An Unplanned Mega Sized DL

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:35

And welcome to The Dividing Line on a Tuesday, well, it's morning here in Phoenix, Arizona.

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For those of you who maybe got up early on Sunday and maybe listened in as I did,

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I heard both versions of the First Baptist Church Woodstock.

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I guess for a lot of churches, though, that is called a sermon today. I would call it story time with Ergin, personally.

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But anyway, for those of you who took the time, I've actually told a lot of folks, don't bother because there wasn't, you know, some,

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I think Fred Butler said, I expect you to have a full dissection of the sermon. There wasn't anything to dissect.

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I mean, you talked about the 10 lepers and you strung together a few pious platitudes, threw out a few

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Greek words without ever explaining why that was relevant. Well, I'll take that back. There was one time when

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Epistates was mentioned that what he actually said was relevant. That was the only time. And then, of course, you threw in the vast majority of the time, and it's short, the vast majority of the time, nothing more than storytelling.

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The old older child, younger child, middle child stuff. If you've listened to as many

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Ergin Cantor talks as I have, nothing new there.

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Nothing new there. You know, he talks about his spanks and how fat he is and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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So there wasn't anything to talk about on that level. So for a lot of folks, for a lot of folks, it was a non -issue.

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It was a non -event. Nothing really happened. But that would be a real misunderstanding of the reality of what took place on Sunday.

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As many of us realized months ago when this was first announced, this is the first step of at least an attempted comeback, an attempted rehabilitation of Ergin Cantor.

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And I don't know the principals involved who, it seems to me that it's pretty obvious that the sole decision maker at First Baptist Church Woodstock is

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Johnny Hunt. Johnny Hunt's former president of the Southern Baptist Convention. He is certainly the most powerful

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Southern Baptist in Georgia. And there are a lot of Southern Baptists in Georgia.

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He's certainly one of the most powerful Southern Baptists in the convention today. But I don't get the feeling that the church functions on what we would call a plurality of elders basis.

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And so I can't look into the man's heart and mind.

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I've never met him. I don't know him. Those who do say he's a wonderfully nice man.

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And he may well be. And others have told me that, well, look, he especially wants to help ministers who have fallen to be rehabilitated and restored.

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Well, as long as that's done biblically, that's a very high goal.

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No question about it. I mean, that would be a wonderful thing. Of course, it needs to be done biblically.

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And the very first step in any biblical restoration is what?

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It's repentance. It's confession of wrongdoing and acknowledgement of that wrongdoing.

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And especially in regards to a minister that might disqualify the minister permanently.

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There are certain things that would. But there has to be acknowledgement, confession, and repentance for those things.

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That's the first step. And then after that, there's all sorts of things that have to be dealt with.

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In Cantor's situation, there would have to be restitution in regards to, you know, he'd stop fighting the courts.

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He would pay for the frivolous lawsuits that he's filed. And he would apologize to Autry and the

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Smathers and to all of us that he has gone after with such vitriol and attacked our characters for just speaking the truth about his own history.

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And he would apologize to the many Muslims who have had his story thrown in their face when they've tried to give testimony to the gospel because of all the lies that he told.

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And he'd apologize to the Muslims for giving them reason to question the reality of the gospel and the commitment of Christians to truth.

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There'd be a lot that would have to be done there. It'd be a long process. And so it's great to have that as a goal.

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But the fact of the matter is, we all know that Ergin Cantor hasn't even started that process.

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In fact, the last word we have from him is that he is as innocent as the driven snow.

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He's as pure as the little lamb. I mean, he's just the one being picked upon.

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And I am starting to hear, I've heard people say, well, you see,

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Ergin has repented privately to Johnny. Well, I didn't know

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Johnny was the high priest of the Southern Baptist Convention, so that you could just go to the high priest, confess to him, he can give you absolution.

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And then, you know, the high priest then pronounces absolution over you like an archbishop or something, and all is well.

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I don't think that's how it works. And especially for Cantor, as I pointed out in my presentation on him last year, in his own published works, public sin, public confession, everything he did that we've been talking about has been public.

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And so some private confession to a specific individual isn't going to cut it.

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And of course, I personally doubt sincerely that any such private confession has ever taken place at all.

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But be that as it may, the real question that a lot of us have is,

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OK, you know, we've become accustomed, I'm afraid, to Cantor's boldness.

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I mean, he is really, really bold in his behavior, in his willingness to,

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I mean, it takes some real guts to stand in front of the audience at Southern Seminary and right next to Al Mohler and speak fake

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Arabic. Knowing that there's got to be people in the audience, there's there's there, there are people who speak

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Arabic, really speak Arabic. And make statements that anyone who actually knows

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Islam well is going to discover you don't know Islam well. And then pretend to have to be stone cold

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Steve Cantor. Just to get the audience all impressed with you.

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And pretend to have debated Shabir Ali by name, putting words into Shabir Ali's mouth, it takes, wow, hats off.

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Of course, it's all lies, but hats off to hats off to him for having the guts to do that kind of stuff.

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So we're not we're not really shocked that he will continue to do these things and just ignore the calls for his repentance.

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But what does cause a lot of us to to have hoped that maybe this situation would not have developed was

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First Baptist Church Woodstock is a megachurch. And I know a little something about Southern Baptist megachurches, at least

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I did. I don't know that I do anymore. I was a member of a Southern Baptist megachurch.

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I was on staff in a Southern Baptist megachurch. I know what megachurches are all about.

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And I know their strengths. I know their weaknesses, more about their weaknesses and their strengths, to be perfectly honest with you. And so there was hope on at least some people's part that Johnny Hunt would not invite this man to speak from his pulpit without requiring some level of of honesty on his part.

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Now, I happen to know that Johnny Hunt knows all about Eric Cantor's lies.

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It's it's not really a question. He knows about the extent and the depth and the length of time that it wasn't misspoken words for a brief period of time.

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He knows all about that. And so the fact that he introduces him as a passionate man of God and then opens the pulpit to him has left a lot of us just going, how can that be?

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Now, some of you know that Seth Dunn, who, in my understanding, is a member of the church, was ushered out of the church.

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He was allowed to sit through the first service, but wasn't allowed to go to Sunday school and was ushered off the property by security, including a

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Bruton Parker security guy. Yeah. Bruton Parker security man.

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That is an amazing thing as well. But let's be honest.

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What we're really seeing here, other than the continuation of the great evangelical cover up, the political climate, you know, you have non -Southern

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Baptists involved like Norman Geisler and John Ankerberg. One of them might be a Southern Baptist, I don't know, but they're not really known for that, if they are.

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You have the cover up in the apologetics ministries for political and financial reasons.

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But two things that I'll make application of, and then I notice that Horatio's called back in, so we'll get to him.

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He was there. Two things. First, there is an inviolable rule in the

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Southern Baptist Convention that simply has to be exposed and abandoned. It has existed for quite some time, and that is you do not speak evil of any of your leaders, even if that means you will not speak the truth.

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That rule's got to go. If integrity is going to be restored, and I think there is a real lack of integrity in the convention right now,

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I think most people know that the baptism numbers are actually a whole lot worse than the convention will admit, because studies have shown, what's the number of times the average

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Southern Baptist is baptized in their life? 2 .7. Cut the baptism numbers by 2 .7.

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You might divide that out, and you might have some meaningful idea as to how many people really are being baptized.

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But there's an integrity issue, and part of that integrity issue just goes back to the fact that we see

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Southern Baptist leaders holding hands and chumming it up, and we all know that when that photo op is done, they go back to their individual schools and do everything in their power to train the people under their tutelage that the other guy is clueless and that the other guy is teaching falsehood.

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I don't understand that. I could not live—I don't have the capacity to do that.

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That doesn't work for me. Maybe other people do. I don't have it.

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But especially when it comes to issues like this, I just suggest you cannot allow this to continue.

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You can't do the, well, you know, we want Bruton Park to do well, and it's going to lose its accreditation here pretty quick, but we're going to do our best to try to keep that from happening, blah, blah, blah.

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The second thing is, it just so happened in the providence of God, and everybody who has been following the

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Hebrew series knows that I did not change the order of material that I was addressing just simply to have an opportunity to talk about Erickon Cantor, and I didn't even talk about Erickon Cantor.

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But Sunday morning, after Erickon Cantor did his storytime thing at a megachurch,

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I, at And you may know the verse,

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And I could not help but think of the fact that there really is a ecclesiology issue here.

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It's ecclesiastical in nature. There are

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Southern Baptists who just will fight tooth and nail against recognition that in the

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New Testament, you have a plurality of elders. They like the pastor, board of deacons model. Good luck defending that one biblically.

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But it's almost a kingship type thing. And the megachurches tend to exaggerate that.

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To control a church like that, you have to have so much power concentrated in a certain individual that it's hard to avoid some of the things that happen with that.

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But the idea of guarding the pulpit, I didn't really,

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I thought back on this. I never thought about this until I became

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Reformed Baptist. When I went to the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church from a

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Southern Baptist megachurch, the idea of protecting the pulpit was something new to me.

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Just as protecting the table was new to me as well. Never heard of it. Never heard of it.

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The Southern Baptist megachurch, we had this beautiful Christmas Eve service and they had all the candles.

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That was gorgeous. Remember that? That was beautiful. It was very beautiful. But the point was nothing was ever said.

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I mean, there were, I would sit there beforehand and I knew I could, by listening to the conversation, I knew that people sitting in front of me up there in the balcony were pagans, but they were going to partake of the supper because that's just what you do.

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And nothing was, nobody said, don't you dare do this. There was no protection of that ordinance at all.

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And so the idea of protecting the pulpit, I had never even heard anybody talk about it.

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Never heard anybody talk about it. And I mentioned in the sermon that over the past 25 years that I've been at the

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Phoenix Performing Baptist Church, I can think of maybe six people outside of our own congregation that stood behind that pulpit, maybe six.

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And I'm just figuring that there were some that have spoken when I wasn't there to even get that high a number.

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There is a high, high standard that we set in regards to who's going to stand behind that pulpit for the very simple reason that we believe that that's the very central aspect of our worship.

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That's where the word of God is handled. That's where the word of God is heard. That's where God ministers to his people by the word and by the spirit.

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And therefore, here's the text. Leaders, you're to keep watch over the souls of your congregation as those who will give an account, who will render apoditimi a logos, a reason, an account for how you pursued your calling.

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And all I can say is I wouldn't want to be

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Johnny Hunt and have to answer for having allowed Eric Cantor to stand in that pulpit.

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Now, did Eric Cantor preach heresy? No. Did he preach? Not really. And that's where the ecclesiology stuff comes in.

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That's where the whole purpose of church comes in because that wasn't church.

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That was a religious social gathering. And if all you're concerned about is the number of seats in the pews and the receipts at the end of the day and how many people are in Sunday school and what was the reaction at the end and are we going to get some baptisms out of this, then you're going to do whatever you need to do.

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You could bring in whoever you need to bring in to accomplish that. I saw that when I was at a Southern Baptist megachurch.

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I saw it. I watched it. Consistency of what was being preached in the pulpit didn't matter.

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Didn't matter. It was very pragmatic. Very, very pragmatic.

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I mean, you've got this big old huge facility. You've got to make budget. You've got it. You've got, you know, and so you do what you got to do.

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Do what you got to do. And that's the accounting that most of those folks have to give.

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Not this accounting because this accounting is watching over people's souls and being very concerned that what you're feeding the sheep is specifically the food the great shepherd wants his sheep to have and nothing else.

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And nothing else. So what you're seeing here really does point to the importance of ecclesiology, the importance of understanding the centrality of the ministry of the word in the church.

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And yeah, a lot of churches are losing that. As the entertainment, as the music, as the feel -good stuff becomes predominant.

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And even as, you know, I even noted, I decided to rebel on Sunday. When I preached,

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I wore a tie. Yeah. You know, we've got all the, you know, get all nice and casual.

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We don't have pulpits anymore. We sit there on a bar stool, you know, we tell stories.

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It's like Dr. Phil has taken over the pulpits. And you wonder why there's no power in that or there's no authority in that.

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Well, no one's projecting any sense that I'm standing up here and I'm handling the word of God and I have a word of God for you.

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And not in the Southern Baptist Blackabee mystical sense either. The objective word of God that's always been given to the church.

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It's a whole other issue that Southern Baptists really need to be thinking about. So it wasn't a, it wasn't a non -event.

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We'll see what comes of it. I think if, if Kanner drives Bruton Parker right into the ground, that this may be a non -starter.

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Either that or he's just going to get out of the educational stuff and just hit the circuit.

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Because he, his comedic timing is impeccable. I mean, it's like he was trained.

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And if you want Christian comedy, then I think Ergon Kanner could do a great job for you. But if you want preaching, theology, truth, honesty, integrity, well, there you go.

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There you go. So one of the people who went to, went to First Baptist Church Woodstock and managed to not get himself thrown out, which surprised me personally, was a guy named, that we call

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Horatio. Hello, Horatio. Good afternoon, Dr.

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White. So you managed to get in and get out without the guys with the earwigs tracking you down, huh?

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Yeah, I did. I feel, you know, I heard about Seth Dunn's story over the weekend,

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Sunday, and he was on the pulpit and pen on Friday as well. And I've never met him.

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So I didn't, it sounds like from the way he described it on Sunday, that he was anywhere from seven to 10 minutes ahead of me in what happened.

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I came in, I went with a friend of mine, met a friend of mine in Woodstock, and then we rode together to the church.

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We prayed before we rode. And I will be honest, I really, really, really wanted to see

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God move in a miraculous way and to bring repentance to the heart of Ergon Kanner.

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That's what we prayed before we drove over to the church. As you know, that did not happen.

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I went in and the first thing I noticed immediately was the Bruton Parker table. I have not been to First Baptist Church of Woodstock in almost 15 years.

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The last time I was there, Larry Burkett was alive and he was preaching, and that was in their old building. It's been a long time.

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I've never been to their new building. And it's really large, quite big. They have trolleys because people have to park so far away.

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Yeah, they do. They literally have trolleys. Get on the train, huh? Yep, yep. They have trolleys.

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Absolutely. I am not kidding you. They look just like the ones that you might see that are famous out in San Fran.

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So we got there probably about 9 .20

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and walked in, and I noticed the Bruton Parker table, and I got the canter coaster and sent that to you.

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And I wanted to talk about that. Now, did you actually... Yeah, you picked one up, right? Did you get me one?

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I'm looking at it right now. It's in my pocket. Did you get me one? I sent... I emailed you one.

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How am I supposed to have that in here to put my... I have... You want to see my...

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Here, here's my... Well, you probably can't see his name. Here's my coaster. It's a messed up disc,

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I guess. Or was it not messed up? I don't know. It's just a CD. That's my coaster.

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I would love to have a canter coaster. Well, look, I can send it to you. It's the picture... I think that picture of him is the one from Liberty.

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Yeah, it is. Which is ironic, which is so ironic. And as I said to you in the email, and this may be nothing, but it just seemed to be purposely ambiguous.

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It says that he migrated with his parents to the United States when he was a young boy. Well, yeah, that's true.

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A two -year -old... I wouldn't call a two -year -old a young boy, maybe a child, but it just seemed purposely ambiguous to me.

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But that's a whole other story. It's not that big a deal. He has to be ambiguous with his testimony anymore, given what he's already done with it.

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That's true, because he could go either way. If you would confront him and say, and say, look, you said five years ago that you came here when you were 14.

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Yep, I was a young boy. Or you could say, look, on the Bruton Parker website, it says you migrated in 1969.

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You were only two years old going on three. Yep, I was a young boy. He could go either way. So it works pretty good for him.

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That just kind of struck me immediately. Now, the guy at the Bruton Parker table pegged him as he didn't belong there.

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And so there was a young boy running the Bruton Parker table who looked like he might have been high school age.

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And then there was this other guy who was kind of standing next to it. And when my friend and I went up there, he kind of moved into the table.

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And he said some things about the stuff that he had. I grabbed a bunch of Bruton Parker stuff just to kind of see what was in there.

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I've got it sitting right in front of me here. And then he was pointing at the coaster. And he pointed at the one with Cantor on it.

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And he said, yeah, you could probably use that one as a Frisbee. Sort of a halfway negative tone. And it might have been nothing.

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Or he might have been trying to see if there were any haters out there that agreed with him. Really? Yeah, yeah.

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That's an assumption of mine. That's sort of what Seth Dunn said, is he felt like he was trapped into saying something by the guy.

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Well, then there you go. I said that I had other uses for it, which I would rather not say here.

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And that just went about my business. So I picked it up. And then we went into the church.

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And we were trying to find a place to sit. Oh, wait a minute. Did the guy ask you if you were Steve Camp? Oh, gosh, man.

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That joke never gets old. No, for all the listeners out there, I have been mistaken as Steve Camp.

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The person was blind and deaf. But that's another issue. No, it's because I was sitting next to you.

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That's why she thought I was Steve Camp. It was at Primitive Baptist Church down in Savannah. Anyway.

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Horatio, I don't know you, remember? That's right. Anyway, that's right. You don't know who I am. So I took copious notes.

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At 9 .30, right at 9 .30, they started with some baptisms. They had about four or five of them. And then at 9 .39,

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they had some announcements. As I said, we were trying to find a speaker to kind of sit directly under to record the sermon, which we did record it.

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Now, it seems that maybe not as necessary as it would have been five or six years ago.

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But we still wanted to be safe because cannerization is out there. So at 9 .43

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was, in my opinion, the worst part of the service. And that was Johnny Hunt's introduction of canner.

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And you've already talked about it. I wrote down Johnny Hunt on screen. He's not even here.

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He's in Panama. Describes canner as a passionate preacher of the word of God. Right. 9 .47,

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we had give tithes, special music, which I thought the music was actually very good.

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Yeah, it was. That special music was awesome. Well, I liked the one in the first service better than the second service.

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I didn't watch the second service. I actually went to Marietta to a different church for another service.

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That's another story. But at 9 .54, canner took the stage.

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And less than 60 seconds, Bruton Parker was mentioned. I want to make note of that.

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At 9 .57, he says Peter Lumpkins is here, which... Did you see him? No, I was way in the back.

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Oh, bummer. I assumed Peter Lumpkins was way down front. Anyway, at 9 .58,

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he made reference to himself as the Muslim kid, the Turkish kid. Right. Talked about free will.

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Well, we can't go through the whole thing because it's just a bunch of stories. He did mention Jerry Tackett again.

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He did mention Jerry Tackett. And did you catch the shout out to me?

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Oh, the haters and debaters line. Yep, yep, yep, yep. All the haters and debaters.

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If it would have just been haters, I would not have made the connection to you. Maybe Steven Furtick or something.

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But when he said haters and debaters, I was like, yeah, I know who you're talking about there, buddy.

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So when they were doing the special music, I was looking around at all these people at Woodstock Baptist Church, and it's a cliche that we say all the time, but my heart was heavy.

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I felt bad. I felt terrible for the people in this church.

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Similar to your own fellowship, my fellowship in the last nine years that I've been there has had exactly two people in their pulpit that were not elders of that church.

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One was Greg Kogel. The other was a strange bald man from Phoenix. That's right.

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Yep. So he actually carried his granddaughter up there at first. Yes, and that's right.

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I could have carried her up there. She's just as responsive to me. Anyway, okay.

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Oh, you are so dead. You are so banished from someone's house right now.

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That's all there is to that. That's fine. That's fine. Whatever. I don't go over there much anyway.

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Anyway, so let's talk about this for a second. Johnny Hunt lets this guy come and preach.

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Not only lets him preach, introduces him in such a way that it's almost as if he's done nothing.

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There's this 800 -pound elephant that's sitting in the middle of the sanctuary that we're just going to sweep under the stage there, and nobody's going to notice it.

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Nobody's going to see it except for Seth Dunn and some weird guy named Horatio and his buddy, and everybody else is just going to go right along with it.

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It's terrible. There are some people right now, and you know who I'm talking about, who feel like they're caught in the middle.

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I don't know what to say to that. I feel bad for them. I feel bad for them and other people,

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I'm sure, that have probably approached Johnny Hunt about this. But I had a thought that maybe one day

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Eric Cancanner might be on staff at First Baptist Church of Woodstock, and maybe that's the reason why this had gone down, because Bruton Parker's all but done.

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I mean, in October, unless a miracle happens, they're done.

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And so, anyway. Wow, I had not even thought about that, but it would fit with what

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I've been told about the rehabilitation thing. And man, if you're trying to pump your youth program, evidently, there you go.

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And that's a big, big part of First Baptist Church of Woodstock is the youth program, and Seth Dunn had explained some things about that on Friday's Pulpit and Pen program, that the youth was...

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They have a, it seemed to Seth anyway, an unhealthy focus on the youth.

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Now, I don't know if it is or not. I'm not a member there, but he is. So yeah, if you want, you know, hey, youth pastor for First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Reverend Dr.

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Ergen -Kanner, I mean, yeah, has a terrible ring to it, unfortunately.

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But you know, if that's... I just don't know. I don't understand it. I've always, even though I differ with Johnny Hunt on the doctrines of grace, he seemed to, in the last few years, kind of back off what had been an anti -Calvinistic stance.

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He didn't, he seemed to kind of back off of that, and I've been told by other people that he's kind of backing away from that.

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There were some Calvinist Sunday school teachers at the church, and I thought, okay, now this doesn't really have anything to do with Ergen -Kanner, but it seemed to me that he would be listening more to those of us who were saying things to him, or those of them that were saying things to him, but he...

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I've always looked up to him, even though we had differences, you know, in the doctrines of grace, that he was a great preacher, et cetera, and then he does this, and it's, you know,

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Norman really can't stand Dr. James White. That's what that's all about. But, and it was so easy to see through that, but this is different.

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This is just like, what are you doing? And yeah, maybe he's privately repented to Johnny Hunt, and I was talking with my own elder about that this morning.

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I said, maybe, you know, maybe he's done something backstage, and it's like, yeah, he does that backstage, but then in public, what does he do?

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He says, I'm innocent as the driven snow, I'm suing a Christian pastor, I'm suing the son of a Christian pastor, and not only...

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Jonathan Autry said, hey, don't sue me, I'll pull the video scanners, like, I'm gonna bankrupt you. I mean, that is not the action of a man who is repentant, either privately or publicly.

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Well, and we know that Johnny knows about those things. Yes, that's the other problem.

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Johnny Hunt knows about these things. So at the end of the day, I don't care if there's something I don't know.

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All I have to go on is what we've all seen, and the only conclusion that can come to is, it's the good old boys network.

35:31

Arrogance, my friend, I like him, gonna help him get back in the limelight. I'm gonna help him get back on his feet because those mean

35:37

Calvinists and Muslims hurt him. That's it. That's all we got. There's nothing else that we have.

35:42

If there's something out there that we don't know, go ahead and make it public. It'd be real easy. As you've said a hundred times, a thousand times, all you have to do is call up and explain yourself and say, look, it's not true, it's not true, this is what happened.

35:53

Won't even do it, and it'll never happen. And I don't know, I can't tell the future, I'm not a prophet, but I was there.

35:59

I was really disappointed. I felt like, after hearing

36:04

Seth Dunn's story, I felt like maybe I should have done something more, should have been maybe more vocal, you know, but I was really, you know,

36:13

I was hoping for a better event. You know, nobody holds responsibility for this but Johnny Hunt, so, and obviously,

36:23

Aaron Cantor, I mean, that hopefully is a given. But, you know,

36:29

I'm going to be interested in seeing what happens with the Seth Dunn situation, but I appreciate the report and appreciate you being there.

36:42

And, but like I said, given the earlier statement, you are doomed, just so you know that.

36:51

What? No. In fact, remember when you and I went out shooting, and you, all this time, you know that I was hitting that thing?

37:01

Just keep that in mind, just keep that in mind, because I am a pretty good shot.

37:07

I'm driving right now, we all know how that goes. Yeah, that's for sure, that's for sure. Yeah, you better,

37:14

I had no idea you were driving, I wouldn't have let you on the air, because you probably... I just now took off, I could sense my call was coming to an end.

37:21

Yes, you can sense that there's something else coming to an end too. But anyways, all right, Horatio, thank you for your report on what took place there at First Baptist Woodstock, you be careful driving there.

37:34

You know I'm your hero. We'll see you later, bye. I had to sneak that one in at the end, huh?

37:43

I just see in channel that Cantor's lawyer,

37:49

David Gibbs, is the keynote speaker at the Stand with Bruton Parker rally tonight. There's a

37:54

Stand with Bruton Parker rally tonight? Okay, all right, well, that's...

38:03

And that attorney did so well for him too. I hope he's not representing the school.

38:09

Yeah, if he's representing the school, they are doubly doomed. Oh yeah, big time, that could be really rough.

38:16

Well anyways, we must move on, we have other things to be doing here. We have so much exciting stuff to get to today, but we wanted to start off with what happened over the weekend.

38:27

Um, I wanted to respond to an article that was pointed out to me by The Troublemaker, who will, for his own survival and benefit, remain anonymous.

38:44

Everyone's, and it's not Rich, no, everyone is speculating as to the identity of The Troublemaker.

38:52

By the way, those of you on YouTube, have you noticed that we have a second camera again?

38:59

We had one for a while that was aimed Rich's direction, but now we have this one that's unfortunately aimed my direction, and now you can see more of the mess in the studio, or at least the books in the studio.

39:15

Unfortunately, it doesn't go wide enough out to get the lava lamp, but we can fix that at some other point. Besides that, the lava lamp, we didn't get it started early enough today, so it's not really lava -ing anyways, so that just gives you an idea when we get in here.

39:30

It's a lazy lava. It's a lazy lava today, yeah, it'll get going there, especially if I go for a jumbo, which at the speed

39:36

I'm going, I'm probably going to have to do that. Anyhow, The Troublemaker, like I said,

39:42

I will not identify The Troublemaker, but he knows who he is. He directed me to an article that David Allen wrote.

39:53

It's at drdavidallen .com, and as I mentioned, what was it, seven, eight months back?

40:05

When did, it's been almost a year now, hasn't it? Since From Heaven He Came and Sauter came out, and it hasn't been quite a year.

40:16

I just realized it was cold when I was writing and listening to it. That's the only way

40:21

I can remember, and since it is no longer cold at any point in time while writing, then that had to have been at a different season.

40:31

We only have two here anyways. But anyway, he was mentioned a number of times in that book, and so I knew that there would be some response eventually.

40:45

This is an attempted response to chapter 12 in the book.

40:51

I should have grabbed a copy. Don't worry about it. Don't get it now, but I should have grabbed a copy.

40:58

We have it available. This is Gibson's chapter 12 on Paul.

41:08

I'll be perfectly honest with you, there are times

41:15

I'm in a rush. There are times I put some stuff up that isn't necessarily my best work, but this article's really difficult to follow, not well -crafted, not well -crafted.

41:34

I think some sections are nigh unto incoherent, but not well -crafted.

41:41

But even with that, it would be worthwhile to look at two of the texts that are addressed.

41:51

One that Gibson does address, one that he doesn't, that clearly Dr. Allen thinks is the cat's meow when it comes to arguing against particular redemption.

42:04

I've mentioned before, one of the things that's troubling to me, again, about the

42:10

Southern Baptist Convention as a whole, is that it's fairly painfully obvious that Dr.

42:20

Allen started studying this stuff back about 2008. He's basically made that statement fairly clearly.

42:32

He was dependent upon one of his students for a lot of his misinformation back in 2008, the

42:39

John 316 Conference. That was six years ago. Now, for some of you, six years is a long time.

42:45

It's not. It's not. I just finished preaching through Hebrews, and it took me six years.

42:51

Of course, I don't preach every Sunday. It was only 80 sermons, but that's a fairly short period of time.

42:58

Yet, in that period of time, somehow Dr. Allen is now being looked to as the great scholarly champion of universal atonement amongst

43:08

Southern Baptists. It just makes you go, really? Okay, well, that's troubling.

43:17

The same thing here, when we look at the arguments in the article, he attempts to deal with the all -without distinction versus all -without exception issue.

43:33

In the interpretation of paspasapan, pantas especially, in this particular text we'll be looking at,

43:43

I think most people understand what the issue is. You can use the word all, both in Greek and in English, to speak of all in an extensive sense.

43:59

That is, all without exception. And if the context supports that, then that's a perfectly valid utilization of the word.

44:10

But you can also use the term all, as in all without distinction, to refer to classes of individuals, types of individuals.

44:24

All Cowboys fans are weird, okay? I got an amen from the other room, from a

44:31

Redskins fan. Wonder why that would be. Oh, did I say, are we going to get sued?

44:40

Are jackbooted thugs going to break in now and take us off the air? Be careful, I might break into song here,

44:47

HTTR. Because, well, but I said... Redskins. And there are certain judges...

44:54

There are certain judges that have said that's... Yes, yes, the Navajo Nation High School Redskins.

45:02

Don't point out inconsistencies. Political correctness can't survive that.

45:08

Yeah, some of these guys need to actually go out on the reservation and meet these people and see how they feel. They're proud.

45:14

Anyway. Anyway. So anyhow, but what was

45:21

I talking about now? Yeah, I was using the illustration. When you say all

45:27

Cowboys fans, you're talking about a group of people. You're recognizing that not everyone is a

45:36

Cowboys fan, but you're talking about kinds of people. And so there's a pretty strong argument to be made that when the scriptures talk about the work of Christ, it is appropriate to make this distinction.

45:55

Because when we look at what the Lamb does in Revelation chapter 5, by his sacrifice, he has made men from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, a kingdom of priests to our

46:12

God. And so the all is talking about the extensiveness of the activity without making it individualistic.

46:27

That is men from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, but not every person in every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.

46:36

That would be universalism. And so all without distinction is necessary to allow there to be an elect people.

46:45

And unless you're universalist, you have to allow that. The universalist can argue, no, no, no, it's everybody.

46:54

And that's a whole different issue to deal with hermeneutically, is arguing with the universalist.

47:01

And there's actually a different set of texts that you need to look at at that point.

47:08

But anyway, he's attempting to deal with this fairly basic issue, and see if you can follow this.

47:16

He says, let's parse the phrase all sinners without distinction. All sinners equals every human being without distinction means every human being, regardless of ethnicity, gender, et cetera.

47:27

It is not possible to change the meaning of this phrase into some of all kinds of people. Well, nor would anyone want to argue that, because that's not how

47:37

Calvinists are using the phraseology. When we talk about all people, we're talking about all kinds of people.

47:44

Whether it's kings and those in leadership or slaves or women, they are subgroups underneath a larger group.

47:53

So that's not really relevant. Though I would point out that the phrase all sinners, when we talk about all have sinned, we automatically make the distinction for Jesus, right?

48:11

So we recognize that you can use very broad terms where there is going to be an exception if taking a

48:21

New Testament as a whole demands that exception be taken, which it does. Yet this is exactly what

48:27

Gibson is doing. The all without distinction concept becomes code for some of all without distinction.

48:37

Thus, all becomes some of all sorts, an unwarranted move by Owen and here followed by Gibson.

48:46

Now, I could be wrong. I don't know Dr. Allen. I've certainly challenged him to debate, and that challenge is still out there.

48:57

I think it would be an important subject to debate, and I know he's writing a book on the subject. But sometimes

49:04

I get the feeling that Dr. Allen is... Well, I know the problem is here. I know that Dr.

49:12

Allen has accepted information from other people without checking it out for himself first. And I guess on some levels, we all do that.

49:19

But when he insists on calling me a hyper Calvinist, when Phil Johnson's corrected him, and I've corrected him, and he still insists upon doing it, and I know where that false information came from,

49:30

Tony. That sort of makes me think that sometimes he's repeating other people's arguments and may not really understand what those arguments really entail.

49:43

And this is sort of where I think this is coming from here. He goes on to say,

49:49

Ask yourself what the statement all without distinction means in the context of the atonement passages.

49:54

The answer is it means all kinds of people. That is, and here's where he just jumps the tracks.

50:03

All people of every kind, not some people of every kind.

50:10

No, that's an unwarranted insertion of a universalism into these texts that you're...

50:17

Where are you getting that from? The problem with applying this distinction to passages like 1

50:23

Timothy 2 -4 is the use of all in this text gets transmuted into meaning some of all kinds of people.

50:32

Well, the all is still modifying people. The point is that in 1

50:38

Timothy 2, you're talking, you specifically have a utilization of categories in the text.

50:49

So, when you start 1 Timothy 2 with, First of all, then

50:55

I urge that entreaties and prayers and petitions and thanksgivings be made on behalf of all men.

51:03

You have hupere ponton anthropon and then you have hupere basileon kai ponton ton and and it goes on.

51:14

You've got a specific breaking down of what the all man is into categories, subcategories of kinds of men.

51:26

And so, if Paul wanted to make sure that the prayers being offered by the church would extend beyond the categories of only believers and beyond those who were friendly to Christians to even include categories of individuals that were persecuting

51:48

Christians, this is how he would use it. But if you start with the presupposition of universalism and then force that into the text, there would be no way for Paul to make this kind of statement.

52:02

It would just be all men, period. I can't talk about anything else.

52:08

I'm a universalist, you know. But it makes perfect sense to recognize that the text is delineating particular groups and that you are to pray for rulers, those in high positions.

52:26

And that later on when it talks about various groups, single people and men and women, older people and younger people, that we're talking about groups of people without having to then say, and it means every single person in that group.

52:41

That's the assumption being read into this by the universal atonement advocate at this point.

52:51

He goes on to say, since the adjective all modifies men in the Greek text of 1st Timothy 2 .4, it is not possible to change all into some men of all kinds, thus making the all modify kinds, not men, properly considered.

53:05

Now this is where I notice there's a lot of folks that because someone makes reference to Greek, they automatically stop criticizing.

53:17

They don't believe that they are in a position to criticize what the person is saying because the person can read at least some level of Greek.

53:26

You don't have to know Greek to criticize this. You just have to think clearly, that's all.

53:32

Since the adjective all modifies men in the Greek text of 1st Timothy 2 .4, it is not possible.

53:41

It's almost like there's a Greek rule that I'm referring to here. No, there isn't.

53:47

It is not possible to change all into some men of all kinds.

53:56

Well, that's not what we're suggesting you do. That's where the shift here is.

54:03

The shift is in changing the argument and misrepresenting our interpretation, thus making the all modify kinds, not men.

54:15

No, that's not what we're doing. We're talking about all groups of men.

54:20

The text introduces the grouping. It has nothing to do with inserting some kind of new idea in there that all then begins to modify.

54:31

That's not what we're doing. And let's look at some places where this alleged rule,

54:37

I'll call it the Allen rule, simply falls apart and doesn't work. For example,

54:43

Romans 5 .18. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, get the font a little bit larger here, all men, pantos anthropos, same terminology used in 1st

54:58

Timothy. So one act of righteousness leaves justification life for, guess what?

55:06

All men. Now, if you can't see that these two are referring to two different groups, you're stuck with universalism.

55:17

Like I said, in my opinion, this traditionalist group, their readings, not only

55:26

Romans 5, but their readings of atonement passages and all sorts of passages in reference to reform theology, leave them absolutely defenseless against universalists.

55:37

Now, they probably don't have to deal with universalists, and so they don't really care. But you can find out when a position has become imbalanced, when it's losing the battle and hence has to become imbalanced to keep fighting against the other side, they're losing this battle.

55:57

And so they become imbalanced. It's like when you're in the tug of war and you're pulling this direction and you can't remain balanced in a tug of war.

56:08

You can tell when a group is becoming imbalanced when the hermeneutical system that they use ends up leaving them defenseless against another group that they reject, but that they're not having to deal with as often.

56:25

And that's what we see going on here at Southwestern, I think, is they're leaving themselves open to universalism because the hermeneutical system they're utilizing is just imbalanced.

56:35

But anyway, there were some others here. Let me see.

56:46

Yeah, Colossians 128. Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

56:56

You know what the term everyone is at each one of those? Same phrase. Panta Anthropon, every man, every man, every man.

57:06

Are we going to present every man in Christ? Oh, I suppose you're wondering why

57:13

I'm not throwing you a cordons. Yeah, I'm not even sure. I'm not even sure it's going to show it here.

57:21

Does that give it to you? Really? That's interesting. The first time I've ever tried that, that's actually on a different monitor.

57:31

Yeah, there you go. There you go. Well, yeah, it is a little small. I wasn't expecting to do that.

57:40

So we can do it that way, easier to read. But there's

57:46

Colossians 128. Every man obviously cannot be taken in an extensive.

57:53

It has to be understood within the context that's provided specifically in regards to the teaching within the church.

58:02

2 Timothy 2 .15 is interesting because it's killed both

58:07

Lord Jesus and the prophets and drove us out and displeased God and opposed Pason Anthropos, all mankind.

58:18

Well, what's that supposed to mean? Well, it obviously has a meaning within its particular context, just as in 1

58:25

Timothy 2, which is the next ones that come up here, has a particular context that defines what we're talking about.

58:32

And in 1 Timothy 2, you have the groups of people at the beginning, but then you have the mediatorial work of Christ that has to be brought into consideration because for whom is he interceding?

58:43

If you say he's interceding for those who are already under the judgment of God, then you're completely overthrowing

58:50

Paul's entire concept of and so on and so forth. So, the

58:56

Roman rule is made out of thin air and really is nothing more than the insertion of a universalistic concept under the guise of basic grammar.

59:09

When we say in 1 Timothy 2 .4, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, we are not saying who desires of all people to be saved.

59:25

We're saying who desires people from all people, tribes, tongues, peoples.

59:35

John 11, Revelation 5, that's the same terminology that's being used there. So, the all is still identifying the groups to say, well, you can't talk about that because all always has to be individualistic.

59:56

Prove it. That's the assumption that's being made here that's never proven, is it has to be individual.

01:00:03

You can't refer to groups with the term all. So, this is what he calls a semantic shift.

01:00:12

He goes on to say, yet this is the semantic shift that all becomes some. No, it becomes all groups.

01:00:19

Apparently, for some Calvinists, since all sometimes means all of some sorts or some of all of all groups, it can never mean in any atonement context that all humanity, each and every person, the logical fallacy of such an approach is evident.

01:00:31

It's not a logical fallacy. You haven't proven a logical fallacy. You've inserted your conclusion into your argument.

01:00:40

That's all you've done, Dr. Allen. This is why you really need to debate this. I think some cross -examination is due here.

01:00:47

And I don't and I really doubt you're getting a lot of cross -examination at Southwestern from your students. So, you know, think about it.

01:00:54

It might be might be really worth doing this. And, of course,

01:01:00

I just have to repeat the fundamental error of David Allen. And those for him at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary is that he starts with a discussion of extent rather than intention.

01:01:13

If you start with what the Bible teaches, the intention and result of the atonement is and then discuss extent.

01:01:23

Beautiful harmony, consistency. It's all there. It's easy.

01:01:30

But you don't get that from David Allen. Then I want we're obviously going at least jumbo.

01:01:38

We're going jumbo today. We've talked about this once briefly before, but I figured we're talking about this.

01:01:45

I'd add it in here. This will probably make the troublemaker's heart happy.

01:01:51

So I decided to do that. I like the troublemaker, even though he is a troublemaker. There's a subtitle that says, what about 1

01:02:00

Corinthians 15, 3 through 11? It's in fails to discuss one of the most important Pauline texts that speaks to the extent of the atonement 1

01:02:09

Corinthians 15, 1 through 11. I'll be perfectly honest with you. Maybe, maybe this is just ignorance on my part.

01:02:20

But this seems like a pretty new argument because I don't remember almost anybody ever raising this.

01:02:27

And I'll be honest with you. I think it's one of the most, one of the weakest, worst arguments for unlimited atonement

01:02:34

I've ever seen. And yet David Allen thinks it's the cat's meow. In fact, at the bottom of his article, he says 1

01:02:42

Corinthians 15, 3 is one of the strongest passages supporting unlimited atonement. Funny.

01:02:47

Norman Geisler didn't know that when he wrote Chosen but Free and entire books were written and no one ever mentioned this.

01:02:56

Here's, here's the argument. See if you can follow this.

01:03:04

All right. I'm just going to read you the whole thing. And then we'll look at 1

01:03:09

Corinthians 15 and see if you can figure out what's, what's, what's going on. I'm going to have to close out one of these and blow up the fonts and stuff, though, if we're going to, if we're going to make this work here and dum dum dum dum.

01:03:24

All right. So here's, here's what he says. So he says, he says

01:03:31

Gibson fails. Well, I don't think it's a matter of failure. I think it's a matter of recognizing this is really bad argument.

01:03:40

But here it is. In 1 Corinthians 15, 3, Paul writes, for I passed on to you as most important what I also received, that Christ died for our sins, according to Scripture.

01:03:47

You know the rest of it. And he was buried and rose again the third day, according to Scriptures. This is, this is the, what most scholars identify as one of the most primitive retellings of the gospel story going right back to the, to within a very brief period of time of the resurrection itself.

01:04:10

Here, Paul is reminding the Corinthians the message he preached to them when he first came to Corinth. He clearly affirms the content of the gospel he preached in Corinth included the fact that Christ died for our sins.

01:04:21

Now, what you need to hear him saying is that when Paul gives you the synopsis of the gospel, which he says he received, this is not actually as the vast majority of scholars have seen it.

01:04:40

That's not really a, a, a creedal fragment and tradition that's been passed down.

01:04:50

No, this is a direct MP3 derived citation of Paul's actual words in his preaching.

01:05:01

Even though he says this was passed down to me, this is actually gives you a, a, a fragment.

01:05:08

If you had had an MP3 recorder out there when Paul first preached to the

01:05:15

Corinthians, you would have heard him saying the words, Christ died for our sins.

01:05:23

Okay, he goes on. Notice carefully, Paul is saying this is what he preached pre conversion, not post conversion.

01:05:34

The Corinthians conversion. This is where there's some in his writing. Thus, the hour in his statement cannot be taken to refer to all the elect or merely the believing elect, which is what

01:05:45

Calvinists who affirm definite atonement are forced to argue. The entire pericope of 1 Corinthians 15, 3 through 11 should be kept in mind.

01:05:52

Paul returns to what he had said in verse 3 when he gets to verse 11. Well, I or they, so we preach and so you, the customary present tense in Greek used by Paul when he says, so we preach along with the heiress tense in Greek for believed makes it clear.

01:06:08

Make it clear. Paul refers to a past point in time when they believed what it was to preach.

01:06:15

What did Paul preach them in his evangelistic efforts to win all the unsaved to Christ? He preached the gospel, which included the specific.

01:06:23

Now I'm doing this in quotes. Christ died for our sins, end quote. And so they believed. 1

01:06:29

Corinthians 15, 3 is one of the strongest passages supporting unlimited atonement. I think if I recall correctly, certain of this, we had a caller who called in.

01:06:42

And I think he had listened to the, um, the

01:06:50

Liberty presentation that David Allen made. I already had him into, you know, speak against a particular redemption.

01:06:57

You know, all the anti -Calvinist schools want to have men to speak on this stuff. And I'm pretty sure a caller called in and said, have you ever dealt with this argument?

01:07:07

Because I really had never heard it myself. Um, and, and I dealt with it briefly at that point.

01:07:15

And you have it as he has presented it on his own website. The central point of the argument is that when

01:07:26

Paul says Christ died for our sins,

01:07:31

Allen's argument is that this gives us the exact content of Paul's preaching that he stood up there and said to unconverted people said

01:07:46

Christ died for our sins. And therefore Paul preached unlimited atonement.

01:07:54

That's his argument. So there couldn't have been anything else in Paul's preaching in regards to repentance and faith and, and there couldn't have been any context.

01:08:10

It has to be specific to these words, even though Paul specifically says, this was passed on to me.

01:08:16

This is the, this is the tradition of the church. This is that tradition, the summary of the gospel.

01:08:25

This is, this is, no, that, that's, that part's irrelevant. What you do is you take this creedal fragment and you come up with that.

01:08:37

Well, you see, Paul said he preached and they believed and what he preached. Here's a quote of what he preached.

01:08:44

And since he's preaching to unbelievers, there you go. I'll reach unlimited atonement. Now I'll be perfectly honest with you.

01:08:50

If that's the, if that's the longest passages you have supporting unlimited atonement, Dr. Allen, you, you don't debate because it'll be a slaughter.

01:09:03

Because I've got the entire book of Hebrews. I have a finished work.

01:09:09

I have the perfection of those for whom the atonement is made. I have high priest and I have what the high priest does.

01:09:17

And I have the audience of the high priest and I have so much. And it'll take you so long to even try to explain this.

01:09:26

And it won't take me much to say, um, folks, I don't know of anybody, but David Allen, who thinks that what you have in first Corinthians 15, three is a direct

01:09:38

MP3 recording of the specific word that Paul preached in Corinth prior to their conversion.

01:09:44

So that you can drag out of that at some kind of, therefore Paul believed this theology.

01:09:53

I mean, the more I see of this, I go, wow, let's challenge more and more of these folks debate these issues because I really think that you, we bring this into the public context.

01:10:11

Dr. Allen, I will, I know people in this audience. I know people in this audience.

01:10:19

I know this audience. If I say that I have the opportunity to fly to Texas and to appear before the student body, the

01:10:32

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, which I know Paige Patterson will never allow. If I had the opportunity, there are people in this audience that would be on the phone immediately saying, if he needs to get there,

01:10:46

I'll get him there. Here's my credit card, buy the ticket. So you let me know.

01:10:55

I'll do it with your theology classes. I'd rather do it with the entire student body. Maybe it won't happen at SWB, but I bet

01:11:03

I could find some churches in the area that might host it. But let's let your students find out whether this stuff can actually survive cross -examination.

01:11:21

Serious discussion. This is important stuff. You believe it's important stuff. So do I. You recognize that it impacts the mechanisms by which we preach.

01:11:31

So do I. So let's do it. Let's do it.

01:11:36

Why not? If you're confident in this stuff. If you're confident 1

01:11:42

Corinthians 15, 3 is one of the strongest passages supporting unlimited atonement. If you really think that that's a strong argument to direct from that text some kind of quote, and therefore, since they were unconverted, when he specifically said these words, that means he would have to have believed in unlimited atonement.

01:12:01

Do you think that's going to stand up against what we have in Hebrews and what we have in Romans, who will bring a charge against God's elect to intercede?

01:12:12

If you think that that's the best, let's do it. Let's do it. Because I know that that actually demonstrates how weak your position really is.

01:12:22

It really does. Really does. So there you go. There you go.

01:12:31

One of many things that we are getting to today. Go back to my list here and shifting gears.

01:12:43

We all saw last week that the

01:12:50

New York Giants hired a fellow by the name of David Tyree.

01:12:56

And David Tyree actually happens to have the perspective that marriage is between a man and woman.

01:13:10

And the human rights campaign, one of the most misnamed people groups upon the planet, the human rights campaign is a homosexual campaign, has said that David Tyree's views on marriage mean that he couldn't possibly be a good football coach.

01:13:31

Encouraging New York Giants to rethink the retired receiver's spot as director of player development. They're getting more and more bold in just being wide open with the fact that from these people's perspectives, from the radical left's perspectives, there is no place in our culture for Christian morality and ethics.

01:13:54

None. No job you can have, no position you can hold, leave, get out, stop believing those things.

01:14:05

We will not tolerate any deviation from our perspective.

01:14:11

That that is the radical left that is becoming more and more open.

01:14:19

Will there be pushback? You know, you think eventually that someone would have to say, you know, this is really grossly bigoted, you people are.

01:14:31

But since they use that language all the time, and since they have the willing cooperation of the media and Hollywood, it is absolutely

01:14:42

Orwellian double speak. To even talk about bigotry, tolerance, prejudice, discrimination, or anything anymore.

01:14:52

People just don't think about what words mean. They'll use the word in one way in one sentence and the very next sentence they'll use it the other way and they don't care.

01:15:02

They don't even, they're not even embarrassed by their inconsistency. We literally, and you know,

01:15:10

Michael Brown does this, but pretty much every week we could probably pull five or six examples of this kind of bigotry, closed mindedness, gross intolerance, anti -Christian, indefensible thinking.

01:15:31

Utterly indefensible. You know, these people could, I mean, you see them on CNN, MSNBC all the time.

01:15:41

And when you listen to them and try to follow their thought process, you end up going, how does this person function in the real world?

01:15:54

It's truly amazing. It's truly amazing. But anyone who will dare to say anything in reference to holding to a meaningful

01:16:05

Christian perspective, you're in trouble. You're in trouble. They will come after you.

01:16:11

It's all they've got to do. It's what their life is. Isn't that sad? Isn't it sad that there are people who just live their entire lives doing this?

01:16:20

So many examples of it. I press on because I've got a lot of other things. Yeah, I still got Enyart clips and stuff like that.

01:16:27

We may have to do a lunch thing at one or anything. Yeah, what's your, what are you thinking about?

01:16:33

Thinking about lunch out there? I wasn't planning on going that long, but I spent way more time on First Baptist Woodstock than I expected.

01:16:43

I would like to say that I really appreciate not only Bill McKeever and Mormon Research Ministries, but Sharon Lindblom, too.

01:16:52

If you have an interest in things Mormon, Sharon puts out a lot of good stuff.

01:17:00

And there is an article on the 24th, so five days ago, called The Book of Abraham, A Mormon Conundrum.

01:17:07

In early July of 2014, the Mormon Church released a gospel topics essay on the translation and historicity of its controversial

01:17:15

Book of Scripture known as the Book of Abraham. Did you see this? Yeah, you'll find this interesting, especially. The essay has done nothing to quiet the controversy at issue is the question of Joseph Smith's translation of some ancient

01:17:25

Egyptian papyri that result in the Book of Abraham. Well, we all know he wasn't translating nothing.

01:17:32

In the pre -2013 introductory note to the Pearl of Great Price, where the Book of Abraham resides in Mormon canon of Scripture, which itself is a fascinating study, by the way.

01:17:41

I mean, the whole Pearl of Great Price thing, I have a strong feeling that it's not going to be long before you've got folks at BYU really questioning whether the

01:17:51

Pearl of Great Price should be considered canon of Scripture. Just watch. Mark that one down.

01:17:58

Oh, they're running from it right now. But I think eventually they're just going to have to realize the best way to deal with this is just to question the very mechanism by which it became

01:18:06

Scripture anyways, because it's so fluid in Mormonism that it's a possibility to go that direction.

01:18:12

I was saying they're running things. Oh, you mean by BYU? BYU seems to be running the show up there anyway now, so why even have

01:18:19

GAs? Well, once they're all graduates of BYU, then it doesn't really matter, but it all becomes coextensive.

01:18:28

Anyway, in the pre -2013 introductory note to Pearl of Great Price, the Mormon Church explained the book in this way, quote,

01:18:35

The Book of Abraham, a translation from some Egyptian papyri that came into the hands of Joseph Smith in 1835 containing writings of the patriarch

01:18:42

Abraham. I think that pretty much goes all the way back, if I recall correctly. In the current edition of the

01:18:49

Mormon Church's Scripture, the introductory note reads, The Book of Abraham, an inspired translation of the writings of Abraham.

01:19:02

Joseph Smith began the translation in 1835 after obtaining some Egyptian papyri.

01:19:10

Now that's a huge run into the woods.

01:19:17

Instead of a translation from some Egyptian papyri, this is an inspired translation of the writings of Abraham.

01:19:27

Joseph Smith began the translation in 1835 after obtaining some Egyptian papyri.

01:19:33

So no longer is the Egyptian papyri what's being translated. It's the writings of Abraham, wherever they are. Oh, that is not what he said at all.

01:19:41

No, no, no, no, no. Not even close. Not even close. The new wording sidesteps the issue of Joseph's traditional, literal translation of the text.

01:19:49

Whereas the church used to promote the idea that Joseph translated the writing that was on the papyri. That is, he rendered the

01:19:55

Egyptian characters in English. The revised explanation takes the resulting text of the Book of Abraham, removes it from the content of the papyri, because they have to.

01:20:03

Because we now know what the papyri was all about. And the papyri is actually the

01:20:08

Book of Breathings from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. This is no wonder, since a major controversy surrounding the

01:20:16

Book of Abraham followed the 1967 discovery of Joseph's long lost papyri, is the fact that Joseph's translation is not supported in any way by the

01:20:24

Egyptian. He got it all wrong. Well, we should, Sharon, we should admit that in one of the paragraphs where Joseph Smith translated something like 65 words from a single

01:20:42

Egyptian symbol, that the

01:20:49

Egyptian symbol is the word the, and the is in amongst the 65 words.

01:20:57

So we got to give him at least that much. The New Gospel Topics essay continues the effort to rescue

01:21:06

Joseph Smith's groundless translation from the harsh reality of informed scholarship. The essay admits, quote,

01:21:11

Mormon and non -Mormon Egyptologists agree that the characters on the papyri fragments do not match the translation given in the

01:21:16

Book of Abraham. Then goes on to state, the relationship between those fragments and the text we have today is largely a matter of conjecture, end quote.

01:21:32

No, not really a matter of conjecture at all, obviously, not from Joseph Smith's perspective.

01:21:38

In other words, the Mormon Church does not know what role the Egyptian papyri played in Joseph Smith's rendering of the

01:21:43

Book of Abraham. Please see Rob Bowman's excellent discussion of this topic at What Kind of a Translation of the Book of Abraham?

01:21:49

A multiple choice question, which there's a link here. If you go to mrm .org, you can find what I'm reading to you here. The Gospel Topics essay on the

01:21:55

Book of Abraham has created a conundrum for Mormons, as Utah Lighthouse Ministries' Sandra Tanner, thank you Sandra for all the work, asked elsewhere, which of the following two statements made by the

01:22:05

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints is accurate? One, the canonized current heading on the

01:22:10

Book of Abraham, a translation of some ancient records that have fallen into our hands from the catacombs of Egypt, the writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt called the

01:22:16

Book of Abraham, written by his own hand upon papyrus. Or number two, the Gospel Topics essay statement found on the

01:22:23

LDS Church's website, Joseph's translation was not a literal rendering of the papyri as a conventional translation would be.

01:22:29

Rather, the physical artifacts provide an occasion for meditation, reflection, and revelation.

01:22:35

They catalyzed a process, catalyzed a process, whereby God gave to Joseph Smith a revelation about the life of Abraham, even if that revelation did not directly correlate the characters on the papyri."

01:22:49

Folks, that is an absolute capitulation. Absolute capitulation on the

01:22:56

Mormon Church's part. They've just... But you know what this reminds me of?

01:23:03

Kerry shirts. It reminds me of the Kerry shirts excuse.

01:23:08

That's all they can do. They have to become mystics at this point. Because the documented fact, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt what

01:23:17

Joseph Smith said. We have the Egyptian alphabet and grammar. His intention is clear. You connect it with what he said about the

01:23:23

Book of Abraham. The entire prophethood of Joseph Smith hangs on this. And anybody who studies the information knows beyond a shadow of a doubt the man was a fraud.

01:23:34

He was a charlatan. And this documents it. This is the only direction they go. But if they go this direction, if they go the mystical revelation direction, you know what's next?

01:23:49

Book of Mormon. Book of Mormon. And once you've gone there, it won't sink as fast as the

01:23:59

Titanic, but it's just as certain. Well, if I recall correctly, wasn't the whole motivation of the saints...

01:24:07

You know what you should do when I'm talking to you? You should put that camera up because now I'm looking at you. Oh, I should do this?

01:24:15

There we go. Yeah, see now I look at you and I actually look like I'm looking at the camera. That's true. That's true. If I'm recalling the story correctly, the saints in Illinois got the mummies in the first place in order to do what?

01:24:30

Validate Joseph Smith's claims that he could do this. Oh, there's no question about it. So this particular book, it's the validation of everything he claimed regarding the

01:24:43

Book of Mormon. Not only the Book of Mormon, but then this is also the very same time period where the first vision is evolving and the plurality of gods is developing and what's in the

01:24:52

Book of Abraham, but all the plurality of gods stuff. And so now this becomes some kind of mystical, revelational experience.

01:25:01

Um, but again, that's the only direction they've got to go. Well, my suspicion is that the end of all of this isn't going to be any kind of monotheism or crosses on Mormon churches.

01:25:13

It's going to be, hey, we're nice, religious and moral people and we have lots of neat families and we're clean.

01:25:23

And so come and hang out with us. Yeah, this is not a process. This is not a process moving toward orthodoxy

01:25:29

A process of moving toward orthodoxy would involve recognizing the falsehood of your past and abandoning it.

01:25:37

That's not what they're doing. They're finding excuses. And so let me just finish this up here.

01:25:45

Does a faithful Mormon choose to believe the canonized explanation? Or does he choose to believe the explanation provided by a nameless group of scholars approved no doubt by someone in authority at church headquarters?

01:25:54

Perhaps no choice is required of church members since the church itself is not troubled by the incongruity.

01:26:00

Rob Bowman notes, quote, After all this time, the LDS church is no closer to an answer. Was the book of Abraham actually written in Egyptian and the papyri?

01:26:07

They don't know. The only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth, DNC 130, led by a series of presidents, each of whom has been a prophet, seer, and revelator, has no idea how to explain the relationship between the book and the papyri.

01:26:21

Perhaps this is because there is no relationship between them. It's hard to conclude anything of the book of Abraham is not but a fabrication at best or a falsehood perpetrated by Joseph Smith, the prophet of this so -called restoration.

01:26:33

Well, that is the fact. Sharon Lindblom is exactly correct. And that the book of Abraham truly, truly demonstrates beyond all question the fraudulent nature of Joseph Smith's claims.

01:26:52

Um, since we're going mega today, uh, before I go back to Enyart Clips, I just wanted to briefly note a blog article.

01:27:03

A fellow by the name of Jason Wolf evidently has written two blog articles, both about me.

01:27:10

Uh, and then, hey, sometimes people say, yeah, you shouldn't pick on these people.

01:27:16

Look, if I tried to respond to everything that's written in response to me and stuff on the net,

01:27:21

I'd never do anything but that anymore. And that's a good thing. I recognize that's a good thing because this ministry existed for a long, long time when that wasn't the case.

01:27:31

And that means we're, we're getting the word out to folks. And that's, that's, that's a positive thing. Um, this fellow contacted me.

01:27:39

He didn't have to seek me out. And he contacted me via Twitter, sent me the link.

01:27:46

I look at it. This is called free grace. The guy's, the guy's a free gracer. What's a free gracer?

01:27:52

Well, he's more than the anti -lordship, non -repentance. And I do identify any gospel that cannot preach what

01:28:02

Jesus preached as the gospel, as a false gospel. Um, just take the time.

01:28:10

Have we, have we put, um, the Wilkins debate on, on YouTube? No. We need, need to bump that up the list.

01:28:21

Ha ha ha ha. Uh, I, I know it's available, uh, from the website, right?

01:28:30

The audio is, but we have the video. I'm sorry.

01:28:38

It needed things. Well, it's, you got to realize this next generation wants to watch stuff. They don't want to listen to stuff.

01:28:43

So despite the fact that we don't like the, uh, the shirt I wore that night. Other than that, um, we need to get that up there.

01:28:53

Track down the, uh, the debate that I did with, uh, Dr. Wilkins. If you really want to hear, it wasn't the best debate because Wilkins behaved like a 14 year old, unfortunately.

01:29:05

But, um, still it lays the, it lays the issues out. And we've, we've talked about this a number of times.

01:29:11

The only thing I wanted to mention about this, um, is that, uh, on the 25th,

01:29:22

Friday, the 25th, I said the 27th, the 25th, he wrote, James White preaches two gospels.

01:29:28

And the other one he wrote on the 27th was James White controversy because I linked to his blog site and it exploded.

01:29:35

And what I did was go read it and see how many clear category errors and isogenical errors you can identify.

01:29:44

And so 400 some odd people, 500 some odd people went and, and looked at it.

01:29:50

And so that's what created the James White controversy is because I'm like, you know what?

01:29:55

This is so bad. I can just let other people take a look at it. I don't even have to worry about what I wanted to address.

01:30:03

Was the statement, James White preaches two gospels. Now, anybody who knows me knows if you want to get me to respond to something, what are you going to accuse me of?

01:30:17

Inconsistency. I have written 24 books.

01:30:23

I have done almost 140 moderated public debates. And I'm, I, unlike certain people do not have to include discussions with cab rider drivers as debates.

01:30:35

So we're not including conferences, sermons.

01:30:42

I mean, you put all the stuff that I've, what is it? 232 sermons on sermon audio,

01:30:49

I think now. And that's not just PRBC. That's just my name and other churches that use sermon audio and stuff like that.

01:30:56

And how many dividing lines? Uh, it runs 1200 and that's the only ones we have recorded.

01:31:04

We didn't record the ones back. Well, we did, but don't have all the recordings, the ones way back in the old days.

01:31:10

I've talked a lot. I've written a lot. I don't know how many thousands of articles there are on the blog.

01:31:20

It's not difficult to determine what I preach as the gospel really isn't.

01:31:28

And it seems to be the mindset of cheap gracers because that free grace is a beautiful thing.

01:31:37

Cheap grace is an ugly thing. And that's what the anti -lordship stuff is. It's cheap grace, which means it's no grace at all.

01:31:45

It's licentiousness. We are warned specifically against this very belief in scripture itself.

01:31:54

But the only way you can rip repentance out of the New Testament is to develop a mindset where you can look at words on a page and only see certain ones.

01:32:05

So, you know, Jesus comes and the first message he preaches is repent and believe.

01:32:11

I don't have to worry about the repent part. You just don't see that part. Uh, you go to James and the reading that Wilkins suggests for James is just so outlandish that most people have to, you know, sit there and sort of do the

01:32:33

David Allen thing. And well, maybe if I look at it this way or that, you know, something like that to try to just make it make any sense.

01:32:44

They look at the Gospel of John and they go, well, repentance can't be important because repentance isn't in John.

01:32:51

And actually make that the canonical filter through which you have to then read everything else.

01:32:57

You know, and I know some of them might be hyper dispensationalist and stuff, and then they can just do their their thing, whatever they want.

01:33:03

Just chop the text up into pieces all they want. That's what they've done to me. That's what this guy has done. That's what Jason Wolfe did to me.

01:33:10

Because he said, well, if you go to his book, The Roman Catholic Controversy, and you read one of his chapters on the Gospel, he never talks about repentance.

01:33:18

There's his two, there's his two Gospels. He's inconsistent. Well, sadly,

01:33:24

I don't have The Roman Catholic Controversy in eText. I actually tried to find it in Kindle.

01:33:33

There's no Kindle edition. I'm going to have to talk to the folks about that because that would be that would be important.

01:33:41

But, chapter three, he says, he says, well, notice,

01:33:51

I intend to demonstrate in this argument that Dr. James White is a false teacher. Okay.

01:34:01

Here is chapter three, the essential issue of the Gospel of Peace. What was my purpose in talking?

01:34:10

It's all of, it goes from page 39 to 44. So it's five, five pages.

01:34:17

In this book, how does it function? It functions as being my statement that the key issue with Rome is that the

01:34:28

Roman Gospel cannot grant peace. That's the whole purpose. Now, there are entire chapters later on talking about justification and imputation of righteousness, saved by grace through faith alone, all the rest of this type of stuff, imputation of the righteousness of Christ, both his perfect life as well as his perfect, all sufficient atoning sacrifice.

01:34:56

That's the act of impassive obedience of Christ. No free gracer, no cheap gracer believes in that.

01:35:04

Because that active obedience, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, not going to go there.

01:35:13

No, it doesn't talk about that. Doesn't, doesn't go into that stuff. So what you do is you isolate five pages that function in one book in a specific fashion, ignore 30 years worth of stuff and say, ah, see, he's a false teacher.

01:35:35

I say Jason Wolfe's a false teacher because I identify his teaching as unbiblical.

01:35:42

There's a difference there. And that's really for me, an illustration of just the mindset of these cheap gracers.

01:35:49

They only see what they want to see. It's a, it's a sad thing to say. And I see, and I warn everyone, um, that movement as, as large as it is, is absolute death to meaningful gospel preaching.

01:36:06

It really, truly is. Keep that in mind. All right, uh, we've got about 20 minutes left on the program.

01:36:14

I wasn't expecting to go mega today, but, uh, I do want to, I've had people mentioned to me that they have found useful, uh, and educational.

01:36:27

Uh, I never felt, I've, you know what I didn't do today? I just realized I never fired up Twitter today. So if anyone was tweeting me stuff,

01:36:35

I apologize. Uh, I did not fire up a tweet deck, uh, to, uh, to see it.

01:36:41

Let's see if there is anything interesting in here. Uh, zoom wars, uh,

01:36:53

Alan Ross's book on the exposition of Leviticus. I might, I might definitely do that. Um, so no, nothing specifically on, uh, on the program today, but I just wanted to check.

01:37:06

Um, there have been a number of people who said, you know, I've been learning a lot from your interaction with Enyart's spin, uh, on the subject of God's sovereignty and relationship to time and things like that.

01:37:19

So I do want to finish that up. Um, I haven't even looked to see if he's even acknowledged the documentation of the misrepresentations that he had.

01:37:28

I haven't looked, uh, I'll, I'll have to try to find some time to do that, but I've got a lot of other things going on today.

01:37:34

So hopefully we are queued up and ready to go out there, um, with this, because I'm going to hit the, uh, hit the, hit the thing here and we'll, we'll press on.

01:37:43

And the beauty of that is because she doesn't have to, that's the beauty of it, but they take the beauty out of the relationship between the father and the son and between a

01:37:51

Christian and their Lord, because it's all compelled. So God's love is so compelling. It has to be forced.

01:37:56

That's their view, but love must be freely given. And that's a beautiful picture.

01:38:02

When he says that this is the issue here, he's agreeing with Augustine who said, when we look at evil, we have to trace it back to the philosophical attributes of God.

01:38:14

Absolutely. And that's what they're doing. That's their commitment to Plato's immutability and timelessness. Now, what this is about, if you recall, the last part of the discussion is

01:38:22

I had said, I had used the term philosophical and of course,

01:38:30

Bob goes nuts. He, of course, can use philosophy all he wants as long as he doesn't use the term philosophical.

01:38:39

And I had said, I have a real hard time with people who present the idea that evil has no purpose.

01:38:46

This is his attempt to explain what the purpose of evil is. So his God, and he makes the strong distinction between his

01:38:55

God and my God. So I'll go there. His God created a universe where he had to have all these contingency plans set up.

01:39:10

And because he knew it was possible that in the universe he created, the

01:39:20

Japanese army could do what it did in Nanking in late 1937.

01:39:28

I read The Rape of Nanking over the past couple of days. It's hard, hard to do.

01:39:34

It's not about even commenting on it. Uh, because, you know, how do you, how do you look at something like that from a

01:39:40

Christian worldview? And it's like, it's like the, it's like the gates of hell itself popped open and every demon in there jumped into a

01:39:51

Japanese soldier. It was the, the evil. I, I would have to warn you to get the kids out and anybody with a strong, without a strong stomach, uh,

01:40:02

I'd have to, I'd literally have to do that before I could even talk. About the behavior of the

01:40:10

Japanese soldiers when they conquered Nanking in December of 1937. Just it's hard to imagine, but in Bob Enyart's world,

01:40:21

God knew that was a possibility. It might happen. No purpose to it other than this, that love must be freely given.

01:40:36

As, uh, Micah just said in channel, love must be freely given. That's second opinions, five, 12.

01:40:44

Uh, that's exactly right. Love the

01:40:49

Lord your God with all heart, soul, mind, and strength. Is that a command? Is that not the greatest commandment?

01:40:58

Yeah. So this sentimental love that Bob Enyart is speaking of.

01:41:05

Um, is definitely sub -biblical and none of this answers the question since he wants to, since he wants to use child pornography videos as his, uh, primary argument against Calvinism.

01:41:22

God created a world that included the very real possibility of that happening.

01:41:34

And even though Bob Enyart wants to argue that God is omni -competent and therefore could, could cause someone to name someone something.

01:41:42

Evidently he's not omni -competent enough to stop that. But it's okay because love must be freely given.

01:41:52

And here's where we really see the primary commitment of Bob Enyart's open theism.

01:42:01

Historically, open theism derives from the highest commitment to human libertarian free will.

01:42:12

Man's will must be absolutely free. That's why, and if God knows the future, then it's not.

01:42:18

And therefore that's where it came from. Now, Enyart tries to pretend that his perspective is different in that he's focused upon the freedom of God.

01:42:30

But here you see the real issue. And the real issue remains the absolute freedom of man.

01:42:38

Because that love must be freely given, given even to the point where he then transfers that concept of human libertarian free will onto the

01:42:49

Godhead. And hence we'll say in the debate that Jesus had to be able to rebel against the

01:42:58

Father and hate the Father and destroy the entire Godhead. Because this is his ultimate, his ultimate goal.

01:43:08

Absolute libertarian free will on the part of every free creature which includes Jesus and God. And so, oh the

01:43:16

Calvinists won't give God free will. Well, of course he just ignores what we say about that. As R .C.

01:43:22

Sproul has said, God's will is free. I am free. When my will runs into God's will, I lose. But he won't allow for those categories that actually make sense of the biblical narrative in any way.

01:43:35

So that was his explanation of that. And it's an explanation that fails miserably.

01:43:42

And notice there was no biblical text cited for any of that. For those of you who are confused, second opinions doesn't exist.

01:43:51

Um, someone tried to bring that up in channel, but I'm sure that was just a joke. Okay, did

01:44:00

I turn this down or something? Uh, did you mute me in there?

01:44:10

Well, it just played a second ago. A camel is hard.

01:44:22

It's harder than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Which, by the way, speaks against Calvin's irresistible grace.

01:44:29

Because if that doctrine were true, it would be as easy for a rich man to be saved as for a poor man as for the whole world.

01:44:37

I'd only mark that one just as a wonderful illustration of how Bob Enyart really, really, really, really struggles to follow categories.

01:44:48

What was Jesus talking about when he says it's difficult for a rich man to be saved? He was talking about the fact that rich men rely upon their riches and upon their, their things as well.

01:44:56

He wasn't talking about whether it's, it's difficult for God to save a rich man, whether it's difficult for God by his spirit to cause a person to be regenerated.

01:45:05

You can't see the difference between those things? You can't see how it's, how the, the poor person who has to be constantly throwing himself upon God because he doesn't have, you know, he's right on the cusp of, of, of annihilation anyways in the sense of, of not being able to get food and departing this world.

01:45:24

You can't see how it's easier for that person to trust God's promises than it is for the rich person?

01:45:32

Oh, but you say that irresistible grace means that God can save. Hey, you don't see there's a difference there,

01:45:38

Bob. That's why I say you've never understood. Never. That's why you will never understand the reformed faith because you're not willing to.

01:45:49

Which is why Calvinism has a hard time showing God's goodness and love. Whereas even James White has admitted that open theism has no trouble defending

01:45:58

God's goodness. And that's because open theism is based on God being personal, good, and loving. Now, of course, that's the misrepresentation.

01:46:05

We've documented it. I never said anything of the kind. I said that open theism has to answer different questions about God's goodness.

01:46:11

Doesn't have to answer the questions that we Calvinists do, but there's a completely different set of questions. We've documented that, put up an entire video.

01:46:19

Good question as to whether Bob will ever admit that. Okay. So, Rudy, I'm interested in your observations on that.

01:46:24

Wow. I really like the comment that you made about the stone idol, because according to James White, a stone idol is half of a

01:46:34

God. Half of a God. Why so? So here's, you got to understand this. He's, this guy is one of Enyart's followers.

01:46:42

And so what you see here is the result of this kind of teaching. And it is massive confusion.

01:46:49

It is massive confusion. Because a stone idol is immutable and impassable, then it's half of a

01:47:02

God. So the idea is immutability, impassability.

01:47:09

These are, you know, the omnis and the ims, and a stone idol has it, and so is your

01:47:18

God, and your God's a stone idol. In essence. Well, because a stone idol is impassable, impeccable, immutable.

01:47:25

Oh, yeah. And then with the omnis, you add the omnis, so you got three of the six of their main attributes of God. And so it shows up that although philosophers have been obsessed with the omnis and ims, they're not actually the significant biblical attributes of God that theologians have tried to convince people of.

01:47:43

I really like the... So a non -personal rock is put in the same categories, in the same category as the personal

01:48:02

God. And then you make a comparison between the two as being impassable and impeccable, can't sin, and immutable, can't change.

01:48:17

Serious category problems. And what that proves is that if you constantly repeat category errors and you make it a part of your preaching and teaching, you'll communicate that to others.

01:48:33

You'll communicate that to others. That a stone has three of... Oh, by the way, and then here is my rebuttal to that, that I specifically lay out.

01:48:45

That was one of the first things I said when I got up and responded in the debate. That a stone has three of the attributes of God, impeccability, immutability, and impassability.

01:48:56

Only if you completely ignore the context of all the systematic theology in the entirety of the history of the Christian church. Because, of course, we've always defined these things in the context of God being good and personal, interactive.

01:49:06

So for example, when we talk about impeccability, what we mean is God can't cease being God. God's goodness is a part of his very nature.

01:49:11

He can't change. So Bob wants to say God's good. How do you know God's gonna be good tomorrow? If he's unimpeccable, he could change, right?

01:49:18

And he could become less good than he is now, right? You see, being able to trust in God's hesed, his loving kindness.

01:49:25

There's in that Hebrew term, there is an element of faithfulness. There is, and that faithfulness requires what? Immutability.

01:49:30

He does not change in his being. So there is my response. And I don't think they,

01:49:37

I don't think their system really even has categories to even begin to respond to that argument.

01:49:43

He says that I've admitted that open theism has no problem defending God's goodness. Where'd I admit this? Because I think it has a major problem defending

01:49:48

God's goodness. I think there's a major philosophical problem in saying that God created this universe and he created all the potentiality of evil, but he had no purpose for it.

01:49:57

Just, well, it's just, I didn't know. I didn't know that was gonna happen. I think there's a real problem with God's goodness.

01:50:05

And even once evil starts happening, when God's, when God saw the plans, I mean, it took a while to plan 9 -11, you know what

01:50:12

I mean? Once God knew what these guys were planning, couldn't he stop them? You've got to answer all the questions about God's goodness and now you don't have a divine decree and an eternal purpose upon which to answer those questions.

01:50:23

I think open theism has serious problems answering the question of God's goodness. Now, so there was my statement within the debate on that very, that very subject.

01:50:34

Yes, he's the, he started out the debate saying I'm misrepresented. James White is the most misrepresented man in America.

01:50:40

James White is the Rodney King of theology. Can't we, can't we just all understand what I'm saying? So there was the first Rodney King statement.

01:50:47

I'm not going to spend too many time, too much time on that. It's just embarrassing to have to listen to it. Has to deal with that. We have audio from James White.

01:50:53

He said, I couldn't provide any references. I have references. I have audio for everything I've said, and we'll post them on opentheism .org

01:51:00

slash James White. But let's hear right now, clip number two. When I say the only consistent

01:51:05

Arminian is an open theist is that the questions of God's goodness that are aimed at Calvinists are questions that anyone except an open theist actually has to answer themselves.

01:51:16

Stop the tape. Now, that was in a debate with Andy Fisher, who is an

01:51:21

Arminian. His name is Austin Fisher. It was not a debate. It was a radio program on Unbelievable Radio Broadcast.

01:51:27

I've already done a video on this. That's why I'm skipping past it. I played the whole section. You can listen to it for yourself. We've documented this one.

01:51:34

I haven't heard anything from or from the debate organizer or anybody else admitting this error, but it doesn't matter as long as it's documented whether they want to admit it or not.

01:51:44

It doesn't matter. And James White, for some reason, keeps saying that was from his debate with John Sanders. He likes that debate.

01:51:50

The debate with Andy Fisher, he doesn't like that. He's removed it from his website. There's no reference to it. As I pointed out in the video, if he had actually searched for the right name instead of Andy Fisher, if he had looked for Austin Fisher, maybe he'd even have

01:52:08

Fisher spelled right because there's a C in there. There are four references on the website, including two full sermons

01:52:16

I preached, which are on Sermon Audio, specifically for Austin Fisher.

01:52:23

So here's another one of those places where Bob Benyart thinks he can read my mind and he's caught me.

01:52:29

I like the debate with Sanders, but I didn't do so good with Andy Fisher. And so I've removed all references to it.

01:52:37

And it's just completely bogus. It's just he stated clearly with a very well -known author that with open theism, very well -known author.

01:52:46

Yes. Austin has written one book. Open theists don't have to defend God's goodness because they don't claim that God decreed wickedness.

01:52:55

No, that's not what I said. And it's amazing, you know, the last person, sadly, that I recall that had the same kind of,

01:53:06

I will only see what fits into my paradigm mindset like Bob Benyart was

01:53:13

Dave Hunt. Remember how Dave, you know, it didn't matter what you said. He only saw certain words on the page that fit his paradigm.

01:53:21

And same thing with Bob Benyart. He only hears, sees what fits his paradigm.

01:53:27

Anything else, just it's not really out there. God in their theology decrees rape. I mean, that's a pretty disgusting thing.

01:53:34

And for that to be in God's mind for eternity past running forever, that's why you have to defend

01:53:39

God's goodness. If you're a Calvinist, let's hear that. And Dr. White said yesterday,

01:53:44

I misrepresented that. Let's hear this from Dr. White. I think it's just in the last year. Let's hear this. Now, what actually happened here is they're now they're now playing with the debate a little bit, which

01:53:54

I'm have we gotten it yet? Still haven't gotten it yet. I will. I emailed on Friday and I received an email back saying the guy was going to try to find some time at home over the weekend to copy the files onto a

01:54:10

Blu -ray. And, you know, it takes a really long time and a lot of work to copy files onto a

01:54:17

Blu -ray. So I'm starting to get a little suspicious here that, unfortunately, one of the problems when

01:54:23

I wrote the contract for this, I allowed 30 days and I think he's going to push this to the 30 day limit.

01:54:30

That's my suspicion at this point. Yeah, OK. First of all, what happened in the debate, which at least

01:54:40

I have the audio, I have all the audio if we needed to, is they fixed this here. They tried to there is a there's a video on YouTube, some guy that attacked me for what

01:54:53

I said on the Bible Ants Man broadcast. And. It starts off with Satchmo's What a

01:55:02

Wonderful World. And there's some graphics and stuff. Well, they didn't queue it up right. They didn't set it up right.

01:55:08

And they never got to play it during the debate. Here, it sounds like they actually did.

01:55:14

It sounds like they were just right spot on with everything. Almost everything they tried to play messed up.

01:55:19

They couldn't get the Roosevelt quote to work right. And evidently they're cleaning all that up post -production to make it sound a lot better.

01:55:32

And so. So that's what we've we've got here is the same exchange that George Bryson turned into the absurdity.

01:55:43

The absurdity. Where you had a fellow on Twitter.

01:55:52

Badly paraphrase something I said, and now it's being repeated as a direct quote.

01:56:02

And then put into books and stuff like that. Same origin and source here that they're that they're pulling out.

01:56:10

When a child is raped, is God responsible? And did he decree that rape? If he didn't, then that rape is an element of meaningless evil that has no purpose.

01:56:19

What I'm trying to point out by going. So what is your answer there? Because I want to understand the answer. I'm trying to go to scripture to answer.

01:56:25

Yes, but what is the answer to the question that he just asked? The answer is that we can understand what the answer is. I mentioned to him. Yes, because if not, then it's meaningless and purposeless.

01:56:35

Now, we spent a lot of time talking about the misrepresentation of this exchange.

01:56:41

You can tell by the speed at which I'm talking. This is in the middle of a of a fairly strong exchange. And as everybody knows, this was a two on one.

01:56:50

This was the attempted ambush on the Bible Ants Man broadcast in December of 2003.

01:56:57

No one, no honest person. A person of ignorance could do this, but no honest person who is not ignorant could begin to say that I have not been straightforward and clear in what

01:57:13

I have said on this subject because the existence of this book.

01:57:19

This is the first edition. I'm going to need to get a second edition. Potter's Freedom. It's been out for what was 2001?

01:57:27

Was that 2000? So 14 years.

01:57:33

14 years this has been out. And there is a very, very clear discussion of this.

01:57:44

I've got a new one here. There you go. See, there's the current edition. Thank you. Very, very clear discussion of all of this in the very first chapter called

01:57:54

The Vital Issue. And it's not short. It's 20 full pages.

01:58:03

And even more so later on in the book. There's no confusion.

01:58:11

Hank Canegraaff had no confusion. I have not in any way gone, oh,

01:58:18

I don't want to talk about this. But here's the problem. And we're almost out of time. We'll pick up with this.

01:58:25

What I said in the video that I posted about Bob Enyart before the debate is being illustrated here.

01:58:31

He just can't hear what I'm saying. He cannot hear that to present a small sliver of what

01:58:38

Reformed people believe on the subject as if it is representative of the whole is misrepresentation. He just, it's all he's ever done.

01:58:45

So his entire teaching credibility hangs on this. So I guess I can understand it. But that's the point.

01:58:52

I have never been slow in affirming what the

01:58:58

London Bapst Confession of Faith says about the sovereign decree of God. But unfortunately,

01:59:04

Bob Enyart won't present that in a meaningful context. So we will pick up,

01:59:10

I will mark right here and say, begin here. And we didn't get very far, but that's okay.

01:59:19

All right. I was not expecting to go for two solid hours, but we did. So there you go.

01:59:24

Wide ranging discussion of a lot of different issues. But Lord willing, we'll be back again on Thursday and we'll pick back up.