Bill Mounce and John 3:16, Slamming TMU/TMS, More on “Color Blind,” then Open Phones with Good Calls

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August 22, 2018

Looked at Bill Mounce’s article on “whoever” in John 3:16 (a second article, more recent than one I’ve addressed before), then moved on to the sad spectacle of Christians gleefully piling on TMS/TMU, including one graduate going after JM for daring to address the “social justice” controversy. Finished up a brief response regarding the real meaning of “color-blind theology,” what that does and more importantly does not mean, and then went to the phones for some great calls on topics such as CRT and a number of calls on Jehovah’s Witnesses. Visit the store at https://doctrineandlife.co/

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00:31: Greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line, prayer request right off the top of the program. Just a reminder for those of you who know,
00:39: Brother Mike Gadosh will be having some fairly complicated open -heart surgery tomorrow morning, 830 in the morning,
00:47: Eastern Time, Solid Ground Christian Books. Many of you have benefited from Mike's ministry over the years there.
00:55: He's normally at G3, he's been at the last two years of debates that we've done there at G3.
01:02: And so, your prayers for Mike Gadosh and his family, and of course the doctor,
01:08: Dr. Martin is his name, tomorrow morning, well, it's supposed to be about six hours, so it's not just the morning.
01:16: So, prayers appreciated for Michael and all those involved therein.
01:23: And we have known Michael many, many years, and lo and behold, we're all getting old.
01:31: Pretty much same rate of speed, but that is definitely happening.
01:37: I'm not sure if any of you have seen Tony Miano's, he wrote it, I think a million tracks, our same guys published this.
01:47: But he has a tract called What Comes After Pride. And of course, it's on a rainbow background, so your mind automatically makes a connection, even though the text of the tract does not ever mention homosexuality or anything like that.
02:03: Especially when you're, well, almost anywhere anymore, but even more so in the
02:12: UK or Europe. If you want to get any of them passed out before being arrested, you have to have at least some kind of excuse,
02:26: I guess. Some being careful. And anyway, despite that, a counselor slams extremist
02:40: Christian flyers that speak of God's love. A local counselor, let's see,
02:48: David Burton Sampson, a Basildon counselor, said the content was appalling and excludes people.
02:58: Leftism rots your brain. Leftism rots your brain. It allows you to exclude people while complaining that they exclude people.
03:09: The leftist worldview, secular worldview, is the petri dish of hypocrisy.
03:19: It has to. There's no way around it, because a secular worldview has you in the middle, so you're going to end up being hypocritical, because none of us will ever judge ourselves the way we judge others.
03:34: So, it is a Christian tract, and it is described as appalling and, of course, resulted in police report and investigation and all the rest of that kind of stuff.
03:52: And good job, Tony. We already know that in the
03:59: UK, just having the Bible being randomly read in your restaurant can be enough to get you into a tremendous amount of trouble, so what can we say about that?
04:08: That's just sort of how it works these days. Let me see which order
04:15: I want to go here. Yeah, let's jump into the text for a little while. I do have a number of things I want to get to. I'm going to try to be disciplined and quick, maybe get to phones,
04:24: I don't know. We'll see what happens, but I do want to get into the text at least a little bit here.
04:33: In Channel, someone had mentioned this article. I had responded to an article by Bill Mounts earlier this year regarding John 3 .16,
04:47: and I guess he's put another one out. It's not all that different, and it actually doesn't contradict my position, but as you read it, it sounds like it does.
04:56: Bill Mounts, great guy, I don't know him personally, I use his grammar, doesn't make him infallible, you can be a great
05:05: Greek grammarian and still miss the forest for the trees. But I don't think that he did here, but I think
05:14: I can see how people... It wasn't clear, okay? It's just not a clear statement. This new article says, does
05:22: John 3 .16 say whoever? Now obviously, if you've not heard the discussion of this subject in the past, let me just bring you up to speed very, very quickly.
05:40: John 3 .16 says, In order that, so what is the...
06:00: When you have a Hinnah clause, it is explaining the reason and purpose for the action that came right beforehand in this context, and that is to give, edukon.
06:19: He gave his unique son for a purpose. In order that,
06:25: Hinnah, pas ha pistumon, everyone believing ais auton, in him.
06:34: The him takes us back to the tan huion tan menagene, the unique son.
06:41: Everyone believing in him may apolitae, might not perish in the subjunctive, but might have eternal life.
06:51: So he gave him so that this won't happen, but this will.
06:57: So there's a purpose. There's a reason for the giving. Now, you have probably many times heard someone preaching or teaching on John 3 .16
07:12: emphasizing the word whoever, in order that whoever believes in him, and the idea behind the emphasis upon the term whoever is that there is a general capacity of all human beings at all times in all places to be able to exercise saving faith.
07:40: Now, first of all, that is not what John 3 is about. That is asking the text to address an issue that if it is addressed at all in the
07:50: Gospel of John, it would be addressed in passages such as John 6, John 8, 10, 17.
07:59: It's not what's being discussed here. It's not what's being discussed here. But that having been said, many of us have emphasized that while you can say whoever believes in him, that the literal rendering of the text, and ironically, the literal rendering that Dr.
08:19: Mounce himself gives at the end of this article,
08:25: God loved the world, so he gave his only Son, that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
08:32: No disagreement. It has been my emphasis for years, really emphasized it probably in a way that most people first were introduced to it in my open letter to Dave Hunt, coming up on 20 years now, two decades ago.
08:54: And so the point is that the phrase pas ha pisteun does not contain within it some kind of assertion of universal capacity on the part of every human being to believe because there is a limitation inherent in pas histeun, the one believing, and in fact, there's even more of a limitation with ais auton, in him.
09:32: So it's anyone exercising faith in Christ.
09:40: It's not saying anyone has that capacity. What it's saying is anyone who does that will not perish but have everlasting life.
09:50: Well, a lot of people, I don't know why Dr. Mounce addressed it this way, but anyway, he says, correct, the indefinite relative pronoun hostess does not occur in John 3 .16,
10:07: but language is not so monolithic there is only one way to say something. In fact, whenever a commentary argues if the author had meant to say one thing, he would have said it this way, you should be suspicious.
10:16: That's a naive approach to language and that he's exactly right. I hear that all the time and I just chuckle when
10:25: I, well, maybe I don't chuckle, sometimes I get upset. When I hear somebody say that, I'm really left going, how much reading in the text do you really do?
10:36: Because that's just simply a ridiculous statement. However, we do have an indefinite construction in John 3 .16
10:44: with the use of pas and the articular imperfective particle pas. He has it wrong here.
10:52: It's pas. He has pas hepisteun. It's pas hapisteun. It's just a typo. Used to indicate a generic general utterance.
11:02: Just do a search for that construction. You can see it is universal in intent. Universal of what?
11:10: Universal of everyone believing. There's nothing here about everyone having the capacity to do this.
11:19: For example, and then this is interesting because the examples that are given illustrate exactly the point that I'm making.
11:30: For example, but I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart,
11:37: Matthew 5 .28, and it is a parallel construction. But I say to you, hati pas hablepon gunaika prosta epithumesai autein, so everyone looking upon a woman for the purpose of lusting after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
12:04: So pas hablepon, everyone looking. That's not everyone just opening their eyes, is it?
12:14: Everyone looking at the sunset, everyone looking at a car, everyone reading a book. No. There is an object, everyone looking at a woman, and then there is further delineation prosta epithumesai, for the purpose of lusting after her.
12:32: So obviously the pas hablepon is not saying that every person has the ability to do this.
12:41: It's not even addressing the subject. It's simply saying in a generic fashion that there is this category of activity which is looking on a woman to lust after her, and everyone doing this, this follows.
12:58: So take that over into John, everyone believing in him, these are the results.
13:11: So in both situations you have a limited group, not a universal group. Does this include women?
13:20: Does this include little kids? Does this include the blind? No, I suppose it could include eunuchs, but the point is there is a specific action with a specific context, and everyone doing this, this is the result.
13:36: Same thing in John 3. And then he says, well, he says, isn't
13:44: Jesus saying this is a generic statement true of all, true of whom? All who look with the intent of lusting.
13:51: Of course it is. Exactly. Exactly. So right there, there's a limitation.
13:58: It's not universal. Not every man does that. Not every man, when he looks at a woman, does so for the purpose of lusting after her, right?
14:06: So it's a limited group. So it is an indefinite with a specific limitation, just as John 3.
14:18: Interesting, verse 28 is followed by verse 32, which uses another explicitly indefinite contraction, 532.
14:42: So there's actually two there. But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery.
14:58: Hassan is explicitly indefinite in general. That's true. But it is only of a specific group.
15:08: A single man cannot divorce his wife and make her commit adultery because he's not married. So there is a limitation.
15:15: There is a specificity that is right there in the text.
15:23: So he goes on to say, contextually, John is asserting a relatively unusual notion that God not only loves those who follow him,
15:31: John's normal usage, but he actually loves the entire world, hence requiring an indefinite construction.
15:39: At this point, you'll notice that no argumentation is provided. And that's where I didn't understand where he was going, because the
15:49: Hinnah Clause is describing the giving of the Son, not the love of the Father.
15:57: The love of the Father is the foundation of all of this, just as it is in Ephesians 1 and so on and so forth.
16:03: But the hosta tan huyan tan managane edokin, so that he gave his only begotten
16:12: Son in order that — it's in light of Didymi here, it's in light of Edokin — in order that everyone believing in him might not perish but have eternal life.
16:29: So you can have all the grammar you want, but you still have to follow the thought.
16:37: To limit the meaning of the statement to a subgroup of people, those among you who believe, is to read a theology not supported by the
16:48: Greek, and I am reformed. Now, I don't even know what this is supposed to mean. Those among you who believe.
16:55: There's nothing about those among you who believe. It is specifically saying that everyone who believes in him.
17:08: So I would argue that the use of the articular participle in the present is emphasizing true faith in John, in contrast to his use of the aorist and a couple of other places to indicate a false faith.
17:26: But there isn't anything about this subgroup of people, those among you who believe.
17:36: Among you? I don't even know where that's coming from. That's certainly not anything I've ever said. I've never heard anybody else say it, so I don't get it.
17:44: In the larger context — and again, he keeps saying, and I am reformed — but in the larger context, it agrees with statements like 1
17:52: Timothy 2 -4 that says God wishes all people, pontos anthropos, to be saved and to come into a knowledge of the truth.
17:59: Well, again, pontos anthropos in 1 Timothy chapter 2 is in regards to the intercessory work of Christ, and the anthropos that is defined there in the first three verses are kinds of men, not individual, particular universalism.
18:19: Again, a contextual issue at that point, and so we would have to ask the good doctor if he likewise believes that Christ intercedes for every single individual person, including those who have been under the
18:32: Father's wrath for quite some time. True, each, every person who believes is a subset of the whole, the world.
18:46: Okay, that's true. I mean, Kosmon is there, even though the specific statement here is in regards to why the
18:55: Son was given. And the gift of eternal life is only for that subset. Well, there you go.
19:02: If the gift of eternal life is only for that subset, then the believing is only a reference to that subset.
19:07: But to somehow limit God's love to a subset of people runs counter to the
19:14: Greek. No one has said that. That's an irrelevancy. Now, I would argue that there is redemptive love over against a generic love, but that's not what it's talking about.
19:28: So, God's love for Tan Kosmon results in this amazing way of salvation through the giving of the unique Son.
19:41: But I don't see any connection that is being somehow raised in Dr.
19:47: Mounce's mind, let alone runs counter to the
19:53: Greek, the meaning of pos, the grammar, the immediate context, and larger context. That's a whole lot of stuff, but I don't know who's said any of that.
20:01: It seems a bit of a strong man there. If you believe in election, as I do, then you understand pos hapistio, and it was referring to the elect.
20:10: Well, yeah, they're the only ones who are going to exercise pistio, that's true. But let's not dismiss the clear meaning of the text and suggest that God does not, in some way, love the world.
20:20: Who does? Who does? I honestly don't know who does. I mean, maybe hypers do.
20:27: I suppose some hypers do. But notice he says, in some way, love the world.
20:32: I make a distinction between God's, that which expresses itself as common grace over against the specific redemptive love for his people.
20:46: But even he says, in some way, love the world. Can you translate the verse without whoever?
20:52: Sure, as long as you choose words that are not limiting. God loved the world, so he gave his only son, that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
21:00: That's how I translate it. So I'm not, that was confusing.
21:07: That was confusing, especially the first Timothy 2 -4 citation. So he ends up saying the same thing that Reformed people are saying, but in the process sounds like he's saying what non -Reformed people are saying.
21:20: It is confusing. No two ways about it. Okay. Now, I want to try to be brief and focused and really handle this in an appropriate fashion.
21:48: I want to finish up my response to the article I was reviewing in the last program. I will try to avoid preaching as I did in the last program.
21:56: Laid a lot of basic foundational stuff out, mainly ignored by most people out there.
22:03: But that's okay. You just put it out there and leave the rest to the Lord. But I do want to just mention in passing the article that was, that appeared initially on a fellow by the name of Terrence Jones's website called,
22:24: The Truths of Dr. MacArthur's Social Justice Series Won't Change. And it was then picked up, and I do not know why, reposted by SBC Voices.
22:36: So maybe there's just people at SBC Voices that don't like Dr. MacArthur. Let me tell you something, folks.
22:43: Those of you who have been rejoicing in the news concerning Master's University and Master's Seminary, and they're being put on probation by WASC, one of the accrediting agencies,
23:06: I don't get you. I don't understand you. I really don't.
23:12: Maybe you just really want to see destruction of wonderful, great things.
23:19: Or maybe you are just so narrow in your thinking that if anyone's even slightly different than you, then you want to see them all destroyed until it's just you left.
23:28: I don't know. But I've been pretty disgusted, to be perfectly honest with you, at the glee that certain people have had about this news.
23:39: Of course, I have a unique perspective, having taught in both accredited and non -accredited situations, studied in accredited and non -accredited situations.
23:52: I was teaching for a seminary, a
23:57: Southern Baptist seminary, when the local campus that I was teaching for went through the accrediting process.
24:04: So I got to see it up close and personal. Folks, it's ugly. For a long, long time, accreditation has next to nothing to do with scholarship.
24:15: It has everything to do with, well, as we're going to find out here sooner rather than later, it has everything to do with controlling education.
24:30: If you haven't learned anything from what happened up in Canada with Trinity Law School up there, that's what's coming for us.
24:41: And if you didn't hear, the school up there, the high court in Canada, ruled that basically because this
24:54: Christian school had a moral covenant that excluded homosexuals, then you could preclude their graduates from practicing law in Canada.
25:03: Canada is just as leftist as it gets. Evidently, the cold weather freezes the brain cells or something, but just as leftist as they come, and religious freedom just doesn't have a ghost chance there.
25:17: And so the school has now dropped the covenant, has made it no longer mandatory.
25:22: Only way they can survive. Sad thing. Sad reality, but that's what's taking place.
25:30: That's already happening here, and it's coming here. You need to understand that.
25:36: And for literally 20 years now, I have been warning about the reality that if a
25:47: Christian institution, a Christian school, accepts
25:55: Caesar's money, Caesar is going to try to control that school and what it can and cannot teach.
26:03: And it's now happening. When you hear the language that was used in the announcement about the suspension, it shouldn't take you a whole lot to figure out what's really going on.
26:22: What's normally behind intimidation and bullying? What does that normally indicate?
26:35: I thought of the illustration recently. Can you imagine if I was teaching for a school and they dug into what
26:43: I have taught and they found my sermon series on God's law? You know what that would be used to do.
26:52: This would be bullying, this would be intimidation, and all you need is one student to file a complaint, one homosexual student, one minority student, one woman student, to use terms like bullying, intimidation, whatever else it might be.
27:14: They've already said, well, some of the problems we have is there's just far too close a relationship between Grace Church and masters.
27:23: You know, a lot of people go there, find that to be a wonderful thing. But no, no, no, no, no, no.
27:28: We need to have that academic freedom there. You can't have an institution that has deep and abiding convictions that would be represented by a local church.
27:40: I mean, come on. And you just don't have enough female faculty. You got to get the women in there. You got to get the women teaching.
27:46: And there's just too much uniformity amongst the people teaching here as far as what they actually believe.
27:53: And yeah, it's just sort of like, and yet there are Christians going, oh, this is wonderful.
27:59: And it's just like, oh, man. So those of you who are just all, oh, this is wonderful,
28:06: I don't get you. And I'm not sure where you're going to end up going before long.
28:14: Anyway, Terrence Jones is a graduate of masters, and he's doing a series in, and again,
28:22: Dr. MacArthur has only done a couple articles so far.
28:29: Has not gotten into the primary issues yet. And already, the kind of pushback will be very much indicative of,
28:43: I mean, you could write the rebuttals right now. And they won't necessarily have a whole lot to do with the biblical argumentation.
28:56: It'll just be, how dare you actually address these types of things?
29:02: You're just an old white man, and you don't have the right to do this type of thing. But I read through the article, and I'm getting a crick in the neck again.
29:13: And I read through the article, and I was very concerned, because Terrence Jones is a black man.
29:28: And he, by the way, makes the allegation that the blog series may be, quote, no matter how they try to change the subject from the real elephant of the room, probation and potential loss of accreditation by WASC for a lack of integrity mixed with a culture of fear and intimidation.
29:56: I can just guarantee you, you are wrong about that, sir. You're completely, utterly, 1000 % wrong.
30:04: And it is sad to me that a graduate of masters would take that kind of shot.
30:11: It's cheap. And I hope you will withdraw it and say, I was wrong. Obviously, I am prejudging.
30:19: I'm being prejudiced. I'm being unfair. But I can tell you, that's just absurd.
30:29: I have had discussions on this subject long before this accreditation stuff came up.
30:35: And it's just totally untrue. But anyway, what concerned me in reading this article was the statements from Mr.
30:57: Jones that we didn't read enough, a diverse enough curriculum.
31:08: And I'm like, you know, when
31:14: I went to Fuller, I loved my church history class.
31:19: He talks about being angry and in tears because he reads these books and there's nothing about black people in them.
31:27: And when I took church history, all I was concerned about was learning about what Christians believed.
31:33: I wasn't looking for people who looked like me, never even crossed my mind. I knew vast majority didn't look like me, dress like me, wouldn't have sung the same songs that I sing.
31:45: None of that. I knew all of that. Never crossed my mind. I never shed a tear that there was not more about my tribe.
31:58: I was just stunned. You've already got to have to have already embraced a very strong narrative that you should find this kind of stuff.
32:10: How about just learning about the most influential people that have impacted what has ended up happening in church history?
32:18: I mean, I knew Athanasius didn't look like me. Didn't bother me. Didn't even cross my mind. Those Italians, they don't look like me.
32:26: They talk with their hands all day, you know, I mean, that's not why I say church history. That's not the point.
32:34: How could I be so distracted from what the real point is? Because I've been told that there needs to be a different point and the different point needs to be affirming me and my narrative and telling my story.
32:48: I want to know the story about other people. I'm not worried about me. I'm not worried about my ancestors, not worried about my skin color.
32:54: I want to know how Christ has built his church. And you know what? I knew that any book
33:00: I was reading is going to have not only its biases, but it's also going to have to select. And if it's written for a primarily
33:08: English speaking audience, then, you know, I mean, one of the sets
33:13: I had to read was Lauterette. Lauterette had a lot about the Eastern church. It would have been a lot about a lot of people with very different practices and history than me.
33:22: But I read all of that and I learned from that. And that's been helpful when
33:28: I've gone to Ukraine and interacted with the orthodoxy there and stuff like that.
33:35: But it just, I mean, there were things that really concerned me when I was at Fuller, but it was because of theology, not because I was looking for the color of people's skin in the books
33:46: I was reading. I mean, I just don't even begin to understand that.
33:53: And I don't know how to interact with someone who's looking for that. Other than to say, you've missed the point.
34:02: You've completely missed the point. I want a curriculum that's actually going to prepare me to do what
34:08: God's called me to do. That's a foundational thing. If you think seminary is meant to get you to the ultimate point, it's foundational, guys.
34:16: There's so much more. So you get the foundations down, you get the big ideas down.
34:23: You don't worry about people's skin color. You get your foundations. And then when God calls you such and such a place, well, you know, you might get called to plant churches in Utah.
34:35: Well, good luck with that. That's going to be pretty challenging, but you're going to have to then add the foundation, that which is going to help you to do what you need to do in that location.
34:45: You might end up in Saudi Arabia, where none of this racial stuff is going to have any meaning at all.
34:53: No one's going to care what hyphenations you use in your name. Nobody cares.
34:59: And neither should you. And neither should you. So if you're in seminary in a rage, there's a problem right at the start.
35:13: And you might want to look at yourself, not at everybody else. You know, I mean, like I said, I went to Fuller.
35:19: I can tell you, if I was looking to be a victim, if I wanted to play the victim card, oh, goodness,
35:26: I could do it all day long. But I didn't. That gets you nowhere.
35:33: It puts you in a constant cycle of victimology. You never go forward.
35:39: You're always spinning in circles. I don't want to be stuck in a circle. I want to go forward.
35:46: So there's going to be more on this. I just thought it was just, to borrow from Peter Pan, bad form.
35:53: Bad, bad form, big time on all of that. Now, I don't think
36:02: I brought that back up, did I? No, let me look in. Where'd that thing go?
36:12: Show full history. I thought
36:17: I had that up. Tuesday. There it is.
36:25: Let's hope it's still there anyways. I want to, and I'm going to have to be briefer than I wanted.
36:34: We were looking at the article by Brad Mason. I've already given you the background on that.
36:40: We looked at the biblical passages, Colossians 3, Galatians 3, and we read, sort of finished off with this paragraph, while there are many things wrong with employing these passages to get to colorblindness.
36:51: And by the way, some guy on Twitter has been accusing me. You're moving the goalposts. You're redefining stuff. I haven't redefined it yet.
36:57: I haven't redefined a thing. Language is one of the biggest problems here. And I will say without question, there's one side that thinks that language should be defined consistently and historically.
37:07: And the other side is the one that thinks language is Plato to be changed with all the time. If you're a critical race theorist, if you're into the social justice stuff, you're the ones playing with definitions, not us.
37:18: You're the ones that are the new kids on the block here. So don't go telling me I'm changing stuff.
37:24: I was clear. I was straightforward when I, what, 20,
37:32: I forget when it was, 2010, whatever it was, when I first started talking about some of this stuff, then
37:37: I had Votie Balcom on. When I've talked about my own personal experience, which has been mocked by people, a number of the people that are still leaders in this group,
37:46: I get to define how I'm using the term colorblind.
37:52: And it has nothing to do with thinking that once you become a Christian, everyone just simply becomes the same color.
38:00: It has nothing to do with abandoning that which is true, honest, just, lovely, of a good report that comes from God's grace in one's ethnicity.
38:12: It is not pretending that you cease to be who you are, but it is saying that because there is only one righteousness that is imputed to believers, and that is the active and passive obedience of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, then that means that there is a radical and new unity between believers in the church that destroys any concept of ethnic division within the body of Christ based upon history of your people versus my people because now we are one people, and those other connections that would bring division in must be severed and destroyed in our thinking.
38:59: That is what I'm talking about, and I'll defend that against anybody. And if you've got a brain in your head and you know anything about the
39:06: New Testament, you will not accept a challenge to debate that because you will get crushed. Because that is plain biblical teaching.
39:16: That's plain biblical teaching. That's what
39:22: I'm talking about. There is one body because there is one Savior, one righteousness, and your ethnicity on the one hand can be a beautiful gift of God, so everything that is from grace is certainly still there.
39:44: But as soon as you start getting together with the rest of your ethnic group in opposition to the rest of the body and begin to divide the body, saying, well, your people did this and your people did that, that is where you have a clear misunderstanding of the nature of the unity of the body in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
40:15: There's the problem. There's the issue. And so we saw that Mason has a different definition, and so we're going to reject that definition.
40:24: We're going to expose that definition, say this is not a proper definition. So he says, but there is simply no warrant for assuming all embodied distinctions are therefore to be eschewed among the members of the body.
40:37: Not eschewed unless they divide. So what happened to your great -great -grandpappy or what happened between your great -great -grandpappy and my great -great -grandpappy does not matter.
40:49: I do assert that must be rejected in light of the unity that exists between us because there's one body and one
40:59: Savior. Definitely. No two ways about it. So, we could just stop right there and say, see, wrong definition, therefore wrong argumentation.
41:13: But he then expanded upon that and talked about no difference via the
41:19: Book of Romans. And so he quotes Romans 1 .16, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel. It is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the
41:25: Jew first and also to the Greek. And we did read his statement that he recognizes the
41:31: Jew and Greek distinction does not map directly to white, black or white and all the rest of the colors.
41:42: South American, Asian, Russian, whatever it might be. I mean, there's just so many ethnicities. We can cram in here if you want to start finding ways of dividing the body.
41:53: But we also emphasize the Jewish and Greek distinction is one that has deep religious context to it in regards to the covenants and Jewish thought and all the rest of that stuff.
42:09: Romans 2, Jew and Gentile, Romans 3, we've already charged it all, both
42:16: Jews and Greeks are under sin. He goes 4, 9, 10, et cetera, et cetera.
42:22: So finally, Paul declares there is no distinction when it comes to salvation among the Lord Jesus Christ, Romans 10, verses 12 to 13.
42:29: For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the
42:36: Lord will be saved. Amen. Herein is the unity spoken of in Colossians and Galatians.
42:43: Mainly, except that Mason fails to recognize that Paul specifically introduces ethnic distinction when he uses
42:57: Barbaros and Scythian in Colossians 3. It's not just Jew -Greek, but it goes beyond that.
43:05: Both are alike guilty before God and will be judged impartially. Both will be justified by the same means, faith in Christ.
43:11: Absolutely agreement. If we would just stick with that and then live in light of it, it would make a huge difference.
43:17: Further, believers are effectually called by God from both Jews and Gentiles, having alike the same Lord Jesus Christ, as Paul says in 1
43:23: Corinthians 12, verses 12 through 13. This truly is the basis for all
43:28: Christian unity, including all racial and ethnic unity within the church. Exactly.
43:35: Exactly. That is why, if you accept this, if you see the ramifications of this, then you will not allow people to then withdraw back into a position that allows them to begin to define relationships within the body based upon something in the past connected to their ethnicity.
44:09: That's the problem. That's the application issue. There is no distinction to be made with reference to guilt, redemption, or unity in Christ by the
44:20: Spirit. Exactly. There's neither barbarian, Scythian, none of that. But here's where the problem is.
44:29: But the supposed colorblind reading of these passages is simply not available, for Paul nevertheless continues to make important distinctions between Jew and Gentile Christians without thereby diminishing their unity in Christ.
44:43: Again, no one has said that you start pretending that everyone is all the same color or that no one has a
44:51: Jewish background or a Gentile background or anything like that. You recognize those realities, but those realities must be viewed through the lens of this new radical thing called the single body.
45:05: And look, just look at Twitter. Just look at Twitter today.
45:11: Look at Anthony Bradley. Evangelicals never had the gospel. Look at what's going on.
45:18: Who is defining the relationship between Christians based upon ethnicity today?
45:29: The very distinctions that are done away with in regards to our unity in Christ.
45:38: That's where the issue is. That's where the issue is. So, obviously, the primary thing here is once you misdefine what is being said, once you strawman it, then it's easy to make it look like what you're doing is giving a biblical response when you actually haven't addressed the issue at all.
46:05: And it's one thing for someone to say, oh, I agree. You know, up to that point,
46:11: I agree with what you're saying. Unity, that's a wonderful way of describing that unity, but it's not enough.
46:21: And I think what's happened with a lot of these guys is they have read and been deeply influenced by teachers that have promoted critical race theory, critical theory, oppression paradigms, and they are more influenced by the embracing of that than they are influenced by the biblical categories of the radical unity that is to exist in Christ.
46:54: A friend of mine has, over the past couple of days, jumped in and assisted me.
47:04: I don't know if any of you saw, yesterday I had about an hour and a half with a couple of Romanists, and we're talking
47:13: Romanists here. I mean, this is a very good description of these guys. I mean, we're talking the radical, yeah, the
47:20: Pope Francis may be weird, but we're not going to worry about that type of guys. The guys who wouldn't touch biblical exegesis with a 10 -foot pole because we're not allowed to, they'll then apply it to somebody else.
47:31: Just super inconsistent because they try to be consistent but can't be consistent in following Rome.
47:39: But in the midst of all that, someone started posting, 1689
47:46: London Baptist. And did you see that? You know who that is.
47:52: The same guy I told you to get a hold of today. Yeah, yeah.
47:59: That's our friend in London. That's another reason I'd like to, if we end up making a swing by there, then maybe we can do something like we did last time.
48:12: Hey, you know, have Oyster Card, we'll travel. They're just not that far away.
48:18: I mean, depending on where I stay. Well, okay, from Heathrow it is, but you know, the tube's the tube.
48:23: I can get where I need to go. So we'll have to work that out. But my brother's jumped in on this.
48:31: Why is that? Because my, A, by his own testimony, I had something to do with his conversion.
48:38: And B, he is a black man. But his background is not
48:44: American, quote unquote, African American. He comes from another part of the world.
48:51: And it's just fascinating to see the difference in perspective. And of course, over there, it's a much more multicultural context.
48:59: And just a lot of the baggage isn't there. And we end up saying the same stuff, coming from very, very different ethnic backgrounds, because we have the same source, the
49:11: Christian scriptures, and allowing them to define things rather than all the rest of this stuff. So anyway,
49:18: I thought about saying a whole lot more about that, but I have covered it so much now that I'm, and let me say one other thing, you're going to get tired.
49:30: Because I already am. You're going to get tired of the battle.
49:39: Because there are some people who get up in the morning, and the first thing they think about is this kind of battle.
49:54: I've said to some of my brothers who are involved in this battle and are trying to hold the line and do so graciously, but in an important fashion.
50:03: And more on that's going to be coming out soon. I said to him, you know, the rest of us, we have lives to live.
50:12: I spent hours yesterday. I've been inserting the graphics, the images of P45 into a cordon so that they're easily accessible to me to check readings and stuff like that.
50:28: And I mentioned last time that I actually found some mix -ups online, because, you know, you've got a small fragment of a papyrus, and it's marked that it contains this, but then you start looking at it, and you start looking at the fragments of sentences in it, and lo and behold, that's not found in that text.
50:49: And you find it's actually been misidentified and stuff like that. And so anyways, I spent hours doing that kind of stuff.
50:56: And so I have that. I've got my daughter, my son, my grandkids.
51:03: My wife and I have been married for over 36 years. We've got a lot of stuff going on in life.
51:11: And these people who are on this 24 -7 crusade, this is how they view the whole world.
51:19: They've got an advantage over us, because we have a life to live that has so much more to it than pursuing a particular complaint all the time.
51:30: I feel sorry for people like that. It cannot be a very happy experience. They have an advantage.
51:38: And sometimes you just get tired. It's just like, I've been over this. And for me, when someone just wants to misrepresent you and misrepresent you, and they will not honestly interact with what you're saying, that's my problem with Brad Mason.
51:51: He put out a list of my problems with James White. It's like I said, it's just horrific. It is,
51:57: I want to twist anything I possibly can to find some way of attacking this man, because I can't deal with what he's actually saying.
52:03: So I'll just twist everything. I mean, that's the mindset. And it gets tiring dealing with that kind of stuff.
52:14: You block one and three others pop up in their place repeating the same stuff. You have to recognize that that's how most denominations have ended up collapsing.
52:32: It's the relentless pressure, and people just get tired. And it really depends on just how much you love the truth and how much you're willing to do for it.
52:44: Really, really, really, really does. So anyways, 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number if you would like to.
52:58: We'll open up the phones and do something until about 3 .30.
53:06: So I'll open up the phones for a little over half an hour. If you would like to call in and rescue the entire audience from my getting into a discussion of specifics concerning P45 and the orthography of P45, which is very unique and interesting.
53:32: But if you'd like to help rescue people from the discussion of how in P45, it is fascinating.
53:45: I'm teaching a Greek class right now. Like I said, once we get into 1 John, maybe after the first two chapters, we may open it up and let others who've had
53:54: Greek in the past to join us and do just an online reading thing, which might be a lot of fun.
54:01: And then go on from there. I think I'll invest the time to go on from there to another book so maybe we can do some textual critical stuff while we're reading along those lines.
54:12: That'd be sort of fun. But anyway, while teaching that class, just in this last lesson, we were talking about roots and stems and the difference between a tense stem and a verbal root and how to differentiate, for example, between an epsilon contract and a future form.
54:34: And sometimes you can't tell, but then sometimes you got one of the dead giveaways, the circumflex accent over the contracted syllable.
54:46: One of the students asked, well, were there circumflex accents in the original New Testament?
54:51: No, there weren't. But it is interesting, neither were there epsilon or iota subscripts.
54:59: So in P45, the iota is written out. So where there normally would be like an omega with an iota subscript in our modern text, it is spelled omega, full size, fully written, formed iota next to it, or an epsilon iota in other contexts.
55:25: Anyways, eta iota, which ends up when you're trying to read it, you're not used to seeing it that way.
55:31: And it messes with the brain. It really, really does mess with the brain when you see that because it throws you off and you're figuring out what the word actually is or where you are, stuff like that.
55:42: So is that working? Yeah, pretty much. All right. So we have callers on the line.
55:52: So let's get started and talk with Kirk. Hi, Kirk.
55:59: Hello, Dr. O 'Brien. How are you? Doing well. What do you think of the future of the
56:05: Gospel Coalition? Do you think the critical race theory and such is going to blow over?
56:11: Do you think this is going to be a continuing problem? Well, I am not a prophet nor a son of a prophet.
56:21: I try to have a positive outlook despite looking at the future and realizing things are ugly.
56:31: So I would like to think that some kind of course correction could be offered.
56:38: But at the same time, as I look at what is going on, for example, at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, as I see what's starting to happen at some of the
56:52: Reformed and Presbyterian seminaries, I've read enough church history to recognize this.
57:00: I've read enough church history to see the trajectory and to know that in general, the trajectory is go left, go left, go left until it gets to a certain point where the people in it are going, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
57:15: And then eventually it crosses a line and they say, we're out of here. And they go back right and start the new denomination, organization, school, whatever.
57:27: And it almost never goes the other direction. I mean, there's a few examples where a school swung back for at least a period of time.
57:37: But the tendency is always to the left, always to the left, always to the left.
57:43: And so it's one thing with churches, denominations, schools, organizations, nonprofit organizations.
57:52: Let me tell you something. Alpha Omega goes left, bar the door, nail it shut, bury it, put the headstone up, let it be gone.
58:03: It ain't going to happen while I'm around. It ain't going to happen while Rich is around. One of us will shoot the other one before that happens.
58:11: So there you go. Thank you, Dr. White. I had approximately the same concern.
58:17: I really enjoyed the Gospel Coalition when it was about the gospel. But they've really taken a hard left turn.
58:24: That does seem to be what's happening. Now, obviously, there are people still associated with it. They're just as concerned about you, but they don't exactly know what to do about it, because so many of the leadership have bought into the fundamental correctness of critical race theory.
58:40: And look, once you buy critical race theory, then critical theory as a whole, which has impact in the egalitarian, complementarian argumentation, it has impact in sexuality, the revoice conference.
59:01: Unfortunately, it cannot be separated out. And so because some of the leaders have been influenced in the one area, they are showing signs of compromise in other areas as well.
59:14: And it's not what we needed, but it's what's happening. And we're called to be faithful in the midst of all of it.
59:22: You bet. Thank you, Dr. White. Thanks, Kirk. All right. God bless. 877 -753 -3321.
59:29: Now, this one's interesting. Hmm. Okay, let's talk with Bryson. Hi, Bryson.
59:36: Hey, what's going on? I know that you're seeing it like Mormons and Martin Luther. What's going on with that?
59:41: Oh, believe me, I've had Mormons use Martin Luther many times. So yeah, I'm just wondering which of the subjects it might be.
59:50: Yeah, so I got a track that I ran into some Mormons at school. And the track says,
59:56: Some inspired people, such as Martin Luther and John Calvin, recognized that practices and doctrines had been changed or lost.
01:00:03: They tried to reform the churches to which they belonged. Without priesthood authority, however, Christ's gospel could not be returned to its original form.
01:00:10: A restoration was needed, end quote. And I want to ask if you've ever had any Mormons tell you that Martin Luther and John Calvin were inspired.
01:00:17: I don't know if that's like a new thing that Mormons have, like, come up with, or if they've always believed that they were inspired.
01:00:24: Well, be careful that you define inspired in the way that they would.
01:00:31: When we think of inspiration, we think of a true work of the Holy Spirit of God, revealing divine truth, the inspiration of the
01:00:39: Bible, things like that. Mormonism has a much wider, squishier definition of inspired.
01:00:49: And so they can look back upon people and say, well, you know, the
01:00:55: Lord was involved in, well, I mean, they view the Constitution as inspired in a sense, because you can get that out of the
01:01:05: Book of Mormon. But it's not inspired as you and I understand the term inspired.
01:01:12: And so, yes, I have had Mormons say, yeah, you know, God used Luther and Calvin, but they could only go so far because...
01:01:23: And then that opens up the very, very, very useful topic of priesthood.
01:01:29: I'm not sure if you've seen our priesthood tract, but we have a tract on the priesthood that I think is available in PDF format.
01:01:41: Is the priesthood tract in PDF format? He's talking to somebody on the phone.
01:01:47: Is the priesthood tract available in PDF format? No. But next week, it's going in the newsletter.
01:02:00: So the priesthood tract, you know, the one that Don did the graphic on with the Korah, Dathom, and Abiram.
01:02:07: Do you remember that? What was that called? Do you? Because I can see the front cover of it.
01:02:16: What is your authority? Yeah, we did. Okay, so if you...
01:02:22: Bryson, if you make sure you're signed up for the online newsletter thing, then we had one tract called,
01:02:30: What is Your Authority? And then we had another tract that neither Rich nor I in our elderly state can't remember the title to.
01:02:41: I can see the cover because our friend Don Falkner did the... drew the cover with Korah, Dathom, and Abiram.
01:02:50: And they're... Do you know who Korah, Dathom, and Abiram are? I do not. Okay, it's a biblical story about three guys.
01:02:59: Okay, it's called A Test for the Aaronic Priest. Priesthood, I thought. Priest. Okay, A Test for the
01:03:04: Aaronic Priest is what it's called. And Korah, Dathom, and Abiram were three men who rebelled against Moses and wanted to have the authority of the priesthood, and the ground opened up and swallowed them.
01:03:14: So it was a picture of these three guys hanging in midair, sort of a Wile E. Coyote look, as the ground opens up to swallow them for their rebellion, for wanting the
01:03:26: Aaronic Priesthood, but not being of the house lineage of Aaron. And so that was one of the tracts that we took up to Salt Lake City and passed out at the priesthood meeting.
01:03:35: They have a priesthood meeting on Saturdays during the general conference, and everybody is wearing a white shirt and dark pants.
01:03:45: Well, at least now. Who knows what's going to happen in the future with Mormonism and transsexuality and everything else. But at least back then, you knew it was going to be a bunch of young guys, missionaries and pre -missionaries and stuff like that.
01:03:58: And we just got through boxes of those things to hand out as they're waiting outside to go into the meeting.
01:04:04: So it was great. So that does open a really neat area, the priesthood area.
01:04:09: Mormons in general are extremely weak. And in fact, that's one of the things I've wanted to get to. There's been people who have been passing around something where they say
01:04:18: I'm all wrong about Opera of Aton. I want to do a study on that and demonstrate that, no, I'm not.
01:04:24: There's something called context when it comes to the meaning of words. But the priesthood issue is a very, very rich field that you can use in talking to Mormons.
01:04:37: And so I guess we're getting a copy. Yeah, yeah, this is bright yellow.
01:04:44: They weren't bright yellow. I thought they were tan when we first did them. No, they were always this bright yellow.
01:04:52: Okay. All right. Well, here's a test for the
01:04:57: Aaronic priest right there. And you can see Korra, Dathom and Abiram and their eyes are big and they're looking down and the ground is opened up.
01:05:04: And oops, yeah, it's the Wiley Coyote. I'm not subject to the laws of gravity for a few seconds type thing.
01:05:12: But there is that. And I guess it's queued up to go into the newsletter eventually.
01:05:18: Yeah. So that one will be in the newsletter eventually, too, because I'm not sure that we even make those available. But priesthood is a good subject.
01:05:24: You can read about it in my book, Letters to a Mormon Elder. Very good area of approach.
01:05:31: Okay. Thank you very much. Probably more than you wanted, but there you go. Thanks. All right. 877 -753 -3341.
01:05:46: And Dylan. Hi, Dylan. Hey, Dr. White. Hello. I had a quick question about 1
01:05:53: Corinthians 13, verse 10, when it says, but when what is perfect comes, how does that correlate with the continuation or ceasing of the spiritual gift?
01:06:05: Well, that's an interesting and rather lengthy discussion.
01:06:13: Obviously, there are those who believe that the perfect that comes is verse 10, but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away, that they make the connection to the apostolic period and then the completion of the canon.
01:06:32: I understand that argument. I would not be able to defend that argument, at least contextually.
01:06:43: I don't think that you can establish that with the same kind of utilization of hermeneutics and exegesis that you would use for anything else.
01:06:56: And so I think the perfect comes is the end of time, and hence,
01:07:07: I don't think that—I understand the argument, prophecy done away, tongues, pausuntai using the middle, and then knowledge done away with.
01:07:21: So the argument is that since katarge theisuntai for prophecy, katarge theisetai for gnosis, but then it's pausuntai for tongues, that this means that tongues will cease of themselves when the canon of scripture is complete.
01:07:40: Well, when was the canon of scripture completed? That raises all sorts of questions about the nature of the canon that I haven't heard very carefully examined by cessationists who use that specific type of argumentation.
01:07:57: You could argue that the canon is completed the very moment that the last
01:08:03: New Testament book is written, but that's not when everybody else knew that. God knew that at that point in time.
01:08:09: God knew he was not going to inspire new books, but now you have to somehow argue that there is a direct correlation between the exercise of the gift of tongues and the giving of scripture, or specifically revelation taking place.
01:08:27: And I don't see that. I think when you look at 1
01:08:34: Corinthians, you focus upon the intention and purpose of tongues, and in light of the fact that it is a sign to the
01:08:47: Jewish nation that the gospel has gone forth to the
01:08:53: Gentiles, that a new thing has come, quoting from Isaiah.
01:09:00: Once that purpose is fulfilled, then there's no reason for the continuation of a sign gift that was specifically to a nation that ceases to exist in AD 70.
01:09:15: And so for me, that's my understanding of what the basis for the cessation of that particular sign gift is.
01:09:26: Now, I believe there are other types of sign gifts. They're called apostolic sign gifts, and as long as they're apostles, then there would be apostolic sign gifts.
01:09:36: But it's also clear to me that there is a vast difference between the infant church, where Peter merely walks down a road and his shadow heals people, to the mature expression of the church in 2
01:09:57: Timothy, where Trophimus is left sick by Paul at Miletus.
01:10:04: What? Paul's shadow couldn't fall on Trophimus and heal him?
01:10:11: Something has changed. And some people would argue that that something that has changed is a degradation of spiritual fervor or whatever else it might be.
01:10:21: I don't think so. I think the apostle, as he is getting ready to go to his death, is just as fervent and spiritual as he's ever been.
01:10:31: But the fact of the matter is that the church is in a very different situation now, and the authority of the apostles has been established.
01:10:39: And so I would see apostolic sign gifts as being relevant to the establishment of the authority of the apostles themselves.
01:10:49: And that, therefore, there would be a natural decline in their exercise over time, which
01:10:55: I think is what we see not only with Trophimus, but in other instances in Paul's letters, where clearly close associates that he would have tremendously missed had they passed away are not simply miraculously healed by Paul, even though he healed other people.
01:11:18: Raised the dead in one instance. And yet, as time passes, that seems to change.
01:11:26: And I think we have to ask the question why that is. And if we understand the purpose of the apostolic sign gifts, then it does make sense.
01:11:35: So I wouldn't go with the palace on Ty closing of the canon argument, if that's what you were asking about.
01:11:45: Yeah, yeah, it was. So that's very helpful. Thank you, Dr. White. Okay, thanks. All right. God bless. Bye -bye. 877 -753 -3341.
01:11:56: You know, it's funny, after the programs, like after the last program, Rich said, I'm going to have to go back and relisten to that program because I spend all my time on the phone talking to other people.
01:12:05: And that's what he's doing right now. We're both involved in conversations right now with various people. And that's sort of strange.
01:12:14: Brian. Hi, Brian. Hi, Dr. White. How are you? Good. Good. I just wanted to thank you for spending the time talking about the critical race theory and all that stuff.
01:12:27: I know it's a really, at least it is to me, and I get the impression it is to most people, a very draining subject.
01:12:35: Yes, that's a good term. Yeah, draining. So much twisting and so much just refusal to examine things or think.
01:12:46: Well, let's remember something, Brian. The other side pretty much seems to think the same about us.
01:12:55: And my hope, and again, maybe I'm just being a cockeyed optimist, to borrow a show tune, my hope would be that there would be a move of the
01:13:11: Spirit of God that would cause both sides not to compromise. Because I keep being told, you're not willing to listen.
01:13:21: And when I then repeat back what they've actually been saying and point out the number of books that I've read and the number of people
01:13:27: I've listened to, it becomes clear that what they mean by listen is to hear my presuppositions and repeat them back to me in an affirmative fashion.
01:13:40: That's what listening is. If I take the time to listen and try to understand and then say,
01:13:47: I see serious problems here, that's not listening. And so we have to start using language properly.
01:13:57: And my concern is that for many people on what I would call my side, people who five years ago never even thought about this, never even gave consideration to this, we stumble and maybe offend without purpose because it's just new to us.
01:14:22: I mean, when you find yourself being called an oppressor, when you find yourself being accused of all sorts of things that you're just like, well, wait, where did this come from?
01:14:36: I've just been trying to serve Jesus and love people and do things. And now all of a sudden
01:14:43: I'm getting hit with all the rest of this stuff. We haven't thought all this stuff through.
01:14:48: The other side's been thinking this stuff through for a long, long time. And so we tend to be behind the eight ball.
01:14:56: We tend to be, yeah. And so I think we stumble and maybe unnecessarily offend because we haven't thought these things through.
01:15:05: I don't believe that the other side is just filled with people who have some kind of a big, grand agenda.
01:15:12: I think there's a lot of folks who are being used by people who do have a big, grand agenda.
01:15:21: And that, sadly, what has happened is it's one thing to look at what the left is doing in Western society in promoting the sexual revolution and the degradation of the family and the collapse of all these things that we know as Christians detracts from human flourishing and leads to ungodliness and so on and so forth.
01:15:45: We know that there are people who want to do that. But then through the use of money and influence and sometimes our own naivete, those people can end up using us to promote their ends by introducing us to imbalanced theology that sounds good, but is actually derived from non -biblical categories.
01:16:14: And so we need to remember that we have brothers on the other side of this argument, and they may not treat me as a brother.
01:16:22: They may treat me in horrific fashion and lie about me every single day, as is happening, and it's going to get worse over the next few weeks.
01:16:32: I'm just telling you right now. So I need my fellow believers to pray that I won't fall into the temptation to just automatically assume, and it's human nature to do it, that if you're repeating this set of arguments, then you're an unbeliever.
01:16:53: You're on the outside. I'm going to treat you like an unbeliever. I may get treated like an unbeliever, but I can't return the favor.
01:17:00: And that obviously puts me in a difficult position. It puts me in a, you know, as far as debate goes or something like that.
01:17:10: But I don't see any other option, because if you're going to end up in the room next to my room in glory,
01:17:21: I don't want to have to spend the first thousand years getting over all the offense that we needlessly caused for each other, you know, saying
01:17:32: I'm sorry in all the different ways we can say I'm sorry. So yeah, one side needs to strongly emphasize graciousness in the midst of conflict, and it's not easy to do, and I'm not going to do it perfectly.
01:17:49: And I'm going to ask forgiveness even now for how I've been imperfect in the past and how
01:17:56: I'm going to be imperfect in the future. But at the same time, for the sake of our children and our grandchildren, we can't let go of the sufficiency of Scripture.
01:18:08: We cannot let go of what sola scriptura really means. We cannot let go of the imputed righteousness of Christ.
01:18:14: And these are all things that just, if you look at history and see the trajectory, every one of these denominations that's gone this way, those things have been lost.
01:18:24: And so the love of those things is going to have to be what motivates us to remain faithful, even when we just want to throw our hands up in the air and say, stop,
01:18:33: I will not do this anymore. So we're going to need, you know, Moses needed people to hold his hands up, and we're going to need people to hold us up too.
01:18:44: And I'm sure we've already lost people that used to support us. And there are going to be people that are going to be writing in saying,
01:18:50: I want you to stop talking about this. I'd rather you talk about the Mormons or about Calvinism, about Dave Hunt or whatever else it might be.
01:18:56: And I try to remain balanced. But at the same time, you know, it's a difficult time.
01:19:04: All right. Well, I really appreciate it, in part for personal reasons. I've actually called in before.
01:19:10: I grew up most of my childhood in Zambia, and I married a Zambian lady.
01:19:16: Really? And so, yeah, it's a little bit personal in a way that it creates a very toxic environment here, where both of us having more of, like you mentioned just a few minutes ago, internationally, there really is not this discussion at all.
01:19:38: Yeah. I mean, it's kind of like, what? But so I guess the closest
01:19:45: I can get to a question is, and you almost answered it anyway, but when it's the personal interactions with people,
01:19:56: I mean, I got what you were saying about, you know, a denomination, there has to be really a holding fast to confessions and that kind of thing.
01:20:05: When there's a personal friend that you see veering off to the left, and I've seen numerous friends do that and even abandon the faith eventually.
01:20:18: And when I see a close friend or even an acquaintance headed that direction, it's easy to,
01:20:28: I don't know, get a little bit scared. In a way, you're like, I know where that road's going. Please don't go down there, you know?
01:20:34: Right. But I guess how far do you go with kind of a personal warning to people when they really don't want to listen?
01:20:45: Yeah, yeah. You hate to see relationships disrupted, and yet at the same time, you realize if they keep down that road, the common ground gets smaller and smaller.
01:20:56: You know, you try as graciously as you can to give a loving warning.
01:21:05: You emphasize that your love for them will not change, but you've seen what the results of this are going to be, and you just ask them to really consider this.
01:21:17: And if they keep going that direction, you know, it frequently results in a disruption of fellowship.
01:21:24: But you need to make it something that they bring about, not something that you necessarily bring about.
01:21:31: And hope and pray, you know, obviously in the perfect world, well, in the almost perfect world, when sin disrupts relationship, it would be nice if we were able to end those relationships in such a fashion they could be easily repaired with a small change of heart on the part of either side or something like that.
01:21:57: But often that's not what happens. And as I've said, when leaving a church or anything else, try to bathe it in as much grace as possible.
01:22:08: And if there's going to be hard feelings, try to make it as little as coming from you as possibly can be.
01:22:16: But the reality is there's going to be offense in this life, and you just have to bathe everything in prayer and pray that God would be glorified in everything you do.
01:22:30: All right. I won't take more of your time. Okay. Thanks, Brian. All right.
01:22:36: Thank you. God bless. All right. Let's get our last two calls in here, all the way down to it says,
01:22:44: Alan in Australia, are you really on the other side of the planet? I am indeed, Dr.
01:22:49: White. Well, Alan, I'm hearing rumblings that your government's falling apart down there.
01:22:57: Yeah, indeed. It looks like, well, the next PM is on the chopping block right now, so we seem to be, it's, yeah, it's a bit of a merry -go -round here.
01:23:07: Unfortunately, we don't vote them out. Their caucus chirps them out. So yeah, a bit of unrest.
01:23:14: Oh, well, at least you don't have what we have. Yeah, well, there's a bit more stability, well, it might not seem like it, but at least temporal stability.
01:23:25: Here it just seems to be every couple of years. Well, you could be like the Italians, though. I mean, how many governments they had since World War II?
01:23:33: I think it's like 11 months average, something like that. At this rate, we'll be catching up to them by the end of the century,
01:23:40: I imagine. Anyway, so that wasn't what you called about, though. No, no, maybe next time.
01:23:46: But at this point, look, I had a couple of lovely Jehovah's Witnesses.
01:23:52: Actually, I was able to have three chats with them that last about three hours each. I think they were just maybe trying to get their hours up, and they saw a great opportunity for that.
01:24:01: But at the very least, one thing that I found after a sermon that was on 1
01:24:07: Peter was 1 Peter 111, where the
01:24:12: Apostle talks about the Spirit of Christ in the prophets. And so I thought, okay,
01:24:19: I wonder how the New World Translation would treat that.
01:24:25: And of course, they take out of Christ. And then I had a look at the Kingdom Interlinear, and it has, as plain as day,
01:24:32: Spirit of Christ in the Kingdom Interlinear. And they had no response to it.
01:24:37: If they'd never seen it, in fact, they weren't very familiar with the Kingdom Interlinear. I had to show it to them on their app.
01:24:43: Now, that probably freaked them out. Yeah, I just wonder if you've encountered any defenses to that, if you've actually covered that with any
01:24:54: Jehovah's Witnesses, just to see—especially because the point I was trying to make was that their translation or mistranslation, you know, it's horrendously inconsistent.
01:25:05: But when it's inconsistent with their own other products, and so demonstrably so—
01:25:11: Well, so Alan, you haven't heard the story of the only time I've ever been assaulted in a witnessing situation?
01:25:19: No. Oh, well, the only time
01:25:25: I have actually been physically assaulted in a witnessing situation was with a little old
01:25:31: Jehovah's Witness couple. And we were in someone's front room, and I was showing them in John chapter 14,
01:25:46: I believe. Yeah, and where—John 14, 14, where Jesus said, if you ask me anything in my name,
01:25:55: I will do it. And the Greek of the Interlinear, specifically says, if you ask me anything in my name.
01:26:03: The New World Translation says, if you ask anything in my name. It took the word me out. And so I'm trying to show this to them.
01:26:10: They've got their Kingdom Interlinears, and she just couldn't see it. So I got up, and I went across the front room, and I knelt down next to her.
01:26:21: And so I could point in her Kingdom Interlinear to where it said me in the
01:26:27: Greek, and then in the English where the word was missing. And she looks at it, and she stares at it, and she looks at me.
01:26:36: And then with—I never saw it coming. She just backhands me right across the face and sends me sprawling into the middle of the room.
01:26:47: And, you know, that's a little on the surprising side. You don't expect that to happen.
01:26:53: And so I collected myself, and I sat down in my chair, and I've told this story many, many times.
01:26:59: But I looked across the room—sort of ended the conversation, by the way—but
01:27:05: I looked across the room at her elderly husband, and the look on his face was, you got no idea, buddy.
01:27:18: Here's a guy who's probably been married to her for 50 years, and I can guarantee you he just had that hangdog look on his face.
01:27:26: It was like, yep, I saw that one coming. Wow, I've got to count my blessings at the very least.
01:27:33: So, yes. Interestingly enough, I have marked in my old
01:27:43: Kingdom Interlinear—well, it's not that old, because it's the blue one, so I've had purple ones, which go way, way back.
01:27:50: But ta en autois numa Christu. What they actually do is, it says, what sort of season the
01:28:03: Spirit in them was indicating concerning Christ when it was bearing witness beforehand about the sufferings of Christ.
01:28:12: And so they disconnect what's clearly a phrase, numa
01:28:20: Christu, and put Christu farther down, especially because you have ta eis
01:28:27: Christan, so they just mess around with it. I can't tell you what their defense of that is.
01:28:37: If I've ever known, I've forgotten it. So I don't know exactly how they try to defend that, because it's like trying to defend their mistranslation of the
01:28:49: Granville Sharp construction in 2 Peter 1 .1. You can just show so many examples of this phraseology that it's just another one of those places where, very obviously, the
01:29:00: Watchtower Rattling Track Society is not trying to translate the Greek as it would have been understood by the original audience or the author.
01:29:08: They're attempting to make it consistent with their own unbiblical theology. So that is a good text, though, to utilize.
01:29:16: Though it does surprise me a little bit for Jehovah's Witnesses not to be familiar with the Kingdom in Linear. They can't be really good
01:29:24: Jehovah's Witnesses if they're not familiar with that, because that's... They seem to have been for quite some time, but they also said that they, you know,
01:29:31: I guess in the 70s or 80s, they moved across from the King James, which I found quite astonishing.
01:29:37: The 70s or 80s. It was the 50s. But, yeah. Yeah, they're, hmm, newbies.
01:29:44: Either that or they're getting a really twisted history of their own movement, which is possible.
01:29:52: I don't know. Yeah. Hey, do you have time for a very brief follow -up? Real quick.
01:29:58: Who are you liking in the Vuelta this year? Rigoberto Aran. I would love to see...
01:30:07: EF first, you know, if they can hang together. Aran was really strong in the last...
01:30:17: You know, he crashed out of the tour. So if he can stay healthy, I think he's got a good shot.
01:30:23: But, hey, it's gonna be wide open. There's no froom. There's no... You know, Kwiatkowski is strong and Sky is strong, but I'd like to see...
01:30:32: I'm pulling for Aran. Good idea. How's that? I just...
01:30:37: Some people have no idea what we're talking about, but my fellow cyclists are going, hey, he's actually paying attention.
01:30:46: Yes, I do pay attention. Yes, I do. Great. Well, thank you very much for taking my call and blessings.
01:30:52: And, yeah, I hope to see you down here before too long. Yeah, I'd love to get back down there. I love my friends down there.
01:30:59: And I've got friends over amongst the New Zealanders now, too. So I'd love to get back down there.
01:31:05: God bless. Ladies, God bless. All right, bye -bye. Bye -bye. All right. One more call here.
01:31:10: We're gonna sneak Clayton in. Hi, Clayton. Hey, Dr. White. Thanks for taking my call. Yes, sir.
01:31:16: Yeah, I heard you're coming to Charlotte soon. Well, yes.
01:31:25: We're trying to get that... We haven't gotten that absolutely nailed down yet. But, yes, we're gonna be going to Charlotte.
01:31:30: Now, the debate is scheduled in Florida, in northern Florida, Jacksonville area.
01:31:38: That's where I'm flying into. Oh, so you're not doing a debate here? You're doing something else? You mean with me and Michael Brown?
01:31:45: You're doing that in Charlotte? No, that's in... What's the name? It's on the website.
01:31:52: Well, that's where I'm flying into. That's not where it is. Okay. The last caller was talking about Jehovah's Witnesses.
01:32:00: My question is about them as well, but not the same. I'm wondering how
01:32:06: I should deal with them at the door. A lot of people at my church have been telling me if I'm not confident in talking to them,
01:32:12: I should just send them on their way. But I've been watching a lot of your programs and a lot of some of the older shows, especially one you did with Mr.
01:32:20: Larry Wessels. Oh, my. I know. Yeah, a long time ago. I was a wee little lad back then.
01:32:29: But I think you briefly covered the idea of their repentance and salvation, and I'm still a little bit not clear on the idea of, you know, as a born -again believer, we believe that we can repent and put our trust in Christ.
01:32:44: And how is that different for them when it comes to their repentance? Are they not capable of biblical repentance if they don't believe that Jesus is the
01:32:56: Jehovah himself? Well, the issue of soteriology with Jehovah's Witnesses is focused upon the fact that, for the
01:33:05: Watchtower, eschatology determines everything else. And so soteriology is a subset and is subsumed under their eschatological perspective.
01:33:16: And so the key thing with Jehovah's Witnesses, and this is changing, they're evolving in this area right now.
01:33:25: But you still have the distinction between the anointed class and the non -anointed, the great crowd that lives forever in paradise on earth.
01:33:34: And so however they're going to end up working around that, that distinction probably is going to remain. The numbers may change, the dates are changing, but fundamental to Watchtower theology is this distinction between sort of a superclass, the anointed class, and then just the plain old
01:33:53: Jehovah's Witness who is not going to be going to heaven, but it's going to live forever in a paradise on earth. That had led them to have only the anointed class in the new covenant.
01:34:05: And that meant that 99 % of Jehovah's Witnesses, more than that, are not in the new covenant.
01:34:12: They're not justified. They do not have righteousness. They don't partake of the Lord's Supper.
01:34:17: And it would be really, really hard after all these years for them to change that.
01:34:23: So whatever system they end up coming up with to get rid of the 1914 prophecy and get rid of all that stuff that was built into their system, they're still going to find a way to keep that distinction there, even though they've started to try to come up with a way where Jehovah's Witnesses themselves of the great crowd, the non -anointed ones are sort of justified and sort of in the new covenant by their fellowship with the anointed class.
01:34:54: And it's a sad thing to watch, but I'm not sure how that all is going to come out. Jehovah's Witnesses are strong Pelagians, if we want to use that terminology.
01:35:02: That's somewhat anachronistic, but the point is, and when it comes to stereology, they actually are open theists.
01:35:12: Jehovah doesn't really know what's going to happen in the future. So there is no election. There is none of that.
01:35:17: And so if you're talking to one of the anointed class, then you can talk about things like repentance and some things that are related to us, but you almost never run into one of them.
01:35:29: So instead, you're going to be talking to a person who has a really almost no anthropology as far as the person being dead in sin or any of that kind of stuff.
01:35:41: And that's why it's a very valuable place to go. The problem is that they also do not have a divine savior.
01:35:48: They do not have a divine sacrifice. And that almost always ends up leading back to the issues of the
01:35:55: Trinity, the deity of Christ, the nature of the resurrection, denial, the bodily resurrection, and things like that.
01:36:01: So it is a fruitful area. But just as it's a fruitful area in talking with Mormons, since Mormons don't have the true
01:36:12: God, you've got to eventually get back there. You need to have the true God to base the gospel in.
01:36:17: The same thing with Jehovah's Witnesses. Okay. Well, you know what?
01:36:23: That pretty much covers it. I'm still a little bit... I don't understand how they view repentance.
01:36:29: In fact, I guess they just can't repent. Well, no. Obviously, they believe that all
01:36:37: Jehovah's Witnesses have repented by demonstrating their obedience to Jehovah by following his organization.
01:36:46: So yeah, they certainly believe you can repent of your past sins. But the idea of the radical break, being indwelt by the
01:36:57: Holy Spirit of God, a new creature, a new creation, since they don't believe we have a spirit, we are a spirit, all those things get redefined and hence don't carry the kind of consistent meaning that they carry in biblical theology.
01:37:15: So yeah, it's a complicated theology, and the very fact that it's complicated helps to protect them from refutation because it makes it difficult for us as believers to communicate clearly with them.
01:37:29: Okay, that answers it. And I'm like, you know, I have a sister -in -law who's a Jehovah's Witness, and she's been sending a lot of them after me lately.
01:37:35: So I'm trying to, you know, discard myself. But at any rate, I appreciate you taking my call.
01:37:41: Okay, thanks, Clayton. All right. You and Richard, done. All right. Thank you. Okay. So the debate is in St.
01:37:48: John's, Florida. Is that what it says? Okay. Yeah, pray for that. One of the participants on the other side has canceled out.
01:37:56: So we're trying to find someone to take his place. I was concerned about that.
01:38:02: I expressed concerns about that from the beginning. So please pray that that will be taking place and that we'll be able to do it the way we want to be able to do it.
01:38:12: So we're still confident that we'll be able to work that out between now and then. We hope so. We hope so.
01:38:19: So anyways, well, great calls. Lots of topics we covered today. And so,