Open Phones on the Dividing Line!

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. It's winter in Phoenix, finally. We didn't have winter in December.

We didn't have winter in January. It was spring in February. Actually, it was spring in January and February.

And then Sunday, this big old cold front blew in, and I think...

I don't think there's any... I thought there might have been one. Let me see here real quick. Yeah, Monday.

Monday, it might get up to 70. But it's... Boy, we've got a 50 tomorrow, 50 on Saturday.

Well, 58. It's in the 50s, but... It's Canada's fault. They sent this down here. That's what

I hear. Unfortunately, I'm running the Phoenix 10K on Saturday. I was really looking forward to...

You know, it's been so warm, then I wasn't going to have to get all bundled up at the beginning, and I don't run very fast at any time, but I certainly don't run very fast.

It's going to be 36 at the start, and that's probably...

My hope was to PR my 10K, but I haven't been able to... I've been out of town, and...

You're Mr. Freeze anyway. You should do just fine. No, no, no, no, no. My muscles do not work well below about 55 degrees.

It's ugly when you get old. Anyway, welcome to the program.

A couple real quick things here, and then we're going to open the phones at 877 -753 -3341. 877 -753 -3341 is the toll -free phone number.

Let's start off here. Yeah, let's go ahead and do this. I just saw this on Facebook.

Now, I saw the hit piece on Jeff Durbin and Apollo Ghia from the

British dude. Vice something? Vice... I don't know. I don't watch that kind of stuff anyways.

It doesn't matter to me. They exposed the spin and all the rest.

It was pretty amazing. I've never had anyone want to do that with us.

They don't want to come in and follow us around with television cameras and stuff like that. Having watched what they did here, even though Jeff and them knew that this was probably what they were going to do, and have television avenues to respond by, still, there's just no shame.

These people just... which shouldn't surprise us. We watch CNN and MSNBC, and it's the same stuff.

It's not only the fake news, but it used to be called yellow journalism, and it's very, very common.

Anyway, so on Tuesday night, Jeff responded to all that stuff and sort of took it apart.

But they just posted a video. And... yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'll do what I can. Okay. All right, let's check out the video they just posted.

In all honesty, I think Jeff Durbin is one of three men who actually strike fear in me, as far as people who preach doctrine.

The three people who strike fear in me are Jeff Durbin, Jim Jones, and David Koresh.

Hey! What are you doing? Watching Buzz? Yeah. Thirsty?

I guess so. Kool -Aid? Yeah, that sounds good.

Why not? Good. Right on. All right. This is actually good. It's not a lot of sugar in this one. Next week with Jeff Durbin, the late night show with the unpopular opinion.

Tuesday, only on Facebook Live. That was really good.

Oh, I can turn that off now. There we go. It worked.

It worked. You're excited about that. Yeah, we've been trying, you know, the trials and tribulations of trying to get things to work right.

When you change everything and try to get it all to work together. That was good.

You gotta admit, Jeff does comedy, you know, because he had to keep a straight face, looking at them and going,

Thirsty? And I wouldn't be able to do that. We're not even going to try that.

This doesn't happen. One other thing. Well, a couple of things.

I was just looking at... Man, it's happening, folks.

LifeSite News has the story of...

Let's see... Why don't they give his name? Anyways, a fellow up in Ontario, Ottawa.

And evidently there's this Bill 163. It establishes bubble zones, all this kind of stuff.

And a seven -year -old man arrested and charged under this new

Bill 163. Canada has no First or Second Amendment.

And as a result, you can really see what leftist totalitarianism looks like.

But it won't stay north of the border. There are so many people who want the exact same thing happening here.

This is very similar, but not identical, to what Tony Miano is facing.

Because this guy, all he was doing was wearing a sign that said,

It wasn't even about abortion. And still, they don't care.

That's the whole point. It doesn't matter to them. Totalitarians will get you no matter what.

And they don't care what you're actually saying, or why you're saying it, or what you're saying.

It doesn't matter. Totalitarians, totalitarians, they want you to think the way they think.

That's their ultimate goal, and that's their prize. It is 1984.

It is that room down at the end of the hall to break you, and to make you think the way you need to think, before they then get rid of you.

Because that's how totalitarians are. If everyone thinks like me, then

I am right. And that's what makes me happy. So, it's here.

It's not just coming. It's here. And it's an astonishing thing to see.

877 -753 -3341. One other quick thing, then a couple things on church history will go to your calls.

One thing I forgot on the last program. I don't know how I forgot it.

Because I thought for certain when I played the audio from the polemics report that I had selected this quote.

And maybe I got distracted and didn't hear it. Whatever. But there is this one quote where in explaining some part of his diatribe,

Jordan Hall says, And of course, James White does not want to be on record disagreeing with Michael Brown.

I just started. And he just kept going after that. And I didn't even stop to realize the comedic content of that comment.

Because, as Michael himself will say, there's only one person he's debated more often than me.

And that's Rabbi Shmuley Botiak. Or Botiak. I don't know. I've heard it both ways. Anyway, so we have hours and hours of not only video debate, but audio debate on his program, on this program, where we are disagreeing.

Where we are debating issues. But I don't want to be on record disagreeing with Michael Brown.

I mean, what color is the sky up in Montana these days? Because it certainly ain't blue.

I was just like, really? You actually said that? I never even recognized how laughable it was.

But for some reason I completely forgot it. And I didn't get a chance to mention it. So there

I have added it in. Okay, real quick, because we've already got some callers. I do want to try to get through some of the factors.

Because after the factors, we get into some of the important people, such as...

Well, we will talk about... Man, looking at this, I've got this teeny tiny little section on Erasmus.

Obviously this was written long before I read all that stuff I read on Erasmus. There's so much we could talk about that.

But we've got the corruption in the Church, and then we get into the Reformation itself and into Luther.

So I want to get to it. But again, background issues.

We'll probably just get one in today and then go to your calls. Remember, the background issues we already covered were the

Avignon Papacy, the Babylonian captivity of the Church, the fall of Constantinople, the invention of printing, in the

West anyways, with movable type. And the next is vitally important, and that is the Renaissance. And as I said last time, the

Renaissance contained... When the

Reformation utilized Renaissance learning, and especially

Renaissance humanism and the phrase ad fontes, back to the sources, many would argue that the

Reformation, by so doing, ingested the seed of its own destruction.

They would look at the history of Europe and the rise of secularism, and now the absolute supremacy of secularism in the

European Union and things like that, and would say it all goes back to that.

The reason I'm not really so sure of that, the freedom that the Reformation brought to Europe certainly allowed that to rise, there's no question about that.

But Rome has been just as infected as liberal Protestantism has been by these things.

And so, if Rome had remained supreme in Europe and there had been no division, which most people would say just simply could not have lasted much longer one way or the other, whether the

Reformation was a religious Reformation, a gospel -based Reformation, or just simply a rebellion against Roman hegemony or something like that, it's all speculation.

It's really hard to say one way or the other. But there is no question that the

Renaissance was vitally important for the Reformation to, again, have its success.

This period of time was truly exceptional. It really was. I mean, the Western world was changing and changing rapidly.

As you know, in 1492, Columbus, and we're not allowed to, I guess, I'm not really sure if we're allowed to talk about Columbus anymore, in the

United States. In 1492, Columbus discovered the New World, the medieval world was coming apart at the seams.

Very importantly, nationalism was on the rise. And you may say, well, what does that have to do with the

Reformation? Just one quick illustration, one of the things that people really, really, you know, in the preceding centuries, if you were a

Christian in what is today called Germany, you would have viewed yourself as part of the Holy Roman Empire, part of the church.

And then you might have had some connection to a particular tribe or something like that.

But by the time of the Reformation, what you have is you view yourself as a

German Christian. And so there was part of what allowed the

Reformation to rise in Germany, was there were a lot of German Christians that were just fed up with Italians running the show.

And their money from indulgences and their giving of tithes and so on and so forth, leaving

Germany and going to build stuff in Rome.

And with the rise of nationalism, you had people who were willing to sort of step back and sort of look at the church and go, you know, it looks like certain people groups are getting favored treatment here over against others.

And this was an issue. Travel was increasing after that medieval period.

And with travel came knowledge of other places, other peoples, other ways of doing things. There was also tremendous concentration, it's really, really interesting, of very dynamic, important personalities that the world has rarely seen this type of concentration.

For example, in the year 1500, Leonardo da Vinci, not Leonardo DiCaprio, which is what most millennials think we'd be talking about.

Leonardo da Vinci was 45 years of age. Christopher Columbus was also 45. Machiavelli, 31.

Copernicus, 27. Desiderius Erasmus, 33. Michelangelo, 25.

Raphael, 17. Luther, 17. Zwingli, 17. And Calvin would be born in 1509.

What an amazing concentration of personalities that you find in 1500.

There was also a shift in economic distribution. A middle class had formed under the influence of the earlier

Crusades, as well as the Black Death. Because remember, we pointed out before that conservatively, very conservatively, the

Black Death killed one out of every three people in Europe.

It could have been, in many places, it was above one out of two. It was above 50%.

What happens is, if you've got X amount of money, and now you only have a third to a half as many people, most people have more money than they did before.

And now you end up with middle class workers who are necessary to have.

When there's half as many workers, you get paid more. You've got to compete with somebody else who needs to have a wall built, and so you've got to pay more to get your wall built.

And so this resulted in a middle class, an increase in personal wealth, and hence banking was developed in Italy in the 1300s, and now corporations were being formed as well.

And once you had a middle class, this led to a need for education, and so the founding of universities, all of this type of things going on in the

Renaissance. This emphasis, there was also a humanism.

And you need to understand, humanism at that time did not mean what humanism means today.

This would be what you might call a Christian humanism, in a sense. But it was part of the

Renaissance movement. The great cry of the scholar of this period, as I just mentioned, was ad fontes, to the sources.

So instead of studying Peter Lombard's sentences and the medieval synthesis of this stuff, you want to go back to the sources.

You want to go back to the original languages, and hence the rise of the study of Hebrew and Greek, rather than just reading it in Latin.

So it emphasized study, scholarship, reading the original languages. It was not primarily a denial of the supernatural.

These humanists were, by and large, believers in theism and the supernatural. You think of Erasmus, one of the great

Dutch humanists who believed that the fleas that were bothering him during the summer while he was trying to do his work were actually demons.

So they weren't humanists in the modern sense of humanists.

Now, the seeds of today's humanism were certainly present, but they had not yet sprouted in the way that they would.

So we will look at an early example of this next time, and that is a fascinating individual by the name of Lorenzo Valla.

Lorenzo Valla and the discovery of anachronism and forgeries and all sorts of stuff like that.

So that's what we'll look at when we look at Lorenzo Valla the next time we pursue this.

So there you go. There's some church history thrown in there. And so with that, got to be able to hear what people are saying,

I suppose. Let's look at the numbers here, and let's talk to Timothy.

Hi, Timothy. Hi. So I've listened to your show quite a bit.

I'm a confessional Lutheran, and I just had a question about what,

I guess, I've heard you address other forms of baptismal regeneration, but I've never heard you address specifically the confessional

Lutheran version of it, which would be holding up the soul of baptism as being salvific in nature and being the work of God, not the work of man.

Well, yeah, when you look at how Luther held these things together, this concept of infantile faith that he presented, it's pretty hard to see how you can look at Luther's utilization of biblical standards and exegesis on other subjects, and then look at this and go, oh, yeah, that's what the biblical writers were referring to.

They had this concept of infantile faith. I don't see it anywhere. I don't see any meaningful effort to try to establish it, utilizing the same exegetical methodology that Luther would use on other subjects.

And I've often said, if you want to detect your traditions, then what you do is, when someone's hermeneutical methodology changes from what they normally would be doing, that's normally the indicator, that's the red flag of a tradition that they're attempting to hold on to, rather than deriving this from simply the text of Scripture itself.

And so I've always seen that insertion of this concept of infantile faith, so that on the one hand, you say, well, it's all of God, but it's still the mechanism whereby this takes place.

But then you try to fit that together with the concept of election that's enunciated in the bondage of the will.

And this is where it's plainly evident to me that John Calvin was a systematic theologian, and Luther was a theologian of the heart, and he didn't mind these contradictions and these stresses and strains in his system.

That comes out as early as the Marburg Colloquy, when it's pretty obvious that in the actual encounter with Zwingli, Zwingli has the upper hand exegetically.

When you're just simply pointing to the word SD on a tabletop, whether it was the wooden tabletop or the cloth or however it was, whether it was carved in, written in chalk, whatever the story about all that was, when you have to take that perspective, rather than dealing with the objections that Zwingli brings against your position, that's just sort of how

Luther was. And as far as I can see, you then take that, where there wasn't a consistency, and then you filter that through the later formulations of Philip Melanchthon, who had differences with Luther in emphasis and things like that, and there's your problem.

So, you know, there's all sorts of different views. I've talked to some Lutherans who de -emphasize that concept with a strong emphasis on sola fide, and then others who go, no, no, this is the mechanism, and baptism is all

God's action, but how do you actually say that baptism is all

God's action? And is that really when regeneration takes place? I have addressed it in the past, and I've said, there's this one

Lutheran that just wants to debate baptism all the time, and I'm like, I'm not interested in it, because I've talked to numerous different Lutherans who have different views, and I don't think there's one view of Luther himself that can be absolutely just nailed down, where you can go, here it is, and this is consistent with this, this, and this.

I don't think it's consistent with so much of the rest of what he said. But he didn't mind that. He saw that as an acceptable thing.

And that's what makes it, you know, I've said to people before, when you get into conversations with Lutherans, especially on the subject of predestination and election, eventually what they're going to say to you is mystery, mystery, mystery.

It's mystery. And you can't debate when someone's willing to go, well, it's mystery, it's mystery, it's mystery.

So that's why I don't really get into it that much. Okay. Well, I guess the only thing

I would, I guess, point to is, you brought up Luther himself a lot, and I'm sure you know, confessional

Lutherans don't really necessarily take all of, like, he's not our Pope, let's just put it that way.

In the same way you hold to certain confessions, certain Reformed confessions, we hold to the

Book of Concord, and that would be more of the, I guess, articulation of the belief.

And, yeah, I mean, I can see what you're saying with the places where it's seemingly contradictory.

I think the way Pieper, in his dogmatic series, points it out and draws it out a little more and explains it more eloquently than I am, but more along the lines of paradoxical, and that's not necessarily in, it's holding attention,

I guess you could say, rather than actually negating each other. Yeah, that's the way, you know, you say it's attention, it's mystery, but what it means is it's really not something that is subject to meaningful debate, because you can't nail it down.

If you start pushing on one side, then they shift the emphasis over to the other side, and then you push on that side, it goes back to the other side, and I've just never seen anything accomplished by it, to be honest with you, which is one of the primary reasons we've just avoided getting into that particular mess and have just simply said, look, when you look back at what originated all of this, it was fundamentally on Luther's part,

I believe, an attempt to, I think his sacralism was central to the development of this concept.

If there had been a break with the state church, and there was a period of time in those early years when

Luther recognized that without a free church, you'd never have a holy church, because if everybody who's baptized in a particular area is part of the church, then you're just always going to have to have that element of people in the church that have no real interest in Christ.

You're going to have a mixed church in that way. But especially after the

Peasants' Revolt in 1525, I mean, the door is completely closed on any thought of that at all. And so you end up with sacralism, and I, you know, obviously,

I think I've made this argument against my Presbyterian friends. I think when you look, the

Reformation was magisterial. It was a state church reformation.

So whether it was Luther, or whether it was Zwingli, or whether it's a second -generation reformer in Calvin, these were state church actions.

And I believe, especially when you come to the doctrine of baptism and infant baptism, that that's central to an understanding of the development of the theology of all of these individuals.

So you can look at Zwingli coming to the conclusion that, yeah, you know, I guess if I was consistent, I wouldn't be baptizing babies, but we have to because that is, and so he's searching for a way to make that work.

And, you know, you can always find a way as long as you're looking for a way, but that's a fundamental violation of the idea that these dogmatic teachings need to be, first and foremost, be apostolic in their origination.

And that's what raises the problem. You get to baptism, and the problem is you can go back to the early church and find all sorts of different views on the subject of baptism and when it's supposed to be administered, and whether you should do it immediately or whether you should delay it to the end of your life, and slow development of infant baptism.

It all depends on who you want to emphasize as to what you're going to come up with in the first and second centuries.

It's a grab bag. There's no question. Well, not just first and second, even into the third and fourth, where you've got competing perspectives existing side by side.

And so, you know, if you want to go find somebody to substantiate your position, great, but when we look at the

Reformation, we normally go, hey, here was the emphasis upon exegesis and consistency in the original languages and all the rest of this stuff, and they didn't always consistently make that application.

And that's what's important about Semper Reformanda. There is a tension, to use that term, between saying

I'm confessional, on the one hand. The problem is the Reformed confessions point us to Semper Reformanda, always reforming.

So I've met lots of folks, Reformed, Lutheran, whatever it is, that want to almost canonize the confessions and immediately break out in hives if there is any question whatsoever about the emphasis, the proper understanding of the framers, whatever it might be.

It's like, from their perspective, okay, that was it. That's the end. We don't change from there.

Then the other side is Semper Reformanda, you know, that's the route that all the liberals take, and they can overthrow everything in the confessions because, well, we're always reforming.

The problem was Semper Reformanda was always reforming based upon the unchanging standards of the

Word of God, assuming that we can grow in our understanding, and that didn't freeze in place in the 16th century.

And so there's that tension, and it's seen, really, to this day, in Reformed circles, in conservative

Lutheran circles. You'll find that stuff all along. Anyway, so there you go.

There's a few thoughts on that, and so there you go. Okay, Timothy?

Okay. All right. Thank you so much. I appreciate the time. All right. Thank you. Have a good day.

Bye. All right. Let's see here. Let's go up to Bryson.

Hi, Bryson. Hey, what's going on? I know my original question was framed on Augustinian stuff, but I won't switch it.

I know in a lot of your debates with Muslims, they like to bring up verses like Mark 13, 32,

Matthew 24, 36, to try to say that Jesus can't be God because he, quote -unquote, didn't know the hour.

But I wanted to know if you thought that Augustine's reply to that was suitable, where he says that no is not meant in the way of, you know, one plus one is two, so to speak, but no in more of an intimate fashion.

I'm not sure if you are familiar with that interpretation or not.

I know that in other verses of Scripture, the term no is used in a way like that instead of as an intellectual knowledge.

And I just wanted to know if you thought that that was an appropriate interpretation or if Augustine is way off. I'd want to read specifics to make a comment on specifically what you're referring to in Augustine.

There are various ways that that text has been understood in the sense of viewing this as simply a statement that it is the father's prerogative to set that date and hence to know it in the sense of establishing it, that it was not the father or the angel, not the son or the angels or any man, but the father sets that particular date and to use the term no in that sense.

You know, I get that. There's definitely – it's definitely true that it is the father's prerogative to set that particular date and the decree of what's going to happen in time and how he's going to work these things out in the same way that it was the father's prerogative to give a certain people unto the son in John 6, for example.

They were the father's, he gives them to the son, so they're taking different roles. And so I think that's an appropriate way of understanding it, but it didn't say set or appoint.

He said no. So that's why I've always explained that text in the context of the functional incarnation of the son, that is, the son laid aside certain aspects of his divine prerogatives so that he could function as the

Messiah, as the suffering servant, as the sacrifice for sin. And so he laid aside his pre -incarnate glory.

He doesn't walk down the road glowing at night with the glory of God, etc.,

etc., because if he did, he would not be able to function as intended as the

Messiah, as the one who did the things that Jesus did. So the knowledge of that particular hour is one of those things that would not be required for the

Messiah to do the things the Messiah needed to do and therefore is voluntarily laid aside, which allows you to affirm that prior to the incarnation, this would have obviously been knowledge that the son was intimately aware of and would be fully aware of now in the same way that the son was glorious prior to the incarnation and is glorious now in his exalted state.

So is it possible that the word no there has a little bit of a wider semantic domain?

I suppose it's possible, but it's not really, from my perspective, useful in an explanatory fashion in debate because the word just simply,

I think you're stretching it too far to get there. Yeah, so I want to try to use an example, like Genesis 22, 12, where the angel of the

Lord says to Abraham, Now I know that you fear God. And Augustine says that it's possible to interpret these words of the angel to mean that Abraham's fear of God has been made known.

And I think that that type of way balances, because there's verses where Peter is like that.

So I think that when you say that Jesus is not making the hour known, not that necessarily he doesn't know it as if he's ignorant, but that he's not revealing it,

I felt like that would be something that's acceptable based on examples like Genesis 22, 12, or maybe even like 1

Corinthians 2, 2, where Paul says that he decides to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

I don't think that he was necessarily saying that he doesn't know anything literally except that. But it's just that way that he's trying to say,

I'm revealing this type of information, so to speak.

I don't know. Like I said, it's open for interpretation. But I just kind of want to run that by you to see what your thoughts were on it.

Yeah, well, you know, both of those are interesting examples.

And certainly the use of now I know in regards to the offering of Isaac would, you know, fit into that parameter.

But normally in a debate, the other side isn't going to be interested in allowing for anything like that at all.

So maybe it's just one of those difficult things along those lines. But that is an interesting perspective.

Okay, thank you for your time. All right, thanks. Bye -bye. Excuse me.

Let's press on here and talk to Andy. Hi, Andy. Hey, Dr.

Wyatt, how are you? Doing good. First of all, thank you for the King James Only controversy. It is a very good book, very good addition to my library.

And your screen caller did a good job of tasking me with making this from an apologetic standpoint, so I think he deserves a raise.

Well, he's in charge of that stuff anyway, so I'm not sure how that's going to work. Yeah, so I haven't changed my question, but I've merely adjusted it from a pastoral to an apologetic question.

I have had funerals where sudden death can cause perspective to come into play.

And so in my encounters with non -Christian family members, a lot of times they'll come from the perspective of, you know, if God was sovereign, therefore this is their equation.

So my question is, do I just stick to the preaching of the

Gospel and reject that need that comes inside all of us to try to convince them? Or do you see any avenue where you might could focus on a particular part of the faith that might help them in that area?

Well, the problem, as I see it, when you're dealing with family members in a death situation is you're dealing with individuals who are in grief, and Christians and non -Christians, everyone grieves.

Anyone who's old enough to love can grieve. But the difference in grieving for a

Christian is that we are not those who grieve without hope. That issue of hope, a firm conviction of God's promises as they relate to the future that give purpose and meaning to life, the non -believer either does not have a hope or creates a false hope.

But fundamentally, without the resurrection of Christ, cannot grieve in hope.

And so we grieve differently. And as a result, people who are in the state of grief are really difficult to address and to work with.

Grief can be a huge barrier to the presentation of the gospel because grief is so irrational.

And it so exalts human emotion that obviously there are many people who will reject the biblical demands to repent and believe because their ultimate authority has become their own emotional experience, their own pain, their own grief process.

And so they are willing to dismiss the factual data of the gospel message and its demands upon them in light of their emotional experience at that particular point in time.

So it can be really hard to address those vital issues in the family.

That's really where we have to try to be addressing them before eternity comes knocking rather than afterwards.

Because in my experience, very often individuals will harden in grief, will harden them in a rejection of the gospel and things like that.

I'm not saying that you don't talk about the gospel to someone who's in grief. I just simply am saying that if there had been a rejection of it beforehand, there may well be an even stronger rejection of it now, unless, you know, obviously we're dependent upon the work of the

Holy Spirit of God. And so, you know, if someone's blaming

God, then obviously the only biblical response is to introduce them to the true

God who actually does ordain all things and calls for our submission to him and our faith in him and our faith in his goodness.

And it seems to me that many modern men, modern men and women, don't believe that they have to submit in faith, that they have to recognize that they're the creature and God is

God in faith. And sadly, because of the evangelism of many churches, since people have been presented with that idea, they've been presented with God's lucky to have you, it's all up to you whether you come to believe in God.

That submission element of saving faith is not a part of many people's experience.

And that's why so many people are willing to judge God's word and to judge the gospel. And I don't like that aspect of it, so I'm not going to believe that.

And it becomes a mess and it becomes even more of a mess when you're trying to deal with someone in the grieving process.

But fundamentally, you can't avoid what the gospel says. If they're saying, well, I'm not going to believe in God because he didn't keep this from happening, you have to speak to issues of justice and the fact that God is

God and you are not. And that can be extremely difficult for someone who is in that particular position.

But the spirit can do anything and make application to anyone. And there's many times in history

God has used grieving as a mechanism of breaking someone of their pride and their rebellion.

They get to see their own mortality. That's what bugs most people about the grieving process, is they don't want to admit it because it's very selfish.

But what really, really bothers them about it is it has brought into sharp focus the fact that they are not going to be living forever.

And in fact, death is waiting for them right around the corner. And that's a very uncomfortable thing for a lot of people to deal with who have not the promises of the gospel that they've already embraced.

So just some thoughts there. I'm not sure if any of that was even relevant to what you're asking. Yes, sir.

And what you said last there was right there on point about the perspective, because that sounds like the prescription you're aiming towards is you rejoice for those who rejoice, weep for those who weep.

And as God moves, if the opportunity is there, you can present those things to a non -Christian family member.

But in times of grief, they may not be at a point where they want to hear it. So you've got to kind of remove self out of the way and move as God moves.

Well, yeah. And you've got to also remember that the grieving process is much longer than most people assume that it is.

The grieving process doesn't even start for most people until after the time period that a lot of us

Americans, even American Christians, think. It can be at its deepest and darkest six months down the road.

And, you know, we think give somebody two weeks off from work and they're going to be fine. They haven't even started grieving yet.

So there's a lot of massive misunderstanding of the grieving process that I tried to sort of address briefly in my book on that subject.

And no one knows I wrote. OK. Well, I appreciate it, brother. God bless you. Have a good day. Thank you.

You too. Bye bye. All right. 877 -753 -3341.

I'm not sure this is a topic down my lane or not, but let's talk with Clayton.

Hi, Clayton. Hey, how's it going? Well, the topic worries me, but let's see what you got.

Well, I have a friend that I got saved like two years ago. And this kid, he was my friend before I got saved.

Then I got saved and I found out that his family is now like left the church that I'm going to now and teaching.

They call it mid -axe distanciation. Yeah. And I recently

I've been trying to like study up on this stuff, but I couldn't find a lot of resources online. And I just met with the guys that and we had like a little debate.

I was wondering, like, have you ever encountered this stuff and how would you how would you tackle it? Like I found some like proof text, but they're not like concrete enough to where.

Is there anything that you could think of that would be? Yeah, it's it's it's a popular, well, popular,

I mean, it's rather small movement, obviously. It is not something that I've gotten into.

I'm sure there are resources out there. I'm sorry,

I can't direct you to them. It's just it's so it individuals who embrace this cannot have any concern whatsoever about the history of the church because it is so unknown until modern times.

No one had come up with this idea that it utterly destroys the consistency and unity of New Testament scripture.

There's there's certainly nothing that is even suggested that I've ever seen that even it is it is just so far removed from any of the of the great theologians of the past of any of any stripe at all.

I mean, you can you can throw all the Catholics and the Orthodox and the Protestants and everybody into a big old pile and they'll all look at this and go, well, you know, it is just so off the wall.

That you really have to be utterly disconnected from the history of the church and from, well, from the

Reformation and everything else. You just sort of have to think the church started about 50 years ago to come up with this kind of stuff.

And it is it's interesting how many people I find that have some really serious theological gospel issues and they'll embrace this because it really opens the door because you sort of get to pick and choose what is and what is not binding scripture anymore.

It's it's it's not exactly like the full preterist position, but it functionally ends up being like that.

It's sort of backwards, though, because with my Sean McCraney interaction last week, or the week before, whatever it was, he doesn't have to worry about what what

Paul says about the church because Christ has already returned. So all that's irrelevant. Well, many of these hyper -dispensationalists, you try to take them to John chapter six and that's irrelevant.

That was that was just for the Jews. That's not for us today. And you just you just get to chop the

Bible up in any any way you want to, to be able to continue to hold your your traditions.

And so, yeah, not a not a subject that I've spent much time on, because I'll be honest with you,

I just don't respect it enough. I've never I've never met anyone who held this view that that was even semi -orthodox in general.

And certainly nobody held this view that that had a clue about any meaningful understanding of church history or connection to it or anything like that.

So, you know, that's I've said many times on the program,

I am not the Bible answer man. And when someone calls on a subject that I haven't done much on, I'm going to tell you straight up front,

I'm not going to try to, you know, smuggle anything in. It's just not an area that I do much reading in.

Do you think that they would be I mean, we both agree on the gospel, 1 Corinthians 15, 1 through 4.

And we talked about that, but, you know, I was under the impression that that's heresy, isn't it? I mean, they we disagree on whether or not the gospels are directed to us or just the

Jews. So like that, that counts as heresy. Well, that term heresy is is thrown around a whole lot.

I mean, any you can say that any departure from biblical truth is heresy.

But there is there's obviously various forms of heresy.

And the church has always talked about what damnable heresy is.

That is to that to believe this results in the damnation of your soul. And certainly today, there are a lot of folks who have a much expanded list as to what is going to damn your soul.

And unfortunately, I think the Internet has caused us to become a little bit willing to utilize that terminology far too often than we than we should.

We need to be very, very careful, just because, you know, I'm not a

I'm not a Pato Baptist. And so there is a sense of the term heresy that could be applied from my perspective to Pato baptism.

But the problem is when you use the term heresy, most people automatically jump to damnable heresy.

That is a belief that violates a central tenet of the faith that separates you from that faith because that central tenet defines what the faith itself is.

I certainly do not view the mode of baptism, whether it be sprinkling, pouring, effusion or the objects of baptism, whether it be infant baptism, credo baptism.

I don't see that as defining the faith.

That doesn't mean it's not important. And that's where people really struggle today is that, well, if it's important, then if you disagree with me, you're going to hell.

And that's the issue. So but now this particular error,

I've seen over and over and over again, I've seen it associated with damnable heresies.

Not that it was the heresy, but that to substantiate and hold to what they want to hold to, they adopted this because that allows them to pick and choose what verses.

It allowed them to get rid of biblical testimony that was against what they were trying to promote.

And so you have to make distinctions, you know, which came first, the chicken or the egg? Was it the hyper dispensationalism that gave rise to the error in Christology?

For example, the full preterist position denying that Jesus continues to have his resurrection body, where did that come from?

Well, it came from their twisting up 1 Corinthians chapter 15 to try to hold on to something else.

It ends up having an impact elsewhere in theology. So it's just been my experience that that's really troubling, that it's normally associated with that kind of stuff.

Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you. I appreciate it. All right. Thanks, Leighton. Have a good day. Bye -bye. All right.

The lines just keep filling up. Did you notice that? Let's talk with Adam in Houston, Texas.

Hey, Adam, I've got some good news for you. Oh, what's that? I saw on Twitter today that the first and only

Taco Time in Texas is opening in Houston. Oh, really?

Now, Houston's a big city, so it may be way, way, way far away from you. But if that is true, then

I would like to congratulate you that you will be able to go get crisp meat burritos and Mexifries.

Sometime in the near future. Now, I'm going to tell you ahead of time that I really, really, really like Taco Time.

But that I've taken other folks there, and afterwards they renamed it

Taco Time Bomb. So just take that for whatever it means. I think

I understand what you're doing. I ate at Taco Time like four times on this last trip, and it's going to take me probably two weeks worth of very hard riding and running to undo the damage that I did to myself.

But, yeah, at the very least, their taco sauce is my favorite.

I purchased nine bottles while I was in Utah and dragged them back with me so that I can have

Taco Time taco sauce. Because there used to be one out in Mesa, and it closed.

And so it's like, I'm really sad. So congratulations. That has nothing to do with why you were calling, but hey, that's okay.

Yeah, I've never heard of Taco Time, so I'll give it a try. I'll hunt them down and give them a try and call you back with a verdict.

You'll have to tweet a picture of yourself eating your crisp meat burrito, and that way we'll know you found it once they open up.

Well, currently I don't have a Twitter account, so that might give me a cause to... Well, I'm sorry, what's wrong with you?

I'm just not into the social media thing anymore, you know? It's been about a year since I've logged into Facebook. I just got tired of all the...

I fully understand. Believe me, I fully understand. Unfortunately, I encourage people to do that, but the downside of it is you end up not knowing what in the world is going on and get blindsided by stuff.

But anyways, that's not your subject. What's up? Okay, so in our men's Bible study, we were going through the book of Titus.

In Titus 1 -6, I seem to be in the minority that, as a requirement, according to Titus 1 -6, you do have to be a married man with children to be an elder in a church.

Everyone else seems to think that it is possible for a single man to be an elder in any capacity, whether they be a pastor or a teacher, but basically an elder in a church.

You can be single. And I was just wondering what your thoughts are. Have you ever heard of anything like that, any kind of commentator throughout history, or is that, like, a little bit too much eisegesis?

Well, let me see if you're consistent, because looking at Titus 1 -6, do you also believe that you have to have children to be an elder?

Yes, that's what I'm saying, is whenever he says above reproach, it is kind of like a generalization, above reproach, and then those are requirements that follow, or kind of like an explanation of above reproach.

You have to be a husband of one wife, your children are believers, and not given to debauchery or—I don't have the text right in front of me, but I'm just going based off of what

I remember from the text. Okay, so— One argument was that all the other following requirements further down uses the word must.

So it seems like what they were saying, what one person was saying was that because they don't use the word must in those first requirements, but they use the word must in those other requirements, and further down the passage, it doesn't seem to be quite as concrete of a requirement for a person, a single man, to be an elder.

So, but searching for consistency here—so, you have to be married, and you have to have older children.

So, just having young kids isn't enough, because how can you know if they believe? So these are the only people that—so, that would disqualify

Timothy, wouldn't it? That's what I was saying, and I was saying the same thing about Paul, and the fact that is

Paul an exception because of his apostolic authority? Because I believe, like, we believe that Paul was never married, or he was at least a widow.

Yeah, yeah. No, this is—well, my position is that the point is that if you are called to the eldership, if any man is above reproach, there's—that's one.

If you are married, you're the husband of one wife. If you have children, they are—and by the way,

I've got a whole— when pista is used here, look at the parallel in 1

Timothy, and I think it would be completely inappropriate, because it leads to some incredible theological issues, to say, what if you have an absalom in your family?

That's by God's elective decree. So what you're saying is, well, that means that even if you've been—if you fulfill everything else, unless God saves your children, every single one of them, that you cannot be an elder in the

Church. I think that pista, faithful in Titus 1 -6, look at the parallel in 1

Timothy, are under control. That is, they're not—well, given to dispassion, not rebellion.

They're under your control as long as they're in your household. But I've known many, a godly minister that served in the

Church and did so to the great benefit of God's people, who, while their children were in the home, disciplined them and kept them in control and so on and so forth.

When those children became adults, they did not make a profession of faith. They weren't rebellious in the home.

The man showed the ability to keep his children under control in his home. But once they became adults, they did not—

All bets are off. Well, not all bets are off, but they did not profess faith in Christ, and they just lived a normal pagan life,

I guess you might say. And the question is, is there a promise in Scripture, given to any of us, that all of your children are going to be heirs of salvation?

I mean, this raises a whole huge area that basically you somehow have to know

God's elective decree, which I've argued for a long, long time. That's one of the major problems of Hyper -Calvinism, is that it assumes you can know

God's elective decree, and you can't. So my understanding of this text—and yes, there are others who have taken that position—is that if you are a man above reproach, and obviously, even at that point, you're not talking about sinlessly perfect, or there would be no elders, as any of us who are elders know that.

If you are married, you are married to one woman, and not just polygamy there.

I think that extends beyond that. Having faithful children, that doesn't mean that they are all elect, or they're all making profession of faith, but you run your home in such a way that your children are in control, and they are not rebellious, and they're not lighting the church on fire, or lighting other people on fire, or whatever it is.

Exactly. Not accused of dissipation or rebellion, etc., etc. So I don't see—and in fact, the word must in 1 .7,

for it is necessary. But digar, I would not see that as somehow making what comes in 7 more important than what's in 1 .6.

I don't buy that argument. But I also do not believe that, you know, given that Paul even said to the

Corinthians, given the day, it is better if you're not married. That would leave

Corinth without any elders in the future, if they all believed that. That's a good point. Yeah, I don't see that as the issue.

What I see is that if you've made that commitment that it needs to be to that one woman, and if that results in children which are considered a blessing from God, then you need to have them under control, etc.,

etc., etc. Okay, that makes everything—when you said that it is better for you to not marry, then that is a very solid justification for a single man, an unmarried man at least, to be an elder in a church.

Don't get me wrong. There are people who disagree with me about that. I think the single state is not normative in most situations.

I don't think it was normative in Corinth. There are those who, however, are given the gift of singleness, and they want to be dedicated to the service of Christ, and if they have the other gifts that are necessary to be able to function in that way.

I'm a stick in the mud. Most Reformed Baptists—I was raised in non -Reformed

Baptist context, and we were basically told, hey, if you feel led, it's up to you to feel the calling.

And Reformed Baptists go, no, you go to the elders of the church you're in, and you say,

I want to know if you believe, if my elders believe, that I should pursue training in ministry and set myself apart to this kind of activity, and ask others.

Because in many Baptist circles, it's almost like, you know, once you say,

I feel it, it's sacrosanct. I mean, you can't question that. And I'm going to tell you something,

I've seen people in a pulpit where I really wish their elders had questioned that, because it was self -evident that they had not been given the gifts to be able to teach and to be able to refute those who contradict, and the whole nine yards.

So that raises a whole other area. And so a person who is single needs to recognize that there are going to be certain—this is why

I believe in a plurality of elders, by the way, because I'm so thankful that I'm a part of a church with a plurality of elders, because there are things that the other elders can do better than I can.

And there are things I can do better than they can. And so, because of that plurality, then we can meet the needs of the sheep better.

And a single man— I believe that, too. I mean, I believe in a plurality of elders. I think it's the only biblical model, and that's one of the reasons why my church, we just started about six or seven months ago, we left the

Calvary Chapel because of their Mosaic model. I was going to say, let's not get into the

Moses model. That's how they typically are, though.

I know, I know. If that's what they want to do, what do you do? You either cause division and complain about it, or you leave in peace and love and go start your own thing.

I really appreciate you saying leaving in peace and love, because that's the way it needs to be done. When you leave a church, you've got to leave it with a clear conscience.

And if you do so with grace—and let me tell you something, and this is not what you're asking, but let me tell you something.

Whenever I've had someone come into our church who included in their testimony the obvious reality that they had really hard feelings toward their former church, frequently put into the context of non -Calvinistic, they criticized me for my beliefs.

Okay, that may be, but that always worries me, and most of those folks have not stuck around, because unless you were just treated like a royal heretic and it was a cult or something like that, be thankful for what the

Lord did for you while you were there. Pray for those folks, but good grief. Don't have animosity in your heart, because I think that can come with you into the fellowship that you're going to.

And it's interesting, one of the questions we ask everyone who is applying for membership at our church is, do you bear improper feelings toward any member of this church?

Before you join, those things have to be dealt with. And we've never had anyone say yes, but we've always asked.

And I think I would also recommend to people, and if you have feelings toward your former church, ask

God to take them away, to just simply thank God for what

He did while you were there, and move on, because I just don't think it's helpful to anybody. So how's that?

Is that good? Yeah, sure. And I just wanted to say thank you, and I want to bless you for your...

Oop, Adam went bye -bye. I didn't touch a thing, but... And your dialogue with Dr.

Cotty, you know, kind of changed my mind as far as how I should interact with Muslims, and I'm totally 100 % supportive of you and your endeavor in that.

Well, thank you, Adam. I appreciate that. Dr. Cotty's from Houston, so he grew up down in your neck of the woods, actually.

So we are working on scheduling another dialogue, and it'll be even more in -depth than the first one.

So we'll let everybody know when that happens. I look forward to it. Okay, thanks, Adam. And if you ever come down here, man, no one ever comes down here.

Oh, no, no, no, no. I've been to Houston many times. I've been to Houston many times. I just try to avoid...

It's just so humid down there during the warm part of the year.

Yes, it's humid right now. It's just horrible.

Anyway, thanks, Adam. Thank you, sir. Okay, bye -bye. It is just horrible.

Let's go to Willis. Hi, Willis.

Hello, Dr. Wyatt. How are you today? I'm doing well. I have a question for you.

The reason I ask is I know a lot of Baptists who have used the longer ending of Mark 16 where it says that he who believes and is baptized shall be saved.

In this question, I don't want you to think that I'm trying to dismiss baptism because, you know, being a missionary

Baptist, I believe in the believer's baptism. But the longer ending of Mark, do you think it's valid, or do you think it was something that was, like, blended in through scribe notes, or what is your take on that?

And where does baptism, what salvific property does it have?

Well, I believe that baptism is incredibly important.

It is an act of obedience to one's Lord. I think it's indicative of a repentant and believing person that they want to do whatever their

Lord would command them to do. It's one of the two ordinances given to the Church. I think a believer should love to see baptism, think back upon their own baptism, in the same way they should love the

Lord's Supper, look forward to the Lord's Supper, prepare for the Lord's Supper. All of these things, unfortunately, are not frequently emphasized in Baptist churches today.

There are obviously exceptions. I would say my own church is an exception to that. Most Reformed Baptist churches would be, and I would hope that there would be other

Baptist churches that would likewise say that they see the importance of the

Lord's Supper. And it's not just something you do every three months and tack it on at the end of a service and just get it over with, but it is something that is a glorious picture of the

Gospel and something that we should really love. So, as far as salvific, you know, when

I look at Mark 16, 16, it says, "...the one believing and who is baptized shall be saved, but the one not believing shall be condemned."

So, it is interesting that even in this text, which I do not believe Mark wrote, and I'll explain that in a moment, even in this text, what brings condemnation is unbelief.

And I would just simply point out that, especially in the early church, in light of the suffering of the early church and the martyrs in the early church, the idea of believing and being baptized is very difficult to separate the two apart because of the fact that the one is internal and cannot necessarily be seen by Roman soldiers.

The other one is external and can be, and therefore was often the basis of one's condemnation from the

Roman authorities. And so, those who would say that belief is not enough without baptism being added to it, that's where I think the problem really comes in.

And when you go to, I think, much clearer texts that refer to the relationship of faith and baptism and things like that would be clarified.

But, obviously, from my perspective, a couple things.

The longer ending of Mark is one of the two longest, and by the way, I address this in the

King James Only Controversy if you want to have a written version of it. There have been books published, some of these books where you have different people taking different perspectives and debating one another on it, on the long ending of Mark that you could look at.

But, fundamentally, from my perspective, it's very, very early.

I'm sorry, there are two textual variants in the New Testament that are 12 verses in length, Mark 16, 9 -20, and John 7 -53 -8 -11.

Those are the only two major textual variants that size in the New Testament.

Everything else is just a single verse, single line, phrases, so on and so forth. So, that's one of the two major textual variants.

Of those two, the longer ending of Mark has significantly better, wider, and earlier attestation than what's called the

Pricope Adultery, the story of the woman taking adultery in the Book of John. As far as I know, the longer ending of Mark is always found in Mark, whereas the story of the woman taking adultery is actually found in some manuscripts in Luke and in some manuscripts at different places in the

Gospel of John. And so, it's a story that was looking for a place to land, and that's one of the greatest evidences against it.

And again, much earlier manuscript evidence for the longer ending of Mark.

Yet, there are very ancient manuscripts that do not contain the longer ending of Mark.

And when you look at it, you discover that there's not just one long ending. When you look at the textual data, in other words, a critical edition of the

Greek New Testament, there are numerous textual variants in the longer ending of Mark.

And then there's a medium ending of Mark, and then there's even sort of a mixture one, at least one manuscript.

And so, since you have these different endings, to me, that is the most significant reason why

I don't believe that the longer ending of Mark is original, is because if it was, there would have been no reason for the construction of the others.

Now, some might say, well, there were very, very early manuscripts where, for some reason, that long ending disappeared.

Maybe the manuscript was defective. Maybe the last page fell off. And so, someone, all they had was a

Gospel of Mark where the last page fell off, which had the longer ending, and so they filled in.

The style of the longer ending, the vocabulary, the fact that it has so many variants in it that look like when you have a later edition and there's been problems in the transmission, these are the reasons why

I don't believe that the longer ending is original. And notice, I haven't said anything yet about the style.

Many people have said that the vocabulary and syntax of the longer ending is very different from the rest of the

Gospel of Mark. That's frequently a subjective issue, but there have been many people who have pointed that out.

And I haven't even touched on the theology. I mean, there's, you know, other than the drinking of poison and picking up serpents and all the rest of that kind of stuff, that that is somewhat strange, to put it mildly.

And then you also have Mark 16, 12, where you have the phrase,

Ephanerothe and Heteromorphe. He appeared to them in a different form as they were on their way to the fields of the country.

And that's troubling, to be honest with you, just on a theological perspective and everything else.

It looks like the longer ending has been cobbled together from other

Gospels and probably from oral teaching or something along those lines.

And the reason is, if you start, if you end at verse 8, it's sort of like, well, wait a minute.

That's not good, because the last two words are ephebunta gar.

And you can't, you're not supposed to stop with the word gar. And so it's like, nah, there's got to be more to it than that.

For they were afraid. You don't end your story with them being afraid. Well, some people have suggested that, in reality, the reason for that was that the

Gospel was to end that way so that whoever was presenting it in the early

Church could present their testimony of encounter with Christ or their testimony to the

Resurrection. And that's an argument for a very, very, very, very, very, very early dating for Mark, much earlier than a lot of scholars would utilize today, though I think

Mark was very, very early. Whether it was the first of the Gospels written or not, that's the most popular opinion, but that's another issue.

So anyways, having taken a short story and made it long, my fundamental reason for personally not seeing it as original is

I don't see why you would have the other forms coming into existence. If that longer ending was actually apostolic.

But I think that it originates in the second century, it's very, very early, but it has some serious problems with it.

So it's a different situation than what you have with the

Percopaic adultery in John. It is much earlier attested, but I still don't think it's original.

Hello? Hello, Willis? I heard something there for a second.

Sorry, Willis, you disappeared. No harm come to him, they all readily point to Apostle Paul when he was on the island and when he's putting the wood on the fire and an asp or a snake, whatever you want to call it, comes out and bites him, and he just shakes it off and there's no harm.

But it says that these signs would follow them, and I think, if you take it literally, I think it's talking about all believers.

Well, living here in the Appalachians, there's a lot of talk of the snake handlers, but it's also in the

Ozarks. But you can see where it says that there would be no harm come on them, but yet, Jamie Cootes had that show, and I don't think he was from Nott or Perry County.

I was raised in Kentucky, which is probably an hour and a half from here. He gets bit by a rattler,

I believe it was, or a cottonmouth or something, and it kills him, and then you read of others. So to me, it says there would be no harm.

Well, the ultimate harm to come to somebody is death. Well, people are getting bit by snakes and they're dying, so to me, that looks like him versus our own shaky ground, to me, anyways.

Well, yeah. We don't want to do textual criticism based upon groups in America or something like that, but the issue with Paul, again, as an apostle, most people would say that it was

Paul's experience that then becomes the source for that later, longer ending in the second century, that that story becomes a part of that.

But in any case, when I finish my comments there, we couldn't hear you for a few seconds.

When you listen back, you'll hear that. But I hope it was useful information to you, and we've got to roll on from there.

All right. Thank you so much, Dr. White. Have a good day. I thought we already talked with, well, it must be somebody else named

Aaron. Hi, Aaron. Hey, Dr. White. How's it going? Doing good.

Good, good. Actually, I have a two -part question, but before I ask it, I just want to tell you,

I appreciate you saying the phrase ad fontes earlier in the program. I've been trying to spread that phrase around because I love that phrase so much.

All my friends think I'm kind of a weirdo for saying it, but now you just qualified me. Well, you know,

I didn't originate. I may be old, but I don't go all the way back to Erasmus and Bala and those guys now.

Right. Well, I actually have a question. It's about total depravity, and it's a two -part question.

The first one is, you know, it also goes to the order of salvation and what that means inside of the

Reformed context. Now, I'm a Calvinist myself, and I really think that that's the best way of understanding the

Scriptures, but there does seem to be a big hole in the Old Testament. That's primarily in regards to the big

Scriptures that look forward to the New Covenant and see regeneration, or at least appear the same, regeneration as a function of the

New Covenant. Such as Ezekiel chapter 36, Jeremiah chapter 33, where Ezekiel says that in that day,

I will take out your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh, and I'll cause you to obey my law.

But that does seem to be a function of a future reality, which is the New Covenant. And so how, if that's the case, how are people believing in the

Old Testament? Well, I think the clarification would be that it is a reality of the

New Covenant that is the experience of every person in the

New Covenant, so that the Old Covenant is a mixture.

You have individuals who receive the sign of the Old Covenant, and some are regenerated, like David, who is a man after God's own heart.

You have others who receive that same sign, who are reprobate in God's sight.

And so the difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant is that they shall all know me from the least to the greatest of them.

Everyone in the New Covenant is a person who knows God, who's had their sins forgiven, and had that heart of stone taken out, been given a heart of flesh.

Under the Old Covenant, that is done by the

Spirit of God based upon the Father's choice of election.

But it is not concurrent with the Old Covenant signs, because the

Old Covenant has national promises and land promises that are involved. So you have the people of Israel, but the people of Israel are obviously a mixed group.

And so the sad thing is, you have people bearing the external covenant signs of the people of Israel, but they're bringing blasphemy upon the name of God because of, you know, you think of the kings of Israel and Ahab and so on and so forth.

He would have borne the covenant signs, but was himself obviously not regenerate.

And so part of the betterness of the New Covenant is that there is no mixture.

Everyone who is in the New Covenant has experienced these things. If you haven't been regenerated, you're not part of the

New Covenant. So that's where I would see the difference between the two.

So it's like a mirror image of Romans 9, where Paul says that not all of Israel are in Israel.

Right, right, right. That makes sense. So the second part of my question is actually going back to Matthew chapter 13, where Jesus gives the purpose of his parables.

And I actually saw you discuss this with Leighton Flowers about a year or two ago. And sometimes

I'll listen to him, just so I can see a good example of someone on the other side, just so it could be challenged a little bit.

Sometimes I have to just, you know, get past all the logical fallacies. But there are times I'm like, hey, actually he's making a point here that I don't really have a good answer for.

Now, I think I do have a good answer for Matthew 13, and what Jesus is saying there. I just kind of wanted to hear your opinion on it, because I gave this answer to my friends, and they said that wasn't a good answer.

So I really wanted to get your opinion on it, too. So Matthew 13, Jesus gives his purpose of the parables.

And in that, he quotes Isaiah. And in Isaiah, Isaiah plainly says that he is preaching, and that God tells him that they will hear but not understand, and then says that otherwise that they will turn and repent.

And it's the purpose of his preaching that's causing them not to turn and repent. And likewise with Jesus' purpose of the parables, causing them not to turn and repent, instead of their depraved nature, essentially.

So I'm just trying to understand exactly how that works, if otherwise they would have repented if Jesus wasn't using those parables, if they have a depraved nature.

So what was your answer to it, that you said others were saying? My answer?

Well, actually, it's that Jesus, in this specific explanation, he's referring to the coming judgment that's going to happen in 70

AD. And that what he's talking about is the healing that he's referring to is a physical healing, a healing that is not going to be elvitic, but one that would kind of divert the coming judgment, so to speak.

And the repentance, therefore, would be one of doing a specific action that they were doing, such as maligning the poor, not accepting the

Gentiles, things of that nature, that would ultimately lead to their demise, and ultimately the rejection of the

Son, but not necessarily in a salvific way, but more in a physical, temporal way.

Well, that's interesting. I had not heard that one before.

There is a lot of discussion concerning the judgment passages, and especially this passage from Isaiah, and its frequent citation in the

New Testament and how it's being applied, especially because it seems to go so much against most people's popular understanding of what the purpose of Jesus' teaching was, which is, we just want to save everybody, and everybody needs their chance.

And it goes directly against that. There's nothing about chances. There's nothing about giving everybody an equal chance or anything like that at all.

And furthermore, there is obviously a specific judgment that is coming that is prophesied in Matthew 24.

And there is going to be the destruction of Jerusalem, and that is

God's intention, and I don't think that it's in any way happenstance, that it happens at the end of the apostolic age, basically, when the gospel has now gone out in the whole world, there has been testimony given that the gospel is going out to the whole world, and therefore,

Israel's prerogative as the people of God, in contradistinction to everybody else, whether it be

Romans or whatever else it might be, is no longer—the promises are going to be fulfilled through the inheritance given to all people through faith in the

Messiah. So, you know, most of the New Testament—well, a lot of the New Testament is taken up with explaining this and demonstrating the prophetic fulfillments and all the rest of that stuff.

But I think I would hesitate to take your perspective only because, first of all, there was an immediate fulfillment in Isaiah's time, because Isaiah is called to prophesy judgment to the people prior to the exile.

And then there's a secondary application here, which could be, you know, in regards to the final destruction of the nation, but I think that when you see the phraseology in Greek, it's mepete.

Otherwise, they would see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their heart in return,

I would heal them. I think the problem that I have with the latent flowers understanding is that this is assumed to be a statement concerning actual human capacity and ability that requires the specific blinding action of God to keep people from doing that.

So in other words, if I didn't blind them, then this is what they would do because they have the capacity to do so, which means everybody has the capacity to do so.

That seems to be the kind of argumentation that most people utilize this for when they're trying to argue against the clear passages of Scripture that talk about they're unable to submit themselves to the law of God, they're unable to repent, you know, this inability, inability, inability, leaving those things aside, they'll go to something like this and assume that it must mean that there is a natural capacity to do all of these things, rather than seeing that God has a necessary purpose in the destruction of these individuals, and in the destruction of, well, in the days of Isaiah, in bringing about the captivity of the people of Israel, fulfillment of God's covenant promises, the blessings and cursings, in bringing about the end of the physical nation of Israel.

But likewise, there are times, we may be seeing one of those times even in our own lifetime, where there are nations that have seen and have received such light and such blessing that God must bring judgment upon their tremendously willful rebellion against that.

And it's interesting to me that the only capacity that I really see in these texts is the capacity for self -preservation of these individuals, not the idea that all those other texts that talk about inability are not actually talking about inability.

In other words, it's like when Paul said to the

Corinthians, you know, if the rulers this age had known who Jesus really was, then they would not have crucified the

Lord of Glory. Well, why not? Because they would have gone, oh, we love him so much, and we want to follow him.

No, it was because they would have realized, well, that's really stupid. He can call the mountains to fall down upon us, so we're not going to do that.

It was a self -preservation idea, not a I -see -the -truth -and -in -and -of -myself -I'm -going -to -rip -out -this -heart -of -stone -and -somewhere -a -heart -of -flesh -is -going -to -take -its -place type of an ability, which is really what the

Synergist is saying we have the capacity to do. Sinners do have the capacity to, well, how many times have you seen somebody who was in trouble as a young man join the

Marines and get himself some discipline? But he still remains just as much of a pagan as he ever has been.

He's just a pagan with discipline now, knowing that if you live a life of dissipation, you're going to die of cirrhosis of the liver or a drug overdose or driving your car off a cliff because you're drunk or whatever.

People realize that following this pattern is going to bring about my destruction.

And so when you have hypotheticals presented, like in Romans Chapter 2, you know, if you kept the law, then you could have life, but the next chapter makes it plain and nobody does that.

There is always somebody who's going to come along and say, see, that means we can all keep the law and have eternal life.

And that's not the point of what's actually being presented. And so Jesus presents, you know, here's the very incarnate

Son of God teaching God's truth amongst God's people. We're supposed to be God's people.

But there are very few, you know, you've got Simeon, you've got Anna, you have very few who actually see the fulfillment of the scriptures and things like that.

There is judgment that has come upon these people, and that judgment is necessary. I wouldn't just limit it to AD 70, but I wouldn't,

I mean, since God brought judgment in AD 70, that needs to be one of the fulfillments.

But I wouldn't say it's the only fulfillment because this seems to be more of a gnomic principle that this is not about man's natural capacity.

It is about God's justice in bringing about his purposes when he chooses to do so to his own glory.

And that even the natural self -preservation of individuals can be in judgment blinded so that God can bring judgment upon a people to his own glory for his own purposes.

And so it's that extra step of going, well, despite all those other texts, what this must mean is that man has this natural capacity.

You know, you can't disprove it without saying to someone, you're not allowing the entirety of scripture to speak, because you have such clarity in texts like Romans 8 that you just can't take that extra step that they're taking as much as you might want to.

Well, yeah, actually, what you mentioned before kind of led me to my conclusion about that specific passage, too, regarding the coming judgment of Babylon that Isaiah was prophesying.

So if Isaiah meant something, then of course Jesus is not executing Isaiah when he's quoting these words.

But that was my take on it anyway, but I do appreciate your input. All right, appreciate it, thank you very much.

All right, bye -bye. All right, let's take our last caller, and let's talk with Kyle. Hi, Kyle. Hi, Dr.

Wyatt, how are you? Actually getting tired, this has been a long program. Some people do this for three hours a day,

I don't know how they do it, but... Yeah, well, thank you for taking my call. My question has to do with early

Church Father, especially Justin Martyr. I just recently started exploring and reading and listening to...

Why is Justin Martyr becoming so popular in our callers? Did you hear the caller a few weeks ago about Justin Martyr?

It kind of was, yeah. I started late. I looked up Justin Martyr's First Apology myself and listened to it, and it just struck me, just kind of the kinds of things that I'm inclined to agree with and the kinds of things that I just want to sort of reject and put off.

And so I think about, like, the stuff that he says about our physical bodily resurrection and, like, the literal return of Christ and the literal virgin birth of Mary.

I want to say, yeah, I totally agree. And, like, this is a reflection of the early

Church's stance on and interpretation of these sort of scriptures, this sort of, again, more liberal views.

But then I get to things where he's taught, where it seems like he was... and maybe I'm misunderstanding these, but he talks about foreknowledge in sort of a way that seems to me more

Arminian in nature than Reformed, like this idea of looking ahead and seeing people repenting and doing good works and then sort of electing on that basis, or just his general sort of concept of justification on the basis of what we do and not really much discussion about faith.

And so I guess my question is about to what extent should we view commentary from guys like Justin Martyr to reflect accurately the view of the early

Church and their interpretation of the scriptures, and how should that shape our interpretation of the scriptures? Well, again,

I simply point out that Justin did not seem to have a completed canon. He has a very limited amount of scripture available to him, and if I didn't have the whole counsel of God, I wouldn't have a real solid understanding of foreknowledge or election.

He just doesn't seem to have anything from Paul. And so if that's what he's functioning on, and we don't know exactly what information he had, this is very, very early.

He's an individual who comes into the faith with, you know, the early

Church may have observed it as an advantage to him that he was an educated man, but he was educated in Greek philosophy.

And so you have a huge amount of baggage that is not then counterbalanced by even having the complete canon available to him, and we don't know exactly what his sources of learning were and things like that.

So when you have only a small portion of what was being written in the second century, and we don't,

I mean, you can put, well, I still have it here. This is other than Tertullian.

This is pretty much all of it, and I can guarantee you that Christians, and a lot of this is introductory stuff, so that's not the actual text, but I guarantee you

Christians wrote more than this, and we don't have it. So we have a fragmentary amount of information.

Very often, even the people that we think we have most of their writings, they had other writings as well, and we don't have them, or they're quoting somebody else, and so we have it from the secondary source.

And so the point is we have to be very, very careful in examining what we have and then recognize that it only represents a fragmentary, if you had a thousand -piece jigsaw puzzle, and what we have are about 110 pieces.

And if you could somehow figure out where they lay on the table in relationship to each other, it's still not going to give you a really, really clear picture.

So you have to be very, very careful. That's why having the entire testimony of Scripture itself is significantly more important than anything else.

Now, those 110 pieces can give us a little window into that time period.

We just, in fact, a new book just came out from Michael Kruger.

We've got here Christianity at the Crossroads, How the Second Century Shaped the Future of the Church. And so there's great scholars like Michael Kruger that are working on, what can we learn from looking at all those things?

And that's an excellent response to, I think, a lot of the abuse of second -century stuff.

But that's why if you try to turn these guys into a prism or a lens through which you interpret

Scripture, you've got it backwards. We have to interpret the patristic writers in the light of the fullness of Scripture, appreciate when they get things right, appreciate that they were up against something that we're not up against, and that is we have 2 ,000 years of church history.

They did not. They're under persecution. Many of them don't have a completed canon. Many of them are bringing traditions in that are not biblical, especially a

Greek philosophical background. And so you try to filter that out, not from our perspective going backwards, but by examining anything in light of that completed canon of Scripture that gives us the full revelation of what

God wanted His church to have. And so you look at a just and martyr, and you filter him through that, and you can be thankful for his arguing for the deity of Christ and issues like that.

And then at the other, when you run across something that, hmm, makes me wonder if he read

Hebrews, hmm, makes me wonder if he read Romans, and if he didn't, then that would explain it. And you just go from there and recognize that we all have our blind spots, and especially if you don't have all the

New Testament, you're going to have some really big ones. And that seems to be the case there. So that's why you don't elevate these folks to a position of interpretive grid authority, because I think that's just backwards, and it results in a real mess.

Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you very much. Okay. Thanks, Kyle. Thanks for calling. All right. Bye -bye. All righty.

There you go. Yeah. I said we're trying to get done by the bottom of the hour.

That was 15 minutes ago. Hour and a half of open phones.

Well, there you go. There you go. So hope you enjoy that.

Lord willing, we'll be back next week on Tuesday, and maybe we'll do some more open phones then.