October 30, 2003

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This is the
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Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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Our host is Dr. James White, Director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an Elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the
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United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. Well, I'm awful glad those Roman Catholic apologists call in, aren't you?
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I hope you were just listening to the Bible Answer Man broadcast. Bill Webster is on with Hank Hanegraaff and we had a
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Roman Catholic apologist call in and he's a deacon in the Catholic Church.
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Do not confuse that with what a deacon would be doing in an evangelical church.
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It's a little bit of a, well, all of the basic biblical offices have become massively complex and permutated and everything else in Roman Catholicism.
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But anyway, this is the guy who calls in. He's called in before. I think I do recognize the voice.
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And I guess he, maybe he didn't understand. It has been funny, the title of the three book set that is available for a penny less, by the way, at AOMin .org,
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Holy Scripture, the Ground and Pillar of our Faith, many Catholics have just absolutely jumped all over that.
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That's not what it says. The Bible says the church is the ground and pillar of the faith and so on and so forth of the truth, actually.
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And they don't even bother to read inside and find out where the title came from. It's a quote from Irenaeus.
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And the whole point is to explain the early church father's view on the subject of the relationship of Scripture.
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So the guy calls in and he quotes 1 Timothy 3 .15. And he says, where does the
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Bible ever say that the Scriptures are the ground and pillar of our faith? And so, of course,
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Bill mentions 2 Timothy chapter 3, then he goes over to 1 Timothy chapter 3, points out that that passage does say that the church is the pillar and ground of the truth.
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But, of course, a pillar and a foundation hold something else up. In fact, the church is differentiated from the truth at that point.
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There is a close, intimate relationship. There's no reason to cede to Rome the high ground on the church because Rome's view of the church is lesser than that of the
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New Testament. Even though she has a distorted, grossly disfigured view of the church, it is not a higher view than that of the
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New Testament. In fact, I would say that by insisting that the church is infallible in her clearly human and erroneous pronouncements,
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Rome has grossly disconnected the church from the true basis that it's supposed to have in the
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Scriptures. But yet, as it may, there's no reason to, you know, 1 Timothy 3 .15, we should be aggressive whenever a
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Roman Catholic cites that. We should demonstrate that we have it memorized, that we've looked at it, that we understand it.
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We should be able to point out the context, point out that I was actually talking about a local church there, look at the context, 1
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Timothy chapter 3, and say, you better believe I believe it. In fact, I believe it more than you do. But I don't make that into what you make it into.
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And so Bill went there, mentioned that, and then goes to Irenaeus. Well, then you have the standard
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Roman Catholic apologetic methodology immediately kicking in. Because, well,
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Irenaeus also said this, well, stop, wait a second. One of the two of us talks about the unanimous consent of the fathers.
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One of the two of us is the one always saying that, well, we've been around for 2 ,000 years, and it's the church fathers that teach what we believe and not what you believe.
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And as soon as you start demonstrating that, in reality, there is this wide range of differing opinions and that we can go toe -to -toe, we can stand toe -to -toe with the
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Roman Catholic quote, quote, quote, quote, quote, quote. Well, see, the problem is that's fine for us because we're recognizing that these were people who were writing, and some of them were well -grounded and well -taught, and some were not.
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And therefore, you're going to find all sorts of different viewpoints amongst them. We do not make them, in essence, containers of tradition that have to in some way be absolutely consistent with one another, because they're not.
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Anyone who reads the early church fathers knows that outside of monotheism, you're pretty much not going to get a whole lot of unanimous agreement amongst all these people.
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There's just that many different viewpoints that are being expressed on all sorts of different things. And so what happens is, well,
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Irenaeus also said you need to be a part of the church. Well, what's the relevance of that unless you're assuming, as the caller was assuming, that the church of the days of Irenaeus was, in point of fact, the
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Roman church, and that's what you have to challenge. Where did Irenaeus ever identify it in that way? Where did Irenaeus submit himself to the dogmas that Rome teaches today, or the concept of infallible
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Roman prelate? Well, there is no such thing, obviously. And it wasn't the Roman church that existed at that time.
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That is very common for the Roman Catholic to assume that, but it is untrue and needs to be challenged.
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You need to recognize that's a part of the thinking on the part of the person with whom you're speaking.
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But then it was really interesting. Bill went through a list. He mentioned Rufinus, he mentioned
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Jerome, Origin, I'm not sure if he mentioned Origin, Cyril of Jerusalem, he mentioned
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Melito of Sardis, and the fellow responded, seemingly knowing he was going to hear that, and then all the way down to Cardinal Cajetan, the prelate who interviewed
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Luther prior to the Diet of Worms, and what was that, 1518, somewhere around there.
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And he went through all these different individuals. I'm not sure if I remember,
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I think he mentioned Pope Gregory the Great, Bill normally does, but anyways, he mentions these people, and do you catch what happened after that?
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Well, but you know, if you look in the writings of those individuals, they also rejected certain
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New Testament books, and therefore if we go with them, then you're going to have to lose some New Testament books.
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Well, back up the truck. First of all, I'd like to see who is he talking about. Which of these individuals is he talking about?
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Secondly, was it in the same context? Third, what we're saying here is there was no unanimous consent of the fathers in regards to the
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Apocrypha. And beyond that, let's say that's true.
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How is that relevant? The point is, they're trying to say there's this ecclesiastical tradition, and here's a bunch of people, most of whom were bishops.
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I mean, Melito Sardis was the bishop of the church at Sardis at the end of the 2nd century, that had no knowledge of this alleged apostolic tradition.
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You've got Gregory the Great, the Pope, in the very same book that became the very foundation of the medieval development of the doctrine of purgatory, rejecting 1st
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Maccabees. Doesn't he know this tradition? Remember, you know, Rome loves to make these grand assertions about her tradition or authority and stuff, but then when you press them, all of a sudden they switch the grounds on you so quickly that you can hardly even catch them in the act.
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That's something that, you know, I remember watching a particular debate that I wasn't involved in, it was one of the few that I wasn't involved in, and that was one of the most frustrating things, was that I would see these
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Catholic apologists engaging in cheap debating tricks. I mean, you know, some of them don't do it on purpose, it's just the way they've been trained to think and to do things.
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Remember, fundamentally they have to be circular in their reasoning. Rome is their ultimate authority.
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Rome can't be wrong. And so, since Rome is wrong, then there has to, by definition, be a twisting of the facts to maintain their position.
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And so there's this subtle shifting of the ground, and you just simply can't catch them on it unless you're listening very, very, very carefully.
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So it was interesting to hear that. I'll be very interested in hearing the rest of it tomorrow.
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Don't forget that right now, in fact, they are recording the next hour. It's 4 o 'clock, 4 .09
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now in California, so they're recording the second hour. And if there's enough calls, then during one of the breaks,
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Hank will get on the line or somebody in the control room will get on the line and say, Bill, can you go an extra hour?
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And, you know, if he can, then they'll end up doing three, I don't know, it all depends. For some reason, they've gotten a little bit more structured at that point.
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Back when I first started doing Bible Answer Man broadcasts, like we did the King James only controversy the first time
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I was ever on, you know, we went for three hours and still had plenty of calls on hold.
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We could have done four. And something tells me that in December, when we do
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Calvinism, that we're going to have a lot of phone calls for that one. So it is possible that it could go three hours unless they, because as I was looking at the schedule, there's nothing scheduled for the third day, which would be a
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Friday or a Monday. At least I didn't think there was. But anyway, it's possible we could go three hours.
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But they're recording those right now. I'd be very interested to see who calls tomorrow, see if there's going to be some more of these
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Catholic apologists, especially the amateurs that love to try to get on there and throw their favorite arguments around.
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You never know what is under those blinking lights as you get ready to pick up that telephone.
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Well, of course you don't pick up the telephone, it's just you see it on a screen, there's a guest screen, it's a computer screen, and you see what the names of the callers are.
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I normally try to bring a little notepad with me and jot that down so I can use the caller's name if at all possible.
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And then you have a description of the call, sort of like we do here, except they have an actual system that's supposed to do it.
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But I get a little brief description of what the caller wants to talk about. Well, very often that only gives you just the vaguest idea of what's actually going to end up coming up.
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Sometimes it's just because the person doesn't know how to express their question more clearly. There are other times, though, when in reality what's due to is the fact that they're, let's just face it, they're dishonest callers.
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They know, or at least they think, anyway, that they aren't going to get on if they honestly express their disagreement, or if they honestly are going to ask a tough question.
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So they'll actually sort of mislead you in how they phrase the question initially to the call screener, and then they get on the air, and boom, there's that kind of thing.
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So anyway, someone was just asking, was Bill in studio? No, Bill was on a phone line there. And only once on,
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I think I've been on BAM at least 12 times, 12, 13 times, something like that. And once I was not in studio.
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And you probably, listening to the archives, which, of course, you have to get tapes now or MP3s or something, you probably would have a hard time recognizing which one it was.
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The reason being, I had intended to be in studio, I had gone to the airport, and my flight was canceled.
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And there was just no way to get a car and drive over there in time to make it.
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And so I went to a local radio station that is associated with the
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Salem Broadcasting Network, which is what Hank is on, which is what Bob Lansing is on. And we did what's called an
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ISDN hookup, and it's a high -quality phone line.
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And it really, well, if any of you have heard when Dave Hunt was on with me at KPXQ, at the same station, it sounded like he was in studio with me.
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And that's, in essence, what we did. And so we did one of those programs. I wasn't in studio.
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And, you know, I didn't enjoy it nearly as much. It is much easier to look at the person you're talking to.
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There's more chemistry, you can have conversations during the breaks. It's just, it's hard to sit on a phone line and do that kind of thing.
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I've done hundreds of radio programs on the phone, I mean, all the time.
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And eventually you do get used to it. But still, there's an element of chemistry that you can have in studio.
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And I have every intention, Lord willing, of being in studio in December. Because it's just the only way to do it.
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And especially if there's going to be another guest, which there's going to be, George Bryson, we need to be in the studio, just as I've been in the studio with James Aiken and Tim Staples.
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And, you know, when I've had the opportunity of being on with someone else, you're really at an extreme disadvantage if the person you're debating is in studio with the host and you're not.
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I've had that happen a few times. And that is just, that's very, very difficult to do.
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So, Lord willing, I will be in the studio. Even though I arrived back the day before from being gone for two and a half weeks in Florida and other parts of the globe.
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So, it's going to be this fall. I've said to a lot of friends,
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I'm scheduling a nervous breakdown for the 17th of December.
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It's just been going really, really, really, really fast. 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341, that's the phone number.
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You can get involved with the program today. If you have some comments on what you just heard on BAM, for example, with Bill Webster, I think
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I know the three volumes set well enough to be of assistance to you. And I actually asked
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David King, who was initially identified as the person who was on the air, I asked
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David King to be with me, but David's out of town. So, he would have loved to have been. We've had, of course, David and Bill on together.
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Some of you may recall the Mr. X debacle that was so illustrative of Robert St.
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Genes and the people associated with him. And so, we've had them on before, both to discuss their books and related issues.
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So, they're good friends in the ministry. That's why right on our front page, we have an announcement by Lance Vanity and tomorrow and so on and so forth.
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And we moved this. Oh, by the way, we need to, before we go to our first call here, we need to make sure that we're on the same page here.
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We are going to be changing the times yet again, mainly due to the fact that the rest of you all just won't stand up and tell your governmental officials that you're sick and tired of playing with your clocks.
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Those time, those little things you're supposed to wind up or they run on batteries, you plug them into the wall.
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You're supposed to just let them run, folks. And this stuff that came around the early 1900s about daylight savings time, it's just unnatural and it's not worthwhile.
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And the problem is now what has happened is that since you all are back now and everybody's on standard time, that now places a four o 'clock
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Phoenix time on a Thursday at six o 'clock back east and three o 'clock in the
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Pacific time zone. We just had a lot of folks saying, you know, we just, we just can't make it.
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The timing is all wrong and everything else. So I think that what we are supposed to be doing is in essence, and Hugh is in charge of these things, needs to be making sure that we know
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I'm getting this right because I forgot to ask about it. Basically, we're switching the days, right?
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Hello? Yes. Oh, there you are. You are correct, sir. Okay. So, uh,
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Tuesday evening, Tuesday evening.
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Go ahead. Give it a try. No, I'm waiting for you. Tuesday evening, 5 p .m.
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Mountain Standard time, 7 p .m. Eastern standard. And on Thursday morning at 11, 11, which would be 1 p .m.
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Eastern standard. So we're going back to what we were doing about a month or so ago, but we're just switching
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Tuesday and Thursday. That's correct. Oh, okay. Well, that works. Well, we'll see if it works.
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Well, let's hope so. One of the things that that might help a little bit with is I frequently have to leave on Thursdays for flights, but they're often afternoon flights because then
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I speak on Friday or something like that. So that we were losing a lot of Thursday evenings. We might not lose as many
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Thursday mornings as we do Thursday evenings as far as the timing goes. So Tuesday evening at 5 o 'clock
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Mountain Standard time. And if you can't figure out what that is, well, you probably should be watching
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TBN anyways. And then 11 a .m. on Thursdays.
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And it sounded like you were eating something out there. You're not eating while I'm doing the program, are you? Well, I wasn't eating on the air.
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But you're eating something. Earlier. Like ice cream or something? Macadamia nut.
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Oh, that's terrible. Yeah, I know. I knew you'd be thrilled. I really appreciate that. Well, anyway, I had cashews before that.
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I know how you feel about them. Yeah, that's true. That's true. I think I have some cashews in here. I could be eating them myself, but that'd be extremely rude to do that while actually talking with folks and things like that.
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877 -753 -3341. Let's go ahead and start taking the phone, because...
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And let's talk with Fred in Canyon Country, California.
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Where is that at? Oh, you asked me that question the last time. Well, the reason I asked that is because are you on fire is the question.
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No, we are sitting in among the fires. We see lots of smoke. Most of them have been sort of beat down now,
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I think. But past week has been a lot of smoke, big billowy clouds of smoke, actually.
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Well, we're smelling it over here now. Oh, really? Oh, yeah, because we're getting the whole flow has changed and the wind's about...
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Yeah, before it was like coming off the desert. And so all the smoke would blow away from us. And then I think the other night the breeze came off the ocean and all the smoke started coming towards us.
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Right. And it's just like this big, thick gray haze hanging over everything. Yeah, everything's changed.
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Right now, our wind's out of southwest 10 to 23 miles an hour. So we actually have a pollution advisory in Phoenix, thanks to all those smoke in our direction.
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Sorry about that. Oh, hey, you know, there are worse things that could happen. And what are they, like 1 ,800 homes that have...
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Oh, yeah. It's just incredible. Some of them are rather expensive. Oh, man. Mansion -like homes.
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Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, big time. Let me preface my comment by saying that I could not agree with you more with regards to the time change issue.
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Why on earth we still hang to that historical antiquity, I do not know. I can't figure it out either.
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It's one of the most infuriating things. Anyway, no, I was just wanting to comment upon how thrilled
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I am that you're going to be on the Bible Answer Man talking about the subject of the doctrines of grace. I could not be more ecstatic.
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And I hope that during the course of the discussion about Chatty Cathy Dolls and divine rape, that you have to ask him about, oh,
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Robert Shank's position that Hank usually takes with regards...
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I think he's wrote a book called Electing the Son. Well, Shank did, not Hank. Yeah, Shank did.
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Shank, not Hank. Hank is the one... Well, I just... I always find it interesting that when people call up and ask about election, he'll kind of...
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Well, there's a Calvinistic view, and then there's an Arminian view. But I take this third view as if it's somehow different than the other two.
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And really, Shank is just sort of articulating your classic Arminianism in some way.
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Well, I honestly think that the primary context in which to place those comments is...
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Certainly, Shank and others have their place in the formulation of these things.
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But I honestly think that the primary context to look for is in anti -Calvinistic
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Lutheranism. That is, there is monergistic Lutheranism that would be more
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Lutheran in the sense of Luther and the bondage of the will. But then there is a very strongly anti -Calvinistic form of Lutheranism.
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I mean, it's always... It's been there ever since the great fights that broke out between the Reform and the Lutherans. Well, even during the days of Calvin, but especially in the generations thereafter.
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And I think that's where you can look to get a lot of the impetus here, as far as the assertions in regards to Calvinism that have become normative within that context.
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Yes, I just know that that's always been one of the, I don't know, the primary questions
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I'm always asked about with regards to Shank's work. It's just to,
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I guess, refute his particular take on corporate election, which is sort of this idea that you're in...
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They're just sort of... I don't know. The way I kind of perceive it, and maybe you can help me articulate a little better, is he takes this position that there's just sort of this idea that Christ is the elect one, and somehow you join yourself to that group with your faith.
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Isn't that how you kind of articulate that? The irony here, and a lot of folks listening will be aware of this, the irony here is that the most recent place where I heard that preached in almost those exact words was at the
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Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Conference in 2002. Yes, it's kind of ironic.
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It is. And you go to the passage in Peter about Christ, the elect cornerstone.
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I think that's a real stretch in regards to the use of the term there.
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We even had somebody in our chat channel using that terminology just last night.
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Well, Jesus is elect. That has nothing to do with salvation. Well, the context, the passage is completely irrelevant to that issue as well.
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But the idea being, of course, what's being presented is that if Christ is the elect one and we are in him, then that's how we are elect.
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And that sort of shifts the emphasis off of the idea of divine election to the idea of, well, how do we get in him?
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Well, we get in him by this process over here, and that's where we can make room for libertarian free will and all the rest of that stuff.
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And again, it involves conflating two completely different contexts, that which is being used to describe
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Christ in Peter with the passages like Ephesians chapter one. And the problem is the definition of election given
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Ephesians chapter one is intimately connected with personal salvation itself. There's no reason to argue about the fact that God has elected a people because that's true.
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I mean, we do need to avoid being what
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I might call hyper personalistic in the sense of importing American concepts of it's just me and the
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Lord off in the wilderness. At the same time, we don't go so far the other direction that you lose the personal aspect of salvation and the personal union between each of the individuals who are part of the elect with their savior.
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There's, you have to maintain both of them or you get into trouble. What they're trying to do is to, in essence, separate those two out so that the individual can have this libertarian free will as to how he participates in this.
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And there's just no basis of doing that in Ephesians chapter one. I mean, right in the context, right in that particular phraseology, you have the assertion that we have been chosen in him and the context are of adoption and forgiveness and redemption.
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And when you start talking about forgiveness of sins, this is not something that is merely done in a corporate elect way in which you just sort of wipe out everybody's sins in a group or something like that.
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Sins are committed individually and the forgiveness and adoption. I mean, Paul gets really personal about the nature of adoption in Romans chapter eight.
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So to think that he would use that terminology and just a really, you know, class concept that has no personal application.
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It just, it just turns the text on its head. And over and over again, that's what I see going on in this situation is because of these external, traditional, frequently philosophically expressed objections to the doctrines of grace, what you end up doing is you end up really flattening out the text and forcing into it meanings that you could never demonstrate or derive from the text itself.
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It's from this overarching system of theology. And I just saw a comment made in Channel, I suppose I should clarify something.
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I'm talking about Shank at this point. I'm not talking about the application that was made by, I believe it was
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John Barich at the Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church Conference. Obviously, these men consider themselves to be
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Calvinist and reformed. And so they would take a little bit of a different view, though, I've said on the dividing line before, if Ephesians one and all these other passages are talking only about corporate election, then where do you go to find the individual element?
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Where do you go to find the foundation of the five points, for example? And that's, that's an issue that I've raised raised before.
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But anyhow, hopefully that was somewhat of the very helpful. Okay. I just, you know,
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I'm looking forward to the discussion. And I think you said on an earlier program, how I appreciate you kind of outlining how you're going to tackle it by just making everyone's state of the
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Bible, you know, and rather than kind of veering off into these traditions and philosophical notions and such.
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There's no question it's going to be difficult in the sense of, like I said, you never know what's underneath one of those blinking lights.
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And unfortunately, there are going to be questions asked by those blinking lights that are not even really remotely central to the real topic.
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And you have to then somehow, you have to hope for cooperation on the part of everybody to bring it back to the central issues.
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But generally, especially if it's going to go three hours, you have the first hour for discussion amongst the guests before you get to the calls anyways.
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And if that's the case, then obviously as best as I can in the, what do you have?
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Maybe at the most 50 minutes, 45 to 50 minutes per hour of actual talk time. You're only, you're really only talking about 20 some odd minutes, 20, 25 minutes at best where you get to talk.
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So I'm going to have to be very clear, very succinct, very direct, but it has to stay in the text of scripture or it's going to be really a waste of everybody's time and it's going to lead to more confusion than enlightenment.
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So I'll do my best. Pray for me. Oh yeah, we will. And, uh, you know, just keep their feet held to the fire,
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I guess. And, uh, I look forward to the, uh, hearing that. All right, man. Thanks a lot for calling in. All right. Stay safe.
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Stay safe over there. Bye -bye. All right. Bye -bye. Uh, 877 -753 -3341.
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Let's go ahead and, uh, take our break and then we'll be back with, uh, Brett in North Carolina and David in Albuquerque as well.
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You can order your copy of James White's book, Mary, Another Redeemer, at aomen .org.
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This portion of the dividing line has been made possible by the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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The Apostle Paul spoke of the importance of solemnly testifying of the gospel of the grace of God. The proclamation of God's truth is the most important element of his worship in his church.
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The elders and people of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church invite you to worship with them this coming Lord's Day.
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The morning Bible study begins at 930 a .m. and the worship service is at 1045. Evening services are at 630 p .m.
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on Sunday and the Wednesday night prayer meeting is at 7. The Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church is located at 3805
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If you're unable to attend, you can still participate with your computer and real audio at prbc .org,
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where the ministry extends around the world through the archives of sermons and Bible study lessons available 24 hours a day.
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That's Abandoned to God, Steve Camp. He has a great poll question at his website,
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I think it's just stevecamp .org if I recall correctly, or com, one of the two. Anyway, he's got a great, he's got a great poll question about the purpose driven life, the purpose driven church,
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I think it's purpose driven life. And one of the, one of the, the bottom choice that you can make is, no
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I'm not going to read it because it's a, how do you put it, a novelette for christianettes or something like that,
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I forget what it was, it was funny. But you might want to take a look at that, that's Steve Camp. Hey, before we go to Brett, I, many, many years ago, and some of you are really not old enough to remember this, but many, many years ago, people possessed things called record players.
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And before CDs, and I know some of you have never understood that music could exist to be recorded on anything but a
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CD, but before there were CDs, there were these things called record players, and they were not just for going with either, in fact, that was not a good thing to do, that would generally destroy your record.
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But these were vinyl discs, very large vinyl discs, very subject to melting, especially in Arizona.
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And so you would actually turn it on and it would spin, and you'd actually put this thing with a needle on it, and you could, you could listen to music this way.
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And I have a whole shelf of, of what are called LPs. It's from Long Play.
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LPs down in my office here from back when I was, I was a kid. And I, I got a record player this week from my parents, and I hooked it all up to my system, and I'm MP3 and all this stuff.
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I've got all these MP3s on my system now. And I thought some of you might find interesting to hear a song.
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Um, this is one of the first songs, I purchased this record, that's how you bought things back then, at Brain Christian Bookstore back when
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I was in high school, like a sophomore in high school, sophomore junior in high school. And this might help explain how
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I ended up in apologetics. See, and now this, this isn't exactly, you know, the kind of apologetics we necessarily do, but you know, it actually sort of fits.
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So let's see if any of you have ever heard this one before. Oh, it's sort of funny to watch all the whining in the channel, all these people who talk about listening to this grunge music.
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Oh, this is terrible. Ah, good stuff.
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Buddha, that was the Imperials. Yes, that was back when Russ Taft was still with the Imperials, isn't he?
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I saw him on TV. He's with the Gaither Vocal Band now, isn't he? He's one of the four dudes with the
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Gaither Vocal Band now, at least that's what I saw on TV anyways. But that was a long, it was like, what, 79? Yeah, I think it was about 1979, 1980, somewhere around there.
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Yep, that's what I was listening to. That and all sorts of other fun stuff.
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But anyhow, I guess that's what started the apologetic stuff. Really politically incorrect, wasn't it? But sort of predictive.
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Well, let's go ahead and let's take our poor phone callers. If they're still with us, they may have hung up during that.
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I don't know. Let's talk to Brett in Raleigh, North Carolina. And Brett, you cannot complain about the music, OK? No, I was listening to that.
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I've got my Steve Camp CD here and just thinking, if he was listening to that, that's going to be a cover of the new album.
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Oh, yeah. Well, believe me, Steve was around back then, and I'm sure he could probably sing it himself.
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Well, kind of open up my question. I'm in a logic class. I'm at NC State University, and there was a girl in my class.
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Her and her husband just transferred from BYU, and I really fell into an apologetics ministry.
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So I knew that I was going to share with her, and I just prayed for an opportunity. And so I got a chance to talk to her.
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I have a Tuesday -Thursday class, and I shared with her on Tuesday some of the things that I believe, and I just shared with her the gospel and who
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God is and what salvation is. And I gave her some passages to think about, and we were going to talk again on Thursday.
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And before the class, I was just in a dining hall reading through Isaiah 40 through 48. I love those passages.
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And just praying through it and reading through it. And so I was walking to my class, and right around the corner, two
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Mormon missionaries walked by. And we don't get a lot of those around NC State. I've seen two in my entire career at NC State, and I shared with both of them about a year ago.
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And so I just stopped them and said, hey, how are you doing? And asked if I could meet up with them and talk with them.
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And they said sure, and they got my name and wrote my stuff down. But here's the question I have. It's kind of a two -part question.
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Whenever they called me, they called me back, and they were eager to meet up with me.
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But they said they wanted to meet at an LDS building just off of campuses, real close to campuses, within walking distance.
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But it's a place, I think, where LDS folks meet together. That's probably the LDS Seminary.
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Yeah, I'm just curious. Do they keep people's information? I mean, would they have my name down that two
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Mormons came by like a year ago, and this guy?
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That's quite possible, yeah. That is quite possible. I mean, I haven't talked to missionaries in the past 10 years and asked them about what their policy is.
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I can tell you that when we first started really aggressively meeting with missionaries here in the area, eventually they started distributing my picture to all the missionaries.
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And so if they did that back then, yeah, I mean, if you made a real splash, shall we say, with those two, they might make note of it, yeah.
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Well, we sat down in my living room for about an hour, so maybe a little longer, and just read through some scriptures, and I gave them some information.
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I mean, there wasn't like a hostile environment or anything like that, but I mean, it was clear that I did know a lot,
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I guess, more than what most of the people in my apartment complex would have known. We had some good discussion.
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I just think they felt like it was a waste of time for them. Well, yeah, eventually they do make that decision that if they don't get you baptized after a certain amount of time, generally most missionaries are just going to move on.
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By the way, I had someone from up in Utah correct me when it's attached to a college, it's an institute, not a seminary.
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It's only a seminary if it's attached to a high school, which really leads us all to confusion, because seminaries for us are very different.
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But anyhow, yeah, it depends on whether you're talking to them, what kind of missionary you're talking to, and primarily the older of the two missionaries is really going to make the decision as to how long this is going to go, what the nature of it's going to be, stuff like that.
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So, you know, what he wrote down, you know, there's no way of knowing, but it would probably be whichever the older of the two was who was sort of in charge of things, depending on how he interpreted your demeanor would sort of determine how your name was remembered, shall we say.
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So, do you think that would be an appropriate place to go and meet with those guys? I mean, I'd probably want to have somebody with me, not in the sense that they're going to mug you or something, you know, you could be dragged off and deprogrammed or something.
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But I just think there's something wise about going out two by two.
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I mean, I don't think the Mormons are wrong about that. You tend to be more comfortable and more, well, brave, more courageous when you have someone to pray for you, someone to accompany you.
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So, if there would be someone who could, you know, come along with you, that would probably be a good thing.
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Now, you might say, well, isn't that going to sort of, you know, make them feel like there's more of a confrontation. Well, at the same time, you know, they're coming to you with more than one person.
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So, it would seem logical to, you know, if they want to meet there, just to bring along someone and they shouldn't really have a problem with that.
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In fact, for most of them, they'd be thinking, oh, cool, we get to sort of kill two birds with one stone here. Yeah, I was,
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I don't know, it was an old dividing line program. I remember you said that you've gotten to the point now where whenever missionaries come to your door, you just invite them in and just show them what you do.
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Well, yeah, I've done that. I mean, I can sort of get away with it because, well, just because I'm me,
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I guess. I'm not sure how to really put that. But, you know, when you open the door and there's a, you know, 235 pound bald guy, you know, with Oakleys on and, you know, hey, you know,
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I'm just about to go do a webcast and, in fact, you know, I teach about you guys and I've written books about you guys.
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That's, they're either going to run for the hills immediately or they're going to be very interested, possibly because they've been going door to door all day long and have gotten nothing but the cold shoulder and haven't had a meaningful conversation in ages.
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That does tend to, you know, it sort of forces the issue. It's going to be one way or the other. And so far it's worked real well, both with the
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Mormons and with the Jehovah's Witnesses. So the approach I thought about taking was just being open with them and just explain to them, you know, what
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I was doing on my walk back and the reason I stopped and, you know, talked with them and maybe kind of lead that into the conversation.
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I didn't know if, in your experience, that's been a good way to go or... Well, you know, you can't predict beforehand.
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They, you know, I think I have a little bit of an advantage there because unless you can show them the books you've written or, you know, one of the things that grabbed those two missionaries recently was, you know,
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I said, you know what, next weekend I'm going to be on the campus of the University of Utah debating an
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LDS scholar on the meaning of the Atonement. And they're like, yeah, you know,
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PhDs in BYU. And they're like, wow, you know, that sort of helps. If you say,
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I'm a college student associated with such and such ministry, they're like, oh boy, you know, here we go again. So I just,
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I can't predict. I just know that, you know, it really is completely dependent upon whether you're talking to a missionary who is doing what he's doing because mom and dad said, you have to do this if you're ever going to become a bishop and never get anywhere in the church, or if you're talking to a missionary who really, really believes in Mormonism and knows what he believes and wants to discuss it with others and accepts a challenge and things like that.
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And there's all sorts of missionaries in between. So without knowing who they are, it's really hard to say.
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Okay. Well, I'm sorry. No, no, no, you give me a lot of help. I was thinking about inviting a friend of mine to go with me, but I didn't, like you were saying, create a hostile environment with that.
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And, you know, like a two -on -two debate. Yeah, no, yeah, and that would,
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I think, impact how you present yourself. You know, hi, we're both Christian apologists and we're here to show you that you're wrong.
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And that's probably not going to go very far, but especially since they're doing it on their own grounds for some reason, which seems a little bit strange.
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Maybe that's something they do on campus. I don't know. Every time I've seen them, they always go. I mean, that's why
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I ask about it. Do they keep your name? Because when I saw them on their own campus going to meet someone and whenever they talked to me on the phone, whenever they were thinking of a place where we could meet, they would have an open place.
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I said, well, you know, our place has some open rooms. I don't know if they're trying to get home -filled advantage.
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I don't know. It's possible. It's possible. I don't know. I don't know how they do things on campus.
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I've not run into them on a campus before. Well, I do appreciate it, James. I really appreciate the ministry.
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It's been a great help. I'm reading through Letters to a Mormon Elder, and I'm going to offer them a book. I really hope they take it.
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All right. Great. Excellent. Thanks for calling. All right. God bless. Bye -bye. 877 -753.
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We may not get to another caller after David over in Albuquerque. Hi, David.
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Hi, James. How are you doing, sir? Good to talk to you. Yeah, just to comment first.
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I think that's a great song that you played by the Imperials. Well, the question is, had you heard it before?
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Yeah, I've heard it before. I love the Imperials. Boy, they were the big thing back in the late 70s into the mid -80s.
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And then they just sort of went—nobody stays popular forever,
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I guess. I mean, they're still around as far as I know. Yeah, I think they are. Yeah, I've heard much of them lately.
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I've seen them on that—well, I call it the channel between 20 and 22 here in Phoenix. And I don't recognize any of them except the bass.
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I think he's the only person that's been with the group all along. Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah, so anyway. But yeah, that music—I mentioned when
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I had Steve Camp on and we did the 20th anniversary of Keith Green's death,
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I mentioned that there was—Keith's music had a huge impact on me as a teenager, as a junior going to high school, carrying my
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Bible with me everywhere I went. I can imagine. And so the
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Imperials did too. I mean, it was amazing. I started throwing these LPs on this week while I was recording them on my computer, and I found myself singing every single song and not missing a word in some of these that had been 20 years since I had last heard this thing.
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So as Steve says, he always draws the comparison.
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He says, you know, James, you've written these wonderful books, but I don't remember a single paragraph of anything you wrote in these books, even though his books helped me greatly.
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And yet, can you not sing some of my own songs? And I can. You know, he's—Livin' in Laodicea is one of my favorite songs, and he's right.
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Once you put it to music, it really connects. It really does. So I think that also should tell us that we need to be careful what we listen to.
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But anyway, that's probably not why you called. Well, yeah, I could talk to you all the time. My question, actually, was a comment, and I wanted to get your perspective on this, dealing with Sola Scriptura.
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I was just in a conference up in PA for ex -Jehovah's Witnesses. And while I was there,
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I met this man who converted to Christianity out of Jehovah's Witnesses. And while we were talking, he was telling me about how he was starting to feel that he was being drawn to the
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Greek Orthodox Church. And in the course of our discussion, he brought up the reason he felt was because of the view of Sola Scriptura in the
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Orthodox Church was a historical view, and the view in evangelical churches was a more popular view that he felt was in error.
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And so I was wondering if you could comment on that, if you had any understanding that he may not know about the
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Orthodox Church, what he's referring to. Well, I wouldn't know what he's referring to in Orthodoxy, because Orthodoxy rejects
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Sola Scriptura, and they do so— So you don't need to be accepted? No, no, no, no, no. That shows,
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I think, a real misunderstanding of Eastern Orthodox theology, because certainly when you look at the
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American representatives of Eastern Orthodoxy, there's a group here in Phoenix that has a radio program, and every few months they're doing programs on the absurdities of Sola Scriptura and all the rest of that stuff.
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And I have newspapers from Frankie Schaefer, who became an Orthodox, attacking
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Sola Scriptura. And of course, it doesn't fit, at least the meaningful doctrine of Sola Scriptura does not fit with modern
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Eastern Orthodox concepts of the liturgy as a container of revelation, in the sense of the rule of faith and that whole aspect of it.
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I would assume what he's referring to is that he believes that he can hold to the sufficiency of Scripture as it would be expressed by an
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Athanasius, as it would be expressed by a Basil, without questioning the use of tradition in non -doctrinal matters, in the sense of, for example,
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Basil talks about unwritten traditions of baptizing three times, baptizing forward instead of backwards, for example, that kind of stuff.
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And Basil uses unwritten tradition. At the same time, he says, let that which is Theanosteles, that which is
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God -breathed, judge between us. And so when it comes to doctrinal issues, he will appeal to Scriptures.
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When it comes to traditions in regards to practices, he'll refer to these unwritten apostolic traditions. Augustine does the same thing.
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And so this distinction between a dogma or a doctrine needing to be the result of the ex -Jesus of Scripture, when you can then allow traditions regarding practices and feast days and the order of the
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Church to be non -written, maybe that's what he's referring to. I'm not certain, but that would be the only thing that would pop into my mind.
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in modern evangelical churches that there's a wrong view of sola scriptura or a wrong understanding of it.
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What do you say to that? Are you talking about those who would say that evangelicalism embraces sola scriptura versus sola scriptura?
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That might be it, or more succinctly, I think what he was referring to me concerning had to do more with the idea of each evangelical is their own interpretive way of how they understand it.
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Yeah, I was referring there to the way Keith Matheson puts it in his book, The Shape of Sola Scriptura.
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He identifies that view as solo scriptura instead of sola scriptura. Oh, okay,
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I see what you're saying. And when I wrote the Roman Catholic controversy a couple years before that, about four years before that,
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I had decried the same elements of application as far as that goes, that he's decrying and using that term solo scriptura.
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Sola scriptura is not a denial of the teaching authority of the church. It's not an assertion that we have to reinvent the wheel with each generation.
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We can learn from preceding generations. Many people interpret sola scriptura to mean that you don't have to worry about what anyone's ever said in the past.
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You can't learn from anybody in the past. There's really no church authority in teaching the scriptures or anything like that.
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And so they take that. And there are many groups, especially like hyper -preterists will get into this kind of stuff and annihilationists and people like that will grab hold of this and they'll say, well, we don't have to worry about the fact that my beliefs have never been held before.
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We can just simply run with it and we can do what we want. And that's not what solo scriptura means.
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No one is arguing that the scriptures are given separately from the church. The argument is with Rome is the relationship between the scriptures and the church and what the church's role is in the proclamation of that truth.
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And so that doesn't mean I necessarily agree with everything that is said in the criticism of solo scriptura by Keith Matheson, especially in regards to the nature of tradition itself.
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But I would agree that there are those who do have a, it is a non -historical and it is a unbiblical concept in regards to the meaning of solo scriptura itself.
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And that's not what was believed at the time of the Reformation. Yeah. Most definitely. So yeah. Yeah, that helps.
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I appreciate that. Well, feel free to call in if there's more on that subject you'd like to discuss.
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Sure. Hopefully we can get you back in Albuquerque. Well, I enjoyed my time there. And I know another group brought me in at one point.
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If you all cooperate with each other, it makes it half as hard. Yeah, yeah.
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All right, man. All right. We'll take care of you. Okay. God bless. All right. Well, another journey into webcasting excellence, as somebody might say.
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Those of you over in Southern California, stay safe. But I'll tell you, the pictures we have seen from over there have just been absolutely positively incredible.
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But if you notice one thing, and I'm sure the music's going to start here in just a minute or two, but if you notice one thing, nobody talks about one little aspect of these things.
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You know, 150 years ago, when people saw that stuff, there would have been a question about God's wrath and judgment.
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And not even Christians think about it now. We're so naturalistically minded that it's, well, it's just due to this, that, and the other thing.
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And the idea that maybe there's wrath involved, it just doesn't seem to cross anyone's mind at all.
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Amazing. Well, hey, we'll be back again. Remember, next week, Tuesday night rather than Tuesday morning, five o 'clock,
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Mountain Standard Time. We'll see you then. God bless. That's A -O -M -I -N dot
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O -R -G, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks. Join us again next