Brother Modene

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona. This is the dividing line

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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence

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Our host is dr. James white director of alpha to make a ministries and an elder at the Phoenix reformed

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Baptist Church This is a live program and we invite your participation if you'd like to talk with dr.

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White call now It's 602 nine seven three four six zero two or toll -free across the

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United States. It's one eight seven seven seven five three Three three four one and now with today's topic.

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Here is James white Hey, good morning. Welcome to the dividing line

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Eight seven seven seven five three three three four one is the phone number We finished up the veneration debate have had a bunch of people who said that what we need to do in the future

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Is to do a bunch of our debates that way The first one that's been suggested to me very strongly was the

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Stafford debate and go through the other guys presentation point by point and Give myself the opportunity to respond to stuff that I didn't have time to respond to during the debate, which is always the case you

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Probably the one of the major things you're doing during a debate is prioritizing the material in your opponent's presentation

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Based upon what you believe is the the truth and what is most important to be?

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Defended and so on and so forth and that means there are things By definition you cannot get to I mean if you both have 25 minute opening statements and you have 10 minute rebuttals

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You can't get to everything someone said in 25 minutes and 10. It's just not possible. So You know that a lot of people said that would be very educational

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Very useful had one gentleman mentioned that you know He'd listened to the veneration bait four times but got much more out of the dividing line programs on it

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Because I was commenting on as we were going along and providing extra information things like that So we will definitely have to give consideration to that down the road

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Might be useful to do some of the older stuff that you know, bring it back to people's mind and that it's been

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Many years since those debates took place, but the issues really very rarely change

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Especially the type of debates we do those issues don't change and can't change basically

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So we might be able to do that. Also real quickly. I'm sure many of you if you have not already heard of it

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Starting last week about a week or so ago I started hitting the news and now it's hitting more and more and more and some people waking up to this

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Gabriel Revelation Stella or Gabriel revelation slab it is a

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It's a slab of stone actually, but it's not chiseled it's actually written upon with with ink

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That has come to light it's not that it itself has come to light but an antiquities dealer had it and Someone's visiting his home looking at it comes up with a theory that it's exceptionally important mainly because it's very difficult to read and One of the issues one of the big things right now is as normal as with all this stuff

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Talpiot tomb and all this, you know, James Ossuary and blah blah blah blah You've got people out there just chomping at the bit to make as much money as they can real quick before the serious engines of scholarship can come along and say and nope, that's probably not the best conclusion to come to there and That happens slowly, you know, it takes you know, really good scholarship takes time

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To collect things that may not take time to respond to really bad scholarship, but You know, it doesn't move at the speed of the

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Internet. It doesn't move as fast as your RSS reader does basically and so The first thing to remember about this is that everything you're reading is tentative.

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It's the first few papers being produced and difficulties of reading something written with ink on rock is

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Going to be more difficult to work out and maybe impossible to work out over against ink on parchment

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Because while you can utilize and we have made great advancements in the technology that we can use to magnify to Enrich to to read at a in a better way using ultraviolet light or infrared or all sorts of different technologies

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That which was once scratched on to a piece of leather That's different with a rock

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Okay rocks do not work the same way that you can't backlight a rock for example

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And with a palimpsest manuscript, which has been washed off and something else written over it You can you can get to what was originally written on it in most cases because you've scratched the surface you've left some

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Inkling of what you did that wouldn't be the case with a rock So there's all sorts of issues along those lines.

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I haven't even seen I mean I've seen pictures of the slab But I've not seen any type of up -close -and -personal

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Pictures of the questionable sections and etc, etc So anything you're going to be hearing in the news is going to be based upon You know sort of like with remember remember the gospel of Judas stuff last year and then six eight months later

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You discover that actually they've mistranslated a portion of it That was major to the to the big initial initial announcements about Judas being a good guy and all the rest of stuff

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You know that that made it to Good Morning America, but the oops we Mistranslated that part didn't make it to Good Morning America, you know

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Yeah, you got to be careful stuff like that. That's Sadly very very very common in these instances and now the big thing and if you're wondering well, what's so important about this thing is

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That it seems to contain and again. I know I said seems to contain I mean, there's still issues about dating and stuff like that We've got it those things are things that have to be worked out and examined over time that takes

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Months and years and so on so forth, but it seems to contain a pre

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Christian Jewish text And at one point it seems it might have reference to a

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Messianic figure of some kind and It may and there's there's conjecture here.

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You have to fill in the blanks as to what it is. It may say something along the lines of after three days living

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The problem is the living parts next to impossible to read and has to be reconstructed sort of conjecturally, but Let's let's say it did after three days live.

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Well what people have immediately jumped to is aha Here it is This is where the

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Christians got the whole idea of the resurrection from now if you're used to you know at least once while exposing yourself to to critic critical writings and and You know following some of the blogs and you know every once while listen to an atheist on YouTube You know as long as you can before your brain start oozing out of your ears

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You know that What you normally hear is that the whole story of the resurrection was made up after the death of Jesus Jesus got himself in trouble in Jerusalem gets himself killed and his followers just cannot accept his death and so they make up the story is the resurrection to explain why they

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Continue to believe in him and then it just grows and grows and then they borrow from pagan religions and Jesus becomes a god and blah

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Blah blah blah This is your standard You know

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I teach in a community college in philosophy religion class type explanation when you can't get any higher than that so That's what's thrown out there now

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Up to this point everybody's saying well Well you either had the critics who are doing the dying and rising

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God thing with those serious or Horace or all the rest that Start stuff, which is pure garbage Especially the

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Osiris myth and stuff like that, and that's very common in YouTube as well But then other people saying no no there's nothing like this, and they just made it up to explain their belief in the resurrection so People go different directions always trying to find a way around you know explaining the facts

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Now the same critics all of a sudden are going you know the ones who used to say well This was just made up to explain death of Jesus now are going aha

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Now they're just borrowing from this Jewish story and tying into that It's just like you know it doesn't matter what you find

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You know we sort of keep going Isaiah 53

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Remember that back there you know I mean And it's just amazing the convenient lapses of memory that may these people have on on stuff like that But you know let's say just for the sake of argument

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That let's say that the correct interpretation of this Apocalyptic vision is that there is a messianic figure and let's say that he dies

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And then he rises again three days there that all it says is after three days lives It doesn't it doesn't talk about the nature of resurrection anything like that There's gonna be a lot of discussion about this in regards to what you

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Jews did believe about Resurrection because it has been taken as a given that what was startling about Jesus resurrection is that while there was a belief in the resurrection at the end of time the idea of an individual

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Resurrecting before the end of time was what was so scandalous to Jews this might if it all

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Pans out and could be demonstrated Might indicate that that wasn't quite as startling as it was thought that it might be

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That's about the most important thing I could see so far, but anyway So you're gonna be hearing stuff about this and see what happens is there's been some scholarly papers written

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There's been that's what started all this but then what you need to realize is That scholarly paper is written

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And then a summary appears in a sort of highbrow type journal And then if that gets noticed then a summary of the summary probably written by someone's much less

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Knowledge gets written and by the time it ends up in US News and World Report The IQ level of it is about that of a wet shoelace.

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Okay. I mean it is just Really bad what ends up happening at that point and You just can't trust 99 % of what appears on that level in that popular level of stuff so Just keep that in mind and of course as more information comes out.

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You know, but here's where again microwave Christianity a microwave culture

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You know might be cool in developing a new drug to help with a disease or something, but in many places

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It is not advantageous to serious long -term Scholarship and understanding of history and things like that in other words, we got to have patience and say, you know, don't have every answer to everything right as soon as it appears because Many times those answers aren't the best answers that can be given sometimes things will you know develop as time goes by so Keep that keep that in mind as well.

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Someone just told me I shouldn't insult all shoelaces But I've never met an overly intelligent shoelace let alone one that was wet so I this was one of my favorite

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Examples is the IQ of a wet shoelace, which has nothing to do Almost nothing to do with where we're gonna go here an interesting

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Shift there. I was sent a sound clip. I have a bunch of sound clips if nobody calls day

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No, no worries to me. I'll get them all through but Remember John Modine Rich just rolled his eyes.

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Remember John Modine going after RC Sproul because RC's pulpit isn't in the center of the church

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Oh good old John Modine, you know John he's even in our in our

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Radio free Geneva opening. I don't like Calvinist Yeah, that's that's

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John Modine and I was Sent actually the bulletin insert from his church that mentioned to me twice in this bulletin insert

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I put on the blog a while back and So, I think this is from the same sermon

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It was preached the day that my name was in the was in the thing But just give you an idea of what's out there now.

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I I have not Met too many people that were quite as confused as as brother

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Modine And yet as confident about his confusion

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Because then he starts off here. He starts off. You're sitting here going. Well, that doesn't sound too bad

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Yeah, okay, you know and then all of a sudden he makes an application you go put wait a minute you what and you realize

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His definitions and the definitions the rest of us use out here in the world are sometimes they're not quite the same things

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So this is a this is a section I'm not sure how much of it I'm gonna listen to I've got nine minutes of it so I don't think

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I can handle that but This is a section from a sermon called keep your dirty hands off the gospel

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Rich is in there just shaking his head going. Oh, no, I might just play some

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Bentley seven seven seven five three three three four one waiting on your calls now

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Yeah, yeah, where's Warren to sing Blue Christmas Elvis or something that's that's what we need anyway let's let's listen to a little

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John Modine and Keep your dirty hands off the gospel

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The Master choice is his the secondary choices are God determines in his perfect and wonderful will

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Number four beware those who gain say the gospel. This is a horrible sin in error I even hate talking to talking about this.

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It's also however the most popular position in evangelical Christianity today It's it absolutely dominates in Baptist churches it is gaining and growing it dominates in control

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It's totally understand the biggest meetings Are those who gain say the gospel and it's understandable

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It's their natural gut reaction. I mean, I mean it listen if you've seen the errors of Finney and Hiles up close

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And you're saved you're sick to your stomach because it's an abomination That now, okay.

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I agree errors of Finney you bet Hiles. Yeah Mm -hmm.

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No problem has has has brother Modine had a change of heart This decisionalism

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I preach against is a wicked abomination it strips the deity of Jesus Christ It takes the

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Holy Spirit and smashes him in the ground It's an it's an offensive affront to God and I understand why the people who do this do what they do

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I understand it. It's still not right So you're you're going against decisionalism Okay, you know up to this point.

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It's sort of like yeah. Okay. All right. This is this is good So what what's he talking about again saying the gospel then what's to what is he making reference?

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The natural gut reaction of the errors of Finney and Hiles, of course, I'm talking about the game saying gospel lordship salvation

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What I mean, but look at what our text says and what it does not say look at that 1630 again. There you go lordship salvation that That's what's gain saying the gospel is lordship

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Salvation just just so you know He brought them out and said sirs.

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What must I do to be saved? And they said believe on the

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Lord Jesus Christ and now shall be saved in the house Now, you know what Paul said, right?

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Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you'll be saved. But what does the Calvinist Baptist say today?

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Here's what he does. He teaches and writes and preaches and says this you've got to turn from all your sins That's what he says

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And I know some of you are thinking well, yeah, but you're supposed to turn from all your sins, please justification sanctification two different subjects

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Wow so you can be justified without repentance repentance is a part of sanctification not a part of Justification see so again

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Here's where theology matters because when you don't believe that it's the Spirit of God who saves when you don't believe

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Spirit of God Who causes regeneration when you don't believe the Spirit of God that caused the person to turn from sin in?

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Faith to Christ when you don't see it. Those are two sides the same thing Once you've thrown out the sovereign the true sovereignty of God he used the term he says and believe the the doctrine

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Once you've throw all that stuff out then you're left with this. This is why you get all these wild imbalanced wacky things that that that people present out there and this is how you can preach against Decisionalism while also preaching against the role the

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Spirit of God in costing regeneration Here's what here's what the Calvinist Baptist preaches.

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You've got to make a lifelong commitment of surrender right now You've got to do that You must persevere to the end of your life.

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You must make Jesus Christ the absolute Lord of your life I'm gonna quote quote from John MacArthur's ironically named

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Gracie website Ironically named here's quote John MacArthur those who want to eliminate

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Christ Lordship from the gospel See faith as simple trust in a set of truths about Christ Faith as they describe it is merely a personal appropriation of the promise of eternal life, but scripture describes faith is more than that It's a wholehearted trust in Christ personally

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It means we rely on his counsel trust in his goodness and trust ourselves for time and eternity whose guardianship real faith saving faith

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Is all this in me in my mind emotions will embracing all of him the Savior advocate provider sustainer counsel and Lord and God May I say amen and how could you say that because true saving faith is born of what?

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the Holy Spirit of God working regeneration in the heart of the elect see

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Theology matters that sounds really really good doesn't However Paul and Silas didn't know about that Yeah, Paul and Silas didn't know about that that Paul there didn't write all that Romans and first Corinthians and Galatians and Ephesians Stop, that's a problem

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You've got to choose who you're gonna believe today Paul and Silas the Holy Spirit the authored preserved inspired

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Word of God or John MacArthur It is Gracie website in his big church in California Maybe I shouldn't chuckle about these things but having listened to Modine before and Hearing how serious he is to actually sit back and go so that one text and those few words is the exhaustive definition of everything

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That Paul and Silas taught the Philippian jailer that night. Is that what you're saying? You know,

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I suppose again as long as you don't see the plain biblical teaching that it's the

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Spirit of God that brings about the new birth Then you could you know come up with this kind of stuff and and so on so forth but once again, you see how it all fits together how it's all relevant how it's all important and Why John MacArthur is exactly right to have said what he said and it makes perfect sense as long as you well allow everything the

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Bible has to say to Speak and not limit everything to just a few words in Acts chapter 16 gotta make a choice

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Now Silas didn't say to the jailer read these books and letters and when you're fully embracing all of Jesus the Savior I've get providers sustainer counselor and Lord God then we'll get you saved

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Didn't say that See that's not what happens in the Word of God in the Word of God sinners have to believe on the

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Lord Jesus Christ and Then you'll be saved That's what the Word of God says now I understand

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John MacArthur's justifiably upset with the heresies of Finney and everyone who's followed on all the way to Jack house and half the

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Baptist preachers today understand that I'm upset with them too, but that doesn't give us the right to change the gospel and Gain say with it

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In the Word of God sinners have to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ then They can groan walk in faith and grace

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Towards Christian maturity when they should embrace all of the real roles in authority Jesus Christ that is unless of course we garble the gospel for them

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The Lordship gospel garble is the appeal to logic. It's logical right logical sinner should want to embrace all of the

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Lord Jesus Christ and all of its attributes and deity in power It's logical right makes sense we can write big institute books about this

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We can name colleges after it. It's logical. It's reasonable. It's also right and property It's it's just not biblical for the

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Modine. I don't understand well the lost sinful jailer was told to believe It's what he was told to do

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Anything else you're doing you're garbling gumming up gain saying the gospel The garbo gospel finds its ultimate end in the doctrines of grace that John Calvin and his followers are promulgated

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And I hope if I ever go on a murderous rampage just speaking here next Cathedral If I ever go on a murderous rampage and use government authority if I take over Perrysburg use government authority to slaughter my theological

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Enemies burn them at the stake murder him execute him torture him. I hope if I ever do that That you name a college after me and associate my name with grace

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There you go there that I guess we can start a new a new saying Meaningful historiography matters

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You know we shouldn't we shouldn't come down too hard um brother Modine Because well first of all he may still be traumatized from R .C.

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Sproul's off -center pulpit and that that takes a while to recover from but But the other thing to remember is that he unfortunately is not alone in this kind of wild -eyed fanaticism that uses history as silly putty and Completely ignores context completely ignores the reality that men lived in and so on so forth it is one of the more

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Effective means of shutting down people's minds to use the guilt by association argument combined with The basic utter ignorance of the vast majority of evangelicals about church history in the first place

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To be able to vilify and and so on so forth those of preceding generations shall we say

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Rather ironic isn't it grace doctrines of grace Grace College Grace Church Calvin College.

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Oh, where'd you go to school at Calvin College? We're having a bonfire Ironic I Guess we're just running around burning our theological

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Enemies aren't we it's actually a lie. Yeah, and we know who the father of lies is the doctors of Calvin demand that your life has to have evidence of Ongoing fruitfulness and I'm going faithfulness to the very end of your life or else somehow.

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How would you know you're saved? You know this is the P into it, right? So this is this is that what this sounds like Sadly aside from the fact that when

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I listen this fellow I I just wanted to put my hand up and say could you sit down and catch your breath? Because that sounds like he's about to collapse.

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He's about to have you know you're gonna need to get out the paddles and restart something because he's about to die, but You know this sounds like this sounds like Dave Hunt It really sounds like Dave Hunt if you've listened to Dave Hunt speak against Lordship salvation if you've listened to him speak against Calvinism This is where he goes remember these guys are into the there is no such thing as false faith

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Viewpoint they're into the Wilkin ism the Hodges ism, which I consider heretical that in essence says well, you know if you if you ever have to If you ever examine yourself, then you're questioning

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God I'm not sure why Paul told you to do that, but if you ever examine yourself, you know and First John 5 says you can know

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Yeah, but it says I've written you these things so that you might know what's these things. It's like the preceding you know five chapters of first John And what's in there?

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You know loving the brethren and stuff like that It the manhandling of Scripture here is is amazing but it's all predicated upon this this idea that well, you know, you can never know and what the what the hidden assumption is

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There is it as long as I tell you you are you is and man? I'll tell you how many of us, you know, you may be a new

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Christians You may not have seen this but those who have walked the Lord for a while False professions are ugly and oh, man, the the the damage that has been done to the church by by those who

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Claimed to be Christians, but in fact, it was Paul's term for them Oh false brethren, or how did

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John put it? They went out from us because what? Because they were not truly of us.

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Yeah, there's those are those texts just so difficult for these folks. They handle perseverance It's the last letter in person into it

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But can you see that Paul Silas slipped up here and they forgot to explain this Bible doctrine to this lost jailer?

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Now again, and I'll stop there because it's just the silliness goes on on but How do you know what

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Paul and Silas taught the Philippian jailer and his family we know that they they they received baptism and That they explained the

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Word of the Lord to them there. They do you think they sat around silently or Do you think maybe they gave them an apostolic introduction of the

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Christian faith that is not recorded for us? in Acts chapter 16 that kind of stuff is just mind numbing but speaking of mind numbing

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I Was then directed to a YouTube presentation.

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I actually download the mp3 just recently Just this morning. In fact from the first Baptist Church of Houston and I started watching this thing.

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I didn't watch all of it, but I started watching this thing and I was struck by a number of things now,

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I I suppose I live a bit of a sheltered life and So when

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I I Remember about three years ago Watching some of the actually about two years ago watching some of the live streamed

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Southern Baptist Convention stuff now for many year well many years from 1978 to 1989

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I Was in a Southern Baptist Church very large Southern Baptist Church 20 over 20 ,000 members of course

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I've often said you had to die three times and provide proof of your death via your death certificate personally submitted to get your name off of the rolls of that Southern Baptist Church as a member of so We could only find seven or eight thousand of those twenty thousand people at any one time but be that as it may that's sort of how it was all across as you know and So from 89 onward though in fact coming up next year 20 years.

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I have been at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church and Though I do speak at non reformed

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Baptist churches still My experience is primarily with primarily within the reformed

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Baptist and conservative Presbyterian ranks and when I am speaking and preaching and so on so forth, so it was amazing to me when

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I tuned in the Southern Baptist Convention and I Could not believe what had happened in the 15 to 17 years since I had last been at a

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Southern Baptist Church I mean even at that Southern Baptist Church The pastor had certain ideas of how things were to be done and how they weren't supposed to be done and I mean

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I remember somebody getting up during and walk trying to walk out during the invitation at the end and getting called down from the pulpit

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There were just certain things you didn't do you did not wear a hat in that church. I Remember when the

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Imperials the Imperials sang at that church and one of their roadies Who was bringing in their equipment had a hat on and the pastor that church stopped him dead in his tracks and had him take it off Okay, so to tune in the convention and see the comfy chairs and flowers and all the frou -frou

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Seeker friendly blah blah blah stuff. I was like whoa what happened while I was gone

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It was pretty amazing. Well after I break I will Continue in my story as introduction to this particular

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Presentation on Calvinism from the first Southern Baptist Church first Baptist Church, Houston, but we're gonna take a break and be right back

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Hello everyone. This is Rich Pierce In a day and age where the gospel is being twisted into a man -centered self -help program

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The need for a no -nonsense presentation of the gospel has never been greater I am convinced that a great many go to church every

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Sunday yet. They have never been confronted with their sin Alpha -Omega ministries is dedicated to presenting the gospel in a clear and concise manner making no excuses

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Man is sinful and God is holy That sinful man is in need of a perfect Savior and Jesus Christ is that perfect Savior?

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We are to come before the Holy God with an empty hand of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ Alpha and Omega takes that message to every group that we deal with while equipping the body of Christ as well

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Support Alpha Omega ministries and help us to reach even more with the pure message of God's glorious grace.

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Thank you Public crimes the criminal mishandling of God's Word may be

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James White's most provocative book yet White sets out to examine numerous crimes being committed in pulpits throughout our land every week as he seeks to leave no stone unturned

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Based firmly upon the bedrock of Scripture one crime after another is laid bare for all to see

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The pulpit is to be a place where God speaks from his word. What has happened to this sacred duty in our day?

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The charges are as follows prostitution using the gospel for financial gain pandering to pluralism cowardice under fire felonious eisegesis entertainment without a license and Cross -dressing ignoring

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God's ordinance regarding the roles of men and women is a public crime occurring in your town Get pulpit crimes in the bookstore at a omen org

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Speaking of pulpit crimes. I noticed this morning that the Anglicans Committed more of them.

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I guess vote was taken yesterday for women bishops now in the

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Anglican Communion Once you start sliding down that hill there doesn't seem to be too many places to stop off You know once you've decided the

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Bible is no longer normative. God really hasn't spoken and it's all up to us. But anyway Back to the

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First Baptist Church of Houston, I was watching I fired up the YouTube and here's a guy and he

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Looks a little bit like Joel Osteen Except he doesn't have a tie on Joel Osteen normally has a tie on so we we've lost the tie

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So we've got the open collared shirt, you know looking suave suave and all those things

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All the things that I don't look okay and There's no pulpit

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There's there's a table With some flowers on it, which end up being tulips because they become part of the illustration, of course

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But there's a table with some flowers. That's where the notes are. They're on a table and you know

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Just a It from my perspective, you know, I know well

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We don't want to intimidate people with the pulpit because the pulpit speaks of authority

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And the pulpit says you're you're not sharing your heart. You're just yelling at people see

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That's that's our society Well, you know That seems to have been really closely associated with the major decline in the view of The authority of preaching once preaching was changed from a proclamation once you're no longer an ambassador

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With authority representing a king with authority now, you're just well you just you're just there to share and you're there to just tell a story and So once you're doing that then you don't need a pulpit you can just you know stand there and you might as well just sit on a barstool and swing your feet and and You know tell some jokes while you're at it to and make everybody feel warm and happy and stuff like that.

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So anyway, so I'm Immediately at the start. I'm sort of going is this actually like a

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Sunday morning sermon? Yeah, this is Again, just reminds me of how much things have changed over the over the past couple of decades

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But very quickly as I listen to this I'm Just like you said what you what?

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So let's just listen I'm not gonna go very far but let's just listen to this because there's a certain phrase that is

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Mentioned here that I want to talk about. We're gonna be all over the map today as We talk about this issue of salvation.

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We've been talking about Milestones and milestones here a little framework that we have to be able to move our

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Hearts in our lives through different things we talked about in in last couple weeks We talked about last week salvation and what it means to be saved and all of those things two weeks before that We did a two -part series on parenting and so I encourage you to grab that CD if you're a parent

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You know somebody that's a parent We've got a bunch of them in the in the library that you can grab and take hold of to be able to get and Then today we're gonna talk about salvation again and in talking about salvation

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I find that we are awed by salvation but confused by doctrine Okay, there it is

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We are awed by salvation and confused by doctrine

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He says that more than once and he's gonna be talking about Calvinism Because he knows it's making the quote -unquote resurgence

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They like to say a resurgence amongst young people, you know, they want to throw that out There's just the young people who are looking, you know to be all smart and stuff.

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See and I Heard that and I and I you know,

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I probably should have stopped the video and just restart it because you start thinking

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We are awed by salvation but confused by doctrine

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What does that mean? I mean, I don't know how many thousands of people are sitting in front of this man.

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I really don't I Didn't see the cameras do the pan thing that normally happens later on the sermon

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I know because I used to run a television camera and a Southern Baptist Church when I was much younger still in my teens

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But I Don't know how many people are sitting there But they're looking up and I believe this man is the senior pastor of the church

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Whatever senior pastor means anymore, too but We are awed by salvation and confused by doctrine

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Okay, let me just ask a simple question and This goes back to I remember even when

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I was in a Southern Baptist Church. There was a movement back then There was a guy named Milt green Milton green carpet cleaner from Memphis as I recall that caused all sorts of problems among Southern Baptist churches for a while and That was one of his big things was don't give me doctrine.

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Give me Jesus and I remember even as a young person going. Um, but as soon as you say give me

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Jesus Who's Jesus? Why do you want Jesus? What does

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Jesus do? Can you answer any of those questions without engaging in? Doctrine and So, you know,

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I found that absurd then and I still find absurd today And so we are awed by salvation.

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What is salvation and in those sermons on salvation, did you talk about things like sin wrath of God probably not

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Atonement Propitiation Substitution repentance hope so faith

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Nature of faith object of faith. Why is Jesus? subject to being object of faith

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Why is he worthy to be believed in? Etc, etc, etc, isn't isn't the answer to every single one of those things doctrine so We are awed by the doctrine of salvation, but we're confused by doctrine is what that's all

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I can hear someone say We are awed by that which confuses us and You sort of wonder why folks that this kind of preaching in my experience leads to two people who are starving

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For the whole counsel of God Because they've been cheated out of it. They've been told you know, no one really knows

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You know people people have argued about this for a long time. You're never gonna figure out that's exactly what he's gonna say here

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Is that people have argued about this stuff for so long? Why should we ever think? That we would be able to figure it out.

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We're awed by salvation but confused by doctrine So for that reason we're going to talk about the issue of Calvinism now

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Why in the world would I bring that up? Why bring up an issue that everybody's got different views on and get scared about and worry about well

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If we're gonna be a relevant biblical community, we're gonna have to handle some tough things about the Bible scared about That's it's never been there really crossed my mind to be scared about some but you know, you know that that might actually be a relevant

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Observation, I'll bet a lot of these folks are scared by Calvinism Because it would mean that the way they've been doing things

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Isn't the way that they should be doing things and they're so wedded to their tradition. I bet you they are scared by see that's

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For me, I'm not scared By any challenges to my faith,

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I understand that part but I Can understand why people who are wedded to tradition would would be scared of those things

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We're gonna have to look at some things about the Bible So as we get into this, I want you to have your heart open and your mind open

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Y 'all are all small smart people small people maybe too, but smart people as well I'm a small person and hopefully

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I can be smart as well But to be able to journey along as we look at this as we look at this issue

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Now when we look at this, I want to give you kind of what happened this past week I've been studying and so I came home and I went home for lunch and I got home and I was there with Kelly And when

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I got there, I said you want to hear some good stuff on Calvinism and Kelly is no not really not today

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No, I don't and I started laughing because I said, you know That's how 90 % of the congregation is gonna feel when

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I bring this thing up This isn't a new subject to me You know,

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I did just make comment on that, you know, he's probably right but is that an appropriate thing

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I mean we are talking here about the very nature of the gospel and unfortunately only people who have been lulled into thinking otherwise lulled into ignorance

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Would go and you know, it's no big deal. I'm not gonna worry about it You know whether whether God is sovereign matter of salvation whether this is all to his honor and glory where there's actually an eternal

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Plan that God is working out the fact that this becomes fundamental to how you deal with death the purpose of the church purpose of preaching

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You know the entire process of sanctification the glory of God being informed the image of Christ. Ah It's just just too much

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Too much. You shouldn't you can't expect people To really

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Be thinking about this kind of stuff only theologians think about this kind of stuff saying That's the mindset amongst many

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Southern Baptists and they they're literally afraid that you're gonna get people to be thinking too much about theology

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We don't need theologians. We need leaders is something I heard somebody say once Not sure what you're supposed to be leading to college ministry for as many years as I have been

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It's not a new subject that it's something that I've just kind of stumbled upon and thought well, hey Well, what's the deal on that?

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It's a thing that's hot in the college areas It's a thing that people ask a lot of questions about I had a lady here at our church

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She asked me she said well pastor Greg. She was 60 years old She said why is it that the young people are so into this?

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We don't seem to be into this as the older people Why are we so into it and I thought about that and it's really a lot of folks under 40 that have the big debate about it and I said,

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I think some of the reason why college students and young singles and and other people of all different ages No question about it wonder about this is because the world that we live in is a postmodern world

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Everything is gray and everything changes all the time So we got to find this one thing and we got to grab it and understand what that is

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As I moved through as a college minister, I would find that freshmen would come to A &M And as they would get to A &M they would get there and they had maybe remotely heard about Calvinism But they thought it was a spinoff of the cartoon

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Calvin and Hobbes. They weren't real. Yeah, I think I just are our wonderful participant from Sweden and just posted a link in channel that shows me a picture of the worship center in First Houston and Man, this looks familiar

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That almost to me looks like a an absolute copy of the

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Southern Baptist Church I was in Are you pulling it up rich? It's the 11th picture in the photo gallery

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And I'm looking at this thing and if there were two big pillars on either side of the quote -unquote stage or something if the stage was a little less round and a little more pushed in Little flatter that would be hard for me not to realize that we were looking at a picture in North Phoenix Because you've got you've got the balcony.

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You've got the only only difference actually now I see it is that there's two rows of seats pews on the balcony

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Ramps, there was only one on the ones at North Phoenix. I'm not sure how big this Congregation is but that is very very very similar to to the church that I was in so That's that's quite interesting.

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It's you know, at least 5 ,000 I would say probably seated there. Sure, but I thought well

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Maybe that's it what it's about. I don't know if that's what it is It's a sequel of Calvin and Hobbes then their sophomore year.

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They would read a book on it then their junior year They were an expert on it and they wanted to bring everybody to their view

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Whatever the view was and then their senior year They didn't care about it anymore because they had to get a job and find a wife and find a husband

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So it didn't really matter You might be in one of those four categories You might be sitting here today and you think

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Calvinism has something to do with a cartoon Calvin and Hobbes You may have read a book on it and you're still kind of wondering what the deal is

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It might be that you know exactly what you think and you are you know to evangelize to your opinion

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It might be that you've studied it. You've gone through it. You said look, you know what? I'm gonna share Christ with everybody I can I'm gonna let

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God sort it out in the end. I don't know I don't understand all these things. We are awed by salvation, but we are confused

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Doctrine, so I want to set a couple ground rules for us and seniors and juniors in high school I want you to really be listening to me today because you're gonna face a lot of this in college

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I want to set a couple ground rules. Here's where we're going. Here's my whole talk We're gonna set a couple ground rules. We're gonna talk about the five points of Calvinism I'm gonna give you two negatives about this discussion and two positives about this discussion

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And then we're gonna see God save a soul and we're gonna end with saying yes You save souls not arguing about theology but ending with going yes

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God you do your work So let's set a couple ground rules first as we start out ground rule Number one is this there are godly and intelligent people on both sides of the issue

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There are godly and intelligent people that I call brother that I call friend I have many friends that are different than my views on Calvinism godly and intelligent people on both sides of the issues

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I would tell students at A &M anything that has been argued about for 500 years You're not coming up with the answer in College Station, Texas Why not is

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Is God's truth not available in College Station, Texas or? Is this just not a implicit assertion that in essence?

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There is no truth to this matter There is no final decision and the funny thing is he's gonna end up coming down clearly in opposition to Calvinism But people don't want to say well, it's wrong what they want to say is well we believe this and I really think

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Again, this ends up confusing people and it ends up decaying the foundations of truth

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I mean if the gospel itself cannot be known then why should we be so dogmatic about the

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Trinity anyways? Hmm, why should we? Why should we really be overly concerned about I mean how many people today know the difference between the story and ism

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Apollinarian ism you take in ism Aryan ism or modalistic monarchy and ism

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I Mean how many people in the audience right now? would be able to define what those things are vast majority

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I Mean most ninety nine point nine nine percent of you are going. I honestly though the terms are somewhat familiar

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I couldn't tell you what the majority of those are actually in reference to and So it's really easy for people to go well look if what the pastor says is right

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And that there are godly men on both sides and no one really knows When it comes to the very purposes of salvation then it's even worse when it comes to Things look like like the

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Trinity and so who cares if Phillips Craig and Dean are not really Trinitarians Who cares if they don't believe the doctrines of Trinity their music's pretty?

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And it's encouraging to me, and we play it during aerobics class so Why does it matter see it's truth decay?

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it is a Willingness to basically say well All right, well if no one you know if the

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Bible really can't answer big questions like that with clarity and Of course

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I could say well there have been godly men on every side of the Trinitarian Controversy I've just through godly in there for the fun of it.

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I mean what's that supposed to mean? Then you could use the exact same argumentation couldn't you well you could

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You most definitely could and so here's here's the question Here's what we we are addressing at that particular point in time so we could go through the whole thing because it wasn't it was not a an

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Accurate presentation anyway shape or form of the doctrines of grace we might if there are enough people who requested or things like that We might you know we might deal with that at that particular point in time, but be that as it may

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I did want to get to one Clip here before we're out of time.

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We've got just about eight minutes left in the program today and That is I wanted to deal with a classic expression of Roman Catholic inclusivism

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Roman Catholic inclusivism and What I mean by that is

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Jimmy Akin was answering a question on Catholic answers live and When I when

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I speak of the Roman Catholic faith and again that phrase theology matters her constant emphasis upon free will her constant emphasis upon all and a

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Really a functional, and I know there are Roman Catholics who claim to to be you know to believe in the

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Existence the elect and things like that hey, I'll let you guys Fight with each other about these things I cannot see how you can fit all that together in light of the universal

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Catholic catechism let alone the fact that the vast majority of the leadership of the Catholic Church today

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No longer believes plainly what was believed only 150 200 years ago

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Within the Roman Catholic Church in regards to the exclusive nature of the gospel. Here's an excellent example of it

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Here's where Jimmy Akin tries To hold these two extremes together, but I don't think it's possible to do.

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Let's let's listen as an example I'm good my husband my son, and I were having a conversation last night and the subject of purgatory came up The question was if someone has a broken

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Relationship with God at the time of death or had never had a relationship with God is there an opportunity after death?

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to reconcile that Well Okay Purgatory is not a second chance after death

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Purgatory is The process of being cleaned up so to speak so that you're fit for heaven

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Because nothing impure is going to enter heaven so if so when you die you're either going to heaven or not

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If you aren't going to heaven then you don't go to purgatory if you are going to heaven

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And you don't need to be cleaned up you'll go straight to heaven if you are going to heaven And you do need to be cleaned up then you'll go through purgatory first But the basic fate of going to heaven or hell is already decided when you die

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Now up to that point that is the historic Position of Rome at least since you know well for a long time

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You know at least dogmatically since Council of Constance in the 1400s or whatever You have this idea when you die if you die in the state of grace

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But with more temporal punishment on your soul than positive merit

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You're going to end up needing to be sanctified through the punishments of purgatory now of course you know now it's

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Now it's we get cleaned up now. It's it's it's the it's the washroom outside of heaven

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Instead of what it used to be that place of terrible punishment and horrible punishment

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From which you would want to deliver your loved ones Which is how you build st. Peter's Basilica by selling that kind of forgiveness, but that's that doesn't work real well today

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And so it's sort of not the way things are but so far That's pretty much the historical perspective depends on how you die

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Do you die in a state of God's friendship or not now in terms of having a broken relationship with God that can mean all?

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kinds of different things Now to catch it having a broken relationship with God here

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Here's where the theology matters starts coming in everybody has a broken relationship with God It's called sin, and they are under what's called the wrath of God right okay?

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So he is 16, and he was asking us who we were going to vote for election day in Pennsylvania, okay?

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Let's let's say ma 'am ma 'am. Let's not go into the election, okay? The in terms of having a broken relationship with God That can mean any number of things if it means you're in mortal sin when you die so that you

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Fundamentally turned your back on God well, then you would not go to heaven or purgatory If by broken relationship you mean you have an injured relationship with God But you haven't fundamentally turned your back on him then you would still be in his friendship even though your relationship has been damaged and You could then go to purgatory and and have your relationship put right and you'd end up in heaven

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It's also possible for a person to die in God's friendship even if the person didn't consciously know

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God during life someone could Through no fault of their own be unaware of God or not have ever been given sufficient you know evidence that they concluded

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God was true through no fault of their own and If they otherwise cooperated with his grace, then

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God won't hold their ignorance of him against them, so It's possible for an atheist to be saved.

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It's still through Jesus Christ and through God's grace, but They can they can still die not knowing

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God and still be on their way to heaven as long as they Otherwise cooperated with his grace does that help you out?

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No problem there you go there's the new Roman Catholic inclusivism you can be saved as an atheist because It's of no fault of your own

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Now that ripping and tearing sound you're hearing in the background is Romans chapter 1 being torn out of all

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Bibles even all Roman Catholic Bibles Because it is oh painfully obvious that that Theology requires you to completely ignore the entirety of the

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Apostles argumentation At that particular point that is he asserts

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That all men know that God exists that God has not left himself without a witness that there is a clarity of God's revelation found in creation itself within us in the in the form of the conscience

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Outside of us in the creation in in what we see of God's handiwork there therein so that they are left unapologetically without an excuse without a reason and So here you again see why theology matters

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Because here you have someone giving a false. Hope Saying that a person who even was an atheist of no fault of their own no fault of their own

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There they are held accountable by God's scripture to give thanks to the God who created them there without an excuse

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But someone can actually come up with the idea of no fault of their own. That's what happens when you have theology

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That is derived not from scripture not from believing in sola scriptura

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Not from seeing that scripture is God speaking and that alone is God speaking to us and defining these truths

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But what Rome has done in denying solo scriptura and having all these other sources, so there's an example of modern

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Roman Catholic Inclusivism well, thanks for listening to the value line today. We covered a wide variety of topics to be certain and Hopefully that is what you enjoy.

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We'll be back again Thursday evening here on the dividing line. We'll see you then. God bless The dividing line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega ministries

59:35

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That's a o m i n dot o RG where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books tapes debates and tracks