Paul Williams

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.
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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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Our host is Dr. James White, Director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an Elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the
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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. Good afternoon, welcome to the Dividing Line on a Tuesday afternoon at the
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Thursday time. Yeah, we moved it again, but that doesn't, that happens all the time.
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And we are going to take phone calls today at 877 -753 -3341. But before we start doing that,
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I wanted to mention the fact, and I appreciate that someone on Twitter remembered this this morning, but I had already seen it myself on my
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RSS feeds. I have been hitting the MDI YouTube page fairly frequently over the weekend.
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And this morning, first thing this morning, I saw in my feeds that Abdullah Al -Andalusi had posted the video of Green Williams 2.
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And I was looking forward to this because you may recall that on Paul Williams' blog, he had specifically made comments about this specific debate in which he had said that he would not be debating
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Chris Green again because of his fundamentalist view of scripture. And Chris Green does view the scripture, well, pretty much the same way that I do.
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In fact, he even came close to saying the word inerrancy, specifically in regards to the original autographs of the scripture, just like me.
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And we all know, of course, that Paul Williams is doing his best to avoid debating, truly.
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And one of the reasons, allegedly, he wouldn't debate me is because I'm a fundamentalist.
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And yet Chris Green turns out to be a fundamentalist, too, which obviously means that we should not be looking to Paul Williams to define the term fundamentalist.
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But as it may, he also made the allegation on his blog that Chris Green, through a
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Greek New Testament at him. He threw a Greek New Testament at him. Well, the first thing that is absolutely amazing to me, and I am very disappointed and I was crying in my
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Wheaties this morning, I really was, is the fact that once I got the video down, and many thanks to Monty, I was having a problem with my
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YouTube downloader. It just kept croaking on it. And then Monty pointed out that I was trying to download it at its highest quality.
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And if I just dropped it down a little bit, then the program was very happy. And I just thought that had to do with what it was convert into, not how it would actually download it.
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But it did make a difference. So I grabbed it. And so I'm, you know, moving through the video real quick because I know the format of their videos and do that stuff.
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So anyways, I get to the point where Chris Green is doing his first response.
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And well, you know, why in the world bother with this?
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Let's listen. I've got it all queued up here. So let's listen to Chris Green throwing a
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Greek New Testament at Paul Williams. This should be very, very interesting.
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We're quite open about it because we list them as books that are worth reading. We're just not including them in scripture.
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We give them their names. However, I think I got into hot water when I did this last time.
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Let me do it again because it's absolutely true. Now, by the way. How did
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Chris Green get into hot water for doing this? Yours truly. I don't know anybody else that that criticized him for turning to his opponent during his rebuttal period and asking him a question that he doesn't know what he's going to the answer to.
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And I have a feeling. Hi, Chris. Hey, brother. I'd love to be able to be of assistance to you.
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I've done a few of these. You yourself say you're not I'm not a debater. Well, why,
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Chris, did you do this again? In fact, folks, if you listen to the very last dividing line, the very last one
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I did, we finally I mean, I talked about this weeks ago. I mean, right after it happened, I'd criticized him for that and said, you don't do that.
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That's that's not how you do debates. Besides that, look how much time you lost in your rebuttal and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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We finally got to it on the last program. We played it on the last program. I said, see, first of all,
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Paul Williams is acting childish. Oh, by the way, you know, I figured out this morning.
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Who Paul Williams reminds me of. His his his attitude, his condescending attitude.
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I mean, here's a guy who says that I have no standing in the academic community. This man has no academics.
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He's never written a book. He's never taught a class. He's never done anything. But he can, you know, he reminds me of Richard Dawkins.
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Think about it, Richard Dawkins, constant he gets to pick who he will condescend to debate.
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You know, it's it's a Richard Dawkins, except he's a apostate to Islam. So anyway,
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I just thought this morning. So what does he do? What does what does Chris Green do?
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He repeats the exact same error. He turns to him and asks him the exact same question.
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But this time he thinks he thinks he's avoiding the pitfall. And here's why I was crying in my Wheaties, by the way.
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You're going to hear him in just a moment announce what he has in his hand. It's something
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I've had on preorder for months. He's holding the Nestle All in 28th edition in his hand.
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And that's what he tosses onto Paul's desk. He doesn't throw it at Paul Williams, but he does toss it onto his desk.
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And of course, I would say even turning to Paul Williams and asking him to respond during a rebuttal, it's bad form, mates, you know, but he did it anyways.
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Let's go back. Here's here's I just wanted to point out that when he starts, he's going to talk about how the ink's still wet on this thing.
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And I'm just sitting there going, oh, I want one of those. We focus on the New Testament.
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Yes, the New Testament. There are 27 books in the New Testament. Every Catholic, every
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Protestant, every Orthodox, everyone has exactly the book.
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Now, look, if you please look at me for one second, I have in my hand Nestle Now, this is the standard, critical edition of the
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New Testament. It is present in every university library across the world.
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This is the 28th edition, the 2012 edition, and the ink is still wet.
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It only arrived from Amazon College Library this week. Now, every library, the
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Vatican Library, King's College Library, the University Library, our library, you can go to the seminaries in Moscow, wherever you like.
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This will be on their shelves. Paul, can you show me one book in there that the
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Pope does not agree with or one book in there? My pleasure. There.
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Did you hear the thump? So he's standing there, he's not very far away, and he just tosses the
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Nestle Allen onto his desk. That's not having a Greek New Testament thrown at you, Mr.
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Williams. I would I would love I would love how would he respond if someone actually did throw one at him is the question that I that I would have, because that was not a throw.
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That was a toss onto the onto the desk and nothing more than that.
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But. And clearly in context, Chris thought that he had now established that he was talking about the
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Pope in Rome, that he was talking about. The, you know, the big papa.
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But when he finally makes the challenge, he just simply says, Pope. And what what happened last time,
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Williams goes off with some Ethiopian pope as if this is somehow relevant. I mean, well,
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I guess I started it. My my pleasure. You may have been aware recently the number of popes in the world, not just the one in the
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Vatican. So Benedict, the 16th. He did.
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They say he even heard him say he did that the last time. Yes. What did you expect him to do?
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You opened the door. You're giving him your time. What did you expect?
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You could make this point so much more clearly without depending upon without turning the microphone over to him to take your rebuttal time to waste more time.
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I mean, it's just like, come on, Chris. Chris. David Cameron said that in the comments.
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I assume I can say that as well. Is this a factual point? And I'm not joking aside.
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I think my friend is in error and I'll demonstrate why. Let me just say what
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I said again in my speech. I said that Christians disagree about which book should be in the
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Bible. Catholics have 73, Protestants 66, most Orthodox Christians 78 books.
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However, I said the Ethiopian Orthodox Church believes the Bible contains 81 books, the highest figure of all the
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Ethiopian canon. The New Testament canon has eight additional books, the four books of the
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Son of God, the two divisions of the Book of the Covenant, the Ethiopian Clement and the Ethiopian Gydastalia.
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I rest my case. Now, rest your case while I would
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I see why I don't think Paul Williams would make this point in a debate with with me, because especially if we had meaningful cross -examination, which these debates tend not to have, unfortunately.
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But there it was. And I was just. I was absolutely flabbergasted that the
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Chris Green went here again and now he made a number of good points in this debate.
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There were a couple of times during some of the audience questions he made some really, really good points. And I was thankful for that.
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And I was thankful that he affirmed what I mean, it was pretty much the
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Chicago Statement of Emergency. And for someone in the Church of England, that's that's wonderful and exciting and that's all great.
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But look, Paul Williams, seven arguments which he himself admits in this debate are the essence of his position have been refuted fully.
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And Chris just didn't do that. I mean, it is so simple to refute.
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So many of his arguments, I mean, some take a little longer time, but but Jesus and the woman touching is,
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I mean, that's just that is innocence of Muslims, stupid.
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And yet they're still using it. And we just have to start knocking this stuff out of the park over and over and over again.
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Of course, I unfortunately have to conclude that the audience that Paul Williams is is debating for is not
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Christians in other faith. He's simply seeking to rev up the home crowd. And I have a hard time respecting that.
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I really do. That's I criticize Christians who do that, and I certainly have grounds to criticize
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Muslims who do the same thing. Much to say on that debate, but. We could simply listen to the first debate or I could literally right now, if I wanted to.
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Transition into the period of the second debate, it would make no difference because Williams is opening presentation was identical.
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He stood there and read the very same presentation. I think it was word for word.
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I think it was identical. Now you say, well, you've used presentations more than once. Yeah, slides.
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But generally, that's not you're not just staying there reading the slides, the slides might have a text on them or some bullet points or something like that.
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But. And, of course. I suppose.
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It's quite probable, in fact, that Paul Williams has not listened to the rebuttal that we've done of his material, because just like Richard Dawkins, he just doesn't he just doesn't care.
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He hasn't worry himself about, you know, people who have refuted his material even. But anyway, so we will continue our response.
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And I think what we might do, honestly, is go ahead and transition into the rebuttals, the second one, because you've already heard the presentation.
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I mean, we finished literally we finished Williams's presentation with the same quotes last week.
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He just repeated everything in this debate. So we could go right into the second debate, the rebuttals, which you just heard the beginnings of and even the same problem regarding the cannon.
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It starts the same way. It's just like, why did you bother? I mean, seriously,
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I mean, the other one's up on YouTube. Now this is up on YouTube and we can sit there and I suppose you could put them in two different screens and go, wow, look at that.
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That's it's the exact same thing. It's amazing. It's a time where I don't know. But it was it was interesting.
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But I got through it all this morning thanks to my trusty iPod and a Bluetooth headset. And even while even while doing errands,
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I was moving through and getting all that done just just to make sure that I got a chance to really understand.
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Did Chris Green throw a Greek New Testament at Paul Williams? The answer is no, he did not.
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So there you go. That's that's how that works. 877 -753.
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I also listened to David Wood's debate with Sami Zaatari. And I've there's there are a number of statements, you know,
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I'm sorry, Sami Zaatari. There are. A number of statements there, especially since Sami is now the head of MDI that are worthy of examination and and response, and we keep trying and hope eventually we will catch wind of some of these guys actually.
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Retooling their arguments in light of meaningful objections offered to them, when you don't retool your arguments, you're in essence saying the arguments being presented against mine are worthless.
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And sometimes that's true. I mean, so I think I've had two people direct me now to a
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YouTube video that identifies me as a Luciferian Satanist from the King James Only folks. You know,
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I don't really change my arguments on the basis of Looney Tunes, you know, I you know, and I but I I suppose they could say, well, so are you.
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You're just a Looney Tune. Well, I'll leave it to the audience to determine whether that's the case or not.
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The fact of the matter is the Muslims who attend those debates. No, that's not that's not the case.
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So we will leave it at that. 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.
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We're taking some phone calls, and let's start with Robert. Hi, Robert. Hi, how are you?
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Good. Well, I had a question in regard to John 3, 16, as well as the warning passages that can be found in Second Timothy 12 and 13.
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And so I was wondering if you could give me a rather help me out with interpretation of John 3, 16 and how it fits within Reformed theology.
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Well, I I'm not sure what the question is, unless you're talking about the traditions that people have imported into John 3, 16.
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John 3, 16, specifically in regards to the work of salvation, says that as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up.
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And whoever believes in him may have eternal life. And so you have even before verse 16, and whether this is and we don't know whether these are
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Jesus' words or John's words or where John's words begin and Jesus' end, but probably between 15 and 16 really makes makes best sense.
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I would assume that John's probably explaining the last portion of Jesus' words in verse 15.
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Okay, well, I guess concerning the word world, because I was having a
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I was having a dialogue with a friend of mine here at school concerning the word world or kosmon, and he was saying that the word world, the very first word in John 3, 16 was referring to creation, and I was saying that it was actually referring to either every person, or it was referring to a particular people, or just in general just people, and so...
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Well, none of those are, first of all, that's not the first word of John 3, 16, Hutos is, and I was explaining that because I'm pointing out that in John 3, 15, whoever believes in him may have eternal life, there is the assertion on Jesus' part of the basis upon which a person has salvation, it is limited to those who believe in Jesus Christ, and so John 3, 16, especially if it is
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John commenting on and expanding upon what Jesus said to Nicodemus, does not change that context, and John 3, 16 specifically contains the same phrase, whoever believes in him, and that's pas hapistio, and everyone believing in him should not perish but have eternal life, and so the question really that needs to be raised is, first you have to follow contextual clues and contextual meaning when doing meaningful exegesis, and if you have the same phrases in verse 15, and then the same context in verse 17, then skipping that or making that a subsidiary idea in verse 16 is a bad idea, and the problem is most people when they look at John 3, 16 do not look at John 3, 16 by reading
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John chapter 3. They look at John 3, 16 because we all have it memorized, and so it's been isolated, it's been taken out so that we don't have direct access to the context.
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The point of John 3, 16 is that there is a specific people, and this people have eternal life, they will not perish.
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Why? Because of the key issue of faith in Jesus Christ. Whoever believes, every believing one, is the literal rendering of pas hapistio in the
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Greek, every believing one, there be no one who believes, truly believes in Jesus the
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Messiah, who will go into punishment, every one of them will receive eternal life.
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Now that's the overriding context. Unfortunately, the vast majority of discussion of John 3, 16 ignores all of that, and instead goes, well, you know, cosmos can mean many different things, and here's an example where John uses cosmos in this way, or here's an example when
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John uses cosmos that way, and when you do that, you're left with between 10 and 15 distinguishable, appropriate interpretations of the term cosmos in John's writings.
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John himself loves to utilize the term in a wide variety of ways, and if you include the
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Revelation and the Epistles, then it's a very wide range of meanings.
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So John says, for example, in 1 John 2, do not love the world nor the things of the world.
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Now, obviously, that's not the same world that we're talking about in John chapter 3. And Jesus came into the world.
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Well, is that the exact same world? There's so many different ways.
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I do not pray for the world, Jesus says in John chapter 17. So the problem is that people get all focused on the term cosmos, and they ignore what the actual emphasis of the text is by following it from verse 14 to verse 15 through verse 16 to verse 17, verse 18.
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It's all about the fact that the person who truly believes does not come into condemnation, but has eternal life.
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There is a specific group in view here. So whatever you do with cosmos, you cannot overthrow the specificity of the text.
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Now, I would say that the extent of the term cosmos, and there is an article, it's still available on the website under this
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URL, it will eventually, I'm not sure what's going on now, I'm getting feedback, but anyway, right now at aomin .org,
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vintage .aomin .org, it's slash dhopenletter .html.
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It's the open letter to Dave Hunt. And this is from back in like 2001.
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And there is an extensive discussion of John 3 .16, exegesis of the context, meaning of the term cosmos.
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There's a specific couple of paragraphs called The Meaning and Extent of Cosmos. It's available there on the website.
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But what eventually I came down to doing was pointing to a parallel passage to John 3 .16
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found in 1 John 4, 7 through 10, that I think gives an excellent example of the fact that what
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John is talking about is not a discussion of how many people live in the world or people before Jesus or after Jesus or anything along those lines at all.
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He's talking about the demonstration of God's love in that anyone who believes in Christ can have forgiveness of sins and eternal life.
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And to try to press cosmos beyond that to any kind of universalism, this means every single person, it's ridiculous.
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How was one of Nebuchadnezzar's foot soldiers demonstrated the love of God by the coming of Christ?
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Doesn't make a lick of sense. And there were people after the time of Christ who likewise never heard the name of Christ, never knew anything about him.
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And therefore the idea that cosmos means every single human being who has ever lived or ever will live, or even every single human being from the time of Jesus on, who would ever live, not only has nothing to do with context, but it's completely untenable on any logical basis as well.
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So that in a simple discussion with someone, with like, for example, a non -believer who brings up this passage, you know...
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Why would a non -believer bring up this passage? Well, because, I mean, it's popular.
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I would say, you know, even, you know, if you're sharing the gospel with someone, for one, would this be a good passage to go to while witnessing to them?
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And two, hypothetically speaking, if they did bring it up, how would you explain it to them in layman's terms?
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Well, I have no idea what the objection is. I don't know why an unbeliever would raise this as an objection.
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God demonstrated his love in that he provides salvation in one person, Jesus Christ. The only reason anyone struggles with this text is because of Arminian traditions, which
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I just demonstrated have no basis in the text at all. So if someone starts going, well, but what does world mean?
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Well, that means that they, you know, if they're now raising that kind of objection, okay, then you start talking to me about all the different uses of kosmos by John in the
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Corpus, and we'll take a look at them, and I'll take it first on four, we can draw the parallel, we can go there. But you want something simple, but then you place into the mouths of an unbeliever a complex
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Arminian tradition, which wouldn't be coming from an unbeliever in the first place. Sure, gotcha.
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All right, well, thank you very much for that. My next question, sorry, I wasn't expecting that to take that long, but my next question was in regards to Second Timothy 2, 11 to 13, and my professor believes that these are, that this right here is actually a warning passage, and he takes it as a,
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I guess you would say, a proof text that you can lose your, basically that you can just lose your salvation.
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And so I was wondering if you could help me interpret these three verses, because they've been quite the topic of debate in class.
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I see. Well, you know, I feel for anyone who has a Savior who cannot save.
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Jesus Himself said He came down from heaven to do the will of the Father. Will the Father's He'd be a perfect Savior. John 6, 39, of all that He gives me,
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I lose none of them, but raise them up on the last day. So the sacrifice of Christ perfects those for whom it's made, everyone for whom
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He intercedes He perfects, and none of them will ever be lost. Hebrews 7, 24. So the texts that specifically address the issue, rather than just those texts that people try to go to to find, well,
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I imply this, or I imply that, the texts that actually speak of Christ's ability to fulfill the purpose of the
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Father are unambiguous and are crystal clear. So the only logical basis to hold to that perspective is if you believe that salvation is fundamentally something we do, that Jesus makes salvation available, but He is not actually the one who saves.
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So I just go there. Secondly, it is a trustworthy saying, if we have died with Him, we will also live with Him.
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If we endure, we will also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He also will deny us. If we are faithless,
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He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself. Now this is pretty amazing that someone would use this as a proof text when it says, if we are faithless,
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He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself. And who is the only one? The only line in the poem that you could even begin to get to is, if we deny
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Him, He also will deny us. Well, who can deny Christ? I mean, that's the sin unto death.
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That's what Hebrews 6 is about. That's what Hebrews 10 is about.
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And so if the idea is that there are apostates, there are apostates.
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But who commits apostasy? Those who are already in the church, but not on the church.
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Well, those who have made, as the book of Hebrews makes very, very plain, that is a work of apologetic to people who have made a profession of faith, they are in the visible church, but there are some of them who, as Hebrews 6 describes it, are arid land that does not bring forth fruit.
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Or, as Hebrews 10 describes it, they are those who shrink back.
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Hebrews 6 says that they do not have those things that accompany salvation, and Hebrews 10 contrasts those who shrink back to destruction with those of us who have faith under the preserving of the soul.
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And so again, it goes back to, well, do you believe faith is something that you muster up within yourself?
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Is it something that is a temporary thing? What does the
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Bible teach about faith? Where does it come from? Is it a gift of God? Is it the work of the Holy Spirit? There's a huge dividing line between a
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God -centered soteriology and a man -centered soteriology. And sometimes people emphasize these things because they have encountered the once -saved -always - saved, no lordship, no repentance folks, who come up with some pretty goofy explanations for the warning passages, because they don't believe there is any such thing as false faith.
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They believe anyone who has just tipped their hat toward God, got their ticket punched, they're going to heaven. Sometimes...
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I'm sorry? That just seems to be the case, because this is, I mean, it's a Apostle Epistles class is what it is, and so what my professor was wanting to do when we finally came across these passages, we were working our way through these letters, is he was saying, you know, we have to deal with this issue, and it seems to be the case that all the...
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that within the verses 11, 12, and 13, we have this, we, we, if we, if we, if we, if we, and all these we's are referring to actual believers, and I seem to be,
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I think I hold to the position that, well, some of these we's are actual believers, but some of these we's are, can't be referring to people who haven't made a profession of faith, and I really wasn't quite sure if...
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Now, this we is the Church, but there's a question about it.
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I mean, if someone, you know, we've had people become apostates who are part of our
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Church. They had once, you know, just two weeks ago,
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I think, yes, two Sunday nights ago, I was the one that had the opportunity of presiding at the
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Lord's Supper. We had baptism and the Lord's Supper in the same night, and so my fellow elder did the baptism, and I did the
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Lord's Supper, and I don't get to do that very often. I've done it a few times, but it's always a great privilege when
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I've gotten a chance to do that, and I look out over that gathered small group of people, and I cannot see into hearts.
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I cannot... They all look to me like they're very serious about what they're doing, like they are hearing what
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I'm saying, that they are examining themselves, that they are rejoicing in their salvation and in the new covenant in the blood of Jesus Christ, and that they are doing remembrance of Him until He comes.
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But I have also been in those Lord's Supper services where there have been people who, over the years, have left the faith.
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And so there is such a thing as apostasy, and we are not given the ability to look into the hearts and minds of men and women in front of us to know who is and who isn't.
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So Hebrews, Paul, they all have warnings, but that cannot be taken to overthrow the plain didactic teachings of the perfection of the new covenant and the perfection of Christ as Savior of His people.
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Just because we have to be able to function in the pastoral ministry, and we don't have supernatural knowledge of who is who, you've got to...
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It's just not allowing Scripture to speak as a whole and recognizing that you have teaching portions that talk about what our ground, our standing is with God.
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We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Okay? Right, and it's interesting that you point that out, because I asked that very question to my professor, you know,
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I was just like, you know, if you can't have assurance that you're safe from one moment to the next, how can you have peace with God?
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And it was a very odd answer that he gave, and that was, he was like, well,
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I have peace with God, I'm pretty sure. Really?
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Yeah, you know, it's just kind of like, it's either you have absolute peace or you don't. And so I guess that was the issue that I had.
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So for him, for my professor, these we's in verses 12 and 13 are referring to actual believers, but the text, you're saying that the text of Scripture is actually saying that the we's are referring to the
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Church, but not everybody in the Church is of the Church. Well, look, it just strikes me that when you have a, when you have the next line saying, if we are faithless,
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He remains faithful. Who is, who is, who is that remains faithful here? Is it not
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Christ? All right. Faithful to do what? Faithful to accomplish what?
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Because, notice, our denying of Him results in His denial of us, but our faithlessness does not result in our rejection because He cannot deny
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Himself. So the real question is, can a regenerate believer commit sin unto death?
35:32
Because that's what denying Christ is. And I just, I just simply state, if you look at the rest of the discussions of this,
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Hebrews chapter 6, Hebrews chapter 10, 1 John chapter 5, yes, there is a sin unto death.
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There is, there is this, this action, but it is not something that the regenerate believer is going to be doing.
35:56
But at the same time, there are people who do it, and so what does that tell us? We have to see it backwards.
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We can't, we can't look into people's hearts and minds. God does know the heart, and He does know the mind.
36:08
Gotcha. So are these warnings just something that I should, that a believer should be concerned about or not?
36:15
Well, when you hear these kinds of sober words,
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Hebrews 3, Hebrews 6, Hebrews 10, 2 Timothy 2, Paul said that this is a faithful saying, and that probably means that this was something that preceded him in the church as far as a, this is not something that he came up with.
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And when you say, should I consider them to be important? Given that the
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Apostle Paul says, test yourself to see whether you're in the faith, then obviously every believer should consider every warning passage to be vitally important, because if we do not, then we are being apathetic about the
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Word of God and apathetic about our relationship to Christ. Gotcha.
37:09
Okay. All right. Awesome. Thank you very much. All right. Thanks, Robert. Thank you. Bye -bye. 877 -753 -3341.
37:19
877 -753 -3341. We still have about 20 minutes left in the program, and only one caller, so now's your opportunity.
37:29
Of course, this is what happens when you open up the phones, and you've changed the time of the program, which is difficult.
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But anyways, 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.
37:40
You know, if I really wanted to light up the lines, I could do what I did yesterday morning. And before we go to Robert, hold on a second,
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Robert. I had to fly out early from St.
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Louis. I was in St. Louis over the weekend to come to Grace Church. I had a great time with the folks there, a wonderful time. And in fact,
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I'm going to be posting the devotional that I did on Sunday evening from Hebrews, I'm sorry,
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Isaiah chapter 9, sort of a seasonal study. But I forget what it was, but I was getting packed up.
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It was 4 something in the morning. I had to leave at 515. My ride was going to be there. I left even before then because my ride picked me up at 503.
38:24
So anyway, it was before 5 a .m. St. Louis time. And some atheists had seen,
38:34
I think they saw the tweet where I responded to Steve Camp. Steve had said something about, young Calvinists, don't do exegesis, and they're not sound, and they're not strong, and they hide behind computers.
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And I threw it back and said, I know plenty of sound, strong, courageous
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Calvinists, brother, put away that broad brush, is what I had said. Because I just felt that he had just, that wasn't right.
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And so for some reason, there are atheists who follow us, just waiting for you to say something,
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I guess. I guess they just live their lives, just waiting to jump in. And we have them come into channel all the time.
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I have a question. Yeah, right. You don't have a question. You just want to get an argument started.
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It's called being a troll. Anyway, I made a hashtag.
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No, no, no. I responded to him by saying, atheist colon, creatures denying their creator.
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Now, that was what we put on signs back in, oh goodness, when was that?
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1980 something, when the American atheists had their convention here in Scottsdale.
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And we stood outside the convention center with these signs. And man, let me tell you something.
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I wasn't that long out of high school at that time, so it hadn't been that long since I'd heard that kind of language in the locker room.
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But let's just say atheists don't have to worry too much about their ethics and their morals.
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We had a number of people come out to us from inside the resort and thank us for being there.
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There had been people there that night. The atheists had dressed someone up like Jesus at about three o 'clock in the morning and were chasing him through the hallways with pillows beating him.
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And I mean, this is what atheists do when they get together, you know. They weren't sitting around playing chess.
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They were acting like complete buffoons. But anyway, we even had one car swerve toward us just to try to scare us.
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I mean, enough cramps of the middle finger to...
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I mean, it was just, it was amazing. So when you say, atheist colon, creatures denying their creator, well, it took two responses from this guy before he became profane, and I blocked him and never gave him another thought.
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Because, I mean, that's one of the reasons that I don't have comments on my
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YouTube videos, is because of atheists. They cannot behave. They cannot control themselves. The fool has said in his heart there is no
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God, and they act foolishly. It's just, I've far too much experience with these folks to even begin to waste my time arguing the point, because all you gotta do is say something about atheism on YouTube or on Twitter, and they will prove the point for you.
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Bunch of angry atheists. We're not angry! You know, and it's just like amazing. So anyways,
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I packed the computer up, head to the airport. Don't even give it a second thought. Well, Rich picks me up at the airport.
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Says, boy, you got things going this morning. I'm like, what? He says, you probably haven't seen
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Twitter since you left. I said, no. And he says, ah, you got like 45 responses, you know, and, you know, and there was your standard, oh, just go read science, you people are so stupid stuff, and you know, all that kind of stuff, and the profane ones, and all that stuff.
42:31
It's just, it's just, you know. So I could have gotten lots of calls today if I had just gone into Twitter and said something like, so atheists, think you're smart?
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Call this number, and we'd have, we'd be hitting the drop button all the time.
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Yeah, it would be pretty wild. Anyways, 877 -753 -3341.
42:59
Let's talk to another Robert, this time someplace else in Pittsburgh. Hi, Robert. Oh, Dr. White, how are you?
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Doing good. All right. I am perplexed. You are perplexed.
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Perplexed Robert in Pittsburgh. There you go. My church has asked me, it's not this week, it'll be a couple weeks from now, but they asked me to present the
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Jehovah Witnesses theology as well as a refutation of it. I know you're an expert on this matter, so I thought
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I'd give you a call and get your thoughts on that. Well, Robert, I've got to ask you a question first.
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Why did they ask you? No, I'm serious. I mean, obviously you must have some experience or something.
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Well, yeah, I have a Masters of Divinity here at the seminary here, and they think
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I have a talent to teach. Uh -huh, I got you.
43:55
Well, you might have a talent to teach, but I'm not sure what that has to do with understanding Jehovah's Witnesses.
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Well, I'm just, I wanted to get your take on it. Oh, sure, sure, yeah, I understand. I'm just, I'm just wondering if you'd, have you ever met with Jehovah's Witnesses?
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Yeah, I've talked with them. They've knocked on my door before. Well, that means you're an American. They don't just do that for seminary, seminary grads, and in fact, if they knew you were, they'd probably avoid you anyways.
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So, well, I've also been reading Walter Martin, Rabbi Zacharias' book.
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Yeah, yeah, well, let me mention something right now. That chapter is, is not the best chapter you want to be reading.
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It's not. I had actually, back in the 1990s, fixed that chapter. If you want to read the chapter in the
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Hank Hanegraaff edited version of the Kingdom of the Cults, then it'd be okay, because I fixed it.
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But, yeah, well, just, just so you know, that chapter in Kingdom of the
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Cults, in the current edition, has been, they reverted it back to Walter Martin's original stuff.
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There were lots of errors in that. I was the editor on that for, for a while.
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I had fixed the errors that had been there for 30 some odd years, but the family took it back and forced the errors back in.
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So, that's a, that's a shame, but that's, that's, that's how it happens. So, I, I would not recommend that as a good source.
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If you want to read some good material on the subject, I would suggest material by Duane Mignogne, MAG and ANI, or Mr.
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Reid. What's the first name? Somebody help me out with, um, Reid, R -E -E -D.
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Yeah, R -E -E -D. First name is skipping me for a moment. Maybe somebody in channel will hear this and mention it, and I'll mention it to you.
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Those would be good resources to have. I have a
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David Reid. Thank you very much. I have lectured on this a number of times.
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I am uncertain as to whether any of that has been put on either
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Sermon Audio by another church. You might search my name and see if one of my presentations on The Witnesses is there, or possibly even on YouTube.
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I'm not certain. I'm trying to remember. I don't think in Delaware, I think in Delaware I did
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Mormonism. I don't think I did Jehovah's Witnesses there. I know I've done Witnesses just recently. I'm just trying to remember what church it was, because normally they do, they do record my presentations when
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I speak at churches on that subject. So, you might try Googling. If you can find it,
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I'd be happy to send you a PDF of the slides that I used. I normally don't do that simply because my slides are just simply information, and I'm the one that fills in what they mean.
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So, sending them to somebody is pretty worthless if you don't know what the background information is. But if you can find the audio that went with the presentation, then it makes perfect sense.
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You've got books like Jehovah's Witnesses Answered Verse -by -Verse by David Reed. That's available.
47:29
How to Rescue Your Loved Ones from the Watchtower. I was once a Watchtower slave.
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I saw that somewhere. Yeah, that's really, really old, and the Watchtower has been doing a lot of changes recently.
47:44
So, you know, that's something to keep in mind as well. You know, dated material.
47:50
Walter Martin's material is very dated. Thirty Years Watchtower Slave is very dated. You need to have up -to -date stuff because things have changed.
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I mean, the fundamental teachings of Watchtower Society. What I do is
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I lay out, you know, thankfully, presenting on the
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Watchtower Society is much easier than presenting on Mormonism or something like that.
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Mormonism, you have so many different topics. It's very, very difficult to even do a cursory presentation.
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You can do a good job on the Witnesses as far as presenting their beliefs in a very short period of time.
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You really can't. What you need to focus on is what they believe about God, the fact they're Unitarians, that the name of God is
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Jehovah. Most of them don't even think we know the name Jehovah. That Jesus is the first created thing.
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Michael the archangel, through whom all other things are created. That the Holy Spirit is God's impersonal active force.
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And hence, one thing I would really recommend that you do, and if you've got a week and a half, two weeks, you should be able to do this.
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Do you have the New World Translation? No. I could not more highly recommend being able to at least pass it around for one simple reason.
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Let people know what it looks like, and then warn people. When you see someone with this in the church, let an elder know.
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Because it may be a Jehovah's Witness, or it may just be someone who doesn't realize they're carrying poison around. Where would
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I get a New World Translation? Would I have to knock on the Kingdom Hall or something? Well, it wouldn't be bad for you to do it, brother, honestly, just to get a chance to talk to one of them and experience it.
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And they would be happy. I mean, if you've got a Kingdom Hall locally, on almost any Tuesday or Thursday night, and sometimes other nights, you're going to find a congregation there.
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They've got a book room in the back. It ain't going to cost you much. I would get the New World Translation, Reference Edition, and the
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Kingdom Interlinear Translation as well. It would be great for you to have them and show to folks.
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If you don't want to do that, every used bookstore I've ever walked into had a whole shelf of them.
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Oh, okay. Probably for a buck. But make sure to try to get the current one, not the
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Purple People Eater, the old purple edition of the Kingdom Interlinear. Get the current blue one, things like that.
50:26
But I would get the original resources along those lines. But what you want to focus on is,
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God is Jehovah, Unitarian, Jesus is God's first created being who becomes
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Michael the Archangel. There is no resurrection of Jesus. He dies on a torture stake.
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He is raised as a spirit. There is no bodily resurrection. He does not have a spirit.
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Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe that we have a spirit. We are a living soul. When we die, we cease to exist.
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The Holy Spirit is a impersonal active force, not a divine person. The New World Translation consistently renders
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Holy Spirit with a small h and a small s, and things like that. He will be baptized with Holy Spirit, like water or electricity.
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And then the toughest part for you, if you don't understand it yourself, is going to be explaining what they believe about salvation.
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The 144 ,000, the great crowd, 1914, etc., etc. Because that's the one place that can get rather complex.
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And it would help a lot if you could track down my presentation on Jehovah's Witnesses. Hopefully you can.
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I just I wish I could tell you the last place I did it at. I just have done it so many times. I just don't know. I can't remember.
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But that is a very, very important thing to communicate with clarity.
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Because to actually reach Jehovah's Witnesses, you have to realize that 99 .99 % of them that are at your door believe that they have an earthly hope, that they are of the great crowd.
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They do not have a heavenly hope. They're not 144 ,000. And so they are only partially justified.
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They have to look to the anointed class for mediation with God. They do not have a mediator in Jesus Christ.
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Theirs is a really bad situation. There's no reason for these folks to be joyful.
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And one of the greatest motivations I know of for believers to really spend the time to present the gospel to Jehovah's Witnesses is once they realize that they've been given a second -class system.
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And theirs is not a joyous life. I mean, to realize that especially
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Jehovah's Witnesses has been one for a few years, has sat through the memorial supper which takes place on Nisan 14, the day of the
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Passover, according to Jewish calendar anyways. And they have passed the elements of the supper by every single time.
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The elements are passed through the congregation and nobody touches them because they're not in the
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New Covenant. The only people who partake, you see that's how they know how many of the anointed class are still alive, is by counting the number of people who partake.
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Because by partaking you're claiming to be of the anointed class. Only the anointed class partakes of the Lord's Supper because only they are in the
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New Covenant. Now they're changing some of these things right now. They're in a transitionary period. They've completely dropped 1914 without repudiating it.
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They're letting time pass and are starting to introduce new ideas, possibly new classes and stuff.
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And no one knows where this is going yet. They had to because for a long time they had been teaching that Christ would return and Armageddon would take place within one generation of 1914.
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Well, we're coming up on a hundred years now. And yeah, there are a couple hundred, there are a couple people that are a hundred years old.
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They had to keep pushing it back. Initially you had to be like ten years old and now as long as you're a gleam in your daddy's eye it still works
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I guess. But they realize their time is running out and so they are making specific changes.
54:08
And only people who know their theology and observe it over time can really recognize this. And even
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Jehovah's Witnesses recognize this. But they're doing it slowly this time because after the failed prophecy in 1974 -75 they lost over a million people.
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And in fact their baptism and growth numbers have been substantially down from the highest points they reached in the 1990s and early 2000s.
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They've been down a good bit since then, similar to Southern Baptists and other people too.
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So anyway there's a lot of good information if you go to Watchtower .org,
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that's their official place. The December 15th
54:58
Watchtower will have a chart and you should be able to find this chart.
55:04
December 15th of last year? Any year. Every year. The December 15th
55:10
Watchtower of every year will have, in fact if I recall correctly, I don't have it up on the screen right now, but if I recall correctly there may actually be a tab or a button someplace.
55:21
Statistics, World Report, something like that. It's published in the December 15th Watchtower but there's a page that they put up there.
55:28
And so you'd have access to, well man you're just just barely gonna miss the new updated numbers, but you'd have access to last year's the 2011 numbers.
55:35
And that'll give you the number of active publishers, that is the people going door -to -door for a certain amount of time, and then
55:42
I compare that to the number of people who attended the Memorial Supper, the number of people who partook.
55:50
I'm thinking that maybe last year they stopped reporting that. They've always reported that and that may be part of how they're changing how they're gonna be doing things is that they're not reporting the number of people partaking so as to diminish the emphasis upon the anointed class.
56:08
But like I said they're in transition right now and it's primarily in that area of explaining well you have the anointed class, then you have the great crowd which is 99 .99
56:18
% of all Jehovah's Witnesses, and then you have all the rest of us. And communicating that and the fact that Jehovah's Witnesses read the
56:26
New Testament and from their perspective most of it's not written to them. I mean that's sad.
56:32
I mean the great apostasy that took place in the
56:37
Bethel headquarters back when Raymond Franz and others left because they came to realize that Romans chapter 8 says as many as are led by the
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Spirit of God, these are God's sons. And an individual
56:53
Jehovah's Witness would say that they are led by God's Spirit but that text would say they're God's sons but the
56:58
Watchtower says they can't be God's sons because they're not in the New Covenant. Only the anointed class are. And so there's a lot of that kind of stuff out there.
57:07
Raymond Franz's book Crisis of Conscience, unfortunately he did not, he left the Society but he did not embrace
57:12
Orthodox Christianity. There's a lot of stuff out there. But Dwayne Mignogne, David Reed, try to track down my presentation.
57:21
What would the title of your presentation be? You know since I do it at different churches they're the ones who would title it.
57:28
So you know James White plus Watchtower is something I suppose you might be able to track it.
57:33
I just don't know. You know they, I don't have any control over that. But I know it's been recorded at least on audio or something like that and so hopefully it's, someone's posted it somewhere.
57:45
If not I apologize. We probably need to put up a video of that sometime or something along those lines just to help folks with it.
57:52
But there's some things you'll want to definitely think about and emphasize. Yeah well that was excellent.
57:59
Thank you. I have a whole page of notes here. Well good and once we post the file you can go back and catch the stuff that didn't get written down because I was talking too fast.
58:09
Okay. All right. Thanks. Bye -bye. All right.
58:16
That'll do it for The Dividing Line today. Sorry Richard not able to get to you today.
58:22
We are out of time but we will be back Lord willing on Thursday at the regular time which is well this time actually.
58:31
And what will we do then? I don't know. It sort of depends on what I encounter on the web and how much time
58:38
I have. By the way just for those of you who listen to this point in the program the galleys to the book are sitting on my desk.
58:45
The PDF. I'm doing the indexing. I'm doing the glossary. I'm reading the galleys.
58:51
It's exciting to see. We're really looking forward to letting you know when What Every Christian Needs to Know about the
58:57
Qanon comes off the presses from Bethany House Publishers. We're working hard and we'll see you next time on The Dividing Line.
59:04
God bless. The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.
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