December 13, 2005

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From the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is
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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.
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Our host is Dr. James White, Director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an Elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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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
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United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now, with today's topic, here is
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James White. Good morning. Welcome to The Dividing Line on a
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Tuesday morning, back from Tampa, Florida, where this is a past weekend.
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I had the great privilege of being involved with the, okay, I'm going to lose a few listeners here.
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That's okay. I'm used to that. The Christmas presentation at Lakeside Community Chapel.
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I did a little teeny tiny part of it, actually. And somebody else did the big, big, big, big part of it.
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But I was asked to do something I've never done before, and that is to write the narration between, it wasn't, you know, back when
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I was at a big, big, big, big church, we did big, big, big, big musicals, you know, that would start months ahead of time, and they had these big old sets, and, you know, 250 voice choir and a full orchestra, and I think we even did the live animal thing once.
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Oh, yeah, we had a donkey once for the Easter one and things like that. But anyway, back then, you'd do sort of this pre -packaged thing, you know.
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You'd have one book, and you'd, from the first song to the last song, sometimes you'd kick one out or something like that, but, you know, it was already pre -made.
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Well, that's not what we did. We took songs from different presentations, and songs weren't a part of a presentation at all.
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And then what Michael Fallon did, who is the music minister there, who also does all of our cruises, so a man of many talents, he said, all right, here's the overarching idea.
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Here's what I want to do. We want to discuss this here and this here and this here.
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And so I took that, and I think I could do better now, now that I've heard the music, you know, and I've seen it and stuff like that, you know.
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It was a tough job, I've got to admit, to look at these, you know, look at the titles and read the words of the music, and then go, all right, we want to, like one of them was discuss the
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Protevangelium here, and, you know, I'm thinking this is a Christmas musical, okay, you know, a 15 -minute excursus off into, you know,
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PL forms in the Hebrew, probably not going to work real well here, you know. We'll turn the lights back on and find everybody laying on the pews asleep, you know, that kind of thing, competing with the snoring.
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So you've got to really have pacing, you've got to have, you know, stuff like that, and believe it or not, I know that this is shocking to many of you, but, and in fact,
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I don't even think that Rich can remember this, nah, I think I was already out of that, but back when I was, well,
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I was president of the Youth Choir, and then I was in a group called Liberation, it took a couple years of voice, did a lot of singing, was actually semi -musical when
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I was younger, and then got in the seminary and didn't have time to really do much beyond that.
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So anyway, I've done this type of presentation before, oh my goodness, what on earth, that sounded like a trombone or something, hitting a really flat thing, and that was my phone on silent.
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Good grief, these things are incredibly loud. My son doesn't realize.
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That's what you get for having a telephone on steroid. Wait a minute, don't you have the same phone
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I have? Well, I got it first. Ah, yes you did. That's my son, wanting to know if I want lunch.
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That's very kind of him, but I need to remind him of what day is which. Would you like to let
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Josh know that I'm a tad bit busy here? What would he bring? Good question, but he'd be bringing it before we're done, so I'm not sure the program would go real well, but anyway, live webcasting folks, that's what it's all about, no pretentious snobbery here.
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Anyways, I knew it had to go quickly, and so, you know, it's easy to write, honestly, it is fairly easy to write a chapter on something like the
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Protevangelium, or Isaiah's prophecies about Christ. That's not that difficult to do.
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I hate to tell you that, that's not that difficult to do. But what is difficult to do is to summarize with clarity that material in anywhere from 45 seconds to a minute and a half.
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There was one narrative I had that was 2 minutes and 20 seconds long. That was probably a little bit too long, but I started preaching there, and you sort of needed to.
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So anyway, so we wrote all that stuff, and I sent it off having no idea how much work had to be done on it, because there was also a video presentation, you know,
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PowerPoint type stuff that had to be timed with it, and oh my goodness, all this stuff, and I hadn't looked real close,
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I had noticed the internal narrations in some of the songs, but I really hadn't looked at them all that much, and I'm sort of getting on the plane going, something tells me
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I need to do those too. And so, thankfully we had practice, and man, those folks really worked hard.
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If you go and you see one of these things, I hope you realize that the people that put that on put hours and hours and hours into that kind of presentation.
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But thankfully Thursday night we got to work through it, and then Saturday, you know, long practices, and long practice
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Sunday afternoon, and it went really, really well, and I really, really enjoyed it. I'll admit,
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I knew that I had a gospel presentation at the end, and it wasn't until Sunday that I even started going, okay, now
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I know what everything looks like, you know, I'm one of those folks, if I, there was no way that I could write that gospel presentation that I was going to give at the end in five to seven minutes, there was no way
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I could write that before I actually had some idea of where we were going to be standing, if you know what
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I mean, at the end of that, in the sense of what would people have just experienced, what would they have heard, what would be the total effect of that.
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Then once I had that idea, once we did the dress rehearsal, then I could go, ah, okay, there's, that's, that's the impact of this, now how do you, you know, bring that home, in essence.
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And I had repeated Matthew 125 a number of times, you should be called Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins, excuse me, that is not, by the way, make them savable.
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But, anyways, I just used
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Matthew 125, and I emphasize the fact that that text, he will save his people from their sins, just clangs,
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I mean, I didn't say this in the presentation, it clangs in the modern ear, because there's something there that the modern ear rejects, and that is that we need to be saved from our sins.
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Sin is a disease, sin is, well, we all do it, so it's really not that big of a deal, etc.,
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etc. It's like missing a, you know, a free throw shot. Yeah, that's, yeah, it's, it's, well, it's missing the mark.
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I saw that preached, remember, I told you that, I saw that preached, to kids. Yeah, isn't that great? Missing the mark, yeah, that's what sin is.
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And everybody does it, in fact, in reality, God's not gonna hold us accountable, we don't need to be saved from missing free throw shots, right?
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So anyway, so I emphasize that first, and then I emphasize the fact that if you're gonna be saved from your sins, there's only one way to be saved from your sins.
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There's not multiple ways, and in fact, to say there's multiple ways is to, in essence, blaspheme
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God for having sent his son to die upon Calvary's tree. So I don't know how long that lasted, maybe
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I'll find out sometime, I was shooting between five and seven minutes, I think I was fairly close in that, in that range.
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And it was odd, from my perspective, because we did this almost totally in the dark, we had those little itty -bitty book light things, and that was the only, that was the only way we could see stuff, was this little,
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I had two of them, and I sort of switched between them and making sure the batteries lasted and stuff, and which they, they did fine.
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And that was all I had on, so really all you could see of me, in fact, it must have looked really funny from a couple of angles, because I had this
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Christmas tree behind me with all white lights, and I'm, you know, bald as a cue ball, so this rather strange outline against the
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Christmas tree, preaching. And I couldn't really see almost anybody, like, except like the first row, there was just a little glow on them, and everything else is just this dark outline out there, it was really, it was really neat.
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But it went really, really well, and really had a great time there, so I thank Mike and Saul for putting up with me once again, and, you know,
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I must, okay, I will take responsibility, I have once again destroyed poor
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Mike's diet, I left those wonderful cinnamon buns that you get from Costco and Price Club, you know,
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I left a whole box of them untouched at Mike's house, and he's going to have to eat them.
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He's, he's going to, he's going to have to eat those, because you can't let them go to waste, because we were all raised to be told that if you, you know, like, left anything on your plate, the children will starve in Africa, and I've never really figured out what the relationship was, but that's what we were told, and since you're told that so many times when you're young, you believe it, and it just becomes a part of your psyche.
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So, anyways, poor Mike's going to have to eat them, and I apologize for that.
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But, had a great time, but you know what? I'm home, and I put my bags away, and the amazing thing is,
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I will not leave on a trip again until two months from this, two months from the day after tomorrow.
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That is shocking. That, I don't know if that has happened for about four years now, that I've actually been here for that length of time without flying somewhere.
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In fact, I became a Silver Elite member on my, my favorite airline, because I, I think, and I know some people do 200 ,000 miles a year, a quarter million miles a year.
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I know, there are people, but I'm an elder in a church, and I don't want to do that, and so, given how hard I try to be at my church as regularly as possible,
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I think I easily topped 50 ,000 miles this year, 50k this year, especially with Italy and the
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United Kingdom. Now, I'm looking forward to my next trip more than I'm looking forward to Christmas, okay? I'm looking forward to, to February in London and Glasgow and Inverness.
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Like, I, it's, that's going to be Christmas for me. I mean, that's just as exciting as can be, but I'm going to enjoy the two months here too.
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That's going to be, that's going to be nice, and that probably means fairly regular dividing lines as well while we're, we're here.
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Just a couple other things. I know I'm sort of rambling, but we have, we, we missed Thursday, so I'm catching you up on stuff, and we, just quick mention of the fact,
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I've mentioned this on the blog, we are moving our offices. We're not moving all that far, but we, we, most of you, not, well, you know,
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I'll take that back. Only some of you, I think, really realize that Alphan Omega Ministries is a very small ministry in the sense that we have always, because of what we do and how we do it, sought to, how do
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I, how do I express this? To do it with, with, to do it right. To do apologetics, you, you need to really be careful about how you do things.
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We have never had much in the way of physical stuff.
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I remember some of the offices we've had in the past, and some of the office furniture that we, we found behind dumpsters and things like that, and, and that's just, you know, that's, that's not a word of complaint.
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That's just that we've, we've made a dime screen before we would let it go. Used to say a penny, but in our economy today, that's sort of irrelevant.
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Doesn't mean much anymore. Yeah, both the buildings that we, we have been in are now dirt lots, and well, now that, another, the building is gone, but now that,
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I think there's a subway pretty much right where our, my office was. No, there's not a, no, they built a, now the one on 16th
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Street, they built a strip mall, a strip thingamabobby whopper there, at least last time I went by, unless they've knocked down the new strip mall, which they just built, so.
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Anyways, be as it may, we've, we've been in some interesting places, and we have really made do with a very, very small, small area.
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I think I was told earlier today that my, my office is, what'd you say, 175 square feet, something like that.
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My entire library is packed into that, and these stacks of books are becoming a little bit on the dangerous side, especially the, the
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Muslim ones here to my left. A little concerned that there's going to come on down.
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So anyways, we have found a, a wonderful opportunity. We've been given a wonderful opportunity to be able to have a little more room, be able to function a little bit more efficiently at a, and again, at a tremendously good rate as far as providing for that space.
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And so we're going to be moving in late January into February. That's, there are going to be costs with that involved, and I've, I've mentioned that on the blog just briefly, that, you know, if you enjoy the dividing line, the, the blog, the materials, the conferences, the debates, et cetera, et cetera, then, you know, remember us if you could.
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We are, are not supported by big, huge corporations or anything like that. You've never heard us having a matching grant.
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You've never gotten a cold call sales solicitation phone call during dinner from anyone from Alpha Omega Ministries.
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If you did, they weren't representing us. I can assure you that. And so we've got that move coming up. It's going to be a lot of work, a lot, a lot, a lot of work.
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And I'm, I don't like moving. I, I, I, when we moved into the house we're in right now, I said, I hope this is zoned for, for a graveyard because you're going to bury me out back.
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I just don't like it. But I recognize sometimes it's, it's sort of like upgrading your computer once in a while.
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You just have to do it. And besides that, Windows works a whole lot better when it's a fresh install too.
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So anyway, that's, that's coming up. A lot of debates coming up in, in the, in the new year on a wide variety of subjects.
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You got to give us one, you got to give us one bit of credit and that is we address a wide range of subjects.
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Now people are always telling me, Hey James, you should write a book on this. Hey James, you should debate this guy. And those, that range is way beyond anything that I could ever, ever even dream of doing.
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I mean, you would not believe the subjects that people have very seriously suggested to me
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I needed to write a book on. Subjects that I'd never even heard of before, to be perfectly honest with you.
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And other subjects that I didn't even think were even semi -relevant to anything. But still, we do cover a pretty wide variety of stuff.
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We just try to tie it all together. For example, on the blog right now, we've got the
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DaVinci Code series going and we're going to be finishing that up because we're, we've worked through the major stuff.
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There's only a few major biblical errors to address yet in the, in the future.
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And so we're going to wrap that up. And a number of people have asked me to address the, the writings of Bart Ehrman.
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His new book, Misquoting Jesus, the story behind who changed the Bible and why he is the, he chairs the
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Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He's, his writings are the favorite sources for Muslim apologists and atheists and others who like to take his discussions of textual criticism.
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And he really does, you know, it's not so much the facts of textual criticism as the spin that he places upon it.
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Now, I'm, I obviously, coming from the position of faith, and it's interesting, he was a graduate of Moody and also went to Wheaton, and it's sad that he then went to Princeton and basically apostatized.
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And that's really his own, his own statement. We're going to listen to some of what he had to say.
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But it's, it's the spin that's placed upon these, these, these variations that is the issue.
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And unfortunately, because Christians are just simply so blessed ignorant of how they got the
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Bible, and it's very difficult to get a lot of evangelicals excited about studying the history of the Bible and, and doing so without automatically attaching all the naturalistic materialism that our world crams into our brains.
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That's where it becomes effective in, in causing people to either lose their faith completely or, or to become silent
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Christians who don't want to say anything because they don't believe the word of God is really accurate and so on and so forth. Well, that's perfectly in line dealing with textual criticism.
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We've been doing that for a long time. I mean, my book on the King James Only controversy came out in 1995, it was written in 1994.
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Good grief, it's a dozen, maybe a dozen years old pretty soon. And so we've always dealt with the textual critical issue.
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And we've always recognized the support in dealing with Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses and others, Bible translation issues primarily with Jehovah's Witnesses, but sometimes like a
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John 1414, you have a textual variant that's relevant to the deity of Christ. That's always been a fundamental part of what we do.
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But we've expanded that to dealing with, you know, with John Dominic Cross in the Jesus Seminar, Bart Ehrman's book, interestingly enough, is put out by Harper San Francisco and, and Harper San Francisco, interestingly enough, is also the one that put out the new
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N .T. Wright book. Um, so that's why they mentioned that he had co -authored a book with Marcus Borg and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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And these are the books that end up on the shelves. And, and so we're dealing with those issues too, but they all tie together because my current studies in Islam, very much of that has to do with textual criticism and transmission of the
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New Testament, constant accusations of the corruption of the text on the part of Islamic apologists.
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And so it all fits together. It all comes together. And the nice thing about that, and I've, I've always thanked the
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Lord for this. I've said many times, I'm very thankful that the Lord did not allow us to be a single issue apologetics organization.
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It's not, not necessarily something wrong with that. I mean, there are certain people, you know, Gerald and Sandra Tanner, their issue is, is
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Mormonism and more power to them and thank God for them and, and so on and so forth. But unfortunately, what you do often see is people becoming imbalanced where that one group that they deal with is hiding behind every bush.
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They're behind all the evils in the world. You've seen people deal with Roman Catholicism. Well, the Vatican's behind everything, uh, deal with Mormonism, Mormonism behind everything, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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And their exegesis of the biblical text becomes imbalanced as a result of that. Since they're always pulling one direction, like a, like in a tug of war, since they're pulling one direction, they can become very imbalanced in their, in their own
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Christian life. They sort of become the negative image of the group they're always fighting with. Well, we've, we've never been able to be in that position.
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We start off dealing with Mormonism, but very quickly people were asking questions about Jehovah's Witnesses and, and, um,
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Roman Catholicism came along right after that. And, and so we've always had to, uh, be very, uh, consistent in what we're saying in the, in the core issues, because if you start getting off center and dealing with one group, then there's other groups over here and they've got imbalanced the other direction.
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And so dealing with more than one of those groups forces you, if you're going to honor truth anyways, to be consistent in what you're saying in all of those areas.
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And I've been very thankful that, that that has been the case, uh, in, in our experience. And, uh, it is difficult to know where to walk the line and in, as far as, uh, what you're going to address and what you're not going to address.
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You know, I was looking at some of the books I've picked up and there's a lot of interest in the emergent church, but you know what?
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I don't have any interest in it. I really don't. And I think the Lord's going to give you an interest in those areas where your skills are going to be.
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There are lots of people to address the emergent church issue. No one needs me to do that. You know, when
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I've published books, I've always tried to not reinvent the wheel. It's, I don't write books just simply to write a book.
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Uh, there's, there's no reason to do that. If there's a really, really, really good book on a subject, I'm not going to write a book on it. Why do that?
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I, you know, there's, there's, there's no reason to, um, and the same thing in dealing with issues like that.
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There's no reason to, uh, to be going into an area where I don't have any particular expertise.
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You know, people ask, what do you think about this? And I just want to say, you know what? In that area, since this is not my area, my, my opinion is, is no more weighty than, than any other well -read layman with a good theological background.
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You know, that's, that's just all there is to it. And, and I, it, that's one of the reasons when people write to me and they ask questions, sometimes
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I don't even answer because I would have to do so much work to even answer it. And I know that the tendency is, well, if I say something that I'm going to be held accountable to that till, till the, till the cows come home.
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In fact, they're going to put all this, this weight upon what I say about that. Even when I'm just giving my opinion on something, it's really not relevant to, uh, uh, you know, to my areas of study.
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And so I, I, I literally have to be careful about my conversations and who I'm having them with.
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If I don't know a person, I'm going to be very hesitant to say a whole lot in a conversation simply because of the fact that, you know, this person may end up putting on a blog someplace and now
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I've got to, you know, defend all that. And I just don't want to. So anyways, that's, um, that's neither here nor there.
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It's just, uh, I'm thankful that we have had the kind of ministry we've had. And, um, of course that has limited our size and, uh, and always will,
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I think, thankfully, uh, because, uh, goodness, I'll tell you, uh, I've seen some very large ministries have some very large problems because they got really a little bit bigger than, uh, than their foundation allowed them to be, shall we say?
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I'm not talking about financially either though. That's one big, huge issue is, uh, I just simply refuse to sit here blathering on about, uh, how if you don't give $66 and 67 cents right now,
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God's going to, God's going to take us off the air and all that kind of garbage that I see all the time on television and here on radio and just, just want to go listen to some pretty classical music or something like that instead of, uh, putting up with that.
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So anyhow, yeah, $6, $6, I think that was, yeah, it's just off of 666, isn't it?
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Uh, I think that was, I forget what the number was, but I saw that. What's her, what's her name? Paula White.
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Is she, she's down in Tampa someplace, isn't she? I keep forgetting to ask a unicle man to take me by, uh, so I can just,
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I can shake the dust off my feet or something. Well, there is no dust in Florida. It's too humid to have dust. But anyway, I guess it doesn't work there, but she's the chick that can talk faster than the
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FedEx dude. Is that, uh, you know, if you know what I mean? And she was, this is just a couple of weeks ago.
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She was somewhere in the Psalms blasting away at some $60 number and how
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God was going to release you. Yes, I remember. Oh man, I was laughing so hard.
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It's so disgusting. She is, she, I tell you, she can out -talk anybody.
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I've, I have never, I mean, the FedEx guy, honestly, and some people don't even remember the
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FedEx commercial, but the guy who talks super fast, he would have a hard time keeping up with that chick. I mean, she is the energizer bunny of false teachers.
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She really is just, just unbelievable. Pure marketing, pure, uh, you know, making money off the gospel and, oh man.
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Anyways, um, she's, she's, she is just something, something else to listen to.
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But that's where I got the 60 some odd dollar thing. I don't remember what it is, maybe 63 something. I don't know.
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But, uh, yeah, Psalm 66, 66. Honestly, I think that's what it was. I think it was, it was based on some biblical passage or something.
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I don't know what it was, but anyhow, uh, I have now burned 25 minutes just yammering away because we didn't have the dividing line last week.
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Um, I did want to address one thing and, and I keep, I haven't mentioned the phones are open at 877 -753 -3341.
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A couple, couple things real quickly here before we take a break. Um, I got, while I was traveling, one of the reasons
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I didn't, I wasn't really yapping a lot in email when I was traveling is when one of the problems you have when you travel is
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I can get mail, but I can't send it unless I go into the net and go into a, you know, like Yahoo thing and cut and paste stuff.
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And it's just, it's just a pain. It really is. So, uh, I receive while I was on the road, a, uh, uh, email from, uh, our, uh,
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Islamic apologist, a friend there, uh, Nadir Ahmed or Ahmed, depending on how you want to pronounce that H.
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And, um, basically to make long story short, uh, once again, he said, and, and we've, we've had some conversations with at least one, uh,
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Muslim who's coming to channel. We've had some very nice conversations with him about theology, but he has said that, that, uh, this gentleman will not come on unless he is, uh, the term he used was heralded or announced and given equal time.
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In other words, uh, he will not call the program to respond to what we've said unless we have a formal debate where he has equal time.
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Now, of course, he's already gotten a tremendous amount of time. We have played his comments in context on this program and then responded to them.
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So he's, he's already been given a tremendous amount of exposure as far as that is concerned to, to make his points.
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And then the problem is we've then demonstrated those points are, are wrong that, that he's factually off base and so on and so forth.
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So everybody knows, you know, uh, you can listen to the last program we did when, uh, when, when, when
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Charles called in, we had a little bit of a discussion about, uh, the, uh, the
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Lutheran situation and the anti -Calvinist Lutherans are out there and so on and so forth that people will be treated fairly when they call this program.
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They don't have to call up and say, okay, I get one minute and then you get one minute and then you, then
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I get 30 seconds, then you get 30 seconds. They don't have to do that. Um, and I have told, uh, this gentleman that if he calls in, he will be allowed to make his points and we will interact.
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And I, I'll be straight up front with you. He has no basis for saying he's not going to call in unless we make it a formal debate because I've been doing this program since the 1980s.
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And anyone who listens to this program and, and takes advantage of the archives and, and, uh, goes back, we'll see that I don't need to play games with someone.
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And if this gentleman calls in, I can let him say all he wants to say and I will prove him wrong because he is wrong.
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I have the facts. He doesn't have the facts and that's why he's not calling. I'll be perfectly upfront with you.
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He's not calling because I told him, I said, look, if you're going to attack the new Testament and you're gonna attack the textual critical foundation of the new
28:37
Testament, you will be challenged on the basis of the original languages. I will have a critical edition of the new
28:43
Testament sitting right in front of me and I will challenge you point by point and you better be prepared to respond. That's why he won't be on is if you're given equal time where you don't have to do interaction.
28:55
And that's why I will not do debates anymore. I made a big mistake last year when
29:01
I didn't check a debate closely enough and find out it had no cross examination. Folks, if you've learned anything from listening to my debates, you've learned this.
29:09
A debate takes place in the cross examination. That's when you find out up until then, all you have are competing presentations.
29:17
And that's all this gentleman wants. He wants competing presentations of the same length. He can make his points and, uh, uh, he doesn't have to respond to what, what is called cross examination.
29:27
Not going to happen. Not on this program. Um, he would be treated fairly. He knows that the facts are in, um, and if he doesn't want to call us just because he doesn't want to call all the rest of these excuses, just have their excuses.
29:40
They don't have any meaning, uh, because a foundation would have to be provided to say, hey, uh, you don't treat people fairly.
29:48
You have a long history of this. No, I don't. Okay. In fact, I have a, I have a history of being on programs where I'm not treated fairly and I live through it.
29:56
You know what? That's just life. You do the best you can. And, um, so, you know, if, uh, if the tables returned,
30:05
I would, uh, certainly be more than happy, uh, to, uh, put myself in the position of answering questions.
30:11
If, uh, someone had given my presentation, the kind of review that had been provided here. So, uh,
30:17
I, I'm just going to say, listen to the comments that I made about 25 minutes into the program. I'm not even going to bother writing a long email.
30:24
I've been over this too many times already. Sir, if you want to call in, the phone lines are open. If you don't want to call in just fine.
30:31
Uh, just there's just one thing, any of your followers who say I'm quote unquote afraid of you, uh, that'll simply be a demonstration, a clear demonstration of the fact that these folks just, um, are not functioning on a type of factual or logical foundation whatsoever.
30:47
That's, that's just all there is to it. Eight, seven, seven, seven, five, three, three, three, four, one. We're going to take a break.
30:52
And then, uh, I've got, uh, some, uh, Bart Airman, uh, material and also some stuff on Calvinism to get to, or your phone calls all depends.
31:00
We'll be right back. It's all works righteousness. You know, the
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33:06
I was sent a link there.
33:32
There is no end of links. I really wonder if there is any. Remember that that TV commercial they had last year,
33:40
I think it was where this guy is sitting there surfing along and all of a sudden it says, warning, you have come to the end of the
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Internet. And I don't think that is really possible any longer. I don't think there is any end of the
33:53
Internet. The Internet is becoming, well, Skynet. We know what's going to happen in the future anyway. And I was sent this link.
34:03
There is no end to the Dave Hunt style of misuse of history.
34:15
It's easy by being selective in your citation and by utilizing standards for other people that you would never, ever, ever want to be applied to you by the generations that will come after you to make
34:31
John Calvin look like a terrible, horrible man. John Calvin was a sinner and he admitted that much.
34:37
John Calvin did not want to take the role that he took in life. He wanted to be a quiet scholar. He wanted to live in a library.
34:43
I understand that kind of desire. He did not want to be in the position he was in.
34:50
But the fear of God was struck in him and he felt it was his duty to do so. And sometimes God's call is such that we minister in an area that is difficult for us and not necessarily easy.
35:03
I was sent this link to this biblelife .org. It's a King James only attack on Calvin and Calvinism.
35:11
And as far as the actual teachings of Calvinism, there's nothing here that's new.
35:20
You've got your standard silliness from Dave Hunt.
35:27
Maybe this is where Dave Hunt got it or there's borrowing from Dave Hunt or there's just simply an entire mountain of stuff out there.
35:36
I don't know. Be that as it may, it's just so sad to see
35:42
Christian people of the past ravaged by individuals who will not even try to be semi -fair as to what they're saying.
35:54
There's all sorts of... And I was asked to respond to this. John Calvin's murder of people who held different doctrinal views.
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It's real easy to get people all excited about that. As long as they're completely ignorant of history.
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The only people that are impressed by this type of stuff is that you are completely ignorant of the entire history of, well, all of history of that period in toto.
36:27
As soon as I start hearing somebody beating the cervidus drum, I just roll my eyes and ask a few basic questions.
36:36
I understand these people are... Well, to be honest with you, they're a little bit like people back in the medieval times that suffered from what's called anachronism.
36:46
Have you ever noticed in a lot of art that there is biblical paintings?
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They'll paint David with medieval castles and wearing the same type of clothing that a medieval king would wear.
37:00
That's because they actually thought that that's the way it was, that things had always been the way they are now. And the sad thing is a lot of evangelicals the same way.
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They think that things have always been the way they are now.
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And so, wow, goodness, if people were being banished and beheaded and burned, oh, anybody who did that today would be a terrible, horrible person, wouldn't even be a
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Christian. So Calvin could not have been a Christian. And they have no idea what it was like to live in a day where if Calvin had stepped over a particular line, he would have been arrested and burned himself.
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They have no idea what it was like to live under sacralism and the state church situation that had developed at that point in time.
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They have no idea. They're clueless. It's this kind of stuff, quite honestly, it preys upon ignorance.
37:55
And you know what? Ignorance, there's a newsflash here. Ignorance is not a
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Christian virtue, okay? There are some people who seem to think that it is. Ignorance is not a
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Christian virtue. Don't be proud of your ignorance. I'm not saying that you have to know everything about everything.
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But what I am saying is that if you're going to be a Christian, you should value truth. And before you consign folks to the pits of hell, you might want to know a little something about the context in which they lived.
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And then when you look at the quote -unquote biblical argumentation in this garbage, it just...
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Well, one thing's for certain. You should know that these are the kind of people who, while they will write this kind of stuff, will never debate it.
38:48
They'll write this kind of stuff, but they won't come on this program. They won't even do a moderated debate.
38:55
Because they would get run over. And the sad thing is, they know it.
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That's why they don't do it. They know it. I cannot understand that. I do not understand how it is that...
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And this was sent to me by the fellow who's worked so hard to arrange a debate next year on the subject of Calvinism and Arminianism.
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And he will tell you the work he had to put in to find anybody. Oh, he talked to lots of folks who will be very brave in their condemnation of Calvinism.
39:28
But they won't stand behind their words when challenged. Oh, yeah.
39:33
He contacted Norm Geisler and Dave Hunt and Tim LaHaye. And he contacted
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Ergin Kainer and Jerry Falwell and the entire staff of Liberty University.
39:47
And all these people that we've talked about. And we've played their sermons on the air.
39:53
And they've got the bully pulpit or the bully keyboard. They're as brave as can be.
39:59
But when it comes to... You know, you said this in print. Would you be willing to defend that against a knowledgeable defender of the other side?
40:07
I got to floss my cat that day. What day was that? Yes, that's the day I'm flossing my cat. And boy,
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I'll tell you, I just don't do stuff like that. No, no, don't do stuff like that. And it's... I don't understand that.
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I just don't understand that. You know, I mean, I've put in print that the folks at the
40:27
Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies at BYU have misrepresented early church history.
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They have misrepresented the teaching of the early church. And I've said that they've misrepresented Irenaeus.
40:38
And I've documented this. And that they've misrepresented the concept of theosis in the early church fathers.
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And I've cited their writings. And when they're alone, people like Dr.
40:56
Peterson will say, I'll debate those guys anytime, anyplace. And then when you call him up to say, well, how about we debate right in your own backyard?
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He doesn't even return the call. He has his wife do it. Nope, not interested. That's just...
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You know, I don't understand that. I can't imagine what it's like to get up and look yourself in the mirror and know that what you say and what you do are two different things.
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I don't understand it. Don't understand it. But that's what goes on.
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So I, you know, I mean, I scroll down this thing. Scripture proves
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John Calvin taught false doctrines. And what are the first two cited? John 12, 32 and 1 Timothy 2, 3.
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You think there's any discussion of this? You think there's any interaction with all the material that's been produced exegetically on these things?
41:47
No, of course not. Of course not. These folks, let's put this, let's put this in perspective.
41:53
These folks have the exact same attitude that most Roman Catholics have. That is, they...
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How many Roman Catholics did you talk to? Well, my priest told me. This used to be more of an attitude back in the 50s and 60s.
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It's not quite as, you know, as prevalent, but it's still very prevalent. How do you know what the
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Bible is? Well, my priest told me. Well, for these folks, it's my pastor told me. And that's as deep as I go.
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I don't question. I don't read anything. I don't... That's why these folks keep losing people to quote unquote Calvinism is that once in a while, one of these folks will go, oh, my pastor said
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X, Y, and Z. Oh, here's a book on that subject. And they all read it. My pastor said John Calvin was a mean, nasty, terrible, horrible person.
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And he was, oh, he was just horrible. Oh, here's a book called The History and Character of Calvinism.
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That'll say what my pastor said. You start reading, you go, whoa. That's... He didn't tell me the whole story.
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He didn't... But see. And all of a sudden, they start going, well, he didn't tell me the whole story there.
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Wow, look at this argumentation. I never thought of this. I never looked at this text this way. And poof, there they go.
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There they go. So anyway, I just, you know, I'm going to write back to the fellow who sent this link to me and say, well, aside from some of the historical stuff, here's what you do.
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If you want to see how utterly ridiculous this biblelife .org
43:21
page... It's biblelife .org slash calvinism .htm. If you want to see how utterly ridiculous this is, it's real simple.
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Read The Potter's Freedom and MacNeil's The History and Character of Calvinism. That's all you need to do. If you read those two books, you will...
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Everything in here will be completely and utterly refuted. There will be nothing left standing. It won't be that this will be a debate.
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It'll be that you'll look at this and go, why would anyone bother to put this on the internet and embarrass themselves in this fashion?
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That's what would happen. That's just all there is to it. So I wanted to mention that thing just briefly.
43:54
We do have a number of phone calls, and time is traveling by here. So let's talk with Brandon real quick.
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Hi, Brandon. How are you? Good. How are you, Dr. White? Doing all right. Good. Hey, I'm calling in about presuppositional apologetics.
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I've never really heard you talk about it much on the show. But I've got to do a paper on apologetics, and I got
44:15
R .C. Sproul and John Gertner's book, Classical Apologetics. And I started reading it a little bit.
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And when I read that, I was like, I really don't want to become a presuppositionalist because it just seems like the way they made it look was that you're anti...
44:36
You know, you don't want to use reason, circular reasoning and stuff like that. And luckily,
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I was able to correspond with Philip Johnson and talk with him a little bit about it.
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But I just wanted to see how you would respond to Sproul's claim that presuppositionalism is fideism and...
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Fideism. Fideism. Pardon me. That's all right. It's Latin. Who cares? The Latins are dead. But God bless
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R .C. Sproul, but that was not one of his best efforts. And I would agree with those who say that very clearly that R .C.
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does not understand, or did not, at least when he wrote that book, did not understand Van Tillen, did not understand what the real issues are.
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I would recommend to you the dialogue and discussion that took place between R .C.
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Sproul and Greg Bonson on that subject. It is available on the internet someplace.
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And I think on that subject, I think the discussion that took place between Bonson and Sproul was a whole lot more enlightening than that book was, because I feel that some of the hard edge to that didn't come from Sproul, because if you listen to Sproul's debate with John MacArthur, for example, on paedo -baptism, that's the way
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Sproul is. He's much more... I don't know. It just seemed like the book had a much harder edge than Sproul would have given to it.
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But if you know the great John Gerstner, and a great man he was, but once he had a viewpoint on something, woe be to you to disagree.
46:13
So I think a lot of that came from that perspective, to be honest with you. And so I would recommend you listen to that dialogue, because, again, that's where you...
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It's like a debate. When you have a debate, you have the cross -examination. You get to hear both sides. When you hear just one side, it's just never as useful as it could be.
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And so I would get the discussion that Bonson and Sproul had, and that'll give you,
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I think, a better idea of what the real issues are. If you've not listened to Greg Bonson's debate with Gordon Stein, I would highly recommend it to you.
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Again, it's available from Covenant Media Foundation. Used to be available online, and then they asked it not be anymore.
46:55
But I've played that in my apologetics classes many, many, many times just to give people a sense.
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And really, when I teach on this subject, what I do is
47:10
I play the Bonson -Stein debate, and then I give you the opposite side. And this isn't completely fair to those, quote -unquote, on the opposite side, because R .C.
47:21
Sproul would take a different perspective than, for example, William Lane Craig. But William Lane Craig would be an example of someone who very much rejects presuppositionalism, especially because of his theological foundation, and as a
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Molinist especially. And I play the opening portion of a debate he did against an atheist called Frank Zindler.
47:39
And I just contrast the Bonson statement that the only way we can have true knowledge is if the
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Christian God exists, because only he can give us the foundation for even making sense out of what we're doing this evening, over against the opening statement of William Lane Craig, where he makes the statement that the majority of the evidence points to the greater probability of the existence of God.
48:08
Right. Now, those are not the same positions. When you say the Christian God must exist, that's completely different than saying, well,
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I think the majority of the data points to the greater probability of the existence of God, not even the
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Christian God. You've got to reason on farther down from there. And so that's why in dealing with atheism and worldview issues,
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I am a presuppositionalist, because you have to deal with the fact that you're not talking to a morally neutral individual.
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When you're talking to the atheist, when you're talking to the person who's suppressing the knowledge of God, that person is not morally neutral, and they're already suppressing
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God's truth. Giving them more facts is only going to cause them to suppress more facts.
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You have to point out the fact they're already suppressing those facts. And I think, unfortunately,
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I'm on dial -up, so this may take me too long to do this, but I think on our, is it the
49:09
Reformed Theology portion or the apologetics portion? Oh yeah, someone in the channel just said,
49:15
Craig wiped the floor with Zindler, even so. But that was because Frank Zindler has nothing meaningful to say, period, end of discussion.
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I mean, I had dialogued with him many, many moons ago, and yeah, that wouldn't be difficult at all.
49:28
Let me see here. Let's see. Well, while you're looking for that, can
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I have time to ask another question? Sure, go ahead. To me,
49:41
I don't know, Philip Johnson, when I emailed him, he said, I asked him the question, you know, where do theistic proofs fit in?
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I said, you know, are they necessarily bad? And he said that he didn't think that theistic proofs were necessarily all bad.
49:55
He said that he thought the ontological argument, although it was kind of rough to understand, he said he thought that was a good argument.
50:05
What's your position on the theistic proofs? Well, theistic proofs are not in and of themselves bad. The problem is that, and I don't see it online,
50:16
I'm not sure why, we had a little tract, and maybe it's because it's in tract form, on atheism that I think you'd find to be useful.
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I thought we had put it online, but I'm not seeing it at this point in time, so I'm not sure where it went, if it was ever there, anything along those lines.
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Anyway, see, the problem is, depending on which theistic proof you're looking at, there is no theistic proof that is easy to explain on any meaningful level.
50:51
I mean, you can sort of briefly summarize the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, no one can briefly summarize the ontological argument.
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But the fact of the matter is, you have to work hard at it to really understand it.
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I personally, when I teach apologetics, I've been teaching apologetics during the summers at Golden Gate Seminary for a number of years now, and one of the things
51:14
I do when I do that is I go through the, when I had time to, now it's become more of an online class, a little bit more difficult to do, but I would go through a certain form of the cosmological argument, and I would discuss what's called
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PSR, the principle of sufficient reason. And there's an excellent article on that in, oh, if my door was closed,
51:36
I'd actually be able to see the textbook, but I can't see it from here. So it's a green textbook used in a lot of philosophic classes, and excellent article on the fact that the cosmological argument, in this person's opinion, would be a valid argument if PSR, the principle of sufficient reason, is true.
51:55
And it's interesting, in the Bonson -Stein debate, one of the things that Bonson harped on more than once was the fact that Stein could only give you brute force arguments.
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He would basically say, well, the world is that way, because that's just that way. And he said, that's irrational.
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Well, interestingly enough, that's dependent upon PSR. And I see that as a connection between the transcendental argument that Bonson uses and the cosmological argument.
52:21
I see a connection at that point that's interesting. But for me, quite honestly, it seems to me, from my theological perspective, that the theistic proofs could only be used as a tool, shall we say, by the
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Holy Spirit of God in a heart in which he's already working. And from my experience, those things are primarily more beneficial for the saints than they are for someone who's still in rebellion.
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And so I don't think there's anything wrong in studying them. I've burned out a few brain cells, especially trying to follow all the permutations of the ontological argument.
52:57
I have some Tylenol and Advil sitting around for that one. But I think that was a worthwhile thing.
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But let's face it, there's a lot of folks that we know in most of our churches that they're not gonna be able to follow that.
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They are not going to be able to follow that. It's not going to do them any good at all. And so that's where I come from on that, is that I see use for it.
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I see use for all of the facts, all arguments, as long as they are grounded in truth, are going to be arguments for God's existence.
53:32
I don't have any problem with that. And I don't think presuppositionalism does. The problem that presuppositionalism has is treating man as if he is in a position to actually even judge the existence of God in the first place and treating man as if he is a morally neutral agent.
53:48
That's where I go, I don't see how a Reformed person can really do that. In fact, as I read
53:54
Calvin's Institutes, as I read especially book one, I see a real consistency between what
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Calvin said there, especially about knowledge and what knowledge comes first and things like that. I see a real consistency between what he was saying and what
54:11
Van Til and Bonson have said as well. That's why I was a little disappointed in Classical Apologetics.
54:19
I've used that book in my classes, but I used it, you'd read that book and then you'd also read something from Bonson like Always Ready.
54:30
Van Til was a horrible writer. English was not his original language, that was not his mother tongue.
54:36
And the fact of the matter is, it's hard to read Van Til. I've had people just give up trying to read
54:41
Van Til. And I think it's one of the problems. He's been popularized by others, and I think in a better way that can help you to understand it.
54:49
So that's where I come down on all that. All right, thank you very, very much. That helps me out a lot.
54:55
All right, thanks a lot. Thanks for calling. All right, let's move on here.
55:01
It's all Indiana Day on the program. Let's talk to Chris also. Hi, Chris. Hi, James.
55:07
Merry Christmas. How are you doing, sir? Fine, thanks. Back on Reformation Day, I got invited to a
55:15
Presbyterian church and, believe it or not, got to hear a Lutheran scholar who was a professor at the
55:20
University of South Dakota. And the guy was so much over my head, even though I asked him a question,
55:27
I really didn't get the gist of his answer. And it had to do with, I asked him if Luther believed in baptismal regeneration.
55:37
And since Dave Hunt recently published in his newsletter the thing about Calvin believing in infant baptism being efficacious to salvation, the whole false gospel thing,
55:52
I wanted to know, did both Luther and Calvin believe in a form of baptismal regeneration?
56:00
And if that's true, I know, like in my church, we teach completely, I mean it's completely faith alone, and that baptism is an act of obedience.
56:10
So if these men believe that, I mean, because I mean, I know now in our time,
56:18
I mean, if you believe that you add baptism to the gospel, that there's a question there of whether you're saved.
56:25
Well, a couple things. First of all, Luther and Calvin are very different on many, many issues.
56:32
And though I think Calvin was considerably more willing to bend and to try to find a middle road, especially in dealing with Luther, the big problem in dealing with Luther, and I just looked out the clock and realized
56:46
I have like 60 seconds, the big problem with dealing with Luther is asking which Luther are we talking about? Are we talking about Luther in 1517,
56:52
Luther in 1520, 1521, or especially Luther after 1525? There's no question you can argue that and prove that Luther held a baptismal regeneration, which is why
57:02
I developed the concept of infantile faith. How can you hold the proclamation of justification by faith alone together with infant baptism?
57:09
How do you put those two things together? Trying to hold together the cultural significance of infant baptism with the theology was an issue for both
57:21
Calvin and Luther, and they came to different conclusions as to how to do that very type of thing.
57:28
And so Luther developed this concept of infantile faith so he could hold those two types of things together.
57:34
And one of the reasons you see so many differences of opinion amongst Lutherans today, and some that can be quite simply crypto -Catholics as far as their theology goes, is because Luther is not a consistent source of material to draw from to build a theology.
57:51
I mean, that's just all there is to it. That's exactly what this guy said. He said Luther was much more inconsistent.
57:57
Calvin was very much more consistent than Luther ever thought about being. Right, Luther was an emotional theologian and Calvin was an intellectual theologian.
58:05
I'm not saying that Calvin was simply cold and things like that. What I'm saying is he was much more systematized than Luther was.
58:12
And so as a result, I think you've got some major inconsistencies at Luther at that point, and that's where you get this issue of baptism.
58:19
Unfortunately, I'm all out of time. I'd love to say some more about that. Maybe we can talk about it another time. Thank you very much,
58:25
Chris, for your call. And I'm glad I said the same thing he did. Thanks for listening to the program today. Lots of interesting subjects came up.
58:31
We will be back, Lord willing, on Thursday afternoon. Finally get back to that Bart Ehrman clip we had queued up.
58:39
And your phone calls here on The Dividing Line. See you then. God bless. A -O -M -I -N -DOT -O -R -G
59:48
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