Calls About Caner then More From Jerry Vines

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of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded

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

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

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

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

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James White. And good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line. On a

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Thursday afternoon, let me read something for you and ask you to identify who it is who said the following.

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When the Bible says, and the title is, Did God Harden Pharaoh's Heart?

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Proposed biblical theological difficulty of God positively ordaining evil. When the

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Bible says that God did this, it is in the particular sense of God allowed the Pharaoh to become hardened of his own accord, then used it for his purposes to free the

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Hebrew slaves. In other words, it is a typically vivid, pungent, dramatic Hebrew way of speech.

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God did it in the sense of it being ultimately used for his purposes in his providence.

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Because it is pre -philosophical language, all that is bypassed, and the writer just says,

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God hardened Pharaoh. But nevertheless, other passages give the fuller sense of this, so it can be better understood.

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Thus, the literature teaches by deduction, what might be expressed in more logical type language all in one sentence.

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Accordingly, we have in the Bible many passages saying that God hardened Pharaoh, and even hardening the

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Egyptians, but it also says that Pharaoh hardened his heart. Furthermore, Scripture states the fact of Pharaoh hardening without saying who caused it, and that one shouldn't harden one's own heart as a generality.

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The obvious, straightforward way to interpret all this data is as I have done.

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It is neither internally contradictory nor troublesome with regard to the problem of evil. This is easily understood by means of some familiarity with Hebrew oft -poetic, non -literal manner of speaking, and Scripture interprets

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Scripture. This is a classic case, but if one reads only one sort of passage to the exclusion of others, then an incorrect meaning will be obtained that seems to cast doubt on God's goodness and self -consistency.

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So who said that? You've heard lots of folks say that.

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Who said that particular thing? In fact, said it, let's see, today, actually.

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Said that, that's an exact citation from a blog article that appears today.

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The utilization of Google or Ask will automatically disqualify you from guessing, but maybe you'd like to take a wild guess.

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877 -753 -3341 here on the wild -eyed jihadist network.

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Most of you are aware that Dr. Ergen Kanner has put up some questions and answers, his answers on his website, and I've responded briefly.

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Anyone who in any way, shape, or form has read the documentation cannot help but be absolutely embarrassed for Dr.

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Kanner. You know, I can't imagine being in his position.

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I mean, he knows, he is well aware of the fact, he was fully involved with the fact that his side agreed to a particular format.

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We have posted Ymir Kanner's signature. I have posted emails from Ergen Kanner, or at least a citation of an email from Ergen Kanner from the 27th of June, acquiescing and recognizing the length of the debate and the whole nine yards, and so that fact, that big, as I put it, 800 -pound gorilla has to be hidden away in Dr.

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Kanner's office someplace. And what must it be like to be in his position? He just doesn't want to have to admit, hey, we're the ones that broke our word.

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Twelve days out, we allowed our word to be broken. We would not stand behind our word.

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We have no integrity. Instead, he has to attack me, says

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I refused to debate, that I found the rules imposed by the moderator,

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Brett O'Donnell, to be unacceptable. Yeah, because Brett O'Donnell wasn't the one who came up with the agreement.

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Dr. Kanner, if Brett O'Donnell was the one who was in charge of this debate from the beginning, why did we waste all that time with you and Ymir?

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Why did Tom Askell and Ymir Kanner talk on the phone? If you guys never had the right to determine what the debate was going to be like, it was all given to Brett O'Donnell.

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Anyways, why? Now, of course, they did that because Brett O'Donnell wasn't in charge. Brett O'Donnell was to be there to moderate.

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He was to enforce the rules. We come up with them. We came up with the format. We came up with the topic, and he was simply there to keep time and enforce the rules.

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Nothing more. That's the role of the moderator, and I've done 59 of those debates, and Dr.

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Kanner's done none that he will even point to as an example. Therefore, which one of us has some idea what role we're talking about?

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That is the question. And so when he says, you know, why am

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I acting in this manner, have to ask him. Well, feel free to ask me. I would be happy to take any phone calls from Liberty students,

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Liberty faculty, anyone, 877 -753 -3341. I will make myself available and open in that way, whereas other people don't do that nearly as readily as I do for some strange and odd reason, but we're certainly available for that kind of interaction.

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But anyways, it says, ultimately, Dr. White walked away over seven minutes per person. That is not true. That is a falsehood.

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It's a falsehood that has been refuted a couple of times, and, yeah, if you're with Liberty, you go to the front line.

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If you want to call in from Liberty, and especially if you're a student, we will put you right at the front line. You won't have to wait long, and it's toll -free, too.

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By the way, I know what it's like to be a college student. So anyway, that's simply untrue, and anyone,

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I would invite anyone at Liberty to record this and provide it to Dr. Kanner. That's untrue.

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Why is it untrue? Well, because the primary reason was the fact that the Kanners reneged on an agreement that they themselves had made.

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This is a documented fact that they have carefully avoided saying anything about. Secondly, there are a number of other issues that they forget to bring up.

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They have yet to mention the fact that they were given first and last word and that there was no reason for giving first and last word because there was no meaningful, positive, affirmative, positive, negative to the thesis statement, which was just Baptist and Calvinist.

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Thirdly, they changed the issue of cross -examination. And I know I've gotten the feeling from the beginning that the

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Kanners were afraid of cross -examination because cross -examination is a period of time where you actually have to answer direct questions.

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And we know what the questions should be about the debate, and they're not the ones Dr. Kanner deigns to answer on his website.

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And so, clearly, if they have problems with something as simple as this, answering direct questions about the biblical text and about history and about why

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Dr. Kanner tells his students that Charles Haddon Spurgeon denied limited atonement when he preached sermons promoting it and various other things, his complete redefinition of hyper -Calvinism, which, interestingly enough, we were just playing for the folks who listened to the pre -feed.

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We were playing Jerry Vine's sermon at Johnny Hunt's church. It's pretty bad. It's pretty much straight out of Dave Hunt's book.

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Absolutely nothing new. Nothing new whatsoever. Matthew 23, 37 misquoted.

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Again, it's a plague. I guess there's a new version of Matthew 23, 37 out there that doesn't match the canonical

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Matthew 23, 37, the tradition version of it, which really sort of proves our point, doesn't it?

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If your tradition doesn't allow you to quote the text of scripture correctly, that pretty much tells you where your actual exegesis has gone or is going.

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But, as it may, interestingly enough, at one point, however, Dr. Vines identified, he quoted from Spurgeon, he said

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Spurgeon was actually talking about John Gild. That's actually only partially true. But he was talking about hyper -Calvinism, which

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Spurgeon stood very firmly against. But did you notice, if we take that, what he actually said, he defined hyper -Calvinism correctly because he was quoting

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Spurgeon. And what was it? What did he say? That men have no responsibility to repent and that there's no free offer of the gospel.

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Now, if Dr. Kanner would simply utilize even the example that Spurgeon used, he would never be able to use the term hyper -Calvinist of myself or Dr.

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Askle or anybody else. But he can't. He has to come up with new definitions on his own.

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And that's what he does. But what I was going to be talking about, even though there's lots of personal shots at me that, again, anyone who's read the documentation knows are just utterly fallacious.

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It's rather sad. There is a, let's see here, after the discussion of hyper -Calvinist, then you have, interestingly enough, how do you spell

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Armenian? Remember, he had misspelled Armenian as Armenian. And it says, well, the short answer is poorly.

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Any student of mine knows that I despise Microsoft Word with its automatic re -spellings. It may have been a word issue, but I am not above misspelling the word myself.

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Actually, someone checked and the words spell checker, if you type

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Armenian, does not give you Armenian as a possibility. So, oh, well, that one didn't work either. Probably should have checked that one out, sort of like CBS should have checked things out before they did things, too.

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But then, question, here's the question that's asked. Didn't you say that Calvinists are worse than Muslims?

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Answer, yes, absolutely. For a small portion of these people, just daring to question the

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Bezian movement, Theodore Bezian, is heresy. They will blog and email incessantly.

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I call it a Calvinist jihad, because just like Muslims, they believe they're defending the honor of their view.

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They can discuss nothing else. I've even had a few call from my head. Dr. Falwell and I have laughed about it, because they are so insistent, and they missed the point completely.

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There are plenty of schools to which the neo -Calvinists can go, but liberty will be a lighthouse for missions and evangelism to the whosoever -wills, period.

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The difference is, Muslims know when to quit. Really? They do? What, when they blow up?

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That's when they know to quit? For these guys, it is the only topic about which they can talk.

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Now, who is that? It certainly isn't me. Dr. Cantor seems to be ignoring the fact that I've debated more high -profile

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Muslim apologists than he has. He doesn't seem to recognize the work of the

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Jesus Seminar, Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, textual critical issues. Those just all go away, and I don't think that Dr.

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Cantor does any work in those areas, does he? So, I sort of wonder, would someone be able to turn this accusation against Dr.

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Cantor, I wonder? Because he seems to be the one talking a lot about it all the time recently. Well, anyway, that's on Dr.

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Cantor's blog, and it's pretty amazing stuff. But we are worse than Muslims because we don't know when to quit.

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Okay, well, if that's what you want to say, that's what you want to say. All right, that's fine.

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Now, I have asked, and I have not yet gotten an answer. But from the start, we have followed a particular path, and I'm not sure, maybe it was just the fact that Dr.

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Cantor acted so outrageously at first.

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Maybe the language he used on the blogs.

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You know, I had challenged Dr. Cantor to debate before the Founders thing happened, actually. I'm not sure if he's mentioned that accurately.

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Because I had been sent numerous emails from people where he had identified

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Calvinism as a heresy, and had made the Muslim comment and things like that. I've pursued this in a very public way so that the people of God would see which side was attempting to get a debate, and how to do it right, in essence, and how to not do it,

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I guess. And so I've been very upfront in telling folks what's going on and things like that.

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That does not mean there's not all sorts of stuff going on behind the scenes, shall we say.

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And there is. There's just all sorts of things I can mention because I've mentioned our chat channel.

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There's all sorts of folks from Liberty who have contacted me. And I mean a number of students and a number of faculty.

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Some just asking questions, some being very supportive. Well, I've only had one person from Liberty who hasn't been supportive of what we're doing and what has taken place.

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And there's many people there that recognize that they've got a problem. They really do have a problem. But sadly, a number, and I'm not talking one.

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I'm talking more than three. Okay? And I won't go beyond that to say how many.

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People who have liberty .edu addresses have been afraid to use them because the emails are monitored.

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And they don't want to be caught talking to me. I mean, there's a sense of fear amongst many people back there.

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And that's just wrong. That just shouldn't be. I mean, isn't there somewhat of a contrast between liberty and this?

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I mean, the two terms, you know, liberty doesn't really mean that, does it? It's very, very odd. And so anyway,

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I received an email yesterday from Liberty's radio station.

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And the radio station asked if I would do an interview on their program on Monday night,

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October 16th. Which, of course, is when the debate would have been. And I was like, hmm, okay, sure.

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Have you all checked up the line on this? You know, have you checked with the people, you know, up at the top?

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And I honestly, today, I was very, very straightforward and say, look, friend,

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I don't want you to, like, lose your job or get kicked out of school or whatever. Are you certain that you want to do this?

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Are you certain that you want to have me on? And it's to talk about the debate.

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You know, we want to know what happened with the debate. Would you be willing to come on and do an interview? I said, sure. I'd be happy to.

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I'll use the facilities we have here. We can fire up the DL equipment and use the phone line here like we do for the, we help out

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Chris Aronson with Iron Sharpens Iron. And that way they'll get the best sound quality that they can get and a nice strong signal.

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And I would be more than happy to answer any questions that anyone at Liberty would want to ask of me. And when they first contacted me,

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I sent them back an entire list of all the URLs to all of Tom Askell's blog articles, all of mine, and to all the

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PDFs and HTML files that we created documenting this interaction with Ergon Kanner all the way back to February.

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It's quite an impressive screen when you see all these URLs sitting there. And have you noticed something about the interaction here?

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There's only one side that provides documentation. There's only one side that says, okay, on this date, this person said this and signed this and this was the agreement and here it is and this is exactly how it was.

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There's only one side that does that. The other side just puts up little things and there's just no dates and stuff like that at all.

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It's just not documented. It isn't that strange. Well, anyway, I sent all that and said whoever's going to be doing interviewing, here's all the documentation you could ever want, probably more than you could ever even begin to utilize in an interview.

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But, hey, you know what? It's always better to have more information than less. I remember back in the day when

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I did radio, I worked six to midnight, Monday to Friday, noon to six on Saturday when

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I was in high school and college on a radio station spinning vinyl records, yes, the ones that skipped and things like that.

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And I remember hearing my father trying to do an interview one day and, you know, back then you had to do all these public service things to keep your license current and stuff.

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You had to bring these people in on some of the most boring topics on the face of the planet, but you had to do it to prove to the

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FCC that you were serving the public interest. And so he had this guy in and it was an hour long public affairs program.

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And the guy gave him monosyllabic responses. That's one syllable for those of you in Rio Linda.

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I don't know where I got that. But I don't have a paper around here to shuffle either.

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So monosyllabic answers. He had exhausted every single one of his questions for the whole hour within the first two and a half minutes.

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And he had 57 to go. Well, let me tell you something.

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That's not what you want. And I can assure you, no matter how long we are given, and I can assure you it's not going to be as much time as I would like or I could fill, there would be much more to talk about in that time period.

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And so I gave all that information. And so as of right now, as of right now,

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I am scheduled to be on Liberty's radio station,

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WWNC, 730 p .m. on Monday night. Now, I have written back and I've asked a few questions because I want to double check on this.

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Is this going to be, my understanding is, going to be me and one other person. I've asked if there's going to be anybody else on.

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I would love to have somebody else on. It would be great. I'd be happy to go on with Ergen Kanner.

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You bet. I've got all these questions I'd like to ask. You know, Dr. Kanner, how come you haven't once mentioned anybody?

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This little old signed agreement here, you know, this Ymir Kanner guy. Doesn't that sort of change everything, you know, that 12 days out?

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You know, he's blaming me for pulling stunts at the end. And who started this 12 days out? Wasn't it

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Liberty and Brent O'Donnell? Do I have some remote control device where I'm controlling

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Dr. O'Donnell? It's time for my October surprise. It's just, you have to laugh because it's just so silly.

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There's nothing to it. It's just, wow, it's amazing. So anyway, I'd be happy to be on with Dr.

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Kanner or whoever would like to be on. But I'm supposed to be on and I've asked if there's going to be anybody else on.

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I want to make sure it's live. How long is it going to be? So on and so forth. And so I am hoping this is just simply the journalistic instinct, which is trained in journalism classes, going to get the story.

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Let's cover the story. Now, this is a story. It's a big enough story that yesterday in the

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Liberty Convocation, Falwell and O'Donnell addressed all 10 ,000 students about it.

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And again, somehow forgot to mention that there was a signed agreement that was reneged upon by the

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Kanners. Don't know how that happened. Maybe Dr. Falwell doesn't read the blogs and isn't aware of these things.

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I don't know. But that's what took place. So it's a story. It's a valid story.

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And let's hope that the powers that be will allow truth to be spoken.

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But you know what? I think there's about as equal a chance of that radio program going off as there is of you and me being snowed into our houses on Christmas, Rich.

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What do you think? And for those of you who don't know, we are in Phoenix, Arizona. Okay? It did snow here twice in my lifetime,

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I think. But it didn't stick on the ground, Rich, so you can't get none of it. It didn't stick on the ground. I was here, too.

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It can't survive that. Mm -mm. Mm -mm. No. For like a half second. Yeah. Okay. That's not being snowed in.

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Okay. We like to think it is. I've been snowed in. I was born in Minneapolis. I know what snowed in means.

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You know, I can hear it in the hallways when somebody else doesn't necessarily want to hear about this finds out and you hear it.

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You're going to do what? I don't think so. I don't think so. Look at that.

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The electricity got turned off. It's 729. What a shame. Mm -mm. Yeah. We'll find out.

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We will find out. I'm going to put my cards around the table here. Folks, if I'm not on that night, you're going to know why.

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I mean, let's face it. If I'm not on, there's only one reason why, and that is because those in leadership are covering their ankles.

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And they just don't want the truth to be known about this. And that would mean they know what the truth is to begin with.

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And they know that they don't have any answers for the documentation that I can provide and present in a reasonable fashion.

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You know, I don't have to liken Dr. Kanner to a

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Muslim jihadist. I don't have to bother with all that stuff because I've got the facts.

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I've got all the documentation. And that's all there is to it. So, you know, there you go.

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I haven't had anybody guess yet. We've got one caller online, but I'd like to get some others. Who said all that stuff that I quoted just a few moments ago in regards to Pharaoh hardening his own heart out of Romans chapter 9?

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I'd like to know who you think it was that said that. Now, before we take our calls, right up to the point of the top of the hour,

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I was recording the sermon by Jerry Vines. You are now going to hear...

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Because, I don't know, I think it is because of our cable here. And I think we just need to replace the cable.

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Or maybe... I think it's the jack in the laptop. I don't think it is. Yeah, I do.

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I think it's the jack in the laptop. How come I can plug headphones in and it works fine? I've got to get this call.

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Silence! You have been refuted! Ah, yes, there you go.

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There you go. So, I was recording the sermon because the sermon came across in...

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What was that? Windows Media? It was a streaming video thing. And so I wanted to get just the audio portions.

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Of Jerry Vines' sermon at First Baptist Church, Woodstock, which, of course, is

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Johnny Hunt's church on Calvinism. And it wasn't real encouraging.

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It really was not encouraging in any way, shape, or form. I was going to play a section for you here, but in obedience to the stated promise made on the air just a few moments ago...

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Are we on the air? Is the web the air? Think about it. I mean, come on. The air used to mean radio.

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But this isn't radio. It's everywhere, air. But this is just a big series of tubes, remember?

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According to that congressman when he was explaining the internet? You didn't catch that? No, I missed that part.

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That's too bad. I didn't see Al Gore describe it. Well, how could he? He's the creator. Well, then...

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He is the creator. Yes. So maybe he could cool things off if he's the creator.

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Maybe that would... I really don't think you want to go to that. Okay. I will make some more comments about the

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Jerry Vine sermon in a moment. But first, we made a promise that if anyone...

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I don't know that this is from Liberty, but it says Lynchburg. So doesn't

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Liberty, like, own Lynchburg or something like that? Would Lynchburg exist without it there? I don't know.

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But let's go to line two and talk to Regina. Hi, Regina. Hi. How are you doing, James?

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I'm a friend of Chris Arnzen. We met you in New York, my husband Dave and I. Oh, yes. How are you doing? I'm doing very well.

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And that's amazing. You were on a radio program with me up there, actually, when you were debating Barry Lynn. Oh, yeah.

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Now, Regina, you need to be careful, though, because you have just publicly acknowledged knowledge of Chris Arnzen.

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Yes, I understand that. I understand that. And listen, you can't find me. I'm in Virginia. I'm safe, okay?

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The FBI doesn't go there, huh? I will not give out my address on the air. Okay, that's a good thing. Now, listen, I went on your website.

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We were waiting patiently for this debate between you and Ergen Kanner. Went on your website, and I see what you wrote today, 10 -12.

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Please explain to me the circumstances around the cancellation of this debate, if you can.

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Well, if you'll go down the blog just a little bit, you'll find every possible bit of documentation on the subject.

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And Tom Askell joined me in the last dividing line, which Rich Pierce is very diligently making available to everybody all the time, that we went over all of it.

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So I'll just be very, very brief and give you the idea right now. Fundamentally, the whole thing fell apart when we had an agreement.

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It was a signed agreement. If you go down my blog, you will see Emir Kanner's signature on an email from September 27th.

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Okay, I didn't see this earlier. That's why I'm asking. Yeah, it's all there, but I'll give you just a brief summary.

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We had a signed agreement. The debate had almost come to a screeching halt back in June. And in fact,

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Tom Askell had said, look, forget it. I'm not going to do this. These men will not reason with us. They will not deal with us.

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They're insisting on a thesis statement that was not even in meaningful English grammar. They're not willing to discuss the reasons why they want to do anything.

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Forget it. Just not going to be involved. And I said, okay, fine. I'll take them on alone. I don't have any problem doing that. Well, briefly, shortly after that,

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Emir Kanner contacted me and said, what do we need to do to make this work? And I said, well, you need to talk to Tom, because Tom is the one that, you know,

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I've tried. There are three files on the Web, and you would not believe,

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Regina, if you went and looked at these files, how much effort went into trying to deal with these guys.

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I mean, people who've read them have just rolled their eyes at the constant effort that was put out by one side to reason logically and rationally, and the other side to just try to derail it in every way possible.

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So, anyway, we came to an agreement back during the summer concerning the format, the thesis statement.

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We just gave up on having a thesis statement that you could deny or affirm. It was just Baptist and Calvinism. I mean, what does that mean?

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That's not even really a thesis statement, but, hey, whatever. And we came up with a period of time that the debate was to take place in.

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Now, remember, I have done four -person debates before that were four hours and 20 minutes long.

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This is a big topic, and what we demanded was at least three hours of debate.

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I mean, if you're going to fly all the way across the United States, you've got four guys, that's still less than an hour. I mean, this program

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I'm doing will be less time than I would have to speak in the entirety of that debate, okay? You're right.

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So you've got to have enough time to do something. It's just to show respect for your audience. So we had said we need to have

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X amount of time. One side goes first, and you just keep going back and forth, back and forth, all the way through. One side doesn't get to go first and last or anything like that.

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It's just go straight all the way through. We agreed to all of these things. And it had been the very first thing that Ergen Kanner had said when he had talked with Falwell was all sides get equal distribution to the videotapes, audiotapes, whatever.

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Everybody can make them available to whoever they want to make available to. That's how everything stood.

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We have signed. We have provided the documentation. There is a signature. That's how everything stood.

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I've got Ergen Kanner telling a brother in Florida back in June 27th that this had already been established way back then.

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You have the confirmation of it as late as 9 -27. And on 10 -4, last Wednesday, Brett O'Donnell, head of debate at Liberty University, who is supposed to be moderating the debate, sends out an e -mail to all of us at 8 -29 in the morning.

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At least that's when my system got it. And he has a no -use contract, which means only

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Liberty is going to own the videotapes. Nobody else can have them, that he wants signed and faxed back in two days. And then he has taken the agreed -to format and thrown everything that we asked.

31:09

By the way, there was one other thing that we asked for and got. We wanted more cross -examination. There has to be time for the two sides to interact or all you're doing is having competing sermons.

31:18

It doesn't mean anything. So we had asked for the cross -examination. They had agreed to that. O'Donnell cut everything they had agreed to out and gave them first and last opportunity to speak.

31:29

Just threw our agreement out. Now, between the 4th and the 6th, about 13 e -mails per side went back and forth between myself,

31:40

Rich Pierce, and Brett O'Donnell. Emir and Eragon Kanner did not say a word between Wednesday and Friday evening.

31:49

Wednesday morning and Friday evening. Over 48 hours, I think it was about 52, 54 hours before any one of them would say a word.

31:56

We called Dr. O'Donnell's office. He would not call us back. We did everything to try to say, wait a minute.

32:03

We had an agreement. What's going on here? How can you just throw all this stuff out? And so finally,

32:10

I said on Friday, if I do not hear from Eragon and Emir Kanner by 5 o 'clock today,

32:17

I'm going to assume that though you signed the agreement and here it is, here is the e -mail.

32:22

I had to dig all this stuff up. I'm trying to write a book. I had to dig all this stuff up and send it off to Brett O'Donnell.

32:29

I said if I don't hear anything from you guys by 5 o 'clock today, I'm just going to assume that you're going to allow, you're going to renege on the agreement.

32:37

You're going to allow your word to be thrown out, to be torn up and made worthless. And if that's the case, well, how in the world can we have a debate?

32:44

If you unilaterally can change the rules now 12 days out, then you can change the rules two hours out.

32:52

You can change the rules in the middle. It doesn't matter. You want total and complete control and we're just to do whatever you tell us to do.

32:59

And so within 10 seconds of 5 p .m., my system received

33:05

Emir Kanner's e -mail saying, we submit to Brett O'Donnell. We believe he's in charge.

33:13

His e -mail to you says that he submits to Brett O'Donnell, but at the same time, his website says that James White quit.

33:22

Right. And as I pointed out over and over and over again, yeah, we quit trying to deal with people whose word could not be trusted.

33:30

You will search through everything Emir Kanner has said and Ergen Kanner has said and Jerry Falwell has said and Brett O'Donnell has said in public so far.

33:39

That was at their convocation and on the two websites. And there's one little piece of information they forget about, a signed agreement that they threw out 12 days before the debate.

33:53

Now, how anyone can pretend that they are honestly addressing this when they forget to mention a signed agreement,

34:01

I can't begin to understand. Okay. Well, I'm glad you set me straight because, like I said,

34:07

I read this today and it was a little unclear to me and I didn't see all the other dialogue actually.

34:15

And now I'm glad that I can review that. Yeah, it's all there. I've seen you debate. We have all your tapes, almost all of them, not 16 years worth, but we have a lot of your tapes and I've seen you debate.

34:27

And so I just really wanted to, you know, hear your side of the story.

34:33

I would love to have been there. And Ergen Kanner has a standing challenge to debate me one -on -one, but if you read his website right now, he says,

34:40

I'm the one not trustworthy enough to debate. And it's an amazing, an amazing thing to observe here.

34:46

It really is. Well, and it's a shame because it would be nice to see, you know, it would be nice to see a debate on this topic because it is a hot issue.

34:57

For sure. It needs to be talked about and we do need to do it in love and say, look, we all know that we still need to evangelize.

35:06

Yeah. We still need to go out and tell people about the good news and leave the rest to the

35:11

Lord. Well, you know, the problem is Dr. Kanner has decided to identify Tom Askell and I as hyper -Calvinists to say that we don't believe in those types of things.

35:21

Of course, the facts are clearly otherwise, but that's the kind of rhetoric, unfortunately, that's being used right now.

35:30

If that was the case, James, you wouldn't be out debating Mormons in Utah. You would think. You would think, but I can't get

35:36

Dr. Kanner to talk about those things. Remember, if you go back and the links are in what's on the blog there, if you go back and read the e -mails we've exchanged, you'll discover he will not even refer to me as his brother.

35:49

So what can I say? Yeah. What can I say? Listen, I'll let you go. Thanks a lot. Hey, take care.

35:54

All right. God bless. Bye -bye. 877 -753 -3341. Let's go ahead and talk with Stephen.

36:02

Hi, Stephen. How are you? I'm well. How are you, James? Doing okay. Do you know who said the thing from Romans 9 that I read earlier?

36:10

I was busy phoning, so I'm not too sure. I couldn't tell you. I don't want to look any more dumber than I already am on this.

36:19

But, hey, listen, I really enjoyed it when you were up here in Toronto a couple weeks ago. I really enjoyed the fellowship that we were able to have together.

36:27

Yeah, it was a quick day, but I appreciate getting to meet everybody up there, including Carla, who suffers from DILUP, which is just a terrible syndrome,

36:36

DILUP. But she does so well with it. Yeah, Carla's cool. Oh, yes. She's a cool person. Almost as cool as you.

36:42

Well, I'm not sure about that. But, anyway. Listen, first of all,

36:48

I read Ergon Cantor's blog, and words don't describe how

36:56

I felt. I felt like tearing out my hair, but I didn't want to go that far. Yeah, you don't want to look like me, either.

37:02

No. I don't know. Well, because I've done work with Muslims, I was personally offended with this idea.

37:13

I guess I'm a Calvinist Jihadist now. Yes, yes. Aren't we all? But, I mean, I was just offended because I've known people who have suffered because they were

37:22

Christians in Muslim countries and have suffered persecution, and I just, this was reprehensible.

37:30

Well, yeah. Let's stop there for a moment. I'd like to expand on what you just said. People really should give a thought to the fact that here is a man whose primary fame is that at the age of 13 in New York, he converted from Islam to Christianity.

37:46

And here he is actually making the statement that Calvinism and Calvinists are worse than Muslims.

37:55

Now, let's remind ourselves what we did on this program last week.

38:00

We went through everything that the Quran says about Jesus Christ, and we did so fairly, and we did so honestly.

38:10

And we talked about the fact that the Quran denies the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Does that mean

38:15

Calvinists do that? We talked about how the doctrines of Trinity is denied in Surah 112, and the relationship of the

38:25

Father and the Son. And is he saying Calvinists do that? It is truly to trivialize the fundamental issues in regards to Islam, to say that Calvinists are worse than Muslims.

38:40

It's absolutely beyond the pale. Someone needs to try to get this man in some semblance of order and control, because right now he's a loose cannon firing every which direction, and that can't be good for Liberty University.

38:55

Well, I had the privilege once of one of the persons who was actually martyred in the

39:05

Iranian Revolution. I knew of him. He was the son of the bishop of Isfahan, I believe.

39:15

And so when you have acquaintance with people who have actually died for him to say this, it is...

39:22

Yeah, it's amazing. It is. Well, anyways, my question was, he was talking about neo -Calvinism, and I'm trying to say, what is a neo -Calvinist?

39:34

First of all, according to him, and then according to what it is historically, because it's obvious from what we've demonstrated already, he has no idea what a hyper -Calvinist is historically.

39:46

Now, this is just a term that he used there once in a while to describe the new

39:51

Calvinistic resurgence. Anyone who knows anything about Baptist history knows that it's not neo -Calvinism, that someone like myself would represent a position that can be documented quite clearly back into the 1670s or even the 1640s amongst

40:08

Baptists. I mean, we have the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith. There's nothing neo about it.

40:13

It's just a term that he utilizes. And Erican Cantor does not believe that he is under any responsibility or accountability to use language in a scholarly way.

40:25

In essence, he feels he can define what scholarship should be and what words should be defined as, and so that's simply what he does.

40:35

And so there is no particular definition of neo -Calvinist.

40:41

It's just a term that some of these Southern Baptists are using to refer to the Calvinist resurgence, and that's really, let's face it, why is there a

40:50

Calvinist resurgence? Outside of God's will, why is there a Calvinist resurgence amongst Southern Baptists today?

40:56

Well, think about it. When you think, and we're going to play this Jerry Vines sermon eventually, you think about what it would be like 50 years ago to be in a church where this is the kind of preaching, the desire of the person in the pulpit is to keep you from examining another view.

41:16

Don't listen to what they have to say. The whole intention is to poison the mind and limit exposure.

41:24

Well, what's the big difference between today and 50 years ago? It's called the

41:30

Internet. This is the same thing that happened back in the time of the Reformation. The Roman Catholics viewed the printing press as the tool of Satan because it allowed these new views to communicate themselves.

41:42

Up to then, they controlled all the sources of information, and that's what the Index Prohibitorum was about. Even once the printing press existed, they knew they couldn't get rid of it anymore.

41:49

They wanted to control what was printed and published and make sure that it was consistent with the orthodoxy of the

41:56

Roman Catholic Church. Well, the Internet's gone way beyond the published word now, and this information, these historical documents, the fact that we

42:04

Calvinistic Baptists have been around for a long, long time and that we can make a really strong case for our position, is now becoming...

42:13

You can't insulate your people anymore from finding out that that's the case. And when you do get these two sides together, the exegetical conclusions are very clear, and that's where the quote -unquote resurgence is coming from.

42:29

Well, he seems like he wants to throw away the big bad Presbyterian word at us now. And I was wondering,

42:35

I said, I'd rather be a closet Presbyterian than a closet Roman Catholic. Well, really, when you think about the fact that his view of man's grace and man's will is far more in line with Rome than it is with our

42:48

Presbyterian brothers, yeah, you're exactly right. I would much rather be on that side of the line than to actually disagree with the

42:58

Reformers. Remember, this is the same guy who said that Baldasar Hubmeier was killed by the Reformers. Yeah, I read that, actually.

43:05

I think where I read it was basically on the article he wrote on Jerry Falwell's site on Bultmeier being burned by the, or drowned by the

43:15

Calvinists. So I just did a quick Google search to see whether or not this was true, and I said, he was in Vienna being burned by Calvin and Roman Catholics.

43:26

Exactly, yeah. And I'm saying, this guy is a scholar? He teaches church history? I mean, how can any parent send their children to liberty if this is what they're going to get?

43:39

Well, that, unfortunately, is what a lot of folks at Liberty are wondering, because there are good folks at Liberty.

43:44

There are solid scholars at Liberty. But now they have to think, every time they stand before their class, if I speak the truth on these issues, and they're hearing the opposite from Ernie Ganner, am

43:55

I going to get in trouble if I continue to practice sound scholarship? That's why I said at the end of my blog article this morning,

44:02

Dr. Falwell, you've got a problem, and you need to deal with it before your university that you've worked so hard to build up for so long, before its credibility is irreparably damaged.

44:12

Well, this hasn't helped it. No, no, no, it has not. All righty, sir, thank you very much. Okay, thank you so much. All right, God bless.

44:18

Bye -bye. All right, 877 -753 -3341. Let's talk with Bill in Atlanta.

44:26

Hi, Bill. Hi, Dr. Wayne. How are you doing? Got any guesses about my Romans 9 thing? No one wants to guess.

44:32

Ergon Kanner? We've got a guess for Ergon. I'm going to let everybody know at the end. We have an Ergon Kanner guess, and we'll let you know who that is, because it is actually rather illustrative.

44:40

So I appreciate that you had the guts to guess who it might be. All right. All right. What can we do for you today?

44:47

Well, there's just something that doesn't make sense about this whole situation. Dr. Falwell is not a complete idiot.

44:53

He has to realize how embarrassing this is going to end up being for the university.

45:00

I've got to believe that there was a lot of pressure from the outside telling him, don't let this happen. Guys like Jack Graham and Johnny Hunt, they did not want to see this debate take place.

45:12

You know, it's possible. I do not claim to be an expert on the internal politics of the

45:18

Southern Baptist Convention, but everyone that you just mentioned are clearly individuals who do not want interaction to be taking place, especially on a public stage where you can actually, instead of just having sort of a mutual admiration encounter, you actually say, no, wait a minute, how do you deal with this text?

45:39

Don't misquote Matthew 23 -37. Actually quote it correctly and actually deal with it. What about John 6?

45:44

What about John 10? That's not the kind of thing that's being encouraged in that context today.

45:51

And so as a result, yeah, this would have been way out of the norm. So was there pressure?

45:57

But I honestly don't have a clue. I do know, however, that there were many people,

46:03

Liberty, that did not want to see it happen. They were afraid that Ergen Kanner would explode like a geyser and make things look really, really bad.

46:13

And I think looking at how he's handling the situation, they were probably right in being afraid about that. Well, you and I had the same reaction about Muslims knowing when to quit.

46:23

I thought, yeah, right, when their ashes are in the basement of the World Trade Center. That's right. That's right. I mean, that one,

46:30

I just sit here and stare and go, come on, who wrote that? I can't even begin to interact with it.

46:36

It's so beyond reason and rationality that I can always sit back and go, okay, how many students are left at Liberty that can read that and actually go, yeah, yay,

46:48

Ergen. You know, I don't know. I just don't know.

46:53

I know that people can become very personally attached to instructors and things like that, but there comes a point in time where their other instructors have been trying to teach them critical thinking skills and eventually just start going, wait a minute, this doesn't, this ain't adding up.

47:10

So I don't know. Honestly, I have heard numerous theories from numerous sources in regards to what you are specifically stating, and I can't answer the question as to whether or not,

47:26

I can't confirm one way or the other. I just really can't comment on it.

47:32

It's nice to speculate about, and it does sort of shine a light on current situations within the convention, but it's a bit of a shame.

47:40

Right. All right. Okay. All right. Thank you, sir. All right. Thank you. All right. God bless. Bye -bye. Bye -bye. 877 -753 -3341.

47:50

We don't have anyone else who wants to guess about Romans Chapter 9. You know, we should have offered something. If we had offered a free copy of, a signed copy of Pulpit Crimes, I bet you we would have gotten more callers, huh?

48:02

Yeah. We probably would have done that, but it's a little bit late now. I could have offered some chewing gum. You don't use chewing gum.

48:09

Well, then that would have made it easy to offer. That's true. But we don't have, you don't have any chewing gum, do you?

48:17

I might have some in a drawer somewhere. That's disgusting. You mean like that really hard stuff that has the unidentified substance on it?

48:24

Yeah, that's disgusting. You shouldn't, no. We're not going to do that. Anyway, so I'm going to go ahead and tell you, and then we'll play a little section of this clip.

48:33

A little section of this clip. You mean a clip of the sermon. That would be the proper way of saying it. Who was

48:39

I reading? I was reading Roman Catholic apologist Dave Armstrong.

48:46

Roman Catholic apologist Dave Armstrong. And there's not a lot of people who would have guessed that.

49:00

There's not a lot of people who would have even given it a second thought. And yet, as I said to one of our callers, that didn't sound good, did it?

49:12

How about now? There we go. As I said to one of our callers, Ergin Cantor has a closer connection in regards to the will of God and the nature of grace to the

49:25

Roman Catholic Church than he does to the Reformers, which may be why he wants to accuse the

49:30

Reformers of every evil under the sun rather than contextualizing them in history. But, hey, what can I say? So that was

49:36

Dave Armstrong. And, yes, if I had time, I would be blogging on that.

49:41

I have actually contacted my good friend, Colin Smith, to see if possibly he would have some time to ship me off a blog article in response to Mr.

49:50

Armstrong on that because it's amazing that we could go there.

49:56

We haven't had a guest blog appearance in a long time. We have not. We have not. And we need to have some of that.

50:02

Let me see if I can make this work. I've never used this particular program to play sounds before.

50:12

So this could be interesting. There is a particular section. I just wanted you to catch. I'm going to go over this eventually.

50:19

But I just wanted you to catch some of the flavor of Dr. Jerry Vines, past president of the

50:24

Southern Baptist Convention, preaching at Johnny Hunt's church, First Baptist Church, Woodstock, Georgia.

50:31

And if you've listened to the sermon, I'm going to pick it up around 30 minutes in. And let's see if I can make this work.

50:38

Most difficult area. Election means that before the world was, before the stars were in the sky and the fish were in the sea,

50:45

God in love chose you to be his very own. Ephesians 1, 4, and 5, according as he has chosen us.

50:54

That word chosen means he has elected us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ himself, according to the good pleasure of his will.

51:09

Now, this means I can take no credit for my salvation. Spurgeon said,

51:14

God certainly must have chosen me before the world was, or he never would have chosen me afterward.

51:20

And I'll say amen to that. But if you push it to the extreme, the extreme says that God chose some to be saved, but God chose some to be lost.

51:33

Now again, just real quick, not going to go point by point, but once again, they're all using the same template.

51:40

And it almost sounds to me as if this template is coming straight from Dave Hunt. My goodness. Talk about using the highest levels of scholarship.

51:49

And they all want to try to create the absolute equality between predestination to life and predestination to destruction.

51:59

As if they are the exact same thing and that we, that's what we believe. And it's not.

52:06

But when you can't get these folks to do debates and do dialogues where there's interaction, where you can correct them and say, no, you are missing the point.

52:15

Then they just keep repeating the same errors over and over and over again. And if you push it to its logical conclusion, it even goes to the point that God chose some babies

52:24

Ah, here comes the babies. to go to hell. Now let's start pulling on the heartstrings. If you think I'm making that up, you don't know the literature.

52:32

There are some who are teaching, popular speakers, that God created some babies to go to hell.

52:40

When I saw those precious children baptized tonight, it touched my heart. I'll tell you, ladies and gentlemen,

52:47

I don't for one moment believe that the God of this universe predestined any baby to go to hell.

52:54

Ah, and here comes the applause. But Dr. Vines, babies die.

53:03

Babies die horribly. In fact, it's sort of hard to preach to the Old Testament without reading the imprecatory psalms.

53:11

The psalmist actually said, bless are those who take your little ones to the Babylonians and smash their heads upon the rock.

53:19

And when God created heaven and earth, he knew babies were going to die.

53:26

Now, later on, he, I'm not sure if it was before this or after this, he tries to talk about God's knowledge of the future.

53:33

It sounds, once again, as if it's the passive God took the cosmic dice and rolled them down the table and snake eyes, praise me!

53:42

Passive taking in of knowledge. There's no sovereign decree. There's no consistent doctrine of God behind all this.

53:51

And they want to try to get away from having to actually provide that by saying, well, you know, it's mystery here.

53:59

Actually, it's just backwards theology here is what it is. But you still got to answer the tough questions. You can you can get people riled up and, oh, yeah,

54:08

I was those mean Calvinists. They want to send babies to hell. Got to ask

54:15

Dr. Vines a question. What is so what did the psalmist mean when he said

54:23

I was conceived in sin and iniquity? My mother conceived. What what does it mean to be a fallen child of Abraham?

54:30

And if death comes upon sinners, why do babies die if they're not sinners?

54:38

Just what do you believe about original sin anyway? Do you really believe it?

54:46

It sounds like what you're saying is God somehow owes salvation to fallen sons and daughters of Adam.

54:53

Now, I happen to be of the opinion. When it comes to infants and those with diminished mental capacity, that we should give to God the exact same level of freedom that we give to God in regards to the salvation of adults.

55:08

God doesn't have to give salvation anyone. But he does graciously and freely.

55:15

And that's why reform folks talk about elect infants. But here you get all upset about the possibility of a non -elect infant.

55:24

Then why don't you just come straight out and say, I reject original sin. Don't believe it.

55:31

Don't believe it. No, don't believe it. I know that the

55:37

Bible says that death's connected with sin. But no, baby's innocent. Not guilty of Adam's transgression.

55:46

No, no, no, no. I reject it. Just come straight out and throw it out. Quit saying you believe it.

55:53

Then you deny it. Go ahead and try, on some type of a logical basis, to defend the idea, somehow, someway, that abortion is the largest heaven -filling device ever created by man.

56:14

Go ahead and defend that. I want to hear it. I'm so tired of this,

56:22

I'm going to get everybody's emotions going. And that way they won't even think about the ramifications of their beliefs.

56:30

It creates a theological system that can not be defended.

56:39

So go ahead and keep using that kind of argumentation. But recognize you're not actually even addressing the subject.

56:49

It says a lot. It says a lot. Now, there are some words that wrap around the election, and I've got to hop, skip, and jump here now.

57:02

Because I know that the mind can comprehend only as long as the seat can endure. Foreknowledge is tied into it.

57:11

Foreknowledge, we get our word prognosis from that. Prognosis is the Greek word, which means to know beforehand.

57:18

Romans 8 .29. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate.

57:24

Notice it's whom. Not what. Not what they did. Whom. Are we going to hear that every time

57:31

God does the action, and it's a verb, it's not passive. He is doing this.

57:38

It's something God does. It's not something he experiences. He doesn't just simply have knowledge of future events.

57:43

God foreknows. Are we going to hear that what he foreknows is not a what but a who? That it's always personal?

57:51

It's never just simply actions? Are we going to hear that? Well, of course. Foreknowledge is the divine attribute of God whereby he sees all things in the present time.

58:00

Now notice something, and this will be the last thing I can mention and we'll go back to it later. Notice he went from foreknowing to foreknowledge.

58:07

You think he might be using Dave Hunt, who likewise doesn't seem to know the difference between a noun and a verb? I think he probably is.

58:15

Well, there you go, folks. I have a feeling, Lord willing, that we're going to finally get to stop talking about this situation.

58:24

But we're going to be able to stop talking about this situation on the dividing line because I'm gone next week. I'm going to Long Island.

58:30

I'm doing a debate on baptism on Thursday. I'm going to be speaking on Islam on Wednesday. I'm going to be preaching on Sunday. So those of you on Long Island, I hope to see you then.

58:37

The rest of you, see you back next week, the week after that, here on the dividing line. God bless. ...contend for the faith.

58:59

We need a new reformation day. ...has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

59:35

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59:40

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59:45

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