June 27, 2006

In the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded

Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host 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. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the

United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

James White. And good afternoon. Welcome to The Dividing Line on a

Tuesday morning, back to our regular schedule for, well, one week. In fact, it's a little less than a week now until I will be speaking in the

School of Theology at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. Two of our English listeners are in studio right now and they were mentioning the fact that they are reporting to me that the

Metropolitan Tabernacle has excellent air conditioning in the main studio and I am thankful for that. I've never been over there when it was even slightly warm, but they're talking about highs in the 80s and I sort of chuckle.

When I got up yesterday morning to ride, I started riding about five minutes till 5 a .m.

While it was still dark, it was about 86 degrees at that time at the low.

So I'm not really certain that folks in London really have a concept of heat the way that we experience it out here.

But anyway, that's neither here nor there. We will be there next week and so obviously that means we have

The Dividing Line today and then we will have it on Thursday and then I will be at the

Metropolitan Tabernacle for a couple days and then I'll be speaking up in Glasgow on Friday night on homosexuality and the

Bible, which of course is the topic of my debate with John Shelby Spong in November.

And then I will be preaching at Edmonton Baptist Chapel and my dear friend

Roger Brazier and his family there at the church and then coming home on Monday.

I have a feeling that since I'm flying in and out of Gatwick this time instead of Heathrow that Roger's probably just going to stick me in a cab with a guy who doesn't speak

English after the service Sunday night and say, Gatwick, bye, hasta la vista, we'll see you later, and that'll be the end of that.

Speaking of the debate in November, I have a clip I want to start off the program with today.

877 -753 -3341. I can't possibly get in everything that I would like to get in today.

I have Paige Patterson's comments in the Patterson -Moller discussion from the

Sun Maps Convention. I have this clip. I have an article from Roger Olson at the

George W. Truitt Theological Seminary at Baylor University. Once again, basically promoting the same thing that Patterson is.

Same old, same old, but it just keeps getting retreaded. And of course there's this little thing about trying to arrange some debate with some other

Baptist someplace that we probably should talk about a little bit too. So lots to get to on the program today.

So let's get started with a, it's about a four -minute clip here from John Shelby Spong.

Now I think that people need to understand that the debate that is coming up,

I know that people get all excited about debates on the doctrines of grace because the doctrines of grace are very important.

But we need to be engaging our culture and especially our children, our young people, are encountering a tremendously aggressive strain of anti -Christian thought in the educational system today.

And that anti -Christian thought also has people who wear clerical collars supporting it and presenting it themselves.

John Shelby Spong calls himself a Christian, but if you listen to his beliefs, he says

Christianity must change or die. And what he means by that is that the supernatural

Christianity of the scriptures, the Christianity of the Bible, the Christianity of history, is no longer relevant and is not what he believes.

And that's what causes people problems. They see a man wearing a collar and they would expect that at some level there would be some acceptance of biblical authority.

The ultimate authority in John Shelby Spong's theology, if we can call it that, is

Darwin and the current cosmological viewpoints of the world. It is pure and on a level fundamentalist secularism.

Now those are pretty strong words, but I'd like to back them up. And I think anything we listen to will back that up.

But he often uses, because he recognizes the minority status of his viewpoints, he often uses the analogy of the church in exile.

And he really does view his as the true church, and the rest of this supernatural stuff as something that just simply needs to pass away.

And he confidently tells his followers that it is, and it will pass away in a very short period of time in the future.

So in this particular clip he's being asked if the church is in exile, are there parameters for what we can identify as the church.

Let's just listen in and see what he has to say. And it may be useful to ask in view of the theme for the conference,

Faith on the Margins, and Bishop Spong's address, Believe in Exile, Where is the center?

The image of exile, to walk away from the incredible human beings had had up until that time.

Well you don't get much more anthropocentric than that,

I would say. More man -centered, naturalistic, secular, non -biblical.

And so the question that everyone is having is, how can he even begin to debate, is homosexuality compatible with authentic biblical

Christianity, when he doesn't believe there is such a thing as authentic biblical Christianity, and that's the point. And that's what's going to make this a challenge on my part.

And that is, his attack is two -pronged. Spong's attack is two -pronged.

Spong will attack on two prongs, there we go. The first is, he does address issues regarding, he does make the argument that we have misunderstood the

Bible, in regards to what it says. He does the standard stuff in regards to arsenic, and the key terms about homosexuality in the

Bible. So that's a part of the apologetic. But, even if you deal with that, you're still dealing with a secular mindset that does not believe that God has spoken.

That's very similar to, of course, Barry Lynn. I don't think that Bishop Spong is going to go quite so far as Barry Lynn did, to claim that he has revelation, and that he has revelation on the same level as Paul's letter to the

Galatians. Or in fact, he said Paul's letter to the Galatians was over the top, so I guess it would be a higher level of revelation than what

Paul had. He's not going to go there, but he certainly does not believe that there is any way of knowing, even if there was a divine revelation, what that divine revelation is supposed to mean in our context today.

And so, it's going to be very much, I think it's going to be very useful, especially to young people who are going into seminary training, or struggling with the secularism of their friends, and their cohorts in the university setting.

Because he's going to be approaching it from both directions, and he's very much representative of the kind of material that the vast majority of their professors would be presenting to them.

I've been contacted by a number of people who have said that in their educational experience, that they were exposed to, they were instructed to read materials by John Shelby Spong.

And of course, the reason that he's so popular is he's wearing that backwards collar, and so you can always say, oh, we're not being biased against Christianity or anything here.

Here's a Christian saying this. And if you want to definitely have an idea of just how elastic the term

Christian is, in the context of the modern context, that is going to be seen very, very clearly in the debate with John Shelby Spong.

So I mentioned on the blog the day before yesterday, that in light of the current standing and situation, in light of the fact, and I speak now to those of you who actually have put yourself through the unenjoyable task of reading through the correspondence that has been going back and forth between myself,

Tom Askell on the one side, and primarily Ergin Kanner. Emir Kanner, I think, has written one or two emails a number of months ago.

Dr. Bren O'Donnell of Liberty wrote one that pretty much destroyed any hopes of his being able to function as a unbiased moderator.

But it's primarily been Ergin Kanner of Liberty Seminary, Liberty University, and the president of the seminary there.

And I will confess it's been extremely, if you think it's unpleasant for you to read through this stuff, you ought to be in my shoes.

You aren't seeing everything that's going on. You don't see what's going on in the background. You don't see all of the rest of the stuff.

And I'm not talking about correspondence. We have posted all of that publicly, at least as far as the main people are concerned.

I don't think anything that we've discussed before has generated this level of email response.

And if you're wondering, I think I've certainly gotten enough that I could actually make a statistical analysis of how many people are for and how many people are against.

I'd say it's about 70 -30. I think it's pretty much stayed right around there, that out of 10 emails, seven of them will be saying you have to hold the course here as much as it may be disgusting and as much as there may be many unknowns.

You can't, for this reason, everybody has different reasons and so on and so forth.

About 30 percent are saying these guys aren't serious. They don't want this to take place.

You cannot know how they're going to behave. It could be a complete debacle. They could act like complete buffoons.

Don't go there. And I understand both sides completely. Both Tom and I have expressed the fact that if we had our druthers, we would rather not have anything to do with ErgenKanner ever again.

I'm sorry. I think that if I can be blamed for lots of things in this situation, one of them is the fact that I bent over backwards repeatedly for months to respond to vitriolic or dismissive, unkind, most would say insolent and arrogant would be good terms, responses by trying to reason with the man as a brother, by trying to appeal to him as a fellow believer, by trying to get him, for example, to talk to me about other issues so we could build some sort of a basis upon for having other dialogue.

Specifically, my debate with Shabir Ali, the man's a former Muslim, and I kept bringing it up. Again, the documentation shows this.

You can go back and look at it. I kept bringing it up. He never would even comment on it.

He wouldn't say, you know, we're going to be praying for you. We're thankful that you're engaging. He could care less.

And, in fact, I think if anyone sat down and just looked at the amount of material that I have sent to him, the number of points

I've made to him, if he has responded to 5 % of what I've sent to him in a meaningful fashion,

I would be shocked. He chooses what he wants to respond to, and the rest of it just disappears. It just doesn't exist.

And it's real easy in hindsight to look at that and go, well, you should have known. You just should have known that this guy, you know, shouldn't have the position he has.

I can't tell you how many people from former students at Liberty, current students at Liberty, have contacted me and apologized for the outrageous behavior of the dean of their school and the president of their seminary.

They just are absolutely mortified that this man would behave the way he behaves. It's unbelievable.

But I just, you know, I obviously had too high a view of Christian education as a whole,

I guess, to think that anyone could ever truly behave this way. I mean, this isn't the first time

I've encountered outrageous behavior. As I said, Dr. Kanner is the Art Sippel of Baptist apologetics.

He's acting the same way that Art Sippel does. But I expect that from someone like Art Sippel. I don't expect it from the president of Liberty Seminary.

I just, it still completely buffaloes me that someone would behave in this fashion.

And so it's not been a pleasant experience. And I have been,

I said on my blog, we do not know what's going to happen if anything's going to happen on October 16th.

Obviously, the idea that one side could come along and just say, well, if we're going to do this, this is how we're going to do it.

And to simply dishonestly say, well, we want an even level.

We want an even surface and you don't. That's baloney. Anyone who will read the documentation knows that we're the ones trying to get a meaningful debate.

We're the ones trying to get a debate that the audience will be blessed by. Any other side is doing everything they can to throw roadblocks in the midst of that, all the while dishonestly saying otherwise.

I can't see how anyone could possibly even argue that point. The only people who would disagree with that are people who have not bothered to read the documentation.

That's just all there is to it. And so I have, I know Rich has been saying this. I said on my blog, and I need you to hear this.

You have no way of knowing that you're, let's say that something works out. Ergen Kanner all of a sudden starts acting his age rather than his shoe size.

And we work something out to where we can actually debate a thesis statement that makes sense, rather than a heretical one that's, like I said, only makes sense when it's translated into Tongan.

And we have a meaningful period of time in which to debate. Something happens, whether it's a one -on -one debate or a two -on -two debate, something happens on October 16th.

You have no reason to think that you're going to be able to get through the doors. We cannot, no one can guarantee that.

If all the Liberty students, and we've been told that the whole plan is to pack that place out with Liberty students.

I got an email last night from a Liberty alumni saying that he was concerned that we need to watch our back.

He said, I have seen incredible behavior at Liberty Universities. I would not be surprised if you had people catcalling.

I would not be surprised if you had people throwing things. I would not be surprised if you had stuff thrown at you from the bushes as you're walking in.

And I'm like, wow, I've never heard this before. But that's what somebody said, you know. You have to evaluate all that stuff as it comes in.

There's no way, there's absolutely no reason. And I said this on my blog, and so I'm making it clear.

Do not make plans for October 16th, 2006 in Lynchburg.

First of all, we can't guarantee you'll get in. Second of all, we don't know that at the last minute everything just comes flying apart and nothing's going to happen.

We, of course, can prove from our side that we've never done that. We can prove, we can plop down stacks of DVDs and CDs in front of anybody who wants to know how we can do debates.

We have nothing to prove here. We have proven our ability to debate difficult issues with difficult people.

So we've got nothing to prove here. It's the Canners who have everything to prove, because even though Ergen Canner promotes himself on his own personal

Glamour Shots website, as the veteran of 60 -some -odd debates, he won't tell you what any of them are.

He won't show them to you. Oh, well, there's some local community colleges, but nothing big.

Well, show us that you, Ergen Canner, can engage in debates with people with whom you have severe differences in a respectful fashion and hold to your word.

Show us that you've done it. We can do it. You need to show that you can do it. Since we don't have that kind of assurance, then what we're telling everybody is don't even plan to be there.

We've heard people go, I'm going to come from California, man, I'm going to be there. No, don't. If it happens, pray for us.

We're going to make sure this thing is videotaped. I think no matter what, we'd have to bring our own cameras one way or the other, because I don't think we can trust what's going to happen one way or the other.

Let's just be perfectly honest about it. Let's say a debate took place, and we do actually have the opportunity to speak in a meaningful fashion.

You all have listened to what Ergen Canner says. This guy cannot defend the idea that Esau was hated by God because of what he did.

You can't defend that kind of upside -down eisegesis. It would be very ugly as far as the outcome goes.

Boy, all of a sudden, the entire television system could just go completely whack there, and the entire digital tape and everything else would explode.

Aliens beam it up to the mothership. Who knows what happened in that situation? We're going to have to do all this stuff.

Don't make plans. If it's going to happen, we're going to get it recorded, and you're going to be able to listen to it, and you're going to be able to see it at another point in time, but you can't guarantee you're ever going to walk through that door.

So make no plans to be there. I don't need to have – I've debated in places. I remember debating once up in Omaha, Nebraska.

Some of you have heard those two debates. I did the gerrymantics, and one night, the only Protestant, the only non -Catholic

I knew was in that room was an Episcopalian on the front row. That only barely qualifies as a non -Catholic, okay?

So I've been there, done that, got the T -shirt. That part of it does not bother me in any way, shape, or form.

I have said that I will walk into every single one of Ergin Kanner's classes on Tuesday, October 17th, if he wants me to, ha, ha, ha, with nothing but a

Greek New Testament, and I will take on all comers. I'll discuss this with anybody as long as we're allowed to actually have a conversation.

That part doesn't intimidate me, no issues on that level at all. When you've done the types of debates that we've done, the places we've done them, that's not an issue.

So we don't – don't be going, oh, we want to be there to support you. If you want to support what we're trying to do here, then what you need to realize is your support is needed in this – the debate with John Shelby Spong.

It's only two weeks later. It's in a place we can actually guarantee you can walk through the door. It's in a place we can guarantee you that it's going to be done in a meaningful fashion.

It's going to be the place where we can tell you that the debate's actually going to mean something. It's going to be recorded. It's going to be recorded for future generations to look at, and the subject is going to be handled in such a way that you're actually going to be able to be benefited when you walk out.

There's not going to – there's not going to be anybody from our side anyway screaming or yelling or throwing things, and it's going to be done the way that we've proved it can be done with John Dominick Crosson and with Douglas Wilson and with Greg Stafford and so on and so forth, because we're the ones in control of it, and it's been easy to set up.

I mean, in comparison to this circus, it has been – it is absolutely simplistic to set this stuff up.

And so what I'm saying is, if you want to support what

Alpha Omega Ministries is doing in general, and if you want to support what we're trying to do in the Cantor situation, Tom Askell's going to be in the conference that we're having in Orlando.

I'm doing the debate there. That's where your support is needed. Vote with your support.

It's one thing to say, oh, go get them, you know, but if you want to demonstrate that you really do support what we're doing, if you want to make a tangible contribution, then be there in Orlando.

Or if you can't be there in Orlando, then send something in and say, this is for Orlando, this is for what you're doing there.

Do something along – let us know of your support in that way. That – it's within two weeks of that taking place.

It's going to be a very stressful time for me because I'm – in September, I was going to be in Fort Worth.

I'm not going to be there anymore, but I've been disinvited for that, but I'm going to be up in Toronto. And then right after that,

I'm still planning on going to Lynchburg. I don't want to go into details on this right now for the sad reason that we need to make sure we have all our ducks in a row.

And there's the concern about reprisals against people who would actually say they know me in Lynchburg right now.

But we want – we do want to go to Lynchburg, but I'm going to be on my way to Long Island, where we're going to do a debate that is going to demonstrate the exact opposite attitude of what we have gotten from Ergin Kanter and Ymir Kanter and the people at Liberty.

And that is I'm going to be debating Bill Shishko on the subject of baptism, the objects of baptism.

He's a Presbyterian brother in the Lord, and he believes in what he calls oikobaptism, which most people call pedobaptism, but the idea is household baptisms, and the

Presbyterian viewpoint is an Orthodox Presbyterian. And I'm a Credo Baptist. I believe in the baptism of disciples alone, and we are going to be debating that subject, and we're going to be debating a subject that for many people raises just as strong an emotional level as whatever omnibenevolence means to Ergin Kanter.

But amazingly enough, we're able to do this in the bonds of Christian unity.

And that's why, again, I'd like to challenge Ergin Kanter. Where have you ever engaged in a debate on a subject like this and demonstrated that you're able to do so in a meaningful fashion?

I can demonstrate. I've debated pedobaptism before, and it was done in the bonds of Christian unity. It'll be done again

October 19th, three days after October 16th, on Long Island. And that's the way it's going to be done because that's the way it needs to be done.

And then I barely get back home before I turn around and head to Orlando for the Pulpit Crimes Conference, the release of the book at that time.

Obviously, we need to try to make it so that anybody who's at the conference or debate, if they want a signed copy of Pulpit Crimes, my right hand will fall off as I try to sign all those things.

But we'll try to make that a reality as well. And that's going to be a really, really challenging period of time.

But if you want to support what we're doing, then that's where you need to be, and that's how you need to demonstrate your support for it.

And so what's the situation on the Cantor debate? Well, we're sort of back to square one.

We need to find out if these men can actually discuss with us rather than just simply acting as if they are, you know, the divine dictators on high who are able to just say, well, we're going to do it in this format, and we're going to do it this way, and here's the time frame, and here's the subject.

And if you don't like it, then you're a big chicken and you're running away, which is in essence what they want to try to say.

And that's why about 70 percent of everybody is saying you can't let them get away with that. And so that situation,

I'm personally not interested in discussing it for a while. You know, these folks have ignored us for as long as a month at a time without even the courtesy of response.

So I don't see any particular reason why, you know,

I can't take this week to be preparing to speak next week in the U .K., and I'm speaking on Sunday, both sermons, and that does take time to do so and to prepare.

And so that's what I'm going to be doing. And so, you know, John Shelby Spong is going to be a considerably more challenging both of the debates

I'm doing. I mean, to be honest with you, the toughest debate I'm doing between now and the end of the year is with Bill Shishkoe.

There's no question about that. I mean, preparation -wise, that's the toughest one. Spong is going to be the one that has a much wider audience as far as relevance goes, and that's not going to be an easy debate.

This man, if you've listened to him speak, he is able to speak clearly. He is able to address the issue clearly.

He knows the other side. He is able to use humor. And the easiest debate, to be perfectly honest with you, as far as preparation goes, is anything that Ergin Kanner is going to come up with because he doesn't even know the difference between a hyper -Calvinist and a

Calvinist. So if you want to support us, then support us in the ones that are really going to have the long -term value along those lines.

Pray that we have wisdom. Just closing before we take our break, I hear those of you who are saying, just give up on these folks.

I hear you. I'd love to. I would love to. There's no question

I would love to. But the fact of the matter is you also need to recognize that my purpose in debating here is primarily for those students who are going to be there.

I have had so many people who have listened to me on the Bible Answer Man broadcast, for example, and other contexts who were angry with me when they first heard me presenting the doctrines of grace.

But that was the beginning of their struggling with those things because they couldn't answer the biblical presentation that was made.

And as long as we're given equal time and you don't have the just outrageous behavior that even precludes that, then we are going to be able to present those truths in a context where, unfortunately, they're not being heard.

And given the last e -mail that I posted from Eric Encantor that he wrote to Centurion, and we ended up seeing that this was a template type e -mail that he's sending out to a bunch of folks, assuming that it's all over with and we're running away and we don't want to debate, desperately dishonest, desperately self -deceptive.

And people need to know that's just simply not the case. It's pretty amazing when you can say a man who is willing to walk into every one of your classes with nothing but a

Greek New Testament and defend his position is running away. When you can say that, you're a pretty self -deceived person.

You truly are. So that's the situation there. We're going to take our break. Come back with your phone calls and lots more on all sorts of interesting topics here on The Dividing Line.

We'll be right back. The Trinity is a basic teaching of the

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Just having a little chat during the break.

Good idea. If something does take place, if by some miracle of God, intervention takes place and we are able to work something out for the 16th, it would actually be worthwhile.

One of the things that was suggested was, since both Tom and I will be in Orlando at the Pulpit Crimes Conference, then we could arrange to rip the videos out as quickly as is humanly possible.

That would not be easy to do, but it could be possible. And then bring those videos with us.

We can make them available at the conference. And Tom and I could have a session where we do audience questions in regards to the presentations, could even show segments of it.

I'm sure there would be some interesting segments that we could show. And you would actually end up having more direct contact with Tom and I and an ability to interact in that context than you ever could that night in Lynchburg, when you then would have to try to drive 40 miles to the nearest

Motel 6 afterwards. So another good reason to make sure that if you are desirous of showing support for us, that make it

Orlando, not Lynchburg, as far as your plans are concerned. 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number that was called quite some time ago.

In fact, right at the beginning of the program. And that was from Jim in Nashville. Hi, Jim.

Hey, how are you doing, James? Doing good. Good. First off, I know that I'm running a risk by calling you at this particular point in time.

I risk being called one of your minions. Oh, well, you know, the cadre of minions,

I think, is the terminology that is now used. Well, I was working singularly. I find it ironic, by the way, that somebody who works for the guy who headed up the moral majority would call someone else minions.

I mean, the moral majority worked because they operated as a voting bloc who all worked in lockstep.

So I guess Ergen knows what minions are. I have no earthly idea.

Every time I see this stuff, I sit here and go, no, no, he didn't. He did.

And every day just gets weirder and weirder. Yes. And not to bog down on him in particular, but for me, watching this whole thing unfold,

I tried to just kind of patiently watch it go through its steps and tried not to decide too early really how problematic this guy was, because I didn't know anything about him a month ago.

And for me, it was the pimp comment that turned it, that he would admit that he said to Tom Askell that Falwell was going to pimp the debate for him to follow up with that and accuse

Tom because he was willing to go on a cruise or something like that. He misses the point completely that it's not about proper remuneration or even promoting the debate.

It's the idea of talking about Christian things in puerile language. Right. Yeah, he completely,

I don't know if there's just no one back there close enough to him to talk to him.

I honestly don't know what the situation is. But when Tom first told me about that, and of course I knew about it shortly after it took place,

I was starting to laugh. And my first interpretation, again, I try to think the best of somebody, is here's a guy who is trying to be cool.

At 40 years of age, he's trying to act like he's 16, and this is a big term among 16 -year -olds.

And I'm looking at that going, okay, Tom told me that in his encounter with him that he used this language and that he was speaking really quickly and it was a really odd situation.

And since there were a bunch of other people standing around, there was nothing that Ergen could do about the fact that once he mentioned it, he had to admit, yeah,

I mean, there's plenty of witnesses to this. That is what I was saying. And then to turn around, here's a guy who, if you look on his own website, he's spoken at numerous conferences that were not free conferences.

And by the way, Tom's not going on the cruise, on our cruise. He's just speaking at the conference. But all of that aside, it's odd that you'd hear that.

And then this morning, I linked to the article from Charles the Brave attacking both

Phoenix Reformed and Tom's church for being small, as if we're not in line with Spurgeon.

And you just go, well, it doesn't really matter what we do, does it? We're going to get hit one way or the other.

Well, and that is really exactly what I called about was the Bob Ross comment. I went and read that article just before calling in.

Now, we have to be careful. Are you assuming that Charles is Bob? No, I didn't make that leap.

It's just that I knew the original material seemed to be coming from Bob and Charles' repeating stuff. Yes, yes. Well, we don't know that Charles is

Bob. And it was Charles' comments that I linked to. Of course, he had numerous links to Bob Ross' stuff.

But if Charles isn't Bob, he might as well be. Right. Functionally.

I mean, there's certainly enough similarities. Well, I found it interesting that the argument that Charles -Bob was trying to make was the distinction between modern -day

Calvinists and Spurgeon, saying that we can't really claim Spurgeon as any kind of progenitor to what we believe or teach now, that we've gone too far and that we are therefore hyper -Calvinists.

And I'm using the collective we because I agree with what you and Tom adhere to and teach.

And it is also what I continue to adhere to and teach. And so I was looking through a

Spurgeon sermon that I recently read and thought, wait, I think Spurgeon just recently,

I had read him say this. I'm quoting now from Spurgeon. He had just read a bit of the

Baptist Confession, showing that Baptists had historically always been Calvinists. And prior to that, this is his sermon on election,

Prior to that, he had quoted from the 95, I'm sorry, the 39 articles of the faith of the

Church of England and from the Waldensian Creed, I believe. And he says, After all,

I am backed up by antiquity. Oh, so you mean this isn't the first time that someone has decided to use the hyper term as a baseball bat to beat a regular old

Calvinist over the head, huh? That's precisely it. And so the idea, the notion that we've gone further than Spurgeon, and that's why we're called hyper -Calvinists, is completely spurious historically because Calvin, or I mean because Spurgeon himself preached a sort of Calvinism that caused people to call him a hyper -Calvinist.

Even though he clearly differentiated himself from the hyper -Calvinists, just as I have. Right, because he was using historical terminology for hyper -Calvinism and understood what the distinctions and differences were.

Exactly. But that didn't stop the enemies of Calvinism 100 years ago or today from using hyper -Calvinism, as you said, as a baseball bat to try to create disparaging terminology against what we believe.

That's a very good point, and it's sad to have to report that I've had Liberty students contact me, and in fact a

Liberty student sent me the emails that he exchanged with Ergon Kanner when he had heard

Ergon Kanner in his classroom, he was staying out in the hallway, this was within the past couple of months, describing

Charles Haddon Spurgeon as an Amaraldian four -point Calvinist. Now, before someone jumps all over my back, that was

Kanner's terminology, not mine. I do know what Moises Amaral believed, and that's not just simply four -point

Calvinism. You know, when people talk about four -point Calvinism, they frequently talk about Dallas Seminary, and believe me, Moises Amaral and Dallas would not have known each other.

So, anyways, that's a whole other issue. But he was calling him a four -pointer, and this student wrote to him and quoted a number of, which is pretty easy to do, quoted

Spurgeon on a number of issues in regards to the atonement, and the dismissive, arrogant response that he got back from Kanner, that says, well,

I could quote just as many back to you. It sounded like Dave Hunt again, you know, after Dave Hunt says, unequivocally denied, well, he spoke out of both sides of his mouth.

That's not the same as unequivocally denied, is it? You sit back and you go, don't you folks take this stuff seriously?

Isn't that the way you would expect a fellow who identifies himself as a bulldog to act anyway, though?

Well, let's be fair. It's the evangelical pit bull. Intellectual pit bull.

Yeah. Well, he didn't identify himself that way, but he likes it and puts it on his website.

Based on his glamour shots on his website, I went and looked at it. He doesn't just like it. He likes himself, and I think a bit too much.

That has been my greatest apologetic issue. All I have to do is link to that one page.

And you know who, it's interesting to me, in the channel, in e -mails, you know who has commented the most about his glamour shots website have been the women, the husbands of the men that I know.

They're the ones that all go, whoa, look out, run from this guy. He's got, this isn't good, you know, because they all realize, you know, that is just not normal.

Oh, absolutely. So, yeah, it's pretty wild. I try to imagine what would happen if I tried to convince our church that this was a good idea, you know, that I should put pictures up of glamour shots of myself on our website because this would be, you know, positive in some way to the listening audience.

You're looking at moving on from the church, huh? Yeah, exactly. That's like a single vote.

I mean, that's one meeting. That's, you know, I'm gone. And probably that's a good thing.

And it would be a good thing. Thanks for your call, brother. Take care. All right. God bless you. Bye -bye. Bye -bye. 877 -753 -3341.

I'm glad we can still smile and try to have some humor in the midst of odd things.

877 -753 -3341. Let's go to Chris in Indiana. Hi, Chris. Hi. How are you doing?

James, I'm doing fine. How are you? Doing all right. I had the privilege of getting to attend the

Together for the Gospel conference down in Louisville, Kentucky. And gosh,

I mean, you had a gathering there of scholars galore. Actually, I took my 14 -year -old son with me and told him that I didn't know if the men of Christendom would be gathered in one place like this together again in our lifetime.

And it was really wonderful. The worship was wonderful. The encouragement that we got to hear was wonderful.

I got to meet some people that I probably will never maybe get a chance to meet again.

I hope maybe I do. But anyway, they provided us with a ton of literature to take home, which was another great thing.

Free books. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But anyway, one of the books that I was given was one by a fellow by the name of C .J.

Mahaney called Humility, True Greatness. I've heard

John MacArthur say in the past that really, only real Christian love can come from a heart of humility, because only humble people truly love.

I remember him saying that proud people want everyone to love them. I know in my own life

I've found humility to be something that is quite escaping, and to try to strive to be that way has never been easy.

I mean, it certainly doesn't come naturally. I've read much of the dialogue between you and Erkin Cantor.

You know, you can't help when you read these things to get a characterization of someone.

Sometimes the dialogue, especially from his end, reeks of human pride.

I'm not saying that to be insulting. This is my perception of it. Not that I don't struggle with pride my own self.

I kind of wonder if you do, actually, if this debate does come together.

I'm not too certain from just what I've read of you dialoguing back and forth with them that it will.

I mean, if it won't be just an utter meltdown with it becoming insulting.

You know what I'm saying? Well, that can only come from one direction. And I have been in,

I think, of the debate on the mass with Robertson Jenis, where he was quite clear in his disrespectful attitude and so on and so forth.

And people saw that. That made it, obviously, detracted from the discussion of the issue itself.

But, yeah, people do see that. And I have hoped from the beginning that the context and just the gathering itself would act as a restraint upon anyone.

When you're staring into television cameras, you'd like to think that part of your thinking is that this is going to be around for, this is going to follow me around for a long, long time.

I know that acts as a restraint upon me. I know that when I, it's very obvious when you're in front of a group of people and you know this is being recorded.

That impacts you and acts as a restraint upon you. And I think if you look at the difference between the tenor in Kanner's article in the

Liberty Journal and what he writes personally, there's a huge difference in those two things. Now, that's what an editor gets you.

But I think there's also that element of restraint. So I can only, and I've said to Tom from the very beginning in our conversations about this,

I've said, well, you know, when I first started writing, debating Calvinism with Dave Hunt, I had many of the same thoughts and issues going through my mind.

And that is, you know, what really can come from this? He's not going to address these issues in a meaningful fashion.

He's not really capable of doing it one way or the other. And what is my goal here? And my goal was, first of all, that the book's going to go into places that none of my other books would ever go to.

And the same thing with this debate. The debate will go into places that otherwise I'd never have any entrance into because of Kanner's participation in it.

And secondly, the best I can do is try to demonstrate by just the vast difference in my deportments and in my presentation and the biblical centeredness of it and the concern for accuracy in it and so on and so forth, to try to draw the largest contrast

I possibly can, no matter what my opponent does. And that's totally up to me.

That is totally up to my ability to restrain my emotions and to respond in a proper way, no matter what the behavior is on the other side.

And that's why the real issue has to be who the moderator is and making sure that we have equal amounts of time.

Because if that can't be established, then there is no reason to do it.

But if that can be established, that there is no question that I will have the exact same amount of time, then both those men could absolutely melt down if they want to.

All it's going to do is provide a massive contrast. Because I'm not going to melt down. Tom Askell is not going to melt down.

Tom Askell was just... I was talking to Tom yesterday and I hung up and I said,

That guy is just salt of the earth. I just love that guy.

I can't say enough about him. But I know how he and I are going to be. And I have lots of bases upon which to say, look at the situations

I've been in where my opponent has been coming after me with fangs bared and teeth bared and growling.

And what has been the consistent thing that people have said about my debates in those situations in the past?

And that is, how did you remain so calm? And in fact, I become more calm the nastier my opponent becomes.

And I can't tell you why that is, but from the very first debate I did against Jerry Matatix in August of 1990 at Long Beach in front of a 95 %

Catholic audience, that's just the way that I respond in a debate.

And I know that Tom would be the same way. So I can only guarantee that in a situation, as long as we get equal time, there is going to be one side that is going to be focused, that is going to be seeking to present

God's truth. And if the other side goes ballistic and goes nuts and is trying to pull all these other types of behaviors, all that's going to do is in front of that audience and in light of anything that comes from that,

DVDs, whatever, is going to present a tremendous contrast between those two positions. And that's the only thing that I can promise.

And that's why we have to have guarantee that there is going to be fairness as far as the timekeeping and as far as the moderation is concerned.

Because if you don't have that, then there is no reason whatsoever to try to do something because it won't work.

You know, when the scripture says that knowledge puffs up, and I know that you guys are extremely knowledgeable, that you've been to seminary and studied the historical languages and continue to pursue that, how do you strive?

I mean, you know, I've heard some men that I have great, great respect for say that they struggle with pride.

How do you strive to fight against this? And, you know, I know that pride is an evil thing, but yet it's quite insidious also.

And I just wondered if you could maybe give a little bit of advice. Well, part and parcel of it for me is,

I have said for a long, long time, I think anyone who is involved in doing apologetics or doing what we do needs to be a churchman.

They need to be involved in the church. I teach a Sunday school class with, and Charles the

Brave will mock this, but maybe 20 people in it every Sunday morning. And, you know,

I don't have minions of people, cadres of millions of people following me around and everything else.

I take myself quite seriously. And, in fact, there's someone in our chat channel right now who will tell you that one of his biggest burdens in life is that he has a real difficulty trying to convince me that it's worthwhile for me to do stuff, because I keep saying, look, no one,

I don't draw a crowd. No one cares about what I have to say. I mean, there's just a small little group. And I take myself with a real grain of salt.

I mean, I've always said, I don't know why I've gotten the opportunity to do these things. There's a lot of people who are smarter than I am and speak better than I do.

I guess it's just because I'm ugly enough and dumb enough to get myself in these situations. And so I go for it.

But I think if you're in the church and you're doing regular ministry and you're having to do that kind of thing, it helps a lot.

It's only when you become sort of separated from that and you don't have the accountability of a fellow elder.

And I'm always in recognition of the fact that my fellow elder at the church is a much better preacher than I will ever be.

I cannot craft a sermon the way that he can craft a sermon. You know, you're just realistic about yourself.

And once you surround yourself with people that are always pumping you up, you start believing your own press clippings.

And I think that's what we're seeing in this situation. And so you become disconnected from that mechanism that God has provided in the local church that keeps you, quite honestly, humble in that sense and realistic, shall we say.

Well, may God protect us from becoming disconnected. That's a good way to put that. Well, that's why

God's given us the church. I mean, that's his wisdom. And we are to our own detriment when we ignore his wisdom.

You know, I was going to tell you something, too. I've been meaning to talk to you on several occasions. You know,

I didn't realize so long ago that you were one of the folks that sit on the panel there with John Ankerberg in the

King James only debate. I remember seeing that. That was because I had hair and big glasses.

Well, yeah, you know, and you were kind of a, you know, and please don't take offense to this, you look kind of like a small, kind of a skinny guy.

Yeah. And then I saw you on the web, and I thought, man, what's happened to this guy? You know, when I realized, you know,

I saw an older picture than I saw a recent one. I thought, what's happened to this guy? And you looked like you had really beefed up.

And I saw a couple of your buddies on there who looked just like huge, powerful men. And now it looks like you're slimming down again.

I'm fine in a happy medium, yeah. I was on the Ankerberg show. I was in the middle of riding 5 ,000 to 6 ,000 miles a year, and that's all

I did. No protein or anything else. And so I was a skinny little guy. And then in 98, I started lifting.

And then last year, I got as high as 254 pounds, and I had lost all the aerobic stuff.

And so I rode 4 ,500 miles since then. But I've also continued with the protein.

I still lift. So I'm now between those two, and it's a nice place to be. So, yeah,

I've definitely presented a number of different looks, shall we say, over the years. And they're all bad ones,

I think. Anyways, hey, thanks for your call, brother. Hey, thanks. All right, God bless. Bye -bye. I definitely am not a candidate for glamour shots.

So don't worry about it. It ain't going to happen on our website anytime soon. Thanks for listening to The Dividing Line today.

We will be back Thursday afternoon, and then that'll be it for a while, because I'm going to head out to visit my friends over in the

United Kingdom, up in Glasgow, Scotland, as well. And then the week back after that, we'll be back on our regular schedule,

Lord willing. Talk to you then. God bless. We were standing at the crossroads, let this moment slip away.

We must contend for the faith our fathers fought for. We need a new Reformation day.

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