue? 42:07 Will Turner I believe it's Romans chapter 10, verse 9 and 10. 42:11 Sean Finnegan Right, But just, you know, you were talking about righteousness. 42:14 Sean Finnegan Would you say that, like, if I wear cotton and polyester blend, that I'm not saved? 42:21 Sean Finnegan Like, it just kind of sounded like that's what you were saying there. 42:25 Sean Finnegan No, I didn't think that's where you're coming from, but yeah, that's kind of like how you interpreted righteousness there. 42:32 Will Turner It's not doing doing doing of the law is not a righteousness that will like grant the grant the salvation. 42:40 Will Turner What I was just bringing up was there's a lot of things that 42:46 Will Turner God, our creator, single person, has created, he's created us, he knows what's best for us. 42:53 Will Turner So doing these things to, just to live a healthy life and not nothing to do with the salvation. 42:59 Sean Finnegan But believe that Jesus died for your sins, believing that God raised him from the dead, those are salvation. 43:04 Sean Finnegan Believing that Jesus existed before he was born, that's, you know, I think, I'll just say my opinion. 43:12 Sean Finnegan If you believe that, I don't think it's going to 43:15 Sean Finnegan keep you out of the kingdom of God or if you don't believe it. 43:19 Sean Finnegan I think it's just sort of like, well, who is Jesus? 43:24 Sean Finnegan That's the question you're asking there. 43:26 Will Turner Yeah, no, yeah, that's the main point I was trying to bring up specifically with verse 9, where Jesus as Lord and that believing that God raised him, you know, from the dead. 43:40 Will Turner And then just continue reading. 43:44 Will Turner And with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. 43:46 Will Turner For the scripture says, whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. 43:52 Will Turner That's verse 11. 43:53 Sean Finnegan All right, so you studied with the Jehovah's Witnesses. 43:56 Sean Finnegan I don't think you ever really finished the conversation about your parents. 44:00 Sean Finnegan I think during that time is when you were having the dispute with your parents about the Trinity. 44:05 Sean Finnegan How did that end up? 44:07 Will Turner So it was, they were very upset. 44:13 Will Turner with me for not believing in the Trinity. 44:16 Will Turner And I kept asking them, and a big help, honestly, was biblicalunitarian.com. 44:22 Will Turner There was a section in there that John has regarding common verses, where a lot of the verses are brought up that we can kind of go through, you know, your common ones, John 1, John 58, John 1030, stuff like that. 44:37 Will Turner And I was able to explain everything to my parents. 44:42 Will Turner But they really straw man my entire argument for not believing in the Trinity because all they did was present arguments of why Jehovah Witnesses are fake. 44:53 Will Turner And they brought up the, what's it called, the false prophecies that they've made, everything like that. 45:02 Will Turner And I told them like, I actually, I forgot what the book is called. 45:06 Will Turner It's, it basically goes over the Jehovah Witness biography. 45:09 Will Turner And 45:12 Will Turner I was aware of all the false prophecies that they made and everything like that. 45:15 Will Turner And I kept telling them. 45:17 Sean Finnegan You mean like where they were predicting when Jesus would return, that sort of stuff? 45:21 Sean Finnegan Or Armageddon would happen. 45:23 Will Turner Yeah, they even predicted that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would return in San Francisco. 45:31 Will Turner And the successor of Charles Taze Russell, his name was Judge Ruth III, he carried out 45:41 Will Turner his succession. 45:42 Will Turner And he, I forgot the exact verse. 45:46 Will Turner I believe it's somewhere that's in the minor prophets where it mentions like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will be brought back, something like that. 45:54 Will Turner And his interpretation was 1914, they're going to be brought back and they're going to be in San Diego. 46:01 Will Turner So they actually built a house for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in San Diego, California. 46:08 Will Turner And when that prophecy didn't happen, he's like, oh, well, 46:12 Will Turner we had a miscalculation, but thanks for the house. 46:15 Will Turner And he actually, he lived in the house. 46:19 Will Turner And that, so I kept telling my parents like, guys, look, I don't agree everything with Jehovah Witnesses, but this idea of the Trinity being false, I've already investigated, there are other groups out there, even finding the, what's it called, the Christ Philadelphians, 46:41 Will Turner Yeah. 46:42 Will Turner They also don't believe in the Trinity. 46:45 Will Turner Like there's other groups who don't believe in the Trinity too. 46:51 Will Turner But they straw manned my entire position. 46:53 Will Turner They kept saying, well, Jehovah Witnesses are fake. 46:55 Will Turner I'm like, cool. 46:57 Will Turner I don't care. 46:58 Will Turner Please answer my question when it comes to John 111 and to all these other things. 47:03 Will Turner The distinction of John 11C where it's Thaos versus the Tanteon and John 11B. 47:09 Will Turner Why are they different? 47:10 Will Turner Why is 1 nominative? 47:11 Will Turner Why is 1 accusative? 47:14 Will Turner They just couldn't. 47:16 Will Turner Even with John 858, Diego and me there, 47:19 Will Turner It's not an equivocation to the that you see in Exodus 3:14. 47:25 Will Turner That's I will be, I will be. 47:26 Will Turner If it was I am, it would be in the Hebrew. 47:30 Will Turner It's not, it's not the same. 47:32 Will Turner It's an equivocation fallacy. 47:34 Will Turner And every other time that is being used or the, I should say, it's I will be, they will be, they to be, they are, it is. 47:46 Will Turner It's never I am. 47:51 Will Turner So it got to the point where sadly, in December of 2022, we had to cut ties. 48:03 Will Turner So I no longer speak to my parents. 48:09 Sean Finnegan Well, hopefully you can speak to them, but not 48:13 Sean Finnegan on this issue, at some point. 48:17 Will Turner I don't want to go into it, but there's a lot of issues where, I'll say this, I did have to get the police involved. 48:23 Sean Finnegan Oh, wow. 48:25 Will Turner So it was a very sad ending, but I had to do it. 48:32 Sean Finnegan Now, what about fellowship? 48:34 Sean Finnegan Did you find other local folks to connect with? 48:39 Will Turner I did not. 48:39 Sean Finnegan On your own or? 48:41 Will Turner I did not, I gave up the, now also too, I never really brought this up. 48:52 Will Turner When I was going to the Presbyterian church, I'm gonna backtrack a little bit too. 48:57 Will Turner I lost my faith a lot too with a lot of churches. 49:02 Will Turner Going back to the Presbyterian church that my dad worked at, there was problems with 49:09 Will Turner the finances and the money and stuff like that. 49:11 Will Turner I don't know a whole lot. 49:13 Will Turner We went there when I was born up until I was in 5th grade. 49:17 Will Turner And there were other issues going on, but again, I was so young, I did not know. 49:23 Will Turner Then from 6th grade to senior, we went to a church. 49:27 Will Turner It was called the Friends Church. 49:29 Will Turner It was like a non-denominational. 49:33 Will Turner They said that they were like descendants of the Quakers. 49:35 Will Turner I still really don't know what that means. 49:37 Will Turner You probably do. 49:38 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 49:41 Sean Finnegan I do, but go ahead. 49:43 Will Turner So with them going to church with them, and actually again, there were financial issues, I guess. 49:51 Will Turner My dad also played for them and he never got a paycheck, but he never cared. 49:56 Will Turner He just wanted to play the music. 49:58 Will Turner And I guess it was leaked that one of the pastor's daughter's boyfriends was in the church and he was getting 50:07 Will Turner I don't know the dollar amount, but he got a dollar amount that people quit the church and they, so I don't know what the dollar amount, but it was enough to make burn a few times with churches in the past and you would say maybe you have a low trust of participating in a group like that. 50:29 Will Turner Yeah. 50:30 Will Turner And then, 50:32 Will Turner I had a hard time with churches with that. 50:34 Will Turner And then at that Messianic synagogue that we went to, we went there for I think like two years or something, or maybe I think maybe three, probably 3. 50:48 Will Turner But we, my wife and I, we gave money, but then we had to stop because we, a lot of the mishandling of the money again, where one of the guys there 51:01 Will Turner who was good friends with the rabbi, he needed money to go to college, and he just gave it to him. 51:07 Will Turner No written plan to pay me back, no anything. 51:10 Will Turner And it's just like, I'm paying for someone. 51:12 Will Turner And this is actually someone who quit his job because he just didn't like it. 51:17 Will Turner And he had no background. 51:18 Will Turner What was he going to school for? 51:21 Will Turner I think something with business. 51:23 Will Turner Business. 51:23 Sean Finnegan So it wasn't even related to the church at all. 51:26 Will Turner No, So I was just like, 51:30 Will Turner I am so done. 51:32 Will Turner Now, please don't think I, because I know you're a pastor, I know you run a church, please don't think that I hate you or anything like that. 51:39 Will Turner You will Barlow, you know, you guys, I have met and everything, but it has definitely led a bad taste in my mouth when it does come to churches and everything like that. 51:53 Will Turner And you know, I'll make donations, but 52:00 Will Turner Anna actually sent me the books from you guys and I'm actually, I haven't done it yet. 52:11 Will Turner I had a vacation, everything like that. 52:13 Will Turner And actually coming up, my son's going to start, it's his birthday and he is going to kindergarten. 52:20 Will Turner But 52:21 Will Turner definitely want to shoot you guys something for the books because I know Anna, so I have no problem doing a donation like that to you guys. 52:30 Will Turner But with me, church has just been such a pain in the **** for me to where I'm like, you know what? 52:38 Will Turner I think I'm doing a good enough job kind of going on my own, having these live conversations with people. 52:44 Will Turner And for me personally, this is kind of where I feel 52:47 Will Turner comfortable. 52:48 Will Turner My son did get into a Christian academy. 52:51 Will Turner It is Trinitarian, obviously, but it's a good school. 52:56 Will Turner And when he gets older and when those difficult questions come up, whatever he is being taught, we will have those. 53:06 Will Turner And he'll have the decision of if he wants to continue to go to this private school or not, if he wants to do homeschooling, 53:15 Will Turner we can talk about that, but I don't. 53:17 Sean Finnegan Want to keep you too long here, Will, but I did want to at least hear about the YouTube channel and why you started it and how people can find out about it. 53:28 Will Turner Yeah, so I, my name is Will. 53:32 Will Turner My entire work related, I do construction. 53:39 Will Turner So all the tools I use are Milwaukee. 53:42 Will Turner I have a good relationship with a lot of the Milwaukee reps in Ohio. 53:46 Will Turner They've been generous with me, sending me some stuff. 53:49 Will Turner So I do that. 53:50 Will Turner So I do Willwaukee is the name I go by. 53:55 Will Turner And then my YouTube channel is called Power Tool Apologetics. 54:00 Will Turner And there's a verse in Corinthians. 54:01 Will Turner I think it's Corinthians, First Corinthians 3.10, where it says, like a wise master worker, I laid the foundation. 54:09 Will Turner And I think that is so important to have a solid foundation, just like our Messiah tells us to, you build a house on the rock, not on the sand, to have that solid foundation right there. 54:24 Will Turner So, and it's also a great thing to think about even with your book, Sean. 54:33 Will Turner reading the Bible for yourself, this new discipleship series that you have. 54:37 Will Turner That's something that I believe. 54:40 Will Turner I remember in the union, we were given Harbor Freight tools to build this apartment building because people kept breaking into our game boxes and stealing all of our tools. 54:53 Will Turner And it was very hard to build everything with crappy power tools. 54:58 Will Turner So 54:59 Will Turner I'm a big Milwaukee fan. 55:01 Will Turner I think Milwaukee has great tools. 55:03 Will Turner So with great tools, you can build a strong house. 55:08 Will Turner And I think when you are grounded in the Bible very well, you can be a very great warrior in God's army. 55:17 Will Turner So that's kind of my thing on it. 55:20 Sean Finnegan And what kind of content do you have on there? 55:23 Will Turner I have a whole bunch of stuff. 55:25 Will Turner So I have an entire, I have different playlists on things. 55:28 Will Turner I go over the 10 commandments. 55:29 Will Turner I go over the holy days, how they relate to us. 55:33 Will Turner I'm working on a new series right now going over the miracles of Jesus in a better historical Jewish context. 55:39 Will Turner I've gone over some of the Jewish midrashes that we have that can relate to the New Testament. 55:47 Will Turner I have a whole series about heaven, hell, life after death, about soul sleep, and some of the hard questions regarding that. 55:53 Will Turner I have interviews. 55:54 Will Turner I have book reviews. 55:56 Will Turner Dustin, Dr. 55:58 Will Turner Dustin Smith, Dr. 55:59 Will Turner Dale Tuggy, Dr. 56:00 Will Turner Ryan Mullins, Dr. 56:03 Will Turner Ken Hovid. 56:04 Will Turner I've had other people on and different videos, even on the atonement, different atonement theories. 56:12 Will Turner I'm not someone who prescribes the PSA. 56:15 Will Turner Just want to throw that out there. 56:18 Will Turner And I try to be versatile like that, but a lot of the stuff that you will see on my channel are a lot of debate reviews, specifically regarding the Trinity. 56:32 Will Turner I think this is one thing that really I'm passionate about because a lot of people are taught the Trinity and they're not really 56:41 Will Turner Like they're just told John 1 1, John 58, John 10 30 and all they do is rattle these verses off. 56:46 Will Turner Nobody actually goes into the Greek or Hebrew, look at the different syntaxes or lexicons that are there to properly execute what's being said. 56:58 Will Turner So on my channel, I have a lot of different guests on going over a lot of debates from Dustin, from Dale. 57:06 Will Turner from Metaphysics Mike, Mike Temperato. 57:09 Will Turner I know he was on your channel too. 57:12 Will Turner And just try to help people understand, build apologetics, stuff like this. 57:19 Will Turner Even there's a, you know who Kanisha is, right? 57:22 Will Turner From Teach Yahweh. 57:24 Will Turner So she actually, she sent me a little snippet 57:28 Will Turner It was 3 Unitarians versus 1 Trinitarian. 57:31 Will Turner And in one of the snippets, one of the girls brought up was Isaiah 43.11, where besides me, there is no savior. 57:37 Will Turner That's what Yahweh says. 57:39 Will Turner But then Jesus is called a savior. 57:41 Will Turner How is that possible? 57:43 Will Turner The Trinitarian will say that they are the two persons and the one being. 57:47 Will Turner But with us, there's 18 verses I found where another human being is called a savior. 57:53 Will Turner So how do we properly exegete that? 57:55 Sean Finnegan In the judges, I think, doesn't it say that they're saviors? 57:59 Will Turner Yes. 58:00 Will Turner The Book of Judges has the most, I think it was six times, I think. 58:06 Will Turner And that's referring to Gideon. 58:08 Sean Finnegan You know, they emailed my wife too for that show. 58:12 Will Turner Oh, did they? 58:13 Sean Finnegan Yeah, they reached out to my wife and she's just not the type to get in the ring and duke it out, you know, so she declined. 58:21 Sean Finnegan But I'm glad that they were able to recruit some BUs to have that conversation. 58:28 Sean Finnegan Pretty cool. 58:29 Will Turner But she brought up and I even had to make a quick little chart where 18 times where saviors being used were Moses, Joshua, Athaniel, Deborah, Gideon, Shamagar, Gideon actually three times is called it, Samson, David, Tilgath, all of these people are called a savior. 58:48 Will Turner So if Jesus is called a savior and we're going to exeget Isaiah 4311 and Hosea 134, 58:54 Will Turner there's no, besides me, there's no savior. 58:56 Will Turner And that means that Jesus is Yahweh. 58:58 Will Turner Well, then I'm sorry, Moses is Yahweh, Joshua, Gideon, all these people, they're also Yahweh. 59:03 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 59:04 Will Turner You know. 59:04 Sean Finnegan I hear you. 59:05 Sean Finnegan I mean, it's like, you have to read a verse within its context. 59:09 Sean Finnegan What is the context of Isaiah 44? 59:11 Sean Finnegan It's Yahweh versus the idols, the gods of the nations. 59:16 Sean Finnegan Like he's saying that for Israel, he's their savior. 59:18 Sean Finnegan They don't have any other savior. 59:20 Sean Finnegan Jesus wasn't there yet anyhow. 59:22 Sean Finnegan So 59:23 Sean Finnegan It's just kind of a moot point. 59:26 Sean Finnegan Let me, last question. 59:27 Sean Finnegan If you could snap your fingers and change one thing in the biblical Unitarian movement, what would it be? 59:33 Will Turner If I could change something. 59:34 Will Turner You know what? 59:35 Will Turner I don't know. 59:36 Will Turner You know what? 59:37 Will Turner You guys have been such a blessing and I have told so many people about you guys. 59:43 Will Turner Like there was another, I introduced you guys to Kanisha to the Facebook group. 59:54 Will Turner And there was another person who actually heard me talking on TikTok that we began talking and she was even saying, I don't know what I am, but I don't believe in the Trinity. 1:00:06 Will Turner I'm like, you're a biblical Unitarian then. 1:00:10 Will Turner And I always direct you, I always direct people to you guys. 1:00:15 Will Turner If I had one complaint. 1:00:18 Will Turner All right, let's see it. 1:00:20 Will Turner Brandon Duke and I kind of talked about it. 1:00:22 Will Turner I think more meetings, more meetings, your converge event. 1:00:27 Will Turner I think the first time you guys had it was in 2019 and the second meeting was in 2025. 1:00:32 Will Turner Yeah. 1:00:33 Will Turner That's a long time. 1:00:34 Will Turner And I know Brandon has told me that it's hard to find people to kind of organize it. 1:00:39 Will Turner And I know there's probably more behind the scenes. 1:00:42 Will Turner I would love to see once a year has to be, has to be like, and here I'm over there or 1:00:49 Will Turner I would love to see an event, honestly, and this is probably too much to ask for, but once a month, somewhere around the world, and whether it's in the US or New Zealand, Philippines, Australia, wherever, I would love to see at least something once a month for us to get together. 1:01:07 Will Turner Because, you know, Kenisha was a Trinitarian for a while, the past, I think three months she's been Unitarian. 1:01:16 Will Turner But one thing she even said was that there's not a, she's, I don't want to say where she is at, but she said that there's no, there's nothing near her. 1:01:26 Sean Finnegan Okay. 1:01:28 Will Turner I did tell her about the event in Arizona and she is thinking about driving there. 1:01:33 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 1:01:33 Will Turner Driving there and taking a flight. 1:01:34 Sean Finnegan I'm going, man. 1:01:34 Sean Finnegan It's going to be awesome. 1:01:38 Sean Finnegan I've never been to Arizona. 1:01:40 Sean Finnegan I don't know what it's like, but you know, I think it'll be great. 1:01:47 Sean Finnegan Stop to see the Grand Canyon on the way home, Kanisha. 1:01:52 Sean Finnegan Why not? 1:01:53 Will Turner Yeah. 1:01:54 Will Turner I can't remember if this was a thing that we talked about here or previously when it was when we were not recording. 1:02:03 Will Turner But you know, when I went to the Converge event for the first time, I got to meet Tabish. 1:02:09 Will Turner I met Jesse. 1:02:11 Will Turner You know, he also does YouTube videos. 1:02:14 Will Turner I got to meet 1:02:15 Will Turner Mike, I've known Mike for a few years. 1:02:19 Will Turner So meeting him in person for the first time was awesome. 1:02:22 Will Turner I felt bad because my wife and kids weren't with me, but he brought his wife and kids. 1:02:26 Will Turner And I was just like, my wife's name is Tanya. 1:02:28 Will Turner I told her, I'm like, if you were there, you would have loved Mike's family. 1:02:31 Will Turner It was so great. 1:02:33 Will Turner We're all like, we all know the struggle. 1:02:36 Will Turner We all know what it's like being called the heretic and every other name that's associated. 1:02:40 Will Turner So it's like you can sit at any table for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. 1:02:44 Will Turner It's like family. 1:02:46 Will Turner It was such a warm, welcoming environment to where the thing I can complain about is it's not more frequent. 1:02:52 Sean Finnegan Yeah, I hear you. 1:02:54 Will Turner So, yeah, honestly, Sean, I don't know if that's the answer you were looking for, but I think that's the way. 1:02:58 Sean Finnegan I didn't have any expectations at all. 1:03:00 Sean Finnegan I just love to ask that question of people in the movement. 1:03:03 Sean Finnegan Like, what do you see as far as like what we could do better? 1:03:09 Sean Finnegan So, yeah, great to hear that. 1:03:12 Sean Finnegan Appreciate your 1:03:14 Sean Finnegan stand for God and your courage to go against the grain, which I think has kind of come up a few times in this conversation. 1:03:24 Sean Finnegan Any final parting words or any more about you that people should know about before we close out? 1:03:32 Will Turner You know, I just because you kind of brought it up, I just think it's so important for people to not just 1:03:44 Will Turner regurgitate, repeat what others say regarding the Trinity, regarding what they think the Bible says. 1:03:53 Will Turner Sean, I know you've been in this walk for a long time. 1:03:55 Will Turner So I know people have probably have made quotes to you. 1:03:58 Will Turner Oh, the Bible says this. 1:03:59 Will Turner And then you're like, well, no, it doesn't actually. 1:04:02 Will Turner People have said that's what the Bible says, but actually it's not. 1:04:06 Will Turner It's false. 1:04:10 Will Turner Really just 1:04:13 Will Turner check out the Bible for yourself and really have a relationship with God through the Bible. 1:04:21 Will Turner And just, if you're being told something in the Bible and it's not there, don't be afraid to say, that's wrong. 1:04:32 Will Turner Don't be afraid to say, my pastor's wrong, my parents are wrong. 1:04:37 Will Turner You know, this is, you know, this goes back to John 17, 3. 1:04:41 Will Turner For this is 1:04:43 Will Turner everlasting life, for them to know you, the one true God, and your son, Jesus Christ, whom you have sent, right? 1:04:55 Will Turner I think that's huge. 1:04:57 Will Turner That plays a big part in your life. 1:05:00 Will Turner And I don't want people to be scared to deny the Trinity. 1:05:05 Will Turner I don't want people to be scared to get a 1:05:09 Will Turner a proper human biblical understanding of who Jesus is instead of this second person, hypostasis, homoousius, whatever Greek term you want to use and identifying who Jesus is. 1:05:21 Will Turner The Bible does not that the church fathers, they've deemed themselves. 1:05:26 Will Turner So that's a big thing I can say. 1:05:29 Sean Finnegan All right, very good. 1:05:29 Sean Finnegan Well, hey, thanks so much for talking with me and coming on the podcast today. 1:05:34 Will Turner Dude, thanks for inviting me, man. 1:05:35 Will Turner I appreciate it. 1:05:40 Sean Finnegan That brings this interview to a close. 1:05:42 Sean Finnegan What did you think? 1:05:43 Sean Finnegan Come on over to restitudio.org and find episode 670. 1:05:48 Sean Finnegan I almost became a Jehovah's Witness. 1:05:50 Sean Finnegan Then I found Biblical Unitarians with Will Turner and leave your thoughts there. 1:05:56 Sean Finnegan On last week's episode, how should Christians use artificial intelligence with Sam Tiedemann, we got a number of comments in, including someone called Number One Son who said, they already believe in man-made artificial gods, so why should AI be any different? 1:06:12 Sean Finnegan Deborah wrote in saying, this was so interesting and informative. 1:06:15 Sean Finnegan Thank you for sharing. 1:06:17 Sean Finnegan And JC Heberly said, AI is a mathematical dot connector. 1:06:22 Sean Finnegan The human is responsible for telling AI what dots to connect. 1:06:27 Sean Finnegan They are trying to please you. 1:06:29 Sean Finnegan If you want scripture to be interpreted as a Baptist, Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Calvinist, etc., it will do it. 1:06:36 Sean Finnegan And it can steel man all those perspectives. 1:06:39 Sean Finnegan Try just finding out what the biblical text means in its lexical meaning in the time that it was written or used. 1:06:47 Sean Finnegan e.g. 1:06:47 Sean Finnegan 30 to 95 AD. 1:06:49 Sean Finnegan Tell the AI that those biblical texts have the highest value, thus increasing the probabilistic weight of scripture and theology in either Second Temple Judaism or 95 AD is not the Word of God and therefore has a lower probability. 1:07:05 Sean Finnegan The AI will always be drawn toward the black hole of modern theology. 1:07:09 Sean Finnegan You as the human have to keep the AI from drifting or lying. 1:07:14 Sean Finnegan It is a LLM. 1:07:15 Sean Finnegan It knows the grammar and can find the lexical history of the meaning of biblical texts. 1:07:19 Sean Finnegan The goal is to understand the thought for thought meaning of the original text, not the English interpretations. 1:07:25 Sean Finnegan The human is the intelligence required in the process. 1:07:29 Sean Finnegan So lots of thoughts there about artificial intelligence. 1:07:33 Sean Finnegan One more comment that came in just a few minutes ago from Nathan said, very interesting episode. 1:07:40 Sean Finnegan Thanks to Sean and Sam for having this conversation. 1:07:43 Sean Finnegan One area I noticed you guys didn't talk about much is agentic AI, which is where AI actually takes action on computers. 1:07:52 Sean Finnegan I use agentic AI every day for work to write code and other IT-related tasks. 1:07:58 Sean Finnegan I don't use AI for much else. 1:08:00 Sean Finnegan For writing code and working on IT systems, I have seen it do some pretty incredible things, some of which I definitely could not do myself, and even the ones I could have done would have taken hours. 1:08:11 Sean Finnegan Here are some personal examples. 1:08:13 Sean Finnegan One Saturday, I made a mock Bible app with some public domain translations and an interactive Bible atlas. 1:08:18 Sean Finnegan My wife left Instagram some time ago, and I made an Instagram clone on her Mac in roughly 45 minutes using Grok Build. 1:08:25 Sean Finnegan It didn't have all the features, of course, but it did display all of her exported data 1:08:30 Sean Finnegan sort of like Instagram. 1:08:32 Sean Finnegan I had agentic AI use my browser to create spreadsheets from scratch from complicated formulas. 1:08:38 Sean Finnegan I'm very curious what impact agentic AI could have on Christianity at large. 1:08:43 Sean Finnegan Maybe it will prove to be about as significant as regular AI. 1:08:47 Sean Finnegan It will be interesting to see. 1:08:50 Sean Finnegan Nathan, I am still personally waiting for the leap to occur where AI actually does interface with the operating system on the phone or on the computer. 1:09:01 Sean Finnegan I think that would be really helpful for the AI to have access to files and be able to do things. 1:09:10 Sean Finnegan I guess the danger is that AI could decide to delete a bunch of stuff and that would be very bad. 1:09:18 Sean Finnegan So I hope they can build in enough safeguards for a system like that so that an agent doesn't just go around wreaking havoc on someone's system. 1:09:29 Sean Finnegan But yeah, I definitely think this is where things are heading, especially on the phone where it would be really helpful for AI to be able to use various apps and to get things done that we would otherwise have to do, especially mundane tasks. 1:09:45 Sean Finnegan Now having said all that, I think it is important to keep in mind that as AI develops and as we find its usage, especially when the robots come to eliminate a lot of the tasks that we don't want to do, that we don't end up in a never-ending treadmill seeking dopamine hits from whatever source, whether it's 1:10:10 Sean Finnegan video games or drugs or *********** or whatever stuff is out there that gives you your hit, likes on your Facebook posts or seeing a really great short video on Instagram, whatever it is. 1:10:26 Sean Finnegan My point is having more time and not having to do so many mundane tasks that we don't want to do 1:10:33 Sean Finnegan can be a really great thing if we use the reclaimed time to serve God and His people and to grow in our faith and our usefulness to our fellow human being. 1:10:47 Sean Finnegan Having the principles of life established to love God, to love people, to know what God's will is for your life and to be able to do that faithfully 1:10:58 Sean Finnegan is really important the more things get offloaded onto AI. 1:11:03 Sean Finnegan So we'll have to see where all this goes. 1:11:05 Sean Finnegan It certainly is an incredible time to be alive, an incredible time to see all these changes taking place. 1:11:10 Sean Finnegan And I, for one, am kind of in a middle position between the Luddites on the one side that say AI is terrible, it's just slop, you know, I don't want anything to do with it, and the ones who are lining up to get the neural link installed in their brain so that they can just pursue 1:11:28 Sean Finnegan their greatest fantasy as AI just directly interfaces with their neurons to generate a virtual reality. 1:11:37 Sean Finnegan So I'm avoiding those. 1:11:39 Sean Finnegan I'm looking at it as a tool, just like a hammer is a tool. 1:11:43 Sean Finnegan And hammers are really so much better than rocks to bang nails into wood, aren't they? 1:11:50 Sean Finnegan You know, I think the result of any tool is 1:11:53 Sean Finnegan more productivity, less time spent doing things you don't want to do. 1:11:57 Sean Finnegan But then the question becomes, well, what do I do with the time that I now have? 1:12:01 Sean Finnegan And if all we do is entertain ourselves, then I think it's a waste. 1:12:06 Sean Finnegan So I think productivity is important, but I think also relationships are really important with God and with each other. 1:12:13 Sean Finnegan So many of us have extra time and instead of reading scripture, instead of praying, instead of meditating, what we do is just watch more TV. 1:12:23 Sean Finnegan or scroll on our phones. 1:12:25 Sean Finnegan So that is the battle to fight now before these tools get any more powerful. 1:12:32 Sean Finnegan All right, I've rambled on enough here. 1:12:33 Sean Finnegan I hope I get to see you at the Unitarian Christian Alliance Conference in Arizona. 1:12:38 Sean Finnegan I'm going to be speaking on the subject of 1:12:40 Sean Finnegan of the two powers heresy. 1:12:43 Sean Finnegan Super excited about that. 1:12:44 Sean Finnegan I've been researching it for months and months and I think I've got something to say on it. 1:12:48 Sean Finnegan So I hope to see you there in Arizona. 1:12:50 Sean Finnegan If you want to know more about that event, go to UnitarianChristianAlliance.org and you can find information about the event there. 1:12:58 Sean Finnegan Also speaking at that event is Will Barlow on the subject, does Jesus have to be God to die for our sins? 1:13:07 Sean Finnegan Sam Tiedemann on 1:13:09 Sean Finnegan Divine Anatomy, Classifying the Christology of Michael Servetus, Luke Jones on One God and One Lord, Paul's Christology Reconsidered, and Mike Temporado on the Messiah Before Metaphysics, Recovering Scriptural Christology, and I believe also Matt Bradley. 1:13:29 Sean Finnegan I don't know, is he coming all the way from Australia? 1:13:31 Sean Finnegan That would be pretty epic if he does, but his topic is the Biblical Unitarian Architecture of the Redemption Plan. 1:13:38 Sean Finnegan Also, Mark Cain is going to be there. 1:13:42 Sean Finnegan Also, Mark Cain is going to be there. 1:13:43 Sean Finnegan Suzanne Lakin, Dale Tuggy, and as I mentioned, I will be there too to speak on the two powers heresy. 1:13:52 Sean Finnegan Was it around at the time of Jesus? 1:13:54 Sean Finnegan That's really the question. 1:13:55 Sean Finnegan Were Jews in the 1st century expecting some sort of binitarian 1:14:02 Sean Finnegan Godhead. 1:14:03 Sean Finnegan I know it's like even a silly thing just sounds ridiculous when I say it, but there are so many scholars and now certainly a lot of apologists who are saying that on the basis of the work by Alan Siegel in his 1977 book on the subject of two powers. 1:14:19 Sean Finnegan So I'm going to be demystifying a lot of that and exposing the truth 1:14:26 Sean Finnegan on what the primary sources like first Enoch and Philo actually say in the Mishnah and the Tosefta and the Midrashim and the Talmud. 1:14:35 Sean Finnegan What do these Jewish literary sources actually say about two powers and when do they say it? 1:14:41 Sean Finnegan Stay tuned for that. 1:14:42 Sean Finnegan Hopefully I will be able to get a recording of that and put that out on this podcast as well. 1:14:47 Sean Finnegan sometime after that presentation occurs in October. 1:14:51 Sean Finnegan Thanks everybody for listening to the end. 1:14:52 Sean Finnegan If you'd like to support us, you can do that at restitutio.org. 1:14:56 Sean Finnegan I'll catch you next week and remember the truth has nothing to fear.