A Potpourri of Topics on Today's Dividing Line

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Greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. We've got a lot to get to today, and pretty much only going to go for an hour, so we'll have to get to it quickly.

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Starting off with, again, one of those things that's thrown at me right at the beginning, right as the program's about to start, within the half an hour or so.

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And we have a tweet from Dr. David Allen at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and this one says,

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Preaching Romans 6, 1 -14 at MIMS Bible Conference this morning, following Tom Eliff.

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And then he makes this comment, like standing in the judgment line behind Mother Teresa.

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Trying to figure that one out. Like standing in the judgment line behind Mother Teresa.

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Well, I don't want to be in the same line with Mother Teresa, Dr.

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Allen. Why do you think you will be? Unless you're one of those folks that thinks that the

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Gospel of Rome actually brings you salvation, which

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I can't believe you would believe that. Or do you? I don't get it.

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Do you actually think that you are made right before God by suffering, by giving the poor?

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Is that righteousness sufficient to get you into heaven? I'm really confused.

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Because when I hear non -Roman Catholics using the

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Mother Teresa line, I'm really left wondering, do you understand what the imputation of the righteousness of Christ means?

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And why it's absolutely necessary? And why this is absolutely part and parcel of the

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Reformation itself? And that without this, there's no reason for a

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Reformation. That we might as well, you know, celebrate

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Clemson's win for the whole year, instead of worrying about this 500 -year

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Reformation stuff. Because if by suffering with the poor, and I know there's all sorts of questions about exactly what her motivations were and what she did,

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I'm not even getting into all that. Even taking the normal narrative here is a wonderful person that suffered with the poor.

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Suffering with the poor will not get you into heaven. That's not a sufficient righteousness to undo the stain of sin.

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So you need a perfect righteousness and the Gospel that she believed in had no perfect righteousness to offer to her.

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That's the great tragedy and the whole reason for the Reformation. So what line are you standing in,

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Dr. Allen? I don't get it. Maybe somebody can explain that because I don't get it.

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But like standing in the judgment line behind Mother Teresa. I don't know.

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Confusing to me, but there are a lot of things that confuse me. Let me give you two more examples of, well, actually a number of things today.

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Every story today. It leaves you sitting there going, huh?

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What's going on here? Do you have the video that I'm sending you?

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We're dead? Oh, you know when the guy on the other side of the window says, we're dead.

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And then says, nope, we're alive. It's sudden resurrection. When Christianity dies, the corpse doesn't bury itself.

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When Christianity dies, the corpse doesn't bury itself. And unfortunately, so we lost the first part.

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So do I need to repeat the first part? We just had a software crash and it's back online.

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And according to this, everything is now picked up right where you left off. So when they view the playback of it, they're going to see it stop and then suddenly come back in with a banner.

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And we, you and I are sitting here having this chat. So you should be able to pick up where you left off. Because according to the live stream, it didn't lose anything until I told you it crashed.

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Well, we'll see. Okay. We'll see. I'm slightly skeptical personally. But anyway, so we really probably shouldn't try to use video or anything like that.

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Just sort of. Okay. All right. Speaking of strange things and things that leave you going, heh.

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When Christianity dies, as I said, the corpse does not bury itself. It keeps twitching along doing strange and odd things.

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And apostate Christianity does apostate things. And so I'm just gonna

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I'm just gonna fire this this up. And you still got there?

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Okay, you here. I can't see anything.

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I can't see what's on the screen. There's nothing on my monitor anymore. But there we go.

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This is a young Muslim woman. This is called Tajweed. It is the chanting singing way of reciting the

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Quran. And she is reciting from Surah 19.

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But if you look around her, she is in St. Mary's Episcopal Cathedral in Glasgow, Scotland.

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Yeah, she is reciting the Quran in an Episcopalian Cathedral.

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Now, I'll stop it there. What makes this in particularly interesting is that Surah 19 says a lot of interesting stuff.

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Specifically, beginning with verse 27, and this is part of what she recited.

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Speaking of Mary and Jesus, then she brought him to her people carrying him.

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They said, Oh, Mary, you have certainly done a thing unprecedented. Oh, sister of Aaron, your father was not a man of evil, nor was your mother unchaste.

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In other words, you're not married and you've got a kid. You've done something unprecedented. So she pointed to him.

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They said, How can we speak to one who is in the cradle, a child? Jesus says, so just as Jesus speaking from the cradle.

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Indeed, I am the servant of Allah. He has given me the scripture and made me a prophet. And he has made me blessed wherever I am and has enjoined upon me prayer and zakah as long as I remain alive and made me dutiful to my mother.

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And he has not made me a wretched tyrant. And peace is on me the day

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I was born, on the day I will die, and the day I am raised alive. That is

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Jesus, the son of Mary, the word of truth. Now it's not wanting to now.

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The word of truth about which they are in dispute. Then notice she finished up with this verse.

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It is not befitting for Allah to take a son. Exalted is he. When he decrees an affair, he only says to it, be, and it is.

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Jesus said, and indeed, Allah is my Lord and your Lord. So worship him. That is a straight path.

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Now, we've talked about Surah 19 before. We've addressed these issues. We've talked about the utilization of post -canonical sources, such as the

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Arabic infancy gospel, which that's where the story about Jesus being from the cradle comes from. It's not canonical.

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It doesn't come from the first century. It is a much later story. And we've talked about, and I discuss in my book, the fact that the

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Quran utilizes numerous ahistorical sources as if they are historical sources.

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All these things. But the point is the context here. You're in the cathedral church in Glasgow, which is supposed to be a

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Christian church. And there's supposed to be something that defines the Christian faith, which historically has been a belief in one

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God, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Not three gods.

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One being of God shared by three persons. And that Jesus is the incarnate

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Son of God. I mean, there is no Christianity without this. And so, what are you doing?

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What's going on here? These men are in their vestments. They're in the church. This isn't an interfaith dialogue where you're honestly discussing similarities and differences and how they relate and making sure there's understanding between communities and trying to keep fear and anger and that type of stuff from growing within communities, trying to increase understanding.

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None of that kind of stuff. This is in a church service. And I would no more.

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I cannot possibly imagine a believing Muslim and a believing

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Muslim imam and a believing Muslim congregation. I can't imagine any of them ever asking a

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Christian to come in and lead prayers to Jesus during their worship service.

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And hence, I can't begin to understand an allegedly Christian church that invites a

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Muslim in to recite a portion of the Koran that denies the fundamental definitional doctrines of the

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Christian faith. There is a time for a discussion of those things. They're called debates. They're called dialogues.

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But not in the church and not as a part of the service. What it shows, obviously, is that these forms, these corpses, these denominations that have abandoned any type of meaningful historical definition of the

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Christian faith, they don't care if you're denying the deity of Christ or that Jesus is truly the son of God or any of that kind of stuff.

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It's just all feelings and emotions and getting together and so on and so forth.

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And, wow, sad.

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I'm not really sad about these apostate men sitting there. I'm sad for the

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Muslim lady. She needs a clear understanding which would only come from a clear testimony of what the gospel is.

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And here's all these guys in long robes compromising left, right, and center.

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There you go. There you go. Theology matters. Theology matters. If you really want an incredible example of what it means to be given over, you know that terminology that's used in Romans chapter 1 where God gives people over in their sin.

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He gives them over to their sin. We live in a day where there has never been more inarguable, unquestionable evidence of the humanity of the pre -born child than there ever has been.

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It's one thing before before mankind even had an understanding, even an inkling of an idea of the existence of the child in the womb and the mechanisms of reproduction.

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I mean, hey, look, we know a lot today, but there are still so many things that we are just left going, how does that happen?

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I mean, the mechanisms whereby the complex biochemical, biomechanical systems of the body are developed in only nine months.

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It's just astounding. It truly is. You need to understand that the complexity of this process makes the construction of any of these computers, anything else, look simplistic in comparison.

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We live in a day where we understand DNA, we understand RNA, we understand the complexity, the irreducible complexity of life and the biochemical systems that make it all possible.

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We understand that you can identify human life over against any other kind of life.

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If you can just, you know, that little old DNA swab, you know, we all know all about it now. Well, hopefully we do. So there has never been a time in the history of mankind when there has been less excuse for the murder of unborn children.

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Never. The guilt that we possess, it's like wombs now have transparent windows on them because when you can get 3D ultrasounds now, where could there possibly be an excuse any longer?

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And yet, and yet, I saw people online, people who call themselves

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Christians saying, you know, I'm really going to miss

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Barack Obama as president. He did great things. And no matter what your political perspective is,

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I don't care what your political perspective is. I'm not a Republican. I'm not a Democrat. Neither one of them are conservative enough for me by any stretch of the imagination.

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Okay. I'm an independent. But if you cannot recognize the

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Holocaust in the womb, that abortion on demand produces, and especially, especially if you cannot recognize that partial birth abortion is nothing but infanticide.

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It, it rivals anything that Hitler's ghouls in the concentration camps ever came up with.

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I've walked through some of those concentration camps and visiting Germany.

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I've walked through those medical places. Oh, it's just, the evil just clings to you.

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And yet the sitting current president of the United States supports doing what the

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Nazis never thought of doing. And yet I saw Christians going, man,

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I'm sure I'm going to miss him. Family man there, family man.

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Yeah. I'm sure at Nuremberg that there were a lot of people that were let off because they were family men.

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Yeah. I'm sure that that happened. So in the midst of this, we have an article that Dr.

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Moeller mentioned this morning on the briefing and the first picture, more than 20 faith leaders bless

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Planned Parenthood's new DC clinic. And the first picture is of an all woman, well, what did he call this?

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The all female percussion troupe, Batala Washington, performed before the ceremony.

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Here's, as Planned Parenthood fights attacks from congressional Republicans, more than 20 local faith leaders came together to bless the organization's new health clinic in DC on Tuesday.

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In almost every message to our staff, I talk about our doing sacred work, says

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Dr. Laura Myers, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington. This confirms the sacredness of the work we do.

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Now, by the way, I'm sure that Dr. Laura Myers believes this, but what this proves is that she is a high priestess of the cult of death.

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She thinks she's doing something sacred and she's offering those children's lives, their blood on the altar of the autonomous will of man, the autonomous will of man.

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I don't care if God has created life within me. I don't care if I have been made to be able to bear life and to nurture life and give birth to life.

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I don't care about any of these things. I am autonomous. I have all authority over myself.

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And so when you're a high priestess in the cult of death, then it's a sacred thing to offer those children upon the altar so that you might maintain the almighty idol of free will, the autonomous will of the human being, the human being who is not created under no law.

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That's what self -law, autonomy, that's what it means. Altas namas, self -law, that's me.

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It's paganism, open and obvious. And that's why it's called the

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Noma, N -O, capital M, capital N -O, capital M -A,

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Noma Health Facility. Noma, was that a play on words?

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The Noma Health Facility, which opened in September, rang with the sound of drums as visitors entered, courtesy of all -female percussion troop,

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Batala Washington. Erin Schmieder, a

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Batala member, says the group chose to participate in the event organized by the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice because there are a lot of us throughout our lives who have benefited from Planned Parenthood.

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Uh, honey, if you're alive, then you benefited from not going to Planned Parenthood.

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Because if your mama had taken you to Planned Parenthood when you were in the womb, you wouldn't be here today.

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You would think that this would be obvious, but not when you've been given over. Before the ceremony kicked off, religious leaders gathered upstairs to their own prayer circle, led by Rabbi Michael Namath, the program director of the

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Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, which is really no Judaism at all, called upon their obligation to the world to make it whole and holy.

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So you're to make the world whole and holy by murdering unborn children.

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You've got to be given over to do this kind of thing, to, to, to so pervert religion.

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You've got to be given over. Then the formal event began featuring leaders from different Christian denominations, a rabbi, abortion providers, a

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Planned Parenthood patient, Hindu priests, an imam over Skype, visual art, and of course, the requisite liturgical dance.

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I've been a Christian longer than I've been an abortion provider, said Willie Parker, who is about as close as the reproductive choice movement gets to a rock star.

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Women have been made to think that this clinic is some evil place where God is not, he continued, pointing out the people, cursing women for making sacred decisions, sacred decisions.

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Our answer to the curse is to bless. Reverend Doctors Christine and Dennis Wiley of, check this title out,

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Baptist United Church of Christ. Yeah, which is

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Buck, B -U -C -C. I just need an O, Bucko.

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Organized the event with RCRC and PPMW and acknowledged that anti -abortion perspectives dominate many religious institutions.

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Well, there's a reason for that, you know, murdering children, you know, Mullick and stuff like that.

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The conservative voices are big, says Christine. It drowns out the progressive voices, but it's not that progressive voices aren't there.

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And it goes on. You have to be given over. You have to have every semblance of common spiritual sense, logic, connection with reality destroyed.

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Conscience seared to be a religious leader and talk about making the world whole and holy by murdering unborn children.

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I cannot begin to conceive the judgment upon such an individual.

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Those words will echo through eternity. Maybe screamed in the voices of the dead children.

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It is absolutely stunning. Absolutely stunning. But you know,

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I remember, I've told the story before, so I won't spend much time on it, but remember, I've told the story when the

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Episcopalians, and that was an Episcopalian cathedral in Glasgow.

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When the Episcopalians had their, I think it was 1989, somewhere around there, conference here in Phoenix, they had

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Native American dancers and medicine men as part of their opening.

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That kind of syncretism, look, once the gospel's gone, once the heart of the faith is gone, you got to come up with something.

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You got to have something to fill in with. And so syncretism becomes the mechanism, we'll bring in something from over here and bring in something from over there, and the result is, well, anything but Christianity.

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I think it was yesterday that Dr. Moeller had mentioned this lesbian married ministers at a

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Baptist church. And once again, he's said it,

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I've said it, everyone's said it. We all have to hearken back to J.

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Gresham Machen's book, Christianity and Liberalism, where he argued the reality that Christianity and liberalism are two distinct religions, two distinct religions.

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And when you see things like this, you just, I think what is so difficult for so many of us is we try to see how this, how does this fit into Christianity?

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Well, it doesn't. The gospel, the centrality of scripture, submission to scripture, all those things, gone long, long time ago.

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They've been rejected, they've been put out to pasture decades ago, and the corpse just hasn't been buried.

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And so it mutates into something else. And this is what it mutates into.

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It's just, wow, it's hard to even conceive of it.

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Then we have this one. Catholics now recognize

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Martin Luther as a witness to the gospel. Uh, this is not coming from the pages of the onion or the

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Babylon Bee. Um, it must be hard to do the

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Babylon Bee because there's so much stuff out there that sounds like it belongs in the pages of the

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Babylon Bee. And yet it's real. Um, a newly released

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January 5th. Oh, this is last year? Well, okay. January 5th, a new release document from the

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Vatican's Pontifical Council for Christian Unity promotes the upcoming January 18th to 25th week of prayer for Christian unity with the theme reconciliation, love of Christ compels us.

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Encouraging commemorations in all dioceses of the world, the Pontifical Council notes the theme is drawn from the 500th anniversary of the

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Protestant Reformation in 2017. It says, now remember, all this unity stuff is just the super liberal

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Lutherans and the Roman Catholics. Lutheran and Catholic Christians will, for the first time, commemorate together the beginning of the

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Reformation. Are they commemorating where the Pope excommunicated

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Luther? You know, that, um, exerge domine, arise, oh Lord, a wild boar has broken out in your vineyard.

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Is that, is that what we're commemorating? Um, maybe, maybe we're commemorating the deaths, the martyrdoms of all of those missionaries that came out of Geneva and went down into Italy and, and gave their lives in testimony to the gospel.

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Maybe, maybe that's what we're commemorating. Um, I don't know.

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It just strikes me as strange that you've got one Pope that says that Luther is a wild boar tearing up the vineyard and then 500 years later, um, well, uh, the text also states the

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Catholics are now able to hear Luther's challenge for the church of today, recognizing him as a quote, witness to the gospel, unquote.

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I don't know. Do you, do you think, do you think if you asked the, the next 20

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Popes after the

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Reformation, if Luther was a witness to the gospel, you think they'd agree with the current

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Pope on this? I don't know. I, I have a, I have a real strong, strong feeling that they, they might not agree.

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Might have a different perspective. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think they might. Um, I was sent a link to, uh, something from William Lane Craig dated today, actually.

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It's an answer to a question from a fellow by the name of Victor. I quote a portion of this on Facebook.

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Just, I'll just, just read it to you. First, I don't claim, this is, this is

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William Lane Craig speaking. I don't claim that universal salvation is impossible because of free will.

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The point here is subtle and easily misunderstood. I think that there certainly are logically possible worlds.

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Let's see if the glass is, oh, that's much better. I think that there certainly are logically possible worlds in which everyone freely places his faith in Christ, and so is saved.

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Now, I just stopped for a moment. Once you buy the centrality of autonomy, it ends up in everything you say and everything you teach and how you, you see everything around you.

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Now, I believe in autonomy, the autonomy of God's will. I believe that's definitional of who

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God is. God is autonomous. There is nothing over him.

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There's no car dealers. There's no, none of that stuff. God is God. I do not believe in human autonomy in any way, shape, or form.

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And so, notice, I think that there certainly are logically possible worlds in which everyone freely, and there's a meaning to that for William Lane Craig, and the meaning is there's no sovereign decree of God.

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None. It's not there. Can't be one. Freely places his faith in Christ, and so is saved.

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What I've said is that for all we know, I love those philosophical, for all we know,

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I mean, the Bible's not going to be enough to answer stuff like this, but hey, you know, if you just live down there on the

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Bible level. For all we know, such worlds may not be feasible for God to actualize.

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So, they're logically possible, but not feasible for God to actualize.

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Or, if some are, they may have overriding deficiencies that make them less preferable.

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The point here is that God's being omnipotent does not entail that he can actualize just any logically possible world.

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He may be omnipotent, but there are logically possible worlds that God cannot actualize.

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You know, I wonder why they don't like words like create.

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But again, it's the idea of the supercomputer looking at all these possible worlds and seeing how middle knowledge allows him to understand what free creatures would do that he hasn't actually decreed to create, and hence they exist outside of the creative decree of God, and we don't know where they came from or how there is knowledge of what they would do outside of God's creative decree.

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But again, it's just the way it is. So, let me repeat that again, because it's the next sentence

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I want you to catch. The point here is that God's being omnipotent does not entail that he can actualize just any logically possible world.

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For the persons in those worlds where God to try to actualize them might freely choose to reject

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God. We can grasp this point by realizing that which world is actual isn't up to God alone.

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Free creatures are co -actualizers of the world along with God by means of their free choices, which

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God does not determine. So, it may not be feasible for God to actualize a world of free universal salvation without overriding deficiencies.

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Listen to this again. I just ask anyone to honestly lay aside your prejudices for a moment.

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Go read any two chapters between Isaiah 40 and 48.

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Go read Psalm 33. Read some scripture and then ponder this sentence once again.

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We can grasp this point by realizing that which world is actual isn't up to God alone.

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Free creatures are co -actualizers of the world along with God by means of their free choices, which

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God does not determine. So, did you hear that?

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Do you hear what William Lane Craig is teaching? We are co -actualizers with God and our free choices, which he does not determine, are outside of his control.

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They are part of the cards he's been dealt. He's doing the best he can, but that makes us, oh we, the mighty creature.

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Undetermined, except by whoever it is that determines what we would do given any circumstance, which means we're really not free anyways.

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And really wonder who it is that made us in such a way that we would actually do the same thing in the same circumstances and God can know these things.

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But God doesn't control that. But who is this God we should be worshiping anyways? Who is the card dealer?

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Gotta figure this out. But they can never tell us that because as far as we know, and there's nothing in the

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Bible about any of this, so can't really know. Oh my. And there are so many people in the

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Southern Baptist Convention, for example, pushing this idea of mullinism. Here's the answer.

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It's to be found in mullinism. Well, I hope you know what you're buying into. Free creatures are co -actualizers of the world.

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I'm sorry, but there is nothing in the Bible that even hints at such an idea.

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Nothing. It makes me stutter to even try to express the utter disconnection between this philosophical system and Christian theology.

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They're just, wow. But now we have free creatures as co -actualizers of the world.

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There you go. You have a role. And wow.

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So it may not be feasible for God to actualize a world of free universal salvation without overriding deficiencies.

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I think that was just posted today. It's at reasonablefaith .org. You can look it up for yourself. You might want to save it, though I can't imagine it ever disappearing.

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The card dealer one is still there. So Craig really does not care about criticisms.

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He really doesn't. He's willing to stand out there and he's willing to take an unorthodox

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Christology in regards to the nature of Christ. He just doesn't care.

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He just throws it out there and says, there it is. There you go. Speaking of the

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Southern Baptist Convention and people who, you know, it's been, how do

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I carefully express myself here? I won't call it humorous.

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I'll call it sad. It's been sad for me to see how many Southern Baptist leaders have taken up arguments against Reformed theology really out of desperation, including

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Mullinism, and started promoting these things, not seemingly knowing the background or the cost or the incoherence of these systems, but just they're desperate.

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They are desperate to find a way around the argumentation that is so compelling.

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We've seen a lot of that desperation of late and you'll get it later on.

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Well, on January 9th,

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SBC Today. Oh, yes. SBC Today. SBC Today, which was actually posted on January 9th.

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Dr. Rick Patrick, who became quite famous back in December with his sermon in the chapel at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary that was followed by Dr.

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Patterson, basically saying, hey, if you want to believe those things, there's denomination already believes those things.

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And a lot of people said, sounds like sounds like you're inviting Reformed folks to become

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Presbyterians. And we reviewed the comments and we pointed out there are other differences, that ecclesiastical thing.

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And there's some issues regarding baptism and stuff in there, but all that kind of stuff.

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But a lot of folks said, sounds like Dr. Patterson's not really on this unity train.

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I don't know what that unity train looks like, to be perfectly honest with you. From my perspective, it really seems like the traditionalists are in an all out defensive position.

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They see the handwriting on the wall, they see what's going on, and they're doing everything they can to try to at least stabilize things, try to hold position where we are, not lose any more territory.

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Well, Dr. Rick Patrick, and everybody was saying, oh, no, no, no, no, you've misunderstood him.

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That's not what he intended. Then he posts this.

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He starts talking about no moss. Remember the Leonard Duran fight, no moss, no moss, no more.

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He says, although Duran's no moss was a sign of surrender, Southern Baptists must learn to say no moss as an expression of firm resistance, opposing the election of additional

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Calvinist leadership over the next several years, as we experience vacancies within our 11 entities.

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That sounds almost Star Trek -ish to me. Our 11 entities. Either that or the crystal skulls in Indiana Jones.

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Recently, such leaders have typically possessed exceptionally strong theological, philosophical, and personal ties to Al Mohler.

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I think that's what he was sounding like when he wrote it. You're a very, very bad man.

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I know. Such leaders have typically possessed exceptionally strong theological, philosophical, and personal ties to Al Mohler, president of the

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Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. A proactive effort by trustees to install soteriological traditionalists would serve to counterbalance this disproportionately

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Calvinistic influence. These sound like the words of people that are saying, we need to go to war.

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Sounds like it. The value of such an approach becomes evident as we take a closer look at our recent leadership choices.

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Southern Baptists have 11 entities, including six seminaries, two mission boards, a publishing house, a financial services group, and a lobbying arm.

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Someone just texted me and said, and you call me the troublemaker.

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Yeah. In recent years, virtually all these vacancies have been filled by leaders theologically and philosophically aligned with Mohler.

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In many cases, one might even consider these leaders to be Mohler's protégés, as much as we might admire

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Dr. Mohler for his scholarship. Now, this is where the Southern Baptist gene kicks in. You're saying, we've got to reject these people.

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We've got to stop these people from taking over. But since we're Southern Baptists, we need to say some nice things.

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So while I'm twisting the sword, I'm going to say, my, what a nice tie you're wearing.

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I hope I'm not getting blood on it. That's how Southern Baptists work.

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I learned this. I'm not a Southern Baptist, remember? But I learned this years ago. The first commandment of Southern Baptist leadership is thou shalt not criticize another

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Southern Baptist. Well, I'm sorry, but if you're saying we need to make sure it's not

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Al Mohler protégés that get elected to these positions, isn't that like a criticism of Al Mohler?

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I would think so. But anyway, as much as we might admire

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Dr. Mohler for his scholarship, his leadership, and his moral compass, which

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I might just point out, you cannot separate his theology from these things.

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He also says, my copyrighted phrase, he also says, theology matters.

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And he would be the first one to say, you can't separate what I believe about sovereignty from my moral compass.

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It's what holds my moral compass together. It is clearly in the best interests of all

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Southern Baptists to select leaders who are more broadly representative of our entire denomination geographically, philosophically, and theologically.

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So in other words, Al Mohler doesn't represent Southern Baptists. That's what he just said without saying it.

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It's all political, but that's what he just said. Southern Baptists come from all walks of life and schools of thought.

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We will be better served if our leaders properly reflect a greater degree of diversity. Now, where do you think he's getting this from?

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I mean, he don't want diversity. He wants Southern Baptist traditionalism.

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So, but you always have to use these terms like diversity, even when you don't want diversity.

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We all understand this, right? So why is Rick Patrick playing the left -wing political card here?

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I don't get it. Then he gives our recent history. The Southern Seminary, 1993,

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Albert Mohler was elected. Southeastern Seminary, 2004, Danny Akin, Mohler's Dean of Theology, was elected.

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Lifeway, 2006, Tom Rainer, Mohler's Dean of Missions, Evangelism and Church Growth, was elected.

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North American Mission Board, 2011. It goes through Midwestern Seminary, Jason Allen, Ethics and Religious Commission, Russell Moore, International Mission Board, David Platt, Mohler's fellow council member in the

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Gospel Coalition, a Calvinist organization, was elected. We could have some arguments there about some things.

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Anyway, do you see a trend developing? If one did not know better, one might even assume that Dr.

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Mohler was leading the entire Southern Baptist Convention from his office in Louisville, Kentucky, to become more

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Calvinistic. Well, let's just be honest, folks. That's exactly what you think. That's exactly how you're responding.

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And that, you know, I was just, what amazed me about this statement is, here's this guy, obviously closely connected with Patterson.

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And as soon as Patterson made the comments he did, which were clearly an invitation for Calvinists to go someplace else, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we're all, no, no, no, no, we are unified, and we are together, and it's wonderful, and it's beautiful, and we can sing

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Kumbaya together, and all the rest of that stuff. We were told all of that stuff. And then barely a month later, you have this article, and you read the whole thing for yourself.

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Go to SBC Today and read it for yourself. It is very clear what it's saying.

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If one did not know better, I mean, that's sarcastic. One might even assume that Dr.

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Mohler was leading the entire Southern Baptist Convention from his office in Louisville, Kentucky, to become more Calvinistic. That's exactly what the traditionalists believe, and that's exactly how they're responding.

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Such a notion, of course, would be absurd, conspiratorial, and impossible to prove, which is why

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I just threw it out there, because it's what I really believe. Fortunately, we do not need to ask the questions how or why

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Southern Baptists become so Calvinistically top -heavy among our entity leadership. All we to do is to correct this unstable imbalance.

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No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't you see what you're doing here?

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Why is it that you folks can't see this? This is the same problem that the non -denominational denomination has.

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The non -denominational denomination keeps losing leaders and churches to reform theology.

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I'm speaking of Calvary Chapel, by the way, in case you didn't know. They keep losing leaders and churches to reform theology.

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Why? Because their responses to reform theology are unbiblical.

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They're unsound and indefensible. If George Bryson's the best you've got, you got a problem.

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You're not up to snuff. And so they will continue creating more and more

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Calvinists because they're not dealing with Calvinism in a meaningful fashion. Now, if you're asking, well, what would be a meaningful fashion?

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Capitulation. I mean, biblically speaking, that's obviously, given my perspective, that's what

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I would say. But the straw man surface level responses that have been offered by the

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George Brysons of the world, when serious minded people start encountering these things, they don't find that stuff to be meaningful.

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They don't find that stuff to carry any weight. And so what's being said here by Dr.

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Patrick is, hey, let's go the way of Calvary Chapel.

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That's not going to do it. Notice it says, all we need to do is we do not need to ask the questions how or why

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Southern Baptists have become so Calvinistically top heavy among our end of the leadership. Doomed.

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D -O -O -M -E -D. What do you mean you don't have to ask those questions?

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Those are the questions. Those will give you the explanation. Why have

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Southern Baptists become so Calvinistically top heavy in the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention?

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Because their arguments are compelling and your responses are shallow.

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That's why. That's why. See, by saying we don't need to ask those questions, what he's saying is this isn't a theological issue.

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This is a political issue and we need to get together politically to deal with it.

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No, you'll never accomplish anything. I mean, this is truly the capitulation of the people that are fighting the rear guard action and it's desperation on their part.

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And unless this is just a smokescreen, unless this is just a canard, if this really represents what

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Dr. Patrick is thinking, then there's not much to worry about from the traditionalist movement.

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Because if they won't ask the most important question, then they'll never be able to answer the most important question and hence do anything meaningful to stop this change that is taking place.

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When I saw that, I was just like, that's amazing. Let me read it again.

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We do not need to ask the questions how or why Southern Baptists have become so Calvinistically top heavy among our entity leadership.

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All we need to do is to correct this unstable imbalance. The how and the why? Are you suggesting it was all just political?

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Where did these people come from? Why do you think they're so committed to what they believe?

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And if this traditionalist apologetic that you yourself, Dr. Patrick, you were promoting, you spent the whole sermon promoting, hey, go to this resource here, that resource there.

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Some of us have done exactly that. We've gone to those resources and I would refer you to certain debates that have been done, certain dividing lines that have been done where, for example, we took some of the statements of some of the very leaders that you referred to in your sermon amongst the traditionalists in denying a meaningful doctrine of original sin, for example, and we walked right through Romans 5 and demonstrated their position was utterly untenable, indefensible.

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There's a reason why you're experiencing the things that you're experiencing. So I really found that article to be a, what do you call it?

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Whistling in the dark? When you're coming from a movement that sees itself shrinking and does not see the future as being positive toward them, trying to sound like, nah, we just need to change a few little things here.

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Well, actually what he's saying is we need to get political. We need to get political. If you thought your theological arguments were really all that strong, would you have to be thinking politics?

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Questions that we ponder. Now we have covered, I don't even think I'm almost going to have to go back and fast forward through this thing just to remember all the topics, except they all came out of my

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Evernote file. So I should be able to remember in writing them up.

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So lots of things in the program today. Lord willing, and when

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I say, you know, wait a minute, when are we going to be doing this again?

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Next week? Well, what about Monday? We can shoot for Monday.

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Yeah, try at least do something, I suppose, because after that, I'm going to do - We're flying on Tuesday. We're traveling like crazy.

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Yep, yep. So I don't know, maybe see if I can work in a way to do it from G3.

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Well, yeah, you know, a lot of people do that. It's not like it hasn't been done before, but I don't know how we could do that.

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If we're both there, you don't have Wirecast. If I were there and you were here, we could do it by Skype, but there's nobody here to take that signal and -

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Facebook Live everything. Facebook Live. Let's crash Facebook already.

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Have phone, will, can travel. Facebook Live, just like we did on the boat, right? Well, we might do something.

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We might do something. We'll find out. Anyways, thanks for listening to the program today. Lord willing, we'll shoot for Monday and hopefully see you then.