A Few Opening Thoughts then Open Phones

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:18

So, I'm very appreciative for Daryl Harrison for providing me with a way to start the program today.

00:23

We are going to take your phone calls at, yes, Rich goes, oh, we are, at 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341.

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It's a very nice Windows 7 or 10 picture up there. It's very blue with all the little

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Windows thingies, it's very nice. Anyway, Daryl gets to say things,

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I think the Windows thing looks a lot better than me. So, anyway, Daryl gets to say things that I don't get to say, so he just tweeted four minutes ago, in their incessant bloviating about whiteness, what many critical race theorists refuse to acknowledge is that black people are often ostracized within their own ethnic communities for not exhibiting enough blackness.

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Trust me, I speak from almost daily experience. Well, I know he does, and he and Kofi and Samuel and Omaha and Votie Baucombe and many others experience that all the time.

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And that just illustrates, once again, that as you listen to these folks talking about the wickedness of whiteness and things like that, the best folks, the folks that recognize there needs to be some mechanism of explaining what is so obviously unbiblical categories of thinking, so as to mask that it's not unbiblical or to try to make it sound biblical.

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The people that work at that the hardest will assure you, and by the way,

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I guess someone had the number, but 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.

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What they will say is that whiteness doesn't have anything to do with skin color.

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That whiteness is a power and oppression paradigm. Systemic racism is another way of saying that the system is rigged for white people versus people of color.

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But if it doesn't have anything to do with skin color, then why attach it to issues of skin color? I mean, they always fail to be consistent.

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They eventually attach it and make it an ethnic racial issue. They can't help but do so. But it's very important to remember that what you hear from these individuals is really it's majority -ism.

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That's all it is. White privilege, white supremacy, whiteness is nothing more than—now, some of these folks are really into conspiracy theories, and they really do think there's a white cabal out there that's designing all this stuff.

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But there is a Chinese majority -ism in China.

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You get along a whole lot better in China if you're Chinese than if you're anything else. And in most countries, that's always how it's been.

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If you're part of the majority, then the majority of the economic opportunities, educational opportunities, all that stuff is for the majority.

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And so in the United States, that's always been immigrants from Europe, primarily.

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And so that's how it gets attached to the term white, but in other parts of the world, it's black.

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In other parts of the world, it's Asian. It's simply majority privilege.

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If you're in the majority, the society's going to reflect you. And when you're in the minority,

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I mean, especially in Africa, if you want to do the

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Black Panther thing and say that all is well as long as everybody is black in your society,

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I guess you don't know too much about the tribal stuff, and I guess you've never been down to South Africa and heard the stories about what happens in the townships and how the townships are divided into certain areas.

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And if you've got your people from wherever, and the

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Nigerians always seem to be in the middle of it someplace, but there is a massive amount of tribalism and violence and everything else going on in those places.

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And so it's not just a nice situation there.

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But the point is, all this stuff about whiteness, they simply cannot stay consistent with the categories when they talk about systems of oppression and power and stuff like that.

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All this stuff doesn't translate outside of the United States. And one of the first things that I remember talking about, when

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I went to South Africa last time and this stuff had broken, I remember talking to both white and black brothers and throwing out some of the stuff that was being said, and they're like, what are you talking about?

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And I hope it stays that way. I hope that, but unfortunately, once people buy into stuff, they want to distribute it all over the place.

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They want to export it everyplace else. And it would be absolute poison in other places.

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It's poison here, but it'd be even worse in other places. So yeah,

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Daryl had just tweeted that. And so I thought I would read that.

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And I'm just looking at some of the responses that have already been posted to that.

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So it's rather interesting. Anyways, 877 -753 -3341.

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I mentioned real quickly before we go to Alex and Chris. If you haven't heard about it, there are two popes right now.

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Not technically. See, this is just it. If you're not aware of this, when

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Pope Benedict XVI resigned, that was the first time that it happened in almost 700 years.

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700 years is a long time. And so Rome wasn't really sure what to do about that.

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And Francis has turned out to be, well, you know, when the Lutheran satire guys have a

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Pope Frankie image, Frankie the hipster type guy, you get the idea that Francis is not exactly following in the footsteps of Benedict XVI.

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And I know that Dr. Moeller was talking about how very important Ratzinger, that's

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Benedict by the way, they take a different name when they become Pope, but Cardinal Ratzinger. Ratzinger has been one of the chief theological voices of Roman Catholicism for 50 years.

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And really, you know where he's coming from. He's written numerous books. And they're not postmodern, fluffy books.

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He's German. I know there are German postmodernists, but the point is, you can figure out where he's coming from.

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He was called the German Shepherd. He was the head of the Congregation of the Faith, which was the old

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Inquisition. So you know where he's coming from. He's light years from Francis. Any Roman Catholic who has gray matter still functional recognizes that Francis and Benedict are not on the same page.

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So everybody figured Benedict would just, you know, fade into the mists of time.

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But lo and behold, he hasn't. I mean, he has mainly, but lo and behold, he just popped up with a letter, an article, an elongated tweet, papal tweet.

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And everybody's reading between the lines that it's basically a rebuke of Francis.

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Now, you know, in Roman Catholicism, when you become a priest, there is a mark placed upon your soul, allegedly, which is why even a priest who is no longer functioning as a priest can still perform the miracle of transubstantiation because of this mark upon the soul.

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And it really makes you wonder, is that the same thing about popes?

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I mean, these two guys ain't infallible. And I would imagine the answer for most people would be, well, only

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Francis is, Benedict isn't because he's no longer in the office, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the reality is, as I've said many times, infallibility is the most useless doctrine

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Rome has ever defined. Because you can never tell if what the current pope is saying is meant to be infallible.

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You can't tell for 50 years down the road. So it's irrelevant. What you do have are two men with substantially, substantially different perspectives on many things, and both have functioned—one functioned as, and one is now functioning as, the

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Bishop of Rome. It is a fascinating time. And certainly the Roman Catholic apologetics community is much more in line with a

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Benedictine style of theology than one that would represent

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Francis, the first Jesuit pope. He's way out there in non -Island.

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Anyway, and then of course, one last thing. I mentioned to some brothers yesterday, while once I got to the computer and I see the first pictures of the fire at Notre Dame in France, in Paris, I turn on television and you watch the whole thing going on there and there'll be lots of conversations about why it took so long before the firefighters could get there and the people who risked their lives to rescue relics, evidently a thorn from the crown of thorns.

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Yeah, that stuff still exists, folks. I mean, you know, we talk about Erasmus mocking the fact that in his day there were enough pieces of the true cross to build a ship and stuff like that, but it still happens.

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And we, you know, I've been to Wittenberg and we've walked through the castle church where the, I've preached the gospel, amazingly, in the same space where Frederick had his collection of relics.

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And we started to go, well, that was back then. No. But it still continues to be a relevant belief today.

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Indulgences continue to exist. And so on the one hand, you see this massive cathedral, been staying for 800 years, survived the

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Nazis in World War II and all these types of things. And so on the one hand, you know, it'll never be rebuilt the way that it was.

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I've already heard a lot of commentary that the craftsmanship simply doesn't exist today to do the things that they had done in that cathedral.

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Nobody knows how to do it. Isn't that interesting? Modern man with all his computers and tools can't do what people did between 1160 and 1260.

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And you think about the fact that that building saw three quarters of the people who lived around it die in the middle of the 14th century during the

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Great Mortality, the Black Death. You know, just the things that have happened makes it sad to see such a building go up in flames.

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At the same time, what is missing in so much

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Protestant reaction is the consistent recognition that directly underneath that spire was a high altar that for centuries was believed to be a place where Jesus was represented upon the altar.

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Now, do modern Roman Catholics in France hold that view anymore?

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Well, some do, but liberalism has eaten the core out of most of that stuff.

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But the fact is, that's what was going on there. And that's what goes on in any

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Roman Catholic Church. And the non -centrality of the theology of Rome in the analysis of things related to Roman Catholicism is a troubling trend that I see amongst

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Evangelicals and Reformed.

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Either that, or all you get is the, ah, popes, the Antichrist, and no entrance into why that was said, what it meant.

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I really don't know a lot of people today who have read much of Roman Catholic material to even know what they believe about the

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Mass. Well, I say what they believe, that's the problem. What Orthodox, historic

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Roman Catholics believed about the Mass up until about 60 years ago. Now it's just such a post -modern mess, who knows?

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It's bad. But it was strange to watch these events and have those competing thoughts in one's mind.

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Did you wish to? No, I was just going to add, you mentioned the relics, and did you see on the news last night the pictures of the relics, the pictures of the

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Crown of Thorns? I had seen it while it was happening, yeah. Is it me, or did that have gold interweaving in it?

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And jewels? Oh yeah, I don't know anything specifically about it, but my guess is that the single thorn was put in a larger thing, and then it was,

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I'm sure it was very ornate and things like that. Yeah, somebody maybe want to watch

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Raiders of the Lost Ark or something. No, I don't know what else was in there.

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I've heard a lot, but the reality is there are no thorns from the Crown of Thorns, and touching bones of saints is not going to do anything for you.

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Let's stick with the Apostles. I guess I sort of need to keep this going because we're going to go to our phone calls now.

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All right. Let's start off in Detroit with a name that looks familiar.

17:22

Alex. Hi, Alex. Hey, Doctor. How are you? Doing good. Good, good.

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I had a question regarding CBGM. Might be a big question. I'm currently working on an

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MDiv in an advanced Greek grammar class, and for my project, my paper,

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I am hoping that I'll, first of all, be able to do this, but second of all,

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I'm hoping to do a basic user tutorial on how to use the

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CBGM tool. Now, part of the struggle of that is I'm still trying to figure out how to use them myself.

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I've seen your video on doing the Acts of Phase 4.

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I've also got access to Washington D .C. work. I'm really having a hard time understanding. Is there some way to—are you on, like, a speakerphone or something?

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Because you're really, really, really mushy. Okay. Is it getting better?

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Yeah, it's a little bit better, yeah. Okay. All right. Sorry about that.

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I'll try to make it a long story short here. I'm hoping for my Greek class to write for my project a basic user tutorial for the

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CBGM tools online so that somebody with only a few semesters of Greek could just walk through all those tools, know how to use them at least minimally, just to study, like, one variance or what have you.

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I'm wondering what are the sources I'm going to need. I've seen your video working through the

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Acts 16 variants. I have access to Washerman and Gurry's work,

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Gurry's article, Dan Wallace's article from 2009. I'm wondering what are some other sources

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I might need and then what your opinion is on whether or not this would even be possible to do as a project.

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Well, just real quickly, because most folks aren't familiar with what we're talking about here at all.

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There is available online what was being described there as CBGM tools.

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I'm having a problem getting in here myself at the moment. My link was expired or something.

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The nice thing is that material has been made available to us online, and we can look at these things, and it's very, very helpful.

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The problem is that, especially with the CBGM stuff, what is available for the general epistles is very different than what's available for Acts.

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There was a major graphic, much more graphically easy to use, much easier to use in Acts.

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My assumption is Mark will be even better, at least I hope, than Acts was.

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I was in Munster a few months ago, and I asked, will there be an effort to upgrade previous releases so that there is a consistency across the board?

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Basically, the answer I got was, that would be nice, but it's not high on the priority list.

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The priority list is to get all of ECM done by 2030. Then after that, if there is time and money, maybe.

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We could be looking at having a pretty messy situation as far as the consistency of the online interfaces.

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Obviously, the stuff for the general epistles requires much more technical knowledge than Acts does, and Acts isn't necessarily easy.

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They've provided the instructional PDFs, which differ for each one, but they're not all that helpful.

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The information's there, but you've really got to have some technical vocabulary to even know what they're talking about.

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It would really be nice to have something like that. The problem is, as soon as Mark comes out, that's going to change.

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Then John comes out, will it change again? I don't know. They didn't know. It would have to be something that would be constantly updated.

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It would be nice to have something right now that would say, okay, here's how you use the general epistle stuff.

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It's going to give you this type of output. Then you go over to Acts, and it's got a whole lot more you can do.

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It's going to look a lot prettier. Who knows what Mark and John's going to be?

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You can see, by the time it all got done, if they don't go back and upgrade the general epistles and stuff like that, it's going to be pretty ugly.

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I certainly encourage them to do so. They certainly recognize the desirability of that.

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They're just very honest, and I get it. It takes funding to do this work, and the funding is there to publish the

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ECM, not to make our online experience overly pretty.

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For a while, it may be a little bit on the ugly side. Other than the sources that you have, the

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PDFs that are available, that's really all there is. If someone wanted to put something together where you're using

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ScreenFlow or some of those types of software things where you go through and you do some and you show how to count the empty spaces in the word and the empty space in the word to figure out where you are and figure out what the variant is and stuff like that, yeah, that would be useful.

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That would be very useful, but it's going to become dated probably within, my guess is within a year,

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Mark's going to be out. Right. That's my guess. I want to see that come out, and that would be great.

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Will the interface look just like Axe? I don't know. I don't think anybody knows right now.

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We are in a transitionary period, so there you go. Right, okay.

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Gotcha. Now, those PDFs, they're available through Munster's website, the

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Institute's website? Oh, yeah, yeah. If you go to the ECM tools, there will be little links to the instructional

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PDFs right there. Like I said, they're not overly helpful, but I mean they're just – they assume a fair amount of information already being possessed by you, unfortunately, but that's how it works.

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Okay? Okay. Okay. All right. Okay, thanks a lot. Thank you, sir. All right. God bless.

25:02

Let me see here. I was on the wrong page. Okay. All right.

25:08

Let's go to Chris up in Canada. Hello, Dr.

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White. Can you hear me? Yes, sir. It's Canada. Thank you very much. Well, you know.

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Eh. I know. I have a question. I was reading The Death of Death and the

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Death of Christ by John Owen, and towards the end of the book, he cites

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John 3, 3, where Jesus says, you know, unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God, and he uses that as an argument against the idea that unborn children automatically go to heaven if they die, like in a miscarriage or an abortion or death in the womb or something like that.

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And I'm just wondering how would you respond to that kind of argument, because I know

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Todd Friel and John MacArthur believe that unborn children who die in the womb do, in fact, go straight to heaven.

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Yeah, you know, it's a very common question. It's probably one of the most popular questions that you get in conferences, even when it doesn't have anything to do with what you're talking about at the conference.

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So I remember in Virginia once, I was on the same stage with Phil when that question was asked, and we differentiated our positions, because I don't hold to MacArthur's view on that.

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And then I was just in Victoria, Texas with Justin Peters, and same thing.

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I think Justin actually has a book on this, or a booklet or a book. I don't know, one of the two. But he also takes the

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MacArthur position. And so we had to differentiate our perspectives on this.

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And that is, you have the standard Baptist evangelical perspective, which is basically based upon the concept of an age of accountability.

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And this basically says, similar to what Zwingli said,

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Ulrich Zwingli in Zurich said that all infants who die in infancy and all idiots, that is obviously the terminology of that day, anyone mentally challenged, anything along those lines, that all infants die in infancy and all those mentally challenged, when they die, go to heaven.

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He says, I can't prove it. You can't disprove it. That's just my view.

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And that's as far as he could take it. There are a couple of passages that I think the tendency is to build way too much upon them, especially

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David and talking about the infant who died, a few things like that, that were very unusual instances of divine judgment for human sin in a very, very particular context.

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And extrapolating that out to all infants in all situations, I think, is a bit too much.

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But if you're familiar with the London Baptist Confession, it utilizes the terminology of elect infants.

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And so what I start with is I start with the presumption that God is just as free in this area as he is in the salvation of adult human beings or older human beings.

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That is that it's a matter of God's grace. I am concerned that many of my

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Baptist brethren have a real weak and often disjointed and disconnected view of the headship of Adam, original sin, and most don't have any concept of a covenant at all.

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And so if you take very seriously the headship of Adam, and that's central to the argument of Romans 5, which a lot of people,

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I just will simply state, don't believe Romans 5. They don't believe what it says. They don't believe there's two humanities, one in Adam, one in Christ.

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If you're in Adam, all you can get from Adam is death. If you're in Christ, all you can get from Christ is life. And everybody is in one or the other, but everybody who is in Christ was once in Adam.

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I mean, this is Paul's argument, and I've never seen anyone come up with a consistent interpretation of Romans 5 that will allow it to sit where it is between the discussion of justification and then what comes afterwards on in the chapter 6 that's consistent with the argument of Romans that does not present that concept.

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But when push comes to shove, most Baptists I know, if you really push them, will end up denying original sin.

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And the question then becomes, if you say that an infant who dies in infancy, an infant who dies in the womb, is just automatically ticket -punched into heaven, that requires you to not believe that that child is actually related to Adam, that that is a child of Adam.

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So you'd have to come up with some idea where basically, up until a certain point, age of accountability, original sin doesn't exist, but there's a problem.

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Then why do they die? Because the wages of sin is death. So the very fact that death takes place in the womb, even if it's the horrific murder of abortion, fallen world, all this stuff is a part of an overarching understanding from a biblical perspective about fallenness in Adam.

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And a lot of people don't like the idea of Adam's sin being imputed and the guilt, and again, they just don't really believe

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Romans 5. I mean, there are Southern Baptists who have come out, the traditionalists have pretty much just come out and said, we're not going to believe

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Romans 5, we're going to come up with something else, and we've covered this before, and there's some program someplace where I spent a fair amount of time going through Romans 5.

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A lot of folks found that helpful. But anyway, so my understanding is that you cannot make it an automatic thing and just simply go, oh, well, you know, ticket punched, gone to heaven.

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God has just as much freedom to extend his mercy and grace in that context as he does in any other.

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So on the one side, you have people who say, oh, sorry, no faith, automatic hell for you.

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And then the people on the other side, don't need it, automatic heaven for you. And I'm in the middle going, I think

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God's probably consistent here, and he's going to have elect infants, and then there are others who will not be.

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And I don't know what basis to put that on other than the same basis of all the rest of us, as a demonstration of his glorious grace.

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And so someone will take that and say, and that means, and that's really the reason that all will be saved, that all those will be saved.

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And of course, that's the same reason why Universalists then go to the point of saying, and that's why everybody will be saved.

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And it's just been my experience that a lot of folks who deal with this haven't ever encountered, for example, argumentation from Universalists who are actually arguing that everyone will be saved.

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And so they don't realize, you know, you've got to be balanced here. You've got to be careful here.

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There's always someone lurking around the next corner who may take what your conclusions are to a conclusion you don't want them to go to.

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So I think it's wise to use phraseology, elect infants, and I think it's wise to then say, look, in situations like this, there's that beautiful text, the

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God of all the earth will do right. Will he not do right? He will. And in the end, how he deals with this issue will be shown to be wise and just, even if in this life we don't see how that all fits together.

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At the same time, you've just got to be careful making dogmatic assertions about an area where Scripture only gives us a certain amount of light, and if you run ahead of that light, you can fall off a cliff.

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Well, that was an awesome and very well thought out response. Thank you very, very much. Ain't the first time I've had to do this when

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I was a hospital chaplain 20 years ago. 20, oh, good grief, 26 years ago. And so this is not, it's a tough topic, but that's when

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I came to the conclusion that I had been way too surface level in my thinking through this stuff.

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It was so much, and look, there's a massive pressure. As a hospital chaplain, somebody would be dying, and you could just tell the family was putting massive pressure upon that chaplain to, in essence, exercise some kind of religious authority to just automatically usher this person directly into the presence of God.

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There's a massive pressure there, and pastors feel that pressure too. And so it's, let's not be naive and not realize that that has had an impact on how we develop things too.

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I would say I probably lean more closely to where you stand on the issue.

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I definitely think God, or I believe that God has the freedom to choose to save whomever he wants.

35:24

I've been Reformed for about two years. I became Reformed when I watched your debates with George Bryson.

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Well, maybe that's what George Bryson's wife was thinking about after the debates. Yep. Actually, I was going to...

35:41

I've just been a Christian for under three years, and I was going to a Calvary chapel here in Calgary, because a lot of my friends were going there, and he had

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Dark Side of Calvinism in his bookshelf. Yeah, yeah. So I asked if I could read it, and I did.

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It sucked. Your material is awesome. It's biblical, it's consistent, and I told him, look,

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I'm more of a Calvinist now than when I started reading this. It took me about three months to read through it, and he told me

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I couldn't be a Calvinist and serve in his church, because I can't tell the little children Jesus loves little children.

36:11

Oh, well. Yeah. There's a doctrinal standard for you. Yeah, and an unbiblical one, too.

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So I'm going to a Reformed -leaning church. My pastor is a Master Seminary grad, and I'm really thankful for him.

36:25

Well, good. Excellent. All right, thanks. Thanks, Chris, for the call. You're very welcome. All right, guys.

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See you later, hopefully. All right, God bless. All right, God bless you. Bye -bye. All right.

36:38

877 -753 -3341. Let's talk to Thomas. Hi, Thomas.

36:45

Hey, Dr. White, how are you doing today? Doing good. That's good. So I was having a conversation with somebody, and Alistair McGrath's work on justification came up, and this acquaintance of mine was making the argument that he argued that McGrath points out, which

37:01

I haven't had a chance to read yet, but it's on my Bible. Let me guess. Because Augustine didn't understand the dikaiō word group in Greek and had a less than sterling view of justification, that therefore

37:16

Augustine didn't have the gospel? Yes. Yeah, I know.

37:23

Look, let me expand that out for everybody else. Alistair McGrath in his book does discuss, and I've not read any interactions with McGrath on this.

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I think there are some out there. There's just too much literature to get to these days.

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But let's go ahead and take the reality that Augustine was much more familiar with the scriptures in Latin.

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His Greek was very minimal and not overly accurate. He had no Hebrew at all.

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And as a result, his understanding of the nature of dikaiō, dikayasune, the righteousness word group, especially as it appears in Paul, would not be quote -unquote reformed.

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Even though he did believe in divine election, in the sovereignty of grace, all the rest of these things, as far as the nature of imputed righteousness, he did believe that there could be non -elect

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Christians, that there could be people who profess faith in Christ and are in some sense saved, but since they're not elect, they're not given the gift of perseverance, so they won't persevere.

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And so they will fall away, because you have to have the gift of perseverance to persevere. So he did believe that there is an elect people of God who are given the gift of perseverance and cannot be lost.

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So that's where he would differ from the sacramental system of Rome today, which always has to have that possibility of being lost.

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But anyway, and so, in light of that, there would be people who would say, well, then in light of what we understand today, then

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Augustine didn't have the gospel. Because if you're going to say, what if you have someone comes along in the church today and takes a view of justification that does not walk the line and recognize the imputed righteousness of Christ and the nature of the union of the elect with Christ, you're not going to view that person as Orthodox, you're not going to recommend their teachings.

39:50

I mean, look at people like Brian Zond and people like that, the Emergent Church and Greg Boyd and the people who have gone off, the people who are attacking penal substitutionary atonement and things like this, and they'll just throw

40:05

Augustine into that big pile. And that preaches well. It also demonstrates that you've spent three seconds reading church history or three seconds thinking about what you read in church history.

40:21

And the reality that if you start judging fourth century believers, fifth century believers, by the standard of what came out in the middle of the 16th century, there's not going to be many

40:45

Christians left at any point in time. And that's why, once again, this takes us back here through the historical method, takes us back to having to define what is definitional, what is known by an individual, what is adiaphora, and the reality that the standard that we use today, when we turn around and try to apply it backwards, we are automatically going to end up dismissing the vast majority of those who came in the faith before us because we are going to try to drag them into a context that was not theirs on the basis of primarily ignorance of our own part.

41:37

For example, if no one presented to Augustine, and no one did, because he would have talked about it, if no one presented to Augustine the actual sound understanding of the dikaya o dikayasune word group in Greek, how do you know how he would have responded to it had it been presented to him?

41:59

You have no way of knowing. And so it is a form of, again, doctrinal perfectionism, which is alive and well today, that allows us to pretend that we can look back in history and judge the thoughts and intentions of others when we don't know what they knew and we don't know what they would have done had a fuller truth been given to them.

42:27

And so, the issues that eventually developed that led to the

42:34

Reformation were not the issues that Augustine was dealing with in his day. He was dealing with Pelagianism and he got that right.

42:45

But there were inconsistencies in him and if there's inconsistencies in one of the greatest theologians of the

42:54

West ever and in all the theologians of the East as well, then we should be very slow to claim doctrinal perfectionism for ourself, which is one of the problems

43:05

I really have with a lot of fundamentalism, is that it assumes on the part of highly uneducated people a level of doctrinal perfectionism, which they do not possess and they don't care whether that's true or not, they assume it.

43:18

That's one of the ugly things about fundamentalism on that level. So, the real problem here is that this requires a level of fairness that I just don't see a lot of people today being willing to extend to people of the past.

43:37

Modern Christians spend very little time entering into the world of the church in the past and as a result, when they do, they often do so with a baseball bat rather than with wondering admiration at people who very often are willing to be martyrs when we complain about how far we have to walk to the church building in our mega church parking lot and at the same time then turn around and say, those people weren't

44:08

Christians but we are. I think we have to be very, very, very careful at that point and leave the final judgment to God and in this situation, if you've not read more than three paragraphs of Augustine, I would really be slow to judge him based upon what you read in the secondary source.

44:32

So, I can't judge people's hearts now. It's a whole lot worse to try to judge people's hearts from 1 ,500, 1 ,600 years distance and yet that's exactly what we pretend we have the capacity and ability to do.

44:48

And so, yeah, it's very common. I mean, you can see the real surface level type in people like Dave Hunt and that ilk that just dismiss

44:59

Augustine and throw him out. I think that is going to lead us to a position where we're almost the only ones left standing and really ends up making you question whether Christ did build his church or not.

45:15

And so, I do recommend the reading of Church History and I recommend the reading of Church History with a firm conviction of Sola Scriptura and Tota Scriptura.

45:25

That is the standard. We can judge Augustine's teaching on this subject without at the same time judging his heart because we lack the ability to do so from a distance and the information upon which to do so that we might have to exercise today.

45:42

In other words, in one of our fellowships today, we have a doctrinal standard. We can lay out what justification means and so if someone is in my church and they start teaching what

45:56

Augustine taught against what is being taught in the doctrinal standards of the church, well, that's a different issue because we now have a standard and they knew that standard when they joined and here we can lay it all out but we can't do that with people in the past.

46:14

It definitely preaches better than what I just told you. I mean, if you want to get people all upset or if you want to get out your theological sword and run somebody from the past through, that's a whole lot easier to do than to try to maintain the balance that I was just talking about and looking at history.

46:32

But, the interesting thing is, I'm old enough now to realize that if the

46:38

Lord keeps time running the way it's running right now, 50 years from now, someone's going to be looking back at my ministry and I want to be judged on the basis of what

46:49

I knew where I was, not something 50 or 500 or 1 ,500 years from now.

46:55

People don't think of it that way. We're always just looking at ourselves. So, that's my thoughts on that.

47:04

Thomas? All right. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm taking in everything you said, but yeah, I appreciate it.

47:09

Thank you very much. All right. Thank you very much. Thanks for your call today. All right. God bless. Thank you. All right.

47:16

Let's go with these three. And let's talk with Matt in California.

47:26

Hey, Dr. White. Can you hear me okay? I can. Oh, great. Well, thanks for taking my call.

47:32

I'm an elder in a PCA church. I studied the Westminster Confession prior to being ordained, sort of as a training tool in becoming an elder.

47:45

And, well, I have to say that I've really gained a lot from your ministry. I think I've seen every debate that's on YouTube that you've had, even the old ones, back when you looked.

47:56

I was about to say, back when I was much more of a Jesse Ventura -style person.

48:02

But remember, I have debates online that are older than those when I looked more like now, except I had hair and big glasses.

48:10

So, yeah. Yeah, big glasses is what I remember. Is that him? Yeah, yeah. So, anyhow,

48:16

Matt, I've gained a lot from your ministry. I really appreciate it. I am convinced that infant baptism is appropriate for the child of at least one believer.

48:28

And since I've seen all your debates that are online, I have seen the debate between you and Doug Wilson. I've seen it a bunch of times just because I just feel like there was a lot there.

48:37

Yeah, except that— I've always— Wait, well, let me ask. Have you seen the ones with Bill Shishko and Greg Strawbridge?

48:44

Yes. Okay, because they're more to the topic. Yeah, I thought

48:49

Shishko did a pretty good job. Strawbridge, he was kind of—I didn't really like the way he was handling things.

48:57

I felt like he kicked a little in certain areas that he shouldn't have. Well, and that's because I had actually done a radio debate with Dr.

49:07

Strawbridge right after I did the Shishko debate because there were people who had felt that Bill Shishko was inconsistent because Bill Shishko is not a paedo -communist.

49:17

And Greg Strawbridge is. And so they felt that was sort of a fatal flaw in Shishko's position.

49:24

And so that's why they wanted that debate. And then that eventually led to the videotaped debate from just a couple years ago.

49:31

So that's—and he has more of a federal visionist background too. Well, that's sort of where my questions are.

49:39

So a couple of my—I've got two questions. First is—and I've heard you say this before,

49:46

I think, that you consider Presbyterian, Reformed Presbyterian folks to be your brothers.

49:52

And so I know you don't have daggers. Matt, are you sitting down? Yes, I am.

49:58

I even think that Doug Wilson is my brother. Well, I really like Doug Wilson too.

50:04

I know—and I'm going to ask you a question about the federal vision thing. I gain a lot from him. I think he's really sharp. His wordsmithy stuff just—man, it really blows my hair back.

50:13

Oh, so you have hair. Was that meant to say something? I do. I've got a lot of hair. Sure, fine.

50:19

I know what you're saying. I get it. I hear you. It's okay. Remember what happened to the men who mocked the bald prophet.

50:26

Just want you to know. Oh, right, right. Well, I'm not mocking. I'm just—I'm thankful to God for every strand that's here.

50:33

It goes quickly. It goes quickly. By the way. Yeah. All right. So my questions, then.

50:39

First is, you know, I guess it's—you know, can you understand how a

50:44

Christian would fall on the side of infant baptism, how a Presbyterian might be convinced of the infant baptism?

50:53

No, Matt, I have absolutely no earthy idea. Despite the fact that I regularly preach in Presbyterian churches and work with OPC guys and stuff like that, no,

51:05

I've never been able to figure out—no, of course I can. I could probably make a pretty strong argument.

51:11

I just would have to fudge a few things, that's all. But no, I fully, fully get it.

51:19

Okay. So then, well, we can forget that question since that's an obvious yes.

51:26

I'd like to hear your take on the difference between what the Westminster Confession has to say about what baptism does for an infant versus what perhaps the so -called

51:38

Federal Vision theology might say about what baptism does. I mean, it's my understanding that there's something where—and maybe not

51:46

Doug Wilson, because every time I hear Doug Wilson speak about it, he doesn't seem to go as far as where some of the other guys went.

51:53

Yeah, exactly. And he no longer calls himself that. Right, right. So you know that he has distanced himself from that terminology.

52:04

And I'm not 100 % certain why. Even during the days of Federal Visionism, there was a clear spectrum as to how far these guys took it, and Doug was always on the less far side than certain other people that we could mention but won't, who took it way, way, way, way, way out there.

52:30

And so I could not even identify a specific

52:36

Federal Vision position today, because the movement has atomized so much.

52:42

I mean, for Doug Wilson to say, I'm not even a part of it anymore, what is it? I don't know, other than it seemed—look, obviously, as a

52:52

Reformed Baptist, I see a fundamental contradiction within the body of the

53:00

Westminster Confession of Faith in regards to the identification of what baptism does and what the nature of faith is and the nature of election.

53:17

It would seem to me that there needs to be a consistency between how you identify who is in the

53:28

New Covenant, who is regenerated in—let's not even try to get into the weeds and go backwards before Christ.

53:37

Let's just talk about today. If baptism is a promise, then it seems to me that the only consistent position would be to hold—was it

53:56

Pierre Marcel? Was that the name? view that there is, in essence, a—that baptism sort of brings elect people to a position of moral neutrality or undoes the effect of sin or something.

54:20

There's got to be something different as to how baptism impacts elect infants than non -elect infants.

54:29

There's got to be some difference there, or you're going to end up with some kind of either sacerdotal salvation or universalism or some messy thing like that.

54:39

Because in one document, you have God's absolute sovereignty, his ability to bring about regeneration as he wills, etc.,

54:45

etc. Then when you make baptism a promise and yet have to admit there have been lots of apostate

54:53

Presbyterians who received baptism as children, they were covenant children, but they were never saved.

55:00

So what's the promise of? And that gets into the nature of the covenants and obviously

55:06

Reformed Baptists go, Eh, look at Hebrews 8, the fulfillment here, and then you get different responses from the other side.

55:15

Well, that's hyper -fulfillment, and that's actually going to be fulfilled only later on, or it's a gradual fulfillment.

55:21

And people take different views, and of course I get told all the time that whatever view they take is the view, and then

55:28

I run into somebody else six weeks later that tells me no, their view is the view, and I just get patted on the head like someday

55:34

I'll figure it all out. Dr. White, can I challenge you to a public moderated debate?

55:41

No, I'm just kidding. There is one text, and this is why

55:47

I brought up the debate between you and Doug Wilson. There was one text in 1 Corinthians that I felt like he asked you in the cross -examination, and I just want to hear you say more about it.

55:59

You probably know which one it is. 1 Corinthians 10, verse 4. Do you remember that one?

56:07

No, of course not. That debate was in 2004. That was 15 years ago, so I do not remember, nor have

56:17

I listened to it since then. Would you mind just interacting with that text for me, and then that will be my last question.

56:27

I've taken up a lot of your time. Well, so is the idea that if you came out of Egypt, that means you were somehow in the

56:41

New Covenant, and so New Covenant people can be laid low in the wilderness? I don't know what you're saying.

56:49

I think it had to do with the idea that they all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink.

56:55

They drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ. So I think the idea was, can someone drink from the spiritual rock and have spiritual food and spiritual drink from Christ and not be a saved person?

57:16

Yeah, and this is the essence of the debate. This is the same issue as the warning passages in Hebrews.

57:22

This is Hebrews 10, this is Hebrews 6. And the answer in Hebrews 6 is we're convinced of better things concerning you, things which accompany salvation.

57:33

In Hebrews 10, it is allowing all the chapters to speak, and either one is perfected in Christ or one is not.

57:39

And here, the same thing. Those who came out of Egypt saw the miracles of God.

57:48

They ate the man in the wilderness. They drank from the springs that were opened up.

57:55

None of that meant that they had changed hearts. And that's the whole point of Hebrews 8.

58:01

What makes the New Covenant a better covenant is that no one says to another in that covenant, know the

58:08

Lord, because they all know the Lord, for the least to grace them, because all their sins have been forgiven. The sins of those people who came out of Egypt had not been forgiven.

58:16

They were not a part of the people who had experienced that gracious work from God.

58:23

A very small number of them actually were. So, yeah, just simply the fact of being in a group and drinking of the same spiritual drink and drinking from the – what was the spiritual rock that they're drinking from?

58:38

Is this actually to say that those who were unbelievers saw in the rock the

58:43

Messiah? No, they didn't. And in fact, Paul's making a rather amazing expansion upon what that rock meant that is not specifically a part of the

58:54

Old Testament narrative. He's making an application in light of what has happened in regards to the Incarnation.

59:00

But the point is, they all ate the same spiritual food. Well, what was that? Why was it spiritual? Did eating – let's put it this way – did eating the manna make you spiritual?

59:10

I mean, it was spiritually provided. So was the water. These were miracles. But did that change the heart and mind of anyone?

59:19

No, that's right. That's the whole point. That doesn't change the heart or mind, neither does baptism.

59:28

It's the Spirit of God that does it. I'm with you on that. I guess what I'm thinking is that someone could be a part of the

59:37

New Covenant church, right, the New Covenant community. They could be eating the spiritual food and drinking the spiritual drink.

59:45

They could have been baptized, but they could be a non -elect person. And I think what

59:51

Doug Wilson was saying was that their baptism would then be what you were saying earlier, which is imagine the kind of light that they're sitting against, right?

59:58

They have had all of this connection with Christ – spiritual food, spiritual drink – but their heart was never in it.

01:00:06

And in the end, it would be worse for them than then. That's the understanding.

01:00:14

But the reason why every single example in the

01:00:20

New Testament of baptism is addressed to people who can understand – and I've argued these.

01:00:26

If you've watched the debates, you know my response to each. I've gone through all the family passages, everything demonstrated.

01:00:33

There were no infants here. And there are people who admit that. There are people on the other side who admit, yeah, there's no example of this. We're going another direction to get there.

01:00:40

But the point is that there was instruction given before that baptism.

01:00:48

Now, I can't see into a heart, but the point is that the elders are to seek to guard – for example, we guard the table at our church.

01:00:57

Why? Do they guard the table at your church? Yes, sir. Okay, why? Because we recognize that – now, if you're not paedo -communionist, this is where it breaks down, and this is where either the paedo -communionists are consistent or we're consistent, but if you're in the middle,

01:01:14

I don't think you are consistent. We're being consistent in how we look at both of the ordinances.

01:01:21

And I don't think that the non -paedo -communionist, paedo -baptist is. Because you are saying there needs to be discipline, order, guarding the table.

01:01:35

You are supposed to be able to ask someone before they partake of the supper, do you confess the name of Jesus Christ?

01:01:41

Have you repented of your sins? You're supposed to be able to do that. Well, we're just consistent all the way across the ordinances.

01:01:48

And the paedo -communionist says, so are we. We don't ask those questions. And it all goes back to some of those foundational things.

01:01:58

So, yeah. Dr. White, can I just say one thing as I part here? Earlier, the other question had to do with what was it?

01:02:06

Doctrinal perfectionism. And we've got Reformed Baptists in our church, and if someone asked me, does the

01:02:14

New Testament teach the doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine of the Incarnation with solid, firm – and I'd say absolutely.

01:02:24

And if they said, well, what about your firmness and your – just what's the percentage of your confidence in paedo -Baptists versus credo?

01:02:35

And I kind of don't – I don't have the same level of confidence in my view of that than I do, say, the doctrine of the

01:02:43

Trinity. Well, I would hope not, because the Trinity is absolutely central and definitional, whereas if I'm accepting people with a different view on this subject as my brothers and sisters, it can't be definitional in that sense.

01:02:57

We all agree that baptism is definitional. We all agree that we're trying to obey what Christ said to do. But no, if you put it inside the non -negotiable thing, then we couldn't have any fellowship at all.

01:03:11

We'd have to be evangelizing each other, which I have no intention of seeking to do. Every debate

01:03:17

I've done on that subject, I've been challenged to do it. We're not chasing Presbyterians around trying to get them to do those debates.

01:03:25

All right. Well, thanks a lot for taking my call. I appreciate it. Okay. Thanks, Matt. God bless. All right. Bye -bye.

01:03:32

Well, I thought we were going to get done. I thought we were – that was a long call.

01:03:40

Nothing against the subject, nothing against the subject. But I've got some stuff

01:03:45

I've got to get to. So I'm sorry, Daniel. Sorry, Gregory. Appreciate your waiting, but I didn't expect to spend whatever time that was, 25 minutes, whatever it was there at the end.

01:03:59

And so I thought we could sneak you guys in, but we actually went over a little bit. So there you go. So real quickly, before you start the music, this is the last program we're going to have stateside.

01:04:13

For almost three weeks. And I'm going to try, because my schedule, my daily schedule is not such that we'll preclude this.

01:04:23

I'm going to try to get some programs in. They'll probably be in the morning because I will be eight hours ahead, eight, nine hours ahead, seven hours, whatever it is right now.

01:04:32

I don't know. We'll figure it out when I get there. At least seven hours ahead. So if I do something in the late afternoon, it would be in the morning here.

01:04:40

And we might be able to do some programs while I'm in the UK. I doubt that my schedule will allow that while I'm in the

01:04:49

Netherlands, but then I go back to the UK. So we might be able to sneak some programs in, is what I'm saying, over the next couple of weeks.

01:04:57

So we will attempt to, we will attempt to make that happen. But your prayers are appreciated.

01:05:04

One of the debates that we're doing is on Unbelievable is on Romans 9. Another debate is on does the

01:05:12

Koran misrepresent the doctrine of the Trinity? Hopefully at the East London Mosque. I don't have all the data on that yet.

01:05:20

We'll get it up as soon as we have that opportunity to do so. And I'm at Grace Life Church in London this coming

01:05:28

Sunday, speaking from Luke 24, and hey, the resurrection. I saw a cartoon today.

01:05:33

This guy is walking out of a church. It was Easter Sunday, and he said to the pastor, he said,

01:05:39

Reverend, you seem to be in a rut. Every time I come, you're preaching on the resurrection. That's because he only came on Easter Sunday.

01:05:47

But it does seem appropriate to do so. But we will be looking at the post -resurrection appearance of Jesus there from Luke 24

01:05:55

Grace Life Church on Sunday morning, 11 o 'clock, I believe. They're in London, so looking forward to seeing our friends there at that time.