April 28, 2006

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded

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

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

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

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

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James White. Hi, good morning, welcome to The Dividing Line on a Friday morning.

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We had a memorial service yesterday. Some of you who have over the years gone to the prbc .org

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website to listen to sermons and listen to Bible studies will recall that at the bottom of that main page, after you entered into the site, there were three elders listed, myself,

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I am the younger elder, and we have the middle elder, Don Fry, who does the

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Vast Stories of Preaching, and then the elder elder, Elder Don Cross. Almost exactly 20 years between each one of us, about 42 years between myself and Elder Cross, and so Elder Cross went to be with the

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Lord last Friday afternoon while I was away, and so we had the memorial service at the church yesterday at 11 o 'clock in the morning, and then the graveside interment at 3 o 'clock.

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Might have just been able to sneak in here and do the 4 o 'clock

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Dividing Line. I just didn't want to have that kind of time pressure, didn't want to be thinking about anything like that.

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It was a wonderful time. It's a great encouragement when you see a man of God who is faithful to the end.

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I could not help but be reminded, we were talking in channel a couple evenings ago, I think, and someone mentioned at the end of Pilgrim's Progress, which there were two books that Brother Cross kept trying to read, even in his declining health at his mid -80s, his

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Bible and Pilgrim's Progress. And as Christian is entering into the river, he feels like the water is going to overflow him, and was it

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Hopeful that said to him, carry on, my feet have reached the bottom and it's good.

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And you think about that, and it's a great testimony. So that's what we were doing yesterday, and that's why the program is on on a

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Friday, and a lot of folks won't be listening. That's bad marketing on our part, but you know what, that's why we are who we are and not who we aren't,

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I guess is the way to put it. So it is nice to have the freedom to be able to do what we need to do, that's why we don't do the network thing, and people say,

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I've got to be on radio. Nah, you know, if we did radio, we'd probably have to do it every day, and you have hard breaks, and I know how to do all this stuff,

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I grew up doing that stuff. Don't like it. It's not, you know, if someone wants to take what we do here and ship it off someplace else, that's fine, but you know what, the internet works pretty well.

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Once in a while we have some hiccups, but it works pretty well, and people are getting better and better connection speeds, and you know, back when we first started doing this, people would be bouncing out all the time, they'd have a lot of trouble listening, and fewer and fewer people have that kind of a problem anymore, so I think this is just a wonderful way to do it, and besides that, that's just how we're going to do it.

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So there's just not much to argue about. 877 -753 -3341 was just chatting with one of our long -term friends out there, and he had mentioned that he had taken the program

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I did in response to Ergon Kanner, and has been distributing it all over the place, and the

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Lord has blessed that, at least one person who has just never heard the issues put that way, and they're listening and considering more and more about these issues, and I'll have to admit, even after posting two days ago now the blog article concerning the great silence of Lynchburg, nothing has changed.

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No responses from either of the Kanners, and obviously that means they have together decided that they're no longer going to talk to Dr.

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Askell and myself. Now I don't know how you arrange a debate when one side won't talk to the other. Obviously we're going to press on, we are going to, well we actually have that.

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If you have the computer, yes, is this the sound that we should use, waiting for the

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Kanners to respond, and the final

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Jeopardy question is, and unfortunately they are holding up blank cards right now, and they bet all their money, so there's nothing going on there.

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Obviously what I'm going to have to do is I'm going to have to make a phone call.

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Someone on the channel just said, a student there told me last night that he heard one of the Kanners mention the debate just yesterday. Well, okay, great, fine, wonderful.

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I really hope it happens. I'm going to be there, even if it doesn't happen, I still want to come and speak at the church there locally, and make things available to talk to students, but someone may be asking, why wouldn't it happen?

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There are a lot of people in the Southern Baptist Convention who would like to see this not happen.

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There are a lot of political reasons why this shouldn't happen from some people's perspectives.

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They don't want this kind of straightforward encounter to take place, and will they prevail?

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I don't know. I have a feeling as the word has gotten out, the pressures, and as the word continues to get out, and especially as the

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Southern Baptist Convention meets in just a matter of weeks, that there's going to be more and more pressure placed upon, not us,

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I mean, what are they supposed to do to us? You know, I mean, that's the nice thing about being us, is what kind of pressure you can put on us.

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I mean, you know, we live on a teeny tiny little budget, and so we don't have to worry about making this person happy and that person happy, and you know, if Mrs.

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Widget, you know, gave 20 % of our income and they could get to Mrs. Widget, then there might be a problem.

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But that's not us, so not much pressure put on us, and Tom Askle just sort of chuckles at political stuff, and so, you know, what can they do to us?

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But there's a whole lot of pressure that can be put on Jerry Falwell, Liberty University, Liberty Seminary, and its new president,

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Ergon Kanner, and Paige Patterson, of course, is having this wonderful discussion with Al Mohler about the reformed theology and Calvinism at the

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Southern Baptist Convention, and so there's all sorts of political clout in that arena that could be brought to bear to where they, you know, would just say, well, we're not going to do it.

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It would be really hard for me to see Ergon Kanner going, well, we said we'd do it and we said we're looking forward to it, but we're not going to do it.

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They would have to come up with something to make an excuse for this one.

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It would be pretty tough, I think, to come up with an excuse other than, well, we've just decided this isn't a good thing to do.

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So we'll see what happens. Anybody who has the Kanner's ear, you might want to ask them, hey, are you going to like respond to Dr.

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White? He's asked some pretty direct questions of you, and there is that stuff about Romans 9 that you haven't touched on, and there's all these questions that are not getting any answers, and it's not like you've just written back and said, well, you know what?

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I'm really busy right now. In fact, what we're going to be doing on the program here in a moment after we take our first call is

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I'm going to be playing what I expect to be the primary portions of my opponent's opening statement on May 7th.

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You say, how in the world did you get hold of that? Well, Shabir Ali is predictable in the sense that he, you know,

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I've heard his presentations and he uses a lot of the same material.

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And there's nothing wrong with that. What I'm saying is he's consistent. You know, when he travels around, he's talking about the same subjects.

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You better be consistent. I hope I'm consistent when I speak on various issues and in various places. So I'm going to play that section.

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And so I'm very, very, very busy. I mean, I've got a book to be putting together right after that's over with.

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I'm speaking in London on July 4th and 5th at the School of Theology at the

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Metropolitan Tabernacle. September, October, November isn't even you can't even begin to chart that period of time.

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I'm preaching twice as much this summer as I as I ever have before at the church.

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So I've got stuff coming at me. And of course, the blog takes up its amount of time.

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I've got stuff coming at me from every direction. So I understand busy. And I wouldn't have had any problem if Dr.

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Kanner wrote back and said, you know what? Good questions about Romans 9. I can see how people would would wonder about what

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I said. And so I just don't have time right now.

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I've got a, you know, a publishing deadline maybe. And I fully understand those things.

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I really do. I'm under I've got two more articles under deadline right now by the middle of May.

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I'm going to have like a week after the Kanner debate. To or after the Shabir Ali debate to get those done.

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I understand all that stuff. And if you just said I'll get back to you, that would be fine. But they're not responding to anything.

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They won't even allow their systems to send back the return receipt requested. And that's purposeful, since it's two different people in two different states that are doing that.

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So they've just decided, let's let them hang for a while in the wind. And I do

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I find this an overly friendly thing to do? No. Do I find it even an overly mature thing to do?

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No. Especially if you look at the article I put up, I hadn't thought about it. But there is a statement in Dr.

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Kanner's last response to me, it's quoted in my response back to him as to our correspondence, something along the lines of, you know,

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I'll respond if I feel irresistibly drawn to do so. And at the time,

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I just sort of chuckled about it. I thought it was just being a joke. Now that he's gone silent for a week and a half, that would, you know, now

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I'm going, hmm, I hadn't seen that. I hadn't really read it in that way. So so anyway, lots of questions unanswered.

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And one side trying to get the best debate possible. We've oh, by the way, did you see the news?

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Congratulations to Liberty University, they have done something no one's ever done before.

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Their debate team won all three categories of the national the national debate categories, all three of them.

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No one's ever done that before. Look at the list of the people they beat, Dartmouth and Harvard and all these places like that.

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I mean, they've got the best debate program in the United States. Isn't it utterly ironic in light of that?

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That the president of their seminary and the dean of their students is the one who's going, well, we're not free flowing debate, man, there's a thesis statement, we don't need to have no stinking rules, we just want free flowing debate, you know, and we're going, excuse me, but, you know, debate has a purpose, it has a reason.

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There are rules for debate so that you don't use bad arguments, so you don't skip subjects, you don't go off, you know, on wild goose chases and waste everyone's time.

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And isn't it ironic that it's the people, it's the visitors going to Liberty who are the ones who are pressing for the application of meaningful debate format at the championship debate school in the

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United States. Evidently, the dedication to sound debate that exists at the undergraduate level has not quite gotten up the chain, shall we say, to those at the top.

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And we can only hope that that will take place. Anyway, 877 -753 -3341, the phone calls coming in, need to get through those so we can get to the

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Shabir Ali presentation. Let's talk with Jimmy. Hi, Jimmy. Hello, Jimmy.

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Hey, how are you doing, Dr. White? Doing all right. Hey, well, God bless you and your ministry.

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I do give glory and honor to God for men who have been called to provide the services to the body that you do.

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My question deals with this. I've been on the, I'm sure you're familiar with the Baptist Fire website, and there was a quote on this website, it was an article.

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If you get on the Baptist Fire website and go down a little bit on the left, there's a link down there to Dr. Umar Towns from Liberty University.

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And he makes this quote right here, and I've not heard an Armenian quite state it like this, and I was going to get your perspective on this.

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OK, hold on, hold on just one second. I'm looking for Umar Towns.

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You said on the right hand side or? It's on the left hand side. Left hand side. Halfway down, and it's going to be a link to Agape.

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OK, we've got, well, there's the link to Kanner's sermon. Probably not giving any links to my response to it.

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What do you think? No. Yeah, I didn't think so. No. And then I've got Bailey Smith.

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W .A. Criswell, Vance Havner, Alvin Reed, Adrian Rogers, Paige Patterson, Paul Pressler, Vance Havner, and then

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I ran out of room. Did I miss it? Yeah, I think you missed it. It's probably towards the upper third portion of it. It's kind of hard to see.

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W .A. Criswell? No, it's Dr. Umar Towns from Liberty University. And what it deals with is it's a response from him.

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It's called Theologians Differ on All for Whom Christ Died. And it's

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Dr. Towns commenting on Dr. Muller's views. All right.

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Well, I can't find it, but you go ahead with it. And I wanted to be able to look at it. And I'm just not

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I'm just not seeing it on the left hand side anywhere. I've seen all sorts of other stuff, but I don't find that one.

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Yeah, and I looked it back up this morning just to make sure that it was, in fact, still there. But anyway, here's here's the quote.

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It says, this is Dr. Umar Towns. It says, Jesus died for all. No man goes to hell for his sin.

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People go to hell for unbelief. They have not to live. They have not believed in Jesus Christ, Towns says.

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Therefore, the atonement covers the sin of every person. But that's not universalism. We must give them the message.

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They must believe. I mean, the obvious implications of this. Well, first of all, it just seems to me that turns the gospel upside down and on its on its head there, because,

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I mean, the implication of this is that there is no man walking around whom

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Jesus hasn't paid for his sin. Therefore, the only sin that somebody would pay for in hell is unbelief.

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And I'm just kind of curious that you heard in any of your debates or communication, somebody come at it from that perspective.

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Yes, in fact, it's quite often. And I finally found it. It is a little teeny tiny link to Agape Press. But yes, very, very common.

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And I've run into it many, many times where people do say that Christ has borne the punishment for all the sins of mankind and they are no longer held accountable for those things.

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The only issue is belief or unbelief. Now, of course, there's a little problem with that. And the most major obvious problem with that is unbelief is a sin.

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And if Christ did not atone for the sin of unbelief, then we are all in in well, we're all lost because that is a sin in God's sight, just as anything else is.

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So you can't find anything biblically to to divide up the kinds of sins for which

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Christ atoned in his death so that everything is covered except for this one particular thing.

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But yes, I've run into it many, many times. And the way to respond to it is to to demonstrate, first of all, that unbelief is a sin, as I just as I just mentioned, and therefore challenge where this distinction comes from.

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And then secondly, to demonstrate that faith itself is the gift of God. It's not given to every single individual.

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It is related to the work of regeneration. These are things I've I've tried to do, and you can get in, you can go directly into the text and do these things if you can find someone who will actually sit down with you and do it will actually actually cares enough about what the word says.

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I last week I played a citation from just a little brief section, the definition of the five points from Dr.

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Wilkes down in Alabama, and I had written to him and we started corresponding. And what I appreciated was at least when he wrote back to me initially, it wasn't, you know, the kind of bombastic response you get from a lot of folks.

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It was it was a nice conversation. And we've been going back and forth. But but I haven't succeeded in getting him to actually engage the the text itself with me.

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And in fact, I've invited him on the program. He even asked his first email that that he have an opportunity to respond to what I would say on the program.

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I said, great, would love to have you on. Love to talk about John six with this stuff like that. But the last thing

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I got from him was, you know, I'm really busy and maybe someday we'll do John six. But I don't have any more time for this right now.

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And I had sent him the exegesis, John six. I had sent to him discussion first on five one in comparison, first on two twenty nine.

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If we can get in the text, we can talk about these things. Then we can deal with them. But I don't find, especially the

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Baptist Fire Anonymous type people to have any interest in engaging the subject on that level.

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I just I just don't find them to have that kind of interest. They want a monologue, not a dialogue.

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So, you know, what can I say? Well, you know, the interesting thing, too, that I found out is that as I clicked on the

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Baptist Fire website, in fact, if you're on the website, there's another link at the top where it says another pastor recants

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Calvinism. That's a pretty interesting article when you go to read it, because he is a young pastor and stuff and you can go to their website and take a look at it.

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But when you read these articles, I mean, even the stuff that I've read from Dr. Adrian Rogers, it seems everything is that a basis of sort of an emotional appeal that, you know, we

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Calvinist or somehow these, you know, we're we're baby haters and all this other stuff. And it really just ends up being an emotional appeal, which is it makes it very difficult to deal with, because if you can immediately tap into people's emotions, they will tend to know that, you know, that's how they're going to come at it and sort of isolate scripture that way and not really give you an opportunity to come at this from a biblical perspective and to show them, say, yes, this is in fact what

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God's word said. And it ends up being more of a man -centered gospel than it does a

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God -centered gospel, which our ultimate purpose is to glorify and honor him and enjoy him forever.

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And if that's our perspective, then we're not going to have an issue with appropriately understanding what the word is telling us.

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Yeah, quite true. There's no question about the fact that there, you know, you will actually even hear individuals make the assertion that, well,

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Calvinism appeals to the intellect and as if there's something wrong with that, as if God didn't create the intellect or something.

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And it really does go back to the fact that people who want to think in a logical, rational way and want to honor

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God by believing everything he said rather than just, you know, picking and choosing are going to think about these issues.

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They're going to want to come to conclusions on these things, and when people start discouraging them from coming to conclusions on these things, they're going to wonder why in the world this is.

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And so we see this happening all the time. I just did click on that link, and this is interesting.

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I'll have to read what this is. It's not an overly long thing, and it goes all the way back to, you know,

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Adrian Rogers. But I'll have to take a look at that, and maybe it would be worthwhile responding to that on the blog.

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We'll see. Anyhow, actually, you know, I don't spend a lot of time looking at Baptist fire, and the main reason, and I should,

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I should probably spend a little more time, but the main reason is these people are anonymous, and I'm sorry, they won't stand behind what they say.

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They don't want a dialogue. They don't want a monologue. They won't put themselves in a position of being held accountable for defending their own position on the same grounds they accuse others of errors, and I have a hard time respecting someone like that.

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I really do, you know. I mean, I am what I am here and at church and all the rest of the time.

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You know, what you see is what you get, and if I'm going to hold other people to a certain level of accountability, well, so am

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I. That's just the way things work, and when people don't do that, it really bugs me. This is all there is to it.

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So I probably don't look at them as much as I should. All right? All right. Well, God bless you, brother.

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Thank you for your time. All right. Thanks a lot. God bless. All right. Bye -bye. All right. Well, the phones are lining up.

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Oh, is that the guy in Georgia? Yeah. Did you put them on line 13? Yeah. Okay. Line 13.

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That's the one that rings in the outer reaches of Mongolia. Yes.

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Yes. As soon as we get to that call, the lights are going to dim in here, and I'm going to start misspelling everything that I'm typing in channel.

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All of a sudden, the phones have gone nuts -a -burgers here, but we'll see if we can't get to the – look at that.

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Hang up one. It's immediately ringing again. So who knows where you get the Shabir Ali. I may have to just say, all right, hold on, everybody.

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Let me at least get to Adam real quick. Hi, Adam. How are you doing? Hello, Dr. White. Doing good.

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I was going to tell you, I heard Dr. Canner's sermon. I listened to it before you responded to it, and some of the stuff was just so offensive that I sat down and I wrote him a letter.

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Oh. And I was a long one. I told him – I said, I'm not trying to convert you to Calvinism, I said, but the problem that I'm having is the method of your argumentation.

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And I told him, I said, the name -calling, I said, is really bad when you say

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Calvinism is an infection, things like that. A virus. Then we can just go back and forth, and I can say, well,

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Arminianism is a diarrhea. You can say, well, Calvinism is a headache.

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I'll say, well, that kind of a name -calling won't get anywhere. And I told him that I didn't like misrepresentations, misuse of terms, and I challenged him on that stuff.

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And you think you're getting the silent treatment? He hasn't written me back. Well, you know, I've noticed – well, maybe that's why your letter was so long that he can't get to mine because he's responding to yours, but I have noticed –

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I think Dr. Canner tries to respond to too many letters because, in my experience – and by the way, let me just make sure that everyone hears me when

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I say this. If you choose to write to Dr. Canner, please, please, please do so with the greatest level of patience, love, kindness, and respect possible that reflects well upon the truth you're attempting to speak with him.

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But I've seen the responses he fires off to people, and they're frequently two sentences long, and they don't look good.

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You can't provide enough context in two sentences to avoid people going, what in the world are you talking about?

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I mean, he made a reference to someone, and he mentioned about my hatred of God or something.

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And it's like, what do you mean by that? And I even asked him what he meant by that, and he wouldn't respond to it.

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But later on, listening to his sermon and stuff, I think what he meant was that from his perspective,

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I would rather preach that God hates people than God loves people. Now, he's wrong about that, but it wasn't my hatred of God.

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It was preaching the concept that God actually hates sinners, which the Bible says he does, but those sections have been effectively decanonized in much of evangelicalism.

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But as it may, there wasn't enough context given in this two -sentence response to avoid misunderstanding there.

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And so from my perspective, Rich doesn't even send me a lot of those emails.

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There'd be no way that anyone could ever work again around this place if all we did was answer the number of emails that come in.

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This is not possible. We don't have that kind of a staff, and evidently, it seems that Ergon Kanner tries to respond to each thing himself.

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You can't do it in a meaningful way without getting yourself in trouble, so that's been my experience. I have a feeling that, especially as this conversation has gone on, that eventually

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Dr. Kanner has decided, look, I'm just not going to engage these folks anymore, and maybe that'll change in the future.

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I don't know, but it's one thing for him to decide not to respond to the Calvinists who are writing to him.

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It's another thing, I'm not just the Calvinist who's writing to him. He's supposed to be debating me, and so there's supposed to be some give and take here.

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There's supposed to be some discussion, and right now, like I said, it's just really, really quiet. Well, thank you,

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Adam. I appreciate the call. All right. God bless. Bye -bye. Let's grab one more real quick and then get to Shabir Ali.

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Let's talk with Mike. Hi, Mike. How are you doing? Hey, Dr. White. How are you today? Doing good. Excellent. Hey, listen, a couple of comments and thoughts on your conversation,

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I guess, with Joe, the Pentecostal minister. Yes, yes.

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Just out of curiosity, was he from the Assemblies of God? I believe so.

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I'm looking over at Rich because, see, he had called, I don't know, was it six, nine months ago? It was well before we started moving.

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And he had had conversations with Rich, and you heard him talking a little bit at the beginning.

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He's still sort of upset about the fact that, in essence, Rich said to him, well, you know, you may feel like you're called to debate

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Dr. White, but we do have some standards as to the people we're going to debate and what have you published, what are your degrees, you know, if Dr.

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White said, all right, then how do you parse this particular Greek verb? Would you have any idea?

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Would you have to, you know, how could you do this? And he took offense at that and I think is still somewhat offended by that from the comments he made at the beginning.

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So my recollection is, yeah, he knows, for example,

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Sam Shamoon up there in Chicago. Then again, everybody in Chicago knows Sam Shamoon. But I think it is an age -y church, yeah.

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Okay, yeah, the reason why I asked you, Dr. White, was because I'm from an Assemblies of God background.

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And I'm no longer in the Assemblies of God. But I would respectfully challenge any of my

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Pentecostal brothers and sisters who are currently listening to your program and ask them, along with Joe, if they have ever heard a sermon or have studied any materials regarding God's electing grace and salvation.

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You just don't, you will never hear that. At least I never did in my 10 years in the Assemblies of God. I never heard one sermon on that very matter.

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So when I was listening to Joe, I thought to myself, you know, chances are probable, if not certain that he hasn't really read much material on this subject.

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You know, I know he had concluded by saying something to the effect of, I don't think

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I'm alone on this. And I thought to myself, to me that was quite revealing.

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Because I thought, you know, he probably hasn't, and I don't want to obviously attack the guy, but I was thinking that chances are probable, like I said, he hasn't really researched anything.

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With regard to, of course, I know you guys were touched upon Romans 9, John 3, 16 and the like.

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But, you know, when I hear somebody, and I've had plenty of encounters with AFG people on that, and I look at that basically as someone committing the logical fallacy of an appeal to prestige.

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You know, perhaps you're saying, well, based on the opinions or testimonials of a certain individual, basically that gets it.

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I've been subject to that a lot. It's not just the AG folks. I mean, that's what you get from a lot of our

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Southern Baptist brethren. And, you know, all you got to do is just appeal to popularity at that point.

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And there's no question that they'll always be able to... I mean, I've had people say, well, look at the history of the church.

30:06

Look at people down through the centuries. Look at the early church fathers. And you know what? If that's what determines truth, if it's a matter of popularity contest at that point,

30:16

I would simply point out that the fundamental things that are most offensive about the biblical presentation of the natural man is the fact that God's a potter and we're the clay, and that he's holy and we're sinful, and that we are completely dependent upon him.

30:31

Those are clearly biblical teachings, yet they're clearly offensive to the natural man. They're offensive to many, many people, even to a lot of religious people.

30:40

And so I'm not surprised that the proclamation of those truths will always be something that is, in the long run, the least popular perspective to take.

30:51

I mean, look at how those truths are treated even within secular context today.

30:58

They're mocked as being against having a good self -esteem and all the rest of the stuff.

31:03

So that doesn't surprise me at all. You look at the early church writers, many of them not even functioning with a complete can of scripture, and it doesn't surprise me at all that they would take a perspective that would emphasize man's sovereignty over God's sovereignty.

31:21

If we didn't have a sure word from God, how in the world would we even be able to argue these things?

31:27

I'm sorry, go ahead. Anyway, that's why I really appreciate Reformed theology, because, like I said, coming out of the

31:33

Assemblies of God, it wasn't a grace -centered theology. I did not at all experience that.

31:40

It was mostly people dealing with their personal experiences becoming very man -centered. Yes, well, let's face it.

31:48

I mean, I want to be kind to any of my Assemblies of God listeners, but my experience in the vast majority of that particular situation is a very emotionally -driven form of worship that in essence functions as a battery recharge each time you get together.

32:06

And the idea of doing verse -by -verse exposition, exegesis of the text, so on and so forth, that doesn't provide you with the context.

32:18

That's not going to provide you with the real exciting stuff, and so you get to pick and choose what you're going to preach about. And so, like you said, ten years, you never heard anything on that.

32:28

I heard last night, one of our channel regulars came in to channel from up at the

32:33

Together for the Gospel conference that's going on right now, Sproul and MacArthur and Piper and Moeller and just a whole group of folks.

32:43

And he mentioned that Dr. Piper had preached on the glory of expositional preaching.

32:50

And I'd like to hear that, but, you know, I would, if someone would say, well, glory, yeah, it's glorious because it opens

33:00

God's mouth. In other words, when we choose what we are and are not going to preach about, we are in essence editing

33:06

God. But if we, in a disciplined fashion, really seek to handle the entirety of God's Word, it's glorious because we are hearing everything that God would have for us.

33:18

And that's why, you know, people listen to what I mentioned here on the program a couple weeks ago. I was just blown away when my fellow elder,

33:26

Don Fry, chose, first of all, he chose to preach on Sunday evenings the book of Numbers. That's the first thing that was amazing.

33:34

But then when he preached on the section in Numbers that has the priestly methodology where if a husband questions his wife's fidelity, he actually preached a whole sermon on that and really made it, he really made it work, not by just leaving the text, but by demonstrating how it was relevant and so on and so forth.

33:54

And I thought about that and I thought about how rare that is in these days.

34:01

And, you know, people find that odd, strange, weird, and that's why, you know, let's face it, there's a lot of bigger churches than mine.

34:09

I'm sure a lot of folks would sort of mock our little congregation because, see, you must not be doing something right.

34:16

That's what you usually get. That's usually the comment. That's right, except that your average Southern Baptist pastor is at a church between 18 months and 30 months.

34:26

And Don Fry has been at Phoenix Performed Baptist Church for 33 years. You look at that, and I'm still thinking about the memorial service yesterday, and you look at it from the eternal perspective, and that sort of changes the viewpoint just a little bit.

34:40

I would say so. I would say so. And, you know, the thing being, as far as the sermon that Dr. Piper had given, it almost kind of reminds me of Dr.

34:49

Askell's Founder's Journal. Yes. The fall edition had a good essay on the preaching on the doctrine of election.

34:58

And I was just really jazzed by that because, you know, like I said, I'm somewhat of a newbie to the doctrines of grace. And that really touched me because, like I said, all those years in the

35:06

Assemblies of God, that was simply a subject that was completely absent. Right. Well, obviously, you know, the important balance to maintain there is when you go for 10 years without it, it's really easy to go for two years on nothing but that.

35:22

And that's what you have to avoid. We call it cage -stage Calvinism, where we take the new

35:28

Calvinist and stick him in a cage so he doesn't hurt himself or anybody else. And I'm not sure who came up with that.

35:34

I know Sky Man on our channel, a Presbyterian pastor in Georgia, was the one who first used that, and I thought it was a good description.

35:41

But you won't hear the quote -unquote five points of Calvinism in every sermon at the

35:46

Phoenix Foreign Baptist Church. If it's in the text, it's always there in the background, obviously, because the sovereignty of God's in the background of the entirety of Scripture and His holiness and so on and so forth.

35:55

But you're not going to hear that. And that disappoints some people, but it just simply flows from the fact that we want to be honest with the

36:03

Word of God and let the Word of God determine where our emphasis should be. And, man, if we could just get other people to do that, think of all the stuff that that would directly address and help.

36:13

Yeah, and that's why I really appreciate your works. As a matter of fact, your books on Sola Scriptura was great, and I have a buddy of mine that I'm really working on as far as reading that book.

36:26

He's actually right now in the Assemblies of God. To get them, just a whole different perspective. But I really appreciate your keep on going back and putting your finger on the text.

36:36

Well, that's what you... I'm not smart enough to do anything else, basically. I'm sort of limited.

36:42

I know I could probably grow this ministry into some big, huge megalopolis here, but I just ain't smart enough to do it, so I've got to stick with what

36:52

I can do. Hey, brother, thank you for your call today. Take care. Bye -bye. 877 -753 -3341.

37:00

Is that the guy in Georgia still on Line 13? That's that blinking light, is there? Good. So we can listen to Shabir Ali for a while.

37:06

And then... And then come back. Like I mentioned to you,

37:13

Shabir Ali is a consistent presenter of information. So I have a distinct feeling that much of what was presented in his debate against Jay Smith a number of years ago,

37:26

I think over in England, Scotland. Yeah. It's going to be the same material that we're going to be hearing in the brief, very brief period of time that we have to do our debate coming up in, what, about nine days from now.

37:47

So I'd like to... I have to skip over the portion where he's talking about the Quran. It would be something that would be very interesting to engage in because there's much to be said there.

37:56

But I'd like to specifically get to Shabir Ali's use of sources, because this is going to be one of the main things.

38:01

If you're going to be in attendance, and they're expecting... I got an email, I'm not sure if I mentioned this to you, but I got an email expecting between 1 ,000 and 3 ,000 people in attendance for this debate.

38:13

So it could be one of the largest debates we've ever done. And one of the...

38:18

If you're going to be there, one of the things you're going to hear me say is, since we're both theists, in fact we're both mono -theists, then upon what grounds can a

38:30

Muslim consistently deny the inspiration of the New Testament text? Especially in light of various texts in the

38:37

Quran that very clearly show a very positive viewpoint toward both the

38:42

Old and New Testament texts. What consistently... Now, if Shabir Ali will not embrace those scholarly sources that would look at the

38:53

Quran and say, well, you know, since we don't have any early evidence of this, we have the story about Uthman and we have these...

39:03

Well, this person said this and this person said that, but that's not documentary evidence. Since the earliest documentary evidence even then shows alteration within the conservative perspective within Islam.

39:16

What do I mean by that? Well, the Uthmanian revision. Uthman gathers up all the copies of the Quran, he makes his own version, burns the rest of them.

39:23

You wouldn't have to do that if there wasn't corruption in the text already. But even at that, there are many who would say, well, you know,

39:31

I don't think all this goes back to Muhammad. I think that there was a lot of other people involved with this and there was redaction and so on and so forth.

39:37

If he won't accept redaction theories regarding the construction of the Quran, then logically and consistently, given that the

39:45

Quran is 600 years closer to us, half a millennium, more than half a millennium closer to us, if he's not going to accept that kind of scholarship in regards to that, then obviously we're not going to hear him promoting any type of radical, undocumented form criticism, redaction criticism of the

40:06

New Testament either, right? Well, wrong. I'm going to play something here,

40:13

Mr. Pierce. Hello, I'm just waving at you because as soon as I do that, you look over the phones and it's like, no, over here, here we go.

40:20

Now this collection of hadith literature would be quite comparable to what we have in the

40:27

Gospel. Christian scholars tell us that the Gospels went through a very detailed process before they reached their final consummation in our present and four

40:40

Gospels. In our Bibles, we have Matthew, we have Mark, we have Luke, and we have

40:46

John, the four Gospels. But were these initially composed the way we have them today, according to this chart found in this book entitled

40:54

Key to the Bible, Volume 3, we must realize that before final

41:00

Matthew, there was intermediate Matthew. Before final Mark, there was intermediate Mark. Before final

41:05

Luke, there was proto -Luke. And before final John, there was a previous John.

41:11

And even these documents are not the very earliest to be composed to record the sayings of Jesus on whom be peace, but rather, prior to these, we had documents

41:20

A, B, C, and Q. They're called by these names because today these Gospels are not available anywhere, and scholars can only try to reconstruct them through painstaking study, trying to work backwards from the existing documents.

41:35

In other words, scholars comparing the Gospels can try to decipher what must have been a common source from which two or more

41:44

Gospels were derived. Let me stop right there. Well, there you go.

41:50

Citation of one source, no authors given, that uses a radical form, totally undocumented.

41:58

What I mean by undocumented is, as he himself says, no one's ever seen these alleged documents. No one has ever seen an intermediate

42:05

Mark or an intermediate Matthew or a proto -Luke. He quotes from Raymond Brown in other contexts about the alleged formation of John and all these things.

42:18

These scholars are all creating a theory, basically they're trying to get published in essence, and they're creating a theory saying, well, based upon word usage here and word usage there,

42:28

I would say that Luke went through this process, and in this period of time, the

42:33

Christians would have had these concerns, and so these elements of Luke would have come from that period of time, and then as that was read by the next generation, they would have had these concerns, and so these elements would have come from them.

42:44

And it's all based upon, in essence, an evolutionary theory of all of the

42:50

New Testament documents, that they could not have ever been written in the form they were written in.

42:57

The Jesus they present could never have existed. That's a presupposition that most of this stuff comes with.

43:06

The Jesus that they present could never have existed, therefore we have to explain the evolutionary process whereby he came into existence in these later writings.

43:16

Now, you can see where the problems are here, and why it is inconsistent for a believing

43:23

Muslim to utilize this kind of an attack upon the New Testament. Not only is this not something that Muhammad did.

43:29

Muhammad, in the Hadith, had the Torah, which had been...

43:36

Remember your history here. This is very, very important. Remember your history.

43:42

Muhammad dies right at the end of the first third of the seventh century. 630 is in that area.

43:52

Now, just put this on your timeline. Put this in your mental picture. So there's only been if we put the very end of the writing of the

44:02

New Testament, if we put John as far back as we can, about 98 or so, there's only been about half a millennium.

44:09

500 years of transmission. Now, by the way, we can clearly demonstrate the nature of the

44:16

New Testament text long before Muhammad. We've got the entire New Testament in its fullness in the manuscript tradition long before we get to Muhammad.

44:27

So, we can tell you what it looked like at that time. Muhammad took the

44:32

Torah. Now, the Torah, we're talking the writings of Moses. 1400 years before that, so we're talking almost 2 ,000 years of transmission at this point.

44:46

And he had that placed upon a pillow, a sign of respect, and said, I believe what is in this book.

44:52

Now, remember a couple of other things. Muhammad was illiterate. He was an unlettered man.

44:58

Not just in the sense of not having been trained in a special way, but Muslims will say he could not read.

45:05

And what's more important than that, the New Testament had not yet been translated into Arabic. He did not have access to the

45:13

Christian scriptures in a direct fashion. He certainly didn't read Hebrew. And so, when he

45:21

I think clearly indicates, I mean, he says to the people of the book, he says to us, test what he is teaching by what has been revealed to us.

45:31

Well, what's that? The New Testament? The New Testament. So, he felt that what he was teaching was consistent with what was in the

45:39

New Testament, though he didn't have the New Testament to be able to check these things out. Later generations, once the

45:46

New Testament is available in Arabic, and later generations as Islam becomes an established religion, you've got the apologetic encounters taking place, all of a sudden they realize you know what?

45:54

What the Qur 'an teaches, and what all the New Testament teaches, they're very different things. The Qur 'an denies the crucifixion of Christ, yet that is the central message of every layer, every element of the

46:06

New Testament text. And so, that's when you start seeing the attacks by Muslims upon the text of the

46:12

Bible. And that develops later on down the road. But Muhammad didn't do that because Muhammad didn't know that what he was saying was contradictory to the

46:19

Bible. He was ignorant, he didn't know. That's all there is to it. And so, when you keep that in mind then, what

46:26

I'm saying is Shabir Ali is inconsistent to utilize this kind of left -wing, unsubstantiated, ahistorical argumentation against the

46:40

New Testament, which is 600 years, 500 years older than his own documents, when there are people who use the exact same kind of argumentation in regards to the

46:53

Qur 'an, the exact same type of argumentation saying the Qur 'an is the result of a community effort and that it developed and evolved over time, he rejects that.

47:06

Notice how he said, Christian scholars tell us. Would he call someone who would present the same kind of theory regarding the

47:14

Qur 'an, a Muslim scholar? I doubt that he would. So, if inconsistency is the mark of a failed argument, then being inconsistent and utilizing this kind of unprovable theories, and it is completely unprovable theories.

47:33

There is no documentary way of substantiating these alleged pre -documents.

47:40

And it requires, interestingly enough, Shabir Ali to assume the exact opposite of what he assumes with every person in his own

47:49

Muslim line. What do I mean by that? If I had played the previous portion of this, you would have heard him saying, well, we have two witnesses and they heard

47:57

Muhammad say this. And in the next generation, there's five witnesses that heard these witnesses say that Muhammad said this. And you've got this memorization, and we have to assume the honesty of these original recorders.

48:10

Except when we come to the New Testament, we have to assume the dishonesty of all the original recorders.

48:17

It's exact 180 degrees opposite. For the Muslims, everybody could memorize everything

48:22

Muhammad said, and everybody is the most honest person on the planet. That's for their sources.

48:28

When it comes to the New Testament, nobody could memorize anything Jesus said. And everybody who recorded it was just out to change things and corrupt the viewpoint about Christ and so on and so forth.

48:38

The inconsistency is absolutely amazing. And it is the mark of a failed argument.

48:44

It is the mark of error. This kind of material,

48:51

Shabir just really needs to recognize, is not something that's going to really assist him along those lines.

48:56

This way, scholars come up with a conclusion that the Gospels we have today, as we have them, were not originally composed in the present form.

49:07

So what I've tried to establish there is that when we talk about the Gospels, when we talk about much of the material in the

49:13

Bible, we're talking about something quite comparable with the Hadith literature among Muslims, not the

49:19

Quran. Even more so, Muslims also have what is called Sirah, a record of the life of the

49:27

Prophet Muhammad, on whom be peace. A kind of detailed story, beginning with his birth and ending with his death, telling us what he said, what he did, where he went, and how he received the glorious Quran from God.

49:39

That would be more of a kind of a biography. And in fact, this would more compare with what we have in the

49:46

Gospels, because the Gospels are of a similar nature. Now let me mention something here. At first he was comparing the

49:52

Hadith literature, which is the traditions, with the New Testament. Now he's talking about the life of Muhammad, and that's even more like the life of Jesus.

50:00

We need to realize something. From the Islamic perspective, there is a fundamental flaw in the nature of our scriptures.

50:08

And the fundamental flaw is, our scriptures are different than the Quran. The Quran is the ultimate authority.

50:14

Everything else is read through the lens of the Quran. And since the Quran is allegedly an eternal book, it is not men speaking from God as they are carried along by the

50:25

Holy Spirit. It's one guy, single off. You don't have to worry about comparing Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

50:31

You don't have to worry about comparing Paul with James. You don't have to worry about any of those things, because you've got one guy, and even when he contradicts himself, it's just the law of fabrication, and everything is okay.

50:42

But you've got one guy, you've got 23 years. Instead of the New Testament, where you've got

50:47

I would say about 60 years, 55 to 60 years. And the

50:52

Old Testament, you're looking at 1 ,000 years, during which you have this compilation.

50:59

Now, some people will say, well that's a real advantage to the Muslim. Well, in one sense, but the disadvantage is, the only way you can really end up believing what

51:07

Islam says is you just simply have to accept the authority of Muhammad. You can't demonstrate.

51:13

I think one of the compelling beauties of the Scripture is, you can look at the writer of Hebrews, and you can go back to the

51:20

Old Testament, and you're talking a span here of like 1 ,500 years, and you can see how they fit together.

51:26

You can see how they feed upon one another. You don't have anything like that in Islam. You don't have that kind of ability to see the consistency and chart it over time, and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

51:36

And I think that's a weakness, not a strength. But on a surface level, it's easy, because you've got one guy, and this is just simply what

51:43

God has said. That's it. No variations. Period. End of discussion. And that view of the nature of Scripture, they then look at our understanding of how

51:54

Paul can express his feelings. Now, he's obviously, for example, in Galatians, very angry about the perversion of the

52:01

Gospel, and yet is clearly a different state of mind in Ephesians. Or if Luke says, it seemed good to me to do this.

52:10

It seemed good to me to record this. Well, see, if it's Luke, then it wasn't

52:15

God. The idea that God is so big and so great that He can use men in their speaking, and in their life, and in their language, and what the result is, is the anusas, it's

52:28

God breathed. There's just no parallel within the Islamic story. There's such a huge break between the

52:34

Quran and its milieu, its language, its form, its function, and what you have in the

52:39

Christian scriptures, and I don't just mean the Christian scriptures of the New Testament, but our Bible, entirety,

52:44

Old and New Testament. There's such a huge difference that it's really difficult for people to sort of wrap themselves around that.

52:51

And so, to hear, now, I know, Shabir Ali has said he doesn't use the

52:57

Jesus Seminar. He has specifically said, I don't use the Jesus Seminar materials. But this kind of stuff that he's quoting here is very much the very same milieu as the

53:08

Jesus Seminar. And by the way, I should mention this, that right in channel right now is the world famous Barsalou, who is primarily responsible for the

53:16

Reformed Baptist Theological Review. I got my copy finally yesterday. It took a while. You know, us contributors, we don't get them as fast as the regular folks do.

53:25

But I have an article in the current RBTR, which is at rbtr .org, on John Dominic Crossan, and his perspectives, and how we as Reformed Baptists respond to that.

53:38

I mean, we see him all the time on television and things like that. And so I have an article right now in the

53:44

RBTR, which is at rbtr .org. So anyway, I just wanted to say that because sometimes

53:52

Barsalou is mean to me. Like when I turn stuff in and he finds a typographical error or something.

53:58

That was a shameless plug. We need to steal Michael Medved's shameless plug music at some point and do that.

54:04

But anyhow, really, Shabir Ali, while he may not be quoting directly to Jesus' seminar, he is in fact utilizing the exact same milieu of information, the exact same type of scholarship here, which he would never accept when it's applied to the

54:24

Quran. Never accept when it's applied to the Hadith. I've taken the time to listen to his Hadith lectures.

54:31

And if the same standards that he uses in his Hadith lectures were applied to the New Testament and the early church, he would have to say, you know what?

54:40

It's very clear the early Christians believed in the deity of Christ. It's not only in the New Testament, it's in the very earliest extra canonical sources that are there.

54:48

And so utilizing the same type of information, utilizing the same standards, then we would have to accept the fact that the

54:58

New Testament writers, all of them, and Toto, believed in the deity of Christ.

55:04

He'd have to do that. But whether he will do that, whether he will be consistent of that, is a completely different issue.

55:11

Now I was going to wait another three minutes because that's when the music comes up.

55:19

And I was just going to pop Alan on the air and say, hey Alan. Oh, there's the music.

55:25

Bye Alan. I was going to do that. But I just, I'm too soft -hearted to do that.

55:32

And so I'm going to go ahead and we've got all of about two minutes, two minutes and 20 seconds or so.

55:39

But I'm going to go ahead and talk with Alan. Hi Alan. Man, I'm so glad I charged my phone last night.

55:47

Wow. Hey Alan, can you see what you're doing right now? I'm outside, man.

55:54

I can see what I'm doing. So you couldn't turn the lights off there? No. I had many various and sundry questions.

56:05

To ask you, however, since our time is short, I'll stick with what I originally had.

56:10

Well, let me answer one of your questions. Generally the slider on the lights, if it goes down, it gets dark and it goes up, it gets light.

56:18

I just thought I'd mention that in passing. Everybody's wondering why, but folks, just watch the debates.

56:25

The John Dominick Crossen debate. Watch the audience questions. And when you see this really odd look on my face because it's getting dark, just put two and two together.

56:34

So anyways, Alan, yes. Okay. I wanted to know in your opinion the

56:45

Kanner debate. Dr. Kanner says he wants to do a free -for -all.

56:51

He doesn't want any form or anything like that? Basically, yes. Why? Why do you think that is?

56:58

Because I think he realizes that his greatest opportunity is to do in this debate what he did in that sermon, and that is to appeal to the emotion, to be able to throw out

57:11

Calvinist hate -baby arguments, Calvinist want -everybody -to -go -to -hell arguments. Just be able to rat -a -tat this stuff out without ever having said, no,

57:20

I will stay on one subject and we will actually do interaction where I may actually have to open my

57:26

Greek New Testament and I'll have to give honest answers based upon the text.

57:32

That's not what they're looking for because they recognize that's what appeals to Reformed people.

57:38

And so it's a matter of knowing your audience and knowing what the most effective form of communication is going to be.

57:44

And actually the way he put it is, oh, you don't think we should have any passion in this debate.

57:50

And I said, no, I believe we should have passion, but that passion needs to be channeled through such a way that the arguments being presented are valid arguments.

57:59

If he, if he, he's been silent lately and if, as it's being talked about, if he declines, wouldn't you think that would destroy his credibility?

58:10

Well, it all depends upon what reasoning is utilized to do so.

58:15

And I cannot begin to imagine what reasoning would be presented, but I hope we don't even have to answer that question.

58:22

But as someone was just saying, as the lights go down and the program goes to an end, thanks for your call, brother.

58:29

We'll talk to you later. Bye. We do have fun, the program, and we wouldn't be able to have fun if we, if it was any other kind of program.

58:38

That's why we do it the way we do it. Thanks for listening. Back to our regular schedule next week, Tuesday morning, 11 o 'clock. See you then.

58:43

God bless. ...brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

59:35

If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.

59:40

Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the

59:46

World Wide Web at aomin .org, that's a -o -m -i -n -dot -o -r -g where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.