Caller-Driven Dividing Line

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.

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

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

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

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

James White. Well, good afternoon. Welcome to the Dividing Line from Boulder, a very warm, hot, in fact,

Boulder, Colorado, where the predicted high tomorrow is going to be triple digits, which for the folks up here is a traumatic experience.

For those of us visiting from the Valley of the Sun, I forgot to look at what the temperature has been like in the

Valley of the Sun recently since I...it's 104 down there right now. Just looked here real quickly with a predicted high of 108.

108, that's not much, 108. So it's only going to be eight degrees warmer in Phoenix, Arizona than in Boulder tomorrow.

That's just great. Everyone's blaming me saying I brought all of this with me and I really didn't because that's really not physically possible to do.

But anyway, good to be with you via Skype today. Very good news. We have our phone system back.

It's only been installed for a matter of minutes. So whether it works or not, we're not 100 % certain actually.

We are definitely flying by the seat of our proverbial pants today. And so if you'd like to help us test it out, you can call at 877 -753 -3341.

We haven't had phone callers in a very, very long time. And so the small possibility exists that over the course of the past few weeks, as we have discussed homosexuality and gay marriage and Islam and all sorts of other things, that I may have said something that might possibly cause you to want to call in.

And you're welcome to do so at 877 -753 -3341.

On the last program on Tuesday, it's weird. It's probably just age.

But I had one topic that I wanted to briefly address and then as I was getting verses lined up for the discussion of secularism, that just so took everything over that I started with that, ended up going the entire hour just on that subject and never got around to what

I was going to talk about initially, which I will do so now lest I forget.

And as all you frustrated phone callers are lining up on our phone lines at the same time,

I believe it was Monday of this week, if I recall correctly. When I travel,

I tend to sort of lose track of which day of the week it is because you're not doing your normal, everyday things and it's hard to remember which day is which at that point.

But I believe it was Monday of this week I had the opportunity of listening to the debate that took place over the weekend, as I recall.

I think it was on Saturday, maybe Friday, I don't recall. But anyway, between Joshua Wipps and Chris Date on the subject of annihilationism.

Now, I knew this was coming up. We call him

R .K. or Razor's Kiss. Joshua is a regular on our chat channel, and so I had seen him musing about things and writing about things and talking about things, and I knew this was coming up.

And I was glad that it was going to happen simply because sometime, quite some while ago,

I don't remember how long ago it was now, I was referred to a particular set of interviews that Chris Date did with Mr.

Fudge. And Fudge is probably the leading annihilationist today.

His book on the subject has gone through, I don't know what version it's in right now. I have it in my office, but I'm not in my office at the moment, so I didn't check.

Third edition, maybe, something like that. But the fire that consumes, and he is, you know, and so I had been directed to it, and so I downloaded it and listened to it.

And I could tell immediately as I was listening to the program that this was not a situation where Fudge's position was going to be examined or challenged.

This was a promotion of his position. Mr. Date was not challenging him, and especially not challenging him on some of what seemed to me to be the most fundamental errors that were underlying the position that he was presenting.

And so I could tell, if I recall correctly, again,

I think I immediately, when I got back from the ride where I listened to this, wrote to Chris and said, have you become an annihilationist?

Because I could just tell. You can tell when someone's promoting a position or when someone is critically examining a position.

And the same concerns I had after listening to that are the very same concerns or issues that I want to briefly comment on in regards to the debate that took place this past weekend.

If you've not listened to the debate, my comments aren't really going to have any meaning for you, so just tune me out for a little while.

We've already got at least one person on call, on the phones, and we'll be moving on to other things here in just a few moments.

But if you did listen to the debate, or if you are familiar with the argumentation related to annihilationism, if you're not familiar with what that is,

I guess I could briefly just mention it as the concept that the evil wicked, and of course there are all sorts of different flavors, there's, you know, many different groups hold to different forms of annihilationism, soul sleep, there's all sorts of, it's a pretty complex area because you can hold a number of different particular viewpoints in it and sort of come up with your own rather unique perspective on things.

And it's not unusual, it's been around for a very, very long time, but it's always been a minority of people who have held this particular view, though there are many

New Testament scholars who hold to it today, I don't think because of any particular exegetical understanding, but because it's just so completely outside of the realm of possible viewpoints for a secular society.

If you want to get a person to consider, if you think that it's your job to get people to like Christianity, then the idea of the eternal conscious punishment of people, that just turns too many people off, it's too much to get past, so let's look at it in another perspective.

And so there are many, let's put it this way, you would have to have a very high view of scripture to hold a non -annihilationist viewpoint,

I'm not saying that every annihilationist doesn't hold a high view of scripture, but let's just say that those who, if you look at the denominations over history that have collapsed on all the cardinal doctrines of the

Christian faith, this is one of the first things to go. It's normally an indicator of someone who is heading left and heading there fairly quickly.

Anyway, as I listened to the debate, and I had asked Joshua, I had asked, well again,

I just call him R .K., I had asked him after it was over with, what did you think of it, and he had used a phrase that I wasn't familiar with, he called it, what was it, a dog's dinner?

In other words, pretty much a mixed up mess. And as I listened to it,

I understood what he meant, because both men were on very different pages, there was the discussions that would be going on between them.

If you've not done a lot of reading in the area, it will probably leave you rather confused as to why one side was saying what they were saying, and the other side would respond the way they did.

It's pretty difficult to follow along those lines, there's no question about it, even for someone who is fairly familiar with the field, it's certainly not my favorite area.

I have wanted to resist the pull to become the apologist for hell, especially because on some levels

I could wish the annihilationism were true. I'm just convinced it's not on the basis of Scripture, I mean, it would be a whole lot easier to get along in the world if the

Bible didn't teach a number of things, but that's neither here nor there, the issue is what does the

Bible teach and what is the consistent teaching of Scripture in regards to Christian theology. So anyway, as I listened to the debate, and especially the beginning of the debate, because what happened was the debate got bogged down in certain aspects, basically because Joshua had said that he was utilizing certain sources, then

Chris just focused upon those certain sources, and do you agree with such and such a person when he said this, and what about such and such a person when he said that, and if you don't have access to those things, if you've not read those individuals, it just doesn't really do much for you, it doesn't communicate much to you.

But especially at the beginning of the debate, the very same issues that had come flooding to my mind as I listened to the very first interview that Chris Date did with Fudge, and the promotion of his views on his

Apologetics webcast, came right back to mind, because this is the real issue, and there's many different directions you can go in addressing

Annihilationism, the idea that the wicked dead are destroyed by God, they cease to exist, and when it talks about eternal destruction, that's just the eternal effects of a one -time destruction.

And so if you talk about the smoke of their torment going up forever and ever, all that means is that that's in essence a monument, it's a remembrance, a reminder of what only happened in the past, but is not continuing to go on.

And that there is no conscious punishment, no matter what the element of time might mean, however we experience time after death, there is no continuation of that particular punishment after a certain point in time.

Evidently, people stop sinning after death, and hence punishment is limited to a certain particular period of time, which is enough to satisfy the punishment of God, and the wrath of God, and then the wicked are destroyed.

Anyway, fundamentally, as I listened to the debate, my primary response was this, and there's much more that could be said, but I'm not going to take the entire time to be discussing this particular subject, since a lot of people listening did not have an opportunity to hear this debate.

I think the best criticism that I could offer to Mr. Fudge, and to those who follow after him and repeat his argumentation today, is

I would challenge them to demonstrate from the

Old Testament, the prophecies and fulfillment of prophecy in regards to the

Messiah and his ministry in the New Testament, utilizing their form of hermeneutic.

I do not believe they can do so. That's an important thing. I mean, it's fundamental to the

Christian faith to be able to demonstrate the messiahship of Jesus, to do what Michael Brown and I did just a few weeks ago, going through Isaiah 52, 13, and 53, looking at that text, looking at Psalm 22, as I've been preaching through Hebrews, looking at the

Old Testament text and then how it comes into the New Testament, and how the

New Testament fulfillment will always transcend the categories that were laid out in the

Old Testament type. But the problem is, the entire hermeneutic that Mr.

Date has adopted, which he has gotten from Mr. Fudge, is that the Old Testament paradigms, the Old Testament categories determine and limit the

New Testament fulfillment. And so, if you listen to Mr. Date, what he keeps saying is, well, when we go back to the

Old Testament, this phraseology meant this, and so that's what it has to mean in the

New Testament. Well, if he follows that consistently, he might as well give up being a Christian, and give up the messiahship of Jesus, and give up the prophecies of the

Atonement, and give up the argumentation of Hebrews, because if you're going to be consistent there, you're not going to be able to prove any of those things using that hermeneutic.

Now, obviously what they do is they abandon that hermeneutic when dealing with these other issues, but on this one subject, the parameters, the scope, the delimitation of the

Old Testament text, its usage, well, since it was about nations that, you know, there was no eternal destruction of them or something, then it can have that meaning in the

New Testament. They would never use that in any other subject, but they do there, and that, again, takes us back to a fundamental argument that I've made a number of times.

Inconsistency is the sign of a failed argument, and that is why I am not an annihilationist.

If I adopted that hermeneutic, if I said that the delimitation provided by the use of the phrase eternal fire, or fire, or destruction, or corpses, or all the stuff that comes into that in the

Old Testament is as far as God's revelation can go, well, I'd be an annihilationist, but I can't believe that.

That's not how the New Testament writers deal with the issue and deal with the

Old Testament. They do not limit themselves in that way, and therefore, I cannot embrace that.

And so, that to me is the primary issue that, to me, demonstrates the error of the annihilationist position and those other people.

I do want to mention one other thing. I was concerned that Chris Dates said, well, look, I know that the

London Baptist Confession of Faith says this, but it says it in such a small amount, you know, I still agree with 98 % of what the

Confession says. Well, that concerns me.

Obviously, there are sections of the Confession that pretty much every church allows you to take an exception to, and when we interview candidates for membership, we ask for general agreement.

The idea that, you know, it's well known, for example, the London Baptist Confession identifies the

Pope as the Antichrist, and that was a popular view at the time, but on exegetical grounds, most of us would not view it that way.

Certainly, I would view the Pope as the head of an anti -Christian faith, but the idea that he is the

Antichrist being spoken of is a different issue. And so, there's no question that the

Confession addresses a wide range of doctrines, not all of which are equally definitional of the faith.

So, obviously, it would concern me greatly if someone were to say, well,

I agree with the vast majority of the London Baptist Confession of faith, I just don't believe the part about the sufficiency of Scripture.

Or I don't believe the part about the sonship of Jesus Christ, or I don't believe the part about the atoning work of Christ.

You can still say you agree with 97 % of it, because those are only certain sections. It shouldn't be, well, you know, this is only a few sections out of all these others.

That's a very poor argument. What the argument should be is, well, this just is not central to the actual affirmations of the

Confession in regards to the work of Christ or things like that. And so, I think

Mr. Dates should change the way he makes that presentation and try to argue that, well, the people who wrote the

London Baptist Confession of faith would not have viewed this as having the same level of urgency or importance or centrality to the understanding of the

Gospel as something over here. At least you could try to make an argument at that point.

But just saying, well, I still agree with 97 % of the segments, I don't think is good, because that's not identifying how central is this belief in comparison to others.

That's much more of an issue. So, someone actually in the chat channel just a few moments ago actually linked to where you can listen to that debate if you wanted to.

It's at the choosinghats .com website. If you want to track down that, it was about,

I think it was about three hours if I recall, right around three hours and 12 minutes, something like that, is when that was.

877 -753 -3341. We can take phone calls today, 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.

And we'd like to have you join us. And hopefully, if Chris in Chicago is still with us, we can talk to Chris.

Chris, are you there? Hello, sir. Am I being transmitted? You are being transmitted to the

Mothership. Wonderful. Wonderful. Hey, I just wanted to share some quick comments on that debate, because I followed it.

I couldn't listen to it after a couple hours, because it was really, like you said, it was kind of a mess, and I had to have a bunch of resources laid out.

That's not an issue I really examine regularly. But I heard

Chris State, he called Matt Flick's show about a year ago when he was first looking into this whole annihilationism thing.

I don't know if that's when he first did. And Matt told him that he was concerned that he was leaving orthodoxy in his examination of annihilationism.

And it got me thinking, you know, what is the difference, or where's the line drawn between a heterodox position versus something that's just an outright heresy?

I mean, that's my question. Oh, okay. A little different than what I had on my screen.

Maybe you have a second question along those lines? Along those lines?

Well, no, because I was told that the question was on the subject of homosexuality, so I'm just putting the...

Oh, no, sorry. I asked him if that was all you wanted to talk about, but...

Okay, well, yeah, we can go there in a second. But it's a good question, and it sort of flows from what

I had just said, and there are those who do not believe that there are any secondary beliefs.

Fundamentalists tend to demand 100 % agreement on all issues.

And as a result, they would say that, well, if you disagree with me on the nature of hell, for example, then it follows of necessity that you are unorthodox, and that you are a heretic, and that you've lost your salvation, and you're outside the kingdom, and all the rest of these things.

And I understand that when we live in a culture where there is such an aversion to truth and to the concept of absolute truth, and when we ourselves are having to focus upon the fact that there is truth, that truth is consistent with itself, that there is an overall message of Scripture, that it's very easy to slip into the mindset that then says, okay, that means that the only people who are really with it are the people who have 100 % agreement with me on everything that is taught in Scripture.

I understand why that happens, and have some sympathy in regards to that idea.

But at the same time, we have to recognize that even those same confessions admit that not all things are alike clear in Scripture, and that there are certain things that are revealed with absolute and certain clarity.

And then there are things that are either inferences from those things, necessary, good and proper inferences from those things, but are inferences that are not as clear.

So for example, it's very obvious to me that the Bible teaches without question the idea of the doctrine of monotheism, there is only one true and eternal

God. That's not even a question. But is the exact nature of the experience of time and the nature of punishment of the dead after death revealed with the same level of clarity in the same number of ways as monotheism is?

Well, no, I would say it's not. So how do we draw those lines and recognize the difference between what we might call heterodoxy and absolute heresy, where you are promoting a doctrine that is directly opposite to a defining doctrine of the

Christian faith? And this is an area that requires a fair amount of thought and consideration and restraint, and unfortunately it normally is not approached in that way.

It is normally approached, I guess the term I would use would be in a very territorial fashion, in the sense that it's almost a xenophobia.

You're afraid of anybody who looks or sounds differently than yourself and are very, very quick to fire first and then ask questions later on.

So I guess when someone asks the question, what about annihilationism, would you say that an annihilationist is a heretic?

Well, I know a lot of heretics who are annihilationists, but that's a different thing than asking is every annihilationist a heretic?

Because fundamentally you would think that what you'd want to start with is this person, aside from this one belief, is orthodox in all other affirmations.

This is the one place where they depart from, well, even a confession that they themselves would say up to a certain time represented their own position.

And if that's the case, that's different from someone who holds that view plus a number of other views.

Now, that was one of the things that did cause me some concern at one point, and I have not pursued this, but it caused me some concern at one point during the debate.

Obviously there was something that had been written or said or discussed outside the parameters of the debate, and I've already told

Joshua this, one of the main criticisms I had for him was that Chris was correct to be able to use my line, well, it wasn't really my line, but it was

George Bryson's line, read my book, because Joshua did keep saying, well,

I addressed that in this article, I addressed that in this that I wrote beforehand. You can't do that in a debate,

I mean, it may be relevant, but it's not how you approach the actual debate itself. You have to bring that information in and present it as part of the evidence of the debate.

You just can't say, well, read my book or read many blog articles that I wrote or something along those lines. But somewhere in that conversation that had taken place beforehand, there had been some discussion of regeneration, and very briefly,

Chris took a proleptic view of regeneration, which almost sounded, and I don't know this because it was done very quickly and I didn't hear any follow -up, but it almost sounded as if he was saying that the regeneration text and our understanding of the nature of regeneration needs to be altered and taken proleptically as if it is something yet future and not that we actually possess eternal life now as a character of life and as a qualitatively different life than the unregenerate person has.

Now, if that's the case, then now you're starting to see where historically annihilationism has ended up having a very deep impact upon many other more central elements of the faith, and because of its inconsistency, that's where it ends up causing problems.

And so I would say that I, for example, could not recommend a person who is an annihilationist.

I could not direct someone to them. I've always pointed out, for example, that someone like a

John Stott said a lot of nice things, but he was a conditionalist, and you have to keep that in mind, almost reading almost anybody from Europe or the

UK these days is probably going to be a conditionalist as well, and that is going to have an impact on how they present the gospel and how they present the concept of atonement and how they, you know, there's issues there.

And so we have to ask people some rather specific questions about that. You know,

I don't think that just holding to annihilationism means you're not a Christian, but what does concern me is that almost everyone, almost,

I hope everyone heard the almost there, but that almost everyone that I have seen who has adopted that viewpoint hasn't stopped there.

That was the first step in a long step of alterations and changes of their perspectives that eventually, in the large majority of instances, led to unorthodox belief, a denial of the full inspiration and authority of scripture, changes in their views of the gospel, the church, etc.,

etc. That has been my experience over the years, and I think if we look back in history, that has pretty much been the experience of many generations, that it's frequently that very first step, which doesn't necessarily demand that it leads to those conclusions, but it often does.

Well, thank you for that response. It was very comprehensive, I guess, just as a parting comment, just one last thing on this.

I noticed that he has, over the course of the day, he seems like a great, nice guy, just a little worried, like as Chris Bolt pointed out on Choosing Hats, I think, a couple days ago.

He's out there promoting a website, promoting annihilationism now, and it just seems like he's become a little too wrapped up in it, and that's a little concerning to me.

Well, yeah, that's what I was saying, is that I almost never see anybody who adopts this position that doesn't lose their balance.

And yeah, I think if you start promoting something, you know, the question I would have now is, where is he going to church?

What kind of a church do you find that is annihilationist and yet reformed, and yet solid in its biblical theology?

You know, I don't know of any, I don't know if anything like that exists. And that in and of itself might say something to you, but normally what it says to these folks is, well, you know, there's just, it's real easy to get wrapped up in all these errors and not think these things through, not realizing that a lot of people you're just dismissing have thought these things through a long time ago.

And so, yeah, I think there is reason for concern along those lines, no two ways about it.

Yeah. Well, all right. Thanks a lot. Have a great week. OK. All right. Thank you for your call, sir. God bless.

Hey, I don't know if the powers that be in the great grand studio want to find a way to play any, do we have any new super cool commercials that we're supposed to air and start awing people with?

Because I know that we're working on some stuff like that, and I don't want to preclude any possibilities of some really cool stuff being done there.

But he is working on them. Oh, OK. All right. So we're not we're not there. Not yet. All right.

OK. All right. Well, I just just wanted to make sure, you know, because it's exciting for our audience who have heard the same commercials that were recorded in the 1990s.

Hey, that's a that's a spot that was recorded in in this decade. Wow. That's incredible.

That'll be it'll be fun. Anyway, those are kind of things to look forward to, things to look forward to.

Is there something else that you wanted to talk about? I don't have any idea what that's supposed to mean, but I do believe we have another phone call and that is

Richard in Chicago. Is that correct, Richard? Hello, Richard.

I guess we don't have Richard on on the line. I can only go with what has been sent to me in the great window and now nothing is appearing in the great window and no one is talking to me.

We do. But hello, Richard. Yes. Yes, sir. What can

I do for you? Yes. I was wondering why would you speak on annihilationism since you have expressed that before that you don't usually talk about topics relating to eschatology?

No, I don't talk about the arguments in the specific issue of premill, postmill.

I often have talked about the wide range of topics related to eschatology. I did a debate against two conditionalists on the unbelievable radio broadcast in London a couple of years ago.

I've spoken on this subject at a conference just within the past year. So the difference when

I say I don't do eschatology is I don't get into the emotionally laden arguments of people who generally in amongst evangelicals think that the only arguments there are about eschatology is between whether you're pre -TRIB, mid -TRIB or post -TRIB and to even attempt to try to go, well,

I'm no -TRIB for folks that have never don't even realize that there are other perspectives and in fact, perspectives that have significantly longer historical pedigrees, that tends to be to me a rather fruitless endeavor and I leave it to folks who are my betters to engage those particular aspects of things.

But the issue of heaven, hell, judgment, the nature of judgment, how that relates to the atonement,

I've talked about those for years. So you may have misunderstood my statements about that.

I see. Then I'm corrected. Well, I haven't listened to the debates concerning annihilationism, but it seems to me inconceivable that you would have a person who is existing and then suddenly he would be out of existence if I understand the position correctly.

Do they address any of the psychological aspects like that? Well, let me at least try to somewhat accurately summarize what an annihilationist would be saying if I understood the presentation as it was made.

The idea is that there will be punishment of the wicked dead and it will be severe punishment, but it will terminate in the destruction of the individual.

So obviously a person who has a lesser sin debt over against a greater sin debt would be annihilated sooner than the person who has a real great sin debt.

And so it's not just there's a judgment and poof that there would be some people who would take that perspective.

Don't get me wrong. There would be some people who would even rebel against the idea there's any punishment at all, that the only punishment there is is annihilation of the unrepentant lost upon their resurrection.

They are judged and vanish sort of like that one Star Trek episode where you step into the thing and disappear.

But the more orthodox annihilationists recognize, and this is where I find an inconsistency, they recognize at least some necessity of afterlife punishment.

But to say that you're punished for X amount of time and then that's enough to fulfill the wrath of God raises all sorts of problems, one of which

I just briefly mentioned in passing. But it's one that I don't hear a lot of people talking about, but I think it's very important.

And that is, if you can think that that could happen, then your assumption is that the wicked dead stop sinning after death, which would require some kind of instant sanctification of the unholy, which

I don't even know how you can put all that together. But if you think about it, the wicked dead, many, many people assume that sin is only relevant to this life.

But why do we assume that? I mean, if a person is a rebel against God and after this life, the restraints are removed from them, are they going to stop sinning?

Are they going to? I mean, they're already suppressing the knowledge of God. They know God exists. They're suppressing his knowledge.

They're perverting his ways. So you remove all restraints from them and they're going to get better. That's literally the anthropology that a lot of people have, and especially for someone who is who is reformed in an understanding of the nature of sin, you can't go there.

That's just that's not even a possibility. And so that's where I see a major problem here is that, well, how long does this punishment have to last?

Well, it's fitting for the sins they committed. You mean committed only in life? Do they stop committing sins during the time of their of their punishment?

And I don't know how exactly they would respond to that. But yes, go ahead.

Would they view hell as a sort of a Protestant purgatory in which you're only punished for the temple sins, but not the guilt of sin?

No, I don't think so, because they're at least what I would call the

Orthodox annihilationists, if I can use that terminology. The Orthodox annihilationists are not saying that you eventually get to a point where now you can be redeemed.

The idea is that the punishment gets you to a point where you can now be annihilated because to enter into the presence of God requires that positive righteousness and that positive relationship with God, which you could not possibly have after this life.

And therefore, the idea is more for the satisfaction of the wrath of God against the sin of that particular individual, but only in this life.

And RK, who is in channel right now, just mentioned and he's correct about this.

I don't think that Mr. Date can really address this issue because he's up in the air as to his perspective on physicalism or whether the nature of the soul, nature of the spirit, all these things.

He's not even certain what he believes about those things. And so he can't really address these inconsistencies in the annihilationistic perspective.

And that's probably why, even though Joshua tried to raise some of those issues, didn't really get very far because his response only is,

I don't know. So that that that was another issue. Oh, OK.

OK. All right, then. OK, well, I'm glad to be able to clear that up and hopefully that's helpful to you.

Thank you very much for your phone call today. Yes. Goodbye. All right. God bless. 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341.

Looks like we've got about 18 minutes left on the program today. We have our phone system back in operation, as you can tell.

The reason we're not doing the Skype thing, though, is because I'm on Skype. And so we can't do two

Skype sounds at the same time, Skype calls same time. So we're not doing the

Skype thing. So you actually have to use the old time technology of the telephone.

877 -753 -3341 is the phone number. I'm very thankful that the phone system did arrive back in one piece and was able to be plugged in immediately.

And evidently, that phone number is the number that Mike in Canada called.

And Mike, it's good to get to talk to you. I hope that the Canadian Thought Police do not come busting into your room as you call and we talk about something religious, which will undoubtedly offend somebody.

You never know up here what's going to happen. Oh, man, I'm going to tell you. So go ahead and talk quietly if you want to.

I just want to say I'm a big fan of your ministry. I don't know if you remember this, probably not, but I was at your debate that you did up here with Shabir Ali a couple of months ago.

I was the guy who came up and gave you a hug. I don't know. Oh, so you really violated my

Scottishness there. Anyway, I wanted to talk about Jehovah's Witnesses and I don't know if you had, they love to go to Colossians 1 and I didn't know if you had a way to, what the best way is to deal with that, that passage with them.

Well, are you talking about their, their mis -utilization of the Greek term prototokos as first created?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's, that is a very, very important text.

And my, my suggestion to you is whenever you're in a conversation with, whether it's

Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, whoever it might be, and you know that they are going to have a particular direction that they are going.

Get to their favorite texts before they get there. Utilize them in context first and you will be in control of the conversation.

This is something that we, we taught people to do for years when we would go to the general conference, the

Mormon church, the Easter pageant in, in Mesa, you know what their favorite texts are and you get to them first, you address them in context, you demonstrate you're not just giving them a pre -memorized spiel, but you've actually looked at text, you have an understanding of the text, and that's how you control the conversation.

That's how you avoid what most people, what most people experience in those conversations, which is, yeah,

I talked to the Jehovah's Witness for two hours, but I don't feel like I got anywhere because we just talked about everything under the sun.

Normally that, that indicates that neither side actually controlled the conversation and had a direction that they were going.

The reason I would say get to Colossians 1 early is because if you walk through the text and you know where it's coming from, and in fact, if we had a hundred verse memorization system for dealing with Jehovah's Witnesses, which we probably should, we have one for dealing with Mormons, but if we had one, this would be one of the specific texts that I would want to specifically indicate would be one that you would want to memorize, because it is, if you have it memorized, if you've got memorized, maybe from 13 through 18 memorized, and if you're also familiar with some of the underlying terminology, look, someone can tell whether you're looking up a verse in the concordance of your

Bible or whether you're quoting it, and it carries weight if you have taken the time to honor the word, honor your

Lord, honor the truth, and honor them by memorizing the text. So may

I challenge many in the audience to be, and myself as well, to be better students of the word in memorizing that text and not to be so dependent, as many of us are, either upon a written text, or let's face it, for a lot of us that are listening to a webcast, we're geeks, and I've got

Greek and Hebrew and how many different translations on my Droid and my iPad and all the rest of this stuff, and it has,

I think, for many people diminished the idea of memorization of Scripture. But having said all that,

I apologize for the diversion there, but I would go there and I would start in verse 13,

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

And where the Jehovah's Witness, you got to realize immediately, they don't think this is about them to begin with.

They think this is about the anointed class. And I would emphasize immediately that the entire

Church at Colossae read these words as relevant to themselves, as relevant to their standing, their position, and that they have been transferred to the kingdom of His beloved

Son, and that they are the ones who have redemption. There isn't just one kind, you know, or a redemption for the anointed class and a different kind of redemption for the great crowd and so on and so forth.

And would emphasize those things. That's a good direction to go, or at least to lay the foundation of going there. Then with verse 15, you are going to have to deal with the issue of the translation because it says,

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. Now, the

New World Translation is going to understand what prototokos means, firstborn, in a particular way that is going to influence the translation of verses 16 and following.

Because as you know, they're going to say, for by Him, all, and then before every word, things, the word other has been inserted in brackets.

Now, it wasn't originally in brackets. It originally was just put directly into the text, but there was such a hue and cry about that, that the brackets were put in.

But their argument is that prototokos means the first created, the first created thing of all creation, and therefore, by Him, all other things were created.

So, they view this as what's called a partitive genitive, where it's referring to only a part of a greater whole.

So, what you have to be able to do is to say, now, what Paul is arguing against here are people, and you're going to have to actually go past Colossians 1, especially in the

Colossians 2, to demonstrate this is what he's arguing against. But he is arguing against people who are attempting to put

Jesus into a class of creator beings. By the second century, this was known as full -blown

Gnosticism, but in the first century, scholars normally referred to it as proto -Gnosticism, an early form of Gnosticism, where you have the idea already of dualism, the idea that that which is spiritual is good, that which is physical is evil.

And so, the proto -Gnostics viewed the idea that you have a good

God, and the good God would not have created the evil creation. And so, there were these intermediate beings, which eventually became known as eons, and they descend down from the good spiritual

God until you finally get far enough away from that God that you have a creature that's still very powerful, but it could create the evil world order.

And that becomes the demi -urge, the one that creates the physical world, which later Gnostics would actually identify as Jehovah God.

And so, Gnosticism was a very pliable religion. So, when it would encounter another religion, it would just make room in itself for the distinctives of the other faith, because it didn't have a concept of absolute truth or anything like that.

And so, what they were doing with Jesus is, obviously, he's very exalted, but he's not the true spiritual

God. He is this intermediate being, and many of them deny that Jesus had a physical body.

This is what lies behind 1 John. Anyone who denies Jesus to come to flesh is of the Antichrist, because how could he have a physical body?

If he has a physical body, then he's not truly pure and good. And so, they were called docetists, docine.

It seems that he had a physical body, but he didn't really have a physical body. And so, what they're doing is they're trying to find a place to fit

Jesus into their system, and they put him in this intermediate place.

And that's the very thing that Paul is arguing against. And yet, that's the very thing

Jehovah's Witnesses are doing. And so, what I would do is I would say, now, when we keep in mind the background of what

Paul is arguing against in Colossians, when he says in Colossians 2 .9, for in him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form, which, by the way, is mistranslated into NWT as well.

It says, for in him all the fullness of the divine quality dwells bodily, and there's not a

Greek lexicon on the planet that actually says that. But Paul is arguing, he is directly focusing against this belief, and he's saying all the fullness, the pleroma, which they considered all those intermediate beings, all the fullness of that which makes

God, God, dwells in Jesus Christ, somaticos, in bodily form. It really dwells in him.

This would be a slap in the face of the Gnostics. If we keep that in mind, then certainly when he begins to describe

Jesus, he's not going to do what you guys do, and say, well, actually he is the image of the invisible

God, the first created thing, for by him all other things were created.

That would be to agree with his opponents in placing Jesus in the very category that he is denying that he is in.

Instead, Paul exhausts the Greek language in using a whole series of prepositions by saying, by him all things created, in heaven and earth, visible and invisible, in the third thrones, dominions, rules, and authorities, all things created through him, for him, by him.

He is before all things. In him all things hold together. I mean, you could almost not come up with any other way of expressing the exhaustiveness of the creative activity of Jesus Christ and what is found in this text.

And the fact that they have to insert a word into the text that materially changes the meaning of the text demonstrates that they have not looked closely at the background of the term prototokos, that it does not mean the first created thing.

Israel, in the Greek Septuagint, is called God's prototokos. Well, obviously Israel was not the first thing that God created, but the nation of Israel was the nation that had preeminence in God's sight, that had the most special and unique relationship to God.

And I would make a connection in Paul's use here of prototokos with his use of monogamase in John, not his use, but John's use of monogamase in describing

Jesus as the unique son of God. Both refer to the unique, highly exalted position that is only

Christ's, the son's in relationship to the father. That's where I would go.

And Colossians is a great place. And you gotta understand that 99 .9

% of the Jehovah's Witnesses you're gonna be talking to have never encountered any

Christian who had any idea what the Greek term underlying first born in Colossians 1 .15

was, let alone how that relates to verses 16 through 17, let alone how that relates to Colossians chapter two or anything else.

And one of the consistent things that I have seen over the years in talking with former

Jehovah's Witnesses who've actually become Christians, not just former Jehovah's Witnesses, there's lots of them, but actually become

Christians is the fact that they encountered a believer who knew their

Bible and would not back down and actually showed a desire to not quote unquote

Bible bash with them, but to proclaim a consistent gospel message to them that was specifically designed so that they could understand it.

And that's really important. Okay, excellent. That's great actually knowing a lot of that, the background with the

Gnostics to be able to explain. Because I tried explaining the difference in the

Greek word first born, first created. And the first thing the guy said was, are you a Greek scholar? And I said, no.

He said, well then I can't really take your opinion on Greek. Right, right. Yeah, and be careful about that because if you want to claim that you actually know the language, make sure that you do.

By the way, there's a whole chapter on this in my book, The Forgotten Trinity, if you want to have a little more of the background and a number of the references that you can use in the

Old Testament to demonstrate Protodocas' meaning. But I'll just tell you a quick story. I was meeting with a Jehovah's Witness elder at a restaurant once.

And I made some comments. I think it was about Colossians 1. And I used some Greek.

And he said, oh, you read Greek? And I said, yes, I do. And he took out his New World Translation and his

Kingdom Interlinear. And he took out a piece of paper that he had folded in the front of his

Kingdom Interlinear. And you could tell it was sort of yellowed with age, a little faded. And he unfolded it and passed it across to me.

And he says, what does that say? And what he had done many years earlier is he had copied out a line of Greek from his

Interlinear. And he had just carried that around. And for all those years, at doorways and tables around the

Valley of the Sun in Phoenix, he had slid that over to people and no one had ever been able to read it before.

And so he had silenced many people. Now, just taking a line out of some place, out of context, especially if your handwriting isn't all that good, could be very tricky.

But I looked at it and I said, well, you actually have the wrong letter here at this particular point, but what it says is let no one deceive you with empty words of deception.

And it honestly looked like a snake had appeared on this guy's plate.

I mean, he just sat back eyes wide. And he said, no one has ever been able to read that for me.

And as we talked a little bit more, I gave him a paper that I had written on the scholastic dishonesty of the

Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, their misrepresentation of Ignatius in a Watchtower that came out back in the early 1990s.

And when he saw my name, he said, oh, James White, we know him. And I just stuck my hand out and said, yes, you do.

And he just about fainted. It was a very interesting encounter. So be very, very careful.

If someone says that to you, well, you're a Greek scholar, my response would be, does it take a

Greek scholar to accurately handle the information that is widely available to us as to the meaning of these particular words?

And if you hold to that standard, why do you use the New World Translation since there wasn't a single

Greek scholar on your translation committee? That might be a direction to go.

And another question I had, if I have time here is, as we were working through this section of scripture, obviously,

I was trying a few different things to kind of, obviously, this conversation went into whether Jesus was created or eternal.

I didn't really wanna get into the Trinity with him, but I was wearing a shirt with a guitar pick on it that said, pick

Jesus. So immediately he wanted to go to the Trinity when I answered the door. But I said, okay, well, is it your understanding then that a created being could say that, he is the image of the invisible

God? Could a created being saying, if you've seen the father, you've seen me?

And he said, well, Jesus was just a man. He went to Romans 5, where it talks about Adam's sacrifice and Jesus' sacrifice and said, see, equal sacrifice,

Jesus is just a man. So I said, so you could say that Adam, Adam could say, I am the image of the invisible

God. Adam could say, if you've seen me, you've seen the father. And to my surprise, the Jehovah's Witness said, yeah.

Yeah, you could say that. Yeah, that's pretty amazing. That's pretty amazing. I would have challenged him at that point and said, well, you're misunderstanding

Romans 5 because what Jesus does is not what Adam does. Adam loses all those things, but what we have in Jesus is much more than what we had in Adam.

So the concept of the corresponding ransom, which is part and parcel of their way of thinking, is not consistent with biblical terminology at all or with understanding

Romans 5 is about. But again, given that these people don't even believe Romans 5 is actually about them, I can understand why they might be confused about it.

But yeah, it is interesting to hear someone say something like that because that is amazingly far removed from anything that could be said of a mere creature, let alone an exalted creature,

Michael the Archangel, which is what they believe. But I would definitely recommend continuing along those lines because eventually that would lead them to a very inconsistent place.

Hey, I'm out of time for the program today. Thank you very, very much for your phone call. Thank you. All right, thanks for calling.

Thanks for everybody for your calls today. That makes doing these Skype casts that much easier for me, obviously, because it makes the time go quicker on this end.

So we thank you for listening. We'll be back, Lord willing, in Phoenix on our regular schedule next week.

And we'll be able to take phone calls then too. And also Skype calls and everything else.

So we'll see you then. Thanks for listening. God bless. ♪

I believe we're standing at the crossroads ♪ ♪ Let this moment slip away ♪ ♪

We must contend for the faith our fathers fought for ♪ ♪ We need a new Reformation day ♪ ♪

It's a sign of the times ♪ ♪ The truth is being trampled in a new age paradigm ♪ ♪

Won't you lift up your voice ♪ ♪ Are you tired of plain religion ♪ ♪ It's time to make some noise ♪ ♪

I'm no witness, but I'm a wittenberg ♪ ♪ I'm no witness, no

I'm staying down for the truth ♪ ♪ Won't you live for the Lord ♪ ♪ Cause we're pounding, pounding on wittenberg ♪

The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries. If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.

Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the

World Wide Web at aomin .org, that's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.