Radio Free Geneva: Stanley/Flowers Concluded, Adam Fannin Refuted

Stanley/Flowers on Middle Knowledge and the Problem of Evil

Hear people that are calvinist harp on this.

God's offering, God's offering, God's offering, God's offering, God's offering. They just keep repeating it.

And they repeat it so much you start to think it's a biblical truth.

Jesus stands outside the tomb of Lazarus. He says, Lazarus, come out. And Lazarus said, I can't. I'm dead. That's not what he did. Lazarus came out. So you mean to tell me a dead person can respond to the command of Christ?

Well, I can talk over your head like that.

I know the Hebrew, the Greek. I've done theology. You can tell I know. Do you really believe that it parallels the method of exegesis that we utilize to demonstrate those other things? Um, no.

New calvinists, even pastors, very openly smoke pipes and cigars just as they drink beer and wine.

Even Jesus cannot override your unbelief.

A verse like that to him, you know what it would sound like if you were listening to it?

He wouldn't make any sense to him. A self-righteous, legalistic, deceived jerk.

And you need to realize that he's gone from predeterminism. Now he's speaking of some kind of middle knowledge that God now has to.

I stand, I deny and categorically deny middle knowledge.

Don't beg the question that would demand me to force you to embrace it.

From our underground bunker deep beneath the faculty cafeteria in new Orleans Baptist theological seminary. Safe from all those moderate Calvinists, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and reread George Bryson's book.

We are Radio Free Geneva. Broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to save for his own eternal glory.

Yeah, you know, that Steve Tassi thing every time. Did he really think he could force me to believe that? I, I, it's, it's hard to follow. It really is. And yes, we do know that there are a few non anti-reformed folks at New Orleans.

We just like the food. Just, just relax. It's, you know, it's okay. Um, anyway, welcome to Radio Free Geneva. On a cold day in Phoenix. I am, I got to wear my, uh, thickest, biggest, fluffiest, makes me look like I weigh 500 pounds, um, coogies today because it was 41 when I got to the office today.

Now, some of you back east, like big deal. You gotta understand something. Um, there are some winters when we hardly ever have a day where the high isn't in the sixties. I mean, the average for today is 65.

So it's 24 degrees below normal right now. And I was just looking at the National Weather Service. They're talking about snow flurries in the northern parts of the valley. I'm toward the north, not as far as Bridges.

You could end up with snow out there. That'd be pretty cool. I don't think we're going to get it. But, um, 41 degrees for us with rain and precipitation, all sorts of snow up north, uh, inches of it up in Flagstaff and places like that.

Yeah, it's, it's, uh, it's a winter storm. And, uh, so, oh boy, here comes the, and by the way, Erwin keeps asking me, uh, you know, you've, you've factored in the Rich Cam to the, uh, to the new situation, right?

Uh, no. Anyway, uh, I want to apologize to, uh, those whose ears are currently bleeding. Um, one of the buttons on the audio board got bumped in between the last time we were on. Bumped?

Uh, let's just say I'm sorry, I ran sound for years. Buttons don't get bumped.

Well, let's just say The operators mess up. Poor Tanner, uh, on, on Twitter is, uh, he, he had the headphones on and he had the volume up waiting for it to start. He's probably on his way to the emergency room right now.

So I'm really sorry about that, Tanner. Hoping that, uh, it doesn't continue.

Bumped is a technical term for you didn't, you didn't do the necessary testing beforehand. That's, um, that's, that's what happens in situations like that. But anyways, uh, here we are. We're continuing Radio Free Geneva from the last time because we didn't finish up the Stanley Flowers thing.

But before we get back to it, I, uh, was informed the evening that we did the last program that Leighton Flowers had already responded to it. Who, he doesn't realize that that just so feeds into the very meme of what we're always talking about.

This is his life, man. It's destroying Calvinism. This is what I do, man. 24 hours a day. I won't sleep until I've put out a response and it'll be five times longer than the original. So, so I was like, oh, really?

Well, that's, that's interesting. Um, not that I'm ever gonna listen to it, but, um, so last night someone posts a, a, I don't know how they did this. One of those GIFs, GIFs, GIFs on Twitter that has sound, a lot of them don't, but it had sound and it was a part of this response.

And I, I tried to bring it up beforehand and my system wouldn't bring up my audio stuff, but I've, I've got it up now and I'm going to have to try to find it. And I'm sorry for that. I think it was around here.

Let me, let me, we, we have this up.

That people could do every possible contingency.

Okay. He starts off by reviewing the new theme, all the clips in a new theme. Wow. Someone has a lot of extra time on their hands. I just, sounds, sounds horrible.

A self-righteous, legalistic, deceit.

And you need to realize that he's gone from predeterminism. Now he's here. It is some kind of middle knowledge. See, God now has to, I stand, I deny and categorically deny middle knowledge. I beg the question.

Now, now, now listen to this, okay. It's right at 19 minutes in. So, so I want you to hear the whole thing. Uh, okay.

You need to realize that he's gone from predeterminism. Now he's thinking of some kind of middle knowledge. So God now has to, I stand, I deny and categorically deny middle knowledge. I beg the question.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. He categorically denies middle knowledge. I don't. So you're, you're, you believe it. James White doesn't believe that God knows every possible thing that people could do. Every possible contingency.

That, that seems to me to be lessening the power and knowledge of God. Not increasing it. I hadn't heard that one before. That's interesting.

Okay, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But look, if you give me a one string banjo, you need to at least have something on that string that is relevant. And the concept of middle knowledge is not the idea that God knows possibilities.

Obviously, Professor Flowers has not taken the time to listen to any, any of the many programs we've done on Molinism to the two-part YouTube series that we did responding to Molinism at a Reformed Baptist church right next to Biola in Southern California.

We laid all of this out. I've lost track of how many programs we have done. Where we have played William Lane Craig presenting some type of Molinistic understanding of something that we've, we've walked through it.

We've, we've talked about natural and free knowledge. We've talked about, uh, I've, I've read from a fact. Didn't we have, didn't, uh, I'm looking at channel. Didn't, didn't, I think we had Turretin on, Turretin Fan on to discuss a series of articles he'd written years ago on the subject of middle knowledge.

And to summarize for us what Francis Turretin, the now dead guy, um, had written in his institutes of Atlantic theology long, long ago. We have talked about the grounding objection. We have talked about the great car dealer in the sky.

Uh, we've played the clip from William Lane Craig, where he says, you know, God, God's got to deal with the cards he's been dealt. It's like, I need to find out who the car dealer is because he's in charge.

Because if the, if God's dealt cards based upon middle knowledge, which is placed between the natural and free knowledge of God, which was good enough for theologians up until the reformation, uh, and still is by the way, uh, then that that's the guy who's in charge.

Cause if middle knowledge can constrain what God can do, see light and flowers doesn't know what it's about. It doesn't see, this is the imbalance. This is the danger of imbalance because when you don't do the rest of the stuff, then you end up with this guy.

Oh, it sounds like you're diminishing God's knowledge. It has nothing to do with it at all. It definitely has to do with understanding that middle knowledge constrains the choices that God has based upon what free creatures would do and who determined the characteristics of those free creatures.

It wasn't God and his divine decree. So who did don't know. We need to find out, but that's what Molinistic middle knowledge is all about. And clearly latent flowers has managed to do years now, years of anti-Calvinism without even knowing what that's all about.

Hey, I'm glad Tim, Tim Bushong is probably going, wow, I have exposed a fundamental area of ignorance and latent flowers by putting a certain clip from Steve Tassi. Who knew that the Steve Tassi debacle would be used to expose latent flowers, lack of the historical ramifications of the development of Molinism and stuff like that.

Yay. That is just, that's precious. That's cool. Anyway, let's get back to where we were. There was a whole section where they talked about John Lennox's book, and I have that on the list. Let me just say John Lennox is a brilliant guy, but not an exegete and not one familiar with the historical issues on this subject either.

And so it makes sense that latent flowers who just demonstrated by that criticism that he isn't, Andy Stanley goes, I'm ignorant. I don't know. Um, so you put all three of them together and it's no wonder they all like what each other is saying at that particular point in time.

But there is more that we wanted to get to. So let's go back to the video. If we've got that ready to go and pick up with this clip. Okay. I didn't hear it.

Try it again. It's so clear. And when you try to spin out of that, some of the things that you address all the time, I just don't know how you do honest ministry. But again, there are men and women who pull it off all the time.

So I'm ignorant.

Now did you catch that? I don't know how you do honest ministry, but there are men and women who do it all the time. So I'm ignorant. I don't even know how to respond to that. I mean, if you point out the inconsistencies, then you just go, well, I said I was ignorant and I said people do it all the time.

I just don't know how they can do it consistently because I'm ignorant. Okay. Maybe instead of going on programs with people who agree with you, who criticize Reformed Theology, I'm sure there's some people that would sit down.

You're not going to do it with me. I'm that terrible, horrible, mean, nasty guy. But there are lots of nice Calvinists out there that you can sit down with and find out how they do it consistently. We've already pointed out that you have fundamental misunderstandings of what Reformed Theology is all about that are not to be corrected by hanging around with Layton Flowers because so does he and refuse to be corrected about it.

But there's the problem with doing a program like this when you go, hey, I don't know, I'm ignorant. And I appreciate the admission that that's the case. The only way they would have any freedom.

So that whole idea of God's a benevolent God depends on where you live, depends on how old you are, depends on who you're surrounded with. But for most people in the world who barely get by, who barely have enough to eat, life is not loving.

And the whole idea that they could even begin to believe that God is love and then to say, oh, yeah, but by the way, I know your life has been hell on earth. And hey, there's good news. You're going to live forever somewhere.

And if you think this has been bad, it's going to be worse. But you know what? God's going to receive the glory. It would be better if there were no God. But again, maybe I'm missing something.

Yeah, evidently, clearly missing something in a major way. Because I don't see how does your, quote unquote, free will theism solve any of this? Because again, unless you're an open theist, God saw this coming.

And God set it up, but it's not to his glory. That's the only thing you've fixed is it's the exact same outcome. God has the exact same knowledge. And well, but he didn't have any purpose in it. Had no intention to glorify himself or anything else in that.

So even my suffering, I can't take as Christians have taken down through the years, down through the centuries. When Christians suffer, they do so with this deep confidence that there is a reason that God is causing all things to work to their good, which is to the glory of God.

Remember, their good and the glory of God are actually the same thing. But their good could include the suffering of disease and an infirm body and persecution. I mean, there are Christians. I'm going to be preaching at Apologia on the 13th.

And I'm going to be preaching out of Hebrews chapter 13, the classic passage on the persecuted church. And we are to consider ourselves bound together with them as if we're in prison with them. And everyone, I hope everyone has seen the transcription of one of the recent sermons before his arrest of the pastor in China.

And his discussion of just the, you know, the other worldliness of his perspective that gives him joy in the midst of being separated from his wife and his children and his friends and his family, all of that, they consider what they're going through to be glorifying.

That's the most important thing to them. God is being glorified in what I am experiencing. And that means the world to them. And here you sit there with Andy Stanley, better to be an atheist. Wow, Andy, I wouldn't want to have to answer for that.

I wouldn't. No, I wouldn't have to answer that. Better to be an atheist. Just go back to better if there was no God. Okay, well, there you go. Stunning. Okay, we press on.

Well, I mean, this gets into theodicy, the problem of evil. And I'm sure reaching people that are unsure, just as the things you deal with quite regularly, of people asking, you know, Andy, if God's good, why are there so many people suffering?

Why is there so much pain?

How do you begin to even respond to those kinds of questions? To which I could say, hey, you ain't seen nothing yet. Hey, at least you go get a cup of coffee. You know, once you die, it's just pain and suffering and torment forever.

So, you know, I mean, that should be the Calvinist answer. Pain and suffering? Are you kidding me? You ain't seen nothing yet. Well, wait a minute. How is that the Calvinist answer? Why isn't that your answer?

Do you no longer believe in hell? There's no eternal punishment? What do you mean? Again, unless you buy into open theism, where God goes, whoa, I didn't see that coming. Then you're stuck. There's no way out of it.

How is this an answer to anything? How is this an answer to anything? Hold on just one second here. Someone who calls himself Lui de Molina on Twitter has said that the card dealer is God, which is, of course, impossible.

Because if God determines the content of middle knowledge, then it's no longer middle knowledge, and it cannot constrain God's actions. So, he has a quotation evidently from Molina. Through his natural knowledge, God comprehends himself, and in himself, he comprehends all the things which exist eminently in him, and thus the free choice of any creature whom he is able to make by his omnipotence.

Therefore, before any free determination of his will in virtue of the depth of his natural, i .e., middle knowledge, that's not what natural knowledge is. This is switching categories. By which he infinitely surpasses each of the things he contains eminently in himself, he sees through to what the free choice of any creature would do by its own innate freedom, given the hypothesis that he should create it in this or that order of things.

What's an order of things? Does that mean that God decrees to create person X in such a fashion that he is going to act in such a way? How does that defend human autonomy? This isn't middle knowledge if it's a result of God's decree.

And right there, it says that he should create. That's the decree. This isn't middle knowledge anymore. This loses the entire ability that Molinists think is the wonderful element of their system that doesn't blame God.

Because if now God decrees to make someone in such a way that they do such things, what's even the reason of doing this whole exercise? It means nothing anymore. For it would be insulting to the depth and perfection of divine knowledge, indeed impious and not at all compatible with so great a comprehension of the free choice of each creature, to assert that God is ignorant of what I would have done by my freedom of choice if he had created me in some other order of things.

Created me, that's no longer middle knowledge. God has perfect knowledge of himself and that which he chooses to accomplish or could accomplish or might desire to accomplish, that's not middle knowledge.

That's not... Explain to me how that has anything to do with how middle knowledge constrains the possible worlds that God could create. Because now he can just change it because it's a part of his decree.

Sorry. If that's Molina, then modern Molinists don't know anything about Molina and Molina's stuff didn't actually answer the question. So there you go. Just thought I would respond to that. I mean, I don't know.

You didn't say who it was, so it's just a graphic. Hard to read graphic. But there you go. Okay, we continue on here.

Yeah, we're fairly close here. Well, for the reprobate, obviously. Now, they wouldn't say that, obviously, for the elect.

Yeah, but most people are reprobate, right? Most people never hear the gospel.

Yep. Now, again, most people are reprobate, right? We don't know percentages. We don't know when Christ is going to come. We don't know what percentage of people are going to be saved. He promised Abraham as the sand of the sea and the stars of the sky.

So I don't know what the percentage is. I mean, the closest you can get is maybe Broadway, Narrow Way. But that's more a discussion of the worldly, easy way of doing things versus the narrow way of the follower of God than it is numbers.

People try to extrapolate from that and say, well, there's just, you know. But let's back up from there. During from Abraham to Christ, Pastor Stanley, numerically, how many people were sent messengers from God that gave them light that they could follow so as to obtain salvation by faith in Yahweh?

The Assyrians, Egyptians, Babylonians, who received those things? Percentage-wise. That might be one reason why Pastor Stanley wants to unhook us from the Old Testament. Let's not worry about that. No, it's not good yet.

Yeah, that might be one of the problems. Yeah, yeah, let's just move on.

But they would argue, they would say, I think a Calvinist would say, but we don't know who those people are.

So let's throw it into the bucket, mystery bucket again. Right.

Mystery bucket, i .e., God has a sovereign decree and God has a prescriptive will. And we are held accountable to the prescriptive will, not the sovereign decree. And that's stated for us directly in the sense of the secret things and the things revealed.

But, and then you'll see the look on Pastor Stanley, well, it's just incoherent. And then, of course, Layton Flowers down there, ha ha ha, I've got him, and all of it based upon, well, we're just not going to listen to their parameters.

We're not going to let them do that stuff, even though they've established it biblically and stuff like that. Yeah, it's okay.

Again, to your question, because it's a great question, and I'm pleading ignorance.

I don't know how I'm pleading ignorance, but I'm going to continue on.

All you do, pastoral ministry, children's ministry, student ministry, evangelism, you don't have to do apologetics because, again, you just throw out the gospel and the elect will respond.

Wow, you don't have to do apologetics, which is why Reformed people are known for doing apologetics. But we, I guess it's just because we like to argue because all you got to do is just throw it out and the elect will respond.

Well, once again, when you are utterly ignorant of the subject you're addressing, you will make incredibly ignorant statements. So, why do we do apologetics? Because the elect will be saved, because God ordains the ends as well as the means, and when he changes your heart, you want to do what is glorifying to him, and he commands us to proclaim the gospel, and he commands us to be ready to give an answer for the hope that's within us, yet with gentleness and reverence, and to refute those who contradict those who are leaders in the church.

And so, when you change someone's heart, they will have a love for the truth, and therefore when the truth is being denied and attacked, then they will desire to give an answer for that truth, not out of fear that the truth is going to somehow disappear or be destroyed or something, but because that truth came from my master who now owns me and whom I serve.

And again, if they would just drop the silliness of Calvinists think they know God's divine decree, because we plainly say we don't, if they just drop that and recognize that God gives to us in his prescriptive will his commands, evangelize, God commands all men everywhere to repent, do what God calls you to do, do justice, love mercy, speak the truth, refute error, expose falsehood, do all of these things to my glory and your good and the good of the church.

How is that inconsistent? I don't know how you do pastoral ministry. I don't know how you do pastoral ministry. I'll be honest with you. You and I have both been in the sick rooms of people with cancer in our churches.

What do you say to them? Do you say, God saw this coming, but you know what? There's no purpose in it. So you just need to pray that God will make the best come out of this, but he's going to have to sort of do that on the fly because he had no purpose in this.

Didn't see it coming. Okay, he did see it coming, but it's all just the result of free will choices. Well, how can cancer be, you know, sometimes cancer is just cancer. Sometimes people can get cancer walking down the street when a cosmic ray makes it through the atmosphere and all the natural protections and just happens to hit that one particular cell and disrupts the genetics and starts a mutation that results in cancer and you didn't do that.

So what do you say when I'm in that situation, we have the assurance that we may not know in this life why things happen the way they do, but we have the assurance of God that he's working all things together for good, for them that love God, for them who are called the elect according to his purpose, not our purpose.

And so there's a theology that lies under that, that these men reject and theology does matter and it matters in the hospital room. It matters pastorally speaking. We have to deal with so much sin and broken relationships and things like that.

And you just go, well, well, why would God do that? Stop asking his purposes in his secret decree. He's told you, I'm not going to tell you, you are held accountable for what the word of God says to you to do.

And ultimately it's going to be to his glory. But if you are so foolish as to think that in this life, you can stand up on your two little feet and judge what God's eternal purposes are, when you are ignorant of 99 .99999 of everything going on around you.

Well, I don't want to answer for that either. Good luck. Might as well say luck to you because I don't believe in it, but I don't want to be there. I don't want to go through that. So we don't have to do apologetics.

Yeah, well, actually, let's tell that to Francis Schaefer and Greg Bonson and R .C. Sproul and all the rest of us that have been doing this stuff for a long, long time. But there is a huge difference between reformed apologetics and non-reformed apologetics.

And we have pointed this out over and over again. We will play the debates of non-reformed folks and we'll play the debates of reformed folks, and the difference is stark. It is stark, and there's reasons for that.

I can't even daydream and imagine what ministry would look like. But again, it's just not my context to even try.

It's not even my context to even try. So why are you on this program? Why are you discussing these things? We don't understand. We'd like to understand, but we don't understand. It does not make a lick of sense to us why you're doing this, but you're doing it anyways.

Okay, I'm going to have to find a way to increase the size of the fonts on this thing sometime.

It would help. Who have questions about theodicy, for example. Why is there evil and suffering? Why is there struggle? And of course, free will is the basis of our theodicy, is that God has created us with the freedom of the will, and that's why there's suffering, that's why there's pain, that's why there's a fallen world, and that's the basis of our theodicy.

If you take away free will and remove that and put everything under a divine decree, determinism, then that theodicy goes away.

Well, glad to have it being put straight out there. You can either have God in control of all things, glorifying himself and working out his purpose and his people, or God has sovereignly capitulated, and it's all because of man's free will.

If you want the mystery bucket, listen to Leighton Flowers explain how God can know for certain all future events in light of autonomous free will. I would argue he can't. I would argue that he can't.

If you actually believe in autonomous free will, God could not... The open theists are right. If autonomous free will exists, God could not know what people are going to do, and if God does know what people are going to do, autonomous free will does not exist.

I agree. The open theists are right. But there is a difference. And so, the theodicy of Leighton Flowers and Andy Stanley becomes an anthropodicy, because the existence of evil is not a part of God's good purpose, lambslain from the foundation of the earth, any of that type of stuff.

No, it's because of man, all because of man. And so, the best God can do is to bring out secondary good, not primary good, secondary good, to try to work external circumstances to try to, what, shall we say, milk the most good out of man's mess?

That's pretty ugly. That is... No, that's not pretty ugly. That's ugly ugly. That's really ugly. And there you go. Okay, now, here's... They get into how this impacts ministry in the church as far as what they do.

It's Stanley's multi-site, wabba-wabba-wabba thing. And I just... This is the part that I was just like, somehow you zoomed in and cut my head off. But let's not get any closer. He's playing with the remote, so it's, you know, he likes gadgets.

So yeah, check this out.

It just doesn't do very well. The other way I say it is that following Jesus will make your life better, and following Jesus will make you better at life. So our constant invitation in terms of our apologetic is to come follow Jesus, because we believe every single person, regardless of what they believe about Jesus, can take a step in following Jesus.

This was his original invitation, and we have found this to be very, very effective in terms of a way of presenting evangelism in the modern world. Come and try it. Come and follow. At least read, explore.

Anytime I can leverage the words of Jesus in a way that makes an unchurched person go, I buy that. I buy that. You know, I do that, because again, we're trying to create a place where people can dispense with some of the things that they've been loaded up with in terms of a version of Christianity, and to the best of our ability, just present, here's what Jesus said.

Here's what Jesus taught. Hey, why not take a step? Why not follow Jesus? Following Jesus will make your life better and will make you better at life, and perhaps in the journey, you'll discover that he is in fact the Savior of the world, the Son of God.

So, it's pretty simple apologetic, and anything I can do to clear away anything that distracts from that simple message, we try to do.

And—. Um, if you've never heard pragmatism before, you just heard it. You just heard it. Try Jesus. He says, I try to leverage the words of Jesus so that the unchurched person says, I buy that. So, the rebel sinner has it within himself.

When you don't have a biblical anthropology, when you don't take Romans 3 seriously, that there is no God-seeker, this is the result. And it's the idea that, just try Jesus, because, you know, if you follow Jesus, it'll make your life better.

Really? Really. If you follow Jesus, this is moral Reformation deism stuff, because when he means follow Jesus, well, you know, do the things that Jesus would suggest you do in being nice to people and stuff like that.

I cannot possibly have any thought at this point other than to go, um, do you remember Mark chapter 8? Pastor Stanley, when, what do you, what do you do, Pastor Stanley, when, when Jesus calls the disciples and the crowds to himself?

They don't come to him, he calls them. He gathers the disciples and the crowds to himself. Remember, you said something about how many chapters the word crowd appears in, right? Well, here's one where he, the, the, the oklos, he calls to himself.

And he says, you want to follow me? Um, the, did the rest of your statement follow from what Jesus said there when he said, so, if I were to look up Mark chapter 8, what I'd find, come follow me and try me out, and your life will be better, and you'll be better at life.

And somewhere down the road, you might find that I'm savior of the world, but try me. Is that what Jesus said? Um, no. He said, if you would be my disciple, you're going to follow me, take up your cross, deny yourself, and follow me.

Not try me, because to take up the cross, everybody in that context knew, meant to pick up the Roman cross, which was only carried by the condemned, and begin the death march. Deny yourself. You're not talking about deny yourself.

In fact, when you appeal to people, it'll make you better at life. To the sinner, that sounds like better at fulfilling their desires. That's not denying self. Jesus's call was, die and rise again. You're saying, try me.

How do you try me in a resurrection paradigm? How does this work? I don't get a bit of it. I don't understand any of that. I understand the pragmatic stuff. I understand the trying to get people to, you know, get them in and, you know, I like the music, I like the entertainment, you know, and some nice people befriend me.

And so, yeah, I'll do this Christianity thing for a while. But the idea of repentance, the idea of the lordship of Christ, this is, folks, you want to see what the long-term result is of rejecting the lordship of Christ and the call of the gospel to repent and believe is.

There you go. This is not the Christianity they're preaching in China right now. The churches that are being closed down in China are not presenting the try Jesus version of Christianity. Because everybody in China knows if you're going to try Jesus, you might end up in jail and never being seen again.

So, there's this thing about dying to self first. That's the Christianity that is still alive in the prisons in Islamic countries and communist countries and maybe coming soon to Western countries when the totalitarians take over.

So, it won't be the, I'm going to try it for a while, because that won't make your life better. It will make your life stink from the world's perspective. But if there is not a radical change in your own perspective, you never understand what it was Jesus was calling for.

I heard that part and it was just like, wow, following Jesus will make your life better and make you better at life. That sounds so cliched, doesn't it? I mean, that is just as much of a cliche as you could possibly, possibly get.

And clicheing the gospel is a bad thing. All right, just a few more. Just a few more.

Every pastor understands that regardless of their theological framework.

Well, either you're doing it right or God has ordained you to do it wrong. Either way, you're doing God's will, so you're safe on either side of that. He gets credit for all the good.

I'll take the blame for all the bad. So, once again, and I mentioned this earlier, the only reason I play this again, we already dealt with this in the last time. By strawmanning the position that you're attacking, pretending that we can know what God's decree is, ignoring his prescriptive will, then Leighton loves to mock.

Well, you're either protestant in one way or the other. Why are you protesting to this? Why are you protesting to that? You know, as if we can actually ask God that. It's a very deeply blasphemous thing.

He doesn't understand that because this is a shtick. It's this thing that just, you know. But it is, and he will answer for it. One way or the other, he's going to answer for it. Who are you? Oh, man, who answers back to God is what he's going to hear.

And I wouldn't want to be in that position. Um, then this one was weird. I didn't get this part. This was very strange.

Um, let's, let's, let's listen here. With them about this, you know what they immediately do? They say, what about Paul?

I'm like, well, okay, he's talking about, he's talking about Jesus' teaching and talking about the Calvinists and say, well, what about Paul? So in other words, there, while there is a tremendous amount, which obviously Pastor Stanley doesn't know about or has ignored or something tremendous amount of teaching on this subject, especially in the gospel of John.

But hey, ever been through Matthew 11? It's right there in Jesus' teaching there as well. But yeah, John 6, John 8, John 10, John 14, John 17. Um, but he says, I talked to, I talked to Calvinists and, uh, and they say, what about Paul?

Well, because you have the book of Romans, you have Galatians and you have Ephesians and, uh, you have got all this stuff about predestination and election and the called and it, I, you can't walk through the golden chain of redemption and miss this stuff without trying really, really hard.