Roman Catholics Worshipping Mary on Video, Trump's New York "Conviction," Soteriology 101 & Election

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. Before we dive into some really interesting stuff today, we mentioned a couple weeks ago that we have some items that have been donated to us to assist with the costs involved in the switchover, as far as the

RVs that we have been using. And one of those is this,

I've discovered it is an Isaac line Bible. I'm not sure what, exactly how that differentiates everything, but it's an

Isaac line Bible, so it's real clean. There's not, anyways, it's the ESV creeds and confessions from Jeffrey Rice.

And Rich Pierce has done the, now you notice some of you are going, hey, the lacrosse on the back of the wall shrunk.

No, it didn't. Rich has made a couple of them. There's one on the front of the podium here.

But the one up on the wall is the one that will be available.

And eventually, Derek Melton is going to have a blade for us as well. But we are going to be doing a raffle, rather than a bidding war, or whatever it was we had last time.

I'm not sure how that worked last time. And since I don't know how it's all going to work, we're just going to ask

Brother Rich to explain it to everybody, so that everybody, if it doesn't work, can get mad at him and not at me, because obviously

I don't know what's going on. Well, I'm hoping that everybody can hear me, because this is the first time I've hooked this particular mic up, and I'm behind the scenes over here.

But the raffle will go live through our website on midnight,

Saturday morning. At midnight. No one's awake at midnight. Well, the idea here is, it's all about timing.

So with a raffle, it has to be a set specific time, has to start at a specific time.

I'm sorry. Start at a specific time. Talking's hard, isn't it? And end at a specific time.

And so the raffle is going to go for the full month of June. Oh, yes.

And then the drawing for the raffle will occur here on the dividing line, perhaps in this room, on July 16th.

Now, we may change the drawing date. Just fair warning, we may change that. We're actually in the midst of trying to see if we can work out an arrangement where we can receive checks.

Our system right now can only take credit cards or debit cards that we have set up for the raffle.

And like I said, that will go live. So those web pages are not available to the public right now.

That'll all go live. The links, the ad, the whole nine yards is going to go live at midnight on Saturday morning.

And then that'll stay up. And they're going to run for about $10 each.

Now, I'm told I could be wrong. We're going to source the actual information.

What are you saying to me? What are you saying to me? You've got this funny look on your face. July 16th.

July 16th would be a Tuesday. Yeah, I'll be in Flagstaff at that point. Not according to your calendar.

That happens on Thursday. This says, well, seven.

See what I have to put up with, folks? Well, according to this, I'm in Flagstaff.

OK, so well, you know, you could do the drawing from up there. Probably not.

But so the drawing date is to be announced. Yes, there you go. It's probably better.

But yeah, so the cross up on the wall there is called a layered cross.

It is 12 inches tall. And we went back and forth as to what we wanted to put up there.

But this particular cross is one of two that I made, custom made.

The other one's hanging in my home. And they're identical to one another. So did you have any other questions?

Any other thoughts? What are you thinking here? There's one on the front of the podium, and there's one over there. OK, so the one there, the 12 -inch tall cross with the padauk, the maple, and the walnut in that particular order

OK, is identical to the one I have hanging in my home. So the the one that is over here is padauk, maple, walnut, not padauk, walnut, maple.

Yes, these things matter. And it also has this one, the taller one has bevels in it, where I decided on the other one,

I didn't want to do bevels. I wanted to have a flat look to it. OK, so so there you go.

All right. So if people go to Aleman .org at some point, there's going to be a link that says,

Saturday, there will be links. There's going to be pictures. There's going to be a segment here where, you know, you were supposed to be doing the

Vanna White thing, you know, stuff, you know. I held it up. And and so we'll have some pictures and folks will be able to buy raffle tickets.

We decided to just try to find a reasonable number that was a reasonable number.

So it's ten dollars per ticket for the raffle. You can buy as many as you want. And then on the to be announced date, we've actually found a.

Now, I know this is not very Calvinistic. It's not reformed at all. But we found a web engine that is a randomizer.

It is a randomizer. And so you can basically put a number equation in, starting with number one.

And let's say however many tickets we sell, you put that as the cap number. You hit the button and it comes up with the winner's number.

That's going to coincide with a spreadsheet as the orders come in. And that will assign the the ticket number in there.

And then we'll announce the winner. And there will be now these are separate raffles. So you're not bidding on both at the same time.

You're bidding on them or you're getting raffle tickets separately. So any other any other questions there,

Dr. White? Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm done then. But cool.

Excellent. Well, we will do it a week earlier. We'll figure it out. We may not be able to take checks in this scenario. And so but, you know, go from there.

All righty. There you go. So the decision has been to do a raffle. And so watch for the links.

I imagine they'll be on the front page, something along those lines or one of the tabs. I don't know.

We'll find out. And ESV Isaac line creeds and confessions from Jeffrey Rice.

The there you go. I cross and don't know what we'll do quite yet with the blade.

How we'll handle that. But I'm sure we'll we'll be experts on this by then. So that'll that'll work out just great.

OK, so and it, you know. Have to point out, we've got another trip coming up.

I'm really excited about it. I need to be getting the pastors together. Probably maybe tomorrow or something like that and figuring out how we're going to make debates work and stuff like that.

Might not know till June 6th exactly how that's going to work out. And even then, we'll see. But we've got a little time to work on that.

And I'm really excited about that, that trip and the work that's going on right now on the unit, the unit.

You know, the last trip. Let's just hope that the last two trips are not going to be indicative of future trips as far as how many times

I end up in surgery suites, ERs and things like that. I'm really looking forward to it.

And a lot of work's being done on the unit that should, Lord willing, greatly increase our net stability as far as doing the dividing lines concern and hopefully even make it so that I can have multiple ways of connecting set up and we can go from there.

So, but that'll be a lot of stuff to do. So interesting things to do. One of them,

Protestia posted this, and I have to confess, it was rather striking.

And I think it's stuff that most of the time we don't see outside of Roman Catholicism.

This is probably within the context of and the camera is moving while live, which is not really how it's supposed to work.

You're supposed to have the other camera on while you're moving the other camera. But anyway, most of us outside of Roman Catholicism don't see these things.

And even here, I would say this is probably something along the lines of charismatic

Catholicism, because it's in a different language. So if you didn't know what they were saying, and if there wasn't a statue in the middle of the room, it would be, you'd think they were just singing some type of worship song or something like that.

Well, it is a worship song. It's just who it's addressed to is the problem. So let me see if I can get this up here and get it started.

Let me see here. There we go. Let's see how this works. All right.

So here you have a statue of Mary. You have a number of folks here.

There's some books down there. I'm not sure if those were taken from the suggested reading file at Midwestern Baptist Theological Center.

I'm sorry. That just shouldn't have said that. No, I'm not, actually.

It just, you know. But someone was kind enough to provide the words.

Someone looked up the translation for us here. There is a queen here, crowned with stars, the moon beneath her feet, adorned by angels.

Your name is Maria. Your name is Maria. Your name is Maria. Your name is Maria. Mary. There is a queen here, crowned with stars, the moon beneath her feet, adorned by angels.

Your name is Mary, four times. There is nothing that does not pass through her.

Everything I have, I consecrate to her. When I call Mary, I also call

Jesus. And then that's repeated. There is nothing that does not pass through her.

Everything I have, I consecrate to her. When I call Mary, I also call

Jesus. So we throw Jesus in toward the end there, just a little bit.

But these are the words. And I haven't had the time to look at all of the comments that have been posted, but I can guess at a lot of what they're going to be saying.

A number of years ago, Patrick Madrid and I debated prayers to saints and angels.

And you'll get in that debate the discussion. And then there was, we actually went over that debate because Patrick Madrid wrote some articles about it a number of years later.

I think it was over a decade later. And so we went over it as a result and responded to those articles.

There's more if you look for that. But for those of you who look at this and go, that's clearly worship.

Yeah, of course. But the Roman Catholic doesn't know it's Hyperdulia. And you go, it's what?

Oh, you need to understand the difference between Latria, which is the worship that is due to God alone, and Dulia, which is a lesser form of veneration, which can properly be given to creatures.

And then there is a unique category called Hyperdulia.

And Hyperdulia is given to Mary. So it's not the

Latria that's given to God and God only. It is hyper veneration, which is given to Mary.

And I pointed out to somebody on Twitter, and I didn't see what responses were given, but do you really think that when

Moses gave the law and he, for bad, giving ahav,

Hebrew term is ahav, to any created thing. Now, ahav is translated worship or service.

So it's translated as both Latria and Dulia, because it encompasses both concepts.

There is no such idea as hyper veneration or you can serve an idol, but you can't worship an idol.

To serve something is to worship it. To give your service to something is to worship.

And so Calvin and the other reformers demonstrated this foolishness centuries ago, but very few people read them any longer, and certainly it's not part of what people are going to be reading on the internet.

So this whole distinction between Latria and Dulia just simply doesn't exist, not biblically.

If the Bible determines it, but that's the problem. For Roman Catholics, the Bible is not the standard that's going to determine these things.

It is the teachings of the church, and the church says there's a difference, and therefore there is.

And so you can have the lady back there, you can see her smiling right now. She's dancing, and I've been in charismatic churches.

I've seen that dance before. The music, the leader,

I mean, all of this is what you would see in charismatic churches all over the place.

Just not with a statue in the center of the frame, and that being

Mary. And when you listen to the words, there is nothing that does not pass through her.

You need to understand what you're hearing. Once again, here it is, the glories of Mary, Alphonsus de

Liguri. The book has gone through more than 800 editions.

Liguri was made a doctor of the church. If there was anything in this that was even slightly untrue, heretical, false, would have been dealt with a long time ago.

But if you, you know, I repeat the story that I've repeated before.

In fact, it might be in here, but I did not bring...

No, that's not the one. Man, why do

I do this anymore? I just need to have permanent reading glasses.

Yeah, there's so many of these quotations. Here. On this account it was, says

St. Bernard, yes, there is someone named St. Bernard, that the eternal father, wishing to show all the mercy possible, besides giving us

Jesus Christ, our principal advocate with him, was pleased also to give us Mary as our advocate with Jesus Christ.

There is no doubt, the saint adds, that Jesus Christ is the only mediator of justice between men and God, but by virtue of his own merits and promises, he will and can obtain us pardon in the divine favors.

But because men acknowledge and fear the divine majesty which is in him as God, for this reason it was necessary to assign us another advocate to whom we might have recourse with less fear and more confidence, and this advocate is

Mary, than whom we cannot find one more powerful with his divine majesty, one more merciful towards ourselves.

The saint says, Christ a faithful and powerful mediator between God and men, but in him men fear the majesty of God.

A mediator then was needed with the mediator himself, nor could a more fitting one be found than Mary.

And so I remind you of my experience on a radio station in Boston in 1993,

I believe it was, debating geriatrics, not debating but arguing with geriatrics on a radio station, and I read one of the prayers that came out of this book,

The Glories of Mary by Alphonsus de Liguri, assuming that what Jerry would do would be to say, ah, that's just popular piety, stuff like that.

I read the prayer, very similar to what I just had here, the petitioner commits himself or herself to Mary, that's the one where he says,

I will not fear the devils or my sins or Jesus, because by one prayer from you,

Mary, he will be appeased. And I finished reading it and I looked back toward Jerry, and he said, my hope for you,

Mr. White, is that someday you will be able to pray that prayer with me. So I think if you were to get to ask a lot of the better, the ones who can write well, speak well, representatives of Roman Catholicism, that are arguing against sola scriptura and saying, ah, church history supports us, and blah, blah, blah, press them on this issue, you would find them saying the same thing, that they believe these things as well, this kind of Mariology.

This is Mariology. That's what it is. There is no way to avoid it, to call it anything else, it's just to engage in self -deception.

This is Mariology. And the apostles did not teach us to engage in this type of activity.

And it took centuries of unbiblical traditional development, and especially the development of the monastic system, and the denial of biblical teaching, the normative

Christian life, to begin laying the seed bed from which would develop the

Marian dogmas. And keep something in mind, even at the time of the Reformation, Rome had not yet come up with, well, had not dogmatized, some of the key

Marian dogmas that are now central, specifically the

Immaculate Conception, the Bodily Assumption. And so there has been further degradation since the time of the

Reformation. That's one of the reasons why the Reformers didn't really invest a whole lot of time in Mary.

Mary wasn't central to the debate at the time of the Reformation. Luther continued his

Marian devotion, not in the monkish sense that he had prior to, say, 1517, but did not raise these issues and did not get into these things.

Because again, there has been so much development since the

Reformation in the Marian area that it just didn't have the centrality back then that it has now.

But you talk to the best that Rome has, they believe this stuff. Almost any of them would be joining in the singing.

And it is Mariolatry, it is idolatry. There is no question.

And so when it says, there is nothing that does not pass through her, there was someone on Twitter that, again, there was some discussion that's going on.

And in Liguri as well, you have the idea that Mary is the neck through which all grace flows.

So it comes from the head, Jesus, but it flows through the neck, which is

Mary. So again, clear parallels to Jesus, his unique offices paralleled in Mary.

This is all what Rome's about. And there's the result.

There is the result. Look at where everyone's looking, look at what everyone's singing, who they're addressing these things to.

This is Mariolatry. And you can try to deny it all you want, it's not going to happen.

Real briefly, in case you're living under a rock, just before we went on the air, the jury in New York City came back with 34 guilty verdicts against former

President Trump. In some ways, I am not going to pretend to be a pundit, but in some ways

I have to wonder if they didn't just guarantee

Trump's victory in November. I don't sit around watching

CNN, Fox, or any of the others. I don't have time to. But it was so obvious for me, from the few times that I saw clips from leftist commentators who were in the courtroom, they were stunned and shocked at the obvious bias of the judge and the entire legal system in this situation.

I think the vast majority of Americans now fully recognize this is a complete witch hunt.

It is what we have read about over and over again in Eastern Bloc countries for years and years.

All some party apparatchik had to do was accuse somebody of something, and it doesn't matter whether you did it or not, there is no legal system.

Communism is not a situation of laws. The law doesn't bind anyone.

It's whatever the party says. And we thought that couldn't possibly happen here.

Well, it's happening here. And this is, what are they calling it, lawfare?

They're calling it lawfare. Man, that happens fast. And from a

Christian perspective, look, I'd love to have some candidates that function consistently on a

Christian worldview. It would be wonderful. But we're in a nation under judgment. We're in a nation that has extended its, well, it's almost

June. I hate to tell you that. But we have extended our multicolored middle finger toward heaven, repeatedly and with force and with screaming.

So a nation of laws that has a foundation in a

Christian worldview, that in other words would actually correspond to reality, is a blessing upon a people.

And we are not in a position to be blessed in that way.

And so the big thing we need to be thinking about is how to be faithful in a context like this.

So I'd love to have candidates like that, but we don't. And so part of me, honestly,

I'll just go ahead and share this with you. I'm feeling a little guilty. And I'll tell you why

I'm feeling guilty. Part of me wants to see Trump win just so that I have another four years to be able to travel.

Because I think if he did, though he will be impeached 14 times in the first 10 months,

I mean, as long as the communists, can we stop calling them Democrats now? I mean, have they not just ripped the mask off?

If the communists, the socialists, shall we call them socialists so it's a little bit softer?

If the communist socialists control either the

Senate or the House, especially if they have the House, you will see impeachment after impeachment after impeachment.

Did we not see that already? Yeah, we did. But at least maybe the government would just be so, well, what's the old saying?

Your property, life, and liberty is not safe as long as Congress is in session.

So maybe if nothing works, and all they're doing is coming up with crazy impeachment ideas, maybe we get a brief reprieve.

But I feel guilty about that because that doesn't help the future. It doesn't help my grandkids or my great -grandkids or anything like that.

So I've been struggling, honestly, to schedule stuff in 2025 right now. I've had people saying, will you come do something in this month and that month?

And I'm like, I'll just be honest with you. There are a lot of scenarios in this situation to where either travel won't be possible or unwise.

If everything went sideways, let's say there was an economic collapse, our money became worthless overnight, and I'm 3 ,000 miles away in a fifth wheel.

How do I get home? If there's a foreign attack, there's an

EMP, and all of a sudden it's the 1970s again. And everything, including the gas pump, is looking for the

Internet. There's all sorts of issues that make you go, let's see how this all works out first.

Because there are just absolutely evil, insane people out there doing their thing.

Now, of course, everyone's saying the same thing, and I certainly would say that, given what

I've heard took place, there are so many grounds for overturning all this, mistrialing it, whatever you call it, that it's astonishing.

It should happen so fast that obviously the judge and the people who brought the charges should themselves.

There's a really good element of God's law that if you bring charges against somebody and you're trying to get this to happen to them, and it turns out that you're lying, that you're misusing the law, what you're trying to get happen to the other person should happen to you.

Boy, would that change the legal system. Wow. And you go, but that's not fair.

Remember, if you're saying that now, the reason you're saying that is because you do not believe that there will be a day of judgment in the future.

It's got to be human judgment in time now. That's the secular way of thinking.

The reason that's perfectly just is it's God's law, and no one's going to get away with anything.

They might in this life, but this life isn't it. This life leads to judgment.

So many of us think as secularists and as such make really foolish statements.

Anyway, all right. Take this down here. That was

Lizzie Reform, by the way, that provided the lyrics. I appreciated that. It helped to be able to have that information available.

Where did... There it is. How'd that get over there?

I don't know. There we go. This is one of the things

I was talking about the last time, and I said we'll save this for later.

I posted a tweet a couple days ago, and I cited 1

Corinthians 124. And the reason I did so is what you hear all the time...

Here it is, 1 Corinthians 124. Let's see here.

For sense and the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom, does not come to know God. God is well pleased with the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.

Can we agree that save those who believe, this whole section starts off with the message of the cross, it's them that are perishing foolishness, and we are being saved.

It's the message of the cross. We're talking about salvation here. To save those who believe, for indeed,

Jews ask for signs, and Greeks search for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified.

To Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called.

But to them, the called. The called ones.

And then you've got, Both Jews and Greeks.

So, tekai is a specific form in the

Greek language that is referring, that we translate it, both this and that.

So, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks. Christ, the power of God, and Christ, the wisdom of God.

So, I put up a little tweet, and all I said in the tweet, basically, was that when you try to say that the elect, the kleitos, the called, according to Paul, is to be limited, in some fashion, to the

Jews. This is why this absurd, silly, childish, two -part

Romans thing, and sadly, Mr. Bretta has decided to press on with it, he just put out the third one,

I haven't listened to it yet, but, despite the utter destruction of its foundation in the first section, we're going to just press on with it,

I guess. The whole purpose for that is to remove, are we going to stay on this, or what?

Alright. Is to remove

Romans chapter 8 from having anything to do with believers today.

It's only about the Jews in the first century. And that way, you know, that also means everything else in Romans chapter 8 only has to do with the

Jews in the first century. So all those wonderful promises, God causes all things, works good, forget it, forget it, two -part Romans, got to get rid of that.

Oh, the Holy Spirit intercedes for you with groaning, oh, that's mine, so obvious it has nothing to do with us today.

All that stuff in Romans chapter 8, no one can separate us, that's not you, yes, someone can separate you from the love of God, that's you, you can do that.

All that stuff that Christians down through the ages thought was for them, we discovered, again, 11 years ago, 11 years ago, on a beach in Florida, that none of that has to do with any of us.

I don't know how anybody functions that way. But anyways, that gets rid of all of it.

And all I was trying to do was say, notice what's said here. For Paul, tois kletois, those that are called, the elect,

Jews and Greeks. He's talking about the church of Corinth. It's so obvious that I want to throw that out there and just point out, you can rip up Ephesians 1, you can tear apart

Romans, I mean, if you're really that dedicated to your task, yeah, you can do that.

But now you've got 1 Corinthians. Or how about 2 Timothy, 1

Timothy. I endure all things for the sake of the elect. It's just the

Jews. No, it's not. And it's specifically said right there. But to the called, they who are called, both

Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God. So I threw that up there.

And there were some very interesting comments.

One of those interesting comments, where did that go?

Come on, come back. There you are. One of those interesting comments was from Dr.

Al Garza, as I mentioned before, where he said, well, if you define the elect as Paul would have defined the elect, because Paul was a

Pharisee of the school of Hillel. And I wrote back and I said,

I really think we need to expose this idea.

It's not that you cannot find scholars. I remember when N .T.

Wright put his little popularized version of his idea of the new perspective on Paul out.

One of the points had to do with what school of Phariseeism Paul would have been associated with.

And, of course, he had some interesting takes on that. But anyway, and it's like, wait a minute.

Paul specifically says that he did not get his gospel from men, but he got it by revelation of Jesus Christ.

He specifically, straightforwardly says, no,

I am, and he has to do this, because the super apostles in Corinth were claiming that he was sort of like a secondary apostle, that he didn't have the same authority that Peter or others might have had or something like that.

And so he had to argue the point fairly strongly and said, I received my gospel through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

And it's so patently obvious that when it comes to the nature of God, Paul's understanding is expanded well beyond the

Pharisees. Now, there were different views. The Pharisees, Hillel, Shammai, different schools, all kinds of arguing between them and things like that.

But on the very nature of God, God had revealed himself. In fact, as I've said over and over again, the

Trinity itself is revealed between the Old and New Testaments. It's a revelation in time.

And so clearly what the Pharisees thought, Paul has gone far beyond that and is not indebted to them for that.

Who the Messiah was to be. And some would say, well, but actually there are intertestinal references that can be made amenable.

But that doesn't mean that that was what the specific view of the school of Hillel was. The idea of limiting

Paul, the school of Hillel, is just as absurd as the two part

Romans theory. I don't know of anybody that takes that seriously. And so here we're being told, well, you can't go beyond pharisaical categories.

And here you have the gospel going to the Gentiles. The whole concept of the one body of Christ.

And that the scriptures have prophesied that this is what was going to happen.

That with the coming of the Messiah, the kingdom message would go to all peoples.

That wasn't the school of Hillel. So if we're going to limit Paul to that, boy, we've got nothing left in the

New Testament. You've got to become so arbitrary in choosing what is being limited. And that's what this is all about.

The entire two part Romans thing, the guy that wrote it was very honest about it.

He came up with the idea because he was trying to find a way around Calvinism. And limiting

Paul's perspectives to the school of Hillel, it's the same thing. We're just trying to get around Calvinism.

The fact of the matter is, again, this is clear proof that all these folks fully understand.

They fully recognize that Romans, and especially

Romans 8 and 9, teach what we say it teaches.

So they have to find some way around that. They've given up on trying to do the exegetical argument because that really doesn't work well.

So let's cut it off at the knees elsewhere. Let's say this is only about Jews. Let's say

Paul was, you know, we have to interpret all of Paul's language in the limiting of the school of Hillel and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

So you've got that very strange approach that's out there.

And the motivation is anti -Calvinist

Strangement Syndrome. That's what it is. Then we have Soteriology 101 again.

And in quoting my tweet down there at the bottom of the page from May 24th, six days ago.

And there you have, but these are called whether Jews or Greeks. The only system that restricts

God from creating agents with choices independent of his own determination is called

Calvinism, which denies God's freedom. How do you even parse out a statement like that?

Because obviously it's Reformed folks who say that God has the freedom to create as he sees fit.

He has the freedom to save whom he will. He has the freedom to glorify himself in the way that he chooses to glorify himself.

And so how do you get to which denies God's freedom? Well, what you need to understand is what is meant here by God's freedom.

And I had some guys come after me today because I just haven't studied this enough to know what they're talking about.

But I have said from the beginning over and over again,

Reformed theology, God -centered, comes down from the nature, purposes, acts of God to mankind.

Traditionalism, renamed, rebranded provisionism, which is nothing more than a modernized and shallower synergism than what came before it, starts with man and moves up from that, limiting

God's attributes, activities, being to what can be extrapolated from what you believe is fair for mankind.

So it's in creaturely categories. So what's meant here by the only system that restricts

God from creating agents with choices independent of his own determination is called

Calvinism, which denies God's freedom. In other words, we don't like Calvinism because it allows

God to be God. And we want a God who is limited to human categories and therefore is understandable to us and can be judged by us.

And I mentioned last time I was listening to some debates recently on open theism.

This is the exact argumentation, the exact. In fact, the open theist made this argument.

He said Calvinism denies God's freedom. The open theist said that.

Why? Because in the open theist perspective, God's freedom is a freedom to act within time.

So it is a limitation of God's actions to a temporal sphere rather than a decree in the eternal sphere that creates the fabric of time in which then all that he has chosen to do in time plays out.

So open theism, for example, cannot even begin to explain. What in the world the early church was thinking when it prayed in Acts chapter 4?

That what Herod and Pontius Pilate, Romans and the Jews had done, what they did was exactly what

God's hand and will had predestined to take place. Because in open theism, when God created,

God had no idea that Pontius Pilate or Herod would ever exist.

I remember the first time I heard an open theist, well, I read an open theist saying that.

I was like, wow. Wow, that's stunning that someone could actually believe that.

But they do. And it makes perfect sense in the sense that in open theism,

God cannot know what free creatures are going to do. There is no future to be known.

So God can't know what is unknowable. And so God can't.

You or Pilate or Herod are the result of myriads and myriads of free will choices by human beings.

You know, guy decides to marry one woman rather than another woman. And he's your great, great, great grandfather.

Well, now you're different, aren't you? Yeah, of course. So to maintain the central assertion of open theism that God cannot know the actions of free creatures, once you start multiplying that by generation after generation after generation, then yeah, the open theist has to sit there and go, yeah, when

God created, he had no idea. Not only that any of us would ever exist, but he had no idea what would be going on today.

He never saw 9 -11 coming. He certainly knew it was a possibility on 9 -10 and maybe even 1 -10 or whatever they started planning and plotting and whatever happened on 9 -11.

I like a lot of people are starting to wonder what did happen on 9 -11. But something happened on 9 -11 and on 9 -10,

God did not actually know exactly what that was going to be. He knew the possibilities, but he could not know what the future was going to hold because, hey, man has to be free.

He has to be autonomous and therefore, you know, the pilot of the first plane might have decided he wanted to live at the last second and missed the building and everything changes, right?

No way of knowing. So what was the church saying when it said

Herod and Pontius Pilate, Jews, Romans did what God's will and hand had determined would take place?

Well, they believed God did know that Herod was going to exist and they believed that God did know Pilate was going to exist.

And once you abandon that, then you can't have election because God doesn't know who's going to exist in the future anyway.

So God cannot eternally set his love upon a specific people within open theism.

And that's what's so attractive about open theism to synergists because that's their goal too.

Their goal is we do not want God choosing who's going to be saved.

We want God trying to save everybody, but it's up to us to help him out to make it happen.

And especially in regards to myself. God can try all he wants, but until I enable him by my free will actions.

Hands off, hands off. So who's denying

God's freedom? The provisionist says

God cannot elect a particular people unto himself. He can only elect to act in a certain way in response to human activity, but he cannot elect a certain people unto himself.

And this whole idea here is smuggling in the idea that if God has a decree, then

God cannot act within time. And I guess I haven't taken the time to look at it, but I guess

Layton Flowers has responded to something I said earlier today. Someone just shared with me the video that we just played, which is fine.

I have said over and over again, Provisionism as a system flattens out the full order of revelation of Scripture about God's eternity and God's actions in time.

And it does so, again, by starting from man, reasoning upwards, and hence only accepting what man's reason can accept within the time realm.

Rather than starting with God is eternal, creator of all things. He has a purpose that he's accomplishing.

He knows the end from the beginning. He creates light and darkness. All these specific references to God's purposes, eternal nature, things like that, those get redefined in light of, well, it has to be this because we start with man.

And so while the truth is a full -orbed picture from Scripture, Provisionism squishes it down to a two -dimensional monochrome little bit of nothing because it's limited to the creature, and because it has its origin and source in the creature.

And so I've been saying that for years. And in fact, if we wanted to,

I'm sure we could go back using the transcripts function now and find out the first time I said it.

It's been a number of years. And people are saying, no, no, no, no, no.

This is misrepresentational, hate -filled, all sorts of stuff like that.

No, that's what we've been saying for a long time. This is the issue. And so it's truly ironic for a system that is denying to God his eternal, his ability to have an eternal purpose, and to then, as a part of that eternal purpose, in his decree, interact with man in time.

It was God's purpose for Abraham to risk himself in walking with Yahweh, in talking about Sodom and Gomorrah.

Abraham was changed. Moses was changed by their interactions with God.

Now, when you forget what the whole biblical revelation of God's unchangeable purpose in nature is, then you can read into those texts all sorts of silly, stupid stuff.

Oh, God didn't know, and now he knows, and now he's going to learn. And really,

Moses was better than God. I've actually heard an open theist saying Moses had a higher moral standard than God did.

Their condemnation is just. But that's what happened.

Once you crush the biblical testimony down into that flat, two -dimensional mess, that's all you've got left.

So we continue on. The elect are not confined to the ancient Jewish people.

Watch the shift here. The elect in 1

Corinthians 124 are what? From Jews and Gentiles. They are those who find in Christ Jesus God's wisdom and God's power.

It's the same message. When it's preached, they see

God's wisdom and knowledge. Those who are perishing see the opposite. They see foolishness, a scandal.

So the distinction is being saved and perishing.

And whether you're being saved or perishing is going to impact, is going to determine how you respond to the message of the cross.

Now the provisionist says you get to respond to the message of the cross as you see fit.

And then by your response, then God can elect to save you.

But the election that he's making is not of you. It's of a plan.

It's of a result. It's not the election of 1 Corinthians 124, which is personal, because those who are elect find in Jesus the wisdom of God and the power of God.

See how it shifts? You have to change. That's why these guys don't do exegesis. They really don't.

I'm sorry. It's just as plain as day. God chooses slash elects to save all who believe in him, regardless of their moral character or nationality.

That's nice. It has nothing to do with what we're talking about in 1 Corinthians 1. This is standard for Soteriology 101 to completely miss the point.

But notice it's a complete shift. That's not what's being discussed in 1 Corinthians 124.

This reduces. You want to see God's freedom denied? One sentence later,

God's freedom is reduced to choosing or electing to respond to what human beings do.

You don't get to choose them. And certainly his choice does not determine how they're going to respond to the message of the cross.

It's their response to the message of the cross that's going to determine what he can do. Upside down, as is normal for provisionism at this point.

In the end, God is the ultimate author. Ultimate author of what? Ultimate author of what?

What is ultimate and author being used here? If God intended all his children to understand

White's interpretation of Romans and Ephesians. Weren't we in 1 Corinthians last time

I checked? I thought we were. Isn't that 1 Cor 124?

At the bottom of the screen, are you seeing that over there? You can see it? Okay. I'm just checking.

Just wondering. In the end, God is the ultimate author if God intended all his children.

Now are we talking about who's God's children? Biblically speaking, who are

God's children? Aren't those that he's adopted, that he's chosen, or they chose him?

It's really hard to follow this stuff. It really is. If God intended all his children to understand White's interpretation of Romans and Ephesians.

We don't know what that is here. Are we talking about the golden chain?

Are we talking about Ephesians 1? Is this

Theology 101 saying, yeah, we're going to use the two -part Romans foolishness and we're also going to do the dumb stuff with Ephesians 1 and that's just the apostles and stuff like that.

Is that what's going on? Anyway, then according to White's own reasoning, which I have never found

Theology 101 to even come close to understanding or represent accurately, God, as the author of these texts, has failed to achieve his intentions.

So, if mankind loves his autonomy, his self -proclaimed autonomy, so much that he will twist

Scripture, turn Scripture inside out, then

God, as the author of these texts, has failed to achieve his intentions.

Reminds me a little bit of how Roman Catholics argue against Sola Scriptura, too. But, wow, talk about weak sauce.

You know, I just throw a text up there, make a simple comment based upon what it plainly and obviously says.

I mean, I know Leighton doesn't know what take high means. Okay, but he wasn't really arguing that point.

I know he can't deal with the text on that level. I get it. He's proven that over and over again.

But, to not even try to interact with the fact that it says, specifically, those who are called are from the

Jews and the Greeks. I suppose it's possible he just hasn't done enough work with that text to realize that it starts off with the message of the cross.

It's them that are perishing foolishness. Those being saved is the power of God. And he's never really thought through, huh, well that's interesting, because that would mean that it has to do with the nature of the person as to how they interact with the message.

Because he always keeps saying it's the message that's the divine part, which of course it is, but that divine message is received by those who are perishing and seem to be foolish.

I don't, I would really challenge, now, okay, let's do it this way.

Let's do it this way. Let's try this out. I would ask

Soteriology 101, post a less than 10 minute...

That's my fault, folks. I made him laugh. I had to chuckle.

Not even Rich could keep a straight face on that one. Post, let's try it again.

Keep the peanut gallery quiet this time. Post a less than 10 minute explanation of 1

Corinthians chapter 1. Let's make sure we, let's put up here.

Yeah, let's start with verse 18. So the...

The message, the word of the cross is indeed...

Let me help you out here. You have twice with men. So on the one hand, those who are perishing, moria, foolishness.

Twice they, those who are being saved, on the other hand, us, it is the power of God.

So there's two groups being presented here, and they're being contrasted.

On the one hand, this, on the other hand, this. So let's start with 1 Corinthians 1 .18.

That little bit of head start is a freebie. And let's, let's go to the end of the chapter.

So, just so you're aware of it, this. Ex alto de humais est in Christo.

Christo Jesu. But by his doing, you are in Christ Jesus.

Who became to us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, nor that it just has been written, let the one boasting boast in the

Lord. So I can go through this in less than 10 minutes.

Now I can go much longer. In fact, I preached a couple of chapel services at Moody Bible Institute back in 1995 on this particular text.

They did two sermons. Got a lot of people talking too at that particular point in time.

But I would, I would challenge Soteriology 101, give us a lesson, 10 minute, explain to us what you're talking about and tell us what specifically 1

Corinthians 1 .24 means in light of the fact that he starts off by saying in verse 18, the message of the cross is indeed to those who are perishing foolishness, but to those who are being saved, power of God.

Tell us how that impacts what the calling means in 1

Corinthians 1 .24. And I'll do the same thing. I can pull it off in 10 minutes. Not a problem.

So we'll see what happens with that. I had another video queued up and my understanding is we're only doing one program next week.

Okay. All right. We'll see what we can work out, but we'll definitely have one at the beginning of the week. And so I have a

Dan McClellan video. What? Oh, I have a

Dan McClellan video on comments that he made concerning the accuracy of the text of the

New Testament that I think would be really useful. And I was going to get to it today, but I ended up yammering about other stuff.

So we'll get to it next week. So before we wrap up here, a couple of things.

You were talking about Dr. Garza and his argument about the school of Hillel and the

Pharisees, etc. And what really puzzled me when I saw him make that case was that Acts chapter 15 identifies who

Paul is butting heads with in Galatians. Okay.

And that's, you know, some men from... Well, the Judaizers.

And then you've got the so -called converted Pharisees. These are the guys that he's butting heads with.

The impact of his three years with Jesus seems to be nowhere in Dr.

Garza's thinking here. And that I don't understand at all. Well, again, there are people who

I think sort of lose their balance in all the

Jewish background studies. You know, like I was reading some stuff that he was talking about Hebrew manuscripts of the

New Testament from the Middle Ages. And I'm like, I don't understand the relevance.

I mean, we have Hebrew translations, yeah.

But they're not particularly primitive and hence they certainly don't have the relevance that any of the early foreign language translations would give to us.

So I don't know. It just seems to be some strange stuff out there that I can't begin to explain, to be very honest with you.

Okay. So before we close out, one more shot here. On your left hand there is the

Bible that we will be raffling off. And hold that up. Do the Vanna White thing, as you like to do.

Yes, very good. Ooh, ah, ooh, ooh, ah. And of course, directly above you is the cross that we'll be raffling off.

Ooh, ah, ooh, ah. And we'll be putting both of those up on Saturday.

The raffle will go for the entire month of June. And then we will pick a date certain to do the drawing.

And so keep an eye on ailment .org. We'll be putting it out on Twitter and Facebook and all these other platforms that we can find and get the word out.

Tell your friends. And these will help us to continue our traveling. It's all for the Travel Fund.

And go to the Travel Fund and things like that. Just think of it this way. Every time you buy a $10 raffle ticket to support

Alpha Omega Ministries and our Travel Fund, somewhere a gay pride flag spontaneously combusts.

Now there are some places in the United States that might try to file felony charges against me for that.

This show just got canceled in Seattle. We're being blocked already.

Well, between that and the Midwestern comment. All right, all right, okay.

Hey, I just noticed John Root on Twitter is local here in the

Phoenix area right now. And he and I had lunch today. And we were talking about all sorts of stuff.

But he took a picture. The problem is the guy is nine feet tall. I measured him, he's nine feet tall.

And so he's holding the camera up like this. So I look like this absolute munchkin.

I mean, it's just terrible. And then there was this guy named

The Armory on Twitter. Hey, if you're going to put this stuff on Twitter. Yeah, called

The Armory. And he goes, I won't hold it against him that he looks like a garden gnome.

But I will hold it against him that he has made non -Calvinists out to be near heretics. I guess that has something to do with responding to Soteriology 101 or something like that.

I don't know. Okay, so watch for Saturday. And then next week we'll look at that Dan McClellan video and whatever else happens over the weekend.