September 4, 2003

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This is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation.
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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. And good afternoon. Welcome to The Dividing Line.
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We are live this afternoon at 877 -753 -3341 is our phone number.
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And only a couple things other than your phone calls today, just thought I would give you a
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URL you might want to take a look at that you might find interesting, a new publication.
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And for those of you who listen to this particular program, you might find it interesting because I will be contributing to this particular journal.
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It is called the Reformed Baptist Theological Review, www .rbtr .org.
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Just remember Reformed Baptist Theological Review, www .rbtr .org. I'm looking at it right now if you want to pop on over there.
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And it looks like it's going to be a very useful, interesting adventure.
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Obviously, it's going to be similar to JETS and things like that,
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Westminster Theological Review, the journals. It's a scholarly journal, but it will have a specifically
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Reformed Baptist orientation. You can read the materials there on the website. I've actually already begun work on, in fact, the article will be 10 ,000 words long.
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To give you an idea of how long that is, in essence, the main articles, the full -size articles in the
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CRI journal that I write, just finished actually one last night. It's a viewpoint article, so it's only 1 ,700 words.
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But if you would look at the, well, the last article in the journal on the subject of the
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Trinity and Islam was 5 ,500 words. So that would be just under half the size of an article here for the
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Reformed Baptist Theological Review. So that's enough room to actually develop a thought and develop a concept.
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I'll be exegeting a passage of scripture, specifically in regards to the issue of the
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New Covenant. And I can let you guess which passage of scripture that will be. Not really, doesn't take a whole lot to figure that one out.
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Anyway, and so I wanted to let folks know about that. And yeah, I encourage you to subscribe, obviously, when something's just getting off the ground.
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Subscriptions would be helpful. And I think we always get folks coming to the channel, where can
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I get good reading material? Where can I get this? Well, here's a place where you can do so.
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And if you sign up, just let them know that James White sent you over, and you will get a free thank you.
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Actually, you won't get anything else. Yes, also, by the way, we do know that StraightGate .com
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is not working. You can get the stuff shows up, it's there, you can see the things.
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I just checked on a, just earlier today, checked on the section on Norm Geisler, to see if it was still working.
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And you can bring up the, you know, everything's listed there, it's just you can't play anything.
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Something's gone wrong with the real audio server portion of the website.
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And I'm certain that Steven Luker is doing everything he can.
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But if I'm recalling correctly, in the past, when he has attempted to get hold of the folks at the server there, they did not really speak
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English very well. And given that he normally has to do that through typing, it can be difficult to communicate with folks and say, hey, you broke down, you're not working.
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No, it looked good here. No, that's not working, man. So it can be very, very frustrating.
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And so anyway, we do know that StraightGate is down, and there's nothing whatsoever that we can do about it because it's not our website in the first place.
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And we fully know what Steven's going through and probably trying to get it working again.
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We could tell you some stories. We could write some stories about the things that we've gone through, especially in regards to our
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MP3s. And it is sort of funny, yes, the MP3s obviously are available of the dividing lines on our website.
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But it is a function of the cheapness of people. Well, I can't do that.
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That's a dollar. That's two dollars. What are you calling cheap? I wasn't talking about what people got.
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Well, yeah, I know I can download the MP3, but that costs money. Yeah, it costs about as much as an order of fries.
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You know, that's, you know, you skip the fries and get the MP3, you know. You know, somebody was saying yesterday in channel,
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I'm really frustrated. It's like, what am I supposed to do about it, dude? You know,
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I mean, come on. It's a free service. How much have you paid for it? So anyways, but we appreciate
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Stephen Luker and all the work that he does. And there are a lot of folks in channel that didn't know much about Stephen last night, and I was filling them in, and they were pretty amazed.
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So we'll pray that StraightGate .com will be back in operation in the not -too -distant future.
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So anyways, remember rbtr .org, Reformed Baptist Theological Review. Sign up, get a subscription, and say,
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I heard about you on the dividing line, and they'll go, okay, and that's about all you'll get. But hey, at least if, you know, if 10 people said
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I heard about you on the dividing line, then they'll go, hey, that's pretty cool. So anyways, we can do that. 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number for the program today.
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I have a couple of cuts to play for you today.
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It's been a few weeks since I last addressed the, in fact,
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I had mentioned I had like 13 cuts that I had gotten out of, off of the Bree and Call website, and we never finished them.
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We would either, either I was rambling too long or started preaching or got phone calls or whatever it might be.
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So I thought I'd cue them up again this evening, especially since we had stopped right before we got to Romans chapter 9.
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And it's always interesting to listen to folks attempt to deal with Romans chapter 9.
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It is always an indication of whether we're doing exegesis or whether we are instead functioning on the basis of tradition.
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And that's obviously what takes place here as we go back to listening to and responding to some comments made by Dave Hunt in regards here to Romans.
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Let me double check this. You know, I'm sitting here going, hmm, click, click, click, click. Yep, there, that's what it says.
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So let's hope we've got the right one here. Let's listen to something on Romans chapter 9. Here's this week's question.
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Dear Dave and Tom, would you give me your understanding of Romans 9 verses 20 through 24?
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Dave, while you're getting into your Bible, let me read it for our listeners. Romans 9 verses 20 to 24.
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O man, who art thou that replyest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it,
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Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor?
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What if God, willing to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering 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 had aforeprepared unto glory?
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Even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles.
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Well, what's your understanding of that, Dave? I think you dealt with that in your latest book, What Love Is This? Well, first of all, obviously the clay can't complain to the potter, and we can't complain to God.
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God can do anything with us that he wanted to. He could torture us if he wanted to, but that's not the character of God.
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God is sovereign, but God has also said to all of the clay, I want to make each of you into a vessel unto honor.
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Human beings do have something to say about this. We do have the power of choice. Now, there are those who deny that we have the power of choice.
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Luther wrote an entire book about it, The Bondage of the Will. John Calvin also denied that man has the power of choice.
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Now, when you say that, then you have to go the next step, and that is what
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Calvin taught, what Calvin is saying today. God is the cause of everything.
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Now, let's just stop it right there. If someone asks about a passage of Scripture, this is not how you respond to it.
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I mean, first of all, deny that man has the power of choice. Baloney! Anyone who has read
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The Bondage of the Will knows that Luther never said that we have no power of choice.
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I mean, the very name of the book is The Bondage of the Will. The will still exists.
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The will still makes choices. The issue is, upon what basis can it make those choices?
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And this is standard for, and I honestly wouldn't say that this is purposeful on Mr.
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Hunt's part, but it is the way the system functions, to simply define libertarian free will as the only real use of the term choice, and then misrepresent the other position.
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I mean, there's only a few folks that I've run into who are going to be careful enough to accurately state, well, what
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Reformed theologians say is, yes, we exercise choice, but that choice is enslaved to the nature of our will, and it has to do with the desires that are presented to the will, and all that kind of fair kind of stuff.
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And sadly, many of the folks who do that, in essence, do so as scholars, but, and folks ask questions about this all the time, they ask, when they address these issues, they address them on the basis of the idea that there really isn't any ultimate truth anyway.
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You know, I was reading a scholarly article, a journal article from 11, 12 years ago.
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No, I was reading it yesterday, but the article was from 11 or 12 years ago. And, you know, the information was, obviously, had taken a lot of time to collate and to present, and it was all wonderful and useful in tracking down the information, but the thing that bothered me about it so much was, in essence, the person's whole perspective was, you know, we really can't come to any decision about all this anyways.
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It was obviously written from a perspective where this person holds to various liberal perspectives concerning the nature of Old Testament revelation, and when it was written, and things like that, and it was really interesting to me anyways to note how much that impacted the final understanding of the article, but in essence, one of the things that was said over and over again is, you know, we just don't know.
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We don't have any way of knowing. And I honestly don't think that you could find any passage of the
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Old Testament that could be as clear as day.
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But if you give a scholar enough time, they'll find a way to completely and totally mess it up.
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I mean, to basically prove, you know, we really don't know what this says. And I think that ends up bothering a lot of, especially theological students.
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They read stuff and they go, man, who knows what any of this means. I think that bothers a lot of folks, and that's obviously not what
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Dave Hunt is doing here, but it just reminded me of that particular aspect of the article that I was reading yesterday.
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So back to this issue of Romans chapter 9, here you have a direct question that has been asked, and the honest answer, the few people
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I run into that answer this honestly, will basically end up addressing this issue from a scholarly perspective with no passion about it at all.
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And reading that stuff is about as interesting as chewing on aluminum foil. But those who have passion about it tend to just misrepresent the other side.
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It's very rare to find someone who's passionate and who's also accurate in what they're stating concerning the other side.
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So there really wasn't even any interaction in what we've heard so far.
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Instead, Dave immediately backs up and he's going back to his safe places.
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I'm remembering the debate with George Bryson on the subject of salvation and how when pressed on the issues, he would always drop back into, in his presentations, well, you know, if what's being said here is true, then in reality, maybe
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Jesus didn't die for your brother or your sister. And instead of accurately representing the actual topic of the debate, what we're going after, the whole idea was, you don't want that, so it can't be true.
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That's not how you've always heard it said, so it can't be true. I then attempted to respond to that and point out, well, you know what?
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A, we don't have access to information. We've been commanded to preach the gospel to all creatures, and we don't distinguish, we don't make a determination on our understanding, because our understanding is not significant enough to do that.
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And then further, why is it that you like the idea that Jesus may have died for your brother or sister, but his death isn't enough to actually save them without their help?
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How is that somehow so much more wonderful? Well, because of tradition. Well, that's what we're talking about here, too, in regards to tradition.
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So let's back this up just a little bit and take another run at it here. God is sovereign, but God has also said to all of the clay,
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I want to make each of you into a vessel unto honor. Human beings do have something to say about this.
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We do have the power of choice. I'd like to see where that is, wouldn't you? Where in Romans 9 does
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God say to all human beings, I want to make you into a vessel of honor.
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I'm the potter, and I don't want to make any vessels unto dishonor. I want to just make pretty vessels.
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All of them must be pretty vessels. I'm sorry, but why does it say that?
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I mean, that is just so clear eisegesis that you just want to put your hand up. You want to pull the microphone away and go, now, wait a minute.
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Did you have your Bible open somewhere there? I'd like to see.
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You used the King James. I know that the King James is a little bit longer than the modern text, but I don't remember that one in the
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King James anyplace. God is sovereign, but God has also said to all of the clay,
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I want to make each of you into a vessel unto honor. Human beings do have something to say about this.
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We do have the power of choice. Now, there are those who deny that we have the power of choice.
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Luther wrote an entire book about it, The Bondage of the Will. John Calvin also denied that man has the power of choice.
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Now, when you say that, then you have to go the next step, and that is what
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Calvin taught, what Calvin is saying today. God is the cause of everything.
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Edwin H. Palmer in his book, The Five Points of Calvary. Now, let me stop right there. God is the cause of everything.
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Let's think about that one for just a moment. It's obvious in the way that he's using.
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We know where he's going. God's the author of evil, and God can't hold anyone accountable, and we've all heard all this stuff before.
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Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't get the feeling, really, that David's considered the other side of these things.
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If God isn't sovereign over all things, and he says he is, and then turns around and says he's not, but if God isn't sovereign over all things, if he wants another cause, if he wants multiple causes, if he wants, and of course, we believe in secondary causes.
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We just believe that they exist under the sovereign rule of God and the sovereign decree, but get rid of sovereign decree.
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He wants causes that are, well, equal with God. Does he want uncaused events?
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I don't know. I mean, that's been one of the frustrations
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I had in writing the book, was there's no attempt to make any kind of positive, coherent, and consistent theological presentation.
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And so you can't go back and say, well, here's his theology. Here's his theology of God.
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Here's his theology of providence. There isn't anything like that.
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It's just, well, you know, it's just the Bible. Well, that's nice. That's what everybody says, but could you be a little more specific?
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So it's very difficult to find out. But does he want uncaused events?
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Does he want events that are solely caused by creatures? And if they're solely caused by creatures, and God created creatures with that power and ability, and God knew what they were going to do with it, how in the world does this help him?
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How does this help the individual who is attempting to deny the sovereignty of God in creation, salvation, and the sovereign decree?
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I don't know. I don't know. Those are questions that I would like to be able to ask. But as most of you know who have listened to this program,
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Mr. Hunt will not debate these issues against me, because I like to ask, and you can ask in writing all you want, and you don't necessarily get a response.
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So let's keep going with this one here. Man has the power of choice. Now, when you say that, then you have to go the next step, and that is what
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Calvin taught, what Calvinists say today. God is the cause of everything.
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Edward H. Palmer, in his book The Five Points of Calvinism, says God's the author of sin. Everything that happens happens because God willed it, even the mistake of a typist.
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So now we've turned the human experience into a puppet show, practically.
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But worst of all, it makes God the author of sin. Every evil thought, crime, murder, rape, robbery, and so forth in history,
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God has foreordained it. Because man has no will, man cannot even will to sin.
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But this is all that God has foreordained. I do not believe that's what this is saying. Well, I'm glad, because as anyone who knows the subject knows,
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Dave doesn't know the subject very well, or he is being dishonest in his misrepresentation thereof.
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When he says that man has no will, that man cannot even will to sin, and all the rest of this stuff, you know that none of the sources that he was citing say anything even close to that.
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And I've had a lot of people ask, how do you write a book with someone like that? Well, there's nothing you can do.
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Absolutely. I mean, especially when in responding to a presentation, you have at first two -thirds and then one -half as many words.
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You know, when someone makes a statement like that, and then they make numerous statements like that in, say, a 2 ,000 -word presentation, and you have 1 ,000 words to respond to it, you just have to pick which errors you're going to deal with, and that means you leave all sorts of errors unrebutted, because there's nothing you can do about it.
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You just hope that through the clarity of your presentation and through dealing with the basic foundational issues in your other presentations that the reader can, you know, become involved.
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The reader can go, hey, wait a minute, Dave, that's not what they say, and this is what really they're saying, and why don't you listen to what they're saying, and so on and so forth.
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So that's the best you can do. You can just try to correct those misapprehensions as best that you possibly can.
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So there you have the response to Hebrews chapter 9.
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It may leave you, well, actually that's not all of it. I need to finish up the rest of Hebrews chapter 9 here, but there wasn't much in the way of interaction there, was there?
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No, there was not. So let's look at the next one here.
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Click, click, click, click, and here we go. He loves mankind. He has the best in mind for us.
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It is our stubborn rebellion against God that causes these things. Now what about enduring with much longsuffering, verse 22, the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction.
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Yeah, vessels of wrath fitted to destruction. How do we understand that? Well, Tom, predestination and election are always connected with foreknowledge.
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Romans 8, whom he foreknew, he predestined, not to salvation, but to be conformed to the image of his son.
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Let's stop it right there. Obviously, Dave's entire position does stand upon his very tired, very shallow presentation of foreknowledge.
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We have discussed it before. We have demonstrated that he does not deal with the lexical information.
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He doesn't understand the differences between nouns and verbs in the Greek language. He knows that that argumentation is there, but some of you may recall,
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I forget how long ago it was now, we played the presentation he made at a large Calvary chapel out in California and demonstrated at that point that the best that he can do in response to foreknowledge and the lexical information is to just simply sort of mock it and say, well, you know, they'll come up with their arguments and they'll come up with their, you know, their reasonings here, but, you know, it's just not biblical.
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He simply cannot handle this information, but he insists upon continuing to make statements based upon already refuted assertions that he makes.
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And that's very distressing. It's very troubling. I would hope that there are people who are serious about these issues who have contacted him and attempted to, believe me, all of us before the book came out were trying to get him to realize these particular things, but we failed in being able to do so.
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Maybe other people are doing it now. I don't know. But be that as it may, you have this whole foreknowledge argument that has been refuted over and over and over again but here's a situation where someone simply refuses to accept correction and just keeps presenting the same thing over and over and over again.
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Romans 8, whom he foreknew, he predestined, not to salvation, but to be conformed to the image of his son.
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Predestination and election are always unto a blessing, never unto salvation. Why even mention foreknowledge if it is just,
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God just does it? Well, first of all, it's an active verb, Dave. It is something that God does.
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You're exactly right. That's why it doesn't mean what you think it means. If you would recognize it's an active verb, it's an action of God, then you'd recognize your understanding of the term is in error.
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But that's what happens when you place tradition before scripture. And that's exactly what is going on here.
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And then you'll notice what happened when he makes the statement. It's never to salvation.
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It's interesting, I've gotten a number of emails, and I've talked about this a couple of times before, I've gotten a number of emails from folks who have said, now, now, the best reading of that passage,
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Thessalonians 2 .13, shows us as firstfruits unto salvation.
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And my response is, one was just asking, what do you do with the variant?
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Another one was really taking me on for daring to criticize Dave Hunt. Believe me, Dave Hunt fans are listening to this program now.
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And I think what probably bothers them a little bit is that a lot of times they have to agree with what
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I'm saying, except when I start talking about Calvinism. When I'm talking about Roman Catholicism, and they probably enjoyed the program we did with Eric Svensson on the perpetual virginity of Mary, and all the rest of that stuff.
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But if you just weren't one of those nasty Calvinists, you'd be pretty good. But anyway, one guy was, you know, no, it's not for salvation.
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Actually, the textual variant there is the difference between, and what you have in the
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New American Standard, what you have in the King James, because this was a variant that was changed between the 21st and 27th editions of the
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Nestle -Aland text, is a difference of exactly one letter. The more traditional rendering shows you from the beginning for salvation.
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The variant is op arcase. That's apa, from, and then arcase, from the beginning.
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But remember, the earliest texts were unsealed texts. They were written in all capitals with no spaces between the words, and no contractions or punctuation, things like that.
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Contractions were there, but there wasn't a mark of a contraction. And so op arcase, op would have a comma after it to indicate it's apa, and then arcase.
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Well, the omicron is taken off, and so you've got op arcase, from the beginning for salvation.
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The other reading is op arcane, one word, which means first fruits. And when you look at them as they would have existed in unsealed text, op arcase and op arcane, the only difference is the final letter, whether it's a sigma or a nu.
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And so that's the whole variant. And even if you take op arcane as first fruits, it still has the phrase eis soterion.
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It's still unto salvation. The choice is eis soterion.
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The descriptor is either of when it took place, or who it is who's been chosen to salvation, but in both cases, it is unto salvation, which is the very thing that Dave repeatedly says predestination or election never is unto.
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So the textual variant, despite some of Dave's best offenders, does not change the reality that he never dealt with this passage in his book.
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And I pointed that out, and his response was basically, well, you know, it doesn't really matter, and yada, yada, yada.
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2 Thessalonians 2 .13. But look in the scripture index of what love is this, and you will not find any reference to it, but you will hear over and over and over again
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Dave Hunt saying, the choice is never to salvation. The choice is never to salvation, it's to blessings. It's a mantra, and even when shown in the translation that he uses,
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King James Version, chosen from the beginning for salvation, he finds a way out of it and continues to say the same thing.
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Why even mention foreknowledge if God just does it? No, the ones that he knew would respond to his grace and to the gospel, he has marked out blessings for them.
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Now these vessels of wrath fitted to destruction, these are the ones that God knew what they would do.
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He knew their evil hearts. So let's make sure we understand what's being said here.
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This is in the context of the potter and the clay, and the potter having the right to make from the same lump one vessel for honor and another vessel for dishonor.
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So in the context of emphasizing the potter's freedom, the potter's authority, drawing from a human analogy,
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Mr. Hunt is saying, well, you see, God knew what our hearts would be like. Now wait a minute.
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So the potter looks at the clay, and he sees in the lump, this lump will be evil, so I will make it into a vessel of dishonor.
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Or he sees in this lump, oh wait a minute, it only says one lump. I don't know how that would work. I don't know.
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Anyway, it's 5 .30, and I don't see anything in my little window here about anyone calling 877 -753 -3341.
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Maybe folks figure because Straightgate is down that we are.
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I'm not sure. Because normally Thursday night, a busy night. A busy night indeed.
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But I know I was gone last week, and so maybe this is everyone's way of getting back at me for having been gone for a week.
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And I'm going to be gone a lot over the next number of weeks, but not so much on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
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There is that one trip to Sao Paulo, Brazil, and I don't think we're going to be doing any international phone calling at that point to things like that.
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But this is normally when we would stop, and we would have our standard commercials and things like that, but we don't have them queued up.
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I'm not even sure how we got the other things working. Maybe we did them off the other. Did we just skip the file server today, just sort of shot it and things like that?
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So that means I get to do what are called live spots, and I used to do this as a radio announcer.
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There would be a big old three -ring binder up above the board, and you'd look in the log, and you're supposed to do a 30 -second for such and such, and so you'd turn over to that particular advertiser.
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And, of course, once you got to know what to do, you wouldn't just sit there and slavishly read it all the time.
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You start developing different ways of doing it, and if you knew the advertiser, you'd do stuff. So we've got live spots here, but the problem is the suggested spots, coming from the control room on the other side of the wall, are on books that I wrote.
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And you sort of know something about those. For example, The Sovereign Grace of God, which used to be called
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God's Sovereign Grace, is that and Drawn by the Father. A lot of folks have been picking up those books recently, using them as a friendly introduction to the doctrines of grace.
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That's why I wrote them the way that I wrote them, and those are available on the website. Everybody snapped up all of the extra copies that we had of the original printing back from about 1991 or so.
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And, yeah, spam. Oh, that's it. Someone's talking about selling a can of spam for the cameras.
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Those are all gone, but the new printing is available from the ministry.
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And, of course, right now, I would think that one of the books that hopefully would be truly hot, in the sense of something that people would be finding very useful, is the same -sex controversy.
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The issue of homosexuality has, as I've mentioned a number of times on the program, come to the fore, and obviously
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Christians need to be aware of the issues at hand.
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They need to be ready to give a biblical defense of their faith.
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And I don't have it in here right now. I put it back in the other room, but I was being shown a video put out by Soulforce, a religious homosexual organization, in which at one point a homosexual minister brags that he has debated many fundamentalists and has never lost such a debate.
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And all of you listening are going, So, have you contacted this guy yet? Yeah, you better believe we're going to track that boy down and see just how far this boast actually goes.
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But that material is out there, and very, very, very few Christians are really prepared to give a biblical defense of their position, let alone really interact with the key passages,
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Genesis and Leviticus and the whole concept of marriage and God's sovereign right to determine man's sexual behavior,
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Romans chapter 1, 1 Timothy, 1 Corinthians, all these passages that are extremely, extremely important to handle.
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So, same -sex controversy is available. You know what would be very wise is ordering the same -sex controversy and the videotape of the debate with Barry Lynn on homosexuality and make it a present to your pastor.
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If you're concerned about these issues and you would like to do something nice for some of the elders in your church, then buy a copy of the book.
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You may have it already. Buy a copy of the book. Do not take it down to Kinko's and photocopy it.
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Buy a new copy of the book and the videotape of the debate and give it to him.
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And when he says, what's this for? You can say it's for Elder Appreciation Day, or you can say whatever you want to say.
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It doesn't really matter. You can just say, here, it's for you, and they would find that to be very useful.
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So, why don't you do that? Well, so much for the live spots. We've got a couple of phone callers online. Just about done with this section from Mr.
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Hunt. Let's go back to it real quick and then talk with the folks online. To his grace and to the gospel, he has marked out blessings for them.
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Now, these vessels of wrath fitted to destruction, these are the ones that God knew what they would do.
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He knew their evil hearts. He knew their rebellion. We go back a ways to Pharaoh.
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It wasn't that God made Pharaoh be the bad guy that he was, but God knew the heart of Pharaoh, and he arranged to have
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Pharaoh become Pharaoh, just to be there at that time. Isn't it nice that God can look down the corridors of time and go, hey, there's an evil guy that I can use.
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I thought he said something about, for this very purpose I raised you up. Just to be there at that time.
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It does say he hardened Pharaoh's heart, but on the other hand, Pharaoh hardened his own heart before God did that.
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You go back and read the story, God tells Moses one of the first things he says is, I know he won't let the people go.
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Then why does God harden his heart? If Pharaoh is, as the Calvinist teaches, totally depraved,
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God wouldn't have to harden his heart. Pharaoh was scared to death because the plagues had been so awesome.
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He would let the people go out of fear, not for the right reason, and his heart wouldn't have changed.
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So you go back in the Hebrew, the word for hardened there means he strengthened him.
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He gave him the courage. The backbone. Right. The spinelessness that a ridden bird is.
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Right. To keep saying no until God had executed all of the judgment he wanted upon the gods of Egypt.
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Well, you know, that's partially true. Now, I'm not sure why it is that Dave can say the original
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Hebrew says such and so, but if I say something like that, all of Dave's followers accuse me of obfuscation and being an elitist, and when
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I challenge Dave on his misunderstandings of those original languages, and I can guarantee you Dave got this strengthened, or hardened means strengthened, probably from Norm Geisler's book.
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But let's go ahead and take it that way. Let's go ahead and take it that God was strengthening
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Pharaoh to remain in rebellion. How does that help?
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I mean, I guess the only way it would help is, well, you see, God foreknew that he'd be evil, and therefore he's doing these things.
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Well, he foreknows everyone's going to be evil, even on Dave's foreknowledge view, which we've already seen isn't true.
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But even on that basis, how does this accomplish anything? I mean, I agree with what he said there at the end, so that the plagues, you know,
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God would bring all the judgment against the Egyptians, all the rest of that stuff, I agree. But that's what
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I'm saying. That's not what there is. So God had a purpose, God had a plan, and that purpose and that plan, was that eternally determined or not eternally determined?
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Is this just something he came up with on the spur of the moment? We aren't told. We don't know.
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And I think it's because of the inconsistencies in the position. Well, we've got so many phone callers now, I think it would be a good idea to go ahead and start talking with them, because we don't want to leave them sitting online all evening.
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So let's go ahead and talk with Glenn down there in Louisiana. We've got a
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Cajun calling us in. How are you doing, sir? Fairly good. How are you doing, sir? Doing all right? I'm sort of a misplaced
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Cajun. I'm actually original. Oh, okay. I have a couple questions for you. Maybe I'll try to stick with topic first.
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I've heard Dave make reference to or response into the death row illustration, the prisoners on death row and one being pardoned.
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And he's sort of like, well, what about all the other death row inmates, because the governor is the one that is sovereignly predestined there to commit their crimes and be there in the first place.
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What kind of response do you normally give to that?
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Well, the primary response to the assertion that, well, first of all, the illustration is being misused there because the illustration is supposed to be in regards to whether God has the sovereign power to grant remission of sins or remission of punishment to one person and not to other persons, not the issue of God's interaction with time.
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But even if you make that type of an argument, which just means you're fleeing the illustration itself,
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I again go back to exactly what we've talked about in Genesis chapter 50 and Isaiah 10 and Acts 4 and say, and in fact,
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I'm sort of contemplating a future encounter not with Mr.
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Hunt but with someone else on a radio program, and I know this is going to come up, so what
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I'm planning on doing is really launch into a sort of an offensive in the sense of saying, look, the
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Scriptures make it very, very plain, very, very clear in these passages that God sovereignly controlled the situation, in fact, decreed the situation with Joseph and his brothers.
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Here is the biblical evidence. Now, I want a biblical response, and I'm not going to accept wandering off into all these things we always hear.
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I want to hear how you believe that God was just in intending everything that happened with Joseph, and using the very same
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Hebrew word of their intentions toward Joseph that is used of God, I want to understand how you know that and try to bring it back to a biblical basis rather than just a basis of philosophy or examples or whatever else it might be, because I think if a person cannot give a basis from the
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Scriptures, then they have abandoned any claim to dealing with this in a biblical sense.
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So that's what I'm going to try to do. Whether I'm allowed to do it or not is going to be another issue, but I'm going to try to take it back to those texts and say, okay, here are clear examples where you have sin involved, you have the will of God involved, you have the will of man involved, and this tells us how they relate.
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Why aren't these the center of your argument? Why do you always have to go to something else?
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And whether that's going to fly, I can't tell you, but I'm going to do my best, because I just don't hear meaningful discussions taking place about it.
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Well, of course, he also, just in the clip you had recently played, it always sort of goes back to the whole thing about a vessel of dishonor becoming a vessel of honor, which of course isn't in the
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Romans 9 passage, but about that passage anyway, what exactly is it saying that's different from Romans 9?
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Is it in Timothy, I think? I'm not sure. Are you talking about where God is talking about a vessel?
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Paul talks about vessels of honor and dishonor. In that context, in the pastoral epistles, if I'm recalling correctly, and I'm just doing this off the top of my head,
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I'd have to look over at them, but my recollection is that we're talking there where he is exhorting
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Timothy to purify himself, and it's an issue of sanctification, service, and things like that in the sense of ministry within the church.
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It's a completely different context than Romans 9. Well, the original thing that I called for, you really whetted my appetite for topics such as hermeneutics and exegesis, and I've just been curious as to what kind of resources or something you'd recommend for a beginner to learn some more about it.
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Well, that's a good question. I have various and sundry students who are involved in doing things like that.
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I've always recommended, you know, there's obviously a lot of books that you can look at. Moises Silva has a number of books.
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Gordon Fee has a number of books that are, you know, biblical hermeneutics by Kaiser and Silva. Silva's work,
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Biblical Words and Their Meaning, which has changed titles since I bought my version of it, but those are always very useful.
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It's good to build up a library of resources that would allow you to have some basic introductions to the subject of exegesis and hermeneutics.
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You can get basic information in basic introductions to the scriptures as well, but those types of books are going to be a little bit more specific as to, you know, exegetical fallacy is a classic work.
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I think a lot of folks learn by seeing mistakes better than they learn by rote memorization or positive presentation, personally.
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So that kind of resource can be extremely useful. And really, for a lot of folks, it's just a matter of spending some disciplined time doing it and then comparing my results with, you know, someone that I trust and seeing if I came up with some new radical heresy, that might be a bad thing.
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If you came up with something new, probably not good. Probably not the direction you want to go.
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But those would be some of the resources. Would Milton Terry be good or outdated or what?
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Which? I'm sorry? Milton Terry? Not familiar with it. I'm not familiar with it. Okay. It's just one that I've seen on various web pages.
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Yeah, couldn't comment on that one. Maybe 100 years old, I'm not sure. Well, you know, there's going to be some changes in that amount of time, but not a whole lot.
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But, hey, we've got an interesting caller up next, so I'm going to need to run along. But thank you very much and hope you're enjoying the humidity down there.
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Yes, I am. Okay. God bless. All right. Bye -bye. All right. Hey, it's been a while since we've had a chance to talk with Pierre.
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And I guess Pierre wants to defend Mr. Hunt and his statement about the vessels.
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Is this in Romans Chapter 9, Pierre? Well, that's correct. I mean, you ask a question in regards to Mr.
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Hunt's statement about his view that God wants to make every lump of clay into a vessel of honor.
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Right. And you ask the question, well, where does it say that in Chapter 9? Right. Verses.
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And, of course, you can't, I think, properly exegete
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Scripture by trying to isolate it from the rest of Scripture. You have to interpret
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Scripture within the context of the whole of Scripture. And there are numerous statements that actually defend what
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Dave Hunt has said. He's quite correct. In fact, it's very clear from Scripture that God wants, in fact, to make everyone a vessel of honor.
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And I would, for instance, cite the ones that are obviously well -known, such as 2
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Peter 3, 9, 1 Timothy 2, 4, Matthew 22, 37, things like that. John 3, 15 -17.
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So you're admitting, in fact, however, that Romans Chapter 9, you have to take your understanding of those other passages.
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We can look at each one of them and discover the problem with that usage of it. But what you're admitting is you have to take your traditional understanding of those other passages and read it into Romans 9, because Romans 9 does not say that, does it?
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I mean, let me read it for everybody. Let's see where it says, On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God?
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Notice here the ontological distinction between man and God there. God is not exalted to man. The thing molded will not say to the molder.
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The thing molded and molder, those are ontological differences too, which you don't have in your theology. Why did you make me like this?
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Will it or does not the potter have a right over the clay to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?
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And then he explains that by saying, What if God, although willing to demonstrate his wrath and to make his power known?
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Is the demonstration of God's wrath and the demonstration of his power something that's a real high priority in your theology?
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I think that's something that's right here in Romans 9. Endured with much patience, vessels of wrath prepared for destruction.
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Remember, this is in the context of explaining the work of the potter, not of the pots. And he did so to make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he also called, not from among Jews only, but also among Gentiles.
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So would you be willing to admit that the text itself, if you read it and you just go from point to point, as those in Rome would have had to have done as they were reading it, that there is nothing in the text about God wishing to make everyone a vessel of honor or a vessel of mercy?
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Not if you limit yourself to just the text. That's what exegesis is about, yeah.
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I don't think so. I think that's eisegesis when you do that. Because then you can mold the interpretation to your own image.
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Well, now wait a minute, Pierre. See, you're reversing the meanings of the terms here. If you derive the meaning from Romans 9, that's what exegesis is, then it says one thing.
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If we take what you think 1 Timothy 2, 4, 2 Peter 3, 9, Matthew 20 -37 or John 3, 15 -17 means, in other contexts, some of those were not even written when
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Romans 9 was written, and hence the original readers could not have even imported such concepts into their thinking.
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If you take what you think those mean and insert them into Romans 9, that's called eisegesis, reading into the text something that was not there initially.
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Well, then you have two sets of scriptures that are in opposition to each other, which I don't think is actually what's happening.
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Well, actually that's not the case, because you've misunderstood each of the other ones that I've cited. Well, that's where I would argue with you on.
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There has not been a misunderstanding. I think these scriptures are extremely clear from that God, in fact, desires to save all individuals.
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Well, let's look at some of them and see if that's the case. Which one would you like to look at?
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Well, it doesn't matter which one. I think they're all very clear, and they're all... You can pick, I don't know, 1
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Timothy chapter 2. Okay, 1 Timothy 2 .4. Let's back up and read the context.
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Let the text speak for itself. First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, so we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.
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So, immediately Paul begins by talking about all men. Now, does he mean that...
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Is Paul really telling Timothy that in the prayer meetings they need to, by name, mention every single individual there in Ephesus in their prayer?
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Well, obviously they won't know everybody by name, but certainly they mention some by name, but I think the concept here is to have a sense of concern for all the leaders of the world, as well as all other men who are in lesser positions.
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Okay, but notice, you just made my point for me, for kings and all who are in authority.
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Now, why would Paul have to tell Christians to pray for kings and those who are in authority? Well, for the obvious reason that they have an impact upon their individual lives.
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And in fact, was it not the case at this point in church history they were under persecution by those very people?
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Sure, that's the case, sure. Okay, so we're talking about kinds of men here, are we not? Kings and those who are in authority are a kind of man.
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And so when he says this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved to come to the knowledge of the truth, why doesn't that mean all kinds of men?
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Whether it's kings and those in authority, or slaves, or free men, or sailors, or soldiers, or any
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Jew, Gentile, why do we leap to the assumption that even though all men in Paul's usage here is all kinds of men, that we need to leap beyond that to mean every single individual?
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Rather than the biblical use we see in Revelation 5 -9 where the Lamb by His blood saves men from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.
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That's what all men means biblically. Why do we take this Western mindset and become individualists and mean well, what this means is it's
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God's intention that every single individual rather than all kinds of men be saved. Why do we make that leap? I think because that's what the text is saying.
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I don't think it's a leap, I think that is in fact what the text is saying. Wait a minute, didn't you just agree with me that in verses 1 and 2 we have kinds of men?
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Where did kinds of men disappear in each individual? Because you agreed it wasn't each individual. You even used the terms of classifications.
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Well, I think that what Paul is saying he wants us to pray for all men.
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He specifically identifies kings and those in authority. He didn't use names, did he?
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He talked about kinds of men, didn't he? Let me give you another reason why you're misreading the text.
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Look at verse 5. For there is one God and one mediator also between God and men, the man
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Christ Jesus. Now, I don't know how you're going to respond to this because you come from a different theological background but I would point out to you that if you believe that the atonement of Jesus Christ actually accomplishes something that it's not just a theoretical atonement then the question immediately has to be asked does
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Jesus Christ mediate between all men and the Father? That is, every single individual person.
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Does Christ intercede for every single individual person before the Father? I don't believe that he does because then he would fail in a large portion at least as we see it today at least in our experience today a very large portion of his work that his offering is not accepted his offering does not actually accomplish salvation.
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No, I think you're misunderstanding the atonement. It's not God's failing, it's man's failing.
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Oh, I understand. Coming from a view that has
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Jesus' blood being spilt in the garden and the atonement taking place in the garden of Gethsemane and then only being finished on the cross and Joseph Smith's belief that the animal sacrifice would be reinstituted during the millennium and all the rest of that stuff
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I perfectly well agree that from our two different perspectives there's no way that you could see that but I could go over to Hebrews chapter 10 with you and I don't think you'd be able to deal with verses 10 -14 because the
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LDS position does not have a means of dealing with Hebrews chapter 10 verses 10 -14 which says that by one sacrifice we have been perfected not that we have had the opportunity of perfection offered to us that is a completely different perspective and there's no way that the two are going to meet in any way, shape, or form but for those listening
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I'm simply pointing out that in this context if you do understand Paul's theology of atonement there's a second reason not to read this passage the way that you read it.
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Now the same thing can be said in 2 Peter 3 -9 follow the pronouns he's talking about, the elect look at Matthew 23 -37 he differentiates between those who have rejected the grace of God and their children
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John chapter 3 itself introduces the distinction between those who believe and those who do not believe it is not a universalistic application when you look at each one of them and believe me we've looked at them many many times you don't find this external tradition that you then read into Romans chapter 9 so as to engage and this is the classic example of eisegesis taking your understanding of other passages and reading them into the text of Romans chapter 9 this is the example
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I mean this is an excellent example of what eisegesis is all about here I think again if you take the
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Romans chapter 9 and those verses that were read within the context of the verses that preceded it becomes pretty clear that what he's talking about in terms of choosing individuals as vessels of wrath or honor has more to do with where he uses them here upon this earth actually
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Romans 8 remember Romans 8 verses 29 and following what does it say?
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the golden chain of redemption what is justification? calling?
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glorification? all those things that's just here on earth? of course not, those are eternal things that's what has brought this whole issue up I don't disagree with that part of it it still has to do with when he talks about calling
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Pharaoh Pharaoh didn't choose to become Pharaoh it was God who made him
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Pharaoh he was born in a situation where he became Pharaoh and if you will for a time being a vessel of honor no, no, no, no, no, no he was never a vessel of honor he was always a vessel of wrath hey
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Pierre, we're out of time for this evening thanks for the call, keep listening the folks, those folks we didn't get to Robin and Mike, we'll be back on Tuesday morning next