January 24, 2006

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Around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded
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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 afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line, unusual time on a
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Tuesday, but that's what you got to be able to do to be able to work on getting our move taken care of and so on and so forth.
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So hey, not only that, but coming up in a couple weeks, two weeks from tomorrow,
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I head out to the United Kingdom and we're going to try to do two Dividing Lines while I'm over in the
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UK, one from London, the all British one, and one from Scotland even.
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So we're going to work those out and that's going to be fun. And I'm even going to try to get some of my hosts to join me on the phone.
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Last time, I couldn't get Raja to get on the phone with me, but maybe this time we can and we can talk about what's going on over there in jolly good
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England in the United Kingdom. And also, I can't quite announce this yet as far as, okay, you can make your plans, but it looks like hopefully this week we will be able to announce the date on the
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Shabir Ali debate we are going for right now. We are going for May 6th.
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So if you've been just waiting and hoping and so on and so forth, that's what we're shooting for is
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May 6th. Now, we're still working on the possibility of as many as two debates in March, which you're going,
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March? That's right around the corner. Yeah, it's going to be the type of thing that's only going to get audio recorded.
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I can guarantee you that. But the possibility of one on atheism and one on homosexuality at Auburn University.
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And we're just really struggling with dates right now. And I'm not the one that's having the struggle with the dates, actually.
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We're trying to get two different debates in a particular weekend and track down the people to do it.
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That's the hard part. So we may have to move it from the weekend. We're looking at doing it and so on and so forth, but we'll try to let you know as soon as we have information on that.
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I realize it's going to be pretty short notice. And of course, we need to start reminding you because I'm just not going to be able to accept from anybody what
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I've heard so many times over the past number of years. And that is, oh, I wish
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I had known about the conference and the cruise.
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And it's like, how can you not know? It's you know, it's over there on the right hand side of the web page there.
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Early November. It's right. Go to AOMEN .org. If you're listening to this, you've already gone to AOMEN .org. Look over there.
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You get to see the pretty picture of the ship and then me and John Shelby Spong and the topic of the debate, the conference.
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You know, I've been dealing a lot with various wider apologetic terms on the on the blog of late and especially attacks on the fundamental foundational levels of the faith.
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We're not talking just differing interpretations of scripture. We're talking about attacks upon whether there can be scripture, whether the
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Bible is scripture, whether the Bible has been transmitted correctly, etc. It's a foundational things that that even if you're if your interest is not in, for example,
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Islam. If you're understanding the issues of the transmission of the text of scripture and textual criticism and and the interpretation of John 2028, for example,
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I was just remoted into my laptop working on the next blog article on that while we were getting ready for the program.
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Those things help you in a much wider range of apologetic encounter today.
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And we all have to be prepared for those things. Now, the day was you could sort of go, well, you know, I'm I'm going to really focus upon Mormonism or something like that.
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Well, OK, but you need to realize that with the advent of the
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Internet and and the information society, all sorts of lies and false teachings are able to be disseminated at an incredible rate of speed.
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And if you want to be prepared, then you've you've got to be prepared. And hopefully most you've been seeing the interconnectedness of false teaching that people will borrow from the same sources to make up their attacks upon the
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Christian faith, even though their their goal is actually very different in what they're trying to accomplish than the person they're quoting from, for example, whatever it might be.
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And that that is significant as well. What that means is you want to be at our conference in November.
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You want to make plans to be there. Obviously, we would love to have as many of you as possible come on the cruise with us.
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It's going to be a wonderful time of teaching. We've got great people who are going with us. The subject is pulpit crimes.
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And certainly I hope you are. Again, I know that this is an apologetically minded group of people listening to this program.
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And hopefully you have all come to realize that when evangelicalism closes its mouth about all of the foolishness that goes on in the name of evangelicalism, that it it tremendously limits and not so much limits, but but damages the ground upon which we seek to stand in providing a response to individuals as well.
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We have been at least consistent in providing a response to those who abuse the
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Bible and engage in in poor teaching. But we're pretty much we're not alone in that.
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But we certainly are in the majority in doing that kind of thing. And so public crimes, the abuse of the pulpit, the preaching ministry of the church, that means by which
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God has ordained that we are to be conformed to the image of Christ. That ordinary means, as we frequently refer to them, will be the subject of our conference.
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And of course, the debate on the subject of homosexuality will get to the very foundations of whether God has spoken in the word of God or whether he has not.
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That will be one of the primary issues that we will be addressing, of course, in the debate. And so hope that you are you are thinking ahead to that.
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It is not that far away. I know that for a lot of folks, the holidays are just over.
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It's amazing that we're already over halfway through the first month. We're over a 24th the way through the year.
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Time goes quickly, but don't put it off. You need to you need to look into the conference and the crews.
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Let folks know that that's something you're thinking about doing. Get the details, et cetera, et cetera. Make sure you do that at AOMIN .org.
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Now, I announced on the blog that I was going to present to you a section from Anthony Buzzard.
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He is a British born theologian, an anti -trinitarian.
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He's written a book called The Trinity, Christianity's Self -Inflicted Wound. And I remember. Corresponding with him briefly,
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I looked up the correspondence, I believe it was in May of 2000. And the issue that he is going to address in this segment
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I'm about to play came up in that correspondence. And I responded to it then. He even toward the end of this invites people to contact him about it.
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But I really doubt that's going to stop him from presenting this, even though it is, I think, a tremendously fallacious argument.
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Here he is going to this is from his discussion, not not debate, but discussion with Shabir Ali, both of whom, of course, denied the deity of Christ.
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So it's just sort of a great heresy fest along those lines. But here in his presentation, he presents what he considers a very simple, clear, compelling argument that demonstrates conclusively that the
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Bible does not teach the deity of Christ. He said Jesus Christ was not God.
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And I play this for you so that you can hear and understand exactly what this kind of presentation sounds like.
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And my my request for you would be, how would you respond to this presentation?
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If you run into a person who maybe hears this and picks it up, they take some notes. And now you've gotten into conversation and here comes this presentation.
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How would you respond? Now, you know that I'm going to respond to it, but I'd like to find out how you would respond at first to this presentation.
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Anthony buzzard from his opening presentation in his dialogue slash debate, more of a dialogue with Shabir Ali demonstrating why the
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Bible cannot possibly be teaching the deity of Christ. Let's let's see it. Listen, it was an astonishingly easy way to show to your evangelical friends that you may be in dialogue with.
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And let's have lots of discussion of these issues because it's very enlightening at a university. This is a remarkable that the
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Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament. As you know, we Christians believe the Hebrew Bible points to Jesus.
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There's a very simple way of showing that he could not be God himself. It's simply this.
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I refer to another Psalm now, Psalm 110, verse one, if you were looking up the Bible, you can see this.
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The 110th Psalm, verse one, this verse is quoted in the New Testament more often than any other verse from the
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Old Testament. It's kind of a slogan. It's a master text that the apostles keep teaching with because it sums up the whole picture of salvation so well.
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I'll just quote that Psalm to you. It says, the Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.
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Now the Lord there, the first one is Yahweh. There are two Lords in that Psalm. Did you hear that? The Lord says to my
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Lord, David is writing. The Lord, Yahweh, as a prophetess says to my
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Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. There are two
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Lords there. The first Lord in the Hebrew language is Yahweh, the one God that we've discussed, very simply.
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But who's his second Lord? Many Christians will tell you that because Jesus is called
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Lord, that's a complete non -sequitur. It doesn't follow at all.
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It's completely false. The word Lord there in the Hebrew language, that second Lord, where we have the
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Lord said to my Lord, that phrase, my Lord, is represented in Hebrew by this word,
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Adoni. The Hebrew word for Lord may be some parallels in the
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Cognate language, Arabic, I don't know. Adon is Lord. Adoni, my
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Lord. Now there's another word other than Yahweh.
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There are several words for God, obviously. You can call God Lord also, and they do in the Old Testament 449 times.
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They refer to God as Lord. But when they refer to God as the Lord, they call him
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Adonai. When you hear your Jewish friends praying, you hear
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Adonai, Adonai, Adonai. This is, I hear the music of the Arabic when I hear your prayers.
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Listen to a Jewish prayer and you hear Adonai. You may know that the Jews do not like to pronounce the divine name
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Yahweh. They avoid that. So you don't push that on them. You sometimes use respect for their prayer language and refer to God as Adonai.
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This Lord is the Lord God. But this Lord is not the Lord God. He's the
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Lord Messiah. So right in the Hebrew Bible, there is a clear distinction drawn between the
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Lord God, Adonai, and the Lord who is not God, but a human superior, or very occasionally an angelic superior.
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You could address Gabriel as Adonai. Sarah can address her husband as Adonai, my
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Lord. You could address the king as Adonai. Now this is very easy for me being from Britain, because in the
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House of Lords in our governmental system, you do have hereditary peers, Lords who sit in the government of the
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House of Lords. Then they would be addressed as my Lord. Will my Lord do so and so?
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That doesn't mean the person is God, you see. So that distinction between Adonai and Adonai is simply a distinction in vowel points, incidentally.
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You may know that Hebrew is written as consonants. That's an aleph, that's a daleth, that's a nun. But the vowels are written underneath to give the vowel sounds.
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And when the learned Masoretic Jewish people who preserved the text of the
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Old Testament put the vowels in, they were minute in their care and the precision with which they distinguished between God and man, just as you do.
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And they carefully wrote Adonai when it referred to the Lord God, 449 times in the
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Hebrew Bible. On the other hand when they wrote Adonii, with a dot down here, giving the sounds the hirek in Hebrew, possibly some cognates in the
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Arabic language, I don't know. The vowel sound ii here, carefully distinguishing it from Adonai, only a difference of one vowel notice.
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They didn't see that vowel and that vowel, but a critical difference to distinguish between God and man.
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Now you see then that this psalm 110, referring to Messiah as Adonai, and I forgot to mention that 195 times in the
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Old Testament, lords of different levels are so addressed. The Lord Husband, the
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Lord King, the Lord Prophet, and so on. The Lord Angel, addressed here.
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This is the word that in Psalm 110 refers to the Messiah. So every
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Jew would recognize immediately that the Messiah is not God. You see, if this was
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Yahweh speaking to Adonai, the universe would collapse. You'd have
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God speaking to God. That's a sheer impossibility. So I want to tell you that here, lying on the surface of the
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Hebrew Bible is a very simple way to demonstrate to your friends that the Messiah is not
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God according to the Hebrew Bible, but the Lord Messiah. And you can run that on your computer software if you're interested in that kind of thing, and check that out.
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If you find any mistakes, write to me immediately. But I check that very carefully, and some scholars are astonished at this very, very simple thing.
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It's not very difficult. Hello. There we go.
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Someone fell asleep listening to that long, wonderful presentation there. Yes, it is quite simple, but how to answer it?
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Yes, I put, I guess, the entire audience to sleep, but at least the person on the other side of the wall. Even though I typed up, you know, morning, here it comes, turn up the microphone.
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But, you know, you get what you pay for. Anyways, we try to look professional around here, but it doesn't work very often.
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Anyhow, yes, it is pretty simple to respond to this, but how would you do so?
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I've sort of been watching some of the people in channel, and I've seen actually a couple of mistakes made in channel.
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Psalm 110 .5 is actually not parallel at that point. So, you know, that's actually
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Adonai there in 110 .5. So, how do you respond? I mean, let's face it, most folks don't know a whole lot about Hebrew.
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They don't know a whole lot about the difference between Adonai and Adonii, especially since it's just the difference between a
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Heraklion and a Comet's yod in the way that it appears in the
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Hebrew text. So, how do you respond to that? What is your response?
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Well, I sort of threw that out there to see if anyone did want to respond to that. And irony of ironies, we got a phone call in the middle of my playing this.
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Something tells me that this individual is cheating just a little bit because I have a feeling he's heard this debate or discussion before for some odd strange reason.
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But we'll go ahead and take a shot at it here because our good friend
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Sam Schmoon is on the line. Hi, Sam. How are you doing? Hey, Dr. Weiner. How are you? Now, why in the world would you be listening to a discussion between Anthony Buzzard and Shabbir Ali?
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I just was bored. I had nothing better to do. Had nothing better to do that day, huh? Yeah, exactly. So, you survived this multi -hour
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Arianism fest. So, you've heard this before, huh?
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I actually have his book, Anthony Buzzard's book. Right. I bought it a while back when
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I was interacting with Joe's witnesses. Believe it or not, some of the Staffordites, the followers of Greg Stafford, referenced that book.
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Yeah, I've got the book as well. He actually contacted me. I don't remember what caused that, but he was the one who actually wrote to me in 2000.
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Do you happen to know, by the way, just off the top of your head? Because I didn't see any information. But when was the
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Ali -Buzzard discussion? If I recall correctly, it was 2001. Ah, so it was after...
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Well, that's interesting. If that was 2001, I had already explained to him the error in this presentation.
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So, that's quite interesting. Well, you're far more qualified to discuss it.
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You were just throwing out the challenge. Yeah, sure. I had written a piece on Psalm 110.
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It's on the website. I've actually cheated because I've had some help with excellent response to anti -Jewish missionaries.
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This is another argument used by, for example, Rabbi Tovia Singer. And he accuses the
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Trinitarians of distorting Psalm 110. So, Michael Brown addressed it, and there's several ways
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I think you could go about it. But as Buzzard mentioned, if I recall, that originally in the
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Hebrew manuscripts there were no vowel markings. Right. Consonants. So that the spelling would be identical, number one.
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Adonai and Adonai would be spelled identically in the Hebrew manuscripts. That's it, first of all. But moreover, even if he argues that the word
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Adonai refers to a human king, and I heard him also say it could be used in reference to Gabriel, am
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I correct? He did say that. Well, isn't the Messiah fully human? I mean, how does this undermine the position regarding the deity of the
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Messiah? I mean, if it speaks to his humanity, that's one thing. But the deity of Christ is not dependent on one single text of Scripture.
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And there's nothing in the word in and of itself to rule out the fact that he can also be deity, because he is fully humanity.
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Yeah, he had tried to make the argument that Trinitarians say, well, since the word
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Lord here is used of Jesus, then he must be God. And I just would like to put my hand up and go, who exactly makes that argument?
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Where is that argument made? I sort of found that a little bit odd, but yes.
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So I don't think that holds any water. No. I mean, we derive the deity of Christ from what the fullness of the
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Scriptures say. Right. But moreover, it is not true that the word Adonai is only used for humans. I mean, he says
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Gabriel, but more importantly, it's used for the angel of Yahweh. And in the context where the angel of Yahweh is
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God's representative, his agent, and he speaks with the authority of God, more specifically, for example, in Judges 6, verse 15, there,
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Gideon calls the angel of Yahweh, whom the author of the Scriptures identifies as Yahweh, and he addresses him as Adonai.
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Yeah, I'm looking at that right now. Judges 6, verse 15. Let me correct myself. Verse 13.
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I apologize. Yeah, I was looking at verse 13 here as well. I'm sorry. I apologize. Right. So Judges 6, verse 13, here's the angel of Yahweh, who's identified as Yahweh because he's
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Yahweh's agent. He's called Adonai. He is. And then you have in Joshua 5, verse 14, where the captain of the
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Lord's army, the commander of the Lord's army, is called Adonai by Joshua, and he says to him to remove his sandals because he's standing on holy ground, which is an echo of Exodus 3 .5,
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and in that chapter, Exodus 3, it's again the angel of Yahweh who appears speaking on behalf of Yahweh as Yahweh.
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Right. So I really don't think this argument holds much weight. No. No. No, it doesn't on any level. Of course, my response to him initially was to say, all you've proven in this entire segment is that the
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Masoretic Jewish scribes, a minimum of six centuries to nine centuries after the time of Christ, did not believe in the deity of Christ.
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Congratulations. That was never really much of an argument to begin with because you're exactly right.
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If you look at the consonantal text, Adonai and Adonai are identical to one another, and the vowel pointing here, the difference between a comets and a herrick, that was not in existence when the
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New Testament writers were quoting from the Old Testament scriptures.
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There's no difference, of course, in the Greek septuagint between those forms. And so to accuse them of dissimulation and dishonesty on the basis of something that did not even exist in their writing makes absolutely no sense at all.
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And I point this out to him, all you've proven is that the Jewish scribes, and we know, by the way, without any question, that very early on the
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Jews were well aware of the use by Christians of Psalm 110, so much so, and so much so was their utilization of the
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Greek septuagint, that they came up with their own Greek translations so as to stop using the
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Greek septuagint amongst the Jews. And so for centuries before the vowel points became standardized in Hebrew text, and hence you'd have a difference between Adonai and Adonai, for centuries before that there was already this conflict between Jews and Christians over this text, and so to discover that once the vowel pointing is done, the
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Jews vowel point this to indicate from their perspective at least a created being of some sort, rather than just simply an absolute reference to Jehovah, is about as shocking as discovering that people in Seattle are happy about the
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Super Bowl. I mean, come on, this is not exactly, and I know you're from Chicago, and our condolences to you, but anyway.
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I could cry now. That's okay. But that's all he proved, and his response to me, because I looked up our correspondence, was to be amazed that I would question the inspiration of the
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Hebrew text. And I said, I'm not questioning the inspiration of the Hebrew text, I am questioning the assertion that what was added after the writing of the
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Hebrew text is itself inspired, in fact, that which was written by unbelieving
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Jews many centuries after Christ is somehow inspired. And so he didn't really have any response to that.
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And so when I heard this again as I was writing this past week, listening to his conversation with Shabir Ali, and that was the same one where Ali was doing the
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Raymond Brown five levels of John VI stuff, which is just enough to make me go, ah!
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But did you hear the beginning of the program? I think I caught you at the beginning that you're going to debate May 6th.
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It looks like the date will be May 6th. I'm planning on coming up. Absolutely. You better be.
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I want him to just look at me and pass out or something. Come on now. That's what I want to happen. I was actually hoping for a little bodyguard action there from the big man.
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Well, yeah, we'll be there, because you're going to mop the floor with him. I look forward to it. I'm going to have some popcorn ready.
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Some popcorn. I'm not sure they're going to allow any food inside the place there. Anyway, I was listening to all of that, and then when this came along, here's an excellent example.
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It's presented with such ease that sadly, and I'm sure you've run into this for so many people today,
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Evangelicals included, as long as someone sounds confident when they're saying it, you will invest weight in it, even though it's actually a completely ridiculous argument and presentation.
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Yeah, I agree. And it's the same thing with the five layers of John stuff that we were listening to.
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That's one of the reasons you have to keep pushing the dates farther and farther back on these
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Gospels, is you've got to have all this time for this development and this evolution and all the rest of this stuff.
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And the problem is, if John was going through all this evolution, I wonder how Ignatius ended up picking up all this stuff about the deity of Christ within one decade of that period of time.
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I mean, why did these people have cell phones, and they were sending this stuff to each other? I mean, come on, they didn't have the ability to communicate with the speed we do.
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So it's just amazing to me. So anyhow, but yes, you're exactly right, and you didn't tell folks what website they could go to see your stuff on.
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Yeah, well, it's the Answering Islam website. It's answering -islam .org. Since I got the expert on the line,
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I don't want to hold you up. I know you may have other readers. I wanted your comments on this, because Buzzard presupposes the inspiration of the
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New Testament. And when Jesus applies it, his argument is essentially this. If Christ is the son of David, how can he be his
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Lord? Which means that if he's merely a son of David, then he wouldn't be his Lord. My question is then, what kind of being must
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Messiah be to be David's Lord? If he's just his son, then he couldn't be his
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Lord. That's how I see Christ arguing his case. But at the same time, we know that angels, according to the
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New Testament, are subject to those who are elect. So we're greater than angels. So in light of Jesus' exegesis, wouldn't this also point in the direction that Christ is using the text in a way to demonstrate that he's much more than human, more than just merely a son of David?
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Well, at the very least, you can prove, I think rather conclusively, that the reason that they don't even offer a response to the
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Lord at that point, because it's not that that had not been discussed previously.
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And there were various Jewish speculations as to exactly the nature of the
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Messiah in light of these things. And again, there were all sorts of different perspectives and viewpoints that were being discussed in the intertestamental period.
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But the fact of the matter is, their understanding of a military -delivering type
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Messiah simply wasn't big enough to fit into the obvious answer to the question, and that is, how can he be his
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Lord? There has to be an ontological superiority, maybe even a temporal superiority, in the sense of a temporal pre -existence.
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I mean, there's all sorts of things you can see there that I think you have to wonder if that wasn't something that was discussed on the road to Emmaus, for example, and things along those lines.
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But yeah, I think that that's there, and it then fits in with Jesus' own statements concerning the
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Father testifying to him, and the works that he does testifying to him. And that's something that you yourself brought out in John 5.
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How can any mere creature say that he can do anything he sees the Father doing? That's just amazing.
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It is, it is. People always think that's their ace in the hole, but in reality it turns around to bite them when they use it that way.
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Hey, brother, thanks for calling in. Thank you, Dr. Wright, and Lord bless you richly in your ministry. All right, God bless. Bye -bye. 877 -753 -3341.
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We have two callers on hold. We'll get to you right after our break, and anyone else who wants to jump online, 877 -753 -3341, we'll be right back.
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What is Dr. Norman Geisler warning the Christian community about in his book, Chosen But Free? A New Cult?
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Secularism? False Prophecy Scenarios? No, Dr. Geisler is sounding the alarm about a system of beliefs commonly called
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Calvinism. He insists that this belief system is theologically inconsistent, philosophically insufficient, and morally repugnant.
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In his book, The Potters' Freedom, James White replies to Dr. Geisler, but The Potters' Freedom is much more than just a reply.
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It is a defense of the very principles upon which the Protestant Reformation was founded. Indeed, it is a defense of the very gospel itself.
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In a style that both scholars and laymen alike can appreciate, James White masterfully counters the evidence against so -called extreme
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Calvinism, defines what the Reformed faith actually is, and concludes that the gospel preached by the
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Reformers is the very one taught in the pages of Scripture. The Potters' Freedom, a defense of the
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Reformation and a rebuttal to Norman Geisler's Chosen But Free. You'll find it in the Reformed Theology section of our bookstore at aomen .org.
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This portion of the dividing line has been made possible by the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. The Apostle Paul spoke of the importance of solemnly testifying of the gospel of the grace of God.
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The proclamation of God's truth is the most important element of his worship in his church. The elders and people of the
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Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church invite you to worship with them this coming Lord's Day. The morning
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Bible study begins at 9 .30 a .m. and the worship service is at 10 .45. Evening services are at 6 .30
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p .m. on Sunday and the Wednesday night prayer meeting is at 7. The Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church is located at 3805
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North 12th Street in Phoenix. You can call for further information at 602 -26 -GRACE.
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If you're unable to attend, you can still participate with your computer and real audio at prbc .org
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where the ministry extends around the world through the archives of sermons and Bible study lessons available 24 hours a day.
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Under the guise of tolerance, modern culture grants alternative lifestyle status to homosexuality.
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Even more disturbing, some within the church attempt to revise and distort Christian teaching on this behavior.
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In their book, The Same -Sex Controversy, James White and Jeff Neal write for all who want to better understand the
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Bible's teaching on the subject, explaining and defending the foundational Bible passages that deal with homosexuality, including
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Genesis, Leviticus, and Romans. Expanding on these scriptures, they refute the revisionist arguments including the claim that Christians today need not adhere to the law.
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In a straightforward and loving manner, they appeal to those caught up in a homosexual lifestyle to repent and to return to God's plan for His people.
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The Same -Sex Controversy, Defending and Clarifying the Bible's Message about Homosexuality.
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Get your copy in the bookstore at aomin .org. And welcome back to The Dividing Line.
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We continue with our phone calls. Andrew, how are you today? Fine, how are you? Doing good.
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Great. I had a question concerning two different translations of Acts 2, 37 -40 that I'm seeing here, one from the
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NASB and one from the ESV. Okay. The NASB says,
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When they heard this, they were pierced through the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brethren, what shall we do?
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Peter said to them, Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the
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Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off.
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As many as the Lord our God will call to Himself. And with many other words, he solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them, saying,
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Be saved from this perverse generation. The ESV has the difference at 39.
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Verse 39, it says, For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off.
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Everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Himself instead of will call. And then it says,
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And with many other words, he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, Save yourselves from this crooked generation.
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That is, save yourselves rather than be saved. And it seems like the NASB, with the text there, the way it's translated, would kind of support the doctrines of grace more clearly, both in terms of having will call to Himself in verse 39 rather than calls, and also be saved from this perverse generation instead of save yourselves from this crooked generation.
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Is there a textual reason to prefer one reading to the other that you know of?
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Well, I'm looking at it here, and the difference is between how you translate a subjunctive, in essence, and the
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New American Standard is more literal. As many as the Lord our God will call to Himself.
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Calls to Himself is a little more periphrastic. It's a little more dynamic, shall we say, functional rather than formal equivalency.
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I don't think that there's any difference as to the meaning, because, again, everyone whom the
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Lord our God calls to Himself is still a specific group to whom this promise is made.
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This promise is made to you and your children, that is, the Jews, and to all who are far off, that's the
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Gentiles. And who of the Jews and the Gentiles is this referring to? Everyone whom the
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Lord our God calls to Himself, or as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself. I suppose someone could look at the New American Standard and say, well, as many as the
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Lord our God will call to Himself, that means that He's still determining who
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He's going to do that for, and it's not a fixed number, for example. So, I mean, there's always a way to find some way around reading the text clearly.
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I really don't see a whole lot of a difference as far as the meaning is concerned. The New American Standard is more literal.
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The ESV is a little bit more smooth at that point. And then, save yourselves, that's...
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That seems to be more significant to me, that He says, be saved rather than save yourselves.
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Well, again, there isn't literally a yourselves.
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It's an aorist imperative, and so it's just literally save from this perverse or crooked generation.
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Crooked is actually more literal there than a perverse generation. But it's really, we don't have a...
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It's trying to say save, and so one translation says be saved, and then the other one is save yourselves.
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Again, to try to read into that particular term something in regards to the entirety of salvation and the idea that, well, you can somehow bring about self -salvation, you can save yourself, and that kind of thing would be really missing the whole point of the teaching of salvation just based upon how you translate an exhortation, and the exhortation was save yourselves from this wicked generation.
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So, both of them are appropriate translations. There's nothing that...
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I'm not going to say the ESV is wrong or the NASV is wrong, but there are underlying issues in just regards to how you would render a imperative, for example, something along those lines.
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That's really the only difference between them. I don't think it's reflecting a particular bias on the part of the translations themselves.
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Okay. There's no way for me to know what you just said without speaking some of the new languages.
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Yeah. I mean, yeah. As far as that goes, yeah, that is something that's sort of important, but I'm just simply saying they're dealing with a particular construction that's understandable in the
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Greek, but it's not always necessarily easy to render it into English, and both those renderings are acceptable renderings of that.
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I don't think that someone was trying to come up with a deep theological reason for why they were differentiating between them.
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Okay. And I just want to say, you're going to be at our church, Grace Heritage Church. They announced it last week on March 1st through 5th, and I just want to say we're praying.
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Maybe. Well, the reason I say maybe is because we're having trouble getting people lined up at the university for debates on that weekend.
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Oh, yeah. So they're all saying they're gone that weekend, but the weekend after, all of a sudden they're available, so we need to be somewhat flexible there.
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So we may be moving it back a week just simply so we can arrange the debates we want to have. So, yeah, we'll be there, though.
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Okay. Looking forward to it. Either way, thank you. Okay. Thanks a lot. All right. God bless. Bye -bye. 877 -753 -3341.
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I'm not sure what in the world I did to BibleWorks here. What did I do to BibleWorks? I closed, I somehow closed a window that's supposed to be there all the time on BibleWorks, and that's really messing things up.
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Why is it doing that? I don't know. That's very odd.
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Well, we will have to work on that. You know, an entire window that you're used to utilizing and dropping stuff into disappears.
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That's bothersome. Anyways, let's continue with our phone calls. Let me see here. Let's try to take them in order here.
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Let's talk with Tony. Hi, Tony. Hey, how are you doing, Dr. White? Doing good. Hey, I just wanted to say that God bless you for your ministry.
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I don't agree with everything you teach, but, man, I tell you what, you really are helping out the body of Christ.
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All righty. I have a couple of questions for you about, I guess, Jehovah's Witnesses and some passages in Scripture, and you have to forgive me,
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I don't have a Bible in front of me. Whenever you're talking with one about the usage of seos, or I don't know what it is in Hebrew, but the passage,
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Thy throne, O God, I guess that is in reference to an earthly king, and how would you get them to see that, yes, kings are called
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God, but in a different sense, and the other question is, when you're witnessing to a
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Jehovah's Witness, would you convince them of the Trinity first, or try to bring them to faith in Christ first?
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Well, in response to the first part of the question, Hebrews 1 .8 is a citation from the
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Old Testament, and the question is, what is the initial fulfillment of the passage in the
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Psalms, and then what is the greater fulfillment as cited in the
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New Testament? And what I do with that is I follow the context of Hebrews 1 .8.
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It says, But of the Son, he says, your throne, O God, is forever and ever. And they say that that should be translated,
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God is your throne. I do not argue with them about that at first. Instead, what I do is I simply continue on through the rest of the citation to verse 10, and demonstrate that even the
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New World Translation says, And, this is still speaking of the Son, you, Lord, laid the foundations of the earth in the beginning, etc.,
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etc. And then demonstrate that Hebrews 1 .10 -12 is a citation of Psalm 102, 25 -27.
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That's specifically about Jehovah, and that gets you past all of the argumentation about, well,
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God, a God, Moses was made to be a God in this situation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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And the problem with that then becoming, well, what kind of a
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God is he, and all the rest of this kind of stuff that goes along with that.
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And so, it has been well said, if Jesus is Jehovah, then all the other arguments about the use of Theos are irrelevant.
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For a Jehovah's Witness, if you can demonstrate that Jesus is Jehovah, all the rest of that stuff has now become a non -issue.
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And that's why you'll notice that in, for example, the Stafford debate, I was really, really surprised that Mr.
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Stafford did not provide a significantly stronger attempt at responding to the
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Hebrews 1 .10 and the John 12 material, because there was nothing new there.
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I had gone through the exact same material in the Forgotten Trinity, and he didn't even seem to have read the end notes, the materials that I inserted in that book that specifically responded to him and demonstrated that his excuses about that didn't hold water.
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And so, I was a little surprised by that. So, I try to get around it, basically, in talking with Jehovah's Witnesses, in the most effective way for dealing with Jehovah's Witnesses.
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And that is, since they have such a high regard for the name Yahweh, the demonstration that the New Testament writers would apply that name in unique circumstances that can only be fulfilled in Christ, that's the best way around that.
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As to what order, well, you know, the
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Jehovah's Witness that is clinging to the belief that Jesus Christ is merely Michael the
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Archangel, is not a person who is in a position as yet to understand the central core of the
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Gospel in regards to the Atonement and how salvation itself has been provided. And so, it's not so much just arguing, quote -unquote,
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Trinitarian terminology or something like that. It is introducing them to a
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Savior that is sufficient enough to actually save. Let me ask you this specifically. What if they believe in the deity of Christ?
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They just don't have the Trinity all worked out in their mind. What do you mean by not worked out?
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You know, there's a difference between having a perfect working knowledge of the Trinity, which no one does, and having a sufficient recognition of the fact there's only one true
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God and the deity of Christ and the person of the Holy Spirit and the differentiation between the words being and person.
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I mean, that's pretty basic. That's probably, sadly, more than a lot of Christians actually end up having in their entire lives in many evangelical churches today.
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Well, I guess in your book you talk a little bit about, sadly, sometimes evangelical teachers and preachers fall into some sort of a modalistic teaching.
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Right. And I see that all the time. Oh yeah, so do I. So, I guess maybe the direct question would be, well, maybe even more so a
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Oneness Pentecostal who's completely legalistic. If you, you know, would you have to convince them of the
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Trinity or bring them into faith alone in Christ? Yeah, well, what
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Christ are they believing in, though? That's the problem. I mean, again, for the Oneness Pentecostal, they don't believe the
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Son's an eternal person. The Son was created at His birth in Bethlehem, and the
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Son is actually two persons. The eternal Father indwelling the physical Son. As John said, if you don't have the
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Son, you don't have the Father either. He didn't leave that as an option because the object of faith has to be the
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God of Scripture, not something else. So, in any of those situations, my concern,
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I would say that there needs to be a higher standard for the person coming out of heresy than for the person who's never embraced it.
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And the reason I say that is, obviously, if they have already embraced error, they've embraced a false gospel in both situations, both groups, you'd have someone embracing a false gospel.
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You obviously are more concerned about a person who has embraced a false gospel coming to really understand the essence of the true gospel, in the same way if they've been worshiping a false god, the essence of who the true god is, than someone who really has no concept of what any of those things are, and there's no resistance on their part whatsoever to the acceptance of the truth itself.
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Now, that doesn't mean we don't challenge every believer to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, as we should be doing, but I would be more concerned on a pastoral level of making sure there is an understanding on the part of the person who is a quote -unquote former heretic, if we want to use those rather blunt terms, than someone who has never professed error, and are not struggling with issues in regards to biblical authority, or who
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God is, and things like that. So, in those situations especially, I would want to make sure they understand exactly what it is that is being said, and exactly what it is that they are agreeing to in their confession of faith, probably more so than somebody else who really doesn't know what those issues are all about, because those are the folks that can then come in, and years down the road cause some real major headaches inside the fellowship of the church if there hasn't been real oversight on the part of the elders themselves.
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But, of course, the problem we're facing here is oversight from the elders in regards to teaching almost anywhere anymore is a rather odd thing, and that speaks more to the issue of evangelicalism as a whole.
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So, yeah, I would make sure that the object of their faith in regards to who this
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God is, that they understand exactly why it's important to recognize that what they once believed about this directly impacts the gospel itself, and I think that leads rather easily into a discussion with the
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Oneness Pentecostal, for example, of the grace of God, and things like that, and dealing with their soteriological heresies as well.
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I just don't think you can cut the gospel up into various pieces and say, ah, we'll just deal with soteriology now, and just sort of hope theology takes care of itself later on down the road.
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I think that's a real pathway to some real problems down the road.
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Let me ask you real quick, in a more practical sense, with so much of evangelical teaching, and even some
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Reformed, I've heard some of this, when they're given the gospel, when they're teaching, and it comes out modalistic,
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I guess I hate to ask you a question, you're not God, but are those people saved that come to faith in Christ in a quote -unquote
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Orthodox church where the pastor maybe has slipped into some moralistic teaching, but is a Trinitarian?
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Does that make sense, because I know a lot of people... Yeah, I understand. I don't think that God is limited by the perfection of the presentation.
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I mean, God can draw a straight line with a crooked stick, and God is not honored by those people who are sloppy in their thinking and sloppy in their presentation.
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They're not showing a proper honor for God's truth and God's word. There's no question about that. But does that mean that the resultant beliefs are aberrant?
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Well, we can't know, first of all. And secondly, that's going to show itself over time.
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I mean, I really hesitate to even look at that.
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I mean, I'm already sitting in a situation where I'm having to, just on a level of honesty, say, look,
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I think a lot of what we see as churchianity in the United States is made up of people who are false professors.
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There's no reality to their faith. There's no reality to... They look like the world and smell like the world and act like the world and think like the world.
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And I think if persecution were ever to break out, you'd see very, very quickly how much is real and how much isn't real.
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So it could simply be the fact that, you know, my fellow elder has really picked up on a phrase recently, and he's used it in a number of sermons, what you win them with is what you win them to.
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And so if your methodologies are meant to make sinners feel comfortable in their sin, then that's what you're going to end up with in your church.
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Now, at the same time, what you're talking about is more a specific misunderstanding on the part of the preacher, and I think that would be more of an issue of misunderstanding rather than purposeful proclamation.
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I think there's a difference between a person who uses bad analogies that slip into modalism and a convinced modalist who's denying the truth.
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Sure. And I would just say that there's a lot of people who were... You ask an average Christian, Dr. Watt, and they're going to give you...
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Oh, I know. Some of these people are dedicated. I'm doing my best to help them out, you know.
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So I guess, again, my question would be, do I need to try to bring them to faith in Christ, or could they have been saved under a confused
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Trinitarian doctrine, and God's just leading them into further truth? Is that a possibility? Well, you know, you have to ask each individual person themselves what they're believing in and what their ultimate faith is placed in.
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And if it's placed in cultic teaching and false teaching, then you deal with that, and you've got to move on from there.
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Hey, I've still got a bunch of calls to get to real quick. Yeah, I'm sorry. Take care. Hey, no, thanks. Thanks for calling. God bless. Bye -bye. All right, let's real quick get here to Adam.
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Hi, Adam. How are you doing? Hey, Dr. Watt. Hi. I had a question. I know you're doing a
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Bart Ehrman series, and I had a question about something he said. P -52, he said a lot of scholars think because it's so early that that pushes the dating of the
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Gospel of John back into the 1st century because of the fact that it's so early, and it was found in Egypt.
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And he said that he wishes, he said, and I know I'm in a minority, but he said that most people, he said, won't agree with me, but he said,
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I wish more people would reject that argument, because he said we don't know where the manuscripts came from.
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So he said it could have been made in Asia around A .D. 125, and then 50, 100 years later brought to Egypt.
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So therefore the dating wouldn't be in the 1st century. It could still have been made around A .D.
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110 or something like that. Well, I don't think that the specific location of the finding of that small fragment is necessarily central to the identification of its dating.
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The fact of the matter is wherever it would be found, orthography and the materials with which it would be found would be the primary consideration as to the dating of it.
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And the fact that you have clearly a codex -style copying of the
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Gospel of John dating to 125 to 150, that in and of itself pushes the
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Gospel of John back into the 1st century and makes that a very, very early copy.
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If it's not a copy of the original, it's within one or two generations in regards to that.
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And, of course, the codex style, very unusual in that day and age, something Christians themselves may have even originated, interestingly enough.
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But that is, it's written on both sides of the papyrus, and it is on a type of writing material that would indicate that, as we see in church history, the
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Christian church was not a rich people. They were under persecution, so on and so forth. So I did not hear that comment that he made.
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Where did he make that comment? It was on, I think, the History Channel, and they were talking about the transmission of the biblical text.
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And he was just simply trying to, you know, because a lot of popular Christian apologists will use that argument, hey, we found this manuscript miles away from where it was written, and they didn't have to believe it.
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I've never heard that. Honestly, I've never. It amazes me, the types of arguments that are said to be real common.
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I've never heard that. I've never heard anyone say that the reason that P52 is so early is because it's found miles away from where it would have been copied.
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I've never heard that. Not P52, the Gospel of John. Okay, all right. It's been in the travels so far. Yeah, even then.
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You know, I mean, I don't know where John was written. I mean, I know where the tradition of John being written in Ephesus in Asia Minor is, but I've never based anything on an argument that says, well, since it was written up here and this is found down there.
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No, I would have to agree that if that's the argument being made, I don't know that I would buy that at all.
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That's not the point. The point is that you have an extremely early copying of a canonical form
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Gospel of John long before you have any evidence of Matthew, Mark, or Luke, which is fascinating in light of current scholarly speculations due to their writing.
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But the point is this Gospel, it has this super high Christology, is being reproduced within basically the first generation of people after the time of the apostles.
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And that's just not what you're going to have. Look at the Gnostic Gospels. That's not happening with them.
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They're not being reproduced in that fashion. So, you know, that's where there's this massive difference between the canonical
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Gospels and these other quote -unquote Gospels from the second half of the second century that just never, ever, ever command the kind of belief and faith that the canonical
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Gospels did. But I hear what someone's saying if they're using that argument. That's just not an argument I've ever heard or would repeat myself.
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Okay? All right, hey, thanks for calling. God bless. Bye -bye. Real quick, we've got only one minute.
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Hello, Mike. Yes, did people in the Old Testament understand that God is a trinity?
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Not in the form that you have the Doctrine of the Trinity. I mean, clearly, as B .B.
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Warfield says, and I agree with him, the revelation of the Doctrine of the Trinity is in the incarnation of the
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Son and the coming of the Holy Spirit. And so while the Old Testament presents all sorts of passages the
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New Testament picks up on to demonstrate fulfillment, the idea that there was a full -blown
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Doctrine of the Trinity in the Old Testament in the sense of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, those weren't even terms that would be utilized within those contexts in the
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Old Testament at all. The idea that the Messiah, however, his goings forth are from of old, even from everlasting, that he is called the
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Aviad, the Father of Eternity, the El Gabor, the Mighty God, the Virgin Birth, things like that that are fulfilled, yes, but the relationship of those things, that awaits
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New Testament fulfillment as far as that's concerned. Hey, sorry, we're out of time. We at least got the last call on the air.
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Didn't get back to the Airman interview and things like that, but only 48 hours till Thursday. And we'll be back then, and hopefully you'll be there.
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Thanks for listening. God bless. Bye -bye. ...been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.
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If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602, or write us at P .O.
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Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the
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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.