A Monologue on Being of Two Minds as a Christian

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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

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

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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. What was it the Apostle James said, the double minded man is unstable in all of his ways.

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So we don't want to be double minded men or women. We do not want to be living in two different worlds.

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And yet, let's face it, many of us do. Many of us live in two different worlds.

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I'm sort of speaking to myself today, but I have a feeling that I am speaking to a number of folks who listen to this program regularly.

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And what I mean by that is we live our lives, we as Christian believers, we study the word of God, we read the word of God, not merely to study a book of ancient texts, but we believe that in the reading of those words, in the hearing of the preaching of those words, in the contemplation of those words, meditation upon the principles expressed by those words that we actually encounter

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God, that God is speaking in accord with the highest views of Scripture expressed by not only the psalmist and passages like Psalm 119, but by New Testament writers as well by the

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Lord Jesus himself. And we read these words and we seek to make application of what we read and we seek to be consistent in forming a worldview based upon the revelation of God.

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We look, for example, at the Old Testament law and we attempt to derive an understanding of what is pleasing to God from what is enunciated therein.

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And we seek to have a deeper understanding of how we can ourselves be pleasing in our thoughts and our actions in our lives as we make application.

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And yet we all live in this world and no matter how hard we might try to resist it, the ways of thought of this world, they impact us.

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They influence us very, very strongly. Most people who know me know that I have a science background.

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In college, I was a double major and single minor. Bible, biology and minor in Koine Greek.

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And in high school, for example, I spent a lot of time in the sciences.

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That was always a strong area for me, whether it was biology or any of those fields.

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About the only field in science that really wasn't my favorite was physics and chemistry, probably, mainly because of the mathematical elements of those.

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But I really focused upon doing well in those areas.

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I remember as a sophomore in high school, sitting in the,

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I guess we called it, what did we call that thing? It was the snack bar. That's right. Instead of the cafeteria, it was the snack bar.

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We had these, oh, these incredibly disgusting bean burritos. I guess it didn't taste really bad, but they looked really bad.

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I mean, ugh, you'd cut into them and what came out was worse than what we were doing in science class. But anyways, and I would sit there with one of my science teachers, and we would debate on creation and evolution and all things related thereto, sometimes branching off into ethics and morality and stuff like that.

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But the reality is that I've been trained to think in scientific ways, completing my major in biology and being department fellow in anatomy and physiology and studying all the things you have to study to complete a major in biology.

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When we look at the world, when I look at the world, I guess I should just talk to myself and see if what

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I experience resonates with anybody in my audience today. When I look at the world,

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I find myself struggling with double -mindedness. What I mean by that is,

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I understand, and I can't keep up as much as I used to, but I still try to keep up with some advances in science and cosmology and things like that.

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Things happen, for example, the earthquake in Japan, and I understand some elements of seismology and plate tectonics and the things that result in 9 .0

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earthquakes and what that can do. Right now, folks along the

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Mississippi River are experiencing tremendous flooding because of snow and rain and the combination of those things.

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Right now, the outbreak of storms in the middle of the

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United States, middle and south United States, Tornado Alley. I've seen tornadoes.

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I lived in Minnesota, and I remember it's one of the earliest memories of my life, seeing those huge black funnel clouds not far away from the farm where I lived outside of Minneapolis near the

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YZ for those of you in that area, if you're familiar with that area. We think about what happened in Joplin and in other cities just for the past couple of weeks, and literally hundreds of people losing their lives,

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F5 category storms, just leaving a swath of damage.

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It is interesting how we get hit much more with this now than we did in the past.

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Everybody now gets to see Google Earth pictures, comparisons before and afters of what happened with the tsunami and what happened in Joplin and things like that, and it's brought much more close to us.

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When I think of, let's think about an F5 twister that produces 200 mile an hour winds, and it's not just the straight line wind power of a twister that is so destructive.

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It is the changing of direction, the changing of pressures that causes just such incredible destruction to man's rather flimsy structures, no matter how well we build them.

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And I look at something like that, and people ask the question, where's

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God in all of this? And I would imagine people are asking you that same type of question.

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If you're a believer and you have professed your belief in the sovereignty of God, and even if you haven't talked about the sovereignty of God, people ask the question, well, where was

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God in all of this? Can't God stop these things? Why did God make a world where there are hurricanes and tsunamis and tornadoes?

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And maybe you, like me, find yourself answering that question in two different ways.

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The scientific part of my mind analyzes the situation, and at this time of year, you have strong temperature gradients developing between the passing of low -pressure systems, where you have warm, moist air to the south and cold, dry air to the north.

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I understand the mechanics of when those two bodies of air crash into each other and the potential energy gradient that is produced.

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It can produce wind and rain and hail and tornadoes.

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And today, we have one fellow in Channel who's a real weather buff, and I think it was last week or so when we had a bunch of those really bad storms going, every once in a while he would pop into Channel a

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URL that had a radar link, and with the kinds of Doppler radar that we have today, you can get the telltale, curly -Q signature of storms indicating a hurricane.

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I'm sorry, a tornado. And we understand how those things work.

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And there is an almost secular part of my mind that runs through the science and runs through the mechanics and runs through the meteorological background and joins with the scientific mindset that basically says, well, you know what?

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When you have a planet that is not all of one temperature and you have a sun and you have different warming patterns and you have an atmosphere with various gases in it, this is just going to happen.

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It just happens. And for a lot of folks in our world today, that's all you've got.

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You know, why did Joplin get nailed and why didn't it, you know, I mean, there are times you see pictures of this swath that a tornado cuts through, maybe cuts through a field or something like that, a smaller one, and you see it just miss a house or you see it go through a neighborhood and it just destroys one house and the house right next to it is not even damaged.

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And the secular mind says, chance, it's random, just happens.

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It's the way it is. And as we've learned more and more about this, you know, we hear all the time about how ancient man, the men who wrote the

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Bible and things like that, how, how silly they were because they thought the gods were involved with this.

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But, but now we know why this happens. You know, we may know the mechanics, but we don't know why it touches down in one spot and the other and not another one.

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We don't know that. You know, we've learned a lot of the mechanics of, of human reproduction and the development of the child in the womb, but we still have a lot of questions.

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And even once you figure out the mechanics, does understanding the mechanics mean you understand the design or the why or how this came into being?

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No, in no way, shape or form. So part of me looks at something like what happened in Joplin and the other cities.

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Tuscaloosa, I think was, was hit just recently. And, and, you know, this, let's just stick with tornadoes for now.

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And I worry about forest fires and floods and earthquakes and, and the rest like that.

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And I look at those situations. I look at those events and part of my mind goes, well, that's just what it's like to live in this world.

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But then I read the scriptures and the scriptures do not leave me with that kind of agnostic neutrality about events in time.

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It's very, very clear that the writers of scripture believe that God was behind the whirlwind and the rain and the drought and the flood, the fire, whatever it might be.

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The writers of scripture saw God's hand behind all of that. And, and if I really believe what scripture says, that all things are created by Jesus and for Jesus and all things hold together in him as the kurios of all the world, the

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Lord of all of time and the creator of all things, then I have to,

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I have to put these things together. And I, I just wonder, you know, we live in a day,

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I've mentioned it before. We're surrounded by the data fog. We have such access to information.

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It comes at us so fast now. I mean, it wasn't that long ago where it would have been at least the next day we would have maybe been hearing something about a bad tornado.

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It wasn't that long ago before it would have been days before you've even heard about something you would have read about it in a newspaper. There might've been a picture maybe now while it's happening, you have full color video and it has, has shrunk the world a lot.

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And it's brought us right up to these things, which we don't necessarily experience.

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And I think there's a lot of people that just are starting to live a paranoid life because you see all these things happening around the world.

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And it's rare for any one person to experience all of that in one life. And so we've got this stuff coming at us and we are, we are going to process what we think of it one way or the other.

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Unfortunately, a lot of processing is done subconsciously. It's done at a, not necessarily at the level of conscious decisions.

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And, and as a result, we start responding to things and we find some dissonance, a lack of harmony between our profession and how we actually think about things, how we feel about things.

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And I think it needs to be a matter of prayer and a matter of proclamation and a matter of teaching and a matter of consideration.

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A truly Christian worldview, a truly

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Christian way of thought doesn't just happen overnight.

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I'm definitely showing that I'm not a second blessing Methodist in the sense that there might be some who have the idea that, well, you know,

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God just zaps you and boom, that's just, that's how it works. My experience of the

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Christian life is that it is filled with labor and you need to have a goal and you need to have discipline and you need to expose yourself to the word of God and you need to labor diligently to obtain those goals that are of, they're precious to you.

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And if they're not precious to you, you're not going to ever really put out the labor to accomplish them, I guess. And so to be able to think in such a way that honors

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God and to think the way that Christ thought that always honored God, it takes a lot of work.

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It takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of thought. And we are living in a day where, you know, if you say anything about the judgment of God, you know that you're going to have a whole lot of people coming down on you like a ton of bricks.

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God doesn't bring judgment. No. No, God doesn't. No, I think they have some self -interest in that.

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Most people do. We all have that thing called a conscience. But as soon as you mention anything about the judgment of God, immediately somebody says, no, wait a minute.

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Are you telling me the people in Joplin, Missouri are any worse than the people in San Francisco? San Francisco is a very convenient city to use if you want to see a place where, wow.

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Anyway, if you talk about judgment, that's what people automatically assume you're saying.

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But what is the really, really, really wrong, unbiblical, anti -Christian assumption that lies underneath that objection?

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The really, really, really wrong, anti -Christian, anti -biblical assumption is that there is anybody who is innocent in the sight of a holy

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God. Anyone. Oh, well, those folks down in Joplin are nice folks.

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I bet you they are. I bet you they are. But is anybody nice in comparison to the holy

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God? There was a day in our society where nobody flinched to talk about the judgment of God upon a nation.

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And in fact, when you go back not too long into the past, when there would be great disaster,

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I mean, there was a lot of discussion of the Civil War, the War of Northern Aggression, depending on which side line you're on, being a judgment of God upon this nation.

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No one flinched at that because, you see, we hadn't been infected quite yet with a real, real, real deep and consistent case of secular humanism.

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If we had a real biblical view of God's holiness and a real biblical view of man's sin, we wouldn't have any problems talking about the judgment of God.

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And if we really had a biblical worldview, wouldn't we see in each one of these instances, every time

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God allows one of these events to take place, and yes, we understand the natural realm that causes these things, but is the natural realm really an answer?

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If we had a biblical view, we would not have any problem talking about the judgment of God and recognizing that in these things is a constant reminder from God that his wrath is suspended over unbelievers.

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We wouldn't have a problem with that. Now, there's one other thing

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I just wanted to mention. I'm just throwing this out because I have a feeling I'm not the only one who thinks about these things. And if I haven't been speaking to you, well,

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I apologize, but I have a feeling that there's at least enough people in the audience that are listening right now or listen to the podcast that I am talking to you and talking with you, not at you, because you feel the same tensions, you feel the same stresses as you look at the world.

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But there is one other area of this I wanted to address just briefly, and then we'll start taking our phone calls at 877 -753 -3341, dividing .line,

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via Skype. We have one Skype call waiting and one regular call waiting, and I don't think we could have two different topics than those two, but that's what the dividing line is all about.

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When we talk about a Category 5 tornado touching down, just in such a way that, you know, there are many times those tornadoes touch down and they destroy crops and wheat fields and corn fields and knock over trees, but don't hit anything else.

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And then they go up and they disappear and we don't say much about it. Almost nobody says, well, thank the

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Lord that it didn't do this or the other thing. But when it hits in the middle of a populated area at night and brings such terror, well, then we really give it consideration.

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And when people say, yeah, but it's just a natural phenomenon.

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Well, what are you going to say to the people who are trying to pick up their lives? If you view this as a merely natural phenomenon outside the control of God, what are you going to say to them?

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You cannot give them any... Why should they pray about tomorrow? Why should they think

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God has a plan for their life? If you didn't see that coming, there wasn't anything you could do about it. Or if you did see it coming,

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I guess you couldn't warn them to get out of the way or something. I don't know. I mean, it does seem like a rather stark contrast.

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Either you'd be a consistent naturalistic materialist and be an atheist, or you'd be a wholehearted

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Christian. I don't really see the middle ground having much of an attraction, to be perfectly honest with you.

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But once again, when we think we understand the mechanics, we understand cold fronts and we understand the power dynamics involved in heated air and moist air and dry air and cold air and what happens up in the atmosphere and where hail is developed and wind patterns and vortexes and all the rest of this stuff, we think we are so smart that because we know the mechanics, that somehow

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God is not behind the whirlwind any longer. Now, what's really interesting to me is this following statement is a true statement.

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The reason that the tornado hit

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Joplin and didn't just miss Joplin could very well be that two days earlier, a bird in a tree in Northern California took off to the north rather than the south.

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I'll let you think about that for a second. That's a true statement. Now, you may go, that's impossible.

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What I'm referring to is the fractal nature of weather. This is a well -known fact. Some of you laugh at me because I like fractal art and I do fractal art and I don't do it as much as I used to, but some of you know

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I've been doing it for a long, long time and I've sort of studied fractal geometry and fractal mathematics and chaos theory and things related to that and the reality is, have you ever noticed that even with all of our satellites, our computers, we can't really predict the weather all that well?

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Well, sometimes we nail it, but it's a percentage thing. And that's why there is a cone around the path of a hurricane, because we just don't know.

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And it's not because we don't have computer models and stuff like that, it's not because we can't see where the warm fronts are and the cold fronts are, but the fact of the matter is, weather patterns are fractal.

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That means that they are influenced by so many tiny little influences and the tiniest little influence can have a huge impact just a few iterations of the equation down the road.

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So the wind pattern created by birds' wings as it flies to the north rather than the south, taking off from a branch of a tree, can literally be the tiny little factor that determines whether that tornado hits

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Joplin or doesn't. Now, I think if you do a little reading, you'll find out what

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I'm telling you is true. Fractal mathematics, you change just the tiniest little factor and the resultant graph, that is the resultant image, is massively different.

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Because what you do with a fractal is you do what are called iterations. That is, the computer runs the same mathematical formula literally thousands of times.

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And so if you change one little factor in that formula and then run it a thousand times, all of a sudden you have a completely different outcome.

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And that's how weather is. Now, what does any of this have to do with my discussion? Well, if God is in control, if God has a purpose, and any

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Christian, well, I think, well, okay, any Christian, any biblically informed

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Christian, knows that God says that the very day and the hour of the death of his saints is in his hand.

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And there were some saints who passed away in Joplin, I can guarantee you. So that means

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God's sovereign decree extended, well, extended to the very direction that bird flew from that limb on that tree.

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At the very time that that bird chose to take off, because if it had taken off two seconds earlier or two seconds later, it would have changed everything.

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That's incredible to me. That's amazing to me. Now, I have a

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God big enough to handle that. But a lot of folks who want to hand to man this huge mountain of autonomy and limit the extent of God's decree have a little problem with that.

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It's funny how a lot of people, they don't mind giving God sovereignty over the weather. But don't give him sovereignty over me.

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Well, if God has sovereignty over the weather, that means God has sovereignty over every little aspect of things.

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And I'm awful glad that he does, because that means that when you talk to those folks whose lives have been impacted, you can talk to them about a

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God who has a purpose in those things and makes promises to them in the midst of those things, not in ignorance of those things or powerlessness over those things.

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Well, just some thoughts. Don't know if anyone got anything out of that. But hey, that was where I was going today.

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877 -753 -3341. 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.

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And so I'm assuming we're going to head over to England first. Yes, indeed. Let's go over to the United Kingdom.

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And James, may I say something to you, sir? I would like to apologize on behalf of all the citizens of the

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United States of America that we sent a representative over to your wonderful country who does not understand how to stop making a toast in the middle of God Save the

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Queen. Britain accepts your apologies, Mr.

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White. Thank you very much. What can we do for you? Yeah, hey, again.

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Yeah, I was just... Recently I've been meeting with a Jehovah's Witnesses elder.

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And I guess I was listening to your Greg Stafford debate. And I was just wondering if you could provide a little...

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Honestly, I'm still a little lost on John 1034. Okay. So I was just wondering if you could walk me through what that's about.

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Okay. Yeah, I wish we had these searchable... I may need to track this down.

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I did an entire PRBC Sunday School class on John 10 and following,

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I think, shortly after that, which would mean it would be a while back. I probably wouldn't be able to find it anymore. It's probably on a cassette tape someplace.

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There's something Jamie needs to do. Hey, Jamie. He'll be listening later on today going,

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Oh, great, fine. The rookie gets to do it. We'll see if we can track that down sometime. But John 1034,

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I don't recall specifically the context in the

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Stafford debate of what his assertions were on that. Because the text is used,

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I would say, abused in two different ways. You have the Mormon abuse of it, and then you have the

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Jehovah's Witness abuse of it. Obviously, if you're listening to the Stafford debate, it would be the Jehovah's Witness abuse of it.

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And you know that Greg Stafford is no longer a Jehovah's Witness, right? Yeah, I know that.

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Okay. Just wanted to make sure you're aware of that. For those interested,

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John 10, beginning at verse 30,

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Jesus has just indicated the unity of the Father and the Son, the salvation of all of God's people, that the

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Father is great in all, and no one is able to snatch Him out of the Father's hand. I am the Father. We are one, plural verb that is used there.

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And the Jews pick up stones again to stone Him. Jesus answered them, I have shown you many good works in the Father.

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For which of them are you going to stone Me? And the Jews answered Him, It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself

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God. And in response to that, Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law,

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I said you are gods? If you call them gods, to whom the word of God came, the scripture cannot be broken.

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Do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, you are blaspheming? Because I said, I am the Son of God.

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If I am not doing the works of My Father, then do not believe Me. But if I do them, even though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the

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Father is in Me, and I am in the Father. Again, they sought to arrest Him, but He escaped from their hands.

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And so, we just notice, because it rarely comes into consideration, but we just notice that Jesus' concluding statement,

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His summary of what His defense is meant to lead us to understand, is that He is doing the works of His Father.

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If He is not, then there is no reason to believe Him. But if He is doing the works of His Father, then they are to know and they are to understand that the

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Father is in Me, and I am in the Father. So, whatever the relationship of Son of God means, it is a unique relationship, and I think this harkens directly back to John chapter 5, and will harken forward to John chapter 13, when

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Jesus says, I'm telling you, so that when it does come to pass, you may know and understand and believe that, egoaimi,

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I am He. Just picking up some of the threads of themes in the context of the

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Gospel of John. The general discussion is normally focused upon the citation of Psalm 82 .6,

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which is found in John chapter 10, verse 34. It is not written in your law. I said, you are gods.

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And Psalm 82 is a judgment psalm, and it wasn't more than a year ago that, in fact, it was a bit less than that,

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I think. Well, I don't know. Time passed so quickly. But both

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I and TurretinFan put up some blog articles that you might want to look up.

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I would search on Psalm 82 or something along those lines, where we specifically dealt with another take on these things.

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I would say more of a liberal take on these things that asserts that what we have here is a text promoting some form of polytheism or God who lives in a council of gods and there are these exalted divine beings and things like that.

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Almost any modern commentary that you read is going to take that perspective.

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That is, Psalm 82 .1, God has taken his place in the divine council in the midst of the gods.

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He holds judgment. And so the first thing that modern

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Old Testament scholarship does is assume the disunity of the canon of Scripture, assume a different view of Scripture than Jesus himself held.

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And so they're going to say, ah, this is parallel to the various of the Canaanite religions or other world religions, where you have a henotheistic system, where you have a major god in the midst of minor gods, and that's what

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God here is. Elohim has taken his place in the divine council in the midst of the gods.

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He holds judgment. Then you read what he says, and I have a problem.

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That's why I have a problem with that interpretation. How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked?

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Well, obviously then you would have to have some concept here of the gods having some kind of influence upon what takes place on earth, which is not a consistent biblical perspective.

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These are people who are judging unjustly. They're showing partiality to the wicked. And then they are commanded, give justice to the weak and the faithless, maintain the right of the afflicted and destitute, rescue the weak and the needy, deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

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Well, to whom are those words addressed? I don't think there's any question. Not only can we find direct biblical evidence in the law that these are addressed to the judges of Israel, but many of the minor prophets, this is their theme.

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This is the theme that they developed, that this is not what's been going on amongst the people of Israel, and when justice is not done, the very foundations of the earth tremble, because what is the foundation of Yahweh's throne?

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It is justice itself. They have neither knowledge nor understanding. They walk about in darkness. All the foundations of the earth are shaken, and it is in that context, then, we say,

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I said, you are God's sons, the most high, all of you. Nevertheless, like men, you shall die and fall like any prince.

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And so you have the exalted status of the judges of Israel. They are put in the very place of God.

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They are given the word of God, and they are tasked with the judgment of the truth of God, and yet they are doing so with partiality.

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Therefore, the foundations of the earth tremble. I said, you are God's sons, the most high, all of you. Nevertheless, you shall die like men and fall like any of the princes.

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Arise, O God, judge of the earth, for you shall inherit all the nations. The final plea for God to bring judgment.

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So that's a very, very, very quick run through Psalm 82, but the point is that who is being addressed in Psalm 82 are the unrighteous judges of Israel, and I think

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Jesus knew Psalm 82 as well as anybody else, because, of course, he is, via the

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Holy Spirit, the very mechanism by which that scripture came into existence. And so I believe when it says, if he called them gods, to whom the word of God came, well, who is that?

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You'd either have to take the sense of to whom the word of God came as in the prophets who received the word of God, but they weren't given the job of judging.

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I think the way to understand to whom the word of God came is that the word of God was given in a special way via Moses to the judges, and they were entrusted with the keeping of it, the teaching of it, and the application of it.

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And so if he called them gods, to whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken, that is, the abiding reality of scripture, the abiding authority of scripture remains intact, that's certainly

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Jesus' view, then in light of that, do you say of him, third person, though Jesus is referring to himself, do you say of him whom the

37:34

Father consecrated, set apart, made holy, and sent into the world, you are blaspheming, because I said,

37:42

I am the Son of God. Now, it's interesting to note that Jesus is not lessening their statement.

37:50

The Son of God is a claimed deity. Very clearly in John, that's the case, John 19, we have a law about law you ought to die,

37:56

John chapter 5, the fact that Jesus can interchange their accusation with Son of God, and that he accepts this as being the inevitable result of what he claimed about his oneness with the

38:08

Father in the salvation of God's people shows that Son of God is not some lesser concept in the sense of a title of non -divinity, especially in light of the fact that in John, Jesus is the monogamous, the unique, one -of -a -kind son, not just one son amongst many sons, etc.

38:28

And so, what I see in John 10, 34, is an argument that involves the application to his accusers of a text that they interpreted as being about unrighteous human judges, hence identifying them as unrighteous human judges, who had just given, in their own words, a very errant judicial interpretation, because Jesus had asked them, he asked them a judicial question.

38:58

He said, for which of these good works are you going to stone me? And their judicial answer, because they're taking up stones, they're taking judgment in their hands.

39:09

And so, their judicial answer as judges is, it is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you being a man make yourself

39:17

God. And so, here they are about to stone the Son of God, and Jesus identifies them as the unrighteous judges, the false judges that they clearly are, in light of their own judicial announcement.

39:32

And so, that's my understanding of the text. How about you? Yeah, thanks.

39:40

Yeah, that's helpful. It seems to kind of, I don't know, the argument they're making seems to lose a lot of weight once you read the context around the verse.

39:51

But from what I've experienced so far, Jehovah's Witnesses and context don't go together very well.

39:59

Well, unfortunately, I would have to say that almost all

40:04

Bible readers worldwide, context and the Bible don't go well. People do a lot of proof texting, and especially with a text like this, not only do you need to see the immediate context, you need to see the themes in John, you need to know the background in Psalm 82.

40:19

Yeah, but when you can explain that to somebody and walk through it with someone, it can have some real impact and real effect upon them.

40:27

So, by the way, don't get discouraged if you do not see, and normally the

40:34

Jehovah's Witnesses go in pairs. Are you talking to one alone, or is there more than one? One alone, yeah. Okay, you might get more reaction out of someone like that, but you've got to realize, these folks have been trained to think that we are all part of Babylon mystery religion.

40:50

And even if you, quote unquote, score a point, that is, you really make a clear point that they don't know how to answer.

40:59

Rare is the Jehovah's Witness who is going to express that to you. You know, just don't be discouraged.

41:08

As long as they keep listening, and you don't feel like you're just completely spinning your wheels, you don't know what kind of long -term impact you can be having.

41:15

So, be encouraged. Yeah, actually, I'm kind of meeting with two separate ones at the moment.

41:23

And one is, and it's just, it seems to be hitting a wall with him.

41:29

Right. But there's another guy who's sort of an immigrant to this country, and I've been sort of talking with him a bit, and I actually seem to be actually making some headway.

41:37

Good, good. Well, just be aware that if he expresses that you're making headway at the

41:42

Kingdom Hall, you may not be seeing him again. Yeah, to be honest with you, he hasn't been returning my calls recently.

41:50

Yeah, yeah, that's unfortunate. But that's why you've got to make an impact while you can.

41:55

So, hey, James, got lots of other callers. Appreciate your phone call today. Thank you. And God bless you over there in the United Kingdom.

42:01

All right, bye -bye. 877 -753 -3341. Let's talk to, it's

42:07

James Day on the dividing line, but this is on the other side of the planet in California. Hi, James.

42:14

Hello? Hello, James, in Yuba City, California. Are you there? Thank you for, what's that?

42:23

What's wrong? Something's wrong. Ah, there you are. There you are. Oh, okay. What? I'm sorry.

42:33

Hold on a second. Rich, you're pointing at me as if I was doing something. What did I do wrong? Oh, okay.

42:39

All right, because that's right. Well, it's because you had the YouTube thing on. Anyways, yes, sir,

42:45

James, what can we do for you? Well, I had a bunch of commenters on my channel on the

42:52

Open Air Atheist on YouTube, and I think I had one particular Christian in mind who wanted me to call in.

43:00

And actually, I'm familiar with you because I actually met you at the debate with Dan Barker in 2009 in Oregon.

43:09

I was there at your interview before the debate. Oh, okay, okay, yes, uh -huh.

43:17

Okay, I was an open -air preacher back then. And I actually shared a lot of your same theology.

43:24

I guess I pretty much mirrored Charles Spurgeon. So I understand where you're coming from theologically.

43:35

So my question was, I had a question that I intended to ask you, but then I heard you make some remarks while I was waiting on the phone concerning you start talking about weathers.

43:48

And for someone to say that God isn't behind that,

43:54

I think that was pretty much your assertion, is making a dogmatic statement.

44:02

And so my question would be, and I hope I haven't misunderstood your statements, but my question would be, how can you justify saying there absolutely is a, especially a particular

44:14

God who has control of all these things without appealing to faith, without just saying, well,

44:20

I know because the Bible tells me. Without appealing to faith. And then you'd probably ask me to define my term by faith.

44:29

Yeah, obviously it seems to be something you think you should not have or something. Well, I have a problem with people believing something on insufficient evidence.

44:39

I, as an atheist, my particular atheistic position is not that there emphatically is no

44:46

God. My position, as Dawkins' position is, is that with the information

44:52

I have thus far, it's highly unlikely that God exists. Now, that's not to say that there isn't some information that I lack, and that that information could change my mind in the future.

45:03

But as a Calvinist, I understand that you believe that, you know, being, you can't believe in God, first of all, until you have been born of God.

45:17

And we can go to, I think it's 1 Corinthians 5 .1?

45:23

1 John 5 .1. Where you illustrated how the term, but the believing ones.

45:30

That's actually 1 John 5 .1. Is it 1 John 5 .1? Excuse me. I actually did a video on that not too long ago.

45:38

So, believing is something that comes after regeneration. So, why do...

45:45

You don't see a difference between believing in that way and the fact that the Bible says you know God exists, but you're suppressing that knowledge?

45:51

Right, Romans 1. You don't see a difference between those two? I do. I do see the difference there, but I'm just trying to articulate that I do understand where you're coming from, and I just didn't get to that part.

46:04

So, my problem is that I know, and I can't convince you of this because you're already convinced of something else.

46:12

I know that I don't believe, and it's not that I'm looking at evidence and I'm just denying it.

46:17

Oh no, I don't want God to exist. It's just that I look at all of the facts of evolution that I once straw -manned, as many

46:28

Christians do, and now that I understand it, I see that it makes sense. I see the evidence.

46:34

I see the massive amounts of transitional forms. I see that the majority of those who have spent their lives studying that field do not reject evolution, and there's really no debate inside of the scientific community on evolution, and that's why a lot of people like Dawkins do not like to debate creationists, because it creates some sort of idea that there is a debate.

47:02

James, the reason they don't do it is because they're suppressing the other side. That's just so painfully obvious.

47:08

I just have to wonder, if you try to take the position of atheism that you now are attempting to promulgate, the question

47:18

I would have is, is there something going on behind you or something?

47:24

Oh, yeah. It sounds like you're about to be attacked by a massive vacuum cleaner. No, I think there's some construction going on across the street.

47:32

Okay. It just seems rather odd that you now take a majority view of a particular community, which is expressed very, very carefully and under a tremendous amount of control, as if that is sufficient evidence for you to just simply declare the debate is over.

47:54

It sounds like you're very, very certain of something. What caused that certainty to all of a sudden happen?

48:00

You admit that you were strawmanning things in the past. Sure, just like Ray Comfort says a crocoduck, and that's not at all what evolution teaches at all.

48:10

Have you ever heard me do that? No, no, no. Okay, then you've probably watched my debate with Dan Barker then.

48:19

Absolutely. Not the first one, the first one in Illinois. No, I didn't.

48:25

I didn't watch that, actually. There's a real cool video in there about F1 -ATPase and its function in the mitochondria of the cell.

48:39

Since there's no debate and you are so certain, I was going to ask you to maybe explain exactly how, given that this is part of the very mechanics of the cell, it's not a part of exterior traits, things that would be influenced by, for example, population pressures and predation pressures and things like that, how you would explain the existence of mechanical devices?

49:07

Because it does use mechanical energy. Dr. Roy, hold on a second. I understand where you're going with this, okay?

49:14

How can I be sure you understand it? Because you said you were strawmanning it before. When you gave me the strawman, that would indicate to me that you didn't understand.

49:22

No, no, no. I don't understand it to the level that Dawkins or an evolutionary biologist would.

49:27

I understand Koine Greek very well. I've studied it for a long time. Do I understand it to your level enough to debate you?

49:34

No. So I would not even attempt to. As far as when you go off rambling about something that I'm not an expert on.

49:41

I'm not rambling about anything. I'm explaining something that you could then go and look on YouTube and you could watch the debate, and I was simply explaining to folks that...

49:51

A debate that you had between Dan Barker, who is not a scientist? Yeah. How is that relevant?

49:59

It's extremely relevant because it's a piece of factual information that you've already dismissed as saying there is no debate, can be no debate, and yet you cannot explain it from within your worldview.

50:12

That's not what I said. What I said was, is that the mass majority of scientists do not consider it even to debate and to debate on the subject.

50:22

I'm not saying that there isn't some evidence that I don't have my hands on yet. Excuse me, how is that relevant?

50:28

Are you seriously telling me, James, that the quote -unquote scientific community today, that each one of those individuals thoroughly examines all the issues of this subject?

50:41

Wouldn't you have to admit that the vast majority of them, including and especially including Richard Dawkins, are philosophically, for example, absolutely abysmally ignorant?

50:53

I have not made any absolute statements in this conversation thus far. There are possibilities, yes.

51:00

There are possibilities that Dawkins is wrong, he's biased, he's just... And I'd agree with that. We're all biased to some degree.

51:07

But it is the principles of science, the whole edifice of science that is erected to correct for that.

51:15

For instance, in my debate with Matt Slick... Well, wait a minute. The edifice of science is erected to correct bias.

51:26

Is that why, for example, for the past decade and a half, we've had people like Al Gore running around making billions of dollars, all basically on the basis of politics and not meaningful science?

51:39

Because science was erected to keep that from happening? Well, I mean, we could debate whether or not...

51:46

I don't know much about what Al Gore's statements are, except that he's promoting the whole global warming thing and...

51:55

The point is, James, is that the community that you have now made evidently your ultimate authority and at least a major reason for your conversion to some form of atheism is not a community that is either unbiased or self -correcting.

52:14

And in fact, its foundational conclusions on key issues changes rather regularly.

52:22

And interestingly enough, if you were consistent, you'd have to admit, can only judge upon physical evidences, right?

52:30

Are you going to let me finish at any point? And I'm not trying to be disrespectful. I have a lot of respect for you. And I think you're a highly intelligent person, great guy, from what

52:38

I can see. So please don't take me as being disrespectful. But my position isn't asserting any absolute.

52:47

I'm not saying that there is no God. I'm just saying with the information that I have, not

52:54

Dawkins, not everyone else, that I personally have thus far, it seems highly unlikely that God exists.

53:01

I do not assert, unlike a lot of theists, that I know everything or that I have read the book that does or the being that does.

53:10

And I'm not saying that you're saying that. So James, you're saying that you're not making an absolute statement and yet you have abandoned,

53:20

I assume, a profession of belief in God.

53:26

And did you not identify yourself when you first called in as an open -air atheist? Correct.

53:32

I was an open -air preacher, and that's the name of the show. Correct. So do you take this to the street now or something?

53:41

No, no. It's just, I guess, a play on words, because I was doing a lot of evangelism.

53:50

I was actually preaching with Kirk Cameron, or not Kirk Cameron, Ray Comfort last year.

53:57

But this hasn't been very long, has it? No, it hasn't. And a lot of things, there isn't one reason why

54:05

I arrived at the position that I'm at. There's a lot of different things. And to try to sum it all up in one phone call is just ridiculous.

54:13

It can't happen. But James, something like this is really fast.

54:19

What kind of time frame are we talking about? I don't know. It's really,

54:25

I would say, there isn't any one time where I just said, oh, you know what, I'm going to be an atheist today.

54:31

There was a lot of things that when I did apologetics that would stick in my mind that I could not explain.

54:36

And then there got to be so many questions that, in order to hold on to my position as a theist, would be dishonest.

54:46

Can I ask you one more question? Sure, sure. Were you involved with a church?

54:54

Yes, I was. You were a member of a church and there regularly? Yes. Okay.

55:01

I don't know if I should say the name of the church. No, you don't have to. I was actually a member of a

55:06

Calvinist Baptist church. They weren't reformed, but they were submitted to the doctrines of grace.

55:13

So yes, I was a study member. Have they done anything about this? About what?

55:19

About where you are now. Well, one of the—

55:24

You don't have to tell me. I'm just asking. Answer any questions you ask. I actually—a very notorious open -air preacher went to church with me, and he teaches at the

55:35

Ambassadors Academy. It's a great comfort there. And yeah,

55:40

I mean, they know about this. We've debated back and forth. If you go on YouTube and watch my show, you can watch our debates.

55:47

Well, I understand. But has the church done any— Did you go to them with your questions when you began having these issues?

55:56

And by the way, how long had you been a Christian before you were doing open -air preaching? Well, because I didn't believe that there was a specific time, or I didn't know when the specific time was.

56:09

I hear Ray Comfort or a lot of Arminians saying, oh, it's such and such a date, I said this little prayer, and I didn't believe that.

56:17

I was kind of toying with the idea that I was, in one sense, always saved, because I was always predestined to be saved.

56:23

I was always in God's mind before the first sunset, before the foundations of the world.

56:30

So in that sense, I was always saved. Now, when did this experience happen? I don't know.

56:35

It was over a process of time. It was through time and experience, at least I felt at the time.

56:41

So I can't really trace it back. I mean, I can—to an exact point, I can tell you this, that I was waiting to spend some time in jail for a misdemeanor crime.

56:52

I got a book called God Doesn't Believe in Atheists. I read it. I got sucked into the whole

56:58

Way of the Master thing. I started going to church steadily. It was a church that was definitely theologically perverted.

57:08

It was one of those non -denominational churches. And, you know, the whole altar call thing, the whole thing.

57:16

Okay, all right. So— I just want to know— Theology progressed over time, and as I began to study the original language of the

57:25

New Testament, I began to become more theologically consistent with its teachings.

57:30

Okay, I'm just trying to understand, you know, it's an unusual thing to encounter someone, and when you talk about very short periods of time and radical changes in worldview and stuff like that, normally that involves some kind—

57:42

It wasn't a radical change. Like I said, it was a process, kind of like dying. Yeah.

57:49

There are bits and pieces here and there that would stick in my mind and accumulate, and I just could no longer do the mental jumping jacks.

57:59

I had two choices. I could either say, well, you know, I'll just figure it out all in one day. You know,

58:05

God will just— I'll just trust God here, and, you know, all these things will—

58:11

But what it came down to is, for me to say that would be highly irrational.

58:16

What's the difference between me and a Jehovah's Witness and someone else who has a worldview that is based off of just believing in something without sufficient evidence?

58:28

Okay, I hear you, James. We'd have to have a discussion. Maybe we'll have a discussion sometime in the future on what is evidence and how you support evidence.

58:36

But I appreciate your phone call today, and I think everybody in the audience also appreciates it, too. Thank you for calling today.

58:42

Thank you for listening to The Dividing Line. We will be back, Lord willing, on Tuesday.

58:51

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59:41

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59:47

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