A Wide Open, Caller-Driven Dividing Line

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.

The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, Director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the

United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

James White. Hey, good afternoon. Welcome to the Dividing Line on a Thursday afternoon.

Have some announcements here to get started with. If you sort of watch the banner ads, which you really should do, that's sort of how we announce things.

I can't believe how many people come to the channel, hey, what about this? And well, it's right there in the banner ad there on the website.

But first of all, I think most of you heard yesterday, if you did not, the announcement that atheist writer

Christopher Hitchens has received a diagnosis of esophageal cancer and will be beginning a treatment regimen for that rather dangerous and difficult disease, chemotherapy, obviously.

And as a result, as expected, then the official word from his publicist was he was looking for a postponement of our debate, not so much a cancellation.

But obviously, that would depend completely upon a successful completion of the chemotherapy and so on and so forth.

So I requested yesterday on the blog that we pray for Christopher Hitchens.

Christopher Hitchens is a fascinating fellow. He is obviously extremely intelligent, as I have listened to many hours of him speaking.

I cannot but be taken with his sense of humor, with the appearance of common grace in the man's life in many ways.

And yet also, obviously, the man is a blasphemer. He knows that the

Christian God does not exist and hates him virulently at the same time.

And I think there are reasons for that that actually come out in his autobiography.

But we need to pray for his recovery and for his conversion.

Obviously, God can change any heart. And if any of us think that somehow we were better than Christopher Hitchens, I think it's a good place for, once again, theology matters.

In the sense that a heart of stone is a heart of stone.

And sometimes there's something downright refreshing about the atheistic heart of stone.

Because in some ways, it's more honest than the self -righteous religious heart of stone.

And so we have let everyone know about that situation. And that means that right now,

Chris Arnzen is doing what he can to arrange for a different debate on Long Island around that same time period.

And we'll see if he's successful. It would be a good debate if we get the first individual that we have contacted.

I have debated him before, and they've always been very good debates. That's probably enough of a statement to probably give most people a hint as to who we might be contacting.

But anyway, we will see what happens and we'll go from there. Now, the other thing is, if you watch the banner ads, you will know that one of them is missing that has been up there for quite some time.

And that is the John 10 -16 conference at the beginning of August.

In fact, I just realized I, last night, was going to send an email to someone and I forgot to. The John 10 -16 conference has been canceled.

There were not enough signups. The folks who are putting on have been told by folks in New York, well, nobody signs up until the last minute in New York.

That's just the way New Yorkers are. Well, they just couldn't take that risk and buy lots of airplane tickets and everything else.

And unfortunately, I was supposed to speak the day after that at another conference. But if I no longer have my ride, in essence, to New York, that's not going to be possible.

So I need to get hold of those folks and say not to be able to be there either. So it looks like I won't be there in early

August, but I hopefully will be there at the end of August, possibly the weekend before the 30th, something along those lines.

And we can hope to have arranged at least a single debate while we are back there.

So just some announcements along those lines. We've also put up very thankful to Hasim, son of Ramallah, king of graphics, for putting up the discern and the believers reasons listings.

You'll notice that in both of those, I will be debating Dr. Robert Syngenis a total of three times, twice in September and once in October.

And so hopefully you'll be able to get that information. And remember, there's a little widget doohickey thing there on the banner ads.

You can stop them if you want to, you know, read a little bit more about what's in that particular one before it fades into the next one or however, whatever it does, transitions, whatever.

Looks really cool. And if you have pop -up blocker on, all that is is a big black box.

It's amazing how many people go, why do you all have a big black box at the beginning of your website?

As if that was, oh, we just really like big black boxes. That's why we put it there.

No, no, that's actually supposed to be a really cool graphical thing. And I realize there are some folks that are still on dial up.

It's hard to say that without laughing, but are still on dial up. They don't like things like that, but that's OK. It's all right.

OK, 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341.

I saw an announcement in channel a few moments ago there that dividing that line will not be working today.

I don't mean the dividing line, I mean the Skype connection.

And so people will sound like they're on phone lines again because they will be on phone lines.

We don't have the ability to take Skype calls today. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but we will we will figure that out in time.

Let's start by heading up to where I was not very long ago. And we'll be going back, by the way. Let me mention this poor

Hasim, son of Ramallah, king of graphics, may have to come up with something more. I am going back to Detroit in a matter of weeks.

I will. I'm not sure what the ABN schedule is going to be, Aramaic Broadcasting Network, but I would assume probably at least

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and probably Friday of that week in August, beginning

August 16th. So that would be the 17th. Let me look here real quick.

Here we go. By the 17th, the 20th, I'm assuming we will be doing live.

Jesus or Mohammed shows again the earlier time zone or maybe just go for an extra hour or something.

So it goes into the later times. I don't know what we'll figure something out, but I'll be recording. I'll be continuing a series.

I started recording with them called Answering Islam, and then we'll be doing live programs as well.

Hopefully. Maybe Tony Costa can come down or Sam Shamoon or, you know, we can have some of the guys there and continue to do that.

I really did enjoy doing that. And who knows? Maybe someday

Manu will be converted. It's in the

Lord's hands, but that'll be in August. I'll be heading back your direction. And then that weekend on Saturday and Sunday, the 21st and 22nd,

I'll be with Paul Edwards at his Reformed Baptist Fellowship there.

I think it's Oakdale Bible Church, I believe, is the new name. They just changed the name, so you can't blame me too much on that one.

And I'll be with them on Saturday and on Sunday morning in the services there.

So heading back to the Detroit area, just had so much fun with everybody there. Just had to come back and do some more stuff.

So I thought we'd mention that and I'll try to get that information to our graphics guru man, and we can get something put on the website about that, too.

OK, let's talk with, speaking of that sort of part of the country,

Michigan, let's talk with Wayne. Hi, Wayne. Hey, how are you doing, Dr. White? Good. Hey, it's good news you'll be coming back this way.

We'll be looking forward to maybe getting over there and seeing you. Oh, good. Yeah. I have a question about church discipline.

There seems to be a big debate on the blogosphere. We're getting specifically the situation and some people are saying, hey, you know, but this ain't nobody's business, but, you know, canner and God's or canner in his local church.

And you people just want to see him. One guy claimed that people wanted to see him beheaded or something, you know, the kind of rational debate that you've been seeing on the blogosphere.

If someone were to call you and say, what would you do if Ergin Canner was in your church and showed the signs of true repentance?

Well, what would you advise? Well, a couple of things.

First of all, that is a condition contrary to fact to utilize some

Greek grammar language. I would love to see Ergin Canner showing any sign of repentance at all.

The fact that at this point in time, the information we have is demonstrating a complete silence on his part in in responding to these things and be a protestation of his innocence in his classes.

Anyways, it's totally hypothetical. Yeah, I realize that. I realize that. I just want

I want the problem is the problem is not everybody realizes that's hypothetical. They don't realize they feel like he actually has repented.

And there's no evidence that. But secondly, the problem is if Ergin Canner was in my church, this would have been something that would have had to have been dealt with by the elders of the church.

And I see no evidence right now that Thomas Road Baptist Church has done absolutely positively anything along these lines at all.

So you've got a fundamental fundamentally different view of ecclesiology.

And in fact, Canner comes from a Baptist background that connects the concept of plurality of elders with Reformed theology.

And therefore, it's something that's to be resisted in the sense of at least our understanding of that that concept of the plurality of elders.

So, I don't know, I can't I can't answer that.

I don't know. I saw a single quote yesterday that would give me some grounds of answering at least a portion of that.

Someone quoted Ergin Canner yesterday as saying that the deacons of Thomas Road Baptist Church could shut down the university on one day's notice.

So that would lead me to assume I'm going to and no matter what I say, there's certain people that don't care.

They're not going to allow me to contextualize anything. But for the rational folks in the audience, I don't know this for certain.

But if that was an accurate quote, then it would seem that Thomas Road has the standard monarchical pastor, single pastor, big staff hired on staff.

They normally are ordained but are not considered to be equal with the pastor. And then you've got the deacons who in essence control the purse strings and can hire and fire pastors and things like that, where the deacons are given a biblical role that the

New Testament never envisions for them in any way, shape or form. If that's the case, then there would have to be major public sin and there'd have to be votes on by the deacon body.

And you get all the politics and all the rest that kind of stuff that comes along with that kind of formation. And so there's a disconnect at that point, because from our perspective, once this information had come to light, then the elders would have to go to this individual and they would present the information to the individual, especially if he was an individual who had ever been in the pulpit of the church.

If this was a member of the church that was not involved in ministry, there'd be a slightly different approach,

I think, than a person who has stood behind the pulpit. But we all know that Ergin Kanner has preached at Thomas Road Baptist Church, and therefore there would be a rather strict standard that would be—and you would not be allowed to hide behind politically correct phrases.

It would be a matter of, are these accusations true? Can you substantiate what you have claimed, including from this pulpit?

And if you cannot do so, then there needs to be a public statement of confession and repentance that either can be read to the congregation or you can read it to the congregation yourself in seeking restoration.

And if you're not willing to do these things, then there would be disfellowshipping.

And the person would be treated as an unbeliever if they were not willing to admit the truth and repent of their sins and do the right thing.

But that requires a certain kind of ecclesiology that is, unfortunately, extremely rare in much of modern evangelicalism and, of course, an attitude that actually takes the whole concept of the purity of the church, and in this case, the purity of the pulpit, seriously.

And so I think that's where a lot of the disconnects are taking place. Now, one thing I did want to mention since you brought this up and since this has been one of the primary things that people have used to beat me over the head, this is not a

Matthew 18 issue. I would say the most common objection that has been raised to me is that this should have all been done in private.

Ergenkanner's sins of dishonesty were not in private. They were from the pulpit of not one church, not half a dozen churches, but dozens of churches.

And as a result, Matthew 18 is about if someone sins against you, it's about personal sin and you go to him privately.

Now, by the way, when I first became aware that there was a problem here, I went to him privately.

When I heard back from Shabir Ali that Shabir Ali had never debated him, let alone anything else, even knew him,

I went to him privately and he immediately wanted to keep it that way.

And I said, no, this is a public issue. But I went to him privately and said, please explain this.

And it was not until he put out a non -repentance statement that I had to publicly respond to it.

So this is not a Matthew 18 issue. And anybody who says, well, it should have been done privately just has a—if they're using

Matthew 18, they're abusing Matthew 18. And if they're not using Matthew 18, then I just have to ask, why is it that public deception of the people of God from the pulpit is to be handled privately?

I don't understand it. And I've had no one who makes that argument give me any kind of biblical explanation whatsoever as to why that's the case.

So there you go. Well, thanks. Had they dealt with this situation down there back in 2006 when you folks were trying to expose some of the character flaws that were so evident in your debate discussions, this wouldn't have dragged on for years and years.

Well, I want to make a clear differentiation between that. I, in hindsight, when

I look back over the correspondence that I had with Ergin Kanner at that time and the behavior that he demonstrated at that time, in hindsight, it makes perfect sense now.

But at the time, it never crossed my mind that there was— The debates, you know, well, gee, where are these debates?

I did. I did ask him about that, but I accepted, though I found it strange,

I accepted his response that they were done at local community colleges and therefore hadn't been recorded.

I didn't—call me naive, I guess, but I didn't press on the issue.

Now, in hindsight, I look at it and go, wow, it was it was right there in front of us the whole time. But at the time,

I didn't even see it myself. It was scandalous. It really was the way they treated you. Yeah, well, that was then.

And I honestly, as has been documented, I mentioned

Ergin Kanner one time between the spring of 2007 and the summer of 2009 on my blog, and that was in passing.

And it really wasn't even about him. So I just moved on. And it was not until this other stuff came up that things changed.

So anyways, thanks, Wayne. OK, thank you. Thanks for calling. All right, God bless. All right, 877 -753 -3341.

Let's talk with Jacob. Hi, Jacob. Hi, Dr. White. It's a pleasure to call in for the first time.

Yes, sir. I'm perfectly considering studying at Columbia Evangelical Seminary, too, so that's something

I just wanted to mention. Looks very interesting. I have a quick question for you, sir. Do you know of any references to the destruction of the

Jewish temple in the Nakamati text or the Pseudepigrapha text or false gospels?

I would have no reason to doubt that such references could exist.

I, off the top of my head, don't. I mean, certainly in the

Pseudepigrapha, you would have references to that. But in Nakamati, I would have to go to my resources to come up with any recollection of a specific reference to the destruction of the temple.

But I wouldn't find that to be an unusual thing at all. What's the background to your question?

Well, I just was considering the Book of Acts and Hebrews and how there's no mention of the temple, and thus using that as a means to assume that it was written before that.

Well, see, I use the same argument, especially as I'm going through Hebrews right now. I mentioned in chapter 7, right at the beginning, again, off the top of my head,

I think it's verse 3, where it says, If perfection came through the Levitical priesthood, and I point out the only people that would ever even think of that, the

Gentile Christians would never even give consideration to the idea of perfection coming through the Levitical priesthood.

But the only way to make sense of the argument of the Epistle at that point is that the temple is still standing and the

Levitical priesthood is still a valid thing that people could be being drawn to. And so there's excellent internal information from both

Luke and Hebrews that would place them well before A .D. 70. I mean, you really have to have a huge agenda to try to post -date either of those books after the destruction of the temple.

But that's because they're specifically addressing subjects relevant to the continuing existence of the temple, whereas, you know, the pseudepigrapha certainly might make references to the destruction of the temple, given the topics that they addressed.

But Nag Hammadi, especially with its Gnostic elements, you know, there might be something in their thinking at that point where, you know, the temple was the earthly and things like that.

And they're much more focused upon, you know, the spiritual Christ. So, you know, but again, they could make reference to destruction of the temple.

And on that basis, talk about the spiritual over against the physical, too. I don't know. It's just not something

I've ever looked up. Maybe somebody in Channel could. Well, actually,

I noticed that an atheist in Channel just mentioned something from Gospel Barnabas.

That's not pseudepigrapha, but, you know, obviously those anything written past the destruction of the temple, pretty easy to make reference to.

OK. Do I have time for a follow -up question? Sure. Sure. Go ahead. Well, I'm just a baby

Christian and I'm new to it. I agree with the five points of Calvinism. But would you have a quick time to to summarize

God's sovereignty over why some people are predestined for hell?

Well, again, you need to be careful in the utilization of that type of terminology. In fact, we had a call on the last program where we addressed that very thing.

And me and the caller knew we were talking about, but it might be good to expand upon that. When you when you talk about predestination to hell, you have to be careful to avoid the concept of equal ultimacy.

Equal ultimacy is the idea that the action of God in extending not just unmerited but demerited favor grace to certain members of the fallen race of Adam called the elect is equal to the same nature as the choosing of a person to receive punishment.

These are not the same things. The fact that a person is a sinner brings a penalty upon them simply due to their status as a sinner.

And in fact, given the concept of federal theology and our representation in Adam and in Christ, then the fallen sons and daughters of Adam, if they receive simply what is justice, will receive punishment.

It is an extraordinary extension of grace and mercy made available only because of the certainty and the accomplishment of the work of Jesus Christ that can allow the elect to receive forgiveness of sins, have that heart of stone taken out, given a heart of flesh, receive regeneration, forgiveness, adoption, et cetera, et cetera.

And so there is a vast difference between the justice of God allowing for the demonstration of his wrath against sinners and the extension of mercy and grace in the salvation of the elect.

They cannot be seen as parallel things. And so when you talk about the term predestination unto hell, that's where you have to be very careful that you're not saying that the act of predestination to heaven is parallel to an act of predestination to hell because those would not be the same things.

One is an act of justice, which simply says that any person who does not have perfect justice before God is an abomination and will be punished outside of his presence, whereas the other is an extension, a self -sacrificial giving of eternal life to the elect people of God.

And they are very, very, very different divine actions, and those need to be very strongly differentiated from one another.

As to why that is, again, the strongest answer to all of this,

I think, is found in Paul's words in writing to the Ephesians, where he says that he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved.

And so you have, it is according to his will and it is to the praise of his glorious grace.

And so God deems it appropriate that his grace be demonstrated.

But if that was a universal salvation, then that grace would not be seen.

In other words, if there is not the exercise of wrath and justice, but there is a universal salvation, then that grace cannot be seen because there is nothing to contrast it with.

Not all of the attributes of God would be demonstrated, his holiness, his wrath, his justice, as well as his mercy, his grace, and his love.

And, of course, either in universalism or in the situation where God saves no one, God would have no choice, no freedom of action in either one of those situations, which he does have in the creation of the university he created, wherein you have the extension of his mercy and grace to the elect people of God.

OK, well, thank you so much, pleasure talking with you. OK, and down there in Florida, I imagine it's probably a little bit humid right now, isn't it?

Ah, it's so humid, but you know what it would be like in Phoenix. Well, I saw 113 today and the humidity has spiked.

It's going to go away for a few days. But we get the monsoon flow coming in and it gets it gets furnace like here.

There's no two ways about it. So, all right. Thanks. Thanks, Jacob. Thank you, sir. God bless. Bye bye.

877 -753 -3341. We're just going to go blowing right through the normal break here because we've got we have one phone line open right now.

But since Ryan, hold on just one second. But since we have an overseas call and those can be very, very expensive, let's try to help

Michael here, especially since Michael lives in Australia, where he gets very small portions of food for much more money than we pay here in the

United States for larger portions of food. So we need to save him some money. Right, Michael? Thanks, Jay.

I appreciate you taking the call. I really enjoy the show and I just want to give you some encouragement about the whole

Urgent Care thing. That's not the main point of the call, but I just wanted you to know that I fully support you and everything that you've done.

Well, thank you, Michael. I think it just has to be done. My main question was actually on Mormonism.

I've been engaging with some Mormon missionaries recently. Let me just ask you,

Michael, are they from the U .S.? Two of them are, and two of them are actually

Pacific Islanders. Really? Yeah. Interesting. Well, I've actually been challenging the

Pacific Islanders about the whole racism aspect.

Right. That's a whole other topic. But two of the guys are from Utah, from Salt Lake City.

Specifically, in 2 Nephi 25, 19, it talks about how his name shall be

Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Right. And it makes repeated references throughout the Book of Mormon to Jesus' name being

Christ. And I haven't seen much written to address the fact that there doesn't seem to be an understanding that Christ is a title, not a name.

I was just wondering if you've addressed that anywhere that I might have missed, or if anybody's picked up on that in Mormonism at all.

Well, let me just give folks a little background here. Let me read all of 2 Nephi 25, 19, and maybe

Jamie can sort of pop that down a little bit so people can hear me. For according to the words of the prophets, the

Messiah cometh in 600 years from the time that my father left Jerusalem. And according to the words of the prophet and also the word of the angel of God, his name shall be

Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Now, you know, it's interesting, I'm not looking at the 1830 edition of the

Book of Mormon here, but it would be interesting to make sure that was the original reading. But be that as it may, it is painfully obvious that Joseph Smith is operating on a very shallow understanding, and he does see

Jesus Christ as a name. Now, interestingly enough, in that very verse uses

Messiah at one point, but he does use this idea that the very name of Jesus was known amongst the

Nephites and the Lamanites hundreds of years before the time of Christ here in this world, when that was not the case in the old world amongst the

Jews and things like that. Yeah, that has been addressed. I didn't really focus too much.

I mean, in Letters to a Mormon Elder, I talk about the anachronisms of the

Book of Mormon, and there's a truckload of them. But there are so many you could develop that you could write entire books, as people have.

Some of those anachronisms are developed much more fully in things written by, for example,

Gerald and Sandra Tanner on the subject of the Book of Mormon. So, yeah, all of that is there.

And it's amazing to read the scholarship coming out of Utah that attempts to find ways of turning this so plainly 19th century document into an ancient document.

But they keep putting forth a strong effort. Are you familiar,

Michael, with the Gerald and Sandra Tanner? Yeah, exactly. OK, good, good.

Excellent. Excellent. She's she's quite a source of information. Thank you, Michael.

All right. All right. God bless. Bye bye. Yeah, it sounds like a typhoon is that was not a

Skype call. Anyway, shape or form, he's on Skype, maybe on Skype mobile.

Well, maybe on Skype mobile, because that was that was one of the loudest background sounds

I've heard. So anyways, let's press on here. 877 -753 -3341.

Let's talk with Ryan down south. Hi, Ryan. Hey, Dr. White, can you hear me? I certainly can.

All right. My question is about love from the biblical sense, like in the way where the

Bible says, love your husband, love your wife as Christ, love the church and how John 316 says for God to love the world when when

God or when the Bible speaks, use the word love. Does it mean this is kind of my dilemma is saying that.

God saved us or saved the elect, and therefore it is love or this is love is the term we use as a description of this act or did

God save us because he loved us and saved that nature?

And the reason I'm asking these questions, because, you know, I'm trying to also balance this with the idea that we're not saved because of anything of ourselves.

So, you know, with God's love, I mean, you get my where I'm coming from.

Well, I'm not I'm not 100 percent certain there. The fact is that God is a personal being just as we are and just as and in fact, our our personhood is is dependent upon him and his creation of us.

And as a result, just as we have differing kinds of love, God does as well.

And so there is the general beneficence of God that is the only reason why any sinner exists for even a second after after he comes into existence as a sinner.

There is there is that that love that is expressed in creation, the fact that even the worst sinner, you know,

Adolf Hitler, while he was killing and murdering millions of people, undoubtedly stood on on many a porch in the in the

Alps and places like that. Well, not the Alps, but well, yeah, probably the Alps, but in various places and and looked at the sunset and saw the beauty of God's creation around him.

So there is that expression of God's beneficence and love. But then there is a very special love that exists between the husband and the wife that has to be different in kind than the love that exists between the husband and any other woman.

So there has to be specificity. There has to be knowledge. It has to have a different character and nature to it.

And the love that God has for his elect people, which expresses itself in the coming of Christ and his self -sacrifice, then obviously is a a kind of love that is is truly amazing.

Now, when we talk about that love, this was set upon us before before time itself.

And so I would say that that what is primary in God's nature is the fact that God is love and election then flows from and is the demonstration of the fact that he is love and he is expressing that love, that love exists between the father and the son.

And by uniting a people with the son, that love then is shed abroad in our hearts as well.

And so I think if you're asking what came first, his love for us that leads to our election or is his love for us due to his election,

I'm not sure how to answer that. I would say that his his love is primary in its expression of who he is and that everything else flows from his desire, like I said, the last caller or maybe the caller before that, actually, his desire to demonstrate and give evidence of the entirety of his divine attributes, his justice, his holiness, his wrath against sin, his power, as well as his love, his mercy, his grace.

And so I think that's the the the fountainhead. And then everything else, creation itself, our our election under grace flows from that that desire.

So we need to be careful putting too much of a temporal order on that in light of God's eternality and existence outside of the realm of time.

But an order of priority, I think, is appropriate. And I think love would be at the very root of everything that God has chosen to do.

Right. To give you maybe further clarification, I hope this does, of where I'm exploring the issue, and maybe you have addressed it and you can just go, well, that's what

I was saying. But what I've understood listening to your base stuff like that, you know,

God loves the elect in a saving way. So like when you talk about John 3, 16, it's better translated,

God showed his love in this fashion. All right. So he loved the elect in a saving way, but he didn't love the non -elect in a saving way.

Why is it that he loved us or the elect in a saving way and didn't the non -elect?

Now, I know the Bible says, well, it's a mystery. It's nothing to do with us. It's just one of those mysteries, not merely that we just don't know, but it's out there or it's just something incapable of understanding.

Well, I think that when you say, why does

God love the elect and not the non -elect? That's part of God's choice in a redeeming way.

It's God's choice. You see, the extension of grace, the extension of electing grace is based upon, as we saw in Ephesians 1, 5, the kind intention of his will.

And that term, eudaikion, that is used there, good pleasure, goodwill, approval, satisfaction, it's that which pleases

God. Fundamentally, it pleased God to extend mercy, grace, and love, and that salvific love is part and parcel of that grace that is given to us.

And he was free to do so in the way that glorified himself and the way he desired to be glorified.

It's not the, well, he saved as many as he could thing. He could save everybody if he wanted to.

That's not even in question, though, for many people's theology, that's not a possibility. He chose to glorify himself in the way that was pleasing in his sight.

And that's really where the mystery lies, is why one and not another?

Well, it's the kind intention of his will, the praise of his glorious grace. That is the only biblical answer that is given, and if it's not satisfying for someone, well, that's a spiritual aspect coming into play.

But it does not find the answer in us ourselves, as if, well, once we were elected, then that drew his love.

No, the love comes first and results in the election. And the answer as to why ultimately comes down to freedom.

I mean, I have to, you know, it's amazing how many people talk about how Calvinism is wrong because we have to freely choose.

If we're dead in sin, then I guess the whole thing falls apart. But when it comes to God's freedom to express his love and his purpose as he sees fit,

I submit the only way, the only biblical understanding that honors that is the

Reformed view, because we're the ones that say, we go to Ephesians 1, 5, and 6 and say, according to the kind intention of his will, it is his will that is predominant, and it is the satisfaction of his will and pleasing him that matters as the final thing, and that we as his creatures, that's why we exist, is for his pleasure, for his sovereign pleasure.

And that's what the atheists just, that's what Christopher Hitchens detests. But my submission is that when the heart of man, the rebellious heart of man has changed, that is something we rejoice in, not something that we rebel against.

By the way, I didn't mean to say that it's either love comes first and then the action, or the action comes first and then the love.

I meant more that either love comes first and it's separate from the action, and the action follows what the world may say in motion today.

I don't know how that would transcend it, but love and the action are the same thing.

Yeah, I think that the love is the attribute that brings about all else that God has done.

It is his desire to demonstrate all those attributes, including his love and his mercy, that results then in what he's done to glorify himself.

So the attributes always give rise to the actions. All right, well, and this will be my final thing, and I'll hang up and let you go ahead and let us say and move on.

But how do we, when the Bible says, you know, like, husbands love your wife or love one another, and that, how do we,

I mean, I can see how God in his mystery, you know, things of that nature, does what he does, is attribute a love.

How do we have attributes towards other people and things of that nature? Are they the same thing at all, or is it completely different?

Well, the fact that God is love results in his acting always in accordance with love.

And that's not just, it is different for us in the sense that,

A, all of our experience is tainted by sin. B, we are limited creatures, time -bound creatures, et cetera, et cetera.

But so we have to allow God's love to transcend any of our experience of it.

But the exhortations to love as Christ has loved us, God gives us examples and illustrations of his love in the redemption of a covenant people and patience toward them in the sending of prophets and obviously in the greatest way, in the giving of Jesus Christ.

And so it is different because our experience is different, but it is the same because we're created in the image of God and given the capacity to love in the way that he would command us to love and that he would desire to see us to love one another.

So, yes, any exhortation that's based upon what God has done, there's going to be a breakdown in analogy at some point because we are creatures, we're time -bound and we're fallen, and God is none of those things.

But God has seen it proper to continue to use that kind of analogy and example because it communicates to us and we recognize,

OK, I may not be able to love as perfectly as God does. However, it is still a high calling and I can see in the self -sacrifice of Jesus Christ the example that I am to use, et cetera, et cetera.

And hence, Scripture can use that kind of language. OK? All right, that helps. Thank you. OK, thanks, William. God bless.

Bye -bye. He's down there in Tucson, so hopefully—oh, and we lost our other caller.

We had—I was just about to go to the next caller, but maybe I answered all those questions. We have open phone lines at 877 -753 -3341.

877 -753 -3341 is the phone number. I suppose it could have—I was only clicking on one button, but I have noticed since we upgraded the

Comrex here that I have to triple -click the air button to get them on and double -click the drop button to get them off.

That wasn't the way it was with the old one, but that's just sort of the way it is. 877 -753 -3341, excellent questions on the program today.

And we have some other folks calling in right now and we'll get to your phone calls as quickly as possible.

Just a quick reminder that—I was just watching some of the odd things going on in the channel.

We've got a lot of folks in channel today. I'm sort of wondering—I mean, we've got a lot. We've got 76 channel folks right now.

That's a fair number of folks in channel. That happens when we're doing debates and things like that. I'm wondering how many are coming from, you know,

Liberty University or something like that. Maybe that will bring it along. I don't know.

But, ah, OK, did I—I may have had—I may have gone—that may have been all my error there.

Maybe I clicked on the wrong person. I don't know. Maybe I clicked on the wrong person because I clicked on William.

That's what I probably did. So I'm going to—William, I'm sorry if I clicked on you and got rid of you.

I apologize if I did that. But if I did, that's my fault.

What can we help with today? Well, first off, thank you for taking my call, Dr. White. I really appreciate your work in apologetics.

And I appreciate your work in showing integrity concerning the Cantor situation in Liberty University.

I think I give God the glory for him using you in that way as he has. My question is concerning the three uses of the law.

I have heard several individuals in the reform circle state three uses of the law is that the law shows us that we are sinners.

The law brings us to Christ. But then some individuals say we have to go back to the law of Moses to learn what justification is all about and how to live our lives.

What would you say to an individual who uses that kind of reasoning when it comes to the use of the law?

Well, I'm not sure that I would express the third use in that way.

I don't think there's any question. See, what you may be referring to, let me give some background for folks.

Sometimes I forget to do that and not everyone is familiar with the backgrounds. What may be in the background of the question here is the division that we've discussed at times in the past here on the program between covenant theology and what's called new covenant theology.

And there are new covenant theologians, some of whom are rather radical, who would say that the only law that is relevant to the

Christian today is what they call the new covenant law, the law of Christ. And they basically would say that if the

New Testament, the new covenant, repeats something from the old covenant, that that makes it valid and binding upon us.

If it doesn't, then there is nothing that is binding or valid from the old covenant.

And it's interesting, some have taken that to its logical conclusion and have been asked, well, since the

New Testament never says, for example, you shouldn't marry your sister, can you marry your sister? And some have said, yeah, under the new covenant you can, which leads to all sorts of rather intriguing applications down the road.

But we even had, I'm pretty certain it was on this program, we even had a dialogue on this subject just about three years ago,

I think. I'm trying to remember who was involved. Was Richard Braselis involved?

If Al goes on channel, he'll remember this. But one of the questions that came up was in the description of the new covenant in Jeremiah chapter 31, which is repeated then in Hebrews chapter 8, that description of the new covenant believer is one who has the law written upon his heart.

Well, what was the only law that would have made any sense whatsoever in Jeremiah chapter 31, but God's moral law?

And so if he has that law written upon his heart, that's rather important. So as I understand it, the law reveals to us our sin and it reveals to us our inability to be made right before God.

As Paul expressed it in Galatians, the law was our schoolmaster or our tutor to lead us unto

Christ. And so there is the use of the law in bringing conviction to the heart of the individual.

The Holy Spirit uses that revelation of our sin, which is found in God's holy law, to drive us away from ourselves and our self -righteousness to the

Savior and the Savior alone who can give to us righteousness and eternal life. Then in the life of the believer, the entirety of God's law in the sense of the moral law that is found in the

Mosaic Code and the applications of that that we find in the

New Testament become the light by which we understand the holiness of God and seek to guide our lives under the tutelage of the

Holy Spirit to live in a way that is pleasing to God.

Now, that leaves open a great area of discussion and disagreement amongst many godly men, and that is when we look at the

Old Testament law, making firm distinctions between moral and ceremonial is not always an easy thing to do.

We can identify certain things that had application to the people of Israel.

Are we to draw moral application from those things, or are we not to?

Or how do we do it? Some of the examples that we've used in the past, you have the law that says that you are to, in essence, fence the roofs of your house.

Well, I can guarantee you I do not have a fence on the roof of my house. Am I breaking

God's law? Well, when you look at why they fenced the roofs of their houses, they spent a lot of time up there, especially in the cool of the evening.

That's where everybody goes. And so many people have said, well, I draw from this the application that I am to do due diligence to protect human life.

And as that then has application to, you know, if I have a, well, here in Phoenix, we have children that fall into pools all the time and drown.

Is that where the application needs to be made, for example? We have the very important theological and apologetic application of the

Holiness Code in Leviticus 18 through 20, and the fact that we've had entire television shows.

You may remember the West Wing. We've talked about this before. We were on the West Wing years ago. The president gave the classic homosexual defense argument from the

Holiness Code and said, you know, raised the issues of the mixed fibers and the eating of pork and the trimming of the beard and things like that, and said, you know, right here in the

Holiness Code, where it says you're not to lie with a male as you lie with a female, you have these other things that you ignore.

Well, there's an element of truth to the fact that, yeah, we do ignore it. I mean, most evangelicals have never read

Leviticus, let alone tried to honestly look at the laws found in the

Holiness Code and go, okay, there's clearly things here that are related to eternal moral principles in regards to homosexuality, but then there are things that are clearly about how the people of God avoid blaspheming the name of God and avoid looking like the pagan religions around them.

And so, for example, you have a number of prohibitions of things that I don't think would have application today or would fall under Romans 14, the

Lordship of Christ, that are there. For example, the trimming of the beard. I trim my beard every morning, okay?

Unless you're a Muslim and you got one of those big, huge beards that go everywhere, why was it that they were not to trim their beards?

Because of the pagan religious practices that went with those things.

We have in Leviticus 19 .28, you shall not cut yourself for the dead, or you shall not, and then the term is ka 'akad.

We're not sure what it means. Some translations, most translations say tattoo. We're not really sure exactly what it is, but that stuff has to do with religious practices of the day, pagan religious practices of the day.

Maybe out of fear of the dead, maybe out of honor of the dead. We find evidence for both in the pagan religions of the day.

Sometimes they would mark themselves to try to hide themselves from the spirits that would come back and try to curse them.

Sometimes it was a matter of honoring the dead or mourning over the dead, that they would cut themselves, etc.

Well, how do we make application to that today? Well, I don't think it's just a one -to -one correspondence.

I think we ask the question, well, what is it that pagans do today in their paganism that we should avoid doing and be different than them?

So there's all sorts of really important discussions that go there, and normally the balance drives us back to Romans chapter 14 and the

Lordship of Christ. And that's uncomfortable for some people because some people would prefer just a black and white,

I don't want to have to make application of these things, so the fencing of my roof thing, I can just forget it.

I don't want to give thought to that. But if you ever get a tattoo, you're going to hell. That's the easy way of doing things, but I don't think that that's really the way to honor those texts.

You have to do some digging in and go, what's actually being said here?

What's the actual history? What's the actual application? And you might even have to allow for some differences of opinion on some of the applications that you come to, but that's what you need to do.

And so I think there is a third use in the sense that God's law illustrates

God's holiness, and we as Christians want to know, what has God considered to be holy for his people in the past?

And I need to grow in my understanding of, alright, I recognize there are cultural differences, there's time differences, there is the specific people of Israel and things like that, but what can

I learn from these things? And I think unfortunately we have really been impoverished by not spending time in those texts and just zooming by them, and you almost never hear preaching from anything like that, because we're, well, sometimes we're bored and sometimes we're afraid of controversy.

But in any case, that would be my take on those things. Well, I thank you for your answer.

You give me 14 minutes of response, it'll take me 16 days to sort out, but thank you for giving me some room for thought,

Hannah. Do you have any events, any debates you plan on bringing back toward my side of the country, where we're soaking wet and we're feeling the wrath of yet another hurricane?

Down there in Houston? Well, you know, the church I was at two years ago in Houston, they haven't called to have me back yet, and you know what?

If they called, I'd go back, because I had a great time with them. So I'd love to head down that direction.

Right now I don't have anything scheduled, but I've been down there and love to get a chance to go back, just not during the humid time of the year.

But that's only two days a year. Yeah, right. Houston? Yeah. You mean the non -humid time? Yeah, the non -humid time.

That's right. You're exactly right. Thank you, Dr. White. God bless. Bye -bye. Yeah, he's exactly right.

There is only about two days a year in Houston that isn't humid. But anyway, well, hey, great questions today.

Thanks for listening to The Vying Line. You made this one go. I walked in here going, what am I going to talk about today?

I knew I needed to do the announcements about the Hitchens debate and the John 1016 conference and stuff like that, but I thought, you know what?

I have a feeling we've got such a good audience out there. We'll cover a lot of ground anyways. So hopefully challenging things for you to think about.

Thanks for listening to The Vying Line today. We'll see you, Lord willing, next Tuesday. God bless. It's a

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