March 15, 2005

From the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is

The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602, or toll free across the

United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

James White. Hi United Reductions, a little bit on the misleading side because it says with today's topic, and I haven't a clue what today's topic is, unlike yesterday where we premiered

Radio Free Geneva, and we had a topic, and it's not going to be the topic today, unless you want to call in and comment on what we did yesterday, and if you're wondering what we did yesterday, you're probably going, wait a minute, it's

Tuesday, and there's not supposed to be a Dividing Line on Mondays, and therefore, what are you talking about?

And we did a special, that's why you need to read the blog, folks, that's why it's there, as I was given a pile of tapes, they were snuck into me in a certain manner while I was traveling,

I won't say who and I won't say when, but I was given a pile of tapes and I made the mistake of starting to listen to them, and I just had to take the time, and I don't want the

Dividing Line to become only a situation where we're addressing only one subject,

I want to try to allow for other things to be addressed, obviously the freedom of God and salvation is relevant to almost all the subjects we do address, that is in regards to Roman Catholicism, in regards to, well, even

Jehovah's Witnesses, I would like to very much see a debate some day, a discussion some day,

I find Jehovah's Witness soteriology to be their weakest, it's the weakest link type of a situation that really is a very, very shallow element of their writing, but then again, think about it, they aren't exactly running into a whole lot of folks, could be challenging them a whole lot in that area either, unfortunately, many of those who are best dealing with Jehovah's Witnesses deal with issues like the deity of Christ, things like that, when it comes to the issue of the sovereignty of God, in fact,

I remember an odd situation once, where I was talking to one of Jehovah's Witnesses, an elder, a rather irascible fellow, actually, and he,

I don't remember now, it's odd, after you've talked to literally thousands of people, sometimes you remember the context, sometimes you remember the date, the dates disappear for me a whole lot faster than the places do, that's odd, and that's probably just me, that's probably just me and it's different for other folks, but I remember looking at this fellow and somehow we got into the subject of the sovereignty of God, and I remember, it was about whether God knows the future, and I had read

Dwayne Mignogne's work, if you've never heard of Dwayne Mignogne, it's M -A -G -N -A -N -I,

Dwayne Mignogne's work on the Watchtower Society, he's written a number of books, and he had mentioned,

I don't remember if it was an article or it was actually a little book or just what it was, he'd written something called the

Heavenly Weatherman, and it was about the Jehovah's Witness doctrine of God's knowledge of future events, and in essence, and this is something you don't hear a lot about, but there would probably be some really good ground to be covered, some really good study in comparing the openness of God, open theology, open theism, with what the

Jehovah's Witnesses have been teaching for a long time, because in essence, their view is very, very similar.

I had a couple conversations, this guy brought it up, I had a couple conversations where this ever came up, but it would seem to me to probably be a good direction maybe to do more study in if I had the time to be able to do such things, but he basically argued the idea that God doesn't really know the future, but since he knows everything that's happening right now, he can predict the future real well, which is a fairly accurate description of open theology.

And when I tried to take him to the old

Testament passages about Jehovah God, being the creator of all things, and his knowledge of being with the first and last and all these things,

Isaiah, it was so odd to be taking a Jehovah's Witness to passages about Jehovah's nature.

And I remember he was just as frustrated as the day was long, he had just, you could tell, sadly, here is a guy who had been going door to door for ages, and this wasn't something that had happened to him before, which is sort of sad when you think about it, you would think that going door to door, that would be something he'd hear fairly frequently, but it didn't work that way.

So anyway, that concept of open theism, the concept of God's not knowing the future, that's a whole area there with Jehovah's Witnesses that I think we ought to look into, so on and so forth.

So, 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341, trying to bring the channel back up here so I can, no one's still, no one is still hearing what

I'm saying, actually, until they listen. And when you listen on the archives, you're going to go, boy, he seems a little distracted, that's because we're not broadcasting right now, we're only recording, because something's gone kaflooey and blown up and died, and so it's very difficult to do this while you look at the screen and everybody in the channel is going,

I hear nothing, I see nothing, nothing's going on. And that's not the most easy thing to try to get past, especially when one of the reasons we wanted to do two programs this week is,

A, and I guess I should announce this for those who will be listening to this on the archive once all the technical stuff is taken care of,

I leave tomorrow for England, for Great Britain.

And the information's on the website, if you, it's on the calendar page, if you'd like to go there,

I should probably throw a blog article up, or just a little blog link up, just to make sure, if you're in the

England area, if you're across the pond, I'm not really talking about France or anything here, but there are a few opportunities

I'm going to have over there to speak. And you would be welcome, of course, to attend any of those, but also get an opportunity to look around a little bit, and I must admit that I am very much looking forward, very, very much looking forward to visiting

England. And the one thing is we're going to do a dividing line there in England, and the one thing that will not happen during that time is that my wife will call me in the middle of the dividing line like she just did again.

I heard the buzzing, and all I wanted to do is, I just wanted to hold it open so she could hear, and the call lasted only five seconds.

And if I know my dear wife of almost 23 years, this is going to buzz here again in a second or two, because she's going to send me a text message, not realizing that makes noise as well, and the text message is going to say,

I hate when I do that. How long have we been doing this now?

I don't know, but I finally learned to put it on silent.

Well, anyways, that's one thing that I will not be doing in London, is my cell phone probably isn't going to work over there, and therefore it's not going to go off during the dividing line.

That'll be a week from Thursday evening. I've got a lot of stuff to do today, so if I don't get all this on the blog,

I'm going to mention it now so there will be no excuses. A week from Thursday evening, we will do the dividing line from London.

No show for Thursday. How in the world would I do a show on Thursday? What are you talking about?

A week from this Thursday, we will do a program, and we'll do it from London, and it may not be at the exact same time.

We're going to get as close as we can, but I'm speaking that night someplace else, about an hour,

I think, away from somewhere. An hour one direction or another from London, whatever that means. When we get back, then we'll do the best we can to call in and make it all work, and so on and so forth.

That'll be a week from Thursday, this coming Thursday, and then two weeks from today will be the first live program once we get back here,

Lord willing, from our journey to Great Britain, the

United Kingdom, the place with three names. That's what we're going to be doing. Anyway, that's what's coming up, and then very shortly after that, out to Toledo for the really nice conference we'll be having there.

I just got an email as I was sitting here from my host in England.

One of the most uncomfortable things that I ever run into is people making translation requests regarding what translation

I'm going to use at a church. Especially because of the fact that, you wrote that book about the

King James only controversy. I remember being at a church, undoubtedly one of the most uncomfortable situations

I was ever in. I spoke at a quote -unquote cult conference at a church back in the

Midwest, and there were King James only books.

It was a King James only church. The books that they had out specifically mentioned me, but no one could put out any of my books that responded to that.

Everyone was asked to use the King James version in their teaching. I was teaching on the prologue of John.

The prologue of John, there's a major textual variant in verse 18. As a result,

I basically looked at the folks and said, I want to respect your wishes.

However, I'm not going to change my beliefs, change my position, change my presentation on the basis of falsehood.

What I did to get around is I said, I'm not going to use an English translation. I'm just going to read to you directly from the Greek and got around that way.

I am bringing that really nice, and we're going to go to our calls here in just a second.

We actually have a call. Who is it, Zondervan?

I don't have it with me. I forget who it was. Anyway, someone has put out that wonderful, tremendous little reader's

Greek New Testament that is so easy to carry. If you've ever taken

Greek in the past, even if you're one of those poor people, one of those poor, poor people who took it in seminary, a little warning here.

If you're going to take Greek, take it in college if you can, the reason being it will go at a speed slow enough to where you can actually learn a language.

I won't mention any names, but I know of one seminary that teaches its entire

Greek course, the course that you need to graduate in a Jan term class.

A Jan term class, that means 13 days, 2 weeks, all of Greek.

Same thing with Hebrew. I'm sorry, unless you are an idiot savant, you cannot possibly learn a language that fast.

The thing that has really bothered me, I've taught Greek and Hebrew at seminary level, and the thing that I've really exercised myself toward,

I don't want to teach anyone to hate those languages. But I met so many people who took it in seminary, and all they learned was to hate the language.

That's wrong. But even if you're one of those, so if you're thinking about taking

Greek, take it at the undergraduate level so you can slow it down, so you can actually absorb it.

For most of us regular human beings, you just can't bring in that much knowledge, especially of vocabulary.

Even if you know lots of languages, it still takes time to absorb vocabulary. So take it at the undergraduate level, take it at the college level.

When I took it at Grand Canyon University, the first semester we met four times a week.

It was a four -hour class. The second semester was a three -hour class, so we met three times a week. But that constant immersion in it, that first semester, was very, very good.

But we covered in, well, what would that be? Four times, how many weeks are those?

We basically had like what? Six times more time to learn that than you have in seminary.

I have to teach all of Mounts in 15 sessions. And you know your last session's pretty much lost to a final or something like that.

Your first session's pretty much lost to introduction. So you're really only looking at about 13 sessions. And that's just not enough time for the vast majority of people, especially if you're taking other classes, if you're in an extension seminary like I'm normally teaching in.

You're not on campus. You're in a regular ministry. You're married. You have kids. La, la, la, la, la, la. Really bad way to do it.

But back to the point, and then we'll go to our calls. If you took any type of Greek at all, let's say you're one of those poor people.

You went ahead and you took it in seminary. You didn't like it. You've put it aside.

It's gone in your thinking. It's actually not. If you can hold this little reader's

Greek New Testament and just carry it. Obviously, if you're preaching, this isn't going to do you much good.

But carry it. If you're listening to a sermon, if, for example, the

Phoenix Reformed, you've got a 99 % chance that on a Sunday morning, the text is going to be from the

New Testament. So both, well, you know that the reading, the scripture reading, is going to be a chapter from the

New Testament or a portion of a chapter from the New Testament. And then the sermon's probably going to be in the

New Testament as well. So take it with you. If that's a similar situation, take that reader's with you.

And even if it's been a few years, just read along. You will be amazed how fast things start coming back,

A. Or let's say you've been trying. If you just put out a little bit of effort on a daily basis, you can get back at least a usable amount.

Not so much to allow you to sit around and just read it, but being able to follow critical commentaries and evaluate things.

All that kind of stuff. Very, very important. Very, very useful. And this New Reader's Greek New Testament, it's nice and small.

It's about the size of most Bibles. If you have one of those thin -lined Bibles, it's almost the exact same size.

You can carry it with you. Just make the effort. And it's cheap. I mean, I understand they're passing them out for free at the

Shepherds Conference. Then again, they pass a lot of stuff out for free at the Shepherds Conference. But they're passing this one out.

And even if you didn't get to the Shepherds Conference, they're only $19 .99 online. We don't carry them.

It would be nice if we did. But we're not trying to compete with folks like that.

But it's definitely worth getting. And so I would hope that you would take the time to do so.

Now that we're back online and everyone is listening, hello, everybody. Yes, it was very, very difficult to do this.

Watching all of you sitting there going, I can't hear anything, and stuff like that. No, it's not pocket -sized.

This is not a pocket -sized item. The closest you can get to a pocket -sized was the Nesjalan 26th

Edition. That was pocket -sized. It will also drive you blind to try to read the thing. So that was fine when

I was 25. Doesn't work too well now that I'm just a tad bit older than 25.

Anyway, 877 -753 -3341.

And that is the phone number. We're taking your calls. If you listened yesterday to the program where we did

Radio Free Geneva, began listening to the presentation of Daniel Gwynn. Oh, by the way, before we take the call,

I have an apology to make. I honestly, I Googled Pastor Gwynn's church before we did the program yesterday.

But I did it in the evening. I looked for it. And it must,

I don't know why, the meta tags must really be bad on their website or something. But I couldn't find it.

I just, I couldn't find the website.

And so I did make a good faith effort to attempt to do so. During the program, one of our information technology specialists, also known as Marie P.,

posted the URL to the church. And so only after the program did

I get a chance to look at the URL. And it is not just Pastor Gwynn.

He talked about graduating seminary. I talked about, you know, the fact that he at least had a master's degree.

It is actually Dr. Gwynn. It is Dr. Danny O 'Gwynn. That is the individual who was preaching the sermon that I began responding to yesterday.

And so there you go. I apologize if I had known that.

I did not know that during the entirety of the program yesterday. I learned it half an hour, 20 minutes after the program.

And so when I continue the review coming up, when we get back from England, then

I will restate that fact that there was no attempt on my part to not use the proper title.

But since it is there, then I will do that with, in the future.

I didn't, you know what, I didn't get the text message. I did just get an email. I did it again.

I just can't seem to get it straight. Sorry. Have a good day. And that is my wifey writing to me.

That is one of the reasons I am so glad that we are so small, that we are not on some big honking network where you are just not allowed to do that.

You know, you get these people come in and they will go, you know, James, there are certain people in the audience that don't like when you mention the fact that your wife just called you.

I mean, this is very valuable air time, James. And we need to be very careful when we do it.

Yes. There are plenty of programs like that out there. Yeah. Just not interested in that.

So anyways, I will not during the program, but I will write back to my wifey and I will say, you know what, honey,

I don't care if you call during every single dividing line that I ever do, as long as you call.

That is the only thing that really matters. That is what is important. 877 -753 -3341.

And that is going to be a bummer while I am in England because I can't, we are so hooked to these things, these cell phones.

What am I going to do since mine is not going to work? I am going to have to actually turn it off. It is going to have more than, oh, you know what

I did? I am sorry, Pierre, we will get there in a second. I forgot to turn my cell phone off on my last flight.

That wasn't my last flight. It was the flight to St. Louis. I put it on silent. That is what I am used to doing.

You walk into church, put it on silent, and I pulled it out of the seat back in front of me when we landed to turn it on, you know, and it was still on.

And somehow we didn't crash and we didn't end up in Siberia. So somehow it managed to survive that.

But it was completely, you know, how many people do that? I mean if you stuck it in your bag or something like that and you just completely forget, you know,

I have heard a few go off during flights and someone gets all red -faced and you are quick trying to get in there and kill the thing.

But that honestly is the first time I ever forgot to turn it off on a flight. And I apologize to the folks at Southwest.

And despite that, still when we landed, they sang that pretty song, which I thought was really cool.

877 -753 -3341. Let's go ahead and after all of that stuff, let's go ahead and talk with Pierre.

Hello, Pierre. How are you? I am okay. Thank you. How in the world did you know we were even on since our feed died?

Aren't you on usually this time? Yes, sir. That is fairly normal. But especially over the next couple of weeks, well, next couple of months, it is going to be pretty hard to be overly normal because we are going to be in England and then

Italy in May and all sorts of stuff like that. I listened to your program yesterday.

Yes. You mentioned you are going to be on today. Ah, there you go. And that is why

I am calling, because I listened to your program and I thought, ah. And did you hear that Pasto Gwyn would not want a

Mormon or a Calvinist in his pulpit? Did you catch that part? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Did you find that an ironic conjugation?

Well, I guess it is understandable, I think. Don't you have a similar policy? Well, we definitely would not have too many

Mormon folks preaching for the pulpit. I didn't have any problem with that. But the difference, yes, as a

Reformed Baptist Church, for example, we have a very clear statement of faith that no person who believes what

Pasto Gwyn believes could possibly ever agree to, first of all. But the difference is

I am more than happy to publicly dialogue with him, to actually engage the text of Scripture with him.

And unfortunately what we discover is that the folks who, like Dave Hunt and Norman Geisler and these individuals who will preach these sermons and will identify us as holding a cultic viewpoint and so on and so forth, they don't want to engage in dialogue about it.

They don't want to debate that on the basis of our common commitment to the

Bible as the word of God. And that's what would be the major differences between us.

Okay. Well, what I was calling about was, and I've been struggling to figure out how to word my question, but it has to do with the fact that you seem to have a problem,

I guess, with the language that he used in talking about Pastor O 'Gwynn,

I mean. The fact that he was upset at the idea that God has elected individuals to both heaven and hell.

Right. That's an inaccurate representation of the position that he's seeking.

And I guess because he used the word elect, election. Right. Exactly. Election in Scripture is only to eternal life.

It's only to mercy. It's only to grace. There is no passage that refers to that gracious operation going the opposite direction.

So we make a very clear distinction because you have to. You don't think that the process is essentially the same?

I mean, you may use different terms. No, not at all. What does election mean? Well, obviously, when we talk about gracious election, grace is required to elect a person unto salvation.

Grace is not required, and in fact, it's the opposite of grace, to bring a person into the proper judgment for their sins.

So it would sort of be like the difference between graciously a doctor operates upon a person and gives them life in comparison to the guy down in Atlanta that shot the judge and everybody else.

Both involved placing something in someone else's body, but the purposes were very different. And the results were very different.

So there's no way to compare the two because, one, you're taking a guilty sinner who is under your wrath, who continues to, at the time of your choices, is an individual.

There is nothing that draws your mercy or grace to that person but is a rebel sinner, and you're going to change that person and give them a new heart.

You're going to blow upon their dead bones and make them alive. That's grace.

That's mercy. It's not only undeserved, it is demerited, over against saying, I am going to be just and righteous and holy in regards to this person's sin.

Two very, very completely different things, aren't they? Do you see the difference between the two? Well, I understand what you're saying, but I think you missed what

Pastor O 'Gwen was driving at. You spent your whole time actually worrying about the terminology rather than the concept that he was trying to come across.

Well, that's because the concept, Pierre, is not what Calvinists believe. I understand that, but the point is that I think you knew very well what he was trying to say.

And you're trying to divert the attention from the essence of what he was saying. No, I reject the assertion that I'm doing anything dishonest in any way, shape, or form.

You're completely wrong about that. The man said that he had studied for nearly a full year, based upon 50 volumes, a certain theology.

Now, I've studied Mormonism, and when I address Mormonism, I quote the General Authorities of the Mormon Church. I quote the language of the

LDS Church. I quote the standard works of the LDS Church. And if I were to represent

Mormonism by completely changing the terminology of Mormonism and completely avoiding the careful distinctions made by, for example, if I completely ignored the statement of the

General Authorities of the Mormon Church at the beginning of the last century concerning the identifications of Elohim and Jehovah, and as a result misrepresented

Mormonism, you as a Mormon would have every reason to complain that my vaunted study does not translate into an accurate representation of your own faith.

The same thing is true with Dr. O 'Gwynn. When Dr. O 'Gwynn says, this is what Calvinists believe, and he makes the actions of election and reprobation equal and the same, which they are not, one is based on grace, and grace and mercy are completely outside the categories of justice and fairness, and makes them equal to one another, and on that basis criticizes us, very obviously he is liable to the exact same criticism that I would be liable to if I did not allow the

LDS leadership to define its own terminology and then respond to them on the basis of their own terminology.

Can I read to you a statement from the Institute of the Christian Religion? Sure.

From John Calvin, this is taken, let me see, from book, looks like book three, page 206.

He says, by predestination we mean the eternal decree of God by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man.

All are not created on equal terms, but some are predestined to eternal life, others to eternal damnation, and accordingly as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestined to life or death.

So it's clear from this statement that God has made a decision, A, B, and C, you're going to heaven,

D, E, and F, you're going to hell. So it's a decision process, it's a choice that God made as to who was going to be saved and who was going to be damned.

In either case, it has nothing to do with what the individual did. That's totally untrue, totally untrue.

Let me finish. No, no, I will not let you finish because what you just said is untrue.

So I'm not going to allow lies to go unchallenged. Yes, it is a lie. You do not understand what

John Calvin said. So I'm going to stop you. If I lied about Bruce R. McConkie, you should stop me.

You're lying about John Calvin, I'm going to stop you. I'm trying to express my understanding of him.

Well, I'm going to correct it. This is my program, I correct it.

You're wrong about what you just said about John Calvin. And if you've read book three, starting in chapter 21, what was the exact reference?

Let me see, it was book three. Uh -huh, section. It was chapter,

I forgot to give you the chapter. It was chapter 21, page 206 on this particular one.

Well, okay, normally the institute... Printed by Ferdman. The institutes are broken down into a book, and then a chapter, and then a section.

So it's normally book three, section 21, or chapter 21, section blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I'm sorry, this one doesn't have a section. It just has chapter 21, book three. That's all it has.

Is that the institutes you have? Yes, the institutes of the Christian religion. John Calvin translated by Henry Beveridge.

Okay, all right. Printed by Ferdman. Okay, so I imagine you're looking at section five.

The predestination by which God adopts some to the hope of life and adjudges others to eternal death, no man who would be thought pious ventures simply to deny.

But it is greatly caviled out, especially by those who make prescience, that is knowledge of the future, its cause. We indeed describe both prescience and predestination to God.

We say that it is absurd to make the latter subordinate to the former. When we attribute prescience to God, we mean that all things always were and ever continue under his eye, and to his knowledge there is no past or future, but all things are present and indeed so present that it is not merely the idea of them that is before him, as those objects are which we retain in our memory, but that he truly sees and contemplates them as actually under his immediate inspection.

This prescience extends to the whole circuit of the world and to all creatures. By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man.

All are not created in equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation, and accordingly, as each has been created for one of these ends, we say that he has been predestined life or death.

This God has testified not only in the case of single individuals, but has also given a specimen of it in the whole posterity of Abraham to make it plain that the future condition of each nation lives entirely at his disposal.

Then he quotes from Deuteronomy 32, verses 8 through 9. The separation is before the eyes of all, and the person of Abraham, as in a withered stalk, it goes on in Deuteronomy chapter 4, so that's section 5 that you were quoting from.

The problem is that's right at the beginning, and to take someone's opening statement and not then allow for the fact that John Calvin was just as clear and just as firm in his assertion that the justice of God against the sin of man is the basis upon which they are going to be punished is to completely and totally misunderstand the entirety of what is being said.

To say that it has nothing to do, that the final end has nothing to do in the case of those who will be under God's wrath for eternity with what they did, is to no more accurately represent

Calvin's true doctrine than for me to say that Joseph Smith taught everybody to worship him and he tried to marry everybody's wife.

That's the same level of inaccuracy that if I took section 132 and just blew it up and ignored everything about eternal marriage and covenants and everything else and just said

Joseph Smith wanted everybody else's wife and that's all there was to it. That's the level of accuracy. So I just want you to understand what

I'm hearing you saying. If you haven't read the rest of the

Institute... Have you read the rest of the Institute? Yes, I have. I didn't read the whole Institute. I just happened to be reading this. That's what

I meant. You haven't read the section? I've read the whole section, the whole chapter for that matter.

But the Institutes are four books. You have or have not read the Institutes? Not the whole thing, no. Okay, alright.

So you haven't read where he talks about the sinfulness of man and the justice of God and all the rest of that stuff that by the way he covered before he got to this?

He didn't start here. Did you notice this is book three? Yes. Did you notice the chapter before this? Do you know what it's on?

You're missing my point. No, I'm asking you a question. Did you notice the chapter before this? Probably not, huh?

The chapter before this is the longest... I underline some of these things as I read it. The chapter prior to this is the longest chapter in the

Institutes. And it's on prayer. It's on prayer. Yeah.

He covered all of that before he ever got to Predestination because the man was in fact whether you like him or detest him he was extremely balanced.

And the reason that the whole issue of Predestination elections attached to his name at all is not because he did anything overly original with it.

It's not because it was the be -all and end -all of all of his preaching or anything like it. The reason is he was a systematizer.

He was very rational and clear in his making connections between divine truths and laying them out in that way.

And he refused to compromise. And so Luther said more about this than Calvin did. But Luther was not a systematizer.

He was a much more emotional preacher type person. And so his name is not attached to these things.

But that's why his name is attached to it. And long before he ever gets to this statement where he's just beginning to lay out the fact look,

God is free and is dealing with men. Long before this he had laid out the issue of sin. He had laid out the depravity of men.

He had laid out the justice of God. And so to jump to this would be similar to my jumping to the end of Jesus the

Christ and grabbing something there that is based on what came before in that book ripping it out from there and setting it up on its own.

That's the same type of situation as to what you just did and you're not alone.

Believe me. Believe me, what you just did in making that kind of a statement you are joined by many others.

And the reason is, as you have yourself confessed you didn't read the rest of it. You didn't just come to this in his own presentation, did you?

No. No. The point that I'm making is that if you're going to predestine someone it means that the destiny of that man is decided before he lives.

That's my point. My point is that the decision for damnation came before the individual even committed sin.

But what you said was outside of anything the individual did and there's two errors there.

In regards to the elect the error of that is that our election to eternal life must be gracious and merciful.

Why? Because we are given that eternal life by the extension of grace and mercy because we demerit eternal life.

We do not merit it. We demerit. In fact, what we merit is judgment. So that's the first thing is that it has to be gracious and merciful to us because we can never earn it.

We can never deserve it. We are the fallen sons of Adam. A. B. In regards to the...

and this was what the context was what we were talking about and this is what Pastor O 'Gwen was talking about was he's trying to say that there are people they've got no chance.

They've just been created for that. The whole issue of sin, the demonstration of God's justice, the demonstration of God's holiness, the demonstration of God's wrath against sin which comes out so clearly in the

Pharaoh situation in Egypt. All of that stuff is just flushed out of the way. Nobody wants to talk about it.

They don't want to allow the whole picture to be seen. All they want to do is produce the idea in someone's mind that here you've got these poor, innocent individuals who are forced to go to hell just because God's so mean and nasty and that couldn't be any farther from the truth if you tried.

I would disagree entirely with that viewpoint. It's very obvious to everyone.

That's what people get angry about is the fact that you have God behaving in a way that is very reprehensible in choosing individuals for damnation from before the foundations of the world and they really, in fact, have no opportunity.

And which one of them has ever done a righteous deed? Which one? Can you name one for me, Pierre, please? Just one of them.

A name. Let me ask you a question. No, no, no. Not until you answer mine. Which one of them has ever done a righteous deed? Which one? Which one wanted to go to heaven?

Which one wanted to trust in Christ? Which one? Give me a name. A lot of them do. None. Zero. Nada. That's the whole teaching of the

Bible. Wrong. No. From the Mormon perspective, yes. But I'm talking about the Bible here.

We're talking about Christianity. No, even from the Bible perspective. Oh, really? You haven't read Romans 3? I have read

Romans 3. There is none righteous. No, not one. There is none who seeks after God. Paul didn't want to do what's right?

No, only as a believer, as a person who has had his heart changed, he did. That's after regeneration, not before.

There is no unregenerate man who has longings for God. I think there are millions of people who want to do right.

Now, you can argue that they're confused in their soteriology.

No. That's fine. But to argue that they don't love God is totally wrong. I mean,

I would take myself for an example. I think I love the Lord, and I'm trying to do what's right. How about Muslims? They love the

Lord too? Yes. And Buddhists? And Buddhists. But they're confused, again, in their soteriology.

They're confused. How about the followers of Moloch or Baal? I mean, those were the only religions around back then.

Certainly there were good Baal worshipers, right? No question. Obviously, I'm allowing myself to be straight from the point, but within the

Christian viewpoint, certainly. But I think the Lord honors those who are trying to do what's right.

Well, Pierre, you know what you're doing? Every time we have this discussion, it's one of the reasons that we keep having them, is you keep illustrating in absolutely glowing terms the difference between having a worldview that is formed by Scripture and having a worldview that forms

Scripture. That's what you're illustrating here, because there is no way that you get what you just said from coming to Scripture as God speaking and saying,

I need to have my mind conformed to this word.

Instead, what you're doing is, well, I feel that I love the Lord, and I feel that Buddhist over there loves the

Lord, and so all those passages of Scripture which talk about idolatry, and all those passages of Scripture that talk about the universal sinfulness of man, and the fact that idolatry is actually an expression of the suppression of the truth of God, and that it's involved in demonstrating hatred for the true

God, I'm going to forget all of those, I'm going to dismiss all of those, and I'm going to pick and choose from Scripture what

I will and will not believe, and I'm going to create my own faith based upon that.

Every time we have a conversation and we get down to the level of text, that's what happens.

One of us accepts it all, and one of us does not, and you just illustrated that.

When I go through Romans 3, yeah, but there are Muslims who love the Lord. No. I'm sorry.

There may be Muslims who on a moral basis are just as moral as anybody else, but morality is not loving

God. Morality is not worshipping the true God. I agree they're not worshipping the true

God, but I think the Lord is merciful to those individuals who have grown up in ignorance, and he will give them the opportunity to receive the gospel.

And that's what God did with the Canaanites, right? What do you mean by that specifically?

The Canaanites. Remember the Canaanites? When Jacob and his family go down to Israel, Joseph and his brothers and all that stuff, and Israel begins to wipe out the

Canaanites. And so for 400 years they're down there, and in a long period of time they become a huge people, right?

Right. And I don't know if it was 400 years, but they're down in Egypt, and they come out of Egypt, and remember there's this little cryptic statement that's made somewhere along the path there that says that the

Canaanites' iniquity had not yet been fulfilled. Yes. And now, if we're going to take your perspective, then what happens in the

Exodus is Israel comes out, and they send missionaries into Canaan to convert all the people, right?

Because, I mean, God's not going to just wipe people out. I mean, they haven't had prophets, they're involved in all this idolatry.

Well, who would have been their prophets? Well, again, what you have in Genesis is simply a thumbnail sketch of the events that took place over hundreds to thousands of years.

I mean, you can hardly draw out some conclusion from the fact that there's only a thumbnail sketch of the events, of the important events that were described.

There may well have been prophets. So you believe that God was sending prophets of the name of Jehovah amongst the

Canaanites for all those years, and then, even though nothing is said about that, and these people are worshiping

Moloch, and so on and so forth, the Israelites come in, and they are to do what again? They're to convert them, right?

No, they are to wipe them out, man, woman, child, right? That's correct. And so you just assume, based upon what, that there would have been...

Where would these prophets have been coming from, by the way? Well, I think you have to recognize that God had more people than just the

Israelites. You know, we have, for instance, Melchizedek, who seems to come out of the blue, obviously.

Man was a prophet of God. Abraham paid tithing, and yet nothing is spoken of much in the

Scripture other than that event. That's because he becomes a picture of somebody. Obviously, he was a righteous man, and I'm sure that he was teaching, and there were others that followed after him, and there may have been many others, but we know nothing.

And so the statement of Scripture that their iniquity was not yet fulfilled actually means the missionaries hadn't had enough time to convert them yet.

I would take it that way, yes. Oh, okay. Right. Once they've had an adequate opportunity to reject the gospel, in this case, then

God says, okay, they've had their chance. And the same was true before God brought the flood.

There was also, I think, another 100 or 120 years also mentioned there.

Yeah, I'm not sure Noah really got too far away from the building of the ark to do that preaching. The thing is that there were probably others also.

There were others? There were other prophets. There were other prophets, but they all just died before the flood? Died, yes.

Okay. Or, you know, but again, it would be pure speculation. Yes, that would be the term

I would use. The thing is that I think the Lord would have sent people. I don't think he would have expected Noah to do it alone and then turn around and just destroy the people without adequate warning.

So the conscience of man, from your perspective, really doesn't testify to him that he's a sinner.

You need to have these prophet guys, right? I mean, it sounds like that's what you're saying.

It would just be unfair to actually judge sinners without something more than just simply their own guilt, convicting them, right?

I think you need more than that, yes. I think you see that. I think

Paul mentions it, I think it's in chapter 5 of Romans, where he mentions the fact that without the law, there is no sin imputed.

And I think that's the concept. When people don't have the gospel or the teachings of God amongst them, then

God does not impute sin to them. And they still have, obviously, transgressed, and they cannot enter the kingdom of God without going through the process of repentance and baptism and obtain a remission of sin.

But I think God is a just God. And when he ultimately executes punishment, it's for the misdeeds of individuals who have had an opportunity to hear the gospel and to either choose good or to choose evil.

So Paul, in Romans 1, when he says that the very revelation of God in the creative world around us is sufficient to render a person without a defense, and that men are guilty before God, and they have no defense, and they are guilty of suppressing the knowledge of God, that really just doesn't fit anywhere.

Well, as I mentioned, we have transgressed, all of us, and therefore God cannot overlook that.

But I think he is merciful to them, and he will not punish them without first giving them an opportunity to hear the gospel.

Which is why you believe in the spirit prison and all the rest of that stuff.

I think that's what Peter was referring to when he talked about the gospel being preached to those who lived in the days of Noah.

And Paul just sort of forgot to talk about that stuff in Romans and stuff, right? I don't know.

We'll have to ask Paul and get on the other side exactly what he had in mind and what he was trying to emphasize.

I think just because you spend time emphasizing one point doesn't mean you've neglected the other.

James, for instance, seems to find it important to emphasize works.

This doesn't mean that he didn't believe in grace, the importance of grace. He clearly teaches that men are justified by their works.

To the point where... Yeah, he actually, before other men, he does make that very clear. He doesn't contradict

Paul at that point. Anyway, Pierre, I definitely appreciate the phone call today.

We are leagues and leagues apart, and every time we talk...

The difference between having a theology that derives itself from Scripture and a theology that tries to at least look scriptural is the difference.

I've mentioned many times before, Pierre is LDS, Pierre believes in other scriptures. Here you have a good example of what happens.

Some people say, Well, you know, the Book of Mormon doesn't seem all that bad. Well, here you have an example of what happens once you start down that road.

It is interesting that what gets Pierre going is when

I respond to Arminians, when I respond to Dave Hunt. I'm not sure

Dave Hunt would like that, but that seems to be what happens. I appreciate that reminder. Since now we have everyone listening,

I do want to mention, since this is going to be the last opportunity to do so, we are out of time for the debate, the cruise information as far as those initial prices.

I honestly do not know what the future is going to hold as far as availability goes at all, but as far as the current prices, as far as the good prices, we're out of time.

It's basically, today I think is it. I think the 15th, I think today is the deadline.

And so if you've been putting things off, folks, this is it. This cruise is sold out, and if you don't take care of things now, as far as I understand,

I could be wrong about some of this, but I'm just going with what I understand, you're talking waiting lists and stuff like that, and you don't want to put yourself in that situation.

As Tex Presbyter said, it's now or never, and I'm not going to sing it because I could sing it, but I'm not going to.

If you want access to the good rooms, if you want to have any type of ability to choose your cabins now, you've got to do it now.

We've been talking about this for a long, long time. You've got to do it now. You can't keep putting it off. And, again, when you think about going, people take vacations.

I don't, but people take vacations. And believe me, I wish I could, but mine are working vacations at best, and I appreciate those that I get.

If you're going to go on a vacation, you could spend much more of this than this to go to Disneyland, to go to Disney World, whatever, and hardly ever run into a

Christian the whole time. You go on this cruise, and not only are you around Christians and the opportunities that presents, but we also have the onboard debate, we have the debate beforehand, we have the conference and the sufficiency of scripture, all this stuff.

And for less than you'd pay going the other direction. Now is the time to do it.

You've got to stop the procrastination. Every year we do something like this,

I hear from folks afterwards going, oh, man, I wish I could have done that, but, you know, da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da.

Just make the decision now. Go for it, do it, and it's going to be a tremendous time.

And, of course, just what we're going to see on the cruise, as far as God's creation, is more than enough.

But everything else added to it, it's almost overload. It truly is.

So I needed to make, I should have mentioned at the beginning, but it wouldn't have done any good anyways, because no one could hear me.

So thanks to Pete for getting us back on the road here. But so right here at the end, please, listen to me.

If you're on the fence, I'm trying to push you over. You're not going to find anything else, anything better to do during that period of time than to go with us.

So hit the website, click on the pretty picture on the right -hand side, and join with us.

It is going to be a tremendous opportunity to get to meet you and to get to know you and to be there as we seek to both debate the conference, cruise, all of it, as we seek to honor the

Lord in that. So glad someone reminded me of that, because I sort of lost the rhythm a little bit at the beginning.

And, in fact, there's the man who runs the cruise right now, and just coming on right toward the end of the program there.

I do want to thank Pierre for his call and thank the rest of you for your patience at the beginning of the program as we were trying to get things going.

I'm not sure exactly when we got started as far as the broadcast is concerned, but those of you listening to Archive shouldn't even notice that there was much of anything other than the amount of time

I spent talking about it. And so I appreciate that opportunity to press forward with that.

Just again, a reminder, hit the website for the cruise, and then remember

I'm going to try my best while I'm in England to find a little time to do a little communication.

But, obviously, when you're away from home, you're speaking a number of different places, you're traveling, you'll be flying up to Scotland and back again, things like that, it's going to be a little bit difficult to get a whole lot of online time as far as blogging and things like that goes.

So I'm going to try to throw a few little things up just about what's going on, but it's going to be a little while. I know that I'm way behind on certain series.

I want to respond on certain issues that are still hanging out there.

Just only so much time in the day to be able to get all those things done, and it's not going to get much better over the next couple of months, to be honest with you, with a number of debates coming up April 22nd in Oklahoma City.

If you've been thinking about that, if you're in driving distance, that's going to be good. June 9th on Long Island, the debate at the end of August in Seattle, possibly one in the fall, maybe an early spring, can't give you much details on that.

Italy coming up, it's going to be a busy time. So keep that in mind if you're hitting the blog and you're not seeing a whole lot.

It's not because I'm lazy. I'm just not in a position to be doing a whole lot about it.

So pray for us. We travel tomorrow. And don't forget, a week from Thursday evening, dividing line from London.

Be listening then. God bless. Music Brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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