Markan Fragment, Panbenevolence, More of MB’s Opening Statement.

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00:33

And greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line, last one I'm going to be doing for a little while. I would imagine head out the day after Thanksgiving for Kiev and Berlin, so folks in those areas be warned, here

00:46

I come. But we've got an interesting program today, even though for some reason this computer has just gone loopy on me,

00:54

I can't get hold of the stack anymore, I have no earthly idea why unfortunately, but that happens every once in a while, that thing goes goofy on us.

01:04

So I won't worry too much about that anyways, until later in the program, depending. Let's start off, maybe

01:12

I can work on that while playing a video on the other computer, how's that? I wanted to play this clip, it's three minutes long.

01:24

This is Craig Evans, just recently talking about what's called amongst folks the

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Green Project, it all has to do with, I remember a couple years ago now,

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Dan Wallace jumped the gun a little bit and mentioned in his debate with Bart Ehrman these fragments, including a fragment of Mark that is said to be from the first century.

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Now I'm going to have to, with great love in my heart and respect for these guys,

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I'm going to have to criticize two of my fellow apologists, Dan Wallace, who does do apologetics work, and Jay Smith, both of whom recently in debates, one was

02:20

Shabir Ali and one was Bart Ehrman. Interestingly enough, with two people that I've debated myself, that's interesting, hadn't thought about that until just now, both of them did the same thing, and that is they utilized information that no one, their opponent could not possibly respond to because, well, they had never heard of it before, it hadn't been published, it wasn't available to them.

02:49

So Dan brought that up, and then it's been, it was supposed to be what, sometime in 2013, now it's 2014, so it's going to be 2015, and how's

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Ehrman supposed to respond to that? And then in a recent debate, Jay Smith brought out a bunch of stuff that has yet to be published, and how can

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Shabir respond to that? If it hasn't gone through the publishing process and the vetting process, is it really fair game in a debate to throw that out there?

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Now for example, Yusuf Ismail mentioned a book from 2013 in our debate, I had not read it, that's perfectly fair, it is out there.

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I have now, but I didn't have it then, and so that's perfectly legitimate to do that.

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So anyway, here's Craig Evans talking about at least one of these new papyri, evidently, that hasn't been published yet.

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He says it'll be published by the end of the year, okay, that means within the next six weeks,

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I would say, pretty much, well actually less than that, five weeks, four weeks.

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It's not good to put dates on things like this, it really isn't, but let's listen to what he has to say, and then

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I'll comment on it on the other side, and we'll see what you think.

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But here's the one that really intrigues me, because it hasn't received a number yet, will it be

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P128, 129, I don't know, it'll be published later this year, and where did we find it?

04:32

Well, we dug underneath somebody's face, and there it was. That's a mummy mask that you're looking at.

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Let me explain what's going on here, this is very exciting. Mummy masks, if you were the pharaoh, were made out of pure gold.

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If you were a wealthy person, it would be neatly carved, and perhaps then covered with gold leaf, and a few jewels.

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But if you weren't really wealthy, and if you were just, well, say, middle class, you could afford a sarcophagus for the body of your loved one, but the mummy mask that covered the face would be made out of papier -mâché.

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Did you know papier -mâché dates back that far, at least 3 ,000 years? Now, paper was expensive, as I already said, so you don't take brand new papyrus, no matter how much you love grandma, and make a papier -mâché mask out of brand new paper, you used used paper, and that's the best kind, if you're a scholar, because we want to find old paper with writing on it, not old blank paper, paper that's been used, paper that's been written.

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And of course, if you're a pagan, and you have no respect for the Christians, then you use their writings as trash, and you make papier -mâché masks out of their stuff, and their stuff includes the

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Greek New Testament. And it was from one of these masks that we recovered a fragment of the

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Gospel of Mark that is dated to the 80s. We could have a first century fragment of Mark for the first time ever.

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The more we find, we keep inching our way, just imagine Gary Habermas now, we keep inching our way toward ground zero, the autographs.

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This is really amazing. We knew that that was a possibility. There are hundreds of these low -end papier -mâché masks that have been painted, but the trick was to get the mask to dissolve so that we could pull apart the papyrus without losing the ink on the papyrus.

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That would defeat the whole purpose, and some genius came up with a solution that allows the glue to dissolve and the papyrus paper to come loose into pieces that could then be picked out of this little bath, and the ink is still on the papyrus and still legible.

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We've recovered two second century papyri, that's why I'm not certain of the numbering here, and a papyrus fragment of Mark dating to the 80s, and other

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Christian sermons and letters and other things, as well as lots of secular stuff, and so the work will continue.

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This is very exciting. Okay, so there you go. You can minimize that.

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All right, well, well,

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I was talking with a fellow in Channel about this, and okay,

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I'm not disputing anything that was said there.

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I wouldn't have any basis upon which to dispute it, to be perfectly honest with you, but there's just a couple of things that just sort of make me go, hmm, about all of this.

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First of all, if, okay, how do they know the dating?

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Dating of a mask could be extremely specific, because if there were other secular papyri fragments that were used in the making of the mask, they could be dated to the fourth year of Pharaoh, or to the fourth year of such and such a person's reign in Rome, or you know, whatever.

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I mean, secular stuff could have specific dates on it that would tell us this papier -mâché mask was made right here, and that's going to be the latest date for a biblical papyri that is found in the makings of this mask, so that's interesting, or it could be found with a mummy where, other than the mask, there's a way of dating the exact date of the death of that person that, again, gives you at least the oldest date.

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That doesn't mean that the papyrus, that means the papyrus could be older. Well, it has to be older. It has to be earlier than that.

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How much earlier than that? Don't know, but 80,

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I don't have any problem with the idea of finding a papyri of Mark from 80, because that's about 40 years after I think

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Mark was written. I think Mark's early 40s, but you've got to realize that's pretty radical for almost like anybody in SBL or anything like that.

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You know, Mark, oh, it's earliest 70, you know, later than that, probably.

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So, whatever dating methodology is being used is going to be attacked in an amazing way by mainstream because if you have papyri of Mark that is old enough to be considered worn out or trash in Egypt by 80, you've got to push

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Mark's writing all the way back to within a very short period of time of the ministry of Christ, which, again,

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I don't have any problem with, but it is when you're talking about something that is going to reorient a large portion of what is currently published in the field, and of course, you move

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Mark back and you have to drag Matthew and Luke along with, and maybe even

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John. And so, you know, the question is, would there be that many manuscripts of Mark in Egypt that would be that old by 80, by only 10 years after the destruction of Jerusalem?

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That would be fascinating. One of the other suggested very early fragments didn't convince everyone, but it needs to be recognized.

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The 7q5 thing was also of Mark and would also be very much in the first century as well.

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So, very, very, very interesting. Very, very, very interesting material that's there.

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When are we going to see this stuff? I don't know. People keep asking me. I don't know. I'm just a lowly apologist.

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I'm not in the inner sanctum of this particular project by any stretch of the imagination.

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So, I don't know, but I certainly am looking forward to it. But again, the one thing that concerns me here, stuff like this used to take years, and appropriately so.

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Today, a lot of people in the church have imbibed the same culture, cultural surface level,

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I want something now, now, now. You know, if you don't comment on something within 48 hours of it happening, then people come down on you like a ton of bricks and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

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And that's not how meaningful scholarship is done.

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And this stuff's going to have to be vetted and vetted appropriately. If it is vetted appropriately, and if there is solid foundation for not only identity, there's enough papyri to prove it's from Mark.

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It's more than just a couple words. It's literally from Mark. We can identify it.

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And we can date it to 80 in Egypt. Katie, bar the door.

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That is going to have a revolutionary impact in textual critical studies and in New Testament studies as a whole.

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Because now, at least minimally with Mark, you're going to have to, you're gonna have to push it way, way, way, way back, lot farther back than a lot of folks want it to be.

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I certainly don't mind having it there at all. That's okay with me. I would put the writing in the early 40s myself.

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So it would just confirm that. But for a lot of folks, that's just way too early.

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And a bunch of theories of development and things like that. Shabir Ali's stuff, where Paul is influencing the gospel writers, out the window, gone.

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Just chuck that one in the history pile of stuff that manuscript finds have completely destroyed.

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So that's what I said. It'd be big stuff, but it's going to get examined

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I don't know what. It really, really will. So there's some information on that.

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People keep asking about it. I just saw that video and thought, well, let's chat about it.

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And let's see. We only got four weeks left. We'll see if it actually comes out before the end of the year.

14:58

All right. Let's move on from there to a clip that was making the rounds about a month ago.

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And it's a Q &A. You got it set up over there?

15:15

Okay. It's Q &A between William Lane Craig and a

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Muslim at a university. And I'd like to chat about it a little bit and see if there's something we can pick up and learn from this and see how it would impact our theology.

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How the Muslim concept of God fails. It's less than three minutes.

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I'd like to suggest that with these arguments, especially the ontological argument, the special case that you proposed, that you'd actually strike close to the

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Muslim perspective on God, which is his absolute transcendence. So where you state as Christians that God becomes

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Jesus and lives on the earth, I'd like to suggest that some of the attributes

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I mentioned, in particular all -knowing, all -powerful, and other such attributes, that these do not sit well with...

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I mean, there's a certain degree of irrationality in this assertion that he becomes incarnated in Jesus.

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So what would you like to... Yes, that's a very interesting question. And I think that what

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Muslim theology has failed to understand about the doctrine of incarnation is the doctrine of the two natures of Christ.

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As Christians, we believe that Jesus Christ is one person, but that he has both a divine nature and a human nature.

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And in his divine nature, he is omnipotent, all -knowing, timeless, spaceless, or whatever.

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It is his human nature that is like ours, that is spatially located, weak, limited in power, and so forth.

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And therefore, these limitations on his human nature have simply no effect whatsoever on his divine nature.

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Indeed, I would think a being is greater who has the ability to take on a human nature.

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Now, let me just stop it right there just for a second. Nice, nice view of WLC there.

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Most of you will, well, those of you who've listened to it, and I would like to, if you have not listened to or watched my favorite, so far, debate with a

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Muslim, then let me highly recommend to you the debate with Abdullah Kunda on Can God Become Man?

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from University of New South Wales in Australia from a couple of years ago.

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It is available on YouTube, and I would, you know,

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I keep hoping to eclipse it someday, but I may have to go back to Australia to do so, and get together with Abdullah again to do so.

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But the audience member was pretty much repeating what

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Abdullah himself said in that debate, because they believe that God was giving up attributes to become incarnate.

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They just, and as William Lane Craig rightly points out, they just will not grasp or accept the

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Christian understanding of the, well, and it's a very primitive

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Christian understanding, it's not something that just developed later on, that is plainly present in Paul's phraseology.

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They would not have crucified the Lord of glory. The Lord of glory, the glorious Lord.

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For most of us today, we can read that text from Paul's epistle to the

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Corinthians and just go shooting right past it, and oh yeah, Jesus is a glorious Lord, and never really give it a second thought.

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But you've got to hear how startling and how challenging that language really is.

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Crucified the glorious Lord. I mean, for Paul, who the glorious Lord is, there really isn't any question about that.

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A monotheistic Jew operating out of the septuagint, that language provided by the

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Greek translation of the Old Testament. You know who the glorious Lord is, and then crucified?

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Stauro, to crucify. You've got to hear how dissonant that is, and how it's very, very challenging for a

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Muslim to even begin to get a handle on what it is we're really saying there. We take it far too, too easily.

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It is a truly challenging concept, and it's a primitive

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Christian belief, the two natures of Christ, and it's central to what we're saying.

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And so to this point, I don't think you could see any difference in how

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William Lane Craig answered this question, and how I answered this question. A lot of people ask questions, well, what, you know, you criticize

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William Lane Craig. Yeah, I do. Well, but aren't you all on the same side?

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Well, if you mean on the side of the angels, you know, as Christians, yes. But theology matters, and one of my fundamental assertions has been that I believe, and I, Dr.

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Craig denies this, but I think the evidence is pretty strong, that one of the primary differences between us is the movement of my theology is from biblical exegesis through systematic theology to apologetics.

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And I don't believe that that's the case for William Lane Craig. His apologetics determines his systematic theology, which determines the exegesis.

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I think it goes the other direction. I really, I really do. I think we've pointed out a number of examples of that over the years, and we're about to get a difference between us.

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So we would have answered this the same. But then he goes on the offensive, and the question is, could

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I go on the offensive the way he did on this matter? And the answer would be no, and that's because I'm Reformed, and he is not.

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And here's the rest of the response. And be incarnate as a human being.

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Now, where my critique of the Muslim concept of God would come in at this point is that I think that the

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Muslim concept of God is not the greatest conceivable being. I would, and I have, criticized the

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Muslim concept of God precisely because it isn't the greatest concept. And in what way would

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I say that? I think the greatest conceivable being would be an all -loving being. His love would be unconditional, impartial, and universal.

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And this is the kind of that Jesus revealed of our Heavenly Father. By contrast, the

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God of the Qur 'an is partial, his love is conditional, you have to earn it, and it is not universal.

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He does not love sinners. Over and over again the Qur 'an says God loves not the unbelievers, he loves not sinners, he loves not the hardneck, he only loves believers.

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And so for that reason, I couldn't be a Muslim. I think that the concept of God in Islam is morally inadequate.

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Okay, whoa, whoa, whoa. Cut it down. Cut that one down, sorry.

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Because it's, there. I'll shut it down on this side. I don't know why it just restarted.

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I tried to hit stop and it didn't want to. Anyway, all right. The Muslim concept of the love of God.

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We have to, we have to use equal standards.

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And when I have heard not only William Lane Craig, but others utilizing this argument, my mind just kept going back more over and over again to so many examples where a sharp

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Muslim that knows the Bible. I mean, I think it's become pretty obvious that one of the primary things that I have to keep working on in preparing myself as an apologist and doing work in this area is

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I have a, there's much more to know about the Qur 'an and the

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Hadith. More memorization, more familiarity with phraseology.

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I have to keep re -reading the Qur 'an. You know, dealing with the Bible as a

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Christian, that's just a, that's the world that you live in. It's the atmosphere that you breathe.

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You're constantly making reference to it and looking at it and things like that. That's not the case with the

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Qur 'an. So I have to, every once in a and listen to it again and spend time flying back from South Africa.

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And I may try to do so on the way back from Berlin in a couple of weeks.

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I spent some great time on the plane looking very closely at the

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Arabic of certain texts and looking up other references and cross -references and grammatical stuff.

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And it's an obvious advantage to know the

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Qur 'an and the Hadith in speaking to Muslims, just as obviously the more a

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Muslim apologist, one engaging in Dawah, has meaningful knowledge of the

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Bible, the better they're going to be able to communicate to a Christian and the stronger their arguments are going to be.

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In fact, I would fault the majority of my Muslim opponents at that very point.

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They are willing to take the most facile views of the

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Bible rather than doing serious study. And so when I, when I approach this subject,

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I go, man, you know, if the first thought across my mind is not, is this guy

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I'm talking to, if it's in a situation where I'm involved, is this guy I'm talking to going to be sharp enough to hold me to a set of biblical examples that will keep me from being able to make this argument?

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You never think that way. Never, ever, ever think that way. Always respond to the best.

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And if the other guy doesn't give you the best, well, then you got to adjust to what he said, but don't start off with, with arguments that you're going to have to be backpedaling from.

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I learned, I learned that, you know, the Lord protected me more than one stand outside the

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Mormon temple in Salt Lake City. I learned many, many times you, you start with the best and that'll put you in good stead.

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If that ends up being a long conversation, maybe one that develops into correspondence and everything else where they're not constantly reminding you.

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Yeah. Well, you remember the first thing you said to me, you had to backpedal from, I mean, your foundation is destroyed at that point.

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Just a practical thing there. Going to this particular example, what do I mean? Well, there are numerous instances in the

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Bible where God demonstrates that his action of love is at least as complex as that of humans and more so.

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I am afraid that when Dr. Craig talks about omnibenevolence, what he means is pan benevolence.

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Now, omnibenevolence would mean that God is love and therefore he acts in such a way that is always consistent with love as he defines it.

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But how does he define it? That's the question. How does any of us define it? For example, when you're defining and speaking of God's love, shouldn't the very first thing you think of ontologically, biblically, systematic, and systematic theology, whatever phraseology you want to use, shouldn't the first thought in our mind be the love that God has eternally expressed?

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And what love is that? Inter -trinitarian love. In fact, that's one of the arguments that the early church used.

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I know it's a argument that I actually have heard William Lane Craig use. I'm not sure if he sees what the connection here is, but the first and primary love of God is love of the

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Father for the Son, the Son for the Spirit, the Spirit for the Father, the love that exists internally within the triune

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Godhead. Because until there was creation, that was the only love there was, right?

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And so you go, what does that have to do with anything? Well, if you're going to talk about the love of God, if you're going to say that God is omnibenevolent, you have to define what you mean by that.

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And unfortunately, non -reformed folks tend to define omnibenevolence in such a way as to destroy the ability of God to love even on the level that mankind himself loves.

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I would argue that loving Pharaoh in exactly the same way as Moses is an incoherent statement given the biblical revelation of the book of Exodus.

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You want to argue that? I mean, if you identify omnibenevolence as an absolute equality of love in the expression of God, then

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God is not capable of loving in different ways in light of his own purposes and goals in creation.

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We have the ability to do that. We have been given the capacity and ability to love in different ways.

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We are called to love all men. Well, especially those of the brethren.

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Oh, especially what? There's supposed to be a special love that I can express for those who are of the

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Christian faith over against someone who is not? Yeah. Why? Well, because we have a foundation for that love.

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That's interesting. We share something in common. That's interesting. We've often used, and it is a perfectly appropriate example, we have often used the fact that we are to love our wives, but we're not to love everybody else's wives in the same way.

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There is a distinction that is to be made. We're to love our enemies. And yet, there is a proper time to engage.

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Well, as Ecclesiastes says, there's a time for peace and a time for war. And if my enemy is seeking to bring about injustice and ungodliness, well, there's a time for war.

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So we have to be able to balance these things. And we as human beings are able to do that and are able to make distinctions in the kind and object of our love and to be able to prioritize our expressions of love so that, so that, as I argued years ago, when

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John Piper said that he would not defend his home against an invader, my response was,

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I think that's totally unbiblical. I have a responsibility to defend my wife.

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And I do not have, and this is not about John Piper, but if you want to present the idea of a, of a person trying to imitate an omnibenevolent

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God who is, who cannot make differentiation in love so that you see this person attacking your wife and you're now conflicted because you love this attacker just as much as you love your wife.

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And so you don't know what to do. I don't respect a person like that. Does anyone respect a person like that?

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How can anyone respect a person like that? I mean, even in that situation, you shouldn't call the cops because the cops might hurt this poor guy that I love so much.

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Right? So this, I'm sorry, but the reason that we are capable of recognizing the propriety of a love for my wife, that means

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I must take action to protect her against this aggressor, is because we possess the imago dei.

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We possess the image of God. Well, what does that tell you?

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That tells you that God must have this ability too, because where does the imago dei come from?

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We cannot have capacities and abilities that are beyond, more complex, more advanced than God himself.

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So we must differentiate. We must differentiate.

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If we're going to make any sense out of redemption history, if you're going to make any sense out of those stiff -necked

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Israelites on the far bank of the Red Sea and the drowning

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Egyptians in the middle of the Red Sea, if you're going to make any sense out of that and the 100 other examples of clear differentiation on God's part as to how he dealt with people and the fact that you must hold together the statement,

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God is love, with the thrice statement of the angels, holy, holy, holy,

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God is holy. Well, holiness and love are going to be held together in perfect balance in God, but identifying omnibenevolence as pan -benevolence is not going to hold that balance together, just as it cannot be held together in any human being in that way.

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And so, if I am going to criticize the Islamic view of God, I am going to be very much aware of the fact that you can go to numerous places in the

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Bible and say, well, then why did God do this or why did

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God do this in this way and why did God do that in that way? And that's why I don't go there. I'm not saying there isn't something valid here, but you all know how

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I differentiate. Well, you all know. Regular listeners. Well, Algo always knows because Algo's Algo, and that's scary, but Nick knows.

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There's no question that Nick knows. And I've met a few other folks, especially overseas, that know, and they all frighten me terribly, and I have bad dreams at night about them, but regular people in the audience.

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If you have listened to especially the audience questions that I will have, exact same situation as that.

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They look like university. Remind me of City College Dublin, Trini College in Dublin just a couple of years ago where you had those really good audience question times.

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I remember really good audience question times because most of the time audience questions are not really good times anyways, but those really were.

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And if you've watched any of them, then you know, or if you've listened to my presentations on Islam, then you know where I go on this subject.

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And it's not to say, well, Allah is unloving because the

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Quran does say that he loves and that there is a certain type of people he loves. And it does say he does not love certain individuals.

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And you can find places in the Bible, whether you like it or not, where it talks about God's hatred of sin and sinners.

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And then you see him destroying sinners and bringing his judgment to bear on groups like the

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Amorites. That's why a lot of these folks try to say that didn't really happen or it's just, it's, it's exalted language.

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And, you know, he just wiped out a few armies, but you know, and I just sit back and go, um, flood

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Noah enough. You know? I mean, seriously, why, why do all this?

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Well, they didn't really wipe out all the Amorites. Well, okay. Let's go back to the flood. Can you get around that one?

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Well, yeah, he just drowned a couple of people. Oh, you know? Okay. Anyway, that's not where I go because there are counter examples, but is there a difference between Christianity and Islam on the issue of God's love?

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Well, of course there is. You just don't get there by, by asserting pan benevolence.

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Um, as William Lane Craig did, you have to be a little bit more specific.

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And I think a little bit more theological in your presentation specifically, uh, to point out not the fundamental difference is that the

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Christian God has proven his love. How could a law prove his love?

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What would be given the transcendence? And the guy started off with the assertion of transcendence.

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He said, you know, your, your Kalam argument, very similar to, and of course, obviously very similar to arguments that Muslims have used in, uh, in times past in regards to the existence of God and the transcendence of God, so on and so forth.

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But given the, what I would call hyper transcendence of a law, the, the re the repulsion that the theology of Islam shows for any kind of direct personal contact between a law and his creation in the way that we view

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God and the way that even the old Testament views God, what's the key issue.

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And there's, there's an advantage to going my direction here, by the way, because it, it presents a direct entrance into gospel presentation.

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How has God proven his love and Christianity, the incarnation, the incarnation of the cross?

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Um, now if you don't want to go for the cross for historical reasons, that particular point in time, you can just go for incarnation, then move on to that.

40:15

But the point is this really is the issue of the incarnation. And it was right there.

40:21

I mean, he had just answered that. And then seemingly just, you know, the two natures of Christ and then the natural thing would have been you're right there asserting, asserting the two natures of Christ.

40:33

Now you can say, and you know what my criticism of the nature of God in Islam would be is that that divine human person, that, that one person with two natures is the demonstration of God's true love for his creation in that he entered into his own creation.

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And that is a demonstration that's utterly impossible in light of the Islamic view of Allah and his transcendence and the fact that he could never and would never enter into his own creation.

41:04

So that seemed to me to be the obvious way to tie the two together straight to a gospel presentation and straight to, uh, the point you want to make.

41:13

And that is that there is a problem with the Islamic understanding of God's love without that mediator.

41:19

This is the fundamental issue that I close most of my presentations on Islam web is you, those of you who've seen my presentation and the guy across the window is just starting to beat the drum louder and louder that we need to put this thing on DVD and blu -ray so we can send it out to churches, have them watch that and then hook up electronically to answer questions with Skype and things like that.

41:50

Uh, he's, he's pounding the drum out there, but those of you who've already seen that presentation know that, um, and I, I can't, well,

42:01

I might be able to bring it up here, but I, I, I'll just describe it to you and, and no,

42:07

I can click while, while doing other things. I, I, I conclude my, my presentation.

42:16

Normally it goes, you know, I, I talk about the nature of God and salvation. Um, and, uh, no,

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I do not want to update now. I, I hate when things do that. Um, uh, sometimes if I have more time,

42:33

I will also, it's hard to avoid at least doing a section on, uh, the, the, the

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Quran because people just don't, don't have the background to it and things like that. Um, but if I've got a short period of time,

42:50

I do the nature of God and salvation. And I enjoy trying to narrate, um, some, some

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Hadith specifically that, you know, the man who killed 99 people and, and, and the issues like that.

43:08

But when I get to the end, all right, I'm going to send you a,

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I'm going to, I've got to go to this first. Cause it, then I go back to window and then

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I go to keynote and you should be getting keynote now.

43:25

Yes. All right. All right.

43:32

Uh, problem is I think if I click on this, it'll work. At least I hope so.

43:38

So after I tell the story, I start making application specifically to the fact that in Islam, you have a holy

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God, you have his law, you have vivid descriptions of hellfire.

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So you have sin, you have heaven. What don't you have because of the ignorance of Muhammad?

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What do you not have? You don't have a mediator. You don't have a mediator.

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Jesus has been removed. He's merely a prophet. You do not have that mediator between God and man,

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Christ Jesus. And the result is you got it. All right.

44:23

Let's see if it starts. Yeah, there it is. Bring her up. June 30th, 2007,

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Glasgow airport, Scotland. I show this, this was the incident at the

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Glasgow airport. Two men, you can see people running from the, uh, from the check -in counters, check -in counters that I have checked in at more than once.

44:52

They have driven a Jeep chair into the doorway, pressed a button and it exploded.

45:00

Thankfully they weren't very good at making fuel bombs. The bomb was intended to spew all of that gas into the, uh, into the airport and kill those people.

45:18

The only people that died were the two people in the car. And they only over a period of,

45:23

I think three weeks from their burns, which is a really, really bad way to go. Really, really bad way to go.

45:33

Uh, in fact, I think that guy in the shirt there is one of the guys actually. Um, they were

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Muslims and they, yeah,

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I think, I think that's one of them right there. They did this purposely.

45:54

Obviously I can't imagine that's where it freezes. So you can bring it down into a window.

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I can't imagine, um, the mindset of not seeing all these people around and yet gunning that engine undoubtedly screaming a lot of lock bar and then hitting that trigger and igniting that fuel bomb.

46:23

Why'd they do it? Because theology matters. Because the only, the only guarantee that the

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Quran can provide to you of true peace with Allah when you die is if you die in a state of jihad, you die in an act of jihad.

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And these men were not down and outers. They weren't people that just didn't have anything else to do.

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They were both national health system physicians, doctors, two doctors.

46:58

There you go. Theology matters. That's what happens when you have a

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Holy God law, hell punishment, heaven, no mediator, no mediator.

47:12

There you go. So I think it's, I think it's vitally important and I saw a lot of discussion about that a couple of weeks ago, maybe a month or so ago, and I've been traveling and sometimes

47:28

I forget about stuff and I wanted to throw that in there just so we could discuss it.

47:36

Speaking of theology mattering, we only have about 11 minutes left on the program today.

47:41

So I'm going to get a little more time taken out of Michael Brown's opening statement here, by the way.

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Michael sent me his book. Our hands are stained with blood.

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I had, if Michael hears this, had actually purchased it already. Thank you for the hard copy.

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But I had purchased it on Kindle, have already recorded it to Kindle, from Kindle to MP3 and it's already ready to be put on my listening list once I get home.

48:15

Obviously between now and December 13th or so, my focus is going to be upon justification and the

48:25

Trinity because that's what I'm teaching in Kiev and Berlin and so that's where my mind needs to be focused.

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But once that is completed, then I can at least roll that into the other issues, including church and Israel studies and things like that.

48:46

But anyway, we've been listening, just gotten, how far? Two minutes into Michael Brown's opening statement, which means we haven't gotten very far.

48:57

Either that or I forgot to mark. Once I start this, I will find out whether I just forgot to mark where we really were.

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Let me scroll down here. No, definitely didn't. So let's go back to it here and we'll fill the rest of the program up with that.

49:12

For a split second, whatever dream that we can take credit for our salvation in any way, the thought boggles my mind.

49:18

Oh yeah, that's where we stopped because that's where Michael is still having nightmares about Brian's call.

49:26

And as I explained last time, uh, the, the, the fundamental issue once again is the question, if God has sought to save every single person equally, and if he has not, if, if you are one of the, the pan benevolence advocates where you believe that God does not have an electing love, he does not have a redemptive love, um, that, that there are no differentiations in God's love, um, that he has no special love for Israel that he doesn't have for Egypt.

50:09

There would be one that I think would communicate to a few folks. Um, if you, if you believe that God has tried to save every person equally, um, then why is one person saved and another person isn't, that was what

50:29

Brian was trying to say to Michael is that one day he realized, well, wait a minute. If God, God tried to save my next door neighbor equal with myself,

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I'm saved and he's not, what's the only possible ground for me to look to as to why

50:45

I differ from that person. It's me. It's not the grace of God. It's not the choice of God. It's me, me, me.

50:51

I was the one who was either more sensitive, uh, in some way, spiritually better than someone who doesn't get saved.

51:00

If there has been equal attempt. Now, if you want to say, no, well, there isn't equal attempt.

51:05

Now you have to start answering questions of election because now God is God. You're gonna have to, you're gonna have to deal with the reality that God gave advantages to his people.

51:18

For example, that he did not give the Babylonians. He did not give the Amorites. He did not give to the

51:24

Egyptians. So God made a choice to act in that fashion.

51:31

Well, what's the basis of that choice and what's the purpose of that choice? Does the Bible say, um, that was what that whole conversation was, was all about.

51:42

I never thought it as a non -Calvinist. I never thought of this as a Calvinist. Salvation is from the Lord. It's all his grace.

51:48

Everyone here is saying amazing grace, exactly the same. I'm amazed at his goodness and kindness that he could part of his grace on a wretched human race with all the sin and evil deed we committed.

51:59

Yet Jesus died for us and causes to himself. How extraordinary. How mind boggling. Again, I love to hear that, but what, what do you mean by that,

52:11

Michael? If from my perspective, if you believe in prevenient grace, which you've used the term, if I recall correctly, if you believe in prevenient grace, um, is that the grace we sing about?

52:32

Is that the grace Newton was writing about? No, no.

52:38

When I sing about the grace of God, I am singing about that grace that Titus chapter two describes that grace, which brings salvation.

52:47

It's not a grace that tries to bring salvation. It does. That's why you have to make the differentiation

52:52

Titus chapter two. Again, from my perspective, I'll make it clear. There's only two consistent views here, the universalist and the

53:00

Calvinist one, the middle doesn't work. Um, the grace it saves in Titus chapter two has appeared to all men.

53:10

That either means Jews, Gentiles, that is what it means or everybody, which doesn't make a lick of sense.

53:16

Uh, because there are lots of people living in that day that it had not appeared to them. So that doesn't make any sense, but that's the universalist perspective.

53:23

The point is grace saves. And that's why all of this is to the praise of his glorious grace.

53:29

Well, how please could someone explain to me, someone pointed me to a book.

53:35

It wasn't out yet. So I couldn't order it and I'm going to have to look for it again, but someone has actually written a book on prevenient grace.

53:43

That's what I think is what's even called. It was an Amazon, but as I recall, it was pre -order thing.

53:49

So I, there wasn't much I could do about it yet. Um, I definitely want to get it because I want to,

53:54

I just keep hearing all these folks talking about prevenient grace and all the rest of this stuff.

54:01

And I just want to go where in the Bible is this prevenient grace, this grace that, well, it's purpose is not actually to save, but to make savable or tries to save, but fails to save or what?

54:22

I don't know. I can't get consistent definitions out of folks on it. But when

54:29

I see to the praise of his glorious grace in Ephesians chapter one,

54:36

I don't see how that applies to prevenient grace. I mean, are you really going to go to the point of saying praise

54:45

God for that prevenient grace that tried to save them Amorites, but save nobody while the wrath of God was filled up before the destruction of the

54:56

Amorites by God via the Israelite armies. What is that?

55:05

How do you, how do you praise God for a grace that actually accomplished nothing?

55:12

I don't know. I don't know, but it is something that has to be discussed.

55:20

Yes. Someone immediately uh, through, through the, uh,

55:25

URL up. Let me see if this is the one that, uh, that I was looking at.

55:32

Yes. Uh, I guess that is. And, uh,

55:39

August 1st, 2014. So there is a, there is a Kindle edition there. Yep.

55:44

It's it's available. All right. Well, I'll have to try to remember to get that thrown onto the, uh, onto the, uh, ministry resource list.

55:54

We'll throw it on MRL and, uh, we'll, uh,

56:00

Brian W. Brian Shelton is the author there. And, uh, I don't know who that is, but, um, 262 pages long.

56:09

So I'll be interested in seeing what, uh, what he has to say. So there's, there's a little discussion of prevenient grace.

56:18

Um, and which I I'll be very interested in seeing what exactly that means.

56:23

All right. We go back to, uh, Michael here for a brief portion. The fact is the reason

56:30

I ultimately abandoned Calvinism out of my reverence for a Holy God before whom I bow out of my hatred and rejection of the man centered gospel of the 20th and 20th century, 21st century

56:41

American church, a hatred that Bruce and I both share. It is because I was convinced that the testimony of scripture read honestly without preconception from beginning to end was against Calvinism.

56:55

So what I want to do is just give you an overview of that. All right. And I'll be clear, but it's no disrespect intended towards pastor

57:02

Bennett, no disrespect intended towards those who differ with me. I recognize we all come the same way by way of the cross.

57:09

I recognize on that day that all glory and honor will go to the Lord. I recognize that none of us take any credit whatsoever for our salvation.

57:17

Now, this is why hyper

57:24

Calvinists need to be very careful about the judgments that they pass upon people.

57:32

I'm going to disagree with almost everything Michael says biblically in this presentation, but I believe he means what he means when he says this and therefore

57:43

I find him inconsistent. But if you believe that,

57:49

I accept that you believe that. And the hyper Calvinist who is a rationalist, as is the hyper Arminian says, no, no, no, he can't possibly believe that and say what he's going to say afterwards.

57:59

Oh yes, he can. And we're going to find out someday that we all do stuff like that. And that's why we can join together on homosexuality and the

58:09

Trinity and things like that. Even though we've already debated, I don't know how many times now on this, because I really do believe he believes what he just said there.

58:18

That's the issue. All right. Well, there you go. We didn't get very far. Uh, wow.

58:23

A minute and 32 seconds. Wow. At this rate. Yeah.

58:29

But Hey, we've talked about Egyptian mummy masks, um, and, and, uh, pan benevolence, uh, and then got back to this.

58:39

So we covered a fair, a fair gamut there, a fair, fair range for this, the last dividing line

58:46

I'll be doing for a while. Your prayers appreciated once again, for the trip beginning on Friday to, uh, uh, to Kiev and then from Kiev to Berlin and then, and then back again, and then coming up in January, uh,

59:00

Norway and, uh, and, uh, Atlanta. So, uh,

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I'm, uh, I'm gonna be doing a lot of, a lot of traveling. So your prayers appreciate for that, but, uh, we will be back

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Lord willing probably let's see the 13th or somewhere that week

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I get back on the 13th of December. So hopefully we'll be able to put together a dividing line right after that.