The Dividing Line PC&D and the SBC; BH and MB; Response to Shawn McCraney

And welcome to the Dividing Line, third Dividing Line of this week. On Tuesday we had what may be one of the most popular, at least as far as the positive feedback, programs we have ever done with Dr. Michael Kruger on the subject of Sola Scriptura and the Can of Scripture.

Twitter and everything else has been extremely active in people saying, wow, that was really enjoyable, thanks for doing that. So once again, thanks to Dr. Kruger for having joined with us, and I got the feeling toward the end there he'd be willing to do that again sometime in the future on some of the other subjects.

I'd certainly love to have him on to talk about the early texts of the New Testament. He says the book he's working on right now is on the Primitive Church, Church in the Second Century. Good stuff, so we will go that direction sometime in the future, but as I said, it took us about three months to get him on in the first place, so he's a busy guy, so we can't expect that very often.

Phillips, Craig, and Dean and the Baptist Faith and Message

Real quickly, breaking news right now, as started hitting the Twitter sphere, blogosphere, social media sphere, whatever, over the weekend and late last week, I think, Phillips, Craig, and Dean are performing at the 2014 Southern Baptist Pastors Conference, and immediately people started once again pointing out, appropriately, the fact that Phillips, Craig, and Dean come from modalist backgrounds, non-Trinitarian backgrounds.

Randy Phillips, as late as 2009, was saying some pretty strong stuff about Constantine being the one who introduced the Trinity and baptism in the formula of Matthew 28, and all the standard Oneness Pentecostal stuff.

That was only five years ago. Now, I would like to think that in that time period, some of the other members have left the UPCI and stuff like that long ago, if they're even part of it, but they've left the standard Oneness stuff.

And one of the other members of the group, in the mid -2000s, was in a church that their statement of faith basically said, oh, we don't know. You know, some people say Trinity, some people don't, you know, God's just really great.

And honestly, I have more respect for a Oneness Pentecostal than someone who goes, yeah, no, it's just, you know, that doesn't really help me very much. So what I've heard this morning is that the group has signed—now, of course, it might be their representative—signed a document affirming the Baptist faith and message before performing at the Pastors' Conference this coming summer.

Now, I know that the background of the BFNM is certainly Trinitarian, obviously, but looking at it, I was rather disappointed. It certainly wasn't written by someone who was specifically seeking to weed out modalism.

The Baptist faith message in its current version, available at sbc .org, says, under God, it says, the Eternal Triune God reveals Himself to us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence, or being.

There's nothing about the eternality of the persons here. Now, there's a section on the Father, the Son, the Spirit, and I know—but the background is, my concern is, could a modalist sign this by ignoring what the background is, just by going, well, I believe that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

You know, a modalist could say, I believe God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that He, you know, the Father is the Deity, the Son is the Humanity, now He's the Spirit, etc., etc., etc., right? So, there isn't much in the BFNM that would necessitate their saying otherwise, in light of the context they would bring in.

So, I would love to hear that in the past five years, in their interactions with people around the United States, with interactions with godly leaders, that the members of Phillips, Craig, and Dean have come to understand and positively confess the truth of the Trinity, and that they will affirm that the Son has eternally existed as a divine person.

That would be wonderful, because they're extremely talented, they really are extremely talented. I would love to hear that, but I haven't heard that yet, and I hope that that will come to, that will really be focused upon here, and I hope that the people calling for some discernment on this will, A, give room for them to do that, but B, that everyone will have enough knowledge of the doctrine of the Trinity not to be taken in by a, you know, elephant room type silliness.

Because remember what happened with that, you know, here you've got Jake sitting there, going, well, you know, I don't really like the term person, you know, well why not? And then when he explains it, he's still a modalist, and Driscoll and everybody else is sitting there going, ah, this is great, you know.

It's real simple to unmask modalism. Did the Son, as a divine person, eternally exist in the presence, not merely as a thought, but in the presence, in communion with and communication with the Father?

Yes or no? Real simple. It doesn't, it doesn't take, you know, a PhD, but unfortunately that's really, of all the areas of Trinitarian study, the area that the average evangelical goes about. So will there be clarity on this issue?

Don't know. Don't know. But it'll be interesting. It's certainly getting some press, so we'll see what happens. And my hope, honestly, my hope is that we'll see a statement on the PC &D website that says, you know, we've come to understand that, you know, this is what the Bible teaches and that the Son has eternally existed as a divine person.

I would think that would be wonderful. I think I've still got some CDs hiding someplace that I haven't listened to in since, when was that I wrote that Loving the Trinity article for CRI? That was, I was in Chicago.

It was, oh, it was before 2000, because I was speaking at the same conference with Norm Geisler. So you know that hasn't happened since The Father's Freedom came out. So it was 98, 99, somewhere around there.

Wrote an article called Loving the Trinity for the CRI journal, and that's when I discovered that Phillips, Craig, and Dean were modalists. And so there you go. So we hope that that happens. Next point on the three that I want to get to today.

This is the third dividing line of the week, which is unusual. We normally only do two, but it's the third dividing line of the week. And I've been hit right and left by people saying, why aren't you talking about Michael Brown and Benny Hitt?

Well, because that happened after the last dividing line of last week, and the first dividing line of this week was already scheduled with Dr. Krueger, and if anybody thinks that discussing this is more important than what we did with Dr. Krueger, you and I are not on the same page, okay?

I'll just, I'll just tell you that right now. Some of you Calvinists are just really hotheads. You really are. You need to, you need to chill out, okay? And I'm telling you that as a person who's considered a hothead Calvinist.

But balance, people. Balance. Good thing. The second dividing line was an early morning dividing line to fit in with our European guests. So this is the first opportunity. Secondly, the first person to respond to Michael Brown on Twitter was me.

I was first one. I mean, my Twitter response was just Benny Hitt in all caps with about five exclamation points afterwards. But then I clicked on, then I did something completely out of character for me.

I went on Facebook. Now, for those who know me, that was, wow, really? You got to be concerned about something to go on Facebook. Yeah, I went on Facebook. And those of you who saw that know that the only person, at least that day that I saw, at least in that time period, that Michael Brown responded to on Facebook was me.

And I expressed my deep concerns in light of Benny Hinn's teachings, his obvious promotion of the prosperity gospel, his obvious pillaging of Christians to make massive amounts of money, flying around on Spirit One and doing all the rest of the stuff.

Now, let me just start laying out a few things here that I think... I spoke about this yesterday on No Compromise Radio, so I may be blowing poor Mike Ebendroth's scoop here. But we talked about this whole situation on NOCO Radio yesterday, so I'm not sure when that's going to air, probably sometime next week.

A couple things. First of all, I have absolutely, positively no doubt about the status of Benny Hinn and Benny Hinn ministries. But, interestingly enough, the very things that Michael Brown is saying about him not knowing much about Benny Hinn are actually true about me.

Now, for very different reasons. I do not consider that realm of sensationalistic, throwing the Holy Spirit around like a basketball, knocking people over with your coat, that's not my religion. Okay?

I do not even begin to recognize that as having anything to do with what I believe. All right? Inviting people into a sports arena and collecting money from them as if they are sowing seed to your ministry.

Doing a sermonette that is really just part of the process of the music and stuff to get people into an altered state of consciousness, and then manipulating them and knocking people over and having them twitch on the stage.

I don't understand what that is. I don't know what religion it is, but it's not New Testament Christianity. It's not even close. The Bible is very clear. The presence of the Holy Spirit in a person's life brings paideia and sophronismus.

Both terms are translated in various modern translations as discipline, sound mind, sober mind, self-control. It doesn't bring people flopping on the ground, getting slain in the Spirit. The Spirit brings testimony to Jesus Christ.

It causes people to have a greater understanding of who He was and is and what He accomplished. It causes people to have a greater passion and love for the work of Jesus Christ, to want to be disciplined in their study of the gospel and the application of the gospel to all of their life.

It doesn't make them flop around on the floor. I consider it a gross blight upon the name of Christianity that Benny Hinn is normally what people think of when they think of Christianity. He has been exposed.

He has clearly and completely disqualified himself for any kind of ministry by his outrageous lifestyle, standing up there in his multiple thousand-dollar, mondo expensive suits, flying in on Spirit One just to whip around his coat and dispense the Spirit.

And then he gets back, well, then he goes to his his hotel with the multi-thousand-dollar per night rooms and then back on Spirit One to go the next place to collect a few more million dollars. That's not Christianity.

The man's a false teacher and this has been known for decades. This is not something that's new. But I have never, ever taken the time to study the man. I don't have to. I mean, just simply by going to the conferences I've gone to, as a speaker, I have seen the presentations, I've listened to the quotations.

You go on YouTube to research something. You're looking up information. Oh, is it Dove One, not Spirit One? I don't know. Algo is saying it's Dove One. I don't want to disagree with Algo. Whatever it is, Dove One, Spirit One, I don't care what it is.

I know what it looks like, but I've seen that. Just going on YouTube, if you are doing searches for Christian subjects, in the recommended videos, Benny Hinn's gonna come up all the time. And sometimes you just look at it and go, well, that looks weird, and you click on it, and you just sit there.

I did this. When was that? I sort of live-tweeted watching a... Oh, the reason it was, was it mentioned Kiev, and I'm going to Kiev next month. So Benny Hinn passes out the anointing in Kiev, Ukraine.

Something like that. So I clicked on it, and I was repulsed. Here is a mean-spirited man. He was in a bad mood that night. Bad mood. I don't know if his five-star restaurant food wasn't as good as he was expecting it to be, or just what it was, but you could just see he was angry.

And he's strutting around up here, and he's in control. And he's telling his music people, change key! Just like that. Change key! And all of a sudden, he looks over and says, that security guy over there!

Out! Out! Never come back! Out! And I'm sitting here going, whoa, this is weird. And then he goes sort of back into his trance-like state, and he says, hold your hand up. Hold your hand. And about 30 seconds later, do you feel the tingling in your right hand?

That's the Spirit of God. No, it's not! It's the blood rushing out of your right hand! If you hold it up long enough, that's what's gonna happen. Every student knows that. I know, teacher! I know, teacher!

That's the anointing. Oh, no, that's not the anointing. That's tingling in your fingers. The anointing makes you holy over a lifetime. Okay, that's what the anointing does. The anointing gives you discipline to stay firm in the faith.

That's what the anointing does. It's not feelings in your finger at a Benny Hinn crusade. Anyway, so everything I know, I've gotten from, you know, sometimes you're trying to go to channel 28, your finger slips, you go to channel 21 here in Phoenix, and you end up on TBN, and there he is!

And, you know, he's hawking this out of the other thing, and I recognize that there are times when he's on for a long period of time, and he's actually got to read the Bible. He's actually got to say things about religion, and he's gonna talk about Jesus, and he's gonna talk about believing in Jesus, and all sorts of stuff like that.

I've seen all that, but I've never spent the time, like Justin Peters has, going to these things and watching and interviewing people and buying the books. I would no more read a Benny Hinn book than drop a 35-pound dumbbell on my toe.

And I can say that because I've done that in the past, and I'm pretty sure I broke it, but they can't do much for you anyways, so you just let it heal up. I have no, zero, nada interest, because he has disqualified himself by his behavior.

It's just so obvious to me, all right? So that's not even, that part isn't even questionable. But what happened was, Michael comes on Facebook and says, I recorded five episodes with Benny Hinn, and I think they start on the 13th, so I think it's Monday.

I think they start Monday. I might watch those. I might, yeah, record them, if I can figure out when they're on or whatever. I might go ahead and watch those, because people will ask. And I would not doubt that Michael got an opportunity to talk about things that are important to him.

He just put out a book on hyper-grace, I assumed it was the non-lordship salvation stuff, evidently it's not really that, it's something else, primarily in charismatic circles that I know next to zippity-doo-da-nada about, though I have a feeling that, philosophically and theologically at its foundation, it's related to the non-lordship, no-repentance stuff.

I don't know. I don't know. We'll find out. He's got a book out called Hyper-Grace and Authentic Firebolt at the same time. And so, I'm sure those are the things that he wants to be talking about, and he probably got the opportunity to do that.

I imagine Benny's just sort of sitting back, asking questions. He's filling airtime. He's got to fill a lot of airtime. And so, I'm sure Michael got the opportunity of doing that. But, here's the things that really bother me.

Let me get to the things that bother me that I'll be raising with Michael directly in Spain in a couple of weeks first. We will be debating each other twice. We are already scheduled to do that. And we will be opponents in both debates.

One's gonna be on healing, one's gonna be on the extent of the atonement. There's actually a connection between the two when you think about it from the Pentecostal charismatic side of things. But, anyways, I'm not sure if that'll come up.

They're short debates, and you can only get certain things. Anyway, first of all, social media is a wonderful thing, but I think it really makes our conversations shallow. Not just the 140 character limit in Twitter, but Facebook and all these things.

Things happen so fast. Word travels so quickly that people begin to assume that if somebody hasn't said something, within an hour of it happening, oh, you're covering for somebody. Oh, you're this. If I decided not to say anything about it until I could sit down and talk with Michael in Spain, would that really matter?

For a lot of folks, yep, yep, gotta do it. Gotta do it right now. I don't really care how in-depth it is, but right now. I'm getting tired of that, to be perfectly honest with you. I really am. I don't care which side of the matter you're on.

There's people on every side of an issue that just are far more concerned about the speed with which the need jerks than the substance with which the response is made. And I'm just, yeah, I really get tired of that.

Really do. What concerned me initially was obviously Michael has a nationwide radio program. His work on homosexuality is just sterling. His debates against homosexuals and promoters of homosexuality are just the best out there.

There isn't any question about any of that. His stuff on Jewish apologetics is solid and sound. And this is what's driving a lot of people crazy. This is what's driving a lot of people crazy. You see that, you hear that, and you go, I sense discernment there.

And then you see this and go, I sense no discernment there at all. How can it be the same person? How can it be the same person? That's what's driving a lot of people right up the wall. There is a massive inconsistency here.

Secondly, Phil Johnson's response to Michael Brown on this subject at Strange Fire was, there is no baby in the bathwater. And within what? Four months? Three months? Michael does something that basically says to everybody on the Strange Fire side, there you go.

There it is. We were saying that people from that perspective don't have much of a way of discernment and there you go. The one guy everyone puts out there as the example of discernment goes on Benny Hinn to talk about his issues.

And of course, from our perspective, the only reason to be talking to Benny Hinn is to call the man to repentance for the wild and crazy things that he's done and to expose him as a false teacher. But what troubled me more than that?

I mean, that troubled me and that's why I said it immediately to Michael. I said it on Facebook. I said, this man is just one of the best-known examples of the worst of the charismatic movement, the worst of word-faith, the worst of prosperity, the worst of violating everything the Bible says about what an elder is supposed to be like.

Paula White, divorce, reconcile. I'm glad he's back with his wife. That's great. Did he step down for any period of time? Or is he just right back into where he was? I mean, there's all sorts of issues there.

The main thing is the money, the money, the money. Come on, it's so obvious. It doesn't take a great amount of discernment here, does it? Really? And you see, those are all things that Michael isn't. I don't see a bit of evidence that Michael is a money grubber.

He's not trying to get himself a private plane. He's a grandpa. He's the polar opposite. So why would the polar opposite not see these things? But what troubled me more than that was the next day, I guess.

So that must have blown up on Thursday, was it? Because the next day would be Friday. And I listened. I didn't get to listen live. So I listened a couple hours after it aired to Michael's program where he talked about someone Justin Peters called in on and Sako Woods called him on.

And that was more disappointing, because basically what I was understanding Michael saying was, hey, you know, if these things prove to be true, maybe I'll have an opportunity to talk with Pastor Benny about these things.

Michael, it's been 30 stinking years. It's past the talking stage. I mean, seriously, if Benny Hinn does not fulfill all of the criteria the New Testament lays out for saying, watch these people, these people need to be marked out and avoided, what would it take?

And what concerned me was he played sections where Benny Hinn was speaking Orthodox words. Michael, I can get the Mormon prophets speaking Orthodox words. I can go to every single General Conference of the Mormon Church and find Orthodox words.

False teachers always speak Orthodox words, don't they? I mean, isn't that how they get in? False teachers don't show up at the doorway of the church wearing pink and purple polka dotted clown suits. They dress like us and talk like us.

And the Galatian false teachers, nowhere are they faulted for their Christology, their view of the doctrine of God. They're never said to be polytheists or anti-Trinitarians, and yet they're anathematized, aren't they?

So you could have pulled from the Galatian teachers preaching sound words. That's not the point. That's not the point. That's not how you recognize these things. I can pull sound words from Anthony Buzzard, Mike, and yet you and I debated him, right?

So is that the only way that you can identify false teaching? That's what really concerned me. That's what I went, what? Well, maybe I can talk with him now that we have a relationship. You don't think he hasn't heard the truth over 30 some-odd years?

You don't think he doesn't know? And basically the words from everybody has been, you can't be that naive. You cannot possibly be that naive. It's not possible. Especially if I know this much about Benny Hinn and he is in circles that I don't, that I am not in at all.

Michael, you're in the circles he's in. So I cannot possibly see how you do not know where he's coming from. I can't see it. Don't know. Don't know how it's possible. Don't know how it's possible. So I'm gonna ask, I'm gonna ask directly, how do you recognize a false teacher?

How do you do that? Don't know. Don't know from that perspective. Obviously my concern is that amongst charismatics, since your personal experience becomes an element of divine revelation, the Spirit did this, the Spirit did that, then it pretty much leaves you without any practical, meaningful way of holding somebody else to an objective standard.

Well maybe that's just, you know, I hate to question whether the Spirit's moving that way when Brother Benny starts swinging his coat around and knocking people over. Wow. If the word isn't objective enough to point out, that's not the result of the Spirit of God.

Mesmerism, whatever else you want to call it, fine. Just don't call it the Spirit of God. Just don't call it the Spirit of God. So there's that. Next thing, third thing, real quick, real quick, haha, I'm not even gonna be able to, this is gonna be, this could be tough.

Sean McCraney and Calvinism

I am very happy to announce that Sean McCraney, Sean McCraney called me, no he didn't call me, he wrote to us, wrote to us, said hey I heard that Brother White's gonna be talking about what I said about Calvinism, I'd be glad to call in the show.

Hallelujah. That's awesome. It really is. I think that's great. I mean how many Radio Free Geneva's have we done? Where I'm going, so rich, the phone line working out there, you know, and he pots it up, you know.

A vast majority of people who say things about Calvinism, they just run and hide. Now Brother McCraney said some pretty tough things. Here, you got popped up, this is the spot that I'm gonna be real honest and I'm gonna ask him, because we'll have him on.

I said I think the best way to handle this is let me explain where you were wrong. Let me try to enlighten you on this subject. I think you've got some real bad understandings here. I think they came from George Bryson or people like him.

Let me explain what the problems are and then let's find a time and I'll invite you on. We'll do a dialogue on it. We'll do it. Because have you seen the videos? Okay, once you pull up Sean McCraney on YouTube and what I'm gonna tell you is he is Mike Munoz with light colored hair and bigger.

He's Mike Munoz. I'll have to do that later because if I pull up YouTube now, everything else crashes. Yeah, game over. Well, you didn't bring your iPad or something. Anyway, when do you get a chance to do that?

He, and you know, the guys up there dealing with Mormonism, when I went up and recorded with Jason and I think the program we did was on Galvanism, if I recall correctly. It might not have been, but I think it was.

But when I record with Jason, Sean's set was right across the studio in the same place. They're recording at the same place and I had asked about it at that time because it was an interesting looking thing and he seems like a down-home guy.

Seems like a guy that I could sit down. If I ever go to Salt Lake, I'll contact him. I mean, as if, you know, if Jason ever decides he wants me back up there in Salt Lake City again to do something. And I'd love to do something.

We'll sit down, I'll contact him. I'll bet my phone will start ringing in about 30 seconds. Okay, well, I'd love to do something. I'd love to get back up there. It's been a number of years since I've been up there, but we stood out there for so many years.

I know the between here and Salt Lake so well. I've earned my merit badge in witnessing the Mormons, okay? And I think he probably knows that. So we've got something that we share in common there. No two ways about it.

And so he's the type of guy I'd like to sit down at taco time with, okay? Yes, taco time! I miss taco time. Or as people call it, taco time bomb is what we call taco time out there in Salt Lake. But we can sit down and talk, and I would love to open the Bible, Sean, and let's just walk through John 6, you know?

Let's walk through Ephesians 1. Let's do Romans 9. Because it is just painfully obvious to me that he's gotten some really bad information. So I'm going to start playing here. I'm not sure how far I'm going to get because we only got half an hour.

But I'm going to start playing the section that most people have been commenting on. I'm going to respond to it. I may not be as in-depth in my response as I normally would be, but it's because we're in a little bit of a hurry.

And then we're going to... I've got so much Radio Free Geneva stuff I've got to get to. Everyone's asking, when are you going to respond to William Lane Craig and the Paul Helm thing on Unbelievable? I'll get to it!

Yes, I heard it. I live tweeted my reactions to it while I was listening to it. We're trying to see if maybe I can sneak on to Unbelievable in just a matter of... was it January, February? February. On my way back from Ukraine.

Might build in a couple days in London there, just to do some stuff there and maybe talk on similar subjects, things like that. Yes, I would love to have a debate at Biola or in Atlanta, where Craig actually lives.

Be happy to go there for some odd, strange reason. Happen to have family there. Love to do all those things. We'll get to it. We've also got to work on Alan's stuff on Limitless Atonement. We've got a lot to do.

We will get to it. Patience is a Christian virtue. It really is. Let's... I listened to this at 1 .6 speed. Sean sounds brilliant at 1 .6%. Then again, I sound like Einstein at 1 .6%. Sounds like you've just got all your stuff.

I'm going to be playing it at 1 .2%, especially for those of you who whine and complain because you listen to me at high speed and stuff like that. We're going to be playing this at 1 .2 speed. Let's dive into what.

Sean had to say. Interestingly, Calvin paradoxically also taught that God loves all of his creations and desires that all might be saved. He had to teach this. It's biblical, by the way. But for some reason in his mind, this God of love determined that most would not be redeemed.

I don't know why. Well, let me explain a couple things. First of all, if you read Calvin carefully, he is going to discuss very carefully, in a number of places, the intention of God, the desire of God, issues along those lines on a level that I don't... that your comments, Sean, and I hope you don't mind if I just directly address you, that your comments did not indicate you're familiar with.

If you'd like to, for example, see a brand new, very in-depth discussion of that in regards to the Atonement and Calvin, the new book that is so very useful, From Heaven He Came to Sotheart. It just came out, 950-page work on the subject of Atonement.

The chapters in there on that subject would be very useful to you. When you say, I don't know why, let me tell you why. We believe that God... well, think about it, Sean, just this way. God can either save everyone, or God can save some, or He can save no one.

In which of those three... I suppose I should... Sean's going to watch this. In which of those three does God have a choice? If He saves everyone, He has no choice. If He saves no one, He has no choice.

Only by saving a particular people can God have a choice and exercise a choice. Well, why would God want to exercise a choice? Well, may I suggest to you, Sean, that the reason is that God is desiring to demonstrate His power.

In other words, He's demonstrating His attributes. He's revealing Himself to His creation in a way that could not happen in any other way, but in the way that God intended it to happen. So, if He saves some, it's unmerited favor.

They are not worthy of His grace and mercy. We fell in Adam and hence are reprehensible to a holy God. We have personally committed sins which make us all the more reprehensible before God. And so, a just and holy God could condemn all of us.

I think your anthropology is a little weak on that point, as we'll see here in a few moments as we look at some of the other statements you made. But the point is, if God saves a particular people, then some are not going to be saved.

They are utterly under God's judgment. He is just to allow them to be judged. They don't want to be saved. They love their sin. And in hell, they're going to be expressing their hatred of God. Those individuals, in them, God's holiness, justice, power, and wrath are demonstrated.

In those that are saved, whose heart, that heart of stone is taken out, they're given a heart of flesh. The dry bones that the wind blows over and they become living beings, in them, God's love and mercy, His tremendous grace is demonstrated.

So, all of the attributes of God are demonstrated, but only because there is both mercy to the elect and justice toward those who continue to love their sin and continue in their hatred of God. That's, so you say, I don't know why.

I think that would be the answer why.

But in order to save some, here's the deal, and again, according to scripture, that number is going to be very few. God, being sovereign, elected a group of people, of us reprobates, to salvation, by His own goodwill and pleasure, and well before any of us were even physical.

Realities. Now, you keep using the term reprobate in a very non-theological fashion. The word has a particular meaning, and it refers only to those who are passed over by God, who are condemned by God, who are not granted the grace of life.

So, you seem to think that, you're using that term in a way that I'm, as Princess Bride would say, I'm not sure it means what you think it means. Something along those lines might be the way to put it.

Okay. In electing some, God also chose,.

Of His own goodwill and pleasure, to place the remainder in hell, or in the lake of fire,.

Where they will burn forever and ever and ever. Okay. One of your major errors is the error of equal ultimacy. You are trying to make a equal mark between election to salvation and reprobation to damnation, as if they're the exact same thing.

This is an extension of unbelievable grace and mercy and power towards sinners who hate God, changing their nature. This is not. God does not extend power, God does not have to extend grace to this group to make them what they are.

Now, He is extending grace to both groups in the sense that God could just bring His judgment to bear instantly upon everyone. And furthermore, He is actually restraining the evil of this group. God is restraining the evil of man.

They would be more sinful than they actually are, but God does not allow it for His own purposes. So He restrains their evil. But there is no equal in the sense that the power that is required and the nature of the action of God in saving the elect is completely different than sustaining the wicked in their wickedness, not calling them out of existence, and restraining their evil, and yet then righteously judging them.

This equal ultimacy will come up a number of times in your comments here at the beginning. These are not people who are.

Horrid murderers, serial killers, but they could be anyone God has not elected. Little grandma, who faithfully served the community, or 12-year-old girls who love dolls and flowers before they're taken, and babies, all created by God's goodwill and pleasure for hell.

That never.

Ends. Now, you obviously have a problem with that, but so do I, because I don't believe that. This is where your anthropology is all messed up. There are no little old ladies who are good. If they are going to end up under God's judgment, they have lived their entire lives in hatred of God.

They have taken God's goods and gifts, and they have abused them. They are sinners. And either you believe that sinners are worthy of the judgment of God, or you don't. If you think little old ladies and 12-year-old girls who play with dolls are somehow not worthy of God's judgment, then we're not reading the same Bible.

We're not reading Romans 3. We're not reading Romans 1. We're not seeing what God did in the Old Testament when he brought judgment upon the nation of Israel, and those are the very people who died. So don't know where that's coming from.

But your anthropology is not a biblical anthropology. It's not a consistent biblical anthropology. You are talking here without realizing and bringing in, really, in this next section, you bring in what should have been said before you said this, which shows you're really not listening to what you're even saying here when you represent the reformed position.