July 26, 2005

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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. And welcome to The Dividing Line, radio -free
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Geneva today, yes indeed, as we have announced. We have much to do today, no question about it.
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But we need to finish up that Adrian Rogers study we've been doing for a very, very, very, very, very, very, very long time.
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And then we are going to be moving on to a DVD, a two -sermon, two -hour
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DVD that I received this week called Five Reasons Why I Am Not a
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Five -Point Calvinist by Dr. S. M. Davis. The main reason is not that there's anything particularly new here, not anything we haven't refuted a dozen times over before, but this is the perfect example of what happens when someone who is a good preacher, in other words, is able to speak with clarity, speak with pacing, is not constantly stopping and wandering off this direction or that direction.
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When a person who is clearly able to speak with a passion and in an understandable fashion speaks on the basis of the horrifically poor information and simple falsehoods of one
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Dave Hunt. Yes, Dr. Davis even held up What Love Is This during the course of the sermon as his primary source.
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And so if you'd like to hear what happens when Dave Hunt's material meets a person who can actually speak and present it with some level of passion, then that is what we'll be looking at.
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But first, we need to finish up with Adrian Rogers. We're about 26 minutes into the presentation. I'm going to try to allow him to speak and try not to be doing too much interruption.
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When I do interrupt, I will be doing so on a brief basis so that we can get on with other presentations.
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So we continue. Adrian Rogers, a college Bible study on hyper -Calvinism, which, as we have already seen, is actually just Calvinism.
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There is inaccuracy in his presentation at that point. Not at all. Now, look, if you will, in John 1, verse 29.
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Just let me quote it to you. You can turn to it if you want to. John the Baptist saw the Lord Jesus Christ coming, and he said,
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Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the elect. No.
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Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world. And, of course,
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I would respond, how about, let's talk about what does it mean to take away? The one taking away.
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If you want to make this every single individual, then all their sin has been taken away. What is the ground of the condemnation of those whose sins have been borne by the
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Lamb of God? You have to start either with the unbelief stuff, and make unbelief a sin that's not borne, or all the rest of this stuff.
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It's so easy to preach tradition, but it's impossible to do it with consistency in the light of the
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Word of God. Do you know what motivated the Apostle Paul? Do you know what made
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Paul the greatest missionary soul winner that ever lived? It wasn't hyper -Calvinism.
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I'll tell you what it was. All right. You turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 5. Well, you know,
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Paul himself said, I endure all things for the sake of free will.
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Oh, the sake of the elect. That's right. That was Paul's own description of his own situation.
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Boy, you know, I really appreciate hearing these pages turn. This is neat. Look with me in verse 13.
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Now, they said that Paul was crazy. I mean, Paul, they said, Paul, you're out of your mind.
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You're beside yourself. And he says, whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God, or whether we be sober, it's for your cause.
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For the love of Christ constrains us, because we thus judge that if one died for all, then we're all dead.
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How many did Jesus die for? All. All the dead.
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All the dead? Jesus died for all the dead? I mean, when you think about this all thing, does that mean
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Jesus died for all the people who were under God's punishment before his death? So God the
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Father puts the sins of people that are already under his punishment, he's already punishing them for their sins, but he also puts their sins on Christ for no reason whatsoever.
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All died? Who has died with Christ? The people in hell? I mean, these seem to me to be very basic questions that someone of Adrian Rogers' clear intelligence and intellect and capacity would have to have thought of at some point in time.
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But it doesn't come out here. For all then were all dead, that he that died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him that died for them and rose again.
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Now what Paul is saying is, this is what motivates me, I'm not crazy. But for him who died and rose again on their behalf.
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The resurrection of Christ according to Paul results in what? Our justification? Isn't that why
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Christ rises again? Justification? You know, Romans 4. So who's justified in Romans 8?
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Those that are the predestined and then called justified, glorified. Paul's perfectly consistent.
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It's only when you import Arminian traditions, evangelical traditions, in that the whole thing becomes a mishmash of contradiction.
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They were all dead. And Jesus died for all.
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And if you don't say that Jesus died for all, you might as well just with the same logic say all were not dead. That in Adam all did not die.
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But the Bible says in Adam all died, even so in Christ are all made alive.
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So if we follow that logic to its conclusion, we must be universalists, right?
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Is he making the humanity in Adam equal to the humanity in Christ? Or does not Adrian Rogers believe that at the end time you'll have the humanity that's in Christ, which will be saved, and the humanity that remains in Adam, which will be lost.
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So are the ones who were in Adam alive at one point, then died again? I mean, it's almost insulting to Paul to so ignore his own theology and the consistency of his theology simply for the sake of tradition like this.
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It's very frustrating. Friend, the Jesus death was this.
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Now the hyper -Calvinists, the ultra -Calvinists will say,
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No, if you say that Jesus' death was for all and all don't get saved, then that makes his death ineffectual.
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It means he's not sovereign. I want to ask you a question. When God said the children of Israel was man in the wilderness, do you think all the manna was eaten?
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Do you think some of it lay on the ground and didn't get picked up? Of course. Does that mean that God didn't do it or God was not showing love and mercy just because some manna was not taken?
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If God offers his love and his love is not received, that doesn't mean
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God has failed. It means man has failed. Okay, let's see if we can cover this.
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The intention of Christ in salvation and in offering himself as a sacrifice for sin is to be paralleled with the dropping of manna from heaven.
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So the only way to make that work would be it was the intention of God in dropping every piece of manna for every piece to be eaten by an
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Israelite. Sorry, but that has got to be one of the worst analogies
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I have ever heard. The manna falling from the heavens is the same as the intention of the
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Father, Son, and Spirit in the death of the Son of God. Wow, okay.
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God is love. Now here's the next thing they believe, limited atonement, that Jesus only died for some, he didn't die for all.
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I reject that because of these scriptures that are so clear and so plain. He is the propitiation for our sin and not for ours only but also for the whole world.
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And the word propitiation is much more clear than the fact that John uses the term world in at least 14 different ways.
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Does he use propitiation in 14 different ways, Dr. Rogers? No, he does not. So why do you take the unclear term and set it up as being obvious when the clear term you then turn into something that's meaningless?
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Then the last one, irresistible grace. You're going to get saved no matter what if you're elect.
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God's going to catch you, God's going to zap you, and you're going to be saved. God's going to catch you,
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God's going to zap you. I've got to admit, when I hear men who at other times extol the grace of God in regeneration and in the grace that saves, to hear them describing the sovereignty of God in the resurrection of the elect, in the regeneration of the elect, in that effective grace bringing about the salvation of the elect,
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I've got to admit, it's rather offensive, very offensive to hear that. I mean, that's blasphemous.
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I'm sure that Dr. Rogers doesn't mean to be that way, but his tradition is allowing him to, in essence, mock a wonderful divine truth that otherwise he would not, and that's really another reason why we must be very careful about our traditions in that fashion.
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That you cannot resist the Holy Spirit of God. You cannot resist the
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Holy Spirit of God when he moves to bring about the regeneration of dead sinners. So now we're going to be treated to more strawman argumentation where men have resisted the
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Spirit of God in other contexts rather than the context allegedly being addressed, and why haven't we heard that one a million times before?
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Well, you turn to Acts chapter 7 for a moment. There we go, Acts chapter 7. Completely different context, but we're going to go there anyways, right?
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He was being stoned, and I'll tell you why he got stoned, because of the message he preached.
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And he says to them, in verse 51, Ye stiff -necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the
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Holy Ghost. As your fathers did, so do you. Now tell me that the
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Holy Spirit can't be resisted. Stephen said he could. You do always resist the
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Holy Ghost. Sure, the Holy Spirit can be resisted. Just not in bringing about salvation. Jesus said in the
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Scripture we read to you from Matthew 23, verse 37, I would, but ye would not.
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I'll tell you a classic passage over in Proverbs. Turn to Proverbs chapter 1 with me for just a moment.
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I think that makes it about as clear as any passage, beginning in verse 22.
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God is speaking. And he says, How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity?
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And the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge. Turn you at my reproof.
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Behold, I will pour out my Spirit unto you. I will make known my words unto you, because I have called, and ye refused.
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I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded. But ye have said it not all my counsel, and would none of my reproof.
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I also will laugh at your calamity, and I will mock when your fear cometh.
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Isn't this plain, folks, that he can be resisted? Going down to verse 27.
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When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind, when distress and anguish cometh upon you, then shall they call upon me, and I will not answer.
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They shall seek me early, but they shall not find me. For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the
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Lord, they would none of my counsel. They despised my reproof. Therefore shall they eat the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices.
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That's Romans chapter 1, description of all men outside of grace. Nothing here even slightly relevant to the issue of Calvinism, only to the straw men that our minions love to throw up and beat upon for a while.
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For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them.
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But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and he shall be quiet from fear of evil.
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It's so clear that God speaks. But God gives man the right to say no.
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Doesn't it say man always says no there? This is not irresistible grace. And it has nothing to do with irresistible grace, does it?
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Suppose one of you girls has a boy, a friend, and he begins to pour the sugar in you and tell you how much he loves you.
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But you don't like him. But he says, I love you. And then you get a little nervous.
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And you kind of want to get rid of him. But he keeps following you. And he says, I love you.
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I love you very much. You say, well, fine, but... No, no, no.
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He says, I really love you. Well, so long.
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No, no, no. Listen. I love you so much. I'm not going to let you go.
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I'm going to make you love me. Hmm?
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Hmm? I am going to make you.
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Now, friend, coerced love is a contradiction in terms.
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There's no such thing as forced love. No. The idea that God has some irresistible grace, something that you say, well,
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I don't want to be saved. Well, you're going to be saved. You're going to be saved. I am going to make you love me.
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Again, it is sad to see someone of Dr. Rogers' stature, so dishonest, so enslaved to tradition, so giving in to straw men.
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I can't assume that he knows any better, but he certainly should. There's no question about that. You all remember, well, those of you who've listened to the
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Rutland debate remember that he raised the same issue, and I started preaching for a little while.
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I will admit I started preaching for a few moments because of the fact that when
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I hear people using this term force to describe the loving action of God in changing a slave of sin, a person in love with their sin, a person in love with their own self -destruction, removing that heart of stone and giving a heart of flesh, when
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I hear that described, spiritual resurrection, raised to life, the chains.
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Remember that beautiful song that we sing, my chains fell off, my heart was free,
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I rose henceforth and followed. That's what is being described as force.
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That's what is being described as a stalker. Oh, that's so sad. That is so sad.
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That's why these people won't debate because if they were to do so, it comes out very clearly in debate that this kind of canard, this kind of straw man, this kind of dishonest argumentation, it doesn't survive, but that's why they won't do it.
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Because they know they can't. They know deep down inside, and I feel for anyone who has so little belief in what they believe that they can't accurately represent positions against their own.
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That's a horrible position to be in. It truly is. That's ridiculous. That's not love at all.
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I mean, you become a robot. That's not love. God gives us the privilege of saying no so we can have the delight of saying yes to him.
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But they call this irresistible grace. Now, if God's Holy Spirit is irresistible, would you explain to me what the unpardonable sin is?
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Explain what the unpardonable sin is. You see, the Lord speaks of the unpardonable sin. You might turn to Matthew 12 for a moment and look at it for just a moment.
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Beginning in verse 22, Then was brought unto him one possessed with the devil, blind and dumb, and he healed him insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw.
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And all the people were amazed and said, It is not this the son of David, but when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils.
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And Jesus knew their thoughts and said, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.
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And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then shall his kingdom stand? Why, Jesus is saying,
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I'm not in collusion with the devil. I'm in collision with him. And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, and by the way, the word
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Beelzebub means the Lord of the flies. If I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast them out?
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Therefore they shall be your judges. Now the point is, God was speaking, and the Lord had done a miracle, and the
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Holy Spirit was working. But then Jesus goes on to say in verse 31,
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I'll fast forward. Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men, but the blasphemy against the
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Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the
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Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him. But whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.
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Now, that's the most extraneous passage of Scripture I've ever seen, if people can't be forgiven anyway.
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I mean, if they're not part of the elect. I mean, what is the sense of that? I know,
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I'm sorry, but it just... When people raise absolutely ridiculous arguments, it's like saying, well, you know, if the elect are known to God, then there's no reason in the
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Bible for there to be anything about how we should live our lives, and there should be no preaching, and the whole thing...
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So, okay, let me see. So, God, if He ordains the ends, cannot ordain the means by which we are conformed to the image of Christ.
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He cannot give us direction in His Word as to how we are to please
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God, and He cannot have a discussion of the unforgivable sin, which, in fact, was about religious people who were so religious and so exposed to light that they had become so twisted in their love of the praise of men that they called that which is black, white, and white, black, that which is good, evil, and evil, good, and that's what made it unpardonable, by the way.
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It was not the seriousness of the sin, but the state of the soul of the person who committed it that it reveals that is actually an issue there.
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But God can't have a discussion of that if we have election. What? I... I mean, what difference would it make if a person blasphemed the
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Holy Ghost, or whether he didn't, if he's not of the elect? It makes absolutely no difference whatsoever. Except, of course,
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Dr. Rogers, that we don't know who the elect are, and if God wants to tell us about these things and warn us about these things,
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He's sovereign, He can do so. Why are you complaining about it? I mean, there's no rhyme, no reason, no nothing to that.
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The so -called unpardonable sin doesn't make any sense at all if that's what it's all about.
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Now, the last is the P, perseverance of the saints. I believe in the eternal security of the believer, just as I believe in election, coordination, and predestination.
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But I really don't believe it's even the perseverance of the saints. I believe it's the perseverance of the
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Spirit. Philippians 1, verse 6 says, He who hath begun a good work in you will perform it, unto the coming of our
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Lord Jesus Christ. The hyper -Calvinist says this.
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He says, If you claim to be a saint, and at the end of your life have a spiritual blowout, you're going to hell, because you did not persevere.
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They believe only the elect persevere. So those who do not elect don't persevere.
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This sounds so much like Arminianism. It's crazy. Wow, man.
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Oh, again, you may be listening, and maybe you don't know what Reformed theology is, so you don't realize just how so many of these men who stand before the people of God choose to address subjects about which they know nothing.
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They learned some traditions back in seminary and Bible school, and they just run with it.
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Same thing with the upcoming thing. We're going to look at this Dr. S .M. Davis. He talks about, you know, he doesn't believe in the perseverance of the saints either.
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He believes in the preservation of the saints. There's no difference. The only reason you have the perseverance of the saints is what it's saying is that since Christ is the one who saves, and since that divine work is his, then it's going to have the results the
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Word of God says it's going to have in the lives of the believers, and that they are going to persevere in their faith, not out of themselves, but because their faith is a divine faith, and because they have a perfect Savior.
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My goodness, how simple that is. What does it say about the entire range of these sermons that we have been examining?
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That these people can never once accurately represent what they say they're denying. What does it say?
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It says to me that they're wrong, that they cannot argue against the truth, and that they love their traditions more than they love the truth.
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That's what it tells me. Now, what that says about their hearts, that's something
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I can't judge. But it certainly tells me that on the level of simple matters of truth, these folks are not functioning the way
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Christians should function. But that's what they believe, and they will tell you this. Right at the end, if you have a spiritual blowout, if you fail, you do this or that, then you just weren't one of the elect.
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And so you didn't persevere. But, old friend, if it's the perseverance of the Spirit, He who hath begun a good work in you will perform it.
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Which, of course, is what Calvinists believe. Really, I take all five points of TULIP in its extreme form, and I just reject that.
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What's the non -extreme form? Arminianism? Now, let me just say a few words in conclusion, and then we'll ask some questions, and look at some other scriptures that seem to teach contrary to what we have said.
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I want to say that God is sovereign. Agree with that? A sovereign is a king.
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He's king. You didn't vote him in, you won't vote him out. God is sovereign. Election and predestination are biblical.
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Election is based on foreknowledge. Election is based on foreknowledge.
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Turn to 1 Peter 1 with me just a moment. Now look in verses 1 and 2.
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Peter and Apostle Jesus Christ, to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, elect, now watch this, according to the foreknowledge of God.
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Elect according to the foreknowledge of God. Now, God lives in eternity.
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We live in time. Don't get the idea that eternity is just a whole lot more time.
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We get that sometimes when we sing songs like Amazing Grace. We've been there 10 ,000 years.
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Bright shining as the sun with no less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun. That's just poetry.
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That's not Bible. Friend, when you get up in eternity, time is irrelevant. It does not pertain.
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Now, you know, we say God's sovereign, but there's some things God can't do. For example, God can't lie.
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Isn't that true? He cannot lie. There's something else God can't do. God can't learn anything. God can't learn anything.
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How could God learn anything? He knows it all. God knows the beginning, and he knows the end.
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And I appreciate that affirmation. The open theists in the audience are becoming ill at this particular point in time.
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I would suggest, however, that if Dr. Rogers were consistent with the affirmation he just made, he wouldn't have been able to say half the things he just said, and he would not be able to make the statement he's about to make.
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And that is, obviously, that he's going to base God's choice of man. He's going to deny unconditional election.
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He's going to make it conditional upon the choice of man. He's going to make all of salvation the very thing whereby
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God glorifies himself. He's going to have to put it in the hands of sinners.
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Unregenerate God -haters who never seek God. There's no fear of God before their eyes, but it's all up to them.
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And so when God created time, the only way to make this work is to say he just shot the dice.
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But even then, he still would have had to have come to know what free agents were going to do in time.
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And if you listen to the Bible Answer Man broadcast, we kept coming back to this.
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We never got an answer because you can't get an answer. There isn't an answer that at least can even begin to make biblical sense as to how
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God can know what men are going to do. You've got to start getting into Mullenism and middle knowledge and all the rest of this stuff to try to find some philosophical means without any biblical basis whatsoever, some philosophy to protect the sovereignty of man in this case.
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He knows the middle. He knows it all. He sees it all. I mean, if God were to learn something, he would not be omniscient.
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God knew I was going to scratch my ear. He knew that before the world came in.
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He knew I was going to scratch the world. Has it ever occurred to you that nothing ever occurs to God?
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Everybody heard that. God is God. He knows the beginning.
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Why? God gave you a... And God has already known what you're going to do with that will.
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And because God knows what you do with that will, you... And since God created knowing that, could you do differently?
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Um... And no, we don't have the audience questions, so no, I don't know if anybody asked. You are elect according to the foreknowledge of God.
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Now, because God knows, it doesn't mean God called you. There was a man named Haley who studied about a comet, and he knew exactly when the comet was going to appear.
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Now, knowing when the comet was going to appear didn't mean that he made it appear. Now, listen to that. There you go again. At least
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Haley's comet is much better. Much, much better. Um...
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Than certain other illustrations that we could think of. Of singers divorcing, for example.
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But it's no different, because Haley came to passively learn about the orbit of Haley's comet, and to predict it.
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And to say that God's knowledge of the future is analogous to how men discover the order of nature is to put them in God's position of learning, which he just said
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God does not. Armenians cannot come up with a consistent epistemology.
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They cannot come up with a consistent theology of God. Can't do it. Not possible.
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Haley's comet just appeared right on time, because he had foreknowledge that the comet would appear.
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And God's foreknowledge of my salvation does not mean that God gives me irresistible grace and I'm a part of a special elect group that he did not die for the whole world.
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The order is foreknowledge, election, and predestination. Election looks backward to foreknowledge.
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Predestination looks forward to destiny. Now, of course, nowhere does
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Dr. Rogers in this, nor in his sermons on Romans 9 that we addressed,
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I don't know, about three years ago now, deal with the actual meaning of the term foreknowledge and foreknow.
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Notice once again, and I know I'm a broken record here, but repetition is important. We once again have to repeat the fact that to simply equate the noun form with the verb form, as he just did, he went to Romans 8, he went from 1
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Peter, elect according to foreknowledge, now he goes to Romans, where it's a verb, God foreknew, and he equates them.
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Now, can they be equated? Certainly, there are nouns and verbs that have the same reference and things like that, but does he even bother to deal with the scholarly information that is right there, right in front of him, it's in his personal library.
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If he went to Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, if he were to look up Progonosco, and if he were to read it, it's right there in front of him.
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Why not deal with it? Why not let that impact your theology?
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Well, because it doesn't fit well with your tradition. You see, God saw a street -fighting teenage boy in West Palm Beach.
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That's me. Fifteen -year -old kid. Been getting in a lot of trouble, skipping school, getting in fights, telling lies, cheating, using bad language.
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God saw that boy repenting of his sins. He said, that's one of my life.
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Think about that. Think about what was just said. God saw a dead rebel sinner who was better than other dead rebel sinners because he was going to repent.
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God didn't cause it. No, no. Even though Acts tells us, you know, he opened
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Lydia's heart. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. That wouldn't infallibly result in faith.
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And even though Acts 13, what do you get? Those who are endangered are not. Well, but, but. Wow. And so someday
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Adrian Rogers will stand before God and he'll be able to look at all of those people there on the parapet of hell, screaming their hatred of God and say, ah, the grace of God, it did 99 % of it.
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But you know, without that 1 % I did, I'd be down there because God couldn't save me.
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No. God couldn't save me without my assistance. God couldn't save me without my act of free will.
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If they had just done that, they could be here too. That's what he just said.
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I know that's not what he intends to say. It's his tradition. It's ignorance.
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But that's what he said. And man, we're talking about important stuff here. You know, if this was just simply some discussion about, you know, different eschatological viewpoints,
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I would never even be taking this time. We're talking about how God glorifies himself in the gospel.
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And when you stand before the people of God and you don't do your homework, well, what's more important?
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God saw him trusting Jesus. He said, he's one of my elect. And he's going to be like Jesus. It's predestined.
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Whom he foreknew. Then he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his
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Son. 1 Peter 1, verse 2, we are elect according to the foreknowledge of God.
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Now, you say, well, Pastor, why did you take all the time to come up here? And by the way, let me just say this about this thing.
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If you take this kind of doctrine and tell some people, I mean, this hyper -Calvinism, it'll make infidels out of them.
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Excuse me, Dr. Rogers, aren't they already infidels? I am so tired of hearing
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Arminians saying, Calvinism will make people atheists. They already hate
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God. They already are in rebellion against God. They're spiritually dead.
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There's no fear of God before their eyes. And you know what? The truth of God will, in fact, make, reprobate people even more angry at God.
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You know what? That's true. But that's what the Gospel does, Dr. Rogers.
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It's the stench of death in the nostrils of those who are perishing.
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But to us, the elect, who are being saved, it is the very aroma of life.
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Isn't that what Peter, Paul said? Didn't Paul say that the
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Gospel is foolishness? It's moronic. It's silliness. It's a stumbling block to those who are perishing.
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But to those who are the called, it's completely different, isn't it?
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You see, Dr. Rogers, you just turned that upside down. With your little foreknowledge idea that isn't accurate to the biblical text, you presented the exact opposite of the biblical presentation.
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And you must hear that. That must be said.
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You cannot compromise on these things. This isn't just a matter of opinion. We're talking about issues of truth here.
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It'll cause them to turn against God altogether. I'll tell you why. Think about little babies that die.
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How many babies die in the world today? Little babies that die. Think about the little babies that are born.
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Let's not go to the Bible. Let's talk about little babies. Well, let me ask you a question. Are the little babies that die that are not part of the elect, do they go to hell?
39:07
Where did we hear this one recently? Yeah, I heard the Bill Rutland debate, didn't we? Had a little discussion about it.
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Tried to talk about this on a biblical level. Tried to talk about... Think of all the passages in the
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Bible that talk about election and the sovereignty of God and the deadness of man and sin. And how does
39:27
Adrian Rogers finish this? Because we've only got like 30 seconds of this left before it ends. With a discussion of little babies.
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Little babies. Well, where on earth does the Bible address that? Talk about completely abandoning the biblical text.
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Just completely abandoning the biblical text. And I don't know what answer he's...
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I'm sure he probably takes the...
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All babies who die in infancy go straight to heaven. Abortion is the greatest heaven -filling device ever devised by man.
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I'm sure he takes that position. I can just guarantee it. But is it odd that an
40:15
Arminian who demands a free will act of man in that instance would violate his own principles?
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At least when I say it's up to the sovereignty of God he can save whom he wants to save.
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I'm consistent with my principles. He's not. Inconsistency is not honoring to God.
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Do they go to hell, those little babies? They didn't know their name. They never did any good or evil.
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Some of them never even got born. They never did any good or evil personally.
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But I sure do hope that wasn't a denial of original sin there. Because if it was, then why'd they die?
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I have a little baby boy in heaven. I'm sure he's there. I couldn't be sure if I thought he might not be one of the elect.
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Well, you say, well, Adrian, maybe your little boy's not in heaven. Maybe he wasn't one of the elect.
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I don't want to serve a God and let my little baby who never knew his name die and fry. You think
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I believe that? Well, you say, Mother, all the little babies that die are elect.
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And I think that's where the MP3 ended. And it did, unfortunately.
41:41
It just ended right there. Well, anyway, we spent quite some time on that over a long period of time.
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And we finally got through it. And I suppose I should just do it all at once, because then it's easier for people to listen back to the archives.
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But I felt it was important, the individual who we've just been reviewing.
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We've reviewed sermons of his against Calvinism before. And unfortunately, because of his great influence on others, many people just simply pick up his presentation and they run with it.
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It's just the way it is. If Adrian Rogers says it, it must be true.
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And you will hear those same straw men. They are falsehoods.
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They are dishonest. They are beneath Dr. Rogers' status as a theologian.
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He should know better than what he is doing. And yet, despite that, that kind of misrepresentation will be repeated over and over again.
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And that's also what attracted me to want to do this special edition. By the way, we'll be going a little bit late today.
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I plan on going until 10 after. I hope that's okay with the powers that be, so that we can fit in a little bit more of this.
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This is a special edition of The Dividing Line, Radio Free Geneva, the worst of the worst of anti -Calvinism, which is out there.
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And that's why I wanted to look at Dr. S .M. Davis' Five Reasons Why I'm Not a
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Five -Point Calvinist. This is a DVD. And it is a DVD with lots of PowerPoint material inserted.
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Dr. Davis is a good independent fundamentalist Baptist. And some of the pictures really represent that, in the sense of almost the old chalk drawings from back when
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I was a kid. But he's very big in the homeschooling movement.
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I guess he was just speaking out here recently in the homeschooling movement. And he truly detests
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Calvinism. And he does so primarily through the use of material of Dave Hunt in What Love Is This?
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Now, Dave Hunt's not a good speaker. We all know that. He's interesting to listen to because he sort of just wanders about a little bit.
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But he's not a fast speaker. He's not a clear speaker. He tends to just say this, say that, and then he'll wander over here and wander over there.
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But Dr. Davis is a much better speaker. He is a much more clear speaker.
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And, in fact, let me just give you an example. I pulled up just one example here.
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Like I said, this is a fairly lengthy sermon. I'm not going to listen to all of it.
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But he starts his sermon with talking about someone he knew.
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And then he ends the sermon coming back to it. I've taken those two parts and put them together just so you get an idea concerning what it is that Dr.
45:06
Davis is really trying to communicate to his people. Let's listen in. I was blessed as a teenager to hear and be influenced by many great preachers.
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My pastor, Dr. Edward McAbee, was one of those. Then there was also an evangelist whom
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I admired, loved, and respected above most others. He was my hero.
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Bob not only preached in the church where I was raised, but also preached all over South and North Carolina and other states.
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I remember traveling distances to hear him preach in camp meetings, churches, revival meetings, and so on.
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His preaching challenged me and stirred me like few people I've ever heard in my life.
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It was clear and biblical and powerful. Bob was not only a fiery preacher, he was also a friendly man, very likable personality.
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If you got around him, you would just like him. He preached to great crowds, but he didn't act like a big shot.
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He didn't mind taking time for guys like me, an ordinary teenage boy, and he'd sit down and talk, and that was a blessing to me.
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Though he traveled a great deal, he still seemed to have a good family. Bob's son and I became close friends, so I visited in their home in the
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Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina on several different occasions. Bob's wife was a gracious, lovely
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Christian lady with a house full of children. I think they had eight of them when
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I knew them. I remember hearing that Bob was having some serious problems.
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To say I was shocked when I heard what I heard would have really been an understatement.
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Now, he just stopped right there. He just sort of left it hanging. I thought that was rather odd.
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But finally, almost an hour later, he returned to what he was talking about.
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I began the message by telling about a preacher who had a great impact on my life. His name was Bob, a fiery preacher, but a friendly man.
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A man who ministered to me, who challenged me, who encouraged me. But then a man that I heard was having some severe difficulties in his life.
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I was shocked when I found out a few months later, I was talking to my friend,
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Bob's son. He was also shocked and also very disillusioned with his father.
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You see, Bob was still traveling and still preaching, but he had left his wife and children and was living with another woman.
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He finally divorced his wife and married the other woman. What made his sin even worse to me was the way he justified it.
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When his son asked him why and how he could do such a thing, Bob said to his son, Well, son, what
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I discovered was that it was never predestined and foreordained by God that I marry your mother.
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Therefore, our marriage wasn't really recognized by God. But it was predestined by God that I marry this other woman.
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Therefore, God recognizes this marriage and not the other one. Bob's son looked at his father, my good friend.
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He told me this many years ago. And he said, Dad, do you realize what that makes me and my brothers and sisters?
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That means we're all illegitimate. And Dad looked back and said,
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Yes, son, I recognize that. But you know, there's nothing I can really do about that. And there is the bookend illustration that Dr.
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Davis gives in his first sermon. I have to admit, there are times, there are simply times when you just wonder,
48:56
Why do we spend the time to accurately represent what others believe when those who constantly and consistently attack us refuse to do the same thing?
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And I have to remind myself, audience of one, there's only one we need to worry about.
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There's only one person that we need to be concerned about. There's only one that is watching and weighs the hearts and the motivations.
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And that's why even though people like Dr.
49:36
Davis, who undoubtedly thinks that Calvinism is a terrible, horrible thing, he probably doesn't feel like he needs to be overly concerned to accurately represent what we believe.
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Because anybody in our audience who is a part of a sound reformed church knows that the illustration we just saw, what would happen to that man?
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He would be disfellowshipped from my church if he continued in such a position.
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No one would have said to him, Oh, you know God's secret predestination, you know his secret will, and therefore you know what was predestined and that you were not predestined to marry this woman.
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Oh, that's a perfect ground for divorce. Yeah, like anyone would ever say such an inane, idiotic thing.
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That's foolish. You know, if someone represented his independent fundamentalist
50:30
Baptist church, the way he just misrepresented all of us, he would be livid.
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And properly so. But you see, when you don't have any respect for the position you disagree with and no respect for the truth, period, then the tendency is for you to do this kind of thing.
50:57
The tendency is to do this very kind of thing. I've watched even good Christians. I've had people, as we've been having conversations, both by voice or even on our chat channel, and I'll be talking about Mormonism, for example.
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And there are a lot of folks, and everybody on the chat channel is listening right now, and I think they're going to know that I'm not talking about anyone specifically, but that this is a general attitude.
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There are certain parts of the nation, especially out east, where they don't have a lot of Mormons. And all they think about is, you know,
51:28
Mormons are those weird polygamists out in Utah. And they hear the amount of time I'm spending to research a subject or to accurately represent somebody, a
51:39
Mormon on something. And they will, you know, I always get very offended, for example, when someone purposefully misspells
51:47
Mormon as moron. Or, you know, they'll just dismiss what a
51:53
Mormon says because, yeah, well, I wonder which of his wives told him that, ha, ha, ha, ha, type of thing.
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I find that offensive. Now, does that mean that I'm not constantly misrepresented by Mormons?
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No, I am. All the time. But still, if I'm going to write on Mormonism.
52:14
Another example. I just finished writing, it'll finish posting tomorrow morning, a seven -part series in response to Art Sippo.
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Now, Art Sippo is one of the meanest, crabbiest, nastiest, most insulting, degrading
52:29
Roman Catholic apologists on the face of the planet. He can't say two sentences without insulting somebody.
52:36
He's not a nice man. He can't even call me by my real name. He's constantly blasting me for all sorts of ridiculous and inane stuff.
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But I spent seven sections, seven blog articles, responding to him in Romans chapter 9.
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And I hope and pray that the way I responded to him is an illustration of how a
53:07
Christian should do that without necessarily just acting like the person you're responding to.
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Not too many people would have judged me for misrepresenting him because the man would never represent me correctly for love of money.
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He's not capable of doing it. It's not possible. And so what's good for the goose is good for the gander, right?
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No. No. That's not how we do it.
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So we listen to something like this and we just roll our eyes. And it would be so easy to come up with a counterexample and say, oh, how many people talk about independent fundamentalist
53:50
Baptists and they say this, this, and this? That must be true of Dr. Davis' church too, right? That's unfair.
53:57
That's not right. Here's another wonderful example.
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And here's where we really, again, see what happens when you simply take
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Dave Hunt, who is not a scholar of anything. And, in fact, you may recall his first initial responses to the response to his book,
54:20
What Love Is This?, was to call everybody elitists. We're all elitists. Since I challenged him about the false statements he made about the
54:28
Greek New Testament and his mistaken understanding of things, James, you're an elitist. You're saying that everyone would have to know
54:35
Greek to be able to understand the
54:41
Bible. You're an elitist. Have you noticed he's dropped that because he's trying to act like he's something he's not?
54:49
And he's not a historian either. One of the greatest problems Dave Hunt all along has been his inability to do meaningful historical research.
54:56
That doesn't mean he cannot find facts in history. It's the context of the facts that he loses. And so the material that he presents, especially as he goes after Augustine and Calvin, is grossly biased, grossly prejudiced, just like his material on Mormonism is grossly biased and grossly prejudiced, or Roman Catholicism is grossly biased and grossly prejudiced, and hence inaccurate.
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It shouldn't be used by Christians when it shows no concern for accuracy. And so this is what happens when someone simply trusts
55:38
Dave Hunt about historical issues. Let's all learn once again about Michael Servetus.
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The most famous incident in Calvin's life in this area involved a man by the name of Miguel or Michael Servetus.
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Servetus was a brilliant Spaniard and a physician who has been credited by some with discovering the pulmonary circulation of blood in the body.
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Calvin considered Servetus a heretic. Servetus was not a citizen of Geneva but was merely passing through the city on his way to Italy.
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It was a law that you had to be in church on Sunday in Geneva. And this man went to church, otherwise he would have been recognized as not being in church, but he was recognized in church and was seized on the spot.
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His fate was sealed. In prison he was subjected to cruel treatment. He was denied the benefit of legal counsel.
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His religious views had neither been printed nor uttered in Geneva territory.
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The Geneva government therefore had not the slightest legal jurisdiction for his arrest, imprisonment, torture and death.
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Calvin used his influence to secure his arrest, condemnation and execution. At one point
56:57
Calvin wanted Servetus beheaded. That was employed for civil offenses and Calvin wanted it to appear to be a civil matter rather than a religious one.
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But as there were no grounds for it, the idea had to be given up on a little knoll just outside Geneva.
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The lonely heretic who to the last persisted in his beliefs was burned to death.
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After being in the flame for half an hour he cried aloud, Jesus, Thou Son of the
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Eternal God, have compassion on me. The agony was to be prolonged though.
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In the case of Servetus, green wood had been used to burn him to death and it took three hours before he was pronounced dead.
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Some people have said that Calvin was a victim of the thinking of his times.
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Yet eight years after the execution of Servetus, having had plenty of time to have considered the word of God in relation to his actions,
57:58
Calvin was advising other rulers to exterminate heretics, quote, like I exterminated
58:05
Michael Servetus. Well, there we go again.
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There's the illustration, folks. There's what happens when you have no concern for accuracy and no concern for balance and no concern, quite honestly, for the truth at that point.
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And you use Dave Hunt as your sources. You know, the last time
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I heard such an imbalanced presentation of the Servetus affair was in a debate with a one -nosed
58:39
Pentecostal. Hello. I don't think it's done. No, no, no. Turn that off. We're going to ten minutes after. Thank you very much.
58:46
The timer decided we were going to stop the program and I said no, we are not. Anyway, I was debating a one -nosed
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Pentecostal, Dr. Robert Sabin, back in 1999, Long Island.
59:01
And he spent all this time on the Servetus incident. At that point, he was, in essence, trying to make it sound like Trinitarians lob off the heads of non -Trinitarians on a regular basis and so on and so forth.
59:19
Nothing was said about what Michael Servetus actually believed. It almost sounds to me as if Dr.
59:26
Davis attempted to make Michael Servetus a fellow believer.
59:32
Servetus was an anti -Trinitarian heretic. He had written his anti -Trinitarian beliefs and had distributed those books all across Europe.
59:42
He was infamous all across Europe, not only in the areas of Geneva, contrary to Davis's false statements, but all over the
59:51
Roman Catholic realm as well. He had been convicted of heresy by the
59:58
Inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church. A death warrant was put out for him. He was in hiding, of course.
01:00:05
While in hiding, he began writing to John Calvin.
01:00:11
Why might that be? Well, these are the little things that Dr. Davis forgot to tell you.
01:00:18
And in the process of not telling you these things, probably because he doesn't know them, he misled you and he misled his own people.
01:00:25
And he should apologize for that and correct the record, I personally believe. You see, because very shortly after John Calvin's conversion,
01:00:37
Michael Servetus contacted him. And even though it was at the risk of his own life,
01:00:44
John Calvin snuck back into Paris to meet with Michael Servetus to seek to be of assistance to him on a spiritual level.
01:00:55
Servetus didn't show. So Calvin, as a new Christian, as a new convert, risked his life to try to be of assistance to Servetus.
01:01:05
But Servetus didn't show. Servetus had a lifelong fixation with John Calvin.
01:01:11
He saw in Calvin an intellect equal to or greater than his own. And when he was in hiding, years later, he wrote to Calvin.
01:01:21
Calvin recognized who it was, even though he was using a different name, Michael Villanueva. And once again,
01:01:30
Calvin could have exposed him immediately. He could have exposed him to the
01:01:37
Roman Catholic, because he was living in a Roman Catholic area, Roman Catholic officials immediately. He did not. He sent him the
01:01:42
Institutes of the Christian Religion, which Servetus sent back with nasty insults and comments written in the margins.
01:01:54
At one point, Calvin let his friends know that he knew where Servetus was, and he knew who he was and where he was hiding.
01:02:06
And they began to put pressure on him. The pressure was, look, if we know where Servetus is, and it is well known that Servetus is an anti -Trinitarian heretic, and if we protect him, then the
01:02:19
Roman Catholics will be able to say, See? See what this Reformation is all about? These people don't even believe in the true
01:02:26
God. They don't even believe the Trinity is something that's worthy of being protected. And remember, this is the context that is missing in Davis's statements and in Hunt's statements.
01:02:36
And that is, in this day and time, Europe was magisterial in its governmental form, and in its church form as well.
01:02:44
What that means is that the church and the state were united together.
01:02:53
The freedom of religion that would eventually come from the Reformation had not yet arrived, and the first generation of Reformers and the second generation
01:03:04
Reformers, Calvin was technically a second generation Reformer, were magisterial
01:03:09
Reformers. And as such, they believed that church and state had to remain as one.
01:03:24
And so heresy was a crime. It was not only a crime against the church, it was a crime against the state as well.
01:03:35
Now, you can argue all you want that Christians should never have believed that.
01:03:41
The fact of the matter is, it's the way it had been for a thousand years. And I would like to look any man in the eye who would say to me that he would be better than all of them together, and be able to see with that eagle eye exactly how church and state should relate, coming out of the medieval
01:04:02
Roman Catholic system that the vast majority of these individuals were coming out of. I'd like to have you look me in the eye and tell me, yes,
01:04:08
I would be wiser than them all. It's easy to judge. Not many of us would have even gone as far as the
01:04:16
Reformers did, to be perfectly honest with you. So Calvin tried to convert him, and what
01:04:24
Dr. Davis forgot to tell us is that, finally, what happened was that Calvin gave in to his friends.
01:04:32
His friends said, look, this man is a well -known heretic. He is not under our jurisdiction, but he is a well -known heretic, and if it comes out that you've been corresponding with him, but you did not expose him, the
01:04:44
Reformation will be greatly damaged, and so Calvin does. He forwards the information to the authorities.
01:04:50
The Inquisition arrests him. He is condemned to death. He is condemned to die by burning at the stake.
01:04:57
The night before his execution, in his bedclothes, he climbs up upon the roof of the privy, leaps over the wall, and escapes from the
01:05:10
Inquisition. The Inquisition the next day burns him in effigy along with his books. Now he is, yes, this was in Spain, he is a very good, he's a very intelligent man, very good at hiding.
01:05:26
He had hidden himself for quite some time, and if he wanted to live, he could have, but he didn't want to.
01:05:35
He made a beeline for Geneva. Davis tried to make it sound like he was just passing through.
01:05:45
No, he had just escaped from the Inquisition. He made a beeline for Geneva. He knew his life was near its end, and he didn't want to die at Roman Catholic hands.
01:05:54
If he was going to die, he was going to make Calvin do it. The man who risked his life to try to minister to him in the past.
01:06:03
The man he saw as an intellect greater than his own. And so he did show up in church, and he was arrested, as he knew he would be.
01:06:14
But once again, Davis only gave us half the story. Being in any prison in those days could not have been a pleasant experience.
01:06:21
But Servetus immediately allied himself with Calvin's enemies, because, you see, Davis and Hunt want to make it sound as if Calvin ruled
01:06:29
Geneva with an iron fist, and no one would dare to question him. But that time did not, in fact, arrive at that particular point in history.
01:06:38
And in point of fact, Calvin had many enemies. He had been driven out of Geneva once before. They had had to beg him to come back.
01:06:45
He didn't want to, but the church was in disarray, and so he did. And he had many enemies.
01:06:53
He tried to get Calvin imprisoned himself. He joined his enemies and tried to get
01:06:58
Calvin accused of Trinitarian heresy himself. And Calvin's role as the prosecutor was his duty.
01:07:05
He was the chief pastor of the church, and this was a theological issue, and therefore it was his job to be the chief prosecutor in regards to the heresies of Michael Servetus and the doctrine of the
01:07:18
Trinity. When he was convicted, as he certainly had to be, his writings were voluminous.
01:07:31
And when he was convicted, the little council, the secular rulers, were the ones who rendered the verdict.
01:07:45
The council of ministers did seek to have him executed differently.
01:07:53
They did seek to have him executed quickly, rather than a slow burning. They were overruled.
01:08:01
Please realize, Calvin was overruled in the means of the execution. That would at least be something that had to be mentioned.
01:08:11
The pleas of the ministers were ignored. Now, did Calvin believe he did what was right?
01:08:17
Yes, he believed it was his duty. He believed in a magisterial reformation. He believed in a church state. Obviously, I disagree with him on those issues, but the fact of the matter is, that is how things were at the time.
01:08:29
And to rip Calvin out of the context, ignore the vast majority of the facts
01:08:34
I just shared with you, which cast the situation in a completely different light, is simply dishonest. It's reprehensible.
01:08:45
Absolutely, positively, reprehensible. But, then again, it's no more reprehensible than the misrepresentation of the word of God that we saw in all these other sermons.
01:08:59
If you're willing to abuse history, you're going to be willing to abuse the Bible, too.
01:09:06
Radio Free Geneva, signing off until Thursday evening. We will continue on the dividing line.
01:09:11
God bless. See you then. Has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.
01:10:31
If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.
01:10:36
Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the
01:10:41
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