Charlotte Report

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.

The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602, or toll free across the

United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

James White. And welcome to The Dividing Line on a Tuesday, the 19th of February.

I think it is anyways, it's difficult to keep track of things these days. We have a quote unquote regular week this week and next week could be ugly.

In fact, if I don't do something on Friday of next week, we won't have any dividing lines at all because I leave on the 24th for Dublin, Ireland.

We have debates on the nights, evenings of the 26th and 27th, University College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin is where those debates will take place.

Just saw that there was a debate in Ireland with Samuel Green and Abdullah Al -Andalusi.

I have downloaded that. Hopefully, remember to throw it on my iPod for my ride this afternoon because I have been told that I will be needing to talk to Abdullah Al -Andalusi on subjects of textual criticism.

I guess he rejects the reading of Monoghanese Theos at John 118 because it's not Byzantine. So we have a

Byzantine priority Muslim that we need to deal with. It should be fun. Anyways, I had wanted to listen to Michael Brown's comments from yesterday on our debate.

Haven't had a chance to do so. That's another thing I'll try to get done on the ride today. Actually, if I got everything done on the ride that I wanted to,

I'd have to be riding until tomorrow. So that's probably not going to work. But I'll try to get to those two things at least on the ride today.

I wanted to listen. Maybe it'd be better that I don't listen. So when I make my comments, he made his comments not listening to what

I've said and I'll make my comments not listening to what he has said about our debate.

But what was it I was going to throw in here before I got into this?

Too many things. I just finished, just packaged up and it's going back out in the mail.

The final draft, not draft, final galleys. This is it. This is the end.

This is the last you're going to see this before you have a book in your hand. A copy of whatever Christians should know about the

Quran. So I know how many pages it is now, thankfully. Well, actually, within a few pages, but I had just written to Bethany and said, you know, that graphic, that picture

I took isn't in here. And yeah, that'll be added later on. So right now it weighs in at 311 pages.

It's actually going to end up being a little longer than that. They went back to end notes, had footnotes, but went back to end notes.

But they're chapter end notes instead of being crammed in the back of the book, which always drives me insane. So that's better than nothing.

And it does clean it up a lot. Some of the footnotes are so big that it really did make it look a little cluttered.

So it is easier to read this way, I guess. But I liked having the footnotes, but they are gone.

They are now end notes again. Very, very small print end notes. And it was amazing.

I was just scanning through it really quickly. I'm just looking for big things and just happened to see this reference.

I said, that doesn't look right. It was a reference to Sahih Muslim. I said, that doesn't look right.

Looked it up and it wasn't right. I don't know where it came from, but ended up having to run around and find the actual

Hadith reference to that. It was 1348, actually. Hadith number 1348, which

I believe is in book four, if I recall. I forget. I had to look it up. But anyways, got that caught and got that fixed.

And so, you know, I have a real good idea what she's going to look like. But other than The God Who Justifies, this is the longest book

I've written in its initial printing. Both The King James Only Controversy and Potter's Freedom have gotten larger than that in the second printing by adding 32 pages to each one.

But other than The God Who Justifies, this is the longest initial printing book that I've done.

So looking forward to that. Do we still have any autographed ones available on the website?

Yeah, we do. Okay. So someone had asked me on Twitter, do you have any of those left? Yep. You can still get into there.

I don't sell many books, folks. I'm just I just write stuff that I hope is going to have value, you know, seven years after I'm dead.

But that generally when you write books that have value seven years after you're dead, they don't necessarily sell real well right now.

Yes. And where can that be found? At store .aomin .org. Really?

Yes. At store .aomin .org. That was just so cheesy. I just decided to let you know. Just thought I'd mention it. Okay. All right.

That's good. Thank you. Anyway, this past weekend, of course, I was in Charlotte, North Carolina.

And very, very interesting weekend this weekend. Very, very interesting indeed. A little disappointed.

I was disappointed primarily due to the fact that Michael Brown and I only got to see each other on one evening and that was to debate each other.

We didn't get together just to talk. We didn't get together to be on the same side in defending the truth or anything like that.

We just met one night and debated a very difficult subject, very challenging subject.

And that was it. So that was somewhat disappointing. I flew in and got picked up by Matt from RTS on Thursday morning.

And Matt, I'm just not going to tell the story. I've told other people the story, but we'll just leave that between you and I. But Matt and I had a little finding the right car issue.

But we got to RTS. And I'm not sure that either

Dr. Anderson or Dr. Kruger will appreciate that I'm going to mention this. RTS Charlotte is a really nice little campus, which is a former

Baptist church, which means that their library has a baptistry in it, which they said, we don't talk about that.

So anyway, and it does look like I've been in a lot of Baptist churches laid out that same way.

But it makes for a very nice, comfortable campus. And I had the opportunity of going there.

In fact, I'm, as Rachel will testify, I'm wearing a very nice RTS Charlotte button down collar

Oxford shirt today with a nice, nice embroidered RTS thing on the pocket there.

Very nice. I appreciate getting that. And anyway, I had the opportunity of giving a lecture on the subject of why

Muslims reject the gospel. And it was well attended and the people really seemed to enjoy it, even though I talked very, very, very fast because I didn't have a lot of time and wanted to say a lot of.

And they did record that. And hopefully Dr. Anderson will let me know if that is going to be posted someplace and I will try to link to it.

And then I had the wonderful opportunity of sitting down with Dr. Michael Kruger, who is the new president of RTS Charlotte.

And if you have not been reading Dr. Kruger's series on whatever Christians should know about the canon on his blog, then you need to look that up.

And if you've not gotten his book, Rethinking, we need to have this book one way or the other.

We need to have it in the store .aomin .org. Thank you very much. If it's not in there, we need to get in there

ASAP. And we got to talk about that and all sorts of other things.

And to my great chagrin, I realized as I was sitting there talking with Dr. Anderson and Dr. Kruger that I was the oldest person in the room.

And I'm just never going to get used to that. It's just a strange feeling.

But I slammed a little geritol and pressed on. Then that evening, of course, was the debate at Southern Evangelical Seminary.

Now, I was informed fairly innocuously.

One of the folks I had dinner with before the debate said that a local pastor had called him and it was just livid that I was being allowed to speak at Southern.

Don't you know how that guy has treated Norm? And Southern Evangelical Seminary was founded by Norman Geisler, of course.

And I, of course, if I had met him, I would have asked him, do you know how

Norman Geisler has treated me, would be the question. But that's neither here nor there. So I knew the whole weekend

I was, you know, I'm the visiting team and I'm the Calvinist and I'm the presuppositionalist.

And while there are a few hiding around here, there and everywhere. And of course, we did have

RTS students that came over. And even Scott Oliphant's son attended one of the things on Friday night.

So I wasn't completely alone, but I was the visiting team. And I knew that and I recognized that and that was fine.

So we had the debate and the actual audio is not yet available.

You're wondering, well, how are you going to play audio? And how is how did Michael Brown play audio on his program?

Well, it's because we both have the same uber geeky pen. We have the

Livescribe pens and I got mine because I saw his and had to have mine. And so we both had our

Livescribes going. And that's why we have sound files to play for you today on our respective programs.

And the debate was not as full as I had hoped that it might be at some point in the future.

We were sort of limited as far as amount of time. There had to be time to allow for audience questions and stuff like that.

But I'll comment on that in just a moment. Then on Friday, I presented a paper at SES during the day.

And then that evening, I thought we were just going to have real informal, and it was informal, get together down in the student lounge at Southern Evangelical Seminary.

And I thought Michael Brown was going to be part of it, but he wasn't able to make it. So it was primarily just me and Dr. Howell, who teaches philosophy there at Southern Evangelical Seminary.

We were supposed to start off with about 15 minutes about how we do theology. Then we're just going to talk about theology.

Well, that sort of happened. But it ended up being a mini debate on apologetic methodology, actually, which

I really wasn't thinking about and really wasn't prepared for. That's just the way it is.

But it was interesting. And we did have a fair amount of good discussion about Roman Catholicism and solo scriptura.

There have been a number of SES graduates who have become Roman Catholics. And so hopefully in the future, we'll have an opportunity to maybe address that there.

And Frank Turk was there. I'll get it right eventually.

And he had some questions on that subject. And so it was an in -depth, interesting, challenging evening.

In some ways, it was just as challenging as the Thursday night debate was. And then Saturday, of course, was supposed to be the debate.

But obviously, I have not seen snow like that in a long time because I live in Phoenix, for crying out loud.

But even the guys there in Charlotte said they had not seen snow like that. And the big concern was that once you got that much snow on the ground and with the temperature plunging, black ice and icy roadways, especially around Southern Evangelical.

And Michael Brown said he was on the other side of Charlotte on his way there. And it was almost not navigable.

And so unfortunately, that was canceled. I'll be honest with you. I will encourage in the future possibility of rescheduling this, that we not do what we were going to do anyways, because I didn't know how it was going to work.

45 minutes for me and Shadeen Lewis to discuss Muhammad in the Bible. And 45 minutes for Michael Brown and James Tabor to discuss

James Tabor's new book, Jesus and Paul. And then get together and discuss exactly what again?

I mean, you could not have two more disparate topics. I would much rather see if we can help

Shadeen Lewis find another Muslim to come along side so that Michael and I can debate he and the other

Muslim on that subject or something along those lines. I think it would be just a whole lot more useful.

And hopefully we'll be able to arrange something like that. I did remember what

I was going to mention. Let me just throw it out here real quickly. And then I will go to playing some segments from the debate from Thursday night.

Like I said, once Southern posts the formal, well -recorded version, then they will be letting you know about that.

But a number of you have sent me the link to a new book that just came out in January, or maybe even the beginning of this month.

I'm not sure exactly when it was, but it has just come out by Sammy Ahmadi titled

Hunting for God's Word. And I immediately got it on Kindle.

I believe the hard copy is on its way. And by the way, sincere thanks to everyone.

Last week, it was an amazing thing when I mentioned the N .T.

Wright materials on the ministry resource list. Not only were they all purchased, but stuff that had been sitting on the ministry resource list.

One book that had been sitting there for a year was also purchased and is sitting on sitting at my desk.

The early Christian commentary series for Accordance was purchased while I just installed it, and that's really exciting.

So it was just wiped out. I mean, there's only one item on the ministry resource list right now, and that's been put on there since then. So that all is incredibly encouraging to me when

I mentioned something regarding the ministry resource list and people respond so quickly and so fully.

Anyway, Hunting for God's Word starts off, and I'm glad that that Samy Ameri is open about this.

He was encouraged to write this book by the example of a book called

Itzhar Ohak. Itzhar Ohak means the demonstration of the truth.

And it was a book written, well, in American history, right toward the end of the

Civil War. But that was fairly irrelevant over in India, where it had its greatest impact.

It was written by Ramatullah Khairanawi, and it was, in essence, the book that has given shape to modern

Islamic apologetics, to modern Islamic dawah. And I would say, in all of its most negative forms,

Itzhar Ohak was a compilation.

What happened was British missionaries were coming into India, Christian missionaries. And Khairanawi responded to them by doing something that Muslims had never really done before.

And that was, he mined all of the liberalism from German critical scholarship.

You know, go read a bunch of stuff from Tübingen and all the liberals of the 18th and 19th centuries.

And put all of that together into a scattergun of barely connected quotations that just paints this horrific picture.

Don't interpret any of it in context. Don't provide any of the response. Don't, whatever you do, seek to have a consistent worldview in responding to this stuff.

In other words, as a Muslim, though you're a supernaturalist, rely completely on anti -supernaturalists.

It doesn't matter. It's okay. Just throw enough stuff out there. Some of it's going to stick. And this was the book that prompted

Ahmadinejad to become a Muslim apologist, to engage in dawah.

And his horrible, horrible scholarship is a reflection thereof. Well, Sami Ahmadi has basically written a new version of Itzar al -Haq and using, again, various and sundry quotations, sources.

Whether the conclusion he draws is a conclusion the author draws doesn't matter. It's just the first chapter had 80 footnotes in it and quotations from Dan Wallace and Bart Ehrman.

And all you got to do is quote one or two scholars and then draw this incredible conclusion that even they would hesitate to even come to.

But again, it's in the same form as Itzar al -Haq. And so it's rather important.

Is something just come? Oh, okay, great, wonderful.

That's nice to see. I was hoping it was hunting for God's word, but it hasn't come yet.

But it doesn't matter. I've got it on my Kindle Paperwhite, which went with me there.

Anyhow, so yes, I am familiar with the book and have started working through it. And it is truly amazing.

I continue the quest looking for the consistent Islamic apologist who will actually say, you know what?

I should use the same worldview. I used to defend the Quran to address the

New Testament. I really, really should. And I just, I have yet to meet that person. And Sami Ahmedi certainly is not that person from what we have seen thus far in that book.

And yes, I haven't mentioned a few times, but not very often. And that's good because the ones that were mentioned weren't very complimentary anyways.

But anyhow, so you don't need to send me any more links to that. I appreciate those of you who did. And we will move on from there.

I only wanted to address a couple things. I generally don't do postmortems on debates.

If I do, it's normally years afterwards. Like remember, we did that long series in response to Patrick Madrid, continuing to make amazing claims about our debate on the veneration of saints and Mary and so on and so forth.

And so we went through it. And I think also in regards to the justification or the Sola Scriptura debate.

And so we went through those things. And so, you know, it'll be useful along the way. And because,

I mean, this isn't even out yet. So as far as the actual audio.

But there were a couple of things that I did want to expand upon or talk a little bit about because I didn't really have time to do so in the context of the debate itself.

And especially when we're talking about these subjects, they are so large and they're so important and they're so central that sometimes

I hesitate to even debate some of these topics because they are so quite literally holy.

We're talking about the highest revelation God has given of his own purpose and his own being. And I think we need to handle these things as carefully as possible.

And in the cross -examination period, Michael brought up a question.

Now, I had been very, very focused. Michael had gotten into atonement issues and things like that. He was a little bit wider in his comments in his opening.

We had literally flipped a coin as to who was going to go first. So he went to first and had final word.

But obviously, I already had a presentation put together, sort of. I had not even timed it and ended up timing out just about exactly right.

It was in about two minutes. And what I chose to do is I went to a text in Isaiah chapter 10.

And it's not just the stuff about the Assyrians either. It's toward the end about the remnant. That remnant that Paul says was chosen according to grace.

And I talked about that remnant and how God said a remnant will return, but destruction has been decreed.

And that these are two truths we have to hold together. And then I really, what

I, over the past number of months as this has been getting closer, what I did is I took the dialogues that Michael and I had done on his program and then on this program.

What was that? 2010, I think. 2010, maybe 2011. Anyway, I took that and I've listened to it a couple of times and I've sort of tried to sit back while writing and listening to it and going, all right, what's the main issue here?

Where is it that we really diverge from one another? What do

I and Michael Brown really need to discuss? And I came to the conclusion that fundamentally and primarily the issue is about as basic as you can.

What is God's relationship to time? How does God know the future?

Does God have a decree? In our conversations, Michael had said there is no decree. And he basically said that again on Thursday evening, that God does not have a divine decree that determines actions in time.

He has a purpose, but it's a general purpose. I'm going to create and at the end of creation, this is what

I'm going to have. This is what's going to happen. How I get there, not a part of my plan.

Which of course I would say, well, that causes all sorts of questions and has to raise the issue of the possibility of failure.

And I said a number of times during the debate, the consistent Arminianism is open theism.

That's consistent Arminianism. And I think that was pretty well demonstrated because I think there were a number of times where Michael still has some reformed thinking back in there from his years as a

Calvinist because he ended up talking about God's plan and he's not an open theist and he's not a

Molinist. And so yes, God has exhaustive knowledge of future events. And yet he has a plan and you put it all together.

And I just don't think that it's consistent. And I think the debate illustrated that a number of times.

But so I was focused on demonstrating two things. That there is a sovereign decree of God where God's sovereignty extends to the actions of men, to all the actions of men.

So there's no such thing as purposeless evil and God didn't just create and go, oh no, look at all, oh, look at that evil

I created. I didn't know that was going to happen. Oh man, I got to get busy and try to make some good come out of this. No, that's not the case.

But then what Michael's argument is, is there's all these places where God says, do this and this will happen, do that and that'll happen.

And so he's talking about God's prescriptive will. And so I needed to establish God's prescriptive will.

And I thought Isaiah 10 did that very, very nicely. And I went to some other texts to illustrate that, but that was the essence of my presentation.

And so we had 25 minutes opening and then 12 minutes rebuttal. And then we had the cross -examination.

And again, I think Michael and I set a pretty nice standard. Any one who says, well,

I won't debate another Christian because nothing good can come out of that. I think we have proven, I think there's two debates especially, that we can present to anyone who says that, that just gives the lie to that argumentation.

That would be this one and my debate with Bill Shishkoe. Because in both, I'm debating a fellow Christian and we're doing so for the benefit and edification of the body.

And it can be done. And in my experience, I know of at least one of the people who says,

I won't debate him because I won't debate Christians. I know at least one of those folks, that's not why you won't debate me. It's just not.

You won't debate me for other reasons. But it can be done and it can be done in an appropriate fashion.

And I think we demonstrated that. So let's start listening to the first cross -examination. This is

Michael asking me questions. And we'll have to play a little bit with the sound because again, this is off of a pen.

But it's not too bad for being off of a pen. So let's just start on a practical level in terms of election predestination.

I'm 100 % sure that I'm a child of God. My sins are forgiven if I was to die right now and be in his presence.

I assume you feel the same. Therefore, since you know that you're an elected predestined, can you say that you know that it's absolutely impossible for you to ever fall away?

Well, you're confusing, I think, creaturely categories of knowledge and divine categories of knowledge. I would take infallibility and infallible knowledge as a divine category.

So in the sense that this Holy Spirit testifies to me of my sonship, as certain as a person can be at that point, given our human limitation, yes.

But I differentiate between any kind of making my certainty the same kind of level of certainty that we have in Scripture.

Now, this issue had come up in our conversations before. We are to grow in the grace and knowledge of the

Lord Jesus Christ. And I believe if you are a Christian and you experience sin and repentance and you learn and you see evidence of God's activity in your life over year after year after year after year, you're going to grow in your assurance.

It's not just, oh, I've got it, boom, that's it. It's a part of experiencing

God's activity in your life. And so when someone says, are you absolutely certain?

I go, well, if you're talking about ascribing to myself infallibility,

I eschew all allocations of infallibility. I am a fallible human being.

And I want no one to think that the truth of the Christian faith is dependent upon me.

I mean, I could get run over by a truck today on my ride, and the truth of the Christian faith will not be affected by that at all.

Let's keep that in mind. And even in 1 John, and that's going to come up in a moment, even in 1

John when it says these things are written that you might know, what are these things? These things are love of the brethren and forgiving one another and so on and so forth.

Isn't that something you grow in over time? And so, hence my responses.

But I have, as a non -Communist, a greater assurance than you. I don't believe so. Ah, well, it says we could know.

John says, I read it, it seems that you could know. So you know you have eternal life. Well, yeah, but you could be deceived possibly. Remember what 1

John chapter 5 says. Well, the fact is, Mike, you and I are both old enough now to know many people who used to stand with us in the church and who made those statements to us.

And we believed them, and they fell away. Yes. And so my ideology allows for that. But so does mine.

They went out from us so that they might be shown they were not truly of us. Right. Some, that's the case. Exactly. The ones that are being described.

And that's why there's warning after warning. Don't harden your heart. Exactly. And we are made partakers if we continue to the end.

So we agree on perseverance. Exactly. So you're saying you're sure. I don't know that we agree on perseverance. I mean,

I think you would think that perseverance is solely by grace. But I believe that perseverance is due to the fact that Christ will not fail to save any of his elect.

That's what I'm saying. So I think we're sort of talking past each other a little bit here because of some previous traditional issues.

Sure, but not God 100 % sure. I'm not divine. So I have to recognize that as far as the

Holy Spirit testifies to my heart, yes. And that's in 1 John 5, by the way, says that you may know what

I wrote these things to you. What were those things? That you love the brethren. That you walk in light. Right, so we have to prove it.

So I grow it. The warnings are real to you. Yes, they are. Okay, fine. Fine. Of course they're real to me.

No, warnings aren't real to me. I mean, I suppose there are some people that take that position, that the warnings are irrelevant to them.

But they are anti -lordship, got my ticket punched, going to heaven, doesn't matter, folks. And I reject that as a false gospel to begin with.

So, you know. That's important. All right. Do you agree with...

Okay, now here we go. Is Algo... I don't see Algo saying anything in chat.

There he is. There he is. Yeah, he is in chat. I'm just wondering how fast it'll be before someone will identify...

The last time I ran into this particular quotation, and I'll tell you ahead of time, it was December of 2003 on the

Bible Answer Man broadcast. Here we go. This is a statement of Calvin that I read. God arranges all things by the sovereign counsel in such a way that individuals are born who are doomed from the womb to certain death and are to glorify him by their destruction.

I do. Doomed from the womb. We even had somebody who made a techno song.

Remember? Who was that? Calvin dude. Calvin dude in channel made a techno song out of doomed from the womb.

Yes, it was the famous read my book debate, which is available at alman .org. Store .alman

.org. Well, there's a link. You go to alman .org. It says store. I don't have to always go store.

That's more to remember. I mean, alman .org is hard enough for people to remember, for crying out loud. But anyway, did you notice what

I said? I said, yes, I agree. I didn't dodge, didn't say,

I agree. And of course, I would say, from his perspective, he'd have to agree.

Because remember, Michael's not an open theist. So when God created, he knew who would be saved and who would not.

And if he knows and his knowledge is infallible and cannot be falsified, then does it not follow that they were doomed from the womb if God's knowledge is true?

And, you know, in his closing, Michael said, you know, my opponent this evening has read more philosophy and theology than I have.

We're both exegetes, but he's written more and read more in that area. Well, I don't claim to be an expert in that area, but certainly

I've had to read in that area. And I do think that there are that there's one of my problems is

Michael keeps saying, well, you know, you asked me if I was a Molinist, I'd look up what a Molinist was. OK, all right.

I don't have any problem with that. I have to look things up all the time, too. Nobody can have all knowledge of all things.

But my concern is that it seems sometimes, at least in the dialogues we had on the dividing line, again, whenever that was sometime over the past couple of years, that the assertion was being made, and I think it was sort of suggested a couple of times

Thursday night as well. Well, you know, you've got your system and you're forced. I'm an exegete. I'm just letting the word speak.

Well, I just don't think that Michael would use that kind of argumentation if, in fact, we were dealing with the

Doctrine of the Trinity. What if one of our opponents were to make the assertion that, you know, you're worrying about all this stuff about the relationship of the persons and, you know, you're just going beyond the text.

You're reading too much theology and philosophy. We just want to be biblicist here.

I don't think Michael would accept that. I don't think he'd accept that kind of argumentation because you say, look, we need to listen to all of what the

Word says, and if we need to know who God is to worship him right, then if God's Word addresses these things, then we need to address these things.

And I, of course, would agree with that statement, and I think it's just as true in this area as well.

And I think it has real practical ramifications pastorally, for the church, for worship, for evangelism, et cetera, et cetera.

And so I don't think it's just, well, I have this system and therefore I allow it to mess with my exegesis and somebody else isn't doing that.

As we have said many, many times, that the person who is blind to his traditions is the person who's most enslaved to his traditions.

And we need to recognize that whether we know what the name is, we have someone at some point in time has thought through these issues and probably named what our position is.

And it just helps to know that so you can read what people have said about these subjects in the past.

Okay, so if there's a mom here, say, with her kids, she's seeking a raise in the faith, it's possible that God could have preordained before he created the world that she would give birth to a child that would be apostate, no matter prayer, raising, no matter what she does, that child will be apostate and will glorify

God by going to hell. Now, this came up in our dialogue as well, and I certainly have not dodged it, but I also realize that a less scrupulous person might make the accusation that this is meant to somehow, in some way, bias certain portions of the audience.

And from what someone told me, there was at least one lady in the audience that it worked quite effectively with. I did hear some rumbling from the audience once in a while.

I know there was one lady that was at least vocal enough that people around her could hear her. And again, she was part of the home team and I'm the visitor, so she wasn't on my side.

And I hear the weight of the question.

Once again, I say Michael's objection actually is just as valid for his own position, whether he'll want to admit it or not, because he can say, oh, well,

I think that the prayers and I think that the actions are all vitally important.

The reality is when God created, he knew, and this is why open theism is the consistent

Arminianism, but he knew that Susan is going to have three children.

He knew that Susan was going to have three children. Now, of course, my point is, from my perspective, he knew that because he decreed it.

From Michael's perspective, he came to know that. Because he doesn't have a decree that forms the fabric of time.

The fabric of time evidently is formed by the free actions of men, not by God's decree. And therefore, when

God created, then there was a point in time where he passively came to know what was going to happen in time, only following his decision to create.

And so he has a general plan and he's doing what he can to sort of make something good come out of all this mess.

But as an open theist would say, again, the open theists are at least consistent here.

They would say when God created, he had no idea who was going to exist in our day. Because he can't know the actions of free creatures or they're not free actions.

And therefore, whether you choose to marry or not to marry or whatever, there is no way he could know that I would exist from the foundation of time itself.

And so there's all of salvation has to be very general and impersonal.

An open theist would just roll their eyes, probably kindly, but roll their eyes at, you know, my name was written on his hands.

Or the idea that at the death of Christ, there was a union of God's people with Christ. It's just their theology does not have room for any of that.

It's not possible. And what I kept trying to press from Michael is, okay, if you're going to say that God has exhaustive knowledge, then are you going to just come straight out and say, and what that means, therefore, is that there was the act of creation and then to preserve the freedom of men, the taking in of knowledge of what the result of that act of creation would be.

So God learned what would happen in the future. He did not know logically prior to creation what would happen.

And if he says, yes, he did, then there's got to be a decree that determines the very fabric of time. And it all comes back to God.

And then all these objections are yours anyway. So going back to the question from Michael's perspective,

God knew that Susan was to have three children and God knew that one of the three would never be saved.

That one of the three would no matter what Susan did, because if he knows what

Susan is going to do, then Susan can't do anything more. Right? If God knows what you're going to have for lunch today, okay, before the program started, because I got to be pretty quick today,

I got to get home, it's going to get really windy this afternoon, then it's going to start raining. And so I've got a certain goal, which any more of my goals are directly related to, what do

I need to get listened to today? How long is that going to take? And what's my average meeting going to be? Do some figuring out. Okay, that's how far

I got to go. Um, so I whipped up some, um, we have a very large supply of canned chicken at the office right now, we discovered.

And, uh, it's good chicken. Was it, was it, was it decent? Yeah, I think it's really good chicken. And, um, so I, I took that chicken and I put some, uh, basic seasoning in it and I put in some salsa and it's sitting in the refrigerator.

And so I'm going to throw it in the microwave and nuke it and throw out some chips and pour that on there. And that's what

I'm going to have for lunch, that and some water. That's, that's what I'm going to have for lunch. And, uh, uh, now that's my plan.

Now, if God knows I'm going to have chicken for lunch today, if that is a part of his divine foreknowledge, can

I falsify God's divine foreknowledge by walking out there and going, man, I just can't do this today. And eating one of my

Hammer Nutrition chocolate chip energy bars and saying it's all I'm going to do or ordering, ordering a pizza.

Yeah, whatever. Can I falsify God's knowledge? Well, the person taking that perspective of simple foreknowledge says, no, you can't.

Because then God would have known for eternity you're going to have the pizza or the chocolate bar or whatever. Um, and so from Michael's perspective,

God knows everything Susan's going to do and she can't do anything more. And if in his knowledge,

Susan does all these things, but that child is never saved as if it's up to Susan anyways, um, then that child is not going to be saved.

That's all there is to it. And so from eternity past, that child is doomed from the womb.

Now, how is it better? This is what I, you know, this is what I'd like to try to ask the people that were obviously so impressed by the question.

How is it better to hold Michael's position than my own? Because you see,

I recognize no one deserves God's grace. No one. My children didn't deserve

God's grace. I didn't deserve God's grace. My grandchildren don't deserve God's grace. God's grace cannot be deserved if it's grace.

That's the whole point of Romans 11. It's on the basis of works. It's no longer the basis of grace.

Otherwise grace is no longer grace. And by the way, there's a textual variant that matters there because the King James then reverses that.

If it's by grace, no longer the basis of works. Otherwise works is no longer works. I reject, not only reject that textually, but theologically.

That is a theologically significantly erroneous textual variant that's found in the Byzantine text.

Because you see, it is of the nature of grace to be free. Works, not the same thing.

Not the same thing. But that's another issue. Maybe we'll talk about it sometime. Anyway, from my perspective, isn't it better to trust the judge of all the earth to save whom he will save to his honor and glory and condemn justly and always justly and always perfectly justly?

And in fact, I was having a conversation with someone this weekend because on Sunday I got to preach at Grace Fellowship Church in Charlotte and had a great time.

The folks were really nice to me there and I really enjoyed that time and hopefully we get a chance to speak there again. And I don't know if they've posted that sermon, but I spoke on Matthew 19 again and homosexuality and things like that.

But I was talking to somebody this weekend and I was pointing out, you know, when you think about it, even to the reprobate,

God shows himself gracious. Think of how many times so as to accomplish his purpose, he restrains the evil of men.

He restrains the evil of men. And if he restrains their evil, then they cannot be judged for doing the evil that he restrained them from doing.

He actually graciously keeps people from piling up all the sin that they would have piled up and been responsible for if they had simply acted out all the desires of their hearts.

God doesn't allow men to do everything that's in their hearts graciously for his own purpose and not salvifically for the non -elect, but only for the elect.

So from my perspective, you know, the question he asks is, should she rejoice in the reprobation of her child?

Well, she doesn't know about the reprobation of her child. None of us can. We do not have access to God's sovereign decree.

We don't know who is. And unless that child dies prior to her and gives just overwhelming evidence of being a reprobate, you know, maybe by joining a false religion or becoming an atheist or something like that, she may never know.

So it's not like, how can she rejoice over the content of God's sovereign decree, which is secret?

You can't rejoice over that. So that's part of the problem with the question. But theoretically, should any

Christian rejoice that God's will is done? So in other words, on a theoretical level, should a mother rejoice that God's will is done, even if that will involves something bad about their offspring?

That's sort of the weight of the emotional element of the question. Now, which is better, to say the judge of all the earth will always do right, there will never be any injustice, and God will extend grace and mercy and save his elect people, or say, well,

Michael, should she rejoice that God has done everything he can, but there's nothing he can do about it?

That God knows from eternity past that one of her children is going to go into a

Christless eternity as a rebel against God, and there is absolutely nothing he can do about it and no purpose to it at all, none, none.

Oh, he can try to make the best come out of it, but it's like cleaning up spilled milk.

It's like cleaning up spilled milk. Which is better? And I just think that if we can put our emotions aside for a moment, the idea that, well, yeah,

God created, and then he learned this was going to happen, and so he learned that as a result of his creation, this person will never be saved, and there's nothing he can do about it, there's nothing you can do about it, you can't pray hard because he's already putting out 100 % effort, and his divine foreknowledge, which he has not determined the parameters of that foreknowledge, the act of creation did that.

Something outside of God's decree created the fabric of time, and now he just knows what it is, and he interacts and tries to make things better, but how does even that work?

When you think about it from that perspective, from a simple foreknowledge perspective, how does even that work? How does God make anything better than he knows it's going to be?

Because once he creates, he has instant foreknowledge of all that's going to happen, this is why open theism is the consistent

Arminianism, but if he has knowledge from eternity of everything that's going to happen, how can he then providentially interact to make anything better happen?

He can't! It's just toss the cosmic dice and that's the way it is. At least in my perspective,

God's decree is for he himself to be intimately involved in his creation.

That's part of his decree, that's what providence is. God providentially, God sovereignly decrees his providential interaction with his creatures in time.

So from Michael's perspective, if he just has simple foreknowledge, then he can't actually make anything better come out of what he knows is going to happen, so he can't save that person.

Yes, I am willing to say he could have saved that person, because I believe God could save everyone if he chose to do so.

It is not his choice to do so. And you say, well that makes him bad. I will never worship a God that doesn't save everybody.

So in other words, you don't have the priorities that the Bible says we're to have.

You say, where does the Bible say we're supposed to have priorities? Well, remember Romans chapter 9? What if God willing to make his power known, demonstrate his wrath, make his power known, do we care about that?

Do we care about that God's justice be demonstrated? Do we care that God's holiness be known? To be honest with you, most

Christians don't. They don't. And if you would say,

I would never worship a God who, if he could save everybody, doesn't save everybody, what you're saying is, I would never worship a

God who is free. Because as my old theology teacher said a long time ago,

Dr. Davis Carroll Martin, D .C. Martin, when you think about it, there's three options.

Either God can save everybody, God can save nobody, or God can save somebody. In which of those three does

God have any freedom? Only by saving somebody. If he saves nobody, we never see his grace, we never see his love, we never see his mercy.

If he saves everybody, we never see his justice, we never see his holiness, we never see his wrath. When he saves somebody, that divine elect, we see all of it.

That's how in the cross you see all of it. You see the depth of his hatred to sin. The depth of his holiness, his justice.

You also see, as a result of seeing that first, the depth of his love, mercy, and grace. So, is it really the question that we need to be asking?

Or is it a question that needs to be asked of everybody, to think about it? The fact of the matter is, that child that was born, I just had my first grandchild, that child was born as a fallen son or daughter of Adam.

And the very fact that death could possibly stalk that young child is evidence that they are already under the wrath of God and fallen in that state.

So, to say, well, it's possible that person could be, quote -unquote, one of the reprobate, that's not the term you use, but I'll utilize the more specific term.

David discovered that. People discovered that all down through history. So, God ordained that and that mother should rejoice then that God has given potentially, if that child dies in sin and rebellion, that she therefore says,

God, you preordain that the child you gave me was going to burn forever in hell to your glory. And that was my role to be rejoicing.

No, what she rejoices in is the goodness of God that has saved her and has given her mercy and rejoiced in the fact that if she has any child that has, in fact, turned, that God, by his grace, had changed their heart.

But shouldn't she rejoice? There's a vast difference between rejoicing in the expression of God's grace and rejoicing in the sense of this question, as in having happiness or something like that.

And that's what I was just interrupted myself explaining. Rejoice in everything God predetermined? I mean, certainly we can't be selective.

If it's what God predetermined, then she should rejoice in it and thank God that that child that she bore was predestined for hell.

But certainly, Michael, you see that the recognition of the question, the foundation of the question you're asking. See, by the way, what she would rejoice in is the expression of God's justice and that God is just and righteous in the judgment of that child, not in the withholding of salvific grace.

That just seems rather obvious to me. Destroy is the distinction of not only

God's word, but our experience of God's word. That is, by saying that you're to rejoice in all things. Obviously, my rejoicing in, say, persecution that comes to me is different than my rejoicing in other aspects of my life.

But you can still rejoice. In the proper sense that, for example, not just that mercy came to August, but that damnation came to her child.

She should rejoice in the justice of God in all aspects, which includes the fact that she has been given life and forgiveness.

I started to try to say something there, but since we're going back and forth, notice I mentioned Sarah Edwards. If you've never read

Ian Murray's biography of Jonathan Edwards, read it. And specifically,

I'm referring there to the amazing response that Sarah Edwards had to the news of her husband's death,

Jonathan Edwards. There's a letter that she actually wrote to her daughter, and her daughter, I think, died before even receiving the letter.

Sarah went through a very difficult time period there. But her response in that letter was just so challenging to me when

I first read it. It was a heartfelt desire upon receiving the news of the death of her husband to not respond in any way that would detract from the glory of God and from expression of love to him for all that he has done in her life and in Jonathan's life and in their children's lives and so on and so forth.

It's just a real testimony to the work of the

Spirit of God in her life. That's what I was going to try to bring up, but never got around back to it. That happens in debates.

And I predetermined that she would give birth to a repudiated child. She should rejoice in that also, because everything

God does is good. There's nothing God does that's bad. Everything God does is good. So that's what he does. I should also rejoice in the rape of that child, because God ordained it, and whatever

God ordained was good. Again, you're changing the categories of what rejoicing means. I don't think when

Paul says, Rejoice in all things, that he's saying that I should, when I stub my toe,

I just grab and go, Oh, praise God! Oh, praise God! That's a ridiculous kind of understanding of rejoicing.

But ultimately, ultimately, in the death room, in the room where death has taken place, our final solace is only that God's will will be done.

When you and I can't know what the outcome is, God's will will be done. That is our solace, and that is our ground of rejoicing.

Yes. All right, Saul. I'll continue on the other side of our five minutes. So then I had five minutes to cross -examine him.

Again, if we are to rejoice in all things, I just have to reverse the question.

What is the grounds for rejoicing in the simple foreknowledge view?

I'm using simple foreknowledge view. It's the closest fit I can come up with with how

Michael has expressed his understanding. And David Hunt, that's not Dave Hunt, David Hunt in the

Views on God's Foreknowledge book, I think it was an IVP 2001 publication, that seems to be the closest

I can get to fitting Michael's position into that. What is the basis in that system?

Let's make application. What is the basis for a mother to rejoice in the birth of any child in that situation?

Because you can't just say, well, you know, if you just raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, then you've got all these promises and God's going to do this, that, the other thing.

If God already knows what's going to happen, it doesn't matter what you do. He already knows what you're going to do. He knows exactly how much effort you're going to make.

The imperfections of your actions are already known to him and you cannot improve them.

Only the open theist can say you can improve them. Michael would have to say, yeah, if God does know all events from eternity past, because he inhabits eternity, then he knows exactly what kind of a parent you're going to be.

He knows exactly how much effort you're going to put into this. He knows exactly how many minutes you're going to spend praying. And he already knows he's going to put out 100 % effort.

And so really the question is this, would you rather have God in charge of who's a reprobate or chance?

Would you rather have God make that decision? Because what I'm saying is from Michael's perspective, that's a decision that's already been made.

Was it made by God for a purpose or by man for no purpose?

That's the question. That's the question has to be thought of. And that has to be the question that, maybe if I was wiser or smarter or something,

I would have just turned around and started by asking him that question. Maybe that's what I should have done. It's really, really easy to second guess yourself in these situations and say, well, you should have just done this.

And so you've been there, and maybe I wasn't allowed to do that.

So we could have this conversation today. Who knows? I don't know, but it's an emotional question, but the most satisfying answer that has lifelong implications and lifelong ability to salve the heart and give you strength and direction is the answer that comes from thinking through it, not by your emotions, but in the light of the revelation of God's word.

And sadly, that's the process that, unfortunately, many in church leadership and pastor leadership do not model, and hence many people do not follow that path.

I wanted to play portions of his closing statement. Maybe we will next time, but at least we got through that.

That was the important part. We will see if we will do that on Thursday, or maybe after all the stuff I listened to over between now and then,

I'll have a bunch of other stuff to talk about. Who knows? We will see, but please pray for us and help support us in getting over to Dublin next week.

Two debates. Need your help. See the website on that. We'll see you next time. God bless. The dividing line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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