New Years Thoughts, God's Decree, the Pope and Mary, ET Stalkers

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. At least, I hope we're welcoming you to The Dividing Line. It seems like the network and computer is feeling about as good as I am these days, so that's probably not a good thing.

Both have undergone extensive surgery. It's supposed to really improve the one, not the other, but there you go.

That's what happens. First, Dividing Line of 2017.

I noticed that the calendar is down and we haven't replaced them with 2017 calendars yet, but we'll get around to them eventually.

It is a new year and I have a bunch of pretty heavy stuff.

One thing that was sort of on the list I've put off for later in the week because I already have put it into audio format and I'm going to have to go through and do some editing as far as picking and choosing stuff because there's important stuff going on.

It really helps to explain why on the popular level you have

Andy Stanley saying the things that Andy Stanley is saying and where he's getting his support and where he's getting his perspective at, but we'll be looking at that as time gives us opportunity.

But I wanted to start before we get into some of the heavy -duty stuff concerning God's sovereign decree today and topics related thereto and a little bit of textual critical issues and things like that, the type of stuff that makes our folks excited to be with the

Dividing Line. I was asked a question on Twitter last week,

I think shortly after I got home, and it's interesting how sometimes someone just asking a question makes you sit back and look at a text and go,

Hmm, I haven't really thought through this one before or preached through this one before.

I suppose that's why it's such an incredible thing what John MacArthur has done in preaching through the whole

New Testament. If you've got to preach it all, it's hard to dodge anything and hard to miss anything.

But in 2 Peter, and 2 Peter gets a bad rap, in most seminaries,

Bible colleges that you would go to today, 2 Peter is going to be dismissed as a late forgery, all because people will not accept the rather obvious reality of the fact that Peter himself mentions the use of an amanuensis, a scribe, and clearly there is a very different style between 1 and 2

Peter. And as a result, then the assumption is, well, 2

Peter and Jude, they're obviously closely related, they're a later point in history, etc., etc. And as a result, there tends to be a diminishment of emphasis upon such books and a diminishment of their authority.

And maybe that's why you don't hear a whole lot of preaching on the subject, but it is interesting.

In 2 Peter 3 .13, well, before this, you've had a discussion of the judgment.

It's fairly rare to hear that kind of connection being made.

Because of the severity of judgment, what kind of people?

So, in other words, it's similar to, you know,

I've seen a lot of people, and we're going to mention someone here in a second, saying that, well,

God's will isn't done on earth. We are to pray that God's will would be done on earth, but it's not done on earth, it's only done in heaven.

Missing the idea that the desire of the Christian is for God's prescriptive will to be done on earth.

It's not that God's will, His decretive will, is not done. He plainly states that He does whatever pleases

Him in the heavens and on earth. I mean, you can't get past the 33rd Psalm.

It's just right there, but people ignore these things and skip over them and things like that.

But when we, as believers, do live out the kingdom, when we are obedient, when we desire to be obedient, when we do the prescriptive will of God, when we seek to be peacemakers, when we seek to live in holiness, then we are hastening the coming of the day of God.

Because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning and the elements will melt with intense heat. But according to His promise, we are looking for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

And so there is a promise, verse 13, that we are looking for.

And as I've thought of 2017, 2016 sort of ended on a whimper for me.

It's been a rough year for a lot of folks. And it certainly looks like it's gonna be a very challenging year.

There's gonna be a lot of opportunities, a lot of tremendous opportunities, but a lot of opposition as well.

There's no question about that. And you may have heard sermons this weekend about what kind of resolutions you're to make.

And we all know those last for a couple weeks and then we sort of forget about it after that. But there's a description here of what kind of people we as Christians are to be.

And we're to be looking for certain things. We are looking for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

And I wonder how much any one of us really had that as a high level of priority as we thought about 2017.

How much do we value the promise of God that there will be a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells?

There will be no injustice. There will be no wrong. There will be an eternal state.

An eternal state will be ushered in where righteousness, which is the foundation of God's throne, dwells.

It's not just the rare thing to see it happen. It is the normative thing.

It's a new heavens and a new earth. A lot of us have been told, well, you're too heavenly minded to be any earthly good.

But there is to be a looking forward and a desire for these things.

There's no question that this is part of the Christian hope. And that's the context then for the primary verse that I was asked about.

Verse 14 of chapter 3. Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by him in peace, spotless and blameless.

I actually rendered that. Therefore, beloved, since you are looking forward to these things, the day of God's judgment, new heavens and new earth, make every effort to be found by him living in peace, spotless and blameless.

And the question that had been asked that brought my attention to this text was, what does this mean, peace?

And I think the individual probably had the issue of peace as in the peace that is provided by Christ, the imputed righteousness of Christ and issues like that in mind, and saw a contradiction between the idea that it's

Christ that establishes peace for his people. And then this idea, make every effort to be found by him in peace.

I put in the word living because I think that's in light of the form of in peace and what's being said, that that's probably the best way to understand what's being said.

There is no contradiction. The reality of our relationship with God is established by what

Christ has done. This is the God -centeredness of the gospel. This is what he is accomplishing.

This is what his purpose is. But there is a result in our lives, and we are given a tremendous amount, if we're willing to hear it and to listen, we're given a tremendous amount of guidance as to what our lives are to look like.

And here, the statement is made, since you're looking forward to these things, so since it is to be the mindset of the believer to be looking forward to the fact that there will be a day of judgment, someday

God is going to set everything right. There's going to be a new heavens and a new earth. There's going to be a fulfillment of God's promises.

Sometimes we lose sight of those things. Sometimes those things are not forefront in our thinking, and they need to be.

The result of that is that we are to make every effort to be diligent, is another one of the translations, make every effort to be found by him.

So in other words, when these things happen and we are to live as believers in this state of readiness,

I mean, Jesus' own parable of the virgins, the wise and the foolish virgins, this is to be something that every generation of believers, we live in this readiness.

And so we want to be ready to be found by him.

It's not just something that's down the way. Any one of us, we so often get inside of a multi -thousand pound vehicle and go hurtling down the road, and we just take it for granted that we're going to get where we're going to with safety.

Don't even give it a second thought. But we know that's not the case.

And we could be standing before our Lord in judgment at any moment.

And so whether it is in his coming or in our encountering him, in our coming to be with him, we are to make every effort to be found by him, living in peace, spotless and blameless.

And so once again, as we think about the new year, which is obviously an extremely subjective thing, there have been many cultures that began the new year at another point in time, for example.

There's nothing special about January 1st, but God has put eternity in our hearts.

And the scriptures do tell us to count the days, to consider the seasons in the sense of recognize the passage of time.

I mean, God provides us, especially as we age, with lots of reminders that eternity is right around the corner.

We spend a lot of time and money trying to ignore those things, but that's the way we've been made.

And so we should be people, sober -minded people that recognize our time on earth is limited and therefore make every effort to be found by him, living in peace.

We live in a, you know, the scripture itself uses the example of warfare, spiritual warfare, fighting the good fight, agonizing for the once for all delivered to the saints faith.

These are all right there in scripture. So how do you balance that with something that says that we are to be found, to make every effort to be found by him living in peace?

I think maybe this audience especially needs to consider that many of you are very apologetically minded and there's everything good about wanting to defend the purity of the gospel and refute falsehood and expose the unfruitful works of darkness and obey all of those scriptural commands.

But there is a danger in apologetics. There is a danger of imbalance in apologetics.

There's no question about that. And if your experience of apologetics leads you to a life that cannot be described as one of peace, then maybe you have the wrong motivations and maybe it's not something you should be involved with.

Not in the sense of disobeying the commandments of scripture to be ready to give a reason, all the rest of that type of stuff, but in the sense of actually seeking out opportunities of apologetic interaction and things like that.

I've seen, we've all seen people burned out.

I can think of people who barely over a decade ago were involved in apologetics, had a position of even leadership.

And yet today, I can think of at least one person who doesn't even name the name of Christ today.

And there are a lot of reasons for that, but here at the beginning of this year, knowing the amount of warfare and opposition heading my direction, my attention was caught by what does it mean to be found by him living in peace?

And given all the conflict in all of our lives, it's going to look a little bit different depending on who you are, what your calling is.

But there has to be an overarching understanding of the peace we have with God, the peace we have because the perfection of the work of Christ.

Just as we are to experience joy, even in the midst of tribulation, we are to experience the peace of God, even in the midst of tribulation as well and warfare and battle.

It's that balance thing again. It's that finding the proper biblical balance, scriptural balance, spiritual balance.

And it's that type of thing that honestly, you don't get it by going off on some weekend retreat, experiencing some spiritual high, and then

I've got it. This is a daily type thing. This is that everyday discipline and grind that so many of us, if we're really honest with ourselves, we lose that battle.

We're apathetic. We look at others and go, well, I'm doing better than that guy is. And it is truly,

I think, a mark of Christian maturity to have the daily discipline to be able to seek this kind of balance and seek this kind of peace, peace with God.

And that peace then will flow outward to those around us.

We should be peacemakers. And you go, well, you're the last one to say that. Well, depends on what you think a peacemaker is.

I'm thinking of one particular individual who I will not name. And as far as I know in this individual's experience in apologetics, in all the decades that I've known of this individual,

I don't believe that this person has been in the same church for more than two years, maybe three.

And in almost every situation, this individual has brought about a church split, a split in that fellowship.

I can't imagine that as a legacy. I don't care what you've written, done.

I don't care how powerful you are as a speaker. If you bring a lack of peace, if you bring warfare into the fellowship, wherever you are, what does that say?

What does that say? If you're going to be at warfare with others, make sure it's either because you are opposing someone who is actively seeking to overthrow the truth.

Or because they are the ones attacking you for standing for the truth.

But don't let it be simply because of your ego, your pride, your tribalism.

This is my area, and so I've got my little niche over here.

And don't you dare come into this area. There are reasons to be in battle.

But I think any true Christian who understands the full breadth of the exhortation of Scripture should be a person who seeks, even in the midst of the battle to which we are called, to be at peace in the way this text speaks of it.

Living in peace. In peace with God, in peace with those in our lives that have been placed there, and trusting solely and completely in Him, not in anything that we can do or ever would do.

So if you really want to have, I think, a verse that can give some guidance and some direction here at the beginning of the year, this one certainly struck me.

Because I really had to think, how much am I looking forward to the day of God's judgment, the new heavens and new earth?

And do I see any meaningful connection between that desire to see

God's perfect will being done and how I live?

There is a connection in Scripture. I think one of the greatest failings of evangelicalism in general, in the compartmentalization of Christian theology, is these intimate and important connections are often lost, not emphasized, not understood.

So I wanted to start off with 2 Peter 3 .14. Maybe it might be a verse you might want to consider to commit to memory.

It certainly would be a good one to do along those lines. I saw an article,

I think it might have even been earlier today, I've just been hit with a bunch of these things. Even as the program was beginning, someone in channel linked to a

YouTube video. And it was a,

I think someone said had 10 views, 5 of them from the chat channel.

But it was some guy, I'm not going to give advertising for him,

I didn't really understand what was going on, but challenging me to debate, there's a lot of those folks, on the subject of God's sovereign decree.

And I didn't get far enough into it to figure out exactly what his views are.

But I think it was this morning that I was linked to a baptistnews .com

article. Lots of interesting people have written on the subject of theodicy and the issue of God's sovereignty.

And of course the term Baptist, unfortunately without some kind of descriptor, can mean almost anything.

I mean American Baptist is almost always wildly liberal. Would have no more to do with me and my beliefs than liberal

PCUSA or ELCA or the left wingers in the

United Methodist Church or whatever. A fellow by the name of E. Frank Tupper, distinguished professor of divinity emeritus at the

Wake Forest University School of Divinity. He's written a book called

A Scandalous Providence, The Jesus Story of the Compassion of God. And evidently even taught at Southern Seminary at one point,

I'm sure it was before the Mueller period. I'm not going to say

I'm sure, I'm just assuming that. He says, I must admit that to challenge the traditional understanding of providence in my personal context, teaching in a

Baptist seminary meant that I was going to experience significant opposition, he said. The two leading lines for interpreting providence was, quote, well, we didn't understand why this had happened, end quote.

Or, quote, this is in some sense the will of God and we must accept it, end quote. I rejected both of those ideas.

His academic resolve grew even stronger, he said, in the crucible of his wife's two -year battle with terminal cancer, leaving behind two small children.

Quote, Betty Tupper's experience of suffering with cancer and dying and the enormous impact it had on our family gave me the courage to say

I'm going to write and interpret providence in a way, listen to this now, that is consistent with my understanding and my faith.

And I'm going to accept the challenges and opposition that I experience, end quote, Tupper said. Tupper's study and experience led him to reject platitudes on suffering such as God is in control or everything happens for a reason.

Now, he says, I do not believe that God is in control of everything that happens in our world, he said. Indeed, I would argue that God controls very, very little of what happens in our world.

Now, needless to say, there was nothing of scripture in the article.

But the point is that here is a, quote unquote, Baptist theologian, and again, that means nothing.

Baptist theologian doesn't mean anything. The term

Baptist simply has to do with how you view baptism, it doesn't really tell you much.

In fact, it's interesting, most of the denominational designators that we have don't actually tell you much about the actual theology, if you don't have a statement of faith.

And there could be nothing more different as far as a statement of faith is concerned than London Baptist Confession versus something like Tupper's personal theodicy, what he has come to understand.

Again, there's a tremendous danger for we as little creatures, and that's what we are.

We are little creatures. How many times does the scripture tell us we live, but for a short period of time, we are like the mist, a vapor, the leaf on the plant that sprouts and is gone.

We've all seen these things. They are excellent examples given to us by God to try to help us to understand that the most intelligent, with the highest

IQ and the greatest experience of mankind, knows but a tiny fraction of what is knowable in his or her lifetime.

And that in and of itself is but a tiny, tiny little portion of what

God knows. In other words, if we really understand who

God is and we understand who we are, then we will be in the proper position to make appropriate decisions.

And that decision will always be to trust God rather than ourselves. And yet that's not what mankind does.

We stand on our hind two legs and we put God in the place of being judged and we tell him that he's messed up and he's done things wrong.

And yeah, his word may say X, Y, or Z, but I'm just not going to concern myself about that. That's not as important as my understanding of these things.

And so we have the human perspective. Now, I, for many years, it's weird why

I have become known for somehow originating this or something.

I certainly did not. But I have very clearly defended what

I believe to be the biblical teaching that God is sovereign over all things.

All things. That God's sovereignty is not a mere hypothetical.

That God could have done it some other way, but he didn't. That a statement like God is so sovereign that he is sovereignly chosen to let man control all things, that's a ridiculous statement.

It vitiates, it disembowels the meaning of the term, the sovereignty, the free, the kingly freedom of God.

I've used that term to try to get past the abuse and misuse of so many people who will say they believe in the sovereignty of God and then immediately turn around and judge him on a human basis, limit him to the human sphere.

Basically just demonstrate they really don't understand what the sovereignty of God is in the first place. I didn't originate any of these things.

I've originated nothing. I have here a little old book.

In fact, I went ahead and just to make my Presbyterian friends happy, I grabbed the

Westminster Confession of Faith. And it's the full book, man. It's not just a little pamphlet type thing.

Just so that people understand, I'm not making this stuff up on my own. God, chapter 3, paragraph 1.

God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass.

Now these words were written centuries before I took my first breath.

I didn't come up with them. I've been willing in public situations to defend them, but I didn't come up with them.

I'm just standing in a very long line of people who are absolutely convinced that the testimony of Scripture cannot be dismissed.

That it makes no sense to believe in prophecy. It makes no sense to believe in the plain statements of Scripture without accepting these words.

They are a truthful and faithful representation of what Scripture states. God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass.

Yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away but rather established.

Now obviously, there had been a lot of conversation and discussion about what the sovereignty of God means and what

God's decree means in relationship to man, because the confession of faith immediately starts using all sorts of words that clearly had been involved in this conversation for a long, long, long time.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of people who are now talking about these things or making videos about these things don't bother with those conversations.

Yeah, just too deep. The books they're written in are old and they're tough to read. But part of that decree does involve, for example, paragraph 3,

By the decree of God for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestined unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death.

So the number of the elect, the identity of the elect is a part of that, but that's just part of the greater reality that God has a sovereign decree that he is working out.

I didn't make it up, and obviously if I'm going to defend it,

I'm going to defend it biblically, and I have yet to see anyone mount much of a meaningful attack upon the decree of God outside of seeking to question whether there is a consistent biblical doctrine that could even be determined regarding God's knowledge, activities, decrees, or anything like that.

In other words, if you want to chop the Bible up into parts and not listen to what it says, then okay.

But as far as people who aren't willing to do that, I've not seen a meaningful attack upon this truth.

I mean, you've got your open theists way out in the boonies someplace, and then you've got your simple foreknowledge folks, and you've got your different views.

But once you abandon the highest view of Scripture, there's no reason to believe what

I believe if you don't have the highest view of Scripture. Just when it comes to Trinity, the

Atonement, everything else, there's no reason to. Once you abandon the highest view of Scripture, then it's everybody's on his own at that point.

Here's a graphic, I think you should have it, that I saw this week, and it's from Kerrigan Skelly.

Some of you may remember the name. We refuted his comments, one of his videos on John 6.

We might have done some others, too. It wasn't, to be perfectly honest with you, with all due respect, difficult to do.

As far as being an exegete or handling the text of Scripture, Mr. Skelly is very poor.

But he decided to pop back in, and of course, I find this grossly offensive.

But again, it's helpful to understand what's being said out there.

It just seemed to be a bunch of this all at the same time, and that's why I mentioned it. But if you blow it up, it says,

Now listen, honey, I know you're upset that nasty man raped you. But Uncle James says

God made him do it to give it meaning. And the pretty little girl says,

Really, Mommy? I feel so much better now. And this goes back, of course, to the

Bryson abomination from a few years ago, where George Bryson just made things up on the fly.

And we, again, documented it very clearly. Things in the

Internet. The Internet has no immune system. And so infections just fester.

And lies just have a life of their own in the Internet. But I want you to see where Kerrigan Skelly once again demonstrates a cavalier attitude toward the truth, or in other words, is dishonest.

Uncle James says God made him do it to give it meaning.

Now, anyone who has the slightest understanding of not only the historical position expressed by the

Westminster Confession or by the London Baptist Confession of Faith says the same thing, or has a scintilla of honesty and wanting to represent what

I say accurately would never say that because it demonstrates either dishonesty or ignorance or the worst combination both put together.

A cavalier attitude toward the truth. First of all, God made him do it.

For decades, I have pointed out the reality that when

Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery, these were not brothers who loved him and cared for him, but were forced to do something against their nature and against their desires by God.

The reality is they wanted to kill him. And God restrained their evil.

And so, the idea can never be, never has been, and it is a lie on Mr.

Kerrigan Skelly's part to say that God made him do it as if he didn't want to, as if he lacked the desire.

There is no morally neutral individual where the big evil

God has his big theological gun out and he says, you do it. I don't care if you want to or not.

This is a straw man. It is reprehensible. It is destructive of anyone's credibility who utilizes such argumentation.

God did not make him do it. And then notice the second error. I mean, it takes a fair amount of talent to cram so many errors into a single sentence.

That's actually a sort of difficult thing to do, but Mr. Skelly managed to pull it off.

To give it meaning. See at the end there, God made him do it to give it meaning.

As if it, the evil action, exists just out there on its own and God wants to give meaning to it.

Now this is just a further demonstration of the fact that individuals like Kerrigan Skelly and others,

George Bryson, they don't hear what we're saying. They don't want to hear what we're saying. They're not interested in having an accurate knowledge of what it is we're saying.

And that's why they don't provide meaningfully significant criticisms in their videos or books or whatever else it might be.

We don't believe that acts of evil just exist out there someplace.

And that God is running around trying to fill them with meaning. What I have said and what people take such offense at is

I've dared to put the shoe on the other foot and to challenge someone to recognize that if they take the position that God does not have a sovereign decree, that when he, now again, very, very rarely do they put themselves out there and try to present a consistent, meaningful perspective on their own.

They're happy to attack Calvinism because Calvinism wants to try to honor God's truth by saying here's how it fits together.

Very often they don't want to positively make a statement as to exactly what their position is.

That's why you can listen to some of these folks and they'll flip -flop between Mullenism and open theism and simple foreknowledge and all these different things because they really don't have any coherent perspective and don't think that it's really relevant that they should have one to begin with.

But assuming, and I've forgotten now, now there's a little bell going off.

Is he an open theist? There was something about his theology when we did the response to him.

And I suppose I have to leave that option open. Last night I was watching

Mike Licona saying he's not an open theist, but then saying, but they've got some great arguments, you know, they might be right type of thing.

I don't recall, maybe somebody will mention in channel or something like that. If someone else remembers, if Algo is around,

Algo will remember anything about. I know he's Pelagian, but I'm not sure exactly what his doctrine of the knowledge of God is.

But again, anyone who wants to take the

Bible seriously has to deal with the reality of God's foreknowledge and has to answer the question, is that foreknowledge falsifiable?

In other words, can God have false knowledge of future events? If he cannot have false knowledge of future events, then the future is fixed.

God's knowledge of it is perfect and man cannot do anything other than what God already knows he's going to do.

And so the question then becomes, well, who determined that? Because if God doesn't determine that, then

God passively takes in knowledge. He creates and then he takes in knowledge of what happens.

And so you can't glorify God for having accomplished his purposes because he didn't accomplish any purposes. He checked the cosmic dice, came up snake eyes, worship me.

That's not a reason for worshiping. And so you just have to ask the question.

And of course, they want to use the most emotionally laden possibility out there, as in this little graphic, beautiful little girl.

A terrible, horrible action, which unfortunately takes place. We think of the sex trade.

I wish I had the name. Maybe someone, well, now it's middle of the night in New Zealand, I imagine.

But I listened to a presentation while I was down in Wellington from a man that's involved in a ministry that gets people out of the sex trade.

It was great. It was really neat to hear the stories of what they've been able to do.

These types of things happen. And if you're a Christian, you have to deal with that reality.

And you're going to have to either deal with that reality based upon what

Scripture reveals. Or you're going to subjugate Scripture to your own personal experience.

We saw Tupper subjugating Scripture to his personal experience. I'm going to create a view of God that is amenable to me.

And my personal experience. That happens. That happens.

In this situation, you have to ask the question, if something terrible like this happened, when

God created, did he know it was going to take place? And if he did, then what was his purpose in creating a world in which something terrible like that would happen?

I am saying, the Westminster Confession of Faith is saying, the Bible is saying, in Genesis 50 and Isaiah 10 and Acts 4, that God has a purpose.

We may not know what that purpose is in this life, but that there is no such thing as purposeless evil.

The other side that they don't want to admit, they don't want to bring into these graphics, is that they believe in a

God who either didn't know this was coming, he created all of the possibilities, he created all of the things necessary for this type of evil to happen.

But he didn't see it coming. He was too dumb to see it coming.

Or just not smart enough to run the numbers. Or he just didn't care.

Or he saw it coming, knew with certainty it was going to happen, and had no purpose in it.

Well, it just happens. C 'est la vie. And what these people don't realize is that while they are muddling the minds of individuals with emotion, in the process what they're doing is they are promoting an idea that this universe exists.

And while God created it, there's all sorts of stuff happening in it.

It's either beyond his control, beyond his care, or yeah, he knew it was going to happen, but it has no purpose.

Or you have to default to the Molinistic explanation. Well, gotta play the cards you've been dealt.

Best God could do. Sorry about that. But we can have assurance that there were other worlds even worse.

There's the Molinistic encouragement.

Comfort. The Molinistic comfort. Could have been worse. This is the best one.

So, in light of that, let me see if I can find...

I have a number of these up, and so let me see. Ah, there it is.

The names of these are not overly descriptive. And there.

Should have one there. Got one?

I think this was last night or this morning. Dr. Rick Patrick.

I don't know why that's all blown up. I'm not sending it to you that way.

Dr. Rick Patrick, who became real well known a few weeks ago when he spoke at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and did the promotion for GNEC 316, basically.

One of the anti -Calvinist leaders in the

SBC. And he tweeted, tweeted or Facebooked, I'm not sure which.

Well, it's not what I'm sending. I don't know. Don't know what else to say.

This thing has just not worked very well since we've changed things at all. Maybe we need to look for something else.

I just reset everything on it, so it should be coming to you.

But anyways, he sends this thing out. It says, Calvinism's Decretive Theology implies a certain kind of divine lottery in which every man must ultimately hope that his number has been drawn by God.

There it is. Before the foundation of the world. And then you've got the graphic, Calvinism, may the odds be ever in your favor.

Now, I personally don't get it. Sorry. I don't know who the chick is.

I don't, I don't get it. But Calvinism's Decretive Theology.

So evidently, Dr. Patrick doesn't have a Decretive Theology, doesn't have decree. Implies a certain kind of divine lottery in which every man must ultimately hope that his number has been drawn by God before the foundation of the world.

So again, how do you, how do you interact with something like this?

Well, ultimate beings don't use lotteries. According to Ephesians chapter one, the ground and the basis of God's choice in regards to the elect is his own good will, not his lottery will.

That's the basis. If you want to say that God's good will, his eudachia, is like a lottery, just because it's based upon what pleases him rather than what's found in the creature.

Because see, what the traditionalist synergist wants is these things must be found in the creature.

The reason for my salvation must be found in me, not in God. That's what they have to have.

That's the only way that you can service the idol of man's free will, that great free will.

And so someone's telling me the picture was a reference to the Hunger Games.

Well, that would completely leave me out of it, since I don't know anything about those books, movies, or anything else, not seen any of them, nothing.

So there you go. The woman is from the Hunger Games and is a quote by her character in the movie.

Yes, I know I'm FAS. I have no idea.

Okay, so there you go. That's what it's from. Little did

I know. Anyway, so the description of God's eudachia, his own will, to the praise of his glorious grace, to turn that into something called a lottery.

Something that has no purpose. You see, God chose his people as a part of his self -glorification, which means he chose us and he uses us in such a way as to bring about his own self -glorification.

There's nothing special about us. He gets to put us and use us as he pleases. There's nothing special about me.

Nothing special about any of the elect. There's nothing in a biblical doctrine of election that could ever create pride when properly understood.

Just couldn't. And so it's all about him.

Even the identity of the elect flowed together to his glorification.

So no lottery. And secondly, every man must ultimately hope that his number has been drawn by God.

No. Every man is commanded to repent. Those that do not, do not desire.

And the vast majority don't care. They don't want to be in the presence of God.

They do not want to be submitted to the lordship of Jesus Christ. So the whole statement really makes no sense.

And of course I would go, and what do you offer in return for that?

But we don't really get anything along those lines from Dr. Patrick.

Let's look at another one. I'm just going to go ahead and just totally reset this thing each time.

And maybe that way it'll get us what we want.

Shifting gears a little bit. 90426

PM. Okay. That should be the papal tweet. All right. Good. I livened up Twitter a bit.

I think yesterday or the day before yesterday. I forget when it was. Yeah, it was the day before yesterday.

It was 1st January. When I retweeted and commented on Pope Francis's statement in Twitter, and we can see it here.

Let us entrust the new year to Mary, mother of God, so that peace and mercy may grow throughout the world.

Now, let me make sure you understand. I'm well aware that there's nothing overly shocking about this coming from the

Pope of Rome. It's not like, oh, wow,

I didn't know they believed something like this. No, no, no. Well aware of that reality.

And have there been things said even worse? I mean, John Paul II, his personal motto was totus tuus sumaria, totally yours, dedicated to Maria, to Mary.

And now there's all sorts of quotations that if I had wanted to dig one out from a

Pope, lots of them out there, a lot of Marian idolatry, but it was relevant.

And it's especially relevant at the beginning of 2017, because I said, this is why the Reformation took place and why it needs to continue taking place.

Now, I will admit, I was really disappointed by the responses. There are a few people who got it, but man, some of you folks just didn't get it and just went off on, look, there are good reasons to oppose

Roman Catholicism, and then there are bad reasons. A lot of people have the idea that as long as something is wrong, that any old reason to oppose it will do.

And in any old argument, hey, the Pope's the Antichrist, therefore all arguments about the

Pope are fair game. It doesn't matter if you're accurately representing him. It doesn't matter if it's a truthful representation.

Hey, it's the Pope. Who's going to defend him? And I saw folks going off after, because it says mother of God.

Look, I get it. I get it. I understand. That's not a biblical phrase.

That's terrible. Look, the modern utilization of the phrase mother of God in light of the constant exaltation of Mary to grossly idolatrous levels, you bet, inappropriate.

But please, please, please, in your criticisms, remain aware of church history and remain aware of what has happened in the past.

There was a time when the Greek term Theotokos had a perfectly orthodox meaning because it wasn't a title of Mary.

It was a title of Christ. In other words, it was a Christological term.

Yes, it was always describing Mary, but there was a time when it had Christological meaning.

In other words, that the child that was born was not adopted. The child was born was not an historian division.

That the child that was born was truly deity at the time of birth.

Over time, with the exaltation of Mary, that phrase lost for the vast majority of Roman Catholics.

It no longer has any Christological meaning. For the vast majority of Roman Catholics, it has nothing to do with the hypostatic union.

It has nothing to do with that at all. It is a title of exaltation of Mary and as such is objectionable.

But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. I saw a lot of people on Twitter going ballistic over the phrase mother of God without contextualizing it properly.

And it may just be because you can't contextualize almost anything on Twitter. There's not enough room.

But don't give Roman Catholic apologists baseball bats with which to beat you up.

You have to start off by taking the weapons away from them. They are so accustomed to dealing with the jack chick style fundamentalist argumentation.

They don't even have to think because jack chick style fundamentalist argumentation stinks.

It's easily refuted. That's not what you hear us using. It's a totally different ballgame when people who have done meaningful reading in church history and are consistent in their theology, are reformed in their theology, take on Roman Catholicism.

It's a completely different situation than dealing with your jack chick fundamentalist type person.

Totally different situation. And so what was disturbing was that people were missing the point.

The point is here the Pope is demonstrating the non -reformability of Rome in light of the exaltation of Mary and the dogmatic definitions of her bodily assumption, immaculate conception, all the rest of this kind of stuff.

Demonstrating how far he remains. Mary is not the one that's going to bring peace and mercy throughout the world.

That's what the gospel does, not Mary. And the gospel is not turning to Mary and the

Roman church either. And yet people were going off after this little thing and that little thing chasing rabbits and it was a little disappointing.

A little disappointing. Now what's interesting is

I posted that and I said this is why the Reformation continues and must continue.

But then interestingly enough, two comments outside of that area that I want to bring up again as a hopefully educational moment, learning moment.

The one came from a Muslim, a Muslim that I've debated in the past.

And that of course was Yusuf Ismail. His comment was, but the

Reformation agenda needs to be even more radical. Christians must go back to the historical

Jesus. A Torah observant prophet who submitted to his Lord. He was so humble he even denied that he was good.

An attribute properly belonging to God alone in Mark 10. And then of course the, once again, the abuse of Mark 10.

And as he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

Jesus said to him, why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. We have corrected the misuse of Mark 10 on the part of Muslims many times.

And I don't expect that that correction is going to result in a diminishment of the misuse of these texts anytime soon, but it is something that each one of us needs to be prepared for.

I was going to look for, didn't have time to, the statement from Dr.

Richard Baucom in regards to what was really going on in Mark 10 and the fact that people miss the reality.

They miss the reality of what Jesus is really doing with the rich young ruler.

Certainly the Muslims do, big time. This is an excellent example of where what

Mark's intention and purpose is irrelevant to them. Mark can't have a purpose.

All you can do is isolate individual texts from Mark and use them as you see fit.

But to actually have, to actually be able to say, yeah, you know what?

I think Mark's purpose through his entire gospel is to communicate the idea that Jesus is not good.

Yeah, that's Mark's purpose. The idea that what

Jesus is saying here is don't call me good. I'm not good. Only God is good.

The Muslim wants to see that because the Muslim has Jesus who is a mere prophet.

Mark cannot, cannot, can not be squished into a

Muslim context. You are abusing Mark. You're abusing the one who has

Jesus not only performing miracles, forgiving sins, being called the son of God, but identifying himself as the son of man, conflating

Daniel 7, and saying you will see him in the clouds.

That son of man from Daniel 7 receives Latruo from his followers, the highest form of worship.

You cannot take the Jesus of the gospel of Mark and make that equivalent to the

Aryan Jesus of the Quran. Can't be done. Not honestly, anyways. Dishonestly, it's done every day.

But my Muslim friends need to understand at what cost you engage in these arguments.

It's the cost of your credibility and your honesty. You know what sources you have to quote on Mark.

And you know that once again, you're not quoting sources that believe

Mark is a consistent whole, that it's the word of God, that it needs to be taken and interpreted in that way.

You know you can't use those sources because those sources won't back you up. And those are the very sources that you would use as far as interpretation of the

Quran is concerned. But you use different standards. You use, you're inconsistent.

And so what Jesus is doing with the rich young ruler, the rich young ruler does not understand.

Does not understand. He goes away sorrowful. Why? Because he's an idolater.

He is a self -righteous idolater. He thinks that he has kept these things from his youth up.

He has not. You can't keep the last part of the law and think that's gonna make you right before God when you are an idolater.

You're not keeping the first part of the commandments. And that's what he was doing.

He had another idol. He did not know to whom he was speaking. He, he was using words that did not have the meaning that they needed to have.

And so not only are the Muslims wrong in thinking that what Jesus said to the rich young ruler is that the way of salvation is keeping the law.

Because that's not what he was talking about. But the idea that Jesus is saying, hey, I'm a bad dude.

Well, he was so humble as a, so humble he even denied that he was good.

That's not, if he's not good, it's not humility to deny his goodness. And of course,

I realize someone like you as a fist male will never allow all of Jesus's words in the New Testament to be brought together.

But when you leave the gospel of Mark, you have Jesus plainly statement, which one of you convicts me of sin?

He won't allow that Jesus said those things. But he did.

And when you allow the entire revelation to be taken together, it's testimony is, is rather clear.

So there was Yusuf Ismail's response. But in the midst of all that,

I got another little graphic here to show you.

And hopefully that's got it.

Fellow by name of A .J. McDonald Jr. Now, when

I, when I put my comments up on Twitter, there were a number of Roman Catholics responding.

And I think there might have been an Orthodox guy in there. And, you know, there are a few other folks.

And it was my intention to once again point us to the importance of the

Reformation in a day. You can go ahead and take that down for the moment. In a day when we are beginning a year that is going to lead us to the celebration of that Reformation.

And to point to Rome's fundamental errors, especially in the exaltation of Mary.

In the midst of this comes an ecclesiastical text advocate.

Now, when it comes to the issue of the

Marian dogmas in Rome, what does an ecclesiastical text advocate have to say?

Is there anything, is there any textual variant between the

Nessean text and the TR or the Robinson Pierpont or whatever that's relevant to this subject?

I can't think of one. Can't think of one at all. One of the things that I've observed about King James onlyists is their inability to remain balanced.

Everything becomes King James onlyism. Every subject, whether it's you're discussing

Roman Catholicism, Jehovah's Witnesses, whatever it might be, everything comes back to the

King James. That's their thing. And that's an illustration of the imbalance of King James onlyism.

Well, you know what? That's the imbalance of ET folks too.

Ecclesiastical text advocates. Because, you know, I don't even bother with Reformed groups on Facebook anymore because they just follow me around.

And it doesn't matter what we're talking about. We can be talking about something good and wholesome and you would think everybody would be on the same page.

Oh, no. Here they come and there's a little spin, little dig, little shot about how you're not really

Reformed unless you agree with them. And so in the midst of talking about Rome and the

Pope dedicating the year to Mary, A .J. Macdonald, Jr.

comes along and he says, The Reformed confessions presuppose the textus receptus, not the

NA28, which is what you and the modernist Catholics use. And then a little bit later, he said,

Your naturalist presuppositions are what's dangerous and not Reformed. Now, once again, we have established and it's not even a disputable thing.

The better ET advocates don't even argue this one because they know better. The Reformers never sat down and took.

Well, first of all, they couldn't have sat down with the textus receptus because it didn't exist.

This standard blue case bound TR is actually a 19th century production.

As you know, it's Scribner's work based upon the decisions made by the various translation groups of the

King James. So it's a Greek text based upon an English translation. But the

Reformers didn't have this. I can tell you what the Reformers did have.

The Reformers had this. This is the

Stephanus text. This is the real thing. And this was used in the translation of the

King James version of the Bible. Are there differences between this and this?

Yeah, not a lot. Not a lot. But there are differences.

Yeah, definitely. But they did not have that.

And then the Nessiolan text over here. And they didn't examine the two and go, oh, we accept this.

We reject this. They didn't have 90 % of the manuscript evidence cited in the modern

Nessiolan text. They didn't have it. And you can speculate all you want as to what they would have done.

But it's just that. It is pure speculation. To call this the text of the

Reformation as if that bears the authority, the critical authority of the

Reformers in textual areas is to misrepresent history.

This is simply what they had. And there are times when they didn't go with that.

There are times when they corrected that. There are times they went with the Latin Vulgate.

There was no one text. There was a general availability of later

Byzantine texts. But the recognition of the families, the relationships they bared one another, unknown.

Unknown to the Reformers. So when you say the

Reformed confessions presuppose the textus receptus, you are loading that phrase with all sorts of meaning that history would never substantiate or could never substantiate.

And so the argument that was being made is, well, you're just like the modernist

Catholics. You're using the same text they did. And so you're bad. What does that have to do with what

I was talking about? What does that have to do with Mary? What does that have to do with the Pope? Papacy?

I can't remember a single ecclesiastical text advocate I know of ever doing a meaningful debate with Roman Catholic apologists.

Not one. What are you doing over there in your little groups? It's real easy to sit back and go, oh, you're just like the

Romanists. Why aren't you evangelizing them? Why are you taking pot shots at me while I am?

Might you be imbalanced a bit? Maybe a lot? The Reformed Confessions presuppose scripture.

And what they possessed was a later Byzantine manuscript tradition that is pretty similar to the

Texas Receptive. But that wasn't their decision. And to say, therefore, that it presupposes it, so that if you do not follow that later

Byzantine manuscript tradition, that you somehow are being unfaithful to the Confessions, is to abuse the

Confessions, and I'm offended by it, and I'm getting sick of it. Really sick of it.

Then to say that I'm the one with naturalist presuppositions. I love it.

I hope to have the strength and the time between now and Thursday, Lord willing, to put together the audio so I can interact with some of the things that Dr.

Mike Lyconis said. Again, directly relevant to the Andy Stanley situation and the issue of inerrancy and the

Gospels and things like that. I think it's important. One of his primary objections to me would be that I'm obviously importing supernaturalist presuppositions.

He'll talk about how you need to build from the bottom and move upwards. Unlike, he does mention one

Reformed scholar that comes from the top and down. In other words, he has a doctrine of Scripture. What is truly concerning to me is that these

Reformed men like Mr. MacDonald don't realize that there was a methodology used by Erasmus, to a lesser extent by Robert Estienne, to a greater extent by Theodor Beza.

But there was a methodology of textual critical approach that led to this.

You can't get this from the manuscripts Erasmus had, the few that he had, the late ones that he had.

But you still can't get here without making decisions on a textual critical level.

Do you even know what those... You think Erasmus had supernatural presuppositions, whereas I have natural presuppositions?

Have you even thought that through? Have you even thought about what you're saying?

It's so easy to use the terminology of our

Reformed tradition, but then to abuse it. And that's what this is.

This is an abuse of... How many times have

I spoken about recognizing someone's naturalistic presuppositions? It's a perfectly appropriate phrase being used in a perfectly inappropriate fashion here.

Now let me say something to Mr. MacDonald and all of his friends. If I need to be like you, if I need to join your group to be

Reformed, I quit! Don't want it! It's yours! Bye!

Have fun over there! I'll come up with another word, come up with another description.

Now, of course, I do not grant to you the historical or logical right to hijack that term and read your presuppositions into it and turn the framers of the

Westminster Confession or the London Baptist Confession or the Reformers themselves from the preceding century into individuals who are making statements about subjects that they did not know anything about.

I refuse to capitulate, despite the fact I'd like to, just simply to get away from you.

But if that's the card I have to sign, if I have to sign the, this is so important,

I'll interrupt you while evangelizing Roman Catholics saying, you've got it! I'm out of here! Don't want it!

Bye -bye! Have fun! Enjoy! Your tribe will remain very small. Hopefully.

That'd be a good thing. You've lost it, man. There was a steady stream of martyr missionaries that traveled from Geneva to Roman -controlled

Italy, knowing what that was going to result in.

And if you aren't out, if you aren't doing something meaningful in reaching out to Roman Catholics, don't grab that term

Reformed of yourself. You're sullying it. Get some balance.

Realize what's important. There, that sermon was for free for all who desired to have it or didn't desire to have it for that matter.

Probably be a bunch of folks that didn't desire to have that one. But as you can tell, I have zero patience for that particular group because they just don't seem to have any balance whatsoever.

I thought I had one other thing here. Let me look at Evernote one last time.

No, I think I pretty much got everything because the other thing that I do have already mentioned.

Hopefully, the last few weeks have reminded me once again of the propriety of using the term

Lord willing and the wisdom of James in telling us to do that.

Lord willing, I will have the strength to be able to, on Thursday, look at the post that was put up.

I think it was a Facebook Live thing. It had some horrible audio problems, but not really in the section that I wanted to deal with, so it shouldn't be too much of an issue.

It was an interview after the ETS discussion of Dr.

Licona's new book. Really, this is where Andy Stanley is coming from.

Andy Stanley just can't express it in the same context. But I'm telling you right now, the position that I take is the minority position.

I'm not claiming, hey, I'm in the majority. No, I'm in the minority. I'm going to tell you why I'm in the minority, why

I'm willing to pay the cost of being in the minority, and hopefully explain why you probably want to do the same thing and not jump on the bandwagon when it comes to these types of things.

So that's what we'll look at, hopefully, Lord willing, on Thursday. So that was a jumbo -length program.

I'm happy to have made it that far. Hopefully, it was helpful to you. We covered a lot of different topics, but that's what we do here on The Dividing Line.