Synergism and the Perfection of Salvation with a Brief Comment on Morey and the Infamous Hadith

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February 12, 2017

The first hour was a hodge-podge of topics related to synergism, including a video from Michael Brown on whether we can lose our salvation, material from SBCToday (i.e., the "Traditionalists"), etc. Then we talked for a few minutes about Robert Morey, debates, and the infamous "thing/thigh" hadith.

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00:20: Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. It's Thursday. Yes, it's
00:26: Thursday. And here we are, back with you for another hour on the program today.
00:32: Lots to cover. I forgot to go into channels so I can see all the channel rats. All I have up is
00:38: Twitter, which is odd and strange. I forgot to pop in there, but I will. There I am. I have retaken my proper place.
00:47: I have the feather of power. There's Red, and there goes
00:55: Red. Anyway, poor Red. I just love doing that.
01:02: Anyway, lots to get to today. I want to start off, actually. Let's go ahead and start off with...
01:09: Let's say I am plugged in here. I've mentioned that one of the things
01:17: I wanted to accomplish in the debate with Trent Horn was to once again emphasize the reality of the fact that synergism is...
01:33: Obviously, there's all sorts of different kinds of synergism. There is sacramentally -oriented synergism.
01:43: There's the barren synergism of the old -style Church of Christ, where Acts 2 .38
01:51: is the only verse in the Bible. And it's just one thing.
01:58: Baptism, well, it really ends up being more than that. All these things.
02:04: And there can be an entire spectrum in between. But what binds all synergists together is that God is not the one who saves.
02:14: He makes salvation possible. He aids by some kind of grace, whether it's a prevenient grace or whatever else.
02:27: But unless you're a full -on Pelagian, you will at least acknowledge the necessity of some level of God's grace.
02:39: And so what binds everyone together is that if you're a monergist,
02:47: God can actually save. If you're a synergist, God can only try to save.
02:52: And you can give Him all the credit in the world and say, I've never been able to save myself. That's true. But you also have to turn it around if you're a synergist and say,
03:00: God could not have saved me without me. That's the issue.
03:07: That's the fundamental issue. Does God save you in spite of you or because of you?
03:14: That's the question. And the monergist says, wow, you know, if it's up to me, I'm toast.
03:21: I believe in a God that actually saves. His grace is powerful. And that everything that I do is the result of His grace.
03:30: Everything I do is the result of His sovereign election and choice. And of course, it also all goes back to our doctrine of God.
03:39: And if we start with the doctrine of, if we start with man, and reason from man to salvation to our doctrine of God, we're going exactly backwards.
03:52: And there will be absolutely no foundation for any of the things that I believe.
04:01: There's no foundation for a belief in perseverance of the saints. There's no foundation for a belief in the perfection of the atoning work of Christ.
04:11: Anything. If you start with man and then try to use our experience as what will tell us about God.
04:21: And it really absolutely determines.
04:26: If you start from God, you start from a position of asking, okay, does the
04:34: Bible tell me who God is and whether God has a purpose in creation?
04:42: You know, if you start with Psalm 33, if you start with Isaiah 40, if you start with, well, the entire book of Genesis, and God's working to establish
04:57: His covenant and then, you know, working through Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and then into Exodus with Moses.
05:07: And if you see His sovereignty in these things, if you see Him saying, well, you're going to be down there a certain number of years,
05:14: I'm going to bring you back out and give you this land. And it really, really seems like God is sovereign over these things and man is not.
05:24: But if you don't start there, then it's, well, it is interesting that monergists, people who believe that God has a sovereign decree, we tend to be pretty unified in the details when it comes to what the
05:46: Bible teaches on salvation. If you notice that synergists, all over the world. I mean, they're all over the spectrum as far as, you know, is it the, you know, bare bones
05:57: Church of Christ thing? Is it just adding faith? Is it the sacraments? I mean, all sorts of, you know, once you enter in the synergistic realm, there's all sorts of possibilities at that point.
06:14: So I wanted the synergists, especially, you know, the
06:23: Southern Baptist traditionalists, I want them to hear just how similar the argumentation of Rome is to their own argumentation, especially when just desperately trying to find someplace in the
06:39: Bible where God tries to save somebody and fails. That's what we're looking for in the Bible. And that was definitely accomplished in the debate.
06:48: Well, lo and behold, just a couple of days ago, I think two days ago,
06:55: Michael Brown puts out a video. And guess what it's on? Oh, by the way, I'm wearing my
07:00: Sermon Audio shirt. You're not wearing your Sermon Audio shirt today. Yes, you did.
07:09: What color was it? It's in the back of your truck. It's the maroon shirt.
07:17: Remember? Wow. Sorry, Sermon Audio guys. You sent two.
07:22: One was blue. One was maroon. I just automatically knew because the first time I ever met this guy, he's wearing this maroon members only.
07:33: That was members only, wasn't it? Members only jacket. And, you know, fresh out of TBNville.
07:46: I see the look I'm getting right now. And it was so scary.
07:51: Okay. I still, when I think about it, I still get a little shiver every once in a while.
07:59: When I think about that first day, that first time. And so, yes.
08:05: Anyway, so when you sent the T -shirts,
08:10: I'm like, well, I do a lot of blue. And he just immediately grabbed the maroon one. So you did well there.
08:18: I did not immediately grab the maroon one. You handed it to me. Not well for that very reason.
08:23: And you said, oh, yes, the maroon one. Yeah, I knew why you were doing it too.
08:29: And I'm sorry that he forgot that he had left it in the back of his truck. But we'll make sure he wears it sometime in the future and, you know, take a picture or something.
08:39: So you know that it was appreciated. Okay, that little detour done. Dr. Brown put out a video on the subject of can you lose your salvation?
08:51: And once again, it is interesting to me.
08:57: Dr. Brown will talk about resting in the promises of Christ, that no one can snatch us out of his hand.
09:06: But we can still commit the ultimate sin of apostasy. But we can still trust.
09:13: But we can do this. And, you know, I've yet to meet the consistent synergist.
09:21: Well, the consistent synergist would be a Pelagian, to be honest with you. But Michael believes in salvation by grace through faith.
09:31: And therefore, that creates an inconsistency. And that's what I've been saying for a long, long time.
09:36: That's what I keep pressing him on. And when it comes to this issue, well,
09:42: I think it'll come out. So I'm going to find my little cool earplug thing here.
09:48: And let's listen to what – it's only three minutes long. So let's listen to what Michael had to say.
09:59: This is probably one of the most common questions we get. Can someone, quote, lose their salvation?
10:05: Let me give you a simple answer. And then we'll look at some relevant scripture and key points here.
10:10: I don't believe you can lose your salvation. You lose the keys to your car. You lose your glasses.
10:17: Where do I put them? Where do I lose them? No, this is not something to be gained and lost in that regard. But does the
10:23: Bible teach that you can forfeit your salvation? That as a believer, someone could deny
10:29: Jesus as Lord, refuse to follow him, and turn away and therefore forfeit their salvation?
10:34: I say the Bible clearly says yes. Now, Calvinists would say if someone falls away and dies in sin, they were never truly saved.
10:43: Others would say, many Baptist believers would say, no, no, even if you die in sin, once you're saved, you're always saved.
10:49: Then many Pentecostals and Charismatics would say, no, no, you can be saved today and lost tomorrow.
10:56: Here's what I want to emphasize. Number one, the Bible makes many wonderful promises, and we need to rest in these promises, that Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith, that no one can pluck us out of the
11:08: Father's hands, that neither death nor life can separate us from the love of God expressed in Jesus.
11:13: Then on our best and most holy day, we are still saved by grace, that it's God's keeping power that sustains us.
11:21: I rest in that 100%. At the same time, I know that God does not force us to stay in his house, or force us to stay in his family, and that we can still choose to deny him or walk away from him as believers.
11:37: You say, well, that scares me. Why should it scare you? If you want to follow the Lord, he's promised to keep you, you've got nothing to worry about.
11:43: On the flip side, if you say, well, I'm going to pursue my own agenda, I'm going to leave my wife, I'm going to take off with this other lady,
11:49: I'm going to do what I want to do, who cares about God, and you live and die like that, then you have denied the
11:54: Lord by your very actions. And Jesus makes clear that it's not just those who say, Lord, Lord, but those who do as well, who enter his
12:01: Father's heavenly kingdom. But listen to this warning from 2 Peter, the second chapter.
12:07: It is clear, it is forthright. Look at what the word says in 2 Peter, chapter 2.
12:12: If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our
12:18: Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and are overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning.
12:31: You say, yeah, that's talking about false teachers. Ah, but notice that these false teachers were once true teachers.
12:36: They escaped the corruption of the world through the knowledge of Jesus and now they have departed and it's worse for them at the end than the beginning.
12:45: That doesn't mean that they're just going to be judged. They're saved, but they're going to be judged because it's better to be saved and be judged and still make it in than to not be saved.
12:54: No, better that they were never saved at all. That's how bad it's going to be for them.
13:00: So, yes, we can forfeit our salvation. We can forfeit the eternal life that has been given to us, but it's not something that we just lose or misplace.
13:10: God has promised to keep us and I put my trust in His keeping power. Okay, so I hear fundamental contradiction in what
13:21: I just heard and it comes from starting at the wrong place.
13:30: As I said when I responded, the only way to address this question, and this is what
13:35: I said, obviously, in the debate with Trent Horn, the only way to address this question, it will reveal what your fundamental presuppositions are.
13:48: Is your fundamental presupposition that salvation is something that we are in control of?
13:57: Because, notice what he said, if we can forfeit, if we choose to do these things, and obviously, if you're a synergist, there isn't any reason to believe in the permanence of salvation.
14:10: You can't. It makes no sense. When I run into Baptists, especially Southern Baptists, who say, oh,
14:16: I believe in free will, but I believe in one saved, always saved. It's just, there is absolutely no coherent way to do that.
14:24: If your free will got you into this situation, then your free will can get you out.
14:31: If it was by your free will, if it wasn't that God adopted you, but you joined God's family of your own free action, then by your own free action, you can bail back out again.
14:43: Right? I mean, there just isn't any way to get around the reality of this.
14:50: So, if you start with man and ask, can we lose?
14:56: That's an action. Can we lose our salvation? Can we forfeit our salvation? Then that says a lot about what salvation is.
15:03: And what I suggested was the only real question, biblically speaking, again, wanting to put together everything the
15:12: Bible teaches, not, notice, a syllogism based upon a text about false teachers.
15:19: Well, this says this about false teachers, and so therefore they must have once been this, and therefore we build the system out of it.
15:26: As I said in the debate with Trenhorn, you start with the didactic passages that specifically talk about what
15:33: Jesus Christ is capable of doing and what the will of the Father for Him is.
15:40: And that led to the astounding statement from Trenhorn that in John 6, when the
15:49: Father's will for the Son is revealed, well, that's just a wish. God doesn't always get His will, you know. So, the specific will of the
15:55: Father for the Son, the Son can't do it because, you know, that salvation thing, it's not just up to the
16:03: Son. It's not just up to the Father. It's always up to us, you see. And I think the result of that is tragic, but there you go.
16:14: So, I suggested the question, can Jesus fail to save one of His sheep?
16:23: And when I asked that question, I couldn't believe the number of people. And again, it's not that we haven't heard this before, but the number of people who said, well, we can jump out.
16:37: We can jump out of His hand. No one can snatch me out of the Father's hand, but I can jump out.
16:42: Again, notice the will. Now, of course, as I pointed out in the debate again, John 10, it says, they shall never perish.
16:51: If I jump out, I will perish. So that's, again, doesn't allow
16:59: Jesus to say the things that Jesus is actually stating. I guess
17:05: I just saw this out of the corner of my eye, and I remembered seeing this tweet, and I'm not sure how this is confusing, but can you talk about your statement in Drawing by the
17:13: Father on continually coming to the Lord? I did, in Drawing by the Father, bring that out rather fully.
17:23: But if it's caused confusion, I guess if you start with the idea that faith is human, it is something that comes from us, then that could be problematic.
17:33: But as I explained in Drawing by the Father, in the Gospel of John, true saving faith is always in the present tense.
17:42: It's a continuous thing. It's not just a point action. It is not just something done in the past that doesn't have continuing emphasis to it, because it is the gift of God.
17:53: It's the work of the Holy Spirit in someone's heart. So what differentiates between those who have false faith, and by the way, this is something that can't even be discussed in a synergistic context in a meaningful fashion, is the difference between true faith and false faith.
18:08: Michael mentioned, for example, well Calvinists will say they never really believed at all. As long as faith is something that is the capacity of every single individual, does not require the regenerate heart, it does not require the work of the
18:22: Holy Spirit to take out the heart of stone and give a heart of flesh, from Ezekiel 36, as long as everyone is capable of doing it, then there is no such thing as the difference between true and false faith, other than whether it will last or not.
18:35: Because all faith is a human action that's dependent upon that human contribution, rather than the biblical teaching that saving faith is the gift of God.
18:48: There is false faith. There are those who express a false faith, but as 1
18:55: John 2 says, if they had been of us, what? They would have remained with us.
19:01: Well, I don't see how the synergist, I don't even see how Michael can look at that text and go, well, yeah, if they had been with us, they would have stayed with us.
19:09: Because he's saying that, no, if they had been of us, those false teachers were of us, and the only harmonious way to bring all of Scripture together is, no, those false teachers were not of us, because if they had been of us, they would have remained with us, because true saving faith endures to the end.
19:27: So what's going on there in 2 Peter in talking about false teachers? They were in the fellowship of the church. They escaped the corruption of the world by entering into the fellowship of the church.
19:35: When you're in the fellowship of the church, you are protected from much of the stuff that the world is going to throw at you. But being in the fellowship of the church doesn't make you actually a part of the bride of Christ.
19:44: You can be in that church. I'm thinking right now, and if you've walked with the Lord in any period of time at all, faces are floating in front of you right now.
19:52: People who were once there, they're out in the world now. They were once there, they partook of the Lord's Supper. They're out in the world now.
19:59: They were protected for a while, but they had a false faith, and eventually they went out from us so that it might be demonstrated they were not truly of us.
20:09: That's why I preached that sermon, The Blessings of Apostasy. But back to John chapter 6 and the continuation.
20:17: Saving faith is a continuous action. It's not a point action. It's not a get your ticket punched and then go and do whatever you want to do.
20:26: Which, by the way, reminds me of another Twitter person that just, I eventually blocked him because, look,
20:33: I block people because I don't want stuff on my screen that is annoying.
20:41: And no one has the right to tell me that I have to allow you to put stupid statements on my screen and just let them sit there and stare at me.
20:50: Okay? Everybody blocked me. Oh, grow up. If you say stupid things,
20:57: I'm going to block you. I'm sorry. That's just the way it is. And this guy refused to accept the idea that there is a difference between the perseverance of the saints and once saved, always saved.
21:12: And I've addressed this a thousand times before. And, well, we can't be troubled to read a book.
21:20: I mean, you wrote a book on this subject? That's longer than 140 characters.
21:25: I'm not going to go read a book on something. So I said, you know, I point out once saved, always saved is normally used to describe the idea of you get your ticket punched, you tip your hat toward God, the anti -lordship, you express faith one time, once saved, and then you're always saved.
21:45: And that's not what John 6 is talking about. That's not what John 10 is talking about. That's not what John 17 is talking about.
21:50: That's not what Philippians 1 is talking about, et cetera, et cetera. How is that relevant to the
21:56: Holy Spirit being the arabon, the down payment of our redemption, things like that. We recognize that it's
22:03: God's purpose to conform us to the image of Christ, that he has a purpose in the salvation of his elect people.
22:09: So in light of that, the perseverance of the saints means that those who are truly saved will persevere in their faith, not that someone can get their ticket punched and go off and do whatever they want to do.
22:25: It was rather frustrating to me to encounter these people who just simply would not even allow that distinction to be made.
22:34: It's a vitally important distinction because to believe in security, to believe in the perseverance of the saints requires you to believe in a number of things before that, specifically the sovereignty of God, total depravity of man, the sufficiency of the work of Christ, the irresistible work of the
22:53: Holy Spirit in salvation. These are all the preconditions for having any meaningful theology of this.
23:00: And so, in John 6, the one coming, the one believing. Why? Because that's what the
23:06: Father does in the life of the elect in drawing them to the Son. They're continually looking at him.
23:13: It's not coming out of them. When they are made a new creature, this is the natural result of having that heart of flesh put inside you.
23:20: That rebellion is gone. The old man is dead. New creation, Jesus Christ. It's not a, well, you know, once every three days type thing and the rest of the time,
23:31: I'm in love with the world. No, that's not the description that's being given.
23:37: So, anyway, that's an answer to those particular issues.
23:42: So, when I listen to Michael saying, I rest in the promises of Christ.
23:51: What are the promises of Christ? Well, the promises of Christ is that there are specific people that the
23:57: Father has given to him and that he is going to be a perfect savior for them. And that is the only grounds of their having any kind of confidence in being saved in the first place.
24:10: That the Son has come down from heaven to do the will of the Father and this is the will of the Father. All that he's given him, he lose none of them, but raise them up on the last day.
24:19: My confidence is that Jesus Christ could be a perfect savior. So, I understand why a synergist won't go there.
24:27: But Michael said, hey, Jesus said these words. I trust in these words. Well, then you have to be consistent.
24:33: You have to be consistent and recognize that if Jesus is going to be able to do the things that the
24:38: Father wills him to do, there has to be an elect people. There has to be specific.
24:45: And it's not just God's initiative, but it's actually the expression of God's power in the salvation of his people.
24:53: And as I said in the debate with Trent Horn, it's really a decision that everyone has to be able to make.
25:04: Has to be able to make. Has to make. You can't... This isn't an issue where you can just go, well,
25:14: I'm just going to... I don't want to have to take a position on this. You're going to have to take a position on this.
25:22: Whether God saves or tries to save is a fundamental dividing line.
25:29: And I am thankful. And again, I can just see the hyper -Calvinists getting ready to jump on this.
25:39: But I am thankful for my non -monergistic fellow believers when they emphasize the truth of God's grace.
25:54: I just want to as strongly and yet graciously as I can, not like a hyper -Calvinist that's going to kick you out of the kingdom, but I want to as strongly and graciously as I can encourage you to think through whether your doctrine of grace is consistent with the direct teaching of Scripture in regards to the abilities and capacities, not of man, because he's said to be not able to do all sorts of things like submit to the law of God and do what's pleasing to God and everything else and come to Christ, but the capacities and abilities of Jesus Christ as Savior, as Father, as Savior, as Spirit, as Savior, the triune
26:39: God as being able to save his elect people. That has to be the first issue.
26:45: We've got to start with the doctrine of God and move from that to a doctrine of man and move from that to what the gospel is.
26:52: If you go backwards, you're never going to be able to provide a consistent, you're never going to be able to provide a consistent response to Rome, that's for sure, because the reality is if you look at your position historically, you're opposing the
27:08: Reformation. Oh, I know, you're not opposing the Anabaptists. There are a lot of, well, again, Anabaptists, I hate using that term because it is used to describe such a wide variety of people that it's useless on this level, but you're opposing the
27:27: Reformation that gave rise to the vast majority of meaningfully biblical expressions today, let's put it that way.
27:38: And I just invite you, it's obvious if you read the Institutes of the
27:43: Christian Religion, but read Luther when he's debating Erasmus on this particular issue, on the bondage of the will, and you are on the other side, you are on Rome's side on this matter, and so it's no wonder that synergists struggle a lot to provide a meaningful soteriological response to Rome's claims.
28:12: They really do. So the real issue, can the triune
28:21: God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, fail to accomplish the salvation of the elect that were chosen before the foundation of the earth as revealed in Ephesians 1?
28:33: And given that in Ephesians 1, the Father is the fount, origin, and source of that electing grace, it is in the
28:47: Son, ten times in that section, in the Son that we have forgiveness and adoption and all the promises, and then the
28:56: Spirit is given as the arabon, the down payment, that indebted the person who made the down payment to the completion of that transaction.
29:11: That's the triune God. That's the triune God glorifying himself in the salvation of a specific people, because the direct object of the verb choose is never
29:24: Christ in that text. It is us. It is those who are forgiven of their sins, adopted in the family of God, and indwelt by the
29:34: Holy Spirit of God. So it all goes back to, you know, the things that Michael and I have debated before.
29:45: But I hope you do see, I'm seeing all the comments of everybody, you know, throwing stink bombs at Michael's direction.
29:53: But I hope you noticed one thing. You didn't hear Trent Horn saying what
29:59: Michael said about grace and the promises of Christ. But you did hear him saying that.
30:05: And that is that blessed inconsistency that I've pointed to many, many times before.
30:12: And he knows that I point to that as well as a blessed inconsistency. Speaking of inconsistency, the troublemaker from Texas loves to point me to things.
30:32: And you know what? Hold on. Hold on. I'm going to do something for somebody. Someone on Twitter this morning,
30:40: I normally don't do this. So when I do it, I'm going to get buried with everybody else going, well, there's another shot.
30:49: You know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Someone on Twitter was saying, do you interact with people privately on their questions?
30:56: And I just didn't even bother writing. Nope. Because this is like, no. Are you serious?
31:02: You know, start at 5 a .m. in the morning. Go to bed at 11 o 'clock at night. You still wouldn't get it all done. A fellow said, would you please respond to this?
31:15: And I'm like, it's this big. Well, it's not all that long. It was short enough to read fairly quickly. But there wasn't a name attached to it.
31:23: So I said, well, tell me who it was. Well, it's a friend of mine. And here he is on Facebook. And I'm like, okay.
31:29: Let me just summarize it and respond to it real quickly.
31:38: Here's a summary. These are some of the main points. In sum, I would argue that Paul in Romans 1, 18 -32 is laying out the case against Gentiles, and he employs both
31:47: Jewish and Greco -Roman sources to make that case. He is not arguing for universal knowledge of God. He is targeting the
31:53: Gentiles who practice idolatry despite admitting its impropriety in order to then move into a demonstration of the failure of the
31:59: Jews as well in subsequent sections. How do
32:06: I say this in the kindest possible way?
32:14: We need to learn to think through objections to exegesis in such a way that we break out of the chapter and verse mentality.
32:37: What do I mean by that? A lot of Christians, a lot of good -believing
32:44: Christians, they want to believe the Word of God, they do believe the Word of God. A lot of good -believing
32:50: Christians read the
32:55: Bible in pieces, small pieces, and we obviously exacerbate this problem when we cite a particular verse.
33:14: It's made it so much easier for everybody to get to the same place, look at the same context, all the rest of that kind of stuff.
33:22: But it also, in our minds, breaks up the flow of thought.
33:32: One of the aspects that you should strive to gain in your studying of Scripture is a measure of maturity as a student of the
33:47: Bible would be to ask yourself the question, do
33:52: I know the flow of thought that Paul presents in Romans or Galatians or Ephesians?
34:04: I don't mean just an outline -type thing, but do
34:11: I really see what is being argued here?
34:17: So that you can see how Romans 1 fits with Romans 2 and Romans 3.
34:25: Because what was sent to me, the focus, interestingly enough, it does mention draws in the polemic in the wisdom of Solomon against Gentiles or idolatry.
34:42: Well, it might, but it also contradicts the wisdom of Solomon, if you've read the wisdom of Solomon in that particular thing.
34:51: He talks about Douglas Moo, he talks about a few people here, but the conclusion is where it goes wrong.
34:57: Because the conclusion is, well, this is just about Gentiles. Oh, so the Jews didn't do these things?
35:05: The whole point, when you then, and this is also what leads to some of the problems that a lot of people have.
35:10: Well, Romans 2 seems to say that you can have righteousness by doing law -keeping. What's the conclusion of Romans 1 and 2?
35:20: Well, it happens to be found in Romans 3. And in Romans 3, you specifically have the apostolic interpretation of what's come before.
35:33: He has that catena of passages where he draws all these texts about sinfulness.
35:41: And what does he do? He ties together the Jew and the Gentile and says, there's no difference.
35:47: We have concluded that all are under sin. They are all universally under the condemnation of sin.
36:00: And so the idea that, well, what he's saying in Romans 1 just has to do with Gentiles. What, you mean
36:05: Jews don't have a universal knowledge of God? There's something different about them? No, he has to go to talk to the
36:12: Gentiles, the Jews. He has to talk about the Jews because he knows what his audience is.
36:17: He knows his audience can say, well, you're Jewish. What about the Jews that are rejecting
36:22: Jesus? Blah, blah, blah, blah. It's going to be a common theme throughout the book of Romans. But the idea that that somehow means that what's in Romans 1 is not universal to all of mankind completely ignores
36:34: Paul's own apostolic application in Romans 3 of what came before. You're going to find a lot of people trying to do this.
36:43: Certainly people defending homosexuality. Have to do something with Romans 1.
36:50: And that's why, for example, Graham Codrington down in South Africa, though I think he was, he really stayed away from it because he knew that I knew what his argument was and he just didn't want to go there in our debate.
37:03: But Graham Codrington actually argues that Romans 1 is
37:09: Paul presenting how the Jews think and then he's going to spend the rest of the book of Romans arguing against that.
37:17: It's not actually Paul's position. I mean, talk about turning the text on its head, but that's what he says.
37:24: And so evidently in this context, I guess, is that this man's arguing that, well, no, there isn't a universal knowledge of man.
37:35: It's just... See, it still doesn't make any sense because it's just amongst the idolaters.
37:41: That doesn't make a lick of sense. So what we have to learn to do is when we hear an objection, for example, as in this case, against the interpretation of Romans 1, then we really need to run that up against, well, what's
38:00: Paul's own conclusion in Romans 3? And that takes care of that.
38:06: Okay. No, I wasn't offended.
38:12: I guess this is the fellow who asked me this morning. I took down my question about if you take private questions.
38:18: I meant no offense. Hope I didn't offend you. It wasn't a matter of offense. It's just, dude, how would
38:23: I do that? How would I ever get anything done again in life?
38:31: Because people always come up to me, could I have your email address? I've got all sorts of questions
38:36: I'd love to ask you. It's like... So we got two lines. We got the line of the people that want to ask you personal questions, and then we have all the lines, the long line of the guys that want to debate you.
38:51: And the funny thing is the only reason there's anyone staying in any of those lines is because I took the time to do what
38:59: I was supposed to do and actually help them writing books and things like that. And amazingly, it takes time to do that.
39:07: Yeah, yeah. And I didn't do that by just sitting around and chatting with folks. But we do a lot of that, but just...
39:14: I was going to say, it's not that you don't. I mean, I think about that line at G3 after the debate that night. I mean, you stood in there strong.
39:21: I was really impressed. That was like an hour and a half, if I recall correctly. You went right down to the very last folks. I did.
39:28: The very last person had a tambourine. That's another story, and only a few people will get that in the channel.
39:34: So anyway, I'm hardly going to have time to do this now. Ronny Rogers.
39:42: The Tollmaker from Dallas pointed me to an SBC Today article today. Ronny Rogers.
39:51: Calvinists say, hope for the hopeless. We did get started at two.
39:58: I can probably go to a little bit after three. Yeah, I know you don't want to.
40:14: I'm actually no major... Yeah, I've got something to do, but it got moved back by 45 minutes or so.
40:21: I'll blame you. Everybody else does, and I'm the one that started that because right here, and that's because you used to say, you used to go, and all that kind of stuff, and so I just got into the mood.
40:40: Anyway, Calvinism's decretal theology and commitment to compatibilism create a host of conundrums that result in Calvinist frequent visits to the storehouse of mysteries.
40:53: That's really nice. No one has ever heard me answer an objection to the relationship of God's sovereignty and man's will by appealing to mystery.
41:03: Not once. There are people who do that. Of course, I'll let them define what they mean by mystery at that point, but it's fascinating to me how the
41:16: Southern Baptist traditionalists, and that's who these folks are, the Southern Baptist traditionalists are big on their criticisms of decretal theology, but they just simply don't seem to have a coherent, positive theology proper to put in its place because having read this article and talked about it with a friend of mine, well, that same troublemaker, we both came to the same conclusion.
41:44: The only way that these arguments could be consistently waged by this group is if they were open theists, but they're
41:55: Southern Baptists, so by confession, they can't be open theists because what year was it?
42:03: Maybe somebody in channel, maybe an expert either in Twitter or in the channel can remind me.
42:12: There was an anti -open theist statement placed into the
42:19: Baptist Confession of Faith somewhere after 2000, I think, maybe late 1990s.
42:27: Maybe somebody can give me that information, but by confession, you cannot be an open theist and be a
42:35: Southern Baptist. Now, it's interesting. What I would love to see would be a tightening, an improvement of the
42:49: Baptist faith and message on the Trinity so that a modalist couldn't skate by, but we saw with Phillips, Craig, and Dean, they could because it clearly was not written with them in mind or being worried about them sneaking by.
43:07: Anyway, 2000 may have been the last one, but can't you add statements to it?
43:16: Maybe somebody can tell me what that statement is. I don't have time to look at it right now. Anyway, this group of traditionalists, their argumentation, they're obviously trying to develop it as they're going along, and yet, since they don't put out a coherent positive statement, it's almost like they don't want to do that because not having that allows them to take all sorts of different approaches to Calvinism.
43:50: In other words, it seems to me that the greatest influence in the development of Southern Baptist traditionalism is their opposition to Calvinism, not exegesis, not some type of positive thing.
44:03: In fact, they even came up with a term in here called extensivism. In fact, he has to define it at the bottom of the article.
44:12: It says, I used the term extensivist as a general term for all who reject
44:19: Calvinism's selective soteriology. So, is that just a synonym for synergist?
44:31: Wouldn't that include Roman Catholics and Pelagians? These folks are so focused on this, you literally have the redrawing of the boundaries so that it's
44:46: Calvinist and all the rest of us, and we're okay about being together.
44:53: It's like, okay, so, y 'all probably aren't really planning any
45:02: Reformation Day celebrations in October, are you? Doesn't sound like it. Wow, okay.
45:09: So, anyway, one of which is the idea that even though God has unconditionally elected only some to have any meaningful opportunity to experience the forgiveness of salvation, what does that mean?
45:24: I mean, how hard was it to find the least possible positive expression of what you actually have in Ephesians 1?
45:37: That in the amazing condescension of God, He actually chooses to love the unlovable and to save and elect people who are undeserving of salvation.
45:49: Because the whole idea that is smuggled in here is the idea that everybody deserves an opportunity.
46:02: No one's really a rebel sinner. Nobody's really under the wrath of God. No one's really abiding under the wrath of God.
46:10: Everybody deserves an opportunity. And it needs to be a meaningful opportunity.
46:16: And as soon as you hear one of these folks use the term meaningful, what they mean by meaningful is free will based.
46:26: Free will based. So Turgeon Fan just quoted,
46:34: His perfect knowledge extends to all things past, present, and future, including the future decisions of his free creatures. Yeah, there you go.
46:40: That's clearly an open theist can't believe that. It's from the
46:45: Baptist faith and message. But I just wish that the rest of it, when it says there is only, there is one and only one living and true
46:58: God. He is an intelligent, spiritual, and personal being. The creator, redeemer, preserver, and ruler of God is infinite in holiness, perfections, all power and all knowing.
47:06: Okay, yeah, that's great. Just the section on the Trinity, unfortunately, doesn't exclude modalism.
47:13: Well, I think in the interpretation of the framers, it would have. But by specific language, it needs to be tightened up, in my opinion.
47:22: Thank you for the quotation of that. Okay. One of which is the idea that even though God has unconditionally elected only some to have any meaningful opportunity to experience forgiveness and salvation, we are to have hope for all and offer salvational hope to all.
47:45: This is to be done without ever divulging that such hope only exists in the theoretical cauldron of unconditional election and reprobation for which there is not one wit of concern that the so -elect will perish nor hope that the reprobate will not.
48:12: Now, that's a very poorly constructed sentence. But I think I figured it out.
48:20: And that is the idea, you know, the idea from these traditionalists is that we Calvinists are hiding what we really believe.
48:29: And we need just to be open with folks that, you know what?
48:38: God's not going to save everybody. Oh, wait a minute. We are open about that. Okay, well, you know what?
48:45: Everybody that God saves didn't deserve. No, we're open about that. You know what?
48:55: If you are lost, it's because... Well, here's where they go.
49:02: Well, it's not because... They want us to say. In fact, he says this.
49:08: Let me see if I can find it. Yes, here it is. Here it is. Here it is.
49:14: Here's what he wants us to say. This is a couple paragraphs later. If the hope the
49:21: Calvinists are offering is said to be for people to hope they are not reprobates, then such should be made clear in the offer of hope in the gospel, lest the listeners falsely believe that hope is there for the taking by all who hear.
49:37: Now, you see, all of this is based... All the traditionalists fundamentally miss the fact that we as proclaimers of the gospel are simply given the message to deliver.
49:57: They function on the idea that we somehow can know the identity of the elect, which, of course, we cannot.
50:07: We are given the prescriptive will of God. In the prescriptive will of God, we are told that all men, women, children are called to repent, that every single person who will turn to Jesus Christ in repentance and faith will find him to be a perfect Savior.
50:27: I say, oh, no, no, no, no. You believe in particular redemptions. That's not true. No, it is true.
50:34: It absolutely is true, because what they are skipping is not only the reality of God's sovereignty, not only the reality of having to answer the question of how he has knowledge of future events, which they have no meaningful answer to.
50:48: You press them on it, and they turn into a pile of theological goo, self -contradictory goo.
50:56: Listen to the webcasts. It's astounding. But they also don't have a biblical anthropology, because those who are according to the flesh do not submit to the law of God.
51:13: They are not able to do what is pleasing to God. That is the biblical teaching.
51:20: They don't believe that. They believe those who are according to the flesh can do what is pleasing to God. They believe those who are according to the flesh can submit to the law of God, because the law of God says to repent and believe.
51:28: So you can be in the flesh, do that, and that results in you becoming spiritual. That results in you being born again.
51:35: This is absolute essence of their perspective and the defense of the autonomous will of man.
51:43: And so they don't have a biblical anthropology, so there you go.
51:50: They ignore a biblical anthropology, ignore that we do not know who the elect are, and therefore, as instruments, we are given the message, and we are to proclaim it to all, and the message is turn, repent, and believe.
52:15: We cannot identify who the elect are. We pray. We have that hope, and that hope is based upon the goodness of God, but we cannot tell who the elect are.
52:30: We cannot tell who the reprobate are, and so as a result, we proclaim the message, the gospel message, promiscuously, and we do proclaim the free grace of God to anyone who will turn, knowing that it requires that very saving grace of God for anyone to truly turn in the first place.
52:56: So to accuse us of, the only way that we could be accused of dishonesty in our proclamation is if we actually possess the knowledge of who the elect are.
53:06: We don't. Therefore, there's no dishonesty. So, okay, it would certainly not be less true to declare as forthrightly in the gospel presentation that it pleased
53:25: God to save some and to reprobate many, and it would at least be more consistent with Calvinism's unique core tenets.
53:32: You mean like Paul does in Romans? That's what Romans 9 is about, isn't it? We've already done that debate, and look, people keep talking to me about that debate.
53:47: There's one thing that must be kept in mind, and let's lay aside all the which side exegeted and which side didn't.
53:57: During my first cross -examination, I think it was my first one, I pointed out a fundamental contradiction in Leighton Flowers' understanding of Romans chapter 9 in regards to the identity of the pots.
54:24: That was the debate. All the other stuff that has come up since then is sort of distracted from that.
54:30: That debate was won at that point because there was the clear demonstration of a failure in exegesis because if your identity of the pots at one point is different than only a few verses later and you cannot establish that there has been a change of context, you're done.
54:53: It's over with. Everything else is just frosting and trying to throw dust in the air, trying to hide what's actually going on.
55:02: It's just the debate's over with. That's what's mentioned in Romans chapter 9, which is a gospel presentation by the
55:13: Apostle Paul to the Romans. Here's the sentence I was trying to get to.
55:19: It would make it distinctively clear that Calvinism entails the reality that people are not in hell merely because they are sinners or do not believe the gospel, but rather they are there because God was pleased to prevent them from receiving the gospel.
55:44: Let me read that to you again because these traditionalists are getting just a little bit warped in their thinking, to be perfectly honest with you.
55:53: It would make it distinctively clear that Calvinism entails the reality that people are not in hell merely because they are sinners or do not believe the gospel, but rather they are there because God was pleased to prevent them from receiving the gospel.
56:06: What's the underlying assumption that is completely foreign to the position being critiqued?
56:16: What's the underlying assumption? Well, there's a couple errors. Again, no biblical soteriology, recognition of man's rebellion.
56:26: Remember, these are folks that quite honestly play footsie with Pelagianism when it comes to original sin.
56:33: They really do. You listen to them and they're just, you know, dance right along the line.
56:38: We've talked about this a number of times before. But the assumption is that the gospel is something that is, that opportunity has to be given to every person.
56:56: Grace can be demanded. Grace can be demanded in this perspective, in this viewpoint.
57:04: It's not free. The gospel is not something, the gospel can be demanded.
57:10: You can demand that someone have the opportunity. And the reality is, there's a reason why we call it the gospel of grace.
57:21: And it's free. And it's powerful. And the idea of preventing someone from receiving the gospel, well, let me ask them a question.
57:38: When God created, could he have created differently than he did?
57:47: Because even when the gospel begins going out across the earth, it goes out from our perspective painfully slowly.
58:00: There are hundreds of thousands, there are millions of people who died without hearing the gospel.
58:07: While the gospel is on earth, because it went out so slowly. What about, what about those people?
58:17: What about those biblical texts? How do these people deal with Isaiah 6?
58:25: And God actually hardening hearts and closing ears. What do you do with that?
58:33: I don't know. Because again, there's no positive theology proper being put forward to be able to really understand.
58:44: But people are in hell because God chose to demonstrate the full breadth of his character.
59:01: People are in heaven because God chose to demonstrate the full breadth of his character.
59:10: And I wonder, honestly, I wonder if Ronnie Rogers would accept that.
59:21: I wonder if you'd accept that. Will you, Southern Baptist traditionalists, does your theology allow that?
59:31: Why is anyone in heaven? Why did creation take place?
59:40: These much more fundamental questions, they may make a lot of people really, really nervous.
59:50: But they need to be answered. And skipping them does not make you more loving or more evangelistic.
01:00:02: Skipping them just honestly means you have less respect for the whole counsel of God is what it means.
01:00:14: God has been pleased to demonstrate his wrath in the just conviction of sinners.
01:00:28: He has also been pleased to demonstrate his love and his mercy in the undeserved salvation of other sinners.
01:00:39: And the choice is his, not man's. That's what the synergist rejects.
01:00:48: No, it has to be man's. God cannot be free in that matter. God cannot be free in the matter of the demonstration of his own grace.
01:00:57: Man has to control how God demonstrates his own power. That's synergism in a nutshell.
01:01:09: That's synergism in a nutshell. The reality is that, again, what you find in synergism is a narrowing of the categories down to a one - or two -dimensional thing rather than the deep biblical reality that you have numerous things playing off one another, which include the self -glorification of God, theodicy.
01:01:48: Theodicy. That ought to be a term that, as soon as I say it, every person in the audience automatically has a knowledge of what it means.
01:01:58: Theodicy. Theos, and then the root for dikayasune, dikaya 'o, justification, righteousness.
01:02:08: The justification of God in regards to the issue of the existence of evil. Fundamentally important.
01:02:19: In fact, my daughter was talking to me about this yesterday. Because of her webcast, she's getting all sorts of people contacting her, and she was talking to me about someone who's asking a lot of deep questions on this very issue.
01:02:37: And if you're watching, dear, I need to find out whether you've got your Kindle yet, because I've got a free book on systematic theology, just waiting to give to you.
01:02:44: Well, it's not free. I'll pay for it, but you know how it works. People say, yeah, you shouldn't get into all that deep stuff.
01:02:56: This is the fundamental stuff. This is the stuff the Bible talks about. Before Paul got into talking about justification for us, remember at the beginning of Romans 3, that God might be just.
01:03:08: He was more important about demonstrating the justice of God. What are we more concerned about?
01:03:15: Ourselves. Because we start with a human perspective rather than a divine perspective. That concept of God's sovereignty, the freedom of grace, these things are all woven together.
01:03:36: This perspective, these traditionalists, what they want to do is they really want to simplify it down, and that results in a misrepresentation.
01:03:45: Why are people in heaven or hell? Simplistic answers to that question will not fly.
01:03:52: They will not accurately represent everything that's taught in Scripture. Check out this line.
01:04:04: You know what? This entire paragraph is a single sentence.
01:04:11: You want to hear an almost Puritan -esque sentence? This is one sentence. Okay, ready?
01:04:17: In my estimation, if the Calvinist leaves his listeners thinking that the offer of hope they present is of the same nature and dynamic as extensivists, they have failed to be forthright.
01:04:29: Now, he uses a semicolon. I guess that's almost cheating, but the Puritans did all the time, so we continue on.
01:04:35: Accordingly, it would be more informative to the hearers, even the theologically unsophisticated, if God's good pleasure in preventing masses from believing the gospel and having hope was included in talking to the lost because even the most deprived spiritual dolts would understand what was actually being said and offered, whereas normal presentations leave only the upper class of theological sophisticates understanding the ontological vacuousness of the proffered hope for all, according to Calvinism.
01:05:14: Now, this brother's from Norman, Oklahoma. I don't think that he preaches like that. I don't think that he uses terms like ontological vacuousness in too many of his sermons because I've listened to some in the past.
01:05:32: So why is the hope offered in the Calvinistic gospel ontologically vacuous?
01:05:43: Because it's not joined with, in their mind, free will and because there is a sovereign decree.
01:05:52: Now, of course, if they're not open theists, they know who's going to believe. So when he preaches to an audience and offers hope to everyone,
01:06:03: God knows who in that audience is not going to believe and God knows that that message offered to them will not bring them hope because they will never believe.
01:06:13: But that doesn't matter because he doesn't know that. Well, wait a minute, but I don't know that either, but I'm somehow accountable because I actually recognize that the basis for God's knowing who's going to believe is actually
01:06:25: God's will rather than theirs. And this stuff just falls apart like wet tissue paper when you really start pushing on it.
01:06:33: That's why you've sort of got an echo chamber over at SBC Voices, you know, and it doesn't really work out too well when they pop out of there and try to defend this outside of that context.
01:06:47: Well, I skipped, I've got to move fast here, but Dr. Rick Patrick got into, oh yes, he preached the sermon at Southwestern back in December and,
01:07:04: Thank you for deconstructing the poorly built Calvinistic doctrine of the well -meant offer of the gospel, which can neither be considered well -meant since the intention all along was to condemn the majority of souls as reprobate, nor truly an offer since the matter has already been firmly determined before the world began.
01:07:22: So there cannot be, there can be no decree. Can't be grace, can't be anything.
01:07:27: If God has a sovereign decree, no, we're not going to debate those texts. No, we're not going to go to Psalm 33.
01:07:32: No, we're not going to say, can't debate those texts. We're just going to say, can't be true.
01:07:39: With eloquent clarity, yeah, that last paragraph I wrote was eloquent clarity.
01:07:45: You describe the manner in which Calvinists often preach hiding the horrific implications of their view so that normal presentations, and then he quotes the very same thing, leave only the upper class of theological sophisticates understanding the ontological vacuousness of the proffered hope for all, according to Calvinism.
01:08:04: Hope's ontological vacuousness means it isn't even there. It doesn't even exist. Ultimately, under Calvinism, there is no hope for you to trust in Christ, but only the hope that Christ has chosen you.
01:08:17: And most of you, he has not chosen. Well, how many times have
01:08:26: I said, the gospel is not what will you do with Christ? It's what will Christ do with you?
01:08:33: That's an objection simply to sovereignty. Nothing more. That's all it is. That's an objection to God's sovereignty in salvation, and that they will not have, cannot have.
01:08:45: But here, check this out. Brilliant article, Ronnie, and thank you for clarifying that extensivism refers to all, to all non -Calvinist soteriologies, whether Arminian or traditionalist or anything else.
01:09:02: Very well done. Anything else? Like Rome?
01:09:10: Pelagian? Semi -Pelagian? Mormon? Y 'all, y 'all see what's going on there, right?
01:09:18: They see that there's a dividing line there, and there is. There is a dividing line there. No question about it.
01:09:24: No question about it. Two more things I want to get to on the program today. There's a lot more, because Rick Patrick wrote a number of other things, and I was going to look at that, but, well, okay.
01:09:40: Sorry. Calvinists preach, this is Rick Patrick, Calvinists preach to two kinds of prospects, the elect and the reprobate, each one of which can only, can make only one choice regarding salvation, whichever the two is
01:09:57: God's decree. Traditionalists, on the other hand, preach to one kind of prospect, the lost, who can make either of two choices regarding salvation, to trust
01:10:05: Jesus or to reject him. You know what? He's exactly right. Problem is, we don't know what those prospects are.
01:10:14: We can't have that. We don't have that knowledge, and therefore we proclaim one gospel message and one hope, knowing that we depend upon God to bring spiritual life.
01:10:26: But what's fascinating is, what's fascinating, is that in what
01:10:32: Rick Patrick just put there, and, you know, this goes back way, way, way back to when
01:10:40: I was in Bible college, in what Rick Patrick wrote there, God has no choice in his perspective.
01:10:50: God has no choice. I remember D .C.
01:10:56: Martin. I missed the Society of St. Martin meeting.
01:11:02: It was Monday night, and I spaced it. I am so upset. Yeah, we're going to try to do it again in May this year, though, because we missed it last year.
01:11:12: It's just a bunch of us, a new D .C. Martin, get together in a Mexican restaurant and tell stories about D .C. Martin while eating chips and salsa, which is just fun.
01:11:19: But I had it, and I totally forgot. I got involved with something in my... Yeah, I'm really angry with myself.
01:11:26: Anyway, D .C. Martin. I remember... I think this building's gone now at Grand Canyon, because any one -story building is pretty much gone at Grand Canyon.
01:11:38: But I remember him staying up there in the classroom and said, look, when you really think about it, there are only three possibilities.
01:11:48: God can either save everyone, or God can save no one, or God can save some.
01:12:00: Saving no one, there's no demonstration of his love and mercy. Saving everyone, there's no demonstration of his wrath.
01:12:07: So it makes sense that God would save some. Now, he wasn't specific at that point talking about this issue, but when
01:12:14: God saves some, does he have any choice in who he saves? Not according to Rick Patrick.
01:12:21: There's just one kind of prospect, and it's up to them, not up to God. God's freedom?
01:12:27: Mm -mm. Man's freedom. That is the heart of traditionalist thought. It really is.
01:12:33: It's not the heart of the Bible, of course. It's not the heart of John 6. No one's able, but that's what you get with traditionalism.
01:12:44: Two more things. I'm going to minimize those notes so that that disappears.
01:12:56: Two things. First, I want to remind everybody, and I feel really badly for Michael Fallon and for everybody at Sovereign.
01:13:09: It has to work with me. Yeah. Rich just said, how do you think
01:13:15: I feel? He didn't grab the microphone to say that, but I just want you to know he gives as good as he takes.
01:13:21: People pick on me for being mean to him. I don't repeat all the things that I can hear through that not quite fully soundproof door, which we've never quite weather -stripped appropriately.
01:13:30: Anyway, so I take a few shots, and I just normally ignore them, but I thought you should know that I have a heart, too.
01:13:40: Most people don't think that I do, but anyway. I'm just the world's worst marketer, and if I was really a good marketer,
01:13:50: I would what? What? That's just the world's smallest violin.
01:13:56: Oh, you're playing a little violin. Thank you very much. I had no idea what he was doing. I would be pushing our
01:14:04: Reformation tour every program, and we have the banner add -up.
01:14:10: I'm just terrible at these things. Look, I don't know when we're ever going to get an opportunity to do something like this again, and I remember seeing something coming from Ryan.
01:14:26: Poor Ryan sends me these emails, and it's like in one ear, out the other, in one inbox, and out the other inbox,
01:14:34: I guess, or something. If you've been playing with the idea of going with us, get on the website, look where we're going, what we're going to be doing, the cities we're going to be visiting.
01:14:51: Look, I'm nervous because I'm not a tour guide. Some of these places
01:14:58: I haven't been to before, I'm going to be sitting there going, but the only thing
01:15:04: I can offer folks that will be, I think, really unique that you can't get anywhere else is
01:15:12: I'm obviously passionate about church history, but I am theologically passionate about church history.
01:15:19: I mean, I recognize the necessity of being accurate, and it's painful at times to try to get people to recognize just how human the process of building the church has been in the sense that God's always dealing with messy human beings like us.
01:15:42: That actually can be painful, but it can also be encouraging. Anyway, so when we're going to places,
01:15:50: I'm not going to be the one going, oh, that happened up there, that happened up there. What I'm going to be doing is talking about the theology that resulted, what the conflicts were, stuff like that.
01:15:59: That's going to be pretty unique to be able to get to do that, and it's not going to be that huge of a group, so we're all going to get to know each other,
01:16:10: I have a feeling, and it's just going to be a lot of fun to be able to go over there, visit these places, and take lots of pictures outside the castle church door at Wittenberg and do things like that.
01:16:27: So if you're thinking, well, they'll do it again next year, the year after, probably not.
01:16:35: Probably not. This is sort of a unique opportunity.
01:16:43: Unique opportunity, most definitely. So time's a wasting, and you need to get hold of Ryan or Kathy or the folks at Sovereign, and just give them a call, and say, what's really involved here?
01:17:02: And they know how to make all this stuff work. So I'm sorry. I have a feeling that I'm going to have people coming up to me in October, November, and saying, why didn't you tell me?
01:17:14: So I need to remind you of the necessity of taking care of that, and coming with us, because it's going to be a lot of fun, and hopefully very, very, very, very useful.
01:17:25: I don't want 2017 to just go by, and everybody goes, oh, okay, Reformation, blah, blah, blah. In 2018, if you're not thinking back on that, if it hasn't made an impact on your thinking of the gospel and stuff like that, was it really worthwhile, is the question.
01:17:40: Okay, one other thing to get to, and we'll try to wrap it up by 3 .30. Last night was weird.
01:17:50: Last night was really, really weird on Facebook. Turretinfan put up an article where he quoted from,
01:18:01: I told you before, I've never read Robert Murray's books other than those little cartoon thingies that he put out mocking the
01:18:08: Hadith. And there are weird things in the Hadith, by the way, that's not difficult to do.
01:18:17: But anyway, Turretinfan quoted some things from Robert Murray, which included,
01:18:26: I think, in the quote, US surface vessels with cruise missiles taking out
01:18:34: Mecca and Medina. And the terminology of vaporized was used.
01:18:42: Now, one of the reasons that this was interesting is because Rich says he's been getting all sorts of people emailing him saying,
01:18:50: Dr. Murray wasn't talking about using nuclear weapons. That's just you. I'm sorry, but how do you vaporize
01:18:59: Mecca with a cruise missile with conventional weapons? A 500 pound bomb can do a little damage, but you don't vaporize cities with cruise missiles.
01:19:14: Well, Dr. Murray jumped into it and is starting to talk about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the global flood and hell as the final violence.
01:19:27: And I'm just sitting there going, whoa, wow, total meltdown here.
01:19:33: And he's telling people that are objecting, he's calling them all sorts of names and your pinky communist pacifist slip is showing.
01:19:41: It was unbelievable. It was sort of like wowsers. This is wild.
01:19:49: Well, that issue to the side, when
01:19:56: Dr. Murray and I, and notice I call him Dr. Murray. If I were to treat him the way he treats me,
01:20:02: I'd call him Bobby because that's what he does to me. He calls me Jimmy. All the way through the conversation,
01:20:08: I referred to him as Dr. Murray. And in that conversation,
01:20:16: I raised an issue that wasn't a part of the topic of nuking
01:20:23: Mecca and Medina, which he included Medina in it, by the way. I raised the specter of his behavior in debates, which
01:20:35: I have always found to be extremely troubling. And I actually have a video.
01:20:50: Oh, okay. Michael Fallon was texting me. It's a video of the
01:20:57: Reformation tour? Oh, well, write back to him and ask him how we can make it available so maybe we can tell folks before we get done here.
01:21:12: I actually have a video from Maury's debate with Jamal Badawi.
01:21:23: And I don't remember what year. That was late 90s, as I recall. I raised one issue, and that was the error that Robert Maury made in two debates concerning the content of Sahih al -Bukhari.
01:21:46: One, there, unfortunately, are different notation systems within the
01:21:54: Hadith. In my hardback edition of Sahih al -Bukhari, this is
01:22:03: Book 8, the Book of As -Salat, the
01:22:09: Prayer, number 371. In other places, it's 1367.
01:22:18: All of us really wish there was a standardized citation format for especially
01:22:27: Bukhari and Muslim little... well, all of them. Sunan Abu Dawud and Jamia Termini would be nice, but there isn't.
01:22:34: Anyway, here was the text. This is
01:22:43: Abdul Aziz. Anas said, this is quoting Anas, When Allah's messenger invaded
01:22:50: Khyber, he offered the Fajr prayer there early in the morning when it was still dark. Allah's prophet rode, and Abu Talha rode too, and I was riding behind Abu Talha.
01:22:59: Allah's prophet passed through the lane of Khyber quickly, and my knee was touching the thigh of Allah's prophet.
01:23:06: Then his thigh was uncovered by the shift of his itsar, his waist sheet, and I saw the whiteness of the thigh of Allah's prophet.
01:23:16: Now, you might go, what did that have to do with anything? Well, you know,
01:23:24: I turned this off, and I need to actually give it back to you. Sorry about that.
01:23:35: Chrome, right there. What I pointed out was that in the debate with Shabir Ali, Robert Maury made horrific application of this text.
01:23:56: Because in an English edition of Sahih al -Bukhari, now it's interesting, this is done by Dr.
01:24:06: Muhammad Musa al -Khan. Evidently, in an earlier printing, there is a typo in the
01:24:11: English. And it said, saw the whiteness of the thing of Allah's prophet.
01:24:26: And he interpreted that to mean the male reproductive organ. And he even made reference to Shabir's in the debate, if you can believe that.
01:24:38: What this had to do with anything, I cannot even begin to conceive, but he did.
01:24:46: In that debate, he had a man down front who claimed to be an
01:24:52: Arabic speaker, who confirmed for Dr. Maury that that was an accurate translation.
01:24:57: Now, they're saying, well, it was just an error in the
01:25:03: English. Because obviously, Dr. Maury can't read Arabic. He could not refer to it.
01:25:09: And anyone who could read Arabic that would look at this would realize it did not say thing. It did not say thing.
01:25:17: The Arabic word for thigh and thing, nowhere close to one another.
01:25:22: Now, thigh and thing in English, common typographical error.
01:25:29: Especially if you're doing any kind of OCR or something like that. But that is understandable. Not in Arabic.
01:25:37: Now, I can't exactly hold this up. I mean, I can go like this, see there. Actually, you can see that this is an
01:25:45: English Arabic version. And my
01:25:50: Arabic stinks these days because I haven't been a good boy keeping up with my reading or with my vocabulary.
01:25:58: I will be absolutely... But when you've gotten to the point where you were reading and had vocabulary, you can still deal with the language.
01:26:07: And right here in the text, twice, the very same word thigh appears.
01:26:15: If you were to take this word, enter it into Google Translate, it would tell you it's the word thigh.
01:26:21: Or if you want to do it backwards, put in thigh into Google Translate, look at the Arabic word, look at this, and go, oh, right there, the thigh of the nabi, the prophet of Allah.
01:26:35: And it appears before that in the Arabic text because the word thigh...
01:26:40: In fact... Excuse me. Do you have this?
01:26:52: It's really, really grainy, but I just want to make a point and then we'll be done. All right.
01:26:59: Hold on a second here. Okay, now right here... Can you put that up?
01:27:05: Okay. Right here, here is a transparency he made of the
01:27:12: Khan... You can see this is an older version because here it has the
01:27:19: Arabic on this side. Well, that's the same size as mine. But these indicators are not...
01:27:27: When they're in the English in mine, they're very small. So this is a previous printing. But the
01:27:33: Arabic is right over here. And if we could zoom in on it, if it had high enough quality, which we can't,
01:27:40: I could show you the Arabic. Here's what ends up being said. Let's listen to it. He misquotes, he does this and he does that, just so that some of you don't spend your time on irrelevant issues.
01:27:53: Because remember, I could be the most wicked person that ever lived and still tell you the truth. So attacking me personally, which was done for 50 minutes, even though that was not the topic,
01:28:05: Allah, that was not the topic, the Quran. He talked about Bob Mori and his book, Islamic Invasion.
01:28:11: I feel a great compliment that you spent nearly 50 minutes on that. The one passage that came up in Toronto, there was a
01:28:20: Muslim I was dialoguing with and he spent a large amount of time on the color of Muhammad's penis.
01:28:25: It was of some concern to him. And I said that in my copy of Bukhari, I was told that then his thigh was uncovered, the shift of his waist sheet, and I saw the whiteness of the thing.
01:28:40: Now, does everyone see the word T -H -I -N -G? Does anyone see?
01:28:46: There, now that is actually clear enough to see. Okay, so there in the
01:28:52: English, it says I, now above that, the shift of his, it's our waist sheet, there, see right above the first, oh,
01:29:05: I can do that, look at that. Is that going out where I'm putting the mouse? Oh, good. Right there, what does that say?
01:29:11: Touching the what? Thigh of Allah's prophet. Now folks, here's, you're going,
01:29:18: I'm sorry? Oh yeah, the word thigh appears a number of times.
01:29:26: But here's the point. First of all, this never should have been brought up.
01:29:33: Not in any meaningful debate situation should this have ever been brought up.
01:29:42: It's non sequitur, outside the bounds. Point number two, if you are going to make a point of something, check your sources.
01:29:57: No one who could read Arabic confirmed that thing was the proper translation of the
01:30:05: Arabic. Because I can probably hold this up to you right in front of the camera close enough to show you the two occurrences of the word thigh in the
01:30:15: Arabic. One his thigh, then the other one just thigh. Can't make it out in that because they zoomed into the
01:30:27: English rather than the Arabic. To bring it up in the next debate and to defend it again, even if for some reason he thought this was relevant in the first debate with Shabir Ali, it should have been enough.
01:30:46: Shabir Ali reads Arabic. He speaks Arabic. That should have been enough to go, I better check my sources.
01:30:52: Not, I better double down on this. That's the problem.
01:30:59: And even to this day, when I raise the issue, instead of admitting, yeah,
01:31:06: I know. That was bad. That was really bad.
01:31:12: I shouldn't have gone there. No, it's still not. Well, Mohammad Khan rendered it that way.
01:31:24: That kind of an attitude is simply,
01:31:30: I don't care whether we're talking about Islam, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, the
01:31:36: Pope, it doesn't matter. You may think the Pope is the
01:31:41: Antichrist and think therefore, oh, I can lie about him all I want. No, no, no, no, no.
01:31:48: As Christians, we have to speak the truth. Doesn't mean we're gonna be infallible. He made a mistake, but he just doubles down on it.
01:31:59: I'm not gonna admit it. It seems in many people's minds that if you admit that a person who believes in a false religion said something true, you are saying that that entire religion is true.
01:32:20: That's not the case. That is irrational. And we've got to get past it.
01:32:27: We've got to get past it. I won't even go into the other wild and crazy stuff that happened. But I will say this.
01:32:36: Dr. Maury challenged me to debate. Sam Shimon has challenged me to debate.
01:32:43: But it's always in the context of, and if you run away again, this will prove that you're a coward and a liar, which is, you know, the last time
01:32:54: I had to deal with that regularly was at Park Meadows Elementary School on the playground in sixth grade.
01:33:03: That's called using debate as a bully. And I hope that at my age now,
01:33:15: I have come to understand and to respect debate enough not to use it as a bully.
01:33:28: I really want to try to raise the level of debate. And that doesn't mean
01:33:35: I'm not going to have debates in the future that are sword fights. Sometimes I can't help that.
01:33:42: But my desire in a debate, what was fascinating is he's used the term coward and run away.
01:33:50: Five minutes later, he says, oh, so you will debate me. Well, then we know this could be edifying to the saints and it could be done very fairly and respectfully.
01:34:01: Within five minutes, you go from beating your chest and being the schoolyard bully and talking about cowards and running away to, oh, well, we will edify the saints.
01:34:12: Yeah, and if you sold used GMC Gremlins, I don't think
01:34:18: I'd buy one either. Right. Sorry. Yeah. Oh, is it
01:34:24: AMC? Oh, they don't even exist anymore, do they? Chrysler bought them.
01:34:31: Okay. AMC Gremlins. Look, all
01:34:36: I remember is that my sister had one and it was the worst green that had ever been designed by man.
01:34:43: And it was also by the side of the road. Nine times out of 10, it was worthless. So that's why I chose that particular vehicle.
01:34:52: Anyway, so I wanted to address that and to once again lay the facts out for folks, for those of you who actually care about the fact that, you know, sometimes you can check things out.
01:35:06: There are facts out there and it's important to be factual.
01:35:11: Okay. Thank you for watching The Dividing Line today. I believe next week is wide open, so we're good.
01:35:20: We're good. Please... Did you start the music? Okay. Please remember the trips we've got upcoming.
01:35:28: We've got the trip to South Africa and London in March and we still need your help with those.
01:35:35: And I'm getting really excited about them because I start getting excited when we start getting all the details and seeing the classes
01:35:41: I'm going to be teaching and the interaction with students and we're putting debates together and starting to see what it's going to look like and it's going to be really exciting.
01:35:49: But we're also working on May, another trip over there. Not to South Africa, but to Europe.
01:35:56: And so the travel link, I think, is still out there to help me get to those places.
01:36:02: There's a banner ad for it. So very, very helpful if you can help us to get there because that's where we get these recordings.
01:36:08: And man, for a lot of these debates, we've got to go outside the United States to get them anymore. So, appreciate your support.
01:36:14: It's very, very important. Some of you think that we've got big folks just take care of all that kind of stuff. That's extremely rare. It's the folks that listen to this program that make it happen.