A Sorta Radio Free Geneva from the New Rig

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. There I am. We are in Big Red, our

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RV, and we are continuing our tests. So far, for like 20 minutes, the connection has been rock solid, and it may be for the entire program, and it may not be, as we discovered last time.

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I have no way of predicting these things. We could blame sunspots and eclipses,

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I suppose. That would be okay. Anyway, here we are, and today on the program,

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I really wasn't planning on this, but I forget what it was this morning where someone sent this to me.

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Not necessarily sent it to me. I think someone commented on this, and I'm like, yeah, you know, I said when this came out, a film came out within the past couple of weeks against Once Saved, Always Saved.

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And, you know, you have Armenian and otherwise scholars going after the subject.

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And I mentioned on Twitter that, well,

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I'm gonna play the beginning for you. And my statement at the time was, look, if all they're talking about is

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Once Saved, Always Saved, as it is enunciated by non -reformed evangelicalism, by the cheap grace movement, the anti -lordship movement, then we're all on the same side.

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The idea of, well, you know, I shook a preacher's hand, I said the sinner's prayer, and I don't care how

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I live, I don't care about the kingdom of Christ, I don't care about holiness,

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I don't care what the Bible says that without holiness no one will see God, I don't care about God's purpose in conforming me to the image of Christ.

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All of that stuff, we're all together going, that's just utterly absurd. But that's not what this is actually about.

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Now, I'll play, like I said, I'll play the opening here, but then I'm going to skip later on to the section where they attempt to deal with Romans chapter 8, and then it becomes clear that, at least in that section, the target is

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Reformed theology. But Reformed theology does not believe in Once Saved, Always Saved.

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I mean, I know there's confusion here. We believe in the perseverance of the saints.

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We believe that they will persevere in saving faith. Okay, what's the difference?

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Well, because it's perseverance, it's the work of the Spirit, it's, you're a new creature in Christ Jesus, you have a new nature, you have new loves and things that you hate.

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You hate your sin, you love holiness, you work for the Kingdom of Christ, there's a change.

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But we also recognize those are all the results of the work of the Spirit of God within us, they are not the things that keep us saved, they are not adding to the work of Christ.

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And these days, you have provisionists, you know, the new kids on the block.

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I wonder, is it Nexus? I've never used it, but there's some website you can go to that searches the web and gives you how often certain terms were used when they first started being used.

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And, you know, just a few years ago, they were calling themselves traditional Southern Baptists, traditionalists.

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And man, believe me, that's a majorly overused term, as they came up with provisionists.

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And so, I mean, they're the new kids in the block, they can't claim that their views have been held fully by pretty much anybody before them now.

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And yet, you'll find provisionists who believe in some form of perseverance of the saints, eternal security, once saved, always saved, things like that.

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And that has never made any sense to me at all. Because the only way to believe biblically, consistently, logically, in the idea that a person, once they enter into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, once they have been born again, regenerated, that they will continue in true saving faith, and they will persevere to the end.

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The only logical, and I would argue, only biblical way to believe that is if you start with the idea that God is sovereign over his creation, he has a decree that he is accomplishing and working out.

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The triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit have chosen to bring about their own self -glorification through taking different roles, in bringing about the redemption of God's people.

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And that, for example, the Son will do the will of the

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Father, will never fail to do the will of the Father. The will of the Father is for the Son to be a perfect savior. And so he must possess the capacity to save the uttermost.

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Without the decree, without the sovereignty of God, without the deadness of man in sin necessitating the radical work of regeneration, without God's unconditional election, without the personal, specific, redeeming work of Christ that includes union with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection, without the powerful and irresistible work of the

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Spirit of God raising a spiritual life, perseverance of the saints doesn't make a lick of sense.

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If it was your free will that got you into this relationship, then your free will can get you back out.

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I mean, that just makes perfect sense, right? I mean, are you really saying that it was your free will as a dead rebel sinner that got you into this relationship, but now with a new nature and a freed will, even more so, you can't get yourself out?

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That doesn't make any sense. It's utterly illogical, but there are people who hold that kind of perspective.

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So I get why there's confusion, because a lot of people think one saved always saves, the same thing as what

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Reformed people are talking about when they talk about the perseverance of the saints, but perseverance of the saints is the end conclusion of a series of preceding theological positions drawn from Scripture.

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I'm not saying you can't go to Scripture and present a strong case that Jesus Christ saves perfectly and that once you are in Christ Jesus, he will not lose you.

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The Spirit of God will not lose you. The Spirit of God being the Arabon, the down payment of our redemption, means that we will, in fact, persevere to the end.

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You can make arguments for all these things, but it doesn't seem to me that that's overly useful.

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I don't like debating that subject, and I don't like debating the subject, because you always end up going back to the preceding stuff anyways, but now you don't have time to do it right anyhow.

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And so that's where the problem lies, I think. It's very difficult to have a debate with someone who doesn't believe that there is a divine decree, who doesn't believe in unconditional election, who doesn't believe that man's dead in sin.

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You're on such different foundations that you're going to bring that into viewing any of the texts of Scripture that are relevant to this subject.

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And so I've told the story before. I remember debating a...

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well, I was supposed to debate, and his name has escaped me again.

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I don't hear about it. This is about the only time I hear about it. I'm not even sure if he's alive anymore. But I was supposed to debate a guy who's written some books against Calvinism on a radio station in St.

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Louis, and he wanted me to sign a contract that I would not make reference to any of the other four points of Calvinism in defending the perseverance of the saints.

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And I'm like, yeah, no, that's not going to happen.

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Thank you. Yes. You know, we are in the days of super gadgets.

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My wrist just buzzed, and Rich texted me.

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I'm assuming he's on the road someplace, and gave me the name of the guy, Dan Corner.

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Sorry, I don't even... the last time I thought about Dan Corner was on the dividing line telling the story.

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That was probably last year or even before that. I don't know. I don't even know if he's still around anymore.

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I honestly don't. But anyway, he's the one wanting me to sign a contract that I would not make reference to the other points of Calvinism.

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And I'm like, yeah, no, that's absurd. So, like I said, when

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I saw this film come out and saw the opening clip of it, I said at the time,

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I said, well, I don't have any problem with what's being said, because they're talking about to believe in this is to believe that holiness isn't important, and pursuit of God isn't important.

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And see, the problem is, if you don't start with a sovereign, ruling, self -sufficient, self -glorifying

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God, if you start with man, then when you talk about pursuing holiness, it always becomes something that arises from within you.

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And it always becomes something that is added to the work of Christ. And that's where the problem comes in.

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And so, I said on Twitter at the time,

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I said, something tells me we're going to be getting a lot of Radio Free Geneva material out of this. And I suppose we could have played the

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Radio Free Geneva video. I'm not even sure. I don't think I have it. I don't think I could play it.

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In fact, I'm not even sure how that... I think I could figure out how it would work. We need to make sure I have that, so that I can do a on -the -road

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Radio Free Geneva thing. Because we've only done it, what, twice, maybe? Once or twice, a new video? Got to do that a little bit more.

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But anyway, I think Tim Bouchon's probably... Yes, you have it. Okay. But if I don't know where it is, it's the same thing as not having it.

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Oh, not the new one. Well, okay. That's what I was saying. I was saying, not the new one. I don't have the new video.

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See? See, he's not even in here this time. I don't know where he is, but he's on my wristwatch.

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And I'm getting... I'm getting on my wristwatch with the...

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Oh, no, you don't have the new one. But you do have the old one, but you don't have the... Okay.

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We have fun. So, I have to be nice, because Rich is running around, and he's doing all sorts of stuff, so that,

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Lord willing, we pull out on Tuesday. Now, we've found some issues.

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Right now, the electric water heater doesn't work, but the gas does. So, might that get fixed the day

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I pull out. I'll probably have to go from here over to the dealership, leave early, and just pull in and hope that they can just open it up and go, oh, got to plug that back in or something along those lines.

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You know, you got to test stuff out. You got to... And I think most of the people who are going to be having me speak on this next trip would like me to be able to take a shower once in a while.

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Don't worry. I've got the man wipes with me, just in case. You know, you got to be prepared for everything.

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But, you know, Rich is working on trying to get all these cables, so that I can just put stuff up there and then pull it out and get this all set up.

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For those of you who didn't see the last program, which got cut off because of our net problems,

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I am in the back of the new unit. And if you want to pray for me, just pray for my driving skills, because I've now pulled a fifth wheel about 50 ,000 miles, never had any problems.

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But this fifth wheel is... I didn't do the percentages, but I would be five feet behind the back of the last one right now.

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Okay. I'd be looking at it out there. She's huge. She's big, much higher quality.

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She's a used unit. That's how we were able to do this. But I'm really hoping that the better suspension and everything else is going to make a big difference.

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How did I get off on that? Well, because I'm in it. That's why. I was just letting you know. Anyway, I keep saying

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I'm going to play this, and I need to make sure that I've got everything. There's about three things I have to do to play anything this way for you without it echoing and doing all sorts of stuff like that.

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So forgive me if that's just how things work. Let's listen to the first. There's a...

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It's purposefully meant to be a teaser introduction -like thing before the title comes up on this.

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So let's take a listen to what we've got here.

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Once saved, always saved, flies in the face of the constant teaching of the

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Bible from Genesis 1 to Revelations end. The major evangelical voices are saying, you're saved by grace alone.

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It doesn't really matter how you live after you're saved. You're saved.

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We might have our lives cut short as a result of sinful living. We might lose some of our heavenly reward.

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But no matter what we do, no matter how we live, we're still saved. I grew up in an assembly which taught that, that I've accepted

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Christ, and now I'm guaranteed for all eternity. And the danger of that is that you tend to relax.

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Once saved, always saved makes the wide way acceptable. We're Christianizing the wide way.

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We have cut the whole idea of transformed living. We've cut it off at the knees.

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I believe it's a lot of the explanation of hypocrisy in the American church and much of the church around the world today because there's a lot of people that are living like hypocrites because they've been taught that they don't have to live holy lives.

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I mean, we're talking about heaven and hell. We're talking about eternal life. It's not over till it's over. No Christian life should be judged in advance of death.

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The idea that you can be forgiven, reconciled, cleansed, now live an unrepentant, sinful life and somehow be a child of God is completely contrary to the whole testimony of Scripture and something that was unknown through much of church history.

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Okay. Oops. I've got it.

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Rich changed cameras on me. I'm hitting the wrong one because I'm used to the other one.

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I'll figure it out eventually. All right. Anyway, so a large portion of that I can agree with.

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As a Reformed theologian, the idea that you can just—and we saw it, believe me—before

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I knew what Reformed meant, I was a part of a mega

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Southern Baptist church, and we would go out on outreach, and we would run into these people who had walked an aisle, joined the

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Bible study, maybe even been baptized at the church, and now we weren't seeing them.

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They weren't coming to Bible study. We had no evidence that they were doing anything, and so we'd go out and visit these people, and as a teenager,

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I recognized how wrong this was and how unbiblical it was and how dangerous it was because I kept running into—and

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I'd especially run into parents who would go, oh, my son

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Johnny walked the aisle at a youth camp one summer, and so yeah, he's living with his girlfriend.

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He's got children at wedlock, and he doesn't go to church, doesn't have any concern about any of these things, but I'm sure one saved, all was saved.

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These guys ticket punched, and so yeah, obviously that's absurd, but that's not the issue.

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And so as long as statements like we're making the broad way, we're

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Christianizing the broad way, yeah, that's what the free grace stuff thing is, but if you don't make a distinction between the free grace people and historic reformed people,

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Presbyterians, Reformed Baptists, then you're just completely missing the point and missing what is important in this issue.

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It's interesting. You probably saw right at the end there. This is part one, the early church.

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Man, if I was talking about this, part one would be what does the Bible teach? But I understand where they're going.

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These are Arminians. They're Wesleyans primarily, and so they're going to go with the early church and people in the early church that didn't even have all the

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New Testament, and they're not going to go with what Clement said about imputed righteousness.

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They're not gonna go with stuff like that, but hey, they can have a grand old time talking about the synergistic emphasis of the early church, because the early church had a very synergistic emphasis.

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They really did. There's no question about it. It doesn't mean they all did, but it was definitely very much there, and the reason for that is very, very obvious.

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Grace is fundamentally opposed to man's religions, and the reality is if you didn't have all of Paul, if you didn't have a systematic recognition of the relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit in the work of salvation, remember the first book -length treatment of the atonement doesn't come to the fourth century, then it's exactly what you'd expect.

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It's exactly what you'd expect. No question about it, but with everybody in this video, we would disagree on God's sovereign decree,

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God's sovereignty, man's deadness and sin, the nature of election, the ground of election, the atonement, the intention of the atonement, the effect of the atonement, the nature of grace, the work of the

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Holy Spirit, what brings about regeneration. We disagree on all of that, and that's what's before all of this, and I've debated at least one of these guys.

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Hi, Michael. On these subjects, and you can go watch those debates for yourself.

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You'll be able to see what we're talking about there. So that part, you know, again, up to this point, if a strong differentiation was being made, then we could agree, yes, pre -gracers, the

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Hodges and Ryries and Wilkins, those folks, yeah, we agree.

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Clearly, it's plainly biblical, but that's not where it's going to stay, unfortunately.

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Now, all I have here, I didn't get to use my program where I can just click on something, and boom, it just goes right to the spot, because we had other stuff going on here, and my goodness, those fonts are small.

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That's about as close as I'm going to get. We'll sort of pick up mid -sentence here is the best

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I can do for you, but let's look at what is said here in regards to one particular text, and again,

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I haven't even gone through the whole movie yet. I have a list put together for driving from here to Louisiana.

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It's a lot of hours on the road. With this unit, I'm not going to be driving as fast, just simply because it's much more pressure on the unit, on the truck and stuff like that, so I'll even have more time as I drive to listen to stuff, and so it's on that list for this particular trip, even though, obviously, the topics of the debates

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I have coming up are on Sola Scriptura and on how a person has peace with God.

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The one how a person has peace with God is relevant here, because, sadly, I would say that in many ways, many of the individuals being interviewed in this film would agree with Jimmy Akin against me.

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These men are not heirs of the Reformation. They're not heirs of Luther's bondage to the will.

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They're not heirs of Calvin's material. By the way, before I do that,

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I wanted to... Let's see, what was that in? That was in Facebook. I hate

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Facebook. Sorry if you're a big Facebook fan, but I am not. I wanted to read you a quote, if I can find it.

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Here it is. This will be in our bulletin on Sunday. I'm preaching in Apologia. I'm continuing in Hebrews chapter 10.

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If you caught the first sermon last week, obviously invited to continue along.

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But here is... We have something called soul food in the bulletin, and here's the quote that I've sent in for Sunday.

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It's from Calvin, and here's what it says. But lest men should imagine that Christ is now idle in heaven, he repeats again.

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This is Calvin commenting on Hebrews chapter 10. That's why I pulled it, is that this is the same text we're dealing with.

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But I just... I don't remember having read this from Calvin before. That doesn't mean a whole lot, because I don't...

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I can walk into a store and go, why am I here? That's just... You young people who are going, oh, that's so sad.

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Just wait. Just wait. But lest men should imagine that Christ is now idle in heaven, he repeats again that he sat down at God's right hand, by which phrase is denoted, as we have seen elsewhere, his dominion and power.

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There is therefore no reason for us to fear that he will suffer the efficacy of his death to be destroyed or to lie buried, for he lives for this end, that by his power he may fill heaven and earth.

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He then reminds us in the words of the Psalm, how long this state of things is to be, even until Christ shall lay prostrate all his enemies, according to Psalm 110.

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If then our faith seeks Christ sitting on God's right hand, and recomes quietly on him, recomes, to lean back, to repose.

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I used to have a recumbent bike, and it's one you lean back on. It's not a term we use a lot these days.

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And recomes quietly on him, as there sitting, we shall at length enjoy the fruit of his victory.

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Yea, when our foes, Satan, sin, death, and the whole world are vanquished, and when corruption of our flesh is cast off, we shall triumph forever together with our head.

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John Calvin commenting on Hebrews chapter 10. And I just don't think the

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Armenian synergistic Wesleyan position can say what

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Calvin says from Hebrews chapter 10. And that saddens me.

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But that's the reality. And that's why this is important. Very, very important. Okay, let's try to do this right this time.

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And let's listen to this next section. One of my favorite passages in all of the

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Bible, and I'm sure a favorite for many Christians is Romans 8, 28 to 39. It says, we know that all things work together for good for those that love

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God and are called according to his purpose. Then he goes on and speaks about those eternal purposes.

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For those whom he foreknew, predestined. Those he predestined, he called. Those he called, he justified. Those he justified, he glorified.

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Calvinists actually call this the golden chain that, you know, those who are called, you know, and so forth, all the way to glorification.

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I agree with you. Okay, okay. Too many buttons to press.

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I don't think it's just Calvinists that have called this, but you need to see. We're no longer where we were at the beginning of the film.

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And it does make me go, excuse me guys, but you can believe everything that we have in Romans chapter 8 and believe.

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And in fact, it's necessary to believe that the result of the work of the

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Spirit of God in the lives of the elect is pursuit of holiness, hatred of sin, perseverance of the saints, implies and really states the action of the

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Holy Spirit of God in working within his people.

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So why are you going after Calvinism now? Unless that's your real goal in the first place.

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And maybe there was something before this where they explained a transition of why they're going that direction or something.

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I don't know. We'll find out. But I was just, as I was looking through this,

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I saw this section and some of you will notice, well, those of you on Twitter, I screenshotted, screenshotted?

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Screenshot? Screenshot? I guess it'd be screenshot. Anyway, I took a shot of the screen in just a moment where they're quoting

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Wesley. And I commented on Twitter. I said, this is just absurd because Wesley, they're going to put it up here in a moment.

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Wesley's literally going to look at the golden chain and say, well, there's nothing here that says all who are called are also justified and all who are justified.

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No, it's exactly what it says. Wesley was a horrifically bad exegete.

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I mean, I don't even know how to express it. He was so willing to avoid the clear teaching of scripture as long as it was on this subject.

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His detestation of Calvinism twisted him horribly. It really, really did.

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And it's embarrassing some of the things that he has said. We ought to spend some time just reading some of the amazing things that he said about the

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Calvinist God. Wow, he really suffered from anti -Calvinist

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Rangeman syndrome. He really, really, really did. And yeah, Wesley said lots of nice things about him, but when it came to this subject, pretty bad.

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Let me see, by the way. We didn't fix it.

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I'm not, well, why did that go real small? I don't know. And why is it?

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Oh, it's always doing camera. We got some things to fix now that we changed one and two. It's got the wrong camera in there, so I can't do the screen and picture in picture thing.

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It's all messed up now that we move stuff around, so we'll just have to keep going back and forth.

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And I hit 47 buttons to try to get the sound right and not echo and all that sort of stuff.

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So let's press forward. John Wesley, who stated that Paul's not saying that everybody that was called is justified, that everybody that's justified ends up being glorified.

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He's just showing how God works in salvation. Paul does not affirm, either here or in any other part of his writings, that precisely the same number of men are called justified and glorified.

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He does not deny that a believer may fall away and be cut off between his special calling and his glorification.

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Romans 11, 22. He only affirms that this is the method whereby God leads us step by step toward heaven.

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Okay. It's hard to know how to even respond to something that far removed from Scripture and that far removed from the entire argument that the apostle's making.

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There are few things in the New Testament more clear and more obvious than the meaning of Paul's words in Romans chapter 8.

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I mean, if you can miss this, then you can miss really, really, really clear and obvious things.

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So let me put this up, because Hus, those whom he foreknew, he also predestined.

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So whoever this is, whoever is foreknown, is predestined to be conformed to the image of his son.

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So that, I stop at the infinitive, so that he, Jesus, might be the prototokon, the firstborn amongst many brethren.

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So whom he foreknew, and I would argue very strongly. I guess

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I can go ahead. It doesn't matter. Foreknew is an active verb.

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It's something that God does. It is not having passive knowledge of what happens in the future.

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That's a creaturely interpretation. Every time God foreknows, the object of his foreknowledge is a person, not actions.

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And so those whom he foreknew, he also predestined. So it's the same group.

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It's the same people that are being seen here. And so those whom he foreknew are predestined, and then

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Hus, those whom, we're back up in the Greek here, those whom he predestined, these, tutus, these, same ones, these, he also called.

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If you can look at that and go, nope, nope, different group, then language has no meaning.

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Language has no meaning. These, he also called. If language can be so malleable and so subject to change and interpretation by tradition that you can literally say, those whom he foreknew are not those he predestined, and those he predestined are not those whom he called, then you can't prove anything from Scripture.

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You can't prove anything from Scripture. You can't prove the deity of Christ, you can't prove the resurrection, nothing, because language no longer has any meaning.

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And that's what Wesley's doing here. These also he glorified, he called.

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And whom he called, these also he justified.

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The reason it's called the golden chain is because the apostle is so plainly and obviously drawing the parallel and leading you through it.

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This leads to this, this leads to this, this group is this group, this group is this group, this group is this group.

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And if you can be so controlled by your tradition that you can go, yeah, anybody can read language can see this, but I'm just not gonna believe it.

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You got a problem. You got a major problem. And so the foreknowledge results in predestination, predestination results in effectual calling, effectual calling results in justification, and those whom he justified, these he also glorified.

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Now let me point something out to you here. Let's put aside for a second the

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Synergist, Arminian, Wesleyan versus Reformed arguments that you get into in Romans chapter 8.

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One of my favorite methodologies of helping

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Roman Catholics to see the glory of God's grace and his great power is to point out that in their theology, a person can be justified and yet not glorified.

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Because within, and you're going to hear this, let me tell you right now, this is what you're going to hear in a couple weeks in Livingston, Louisiana.

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What are you going to hear? You're going to hear Jimmy Akin say that Abraham was justified multiple times in his life.

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That he was justified in Genesis 12, he was justified in Genesis 15, and he was justified in Genesis 22.

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Now I guess that means that he committed a lot of mortal sins, which of course the whole anachronistic reading back of that type of thing into the

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Old Testament text is just absurd beyond words. But the idea is multiple justifications in Abraham's experience.

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And therefore, there can be multiple justifications in our experience as well. Because in Roman Catholicism, you are justified by the infusion of grace at baptism.

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You are made objectively pleasing to God, that's why you go to heaven. But when you commit sin, if it's a venial sin, then you now have the pollution that comes from venial sin and the temporal punishments of sin, and that's why you have to go to purgatory.

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If you commit a mortal sin, mortal sin destroys the grace of justification, and you are no longer justified.

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And if you do not seek remedy through the sacramental system of the church, you will die as an enemy of God and die under his punishment.

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Now that's, again, historic classical Roman Catholic theology. I personally doubt very much that Francis actually believes that, but that's a whole other issue.

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The point is, the Roman Catholic believes you can be justified but not glorified, and these men believe the same thing.

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They are opposed to the Reformation. They're on Rome's side. They're on the wrong side of the tiger. Because if you believe you can be truly justified, you have the righteousness of Christ imputed to you by faith, and then somehow you lose it.

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I don't know what happens to it. I'm not sure how this works.

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And something tells me, given the wide variety of folks they're interviewing, you'd get different responses as to how that works.

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But you've been justified, and, you know, maybe they don't, you know, not all

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Protestants are imputationists by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe they don't believe in the imputed righteousness of Christ.

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But you've been justified, but you may not be glorified. Now, all those who are justified and maintain their justified state will be glorified, but the golden chain has

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God doing all these things. God is the one, as an active verb, who foreknows. That is, chooses to enter into relationship with people who don't even exist yet.

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He foreknows. He predestines. He calls. He justifies.

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He glorifies. These are all God's actions, and that's what is so offensive to the if these are all things that God does, where do

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I get to boast? Well, that's why this, that's why the same author said to the

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Corinthians it's by his doing that you're in Christ Jesus, so that no one can boast.

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So there it is. So, obviously, synergists, non -reformed, non -Catholics, will interact with Roman Catholicism in a very different way.

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That's why most of their objections, for example, to the sacrifice of the mass will be based on transubstantiation, not on the intention and purpose of the atonement, which is what we're going over right now in the sermons at Apologia, and Lord willing, we'll continue on the

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Lord's Day on that subject. We just, we give a very different response, and I would say a much more powerful response, because it's biblically consistent, and it strikes at the root of the issue,

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Rome's man -centeredness, and so it's sad to see this happening, but again, this was

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Wesley, and his comments and the comments in the film on Romans chapter 8 are indefensible.

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Indefensible. I'll debate anybody on that. Not anybody. I'll debate any of them on that, because it's really not even a question.

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It can't be. If language is language, that's what it's saying, and it's communicating it that clearly to us.

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All right, back to the film.

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When you look at the so -called steps in these links in this golden chain, not any one step guarantees the next step.

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The Bible says many are called, but few are chosen. Okay, I'm not even going to play with the camera, okay?

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Matthew 22 is not Romans 8. This is called eisegesis.

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This is called taking a term that appears over Matthew 22, assuming it's being used in the same way in this context.

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Common hermeneutical exegetical error. I mean, just really basic.

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Eisegesis 101. This is not the same context and not the same use of calling.

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That's not good. Not good at all. Call doesn't mean you automatically be chosen. Peter says in 2

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Peter 1 .10, to make your calling and election, which is you're being chosen, make it sure to ratify it in the context that it's continuing in the faith.

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So that doesn't guarantee that you'll be justified. And those who are justified, they can't say, well,

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I'm for sure going to be glorified automatically. Scripture say in Hebrews chapter 10, verse 38 and 39, the just shall live by faith.

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But if he who is back, he's not going forward in that chain. Now he's going backwards. My soul will have no pleasure in him.

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Okay. So again, I just, I am not making the argument that because this is how

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Roman Catholics argue, it's wrong. I'm making the argument that this is a fundamental denial of the reformation.

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It is a fundamental denial of reformed theology. And again, it is eisegesis.

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It is not following what the author is doing in Romans chapter eight, which is going to take us from here into verses 30 and following the heavenly courtroom scene, the work of the intercessor, the judgment of the father.

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It messes with all of that and goes to a different context, assuming and importing meanings into terms.

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Now, yes, the just shall live by faith. And if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.

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Again, is this descriptive or prescriptive? Is this man -centered or God -centered? Is this, yes, when

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God works in a person's life, then he will not draw back. That's the point of the golden chain.

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These people join with Rome. They're man -centered. They're synergistic. That's why they cannot, they cannot allow

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Romans eight to say what Romans eight says. They have to break it up. Not by looking at what the text says, because you can't.

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You cannot come to these conclusions. You've got to go someplace else, say, my interpretation over here,

48:00

I'm going to import it in to Romans chapter eight. This is very much the same thing with what people do with John six.

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And all these people were going, hey, hey, hey, you can't, you can go to other verses to interpret scripture.

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Not when it results in you destroying the grammar of the text itself. You start in the immediate context.

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You go outside of that only once you've established the meaning of the immediate context.

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That's the issue. As we go on, when we see this list of what can separate us from the love of Christ, beginning with tribulation, angels, demons, principalities, life, death itself, there's nothing outside of you, nothing outside of you that can pull you away.

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There's one thing in that list that's missing from that list. That would be you. Okay. There, my heart's broken when

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I hear this kind of stuff. My heart's broken. Did you see what, what happened there?

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You jump down to the stuff. Now, now again, each one of these men, they are taking,

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I know how this works. I've been in videos like this myself. You're, you're interviewed and they, they take snippets of what you say and they try to make it where it all works.

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You may have said other stuff. You may have said some other good stuff that would change how things are interpreted.

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But that's how these videos work. So maybe there was a discussion of what came between these things, but it was skipped.

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And, and, and that, that should warn all of us. That's not a good thing to have that happen.

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What was, what was skipped? Well, after these things that God does and those who predestined, he also called.

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And those who he called, he also justified. Those who he justified, he also glorified. There is no question that it's the same group.

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If you say otherwise, you are twisting the scriptures. You are twisting the scriptures as Wesley did.

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It's a twisting of the words. There isn't any question about it. But then this is the stuff that gets skipped.

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What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?

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Well, who's the us? The us, as you will say and see in verse 33, the elect of God.

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So if God is for us, who can be against us? Who is this us?

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The us is the one group in the golden chain. It's right there.

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If you're willing to listen, if you're willing to hear, if you're willing to have your, your pride crushed by the

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God centeredness of the gospel, it's right there. What shall we say to these things?

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If God is for us, who can be against us? He, who his own son did not spare, but who parahimon, in our behalf.

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That's substitutionary atonement. And it's specifically, we've gone through this.

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We have worked through this text so deeply before in response to the provisionists, the

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David Allen and others. Here is substitutionary atonement, but it's substitutionary atonement in behalf of a specific group, which is the elect.

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But in behalf of us all, gave him over, delivered him over for us all.

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How shall he not also together with him, with Jesus, who's delivered over for us all, taponta haimin karisetai, freely give to us all things by grace, as a gift.

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If the son's been given in our behalf, then everything comes along with the son.

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Who will bring a charge, kata eklektom theu, against the elect of God?

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Well, that's a question I'd like to ask these men, because unless they believe that there is a group called the elect of God, and it's the elect of God, God's the one who chose them, are they going to say, we chose ourselves?

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We made ourselves the elect of God by our choice? I have a sneaking hunch that many of them would, sadly.

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Who will bring a charge against the elect of God? If the elect of God is the content, is the same group, and it is, that was in the golden chain, then this is a rhetorical question.

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God is the justifier. God is the one who has said they're not guilty. Who is the one who condemns?

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Christ Jesus is the one who died, rather, who has been raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes huper haimon.

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Please notice, huper haimon here, huper haimon here, in our behalf, it's the same group.

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If you do what Wesley did to the golden chain, you won't have any idea what this is about.

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Nothing. You will be lost. But you can't, not if you're doing exegesis, not if you want to know what the text is saying.

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He is the one who is interceding for us, and it is that intercession.

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Remember Hebrews 8? Able to save completely, he always lives to make intercession.

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This is the foundation of the security of the believer. Not what they do, it's what

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Christ has done on their behalf. So once you get down to the who will separate us from the love of God in Christ, to hear somebody say the thing that's missing is you, oh my goodness, talk about a destruction of the

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God -centeredness of the gospel. That's Rome's view, yep, that's the synergistic view, yep, and that's a view that has to skip over, twist the golden chain, and then skip over.

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The fact that it's the Son who is at the right hand of the Father, who has been given for us, and who intercedes for us, and that's why salvation is secure.

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That is why the Spirit of God can then dwell within us, and give us that new nature.

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And that new nature hates sin, and loves holiness, and wants to strive for these things.

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But it's the result of what God does, which is why the glory goes completely to Him. That's what the text is about.

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That's what it's saying. And if you say otherwise, then prove it. Don't just skip over it, prove it.

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Go to it and say, nope, you're misunderstanding this. You don't see the grammar here. You don't know the meaning of the lexical here, or wherever else.

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Do it. Let's hear what you have to say. I want to know what you have to say.

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Paul is saying is no external circumstance, or external person, not even a demon, not even an angel.

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Advocates of once saved, always saved propound this verse as though Paul followed his question with the words, shall adultery, or murder, or theft, or fornication, or covetousness, or lying.

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Again, I'll leave this up.

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Too many buttons to push. Again, the absurdity here is really hard for me to deal with, as you can tell.

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I'm getting a little riled up about it. No. Again, if you want to talk about the free gracers, but they don't believe this verse is relevant.

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You're talking about reformed theologians here, and you show me a reformed theologian who says that.

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That's why this is scripture twisting, because you skipped over it. The editors did.

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Maybe all the people interviewed didn't, but the editors skipped over who will bring a charge against God's elect.

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God is the one who justifies. Folks, if you take this, and this is why Wesleyanism has collapsed on justification by faith.

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They don't have a foundation to stay with it. Justification by faith requires a belief in the sovereignty of God.

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It will not stand on its own outside the doctrines of grace. It won't. You just look historically.

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Look at it in debate. You watch. Paul hasn't skipped this.

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The reason Paul's not talking about adultery and things like that is because we've been justified. Our sin bearer has borne our sin, and we now have been changed, so we don't want these things.

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That's what's so frustrating about this man -centered kind of stuff. It truly, truly is.

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Ah, sorry. No matter what our sins may be, they will not separate us from God's love.

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Yet that's not what Paul said. He followed his question with these words.

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Shall trouble, or hardship, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword.

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Now those are not sins. Those are things that Paul and his other faithful Christians were suffering.

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There are multiple different ways to read this, none of which support the idea that you can be wonderfully born again, forgiven of your sin, cleansed, transformed, and then go out and live however you want to live, commit whatever sin you want to commit.

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Maybe your life cuts short. Maybe you lose treasure in heaven, but you still go to heaven. There's not a syllable in the New Testament that supports that idea, and Romans 8 certainly does not.

59:18

Okay, that looks like the end of it, because it's, let me see here.

59:24

Yep, sermon of the mount. Wow. Okay, Michael, you know, you know that that is not relevant to Reformed theology, because I agree with you.

59:41

There's nothing in that text. There isn't. There's not a word in that text that says, hey, you can go out and live like you want.

59:48

We agree, 1 ,000 percent, but that's not what the issue is, is it? Why? I have to ask everyone, and Michael, I'm going to ask you directly.

01:00:01

Why did you all skip the justifying work of Christ and the intercessory work of Jesus?

01:00:08

Because it's for a specific people, because it deals with election. There, I'm going to say this directly, and Michael, if you gave a full exegesis of the text in the interview, and it didn't appear, please tell me that, because what's in this film is sheer eisegesis.

01:00:31

It's shameful. It's shameful. This is twisting the text.

01:00:42

This should not be. This should not be. That's why

01:00:48

I said, when I first saw this,

01:00:53

I said, wow, we're going to have a lot of Radio Free Geneva stuff here, and this should have been a

01:01:01

Radio Free Geneva. Very clearly, my mistake.

01:01:07

I'm sorry. Well, maybe next program, we'll just play the video and say, see, there, that's what you needed for the last one, so we'll go on from there, but something tells me there's going to be a lot more to deal with there, because this was bad.

01:01:26

This was bad. I would love just to find out if there's someone from this film that would do a formal debate against me, which would involve the exegesis of Romans 8, 28 through the end of the chapter, if you want, or 37, wherever you want to break it, and deal with the specificity, the exclusivity of the text, and how it teaches

01:02:12

God's the one who saves. He is not dependent upon the cooperation of man. It is all to his glory, and he does it perfectly, because that's what it teaches.

01:02:23

That's what it teaches. Now, the free -gracers, the cheap -gracers, the anti -Lartian people, they don't believe any of that, so by going after Romans 8, you were going after, quote -unquote,

01:02:36

Calvinism, but this film failed face -plantingly to actually deal with it.

01:02:43

When you have to skip over God's what it justifies, so on and so forth, wow, you've missed it.

01:02:51

You've missed it, missed it big, missed it big. So, there you go. Like I said, you can listen to the whole thing on the...

01:03:01

We played the whole section on Romans 8 there, so don't go saying, I should have done that, because it might be something... No, I don't think there is.

01:03:09

This is something we're going to be dealing with for a while, I think, and appropriately so, and hopefully to everybody's benefit, because Romans 8 is the greatest text of assurance and peace to a person who has cast themselves fully and solely upon Christ for salvation of anything, anything.

01:03:38

And so, I will defend that particular text, and I don't think anyone's going to be able to do anything else with it.

01:03:49

Well, anyways, thanks for listening to the program today. Next week, we're going to be on the road, and so I'll probably be back here,

01:03:57

Lord willing, continuing as we head out to the debates with Jimmy Akin. Thanks for watching the program today.