Interview with Thomas Ross (Following his Debate with James White)

Everyone, I'm with Thomas Ross, who just finished his debate with Dr.

James White.

I'm getting that right, right? It is Thomas Ross.

That's correct, yes.

Ever since I was born.

Absolutely.

Thomas, where are you from? I was born in San Francisco.

I came to Christ the first time I heard the gospel, clearly, as a freshman at a secular college in Massachusetts.

And we serve the Lord now at, I've moved different places, serve the Lord at Bethel Baptist Church in El Sabrani, California.

What was that last? El Sabrani.

It's in the San Francisco area.

Yeah, yeah.

East Bay.

Okay, so you ended up back in California.

Yes, yes.

Is that where your family is and everything? Well, my family's not believers, but we do help take care of one of my family members who's very elderly there.

Gotcha.

I understand.

But we have several family members that aren't believers as well, and we continue to pray that God will move on their hearts, for sure.

Well, I want to thank you for coming all this way and sharing with us today.

And I want to start out by saying, this is Conversation with a Calvinist.

You told me earlier that you're not a Calvinist.

I am not.

I promise to not try to convince you of Calvinism.

You can if you want.

It's fine.

That's not what my show is about.

My show is just about meeting people, interviewing people, asking questions.

And you were presenting the side for the King James the Superior to the Legacy Standard Bible today.

And what it really seemed to me to turn out to be more of a debate about preservation.

Would you agree that that was the sort of what...

I think that what Scripture teaches about its own preservation is absolutely crucial to this issue.

And whether you take those passages on Scripture, on preservation for what they say in context will answer the topic of the debate.

And I actually want to...

I think that should be what we focus on too.

Some of the things that James points out in his King James Only Controversy book, some of the...

Ripplinger has acrostic algebra, a lot of this weird stuff.

It's good to expose that, but we really need to deal carefully with what God says about his own word.

And if we believe those promises, we're going to recognize the text received by the church is the right text.

And that's going to be establishing my proposition.

So I wanted...

And also the sword of the Spirit is the word of God.

The most powerful thing I can give anybody is what God says in his own words.

So I want people to understand that.

If they understand that, they're going to come to the right position.

Okay.

It's interesting that you had mentioned Gail Ripplinger.

Obviously, I'm familiar with her and also Ruckman and some of the other ones.

How would you differentiate yourself from them? I mean, what would you say...

What would you say is...

I mean, do you support what they've done or what are your thoughts? I think that Mr.

Ruckman and Mr.

Ripplinger are some of the best friends the Nestle-Allen text has.

Because by being so crazy and...

Like Peter Ruckman, one, I hope I'll see him in heaven, if he believes in justification of my faith alone.

But, you know, his alien breeding facilities by the FBI, he wasn't qualified to pastor, divorced multiple times.

I tried reading one of his books.

It was so vitriolic, I couldn't get through it.

I felt defiled reading his book.

So I don't think that he is really helpful for contributing to the defense of TR.

And I think he puts a bad name on King James-Only-ism.

Ms.

Ripplinger, too, I wish that...

I hope that I'll see her in heaven as well.

But James was correct that sometimes she was just taking stuff radically out of context.

Some of her books, she says that you should translate four-language Bibles from English.

You shouldn't use Hebrew and Greek lexica.

That's going to cause the people of God to get worse quality preaching.

It'll hinder their growth.

When I was studying this issue out as a new Christian, when I stopped reading...

I had four Bibles I was originally reading.

I was reading the New World Translation, the New Revised Standard Version, the NIV, and the King James.

When I stopped reading the New World Translation, that was the first one to go, then I stopped reading the New Revised Standard, and then I stopped reading the NIV, just read the King James.

It helped my spiritual life.

I was growing faster because I had a more faithful translation.

If you believe what Ms.

Ripplinger says about, you know, you shouldn't look at Greek and Hebrew, that kind of thing, that's not going to help you grow.

And it also isn't what Scripture says.

The most effective way, I believe, to help somebody who's involved in Ruckmanism is to show them the Bible doesn't say that God would have to restore a lost text in 1611.

God says jots and tittles are preserved.

The King James says your position is wrong.

That's going to do a lot more for a Ruckmanite who, you know, wants to believe...

A Ruckmanite wants to believe, I've got God's Word in my...

I have God's Word in my hands.

That's a commendable desire.

But we can believe that based on the promises of God without going into all this weird stuff.

Okay.

And I appreciate you recognizing that there are some wackadoo stuff that's out there.

Just like there is on James's side.

Hey, I don't...

Not an argument.

Everybody has some wild stuff out there.

So with that in mind, thinking about your position, which is not the position that I hold.

But again, I'm not here to debate you.

You just spent three hours debating.

I didn't put a question in the thing because I thought I might get a chance to ask you.

Okay.

So am I allowed to ask you one question? You can ask me as many questions as you like.

Well, again, not wanting to re-do the debate.

Oh, it's okay.

I had more I could have said.

Well, and I'm sure...

And I probably said it too fast, too.

Well, I was going to say, are you...

How many debates have you done? I've done...

So James has done 170 something.

This is like six or seven or something.

Yeah.

I was going to say, you seem to have a lot to say.

I did, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

And the time limitations.

I've done two debates, and both of them, the time limitations do sneak up on you.

So I get that.

I get that.

The question that I've asked, and I haven't really gotten a good answer, but maybe it's just because I haven't spoken to the right person, is in regard to the Council of Nicaea and Athanasius and the Kamiahonian, which I'm not sure if you even call it that.

I don't want to...

Yeah, yeah.

First John 5-7.

Yes.

The passage.

That's right.

Which I have said that if this is a legitimate text, and I know you believe it is, but we're just for the moment, then certainly it would defend what we believe about the Trinity in regard to God as one in essence, three in person, because it says these three are one.

But we don't see that text in the defense used by Athanasius in his writings and things like that.

Can you tell me why you think that is? Well, they're actually, first of all, I may take a little bit different view on what the church is.

I actually am a landmark Baptist, so I think that the true churches were separate from the Roman Catholic state church throughout the medieval period, and that Baptists are not Protestants.

I would agree with, say, Charles Spurgeon, who said that we were reformers before the Protestants were ever born.

So I'm very thankful that the Council of Nicaea got the deity of Christ right, but I think the true churches had separated from the Roman Catholic state church, or they weren't a state church quite yet, but they'd separated before that time, in the time of the Novation controversy.

So the fact with me that, say, the Waldensian Bible, Pre-Reformation Baptists, had 1 John 5-7 in their Bible, I think is more significant for me than somebody who takes a Protestant view of that history.

I also would point out that Athanasius, for example, in John 1-18, had a son.

He didn't say only begotten God.

So those are some things I would say.

As far as I can tell at the Council of Nicaea, they did not quote 1 John 5-7, but it also wasn't a Trinitarian council, it was specifically about the deity of Christ.

So that's something to keep in mind.

Is the Greek manuscript support for 1 John 5-7 overwhelmingly great? No, it's not overwhelmingly great.

But I believe that there are sufficient reasons to keep it, though you could disagree with that and still come to the conclusion that I took in the debate.

And that's fair, and I appreciate you pointing out the landmark Baptist.

I wasn't aware of that, and I would invite you to do a whole program on just that.

Oh, that would be great, yeah.

I'm going to give you my card when we're done, and maybe I can have you.

I do it through Zoom.

Sure, sure, sure.

We can do a conversation, because I'm curious about that position.

The seminary that I went to sort of took that position.

What was that? Well, Jacksville Baptist Theological Seminary.

I don't know about that.

It's a very small seminary.

I call it Minister Trade School.

It wasn't fancy, but the men loved Jesus, they loved the Bible, they loved me.

Good.

And they taught me how to love God's Word.

Well, the Spirit did that, but I mean, they taught me what it looked like to love God's Word.

Good.

So I'm thankful for those men.

But I went back later, after having gotten my doctorate, I went back and helped teach some classes and do some things.

And one of the classes they had mentioned to me teaching was church history.

And I take a little different perspective, and I said, well, I could teach through the creeds and councils.

And they go, nope.

And I didn't realize the distinction was so massive.

So would you say that all of the creeds and councils then are strictly Roman Catholic? No.

Well, I think if you read the church history of the guy after Eusebius, now his name is skipping my mind.

He continued, it's either Sozomen or Socrates, his name started with an S.

But he continued Eusebius' church history.

And it was interesting.

He records that in the period between 325-381, you had, you know, Arian emperors and you had Trinitarian, you know, Nicaean emperors.

And when the pro-Nicaea emperors were in charge, they persecuted the Arians and they persecuted the Anabaptists, the Donatists and Donatists.

When the Arian emperors were in charge, the reason that the Catholic emperors persecuted the Donatists and Donatists is because they weren't Catholic.

When the Arian emperors were in charge, they persecuted the Catholics and the Anabaptists because they weren't Trinitarian.

He actually mentions that the Anabaptists had the same Trinitarianism as the Catholics.

So I agree and I think this is actually valuable.

I can tell a member of the Watchtower Society, I didn't get the Trinity from a Catholic council.

My people had the same Trinitarianism before this council and after this council and I'm glad they got it right.

But we got it from the Bible.

So I'm very thankful for what they said about the Trinity, but I don't get, and you know, we all know that councils aren't infallible.

Like at Nicaea, they said that the Father and the Son were one person.

Now they defined, the word hypostasis wasn't defined as strictly at that time.

So they didn't mean modalism when they said it.

But that was wrong.

They should have said three hypostases, not one.

So I'm very glad that at 381, they got it right.

One usia, one essence, and three persons, three hypostases.

But I would say I get my Trinitarianism from sola scriptura, only from the Bible.

Nice.

Nice.

Okay.

Well, brother, I want to thank you again.

And I will ask one other thing, because you said earlier about Gail Ripplinger and about Ruckman and if they believed in justification by faith alone, then they're in heaven.

Praise the Lord.

So you would agree then, I think.

And I said if, because sometimes some of those more extreme King James people are more associated with Baptist churches that are more like with Jack Hiles, certain things where they kind of go after repentance.

Ruckman didn't.

But Ruckman's view that there are different ways of salvation, different periods of time, that's terrible.

It's evil.

It's unbiblical.

Well, what I wanted to ask is, you would agree then that even though you hold to a very strong view of what the Word of God is, that if a person believes in justification by faith alone, according to your view, they could be wrong and still be saved? Absolutely.

Okay.

There's many things, if you couldn't be wrong on doctrine and still be saved, I wouldn't go to heaven.

I'm sure there's many things I'm wrong on.

Amen.

Amen.

Thank you, brother.

Thank you.

I really appreciate it.

Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you.