Open Phones on the Dividing Line

And welcome to The Dividing Line. If we are here, we don't know. We just had to reset the modem.

The computer crashed twice. It's great to be back. Evidently, the computer would rather have

John Samson sitting in this chair because it obviously does not like me because it isn't working too well.

Well, John doesn't use computers. He uses, you know, paper. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that's probably why he decided to start the ESV -only movement. And I've got to admit,

I suppose this needs to be plugged in. Boy, which hole do

I plug that into? We'll find out soon enough. The endorsements that John got for the

ESV -only movement were... I thought the Ergon Canter one was just classic.

That was good. It's good to know that when the cat's away, the mice will start heretical movements.

There you go. But it's good to be back, even though I'll have to admit the weather sure was nice in Santa Fe and in Evergreen, Colorado and Boulder and places like that and at the top of Mount Evans and going over Loveland Pass and all those other things.

And I was going to do a travelogue for you. Maybe I will yet in the future, but we have other things to do.

And to thank everybody, let me just briefly thank everybody that made the past two weeks for me possible.

I hope you all found the debate with Bob Enyart to be useful. I've seen a lot of commentary about that and the presentations we did on the subject of response to the, quote, gay

Christian movement, end quote, though I don't obviously use that terminology myself.

But we'll hold that off a little bit later. 877 -753 -3341.

We have not tested the phones, but the nice thing is I actually do have connection to the stack.

So that's one of the few things that's gone right so far, technically for us. So we'll see.

We'll see what happens. That angle looks different. Did you move it or zoom it? It seems to be taking a lot more of the computer screen in than it did before.

I don't know. It's just you didn't.

Things got moved. No, I had to. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no be pronounced spouse and spouse after governor jerry brown with a big old d behind his name signed a bill last monday eliminating outdated husband and wife references from state laws the post also explains that senate bill 1306 was introduced by state senator mark leno big d san francisco openly homosexual to eliminate confusion and correct discriminatory phrasing in the california constitution that contradicts state law um of course there have been a few folks out here primarily ignored by the mainstream media who've been trying to say for a long time uh that there is more to this than the surface level absurd ridiculous outrageous civil rights argument which has been refuted so many times and most eloquently by especially black women christians who can say wait a minute that's absurd and it is of course absurd the whole civil rights thing is is completely absurd but there's a reason for all of this and there is a greater reason it's not just that people are stumbling into this and and it's going to have bad effects here there and everywhere but there is there is a everyone who and anyone who would want to destroy a culture and a nature a nation that is has been blessed by a culture that was informed by a christian worldview this would be the way to do it to introduce a level of utter confusion that um will fundamentally cripple human flourishing within a particular culture and that's what we have here there is nothing more basic in my recollection than to think of my father and my mother and i know the difference between the two i think about how for example i would misbehave as a child and my mom would say i'm gonna tell your dad when you get home now why was that relevant well because my dad was the primary person responsible for my discipline and my and if i got hurt the first person i'd read to would be my mom and that's natural that's right that's that's the way it should be and i learned about from my dad i learned i saw their interaction and that was an appropriate thing but i knew who a mother was and i knew who a father was and i didn't i didn't grow up in a a culture of confusion at that point in time but now in california um the leftist secularist nutcases um husbands and if you do not have wives you don't have marriage it's all there is to it um spouse a and spouse b is not marriage no father no mother no husband no wife is not marriage call it whatever you want it's just not marriage never will be never can be and calling marriage that is absurd ridiculous stupid on its face it's disgusting it's depraved and from a christian perspective it's downright sinful it is an act of utter rebellion there's no question about that no question about that at all so we already had heard about how for example in certain european countries you have progenitor a and progenitor b and there was a day when our culture had enough common sense to realize that a a nation that loses track of these things was a nation in great decline great decline um but there is tremendous common sense that has been lost in uh in our nation and i believe it to be part of part of god's judgment if you want an example then of what that has resulted in uh you have you have california doing away with these things and then just before programs someone career and she's a footballer and uh says until last season my partner megan harris was a footballer and we played together at lincoln ladies but her desire to be a mom far outweighed her ambitions in football so she is the one who is can't be by you will never be by you and so that's not your child oh like oh yes it is no it isn't in fact up until just a few years ago people who wanted to have other people's children we locked them up you know when they snuck into the the uh you know one of the reasons i came out about my sexuality last february was because my partner and i were playing and having a family and i'm so excited to say we are expecting twins later this year that is like saying that i remember watching the altimeter on my cycling computer and once it went past 11 990 i knew that was top of loveland pass and uh so we're i was going into rarefied air literally and uh wow you you just you really feel like you can just see forever it is sort of the top of the world feeling there's no question about it and it would be like my going to the top of that mountain and looking out over the broad vistas you can just see forever and and deciding you know what i'm gonna fly over all of this i'm just going to jump off of this you know there's lots of places if you want to get a good start i rode around a few corners where gone fast enough could have gotten a real good start terminal velocity would have been pretty ugly but um and i'm just gonna spread my wings and fly well i can't do that because um god didn't didn't give me wings don't happen can't do it it's against nature i'm a human being not a bird but we've lost track of that nature thing of recognizing what we are and so now you've got two women and uh my partner and i were planning having a family and i'm so excited to say we are expecting twins later this year you know when i told people that my wife and i were expecting that had a special meaning this is an insult to that meaning that i expressed to others an insult um because what she means is we underwent an expensive um medical procedure that has artificially begun pregnancy in one of us um and uh it's going to result in that child someday wondering who those twins actually someday wondering who their real father is because um casey stoney is not a father will never be a father cannot be a father and if they dare tell these twins that their actual mother who bore them is actually their father is that not child abuse on a level that is absolutely perverse it is it is absolutely amazing so one of them decides that they're going to get pregnant um while the other one keeps playing futba i am in a very fortunate position where i can become a mom in women's football without it impacting my career negatively the selfishness the absolute self -centeredness of homosexuality it truly is narcissism childish narcissism it's just well it's not gonna i can become a mom no you won't you're not a mom never will be a mom you may be taking care of kids but you're not a mom that word has meaning and i've said over and over again isn't there anybody anymore isn't there anyone anymore who actually values something called motherhood fatherhood don't don't those things mean something well just because they're coming up with a different meaning doesn't mean it impacts me yes it will what about these twins what if you're a parent right now and one of your offspring falls in love with one of these twins raised by two lesbians remember last program the program well last program i was on or was it the one from colorado i can't remember now but i was it was talking about the the little kid who um is undergoing sex change therapy at like age 11 so he won't go through puberty because he was raised by two lesbians child abuse plain and simple that's all there is to it you can deny it you can close your eyes to it it's amazing amazing professing themselves to be wise this is foolishness on a level that is truly truly difficult to begin to comprehend it really is it really is all right we have phone callers the phone lines are open eight seven seven seven five three three three four one eight seven seven seven five three three three four one and uh let's talk to kyle hi kyle hi how are you doing good hey i've got a question for you um i've kind of become involved with some mormon missionaries and you know we're just talking and getting to know each other but you know the rubber eventually has to meet the road and so i committed to them i will read the mormon and you know then i'm saying okay you need to read john now you need to read roman but i want you to come along with me as well um and i'll comment on that they'll only let they'll only let that their leaders will only let that go so far by the way well i've i've met the leader and and i don't think he likes me but um which actually at the end of it i'll be honest with you i i'm actually i'm fairly heartbroken uh because i really do care about these guys yeah i understand for some reason i don't have the compassion for the leader i don't know why well i i understand that you you see these guys as as the ones who've been deceived and those who have authority over them as the ones who have been doing the deceiving i mean i've run into some of some of the people from their ward when we i take them out to dinner and stuff and it's like i'm in my in my heart i just like let them go do what you want to do but let them go but um but i you know i i've seen some some of the lectures you've given on youtube they're very helpful but rather than kind of jump into the you know the the standard things i think people get into um i just started looking at it and and i i tried to take some things that i'd seen where you're going through the quran and saying listen that the author of the quran didn't really understand the bible right and i think that you see the same thing have you seen the same thing in the book of mormon where well yeah it's like off comments and you say there's no way you know my point to them is listen tom clancy from book to book doesn't get his characters wrong so the holy spirit can't right right and so on one hand you know like there's offhand comments that if i'm reading it correct jeremiah would have said lehi was a bad fig because he left jerusalem instead of accepting the discipline to go into captivity and there's a comment where nephi is bragging that just as moses smoked the rock and provided water for all of israel so i'm doing blah blah blah and that's the great downfall of moses ministry he didn't go into the promised land because he struck the rock instead of speak to it you know and i'm just like there's these offhand comments that the holy spirit could not have inspired you know so there has to be different authors and i'm just wondering if you if you've kind of taken that well yeah and i've gone through the book of mormon yeah but you got you got to remember a couple things uh first of all uh if the two young men with whom you're speaking are like a lot of mormon missionaries though they've been encouraged to do so they may not really have read uh the book of mormon i mean i remember uh years and years and years ago uh we i was driving at that time i was driving a 1964 dodge dart no two body panels were the same color uh my wife to this day uh just shakes her head when she remembers that particular vehicle and and uh we were up in provo utah and uh we pulled into the parking lot of the provo temple up there and we ran into this missionary little did we know that right down at the end of the of the parking lot was the missionary training center we eventually went down there but we ran into this missionary we started talking to him he did not even know where the book of abraham was he had never read it uh so he you know you can't necessarily assume a high level of knowledge of the book of mormon or its context on the part of an lds missionary it would help if they had it but you can't necessarily assume that secondly you've got to remember the eighth article of faith uh we believe the book of mormon to be the word of god we believe the bible word of god as far as it's translated correctly so there is a fundamental assumption on the part of the vast majority of of mormons that uh if you if you encounter a contradiction if you encounter something like that then the problems with the bible not with the book of mormon because the book of mormon is the most perfect book of any on earth so yeah i've also heard like arg well not arguments but but comments and references to um well it's basically we believe these three books but we really want to submarine the bible as much as possible yeah uh -huh you know it's like it's almost like that's a ruse i'm really i'm using i'm using the word the bible and i'm using jesus name to kind of get me in the door with some people but you know that's not the that's not the focus that i'm hearing and it's it's very disheartening oh yeah there's no question about that and by the way it keeps something in mind kyle about the the leaders i believe me i know exactly how you feel about that um but those leaders were probably missionaries themselves and what you're seeing is generation after generation of deception and you know those leaders are just as you know well i think it's very well described by paul deceiving and being deceived so so they've they've been deceived and as they've been deceived they now deceive others and then uh you become truly uh established in your deception and and then you become the one deceiving others that's that's one of the horrible things about untruth that's one of the reasons that you have such strong terminology in second thessalonians if you will not love the truth you'll be caused to love a lie and uh we just don't take that very seriously but no that is a good direction to go but eventually you cannot avoid uh going after the testimony and establishing the reality of objective truth you have to eventually uh say to them look you know the testimony you've been taught to to look to your feelings to your emotions to pray about these things uh the reality is uh that the scripture says the heart is desperately sick and wicked and deceitful who can understand it jeremiah 17 9 and the that there is a way it seems right into a man but then there are the ways of death and proverbs 14 12 and difference here but when you start unpacking what you mean by those words yeah then you realize oh we're actually just speaking different languages big time big time there's there's such a huge language barrier if you don't know the language barrier uh you'll sit there for hours talking talking talking and uh then a few hours later realize we haven't been talking at all and that's that's a real problem so yeah pray for him you know you may never get to see him again i mean i i've i've i've had situations where i've really gotten to know missionaries and they've they've been sent home they've been transferred someplace else uh the uh those folks the mission president knows when someone has gotten too close to somebody that's why they'll switch people up normally their their tendency is they will not allow someone to meet for more than just a few times unless they're seeing real progress toward that person expressing desire to be be baptized uh that would be that would be different but uh other than that they they know that if they allow this kind of relationship to go too far it ends up bad for them and so you know you can only pray for them i've i've sometimes run into some of the missionaries that i had encounters with sometimes i don't i've got to put them in god's hands at that point yeah no i understand i understand but anyways but thank you for the you know the stuff uh especially on youtube you know people do watch it and it's beneficial so thank you all right thanks kyle okay bye -bye all right bye -bye yeah i still uh i still look at those uh at those missionaries when they go by and man i'll tell you now uh i'm in the i'm in in the in between time where over the next decade and a half or so they're going to become the same age as my grandchildren right now they're younger than they're a good bit younger than my kids right now they're almost 10 years younger than my kids yeah when i see it i i and when i first met with my first two more missionaries elders reed and reese uh i was younger than i was younger than i think i was right in between elder reed and reese if i recall correctly so we were about the same age but i was younger than one of uh because i got married at 19 and uh my wife was 18 so we got we got a nice good early start um so anyway let's uh continue on with uh colin in uh california hi colin hey how's it going can you hear me okay i sure can all right great i just wanted well first of all thanks for everything you do really appreciate it i wanted to make some you mean you're thanking you think you're thanking me for riding riding up mountains on a bike because i do that yeah and listening and studying while you do it in fact let me tell you colin you know what i was listening to i it was one of the most amazing rides in my life i rode from evergreen to the top of mount evans now most people don't know what that is but mount evans is 14 160 feet above sea level at the parking lot and you know what i was listening to all the way up that beautiful fantastic gorgeous mountain bob enyard bob enyard and i will always remember that for the rest of my life the one thing you'll remember exactly where you were when you said uh almost almost almost uh but it was it was i would rather have been listening to like some spurgeon sermon or something if i had to be listening to anything at all but anyhow uh go ahead yeah so i want to make some comments in light of uh it's a little late i guess at this point a couple months ago the molinism stuff you covered uh and i guess this would this would obviously apply to any non -calvinist view of the knowledge of god i wanted to you know respond to this accusation that comes along and basically says you know calvinism view of the sovereignty of god makes man into a quote -unquote robot right um you know first of all i i understand i don't quite understand why a lot of calvinists shy completely away from that accusation because after all that they don't mean literal robot all they mean is that god has determined all things including our actions which we fully affirm so uh i just simply when i when i i think i think i know why i mean we both we both know why because it it takes the the humanity out but it does so by misrepresenting where we're coming from and i'm a little bit concerned that a lot of reform folks don't know how to respond to that i mean my my standard response to that is the incarnation demonstrates that's not the case because jesus entered into our human experience and he didn't become a robot so so obviously the reality of our actions in time are meaningful to god or he would not have decreed his own interaction with us in time i i think i think that's one of the reasons i took the open theism debate is that that's one of the fundamental problems that bob enyard has and his his followers is that he does not recognize the the richness of reform theology he takes the robot perspective as well but i run into a lot of calvinists that really don't realize the richness of of what we're really affirming uh because because they they look so much to the decree that they don't at the same time see that the decree is what makes the temporal interaction of god and his people and us with each other and and justice and righteousness and and everything else that's what gives it the very matrix of meaning uh that it can have and that's what allows christianity to be different than the greek and pagan religions where you had the fates that's one of the things about enyard that drove me crazy is he he thinks that we believe that god is controlled by fate he's like the great zeus or something it couldn't be farther from the truth couldn't be farther from the truth yeah and i think that one of the one of the things that the robot accusation stems from is this experiential thing that well as a human being the only way i could get somebody else to do what i want is if i forced them or made them into you know a robot and therefore that's the only way god can get things done that he wants and i think it's just a false right conclusion but but anyways what i like to respond to that with really quickly is you know we are creations of god i mean we might i won't even use the word create but we might um assemble a robot but god is actually creating human beings and i can assure you that the the almighty god of the universe's control over you is far more exhaustive and far more extensive than any amount of control you could ever have over a robot even if you program it to do exactly what you do after all you didn't you didn't create out of nothing the parts that make up the robot you don't uphold its existence you don't uphold the universe's existence in which the robot operates so i mean i actually think that the robot accusation is a little bit of an understatement i mean i i appreciate the point you raised about stripping the humanity because that's true but really what they're getting at is the the determination of the action but this brings me to my main point uh if i could really quickly here um if i would like to say that if the calvinism if calvinism's view of the sovereignty of god makes man to be a robot then the act that the reverse is true because the armenians view of the sovereignty of man is actually making god up to be a robot and this this has come out many times before when you've covered monism and you've said that it basically likens god to that of the supercomputer and you're exactly right and we've heard william lane craig for example say that well god is surveying all these possible worlds which of course by the way we're not determined by him but determined by something outside of him and that he's choosing the best possible world well why the best possible one i mean why not the second best or third best or why not even the worst and i think the obvious answer is well he's god and so he's always going to do the best possible thing and that is that's my point in all this is that's where the problem lies is when you place god into a reactionary position you turn him into a robot and the armenian when it comes to the foreknowledge of god he's conveniently left out the fact that god is the creator and that anything he's knowing about his creation is actually he has to first know that he's going to create i mean so it all stems back in the logical order of things it comes back to his first knowing that he's going to act because that's where anything that exists comes from to begin with and i guess that would be the grounding objection you've raised before but um well there's there's no question in my mind that i think what you're getting at here is that really and i and i know my molinist friends and my armenian friends if they would even use the term friends are are going to be upset about this but there is a fundamental lack of of trust of god expressed in both systems because both systems are all designed around maintaining a way where a man can control god rather than being fully controlled by god uh because there's a lack of trust that god will do what is right in uh in in everything the judge of all the earth will do right and that's really what i see in this is that the the overriding thing in open theism or in molinism whatever it is why did those systems come into existence to protect not the freedom of god but the freedom of man and the result is constraints on god yeah you can't have both god and man being autonomous in the same sense at all because like i said um you know when it's all about the reactionary position if you don't start in the logical order of this entire discussion with god acting to create then you're starting with man first creating i mean they won't use we're not going to use that term but you know best possible worlds where they come from man is coming first in that logical order and then god comes along and foreknows it and that's what the real really the problem is because um now he's just reacting in the best possible way that he can and where's the freedom in that i mean really that that makes god a robot and that's my point is i think that this whole robot accusation can actually be flipped around very plainly and it's not just the molinist even the standard arminian the arminian might say oh yeah well that molinism stuff that doesn't work we know that but even even if you take any given situation and have the standard arminian well god knows how to bring good out of bad right well god being god might have a trillion different possible ways to bring good out of a particular bad but he's going to choose the best possible way right i mean he's got to choose one of them he's got to choose to act in one way but what's the problem there yeah well reactionary yeah he's not reactionary but you also have to ask the question who gets to determine what the best possible way is at least the reformed person can say god has a purpose that purpose is self -glorification and he is going to work that out to uh to to provide that and i don't know what the ultimate purpose is in in an arminian bare foreknowledge perspective and and there's all sorts of disagreement amongst uh uh amongst uh molinists as to exactly you know why i don't necessarily take the william lane craig view here and all this kind of all this kind of silliness and uh so yeah it's um they're they're i i think it is good to have a way of reversing the accusation i certainly have suggested that in a number of contexts uh especially in our culture today but it's uh it's a good good direction to go there too all right well i appreciate the time okay thanks colin thank you all right bye -bye 877 -753 -3341 um the video i did not know this but um berean warrior posted a lot of the uh of the debate um and i had only seen the one uh my cross -examination of bob enyard but the uh the actual uh 15 minutes of my my being cross -examined now uh yeah oh you want me to do that all right sure fine manuel go ahead uh i i i'll be honest with you manuel um i doubt you could last 30 seconds without losing control but if you want to try we've done it before um we'll give it a shot uh but we just have a some of you know that we've had a regular caller over the years and have tried to reason on the subject of the trinity and have always failed but hope springs anew here that are my memories back that's probably more my memory's getting back than anything else anyway uh but um i had i had hoped uh to that this this video is up there and i i found it just before the uh just for the program started while rich was running around trying to did you look at amn .org