Dallas Trip and Debate Report, Plus Calls

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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other than a passage that is dealing with the subject of predestination election.

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But if you elect... Alrighty, welcome to the

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Divine Line, my name is James White, it is a Thursday afternoon and I am looking at the advertisement we have up.

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Once again, thankful to Hasim, son of Ramallah, king of graphics. May 23rd,

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Saturday, 4 .30pm is time, a little bit early in the evening for you

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California folks, but it is a Saturday, so anyway, at 24 .30,

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Yellow Brick Road. I didn't name the street. Yellow Brick Road, Walnut, California, I don't know if that's church,

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I honestly have no idea where this is, really don't know. I know it's 20430

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Yellow Brick Road in Walnut, California, Jesus, prophet and or God, a debate and dialogue between myself and Sheikh Mustafa Umar, and yesterday

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I had the opportunity of listening. Haven't heard back from Sheikh Umar, I wrote to him, and there is a phone number, maybe

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I'll try that, it's getting a little late. I wanted to send him some books. Seems to be just a few years older than my son, actually.

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I think I heard him say he was 32, my son is 29, so yeah, pretty close there. But I enjoyed listening to what

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I did. What I was going to do, I've been playing around with stuff for the program today as far as some topics.

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We're going to open the phones, by the way. When nothing works, you open the phones, 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341,

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I forgot to tweet that we are at it here, so let me do that.

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The DL is live, call in now, and people tweet back, what number should

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I do? But anyway, one of the things

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I listened to, I listened to a presentation that the

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Sheikh made at Cal Poly on the Muslim view of Jesus.

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That's pretty relevant. But I also found on YouTube, and you can find this yourself, it's real easy, just look up Mustafa Omar, and I think it's on the first page.

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He did a debate with Dan Majus. Now that name,

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I just kept going, Dan Majus, Dan Majus, heard that name somewhere before.

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I didn't expect it really in that context. And it turns out that Dan Majus, the guy that went to,

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I'm not sure if he graduated from, but went to the Master's College, or Seminary, I don't remember which one it was.

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I found one email from like four years ago, where I was asking Phil Johnson, who is this guy?

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Because I had heard him doing a debate against the Trinity from a

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Unitarian perspective, but the guy is an atheist. In fact, the guy is a full -blown vegan, communist,

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I mean, he is so far left, if he was a plain he'd only have two left wings, I mean, hey, we're out there, and if you think

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I've looked odd in a debate or two with a bow tie, you ought to see what this guy wore to a debate with a

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Muslim sheikh. Anyway, in fact, at one point, Sheikh Omar said, my hat looks better than yours, he was talking about his kufi, and I have to agree, it most definitely did.

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Anyways, what was fascinating to me is, well, first of all, you'd say, why would you be listening to a debate like that, if you're going to be having a debate on Jesus?

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Well, because I want to know how the person I'm going to be dialing, how they think, what's their worldview, how do they, it helps a whole lot to know what they think about stuff over there and over there, it gives me a little bit more of a sense.

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I'm really looking forward to this, I'm hoping maybe, possibly, if the debate doesn't go too long, maybe we can grab a bite after it's over with, or something like that,

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I don't fly back to early in the morning, so, who knows, that would be great, but I'd like to get to know him,

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I'd like to, I'm already praying for him, and I would encourage you all to pray for the debate, and to pray for Mustafa Omar.

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Now, what do you pray for? Well, obviously, our greatest desire is that Christ would reveal himself in all of his glory, in his gospel, to everyone, and that's what we want to have happen, but I realize that's frequently a process, and there's a lot of things to work through, so we want to pray that the debate maybe will just be the first of many that we can do, obviously, fundamentally, that he would come to know what we know about who

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Jesus Christ is. So, I was listening to this debate, it was fascinating, it's fascinating because it's not a

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Christian -Muslim debate, and so that's really not there, and it was fascinating to A, listen to how

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Muslims deal with atheists, this has been interesting, we've had some discussions about this in the program before, we've talked a little bit about what's called the fitrah, and the idea of the mitakh, this covenant that was taken between Allah and all the offspring of Adam, and that the leftovers of that covenant is that everyone is born upon the fitrah, that they have this sense of the fact that they had covenanted to be covenanted with Allah, that he was their

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Lord, we allegedly confessed that Allah was our Lord before we were ever born, and I've talked about the parallels between that and Paul's discussion of the imago dei, the image of God in Romans 1, and suppression of the knowledge of God, things like that, it's quite interesting to hear that, but still,

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I've not seen the development, you could not see the development of a truly parallel apologetic to what we've developed within presuppositional apologetics, because you have a

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Unitarian God, and that's fascinating to me, sadly the vast majority of folks, even those who would call themselves presuppositionalists, have not read

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Van Tilt closely enough to recognize how Trinitarian presuppositionalism is, and the necessity of the

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Trinity to a presuppositional approach, and since Islam does not have the

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Trinity, it has a strictly Unitarian perspective of God, even though they have a transcendent

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God, a creator God who has made all things, because you don't have the Trinity, because you don't have incarnation, because you don't have imminence in entering into, you've got both transcendence as well as the incarnation, you put the two of them together, since they don't have that, there's really no way to develop any meaningful presuppositional apologetic that doesn't become just a tiny circle of believe because the

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Quran says so, that's it, there's no transcendental foundation or transcendental argument or anything like that, and so the vast majority of Muslims just really default back to a standard evidentialist apologetic that really does not work very well at all, but it was also fascinating to listen to Dan Majus, I mean, yeah, lay aside the really weird,

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I mean, I really should have queued up the sound file with the

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Fraser Crane statement, because I thought of it so many times,

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I was climbing South Mountain, descending South Mountain, da -da -da -da, there are so many times that I just wanted to go, what color is the sky in your world?

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It's just, oh, the vast difference between recognizing the sinfulness of man and living in the leftist utopia, where mankind is just this wonderful, good, awesome person, if you just give everybody universal healthcare and stop eating animals, we'd all just love each other, and you just want to go, oh, have you looked at history?

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What color is the sky in your world? Wow, it's amazing, it really is amazing, but still, the arguments, totally, well, you know, he's arguing against the

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Muslims, so I guess it makes sense, but they were just completely irrelevant to any meaningful theistic presentation.

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He had a whole section, I was starting to queue it up, and it just would have taken too long to play all of it, but he had this whole section about how all the theistic proofs are so complicated, that God must only be seeking to have the most intelligent philosophers follow him, and I'm sitting back going, that's a criticism

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I've made of a lot of Thomistic apologetics and things like that, but it really was very, very interesting, and by the way, this whole thing is all megapixelated in here and looks really goofy.

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It's fascinating to listen to two perspectives that you've interacted with, both of them, but to hear them, thank you, to hear them interacting really sheds some light on things that wouldn't otherwise happen, so you just might want to grab it and listen to it, it's on YouTube, if you just put in Mustafa Umar, Dan Majes, M -A -G -E -S, it'll come up, and it was quite interesting, no two ways about it.

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Anyway, someone on Twitter sort of threw me off there, not near a phone, but I asked you before, how is a printed copy of the

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Quran not shirk, it's a created thing associated? I'm not sure

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I understand that, because it's not being associated with God as the object of worship,

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I would guess, and no printed Quran, even the

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Arabic Quran is actually the Quran which is on the tablet in heaven, and no translation of the

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Quran is a real Quran anyways, I suppose, but anyways, that was a question that was asked, I'm not really sure where it's coming from.

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877 -753 -3341, we do actually have one call and open for your participation as well, 877 -753 -3341.

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Yesterday, Layton Flowers posted the video of, a partial video, well, it's the whole debate, it's just not all the cameras that were there.

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As I explained on Facebook, eventually what we will do, is we will hopefully gather together all of these sources, and we will put together the, shall we call it the

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Director's Cut? The Collector's Edition? Whatever. We'll put together a real nice, super nice version of this thing, because there were lots of cameras there.

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But this is just from one or two, and sort of jumped the gun a little bit, but hey, it's out there no matter what, and so,

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I wasn't going to play into this, but I wanted to give some time for people to line up on the phones at 877 -753 -3341.

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I'm sorry? At what? There's three?

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I have the screen, I see it, I see one call, like I said. I have the shot lined up, finally.

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I can't put it up yet, but, you know, if you want to play, I can play it.

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Well, I'll be playing it here in a second. I wanted to find a certain part, and I didn't have time to, unfortunately.

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I wanted to find a certain part where I asked Professor Flowers a question, and the question was, where does

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Romans 9 talk about this noble cause?

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Because if you listen to Professor Flowers very long on this particular subject, you will overdose on the phrase noble cause.

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If you listen to just the first of his webcasts, and I guess there have been many since the debate, too.

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This first of his webcasts on Romans 9, Eddie McKee and I were driving up to Prescott, and I said, okay, what are we going to do?

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I even wound it back. I said, okay, we're going to count how many times he talks about the noble cause.

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Noble or noble cause, as long as it's synonym. And we pretty much lost count at 24, and it was like a half -hour program.

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It's almost one a minute. The noble cause, the noble cause, the noble cause. And so I wanted to play a section where I asked him, where do you get the noble cause from Romans 9?

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I mean, it is the interpretational issue for you.

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It is the lens that you indicate must be used.

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So where does it come from in Romans 9? And I was amazed because he referred us back to the potter, and right there to the phrase, one vessel for honorable or noble use.

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I didn't have time to pursue it, unfortunately. But you have to have had this all the way back from the start to interpret it in the way that he does.

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And so the potter has a right over the clay to make the same lump, one vessel for the noble cause and another for common use.

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And the parallel to that in verses 22 and 23 becomes the ones who are for common use receive his wrath.

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He makes his power known in their destruction. But the honorable use is riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which you paired beforehand for glory, which isn't salvation.

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It's being used as a instrument of proclaiming salvation or something like that.

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But I didn't get to find that particular section. So I did find one section.

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I just wanted to play it if we're ready to play this. This is part of the cross -examination.

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And a lot of people, to be perfectly honest with you, have said, we didn't really understand what he was saying.

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We didn't understand where he was going. We didn't understand his answers. And maybe that's why he's cranking out all sorts of stuff to help understand that after the debate's over.

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But here's—I thought this was sort of representative. Let's take a look at a little bit of the cross -ex here.

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You said in your presentation that—this was your words— that God has elected or that he has chosen that people be saved by believing that word.

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Do you believe that God chooses who will believe, or is God's choice that it's just that salvation will be by faith?

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The second. So God doesn't choose who will believe.

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The object of his choosing is the method, not the individual. No, the individual's still chosen because the individual who believes, just like the prodigal, when the prodigal son comes home, the father chooses to show him mercy.

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The father doesn't owe him that. That's a monergistic work of the father. The father could cast him out or punish him or stone him, even, in that day for what he did.

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It's a monergistic work of the father to decide to take that son back in. So it's a very personal relationship between those two people.

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When he's coming home, he chooses to show him mercy. So that's one of the reasons I think our view is a much more personal view of election than your view because your view has

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God choosing people without any regard to their personhood or their knowledge of anything good or bad to do. Whereas my view, he knows exactly what they did.

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They're coming out of their pigsty. He knows exactly who they are, and he's choosing to show them mercy in the midst of their shame and filth.

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Okay, now, I think most people understood the question I was asking. And I don't know why there is this demand to complicate things and to focus upon things other than what the real issues are between monergists and synergists.

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Because if you listen to my question, he just affirmed that what

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God chose to do was to save people who believe in him. He didn't choose the people.

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So he's choosing a method of salvation, which is by faith.

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He's not choosing the individuals. So the object of election is a method, not a person.

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And so evidently the argument is, yes, but once they humble themselves and come back, then there's this personal relationship.

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That's a completely different issue. That's way over there somewhere. It has nothing to do with monergism or synergism or anything like that.

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It just seems like, especially some of these modern Southern Baptists, they've just decided that the categories of the discussion that were worked out from the

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Reformation onward that allow for meaningful communication, we don't care about that.

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We overthrow all that, and we're just going to redefine all the terms. That's what Norman Geisler did. And so we spend half our time just getting back to what previous generations had already gotten to.

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It really ends up wasting a whole lot of time in the process. And I'll be perfectly honest with you.

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I find a great deal of hubris in modern folks who can knowingly or out of ignorance, one of the two, throw out all the categories that have already been agreed upon in this debate.

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Maybe thinking that they've seen something no one else has ever seen. We get that all the time. Obviously, you all haven't seen what

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I've seen. You probably don't even bother giving it to me, but I know at the church...

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Please don't bother contacting me at the church, by the way. I do not answer phone calls that are given to the church.

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I do not answer letters that are sent to the church. We've got three people online right now. I mean, I'm a whole lot more accessible than most people are.

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Don't bother the folks there at the church. That stuff, please. Thank you, by the way. Just a little thing

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I'll mention in passing. Anyway, but I get stuff at the church all the time.

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Long typewritten, sometimes on a typewriter, letters from folks. They just really think they've come up with something that no one has ever, ever thought of before.

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And normally it is as heretical, ahistorical, unbiblical as can possibly be.

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But, boy, they've got to make sure everybody hears about it. And you get that call probably about once a day from people.

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I've got to talk to James White. I have discovered, I've found the way through the

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Bible. It's going to, once everyone hears this, all disagreements are going to be done away with.

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And, you know, it's just like, okay. So anyways, that's sort of what's going on here.

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You have this redefining of things. And ours is more personal than yours.

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Except what's elected is not a person. It's a group.

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It's a method. He's elected to save those who humble themselves and believe.

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You don't see the difference? It's very, very different, actually.

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But he's choosing to do so because they have humbled themselves. Um, well, yeah,

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I would say yes. Yeah, the Bible does say, humble yourself and you will be exalted. So they have the ability to do that.

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I think there's a lot of passages in Scripture which teach that very clearly. He knows that the point is, and I, as a pastor of Scripture, have absolutely positively nothing to do with a dead sinner's capacity or ability to do anything.

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And he, later on in the debate, he obviously had a whole page of these. He just wanted to read them. Just had to get to them.

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But there you had it. If you will humble yourself, then that is what allows

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God to save you. But you have to do that. So it's the method that God has elected, not the persons.

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It's not a personal knowledge of an individual. And a choice to save that individual, especially if that individual is not worthy of being saved.

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But, what? You're holding your head and now I have no idea. Twitter. Oh. Unbelievable.

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No, Layton, I really wouldn't. You're cranking stuff out.

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Keep on cranking, man. I've got other things to do. Let's just finish up this section and get to Jarrett as a first caller.

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Humility, or humbling yourself, is a part of our responsibility as children of God.

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For example... As children of God? Well, oh, okay. As people.

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I misspoke there. Did you catch that? Did you see why I said that? There's a vast difference between children of God and what we're supposed to do, and what our abilities are as regenerate individuals and unregenerate individuals.

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It's pretty obvious. Okay, so evidently, man has the capacity to do this without the

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Spirit of God. Or is this some kind of prevenient grace? Who knows? Who knows, but...

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I'm trying to get to the central issues, and we didn't really get all that close. Okay, now,

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I switched because... See, the way I debate is, if someone's listening carefully, they already just heard the classic monergism -synergism issue.

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He's stated it. He doesn't want to have to state it, but I've established that. Move on.

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And this is one of the more important questions. I will repeat again. The methodology of interpretation and hermeneutics used by Professor Flowers is not the methodology that has been used in the history of the

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Church to establish the Trinity, the deity of Christ, resurrection, atonement, justification by faith, or anything else.

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It is not. It is idiosyncratic.

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It is different. And I made the argument from the start. If you have to use a different methodology of theology, hermeneutics, exegesis, on this subject, than you use in everything else, that's an indication that there is tradition involved, that you're not actually allowing the

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Word of God to address these things. That's what I said. So... ...interpretation

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that we just listened to here models for us the kind of interpretation and exegesis that we utilize to demonstrate the doctrine of the

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Trinity, the deity of Christ, the resurrection, justification by grace through faith, with the necessity of the atonement.

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Do you believe that this kind of exegesis which you just gave us is the same kind of exegesis that you would use to demonstrate those truths from Scripture?

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I would think that the book that I'm writing, the blog that I've written, the podcast,

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I go into a lot more deeper exegesis. This is a 20 -minute presentation for the beginning of a debate. Irrelevant.

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100 ,000 % irrelevant. Just dodge the question. Notice advertising a

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Kindle book, my webcast, all that. So what I asked, I asked, is this method of exegesis the same method that we would use elsewhere?

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Now unless he's saying, well, I couldn't, I'm sorry, I couldn't open the Bible and defend any of the cardinal doctrines of the

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Christian faith in 20 minutes, if that's what he's saying, wow, what can

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I say? After watching this, I'm getting to the point with him where I'm beginning to wonder if this isn't the way he processes everything.

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And I would really fear what would happen if we witnessed him going back and forth with a

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Mormon or a Jehovah's Witness or a Roman Catholic as to what he would cobble together as an apologetic.

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It's so many different things. It would have a lot of stories in it.

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Well, the repeated desire to shoehorn the prodigal son into the heart of Romans 9 and make that the a priori lens by which it's interpreted, it blew my mind.

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Yeah, well, my point that evening, and it stands this day,

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I'm done with that, go ahead and pull that down. It stands this day. It was not the same methodology.

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And that establishes my thesis from the start. So cross -ex is good.

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Cross -ex is always good. The videos are up. Well, even

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Red Grace put up something today but it had some problems with YouTube or something. I forget what it was. I jokingly said it was the dog chewing on the cable.

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But anyway, there will be more stuff appearing. And so you can listen and watch to your heart's content.

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Even my daughter tweeted that she was watching. And so there you go.

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Let's get to the phone calls. And the first one's on the exact same topic.

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Well, pretty close. That's why I wanted to get to it. Let's talk to Jarrett. Hi, Jarrett. Hi, Dr.

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White. Thanks for taking my call. Hey, is it humid down there? Oh, man, it's incredible. You can't even imagine.

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That's a silly question to ask anyone in New Orleans, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, it's a swamp.

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It's an appropriate thing to call it. Anyway.

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Try and get used to it. But yeah, that sounds like I called in the right day with this question. I've been listening to your teaching about monergism and synergism.

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And I just have a question for you about means, how

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God ordains the means of salvation through the preaching of his word, as taught in Romans 10.

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You know, how then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? How should they believe in him in whom they have not heard?

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And how should they hear without a preacher? So God ordains the means, and I believe that you agree with that.

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That people need to hear the word of God preached to them, and that's part of the plan of salvation that God has ordained.

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Is that right? Yes, that's certainly classical Reformed theology, always has been. That God ordains the ends as well as the means, that the very purpose that we, the reason we stay here in this world is to be conformed to the image of Christ, to be used by God as the means by which he spreads the gospel, builds his kingdom, subdues the nations, etc.,

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etc., and that that is a part of the divine decree itself, and that the means are real, just because they're a part of an eternal decree does not make them any less real.

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In fact, that is the very guarantee of their being important and meaningful in God's sight, just as the

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Incarnation demonstrates the same thing. So yes, most definitely, we are called to be the instruments in his hand, and that is to our great benefit and to his glory.

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Okay, good. So then I guess my real question is,

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I've heard you say that if someone says that there's a condition on salvation that we need to believe first and then we're regenerated, that that would be called synergism.

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Well, yeah, because it is asserting that man has a capacity and ability that first of all the

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Bible says he does not have, he's dead in sin, he's not able to do what is pleasing to God, and obviously humbling yourself, repenting, believing these are all things to be pleasing to God, and Romans 8 makes it very clear that man does not have that capacity while he is in the flesh.

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So in most systems, that ability ascribed to man becomes the deciding factor as to whether God's efforts to save someone are going to be successful or they're going to fail.

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And so that's the very definition of synergism, is that the synergistic perspective is that there is at least two, or maybe more, but multiple forces working together to bring about the ultimate result of salvation in any individual's life, and if any one of those forces is missing, then you're not going to have salvation.

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So God can do 98%, but it's that 2 % of man's free will, self -humbling response that determines whether God's going to be successful in saving that individual or not.

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That's synergism. Now, it can be very simple synergism, or it can be very complex synergism in the sense of you've got the entire sacramental system of the

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Roman Catholic Church. I mean, that's synergism taken to the nth degree, and then there's everything in between.

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Okay. Well, okay, so I guess this really gets down to it, then. I don't understand how

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God ordaining the means through the preaching of His Word would not then be considered synergism according to your definition.

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Well, because you're confusing what the issue is. Synergism, monergism has nothing to do with means.

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It has to do with capacities on the part of God and the sinner. And saying that God uses means to glorify

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Himself, to bring about the proclamation of the Gospel, anything else, is not giving to the means the capacity of bringing about salvation themselves.

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It's just simply saying this is how God has chosen to operate. It's not saying that the preaching of the

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Word is one power, and the Spirit's another power, and the person's another power, and the

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Father's one power, and the Son's one power. No, that's just confusing what's being spoken of.

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When we talk about synergism, we're saying that there are multiple wills involved, multiple workings involved, to where you have to have agreement between these to bring about salvation.

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That has nothing to do with the fact that God chooses to use means in the sense of bringing

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His Gospel to bear upon someone, and the Spirit of God then making those words to come alive in someone's heart.

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The real issue is, is the Word and the Spirit enough to bring about salvation?

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That's God's work, monergism. Or is the Word and the Spirit insufficient without the addition of the human will?

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Synergism. That's the difference between the two. Okay. Yeah, because it just seems like, at the beginning of your response, that would be the same thing that I would say about synergism, is that there's not more than one power that's saving there.

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It's just part of the means that God has ordained as His plan for how to save people.

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So the human will, the will of the rebel sinner who is in a position of hating

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God, who is suppressing the knowledge of God, that will is actually part of the means that God uses to save them?

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I believe so, yeah. That's what the Bible is teaching. So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the

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Word of God. Okay, how do you explain then that,

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A, faith is described as a gift given by God to His people in a number of different places,

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Philippians 1 .29 just comes to mind, and B, the teaching of Romans chapter 8, that those who are according to the flesh are not able to submit themselves to the law of God and cannot do what's pleasing to God.

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Is it pleasing to God to humble yourself? Absolutely, if you're humbling yourself to Him, yeah.

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Is it pleasing to God to have faith in Jesus Christ? Of course. Is it pleasing to God to repent of your sins?

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Yes. So those who are in the flesh, according to Romans chapter 8, can't do that, right? Right, and I understand that argument.

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I think that, you know, obviously the

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Father is drawing us to Him. Jesus Christ said

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He would draw all men unto Him. You know, so it's not an act of our will apart from God's work, of course.

38:32

And I just, I can't see using that one verse, you know, as a carte blanche of saying that that applies to the act of salvation also.

38:48

Wait, wait, wait. You're talking about Romans 8? Where Paul introduces the whole section on salvation.

38:55

We shouldn't use that verse as a carte blanche for salvation. But you will

39:00

A, contextually cite John 12, 32 without noticing its context, which has nothing to do with the application you made of it.

39:07

Because when John 12, 32 was written, Jesus was hiding Himself from the

39:12

Greeks who were coming to Him. And all men therefore means Jews and Gentiles and hence has no application to your use at all.

39:19

You'll take that as a carte blanche and apply it to everything. Whereas if you take John 8, where it's right at the beginning of an extended discussion of salvation itself and say that doesn't really apply to everything,

39:32

I think you have it backwards. I think you have it backwards, Jared. What you need to see is

39:39

Romans 8 is a universal statement and John 12, 32, you've put it in the wrong context.

39:46

Got it backwards. That would help explain it. Okay. All right. Take a look at that. I think you'll see how that works.

39:54

Okay. Appreciate it. All right. Thanks for your call. Appreciate it. All right. Thank you. Bye. All right. Let's get to Jeff in Philadelphia.

40:02

Hi, Jeff. Hi, Dr. White. How are you? Doing good. All right. So I'm the person who called you last

40:10

August about the Pope coming to town. Okay. Coming to Philadelphia in September.

40:16

Yes. And I took your advice and we actually started arranging or planning to do an evangelistic outreach when the

40:25

Pope arrives. And I wanted to ping you.

40:32

Sorry, I'm a computer science guy, so sorry for using ping in a sentence. I wanted to talk to you and get your opinion on, for people who are planning to go out with us and talk to Catholics, do some street evangelism, we're going to make our campaign generally themed around justification by faith alone, probably not going to use those terms, and I know we're going to train our people on soul scriptura issues and stuff like that.

41:05

And I was just thinking, since we're going to run the gambit for the Catholics that we're going to talk to, probably from religious to, you know, cafeteria

41:17

Catholics, I was wondering what specific issues should

41:23

I not miss in terms of training our people? Well, you know,

41:31

I think if you look over the debates we did on Long Island, you'll see the range of topics that you're going to be running into.

41:41

Obviously, authority issues are fundamental, especially people who are going to be traveling to see the

41:48

Pope and things like that. We did groups like Catholic Answers and stuff that could be out there, and they're going to be looking for you.

41:55

So they're going to want to interrupt your opportunities. They're going to find where your people are, and they're going to set up nearby, and they're going to try to engage you, and they'll have their literature to pass out and stuff like that.

42:07

I've been trained by Jesus for Jesus, so I know how to work. We're going to definitely train our people on not wasting our time with people who are just there to interrupt us.

42:16

Well, good luck. I don't believe in luck, but they're trained well, and the venues sort of limit the space that you have.

42:29

When we were in Denver when this happened years and years ago, my goodness, 22 years ago, there were only a certain number of places you could go to really have access to folks.

42:42

So they will be there, and a lot of those folks are going to be the types of folks that are going to have lots of questions on authority issues, sufficiency of Scripture, issues of the papacy, how anyone does interpretation, things like that.

43:00

Obviously, those are the fundamental questions that you want to be able to raise and to address.

43:07

When you get into the issue of justification, certainly with Roman Catholics the primary issue is the issue of peace.

43:16

I would focus upon the sacramental system and its incapacity to bring a person to the position of having peace.

43:25

That's vitally important, and that can allow you to really get past a lot of the surface level...

43:31

Are you still there? I'm still there, yep. It sounds like you're either shoveling snow or being attacked by an alien.

43:37

I'm not sure which one it is. Oh, no. While I was on hold, I was doing some stuff. Okay. I'm moving some stuff around.

43:44

Sorry. Okay. It might assist you in getting past a lot of the surface level objections to your position to directly go to whether the person has peace.

43:56

How they can know they have peace. How they know that they have a right relationship with God.

44:02

Those things are really important. The nature of the Mass, that type of stuff, really needs to be something that people have a good handle on.

44:12

And, of course, obviously, if you start talking about issues regarding the Mass, the issue of the

44:18

Atonement and what we believe about it will become central there as well. Gotcha.

44:23

Okay. If you guys could be praying for us, I'd appreciate that. Yeah. I was initially going to try to get up there, but September is completely shot for me.

44:35

Oh, that's with... Yeah. He's in touch with Chris Arnson, and he's...

44:44

He basically told me your schedule was packed. Yeah. The irony, Jeff, is the next person up happens to be

44:51

Chris Arnson, so we'll try to sneak him in here real quick. All right.

44:56

All right. Thanks, Jeff. All right. Thanks for talking to me. God bless. Bye -bye. All right. Speaking of which, ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages.

45:07

I was going to say, we might actually need a theme for this. We should. Well, we've got plenty of sound files from the older days, musical sound files.

45:22

Involving Chris Arnson, which we could utilize them. Especially Party Hardy and Marty Luther. Oh, there you go. Oh, that would be great.

45:27

That would be great. But it's exciting today, because you probably saw on Facebook, that starting

45:35

June 1st, with yours truly as the kickoff guest, which

45:41

I wrote back and said, you're really scraping the bottom of the barrel already, aren't you? Is none other than the great,

45:48

I mean, I'm just surprised that he would even slum now with a small little podcast like this.

45:54

But we have the host of copper sharpens, no, iron, no, jade, no.

46:05

What is it? Iron sharpens iron. That's right. There we go. Steel, silicon,

46:10

I forgot what it was. Well, as our Muslim friends call it,

46:16

Iran sharpens Iran. I am very excited about launching the show with you as our first guest,

46:27

God willing, and can't wait for it, brother. I really appreciate your willingness.

46:32

Well, of course, I'm just hoping, Chris, that this time you will have someone go over the technical stuff with you.

46:44

Because if I'm on with you, and all I keep hearing every about seven seconds is, boop, boop, boop.

46:56

I'm not going to be able to keep from just laughing my head off that the call waiting thing is beeping.

47:06

Now, to be fair, I did go over some things with him. When? A couple months ago.

47:14

He's slept since then, Rich. Come on. That was my fear. That was my fear.

47:23

Well, I do plan on doing some dry runs before we actually launch the show. That's a good idea.

47:30

That's a good idea. Hopefully, I will have a computer geek in the room with me, at least for the first week.

47:36

That would be very good. That would be very good. Because, look, I'm sitting here,

47:41

I've got Rich on the other side, and we still do really wild and crazy things. So, what can

47:47

I say? What can I say? Well, I have a two -pronged question, if I have time for it.

47:55

Yeah, sure. They're both involving the debate with Leighton Flowers. The first part of it is, it is obviously always baffling when you are involved in a debate with somebody who claims to have been a

48:11

Calvinist at one time. Yeah. When they seem to be completely ignorant of some of the things we believe, especially in regard to his equating equal ultimacy with double predestination.

48:24

Right. I couldn't help but to think that either he thinks

48:30

Calvinists believe men are by nature morally neutral and God has to impose evil upon them, or he believes that men are created or born morally neutral.

48:45

I couldn't help but get beyond that thought, because of his horrific reaction to double predestination.

48:55

Obviously, if he was a Calvinist, he must have known that we do not believe that man requires a supernatural intervention of God to make him evil.

49:07

They seem to be insinuating that. Well, yeah, and there's a number of times in his podcast he has said he does not understand why

49:17

I say, specifically, it's not that I'm the only one that says it, but why I say that God restrains evil.

49:24

Because he says he's just restraining himself. He just simply will not allow for the reality of events in time.

49:33

As I've said many, many times, he doesn't get it. There's nothing I can do about it. Try not interested in wasting more time on it.

49:40

But he conflates the eternal decree with events in time, so it's all just this two -dimensional thing.

49:49

And so if God has decreed it to happen, then that's it. And therefore, the idea of restraining, you know, man may have a nature that's evil, and Joseph's brothers may have wanted to kill

50:05

Joseph, and God kept them from doing that. But because he decreed he was going to do that, then their desire was an irrelevant thing anyways.

50:13

So he just washes out really the essence of why history is real, and God's interaction with us, and all the rest of this stuff, and just makes it this two -dimensional thing.

50:25

He says, I can't do that. And I mentioned very briefly in Facebook, in the closing statement, when he promoted free will theism, and I mentioned on the program, the last program

50:39

I did, this free will theism thing, defining your

50:44

God on the basis of his creature, is really dangerous.

50:50

I know somebody else who did that, his name was Joseph Smith, and Brian Zond, and all the rest of these folks.

50:58

The only way that free will theism has any meaning is if we're talking about God's free will, not man's free will.

51:05

Anything else, I find that very phrase to be grossly dishonoring to God and disrespectful.

51:11

But anyways, that's neither here nor there. Why did

51:16

Rich put up ecumenism as your question? That was the second part of my question. Okay, there we go.

51:23

Some people might have left that debate, left listening to it, watching it, thinking that Leighton Flowers was the kinder, gentler debater in regard to ecumenism between Arminians and Calvinists.

51:40

Yes. But obviously that was a fallacy, because he would only encourage support of your ministry if you ceased to be a

51:47

Calvinist. But the question is, how far can we cooperate with Arminian brethren?

51:57

And obviously, you didn't mention it at the end of that debate, but you obviously do cooperate, like with your very good friend,

52:06

Dr. Michael Brown, and so on. You do cooperate with Arminians. You believe that there is an arena for Calvinists to be involved in such an ecumenism.

52:18

So if you could just elaborate on the level to which you believe we can work arm -in -arm with Arminian brethren.

52:28

Well, yeah, I think in a sense, I have sought to provide a real good example of that.

52:36

And obviously, Michael and I are an example of that. But even at the same time, in talking with Michael about how we would respond, for example, if we were in a debate on homosexuality and issues of the gospel came up,

52:59

Michael affirms justification by faith and sola gratia. And obviously, I argue that he's inconsistent.

53:07

For example, who debated Brian Zahn in defending penal substitutionary atonement?

53:14

It was Michael Brown. Now, he even said in that, my dear friend James White says,

53:19

I'm inconsistent about this. But that's what he did. I would not be able to do a debate with an

53:28

Arminian who is defending free will theism on almost any subject. Because and that's obviously not what

53:37

Michael's defending, but because of the reality that, well, as that Emilio put out that article today,

53:48

Emilio Ramos put out that article today on his own website where he was talking about my response to that thing that happened at the end of the debate and saying, hey,

54:00

I can't cease being who I am. This is definitional to who I am. And I'm going to answer questions from a homosexual or an atheist or whatever from a thoroughly reformed perspective.

54:11

And if someone is inconsistent, that's one thing. But if someone has taken a stance directly opposed to the freedom of God, et cetera, et cetera.

54:22

Yeah, that does actually close the door for cooperation as far as standing side by side at that point.

54:28

It's that blessed inconsistency that allows allows for the measure of cooperation that we actually do have.

54:38

And that is that's a huge issue. I mean, it's just amazing how many people will actually try to say, well, you know,

54:47

I really love what you do in apologetics. I just wish you weren't a Calvinist. I just want to go. Are you listening to me? I mean, are you hearing me seriously?

54:56

Because it's it's the foundation of everything that I do. I don't I don't understand how people can take that perspective and do that kind of thing.

55:05

And by the way, in answer, in response to what you said, some people might think that that he's the kinder, gentler.

55:14

Rich mentioned Rich mentioned this, he listened to it and he didn't get to hear it live. And then when

55:21

I watched. Layton's presentations. I'm sorry, he seems really angry to me at a number of times.

55:33

Just I mean, he got into the Southern Baptist rock and back and forth reading, you know, and unfortunately, he chose to read everything he was saying and that didn't help.

55:43

But I don't know that I looked like the meanie this time, unless you only interpret that as someone who is obviously comfortable doing what they're doing and asks pointed questions and makes conclusions.

56:01

You know, people find that to be nasty these days. But but as far as you know, I'll put my 20 minute opening statement up against his any day as far as niceness goes, because.

56:14

He just seemed he just had a scowl on his face and was ripping and snorting, and a lot of people said, wow, he really doesn't like Calvinism, does he?

56:24

And I'm like, yeah, I said that for a long time. See, I didn't get around to listening to it until yesterday morning, and I listened to the high quality version of it over my stereo system at home while I'm working.

56:36

And I'm like. Wow, this and I'm thinking,

56:43

OK, I'm trying to picture in my mind, you said he was reading everything. Yeah. And I'm thinking. I know what

56:49

Southern Baptist passion is. OK, you and I come out of that Southern Baptist tradition from long ago.

56:57

I know what that is. And this is just. Angry, deep, angry, and I'm just like, wow, it's where in the world is this coming from?

57:09

And yes, it was a great contrast to your approach, which is simply I mean.

57:15

Yeah, essentially just read the text and made a few comments along the way. Yeah, yeah. It seemed to me he was playing both good cop, bad cop at the same time because he would say harsh things and then try to make up for it and do damage control by offering these very flowery comments about how much he loves

57:37

Calvinists and you in particular. Well, obviously Leighton says everything in a flowery fashion.

57:47

That was unintended on there. I know. And and you would probably tell everybody that until I met you,

57:57

I never even would have thought of pointing it out. Right. I think that's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

58:05

So, yeah, there you go. There you go. Hey, Chris, I got two more people got to sneak in here. And Wade, Kyle, hold on.

58:11

We'll get to you. We'll go a few minutes long. But looking forward to having iron sharpens iron back.

58:18

And all I can say is I just I just I just hope you get the technical stuff this time.

58:27

I do, too. Believe me. All right. We'll talk to you later. All right. All right. God bless. All right.

58:34

Wade and Kyle, we're gonna have to be quick here, but not so quick that we can't talk. Let's talk to Wade real quick.

58:39

Hi, Wade. Hey, Dr. White. Howdy. Hi. I just had a question related to Chris's question, but more particularly about church fellowship.

58:49

I'm a Calvinist and I'm serving in a Southern Baptist church alongside guys who graduated from Southwestern.

58:56

I'm really hoping your real name isn't Wade. I don't think they'll be listening to this program.

59:02

Oh, no, no, no, no. I'm sorry, Wade. They they do. And I know people who have lost their jobs at a

59:14

Southern Baptist church for calling this program the level of anti -Calvinist derangement syndrome in some of the highest levels of the

59:26

Southern Baptist Convention is shocking. I am not. I wish

59:31

I was joking with you right now, but the reality is it is at that level. It's it's amazing.

59:39

Amazing. So your name. I'm sorry. I misread this. Your name is

59:44

Peter. Yes. That's right. That's right. Exactly. And I'm glad I didn't say where you're calling from.

59:51

Sheesh. Yeah, I just had a question just about your advice for Calvinists within the

59:57

Southern Baptist Convention with that anti -Calvinist derangement syndrome that you just mentioned operating there.

01:00:05

Are these issues? I mean, I know these issues are important, and I'm trying to figure out if they are important enough to obviously to talk about.

01:00:14

But are they important enough to divide over? Where are the dividing lines, if you will?

01:00:20

I know you like that term, but just kind of working within the

01:00:26

Southern Baptist Convention as a Calvinist. And I know you've had experience with that. What are your thoughts on that?

01:00:31

Well, I'm going for it now. Yeah, my first suggestion is body armor. Yeah. Secondly, I don't even know how to answer this question anymore because it would require that there be some willingness on the part of the other side to not engage in scorched earth methodologies.

01:00:58

And as far as I can tell, there's not. I mean, I'll just be perfectly honest with you.

01:01:04

There are leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention that are far more afraid of Calvinism.

01:01:12

So afraid of Calvinism, in fact, that they will allow their students in their seminaries to not get the best education on subjects such as Mormonism, Islam, Jehovah's Witnesses.

01:01:27

They will trade that off to keep them from being around a Calvinist. I know of a particular situation where the best qualified teacher with tremendous experience in Islam and in Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses and writing on the

01:01:48

Trinity can't allow that person to teach because he's a Calvinist.

01:01:54

So when you've got that kind of mindset, they will come after you.

01:02:00

I mean, there are certain churches in Southern Georgia where they will sick their dogs on you and hunt you at night.

01:02:09

I mean, they're just that focused. And I don't know how anyone can survive in that situation.

01:02:14

Obviously, for many years, there have been churches where there was allowed to be conversation and discussion.

01:02:25

But when it eventually boils down to what's going to be preached from the pulpit, you have to make the decision as to whether it's going to be a man -centered gospel or a

01:02:36

God -centered gospel. Now, I'm thankful that there have been Southern Baptists who've presented a

01:02:42

God -centered gospel even when their theology wasn't quite sufficient enough to actually explain why they said it that way.

01:02:49

Again, that blessed inconsistency. But these days, there's such a well -known recognition of what the issues are that, man, it's made it all that much tougher to find yourself a place where you have that freedom and that space to discuss these issues without the kind of recrimination that is being demanded by many people.

01:03:11

So I'll just be perfectly honest with you. There are some situations you can't survive. There just are.

01:03:18

There are others where you can. It all depends on the context you find yourself in.

01:03:25

It really does. But I wish I could say it's just something you can put off to the side, but it is the difference between a man -centered gospel and a

01:03:32

God -centered gospel. And that ends up determining how you do everything.

01:03:37

It determines how you do funerals. It determines how you go to hospitals and minister to sick people. And it determines how you do music and how you do worship and what you preach about prayer.

01:03:46

And, yeah, it's vitally important. And I can't soft -sell it.

01:03:53

I can't soft -sell it at that point. You know who to talk to about that is the founders, folks. They're the ones that are in it and have the investment in being able to survive in that context.

01:04:08

Sorry, I wish I could give you a rosier picture, but it just seems that over the past, especially 15 years or so, there's been a real hardening of the lines.

01:04:18

And maybe it's the advent of social media and the Internet and stuff like that. I don't know.

01:04:24

I don't know. But I just am hearing so many horrible stories of just the

01:04:37

Inquisition and have experienced it myself. I just have to be honest with you.

01:04:45

Well, I appreciate it. Thank you very much. All right. Thanks, Wade. All right. Thank you. All right. God bless. Bye -bye. All right.

01:04:50

Bye -bye. All right. Real quickly, Kyle, First Timothy 410, let me just ask you real quickly, do you have the

01:04:56

Potter's Freedom? Yes, I do. Do you have the new edition of the Potter's Freedom? Yes, I do.

01:05:03

Okay. Then it must be about what I said about that in the book. Yes, it is.

01:05:09

Good. All right. That helps. Go ahead. Okay. And actually, this relates to how we render, for instance,

01:05:18

Acts 1348, where the translation, as many as were appointed to eternal life, you had suggested that the translation, as many as were disposed to eternal life, that there's a mountain of evidence against that, just based on the fact that there's no major translation that renders it that way.

01:05:40

Unless you want to count the New World Translation, right? Well, that's not the only argument that I make on Acts 1348.

01:05:49

I mean, Luke's grammar, Luke's utilization of the term, there's a whole lot more, and that was explaining why you don't have any major translations that render it that way.

01:06:02

Right, right. And just real quick, when it comes to how you would translate, then, 1

01:06:08

Timothy 4 .10, I don't notice any major translation translating it as, the

01:06:14

Savior of all men, that is, those who believe. It's the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe.

01:06:21

And I just wanted you to maybe elaborate on how you would defend that translation, not using a double standard in your approach to this text, as opposed to the

01:06:31

Acts 13 text. Well, as I point out in the appendix, you have a number of references in the papyri that use malista in the same time frame, in that exact way.

01:06:50

And as a result, you have an understanding, even from Arminian scholars, as I cited them, that that fits very well with the flow and context of the discussion of what, the use of the term soter, especially in the pastoral epistles.

01:07:12

The difference with Acts 13 .48 is you don't have anything in the

01:07:20

Lucan narrative, anything in Luke's utilization of those terms, that would require you to even raise the issue of self -disposition as the issue in regards to why it is that someone is saved and someone is not.

01:07:40

I don't believe that either Acts 13 .48 or 1 Timothy 4 .10 can be placed in the list of central text, because they're both making passing comments.

01:07:52

It's not Romans 9, it's not Romans 8, it's not a lengthy didactic passage or anything like that.

01:07:59

But it is interesting that when you have the very traveling companion with Paul, who would be exposed to Paul's teaching,

01:08:11

Paul's teaching in Philippians 1 .29 or Ephesians 2, whatever it is in regards to the nature of saving faith, there's perfect consistency in the phraseology, the way that he renders the

01:08:25

Apostle's language there in Acts 13 .48, with what the Apostle himself taught. To make it dispose yourselves,

01:08:33

I can't think of anything that would be parallel to that in Paul's theology. In the pastoral epistles in 1

01:08:39

Timothy 4, you've got the exact same thing. In Titus, he's going to use the language in Titus 3 .5

01:08:47

-7 that's going to be parallel. You've got Paul's entire theology.

01:08:53

It fits with Paul's entire theology, whereas disposing yourself or something like that does not.

01:09:00

I don't know if there are papyri utilizations of the terminology in Acts 13 .48

01:09:08

that could be made parallel to that. But I believe it was – was it Sweet that I was looking at there?

01:09:19

Because I know I thought I had cited it in here, or maybe

01:09:27

Knight was citing him. I don't remember. But I actually thought

01:09:32

I had the reference to the papyri article somewhere in here.

01:09:38

It might be within one of the actual citations. I can't find it right now.

01:09:49

Anyways, I'll look for it later. But I provided the citations.

01:09:56

George W. Knight gave the citation. I think it's probably in the footnotes in Knight now that I think about it, to Sweet's article on this particular subject as well, which provides that kind of – no, there it is.

01:10:09

Skeet, Skeet, not Sweet. There it is. In other words, if malice does function in the same fashion as it does in particular secular doctrines of time, as noted by Skeet, a long -time keeper of manuscripts at the

01:10:17

British Museum, an expert on ancient papyri manuscripts, it would be identifying the all men of whom God is Savior by the normative

01:10:23

Pauline term, those who believe, et cetera, et cetera. So I didn't give the

01:10:28

Skeet reference, but it's easily findable. So that's where I see the difference.

01:10:34

I wasn't arguing that, well, you just got all these translations, especially because in 1

01:10:41

Timothy 4 .10, what does the translation mean by its rendering? Especially those who believe it has been understood in a number of different ways, but ordained or disposed requires a completely different understanding of the function of that particular construction.

01:10:59

Very different understandings. So I think I see a difference there as well. Sure. So the translation committee didn't pick up on it, but it wouldn't have been inappropriate for them to render it.

01:11:12

Still there? Hello? Yeah. It's a party line. All right, cool.

01:11:20

This is an important message for business owners. Attention, business owners. Hey, Kyle. I'll let you go.

01:11:27

Thanks. Don't know what that was about, but it wasn't on our end.

01:11:34

What? What happened? How does that happen?

01:11:39

It's call transfer. It grabbed his line as part of the automated system because after four o 'clock, we switched back over to our main system.

01:11:49

Oh. I didn't expect that to happen. So that was a... Oh, I get a lot of robocalls. Oh. Yeah, yeah.

01:11:55

Sorry. The robocall got you. We thought it was coming for you, but it was actually... I really, really detest robocalls.

01:12:03

Especially since a lot of the robocalls I'm getting now say, Attention, seniors. I've actually sat through a couple times.

01:12:15

I want to go ahead and talk to somebody, and as soon as you say, please take me off that list, all of a sudden, they're not happy anymore.

01:12:21

They're not nice anymore, and they don't do it. Anyways, sorry about that. Thanks for listening to The Dividing Line today.

01:12:30

I don't see any interruptions next week, but please keep that debate on Saturday in prayer with Sheikh Mustafa Omar.

01:12:38

I really hope that goes really, really well and may lead to some others as well. So keep that in your prayers, and we'll see you next