Adrian Rogers on Romans 9 Pt. 2

Did God just predestine some people for hell?

Are we just pawns on the chessboard of fate? No, absolutely not.

Welcome to Dividing Line. My name is James White, and that, of course, is the familiar voice of Adrian Rogers.

Right before we headed off toward Alaska, which is where we were last week, we played a section of some sermons by Dr.

Rogers that were aired recently, and we've gotten such a strong response to those particular programs.

That one particular program, actually, I had not intended to do anymore, but since there has been so much request for completing the series as far as dealing with the rest of the sermon on Romans chapter 9,

I have taken the time to put together the needed audio material, and we will be looking at that information a little bit later on in the program today on the

Dividing Line. But first, in the first half hour, the first few minutes, the first half hour anyways,

I want to give you a little bit of a report on where we were last week and what's coming up in December of 2003.

We had a lot of folks, especially in the channel, we would talk about the fact we were heading up to Alaska on an apologetics cruise, and people were saying, oh,

I wish I had known, I wish I had heard, I wish I had known earlier so I could have saved up for it, etc.,

etc., etc. So we're going to, in essence, rip all of the possible excuses out of everyone's hands so that come

December of 2003, anyone in channel who dares to whine about not having heard early enough, we can just simply sit and mock them, because they will have heard plenty early enough, because we're going to let you know, beginning this week, what we are planning.

And to help me do that, I have enlisted the help of the cruise master himself, the man who knows how to cruise, and especially,

I think, I don't know, Mike, is it the first, you knew, I've got to tell a story, you took me directly to the

Mater D as soon as we got on the Mercury a couple weeks ago, and I don't know if you noticed, but you just, you were like a hound dog on ascent,

I mean, you knew exactly where you were going. Did you recognize that when we got on the boat?

Well, I knew exactly where we were going, because originally we had a room scheduled in the back of the boat, and I was told that the

Mater D would be changing table assignments. Oh, I don't, I... In the back of the ship, and then we were placed in another lounge.

I don't know, you know, that particular place was on the other side of the gambling area.

So, I mean, you know, it just seems a little suspicious here, just how we just went straight back there.

No, I knew that you had probably been assigned a wrong table. I think that was the case, right? Yes, it was.

I think you were assigned with a number of Mormons. Well, you know, we actually probably should have just left that alone.

It would have made for some interesting food fights toward the end of the cruise, I would imagine. But, oh, look,

I dropped my flaming baked Alaska on this guy, what a bummer, you know. Well, your 15 -minute presentation on Mormonism was complete and exhaustive and wonderful.

Well, hey, 15 minutes is better than nothing at all, I always say. But, anyways, we are joined by Michael Fallon, all the way from Florida, where it's probably considerably more humid there than it is...

We're adoring the Tropical Storm Hannah, the terror of Tropical Storm Hannah.

I heard sprinkling a few minutes ago. A real bad one, huh? Absolutely.

Well, it's 102 here, but the humidity is only 14%. Well, you can swim to your car here.

I bet you probably can right now. We had a great time, didn't we? Oh, we did, and it was a beautiful ship, a beautiful creation.

The inside passage was gorgeous, and of course, Hubbard Glacier. I had no idea that glaciers made noises like that.

Did you know about that before you heard that stuff? Oh, yeah, I'd heard about it, but when you're out there... It's like a thunderclap that's a mile away from you.

It was incredible. It would be like if you could take an ice cube and drop it into a warm glass of water.

I imagine that happens a lot in Phoenix. It does. And go ahead and increase that sound by a million.

That's what the sound is like. Well, when you have an ice wall that's six miles wide and hundreds of feet tall, it definitely was quite the experience hearing that, seeing the calving as pieces of ice came off of that.

It was gorgeous. Of course, I have to mention this, Mike. I'm sorry.

I hadn't planned on doing this, but I did get to see the

Northern Lights. Yeah, thanks for calling me, Jim. That was not

ESPN. It does need ESPN at that. You're out there singing praises to God and watching the

Northern Lights. Yes, and you were asleep. What can I say? I thought you were off doing something else, and there

I was standing on the darkest part of the ship. It was the best place for seeing the sky. I'm telling you, how many people are on that boat?

About 3 ,000? In total with crew, yeah, about 3 ,000. About 3 ,000 people on this boat, and I am at the best place on the boat for observing the skies, and I am the only person there as the

Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights, explode above us in just grandeur. I keep looking around going, am

I dreaming this? Shouldn't this whole deck be filled with people? And I would look over, and as you know,

Mike, you were on the same level with the pseudo -Jim there, and then right above it was the,

I think it was called the Navigator Lounge, and there's this guy sitting in the Navigator Lounge. You can look out over the front of the ship from there, and he's sitting there with something to drink,

I suppose, reading a book. You've got to figure eventually he probably noticed the guy staying out there staring up into the sky for like 35 minutes, and it never crossed his mind.

You know, I bet you there's something up there he's looking at. Well, you know the amazing part about that is that that was the first day since February of this year that they had had the

Aurora Borealis, and you caught it. Not only did I catch it, but think about it. This is something that we thank the

Lord for, but we were blessed with incredible weather the whole trip. I mean, the folks on the ship told us that they had had pretty much rain, rain, rain, rain the whole time, and so when we were at the glacier, it was as clear as could be.

The night before with the Aurora Borealis, I mean, it was just incredible. And of course,

I must take my hat off to you, Mike. I am not much of an eater, and we'd go to these five -star restaurants, and we'd have prime rib or beef tenderloin or filet mignon and all sorts of salmon and all these fish things and pasta things and a bunch of Italian and French words

I couldn't even really figure out. And all I'd do is I'd just have my one little entree.

And your glass of skim milk. And my glass of skim milk with the dessert. Which the waiter would bring to him.

The waiter would try to be on the ball and bring it to you every night, and then also the busboy would bring you another glass. That's right.

They were very, very good. Everyone's been going, where's Nenga? Come on, get back here,

Nenga. I'm having to fix my own food all of a sudden. What's the problem here? Poor guys off in Bali someplace going,

I'm glad I'm rid of them. But anyways, but unlike you and a certain person who is in the channel right now, you all discovered a long time ago you don't have to just have one entree.

You can have two or three of them, can't you? Well, if you're talking about Simon Escobedo, we both, as well as my wife, is the one that really first turned me on to that.

And my wife can out -eat me. Oh, oh, oh. But she stays at a stout 106 pounds.

And, of course, we have merited our shapes, have we not? Oh, yeah, well. Maybe not unmerited.

I haven't gotten, but see, I don't eat that much, and I still have that shape. So it's a terrible, horrible thing.

It's a curse from God. But anyways, it was a wonderful time, and we had a beautiful conference center on this ship.

It was considerably better than a few places we've been before, where I was using cocktail napkins and everything else to prop up my digital projector on a bar someplace to try to project it on something somewhere to try to be able to do a presentation.

We had a beautiful conference center, digital projector to use, nice seats. It was really neat.

The desks included, too, for writing, so. Yeah, the desk, you pull those things up, it was really, really nice. It was excellent for the presentations.

I spoke on open theism and inclusivism, and we had some new folks on the trip this time.

Dr. Job Martin, everyone just loved him. Dr. Martin gave a fantastic presentation on biblical creation, and also showing the difference between that and the secular worldview.

And he just was very entertaining to listen to. He spoke twice, actually, and you could really come away with a lot from him.

Oh, you certainly could. He has a book out and some videos, and it was really, really neat, and a wonderful family and a great addition to the cruise.

Of course, Mike and Jane Gendron were there, and we talked about Roman Catholicism and evangelism and had 300

Mormon dentists on the boat. Well, probably not all of them were Mormon dentists.

They probably brought their wives along. But the Utah Dental Association was on board, so we got to share at least with a couple of Mormon folks while we were there, even though for some reason after an hour -long conversation with me, they never came back.

I'm not really sure if it was just what that was, but we did have the opportunity of sharing the gospel there. Yes, indeed.

Well, that's done, unfortunately, and I've got my land legs back, and the world has stopped shaking because anyone who ever goes on a cruise, at least the first year

I didn't really do that because it was only a four -day, three -night cruise, but you go on a seven -day cruise and you just get used to living on something that's moving, and therefore you get home and you touch anything that ain't moving, and all of a sudden there are waves washing underneath your house.

It's a very interesting experience. Yeah, you're taking a shower and you think, oh, that was a big one. Yeah, that was a big wave there. It's true.

It's exactly how you feel for a couple of days, but that has unfortunately passed, and so looking toward the future, you have already been on the ball, shall we say, and you have set aside

December 6th of 2003 for our next Apologetics cruise, and that'll be on the

Holland America Zandam, Z -A -A -N -D -A -M, correct? That's correct.

All right, and anyone who wants to see the Zandam, and I think this is the

Western Caribbean route? This will be an Eastern Caribbean itinerary. Eastern Caribbean itinerary, okay.

And those are available at HollandAmerica .com if someone wanted to just see the pictures that they have and all the rest of that stuff, right?

Yes, and we will be having something up on your website probably within this next week. Right, but as someone who right now wants to know what the

Zandam was, what does it look like, stuff like that, that information is available. Now, why Holland America?

Well, Holland America is pretty much considered the premium line of cruise ships right now, anything that is below $10 ,000 a week, let's say.

And Holland America has got phenomenal service. My wife and I cruised them for the first time this past year.

Exceptional service, a lower passenger ratio, so you're not so crowded.

One little frustration sometimes we have is just finding a place to sit sometimes. But you don't have that problem with Holland America.

Not only that, but just ease of flow of getting one place to another, as well as the food is exceptional, and they're excellent about providing for services such as what we do.

Also because their ships are beautiful. Their cabins are much larger than your regular premium cruise lines, that kind of thing.

So if you want to really take advantage of an opportunity, and I think most importantly, we say apologetics cruise, but this should be called the conference cruise, and this next time we're going to be spending much more time really zeroed in on one subject, and that is the most important.

Do you want to talk about that at all, Shan? Yeah, we have talked about the fact that as we look back over the past couple of cruises, we've done some pretty interesting subjects, but they've been sort of all over the map as far as very important to Christian apologetics, but there wasn't one specific theme that just necessarily tied everything together.

I guess the second cruise there was as far as the biblical aspects and stuff, but still you've got stuff on Old Testament, you've got stuff on the

King James, you've got stuff on justification, you've got all sorts of stuff put together. And so as we were thinking about the next cruise,

I started thinking about the fact that if really serious people, people who are serious about being trained and learning and growing in their knowledge and understanding, if really serious people wanted to be involved in a cruise, then what you'd want to do is you'd want to have some preparation beforehand.

And to have preparation beforehand, you need to have a specific topic and you need to be able to send people reading lists and materials that they can be looking at and they can be up to speed on, so that one of the problems you have is if you don't do that, then the seminars you have on the ship while you're at sea, you basically have, you're faced with the, well, it's an issue we normally have, and that is do you start from ground zero every single time that you do a presentation?

I mean, if you don't, you're going to lose a lot of folks who are not prepared to really delve into the deeper elements of doing apologetic ministry.

And so what we want to do this time around is we want to have the topic set beforehand and we've chosen to put everything under the umbrella of giving a

Christian response to Islam. Obviously, we are going to hope that most of our waiters and the crew are not

Muslims, but... Well, seeing as they're mainly from Indonesia... You never know.

Actually, I think we had some Buddhists with us the last time. But anyways, not so much focused upon, you know, we probably will do some things on Muhammad or something like that, but more what are the issues that we deal with when giving an apologetic response to Islam, which would include the doctrine of the

Trinity, the doctrine of the deity of Christ, giving a response to the

Islam position. Who knows, maybe we can even find a time to show the Malik debate, so that people can, and invite everybody to see, because both sides will be presented.

Or invite Malik along. Well, that could be real interesting. Yeah, right, put him right in the middle of one of those tables.

That would be a very interesting trip. It would be a hard time getting out of port. I think so, yeah. Then of course, the transmission of the text of Scripture, because obviously

Islam is very big into denying the accuracy of the Bible. And in fact, that's what

I was spending most of my free time on the cruise, was writing an article for the CRI Journal on that very subject, which hopefully we could be able to get

CRI's permission to be able to share with folks even by next December when we do this.

So what we're going to be doing then is putting together a reading list. And we don't have all of this worked out yet, because I would really like to utilize yourself,

Simon, Rich, Warren, the people that are part of our ministry, and do some more personalized type of training.

And if we have time, we've got 15 months, then we can get focused upon certain areas.

And when people come from wherever it is across the United States, they become a part of this. And of course, this cruise leaves out of Cape Canaveral, right?

That's correct. And the day before, we're going to be doing something, we're planning on doing something at the

Cape, right? Yeah, we'll be offering to folks if they do come early to be able to spend one day.

It might end up being in Orlando, because I believe that's the international airport that services that area. And either in Orlando or at Cape Canaveral itself.

So an event with Dr. White. You can spend time with him. Yeah, cool. That's me. Anyway, whenever I hear people think that,

I think, is there an older fellow that's going to be coming along with this or something? I don't know. Oh, that's me. Never mind. Someone on the channel was telling me about how my problems may be due to aspartame or something.

But anyways, I really appreciate that confidence -building thing. But back to the cruise. So we're going to be leaving out of there.

And before folks get there, before we get on the cruise and head down, which, by the way, is after hurricane season.

I hope everyone caught that. Because a lot of folks, whenever we mention that, I automatically hear people saying, well, don't they get those big storms out there?

You know, that kind of thing. I think we learned our lesson. We held a conference. Our first cruise conference was in September of the year 1999.

And we had the great opportunity to have a travel depression group develop over us as we were in the

Gulf of Mexico, if you remember that correctly. I do. I do. And so hence, why we are moving this all the way up to December.

And that sort of thing just does not occur during December. The weather is beautiful in the Virgin Islands during that time of year.

It's moderately cool. Skies are blue. Air is dry. It's fantastic. Great time to be out there.

In fact, it was really nice even up in Alaska this past trip. That one cruise was one time we had a fair amount of rainy weather.

But anyways, before people get there, before we get on the cruise, then they will have the opportunity of doing this study.

And then when we get on to the cruise, the bases have been covered. The foundations have been built.

And now we can do advanced studies of these particular issues and really get into the more technical questions, the type of questions that would allow

Christian leaders to really give an answer for the faith in a meaningful fashion without having to go back and basically start from, well,

Islam is a religion and this is the Quran. We don't have to do that because we've covered that beforehand.

Well, Islam means peace, right? Sorry. Okay. You have now been volunteered to lead the discussion.

Does Islam mean peace? Peace and submission, yes. Yes, that's right. There you go. I'll tell you one thing.

I was driving from Federal Express on the way back over here, and I heard in the car

Chuck Colson was giving his daily update. And this is something that he said. It kind of relates to the subject and possibly to what you're doing here with Adrian Rogers.

And he said, sure, God could have prevented the events of 9 -11 from happening, but to do so he would have had to violate our free will and turn us into robots.

That's Chuck Colson's response to 9 -11. That poor apostle Paul got knocked off of his horse and had his free will violated all over the place.

Man, turned into a blithering robot. What a bummer. I tell you. Well, anyway, so that's what we are planning now.

This week, Lord willing, and you're given the opportunity to get together everything you need to get together, we're going to be posting basically through the link that's right now, sort of old because it's about the 2002 cruise, through that link we're going to be posting the information about what is available.

Tell folks, what are the advantages to them in making a commitment early?

Well, if you make a commitment early, and that would be before October 1st, we are offering a $100 per birth reduction, which would be $200 total off of each stateroom.

The regular price for the stateroom is going to be $899 per birth.

And that would be for an inside cabin. You would then have your price reduced to $799 per birth.

Same thing would happen with the outside cabins with the window from $1 ,106.

Excuse me, there had a phone call coming in. Okay. Down to $1 ,006, also with the verandas and so forth.

So, so far, and that kind of thing down the line. That's how we're trying to make an incentive for people to say, yes, we would like to get on board.

We want to plug into this. We don't want just a vacation. We want to be able to be a part of Dr.

White's ministry as well as be educated the best we can and be able to defend our faith against a lot of the attacks that are coming from Islam.

Great. Excellent. So we will have that information on our website, Lord willing, by later this week.

And so if people, a lot of people listen to this on Archive, even though many people right now are listening live, thanks to the crazy

Canadian named Pete. And that's how we're broadcasting right now. And a lot of folks will be listening either later this week or even after that.

If you are listening by an archived program, then you should be able to just hit the website and be able to see this link right off the main page in regards to the apologetics cruise for 2003.

I know of people who wanted to go. As it got close, they really, really, really wanted to go.

But by the time, you know, sort of like air travel things, the closer you get, the more it costs.

And the price right now is outrageously good. But there's just simply nothing that we can do about the fact that the closer and closer you get, the more the price goes up.

And so now is the time to make the commitment and do that. So now if folks have lots and lots of questions, or if they do have lots and lots of questions, we'll probably be forwarding their questions on to you, ye of the many, many answers, right?

Yes. And I believe you'll have a way in which they can link over to my email.

And feel free to ask me any questions that you need to. Now, isn't it true that this cruise, aren't we having the

Great Zucchini come along? Yeah, the Great Zucchini is supposed to be coming along. And he's going to be giving specific seminars on how to fill tape orders while PHP programming and answering the phone all at the same time.

In fact, we're going to have some demonstrations of this that are going to be done, and we're going to videotape them. And people are going to be just absolutely amazed at this man's capacities.

It's fantastic that you guys are going to have, this time, basically the entire staff, most of the staff,

I should say, of Alpha and Omega Ministries. Well, we're telling some of them, some of them are going, ah, you know, I'll never be able to do that. And we're telling them, look, you've got plenty of time, we'll make it work out.

So we're getting a head start on everything here. And yeah, Zucchini just said the entire staff, both of them.

He was talking to some ministry this past week, and they're saying, well, you know, we're not a real big ministry.

We only have one floor and 40 employees. Well, let me let you in on this, and this is exciting. I've been trying to contact the last two days a church, there's a couple churches in St.

Thomas, and we might possibly be doing one of our seminars, of course one of our seminars that would be headed up by you, on St.

Thomas in a church. No, no, you don't seem to understand. That would require that I actually walk off of the ship.

That's the point. That's the only way I can get you off the boat. I figure if I'm already in the five -star resort, why do

I have to leave it? I don't understand that part. I like it. It's great there. Well, this will be a first, so you don't want to miss it.

Jim nervously takes a step off. One small step for that whole thing.

Hey, I want you to know, as Zucchini just asked me, don't they have those RCC voodoo cults down there?

Oh, yeah, yeah, Santeria. There you go. I'm dead meat. But I want you to know I did get off the boat.

I did get off the Paradise once. Don't you remember that? No. I helped Steve carry his boxes off.

Oh, you mean in St. Thomas? Yes. For a second, then you ran back on board. Please don't leave without me. You're exactly right.

You've got it nailed. Well, anyways, Mike, thanks for joining us this first half hour. I was just going to go a couple minutes, and here we're coming up on our break.

It's absolutely amazing. But thank you for all that you do in putting these cruises together.

They have been a wonderful experience. I never thought I'd ever get on one of those things, but lo and behold, three times now, and they've all been just wonderful and looking really, really forward to December 6th, 2003,

Holland America's Zandam Eastern Caribbean cruise, and that's what we're going to be doing.

All right, man, thanks for joining us today. God bless. All right, God bless. Bye -bye. All right, we're going to go ahead and take our first break, and when we come back, we're going to dive into the subject of Adrian Rogers' sermon on Romans 9.

We'll be right back. It's all works righteousness, you know. Can I manufacture grace?

Myself denied in some religious place. By weeping hard on your face, or saying prayer to some dead saint, you know.

It's not too bad to do for us. And welcome back. Whoa, zoom there. There goes

Steve. Steve just fell right out of the piano right there, and I think he'll be fine.

Anyways, a couple of weeks ago now, we recorded our first response to Adrian Rogers' recent sermons, which were aired on his nationwide broadcast concerning Romans chapters 8 and 9.

Now, Dr. Rogers is not reformed in his soteriology in any way, shape, or form, and so therefore we have been providing a critique of the interpretations of those passages that were offered.

Of course, we also, I want to point out, applauded him and his presentation on justification.

It was very well done. Dr. Rogers is a tremendously talented speaker, and unfortunately, as we pointed out the last time, he has traditions, and those traditions, unfortunately, end up overruling the exegetical methodology that he normally utilizes in dealing with other issues where he does not have a tradition that gets in the way of the biblical text.

And so we have a number of cuts, and I need to get to them if we're going to get through almost any of them today at all in the hour that we have left to us.

This first cut's just a very short one, but it demonstrates the importance of a consistent theology because you will hear, hear what happens when you have a tradition of universal atonement, universal redemption in that sense, that does not fit in Romans chapter 9.

I read this correctly, and most commentators agree that what Paul is saying is that I would be willing to go to hell if they could be saved.

That was impossible. Jesus had already died for them. Jesus had already baptized his soul in hell.

Now, notice something immediately here. This is right at the beginning. It's Romans chapter 9, beginning verses 1 through 3.

And as we mentioned last time, you sort of need to put these two programs together so you'll have some of the context.

We worked through Romans 8. We saw the many problems with the interpretations provided by Dr.

Rogers at that particular point in time. And now in Romans 9, he's talking about the fact that there is an issue here.

And notice at the beginning, Dr. Rogers recognizes that Paul is talking about salvation.

He's talking about how Paul would be willing to go to hell for his Jewish brothers and sisters if they would but be saved.

Now, that is not going to remain consistent. And we're going to focus some energy on how it is that Arminians try to make the shift from recognizing that the beginning of Romans chapter 9 and obviously the end of Romans chapter 8, we are talking about salvation, to all of a sudden, now we're talking about national blessing.

We're talking about nations rather than individuals, and salvation falls out of the picture.

We will see that it doesn't fall out of the picture, but Dr. Rogers will say that it does. And notice that in this particular passage, he makes reference to the idea, well,

Jesus has already died for them. Well, even from his own perspective, that would have to do with salvation itself.

Would it not? Well, of course it would. And unfortunately, that consistency does not follow through through the rest of this particular section.

Now, in this next clip, Dr. Rogers is going to talk about how hard Romans chapter 9 is.

Well, it's not really hard. The only reason that it's hard for Dr. Rogers is that he has his traditions, he won't abandon them, and you simply cannot fit those traditions in with the text and remain consistent.

But unfortunately, this passage has a lot of misrepresentation in it. For some reason, all through this section,

Dr. Rogers keeps emphasizing stuff about little babies. God loves little babies. He's not going to, he's not going to condemn little babies as if God makes his eternal choice of election once a person is a little baby.

No, this is an eternal choice long before our birth in time. But listen to what he has to say.

Now, here are the three things I want you to notice and it's going to help to solve the problem because, very frankly, folks, the ninth chapter of Romans is one of the hardest chapters in all of the

Bible and you can get led astray very easily and there are some who read this and say God has just chosen some when they're little children, little babies, just to go to hell.

There's nothing they can do about it. And God has chosen others to go to heaven and there's nothing they can do to keep it from happening.

And there's a lot of theology that believes that. I don't believe it. I don't accept it for a moment.

Well, of course, when he says there's a lot of theology that believes that, he's making reference to Reformed theology.

But that's a misrepresentation of Reformed theology as well, obviously, because it is not fair to the presentation that is being made.

But, you know, Hitler and Stalin were once little babies too. To simply put it the way he's putting it here is to completely ignore the eternal nature of the choice that is

God's. He not only doesn't believe what the Bible says about God's sovereignty and salvation, but evidently he is so attached to the traditions that he has embraced in place of that truth that he will not even consider the errors of his own position.

He will not even listen fairly to the Reformed position because if you can't represent it fairly, if you have to use all sorts of emotionalism as he does with the little babies stuff, then obviously you're not listening fairly to what is being said and you're not giving a meaningful response to that.

Well, let's go on with the next section of the sermon. I want you to see three reasons why.

Now, the first thing I want you to see is what I'm going to call God's sovereign choice. God's sovereign choice.

Paul is reminding these people that God is a sovereign God and he can choose whom he will for what he will.

Well, except we already heard that Dr. Rogers understands this sovereign choice to be within the context of his understanding of foreknowledge.

And so God is sovereign in, say, choosing to use the Jews as a nation.

God is sovereign in national events. But when it comes to, well, the very issue that brings him the greatest glory, and that is the salvation of a people in Jesus Christ, we've already seen that what he means by God's sovereignty is that he has sovereignly chosen to save, not that he has sovereignly chosen the individuals who are saved.

And so this sovereign choice, this freedom of God, is extremely limited in reality in the

Arminian perspective. Now, if Dr.

Rogers were to remain consistent in seeing what the text is talking about here, then the logic would flow as follows.

Paul wants Jews to be saved. That's the salvation context. Paul says not all the physical descendants of Israel are

Israel. There are people who are not of faith. He's talking about individual

Jews and he's talking in a salvific context. The illustration that is then given is

Isaac and Ishmael. They both had one father, but there is a distinction between them.

Now, where does the context leave salvation, leave the sovereignty of God in redemption, and where did it leave the issue of individuals being saved out of Romans 9 .6?

It didn't, but as we will see, unfortunately, Dr.

Rogers will leave that context. Isaac had two sons, Jacob and Esau.

Look down to verse 13, as it is written, Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated. There were two sons, they were twins.

But God made a sovereign choice. And God said, I choose

Jacob. Now, this is God's plan. Don't argue with it. You may not like it.

You might say, as one man said, how odd of God to choose the Jews. But he did. He chose

Abraham out of all the people, and then Abraham's son, Isaac, and then he chose Isaac's son,

Jacob. So what God is showing here is just simply his sovereign promise.

Now, right now, we're starting to get into some deep water. Okay? Don't check out on me now.

This is important. Yeah, the deep water is where he has to abandon the consistency of what he's said up to this point.

Because up to this point, if you were simply to follow what has been said, then obviously, we are talking about a salvific context.

We're talking about the sovereignty of God. We're talking about his ability to make choices, not to respond to choices that we make.

And remember, that's what he already did back in Romans 8. He's already said that what God has done there is in response to what men did in time, though he then turned around when talking about eternal security and says that what men do in time can't impact that.

We noted the tremendous inconsistencies last time. But if he were to remain consistent, then the next verses would lead him to hold to a

Reformed soteriology. But he doesn't hold to that. He has his traditions.

And therefore, in this next section, in this next one -minute clip, you will hear where the switch takes place.

See if there's any basis in the text for it. Verse where God says, look at it, in verse 13,

Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated. How could God ever hate a little baby?

Well, actually it says that even before the children were born. Look in verse 11, for the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God, according to election, might stand not of works, but of him that calleth.

Why did God call Jacob and not Esau? Was it anything that Jacob had done?

No, he hadn't even been born. It is God's sovereign choice.

Now, be very careful. God here is not talking about two little babies, one born for heaven and one born for hell.

That's not what he's talking about at all. This is national and not personal.

Let me give you a verse that will help clear this up. Well, there's where the switch takes place. Up till now we're explaining how it is that not all who are of Israel are

Israel. That is, there are Jews who do not believe. There are Jews who reject.

This is clearly what Paul has been talking about up to this particular point in time. But now, all of a sudden, it's not what he's talking about anymore.

And it's hard to know exactly why he's not talking about that anymore. But the main reason,

I would suggest, is not because of a verse that he's going to look at. It's because if you hold to that, then you have to hold to Reformed soteriology.

He was talking about individuals. He will continue talking about individuals later on. The context before and after is very consistent.

And you'll notice that if you look at Romans 9, and I hope you will take the time to look at this in your own text, notice one other thing that needs to be brought up.

When we talk about the subjects of Romans 9, the various verses, and all the rest of this stuff, notice the words that Paul uses.

Look back at Romans 9 -11, where he were. Where he were, where he was. For though the twins were not yet born, and had not done anything good or bad, so that God's purpose according to his choice would stand.

And then look at the next phrase. Not because of works, but because of him who calls.

Now stop just for a moment. Theorize with me for a moment. If Dr. Adrian Rogers were looking at any other passage of the

Bible, if Dr. Adrian Rogers were looking at any other section in Romans 3 or 4 or 5, or in other of Paul's epistles, and he saw the words, works and him who calls, what would he say?

What would be the context? Notice, not according to works.

That's the exact same Greek term that's used in Romans 2 and 3 and 4.

And when he sees those, that word in Romans 2 and 3 and 4, he knows what it's talking about.

He doesn't have any problem understanding works there. But here in Romans 9, he can see works and he won't even mention it.

Are these national works? I don't know. We're not told. I listened to the sermon.

He didn't explain it. It's like it's not even there. And what about the calling? Didn't he just get done in Romans chapter 8, talking about a universal calling?

Now, we saw last week that he didn't deal with this properly. That is, he was very inconsistent in his use of the term calling.

Didn't see the golden chain of redemption, so on and so forth. But he recognized that calling is what?

National or salvific? Well, it was in Romans 8. He doesn't give us any reason to believe that here in Romans chapter 9.

He doesn't even deal with it. It's like it just simply vanishes from the text and it does most of the time when you're dealing with Arminians who are trying to find a way around Romans chapter 9.

The words don't mean anything yet. There is a template that is put over the text and what we need to do is we need to get it off of personal things onto national things and therefore words that otherwise would ring a bell.

Speaking to the mother of these two little twins and the Lord said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb.

She might have said it feels like. Two nations are in thy womb and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels and the one people shall be stronger than the other people and the elder shall serve the younger.

He's not talking about one particular baby and another particular baby, one born for blessing and one born for bane.

He's talking now about two nations. God in his providence said, I'm going to use the Jews. My choice is for the

Jewish nation. Well he said actually Genesis 25, 33 but it's actually 23.

If you look back at Genesis chapter 25 beginning at verse 22 but the children struggled together within her and she said if it is so then why then am

I in this way? So she went to inquire of the Lord. So she inquired of the Lord. The response to her was,

The Lord said to her, Two nations are in your womb and two peoples will be separated from your body and one people will be stronger than the other and the older shall serve the younger.

And then it says when her days, then the very next verse, When her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold there were twins in her womb.

Alright, so God tells her beforehand you are going to have twins and yes God tells her beforehand that they will lead to two nations.

There's no question about any of this. There is no question about the fact that Jacob is the one through whom the

Jewish people come. There is no question about the fact that through Esau come the Edomites. There is no question about the fact that God chooses

Israel. He does not choose Edom. Edom is under His wrath and His curse throughout the

Old Testament. No question about any of those things. But where do we find the basis in the text for thinking that Paul himself has abandoned his own purpose in explaining how it is that not all of those who are of Israel are

Israel. We haven't been given that. We're simply shown, well you know Jacob led to a nation and Esau led to a nation therefore this has nothing to do with individuals.

Wait a minute, where does the context say that? Because you'll note that in the very next section of Romans chapter 9 after Paul cites from this particular passage he is then going to quote from the

Minor Prophets after he says the older will serve the younger he quotes the Minor Prophets Jacob I love but Esau I hate it and yes if you go to the

Minor Prophets that is in reference to the difference between Israel and Edom. There is no question about any of those things.

The question is how does the Apostle Paul intend that to be understood?

And I would submit to you that much of the argumentation presented by Arminians against Romans chapter 9 being relevant to individual salvation is actually an argument against the

Apostle Paul and his use of these things because his use of these passages is specifically personal and in the context of salvation which remains consistent throughout.

And so the argument here really is an argument against Paul not an argument against even the representation of Reformed theology that Dr.

Rogers is presenting. Now listen to how you can sort of skip over those issues through how well you can speak and the rhetoric that you can put forward.

Number two, God here is not talking about salvation at all. Look if you will in verse 12 and it was said unto her the elder shall serve the younger.

He's not talking about salvation. He's just simply saying that Israel is going to be my choice and the descendants of Jacob are going to be my spiritual leaders in the world and the elder, that is

Esau, will serve the younger. Nothing is said here about one twin going to heaven and another twin going to hell.

You don't spell save s -e -r -v -i -c -e You don't spell save, s -e -r -v -i -c -e service.

Yeah, but you know it's always best to interpret the Bible in such a way that you do not separate sentences out from one another because when it says the older will serve the younger, dul -yusai, that term is within just a couple of words of not by works but by the one calling and those are salvific terms that we've already seen in context cannot be separated out and so when he cites the older will serve the younger that is

God's calling that is God's purpose and the point is that God made a determination concerning these individuals before they were ever born the point of Romans 9 11 and 12 is that God's choice would stand,

His purpose is not based upon human actions. Now again, this is completely and totally contrary to everything that Dr.

Rogers has already said about God's foreknowledge. That is, He is the one who has already told us that God's choice is based upon His seeing that we are going to choose

Him. We saw that last week when we looked at this particular subject. Romans 9 11 decimates that concept.

The whole point is before they had been born, before they had done anything good or bad, God's purpose,

God's choice is free. It is not determined by events in time and actions of men.

That is the point. And so to attempt to get past that by saying, well, you don't say saved by service is to also say, well, you don't address salvation by saying not all are of Israel who are of Israel.

Where's the word saved in that verse? And yet he didn't have any problem seeing that as salvific, did he? A little bit of inconsistency again brought on by the use of tradition as your primary hermeneutic.

And also, here's something you need to be very careful about. When it says that verse 13,

Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated. It doesn't mean that God despised Esau. It doesn't mean that God had vehemence toward Esau.

He may have had later on because of what Esau did, but not before Esau was born.

It wasn't God said, all right, you don't have any choice about it. Before you were born, I hate you.

You're going to die and go to hell because I hate you.

Friend, anybody who can read the Bible knows that God doesn't despise little unborn babies.

Anybody who can read the Bible knows that God doesn't despise little unborn babies.

Well, you know, God doesn't see us just as little unborn babies. He saw

Hitler as Hitler when Hitler was in his mommy's lap. He saw Stalin as Stalin when

Stalin was out playing games with his friends as a little boy. You see, this is purely emotional.

It's an emotional appeal to little babies and it's very dramatic, but it ignores the real issue.

It really ignores the real issue. This is a place where, I'll be honest with you, a lot of folks who even pay very clear lip service to Reformed theology don't really believe this part.

The wonder of Jacob I loved, Esau I hated is not Esau I hated. That's what everybody focuses on.

That's what we don't want to hear. I don't want to hear Esau I hated. You see, folks, we were all born in sin.

We were contemptible in God's sight, worthy of destruction and very few people really believe this.

Very few people really believe that being in Adam makes us loathsome to God and that we could really justly be held accountable.

That that corruption is truly sinful in the sight of a holy God. Very few people really believe that.

It's obvious Adrian Rogers doesn't. You see, the wonder is not Esau I hated because every single rebel sinner of Adam and every single rebel daughter of Adam that comes into this world, you can put their name right there.

The wonder of Jacob I loved but Esau I hated is the Jacob I loved.

It's only a humanistic, secularistic mindset that misses that but then again to embrace human tradition at the cost of divine truth is the worst sort of humanism anyways.

If we really would listen to the scriptures with a biblical mindset, when we hear

Jacob I love, we go, why? Jacob! God knew before Jacob was born what

Jacob would be like. And Jacob I love, not because of anything in Jacob.

That's the wonder, not Esau I hated. Esau was worthy of it. See the point is, so was

Jacob. And that's what's missed. When we are trying to avoid the truth of God's word at this point, we miss the most fundamental issues.

And we end up thinking that we are worthy of love. That there's something wrong with God hating

Esau in his sinful state. No, there's nothing wrong with God hating

Esau at all. And as long as we have that attitude, we will sell grace short.

We really, really will. Now this is followed by a discussion of hated, meaning preference, based on, for example, the passage in Luke to hate your father and your mother when you follow

Jesus Christ. And of course, Dr. Rogers goes on and on, and somewhat sadly of a mocking tone, saying oh, you know,

I mean do you think a Christian would hate Esau? No, God's just saying there's preference here.

Well, yeah, hated's used that way. Of course, it also ignores the fact that sometimes hate simply means pate.

Psalm 5 .5 says the boastful shall not stand before your eyes. You hate all who do iniquity. That does not mean you have preference for the good and righteous people over those who do iniquity.

Psalm 11 .5 says the Lord tests the righteous and the wicked, and the one who loves violence, his soul hates.

It doesn't say he just simply has less preference for the one who his soul hates, but in reality, that's pretty much what

Dr. Rogers says. Because in this next section, we're going to hear a lot about how God loves sinners.

And since the issue of the elect has already been dismissed on his part, in the sense that election is not something that God freely does, then that means

God has this peanut butter love that even includes those who will abide under his wrath.

God loves lost sinners. We're in the book of Romans. Put down Romans chapter 5 verse 8. If you think that God hates you, let me tell you,

God doesn't hate you. You say, well, I'm a sinner. He still loves you. Romans chapter 5 verse 8, but God commendeth His love,

His love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

God loves the lost. God loves sinners. Don't get the idea that God predestined

Esau to go to hell and God predestined Jacob to go to heaven. Now Esau may have gone to hell, but he wasn't predestined to go to hell.

But you can be sure that God is a God who makes sovereign choices. The choice! God is a

God who makes sovereign choices based on what He sees His creatures do. I just,

I don't know, I honestly don't understand why someone who is so averse to God's freedom in choosing individuals unto salvation would want to continuously over and over and over and over talk about God's sovereignty when you don't really believe in it.

God loves lost sinners. Yes, His elect, in the sense that God shows mercy toward all sinners, provides all sinners with good things, makes

His sun to shine, His rain to fall upon the just and the unjust, does not bring the fullness of His wrath upon them and gives them many years of good life.

Yes, there is a general sense of that kind of love, but to destroy all distinctions in God's love is to make

Him less than even His creatures are. We are called to love all men, but we are also called to love the brethren in a very special way, are we not?

Men, are you not called to love your wives as Christ loved the Church? Is that not a distinction?

Is not the love you have for your wife supposed to be different than the love you have for somebody else's wife?

It better be! Are we not capable of making those distinctions in love?

Are all these the same kinds of love? No. Rogers is so committed to his tradition, he can't see that Romans 5 says that he died for us while we were yet sinners.

That is the redeemed. A view of God's love that rips Psalm 5, 5 or 11, 5 out of the

Bible is a wrong view of God's love. Well, we have about four more clips, three more clips, four more clips to play from Dr.

Rogers and his sermon on Romans chapter 9, but we need to take our break. We already have one person online.

I'll try to be as quick as I can in the next half hour so we can get to a few questions at 877 -753 -3341.

We'll be right back. So many stars, strong and true, quickly fall away.

It's all above His holy name. Here I stand, never changing one command of the pure sufficient

Word of God. And welcome back to Dividing Line.

We are in the stretch run here, responding to Dr. Adrian Rogers' recent sermons on Romans 8 and 9, which he took a rather decidedly anti -Reform slant as we continue listening to him in this next section, a fairly lengthy section, two minutes.

He speaks of mercy here and God's showing mercy, but unfortunately if you'll look at the text and read it in context, he ends up turning the passage on its head.

All the passages he reads are true, but if you understand God's electing grace, you understand how they can be true.

But what he ends up doing is instead of Romans chapter 9 stating very plainly that there is no injustice with God because I will have mercy on whom

I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. Instead he makes that say the exact opposite.

Listen to this. But I want you to notice God's spotless character. God's spotless character.

There's some who might want to argue with God and say, well God, you don't have a right to do it that way. Maybe you're a little unrighteous if you just choose one person above another.

Look in verse 14. What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? Well he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom

I will have mercy. And I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.

So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.

Now who decides whether or not God's going to have mercy? You want to know?

God. God! God says, I will have mercy upon whom

I will have mercy. What does that mean? God won't have mercy upon you? No.

If you want mercy, you may have it. The Bible says in Titus 3, 5, it's not by works of righteousness that we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us.

The Bible says he that covereth his sins shall not prosper, but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.

God does as he pleases, but he always pleases to do right, and there's no unrighteousness with God, and I'm telling you that anybody who will call upon the name of the

Lord shall be saved, and any mother's child who says, God have mercy upon me, God says, I will have mercy on him.

God will have mercy upon whom he will have mercy, and he will have mercy upon him who uncovers his sin that God might cover it.

He will have mercy upon the man that comes unto him in faith, not by works of righteousness that we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the

Holy Ghost. Yes, listen to me folks, pardon, pardon is according to God's sovereign will.

God always wants to be merciful, but punishment, punishment is according to man's sinful wickedness.

Well, there you go. The point, of course, in Paul is that God is absolutely free.

His mercy cannot be demanded. He will have mercy on, literally, it is,

I will mercy whoever I will mercy, and I will compassion whoever

I will compassion. And so there's a direct parallel, if you go back to Romans, to Exodus chapter 33 where this is drawn from, excellent stuff we don't have time to get into today, we've done that in past editions of The Dividing Line when responding to Dr.

Geisler's book when it first came out a number of years ago. You have the direct parallel there in the text,

God is free, but if you'll listen to what Dr. Rogers just said, what he's saying is

God will have mercy on whoever they choose, in other words, the person who wants to have mercy will have mercy.

And that's true, see, that's the problem here. It's a half truth. It's a half truth. Anyone who cries out for mercy will receive mercy.

The problem is, the only ones who cry out for mercy are those whom God has already been merciful to in freeing them from their slavery to sin.

So it's a half truth, but since you deny a portion of the biblical truth, it ends up becoming an untruth.

The passage about God's freedom, Dr. Rogers, in essence, turns it into something other than that, and of course, he has to because you're coming right up on verse 16, so then it does not depend on the man who wills, or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.

But you know something else? Where did the nations go? Have you noticed that? I mean, you just simply can't stick nations in here, can you?

Did you notice in his discussion about mercy, he went back to salvation and individuals. Where did that transition take place?

I don't know. He made no attempt to even explain to us how for a while we were talking about salvation, then it became nations, and now we're back to people again.

The inconsistency of attempting to deal with this passage, it just forces you into it all the time.

Now, after dancing around verse 16 for a while, and it's a long while in the sermon, including asking what chance

Pharaoh had, why did Pharaoh deserve a chance? I thought we had our chance in Adam, didn't we?

At least I thought that's what Romans 5 said. But anyways, finally he gets to the, well, God hardened his heart because Pharaoh first hardened his own heart excuse, and here's how he does it.

Now, the reason that God hardened Pharaoh's heart is very simple.

Pharaoh first hardened his own heart. Now you read about 17 to 20 times in the

Exodus passage where Pharaoh's heart was hardened. About half of those times

Pharaoh's heart was hardened by Pharaoh before it was ever hardened by God. God did not take a little tender child and say, now from childhood

I'm going to make your heart hard. And you're going to get harder and harder and harder and harder, and then

I'm going to cast you into hell. No. Well, of course, the point of the passage in Romans 9 is that God had a purpose in raising up Pharaoh, and that was through Pharaoh to destroy

Egypt and to glorify his name. Now that destruction of Pharaoh would include his own personal destruction.

But Dr. Rogers doesn't want to focus upon that. That defense also ignores

Exodus 4 .21 because long before Moses faced Pharaoh, Exodus 4 .21

says, the Lord said to Moses, when you go back to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders which

I have put in your power, but I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.

God had a purpose. And before Pharaoh ever hardened his heart, God said, I'm going to do it.

Because I am going to bring destruction upon the false gods of the Egyptians. And I am going to make my name great.

And to do that, I know exactly what I'm going to have to do, and I'm going to harden Pharaoh's heart and I'm going to bring judgment on him.

And the thing we need to realize is, God could have struck Pharaoh dead at any second and been just in doing so, and that's the part that gets lost.

It gets lost in this kind of rhetoric, in this kind of presentation based upon tradition.

God hardened the heart of a man whose heart was already hardened.

Now, don't get the idea that God just raised up Pharaoh to send him to hell.

No. God warned Pharaoh. He wouldn't take the warning. See, God hardened the heart of a man who was already hardened.

See, if Pharaoh had softened his heart, then I guess God's entire plan, even that which he announced to Moses before Moses got to Egypt, would have been changed.

Ah, so that we can have the freedom of the creature over against the sovereign freedom of God.

What an incredible thing to watch happening. This is what happens, folks. This is why you have to test your traditions.

This is why you have to do exegesis. This is why you have to be disciplined.

Because if you don't, then tradition takes over, and you call your tradition the

Word of God. This is why you have to do it. It's absolutely positively necessary.

Two more cuts. I know we're getting toward quarter after here. We might only be able to take a single call, but we'll do what we can.

Two more cuts. This is a little bit of a longer section. In fact, both of them are a little bit longer.

Some folks might be a little bit offended by some of this, to be honest with you, because especially in the last cut, there's a little bit of mockery.

There really is. I'll admit there is. But how then do you deal with 9 .19 and following?

With all the stuff about the potter and the clay and God's righteousness and stuff like that?

Well, here's how we do it. Here's another example that some people wrongly use.

Begin in verse 19. It's a classic passage about the potter and the clay. Paul, you know, is a great, very logical man.

So he can just hear the wheels turning in the minds of people. Look in verse 19. Why doth he yet find fault?

For who hath resisted his will? I mean, if God is sovereign, how can he blame me for sinning?

Was I created to be a sinner? And what Paul is going to say here in just a moment is one preacher said somewhere, your arms are too short to box with God.

Don't you start arguing with God about that. Nay, but, O man, who art thou that replies against God?

Shall the thing formed say unto him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Had not the potter power over the clay of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor?

What if God, willing to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much long suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction, and that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy which he hath afore prepared unto glory?

Somebody says, well, there it is, pastor. Here's God. He just takes a lump of clay. He takes humanity. He says, this one is for heaven.

This one's for hell. This one's for heaven. This one's for hell. This one's for heaven. This one's for hell. These I'm going to keep.

These I'm going to destroy. Now use a little sense. What potter in his right mind would be making vessels so he could turn around and destroy them?

Unbelievable. I mean, this is, you know, I've talked to a lot of folks about Romans chapter 9.

And I've heard a lot of responses to Romans chapter 9 but the one thing they've all had in common was they were not drawn from Romans chapter 9.

I mean, where do you get the idea, just for destruction, did you notice vessels of wrath?

Is it important, Dr. Rogers, for God to be glorified in the expression of his wrath?

Vessels of wrath and vessels of mercy. The Arminian has to mean, has to take that, well, we're just vessels and we choose to be vessels of wrath or we choose to be vessels of mercy.

No. He is the potter. And obviously the potter does make vessels that are not meant to simply be put up into a beautiful china cabinet.

They're meant to be used to pick up the dog dew in the backyard. They're meant to be used to throw garbage in.

That's what potters do. Potters have that right. Potters have that freedom.

It's your tradition of the autonomous man who controls God that doesn't allow you to see that.

Simply mocking it doesn't make it go away. Were there not people sitting in that church that morning with their

Bibles open who had to sit there and go, wait a minute. That's not a response to what he says here.

Mocking it isn't going to make it go away. You say, well, he wasn't really mocking.

Listen, he really wasn't mocking. Listen to the rest of it. And who, what potter is going to sit there and say,

I'm making this one. I'm going to get a whole stack of them over here on the wall and then I'm going to take a broomstick and I'm going to break them all.

Ha, ha, ha, ha. It sounds more like a mad man.

No, no, no, no. The Bible says God formed these vessels. It doesn't say he created them.

Now God is the creator, but that's not what he's saying here. It's not the idea that God is creating some for honor and some for destruction.

The Bible says that he is forming them. God has a plan. God has a purpose. The Bible says that God is molding these that he is long suffering with them.

Look, if you will, in this passage of Scripture here. Look in verse 22. What if God, willing to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much long suffering the vessels of wrath.

Here's God working with them. Here's God's hand on them. A patient, loving, long suffering

God. Not an arbitrary

God. A long suffering God. Verse Peter 3, verse 9,

For the Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness, but is what? He's long suffering.

There you go. Now obviously, I think we established the mockery part.

I won't replay that. I mean, when you start giggling and start talking about madman, you get,

I think, a sense of what Dr. Rogers really thinks of Reformed Theology or at least what he thinks

Reformed Theology is. One thing's for certain, if this is an accurate representation of what he thinks Reformed Theology is, he doesn't know what

Reformed Theology is. I've gotten the feeling that many, especially in the Southern Baptist Convention, especially leaders, have never taken the time to seriously consider what they are saying and what is being said in response to them.

I really, really do. Now, he then gives two attempts to avoid the meaning of the text or the conclusion of the text.

These are how they go. The first one is, well, form does not mean create it. Look at your

Bible. What's he talking about? He's talking about the potter. The potter forms the pots.

Are we going to go back into the Old Testament where God uses that analogy for his own creative action and say

God didn't create everything? Of course not. And then he says, well,

God showed patience, long suffering, in the King James Version, toward the vessels of wrath.

And then connects that with, he said, 1 Peter 3 and 2. Well, first of all, we're not given any basis for thinking there is a connection between the two passages.

One passage is talking about God's patience toward the elect and then, of course, we're talking here about vessels of wrath.

And why does he put up with these vessels of wrath? For his own glory so that he may demonstrate his wrath.

Seemingly, he's saying, oh God, he's working so hard with these vessels of wrath. The potter didn't determine that they were vessels of wrath?

What an amazing, amazing misrepresentation of Romans chapter 9.

Now again, one of the reasons that I'm, you know, I call it amazing is because last week we saw when

Dr. Rogers addressed justification, he didn't use this kind of exegetical methodology when he dealt with Romans 4 -8.

He didn't use this kind of interpretation when dealing with other issues.

So why do it here? Because of tradition. And if this study has done anything for anybody,

I hope it has encouraged all of you. We must examine our traditions.

Dr. Rogers, you don't understand Reformed theology, or if you do, you're not representing it honestly. I would invite you, sir,

I would invite you to lay aside your traditions and recognize that Romans 8 -9 doesn't say what you said it said.

Be consistent, sir, and accept whatever the text has to say.

Well, we only have a couple minutes, and we have a caller who has been online for quite some time, and Kevin up in Stoughton, Massachusetts.

Hi, Kevin. Hello, Dr. White. It's an honor to speak with you, sir. How you doing, sir? Doing great, doing great.

I've got a question for you. I've been a Calvinist now for many years, but I come from a strong Armenian background, so I get into this debate constantly.

And the question I keep getting asked, and I don't have a response for, is 2

Peter 2 -1. I'm wondering if you can comment on that. Yeah, actually, you know,

I think what we're just going to have to start doing is we're just going to have to start giving out the email address of the one individual who has written a lengthy, extensive article on 2

Peter 2 -1 for us, but for some reason We're talking to him right now. We're talking to him right now.

Private messaging. I don't know if you can hear Warren in the background. We're private messaging him. He just finished the article this morning.

And when are we going to get it? As soon as you're willing to read it. As soon as I'm willing to read it.

We have had a link up on the website for a long, long time because we've just been waiting for a cohort of mine to get done with all of his material on 2

Peter 2 -1. A couple things, just really briefly. A, hopefully this means that the long -awaited, long -promised but greatly delayed article going fully into this issue is going to be put on the website.

But the main thing I know that that article does work with is not with a real

Arminian use of 2 Peter 2 -1 but the inconsistent Arminian use. What do I mean by that?

Well, there are many inconsistent Arminians who believe in eternal security who will use 2

Peter 2 -1 primarily as an objection against particular redemption. And that,

I think, is the primary focus. I'm assuming anyways, that's the primary focus of the article that this gentleman has written.

Now, are you talking about those kinds who do believe in eternal security, or are you talking about the, ok, because the primary use of that at least historically, has been to deny eternal security and anything else.

These are Christians, these are individuals who were bought, they were redeemed, and therefore they fell away, and therefore so on and so forth.

That's not the application you're using. Basically, when people ask that particular question,

I run through just a few basic things, and since we only have a couple minutes before the music starts, I'll be very brief.

First of all, this passage is not discussing the nature, intention, or extent of the

Atonement. When you go to the passages that do, Hebrews chapters 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, you come up with a completely different perspective than assuming that what is found in 2

Peter 2, 1, when you reference it, is that, well, what we have here is redemption. Because when it talks about being bought, the

Master who bought them, the assumptions that are being made are, A, Master is Christ, bought is a reference to the redemption.

I immediately respond with the answer, A, why do you assume that Master is

Christ? Why is it, since it's used, the term there is despot, that is not a term that is used in salvific context?

It is primarily utilized in sovereignty context. And secondly, why do you assume that agaradzo that is used there, to buy, since it does not have a price that is mentioned?

Every time the blood of Christ is used in this way, the price of the redemption is meant.

You were bought with a price. You were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ. Here it is not.

And, as the article will bring out very clearly, when you go back into Old Testament uses of this particular term,

I think the best way to understand what Peter is talking about here is not to say, well, we can read out of this all sorts of assumptions about the intention of the

Atonement, the effect of the Atonement, the scope of the Atonement, and everything else. Leave it in its own native context.

The native context is talking about the judgment that comes upon false teachers who are within the

Church. And it's talking about God's sovereignty. God could keep every false teacher from entering into the

Church. I suppose he could make it sort of work like Acts chapter 13, and when

Bar Jesus began opposing the Gospel, what happened? Paul struck him blind. I suppose he could do it like he did in the early

Church with Ananias and Sapphira. And when they lied to the Holy Spirit in the presence of the

Church, they dropped dead. I mean, that would take care of all false teachers rather quickly. But God hasn't chosen to do that.

God has sovereignly chosen to allow false teachers to enter into the Church so that we might love the truth and stand for the truth, even though that's frequently a very painful thing to do.

And so I think what's being referred to here is the sovereignty of God. He has placed these people in that position.

They are there for a purpose, and God will bring judgment upon them for doing what their hearts desire, but he has sovereignly allowed this to enter into the

Church. So, I'm not sure, I think, I think there's a URL already up there.

I'm not, I can't, I don't want to bring up the website right now because that interferes with our live streaming, but keep a close eye on,

I'm going to assume, yeah, I've just been told I'm correct on that. I'm assuming, and is that in the Reformed Theology section?

I think it's in the Reformed Theology section of the website. Lord willing, later this week, a full discussion with references to scholarly journals and everything else is going to show up there that will be a lot faster than my two and a half minute response.

How's that, Kevin? Great, thank you very much. Thanks for calling. All right, God bless. All right, thanks for listening to The Dividing Line today.

I don't know what in the world we'll be doing next week, but then again, normally, when the music starts at the beginning,

I'm not totally certain what we're going to be doing then either. But that's what makes it exciting, and hopefully get a few more callers in next time around.

But thanks to those of you who've been listening. God bless. We'll see you next week. That's A -O -M -I -N dot

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