More on the John 3:16 Conference

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Mighty Fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing.

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I don't like Calvinists because they've chosen to follow John Calvin instead of Jesus Christ. I have a problem with them, they're following men instead of the word of God.

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Our helper he amid the flood, of mortal ills prevailing.

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On top of my feet, standing on a stump and crying out, he died for all.

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Those who elected were selected. For still our ancient foe does seek to work us woe.

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His craft and power are great and armed with cruel hate.

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Well, first of all, James, I'm very ignorant of the reformers. On earth is not his equal.

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I think I probably know more about Calvinism than most of the people who call themselves Calvinists.

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Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing.

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But God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever.

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We're not the right man on our side, the man of God's own choosing.

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Ladies and gentlemen, James White is a hyper -Calvinist. Now, whatever we do in Baptist life, we don't need to be teaming up with hyper -Calvinists.

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You ask who that may be. Christ Jesus, it is he.

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Lord saw both his name. Read my book. From age to age the same.

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And he must win the battle. And now from our underground bunker, hidden deep beneath Liberty University, where no one would think to look, safe from those moderate

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

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Radio Free Geneva, broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to say to his own eternal glory.

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And welcome to Radio Free Geneva, a Ministry of the Dividing Line webcast, on this

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Tuesday morning. Yes, I got out early this morning. It was nice and cold, at least cold for those of us in the

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Phoenix area, and I listened to more of the John 3 .16 conference, and so I will have those clips to play for you.

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There's some troubling things, I must admit. And some of the things that I've heard since I was last with you a week ago today.

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Of course, we enjoyed our time over Thanksgiving, but I also took time to be listening to the rest of the presentations, and there were some that are just really, really troubling.

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For example, Dr. Patterson said the following words in his presentation.

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We all have been affected by the sin of Adam, and all the fig leaf solutions, the human solutions in the world, are not going to do anything.

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Now, what does that mean? Does that mean that we are born guilty before God?

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I do not think that can be demonstrated from Scripture. We are born with a sin sickness, a disease that makes it certain that we will sin and rebel against God.

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Now, I don't know about you, but I would sort of wonder if one could say that Dr.

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Patterson actually believes in the concept of original sin. Why do children die if they do not have that guilt of Adam's sin?

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I thought the wages of sin was death. Why do children die if they are not guilty of that?

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It seems that's imputed to them, just as the righteous Christ is imputed to us. That's a little bit troubling there.

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And also had, in the same presentation, had this discussion from Romans chapter 5.

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However much we want to hear about it, how do we ever get into this kind of situation anyway?

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Well, in Romans chapter 5 and in verses 15 and 18, we are told,

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But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man's offense many, note that word, many died, well now, how many died?

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Because of one man's offense. What does many believe? What does many be? What does many mean in that text?

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Does it not mean everybody? Have you ever known anybody that was born to Adam's race who was not depraved?

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You ever know anybody who wasn't a sinner? No. For by one man's offense, Evidently you can be depraved and that means you're a sinner, but that doesn't mean you're guilty of sin.

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At least if you put the two together. I'm not really sure how that works. But that wasn't really the point of playing this.

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Let's continue. Many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of one man,

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Jesus Christ, abounded to, same word, many.

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Same word. Well look, what does many mean? Well find out in verse 18. Therefore, as through one man's offense judgment came to all men, that's what many means, all men, resulting in condemnation, even so, through one man's righteousness and the free gift, through one man's righteous act, the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life.

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And so, though we'll talk about it tomorrow, the atonement of Christ is

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God's way of saving the whole race if the race would receive

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Him as Savior. Now again, look at Romans 5. That is really very poor handling of that text.

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I often wonder, you know, I keenly sense the fact that as an apologist,

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I have concerns that a lot of people don't have. And I recognize that when you work in a particular area, you can become imbalanced in that area.

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I recognize that, and I try to avoid that. But it does seem to me that most of the people with whom

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I take difference in these areas are people who don't take their message out into the world against people who have a pre -existing faith structure.

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They don't have to demonstrate the consistency of their own faith over against somebody else's. They don't even engage those folks.

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They're not taking on the Shabir Ali's, the world, or the Zulfiqar Shah's, the Bart Ehrman's, or the

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John Shelby Spong's, the John Dominic Crosson's. They're not going anywhere near those people. And so, they don't have to seemingly worry that their theological system is an incoherent mess.

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And that they cannot point their finger at a Jehovah's Witness, or a Mormon, or anybody else and say, look, your position is wrong because you are not applying a consistent hermeneutic to your interpretation of the

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Bible. They can't do that because they don't do that. They don't see any reason to do that. They don't mind the mess that is their view of Christian theology.

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That's one of my main problems with this whole John 3 .16 conference was there was no discussion of the issue of the nature of God.

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I heard briefly this morning while writing, I heard some discussion of open theism. I don't know how these folks would defend themselves against open theism.

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I've debated that subject, again, because we seek to be consistent and see that it is a tremendous blight upon the evangelical view of God, the biblical view of God.

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And so, coming back to Romans 5, this kind of interpretation that was just presented would be just so wonderful for the

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Universalists to grab. Did you see all the baggage that was being imported into the text? The Universalists go, well, wait a minute, where did you get this if you will but receive thing?

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There's nothing about that in here and there isn't because what Dr. Patterson has missed from the very start is the fact that Romans 5 is presenting to us two humanities, one in Adam and one in Christ.

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And so, the justification of life to all men is all men in Christ, not all men individually.

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If you try to turn this into a proof text against limited atonement, the only possible result of that is

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Universalism. But you see, Universalism isn't a threat in the majority of the

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Southern Baptist Convention so we don't have to worry if our exegesis is so out of whack that it results in the promotion of, well, a position that really we don't find to be overly an issue anyways.

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So, I have, these are just, I don't want to go into depth on some of these, I just want to play some of these and go, man, there's some really troubling things that I've heard and I haven't heard a lot of people going, wow, is this really what we should be hearing people saying?

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You know, is this, does this not demonstrate some level of, you know, pulling too hard the other direction, hence losing some balance?

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I think that that might well be the case. I'm not sure exactly which one to start with here, there's so many.

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I think I'll go to this one first. In the Q &A, I have done two videos, but I know that we have separate audiences.

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I know a lot of people in the audience now watch the videos and vice versa, but for some odd reason there are people listening to VyingLine that don't really get into YouTube videos and vice versa.

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And so, I can't assume just because I did a YouTube video on something that everyone has necessarily seen that.

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And so, the Q &A section, the question and answer section, which evidently is not part of the transcript, the

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Q &A section, that sounds much better, it sounded really bad there for a while, gave us some interesting insights into the positions of the individuals.

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And a Calvinist finally got up and asked Dr. Allen, since Dr.

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Allen, you sort of skipped past a lot of the biblical and theological stuff, the vast majority of his presentation was nothing more than warmed over, ponder, and burn, then could you explain your problems with the double payment argument?

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And that is the argument that's been used by many that if, and of course it's never presented overly well in the conference, but it's one certainly that I have echoed because I believe it goes back to the issue of Jesus as High Priest.

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It is a biblical argument on that level. The form that it takes in the modern context is not specifically biblical, but that's because the

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Bible isn't dealing with the particular viewpoints of modern people who try to hold together an incoherent view of the atonement.

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That is, trying to hold together the beauty of substitutionary atonement with some kind of universalism without resulting in universal salvation.

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That is the incoherent position that is trying to be maintained by individuals for various reasons.

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You know, there are people who believe in election, people who don't believe in election, and they will argue the issue, etc., etc.

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So, the double payment argument is very simple. If you have an individual, Tom Smith, that God knows, and we don't even have to get into the issue of how

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God knows this right now, that will be an issue we address in regards to Richard Land's interesting presentation that he made there that I really don't think almost anybody else at the conference believed his own position.

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I think he was a bit too Calvinistic for the rest of them even though he's not a Calvinist. But that was interesting to listen to.

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He didn't have enough time to really develop it and it was interesting. We'll get to it later on. Anyway, if Tom Smith, God knows in his eternal foreknowledge is never going to be saved, then why would

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God place the sins of Tom Smith upon Jesus Christ pour his wrath out in perfection upon his own son in the place of an individual that he knows he is then going to pour his wrath out in perfection upon him for eternity?

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It's not just that God would be unjust. That is a part of the argument. But it goes beyond that.

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It goes to the irrationality of the action of God to knowingly punish Christ in behalf of an individual that he knows he is also going to punish for the same sin.

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That's the question. Why? Why do people want to believe that? What is the Biblical basis for asserting that it was the intention of Christ knowing that he was going to fail in the effort to attempt to save those that he knew were not going to be saved?

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That's the question. And obviously, a lot of this, almost all of the issues in regards to particular redemption and limited atonement actually go back to the issue of election.

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The vast majority of those who reject particular redemption actually reject unconditional election.

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And watch those who this day argue the most strongly against particular redemption. See where they are five or ten, fifteen years from now on unconditional election.

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See which direction they're going. Just keep an eye on them. I'm not saying that there are not people who stay in that one spot.

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But just keep an eye out. It might be interesting to know. Anyway, so that was the question.

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You'll hear the questioner and you'll hear the answer. And I want you to listen to Dr. Allen's response.

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Because Dr. Allen is going to introduce us to the idea of different kinds of debt.

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And he's going to introduce us to the idea that Jesus bears the penal debt, the penalty of law, but it sounds like, and I will confess,

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I don't know where he's coming from on here. You would think that one of the first things that would have happened in this conference is that each speaker would have provided a positive biblical defense of their actual position.

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They didn't do that. They didn't do that. You're left wondering exactly where in the world they're coming from.

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It's sort of like, well our position is the default so we don't even have to define that. Let's just talk about Calvinism. I don't know what

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Dr. Allen's view of atonement is. He talks about substitutionary atonement, but then it sounds to me, sounds to me, like what he's saying is that the atonement, the fact that Christ dies for all, creates a moral debt on behalf of each individual.

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Let's put it this way. The illustration he uses forces us to this conclusion. Whether he then takes his illustration to his logical conclusion,

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I don't know. I can't tell. I mean, I'm sorry, but I just compare this with some of the conferences

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I've heard with people like a Mark Dever or a Tom Askell or an R .C. Sproul or a John MacArthur and the level of clarity is so massively different between the two.

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The level of biblical exegesis is just, it's huge, the difference between the two.

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And so, it makes it frustrating to try to interact because you can't really exactly tell.

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But the illustration he uses of the king and the army and joining the army seems to indicate that what he's saying is that the death of Christ creates a moral debt and that our faith is the payment of the moral debt.

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Now, do I even need to point out that that's about as biblical as Mormonism is? I mean, seriously, where in the world do you get that?

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For people to sit around and say, well, this Calvinism isn't biblical and then to buy something like that makes me go, what?

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What? But again, let's just listen to it and see for ourselves.

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I'm a layperson at North Central Baptist Church in Gainesville, Florida. Calvin Carr. Yes, Pastor Calvin.

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I am a five -point Calvinist. One thing I was really hoping to hear answered was the double payment argument.

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I thank you that you give me a reference to read on. I was really hoping if you could just speak to that for a little bit.

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I'll be happy to. The key argument that is made theologically for limited atonement is the double payment argument.

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It's historically argued by John Owen in his famous book The Death of Death and the Death of Christ. It is important first to note that John Calvin did not use the double payment argument.

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Never in his writings does he use it. It's because Calvin didn't hold a limited atonement. It's why. But nonetheless, secondly, it's important to note the double payment argument is not found in Scripture.

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Alright? No biblical author argues the double payment argument. Now here's the double payment argument in a nutshell.

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If Jesus died sufficiently for the sins of the whole world and then people go to hell,

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God is unjust. He's punishing them twice. He punished their sins on Christ and He punished their sins by sending them to hell and therefore

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God is unjust. Now I've already mentioned two of the problems with it here are the other two. The double payment argument fails to differentiate and I'm going to use terms here and then

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I'll try to explain them. But these are the terms that are used by the

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Calvinists who reject the double payment argument. Dabney is a name you will recognize.

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A. A. Hodge. Charles Hodge. John Davenant. And I could go on and on and on.

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Albert Barnes. These are Calvinists who in their writings and in their systematic theologies said

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Owen was wrong on the double payment argument because he failed to distinguish between commercial payment which is pecuniary and commercialism in terms of debt.

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He failed to distinguish the notions of commercial debt and penal debt.

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And the two are totally different. I'll illustrate it this way. In a commercial debt if Dr.

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Lemke and I are over here at the Crystal's or the Long John Silver's or wherever and he discovers he doesn't have enough money and so I pay for his meal.

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All right? From the perspective of the proprietor of the restaurant his debt's paid.

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All it is is a commercial transaction and as long as I pay it he owes nothing.

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It's covered. That's what we call pecuniary and commercial debt.

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Now, penal debt legal situations are totally different from that because there is not only a debt involved there's a moral issue that is involved as well.

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Now, just catch that. What he's saying is this isn't just simply a transaction. Of course, by the way to boil

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Owen's argument down to this level of simplicity I'm sorry, but I have to question whether Dr.

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Allen has actually really dealt with Owen. I'm hearing and there are people in the channel right now verifying this

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I'm hearing a lot of Bern in this.

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Tony Bern. Okay? I think Tony Bern was one of his students. A lot of people he's quoting.

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Many people would argue that Bern has misunderstood even the people he's quoting. I really think a lot of this is coming down to one guy here that Dr.

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Allen has just said he's the standard of all things. He's certainly the standard of what hyper -Calvinism is now. Not sure how he got that status but that's somehow how he pulled it off.

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But that's how you do it. And the idea that Owen's is this simplistic really it's hard for someone who's actually read

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Owen to buy this idea that that's an accurate representation of him.

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But anyways, catch this idea of this moral debt idea as being beyond here he says it's part of the legal debt.

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Let's see if he remains consistent with that. And in the legal debt in that situation if you, let me illustrate it this way.

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If you, let's say that we have six men here who are in prison and the king of the country comes and says that I am willing for all six of you to be released from prison.

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My son is going to pay the price for your release and the condition is you join my army and you are free to be released.

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And then the son pays the price for all six to be released.

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But only three of the six meet the condition they are willing to join the army.

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The other three say I'm sorry, I'm not willing to join the army. There is no legal court on earth that would say well

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I'm sorry, that's unjust. Their penalty has been paid. No, their legal debt has been paid.

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Their moral debt has not been paid. And the condition of the covenant is I will redeem you or I will release you.

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I will pay the penalty and you join my army. And see, this is what the Scripture teaches.

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God, through Christ, has paid the penal debt through a penal substitutionary atonement.

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He has paid the debt for every human being. But the reception of that debt is conditioned on their faith.

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And this is stated a hundred times in the New Testament. It is never stated to be on condition of their election.

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Now, it is never stated in the New Testament that reception of this is...

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Certainly, faith is the passive means by which we receive God's salvation.

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But the idea that... Man, there's just so many errors here.

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I'm impressed so many can be packed into such a small space. There is just so much here.

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So many, first of all, red herrings and misunderstandings and just fundamental category errors.

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Remember, Dr. Allen is a professor of Systematic Theology, folks. Keep that in mind. Professor of Systematic Theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, the largest

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Southern Baptist Seminary in the green world created by God. And I'm just left stuttering at some of this, to be perfectly honest with you.

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First of all, there's a complete lack of clarity. There's so many problems with the illustration that was just used here. Where did substitution go?

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Where did union with Christ go? I mean, this is what happens when you chop theology up into little pieces and you don't have to be consistent and bring things together.

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It's all gone. And so you can just come up with something that really makes absolutely positive and no sense. And then you first say that this moral debt is a part of the penal debt, but then you differentiate later on and say, well,

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Jesus pays the penalty. Well, what was that payment, folks?

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Not once in this entire conference did anyone define the word atonement.

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Not one time. I'm shocked at even pretending to use the term biblical for this conference.

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There wasn't enough biblical in there for a Sunday school class of third graders. I'm sorry. I know that people are going to be offended by that, but listen to it and see if I'm not telling you the truth.

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I've been listening. I want to hear. I get quoted. I'm going to play the thing from Steve Lemke.

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I've been quoted or referred to by at least two of these speakers and I think obliquely by some others.

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Not one single text that I exegeted is touched upon by these men.

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And if they don't come to understand that that's the power of the Reformed faith, then all they're going to do is continue to help to promote it.

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I mean, look at what Chosen but Free did. Chosen but Free has created more Calvinists than any other book

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I can imagine. And so will the John 316 conference. If these guys don't get the message that you can't just lightly dance over these things, you've got to go in depth.

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You've got to deal with the scriptures as a whole and they don't do it. They never define atonement.

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So here you have an illustration. It doesn't deal with substitution. It doesn't deal with the eternal decree of God.

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It doesn't deal with the union of the elect with Christ. It doesn't deal with any of those things. It doesn't even deal with the argument it's supposed to be dealing with here, which again, may

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I remind you of what it is. God's wrath is propitiated.

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Can we define propitiation, please? It's an atoning sacrifice that removes the reason for the wrath of God as well as the guilt.

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Is that what Jesus does? If that is the case, if that guilt has been removed, the wrath of God has been poured out upon the substitute, not just the son comes along and pays a big bunch of money out of his wallet, but the wrath of God has been satisfied in the substitute, then please tell me how the wrath of God can come against the same person for the same sins.

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They don't even seem to understand the argument well enough to create a coherent response to it. Why is it only one side takes the time to learn what the other side is saying?

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The other side just simply refuses to do so. Just refuses to do so. That is evidence, to us anyways, of what the real situation is in this context.

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So anyway, so once he says that this moral debt is a part of the penal debt, but now he says he's paid the penal debt, but he hasn't paid the moral debt and it sounds to me like the only way you pay the moral debt, at least in this illustration, in this analogy, is by faith.

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So faith, instead of being sola fide, the empty hand of faith that demands nothing from God, now you have undercut the entire

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Reformation by turning the act of faith into a payment of moral debt.

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Why weren't there pastors standing up in that conference going, wait one minute, sir, because that's not what you do in the

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Southern Baptist Convention. And that much I knew. See, what bothers these folks is, well, he's not a

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Southern Baptist. Well, I'm not in the Southern Baptist Church. That's right. I've only taught in the Southern Baptist Seminary since 1995.

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Graduated from a Southern Baptist school called Grand Canyon University, Grand Canyon College back then. Licensed and ordained in the

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Southern Baptist Church. Member there from 1978 to 1989. Served on the staff of a major Southern Baptist church.

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I was a Southern Baptist for 11 years. I know a little bit about the politics and I know how it works. Once you get to a certain point, you just don't open your mouth and question these folks.

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And that's a bad thing. Bad thing. And that's why no one stood up and said, but wait, you're undercutting justification by faith here.

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Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I believe in justification by faith. It's the inconsistency, the incoherence of the resultant systematic theology that guts this system of having any ability to commend itself to the young minds who've been taught that God's word is true.

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And that's why this stuff, I'm not bothered by the John 316 conference in the sense that I think it's going to somehow stop people from finding the truth.

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If anything, hey, keep talking about it because the more you do it, the more the inconsistency of your position will be demonstrated.

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So, I'm not even done with this particular question. I have a feeling we might go a few minutes long today. But anyways, we do need to take our break and we'll continue on with Dr.

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Allen and the rest of the fine folks of the John 316 conference right after this. Such a rarity today

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So many stars Strong and true Quickly fall away

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And cross -dressing, ignoring God's ordinance regarding the roles of men and women. Is a pulpit crime occurring in your town?

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Get Pulpit Crimes in the bookstore at AOMIN .org. Hello, everyone.

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Thank you. And welcome back to the

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Dividing Line Radio Free Geneva today. Before we go back to Dr. Allen, I have in my hand that which

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I mentioned a few weeks ago. I've blogged about it. It is the New English translation Novum Testamentum Grecki New Testament The Diglot that Bible .org,

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the Net Bible Press puts out. I have mentioned on the blog, but I want to mention to you. If you want to have what

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I consider to be the single best volume to carry with you apologetically, to answer the widest range of questions upon the faith that are used today, then

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I could not recommend anything more highly than this. I'm going to try to find the time. I don't think

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I'm going to have the time this week. I'll try to do it next week. But if you go back through some of the pictures that I posted, some of the videos

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I posted from London, if you look through the YouTube videos that I put up that time, you will see an orange volume in every one of them.

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You'll see it as I'm going up to the podium. You'll see it as I'm sitting at my desk. You'll see it in each one of the debates.

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And that is my NET Diglot. And it is what I carry.

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It is what I had in the studio at the Premier Radio program, Unbelievable, with Justin Brierley.

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And the reason is, you know, obviously, when you're traveling, you can't carry an entire library with you.

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But this book is a library. It is, I've always loved the NA -27, and the

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NA -28 is coming out eventually. I'm sure they'll team up with that, too. But the NA -27 is a library. What do

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I mean by that? If you, once you learn, and I just go back to the dividing lines we did when we explained this, once you learn how to read the textual datum, it is a library of books.

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It's huge. And combine that then with the NET and its translator notes, the translator notes and textual critical notes that are found in them, plus the many pages of textual critical discussion provided primarily by Dan Wallace in the back.

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And you have a library in one hand. And what are the vast majority of the arguments being presented against the faith today based on attacks upon textual critical and consistency and harmonization issues in the

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New Testament? And so I began asking

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Rich a couple weeks ago, we need to see if we can carry the NET NA -27 diglot.

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And they came in this morning. I have one of them in my hands here. Of course, don't worry. If you end up with this one, it is in plastic shrink wrap.

37:13

So but we have available in two forms. One is this sort of dark tan brown hardcover.

37:21

The other is the black leather version. And I know it's quote unquote that time of year for the apologist in your family, especially for elders and others.

37:33

And it's excellent, excellent volume to get. And of course, when you get it from us, you help us to continue doing the work that we do through Alpha and Omega Ministries.

37:41

So the NET NA -27 diglot, available at aomin .org. And look them up there.

37:47

They're very, very, very useful. So going back to Radio Free Geneva, listening to Dr.

37:53

Allen's response to a question, troubling answer because it raises, honestly, one of my biggest observations

38:03

I've made now listening to the John 316 conference is that it has raised far more questions than it answered because of the many inconsistencies, because there was not even an effort made to present a positive case for a non -reformed consistent hermeneutic or anything of the kind.

38:21

And I will never, ever name names, but I have received correspondence from students at Southern Baptist Seminaries, at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminaries that said we would love to see a debate on this subject between yourself and Dr.

38:38

Allen, but we know it's never going to happen, just like you said. It's not going to happen. Yeah, I know. But it would be so useful because it is in that context of confrontation, controlled, purposeful confrontation, that inconsistency is most clearly demonstrated.

39:01

And that's why it'll never happen. We can pray that it'll happen.

39:07

We can hope it'll happen. I'm certainly willing to have it happen. But I just, I don't see it happening.

39:14

But let's continue on with his response. Now, I'll be happy to furnish you, I just didn't get to this, but I can give you

39:20

Calvinist after Calvinist after Calvinist after Calvinist who defeat that argument.

39:26

That argument is easily defeated. Well, it certainly wasn't defeated by introducing a whole new category of debt that Jesus doesn't atone for.

39:36

That's for certain. And again, he's just given you the David Ponter, Tony Byrne routine there.

39:42

And I'm sorry, they really have not convinced the vast majority of Calvinist scholars that they're on the right track there at that point anyways.

39:49

But that's just what he's giving you. Now, this next commentary, well, just listen to it for yourself.

39:55

David, do you mind if, would it be all right if I just add up one point? That is a legal argument and not a scriptural one.

40:04

And the Supreme Court has already answered. In 1833, there was a man named George Wilson who received a pardon from Andrew Jackson.

40:13

He was guilty of robbing the federal mail and was condemned to death. And for whatever reason,

40:19

Andrew Jackson issued him a pardon and Wilson rejected it, would not receive the pardon.

40:26

So they were going to execute him. His lawyers took it all the way to the Supreme Court saying, you cannot execute a man who's been pardoned.

40:33

And the Supreme Court Justice Marshall said, a pardon unreceived is a pardon unaffected.

40:40

And he said, it has been provided, but it has not been received. And Wilson was executed.

40:47

So the double jeopardy argument has already been answered by legal scholars. Well, there you go.

40:53

That's, there's a hermeneutic for you. I'm sorry. It's either laugh or cry.

41:01

One of the two. I mean, how do you take that seriously? I just have to believe that these men are going solely on secondary information.

41:11

They actually haven't read Owen. They haven't delved into the book of Hebrews. They haven't dealt with the concept of substitution, the concept of the wrath of God.

41:21

Answer the question. On what grounds will God's wrath be poured out twice for the same sins?

41:31

Tell me how God is rational in knowing that that sin is going to go to the grave with that sinner.

41:40

And yet he punishes his own son in behalf of those that he will not save.

41:47

Answer the question. But they can't. And instead, you end up with the

41:53

Supreme Court as the eisegetical hermeneutic to answer that question.

42:00

I'm just left stuttering at such things. You know, this, I'm going to step into the

42:06

Wayback Machine with you just for a moment here. We used to have in our old offices in a building down on 16th

42:11

Street that doesn't exist anymore, a cartoon that was hung on the wall.

42:16

I think you might have clipped it out. It was something that was called the Wittenberg Door back then. It was somewhat tongue -in -cheek.

42:23

But it had a picture of a bunch of guys sitting around a table. Okay, it's the deacon board. And they're going over the rules.

42:30

And the caption is that the will of God can only be overridden by a two -thirds majority vote. I don't remember that.

42:37

You don't remember that? I don't remember that one. Back then we thought that was really cute and funny. And I think from what

42:43

I just heard there, boy, I tell you, this is how theology is starting to be established.

42:50

Well, again, I saw precious little reason to believe that almost anyone that was chosen to address this issue has much firsthand exposure to Reformed writing.

43:05

I think they've gotten it through secondhand sources primarily. I know that Dr. Allen is almost word for word quoting

43:12

Tony Burns. So, yeah, it's a little bit frustrating.

43:18

Right. What happened is Owen is importing Western legal jurisprudence into the first century.

43:28

It is an anachronism. You simply cannot do it. And many of his Calvinist friends recognize that and say you just can't make the case that way.

43:37

Well, again, he hasn't even addressed the case. He hasn't addressed Owen's position in any meaningful fashion whatsoever.

43:43

The jurisprudence was jurisprudence found in the Old Testament law and in the book of Hebrews and the book of Romans.

43:49

I suppose we would execute Romans 8 where it talks about who brings a charge against God's elect that we'd be accused of bringing in Western jurisprudence then too.

43:57

I'm sorry. That's not an answer. So that entire argument was left standing by this conference.

44:05

It was not addressed in any meaningful fashion whatsoever. But immediately after this, this one

44:13

I blogged as well. So some of you have already heard this, but I think we need to take a listen to it.

44:19

Someone else wasn't there third here. I was thinking there was one right over here.

44:27

Yeah, just before I start speaking, someone in channel just made a comment

44:32

I think is well said. Owen is importing in Western jurisprudence, not the person quoting

44:37

Justice Marshall. That's exactly right.

44:43

I mean it's that kind of just glaring inconsistency that makes most people go, what are you all talking about here?

44:52

My name is Thomas Dickerson, and I live here in Atlanta, Georgia. This is actually my first Baptist conference ever in my life.

45:00

And my personal testimony, I do have a question, but my personal testimony is

45:06

I grew up in the Presbyterian Church for 26 years. I served at Perimeter Church as a worship leader, a

45:12

PCA church here in Atlanta as a worship leader for five years, and at a Reformed Baptist church for three.

45:18

I was a full five -point Calvinist. I was trained from the time I was 14, the doctrines of Calvin, the five points of Calvinism, Jonathan Edwards, Spurgeon, by pastors and associate pastors that had gone to Reformed Theological Seminary.

45:35

And so for all those years, I took these men at their word, and I studied the scriptures this way.

45:40

I believe that God before the creation of the world elected only some for salvation, that Jesus Christ only died for the few elect, and that the rest of those people were damned for hell.

45:52

I wonder if Thomas also had been taught about the justice of God, and the just wrath of God, and the holiness of God, and the fact that grace is undeserved.

46:06

I don't know. I'm hearing real imbalance in his presentation. Most former people don't tend to be overly balanced toward what they once were.

46:14

That's certainly not something that's overly surprising to me. But certainly he's not trying to impress his former

46:21

Calvinist associates because, I don't know, there's just something wrong with this guy's story.

46:28

It just doesn't add up as far as I'm concerned. There was really no question about that in the denomination that I was in, and I was raised up to be a good

46:36

Presbyterian in that way. I also, when I was a kid, had believed that I had accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior.

46:42

The problem was, when I got to the end of eight years of serving as a full -time minister in the

46:48

Reformed faith, there was no power in my life. I couldn't overcome sin, and I kept trying to reconcile the fact that, well, if I'm one of the elect, and I had nothing to do with coming to Jesus, then why can't

46:59

I overcome the personal sin in my life? What is wrong with me? I mean, I confessed Jesus as Lord and Savior.

47:05

And so I get to the end of this, and I finally resigned from the church because I felt like there was no power in what we were professing.

47:11

Though we claimed to be Christians, there was no power in it, and I had studied all of these doctrines. And so I left.

47:17

I went off into the world to see if there were answers there. I didn't find it. I finally came back.

47:23

I'd never been in a Baptist church really at all, to Johnson's Ferry Baptist, and I met my wife. And the first day,

47:28

I was actually leading worship. I had no business being in a leadership role for a college group for about a six -week series.

47:34

And when I met my wife that first day, I didn't know she was going to be my wife. She talked to me about Jesus. But when she talked about Jesus, she said that he was the

47:42

Savior of every single person in the world, that God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.

47:50

Does it sound to you like he's saying he had never heard that before? I mean, is someone seriously suggesting that they would just never talk about that?

48:02

I mean, you know, and I listened to some of the other questioners. There was another fellow right before us,

48:08

I should have played it, that was, you know, just identifying all Calvinists as fools and don't speak in the ear of a fool and blah, blah, blah.

48:14

There was some real animosity on the part of a number of people. And they seemed to be almost upset that the speakers hadn't been anti -Calvinistic enough.

48:22

And isn't it ironic? I may end up going a little bit long here because I do want to address something that Dr. Allen has written, where he just refuses to accept my repudiation of his false identification of me as a hyper -Calvinist,

48:34

Phil Johnson's repudiation of him. Everybody that he even quoted has repudiated him, but he's, you know, as long as Tony Byrne says it, it must be true.

48:45

So, you know, Robert Raymond's a hyper -Calvinist, I guess Calvin was a hyper -Calvinist, and so on and so forth. But be it as it may, he's written some stuff, so I want to get to that, so we may have to go a little bit long here.

48:56

But this kind of just gross misrepresentation. It's interesting that Dr.

49:03

Allen argues against Tom Askell. He objects to being called an anti -Calvinist, but he stands firm in identifying me as a hyper -Calvinist, despite the fact that the one source he used,

49:16

Phil Johnson's primer, Phil Johnson's point out to him, does not say what he thought it said. That just sort of makes me go, okay, so how does this work again?

49:29

Doesn't seem to be a single standard here, but anyway. And so we get married, I continue a position at Reformed Baptist Church, and I told her...

49:36

I'd like to know what Reformed Baptist Church it was. I thought he named something, but that didn't sound like a

49:42

Reformed Baptist Church to me. Some Johnson Ferry something? That doesn't sound like a Reformed Baptist Church. I'd like to know what

49:48

Reformed Baptist Church he was in. Was he an elder in Reformed Baptist Church? Because Reformed Baptist Churches generally do not have, quote -unquote, worship leaders.

49:56

We have the Trinity Hymnal, folks. Don't even go there.

50:02

Our kids will be Calvinists. We will always be Calvinists. She kept trying to tell me about the love of God, and what I didn't know is that her and her parents, who were

50:09

Southern Baptists, began to pray for me to get saved. Now, if you would have said that to my face, I would have said, you're crazy, and this is the real gospel.

50:16

God does not love every single person, and only those whom he foreordained to believe are going to come to Jesus. And so, two and a half years later, one night,

50:24

I'm in my car with my wife, and the Lord overwhelmed me with his presence. And when

50:30

I was in the car, the Lord revealed something to me, and he said, Thomas, you're serving against me. And then he brought a scripture to my mind.

50:36

Did you catch that? The Lord revealed to me. It sounds like direct vocal inspiration here.

50:44

We haven't heard anything biblical other than a citation of John 3 .16 as if Calvinists had never seen it before. And he brought a scripture to my mind out of John 3, something that I'd read but never really understood about being born again in this interaction with Nicodemus.

50:54

And I said, Lord, after 26 years of being in church buildings and eight years of full -time ministry, have

51:02

I never been born again? And he said, no. And do you know, in that moment, I experienced the love of God for the first time.

51:08

I realized that I'd never been saved. Amen. Saved out of Calvinism.

51:15

Let's applaud. And right there in the car as I was driving, as my wife was watching this, I said, Lord, would you come into my heart as Lord and Savior?

51:22

I want to be born again and I need your Holy Spirit. And instantly I was saved. Now, listen, I knew from the moment

51:27

I met Jesus that he loved every single person. For the first time, I knew that God so loved every single person in the world that he gave his son on the cross for the sins of everybody, that whoever calls upon the name of the

51:39

Lord can be saved. Now, let me just stop for just a moment. Now, you know, does this gentleman provide us with any way of understanding?

51:51

Remember what he said his problem was? Couldn't overcome sin. Does he provide us with an understanding of how it is that believing that Jesus loves everybody.

52:03

He loves everybody. He's going to love everybody in hell just as much as everybody in heaven.

52:08

And Jesus tries to save everybody. He really does try. He fails, but he tries.

52:16

That somehow gave him power over sin. And Jesus' death is for everybody.

52:23

It doesn't save everybody. It just makes you savable. How did, what, where'd repentance,

52:30

I lost the repentance part. Where'd it go? I don't understand this. Why are people sitting there clapping?

52:38

It's somebody who's promoting basically latter day revelation. And not giving us any meaningful biblical foundation at all.

52:48

Why? Because his words go together with their tradition. That's why.

52:55

And I'm sitting here listening to this going, you've got to be kidding me. This is how you get power over sin?

53:07

If this is how he's gotten to the position he's at now, if he gets overwhelmed again, what's he going to become then?

53:16

You know, what group is he going to join the next time he gets overwhelmed and hears voices? That's scary.

53:22

And so from that moment 30 months ago, I've been talking about Jesus, and I can't stop talking about his love.

53:28

Having been a former Calvinist, I pray for my Calvinist associates and pastors and people that I know.

53:34

Because a lot of them are good people, but my question is for you, and I don't know who would be best to answer this, is

53:39

I came to this conference to find out what the Southern Baptist Convention is going to do about Calvinism.

53:46

Because if I were to walk away from this conference this weekend, I'm not sure I would walk away with the understanding that there's a definitive line to say,

53:53

Jesus Christ truly does love every single person and gave his life. And because I would walk away understanding,

54:00

I understand you were very strong in limited atonement. Now let me start. What the question is, he's not the only questioner on this.

54:07

He wants them to say, look, you know what? We as the Southern Baptists are going to absolutely demand that you believe that Jesus Christ has an undifferentiated love for all people, and that he tries to save everybody equally.

54:24

And you must believe that Jesus Christ only makes people savable, but he can't save anybody. That's what will define

54:29

Southern Baptists. That's what they want. That's what they want. They want a synergistic gospel where they can say,

54:37

Jesus is trying his best for everybody, and it's all up to you. They want the old, well, you know, elections like this.

54:46

God's voted for you, and the devil's voted against you, and now you've got the tie -breaking vote.

54:52

That's what they want. And there's people on the channel going, you do that way too well.

54:59

That's because I've heard it. I heard it from the pulpit more than once in a

55:04

Southern Baptist context. And that is pure, bland synergism that has nothing whatsoever to do with the inspired text of Scripture.

55:15

It just ain't there. But that if I was a perhaps two - or three -point Calvinism, that that would be okay. We just need to get along and agree to disagree.

55:22

But I'm telling you, as a former Calvinist, that the Lord made it very clear to me that he has no association with that type of thinking.

55:29

Did you catch that? Did you catch that? The Lord made it very clear to me that he has no association with that kind of thinking.

55:38

What does that mean? How did the Lord do this? Should we be adding this as the 28th book of the

55:45

New Testament after Revelation? It sounds like it's, you know, God speaking. And he has no association.

55:51

What does that mean? That the Lord isn't working in the lives of people in Reformed churches?

56:00

How else am I supposed to understand that? I don't know. It sounds like that's why this has been interpreted.

56:05

I got saved out of Calvinism. Just like I got saved out of Mormonism. You know, same thing, seemingly, from their perspective.

56:11

Because he is the God of love, and he gave his life for the sins of every single person. So my question is, what will the

56:17

Southern Baptist Convention do? And we've had less baptisms from what I understand from my father -in -law than ever before in the

56:25

Southern Baptist Convention. And I believe it has to do with this doctrine. Ah, there you go.

56:30

Okay, first of all, baptisms were down. They were not the lowest they've ever been in the

56:36

Southern Baptist Convention, obviously. But baptisms were down. And for what reason?

56:43

It's the Calvinist's fault. Well, you know, Nero blamed the

56:49

Christians for the burning of Rome, too. Love to see where the logic comes from that one.

56:58

Boy, that's one you can take apart. At least he didn't say the Lord told him that, because then that would get really, really bad.

57:04

But what an amazing thing that, well, you know, baptisms were down. That means people aren't getting saved. It must be the

57:10

Calvinist's fault. Well, of course, the sad thing is you get into a lot of these Southern Baptist churches, and the average person has gotten baptized 2 .7

57:17

times. They get baptized when they're a kid because you force them down the aisle, and they do whatever mommy and daddy wants.

57:24

And then they get to be a teenager, and they have an emotional experience. They get baptized again. And finally they become an adult, and they get baptized again because they didn't know what they were doing the first two times.

57:32

And every one of them counts. It's no wonder that they've got these big, huge numbers.

57:39

And then you go, where are all these people? Isn't it better to actually know who's in your flock than to play with inflating numbers?

57:48

I mean, come on, folks. Let's start getting serious about some of this stuff. But anyway, there was that.

57:56

All right. We're supposed to be out of time here, but I did want to comment on this. And I guess

58:02

I'll just save the rest of the stuff for Thursday, because we do this again on Thursday. And then I'm sorry.

58:08

Yeah, we'll go a little bit longer. I will be in St. Louis area in St.

58:14

Charles this weekend. I will be discussing New Testament reliability issues.

58:20

We'll be talking about Bart Ehrman. We'll be looking at Bart Ehrman's common attacks against the reliability of the

58:26

New Testament. We'll be listening to a fair amount of what he has to say and be looking at the

58:31

New Testament manuscripts and all sorts of stuff. So if you want to join us at Covenant Grace Church, I think this is the sixth or seventh year in a row that I've been there the first weekend in December.

58:42

So you should be able to find it pretty easily. That's where I'll be this weekend. But very quickly, on Peter Lumpkin's blog,

58:53

I started a response to Lumpkin. I just finally just gave up and said, let's not bother with that.

58:58

But David Allen has posted a very, very lengthy response to Tom Askell.

59:03

And of course, I leave it to Tom to respond to the vast majority because Tom is very good at that.

59:11

But he mentions, additionally, that the John 316 Conference was billed as a biblical and theological evaluation of in response to five -point

59:18

Calvinism. Since the majority of Southern Baptists are clearly non -Calvinists, I see no conflict of interest here, either on my part as a speaker at the conference or the part of the seminaries that chose to be co -sponsors.

59:30

Dr. Askell continues with this statement, although I must say that any conference that accuses James White of being a hyper -Calvinist loses credibility with thinking people.

59:37

First, the conference did not make the claim I did. Well, the conference makes no claims, obviously, but the speakers do.

59:45

So I'm not sure that talk about parsing words to no avail.

59:51

If there's any credibility to be lost, it would be mine and not the conference. This single statement is the only statement Dr. Askell makes concerning my comments about James White.

59:58

Given the evidence I presented during the John 316 Conference and my defense of this accusation on this very website on Monday, November 24th,

01:00:05

I find it impossible to swallow Askell's statement. He will have to provide some argumentation or evidence to claim his fault.

01:00:10

He offers none. He doesn't need to. I have repudiated it. Phil Johnson has repudiated it.

01:00:16

And it would require you to identify a large portion of historical Calvinists as hyper -Calvinists even when they were arguing against the hyper -Calvinists.

01:00:26

It means you don't know what the term means. You've been misled by Tony Byrne and others who are not balanced.

01:00:34

They are just not balanced on this. They have a crusade they're on and they're far more intent upon attacking

01:00:41

Calvinism than promoting the freedom of God and salvation. They don't mind having their stuff used to promote rank

01:00:49

Arminianism as long as they can go after somebody who believes in particular redemption. And so, it's your sources, sir.

01:00:55

You've been misled by your sources. Now, you shouldn't have been because you're a professor of systematic theology.

01:01:00

But you've been misled by your sources. You continue to say, in fact, Askell seems to continue to miss the whole point by bringing up James White in the first place.

01:01:08

I commendably quoted Askell's affirmation of God's universal saving will in addition to reading his own careful

01:01:13

Calvinistic qualifications and pointed out how White's rejection of this orthodox Calvinist position on God's revealed will places him in the category of a hyper -Calvinist on this point.

01:01:23

Dr. Allen, you are wrong. W -R -O -N -G.

01:01:28

You are not listening. What did Tom Askell say? He said that we need to differentiate between the decree of God and the prescriptive will of God.

01:01:42

Did he not say that we need to recognize that there is that will of God that is revealed in his law?

01:01:50

He reveals that man should not murder. Therefore, you can say God desires that men not murder.

01:01:58

Yet we know in the sovereign decree of God that the lamb slain from the foundation of the earth was handed over to be murdered.

01:02:07

That is a distinction that is biblical in origination. It is the prescriptive will of God that we do not kidnap.

01:02:16

And yet God intended through kidnapping for Joseph to go into Egypt. So we recognize that there is a difference between the two.

01:02:26

And what Tom Askell said was God's prescriptive will is that all men repent and believe.

01:02:32

On that level you can say God desires the salvation of all men. But my problem has always been when you go beyond the recognition of the prescriptive will of God and you force into God's heart an irrationality in regards to what he desires.

01:02:50

That's all I've been trying to say. And I've said it over and over again and your tradition keeps you from hearing me.

01:02:57

You see, there are people who want to say, well, you have to affirm that God is disappointed.

01:03:04

That God has willed his own eternal disappointment. That he wants to do something that for some reason this other part of him, this schizophrenic part of him, doesn't allow him to do.

01:03:15

And I can't take that kind of irrational view of God into the arena of apologetics of the world religions.

01:03:23

I not only can't do that, I won't do it because the Bible never tells me anywhere that that's how I should do so.

01:03:30

There is room for argument and disagreement on how to interpret 2 Peter 3 .9. I don't think that I've seen a meaningful counter exegesis of the text.

01:03:40

That in any way takes into consideration what we have to say. And one thing's awful certain, nobody at the

01:03:45

John 3 .16 conference even tried to engage in such things. I mean,

01:03:50

I was going to play a part, but I'll get to it next time. Of Steve Lemke stumbling through Matthew 23 .37

01:03:57

again. Even though we've written about these things, we've explained these things. So you are wrong,

01:04:04

Dr. Allen. W -R -O -N -G. You have been publicly shown to be wrong. Stop repeating falsehoods, sir.

01:04:12

What Tom Askell said and what I'm saying are the same thing. We recognize that there is the prescriptive will of God where God commands all to repent.

01:04:21

That's why I can preach the gospel to everyone. But to go beyond that and say, well, what that also means is that in the, you know,

01:04:30

I want to ascribe to God unfulfilled desires and eternal unhappiness because he tried to save everybody.

01:04:38

Isn't that a denial of election in the first place? It is, obviously.

01:04:46

And so you've been misled, sir. Your sources are bad. The scholarship of it's bad.

01:04:52

It's inconsistent. It's not exegetically sound. And I would invite you to do what

01:04:59

Steve Lemke said, who I think spoke right after David Allen, who said we need to be careful not to call

01:05:04

Calvinists hyper -Calvinists when they're not. And to that, I can actually applaud for one time in that context.

01:05:14

So then notice, notice at the end of this statement and then we'll take our break.

01:05:19

Okay. Yes, of course. I agree with about the decretive will. Incidentally, the attempts,

01:05:25

I'm quoting Allen again. Incidentally, the attempts of Phil Johnson and James White at parsing words, nuancing or otherwise skirting the main issue at hand, have failed to show my initial statement concerning White to be false in my opinion.

01:05:42

Now, this is the same man who dares to disagree with Tom Askell in identifying him as an anti -Calvinist.

01:05:50

He wants to have the right to define his position. But when I directly refute his false accusations, and the person he quoted as his foundation say you misunderstood.

01:06:03

Notice what he says in the next sentence. I am willing to concede Johnson's point that his primer does not state what

01:06:09

I interpreted it to state. So the very source he uses, he now concedes he misunderstood.

01:06:17

That was the grounds of his accusation. But then he says he has every right to state that he is the author of what he is the author intended by his own words.

01:06:27

This does not, however, remove the fact that given the declarations and links found in the primer,

01:06:33

I had epistemic grounds for my interpretation. That is, my interpretation was a reasonable interpretation.

01:06:40

So even though the author says he got it wrong, the person he's falsely accusing says he's got it wrong, we repudiate it, he's going to stick by his guns.

01:06:50

But he's not an anti -Calvinist because he says so. Well, there you go.

01:06:58

Same gentleman who introduces the idea that there's a moral debt we owe to God that Jesus didn't pay.

01:07:04

So your faith has now become a payment of debt to God. There we go, folks.

01:07:10

There's the John 316 conference. Yee -haw and my goodness.

01:07:16

Well, anyway, we will continue with our analysis of the John 316 conference on the next edition of Radio Free Geneva coming up on this

01:07:26

Thursday. Thanks for listening to this program. We'll see you then. God bless.

01:09:13

That's AOMIN .org, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.