April 1, 2004

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around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded
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Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll -free across the
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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. Good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line here on a, what is it,
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Thursday afternoon? Yeah, we will figure it out eventually. It confuses me too. I'm not really sure why, but anyway, we are back and someday we're going to design a way that I can control my own headset.
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That's what we're gonna do. That's the next big thing, AOMN, on the list is I get to control my own headset so that I can fix it each time so it's just right, because I can't hear myself really very much right now.
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It's just I'm off in another world someplace and that's a little bit better. Anyway, that's what we're gonna do.
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That's the next big thing. You can just put that on the list and then you can join in with the
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Hate James White Society. It seems to be a growing group these days. I was gonna start off by saying up in this corner we put fluffy little clouds.
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This is where they live in. Pretty little squirrels live in here. Remember Bob Ross? I remember Bob Ross. My wife liked to watch the
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Bob Ross painting things. She did some art stuff when we were first married and she was studying art in college and stuff and so we watched little
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Bob Ross. I was really sad when he died. I mean I look at that, the best I can do is stick figures.
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It really is. So I look at his paintings and I just go, dude, that's really good.
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I'd like to have an original Bob Ross. I bet they cost a lot of money now. Anyways, that's not the
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Bob Ross we're talking about. Some folks have been looking at the blog and that's sort of what
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I'm gonna be talking about. Taking your phone calls today at 877 -753 -3341.
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Just sort of wandering about today, dodging the various and sundry bullets heading my direction and there are a lot of them.
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As I mentioned on the blog, normally going to Utah is going into unfriendly territory. I think it's gonna be peaceful. I think it's gonna be a vacation.
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It's gonna be nice. I'm looking forward to it. But I've mentioned all of a sudden Bob Ross on the warpath.
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I met Bob Ross, I think, in 1995 at the
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Christian Bookseller Association Convention in Denver and stood around at the
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Pilgrims publication table, booth, whatever you call those things at CBA and he publishes
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Spurgeon stuff. Now I imagine that's not easy these days because Spurgeon is now available electronically in every which format possible.
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But he puts out real nicely bound Spurgeon volumes and if you've seen a pastor who's got the whole setup, it probably came from Bob Ross.
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I noticed after I put out The Potter's Freedom that some folks had mentioned that there was something about my view of regeneration he didn't like and to be perfectly honest,
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I just didn't pay much attention to it. I don't sit around looking for battles to fight.
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I really don't. I'm involved in apologetics, we do apologetics ministry, therefore we're gonna know these things.
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But man, if I wanted to get into fights, I could do nothing but sit around web boards all day long and just cross swords with every kind of internet nutcase on the planet if I wanted to and I do not.
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It's not enjoyable in any way, shape or form. So anyway,
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I just said, okay, so he doesn't like, he thinks I'm a hard shell Baptist or something, whatever.
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And I just ignored it. Well, now that the Dave Hunt book has come out, people start forwarding me all this stuff where he's saying that I agree with Hunt and I'm a
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Pelagian. And I'm like, what are you, and then
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I just found out that he wants to debate the issue. He put out these quotes from Spurgeon and Gill and Pink and I agreed with everything they said.
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Yep, that's what I believe, no problem. And I want to debate that. And so as people have been saying in the chat channel, it'll be a real great debate.
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He'll get up, say his thing, I'll get up and say, yep, agree with him, sit down, we'll go with it, great. What in the world is going on these days?
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I just, I do not, I cannot even begin to comprehend it. Aren't there more important things?
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I mean, let me give an example. If some of you think that I'm treating that far too lightly,
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I don't know what to say in a situation like that. I just don't find that to be a credible issue to even consider debating.
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And aren't there some more important things out there to be debating? For example,
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I found this very interesting. This was just a matter of days ago.
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There was the third annual Mormon theology conference was held up at Utah Valley State College in Orem, Utah.
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And the title was Open and Rational Theologies Among Evangelicals and Other Christians.
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I'm sorry, I'm sorry, back that one up. That was the title of Clark Pinnock's presentation in Utah.
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Now, if you're not up on the names, Clark Pinnock is a scholar.
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He was once Reformed. His decline into abject heresy is well documented.
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And he really now, he's not only an open theist, but an inclusivist, post -mortem evangelization, believes
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God has a physical body, obviously denies eternal punishment in the orthodox sense, all the rest of that stuff.
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He has just completely gone out into left field and is picking the daisies out there. And it was fascinating to see the people who were going to be a part of this discussion of this group up there in Utah.
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You had Clark Pinnock, open theist. Then you had
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Roger Keller, former Presbyterian, converted to Mormonism.
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I debated him up there in Salt Lake City. Dan Peterson, Brigham Young University, who said publicly on the air that he would debate me anytime, anyplace.
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And when we then contacted him to do so, he did not even respond. He had his wife call us back and said he didn't want to.
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John Sanders, of course, who I debated on open theism and inclusivism in November 2002,
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I believe that was, in Florida. Clark Pinnock, and then Dennis Potter, who
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I debated in Salt Lake City a year ago. And so, the only person on the panel that was going to be discussing at the end that I have not actually met, talked to, or debated was
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Clark Pinnock, interestingly enough. And so, as this started getting out, of course, obviously the thought that crosses everyone's mind is, wow, this is interesting.
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What's going to happen when you start this kind of dialogue between people who are, well, let's face it, the
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Evangelical Theological Society could not get rid of Pinnock and Sanders.
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And people like Norman Geisler had the guts to say, hasta la vista,
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I'm out of here. If you can't get rid of heretics, then there's no reason for me to be bouncing around here.
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And so, he did. And so, interestingly enough, Richard Abanas posted a quotation, a citation from a
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Mormon message board, seemingly from someone who attended. I would love to get the tapes of these things, see if we maybe can track them down while we're up there in the next couple of weeks, because I'd love to hear some of this stuff.
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And one of the quotations reads, Pinnock definitely was comfortable with the idea of a corporeal body.
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This is for God, of course. Seemed to think it was a given, considering the scriptures, actually, though expressed the feeling that many of his colleagues would not.
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Oh, really? Did have a problem with the idea of an anthropomorphic God, or rather a theomorphic man, but didn't seem to think it was anything that classed us out of the race.
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Remember, this is a Mormon writing this. He was accepting of our view of social Trinitarianism, having read
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Osler's book on it. Overall, very appreciative of the LDS views, and said they gave him a lot to consider, including how they affected his own views as far as the spectrum of belief.
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Pinnock placed us between open theism and processed theology, sometimes closer to one, sometimes closer to the other.
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Definitely saw us as Christians, I believe. Well, I would imagine Pinnock would have to, given the definition of the term.
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But here you have an excellent example of the degradation of meaningful apologetics because of the degradation of what calls itself
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Christian scholarship. That is, since these individuals are allowed to participate in such forums as ETS and teach at Christian colleges, even though, obviously, despite their very nuanced definitions, they really don't believe in inerrancy.
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They don't believe the scriptures are clear enough to give us any type of meaningful theology. Clark Pinnock is unorthodox on almost everything you can be unorthodox on.
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But since they're allowed to remain, and this is because, quote -unquote, the academy uses a worldly definition of truth, a worldly definition of what scholarship is, a worldly definition of how we are to do theology and how we're to do these things.
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Because of that, now you've got these individuals dialoguing with the Mormons, and all of a sudden the
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Mormons are now in the spectrum, and this is exactly what they want, by the way.
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This is exactly what they've been seeking for. There was some meeting, I don't know when, a number of years ago, when the
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Mormons decided, you know what, we're going mainstream and so we need to have mainstream scholars. We need to send our young people off to mainstream schools so we can get
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Mormon scholars who have degrees to someplace other than BYU, and we're going to mainstream. We're going to get in the middle of these things that we see the changes coming.
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Somebody saw it coming and they made the changes. And so that's exactly what they want. They want this kind of dialogue.
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And does this dialogue, does this kind of academic dialogue ever lead to a clarification of truth?
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Does it ever lead to a Mount Carmel and Elijah with the priests of Baal type call for repentance?
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Or does it lead only to greater confusion? Well, look at history and the answer to that one is pretty simple.
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Very, very easy. And so here we've got this kind of thing going on, and another individual, a
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Mormon, posted a quote. And this is from The Most Moved Mover, published by Baker in 2001,
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Clark Pinnock. So this is found in your local Christian bookstore. If God is with us in the world, if we are to take biblical metaphors seriously, is
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God in some way embodied? Critics will be quick to say that, although there are expressions of this idea in the Bible.
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They're not to be taken literally, but I do not believe the idea is as foreign to the Bible's view of God as we have assumed. Is God in some way embodied?
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Critics will be quick to say that, although there are... hey, I just repeated it twice. I do not feel obliged to assume that God is a purely spiritual being when his self -revelation does not suggest it.
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It is true that from a platonic standpoint, the idea of a physical God is absurd. But this is not a biblical standpoint, and how unreasonable is it anyway?
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The only persons we encounter are embodied persons, and if God is not embodied, it may prove difficult to understand how
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God is a person. That's from pages 33 through 35. And then another reference is made to the openness of God.
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A biblical challenge to the traditional understanding of God. Pinnock, Rice, Sanders, Hasker, Basinger. That, of course, is an
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IVP publication, 1994. Well, you know, what can we say?
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When that kind of stuff is in the pages of Christianity today, when that kind of stuff is being taught in seminaries and colleges, and these people are allowed to continue without being identified for what they are doing, and being what they are, they're in the midst of what is allegedly
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Christian education, then should we be at all surprised that the apologetic task of seeking to call
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Mormons to an understanding of who God is, not in some slow little, well, maybe if we can make them, maybe for a few generations they can be a little bit less polytheistic, and then for a few generations maybe they can just sort of like become tritheistic, and then for a few generations, you know, this kind of thing.
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And that's very, very, very common, by the way. Very, very common for that kind of perspective. That's how we're supposed to do evangelism.
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And you wonder why you look at the New Testament and that's not how the apostles did it.
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That's not how the apostle Paul encountered those who taught falsehood within the church.
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It just didn't work that way. And the amazing thing is, if you dare, if you dare to bring that up, then people will say, oh, you think you're the apostle
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Paul? You think you're somebody special? Well, you're just a schismatic and a hateful one at that.
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And how do I know that? Well, because, well, like, you know, Timothy Enlow said on his blog this week, that myself and Dr.
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Svensson, and I would assume he would also include in here, Pastor King, because he threw that name out there.
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Well, that we're radical, willful sectarians who hate unity and love division, despise correction and love our own egos, hate the world that God has made and love one of their own making.
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Instead, they wouldn't know the church, Catholic or proper or humble biblical exegesis. If it came up and bit them, so blinded are they by their zealotry and pride and sin.
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They will answer for it someday, and fearful will be the reckoning. Their condemnation is just. Ah, well, there you go.
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Well, like I said, we're starting the hate fan club next week on the website.
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You can sign up if you'd like to be a founding member or something like that. Well, anyway, 877 -753 -3341.
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You know, I was thinking, and we're going to take our first phone call here in a second, but I was thinking, looking at the blog implosion of Mr.
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Enlow, it's a sad thing to watch. I don't even recognize myself in his words anymore. There's quotes there
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I've never even seen before. And when you look at Angel's cartoons that we use on the website once in a while, what makes them funny is twofold.
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First of all, you can recognize who it is because Angel's so talented that it looks like a picture.
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And secondly, the situation they're in, the words they're uttering, the context, the dialogue that is included, demonstrates an error.
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But it has connection with something they've actually said, a position they've actually taken. It's accurate to the truth.
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That's what makes it funny because you're bringing out an inherent contradiction and you're visually presenting it.
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And that's really where it takes talent and it takes insight.
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And that's why not a lot of people do what Angel does. I don't even recognize myself in these caricatures that Mr.
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Enlow and his fans are throwing out anymore. I mean, anybody who knows me looks at that and goes, what is this guy talking about?
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I mean, just today, even Dave Armstrong, Dave Armstrong is not my friend. He's really not.
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We don't get along very well. But even he had to take Mr. Enlow's task and go, excuse me, hello, anybody there?
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This is getting really ridiculous. And Mr. Armstrong knows no one on the other side has done anything even close to what
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Mr. Enlow is doing. So it's a sad thing to watch, but it also illustrates a lot of things. And I think the reason that we even address those issues on the website is because here you have someone who once was considered a friend and a colleague, a bright young man off in the wilderness someplace saying just the most outlandish stuff, even to the point where Catholic apologists are having to call him to task for being disconnected from reality.
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And what caused that? What were the issues? That's where we can learn things.
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That's hopefully where everybody can pick those things up. 877 -753 -3341.
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Let's go ahead and start taking some of our phone calls as you're lining them up. Don't forget this weekend we're going to be up in Salt Lake City.
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So I mentioned that on the blog. Let's go ahead and go to the great state of Texas and talk with John.
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Hi, John. Hey, James. I appreciate you taking my call. I like that accent of yours.
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Are you from someplace other than Texas, like maybe Georgia or something like that? No, I'm from Texas. But you must be out in the real part of Texas, not just the
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Dallas type. Well, I'm originally from a small little cow town. Yeah, I could tell.
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I'm sorry. I'll stop doing the accents. Everybody always gets mad when I start doing that. My question is,
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I tend to Calvary Chapel. And I'll give you a little bit of background.
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I'm a recent Christian. I guess I've been studying the Bible about five years.
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I recently finally gave up my own presuppositions.
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And listening to you and listening to other Reformed teachers, R .C. Sproul and that sort of thing.
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I listened to a little bit of Dr. Barnhouse. I've come to a decidedly
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Reformed position. But I'm attending this
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Calvary Chapel. And I hear a lot about free will. And I have friends who came to faith through me bringing them to my church.
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And I wonder what you think about being at a
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Calvary Chapel. Because I hear a lot about free will.
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And yet we sing songs and we sing about being chosen by God.
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And you'll pray that God will soften men's hearts and open their minds.
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Our prayers are always significantly better theologically than our theology is.
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But first of all, you're not the only one in your situation. Because when I debated
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George Bryson on this subject back in 2002, there were numerous
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Calvary Chapel folks there. Of course, he is Calvary Chapel. And many of them, especially young men, came up to me.
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And see, the good thing about so many Calvary Chapel churches is you've got this, you're supposed to have, and it is openly said that you're to engage in this idea of verse -by -verse study of the
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Word of God. And that's why I started attending there. That's right. And so you do that though.
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And if you do it consistently, it causes you problems because it leads to certain passages.
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And no matter how hard you wiggle, those passages say certain things.
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And you have to deal with them. And so there are many folks who have found themselves in exactly the same situation that you are in.
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Because they've studied the Word and they've come to this conclusion. And there are different kinds of Calvary Chapels.
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There are some Calvary Chapels where I've been told you can find my books.
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And there are people there who would call themselves Reformed. But I've noticed in the publications, for example, in the
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Calvary Chapel magazine, I've seen a strengthening of an anti -Reformed perspective on the part of the non -denominational denomination.
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And a promotion of Dave Hunt's stuff and things like that. And so there are a lot of Calvary Chapels that have become very much opposed to Reformed theology.
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And there are a lot of folks who are looking at anyone like yourself basically as a danger.
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I mean, the ad that I saw in the Calvary Chapel magazine for Dave Hunt's book, in essence said, when you see it sneaking in, and so someone like yourself would be considered almost a, someone who is snuck in or is sneaking in or is, should just be honest enough to go elsewhere basically with your
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Calvinism. That's the case in a lot of Calvary Chapels. Now I don't know yours. And I don't know where the staff is there.
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But that's what I'm seeing on the official level. And so basically what you have to, you know,
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I, because of what I do and because of my need for consistency,
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I mean, if you're going to be an apologist, you need to be consistent in your theology. You can't point your fingers at somebody else and say you need to do
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X, Y, and Z if you're not doing it yourself. And so because of that, I was in an inconsistent
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Baptist church back in the 1980s. And sometimes on a Sunday morning, I would get a sermon that would just thrill my soul.
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But then two weeks later, I'd get a sermon that on a theological level was exactly opposite of what had been preached two weeks earlier.
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And I found myself sitting there going, doesn't anybody notice this? Doesn't anybody else see this inconsistency?
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And it became a real, a real problem for me because I, I had a hard time teaching in a
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Sunday school class, not knowing whether the people who were listening to me were going to walk into a service and either hear what
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I just said affirmed or contradicted, because it would happen both directions.
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And I couldn't, I eventually could not handle that. And that's one of the main reasons that I ended up at Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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So really the issue comes down to a matter of consistency and a matter of whether you have the freedom to speak openly concerning the issues of the gospel, concerning those places where the freedom of God is involved, the glory of God is involved.
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And that's really where it all ends up boiling down to, is do you have that freedom to do that?
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And if you don't, then, you know, I'm well aware of the fact that there's a cost in making a change.
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I do not, I've never told anybody, well, you need to leave a church, unless it was a church that was specifically rejecting the gospel of Christ.
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You know, if someone said, well, I'm at, you know, St. Mary's down the road or something like that, that's a different situation. And so you have to, you know, my suggestion to you would be, first and foremost, to talk to the leadership.
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And that may, however, precipitate things faster than you want them to be precipitated.
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Yeah, that may cause a problem. Yeah, but you see, you know, if you can't talk to the leadership, that in and of itself is a problem.
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Well, I mean, not that I couldn't talk to them. I definitely could. And I've spoken to them before, just not on that subject.
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No, but that's what I mean. I think there needs to be an ability to address this issue and to, you know, go to the
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Word of God and to do so with freedom. And, you know, that's just the first place you've got to go, is you've got to talk to the folks that are there.
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I think, you know, whenever anybody is contemplating the possibility of leaving a church, we've got to do it, quote -unquote, the right way.
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It's got to be done in a God -honoring fashion. It's got to be done without, it's got to be done with a tremendous amount of humility.
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I guess that's the most important thing you can bring to a situation like that, is to humbly ask, you know, what the church's position is, why is it, and if the position is, well, no, you can't hold that viewpoint and here's why, then you go from there to say, okay, can we look at the
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Scriptures? I'd like to know how you understand these things. Generally, one way or the other, either it's cut off very quickly, unfortunately, because there's not a willingness to do that type of thing, or sometimes, who knows, maybe the
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Lord can use that to get some conversations going. But you've got to approach it with the utmost of humility, and if there are any bridges left burning, you've got to make sure you don't have any matches in your hands.
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You know what I mean? I mean, if you end up someplace else, but you end up someplace else with a completely clear conscience, that you are transparent, open,
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God -honoring in everything, then that's the best way to do it. Most people just don't know how to leave a church, and they don't know how to do it right.
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And, you know, my theological background is, you know,
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I came up listening to Hank Hanegraaff and Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, and they were all so free.
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I mean, these are all my theological backgrounds. And in listening to Reformed people, and yet, all through that time,
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I've always had trouble with some of these verses that just didn't square. And I recently received your book,
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Potter's Freedom, and I'm just getting into it. But the one thing that really broke the camel's back was the article on the
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Alpha and Omega website from Simon Escovedo, whatever his name is, about the verses in,
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I believe it's 2 Peter, about the Master. And wow, that just really did it.
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That was my only sticking point. Well, I'll make sure to let Simon know that all of his efforts, and of course, he did the writing, but myself and Mike Porter and Warren Smith, we all kept having to heap opprobrium on Simon's head to get it finished, because he had it done long before we ended up posting it, but he was, you know, he served one of those perfectionists at times, and, you know, wanted to cross every
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T and dot every I, so he'll be very thankful for that. You know, and it was extremely long. And that caused me a problem.
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I thought, you know, if this is something that has to go this much into depth, then they're just going to be twisting it around.
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But once I got into it, and I realized where it was going, and then I really, you know, realized what he was talking about, about the false prophets among the people, and tied it into the
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New Testament church, and how, oh, you know, it just really opened my eyes to what
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Peter was saying. Well, that's great. Well, I'm always very thankful to see any of our materials being helpful to folks, and, of course, it's very encouraging to me to see someone who is concerned about what the
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Word of God says, and the desirous of being obedient to that Word. My advice to you, then, is to, and I say this with all sincerity, is to patiently pursue the topic of discussion.
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It's not something you can just simply, in essence, dismiss. You can't hide it under the rug, because it's eventually going to come out.
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Be honest, open, humble. Be willing to read whatever they want you to read, but also ask for give and take.
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Once you can, with a clear conscience, say, I have sought to the best of my abilities to honor
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God in this situation, and I am not acting on impulse.
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I'm not acting on any type of pride or arrogance. Then, once you end up where you end up, you can serve there with a clear conscience.
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That's always the best way to do it. Well, you know, the gospel pretty much dashes all that. Well, yes, it certainly does, but unfortunately, there is that problem of abiding sin, and we all struggle with it.
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Well, John, thank you very, very much for giving me a call, and I'm glad the website was useful to you.
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Thank you. 877 -753 -3341. We have two more folks online, and we're going to take our break.
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Be back with your phone calls, 877 -753 -3341. A godly man is such a rarity today.
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So many stars, strong and true. Under the guise of tolerance, modern culture grants alternative lifestyle status to homosexuality.
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Even more disturbing, some within the church attempt to revise and distort Christian teaching on this behavior.
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In their book, The Same -Sex Controversy, James White and Jeff Neal write for all who want to better understand the
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Bible's teaching on the subject, explaining and defending the foundational Bible passages that deal with homosexuality, including
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Genesis, Leviticus, and Romans. Expanding on these scriptures, they refute the revisionist arguments, including the claim that Christians today need not adhere to the law.
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In a straightforward and loving manner, they appeal to those caught up in a homosexual lifestyle to repent and to return to God's plan for His people.
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The Same -Sex Controversy, defending and clarifying the Bible's message about homosexuality. Get your copy in the bookstore at almen .org.
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Millions of petitioners from around the world are imploring Pope John Paul II to recognize the Virgin Mary as co -redeemer with Christ, elevating the topic of Roman Catholic views of Mary to national headlines and widespread discussion.
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In his book, Mary, Another Redeemer, James White sidesteps hostile rhetoric and cites directly from Roman Catholic sources to explore this volatile topic.
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He traces how Mary of the Bible, esteemed mother of the Lord, obedient servant and chosen vessel of God, has become the immaculately conceived, bodily assumed queen of heaven, viewed as co -mediator with Christ and now recognized as co -redeemer by many in the
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Roman Catholic Church. Mary, Another Redeemer, is fresh insight into the woman the
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Bible calls blessed among women and an invitation to single -minded devotion to God's truth.
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You can order your copy of James White's book, Mary, Another Redeemer, at almen .org.
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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 9 .30 a .m. and the worship service is at 10 .45. Evening services are at 6 .30
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p .m. on Sunday and the Wednesday night prayer meeting is at 7 .00. 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 are 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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I love singing along to that. Talk to Steve this week. In fact, I should mention hit www .audience1
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.org I've got a little brief article there but he's got an article he loves to sort of wander off into the controversial stuff you might say and he's got one there that you just need to go to audience1 .org
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and take a look at it and you'll enjoy it. Well, let's continue on with our phone calls and we lost
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Larry. Larry was in Kentucky and Larry wanted to talk about Hebrews 6 and 10 which is fine, but we have let me see here we have
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Paul, I believe doing fantastic.
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Spring has sprung in the Slozarks and it's very nice on my patio today. That's 82 degrees here which ain't half bad actually.
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No, not at all. For us, I mean, especially since it was like 98 a couple days ago. Anyway, what's up, sir?
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Well, you know, I was listening to the program and I really enjoyed hearing that last call.
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It was so encouraging to me to hear someone who being confronted with those issues and has a sincere heart desire to be obedient to it.
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I just wanted to share a very similar circumstance of my own experience with being in a church and so many of us have had this situation as you were describing earlier where the preaching is inconsistent.
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It's great one day. It's deplorable the next. On the same subject.
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That was the part that just drove me. I was in a
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Bible college here in Springfield and taking a
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Christology course and when I was doing my research, some of it I went to B .B.
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Warfield's volume and was working through that and that's one of the main things that led me to reform perspective on the atonement.
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And when confronting my or trying to get some honest questions answered by my professor about the matter,
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I was branded a troublemaker. That's not the first time that's happened.
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No, it's not. And there were other brothers who went through it as well. Anyway, a member of a
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Baptist church in the city and went to my pastor about it and he pretty much took the same position and I was confronted just faced with the issue of well,
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I just don't know that I can continue here and there was a Reformed Baptist church in the city at the time.
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I didn't either. I should probably tell my story too. I didn't either. What was interesting,
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I didn't, I certainly could have gone over there but I met a pastor of a
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Southern Baptist church in the city as well who had a strong commitment to the doctrines of grace. He had been pastor in a church here for less than a year and after talking with him
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I decided to join the church and so that made two Reformed people which can cause problems, believe me.
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I am well aware of how that works. Yes. But you know, that was ten years ago and thankfully by God's grace alone the church is thoroughly
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Reformed today and it's just been a tremendous thing to remain.
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There were times that it was frustrating and we thought about just moving on to a Reformed church but God did a wonderful work in that church and caused people to really desire to know the truth and be obedient to it.
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This pastor did not come out and just ran the doctrines of grace down people's throats per se in a systematical format.
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He just preached through Ephesians and Romans and John's Gospel and people began to wake up and go, wow, this is true.
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It's amazing to be able to be part of a congregation where the vast majority of the people are on the same page.
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Oh, believe me, that I know. That I know. Certainly we're not without warts by any means but I just want to encourage the man as a member of the
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Calvary Chapel to continue to hang in there and be faithful in whatever he decides to do and trust the
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Lord to lead him. And I appreciate your ministry and everything you've done. Thank you.
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In fact, that's going to be a tremendously enjoyable time and I always love to get to meet folks who listen to The Dividing Line.
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They're an odd lot, however. I listen to my computer, yeah.
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Yes. It's a strange thing but hey, on the cruise we wear nice, fancy clothes to the formal nights and we actually clean up pretty well.
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Yeah, we're not bad for a bunch of geeks. No, no. All right, man, thanks for listening.
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All right, take care. Yeah, you know, I fully understand that. I'm going to kill this thing. I hope there isn't anybody from the
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ASPCA around but there's a little fly type thing in here and I think it just lost its life.
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Anyway, I think they're a part of the curse anyways, don't you? I'm going to do some theology on that.
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Anyway, I didn't know what a Reformed Baptist was.
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And by the way, lines are open at 877 -753 -3341. I hope Larry didn't, like, drive off the road or something on a cell phone or something if you'd like to call back.
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Then again, how would he be listening when I think about while you're driving? That's the one group of people we don't end up, well,
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I guess we have had a few drivers call. They must have been calling just for the fun of it. They weren't actually listening because I had never heard of Reformed Baptists.
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I was at a Southern Baptist church and I remember there was a
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Berean Christian bookstore right next to the college where I was a student.
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And back at the Bible counter where you would actually buy Bibles back in those days, that's where you'd also get the imprinting and stuff like that.
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There was a tape rack where you could print and I remember just looking over at this tape rack and I saw a tape on election from a guy named
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Don Fry. I pulled it out and I looked at it and it said, Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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I had never heard of Reformed Baptist Church. The Berean that I was at didn't have that little handbook of denominations.
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So I went to another Christian and it's now moved out to 32nd
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Street and Bell. Anyway, I went in there and they had the book and so I looked up Reformed Baptist the first time
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I'd ever even heard of what a Reformed Baptist was. And so I didn't know.
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And I remember the first night I attended, it's funny, the pastor's wife at our church has an incredible memory.
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I mean, it's just not fair. She can remember anyone names and all sorts of things like that.
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And they're indestructible little boogers. I'm having a,
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I'm trying to, right on the air. I am attempting to, what am
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I doing? I'm taking Dominion. That's what I'm doing. The thing probably weighs about one thousandth of a gram and I'm trying to take
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Dominion. It'll probably bite me before the thing's all over. Anyways, I remember attending that night and her, man,
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I'll tell you, she remembers to this day what I was wearing and where I sat.
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I remember where I sat too. But I was just, I'm blown away the first time
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I attended. I mean, the respectfulness, the,
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I know piety is a bad word, but in our day anyways, but the fact that a few minutes before the service started, there was a playing of some music which was meant to indicate, okay, it's time to become serious and so on and so forth.
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And the preaching, and wow, it was just a totally new experience for me. I had no idea that there were such churches like that.
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That just wasn't a part of my experience. It just really wasn't. So anyway, did
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I just ruin something on my screen? Well, I sure hope I didn't. There's something on my screen. I don't know why it's there. Oh, well, hey,
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Jason. Oh, good. I needed this to die.
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I really did. I needed to have the opportunity to get away a little bit. There's someone who wants to take me to London so I'm going to have a caller and it's our good friend
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Jason from the United Kingdom. Hello, Jason. Oh, good evening. Oh, good evening, yes.
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Well, what time is it there again now? Oh, actually, no, it's actually quarter to one. Quarter to one in the morning.
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So it's not evening. And I hear a little bit of an echo so are you keeping anyone up? No. I hope not.
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The bonnet's closed, eh? I'm sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. I really do need to get serious here just a second.
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Let me get rid of Dick Van Dyke. Leave, thank you. All right, I got rid of Dick Van Dyke. He had taken over the microphone every once in a while, especially when you call.
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At least that's what people tell me. Do you know what they're talking about when you talk about Dick Van Dyke? Not really.
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Have you ever seen Mary Poppins, the American film Mary Poppins? Yes, I have. Yes, well, he played the chimney sweep.
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Really terrible. Oh, right, yeah. Yeah, I remember now.
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They say I sound like him and I'm really offended by that but they don't seem to care. But you have a serious question so I need to adopt my serious persona here so I will do my best even though I tell you if I go to London and I come back
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I'm going to do an entire dividing line in Londonese.
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Oh, right. That'll be interesting. But see, look at what you just said.
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Interesting. You put the accent on all the British syllables instead of the American ones.
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I love it, it's great. Where do you keep your car? Well, I don't have a garage.
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See, yours is a garage. I'm no longer at the language than we've had but we've just done more with it, that's all.
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All right, you have a question about something serious, however sad. Yeah. One of the main reasons why
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I became quite reformed in my theology was listening to one of your radio programs on open theism because you were talking about how many supposedly free will decisions have been made and it sort of dawned on me at that moment when you said that that the historic
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Arminian position which I held at that time had the same problem in that if any of the people who were responsible for the crucifixion of Christ had chosen differently then the crucifixion might not have actually taken place.
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Right. And that really led me to the conclusion that in order to ensure that all of his plans were accomplished
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God would need to ordain everything that happens. Would you agree with that?
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Yes. Obviously not only what happens but the means by which those things are to happen and all the things that go with it would be a part of his creative decree not in the sense of where it's sort of an ongoing situation.
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God's looking at all these billions and billions and billions of possibilities and he micromanages everything down to that just to protect man's free will but I really do believe that the reality of God's interaction with us is a part of his decree.
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In other words I think sometimes Reformed folks tend to give in to the assertion that well you really don't believe that God can you turn
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God into a distant cold thing because if there is a decree then this is just a puppet show and there's no reality.
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My assertion there is that if God is truly the God who created all things if he is so great and so powerful he's upholding all things by the word of his power and we look at the tremendous power of God and what that kind of power means for his interaction on this tiny little planet to be real he would have to be purposing to interact with us from all eternity and my experience of his interaction with me has to be a part of that.
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We need to be very careful I think that sometimes we lose the balance there and the
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Bible shows that God can turn
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God into an exalted man I don't know if you were listening at the beginning of the program but I was reading a quote from Clark Pinnock and basically the open theists define
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God based upon our experience of each other. I don't want a God who is reflective of my experience with other men because to be honest outside of just a couple of them
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I can't trust a lot of them I don't know if that's true
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I was actually accused of arrogance actually a few days ago by a friend of mine who
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I actually gave the argument to he's a very good friend of mine who I've learned quite a lot from but he said that well what you're saying then here is that you must know everything there is to know about God and his decree and for you to be able to say that God must ordain all things to accomplish all of his plans well why would that I don't understand why that would follow in light of the fact that that's like saying if you say the doctrine of the
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Trinity is true then that must mean that you are claiming exhaustive knowledge of every aspect of the relationship of the
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Father, Son, and Spirit in time past that's not the case that kind of reasoning so I don't understand
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I'm just trying to understand where he's coming from well I think it's because the argument
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I gave was actually an argument based on reason really
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I suppose what I should have done perhaps was to focus more upon the scriptures well you could demonstrate the consistency between the two
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I mean the way you can always keep that balance is if you gave him an argument here in Psalm 135 you can start going through Nebuchadnezzar came to understand this in Daniel chapter 4 verses 34 and 35 you can always go either direction with that but I just don't understand his particular argumentation because it would seem that it leads to the destruction of all possible knowledge about God at all because if God has revealed in essence it's saying if God reveals anything truly then he must reveal exhaustively or we cannot have a true knowledge of anything and that obviously does not follow and it would also mean
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God cannot communicate with his creatures who are finite because the knowledge of God would be infinite so most of the time when people object like that one of two reasons one is contradictory to what
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I have been raised to understand and I don't really want to engage it biblically or B you just need to understand that you are
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British and therefore most of the time when
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I talk to British people they sound like they're talking down to me anyway so is this an
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American guy you were talking to? No this is a British guy Ring!
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He sounds very middle class British Could I understand anything you say?
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Actually I think that he probably would he can argue very well so it would be quite an interesting call if he stayed up until one o 'clock in the morning
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Well I suppose it's a little bit easier for you all to call on Tuesday then because it's a number of hours earlier but hey encourage him to do so be glad to have a conversation with him and maybe
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I could understand his arguments a little bit better but it just seems to me that he's a he's a
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KJV he's a KJV only so you'd probably have to use a King James Oh well I could probably work that out does he know what
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I've written on that subject? He's aware of your position and I did send him an article articles, you know,
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Jacob Prash's ministry, they would disagree with you on a lot of things but they would agree with you on that issue.
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Interesting, interesting. Well, hey, if the phone rings and I hear someone whose accent even
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I cannot understand, then I'll know what happened. Would you be able to call in and maybe interpret for me?
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Yeah, sure. But it's actually quite a nice accent, actually.
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It's probably clearer than mine, I think. Oh, okay. All right. I'm a bit sort of working class,
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I suppose, really. So he tells me. So he tells you. Well, I know there's a lot of different kinds of accents over there, which to me is odd.
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I mean, you just have so many more people crammed into so much less space than we are accustomed to here in the great wide open spaces of Arizona.
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If you ever get a chance to come out here, you'll find it to be very different. Well, anyway, Jason, thanks for listening.
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It's almost 1 a .m. in the morning now, so you can open the door now and go to bed. Okay. Thanks for calling.
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All right. God bless, Jason. Bye -bye. All right. Look, it's been a long week, okay?
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It's going to be a long weekend, and therefore, I can do my English accent if I want to.
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I'm not going to take any guff from anybody, okay? That's all there is to it. Just going to do it. That's what I want to do.
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Friday night, tomorrow night, Lord willing, we will be at the University of Utah. We will be debating, do
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Christians build temples? And I think, obviously, since that's within the context of Mormonism, we will be addressing the issue of the priesthood as well.
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Not as the subject of the debate, but it's going to come up. There's not, obviously, any reason to have a temple without priesthoods.
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And then the next night, Lord willing, I hope this comes off, we're going to have a debate on the subject of gay marriage.
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We've had a commitment, anyways, from an individual to defend that perspective, and I hope that he will. Because I think that it's important to address that subject.
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There could be few subjects where the Christian worldview, which some folks say I don't know anything about, but I'm going to do my best.
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In fact, I don't see those folks that are always saying that kind of stuff out there doing this kind of thing.
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They keep saying, I just want to live in my own little clique for some reason. I'm not sure why I'm going to be out there addressing this social issue from a biblical perspective.
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Oh, well, a little inconsistency there. It is an important issue, and obviously, from my perspective,
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I'm going to be presenting a biblical defense of biblical marriage and God's right to define the relationships between men and women based upon His sovereign decree and purpose that He's working out in this world.
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And I think it's vitally important. And the reason I really hope it comes off is so that people will get an opportunity to listen and understand how to apply the
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Christian worldview and especially the emphasis that it contains, must contain, on the creatorship of God.
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That God is the creator of all things. That's why I want that debate to take place. So pray for us.
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We'll be back, Lord willing, Sunday afternoon. And back here with you on The Dividing Line, 11 a .m.
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Tuesday morning. Whatever time that is, wherever you are. Off in, surely, good
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England? Or in Australia? Or Hawaii? Or wherever?
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It'll be Pacific time next week, too. Oh, great. No one's going to be listening, and no one's going to know.
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Oh, well. Hey, we'll see you then, whenever it is. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.
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Bye. Bye. Bye.
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Bye. Bye. Bye. Join us again next Tuesday evening at 5 p .m. for The Dividing Line.