A Slightly Longer than Jumbo Radio Free Geneva!

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Started off looking at " http://sbctoday.com/comparing-calvinism-to-sbc-traditionalism " this "chart" published at SBCToday and noting that, well, there won't be much progress in pursuing the truth of these matters as long as one side refuses to accurately represent the other, that's for sure! Then I reviewed " http://www.mmoutreach.org/tg/come-john6-37 " comments here by Cheryl Schatz regarding John 6:37 , and her particular way of undercutting John 6's testimony to monergism. Then I snuck a few Enyart clips in before we wrapped up. BTW, Mrs. Schatz mentioned she is having surgery tomorrow, so we should definitely pray for the Lord's blessings upon the doctors, and for healing, health, and grace.

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I don't like Calvinists because they've chosen to follow John Calvin instead of Jesus Christ. I have a problem with them.
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They're following men instead of the word of God. Our helper, he amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing.
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And I, on my feet, smit, he died.
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Those who elected were selected. For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe.
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His craft and power are great and armed with cruel hate.
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Well, first of all, James, I'm very ignorant of the reformers.
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I think I probably know more about Calvinism than most of the people who call themselves
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Calvinists. But God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.
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Ladies and gentlemen, James White is a hyper -Calvinist. Now, whatever we do in Baptist life, we don't need to be teaming up with hyper -Calvinists.
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But I don't understand the difference between hyper -Calvinism and Calvinism. It seems to me that Calvin was a hyper -Calvinist.
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Right, I don't think there is typically any difference between Calvinism and hyper -Calvinism.
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Lord Sabaoth his name. Read my book. From age to age the same, and he must win the battle.
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And now, from our underground bunker deep beneath Bruton Parker College, where no one would think to look, safe from all those moderate
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Calvinists, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and re -read George Bryson's book, we are
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Radio Free Geneva, broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to save for his own eternal glory.
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I like that. I like how that finishes up. I like that. Welcome to Radio Free Geneva.
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My name is James White. We have a lot to cover today. Yesterday, The Troublemaker, who
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I will not identify for his own protection. The Troublemaker directed me to a chart that was published at sbctoday .com.
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Comparing Calvinism to SBC traditionalism. This is part of this attempt to rewrite history, and that's what it is, to create two camps.
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The traditionalist camp. This is where Southern Baptists have always been, see. And then this newfangled
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Calvinism stuff. And it's a rewriting of the history.
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And when you have entire seminaries committed to rewriting history, then you can get away with it, at least somewhat.
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But a chart was published. And as I said, the date was yesterday.
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And so on the one side, you have doctrine. In the middle, you have Calvinism. And on the right -hand side, traditionalism.
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The traditional Southern Baptist perspective. Which, of course, is just the synergistic
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Armenian perspective. But they don't want to. They're just biblicists anyways.
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So they don't want to use terms like that. And so I want to take a look at that. And then we're going to be diving into the
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Greek today to respond to Cheryl Schatz's articles on John chapter 6.
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Or at least start on that. And then we've got a lot of Enyartianism to finish up on as well.
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I think that Bob Enyart's probably moved on. We will eventually too. But there certainly are some good things to be dealing with in that material as well.
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So we've got plenty to cover the Radio Free Geneva today.
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So let's take a look at the chart. The first line is Providence.
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Going to want to zoom in on that like we had it before. There we go. There we go. Providence. Under Calvinism, all that occurs is ultimately caused by God.
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Acknowledging God as the primary cause and human agents as secondary causes. And under Traditionalism, all that occurs is caused or allowed by God.
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Well, one of the reasons I've never personally found charts like this to be overly helpful is because this is as bad as Twitter.
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I mean, every little box you put into a chart is...
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I would imagine probably each one of these, there might be a few exceptions, but each one of these could be a tweet.
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And so you never really get much in the way of depth.
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The alleged benefit is the comparison. But if you're comparing superficial statements of both positions together, what does that really end up accomplishing?
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But certainly under Calvinism, all that occurs is ultimately decreed by God.
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Not caused by God. And I am thankful that there's at least an attempt to recognize the difference between primary and secondary causation that is noted here.
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But I'm left wondering, all that occurs is caused or allowed by God under Traditionalism.
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What does that mean? Raises all sorts of questions. Because we know that at least in the modern period, a
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Southern Baptist cannot be an open theist. The Baptist faith and message specifically denounces open theism.
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So if you're an open theist, you're Southern Baptist, you're not a Southern Baptist. At least not a
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Orthodox one. And so when it says all that occurs is caused or allowed by God, it sounds like there is no decree or the decree is limited in its scope.
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And hence, you have non -decreed events, which evidently are so irrelevant, they don't change the direction of God's purposes, or there's no interaction with God's decree, or we're not told.
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We're not told, it's just we don't, we want to have some sort of, there's got to be some room here for libertarian freedom, evidently is what that is.
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Is allowing for, hard to say. Under original sin, people begin life guilty due to Adam's sin, even before they commit a sinful act.
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Well, again, we've addressed this with Hankins and others. We've gone through Romans chapter five, and we've talked about federal headship.
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We've talked about the union of the elect with Christ, the parallel that is to Adam and our union with Adam, our federal head, and therefore the whole concept of falling in Adam.
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And it's so strange that these traditionalists, and I use the open and close quotes there, let's just be honest.
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These Arminian synergists are willing to say that we have a nature that does not reflect our reality.
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Because what does it say? People begin life with a sinful nature due to Adam's sin, but become guilty only when they become morally responsible and knowingly commit a sin.
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Now, you see what's going on here, and it's important, I think, to recognize this. You see, from our perspective, the issue is
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God, and the issue is man's relationship to God. And so the question is, is man pleasing to God or reprehensible to God in his fallen nature in Adam?
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That would explain why death passes on to all. That's why little babies die.
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If you don't believe there is any moral responsibility, a culpability, or even a fallen nature, what's the difference between a fallen nature and a sinful nature?
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So are infants fallen or unfallen? They have a sinful nature, so are they fallen?
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If you're fallen, are you pleasing to God? But if you're sinless and not guilty, how can you be fallen?
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And why would they die? And why would there be any disruption of a relationship?
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It seems like someone's really straying at a gnat here to try to avoid something. Because you recognize, obviously, that if the federal headship view of Romans 5 is true, this whole system falls apart.
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Because you're either in Adam or you're in Christ. But become guilty.
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So you can have a sinful nature. You can be a guiltless individual with a sinful nature.
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And so you can have a sinful nature before you're morally responsible. There you go.
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That's the Armenian synergistic. And most
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Armenians wouldn't want this either. So that's part of the problem,
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I guess. Okay. Spiritual death. Calvinism.
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Unsaved people cannot respond to the gospel unless God first regenerates them. Unsaved people.
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One of the problems that we have with our synergistic friends is that they just aren't careful in language.
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They just are not careful in the terminology that they use.
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And all of us, you know, but if you're going to publish something, you know, maybe it's one thing, a tweet or an offhand comment.
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And, you know, that's one thing. Salvation is a big term.
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And it encompasses many things. You could be more accurate if you say, unregenerate people cannot respond to the gospel unless God regenerates them.
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Which seems like a bit of a tautology, doesn't it? But that's the point. What is the capacity and ability of the unregenerate person?
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What does Romans chapter 8 say? Those according to flesh, can they do what's pleasing to God? Or can they not do what's pleasing to God?
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Can the unregenerate person come to Christ? Or can the unregenerate person not come to Christ?
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These are the questions. And so, yes, Calvinists definitely say that if you are spiritually dead, you're an enemy of God, you are in the flesh, not in the spirit, then you cannot, well, and when it says cannot respond to the gospel, positively.
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Everybody responds to the gospel. An apathetic response is still a response to the gospel.
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So there needs to be more specificity there. Obviously, they're assuming, cannot respond to the gospel, oh, well, the only response to the gospel is a positive response.
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No, it's not. Every rejection of the gospel is a response to the gospel.
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Every apathetic attempt to maintain neutrality is a response to the gospel.
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So unsaved people do respond to the gospel, but they cannot respond positively to the gospel unless they are raised from spiritual death to spiritual life.
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That's what Calvinists actually believe. Under the synergistic
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Arminian position, or Arminian synergistic position, if you'd rather that terminology, unsaved people can respond to the gospel.
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I would assume that that means can positively respond to the gospel.
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God desires all people to be saved, and by his grace enables all people to hear the gospel, who hear the gospel, to freely accept or reject
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Christ. So there is a full -on assertion of the concept of prevenient grace, which
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I've never found any of these people to even try to provide a meaningful biblical defense of this concept.
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I've just never seen it. There may be some folks out there to try, but there just isn't anything in the
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Bible that even looks anything like prevenient grace. It's a nice, you know, peanut butter means of getting around everything, just sort of slather some on, and it sort of covers over the holes in your theology.
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But that's unsaved people can positively respond to the gospel.
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Why? Well, evidently, by his grace, all people who hear the gospel are enabled to freely accept or reject
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Christ. So with the gospel proclamation comes prevenient grace that creates this,
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I don't know how to describe it, but creates this a strange middle position where you're no longer the enemy of God, but now you're at a moral neutral point.
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Or are you in the flesh or in the spirit? I don't know. There's just no biblical categories for this.
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It's just made up. It's just the way to sort of get yourself out of the impossibility of the biblical position.
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But, you know, there it is, is your prevenient grace stuff under spiritual death.
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Okay, under election. From eternity, God chooses certain individuals to be saved.
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Non -chosen people cannot and will not be saved. You can tell a non -Calvinist without a whole lot of real knowledge of the system wrote these things.
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From eternity, God chooses a specific people. That is what
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Ephesians 1 teaches. That is what Romans 9 teaches. There's a question about that. And he chooses them to be saved.
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And that includes all aspects. So Romans chapter 8, golden chain, their effectual calling, their justification, their glorification,
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Ephesians 1, their adoption, their forgiveness, their redemption. Everything. Because it's all in Christ.
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So there is a very personal aspect of this. There is a group.
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But the identity of the people in the group is very plainly a part of God's purpose.
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That's true. Non -chosen people cannot and will not be saved.
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Well, non -chosen people will not be saved. And from an eternal perspective, cannot in the sense that they cannot save themselves.
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But what's not taken into consideration here at all is that not a single one of them would ever want to be or seek to be saved.
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So I don't want to go there because then that again, that sort of takes you back up to spiritual death and to falling an atom and, you know, all that biblical anthropology stuff that's sort of depressing to people because, you know, what it points out is that man is not some, you know, good creature that's just trying to get to God and God's being mean saying, no,
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I won't have you. It's so much easier to maintain anti -Calvinist derangement syndrome when you promote that idea than if you actually admit that, well, what they're saying is, is that everyone's a rebel sinner and that unless there is a radical change where God takes out that heart of stone and gives a heart of flesh, that heart of stone is always going to be in rebellion against God and that there is nobody.
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Now, there's all sorts of non -elect people who are religious because there's all sorts of religious ways to suppress the knowledge of God.
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That's what Romans 1 is all about. When people suppress the knowledge of God, it's not just that they do so as atheists or via drunkenness or whatever else it might be.
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One of the primary ways that men suppress the knowledge of God is religiously.
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So, when it says non -chosen people cannot and will not be saved, non -chosen people will be left to justice, to God's justice.
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They will never seek salvation. They will never desire salvation.
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Now, they may desire the benefits of God without seeking
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God. That's extremely common, but that would be the appropriate way of describing this particular thing.
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Under election for the Armenian Synergist, from eternity God chooses to save anyone who believes in Christ.
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Anyone who hears the gospel can be saved. So, in other words, though they don't want to point this out, this is some sort of corporate election.
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We get to fill in the names. God chooses to save anyone who believes in Christ, but he does not decree who that's going to be.
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Election is of a group, a nameless faceless group. It is not of individuals. It is not personal on that level.
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It becomes impersonal just as the atonement becomes impersonal. This is just the way that it works.
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Anyone who hears the gospel can be saved. So, despite all of the many references, why do you not hear my words?
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Because you don't belong to God. Oh, no, no, no. Anyone who hears the gospel can be saved. So, there you go.
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You can be a traditionalist or you can believe John. Whichever one you want to go with there.
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But there you go. God's salvific will.
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God's salvific will. God desires to save only those whom he selected from eternity for salvation.
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Only they will repent of sin and believe in Jesus. Well, if you want to talk about this specific content of God's decree,
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I don't know why you all keep acting as if we're hiding something.
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If you've read the Westminster Confession of Faith, if you've read the London Baptist Confession of Faith, there's this line in there about whatsoever takes place in time as, you know,
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God has decreed, ordained, whatsoever, that immediately follows, you know, primary and secondary causes and the will of the creature and all that kind of stuff.
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So, if you will allow, and you must allow, but you won't, unfortunately, that you have
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God's decretive will, which determines everything that takes place in time.
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And then you have God's prescriptive will, which expresses his law and his character.
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If you don't recognize those two different aspects of how God's will interacts with his creation in time, then you're going to end up perverting the testimony of Scripture by putting one over the other.
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So, the Hyper -Calvinist will take the one and dismiss the other.
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And the Hyper -Arminian will go the other direction and get rid of the decree.
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But if you simply allow everything the Bible says, and you don't force
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God down to just being a big exalted man and say, well, he's got to function the same way we function, so his will has to be the same kind as our will, and hence is temporal and time -bound and depend upon all these things for fulfillment and everything else.
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As long as you don't do that, then you can recognize how to understand what the
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Bible's saying at this point. That yes, the specific individuals who would receive
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God's grace, known to God, not passively, but actively because of his decree from eternity past.
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He didn't just take in knowledge and go, oh, those people are going to believe in me. Okay, well, I'll select them. That would be passively taking in knowledge, learning, and being impacted and changed by your creation, which is, again, the open theist stuff we'll be looking at later on.
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But again, these are Southern Baptists. They can't believe that. They can't be open theists. It would be more consistent for them, but they can't go there because of the
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Baptist faith message. So God has a specific salvific will that is in harmony with the decision of the triune
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God as to the specific identity of the elect, obviously. And just as God chose the people of Israel and not the
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Egyptians and not the Babylonians and not the Assyrians, et cetera, et cetera, in those contexts in the
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Old Testament, that concept remains true today. So if you're talking about God's desire in light of his decree, if you're talking about the desire that he will accomplish through the work of Jesus Christ, yes.
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If you're talking about God's prescriptive will so that the desire you're talking about there is the desire that is expressed by God's holy nature in his law so that it is
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God's desire that no one kill, that no one murder, that no one kidnap or sell others into slavery or murder innocent people.
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Those are all expressions of God's nature that come through in God's law.
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And yet you can't avoid the fact that in the Bible, God sent
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Joseph into Egypt through kidnapping and selling people into slavery.
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And God intended that to happen. He had a perfect and righteous intention in that act and hence it's holy.
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The men involved had non -perfect sinful attitudes and hence it's worthy of punishment.
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But you just can't get around it. You can't escape it. It is a fundamental revelation of biblical truth.
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You can dodge it. You can just simply try to dismiss it all you want, but facts are facts.
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You got to deal with the facts. So under the
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Arminian Synergist for God's salvific will, God desires to save every person.
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He will save only those who repent of sin and believe in Jesus. So God's desire to save is universal, but the fulfillment of his desire is limited and determined by man's actions.
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So I've often wanted to ask, does it follow therefore that eventually
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God will be, you know, will God's salvific desire ever end?
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Because these folks couldn't, I don't think conditionalism is a valid theological possibility for Southern Baptists.
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So you can't have annihilationism. You can't have conditionalism. And so those who do not repent of sin and believe in Jesus, who end up under God's wrath, then will
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God's desire to save them ever end? It's just a question
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I'd like to ask these folks. Because are you saying that God has chosen his own eternal unhappiness, his own eternal unfulfillment?
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That's the question I would ask, as if there's going to be an answer given anytime soon.
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But it's a question I think it's worth considering. Under atonement, Calvinist, Christ died for the sins of the world, meaning the elect among all kinds of people.
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Why don't you just, I could have done a whole lot better with about 110 characters in that, maybe 80?
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It's short. Christ died for the sins of his people, the specific people who would be joined to him, the specific people who the
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Father, Son, and Spirit have covenanted together to save, the specific people the
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Father gave the Son, and as a result of being given, as we will see once again, back into the breach to defend
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John 637 from those who would seek to hijack it and make room for man's almighty will.
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We'll get there a little bit later on. By being given by the Father, the
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Son, this is why they come to the Son. As we're going to see later on, we're seeing a little more
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Pelagianism coming from certain corners, where the idea is, well, what you've really got in John 6 is that those are given by the
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Father, the Son are those that he sees already believe in him, which would then make believing and coming two different things, and that doesn't work either, but we'll see that in a moment.
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So, God desires to save only those,
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I'm sorry, I'm sorry, atonement, Christ died for the sins of the world, meaning the elect among all kinds of people.
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Well, Christ died for a specific people who are the elect, the atonement and God's decree are in perfect harmony, the
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Father, Son, Spirit are in perfect harmony, those whom the Father elects, gives to the
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Son, are those for whom he dies, those the Spirit comes, takes out the heart of stone, gives the heart of flesh, grants faith, brings to spiritual life, there is a perfect unity in the
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Godhead, in the actions of the Godhead, the idea that the Godhead could cease to exist, that Jesus and the
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Father and the Spirit could get into a big old fight, and the Godhead could cease to exist, and the universe explodes out of existence, and all the rest of that kind of stuff, is the science fiction for heretics, but it's not theology for Christians.
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So, furthermore, the interesting thing here is, and this is the real problem with the
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David Allens, and all the Arminian Synergists, and the Sunday Baptist Convention, and everybody else, again, rather than looking at atonement biblically, and seeing where it relates in the work of the
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Son, in regards to the Father, in regards to the Spirit, and seeing that the intention of the atonement must be dealt with first before you deal with the scope, they just focus solely upon scope.
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What was the intention of the triune God in the death of Christ? This just simply ignores all of that, just ignores it.
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Christ died for the sins, the world meaning the elect, among all kinds of people. No, Christ died to provide a perfect means of salvation for all those who are united to himself, and therefore, the scope can be determined from that.
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If you're a universalist, then that will answer the question for you. If you think everyone's going to be saved, then there you go, but again, universalism isn't a possibility for a
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Southern Baptist either, and therefore, they're left with the conundrum, then
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Christ's death does not actually accomplish anything. It doesn't accomplish the salvation of anyone.
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It just makes salvation a possibility. So under their perspective, ah,
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I see you've blown it up for better reading now, I see. Even I can read that now.
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Christ died for the sins of the world, meaning all people, and so you have the inconsistent universalism.
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It's inconsistent because it doesn't ask the question, why did Christ die? It starts with scope and then has a muddled, incoherent response in regards to reason.
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So what does Christ's death actually accomplish? Well, it makes salvation a possibility rather than an actuality, and this is one of the fundamental differences between us.
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God's grace and human response. When God calls people to be saved, they cannot and will not resist that saving call.
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Well, that's a true statement. When God calls people to be saved, there is the effectual call, and that is simply the acknowledgement that when the
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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit choose to bring about the regeneration of an individual, and notice again the lack of specificity in the language.
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When God calls people to be saved, you mean when God calls people to be regenerated, they cannot and will not resist that saving call.
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Correct, because they're spiritually dead, and once they're brought to spiritual life, they're recreated in the image of their
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Savior, and that slavery to sin is broken, and as Jesus says, if you want to be free indeed, then the
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Son knows how to do that. We can't do that. True freedom only comes from God, only comes through the
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Son. There's no other way, and just as the Jews got really upset when
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Jesus started talking about being set free, a lot of people got upset about that today. So when
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God calls people to be regenerated, because they're dead, like Lazarus in a tomb, they cannot and will not resist that saving call any more than Lazarus could have said, no thank you,
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I'm staying here, even though theoretically, I would say that these folks would have to say that Lazarus could have done that.
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That Jesus could have said, I'm doing this to glorify you, Father, and to demonstrate that I was sent by you. Lazarus, come forth.
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No, thank you. You don't know what it's like living with those women. I'm staying here. I suppose the open theists and folks would have to say that, yeah, yeah, but anyway.
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The synergistic Arminian, Arminian synergistic response is when
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God calls people to be saved, they may accept or reject his invitation. So the person in the tomb, the person in the grave, the heart of stone has a choice as to whether to become a heart of flesh.
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The valley of the dry bones was up to the bones where they wanted to become living beings.
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It wasn't up to God. It's just an invitation, you know, and that's your good synergistic, semi -Pelagian,
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Arminian understanding. Order of salvation.
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People believe in Jesus because they are saved. I've got to admit, it's sort of hard to really take this overly seriously because, you know, is this seriously meant to, were the people writing this actually seminary graduates and things like that?
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I mean, it's, that's just so sad. People believe in Jesus because they are saved. People believe in Jesus because the spirit of God raised in the spiritual life and grants them the gift of faith, not because they are saved.
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Again, why can't this side get up to speed, read a few books, discover that there's certain language that has been used, and it's not so that we can just keep the conversation amongst a few select people.
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It's so that we can actually communicate things, honor God's truth, get past straw men.
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That's why the language is there, because it was so reprehensible about Norman Geisler's book.
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I think I'll just redefine everything. Yes, unconditional election is true from one perspective, but not from this perspective.
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And, you know, irresistible great doesn't really mean, I'm just coming up with all these new terms on my own.
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That's really disrespectful. You say, oh, you're referring to tradition. We're going to hear Enyart saying that.
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He did that, his program yesterday, day for yesterday. Oh, he's just referring to, he just believes in tradition.
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He doesn't believe in the Bible, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What we're saying is that we aren't the first people to discuss these things.
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And it's arrogant to think that we are, very arrogant. And if there's language that accurately represents what the categories in the discussion are all about, that other people have already hammered these things out, then use them.
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Because generally, if you're not, it's because you really don't want to deal with the issue anyways. People believe in Jesus because God, by his spirit, raises them to spiritual life and grants them the gifts of faith and repentance at the very point in time and by the very means that God has decreed from eternity past.
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That's why they believe in Jesus. Order of salvation for the
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Synergist Arminian people are saved when and because they believe in Jesus. Well, that's a completely failed attempt to deal with the issue of the nature of regeneration, the role of the spirit, what spiritual death is, what the capacity of man in sin is, what the effectual call is, why the
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Bible describes faith as the gift of God. It's just ducking all of it. Ducking all of it.
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Because I don't think they have much to say about that kind of stuff. Really don't. Finally, gospel invitations, the
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Calvinist says, all should be invited to repent of sin and believe in Jesus because we are commanded in the
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Great Commission and we don't know who is elect. Well, there is a germ of truth in there.
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But what they don't want to allow for is the idea that any Calvinist could ever have any kind of evangelistic zeal.
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We're just automatons. We're just doing what we were told, you know. And so we just, we're commanded in the
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Great Commission. We don't know who the elect are. So we just sort of, you know, we gotta do what we're told.
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And, you know, I guess that's what's being communicated. The Arminian Synergist, all people should be invited to repent of their sins and believe in Jesus because we are commanded to do so in the
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Great Commission. Anyone who hears the gospel can be saved. Okay.
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The only thing wrong with that is, and anyone who hears the gospel can be saved, anyone who hears the gospel in turns in faith and repentance to Jesus Christ will be saved.
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But don't you see you're just completely missing the point if you emphasize this? I mean,
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I can proclaim the gospel to anyone. I don't have to worry about their elect status. I don't have to, you know,
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I'm not a hyper, a hyper Calvinist who looks for evidences of regeneration and, well, you know, has there been a proper preparation and all the rest of that kind of stuff?
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No, you proclaim the gospel. The Spirit of God is the one who makes that gospel, who is the one who provides that gospel with power.
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And if the Spirit of God is not working in the heart of an individual, you're going to find out real fast and they're going to mock you and they're going to deride you.
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But anyone who turns to Jesus Christ and seeks forgiveness of sins will be saved.
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There's no question about that. The issue is, does the Bible address who can and cannot do that?
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This is basically saying everybody can do that. The problem is there are numerous biblical passages that say otherwise.
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Jesus taught otherwise a number of different times. And one of the reasons we only get a monologue out of these folks rather than a dialogue is because they sort of have a hard time defending that stuff.
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So there is the Calvinism versus Traditionalism from Connect 316.
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And evidently this says, this chart with the original labels, Calvinistic Southern Baptist and non -Calvinistic
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Southern Baptist. Well, that's nice. Was provided by Dr. Adam Harwood, McFarland Chair of Theology, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
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So why change what he had? I mean, that was better than saying
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Traditionalism, but I guess they're trying to really push this Traditionalism. Maybe he gave permission. I don't know.
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I didn't ask. But there you go. There you go. So interesting, interesting stuff.
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We move on as we... Oh, I'm going to have a hard time getting very far here.
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I guess I'll just do one of these. The website is mmoutreach .org.
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The... So this is from 2013. The last one I want to get to eventually on John 644 was published two days ago, which is why
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B, the Calvinist, sent this to me. And so it obviously doesn't make any sense to try to deal with the
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John 644 comments until you've dealt with what comes before them. So going back to the
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John 637, All the Father Gives Me Will Come To Me article. Again, mmoutreach .org.
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If you want to find it and read along if you wish to.
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There's a fair amount of parallel in this material with some of what we saw.
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It's a little more nuanced than what we saw with Kerrigan -Skelly.
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I keep forgetting to look. Has Kerrigan -Skelly even acknowledged the reputation of his sermons and stuff?
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Last time I checked, it was like, no, I haven't heard anything about James White Guy.
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Never heard about him. So it sort of surprises me because he's a rather go -get -em type guy.
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So I would expect that there would have been some kind of response, but how long ago is now? It's been months since we did that.
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Here we have Cheryl Schatz. My recollection is that Mrs.
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Schatz wanted to interview me on John 6.
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I didn't choose to go there. I figured it would be best to respond once the argumentation came out, and I guess this is what we're going to be seeing.
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What concerns me about this presentation is that once again you have a lot of reference to the grammar of the
45:03
Greek. But what you don't have is a knowledge of the syntax of the Greek. There are a lot of folks that today with the technology that we possess, anybody can post citations from BDAG and Loanita and Wallace and everybody else.
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Probably won't post much from Wallace because that's where you've got to know some syntax and know what he's talking about.
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But you can throw all sorts of Greek on the screen and lexicons.
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My concern is that I see a lot of folks, they'll come popping into the chat channel and they'll go,
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Hey, somebody over here says this and they quoted a lexicon. As if somehow, there you go, it just must be true.
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And after a while you sort of start recognizing, you can start seeing certain kinds of argumentation for what they're really all about.
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If we look at this particular text, John 637 is brought up.
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I'm not feeding you this particular article. The print's really small, you'd have to blow it up really, really big.
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But using accordance is probably fine. There's a lot of true things said here.
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But it's the final get around that I want to deal with here. We all know what John 637 says, all the father gives will come to me and whoever comes to me,
46:53
I'll never cast out. And as we point out and respond to Kerrigan, Skelly, if you don't see how the language is relating to itself, if you don't see how tenses and modes and voices and participles and finite verbs, how they all relate to each other in a context, then it is very easy to overthrow the actual meaning of a text by saying, well, this is a present and the present means this.
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Well, a present finite verb and a present participle, and whether it's articular, that is substantival or not substantival, and the interplay of presents and aorists and paraphrastic constructions and all these other things come into play.
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And if you don't recognize those things, the result can be a royal mess.
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Now, the problem that is presented to synergists by John 637 is that it's obvious meaning and the meaning that is established by meaningful exegesis.
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Is that the father is the one who saves without fulfillment of conditions on the part of mankind and all of man's religions has to rebel against that.
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All that the father gives me will come to me. It is natural in English and it's very plain in the original language.
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What the relationship between the giving of the father to the son and the coming of the individual in faith is.
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It's the father's giving that determines the coming, not the coming that determines the giving.
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And we need to remember, notice what's the direct context is verse 36.
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But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe.
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So there's the context. So there's nothing in between it.
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Might as well put that back up since I'm reading it. There's nothing in there's nothing in between the statement.
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But I said to you that you have seen me and are not believing all that the father gives me will come to me and the one coming to me.
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I will never cast out. So it's amazing. And we point this out with Kerrigan Skelly.
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Why don't people see that the context here is the explanation of the unbelief.
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These people who are going to walk away. He's explaining why they're unbelievers.
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So let me let me just get down to the here's here's the idea at the bottom of the article.
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The consistent message of Scripture. The consistent message of Scripture is that those who fear
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God will come to Jesus and they will continue to come to Jesus as the coming ones.
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Now you think about fearing God in here? No, she's got to go back to the Old Testament to pull these things. That's what that's what
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Michael Brown did, too. You go back to the Old Testament and say, well, actually, this is a fulfillment of these texts.
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So to try to explain that, let's let's see how this this works. Gives. She breaks it up into various words and then tries to explain that.
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It's one of the problems is that if you come at it from that perspective, you normally miss syntax.
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Since all is that which is given, what does it mean? The term gives the grammar will help us to understand. The term gives in the
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Greek is the present active indicative. The present means that the action is in process without an assessment of the actions completion.
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I stop immediately. Mrs. Schatz may be a very experienced professor of Greek.
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I don't know. I don't know. But. When you have to explain the basic meaning rather than the contextual meaning, because.
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There are all sorts of syntactical categories as to the function of the present again, especially as the present interacts, whether it's a finite verb or whether it's being used in a participle and.
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Errors, participles or finite with with present tense verbs and all the all the things that go together with that.
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When you when you're using a basic meaning without saying what the contextual meaning is, that's normally indicative of a problem.
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Gives as the present tense means that God is presently giving and is continuing to give.
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Notice that the grammar is not eternity past, but rather than now. Now, there's first major error.
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That is not what the Greek is saying. And you can't get that simply out of the fact that this is a present.
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That meaning of the present might be relevant if you were. Narrating a historical event and you'd use a historical present or something along those lines.
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But when you are making statements like this that are explaining pre -existing conditions, such as the unbelief of these individuals, that just doesn't follow.
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Doesn't follow. No serious scholar would suggest this. And again, if Mrs. Schatz wishes to present her credentials as a
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Bible translator or something along those lines, then I'd love to see her substantiate this and all sorts of presence in the
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New Testament, which would turn the New Testament on its head. But we're going to see where the problem comes in here, because how else could how else could you refer?
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To this, he's explaining why these individuals are not coming, they're not believing. Coming and believing are synonymous in this text.
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You can't even begin to argue that. He's explaining why these are not believing. And in the process, he's identifying the giving of the
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Father as what determines the coming to the Son. How else could you put it?
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If the present is limiting this to the right now, then how could he speak in general terms?
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What would be the default term? Would it be an aorist? All the
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Father gave me will come to me. It's possible.
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How about a perfect? All the Father has given. We're actually going to find out that he will skip between these.
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And he will use different ones. Because he's not speaking in such a way as if you're describing a horse race that was taking place or something like that.
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He's not limiting himself, because the original language doesn't limit itself in that way. But people today that don't really know it all that well will say that.
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Then it says, the Greek term for gives means to entrust someone to another's care. It can.
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I would never put it that way. I would say, in this context, the semantic domain of the term didymy can indicate this.
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And then you have the BDAG entry. Of persons, tenatini, entrust someone to another's care in John 6, 37 and 39 are listed.
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Those who are given to Jesus are entrusted to his care. Nothing to argue about there. From whom and to whom?
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All that the Father gives me will come to me. Jesus said that it is the Father who is the giver and Jesus is the receiver.
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The Father will most certainly give and the Son will most certainly receive. Paying attention to the grammar, we can see that John 6, 37 shows the
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Father is presently entrusting and continues to entrust people to the care of Jesus.
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Well, that is true as far as it goes. But it is invalid to say that this does not represent something that is relevant before this particular historical event.
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And that's going to become rather clear in light of John 6, 39. That this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose none of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day of all that he has given me.
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I've come to save these particular people. So, did God not know who this particular people was before?
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Well, we're going to see that the whole purpose here is to try to find a way. See, the synergist must find a way to deny unconditional election.
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There has to be a condition that's been fulfilled. That's the only way that man can have control in this matter, is if there is a condition that's to be fulfilled.
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So how does that happen? Well, let's keep going. All the
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Father gives you will come to me. The term will come is future, active indicative. So while we know that the context is the
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Father giving in the present time and continuing to give, the coming that Jesus is talking about is presented as future, as an action that people will do themselves in a future time.
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Jesus now changed the tense to present. Well, the problem is, take the present and the future.
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Put them together. Recognize how Greek does this. And that's how you communicate, because God does this, the result will be this.
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That's what's actually going on. The giving of the Father results in coming to Christ.
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All the Father gives me will come to me. So you see, it's the relationship between the two verbs that communicates the point.
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And we do that every single day in our own language, every single day. I can guarantee you, if Mrs.
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Schatz has children, that she has communicated to her children, her will, through the use of the change in tense, in a sentence, and expected them to get it.
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I'll bet you anything. We will go and get pizza.
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Once you have cleaned your room. Right? And I don't think she'd appreciate it, if the kids disrupted the syntactical relationship between the two.
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But that's what's going to end up happening here, unfortunately. Okay.
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So, and the one who comes to me, I will certainly not cast out. G .S.
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now speaks about those who are presently coming. Who comes as present, active, indicative, substantival, participle.
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Now, I stop immediately. Two, in my opinion, and this is just my opinion here.
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But in my opinion, the two, no, three. There are three elements of the
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Greek language that students just seem to struggle with a lot.
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And it takes more than a year. In my experience, it takes more than two years of serious translation and study before you start feeling any joy in this matter.
01:00:13
Articles. The article in Greek is just so unlike the article in English.
01:00:19
That's the first one. Infinitives. Still a problem for me. Many of the infinitival constructions are still difficult for me after all these years.
01:00:30
And then the third, that a lot of people find to be the toughest, but for some reason, I've always found to be the most enjoyable.
01:00:37
Participles. The participles. Because there's just so much more flexibility and so much more color and texture.
01:00:46
And really, in my opinion, the color and texture of the language comes especially from the participles, especially in Paul. Though I guess you could argue that Luke does, but in a very different way, very different way.
01:00:58
Anyhow, a present substantival participle.
01:01:08
The present is important because it emphasizes the continuing action.
01:01:15
And I have preached on John 6 many times and I have emphasized many times.
01:01:21
In the Gospel of John, the one coming, the one believing, the one looking, it's all present tense.
01:01:29
Aorist tense faith is never saving faith in John. Point to action. It's always ongoing.
01:01:36
There's no question about that. But that describes to us what true saving faith is. He who endures the end shall be saved.
01:01:42
Why? Because saving faith endures. And there is just no room for the anti -lordship, cheap grace,
01:01:52
Bob Wilkins heresy that is just so rampant out there. In the
01:01:57
Gospel of John. Can't find it. Can't find it. It's funny, they love the Gospel of John.
01:02:02
Why are you talking about repentance? How can the present tense be understood without it?
01:02:08
This doesn't, anyway. But it's the relationship of participles and finite verbs that most people don't get.
01:02:16
Most people don't get. So, who comes as present, active, indicative, substantival, participle?
01:02:22
The present tense means that it is happening when it was written. No. No.
01:02:31
It does not. It is descriptive of the substantive.
01:02:37
The one coming. It would be true before, during, and after.
01:02:44
Because the temporality of the participle will be dependent upon the finite verbs around it.
01:02:49
This is just wrong. No. This is a description of the person.
01:02:58
The person is the one coming. It's not just, well, right now, that's not even in view.
01:03:08
The one coming, I will certainly not cast out. He casts out those who believed.
01:03:14
John chapter 2, remember? He did not entrust himself to them. He knew what was in the hearts of men. John chapter 8, there are people who believe in him.
01:03:23
By the end of the chapter, they're throwing stones at him. Jesus knows. The substantive participle is a participle that is being used as a noun.
01:03:32
We know that. Thus, the one who comes is the coming one who continues to come. That's the point. It's descriptive.
01:03:39
It is the one who continues to come who will certainly not be cast out. That's right. But the one who is continuing to come continues to come because he's been given by the
01:03:51
Father to the Son. That's where Mrs. Schatz and her synergism collapses.
01:04:00
Why is it that any one of us continues coming? Because we were given by the
01:04:06
Father to the Son with the result that we are coming to the Son. So by misunderstanding syntax, by misunderstanding the relationship of finite verbs and participles and infinitives and all the categories that are a part of second and third year, you've now tried to open a way out of the monergistic message of John chapter 6.
01:04:37
The next line explains how that works. Does God give God -haters to Jesus?
01:04:45
The question that John 6 .37 brings up is who are those who are given to Jesus? Are those given people who hate
01:04:53
God? Now, this is live, so let me look here.
01:05:02
Got a little more B -Day. We've got a little Yadah. Got a little Covenant.
01:05:10
Uh -huh, Lydia. Mm -hmm. Well, Lydia's good on our side, definitely. Mm -hmm.
01:05:17
God -fearing. Nope, not there. Not there.
01:05:24
Well, let me see. I don't see anything over on the side that would tell me there was anything before this.
01:05:32
So, what I'm looking at here, what I just verified, there's no reference to John 6 .36
01:05:41
here. The immediate, and I would argue controlling, contextual statement.
01:05:51
Ignore it. It's not even there. I said to you, you've seen me, and yet you're not believing.
01:06:02
Doesn't even enter in. I suggest to you that if you don't start there, that Jesus is explaining the unbelief of people who had seen
01:06:10
His miracles, heard His words, and not really dealing with the text.
01:06:17
And before you go running off to any place else, if you want to ask the question, does
01:06:22
Jesus answer the issue of who's given to Him? Oh, does He ever. Does He ever.
01:06:33
Been John 8 recently? Why don't you hear what I'm saying to you? Because you don't belong to God.
01:06:43
You don't belong to God? Yeah. But there's even a way out from that.
01:06:49
I mean, as long as you want to defend a man -centered interpretation of scripture, you will be able to do it.
01:06:55
You will find the way. You will find the way. You're going to have to twist a few things and open up some holes that aren't really there, but you'll find a way.
01:07:08
So, those who belong to God are those that God already sees fear
01:07:13
Him and trust Him. Michael did that. That's what Michael said in one of our debates. And that's what we've got here.
01:07:22
The question, are those given people who hate God? Well, that's like asking, was the valley of dry bones filled with dead people?
01:07:37
Was the heart of stone made of stone before it was taken out and made a heart of flesh?
01:07:44
Yeah. Yeah. And according to Romans 3, there is none who fears
01:07:49
God, none who seeks after God. They have all together become corrupt. They all hate
01:07:55
God. Yeah. So, yes, every single person is given.
01:08:02
Was at one point in their existence, at one point in their life, what does Paul say?
01:08:08
We were all, what? Children of wrath. Can we say that children of wrath is the equivalent of haters of God?
01:08:21
Yes, we can. So, are those given people who hate
01:08:27
God? Yes. Will they continue to hate
01:08:32
God? No. Why not? Because God, by His grace, will change them.
01:08:41
Or are the ones given people who already belong to the Father, who already fear God, and so they are ready to be given to Jesus?
01:08:48
There you go. There is the way around it. Let me read that again. Or are the ones given people who already belong to the
01:08:59
Father? Well, everybody belongs to the Father. He's sovereign king. People who already belong to the
01:09:05
Father, in the sense of sovereignty. But there's a specific people He gives, and now what do you want to do?
01:09:12
Do you want to leave that in God's hands? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It has to be in man's hands.
01:09:17
So, who already belong to the Father, who already fear God, and so they are ready to be given to Jesus.
01:09:30
So, by their already pre -existing positive character, by their goodness, because,
01:09:38
I mean, if I already fear God, and I'm ready to be given to Jesus, then that's the basis of election, and election's based upon who
01:09:51
I am. God's a respecter of persons. Good people get in, bad people don't. God's a respecter of persons.
01:09:58
Isn't that what we're being told here? They're ready to be given to Jesus. Yeah, those disciples, they were ready.
01:10:06
Mm -hmm. And every single person in this audience that knows God's sovereign grace knows that's not true.
01:10:13
We weren't ready to be given to Jesus. We were running as hard as we could the other way.
01:10:26
But, this is the standard response. So, Malachi 3 is cited.
01:10:34
Then those who feared Yahweh spoke to one another, and Yahweh gave attention and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for those who fear
01:10:41
Yahweh and who esteem his name. So, you've got a description of people who feared
01:10:47
Yahweh, and therefore, as long as you fear Yahweh, then you're ready to be given to Jesus. Verse 17, they'll be mine, says
01:10:54
Yahweh of hosts, on the day that I prepare my own possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him.
01:11:01
So, you will again distinguish between the righteous and the wicked, between the one who serves God and the one who does not serve him.
01:11:07
So, we are right down to the issue of Pelagianism, semi -Pelagianism, and grace here.
01:11:14
We really are. It does boil down to this, folks. It boils down to this. And this is just simply a more complex way of getting down to the idea that apart from...
01:11:27
Now, I don't... Is there going to be a prevenient grace wiggle here eventually?
01:11:35
But if you're going to say that apart from the specific, redemptive, gracious work of God, that there are people who fear
01:11:48
Yahweh, but are unregenerate, you've just made an absolute mishmash out of New Testament theology.
01:11:59
So, hearts of stone can fear
01:12:05
Yahweh. And dead bones can fear
01:12:11
Yahweh. Those according to flesh can fear Yahweh. And as a result, be ready to be given to Jesus.
01:12:23
The reality is that this language in Malachi 3 is taken up in the New Testament.
01:12:28
It is. You know where it's taken up in the New Testament? In a beautiful text.
01:12:35
I'll bring it up here. It's right here in Titus chapter 2.
01:12:41
The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people. This is saving grace.
01:12:47
And you're either going to be a Universalist or Calvinist here because it's actual saving grace. It brings salvation for all people, all kinds of people.
01:12:54
Every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. It's the consistent meaning. Stop fighting it. It's there.
01:13:00
And what does saving grace teach us? It teaches us to renounce ungodly and worldly passions and live self -controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great
01:13:13
God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession who are zealous for good works.
01:13:26
Right there. There's the same language coming out of Malachi 3. And what's the fulfillment? The perfect work of Christ.
01:13:35
So there's only two ways to understand that. Either what you have here is the God -man being exalted for His capacity and the result of His self -giving that results in our redemption from all lawlessness and the purification for Himself of a people for His own possession and as a result of that, who are now zealous for good works.
01:13:55
Or you've got Rome. You've got semi -Pelagianism. And that is that Christ gives
01:14:05
Himself so as to make our redemption a possibility. We may be redeemed from all lawless deeds and He wants to purify for Himself a people for His own possession but He can only do that if we are ready to be given to Him by our actions of fearing
01:14:25
God, by our being zealous for good works. You see? Synergism and monergism don't have any place to cooperate.
01:14:38
They are very, very different systems. And I would suggest they cannot interpret the
01:14:45
Scriptures consistently. So, I was not,
01:14:51
I was going to be doing Enyart half an hour ago. So, it may.
01:15:00
So, let's go down to the bottom of the article here. I was going to try to get through two of these and that ain't going to happen either.
01:15:07
The consistent message of the Scripture is that those who fear God will come to Jesus and they will continue to come to Jesus as the coming ones.
01:15:15
The consistent message of Jesus is that God the Father gives a specific people to the Son and as a result of being given, they come.
01:15:23
They come because of the specific work of God in their hearts. That's the difference between Christianity and Rome.
01:15:31
Between monergism and synergism. They are two very different systems. One is a system of grace and the other can speak of grace but can never extol grace as having the power to actually save.
01:15:49
Questions for Calvinists to answer in case you thought this was just exegesis. Can you show a single
01:15:55
Scripture that shows God hater is given to Jesus? Yes. Every single person who has ever been given to Jesus was at one point in their experience a
01:16:03
God hater. Can you show us where being a God lover becomes the basis upon which you are given to Jesus?
01:16:13
Because that's what you're saying. That's what you're saying. You're making our accomplishment, our fulfillment, this is works salvation.
01:16:23
You know what's useful about this? Is that when someone makes a strong effort to actually get around Calvinism they will demonstrate that it's only
01:16:33
Calvinism that can give a grounding for grace. And that's all we're doing.
01:16:40
They will have to eventually make it very clear that it's grace plus.
01:16:49
It's back to Luther and Erasmus. It's back to the Reformation.
01:16:54
Only one side is on the side of grace. It's the Cajun. You may talk about grace all you want.
01:17:01
You may not like Rome. It doesn't matter. You're in bed with Rome. Soteriologically speaking.
01:17:07
You're in bed with Rome. So, questions for Calvinists to answer. Can you show a single scripture that shows a
01:17:13
God hater is given to Jesus? Everyone who is given to Jesus is a God hater when they are thusly given. Number two, how can
01:17:19
God's giving of people when
01:17:28
God has said he distinguishes between those who serve God and those who don't? Does God contradict himself?
01:17:35
Well, why did anyone in the Old Covenant actually serve God? Who were the remnant?
01:17:43
What was, what is that text again? I have reserved for myself a remnant?
01:17:51
Oh. How did he do that? Well, he looked around and saw who was going to believe and he looked around and saw who was, is there anybody left who fears me?
01:18:00
No. By grace. By grace, that's the whole point. So, this has been really good.
01:18:07
This has really, really demonstrated that once you really get down and you see the amount of effort that has to be put in to try to get around monergism, the only way to do it is to promote a works system that makes man's actions control
01:18:28
God's grace. And there you have it. So, that will come out also in the next one, which is
01:18:34
The Will of the Father, John 6, 38 -40. And we'll just have to save that one for a future
01:18:43
RFG because I suppose I should at least get to a few of these
01:18:50
Enyartianisms. I think it would be necessary to do so. So, we'll press on here for a few minutes anyways.
01:18:58
I'm still going to try to wrap up at the half hour, so we'll only do about 10 minutes here. Okay, back to the spin that Bob Enyart was continuing to put out even through yesterday.
01:19:12
No, day before yesterday. What's today, Thursday? Yeah, so day before yesterday.
01:19:17
Huh? Oh yeah, well, and given how hot it is outside,
01:19:22
I'm sort of glad it's flying by this summer. It's a toasty one out there today. Anyway, let's get back to Bob Enyart.
01:19:29
Hopefully I have this thing plugged in at the right spot. So, now we're going to hear James White's opening statement and he's going to begin immediately complaining that I misrepresented him when
01:19:39
I said that Calvinists like James White trace all wickedness and also,
01:19:48
I said that James White as a general observation has admitted that open theism does not cause men to question
01:19:54
God's goodness like Calvinism does and James White begins by accusing me of misrepresenting him.
01:20:00
Well, later in the debate I'm going to play audio clips of him saying almost verbatim both those things. Almost verbatim, which means not saying as I mentioned before,
01:20:17
Bob Enyart refuses to hear correction. He is right and his understanding of everybody else is absolutely right.
01:20:27
It's interesting, he did not say that I misunderstood what he was saying, but if I say he misunderstood what
01:20:32
I was saying, well then I'm Rodney King and all the rest of the most misunderstood person in the world and all the rest of that silliness that he's getting involved in.
01:20:47
I didn't say God's goodness because of open theism. I said that the questions about God's goodness are different for a Calvinist than they are for an open theist.
01:20:53
Any honest person will recognize that's what I was saying and if you don't see that, I'm sorry, you're either grossly prejudiced or dishonest and it may be a combination of both.
01:21:04
Secondly, I put an entire video up explaining why simply saying that Calvinism, to describe
01:21:14
Calvinism as saying God ordained every child raped. To think that that is an accurate description of Calvinism which is all he ever says.
01:21:23
If you can't see why that's warped and I can tell Bob, Bob cannot stop saying this.
01:21:30
He's been saying it for 30 years. If he were to actually admit, well that's not really a balanced description.
01:21:38
I mean, it's a part of what you have to deal with and yes you have honestly admitted that and dealt with that but it's part of a much bigger picture and I'm just giving this one,
01:21:50
I'm giving the absolute worst case scenario, ignoring everything else. I'm using emotion and everything else here.
01:21:59
I'm not being fair. I'm not being scally. I'm not being accurate. I'd like to think some of his followers might actually recognize that.
01:22:10
That would be nice. If they can't, that only talks a little bit about the cultic nature of this.
01:22:17
I'm sort of not going to replay my opening because hopefully before long we'll be able to post it someday, eventually.
01:22:27
So that was James White's opening statement. At least, I could be wrong here but especially two days ago
01:22:34
I think now when they did my closing statement I couldn't get through two sentences without them stopping and jumping in with commentary.
01:22:44
So at least I think the opening statement didn't have too much in the way of interruption.
01:22:50
So that was James White's opening statement. I've been reading Calvinist theology textbooks and Arminian's Settled View text since 1973.
01:23:00
Okay, if that's the case it's a zippity -doo -dah excuse for the kind of imbalanced worst -case scenario one -one -thousandth -of -the -truth description that you use like a baseball bat to end all thought when it comes to discussion of Reformed theology.
01:23:22
It's inexcusable, Bob. It's inexcusable. I know it, you know it.
01:23:28
You know it in your heart. Stop it! Continuum.
01:23:35
I've read far more of their material than I have of Open Theist material. That's because there really isn't a lot of Open Theist material to read,
01:23:44
Bob. I mean, come on. Seriously! You can list the number of books.
01:23:50
Wasn't that one of John Sanders' points? He's like, hey, you guys have had all these years, hundreds of years to come up with stuff.
01:23:56
We're just getting started. The arguments were exactly as we expected, and that enabled me to prepare my rebuttals, my first rebuttal.
01:24:07
Exactly as we expected. Well, they listened to, they bought my debate with John Sanders.
01:24:14
Am I going to argue differently? He's actually going to use this as a defeater for the
01:24:21
Isaiah passage and the God Test passage. It's amazing. Every time I hear him go, that is just one of the worst examples
01:24:31
I've ever seen in my life, and anyone who can keep doing it just is not listening and is not thinking things through clearly at all.
01:24:39
But the one aspect, well, actually, the vast majority of my opening statement was never responded to.
01:24:49
Never responded to. The key issue of Isaiah, not only that God has exhaustive future knowledge, and why it happened in the debate, no response.
01:25:04
Just didn't respond to it. Once he tries to get around to it in his comments on the radio program, the response of present knowledge just doesn't even begin to fulfill the challenge that's found in Isaiah.
01:25:18
Fundamentally, Bob Enyart doesn't believe that God can fulfill the actual challenge of the book of Isaiah. I'm not sure who the false prophet is, but he's got a lot of false prophecies running around.
01:25:29
But then, the issues in regards to the deity of Christ, that was especially, especially ignored.
01:25:42
And I, anyway. Focuses on what James White always says is one of his strongest biblical passages,
01:25:49
Isaiah 40 through 48, which he spent maybe five minutes on or so. So I'm going to focus on that, and tomorrow's show,
01:25:55
Lord willing, we'll get into the rebuttals. And it should be fun. And you'll be hearing,
01:26:01
I think it's in the second rebuttal, you'll be hearing audio clips of James White saying exactly the things that I indicated he said, which he denied, said he was misrepresented.
01:26:11
In fact, one of his major themes is that Bob misrepresents me, Bob doesn't understand what
01:26:16
Calvinism is, he doesn't understand the attributes, he doesn't understand what it means to decree, and he turned it in the past, especially when we have documented that he did completely misunderstand and misrepresent what
01:26:32
I said about God's goodness and open theism. We press on with the second program.
01:26:39
From James White, something he said. And so what is that? Well, it's an excerpt that I believe you're going to play momentarily, and I think it illustrates that James White is violating a key biblical principle in Colossians chapter 2.
01:26:52
Now, all you Molinists put on your seatbelt.
01:26:58
Okay? All you Molinists who are constantly going oh, that James White, he's just death on philosophy and everything else, put on your seatbelt.
01:27:07
Can I read that Bible quickly? It says, beware, lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit after the traditions of men, after the rudiments of the world and after the word of God.
01:27:29
At least I'm getting fire from both sides. That sort of is a good thing. You know, you got the Molinists on this side just don't know enough about philosophy.
01:27:37
And then you got the wacky open theists over here, hey, you're exalting philosophy over the word of God. But how did
01:27:42
I do that? Anybody listen to my opening statement of wow, that's a lot of Bible in there is pretty much just talking about, you know, and so we're going to have to go a few minutes and say, is this a jumbo or a mega?
01:27:59
I said, it's a when he's done show. And so, here's, well, you should not take the philosophical considerations, like from Plato and Augustine and Aquinas, who was addicted to Aristotle.
01:28:18
You shouldn't take their philosophical considerations, like timelessness or immutability and elevate them above the biblical attributes of God being living, personal, relational, good and loving.
01:28:28
Absolutely. So if God is good, he's not going to predetermine all the filth and wickedness in the world if he's good.
01:28:33
But if you elevate the philosophical concerns of Plato above God being good, well, then you're going to start saying things like God decreed horrific crimes against women and children.
01:28:44
Correct. And so, and we'll hear from James White that he believes that. I think there's a major philosophical problem in saying that God created this universe and he created all the potentiality of evil, but he had no purpose for it.
01:29:02
Okay, so he said there's a philosophical problem and James White denied that they take the philosophical attributes of God and elevate them.
01:29:09
Correct. So there's the issue of evil and he says there must be a philosophical answer to why there's all this evil.
01:29:15
So it must be that God is atemporal, timeless and immutable and all powerful. So all evil flows from the mind of God.
01:29:26
I, I used, I used the word philosophical and that means that I'm exalting pagan philosophy.
01:29:38
Wow. How do you get that? How do you get that from what
01:29:43
I said? Yeah, there is a problem with the assertion that God does what he does and doesn't have a purpose for it.
01:29:55
And that's both biblical and philosophical. Now, here's a man whose arguments for a temporality are all philosophical, who is filled with philosophical arguments.
01:30:08
But if I use the word once, then I'm somehow exalting philosophy over the
01:30:15
Bible. Wow. Amazing. Yes. And he even emphasized he created all the potentiality of evil, but, but he had no purpose.
01:30:25
But he had no purpose. So there must be. So for the viciously wicked crimes against women and children, for example, he thinks that every one of those crimes somehow glorified
01:30:34
God. All the filthy videos in the world, there must be hundreds of thousands of them. He thinks for each one,
01:30:39
God was the director. Are you noticing a pattern here? He can't do anything else.
01:30:47
He can't be fair. He can't be balanced. It this is this reminds me so much of the of the
01:30:55
Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses. And it's a cultic mindset. You just you keep going back to the same thing.
01:31:01
You just keep hammering away on the same thing. And you keep saying it doesn't matter if it has any connection whatsoever to anything
01:31:06
I've said. God is the orchestrator. How long the video would be every little bit of it. It's all filth and perversion.
01:31:12
And to say that glorifies God conceived it for his glory and pleasure is such a tragedy.
01:31:17
Let's hear that one more time and then we'll see. Is it really purposeless like he claims? Let's hear this. I think there's a major philosophical problem in saying that God created this universe.
01:31:25
And he created all the potentiality of evil. But he had no purpose for it. I stand by that statement.
01:31:32
I don't know how any rational person can't. So you've got Bob Enyart and he's telling us that that yeah you know
01:31:39
God knew God knew those videos could happen. It was possibility.
01:31:47
And wait a minute. Isn't isn't Bob Enyart the one that says that God is omni -competent?
01:31:58
Huh. If he's omni -competent Bob how come he couldn't head off all those videos?
01:32:07
If he's competent enough to make a rooster crow or John named or Zechariah named someone
01:32:14
John then he'd be competent enough to head off all that evil.
01:32:20
Right? If he's omni -competent? Hmm. Well there you go.
01:32:29
I'm going to I'm going to mark this right here as start here. And I just wanted to mention one thing.
01:32:37
Evidently Mrs. Schatz has been was listening to the program today. And dropped a link into Twitter to a post from February Twith February Twith 5th 2013 on John 6 34 through 36.
01:33:07
Problem is it goes down and when it deals with verse 36 it says the problem
01:33:13
Jesus promised to give to the crowd the bread that gives life to the world yet they were not experiencing life.
01:33:19
Then it's quote John 6 36 But I said to you you have seen me and yet do not believe. There is two sentences.
01:33:30
The crowd experienced Jesus' miraculous works but they placed no trust in him. Why? The next article will carry on with verse 37 of John 6 to find the answer.
01:33:40
But that next article is the one that I reviewed and there was no reference back to the immediate context.
01:33:47
No connection was made. You say that this gives the answer but you don't allow the immediate context to become the controlling factor in recognizing what verse 37 is saying.
01:34:01
You didn't. There you go. There you go. Okay, well we went a little bit long there but that's okay.
01:34:10
I got a couple little quotes in from Enyart. I was going to do 45 minutes but the best laid plans of mice and men.
01:34:20
Apologize for that but there's always more time on the next Dividing Line. Who knows? Maybe there'll be a new traditionalist statement to look at or something.
01:34:28
I don't know. But Radio Free Geneva is always an enjoyable thing to do.
01:34:34
I hope it's been useful to everyone. We'll see you next time on Dividing Line. God bless.