1 John 1:5-2:2, Brief Discussion on Presuppositional Apologetics

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. I'd like to dive right into the text of scripture today on the program, if you don't mind.

Some of you automatically skipped the first five minutes anyways, so you're going to have to roll back and you'll feel guilty for the first time, because I didn't spend all that time talking about other things, the weather, or anything else.

But 1 John 1, I'm going to blow up the font a little bit here.

We'll be sharing it with you here in a moment. And this is the message which we heard from him and are proclaiming or announcing to you that God is light and there is no darkness at all in him.

The apostle starts off with the assertion, you may recall, of course, in the

Gospel of John, the distinction between light and darkness, hearing and not hearing, seeing and not seeing.

The apostle continues that kind of a theme, connecting the epistles to his gospel and his ministry.

And God is light, there is no darkness in him at all, therefore, verse 6, if we say that we have fellowship with him and are walking in the darkness, we lie and are not doing the truth.

Now, again, it's important to remember that the background of this first epistle is a very difficult time in the early church.

There are many false teachers, there is tremendous difficulty within the church.

Many of the apostles are now gone, John seems to be the last one left, and even with him still alive, the church struggles against the beginnings of what eventually is going to be known as Gnosticism and all of its teaching, and there's an anti -Gnostic strain in 1

John itself already before this, which our hands have touched concerning the Word of Life, a denial of the error of Docetism, the idea that Jesus didn't have a true physical body, that becomes the essence of the

Antichrist, he who denies that Jesus came to flesh, this is the Antichrist. There are many Antichrists, they've gone out from us.

So, they were struggling with the issue of apostasy, how to identify who true

Christians are, sounds like today, and that's because there are a lot of parallels.

And so, one of the tests is if we say that we have fellowship with him, because all false teachers claim to have fellowship with God, and no one's going to say, oh, no, no, no.

If we claim that we have koinonia, fellowship with him, but are walking in darkness, if there is no darkness in God, if God is light, there is no darkness in him, and we are walking in darkness, then we are lying and are not doing the truth.

That's not a nice, smooth translation, but it is the best way,

I think, to render it. Some say do not practice the truth, but I think it's good to emphasize that in the mindset of the

Apostle, truth is something that we do, not just something that is believed.

And so, to lie is to not do the truth. Truth will always impact the doing.

You cannot separate the two. We have in Western thought, but that is not the appropriate thing to be doing.

And so, there can be – so, what this verse says is there can be those who claim to have fellowship with God, but they're not doing the truth, and they're walking in darkness.

This is laying the foundation for what is going to come after this. So, verse 7, but if we walk in the light, as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his

Son, is cleansing us all sin. And so, for the believers, those who are truly walking in the light, in contrast to those who walk in darkness, who may claim to have fellowship with God, but if you're walking in darkness, you don't, because there is no darkness in him.

If we are walking in the light, as he himself is in the light, so the only way you're truly going to have relationship with him, is to be in that light, which is going to be associated with truth, we have fellowship with one another.

And so, there is something very important. True Christian fellowship flows out of the commonality of our walking in the light, our being in the truth, our doing truth.

When people say doctrine divides, they have no idea what in the world they're talking about, because it is fundamental foundational doctrine that provides the very light in which we are to walk, so that we can have koinonia, fellowship with one another.

And as we do so, the blood of Jesus, his

Son cleanses us from all sin. And so, once again, this is not a, you know, put the doctrine over there, and then our salvation is over here, and so on and so forth.

No. This is a, you know, we like to say a soteriological issue, that is an issue relating to the gospel, to salvation, but walking in the light, knowing the truth, and being cleansed of your sin.

For John, there is no way to distinguish these things. There is no way to separate these things out, and it is dangerous that there are so many who can tear the

Christian faith into little parts, and emphasize this over here, and that over there, and this over here, and never see the intimate connection that is to be maintained between all of these elements of truth.

I have decried that for decades now, and it still is something that is a true problem.

But notice, this true Christian fellowship, therefore, is one that involves being the light rather than darkness, having fellowship with one another, and being cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ from all sin.

That is the only mechanism. There is no, there's no one way of salvation for the Jews, another way of salvation for the

Gentiles. You, there's only one, the ground is leveled before the cross. Everyone comes in the same way.

And so, you have the promise that Jesus' blood actually is able to cleanse from all sin.

So, as soon as he makes reference to this need to being forgiven of sin, remember, it's the same writer

John, most people believe, it's the same writer John that recorded for us chapter 8, and in chapter 8, you had those people who heard what

Jesus said, and they're like, that guy sounds pretty sharp, and they believed in him.

But it's not the normative form of belief that John uses, present tense, it's an heiress.

They believed in him, and so when Jesus says, he turns to them who said they believed in him, and Jesus says, if you continue in my word, then you're my disciples, and you shall know the truth, and the truth will what?

Will set you free, and as soon as he says set you free, the rebellion kicks in, because it wasn't true saving faith.

The rebellion kicks in, we don't need to be set free. By the end of this chapter, they're picking up stones to stone him.

And so, when John says all sin, cleanse us from all sin, that assumes that there is a need for such cleansing.

And so, verse 8, now if we say that we do not have sin, ourselves, healtus planomen, we deceive ourselves.

Not we're just being deceived by somebody else, but this is such a obvious reality to any person who has any semblance of an understanding of the holiness of God, and then looks into our own heart, your own mind, your own motivations, and how anybody could say,

I don't have sin. You know, I'm always amazed at the sinless perfectionists out there, who say,

I don't sin. And the reality is, the more you grow in the grace and knowledge of Lord Jesus Christ, the more you know about him, the more you recognize the ways in which you are not like him, and hence, seek to grow in those ways.

So, somebody who goes, well, I don't have sin, seems to me to be just giving tremendous testimony of their own abject insensitivity to who they are and to who

God is. And yeah, I'm thinking of one particular advocate of sinless perfectionism, who's a heretic in many ways.

We deceive ourselves. It's self -deception. You know, Paul's description, men grow worse and worse deceiving and being deceived.

We deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. So, that truth, which has already been referred to, that truth that we are to be practicing in verse 6, in verse 8, if we say we have no sin, we're deceiving ourselves.

We're lying to ourselves, and that person is giving testimony via those words that the truth is not in that person.

It is not in that person. But on the other hand, you'll notice verses 8 and 9 both begin with the same, well, verse 10 as well.

If, if these are subjunctive forms, these are conditionals, if we are confessing our sins, then

I love this. Pistos estin chi dikaios. It is not expressed directly, but it is very clear.

We are the ones confessing our sins, but then it looks away from us.

And faithful and just is he. Not, not faithful and just are we, not he has made a great way available for us to somehow do something for us.

No. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just in order that in reference to us, he might forgive those sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

And so before we have walking in the light, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin.

And now there is the reality of the ongoing nature of the

Christian life as one of repentance, of one of confession. How any of this fits into sinless perfectionism,

I cannot begin to understand, I'll be honest with you. It doesn't make any sense. But the point is that God is said to have the capacity to forgive those sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

This is something that's done for us. It's not something that we have the capacity to do in and of ourselves. It's something we desire.

We certainly want to set aside anything that would be displeasing to God, would be constantly entrapping us in sin.

And we know what those things are. Every single one, every single one of you who's walked with the

Lord for any period of time, you know exactly what I'm talking about, exactly what I'm talking about. But he is the one.

If we confess that he is faithful and just to forgive us, not because of who we are, but because of who

Christ is, because we've already seen what is the mechanism of this term. It's the term Katharizo.

What is the mechanism? The blood of Jesus Christ. So, follow the themes, follow the threads as John weaves his theology here.

We've already seen that walking in the light results in being cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ.

Here, confession of those sins brings cleansing from all unrighteousness because he is faithful and he is just.

But then, if we say that we have not sinned. Now, before it was in verse 8, if you look back here, if we say that we do not have sinned.

And then, verse 10, it's a little bit different. If we say that we have not sinned.

So, we know that some of the early forms of, well, the

Gnostics as a whole, but Gnosticism was not a absolutely unified movement, obviously.

In fact, Gnosticism eschewed the very idea of a objective truth to begin with. So, you're not exactly get a systematic theology out of that.

But the point is that there was this idea that the physical is the locus of evil and the spiritual is the locus of good.

And so, there were those who would say, well, I haven't sinned. My flesh sinned, but I haven't sinned.

And maybe that's what's behind this. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us.

So, if you say, I've not, not me. Well, God has testified in the cross that that is not true.

You see, if there was anyone who had not sinned, there would have been no need for the cross. If there was a way of salvation outside of that drastic measure, there'd be no need for the cross.

And so, when you, in essence, fall into the enlightenment view of man, that man's pretty good, man's basically good, you're making

God a liar. You're saying he lied in the cross, in the necessity of the cross, in doing something so radical as to give his own son.

When you say, I went a little bit overboard, you are making him a liar.

John's not trying to win friends and influence people here, by a stretch of the imagination.

If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us.

That message, that logos, that's a term that's used there. His logos is not in us.

So, truth, logos, message, word, dwells amongst the people of God when they're walking in the light, believing the truth, so on and so forth.

Then you have what I would call a minor break, not because we go into chapter two.

Remember, the chapters are a medieval innovation and then the verses between 1550 and 1551, between the third and fourth editions of Robert Esty and Stephanos.

But I call it a minor break in the use of language. Techniamu, my children.

My children, I'm writing these things to you. So yeah, there's conceptually a bit of a minor break, but he uses tauta, my children, these things

I am writing to you in order that you may not sin. Now, these things might be a direct reference to what was just said before, or tauta is used that way all the way through John.

You go back to 1 John 5. Now, these things I've written to you that you might know what?

That you have eternal life, right? We all know that verse. But what is the these things there?

I would argue everything that came before, the entire message of 1 John. Walking in the light, loving your brother, all these things, confessing properly that Jesus Christ came to the flesh, all these things are important in your knowing that you have eternal life.

We so often misuse the 1 John 5 passage. Well, it's like,

I had to get a new passport recently because I'm traveling so much,

I used up my passport before its time was over. Well, that, and the Russians wanted 47 ,000 pages of their visa.

But you have to have enough pages. Why? Because when you go through the process, now this is starting to change.

Like going to Heathrow, starting this summer, if you have a certain kind of passport, you just put your passport down and it scans through and you go through and they don't anymore.

But for years and years and years, you have those self -inking things and you find an open page and it's got the date on it.

When you enter, then they find that same page when you're leaving, passport control, and so you know when you went in, when you went out, so on and so forth.

Well, that's how a lot of people viewed that passage of 1 John 5. It's your eternal life. These things

I've written and no one ever asked, what things? It's everything else in 1 John. These things, my children,

I'm writing to you in order that you may not sin. So, is it just what's came before or is it everything that's going to be said in this epistle?

I think it's everything. The point is John is writing so we may not sin.

He's providing information for us. He's providing godly direction for us.

The more we know about God's will, then the better we can avoid that which violates

God's will. That doesn't mean, I mean, a lot of us know plenty about God's will and we still sin. But there are many times when we fall into sin and we realize, oh, if I just realized this, if I just known that, if I just remembered this contemplation of scripture, these things

I'm writing to you in order that you may not sin. We want to avoid this.

We do not want to be, when you think about it, when you talk, when you think of how Christ has borne our sins in his body upon the tree, but we are still alive.

So, a lot of us have, you know, we've, we recognize that because, now

Roman Catholics don't have this idea because they, forgiveness is piecemealed out to them over time. That's what the sacramental system is all about.

But we, I think, correctly recognize that since we were not in existence when the cross took place, that there is a sense in which if we are united with Christ, then all of our sins are nailed to the cross of Calvary.

And that's true. But what that frequently leads people to think is, well, you know, it's all been forgiven anyways, so I really don't have to think about it.

But the proper attitude should be, if you really recognize that the massive debt that has been forgiven to you, why would you want to add to that?

How could you not recognize that every act of personal sin in the future adds to what

Christ had to bear? I mean, it gets into the sort of the time paradox that we're dealing with something that God did in eternity that has effect in time.

And yeah, okay. And we can only, we can only handle a part of that because we can't think outside of that, no matter how many

Star Trek episodes we've seen, we can't do it. And so the reality is that we should not desire to add to the burden that Christ has borne for us.

That's the sin of presumption. My little children, I'm writing to you in order that you may not sin.

And if anyone does sin, obviously John recognizes that there is going to be in the life of the true believer in Christ, the continued experience of sin.

If what, if how some other verses in 1 John have been interpreted out of their context to mean, oh, if you're a child of God, you don't sin, ever.

It's never a part of your experience rather than if you're a child of God living in that sin, practicing that sin, that being what you peripateo in, you walk in that.

If you come up with the idea that you just don't sin at all, then this doesn't make any sense. And if a certain one sins, well, no, that's never going to happen.

Well, no, it does. I'm writing to you that you may not sin, but if someone does, then notice this next term, parakleton.

That is the same term that Jesus himself uses of the paraclete, the

Holy Spirit. But here it is, parakleton ecumen prostant pater.

We have a paraclete with the Father. So this is a different context or category than when

Jesus is talking about the paraclete who is going to come in his place.

That is the Holy Spirit who indwells the people of God. Here, the emphasis is upon the intercessing, the mediatorial work, the advocacy.

So we have an advocate, prostant pater. Now remember, remember in first, in John chapter one, in 1 .1,

where it says the word was with God, that's prostanteon, face to face with.

So here, prostant patera, in the presence of the Father. This is the intercessory work of Christ.

This is where Christ is in the presence of the Father, at the right hand of the

Father, having entered into the holy place, the intercessor, the mediator, the advocate.

And if anyone sins, we have a paracletos, an advocate with the

Father, Jesus Christ, dikaion, the righteous one.

And so I, very clearly a connection here to Paul, the idea of the righteousness of Christ.

He himself is righteous. He is our advocate in the presence of the Father. Interestingly enough, just above this, it had said that God is what?

Righteous, faithful, and righteous to forgive our sins. So the

Father is righteous. Our advocate likewise is righteous. Jesus Christ the righteous is the paracleton we have with the

Father. Now, walk through the threads that have already started to appear in John's narrative.

We have a cleansing that comes from outside of ourselves.

It is extensive, deals with all of sin, all unrighteousness.

If anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

It is his blood that brings the forgiveness of sin. All of, but we likewise have within that light and darkness, fellowship with God.

Fellowship, what? With one another, between believers in God and with one another.

Within what? The body. Within the body. So when

John says in 1 John 2, 1, if anyone sins, we have a paracleton in the presence of the

Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the sacrifice for sin, the propitiation, and he is the propitiation, and it's really he himself.

The emphasis is only him. He himself is the helosmos.

Now, however we define this, it has to be defined within the language that's come before, which includes cleansing, kafaridzo, and here, paracletos, the one who is the advocate.

And he himself is the helosmos, the propitiation, then very carefully, periton hamartion haimon, concerning our sins, and then uperiton haemeteron, and not concerning ours alone, de manon, uperiton haemeteron de manon, not concerning our sins only or exclusively, but the adversative,

Allah, also perihalu to kasmu, the entire world.

If we did not already have in our minds certain controversies and questions, how would we understand this?

Because it's always good to just check what comes afterwards.

Sometimes there's a break, and there does seem to be a break here, and in this, we are knowing that we have known him if we are keeping his commandments, and so it immediately continues on in a

Christian context, a believing context, we're talking about believers here.

So if we did not have, if we did not already know what this half of a sentence, how it plays out in theological controversy today, how would we understand it?

I know that we can't put those things aside completely. Our minds just aren't made to be able to do that, but try to stay in the context of where we were, because really, until you get to this verse, our minds are on other things.

Our minds are on forgiveness of sin, our minds are on confession, koinonia, katharidzo, cleansing, walking in the light, all these things, this is what we're focused upon, and it's very clearly within the context of believers.

And so when we get to 1 John 2, 2, if you put that aside and follow the thread through,

Jesus Christ, the righteous, and he himself is the propitiation, which you're going to understand in the context of what?

What's the only context that has come up until this point? Cleansing of sin, not potentiality, not maybe, not making someone savable or anything like that.

The only thing that's come before this is he is faithful and just to forgive sin, cleanse sin, for walking in the light, love

Jesus Christ, cleansing us. That's all we've got up to this point, and that's the only way to do meaningful exegesis, is not to immediately jump out of here to someplace else, but follow the context.

And in the context, he himself is the propitiation concerning our sins, the sacrifice of atonement, which brings, which satisfies the wrath of God and brings the forgiveness of sin.

And then John says, and not concerning our sins only, but also peri, using the same term, it was peri ton hemetano, not just concerning our own sins, but concerning halu to kosmu.

Now, it has been well said and documented that the

Apostle John uses the term kosmos, kosmu here in the Geno singular, at least 14 different ways between the gospel and the epistles.

And it's only going to be a few sentences later on. Verse, um, come on, where'd you go?

Uh, there it is. Uh, verse 15, verse 15. Uh, do not love the world ton kosmon.

It's right there. Ton kosmon. Do not love the world near the things in the world.

If anyone loves ton kosmon, uk est in he agape tu patras en auto.

The love of the Father is not in him. Now, is this a different world?

Well, there are all sorts of different, you know, for all that is in the world.

And then the description here is the lust of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the fool, the foolish pride of life is not from the

Father, but is ek tu kosmu. It is from the world. So, it's the world system of things.

It's not the physically inhabited world. It's not the world of biological creatures or, and it's certainly not the

Western concept of a huge collective of individuals known as every person who has ever lived or ever will live.

It's not what it is in verse 15, but you go back to first John two, two, and what happens?

You have people dragging an entire boatload of presuppositions into what you have here.

And so, when it says de manan ala kai peri halu tu kosmu, but concerning all the world, what would the natural understanding, given what you have up to this point, which would only be the first chapter in the first two verses, it's appropriate to shed light upon passages by looking later in the epistle, but you cannot go to things later in the epistle and make them determinative of what came before that.

That's not how we communicate. That's not how it works. It's appropriate to say, well, this term's used over here, this term's used over there, but when you're talking about the flow of argumentation, then you have to go with only what you've been given so far, unless you're believe that the author wanted his readers to be going,

I got no idea what this guy's saying. I'm lost. How about you? I don't know. That's probably not the case.

And so, what would the natural understanding be? Well, hilas mas is going to be the sacrifice takes away from sin.

We're not talking about universalism here because John has already talked about those who are deceiving themselves and walking in darkness and they are not being cleansed of sin.

There's only one way of being cleansed of sin. So, the natural way would be to recognize that he is the propitiation, not just for our sins, those of us in the fellowship right now, but there are going to be so many others from perihalu to kosmu.

There are going to be others who are going to become a part of this fellowship from the entire world.

Jew and Gentile primarily would be the application. But it's interesting, we have a parallel here between this and 1

Timothy 2, where Paul talks about prayers being made for all men, then he identifies classes of men, those in authority and so on and so forth.

And then he talks about Christ as mediator, just as he does in verse 1.

And in both, you have the same situation. There's one mediator between God and man, the man

Christ Jesus. And men is made up of men from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, every status, high, low, those in authority who are persecuting us and those in low authority, whoever it might be.

And here, not just us right now, but the whole world, Jew and Gentile, Jesus is going to provide propitiation for the sins of everyone who does what?

Well, everyone who confesses their sins and believes in him. But to jump from that to say, well, hilosmos doesn't actually mean forgiveness of sins, it's a potentiality thing.

That wasn't anywhere in all of chapter 1 in the first verse of chapter 2, but then all of a sudden, it's just dumped into verse 2 out of nowhere.

No, it's not dumped out of nowhere, it's coming from a theological system, a theological system that simply has to have in it as the definition,

Jesus's ability to fail. You can't have a Jesus who actually saves.

And this is so central, this is so central to every synergistic system that it's just as prevalent in the interpretation they give as when you're dealing with Unitarians and how

Unitarians will constantly assume Unitarianism. Well, that can't be about Jesus because God's only one, one person, not one being, one person.

They'll assume Unitarianism to argue against Trinitarianism. Well, synergists will automatically assume all sorts of things and read them in the text of scripture and we let them get away with it.

We let them get away with it. And so, we have to challenge from the context, where are you getting the idea that hallu to kosmu means every single individual who has ever lived or ever will live from the context so that, now if they're a universalist, different issue.

If you're arguing with a universalist, different issue. But there aren't that many of them running around. I mean, they're, let's put it this way, most universalists aren't arguing with you about scripture anyways because they don't care.

They really don't have anything to argue about anyways. But if you're dealing with the standard synergist, then you have to challenge them.

You are turning hilasmos into a mere potentiality rather than an accomplished reality and you're doing it on the basis of your definition of to kosmu.

You need to show me that from the text. You can't read it into it, especially in light of the fact that 13 verses later, to kosmu is going to mean something completely different.

So, you just can't assume it. You need to prove it. As you know, in the vast majority of instances, when you hear people talking about these things, they're just going down a list of verses.

They've never listened to a reformed exegete working through these things and they don't want to and they don't care to.

It doesn't matter to them. It's just a list they got off the internet. They borrowed it from light and flowers or something like that and just going with their thing.

So, what brought all this about? Went for a walk this morning and it just so happened, back in the 80s or 90s,

Integrity Music did all these scripture memory albums. I think there's like 20 of them and I bought all of them and I downloaded them to my phone and I've just been listening to them while running and walking.

I couldn't ride when I was in London and in Holland. So, I did 105, almost 105 kilometers of walking, 61 kilometers of running when

I was overseas. A lot of time, it's like 25 hours, something like that. You can listen to a lot during that time and sometimes

I just wanted to listen to Christian music. And the first two songs up this morning were about forgiveness of sins and cleansing.

I started thinking about this text and there's just so much in it that is directly relevant to so much of what we're facing today.

But even if putting the apologetic issues aside and things like that,

I just get the feeling that in our modern day, in our modern context, we just get so distracted that we can literally...

Well, let's just put it this way. We get so distracted that that's why we need the

Lord's Supper and that's why we need the regular celebration of Supper.

Because the Lord's Supper, unless you are just completely tuned out, forces you once again to go back to these basic issues of the cleansing of sin and how that has been accomplished in your life.

And I think it's just natural for us to downplay this.

We don't want to think about this. We don't want to talk about this. But it is central to everything.

It really is. Oh my goodness, is it quarter to three? Wow. I don't know how that happened.

I honestly was figuring we might be getting close to 2 .30, but it's...

Wow. Okay. I'm sorry. Anyway, okay. So I'm not sure

I'm gonna get through much of this then. The only other thing that I wanted to get to today on the program,

I commented to my fellow elders this morning that we have a

WhatsApp group, and so we do a lot of talking in there.

And I commented that the amount of just utter insanity and evil that I had seen just that morning in the articles about what's going on, the education, especially in the area of education in California, the sex education.

And then I had some guy, I don't even know where how he found me, but came after me and was, you know,

I'm stupid and, you know, all the rest of this stuff. But just this morning, the amount of stuff was, if you didn't think

God was in control, it would be massively depressing. And again, as you get older, what you're thinking about is not so much yourself and not even fully so much your kids, but your grandkids and what they're going to be facing and how fast this is happening and just the withdrawal of the hand of restraint that we're seeing going on in Western culture.

Now, I did appreciate yesterday on the briefing that Dr. Moeller pointed out that, yeah, there's a lot of bad

Christianity in Africa, but there is growing good, solid Christianity in Africa. And you look at the

Faithful Brothers in China and you see God doing great things in Brazil and, you know, they're going to be sent, they are already sending missionaries to us because our culture needs it.

And maybe a voice from another place rather than what we've gotten used to hearing. But anyways, the point was there is so much stuff that it can be very distracting and hurtful to the soul.

And honestly, I've said it many times before, when people come to me and they ask, how do

I get into apologetics and stuff like that? I throw as much water on them as I can, because if you can do anything else and fulfill

God's will for your life, do it. There's a lot of reasons for that, but one of the reasons is being involved in this kind of work regularly is hard on a person's soul.

Living to where you're constantly thinking about error and how error, how people in error might interpret this text or that text can function almost like acid on your soul.

And so, I don't recommend it. Now, obviously, I also say in our day, we can't avoid certain elements of it just simply because of where the

Lord's called us to serve in this time, in this place. But that's especially why, even more so than ever, you need to be in a solid church with solid fellowship with fellow believers to have your soul repaired, quite literally, from what is taking place all around us.

And so, anyway, I was thinking about those things, and as I was thinking about the program, what

I was going to do, and then a bunch of other stuff started happening that maybe a few months from now we'll be able to tell you about and things like that, but just a bunch of stuff going on that kept me from being able to cue up some of the stuff that I wanted to cue up.

But I've put together a collection of stuff from Dr. Andy Woods on the subject

Calvinism, but I'm going to hold that for a Radio Free Geneva because there's just so many misrepresentations.

That's sort of why we did Radio Free Geneva to start with, was let's hear the misrepresentations, let's respond to them, and sometimes that's the best way of teaching something is, yeah, you may have heard it said this way, but here's where the problem with that is.

But then, yesterday, I listened to, and there's no way I'm even going to be able to start to get through this, so I'll just very basically sort of give you an idea.

I listened to an episode of Mortification of Spin. Now, there are only, well,

I was going to say there are only so many webcasts out there, but actually there's a lot of webcasts out there, but there's only a certain number that people in this audience probably would find useful, and I'm sure that we have a lot of crossover.

I've been on Mortification of Spin myself, I've done conferences with Carl Truman and stuff like that, so there's a connection there.

And a couple months ago, a book came out by Dr.

Fesco. Now, Dr. Fesco has been at Westminster in Escondido, and he's now transitioning to RTS Jackson, and so here's a

Reformed scholar who will have a lot of impact upon the formation of the next generation of Reformed leaders.

And he's written a book, Reforming Apologetics. Now, it's on my list.

I've got about 12 books that I've either bought the Audible versions of or Kindle versions, have converted them, and a lot of them are for upcoming debates.

Like I announced the day before yesterday that what, five, six debates left this year alone.

Most of them? I think all of them are overseas. So, the amount of stuff that I need to be reading and dealing with in the background is a lot.

Now, Rich does all my research for me. I don't know if you could hear that in the background, but it was the incredulous cough.

I don't have anybody that does that. I did just reach out to somebody to help me with one of the debates coming up because I know that particular individual has a lot of expertise in that area.

But especially for this program, I've mentioned my indebtedness to some folks on Twitter who will send me links and stuff like that.

But when it comes to editing audio, converting debates, listening to debates, reading books, me, myself, and I, me and my bike and audio note taker and my programs

I download videos with, convert them to MP3 and put them on my wonderful Trex Air bone conduction headphones so I can listen to stuff and still hear what's going on around me, which is a real safety thing when you're on the bike.

I use a lot of technology to make it possible to really be crunching through a lot of information.

And a number of the books that I read are background books. They're stuff on intertestamental history and stuff that may not just come popping out in the very next dividing line or something like that, but they do down the road during a debate, whatever else it might be.

And there's 10 times those number of books that I wish I had time to read. All sorts of books in Islamic interpretations of the

Quran and development of that over time and stuff like that that I wish I had time to read, but one person can only do so much and do it well.

So the Fesco book is pretty high on the list.

I'm going to get it done. I was actually talking with Brother Jeff about that. I said, okay, who's going to take one for the team and be the first one to tackle that one?

Because it is in essence a critique of presuppositional apologetics.

And so that's what this mortification of spin program was about.

They're asking him material about his book.

And once I, it's not a long, let's see, let's see how long the whole thing was. 34 minutes and 15 seconds.

So that's not long. I did manage to get portions of it put together so we could listen to it, but we're just not going to have time to do that today.

So I was troubled by it. I was troubled by it because the same reasons that I was troubled by classical apologetics by R .C.

Sproul and John Gerstner, men that I, whose memories I greatly honor, and Lindsley, Lindsay, Lindsley, one of the two.

Anyway, what, what concerned me was again, some of the representations of presuppositionalism that just were not accurate at all as if Van Til and those of us who have sought in some way, shape or form to apply his thought, because we find it to be extremely necessary in our modern situation.

And especially in light of the fact that Van Til writes in the period of the rise of modern

Roman Catholicism, the reformers did not. Rome has morphed and changed and developed.

The counter -reformation took place. Other things have happened. You have to take all that stuff into consideration.

I was concerned. I've, we'll get to it, but I was concerned about some of the things

I heard. I've been told, I didn't see this, but I've been told that in a review or a response,

Dr. Oliphant basically said to Dr. Fesco that he was reintroducing the vomitous philosophies of Rome to reformed apologetics.

Something, it had the term vomit in it somewhere. I, I, I, I know, I know that. And that's because, well,

I know why it is. And, and there were a couple of statements made on mortification of spin that made me sort of go, do you guys really know where Rome is today?

And, and where Rome is coming from. And I know that there are liberal

Roman Catholics out there today, but, but I know the believing Roman Catholics better than these guys do.

Not because I'm having lattes with them at scholarly conferences because I debate them.

And it was concerning to me. And I will, next time

I will avoid the 45 minute sermon and we'll, we'll get directly into what

I found concerning about the reforming apologetics discussion on mortification of spin.

So I'll just keep this queued up and we'll, we'll dive into it next time without doing all the exegetical stuff on another, another subject that ended up taking three quarters of time up.

But, but I think it, I think it'll be useful. I think we need to think these things through. And I can just put it this way, having listened to that program and having read some reviews,

I'm more convinced of the necessity of recognizing, and this is, this is, this is not a sufficient definition, but I think it is a, it's functionally important.

What's that one, one key issue that separates presuppositionalism from whatever else is out there is that a presuppositional apologist will never invite the sinner to sit in judgment upon the claims of God over his life.

That to me, call me simple, many people do, call me simple, but that to me is a defining aspect that gives light to how you present the claims of Christ, the centrality of Christ, scripture, so on and so forth.

So I think that's, that, that's something that hopefully we'll be able to bring up as we, as we look at this.

So thanks for listening to the program today. Lord willing, we'll be with you next week. God bless.