A Response to a Bible/Qur'an Article

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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. And good afternoon, welcome to the Dividing Line. We almost called it off. I had left my office, went down to the break room for a little while, came back and we were deader than a doornail, no more internet access, down for about half an hour.

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We just about said, ah, forget it. But we called in and they said, there is an outage in your area and we were still,

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I mean, I was, I had fired up my droid and was connecting up my computer to a blog via my droid and poof, it all came back.

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So whether it will stay here or not, we have no idea. Didn't the internet, wasn't it a little bit more stable in the past than it seems to be today?

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Is there some kind of, you know, sunspot thing going on? And I don't know what's going on, but it's a bit of a mess anyways.

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Anyhow, back on sometime early this week, I saw a tweet from a fellow was talking about meeting with some

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Mormon missionaries. And so I said, hey, you know what, why don't you give me a call on the program? We'll talk a little bit about that.

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So we're going to do that. Then I've got an article that I've gotten at least two requests from completely different places in the

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United States to talk about. I'll hit that real quick and then we'll get to the rest of our phone calls.

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So let's go ahead and talk with Justin in New York. Hi, Justin. Hello, Justin, how are you?

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Can you hear me? Yes, sir. All right, great, great. Well, I appreciate you responding there to my to my tweet.

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I'm actually a Liberty University student and I've been given a phone call. We need to hang up on this guy right now.

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You didn't tell me that part. I mean, why aren't you calling Eric and Cantor for crying out loud?

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I mean, he's going to help you out, won't he? You know, I would if he would actually take my calls.

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I gave him one tweet and it's been silenced. Well, I can say, well, we'll try to do our best, though.

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I don't have the followers of Eric Cantor and I cannot relate any of your

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LDS questions to WWE wrestlers or anything like that, but I'll do my best despite my shortcomings.

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Well, that's good, because any reference to WWE might be lost on me. Well, evidently they wouldn't be lost on Eric Cantor.

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But anyways, so how many times have you met with the missionary so far? Oh, man, you know, it started about three years ago.

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So it's been a while. There was a lull in between. But certainly not the same missionaries.

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No, no, absolutely not. We've probably gone through about 20 different individuals.

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And they still keep coming? Well, as I said, there was a lull in between there.

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I think the missionaries that we were most consistent with, I think eventually their ward got word of what was going on and then there was some discomfort there.

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So initially, it was very innocent. I just wanted to know what they believed. I grew up out West and had a lot of friends.

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And since becoming a Christian, it's something that's come up over and over again. These days,

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I'm better prepared. And I thank you for your book. I was actually caught by surprise that you wanted to talk to me.

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I was just letting you know that your work is appreciated. Yeah, well,

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I didn't realize you've been talking to him for that long. But when people have the opportunity, and I haven't had the opportunity now for a number of years to meet with LDS missionaries, and I miss it.

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I do sometimes see them riding their bikes. And I'm absolutely blown away by how young they look anymore, because those first conversations that led to Letters to a

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Mormon Elder were conversations with individuals who were my age at that time.

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And so now they're younger than my youngest child. So I've been doing this for a while. But so when you meet with these guys, are you with a new pair of them now?

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Or have you talked with these guys for a while or what? Yeah, actually, a new set of them has come into the apartment next door to me.

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I have a house and then there's a set of apartments next door to me. So it's something that's always been there.

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There you go. Okay, I was wondering how that would work. Because I can guarantee you, if after that many years of meeting with missionaries, they wouldn't keep sending them to your house.

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They would put a big old X on your front door and say, uh -uh, no way. We ain't wasting our time with these guys.

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Yeah, that's what I suspect happened with previous pairs of missionaries.

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But it's been about a year since we had really any meaningful contact with them. And I approached them one day.

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I've seen them out and about. And it struck me as odd that now there's been three of them.

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Huh, yeah. Well, the main thing to keep in mind, I really feel for these young guys.

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I could tell you stories all day long about the conversations I've had with LDS missionaries over the years.

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There was one poor fellow who had come back from Salt Lake.

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My son and I were coming back from passing out tracks at the General Conference. And we left on a Sunday.

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And we got to the Salt Lake City Airport. And there was a huge group of LDS missionaries heading out to their mission field.

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And a number of them were going down to the Arizona Tempe mission. And we were all on the same flight.

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And this green, green missionary. I mean, this was his first airline flight.

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Salt Lake was the largest city he had ever been in. Okay, this gives you an idea of how green this country little

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Mormon boy is. And guess where he ended up? He ended up in the window seat. And I had the middle seat for his entire trip from Salt Lake to Phoenix.

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And oh, did we have an interesting conversation. My son gave up his copy of Letters to a

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Mormon Elder. Not like he couldn't get another one. But he gave up his copy of Letters to a Mormon Elder so we could give it to him.

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And I've often wondered if I was ever going to run into that guy again, with stories about how his mission started off with getting stuck on the plane with me sitting in the seat next to him.

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But there's so many different kinds of missionaries.

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And I bet you you've already seen the bored missionaries and the zealous missionaries and the clueless missionaries and every bit along the way.

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And sadly, as the years have gone by, I've noticed the missionaries themselves know less and less about what their own faith teaches.

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And they've been more and more infected with really a postmodernism of truth everywhere type of a thing.

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And so it's actually become more complicated to attempt to speak with these guys, because it takes even more education, more educating them what they believe, let alone what you believe.

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But I just wanted to encourage you, wanted to know if there were any questions you had. If you've already done this many times before, then it's not quite the same situation.

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But I really wanted to encourage others, too, to think about engaging these folks. Because, look, one of the saddest stories

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I can tell of meeting with missionaries was meeting with this one missionary.

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He was a return missionary, an RM. And as you may be aware, over 60 % of RMs go inactive for a period of at least six months after they come off their mission.

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They're just burned out. They're tired. It didn't turn out to be what they expected it to be.

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And so here's an RM who was still doing missionary work, sort of as a stake missionary.

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And we were meeting at this woman's house. This turned into a real long situation, extended for quite some time.

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I mean, the missionaries really put the full court press on this lady. But this was one of the earlier meetings. And after I explained the gospel to him for quite some time one evening, he made a comment to me that I really think should not be the case.

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He meant it as a compliment. I took it as a real, real sad statement.

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And that was, here was a guy who had gone door to door in the United States. He wasn't in Zimbabwe. He wasn't in Zaire. He was here in the

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United States of America going door to door for two years. It wasn't even back in the 18 -month time. They flirted with having missionaries out for only 18 months once.

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That didn't work at all. But anyway, he said to me, he said, this is the first time anyone has ever explained to me the differences in what we believe.

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And I was glad he now understood what the differences were, but I was absolutely mortified that this was the first time that this man had had it explained to him in language he could understand what the difference was between the gospel he was preaching and what the

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Christians at the door were saying to him. And that just shouldn't be.

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And I'm very grateful that you've taken the time to try to talk to these guys. But I hope that other people will hear that.

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And no, I'm not saying everyone should just jump on their white horse and go out and try to save all the Mormons. If you don't know what the Mormons believe, no, that's probably a dangerous thing to do.

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But there is so much good information that is available that if you do have, I mean, I know somewhere over near the canal around 51st, 55th

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Avenue, there is a missionary house. You can find them. You can recognize them eventually. There's an apartment or a house that is being used or something like that, and there's going to be a fresh set of missionaries rotating in and out of there, sometimes as many as four in one apartment, sometimes more, rotating in and out of those apartments.

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And you're right next door, so you've got a whole mission field there. I think you need to memorize letters to Mormon elders.

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But, you know, I would encourage other folks to really give consideration.

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These young men, many of them have never, ever heard a gospel presentation they could understand.

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The language barrier is so big that if we don't climb that mountain, if we don't do the translation ourselves, well, it's going to be, who's going to communicate with them?

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Who's going to have the beautiful feet bearing the good news for these people? And so I'll encourage you to continue to do that, encourage others to consider doing the exact same thing.

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When you see those missionaries, take the time to meet with them and to present the gospel to them.

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There's a YouTube video. It was recorded up in Anchorage, Alaska a couple years ago, where I give the eternal law of progression and help people understand what

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Mormons believe. So press on, and if you found letters to be helpful, you might find

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Is More My Brother to be useful if you run into maybe some of their stake missionaries or something like that. Have you ever run into some of the older folks?

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Have they brought some of those folks along, or has it always been the young guys? No, no. Actually, I'm sort of praying that perhaps their bishop or somebody like that might get involved.

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Well, I realize that the bishop would almost never do that. I realize that the missionary stuff and the local leadership of the ward are very distinct from one another.

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So you could get some RMs, you could get some stake missionaries, or like a mission president or something like that.

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They choose their bishops based not upon their theological knowledge, but their ability to get everyone to play together in a nice way.

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That's just all there is to it. So the bishops normally are not the ones that are going to be overly challenging, but they will have people that are sort of a little more knowledgeable that you can talk to.

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And you have to walk a real careful line there. If you want to get those folks, you might be able to get to them.

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But then if you don't just roll over to whatever they're saying, they're going to mark you off.

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And if they know you're near, like right next door to one of their things, they will pass out your picture.

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They've done it to me. They will tell people, do not talk to the person in such and such a place.

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I remember very clearly I had been called out to meet with some missionaries, some Christians that we went to a really large church at the time.

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And so people knew that I would go do that. And I was standing, it was a second floor apartment. I was standing in the window waving to show up.

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They rode by, looked up and kept going, rode to a Circle K, called the family and said, we'll be happy to meet with you, but not with him there.

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And they had ridden by and seen me through a second story window. So just, it's a hard line to walk.

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It's a hard balance to get, but it's worth pursuing. You've been famous most of your life.

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Infamous, I think is probably the terminology that would be better used there. Well, we'll pray that the

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Lord will bless your efforts, Justin. All right. Thank you, sir. All right. Thanks a lot. God bless. Bye -bye. Bye. 877 -753 -3341.

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We have almost full board of calls. We don't have Skype up today. But I have gotten two requests to deal with an article

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I need to get to here real quick. It's not a long article. This is an article that appeared a couple days ago,

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March, well, to March 29th, so two days ago, by Leonard Pitts, a syndicated columnist entitled,

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People Should Stop Cherry -Picking Warlike Quotes from the Quran. And here's the article. It says, OK, put your books away.

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We're having a pop quiz. Below are four quotes. Each is from one of two sources, the Bible or the Quran.

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Although just to make things interesting, there's also a chance all four from one book. Two are edited for length. And one of those was also edited to remove a religion -specific reference.

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Your job, identify the holy book of origin. Ready? Here we go. This was incredibly simplistic, but I realized that for 99 % of the

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American populace, this would be a very interesting approach because people would not be able to identify these.

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This is really simple. Wherever you encounter nonbelievers, kill them, seize them, besiege them, wait for them at every lookout post.

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That, of course, is from Surah 9 of the Quran. It's not saying that. I'm just telling you that. Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth.

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I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. Well, duh. If your very own brother or your son or daughter or the wife you love, your closest friend secretly entices you, saying,

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Let us go and worship other gods. Do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. You must certainly put him to death.

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Well, we certainly know that from the Torah, from Deuteronomy. Now kill all the boys and kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.

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Of course, from Numbers 31. All right, pens down. How did you do? If you identified the first cause being from the

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Quran, Surah 9, 5 and the other three as originating in the Bible, I congratulate you on that degree in theology.

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Well, thank you very much, sir. I worked hard on it. If you have guessed correctly, most people will not have not found it easy to place the quotes in their proper books.

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And sadly, he's probably right. If I have guessed correctly, most people will have found a certain thematic similarity in them.

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Well, only if you are ignorant of the context. Yes, there is a point here. I wish people would stop cherry picking warlike quotes from the

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Quran to prove the evil of Islam. You see this stuff all over the web. Just a few days ago, some anonymous person angry with me for defending fascist

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Nazi Islam. The writer says is trying to kill us all. Sent me an email quoting chronic exhortations to violence to prove that Islam is a religion of hate and murder.

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As rhetorical devices go, it is a cheap parlor trick, a con job to fool the foolish and gull the gullible.

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And for anyone who has spent quality time with the Bible, its shortcomings should be obvious. If not, see the pop quiz again.

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The Quran is hardly unique in its admonitions to take up the sword. It's not my intention here to parse any of these troubling quotes.

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Let us leave it to religious scholars to contextualize them, to explain how they square with the contention that Islam and Christianity are religions of peace.

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For our purposes, it is sufficient to note that while both Christian and Muslim scholars will offer that context and explanation, only

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Christians can be assured of being taken at their word when they do so. I'm sorry, I couldn't get through that one without laughing.

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I'm not sure what color is the sky in your world. I'd like to ask this writer. Anyways, Christians get the man for the doubt.

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Muslims get Glenn Beck asking a Muslim congressman to prove to me that you are not working with our enemies. Because Christianity is regarded as a known and a norm,

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Muslims, in the meantime, have been drafted since September 11, 2001 to fulfill the nation's obsessive, historic, paranoiac, and ongoing need to rally against an enemy within.

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We lost the commies, but along came the Islamo -fascists. The names change. The endless capacity for irrational panic remains the same.

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As in people who send out emails insisting upon the rightness of holding over a billion people, that bears repeating over a billion people responsible for the actions of what?

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A few hundred, a few thousand? Some of us use lies, exaggerations, rhetorical gobbledygook to insist in the rest, to instill in the rest of us that irrational panic they breathe like air.

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Yes, it is only sensible to fear the threat we face from terrorism, but panicked, irrational people are capable of anything. It might be wise we chose to fear that too.

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That's Leonard Pitts Jr., a columnist for the Miami Herald, and his email address is even provided here as well.

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Uh, just a couple things. Um, short, short, there are things to agree with. Uh, I too am troubled with a lot of the surface level, uh, criticisms of Islam, of people who will quote, uh, only certain portions, uh, of the

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Quran and have not actually read the Quran, don't know anything about the history of the Quran, don't know anything about the organization of the Quran. Um, I, I, that does bother me.

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And I honestly don't think you should be running around saying the Quran says X if you've never even read the Quran.

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And I wish people would stop doing that with the Bible too. Uh, I mean, every person who runs around saying, do not judge, lest you be judged.

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If you've not read the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, then you shouldn't be quoting it. Okay. I mean, ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is normally just, um, ignorant.

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But however, uh, that's not the same thing as the situation we face today, especially with the citations that were given.

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Now, I, I listened to a debate that took place between, uh, the last guy was, oh,

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I forgot to bring it in here. I'm sorry. It was posted just recently between Jay Smith. It took place, I think at Midwestern.

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Uh, I think the last name of the fellow, he's a former Southern Baptist who is becoming Muslim. I think his last name was

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Khalil, Muhammad Khalil. I think I'd have to go look. It's on my other computer. Uh, maybe somebody in the, in the chat channel can throw it up.

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I'll correct myself when they do. Uh, but I listened to it, uh,

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Monday. And Jay Smith is just, uh, is just an incredible, he, he knows,

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I, I wish I knew the Quran. Someday I will, Lord willing, if he gives me enough years, I, I will be able to quote the

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Quran as quickly and as easily as Jay Smith does. Um, and Jay is a great guy. Now, the interesting thing was, uh, and, and Jay just dominated in this debate.

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It was almost embarrassing because, uh, even though I was listening on it, listening to it at high speed, so it made the

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Muslims sound like a little bit better. When I did listen to it at regular speed, the long pauses of quietness were very

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Khalil Meek. Thank you. Uh, we're really, really difficult, difficult to, to, to get through.

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Um, but the one thing that made me cringe just a little bit is, is

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I love Jay, but he's a Mennonite. And, um, he just, he just, he did.

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He threw the New Testament, the Old Testament under the bus. He really is. And I'm not worried about the Old Testament. I follow the New Testament.

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I follow Jesus. We don't have to worry about the Old Testament. Well, but there's this little problem.

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And, and Khalil Meek doesn't know enough about the Bible to have done this, but a sharp Muslim would have responded.

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Well, is that so, Jay Smith? Um, how do you explain the fact that almost every page of the

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New Testament, you have quotations of the Old Testament. You just, you can't, you can't do that.

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We have to be able to explain and explain consistently and explain clearly and explain, uh, in, in a, in a biblical fashion, these texts from the

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Old Testament, because we can't just throw it out. And Jay likened it to the fact that he has like a 16 year old and a 12 year old and a six year old.

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And the Old Testament is the rules he has for the six year old and the New Testament is the rules he has for the 12 year old.

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And we're supposed to move forward the rules for the 16 year old. Um, that's a, that's a level of, of, of interpretational grid work there that I, I wouldn't want to have to defend in, in a debate.

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Um, there's no question that we can recognize that the Old Testament laws and especially the laws of stoning, killing apostates, et cetera, et cetera.

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Uh, were for a specific people at a specific time. And it was a specific people that were being used by God to bring about the birth of the

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Messiah. They were God's covenant people in the land of Israel. And there were certain things that marked them off as God's covenant people, uh, that were external in nature.

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And apostasy, uh, was something that had you not only cut off from your people, but it would result in a capital offense.

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And unless you're someone who feels that the, the theocracy of Israel is supposed to be established across the world under the rubric of the church.

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And there are people who do believe that, but they are a small minority. Then you have to recognize the differences and the fact that as the gospel has gone forth across the world, it leads people to honor

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God's law, but not to attempt to make everyone Jewish and establish a theocracy in the process.

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We look at God's law, which is, you know, this is, this is the word that makes everyone cringe.

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Theonomy, that's theos and namos, God's law. We look at God's law and we see the principles that it enunciates and what is pleasing to God.

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And I do believe that nations will be judged on the basis of whether they have judged rightly in light of God's law.

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There's no question about that. But those things that marked off the people of Israel as a specific people at a specific time, the holiness codes that do not contain specific moral elements that are otherwise in the law attached to creation and so on and so forth, such as the trimming of the beard.

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Okay. I mean, and that one really connects well when you're talking about Islam. I suppose there's some group someplace that calls itself

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Christian that does not trim the corners of their beard, but I do it all the time. And I'm not being inconsistent in so doing.

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We have to look at those laws. I've done, I've done programs on this in the past. I've actually put a fair amount of time into thinking about this because the homosexual issue, because two of the strongest prohibitions against homosexuality are found in the holiness code,

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Leviticus 18, Leviticus 20. And people say, wow, if you wear polyester, you wear clothes that have mixed fibers or any of these other things, then you're being inconsistent, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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And I've tried to put some serious thought into what all of that means and looking at the holiness code and being able to discern what is, what is an element of morality that is, that the

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Bible tells us is, is part of the creation itself, such as homosexuality, such as the marriage bed and so on and so forth.

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Over against, no, I am not expressing any level of dispensationalism whatsoever.

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Mr. Squirrel, Tim LaHaye, favorite guy. Anyway, I just happened to look over in channel and there you go.

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Everybody, I don't care. Look, look at, look at the Theonomy by Greg Bonson. Even Bonson's conclusion was there's a lot more work we need to do to know how to make application of God's law.

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And, and Bonson recognized that there, there has to be more work done in these, in these areas.

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And I think we all need to be thinking through these things and in a serious fashion and need to be serious

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Christians so we can give serious answers to questions like this. But what is very, very clear is the new covenant does not establish a theocracy in every nation it goes into.

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And this is where the difference exists between at least Quranic Islam and Christianity.

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And I say Quranic Islam because there is such a wide variety of Islamic belief. There is no question there's a wide variety of Islamic belief, but the kind of Islamic belief that is behind Al -Qaeda, the

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Wahhabi, Salafi type of super conservative, we need to be interpreting the

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Quran in the light of everything that Ibn Kathir said. And it's everything that's found in Sahih al -Bukhari and Sahih al -Muslim and al -Tabari, especially as seen in Ibn Tamir, that kind of Islam cannot be separated from the

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Sharia and the Sharia is a political system. You can't separate the two out.

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And that's one of the major, major, major, major differences that you have in that particular conflict and must be understood when we look at these things.

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And so, yeah, I'm personally tired of all the really, really surface level citations of the

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Bible, as well as the surface level citations of the Quran. And I wish

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Christians wouldn't do either one. I wish atheists wouldn't do either one.

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And the level of discussion, what I see on Fox News and places like that is bad.

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But there's a, there's, on the other side, there are people that feel that you can't say anything about Islam, that you cannot identify any elements of Islamic teaching as being an error.

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It's just, it's the untouchable. That's, that's the left. And of course, the leftist doesn't seem to realize how absolutely insane that type of action, that type of action is because were the

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Muslims to ever take over, they would not spare the left. Having been nice to them at any point in time, I can assure you of that.

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So anyway, I did find it an interesting discussion.

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And yes, there are reasons we should be concerned. But at the same time, we do need to recognize what

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Muslims believe. That's why we've done programs on this, on this, we've done entire issues of the dividing line on these things.

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What other program has gone through every single one of the references to Isa and the Quran? And, you know, played lectures from Islamic folks and talked about the fithda and the mithak.

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These are all in the archives. You can look them up. And we'll be doing more in the future. I mean, you know, right now

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I'm fighting the temptation to talk about some of the stuff I'm working on my book right now, because I thought it was just fascinating that my tutor and I spent time,

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I mentioned this briefly yesterday, my tutor and I spent time looking at Surat al -Fatiha and who is it?

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Al -Daleem. If you've ever hear anybody quoting Surat al -Fatiha, they extend the vowel in that last word.

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Those who have been led astray. Who are they? Well, a lot of the early, earliest, earliest

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Muslims said Muhammad, when he was asked that question, said, those are the Christians. And those who've earned

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God's wrath, those are the Jews. Folks, that would mean in every prayer, five times a day, when the

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Muslims pray, they pray a prayer saying, don't let me be like a Jew or a

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Christian. That sort of is important. You know, that sort of has a, you know, that sort of impacts the kind of dialogue we can have.

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It needs to be understood that that's what's going on. But anyways, I'm fighting the temptation to do that.

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Did you want to take a break today? No? Oh, you're just gonna sit there and just watch me just babble on? Oh, you did want to say, did you want to bring up that one subject before we go to our scholars?

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Sure. Because apparently I've got something to correct. Oh, yes.

30:31

Aside from the spelling of your name? Well, somebody else has something to correct in that regard, because you can't seem to spell my name right.

30:38

It is on the front page of the website, isn't it? It is on the front page, as well as my title, which is this particular article.

30:45

I'm really sorry about that. I didn't mean to take over as president. I really didn't, because you are actually the president.

30:51

Well, I think you need to correct that right away. Rich Ferris is the president of Alpha Omega Ministries. I'm the director of ministries.

30:57

Yes, yes. But yesterday on the program, I actually, and I'll explain why in a minute,

31:05

I apparently errantly said that the Christianity Today article had been changed, updated to take out the word presently.

31:13

Yes. And the reason I said that was that here on Peter Lumpkin's blog, he has, and in fact, there's three different blogs that use this particular image, where he has, quote,

31:27

Dr. James White presently teaches at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, unquote, and then big red letters, really?

31:35

Underneath it. And your picture's right there. And so I... At least it's not a distorted picture.

31:42

Is it a distorted picture? No, no, no. So it's not a Dave Armstrong picture? No, it's not a Dave Armstrong. That's good. So, you know, but given the fact that it was clearly a quote,

31:53

I just made the assumption that he was quoting someone. And in trying to sort it out,

32:00

I could only come to the conclusion, given the fact that I actually went and googled the phrase

32:05

James White presently. And there was only one place in the entire internet that that phrase was showing up.

32:12

And that's... That's on Peter Lumpkin's blog. And so apparently, you know, when

32:19

I stated that Peter, you know, that the Christianity Today article had been changed, I was presuming that he was actually drawing that quote from what was published last year.

32:29

And here he puts that he's rather flummoxed, apparently, at my having said this, because here, this is...

32:36

It still says, according to him, as of last night... So, in other words,

32:43

Peter Lumpkins has convicted himself of inserting a word that's not there? Well, he says that, in fact, he says the quote is...

32:52

He gave a link. This is where he drew his inference. The president of a large theological seminary. His inference.

32:58

You know, who teaches on Islam at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. Well, the word presently isn't in there.

33:05

In fact, there's other things. It's actually very different. Well, so I'm left to conclude only one thing as I'm surfing the net last night, and that was that apparently this phrase

33:17

Peter was actually quoting himself in this particular representation, which is another circumstance where you need to correct that.

33:27

You need to get that fixed, because here, Peter Lumpkins, in a very sane article, is calling you the president, and now he's saying that these things presently teaches blah, blah, blah.

33:40

And so, just in trying to sort all this out, I decided, as I'm still searching the net and all that,

33:46

I decided to Google the phrase... And you know how when you get certain websites, you get these pop -ups that pop up real fast?

33:54

I decided to Google the phrase yellow journalism, and I'm positive, boom, right there is a pop -up of Peter Lumpkins.

34:01

But it went away. Yeah, you move the mouse, and it just disappears. But he needs to disprove that you actually saw him pop up when

34:12

Googling yellow journalism. He needs to disprove that, because all you've got to do is say something, and it must be true.

34:18

Yeah, it's a sad thing, because... So I need to correct it. Yeah, well, thank you very much. Anyone who would...

34:23

Well, honest people, when they listened to my video on the dangerous subject of the love of God and the fact that people get very emotional about it and don't necessarily really think biblically or theologically about it, honest people knew exactly what

34:40

I was saying. And they didn't have to change my words like Peter Lumpkins did to come up with an entire reason for criticizing me.

34:47

And honest people, if they go to my website, would see that I've always been straightforward about Columbia Evangelical Seminary, and they could look at my teaching list there.

34:57

And what they would notice is that every class I've listed as teaching for Golden Gate, I've given the exact years in which

35:05

I taught those things. And you'll notice that there has been a pretty consistent teaching pattern since 1995.

35:11

Now, there are places in there where I wasn't teaching a class. I'm not teaching one right now.

35:19

But honest people, rational people, would look at that and go, wow, you've taught a really wide range of classes in different places.

35:26

You've taught in Mill Valley. You've taught in Denver. You've taught in Arizona. And so they would interpret that reporter in light of, well, what's rational?

35:40

But you see, that's not O 'Lumpy. O 'Lumpy's not trying to be honest or anything like that.

35:47

He's trying to come up with something to distract people from the fact that he is a defender of a known and documented liar,

35:57

Erkin Kanner. And so this is a common methodology. It's a little bit like the force.

36:05

These are not the droids you're looking for. Only works on the weak -minded. It doesn't work on someone who goes, well, wait a minute.

36:11

What are you talking about? And can see past that. So just for clarification, for the third time now, you got a response to your inquiry last year at Golden Gate.

36:23

Yes, I did. And you were told nothing from Mill Valley whatsoever. No communication had been, no grand proclamations from these unnamed sources and people that, of course,

36:37

Peter Lumpkins won't even mention and won't even document. No, of course not. So the status is still the same.

36:44

I will hope and look forward to an opportunity in the future. And once again, if because of stink bombs thrown by little people who have nothing else to do with their lives than make stink bombs, causes the students there to not get to study

37:03

Islam with someone who actually has the level of experience I have with Islam, I will shame on them. What does that say about their motives?

37:11

It says everything about them. Anyway, let's, I've got phone callers here and good grief.

37:17

A really wide variety of topics here. And we'll see what's behind the blinking lights.

37:25

Let's talk with Ian. Hi, Ian. Hey, how you doing? Doing all right. Hey, I have a question about believers' baptism and the early church.

37:35

I have a friend who was a pastor of Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, and he was talking with me and he was saying, well, you know, how can you believe something that no one for, you know, a thousand years even believed or taught in the

37:55

Christian church? And I am not an expert in the early church. It's just not one of my areas that I really have studied.

38:04

So I thought I'd call you because I know you've done a lot of work in that area. Well, I wouldn't say I've done a lot of work in that area, but I mean, it's certainly, it is obvious beyond all question that baptism in the primitive period of the church was done on believing adults by immersion.

38:24

I mean, that's not even a question. They've dug up archaeologically the baptismal fonts that were used by Ambrose, and you can stand in them.

38:35

You don't need to stand in something if you're going to just be sprinkling somebody or something along those lines.

38:41

It's not even a question. The question is, when did infant baptism start? And what was its origin and what was its meaning?

38:50

There's, what's it, Kurt Ahland did a book on that subject.

38:58

And what's the name again? Kurt Ahland, the great New Testament textual critical scholar, he did a book on that subject.

39:04

And there's another book. Again, I'd have to go into my library and go track it down.

39:11

I suppose I should start doing the dividing line in my library sometime. But there are many books right now on the subject of baptism in the early church.

39:23

And I think honest historians will admit that the development, because you can look at the

39:29

Didache, and the Didache gives us the picture of the early church's practice, probably in somewhere around north of Israel, somewhere in that area, around the turn of the first century.

39:46

And it is baptism of believers, somewhere in...

39:52

The Didache is the baptism of believers? The Didache is an ancient document from around the turn of the century called the

40:00

Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. That's the term, Didache is the Greek word for teaching. And it presents a form of baptism that certainly would not be like your

40:12

Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor would practice today. So I just, it just makes me wonder what he's reading for him to say something like, oh, well, nobody believed that for a thousand years.

40:25

I have no earthly idea what he could be reading, because the real question is, when did infant baptism develop, and upon what grounds?

40:35

Because my discussions with my Pato Baptist brethren, who do not believe in infant baptism for the remission of sin, but take more of a

40:47

Calvin's view, my argument has always been, well, it's certainly ancient, it certainly goes back to early centuries, but it doesn't go back as far as baptism of confessing disciples does, historically or archaeologically speaking.

41:05

And when it does appear, my concern has always been this, I don't know anybody before Calvin who had

41:11

Calvin's view of it. Now, I don't know what view of Luther's that particular

41:17

Lutheran is holding, because Lutheran always makes me scratch my head, because there are so many different interpretations of Luther himself at that point, and infantile faith, and all the rest of this stuff, that I just,

41:31

I don't know, I just find the argument as you presented it just sort of amazing from a historical perspective.

41:40

So anyway. Would you know anybody in the early church who, I mean, obviously after the

41:48

New Testament, that talked about believer -only baptism?

41:55

Well, you see, we need to be careful. Believers -only baptism only makes sense once a form of infant baptism arises.

42:06

So why would they be talking about it until that arises? And even when it does arise, it doesn't necessarily mean there's going to be some kind of a conflict between people holding different views on these subjects and therefore having debates about it.

42:19

And so one of the things you have to be very careful about doing is taking modern situations and modern definitions and modern debates and reading them back in the early church and trying to get everybody on one side or the other side or whatever else it might be.

42:36

So the whole idea of disciple -only, what you have to do is say positively, who were they baptizing?

42:44

They were baptizing people who made this confession of faith. Okay, were they baptizing anybody else?

42:50

Well, no. So where did infant baptism come from? Well, it seems that it arose from a belief, a growing belief of a sacramental view of baptism where it washes away sin.

43:05

And so since infant mortality is a big, huge thing, then the idea comes up, well, if you baptize your kid, then are you getting them rid of...

43:15

And for most of the folks I'm debating infant baptism with, they're like, that's not even on the table.

43:22

That's not even why we're concerned about this. And that goes into a whole other area.

43:28

So I'm thinking, I wish I could see right through this wall right there because I know exactly which shelf it is upon which all the books

43:37

I have that I could mention to you. There's one particular book that I want to try to grab. And if I have time,

43:45

I'm not sure how I could do that unless Rich played a commercial or something so I could go get it and let you know.

43:52

But we've got other callers. But hopefully that's helpful to you, Ian. Okay, thank you. Appreciate it. All right, thanks a lot.

43:59

All right, bye -bye. Okay, we go to Brad. Hi, Brad.

44:05

Hi, Dr. White. How are you? Doing all right. Good. First off, I just want to thank you for your ministry.

44:11

It's been very helpful to me, especially the

44:16

Reformed theology stuff. I think it's really clear and compelling.

44:22

And when you walk through the texts from start to finish, I don't see how you can see it any other way.

44:29

So thank you for that. But my question today actually doesn't have anything to do with that. And it's possibly a little bit

44:36

Bible Answer Man, so I apologize for that up front. But I just wanted to know, do you have a view on where Jesus was in the three days between his death and resurrection?

44:49

Yeah, well, we need to be careful we define the three days. We're not talking about 24 -hour periods there.

44:55

But Jesus' own statement to the thief on the cross next to him was, today you will be with me in paradise.

45:03

And no matter how many hoops Greg Stafford jumps through to try to re -translate that particular phrase to where Jesus says, truly

45:15

I say to you today, comma, you will be with me in paradise, it would make absolutely no sense whatsoever for Jesus to waste breath identifying the point in time he's speaking.

45:26

So there is, in Jesus' words, a recognition that this man who has turned to him in saving faith, and he would be in paradise.

45:39

Now, the only paradise that I can identify from Jesus' teaching is identified, for example, in the common understanding expressed in Luke chapter 16, and that there is in Sheol, which is the place that one goes after life, there is a place called

45:57

Abraham's bosom, and there is a place that isn't Abraham's bosom. Abraham's bosom is a place of joy and peace and refreshment.

46:07

It is not a place of suffering. Whereas there is some other place that is separated from that place of peace, that is a place of suffering, because the rich man cries out for some cessation of the suffering that is his, because he is under the wrath of God.

46:28

That distinction has been given different names, and there seems to be some indication in light of the resurrection of Christ that there is a fundamental change that takes place in the resurrection of Christ.

46:43

In the sense that Paul's assertion is that when he dies, he will be in the presence of Christ, and that all such believers will be in the presence of Christ.

46:55

And given that Christ has ascended into heaven itself, then there is a change that takes place as far as that is concerned.

47:06

But the term Sheol, there would be less confusion about this if the

47:12

King James hadn't quite simply messed up here. The Sheol is sometimes translated as hell in the

47:20

Old Testament. That's not what it is. Sheol is the realm of the dead, and the

47:26

Old Testament does not give a whole lot of information about it, other than saying that there is activity in Sheol, and it is the commonplace of the dead.

47:36

There is a distinction that's made in it. We come into the New Testament, and we see Hades, and that's different, however, from the lake of fire, because Hades is cast into the lake of fire, so they can't be the same thing.

47:55

And Peter tells us that God knows how to keep the ungodly under punishment for the day of resurrection.

48:01

And so when we put all of this together, it seems, you know, when

48:07

I hear people saying, well, he's in hell now, I don't think anybody's in hell. I think there is a place in Sheol slash

48:16

Hades where the unrighteous are kept under punishment for the day of judgment.

48:25

And the righteous are in the presence of Christ, and that temporary place of holding will be cast in the lake of fire, which is the second death, and which is that place of eternal punishment.

48:38

But I don't think that that is yet the location. It's certainly the destination, but not the location.

48:46

And so Jesus would not be undergoing punishment, however, because he gave his life voluntarily, and that was a finished transaction when he says to Telestai, there is no further need beyond the giving of that sinless life of the people who say that Jesus was tortured for three days in hell, or so on and so forth.

49:10

There's just absolutely no basis for that in the New Testament, because he says to the thief on the cross, you will be with me in paradise.

49:17

And he was. And so at his resurrection,

49:24

I think you have captivity led captive, as it says in Ephesians, and there is a fundamental shift.

49:30

The exact timing of that, is it right then? Is it after his ascension? I don't know that the word's necessarily designed to give us that level of information, but that's where I believe he was.

49:42

Right. So, yeah, I noticed sort of increasing popularity that he was tortured in hell, which

49:51

I think there's no support for whatsoever. But what about the passenger, where it sort of seems to be a tricky one, but it seems to say that he at least presented himself to some spirits in captivity?

50:07

That's Tartarus. That says he made proclamation to the spirits in prison.

50:14

And it's not preach. It's not, I don't, if I recall,

50:20

Clark, I had to look it up real quickly here. It is to make proclamation. And I believe that he was making proclamation of his victory over all those forces that had sought to destroy the promise of God that began back in Genesis chapter 3.

50:36

They would all be in that one place. And he made proclamation of his victory. This would be part of his vindication and part of the fact that in his resurrection, all of their efforts to stop

50:48

God's plan of salvation for his people had been destroyed. All right, okay.

50:54

All right, that is great. Thank you very much. And I'm looking forward to seeing you down here in Australia later this year.

51:02

Yes, coming in October and going to be a busy, busy time. But looking forward to meeting with my

51:08

Australian brothers in Sydney and Brisbane. And I'll talk to our eateries about increasing the portions.

51:16

Well, I won't need it anymore. I'm a much smaller man heading your direction.

51:22

I'm thankful for that. But hey, you guys should be the ones asking for that.

51:28

You're the ones paying through the nose for a little bit. Yeah, we've been ripped off for years. All righty, brother.

51:34

Thanks a lot. Thank you very much. All right, God bless. Thanks. All right, we got two more calls to get to.

51:40

But I have asked Mr. Pierce to do me a favor. He's going to cover Dead Air for just a moment because I want to give a resource.

51:49

And I'm going to run in my library and get it. So enjoy the music for about 30 seconds.

52:11

The dividing line will resume in a moment. Go ahead and resume it.

52:18

Here we go. Putting the earphones back on. All right. I knew it was real close.

52:24

I knew exactly where it was. I've got an entire shelf. For our previous call,

52:29

Ian, this is interesting. You can tell when I've been studying a subject when you find

52:35

U .S. Airways tickets. Hey, I was in first class on this, and that's cool.

52:43

How long ago was this? Where's the date on this? Anyways, it's still in the book here.

52:49

There is a book you want to pick up. This is the kind of book, when you pick it up, what's extremely valuable about it is that it has bibliographies and notes.

52:58

Most people know this. But when you want to study a subject, what you want to do is you want to find a source book.

53:05

A book that goes into depth. And then what you do is you use the bibliography in the back.

53:10

And this one isn't a huge bibliography, actually. But it's four or five pages.

53:16

And then you use the notes that are provided in it. And that gets you started.

53:22

So this is a book by Hendrik Stander and Johannes Lowe called

53:28

Baptism in the Early Church. And it is published by Cary Publications.

53:35

And you want to grab this, and it'll get you started. Because this will talk to you about what was found in the

53:44

Didache, what you've got in Origen, Tertullian, Irenaeus, Justin, the

53:50

Apostolic Fathers, et cetera, et cetera. Good survey, good place to get started. And then you can go from there.

53:57

So Baptism in the Early Church by Hendrik Stander and Johannes Lowe. There you go. That's what that was.

54:02

I couldn't remember the names off the top of my head. And I wanted to go and get that for you. Let's talk to George.

54:09

Hi, George. Hey, Dr. Wade. How you doing? Doing good. I have a question. I wanted to read this from a

54:16

Catholic translation. I'll tell you why in a second. It's the New American Bible. In Exodus 34, it says,

54:24

Moses at once bowed down to the ground in worship. Then he said, If I find favor with you, O Lord, do come along in our company.

54:31

This is indeed a specific people. Yet pardon our wickedness and send to receive us as your own.

54:38

I also read that in the New Catholic version, and it doesn't have the word worship in it in that particular verse.

54:47

And I was just wondering if you could address... In verse 8? Yeah. It actually doesn't have the word worship.

54:55

Okay. And that translation actually says... Here it is.

55:01

And Moses, making haste, bowed down prostrate unto the earth and adoring.

55:10

Well, it's worship. Yishtchaku means to worship. So he bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped.

55:18

Okay. Yeah, I was just wondering if you can address... Do you think that this is actually a good portion of Scripture to show a

55:26

Roman Catholic, to show them that prayer is worship? Because if you compare this prayer, this little prayer, to the

55:34

O Mother of Perpetual Help prayer, just the thing I don't understand is, if the Catholic Church, though they claim to be the sole and fallible interpreter of Scripture, why does there have to be variance between different Roman Catholic translations?

55:48

Well, I did chuckle a little bit when Robertson Jennis said in one of the debates we did last year that Rome could provide...

55:56

could answer all of the textual critical questions and everything else, but evidently is busy doing something else.

56:02

I'm not sure what it is they're busy doing. But be it as it may, Roman Catholic translations of the

56:08

Bible even make Roman Catholic apologists queasy. It's just a rather interesting thing.

56:15

There are many places that demonstrate that prayer is an act of worship.

56:23

But it's not so much finding a verse for these folks. If you've listened to my debate with Patrick Madrid, there's always a way to get around what the

56:34

Bible has to say by redefining its terms. And if, you know, just fundamentally, it's the

56:41

Spirit of God that has to strike you with such an awe of his presence that you'll stop playing around with his

56:47

Scriptures. And if you want to continue worshiping

56:52

Mary, you will find any excuse, no matter how shallow it is. I remember, what was it?

56:58

About two years ago, we went through that Madrid debate here on The Dividing Line, and we went through it very carefully.

57:04

And there wasn't a shred of biblical argumentation he presented that could stand up to any type of cross -examination at all.

57:11

It's just not there. I mean, going to Revelation, the prayers of the saints, and all the rest of it. We went through all of it.

57:16

And it is just so obvious that prayer is an act of worship, and that it is associated with worship.

57:24

And that, therefore, we should take it extremely seriously and should not direct it to anybody else.

57:30

That it's not really a matter of finding. I mean, I would agree with you. This is one text that demonstrates that in the context of prayer, you have worship going on.

57:39

But let me play a Patrick Madrid with you. He bows down, and he worships, and he prays.

57:46

But it doesn't mean that the prayer was necessarily intimately associated with the worship. You could pray to God while worshiping, but if you pray to Mary, it doesn't mean that you're worshiping

57:58

Mary. I mean, because, see, again, you,

58:03

I'm assuming, George, want your prayer and worship to be defined by what flows positively from the

58:11

Word of God. But the Roman Catholic has a different authority and, therefore, is willing to define their worship on other grounds so as to have an explanation as to why it doesn't necessarily violate the

58:28

Word of God. So you're drawing from different sources. One sees the

58:33

Scripture as a sufficiently positive source from which to draw the definitions of one's worship.

58:40

The other says, no, I have a greater source, and, therefore, I'm not necessarily violating what is found.

58:46

Two different things. And, Dr. White, I just want to say, I picked up the book Inerrancy, and I was just wondering if you knew if that's one of the best books written on that subject.

58:56

Is that the 70s Norman Geisler -edited work? Yeah, but I think he only speaks in one chapter.

59:03

Well, don't worry. Norman Geisler has written some good stuff. I mean, right now,

59:10

I'm not sure that I'd be buying any of his current publications. I didn't want to hang up on him. No, I mean, come on now.

59:18

But it's dated. But my recollection is that this was right around the same time as the

59:26

Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, if I recall correctly, and that it was a book that was written to substantiate the various elements of that particular statement.

59:36

And so, yeah. Is it? Are we going over time? Oh, I didn't even notice it. I'm sorry.

59:42

So yeah, it's on my shelf. I certainly read it, and I would recommend it to you. Oh, thank you,

59:48

Ed. Thanks for your time. Appreciate it. Okay, thank you very much. We're going to go ahead, and thank you very much, George. We're going to go ahead and grab

59:54

Daniel real, real quick. But Daniel, we're going to have to be real fast because we're going over time. Hey, Dr. Wright.

59:59

I'm trying to, in having a proper foundation for defending our being born with a sinful nature, I'm looking at how that relates to Adam being our just representative and trying to articulate that in a faithful way.

01:00:12

I've heard everything from, well, sometimes we get presidents we didn't elect, and their decisions affect us, to we were actually spinning in Adam, to we had him on our football, fantasy football team, and so when he lost, we lost, you know.

01:00:27

And I feel like that has to bear a lot of weight because that relates to the justice of having an inherited corruption.

01:00:35

So I'm just kind of wondering how you would articulate that in a way that can hold that weight.

01:00:40

All right, Daniel, I would articulate that by challenging the direction of argumentation behind the question.

01:00:49

In other words, you just said it bears a lot of weight because of the issue of justice.

01:00:55

Yeah, if you're willing to put God in the dock and judge his justice and how he has dealt with mankind as if we are even invited to do so, yes.

01:01:06

But you see, I think the biblical response is that this is what

01:01:11

God has done, and since it is God doing it, that's what defines justice.

01:01:18

Because fundamentally, Adam's role as the federal head of the race is an act determined by the

01:01:29

Creator himself. God has determined that Adam is to represent us in the same way that he is determined without asking our permission that Jesus be the federal head of those who are in covenant with him.

01:01:43

And so the issue is, are God's acts just? And by definition, they are.

01:01:51

And we live in Western culture where that has been reversed to where that would no— at one point, that would not even be questioned.

01:02:00

Now we actually think that we can—that there is some standard outside of God by which to judge his actions as to whether they're just or not.

01:02:10

And obviously, I would challenge that very—on a presuppositional level.

01:02:16

Would you say that it's better instead of—just to emphasize, because the thing with those analogies,

01:02:21

I feel like they're trying to cash that out. And that's why I feel like the problem with some of those analogies are, they're trying to cash out how that works instead of just going ahead and saying, well, maybe we don't know in what way that works, but if God declared these actions just, we can trust in that.

01:02:37

Yeah, but we sort of do know how they work in the sense that the judge of all the earth will do right.

01:02:42

And in essence, the foolishness of the question is that we could actually pick somebody better.

01:02:49

If God created Adam so as to function the way that Adam did, so as to bring about his greatest glory through the redemption of a particular people in Christ Jesus, the whole idea of putting

01:03:02

God in the dock and saying, well, you know, we're really not sure that we like the way you did this, is really more of a fundamental rebellion against the creatorship of God as it is anything else.

01:03:15

And so there is a sense in which we struggle today because so many are so infected, including within the church, are so infected with a humanism that lowers

01:03:28

God and subjects him to external criteria that it's really hard to talk with folks who have been infected in that way, and they're in the church.

01:03:43

And so that's why I think we need a whole lot more of Sharnach's, The Existence and Attributes of God, and preaching on the transcendence of God and the holiness of God.

01:03:55

And that's why I keep referring people to The Holiness of God by R .C. Sproul. Just to be taken with the otherness of God is normally enough of an answer for us to realize, wow, that's a dumb question to ask.

01:04:08

But I'm not saying dumb in the sense of we shouldn't deal with this, but that if we recognize our creatureliness and recognize his creatorship, we will actually be standing on the proper grounds to understand the biblical response.

01:04:21

If we have dragged him down to where he's standing on the same ground we are, I'm not sure that we can answer the question in a meaningful fashion.

01:04:30

Yeah, I think the big problem is with trying to understand, you know, if I'm born, it's almost position in the sense of, well,

01:04:38

I was born this way and I can't control it now. It's not my fault, it was Adam's. Oh, I know, I know.

01:04:43

We see it all around us, don't we? It's amazing how we have dehumanized ourselves in that sense. What do you mean I have no choice about this?

01:04:49

I mean, we are human beings, we are created in the image of God, and to recognize our fallenness in Adam, to recognize total depravity is only to make sin all the more guilty because we know we can control ourselves, but we don't want to.

01:05:03

And this whole idea that people have developed, oh, we can't control ourselves, it's all genetics, all the rest of the stuff.

01:05:10

My goodness, the Christian view of man is much higher than that. It is much higher than that. It makes the guilt of man even deeper because we are created in the image of God and we can control ourselves.

01:05:22

I don't buy this, we can't control ourselves stuff. It's no, no. Sin, yes, it's our nature, but we do it because we love it.

01:05:32

And we know, every single one of us knows when that temptation arises, we don't have to do it.

01:05:39

And yet so many people today have bought into the idea that, well, yeah, we do have to. Daniel, we went way over time. I'm sorry, I wasn't a good clock controller today.

01:05:48

But thank you very much for listening and calling in today. God bless you. Thank you. All right. Thanks, folks, for listening in.

01:05:53

Lord willing, we will be back. Lord willing, and Cox Communications functioning.

01:05:59

My goodness, we will be back on Tuesday. Thanks for listening.

01:06:05

Hope you're challenged every time you do, and hope you're encouraged to continue in your service to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

01:06:11

We'll see you next Tuesday. God bless. God bless.