Muslim persecution of Christians in Sudan

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So welcome to The Dividing Line, my name is
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James White and I had just tweeted, open phones on The Dividing Line today, 877 -753 -3341, starting in one minute.
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The very next tweet was Dr. Michael L. Brown, God help us. Thankfully he was referring to something other than what
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I had said. I think he's in Israel someplace so we can forgive him for that. Well that was a nice dump out of the music, turn it off.
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No fading out today or anything like that, we're just going to dump things real quick. 877 -753 -3341, we haven't done a program with just phone calls for quite some time and of course we may not today if there's no one left that has any questions, but we have the phones open at 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number, we're not taking
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Skype I guess today, no. Someday we'll get that back, well
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I guess it just requires you to have another computer running and run back and forth and do stuff like that, but that's okay, no
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Skype calls today unless you call in from like some place far, far away and talk
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Rich into it and then he might do that because he has in the past, but you have to avail upon him to do something like that.
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While the phone lines flood with people calling in, thought
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I would mention a story that has been in the news a good bit that is just a true, you know we really, really overuse the term tragedy, have you noticed that?
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And I don't think we use it in an overly accurate fashion, accurate way.
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People talk about the tragedy of the shooting over the weekend over in California and in the sense for the people who were killed and badly wounded,
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I suppose in a sense you could use the term tragedy of that, but what you had there was an explosion of evil, you had an evil, evil man, you had a wicked man.
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No one's, well I haven't seen the term wicked used by anybody, maybe somebody has,
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I don't know, but that kind of stuff is rather old fashioned as am I, but you had a wicked man who engaged in wicked activities and you know, to call that a tragedy, you know, tragedy is when a tree falls on a toddler or something, but this is a wicked man, he was doing wicked things and when we look at what's happening to Maryam Yahya Ibrahim, 27, she's in prison in Sudan.
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Now Sudan we know is a brutal, brutal place and even with the splitting off of South Sudan, the
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Islamic portion of Sudan is a, well, evil, wicked regime headed by evil, wicked men and they do evil, wicked things to people and Maryam Yahya Ibrahim has been imprisoned because she is a
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Christian and someone in her family alleged that she was once a
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Muslim and we all know what the universal law of Islam is. If you were once a
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Muslim, well she wasn't, she's always been raised a Christian, but someone in her family produced false documents saying that she had been born as a
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Muslim and hence she is an apostate and hence she must die and she was imprisoned while pregnant, she just gave birth to a girl early
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Tuesday and yet because of this apostasy conviction, she is under a death sentence.
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The court in Khartoum ruled earlier that Ibrahim must give birth and nurse her baby for two years before being executed, but must receive 100 lashes for adultery immediately after having her baby for having relations with her
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Christian husband. Ibrahim could have spared herself death by hanging simply by renouncing her faith.
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I was never a Muslim, she told a judge, I was raised a Christian from the start. Now of course Amnesty International, US State Department, US lawmakers all quickly condemned the sentence calling it a affront to religious freedom around the globe, but it's more than that, it's wicked, it's evil and what
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I would like to see, and this is what I don't see, is
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I would like to see my Muslim friends condemning this as wicked and evil as well and providing a meaningful argument from consistent
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Sharia law. That's tough to do, that's tough to do, but I would certainly like to see some of those enlightened individuals at least arguing that, maybe trying to contextualize some of what happened in Muhammad's life so that you don't have these problems,
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I don't know, but I don't see much of that going on. So we need to pray for Maryam Yahya Ibrahim, pray that enough international pressure might be brought to bear, that she might not be killed, might be able to be with her child and reunite with her family, but we of course realize that she is certainly not the only person facing this.
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There are all sorts of other people that, unfortunately, we don't know about, who this day suffer, and I have said many times in my pastoral prayers at PRBC and many times in my teaching that we have brothers and sisters in Christ who languish in jail cells in Islamic countries, and they hold the key to their own freedom in their hands.
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As it was said in that article, all she has to do is renounce her faith, renounce her faith, and she would be free.
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But they do not do so, and it certainly makes us think about ourselves as well.
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877 -753 -3341 is the phone number for phone calls.
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A phone is an item that you dial the numbers on it, and there's how that works.
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Feel free to give us a call today if you have some questions. I am not going to do the thing
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I used to do. I can't do what I used to do, which was to threaten to have
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Warren Smith sing, because Warren is a busy man these days, so I can't do that.
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I could threaten to sing myself, but that's not nearly as much of a threat.
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You used to play John Denver. We played John Denver in the pre -show. That wasn't a threat.
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Well, you didn't think it was a threat. No, and I still don't feel that it's a threat. I just sent this link before we look at something else.
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Bernard Roberts sent me a link. This is called multitasking because he sent that just now. Children to be offered controversial sex change treatment.
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The NHS, National Health Service, this is in the girl of the
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United Kingdom, is planning to offer sex change treatment to children as young as nine using a controversial drug which will block the onset of puberty known as hypothalamic blockers.
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The drugs prevent the development of sexual organs so that less surgery is needed if the patient decides to change sex after reaching adolescence.
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Socialism combined with a complete lack of morality. What a wonderful, wonderful thing.
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Talk about being anti -children and anti -human. That's what happens when you don't have a
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Christian worldview. Anyway, before we get to... We actually have some calls coming in now. Before we get to those calls,
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I did want to look at a text of scripture just for a few minutes here.
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If you have your Bible, I'll have it on the screen here eventually.
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I think Rich will put it up on the screen eventually. But I had a couple of Twitter conversations this morning and in one of them,
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I mentioned I think... I don't have time to get into all the
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Tullian antinomianism stuff right now. I want to get a couple books on the subject, maybe put them into the queue.
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Maybe after everyone's calmed down a little bit, I can talk a little bit about it.
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But there does seem to be some confusion in the world concerning the clarity of the
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New Testament's teaching regarding holiness in the
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Christian life. I've seen some very troubling comments from people who in essence...
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There was someone, if I recall correctly on Twitter, that basically said something along the lines of, well, you know,
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I used to be really concerned about sanctification, but I got burned out.
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And so I'm very thankful for this message that it's just all of grace. Well, I sit back and I listen to that and I go, that really confuses me.
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What is all of grace? I mean, everything is all of grace, but what is grace supposed to be doing in our lives?
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And that's where the whole issue of third use of the law, or some people call it fourth use of the law, depending on how you divide stuff up.
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And it just seems very clear to me that the description of the
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New Covenant in Jeremiah chapter 31 says, I will write my law upon their hearts. So, if you're going to have a love relationship with God and God's law represents
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His own nature, His own moral and ethical perfection and the revelation of what
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His will is for us, then wouldn't it follow that once the law is written upon our hearts rather than upon tablets of stone, now it's become internalized by the presence of the
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Holy Spirit, then that would become our joy, not something that burns us out.
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And so, Titus chapter 2, I think, is a really important text to keep in mind as you're looking at all of this stuff.
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And I just want to briefly, just for about five minutes, then we've already got three calls now. Evidently, the singing threat managed to do it.
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Yeah, from all over the world, yeah. Well, yeah, that's true. People from all over the world decided to call and keep that from happening.
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There you go. Personally, I think it was the John Denver. I had nothing to do with that.
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I have no John Denver to cue up and it would not be a bad thing if I did. Anyway, Titus 2, 11, for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self -controlled, upright and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great
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God and Savior, Jesus Christ. I'm not sure why this isn't up, but it's supposed to be. Who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people of his own possession.
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There we go. Who are zealous for good works. So here is one of those very balanced passages.
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And notice what it says. The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people.
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So you either have to be a universalist or a Calvinist again, because it really does bring salvation.
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And this is the saving grace of God. But if it's the saving grace of God and it's brought salvation for men from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation,
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Revelation chapter 5 sort of fills it out for us. Notice what it says. There is that term that right now we're seeing a lot in the book of Hebrews chapter 12, training, instructing, disciplining us to do what?
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In order that we might renounce ungodliness and the worldly passions and instead to live self -controlled and righteous and godly lives in this present age.
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So if it's truly saving grace, if that's truly what's the foundation of everything, which it is, then it trains us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions.
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And how does it do that? Well, the renewing of the heart, the renewing of the mind. But how do
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I know what ungodliness is? Well, God's law reveals that to me.
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It's written upon my heart. How do I know what worldly passions are?
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Well, God's word tells me what they are. It gives me guidelines. It gives me direction.
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And so the close relationship of the word and spirit, I'm not saying anything new or overly controversial here, at least from a reform perspective.
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Reformers were known for talking about the word and the spirit together, working together in the person's life. And here you have it.
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Grace of God trains us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions. Waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great
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God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.
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You cannot avoid the reality that this very work of Titus 2 .14,
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which is soaked in Old Testament illusions and imagery of the work of Yahweh with his own people.
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Here, predicated of Jesus Christ, who's called our great God and Savior in Titus 2 .13, the
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Granville Shard construction there, gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness.
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So, he does the work of redemption and to purify for himself.
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So, there is a purification aspect, to purify for himself a people for his own possession.
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And just as you have in Ephesians chapter 2, that we might walk in those good works, here, who are zealous for good works.
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It's Paul's common terminology that's being used here. And so, the balance is so clear.
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You can't, you know, the work salvation side, the,
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I don't even like to use the proper term is cheap gracers, it's not free gracers, that's not true.
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The two sides, two imbalances on either side of the narrow way.
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And it's very easy for people to fall off on one of those two sides. You've got your libertines, you've got your people who's, you know, the anti -lordship folks that don't understand that faith and repentance are both the work of the
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Holy Spirit. And so, you can have, you can have repentanceless faith on that side, utterly unbiblical, grossly unbiblical, to be rejected.
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Other side, work salvation, righteousness, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I've said many times, the only way to keep a balance in all of that is the reformed understanding of these things.
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So, it's important. Need to take the overseas ones, how do you want to, any which direction?
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I'm the man, huh? Okay, all right, let's get to them here and we'll start overseas and let's talk with, let's talk, oh,
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I, oh, I'm sorry, Festus, give us a call back,
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I'm sorry. I was just, I've, that was a complete mistake on my part,
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I've got the window very, very, very small to try to, we've got a new monitor in here and I've said, okay, let's see if we can put some more on here so I'm not switching back and forth and unfortunately, the buttons are a little bit too small for that.
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I apologize. Let's talk with Greg. Hi, Greg, how you doing? Good day,
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Dr. Wright. Yes, sir. Yes, sir, and your ministry has, over the years, been a great blessing to me.
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Yes, sir. I would like, yes, I would like to ask three questions. The first one is that I've seen the
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Jehovah Witnesses use an argument that says Jesus is not
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God because Jesus is referred to as the Son of God, but the
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Father is never, ever referred to as the Father of God. So just from their viewpoint, that argument shows that Jesus is not
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God. Now, I know of different arguments to show that Jesus is God, and I know that that is an argument from silence which proves nothing, but is there a direct way to deal head -on with that question as to why the
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Father, Jesus is called the Son of God, but the Father is never called the Father of God?
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First of all, I've never heard that argument, and I wouldn't even know what
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Father of God would mean. That's a nonsensical term. I don't know how to respond to that because,
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A, like I said, I've never heard of it, and B, why would the Father ever be called the
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Father of God? He's the Father of the Son, and the Son is the Son of the Father. It's a relationship term.
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Father of God, that's like asking, well, Jesus can't be God because God's never called the
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Father of Elephants. So what? What's that got to do with anything? That doesn't make any sense.
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I don't even know how to respond to it. Yes, I've seen that argument used in one of their magazines.
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The second question is this. What are the differences between positional sanctification and justification?
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And actually, the third question is related to it. Are they both forensic? Well, yeah.
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I mean, positional sanctification simply means the fact that we have been made holy, that it is the fact that in Christ, in the imputed righteousness of Christ, we have received that righteousness that is a part of the great exchange.
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Our sin has been imputed to Christ. His righteousness is imputed to us, and we have been made holy in that sense.
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Really, when we talk about positional sanctification and experiential sanctification, all we're dealing with there is the necessary distinction between the now and the not yet, the reality of the finished work and yet the reality that we are still experiencing the work of God in our lives.
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And so both are true descriptions. That's why we have been saved and are being saved, have been made holy, are being made holy.
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One is just simply the recognition that in this life, we continue to experience being conformed into the image of Christ.
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And the other is that we've already been seated in the heavenly places. There is that constant tension that is part and parcel of the
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New Testament revelation. There is a certainty to our salvation. But there's also our experience of the ongoing reality of being conformed to the image of Christ.
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So we recognize that both are taught in Scripture. It's not a matter of contradiction.
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It's a matter of a fuller recognition of the fact that the
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Scripture gives us for our confidence the reality that salvation is a finished work.
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But at the same time, it also speaks to us in the midst of our trials, our tribulations, our struggles.
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And it has to speak to God's people within the context of their lives in this world as well.
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So it gives us both. So you would say positional sanctification is forensic?
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Well, positional sanctification, because it is the holiness that has been imputed to us and is made part of us.
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Well, the experience of that is that we are being made holy in our lives.
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But we have been made holy. We have been sanctified. And part of this is the fact that the book of Hebrews, because of its audience, utilizes holiness language in some places where Paul would have used justification language.
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And so you have to differentiate between them in light of the audiences to which the various language was addressed.
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And so there is the position that we have as holy is definitely the result of the sacrifice of Christ.
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And on that basis, you have the declaration of our righteousness before God. But that's based upon the fact that the sin debt has been dealt with.
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And since we possess that righteousness, then we have been made holy. So it's sort of derivative from the forensic action of God the
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Father as judge. Okay. So positional sanctification is the result of justification?
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Yes. Okay. Yeah, it was a bit puzzling me to know what are the differences between both of them, because both of them have seemed to me as though they were both forensic.
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And I was wondering. It's important to distinguish but to recognize the connections.
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I mean, the same thing is justification, sanctification need to be distinguished, but they cannot be separated from one another.
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They're absolutely necessary corollaries, because we're talking about the one work of God in the salvation of his people.
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And so while we distinguish the elements of it by necessity, because the scriptures do at the same time, it's still one work.
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It's sort of like looking at the high priesthood of Christ and recognizing the various roles, but he's still just one high priest.
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And it's still just one work. So yeah, we're looking at a tremendous amount of deep revelation there.
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And so we cannot simplify it beyond what the New Testament simplifies.
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God bless you, brother James. Thank you, sir. Take care. All right. God bless. Thank you very much.
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All right. All right. This time I'll hit the right button. Festus in London. Sorry about that, Festus.
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Oh, that's all right. That's fine. Hi, James. Yes, sir. How are you? Yeah, I'm good.
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I'm fine. Kind of late here, but it's all right. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. I've been listening to you for,
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I think, a few months now, and you've been discussing about Molinism and Calvinism, and they're a bit too high for me, but I kind of drag along little by little.
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But it's basically about free will. I understand that you believe that man has free will.
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Man has a creaturely will. If you mean by free will an autonomous will, no,
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I believe there's only one autonomous will in the universe, and that's God's. But I believe that we have been created with a creaturely will, whereby we act on the basis of the strongest desires presented to our will by our nature.
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But I believe that man in his fallen state is a slave to sin, as Jesus taught.
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Okay, the reason I ask is, do you believe in the sense that God knows exactly what
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I'm going to do in the next five minutes? Well— And I couldn't possibly do anything else?
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Well, the large majority of Christian theologians down through the ages have believed that that would be true, but why
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God knows that is where a Calvinist and a Molinist will disagree.
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Because the Molinist believes that that is based upon middle knowledge, the
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Calvinist believes that that is based upon God's eternal decree. So his decree determines whatsoever takes place in time, and therefore creates the very fabric of time and all the interrelated elements thereof.
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And since that's a part of his decree, then he has perfect knowledge of it. So, yes, God does know that, yes.
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Okay, but don't you see this as a problem in the sense that if God knows exactly what
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I'm going to do, then in what way—in what sense can you say that God justly punishes someone for—
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Oh, certainly. He decrees, isn't it? Yeah. That's on one hand. But then on the
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Molinist hand, I can understand the difficulty in the sense that if God doesn't know, that would mean that things
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God does not know, which would mean he can't possibly be God. So— Yeah, well, the Molinist would say that God does know.
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He does know exactly what you're going to do. I don't believe they can give you a really good answer for why
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God knows that, but that's the whole point. But anybody, any
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Christian theist, from Arminians to Calvinists or anybody else, who is not an open theist—an open theist is a person who does not believe that God knows what you're going to do in the next five minutes and cannot know what you're going to do in the next five minutes, or you will not be free and therefore
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God cannot judge you—that has never been an Orthodox Christian opinion down through the history of the
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Church, and it certainly is not what you would find in the Bible, because the Bible very clearly does affirm that God knows exactly what you're going to do in the next five minutes.
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And in fact, the whole argument in the book of Isaiah to demonstrate that the false gods that the people were being tempted to worship were unworthy of worship is that they didn't know what the future was going to hold and why things were going to happen, why things had happened in the past, and so on and so forth.
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Any Orthodox Christian theist, from an
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Arminian to a Molinist to a Calvinist, is all going to have to answer the question, well, if God knows what
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I'm going to do, then how can he judge me? Well, those who would say, well, God knows just because he looks down the corridors of time and therefore he can judge you because you're just doing what you freely choose to do, they have the rather insuperable problem of explaining how
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God created this universe knowing that all that was going to happen, but he doesn't have any purpose in it.
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The Calvinist says God has a purpose in it, and part of that purpose is the fact that God engages with his own creation in the person of Jesus Christ, in the
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Incarnation. He becomes personally involved with these things in an amazing act of condescension, and that we are judged not on the basis of us having knowledge of God's decree, but we are judged solely on the basis of following our desires.
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I do what I want to do, I act upon the desires of my heart.
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I don't have to have autonomous freedom if I'm only being judged upon doing what
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I desire to do. And so when I sin, my sin is truly sinful in God's sight because what
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I'm doing is I'm acting upon the desires of my heart, and I don't have to have knowledge of what
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God's eternal decree is or anything else. I don't have to have omniscience or anything like that to be held accountable.
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He's told me, he's given his law, he's given it not only in special revelation, but he's written it upon my heart, and when
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I go against that revelation of his law, that's what I'm judged upon, and only that.
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I'm not judged upon anything beyond that. And so you don't have to have autonomy to have a righteous grounding for judgment.
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I am not arguing about autonomy or anything. I'm just arguing that if God knows exactly what you're going to do, and according to you, these desires are by God's decree.
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In other words, God has decreed that you would have these desires and you would act in this way.
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Well, but I'm not judged, but I'm not judged based upon that, and it's not, and the way you're presenting it is the idea that well,
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God gave you those decrees, I'm sorry, those desires, and therefore there cannot be any basis for judgment is reducing what scripture reveals as a beautiful interplay between God's righteousness, his holiness, and his decree, and the creatures that he has made in his image, and it's reducing them to a mere puppet, where God's just pushing buttons and says, okay, here's this desire, and now you're going to do that, and there's that desire, you're going to do that.
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We're made in the image of God. Yeah. I've described it many times as taking a diamond, which has all these different facets, and it's multidimensional, and when the light hits the diamond, what's beautiful in it is when those different dimensions interact with one another, and you can look at it from different directions, and you can see it in all these different planes of existence.
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When you're placing it the way you're placing it, you're making it one dimensional. I've never seen an overly beautiful picture of a diamond, because the light can't play upon it, you can't look at it from different perspectives, you can't see its depth, and so certainly
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I can understand if someone turns man into a puppet, and turns the biblical revelation of this complex interplay that God's decree has brought about into just simply a one -dimensional, two -dimensional puppet play, that there would be no reason for there to be anything special about God's justice or anything like that, but that's as wrong as looking at the incarnation and saying, well,
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Jesus knew what was going to happen at the end, so it didn't really matter that he died on the cross. He knew what was going to happen, he knew he was going to be resurrected, it doesn't matter.
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And you go, no, no, no, there's a whole lot more going on in the garden than that.
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Yes, I affirm that he knew what was going to happen, but that doesn't change the reality of what was going on. In the same way,
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God may know what I'm going to do in the next five minutes, but that doesn't change the reality that his decree has brought into existence, and the fact that he says to me in these next five minutes, honor me, and when you honor me,
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I receive glory from that, and you will be changed in the image of Christ, and when you don't, you will experience separation from life, and difficulty in life, and judgment, and so on and so forth.
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Just because God's decree has brought that into existence doesn't mean that it's somehow cheap and shallow as a result.
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Okay. Okay? Okay. Yeah. Am I allowed to ask another question?
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Sure, real quick, we've got a couple other calls, but go ahead. Okay. This, I understand,
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I'll do a little bit more study, and maybe, the question I want to ask is something else. It was something that was brought up to me when
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I was discussing Trinity with someone, and the person is a
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Jehovah's Witness, and he said, he showed me a verse in Scripture which I didn't know how to answer, and it was from 1
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Corinthians 15, verse 27, where he says, for he has put everything under, sorry, for he has put everything under his feet.
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Now, when it is said that everything has been put under him, talking about Christ, it is clear that this does not include
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God himself, who puts everything under him. But when this has been done, that the Son then will be made subject to him, who puts everything under him, so that God may be all in all.
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And I was confused, because I hold that Christ is, the
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Son is equal to the Father. And again, because the way
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I see it, anyway, this was what I would say originally, because I, the Bible teaches clearly that we are to worship
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Christ, and we are to worship God the Father as well, and if we are worshipping
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Christ, and God, and Christ is not God, that would mean we are doing some sort of polytheism.
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But then if Christ is not God, but he is someone who has been elevated and will be subjected in the end, then how can we say, how can we hold to the doctrine of Trinity?
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I don't know if I've been very clear about it. Well, yeah, it's a common text. 1
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Corinthians 15, 27 to 28, we've addressed it a number of times on the program, it's a common text for Jehovah's Witnesses to use, and what it requires us to recognize is the economic trinity versus the ontological trinity, and that is, we have
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Jesus identified as Yahweh, we have him functioning as creator, we have him functioning as the eternal
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Son of God, always in relationship to the Father in that way, etc., etc., and when we talk about the relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the
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Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son and things like that, we're talking there about the ontological trinity, that is, the trinity as it has eternally existed.
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But we also have the functional or economic trinity, and that is the different roles the Father, Son, and Spirit have taken in the redemption of mankind.
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And so the Father takes one role in that, he is the originator, he is the righteous judge, he is the justifier, the one who has faith in Jesus.
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Jesus is the one who becomes incarnate, he is the self -giving sacrifice, he is the high priest, prophet, priest, and king, and all the roles that Jesus has, which are the ones we see the most during the church age, as New Covenant believers, we look to Christ who stands in the presence of the
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Father, and so on and so forth. And then the Holy Spirit has taken the role of the one who indwells the people of God, brings conviction of sin, raises people to spiritual life, gives us understanding of the
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Word of God, as Jesus himself said, he takes from my things and explains them, makes them real to us, so on and so forth.
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So we have the different roles that each one has taken, and what Paul is talking about in 1
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Corinthians chapter 15 is that, is it always going to remain this way? Will there always be these roles that are being taken in redemption, or what's going to happen once redemption is accomplished, in the sense that it's finished up?
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In other words, all the elect have been brought in, the judgment has taken place, resurrection, now we're in the eternal state, will
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Jesus still stand in the presence of the Father as an intercessor at that point? Is there going to be a need for the
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Spirit of God to function as a convictor of sin or one who's raising people to spiritual life?
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Well, no. So what's going to happen then? Well, you have the prophecy that is found in 1
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Corinthians chapter 15, citing from Psalm 8, you have, for all things will be put under subjection to his feet, and that says, now of course that doesn't include the
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Father, all things are put in subjection, it's plain that he is accepted, and who is the he? The he there is the
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Father, is accepted, who put all things in subjection under him, who is the him there, would be the son, when all things are subjected to him, that is the
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Father, then the son himself will also be subjected to him, who put all things in subjection under him.
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Then notice, it doesn't say in order that Pater, Father, may be all in all, but it's simply
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Hatheos, would be all in all. And so my understanding of what is being said here is that right now, our worship is differentiated in light of our current situation in being sanctified and being made holy and conformed to the image of Christ and experience in this life and so on and so forth, and so when we worship we think of the
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Father as the source of all things and we are thankful for the Son who is interceding for us and upon whose righteousness we are dependent, and we'll always be dependent obviously on that level, and we're thankful for the
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Spirit who gives us understanding and who intercedes for us with groanings that cannot be uttered because we don't even know how to express our prayers and so on and so forth.
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But someday our worship is going to be focused perfectly upon God who has accomplished what
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God chose to do in eternity past in that the people of God have been perfectly redeemed, all justice has been accomplished, punishment has been accomplished, everything is completed, and so our worship will become singular, not of the
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Father alone, because it doesn't say that. It says Hatheos taponta enpasen, our worship will be of the one triune
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God without the experience that is currently ours of those functional offices that will have their completion at the end of time.
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Okay. That helpful? Yep. Yeah, that's longer, but I'm going to replay it again.
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Well, that's a good thing about the fact that we record these things. Thank God for the replay. I can always replay it on YouTube and hear it properly and make notes, but thanks.
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Yeah, at least for now, my heart is at rest. Okay, all right. Thank you, Pastor. Thanks for your call.
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Yeah, all the best. All right, God bless. All right, cheers. Bye -bye. All right, let's make sure
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I hit the right buttons here. It's been so long since I even had phone access. I dumped the poor guy.
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I feel terrible there, but let's talk to Duane. Hello, Duane. Hi, Pastor James.
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How are you? Doing good. I'm going to call you my online pastor now. Oh, no, no, no, no.
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Yeah, I never miss a presentation, and I love your Bible studies, so you have to be my online pastor here.
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Well, as long as you've got the real thing to talk to when life hits you upside the head, because I won't be available at that time.
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You're talking about the Holy Spirit, right? No, no, I'm talking about that one from Hebrews 13, verse 17, you know, those local elders that we are to be in subjection to.
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But anyways, John 16 verses John 6, what you got here? No, actually, it's John 17, but before we get to that,
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I would like to throw a couple real quick ones at you. And that first question is, I've been sitting here watching with my sound off, so I was almost hypnotized by that blue thing flashing to your right.
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Yes, that is a—it's technical term is called a lumen glass, and I'm not sure why the mouse is going all over that.
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Are you—can they see that with the mouse? Oh, okay. That's called a lumen glass. It's right next to my 1970s vintage lava lamp.
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And have you ever seen any of the Star Trek stuff? All of them.
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Okay, well, if you know the Borg, they have these big green flashing things behind their heads when they're in their regeneration chambers.
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That's a lumen glass. That's a small version, and it's multicolored instead of being green.
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So it's blue, green, and then sort of red or pink in the center. So you can't see that real well, but it's a lumen glass.
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Yeah, I love those things. I think they're great. You're on the risk of hypnotizing half your crowd. What does it do for you? It looks cool.
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It demonstrates that I'm a complete geek and that I have managed to somehow resist the mockery of Rich Pierce.
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Oh, there you go. See? Oh, Rich has just zoomed in, and you'll see it here in a second. Now you can see the green in the center and the red and stuff like that.
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Thank you. Thank you, Rich. Now everyone can see my nose that looks like the Empire State Building there. Thank you very much.
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Okay, real quick. I want to throw some fast questions at you. When they come to John 17,
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I just want to drive home something real fast. First of all, your favorite commentaries.
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Who would be the favorite author for commentaries? It depends on the book. For example,
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I've been preaching through Hebrews for a few years, and so I now have favorite Hebrews commentaries.
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Philip Edgecomb -Hughes is my favorite of all of those. F .F. Bruce, the new
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Pillar one, O 'Brien from down at Moore College. There's not a series, for example.
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Every series is a grab bag, so I'll have favorite ones in Romans, Murray, Moo, favorite ones in John, favorite ones elsewhere.
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You can buy an entire commentary series and get some real clunkers along with some real good ones, so it depends on the book that you're studying.
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That's okay. I'm into Robert Yarborough on 1 John. I really am enjoying that one.
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What about Ephesians? I would have to be standing in front of Ephesians.
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Since I haven't preached through Ephesians, I'd have to be standing in front of my library to go, oh, okay, this one is good.
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I'm not standing in front of my library. It's in the other room. Fair enough. When you come to St. Charles at the end of the year, do you have any idea of some general topics that you may be choosing to speak from?
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For the first time in about 15 years, I won't be in St. Charles at the end of the year, and I haven't told them that yet.
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We're going to have to make it early next year, because I, in fact,
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I'm glad you mentioned this, we need to put a link up. We need to start asking folks for assistance in two overseas trips, one in October and one right at the beginning of December, when
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I'm normally in St. Charles. October, we're going back to South Africa.
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The first two weeks in December, and I'm sure that Pastor Van will not have any problem with this, because he has a big place in his heart, and of course, right now,
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I'm sure is very troubled about what's happening in Donetsk, but I will be back in Ukraine, in Kiev, as long as it's
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Kiev, Ukraine, anyways, by December of this year. But I have been asked to teach on the
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Trinity and teach a class on justification at European Biblical Seminary in the first two weeks of December.
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So we're going to have to reschedule my almost perfect scheduled, perfect record trip to St.
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Charles. Do you have any thoughts as to when you do come, what you'll be talking about? No, I have no idea, I have no idea.
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Okay, would you please announce that in advance so I can... I'm within driving distance, so I'd like to come up if we come up with a topic that would get me excited about that.
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Okay, who wants to see if it's worth the trip? You know,
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I didn't know how to say that exactly. Okay, here's my question on John 17. Okay.
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I was reading that this morning, and boy, it seems to me like Jesus really drives home
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John 6, the whole concept that you talk about a lot, about the Father, no one can come to the
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Son, the Father doesn't, first of all, draw and give to the Son. And John 17, he references those that the
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Father gave to him. It looks to me like 1, 2, 3... Many times.
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4, 5, 6, it's like it's all written, that's what John 17 is all about, is a reference and a discussion about those that the
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Father gave to the Son. Well, I'm actually teaching through John 17 right now in the adult
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Bible study class at Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. Those studies are on sermonaudio .com,
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and one of the things that I have emphasized, I don't know how many, I'm probably at the 7th, 8th, 9th lesson so far in John 17, and certainly one of the things that I've repeated over and over again is that it seems that in the
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High Priestly Prayer, you have a tying together of numerous themes from the
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Gospel of John, but we've over and over again, you know, John 17 6,
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I have manifested your name to those whom you gave me out of the world. The giving by the
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Father to the Son, this is exactly what you've got in John 6. But you also have the themes from John 5 being interwoven in there, and from the prologue, and John 10, and it's like chapter 17 is the nexus that ties all of these threads together into this one whole, and it has struck me much more strongly this time teaching through John 17 than ever in the past, that it would be really hard to understand
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John 17 in its fullness if all you had was John 17. But once you see
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John 17 as the completion of the teaching ministry of Christ in all the preceding chapters, then it becomes very clear how he ties together all of these very important themes from the preceding chapters.
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And so when you keep that in mind, you can trace through all the major themes of the
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Gospel of John right into the High Priestly Prayer, and it's obviously very purposeful that that's the way that it's been put together.
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I wanted to, it's really a confirmation, I just wanted to state that I really saw that for myself this morning, really for the first time in a real powerful way.
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Yeah, yeah, it's there, and it's a beautiful, beautiful, and obviously very, very purposeful thing, and the more you study
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John, the more you are struck by the fact that a tremendous amount, and people sometimes get a little uncomfortable when
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I say something like this, but a tremendous amount of thought went into the organization of this work. There's purpose to it. For some reason, people think that if it's really spiritual, then
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John just was sitting there doing automatic writing, and no, that thought that goes into the construction of this is just as much a part of the supernatural superintendence of this act and this scripture as anything else is, and yeah, it's beautiful.
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The balance is just great. I'll have to go over to the sermon audio and catch those sermons. I didn't know that.
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I'll get those, and I wanted to thank you for holding the line in the sand on the dividing line. Well, we're doing our best.
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We're doing our best. Thanks, Duane. God bless. All right, God bless. All right, bye -bye. See, I got the right button that time, and I didn't dump somebody else.
51:51
All right, let's talk to Casper. Casper, how are you? Hi, Dr.
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White, sorry. Yeah, so I had a question on definite atonement.
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I've recently become very captivated by Reformed theology, but I don't fully understand how most
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Reformed theologians would take this, because as I've been looking through John Piper's theories on Reformed theology, it seems like he affirms, he'd like to say that he affirms everything that Arminians believe in regarding the atonement and more, so this idea of sufficient for all but efficient for the elect, and I don't know how that would jive with the idea of penal substitution, you know, the idea that Christ is representing a certain group of people, a definite group of people, and how would he represent all to make salvation sufficient for all?
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Yeah, well, I would imagine if the context is the sufficient for all, efficient for the elect concept, that what he's referring to there is, when you say sufficient for all, that the limitation is not in the power or the efficacy of the atonement, that the limitation is in the definite intention, audience, and scope of the atonement.
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So when a Reformed person says sufficient for all, what they're saying is that the limitation is not in the capacity of the atonement, because we,
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I would say, this is one of my problems with William Lane Craig's view of Molinism, I absolutely affirm that if God wanted to, if it was
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God's intention to save every single human being, that the sacrifice of Christ would be more than sufficient to do so.
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There is no inherent limitation in the power or the efficacy of the atoning sacrifice of Christ.
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Christ could have joined to, the Father could have joined to Christ every single human being ever born, ever will be born.
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If he wanted to allow history to go on for the next 100 ,000 years and have 100 billion people, that's totally up to him.
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There is no limitation in the atonement in that sense. And when we talk about limited atonement, we need to make sure that people understand that we are not limiting the power of the atonement in that way.
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The limitation is derived from what God's intention in the atonement is, not from any intrinsic lack of value or limitation in the atonement itself.
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And that certainly sounds like what Piper was saying. Because when you say, when you put it the way that you put it, that's historically been the understanding that was being expressed at that point.
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Well, I get the idea that he's talking about common grace and, you know, this bona fide offer to everyone.
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You know, the idea, I think, and I'm reading here, that many Calvinists take 1 Timothy 2, 5, 6, that face value when it says
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Christ died for all. So in some sense, Christ purchased common grace for all, but I don't understand how he could do that.
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Yeah, I would disagree at that point, because I certainly do not believe that the face value interpretation of Paul's words to Timothy has anything to do with purchasing common grace.
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Because the text in 1 Timothy 2, if it's going to have any meaning when it talks about Christ as the mediator between God and man, now you're going to have to start talking about what the mediator does.
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And I don't see how the mediator mediates a common grace. That's not the role of the high priest.
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And so I do recognize that there is a hesitation on the part of some to be clear in their interpretation at some times of that text and 2
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Peter 3, because there is a fear of being accused, as I have falsely been accused a number of times, of falling into the hyper
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Calvinist camp. It's an exegetical issue. It's a real question as to, all right, what's this text saying?
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And when you start doing exegesis based upon what you're afraid somebody's going to say about you, you're not doing exegesis anymore.
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But you do believe that common grace in some sense is purchased by Christ on the cross, right? Well, in the sense that God has perfect freedom to deal with unregenerate men in a gracious fashion, that's always been true even before the cross itself.
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But I'm really hesitant to talk about purchasing common grace.
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Where do I get that category? I mean, again, I'm hesitant to affirm things that I would never be able to defend in a debate against someone who would say, where do you get that biblically?
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Because the whole idea of purchasing non -salvific grace,
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I do believe that in Ephesians 1, because of the ministry of Christ, there is a summing up of all things.
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And hence, there is a just basis upon which the Father can deal even with the unregenerate in a gracious fashion.
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But the idea of purchase price always, as far as I can tell, is in a redemptive context.
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And so I would be really... Sorry? The government theory of the idea that God is able to deal graciously with the reprobate because somehow
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Christ had to make that sacrifice. So it's not penal substitution, but it's something else.
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Yeah, well, if you want to try to see some greater fulfillments outside of the specific redemption of a particular people in Christ for their salvation in the atonement,
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I understand that that's a possibility. But I'm very hesitant, certainly not a governmental theory of the atonement person.
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And I think sometimes we want to grab hold of those things, but when we do so, we end up leaving biblical language behind.
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And I just have a hard time with that. But hey, Casper, sorry that we got right toward the end of the hour.
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I guess I talk a lot, but we're running out of time. I appreciate your... I'm sorry? Thank you very much. Hey, thanks for your call.
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Appreciate it. Over there in Los Angeles. There's actually a Christian in Los Angeles. What an amazing thing.
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All right. Hey, thanks for listening to The Dividing Line today. Lord willing, we'll be back again on Thursday.
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And people keep saying, well, what are you gonna be talking about Thursday? I don't have any idea. But it's always good to have some open phones and to do things like that and to talk with folks.