Steve Gregg Debate in CA Off: Here's Why

So a few weeks ago I started looking at my calendar and I recognized that I have a debate coming up at the end of March with Steve Gregg.

Now last year I had done a number of programs called Radio Free Geneva on the

Dividing Line. The reason being we had actually for a number of years been getting emails from people basically accusing us of,

I think the terminology one of them used was, picking the low hanging fruit by reviewing people like Dave Hunt and George Bryson and their objections to Reform Theology or Calvinism.

And they said if you really want to go for the best guy, here's Steve Gregg, you need to listen to these MP3s, he's in depth, he's clear, and this is the guy you've got to respond to.

So I downloaded the MP3s and it was 13 and a half hours of them and I was doing a lot of riding at the time and so I just would start doing a 20 -30 mile ride and just listen to as much as I could and we started reviewing them on the

Dividing Line and did a number of those programs and so people were saying well you all need to do a debate.

Now Mr. Gregg has a radio program, we have the Dividing Line, we can obviously move the time of the

Dividing Line, we can be flexible so we can simulcast at the same time that I would be on with him, something like that.

So anyway, toward the end of last year, I think it was in November as I recall, maybe even

October, I don't remember now, I was contacted by a church in Northern California that said that they wanted to host a debate between myself and Steve Gregg and I had seen actually a picture of the facility, very nice facility, would be perfect for videotaping, and so I said that would be fine and then

Mr. Gregg and I were to work out the details. And so finally, I realized this debate is coming up and as I had read an email from Steve Gregg, he had said you know my views have changed some since I started doing debates with Calvinists, the

MP3 files you listen to are rather old, even I haven't listened to them he said for a long time and so he gave me a link to some threads on his web board where there's like 200 pages worth of stuff and so I asked one of the folks in Channel, a very kind lady, to help me out and she went through and sent me the relevant material but also pointed my attention to some of the statements that Steve Gregg had made fairly recently that were pretty amazing and so I saw them, you know, about depriving himself of sleep a few days before the debate to make it fair and things like that and I looked at these and they had been posted, you know, more than a month, almost two months ago and so I wrote a blog article and I did not respond in kind,

I just simply said I've never had anyone make statements like this before a debate before and it was about the debate and I did try to interact with one element of Matthew chapter 11 or something like that and the blog article is still on my blog, you can go back and take a look at it.

Well, this morning the church contacted me and requested that I remove that blog article and it became very, very clear to me that we would be causing a major problem at this church if we were to have the debate there.

It takes a special kind of church to have a debate on Calvinism and Arminianism.

You either have to be a very firmly Arminian church or a very firmly Calvinistic church. The ones in the middle aren't really best suited for this.

Now, one exception, we did have a debate with George Bryce in Los Angeles at the

Anaheim Vineyard but nobody from the church showed up actually. The audience was some other church.

We were competing with, as I recall, a mime preparation seminar that night so there wasn't anybody from the church there so it wasn't a majorly big deal.

Anyway, I recognize that this subject is extremely controversial and there are people who become very, very upset about it and I do not want to cause problems for a local church and since both

Mr. Gregg and I have the means through our webcasts and radio programs to do this kind of exchange without causing issues like that,

I have canceled that debate on, I believe it was March 30th it was going to be, simply because I am very concerned that if there was offense and what was communicated to me was there was offense just over my having posted that blog article and I didn't even respond to anything.

If there is offense this far out of something that tepid, that non -offensive, then clearly there is a huge chance that it as we get closer, even once money's been spent and plans have been made, as we get closer the chances get greater and greater that it's going to get canceled anyways.

And I really don't have any confidence that halfway through the debate it wouldn't be called off if there was any heat generated by the exchanges at all.

And so I don't want to have a debacle like that take place. Since there's other mechanisms to do this then we'll do it in another way and that'll work out best.

Now I should mention that because of this Steve Gregg removed those comments from his web board.

I didn't ask him to do that. And some people say, why don't you remove the blog article?

Well, the problem is once you hit post, once you hit send on the internet, it's there.

There are how many thousands of RSS readers that already have that blog article in them?

I can't recall it. And in fact, when you do try to delete something like that, in essence all you're doing is making it all the more popular.

I wonder why it disappeared, people go. Steve Gregg has apologized for the comments. He says they were meant in a somewhat lighthearted fashion.

But he does really believe that on this issue, I'm that far out to lunch on this issue not on other issues like the

King James only controversy or things like that. And quite honestly, he's not familiar with my work amongst

Muslims or Mormons or Roman Catholicists or stuff like that. He just hasn't read any of that so doesn't have any knowledge of that.

But I think that those words, he says they were in there for him and therefore it's a little bit more lighthearted context.

And I understand that being a little bit like someone posting stuff from my chat channel all the time as if that was the final word in my presentations as well.

So Mr. Gregg has graciously apologized for any offense. My concern wasn't the offense. My concern was when someone says that, for example, my exegetical method is imbalanced but then you go back and you listen to all of the criticisms that I've offered of Steve Gregg this morning.

I listened to the commentary on Acts 13 .48 which I'm going to link on my blog with this particular video.

The exegesis I offered of Acts 13 .48, my criticism of his perspective was perfectly balanced even according to the standards he himself lists.

And so that is the thing that really concerns me and I think the only way to solve that particular issue is for Steve and I to actually get around to doing this debate.

And so we're going to look at how to arrange this, how to do it maybe over the course of a week's time or something with the dividing line with his radio program and things like that.

So for those, hopefully no one was making major plans as far as Northern California was concerned but I just felt that it would be very inappropriate to continue at that particular venue and force that church to deal with very unhappy congregational members it would seem if that debate were to go on.

So we'll obviously let you know what's going to develop over time as far as when we'll be able to do the radio online type of exchange but as far as a live debate before an audience,

I just don't see that happening anytime in the near future. So there's the story, the developments today.