July 22, 2003

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From the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is
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The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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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. The name of this program is
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Search the Scriptures Daily. The name of the ministry is The Berean Call. They search the scriptures daily to see if what the
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Apostle Paul was saying was so. Now our concern here is with the scriptures and how people understand the scriptures.
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Because I know there are listeners out there that say, I'm clueless, I don't know what Calvinism is about and Arminianism, I don't know any of those things and I'm not particularly interested.
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Well Tom, just a second, I'm going to interject a moment. I remember a letter recently from a pastor and he begins by saying, we've been taking the
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Berean Call for many years. We have agreed with you 100 % right down the line, how you've exposed
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Aaron, how you stood firmly for the truth. But now, as soon as you say a word about Calvinism, all of that is out the window.
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We dare not touch this. That really concerns me. Well, let me tell our listeners how basic this is.
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And I think this shows you what we're concerned about. First of all, take the first scripture that anyone in Sunday school, any
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Christian would learn. It's John 3 .16, for God so loved the world.
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That of course is from the Berean Call radio program. You may recall just a couple of weeks, and I'm really, really, really hot in my headphones here, that we started looking at some clips from the
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Berean Call that I had called from the archives and I just disappeared. And we started responding to some of the common assertions that are made by Dave Hunt and his co -host
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T .A. McMahon. We only got through a few of them in that program, and I started thinking over the past couple of weeks that in reality on Tuesdays, as we've been doing this for a number of months now,
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Tuesdays during the day, generally we don't get a lot in the way of phone calls.
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And Thursday evenings, during the evening, we do. That makes sense. Most people are at work right now.
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They can't get in to make a phone call or something like that, and that makes a lot of sense.
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And so my thinking is, in essence, maybe we could focus on Tuesday mornings on programs where I do more of a presentation, something like that, maybe take a phone call or two if they come in.
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But in essence, then on Thursday evening, have more of the interaction.
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I've got a lot of distortion and stuff in my headphones right now, so you all just ignore me. I'm doing the best I can. That, of course, what
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I was playing for you, which sounded fine, was T .A. McMahon and Dave Hunt, and they are discussing John 3 .16.
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That's where they start. You'll notice that Mr. Hunt said, you know, you're just not supposed to discuss these things.
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It is not that you're not supposed to discuss Calvinism, Dave. It's the means by which you're to do so.
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Remember the words of Spurgeon when he said, if you're going to disagree with our Calvinism, at least represent it accurately, which has been the issue.
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So I'm going to go back to that particular section again and restart that, and we'll hear what
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Dave has to say about John 3 .16. Well, let me tell our listeners how basic this is, and I think this shows you what we're concerned about.
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First of all, take the first scripture that anyone in Sunday school, any
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Christian would learn. It's John 3 .16, For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten
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Son, that whosoever would believe upon him. Now, somebody would say, well,
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I know that scripture, so what? How would a Calvinist, and I'm being honest here,
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Dave, and I know that you will be, too. How does a Calvinist have to interpret that critical, very important, very wonderful verse?
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Because of their peculiar belief in predestination of a certain nature, of irresistible grace, and so forth, that God has predestined some to go to heaven, and predestined others to go to hell, therefore it can't be for whosoever.
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They believe in limited atonement, that Christ did not die for all, therefore they have to change world to elect.
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Now let's stop right there. You'll notice, and this again is something that Mr. Hines has been corrected on a number of times, but he has yet to grasp hold of it or accept the correction, and of course if you're not going to accept the correction, you might want to be able to explain why there is an issue in regards to why it is improper to understand it in a particular direction, but be that as it may, the phrase whosoever is very key to the understanding of this passage in regards to Mr.
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Hunt's understanding of it and many others. The more scholarly Arminians will not be quite as emphatic at this point, because they can read the text, and they can translate the text, and that changes things in essence for them.
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They recognize that there is no general term in the text for whosoever.
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They will not read into the Greek text the concept of universal ability, but Mr.
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Hunt does. And it's interesting, I might mention around the way, and there's folks mentioning it sounds rough.
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It will clear up in just a second. It just hit. I don't know what happened, but something just hit, and all of a sudden we're back to where we normally are, and it sounds good.
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But anyway, the material, the discussion that we've had on this program regarding Dave Hunt of late, and by the way, let me back up one more time, straightgate .com,
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if you haven't been there, straightgate .com,
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if you've not read Pilgrim's Progress, that might not mean anything to you, but straightgate .com, that's where this program is archived.
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If you're listening to this program on archive, you're probably listening to it there, unless you purchased the MP3. That site has been completely reworked.
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Steven Luker's done a great job, and what he's done is he has collated all our material on various subjects and put it together.
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So you can go to now a Dave Hunt page, and obviously this particular program will be added to that, and you can see all the responses we've offered to Dave Hunt over the past about three years now, and that material is getting all over the place.
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I'm getting regular emails right now. There's a tremendous amount of discussion of Dave Hunt and his book in Australia and New Zealand, and it's fascinating to read these supporters of Dave Hunt who will, for example, say, well,
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I listened to that debate between White and Hunt, and we haven't debated yet, and Mr. Hunt won't.
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He's reneged on his agreement to do so, saying that the book is sufficient, and obviously it's not, but I listened to that debate, and it was just the radio program that I hosted, the
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Marty Minto radio broadcast on KPXQ, and I felt that Hunt bested
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White, and I listened to that program, and everyone that I know who's listened to that program just looks at it and goes, that person said what?
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They said what? And it was amazing that people could say that, but anyways, this stuff is going all over the place.
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These programs are being taped and are being distributed in the places where the battle lines are drawn, and you might say, you know, you've gone over John 3 .16
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before. Yes, sort of. There is an exegesis of John 3 .16 on our website.
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If you go to the Dave Hunt open letter, go about three -quarters of the way through that very lengthy article, you'll find a section on John chapter 3, but the fact of the matter is the
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Berean Call, the newsletter, the radio program is distributed all across the world, and as statements are made, responses need to be made, and sometimes if you listen regularly, you'll see a response made more than once.
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That's because not everyone listens all the time, and we frequently get people asking the same questions, and so sometimes, yes, there is a level of repetition that has to go in there, and obviously when dealing with John chapter 3, verse 16, the first thing to catch when you're listening to someone presenting it to you, one of the ways
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I've discovered, and this isn't really anything overly insightful, but it's certainly something that I've found to be consistent, is that if the person emphasizes the term whosoever, and immediately makes application based upon that, one of two things is going on.
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Either they have not interacted seriously for lack of exposure to Reformed materials.
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They're going on their tradition. They've never had a response. They may be very interested when you provide them with a response, and they may be very much willing to embrace what the actual text is saying, and to abandon that.
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That's quite possible. You can't just assume that they're going to blow you off, and so on and so forth, but the other possibility is that yes, they're very much repeating a tradition.
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They've already heard a response, and they have no intention of accepting that response. That unfortunately is a possibility as well.
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There's no way of knowing until you get into the conversation. But when you hear someone emphasizing that whosoever, you need to, in a respectful way, and in a knowledgeable way, and in a way in which you are seeking the edification of all involved, correct the misapprehension.
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What I mean by that, of course, is that when that whosoever is emphasized, it's being emphasized without a textual basis.
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What do I mean by that? Well, if the person is saying, this verse is saying that every single individual has the capacity to engage in this activity, then there would have to be something in the text to provide that foundation.
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It's not there. The actual Greek refers to all the believing ones.
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Now we generally in English do not use that kind of a construction. We can understand it, but it's very rough.
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And so what we'll say is, whoever believes, whatever group it is, when you have that believing group, name any person within that group of ones who believe, and you will there have a person, if they believe, they receive eternal life.
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That's all it's talking about. All the believing ones receive eternal life. That's all that John 3 is talking about.
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When you use that term, whosoever, and say see it, there's no election. You have now transported
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John 3 out of its context. You have ignored its original language. You've ignored the original point, and you're not showing respect for the passage.
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So what you might want to do when talking to someone who brings this up, when they say, well, let's look at John 3, you might say, you know, let's do that, and in fact, let's look at the key passages in John.
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John 3, John 6, John 8, John 10, and John 17.
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Let's look at all of them, because, you know, the advantage here is we're staying in John.
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We can stay in the words of Christ, specifically, and the dialogues he had with others, and let's really do our best to show respect for the word of God, and what
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I mean by that is let's make sure that instead of me hearing my
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Calvinist traditions, or you hearing your non -Calvinist traditions, let's do the best we possibly can to make sure that how we understand these words is how they were originally intended.
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And so if there's something that we emphasize, then we need to make sure that that emphasis is the text's emphasis, and not our emphasis.
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And now you've laid the foundation. So when they quote John 3, and they emphasize this whosoever phrase, you can go, well, you know, it's interesting.
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You seem to believe that there's something in the text here that's talking about a universal capacity, but all it's saying is, all the believing ones, whoever believes, receives eternal life.
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It in fact limits the text to believers, because unbelievers are not going to receive eternal life.
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And then you're assuming, and I'm not sure upon what basis, especially in light of the contradiction in John 6, 44, that this somehow is a universal capacity.
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And that way you've sort of laid a foundation, and one of two things is going to happen. Either the person's going to listen and go,
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I've not thought about that way, I'll need to look into that, or the more common reaction, sadly, is, oh, you're just complicating things, and you're just such a standard
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Calvinist, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That, unfortunately, does happen a good bit as well.
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Therefore, it can't be for whosoever. They believe in limited atonement, that Christ did not die for all, therefore they have to change world to elect.
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Whosoever must be whosoever of the elect. The next verse, verse 17, for God sent not his
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Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. And on and on it goes, with so many verses, the
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Bible ends, whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely, but no, you can't say that's whosoever.
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Now notice something, and I, you know, if you have not taken a look at his book,
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What Love Is This, one of the things that Dave does, and this is a standard mistake, an exegetical mistake that many people make, he will utilize
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Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. Now, thank God for Strong's, Strong's is wonderful, but you have to use
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Strong's correctly. And what I mean by that is, if you simply look up a word in Strong's and you don't bother checking the words or phrases that that word is translating in the original languages, especially when you span across Old and New Testament, you're going to end up coming to some pretty bad conclusions.
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And that's what Mr. Hunt does. He goes through this term, whosoever, and he doesn't seem to recognize that especially a phrase like whosoever, a word like whosoever in English can be translated from a number of different foreign language phrases, whether we're talking about Hebrew or Greek, and that type of a translation can come out of a number of different original language contexts.
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And so you can't just simply throw them all together and say, well, it's used 500 some odd times and it always means this or something like that.
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You simply cannot take that kind of a road that may impress folks who don't do exegesis on a regular basis, but it's not sound exegesis.
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It's a common error, and it's an error that Mr. Hunt has made. Really, but no, you can't say that's whosoever, because only the elect are allowed to do that.
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And in fact, no one can unless God regenerates them first.
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So you have to be born again before you get saved, before you can have faith to believe the gospel. So why would
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God be saying whosoever will, let him come? Why would Jesus say, come unto me, all ye who labor and are heavy laden?
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Why would Jesus say that? If someone were to ask you that question, if someone were to ask you, why would
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Jesus say, come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, what is a reformed understanding of that passage?
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Well, it's quite simple. In fact, in my experience, the vast majority of objections that are raised by,
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I guess we could call them neo -Arminians. I think
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I would almost have to call them pseudo -Arminians. I need to come up with a term for evangelicals who know nothing about church history, who hold to a non -reformed soteriology on the basis of tradition, but yet just don't know the whole issue and argument to begin with.
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I need to come up with a term. Maybe we'll come up with a contest one day. I'll have you all call in with your suggestions for a term to utilize for someone like that.
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But when such a person asks a question, how would you understand it? The vast majority of cases, we just sort of have to look at them and go, well, there's nothing there that is an objection.
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One of the things that we have to struggle with is that many people think that almost, you know, they'll throw these verses out, that's an objection.
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No, that doesn't mean anything to my position at all. You just don't understand my position, evidently.
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Come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, I will give you rest. Does the unregenerate man recognize what's being discussed here?
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Does the unregenerate man hunger and thirst for righteousness? Is the unregenerate man, is he weary and heavy laden?
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These calls out to, and this is something that Hunt just hammers away on,
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God gives all these invitations! Yeah? I use this illustration, and I'm certainly, of course,
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I certainly recognize that I didn't come up with this illustration, but it's one that I have used for all sorts of years now, and it's all sorts of different contexts, and that is, the non -reformed perspective, in essence, has
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God walking through the graveyard of humanity, carrying in his hand the elixir of life, and with tears in his eyes, he's calling out, anyone who will raise yourself to spiritual life and take the elixir of life from my hands, and if you do that in the graveyard long enough, they'll come and cart you away, because there's something missing, and what's missing, of course, is spiritual life itself!
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No one can raise themselves out of that grave to take from you that healing potion!
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And so, the whole idea of, well, there's all these passages of Scripture, hundreds of passages in the
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Bible, where God pleads with people, so let me see if I follow the argument, so if God pleads with people, then there can be no further action on his part where he enables his elect people to respond to those pleas.
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Instead, the assumption, the unstated assumption, that is being made, over and over and over again, is that if God makes the plea, every single person has the capacity to respond to it.
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And, you see, what follows from that is the idea that, well, what's going on here is, if God commands something, or God gives a plea, he must give the ability to fulfill it as well.
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That becomes the argument, and that needs to be the statement, the unstated premise that is a part of most of these objections, is this idea that, well, if God pleads with all, then he gives all the ability to respond, as if giving that plea, and then enabling the elect to respond to that plea, and using that plea in their life to bring about spiritual life or spiritual sanctification, and at the same time, through the rejection of that, to bring about the hardening and the just damnation of those who hate
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God, just as in the preaching of the Gospel, you have the exact same thing, somehow God's not allowed to do that.
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That becomes part and parcel of what's going on. Let's finish up this clip. Come unto me, all ye who labor, and are heavy laden,
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I will give you rest, do only the elect labor and are heavy laden, or is he just saying that to the elect?
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See, so we have hundreds, even thousands of verses. Hundreds and thousands of verses.
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That is the constant argument that I encountered in the writing of our book. Every time a particular verse of Mr.
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Hunt's would be refuted, and demonstrated to not teach what he thought it taught, for example, 1
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John 5 .1, then the response would be, we don't need that verse anyways, because there are hundreds of others, and then you'd pick out another one, let's look at another one of these hundreds of others, you'd examine it, boom, that one doesn't work either, well, that doesn't really matter, because there are hundreds of others, and it's this constant, well, these nebulous lists, and you start going through the lists, and you find out the lists don't have anything to do with what we're talking about here, they don't prove the point, and yet it keeps being repeated over and over and over again.
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Let's listen to this one more, and then we've already got two folks online, and the phone number is 877 -753 -3341.
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I didn't expect much in the way of phone calls today, but we've got some questions specifically on the subject today, so we'll go ahead and take those, but let's listen to this next clip first.
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This needs to be addressed, because it has to do with how you interpret God's Word, and look, we're not saying that they're dead wrong in everything, and I don't want them to say that about us, but let's wrestle, let's go through the
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Scriptures, let's search the Scriptures to see if these things are so. Amen. Did you catch that amen there?
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There's an obvious reason why I played that, because I agree with it, and I agree with Mr.
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McMahon, let's go through these Scriptures, let's do this. Well, I suggest that doing it the way we're doing it right now, that is, you have the folks up in the
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Breein' Call, and they do their programs, and they give their side, and we give our side. Now, of course, what we do is we not only give our side, but we play their side too, and then respond to it.
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They don't play our side, and then respond to it. We certainly, by the way, would love to have
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Mr. Hunt or Mr. McMahon on our program. If they would like to respond to any of this, we'd be glad to have them on, and by the way, we'd be glad to come on the
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Breein' Call as well. But obviously, we think that the best way to do it is not through radio programs and webcasts, but to do so in the form of a formal debate, where we could debate
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John 3 .16, and we could debate the exegesis of John 3 .16, we could go through the text of John 3 .16,
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so on and so forth. That's what we would like to see take place. Well, our phone lines are almost full.
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I guess it's just one of those days, and what I'd like to do is go in not quite the same order because I'd like to try to keep the topics related here, and since we were just discussing the term whosoever, and what it means, and things like that,
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I'd like to go down south, just north of Nogales, Mexico, to Rio Rico, Arizona.
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Hello, Jim. How are you? Hey, I'm fine, Jim. Jim and Jim. Yeah, right.
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I don't know if you remember, but you were at a conference with us several years ago at Sovereign Grace Baptist Church.
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That's true. It's the only time I've ever been into Mexico, is when you took us across the border there to the restaurant that John Wayne used to frequent.
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That's about the only thing I remember about the specifics there, other than I was hoping a whole lot that I was going to get back into the good old
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U .S. of A., and not encounter any Federales. Right. I think you made it safe and sound.
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I think we did. Right. Right. Just a question, or maybe a comment, about this concept that they have of whosoever.
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In my contemplation and study of that, whosoever really doesn't mean anything without a verb.
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It only takes on meaning when you add a predicate to it. For instance, in Proverbs, a classic
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King James reference that says, Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging, and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.
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Whosoever doesn't mean anything, really, when they throw that out there. Is that not true? Well, yes.
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Of course, each one of those phrases, whosoever, whoever, is what the New American Standard uses. Each one of these has to be defined within its context, because as you say, whoever does this, whoever fulfills this condition, it's just a part of the
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English language. But what we see here, I think, is an example of where tradition exists within evangelical preaching and teaching.
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That is when you don't have to stand up in a pulpit and say, well, whenever we say whosoever, this is what we want you to understand by it.
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As long as you use it that way, with an understood idea, you never have to actually commit yourself to the teaching, but the teaching is there nonetheless, and in fact it is so clearly communicated that to question that on the part of anyone is to expose yourself to being identified as a
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God -hater and a false teacher and a cultist and everything else, as I have discovered over the past number of years myself.
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So I think we really need to learn that one of the means by which tradition is promulgated, even within evangelical churches, is through the way in which we use verses, not necessarily by what we say about them.
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We can simply allow the conclusion to stand, and if you repeat that over and over again, especially within the context, for example, of an emotional altar call or something like that, you repeat it on a weekly basis over and over and over again, eventually people get the idea that, well, you know what, that must be what the verse means, and they stop thinking critically about the verse and just understand it within the context of tradition.
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Right, right. But Bollinger refers to that in his figures of speech as a synecdoche too, doesn't he?
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I'm not sure what he refers to it as, no. Yeah, he puts it under the category of a synecdoche, of genus, the whole for the part, and that's one of his big compliances, that overlooked figures of speech, and in reality the
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Lord is using a figure of speech there. So it amazes me, it amazes me how they circumvent any exegesis on that, looking at figures and so forth.
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Well, especially with verses like that, you heard T. A. McMahon saying, well, this is the first verse any of us memorized, as if what that means is, this is a verse that everyone understands and our traditional understanding is the only way that it can be understood.
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The problem is, the vast majority of us have never been challenged or instructed to recognize that what
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John wrote under the direction of the Holy Spirit of God, as he spoke from God, was hinah pas ha -pistuon, in order that all the ones believing, eis auton, in him, and you go on from there.
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He didn't use the term whosoever, our understanding of whosoever must be made commensurate with and must match what the
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Holy Spirit gave to us in John initially, and that's the important part that people need to understand, and I think we need to communicate very clearly to our people today.
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Right. Alright, thank you very much, brother. Thank you for your work down there in Rio Rico, beautiful area.
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I imagine you're getting some monsoon storms down there about now? Yes, we are. We're getting the monsoons now, for which we're thankful.
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I bet. Alright, brother, God bless you as you work down there. Okay, thank you. Alright, thank you for calling. Bye -bye.
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877 -753 -3341. We need to take a quick break and then come back with Drew and with Jason, Jason Furst down in Florida, and we'll continue here on The Dividing Line right after this.
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What is Dr. Norman Geisler warning the Christian community about in his book Chosen but Free? A New Cult?
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Reformers is the very one taught in the pages of scripture. The Potter's Freedom, a defense of the
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Reformation and a rebuttal to Norman Geisler's Chosen but Free. You'll find it in the Reformed Theology section of our bookstore at aomen .org.
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Hello Jason, how are you? Doing good. What can we do for you today? Well, unfortunately
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I couldn't get Winamp to work, so I have no idea what you've been discussing, other than what
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I heard on the phone. Oh, okay. Well, Winamp works, Music Match Jukebox should work.
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We've got lots of folks that listen regularly on them, so it's just a matter probably of playing with your buffering settings and your network setup.
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Yeah, I'm having trouble with that anyways. The reason for my call is
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I was discussing with a friend of mine who is a Presbyterian, and I was using the argument that you had come up with on Christ being the mediator of the
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New Covenant, which, you know, the mediator is somebody who brings peace. And his response to me was, well, was
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Moses the mediator of the Old Covenant? And I said, well, yeah, I think so.
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And did Moses mediate wrath to people in the Old Covenant? And he said, yeah.
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And then he says, well, what's your point? Well, the point, yeah, the point, I'm sorry someone would say that simply because the point is fairly clear, and that is that the offering that is a part of the
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Old Covenant, as argued in the book of Hebrews, is an offering that can never take away sins.
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The New Covenant is the covenant in his blood. I think if we would always, instead of just using terms old and new, if we would just refer to the covenant in his blood, then the issue of the nature of Christ's mediation and intercession, his being a mediator of a new and better covenant, would
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I think be a little bit more clearly understood by everyone, because if someone were to say to me, well, what's your point?
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I would probably respond, well, I guess you didn't get my point. My point was that the work of Christ in his blood as a mediator is significantly different, which is what makes the covenant new and better in the first place.
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Now, I recognize that there are all sorts of ways around this. There are those who say the
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New Covenant will not be brought into full fruition until the end of time, in essence, in a post -millennial concept.
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Other people who limit the betterness of the New Covenant to such things as the priests and the knowledge of God's leaders in the
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New Covenant and things like that. But I think if you just simply read Hebrews and the argument of Hebrews, and always keep in mind it is an argument, it is an apologetic, and we must understand it in such a way that its arguments have weight and make sense, then the question that I have asked many times in regards to Christ as the mediator of the covenant in his blood is significant, but significant in different ways to different people.
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What I mean by that is obviously this is a debate within the context of those who believe in such things as particular redemption.
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For those who do not believe in particular redemption, that is a completely different context for them in regards to the nature of the
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New Covenant in the first place. So that would have been my response to him is if you had said, well, if Moses mediated wrath, well, first of all,
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Moses isn't the one who provides the covenant in his own blood. There is a significant discontinuity in the fact that the pictures in the
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New Covenant of the New Covenant, that is the types and shadows, the sacrifice of Christ, in and of themselves could never fully picture the sacrifice of the
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Son of God himself. You do not have a person who is both the high priest and the offering.
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This is another of the great superiorities of the New Covenant to the Old at that point.
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So the discontinuities there would cause all sorts of issues. I would probably just go back and try to explain that to the individual and see where they come from then.
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Something I just thought about, it is actually in the shorter catechism, is one of the reasons why
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Christ had to be a mediator was because he had to take, he was both man and God in that respect.
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That would be something significant. Yes, the nature of his mediation is absolutely unique because of the nature of the mediator himself and the nature of the covenant itself, being the covenant in his blood.
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Yes, I mean, that is, I think, vitally important. All right? Is it okay, can
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I ask a couple other questions? Let's make it just one because we've got Drew and Jeremy online waiting to get in and we only have about 15 minutes left.
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So just one more if we could do that. Oh, I don't know which one to pick.
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Okay, I'll pick, all right, I guess, assuming that Presbyterians are wrong.
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All of my Presbyterian friends and channel are currently biting their fingernails. Assuming they're wrong, the question, and I'm sure you've heard this, is what do you do with your children?
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And I'm going to give you a scenario. Okay, for instance, you say you have a 12 -year -old boy who professes Jesus and you have a 5 -year -old and a 4 -year -old who has not professed to be a believer in any formal way.
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Seeing how God tells us to relate with unbelievers, would you tell your 12 -year -old not to hang out or associate with your 5 - and 4 -year -old who are, as it were, atheists?
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No, not at all. Now, within the context of the family, we are instructed to, as parents, to bring the discipline of the
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Lord to bear upon our children, recognizing that it is only in God's hands what
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He does with their hearts, but it is our responsibility to make sure to communicate
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His truth and His will to them. They may, well, as we have many biblical examples, rebel against that, but when they are within the context of our homes, they are under our authority as parents, and as parents, we are to bring that discipline to bear upon them.
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And as far as association goes, I don't think that that passage is referring to inter -familial associations of children with children, brothers and sisters, and so on and so forth.
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We know that the Gospel divides families, and we pray that God will be merciful to our children.
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I just had the wonderful opportunity Sunday night before last to baptize my son on the profession of his faith.
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He is 17 years of age, and I have every reason to believe that the
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Lord has been merciful to him not just a matter of weeks or months ago, but a good bit before that.
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We Reform Baptists, however, tend to be a little bit slow on the uptake there in the sense that we recognize that young children especially will do anything to make mommy and daddy happy.
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I have personally seen in my life far too many people who walk through the waters of baptism as a 6 -year -old and as a 26 -year -old blaspheme
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God, hate God, and bring dishonor upon their family and upon the profession of faith they made as a child.
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That tends to take place during that period of time in the teenage years when the hormones kick in and all of a sudden doing what mommy and daddy want aren't nearly as important as they used to be.
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But once a person gets through that period of time and remains consistent to that confession, we
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Reform Baptists tend to take that rather seriously and want to encourage them, and that's what took place.
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We continue to pray for all of our children. That's a common prayer within our fellowship is to pray for our children that God would be merciful to them and draw them to himself, but I don't think that has anything to do with the
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Talkabout Association has anything there to do with Inside the Family. Jason, thank you very much for your call today.
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Let's go ahead and talk to Drew up in Boise, Idaho. How are you, sir?
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Doing pretty well. Doing good. Hey, I just wanted to start by thanking you for your ministry and stuff.
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I've only been Christian for almost four years now, and reading your stuff has really helped me really solidify a lot of what
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I believe. Actually, I came out of the
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Way International, and I actually became a Calvinist before I became a
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Christian. I'm actually reading Is the Mormon My Brother because I was studying
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Mormonism. Oh, my. But anyway, as soon as I came to believe in the deity of Christ and stuff,
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I went out and immediately consumed the forgotten trinity. Wow, that's excellent.
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That's great to hear. It's been quite a blessing. But anyway, my question. A little while ago, a pastor at my church was teaching on John chapter 1, and he gave an interpretation of 1 .13,
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applying not born of blood or will of flesh or will of man to Christ.
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I didn't know instead of to the believers, the children of God. I was kind of...
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Okay, I'm confused. John 1 .13 says who were born, not of blood, nor the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but of God.
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And so I'm confused as to what he was saying in regards to Christ.
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Well, he was saying that the one that's born in John 1 .13 was
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Christ. Except it's plural. Right, it is plural. And I even asked a friend of mine who has taken a couple years of Greek and who has a
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Greek New Testament, is it plural in the Greek? And she said, yeah, it's plural in the Greek. But then
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I came across R. C. H. Lenski's commentary on that passage, and he has the same interpretation, but he argues, makes a couple arguments for it being applying to Christ.
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The first is that it's sort of a contextual argument saying that when
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John uses chi to say and, he doesn't do that to move on to a new topic, but to expound the same topic.
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And he uses and in verse 14. And so why would he... And so even though the common understanding would be that he's moving on to another topic, the
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Incarnation. And Lenski argues that, no, he's talking about the
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Incarnation in 13 as well. But then also he argues that the
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Greek text that we have is from a later origin in the earlier
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Greek text, and he brings a bunch of names that I don't really recognize because I never saw it before.
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But that they all had no pronoun at all in verse 13, and that for a long time it was singular, and then it got changed to plural to reflect peculiar doctrines and stuff.
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Okay. Well, yeah, there is a variant. It is a very minor variant.
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The text that we have says, Hoi Uk, which ones were not born.
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Now, Codex Beze simply has Uk. Now, Beze is well known for its rather strange readings.
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There are a couple reasons for that. There's a reference to Irenaeus in the
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Latin and to Tertullian as not having the plural pronoun there.
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However, the text is read by P66, which P66 is one of the two earliest manuscripts of the
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Longshot, and Sinaiticus, the second hand of Vaticanus, the majority text.
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And I'm just looking at the variant here. P75 as well would have the plural article.
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The vast, vast, vast, not only vast majority of text, but also the vast majority of early text.
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When someone takes a super, super, super, super minority reading that goes against all the best manuscripts of a book, you know that they're trying to get around something.
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And that's what's going on here. Lenski has a number of, shall we say, overly unique interpretations.
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The only one I've addressed on our website is his overly unique interpretation of Romans chapter 9.
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But let's just say, let's call this one a big reach, a big, big reach.
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And I don't see any reason whatsoever textually to give much credence whatsoever to that.
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And further, the context just would be left utterly disrupted.
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And this idea that Kai, I'm sorry, again, that is a massively, that's a big relief.
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That one didn't seem as convincing to me. No, no. No, not at all.
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So that is interesting that there is a very minor variant there. But when
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P66 and P75 both have that, the issue becomes later on down.
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P75 has a different spelling of Genao and a few things like that. But just glancing at it there, that's taking
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Codex Beze over against the papyri just is not something that you would normally do.
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So you'd have to have some other reason to be doing that. Yes. All righty? All right. Okay. Well, thank you very much.
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I appreciate the kind words. And I'm very thankful that our meager efforts have been used by the Lord to help you understand his truth.
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So I pray that God will continue to grow you in his grace and knowledge. I pray the same.
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All right. Thanks a lot, Drew. God bless. Bye -bye. Okay. Let's go on and let's talk with Jeremy down in Atlanta, down in the great state of Georgia.
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Down in Georgia where the South will rise again. You do not talk about the Civil War because there was nothing civil about it.
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It was the War of Northern Aggression. That's right. Make sure you talk real slow so I can understand you.
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First, I'm called. I did meet you down at Pastor David King's church down in Dayspring, Presbyterian.
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I believe the last time you were there last fall and you talked from Titus 2. That's right, in July.
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I'm the former one that's been a gospel. I've emailed you a couple of times. Oh, great. Yes, certainly. And we've had some conversations about trying to get some debates arranged.
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Yeah, I still haven't given up hope with David K. Menard to get involved there. It doesn't look good at this juncture.
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Not as far as a public debate, but sometime in August we're doing a radio debate on KJSL in St.
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Louis on the subject of, I believe, whether the sun has eternally existed as a divine person.
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Well, that would be great. When is that going to be? You know, it's funny. I just wrote to them last week because as I was looking at all the emails,
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I had not put it in my palm pilot. And if I do not put it in my palm tungsten tee, it does not exist.
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And since it's not there, then I don't know when it is. And I couldn't find the final emails that nailed it down.
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So I just wrote to them a couple days ago and have not gotten a response. But it's supposed to be sometime in August.
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I'm not sure exactly where. Okay. Well, maybe you'll mention it. Being a former third generation,
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I have a lot of family still involved, and I would love for them to tune in and hopefully something good will come of that.
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Indeed. Just one observation. I teach the adult singles class at a
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Southern Baptist church that I attend. And I tell you, just a comment and observation here.
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One of the real challenges in this area where Southern Baptists, particularly non -reformed
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Southern Baptists, are so dominant here in the Bible Belt, as we call it, is the preaching every
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Sunday from the pulpit just throughout the years that most people have sat under. Couple that with the evangelistic tools, if you will, like whether it's a faith program or a
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CWT or whatever program that someone uses or tool, they seem to present such a shallow decision, like backing someone into a corner to make a decision today, and almost as if why wouldn't you want to accept that we're offering.
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It's really tough when you throw something out. And I heard R .C. Sproul say one time that anybody who wants can have him.
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And that's very, very simple, but yet it's so complex to try to get that across to people who have just,
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I mean, they're just, where tradition is so embedded here on the main thing is to see men and women, boys and girls come to the knowledge of Christ.
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And I'm not saying that's not important, but the whole idea of the main thing being God is glorified.
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It's just unheard of in this area. The churches are huge here. I mean,
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I'm sure you're aware. Yeah, I know. And the idea that evangelism, first of all, continues on inside the church.
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In other words, there is this growth and grace and the necessity of discipleship and things like that, and that God is glorified when his truth is proclaimed, even when that truth is rejected.
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That's pretty much unheard of within, sadly, a large portion of Southern Baptist churches outside of those founders' churches.
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And, yeah, I've been there, done that, got the T -shirt, in essence, many, many years ago in seeking to uphold the truth of God, and eventually that's why
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I ended up in Reformed Baptist Church was because of that very issue. But, yeah, it can be done in a biblical sense, in the sense of going into an examination of passages where evangelism takes place in the
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New Testament, and it doesn't fit that particular paradigm. But that's sometimes difficult to do within certain
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Southern Baptist churches because you aren't given a whole lot of freedom within the Sunday school classes to necessarily vary from that always scintillating, always gorgeous, always in -depth and exciting quarterly material.
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Yes. Oh, yeah. And almost, I mean, there really is a sense where you will be labeled as a divider if you're not careful because this doctrine divides people and we just need to all get along and preach
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Jesus is what I hear a lot. If I could just ask you, I know I appreciate your time, one more question.
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We're in transition, we do not have a pastor, and without going into the fact that I do disagree with the congregational form where we have one pastor.
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But having said that, we have a pulpit committee, if you will.
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Can you recommend any material that would be helpful and,
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I don't know, questions to ask for potential pastors or any, I don't know,
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I mean, I don't know even how to ask you what I'm looking for. I, you know, I don't,
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I know that Broadman Holman will be putting out the book that I contributed to in regards to forms of church government.
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I don't know when it will be out, but they will be putting that book out in the not -too -distant future, but that wouldn't be of a lot of help there other than just examining issues of church governance and how that is to work out.
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But I personally am not familiar with anything like that. I'm sure that they're out there, but I haven't seen anything like that.
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Obviously, from my perspective, a person who is willing to work with creating the future leadership of the church from within the church is something that's extremely important.
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I think that the eldership should arise from within the congregation itself and perpetuate the teaching of the church in that way so they don't have this constant, massive change over time.
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So that would be one thing we'd want to look at. But Jeremy, thank you very much for your call. You keep serving the
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Lord down there in Georgia. It doesn't matter how slowly you say the truth, as long as you say it.
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Thanks, Jeremy. God bless. Thank you for listening to The Dividing Line today. Thursday evening
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I'll be in normal Illinois, so I won't be able to be here, but should be back, Lord willing, next Tuesday morning for The Dividing Line.