October 5, 2004

from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded

Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the

United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

James White. And good morning or afternoon, wherever you are. The stack of stuff is large today.

Of course, in my case, it's not a stack of stuff sitting here, it's a stack of stuff on the hard drive of my computer, specifically sound files and all sorts of neat, fun, wonderful stuff that I wanted to get to.

But you may recall on Thursday, well actually it wasn't Thursday, we sort of missed that one.

On Friday morning, we had our last dividing line and I mentioned on the dividing line some of the posts that had been put on the

Catholic Answers Forums. And of course, there are millions of websites out there.

There's the Catholic Answers Forums and there's blogs. And if anyone ever, for even more than a few moments, tried to keep up with the

Steve Ray board, that thing would, you'd post something on that and you'd come back five minutes later, it's on the second page.

I never did figure out how in the world you could even try to follow that one, even if your life was such, you just sit around and do nothing more than write blog entries or web board entries, things like that.

And so anyways, I had mentioned that someone had come to the channel and had given me a link, a coach had come to the channel and given me a link.

And there was a, I don't know, there was 214 messages or something on this one thread, went back to August.

I didn't even know it had been there. And I had made some comments about, well, just the very personal stuff that people who've never met me and don't know anything about me other than maybe they've listened to a single tape or a single debate or read a single article someplace.

I even pointed out some of the folks who who made these big, long discussions about my character and all the rest of the stuff.

And then a few messages later, well, actually, I've only read one thing he ever wrote. It's just like,

OK, all right, well, that's that's fascinating. And so I had mentioned all this stuff. And then

I also mentioned on the blog that that had then generated some some interesting responses.

And one one of those who had responded had said some interesting things had said since I talked about on the program rather than posting on the thing that he didn't know this at the time.

But I couldn't get into the forums. I had I had signed up and it had access initially when they first came online and then it stopped working.

I couldn't get in. I requested over the because I want to get hold of the Greg Assisi fellow.

I had requested my password to be sent to me. Nothing was sent to me. I tried signing up at least one time,

I think to valid email addresses. Nothing was ever sent to me. So, you know, when you try a number of different ways, numerous different requests and nothing ever shows up, you sort of wonder, well, you know, maybe, you know, maybe

I'm persona non grata there. So he wouldn't have any way of knowing that I couldn't get it, by the way, in passing. The the lady,

Teresa, who runs the forums, who for some reason didn't get to go on the cruise. You get to do all the hard work on the forum site.

I think she'd be the first one on the boat, OK? But she didn't get to go anyway. She wrote to me because someone posted what

I had said on posted this thing from ten one on the Catholic answers forums. And she got to me and said, you know, what's your user

ID? What's the email address you used? I'll reset it. I don't know why that it wouldn't be sending you stuff and all the rest of that stuff.

And so we got it worked out. And I was able to get back in on my original one, not the ones

I signed up on and all the rest of that stuff. So I have access now, but I didn't then. And so a fellow down in Texas, who

I guess his name, Jonathan, had said some things like that. Why can't he say it to a person's face?

Why would he hide behind a microphone when he could actually address people directly? Well, and I pointed out like I do debates and I I have a call in radio program and I travel all over the

United States and and we do question and answer things. And, you know, I mean,

I really honestly believe that especially in this area, I'm significantly more accessible than, well, name almost anybody else.

Now, does that mean that I feel under some obligation to invest huge amounts of time, especially this month?

I mean, not if I include last week, I'm speaking thirty five times in 40 days and major debate.

I have to get stuff in for the next semester teaching at Golden Gate. I've got articles to write for the

CRI Journal and for the Reformed Bible Theological Review and all the rest of this stuff. And sitting on web boards is not, you know, that takes a lot of time, even as fast as I type.

It's a whole lot faster to respond to this stuff this way. I mean, that's why I like live debates. You can do that a whole lot faster and it's a lot more interesting than just sitting there and reading along and so on and so forth.

So anyway, this person continued on saying that he whines on his own blog, again, with no comments allowed rather than making use of the comment function on theirs.

Well, again, there is no end to written sniping. But quite honestly, a lot of the stuff

I was responding to wasn't wasn't it was stuff that was personal. What am I supposed to how in the world do you respond to people saying you're an arrogant, nasty, self -absorbed?

How do you respond to that kind of stuff? Anyways, I mean, if these people are saying, actually, well, James White was wrong because he said that the verb in Romans 5 one is an heiress and that in the context of the relationship between the verb and the state of peace, he's wrong about that.

And here's grammatically why. Then I could respond that that's something that would be worth taking the time to write something out about.

But when people who've never met you don't know anything about you, they've they they've never taken the time to find out what my kids are like, what my wife is like, what my daughter is like.

We've got some news on that front. For those of you who know what I'm talking about, she may be on a radio station in San Francisco this week to discuss her letter to the president against stem cell research.

I mean, I've got great kids, you know, that reflects something on me, I hope. I mean, I think

God's the one who made them great and just sort of said, and you're going to be you're going to be a nut anyways, almost give you good kids.

But they know nothing about me. How are you supposed to respond to that kind of stuff? It's it's not even worth doing. So other than noting the fact that here within the context of Catholic apologetics, folks, the vast majority of responses to what

I have written in books like The God Who Justifies and the Roman Catholic controversy has taken that form.

It's just been, oh, don't listen to him. He's a mean, nasty man instead of, well, you're you're wrong here or grammatically this is the case.

And remember what just happened recently with James Aiken? You know, for years I've been pointing out his errors in Greek regarding John six and people just kept throwing it out there, throwing it out there because it was on the

Web. And finally, a few months ago, he takes time to go look at it and goes, what was

I thinking? That's silly. Now, he hasn't told us actually how to respond to that yet, but that's the kind of kind of thing

I'm talking about is if it was worthwhile talking about, then we would do so.

But comment functions. Yeah. You know, there's no end to those things, too. It says anyway, you know, and then, of course, you're saying that we don't have comments of mine.

Yeah, it's just a plain old HTML file. I think we're going to have RSS stuff and all the rest of that stuff on on my blog in the future.

But to be honest with you, I'm not turning on the comment functions anyways. That's not there is a debate forum. It's there for me to post materials that I come across and that I'm working on as I'm writing books, as I'm doing debates, as I'm teaching seminary.

And, you know, that's just the way it is. And he'll boast all day. I'll just finish this up because Jonathan's online and I appreciate the fact

Jonathan's online. We'll bring him on just a moment. Just want to give the background so you know where why why we're starting off the direction we're starting off.

He'll boast all day about how much conviction he has in his position. Boast all day. Is that is that when you if you say you have convictions, that's boastful.

OK, but when somebody actually throws down the gauntlet, he never has enough time to take the challenge, although somehow he all seems to have enough time to cry in his blog about I'm sorry.

But that then he said to me, that's just yellow bellied. That's just not true.

I mean, what meaningful Roman Catholic apologist has thrown down the gauntlet to me that I'm not willing to pick it up?

Now, if you're talking about people who just want to snipe at me and insult me personally on web boards, yeah, to be perfectly honest with you,

I don't feel any need whatsoever. If that's a gauntlet, fine. I ignore those because there's no end of those folks.

I mean, there's Mormons like that and Jehovah's Witnesses like that and Muslims like that and one is Pentecostals like that.

And man, the King James only folks. Oh, man, if I applied this standard to them,

I would never sleep. I would never eat again simply because I would be spending all day long responding to the most inane stuff that you could ever deal with.

So where is the gauntlet that's been thrown down? Where is where are the in -depth grammatical, exegetical responses to the

God who justifies? Where is that stuff? Why is it that people look at certain debates and they won't look at the entirety of debates?

And when a debate goes just horribly wrong for the Catholic side, it's because I'm a good debater or I tricked somebody or I I ambushed somebody or they're just not a good debater.

But if a Roman Catholic even even stays in the debate, I see there's the true church and and all the rest of the standards just simply aren't consistent.

And that's what I tried to point out. So I appreciate the fact, you know, it said that the Jonathan was from Texas.

And I said, you know, I was just in Texas. I was just in Dallas. I loved I had so much fun down there.

The elders of the church I was speaking at for our for our field trip, we went to cheaper than dirt.

OK, you know, and at the beginning of my presentations, I was showing pictures of my Smith & Wesson M -500 .50 caliber

Magnum and folks in Texas like that. And I mentioned the the bumper sticker on the on the trucks.

I think it was one of the deacons, actually, that said Yanks one rebels, nothing halftime.

You know, it's just we've got a bunch of Texas folks sitting in channel right now that are hooting and making noise and doing things like, well, not making noise.

I wouldn't let that happen. But anyway, so I sort of figured, you know what, if anyone's actually going to take the time to call in our friend from Texas might actually do so.

So with that background, for those of you who did not read the blog and if you want to read the whole thing, it was

October 1st for it's there's only one there's only two entries that have have been posted since then.

So it's still on the main page, October 1st of 2004. Today's deal results in odd forum comments was the was the title.

And so with that, let's let's go down to to the land that spawned the

Alamo and all sorts of other neat and fun, wonderful stuff like that. And the talk,

Jonathan. Hi, Jonathan. Thanks for calling in. Hi, Pastor White, good to meet you. Good to talk to you, sir.

OK, basically, I can just start, if you want to, in reference to the things that you were talking about,

I actually agree with a great deal of it. I think that the personal attacks are completely unwarranted, especially now that I've found out about your firepower, both in the apologetics and the real world.

I think, you know, and I've I've I've always, I think, been been pretty careful to say that I think that, you know, it strikes me that you're an excellent father, excellent pastor, excellent

Christian, actually. And, you know, I don't want to cast aspersions on your character. My concern is that the environment that that essentially you're not helping that environment at all by taking the approach that you have.

And the reason I say this is, you know, I can watch it on the Web and I can see what happens on both sides.

And it seems to me like just simply the lack of putting something out there that says

I'm going to talk about this, especially when you're responding directly to someone's argument. You know, essentially, if they're willing to put an argument out in public, that's that's sort of an invitation to discuss it.

And I agree with that. But I think I think the impression sort of the pattern that people have seen is that you'll answer it, but they're finding out on their own because they hit the blog or whatever.

But they sort of haven't had any notification. And I think that people just sort of get the impression that that you're you're.

Coming from behind somewhere, you know, you're you're essentially trying to hide the fact that you're responding, although obviously your blog's public.

Well, John, could I ask you some do you know of anyone who has posted this stuff? And I remind you, the the thread that I started talking about started in August.

The first time I ever found out about it was from Coach last week. So in other words, no one from the

Roman Catholic side who posted anything about me ever said anything to me. They never said

I'm reviewing you. They never said I'm posting this stuff. So if they aren't under any obligation to inform me that they're saying that I'm an arrogant, stuck up person who only wants to make money and all the rest of the stuff that they say, why would

I be under any obligation to then take my very limited time and and you can look at my calendar?

I've I've been all over the place, frequently have difficulty even getting good access while I'm traveling.

Why should I go and and post something that will, of course, result in, you know, how many can you imagine if I if I started actually posting stuff on the

Catholic answers forums? I mean, we shut the server down almost in in responses. Why should

I have to go there and say, you know what, I'm going to mention on my blog or I'm going to mention on the dividing line,

I'm going to read some of these personal attacks and I'm going to make application that you know what? This is what

I see all the time. And isn't it odd that what I don't see posted in these places is what

I mentioned before, an in -depth review, for example, of of the 24 page chapter in The God Who Justifies on James chapter two, verses 14 and following that is very closely argued, very fully referenced, filled with the original languages.

And I never get anybody responding to that kind of stuff. Instead, I get

James White is a stuck up, arrogant, mean spirited guy. And therefore, well, even in your own in your thread that you posted,

I think you started it. A guy named Scott Waddell said everyone would be much better off. They put white in the same category as the

Raelians, fringe elements who don't have anything to say that is worth expending mental energy contemplating.

So do you see where I don't see the that there's a parallel here that would substantiate your position?

I absolutely agree with that. And and I mean, I think that that that most of the attacks that are made on you are are beneath discussion and you don't get the kind of response you deserve.

And, you know, frankly, on the Internet, I think that there is relatively little opportunity.

I mean, I know that that, for example, Dave Armstrong's not one of your favorite people because, you know,

Dave and I go back so far that, you know, it's the sad thing there is is

I've tried to introduce some humor there because, to be honest with you, I gave up on that one. I just and, you know, you're entitled to do it.

And, you know, that that happens in real life. And come on, Jonathan, Monty Python's pretty good, right? Yeah.

Well, have you ever heard my introduction to when I when I'd respond to Dave? No, no, no.

On the on the show, I don't have a real player. Oh, that that's that's I just for everybody's just you'll like this.

Hold on a second. D .A. on C .A. Everybody in the listening and we stop doing this because I'm done responding to him.

But this is how I began each section of the of the response to Dave Armstrong.

Rich, make sure that you've got good feed to the to the phone line there. So that's

Jonathan can hear this. Who are we?

I. Nobody expects the

Spanish inquisition. I am usually referred to as the master. There are some who call me.

So that's that's how we got started.

All right. So I can appreciate that. All right. Well, I mean, the point being, you know, he writes rather extensively, although his grocery list is 12 pages long.

What do you think? And, you know, and I, you know, I'm willing to take him at his word that I think, you know, if he if he's under a word limit, he can stick to it.

But, you know, regardless, the thing is, I think that he perceived that that's sort of the length that's required to go into these things in depth.

And, you know, if that's if that's true and that is, in fact, the case, it's going to be hard to substantively debate anything in an

Internet forum or anything like that. And so, you know, I understand that there's you know, you can't sit in a forum.

And I completely agree with you speaking a great deal faster than typing. Oh, yeah. But the concern, like I said, is.

Essentially. If you sort of take the position that it's it's the directed response, you know, essentially by giving a response to some particular class of activity, you're saying, well, there's some kind of response, maybe not an in -depth response, maybe a brief response or something like that.

And the point is, if there's going to be a directed response to someone particular to particular, then

I think that they're entitled to if you're going to respond to it, I think that they're entitled to know that you're responding to it.

OK, well, more courtesy than you get, I completely agree. Well, and let me let me point something out. I only all

I did was I read certain portions of that thread and I gave the nick.

I mean, I'm not even I don't even know these people's names. I mean, your your your ideas wasn't

Jonathan on the on the thread either. I mean, I just used whatever was there. And so some of these things were written two months ago.

I mean, I just the reason that and let me clarify one thing. It's not so much giving a response.

I mean, a response in my mind would be if someone actually made a substantive argument and I want to respond to it with substance.

What I was doing and what I frequently do in on the dividing line is

I try to grab sound files, bring stuff into the program and say, look, here's an apologetic lesson we can learn from this.

And what's the apologetic lesson we can learn from the Catholic answers forums? Well, the fact of the matter is this isn't the only place where a form of ad hominem argumentation is used to try, in essence, to get people to not listen to what a particular side is saying.

And it's one thing if there has been a tremendous amount of in -depth response to a particular individual and they just don't listen and they just keep saying the same things over and over again.

That's one thing. But, you know, anyone who would try to argue that, in my case, just isn't dealing with the documentation that's out there.

That's the first thing. So I'm just simply trying to show here is the situation where you have individuals who are using bad forms of argumentation.

And I don't see anybody stepping in other than Protestants. I mean, Coach is one of the few people, and I think there was one other in the thread, who was basically saying, hey, folks, what are you doing here?

You don't know this guy. And Jonathan, you got to admit, I don't know how much you have.

I don't know if you've ever read any of my books. I don't know if you've listened to any of the debates I've done. If you haven't,

I would really, really like to offer to you, for example, and in fact,

I want to even offer you one of my books. I'll tell you this. If you'd like to listen to or watch, I wish you could watch all of them.

You could if certain people would let the videotapes they have out for distribution. But if you would like to listen to the ones you can listen to and watch the ones you can watch of myself and Mitch Packwood, you know who

Mitch Packwood is, right? Sure, yeah, on EWTN. OK, he's he honestly, I and I, people will tell you, you can go back in the archives of this program.

I have repeatedly said over and over and over again that I have tremendous respect for Mitch Packwood of all the people

I've debated. I have the most respect for him because he doesn't engage in ad hominem argumentation. He doesn't back off of what he believes.

He doesn't engage in cheap debating tricks. And we've done five debates since 1990.

I mean, I joked in the one in 1999 that we did that both of us had considerably more hair the last time that we had debated.

And it's true. I mean, we were both a lot thinner yards. Gravity has been taking effect. But we've debated justification, the mass, sola scriptura, the papacy and the priesthood.

The last one was a year ago this past May when we debated the priesthood on Long Island.

And I would be happy to send you the CDs and DVDs, the ones that we've taped the last three.

We have those. The first two were videotaped, but the Roman Catholic folks that have it will allow those videotapes to be distributed.

We'll send the CDs of those. Listen to those debates. See if they are not fair, respectful.

Stay on the subject. I mean, I honestly think they are they are illustrative of the fact that you can discuss these things without the use of acid, without getting people's faces and so on and so forth.

I don't use the kind of argumentation that I was documenting in the Catholic answers forums.

You won't find me. Someone might say, oh, yes, you do it, Dave Armstrong. Well, you know what? We respond to Dave Armstrong in a very serious way for a long time.

Dave Armstrong, we even set up a debate in our chat channel with Dave Armstrong for a long time.

And until he started getting a little bit odd from my perspective, then I started using humor.

But you're not going to find me, for example, trying to dig up information on Patrick Madrid's family.

You're not going to find me trying to attack Karl Keating for pulling the wings off butterflies or something.

I mean, that's just not that's not what we do. Anybody who looks at our website can see that when you look at the sections on Roman Catholicism, they're primarily dealing with patristics.

And and what did Augustine actually say? He never said Rome has spoken. The case is closed.

Here's what he actually said. Here's the Latin. Here's the context. You know, looking at things like that, you're just not going to find from our perspective, from our side, that kind of behavior.

And I do think that's relevant to an examination, because many of the people who come into our channel or contact our ministry, they're saying, how do

I get past this emotionalism, this, well, I'm not going to listen to you because you people are, you know, this person's mean.

How do I get past that? It is a relevant, apologetic issue on that level. And that's why

I addressed it on the program. And I mean, I think that that's entirely fair. I guess the problem that I've seen, particularly in the blog wars phenomenon, which

I know is not going to be a great topic for anybody. But it seems like that sort of a situation where you have the mutual monologue situation on the blog, it becomes so easy to dehumanize each other that essentially sort of the fact that you're not there or present as a virtual person and saying, you know, this isn't very nice and, you know,

I'm not that kind of person. Even if it's just to say that, I think that it helps the climate for discourse, because,

I mean, you're a human being, you know, I don't think that you're a bad person. I don't think that anyone who sincerely takes a position as a bad person,

I don't think, I think Father Pacwa gets along with you fine. We do. And so, you know,

I think that sort of the, it's the lack of interaction.

And that's what I meant by essentially the face -to -face thing was, I completely agree with you.

There's no call for saying most of the things that you do. But I don't think that it would hurt anything to go in there and say, look, you know,

I think you're completely wrong on this. And, you know, I'm a person, you know, don't talk about me like I'm some kind of ogre.

And let you know, Jonathan, don't they know that? I mean, don't they know that I'm a person? And I don't think so.

I honestly don't, because otherwise there wouldn't be so much traction for these kind of arguments.

I mean, it wouldn't be believable. It is believed. I guess the example that I give is

Tony Snow was talking about being on the Bush campaign. And one of the concerns he had with the elder

Bush was that he wouldn't get out there and defend his honor. It's like even if the charges are bogus, if you don't get out there and make a statement, people are going to assume they're true anyway.

And I agree that it's beneath the level of discourse. But. I'm afraid that.

That in the situation where there isn't a direct notification to someone, hey, I think your argument is bogus and I'm responding to it, that that that's what creates this climate where you can have separate people essentially doing mutual monologues that just get nastier and nastier on both sides.

Well, I mean, maybe there's a great deal of responsibility that you don't feel. Well, yeah, well, let me put it this way.

There is no possible way. I mean, I would no longer be able to do the dividing line and respond to and do what you just said, like Bush needed to do and defend his honor if I had to contact every person.

Because remember, unlike what is said by many people in the forums,

Roman Catholicism is not what I wake up thinking about in the morning and go to bed thinking about at night.

In fact, it's one of many, many issues that I deal with.

And if I had to, before I went on the air, make sure that I had somehow personally contacted every you know, today, for example,

I'm going to play a clip from Harold Camping. I don't know if you know who Harold Camping is, but they've got this teaching that everyone should flee the churches and all the rest of the stuff.

I'm going to play a section from from not Harold Camping himself, but one of his followers from Family Radio. Now, do

I have to contact him and tell him I'm going to do that, even though this is something that was recorded and broadcast on the air?

If I had to do that and then had to contact Chuck Smith because I'm going to play a section from Calvary Chapel's discussion of Calvinism.

And then and if I had to contact everybody on the forums and all the King James only folks and all the rest of it,

I'd never be able to give the very responses that you rightly point out I should give. I think the best place to provide the response is right here, because as you've just proven, there's a phone number and you can call and say

I'm right or wrong. You can defend what you said or say, you know what, what I said was wrong and I shouldn't have phrased the way

I did. There's a there's a give and take here that's actually much more open because there's other people watching and listening than there is on the

Catholic answers forums. And so, you know, that's that's why I think it's more useful to do it in this way, especially since I don't know those people.

They don't know me. And I wasn't using their names. I was simply using these are people who've just said things about me on a forum.

If I was saying, hey, here's the person's name, here's their email address, call them up and write them up and tell them that they're nasty for saying, you know, that's different.

I wasn't doing that. I was using it as an apologetic illustration that this is bad argumentation and this is something we don't do and won't put up with if we were in a situation like that.

And I mean, I understand that there are that there are time constraints. And as you said, you know, there are going to be some people who are essentially out in the in the public and it's not going to be it's not going to be convenient for you to to respond to them.

You know, they publish books. I mean, in the in the case of of Dr.

Seyfried, I'm not sure, you know, maybe if you had gotten a hold of his email address, there's some of it that could be resolved.

Maybe not. Well, that that's a whole different issue there, because we're talking I'm no longer talking about an anonymous person on a on a

Web forum where you sort of have a feeding frenzy to get started in that situation. You're talking about a published book that is it has been in the published realm for four years now.

Right. And I mean, I think I think that there, you know, you can get to the point where it's like, well, you know, even even if their defense is essentially that.

You're misconstruing what they said, then they should probably also give some consideration to the fact that they may be misconstruing what you were saying.

Oh, yeah. No toys about it. And and and and, you know, those kind of situations, I'm not sure if they're if they're going to be avoidable.

But, you know, I suppose that's the point is, is if they had given you the same, the same, the same deference that they expect from you, you know, in the same sort of sort of charitable construction that you would that you would like to have from them, then then maybe maybe it just doesn't it doesn't get particularly nasty.

And and I guess in these situations, you know, when it's something like a forum or something like that to me, and maybe

I just have a skewed perspective on this. But to me, if there's time to, you know, draft a response to it or speak at some significant length about it, you know, it wouldn't be that hard to drop something on the thread.

Except one thing, Jonathan, if I drop anything on the thread, what's going to happen? Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, it's going to blow up.

And who's and then what are people going to say if I don't then respond to every single response to what

I said? Then believe me, and I've seen this happen. That's why I I've never posted there other than to send one private message to one person once is that if if I say something, man,

I now allegedly I'm under the the responsibility to respond to every single thing that said said to me, even if I've responded to the issues that are raised a thousand times before and the people who are responding feel absolutely no obligation whatsoever to read anything that I've ever read.

And I'm not just talking about on the Internet. I'm talking about in nationally published books from recognized publishers, scholarly journals, whatever it might be.

They don't have to read anything I've said, but I have to read everything they say and then respond to it fully.

And if I dare even refer them to something I've written, that's also a cop out, too. I've been there, done that, got the

T -shirt. I believe, you know, and I completely agree. I mean, I guess, you know, from my perspective and maybe maybe

I'm just being too optimistic about this, but sort of sort of my position and something like that is, you know, you're really writing for the reasonable people, not the ridiculous people.

That's the only people I can write for. And so and exactly. So, you know, obviously, a reasonable person isn't going to take the position that you're you know, that you're indication that I don't have time to go through this.

You know, I think anyone who's been involved in an online dialogue knows how much time those things can take. And if they can't understand that,

I think that that that is unreasonable. Yeah, they can take forever. Hey, Jonathan, we actually blew right past where we normally take a break and everything else.

I just want to thank you for stepping up and for calling in. It does help to clear the air somewhat.

And and I was very serious about stating if you'd like to listen to the to all the

PACA debates, just just stay on the line and I'll have Rich take down the information. We'll send them to you.

And the reason I say that is because there you get both sides there. They're even Steven. You know, I mean, it's not just one side lecturing away.

You got both sides represented there. And, you know, I I would really invite you, if you haven't had a chance to listen to him, to get a chance to do so.

Sure. No. And thanks for giving me the opportunity to explain where I'm coming from. I mean, you know,

I don't want you know, I don't want it to be taken as one of these nasty attacks. That's not what I'm that's not the point that I'm trying to make.

Well, let me tell you something. I ain't yellow bellied. So. All right, friend, thanks for calling in.

Thank you. All right. Bye bye. Well, that's that. Hey, we give folks an opportunity.

That's what we do. And I don't know if he stayed on there for Rich got a chance to talk to him or not, but be glad to send him the

PACA debates so he can he can listen in for himself. Hey, I just got an email just in passing. I just want to.

So just very quickly, before we go on with the other things, some of you know about most of you know about Summer's letter and the fact that her not only was she given no credit for it, but but it was not sent to the president.

Some some good folks out there who read my blog saw that offered their services because of their connections to the

White House in getting the letter. And I just received an email during Jonathan's call.

It says, James, I just received confirmation from my sister in law that Summer's letter was received. She said it was hand delivered to the

White House on Saturday. So between that and the fact that Summer may be on the radio in San Francisco to discuss,

I just you know, if that teacher was trying to keep this stuff from getting anywhere, she went the wrong direction on that one.

There's no two ways about it. So we will we will see what develops from that. I've obviously hoped all along that at some point we would get a response from from from President Bush.

And I think that is still a very strong possibility. Oh, you got an announcement. Oh, you're going to make the announcement.

OK, fine. That's cool. I can use shutting up a second. Well, I can I can I can talk to.

That's good. Just a little announcement for those of you who have not gotten your rooms at the

Sheraton LAX for the upcoming debate and conference. If you've been delaying on that indefinitely thinking that, well, you know, right up to the doorway,

I can just walk in, get a room and eighty nine dollar rate. October 15th is the deadline with the

Sheraton to be able to get that rate. If you want that discount to to get a room at the

Sheraton to be able to get your free tickets for each each event, you need to get on the phone now.

The Sheraton is running out of rooms, number one and number two. Again, October 15th is the deadline and we need to get you signed up and in there.

If you call on October 16th or if you go through the website on October 16th, if the

Sheraton still has rooms, they'll still, you know, get you taken care of and signed into our group so that you can get your tickets.

But the problem is you'll then be paying the Sheraton's rate, whatever the going rate for that room normally is, which is,

I understand it is around, I'm guessing here, I believe around one hundred and ten dollars for that room. So if you want to save some money and still be able to get in and be guaranteed the room to boot, you need to get on the phone now and call the

Sheraton or get on the website and and sign up for that room. All right. There you go. It's coming up fast.

It's only a month from today. It's only a month from today.

I got too much. Anyway, yep.

Month from today. It is coming and it's coming fast. All right. I mentioned, you know, folks send me such neat stuff in email and sometimes it's it's like, why did you send it to me?

But other times it is very, very useful. And I was sent a link to the 2002

Northwest Pastors Conference for Calvary Chapel. And it's very interesting to listen to the question that is asked.

It's a series of questions on Calvinism regarding Dave Hunt. And one of the questions even mentions, thank you for making

Dave Hunt's book available through the Calvary Chapel bookstore, which, of course, would be what love is this, because that was prior to the release of Debating Calvinism.

And so it's interesting to listen to this non -denominational denominational response, because we've mentioned before the official denomination.

Let's face it. Calvary Chapel is a denomination. In fact, if you listen to one of the questions, they they talk about our distinctives and how people think you can you can dismiss those distinctives and still be a

Calvary Chapel. Well, you know, OK, don't use words like Baptist or whatever. Calvary Chapel is a denomination.

It has a denominational structure, has a denominational confession of faith. And will that denominational confession of faith preclude holding to sound biblical theology?

That really is the question that that is being asked here. And the people ask Chuck Smith about Dave Hunt and Dave Hunt's belief in once saved, always saved.

Now, remember, Dave Hunt's view is the Wilkins dead faith view. It is the non lordship view.

It's as long as you've had faith of some kind or another. There's no distinction between dead faith and living faith.

The faith is faith. As long as you've had it, you're saved. And that's it. And Smith's view is different.

You don't lose you can't lose your salvation, but you can give it up, which I think is, you know, speaking out of both sides of your mouth. But be it as it may, let's listen to this from the 2002

Northwest Pastors conference. Here's a couple there's a couple of questions on this one regarding the the

Calvinism issue. They kind of relate. Pastor Chuck, thank you for the

Dave Hunt books at the pastors conference. Do you agree with Dave's views on Calvinism and his view on assurance of salvation, which he firmly supports?

Then this question says, it seems the Calvinistic doctrine on eternal security is becoming an ongoing issue at Calvary's, although the

Calvary position is listed in the distinctives, it seems many feel that they can disagree and still call themselves a

Calvary. What is your position on the doctrine and how essential is it to hold to the

Calvary distinctive on this? Now, I'm just to stop to catch that that kind of question is not asked outside of a denominational structure.

A loose affiliation of of independent churches, that that question is irrelevant within that context.

This is what defines a Calvary, a Calvary chapel. And the question is, does the view of eternal security fall within or without the parameters?

Can you believe that and still be a Calvary chapel? And one other one, I know of people who were saved, but later they fell into some sin or or left the faith completely.

Were they saved originally or were they deceived and deceived others? Can one leave their salvation?

Is it once saved, always saved? Or is there choice involved for the rest of our lives? Those are easy.

You do that. That's an easy one. I don't think anybody can lose their salvation.

I think people can leave their relationship with the

Lord. I don't think that God takes away our free will once we accept

Jesus Christ. As we were talking last night, unless I have a choice, the relationship with God cannot really be a meaningful relationship.

And so if there was some point where God took away my choice, my relationship would no longer be meaningful with him.

I always have to ask the question that Chris Arnzen asked in my debate with Jim Barker many, many years ago at this point.

He said, Brother Barker, since we believe in heaven, there will be no sin.

Does that mean that we as human beings will be less human because we do not have that choice to sin?

And the response from Brother Barker at that time was that's the stupidest question I've ever heard. So stupid. I'm not going to answer.

Let's move on. And so I've asked the same question of Mr. Hunt, and I now ask it of Chuck Smith, is that if your theology is so defined, if your anthropology of man is so defined by libertarian free will, and you can tell by the parameters he was using there, he's talking about libertarian free will, then it would follow that we become dehumanized in heaven and that we were dehumanized in the sense of not being a human when under the slavery of sin.

But of course, they don't believe we're under the slavery of sin functionally because of what was just said, he doesn't take away our free will when we're saved, which to me assumes we had it before we were saved.

And so even though you're enslaved to sin, you allegedly have this kind of libertarian free will. So things that we have have heard, you know, traditions that get repeated over and over again and they're taken for granted.

There's no biblical anthropology here, but that's the foundation of what's being said. We continue on whether or not a person was ever saved or left his salvation.

It all depends on what position you're coming from. If you're coming from a

Calvinistic position, he was never saved. If you're coming from an Arminius position, he left his salvation, but you're both of you talking about the very same person and you're just both of you defining what is an obvious thing that this person once had a great faith in Christ and a walk with the

Lord, but is now living in adultery, fornication or drunkenness or whatever, and and has renounced his faith in Christ, renounced his belief in God.

So if I'm a Calvinist, I'll say, well, he was never saved. And if I'm an

Arminius, I'd say, well, he left his salvation, but I'm talking about the same person, same thing.

Arminian. I'm talking about it from the position that I have held.

From a theological standpoint, interesting. With even with Dave Hunt, I was on a radio broadcast with him and we were talking about his book and all.

And so I brought up this fellow, Charles Templeton.

And I'm going to skip past Charles Templeton, the church that are against God, came to the place where he even renounced his belief in the existence of God, became an atheist and ultimately wrote a book,

Farewell to God, and in which he said he could no longer intellectually accept the idea of God.

He could no longer intellectually accept that the Bible was the word of God and that Jesus was the son of God who died for our sins and totally renounced it all in his book,

Farewell to God. In fact, it was just that goodbye, God, you know,

I don't believe in you and I don't believe in your son. And the book really has an endeavor to turn other people's, in other words, to create doubt and turn other people away from Jesus Christ.

So here's a man who was once turning people to Jesus Christ. Now he's seeking to turn people away from Jesus Christ.

And as I brought this fellow up, Dave Hunt said, well, you don't believe I don't believe he was ever saved.

And I said, well, Dave, I said, you know, the guy testifies in the book of a real experience of going forward and going home at night and weeping and how

God really, you know, he felt the Lord was really dealing with his heart. You hearing that, folks,

I hope I hope some of you are catching that there is there's the evidence of salvation, a feeling, not a love for all of God's truth, not a love for those aspects of God's character that are repulsive to the natural man, not a consistency in faith, none of that.

He went forward at an invitation and he wept and he felt things and therefore he was a

Christian. There is a really, really good reason for not following that perspective on the definition of what a true believer is.

I don't know. And how can you say that? That's a you know, that's a but even

Dave in his position on Calvinism has this, you know, once saved, always saved kind of a concept, which is sort of an interesting kind of a schizophrenia.

As far as I can see, the the the issue has gone beyond the once saved, always saved into and even almost beyond Calvinism into this tulip, the, you know, the five points.

And and there are those Sproul and others who

Jack Packer and all that are really very, you know, just, yes, are carrying this to its extreme, extreme and truth never is in an extreme position.

Truth is usually in the middle. But I heard that when

I was like, OK, so Sproul and Packer are extreme.

There's nothing beyond them. I guess he's never run into a hyper Calvinist before. And truth is never in the extreme.

So I guess that means that if the extreme is Jesus is God, then the truth is between Jesus is just a man and Jesus is

God, which makes him a demigod. I mean, come on. Between the extremes on either end.

And so you have this end of the extreme where a person has no assurance of their salvation from moment to moment, you know, and they're always just they have no assurance.

And you have these who are presumptive over here. Well, I was saved. I went forward and it doesn't matter what

I'm doing, how I'm living. I'm you know, I've been saved. And that is Dave Hunt's view.

That is not the Calvinistic view. That's Dave Hunt's view. That's one saved, always saved.

That's not the reform view. The perseverance of the saints is not. I got my ticket punched and therefore

I'm on my way no matter what that. And may I just say in passing, it also is not.

I got baptized in the proper way and therefore I'm on my way. None of that is historically reformed.

And that's and of course, if God has called you to be saved, there's no way you can be lost.

And if God has ordained that you should be lost, there's no way you can be saved. All of your praying and repenting, everything else is nothing because God's ordained to you for you to go to hell.

Did anyone just catch the fact that Chuck Smith has no concept of what he's arguing against? Man, why do these leaders who stand up and denounce reformed theology, why is the consistency that they have no concept of what they're talking about?

There is nobody, nobody who wants to be saved, who desires to repent of sin, who has a hatred of their sin, who can have any of that outside of the work of the

Holy Spirit in the first place. There's no one who wants to be saved, who wants to turn to the true

God, who won't be saved. But the fact of the matter is the only ones who want that are those who have been changed by the

Spirit of God. Why? I guess I know that's evidence that what we believe is true.

When nobody can even get it right in denying it, I guess that's clear evidence that they can't get it right because they can't respond to it.

But it's like, man, every time I listen to these people, I listen to Southern Baptist leaders that I could name, and over and over again, it's just the same tired, worn out straw man that's been blown away over and over and over and over again.

And they just keep trotting it out every few months just to try to keep Calvinism out of their church or something.

It's just... That's just up. And that's basically what

TULIP says. That is not! And so you've got the true exchange, but the truth doesn't lie on either end.

The truth lies right here, that I can abide in Christ. And as long as I abide in Christ, I can have the glorious assurance that he is going to keep me and he's not going to let me go.

And I have fabulous assurance. And so here's the center position.

And I think that that's really the balanced position. And I don't think we have to go out on either extreme.

And I think it's dangerous to go out on either extreme. George Bryson is coming out with a new book that is dealing with the issues.

And I think that it's going to be a real eye -opener for a lot of people who have played with Reformation theology to really see what the ramifications of these positions really are.

Read my book. And I don't think people understand the real ramification of the extreme position of the five points of what they call

Calvinism or TULIP. Read my book. You know, such a dangerous thing that what Dave was saying is to say somebody is not saved.

When you look at that and think that through a little bit, here a guy has heard the gospel, received Christ. He's wept over, he's wept over sins.

He's gone home, gotten into the Word. He's confessed to Christ as his Lord and Savior. His life has even been set aside for the work of the ministry.

He's preaching. Thousands have responded to come to Christ and they say he was never saved. Yes. Well, what's that?

What kind of assurance does that give any of us? Well, man, that's all the stuff I can hold on to.

Oh, wow. Perfect, perfect, perfect. If your assurance is based upon the size of your

Calvary Chapel buddy, then you need to hear somebody say that your assurance is in the wrong place.

If it's based on your feelings and if it's based on, well, look at all the people who have been blessed because of me.

Don't you remember what Jesus said? Lord, Lord, did we not do all these things in your name?

Did we not do miracles? Did we not do all this stuff? And what does Jesus say?

I get away. Depart from me, you work lawlessness. I never knew you, man, alive.

What I just, oh, folks, do you see the need for sound theology here?

Here you're listening to leaders standing in front of pastors and their concept of assurance and the sources of assurance is such that Templeton was a, he had to have been a true believer.

He had experiences and he prayed and he cried and he had people walking down the aisle.

Well, so did Jimmy Swaggart for crying out loud. Oh, man. I'm sorry.

Did I just lose my scholarly demeanor? Yes, my scholarly demeanor fell off and it's rolling around the floor somewhere.

Read my book. Yes. Yeah, that's, um,

I did. And I was amazed. Well, thank you very much to the folks who sent the

URL to that because I didn't even get a chance.

What I want to do, by the way, and in fact, let me just play one little section here so you'll have an idea what we'll try to do on Thursday.

Something may get in the way, but I'll try to remember to do this. Here's a guy named David Hoff with Family Radio.

This will just give you an idea of what it is that I want to try to address next time around.

For by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. And this verse is unacceptable to the majority of those in the

Christian community and the Bible translators also. So they go ahead and change the verse. This verse clearly teaches us that it's

Christ's faith that has saved us. And the King James has the correct translation, faith of Christ. Other English Bibles, probably almost all of the newer

English Bibles, have changed that to faith in Christ. And other languages, unfortunately, many languages are not blessed as we are.

And the only Bible they have says faith in Christ. And they have changed that to what's acceptable to the church.

Now the church says, the Christian community says, it's man's faith that saves him. But we're learning that the Bible says it.

We're going to look at a couple of other verses this morning where God insists that it's God's faith that saves us.

There you go. There's not only ignorance of the Greek language, even though this man claims he studied a little

Greek. But ignorance of the difference between the subject and object of genitives and the proper translation thereof.

And the reasons why there are different renderings of the genitive phrase faith Christu, the faith of Christ or faith in Christ.

And we were going to talk about that. We gave Jonathan a good bit of time at the beginning of the program, so we'll get to that next time around. But also, the church.

Remember, he's a campingite, so he's against the church. And the church has changed the

Bible. Is that really the case? No. And we will document that. And if anyone would like to let

Mr. Hoff know in Alameda, California, that we're going to be taking his teaching apart at that point, on the basis of truth, then please feel free to let him do so.

Alright folks, that's it for today. Boy, an hour went fast today. I hope you enjoyed the dividing line. Next time around, we'll be talking about that.

And maybe, maybe something else too. Not sure. Something in the background might be going on.

And we'll just see. Thursday afternoon, 4 o 'clock hour time, 7 o 'clock eastern daylight time.

Talk to you then. God bless. Brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602. Or write us at P .O.

Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the world wide web at aomin .org,

that's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G. Where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.