A “Presuppositionalist” Swims the Tiber, and More

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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 back here in sunny Phoenix, Arizona, where I am so happy to announce the dew point has dropped into the 30s.

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Yes, humidity of 10%. And for me, that's just a that's a lovely thing.

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And next week, highs in the upper 90s. Yes, it's September. Whoo. I'm excited.

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You got to realize when you've survived August in in Phoenix, it's a it's a great thing.

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So anyway, a couple of quick things. I do want to get to a particular sound file today that was posted a couple of weeks ago on the

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Called to Communion blog, which is a blog of apostate Calvinists, basically, and who have jumped in the

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Tiber River and swam across and are standing over to the side going, hey, it's cool over here. And it's a an interview with a former

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PCA fellow, Mark Ayers is his name, and he says he was a presuppositional apologist and that that led him to Roman Catholicism.

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I think we're going to hear some pretty interesting things from Mr. Ayers. And once again, we will demonstrate that there's nothing over there on the far side of the

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Tiber, guys. You try to go into the city and you'll see it's all empty facades. There ain't nothing there. But to me, it's just fascinating how anyone could truly understand justification, could truly understand and embrace with their heart the substitutionary atonement of Christ, the perfection of his work and exchange that for the never ending cycle of Roman sacramentalism and an unfinished work and everything else.

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But we'll take a listen to that. But before we do that, real quickly on the subject of the debates this past weekend.

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Those of you who listened to the live stream know that I found a setting.

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Yes, I did find a setting, not only that, but just the setting we were in also was much different and easier to to use on the second debate, which was

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Monday evening. But you could hear some people said it sounded like we were in the next room.

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The debate on Monday evening, not so much the debate on on Saturday evening, which is a shame, but didn't have a whole lot of people show up for the first debate at all.

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It was at a Roman Catholic high school and the Roman Catholics did not show up. Evidently, Roman Catholics aren't overly excited about the subject of the

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Immaculate Conception and the sinlessness of Mary. I've always felt that the vast majority of Roman Catholics don't even believe it, actually, at least in the

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United States and the West. Certainly in other countries, we would have gotten a lot of folks. And in fact, we would have had to have had security to do a debate on the

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Marian topics. But it was quite the interesting debate. In fact, I want to make sure everyone knows that as soon as this program is over, you're your job is not done.

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As soon as this program is over, you need to switch over to the Iron Sharpens Iron feed and listen to Turretin Fan, who will be on with Chris Irons in and they're going to be discussing that debate on the

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Immaculate Conception and the sinlessness of Mary. And Turretin Fan already wrote one article on the subject.

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Well, actually, two, but it has another one that he's working on on that subject. So I think you'll find that to be very interesting.

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And that'll be right after this program. As soon as this is done, just switch on over and listen to Turretin Fan and discuss the subject and give you all sorts of enlightening information.

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You're saying, why aren't you doing that? Well, because I have four more debates over the next 22 days and I've got things to do.

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And the Dividing Line is one of them, but doing two hours of discussion, a little bit much.

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But the Farrar Debate was a good illustration of, again, sola ecclesia to the max.

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It's believe what we say, believe what we tell you to believe. Don't ask us any questions because we really are not under the authority of Scripture or tradition.

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And that will be shown again a week from tomorrow in Santa Fe in my debates with Roberts and Jennings.

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I can guarantee you right now we've listened to and I want to get back to the program where Roberts and Jennings discussed the bodily assumption with Matt Slick.

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And what was his argument? I don't need to give you any Bible verses and I don't need to give you any early church fathers.

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The church has spoken, sola ecclesia. That's all there is to it. We say it's true because we say it's true.

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Just believe us. That's it. That is fundamentally the reason all the rest of the discussion of, for example,

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Christopher Farrar's utilization of one of the many instances where Thomas Aquinas used false sources, sources that were not real.

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Aquinas quoted from Augustine about the bodily assumption of Mary. Well, the fact of the matter is that's pseudo -Augustine and it is not something that Augustine wrote.

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And Aquinas did that a lot. In fact, if you go to ChristianTruth .com, scroll down the articles page, there will be a very interesting article that William Webster wrote on some of the papal quotes, some of the quotes on the authority of the papacy that Thomas Aquinas used, that were absolutely central to the development of papal authority.

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But they're all fraudulent. They're all fake. Now, it wasn't that he was making it up. Someone else had made it up.

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But you need to understand something about people living in the medieval period, 11th, 12th, 13th century. They suffered from something called anachronism.

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Anachronism. And you can see it in the artwork of the day. A lot of people are not aware of this. But you can see it in the artwork of the day.

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Have you ever noticed that paintings from that time period, if they have a biblical theme, everybody in the painting is still dressed as if they lived in the medieval period.

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The reason for that is they really honestly thought that nothing had ever changed. They were cut off from the kind of information we have today that would illustrate for us the differences in culture, in dress, in how they lived and how they traveled, et cetera, et cetera.

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They really believed that David lived in a castle and rode a horse and they did not recognize that things had changed.

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And what this meant to them is that they were exceptionally susceptible, exceptionally susceptible to fraud in the area of documentation.

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Because how do you recognize fraudulent documents?

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How do you catch those things? Well, let's use a good example that will also be educational.

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And that is the Gospel of Barnabas that less well -read and consistent

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Muslims still make reference to. This is a document that claims to have been written by Barnabas.

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So it would have been written contemporaneously with Jesus. But it is utterly laughable on every level because it is filled with anachronism.

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It is filled with things that were not around at that time. But if you suffer from an anachronistic worldview, if your worldview is such that you think things have always been the same, then you're not going to recognize anachronism in a written document.

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And so the result is that people would take these collections of sayings.

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For example, like I said, you go to ChristianTruth .com, you can read the article where you have a whole series of alleged statements that are attributed to Basil of Caesarea or Augustine or Cyprian or whoever.

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And you can't find them anywhere. They don't exist. They were made up by people trying to promote a perspective.

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But literary criticism had not really started yet. And so that's why he utilized that kind of material.

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Well, that's exactly what happened with the situation in the debate where my opponent utilized a citation and it was simply bogus.

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It does not represent what Augustine himself actually taught or said.

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And as a result, you have that kind of argumentation being presented.

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It's very, very interesting. Now, I was unfamiliar with that particular citation when

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Mr. Ferrara brought it up. But you will hear my response once we post the audio from the debate.

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And by the way, great channel or board operator in there. The DVDs I put on your desk include the

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Ferrara debate. So we should be able to find out if the sound from his is any better. So you have all the

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DVDs from the Ferrara debate sitting. I brought them home with me. So you will be able to get that material, take a look at it.

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But once we have that up, you'll be able to listen to the cross -examination. And unfortunately,

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Mr. Ferrara really tried to utilize his lawyerly background, which didn't work very well.

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And he would say that I wasn't answering questions when everybody could tell that I was. I talked with folks in the audience afterwards, and they all caught it.

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You don't accomplish anything with that kind of thing. But it was a very interesting encounter.

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Now then, Monday evening, we had a lot more people there. And the location was excellent.

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The folks at the church, they were there early. And they had people out in the parking lot directing you where to park.

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And as soon as you got in, someone from the congregation came up to you and said, is there anything I can do for you?

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They offered to take me back to this room. And I didn't want to do that. I like talking with folks and meeting with folks beforehand and stuff like that.

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But the setup was perfect. Jonathan Weingarten, who did the videotaping, was able to plug right into the soundboard.

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I was able to put my streaming. They had wireless Internet, so I was able to be in channel on my

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Mac while I was doing the debate, which was really neat. I even kicked people out of channel during the debate.

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That's called multitasking. I was able to put the streaming PC right over in front of one of the foldback monitors and put my little microphone right there so people said they could hear it really well.

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Excellent lighting. I mean, it was a really, really, really good location for having a debate.

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Mr. Silverman was quite interesting. My first major experience with atheism was with the

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American Atheists. And the radio program I did with Brian Lynch, one of the national representatives of American Atheists, remains just a classic example of the

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American Atheists as an organization do not give evidence of much in the way of self -reflection on worldview issues.

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What I mean by that is they are your stereotypical atheists, and they don't think through the fundamental issues of their worldview.

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They don't enter into our worldview. They're not trying to provide an internal critique.

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They're not thinking about issues as to whether they, as naturalistic materialists, are consistent, etc.,

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etc., etc. And so I knew what to expect.

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I didn't know where he'd be going because the topic did mystify a number of people. And Dan Badafuco, who did the fine job moderating, even asked me beforehand, where did this topic come from?

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Is the New Testament evil? And, of course, it came from the chapter in Christopher Hitchens' book,

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God is Not Great, because that was supposed to be the night that I was debating Christopher Hitchens at that same location.

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It would have been wonderful. But Christopher Hitchens, of course, has esophageal cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy.

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So I'm thankful that Mr. Silverman stepped in. But I knew he wasn't going to go the same directions as Christopher Hitchens.

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But that was the topic. And so I wasn't sure whether he was going to go the direction the chapter in Hitchens' book did.

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He did not. But I was very thankful, after he got done with his opening statement, that he went the direction he did because it allowed for a pretty consistent debate.

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One of my concerns was it was going to be the carpet bombing type thing. I don't like this and I don't like that.

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What about this? You throw out 47 issues, and there's just no possible way to address them.

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It was much more focused. And it was pretty much, I think the New Testament is evil because the gospel is evil.

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And any God that would judge sinners is evil. And the babies in hell thing came out too.

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But it was pretty much, I just don't like your God. And that allowed for a very good debate on that particular issue.

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And so I thankfully went that direction. He didn't know how to stop in his opening statement.

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Why is it that people do debates and they don't bring timers? I didn't bring one of my beep beep beep timers.

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But you know what I've started using as my timer now? My 64 gig iPod, iPod

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Touch. I have an awesome timer program on that. And all you've got to do is swipe it and it resets back to where it was.

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I'm watching the other guy's time so I can see when he's out of time. And then I just swipe and it's back to 20 minutes.

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It starts counting down straight from there. Why don't other people do that? No, his problem was not that he didn't have a timer.

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I can barely hear you actually. Better? I don't know, but anyway. His problem was that he didn't have an off button.

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I mean, the guy gets a one minute warning. Oh, and Dan keeps saying, sir, your time is up.

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He went, what, three minutes? Three minutes over. And I had set my timer for 20.

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So what I had to do, and this is what I love about this. I'm giving my future opponents some suggestions here.

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Because I would like them to keep to the time limits. But once my time was up, I just swiped and it went back to 20.

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And I figured, okay, I've got to 17. And that's how I kept my time. You give me 23 minutes,

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I'll preach for 23 minutes. No problem at all. But you'll notice I did not have a prepared opening.

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How could I? I didn't know which direction he'd go. What could I do? At least like when

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I debated Barker, Barker had had the same arguments in print in two different books for 17 years.

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Okay, now he tried to dodge that and didn't present any of that stuff. But at least when you have an opponent who's published, you can at least, but he hadn't published anything.

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So I had no idea which direction he was going to go. But it was very interesting because you haven't seen the videos yet.

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But he starts off by just wandering around the stage, looking up and squinting at the ceiling.

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That's a weird way to start because you're sort of like, Don't tell me he's looking for God.

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No, no. He started off by saying, If you squint, the ceiling looks like the sky. Oh, that's right.

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Remember, James has to squint at the New Testament. He calls all you textual critics and Bible scholars, you're squinting.

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Yeah, you're squinting to find something good. Do you understand the squint term? Well, he was saying we have to look real hard to find anything good in the

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New Testament. There is a television show called Bones, and the

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FBI agent calls all of the scientists squints because all they do is look at things on tables and they squint at them, trying to examine them.

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So it was a derogatory term. You were being called a squint. Well, whatever. It was interesting, and he liked to walk around.

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In fact, for cross -examination, I thought it was very interesting. He walked over to my podium for cross -examination.

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He wanted to be as close as he could be. It was an intimidation thing, very clearly an intimidation thing. And what

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I said was, I think you should be at your own podium. Oh, you don't want me here? I said, well, if you stand there, your back is going to be the audience.

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Oh, and he went over there and said, well, he's right about that. So it was interesting.

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He wants to debate his assertion that Christianity's origins is found in Egyptian mythology,

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Osiris. I don't know that he's going to want to do that because he said I need to send him my debate with Dan Barker on the subject.

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And my debate was Robert Price. So I don't think that's going to happen because, look, he's just wrong.

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I mean, it's just as bogus as a day is long. I did appreciate Chris's, when he was introducing the debate, and he asked how many atheists were in the audience.

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I was actually at the break, yeah. At the break, and they raised their hand. They clapped, yeah.

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And it was funny because he – how did he put it? We now know you exist because you gave evidence.

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We acknowledge your existence because – Something like that, yeah. Because you've given evidence of it or something like that. Well, I would love to do it, and the church would love to have us back.

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So I hope that we can work that out. But, of course, I don't know when it's going to be because I'm slammed through February right now.

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But we'll see if we can maybe figure something out for next summer or something like that. That church is very good.

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All right, 877 -753 -341 before we go to any phone calls. And we now can take even more phone calls than before because our phone system fried, so we had to put a new one in, and that rescued a line that had sort of been languishing.

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So I guess we can take four lines plus Skype at dividing that line. But before we do any of that,

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I want to get to – This closing statement was about how the earliest religions were created by Neanderthals who worshipped bears.

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Like, oh, man, the stuff atheists come up with is sometimes very humorous. But anyway,

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I want to get this Mark Ayers thing because, I mean, here you have someone who claims to have once been right where we are, a presuppositional apologist, reformed, and now a

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Roman Catholic. And it is interesting to listen to converts.

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It really is interesting to listen to converts. I was listening to a convert yesterday, in fact, that I may be talking about in the not -too -distant future.

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Converts are interesting people. And when you as a believer in belief

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X here, reformed theology, listen to a person who claims to have once been one of us, and now becomes

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Roman Catholic. My consistent experience – and there's a spectrum.

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There are some that try to be accurate in their representation. But my consistent experience is I just wonder, where did these folks come from?

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Because they say things that just make you go, what? You say you once believed what?

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And that's sort of how that works here. Just go listen to a couple minutes here at the beginning.

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There's actually two segments here. But let's listen to this interview with Mark Ayers.

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And, well, I'll stop and start it. One of the first things that we studied was the

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Council of Nicaea. And it was something of an eye -opener because his question that he – and he just kind of let us get to this answer.

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He said, now, look, what's going on at Nicaea is you have this kind of in -house battle about the very fundamental question of Christianity, who is

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Jesus? And how did they resolve that question? And, of course, from my PCA standpoint,

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I was like, well, you just go to the Bible, you open it up, and you read it. Now, let me just pause right there.

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From my PCA standpoint, there's a massive amount of naivete in that statement.

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I mean, I know what happened to the Council of Nicaea. I know which viewpoints there were. I understand the necessity of examination of questions that were being raised about the relationship of the

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Father and the Son outside of biblical terminology. What do you mean you just open your

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Bible? What serious church historian at Westminster Seminary would say that Nicaea just simply opened the

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Bible? At the same time, Nicaea is one of the clearest examples of the fraudulent nature of modern

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Roman Catholic theories concerning papal infallibility because the one thing they didn't do was go to the bishop of Rome and say, well, you're the head of the church, tell us what to believe.

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They didn't do that. And the bishop of Rome had little to do with Nicaea, and even after Nicaea spoke, there were decades in which they had to fight for its definition.

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And it's there that you discover that those that defended the Nicene symbol did so on the basis of what?

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On the basis of papal infallibility? No. On the basis of unwritten apostolic traditions that we don't have access to any longer?

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No. How did Athanasius defend Nicaea? Biblically.

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Biblical argumentation from the Word of God. So it really makes you wonder when people start talking like this, wow, you really had that shallow an understanding of church history at that point?

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That's weird. There it is. There's Trinity, he's God's son, he's God himself. But he said, well, now, but wait a minute, that's not exactly how they resolved that question.

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You had different factions with different areas, had lots of different Bible verses.

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He had lots of bishops with him, in fact, initially more because there were more eastern bishops there. And so it wasn't just open up the

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Bible and answer the question. And it was through this kind of back and forth and looking at how they resolved this question, it wasn't just this obvious point that anyone, you know, and Arius didn't show up with horns and a cape to where you could say, well, he's a bad guy.

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Many of the Arians thought that they were actually defending what they understood to be the true faith.

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Let me just mention something here. There doesn't seem to be any knowledge or recognition of the middle group, the background of what had taken place with Arius.

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This is very, very simplistic. But listen to what's going to be said about Arius here. Fundamentally, what you're hearing here is an attack upon the sufficiency of Scripture.

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That's what Rome has to do. Rome has to attack the sufficiency of the

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Bible to be able to answer the question so as to imbue the church with the authority to answer these things.

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And that's really what Mark Ayers is doing. So how do you answer this question? And I began to wrestle with this.

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I was like, okay, well, it does seem now that we are attacking or at least questioning the very underpinnings and presumptions of Christianity.

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And I had to come to the realization, and eventually I did, that the doctrines that we hold to are not self -evident from Scripture.

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In other words, like if you handed the Bible to a

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Martian comes down, he's had no background with Christianity whatsoever. He's never heard of it. He hasn't grown up in America with all the various Christian references.

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Now listen to this. This is an excellent example of the type of argumentation that these people use.

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We're talking about Martians here, all right? A Martian comes down, takes the

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Bible back. Will he come back with a Nicene faith? Think about what that means. Think about the false presentation that he as a

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PCA member should have recognized, didn't, tells you something about where he was, but should have recognized.

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And let's hope you can recognize it because we've covered it on this program many, many, many, many times before. To Jesus being divine and all the rest has no familiarity with it whatsoever, and you hand him a

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Bible, and he just takes it off to Mars and reads it. The idea that he's going to come back to Earth with a

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Nicene creed is possible, but highly unlikely.

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There's any number of, as we see, you know, just looking around, I mean, there's any number of different philosophies that people come up with in giving the

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Bible an honest read. They say, well, I think this, and they put it together in any number of ways. So did you catch that?

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From their perspective, you can honestly read the Bible. The Bible is so unclear, the

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Holy Spirit so utterly incapable of self -expression, that you can honestly read the

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Bible and be an Arian. You can honestly read the Bible and come up with Jesus is less than truly

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God. That's what Rome is saying. Is it any wonder that Roman Catholics are not out there doing apologetics to Muslims?

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They've got no basis for doing it. They've capitulated. They gave up a long time ago. They don't believe that the

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Bible is the word of God in its ability to express itself. It's the word of God, but you've got to have

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Rome there to interpret it for you, which, of course, they've never done invalidly on anything.

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So, you know, I guess it's a circular thing. But that's what you're hearing is the word of God is so pathetically inspired that you could honestly read it and come up with something other than the truth.

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Now, this is a common Roman Catholic attitude. This was the attitude during the medieval period. This is why it was on the index.

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I mean, don't read that stuff. You need to have the church's guidance. This just needs to be done by people who have the right training.

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You know, just a plain old person reading this is going to be misled. This is a full frontal attack upon the sufficiency, perspicuity, and I would argue even inspiration of the text of Scripture being done by a person calling himself a

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Christian. And you just need to understand that. And so this question of authority really kind of got to me.

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And, by the way, did you catch the presupposition? The presupposition is it's you and your

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Bible under a tree. Again, there can be no, there are no taught and stable men. There's nothing you can learn from the past unless you make that infallible.

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So it's either us in Rome or it's you under a tree with your Bible and nobody else.

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You know, the Martian, you know, no context, no nothing. The middle ground of, you know, where the

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Bible would present the church, things like that, oh, don't even go there. Why a PCA person wouldn't catch that immediately,

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I don't know. But evidently he didn't. What he put to us is, all right, so it seemed like a bunch of men named bishops all got together and voted and answered the question.

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Now, they either had authority to do this or they didn't. Now, I'd love to hear

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Mark Ayers now address Ariminem and Seleucia and the history after Nicaea where those same bishops or many of those same bishops got together and said, ah, you know, this is actually what we believe now.

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And what do you do then? What do you do about Athanasius who stands against the might of the church, against the vast majority of the bishops for decades and says no?

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What kind of a principle is that? Is that a Roman Catholic principle? How?

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How can you even identify that as a Roman Catholic principle? And so, and all of this was really kind of shaking my foundation.

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This is very unsettling because I just thought, wait a minute, these are questions that nobody could ever possibly have a serious debate about.

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I mean, we're kind of done with these. These are obvious points, and I had to realize, wait a minute, it's not obvious. These things do have to be resolved, and they are big essential points.

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And so it really kind of forced me to view, all right, well, how do I justify this?

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And that's where the presuppositional method kind of reared its head again, but it forced me to the angle.

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I had to start asking the question, okay, what is essential in order for a

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Christian to be able to know, defend, and define the faith? Well, one thing's for certain.

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If this guy ever read Vantill, he didn't hear him. Vantill is spinning in his grave that anyone could read his material, especially his vociferous and thorough critique of the man -centeredness of Rome and its incapacity because of its low view of Scripture.

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To read Vantill on those things and to read what he said about Rome and his identification as a sub -Christian perspective,

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I don't know. It's hard to see how somebody could call themselves presuppositionalist.

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But, of course, a presuppositionalist begins with the reality of God's revelation. He's now embraced a system that begins with natural law.

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The leap that he made either indicates a gross misunderstanding of the position he once held or just a willful abandonment of it, one of the two.

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It's hard to say. What do you have to have? And ultimately, the answer for that was there has to be a body.

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There has to be a living, speaking body with authority that can speak throughout the ages in order to answer the questions that come up and to be able to teach, for example, on the nature of Jesus, and then just a little bit later on which books are supposed to be in the

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Bible. That's perhaps one of the easiest examples. You say, well, how do you even know that these books are...

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because what you really have in history is you've got any number of books and letters that are floating around the churches, and some books...

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certain churches said, well, we think that these should be in the canon and were ultimately excluded, and then other churches had other books that they said we think that these should not be in the canon that were accepted.

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You had some general agreement on some books, but then a lot of disagreement, and ultimately the church came together and just chose.

33:12

Well, no, the church didn't, sir. I wonder if they ever catch the inconsistency of their arguments.

33:19

I mean, these are such shallow arguments that have been shown to be shallow arguments for so long that it's sad to continue to hear this type of stuff, because the first dogmatic, infallible definition of the canon of Scripture is in April of 1546.

33:37

Hippo and Carthage are not ecumenical councils. He said just a few years later, so he's clearly referring to Hippo and Carthage.

33:43

But there is no dogmatic definition of the canon until 1546. Pray tell me, sir, Mr. Ayers, how did

33:50

Nicaea do what it did without a dogmatic definition of the canon of Scripture?

33:58

They tell us, someone has to tell us what the books are. Somehow Nicaea got the deity of Christ right without that.

34:05

In fact, all the Trinitarian stuff took place long before any dogmatic definition of the canon in 1546.

34:12

How did that happen? Don't they see this? Converts just lose all sense of ability to see things, it seems.

34:22

It's the convert syndrome. Thankfully, for some people, they get over it, but others just don't.

34:30

It's amazing. It really is. I don't want to rush this. There's more stuff to get to here. And the next section is much longer, and we've got a bunch of callers.

34:38

So I'm just going to leave it there and pick it up next time around. Maybe get back to it if we get to our callers real quick, which

34:45

I sort of doubt we will. Because it's just amazing to me to listen.

34:51

Later on he's going to say, well, I was just blown away by what Augustine believed, which means he'd never read any of Augustine, which is quite probable.

34:58

But even then, he says, well, Augustine believed in the Immaculate Conception. I don't think so. And if you want to have that documented, make sure to stay tuned.

35:06

Well, not stay tuned, but tune, as soon as this is over, over to Iron Sharpens Iron and listen to Turret and Fan's discussion.

35:14

He'll be going over that. But the reality is Augustine taught that Mary died due to sin.

35:19

Now, if you can explain how she could die due to sin, even though she was immaculately conceived and protected from the stain of original sin and did not commit personal sin, please tell us how that works.

35:31

The reality is Augustine did not believe in the Immaculate Conception of Mary, and that was recognized down through history.

35:38

In fact, his influence had to be gotten over before Enephabelus Deus could see the light of day.

35:45

That was something we pointed out very clearly in the debate. Augustine stands against that.

35:51

But anyway, we'll get to that and to his errors on that at a later point, Lord willing.

35:56

But we've got at least three calls up right now. One from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, claiming to be from London.

36:05

But we need to go. I'm sorry? Yes, I know. Let's go to Marcus in California.

36:12

Hi, Marcus. Hello, how are you? Doing good. Thanks for taking my call. I was wondering, how do you use

36:23

Scripture to understand limited atonement? Like, what passages would you use to support it?

36:32

Well, there are many. There's a couple chapters on the subject in my book,

36:38

The Potter's Freedom. Yeah, I read, yeah. Okay, so was there something about the presentation there that was unclear to you?

36:48

Because I went through a number of texts specifically in regards to the high priesthood of Christ, the nature of the atonement on the

36:57

Day of Atonement in the Old Testament, the intermediation of Christ, the effect of the atonement being the perfection of those for whom it's made.

37:08

There were a number of presentations that I made there. Was there something you specifically had in mind?

37:16

Yeah, like what you've often said about how, well,

37:24

I guess specifically I'm thinking about 1 John 2 and 1. I think that's where it is, where it says

37:31

Jesus is the Savior of the world, especially those who believe. Actually, it's propitiation.

37:37

You just put together two different texts. One is 1 Timothy 4 .10.

37:43

The other is 1 John 2. 1 John 2 is talking about Jesus as a propitiation for our sins, not ours only, but for the whole world, which is a foundation upon which we are to go out and preach the gospel to all people.

37:59

It's not an assertion, I don't believe, of universal atonement, because if propitiation means what it means, then the wrath of God has been satisfied for all people, and therefore the wrath of God would not abide on unbelievers.

38:11

And then you also took 1 Timothy 4 .10, which talks about Jesus as a

38:16

Savior. I included an entire appendix in The Potter's Freedom on that text. I'm not sure if you had a chance to read that or not, but again, the best translation is, in particular, of believers, and I pointed out that even

38:34

Arminian Greek scholars admit that that's what the text is referring to there. But those are texts that are 1

38:42

John 2, 1 Timothy 4 .10. That's different than asking what's the biblical grounds, which the biblical grounds is the nature of atonement, the nature of propitiation, and the fact that Jesus, as the high priest, fulfills the

38:56

Old Testament types, and he therefore intercedes for a specific group of people and is able to save them to the uttermost because he intercedes for them.

39:08

For me, that's the strongest argument for particular redemption. Another related argument is that when you have universal atonement, where you have really

39:20

Christ dying for every single individual, the personal nature of the atonement is lost.

39:27

That is, if Christ is dying for just a group that we then fill in by what we do, then the personal aspect of substitution is lost.

39:37

I agree, yeah. And so that's a major, major issue for me. I actually raised that briefly in the sermon that I delivered at the

39:47

Massapequa Church of God. When three churches got together Sunday evening, Massapequa Church of God, Hope Reformed Baptist Church, and Grace Reformed Baptist Church, and I preached out of John chapter 17 and emphasized the personal nature, history work of the

40:01

Son of God and his atoning work from his high priestly prayer. I'm not sure if that's available online yet.

40:08

I'll have to ask Jim Capo if it's available. Yeah, that helps a lot.

40:15

All righty. That helps a lot. I did read Potter's Freedom, but I was confused.

40:21

I mean, that's basically the only of the five points, that's the only one that's giving me a lot of trouble.

40:28

Well, I think if you'll simply focus upon the two things, A, the nature of propitiation.

40:35

If propitiation is removing the issue of the wrath of God, if propitiation has something to do with the wrath of God, well, either

40:45

God's wrath has been propitiated or it hasn't. Either it's truly an atonement or it's not.

40:52

The question is, is Norman Geisler right to say that the death of Christ doesn't save anyone at all, it makes all men savable, or does the death of Christ actually save?

41:03

That really is a dividing line. That really is a major, major issue that needs to be addressed.

41:10

And the other thing, of course, is the consistency of particular redemption with the electing grace of God.

41:17

If you believe that God has elected a particular people, that their identity is known to God not passively in looking down the corridors of time, but actively has chosen to be merciful to a particular group of people, then the work of the

41:31

Son is going to be consistent with the work of the Father. The idea that the electing grace of the

41:36

Father would have a different audience than the atoning work of the Son introduces a fundamental disconnection between the divine persons.

41:48

And so that's not a good thing. I would agree. Yeah, I hear what you mean.

41:53

Okay. Well, in the

42:17

United States, it's not a matter of gravitation. You have to teach the Word of God. Arminianism is much more amenable to the concepts of man's mind.

42:30

Man wants to be in charge. He wants to have God responding to him.

42:37

And so you have to be taught what the Word of God says concerning God's holiness, man's deadness and sin.

42:44

And therefore, an Arminian perspective is significantly more acceptable to the natural man than the divine revelation of Scripture in regards to our deadness and sin and God's sovereignty over our lives.

43:01

And so it's just significantly less challenging to the natural man to present to him a system of salvation where God makes it available, but then you have to pull the right levers.

43:15

You have to do the right things. That's natural to human religion. It is not natural to mankind to hear that God is sovereign over all things, that I am his creature, he can do with me as he pleases, and that he must be merciful to me if I am going to be able to even make the first move toward him.

43:37

That's a very different thing. So I think that's where a lot of that comes from, to be honest with you. Okay.

43:42

Okay. Thank you. Okay, thanks, Marcus. God bless. Bye -bye. Bye. 877 -753 -3341.

43:48

The fellow from Milwaukee dropped. Unfortunately, I wanted to get a chance to talk to him, but he's having headset problems.

43:58

Well, you know, that's further evidence because I've heard there's major headset issues in Milwaukee.

44:04

Now, headsets in London work just fine, but I'm just picking on our brother.

44:16

Anyways, let's go to Daniel. Hi, Daniel. Hello, Dr. Wyatt.

44:22

How are you? Ironically, I'm actually more of an Arminian calling in. Okay. But I have a non -bacteriology question

44:30

I wanted to ask. I wanted to get your commentary on 1 Kings 22 -22, where God sends a lying spirit in the mouth of the prophet in order to have a king go to war.

44:42

I've had some people bring that up about, like, how can the Bible say God cannot lie when, you know,

44:49

God does this kind of deceitful little lie trick? Well, God doesn't lie.

44:54

However, part of what he has told us in truth is found in Deuteronomy chapters 28 and 29.

45:01

And in that section, you will have the blessings and cursings associated with the covenant with the people of God.

45:09

And when the people break that covenant, God brings his curses upon the people in the form of judgment.

45:17

And part of those judgments include allowing foreign powers to rule over their land, the loss of their national sovereignty, and basically the bringing of wrath against them in the form of peoples outside of the nation of Israel defeating them in war and things like that.

45:38

And so what you have in 1 Kings 22 -22 in the sending out of a lying spirit in the mouth of the prophets is

45:46

God's punishment being brought upon the people. Since they were stiff -necked, since they loved their sin, they loved their idols, they actually even brought idols into the house of Yahweh and tried to join his pure worship with the worship of idols.

46:05

God brings his wrath upon the people. And part of that wrath is seen right there in allowing the people to be deceived and to have prophets who would prophesy falsely.

46:22

And that is a part of God's wrath upon the people. And God could have just simply,

46:28

I suppose, sent hailstones from heaven to kill all of them instantly, but he didn't do it that way.

46:34

Instead, there was still a remnant, and so he used other means and continued to send prophets amongst them that were speaking the truth if they would but listen to what the

46:45

Word of God said, but they would not do that. So it is not a matter of God giving conflicting revelation and lying to all of mankind.

46:57

But when he brings his wrath against a people, he can do so in many, many different ways.

47:04

And it is a sober thing to reflect upon the same truth that is found in Paul's letter to the

47:11

Thessalonians. When he talks about those who refused to love the truth, he causes them to love a lie.

47:20

And if you have the people of God here who have the Word of God available to them, he has sent prophets amongst them, he has his temple and his worship there, they have refused all of that.

47:31

They love their sin, they love to go to the Ashtaroth, which is a gross form of perverted worship.

47:43

And yet, in spite of all of that, having all of God's Word, the clarity of it, and everything else, they continue to love a lie.

47:53

Well, God allows them to continue in that and helps them along their way to their own destruction. And so it's part of his wrath.

48:01

I've also heard other people use those verses to justify people who would give a prophecy and it being wrong.

48:09

So I've heard people use this with, you know, your favorite person in the world, Harold Camping, where God sent a lying spirit to Harold Camping in order to, you know, because it doesn't deny that these guys were prophets and that they were false prophets, so they kind of use this as an excuse to justify giving a false prophecy.

48:27

Well, again, any truth of God can be perverted.

48:34

We don't really need to worry ourselves too much about that. You know, I've had people say, well, why didn't

48:40

God say this? Or why didn't God put it that way? Or if we interpret this verse this way, then someone might say this. All those things are utterly irrelevant, because if you can take the clear revelation that was given to Adam and Eve, and Adam and Eve can pervert it, well, anything else can be perverted.

48:56

I mean, the fact that the Bible teaches there's only one true God is one of the most basic, clear elements of divine revelation, and yet there are 13 million people in the

49:05

Mormon church that deny that, and they carry a Bible around. So anything can be—any of God's truth can be abused.

49:15

God simply has not deemed it appropriate to cause heretics to explode into flame the moment they twist

49:22

God's word. The flame's coming, but just not in this life. So you don't have to worry about that issue.

49:30

People are going to do that. But that's not what the text is talking about. That's not an excuse for false prophesying.

49:37

That's just simply pointing out that even those prophets themselves, those are the very same prophets that were speaking against the true prophets of God.

49:45

They're false prophets. Okay, so the prophets that are mentioned there are actually false prophets? Well, yeah.

49:51

The Lord said to him, by what means? And he said, I will go out, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all of his prophets. And he said, you are to entice him, and you shall succeed.

49:58

Go out and do so. Now, therefore, behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets.

50:04

The Lord has declared disaster for you. So there is, you'll notice a number of times in the Old Testament, you would have one true prophet staying against an entire group of prophets who are on the king's side, who are saying, oh,

50:16

God's going to bless anything you do. La, la, la, la, la, la, la. And so, yeah, those are false prophets, and they are actually being caused by a spirit from God to false prophesy.

50:30

All right. Well, thank you. Okay, thanks, Daniel. Bye. Bye. 877 -753 -3341.

50:38

Now let's talk with Douglas. Douglas, calling from where are you calling from,

50:45

Douglas? Calling from London as always, sir. Well, you know, like I said, your accent is getting a little bit better, but you'll have to keep working on it because we still know, of course, that you're in Milwaukee.

51:00

But that's not why you're calling. What can we do for you? Very funny. Yes, well, basically, a friend of mine has got me into a situation where we're going to meet a couple of Mormon elders next week.

51:13

And they'll probably be from somewhere in Idaho or Utah. I wouldn't know.

51:19

I'm in London. No, seriously. The vast majority of missionaries, even in the

51:25

UK, should you travel there next week, the vast majority of them are going to be from the

51:30

Intermountain West. So, you know. Okay. That's interesting.

51:36

But, yeah, I'm looking to meet with them next week. I've never met with Mormons in person because they're obviously reading, listening to…

51:44

Well, they don't bite or anything. They actually will probably be really nice. I'm sure of that, yeah. I've been assured they're very nice people.

51:51

But, obviously, it's pretty much calling into, okay, from where should I start with them?

51:57

Do I go guns blazing with Joseph Smith, this, that, or the other? Because, obviously, it's one opportunity to speak to them.

52:05

Well, yeah. You sort of have to be sensitive to the spirit of that point. I wrote an entire book that you need to have read by next week called

52:13

Letters to a Mormon Elder, which is available online, by the way, if you want to get started before the airmail arrives with the copy that I'm sure you'll purchase from the ministry at aomin .org

52:24

or that I could have given to you at Leicester Square last year. But, anyway, leaving that aside for the moment, and, of course,

52:33

I won't be there until probably the second week of February next year. We're actually starting to look at dates now for the trip to London, which

52:41

I don't care whether you're working or not are going to have to show up just so I stop mocking you about actually living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

52:46

But you have to be sensitive to the spirit at that point because missionaries are different.

52:52

And the missionaries, as they're paired together, you have a different mixture at that point as well.

52:59

So some missionaries really want to get into a discussion with you and talk about what they actually believe.

53:06

Others are extremely sensitive and are heading for the door at the first sign of resistance.

53:13

And it all depends on how you approach and how they approach you. The missionaries in the olden days would talk about Joseph Smith and talk about his first vision.

53:23

Missionaries today want you to talk. And so you actually, at least initially, will have an opportunity to say some things.

53:31

And so one perspective you might want to take is if they do want to know about your faith journey, etc.,

53:38

etc., would be to give a strong testimony of faith in Christ that emphasizes the specific areas that you'd want to emphasize with Mormons to begin with.

53:51

And that would be the sufficiency of the revelation of God, the fact there's only one true God, that we are his creatures.

53:59

While we are made in the image of God, there is this vast gulf that separates us from God, that God has eternally been

54:06

God, that he's unchanging. I would, if I had such an opportunity, I would clearly emphasize over and over again the reality of the unchanging character of God, how that's so important.

54:20

Because if God has changed, if God has evolved to where he is now, then we have no certainty in our salvation.

54:27

We have no certainty that tomorrow when we get up that the gospel is going to be the same thing as it is today. The perfection of the work of Christ on the cross, not in the

54:36

Garden of Gethsemane. My unworthiness, the fact that I am fully dependent upon grace. You know, you can know that the

54:44

Book of Mormon says it is by grace we're saved after all we can do. In 2

54:49

Nephi 25 -23, you don't have to quote that and say, well, you know, your Book of Mormon says it's by grace we're saved after all we can do.

54:56

It's actually by grace we're saved in spite of all we've done. But knowing that the Book of Mormon says that, you can phrase things in such a way as to directly deny what that text is saying without necessarily raising the temperature so much they're heading out the door of your flat.

55:15

You know, so that's sort of how I wrote Letters to a Mormon Elder. I mean, it really is written in such a way as to be a handbook of how to approach these subjects and how the

55:26

Mormons can understand these things and basically speak their language. But that is the biggest challenge is you're going to have to translate not only due to your accent and the fact they ain't going to have one, but due to the fact that you're going to be using a completely different theological vocabulary.

55:46

You're going to be using the same words. They're going to understand them completely differently. And so one of the things minimally that you need to do, even if you don't read

55:54

Letters to a Mormon Elder, is go to my YouTube page and go back about a year and you will see a presentation

56:03

I did in Anchorage up there on the subject of Mormonism.

56:08

And I go through my whole thing there. It's about an hour and a half long or so. And you can't necessarily see the slides all that well, but it doesn't really matter.

56:17

I go over the necessity of doing translation. It's called the

56:23

Eternal Law of Progression. And if you go over that, it will help you to make those first steps in doing the translation, because they're not going to do it.

56:34

They're not going to make that effort. The Christian has to make the effort. If you want to reach the Mormon, to use their language and to be aware of the terminology pitfalls that are there for you.

56:45

And that presentation that I did there will help you to do that. Okay.

56:53

Still there? Hello, Douglas. Did we lose Douglas? Well, it's gone.

57:03

Okay. He's dead, Jim. The connection is dead, Jim. That's what happens.

57:10

Again, normally when I talk with... Remember when I did the Skype dividing line from London?

57:17

Worked just fine. But from Milwaukee, that's a different thing. So there might be some evidence right there.

57:23

I think he lost his connection because he just popped back in the channel too. But that's okay because Skype just crashed on me.

57:32

Yes. Well, that's what happens when you live in London. But we're out of time anyways for the dividing line.

57:37

We will be back, Lord willing, on Tuesday morning at our regular time on...

57:44

What's that going to be? The 10th? No. Wait a minute. On Thursday. No. Today's Thursday.

57:50

Whatever. I forgot to... I'm sitting here looking at the August thing. I forgot to flip my calendar in the room again.

57:56

But we'll be back on Tuesday morning, whatever it is.

58:01

We'll continue on with the Ayers interview. And I want to get back to the Syngenta stuff because, you know,

58:09

I'm not sure. Yeah, I fly out on Thursday next week. So I guess we only got one next week. But, hey, we'll be live streaming the

58:16

Syngenta stuff. So you'll get plenty of stuff next week. We'll see you then. God bless. God bless.