Radio Free Geneva: A Study of Flowers!

Mighty Fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing.

I don't like Calvinists because they've chosen to follow John Calvin instead of Jesus Christ. I have a problem with them, they're following men instead of the word of God.

Our helper he amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing.

He died for all, those who elected were selected.

For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe.

His craft and power are great and armed with cruel hate.

Well, first of all, James, I'm very ignorant of the reformers. On earth is not his equal.

I think I probably know more about Calvinism than most of the people who call themselves Calvinists.

Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing.

But God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever.

Were not the right man on our side, the man of God's own choosing.

Ladies and gentlemen, James White is a hyper -Calvinist. Now whatever we do in Baptist life, we don't need to be teaming up with hyper -Calvinists.

You ask who that may be, Christ Jesus it is he.

But I don't understand the difference between hyper -Calvinism and Calvinism. It seems to me that Calvin was a hyper -Calvinist.

Right, I don't think there is typically any difference between Calvinism and hyper -Calvinism. Lord Sabaoth his name.

Read my book. From age to age the same. And he must win the battle.

And now, from our underground bunker deep beneath Bruton Parker College, where no one would think to look.

Safe from all those moderate Calvinists, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and re -read

George Bryson's book, We Are Radio Free Geneva! Broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to save for his own eternal glory.

Well howdy friends, it's nice to have you on Radio Free Geneva today, it really is.

You know, over the years people have said things to me that have been very hurtful.

They've said that I'm not nice to people sometimes, especially on Radio Free Geneva.

So today, today is going to be a very nice Radio Free Geneva. It's going to be so nice.

How nice is it going to be? It's going to be so nice that we are going to have a study of flowers on Radio Free Geneva today.

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. A beautiful day in the neighborhood. Hey, hey, dude, wrong show.

Okay? Won't you be mine? Wrong show. Won't you be mine? And besides that, you're dead.

Go away. Sorry about that interruption folks. Somebody in the neighboring studio thinking back on the past,

I guess. Won't you be my neighbor? Anyway, we're going to have, in fact,

I have put together a presentation for you today called A Study of Flowers.

Can we show that, Mr. Producer Man? Can we see?

A Study of Flowers on a Very Kind Radio Free Geneva.

And please notice, I also wished everyone a really nice day. So we're going to be very kind today.

And you may be asking, well, why would we be studying flowers? Well, first of all, you'll notice that I have flowers on my bow tie today.

And flowers are very nice things. But it seems that flowers have great theological importance too.

And so let's start off with the favorite flower of everyone who likes

Radio Free Geneva. And that is the tulip. Aren't those beautiful? Look at that field of beautiful, colorful tulips.

But there's something I want you to notice about those beautiful tulips.

They're all growing out of the soil of the ground. The soil of the ground.

As I said, as we're going to discover as we look at three different flowers today, every letter in every flower has theological significance.

So that when we look at that picture of those tulips, those truly beautiful tulips grow in the soil.

And soil begins with the letter S, which represents the sovereignty of God.

Now, what that means is a truly beautiful tulip is a tulip that begins with the sovereignty of God.

And, of course, back when the Synod of Dort met that formulated these points, not in the specific

English acrostic of tulip, of course, but when they formed these points, that was sort of a given, even though Melina had come along and Arminius, as I discovered recently, was influenced by Melina and things like that.

But still the point is it was pretty much a given. And so that's not one of the points, but it needs to be always recognized that a real beautiful tulip will only grow out of the soil of God's sovereignty.

And so when we look at the scriptures, we have to start with the recognition that, well, the

Bible does teach this thing. As unpopular as it is today, it does teach to God's sovereign over all things.

He says he does whatever he pleases in the heavens and upon the earth. In Psalm 135, 6, even the pagan king

Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel chapter 4 recognized that no one can stop his hand. When he acts, no one can stop him.

And as we saw just a few weeks ago on the program, it may have been one of those programs, and I was being a little snippy, a little unkind.

I did read through Psalm 33, and Psalm 33 makes it so plain that while men plan in their hearts to do things, it's

God's purpose that will be established. And in fact, God's the one that's described in Ephesians chapter 1 as the one who works all things after the counsel of his will, even to the point where he's the one that sends

Joseph to Egypt through tremendously difficult circumstances. And he's the one that brings the

Assyrians against Israel, and yet it's all his purpose. And in fact, when we look at the cross, it's very, very clear that everything that happens there was a part of God's predestination.

So that soil, that sovereignty, that free kingship of God, very, very important right at the beginning.

But of course, once we see the soil, then we need to look at the tulip itself.

And everybody knows the tulip acrostic, and it's come in for some hard times recently, to be honest with you.

There's a lot of folks, even some folks that would say that they're friends of it, that have been a little bit unkind to it, and saying that we need to come up with something else.

But you know what? I still like the tulip. And I like the tulip for a couple reasons.

First of all, it's easy to remember, and it flows. In fact, there's a logical progression from each letter to the next letter.

And as we're going to see when we look at the other two flowers today that other people have suggested, in case you're wondering, we're going to look at roses, and we're going to look at poinsettias.

Yeah, there is an I in there somewhere. We're going to look at both flowers that have been suggested just recently as alternatives, as better alternatives to the tulip.

But unfortunately, what we're going to discover is there's absolutely no flow in those flowers at all.

They don't – one point does not lead to the next point, does not lead to the next point. But only in our beloved tulip do we really get that kind of flow.

So let's take a look at the tulip. That first letter, T, is total depravity, total depravity.

And what people don't like about total depravity is they'll say, well, it could be misunderstood.

It could be understood as saying that we're as bad as we could be. Well, here's the problem with when people are saying, well, it could be misunderstood.

Well, actually, any element of Christian teaching could be misunderstood by someone if they're not taught correctly.

And so when people say, well, we want to change this, we don't like limited atonement because it could be misunderstood, the reality is that we need to teach what each of these points means in a certain context, and therefore the whole idea of changing it just because someone might, out of ignorance, misunderstand it, well, that doesn't really change anything, does it?

I mean, anybody could misunderstand the doctrine of the Trinity or the cross or all sorts of things.

You need to understand it as it has been presented and as the authors or people who are promoting it intend it to be understood.

So I don't care too much about that. Total depravity does not mean that we're as bad as we can be.

It doesn't even say that. It does mean that the totality of man's being is depraved, that every aspect of man's existence, physically, hence death and disease, but also mentally and spiritually, that sin has impacted every single aspect of man's being.

It also includes within it the resultant inability of man to do good.

Now, is that a biblical teaching? It most certainly is. It most certainly is. It's amazing that people will emphasize by very special argumentation, well, you know, the

Bible wouldn't tell us to do this if we didn't have this capacity. But let's keep something in mind.

The direct teaching of the Bible on the subject of man's inability is tremendously clear.

It's tremendously clear. There's more said in the Gospel of John about what man cannot do than about what he can do.

Over and over again, we have God being able to do things, Jesus being able to do things, but man not being able to do things.

No man is able to come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. No man has the capacity.

This is a statement that's made directly, and I don't want to offend anybody here, but it does seem to me that a lot of folks who don't like the tulip and don't like that tea, they don't do much exegesis of these particular passages.

And I'm sure that's just an oversight on their part, but we definitely would like to see some serious exegesis of passages like Romans 8, where Paul says that the one who's according to the flesh, he can't even submit himself to the law of God.

He's not capable. He doesn't have that capacity to do that. We'd like to see some exegesis of those texts and far more effort taken in answering those texts than in trying to establish some other concept.

But we don't have a lot of time today because, well, tulip, you can get five points, but poinsettia, that's a big flower.

So it's going to take us some time. So total depravity, we have the soil of God's sovereignty.

Now we have the depravity of man. He's enslaved to his sin. He's spiritually dead.

He's constantly in rebellion against God. All of man's existence has been impacted by sin.

So that outside of taking out that heart of stone and giving a heart of flesh, there will never be a positive choice for God.

There will never be true repentance. And so the next flow is logically from that. If you have the sovereignty of God, you have the total depravity of man, then election, the actual positive action of God to choose to bring men unto himself, that election has to be specific and it has to be unconditional.

What does that mean? Well, it's not conditioned upon God looking down the corridors of time and seeing what men will do.

It couldn't be because that would deny the soil of God's sovereignty and that would deny the total depravity of man because it would assume that man has the capacity of doing things that are good in God's sight even when he remains in sin and spiritual death.

And so the electing grace of God, the choice that God makes to bring people unto himself, it has to be unconditional.

It cannot be based upon man fulfilling conditions. Instead, it has to be unconditional, which means it's completely free on the part of God.

He does not do this based upon seeing man fulfilling certain conditions that he lays out.

It is the free act of God. He chooses whom he will choose freely apart from any fulfilled condition on the part of man.

You would think for people who are so concerned about libertarian free will that they would first and foremost be concerned about God's libertarian free will.

But it's interesting, many people who are big on libertarian free will of man, when it comes to what

God has libertarian free will about, well, he's pretty much just limited to having libertarian free will about, well, maybe which feasible world to actuate.

Really, when you think about it in the common perspective that people have where God's just looking down the corridors of time and seeing what's happening,

I don't really know what free will choices God has other than maybe controlling tsunamis or earthquakes, something like that, just stuff in the natural realm.

But when you think about it, unconditional election is very important for protecting the actual free will of God himself.

And I would just suggest that maybe when we think about it, unconditional election really protects the freedom of God and that only a

God who has libertarian free will and can actually exercise it is really worth worshiping. I mean, if you really think that libertarian free will is what makes someone human, how could

God have something less than what man has? But again, not a lot of time today, not a lot of time today. So the next one, of course, limited atonement.

Everybody dislikes limited atonement, not me. I don't even dislike the phrase.

Well, I understand why someone might misunderstand it, but again, I misunderstand various forms of mathematical formulae and things like that, and that doesn't mean there's something wrong with them, calculus and things like that.

So limited atonement simply means that atonement, the atonement that is actuated by Jesus Christ, effectively accomplished by Jesus Christ, is limited to the decree that the father has had in regards to who he's going to elect to salvation, that there's nothing wasted.

There's no disharmony between the father and the son, and that the atonement actually accomplishes what the father, son, and spirit intended to accomplish, that it's not just a peanut butter atonement.

You just throw it out there and Jesus dies uselessly on behalf of large numbers of people that God has not decreed to save.

It's simply a statement of the perfection of the atonement and the accomplishment of the intention of the atonement that it is perfect in all that it does.

I'm in a little danger here because, again, we want to be very kind today. We want to make sure everyone has a good day today, even after watching

Radio Free Geneva. And so the danger is I might start preaching, but I just want to make sure people understand that when you really think about it, what we're saying in limited atonement is that Jesus actually succeeded in what the father asked him to do, and that was to provide a perfect atonement in behalf of everyone who's united to himself.

And given unconditional election, that's the elect of God. And so may

I suggest to our friends who like other kinds of flowers that you might want to think just a little bit about your doctrine of atonement and what you're really saying with it.

And I just ask you, are you really comfortable with the doctrine of atonement where Jesus is trying to save but can't?

He tries, tries real hard, but he can't do it. Is that really the kind of flower that you want to promote?

That's one of the questions we would ask. And then we have the eye of the tulip is irresistible grace.

And people say, I don't like that, because it sounds like God's forcing people to be saved. But what irresistible grace really is saying is that God can raise dead sinners to spiritual life.

And that in point of fact, there is nothing that Lazarus could have done to keep himself in the grave.

And there's nothing that those dry bones and the valley of dry bones that Ezekiel saw could have done to stop the sovereign

God from raising them to spiritual life. All it is is a recognition that the power of God that brings his elect people to spiritual life is absolutely effective.

And it's not synergistic. It's not dependent upon man's cooperation.

And I'll be perfectly honest with you. It's hard for me to understand why any believer who knows the depth of the sin in his own heart would have any problem whatsoever in confessing that we were spiritually dead and it was

God alone who saved us and that that power and that power alone is sufficient to bring about my salvation.

I don't understand why anybody would have a problem in recognizing that, especially when the Bible is so clear and talking about the efficacious work of the spirit of God and the fact that regeneration is the work of God and that faith and repentance are the gifts of God.

I mean, the Bible is so clear on all of these things. It's clear on the perfection of the atonement and it's clear on election being the free act of God and man's depravity.

The Bible is just so clear on these things. That's the real power of the tulip is that it's extremely biblical.

And so when people say, well, I just don't like that idea, what they're really saying is most of the objections to limited atonement, irresistible grace are actually objections to unconditional election.

It goes back to that idea that I will not worship a God where you have the necessity of his will, monergism, one will.

I want a God whose will is depend upon cooperation with mine to bring about salvation.

And then we have the perseverance of the saints. I can't believe how fast time is going here. And all this is, of course, is that it is

God's purpose to bring all of his saints to final salvation and therefore the spirit of God will work in them in such a way that they receive that divine faith, they receive that divine repentance.

While it's us who repents and believes, we are enabled to do these things by the work of the spirit of God.

We're a new creature in Christ Jesus, and therefore the faith that we have will persevere to the end. It will persevere in holiness.

It will persevere in good works. There are some very confused people who seem to think that this means that we can't know that we're saved.

And there are some very confused people that think that this is somehow lower than the idea of eternal security where you get your ticket punched, you go to heaven no matter what you do.

All this is is it fits perfectly with the rest of this. It's God's purpose to glorify himself and the salvation of a particular people in Christ Jesus.

And it's God's purpose that part of the ways that he is going to be glorified is in the conforming of those people into the image of Jesus Christ.

And so he doesn't just leave us sitting here in our sin. He is going to conform us to the image of Christ.

He is going to make us into the image of Christ. And so we are going to grow in holiness.

And we are going to persevere in those good works in which he has called us to do. They don't add to the sacrifice of Christ.

They don't add to the righteousness that is ours, imputed to us by faith, any of those things. But we will persevere unto the end.

He who perseveres to the end shall be saved is what Jesus said. And we shouldn't be afraid of what

Jesus said there because the only reason that I've persevered this point in my life is because of the sovereign grace of God.

And so there is the tulip. And there are a lot of people that don't like the tulip today. And so they've got some other suggestions for it.

One of them that is suggested by Dr. Keith Lee, a Molinist in his book on the subject of salvation, is roses.

Roses. But I want you to see something about these roses. I chose this picture very purposefully.

You see the picture there? These roses are in a pot. They are potted roses.

And pot starts with a P. And so does philosophy.

Yes. Yes, my friends, I do believe that the other two flowers we're going to examine, they don't start in the soil of God's sovereignty.

They start in the pot of man's philosophy. They don't have the kind of robust biblical basis.

They don't get their life source from the soil of sovereignty. They get their life source from the pot of man's philosophy.

That's a problem. And so as we look at roses, well, what are roses supposed to tell us?

Well, here we go. Here's the roses acronym. Radical depravity, overcoming grace, sovereign election, eternal life, and singular redemption.

Well, what does that mean? Well, radical depravity instead of total depravity.

And I'm deriving this from Paul Gould's summary of this, of Dr.

Keithley's work. Radical depravity instead of total depravity emphasizes that every aspect of our being is affected by the fallen, rendered incapable of saving ourselves, instead of the impression that fallen humanity is as bad as it possibly can be.

Well, that's pretty close. But unfortunately, what that also indicates is that man is still capable, with the assistance of prevenient grace, of doing something that is appropriate and right before God.

Normally what has to happen for the rose to flourish in the pot is you need to have the prevenient grace added to the potted soil.

And the problem, of course, is there's nothing in the Bible about prevenient grace.

It's a philosophical construct without any biblical foundation.

Where do you find in the Bible this idea of a grace that removes, that sort of is like the wind that blows over the bones there in Ezekiel's vision, and brings them to a point where they can choose whether they want to be alive or not.

I guess that's what prevenient grace would be. And it's hard for me to get the proponents of prevenient grace to give me exegesis, give me examples, and things like that.

And of course I ask very nicely for that today. But it just seems to be assumed by people that there's this thing called prevenient grace that can sort of undo all the problems with radical depravity, but not to the point where it actually saves.

And it allows man to make the decision, and yet it's not so powerful that it can then bring about the decision, because God has to look down through the corridors of time, or Bible knowledge knows what man's going to do.

It gets very confusing at this point, exactly what this radical depravity means once you bring in this concept of prevenient grace.

And then we have this overcoming grace, I guess that's the next one. Overcoming grace, that's

God's persistent beckoning that overcomes our wicked obstinacy.

But if you don't have unconditional election, you're going to have a sovereign election here in a moment.

The problem is, who is he beckoning to? Well, in this system it's everybody.

But within the Molinistic system, he knows who by middle knowledge is actually going to choose him, and so he beckons to people that he knows by his middle knowledge are never actually going to be saved.

And in fact, there is one theory amongst Molinists that there are certain people that could never be saved in any feasible world.

Now, of course, all of this, again, I just look for this in the

Bible. I mean, unless you're going to confuse the efficacious grace of God, the powerful grace of God that actually saves, with God's common grace whereby he restrains the evil of man and causes his sun to shine and rain to fall, and so on and so forth, upon the just and the unjust.

Unless you're going to destroy that distinction, then you're left with this overcoming grace.

But why does it overcome in the case of one person and not another? And if you're a Molinist, it's because, well,

God always knew which one it was going to anyways. If you're not a Molinist, then it was because man joined his free will acts with God's grace, and it only overcomes because man allows it to.

And that's why it becomes overcoming grace rather than a real accomplishing, effectual, powerful grace that flows from the union of the work of the

Father, Son, and Spirit in salvation. So then the S is sovereign election, and so this new term, we're told, affirms that God desires the salvation of all, yet accentuates that our salvation is not based on us choosing

God, but on God choosing us. Now, I don't understand that, because if it is

God desiring to save every single person, then it's not election which is choosing.

It's election in the Molinist scheme, which is what you have with Dr.

Keithley and the Roses. It's election not of persons. It's election of feasible worlds.

The personal choice aspect from God is not of the individuals who are chosen.

It's of the world in which they themselves choose to believe, right?

And isn't there a, I don't know, again, I don't want to offend anybody. I want us all to have a very, very good day.

But isn't there a huge difference between the object of God's choice being the individuals who will be saved and the object of God's choice being a feasible world whereby middle knowledge

He knows what people are going to do? Can't we all sort of sense a real big difference between those choices?

And doesn't that really mean a huge difference in regards to what election really means?

How can it be sovereign election when it's really limited to what feasible world is going to be created based upon middle knowledge?

And of course, the other view is that what you really have here is all you have is the election of a nameless group.

A nameless, faceless group that if you fulfill, no unconditional election, if you fulfill certain conditions, then you get to be a part of this group.

And so, again, it's impersonal. The election is not of individuals. The election is of a class or a group and then a set of conditions that they must fulfill to get into that group, which would be repentance, faith, or depending on sacraments, it all depends on what group you're part of at that point.

So, sovereign election may fill the acronym, but it doesn't really describe what's being said.

So the E then becomes eternal life, and this is over against perseverance of the saints.

This new term stresses that believers enjoy a transformed life that is preserved and we are given a faith that will remain.

That almost sounds like an assertion of we're given divine faith.

But we know that in the Molinus scheme, that can't work because God's election is based upon his middle knowledge of knowing what we would do, which would include his knowing that we would continue to do it.

So why would there be a need of giving us a faith, giving us any faith at all?

If he has to give us faith, did he not foresee by middle knowledge that we would be acting in faith?

How can he give us something that he foresaw we would actually have? This is the problem again because the giving of faith is a part of God's decree, which comes after middle knowledge, and it's just one of those really big problems that we have in trying to figure out how the

Molinus scheme works. Then the last one, you'll notice how these don't flow. We're jumping back and forth in the process, but the last one is singular redemption instead of limited atonement.

The new term emphasizes Christ died sufficiently for every person, although efficiently only for those who believe.

I will confess that I don't see how singular redemption actually communicates any of that.

In fact, the phrase itself seems incredibly confusing. Singular redemption over against what?

Multiple redemption? It's really been forced on me. They link to the

Southern Baptist Faith and Message 2000 and then to a statement of the traditional Southern Baptist understanding of God's plan of salvation, which is a statement that has been said by many to have some serious

Pelagian or semi -Pelagian elements to it. Of course, the idea that it is the traditional position is, well, again,

I want to be very kind to everybody, but anybody who knows anything about the history of the

Southern Baptist Convention knows that that's just simply completely wrong. It's not sustainable from any historical perspective, but that's what they link to.

And then beneath that they have, and here's what we're looking at, the

Poinsettias. And please note, once again,

I chose my image purposefully here. The Poinsettias are in a pot because they definitely grow from the source of man's philosophy.

And that's how most of us see Poinsettias, just like that, right? In a pot because we see them around Christmas time, you know, sitting on grandma's piano.

And then by New Year's, they're dropping stuff all over everywhere. And so here's what the

Poinsettia means. And to be honest with you, this really does not work as well as the tulip does at all.

It really doesn't. Most of us don't even know how to spell Poinsettia.

So if you don't know how to spell something, it doesn't really seem wise to use that as your acronym.

Anyway, here's what the Poinsettia refers to. P is

Pursuit Unconditional. O is Own Guilt.

I is Inclusive Atonement. N is Natural Responsibility.

S is Spontaneous Regeneration. E is Election Available.

The first T is Temperate Foreknowledge. The second

T is True Freedom. The I is Indestructible Security. And the

A is Almighty Gospel. So there is your

Poinsettia. And I had never heard of this one before.

I must confess, this was a new one. But I'll go with the

Connect 316 guys here. And we'll look at what they had to say here.

Pursuit Unconditional. God desires all to be saved and has made a way of salvation in Christ for any person.

And so the pursuit of God is unconditional.

And basically, I think what they're saying here is God tries to save everyone equally. And so I will let them explain.

Why God allowed entire generations of Babylonian, Syrian, Egyptian, and people far flung from there to live their lives without ever sending a single prophet to anyone.

Let them explain how God was trying to save Moses equally with Pharaoh.

I'll let them explain that because I'll be perfectly honest with you. I can't even begin to make up a defense for any of that.

It seems so self -evidently untrue. But that's Pursuit Unconditional.

Own guilt. Fallen man inherits a sinful nature but is condemned only because of his own sin.

This is a denial of original sin. This is a denial of the idea that there is a federal headship in Adam.

That we fall in Adam. We become impure in Adam. We have gone through the attempted defense of this with Dr.

Hankins and have walked through Romans chapter 5 and have demonstrated, again, with all respect for our friends, that they can't walk through Romans chapter 5 in a consistent way and present this concept.

And that there is an element of semi -Pelagianism in this kind of a perspective that is being presented here.

Then we have inclusive atonement. The substitutionary atonement of Christ is effective and available for every person.

A couple of things. Substitutionary atonement is a Reformed concept. And I'm very thankful that our non -Reformed

Connect 316 friends here, who many of them would not call me a friend of theirs at all.

I might point that out. But anyway, our Connect 316 friends here,

I'm glad they still want to use the term substitutionary atonement because it's a beautiful biblical teaching.

But it is a Reformed teaching. And there are certain elements of it that I think that are difficult for them to work into their system.

For example, if Christ's death is substitutionary and effective, I think it would be very, very difficult for these individuals to avoid the only possible result, and that is universalism.

Because if everyone is joined to Christ, and his atonement is effective in their behalf, then how can you avoid the result of universalism?

And when you say it is effective and available, in your understanding, can you put those two terms together?

I'm not sure how you can do that. Because if it's effective, then everyone is going to be saved.

If it's available, and hence has to be actuated by a freewill act of faith, then how is it effective?

There does seem to be some real confusion on the part of people, some very inconsistent thinking when it comes to what the atonement actually accomplishes, and especially how it accomplishes it in regards to union with Christ, and how this union is brought about.

Inclusive atonement just seems to be a way of trying to say that Christ's atonement is made for everybody, but it doesn't actually save anyone.

So why would it be effective? One of the big problems that has come up over the past number of years in attempting to discuss this is that for some reason, every new generation thinks they have to come up with new words, new phrases, new terms.

But it's difficult to do that without borrowing from old terms that have different meanings. And that's what's going on here, is using the term effective.

Effective only in setting up a hypothetical that then man by his will can actuate.

When we hear the term effective as followers of the tulip, we understand effective to mean that it actually accomplishes what

God intended to accomplish without any failure. Then you have natural responsibility.

God's grace takes all the initiative in saving souls. Man's free response is not a work.

Well, God's grace takes all the initiative in saving souls.

Notice it does not say that God's grace actually saved souls. This is the same thing we looked at before.

Here we have prevenient grace. God is taking the initiative in seeking to save souls, but the reality is that that grace cannot save souls.

It cannot save souls without man's free response. Notice that man's free response is not a work.

Well, we understand that in the sense of work that merits something, but this is simply the assertion that God's grace is not irresistible and that God cannot save anyone by his grace alone.

He is dependent upon that synergistic cooperation of the will of man.

That's what's being said here. Now, I need to briefly stop for a moment.

Someone on Twitter just hurt me. I think today especially we all just need to be trying to be kind to one another.

I'm going to have to call him out. He uses his name. It's Aaron Timmons. He says,

I want mean James White back. This nice James White is creeping me out. Well, I'm sorry,

Aaron, that I'm creeping you out. I don't know what to do. I mean, because when

I'm just my normal self, people say that I'm mean and terrible and horrible. We're studying flowers,

Aaron. Can't you just do a study of flowers with us for a little while? Come on.

Be nice. Where were we? Oh, yes. Then we have this very strange terminology used here, spontaneous regeneration.

Spontaneous regeneration. Any who repent and believe are regenerated at that point, not before or apart from it.

I don't understand what the term spontaneous means. I guess it means regeneration based upon the activity of man's will in bringing that about by repentance and faith.

How that's spontaneous, I'm not really sure. But it's meant to promote the idea that sinful men who are dead in their sins, enslaved to sin, the

Bible says they cannot do what is right, they cannot do what is pleasing to God, and they cannot submit themselves to the law of God, actually can do all those things.

That's what this point from the Connect 316 guys is. It's just to basically say that everything we believe that the

Bible says about man's inability, it shouldn't take it seriously,

I guess. I don't know. But it's spontaneous regeneration.

We bring about our regeneration by what we do. It's not God taking out a heart of stone and giving a heart of flesh.

It is the heart of stone. Somehow the heart of stone jumps out, and a heart of flesh jumps in.

Okay, we go on to election available. Election available.

In election, God saves people without predetermining their souls for heaven or hell.

According to the Connect 316 guys, in election,

God doesn't choose.

I'm not sure what election means, because the word sort of means that.

So it's the non -choosing choosing is what it means.

I'm sort of wondering if this is a different flower. Okay, never mind.

I'm sorry. Temperate foreknowledge is the first T. God's sovereign omniscience does not mean he causes human decisions about Jesus.

So temperate foreknowledge is the idea that God's foreknowledge is completely passive and has nothing to do with his decree.

So this is a direct assertion that though God knows what happens in the future, it's not because he decreed it to happen, which leads directly to the assertion that God learned what was going to happen at some point in time.

God grew in his knowledge. All these really major theological issues are all wrapped up in this idea that God's foreknowledge is temperate rather than,

I guess, radical or hot or something like that.

Then the next T in Poinsettia is true freedom. God gives to each person actual free will to accept or reject his call to salvation.

Now you'll notice by the use of the phrase actual free will that what is being argued is that if you are a compatibilist, as I would be a compatibilist, and you believe in creaturely free will, that the only meaningful, from a biblical perspective, way of describing free will is not to ascribe to man libertarian free will, but to ascribe that to God, and that since God's libertarian free will is bigger than man's, as R .C.

Sproul put it, for those who struggle with the pronunciation of his name, as R .C. Sproul put it,

God is free, I am free, God is freer than I am, and my freedom runs into God's freedom, I lose. Rather than recognizing that our freedom is a creaturely freedom and therefore we are held accountable only for what we do in light of our creatureliness.

And that we are held accountable for acting on the basis of what we desire to do, not on the basis of having knowledge of the entirety of God's decree, some cosmic libertarian free will.

Rather than that, what we have here is the assertion that God gives us actual free will.

So what they're saying is that's not really free will. That the only free will that is real free will, actual free will, is libertarianism, and that God gives to each person actual free will.

Does this involve, from their perspective, an all out concept of prevenient grace?

I would assume so. I would assume so, but they don't bother to lay that out. And again, outside of the

Wesleyan tradition, I've never seen anyone try to substantiate prevenient grace, and the

Wesleyans really admitted that it was more of a conclusion based upon the necessity of believing in free will than it was any type of biblical or exegetical conclusion.

So it does seem that the Connect 316 guys might want to produce a real strong defense of prevenient grace, exegetically speaking, but I wouldn't be waiting too long for that to actually happen.

The I, it takes a long time to get through this, because it's a long word.

The I is indestructible security. When one is saved, God promises to complete the process, sealing their eternal fate.

Now, I must confess that it was amazing to me, even in my very calm and happy demeanor today, in the studying of the poinsettia, to run into the word fate, especially because the folks that are putting this together,

I think should have known, should know, that that's really not a

Christian term, and so much of their objection is to our strong doctrine of sovereignty that to even use the term is,

I think most people would say it was highly inappropriate and misleading, but it's also within a context that again leaves us, well, it leaves me a little confused and scratching my bald head, because if there's so much of an emphasis here, on libertarian free will, why is this penultimate point a denial of it?

Because that's what's going on here, is that when one is saved by the action of their libertarian free will in choosing to be saved, once they're saved,

God takes away the libertarian free will. That seems to be what it's saying.

God promises to complete the process, sealing their eternal fate. So with language that no

Calvinist would ever use, well, maybe a hyper -Calvinist would, the

Connect 316 gentlemen say once you're saved, so much that libertarian free will, your fate's sealed buddy,

God's going to complete the process, you've got no choice in it, and that's it. That has always struck me as very odd.

At least the Arminian at this point will say, no, no, no, it was your free will to get in, and it's your free will to get out.

Yeah. I've never understood this. Never understood it.

This is a particularly bad, sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to hurt the feelings of the

Connect 316 guys, because we know they're very sensitive, and hopefully our approach today has kept them from being offended by anything that I've said.

But that's just a really bad way of stating it. Did anybody run this by some theological training before putting this up?

It's amazing. Well, there's one last one. Now again,

I'm seeing things on the Internet here, and I don't understand. I've just tried to be so gentle and kind today.

We're studying flowers. How can anything be more fluffy than that?

But someone in my chat channel has been laughing at what

I've been saying, laughing while making dinner. And sometimes, folks, it's hard.

It's just difficult. But I'm going to press on. I'm going to try. I'm going to try to be nice.

The last point is almighty gospel. As we share God's love, the gospel is a means of bringing any person to Christ.

Well, I certainly believe in an almighty gospel. But isn't this the last letter of an acronym that's specifically designed to say that the gospel will be ineffectual in the lives of many people into whom it is proclaimed?

Does it make much sense to put almighty gospel when what you're saying is the gospel isn't actually what can powerfully save?

It can try, but it's dependent upon libertarian free will being joined to it?

Why does that make it almighty? These are some of the questions that come up naturally in our study of flowers today.

On Radio Free Geneva. And I hope you've been helped by our study of flowers.

But I would simply point out to you that only one of those flowers actually gave us a solid foundation for agreeing with the biblical message that salvation is totally of the

Lord. That God does what pleases him. That all things result in his honor and glory.

I think that was clear. I hope it was clear. But I'd like to thank you all for having been with us today on Radio Free Geneva and our study of flowers.