James Lindsay on John 1:1, then Calls

Alpha & Omega Ministries

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

Comments are disabled.

00:35

Well, greetings and welcome to everybody who's listening in and using Zoom.

00:41

We're going to do a Zoom call program today. Rich insisted that even though we have a perfectly good 877 number, it's taped.

00:52

It's been taped there for 15 years, right there, but everything must change.

01:02

And so Rich has a Zoom link out on Twitter, I don't know where else it is.

01:08

I don't know if it's on Facebook, I don't know how else you get it. What? YouTube, Facebook.

01:17

It's in our app. Yep, there you go. So if you want to get in, that's how you do it.

01:26

However, all credit goes to Rich.

01:32

Credit can sometimes be spelled B -L -A -M -E. Depends, you know.

01:40

So while people are lining up there, there is something

01:46

I do need to discuss before we go to the phones today. And by the way, if you're ever wondering, one of the reasons

01:54

I look over to the right like this is I have a monitor over there. And we have external cameras.

02:04

And both Rich and my trucks are out there. And we live in Phoenix, and Phoenix has become

02:12

Eastern LA. We, like almost all major cities, have far fewer police officers per capita than we've ever had in the past.

02:22

We're losing many. And I don't blame anybody for retiring, I don't blame anybody for not wanting to do the job, given what we did to them over the past few years.

02:32

And of course, at the same time, I think that was purposeful to get rid of the good cops so that you end up with the ones that will do whatever they're told to do.

02:41

And whether it's constitutional or not, something else. But anyway, the point being, I don't want to go out and find my truck up on blocks without any rims left.

02:51

And so once in a while, I just do a gander over there. Actually, that's probably not the big danger anymore. The big danger anymore is not having a catalytic converter when

03:00

I go out there, because they can get them real fast. I'm not even sure we'd be able to stop them even from within here that fast.

03:07

But that's what it is, in case you're wondering. I'm not distracted by a football game or something. I'm not even following that stuff.

03:13

But anyhow, all right. Need to address this before we go to the

03:20

Zoom calls today. And since no one is having to long distance

03:26

Zoom in, I started seeing stuff on social media yesterday.

03:32

And I don't know if it's just purposeful on social media that you make it so everything's disjointed and you have to put pieces together.

03:41

And I don't know. But actually, what I first saw was a guy saying that today is a good day for him to announce that he's becoming an

03:54

Anglican, because today Southern Baptists were celebrating an atheist denying central

04:03

Christian theology or something. And I'm like, what? And so initially,

04:09

I just followed the name and found out I was blocked by this guy anyways. But I had a vague...

04:14

When I saw his picture, I had this vague recollection of some wishy -washy wote guy from last year or the year before.

04:23

Anyway, so I'm sitting here going, what? And so I started seeing some other comments, and I realized that it was

04:31

James Lindsay who was being addressed. And I literally had to dig.

04:37

I mean, I had to really... It didn't pop across my feed, even though I follow

04:42

James. I should say I've met James once.

04:48

We had a very pleasant dinner at a restaurant I'll probably never see again in Atlanta at the

04:56

G3 conference, I believe, in 2020? Yes, I think it was in 2020.

05:04

And we had a good conversation, and that was about all.

05:11

I remember afterwards saying some long lines of, maybe someday we'll get to arrange a debate or something on atheism or something.

05:22

But it was cordial, and so there you go. And of course, he's done all this stuff in regards to CRT and all the rest of that stuff.

05:34

And a lot of us have benefited from that. And other people said, you can't benefit from that. That's the same genetic fallacy garbage that I got when

05:42

I said I learned a lot about Islam from Yasir Qadhi. Oh, Christians aren't supposed to be able to learn anything but from fellow

05:49

Christians, right? Brilliant. Anyway, so I had to dig, and I eventually found it.

05:56

And this was the tweet that caused all this furor yesterday in Twitter.

06:06

And here it is. And the word was with God, and the word was God. In other words, the word meaning itself.

06:14

So what he's clearly saying is the word is meaning, that there is meaning in language, linguistic meaning, is enduring and uncorruptible.

06:26

Beware those who would manipulate the meanings of words. They are never the good guys. So if I have looked correctly, this was in response to someone who was redefining various terms and terminology, even within a religious context.

06:50

And so when I read it, I'm like, okay, there's one of two ways you can do this.

06:58

You can either sit here as a Christian theologian and ignore what the non -Christian guy is trying to say, or you can hear what he's saying, offer further insight as to what the text was actually saying, and then be thankful that he's actually saying something that a because they've been compromised.

07:30

And then after you've done all that, go, and by the way, James, think about what you just said.

07:36

And make an application, an invitation. Okay? So that's what I want to try to do.

07:42

Very briefly. It's only a tweet. Well, it's only a tweet. Yeah, the Puritans could have done 10 weeks on only a tweet.

07:50

So it's true. Anyone who's read the Puritans know that. One tweet, you could go for years on it.

07:58

Anyway, a couple things. I hear what he's saying. I'll get to that in a moment. Let me make sure that everyone has the

08:07

Biblical background, because it's a Biblical text. It's being quoted. And the word was with God and the word was

08:12

God. So let's back that up. In the beginning was the word. So NRK, enhalagas, kailagas, enprasthan, thean, kaitheas, enhalagas is what

08:21

John wrote. And those three clauses cannot be understood without the balance that they provide.

08:33

And I think it's also important to recognize this is the beginning of the prologue, which ends in verse 18.

08:39

And as such, you have what's called bookending. Verse 18 repeats the same phraseology as verse 1 did.

08:49

And so John, the author, is reiterating his point, having explicated it, gone to verse 14.

08:59

You've got the lagas becoming flesh, incarnation, so on and so forth. But then verse 18, where he describes this.

09:08

No one has seen God at any time. The monogenes theos, the unique God who is at the

09:15

Father's side. He has explained or exegeted him. He has made him known.

09:22

And so it is this lagas who is eternal, John 1 1a.

09:27

In the beginning was the word. The term was there is in the imperfect tense. There is no beginning point to it.

09:33

So as far back as you want to push the beginning, the word already exists. So the word is eternal.

09:39

The word was prasthan, thean, was with God. So there is fellowship between, as we will see, it will be defined later,

09:47

Father and the Son. And then the word was God. And of course, we've done entire programs in response to the

09:55

Jehovah's Witnesses and everything else, Unitarians, everything else in regards to what is being said there.

10:00

And that this is saying the word was as to his nature deity. So we've expanded upon this in the

10:07

Forgotten Trinity. We've looked at it fairly carefully. So when

10:14

James says meaning itself, the emphasis there is on meaning,

10:21

I can see how someone might misunderstand that. But the emphasis is upon the fact that there is a meaning to the lagas, which is enduring and uncorruptible.

10:36

So what he's trying to say is that language games are inherently dishonest and destructive.

10:47

If we cannot have enduring meaning to words, one generation can communicate nothing to the next generation.

10:57

And we're living in the midst of a massive attack upon language. Beat language up, tear it to shreds, put it under the control of the totalitarian big state, and you can no longer talk about history, you can no longer offer criticism, you can no longer have any meaningful discourse on any subject whatsoever.

11:22

And in all of that, he's exactly right, of course. My pushback and my correction is that is true, but that's not what

11:35

John 1 is about. It becomes true because of what

11:43

John 1 through 18 says as an entire revelation.

11:51

So the lagas, a lot of interpreters will emphasize that the lagas, that John is primarily drawing for his definition of the lagas from Greek philosophy, because the lagas is the ordering rational principle of the universe in Greek philosophy prior to the writing of the

12:14

Gospel of John. And so a lot of people think that is what John is primarily pulling from, that John loves to pull from multiple sources.

12:21

He loves to allow almost a double entendre for many things that he does. He does that even in the prologue when he says, the darkness did not, and the term could be translated, overcome or understand or comprehend.

12:36

And we're not sure which one it is, and that's probably purposeful, because it's meant to be both.

12:42

So John can do things like that. So maybe the philosophical lagas is in the background.

12:48

I, however, believe very strongly that given John's use of the Tanakh, the

12:53

Old Testament, as his source book for terminology, that davar and memrah, the

13:01

Hebrew terms for word, which are so often used in the

13:07

Old Testament and are so central to God's self -revelation in the

13:13

Old Testament, that that's the primary background. If you want to make a connection to lagas, it needs to be subsidiary to, secondary to the davar, memrah utilization from the

13:27

Old Testament. Why? Because the whole point of the prologue is that the lagas is the perfect revelation of the

13:36

Father. No one has seen God in any time. Well, actually, people did. Well, the point of John, and he's going to make this point a couple times during the gospel, is that the one who has been seen was the son, not the father.

13:51

And so this is this amazing revelation of who Jesus is. He's not just an itinerant preacher.

13:57

He is the lagas made flesh. He was the one seen, according to John chapter 12, by the prophet

14:03

Isaiah 700 years earlier, sitting upon the throne when Isaiah was commissioned as a prophet in Isaiah 6.

14:09

Look at John 12, 39 to 41. This is why there's no embarrassment when

14:17

Thomas says, my Lord and my God, in John 20, 28 of Jesus.

14:24

And that's because the monogamous theos, the unique God, the son, has revealed the father perfectly.

14:36

And he can do so because he is at the Father's side. He is in intimate union, intimate communication, intimate knowledge of the

14:44

Father and is himself divine. Therefore, he can be the perfect revelation of the Father. So that's the lagas of John 1 .1.

14:54

So if the lagas is personal, then doesn't that mean that the idea that this is meaning itself is not true?

15:03

Well, no, because the lagas' revelation of the Father is consistent for all mankind in any context at any time.

15:17

The revelation of that truth is enduring and incorruptible. And so the mechanism of that revelation must likewise be enduring and corruptible, which is in human language.

15:31

That is not to say, and I don't think Dr. Lindsay is saying, and I'm certainly not saying, the language cannot change over time.

15:38

But it's a completely different thing to, for example, any

15:43

New Testament scholar has to be familiar with the Greek Septuagint and the development in language that took place between the writing of the

15:55

Greek translation of the Old Testament and the writing of the New Testament. That just has to be, and there are reasons for that.

16:03

I mean, the Greek Empire has expanded all over the place since the days of Alexander, and yet now

16:12

Rome is coming. And so you've got changes, and language has to expand, and it changes in its use of forms.

16:19

For example, the vocative case was dropping out in Greek during this time period.

16:25

The nominative was taking its place. These are things that are observable, but they were not taking place so as to corrupt the ability of language to communicate.

16:35

The vast majority of linguistic change over time is either due to differences in pronunciation because new people groups come in and things like that, or to advancements in technology, you have to come up with a new vocabulary, and then influences of other languages, mixtures of languages.

16:54

Look at how some Germans are angry today at how anglicized German has become just over the past 50 years, and it's true, it has.

17:05

Those are natural forms of change. What Dr. Lindsay is talking about and what all of us who want to continue having meaningful discourse to other people, what we're talking about is a corruption of meaning so to control a narrative and to establish one narrative is the only narrative that can be had, and then shut down all criticism of that.

17:33

It's a completely different thing. It's done rapidly, it's done without reason, it's not done because of pronunciation issues or anything like that.

17:41

So here would be my application.

17:49

If the point of John 1 is that the word is the logos, that is the perfect revelation of the

17:57

Father, has become flesh, and has made perfect revelation so that God's truth may be known and understood, what

18:13

I would say if I could sit down with Dr. Lindsay would be, did you hear what you said?

18:20

Because I agree with you, and I'm sorry that there were so many people who call themselves

18:26

Christians who are so afraid and so fearful that they lash out at anything that sounds different or isn't exactly the way it should have been placed in the first place.

18:39

Sorry about that. If we had been sitting across the table, or next to each other like we were in Atlanta, and we had had this conversation, and you had said, well, look at John 1, the word, meaning itself,

18:56

I would have said, hopefully shorter, between bites maybe, the things

19:03

I just said, and then I would have said, now you recognize the absolute necessity of the ability for truth to exist over time, for any rationality to exist at all.

19:26

If we can change the nature of facts overnight, there is no way that we can function and communicate, and then

19:37

I would say, but why should we function and communicate? In other words, what is it about us humans that makes us want to be able to communicate or think that truth should be truth tomorrow as it is today as it was yesterday?

20:02

And I would just simply say, James, you are borrowing from my worldview of necessity, of creative necessity.

20:15

I believe that your recognition of the proper necessity of meaning being enduring and incorruptible is a function of the

20:29

Imago Dei in you. I do not believe that random inputs of energy in a biological mass contained within ossified minerals is a sufficient explanation for why you feel the necessity to be consistent in your thought and to ask for consistency from others.

21:04

So in other words, I would say the impetus is consistent with my worldview.

21:12

If there is a creator who has made us to think this way and to communicate this way, he has placed us in a universe where that makes sense.

21:20

A random chaotic universe that just happens to be the way it is is insufficient to give grounding for why it is that you and I both recognize the need to be able to communicate the same truths to the next generation and to be able to talk about them ourselves.

21:39

So my application would be keep thinking along those lines and recognize that that logos that became flesh in John 1 14 is the logos that has eternally existed personally.

22:00

And as amazing as the message is, that is the logos that became flesh in the person of Jesus Christ.

22:09

If that tomb's empty, you put it all together and the only light that is going to save this civilization from the deepest darkness man's ever seen is the light that comes forth in that empty tomb because that logos who eternally existed became flesh.

22:29

He was crucified, buried, and he rose again. And he is

22:34

Lord of all and continues to give meaning to life today. So I didn't see anybody saying that, unfortunately, in response to Dr.

22:45

Lindsay. I didn't see all the responses. Maybe people did. I don't know.

22:53

I don't know. But the few things I did see were not overly friendly, shall we say.

23:02

So there you go. There's my response. I went a little bit longer, but hopefully that will be useful to everybody.

23:10

Okay. Goodness sakes. All right.

23:15

Let's, I guess I need to find this thing, don't I? Yeah, because I can't be in Zoom.

23:21

We found out about that last time, didn't we? All right. Let's talk to Joe. Hi, Joe.

23:29

Hey, James. How are you? I'm good, except that's way too loud, Rich. Okay.

23:35

Okay. Yes, sir. Thank you for taking the, I guess, not my call, but my Zoom. I appreciate it.

23:42

It's about baptism. The question is about baptism. Romans chapter four is the text

23:47

I want to cite. And then I have a question after that. It says, starting in verse nine, for we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness.

23:55

How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he was circumcised? It was not after, but it was before he was circumcised.

24:04

He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.

24:12

And so I guess my question is, if Abraham received the sign after he had faith, and he gave his son the sign before he could have faith.

24:22

And then Paul takes in Colossians two and unites spiritual circumcision and baptism together in that verse.

24:29

Why don't we continue the same pattern in baptism? And this is kind of came off of the R .C. Sproul and John MacArthur debate on baptism.

24:37

When they said the burden of proof is on the Baptist side, because when we say an infant child dies, we say, well, they go to heaven.

24:46

But I guess, wouldn't that imply that monergistically that God had to save the child through Christ's righteousness?

24:53

He didn't get there on his own. He was helpless. It kind of shows the helplessness that God has to act born of the spirit is not something we do or that we can make happen.

25:04

God has to make it happen. I guess, can you address all that? Well, the best way

25:11

I could do that is I preached on Colossians two and baptism about three weeks ago.

25:20

Yeah, three weeks ago at Apologia. So unfortunately, the YouTube thing got mistitled as part of my fault.

25:30

But if you go to Apologia Studios YouTube channel, just go to videos and it'll still be probably in the first page.

25:39

Actually, I'll take that back. Chris on our website, on our blog, posted yesterday, if I recall correctly, a article where he put all my baptism sermons so far.

25:53

We're not done. But I think there are eight and it would be the last one. So the link you'll find at almn .org

26:00

on the blog. Go that one. There's Colossians two, because part of what

26:05

I wasn't certain, couldn't completely tell from what you were saying, how you were understanding

26:11

Colossians two and its relationship to baptism. Obviously, R .C.'s

26:16

position would be that in Colossians two, baptism becomes the fulfillment of circumcision.

26:23

And I disputed that and walked through the text to demonstrate that's not even close to what

26:28

Paul was talking about. And that goes back to Calvin, but that's pretty much as far back as you can trace it.

26:34

And before that, that's not how it was understood. And that's not how we should understand today. So that sort of break.

26:42

So I wasn't following the Romans four. The point of Romans four and nine and following is that Abraham was justified by faith before the law.

26:57

And for example, the offering of Isaac was more than 20 years down the road. He quotes from Genesis 15 and his point is, in what state was

27:09

Abraham when he was justified? Uncircumcised or circumcised? Uncircumcised. Therefore, the

27:14

Judaizers that Paul is so concerned about both in Galatians and Romans cannot come to Abraham and say he's our father and therefore circumcision is necessary to be right with God because Abraham was right with God before he was circumcised.

27:30

So as long as you don't use the Colossians two text to forge a connection that doesn't exist, then you see that what's actually being said by Paul in Colossians two is that the

27:41

New Testament, what's being referred to there is regeneration. That's the circumcision done without hands.

27:49

And that's regeneration. That's why everyone in the new covenant knows God. Under the old covenant, you had all sorts of people who were in the old covenant.

27:58

They bore the covenant sign, but their hearts were not circumcised and they did not know God. They had to be taught about God.

28:06

And that's why you have the kings of Israel that were the way they were, and so on and so forth. So once you forge that link in the chain that Calvin did with Colossians two, that's when you make those connections.

28:20

That's not a Pauline connection. That's the point. Pete Quick question. When he said he received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness he had by faith, why didn't they then circumcise

28:33

Isaac when he believed as an adult? Why did they give it to him to his child? I mean, that's,

28:38

I guess, my point. Pete Well, because the old covenant is different than the new covenant. The old covenant contained promises that are not a part of the new covenant and vice versa.

28:47

The new covenant is a greater covenant. And one of the differences is that the new covenant, everyone in it knows

28:54

God. They've all been forgiven of their sins. So the land promises to the people of Israel were given to a people, and therefore, the sign could be given to children.

29:05

But please note something. There was no sign of any covenants prior to that, was there?

29:12

So there was no sign of the Noahic covenant. There was no sign of the Adamic. So giving a sign to children is not a definition of what a covenant is.

29:22

But when you're establishing a people in a land who are to be a peculiar people in that context, then yeah.

29:30

But that's where the new covenant breaks out of those land promises and expands it to all the world.

29:36

And that's how it can go to the Gentiles, and that's why you no longer have that fleshly aspect of it.

29:42

It becomes the spiritual reality of regeneration, which is then why, and this concerns me, and I haven't preached this part of the series yet, but I've preached it in the past, and every debate

29:53

I've done on baptism points this out. You end up with people actually saying that the new covenant has not yet fully been established, that there is still a future aspect to be gotten.

30:06

And I think that's a horrific misreading of Hebrews chapter 8 and the argument of Hebrews as a whole.

30:14

So that's another issue that, again, we're on number eight.

30:19

I figure it'll take at least 14. So it'll take a little while longer to get there.

30:26

JGT Or 50. JGT No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, please. JGT Seems like it never ends, you know, this talk.

30:33

JGT No. JGT So I appreciate your ministry very much. I've learned so much. JGT Okay. Thanks, Joe. JGT Thank you.

30:39

JGT Thank you. God bless. All righty. Let's talk to Turner. Hi, Turner. TURNER Hey, Dr.

30:46

White. Thank you so much for taking my call. JGT I'm not sure why we're calling them calls, but we got to come up with some term eventually.

30:54

But we are slowly transitioning into the cyber world. So there you go. JGT Hey, quick question.

31:03

Why is it that the Greek word, yakobos, why is it that it's consistently translated as James?

31:14

When I was going through my Logos Bible software, it seems to me like it's just a slightly

31:22

Hellenized transliteration of the Hebrew name for Jacob. And so why don't

31:29

English translations just translate yakobos as Jacob?

31:35

TURNER Well, there are some folks that do push that. Michael Brown has been pushing that for a number of years, and whenever he talks about James, he actually says

31:45

Jacob, also known as James, which makes for a real long way of saying things.

31:51

But there are various theories. Most of the theories have to do with Middle English, French, and German.

32:03

And there are theories about how these two vowels were elided into one vowel, and these group of consonants became this consonant.

32:14

And no one really knows, other than by the time the King James version is translated, it had become commonplace in England at that time to refer to, to use the word

32:27

James as the English translation of yakobos. But the exact process that that took, as with many terms in Middle English in that medieval, not medieval period, but that period of development for the

32:45

English language, which is such a mixture of German and French and Latin, that it's really strange.

32:56

But it had become an established usage by that point in time. And so there would certainly be no inherent reason not to use the translation

33:06

Jacob. The problem is no one would know where in the world to look in their Bible, just simply by usage over time.

33:13

And so if everybody agreed to make the change all at once, then we could.

33:19

But sometimes there are just things that developed over time, and that's how it is.

33:26

And that's the best I've read on how it came about. I'm not sure anyone has an exact way of determining that, and knowing exactly what the process was.

33:40

But no one's trying to change anything or hide something. I'm sure there's some conspiracy theory folks out there that will come up with something like that.

33:48

But no, there are a lot of things in English that are just weird. Probably, yeah.

33:55

Hey, I just had a quick little follow -up. I called last time and I was going to ask a question about the

34:02

Trail of Blood. Do you have any resources that deal with that? I've not seen a specific written refutation that has been published.

34:23

I've noticed in various historical articles when, for example, almost any article you're going to read about the

34:35

Paulicians, someone will make a note or have a little paragraph about the

34:41

Trail of Blood trying to turn the Paulicians into early Baptists or things like that.

34:46

And so you'll get bits and pieces. I did actually find, interestingly enough, one of the longest article refutations that I've encountered was by an

34:58

Eastern Orthodox guy. Basically, it's just you go through the various alleged groups that are strung together.

35:12

And what you have to do is you have to, but the theory behind the thing is that everything that's been said about these groups was changed by Roman Catholics, or I suppose he's an

35:28

Orthodox, but mainly by Rome because that's the big boogeyman for this particular group, was changed over time.

35:36

And so even though the historical documents say that they denied the resurrection, they denied the marriage, they denied the virgin birth, or had all these other heretical aspects, frequently rather Gnostic aspects to these groups, that was just all slander that Rome put out later.

36:00

And that, in fact, they were all faithful, independent fundamentalist Baptists who had potlucks on Sundays and wore white shirts and dark ties.

36:09

And that's just sort of how it worked. So it's hard to debunk, once you basically say anything that goes against my theory was obviously just the creation of Rome.

36:22

It's sort of like when I'm dealing with people, I won't debate that guy, he's Roman Catholic. How do you even deal with someone like that?

36:30

It's hard to do. So yeah, like I said, most of the refutation

36:36

I've seen has been in dealing with those individual groups. I just don't think most historians even want to deal with that booklet as a whole, simply because it's just,

36:49

I think they consider it beneath them, though it would be worthwhile for somebody to do that.

36:55

And maybe there's something out there I just haven't stumbled across, I'll be honest with you. But it's not really been something

37:01

I've been looking for a whole lot either. But anyway. Okay.

37:07

Okay. Thanks, Turner. Okay, thanks. So you put

37:16

Joe again, but I don't think that's what you meant. So it's after Turner.

37:21

So I think Micah. Okay, let's go to Micah.

37:30

Hey, Dr. White. How are you doing? Good. I just want to say before I get into the question, just how much

37:37

I appreciate your ministry, you and Apologia, just all the videos that I've seen over the years and how much it's helped me with LDS ministry and gave me a passion for it just about three or four years ago.

37:53

But along with that, I've got a question involving 1

37:59

Peter 321, where it says, baptism now saves you.

38:06

I've tried to study it plenty of times. And it's not only just been a conversation with Mormons or whoever, but people of other denominations.

38:16

I know you have people like Lutherans that will say that they're still saved by faith, but they're saved by the faith that's given to them through baptism, and it's just a passage that I've struggled with quite a few times.

38:29

And I've got a few different understandings of it that kind of make me okay with reading it, but obviously, I understand baptism, like physical baptism doesn't actually save, but I was just curious what your interpretation of that was.

38:42

Yeah, well, obviously, it's made as a passing commentary where it is considered to be an antitupon, an antitype to the salvation of the eight persons in the ark who were brought safely through water.

39:01

And so, what he's saying is, here is a type of baptism, the antitype that we see now saves you, but what is the antitype of?

39:13

There's immediately, after it says, sodzai baptisma, u sarcas apothesis hupu,

39:23

Allah goes on from there. So, it's not the removal of dirt from the flesh. So, he's saying that the antitype that he's referring to, just like the eight persons in the ark were saved, but we never give thought to through water or they were washed by this or anything else.

39:46

As soon as he says, and corresponding to that, baptism now saves you, not the removal of dirt from the flesh, so not the physical aspect, but what?

39:56

An appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

40:03

And so, clearly, the issue for Peter is that we had this type in the past,

40:12

God was demonstrating so much of the old covenant activities of God are meant to have a, to provide to us insights into what

40:24

God was going to be doing in Jesus Christ, their types and shadows, there's the type. Antitype becomes the amazing reality of salvation in the new covenant, and that new covenant is pictured for us most clearly in baptism, which brings us back to Colossians chapter two that I was just talking about with the previous caller, and that is the picture of our death, burial, and resurrection with Christ, and that doesn't surprise me, therefore, that you have at the end of verse 21, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

41:03

So, is the physical baptism of a believer the resurrection, or is it a picture of what the resurrected believer has gone through, or even more wildly, even though this is where sinners just go, is that how a sinner becomes unified with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection?

41:30

So, there are, it is amazing how far mankind will go to say, yes, when

41:37

I get baptized, I'm uniting myself to Christ so that I'm uniting myself to his death, burial, and resurrection, rather than seeing that that couple of seconds underwater, if that long, is meant to be a picture of the reality that all of God's elect were united with Christ in his death, therefore, in his burial, in his resurrection.

42:00

It's all about Christ. It's all about the resurrection of Christ. It's not about us, and therefore, the emphasis is upon the appeal to God for a good conscience, and even that, all of it's dependent upon the resurrection of Christ, who is at the right hand of God, having gone to heaven after angels, authorities, and powers have been subjected to him.

42:24

So, all the time, mankind is trying to find ways of controlling the power of God, rather than seeing that in baptism, we have, in fact, when you think about it, because I've baptized my share of people, and they are absolutely dependent upon me in all of that.

42:44

They didn't baptize themselves. They didn't bring about their baptism. I'm the one that did that. That was my physical energy, and I timed it and everything else, but that's the whole point.

42:55

It had nothing to do with me. It's what it represents. It's why it's a church function. It's why it's done before others.

43:01

It's testimony. I'm saying I have been united with Christ, and it's not saying

43:08

I am uniting myself with Christ. I have been united with Christ. He is my

43:14

Lord, and here is my testimony to that taking place. And that's what the antitype is, not the physical, but what the physical represents through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

43:27

So, there you go. Yep. Oh, yeah, that was very helpful. I appreciate it,

43:32

Dr. White. Most welcome. Thanks for giving us a Zoom or a

43:38

Zweet, or I don't know what term we're going to come up for this stuff, but anyway. I'm pretty sure it's still called a

43:43

Zoom call, so you can keep the same language and just keep on going and not have to trip over it. Rich will come up with something.

43:49

He's just trying to become so maud and everything, it's sad. Okay, thanks! All right, thank you.

43:56

All right. Okay, now I have two names with the same topic.

44:05

All right. Hello, Dr. White. Hello. This is Jeremiah. Hi, Jeremiah. How's it going,

44:11

Dr.? Doing good. So, today I was actually listening to one of your debates,

44:18

The Triune God of Scripture Lives with Dan Barker, and in the middle of that, I got an email from my leadership in the

44:26

Navy about the newest addition to the mandated vaccine policy.

44:32

Several aspects of it were actually quite shocking. If you haven't had a chance to look at it yet,

44:37

I shared it to your Twitter thread, but essentially, some of the aspects of it are that service members who refuse to be fully vaccinated within the next two months will lose pretty much all of their educational benefits, as well as having an adverse fit rep, which is basically just Navy lingo for performance evaluation.

45:04

I know this is something that was kind of predicted with the military kind of being the guinea pigs for larger policy enforcement, but it's kind of shocking to see it actually coming to fruition.

45:16

I wanted to know if you had any immediate thoughts on it. Well, I haven't seen it.

45:22

This is the first I've seen, though it doesn't shock me at all. It shouldn't shock anyone.

45:31

I hate to be this realistic, but it just seems to me that with the taking over of positions of authority by the current regime, however that took place, it is their intention to rid both the military and FBI, police, all those aspects of anybody that understands what the

46:13

Constitution is, what it was meant to protect, and that therefore would actually obey their oath of office and would therefore resist unlawful actions against the

46:34

American people. And I think that this is what they are going for.

46:40

They want to get rid of anyone who would do anything other than just simply go, yes, sir.

46:47

Who do you want me to shoot, sir? And this is part of that process.

46:53

It's irrational. It's unreasonable. It's dangerous. It goes against all factuality.

47:00

They cannot defend these things. That's why they censor anyone who says anything like what I just said.

47:08

We recognize all of that, but at the same time, from a theological perspective,

47:14

I just have to step back and go, that's what judgment looks like when it comes upon a people.

47:26

Part of me very much wants to see a restoration, but at the same time, there can be no restoration without a fundamental change in the direction this country has been going.

47:38

The ability to close our eyes to what we've been doing with the murder of unborn children, with the profaning of marriage, to basically taking the gifts of God and spitting in His face at the same time and saying, thank you very much, give us more, that can't go on forever.

47:57

And this may be the way that it ends. And it's an ugly process, but when we look back at history, it's not the first time that it's happened.

48:08

It's happened many times in many different forms. Maybe not with as much— Sorry, Dr., if I can interject really quick.

48:15

I was actually just talking with my family about this, where it seems like—it reminds me of progressive

48:23

Christianity in a way, where they're just kind of treating the Constitution like it's up to an entirely subjective interpretation.

48:31

Of course. Like it's almost fan fiction to them. Right. And as a service member, and I'm fully aware of potential consequences of anything that I'm saying right now, but it's not the

48:48

America I signed up to serve. And if I don't get a chance to get more words in today,

48:54

I would just like to ask you and all of your affiliates to be in prayer for the thousands of service members whose lives and families' lives are going to be severely impacted by this.

49:04

Well, as I was traveling last month, I met with numerous service members who were saying, well, it looks like a matter of weeks, months at most, before I will no longer be able to do what

49:19

I'm doing right now, and I don't know what I'm going to do. As you may know, Apologia was involved in seeking to assist the

49:29

SEALs with their situation, and I wrote the paper that they've posted in regards to their reasons for taking the stand they've taken.

49:42

And so we are, part of me is heartbroken for service members who have become service members for the right reasons of seeking to defend what was once a great nation.

49:59

But then to see that nation being taken over by its enemies from within, rather than from without, is a great frustration.

50:06

It'd be one thing if there was an invading army, we'd all know where to go and what to do. But the army is internal, and it is one that has, really, when you just talked about what you just said about the interpretation of the progressive

50:21

Christianity, that started 70 years ago. Well, it started even before that, but I mean, really started within the law schools 70 years ago.

50:28

So this is not new. This has been coming, and some of us in the older generation should probably be apologizing for having been so darn dumb as to have not seen it coming.

50:42

But we either didn't or didn't think it would happen this fast, to be honest with you.

50:48

So yes, we will definitely be praying, and we know of many people in your situation, you're not alone, you do know that.

50:57

Absolutely. And so we just, obviously, my prayer is that as this takes place,

51:05

I mean, aside from just the utter lack of preparedness of the nation as a whole, that when, if people are discharged, that people, that the rest of us will realize why they were, and we'll honor them for that, and we'll work with them in helping to provide for their families and things like that.

51:25

We just need some wisdom from God as to know exactly how to make that all work. Yes, sir.

51:31

And one bit of hope I can provide you for a lot of the younger service members like myself is that even many of us can see that what's kind of happening right now is an exacerbation of a national issue to create some kind of illusion of dependence upon the government.

51:48

It's very 1984 -ish, like I've heard you refer to a couple times.

51:54

But thank you for allowing me in today. I enjoyed your input. We'll keep praying for you, brother.

52:00

Stay strong. Thank you. Thanks, Doc. All right. God bless. Bye -bye. Okay, let's talk to Clayton.

52:09

Hello, Dr. White. Yes, sir. Hey, first off, I just want to say

52:15

God bless you, man. You've been such a huge inspiration to me in my life, and you have taught me so much.

52:21

So, I have to thank you beyond words for everything you've done for me and my walk with the

52:27

Lord. Well, thank you, sir. Two quick questions here. The first one is, the church we're on that now, it kind of has to do with church membership.

52:39

I'm not at a Reformed church, although I am a Reformed Baptist. The place where I'm at is, you know, my family goes there.

52:49

I have friends. A lot of the members there are just great people, and I love the heart of the church.

52:57

But as a Reformed Baptist, I feel like I'm almost not getting the spiritual growth that I'm looking for in a church.

53:10

I've looked around to see if there are any Reformed Baptist churches nearby, and there aren't really in the town

53:18

I'm in. So, the situation I'm in, I was wondering if maybe you could just give me some advice here as far as guiding me in the direction of where I should stay and where I'm at, or should

53:33

I consider relocating if it means being in a Reformed Baptist church where I know

53:40

I'm going to get that spiritual growth that I'm looking for. Yeah, well, you wouldn't be the first one.

53:48

You wouldn't be the first one that decided, I think wisely, that it was necessary and important to be in a place where you're going to experience growth.

54:01

Now, just because it's a Reformed Baptist church doesn't necessarily mean that you're moving to Eden.

54:11

So, it's always good to have a good idea of where you're headed and things like that.

54:20

I know that we get lots of people who visit at Apology and, we've just got to move out here.

54:25

It's like, whoa, Nellie, hold the horses. You might want to have a job first and want to make sure you understand we have our warts and issues as well.

54:37

But, you know, you don't want to be in a situation where you're in constant either decline or stagnation, either.

54:51

That's where I feel I'm almost at is that the church

54:56

I'm at, they're very much kind of old school Southern Baptists. Yeah, I know.

55:03

I just feel like I'm kind of confused on what to do. I mean, part of me is really looking for a church where I know their sound and their theology, where I'm going to get that spiritual milk and growth that I'm looking for.

55:19

But at the same time, like you said, you know, maybe not every

55:25

Reformed Baptist church is the best option. There's going to be wails and gnashing of teeth and lamentation in the cyber world, but it doesn't have to be a

55:41

Baptist church. You could find quote -unquote non -denominational churches.

55:48

You could find good Presbyterian churches. There are churches that will allow you to continue to hold your convictions on the nature of baptism.

55:57

You might not be able to have leadership positions, but they're really addressing the whole nature and range of things and would give you that depth of challenge that a lot of your standard

56:16

Southern Baptist churches that really aren't engaging all these issues and have somewhat of a stunted view, honestly, of what

56:27

Christ is doing in the world would not provide you with that. So I don't know where you're located, but you might, before you go through all the cost and stuff, and I hate moving, personally.

56:40

We moved into a house I'm at right now. I said we're going to bury me in the backyard. But before making that kind of move, you might want to broaden your look a little bit and see if there might be some other churches nearby that would have the proper central focus of things, but you might have some differences elsewhere.

57:07

That might be something to look at first before the big investment of relocation comes about because the only problem with relocation is you can think the place you're going is that the grass is going to be so green over there, and then you get there, and it takes you two months to find out that, yeah, it looked good, but not so much type of situation.

57:34

So it's good to exhaust the local possibilities first. Okay, and I really appreciate your advice on that.

57:42

I don't want to take up too much of your time, so I'm just going to get to the second question real quick. In its regards to the golden chain of redemption in Romans 8,

57:52

I'm the only one in my entire family that's Calvinist, so I have a lot of discussions with family and stuff on the reformed doctrines of grace, and one of the questions that they confronted me with, and it didn't shake me in my

58:10

Calvinism or anything, but I'm just trying to figure out the best way to answer this. They mentioned in Romans 8 and the golden chain of redemption that because the text says that those who he foreknew he also predestined, the foreknowing is coming before the predestining there, so their argument is that shows that because God exhaustively knows the future that he sees who will believe in him, and then elects them as his children, and the text proves that or supports that argument, since it says he foreknows before he predestines.

58:52

So how would you respond or answer that? Well, you'll notice we've done a number of extensive programs on the golden chain, and of course, the potter's freedom goes into depth on this very issue, but the verb in verse 29 is an active verb.

59:17

It's something that God does. They are using it as the idea that God passively takes in knowledge of future events, but these are all active verbs on the part of God.

59:32

Whatever it is God foreknows, he predestines, he calls, he justifies, he glorifies. And when it says he foreknows, they're taking that to mean he takes in information from the future and then acts based upon what he sees from the future.

59:51

That is not what foreknowing means. Notice it's for whom he foreknew, he also predestined.

01:00:00

And so the issue of foreknowledge, it has to be something that is just as predestination is an active verb and has a subject, called, justified, and glorified.

01:00:14

They all have to be together or you're basically saying I'm just going to pick and choose how I want to do these things.

01:00:20

And so when we talk about foreknowing someone, in scripture, the only things that God has said to foreknow in the

01:00:33

New Testament are persons, never events. So they're saying it's an event that he foreknows.

01:00:41

This is saying it's a person he foreknows. When it says he foreknew, he foreknew the son,

01:00:48

Israel, and the elect. Those are the three things that God foreknows. So is that saying that he knew what

01:00:55

Jesus would do in the future or that what Israel would do in the future? No.

01:01:02

When Adam knew Eve, she brought forth a son.

01:01:08

So obviously knowing is something more than simply having some kind of intellectual knowledge.

01:01:17

There is something much more intimate involved there. Israel, in the Old Testament, God says, you of all the nations have

01:01:25

I known. Does that mean God didn't know the other nations existed? Of course not. But it's a concept of choosing to enter into relationship with.

01:01:36

And so it has to be something free on God's part because we don't yet exist.

01:01:42

This is the eternal one, choosing before we exist to enter into relationship with us.

01:01:49

That's the exercise of his freedom to do so on the basis that he predestines us, on the basis of that he then calls us, justifies us, glorifies us, so on and so forth.

01:02:00

So they're all divine actions, but there's a subtle, and it's based on the

01:02:06

English primarily, there's a subtle shifting in the argument when you change it from the divine into the temporal, the idea that God is acting based upon what he has seen in the future.

01:02:22

There's all sorts of problems with that, but that's the quick response. Okay? Right. Yeah, no, that makes a lot more sense.

01:02:31

I appreciate all you do, Dr. White, and thank you so much for taking my call.

01:02:37

Okay. Thanks a lot. We appreciate it. Okay. Thank you. God bless. Let's get our last call in here and talk with Jason.

01:02:45

Hi, Jason. I'm waiting for Jason to unmute.

01:02:54

That is one different thing with Zoom calls, is that Jason has to unmute himself so I can refresh myself with some wonderful ice water before Jason unmutes himself, or eventually we give up on Jason, and Jason unmutes himself as the last note of the closing of the song ends, and he realizes that his one chance to discuss the at four o 'clock anyways, and he's actually watching

01:03:36

Fox News. So there you go. Well, Jason, we tried, but I can only fill for so long and stay funny.

01:03:48

So anyways, thanks for the great calls today, and I appreciate all of them, and hopefully it's useful to you folks.

01:03:56

Let's see, today is Thursday, isn't it? Yes, it is. So I'm not, again, hopefully early next week, but then it gets weird for a while because I'm on the road.

01:04:07

So different times of day, and get used to seeing the Mobile Command Center, and I just ask for the audience right now, something big is coming on the 29th,

01:04:21

Monday the 29th, at three o 'clock Central Standard Time.

01:04:28

Please be praying for an encounter that will be being recorded at that point in time.

01:04:34

Pray for its technical aspect, clarity of thought, clarity of expression, and hopefully the people of God will be blessed by that particular encounter.