March 21, 2006

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from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded
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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. And welcome to The Dividing Line on a Tuesday morning.
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You know, one of the advantages of the upcoming conference we're going to be having, which evidently a lot of folks think is a long, long, long ways away, but in reality it's not a long, long, long ways away.
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And those of you who have been putting off getting everything taken care of for that, don't do that.
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You need to make your reservations for your rooms like really, really, really soon, like this month, like before the end of this month, or it's going to have like major impact on everything that we do and can do and can't do and so on and so forth.
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So please, please, please stop putting that off if you're planning on going. One of the advantages of the topic, public crimes, is that we can,
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I mean, there's a lot of stuff there. I can't, I can't think of a conference we've done that would have more for a wider variety of people than what we're doing here.
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And one of the areas, one of the things that we can do with the topic that we have is if there is a, you know, major issue that develops between now and then or is currently developing, there's plenty of room to deal with it because we're talking about what takes place in regards to the preaching and the ministry of the word from the pulpit.
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And there is so much that needs to be discussed in that area. But also, if there is an issue that is illustrative of the degradation of the preaching of the word from the pulpit, then we can, we can work that in.
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We can make that available as far as something that will be addressed. And so, I do hope that you will take the advantage, take opportunity and take advantage of the website.
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Take a look at what we have coming up in the conference and the cruise and join with us because we have a wonderful group of godly men who will be speaking and some very important subjects.
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Speaking of important subjects, what prompted me to think along those lines was the fact that while I do have the
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Dr. Davis sermon queued up, ready to go. In fact, I've finally learned how to use a cue list in Adobe edition.
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Finally, you'd think after all these years I'd always been doing that, but I wasn't, but I got it working now. I'd like to take a few minutes just to comment on a current situation that exists out there.
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I noticed Steve Camp's blog this morning and was looking at his commentary and I noticed yesterday
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I'm a little bit behind on these things. I only read the digest version of the
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Reformed Baptist discussion list. And so, a little slow getting to the party, shall we say, in regards to the fact that just recently another individual came out in a position of influence,
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I guess you should say. We should say taking aim at the historic doctrine, certainly the doctrine that is plainly and specifically asserted in the
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Reformed Baptist confession of faith, the confession of faith that my church uses and that I certainly have a close attachment to in regards to the issue of the nature of our justification.
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If we look at what the chapter 11 of the 1689
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Lenten confession in modern language, it says, God freely justifies the persons whom he effectually calls.
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He does this not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins and by accounting them and accepting them as righteous.
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This he does for Christ's sake alone and not for anything wrought in them or done by them. The righteousness which is imbued to them that is reckoned to their account is neither their faith, nor the act of believing, nor any other obedience to the gospel which they have rendered, but Christ's obedience alone.
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Christ's one obedience is twofold. His active obedience rendered to the entire divine law and his passive obedience rendered in his death.
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Those thus justified receive and rest by faith upon Christ's righteousness and this faith they have not of themselves, but as the gift of God.
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So some of you are going, oh boy, here we go again back to summer of 2004,
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I believe it was, and the issue of the Mark Seifried situation and the comments that he made about imputation.
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Actually, no, this actually brings us to a discussion of those who have begun to deny this element of historic reform theology in regards to the nature of the righteousness which we possess based upon dispensational theology and an attempt, in essence, to distance themselves as much as is humanly possible from covenant theology and the resultant redefinition of terminology, the resultant redefinition of key issues that are very, very important.
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And it's sad to me, I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on this right now. It's a sort of we've been there, done that, got the
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T -shirt type of a situation. We've discussed this a number of times before, but it does seem very sad to me that this insight into the nature of our standing before God, the fact that when we look at what
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Paul teaches in regards to the great exchange, 2 Corinthians 521, he made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
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It seems that there is a movement out there that seeks to minimize as much as is humanly possible, strip down the righteousness of God in 2
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Corinthians 521 to the barest bones it can possibly have.
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We've seen that in N .C. Wright. We've seen in his reading of this text or his horrendous misreading of this text, a reading that never before known in the history of the church, to be quite honest with you, this righteousness of God becomes something that really has absolutely positively nothing to do with us.
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It has only to do with God's covenant faithfulness, which is a wonderful truth. God is faithful to his promises and there's no question about that.
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But is that all that this is about? Is that is that all that Paul is saying here is that the apostles are the incarnation of God's covenant faithfulness, which is
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N .C. Wright's perspective, which, of course, is not the case. But it does seem that that others outside of N .C.
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Wright are seeking to draw back, in essence, from a rich, full and I would say incarnational understanding that is part and parcel of our historic reformed understanding.
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I don't know why it is that so many of those who are promoting these things come up with very odd understandings of what historic theology has been.
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You know, N .C. Wright's always saying that basically we've always viewed the Jews as Pelagians who are pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.
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And I go, that's not how I've ever understood that. I don't see that.
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And these straw man representations of what reformed theology has been and things like that over the years just makes it
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I don't understand what the motivation of all that type of stuff is.
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But I've heard people basically saying that historic reformed theology is nothing more.
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All they're worried about was Rome. Well, they were worried about Rome. There's no question about that. You can hear the concern about Rome, for example, even in Chapter 11 when it says not by infusing righteousness into them.
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Well, OK, no question about that. And people said, oh, well, see, if you're just responding to Rome, then that's where the imbalance is, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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Well, that's not all they're responding to. And the apostles responded to specific issues regarding their day.
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They engaged in apologetics even when preaching the truth. And so I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that particular aspect of things.
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But yeah, they were responding to that. And so as a result, they say, see, all they're concerned about was the forensic stuff.
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And they're just trying to deny Rome. And they missed the rest of it. Well, I don't think so. There's a fair amount in there about union with Christ, unite with Christ.
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So people say, well, we want to have an incarnational theology where it's based on our union with Christ. Well, where did
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I get my emphasis upon union with Christ and the fact that we are in him and that it's that union of the elect with Christ and his death, burial and resurrection and that union with Christ that is eternal?
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That was one of the reasons, you know, one of the disappointments that I've had over the past over a year now is that I've been running around so much and I've been so busy that I never got a chance to finish the dialogue with Eric Svensson on atonement because I thought, you know, that's something
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I really enjoy doing. And it's relevant because part and parcel of that particular dialogue was whether the elect are united.
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When are the elect considered to be united with Christ? Because in essence, there is a, as I see, especially in this dispensational viewpoint, this viewpoint coming from a professor at the
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Master's Seminary, Andy Snyder, who in his thesis attempts to get dispensationalism, whatever that is anymore,
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I'm not sure how anybody defines it anymore, that's a whole other issue, but get dispensationalism separated out from covenant theology.
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I see a division in the righteousness of Christ. I see a problem in regards to the union of the elect with Christ.
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What is the nature of our union with Christ? Are we only united with Christ in a partial way?
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Are we only united to him in a certain way in the sense that we're just united enough to be able to be saved and to receive forgiveness of sins?
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A lot of these folks are trying to say, well, look, you don't need to have a positive righteousness before God.
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That's work salvation. And that's that's that's Rome again. You don't need to have a positive righteousness before God.
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Well, leaving all that aside, isn't there isn't there something about be perfect even as your father in heaven is perfect?
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Isn't there something about about loving the Lord, your God, our heart, soul, mind, strength? Isn't there something positive in those?
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It's not just don't do these things. It's do these things where if you just get the don't do these things removed, the positive sins, where's where's the positive righteousness?
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I've never figured that out. And I don't think I need Rome to come up with that. In fact, I was writing yesterday and I was listening to Shabir Ali dismissing
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Matthew 548. Jesus could never have said that because it's ridiculous. God would never say that. God would never say be perfect because he knows we're sinners.
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I mean, complete misunderstanding and total of the entire concept of the gospel and grace and things like that, which is understandable coming from a
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Muslim perspective. But anyway, that's the way the natural man views these things.
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And and there's just such a richness. In reformed theology, and let's just be honest,
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I'm going to offend a bunch of people in biblical theology and in looking at all that the scriptures teach and the richness of what it means to be united with Christ.
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You know, we in First Corinthians chapter one. Verse 30, you have that that union with Christ that is described there and people will say, we'll see that.
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Yeah, there you go up by his doing. You were in Christ. Jesus has become to us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification, redemption.
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And that's the only way you can actually get any type of idea of of imputed righteousness or anything like that.
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But then you'd also have to have imputed sanctification, imputed redemption. Now, the point is that it's in Christ.
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What do we have in Christ? What is the nature of the righteousness that we have in Christ? Can't we ask that question?
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Is the New Testament not able to answer it? What's the nature of sanctification? We know we distinguish between progressive sanctification and positional sanctification.
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We need to. And in fact, more of the references in the New Testament are to positional sanctification than to progressive sanctification.
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But we need to make those distinctions because of the way that the term is used. And all that's fine and dandy.
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But can't we can't we look at what this righteousness is? Can't we ask the question, is it is it just a a proper standing before God?
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Our past sins are forgiven. Now we got to keep our nose clean. I mean, I do think that this ends up impacting a lot more than than some of these folks, whether it be
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Wright or Seyfried or or Snyder or whoever, I think it impacts a lot more issues than they seem to recognize.
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And once again, I think one of the reasons that that I sort of see it that way is because they're not really dealing with apologetics.
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They're not dealing with a defense of these things. And those early reformed theologians had to be they had to be dealing with the fact that especially the earliest reformed earliest reformers were living in a world where if they wandered across the wrong line on a map, they'd be strung up and burned.
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And. So that, you know, I mean, that that definitely clarifies your thinking. And I think it also helps you to prioritize things.
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I'm sorry for my dispensationalist friends. I was raised a dispensationalist. But when you make dispensationalism, the be all and end all of all things, especially when you make a particular form of it, whatever it is now these days,
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I mean, progressive or this or that or the other thing. And who knows when when you're willing to make that the be all and end all of all things, it so clearly becomes the lens that you use to to see everything else.
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And. I just wonder what's being given up. What's what is what is being sacrificed in that process?
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It's a sad thing. It really is. And I was talking to a brother this morning. And, you know,
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I once again made reference to the fact. That we can sometimes look at this and I I even, you know, honestly,
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I sort of sighed and it's like, well, you know, here we go again. And I I understand.
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When people will look at this and they can go, you know. Is there really any reason to continue the struggle?
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Why not just give up and say, you know what? Nobody knows. Nobody knows that the scriptures just aren't sufficient to answer these questions.
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That's what people want to tell you. And that's what that's what the enemy will want to whisper in your ear. Hey, those
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Roman Catholics, right? See all this disagreement. But what's the source of this disagreement?
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Is it really a lack of clarity, a lack of consistency? What's the real source of it?
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And I said, I said to my friend, I said, you know. Here we see once again.
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What we are going to be facing. As believers in a culture under the judgment of God.
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A sound, discerning, and here's a key word, content with truth.
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Church is a blessing on a nation. It's a blessing on a culture. A church where.
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You don't have this wild swinging from chandelier to chandelier, which is the only way to describe the quote unquote external evangelical church today is is find the newest trend and ride it into the graves.
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Swing over here and swing over there and imbalance here and imbalance there. And and people that you thought were real solid going way off into the ozone layer for just one particular thing, one particular reason, one particular emphasis they develop and poof.
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Off we go into the wild blue yonder. That is symptomatic of God's sovereignty in this situation.
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And what do I mean by that? Well, like I said, a church that is that is consistent.
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That is content with its message. That has one generation after another coming up in love with the truth.
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Is a blessing on a nation. And so a church. That would even even give room to such things as this as this.
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Emergent church movement where where a man is so arrogant that he thinks every element of God's truth is up for discussion and God can't actually can't actually communicate to us and all the rest of stuff, a church should even give that the time of day is a church that's demonstrating.
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That God is not blessing it. In the sense of giving it that stability.
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And that's a part of. The judgment of God upon a very wicked society, a very wicked culture.
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So what do we do in the middle of that? Well, you first of all, give up the idea. Very, very quickly.
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Abandon the idea very, very quickly that you're going to judge the soundness of God's word and you're going to judge the soundness of God's purposes.
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Based upon human ideas of what success is supposed to be. That's first thing you do.
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Just just dump it. Get rid of that idea instantaneously right now. You have to all of us have to be focused upon being faithful to God's truth, loving
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God's truth, even in the midst of apostasy all around us.
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This is where the lessons of the Old Testament become so much more precious to us because that is something that.
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The faithful had to deal with over and over and over again in the midst of apostasy.
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And that is. That is what I'm taking from this.
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And does that mean we stop speaking about? No, we don't give up. We don't don't climb into a shell. We continue to speak the truth and you continue to to say, hey, folks, look.
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Christ's perfect life was not just so that he could say he was sinless.
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That's very, very important. His sinlessness is central and vital, but is that all there was to it?
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All those years of perfect obedience to the father. The only reason was, well, see,
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I'm sinless, so now I can die. That's it. Amazing to me that the people would want to give that up and all for what?
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The distinctives of particular systems. Anyway, just commentary on that.
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Like I said, that's the kind of issue that could very much end up being discussed.
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I mean, it is already going to be discussed in the sense of dealing with sound theology from the pulpit in the
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Pulpit Crimes conference coming up in November. Please, if you've been putting off, you've wanted to be there and you want to be able to hear discussions of this, you want to hear
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Tom Askell and myself and others that you look at, look at the lineup.
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It's a great group of people to be speaking. Please, please, please make sure before the end of this month to make your plans known, shall we say, because that's going to impact very much what we're able to do in that conference and the accommodations that we have and so on and so forth.
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So it is important for other reasons than you might know.
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So please make sure to do that. Now, I mentioned on the dividing line that's on the dividing line. This is the dividing line.
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Hello. I mentioned on the blog, which is not the dividing line, that today
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I want to start working on sort of a radio free Geneva in a sense.
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I want to start working on two sermons that were delivered by Dr. S .M. Davis, I believe.
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I have been looking for the DVD that I took this from. I have not been able to find it, but that's not overly surprising because about a quarter of my office has already been moved and it's a disaster area in here, as it's going to be for a while.
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And so I'm going to actually to be able to honestly utilize the
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Gerrymatics defense for quite some time. And that is, well, I'd like to be able to answer that question, but all my good books are in boxes.
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And however, I will not be able to use the entire Gerrymatics defense because I'm not going to be able to then say, and I just drove here writing my notes on a yellow pad of paper and all
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I've had today is a Diet Coke. That's not me.
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No, I wouldn't be able to do that. Besides that, I'm and someone across the wall is only hearing this for the first time.
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I'm really seriously looking into changing the way I do debates because there's a thing called age.
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And I'm noticing, sadly, especially over the past year, that the screen of my palm tungsten
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T5 is shrinking. Now, don't worry, the T5 is OK. But I had this thing called
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LASIK a few years ago, and they told me at the time, they said, now, once you get past 40, having LASIK will actually speed up in all probability the onset of what's called presbyopia.
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That is not a conversion to Presbyterianism, but it is the problem where your arms get too short.
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And so I'm really, really, really looking at these things called a tablet PC, which has a 1024 by 768 screen or so.
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And it's actually a full computer, basically. But just imagine this for just a moment in a debate.
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Half your screen is your notes and the other half of your screen is Bible works seven. Yes, yes.
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No, I'm not going to tell the LASIK story, Norris. Calm down. It's OK. I'm not going to tell about what happened during my
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LASIK. OK, I'm not trying to scare anybody. I had some problems during LASIK. It wasn't my doctor's fault, but they got me through it and I would do it again.
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So I'm not saying that. But anyways, so I wouldn't be using the yellow pad that Jerry Maddox uses.
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And the scary thing is the person on the other side of the wall remembers what Jerry Maddox desk looked like after a certain debate in Denver, Colorado.
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And I don't think he could actually function without yellow pads of paper. But I think it's one of the reasons he's never written his book is he probably has written his book, but he wrote it all in yellow pads of paper and lost most of it.
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And that's why the book never came out, which was supposed to come out. When was that? Like 1989, 91, something like that.
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No, he needed a strong breeze on his side of the stage because as you know, you missed my point.
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Oh, well, he had a strong breeze over there on that side of the stage for some reason. Oh, he's a warm, warm, lots of hot air.
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Yeah, yeah. OK, yeah. Well, it didn't blow is any of that yellow paper. Anyway, I'd never seen so many single pieces of yellow paper on the floor and on a desk in my life.
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I'm talking about the 1993 Denver debate on the papacy, but the second one,
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Presbyterian Church on the historical stuff. It was when we got done. OK, now I've now introduced it.
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Now I got to tell a story. Then we'll go on with it with Dr. Davidson. Rich and I were up there, we were passing out tracts to Roman Catholics during World Youth Day, and we're doing a two night debate with Jerry Matatix, which you can hear on MP3 on the papacy.
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Second night, yeah, the second night, we, I got done and I had, you know,
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I had had a number of the end Nicene Fathers, the Nicene, post -Nicene Fathers with me, and I had put all of them into a silver bookcase, which in fact is under the desk here, and I had just these two cases sitting at the end of my desk, and that was it.
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Everything else, there was a six foot table and the chair was pushed in, and Rich and I were staying toward the back.
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Yeah, I didn't have PDAs back then. And Rich and I are staying a little bit farther back on the podium stage area.
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And we look over and here's Jerry's table.
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And honestly, it's a six foot table. There is not a square inch of the surface visible.
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Books open, placed upside down, and mainly yellow pads of paper torn off everywhere.
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You cannot see the surface of the table. But what's even weirder is underneath the table, in the six foot area underneath the table, the carpet is covered with books and with pieces of paper strewn all over the place, with one little exception where his feet were.
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It is a mess. And the contrast between the two was sort of funny, and Rich and I were sort of commenting on it to ourselves.
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And Jerry saw us, and pretty much everybody had left by then, and he looks at his table and then he looks over.
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Yeah, I wish I had had a camera too. And he looks over at mine, and of course, like I said, I've got two book bags side by side, perfectly straight, sitting on the end, chairs pushed in.
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That's it. It's all cleaned up. And he looks at his, looks at mine, looks over.
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He says, well, OK, you win the organization debate. Because I remember that debate really didn't go well for him.
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He had never been challenged with any of this information that I threw at him, you could tell. And so during the break, while I'm out talking to folks in the audience, going back to the book tables in the back, blah, blah, blah.
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He retreats up into the choir loft of this Presbyterian church and is feverishly writing notes for the second half of the debate.
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And then even in the second half of the debate, he's standing there with the jurgens, the three -volume jurgens that he's standing there with,
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I think, the first volume open to the index, reading out of the jurgens index as if this was proof of who believed in the papacy.
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And so it was amazing. I very much, very much recommend that particular debate to folks who want to hear a debate on the subject of the papacy.
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Anyhow, let's finally launch into, after all this time and my wandering about, the
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Dr. Davis sermon. I had played a few sections of this, I don't know, about a year, year and a half ago when
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I was first given it. Didn't do the whole thing. Dr. Davis is big in the homeschool movement.
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The reason I'm doing this right now is that he was one of the last people that the folks in Sedalia, Missouri had contacted to try to find somewhere, someone who would debate me on the subject of Calvinism and Arminianism.
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This was for the high school that had, for two years, done debates on creation and evolution.
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Now they want to do a debate on the subject of Calvinism and Arminianism.
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And the folks just had a really hard time. They were turned down by, the list is long.
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They were turned down, of course, by Geisler. They were turned down by Hunt. They were turned down by Ergun Kanner.
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They were turned down by everybody at Liberty. They were turned down by Jerry Jenkins. They were turned down by everybody.
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And no Arminians were willing to stand up and be counted in a debate on the subject of Calvinism, Arminianism.
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And so finally I said, well, you know, there's this guy, this S .M. Davis, I've got this DVD from him. Why I'm not a five -point
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Calvinist. It's two sermons. And basically he takes Dave Hunt's materials.
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And he's a much better speaker, much more engaging speaker than Dave Hunt is. And so you can actually get through the material in a decent amount of time.
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And so try him. I think this is the address. I'm not completely certain, but I think this is his email address.
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And it was. And so I got a hold of him. And sadly he wouldn't do the debate. But there's an attorney in his church who would.
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And so that's what the debate is going to be one month from today in Sedalia, Missouri.
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I think it's a Friday night, April 21st. And so what I'm doing is that one of the requests that I made of my future opponent.
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And I don't have my email with me. So I'm going to try to come up with his name just off top my head, because I don't have my email up on this particular system at the moment because it bogs down the network.
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But anyway, the one request I made. Was that he if this sermon was representative of the position that's going to be presented,
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I don't want to spend the entire night knocking down straw man. I would like to debate the issues.
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I would like to have an accurate, fair representation of my viewpoint, just as I always to make an accurate, fair representation of the other side as well.
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That's why I play what the other side says here on the program, rather than just simply coming up with my own summaries of it.
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And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to play a bunch of segments. It's two hours worth of sermons. I'm not going to play all that because it would take too many weeks to do it.
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But I have started going through the sermon and I am pulling these parts together. And if anyone feels that I've missed something, it was very, very important.
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Be happy to go back and play it. No problem at all. But I want to play these things and I want to correct the many misapprehensions.
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I mean, he even says very, very clearly. In fact, let me scroll down here to this particular clip.
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We'll get back to it later on. But here's a here's a clip where he talks about what his real source is.
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The Calvinist in his zeal to exalt the sovereignty of God brings into question the love of God, the justice of God and some ways even the holiness of God.
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Perhaps the key book on this subject and a major resource for me, as I studied on this subject, is
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Dave Hunt's book. What Love Is This? And the book is subtitled Calvinism's Misrepresentation of God.
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So there you go. He very clearly admits that his source is Dave Hunt. Well, I have demonstrated, documented repeatedly the many, many, many, many, many errors of Dave Hunt's work.
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He does not understand Reformed theology. He thinks he can define it. He refuses to take a correction.
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He has been caught in error after error after error. And he refuses to admit the errors when he is caught in them.
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And unfortunately, Dr. Davis follows him a number of his errors, including his errors on Charles Haddon Spurgeon.
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And so I am actually doing these dividing lines for the benefit of my opponent in April.
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I'm going to refer him to them so he can hear. And I'm, in essence, doing debate prep right here for my opponent, because I honestly want the students at the high school to get to hear a debate on the subject, not a debate on how fast can one
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Calvinist knock down the straw man raised by a non -Calvinist as to what Calvinism actually is, what it's saying and what it teaches.
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Dr. Davis is wrong in what he says about Calvinism. He does not understand it. And he has good reason not to understand it, because he has been misled by the sources that he has used.
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And I would invite Dr. Davis to call if you would like to take issue with that.
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But that's the issue that I'm facing here. That's why I want to do this. Also, it, of course, helps me to prepare for the debate, to deal with this particular presentation because of my assumption, anyways, and I think it's a fair assumption, that my opponent is going to agree with Dr.
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Davis's theological affirmations. And therefore, by reviewing this as I was reviewing it yesterday, and then here on the dividing line,
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I am, in essence, doing debate preparation as well. So let's start with the opening presentation made by Dr.
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Davis as to why he's doing what he's doing. I so loved the world, meaning everybody that gave his son
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Jesus that whosoever, and that means anybody, can be saved.
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What do you have to do to be saved? Realize that you're a sinner. Realize that if you died in your sin, that you would spend eternity in hell.
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Realize that Jesus loves you so much, He paid the penalty for you by shedding
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His blood on the cross of Calvary. Repent of anything keeping you from turning to Christ alone for your soul's salvation.
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By faith, call on the Lord for forgiveness of sin and to receive the free gift of salvation and eternal life.
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How many of you have heard those wonderful truths over and over again? Then why am
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I speaking on this subject, why I'm not a five -point Calvinist? Because five -point
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Calvinism changes much of what I just shared with you. Allow me here to share with you the five points of the
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Calvinistic doctrine using the anacronym TULIP, T -U -L -I -P, which the
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Calvinists themselves use. T stands for total depravity, meaning that man is a totally depraved sinner.
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Now, many of us would believe that as well, but the Calvinist meaning is even different than that.
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It goes further and carries the meaning of not only total depravity, but total inability.
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They believe that man is so spiritually dead, according to their interpretation of Ephesians chapter 2, verse 1, that man cannot even respond to the gospel at all without first being regenerated or born again, which the man himself has nothing at all to do with.
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Now, a number of things. I'm not going to spend too much time right now on John 3, 16. We've addressed that in my open letter to Dave Hunt.
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Obviously, I have a feeling, no matter what, I will have to address the misapprehension of the term whosoever, and the underlying
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Greek text there, and the fact that it is referring to all the ones believing. Probably have to deal with that one way or the other, and probably would want to whether it's brought up or not, because there are so many people who have a misunderstanding.
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They've just heard it preached so many times. It's just simply a tradition rather than exegesis. But in listening to that, you can at least get a sense of where Dr.
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Davis is coming from. And the primary reason that I selected that particular section, when someone says that they cannot respond to the gospel, there is a context in which that is true, and there's a context in which that is false.
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The context in which that is true is to respond to it favorably. That is, they cannot, in and of themselves, free themselves from spiritual death and slavery to sin.
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As Romans chapter 8 very, very clearly says, those who are according to the flesh cannot please
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God. They cannot do what is pleasing to God. And if responding positively to the command of repentance is pleasing to God, then please explain what
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Paul's talking about in Romans 8, 5 following, where he is specifically saying that those who are according to the flesh lack that capacity.
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This is the context in which that is true. That is, man, outside of the work of grace in his heart, cannot respond positively, in and of himself, outside of grace to the gospel.
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The context in which it is not true is that he does not respond at all.
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And man does respond to the gospel. If you preach a gospel that gets no response at all, in the sense of any response, then you've probably missed something.
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Because the gospel does bring about a response, but the response of the natural man is mockery.
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It's to identify it as foolishness. The foolishness that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians chapter 1.
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It's a stumbling block to the Jews, foolishness to the Greeks. The natural man does not receive the things of the
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Spirit of God. They are foolishness to him. There is a rejection. God -haters hate the call to repentance.
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And so, to say that man does not respond at all would not be true in that context. The problem is, man, outside of grace, man, outside of the work of the
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Holy Spirit, will always respond negatively. Now, it may not be negatively in the sense of a direct mockery, like an atheist would.
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But it can be negatively, for example, in the sense of embracing a false gospel rather than the true gospel.
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That is still a negative response. I mean, any response that does not involve a direct bowing of the knee to the truth of Christ, accepting a false
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Christ or a false gospel or something like that, that's still rebellion. That's still a rejection of the preaching of the gospel.
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And so, it's important to keep that in mind, what it is we're talking about here in regards to responding to the gospel and man's total inability.
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Yes, man is incapable of freeing himself from the slavery of sin.
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Jesus said in John chapter 8, he who commits sin is the slave of sin.
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What does it mean to be enslaved? Dr. Davis is later on going to talk about different meanings of the word death.
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He noticed he heard totally dead, or maybe it's coming up in the next one. Um, the point being that the number of words used by the inspired writers, and I use that term advisedly,
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I realize it's a misused term inspiration, but by the writers writing what is inspired,
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I guess, would be the better way of putting it. The words used by them to describe the state of man includes deadness, but it also includes rebellion.
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It includes slavery. It includes hatred of God. These all have to be taken together. And when you do, and you look at all the places where the
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Bible says that man is incapable of doing X, Y, or Z outside of the prior action, logically prior action, not getting into all the argument about temporality at the moment, but the logically prior action of God and grace, that's where the reformed position comes from.
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And that's why, of course, my presentation is going to be very much focused upon the biblical teaching of these particular passages.
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Um, as I laid them out in the potter's freedom. So let's continue on with Dr. Davis. The way a
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Calvinist will often introduce his doctrine is by asking, which do you think comes first faith or regeneration?
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When people answer faith, then the Calvinist will say something like this. But mankind is totally dead in trespasses and sins.
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How can a dead man believe? And then they point out that what they believe, that you have to be regenerated first, then you trust
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Christ by faith. So it's almost like the Lord has to save you before he saves you.
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And it's almost like you're getting saved twice at the same, almost the same time. Now, of course, the problem with that language is confusing, which, which
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Dave Hunt does. And again, he may be just following him in this, but is confusing the terms regeneration and saved.
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Saved, especially in the New Testament, is often a term that refers to all of the work of God in salvation, not merely the raising to spiritual life.
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And so I criticized Dave Hunt for this, for utilizing very poor theological specificity,
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I guess, is a term that I'm searching for. And of course, that's part and parcel, from my perspective of his own background, is you eschew that kind of thing.
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You don't want to have theological specificity. You don't want to use terminology in an accurate way. You just want to use any way you want to use it.
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Regeneration is not the same as being saved. Regeneration is one element of what
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God does. This is one of the problems that that's currently having with a particular gentleman who, who just simply does not believe he could possibly ever be wrong about anything, including what other people believe.
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It's an amazing and a sad thing. A person would be very, very sad to see someone sort of finishing their race the way this particular gentleman is.
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But he wants to just simply ravage me for discussing the relationship between regeneration and faith and the logical issues and the fact
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I do believe that God uses the proclamation of the gospel to bring about his purposes. And it's only when people divide stuff up and don't look at the whole thing, they can become as confused as this man has and as other has, as Dr.
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Davis has. And in this particular situation, what he's done here is he said, you got to get saved before you get saved.
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No, we're talking here about a simple question. Is saving faith something that an unregenerate man has the capacity in and of himself of doing?
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Is it pleasing to God? What is the relationship? Does the unregenerate man have faith which results in regeneration based upon free will?
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Or does God work in a person's heart so as to bring spiritual life through the ministry of the word, which gives to the person the object of faith so that new life, that newly created person clings to Christ because it's natural for the new man to cling to the one who created him in his image.
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It really, the whole reason that we have to discuss this is because of free willism and the idea of those people who are basically saying that God's trying to save, trying to save, trying to save, failing to save, failing to save most of the people he's trying to save and that he tries and tries and tries, but it's all up to us.
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It's all up to us and our free will choice as to whether he's going to fail or succeed in his work.
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And simply pointing out the contrast between the biblical presentation and what is made in the free willism.
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So keeping those things in mind, we press on. The U in TULIP stands for unconditional election, meaning that God elects some to go to heaven without any conditions being met on their part.
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They are the elect. They are chosen unconditionally, elected unconditionally by God to go to heaven.
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They will be saved regardless of what anyone does or doesn't do. Everyone else but the elect are allowed to go to hell and there's nothing anybody can do about it.
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God could save all, but he chooses not to do so. Most Calvinists will also teach that God loves only the elect whom he has chosen to be saved.
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Now, again, a number of misrepresentations here. And of course, if you don't understand unconditional election and we will see later on,
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I don't believe that Dr. Davis has thought through even what he professes in regards to God's knowledge of the future, God's decrees and things like that.
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If you start off wrong here, then it's no wonder that the rest of it doesn't work very well.
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Unconditional election. The reason for the emphasis upon the term unconditional is that election is not based upon our fulfilling some condition which then causes
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God to elect us. In other words, the term unconditional is a denial of the idea that God looks down the corridors of time, sees who's going to believe in him, and on the basis of the fulfillment of that faith, then elects them.
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That's what unconditional is emphasizing. It is not that there are no conditions which are fulfilled because in point of fact, there are conditions and God fulfills them perfectly in his sovereign decree and in the work of regeneration, faith, repentance, everything that takes place in that sovereign work of God which he cannot fail in accomplishing to his own glory and to his own honor.
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You also had then the assertion that they're going to be saved no matter what.
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Well, in a very vague general sense, that's true.
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But what is missing, of course, is the fact that along with unconditional election, the
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Calvinists believe that God has ordained both the ends, that is the ultimate salvation, and the means, the means by which they are going to experience new life in Christ.
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And that means is through the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the means by which this takes place is that we are given the tremendous privilege of being used by God as instruments in his hands whereby we proclaim the gospel and we call men to faith and repentance in Jesus Christ.
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And in so doing, we become the means and we ourselves are sanctified in that process.
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We are made more like Christ in that particular process. And so it is very, very common for anti -Calvinists to misrepresent us and to ignore that very important element of our own self -profession.
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And that is God has ordained both the ends as well as the means by which he is going to bring about his own glory.
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And that means, specifically in this instance, is the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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And then, of course, we have the misrepresentation, very common, again, for someone who's read Dave Hunt.
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And this is one of the reasons why I asked that my future opponent read the debate book that I did with Dave Hunt, because I, in one of those sections, pointed out the incoherence of Dave Hunt's view of the love of God.
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Dave Hunt, until I forced him to address it, and now he's completely forgotten that he was forced to address it, simply would not allow
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God's love to have the fullness and to have the differentiation that human love has.
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There's a whole section in Debating Calvinism where I address the fact that, biblically, there are different kinds of love.
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There is love toward one's enemies, but that is different than love toward one's wife, love toward God, love toward one's children, that these are different kinds of love that we as human beings recognize.
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Unless we're going to make God less than a man and deny to him the ability to have different kinds of love, he cannot have redemptive love, he cannot have the love that's demonstrated in common grace that shows his patience toward sinners who are reprehensible in his sight, and he could call out of existence at any moment, but he doesn't.
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Allegedly, we can't make that kind of differentiation. And so the lie is presented that Calvinists do not believe that God loves everyone because they won't allow us to define what kind of love we're talking about.
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If we're talking about redemptive love, in the sense that God is going to have an undifferentiated love for John Brown, who will remain in his rebellion and hatred of God for eternity so that God is disappointed and he's unhappy and he's sad for all of eternity, yes, that is true.
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We do not believe that the love that God lavishes upon the elect is to be confused with his attitude toward those who will abide under his eternal wrath.
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That is quite true. But to then say that that's the only kind of love that God can express, there's no other way of using that term.
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That's where the disagreement comes from. And that's where Dr. Davis is wrong. But again, he's wrong because he's following Dave Hunt, who is likewise wrong.
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I've seen pamphlets published by Calvinists where they quote John 3, 16, and they quote it like this, for God so loved the world, and then they will put a parenthesis, the elect.
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God so loved the elect that he gave his only begotten son. And so they're saying God only loves those that he's elected to take to heaven.
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He does not love the rest of the world. At the Synod of Dort, it was declared that some receive the gift of faith from God and others do not receive it proceeds from God's eternal decree, by which decree he graciously softens the hearts of the elect, however obstinate, and inclines them to believe while he leaves the non -elect in his just judgment to their own wickedness and obduracy.
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Now notice, and I guess Dr. Davis didn't notice this, that the quotation that he gives does not substantiate the assertion that he made beforehand.
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The quotation that he gives speaks of God's grace freely giving the gift of faith and softening the hearts of the elect.
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Now, unless grace can be said to be something that is demanded of God, to be given equally to all people, which of course destroys what grace is in the first place, then the quotation that follows the assertion doesn't follow.
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It just evidently just came out of Dave Hunt's book. Now, let's say that he actually has seen a pamphlet where someone put in the word the elect after the word world, which
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I wouldn't agree with, but I understand what's being said. The reason someone would do that is that John 3 16 doesn't stop after saying for God's love the world that he gave his only begotten son.
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John 3 16 says there's a reason for this giving, there's a reason that this love manifests itself, and what is the reason?
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So that a certain group, there is a delimiter, there is a limitation in John 3 16, so that all the believing ones, it's not whosoever, that means anybody, it's whosoever believes.
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The whosoever there is an English way of expressing the fact that it's all the believing ones.
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There is no such thing as one who is believing in Christ, who has true and saving faith, who will not receive eternal life.
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That is the expression of God's love. But the problem is unless you're universalist, which Dr. Davis isn't, unless you're universalist, then you have to explain how it is that if you want to make the word world, if you want to absolutely force the
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Lord Jesus in this context, if it's the Lord Jesus, it might be John, there's questions about it, blah, blah, blah. But the inspired text, if you want to make the inspired text, if you demand of it that it define exactly what world refers to as far as numbers, which
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I don't think you can do in the first place, but if you demand of that, that kind of specificity, then the text itself tells us that that love is going to result in what?
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It's going to result in eternal life for all those who believe.
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It's right there. I mean, I'm not the one making this up. It's right there. People have got to look at the text and answer these questions.
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You can't just simply repeat the traditions that you've had pounded in your brain when they don't answer to the text itself.
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I mean, that's just all there is to it. Let's sneak one more on this subject in before we run out of time.
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So what I believe is a misinterpretation of Romans 9, 13, which reads, Jacob have
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I loved, but Esau have I hated. Most Calvinists believe that one baby in the womb is loved and another unborn baby still in the womb is hated by God.
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When they're children, God loves one and hates another. When they're adults,
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God loves one and hates the other. Has nothing to do with them. Has to do with God. He chooses to love one.
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He chooses to hate another. In old age, all the way through their life and on into eternity.
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The belief is God chooses to love one. God chooses to hate the other unconditional election.
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Now, a number of problems with that. And I only have about 90 seconds to lay them out.
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Nothing is said here about the fact that we are talking about those who are under the wrath of God.
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In fact, this is one of the major problems with Dr. Davis's presentation. All the illustrations he uses and the same with Norman Geisler and others misses the fact that we're talking about rebel sinners here.
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And so the amazing thing is that God would love someone who hates him. Not that he would hate evildoers.
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The scriptures are very plain in teaching that God hates evildoers. People may try to take those passages out of the
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Bible, but they're there. And the wrath of God against sinners cannot be simply ignored.
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And so that is just simply dismissed. And the idea that is promoted, of course, is that you have two innocent people.
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And that God simply outside of what they are. Outside of whether they're in Adam and have his life, which is death, or whether they're in Christ.
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Outside of that, it's just simply this arbitrary decision that has nothing to do with justice.
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It has nothing to do with sin. It has nothing to do with wrath. And that isn't the case.
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That's the problem with that kind of, I would say, misrepresentation of the discussion that should be taking place.
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And hopefully we won't have to deal with that misrepresentation coming up a month from today.
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Now, that means on Thursday evening of The Dividing Line, I'll continue with Dr. Davis's description of limited atonement.
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And obviously, you can sort of imagine, given what we've already heard, where that's going to be going.
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But we will continue in a very fairly responding to this issue and also hopefully correcting many of the misapprehensions in hopes of having the best debate that we can on April 21st.