REFORMCON2016 | James White on Hyper Calvinism

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You guys ready today? Yes? Again, thank you guys, everybody coming from all over the country and joining us for this conference.

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It's a real gift to be able to do this and a treasure and it's an honor to have you guys all with us.

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So, I get the opportunity of introducing our first speaker today, which I'm sure you guys are all very excited about.

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And before I do, again, I want to welcome everybody, let you guys know what's happening here in the conference.

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In the back of the little folder here is the schedule of all the speakers and the breakout sessions and everything that's happening.

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If you have questions about where people are meeting up after the conference today, feel free to ask.

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We'll give you guys directions. If you guys need rides, if you guys from out of town, you need some rides, let us know. We'll try to organize those for you guys.

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So, I'll also let you guys know we have food here, lots of food here. We have stuff right here in the back.

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Lunchtime, we're going to have tons of stuff right over here and in the back. If you guys need anything else, please let us know.

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We want to make sure we can provide that for you guys. Just feel free to ask anything you guys need. My wife,

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Candy, was the one running the food over there this morning and so, find her running around. She'd love to help you as well.

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So, if you guys are watching this right now on the live stream,

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I want to thank you guys for watching this, for sharing this. If you can share the link, sorry, it's reformcon .org

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backslash live. Let people know the live stream is happening and you can actually see the schedule if you're watching on the live stream right now.

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You can see the schedule at reformcon .org. There's a little button there for the schedule so you can see what's happening.

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All of the main sessions are going to be live streamed. The breakout sessions, unfortunately, won't be live streamed today but those are being recorded and will be put online sometime in the near future, hopefully, if Marcus can find any time in his already busy schedule.

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He lives at the studio as it is. So, if you get a chance, say hi to Marcus. We also have, by the way, Joy. Where's Joy the girl?

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Is Joy around here? Where's Joy? There's Joy. That's Joy the girl over there. See Joy? Say hi, Joy. Okay. If you didn't know, she's undercover right now.

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Luke, the bear, is back there. Marcus is in the back working that. Also, Ivy Connerly is here right now.

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If you guys get a chance, say hi to Ivy. He's in now. Eshawn's coming tonight. So, feel free to ask any questions about the schedule, the breakout sessions.

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Just let us know. I, again, get to introduce the first speaker, Dr. James White.

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Dr. James White is responsible for most of what I know about theology. So, if there are problems, talk to him.

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I consider Dr. White a friend. He's one of my heroes of the faith, someone that I think is a mentor to me.

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Again, he's just been a real gift to my own life and my walk with Jesus. Dr. White has participated in over 150 moderated public debates.

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I was saying, I think on last week's episode of Apology Radio or two weeks ago, I was saying, and I mean this,

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I don't think, he probably wouldn't want me saying this right now, but I'm going to say it anyway. I don't think that there is a single

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Christian in the history of the Christian church, 2 ,000 years of history, that has done as many public debates with so many different world views.

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I can't think of anybody in church history that has done so much. Dr. White has debated against top representatives of Mormonism, the

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Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, Roman Catholicism, skeptics and critics of the faith, someone as large of a name as Bart Ehrman.

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He has participated in so many different debates and really been a gift to the church in bringing the gospel and the biblical worldview in a way that is consistent, in a way that is gracious and loving and kind and gentle.

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And so, that is truly a tremendous gift. Dr. White has written some phenomenal books that if you do not have on your shelves,

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I encourage you guys to do, to get some. AOmen .org is where you guys can go to get some more of his resources.

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He has a weekly online podcast, The Dividing Line. Most of you guys probably already know that.

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If you haven't seen it yet, I encourage you guys to go and take a look at the archives and get some good training and equipping.

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Dr. James White is the Director of Alpha and Omega Ministries in Phoenix, Arizona. He is also an elder at the

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Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, author of more than 20 books, a professor and accomplished debater. And he and his wife,

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Kelly, have been married for over 30 years and have two children, Joshua and Summer. And Summer is right over there and one of his, both granddaughters here today.

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No, just one. Clementine is right there in the back as well. So, I want to thank

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Dr. White for giving us the blessing of having him teach here today at ReformCon. Please welcome

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Dr. James White. Well, it is a pleasure to be with you and to be so well amplified there.

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I'll admit right off the bat, I really detest these microphones. I call them Britney Spears microphones.

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And they always end up in my goatee or something, I don't know, falling off or doing something strange.

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So, hopefully we will be able to work our way through that this morning. When you're under these lights, you're all just a bunch of dark little shapes out there.

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You all could go to sleep and I wouldn't even know. That's a bad thing. I prefer seeing the whites of your eyes.

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But it is good to be with you. I would like to welcome all the out -of -towners. Welcome to Phoenix in June.

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Ah, yes. If you go out in the parking lot, you'll discover that all of us who live here found the right parking places.

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We're in the shade, as you know.

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Less than 110 today, that's nothing. That's easy. But Saturday, you know, 118, that's only four degrees below our all -time high, which is

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June 26, 1990, if you were wondering about that, at 122 was our all -time high.

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And yes, I was here for that. It was very close to my anniversary. I remember that very, very vividly.

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But 118, that's in the shade, okay? If you're walking across a parking lot, it's about 135.

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And if you get into your car that's been sitting in the sun, it'll be 175, just so you have an idea of how things like that work.

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So please do not leave anything in your car that can explode in high temperatures because it probably will.

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And that includes children, by the way. Please do not do that. That unfortunately does happen here in Phoenix.

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So welcome to the Valley of the Sun. Who thought of doing this in June? It wasn't me.

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I just thought I would let you mention, I'll mention that. Someone else who just a few moments ago was speaking from up here.

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I think that's the person to talk to. Anyway, I have chosen to address two topics, and this is somewhat unfair,

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I imagine, but my breakout session will be the continuation of this.

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So I sort of feel that that's not necessarily appropriate, but there wasn't anything I could do about it.

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And so I'm going to be touching on some extremely sensitive issues. And I'll be honest with you,

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I'm going to offend a lot of people, not necessarily in this room, but people watching, because I'm going to be talking about some very, very emotional issues, unfortunately.

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This morning I'm going to be talking about hyper -Calvinism, and I'm going to be talking about what it means and who is and who isn't one.

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And the use of that term is a baseball bat for beating people over the head, which unfortunately happens a lot. But then in the breakout session,

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I'm going to be talking about the fact that there are some people that will basically tell you if you do not affirm these things, then you're a hyper -Calvinist.

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And what they're actually saying is if you hold to a historic, high Calvinistic position, you're actually a hyper -Calvinist.

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And basically what they're saying is you need to ascribe to God a level of incoherence and inconsistency and self -contradiction, or we will call you a hyper -Calvinist.

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And so these are really the two edges. And I've certainly discovered as I have gotten older that balance is the key to maturity in the

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Christian life. Balance. And when I see someone who just has, you know, I call them a one -string banjo.

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When I see someone who has, they have one topic, that's all they ever talk about. That's all they can ever get excited about.

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They cannot see how that one topic is related to the rest of the Christian faith. They cannot see how that's related to a mature, full

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Christian faith. I'm really concerned about someone like that. One -string banjos end up as apostates or cultists, one of the two.

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And so maturity requires balance. Balance is also vital in exegesis.

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It's vital in interpretation and, of course, in collecting together the elements of theology that allow us to come to conclusions as to what we're to believe and hence how we are to act.

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Now, my first encounter with Calvinism was not pretty. It was not pretty. I remember it to this day.

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I was that guy in high school that was never tardy for a class. I never got it to merit. Yeah, I was that guy.

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I'm sorry. Some of you are getting ready to walk out now. But never got to be either in high school.

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So it was even worse than that. But when I got into college, I went to Grand Canyon College back then.

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Now it's Grand Canyon University. And guess what? Grand Canyon University just announced yesterday they're starting

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Grand Canyon Theological Seminary. There's going to be another seminary here in the valley. Back when

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I did seminary, there was one seminary in the valley. Now there will be a number of them, which will be quite interesting.

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But anyways, attendance at chapel was required back in those days.

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In fact, you actually had to wear clothing most of the time back in those days, a good thing. And I was really, really early for chapel one day.

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I don't remember why. And there was this fellow, I knew him from some of the Bible classes. He was a little bit of an odd duck.

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But I tried to be friendly even to the odd ducks. That's why I like John Samson. And he didn't even have that speech thing going on.

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So we're starting to talk. And I'm excited because we had started going out to the

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Easter pageant of the LDS Church in Mason. Any of you who know Jeff know that's sort of how we got hooked up many, many years ago.

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He was in diapers and very, very young and couldn't even grow a beard, I think, at that point in time.

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But I was excited because we just started doing this and we were going out witnessing to the Mormons and we were just having a grand old time.

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And I remember the look on his face when I told him about how we were passing out tracts and witnessing to people.

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And all of a sudden he said, well, that's really silly. I'm like, what?

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He says, well, if they're going to get saved, they're going to get saved. You don't need to be going out there and doing that kind of thing. And I was like, what are you talking about?

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And he said, well, you know, if you just understood Calvinism, then you would understand that God has his elect people and you don't need to be going out there and getting abused by these people and stuff like that.

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You need to understand if they're going to get saved, they're going to get saved. God's going to save his people and you don't have to be doing this kind of stuff.

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And I was just, I was horrified. I just, I couldn't believe that someone would say something like this.

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And it was very shortly after that, okay, the glasses come off. I almost feel like just holding it like this, you know, just sort of walking around.

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A few, it was just a few months later. I used to subscribe to the Watchtower magazine.

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It's because I was studying them, not because I found it to be a useful thing, but, um, and, uh, they had an article about Calvin and guess who?

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Servetus. That's always the, you can always tell when an Arminian is in panic mode.

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Servetus, you know, and, and, and that's what, that's what they were doing. So, uh, I appreciate putting the name up now.

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I know who I am. That's, that's very helpful. Um, and, uh, so I'm reading this article about Servetus and all this

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Calvin guy, he's terrible. And, and, and so my introduction wasn't really good, but thankfully that wasn't really my introduction.

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What I only found out later on was my dad went to Moody Bible Institute and he graduated in 1953,

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I think. And I, to this day, have his systematic theology textbook.

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I had it restored recently. Ace Bookbinding did a great job. And, uh, interestingly enough, his systematic theology textbook was written by a guy named

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P .B. Fitzwater, who was a Presbyterian. And so I had actually imbibed a great deal of Reformed theology without all the terminology that would allow me to recognize it for what it really was.

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And so when I first heard the term, it was being presented to me by a guy who was a classical hyper -Calvinist.

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But thankfully, as I started to read books and started to grow in my theological understanding, that experience with that gentleman did not keep me, it did not so impact me that I was not able to fairly analyze things a little bit later on.

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You need to realize, though, that a lot of the people you talk to have had similar experiences, and they're filtering what you're saying to them through their experiences.

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And that's why there's this strong emotional revulsion at what it is you're saying to them.

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Getting past that, I don't have a 0 .1, 0 .2, 0 .3 on how to get past that, but you do need to recognize it and that it is a reality in the experience of many people.

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Now, I'll be perfectly honest with you. I'll be straightforward. I detest hyper -Calvinism. I detest it not only because of that first encounter with it, but historically it has destroyed many, many churches.

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Historically, it has destroyed a strong Reformed movement by creating a, well,

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Now, the hyper -Calvinist says, no, no, no, no, no. We are very zealous to the proclamation of our message.

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Well, yes, I suppose in a certain way that that could be said. But as we will discover,

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I think there is a fatal flaw to the system. And that fatal flaw to the system,

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I told you this would happen. That fatal flaw to the system, I'm not sure what that is. I'm just pushing it up here or something,

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I guess. That fatal flaw to the system really ends up taking the heart out of meaningful

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Reformed theology. I have a hard time even dialoguing with hypers, and they surely are not fond of me, which is what makes it very strange that I am often accused of being a hyper -Calvinist.

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Now, the people who accuse me of being a hyper -Calvinist do so on various foundations.

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The vast majority of the time when you're accused of being a hyper -Calvinist, you're being accused of that by someone who doesn't have a clue what

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Calvinism actually is. So, we have someone like Ergin Kanner and many people within the

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Southern Baptist Convention who will utilize the term hyper -Calvinist of anyone who believes even three or four points of the acrostic tulip as if they are a hyper -Calvinist.

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Now, that's not a meaningful use of the word. It is not a historical use of the word.

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It is not a use of the word that advances understanding. That is using words as weapons to try to damage someone, and specifically to try to get people to stop thinking about what it is that we should be thinking about, and that is, what does the

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Bible teach about the relationship of God with His creation? Does God, the triune

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God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have an eternal decree? Are all things happening to the honor and glory of the triune

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God? Or, did God sort of create and then look at what happens from the outside and come to understand that, well, in the end,

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He was going to win? I mean, these really are vitally important issues. When someone actually gets past that point in time in their life, when just platitudes and vague answers are enough, and that you really want to go,

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God made me with a brain. I want to use my brain to understand His word. Obviously, there's a whole lot of stuff in this word, and there's some really difficult passages, and there are things

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I need to think about, and I need to have a coherent understanding. God made me this way, and so I want to understand what

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His word says. Once somebody gets to that point, there are certain questions that have to be asked and answered, and I obviously believe that Reformed theology is a biblical theology.

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It is not a theology that pretends to answer all questions that can be asked. In fact, I've used the illustration a number of times before, and I think it's important.

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When you look at two of the greatest minds in the history of Reformed theology, obviously we think of people like John Calvin and Jonathan Edwards, and yet there was a difference between Edwards and Calvin.

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Calvin self -consciously, now I'm not saying that Edwards was more intelligent than Calvin or something like that.

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Obviously, we're all different from one another, but Calvin self -consciously committed himself to the concept that when

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God makes an end of speaking, then we must make an end of speaking. In other words, we all know the text from Deuteronomy.

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The secret things belong to the Lord our God. The things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, and so God has not revealed everything there is to know.

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There are questions that we can ask that God has not given us answers to. What the triune

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God was doing at a given point in time prior to creation, the

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Bible does not answer questions like that. It may give us broad concepts. It may tell us that God has always been

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God and God was not lesser before creation than after or things like that. There's all sorts of things you can say in a general way, but the

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Bible is not meant to be an exhaustive revelation of everything that could possibly be known about God.

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There is a wall that God has built, and He said, this far and no farther. In eternity to come, will we go farther than that?

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Well, I would assume so, but how far? I don't know. But Calvin specifically recognized that there was a danger in attempting to, in essence, well, in essence, in expressing dissatisfaction with the amount of revelation that God had given to us, because that's what you're doing.

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When you go to the point where, okay, here's what God has said, here is what He has revealed, and that's not enough for you, then what you're saying is, well,

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God hasn't given me enough. You're dissatisfied with the provision that God has made for you.

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And so Calvin would go to a certain point, and then he would say, beyond this, we must leave it in God's hands.

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Edwards went a little bit farther than Calvin did. Edwards was willing to say, well, we have this foundation, this foundation, and if we put these things together, and no, the

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Word doesn't specifically address this, but you know, I think if we do this, this, and this, and even his fans, even his greatest fans will admit that the result, especially in the very muddy waters of attempting to understand specifically how

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Adam's will and God's will interacted with one another. I mean, there's not a lot of biblical revelation on that subject, when you think about it.

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You got a couple chapters in Genesis and maybe a few references elsewhere that you might be able to cobble something together, but there just isn't a whole lot of biblical revelation on that.

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Most of his fans would admit, those who are even biased toward him, that he ended up really in a morass of self -contradiction.

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And you can understand why. Once you leave the safe ground of divine revelation, it's very easy to end up in a pit of self -contradiction.

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And so, obviously, there comes a time when in our seeking to mature as believers in Christ, we have to ask some of the big questions, and many times life will force us to ask those questions.

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You experience the death of a loved one. You experience tragedy, maybe national tragedy.

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Maybe we could be facing a situation in the not too distant future where there's a nuclear explosion in our world.

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There are nuclear weapons running around. There's nothing we can do about that. They're there. And what if that happens?

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What about all the tremendous suffering that would result from that? We have to ask questions.

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Can you imagine the number of people who are asking questions during the Black Plague when one -third of Europe disappeared?

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If one out of every three people that you know dies, you're going to be asking questions about God's purposes and God's goodness.

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And all of us have to come to that point. And so, we have to wrestle with things about God's decree and God's knowledge of future events and His relationship to time.

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And a lot of people get very uncomfortable at that point because when you start asking those questions and dealing with those issues, you end up having to come to some conclusions which will require you to say, this is right and this is wrong.

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And that means you're going to be examining some traditions, maybe some things that you were brought up with, and you discover that even men that you greatly admired, maybe were used by God in your life, at points in your life, you have to come to the conclusion that, you know what, what they believed about that wasn't quite right.

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It wasn't really fully biblical. And so, we have a lot of folks who will make the accusation, well, you're a hyper -Calvinist if you believe all five points.

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And I believe six points. I think we need a sixth point up at the beginning. Sovereignty of God, that used to be a given.

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Even Arminius believed that. But anymore, that's not a given any longer, especially in our day where you have sovereign man rather than sovereign

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God. But I believe all five points, and so therefore there would be many people, especially in the

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Southern Baptist Convention, you're a hyper -Calvinist, you're a hyper -Calvinist. That's not a meaningful use of the term. And then there are others that will say, well, you know, we're really not 100 % certain exactly what

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Calvin believed on the issue of the atonement. He said this over here, but he said that over there. And so they'll try to raise the issue that, well, classical

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Reformed theology as you'd find it in the Westminster Confession, or the Three Forms of Unity, or in the

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London Baptist Confession, or whatever else you might be looking at, that orthodox

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Reformed theology actually goes beyond Calvin. Well, as far as a system,

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I would imagine it would have to. It came after him. It would be sort of strange if it became less clear and coherent over time rather than more.

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But they'll try to make that argument and will argue that hyper -Calvinism is just going beyond where Calvin was.

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That's really not what we're talking about here today either. I need to put those things aside.

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And look, if you encounter anyone who accuses you of being a hyper -Calvinist simply because you believe in the doctrine of election, you believe that there is actual consistency between the intention of God in election and the intention of God in the atonement—shocking thing that you would believe there's actually consistency there—which is really a good reason to believe in particular redemption, where you actually believe that Christ is a perfect Savior and he accomplishes what he intends to accomplish.

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When someone accuses you of being a hyper -Calvinist for believing those things, you're not really talking to a serious individual.

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You're talking to someone who either is just extremely ignorant—maybe they've read some really bad internet articles, and this is shocking,

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I realize, but there are some really bad internet articles on Reformed theology out there. I just warn you, that Google thing, okay, it's got some problems there.

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Or, and it may be a combination of both, you're talking to someone who has some really deep traditions and emotions that are connected with that, and here's where you run into danger of starting moving toward hyper -Calvinism when you look at someone like that and say, well, if you won't even listen to what the

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Bible says about this, you probably aren't saved anyways. Be careful. Be careful, because every hyper -Calvinist

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I've ever met was willing to basically say, I really wasn't saved until I came to understand the five points.

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And that's scary, because I know I was saved before I came to understand the five points.

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Now, I remember working through the issue of the atonement, because that was, for me, was the big thing.

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I mean, the tradition I had been raised with was this proclamation of a universal atonement, and the atonement doesn't actually save anyone, it makes men savable, and that had just been part and parcel of what

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I had been taught. And I just heard it so many times, it was just so much of my experience that to be challenged on it, and then to come to recognize the beauty of what the

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Bible was actually teaching about the atonement and about God's sovereignty and man's need and all, that was an extremely important thing, but you have to be very, very careful.

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That's not what gets you saved. And for a lot of people who go, well, don't you believe that Reformed theology is the gospel?

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Well, yes, I do. I believe it is an accurate, biblical understanding of what the gospel is. Well, then you need to have all of it.

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If there's anybody in here who thinks you've got it all exactly, perfectly right, we need to talk after I get done.

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Well, actually, nobody else in here should be talking but you anyways, because I don't have it all right.

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I'm not a perfect theologian. I'm going to get to heaven someday, and I'm going to go, oh, wow, oh, hmm, oh, hmm, okay.

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And if there's anybody in here who thinks you've got it all figured out, there are no blank spaces, no inconsistencies, you've got it all figured out.

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Let me tell you right now, you haven't even started your journey yet if that's what you really think about yourself.

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And so the thing that I have identified as the mark of hyper -Calvinism is theological perfectionism.

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The idea that, well, I listened to that James White guy, okay, and he said on the dividing line that Roman Catholics believe

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X, Y, and Z. And because what they believe about the mass and about justification and about how forgiveness is, grace, so on and so forth, then the result is that's a false gospel.

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Therefore, if this church over here doesn't understand what

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I understand about limited atonement, particular redemption, and the consistency of these things, therefore, that must mean they have a false gospel too.

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I've seen many a person walk that road. Many a person walk that road. And the idea is if you draw any line, then you have to draw the line so close that honestly the hyper -Calvinist ends up being the poor guy who's standing on one foot to stay inside the circle that he's drawn of true believers.

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Because if he puts the other foot down, that's too big, that's too wide. There needs to be absolute unanimity of opinion on everything because I've heard so many people, they start down this road.

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And well, if you have to agree about everything on the atonement, then you also have to agree with everything over on this and over there and eventually eschatology.

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And I mean, I happen to know there's some people in here with a weird eschatology, so hey, you know.

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And you end up drawing the circle tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter until you literally have to stand on one foot to stay in the circle so you yourself can stay safe.

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And they become loners. They're not people that are big on the fellowship of believers because nobody else is really quite as perfect as they are in their understanding of these things.

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And that becomes a very, very lonely, lonely world. And you'll run into those folks again in that big place called the internet.

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You're probably not going to find them in real life because they don't want to have interaction with our human beings very much. But that's what ends up happening.

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Now, when we talk about the issue of other people's accusations, especially

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Amaraldians, hypo -Calvinists, not hyper but hypo, in other words, people that want to start compromising on various points and they'll want to affirm some things.

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I mean, everybody, I was talking to some Armenians online just yesterday. Well, we believe in the sovereignty of God.

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He's so sovereign that He's chosen to let man have a free choice. You know, oh, I hear that all the time.

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It's such an empty statement. But there are people that, you know, they go there and they say, oh, I'm, I'm, I'm actually,

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I'm, I'm the real Reformed person. You're the one that's gone too far, et cetera, et cetera. When we start getting into the free offer issue and the definition of that, that's what the breakout session is going to be about.

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We'll be responding to the accusations coming from that particular perspective. Oh, don't leave that door open.

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I can feel all the cold air going, escape, and then it's heading right out there. That's what cold air does here in Arizona.

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We can get out there. There is no really official definition of what hyper -Calvinism is because, obviously, um, we recognize that there are different levels of, uh, understanding of exactly how the decrees of God work and, and how the responsibility of man and the call, the gospel and how these things interface with, with, uh, each other and things like that.

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And, uh, but I would like to offer at least a somewhat descriptive way of understanding what hyper -Calvinism is.

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I know that it has existed historically and much more so in England and Scotland and places like that.

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And so there is an extreme concern on the part of many in the

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United Kingdom over the subject of hyper -Calvinism. When I first started going over there,

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I was surprised at how many people would raise the issue because hyper -Calvinism is known to have, uh, infected and, uh, deeply damaged many movements, uh, within the history of the

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United Kingdom. The result of that, though, can also be, if you look back and go, oh, this happened 150 years ago and this was a bad thing.

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Uh, the problem is, if you're not really careful knowing what happened 150 years ago, you can use that as a means of saying, therefore, you should never believe anything that even looks like or might indicate an openness to even possibly contemplating becoming one of those guys.

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And unfortunately, I've seen that creating schism and division and a, and a willingness to, to push people away from you, uh, because of a, a fear of what they might do if they lose balance.

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Look, folks, there's a lot of folks that will tell you, if you even contemplate the idea of believing that God has an elect people, you're on the road to hyper -Calvinism.

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You can't avoid that in the Bible. It's right there. It's on the surface. You, there are going to be people who are going to ask the question, you know,

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Paul says, I will endure all things for the sake of the savable.

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No. The, the, the better people? No. The elect. I endure all things for the sake of those who are chosen.

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Who, who will bring a charge against God's elect? I mean, it's there.

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There's, and, and I'm sorry, but the vast majority of Arminian watch phrases to get rid of that, to get rid of that phrase, you know, those who choose themselves or those, you know, all the rest of that kind of, it doesn't really satisfy the mind.

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And so people are going to ask the question, who are these elect? Who's in charge of identifying who they are?

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Is God, has God simply elected a nameless, faceless group? Or is salvation actually intensely personal?

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These are the questions that people are going to ask and you're going to end up having to come to answers, but you can see how someone might say, don't even go there.

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Don't even start asking those questions because if you do, the result is you're going to end up as a hyper -Calvinist.

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Well, there needs to be balance. There needs to be balance. And I recognize that when

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I affirm my belief in God's absolute sovereignty, that God has a decree that He is working out, it is not just a, well,

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God does the big things. You know, God does tsunamis and famines. That's about all

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God does and the rest of it leaves up to man. Really? We're supposed to bow down in eternity and worship a

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God who just did the big stuff and then left all that other stuff? He created a universe where there's going to be all this purposeless, empty evil, and then we're supposed to glorify

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Him for that even though it really didn't have a purpose? I have a problem with that. Since I affirm the full bore idea that God Himself is sovereign over all things in time, that means there's no purposeless evil.

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We may not know what the purpose is in this life. I can't guarantee you that God is going to tell us what the purpose is outside of general categories in eternity to come.

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But the reality is the scripture teaches us that God has a decree and that teaches us that He is good and therefore if He is accomplishing that decree, it is a good thing.

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And I'm the one with the teeny tiny little amount of information and the teeny tiny little brain and I'm in no position to judge

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Him in regards to what He's doing in His own creation. Well, there are a lot of people that will say, you cannot possibly remain balanced in that affirmation without falling into the pit of hyper -Calvinism.

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And I say to you, God is able to do anything. And by His Spirit, if these are true biblical teachings,

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I want to believe what the Holy Spirit has given in all of scripture and I'm not going to back away from something just because someone else who believed that has then gone into error.

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How many Trinitarians have gone into error? Rome is Trinitarian. So should we stop believing the Trinity because Rome has gotten into all sorts of problems?

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It doesn't make any sense and yet there are a lot of people that end up buying into that very perspective.

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It's simply not a balanced perspective. Now, I believe the key elements of hyper -Calvinism would be these.

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First, theological perfectionism. Secondly, claimed knowledge of the secret decree rather than the prescriptive will.

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Third, the search for signs of regeneration. And four, a refusal to, now here's, and this is,

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I'm using this word purposefully, to promiscuously proclaim the gospel to every creature, including in that proclamation, the call to repentance and faith on the part of every hearer.

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Those would be the four things I would identify with. Let me repeat them. Theological perfectionism, claimed knowledge of the secret decree rather than the prescriptive will, the search for signs of regeneration, and a refusal to promiscuously proclaim the gospel to every creature, including in that proclamation, the call to repentance and faith on the part of every hearer.

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Now, what do I mean by that? Well, first of all, theological perfectionism, the idea that you…

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Now, again, here's where balance is required, because the two extremes are either what we see all the time today on the one side, there is no objective truth.

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The Word of God is how you experience it. The gospel is what we feel and experience in the position

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God has placed us in. And so, we have the theological liberals and the collapsing evangelicals in our society over here that can no longer define what the gospel is at all.

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And so, it's like the term evangelical. What in the world is an evangelical? I don't know. If T .D. Jakes is one,

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I ain't. Okay? If Joel Osteen is one,

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I wonder if I can… No? Got some tape or something?

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You know, glue? I don't know. All I can say is John Sams is going to have a lot of fun with this.

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You really are. It's supposed to go over my ears somehow, but I've always known

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I have this just massive ginormous head, and it just wants to fall off.

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None has ever been designed that can fit on my ears. So, that's why these things… I just need to buy a lavalier mic and carry it with me wherever I go, and they give me this.

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I smile, walk away, pull it off, put the lavalier on, and then there's nothing I can do about it by the time I get up.

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That's how you do it. Anyway, what was I talking about? Moses was into bulrushes, and what were we talking about?

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Oh, yeah, hyper -Calvinism. That's right. All of you who watched The Dividing Line goes, oh, no, he's going to forget where he was because he just wandered off, and Rich isn't there to help him go.

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Rich is watching, though. Hi, Rich. How are you doing? I'm trying to tell him you need to come tomorrow or something like that so that people can see the mysterious voice.

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Well, he's started doing some Dividing Lines, so you've actually seen him. Anyways, so on the one side, you've got the collapsing evangelicals, where they show up on Oprah.

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I'm not sure why you'd go on Oprah, but you'd go on Oprah, and they ask you, what's the gospel? And they have no clue.

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They cannot say. It's something about Jesus, and Jesus is somehow important to your life, and Jesus is important to my life, sort of.

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But, you know, people say that about the Boston Red Sox, you know. I mean, how is Jesus different from the

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Golden State Warriors or something like that? They can't really tell you. They can't give a meaningful proclamation because there's no defined faith anymore.

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That's not working very well, is it? There's no defined faith anymore. Okay, that's not where I'm going.

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That's the one side. I don't want to go that direction. I can't go that direction, all right? The other side is theological perfectionism, and that is where you draw that line so very, very tightly that, again, you're the only one in it.

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There has to be a balance, and where do we get the balance? Well, the balance is always given to us by the

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Word of God. What does the Scripture show us was the focus of the apostles as to the definition of the true church over against, well, there were false teachers in the day of the apostles.

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And so what were they concerned about? There are a lot of people today, I've called it mere

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Christianity, using the C .S. Lewis thing. A lot of people today, they're in the mere Christianity thing. Well, you know, as long as you're

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Trinitarian, you believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, can't ask any soteriological questions, can't ask questions about what the cross meant or anything like that, but as long as there was a cross and there was a resurrection, there was a virgin birth, and you believe in the

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Trinity, that's good enough. That's our least common denominator. That's good enough. Well, all those things,

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I think, very clearly would be a part of what the apostles believed was definitional of the faith. If you believed a

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God and a God other than the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they're not going to consider you to be within the pale of orthodoxy, within the church.

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If you don't believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, most definitely. So, I'm not disputing the least common denominator,

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I'm just pointing out that that clearly does not exhaust what the apostles thought was necessary in defining the gospel and defining the church.

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Because if the book of Galatians is to be considered canonical scripture, you must include the gospel.

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But someone would say, well, that's all I'm doing. The hyper -Calvinists would say, that's all I'm doing is

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I'm just including the gospel. Well, which elements of the gospel? Well, the gospel is the gospel.

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No. There are all sorts of elements of the gospel. I mean, for example, there's the very necessary conversation of the now and the not yet.

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Are we seated in the heavenly places, or is that something that we will experience in the future?

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Both. Are we adopted as sons of God? Yes. Will we be?

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Yes. Both. So, there's all sorts of issues like that. What's the nature of adoption is and sanctification?

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What's the difference between progressive sanctification, positional sanctification, and all these things?

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And there have been people who have lived their lives and will be in the presence of Christ for eternity that never knew there was a difference between positional sanctification and progressive or experiential sanctification.

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Never even heard the discussion. And yet, there would be others who would say, yeah, but if you don't hold this, then you've got to put those people outside the kingdom.

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So, there are certain elements of the gospel. The fact that it is by grace alone, through faith alone.

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Yeah. Galatians chapter 5, if you think you can be justified by circumcision, fall in from grace.

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Christ will be of no benefit to you. I don't know how much more clear

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Paul could have been. No question about it. So, if we stay biblical, the

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Bible provides us with the evidence the gospel has to be part of the definition. But then there are sub -issues that are vitally important.

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I believe they are vitally important in putting together and proclaiming a consistent understanding of the gospel.

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But that's not the same as theological perfectionism. That's not the same.

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You can see the different emphases between Paul or Peter or James, John in the

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New Testament. Some will use some terms more often than others. I'm thankful that we have the

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New Testament that we have. That we don't just have a New Testament written by one person. Because when you can compare the emphases of the different authors.

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And remember, men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. That allows for a deep, rich understanding of what inspiration is.

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I'm looking forward to hearing the discussion of Revelation tomorrow from Dr. Oliphant. But we need to understand the depth of our understanding of the concept of inspiration, the giving of Scripture in the first place.

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So, those are your two sides. The theological perfectionism, where you make your understanding of every single element of these issues, the standard, over against the other side where no one knows what is definitional of the faith whatsoever.

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Secondly, historically, Hyper -Calvinists have been limited in their proclamation of the gospel and in what they will proclaim to people based upon the idea that they needed to look into your life to see if they saw signs of regeneration.

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Because the only people that you need to proclaim the gospel to are regenerate people. Because what are unregenerate people going to do with the gospel?

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They're going to reject it. They're going to pervert it. Sometimes false religion. That's what unregenerate people do with the conviction of the

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Holy Spirit, with the image of God. They come up with false religion. And so, we don't want to promote false religion.

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And so, what you do is you look at individuals and you look for signs of regeneration.

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And once they have signs of regeneration, then you tell them what they need to do. You proclaim the gospel to them.

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And since they're regenerate, they're going to do the right thing because they have that new nature.

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Now, I don't know about you, but looking around this room, most Hyper -Calvinists wouldn't be preaching the gospel to any of us.

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And there's all sorts of people that they wouldn't even begin to proclaim the gospel to because of the standard that they have of what regeneration is going to look like.

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And the funny thing is, it almost always ends up looking like, well, what my experience was.

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And that's a very dangerous thing. We do not know the identity of the elect.

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We do not know the identity of the elect. I cannot even with certainty look at someone that I've known for many years and say, oh yeah, that question, that person.

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I cannot see hearts. God has not given me that ability. And the older you get in the

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Lord, the more decades you walk this path, the longer the list of people that you can bring to mind that fooled you.

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That you thought, wow, that person's right there with me. This is, whoa. And then you're crushed when they walk away from the faith or enter into some type of false religion or whatever else it might be.

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I cannot see hearts and minds. We are not given that capacity. Are there certain things that seem to me to be the most reliable indications of a regenerate person?

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Sure. I think Edwards was right. When you love the attributes of God that the natural man finds the most repulsive and hatred, that's a very good sign that the

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Spirit of God has changed your heart, made you obedient to His words. Great sign. Is it an infallible sign?

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Not from the external perspective. I can't look into somebody else's heart. And so this idea of looking for signs of regeneration, the idea that we can know who the elect are, there's also a confusion between the decree of God and the prescriptive will of God.

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And this is vitally important. This isn't just some type of theological thing that we can give or take and it's just a tradition of man or something.

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You cannot make heads or tails out of the commands of Scripture if you do not see this difference. And that is, we know as believers that we are called to proclaim, we are commanded, and this is where Hyper -Calvinism simply engages in disobedience against God's command.

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We are called to proclaim repentance to every creature. God commands men everywhere to repent.

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And He uses His people as the means of communicating that message of repentance, which makes me wonder a little bit about those quote -unquote evangelicals who will never even utter the word, but I'm not sure what they're doing, why they're doing what they're doing, but that's another issue and a whole other subject.

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We are called, we have the privilege of being used to call everyone, every human being to repent and to believe.

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And it would be a tremendous burden to feel like I have to actually run this filter and figure out, okay, you know, of this group of people

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I'm talking to, how would you, I don't even know how you would do it. Obviously, this is where the idea of public proclamation and stuff like that becomes almost impossible, or the

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Hyper -Calvinists will say, oh no, no, no, I can do public proclamation, but then listen to what they're offering.

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They're not offering Christ. They will say that all men everywhere must repent, but what they will then refrain from doing is proclaiming

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Christ. If you will do this, you will find Christ to be the perfect Savior.

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There's where the real dividing line, to borrow a phrase, ends up existing.

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That's where it ends up existing. It's one thing to simply proclaim a general message that mankind as a whole should repent.

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It's another to say to anyone who will believe in Him, will repent and turn to Him and believe in Jesus Christ, you will find

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Him to be a perfect and powerful Savior. Because from their perspective, you have to have some evidence that there is regeneration before you can then offer the promises of Christ.

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I never see anyone in the New Testament making that distinction. It's a theological distinction that requires the imbalance of theological perfectionism and the idea that we somehow have the capacity to look into hearts and minds which we do not have.

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I have a lot of young people. People come up to me and say,

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I've just started to come to understand the doctrines of grace. It's blowing my mind.

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It's amazing. It's awesome. It's fantastic. I don't understand how to evangelize anymore because I don't know who the elect are.

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How am I supposed to do this? You recognize, first of all, some of the things you used to do were not biblical.

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They weren't biblical. The gospel is not, you know,

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Jesus has done so much for you and so now you owe it to do something for Him.

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That's not the gospel. I've never found an apostle that proclaimed the idea that, well, you owe

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Jesus something because He's been so nice to you. That's not the gospel.

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The saviorhood of Jesus isn't something that's supposed to make you feel like you're under some type of guilty need to do something to pay

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Him back for being such a nice guy to you. That's not the gospel. So, yeah, all that stuff you were doing, trying to trick people into doing something emotional, you know, the 34 stanzas of just as I am, that type of thing, yeah, there's a reason for you to step away from that and go, you know, sounds like that produces a lot of false converts.

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It sounds like it produces some of the hardest people in the world to witness to because they think they've shaken the pastor's hand and they've got their ticket punched or on the way to heaven and now they don't need to hear anything else.

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Okay, I get that part, but then the question becomes, but what can I say to the lost person?

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Say what the apostle said. Look at what God has done in Jesus Christ. He has died upon the cross.

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He was buried. He rose again the third day and God commands men everywhere to repent and to believe in Him and if you will repent and believe in Him.

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But we don't know who it is. You're not supposed to know who it is. That's not your responsibility. I'm awful glad that's not my responsibility.

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Talk about taking a burden off of you. In the old way, I felt like I might have blood on my hands if I didn't get the proclamation just right.

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You might be the reason that person ends up in the flames of hell. No, that's not how it works, thankfully.

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Jesus Christ is a powerful Savior and anyone who repents and believes in Him will find

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Him to be a powerful Savior. But we don't know who that is. Leave it to God. When Paul would go and preach in so many places in Acts, he goes and he preaches and he proclaims and in the vast majority of the situation, the majority reject his message.

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But then there are those and as Acts 13, 48 so thankfully expresses it to us, those who were appointed unto eternal life believed.

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Now did Paul know who they were before he proclaimed? No. Do you know?

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No. When we look back upon how God uses our message to draw people, isn't it amazing?

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But what foolishness for us to withhold that message because we don't have the specific identity of the elect or think that we somehow have to have that information before we make that proclamation.

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And so that's why I say we are to promiscuously proclaim the gospel to anyone at any time.

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There should never be a limitation. Now, does that mean that we're now making it man -centered and we're making it just a probability?

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No. I never say to people, Jesus died for you, therefore you owe him something.

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The apostles never said that. Jesus died for you and unless you believe in him, you're going to make his death vain and empty.

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Apostles didn't say it, I'm not going to say it either. A lot of people say that today, they just don't ever get around to actually enunciating the words.

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No, I'm going to proclaim the message that the apostles proclaimed because you see, the thing that can provide us with balance.

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If you ever feel yourself losing your balance, I'll bet you're not spending much time in the

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Word of God. I'll bet you're not hearing the Word of God proclaimed in a balanced fashion or you yourself are not spending the time you need to spend in that Word because it is the great balancer.

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Unless you're doing the, I'm only going to read the parts I already like thing. If you actually expose yourself to the whole counsel of God, it provides the balance that keeps you from falling off on one side or the other.

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This issue of hyper -Calvinism, you can proclaim to any individual the perfection of the work of Jesus Christ as Savior without ever contradicting your theology.

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As long as you recognize and understand we have been commanded to make that proclamation, we are the means by which

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God is drawing His people into Himself. The Word and the Spirit, that's what God uses to bring

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His people and He's chosen for some reason to use us, His church, as the mechanism whereby that message goes out to the world.

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And He does not require you and I to become mind readers or heart readers or fruit inspectors because we really stink at it.

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Instead, we are given the tremendous opportunity of simply proclaiming the Gospel.

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We don't have to shave off the rough edges. We don't have to edit it down. We simply proclaim the

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Gospel and the Spirit of God uses that Gospel to draw

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His people into Himself, which is why if you sit in this room today and you name the name of Christ, that's how you were saved and that's how

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God has chosen to continue that process. So, be careful.

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It's so easy. My friends, there's nothing more reprehensible in the sight of God than a

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Christian proud of their knowledge of His truth. A knowledge of His truth rips every foundation for arrogance right out of every one of us, if we just understood it.

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And a proud Calvinist is an oxymoron because you're saying,

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I didn't deserve it. I had nothing to do with it. God's in control of all things, but I'm awful proud

01:00:00

He chose me. That's foolishness. That is a self -contradiction.

01:00:07

There's a little booklet I'll mention to you. We don't have it here, but you have to look it up, I suppose. A little booklet

01:00:13

I would recommend to you, to your reading, maybe every couple years.

01:00:20

A little booklet by a Reformed Baptist, well -known Reformed Baptist by the name of Al Martin. And Al Martin can preach, by the way, if you've never heard an

01:00:30

Al Martin sermon. Look a few of them up. A couple of his sermons on hell will get you saved again.

01:00:39

But he wrote a little, it's one of those banner booklets. It's called

01:00:44

The Practical Implications of Calvinism. And it is the most pride -deflating little booklet you'll ever read, which is why we probably need to read it over and over again.

01:00:58

Because he brings out this reality, that there is no greater contradiction than a

01:01:04

Calvinist who's proud of being a Calvinist. This theology, if properly understood and in a balanced fashion, clearly robs us of all grounds of boasting.

01:01:19

It is exactly as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1. It is by his doing that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become to us redemption and wisdom of God and justification, all these things, so that let he who boasts, boast in the

01:01:36

Lord and not in anything that we have done. We need to avoid this movement.

01:01:42

If you see people heading into this, warn them. Seek to get them back into a balanced position because it is destructive.

01:01:51

God has been very kind in raising up people who are willing to say, I stand with the

01:01:58

Reformation. I stand with the Bible in believing these things, even when it's unpopular. But we do not do ourselves any favors if we do not say, yeah, there are imbalanced understandings of these things.

01:02:13

We need to seek to avoid them. And may God, by his grace, give us guidance as we seek to do so.

01:02:19

Let's pray together. Our Grace Heavenly Father, we do thank you for the opportunity we've had, even in these few minutes, to consider your truth.

01:02:27

And once again, we would ask that you, by your Spirit, would help us to grow and to mature, to come to an understanding of your truth.

01:02:37

And Lord, protect us from imbalance. Protect us not only from all the waves of fads and movements that come and go, but protect us from that internal temptation toward pride, that internal temptation toward perfectionism, thinking that somehow we have figured things out that no one else ever has.

01:03:06

Lord, help us to always remain balanced because we want to honor and glorify you. Drive us constantly into your

01:03:12

Word. Fill our hearts with love for your people. Make us to be a balanced people all to your honor and glory.