Road Trip Radio Free Geneva: Frank Turek's Anti-Reformed Video

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You hear people that are palpitanous, harp on it. These people keep repeating it, and they repeat it so much, you start to think it's a biblical truth.

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Jesus stands outside the tomb of Lazarus, and he says, Lazarus, come out. And Lazarus said, I can't.

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I'm dead. That's not what he did. Lazarus came out. She didn't mean to tell me a dead person can't respond to the command of Christ.

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You take lessons from the Jewish people. It shows in this kind of sequential format, it parallels the method of exegesis we utilize to demonstrate those other things.

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Um, no. Calvinists, even pastors, very openly smoke pipes and cigars just as they drink beer and wine.

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Even Jesus cannot override your unbelief. It's not like that.

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It's not like that. It's not like that. It's not like that. It's not like that. It's not like that.

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It's not like that. It's not like that. It's not like that. It's not like that.

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It's not like that. It's not like that. It's not like that. It's not like that. It's not like that. It's not like that.

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It's not like that. It's not like that. It's not like that. It's not like that. It's not like that. It's not like that.

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It's not like that.

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It's not like that. That's not what we're talking about.

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We're talking about what God is telling us to do...

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Embracing. And greetings, welcome to Radio Free Geneva on the Dividing Line. This is a road trip edition of the program.

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I'm still up here in Salt Lake City, where over the weekend

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I spoke a number of times. We'll be speaking again this evening, Lord willing, out in Magna on a

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Biblical view of sexuality. We talk about transgenderism and the culture of death's insistence upon destroying the good that God has created in making men male and female, the family, marriage, children, grandchildren, those wonderful things that God has provided to us.

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The culture of death hates viscerally and is utilizing the public education system and Hollywood and everything else to seek to destroy all those things that God has given for our flourishing, for our happiness, for our joy, for our fulfillment, for the peace of the society.

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A society that values what God's law says is good is a society that will be a peaceful society, a respectful society, a society where there is rebuke and shame for doing wrong and praise and encouragement for doing what is good.

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Sounds crazy, doesn't it? Yeah, well, that's because most of us have been taught to think that it's crazy, that anything like that could happen, but that's the way

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God's designed things. So that'll be this evening. Over the weekend, we spoke on the transmission of the text of the

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New Testament, and Pastor Jason Wallace asked me questions concerning issues related to manuscripts and the transmission of the text and the textus receptus and the critical text and all those things that we've addressed over and over and over again on this particular program.

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And Lord willing, I spoke last evening at Apology of Utah, and a great bunch of folks there.

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It's the first time I've had the opportunity of coming up to our church plant here in Salt Lake City. Pastor Wade Orsini, Andrew Sokrat, the deacon, doing a great job up here getting things going.

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And there were some great folks there. And I got to see one family that used to be at Apology in Phoenix and is now up here.

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And I haven't seen them in a long time, and their beautiful daughters. And that was exciting.

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Spoken to a bunch of folks. And yeah, we're going to get to the RFG stuff here. Hold on a second. Spoke to a bunch of folks.

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So far on this trip, starting in Cedar City and then after each of the things I've spoken, so many former

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Mormons. And many of them, former Mormons who directly speak of our ministry as having been central to their conversion.

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Yesterday, I spoke to a former Mormon. We weren't the reason why he left Mormonism, but he ended up in a form of evangelicalism that just sort of left him without direction to know where to go and what to do.

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And someone handed him letters to a Mormon elder. And it was reading that book and the amount of theology that is in the book.

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Because unlike most books on Mormonism, mine was intended to communicate a positive message of the fullness of Reformed theology to the

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Mormon person. And he said he read it a number of times and that's what gave him the foundation to be able to start witnessing the

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Mormons and know where to look as far as churches are concerned and things like that.

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And so basically, we're coming up on 40 years.

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Next year, 40 years of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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And we're just seeing the fruit. I mean, you've got to plant and plant and plant and water.

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And eventually, you start seeing the fruit. And when you start seeing entire families, knowing the impact that that has on children and grandchildren.

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You know, in those first years, when you're struggling just to get by, and nobody has any earthly idea that you exist, you can dream that 30, 40 years down the road, you'll see the benefit of all this stuff.

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But you've got the promise that God's Word does not return to him void.

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So, it's exciting and I'm looking forward to seeing more folks as we continue on with the ministry up here.

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I don't know what the next couple of days are going to look like. They are talking as much as two feet of snow in the mountains.

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The folks who live here say that means it'll be much less down here, but we could still get a substantial amount of snow.

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And so, I'm not sure what the next few days are going to look like. But, isn't it almost the middle of April?

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I think it's almost the middle of April. Yeah, okay. Well, seems that winter is trying to hold on, give us one last kick in the teeth before it surrenders.

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So, there you go. Prayers appreciated because I've still got to drive farther north.

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All the way up to Moscow, Idaho, in fact. So, prayers appreciated for that. By the way, new shirt.

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Thanks to my wife for sending them up because they arrived, of course, the day I left. It always works that way.

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Daigar Altan Basaluwine. Now, if you are a regular

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Bible school or seminary graduate, you're going, that looks weird. Because I used the papyrus fonts from Accordance.

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And so, when you, well, it's not really the papyrus. No, I have papyrus fonts.

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I actually used the unseal fonts, maguscule fonts from Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, that Accordance uses for the transcriptions of the manuscripts, basically.

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But, yeah, it's the ancient form, remembering that New Testament for the first 900 years of its history was transmitted by being written in all capital letters.

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That Accordance uses for just the way it was. And it's just one long string of capital letters.

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And that's got to get used to reading when you read the papyri, when you read the earlier vellum manuscripts like Sinaiticus, Vaticanus.

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It can be challenging. But anyways, what does it mean? Well, it's from 1 Corinthians 15 .25. The first four words of 1

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Corinthians 15 .25, for he must reign, is specifically what it is. Until, and then

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Paul quotes from Psalm 110 .1. And so, I appreciate my wife sending it because I wanted to wear these for some of the dividing lines and stuff.

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And so, now I have my 1 Corinthians 15 .25 shirt. And so, there you go.

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That's what's there. All right. So, plan was not necessarily to be doing a

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Radio Free Geneva today. But someone sent me a link to a video that Dr.

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Frank Turk put out. And I was like, maybe.

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That's a possibility. And then I saw it come across my feed directly from Frank.

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And so, I listened to it. And it's a nice short summary of all of the arguments that we've refuted over and over and over and over again.

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Without any attempt to improve the expression of the arguments in light of the refutations that have been provided.

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And even, I really started to decide, okay, when Frank recommended or made reference to, but obviously it was in the form of recommendation.

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Chosen but Free by Norm Geisler. Which, you know,

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I'll be directly honest with you, has produced more Calvinists than Norm really wanted to admit, even when he was alive.

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The refutation of that book produced many, many Calvinists. And, like I said,

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I know of a number of churches that exist today because of the refutation of Chosen but Free.

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So, I thought, well, let's, now, you know, Tim Bushong told us that he was going to give us a new edition of the theme song.

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But I haven't heard anything. So, you know, maybe it's, you know, maybe he's expecting a little more pay for this one.

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Three, four times what he got for the last one. I don't know. But we are going to be switching things up, and maybe some of the old classics will return, and we'll see how it goes.

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But if you're wondering what Radio Free Geneva is, it's where we deal with the good, the bad, and the ugly in regards to arguments against Reformed theology.

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And it started many, many moons ago when

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I listened to Avian Rogers' sermon. And I responded to it.

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And, man alive, did people respond to that.

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They responded to the response. Big time. Big time. And so, been doing it for many, many years now.

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And we will hopefully be able to continue in the future. Now, before I get started with Dr.

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Turek, what's interesting is we have responded to a number of the things that Frank has said in the past.

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For example, we did a comparison of Frank's interaction with David Silverman and my interaction with David Silverman, where David Silverman asked the exact same question.

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And it was very useful, actually, to compare and contrast the presuppositional method versus the evidential method in regards to dealing with theodicy, the nature of evil and God's existence in the light of evil.

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But we've also responded in regards to his insistence that belief in the doctrines of Roman Catholicism is not necessarily really all that much of a big deal.

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And other related elements like that, as well as the issue of Reformed theology, because he is clearly opposed to Reformed theology.

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The only time we've ever met, by the way, was at Southern Evangelical Seminary. That one time when

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Earth and Heaven moved, and I was allowed on campus, and yeah,

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Michael Brown and I had our debate. And that was the one time we met.

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He sat in on the debate over apologetic methodology with Dr.

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Howe. Well, it was not even a debate. It was not even announced.

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It was just sort of a, we're just going to do this now, and hope you're ready type of situation.

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Anyway, he was there and seems like a really nice guy, but ever since then, whenever we respond, there's never any response from him.

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When recently he did the thing on Roman Catholicism and said to the person in the audience, don't worry about it.

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Yeah, your mom may be asking for a priest and stuff like that, but as long as she just believes in Jesus, she'll be fine. And I contacted, oh my, one of those bus -size units.

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Coming around the corner, and it is so long, and I can, again, eight

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V -U -M. Okay, there we go.

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See in the background there? Yep, that's a

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Pace Aero LXE pulling a Jeep behind. I don't want to get his gas mileage, personally.

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Not these days. Yeah, that's a big one. Anyhow, I would not want to, no,

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I would not want to maneuver one of those things around. That's too much stress for me. This one's plenty long enough.

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I'm 44 feet long when I'm hooked up. That's all I can handle. That guy's got to be 65 when he's got a car following behind him.

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Anyway, what were we talking about? Yes, Moses was in the bulrushes. Anyway, I wrote to Frank, and I made sure

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I had the right email address, stuff like that. Said I'd love to have a conversation with you on the dividing line or something like that.

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This is very important. People have a lot of questions. Not even the courtesy of a go -away.

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It's just, you don't exist, and I'm not going to talk to you. I don't expect, to be honest with you,

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I believe that Norman Geisler died without ever reading The Potter's Freedom.

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No question about it. Because I knew

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Norman Geisler well enough to know that he would have considered it a violation of his personal principles to even read

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The Potter's Freedom. You may be going, but there was an appendix responding to it.

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Yeah, a really, really bad one. The publisher eventually took out because it was so easy to refute. It had so many errors in it because it wasn't written by Norman Geisler.

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It was written by his students. He told somebody else, though. He just had the very firm belief that he could not learn anything from anyone younger than himself.

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He told me that. And so that would not be

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Frank's reasoning here. But I just get the distinct feeling that, from his perspective, there are certain people, when you talk to them, once the issue of Reformed theology comes up, there's just this look.

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A curtain comes down, and it's just like, you just repeat the same things and don't listen to what's being said.

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What's ironic is that his website is crossexamined .org.

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Now, I give him all the credit in the world. He goes on campuses, and he takes questions. And, hey, that's tough to do.

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More power to you. But on this subject, evidently, cross -examination is not what he wants, because if he wants cross -examination, we know who can provide him cross -examination.

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And as I said on Twitter this morning, I said,

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Frank, we stand ready to debate this issue when you're ready to do it.

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And last I checked, there was no response to that. I've got it up here.

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I suppose I could check here. Huh. So now

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I'm looking. And now this is really distracting, because I look to see if there's been a response.

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And the weird thing is, I sat here for 40 minutes, hooked up with Rich before the program started, and he's tweaking sound.

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I mean, just, OK, do this with the sound. And, OK, I'm going to do it. Oh, that didn't work. I'll just try. 40 minutes.

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And now I'm sitting here watching all this stuff, now that I see on...

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And now broadcasting from an inconspicuous fifth wheel somewhere on the fruited plain, adorned with a

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SEBTS bumper sticker where no one would think to look. Michael Potts posted that one.

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That's pretty good. I ain't putting an SEBTS bumper sticker on anything.

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I might put one on somebody else's. I ain't putting it on this. But here's

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Rich talking about all this stuff, about audio output channels. What are you doing, Rich? Come on, man.

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You had 40 minutes to get all that stuff perfect. And now you're telling me that there's something going on.

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I have no earthly idea what's happening here. But, no, I do not see any responses to what

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I wrote this morning. Unfortunately, you have to go and actually look at your tweet.

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Standing ready. Okay. Standing ready to do a full debate on the topic, Dr. Turek. There are 18 responses that I have not seen.

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Why don't I see these things? I don't know. So, Lauren Holiday, Andy Cain.

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I'm going to read through all these when it's all done. But I don't see anything from the good doctor himself.

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So, yeah. And that's sort of – everybody else is saying, do it, do it.

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And, yeah, there's a lot of people saying, please debate.

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Frank was one of the first apologists I discovered. He is a smart and intelligent guy. But like many Christians, he attempts to explain away what

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God says about himself. Extra prolific said that. Oh, please, we need to see this.

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Tim Dykstra. Humanist Mike has the eating popcorn gif, whatever you call it.

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Teddy Roosevelt. This needs to happen. Now that you've thrown down WLC, this is the debate

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I most want to see. Oh, yeah, Tovea Singer, too. You got the time, right? The Potter's Clay, 1689.

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Well, once you put 1689 in your neck, as that one scholar from Westminster would tell us.

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So there's been lots of response, but nothing from Frank Turk. As far as I can remember,

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Frank has never responded to anything I've ever said. So I don't know.

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I don't know. All right, let's get to it. Talking about it and actually doing it are two different things, isn't it?

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It's only three minutes, 51 seconds. And I think there was something toward the end that wasn't overly relevant.

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So it's less than that. But there were a lot of topics raised. So we could go for a long time, depending on how

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I wanted to do things here. So let's share the screen. And let's.

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There it is. And voila. And here we go.

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I'm kind of looking for your definition of what it means to be born again. Jesus said that a man must be born again to enter the kingdom of heaven.

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And through my experience with talking to Calvinists, they say you had to first be indwelled with the spirit before you can even say yes to salvation.

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Okay. Let's let the gentleman. It would have been helpful.

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And I'm not I'm not going to pop back for short responses. I'm like, I'll just let you. You don't need to see me.

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You've already seen me for 23 minutes, 24 minutes. It would have been helpful if Frank had corrected some of the misapprehensions in the gentleman's questions.

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He's clearly got some dispensation dispensational confusion. And it's not indwelt by as in indwelt as a as all believers are indwelt by the

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Holy Spirit, empowered by the Holy Spirit, etc. The issue is what is the relationship between repentance and faith and having a regenerate nature of being raised from spiritual death to spiritual life?

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That's the issue. It's not in indwelling in that sense at all. And there there should have been a correction offered there, which there there wasn't going to be one.

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In the Old Testament, for my knowledge, no one was ever indwelt with the spirit, but we know like Abraham was saved.

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So what was David saying when he said, take not your Holy Spirit from me? What do you mean?

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Again, I'm seeing some some almost hyper dispensationalism here as part of the confusion.

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What is your definition then of being born again? Well, the Calvinistic viewpoint is, as you said, that God has to regenerate you before you can believe.

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Because notice he's saying, as you said, that's not what he said. It needs to be you got to be accurate.

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He's saying, yes, the Calvinist viewpoint is that regeneration is a divine act of God that then results in faith, repentance, so on and so forth.

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But that's the same thing as being indwelt. There's there's confusion here. They say we're dead in our trespasses, trespasses and sins.

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They say we're dead in our trespasses. I thought that was Ephesians chapter two that said we're dead in our trespasses and sins.

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I thought that was Jesus and John eight saying that we are slaves to sin. That's that's what you mean.

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They say you don't say that. I don't think the way that the Calvinists interpret that is correct.

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I interpret the phrase being dead instead of Ephesians two. So that would mean that we're now going to get an exegetically solid understanding of what's being said in Ephesians chapter two.

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Right. I think when it says we're dead in our trespasses and sins, it means there's nothing we can do to make up for that, that Jesus is the only way that we're going to ever be reconciled to God.

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So that's what Ephesians chapter two. I mean, unless there's some other text that is being referenced,

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Ephesians two one says, and you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you formally walked during the course of this world.

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According to the rule of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all also formally conduct ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind.

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And we're by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

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But God, being rich in mercy because it was great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ.

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By grace, you have been saved. So that seems to very strongly be saying that we were children of wrath and that it was

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God who made us alive together with Christ by his grace and raised him up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

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This is all God's activity. And so this is about salvation.

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It's not merely a statement that we can't do anything apart from Christ. But once Christ has been provided, then, well, you know, now it's up to us whether we're going to accept it or not.

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That's not what Ephesians two is talking about at all. However, I think we can accept that offer that Christ gives us in order to be saved.

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So here is your assertion of synergism, your assertion of the ability of man in the unregenerate state to do what is good and pleasing in God's sight.

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This is an assertion that man can have true saving faith, man can have true saving repentance as a spiritually dead rebel against God.

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And then by exercising these things, maybe he doesn't use this terminology, but you can't avoid this terminology if you're going to get into any type of meaningful debate.

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Maybe he's saying that by prevenient grace, you're given this capacity or ability.

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But are all men given this prevenient grace? Because there have been many men to whom the gospel has never been presented.

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So are they given prevenient grace to no end? There are so many questions that have to be asked in this situation.

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Look, if God has to regenerate us before we can believe, and yet God wants all to be saved.

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Now, at this point, this is the creation of a very surface level, very simplistic and oft refuted alleged contradiction.

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If God must regenerate us, if God has the ability monergistically to bring about regeneration, and God has a universal salvific will, and does not have a specific decretal will, then we have a contradiction and therefore we can dismiss

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Calvinism. So let's talk about this for a second because I think it's important.

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When Reformed people, based upon biblical context, biblical text, and a belief in believing everything the

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Bible says, make the assertion that there is a decree of God that fixes the number of the elect, that the elect are personally known to God, that it is not simply a matter of a generic class that can be filled by the free will actions of men, but that God actually has an elect people, which the chapter before the one sort of citation so far of Ephesians 2 -1 is

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Ephesians chapter 1, which specifically says that God did not choose

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Christ, God did not choose an impersonal group, that God chose us in Christ.

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And it is for salvation, because adoption is a part of salvation, forgiveness of sin is a part of salvation.

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You can't cut those things out. So the class election stuff does not work, not exegetically.

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The privilege thing doesn't work. Well, it's not like Romans 9. No, it's not. These are all things that have to do with salvation, with the indwelling of the

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Holy Spirit, Ephesians 1 -14, who is the arabon, the down payment of our redemption.

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But that all flows from the decree of the Father, the accomplishment of the Son. It's Trinitarian gospel and it is

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Reformed. And so that material is being presented to us in Scripture.

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Does it create a contradiction? Reformed people will immediately go, well, you need to recognize the multiple uses of the term will of God in the

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Bible. No, no, no, now you're just trying to... Everybody has to.

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If you're going to hold a Bible in your hand and say, I believe all of this, then you can't ignore major portions of it.

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And it is simply an obvious given that there is such a thing as the prescriptive will of God.

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What do I mean? The Bible says that it is

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God's will that all men repent, right? That is

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God's revelation of Scripture, that all men everywhere should repent. And God's law says you shall not murder, you shall not kill, you shall not sell someone to slavery.

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So this is God's prescriptive will. But plainly the

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Bible then speaks of God's decretive will. Why? Well, because Acts chapter 4 tells us that the murder of Jesus was the will of God.

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Now that violates his prescriptive will, but it's his decretive will. He decreed that it happened.

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It was the most glorious, greatest thing that's happened in time. And yet it was the most evil thing mankind ever did.

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That's true. You should not sell someone to slavery.

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And yet, Genesis 50 -20 says it was God's will that Joseph was sold into slavery.

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His brothers were accountable for that. His brothers sinned when they did that.

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But the reality is that was God's decree. Now, if you're going to believe

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Sola Scriptura and Tota Scriptura, then you have to put these things together. You have to believe both of them.

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And it's possible to do so. You're not just simply saying, oh, that's contradictory. No, it's not contradictory. Not if you recognize that those two discussions are addressing different aspects of how

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God deals with his people in time. That he gives us his prescriptive will.

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This is how we know his character, know what our character should be.

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At the same time, how we can then have confidence and faith that God is accomplishing what he wants to accomplish with his decree in light of the fall of man.

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And the redemption of man and the demonstration of the glory of God and the character of God that only comes about through that gospel, that redemptive plan.

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Which is more about God than it is about us. That's where most people miss all this stuff when they think that it's more about man than it is about God.

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So when Dr. Turek says, well, the Calvinist says that God must regenerate man.

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Yes, because the Bible says so. Because the Bible says we can't do what is pleasing to God.

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We cannot submit ourselves to the law of God. That we are slaves to sin.

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And Jesus said the son has to set you free. So the Bible teaches what we're saying.

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But Dr. Turek's tradition denies that. So he doesn't believe that part of the Bible. Oh, he says he thinks he does.

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But what he's doing is he's creating a lens to make it disappear. So it just isn't a problem anymore.

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And then he says God wants to save everybody. What does he mean by that? Does he mean that there is the general command that goes out to all men to repent and believe?

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That's not the same thing as the will of God expressed in Ephesians chapter 1 toward a specific people, is it?

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No. He's using it differently. He's speaking of a universal salvific will.

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And I'm sure he would go to one of the big three. I've never heard him respond to my chapter on the big three in response to his mentor,

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Norman Geisler. I've never heard him reply to that. And that may be why

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I never hear from him and why he doesn't want to be cross -examined about the big three.

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But, man, that would be useful. Don't you think it would be useful? I think everybody in this audience realizes that a meaningful, not a dodged cross -examination period, especially on those texts, would be vitally important.

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I would be happy to defend the exegesis I've offered in Matthew 23, 37 or 1

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Timothy 2, Peter's discussion of the elect and the patience of God.

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Any of them would be happy to do that kind of a thing. But see the creation here of a false conundrum by ignoring the fact that if Dr.

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Turek was going to be accurate in his representation of us, what he would do is he would say, well, Calvinists distinguish between the prescriptive will of God and the decretal will of God.

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And they believe that while God commands all men everywhere to repent, that God is under no obligation to grant the ability to do that in light of the fact that we are appropriately related to Adam in his fall.

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I would be interested in knowing where Dr. Turek goes with original sin and the imputation of the guilt of Adam's sin, because that generally requires too much reformedness to really affirm that.

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And what's interesting is I've heard Frank slip into, he'll borrow some of our argumentation.

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He recognizes, for example, that presuppositional reasoning in regards to worldviews is extremely useful and that there is an absurdity in the way of thinking of the rebel sinner, because you're living in God's world.

40:28

And so he'll borrow from some of our stuff, not realizing that to borrow that requires the theological foundations that built that, which include this recognition of the prescriptive will of God, the decretal will of God, the differences between those things, and the fact that the text that he's utilizing to create a universal salvific will,

40:55

I don't believe he could defend that interpretation.

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He certainly could not demonstrate that the interpretation I would offer is impossible, and I know that I can present numerous texts,

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John chapter 6, Ephesians chapter 1, John chapter 17, Romans chapter 9, where his interpretation would not survive cross -examination because they're inconsistent.

41:26

So there you go. But just so you recognize how this works in creating these conundrums,

41:36

I think it's helpful to see that. All right, back to this one, and here we go.

41:45

Isn't everyone saved then? He does want us all to be saved, yet only he regenerates some?

41:51

That appears to be a contradiction to me. Well, and again, that's, I'm sorry, that's extremely simplistic, especially in light of the depth of conversation that has been had since, even since the time of the

42:04

Reformation, but had been had before then. You can go back to Gottschalk, you can go back to Augustine. These are things to say, well, that seems contradictory to me, is really,

42:15

I think, very shallow. It also appears to be a contradiction to say that we can have love without free will.

42:24

If we don't have free will, how can we love? Okay, so just a very, very common assertion, and it's meant to connect to certain types of people, but it requires ignorance of Scripture, because what is the greatest commandment?

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The greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Jesus, Jesus repeated that.

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I have to play with the microphone over here, just for the sound stuff. Jesus repeated that, taught that, demonstrated that.

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The same Jesus who said, you are children of the devil, and you're slaves to sin.

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He who commits sin is a slave to sin. The Son has to set you free. Jesus didn't think that was a contradiction. You're commanded to love, but you're a slave of sin, which means you do not have, quote -unquote, autonomous or free will.

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You are a slave of sin. Can we agree, hopefully, that if you are a slave, you are not free?

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I don't know how people fit that stuff together in their minds, but they'll stand up there and say, yeah, we're slaves to sin.

43:46

And yeah, we're free. And to truly love, you have to be utterly free.

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And the idea is, what's being said is, so what's being created in the mind of the person listening to this is, well, those people are actually saying

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God forces you to love, or God creates some kind of feeling or something.

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This is one of the problems in thinking of having an unbiblical definition of love.

44:22

Earthmover. It was perfectly quiet all morning, and now we've got earthmovers running around.

44:30

They're actually working on a – this is a pretty nice little park here in KOA in Salt Lake City.

44:36

It's a pretty nice little park, and they're working on stuff, and I'm seeing earthmovers running all over the place. They may be trying to get stuff done before the snow hits, before a snowpocalypse hits in the middle of April.

44:49

Anyway, so this issue of what love is, love is something that God can command of us.

45:00

And so once again, you have to have – there's a lot of conversation going on about Thomas Aquinas and stuff like that right now.

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And believe you me, Dr. Turek, Dr. Geisler, deeply influenced by Aquinas.

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This is one of the key areas of concern that everyone should be concerned about, about this rising

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Thomism amongst the Reformed, is that Aquinas, brilliant as he was, did not have a biblical anthropology.

45:32

I cannot imagine anyone in the Reformed world that would say

45:39

Thomas Aquinas had a biblical anthropology. And yet we are the ones that recognize the centrality of a biblical anthropology to a solid understanding of biblical soteriology.

45:52

If you begin with a Greek philosophical understanding of mankind, if you think that mankind has a natural light that can lead him to a true knowledge of God, in the fallen state – now there's always a distinction, this could come up in a moment – you always have to make a distinction between a discussion of man now and the theoretical discussion of Adam.

46:20

Because we can have theoretical discussions about Adam, but what you've always got to remember is at most we have two chapters of Scripture that even touch on, briefly, in just snippets,

46:48

Adam in an unfallen state. And you might be able to argue a text over here or a text over there, something along those lines.

46:58

But we simply have no description, and that means there are just all sorts of questions that Scripture never intended to answer in regards to Adam if he had not fallen,

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Adam if he was in this situation or that situation. You can run yourself ragged going theoretical about those things.

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The irony is that people will write entire books about stuff like that, but when it comes to fallen man, we've got a lot of stuff.

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Just think about Jeremiah, just one prophet and the insight that he has into the depraved, fallen heart of man.

47:45

And all that just gets ignored. Jesus says more about our slavery to sin in John 8 than almost anything we have in the

47:54

Bible about any theoretical knowledge of Adam in a pre -fallen state. But we don't want to talk about that.

48:03

Well, we have to if we're going to believe Sola Scriptura and Tota Scriptura. That's what we've got to do. So I think that's important stuff to be looking at, and I don't know why it does this.

48:16

There we go. And back to the video. Moist robots, as the atheists say.

48:25

So I have some issues with the hard five -point Calvinism view. I also think tragically it makes

48:31

God the author of evil. You say, why does it make God the author of evil? Well, I'll give you a little story that went back to Dallas Theological Seminary a number of years ago.

48:40

My co -author, Dr. Norman Geister, who actually wrote a book called Chosen but Free, which has been refuted thoroughly and has created more

48:50

Calvinists than probably any other book written recently. And in fact,

48:56

I spoke with someone within the past couple of days that – well, yesterday

49:01

I spoke with a brother who was given – after he came out of Mormonism, he was given

49:09

Chosen but Free. And then he read The Potter's Freedom, and that was it.

49:14

He, from that point on, recognized the necessity, the biblical necessity of Reformed theology and had no interest in going in that direction anymore at all.

49:27

Later, after this debate, was debating a Calvinist by the name of John Gerstner. And during the debate, Geister asked

49:33

Gerstner, does man have free will? And Gerstner said, yes, man has free will to do what he desires, but God gives him the desires of his heart.

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So Geister asked, well, who gave Adam the desire to sin? And Gerstner said, mystery.

49:49

And Geister said, contradiction. There is really one of the – to be honest with you, that does not reflect well on Norman Geister at all.

50:05

And, in fact, Norm's interaction with Reformed theology as a whole does not reflect well on Dr.

50:12

Geisler. And, of course, I can give you more stories along these lines than most people can because of The Potter's Freedom and Dr.

50:21

Geisler's astonishing response to that book. Just astonishing. I've told people, but I don't think

50:29

I've ever, on the dividing line, gone through everything that really happened after The Potter's Freedom was published.

50:38

The appendix that Dr. Geisler added to his second edition of his book that was then removed later on because it was so bad.

50:47

So many errors. Yeah, we really haven't gotten into all that.

50:52

But I've never heard this debate between Gerstner and Geisler.

50:59

It would be interesting to hear. But this illustrates exactly what

51:07

I was just saying. Because when we talk about the will of man now in the fallen state, we have pages and pages and chapters and chapters and books and books of divine revelation on that subject.

51:23

We have almost nothing on Adam and the unfallen state.

51:29

What does it take? Okay, I'll say it straight. It takes an incredible amount of hubris, philosophical hubris, to dismiss the mystery response by saying it's contradiction.

51:45

You do not have sufficient basis in Scripture of knowledge of Adam's constitution in regards to the nature of his will in comparison to all the information we have about the fallen man's will in Scripture to make that kind of an argument.

52:06

What Dr. Gerstner, I think, should have pointed out was exactly that, that the fundamental assertion that's being made that is erroneous is that there is a parallel that we can draw.

52:21

We do not have sufficient information to draw that parallel. And to challenge him to prove it scripturally, you can't.

52:29

There's nothing about it. And then he'd have to say mystery as to why there's not.

52:36

So thinking presuppositionally, identifying those presuppositional things.

52:41

But that is not a foundation, logically, for the assertion beforehand, which was very common in the

52:50

William Lane Craig -influenced group to assert that this makes God the author of evil.

52:57

And it doesn't matter what you say to these folks, they will not hear what you're saying.

53:04

Do we not have literally decades of evidence of this now? You can point out to them, well, wait a minute,

53:13

Dr. Turek, do you believe God knows the future? I don't know exactly where he stands.

53:20

I don't think he's an open theist. Probably a Molinist of some sort, I suppose.

53:27

So is he going to go down that line and have to now defend counterfactuals and true subjunctives and all the rest of this mind -numbing, soul -stealing stuff of Molinism?

53:45

Is that what he's going to try to defend? He has to deal with the reality that God had knowledge of what was going to happen with Adam.

54:00

And the Molinist response is an empty response. It has no meaning to it.

54:07

It is a failed theodicy. We were trying to get into that in the debate a couple months ago in the cross -demonation, but that only got so far.

54:16

But it's a failed theodicy. It's a shallow, unsatisfying theodicy because it has to bring in this external concept that fundamentally you are left with more unanswered questions than you have answered questions.

54:39

But again, one of the two of us can camp on text after text after text and demonstrate that our interpretation of those texts is flowing from the text.

54:54

And the best the other side can do is say, well, we've got this system, and that means this text means this, and that text means that, and that text means that, all determined by our system rather than our system being derived from the text.

55:07

That will always be, for me, when I talk to committed people that are committed to this system or that system, and I encounter folks that go like, no, no, no, no,

55:18

I've heard all you have to say, and I just don't. And I'm just like, okay, that's fine, because I've seen so many times others who fully understand that you have to derive your beliefs from the text of Scripture.

55:35

You have to pull it directly from the text of Scripture, and there's a difference, and they can see what that difference is.

55:43

And when I was younger, when you talk to folks that you couldn't convince of that, that would be frustrating.

55:51

It's not really frustrating for me anymore, partly because it's not up to me to do that.

55:58

I don't have the capacity to do that. And secondly, because I've seen people who once were like that, and then over time, the hound of heaven got them, and they're like, yeah, yeah,

56:11

I was just being pigheaded type of a situation.

56:16

So there you go. But we are actually, we might, I realize the hour is almost done, but we might actually get through this.

56:26

That would be a first. Now you're making God the author of evil. See, that seems to be a problem in my view anyway, making

56:35

God the author of evil. God is not Allah. He's not arbitrary. He's good.

56:42

God is not Allah is another Geislerism that, again, is just horrifically shallow and extremely prejudicial, false.

56:55

It's untrue. It shows not only an ignorance of Islam, but certainly of what reformed people are saying about God.

57:04

God is not Allah. That does not mean, however, that God is less than Allah.

57:13

So I understand what Qatar is in Islamic theology, probably better than Norman Geisler did.

57:22

And probably better than Dr. Turek does. And I've debated Muslims in foreign countries on that subject, interestingly enough.

57:33

God is not arbitrary. That's exactly right. That has nothing to do with reformed theology.

57:41

And if you think it does, it just demonstrates you're utterly ignorant of reformed theology. And I'm sorry to see people demonstrating their ignorance of reformed theology.

57:50

But if you think God is arbitrary, you say, well, he chooses whom he wills.

57:57

And it's not based upon what we do. Right. That's not the same thing as being arbitrary. Well, what's the difference?

58:03

One is the exercise of God's freedom to grant unmerited grace, literally demerited grace, to convicted rebels based upon what will glorify him versus the arbitrariness that is demonstrated, for example.

58:24

And I would ask Dr. Turek, how many hadith could you narrate that would illustrate the

58:32

Islamic understanding of Qatar off the top of your head without looking anything up right now?

58:38

Again, he's not going to watch this, so I don't know why I'm bothering. But how many could you? Because the arbitrariness of a law as illustrated in Mutawatir Hadith.

58:57

Do you know what Mutawatir Hadith is, Frank, without looking it up? It's very, very clear and very, very establishable.

59:08

Two brief summaries of two different hadiths. You have the clear statement in Sahih al -Bukhari where Muhammad says that there are those who do the deeds of the people of fire right up until the time of point for them.

59:25

And then the decree of Allah overtakes them, and they enter into paradise. And there are those who do the deeds of the people of paradise right up until the decree overtakes them, and they enter into the fire.

59:39

The idea being there are people who live godly lives and yet will end up in hell because they're not chosen by God.

59:45

And there are people who live horrible lives who will end up in heaven because they're not chosen by God. That's arbitrary because it has nothing to do with the life they live and the purpose of God in demonstrating his holiness within those individuals and in the redemption through the mediator,

01:00:03

Jesus Christ. The more obvious one was the man who killed 99 people. And the summary of this one, it's a longer story.

01:00:11

The summary of this one is there is a man who murdered 100 people. He asked a scholar if God would accept his repentance.

01:00:22

The scholar said no, so he killed the scholar. So it was 100 people. He had killed 99, then he killed 100. He was going to a town to find out about repentance when the time of his death comes because God writes the day of your death on your forehead.

01:00:35

And he dies, and Allah says if he's one cubit closer to the town he was going to than the one he was coming from, he will go to paradise.

01:00:43

And then in some stories he makes the ground shrink between where he died and the town he was going to, and so he went to paradise.

01:00:50

So here's a mass murderer who never repented who goes to paradise. The arbitrary notes, because there were companions of Muhammad that cried on their deathbeds because they had no confidence they were going to go to paradise because there's no way to know.

01:01:12

There's no mediator. Allah is arbitrary. And if you think that has anything to do in any way, shape, or form with what the

01:01:21

Bible teaches concerning the elect, their union with Christ, and the demonstration of the glory of God in the salvation of totally undeserving people, then

01:01:38

I don't even know how to talk to you because there is no connection between the two.

01:01:45

So every time you hear someone, and they're normally just repeating what they've heard from Kanner and Geisler and people like that.

01:01:53

They do not know either Reformed theology or Islam and do not have a high enough standard of truthfulness to make sure that they would know the truth about either one.

01:02:04

So I call upon Dr. Turek and others, stop. You are only demonstrating that you do not know what you are talking about in both areas.

01:02:15

Stop. For your own good, learn. Just repent. Do better next time.

01:02:21

All right. Okay, back to it here.

01:02:28

He allows evil. He may bring judgment on us, but he is not the author of evil.

01:02:34

He gives everybody the ability to respond to him, but only some of us do. He gives everyone the ability to respond to him, but only some of us do.

01:02:46

Standard synergistic approach. But what does that mean? There are still unreached people groups.

01:02:56

There are still groups in this world that do not have the scriptures in their language. How have they been given the ability to quote -unquote respond to him?

01:03:07

How was the Amorite high priest, my favorite example, how was the Amorite high priest, hundreds of years before Christ, given the same ability that I was given as a child to respond to the

01:03:20

Christian message? I was raised in a Christian family. Sunday school and church was all

01:03:26

I knew from my earliest memories. You're telling me that the

01:03:32

Amorite high priest was given the same prevenient grace? Is that what he would use here, the term prevenient grace that I was given?

01:03:39

That's ridiculous. That's absolutely ridiculous. It's just not true. And the

01:03:45

Bible nowhere says it. Where does the Bible say this? Because that's clearly an exceptionally important assertion on his part.

01:03:56

So where does the Bible say this? Where in Ephesians 2, but God being rich in mercy, gave the same kind of saving grace to everybody?

01:04:11

No, that's not what he did. That's not what Ephesians teaches. That's not what

01:04:17

John teaches. That's not what Romans teaches. That is not a biblical teaching. And anybody that looks at the

01:04:22

Old Testament sits there and goes, wait a minute.

01:04:27

You're saying that God gives the same light to everybody at all times.

01:04:34

Is that what you're saying? Like Pharaoh's soldiers drowned in the

01:04:40

Red Sea maybe? The firstborn of Egypt. Because the events in Goshen were far removed from other cities in Egypt.

01:04:53

They didn't know what was going on. They knew that there was a bunch of weird stuff happening, and the Nile turned to blood, and that stunk, and there were frogs, and everything.

01:05:01

Well, it was bad. But they didn't know Moses was. And then one night they all dropped dead, the firstborn.

01:05:11

Huh. They give them the same chance? It's so absurd. Maybe you just repeat it so often that you start believing it.

01:05:20

But when you ask, does this really represent what's found in Scripture? You just have to go, no, that doesn't make any sense at all.

01:05:29

No, it doesn't. Doesn't make any sense at all. Share screen.

01:05:38

Because we resist the Holy Spirit. We don't want there to be a God. We want to be

01:05:43

God of our own lives. So I think we have free will that we can respond to God's call to the

01:05:49

Holy Spirit, going out to all the world, convicting the world of sin. But some of us don't want to be convicted.

01:05:55

We want to go our own way. There is truth in what was just said, but it also assumes that the same call goes to every person.

01:06:07

Many are called, few are chosen. And plainly in Scripture, there is an efficient call.

01:06:15

That's what the golden chain's about. Those to be predestined, these He also called.

01:06:20

Those to be called, these He also justified. Is anyone justified apart from faith? No. Therefore, the calling results in having faith.

01:06:29

It's right there in Scripture. But these synergistic human traditions sap the

01:06:36

Scriptures of their consistency and their power of proclamation.

01:06:42

And that's what we've been demonstrating on Radio Free Geneva for many years.

01:06:49

And thankful for the opportunities of having done so. Once again, I would very much say,

01:06:58

Dr. Turek, you go on campuses. You take on atheists.

01:07:06

Why not me? I've debated some of the same people you've debated.

01:07:12

People can go watch these things. Like I said, from what I saw on Twitter briefly just a few moments ago.

01:07:19

Well, not a few moments ago, but half an hour ago. There were lots and lots of people who were saying, yeah, yeah, this really needs to happen.

01:07:30

It would be so useful. Join with me in edifying the saints.

01:07:35

Wow, we're up to 46 comments now on that particular one.

01:07:50

Oh, goodness. Reverend Theo Babble God Mockery.

01:08:00

Calvinists are wrong and TULIP is an evil doctrine, but Frank, turns out you are wrong too. La, la, la, la, la, la.

01:08:09

It's going to be interesting to read through all this stuff. And you want my prediction?

01:08:16

I haven't been able to read through it just sitting here. Here's my prediction. The farther you get into the comments, the less they will have to do with what was originally said.

01:08:31

Isn't that how it works? That's how it works on Facebook. That's how it works on Twitter. That's how it worked on all the web boards

01:08:36

I was ever part of years and years ago. That's what worked on the AOL forums back before there was social media, when it was an early form of social media.

01:08:43

All the rest, that kind of stuff. That's just how it works. And there's no way around it.

01:08:50

And I'm sure by the time I get down to the bottom, there will be discussion about transgenderism and something about pulled pork and probably something about sports.

01:09:01

That's just how it works. Anyways, all right, kids.

01:09:08

You know, if you would pray that the Lord would ameliorate the strength of the storm, shall we say,

01:09:19

I really would like to have the opportunities on Tuesday and Wednesday to do the stuff we were supposed to be doing, meeting with the people we're supposed to be meeting with.

01:09:31

I mean, I'm not going to. I can survive. I've got plenty of food and water and stuff here in my little mobile home.

01:09:41

But, you know, and I personally am sort of. Rich says the snow falls on the just and the unjust alike.

01:09:53

That's true. That's true. There's no two ways about it. But anyway, this shouldn't have any impact on my getting up to Idaho for the debate in less than two weeks now with Doug Wilson and the other stuff we're recording and speaking and stuff like that.

01:10:14

It shouldn't, Lord willing, affect any of that. So we will we will press on.

01:10:21

So thanks for watching Radio Free Geneva today. I again,

01:10:26

I don't know what the schedule is going to be the rest of the week because my schedule is now going to be up in the air due to weather.

01:10:32

But if I am stuck in here, hey, we might as well do do more dividing lines. Right. There's lots of stuff to be discussing and talking about as it is.

01:10:41

And who knows, maybe next time there will be a wintry wonderland outside the window instead of the green grass across the way.

01:10:50

It might all be white. I might just disappear into it. If I close up my white jacket and my white beard,

01:10:58

I might just be a floating head. That's everything white all behind me or something like that.

01:11:03

So, hey, look, I'm from Arizona. I don't see snow all that much, but I got all

01:11:09

I needed when I was in Conway. So I really don't really need any extra. But if it happens, it happens.

01:11:15

Lords in control. Lords good. Thanks for listening to the program today. We'll see you next time. God bless. You absolutely hear people that are

01:11:34

Calvinist harp on this. God's offering, God's offering, God's offering, God's offering.

01:11:40

They just keep repeating it. And they repeat it so much you start to think it's a biblical truth. Jesus stands outside the tomb of Lazarus.

01:11:54

He says, Lazarus, come out. And Lazarus said, I can't. I'm dead. That's not what he did.

01:12:01

Lazarus came out. Do you mean to tell me a dead person can respond to the command of Christ? And then you take lessons from Judas White and Jeff Durbin.

01:12:16

It shows in this kind of sequential format. Do you really believe that it parallels the method of exegesis that we utilize to demonstrate those other things?

01:12:34

No. Some new

01:12:40

Calvinists, even pastors, very openly smoke pipes and cigars just as they drink beer and wine.

01:12:57

Even Jesus cannot override your unbelief. Quoting a verse like that to him, you know what it would sound like if he were listening to it?

01:13:15

It wouldn't make any sense to him. A self -righteous, legalistic, deceived jerk. And you need to realize that he's gone from predeterminism.

01:13:31

Now he's speaking of some kind of middle knowledge that God now has to...

01:13:36

I deny and categorically deny middle knowledge. Don't beg the question that would demand me to force you to embrace it.

01:13:49

You're not always talking about necessarily God choosing something for no apparent reason, but you're choosing that meat because it's a favorable meat.

01:13:56

There's a reason to have the choice of that meat. Our underground bunker deep beneath the faculty cafeteria at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

01:14:12

Safe from all those moderate Calvinists, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and re -read George Bryson's book, we are

01:14:18

Radio Free Geneva! Broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to say for His own eternal glory.