The Mormon Question and Then Open Phones

Greetings, welcome to the Dividing Line. We're taking calls today, which is, by the way, is much more energy intensive for me than the regular program.

It really is. I mean, unless I'm doing like video and something I had to queue up and do all the editing on and stuff like that.

You never know. And I don't care how much Rich asks, what you get told and what ends up being asked are normally not all that close to each other.

And having done lots of radio over the years and lots of call in shows and sitting in studios and seeing the stuff before it comes up.

Yeah, that's sort of how it. How it always is. One more time on so that Rich doesn't make sad little faces through the window and all that distracting stuff.

We are we've got a raffle going on for the multi layered cross made by the the the king of the

Frenchman of of Prescott himself, which in of itself makes it extremely valuable, extremely valuable.

And we have our Isaiah, not Isaac, Isaiah line,

Jeffrey Rice, ESV creeds and confessions Bible. And we you can buy raffle tickets throughout the month.

And why are we in the world we're doing this because we almost never talk about money was once again, we had to make a major change in the

RV world. One that I am very thankful for, I will be perfectly honest with you. I mean,

I would have been perfectly happy keeping the unit that we had. But I'm perfectly much more happy with the unit we have now.

And for a lot of reasons, one of them we mentioned before, that is weighing on my mind more these days, what happens if I get sick while I'm traveling?

And given what 2024 it's been like so far, it's good to have a bed.

Good to have a bed. All I had in the other one was a bunk that I had to sort of dive into headfirst.

And when you're really, really sick, that's not a you got to be able to sit up and do stuff like that.

So anyway, we are seeking to ameliorate the extra costs of that, that switch that change.

And so that's what this is all about. And you can go on alman .org to get the details and contribute toward that.

And who knows what, you know, you might end up with, with one of those these things, and then we're going to have a

Melton forged blade coming eventually as well.

I'm watching the radar. It's, it's, it is so weird. It's the 13th of June. And if you've lived in Phoenix for as long as I've lived in Phoenix, and I keep reminding myself that I moved to Phoenix 50 years ago next month, 50 years ago next month.

So I've been, I've been in Phoenix longer than you have. Cause you came down from Prescott, right?

When did you come down from Prescott? Yeah. Yeah. So I've been in Phoenix actually longer.

Um, and I'm sorry, you don't have cloudy days at this point in time in June, but we've got some, uh, almost monsoonal flow type stuff coming up from the

South. Cause this is all coming straight, straight North. So that's, um, interesting.

Um, I'm not complaining cause it was only like a hundred degrees. The truck was reading a hundred degrees as I rode in.

So we're going to be taking your calls. We have a number of them already queued up. I'm not sure about all of them, but we'll get to them in a second.

There was one thing I did need to talk about briefly, uh, as we get started. Uh, I think a week ago this past weekend, there was a get together that Jason Whitlock put together and there was a lot of discussion about it.

Protestia, uh, talked about it. Um, a number of good people were there, but they also invited, and I think my understanding is

I, I didn't invest a whole lot of time in this, but my understanding is that Jason Whitlock was talking with Glenn Beck and they got all excited about this stuff and he invited

Glenn Beck to come. And it took on more and more of a religious perspective as time went by, which raises the issue of Glenn Beck and Mormonism.

And my understanding is when he got up at this thing, you know, he said, I need to start off my testimony of Jesus Christ.

I encourage you all to surrender to Christ. And look, uh, I've been saying for a long time that as we are pressed into a smaller and smaller portion of the cultural landscape with the rise of the secularized younger generations, um, we, we've talked about being pressed ever closer with Roman Catholics and hence the temptation and the pressure to minimize the doctrinal issues, doctrinal distinctions.

And, uh, which, which reminds me by the way, just in passing, um, I was just informed today that Robert Syngenis has posted three hours of video material.

Now I looked at the first one and I never saw Bob. Um, but I saw it was text screens being read by different voices.

Not sure how you do that. I'm not sure if there's like an app that you can pick voices to read stuff.

I assume there is, I don't know. Um, I mean, I recently, uh, actually created my own voice in, um, uh, what was that?

It's a speechify and speechify, which is a super useful, useful, useful app, especially when

I'm driving, uh, to be able to listen to PDFs and books and all sorts of things like that.

My entire Kindle library is available to me now to be read in my own voice. And you might say, why would you want to listen to yourself?

Interestingly enough, I don't find it distracting. And in fact, it's less distracting than a lot of the voices that are available.

Uh, rich, rich won't be doing this, but I can, I I'll give you my voice and then, then you'll be fine.

Um, but, uh, anyway, uh, I have,

I've now jumped about 14 rabbit holes off from where we were. Um, but I, what

I was talking about, get back to the point here so we can get to our colors. Um, if we have these issues, when we are, when we're talking about Protestants and Roman Catholics and,

Oh, what I was gonna tell you, sorry. Syngenis, um, posted three hours worth of video refuting

Jimmy Akin's presentation on justification from our debate two months ago.

Now, let me just say something. I, I, I, I need to say, I, there have been times when

Bob Syngenis and I have debated where I was really impressed. You know, when, when we debated papal infallibility, uh, in Florida and the moderator sort of fritzed out on us and we sort of had to self moderate,

Bob worked with me. Bob is the only guy who's ever debated me on the bodily assumption.

Um, I don't think anybody else would be willing to do that. Anybody else with any experience or publications or anything like that.

Um, so there have been other debates where I was significantly less impressed.

Um, so there's sort of one Bob Syngenis, another Bob Syngenis, but the point is, um, you've just got to give the guy credit.

You just really do. He's actually going to do, um, he's actually going on iron sharpens iron with Chris Arnzen to talk about this.

And that'll be a program I'll be interested in listening to, obviously. Um, he, this isn't easy for him to do.

I mean, he's taken a bunch of stands that have really marginalized him.

I mean, he was once, you know, he was up on the stage with Madrid and what was that?

Was it Marchner? I think it was his name in Marchner in Los Angeles and debate they did against the white horse in guys.

And he was on EWTN. You don't see him on any of those platforms anymore. One of the reasons is his geocentrism.

Okay. That is weird. Um, but there are other reasons and he just, he takes his positions and he'll stick to his guns and you, you know, you gotta give him credit for that.

Uh, he's not one of these guys that just gets blown, blown by the wind. He sort of makes his own wind.

It goes his own direction, you know? Um, and so give him credit where credit's due.

Um, uh, that'll be, that'll be fascinating. Anyway, if we have these conversations between Catholics and Protestants, then when it comes to Mormonism, I'm going to say it again.

And people always dismiss me despite the fact that to be honest with you, just thinking off the top of my head here,

I cannot think of any other living or dead Christian apologists. And I'm sort of in between these days, um, uh, who has debated as many

Mormons and Roman Catholics and Muslims. You put those three groups together.

I can't think of anybody that's done more debates with those folks than I have or written more books on those subjects than I have.

I've written one, two, three, at least five or six books when you put the three of those groups together, um, over the years.

So here's the statement. Islam is considerably closer to biblical

Christianity than Mormonism ever could be. And people just freak out.

They start throwing sand in the air and pulling on their hair and stuff like that. And I'll explain it briefly once again.

Muslims and Christians believe in monotheism. We believe there's one creator

God who made all things. Mormons deny this. Mormonism is the most polytheistic religion ever dreamed up by man.

There is an unlimited, infinite number of deities. Mormon men can become gods.

And with the changes going on, who knows what will happen with that in the future. Um, but at your, your doctrine of God and whether he's the only true

God defines your faith. That's the most basic dividing line with everything else.

And Mormonism is over here and Christianity is over here. And Islam and Christianity both say the same thing at that foundational level.

There's one God who created all things. Now they don't believe he's triune, therefore we're not talking about the same God. That's where the conversation starts there.

But Mormonism is way out there. And so when Glenn Beck gets up and starts talking about surrendering to Christ, there's the few of us over here who've talked to thousands and thousands and thousands of LDS missionaries over the years and read thousands and thousands of pages of Mormon doctrine, um, going, yeah, what

Jesus are we talking about here? And unfortunately, most evangelicals are like, oh, look, man, you know,

Glenn says all this good stuff and he's so passionate. And why do you, why do you get all hung up on this type of stuff?

And it's like, you have to be hung up on this type of stuff. Not being willing to actually deal with the issue is going to create a surface level unity that cannot provide any kind of meaningful foundation for addressing anything going on in the world at all.

That's all there is to it. So, you know, I don't know who can actually get

Glenn Beck's ear. And I would imagine that he's heard a lot of it before and he doesn't strike me as the most orthodox of Mormons to begin with.

Okay. But the point is we, once again, we're facing a situation where a lot of people are willing to go, um, we'll skip over the non -essential differences to create a larger larger group politically.

And the reality is when it comes to Mormonism, everything is an essential difference because it starts at the bottom, starts at the very foundation.

Mormonism is not Christianity. It's not just a different view. It's not just different denomination. It is a completely different religion.

And its founders said that. Its founders said that.

Only its modern proponents, pretty much from Gordon Hinckley onward, have played around with that reality.

Okay. So there's that. Let's get to our, uh, our calls and are they pretty much in the order you want to?

Okay. I never did. Oh, okay. All right. So let's, um, let's talk to, uh, to Noah.

Noah, how are the, uh, how are the animals doing on the arc? They're doing good. We're doing good.

We're taking care of them. Yeah. Okay. And I've always wanted to know, Noah, um, how did you provide ventilation?

Because I would imagine after about a week, uh, it would be really rough in there.

It really would be. Yeah. You just got to deal with the smell. Yeah.

I get the feeling I'm not the first one to have thrown some of these lines at you. Yeah, for sure.

Sorry. All right. Go for it. Yeah. So, um,

I've been engaging with, uh, a couple missionaries from this missionary.

It's the world missionary society, church of God. Um, I don't know if you've heard of them. They're like a

Korean cult that's here in the U S I live in San Diego, California, and they're active in my community.

And they kind of talk about God, the mother and God, the father. Um, they say that they believe in the

Trinity, but it seems like it's, it's modalism when they talk about the Trinity. Um, but they believe that in God, God, the father and God, the mother, and they point to in Genesis or even throughout the old

Testament that the Hebrew word Elohim is a plural and it in references, multiple gods.

I just want to, you know, you're a, you know, you know, good in biblical languages. So yeah, sure.

Um, well, father and mother gods, huh? Well, uh, when it comes up, when it comes out of the

East, it's always, um, interesting stuff. Um, obviously not connected to the historical doctrine, the

Trinity at all. Elohim is a plural word and the issue people don't understand in Hebrew, you have plurals, you have duals and you have singulars.

And frequently, for example, uh, the heavens are plural. Even if you're talking about just heaven as a whole, uh, you can have waters as plural.

There's a lot of poetic things that could be done with duals and plurals and things like that. Um, but the, the, the key issue in with Elohim is what verb is being used with it.

So if you have Elohim with a plural verb, then it's going to be being, it's going to be translated as gods.

Uh, so the gods, the Elohim of the peoples are idols, Psalm 965. Um, but when it's used with a singular verb and frequently, uh, for example, you'll, you'll have

Yahweh Elohim. And in most English translations, that will be

Lord God with O -R -D in caps. Um, legacy standard

Bible, for example, would have Yahweh God or something like that. Um, but so often the, the, it will be used together with the specific name of God.

And obviously that's not going to be Yahweh gods or something like that. And then a singular verb.

So it's, it's very, very obvious that at least to people reading the Old Testament in context, uh, that in the vast majority of instances is talking about simply

God, um, in this, in the singular and not gods or anything along those lines, the context almost always will give you the, uh, indication of that though, especially in poetic texts, sometimes verbs will disappear because poetry.

I mean, you, you do that with poetry. You do, you know, you're trying to get a certain number of words into a certain space and it doesn't matter what language you're in, you're still doing the same type of stuff.

So, so there are a couple of places where it's ambiguous and people will argue for one thing or another thing like, um, there, there's a text,

I think it's in Daniel. Is it, uh, one like a son of the gods or a, like the son of God?

And in that instance, it's a pagan saying it. So you're sort of like, well, actually we just sort need to consider both and see what each one would mean because yeah, it could be taken either direction.

But in the vast majority of instances, it's very, very clear. It's talking about one God, Yahweh God creator of all things, uh, with the singular verb and the, the pushing the, the plural form just demonstrates that the people you're talking to, uh, have as much knowledge of the

Old Testament languages that Joseph Smith had, which was not. Okay.

Yeah. They had pointed to, I think, um, one of the missionaries had said like even Genesis one, one, like it's talking of multiple gods creating the heavens and the earth.

Yeah, no, I mean, uh, uh, it's singular there in Genesis one, one, the beginning God created, not the gods created, um, the heavens and the earth.

And so, yeah, it's, it's not the gods said this or the gods said that that's, that's just absurd.

But, um, look, a lot of these groups won't exist 20 years from now.

And, um, you know, those, but, but that doesn't mean you don't deal with them because I'm sure a lot of people thought the same thing about Joseph Smith.

Uh, I'm sure a lot of folks were like, uh, yeah, well, this, this is going to be a flash in a pan and you see how many millions of lives have been impacted by that.

So we, we do have to respond to it, but so many of them, especially these days live off of the internet that, um, they wouldn't have, they wouldn't have survived, uh, 30 years ago, but now they have a means of communicating with people.

I'm wondering sort of off. I'm wondering, I had a guy actually come by the RV. Um, he had seen that I have a

Christian sign on it and I'm wondering if wasn't the same group.

There was, there were quite, he was quite aggressive as far as, I mean, Hey, he's going around knocking on doors in an

RV park. Uh, so they seem to be really going out there doing their things. So, um,

I wonder if it wasn't the same thing because he was talking, he was talking about Elohim too.

That's, but everybody talks about Elohim. I mean, Joseph Smith talked to everybody. That's that one. Okay.

They're really active inside like department stores or in, um, like I was in target and I heard him talking and he happened to be talking to a

Jehovah's witness. There was strange that they were both dialoguing back and forth. Uh, the blind leading the blind.

Yes, indeed. Alrighty. Noah, thank you for your call. All right. God bless.

All right. I almost started going eight, seven, seven, seven, five, three, three, three, four, one, which, uh,

I feel sorry for whoever has that number. Uh, now, um, that used to be our toll free number, but as soon as somebody hung up,

I'd be given the next, uh, given the next number. Did that for years and years and years. Okay. I, we have a two

Daniels. This is the, we have a Daniel and a Daniel else. This would be Daniel on open theism.

Hi, Daniel. Hello, Dr. White. Uh, first of all, I want to thank you for your ministry.

It has helped me tremendously in seeing the consistency of the reformed faith and also your lectures alone.

I witnessing to Muslims have been invaluable to me when I'm witnessing to these people on my college campus.

Oh, great. That's great to hear. Thank you. Yeah. I just had this, uh, well, I often hear you say the only consistent

Arminian is an open theist in your debate with Dr. Michael Brown. During the cross -examination, he said this, that when

God decreed by foreseeing those who would be saved, when did he gain the knowledge of who would be saved?

Dr. Brown responded by saying it was from eternity. But in your debate, you mentioned, you made a point in saying that, uh, there must've been some points in which

God would have foreseen what they have done and therefore decreed it, uh, in that point. Could you please explain what you mean by that phrase that the only consistent

Arminian is an open theist in connection to that question and Dr. Brown's response when he said it was from eternity?

Yeah, I, I haven't listened, uh, to that debate in a long time. So I don't remember Michael's exact, uh, answer.

Um, my, I'm at least again,

I, I talk about the blessed inconsistencies of my non -reformed brothers and it's, it's hard to understand how from a

Arminian perspective, you could say that God has known from eternity when you've also said that the choice that is to be made will be made by a creature that has not yet been decreed to come into existence.

Um, it, it puts God in a position of observing, um, from the outside, some kind of, um, timeline of history in essence.

And there are people that are comfortable saying that, uh, the, the problem then becomes, okay, and what is the origin and source of that timeline?

Who, who formed it? Who, who gives it? If, if it, if you're saying that the end is going to be what

God says it's going to be, uh, in his own glorification, in the victory of the, of the, of the people of Christ, so on and so forth.

When, when did that happen? What's the logical order of these things? And so when

I, when I say the only, uh, consistent Arminian is an open theist, what

I'm saying is my Arminian brothers who affirm that God has infallible, unchangeable, completely accurate knowledge of future events.

The only way to hold that perspective is to believe that when God created, he had a purpose and decree in creation.

If you then say, yeah, except those who are amongst the elect are not, that's not the result of his decree.

It's the result of their free actions coming into existence as a result of his creation.

It's, it's an incoherent position. And the open theist would agree with that. By the way, the open theist would say, yeah, we, that's why we're open theists is we think the

Arminians, um, were way too reformed because Arminius was a reformed theologian, at least, uh, in his, in his background and where he was coming from.

Um, but the open theists are saying that's incoherent because if God has a decree that forms the fabric of time, then the identity of the elect flow from his choice, not autonomous choices within time.

And if you, if you say that God knows, then there is no libertarian freedom to do otherwise, because if God from eternity knows that that person

X is not ever going to accept Christ as Savior, then person

X, if they choose to accept Christ as Savior, invalidates

God's knowledge. And so God's knowledge becomes falsifiable and erroneous.

Now the open theist doesn't mind that the open theist is okay with God's knowledge being falsifiable.

That's part of open theism. But the Arminians like, uh, no, uh, we're not, not going to go there. So the phrase classical theism was actually coined, uh, at least it seems it was coined by open theists to describe everybody on the other side,

Arminians, Calvinists, they're all, if you affirm that God has, um, certain attributes that he is immutable, uh, that, that he is eternal in the sense of unchanging, uh, that he's omniscient, that he actually knows the future.

You know, the open theist says, no, he can't know the future because the future doesn't exist. God can't know unknown things.

God can't know things that do not yet exist. Um, and so they don't have any problem, the open theist, in putting

God in time and limiting God to time in that way.

Now, again, there's different forms of open theism and different expressions of that.

And people come up with their own little names, uh, for their, how they tweak things to themselves.

Um, but I would say the fundamental defining aspect of, uh, open theism would be the idea that God cannot know what a free creature is going to do and still have the creature being free.

So if God knows everything I'm going to do, then I'm going to do everything God knows.

And hence there can't be libertarian freedom. And so how you fit that together with everything else, uh, there are different versions of that.

The internet, I think has, um, produced, uh, some really interesting variants, um, that, you know, people get their own little group of followers by coming up with their own tweaking in a certain way.

Uh, but that I think is central to, to open theism. And so I'm just, when

I say the only consistent Arminians in open theist, I'm simply saying there is a fundamental contradiction between on the one hand affirming

God's exhaustive, exhaustive knowledge of future events. And on the other hand saying that the actual identity of the elect is not determined in God's creative, uh, decree, but happens in, in some fashion.

I mean, even if you say, well, yeah, you don't, you don't have these people coming to accept

Christ except at a point in time. But once God created in that instant of creation, he came to know who was going to believe in him.

I mean, how do you most, most, thankfully, most Arminians have a real aversion to the idea of God coming to know things, learning things.

Um, the open theist embraces it and, and says, it's awesome. It's great. It's wonderful. Isn't God, isn't it great that God can learn things.

And even to the point of saying, isn't it great that, that God can make mistakes. Um, that's, that's the open theist perspective.

So, uh, I'm just simply saying that, uh, the consistent position would be to adopt open theism that historical

Arminianism is not a consistent position to hold. Yeah. I found it very interesting.

And it's just so much more simpler and consistent to see the God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy council of his own will chose from eternity to elect onto himself a person and that every action, like you said, it is decreed and just so much simpler to and consistent with scripture, at least so in the way.

Well, but, but see, they're, they're not, they, they would say, no, no, no, no, that's not simple.

That's, that's the end of any meaningful, um, defense of God's goodness, because they're going to, they're, they're not going to allow for the idea that, that God can act in eternity in the sense of the creation of the decree.

And then look at time and see how God interacts with us in time.

They, God, God can't have the, the eternal aspect. And then our experience of that in time, they want to say, no,

God's not an eternity. God is in time. And therefore God is experiencing a progression of events.

Uh, they will argue, for example, the incarnation is a demonstration of, of God being, uh, experiencing time as a progression, uh, that there was a time when he wasn't incarnate now he is, uh, and therefore there could not be any eternal, uh, concept to the nature of God that cannot change.

There's all sorts of stuff. Uh, I've been listening to some debates recently from, uh, open theists that have taken place since I did my debates with, uh,

Sanders and, and, uh, Bob Enyart, uh, back in 2014, it's been 10 years.

He's gone as to, um, and I've been listening to some others that have taken place recently, um, and, uh, sort of getting back up to speed on some of the developments.

And, uh, what's fascinating is the argumentation that open theists present against God's eternity in the sense of, uh, they, their, their argument is

God is in time. God is experiencing a progression of events.

God knows what time it is right now. And it's the same time for God as it is for us.

And so the past doesn't really exist. The future doesn't really exist. Uh, God knows everything that happened in the past cause he's got a really good memory.

Um, but he can't know what's going to happen in the future other than what his plans for the future might be.

Uh, so many of the arguments that they make as to why that is supposedly necessary are the exact same arguments provisionists make, which is why

I have said over and over and over again, there is, there is nothing to keep the provisionist movement from, uh, adopting open theism wholesale.

And they would be significantly more consistent if they did. They really would be.

Yeah. But in the end, all glory be to God. Amen. All right. Well, thank you, Daniel. Have a great day.

All right. God bless. Bye -bye. Yeah. That's been a topic I have been, uh, uh, looking at, uh, a good bit recently.

We are trying, uh, to set up, uh, at least one, hopefully two debates, um, for the trip to Colorado or your open theism is one of the subjects that we want to address there.

Um, we've got calls in and are not getting calls back for some reason. I'm not sure why, but, uh, we're trying, we're trying.

Okay. Let's talk to Howie. Hi, Howie. Hi, James. A pleasure to be on.

Can you hear me? I can. Great. Uh, uh, yeah. So, uh, I'm over here, uh, in France right now.

It was funny that you talked about it yesterday on the program or the last program. And, uh, it's been quite the protest.

Everyone's upset about the, the elections. Oh, yes, yes. Uh, and Rich's, Rich's, uh, uh, involvement in, um, moving

France to the, uh, to the right. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just here on a summer mission with crew or in the middle and your, um, videos on, uh,

Islam have been helpful. Uh, I was able to put together a PowerPoint to share with the team to inform everyone on, uh, just the basics of Islam.

Oh, good. Excellent. Yeah. But my, my question is, um, about, about Mormonism, uh, just in some, uh, additional research and, uh, thoughts.

Uh, I was wondering just, uh, for clarification on the context of Deuteronomy 17 at 17, uh, the, it outlines the rules for Kings for Israel.

And I was just wondering if that, how, if that could be applied to me as a whole, uh, since it seems like it could be a simple, like a rebuttal just like, well, that doesn't apply to, uh, like to profits.

It was just the Kings at the time. Like how, how could, uh, would be a good way to address that? Well, well, um,

Mormons are conflicted today. Let's, let's just be honest. Um, when, uh, when

I first started studying Mormonism, Mormons would defend polygamy because they sort of felt, uh, safe that it would never come back.

So, so they can sort of, they can sort of defend it historically, um, and defend it theoretically, but they could do that without much fear that they'd ever be in a position where they'd ever have to start dealing with it again.

I think the modern Mormon church, just in passing, is terrified that, uh, polygamy will become legal again because then they've got, they simply don't have any reason to not engage in it.

I mean, um, Alito, I think it was, uh, said that, uh, the, uh, 2015

Obergefell decision kicked the door open for polygamy. And I think he's right.

It's just, it's just the right case needs to come along, uh, to allow that to happen. And I think,

I think the folks in Utah are losing a lot of sleep, uh, over that because they have to deal with their, there's all these polygamous cult groups in Southern Utah that they're constantly having to deal with.

And, and they just, they do not want to go there, uh, at all because they realized the mess that it would create.

And they're trying to look as much like other Christian denominations as possible. So, um, if, if, if they go back to the one guy, 10 gals thing, um, and believe me, there's lots of them up there.

We we've joked about the fact that, um, when we would go up to general conference, uh, a few years ago, uh, all the apologia gang, uh, we, we found the polygamy palace.

And so it was a, it was a B and B, but it was, it was one house, but you could ease.

There were three, there were three kitchens. Um, and they're all, it was, it was made for polygamous.

It was just, it was just obvious. And it's great for staying. If you've got a whole bunch of people in an

Airbnb. Um, so just right now, I know they're panicked about it from a

Christian perspective. Certainly Deuteronomy 17, 17, he shall not multiply wives for himself or else his heart will turn away.

Nor shall he greatly increased silver and gold for himself. Yeah. I mean, those are general statements, but the reality is that these

Kings were allowed wives, but it was never God's purpose. And the reason the simple text that demonstrates that is in Matthew chapter 19, from the beginning,

God created the male and female, a husband and wife, man shall leave his father and his mother.

And then the fact that the entire picture of the relationship of Christ to his bride, um, is that of a bride and not brides, uh, plural, um, and a husband.

And of course that's relevant to gender binaries and all the rest of that fun stuff too.

Uh, but it was just so plainly, uh, the intention of Christ that it's interesting that historically, um, you don't see the beginning of a development of a defense of polygamy until you really get the church out to Utah where they can actually really start practicing it.

Because it's something that Smith develops much later. Um, you know, just at, just read the story about when he finally showed

Emma, his first wife, section 132, the doctrine and covenants that she drove him out of the house of room.

It's like, okay, all right. That gives you an idea of what was, what was going on there.

Um, and so they, they had to develop their defenses and obviously they did it the same way that, um,

Muhammad did it basically. Um, you know, you go to those old Testament examples and just ignore the new test.

Now, Muhammad didn't know enough about the Bible to, to, uh, fill a thimble full of knowledge.

So, uh, that, that one's understandable, but the Utah church certainly, um, did develop a primarily old

Testament based, uh, apologetic, uh, eventually. And they were forced to, for a lot of different reasons.

One of the reasons was the, um, other groups, because there are multiple Mormon groups that go back to Joe Smith.

They didn't develop it. And so it was like, Hey, how come you guys are doing this? And these other people that trace themselves back to Joseph Smith, aren't doing it and stuff like that.

So historically there was a lot of stuff there, but I would, I would say it's, it's really the new

Testament teaching that, uh, completely, um, finishes it off as far as, uh, a biblical argument would be concerned.

Great. Thank you very much. Yeah. So, hey, if you're over there, are you going to be, uh, catch any of the stages of the

Tour de France? Uh, I don't think so. Uh, down in the

South in Toulouse. Okay. Uh, we will Paris for the very end, but I'm not sure if we'll have time for that.

Well, it's coming up and I'm a big cycling fan and, uh, uh, we're all pretty excited about it this year.

So even though they don't get to finish in Paris, so, uh, uh, because the Olympics. So anyways, let's hope everything goes safely.

Let's put it that way. All right. Thanks for your call. God bless. Bye -bye. All right.

So three good calls there. And, uh, now we're gonna go on to, uh,

Daniel L and prayer to the saints. Hi, Daniel. Hello.

Can you hear me? I sure can. Hey, Dr. White. Uh, I had a question in regards to, uh, dealing with some of the ecclesialist traditions, you know,

Roman Catholicism, uh, Eastern Orthodoxy, et cetera, um, practice of praying to the saints.

Their basic arguments, as best I can tell, seem two -pronged.

Firstly, we ask prayer from each other on here on earth very often.

Um, asking prayer to saints is apparently no different, even though I don't know about that, but we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll grant that for charity's sake.

Um, Revelation seems to indicate some sort of heavenly knowledge of, for the saints, of what it's going to like, like on earth.

Uh, for example, the passage about, um, uh, how long, oh

Lord, um, until you avenge our blood, and then they're given garments and so on and so forth.

Um, but secondly, it seems to pop up relatively early in church history. Some of the heroes of faith, classically, um, seem to have practiced it.

Um, sometimes they'll try to locate the practice in the Second Temple Periods. So I'm wondering how you would answer both of these arguments for the practice of praying to the saints.

Yeah, okay, thank you for the, uh, for the call there, Daniel. Um, we did a debate, um, somewhere,

I think, early in the 2000s, I forget exactly which year it was, uh, probably between 01 and 05, somewhere on earth, maybe earlier, uh, with Patrick Madrid on prayers to saints and angels.

Um, so we, we walked through all of those, and my recollection is that about 10 years later, um, maybe even a little longer, uh,

Patrick Madrid did a series of radio programs where he went back over that, uh, that debate.

And since he did that, we then did, uh, two or three dividing lines where we, um, because when you, when you go back over a debate, you can expand on all sorts of stuff that, that the other side doesn't have an opportunity to respond to during the, uh, debate itself.

And so we did two or three programs. I, uh, I'm sure Algo would know, uh, cause

I've, I've actually heard Algo make reference to those a number of times. So I would imagine that Algo would know immediately is, is he happened to be in, uh, he's on Twitter today.

He's traveling. Yeah. So he does do a lot of traveling. Um, normally he would be, uh, in, uh, in the

Twitter group and would probably just drop the, uh, the dates on us, uh, immediately, uh, to where we did the followup, but that would be three, four, five, that'd be like five or six hours of, uh, discussion on the issue.

The issue would involve looking at each of these texts and revelation of the, the saints who are asking how long are martyrs.

That doesn't mean that they are the objects of, uh, prayer. They are not given any, uh, intercessory, uh, capability or capacity, which is unfortunately what you see in Roman Catholicism primarily with Mary, but to a lesser extent, uh, to saints and even angels, um, have the ability to, um, mediate grace and, and things along those lines.

And, uh, you know, the primary issue really has to do with what the nature of prayer is that prayer is an act of worship.

Um, the distinctions that Rome has introduced between Latria, Dulia, Hyperdulia, uh, all those types of, of issues were also addressed in those debates, uh, and are addressed to in, in a written context in the

Roman Catholic controversy. Um, and Rich says, uh, if you search saints images now, is that in the transcript box or in the search bar?

I'm sorry. Right. But is that, is that the regular search thing or the transcripts, uh, tag regular?

So the regular search box at aomin .org will, will pull those up. And I would assume the transcripts, uh, would even give you more, uh, take you directly to, uh, the

YouTube videos and stuff like that. So you could, um, really delve into all that stuff much more deeply than we would have time to today.

So hopefully that'll be, and like I said, uh, the Roman Catholic controversy, uh, likewise, uh, has material on that as well.

Okay. Let's continue on and let's talk to Nelson. Hi Nelson.

Wait, can you hear me? I can hear you now. Okay. I'm sorry. I don't, uh, wait, is it tripping or?

No, you're good. You're good. Go ahead. Okay. Cause I don't see my thing moving. I'm sorry. But, um, I wanted to say thank you for your ministry and, um, thank you for the work that you did on the

INC. My partner was actually in that, um, in that cult and, um,

I was able to show her the, um, at one time I showed her the videos, but she wasn't having it.

Um, she did, she wouldn't listen. Um, and she had that exact mindset that you had discussed, like, um, she just, you know,

I would tell her something and it was just a no, but over time she came to see those things. And she now has began to embrace the

God of the Bible. Um, and I'm thankful for that because I didn't know when I met her five years ago, I was watching you at that time, but I didn't know that, you know, it would lead to that.

And, and that's kind of related to the question I have because I've been studying the sovereignty of God.

And, um, I started with a book that, um, you and a bunch of other people had recommended at like a

G3 conference. It was, um, the attributes of God by AW Pink. So, so I've been reading that.

And, um, one thing that I'm struggling with is I definitely believe in the sovereignty of God.

Um, one thing I struggle with is that we have a responsibility, you know, like, you know, like human responsibility to do certain things.

And for me, whenever I do the things that I don't want to do, I struggle with did not the reasoning why

I do that. But if I had to try to answer that, I would say something amongst the lines of, um, it's because in that moment,

I simply loved that more. I don't know if that would be except an acceptable term, but that's how

I feel in those moments. And for me, the struggle has been to, to, um, bring those two together where it's like,

I'm responsible. I definitely believe that I'll be held responsible or held accountable for my actions.

It's just, how do I bring those two together without letting my choices overwrite that?

Cause I don't believe we have free will. Um, but I do believe that there's actions that I take and that I make myself as a person.

Um, and that's been, that's the struggle for me. So, um, right.

Uh, and, and I think most folks can understand the origin of that struggle and where it comes from because we are time bound creatures and we think temporally.

And in this situation, we are embracing a divine revelation. That is that God is sovereign.

He is the creator. His decree forms the very fabric of time. Um, and we want to find some way of holding those two things together or even meshing those two things.

And we, we can't because we don't have, we don't live in the eternal realm.

We can't think when we think we think only in a tense expressions, past, present, future.

We can't even, we can't even go there. It's, it's beyond us. And so, uh, what we do is we look to scripture and we see those examples, uh, that are given to us in Genesis 50,

Isaiah 10, Acts four and elsewhere, where, um, men act and they act in accordance with their natures, their desires, and they're held accountable for such things.

And scripture says that what they did, God sovereignly decreed that they would do.

It wasn't that they were good, innocent people and God had a gun to their back saying, do bad things.

That's, that's the normal, uh, objection that provisionists and others try to try to throw out there is that, uh, well, you didn't have any choice.

I mean, you just had to do that. Um, the, the reality is every place where you see

God restraining evil, um, does not make sense within a non -sovereign paradigm.

Uh, if you, if you truly believe in the autonomy of the human being, then

God should never restrain evil. Um, and he should never, uh, prompt doing good.

But instead what we see in scripture is with Joseph's brothers, for example, they wanted to kill him.

God had a purpose for Joseph to go to Egypt. God had a purpose for Joseph to go to Egypt in a particular fashion.

God had a purpose for Joseph to experience, uh, extreme injustice, um, to be, uh, put in prison, uh, to, unjustly for an extended period of time before he is then elevated to the position he's elevated to and then encounters his brothers and by then has come to understand you intended this for evil and God intended it for good.

He uses the exact same term. So he saw in what his brothers did, the actions of God and God's sovereignty, but he did not excuse his brother's sin.

He did not, um, in any way think that they were just pawns.

They were responsible. Um, but he had endured that situation and he had endured, um, and learned about God's sovereignty in a way he never could have understood and never could have, uh, applied as the second most powerful man in Egypt.

Um, if he had simply been lectured about this and read it in a book or something like that.

And so we have these biblical examples where Herod Pontius Pilate, the

Jews and the Romans all with completely different motivations and completely different interests are involved in the crucifixion of Christ.

And yet it is said they did what your hand and your will predestined to occur. That's the biblical teaching.

And so the question is, will we subjugate our experience to divine revelation and scripture, or will we subjugate divine revelation and scripture to our personal experience?

And that's what you have in Arminianism, in provisionism.

You have the subjugation of the biblical text to human experience in time.

And, um, that's why they end up flattening out what God does or what

God can even do. And, um, so what you, when you say, you know, I, I, I, I do something and then

I'm struggling to be able to explain exactly why I did things the way I did things. And how does that relate to decree?

We don't know what the decree is. We have God's prescriptive will revealed in his law, and then we have his decreed of will, which the only way we can see that is in hindsight.

And even then you can't necessarily see it with perfection. We won't see that until, uh, until eternity itself.

And so, um, it is a lifelong application of submission to biblical categories that leads a person both to be able to do what

I just said to do, as well as to desire to do what I just said to do. Okay.

And that, that makes sense. Um, I, uh, it just slips my mind, but I had it, but basically

I'll, I'll, I can't, I can't remember it. It slipped my mind, but it happens to me every single day.

Um, um, I wanted it, I wanted to say like, um, oh, that's what

I wanted to say. One thing I have noticed is every time that I do sin or fall short, um, it's made me realize my complete and utter reliance on God.

Um, so that's something that's, that I am thankful for because, um, without that,

I, I don't have anything. And also I think, and I don't know if I'm wrong about this, but I've come to believe in if it's wrong, then of course

I change that. But whenever I do have thoughts that I shouldn't have, or it would that be a, uh, not a sign, but like, cause

I know the Bible says, you know, we can't trust our own hearts, but like when I have like thoughts or, you know, stuff like that, that's when

I know like, there's nothing good in me and I need to place my faith in Christ, or am

I looking at that the wrong way? Well, it would depend on specifically what you're referring to, but remember, we don't have access to the content of God's divine decree.

There are times when we can look at something and go, wow, uh, real obvious how

God providentially worked these things together to this particular end, but we have to realize that we have such a small amount of knowledge of what's happening in time that to try to come to those types of conclusions,

I don't see the Bible telling us to do that. We accept everything that God says about himself.

Um, but when it comes to my sin and my responsibility, we have

God's law and that's more than sufficient. We don't need to be guessing that, well, you know,

God put me in this situation and, and that means this is going to result in that. We, we, we can't go there, but that we're not told to go there.

We're given God's prescriptive will. And when our hearts are changed and we desire to live that prescriptive will, a changed heart does not give you the ability to now understand

God's decree. Uh, we accept the existence of that decree on the authority of scripture, uh, not on our being able to figure it out as it applies in our life.

Uh, so I think that's an important aspect. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Nelson. Thanks for your call today.

All right. Bye. God bless. Bye -bye. Um, boy, I have no idea what this last call is about.

Absolutely, positively none. And that scares me, but the timing's good because before we take this call, um, in one hour from right now,

I will be going live, uh, with Eli Ayala. Um, Eli doesn't know this, but, uh,

I learned most of what I know about presuppositionalism from him. Um, and no,

I'm serious. Uh, Eli has come out twice now for Apologia and done a whole series of recordings on, uh, presuppositional apologetics application.

I've, I've had Isaac Vanegas there at Apologia, uh, put them all together for me and listen.

I listened to him all while driving. Uh, he just had Jason Lyle on. I haven't had a chance to listen to that one yet.

Next week, it looks like Jason and I will be on with Eli. So we're going to need to do this thingy we're going to be doing tonight and getting set up for that.

Um, but an hour from now, exactly one hour from now, uh, I'll be on with Eli and we're going to be talking about dealing with the

LGBTQ movement from a presuppositional perspective. It's June.

Every website you open starts off with rainbows and things like that. So, um, is that even something that's relevant to presuppositionalism?

Yeah, it is. Um, I, my, my position is going to be, I think about the

LGBTQ movement presuppositionally. Um, and we really have to, so that's one hour from now.

So, um, look up revealed apologetics on YouTube. Uh, it's probably already there with the countdown thing going on.

And, uh, we'll be doing that, uh, about an hour from now. Uh, so let's, uh, let's dive into the danger zone with danger,

Dan. Hi, danger, Dan. Good evening, Dr. White. How are you doing? Doing good. Good.

So sorry about the title. I, I know I could have probably summed up a little bit better, but what I'm dealing with is there,

I'm, I'm reforming a church that was formerly more dispensational, more, um,

Arminian. And currently the former pastors of that, of our church have made a podcast and they've kind of attacked

Calvinism. They've, uh, attacked replacement theology, that sort of thing. And I can kind of deal with those arguments, but they're making an argument from church history in terms for dispensationalism that they're following more of the literal grammatical interpretation because they believe in, you know, they believe in a pre -mill, you know, thousand literal thousand year kingdom, literal

Jerusalem, literal temple. And they're following in the school of Antioch versus Alexandria because Augustine was part of the church, part of the school of Alexandria.

And that an issue without, with Augustine is that because he made the kingdom of God, that he started to allegorize eschatology and they've sort of flatten everything out and say, if you're going to allegorize and symbolize some things in eschatology, that it's going to lead to other issues when you're dealing with trying to interpret the

Bible. And I'm just trying to see where are they getting this in church history? Um, yeah, no, as soon as you started mentioning it, then

I figured you were going for the Antioch Alexandria thing, which is, uh, it's a real thing.

Um, but initially the, the emphasis was, was more upon how the two schools formulated their

Christological understandings. So, uh, when you get to Chalcedon after Augustine, um, when you get to Chalcedon, a lot of the tension and disagreements, um, that, that council is dealing with in trying to formulate a meaningful doctrine of Christ, hypostatic union concept of two natures or one nature.

Um, when you're, when you're dealing with that, you're dealing with perspectives from Antioch that are more literalistic and unwilling.

And the problem is once, once you're dealing with Christology, you're starting to, by the middle of the fifth century, you're, you're dealing with language that isn't biblical any longer.

It's, we're, we're trying to answer questions that the New Testament authors didn't.

And so if you try to be literal, you know, so for example, um, one, one, one illustration of this was what got

Nestorius into trouble was rejecting the Greek term

Theotokos, which means God bearer. Um, when it's being used of Mary, which becomes mother of God down the road.

But at the time, it was just simply an assertion that Jesus, once he was, came into existence in Mary's womb, was the

God man. He wasn't just a man that was then adopted by God or indwelt by God, but that the hypostatic union was from the time of his conception versus, and Nestorius didn't like that because Nestorius was taking more of a

Antiochian, Antioch, um, literalism.

And so he preferred Christotokos, mother of the Messiah of the Christ. The problem is that doesn't address what the actual question is.

Was Jesus truly the God man from the time of his conception onward? And the Alexandrian school, um, didn't have any problem utilizing language in that way that was not strictly biblical.

The Antioch folks did, but that actually pressed them toward um, some sub orthodox views in Christology over time.

And so there's a lot of discussion of Antioch and Alexandria. There are exceptions on both sides.

And by the time you get to Chalcedon, uh, politics have gotten deeply involved.

Um, Alexandria is very jealous of its political power.

Um, the more Antiochian school moving toward Constantinople, uh, all sorts of history gets involved with that.

So it's easy to grab hold of historical things like that, which are very messy.

You got lots of exceptions. They generally had one focus, um, and, and, and then apply them to all sorts of other stuff.

So they've, they've done the same thing in textual criticism. Uh, there's all sorts of, um,

King James only folks who will say that the, uh, manuscripts that come out of Antioch are accurate.

The manuscripts come out of Alexandria are not. They struggle to, to deal with the reality that for 40 years after the council of Nicaea, it's the

Bishop of Alexandria who is defending the deity of Christ against everybody else.

It's, it's Athanasius Condramundum, Athanasius against the world. And that, that, that Antioch was filled with Aryans with people who denied the deity of Christ and had a sub orthodox view of who

Christ was. So you can, um, you know, it's sort of like when people use the term

Gnostic today, and I can tell they've never read a single Gnostic document in their life.

Um, you can attach those terms and say, Hey, we're the ones that are being literal to the word of God.

And these people aren't when historically I can show you places where the Alexandrians were being much more, uh, conservative with the actual language of scripture and the folks in Antioch work, but it depends on what topic that you were addressing.

And so, um, in your instance, um, you know,

I, I'm not, I'm not going to rush to, uh, Augustine's, uh, defense in, on a lot of things.

Augustine was deeply influenced by Neoplatonic philosophy. Um, they didn't have anything to do with Alexander Antioch, to be honest with you.

Um, there were, there were people influenced by Platonic philosophy and Neoplatonic philosophy, um, in both

Antioch and, uh, and Alexandria for that matter. Um, but to, to try to turn it into, well, it really just has to do with your entire interpretive methodology.

The fact is when you get to eschatology, everybody is going to have to, um, bend their own rules with certain texts.

There is no eschatology that allows you to just go, here is a black and white rule book that I'm going to follow.

Um, it doesn't work that way. And I don't think it was ever intended to work that way. And I hate to, hate to even use the term eschatology in that way because sadly that, that word has been forced to cover way more than it should.

Um, resurrection, judgment, those are all eschatology subjects and no one ever asks, are you a what in eschatology when you're talking about that.

But it's always what is the millennium? When does the millennium take place? What's the church age coming of Christ?

Uh, that kind of stuff, uh, gets squished into, you know, sort of squishes everything else in eschatology out, which is a shame because I know a lot of folks that know more about the timing of raptures or the second coming or millenniums than they do about judgment or, um, the nature of punishment or anything like that.

That's backwards. It's, that's upside down. Uh, it, it really, really is. So, um, without seeing the specific application that's being made, um, my, my general response for having given you a lengthy background there, uh, would be, well, you know, if you're saying you're being literal and somebody else isn't being literal, let's get specific.

What do you, what are you specifically referring to? Uh, what's the genre of the literature we're looking at?

Are we looking at revelation? Do you have a consistent understanding of revelation? There's a lot of things that go into that, that unfortunately, uh, frequently gets skipped.

So I don't know if anything there was of any assistance to you or not. I think that was very helpful.

Thank you, Dr. White. And I'm a GBDS student there and I had the pleasure of attending your

Baptist history class. Well, I'm sorry that you had to go through that. Oh, no, it was, it was very informative and all.

Well, it may have, may have been informative, but, uh, as you know, I was, um, not really there.

That was, uh, that was rough. I like to be significantly more energetic and, uh, well, but, uh,

I was, I was fighting a lot of stuff there. So, uh, hopefully when I get a chance to do a reformation church history, uh, you'll get a chance to come to that one.

And I'll be very energetic for that one. Uh, I promise you that. So I appreciate it. Thank you, sir.

Thank you, sir. All right. God bless. All right. Bye -bye. All right. Good calls today. Um, always do get good calls.

And, uh, like I said, though, I'm going to tell you if you don't do this kind of stuff, um, that's far more, uh, energy intensive for me than to sit down and do a normal dividing line.

Uh, because the only thing I had on my screen was according to spiral software.

So I looked up Deuteronomy 1770. Other than that, you just gotta, you gotta run without notes.

And, um, that takes a whole lot more, um, more work. And, um,

I'm sure that, you know, you're sitting over there going, oh, I could have done all that. Uh, could have no, you said, no, he's doing his thing.

That's right. He's doing his, uh, zoom thing. There you go.

All right. Um, let's see. It's Thursday, isn't it? So, um, next week, uh, should be fairly straightforward.

Um, schedule wise, I only have one doctor's appointment next week. Yay. I really don't like going to, you know, many times

I've filled out that new patient information sheet. Oh my goodness. Um, uh, getting tired of that anyways.

I think there's, this could be more of that in the future, but that's what age is all about. Thanks for listening to the dividing line today.

Don't forget the, uh, the raffle for our, uh, layered cross our

Isaiah line ESV creeds and confessions, uh, on the front page at a omen .org,