January 11, 2005

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from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded
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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 Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program, and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the
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United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. And good morning, good afternoon, whatever it is. I'm not really perfectly certain myself.
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It's one of those weeks I'm teaching a janitor in class, and it's like teaching a class during the summer at Golden Gate.
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And when you teach that many hours in a row, eventually your mind just sort of starts wandering off.
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I'm going to get to beat everybody to the punch today, because this is going to be a sermon illustration all over the planet next week, especially in the
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United States. And so I'm going to get to beat everybody to the punch, and I'm going to get to ruin everybody's sermon illustration, without the bat.
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It's big news this morning. It's hitting some of the Christian blogs, and it was sent out this morning by a few folks.
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Presbyterian minister collapsed and died in mid -sentence of a sermon after saying, and when
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I go to heaven, his colleague said Monday. The Reverend Jack Arnold, 69, was nearing the end of his sermon
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Sunday at Covenant Presbyterian Church in an Orlando suburb when he grabbed the podium before falling to the floor, said the
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Reverend Michael S. Beetz, associate pastor at Covenant Presbyterian. Before collapsing,
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Arnold quoted the 18th century Bible scholar John Wesley, who said, until my work on this earth is done,
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I am immortal. But when my work for Christ is done, I go to be with Jesus. Beetz said in a telephone interview.
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Maybe it was a Presbyterian quoting Wesley that caused such a massive conflict. That's a possibility there.
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But several members of the congregation with medical backgrounds tried to revive the minister, and paramedics recalled that Arnold appeared to die instantly,
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Beetz said. Arnold had been the senior minister of the church until the late 1990s, when he began traveling to Africa and the
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Middle East to teach pastors. The cause of death was believed to be cardiac arrest. He had bypass surgery five years ago.
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Beetz also recounted Arnold's death in an email he sent to members of the Central Florida Presbytery.
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We were stunned, Beetz said. It was traumatic, but how wonderful was he died in his own church among the people he loved the most.
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Well, I'll tell you one thing. You know, I certainly disagree a lot of Wesley's theology, but he was right there.
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Until my work on this earth is done, I am immortal. But when my work for Christ is done, I go to be with Jesus. Very, very true.
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However, it requires a theology somewhat inconsistent with his own Wesley's, that is, to believe that.
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But it fits perfectly with a good Presbyterian. So that's the way to go.
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You know what? When you think about it, I've thought of that a number of times as I've watched very elderly men become very excited in the proclamation of the word.
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I've thought, I wonder how many times that's when people go. And what would we do?
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You know, how would we respond to that? But I think that's a good response. I mean, better than a car accident or in a hospital someplace or something, you know?
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Proclaiming the word, and especially if this is accurate. And I've seen it in two different sources now.
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They may be quoting the same source, but I don't think they were. Hey, that's the way to go.
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If you spent your life doing it, why not? That's the way to go. So I've ruined many, many sermon illustrations because the best element of a good sermon illustration is that it hasn't been heard before, that that's new to you, that it catches you by surprise.
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You're listening and so on and so forth. But I ruin that for everybody. So sorry about that.
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But that is the news that is going around. 877 -uh -oh, 753 -3341.
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I say uh -oh because I'm going to need to write that down here. Type it out, 877 -753 -3341.
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Because the really cool, neat sticker that I had on a shelf is gone because the shelf is gone.
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Actually, the shelf is sitting behind me. But actually, I hope that's the right number. That's 877 -753 -3341.
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I got it. I put it in my really neat, cool copy of EditPad Lite here. And we want to keep that available.
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877 -753 -3341. Getting a lot of response to the discussion of postmodernism and the emergent church stuff.
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That's exploding all over the place. I was mentioning to Steve Camp yesterday. I was talking on the phone with him as I was driving home.
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From teaching, I was trying to go another way to see if it was any better. It was a little bit better, but it was like 38 miles.
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It's just outrageous. And we were talking about that stuff.
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And he was talking about trying to get a dialogue, a three person on each side dialogue going.
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And I sort of mentioned, I frequently feel like I'm completely behind the times.
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Like I am definitely, you've never, ever heard me claim that I'm on the cutting edge of theology.
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I look at people. I could name some names. I look at people who are on the cutting edge of theology.
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They see these movements coming long before I do. Long before I do.
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And the reason is they are not the people who would ever, ever, ever, in essence, climb into the ring with Dave Armstrong, or Robert Syngenis, or folks like that.
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They just, they would never do it. And that's not their calling. In fact, there's lots and lots and lots of folks who never, ever should get into that kind of thing.
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Because they're just not cut out for it. They don't have the Constitution, shall we say.
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And, but they can then be the ones that see these things coming. They're sort of the visionaries. They see it coming.
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And then the slower folks like me can then pick up their warning and spread it abroad a little bit wider.
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And then get into the trenches and do stuff that they're not going to do. Because they're going to be moving on to the next thing.
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And I just saw Gary embarrass himself in channel. So anyway, lots of positive comments.
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All I'm doing, really, honestly, so far, is I read a response to Steve Camp's comments on McLaren.
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And didn't I mention, I think I had mentioned last week that I had Raschke's book here,
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McLaren's book. I had mentioned, I read something, as I recall, about open
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Christianity. And I don't know if they would necessarily want to. And that's one of the problems here.
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You can't define this stuff. You just, you cannot define this stuff.
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As soon as you think someone has written something that you can sink your teeth into and really talk about and respond to.
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As soon as you do it, the response is, well, that's not really what
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I am attempting to communicate. Because, you know, once you define theology as telling a story and that wonderful nebulous term, dialogue.
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And we want to avoid metanarratives. But we want to share our stories.
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The story can change as soon as you try to respond to it. So it's really, especially for someone like myself.
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Look, I'll tell you, you know, I'm not the brightest bulb in the universe.
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And it's easier for me, I'll be perfectly honest with you, this has been one of my many, many downfalls and shortcomings for a long, long time.
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It's like Christian science, OK? I've never really done much with Christian science, the whole movement.
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And the reason is, I have a hard time talking to someone who doesn't think I exist.
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You know? Somebody who thinks that I am a myth, that I am a, just a,
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I'm not really here. It's hard for me to talk to them. All right? It's very difficult for me to invest a lot of time, a lot of effort into talking to that individual.
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Because I want to walk up to that person, pop them in the nose, say, did that hurt? Good, now we have a place to start.
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You know, we've got a grounding in reality now we can have a discussion on.
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And so it's very, very similar in talking to these folks who are into postmodernism.
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Because you can't get them to define anything. I do a whole lot better talking to a conservative
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Roman Catholic who believes what they believe, and they will define what they believe, and they'll stick with what they believe, and they actually believe it enough to defend it,
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OK? I can respect that person, and I can debate that person, and that's a person
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I can defeat and debate very easily because that's what I'm good at doing, OK?
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But you know what? When a person presents their viewpoint, and then
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I present a response, and they come back with a new viewpoint, not only
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I have a personal character flaw, I don't respect that. I don't see any reason to respect that.
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I don't, it's just the way that I have been raised in my life,
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I don't respect individuals who are constantly changing their viewpoints and changing their position.
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They won't stick to their guns, and they don't really believe something strongly enough to say here's what I believe, here's why
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I believe it, and I'm going to defend it.
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You know? I just, so dealing with this postmodernism stuff is really,
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I do not enjoy it. Because my meager skills are bringing a position, a belief, into the light of Scripture.
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And these folks can say, I believe in inerrancy, and then turn around and say, but I don't believe
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Scripture is clear enough to really give us any, well you know what the big phrase now is.
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If you haven't run into this stuff, you're probably going, what on earth are you talking about? The big thing now, this just makes me want to, the big thing now is we need to have epistemic humility.
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Doesn't that make you feel warm? It makes me feel warm. It makes me feel very, very warm. It makes me feel very
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Rodney King -ish. Epistemic humility. And the way that's presented is, well, what we've had in the past have been these people who have been very arrogant about knowledge and how much we can truly know, and we didn't really know a lot of the things that we knew, and we need to have epistemic or epistemological humility.
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Epistemic is shorter than that, but epistemological makes you sound smarter. So epistemological humility to admit the limits of human knowledge, well, you know, the vast majority of the time
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I hear these folks talking about what allegedly I believe, I don't recognize it because I've always recognized that man is absolutely dependent upon God's revelation for true knowledge.
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I've never believed that we have some neutral ability to examine the universe outside of God's revelation.
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I read Van Til, you know, okay, I'm familiar with some of that stuff, and I agree we are dependent upon revelation.
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I don't agree with Rome and her rationalism at that point and all the rest of that stuff, but a lot of these comments are aimed my direction anyways, or at least the direction, not my direction personally, but the direction of what
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I believe, and so I just don't understand what this is all about. But the whole idea is if you dare to think, and this is how
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I'm seeing it anyways, if you dare to think that God has given us his word with sufficient clarity to hold all men accountable to it, and if you think that God has given us his word with sufficient clarity that we can define the gospel so that we can say this is and this isn't, define the
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Trinity, this is and this isn't, then somehow you are epistemologically arrogant.
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And of course, from my perspective, I'm saying no, you are questioning God's ability to communicate with the creatures he himself made.
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God made us to be communicating creatures, and he chose to communicate with us through the spoken word and the written word.
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And so what you're really doing is you're questioning God's wisdom and God's ability to communicate in his word.
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That's what I see. And so when I hear, it was interesting,
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I followed just a little bit, didn't have a lot of time, got back fairly late from class, and just a million things going on, and I'm definitely feeling like I'm falling behind everything these days, and this is supposed to be the easy time of the year, so it's sort of making me feel like the rest of this year once I start traveling and doing all the stuff
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I need to be doing again, that I'm just never getting anything done. But I was following a thread, just doing a little research, reading up on what people are saying on various other things, and there was a thread on people in the emergent movement who clearly are willing to allow for conversation on key issues.
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Have we been wrong to assume this or wrong to believe that? And a number of them recognize, and this is what was so, seemed so odd to me, the importance of maintaining the doctrine of inerrancy in the midst of all this.
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And I, you know, I feel for them in the sense that, well, yeah, duh, but how can you?
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I mean, once you start reducing the proclamation of the word to sitting around and having, and telling your story, that's not the proclamation of the word.
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Once you, once you go there, how on earth can you even begin to defend something as as concrete and objective as inerrancy?
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You just don't, you've knocked the ladder out from underneath yourself at that point. It's no wonder you're left hanging from the rafters when you, when you pull a stunt like that.
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So anyway, I've just been making a few comments, just I've been quoting some stuff from a thing on summarizing
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McLaren's view on evangelism from a point -counterpoint thing in Christianity today. And it's amazing the amount of response we've gotten from it.
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And I have not forgotten about the other things I, yes, I've started a rejoinder, a discussion with Eric Svensson on the atonement, just haven't finished it.
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Want to get back to the discussion of the Islamic article. I've got four or five or six other things going on, and that's aside from all the writing stuff that needs to be done as far as I've got a full -length article due to a journal in what,
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I think nine days. Haven't even really started it yet, know what I want to say, but haven't started it yet.
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And so there's, there's where we are at the moment, so we're just, just doing the best we can do.
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877 -753 -3341. I received a sermon in the, well, not in the mail, but it was email,
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MP3 version of a sermon by a Baptist pastor in Florida.
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And I started listening, I listened to it over dinner. I know this is somewhat socially unacceptable, but hey,
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I was eating alone. I've had an incredible desire for Mexican food recently, which living in Phoenix is a good thing.
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It's like, you know, it would be a really bad thing if you were, if you had an insatiable desire for Mexican food and you lived on Long Island.
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Because believe me, I, I've, I spent time on Long Island and there is no Mexican food on Long Island.
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It just doesn't, doesn't exist. And so I, I, I loaded this sermon onto my super duper, really cool one gig
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MP3 player thing. I'm a Bobby jump drive thing and I went to dinner and so there
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I'm sitting munching away on my, on my chips and salsa while I'm listening to the sermon. And I thought as it started, finally, we're going to get some meaningful interaction here from someone who opposes reform theology, but who is going to be fair.
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He's done that. He's done the research. Didn't quite turn out that way, but it sounded like it.
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It sounded like it when it first started. So I'm going to play this sermon. I mean, it's, it's a 48 minute sermon and we're already 40 minutes in or 20 minutes in the program.
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So obviously we aren't going to be able to do that. But, um, get started on it anyways. And, uh,
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I want to play the first part because I, it's clear to me that this pastor, uh, and if I had the name right in front of me,
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I'd give it to you. But, uh, I think it's, uh, Pastor Revis, I think is the name.
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And I, I understand the motivation.
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Okay. I understand the motivation. He's concerned. This is different.
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But what concerns me is he then goes through and tries to establish, look,
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I know what Calvinism is. Here's what I've read. And that then in my silly way of thinking means, all right, if you've read those things, then you're going to have to accurately represent those things, right?
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You're going to, you're not going to make the common mistakes that people make, right? And it, it, it didn't work out that way.
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So anyways, here's, uh, here's where he began discussing why he's discussing this issue. It has come to my attention in recent days that some of our flock have been exposed for the first time to a theological system called
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Calvinism. And so I wanted to speak to that issue tonight to explain to you what that theological system is and where I stand and what
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I believe. I want to say up front, I don't have any ax to grind and I have some friends, many who are what we would call five point
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Calvinist, and it's never been a test of fellowship, but I'm discovering that in this day in which we live, there is a new breed of five point
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Calvinist that has arisen that will not tolerate any dissent, will not tolerate any flexibility, will not tolerate any difference of opinion to make the doctrines of John Calvin a test of fellowship.
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Now, let me just mention something just in passing. That sounds very harsh. Okay. That sounds really bad.
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Um, but you know, I suppose he's, he's talking about someone like myself.
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And the reason I say that is we have a statement of faith. We have a confession of faith and we ask before someone joins the church if they have any serious reservations about the statement of faith.
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And I think most everybody would understand that if someone said, yeah, I don't agree with what it says about the
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Trinity, that we would probably have a little bit of a difficulty in having this person as a member of the church. But at the same time,
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I think if they said, yeah, I'm not really sure if I believe in this election stuff, we would probably have the same problem.
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And we would want to talk with this person and want to seek to educate this person and seek to do that because we do feel that that's very, very much important, very, very important.
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And obviously we don't, we're not saying that I don't have fellowship with a person who's not a five point
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Calvinist. But there's a difference between fellowship outside the church and fellowship in the local body, especially when you're talking about someone being in a position, any position of leadership, member of the church, supportive of the church, two different contexts there.
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I'm not sure exactly which context he's talking about. When I went to Moody Bible Institute, just out of high school in 1974,
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I met my roommate there, he was from Dallas, Texas. He told me he was a five point
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Calvinist. Well, I'd never heard of such a thing in all my life. I knew that my parents were
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Republicans. And so he began to explain to me the five points of Calvinism.
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He gave me all the literature. He gave me the books. For many years,
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I subscribed to Banner of Truth Magazine, which is a premier Calvinistic publication.
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I read Ian Murray's The Forgotten Spurgeon. I became familiar with Jonathan Edwards' essay on the bondage of the will.
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I read the works of Arthur Pink, especially his little book, which
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Calvinists prize on the sovereignty of God. Became familiar with theologians like Louis Burckhoff.
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Became familiar with books by Hodge and others who espouse the doctrines of grace, as the
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Calvinists call them. So I want you to understand that this is not new to me.
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I didn't just fall off the turnip truck or whatever you call the thing you fall off to. And I want you to know, if you're here tonight and you've become enamored with this truth, you're not the first person to ever consider these issues.
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For two years, I lived seven days a week, 24 hours a day, with a five -point
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Calvinist who was a wonderful Christian who did everything in his power to convince me to embrace the five points of Calvinism.
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I read, with great profit, the two -volume autobiography of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the great
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Calvinistic Baptist, published by Banner of Truth. I have in my library the commentaries of John Calvin from Genesis to the end of the
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Bible. I have in my library the two -volume biography of George Whitefield, the great
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Calvinistic preacher. So what I'm trying to say is
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I don't have a phobia concerning Calvinism. I've read, with great profit, the two -volume biography by Ian Murray, a great
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Calvinist of the great Calvinistic preacher, Martin Lloyd -Jones. And consider Martin Lloyd -Jones' book on the
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Sermon on the Mount, the greatest book ever written on the Sermon on the Mount, and he's a five -point Calvinist.
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Now what is a Calvinist? Well, who is John Calvin, for crying out loud?
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John Calvin was born in 1509. John Calvin died in 1564.
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John Calvin was born and reared in France. He lived in the fires of the great
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Protestant Reformation. France was Roman Catholic. You have to understand that in those days,
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Roman Catholicism not only was a system of theology and was not only a religion, but it was the most potent political influence in that day.
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Martin Luther shocked the Vatican and the Roman Catholic system when he declared that they were wrong in their theology of justification by works.
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We are not saved by works, but we are saved by faith.
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They said that's heresy, and they persecuted and killed people who preached salvation by grace through faith.
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Of course, a lot of our modern Roman Catholic apologists are screaming at this point at, you know, the
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Council of Trent said you can't be saved by works and things like that. But that's not really the point here.
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When John Calvin became drawn to the followers of Martin Luther in France and began to preach justification by faith, the
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Roman authorities sought to arrest him. But his friends warned him, and he barely escaped arrest and death.
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He would eventually settle in Geneva, Switzerland, where he preached the gospel.
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In his mid -twenties, he began his monumental work called the Institute of the
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Christian Religion, which is one of the greatest cyclopedias of theological thought and doctrine ever put together.
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He preached the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ with great power, was a
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Bible translator, but he died in 1564.
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In the days of John Calvin, his followers were not called
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Calvinists. Now, a generation removed, a generation after John Calvin, there was a man named
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Jacobus Arminius. Jacobus Arminius began to study the doctrines of Calvin, and he got disturbed.
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John Calvin stressed predestination, that in eternity past,
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God Almighty predetermined who was going to get saved.
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Jacobus Arminius said if you carry that line of thought to an extreme, it removes all human responsibility from the equation of salvation, man becomes a robot, and ultimately
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God would be the author of evil and sin. Now one of the errors that Arminius espoused was that you get saved by grace, but it is a cooperative effort between the free will of man and a holy
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God, and you can decide that you don't want to be saved anymore, and you can renounce your salvation.
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The Arminian theology is predominant among the Wesleyan people, the Methodist, Church of the
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Nazarene, and the free will Baptist. A great controversy erupted in the
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Netherlands between the followers of Calvin and the followers of Arminius.
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A synod or church council was called, called the Synod of Dort, to try to resolve the issue.
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Even Calvinist historians will tell you that the synod was stacked in favor of the
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Calvinist. When the synod made their decision, they repudiated the teachings of Arminius with his overemphasis on free will, and they upheld the teachings of John Calvin and his stress on the sovereignty of God.
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My personal conviction is Arminius overreacted to the teachings of John Calvin.
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Then the Synod of Dort overreacted to the overreaction of Arminius.
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For out of the Synod of Dort, now get this in your mind, John Calvin dies in 1564,
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Arminius dies in 1610, the Council of Dort or the
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Synod of Dort meets in 1619, and from the
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Synod of Dort in 1619, decades after the death of John Calvin, came the five points of Calvinism.
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The first time I saw them articulated, it was in a track someone gave me in Bible colleges called a tulip track.
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Because one way that Calvinists seek to evangelize the five points of Calvinist is using that image of the tulip,
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T -U -L -I -P, those are the five points of Calvinism. This is what the five point Calvinist would teach.
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T stands for total depravity, that man is lost and separated from God, we are totally depraved, we are dead in trespasses and sin, and we cannot respond to God, we are dead.
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Well, that's what the Bible teaches, I have no problem with that. You read the first three chapters of the book of Romans, and you'll find the whole world is in sin, and it specifically says that no man seeketh after God.
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And if you read the second chapter of the book of Ephesians, you'll see how lost we are without Christ, we are aliens, we are dead in trespasses and sin, and a dead man can't respond because he's dead.
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You look in the garden, when man fell, man didn't seek God, but God came into the garden and he said,
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Adam, where art thou? Totally depraved.
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Use Sam's for unconditional election. Now this is what that means.
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Let me stop right there, because now we're going to start getting into the critique and criticism section.
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I was a tad bit busy right before the program started, I barely got a chance to get this queued up.
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This is Herb Revis, North Jacksonville Baptist Church, I believe was the name I was just looking at.
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And it really, to me, it doesn't matter who this is, because this isn't personal. Sorry, he has nothing, probably a fine man, great guy, whatever.
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It's not personal. This is just another example of something that I think
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I can fairly say now, after how many years of doing
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The Dividing Line, and how many times, how many different people now have we, we've played them, we've let them speak.
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I haven't just said, well I heard so and so say, we've, I've let, how many minutes now have we done here?
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Eleven minutes of letting him speak, and he's going to do some more? And it's not just taking a little section out, it's not just taking a few words out, we play whole sections.
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People say, man, you sure do let them just ramble on. Well, you know, you've got to, you've got to be fair, you've got to cover the whole spectrum.
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And over the years, how many people? We've listened to Charles Stanley, and we've listened to Patterson, Paige Patterson, and we've listened to so many people, and of course probably the biggest one that we've listened to,
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Adrian Rogers. Got lots and lots of response out of that. And I have, in fact, a college
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Bible study thing, and I need to check and make sure it's not the same one we listened to before. You know, people send stuff and sometimes it's older.
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But that we're going to get to. We've given these folks repeated opportunities within their own context.
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I mean, it's not like, you know, I mean, this is before their own people. Those are the, that's the best way to know what someone really, really believes is listen to what they say in a comfortable surrounding where you're talking to your own folks, right?
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And what is the consistent result of that?
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What have we seen over and over and over again? You know, everybody says, well, the other side misrepresents us.
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The other side engages in ad hominem argumentation and straw man argumentation.
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Those are the favorite terms to throw around, though most people don't really know what either one of them actually means. But both sides say that.
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But in my experience, only one side, that's the one I hope
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I represent. Has Al Mohler ever come out pro -con -califism?
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Yeah, just slightly. That's what he's known for, is being a
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Calvinist, you know, at least was back in the 1990s. Anyway, one side is willing to let the other side speak, define its terms, and then say, here's the response.
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Here's what we believe in response. Let's dialogue. Let's debate. Let's go the word of God. Let's make sure that there's accurate representation.
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The other side just doesn't do it. In fact, as you listen to this entire sermon, there is an underlying current that evidently there are some
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Bible studies in the area that obviously Pastor Revis does not want his people attending.
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And my understanding is he is opposed to the Founders Conference and the Founders Movement and to Southern Baptist Church's embracing
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Calvinism openly. Now, given the misrepresentations he makes of it, sadly, which, again, you know, at least this time as I was listening, and maybe it was because of the sound of the chips as I was munching, but I was listening a little bit more closely, to say,
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I'm familiar with Hodge. I'm familiar with Berkhoff. Well, being familiar with means you have their books in your library.
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It doesn't mean you've read them. It doesn't mean that you've actually sat down and said, I want to understand what this person believes and why.
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I want to be able to see their context, their language, their drive.
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Why do they say what they say? That being familiar with and knowing on that level two different things, two different things.
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But if you're going to stand before your people and say, you know what? I know this stuff. I lived with a five -point
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Calvinist 24 -7 when I was at Moody Bible Institute in the 1970s.
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Well, okay. Then that means you're going to be held to a little different standard, should be held to a different standard, than someone who hasn't done that.
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And so I was hoping maybe, you know, you start off that way.
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It's not as bad as many. It's certainly not a Dave Hunt presentation. In a spectrum of things, it's better than some.
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There's no two ways about it. But as we get into it, we start seeing that the primary objections are the same ones and they are not critically handled in a proper fashion.
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And that's unfortunate. The five -point Calvinist says, in eternity past...
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Well, now wait a minute. I haven't even mentioned them. You know, one of the troubling things is
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I will listen to this individual speaking and I'll listen to Pastor Revis.
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Sorry, again, I don't know him. I just saw a picture of him for the first time. Somebody actually pulled up a
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URL and I clicked on it. Oh, okay. Looks like he's got a nice -looking family and there you go.
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Pastor Revis said, I have no problem with total depravity. Yes, actually, you do.
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At least as far as being consistent in the application of it. That's really the issue.
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Are you consistent with your self -professed belief in the total depravity?
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Man, does that total depravity mean total inability? Or does it simply mean that grace is absolutely necessary but not sufficient?
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There's that phrase once again. God predestinated.
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The word predestined in the Bible means to lay out boundaries beforehand. You find in the book of 1
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Peter, I believe it's the second verse, the word elect. It's found more than one time in the Bible. The word elect means chosen.
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The word for ordination, which is important to this issue, means to know beforehand. It doesn't just mean
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God knows what's going to happen in the future. It means God knows and God actually controls what's going to happen in the future.
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Now to catch that, hold him there because he's right in the sense that he's just went beyond God merely knows the future to the reason he knows the future is because of the reality of his sovereignty over events in time.
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So got to keep that one on the table. So predestinate means to lay out boundaries beforehand.
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For ordination means to know what's going to happen before it happens but to have sovereign control over it.
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And when we are called the elect, it means we are the chosen of God. What is unconditional election?
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The five -point Calvinist teaches. In eternity past, God predetermined who is going to get saved.
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He made a list. He wrote before mankind was ever created, before Adam and Eve ever fell, in the
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Lamb's book of life, the elect, the saved. The unsaved, the non -elect, were not written down in the
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Lamb's book of life. And God predetermined that those people would get saved.
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John Calvin and Calvinist also teach, five -point Calvinist. They don't like to talk about this.
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But if you're going to embrace it, I want you to know what you're embracing. Along this line of unconditional election...
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Now, what about those of you who've listened? What's coming?
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I knew what was coming. Despite the sound of the chips, I knew what was coming.
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We're about to get the idea of the equality of election and reprobation.
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They're about to make the equal sign Even though Calvinists, very clearly, in our discussion of the issue of reprobation and the reprobate,
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Calvinists make a clear distinction in the issue of grace, the action of God, the purpose of God, the extension of God's power to make
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His grace effective is not necessary to make a sinner be sinful. So, here it comes.
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You can hear it coming. But you're not going to hear that kind of distinction presented to it.
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Because obviously, we just heard, obviously, Pastor Revis does not want his people involved with this. And you know what?
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That's his right as pastor of that church. He's going to have to answer to God for that. He's going to have to answer to God for teaching the
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Word of God. But, I'm not sitting here saying this man should not talk to his people about what he believes.
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I just think he should be a little bit wiser in listening to what they're saying. There's a difference between the two. They believe in the doctrine of reprobation.
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The doctrine of reprobation says God decreed that the elect would be saved and God predetermined that the non -elect would go to hell.
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As Centurion and Channel just said, that's the dark side of Calvinism. As George Bryson puts it, the concept of the passing over, the reprobation.
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And what does it mean that God actively reprobates? Does he need to actively reprobate? Et cetera, et cetera.
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In other words, God not only predestined... Are you hearing what I'm hearing? Because I couldn't hear this on the
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MP3 player. But I can hear it now. And I can see this picture in my mind because I bet if I went to the website and if there's a picture of the worship center,
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I can see what this looks like. There's some associate pastor within range of the microphone.
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And his noises are really interesting to hear. Did you hear that?
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That was the comment. It was just... And it's like... Really?
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They can't possibly believe that. I just heard that. And I don't know if you heard it. Obviously, if you're listening to real audio, you probably can't hear it.
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But I can hear it. And if you listen to the sermon on MP3... That's an amen with a mouthful of chips.
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They did the elect to be safe. But God has predetermined that the lost will go to hell and they have no choice in the matter.
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Oh, ouch. Okay, well, you know. Eventually, the mask slips off.
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I don't care how hard you try. I've just never heard. Maybe they're out there. Maybe I just don't run into the right folks.
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You know? But why is it that you just never hear a real fair discussion that doesn't include this kind of rhetoric?
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I don't know. I keep looking for it. Someday, it may show up. And somebody might be saying, yeah, well, you know, there's a lot of Calvinists and their rhetoric's pretty strong, too.
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Yeah, well, that's true. But the question is, what about accuracy?
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The point is, their choice is always against God. And that's because of their fallen nature.
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And they make that choice and they make that choice every day. And to say they have nothing to do with it is just...
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It's wrong. And if he's read Burkhoff, if he's read Hodge, if he's read the sources he says he's familiar with, then he would know that.
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Now, somebody here who's leaned that well said, well, Brother Herb, that's what it says over in the book of Romans, chapter 9. It says that God has created or fitted vessels of wrath for damnation and judgment.
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Well, that's not what that means. Now, here we get an interesting assertion.
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You've... I hope you've noticed if you're Reformed in your theology, if you're
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Reformed in your theology, you get to hear every kind of excuse, explanation possible in regards to Romans 9.
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And I think you could probably agree with me over time that the explanations offered on Romans 9 all share the same
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I would call it the same element of desperation. The same element of desperation.
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There is always some if you just had this one little hermeneutical key, if you just would understand this one
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Old Testament passage the way I would, then it would completely change everything that Paul says, never mind his own interpretation of the
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Old Testament passages, never mind his own application, never mind the consistency of just following the text through and how it really doesn't present a whole lot of difficulties at that point that, boy, you just come up with excuse after excuse after excuse.
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Well, here's another one. And it's... This is not the best presentation of it.
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Okay? This actually is a bad presentation of it, but I've seen this in Lenski's commentary.
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Just a much more full version of it. I'll let him explain it to you here. Scripture does not support the doctrine of reprobation.
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The only time predestination is used is always in reference to the saved.
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And no Calvinist would ever disagree with that statement.
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Predestination unto salvation and the reprobation of evil sinners are not equal things.
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They do not take place in the same way. They are not of the same character. And again, if he would just read the sources that he claims to be familiar with, then he would know that.
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But, evidently, he... What happens with a lot of these men, because if he's at Moody Bible Institute straight out of high school in, what did he say, 74?
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That would make him 70. That would put him right around 49 -50 years of age.
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Approximately. I don't know this. I'm just guessing. My experience with a lot of these folks is they ran into this issue back in Bible school.
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They came to a conclusion back in Bible school. And they've run with that ever since then.
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They've actually never invested any more meaningful time in really working through that.
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And that tradition just gets more and more hardened over time.
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And they're really running on very old information and hence not overly accurate information.
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Sometimes it gets tweaked a little bit and frequently in their 40s, 50s, they'll say stuff that actually isn't as accurate as they would have maybe in their 20s.
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But they've not revisited the issue. They don't consider it important enough to revisit it. And hence they don't.
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And that's why this type of thing happens. And, for instance, it says God predestinated us to be conformed to the image of Christ.
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The Bible says God predestinated us to receive the adoption, the spirit of adoption, to be adopted as adult children in the family of God so that we can immediately, upon our new birth, access our spiritual inheritance.
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This is the verse they used to teach the doctrine of reprobation in the Bible. Now, let's listen to this.
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You don't have to turn there. Just hang in here with me, please. Because I'm not going to say anything else about this.
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I'm getting the whole load out tonight and I'm going to take this as long as I can because we've got these people in Jacksonville having these little
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Bible studies talking about this. And we've got some of our young people, people trying to suck them out of the youth group to get them involved in this.
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We've got some of the college and career confused about this. It's dividing seminary campuses.
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It's dividing Christian college campuses. It's even dividing the BCMs, the
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Baptist Campus Ministries, on some of our secular college campuses. And so I'm going to stay there tonight and tell you what
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I believe that this is all about. There's the motivation. There's the motivation.
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I mean, my understanding is this man's very opposed to Reformed theology and to allowing even...
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well, you know, it's interesting. He says the other side won't allow dialogue and the other side won't allow freedom. But it sounds like that's sort of a two -way street.
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Amen. Amen. The Bible says, now listen, in Romans chapter 9 and verse 22, What if God, willing to show
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His wrath and to make His power known, endured with long suffering...
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Now listen to this. The vessels of wrath fitted to destruction. Oh, there it is, preacher. He prepared those people for hell.
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That's not what it says in the Greek New Testament. Here we go. The verb there where it says fitted to destruction, the verb is in what
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Greek grammarians call the middle voice making it a reflexive action verb.
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And this is what it literally says in the Greek New Testament. The vessels, the lost people fitted themselves, prepared themselves to destruction.
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How did the vessels prepare themselves for destruction? By rejecting Jesus Christ as their personal
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Savior. Well, that's news to those who can read the
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Greek New Testament or maybe if you have your BibleWorks program up and you're looking at what is in actually the last phrase of Romans 9 .22
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you're looking at that particular verb and you're going wow, that's interesting.
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It doesn't say that in my particular program. Why doesn't my program indicate what he just himself said?
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And you don't really need honestly to be looking at the
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Greek text at this point because you might go if I'm following the argument here if I'm following the whole thrust here isn't the preceding verse about the potter and isn't the preceding verse talking about something different than what he's talking about.
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The preceding verse seems to be talking about the potter and the potter's right.
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Does not the potter have a right over the clay to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use.
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Now clearly the honorable use, common use is parallel to vessels of wrath and vessels of mercy.
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And the potter is the one who makes pots and the potter is the one who is putting out effort here and determining one indeed an honorable use and one indeed a common use.
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And isn't all this if we back up just a little bit more isn't all of this in answer to an objection.
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Romans 9 .19 you will say to me then why does he still find fault for who resists his will and why is that objection being raised because of verse 18.
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So then he and literally it's mercies whom he desires and he hardens whom he desires.
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So there's a direct parallel and in fact the little distracted here because being told that the feed just died but verse 18 we don't translate that overly well in English because of the fact that we don't have a verb to mercy but Greek does.
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And so it's literally so then he mercies whom he wills and he hardens whom he wills. Direct parallel.
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And so the objector says you will say to me then why does he still find fault?
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Who resists his will? If God is in charge of these things who resists God's will? And the response says on the contrary who are you oh man who answers back to God?
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Who are you you created thing to answer back to the creator? The thing molded will not say to the molder why'd you make me like this will it?
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And the expected answer here in case you're really really really out there in theology the expected answer is no.
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The molder has the right over what he molds the potter has the right over the clay and so what happens?
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We're in the context because this is a good illustration where people go well you know if I just knew
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Greek. Actually what in the context would tell you this is an improper interpretation on the part of the pastor here because you see the pastor is assuming that what is taken by the vast majority of translators vast majority of translators as a passive participle is actually middle and if this sounds familiar to you this is how they try to get around Acts 13 -48 as well.
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There is nothing in the context that breaks the parallelism that would indicate to us that we have been right all along to translate the participial form of as a passive nothing whatsoever but when you stand behind the pulpit and tell people this is what the
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Greek text says I bet you 99 .99 % of everybody in that room said oh wow
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I didn't know that. I didn't know that. That's why you need to have dialogue. That's why you need to have debate so you can bring these things out and actually correct these types of things but we'll continue with that and lots of other things as we continue with the dividing line.
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Remember, remember, remember teaching a Jan Term class in the afternoons right now that means this
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Thursday instead of the afternoon dividing line it will be a morning dividing line just like this one so 11 o 'clock we'll see you then.
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God bless. at the crossroads let this moment slip away we must contend for the faith our fathers fought for we need a new reformation day
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That's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G Where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates and tracks