Radio Free Geneva: Mark Driscoll, Michael Brown, Tony Hutson

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You constantly hear people that are Calvinist harp on this, they just keep repeating it and they repeat it so much you start to think it's a

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Biblical truth. Jesus stands outside the tomb of Lazarus, he says,

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Lazarus, come out, and Lazarus said, I can't, I'm dead. That's not what he did,

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Lazarus came out. To me, to tell me a dead person can respond to the command of Christ... Well I can talk over your head like that.

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I know the Hebrew, the Greek, I've done theology, you can tell I know. Do you really believe that it parallels the method of exegesis that we utilize to demonstrate those other things?

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Um, no. Some new

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Calvinists, even pastors, very openly smoke pipes and cigars just as they drink beer and wine.

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Even Jesus cannot override your unbelief. A verse like that to him, you know what it would sound like if he were listening to it?

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Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It wouldn't make any sense to him. A self -righteous, legalistic, deceived jerk.

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And you need to realize that he's gone from predeterminism, now he's speaking of some kind of middle knowledge that God now has to...

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I deny and categorically deny middle knowledge. Then don't beg the question that would demand me to force you to embrace it.

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You're not always talking about necessarily God choosing something for no apparent reason, but you're choosing that meat because it's a favorable meat.

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There's a reason to have the choice of that meat. And now, from our underground bunker deep beneath the faculty cafeteria in New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, safe from all those moderate

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Calvinists, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and re -read George Bryson's book, we are

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Radio Free Geneva! Broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to say for his own eternal glory.

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Yes, indeed. Always fun to watch people respond to the Radio Free Geneva theme.

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I always feel sorry for the people who keep writing to me and say, So, what's the difference between Radio Free Geneva and The Dividing Line?

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And it's like, well, just listen, you'll get the idea. Radio Free Geneva, where we deal with objections to Reformed theology, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

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And we'll be dealing with a little bit of both today, I guess. You can sort of guess what prompted at least the beginning of the program today, and that was a couple weeks ago, the internet all of a sudden exploded with memes and quotes of Mark Driscoll, formerly

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Mars Hill. I'm just going to tell you straight up right now, I've never read a

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Mark Driscoll book. The only sermon on Mark Driscoll I ever heard was the infamous one about where he had porn vision or something, where he could sort of see something about his congregation and what they were doing and stuff.

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And I'm sure that was not representative of what he was normally preaching, so that really isn't all that fair, but that's the only one that I ever heard.

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And I think that was more toward the end of his time up there. I read some stuff once about stuff that he used to say on web boards using a pseudonym or something.

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I remember something along those lines. I was never a person that just got into all that stuff.

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And so when he moved to Phoenix, Scottsdale specifically, I think everybody's like, hey, you're going to meet up with Mark Driscoll?

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I'm like, you don't seem to realize that Phoenix is not a little western small town.

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It is the fifth largest city in the United States, by however you measure those things. And so it's, no, the chances of us running into each other are fairly small.

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But lo and behold, all of a sudden, a couple weeks ago, the internet explodes with Mark Driscoll, who

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I understand named one of his sons Calvin, after John Calvin, made the statement in some webcast that Calvinism is garbage.

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And then a few, sometime last week, I guess, a web -ask -Pastor -Mark thing came out.

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And he never explained, in this one anyways, why he called

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Calvinism garbage. So you're not going to get any explanation of that. He repeatedly says he's reformed, but not necessarily a

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Calvinist, which in and of itself raises all sorts of questions as to what in the world he means by any of that.

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Connection to historical issues, confessional issues, there's all sorts of questions that were not answered in this particular webcast.

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But there were enough really interesting things said that we're going to take some time to look at.

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Then, once we finish up with Mark Driscoll, there's a five -minute segment of video that's been floating around from Michael Brown on the subject of Calvinism.

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And everybody says, you need to respond to this. And other people say, you'll never respond to this because he's your friend. I remember a couple years ago,

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Michael put out a little video why I'm not a

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Calvinist. And so I responded with a little video why I'm not an Arminian. And we've debated this many times before, and so we'll go back at it again.

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And then I've got just some of the strongest argumentation we've ever tried to deal with on the dividing line from...

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Well, you just have to watch it to be able to understand. It's compelling. Compelling is one of the best terms

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I could come up with. It is truly compelling. Propelling.

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Something. We'll get to it. Dr. Tony Hudson will explain to us why we should not believe in Calvinism.

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I'm still concerned that Dr. Hudson is not actually an employee of Babylon Bee, but we'll see when we get there.

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Anyway. Okay, so let's dive into the Mark Driscoll stuff. He did a 20 -minute thing.

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Obviously, I'm not going to play all 20 minutes. But let's dive in and listen.

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It would help, of course, if my thing was plugged in there all the way, so let's try it again. But I would say that what oftentimes holds historic

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Protestantism together, of which I'm a part, and I am reformed, is... He says,

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I am reformed over and over and over and over again. While at the same time...

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By the way, the one time I tried to look into his theology, I came to the conclusion,

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I ran across stuff that made it fairly clear, he does not believe and did not, for a while back anyways, believe in particular redemption, limited atonement.

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And the fact is, unless you are really well -read in second and third generation

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Reformed theology and specifically have read... You are an

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Amaraldian and have read Amaral, the vast majority of people who call themselves four -pointers are not objecting to limited atonement.

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They think they are. But when you dig and you push, what they're actually objecting to is unconditional election.

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So if you don't believe in unconditional election, I don't care what else you call yourself, you're not Reformed. Not in any meaningful sense of the word.

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In fact, if you're a Presbyterian and you had all your children baptized 14 times before their 15th day of life and you don't believe in unconditional election,

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I don't think you're Reformed. Because you don't believe in the sovereignty of God. And if anything defines Reformed theology, it's the sovereignty of God.

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Everything flows from that. It just does strike me from some of the comments he will make that that means something and that means something to his interpretation.

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So, grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, scripture alone, to God be the glory alone.

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Well, certainly the Solas are important, but the Solas, as we've said many times before, are a modern reflection looking back upon the principles that gave rise to the

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Reformation. And they are not the issues that specifically differentiate between those who are monergists and synergists.

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Now, he's going to get into monergism and synergism, but I just sensed a real lack of clarity of thought and presentation in regards to what the definitional issues really are in what was presented in this webcast.

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Those were, I would say, the big overarching principles of the Big Tent, and then there were various nuanced positions on other issues by those who were under that tent.

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Well, part of the debate really within the Protestant Reformation that continues to this day is a very important issue, and that is how is someone justified in the sight of God?

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If God is holy and righteous and good and we are sinful and fallen, how can he declare us righteous, right?

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God's a perfect being. Heaven is a perfect kingdom. We're not perfect. How in the world are we ever going to qualify to be in that place if the standard is perfection?

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Well, the answer is that Jesus Christ died on the cross in our place for our sins.

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Okay, now, obviously material principle of the Reformation, the concept of sola fide, but the issues regarding justification and what it means, that's one area very importantly connected to the other area, but but very plainly, when we're talking about the definition of Calvinism and Reformed theology, the issue there is in regards to man's status, the existence of a divine decree, the sovereignty of God over human affairs, the whole issue of the free will of man, the first written debate of the

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Reformation between Erasmus and Luther on that very issue.

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And that's not I mean, that's related to solas because Erasmus doesn't believe in the solas or at least doesn't believe in sola scriptura, doesn't practice sola scriptura, whereas Luther does whether either one of them were consistent with their own position is another issue.

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But again, just a strange lack of clarity and a mixture of categories historically and biblically speaking that we'll see elsewhere.

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And as a result, there is an opportunity for a person through faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ to be justified, declared righteous, given the righteousness of Jesus Christ through faith.

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And so within that, the question is one of synergism versus monergism. Synergism means two people working together.

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Monergism is one person working alone. So if you think of it this way, if I could use a simple analogy, imagine someone's drowning, and they're going to be rescued and or saved, to use language of the

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Bible. The question is do they raise their hand? That's not a good illustration and I'm surprised that someone who calls himself

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Reformed would use it. The real issue is not a person struggling in the water where they're going to put their hand up.

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If you're dead in sin, you're not struggling in the water. You are dead on the bottom of the ocean.

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You've got bite marks from the great whites that came by and can we even talk about that anymore?

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From the sharks that came by and took bites out of you. You're dead.

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It's not a matter. You don't even have the capacity. You are a rebel sinner. You are in rebellion against God.

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You are not able to submit to the law of God. Unable, unable, unable, unable. John chapter 6 in a number of different ways expresses you are not able.

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John 6 44, later again 65, you lack the capacity to come to Christ.

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So it's not just a thrashing around and whether I put my arm up or whether I don't, dead on the bottom of the ocean needing resurrection life.

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That's the issue. Or whether I'm spiritually active and alive in some fashion and hence have an autonomous will and that kind of thing.

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Right. The drowning victim and then God grabs their hand and then they lock arms and they participate in their deliverance.

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They participate in their rescue because they reached up and someone reached down.

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That would be the position of synergism. That we can reach up and that God will reach down and that together, in some form or fashion, justification, salvation will occur.

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Monergism says, no, no, no. We are not participating in our justification. It is a one -handed work of God.

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It is something that God exclusively does. And I would just say... In other words, God has the power to raise the spiritual life and only

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God has the power to raise spiritual life. That's the reformed position.

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Much of this goes all the way back to a guy like Augustine. Some of this is really early in church history and theology and so you don't even necessarily have to be in one of those narrow particular lanes to believe in monergism.

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But that's really the issue is ultimately, do we participate or does God do all of the work?

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Because if we do some of the work, it seems possible that we could undo the work and if God does all the work, it seems permanent.

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Well, all of that results in a group forming and gathering and having time to put together their theological convictions in 1610.

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It was the Remonstrance. And I want to make note too that John Calvin died in 1564.

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And so what that means is you've got decades from the death of Calvin to the gathering of those who would come with the five points of Arminianism.

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And then in response, those who were Calvinistic, followed in the traditions of Calvin, they would come along and they would have the refutation,

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I'll explain that in a moment, of the five points of Calvinism. And a lot of people think, well, the five points of Calvinism, that must be

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Calvin. No, it's decades after Calvin. And it's a very debatable, questionable point, but some would even argue, and I think fairly persuasively, that Calvin may have not believed in limited atonement himself.

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And so the five points of Calvinism, they may be influenced by John Calvin, and they may not be completely from John Calvin.

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So that being said, you can love Calvin without being as excited about the five points of Calvinism.

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Well, it's very common, again, books have been written, articles have been written, we talk about some, the

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Potter's Freedom, we've talked about in preceding issues of Radio Free Geneva as well.

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But that particular subject aside, the fundamental issues that you are facing when you look at the remonstrants,

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Arminius and his followers. Arminius considered himself a Reformed theologian as well.

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And the particular points that were raised did not specifically address the issue of God's sovereignty,

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God's decree, issues like that. But the remonstrants was a very clear move back toward Rome, and back toward a synergistic system, and those at the

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Synod of Dort recognized that that was the case. As to Calvin's position on that,

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I think you can demonstrate a consistency in his theology in regards to that, but that was not a topic of the day.

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So it's so often that people attempt to drag people into controversies that they never addressed.

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And since they never addressed them, then you have to speculate and say, well, since they said this, well, since they said that.

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I think the reality should be kept clear that Calvin himself said, if you want to know what

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I believe, you go to the Institutes. And if you consistently interpret the Institutes, not just comments made in passing in the commentaries, but specifically to the

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Institutes, you can build a pretty solid case that consistently Calvin would accept particular redemption.

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What he clearly accepts is unconditional election to the nth degree. And as such, the question then becomes, can you in any way insert an intentional universal atonement into a doctrine that is as clear as Calvin is in the

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Institutes in regards to full -on predestinarian theology?

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That really becomes the question at that particular point in time. So, we skip forward a little bit.

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Concern around that led to something called the Synod of Dort that met many times over the years of 1618, 1619, and they were responding to the points of Arminianism.

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So they came up with the five points of Calvinism in response as a refutation to the five points of Arminianism.

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Number one is total depravity, that we are such sinners by nature and choice that we would never choose

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God because we're dead in our trespasses and sins. Total depravity. Okay, so there's the first description.

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And yes, we're dead in our trespasses and sins, but what does that necessarily mean in regards to is this talking solely about the unregenerate individual?

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There's going to be confusion later on that really surprised me when part of his criticism was of Calvinism making total depravity your entire anthropology, and then his objection is it's not true of Christians.

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I'm like, this man does not speak as a person who has ever been a

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Reformed theologian or a person with a broad exposure to Reformed theology,

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Reformed writing, thought, and things like that. It surprised me just the expressions that were utilized.

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It really did. Unconditional election that God chose us of free, pure grace. There's nothing that we did to participate or earn or merit that favor in any regard.

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Al limited atonement that Jesus Okay, so again, if I'm going to talk about unconditional election,

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I'm going to talk about the specificity and reality of God's decree of salvation.

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He has elected a particular people unto salvation that is then accomplished in perfect harmony by the

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Father, Son, and the Spirit. Again, I sense, and this isn't enough to be making final judgments about, but I just sense a disconnectedness.

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Now, just maybe because this is a webcast or, you know, I don't know, but if I were asked in a webcast to present my

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Reformed belief, it's not like the first time I've done it, and so there's going to be certain things that are going to come out.

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I'm going to emphasize the sovereign freedom of God, I'm going to emphasize His decree, I'm going to emphasize the

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Trinitarian nature of the gospel, all sorts of stuff like that, that I just see the points just sort of existing disconnected from one another, which

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I find odd. Al limited atonement that Jesus died on the cross for the sins of the elect, not for the sins of all.

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That's the most debated point of Calvinism, and that is really the point where someone will say,

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I'm a four -pointer, I'm a five -pointer. That would often be the point that if someone is not going to accept all five points of Calvinism, that is usually the leading candidate.

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And, again, as I said before, I really believe that the vast majority of objections to particular redemption are actually objections to unconditional election.

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I heard nothing that would reflect Mr. Driscoll's understanding of the unity of the

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Father, the Son, the Spirit, and the accomplishment of that one sovereign decree, the voluntary positions that they take in that drama, and in that accomplishment.

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Hence, the standard objections against limited atonement, not really recognizing the strongest presentation of what that actually means.

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Limited atonement, irresistible grace, that if God chooses you, eventually He's going to get you. He's going to get you into relationship with Him.

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Now, that is way too short, and He's going to get you. We're talking here about the

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Spirit's ability to bring about regeneration by His own power. We're talking about the difference between saving grace and any other expression of God's patience.

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In other words, there is a redemptive grace that brings about the salvation of God's people infallibly.

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The power of the Spirit in bringing it, just so many different things. Again, it may just be well, this is a webcast, so we're doing it fast and whatever, but it's just unusual in my experience for a

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Reformed theologian to not only express it in that way, but to spend so little time on irresistible grace and more time on the preservation of the saints.

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It's odd. Perseverance of the saints, that we are kept secure because of the finished work of Christ and you can't undo what

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Christ has done, and so your eternity is secure, and the true believers will persevere in that.

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They will continue in their relationship with God. They may have rebellious seasons, but they'll return in repentance.

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Okay, that's basically would be an accurate summary at that particular point in time.

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Number one, this is a protest within a protest. So Protestantism...

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Now, here's where we get into some of the Church history stuff, and this again made me go, okay, and we're going to start with a common misapprehension about what

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Protestantism means. You've heard it before. I know it's very common.

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This is a protest, and so it's called Protestantism, and that's not what it came from.

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We've talked about it before, but basically you have diets that met in the

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Holy Roman Empire, and as the political winds blew back and forth, and Charles had control,

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Charles didn't have control, who was elector in this area, who was elector in that area, etc., etc.,

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finally, if I recall correctly, I don't have any notes in front of me, but as I recall, it was in 1529, the

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Protestants were put in the minority position, and when

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Charles then attempted to use the power of the Holy Roman Empire to suppress their worship, primarily

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Lutheran worship at that point, of course, there was a mechanism in the legal system of the

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Holy Roman Empire for the minority to protest the actions of the majority.

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The term Protestant came from politics. It came from the internal politics and legal documents of the

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Holy Roman Empire. That's where Protestant came from. Now, has it evolved?

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Can you make the argument that it was a protest against Rome's theology? Well, it was in a sense, but that's sort of using the word protest in an odd fashion.

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It was a refutation of major elements of Rome's theology, but not all of Rome's theology.

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The reformers were Trinitarians, and so on and so forth, so the term protest just doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, and the term

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Protestant didn't come from protest. It came from the minority actions of the electors in the

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Holy Roman Empire. I think it was the Diet of Spire in 1529, as I recall, just off the top of my head. It literally means protest.

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It's what we're against. And then within that, the Calvinistic response to Arminianism is a protest.

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It's a rebuttal, a refutation of Arminianism. So what you've got is you've got a protest within a protest.

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Now, the Calvinists, if anything was a protest, it was the remonstrants protesting against the

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Reformed Orthodoxy that had become established in the Netherlands and places like that.

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It's not the other way around. He may have meant to express it that way, I don't know. And so my encouragement would be for all of us, and I'm not saying there aren't things that we need to correct or stand against, contending for the faith, to use the language of the

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Scriptures, but I am saying that we need to be careful that our primary energy is not always trying to figure out who or what am

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I against, and who or what can I protest or critique right now. We all do that.

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I'm guilty of that for sure, and there are times that that is necessary. It's really obvious to me that if you read the

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Institutes of Christian Religion, Calvin is giving a very positive presentation of God's truth.

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Unapologetic in the modern sense of that term, very apologetic in the more classical sense of that term. That's certainly what he's doing.

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And so that already existed, and then you have the remonstrants seeking to go back at that particular point in time to a more synergistic perspective a la

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Rome. But if that's the whole disposition, it might not be the best use of energy because ultimately it should be not who we're against but who we're for, and not what we're against but what we're for, and people need not only to have a correction of faulty theology, but also instruction in sound doctrine.

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Number two, I believe that the five points of Calvinism start in the wrong spot.

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Because number one, they start with man, not God. Total depravity.

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That's man's fallen state. If we're going to have a real God -centered theology, it seems like we should start with God, not man.

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And it seems like we should start where the Bible starts, not where our opponents start.

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This was just confusion. The reason that the

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Synod of Dort responded the way they did is because they're responding to a specific complaint, a specific position, and Arminianism starts with man.

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That's the whole essence that anyone who is Reformed should know this. This should just be second nature.

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Arminianism starts with man, and therefore the rebuttal of that follows that pattern.

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But no one should, I'm not sure why Mark Driscoll thinks this, but no one should think, no one would think, if they had actually read

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Calvin, that this is a theology that starts with man. And if you have read

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Chosen by God by R .C. Sproul, if you've read My God's Sovereign Grace or The Potter's Freedom, in each one of those, you will have the same presentation made that we really should have a stulip.

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It should be the six points of Calvinism, because everyone understands if you look at anyone who was involved at the

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Synod of Dort, they started with their theology of God.

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They did not start with total depravity. It is a complete misrepresentation of any of their, any of them who were published, any of their published writings, what came before in the establishment of Reformed Orthodoxy, that starts with man.

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In fact, one of the greatest criticisms that is offered is that Reformed theology is too high -minded and otherworldly because it's completely focused upon something we can't really know, and that is the content of God's decree and things along those lines.

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And it's focused upon the majesty of the triune God and the accomplishment of His purposes and all that kind of stuff, and that's just not what people are interested in today, and so we need to be focused on something that meets man's needs more, etc.,

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etc. Well, yeah, the Reformed accept that and embrace that and say, yeah, we start with God, and we start with His nature, and we start with His purposes and intentions because that's what then gives you the proper context to be able to find who man is, biblically speaking.

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And so, to say that the five points start at the wrong place is just to completely miss their place in history, the intentions of the authors, and everything else.

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And he goes on to talk about a book he's revising anyways, which is interesting, and then we pick up.

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In Genesis 1 and 2, that's very, very important, and I know my Calvinist friends, whom I love, and I've learned a lot from, and there's a lot

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I hold in common with, would agree with me on that point. He was actually saying that we start in Genesis 3 and the real story starts in Genesis 1.

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Well, that is... I don't know how you call yourself a Reformed theologian, and you haven't figured that out.

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You don't understand what it is that has been said all along. It's just a misrepresentation. In addition, number three,

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I think you've got to be careful that you don't have total depravity be the sum total of your anthropology.

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The total depravity means our mind, will, emotions, body, all of our being was infected and affected by sin, but that is not how the

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Bible primarily refers to a believer in Jesus Christ. I think it's 300 times if my memory is correct in the

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New Testament, it refers to sinners, but there's only three texts that are potentially referring to a believer as a sinner.

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Sinners are believers and unbelievers. Okay. It took me a while to listen to Stephen figure out what the objection was, to be honest with you, because, again, when you have someone as an author who is saying,

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I am Reformed, I am Reformed, I am Reformed, I've been doing this a long, long time, you're going to assume certain common foundations that you would share.

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And in Reformed theology, when we talk about total depravity, we are talking about the unregenerate man.

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When you talk about the regenerate man, you have an individual who is a new creation in Christ, and the categories are completely changed.

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It's a recognition of a radical change that has been brought about by God and by God's spirit.

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So, again, I could understand this kind of expression from someone who's never read

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Calvin. Someone who's never read the second generation, never read Turretin, never read any of the

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Westminster Divines, or even modern, had never read Warfield or Hodge or Sproul.

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I could understand that, but when you repeatedly say, I'm Reformed, I'm Reformed, I'm Reformed, and then you make these statements and try to offer corrections to quote -unquote

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Calvinism that aren't relevant to Calvinism. Well, okay. I suppose if he is primarily interacting with online

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Calvinism, okay, but hopefully we can tell the difference between what you find on Facebook and what you find in a systematic theology written by Charles Hodge or something.

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There is normally a real big difference there. I don't know.

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It was just very, very confusing to me as to why he did that. Now, I have this little teeny tiny section.

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I'm trying to remember why. Well, I'll remember when I play it here. But our identity is not in what we have done, but what

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Jesus has done. Okay, yeah. Keep that in mind because he wants to say that Jesus' work on the cross, he seemingly believes it's universal.

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He rejects that point. But then, whenever he talks about the work of Christ, he always makes the application to believers.

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Our identity is because of what Jesus has done. Well, if Jesus has done the same thing for everybody, then why doesn't the person in hell have the same identity that the elect has?

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Because Jesus has done the same thing for both of them. And so, he may want to lean toward monergism, but you can't consistently do that once you divorce the intention and scope of the work of the

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Son from the decree of the Father and the application of the Spirit. Once you make the Atonement non -Trinitarian, and I would argue that's what universal

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Atonement does, is it is a non -Trinitarian application of the

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Atonement, because it's outside of the decree of the Father and outside the work of the Son. It is asserting an intention on the part of the

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Son that is not shared by the Father and the Spirit. Now, that's troubling on many levels, but I also recognize that 99 .999

37:27

% of everyone who holds universal Atonement has never even thought about it, let alone been challenged to think about it.

37:33

So, you know, keep that in mind before you start jumping up and down on using the term heresy of your next -door neighbor, or worse, the person sitting next to you in Bible study on Sunday.

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Don't want to cause that kind of problem, but so it is interesting, again, the inconsistency there.

37:54

And then lastly, there is a difference between systematic and biblical theology. Now, okay, we've discussed this before, but again, there was just a...

38:09

The problem I had is someone claiming one title, one descriptor, and then not acting like that actually is where they're coming from.

38:21

You know, it's not like... Okay, he never answered why he said Calvinism was garbage and the other thing.

38:27

I don't get it, and I don't know why he was running around with all the Freudian daddy wound stuff and all the rest of that silliness that I heard in a little of that other one

38:35

I listened to, but in this instance, this sounds way too familiar to me.

38:43

I've heard all this before, and let's play the rest of it.

38:49

A biblical theology is literally just trying to work through all of the scriptures, and we need systematic theology, and everybody has one.

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And systematic theology is where we take the various texts or concepts, and we put them together thematically and categorically.

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We all do that. That's perfectly well and good. The question is, is your systematic theology over your

39:12

Bible, or is your Bible over your systematic theology? If your systematic theology is over your

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Bible, then anything that doesn't fit your system, you're going to ignore it, downplay it, cut it out, whatever the case may be.

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Because, I'll just be honest, there is no systematic theology that really has every verse of the

39:34

Scripture fit tidily into. God tends to be a little free, and there are some points in the

39:41

Scriptures where whatever your position is, you can't get everything in the Bible to get shoehorned into that category.

39:47

You can try really hard, but God's Word is still free. And if we have our systematic theology under our biblical theology, then we'll allow more mystery, we'll allow more questions to be,

40:00

I don't know, maybe it's this, maybe it's that, without having to come down on a hard position. Okay, so, there's everything right in recognizing categories of systematic theology and biblical theology, but we live in a day where the vast majority of writing and teaching scholars no longer believe that biblical theology is consistent enough to give us a systematic theology.

40:31

And so, in the vast majority of commentaries, books that you will purchase in a

40:38

Christian bookstore or online anymore, I don't know if the Christian bookstores even exist anymore, but what you're going to find in those publications is an assumption.

40:51

And the assumption is that biblical theology is self -contradictory, that Paul's position and Peter's position and John's position and Luke's position are fundamentally different from one another.

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Not necessarily 180 -degree opposites, but the idea of an overarching consistency that is the assumption of the biblical writers themselves is absent from the vast majority of what is being written today.

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And if you believe that there can be a systematic theology because that there is an intended and purposeful, supernatural coherence to Scripture that can give you a firm basis for systematic theology, you're in the minority.

41:39

A small minority. Now, there are lots of people who believe that, they don't have any idea why they believe that.

41:46

They believe it, sometimes they'll be obnoxiously arrogant about it, they've never really thought it through.

41:54

Fundamentalists believe that, they don't know why they believe that, they use it as a weapon. But it is important to think these things through, it is important to not allow a systematic theology to override biblical teachings.

42:13

I see that all the time. Every single time a synergist just whips through Matthew 23 -37 and the

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Peter passage in 1 Timothy 2 -4 and 2 Peter 3 -9 and just whips out those three and says, see, God wants to save everybody.

42:28

There's someone who is using a systematic theology to completely twist Bible passages that don't mean any of the things they're saying they mean.

42:36

It happens every single day. Constantly. So, we do have to point out when your systematic theology results in your accepting eisegetical interpretations of Scripture, but that does not mean that the biblical theology we derive from exegesis should not be allowed to rise to the position of creating a systematic theology.

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If you have a high enough bibliology, if you have a high enough view of inspiration and, yes, inerrancy, then you are going to be able to create a systematic theology.

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But in 99, 97 out of 100

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Bible colleges and seminaries in the Western world today, what you're going to be taught is that if you do your exegesis right, you'll never be able to have systematic theology.

43:32

I saw that decades ago when I was at Fuller Seminary. I saw people come into that master's program knowing what they believed and graduate with a master's degree in confusion because they had accepted and imbibed the teaching that if you do it right, you will become less and less confident that you know

43:52

God's truth. And that's gotten much worse in the decades since that particular point in time.

44:00

That's what you're up against. And then this language of God is free.

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He's freer. What does that mean? What does it mean that there's a freedom in God?

44:11

That sounds to me like code words. I learned code words, again, at Fuller. Back in the 80s, they didn't want to say that the

44:19

Bible contained contradictions directly. Well, some did. But most of my professors that came from the main campus didn't want to exactly say that.

44:27

What they would say is, well, there are certain tensions in the text. Well, what does

44:33

God is free mean? Is God free to inspire contradictory statements?

44:40

Is God free to violate the laws of logic, which actually represent the way

44:46

His own mind functions and the way He's created the universe? What do you mean God is free?

44:52

How does that play out? I would really really like to know exactly how that ends up working out.

45:01

And so within that, within the Reformed tradition, of which I'm a part, and I am Reformed, and I believe in monergism, that we are saved by the work of God and kept by the work of God.

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Is that work of God the sacrifice of Christ? Or is the sacrifice of Christ, does it have a different audience than the work of the

45:19

Father and the Spirit? It's just a question that consistent Calvinists want to answer. If I had to choose between the five points of Arminianism and the five points of Calvinism, I'd pick the five points of Calvinism, because they're better, but I don't, quite frankly, think that they're great, and I think there's better ways to do theology.

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But we're not told what they are. And this just leads to, this must be that freedom part, what is that supposed to mean?

45:48

Because what we have are two polar opposite answers to important questions, and if you reject the

45:55

Arminian one and then at the same time say, the other answer I'll accept, but it's not that great, and there's better ways.

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Well, what's the better way? Why not be straightforward on this?

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I don't get it. If I were to make that kind of statement, I would want people to know if this isn't all that great, then here's the great stuff.

46:20

Maybe that's what his new book is going to be about. But history tells us that people who try to come up with a middle way here, they rarely get it.

46:31

But at the end of the day as well, Martin Luther and John Calvin, two of the most towering figures in the

46:37

Reformation, they had some training as lawyers. And so they tended to read the

46:43

Bible through the lens of law and gospel. Through God's demands or failure, and then the justification of Jesus Christ.

46:53

That's what you'd expect from somebody who was trained as an attorney. They would gravitate toward the law.

46:59

So those from... Except that's what Paul does in Romans 8. The entire argument of Romans, the whole concept of justification, that's legal language.

47:12

Imputation is legal language. Judgment, condemnation, it's all legal language.

47:20

And these are the primary texts that specifically address this subject. Scripture addresses many other subjects.

47:26

But you go to the plain sections, the didactic sections that define what we're talking about.

47:34

And I think what we're going to see in the rewrite of this Doctrine book, and I never saw the original one either, but what

47:42

I think we're going to see is a movement away from any type of clarity that would come from being

47:48

Reformed. Because of this kind of language that you're about to hear now. Reformed tradition tended not to delve much into wisdom literature.

47:57

So the Reformers would work a lot in the Ten Commandments, the law, the laws of Moses, the

48:02

Old Testament regulations, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the fulfillment of Jesus, obedience perfectly to the law.

48:10

I'm getting into a lot of that in Galatians right now. But there were whole other parts of the Bible that weren't really delved into.

48:16

So Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Job. Those are wisdom books. Tended not to spend a lot of time there.

48:23

Not as many commentaries, sermons. And so what I'm saying is part of the reason is that they weren't relevant to the conflict they were having with Rome?

48:33

Or they're not definitional? The Doctrine of Justification? Am I missing? This seems so simple to me that I'm wondering what's behind all this.

48:42

Let's deal with the whole Bible. Let's look at all the genres of literature and law and gospel is a category.

48:49

So is wisdom and folly. So is oppression and deliverance. But wisdom and folly is not a relevant set of categories to the subject of justification, is it?

48:58

So is brokenness and healing. So is truth and lies. So is wisdom and folly. There's all these different categories within the

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Bible and certainly law and gospel is one but most assuredly not the only one. Yeah.

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I don't know. I think those of you who have that book you're going to find the update to be very, very interesting.

49:23

But I'm going to leave it to others. No interest. No interest at all.

49:28

So we didn't get any answers to why Calvinism is garbage but we did find some other interesting things.

49:36

So over the past couple of weeks a number of people have sent me a 5 minute and 36 second video clip from Michael Brown.

49:47

He told me he was going to a what was it, Serbian Baptist or something like that?

49:52

I forget what it was. It was an interesting denominational, cultural connection type thing.

50:00

They're anti -reformed. And he spoke there with latent flowers. Which I found very, very interesting in and of itself.

50:09

Anyway they put out a clip. And yeah, we've addressed a number of these things before.

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But I'm going to respond to this clip and I'm going to sort of do so directly to Michael.

50:26

In fact I'll try to find a way to link him to right where this section starts.

50:35

This is of course completely different than the last person we'll look at. This is meant to be taken seriously.

50:42

But let's listen to what Michael Brown is saying in again, on Arminian. And this is a standard objection.

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The standard objection being that there is a contradiction between their understanding of the nature of God and the actions of God within Calvinism.

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If you hold to what would be called Reform Doctrine Calvinism, even though you say human beings are responsible for their actions, you ultimately say that God ordained what takes place.

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That God decreed before the foundation of the world what would happen, who would be saved, who would be lost, but not only so, decisions that you would make.

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Now, Michael, I've said this before, say it again.

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At some point you're going to need to come out and take a specific and clear stand on the central theological issue of the knowledge of God and his relationship to time and creation.

51:55

That is, I don't believe you're an open theist, and I would like to believe that you would condemn open theism.

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In fact, I can't see how you couldn't possibly condemn open theism because open theism destroys

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New Testament fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. You can't have prophecy in open theism.

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And central to your messianic presentation of the defense of Jesus is the existence. So there's no way you could be an open theist.

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You'd have to agree with me that open theism is a destructive, false teaching.

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And yet, I have argued, and will continue to argue because no one has even tried to refute my argumentation, that the only consistent

52:37

Arminian is an open theist. Because if you accept that God has infallible knowledge of future events, you have to give a reason for why that is.

52:52

If open theism is off the table, then you're left with basically simple foreknowledge.

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God looks down the corridors of time and knows what's going to happen, which then leads into all the quandaries that that perspective demands of you.

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And that is, does God learn that at creation? When he creates time, does he learn what's going to happen outside of his decree, and he just happens to win in the end?

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This makes all prayer on an Arminian understanding irrelevant because if God has absolute knowledge of what men are going to do from simple foreknowledge, then why should you be praying that God would intervene in any way because his actions cannot therefore nullify the knowledge he already has of what's going to happen?

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Because if he knows future events, then he knows what he's going to do in the future as well as what man's going to do in the future.

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And so you have serious questions. You ask of us questions, but until you take, you put a stake down and say,

54:10

I take the position of simple foreknowledge, then you can't really be in the game, shall we say, because you're not answering the same objections you're raising to us.

54:27

Then there's Molinism. And I really hope you don't go that direction. But then you have the whole issue of the micromanagement of every single action and movement of every single molecule only simply to serve the continued existence of the free will of man.

54:50

You have the reduction of God to the master computer. You have the idea that God's decisions in time are constricted by the content of something he did not make and does not flow from his will.

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Middle knowledge. Nobody knows where it came from. But it can determine what

55:13

God can and cannot do, what worlds he can and cannot create. Molinism is a philosophical nightmare.

55:19

But what's more than that, Michael, is, for you and I, it's not even close to having a semi -convincing argument that it has any claim at all to have been believed by anyone in scripture or anyone in church history up until Molina or maybe an

55:41

Anabaptist before then. Some people make that claim. But anyway, the point is, it is a philosophical answer searching for a problem.

55:50

And it is in no way, shape, or form biblical. But you've got to come down someplace. You've got to put a stake down and say, okay,

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I'm going to criticize what you Calvinists believe about the decree of God, because that's what you're doing here.

56:07

And so, here's my explanation of why

56:12

God created, what God knew, the relationship of his knowledge to his creation. This is the one thing that has not been a part.

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Every time we have talked about these things, and we've talked about them many, many times, normally in public, when

56:29

Michael and I are not on the radio and eating dinner or something like that, this isn't normally what we're talking about.

56:36

But we've had a lot of hours of conversation about this, and one of the reasons I've felt all along that we don't end up getting to a conclusion is because once we push back to this point, you're like, well, some people have theorized this, and you can't, as long as you aren't taking a stand someplace on that issue, you need to understand that us

57:01

Reform folks just sort of go, yeah, it's easy for you to say, but you don't have an answer to the questions you're asking us, and so how can we put a whole lot of weight in what you're saying to us?

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We've struggled with these things. We've written entire books on these things. This is an area,

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I think, that you really, really need to put some stakes down the ground, and then we can get into it.

57:26

It's not fatalism, as Islam would teach, whatever Allah wills is going to happen.

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Thank you. Over against Norm Geisler and all of Norm Geisler's disciples that repeat that one all the time.

57:41

It's not fatalism, but the fact is, a Calvinist believes that God has ordained human behavior, what human beings do.

57:49

God has ordained whatsoever comes to pass in time. That not only includes earthquakes and tsunamis and the solar cycle.

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The sun has a cycle. We're in the solar minimum right now. Looks like we're about to start coming out of it. That impacts all sorts of things.

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Here on Earth, in the solar system, it's all a part of God's decree.

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It had to be for God to have the ability to give us prophecy. The decree is exhaustive, and I would argue has to be exhaustive, because that decree is also the basis for the fulfillment of the

58:36

Messianic prophecies. You'd agree with me that Cyrus, very important in the fulfillment of the prophecies given to the people of Israel and the eventual coming of Messiah, but there are...

58:47

I just don't see how on any other understanding of the relationship of God's knowledge to time that you can say both that Cyrus historically existed and that what he did was meaningful outside of a

59:04

Reformed understanding of that. And if you say that God just simply looked down the corridors of time and saw what

59:10

Cyrus was going to do, you either have to say and he might have been wrong and therefore

59:15

Cyrus could have done something different, or say and that means what Cyrus did was absolutely fixed, and now you're stuck with a situation and it's fixed outside of God's decree and will, and so if he wins at the end, it's just because he lucked out, not because he's actually accomplished his purpose.

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And yet that phraseology of accomplishing his purpose is fundamentally biblical. It's the exercise of God's power.

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That's why we glorify him. We don't glorify him because he really predicted things well. We glorify him because he's actually accomplishing something that reveals his nature.

59:47

So I think it's pretty important. So the simple question I have is this.

59:54

If God ordained that someone would do evil, why does it grieve him when they do evil?

01:00:00

Okay. If God ordained that someone do evil, why does it grieve him when someone does evil?

01:00:09

Let's think about what the presupposition of this is. Because, again, if we both believe that God has exhaustive knowledge of future events, you have to answer the same question.

01:00:28

Because God knew millennium before certain people did evil that they were going to do evil.

01:00:36

And so God's grieving can't be like when you and I grieve something. When you and I debate

01:00:47

Unitarians together or we debate homosexuals together, we grieve over their hardness of heart.

01:00:53

We want to see them change. God's grieving can't be the same as yours and ours because ours is based upon ignorance.

01:01:03

We don't know anything about their background. We don't know the level of their understanding. Could we have been clearer in what we said?

01:01:10

There's all sorts of things you and I don't know that is a part of our grieving. God's grieving is different.

01:01:17

And I would suggest to you that if God actually interacts with his creation as the

01:01:26

Bible says that he does, he interacts with Moses. If you with me reject open theism and yet you look at the interaction that God has with Moses.

01:01:40

How he puts Moses in positions that forces Moses to intercede for the people. God, I'm going to destroy these people.

01:01:46

Oh, don't do that, Lord. What about the people? Do you really think that God was such a hothead that he needed a cooler head around like Moses to keep him from doing stupid things?

01:01:57

No, we know that's not what's going on there. He's putting Moses in a situation that is changing him and altering him.

01:02:05

God is always good in all that he does. But in those situations, he is interacting with us.

01:02:13

And of course, the greatest interaction comes in the incarnation itself. But in the midst of all that, what is he accomplishing and what do we see in his interaction with us?

01:02:27

We need to be very, very careful that we do not attribute to God the ignorances that mark our interactions with other people.

01:02:36

He knows full well what fills our hearts. That's a biblical statement. God knows what fills the hearts of men.

01:02:44

He knows that their thoughts are evil continually. He is the one who formed us. He made us inwardly.

01:02:50

He knows us intimately. And so, if that's the case, then when we talk about God's—and you bring this up repeatedly, you're going to do so here.

01:03:00

I'm not sure how far I'm going to get through this because I was only planning on going an hour today, as it is. But if you recognize that God is interacting with us, not to improve himself, but to change us, then what would the proper action of the holy

01:03:19

God be in his interaction with his creatures when they sin? And you go, well, but if he decreed all things—and for you and me, if we decreed all things, we don't understand how we could meaningfully interact with our creation, but that's because we're finite creatures.

01:03:35

Don't limit God in that way. Don't limit God in that way. I would suggest to you that the consistency in divine scripture will be found when we recognize that you have the grieving passages, but we also have the hardening passages.

01:03:55

And you know about them. There are lots of them. Where God hardens people's hearts, he hardens nations to their destruction for his purposes.

01:04:05

The unbeliever just says, see, the Bible's contradictory. You and I don't have that option.

01:04:10

And I suggest to you, Michael, that the beautiful harmonization of those things is found in the fact that God is accomplishing his sovereign decree.

01:04:22

And he decrees to interact with us, and we need to recognize that when we see his actions in time, don't attribute to his actions in time human creaturely limitations of ignorance or anything else or surprise at what's happening.

01:04:42

I think it's very, very important. And we're going to see here in a moment, you also need to, you must understand, and I think it's necessary for a defense of the inerrancy of scripture, the difference between God's revealed will, his prescriptive will, what he wants us to do, and his decree or his secret will.

01:05:03

It was God's decree, we've talked about this before, but it was God's decree that Joseph go to Egypt and save many people alive through the famine.

01:05:12

But God's prescriptive will was for his brothers not to sell them into slavery or not to try to kill them.

01:05:18

There's a conflict between those two. You have to see the difference between those two, or there is no way to harmonize scripture.

01:05:26

And I see in that harmony the depth of the beauty of the revelation of God. And that's why

01:05:33

I say, if you put your stake down and defend a position, I think you'll see what it is that is really separating us and what it is we're saying.

01:05:46

And why does he express his desire that they not do evil? Throughout the word,

01:05:52

God makes it clear... Okay, the desire not to do evil is his prescriptive will. Thou shalt not kill. So did

01:05:58

God grieve when the brothers sold Joseph into slavery, in the sense that that is a violation of his prescriptive will?

01:06:06

God saw the evil of their hearts. He saw their lack of respect for their father. I mean, it is amazing to think about them sitting there and watching him grieve and grieve and grieve, and they say nothing.

01:06:18

But it was his purpose that it happened. It was his purpose. It's explicitly stated that it was his purpose.

01:06:26

We can go to Isaiah 10, we can go to all sorts of other places to illustrate the same thing. But there's a difference.

01:06:32

Prescriptive, decree, that's what you're talking about here. And when you recognize the two, these are not objections to Reformed theology.

01:06:38

...that he takes no delight in the death of the wicked, but desires rather that they would repent and live.

01:06:46

I can truly look at any lost person and tell that person, God desires that you turn and believe.

01:06:54

Okay, again, in the prescriptive will of God, yes. Could you have said that to Judas? Could you have said that to Judas?

01:07:05

Could the entire crucifixion have been derailed by Judas doing something other?

01:07:12

Again, this takes us, see how we have to go back to the starting point to be able to put these things together, and the question is, who can do so consistently?

01:07:24

If I held to a predestination, a predestinarian doctrine as taught by Calvinists, I could not say,

01:07:32

God loves you, and send Jesus to die for you, because I don't know that. That's sort of a different issue.

01:07:38

I think you're mixing some categories here. Where did the apostles, in talking to specifically a lost person, place upon them the onus of doing something nice for God, because God had been so nice to them?

01:07:52

Noah, as you yourself are going to quote, God commands men everywhere to repent, not to return him a favor, and I just simply ask,

01:08:03

Michael, will the person in hell be able to say, God loved me,

01:08:09

Christ died for me, and I'm satisfied that I destroyed their work by my continued rebellion against them?

01:08:16

Is that the result of this? I don't think that's what Galatians 2 .20 is saying. But that's,

01:08:23

I think we've gone outside the specific category that we were dealing with there, at that particular point. Just please understand the implications of this.

01:08:31

Jeremiah 31 .20 Jeremiah 31 .20 is not

01:08:36

Ephraim, my dear son, the child in whom I delight. Though I often speak against him,

01:08:43

I still remember him. Therefore my heart yearns for him. I have great compassion for him, declares the

01:08:50

Lord. Alright, so you hear it. But, okay, a couple things. Again, if God interacts with us, he's the covenant

01:08:57

God with Israel, that could be understood in a historical redemptive sense there, but you also have the lima, you have the remnants.

01:09:07

Where does that fit into your theology, again, of what God's purposes were, even in the

01:09:14

Old Covenant, let alone Jeremiah 31, being where you have the introduction of the New Covenant. I'm not sure what your position at that particular point is.

01:09:21

Dear God's heart, I have no desire for the death of the wicked. My heart's yearning for the wicked to come and repent.

01:09:27

Even in your disobedience, my heart goes out to you. Contrast that. Okay, now you can contrast that with Calvin, but, once again, let's make sure we recognize the issues here.

01:09:38

We have the prescriptive will of God, and we have the decree of God. And so, in the prescriptive will of God, thou shalt not murder.

01:09:45

In the prescriptive will of God, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and strength. And yet, that is not fulfilled.

01:09:51

The decree of God will be fulfilled, because his purposes will be fulfilled. That has to be entered into your calculations in giving a consistent answer to the same objections that you are making to the

01:10:08

Reformed perspective. With the words of John Calvin, all right? These are not taken out of context.

01:10:14

Are you ready? From the Institutes of the Christian Religion. And, by the way, there's much in Calvin's writing that's wonderful, much in his commentary that's rich.

01:10:24

Listen to what he says. God arranges all things by his sovereign counsel in such a way that individuals are born who are doomed from the womb to certain death, and are to glorify him by their destruction.

01:10:41

God brought them into the world with the specific purpose of glorifying him by being destroyed.

01:10:48

Okay. Now, that is absolutely true. It's only partially true because Calvin will also, in that same section, talk about the unmerited favor and grace upon those who, being just as guilty, are redeemed from their sins by God to his glory.

01:11:11

But his point is there is not going to be anything in this creation that is not going to end up demonstrating that God was just in all that he did.

01:11:24

That's how he's glorified. Isn't that the concern in Romans chapter 3? Isn't that what theodicy is all about?

01:11:32

The justification of God. He is demonstrating his wisdom in Jesus Christ, in the redemption of a particular people and elect people unto himself, but also in the judgment of those who hate him.

01:11:53

I'm concerned. I would hope, given your background, this wouldn't be the case, but I am concerned that possibly what you're thinking of or what you're reading into that is the idea of innocent individuals who are quote -unquote never given a chance.

01:12:09

But in Calvin's theology, these are the fallen sons and daughters of Adam who are restrained in their sin.

01:12:18

They are not allowed to give full expression to their sin. And God will be glorified in justice being done in regards to them.

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And if a person struggles with that, then why the cross? Why do justice on the cross for some people if you object to justice being done for others outside who have rejected that gift that is there on that cross?

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Why would God have to go through what he went through if in point of fact there is not a need for the demonstration of his justice and the vindication of his law?

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I think that's a... Again, we go back to Romans 9 and one of the elements that's missed there is the fact that it specifically says

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God desires to demonstrate his power and his wrath. Is God glorified with his power and his wrath?

01:13:19

Well, let me ask you a simple question, Michael. If you look upon the floating bloated bodies of Pharaoh's army washing up on the shore when the

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Red Sea kills them and the children of Israel are singing Miriam's song on the other side, are you offended by that?

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I know you won't be, but think about what that means. That means God was glorified in their destruction. God was glorified in their destruction.

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That he is glorified by judging them for their wickedness, but they were born into wickedness by the will of God.

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That is the reality. They were born into wickedness by the will of God. If you mean by that that they are the fallen sons and daughters of Adam and that God treats us, deals with mankind in a federal headship manner, yes, that's

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Romans 5. You can't object against that because the reason that you and I have the imputed righteousness of Christ is because we are in Christ and he is our federal head.

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So we are being treated in grace and mercy because of our federal head, just as Adam functions as a federal head for those that are only in him.

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So, you can't object against the one without objecting against the other. Jesus said, if you've seen me, you've seen the

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Father. Jesus is the will of God in action. He is the word of God made flesh.

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He is the heart of God in human form. Do you want to know what the Father's like? Look at him.

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Does that include John 12? When the Greeks come seeking him and Jesus doesn't meet with him? Does that include

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John 12 when Jesus talks about the hardening of individuals? You've got to have all of it!

01:15:04

Not only does Jesus teach us to love our enemies and to bless those who curse us, not only does he teach us to do those things reflecting

01:15:14

God's heart, because God is kind to the sinner as well as to the saint, but what does it say in John 3 .16?

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You all know the verse, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes wouldn't perish but have eternal life.

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You say, well, who does the world mean? Read John 17. John 17 verses 6 and 9.

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Jesus said, I'm not praying for the world, but for those you've given me out of the world. They're in the world but they're not of the world.

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The world is everybody. The world is not just the elect, the world is everybody.

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What does it say in 1 John 2 .2? And he, Jesus, is the propitiation, the atoning sacrifice for our sins and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.

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God so loved the world, Jesus died for the sins of the whole world.

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1 John's a little book, just five chapters, right? 1 John tells us what the whole world means. 1

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John 5 .19. We are of God, but the whole world lies under the power of the evil one.

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Jesus is the atoning sacrifice for the whole world. Or Jews and Gentiles.

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I'm a little surprised here, Michael. I really am, because maybe we haven't had this particular part of the discussion.

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I don't know. I certainly have in my books. But that same little epistle of 1 John uses Cosmos in a number of different ways, and one that totally disrupts your utilization of it here, of course, is the fact that we are told that if you love the things of the world, the love of the

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Father's not in you. So, what's the world? The world has nothing to do with people at that point.

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It is the created order. And so, there is a perfectly consistent way of understanding, especially from a

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Jewish perspective, what would the world be? Jews and Gentiles. It's kinds of people.

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And John chapter 3, whatever you do with it, trying to read

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Cosmos, trying to read into Cosmos an individual universality of humankind is inconsistent with the fact that the demonstration of God's love doesn't work there on that basis.

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Why? For God so loved every single human being who's ever existed, including the

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Amorite high priest who died hundreds of years before Jesus, that he gave his only begotten son long after that guy was dead and couldn't have anything to do with him.

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So that, what? Everyone believing in him might have eternal life.

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So, the verbal aspect is limited to believers.

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How is that a demonstration to every individual who has ever lived or ever will live?

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It's not. But it is a demonstration to the created world as a whole, either as Jews and Gentiles, or just simply the created order itself, in the fact that the created powers, according to Colossians, see in what

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God has done the demonstration of his wisdom and his power and summing up of all things in Christ and so on and so forth.

01:18:47

Two ways of understanding that. But it's not a matter of trying to come up with some universal individualistic fulfillment of world in John 3 .16.

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It is necessary to recognize that at this point, we need to have some more discussion about what means and propitiation, because I've heard you make some comments to other people about that, that I think would make for important discussion in the future.

01:19:15

Almost done! What does Paul say at the end of Romans 11? That God has consigned all men to disobedience, to unbelief, that he may have mercy on them all.

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How about Acts 17 .30? But what do you mean by mercy on them all? How has

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God had mercy on them all? How did God have mercy upon any individual who lived in this world, who was never sent a prophet, was never sent the gospel, was never sent anything?

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How can that be all if you individualize it? It makes sense when you look at Jews and Gentiles, it doesn't make sense.

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If you do kinds, if you do this generically, it makes sense. Once you individualize it, and I would argue that's not a part of a

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Jewish background either, then it doesn't make any sense. God commands all men everywhere to repent.

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How's that? All men everywhere, each, every world, whole world, how else could

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God have said it to tell us Jesus died for all? God commanding all men everywhere to repent is not the same thing as saying

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Jesus died for all. You need to allow each context to speak, and in Acts 17, you're specifically talking to Gentiles, and the command to repent is a universal command, there's no question about that.

01:20:42

Not everybody hears it, but it remains a universal command. So the God I worship is so extraordinary, so full of wisdom and power and might, that he chose to give freedom to the human race, the most dangerous thing you could possibly imagine, and yet out of it gets a people for himself, and out of it shows himself as the

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God who blesses what is good and judges what is bad, and we get a glimpse of his full character.

01:21:11

And I would say that we get the clearest and fullest understanding of his full character, that that concept is central to my understanding of who

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God is and what he's doing. He desires to demonstrate his wrath and to make his power known, and his mercy and his love and his grace.

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The way he does so consistently is with an elect people, a specific people that he has chosen before time itself.

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Not just a group, but individual people, so that Christ's death is individual in their behalf as well.

01:21:44

So, I wanted to respond to that, and wanted to do so fairly, very quickly, don't have a lot of time, but...

01:21:51

... ... Okay, I'm just going to let this rip, and I'm just going to tell you, this is not

01:22:00

Babylon B. This is real. This is the fulfillment of every stereotype of independent fundamentals,

01:22:08

King James, Baptist, you could ever, ever come up with. And I rolled it back a few minutes just so you can get a feeling.

01:22:16

Get a full flavor of this kind of preaching. I think during the...

01:22:23

I think during this sermon that Dr.

01:22:30

Tony Hudson must have said, Hey! Hey! At least 250 times.

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Minimum of 250 times during this sermon. Hey! Hey! Look up here now! Look up here now! You okay?

01:22:43

Hey! Hey! What? I must compliment one thing. What? That is a massive pulpit.

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That's a big one. I've never seen a pulpit like that before. That is spread out and get covered.

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You know what? Jerry Matitix would be lost in that pulpit. Yeah, yeah. He would have places to put everything.

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That's true. Well, let's... He's going to...

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Trying to follow a subject with Dr. Hudson is a little bit difficult to do. He's eventually going to get to Calvinism, which is why we're going to talk about it just briefly.

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Not going to spend much time on it. There ain't much substance to it, but I just thought you might... Okay. Just get yourself a seat in the saddle.

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We want everybody to like us. We got to have that Facebook with all these likes and likes and follows.

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Me and my gang. I mean, you got to have an entourage. Let me say something.

01:23:40

Until you learn to stand alone, you won't stand for long. If you have to have...

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If you have to have these alumni to call you... I've never seen such sissy preachers in my life.

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You didn't call me today. I speak to Brother Westmoreland maybe twice a year.

01:24:00

We're friends, but we're not groupies. We're not freaks.

01:24:13

Got to retweet every... Tweet. That sounds effeminate to me anyway. Tweet. Tweet. You sound like tweets.

01:24:21

That sounds like, but God help us. Is everybody okay? I've never seen anything like it. I don't see how you preachers do anything on that social media so much.

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I don't see how you feed your mules in the morning. Is everybody okay? It's on everybody to like us.

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I mean, we can't call it a wall. It's got to be a permanent barrier.

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I mean, you're so politically correct. God help you. Hey, you vote for Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. Help me now.

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You're gone, friend. Not John the Baptist's house. When he walked up to him, he had an outlook.

01:25:05

He knew the wrong crowd when he... He was able to define, define that crowd.

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Bible said you're supposed to. He said, I command you that you mark those.

01:25:17

Note that man who walks not after our traditions. Let me just stop and say, anybody who's not walking after our doctrine is a heretic.

01:25:27

We already know if he's denying the virgin birth, if he questions the deity of Christ, if he even puts a question on a pre -tribulation rapture.

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I'm chunking him. Bunch of mid -tree, a bunch of pre -wrath, a bunch of false doctrine.

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Look up in here, big boy, and you Calvinists that might have crept in here. Calvinism is a bunch of false doctrine as ordaining a woman preacher is.

01:25:56

Amen. Calvin. I went up to one of them and said, I hate it for y 'all. We was at a meeting and I knew he's way outspoken.

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They think they're smarter than we are. I said, I hate it for y 'all. He said, what are you talking about?

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I said, Jesus didn't die for y 'all. He said, what do you mean?

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I said, well, he came to seek and to save that which was lost. But according to your doctrine, you've never been lost.

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You've been saved before the foundations of the world. And I said, I hate to see it.

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I hate to hate it for y 'all that y 'all think God is stupid. Them Calvinists, they think

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God's stupid. They think God's stupid. He said, what are you talking about? I said, you think God's stupid.

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Who was hell made for, everybody? Who was hell made for? The devil and his...

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Who was hell made for? Who was hell made for? Well, where does everybody die that rejects

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Christ? Are they all angels and devils? No, the Bible said hell hath enlarged herself.

01:27:07

Why did God make hell so small if he already knew who was going? Because he wasn't willing that any should perish, so he has to enlarge hell.

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That's Bible. Look around. If I had a pipe, I'd say put it in there and smoke it, friend. But my pipe's out in my truck with my chewing tobacco.

01:27:23

Is everybody all right? Hey! Hey! Look up in here!

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You don't believe the Bible. Hell was made for the devil and his angels.

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And every time a sinner dies without Christ, he has to enlarge hell! They Calvinists think

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God is stupid. Yeah... Well...

01:28:02

What do you say? After a program of seriously interacting with history and theology...

01:28:12

Hey, man! Hey, man! Look up here! Oh, man!

01:28:19

Oh, I know! The guy sitting there, the thought that crossed my mind when he went over and started saying that guy,

01:28:25

I wonder if he's been reading R .C. Sproul and he's feeling really guilty right now.

01:28:30

Or he's just afraid that he knows! Oh, no! You know? Oh, man!

01:28:41

Folks, that's real stuff right there. Right there! Look up here now!

01:28:47

Hey, man! I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. Do I really need to respond to what he said?

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Because it was just pretty obvious. You know, we don't believe we've been saved from the foundation of the earth.

01:29:02

God elects us, but the application of that is in time. And God's stupid?

01:29:09

Because he has to expand hell or something? I don't know. But there are folks that actually seriously believe that that's actually an argument.

01:29:21

Yeah. Anyway. So, there you go. Dr. Tonya Hudson, just for some comic relief in Radio Free Geneva today.

01:29:32

You can look him up on YouTube. Believe me, that's not the only thing that you'll find there. Anyways, thanks for watching the program.

01:29:39

Again, for the rest of the week, I don't know. We're just going to have to work out and see what we can do from Colorado.

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Want to try to put together some programs in Colorado. It worked well last time. The feed was good, so we'll definitely be attempting to do so.

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But pray for all the preaching and teaching and stuff going on up there. And then don't forget,

01:30:04

I mentioned on social media, we've got I know September of 2020 sounds like a long ways away, but the early bird special,

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I think, expires tonight at midnight on the trip to Israel and Athens and Ephesus.

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Be thinking about that. It's going to be a once -in -a -lifetime type thing. Myself, Jeff Durbin, we're going to be leading a group over there.

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It's going to be really, really exciting, Lord willing. And then very shortly after I get back, middle of August, we're heading for South Africa.

01:30:34

Please pray for stuff there. There's a lot more resistance than normal. It's one thing we debate the Muslims. It's not that difficult to set that up.

01:30:41

But when we're trying to set up debates on other subjects, and specifically right now on marriage, we're running into resistance.

01:30:50

And so pray that the Lord would allow these opportunities to take place. Lord willing, we'll see you later this week from beautiful Colorado.