More Calls Today: Calvinism, Catholicism, Greek, Exegesis

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us.

Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence. Our host is Dr. James White, Director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an Elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation.

If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602. Or toll free across the United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is James White.

Well, good afternoon. Welcome to The Dividing Line, 4 o 'clock in the Mountain West. Beautiful day, about 70 degrees outside, breezy. Gorgeous here in Phoenix, Arizona, which truly is a desert metropolis that is growing and growing.

And it's a whole lot bigger when I moved here, that's for sure. I was looking at my itinerary for England and was very pleasantly surprised at what I saw. I was sharing this in channel. And there was some really cool stuff that I'm going to get a chance to be doing and seeing and things like that.

But there is an opportunity. I'm going to do the best I can. There is an opportunity. Where did that go? I think I put it in my personal stuff here and it's not there. Hmm, where did it go? Oh, there it is.

I wonder why it didn't show up before. Anyways, it looks like the possibility would be that we could do a British Dividing Line. Yes, straight from the great world of that place there. And it would be Thursday night.

Why is Word flashing at me? Why doesn't it open the thing? Okay, you hit that and then you hit that again. Okay, Word cannot open the existing... And there's nothing behind that. Fine, then don't open the existing...

Open something else.

Alright.

It looks like Thursday the 24th. Thursday the 24th. Now what that's going to mean, I'll try to communicate. I hopefully will be able to get online once in a while while I'm over there. And send Rich some emails or something.

I speak at Days Lane Baptist in Kent at 7 .30 on Thursday evening. And it's approximately one hour drive from where I'll be staying. And so the question is, when we get back in time, what time is it right now?

It is midnight, isn't it? Or is it 11? I think it's 11 right now. Yeah, I think it's 11. I think we're seven hours different than England right now. Where's Jason when you need him? I think it's 11 o 'clock there.

And so I don't care if we have to start an hour later. I don't care if we have to start a half hour later.

Well, what's Greenwich Mean Time? Isn't that London?

I think London is. Yeah, I think London is. So it would be seven hours.

Seven hours difference.

Yeah.

And no, that will not be...

Then again, it's Arizona. It could be eight.

It could be anything.

Or six.

It could be half an hour difference. You don't know.

I don't think that's going to happen.

Well, I do remember back in high school that the hippy-dippy weatherman on SNL, the clocks would be like half an hour apart from each other and stuff, and that was part of the funny thing. Of course, I didn't watch it, but I heard about it.

Anyway, no, people are saying, well, you're going to be jet lagged. No, this is the 24th. I leave the next day.

Okay.

So I will have just been in Inverness and Glasgow and Edinburgh. So I will have my Scottish accent given. So it would be perfect. In fact, Roger even says here, it looks like the only possible night to do Dividing Line, if we can get back home in time, at least you'll be able to use your newly acquired Scottish accent as well.

I'm looking forward to that. And if you're wondering, it is going to be Friday the 18th. So two weeks from tomorrow, I will be in the British Museum and the British Library and Lord willing, casting my LASIK-corrected eyes upon Codex Sinaiticus, which all of you have been learning a lot about on the blog of late.

And tomorrow morning's blog article, by the way, was sort of fun to write. It's nice and short, but the resource that our Muslim friends were using did a face plant. Just completely blew it. Just not even close to being right.

It was fun. But anyways, that will be posting tomorrow morning. So I'm hopefully going to be looking at that on Friday the 18th. That's the day after I arrive. I leave Wednesday the 16th. What time is this?

2 o 'clock my time?

No.

Yes.

2 o 'clock my time. Arrive London Heathrow at 10 a .m. the next morning. That's going to be fun. But anyway, hey, it's the first time over there for me. I know for other folks it's a yawner, but not for me.

I'm looking forward to it. I will be preaching Sunday morning the 20th in the morning, but then in the evening I will be visiting the services at Metropolitan Tabernacles, Spurgeon's Church, for their evening service.

So I'll hopefully be able to report on that as well, as well as getting a chance to bum around Edinburgh and Glasgow and places like that. So it's going to be enjoyable. I am not looking past, however, the fact that next week I will be in the St. Louis area for the Founders Conference speaking on the sufficiency of scriptures for various things, for life and godliness, for missions and evangelism, for preaching.

And the information for that is on the website as well. So 877 -753 -3341. While I'm going over there, Roger sent me a book. My host over there, I'll probably drag him on the phone or something. Ah, there's Jace there.

Hey, you showed up. It's 11 .07 p .m., that's what I thought.

That's just not fair because I won't be able to understand any of you.

It won't matter. I doubt Roger would sound a whole lot different than Jace. Jace does, and we can understand him. It's just they put the accent on the wrong syllable all the time.

That's all. Emphasis. Emphasis. Emphasis.

Whatever it is.

Emphasis.

Emphasis, yes. Had Jace been there the whole time or did he just join? I wasn't watching that. Ah, see, he joined at 4 .06 our time. Hi, Jace. Jace, am I going to be seeing you anytime while I'm there?

You should let me know one way or the other. Anyway, he sent me a book, and it's sort of a, it's not just King James only, but it's a critical assessment of the NIV, ESV, and New King James version, three modern versions.

And I'm going to be getting to have dinner with the author at some point, and that'll be fun. And I just happened to just pop it open and was just looking, sort of looking down the page at various and sundry things.

And I ran across the following, and, of course, I pulled the piece of paper out, and good luck finding exactly what it was I was looking at now. Ah, there it is, page 77. Jace says he hopes so. Okay, good.

They've got a real nice PDF of the Saturday presentations I'm doing on Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses and all sorts of stuff. I hope I don't violate some hate crimes or something while I'm over there, end up in jail or something.

But on page 77 of this book, it reads, in 2 John 7, the authorized version renders the verse, for many deceivers are entered into the world who confess not that Jesus Christ has come to flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.

However, the New King James version, and this is the section where the New King James is being criticized, the New King James version once again follows the Westcott and Hort text by rendering the first part of the verse, for many deceivers have gone out into the world.

This suggests that these deceivers were in the church and have now left it. The AV's received text tells us that these deceivers are entered into the world with the danger they may either attract people out of a church which preaches the true gospel, or they will seek to come into sound churches.

They come in like wolves in sheep's clothing, having a form of godliness yet denying the truth of Christ coming to flesh, and they enter with the hope of turning the whole congregation away from the truth.

We see once again the strange reluctance of the NKJV to stick to the received text. Now, when you hear something like that, you go, well, why is there a difference? And for those of you who have the BibleWorks program, I didn't check this out.

It may preexist 6 .0, I'm not certain. It may preexist 6 .0. I'm using 6 .0 and I didn't exactly go back to look for 5 .0 or whatever else to see if it's there. But if you have BibleWorks 6 .0, what you can do with this, this is a little bit of a techie talk here, but Dale Valente in Channel pointed this out to me.

There's lots of stuff this program can do that I haven't even taken the time to find out about actually. It has the ability to compare texts. And I have mine set up to compare the Nessie Olin 27th edition with the Stephanus text.

And I can also have it compare it with other texts and show the variations between all of them. So I can have it with the Robinson Pierpont majority text if you're a majority text advocate and you don't want to use a TR version or something like that, which makes sense.

And if you look at 2 John 1 .7, the New American Standard says, For many deceivers have gone out into the world. And that's because the Nessie Olin text, upon which the NIV and the NASV and basically all modern translations and TOTO are based, the verb that is used there, that's the proper translation, ex aethon, is to go out into.

Now, interestingly enough, the Stephanus text, which would reflect in the vast majority of instances, the text that underlies the King James Version, it's not exactly. In fact, what I should have instead of having Stephanus, I just realized this, I'll fix that later, is I should have Scrivener because Scrivener's Greek text actually reflects the textual choices made by the King James Version.

It's actually a Greek text based upon English translation, which is rather odd and interesting. But anyway, in 2 John 1 .7, I have a question on John 6 .44 -45. Well, it's 8 .7 .7 .7 .5 .3 .3 .3 .4 .1.

We've talked about those verses a few times before, so why don't you give us a call. 2 John 1 .7 in Stephanus has ice aethon, and that's ice instead of X, and so best translated as entered into the world.

Now, I would point out immediately that part of the objection raised by the author here is theological, based upon an interpretation of what the differences between X aethon and ice aethon would be. The problem is ice aethon, going into the world, could also mean that they were in the church and now they've gone into the world.

It doesn't exclude the understanding of 2 John 1 .7 in the Nessie-Alan text. It does not exclude the idea that these people were in the church and now they've gone into the world. It's just simply that the use of X aethon tells you that they had been in the church and now they've gone into the world.

Now, as soon as I read this explanation, I was sort of caught off guard a little bit by it because I said, well, wait a minute. Okay, there's a textual variant there, so you look at the textual variant, but isn't it very obvious that the same false teachers who deny that Jesus Christ has come into the world are referred to by the same writer in 1 John 2 .19?

They went out from us, but they were not really of us, for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us, but they went out, so it might be shown they were all not of us. The false teachers who deny Jesus coming to flesh, the antichrists, in 1 John 2, were people who came out of the church.

And when you look at the verb that's used there, it's the same one in both the Anesthioland or in the received text. Well, there's a slight difference in the spelling, but it's the same verb. And so the King James says they went out in 1 John 2 .19, so if it's proper in 1 John 2 .19, why wouldn't it be proper in 2 John 1 .7?

That's just one of the many issues. It sounds good when you first read it, but then when you start thinking about it, you go, well, wait a minute, that's assuming something, and of course when we've talked about the King James only position and things like that in the past, that's been something we keep coming back to, is that fundamentally you start with the supremacy of the King James Version and or the received text, and then you move from there.

So that's one of the really useful things about having Bible works. Now, of course, I will admit, if you don't read the original language, having various words in the Greek highlighted for you may not do a lot for you, but you can just put your cursor over it and you can see at least the differences in the meanings of the roots, and if you've got at least a little facility with the language, you can tell exactly what the variants are between them as well, which is really useful.

Now, I had told Hermeneutica, which produces Bible works, a long, long time ago, a number of years ago, we talked with Hermeneutica about various things, and they asked me, what would you like to see in Bible works?

And I said, well, I realize that I'm probably in a small group here, but what would make Bible works just awesome, in my opinion, was if you had the textual data, the variations, the materials found at the bottom of the page in either the UBS 4 or more likely the Nestle Allen 27, and that was accessible on screen.

That would just be awesome. Well, they didn't do that. They did put out Tischendorf, because Tischendorf is obviously beyond copyright. They did put out, in Bible works, you can look at an older, still valuable, but older textual apparatus.

It's available in Bible works 6 .0. If you've not looked for that yet and you have it, you might want to look for it. You can pull that up, and you can see some of the variants there. But the folks that have now grabbed that, as I've mentioned on my blog in the past, is the Libronics folks, Logos folks, and, in fact, it's actually a German thing, the Stuttgart Electronic Study Bible, which has the textual data in it.

Of course, you can also find the proto version of the Nestle Allen 28 edition online with textual data attached to it as well. So that's all out there as well. I just realized I lost my bookmark to that when I redid Windows.

I lost all my bookmarks. I forgot to export my bookmarks file, and I'm not happy about that, but I'm sure I can track that down again. So lots of material here as I've been going through the citation of Bentley's book about Sinaiticus being used by Muslims.

It's been very useful to be able to... I've had all this stuff in written form, but I'm having to try to transfer it into a blog format. And the best way to do that is to have it electronically so you can cut and paste and do things like that instead of having to figure out all the different font issues and all that kind of stuff.

So it's been very, very, very useful. 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number, and that is the phone number that Tim called up on the left coast in Oregon. Hi, Tim.

How are you doing?

Doing pretty good.

Okay.

You just reminded me of that guy in the Volkswagen commercial where they accelerate through the corner and he starts laughing, and then just sort of laughs really insanely, and it's sort of scary.

Yeah, that's me.

Okay.

I've been talking to a Lutheran pastor about John 6, 44 and 45.

Well, that's probably one of your first mistakes,.

But go ahead.

Basically, he's trying to make a distinction between the hymn that is drawn and the hymn that comes in those verses and the hymn that has heard from the Father and the hymn that is learned, basically saying that, you know, we have a choice.

Not everyone that is drawn will come, even though everyone will be drawn, apparently, or something like that. Now, obviously, in verse 37 of John 6, context would say that doesn't really hold water, but is there any grammatical reason why the hymn would be the same?

Well, actually, the proper question would be is there any grammatical reason, and specifically in verse 44, why the hymn would be different? I mean, when you have a sentence, and I'll try to put it in as close to Greek word order.

As possible here,.

No one is able to come to me except the Father, the one who sent me, draws him, and I will raise him on the last day. So there are exactly two words, kago, which is a contraction putting together kai and ego, and on a steso, I will raise up, though there's two words between the two occurrences of auton, which is the word hymn.

Now, the hymn, here's the question, maybe this is the one way, because honestly, I'm really, really seriously putting together material as best I can to put together a book on John 6 with all the exegetical information I can gather on it.

And so I have tried to do with John 6 what I do with debates. And when I go into a debate, one of the things I try to do is, as I make my presentation, I want to think like my opponent, and I want to go, all right, what would be the best possible response that could possibly be raised against what I'm saying?

What's the best case that my opponent could ever throw at me here? And so I'm doing the same thing with John 6. And I look at this and I go, all right, if I was going to try to say that the hymn who was raised up on the last day is a different hymn than the one who's drawn by the father, how could I come up with this?

And the only thing I've heard was someone said once, well, look, the hymn that is drawn is the hymn that comes, because it says no one is able to come to me unless the father draws him. And so the hymn there is the coming hymn.

And so there could be drawn hymns and coming hymns, but they're not necessarily the same one.

That's what the guy is saying.

That is the only way I can come up with something. There's one problem with that. To come, in John 6 .44, is an infinitive. And it is a part of a phrase, no one is able. Dunati is followed by an infinitive.

Not able to do something. Now, auton is an accusative masculine singular. And it is not the object of elthine. It's not the object of come. It's the object of halcuse. That is, to draw. And so though I came up with the exact same argument that your friend did, I also immediately realized grammatically it's not possible.

The one who is drawn is the one who is raised up. The connection between the two is unquestionable. There's nothing in the text whatsoever that would allow you to go, well, that and doesn't really mean and, because Jesus is saying, the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up.

He's talking about the two things that the Father and the Son are going to do. And is that not what we're seeing all the way through John 6? Is this cooperation, this unity, which is flowing straight out of John 5, between the Father and the Son.

And what the Father does in drawing him, the result of the Father's drawing is twofold. Yes, that person does come. There's no question. Everyone who is drawn will come. That's clearly what John 6 is saying, John 6, 37.

But beyond that, then the Son has the exact same audience in his raising up on the last day, which also is seen in John 6, 38 and 39. So there's perfect unity in Jesus' teaching. And all of these attempts made by the various denominations of men to get around what the text says end up creating disharmony and confusion, and you end up having people saying, well, you know, maybe just no one really knows what the text is saying and all the rest of this kind of stuff, which just isn't the case.

There is simply nothing in the grammar that would give any indication. There's nothing in the context. There's nothing in the syntax that would give any indication that there is a different audience of view, that the hymn changes at all.

And what we need to keep in mind is when someone says it is different, they need to show us. And in my experience, the only way anyone ever tries to show us the difference between those two words is by leaving this text.

They have to go someplace else. They have to jump to John 12. They have to go somewhere, and they have to abandon this text and say, well, it has to be different because of my traditional understanding of this thing over there.

See?

And that's how it happens all the time.

Sweet. All righty.

Very good.

Okay.

Well, thanks for calling in on that.

Thank you, sir.

Have a good day.

God bless. Bye-bye.

877 -753 -3341 is the phone number that Tim had called. And again, I just want to emphasize that there is, interestingly enough, I just, and because I had BibleWorks up and had that thing going, in fact, I'm going to pull this up just to see if, just to double-check here before I say something here.

Let's put Scrivener up here.

All right.

There's Scrivener. And okay. If you're looking at the King James or the Textus Receptus, you're going to have three words between the two autons, not two, because in the King James and the, not the King James, it's an English translation, but in the Textus Receptus that underlies the King James, kago, which is a crassus, it is a putting together of two words, kai and ago, is spelled as two separate words, kai and ago.

Just thought I'd mention that in case you're sitting there trying to count the words and going, no, it doesn't look like, you know, how I've got it set up. So just so that you are aware of that, I don't want anyone to be going, no, you're wrong about that.

Well, I was looking at the Nestle-Aland text at that point, and I was not looking at the Scrivener or the Stephanus text at that particular point in time. 877 -753 -3341. Let's put Adam on the air. Adam's up in Wisconsin.

Hi, Adam.

Hi, how are you doing, Dr. White?

Doing good.

I had a real quick site that you had a radio discussion with Jerry Thornburg.

Yes.

And I was wondering about that, especially considering what the Thornburgs, considering what happened in 2000 with them.

I have no idea. I have no earthly idea who Jerry Thornburg is. He was filling in for Al on Tim and Al in the mornings on KJSL in St. Louis.

You don't remember what happened with Dan Korner?

I remember Dan Korner. I don't know. Is this the guy that had a program on at midnight or something?

Yes, this was the guy who said that. You had said that Dan Korner had some extenuating circumstances and couldn't make it.

I don't invest brain cells in remembering people like that, so I made no connection there. I knew a Bob Thornburg in Phoenix once, but I didn't figure it was the same guy. Actually, Tim is passing on a message to him that I would be happy to come on his program, which is now, I think, at 8 o 'clock on Thursday nights.

And I suggested that we just actually stick with the text of scripture for once because I threw John 6, John 8, 1 John 5, 1. I was throwing all these texts at him, and he wasn't able to answer any of those.

And then I kept catching him misciting. He, again, miscited Matthew 23, 37. He did the exact same thing that Dave Hunt did in skipping from, I would have drawn you, but you were not willing, and he skipped your children part.

And he eventually just stopped responding. He just became quiet and didn't say anything during the last, I don't know, seven or eight minutes of the program. I was just responding to the callers at that point, and probably because I assume he got to be on the next hour anyways and rip and shred and do whatever he wanted to do without having to worry about having someone who could keep him honest at that point.

So I have no clue who the guy is. All I know is when I came in yesterday morning, someone came in channel and said, this Jerry Thornburg guy is ripping on Calvinism. Here's what he's saying. So he was on the hour before me.

I mean, this is what's really funny. Dave Hunt's on the day before, because Dave Hunt will not go on the air with me. Dave Hunt has forced Multnomah Publishers in trying to promote debating Calvinism to talk radio stations into doing two separate interviews because he will not come on with me.

And if I were Dave Hunt, and I had made the mistakes Dave Hunt has made, and I had absolutely obliterated my credibility the way Dave Hunt has, I wouldn't want to be on with anybody either. So he will only come on alone.

So he's on the day before. They don't have any special guests in to oppose him. He gets to do, say whatever he wants, the day before. Then when I come on the next day, the hour before, they've got an anti-Calvinist in to poison the well.

While I'm on, he gets to go back and forth with me and take half of my time, and then he's on for an hour after I'm gone. Talk about, you think you folks are a little bit nervous about something?

No kidding.

Talk about a little fairness here. That's unbelievable. It was something else. No, I hadn't remembered the name. I knew that his, I thought his wife had called in.

Right, his wife called in to the program.

Yeah, well, let's just say both times they have very well helped me to make my points for me. That's just the only way to put it. I appreciate them helping along the way. I appreciate that information.

Paul, you had a question about Roman Catholicism. I'm going to put you on hold, because we need to take our break, and then we'll pick up your question on Roman Catholicism on the far side. Is that going to work for you?

I think so. Okay, hold on just one second, and we're going to take our break. 877 -753 -3341. We'll be right back.

A godly man is such a rarity today. Many stars, strong and true, quickly fall away. Under the guise of tolerance, modern culture grants alternative lifestyle status to homosexuality. Even more disturbing, some within the church attempt to revise and distort Christian teaching on this behavior.

In their book, The Same-Sex Controversy, James White and Jeff Neal write for all who want to better understand the Bible's teaching on the subject, explaining and defending the foundational Bible passages that deal with homosexuality, including Genesis, Leviticus, and Romans.

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In his book, Mary, Another Redeemer, James White sidesteps hostile rhetoric and cites directly from Roman Catholic sources to explore this volatile topic. He traces how Mary of the Bible, esteemed mother of the Lord, obedient servant and chosen vessel of God, has become the immaculately conceived bodily assumed queen of heaven, viewed as co-mediator with Christ and now recognized as co-redeemer by many in the Roman Catholic Church.

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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. The proclamation of God's truth is the most important element of his worship in his church.

The elders and people of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church invite you to worship with them this coming Lord's Day. The morning Bible study begins at 9 .30 a .m. and the worship service is at 10 .45.

Evening services are at 6 .30 p .m. on Sunday and the Wednesday night prayer meeting is at 7 .00. The Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church is located at 3805 North 12th Street in Phoenix. You can call for further information at 602 -26-GRACE.

If you're unable to attend, you can still participate with your computer and real audio at prbc .org where the ministry extends around the world through the archives of sermons and Bible study lessons available 24 hours a day.

Now the pilgrim's progress is not an easy way. It's a journey to this my day. It's a walk of grace.

Progress.

I hope no one makes a wave file out of that. Like they did that day when I tried to sing Happy Birthday to Julie Staples and what a disaster that was. Do you think that would work now? Do you think we've got the phone system set up now to where we could actually have Colin on?

Do you think it would work now?

Yeah, it would work.

It would work?

It would work.

Because let me tell you something, it was bad.

But choosing the first day that we put the Gettner in to decide to do something like that.

You know why I did that? Because someone kept telling me how good they were.

I see. Okay.

You know, you sound terrible.

Yeah, I know.

I don't know what's going on here. You start talking about things. Hang on just a second. Is that better?

A little technical adjustment.

Yeah, yeah. Let me go in the back and get a hammer.

I'll be right back.

Okay.

All right.

We'll let you do that. My dad was chief engineer at WHP AMFM and television back in Harrisburg in the bygone days. I remember walking the towers with my dad. We'd be going out to each of the towers and taking the readings and stuff.