February 12, 2006

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.
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The Apostle Peter commanded 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 morning, afternoon, welcome to the Dividing Line.
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On a Tuesday morning, we get emails. And before we get started,
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I have one to respond to here. I actually get lots and lots of emails and might find it easier to respond to some of them this way.
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Actually, I have, I don't know how many I have on my system right now. And it takes time to type things, you know, you can talk faster than you can type.
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But then again, when people are asking for URLs, it's easier to type than to talk in that situation. Anyway, a question that was asked is, which
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Hebrew English lexicons would you recommend for someone who has no knowledge of Hebrew? I've been corresponding with some people regarding grammatical and definitional issues in the
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Old Testament, need some sources, or in other words, I have no knowledge of Hebrew and need some things to get me started.
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Well, that's a challenge because you can install
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BibleWorks and you'll have everything you could ever want. I mean, you'll have Brown Driver Briggs and you'll have the
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Holiday. Is the Holiday a plug -in? The Holiday might be something you have to buy and add in, but you'll have basically everything you'll need.
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You've got stuff that you would have for the Greek Septuagint and all sorts of stuff like that.
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And the problem is, you can bring it up on your screen and you can put your cursor on a word and it will tell you, give you an example.
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On Christmas Eve, I'm going to be speaking in both services and I have really been struck by a particular phrase in Isaiah 53 and the term is in the phrase, smitten of God.
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And the term smitten is in the hophal form, hophal participle form, and you could put your cursor on that particular word in the
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Hebrew text. And in fact, if you can't read Hebrew, you can run your cursor down the thing and find the exact term and it'll tell you all those things.
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But to be honest with you, does the fact that it's a hophal participle mean anything to you if you don't already know
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Hebrew? I mean, it can be very helpful along those lines, but if you don't know the grammar, how useful really is that?
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So especially it's a little, it's not quite the same thing with Greek sources. Again, if you've got
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Bible works, you've got libronics, I was telling Rich yesterday that somehow libronics, don't ask me how in the world they did this.
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But I was looking at that very term in Bible works and I right clicked it and I happened to look down the list all the way to the bottom and it said, open this in the
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SESB. Well, I know what the SESB is, but I've got the Stuttgart electronic study
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Bible in libronics, not in Bible works. And so I clicked this thing and it opens libronics and takes me over to its
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Hebrew text. It's almost like, come over here, come away from Bible works.
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You know, and it says, how'd they do that? You will be assimilated. You will be assimilated to libronics.
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Resistance is futile. Oh man, it was like, whoa, you guys are pretty. That's cutthroat, man, to sneak your own right clicks into somebody else's programs.
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But anyway, you can do all that stuff. And Greek's a little bit easier.
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There's all sorts of stuff, all sorts of lexical sources that'll come up when you bring that stuff up in Bible works.
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And still, even at that point, looking at BDAG, looking at something older like Thayer's or any of the resources that'd be available, even just the
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UBS dictionary, you know, on my palm here, I've got UBS and I've got
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Bauer, Dunker, Arndt and Gingrich, and I've got Freiberg and some others.
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Still, there are going to be specific terms that are used in those sources.
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If you don't know what they mean, I cannot tell you how many times I have seen bad arguments on the internet because someone had no clue what those things meant.
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And so they just start looking at an entry and they start going down. And even if the lexicon gives their reference at a certain point and says, this is how this lexicon would translate this particular phrase in this particular context, they'll jump down to some other and say, oh, look at that.
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It can mean this. And as a result, you know, come up with horrific arguments about what things mean based upon that.
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That is even more the case when it comes to Hebrew, because there are all sorts of groups out there that they're looking for a hook, they're looking for some way of grabbing people, and they do it by saying, well, you know, your
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English translation and things like that. If it just took seriously the
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Hebrew and, you know, we all know about Dave Hunt coming up with the original Hebrew of Acts 13, but, you know, he stole that from these very types of people.
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He got that from these folks that, you know, as long as you say, well, this was originally written in Hebrew, and since you're translating the
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Greek, you're not seeing what I see in it. You can come up with an interpretation that says almost anything at all.
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And so there's all sorts of groups out there on the Internet. I've clicked on I don't know how many
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URLs. And, you know, the true insight to the scripture is given from recognizing the feast days and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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And so the problem is that even if you obtain Brown, Driver and Briggs, let's say,
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OK, you obtain something along those lines and then you have to figure out roots and stuff like that.
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I mean, the only way for a person who doesn't know Hebrew to get almost anything out of these things is to have the electronic form. But even if you obtain these things, what are you going to do with them?
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If you don't know the difference between a kol and a nifal and a pl and a pual and a hefil and a hofal and a hifpal and how roots are related to one another and how a participial form of a root can have these kinds of semantic domain changes upon the meaning of the root and stuff like that.
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And I'm running into the same stuff in trying to teach myself Arabic at the moment. And because it's a
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Semitic language, just like Hebrew, and very sometimes exact same roots between the two, which you might think is somewhat helpful in some ways it is.
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But in other ways, when they're not the same, it ain't helpful at all. It's sort of like studying German and French at the same time.
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I did that once and German blew French right out the door. Just nothing stuck. I think it was because I'd already known
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German before I did the two of them at the same time. But the real problem was that the
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French forget to pronounce most of their language. Just to skip over things.
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But anyways, that's a completely different issue. So I would recommend
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Bible works and things like that if you're just absolutely intent upon looking stuff up. But who are these people?
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Why are they throwing grammatical and definitional issues out? What are they trying to promote? Get to the bottom line and see what in the world it is they're trying to promote and then find out what resources they're using.
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And you can sort of go from there. But it's really tough to respond to a lot of this stuff if you don't really have the background in the languages you've taken the classes and done stuff like that.
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And so that would be my response to that. I don't want everybody to get the idea that all we ever talk about here are
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Southern Baptists who can't get a clue on Calvinism. So I want to play something else. I was directed to something that Patrick Madrid had said on EWTN recently.
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I couldn't find it. I listened to an entire program and I wasn't able to find the specific thing that was sent to me.
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But there was an interesting call and comment that I wanted to play for you because it addresses something
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I've said many times, and that is that the issue of ecumenism.
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What is ecumenism when it comes to Roman Catholicism? That seems to be the rage today.
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If you want to be accepted in mainstream academia, you need to abandon the old style viewpoint of Rome.
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You need to start viewing Rome as just simply a separated communion, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, how does
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Rome view us? Well, the fact of the matter is within the United States, you've got all sorts of viewpoints expressed within Roman Catholicism.
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But Roman Catholic apologists who are defending the unique claims of the
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Roman Catholic faith tend to be much more conservative in their orientation, as you would expect.
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And as such, they actually, most of the time, if they are consistent, will view ecumenism pretty much the same way that I do.
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And that is an ecumenism that does not bring about conversion is a false ecumenism.
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An ecumenism that compromises truth is a false ecumenism, that you can't do these things.
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And that really comes out in the response that Patrick Madrid gives to a caller who saw a sign for Loyola University up in Chicago, which is a
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Jesuit school. That's where Mitchell Pacwa was teaching. And when I debated him back in 1991,
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January of 91, we had a couple of debates over in San Diego, El Cajon, actually, which, again,
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I sure wish we had the videos for those things. They do exist, but no one's ever seen them because certain
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Roman Catholics are sitting on them. But anyway, he saw a sign that said,
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Loyola, a place for all faiths. Now, got to admit, if it was a
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Baptist school, if you saw a sign outside, you would never expect to see a sign outside of Westminster Theological Seminary in Escondido.
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A place for all faiths. You know, they might say everyone of any faith is welcome to come here and learn about Christianity and bow to Jesus Christ.
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It's a different thing. But that's that's not quite what a place for all faiths means. And so the caller calls and he asks about that and he asks
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Patrick Madrid his opinion on that. And I wanted to play this for you.
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It's in a real audio file, so I don't have it. I'm not sure I can be able to start and stop the way
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I'd like to, but maybe we'll just listen to the whole thing. What I want you to really hear is what he is saying regarding the fact that true ecumenism has as its goal, this is a
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Roman Catholic speaking, true ecumenism has as its goal the conversion of individuals to the
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Roman Catholic Church. So many people view that as just, well, we're just we're just, you know, getting to know what we believe and let's just have a little chat, even from Patrick's perspective.
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That's not actually ecumenism. Well, you know, I haven't seen the sign that you're referring to, but I've seen other things like it.
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So I'll speak in the abstract. I won't I won't be commenting specifically on on Loyola University.
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But, yeah, I've seen things of that nature where it seems to me that this ecumenism ecumenism, it borders on ecumenism.
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That's not even a word. But you can be ecumenical in the authentic sense. And let's not forget what authentic ecumenism is.
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And Vatican II actually reiterated this this reality, although I think many people have missed that authentic ecumenism, according to the mind of Christ, the mind of the church is a dialogue based on truth that leads to conversion.
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Ecumenism is not about let's let's find out more about each other so that we can feel warm and fuzzy and and just, you know, enjoy each other's company and never really make any any strides or progress with regard to truth.
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That's not ecumenism. Ecumenism is not where we do like a foreign exchange program where I learn about your church and you learn about my church.
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And we do that simply for the fact that we'll know each other better. That's not ecumenism. Ecumenism is a dialogue based on truth that leads to conversion.
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And the conversion we're speaking of here, ultimately, when we get right down to it, is conversion to the
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Catholic Church, because after all, the Catholic Church is the one true church established by Christ. And yes, other churches, other groups do, in fact, have portions of the truth.
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There's no doubt about that. The Vatican II document, Lumen Gentium, makes this very clear that there are portions of the of the truth that are visible and manifested in other religions, but they don't have the fullness of the truth, the fullness the
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Vatican to document, say, subsists. And that's a technical philosophical term, which means that that you can it is located.
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It has its basis or its standing in the Catholic Church. So that's the first part,
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I guess, of the answer is that we have to we have to be engaged in ecumenism the right way, the authentic way.
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So often it's not. I think that there now let me just pause it right there. I could not agree more from the other side.
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In other words, you know, people say, well, you know, why do these debates? Well, fundamentally to glorify
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God, to strengthen the saints. And when you debate Roman Catholics, you want to see Roman Catholics come out of the
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Roman Catholic Church. And we have when you debate Mormons, you want to see Mormons come out of Mormonism and embrace the truth.
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When you debate, you know, Muslims, you want to see Muslims come to know Jesus Christ. That is your purpose. That is your desire.
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And I just want to make sure everyone knows that that I do not have.
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The attitude of ecumenism and not like anyone was confused, I think I'm normally, you know, hit pretty hard is the the hard nosed guy, the mean, nasty guy, blah, blah, blah.
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Normally people have never actually listened to me or spoken to me, but that's that I would agree.
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And I recognize, in fact, I would have the most respect for I have a hard time respecting.
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A Roman Catholic who comes to me and who wants to have, even from their perspective, illegitimate ecumenical dialogue, if they don't think that I should join them and if they don't think that it's important that I join them,
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I have a lot of difficulty even respecting them. And in fact, why am
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I bothering to discuss truth with you? Because you don't have a very robust view of truth to begin with, to be perfectly honest with you.
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So, you know, that's that's that's the perspective there. There is this blindness that exists in many, many circles, certainly in many
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Catholic circles, which views the Catholic Church as if it were one denomination among many or one option among many.
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You know, the old saying there are many paths up the mountain. Another way of saying it would be, you know, there are many boats that you can sail along in.
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But don't forget that when God told Noah to build his ark, he didn't say, you know, show other people how to build their own ark the way they would like it.
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He said, no, here's the ark I want you to build. And anyone who enters into that ark will be saved. And when the flood came, you know what happened to Noah and his family, a total of eight people were saved because they entered that ark.
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Now, the Catholic Church is like that ark. Christ went to all the trouble and literally blood, sweat and tears to establish his church that he speaks about in Matthew chapter 16.
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And he wants people to enter his church. And so if we're talking about a university or some other
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Catholic institution which is inviting people to participate in school or in some other type of cultural event, whatever it may be, with the purpose of helping to expose them to the fullness of the truth.
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And what they're saying is everyone's welcome here. I couldn't agree with that more. I would applaud that.
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But if what they're saying is, hey, look, we're going to present the Catholic Church as if it's just one among many. And as far as we're concerned, it really is just one among many.
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Then I give that a hearty thumbs down because that's not the true purpose.
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It's not the intention of authentic ecumenism. What we don't need right now are ecumenics, people who are just sort of blindly flailing away at this project that they call ecumenism.
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They can actually do far more damage and drive people further away from the truth than if they were to give a balanced, clear, charitable presentation of the
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Catholic faith in a way that people can understand. Thanks for that call. Again, I can't disagree, but people need to keep that in mind because so many do have the idea that all they're doing in having these dialogues and what we should all be doing is sitting around and doing what
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John Shelby Spong says. We should all be sitting around and talking about what makes us feel warm and fuzzy about our religious faith and getting warm fuzzies off of other people's religious faiths and that kind of thing.
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That kind of liberalism really struggles to perpetuate itself.
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It's sterile, it's empty, and it only exists in cultures under the judgment of God, if you want to go from that direction.
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Anyway, so I did find that interesting. I wanted to bring that attention to your attention. That is 877 -753 -3341.
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We actually have a webcam going today. We're not going to call it a ditto cam because that has undoubtedly been copyrighted and someone might sue us.
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In fact, someone wouldn't need to bother to sue us. Someone could buy us with the spare change found in someone's pockets, actually,
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I'm sure, quite easily. So I'm not sure what we're going to call it, but I started testing it out because I've got to be able to use this thing on the road coming up in January.
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I actually need to do a class while traveling and be using a webcam off the computer to try to make that work.
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So it should be the doco cam. Yeah, well, OK, that's the cal cam that we're getting all sorts of suggestions here in Channel now.
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The cal cam, hmm, that sounds a little too much like cow cam. And since it was Mutato who suggested it, that's a cal cam or cal can.
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Cal cam, I remember cal, they still have cal cam? I don't think so. I haven't seen that one for a while. OK, the can part probably wasn't real good.
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That wasn't, no. You don't want, I'm giving my dog something out of a can. Well, of course you are.
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In fact, if you knew what you're giving your dog, you'd be ill. But the dog doesn't mind. The dog thinks it's great.
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It's wonderful. So the tulip cam, the Calvinista cam, the Calvinista cam might work.
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That's that's getting closer. That's good.
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The Calvinist eye. There's one. This is, I like Calvinista cam. That's pretty good.
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Yeah, the Calvinista cam. We may have to, we have to put a link up. Calvinista jihad cam.
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I don't know, that's, and it's not really actually a webcam right now. I'm just setting up an image every 10 seconds.
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I mean, talk about silly, but we'll, we'll make it work eventually. The Coogee cam. There you go. No one would have a clue.
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Nobody would have any idea. And they don't want to know. Yeah. All right.
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Anyway, we need to prove that we are mean, nasty, baby eating Calvinists here, because that's what everybody says.
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We had a guy come in. I just missed him Sunday night, a guy named, but with Nick Azusa. And I look back at some of the dialogue.
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Wow, this guy, if this wasn't Dave Hunt dictating to this guy, this, this is a guy who lives on Dave Hunt.
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And man, it was, it was, someone said something about Dave Hunt.
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He said, well, at least Dave Hunt hasn't burned anybody alive or something like that. I think I poked in a little bit on that while it was happening.
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I was like, you know what? Everybody else in the room is handling it very well. I'm leaving it alone. Yeah. Yeah. I just,
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I really wish I'd had an opportunity to chat with that fellow, though. Then again, I might not have wanted to.
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Because it sounds like he was listening to the same sermon we're listening to, and that is by Dr. Jerry Vines, past president of the
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Southern Baptist Convention. And we have been listening to a sermon he delivered back in October.
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It's taken us quite some time at the, at First Baptist Church, Woodstock in Georgia.
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And we're getting toward the end. So I want to press through and get to that. We had been looking at the subject of the atonement and we didn't get very far last week.
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He had just made the comment, you know, sufficient for all, efficient only for the elect.
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And we were talking about purposes of God and things like that. We continue at that point. All right.
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Number four, irresistible grace. I'm coming along pretty good here. Irresistible grace.
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Now, this is the teaching that God irresistibly draws the lost sinner with his grace, regenerates him, causing him to repent and believe.
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Some refer to this as the effectual call. Now, if you push that to the extreme, as some of our Calvinist friends do, it means that the elect are not able to resist
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God's grace to save them. What is the non -extreme pushing of it?
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You know, we keep hearing this extreme, extreme, extreme, and nobody wants to be extreme. So all you got to do is just, you know, do what
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Norman Geisler did and identify the historic understanding of these things as the extreme. Well, if that's the extreme, what's the non -extreme?
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I mean, if men are dead in sin and if God's grace is powerful and does not fail, then what's the non -extreme version of this?
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I mean, the difference between monergism and synergism, between one power that brings about salvation in the sense of regeneration and bringing the person into relationship with God through faith, that's one side.
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And synergism, you can join one or a thousand powers to God's power, but the chasm is between mono and sun, one or more than one.
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You can have dinergism or trinergism or whatever you want, as many as you want.
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That's all synergism. That's all synergistic. He's just identified monergism as extreme.
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So what's the non -extreme part? No one ever seems to ask these questions or think that it might be good to answer them.
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They use John 6, 44, among many other passages. No man can come to me except the Father, which hath sent me, draw them.
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The elect have no say in the matter. Well, that goes back to unconditional election, which is why it's unconditional.
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It's not the fulfillment of a condition. The elect have no say in the matter in the same way that Lazarus had no say in his resurrection or the dead bones in Ezekiel's vision had no say as to whether they're raised to life and the heart of stone had no say into whether it was taken out and replaced the heart of flesh and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
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Again, I go back to Potter and Clay to say the elect have no say in the matter is to say that the potter has the right to form from one lump vessels under honor and vessels under dishonor, which is sort of what the
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Bible does teach. That's clear. We're saved by grace, but the Bible is also clear that it is possible for us to reject the overtures of God to the soul.
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And of course, this once again demonstrates the fact that this is a template sermon.
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This is where you just simply borrow from someone else. You don't listen to what the one side is actually saying, because when you make a statement like Dr.
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Vines just made, that you should know the other side would agree with, and in fact would say outside of the saving grace of God, every person would reject every overture and in fact would remain in their sin and remain in their rebellion constantly without break, without cessation.
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If you knew the other position well enough to know that, then you wouldn't make statements that demonstrate that you really aren't fairly representing them.
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You're not actually engaging the subject in a meaningful fashion. You would express yourself in such a way as to not have inherent misrepresentation.
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But unfortunately, that's not what you get when you have these template sermons going around. They're just meant to be inoculations, surface -level inoculations.
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You still know you're going to lose some folks because you're just not getting deep enough here. You're not providing a meaningful enough apologetic at all.
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But you're going to keep most of your folks, and I guess that's just good enough. Hebrews 10, 37, 38,
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God draws, yes, but listen to what that passage says. Now that just you live by faith, but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.
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Okay, what does that mean? Are you seriously attempting to draw any kind of exegetical, contextual, or a didactic parallel between the drawing of the
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Father, which results in being raised up by the Son in John 6, 44, with the soul that draws back in the book of Hebrews, a book written to people in the
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Jewish Christian church who are under constant pressure to go back to the old ways.
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So to draw back would be to have confessed faith in Christ, to confess the sacrifice of Christ, and then to give in to that pressure and go back.
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That's a constant theme throughout Hebrews, isn't it? And so where's the connection here?
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It's just a simple word, draw. My goodness. I mean, here, this is the kind of simplistic, exegetical error that should be covered in the very first Bible class in hermeneutics.
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This isn't even seminary level error. This is basic, basic stuff.
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And that's why people, they keep saying, what are the best books on Arminian? I want to read the best books, the
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Arminian attacks on Calvinism. There are two kinds of Arminian books about Calvinism.
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Okay. There is the one kind that is the Dave Hunt's and the
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Norman Geisler's and the Vance's and the George Bryson's and these, and the
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Frank Page's that have, and I say this with as much charity as the subject deserves, laughable eisegesis.
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Quoting half of a verse and dedicating a short paragraph to an entire text that you could exegete for three pages without exhausting anything, there's no substance to them, they try to pretend that they're exegetical, but they're not.
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Then the quote unquote more scholarly works of formal Arminians in seminaries are not exegetical.
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In fact, you look up the scripture index and most of the texts won't even be mentioned. They don't even pretend to try to present an exegetical perspective because they recognize theirs is a philosophical position.
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It's not an exegetical position. Those are the kinds of books. If you're looking for the one in the middle, it ain't there.
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I mean, look up the Malcolm Lavenders and look up these people. When you start digging into what they're saying, there's no substance to it.
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It's empty. It makes claims, but it's completely empty. No consistency whatsoever.
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And that's what we're encountering here. We will continue with Jerry Vines. We're already, believe it or not, halfway through the program.
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I don't know where the time went, but we'll be right back right after these messages. Alpha and Omega Ministries is pleased to introduce the
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This portion of the dividing line has been made possible by the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. The Apostle Paul spoke of the importance of solemnly testifying of the gospel of the grace of God.
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The proclamation of God's truth is the most important element of his worship in his church. The elders and people of the
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Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church invite you to worship with them this coming Lord's Day. The morning
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Bible study begins at 930 a .m. and the worship service is at 1045. Evening services are at 630 p .m.
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on Sunday and the Wednesday night prayer meeting is at 7. The Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church is located at 3805
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North 12th Street in Phoenix. You can call for further information at 602 -26 -GRACE.
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If you're unable to attend, you can still participate with your computer and real audio at PRBC .org
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where the ministry extends around the world through the archives of sermons and Bible study lessons available 24 hours a day.
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Pulpit crimes. The criminal mishandling of God's Word may be James White's most provocative book yet.
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White sets out to examine numerous crimes being committed in pulpits throughout our land every week as he seeks to leave no stone unturned.
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Based firmly upon the bedrock of scripture, one crime after another is laid bare for all to see. The pulpit is to be a place where God speaks from his word.
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What has happened to this sacred duty in our day? The charges are as follows. Prostitution, using the gospel for financial gain.
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Pandering to pluralism. Cowardice under fire. Felonious eisegesis. Entertainment without a license.
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And cross -dressing, ignoring God's ordinance regarding the roles of men and women. Is a pulpit crime occurring in your town?
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Get pulpit crimes in the bookstore at AOMN .org. And welcome back to the
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Dividing Line. We continue with the Jerry Vine sermons and I see some phone calls.
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We'll be screening here in a moment and getting your comments as well. Getting toward the end here, though, so we press forward.
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The Bible teaches that man's will can resist God's will. Act 751. You do always resist the
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Holy Spirit. Now, I've said many times before, if I ever hear anyone citing
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Act 751 as if it is relevant to the subject of Calvinism, I automatically know this person is clueless.
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This person has no idea what they're talking about. They got this sermon from somebody else. They got this talk from somebody else.
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They got this book from somebody else. Whatever it might be, they don't know what they're talking about. Because if you know what irresistible grace is, you know that the statement is not that God's grace is irresistible.
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There's all sorts of God's grace is resisted every day. There's not a Calvinist who's ever said anything other than that.
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It's not even an issue. The issue is when God determines to save one of his elect people, not just curb sin in this this person over here or any type of common grace.
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When God chooses to save one of his elect people, bring that perfect salvation to fruition in that person's life.
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Is God capable of failing in doing that? And the answer, of course, is no.
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Act 751 has nothing to do with that. Just look at the context. Read it. It has nothing to do with it. So if you cite it, you've just told me you don't have any idea what you're talking about.
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You just you just don't. You're not dealing with the issue fairly. And this would just I don't care what your religion is.
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I don't care if you're Jehovah's Witness on a Calvinistic jihad. I don't care if you're a Mormon who just can't even begin to understand how they could believe these things.
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I don't care if you're a Muslim. I don't care who you are. I don't care if you're the past president of the Southern Baptist Convention. You are not representing the subject in a meaningful fashion.
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Jesus said in Matthew 23, 37, how often would I, but you would not.
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Now, there we go again. How many we've got to put up a scoreboard someplace.
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How many times can you completely ignore the actual reading of the text of Matthew 23, 37?
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How often can you do it? And how many different people will be able to completely destroy
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Matthew 23, 37? You know, the more I hear this, the more I'm absolutely convinced of the correctness of my commentary on it.
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You know why? Because these folks don't even know what the text says. They've never even begun to examine it in a fair fashion.
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If their mind is so made up by the time they got there that they can continually ignore what it says in black and white right in front of them, then they've never listened to another viewpoint.
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They've never examined themselves in any meaningful fashion on this subject. So has someone actually provided a meaningful counter exegesis to the one we've offered?
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No. Obviously, Dr. Vines has never thought about it. He's just heard it this way over and over again.
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So you can just ignore what the text says, ignore the distinctions that are right there in the text. No textual variations.
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Nothing like that at all. Just throw it all out and just say, I would, but you would not.
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That's not what it says. Now, the will of God, God wills it all be saved.
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2 Peter 3, 9, he is not willing. This is not on the graphics, guys. I put in some extra for you. Not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
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That's what God desires. Put positively, 1 Timothy 2, 4, who will have all men to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.
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Now, everybody who has read the Potter's Freedom knows that we just heard the big three in order.
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Matthew 23, 37, 2 Peter 3, 9, 1 Timothy 2, 4. And you also know that there is an entire chapter and that you also know that as of yet,
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I cannot think of having heard anyone actually attempt to respond to the counter exegesis and the issues raised within the text of my book.
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Now, Norman Geisler at least recognizes that people have said different things.
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And I and he would be one person who at least tries to raise the issue. He doesn't raise it in an accurate fashion, but at least tried to raise the issue.
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But everybody else I know, I suppose one of the exceptions would have to be
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Dave Hunt, mainly because we did a debate book and he's got to at least try to make it look like he's responding to what
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I'm saying. But when you hear these people preaching within the context of their own, they're in control.
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There's no one there to provide the other side. You're not going to hear a meaningful response to any of these texts, because quite honestly,
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I doubt if you cornered Dr. Vines, if you cornered Nelson Price, if you cornered
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Johnny Hunt, if you if you cornered Graham or any of these guys, the current president, if you cornered any of these folks without any help from anybody else, it said, would you please explain to us what the reformed exegesis of First Timothy 2 .4
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or Second Peter 3 .9. Now, again, I know Second Peter 3 .9, First Timothy 2 .4, there are some people who who make this a general will type type thing.
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But what I have presented, what others have presented in an exegetical fashion, would they have any idea?
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Would they be able to define it? I don't think so. I don't think so. And if you can't even begin to define what the other side says about a text, you probably really haven't entered seriously into the discussion of it.
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Now, if the problem in salvation is not God's will, if it's God's will for you to be saved and you're not saved, then the problem is with whose will?
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It's your will. Yeah, there's the old, here's the doctrine of election, God voted for you,
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Satan voted against you, and now it's up to you to break the tie. Irresistible grace, no. Man can resist.
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No. 5, perseverance of the saints. Now, this is where most people really...
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Now, let me just say in passing, I'm sorry, but if this is meant to be serious interaction with these things, this kind of presentation is what creates
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Calvinists. Because it is so shallow. I mean, it shows so little respect for the other side that anyone who's even been introduced to it goes, wait a minute, if you've rejected it and you're not really giving any arguments, maybe there's really something to this.
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This is what creates Calvinists. We agree with the Calvinists on this point. They believe that those who...
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No, no, no, you don't agree with the Calvinists on this point. Because everything that's come before is the basis of this.
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If you reject everything that's come before, you don't agree with the Calvinists on this point. The saved are preserved eternally, and that those who persevere in the faith will ultimately die in a state of grace.
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Unto God's glory. We call this eternal security, or we Baptists like the little thing, want saved, always saved.
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No, no, no. John 10, 28, and 29. And I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.
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My Father which gave them me is greater than all. No man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand.
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Except for the person, maybe? I mean, free will, free will, synergism, resist
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God's grace, up to this point. And now all of a sudden, oh, well, once you've got your ticket punched, that's it. You can't resist
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God's grace anymore. You can't get yourself out of this thing. You sign on the dotted line. The contract is, you know, you can't break the contract.
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The inconsistency is so striking. But, interestingly enough, even this here, this point...
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Now here's where it becomes clear to me that Vines is utilizing Hunt without giving attribution to him.
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Can be pushed to an extreme, to the point that they will say the only way you know you're saved is that you're faithful unto death.
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That you don't really ever know you're saved if you're faithful. I used to hear the primitive Baptist preachers.
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And, by the way, I love primitive Baptists. I was brought up around primitive Baptists. Some of you have a primitive
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Baptist background. I used to hear the primitive Baptist preachers pray like this. Help us to hold out faithful and save us in the end.
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You ever heard that? They used to pray that way. Really the best they could hope for is Lamentations 3 .26.
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It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the
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Lord. Now what this does is this puts our assurance of salvation on the basis of works.
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What we do. Now ladies and gentlemen, I don't know about you, but there are some days of my life, if my assurance was based on what
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I did that day, I wouldn't have a whole lot of assurance. Do I have a witness out there?
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Anybody say amen to that? I mean really, if it's going to be me, and then the question comes up, well how faithful have
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I been? How good have my good works been? Is it enough? Is it sufficient?
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It's going to be very, very hard to have much assurance of salvation with a system like that.
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Let me quote, and I'll not use the name, one of the leading teachers in the Calvinist movement who talked about the tormenting thoughts that overcame him that he might not be one of the elect.
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See, this is coming straight out of Hunt in case you're wondering. It's clear that we are saved forever. It is not so much the perseverance of the saints as it is the preservation of the
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Savior. My security and my assurance is in Christ, and Christ alone.
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That's my assurance. I come to God at the end of the day, and I see how
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I'm blown, and how I've sinned, and how I've messed up. And I say, oh God, I'm so thankful.
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You shed your blood on the cross, and you saved me. If it was left up to me, I'd be in the devil's hell.
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Let's catch that. Let me stop that right there. Where is the consistency here? Because what he just said is exactly what every soul in hell could say.
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Have you thought about that? Think about that for just a moment. That's the cost of inconsistency on the previous issues.
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Every soul in hell can say Jesus did that. How does that somehow change something? That's where these folks are so inconsistent.
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They can see that if Jesus shed his blood for me, that is my only hope. But then because of their traditions and just a dogged traditionalism, won't realize, oh wait a minute, well if that's true, then there are things that must flow from that.
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It's just this dogged traditionalism that keeps them from seeing that. And when they start getting into their real experience of salvation, they have to say things that just aren't consistent with what they said before, and they don't even realize it while they're doing it.
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One writer said, I'll just quote him, A tulip is a beautiful flower, but bad theology. The fruit of the flower is appealing, but the fruit of the theology is appalling.
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How do you reconcile these? Pastor, I'm a little over, can I go over? My pastor said
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I could, I will. How do you resolve this tension that flows all through these?
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What you've got in the Bible is you've got the two sides of the salvation matter. On one side you've got
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God's side of the equation, and that's when you get words like called, election, foreknowledge, and predestination.
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But on the other side you have man's side of the equation, and you read words like repent, believe, whosoever, come and take.
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You will see that tension all the way through the Bible. For instance, Joseph in the Old Testament, when he talked to his brothers, he said in Genesis 45, verse 8,
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So now it is as not you that sent me, but God.
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Chapter 50, verse 20, But as for you, you thought evil against me, human responsibility, but God made it unto good, divine sovereignty, the betrayal of Jesus.
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He's talking about compatibilism here. I don't know, he must have stumbled out of hunt for a moment, went back to some of his old sermon outlines, and now he's saying something right, not seeing that it's contradicting everything he said before.
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He's not seeing the connections here at all. Luke 22, 22, talking about Judas, And truly the
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Son of Man goes as it was determined, divine sovereignty. But woe unto that man, Judas, by whom he has betrayed human responsibility.
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The cross of Christ in Acts 2, 23, Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, You have taken and with wicked hands have crucified and slain.
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And was that an uncertain thing? Could his free will, could the free will of those who crucified
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Jesus, have overthrown God's purpose? The answer must be no. Yes, these are both there, but to make them equal to each other, rather than seeing that the one flows from the other, is the fundamental error of human religion.
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Human responsibility. I'll tell you what it's like. It's like a chessboard with a master chessman and beginner playing.
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Now the master chessman knows every move on the board. The beginner is free to make any moves on the board he wants to make.
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But when it's all over, the master chess player is going to win.
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Alright, now watch. Here's what we do. Huh? Excuse me? How did any of that just fit with what was just said?
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Master chess chessman and beginner, okay? So you got a grandmaster playing what's called a wood pusher.
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Okay, I know a little something about this. And he's free to make any move he wants, but in the end he's going to win.
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But the fact of the matter is, how long it's going to take and the course it's going to take will be dependent upon what that other guy does.
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There have been times that I was playing somebody and they were really outmatched.
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They were a new player, and I spent a lot of time playing chess as a young person and memorized lots of openings.
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And at age 13 or 14, the last term I played in, I had an 1800 rating. For those of you who are
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USCF people, you know that that's not a master level, but for a 14 -year -old, not half bad. There's protégés out there.
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They're very, very much better than that. But I wasn't a bad player, okay? And so I'm playing somebody, and there's times you're playing somebody, and it is inevitable.
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You're not going to lose. But the question is, how long? And sometimes somebody will put up a real good fight. They just won't make real obvious mistakes, and it takes some time to get the game.
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The point is, it's still synergistic. Does that mean the cross was the result of that?
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That God sent Joseph to Egypt to save many people alive? He has a purpose in that thing? Can't they see this?
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It's so frustrating. Well, let me try to just finish this up real quickly.
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We've got to try to get to at least one of our phone calls, because we're almost at the end of this, and I want to wrap it up. The human mind cannot comprehend this.
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The human mind cannot reconcile the sovereignty of God and the free will of man.
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Why should we be surprised at that? When you pick up your Bible, do you know what you're encountering? You are encountering the infinite mind of God.
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And, of course, I'll just conclude by saying, if he would just not insert those concepts that are just not there, the free will of man, where did you get that?
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You didn't get it from the text of Scripture. That just isn't there. That's a philosophical construct that you have constructed from other aspects, and then you fill it with certain meanings, then you fill your traditions in.
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If he just wouldn't start there, he was right on the edge there of seeing exactly what the truth is, but missed it.
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Well, anyway, we have spent a good deal of time on that, and I just wish that folks like Dr.
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Vines would sit down and would really listen on this subject.
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If you're going to continue to not agree, fine. But at least disagree with the reality, not this constant strawman misrepresentation of it.
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877 -753 -3341. Let's get to our phone calls and talk to Johnny. Hi, Johnny. Hi, how are you?
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Doing good. Good. James, I was calling you because I listened to the discussion that Dr.
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Robert Morey and Pastor Gene Cook had with Greg Stafford. And in their discussions, one of the things that I noticed is that I think they committed the crime of not defining their terms, and particularly with the use of the term anthropomorphic.
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And he was trying to argue, of course, that when the Bible says in Genesis 2 -19 that God put the animals there to see what
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Adam was going to name them, he said that that's an indicator that God has sovereignty over his knowledge to not know what
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Adam was going to name them, and so he wanted to see it. And when Pastor Gene Cook and Dr.
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Bob Morey argued that that was an anthropomorphic reference, but then he said something that was very eye -opening. He said, all of our knowledge of God is anthropomorphic.
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And so I noticed that they kept throwing the term around, but he has a different understanding of anthropomorphisms.
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And so I asked him for a definition. I put up a question on his website, and he gave me this interpretation.
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I want to hear your comments on it, and where he gets this understanding from. But he says, I use the term anthropomorphic to refer to how we humans conceive of divine or spiritual things by using human thinking and terms.
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In other words, since we are not spirit or divine, we cannot fully appreciate, know, and thus define completely what it means to be spirit or divine or how to describe such things as they truly are.
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We only relate to them with respect to how we conceive of spiritual things in human terms. He argues that, for example, in Jeremiah 23 -24, where the
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Bible says that Jehovah fills heaven and earth, he says that that's anthropomorphic. Do you have some comments on that?
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Well, that's obviously a complete misapprehension of the use of the term, and it would be important to define it so that that would, in essence, mean that all of Scripture is anthropomorphic, that any revelation is anthropomorphic, that it's all defined by man simply because it is placed in a means by which man can understand it, that is, within language.
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And the problem is that that is a complete misuse of the term. Anthropomorphisms are structures in language that seek to utilize parallels between human experience and existence and something that God says or does so as to illustrate a single point.
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Sort of like a parable has primarily one point that you are going for, and you have to determine that before you can start trying to make any connections to anything else within the context of the parable.
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And anthropomorphism then would be the utilization not of human language in total because that would make everything an anthropomorphism, and that would mean that the word becomes a synonym for simply human language, and it's not.
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It is the utilization of and the projection of human experience, whether it be our experience, for example, speaking of God's hands and feet and eyes or things like that, onto God to communicate something.
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When God's eye is upon someone, that means he's observing them. That's an anthropomorphism.
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It is not something that is meant to literally communicate something about the actual nature and being of God.
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And so by expanding it, what Greg is doing there is allowing for – really destroying the meaning of the word, first of all, making it irrelevant in conversation, and then further it's allowing him to promote this idea he has where basically he starts back with Genesis and he tries to create solely out of the
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Genesis narrative some sort of foundational doctrine of God that is addressed elsewhere.
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I mean there's no way that you could read, for example, The Trial of the False Gods in Isaiah 40 -48 and come up with his kind of perspective on Jehovah.
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But instead what he's got to do is start back in Genesis and in texts that are not meant to be communicating what he thinks they're communicating, that there's no argument in Genesis 1 that demands the conclusions he's coming up with.
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There is in Isaiah, and that's where one of the hermeneutical errors that he makes is, is that he's got an overarching theology, in this case provided by the
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Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, which is open theistic in its view of God's knowledge of the future. Most people are not aware of that.
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They would think that if these people know anything about Jehovah they would know that Jehovah has exhaustive knowledge of all future events and is sovereign over all things, but being a non -Christian religion they can't accept that.
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And so he takes that overarching theological perspective provided by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society and then uses that as his interpretive grid, which he must do in all things, to then see in anthropomorphic issues in regards to Adam or whatever else it might be, the same kind of limitedness that open theists see today, but then when you look at those texts where God is specifically contrasting himself to false gods and giving those attributes of his own nature that are definitional of what it means to be the true
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God over against false gods, all of a sudden those things get flattened out and the fact that he is the creator of all the generations, that he can tell you what's going to happen in the future, he can also tell you what happened in the past and why it happened.
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In other words, there is that sovereign decree that is part and parcel of the whole thing. All of a sudden that stuff disappears and it must disappear just as the testimony to the deity of Christ, the resurrection, the personality of the
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Holy Spirit, and all the other things the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society vacuums out of scripture, likewise must disappear through the application of that overriding concept.
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Right. One of the things I've also noticed, and a lot of people aren't aware of this, you probably are, but is that the
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Watchtower Society also believes that the Jehovah, the Father, has a spiritual body.
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Yes. Which actually came kind of as a surprise to me just a couple months ago when I was reading about this. Okay. Okay, thanks a lot,
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Johnny. Thank you very much. All right, thank you. God bless. Bye -bye. I'm afraid we're out of time, and yes,
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I was looking for the music, and Rich is just sort of off in his own little world doing his thing.
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Sorry, Michael. We'll be back with The Dividing Line on Thursday afternoon to be able to take some questions at that time and also pick up with the
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George Bryson MP3, a great insight into the mindset of those who fear
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Calvinism but cannot refute it. We'll do that on The Dividing Line on Thursday. See you then. This moment is so far away
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We must contend for the faith above is fought for We need a new Reformation day
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It's the sign of the times The truth is being trampled in a new age paradigm
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Religion, it's time to make some noise I'm going first on the floor
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I stand up for the truth And won't you live for the Lord Because we're piling on, piling on Waiting by the door
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The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries. If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.
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Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the
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World Wide Web at aomin .org, that's A -O -M -I -N .O -R -G where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates and tracks.