July 27, 2006

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From the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded
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Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the
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United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. Good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line. On a
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Thursday afternoon, I mentioned on the blog this morning that I was listening to an interview referred to me just a few days ago when
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I heard that, when I heard that, how's that?
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That's much better. There's a short in that thing. That plug does not like that thing at all.
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I just turned it a quarter turn and now all of a sudden no more boom type of stuff. Anyway, when
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I heard that Barry Lynn had interviewed John Shelby Spong, that was an interview
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I had to listen to for obvious reasons. And especially in light of the fact that I debated
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Barry Lynn on homosexuality and this took place after that. And I have to wonder, a couple of his comments, if they didn't have something to do with people at least like me if he wasn't thinking of me when he made them.
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And of course I'll be debating John Shelby Spong on the subject of homosexuality, same subject. And while the debate itself wasn't, or I'm sorry, the interview itself wasn't on the subject of homosexuality, it did come up a number of times.
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And it was primarily in reference to his book that came out, The Sins of Scripture.
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And we have listened to John Shelby Spong, we'll be listening to him some more in the future. Why? Well, obviously, since this is my webcast, we talk about things that I'm studying right now.
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It's fairly obvious. It's sort of like Rush Limbaugh, you know, he talks about it, I interest him. Secondly, I'm really lousy at talking about things that do not interest me.
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That's another, I think, important aspect of it. But more so than all of that, the primary reason is that I really think it is important to understand where these folks are coming from.
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They are a large group. I have never seen liberalism really, at least in this form, replicate itself long term.
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It's almost always deaf to the denominations that it takes over, even though you'd never hear them saying that, and Spong likes to present a very positive future for his progressive
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Christian movement, as he calls it. But it's important for us to understand why people believe the things they believe.
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You can't just simply roll your eyes and say, oh, that is just so utterly ridiculous, or that's just blasphemous.
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Okay, all of those things may be true, but when it's your kid coming home and his professor has been reading
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Spong's books and repeating Spong's stuff in class, how are you going to respond to it?
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You can roll your eyes all you want. That's not a response. And in fact, for many young people, that would be an admission you don't really have a response.
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And so we need to give an effective, meaningful, long -term response, one that doesn't just respond to one point, but to the entire worldview.
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We need to listen to what they're saying. And, you know, Spong is a good speaker.
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He knows how to be humorous. He knows how to use Scripture passages.
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He's not ignorant in any way, shape, or form. He's very close -minded to what the other side has to say, while claiming to be open -minded.
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I don't even know that he knows that. But we need to be able to hear. And here's where I think a lot of conservatives fall down.
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This is where I think we don't give as good a response as we could give.
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And that is, sometimes we are so turned off by the rhetoric. I mean, the very first question
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I'm going to play for you here is, it's almost demeaning. I mean, the whole response and attitude and idea is that people like you and I, who actually believe the
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Bible to be the Word of God and things like that, we're just intellectually inferior.
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We just are not nearly as bright as these folks. And it comes across very clearly.
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And I know that that's exactly what Bishop Spong believes. And that's exactly what he's going to believe when he walks into our debate.
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And I can't guarantee he's going to believe anything different when we leave, because he'd have to be listening to what I'm saying to come to any different conclusion.
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And I don't know that that's going to happen. I don't know that he's going to really hear what I have to say or anything else.
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And that's obviously not within my purview to determine one way or the other. But when we do hear these things, we tend to respond in such a way that we're not ourselves hearing what they're saying.
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They will frequently, for example, cite factual things. Many of the things that are said by Spong and Lynn in this interview are factually true.
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For example, Spong, pretty early on, is going to talk about Joshua being commanded to destroy the
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Amalekites. Okay? That's a factually true thing. That's a factually true statement.
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He's going to make references later on to the women in the Gospels, who, as he said, are invisible up until the point where the men run away.
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Which is only semi -true. There's actually reference to them and how they helped to support the ministry and things like that.
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But they'll say true things, and it doesn't do us any good to deny the truth of what they say.
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A lot of people, when they hear this kind of stuff, don't... Because you get the emotions going or whatever, you don't stop and go,
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Okay, that statement is true as far as it goes, but the connection being made by this individual and the conclusions being drawn are completely erroneous, and here's why.
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And that's what we need to be able to do. That's what we need to be able to do when we are given the opportunities, as rare as they may be, especially in media and things like that, to interact with these folks.
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And so, I don't play these things just simply to advertise the upcoming debate and conference, though that certainly is important as well.
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And I would encourage you that if you have been putting off making your arrangements for being there, to make those arrangements as soon as possible.
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Please remember that though the debate in Lynchburg is ongoing and will be taking place, and in fact,
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I'm not going to say much more about it today, but there are developments in that area, and they are, in my opinion, positive developments.
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I'd be watching the blog over this weekend or early next week for new information and major information on that subject.
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But even though that's definitely going to be happening and that's ongoing,
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I have asked that especially those who support this ministry and are blessed by what we do, recognize that no matter how positive that might turn out, we don't have any way of guaranteeing access to people to that debate.
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If most of the students from Liberty show up, there's not going to be room for people from outside. We can't guarantee access.
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We can't guarantee that you're going to be able to walk through the door. And so, we will be discussing the debate at the
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Pulpit Crimes Conference. And so, if you want to have the opportunity of talking to both
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Tom Askell and myself about these issues and about what's taken place in the past up to this point and the whole issue, that would be the place to be able to get hold of us and to do that.
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And in the process of discussing Pulpit Crimes and, of course, doing the debate with Bishop Spong, and that's what's going to be taking place at the beginning of November.
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So, keeping those things in mind, let's go ahead and jump into the interview here.
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And like I said, it starts off right off the bat, sort of in your face, but you'd sort of expect this.
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This is Barry Lynn's radio program, so we all know Barry Lynn. Today's guest is
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Bishop John Shelby Spong. He's the former Episcopal Bishop of Newark, New Jersey, a prolific author, the leader, really, of progressive
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Christianity, some say, as he writes such books as Rescuing the
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Bible from Fundamentalism, and his brand new book, The Sins of Scripture, just published by Harper San Francisco.
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Bishop, thank you very much for joining us. Barry, it's wonderful to be with you. Look, I think most people understand that the
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Bible, as we understand it, the Christian Bible, is a collection of works put together by the early church fathers, and they were all fathers, who took some texts and included them in this so -called canon of the
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Bible, and then essentially took other works that could have been included but said, no, let's throw that one out.
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So how, if we know that this is historically accurate in terms of the way the Bible was put together, how can anyone still believe that the
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Bible is literally accurate? Word for word. I didn't mean me,
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I meant my ears are bleeding. It's too stinking loud in the headsets. Instead of going, down, down, it stays loud, then
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I start trying to talk and there'd be no microphone over there. Okay, yeah,
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I'm sitting here, down, down, down! Okay, what did he just say?
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Oh yes, alright, so anyway, that's an amazing presentation of how the
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Bible was allegedly put together by Reverend Lynn there, that perpetuating the myth, and it is a myth, and it just demonstrates that,
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I'm sorry, Barry Lynn is not a scholar, he may have gone to some religious school and gotten himself a degree, but his exposure to original sources and to original study is very minimal, and that was demonstrated in our debate, when he threw out the standard argumentation on terms like arsonic coitus and things like that, and as soon as I throw back at him any type of rebuttal, he's lost.
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He had no idea where to go from there, because he'd only heard one side, he'd never listened to the other side, because these folks don't believe the other side has anything worth saying.
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Remember, that was the same year where we had both Stravinskas and Lynn do the proverbial faceplant routine in those debates, because they had no respect whatsoever for me individually, but for what
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I represent. They just didn't figure that anyone who was a Baptist from Arizona could have an IQ higher than a wet shoelace, and so they didn't prepare, they didn't read anything, they didn't do any fresh study, because they didn't figure that would ever be necessary.
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And so, anyway, this kind of presentation, that the can of scripture was somehow determined in smoke -filled rooms by a bunch of guys sitting around, picking and choosing, and throwing this one out, is, of course, baloney.
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Anyone who knows anything about the history of the early church knows that's simply absurd, and that it never happened, and if I were to have the opportunity of asking
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Mr. Lynn to back that up, all he'd ever be able to say is, well, all the scholars agree.
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Whenever you hear that, you know that someone really has no idea what in the world they're talking about, and he's later going to make reference.
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I'm sure that Lynn was real big on the Da Vinci Code stuff, because he's going to make reference to Mary Magdalene, Spong's going to even make reference to Mary Magdalene, and the relationship with Jesus, and all the rest of the stuff.
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But, of course, they're going to make reference to the Gnostic Gospels, and all the rest of the stuff that we've discussed so often on the blog.
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And here's a good reason, once again, why we need to understand the nature of the canon, the formation of the canon.
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Issues like that, it is coming right at you from the mouth of Barry Lynn.
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So, now listen to Spong's response. I think late in the Protestant Reformation, the Protestants got a little jealous, because the
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Roman Catholics declared that the Pope was infallible, and they wanted an equal authority, so they created a paper
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Pope, and they decided the Bible was inerrant. Now, let me just stop right there. The idea that that was the first time that someone had come up with this concept, that the
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Scripture is God speaking, that it's inerrant, that it is divine, that it exists on another level, again, is a commonly enough repeated assertion, but it's also just as ridiculous, historically speaking.
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The whole issue of inerrancy, and the use of a specific terminology, is one thing.
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The view of the Church in regards to the nature and authority of Scripture is completely different. And the idea that all of a sudden the
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Protestants decided that they needed an authority equal to what had come up with the
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Pope, which, by the way, again, even historically, that doesn't make any sense, because the infallibility of the
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Pope was a development long after the time of the Reformation. I mean, you're talking Vatican I there, so there's only like a 300 year difference.
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So, that sounds real good, especially when someone wearing a backwards collar throws that out there, but historically, it's absurd.
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It has no foundation and no meaning. It is not an intellectual position that's defensible. Now, in case you didn't hear that, he said, it is not an intellectual position that is defensible.
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And I really believe that John Shelby Spong believes that. I really believe that he believes it so much so that he is, in essence, a fundamentalist on that as an article of faith.
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Now, why do I emphasize that so much? Well, think about it. If you're absolutely fundamental on something as an article of faith, if, you know, when you're talking to a
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Christian, you're going to have to come up with something a little bit stronger and better than, uh, can
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God create a rock bigger and he can lift? To really get a Christian to start thinking about the existence of God, because the existence of God is a fundamental article of our belief.
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And so, if you don't throw anything out there that's meaningful, a Christian's not even going to blink at what in the world you're trying to say.
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In the same way, I think John Shelby Spong is so convinced of what he just said that it takes a tremendous amount to get him to even consider the possibility that someone who believes what he has rejected, and you need to, you're going to hear this,
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I can't think, I'm just thinking right now, I haven't listened to nearly as much
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Spong as I listen to, for example, Shabir Ali or something like that. But, in all the stuff
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I've listened to, and in the stuff that I've read so far, I can't think of a single presentation where he does not, at some point, make, uh, repeated and definitional reference to his childhood growing up in the
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South. He detests Southern culture. He detests white
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Southern Christians. He just, they're just, ah, the very definition of the opposite of where he's coming from.
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And so, that has made a statement like he just made, that it's not an intellectual position that could ever be defended.
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That's not because he's actually interacted with people who have provided an intellectual defense of it.
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That is a statement of faith for him. It is, it is fundamental to understanding where he's coming from, that what he's going to encounter in November can't possibly happen.
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That there can't be somebody who can actually think to some level of depth, maybe, maybe even a level of depth equal to his own, who could possibly believe those things.
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That's, that's exactly what's, it is a, that is a statement of faith. Not just an assertion of something.
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Not a conclusion he's come to. This is not the conclusion of a long period of study. This is, in point of fact, definitional to his, his worldview.
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As a matter of fact, the Bible is written somewhere between 1000 BCE and 135
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CE, or AD if you prefer. And, you know, it's a, it's a tribal story.
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It shows how God loves only the Jews in some parts, and hates everybody else. God certainly hates the
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Egyptians. Sends plague after plague on them. Kills the firstborn in every Egyptian household.
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Drowns the Egyptian army in the, in the Red Sea. And, and God is rejoicing about that.
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Well, that's not a very pleasant view of God if you happen to be an Egyptian. Now, I've heard that one. That's, that's a, a certain element of this presentation is, is sort of repetitive for him.
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It's part of his regular repertoire, shall we say. And I imagine we're going to hear certain elements of this, though it may be more focused given the topic of the debate than, than this particular element of it.
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But, but something tells me some of these phrases are going to appear again in November because I'm hearing them repeatedly and, and that probably gives me an indication.
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Anyway, the idea is, of course, whenever you hear
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John Shelby Spong talking about Scripture, you will experience the same frustration that I experienced in that he completely atomizes it.
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And, of course, that's the result of a lot of, of, of scholarship today, which atomizes the text.
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It breaks it up into pieces. It gives you the right to, to literally excise a phrase from a sentence.
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And those of you who've attended seminary and you read commentaries in the Old Testament, you know exactly how this works.
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Take a phrase from a sentence. Assign it to one particular group of people writing in a particular context.
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Take another phrase from the same sentence. And it's a little bit earlier, but it's a different group. And so you, you've got, this is the
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Yahwist element of this sentence. And this is the Elohist element. And now we've got the priestly element and the
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Deuteronomist element over here. And you've got your J -E -D -P and all the various permutations of that particular theology and not, well, it is a theology.
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It's based on theology. And the result is, you don't ever have to consider the entire message of a prophet or a book, let alone the
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Old Testament, because it is a given from the start that there is no such thing. And I would say that if you believe that there is such thing as a consistent message, that today you are in the vast minority within Christian scholarship.
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I would say you're still in the majority as far as believers are concerned, but you're in the vast minority of Christian scholarship today, where the vast amount of stuff that is being produced within what would be called
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Christian scholarship would tell you there is no consistency there. I mean, look at James D .G.
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Dunn and how popular he is in, well, even in very conservative circles.
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And yet, from his perspective and those who follow him, there's unity and diversity in the New Testament. And what does that mean?
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Well, there's only a certain number of things where there is a unity, and there's all sorts of diversity. And in reality, it's because Paul has his view here, and actually
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Paul sort of contradicts himself here, there, and everywhere. But then Peter has his thing, and the idea that you can do systematic theology, the idea that there is a revelation here, that you can determine
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God's truth by comparing scripture to scripture, that's extremely unusual in scholarship today.
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And that's not because it's unscholarly to believe those things, it's because there is a political correctness that determines what's going to be accepted and what isn't.
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It's not that these things can actually win the debate, it's that they've managed to shut the debate down.
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So that's, don't get me wrong there, I'm just bemoaning the fact that a large portion of quote -unquote scholarship in the world today, on many subjects, has become extremely politicized, and dissent is not allowed in many areas along those lines.
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And so this kind of stuff, extremely popular, and so the texts of scripture that explain
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God's destruction of the Egyptians, the idea of idolatry, the idea of the wrath of God, the idea that these people were under the wrath of God and it was just to do these things, can never be allowed in.
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It's amazing that later you're going to hear Spong saying that when we put God in a box and we think we can determine what
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God is all about, we're the ones engaging in idolatry. And yet, in reality, the biblical definition of idolatry is completely ignored and dismissed by both scholars and their commentaries in this particular interview.
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And then you have other things. You have God stopping the sun in the sky during Joshua's time, so Joshua will have some daylight time to kill more of his enemies, the
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Amorites. You have the prophet Samuel addressing
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King Saul and urging him to commit genocide. I think we ought to use the right word.
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Samuel says to King Saul, in the name of God, you're to go out and kill every man, woman, and child among the
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Amalekites. That's genocide, is what it is. And this is exactly what some Christian fundamentalists, though, would read similar, perhaps even less lurid passages in the
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Quran and say, see, this proves that Islam is a religion of murder and genocide and slaughter.
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Now let me comment on that. Uh... There is no question that we should be slow,
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I think, to be sort of digging around the text of the
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Quran looking for verses and throwing them out without really any knowledge of context, if you can even determine the context.
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That's the problem with the Quran is you don't have context. That's one of the biggest differences between the
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Quran and the Bible at this point, is that we have the context of God's comments concerning and God's command concerning the
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Amalekites. Way back in Genesis 15, way back when God made covenant with Abraham and told him he was going to send his descendants into a faraway land and they'd be there and then they would come back and they would be given possession of this land.
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One of the things that is said in that context, check it out in Genesis 15, is that the iniquity of the
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Amalekites, that is the people living in Canaan, was not yet full. Now we know that the practices and the religious idolatry and child sacrifice and the perversity of the religion of those people was incredible.
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Just absolutely positively incredible. So there's no question if you actually believe that there is a
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God and that he has a law and that you can violate that law, there's no question that God's wrath would justly come against these people.
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But again, once you can just tear the Old Testament apart and just pull out this text and pull out this text, and remember his book
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The Sins of Scripture is about how text of scripture can be used to hurt people.
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See, he saw the Bible being, in his mind, misused down in the south.
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And that's what he's always reacting against. You can detect it in almost everything that he says.
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Every religion starts with what I call a tribal God. And the marks of a tribal God is that a
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God has a favored people, which of course means everybody else is God's unchosen people.
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And that this God hates everybody the favored people hate. Now that's what I call tribal mentality.
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I went to the Democratic and Republican National Conventions this year, and I heard a lot of tribal religion come out of the mouths of our politicians in both parties.
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And everybody would end up the speech saying, God bless America. Senator Barbara Boxer was a little more provincial than that.
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She only wanted God to bless California. You know, Charlie Wrangel of New York only wanted
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God to bless New York. Remember that? We've played one of his interviews before, and he continued that by saying that since I live in nearby
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New Jersey, I was a little bit concerned, was God's blessing just going to stop on the border and not make it in New Jersey? So, you have at that point a you know, this is one of his sort of his favorite things to do.
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And did you notice, and I'm not picking on this, I'm just observing this, there was timing in how he did that.
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And he got Lynn laughing, and there was timing how he talked about Barbara Boxer. Almost any reference to Barbara Boxer will make me laugh too, but he did it in a certain way that you know, you can tell he's doing this.
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And that's one area where he's a better speaker than Lynn was.
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I really honestly think on that level that the debate that we're going to have will be better than that which we had with Barry Lynn.
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He's got a whole lot more going on that level than Lynn did. And so I think that's a pretty safe thing.
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But this idea of a tribal God, again, you have to ignore those promises.
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Going all the way back to Genesis 15, see once you can just cut it all up, then you don't need to listen to the covenant promise.
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You don't need to listen to the thing that your descendants will be as the stars of the sky and that all the nations will be blessed in you.
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You don't have to worry about that. See? And then you can make, you know, if I could treat
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Spong's writings the way he treats Moses, then I could make him just as mean and nasty and terrible and horrible as he makes
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Moses by just ignoring those things and not allowing a singular meaning to be communicated by his words.
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Obviously, the parallel doesn't fit overly well because you have multiple authors, but he's not allowing, because of his presuppositions, for the
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Christian position, which has been held by Christians all the way down through the years.
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We'll continue listening to this. We've only gotten, what, three minutes and 53 seconds into this, and I cut out the first 30 seconds.
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So, three and a half minutes in, and it's a 38 -minute discussion. So, I don't think we're going to get it all done today, and we do have at least one caller online, but we're going to take our break and be right back right after this.
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Under the guise of tolerance, modern culture grants alternative lifestyle status to homosexuality.
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Even more disturbing, some within the church attempt to revise and distort Christian teaching on this behavior.
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In their book, The Same -Sex Controversy, James White and Jeff Neal write for all who want to better understand the
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Bible's teaching on the subject, explaining and defending the foundational Bible passages that deal with homosexuality, including
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Genesis, Leviticus, and Romans. Expanding on these scriptures, they refute the revisionist arguments, including the claim that Christians today need not adhere to the law.
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In a straightforward and loving manner, they appeal to those caught up in a homosexual lifestyle to repent and to return to God's plan for His people.
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The Same -Sex Controversy, Defending and Clarifying the Bible's Message About Homosexuality.
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Get your copy in the bookstore at AOMin .org. This portion of the dividing line has been made possible by the
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Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. The Apostle Paul spoke of the importance of solemnly testifying of the gospel of the grace of God.
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The proclamation of God's truth is the most important element of his worship in his church. The elders and people of the
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Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church invite you to worship with them this coming Lord's Day. The morning
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Bible study begins at 9 .30am and the worship service is at 10 .45pm.
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Evening services are at 6 .30pm on Sunday and the Wednesday night prayer meeting is at 7pm.
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The Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church is located at 3805 North 12th Street in Phoenix.
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You can call for further information at 602 -26 -GRACE. If you're unable to attend, you can still participate with your computer and real audio at PRBC .org
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where the ministry extends around the world through the archives of sermons and Bible study lessons available 24 hours a day.
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And welcome back to the dividing line. We are listening to an interview between Barry Lynn and I would imagine most folks know who
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Barry Lynn is. The head of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.
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Also, I don't know what his situation is right now as far as if he is still an
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ACLU board member. I think that he quite possibly might be.
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I don't know. He certainly is way out there on that level of things.
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He is interviewing on his radio program John Shelby Spong. His book The Sins of Scripture came out in 2005 as I recall.
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They are having a little discussion and we are listening in and responding to it, even though evidently we should not have the intellectual acumen to be able to even understand what they're saying.
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But we're trying to do our best as we muddle along in our poor fundamentalist fog.
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So we continue on. Oops. And one of the great tragedies of our humanity today is that we haven't been able to escape our tribal identity and now religion is deeply wrapped up with tribal identity.
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It's Osama bin Laden invokes God when he sends his attack planes into the World Trade Center. But George W.
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Bush invokes God when he sends his missiles and bombers on the people of Iraq. In fact, in the
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President's case is even something stranger. As you undoubtedly remember, Pope John Paul II, of course, condemned the invasion of Iraq in the strongest possible terms that I recall any modern
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Pope ever using, saying that the individuals responsible would have to face God and explain their actions.
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And then a few days after that, of course, the President brought in some of our friends who might loosely be called members of the religious right to essentially go to the
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White House, meet with the President, and say well, we've looked at the matter biblically also, and we just think the
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Pope is wrong. Go right ahead. Well, you know, we do pick and choose a lot.
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Even Roman Catholics pick and choose a lot among the Pope's many pronouncements. Statistics show, for example, that Roman Catholics practice birth control in this country in exactly the same proportions as Jews, Protestants, and non -believers.
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So I don't know who the Pope is influencing. But you know, those are what we've got is that religion is serving a very narrow agenda of some of our people.
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I grew up in the South, Barry. Okay, here we go. Here comes the inevitable explanation of what really drives
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John Shelby Spahn. I think if you'll listen to this and you'll consider where he's coming from, then even in the debate in November, you will better understand what he's saying, better understand why he's motivated to say what he's saying, and maybe even understand why
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I respond to him in the way that I do at certain points. So let's zero in on this one.
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And when I was in the South, the Democratic Party was solidly in control of the South. The only trouble was no black people could vote.
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And today, that Democratic Party has become a solid Republican Party because the
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Democratic Party is by and large a black party in the South today and racism is still at the heart of that.
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I think the religious right today is nothing but the George Wallace vote of yesterday with a little perfume.
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They don't want to be overtly racist, so they say we're not against black people, we're in favor of family values.
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But you get them to talk about the gay issue and all that racism and all that hatred comes out all over again.
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It's just a different victim because they think it's more socially acceptable to be anti -homosexual than it is to be anti -black.
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Now, does he catch that? You may wonder why I'm not overly optimistic that Bishop Spong is going to be listening real carefully to what
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I have to say or anything else because I think if I understand what he was just saying, he thinks that and certainly, again,
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I'm sure he really does believe this but that I'm just back I'm just sort of a Jim Crow throwback
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I'm down there being a redneck in Georgia or Texas or Alabama someplace and I just don't like them colored people.
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That's, I guess what his picture of a conservative theologian would be, especially one who would say, well, you know what?
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The Bible very clearly says that God has a positive, clear presentation about the relationship of male and female.
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It's a creative decree. It is consistent from beginning to end and the
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Bible shows the pain and the destruction that comes forth when that relationship is abused and when it is distorted all through the
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Old Testament we see this happening and it is a measurement of the depravity of man when
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God's law concerning sexual behavior is violated and there are clear statements that say that homosexuality is outside of God's will.
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It is contrary to God's law. It is self -destructive. It is an element, an indication of man twisting the creator -creation relationship and demanding for himself the right to define his own creative nature over against God's clear purposes,
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Romans chapter 1. And so for someone to say all of that automatically requires them to have a lower
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IQ than Bishop Spong has and to be filled with hate. Now of course one thing that crossed my mind as I was listening to this as I was writing this morning and I happened to have heard this particular section twice the same thought crossed my mind both times and that was who's really hating these individuals?
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This is going to have to come out a number of times in debate. If the data I've seen is correct and I'm going to be doing more study on this and I want to get some more specific information on this, but if the data
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I have seen is correct the average lifespan of the male homosexual and this can be broken down on a number of different ways, long -term partners and non -long -term partners and blah blah blah, but bottom lining the whole thing the average lifespan of the homosexual male is 53 years.
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Now for the rest of the population it's 73 to 74 years and we go nuts about things like second -hand smoke and it might take one or two years off but we can't say anything about something that will take 20 years off of someone's life.
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Well because it's their choice, see. I would imagine a lot of other behaviors are too but is it truly showing someone love to encourage them in a behavior that will in all likelihood end their life 20 years earlier than it would otherwise?
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Is that showing love? I'm not even talking biblically, I'm just on a social level.
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These folks don't have any basis for defining love anyway, do they? God hasn't defined what love is.
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It's obvious that in the world view of these individuals they're the ones who determine what is going to be defined as loving and everything else and they hate the idea that they would actually have to submit themselves to definitions provided to them by God.
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They want to provide those definitions themselves and so when you listen to this and you hear this stuff about hatred
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I don't know if this will come out in the debate but I hear a lot of hatred toward God's word.
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I mean later on he's going to talk about there's a part of the Bible about Hosea and that love is just wonderful there and there's some things in the
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Gospels that are just great but I'm sorry that's again you're taking three sentences out here and ignoring the previous sentence and the sentence that comes afterwards and somehow thinking well see
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I'm finding good things in the Bible. I see a lot of hatred for God, hatred for God's law, hatred for the idea that God could define what's right and wrong and that's going to come out especially in their comments about the relationship of Christianity to other religions.
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Yeah I mean it really does seem that in the midst of a political season that for a brief time at least looked like the conservative value voter had swung the election.
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I think most of that nonsense has been pretty much debunked now but you find people on the left and the right tending to reduce most of the political dialogues we're having in the country to kind of proof texts from the
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Bible. I mean they've given, I'm all in favor of values as you are certainly yourself and talking about values but that doesn't necessarily require an additional tag on of your favorite verse from the
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Bible to support your view and then the next guy's going to use it to support his view. Well it's interesting.
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My favorite text in the Bible are words attributed to Jesus in the 10th chapter of St. John where Jesus states as his purpose
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I've come that you might have life and that you might have it abundantly. I think we can take that and create a value system.
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Now stop right there. Aside from all the political stuff they're talking about isn't it interesting how the folks on the left can get to talk about that all they want and no one ever questions that but if anybody on the right does.
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Anyway, well we already know about how that works with Barry Lynn but he's not really subject to any of that kind of stuff but anyhow we can create a value system out of John chapter 10.
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Oh no, no, oh I'm sorry. No we can't create a value system out of John chapter 10. We can only create a value system out of a particular phrase from John chapter 10 because we can't create a value system out of say a passage that Lynn's going to bring up here in a moment.
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John 14 6. No we can't do that but we can create a value system out of one phrase isolated from its context and isolated from the intention of the original authors and even though he's going to try to say later well we need to understand what the original authors said and you know the context they're in.
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Yeah but then if you actually allow everything they say to be taken into account the resultant meaning is going to be quite different than what you've come up with and so why does this one text get to be made a value system and if it's not a revelation from God then why should anyone else care about what you think this text says?
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Why should they care about your value system? Are you just simply going to say well you know
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I'm going to create my value system and as a result I'm going to just try to get other people to agree
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I'm just going to love people into my value system. Is that how it's going to work? Well what happens when the
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Al -Qaeda value system comes along and blows up your nice loving value system? You know there's a little reality issue that sort of comes in along those lines.
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Because anything that enhances the life of an individual has to be good and anything that diminishes the life of an individual has to be evil.
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Now, there you go. I can pretty much give you a 98 % promise that you will hear that statement in November.
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You're going to hear exactly what we just heard in November. But what does it mean to add to life?
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What does it mean to value life? What does any of that actually mean?
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How do you determine that? It seems obvious to me that Bishop Spong would think that to live as I live
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I am detracting from my life by not allowing myself certain things because of my fundamentalist interpretation of the
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Bible. And obviously he feels that people can engage in homosexual relationships if that adds to their life.
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But you see, they get to determine that. It is self -referential. God has not given us any means of knowing what adds to a person's life.
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That's totally up to you. This is a very individualistic concept. As if God doesn't speak to all of mankind.
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He only speaks to a portion of mankind. Well, we'll continue with that because I really think it is important, especially for those of you who are going to be attending the debate.
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If you listen to these programs we're going to be doing, and you listen to what he's saying, and you've got his mindset down, as I certainly will, you're going to hear better.
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You're going to hear my responses better. The whole thing is going to make more sense to you. So that's why we do this kind of stuff.
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And even if you aren't going to be there, unfortunately this man's books are widely distributed in the educational system.
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I can guarantee you that anyone who wrote a book responding to it, their books would not be widely distributed in the educational system.
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And that would be done with prejudice. There is gross bias in the educational system and in the systems that control that system.
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And so I've had many people say, yeah, I ran into Spong's stuff when
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I was talking with such and such a person, and my professor gave this to me, and I'm so glad that you've been discussing this and talking about this and responding to this, because I just couldn't find much else, and so on and so forth.
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So we will continue on with that, but we have a phone call to deal with, and so let's go ahead and do that.
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And we're going to be going all the way up to Tim in Oregon. Hi, Tim. Hey, Dr. Wade.
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How are you doing? Doing good. Hey, thanks for taking my call. That Spong stuff is pretty scary.
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The thing that's the most scary is when you hear him talk, it's like you're listening to your grandpa.
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You want to go sit on his knee. Something like that, you know? And that kind of creeps me out. Well, given the subject of our debate,
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I would not suggest sitting on his knee, personally. No, definitely not. I don't know if that would really go well. But anyway,
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I had a really quick question for you. Hopefully it's really quick. No, I know where you're going, and no, it's not, which is why
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I left at least 10 or 11 minutes for the conversation. Okay, the question is Matthew 24 -36, and I've been dealing with some
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Jehovah's Witnesses, and some of the material I'm reading, and they understand that where it says, no one knows except for the
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Father when the Son will return, and they understand that. What we say about Jesus, well,
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Jesus had two natures. But they come about it from the point of the
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Holy Spirit. They say, well, if only the Father knows and does not the Holy Spirit know, and if the
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Holy Spirit doesn't know, then is the Holy Spirit not God? A couple things.
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First of all, if they actually do understand what you just said, you must have explained it to them, because they ain't going to get that from their literature.
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Is that what's happened? Did you take the time to explain that to them, as far as the Son part? There was something in here, yeah, this little pamphlet
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I have, What Does the Bible Really Teach? I thought that was cute. It says,
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Jesus says that the Father knows more than the Son does. If Jesus were part of Almighty God, however, he would know the same facts as the
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Father. So then the Son and the Father cannot be equal. Yet some will say, Jesus had two natures. Here he speaks as a man.
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But even if that were so, what about the Holy Spirit? Really? That's not the
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Should You Believe in the Trinity booklet. No, this is 2005, What Does the Bible Really Teach?
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I was just giving this the other day. Really? So the whole title is, What Does the
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Bible Really Teach? Not about the Trinity, just What Does the Bible Really Teach? It's about a couple hundred pages long.
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It's just a little paperback. Really? And it's from the Watchtower Society? Yep, and it's copyright 2005.
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It says 2006 printing. Need to get ahold of that. Maybe well, unfortunately most of the district conventions are now over, but anyone listening audience who has access to an extra copy of that,
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I would like to be able to take a look at it because I have been to a district convention since, oh goodness,
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I actually attended one in Phoenix the year that they put out the Reasoning from the
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Scriptures book, and we grabbed that one down in Tucson, but I'd like to take a look at that one because that is rather interesting that they would make that kind of a statement because first of all,
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I bet you Greg Stafford and some of the folks that follow him hear you read that or they read it themselves and just rolled their eyes because that's just not the normal way that they would respond to that.
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They would normally, the better Jehovah's Witnesses would stay focused upon the relationship of the divine human in Christ or something like that.
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They wouldn't just simply make that kind of a statement. Well, okay, but what about the Holy Spirit?
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As if that somehow is a meaningful response to that particular issue. So that's quite interesting.
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Well, I think the answer is fairly straightforward, however, at that point, and that is there is no discussion of the
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Holy Spirit in this text at all. And so to say well, if you don't mention the
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Holy Spirit, that means you're denying this knowledge of the Holy Spirit. I mean, given the role of the
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Spirit in Scripture, and especially what would the disciples have understood in regards to the
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Spirit of Yahweh, the relationship of the Spirit to the
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Father, there's no reason to even raise the question at this point in regards to the
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Spirit. And so to even throw that kind of an argument out is rather vacuous, because it's introducing a subject that the text itself is not addressing.
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The text never says the Spirit does not have knowledge of these things. And it begs the relationship of the
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Father and the Spirit in regards to who knows the innermost thoughts of man but Spirit, and Paul then says, and so who knows the innermost thoughts of God but the
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Spirit of God, and when he talks about the intimacy of the relationship that we have with God through the indwelling presence of the
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Holy Spirit and things like that. So that would be where you'd I mean, if you really want to have a discussion of what does the
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Spirit know in regards to His relationship to the Father, those would be the texts you would go to, not to a text like this, where the whole point is that he's having to the
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Lord Jesus here is having to deal with the disciples who constantly are raising this issue given the traditions that they had imbibed concerning the nature of the kingdom, the overthrow of the
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Romans, the nature of Messiahship and all the rest of this stuff. He's constantly having to deal with that.
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And by the way, they still don't get the message. I mean, according to Acts at the Ascension Is it time now?
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I mean, they still haven't gotten it. So it had to be something that this probably wasn't the only time that this particular discussion even came up.
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So this would not be the text to go to to try to raise those issues. It's very interesting to, and that's why
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I do want to get hold of that material that you mentioned. It's very interesting to me and one of the reasons is
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I'm not sure if we've discussed this before, or if you've heard the program I've discussed it, but in 98 I presented a paper at the
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Evangelical Theological Society National Meeting on Greg Stafford and how the
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Society deals with individuals in its midst to try to put forward an apologetic defense of the
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Watchtower Society. And I said how they treat Stafford is going to very much signal how major changes are in the
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Watchtower Society in Brooklyn right now. And I mentioned I think at the beginning of the program either last week or at some point or the last time that Greg Stafford has announced that he's going to start attending
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Kingdom Hall again. He had not been attending Kingdom Hall. And it seems to me, and again
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I want to look at this more fully but that kind of a what you quoted to me tells me that as I listen to that, it almost sounds to me like they are purposefully distancing themselves from some of the methods of defense that Stafford and his movement have created.
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Maybe they consider that to be too highbrow for publication, too complex for people.
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I don't know. How much do the writers in Brooklyn know what Stafford is saying?
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I don't know. Is that reflected in the some will say? Well if it is, then why isn't a better response given to it?
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It would be wonderful to be a little mouse in the corner of the writing sections in Bethel headquarters in Brooklyn but we don't get that opportunity.
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We've got to look at these things in hindsight. It's interesting to me that they would give that kind of a presentation because most
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Jehovah's Witnesses that I know of would not respond that way. And so even if they are responding to you that way, something would tell me that they're not understanding what you meant about two natures at all and why that would even be relevant.
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I can't believe that they really would begin to understand that at all. Now, did we talk, you and I had talked about the
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J documents? Yeah, we did talk about that. I was on a call before, yeah. And so you also called Issues Etc yesterday.
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No. Oh, someone else heard about that then. Because I was on Issues Etc yesterday and a caller called in and said that he had heard me talking about, and I just assumed it was the caller.
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So I guess it was someone who just caught the dividing line, heard me talking about the J documents, and called the
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National Issues Etc program yesterday when I was on to ask me about it. So I hopefully was able to help them, and I hope to have a link to that material, that information, in the not -too -distant future put on the blog.
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So I've actually got someone working on that right now. Great. That's good stuff. So now you're continuing this conversation.
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How many meetings have you had? I've actually had one with the one that's a relative of our family.
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And then the other day, this just kind of happened upon me. Jehovah's Witnesses haven't come to our neighborhood in like over a year.
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Probably because I told them to get lost last time. But this time I was more prepared because of my own research with this family member and stuff.
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This nice family just came to our door the other day. Just a mother and her kids and no husband.
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And they just tried to show me a few things. Then I came back and showed her from Hebrews 1 and Psalm 102.
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And then I showed her from John 12, 41 and Isaiah 6, 1. And she was kind of like, uh...
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She handled it well. She wasn't quite sure how to talk about it. She asked me, what exactly are you trying to say by it?
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So I explained to her that I'm trying to say that Jehovah is broader than just the Father. We both agree that Jehovah's the
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Father. I'm saying that the New Testament identifies... uses the name
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Jehovah of at least two individuals that you would recognize are not the same person.
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You're introducing... I fully understand. Did she then come back with this? She handed me this booklet and asked,
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I'm wondering what you think about this. And she gave it to me and asked me if I'd read it. I'm like, yeah.
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Yeah, sure. Cool, I'll put it in my library. Yeah, you bet. They're going to come back tomorrow.
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She's going to come back with her husband. Ah, okay. I don't want to inundate her. When I talked to my family member,
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I had prepared some stuff to show her and I talked to her for two and a half hours and she was crying for mercy at the end.
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She was like, no more! Yeah, yeah. You've got to pray for wisdom to know exactly...
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You know, and you can't control that situation. The Holy Spirit of God has got to do that.
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You don't know what that person's experience with the society is right now. You just don't know.
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So you just have to try to be as faithful as you possibly can be in that context. I definitely pray that the
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Lord will give you the opportunity to meet with them more than once and to give a good testimony to them. Yeah, absolutely.
57:57
All right, thank you, sir. All right, God bless. Thanks for calling. Bye -bye. Perfect timing on that one,
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I would say, as the music comes up in the background. So, yes, we will definitely remember to pray for Tim in Oregon as he speaks with Jehovah's Witnesses.
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The God will be glorified and he will be pleased to show himself mighty in opening their hearts and their minds and communicating that truth to them.
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Next Tuesday, Lord willing, yes, we'll be back here. We'll continue with the discussion between Barry Lynn and John Shelby Spong.
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If you can handle that, you need to know what these folks are saying. They've got the ears of the people around us.
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We want to reach them. We need to know how they're thinking. We'll see you then. God bless. Write us at P .O.
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Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the
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World Wide Web at aomin .org. That's a -o -m -i -n -dot -o -r -g. Where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.