Pastors' Panel Podcast- Limited Atonement

Hello, good evening. Welcome to the Pastors Panel Podcast. We are so thankful that you are watching with us and joining us. If you have any questions, we would love to interact with you and fellowship with you.

If you have any comments, critiques, whatever you'd like to tell us, tell us whatever you'd like to tell us, but at least tell us hello. We'd love to hear from you and hear your questions and try to answer your questions.

That would be great as well. We'd love to pray for you. I've always said, all you have to do is type me and somebody will see that notification and we'll pray for you. We'd love to be able to do that.

I'm thankful for the Pastors Panel and the discussions that we get to have. I'm here with Dan and Claude and maybe we have some others join us later on, but I'm thankful for them too. We're going to continue our discussion on the doctrines of grace tonight.

We've looked at the sovereignty of God, which is a good starting place. We have looked at total depravity and we have looked at unlimited, unconditional, unconditional election. I'm going to get tongue twisted tonight.

Total depravity, unconditional election. And then tonight we're going to look at limited atonement. And we're going to look at limited atonement, its definition, and then what the other side says as far as you have limited atonement, then unlimited slash universal atonement.

And you can also call limited atonement, definite atonement. So we're going to let these guys define what those things mean first. But like Dan knows, I like to throw a curve ball because I want them to speak to me.

Because again, like I say often, I'm thinking about my audience. I want to reach our community and who might be listening. And this doctrines of grace subject sometimes is a difficult one. I'm going to give you an example, guys, of a situation that I was in.

I'm not going to give you the specific place or many details about the situation, but I'd like to hear from you guys in a pastoral response, if you would. So the situation that I was in, so I was in front, I was by myself in front of a room full of people and I was supposed to be there to answer questions.

And so the issue of the doctrines of grace and some trigger words were mentioned, election, predestination, they were mentioned. And so after that, you could cut the tension in the room with a knife. It was so, you know, felt so strongly.

It was so visible. And so I'm thinking about two people. I think about people who, because in my community, I'm not sure how it was, how it is in your community or how it was in your community growing up.

I'm coming from a more rural community and I feel like there's a negative connotation to the doctrines of grace, also known as Calvinism or, you know, using those trigger words again, election or predestination.

There's a negative connotation because I think for two reasons. One, because how people are taught that way to have a negative connotation towards doctrines of grace, or we base our theology on feelings and we just don't, we don't feel that.

It doesn't make logical sense to us in our minds. So the response is, you know, attack the person that's pro doctrines of grace or Calvinist or whatever. And so pastorally starting off, I'd like you guys to speak to that person.

Number one, who is maybe a young pastor or a Calvinist, a young Calvinist that is in that situation, a situation, maybe there's a church, they're in a church that's, they may be the only person that believes in the doctrines of grace in a community where they're one of the very few that would believe in the doctrines of grace.

And then if you would, if you're able to speak to that person that feels that tension, when somebody brings up the word election or predestination, they want to argue and they want to bring that tension to the forefront and cause division between their brothers because they just, they find that doctrine so reprehensible, they've got to speak out against it.

And I'm sure you guys have maybe noticed that tension before with people. So what do you guys say? What would you say to a young pastor or a lone Calvinist out there? And then how would you talk down, not talk down as in condescending, but talk down the tension in a person who feels that way.

So I'll turn it over to you guys. Whoever wants to start first is fine. Oh, come on. All right. I'll jump in after you, brother. I've been in that situation a few times, you know, growing up in churches in the South.

Yeah. The person who's the only Calvinist in the bunch had that happen a few times. The thing you want to remember is just because somebody doesn't understand the way that they get saved, doesn't mean that they're not saved.

So you want to be careful to not draw the circle around yourself as to who's in the kingdom and who's out of it so tightly to where you're the only one standing there. And even then you're on one leg, cause maybe you're on the other one who doesn't want to fit in.

I'm thinking of a church specifically in Gastonia, North Carolina, wonderful Bible preaching church. They go out trying to knock on doors and see people saved. Like they're doing the Lord's work. They hear Calvinism or predestination or election, anything like that.

So it's a wonderful group of saints down there in that church. We don't ever want to break fellowship with people over something like that. While we don't compromise on our beliefs, we also don't break fellowship with those who still hold to those core doctrines of the faith, which can get a little tricky because sometimes they accidentally skirt over towards the heretical side, but we'll bring them back and help each other out.

So the other one, being somebody who may bristle up at the idea of election or predestination, I'd probably just say the same thing. But hey man, you love the Lord, the same Lord that's here in the scriptures, the one that died on the cross, laid in the grave for three days, arose.

John 3, 16, all that good stuff. We can fight about the rest, all the way to heaven. Let's not beat each other up too badly. Sorry, too soon. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. I don't necessarily think it's bad to fight over doctrine.

As long as it's not nasty and you're still discussing the issue and not attacking the other person. That's good. I mean, you need to be challenged in your faith. I'm thinking of one guy right now. I don't know if he'll even, he may even watch tonight, but we used to go round for round on the whole idea of Calvinism or Arminianism or somewhere in between or whatever.

And yes, we're still good friends to this day. So yeah, I probably give him about the same. The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing. You've heard that before. That's kind of where you want to land on that.

Claude? Yeah. That's hard to do directionally. I just go, these two guys. Um, so I would, I would begin by, because I've been there too, and it's number one for the, as you stated, for the young pastor that's out there.

And he's, you know, if he feels, quote unquote, feels like he's the lone Calvinist, right. He's probably still somewhat cage stage and, uh, overzealous. So my advice to him would be like, like Dan said, calm down.

First of all, I'm speaking to the, to the Calvinist. I'm saying, calm down, realize you ain't got everything all figured out. We've all got room to grow. That's just a, that's just a plain country pastoral advice.

Right. Uh, uh, and then, um, to the, uh, to the, to the one who bristles to the idea of Calvinism, I would just do what I've always done is start with questions for them. So, you know, they, because the fact of the matter is for someone who, um, holds to our, the Armenian perspective, and we're not using that as a negative connotation.

It's, it's literally distinctions that we're making. So, you know, uh, reformed in Armenian, uh, to the, to the Armenian perspective, I would say the burden of proof is on them. So just allow them to look at the scriptures, ask them questions.

So what do you know about Calvinism? Right. What, what do you know about it? Not, we're not in, and I can even probe deeper and say, not asking, what have you heard? I'm asking, what do you know? Have you put the time in to research to find out what reformed theology is?

And as much as possible, always draw the names out of it because Calvin wouldn't want, Calvin, Luther, any of them guys, they would be appalled if we were, you know, dedicating a faith to them when their whole lives pointed not to themselves,.

But to the Christ of the scriptures. Yeah. Yeah. Those are good questions to ask. So I think that was helpful. I appreciate it guys. And I'm going to give you next week's question. Um, even if, even if Claude is out of jail and he's Facebook jail, I'm going to say that.

He's able to host. Here's the question for next week. Just, just to give you a heads up, because we, we need to get into our topic, but it's along the same lines of that question. So, um, and I'll go ahead and tell you, I'm one of these persons.

Should a potential pastor be up front about being reformed prior to hire, or should he keep, keep it hush and just teach?

So that's for next week. Okay. Okay. All right. Thanks for giving us such a good, a good questions. No, I don't need a heads up for that right now. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. That's, that's going to be like a piece of chewed bubble gum that you keep putting under the desk and pulling out.

Well, I know you guys will be good answering that question next week. So tonight we're, we're going to dive right into limited atonement. And after we give some definitions, I want us to take turns going through these different texts.

Um, and just, I think we can probably go through these texts quickly. Um, because what, I guess what we're basically going to do is, um, show how these verses speak to limited atonement or, or help define or where we find limited atonement in scripture.

And so that's basically what we're doing going through this, going through these texts. I'm going to keep an eye on the time because I do want to get to these later, um, passages that those who are on the other side would use and say, you can't believe in limited atonement because of this verse.

And I do want to, want us to take a look at some of those verses. So, um, whoever feels like they're prepared, I don't know which one of you, um, is, is ready to answer or define what these things are, but, uh, limited atonement, what is a good definition of limited atonement?

Limited atonement is, uh, in, in simple, just layman's plain terms. It, first of all, it's not what it sounds like, right? We're not limiting the sacrifice of Christ. That's, that's key right there. The limitation comes on the efficaciousness, uh, or, or no, maybe I'm wrong there too.

Uh, it's not that Christ's death is not effective, but it is specifically effective for those whom he has elected and called into salvation.

Yeah. Yeah. Do you have another definition, Dan? No. Okay. And I don't ask that because you have, it's a totally different definition because I know you agree with what Claude said, I'm assuming, but I think when we go to put things in our own words, it may help clear things up for us.

You know, and someone who's listening, you may say it differently and how they understand things. So it's not that we disagree, but. Oh no, no, don't disagree at all. I almost think it'd be helpful if we, uh, because you can state it negatively, which would be limited atonement, or you can say positively, uh, which I guess you would call, um, particular redemption or, uh, or definite atonement.

Um, and what that means is that when God entered into, um, the, the act of salvation, when he sent Jesus to the cross, when Jesus laid down his wife and went to the grave and came up victorious, what was the purpose behind the act of God in salvation?

You know, what did he have in mind when he went to the cross? Who was he trying to save? In that respect, you stated positively, not that it was limited, but that he had a specific people in mind, those who would be saved, those who had chosen him before the foundation of the world.

He chose them, went to the cross for the express purpose of saving those people. So it's not that, that the blood of Christ couldn't save everyone on the planet, but that it was only meant to save, uh, those who were being saved.

I guess that would be the positive way of saving it. Yeah. And using those different terms of the definition, uh, is helpful because you can, you can see the different aspects of, uh, limited atonement in those different words, particular, you know, particular people on definite, you know, there's a definite, it has a definite effect.

Right. And that would be in contrast to indefinite where, where instead of God dying for a specific people, he, uh, Jesus would have died for a nameless faceless blob that he wasn't really too sure who was going to populate that field.

Look at it like a spreadsheet. Been a lot of spreadsheets lately. I don't know why that came to mind. All right. So flipping it over unlimited or universal atonement. So this will, this will be the other argument versus unlimited or universal atonement.

So unlimited atonement is just like what, uh, Dan was explaining there. The, the, the opposite view of limited atonement that Christ made, um, salvation possible for everyone, but not certain. That's the, that's the issue with unlimited atonement.

Because whether it's intentional or not, it's stating that salvation in some way was done with an uncertainty of the effect of the saving work of Christ. When in reality, he died for an elect people. He didn't, he didn't, he didn't die on the cross to make salvation possible.

He died on the cross to make salvation certain.

And before you jump in, uh, Dan, Claude, you use the word, um, so sufficient. And I think that's where some of the rub comes in with, um, the other side or the, the two different sides is because you have the Armenian, the Armenian side, um, that this is it's his sacrifice is sufficient.

It's enough. It can, it can cover the whole of the earth, all of all people that were ever born. It's, it's sufficient to do that. And then the other side, the, the doctrines of grace reform side is going to say, well, it's, it's sufficient for those who it was designed for.

And so that's, that's where the rub, that's where the friction comes in, I think.

I think another descriptive term that might be, um, good is purposeful, uh, atonement, you know, like Dan, Dan used definite atonement, particular redemption, but it's,.

It's purposeful atonement. Do you want to add anything, Dan? Um, I'm trying to think of something, but we kind of covered it pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. I guess, I don't know. My brain works slow at night time.

Don't, don't worry about me. When you think about unlimited atonement, um, it's kind of a misnomer too, because in some way the atonement is still limited because not everyone is saved. Um, even in the unlimited atonement scene.

So they would say that salvation was purchased for all, but it's not given to all. So for whatever reason, and you go to different people and find different reasons why it's not given to this one or that one, but it's limited to usually whoever believed or whoever confessed with their mouth and believe in their heart.

Uh, some people say baptism. Um, but even then it's, it's limited in its scope, uh, in some way, form or fashion. So really the, the limited unlimited distinction is only helpful if you're putting it in the proper categories, what aspect of it is limited, what aspect of it is unlimited.

Um, if you don't put it in those correct categories, people are going to talk past each other. I think that's probably why a lot of people have trouble understanding the Calvinist point of view or the Arminian point of view or anywhere in between, you know, Lutherans, whoever they talk past each other because one's thinking of, of sufficiency while one's thinking of efficacy and vice versa.

And it ends up being a mess because people aren't defining their terms properly. Right. Exactly. Amen. And, um, I've got different, I'm going different places in my mind and I forget where we're tracking.

We're tracking with you. You just go and we'll follow. I'm on for the ride. Wait, your mind works slow at night. Mine works slow all day long. So limited atonement. And what you said was, was really important because, you know, in that sense, everybody believes in limited atonement because some people go to hell and some people go to heaven.

So, so everybody believes in some type of, however you want to describe it, some type of limited atonement. Unless you're a university. Unless you're a university. Yes. Yeah. So, you know, you got to decide that in your mind, you know, am I a universalist or to believe in limited atonement?

Now that's where these, it's good that we've studied these doctrines together because they begin, they begin to bleed, um, over into one another because, all right, now, you know, we've settled this. I'm not a universalist.

Okay. I may be, you know, in the Arminian camp, but I'm not a universalist. So, you know, I've got to lean over here and submit to a little bit of the limited atonement. So, but then you start getting into like Dan was saying, well, how did, how does it get applied?

And now we're start bleeding back into, um, unconditional election and total depravity. I have an inability to, to get, to get it, receive it, apply it to myself. It's got to be a gift. It's got to come from God.

So it's good that, and I, you know, maybe there's no, maybe two of the look, the Lord is working and, um, you know, called you and what you're doing on your podcast. Um, you're talking about the doctrines of grace.

There's another podcast out there that we're, you know, we're familiar with. It's going to be studying the doctrines of grace. So it's good that we continue to bring these things up and talk about it for the sake of, you know, our community and who needs to know.

Um, and we, and we keep the doctrines of that study of the doctrines together so we can better understand. Does that make sense? Is that good?

Yeah. Keeping it together, systematize so that you can walk through it and, and big picture. If we can just get ourselves and others just to slow down to take the time, that's where, that's where it's, it's got to come to that.

And then we're not necessarily trying to listen to each other's opinion, but we're going, but we're going to say, we're going to go to the book. We're going to go to the scripture. We're going to see what the word says in context.

Now, again, that it, it inevitably leads to a, a drug out. And I mean that in a good way. I don't know if that's right. English though. Uh, you know, a prolonged drug, drug at prolonged drop. So a prolonged study of the scriptures, which sadly very few have, um, the patience for in our day and time.

And over the years that's been demonstrated to, but it is, it is the necessary course that we must take that prolonged study of the scripture so that we get in context.

So real quickly, before we get into the verses, the next question is, uh, well, we've looked at the differences, but do you have maybe any thoughts on why, why it matters? Um, why we need to take a look at the different camps and why it matters that we understand the differences between limited atonement and unlimited atonement, like consequences to believing one over the other.

Any, any thoughts on that? Yeah. Um, one, one of them, the just basic surface level, um, is that as Christians, we should value truth. So no matter what the truth is, you seek it from the scriptures and follow it.

You know, if we're wrong, man up, say you're wrong. Um, if, if we're right, stand your ground, you know, throw darts at your enemy. Pinch your brother until he keeps on throwing them the right way. Another one is, uh, this is a little bit deeper.

Um, it has, it affects the way that you pray, worship, and do evangelism. If you look at, especially us here in New York, we are reaping the consequences of having Charles Finney come through this area.

Um, oh man, it was about 150, 100, almost 200 years ago. Um, he came through, um, with a, a semi-Pelagian, almost Pelagian idea of, of how the atonement worked, uh, completely, um, in the unlimited atonement, um, camp, but he pushed really hard for emotional responses, a mental ascent, um, that you could lose your salvation.

Huge Methodist presence, uh, up here as well with the, the Armenian, uh, doctrine. And what ends up happening is over the course of the last 200 years, um, that, that doctrine, um, has warped the way that worship is done.

So that, um, instead of coming with, with the holy reverence for worship, realizing that it is God's called people to himself in order to, uh, worship him on a Lord's day, really what you end up having is a, is a, a endless cycle of evangelistic outreaches that masquerade as your Lord's day service.

So you end up with, with almost like a parachurch evangelistic outreach instead of being the church. Um, and it's not entirely a bad thing. You should be preaching the gospel every week at some point.

Uh, it's built into, uh, the Reformed Presbyterian liturgy. Um, you know, we have a, a reading of the law, a confection of our sin. We hear the gospel preached to us by our minister each and every week.

Um, you know, that we who believe in Christ and sought forgiveness of sins, we have found forgiveness of sins in Christ. Beautiful message. Um, but that's also allowed for churches to not go past a very shallow level because if all you're doing is preaching the very basics of the faith each week, uh, you end up with people who are, what Paul put it in, I believe it's Hebrews.

I believe Paul wrote Hebrews. Shoot,.

It'd be all right. You said that y 'all should be able to eat solid foods now.

Yeah. But instead you're still on milk. And then he goes on to stuff. And this is crazy to me. He talks about the laying on of hands, repentance of sins, washings, and all sorts of stuff that you ask the average church person today.

Um, they, they don't, they couldn't give you a solid baseline on, on most of those doctrines. That's what he's calling. It's like, Oh man, we need to step it up and you can't do that. So it affects things.

Now I don't want to paint with a broad brush. I mean, I kind of just did, but I don't want to paint like everybody who holds to that or some sort of, um, can they call themselves compatible or, uh, traditionalist Southern Baptist doctrine or whatever you want to call it.

Um, I don't want to paint everybody with a broad brush, but that overarchingly has been what I've seen, at least in the Northeast. Uh, it's been not good. Uh, at the same time, um, we have seen through the, the Calvinist church is an area.

A lot of.

Went cold and dead. Yep. That's the, that's the challenge for reform folks. If you believe,.

Well, God's going to do it. Then, uh, the, the temptation is to sit back on the world and just wait for it to happen. God called us to go out there and disciple the nation, baptize them, teach them all that you've commanded.

Um, and remember that he's with us until the end. Yeah. I found a group of Presbyterians that are planting churches and we're rolling with it. There's my musings on the situation, I guess. Well, is, is basically what you described there at the end.

Some people call hyper Calvinism somewhat. Yeah. Okay. It could be, it could be hyper Calvinism. It could be laziness. Some people believe that you shouldn't evangelize unless you know that a person's either showing signs of faith or something like that.

They go really far with it. Some people are just lazy or scared. Yeah. They don't want to do the work. They know they should. They know that God uses people to call people to himself, but they just don't really feel like doing that today.

Might lose my job or somebody might make fun of me. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the reason why I want to bring that up is because when, when, you know, certain people begin to look at or describe Calvinist, all Calvinists get lumped into that, the hyper Calvinist.

And so we want to, you know, kind of shake loose that caricature and say, no, we, you know, we're not like that. We, you know, we believe the Bible says that we are to evangelize. We are to go out and save that which is lost and preach the gospel.

And so, and, and all those other things that, you know, the Bible says that we should be doing and not sit on our laurels and let God, God's going to take care of it. So, yeah, I think that's an important discussion to have.

So let's, let's jump into these verses. And the reason we want to look at these verses is because like we were, like we were discussing earlier, you, you look at, you look at Limit Atonement and you get into these, what is she, is she talking to you?

Yeah, she's talking to me. She's talking to you? Hey, she's a good wife. I've got a joke for her and I hesitate, I hesitate doing it because I've learned to, to bite my tongue and, and just, you know, let my yes for yes and my no me no, cause I don't want to offend anybody, but I only say this in jest.

I don't, I don't want to offend anybody. So this is, this is just a joke, but I've, I've got my Arminian soteriology coffee mug with me tonight.

Oh man. Oh my. Have you, have you seen the, the coffee cups? I think Reform Sage puts them out. It says Arminian tears on it. Have you seen that Dan? Yeah, I've seen that.

Yeah, I've seen a couple, a couple of spinoffs on that. I've seen Calvinist tears and Lutheran tears. One of them said Papist tears. I thought that was pretty funny. Well, I hope nobody was offended by that.

I just did it in jest. So what, what we want to do and our goal, especially, I know it's our heart and we hope that it's your heart as well. We want to see, we want to see what God says. We want to see what he says in his word, through the scriptures.

And so even for us, and I think it was Dan or Claude that kind of was kind of taking us in that direction. I think it was Dan taking us in that direction earlier when you were saying, you know, if we're, if we're wrong, they man up.

So either side, whatever side we're on, if we're wrong, man up. But how do we know that we're wrong? Test everything according to the word, brother. So that's where we want to go. That's why we go there.

You know, who cares what we have to say? And we can babble on and talk about whatever, but officially we want to get to the word and hear what God has to say. So if you guys are ready, I want, I want to do Matthew 1, 21, and we're just going to point to the limited atonement in these passages.

Claude, if you want to do Matthew 20, 28, and Dan, Matthew 26, 28, and we'll go from there and keep a check on our time. But while y 'all were looking at those verses, and you guys don't have to limit it to that, no pun intended.

If you want to talk about, if you want to talk about some of the context of the passage, you guys have freedom to do that. So Matthew 1, chapter 1, verse 21, it's God's word says, and she will bury son.

We're familiar with this passage. She will bury son and you shall call his name Jesus for, or so, for it is he who will save his people from their sins. And how do we get limited atonement out of this?

It's, it's his people that he will say. So there's, there, there's that definite, definite part of the atonement. There's that peculiar part of the atonement. There's that limited part of the atonement.

Whom will he say? It will be his, his people. And I'm sure we could probably say that through most of these verses, but I wanted us to make sure that we looked at God's word tonight and get it straight, straight from him.

All right. Let me, let me pull up the next one. Matthew 20, 20. Yep. I have to go back to my notes. 28.

Yeah. I'll read 26 through 28 just to get a little bit of context. Okay. The scripture says it shall not. Jesus is speaking to his disciples there. And he says, it shall not be so among you, but whoever would be great among you must be your servant.

And whoever would be first among you must be your slave. Even as the son of man came not to be served or not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. So the, the scope kind of broadens there as we move, uh, just kind of a teaser for your, for your end, uh, your closing section.

Here. Um, you know, the scope broadens, but it's still very specific. For the day there, we went to Matthew 20, 26, 28, 26, 28. I was just checking on something before I studied. I didn't want to tell anybody anything wrong.

Uh, yeah. Uh, this is the, the institution of the Lord's supper that's found in Matthew. Um, it's beautiful. Uh, passage, uh, Jesus is, is he's gathering his people together. They're eating the, uh, the, the Passover meal.

Um, but the whole dinner, you know, they're singing Psalms or they're looking at it and, uh, he, uh, takes the bread and breaks it. This is my body, which is broken for you. Takes the cups. And this is, uh, the, the, uh, blood poured out for, for the sins of, for many, for the forgiveness of sins.

He's there talking about his coming crucifixion. It is the act of atonement, the sacrifice being made saying here, this meal is representative of not just representative of, but it is representative of his crucifixion.

So what he's saying is this is what is given my body, my life for yours. You deserve to die. I'm going to take that on myself that way. You don't have to. And then it says, um, well, this is my blood of the covenant, the covenant, that promise of salvation, that he's going to bring salvation to his people.

He just poured out for many. And that word many, it's not the word. Oh, it's the word many, which means that there's going to be a large number of people. He's pouring it out for, and not everyone is pouring it out for, for the forgiveness of their sins.

Um, my wife was reading some, uh, anti-Calvinist, anti-limited atonement, uh, literature to me, uh, before I came on. And, um, it is incredible the lengths that people go to, to get around the word many here.

Um, the one guy actually said that many in this situation means all because it's more than just a few, but what the word means at all. So, um, it is, yeah, it was, it was bad. Uh, she put her phone down, but, uh, was it lightened flowers?

No, it was, uh, I'm sure he would probably say the same thing. But, uh, yeah, so that's where we get the idea that Jesus, when he went to the cross, when explaining his sacrifice, this sacrifice, which is the salvation promised in the covenant is going to come to the many for forgiveness of sin.

And I believe that many is the same, uh, people who were chosen in him before the foundations of the world as in Ephesians one, uh, four, and then, uh, it's later on 12, 13, 14, the whole first chapter, second chapter two of Ephesians.

Um, you look at it all throughout the New Testament, uh, the idea of, yeah, the guy was Thomas Taylor. Uh, we were reading, um, I never heard of him. Uh, you're okay. Yeah. So that, that is where, uh, Matthew 26, 28 shows us the idea of limited atonement.

Now, one thing I would like to point out, um, people like to look at these doctrines that are, that are systematic in nature, their systematic theology, right? And so they like to go to the Bible and say, well, where is the systematic theology that proves this, this doctrine?

And the thing is the Bible isn't written in systematic theology, the Bible in truth, like this is a part of a narrative. Right. Um, what we do when we come to, to these doctrines, we have to actually pull them out of scripture and see what they, what, what they look like together.

Yeah. So you're not going to find one verse that lays out explicitly limited atonement, but if limited atonement is true, you will see it sprinkled all throughout scripture. And I was just about to say something about John 10, which he has punched in up there.

You see it here at math and you see it in John 10, uh, on 17, you see him in his high priestly prayer again, Ephesians, um, all throughout the new Testament, you see it sprinkled, um, the author and finisher of our faith.

Um, yeah, you see it sprinkled all throughout. And so if you see that idea running on the surface and just below the surface of many, many texts across the whole of the new and old Testament, you can rest assured that that doctrine is there.

And that's how we systematize it to make it look like tulip because tulip is a, you know, neatly packaged little thing where scriptures are not as neatly packaged. And I think that that's important for every side because people will try to pigeonhole people and say, well, give me one verse.

Well, you can't just find it in one verse. You got to put it.

Together and see if the dots actually connect. That's the danger of proof texting. So let me.

Give you guys your, your next, uh, two texts, uh, Claude X 1348. Okay. And Dan X, um, I'm going to skip that one. Um, let's do, um, Hebrews two 17. So I want to, I want to go to John 10. That would be mine.

And, um, I really appreciate what, what Dan was doing there. Um, not only was he explaining the text, um, and of course, Claude helps us out and does this as well, but, but Dan, what he was just doing was he was, he was giving us, um, how to study the text, talking about how to study the text, um, so that we don't take these things out of context as, as Paul was talking about, you know, proof texting and, um, misunderstanding because we proof text misunderstanding because we don't read it in this context.

Um, Dan was not only explaining the text, but teaching us how to explain the text. And that's something that I wanted to do with, with this passage to, to go back to the, my first text that I looked at a few seconds ago was, um, the Matthew verse where Matthew tells us that, um, um, he was talking to Mary and you will bury his son and he will, you will call his name Jesus.