December 28, 2004

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Metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded
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Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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Our host is Dr. James White, Director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an Elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the
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United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. Well, good morning. Welcome to The Dividing Line on the 28th of December, 2004, getting ready for 2005.
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It's going to get here one way or the other, basically. And it's getting here a whole lot faster than any of us expected.
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Going to spend a little time this morning before we take your phone calls probably halfway through the program at 877 -753 -3341, we are going to spend some time doing a year in review, the apologetic year in review of 2004.
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There was supposed to be a beginning part of that, but me and the guy on the other side of the wall just aren't quite clicking.
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Right now, for some reason, there's this big delay between the two of us. Anyway, yeah, that was some lag.
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Oh, well, we try. We do our best. Let's see if this one will work.
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What is thy bidding, my master? There we go. That's what I want to hear from the other side of the wall.
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Anyhow, 2004, you know what? Now, that's just funny. I sort of like that.
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Don't you think that'd be... What is thy bidding, my master? I think every time I call you, you should just...
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In your dreams, pal. I don't think so. Oh, yeah.
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I can't find the forces strong in this one. Anyway, yeah, we did spend a little bit of 2004 goofing off on the program.
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That's part of how we just keep our sanity around here. Looking back, what
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I did is I looked back over the blog, and it's going to be a whole lot easier to do that next year because it'll all be a real blog, but these are just big old honking
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HTML files. And... Rich and Dr. O had a falling out.
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Yeah, actually, last night, we were about ready to come to blows over, I can't find the archives. It's right there.
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No, it's not. It's in the Read More thing. Who's going to look at a Read More thing on December 21st for archives?
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But it's right there. And, you know, it was just sort of, you know, it was fun. Y 'all find out a whole lot more than you should know about what goes on inside the confines of Alpha and Omega Ministries.
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Anyway, looking back over the blog, the first thing that caught my attention, of course, apologetically, was the passion uproar.
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January through March, there was a tremendous amount of discussion.
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There was a lot of different viewpoints were expressed that time.
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The lack of discernment in regards to Roman Catholicism was sadly evident in the vast majority of discussions that took place.
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The lack of knowledge of the issue of the Mass and what Rome teaches concerning that and the fact that for a lot of folks, they just don't care.
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Doesn't matter. It's okay. They want to believe that. That's fine, et cetera, et cetera.
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And, of course, that has continued on in the absolute unwillingness of Hollywood to deal with its own biases and bigotries in the fact that, of course, the passion is going to not even be mentioned at the
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Golden Globes and it's going to get passed right over at the Oscars. And that's going to be their way of saying, look, do it our way or it's the highway.
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These are our awards. They have nothing to do with actual viewership or content of films or anything else.
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And it has been interesting to listen to Michael Medved talking to people, especially to movie reviewers and people like that in the establishment who have not even seen the film and yet they detest it and reject it and so on and so forth.
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The bias and the bigotry, incredible, at least when I responded to the film and pointed out the fact that it is a
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Roman Catholic film presenting a Roman Catholic view of what took place, I knew what
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I was talking about and the liberals don't even care about that. So that was the first big thing.
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And, of course, one of the comments that I made in regards to that was all the people running around going, well, who killed
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Jesus? Was it the Jews? Was it the Romans? Who was it? And I've taken a lot of heat from a few folks who, of course, refuse to actually allow me to speak for myself, they're dishonest individuals, and they will only look at a portion of what
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I said. I quoted Acts chapter 4 and everybody knows that Pilate had a part in it and Herod had a part in it and the
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Jewish leaders had a big part in it and the Romans had a part in it. They were all, however, used of God to accomplish what his purpose and will had predestined to occur,
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Jesus Christ and the Father together with the Holy Spirit. This was a triune action of redemption.
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And so I tried to bring that out, but it's amazing how many people just can only see certain words on a page and then they twist them and go, ah, you hyper -Calvinist, you or something like that.
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And so that was rather interesting. One that really, interestingly enough, has turned out to be a complete flash in the pan that's just of late.
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You look at the website representing this quote -unquote movement and it's deader than the proverbial doornail, which makes you sort of wonder if maybe some of the people in that group have turned on each other and now no longer want to cooperate together.
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But the Reformed Catholicism movement, which is neither Reformed nor Catholic, but this oxymoron movement starts off with a big bang earlier this year and dies with a quick whimper as far as,
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I guess they've said everything they need to say. I mean, once you've expressed your detestation of historic
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Reformed theology and me enough times, what more can you say? You just can't keep saying the same things over and over again.
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And so the flash in the pan for 2004 award goes to Reformed Catholicism.
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The San Francisco gay marriage uproar. Remember when the rule of law was thrown out the window for a few months before someone finally said, oh, you know, this law stuff,
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I guess we do have to sort of follow it a little bit, you know. Remember that for a while?
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Yeah. Well, that was quite the interesting thing. And then Massachusetts, of course, the home of Jonathan Edwards and great men of God the past, chucks
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God's law out the proverbial door. Again, the despotism of king priests called judges.
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Once the rule of law is overthrown, they no longer believe that they are actually simply to interpret the law, but they themselves are the law.
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Well, you see what happens as a result of that. And it is it is a sad thing to see.
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And that is something, of course, that will be continuing for a great deal of time into the future as well.
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Now, one of the biggest events this year, certainly those of you who listen to the dividing line are aware of this, is that this it was in 2004 that I finally did announce my eschatological viewpoint.
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Yes, it was a major event covered by all national news media. And and most people don't even remember what that was all about, actually.
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Obviously, one of the biggest things for me is, in fact, the first thing that came to my mind as I thought of 2004 and situations that I certainly learned from, even though I didn't necessarily want to learn from them in this way, was the
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Mark Seyfried Southern Seminary situation. That's probably to me the thing that I will take from 2004 for the longest period of time in the sense of disappointment, in the sense of I'm not nearly as naive as I used to be.
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And I hope that when the documentation, you know, if anyone actually takes the time to read back over what was actually written by everyone involved, that there will be a consistent response offered by myself that I acted in a certain way that I did not attack anyone.
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I was, in fact, the one who was attacked and only for providing a theological response for for being consistent with what
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I thought people were supposed to believe within a certain category of individuals.
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And so I I can't say it was a positive thing because obviously nothing came of it.
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Well, nothing came of it in the sense of of it. Basically, obviously, at some point the decision was made.
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Let's all be quiet and hope that the you know, the the whole thing is going to go away, that no one's going to talk about this anymore, that it'll just it'll get swept in the rug.
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Nothing was done about it. The statement that Southern released was very, very disappointing and it did not deal with the issues and still doesn't deal with the issues and the issues have not been dealt with.
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It's going to come back up, I think, eventually, simply because if that kind of teaching is acceptable, then there's there's got to be a much wider range of teaching that's going to be acceptable in time.
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It may take time for that to happen. I don't know. I hope that's not the case, but it was a very disappointing situation for me.
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I was contacted by a number of individuals. I was very disappointed at the idea that, you know, don't talk about this kind of thing, don't don't address it in the public venue.
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And it's like, I thought that's why we did what we did. The motivation thing was very, very, very disappointing and very sad along those lines.
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But, you know, we did what we felt was the proper thing to do and would do it again and would have to do it again.
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And we'll continue to try to speak the truth in regards to that issue as well. Of course, the entire
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Auburn Avenue situation is an ongoing situation. We had the debate in November that I think has really, really surprised a lot of folks.
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I think it surprised a lot of folks in the way that it was handled. I think it surprised a lot of folks in the fact that it was very different than what they expected.
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They expected some sort of nuclear war with with all sorts of blood laying around afterwards. And that's not what happened.
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And we've been getting a number of people. Someone just mentioned this morning that they had purchased the debate on DVD and they were inviting someone who was involved in that particular perspective over to sit down and watch it because they felt that the issues were very, very clearly laid out.
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And that makes me feel good. A couple things have happened recently that make me feel real good.
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We had a fellow in channel, I think it was last night or the night before last, sometimes hard to keep track of which night's which.
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But we had a fellow in channel who has left the Mormon church and the beginning of his exit was when he found a tract with a shoe printer had been stomped on lying on the ground in Salt Lake City.
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That was last night. OK. And it was on the book of Abraham. Well, it was the track that that as Rich and I were talking about,
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I wrote and he printed called Men Is Not God. And that's been one of our most effective tracks because it just lays out the facts in regards to the book of Abraham and Joseph Smith's gross misidentification of elements within the hypocephalus found within the
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Pearl of Great Price book of Abraham and LDS scripture. And the attempted responses by certain
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LDS apologists just absolutely boggle the mind. To any rational mind, you just sit back and go, you don't realize just how completely lost you are, do you?
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Every time I mention the name of that track, people go, don't you mean Men Are Not Gods?
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No, Min, M -I -N, is not God. Min is an Egyptian god that appears in the hypocephalus that Joseph Smith interprets for us in the book of Abraham.
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And he identifies as a god sitting upon his throne, revealing to the heavens the grand key words of the priesthood. Min is actually a pornographic god known for his incestuous relationships with people in his family.
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And he's doing nothing about revealing grand key words of the priesthood through the heavens, I can assure you of that, in this particular representation.
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And it's just a tremendously effective means of demonstrating that Joseph Smith was not a prophet.
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He had no concept of what he was talking about. And despite what Richard Mao says, we should probably not be celebrating his birthday anytime soon.
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And so anyway, that was very encouraging. But that's not in regards to 2004.
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It was also encouraging to hear from a lot of folks that the debate with Doug Wilson, they found it to be extremely useful.
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And that's what I had, you know, I told folks, I told a lot of folks, that I wasn't looking forward to this debate because I was concerned about the,
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I just knew that it could go the wrong direction. I wanted it to do what it did.
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And since it did what it did, I'm happy about it. Let's put it that way. And so very encouraging that people are finding it to be useful.
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And that's not the only person. I've talked to a number of people who said, you know, I went into it really not knowing what the issues were.
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And I've had a number of people, I'll be perfectly honest with you, and you on the other side can say, ah. But I've had more than once people said,
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I just didn't understand what Wilson was saying. I just, it made no sense to me.
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But then when you made your presentation, then it made sense to me. And I think on that level that I may have communicated with a little bit more clarity.
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And a part of that, I think, you know, Doug Wilson read his opening statement. And when you read your opening statement,
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I used to do that all the time. I mean, my first number of debates, I had, you know, written and, man,
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I had timed it out. And it's really funny. I've discovered this to be true. I don't care how accurately you time out a written work.
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It will take you longer live in front of an audience than in your office or hotel room or wherever it is you are.
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It will just add a minimum of 40 seconds, a minimum of 40 seconds.
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It's just, I don't know why that is. It just is. But anyway, he read his opening statement.
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And I didn't. I really felt the need to be free to address what
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I felt needed to be addressed in a more, I don't want to use the term personable, but in a freer fashion.
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So that's what we did. That is ongoing. That's going to, if you want a little prediction here, there's going to be an explosion of discussion of the
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Auburn Avenue movement and its relationship to new perspectivism next month. Because the
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Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church Conference comes up next month. And unless something has changed, and I haven't been looking around to see if anything has, but unless something has changed, the cast of speakers includes
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N .T. Wright and I think Richard Gaffin, if that's correct. And so there's going to be, there's some sparks going to fly, but they're not going to fly in the way you think because, again,
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N .T. Wright's a real nice guy. And as a result, people are going to go, wow,
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I don't know why people are just so upset about what N .T. Wright's saying, aside from the fact that completely redefines doctrine of justification, and in essence says that he alone of everyone in church history has ever really understood certain key passages, which should make anybody go, hmm, okay.
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That's going to be really interesting, what's going to come out of that and just watch end of January, end of February you're going to see lots of discussion of that once the tapes of it get out.
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Well, tapes, that's an old term, isn't it? The recordings, the MP3s, the
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DVDs, the CDs. It would be nice if they'd record these with video cameras.
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I would definitely want to get hold of a DVD of that because, in fact,
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I was talking to some folks about the Stravinskis debate and channel, and I was saying, you know, if you really want to enjoy that debate to its fullest, you need to watch it on DVD.
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And they're like, why? I said, because it's the facial expressions that make that debate.
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And if you don't see those facial expressions, you're only getting a part. It's going to impact how you interpret the debate.
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It really, really does. The body language, stuff like that, you really want to view it in that way. So that's going to be an ongoing thing.
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Of course, on the dividing line, we mentioned briefly the clash of cultures and the fact that Christian young people are up against a very anti -Christian culture in regards to my daughter's own letter to the president, which, by the way,
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I've mentioned this before, but she did get a response from President Bush in regards to her letter.
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I do not, to my knowledge, know one else in her class. And remember, only her letter wasn't sent, and she was failed and was never given points for that.
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But hers is the only letter that got a response because, of course, we sent it, and we thank those who got it to the president for us.
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But that, again, illustrated the culture clash, which, of course, at that time of year, was very, very clearly seen in the elections that were taking place and the constant discussion of religion and culture,
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Bible, all the things related to that. There has been more discussion of that than ever before.
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And that's not going to go away. That's going to become more and more and more a part of the cultural discussion that is going on, and we need to be prepared to engage it.
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Then we had one that you might not consider an apologetic issue, but it is relevant,
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I think, and that is the meltdown at discerning reader. Now, I'm not talking about the meltdown as far as behavior goes and cussing people out and basically saying, you know, if you order books from us, this is a ministry, and we'll sort of decide whether we want to get them to you or not, whenever.
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That's not the issue. The issue, when you really look at it, is aside from the meltdown and the rejection of quote -unquote reformed publishers and reformed authors, and I've talked to a number of the publishers.
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I or people close to me have talked to a number of the publishers, and they have all said that the real issue was that they had sent books that hadn't been paid for, and then when they wanted more books, they said, well, how about paying for the first ones first, and you terrible people were supposed to be doing this ministry, and that was why reformed publishers are really bad.
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Something tells me eventually the postmodern publishers will be doing the same thing, and then they'll become really bad, and I'm not really sure where they'll go after that.
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But the big thing at discerning reader is now this emergent church postmodernism stuff that is being promoted and put out there, and we need to think about this.
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We need to see what's being said here. The emergent church movement, the embracing of postmodernism, will be something that you're going to hear a whole lot more about in 2005.
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No question about it. I honestly don't think, however, that it can become massively huge, simply because to be a postmodernist and to talk about any kind of truth at all just doesn't work.
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They don't go together. Postmodernism is so much against the image of God.
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It takes so much effort to suppress the image of God within us and to suppress the knowledge of God that postmodernism, it's just hard for people to live that way for a long period of time.
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It really is, and so I don't see that as becoming so massively huge. Certainly things like the
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United Church of Christ, that's already, I'll be very, very clear, an apostate denomination that is ripe for any kind of heresy.
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So seeing them embracing that kind of stuff is nothing shocking, but I just don't see how it can get that much larger.
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Now, one of the biggest things, two more things, and then we're going to start taking our phone calls.
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I don't know if we have a break today or not. We've sort of been phasing breaks out. I'm not sure why, but no break today.
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That's crying shame. I like those breaks. Those breaks give me an opportunity to take a little drink of water, take a deep breath or stretch a little bit.
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I mean, all the professional people get breaks, but I don't get any breaks. It's a sad thing.
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It's a very sad thing. Well, I'll just press on. I'll do my best and just trust that we'll make it through.
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Anyway, somebody's going, okay, we can have a break. Oh, I'm so thankful.
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That's very nice of you. One of the major, major, major stories that you're going to hear in 2005 and into 2006 will be the continuation of the
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Da Vinci Code story. Yes, the Da Vinci Code. I'm sorry, when you take a book that has sold between 7 and 9 million copies hardback and is now, you know, you're getting your
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Da Vinci Code coffee mugs, this is the secular parallel to the prayer of Jabez and the purpose -driven life and the purpose -driven church and so on and so forth.
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And when you've got something that is that massively distributed, that is going to be turned into a
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Hollywood movie with Tom Hanks, that's the current word, what it contains, and especially that one section toward the middle of the story where you have the presentation of fiction as if it is fact, attacking the deity of Christ and the
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Trinity is the invention of Constantine and all the rest of the stuff. That is being pounded into the heads of people who are desperate for another reason to not believe.
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And so they're going to grab hold of this, and the first time you say anything about God's Word, the
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Bible, Revelation, boom, they're going to hit you with this stuff and you will have to be prepared to give a response.
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It's not that it's that difficult. I mean, this stuff is childish. Did you notice that I blogged
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N .T. Wright saying the historical foundation that Brown lays is laughable?
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And it is. I mean, it's just stupid. It's just so easy to refute this stuff.
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But how many people are prepared to do so? How many people are prepared to do so?
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Not many. Not many. I'm telling you, you know, if people are just running around trying to learn how to present the four spiritual laws, folks, you need to realize that you're shooting a .22
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at a tank in our society in that situation. It's not going to do anything. It just bounces off. You've got to understand if you're talking to somebody who has heard this stuff, has embraced this stuff, there is a big, huge hurdle standing in your way.
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What are you going to do? Just sit there and quote the Bible at it? That's not going to work because this is undercutting the entire authority of the
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Bible to begin with. You've got to be prepared to respond to it. So that's going to be, that's a big story in 2004, and it's ongoing.
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It is continuing. I think it's symptomatic. It's symptomatic of the disease in our society, really, at that point.
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And what's the last thing that I wrote down from 2004? That would, of course, be the events of November 14th and the meeting in Salt Lake City in the tabernacle concerning the
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Night of Friendship. And especially, and sadly, and I sort of feel sorry for him regarding this, but Ravi Zacharias' name will not be the main name remembered 10 years from now.
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People are going to be sitting around going, ah, yeah, that guy, one guy spoke, but it was Richard Mao, president of Fuller Seminary, who, without warning, produced the equivalent of a sawed -off shotgun placed at the temple of the heads of all of us, myself included, who had been ministering to Mormons for years and years and years, and for myself had invested a tremendous amount of effort into accurately representing what the leadership of the
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LDS Church teaches concerning the nature of God, had published books demonstrating this from original sources, most of which
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Richard Mao has obviously never read, and in the process put a sawed -off shotgun to our head and decapitated us with the resultant blast there in Salt Lake City.
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He handed to farms and to those who would seek to continue the deception of Mormonism amongst
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Mormon people, hence who are enemies of the gospel, one of the greatest weapons they could ever have.
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And that, I think, will be pretty much all that is remembered about that particular event, sadly.
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Great discouragement to all of those who have bent over backwards to be accurate, who have refused to engage in the sensationalism that marks so much of what is out there.
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When Mao said that evangelicals have lied, that's where he lied.
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The problem is, there was an element of truth in what he said if he had just said it right.
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If he had just said, there have been those who represented themselves as evangelicals, who violated our commitment to truth by lying about you.
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That would be a completely different statement, because I myself have appeared on Salt Lake City Radio in company with BYU professors and have named names of people who inaccurately represent
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Mormonism. But that's not what he did. He just chose to use the street sweeper approach, blow us all away, and in so doing, really, he needs to face that fact and repent of it and apologize for it.
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The problem, of course, will be that unless he does that in writing in such a way that the
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Mormons are forced to pick that up, then that's a different issue. Those were the apologetic issues of 2004 that I thought we would throw out there.
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Maybe you have some to add. I know we have at least one caller online already, and you can get online as well at 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341.
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We'll be taking your phone calls right after this break. The Trinity is a basic teaching of the
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Christian faith. It defines God's essence and describes how he relates to us. James White's book,
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The Forgotten Trinity, is a concise, understandable explanation of what the Trinity is and why it matters. It refutes cultic distortions of God, as well as showing how a grasp of this significant teaching leads to renewed worship and deeper understanding of what it means to be a
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Christian. And amid today's emphasis on the renewing work of the Holy Spirit, The Forgotten Trinity is a balanced look at all three persons of the
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Trinity. Dr. John MacArthur, Senior Pastor of Grace Community Church, says, James White's lucid presentation will help layperson and pastor alike.
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Highly recommended. You can order The Forgotten Trinity by going to our website at aomin .org.
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Answering those who claim that only the King James Version is the Word of God, James White, in his book,
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The King James Only Controversy, examines allegations that modern translators conspired to corrupt
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Scripture and lead believers away from true Christian faith. In a readable and responsible style, author
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James White traces the development of Bible translations, old and new, and investigates the differences between new versions and the authorized version of 1611.
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You can order your copy of James White's book, The King James Only Controversy, by going to our website at www .aomin
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.org. The history of the Christian Church pivots on the doctrine of justification by faith.
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Once the core of the Reformation, the Church today often ignores or misunderstands this foundational doctrine.
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In his book, The God Who Justifies, theologian James White calls believers to a fresh appreciation of, understanding of, and dedication to the great doctrine of justification, and then provides an exegesis of the key
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Scripture texts on this theme. Justification is the heart of the Gospel. In today's culture where tolerance is the new absolute,
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James White proclaims with passion the truth and centrality of the doctrine of justification by faith.
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Dr. Jay Adams says, I lost sleep over this book. I simply couldn't put it down. James White writes the way an exegetically and theologically oriented pastor appreciates.
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This is no book for casual reading. There is solid meat throughout. An outstanding contribution in every sense of the words.
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The God Who Justifies by Dr. James White. Get your copy today at www .aomin .org.
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Here I stand, on the ones for all delivered me.
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See how
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I just slide right in there? See over the music? That's how it's supposed to be done. See how that works?
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That's my years of radio. In fact, someone on the channel didn't know.
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I did radio for years. I started, I think, my junior year in high school, and worked through into college, and spent oogles of hours behind a microphone spinning vinyl, and all that kind of stuff.
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And I'll bet you never once hit the wrong button. Nope, never. It's just a matter of multitasking there, brother.
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Yeah, you didn't have to push the computer either. And if you hadn't hit that wrong button, we wouldn't have had that caller.
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Well, you know. Tell us about some of our callers there. You know, I get interesting calls here at Alpha and Omega.
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I really do. It's, oh, what can I say? And during the break, we get a call from Pam.
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Pam in Denver. Yes. And Pam in Denver, I asked her what her topic would be, what she'd like it to be, and she said that she wanted it to be happy.
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Happy. Happy was her topic. Happy topic. And I asked her if she could be a little more specific. And she said, what do you mean?
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And I said, well, could you, you know, how does that relate to your question?
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And she says, I don't know. I just want to be happy. And she hung up. Well, I want to help
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Pam out, and so why don't you turn the sound up on my system here. This, before we go to Marie, here is something for Pam in Denver who wants to be happy.
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I dare you not to crack a smile while listening to that, because every single one of you knows someone who laughs like that.
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So now Pam is happy, and Chalice in channel is happy.
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I'm happy now. So we've made many people happy. I think that definitely addressed her question. I could not have answered.
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I could not have answered any better than that personally. And it was deep theology to boot. Carla's happy, too.
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We have spread happiness. I mean, this is really sort of almost an emergent church, postmodern thing, you know?
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There was no truth communicated, but we didn't need it. And that was okay.
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There was no truth required for that question. No truth required, and very low in calories, too. So it met all criteria for a commercial success.
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So we now move on. And this is going to be pretty tough, because I have a feeling this is a serious question, but I'll take a deep breath.
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And awe. Hat trick in channel says, I'm not happy, I'm sick. There's a lot of sick people.
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Have black helicopters been flying around the United States again? I'm sort of wondering about that.
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We have one poor fellow in channel who's trying to ask about the textual variant of John 7, 53 through 8, 11, and everybody else is talking about the program.
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You can tell he has no idea the dividing line's on right now. So he's just doing his thing, and it's sort of this odd little serious thing in the midst of all the silliness.
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But take a deep breath now, and now we will. Is the dividing line starting soon?
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See? See? There you go. Those of you who read the blog, is the dividing line starting soon? I love it.
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I love it. Let's go ahead and talk to Marie and see if we can take a deep breath here and handle this in a professional fashion.
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Hi, Marie. I can't hear Marie. I still can't hear
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Marie. Do -do -do -do -do.
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I hear something. Marie? No. Still no Marie. Do -do -do -do -do.
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Let me put her on hold and see if I can get her attention. Okay. I hear something. Oh, there she is.
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Yeah, yeah. I had trouble hearing you at first. Oh, oh. Yeah, I did. You know, the funny thing is, though,
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I can hear your keyboard. So that means you're there. Yep.
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But now, okay, there we go. Now we're all set so you can hear me now. Great.
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There. Yeah, that made me happy too. Now you've got to be careful.
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I was cracking up. Now, Marie, you've got to be careful because someone else from channel, a lady called in a couple years ago, and she had a tendency to giggle.
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Oh, sorry. Could you speak up a bit? I'm having trouble hearing you. Oh, well, I'm speaking as loudly as I can.
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Okay. And maybe we just have a bad connection or something there. I'm not sure. But anyway, you had a question.
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Yep, I did. I had a question about First John 516. All righty.
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And I know in channel you had said that you thought that the sin that leads to death was apostasy.
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Uh -huh. And I was going to ask about if at the end of the verse it says that we are not asked to pray for them, how do we know whether or not we should pray for someone?
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Like take J. Meditix, for instance. Right. Well, I think folks need to see the context in First John chapter 5, begins at verse 14, and it says,
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This is the confidence which we have before him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the request which we have asked from him.
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And so the context is the fact that prayers will be heard and that prayers are to be offered to God and that God is going to hear us and that we are to lay our requests before him.
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And, of course, as always in Jesus' teaching and here in John's teaching, if we ask anything according to his will, this is not one of those things where you have folks on certain television channels that will not be mentioned who, in essence, assert that if we ask anything according to our will, he hears us and will give it to us and we can command
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God and command a blessing and all the rest of this wacky stuff that appears on Christian television all the time.
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This, instead, is a confidence that we have that when we are living and walking in accordance with his will, which 1
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John chapter 5 has been, actually all of 1 John has been talking about, if we love the brethren, if we are not loving the world, etc.,
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etc., etc., then obviously our prayers are going to be in accordance with his will and he hears us and we have the request we have asked from him.
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So a person who asks that God would sanctify them and would increase them in holiness and increase their patience and help them to watch over their tongue and make their speech something that would be pleasing to God, etc.,
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etc., these are the types of requests that he has in mind. And right in the middle of that, right having said that, is where verse 16 comes in.
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If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask and God will for him give life to those who commit sin not leading to death.
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If there is a sin leading to death, I do not say that he should make requests for this. All unrighteousness is sin and there is a sin not leading to death.
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We know that no one who is born of God sins, but he who is born of God keeps him and the evil one does not touch him.
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And so there is a discussion here and of course there is a lot of reference to this passage by Roman Catholics as the foundation for the distinction between venial and mortal sins.
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A mortal sin being one that leads to death. Venial sins do not lead to death in the sense of the destruction of the grace of justification.
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So they'll go here and say, see here, here is where it is. All unrighteousness is sin and there is a sin not leading to death, which means the idea that all sin leads to spiritual death and to separation from God isn't true, that there are venial sins that do not destroy the grace of justification, so on and so forth.
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It is interesting to note that Raymond Brown, who is probably one of the, well let's see, he is the first person to have been president of all three major Biblical societies, the
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Catholic Biblical Association, the Society of Biblical Literature, the International Society for New Testament Studies. From 72 to 78 he was the only
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American on the Roman Pontifical Biblical Commission, an appointment Pope Paul VI stated according to 20 scholars, accorded to 20 scholars, quote, outstanding for their learning, prudence, and Catholic regard for the magisterium of the church and granted to Father Brown after consultation with the
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National Conference of Catholic Bishops. So Brown is certainly considered to be the leading
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American Catholic Biblical scholar, let's put it that way. And he says in regards to this passage, and of course the reason
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I'm citing him is because the fact that the passage is frequently used by Roman Catholics in regards to that particular distinction.
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To assure his children that they share in this divine life has been the purpose of 1 John, the same basic purpose found in John.
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Both writings state this in a conclusion. The theme of asking for things according to God's will, returns again, but we should notice the limitation about agreement with God's will.
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The early church soon discovered that private requests were not always granted. One praiseworthy object of this
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Christian power of prayer is for brethren who have fallen into sin. Here, however, 1 John is cautious.
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For most sins the prayer will be heard, but there is a sin so serious that John does not encourage prayer for it.
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Evidently the readers of the letter knew all about this sin. We are not so well informed except that we should avoid identifying sin unto death with mortal sin, and a sin not unto death with venial sin.
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Probably the sin for 1 John was joining the secession, which is a form of apostasy, a sin elsewhere judged harshly.
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And so here you have the leading American Roman Catholic Biblical scholar saying that we don't know a whole lot about exactly what he's talking about.
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One thing we can be sure about is we should avoid connecting this with the issue of mortal and venial sin.
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But I think he's right when we remember what we're talking about in 1
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John. 1 John talks about the Antichrist. And remember in 1 John chapter 2, the
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Antichrist went out from the church.
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And they went out, and as John puts it, so that it might be demonstrated that they were not truly of us.
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It was necessary that they be separated from the church and their teaching denying the resurrection of Christ and denying the incarnation of Christ.
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It was necessary that they leave the fellowship of the church so that it might be demonstrated that they were not truly of us.
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So this is a situation where throughout 1 John, the author is having to warn his readers against those who may have at one point, for example, been their pastors, may have been people that they had heard preaching, that had been involved in their own conversion experience.
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And yet now, because of what they have taught, they have left the fellowship. They have gone outside of the faith.
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It's amazing to me how many people... I was reading a... I hate to call the person a
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Catholic apologist, but a person who writes in regards to Catholic apologetics issues today, who was dredging up old past situations, and it was pretty disgusting, but what happened is this person just absolutely finds it ridiculous that anyone could believe that a
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Roman Catholic is not a Christian, that you could ever define the gospel in such a way that Roman Catholicism would not fall within those parameters.
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He evidently doesn't understand 1 John or Galatians or anything like that, and there's many people like that today. And so this is what
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John is saying. These people are outside the fellowship. And so what he's talking about then is these individuals, there are certain individuals that you do not pray for because once they've done what
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John has talked about, they deny that Jesus has come in the flesh. They do not even believe, even though they once said that Jesus was the
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Son of God and they were in the church, they are out there and they are preaching that Jesus did not even come in the flesh.
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I do believe that at that point he is saying, do not expect God to hear your prayers, and, in fact,
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I'm not encouraging you to pray for those who have gone to that point of apostasy.
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You leave them in God's hands. You leave them up to him. There's a difference between praying for an individual in your church, for example, who has become disillusioned with the fellowship and a person who is actively promoting a false gospel and a false
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Christ. There's a difference there. When I first started going to Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church and I would hear the pastor praying, and he would pray in line with the
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Psalms, he would pray that God would silence false teachers, that he would, in fact, to use the terminology from the old
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King James, break their teeth. That took me back the first time I heard it.
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But, in reality, it's very much in line with what we see in the New Testament. Given that we're not to have anything to do with those individuals, that we're not to have fellowship with them, it makes sense then that there would be a distinction made between praying for someone that we may end up having fellowship with and that we may be used as a change agent in their life with someone who is actively promoting these things.
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There's a line that's to be drawn there, and our tendency is to blur that line for sentimental reasons rather than the reasons of the glory of God, or the rigorous, cold -hearted person on the other side goes too far in the other direction.
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It's a matter of balance. It's a matter of balance. Does that help at all? Yes, it does, actually.
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I really appreciate that. It's interesting because a lot of churches that you visit, they would just say,
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Oh, you know, we should pray for everyone. It's just odd that a lot of our churches today would be not dealing with the text, and just going with their tradition.
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It's not really odd simply because of the fact that to understand what
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John is saying requires that we understand that there are certain priorities in the Christian life.
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There are certain priorities that we're to have. God's glory and the honor of his truth is higher than our emotional priorities are.
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You asked about geriatrics. Let me be real quick because I need to get to Raymond's question about John 7 here before we close out.
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As far as praying for geriatrics, I pray that God will close his mouth. I pray that God will protect people from him as a false teacher.
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I leave him up to God. He is clearly a Hebrews 6 situation. I can't look into his heart and know what he knew before he became
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Roman Catholic. I leave that completely in God's hands. I just simply pray for protection of Christ's sheep from a wolf like Geriatrics because he is a wolf.
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That's just all there is to it. If you find that harsh, then you find Jesus harsh. You should go read
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John 10. All right, thanks Marie. Okay, thanks. Thanks for calling. Bye -bye. Thank you.
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Let's run quickly over to Raymond in California, the Raymond that everyone loves and that I blogged about and who is in -channel and asking about John 7, 53 through 8, 11, right?
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That's correct. I just recently heard a sermon on the internet where the pastor preached from these verses and he mentioned about the textual variant about it.
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It kind of struck me as odd that what is the purpose of textual variants and why do some
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Bible translations have them and do not have them? What do you mean was the purpose of textual variants? I understand that it's for the information.
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Some manuscripts don't have that. Right. How does that relate in regards to the inspiration of Scripture?
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Is that really considered to be... You know, Raymond, you need a book called Scripture Alone. In fact, if I had the sound up,
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I'd play Read My Book because this is very much addressed in Scripture Alone.
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I go into a fair amount of discussion of the difference between inerrancy and transmission issues.
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Inerrancy speaks to the Scriptures as written, not to the copyists down through the centuries who copied it.
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God has preserved his word for us in another fashion. In fact, this is very much what
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I'm addressing right now on my blog in regards to the Muslim apologists that I'm responding to.
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They're making the same kind of arguments as far as the relationship between inerrancy and textual criticism.
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So I don't know if you get a chance to follow the blogs but you might want to go back and pick up with what I'm saying to those
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Muslim apologists because it's relevant all across the spectrum.
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But in regards to John 7 .53 through 8 .11, yeah, I do not believe that that is original with John.
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One of the main reasons I don't believe it is is it also appears in Luke in at least a couple different manuscripts. And so any segment like that, it very much breaks the flow of the text there.
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If you read John 7 .52, it goes right into John 8 .12 without any seam or anything.
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It's just a perfect flow there. It's very early. Most feel that it is reflective anyways of a story, a very popular story about Christ.
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But I do not believe that it should be used to base theology upon. I would include it in either brackets or I would personally prefer seeing it in a footnote, that it's there simply because the fact that we have, there's just millions and millions and millions of Bibles that have been printed that have it there without any indication.
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So if you just pull it out and don't include it in a footnote or something like that, then you create more confusion than I think you actually get rid of.
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But the fact of the matter is, when you look, that's the second longest textual variant in the New Testament. The longest is Mark 16 .9
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-20. And then after that, you're only talking about basically one, maximum one verses that are almost always, well, 1
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John 5 .7, but they're almost always, the rest of them are parallels between Matthew, Mark and Luke where Matthew has a phrase that gets inserted in Luke because it's in the same context, that type of thing.
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But this is the second, like I said, the second longest one that we have in the New Testament. And people just need to be aware of what these are, what they represent and what the science of textual criticism is all about.
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This is another area where, as I was saying earlier, the Da Vinci Code stuff, the idea that the church willy -nilly changed the text.
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Well, people might point to textual variations, but we need to know why those variations came into existence, what the nature of them is, how we detect them, the fact that God has given us this massive amount of information in the manuscript history of the
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New Testament that allows us to determine the original text and to recognize these things, and that this is a completely different situation than the
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Muslim faces because the fact of an early revision of the Quranic text, the
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Uthmanian revision, we can't go back past that point in time because of the fact that a religious body took over the transmission of that text and said, this is going to be the text.
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Well, that's as far back as we can go. They got rid of what went before that. They can't get back to Muhammad. The transmission of the
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New Testament text wasn't handled in that way. The transmission of the New Testament was not by force of the sword.
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When you use military force to transmit a text, then you can transmit it in one form.
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The problem is, the guarantee of the truthfulness of that form is no greater than the military force that is behind it, in essence.
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And so this is why both Scripture alone and then I've found a lot of folks who've said that the discussion of these issues in the
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King James Only controversy have been very, very, very useful to them in understanding the process that is involved in the creation of the
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New Testament text, the transmission of the New Testament text over time, etc. So I would recommend those books to your reading.
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Sometimes just looking at one text, like John 7 .53, it's difficult to get the bigger picture of the entire transmission of the text over time and how in reality there's so little important textual variation given the fact that we're talking about manuscripts written over a massive geographic area, across numerous cultures, across numerous language groups, and across, in essence, 14 centuries when we talk about the
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New Testament itself, not talking about the Old Testament at all.
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So hopefully that will help you with that. So basically, the minor, whether there's word differences, those are not as big of a deal as in John's case or like in Mark also, in Mark 9, where verses 44, 46, and 48 are not found in NIV, but it's in the
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NSAB. Well, but the NASB will have those in brackets with a footnote.
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And that's basically the difference. The New American Standard and the
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NIV are using the same Greek text as a foundation, and the difference is the decision that was made to, in the
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NIV, remove those and make them footnotes, and the NASB to keep them in the text but put them in brackets.
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Those are editorial, completely editorial decisions on the part of the publisher and for their own, you know, you can defend either one of them in essence.
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I mean, I can tell you stories. In fact, the King James Only controversy was somewhat prompted by a situation in the
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Calvary Chapel here in Phoenix where the pastor preached on a passage that in the
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New American Standard that he was using is in brackets, but in a certain lady who was volunteering for us at the time, in her
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NIV, it had been removed, was in tiny little fonted footnotes at the bottom of the page, and she didn't see it.
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And so she went through an entire sermon going, what on earth is he talking about?
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And it really threw her for a loop, and you can understand why it would. And so that together with her hearing
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Gail Riplinger on the radio is actually what ended up starting all of the things in God's providence that led to the
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King James Only controversy being written. So I certainly understand where that comes from. And I think you would find, like I said, the
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King James Only controversy and scripture alone to be extremely useful. There are a number of other works, obviously, on a more scholarly level in the sense they become a little bit more complex that also address the issue.
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Great. Well, thank you very much for your time, sir. Thank you, sir. Thanks for calling. Bye -bye. God bless. All right.
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Let me real quickly, we're pretty much completely out of time. The music was supposed to start a while ago. Yeah, see, he's already singing, and I'm not supposed to be talking over poor
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Steve. But anyways, starting, I believe, next week,
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Thursday is going to have to be in the morning, not in the evening. We'll talk more about it next time. I'll put it on the blog.
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God bless. Bye. 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O. Box 37106,
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Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the World Wide Web That's A -O -M -I -N dot
59:49
O -R -G where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks. Join us again this