Real Islamophobia, the Homosexual Agenda, and Calls

Alpha & Omega Ministries

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

Comments are disabled.

00:14

Welcome to Divine Line, my name's

00:36

James White. It's a beautiful, well, it's Reformation Day here in Phoenix, Arizona.

00:43

Beautiful, beautiful day here in Phoenix, about 77 degrees, very slight breeze, not a cloud in the sky.

00:50

It is absolutely gorgeous. I did read a very interesting article.

00:55

I shouldn't mention this if I can't then tell you where it is, but who linked that?

01:04

I don't know. I get too many things. I've got Feedly and Pocket and Twitter and all that kind of stuff, and I just can't keep up with it all.

01:15

I don't think God ever designed us to have this much information flying at us at any one time. But I read a article this morning while rowing.

01:25

Well, okay, I listened to an article while rowing this morning, and it was by a

01:31

RTS grad and a professor of history, and it was all about the history of Halloween.

01:38

And it wasn't what I expected it to be. I'd never spent much time thinking about it, to be honest with you.

01:43

But it was very interesting. Maybe, I don't know if that would be enough information to Google it or not, but it was quite interesting.

01:51

So I guess, it's Halloween too. But I prefer Reformation Day.

01:59

I now have had the opportunity of standing in front of Wittenberg's door myself.

02:07

Of course, it was under construction. But we have plans within plans. There are plans, believe it or not, to try to arrange a major debate with a

02:18

Roman Catholic apologist for Wittenberg for 15, 17, October of 15, it's not 15, 17, 2017, 500 years later.

02:29

And I would really look forward to that. I hope that works out. It would be awesome to get an opportunity to defend justification by faith in Wittenberg 500 years down the road.

02:41

That would be pretty, pretty cool. Yes. I can't hear a thing you're saying. Because I pushed the wrong button.

02:48

You wouldn't be thinking about taking the same road back from that, that Luther did.

02:53

Now you're confused. I'm confused. That wasn't Wittenberg. It was the road back from the Diet of Worms.

02:59

Oh, yes. 1521. Yes. That was after... See, that's the place to have it.

03:04

Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders, Gott helfe mir. Though that really probably wasn't what he said, but it was close.

03:13

That's the place to have it. Oh, wait a minute. Can you translate what I said? No. So we shouldn't have done that.

03:20

Tongues. Just trying to be consistent here. Just trying to be...

03:25

And you and I are the only ones here. So if you're not the translator, then... Here I stand, I can do no other.

03:31

There you go. We're good. We're good. All right. There we go.

03:39

Yeah. Well, that was pretty obvious, wasn't it? I thought it was. But no, that was the

03:44

Diet of Worms after he responded to Charles in that fashion and was headed back to Wittenberg and was pseudo -kidnapped by Frederick the

03:54

Elector, his protector, and became Junker Jorg, not to be confused with the world famous Junker Jorg in Hawaii, who lost his hair.

04:07

But I'm not sure if he's even going to hear that. But if he does, then he can drop me an email and go, hey, I heard that. Just a little secret.

04:13

Send out to somebody. Anyhow, I want to start off the program today, even though we actually have started off the program with another subject.

04:21

I've spoken so many times on Reformation Sunday, which

04:27

I guess would have been last Sunday or maybe next Sunday, whatever. I don't know.

04:32

Sometimes I sort of lose track of where we are in the year. This is a very, very busy time of year.

04:40

I sort of think the Strange Fire Conference sort of distracted a little bit from the celebration of Reformation Day.

04:48

But at the same time, I grew up, I never heard of Reformation Day.

04:54

Not once. I think the reason it's not nearly as popular as some might wish it was,

05:04

I think it's become more popular over the years, over the past 15, 20 years anyways, as people have come to understand the

05:11

Reformation, the importance of it. But so many evangelicals today do not have any investment whatsoever in the issues of the

05:20

Reformation. And in fact, most, if they were to be really, really honest, would look back at that particular time period and the issues are being addressed.

05:36

We just don't have a connection. We don't understand. We are so distracted by our technology and we don't think about death.

05:44

I mean, for Martin Luther and for the people today, the discussion of how you can know right now that you have peace with God was such a day -to -day thing.

05:53

I mean, I'm getting into my church history mode here, and I like getting into my church history mode, actually.

06:02

Someone needs to tweet that we're actually on because I've got to do that. So somebody tweet that and I'll retweet it.

06:08

Did you? Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, sort of. Yeah. I don't want folks to miss the fact that...

06:15

You know what the funny thing is? This is the regular scheduled time. And we're so, we're so, what are they doing on now?

06:22

What's that going on? That's weird. Okay. I'm sorry. I just saw

06:28

Micah had just now caught up and said, apparently the Dividing Line is live now.

06:33

No one tells me. Don't you see the, from Alpha and Omega Ministry up there, I started a live stream on YouTube?

06:40

Well, it's at the bottom of my screen. I can barely see it. Oh, okay. See, that's the live stream. Yeah, but that doesn't say anything about the

06:48

Dividing Line. I started a live stream on YouTube. That doesn't tell you what it is. Well, I guess. Someone needs to tweet something about the

06:54

Dividing Line and then I'll retweet that and let people know that we're actually here. Anyhow, what I was trying to say, before I got so completely distracted, see

07:03

Martin Luther would never have been distracted by tweets, would not have been distracted by live streams, nothing like that.

07:08

That's why they got things done. And that's why I don't get things done. I need to find that video that I saw on YouTube a few years ago of the lady.

07:16

It's 20 minutes long and it's just how you can get sidetracked, sidetracked, sidetracked, and you get to the end of the day and you got absolutely positively nothing done.

07:23

You actually did 47 things, but you know, that's, that's the way it is. Anyhow, I was trying to talk about church history here very quickly.

07:32

There is something that we do need to understand. One of the reasons that the

07:39

Reformation, Sola Fide, the risk of life that Luther faced at the

07:49

Diet of Worms, that doesn't ring with a lot of people today because of the deep and sad humanism of our day.

07:59

And the fact that we, we just don't think about death and hence we don't think about life.

08:06

I mean, death was such a ever present reality. Disease could take you so quickly in those days.

08:12

You know, we have this false idea that, well, you know, I just get to the hospital. There's some diseases running around out there that we cannot fix at all.

08:19

And they're fast and they're, they're swift. We may, we've really been lulled into insecurity at that point.

08:29

But the memory of the plague, which had taken a third of Europe. Can you imagine?

08:35

One out of every three people you knew in cities was dead. Maybe more in cities because it was more in that area, obviously.

08:47

The memory of that was still clear and the plague would sort of do the return thing, you know,

08:53

I mean, Calvin stayed and, and risked infection when the plague came to Strasbourg to care for his parishioners and it would happen.

09:04

It would, it would come in and it wasn't as bad as it had been during the 14th century, but it was still around.

09:09

And so people thought about eternity and they thought about how they could have peace and peace with God and things like that.

09:15

And so these issues were right on the front burner, but anymore, you try to get most people to think about eternal issues and about stuff like that.

09:24

And it's just like, no, no, no, just no interest. Just doesn't ring the bells. And I think that's reflected in the lives of a lot of people in regards to what we find interesting and that captures our interest and that we celebrate.

09:40

And so I certainly celebrate Reformation Day. I celebrate the fact that God truly, by his grace, broke into Western culture.

09:50

Now, obviously I recognize that it wasn't October 31st.

09:56

I mean, I know, and hopefully you know, Luther was not staying there as a

10:02

Lutheran. He was a faithful son of the Roman church. He was an Augustinian monk.

10:08

All he was doing was posting stuff that he hoped would result in some debates.

10:16

That's all he was doing. Yeah, he already, God had begun working in such a way, but God had begun working long before Luther.

10:23

I mean, you look back at Hus, you look back at Wycliffe and the light was beginning to dawn and man,

10:29

Luther would not have been the guy I would have chosen, okay? Nah, wouldn't have been the guy

10:35

I would have chosen to be the one through whom this message would get out.

10:41

But there were so many streams, so many streams that had already come together to allow this to happen.

10:47

I mean, right at the time that Luther's starting to go, man, those indulgences things, they really stink.

10:53

I mean, I'm seeing just how anti -Christian and how far removed from the truth this stuff is.

11:03

And right at the same time, he comes into possession of one of the first printed

11:09

Greek New Testaments. Printed Greek New Testaments. And so he has ease of access to the original languages, and he can compare the

11:17

Latin and the Greek, and that helps him to understand justification by faith and to come to understand things.

11:23

Well, that came out of the Renaissance. That came out of Erasmus and Ad Fontes to the source.

11:29

And there's just so many streams. The German nationalism that was rising in that day, which allowed the

11:35

Germans to go, you know, I don't like this, how we're in charge for these indulgences, and the money leaves

11:40

Germany and goes to Italy to build St. Peter's. You know, it seems like a religious tax of some kind based upon forgiveness.

11:49

It seems really bad. And of course it was and still is.

11:55

And so all these things came together in an amazing way. And it's great to tell the story.

12:02

Unfortunately, most Protestants today don't know the story. But even when they learn, it's sort of like, oh, that's interesting.

12:10

It's not the stuff of life, you know, for most people.

12:16

When it becomes the stuff of life, those are the people that are in no danger of ever going off to Rome or anything like that because they've come to understand what's really important.

12:25

But it's the ones who don't understand that that end up going off to. Rome in some way, shape or form.

12:31

Anyways, what I want to, I start off saying I want to start off something else, start off with that. But just a little brief conversation there on Reformation Day.

12:41

Ran across something yesterday. I want to bring it to your attention just as an illustration, hopefully as a warning.

12:49

Once again, I am disturbed by the.

12:59

Well, we've we've all heard the abuse of the term phobia, right? You know, you know, you have certain phobias.

13:08

And now, of course, homophobia was the first term to come along. That is just massively abused and turned into any disagreement with homosexuality whatsoever.

13:19

And anybody who has a moral bone in their body is considered to be a homophobe and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

13:26

Then you have Islamophobe and the Muslims picked up on this. Hey, this this works pretty well.

13:32

You just beat somebody over the head with this phobe thing and everybody stops thinking and you win the argument.

13:39

And so if you have any disagreement whatsoever with Islam, then you're an Islamophobe.

13:46

Well, there are homophobes. And now, of course, it actually it should be homosexual of phobes,

13:53

I suppose. Um, there there are people who have a a bigoted response to homosexuality.

14:01

It's not based upon having thought through morality and ethics and the nature of the male and female and marriage and culture and all the rest of that stuff.

14:10

It's just I just don't like those folks. OK, there's there's people like that. And they to to take them and and apply a term used for them to everybody else that has a moral objection to this obviously is is absurd.

14:29

But the same thing is true in regards to Islamophobes. There are people who are Islamophobes. There are people who they just look at a

14:37

Muslim and if that Muslim happens to wear traditional Islamic garb, just automatic fear and automatic prejudice.

14:48

I've been if any of you have listened and I don't know how you could not have. But if any of you have listened to the opening statements that I have been making in my introduction to Islam stuff for months now,

15:01

I've really been trying to address the fact that Christians, believing

15:08

Christians, the Christians who I assume are attending some presentation that I would make. And so two weekends ago,

15:15

I was in Spring, Texas with Vody Balkan and his church. Last weekend, I was up in Vancouver with the

15:22

Sola Scriptura folks, Heinz Daskalonitz. And they'll all tell you that the opening statements that I made were directed to Christians saying, look, we need to understand what

15:34

Islam teaches. The primary source of our information from Islam should not be Fox News. I always joke that it's better Fox News and MSNBC, but either one of them are not really what we should have.

15:46

But also that if we have fear in our hearts toward a

15:52

Muslim because of the way they dress, because of just our unfamiliarity with them, etc.,

15:58

etc., that in all probability, we are not going to take the opportunity of being the one who opens the dialogue for the presentation of the gospel, because that fear is going to cause us to remain quiet, to direct the conversation someplace else, whatever it might be.

16:12

That fear can come from many things. It primarily comes from ignorance. But that fear can also be stoked by many people,

16:19

Christian and non -Christian, but on the right hand of the spectrum of things. And so as a result,

16:28

I've told the story more than once that, for example, I've gotten the message a few times from TSA agents.

16:37

Yeah, I will travel with an Arabic Quran in my checked luggage.

16:44

And twice now, I've gotten to my hotel, opened my luggage and found sticking out of the

16:50

Quran the TSA inspection card. Now, think about that.

16:57

If you got to your hotel and you were a Christian minority, you were in a majority

17:04

Muslim context, you got to your hotel and found an inspection card stuck inside your

17:09

Bible, don't you think that's a message? And don't you think somebody in the TSA was trying to give the message, we're watching you?

17:17

Now, of course, they had no idea they're watching. They're trying to warn a guy with an

17:23

Arabic Quran who happens to be a Christian apologist who's going around the world debating Muslims. So wasted that one, shall we say.

17:31

But twice that's happened, twice that's happened. And somebody was trying to give me the message, no question about it.

17:40

And there are acts of vandalism at mosques and things like that.

17:45

You got your redneck guy someplace, you know, just wants to get himself a

17:50

Muslim. And you've got ignorant people like that out there, there's no question about it. They're there. So someone on channel says they've had that happen with their

18:01

Farsi Bibles, because Farsi looks like Arabic, I mean, to the untrained eye. They'll stick it in there like, we know you're there, we're watching you, you know.

18:10

Well, anyways, yesterday, I saw something posted. John Mark posted something on Twitter.

18:18

And I followed the link because I saw the name of Yasir Qadhi. Now, I've talked about Yasir Qadhi a number of times on this program, haven't really mentioned him for a while.

18:28

I think I mentioned shortly after the book came out because I had seen an article where he said he's not using the term

18:33

Salafi of himself any longer, which I found very interesting. Unfortunately, I had used it of him in the book, but when

18:39

I wrote the book, that was still the terminology that was generally used. But I have spoken with Yasir Qadhi, I have corresponded with Yasir Qadhi, I have listened to hours and hours and hours of Yasir Qadhi in his lectures, and so on and so forth.

18:56

And I've been very appreciative of the consistent Muslim perspective that is his. He is very conservative, but he is a thinking individual, and I would love to have the opportunity of dialoguing with him someday.

19:11

I just don't get the feeling that's something he's interested in doing, but I would love to have that opportunity someday.

19:18

That would be great. Anyway, I followed the link, and it took me to an article by Tim Brown at Freedom Outpost dot com.

19:33

Freedom Outpost dot com. And, you know, Freedom Outpost has the coiled snake, established

19:40

July 4, 1776, don't tread on us. And the title is Tennessee Imam Abu Ammar Yasir Qadhi, Jews and Christians are filthy, their lives and property can be taken in jihad by the

19:52

Muslims. I started to read it, it says Abu Ammar Yasir Qadhi, a memphul imam.

19:59

I'm not sure what that means, to be honest with you. Based in Tennessee, I assume that has something to do with Memphis.

20:04

Preaches openly about what Islam truly is. He makes no bones about thinking that anyone other than a

20:10

Muslim doesn't deserve anything and are less than Muslims. In fact, part of Yasir Qadhi's preaching includes rhetoric that says non -Muslims' lives are forfeit and their property is legal for Muslims to take in jihad, and this would include women as sex slaves.

20:23

Recently, Yasir Qadhi said that, quote, Jews and Christians, and it's not typed properly,

20:30

Jews and Christians are filthy, their lives and property can be taken in jihad by the Muslims, end quote.

20:35

And then there's a YouTube video, and I watched the YouTube video, and it's very disrespectfully done.

20:40

It's a still frame of Yasir, and when he's saying things that Mr.

20:45

Brown can't understand, he goes yada yada, whizza whizza when he's typing out what it is because he doesn't know what it is.

20:53

He doesn't understand what the background is. It says Yasir Qadhi is not only a memphul imam, but is also the dean of academic affairs at the

21:01

Al -Maghrib Institute. He is a hafiz, he has memorized the Quran, and he has an MA in the

21:06

Islamic creed and a BA in Islamic sciences from Islamic University of Medina, as well as a master's and a doctorate in Islamic studies from Yale.

21:14

During a lecture on shirk, or polytheism, Yasir Qadhi said that Jews and Christians are mushrikun, or polytheists, because they have made partners with Allah.

21:22

From Yasir Qadhi's perspective, only Muslims are monotheists. He also claims that it's the responsibility of every single human being to bear witness that there is no deity worthy of worship except Allah and him alone.

21:31

Well, yeah. First of all, this wasn't recently. I started talking to you about listening to those exact lectures back in 2006, 2007.

21:41

This wasn't some recent thing. These are actually some of Sheikh Qadhi's earlier presentations, and I would imagine he would be a little bit more nuanced today than he was when these were originally recorded.

21:56

But what they did in the YouTube video was to take just portions of a lecture.

22:02

And again, you can go back to whenever it was I started dealing with Qadhi. And I played some of this stuff.

22:09

I played portions of it. One of the reasons that I had originally contacted Yasir Qadhi, the possibility of writing the book with me, was because he does take the consistent, and it is the consistent perspective of the vast majority of Muslims in the world, that we as Christians are mushrikun, that our worship of Jesus Christ involves us in shirk, that we are associating someone or something with Allah and that this results in shirk.

22:37

And I respect the Muslim who holds to tawhid and hence is very, very concerned about shirk.

22:47

I respect him a whole lot more than I do the Muslim that doesn't and isn't concerned about these kinds of issues and doesn't see the relationship between tawhid and shirk and things like that.

23:01

I mean, if you're going to be a believing Muslim, be a believing Muslim for crying out loud. I can actually deal with a believing

23:07

Muslim more easily than I can a liberal Muslim who doesn't share with me a commitment to the idea that there is truth and things like that.

23:17

But what they did is they just took sections and piled them all together. The result is, obviously, you can tell by the title.

23:28

Jews and Christians are filled with their lives of prayer but can be taken in jihad by the Muslims. Now it's interesting, I played, years ago, his exact statement in regards to jihad, where he said we, this cannot be done now.

23:44

And I expressed then the concern that was mine, because I remember right where I was in South Mountain when

23:50

I was listening to this, in fact. He explained that there is no state of jihad today.

23:57

That's why, you know, one of the things that was unfair about this is Yasir Qadhi has been attacked from his right because even as a

24:05

Salafi, he stands against the acts of violence that are perpetrated by some

24:12

Muslims, by Islamists and things like that. But the line that he draws is what

24:19

I tried to point attention to a few years ago when I reviewed these things. And that was, he basically said there can be no state of jihad because there is no caliph.

24:28

There is no caliph today. There is no leader of all the Muslims to be able to proclaim a state of jihad.

24:34

Now if there was a leader of all Muslims who could proclaim a state of jihad, then the lives and property of the enemies of the ummah would be forfeit.

24:45

And everything that he said there would be true. And when he was talking about Christians and Jews as najis, that is a term of ritual impurity in regards to people who engage in shirk.

24:58

And so if you think that we're engaged in false worship, then you're going to say that we are impure in God's sight.

25:06

Now what worries me is that a lot of Christians will grab hold of this stuff.

25:14

And John Mark hadn't looked into it, didn't look into the background of it. I told him about it. I said, hey, sorry.

25:19

And he pulled it. And that's great. And I appreciate that. But folks, this is the stuff that's done to us all the time.

25:28

And we get upset about it. This is what is done to us all the time. I mean, you have any idea how easy it would be?

25:38

How very, very easy it would be for someone, if they wanted to take the time, to go through the stuff

25:45

I've said on this program over all these years. I mean, all you'd have to do is set up a large hard drive and record for about a month.

25:52

You'd have pretty much all the way back to 1998. And you'd hear me saying stuff about Jesus Christ, his

25:59

Lord, and judgment coming upon the nations. And why is the video feed dying all of a sudden?

26:09

I don't know if you're noticing this, but something strange is going on with the camera there.

26:15

And that sort of worries me. It just disappeared. It just died. I think the camera just croaked while I was watching it.

26:22

I'm hoping that's the camera and not smoke or something, because it just went white. So, I just thought

26:31

I'd mention that in case it's something other than the camera just dying for the last...

26:36

That's probably one of the older cameras we have. No, actually, it isn't. That's terrible. Anyways, just thought

26:43

I'd point that out to the powers that be. And I'll continue on to what I was saying. This happens to us all the time. You could, if you recorded all the stuff that I've said,

26:49

I've talked about judgment coming upon the nation. And I've talked about every knee bowing and every tongue confessing.

26:55

And you could find all sorts of stuff about judgment and the lordship of Christ and all that stuff, and make me sound like a complete nutcase.

27:06

A complete nutcase. It would be pretty easy to do. By ignoring the context, ignoring everything else that I was saying.

27:14

And that's exactly what's been done here. And unfortunately, a lot of Christians don't care if it's done to Yasir Qadhi, because, well, he dresses funny.

27:23

And his name is different than what we'd like. You know, all that kind of stuff.

27:31

But we have to be consistent. We have to recognize if people are going to put together this kind of unfair compilation of citations and take it out of its context, not that there's...

27:44

Look, there's reasons to think about what

27:50

Yasir Qadhi said about what the dividing line for judgment is. There's reasons to be concerned that for a non -jihadi, the line there, it seems rather scarily thin.

28:03

But that means I would want to talk with Yasir Qadhi about how we can understand that and what the foundations of that are and how that's different than Christianity.

28:13

Not just go, oh, we need to... There's someone that's dangerous and we need to, you know, don't want this person around type of thing.

28:22

That starts getting into the area of, well, Islamophobia. It really does.

28:28

Because it's not a rational... It's not seeking to understand what he's saying and to disagree with it from a

28:35

Christian perspective in a fair way. It's just, I don't like what the Muslims are saying.

28:40

And I'm going to apply one standard to them. It's not the same standard I apply to my own faith. And I am so super sensitive to that.

28:47

Because I have to deal with it constantly coming from the other direction. Constantly coming from the other direction.

28:54

And so I think it's far better to err on the side of grace at that point.

29:02

And so I even contacted Yasir Qadhi and he directed me to a response that he himself had put up when...

29:12

This was July 3rd of this year, I guess. And so a few months ago, the audio clip had been put up.

29:19

Now, this one that I had seen yesterday was really... What was the date on this?

29:25

October 29th. So this is... They just must have glommed onto this recently, I suppose, at Freedom Outpost 1.

29:31

But evidently, this is something that's not overly new. But he had responded to that. And this is available at MuslimMatters .org,

29:43

which I think they must have... Now that I think about it, they must have changed their RSS feed. And I need to get back on it because I used to get their stuff.

29:51

So I would have seen this. But I think I lost the RSS feed and didn't even realize it. Well, now I know. So I'll try to fix that.

29:59

But anyway, he thanked me for pointing it out to him. And I just wanted to point that out that, folks, we just can't go that direction.

30:10

We cannot behave in this way. Even if the Muslims do not reciprocate, even if the

30:17

Muslims do not respond to us, it doesn't matter. We still have to, out of service to Christ, do what is appropriate at that point.

30:27

And that's just absolutely necessary. 877 -753 -3341. Phone number today if you'd like to get involved with the program.

30:34

877 -753 -3341. I mentioned last week my thanks for the words of Al Mohler as he spoke at BYU.

30:46

It looks like there's something going on up there. Because on October 30th, so yesterday,

30:53

ReligionNews .com, evangelical visits to BYU signal a new evangelical

30:59

Mormon detente. And the picture here is of Richard Land, the new president of Southern Evangelical Seminary.

31:06

At Brigham Young University. It says, last month, after being sure to get his caffeine fix, a

31:11

Starbucks Southern Baptist leader, Richard Land, went where a few evangelicals had dared to go before, the campus of Brigham Young University Intellectual Heart of Mormonism.

31:18

I went there, it just kicked me off. Of course, that was many, many moons ago, and I was passing out tracts, so it was a little bit different.

31:26

But it also, unfortunately, mentions Richard Mao and all the compromisers that have been up there.

31:32

And that, of course, is the problem. Even when good folks go up there because of people like Mao and others.

31:42

It's just, who's to know? That's the problem. They've got a bunch of pictures of Mao and Millet, and we've talked about the soft -selling of Islam, soft -selling of Mormonism.

31:57

Muslims, Mormons, I wish they had different starting letters. It would be easier for me to keep track.

32:04

What? Well, since you were talking about Mormonism, I just thought

32:09

I'd point out that this morning, I uploaded a never -before -seen -

32:15

Which is the main reason I can't get my internet to work anymore. In public video. It's been a, and yeah, you're not connected to the console, so you don't see the caller.

32:26

But it's been available on the audio side of things, but I finally found a way to be able to produce this in video, and it is now on the

32:36

YouTube site. I'll be actually posting later this evening the links and stuff to it into the blog.

32:42

But the Witnessing to Mormon Seminar from 1994, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to see

32:49

James White skinny with hair. I'm skinny. No beard. Well, you got back around to it.

33:00

True, true. And actually, I think in some regards, those watching on video will be able to tell you you're still a little bulkier now than you were then.

33:09

No. Yeah, you are. No, I'm not. No, well. I happen to know my weight now, my weight then, and no,

33:15

I'm not. Yeah, but I don't think you'd actually lifted anything called weights back then. No, that's true, but I weigh the same thing now as I did then.

33:24

I can't get into the phones. I just thought I'd let you know that. Well, we do have a caller. I can't do anything about it because the connection failed, so.

33:31

Yeah, it took me two or three shots to get into it, and then it let me in. I don't know what that's about, but. Well, that's exciting,

33:37

I wonder. Well, I think I do know what it is. I think one of the reasons I can't do anything on the net today is because that thing needs a brain cleaning again very badly.

33:47

So once you're done whatever you're doing, once we're done here, we got to reset everything.

33:54

And I wish there was some way of telling it to do that, you know, at three o 'clock in the morning. Yeah, no kidding.

33:59

Well, and the problem is, what about that poor one person who's listening to the Wayback Machine at three o 'clock in the morning?

34:06

That'd be bad, very, very bad. But anyways, I cannot,

34:12

I have no idea. You're going to have to give me some information about phone calls and stuff. Otherwise, because I do not have access to the phone system in here at all.

34:24

I have tried. 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number. If you'd like to get involved with the program today,

34:32

I'm going to try to get the phones working on a different computer, maybe. Don't know if that's going to work, but probably won't.

34:41

Because once Comrex doesn't want to talk to you, Comrex does not want to talk to you. But anyways, I was saying, we have to keep an eye on what's going on at BYU.

34:52

Because it is very, very, very interesting. And I'm not sure where it's going.

34:58

And I think the reason I'm not sure where it's going is because I don't think the Mormons know where it's going. That's the whole issue.

35:05

And my concern is that they want to utilize this kind of willingness on the part of people to mainstream more.

35:23

Maybe they think that's the direction they need to go. I don't know. Now I can't. Now my computer can't even find the server. So we've got major problems.

35:31

I just hope we make it through the program today without the whole thing falling down around our ears.

35:37

Well, I listen to this, and I think this is pretty much consistent with how the

35:43

LDS Church has done things over the last 20, 30 years. And that is go out and befriend people and just kind of push all that stuff.

35:53

Yeah, what was that guy out in Mesa? What was his name? That came over to the office, an older fella, doing the same thing.

36:00

Yeah. Yeah, wanted to just sort of do the chit -chat thing. Just befriend you.

36:06

Let's all get along. How much we have in common. We don't need to be talking about gods and stuff like that.

36:12

Yeah, all that theology stuff. That's exactly, yeah. Yeah, his name will come to me. Yeah, it's been a long time.

36:17

Right there. He was very, very old when I met him a long time ago, so he may not even be around anymore for that matter.

36:23

But yeah, that's the same thing going on there. Before we go to the phone calls, since this is relevant, perfect.

36:32

I saw this article a couple weeks ago. I didn't realize this. We now have our first same -sex married

36:43

U .S. ambassador. Thank you, President Barack Obama. U .S. ambassador to Australia marries in private same -sex ceremony.

36:52

There's a picture. Wedding rings are exchanged between U .S. ambassador John Berry and some fella by the name of Curtis Lee, Curtis Yee, partners of 17 years.

37:05

And of course, the person officiating is a woman. And of course, it's a radical leftist liberal church in Washington, D .C.

37:17

Where else would it be? But isn't it wonderful that as Australians seek to fight against the redefinition of marriage in their country, the ambassador from the

37:30

United States of America is himself an open and avowed homosexual who has profaned marriage.

37:37

Is he the husband or the wife? We don't know because those terms don't mean anything anymore.

37:43

Those words are meaningless within this context and cannot be defined because we have lost our simple, common ethical and moral sense.

37:54

It is absolutely a shame that we are exporting this and doing so purposely.

38:01

That also should cause us to consider this article from christian .org

38:10

.uk. Free speech laws that allow people to express their opinions about homosexual conduct should be scrapped,

38:17

Labour leadership hopeful Ed Miliband says. Incredibly, he claims the law, which has been backed by Parliament on four occasions, makes it harder to convict murderers.

38:28

His extraordinary comments appear in an opinion article he wrote for the homosexual website Pink News. The current law says that for the avoidance of doubt, criticizing same -sex conduct or urging people to refrain from such conduct is not in itself a crime.

38:44

It was inserted by Parliament to a sexual orientation hate crime law following a string of alarming cases where Christians had been investigated by the police their beliefs about sexual ethics.

38:52

Well, duh. But Mr. Miliband says that he was angry that the free speech protection had been introduced and he claims the safeguard makes it hard to convict someone for killing someone because their sexuality than for their skin color.

39:05

Throughout his article, Mr. Miliband took pains to stress his commitment to the homosexual agenda. He voices support for attempts to radically redefine the nature of marriage in the

39:13

UK and he praised a recent court ruling in California that ignored 7 million voters on the issue of same -sex marriage.

39:19

Yeah, okay, that would be and we know which one that was. So there you go.

39:26

Um, anybody still naive enough to think that any one of these, um, alleged, um, free speech or religious speech protecting amendments, little codicils that are put in law are actually going to stand.

39:46

It's not going to happen. They're there only to get the law passed and then they will be torn out, ripped out as fast as, as can be.

39:56

I don't know why anybody anywhere, uh, believes anything any politician has to say anymore.

40:04

Um, but especially when it comes to the left, you need to understand they want to shut us down.

40:11

They want to silence us. The idea that, well, we've, we've put in, uh, we've put in language that will protect the church and no, no, no, no, no.

40:21

As soon as this, as this, uh, redefinition of marriage, this destruction of the

40:28

God -ordained Institute of Marriage becomes law, and it will happen very, very soon, um, we, we see that because of these

40:37

Supreme Court absurdities of this past summer that already, uh, the proponents of, of destroying marriage are in New Mexico and every place else, they're filing lawsuits everywhere because in essence,

40:52

Justin Kennedy said, bring on, just, just bring us the right case and it's over with. It's done. And that's what they're doing.

40:59

It's going to happen. And as soon as that happens, then there will be first civil and then criminal penalties for not, um, bowing the knee to the homosexual agenda.

41:11

It's, it's there. It's obvious it's happening in Europe. Um, there can be some pushback, but it's, it's going to happen.

41:19

That's just, it, it, anybody who thinks otherwise is just being naive on a level that is difficult to, to, to believe anyone could, could really be that naive.

41:28

So with that in mind, let's, uh, go to the calls and, uh, let's talk to, uh,

41:34

James in Stillwater, Oklahoma. James. Sir, it's a pleasure to talk with you on the phone.

41:40

Yes, sir. Uh, I finally got to meet, well, I got to meet you at the tail end of your presentation last time you were in Oklahoma.

41:47

Oh, okay. Yeah. I'm the one that got lost big time because none of the gas stations knew where that one church was.

41:55

Yes. Yes. Hey, um, real quick before I get, get on topic.

42:00

Um, I've tried to debate, speaking of homosexuality, I offered to debate

42:05

Matthew Vine since he lives in Wichita and I'm only two hours away. His agent won't let him do it unless they get a set fee and it's $5 ,000.

42:17

Oh yeah. Um, I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, I don't have five grand. And, and I was even willing to do it at a gay friendly church, whether it be

42:26

UCC, PC USA, and, and still they, they wanted the money.

42:33

So, but Jesse Morrill, uh, currently a young aspiring author who's an

42:39

Armenian in Texas has actually taken me up on my offer. So we might actually get, this might actually happen.

42:44

Well, he's, he's not, he's not an Armenian. He's a Pelagian. So, um, that's a, that's a different, different, different issue.

42:52

Well, I was going to do my research about him, uh, later. Um, anyway, I don't know if you knew this, but I'm still technically a part of the

42:59

UCC and I was attending a church in Oklahoma city that's actually 95 %

43:04

LGBT. Okay. So, um, and from my experience, um,

43:11

I found that most of the people that we ran into that we tried to invite to church don't actually want to get married.

43:20

They're just like, that's good for you. No, thanks. Yeah, no, I think most of the, most of the, uh, uh, most of the surveys have shown that the vast majority of homosexuals do not want, uh, to get married.

43:34

This, this has nothing to do really with the vast majority of homosexuals. It has to do with the radical transformation of the society and, and the destruction of the, the, uh, of the family within Western society.

43:46

It's, it has nothing to do with marriage equality. That's, that's all, it's all a bogus, uh, cover, uh, that, that really has, uh, no, no meaning to it.

43:58

It is, it is meant to fundamentally alter the, the entire fabric of the society.

44:05

Yeah. And I have to give you credit because it was your book that really helped set me straight. The Same Sex Controversy, which is an absolute fantastic book.

44:14

It's almost as good as The Forgotten Trinity, but not close, but close. Well, they're very, very different subjects.

44:20

Very, very different subjects. Well, I still think The Forgotten Trinity is your best one. Um, but what

44:25

I've noticed is that when I was helping, we went to, you know, every year, Oklahoma City, they do have a gay pride parade.

44:33

You could hand out buttons, you could hand out flyers, you could talk to lots and lots of people and they'd be like, oh, thank you.

44:40

We're so glad you're here. And, uh, you could invite a thousand people that are LGBT and five of them would show up for church.

44:48

Well, yeah, uh, that's, uh, I think that's better percentages than you would get at a

44:55

Mormon meeting, to be honest with you. Yeah. So here's, leading into my question, I'm sorry for the long prelude.

45:04

Um, theoretically, is it possible that, you know, the few that do want to read their Bibles, do want to pray, could be saved?

45:15

Well, again, no one is saying that homosexuality is the unpardonable sin, but if you're talking about someone who is practicing homosexuality and says, no,

45:33

I want to be a Christian and continue in this lifestyle, continue to do this, there are

45:43

Christians, they're a small minority, but there are Christians who struggle with same -sex attraction.

45:49

And since they struggle with it, sometimes they even give into it. And so there are people who experience same -sex attraction, they do not want that same -sex attraction, they do not love that same -sex attraction, they are seeking to live in the

46:05

Lordship of Christ, just as there are people who struggle with many other desires in their life.

46:12

There are people who struggle with anger and impatience and lust and all sorts of things like that, who are true

46:19

Christians and are seeking to gain victory over those things in their lives.

46:25

The dividing line really is when someone says, well, because I experience these things,

46:32

I am going to demand that you redefine the faith to allow me to embrace the faith without embracing these elements of it.

46:43

And that is really the essence of what the homosexual movement is demanding of the

46:50

Christian faith, is that you must accept us as we are, and you must change

46:56

God's law, you must change the very basis upon which Christ went to the cross, you must change the revelation that God has given to us, so as to fit my predilections and my desires.

47:09

And that goes directly against what 1 Corinthians chapter 6 says, such were some of you, but – and that's the adversative use – you were washed, you were regenerated, and so on and so forth.

47:22

So that would require us to, in essence, reject the authority of that text, and to reject the entire positive presentation of Scripture in regards to the nature of marriage and the nature of male and female relationships.

47:38

So essentially what they're doing is they're putting their experience ahead of Scripture. Well, they're putting – actually, it's not just their experience – they're putting their passions and what they want to be as defined by their feelings and experiences ahead of Scripture, and saying that Scripture – but again, this is the essence of liberalism itself.

47:59

I mean, the whole essence of liberalism has always been to make the Scriptures amenable to an experience that, back in the old days, you know, well, we found the gospel gets in the way of our doing social work, and so we're going to change the gospel to fit more what we want to do in social work.

48:26

And so you subsume revelation under your desires in that way. Here it's sexual desires and political desires.

48:35

When you look at liberation theology and stuff like that, it's always, instead of going from revelation being applied to man and man conforming himself to what

48:45

God has said, it's conforming what God has said to man's experience, and that can take all sorts of different forms and things like that.

48:53

So in answer to your question real quick, because we've got some other calls coming in, in answer to your question, I think that, again, there can be people who are believers who have been misled, who have been taught inappropriately, but the dividing line is, obviously, has this person repented their sins?

49:14

Do they even know what sin is? Do they even know what the gospel is? And that really is the issue.

49:20

And, you know, can they read 1 Corinthians chapter 6 and agree that God has the right to define what is and what is not sin?

49:28

And that really is the issue. Hey, thank you for your call today, James, and we're going to run along here real quick, and you do well down there in the midsection of the country there.

49:39

Let's talk with Tom. Hi, Tom. Hey, Dr. White. How you doing? Also from the midsection of the country, ironically enough.

49:46

Yes, we're getting the flyover territory here, I guess. I guess so. And ironically, met you at Pryor as well when you were down here.

49:54

Okay, well, that's interesting. We got two folks that got together at the same place, so... Apparently.

49:59

I was the one compared to a Bieber fangirl by my fiancée, if that rings any bells. Well, I do...

50:06

To be honest with you, I try to forget things like that, because there's only so much room in the cranium, and when someone is likened to anything that has to do with that name that starts the

50:17

B, it just automatically disappears. Can't blame you a bit. No, no.

50:23

And are you two still together, is the question. Yes, sir, absolutely. Wow, okay, all right. We've got a wedding date in May of next year, actually.

50:30

There you go, all right. Okay, so here's my question. Hearing you talk about the gay agenda and all the things that are happening politically in our nation, friends and I, of course, as we do, have conversations about how do we as Christians respond to all of this.

50:46

And so what I was wanting to know from you is, is there any value to the theonomist position?

50:51

Should we stick with the use of natural law? What's your preferred approach when dealing with that? Well, you see, you mentioned two things there, interesting.

51:00

Any Reformed person starts breaking out in at least moderate hives at the mention of of natural law, at least as it has been abused by Roman Catholicism and then adopted by a lot of Protestants as well.

51:18

A Reformed person believes that God's revelation precedes anything else, and the whole concept of natural law that could be understood separate from the priority of revelation, which unfortunately is normally how natural law is used, especially amongst

51:38

Arminians and others today, is a real problem, is a real issue. But in regards to the term theonomy, that's a hot button as well, for many, many reasons.

51:53

Partially because there are so many different definitions of that term, and there are so many different kinds of theonomists.

52:00

And partly because, unfortunately, when someone starts talking about these things, you end up getting people very quickly taking sides and building their walls and getting behind their walls and starting shooting each other.

52:14

And you get in trouble if you actually try to say, well, what's this side trying to say?

52:19

Well, you can't talk to them. And all the politics start kicking in. And this happened back in the 80s with theonomy as it was coming into expression amongst certain people, from Greg Bonson to those who were earlier influences,

52:36

Rush Dooney especially. And you also end up with people who take things way out to their end, and the whole theonomy discussion is unfortunately marred by that.

52:53

And it becomes a little bit difficult to get folks to sort of calm down and think about it. To be honest with you, in many ways, theonomy simply means the law of God, and the idea that God's law should be the standard for mankind.

53:11

And I would think, biblically, that that would not really be an overly controversial issue, but it is for a lot of folks.

53:20

I mean, obviously, if the law of God represents God's nature, and in fact, interestingly enough, this has apologetic influences, because this is one of the arguments that I made in the mosque, in the masjid in Erasmus, a few weeks ago in South Africa.

53:37

And that is that I think that in Islam, you have had a division of God's law from his being reflective of his nature, because from their perspective, there doesn't have to be atonement.

53:47

God can just simply forgive and allow his law to be broken. So if you start with what

53:54

I believe, and that is that God's law reflects his holy nature, then you're going to have a very high view of God's law.

54:01

And you're going to basically say that man's law will reflect

54:06

God's creative purposes most closely when it reflects the law that God has revealed to us concerning how men should behave.

54:15

Obviously, at that point, the question becomes, well, how do we differentiate between that which is an abiding moral principle in the law of God and that which specifically had application to the people of Israel?

54:31

Because obviously, that's the rub. How do you make that differentiation?

54:37

Can anyone in this life come up with the perfect way that would convince everybody that this is how we do this?

54:49

This is how we understand the difference between ceremonial and moral, and here's the exact way you can determine it, and so on and so forth.

54:55

And I don't know if in this life that's ever going to happen, to be perfectly honest with you. But I can agree with Greg Bonson, who said, just because it's a – and I'm paraphrasing him here – but just because it's a difficult and challenging task doesn't mean that we should not be pursuing it.

55:13

And I've attempted to do that. I'm seriously pondering upon completing my series in Hebrews to do a series at PRBC on the

55:22

Holiness Code, because I think that there is a need to – but unfortunately, it's just so controversial.

55:32

It's just – there's so much tradition involved that I don't know that I'd be able to get away with it.

55:41

I'll see. But I've tried to give examples in the past. I've tried to go through some of the texts in the

55:51

Holiness Code to sort of show some way we might be able to make that kind of differentiation. But that issue aside, obviously, what

56:00

I would say is that if the laws of a nation are going to reflect who we are as the creatures of God, then they will, for example, protect marriage, and they will not allow for two men to marry.

56:16

That not only profanes God's law, it profanes who they are as men. Right. And so at that point,

56:24

I would say that the closer a nation's laws reflect the moral content of the law of God, then the better life is going to be within that context.

56:38

And now, of course, there's going to be disagreement, even amongst believers, as to exactly how that's going to flesh out, exactly how it's going to work.

56:47

Because at the same time, if you have a majority non -believing, unregenerate populace, how do you deal with that?

56:58

Well, or even just voicing it in the public square, because I mean, I have friends that have swung over to the natural law perspective, saying they get laughed to scorn when they bring up God's laws, because all the secularists just say they're promoting

57:12

Christian Sharia. Yeah, well, the whole idea of Christian Sharia, to even utilize that kind of language, only shows the person using it has never taken any time whatsoever to really consider what the issues are.

57:26

I mean, that's a person who knows nothing about history, knows nothing about the influence that the

57:33

Christian gospel and the law of God that is part of that Christian gospel has had in the very founding of Western culture itself.

57:43

So I understand the level of discourse in our culture is pretty simplistic these days, but we can't allow that to keep us from speaking out on these particular subjects.

57:55

It's a huge subject, it's a huge area, and I can't in this time frame really do it justice, but I do want to do some more on it in the future.

58:05

And it is an area that I think evangelicals need to think through much more. How many times have

58:11

I said when speaking about homosexuality that we cannot meaningfully talk about the

58:17

Holiness Code in Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20 if we've not read the rest of the surrounding context and dealt with what it really says to see what our views are on it?

58:27

And unfortunately, most evangelicals haven't even read the Holiness Code, let alone that context in Leviticus, and then thought that through in regards to then how the prophets apply that, how that comes into the

58:38

New Testament. All those things along those lines. They just haven't done it, and as such, that hamstrings us.

58:43

It really does. Anyways, hey, Tom, sorry for the brevity of the answer, but unfortunately the clock is running past.

58:53

So thank you for your call, sir. Thank you. Thank you. God bless. Bye -bye. All right. Well, thanks for watching

58:58

The Dividing Line today, or listening to The Dividing Line today, however you did it. We will be back,

59:04

Lord willing, next week. And I am excited about the fact that I think that we're going to need to do a

59:13

Radio Free Geneva pretty soon, and we might actually be able to do a Radio Free Geneva pretty soon with the

59:19

Radio Free Geneva theme. Yes. Yes. Exciting stuff. Thanks for listening to The Dividing Line.