March 15, 2005

Webcasting around the world 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 is that 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 someday, a discussion someday. 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.

But 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.

I remember it was about whether God knows the future. 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've only had a couple of conversations, this guy brought it up, I've only had a couple of 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, open theism.

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 the 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, 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 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, 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. And 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.

So 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. So 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 e-mail as I was sitting here from my host in England because, you know, one of the things I run into is 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 know, that book about the King James only controversy.

And I remember being at a church. This 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's a King James only church. And the books that they had out specifically mentioned me, but no one could put out any of my books that responded to that. And everyone was asked to use the King James version in their teaching.

And I was teaching on the Prologue of John. Now, the Prologue of John, there's a major textual variant in verse 18. And as a result, I basically looked at the folks and said, look, 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. And so 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. So 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. But we're going to, 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, 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 mean, 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, two 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. And 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 there? 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 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, for example, if things are formed, you've got a 99 chance that on a Sunday morning, the text is going to be from the New Testament.

So, 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. 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 Nesjaland 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 the 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's plenty of programs like that out there.

Go. Yeah.

Just not interested in that. So anyways, I will, not during the program, but I will write back to my wifey and I'll 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's the only thing that really matters. That's what's important. 877 -753 -3341. And that's going to be a bummer while I'm in England because I can't, we are so hooked to these things. These cell phones.

What am I going to do since mine's not going to work? I'm going to have to actually turn it off. It's going to have more than, oh, you know what I did? I'm sorry, Pierre, we'll 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's what I'm 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've heard a few go off during flights and someone gets all red-faced and you're quick trying to get in there and kill the thing.

But that's the first, 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'm 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's fairly normal. But especially over the next couple of weeks, well, next couple of months, it's going to be pretty hard to be overly normal because we're 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're going to be on today.

Ah, there you go.

And that's why I'm 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's 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 'Quinn 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, 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 John Calvin? This is taken, let me see, from book, looks like book three, page two. 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, you know, 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. Well, 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 don't understand, 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, okay?

I'm trying to express my understanding of him.

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

Okay, all right.

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.

Right.

Page 206 on this particular one.

Well, okay, normally 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.

Okay.

John Calvin, translated by Henry Beveridge.

Okay, all right.

Printed by Ferdman.

Okay, so I imagine you're looking at section five. The predestination 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 at, 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, that He quotes from Deuteronomy 32 verses 8 -9.

The separation is before the eyes of all in 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.

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'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 underlined some of the things that I read.

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 man.