November 16, 2004

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. Well welcome to The Dividing Line. We are back and we are live on this

Tuesday morning, the 16th of November. I have no idea where September and October and the first half of November went, but it's gone and we are only a matter of weeks from the end of 2004 and I tell you, if it keeps going this fast,

I'm going to be 92 next week. It's just absolutely positively unbelievable how fast time can go.

I was just looking at the front page, was just informed that the redoubtable

Unicle Man had just finished doing some changes to the website.

We'll have a different picture up eventually to have probably like have the picture of the ship we're actually going to be on.

But please note, there have been some changes in regards to the next cruise, the

Alaska cruise. Everybody's going to Alaska. I discovered that not only is

R .C. Sproul going to Alaska next summer, but so is Stan Terezan.

They're going to Alaska next summer and we're going to Alaska. That's where everybody wants to go. But I've noticed that since everybody else is going with this particular company, all their prices are like double ours.

I hate to mention that. I don't want to sound like we're competing or anything, but you just put our rates up against their rates and somebody's well, we're we of course are blessed.

We have people who arrange our debates who actually want to go on them and do so as a ministry.

And therefore, that's where the difference lies partially. So anyway, the details of this one are going to be absolutely amazing.

We got to see a video of what we're going to be doing. I felt a little uncomfortable that we're sitting there on a

Royal Caribbean ship and we're playing a princess video, expecting to see people walking in with their arms crossed staring at us very, very angrily.

But anyway, we had a great time. I've got a bunch of stuff to catch up on here. Obviously, we need to talk about the debate, the conference, the cruise.

And then, of course, right now, the big thing apologetically going on is the recent visit to Salt Lake City, all the stuff going on with Mormonism, Rabbi Zacharias's appearance at the

Mormon tabernacle. I've been at the tabernacle, too. They just didn't let me talk. I had to stand outside there.

But Clark Pinnock being on BYU Radio and all this wild and crazy stuff that's going on and the things about it.

So we have lots of stuff. And then I have a tape that I finally got hold of that was from 1995.

It's an older tape, but it is Tim Staples interviewing a convert to Catholicism from the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church. And it's difficult to listen to. Not because of the sound quality. It's just difficult to listen to.

And so we'll be listening to that over the course of a couple of different dividing lines. So lots of stuff to do.

Let's go ahead and get to it. Obviously, the big thing, we don't have the

MP3s up yet, do we? I didn't know if... Actually, I'm anticipating having the

DVDs, the CDs, and the MP3s all up tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning. Okay. So the debate...

Now, it's just a debate. It's not the conference. But those of you who have been beating down the doors to get hold of the

DVD or CDs or MP3s of the debate, we hope to have them up very quickly.

Actually, I would actually, if you have the choice,

I would actually suggest the DVD. Not because it costs more, but the reason that I would suggest that is simply because there were some, how would

I say, visual moments. There were some of the comments, and there was some humor.

I expected that there was going to be some humor. There are a couple of little zingers here, there, and everywhere from both sides during the course of the debate.

You'd expect that with Doug Wilson. He has written a book on the use of sarcasm, and he likes to use humor.

And so there were a few little zingers here, there, and I don't know. I just sort of figure you'll have a little more accurate gauge of the tenor of the debate if you have the

DVD rather than if you listen just to the MP3s. It'll be interesting to me to listen to people's reactions who either watch it or listen to it.

That is a constant variable. I frequently try to remind myself to ask people when they're asking me about debate.

When, you know, someone will say, I didn't feel you treated such a person well. And I'll say, how did you listen to it?

How did you listen to it? Did you watch it? How were you exposed to that particular debate?

And it's interesting, basically, I have found that people who listen, it is easier to insert certain attitudes into just the vocal element than it is watching it and listening to it at the same time.

That's just been my reaction to it. Maybe I could be wrong about that, but anyway, that's how it seems to me.

Well, my impression would be to describe Doug Wilson in this way, that he has quite the sense of humor.

But I think a lot of folks who just read his sense of humor or listen to it miss out on half of the humor, because his facial expressions, when he delivers, he easily could have been a good comedian,

I think. Well, that'll get thrown all over the place now, that Rich Pierce says that Pastor Wilson's a comedian.

He has excellent timing, I mean, there's no question about it, and I think the audience appreciated him for it, and you did too.

I couldn't see his face when he was making the jokes, because I was behind him.

I had a close -up of him, and it's funny. Well, Mike just mentioned in Channel, he says,

I wonder what my facial expressions were during certain comments. Just yesterday, when I was just watching that little thing,

I made the comment, I said, it looks like Mike's dead. He's just propped up there, he's not moving.

It's just absolutely still, during the entire, I don't know, it was about 45 seconds, a minute, we were just looking at something on the tape, and I said, look at Mike, he hasn't moved at all.

Yeah, he's just kind of frozen. He's just, eek! Frozen Chosen right there. It was really funny. But anyway, it'll be interesting to see how people respond to it.

I haven't seen much of a response right now, I mentioned on the blog that while I was on the ship, and I'm paying 50 cents per minute of internet time,

I briefly ran by some comments that were posted by stuff. Of course, you'd expect certain people, for example, the one man, the

Uber Scholar, the man who believes there's never been a more intelligent man than himself, who has ever lived on this planet, he of course had various and sundry, nasty comments to make second hand, nothing unusual about that, but there really hasn't been much in the way of comments as to this point, and so once we get the

DVDs out there and things like that, then there'll be more to comment on there. People ask me, how do you think it went?

Well, I think it went as well as I want it to go as far as what I want to try to accomplish. People, when you go into a debate, you have certain goals that you want to try to get to, and one of the problems is people coming to a debate, they have certain goals for you as well, and if your goals and their goals are not the same thing, then that's how they're going to judge how you did, even if that's not what you wanted to accomplish.

My biggest concern was that this debate would only confuse the issue even more. There's so much confusion about this subject out there that one of my biggest fears, my two biggest fears were

A, it was going to add the confusion, not help to clarify anything, and B, it wasn't going to be on the topic that I wanted it to be on.

I mean, I knew that there were other topics, there are clearly other issues that are relevant to this, that are actually in some ways maybe even foundational to this, and I was happy with the debate because of the fact that a person who wants to understand, who isn't just absolutely intent upon misrepresenting

Douglas Wilson, and there are for some reason a bunch of folks who want to do that. I saw another statement just recently that says just,

I just don't know why people can't get the clue and get it right.

They can't accurately represent the fact that there are people in this federal vision movement that believe things differently than others.

I mean, that's like painting OPC and conservative PCA people with what the

PCUSA does. That's just not fair. Why is it that people can't do that? This isn't a tightly knit group as far as certain of their beliefs, and I was reading a statement made by some

Presbytery someplace that just baldly asserts that all federal visionists deny the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, or at least the act of obedience to Christ.

Well, Norman Shepard does. He denies the imputation of the act of obedience to Christ. But Douglas Wilson doesn't.

So you've got to differentiate between those two. You know? I mean, that's just all there is to it. So anyway, somebody coming into that debate who's just not absolutely insistent upon misrepresenting

Douglas Wilson or myself, I've got people who do the exact same thing with me, pretty much the people at ReformCatholicism .com

are experts at that. As long as it's not those folks, I honestly believe that they would have a clearer idea of exactly what's at stake, and those more fundamental issues, those foundational issues, did come out.

They were addressed. Obviously, they were addressed, you know, in 90 seconds, which, you know, anybody who thinks that, well,

I'm going to judge this debate on the basis of a 30 -second response, you know, I can't worry about people like that.

A serious -minded person wants to go, I want to understand what's being said. I want to understand what the positions are.

I want to hear them interact with one another, and I want to see some of the confusion removed from that. That was accomplished, and that was my first goal, was to hope to really make a clear contrast between the two perspectives.

One of the places where I thought it was very clear, Pastor Elliott, some of you may recall him from the

Staples debate long, long ago, the man with the deep, deep accent that I just love listening to.

I mean, don't worry, don't worry, folks, I'm not going to do that right now. A Scottish brogue. Well, see,

I did. I can't help but do it. I'm Scottish, for crying out loud.

I've got to be able to speak it. He... It was so funny how many people in the audience started laughing when

I said something about an accent. And I think only half of them knew why they were laughing, and the other half were the channel rats.

It was funny. So anyway, he gets up, and he asks a question. He asks this wonderful question, and Wilson's response was very much illustrative, because basically he said, when

John Knox stands before the Queen, he does not call her sister.

He calls her to repent and believe. And of course, Wilson's response sounded real good for a second, anyway, so I'll be perfectly honest with you.

He says, yes, but he didn't say repent, believe, and be baptized. And of course, what he's going back to there is the fact that these folks...

The Anabaptist issue was very, very, very much on the minds of everybody.

And there was a bunch of other stuff tied in with that. A bunch of other stuff that had nothing to do with our debate, nothing to do with the nature of the

New Covenant, nothing to do with the biblical stuff. It has a lot to do with the culture and politics, to be perfectly honest with you.

But to just simply respond to what he had said, about here is a man who's calling this person who's a

Roman Catholic to faith in Christ, and respond, oh yes, he said repent and believe, but he didn't say repent, believe, and be baptized.

And you see, that at least illustrated what I was trying to say. And that is, no matter how hard you try to get out of it, the term

Christian and brother and sister in Christ, from Pastor Wilson's perspective, are terms defined without reference to the gospel, without reference to regeneration, without reference to salvific union with Christ.

They are defined by other things than the gospel itself.

And that at least, and interestingly enough, while I don't think most of the people who hold the federal vision would have been overly moved in their perspective,

I did talk to a number of former Roman Catholics. And the former

Roman Catholics just couldn't wrap themselves around what in the world Doug Wilson was saying.

At least the ones I talked to. They're just like, he doesn't understand.

He doesn't understand the huge leap, the vast difference, the completely different commitment here.

He doesn't understand it. And they just couldn't understand how he couldn't see the importance of that.

So it was, I think there are going to be a lot of folks who are going to be very disappointed in the debate because at the end there were not pools of blood on the floor.

It seems some folks wanted, for whatever reasons, maybe because they've had bad experiences in the past with Doug Wilson or whatever, they wanted pools of blood on the floor.

And I don't know why they thought that I would be the type of person who would do that. You know, people all the time are talking about how hard -nosed

I am. Has anybody ever actually listened to my debates with Mitch Pacwa? I mean,

I know some people have said it's not fair that I debate Mitch Pacwa because he's just not nasty enough to deal with me.

Well, I've never been nasty with Mitch Pacwa. There's nothing there. Listen to Robertson Jenis in the mass debate, just dripping acid, just treating me like dirt.

I didn't respond to him in that way. I mean,

I don't, you know, there's just this persona, but the persona doesn't match the reality.

And so I think people were hoping that somehow there would be this rhetorical smackdown of Doug Wilson.

And that's not who I am. That's not how, if anybody had listened to the debate from 1995 on paedo -baptism with Robert Strimple and Gary Johnson from many moons ago, they would know that that's not how it was going to happen.

OK, so that's just that's just all there is to it. And so there was it was I considered this an intercollegiate debate.

I was not standing there saying this man's going to hell in a handbasket because we disagree on these particular issues.

And so. Anyway, I someone

I need to mention this Roman Catholic and channel was just who wasn't there, doesn't seem to understand.

And it's being corrected right now, but let me just mention it. I guess at one point

I do recall somewhat. I pointed out I would not call one of the apostates or one of the

Antichrist in first John, chapter two, my brother, sister in Christ. What I was talking about is first John to 19, where they went out from us.

So it might be demonstrated that they were not truly of us. And my point was that these were people who were baptized.

They were in the fellowship of the church. They were in the visible church.

But they went out from the fellowship. And according to John, they went out the fellowship to demonstrate that they were not truly of us.

And so the us is defined by John as the elect. They were not of those who are who

I've been forgiven of their sins, which, according to Hebrews, chapter eight is the new covenant. And I said,

I would not call the Antichrist my brother. I would not call one of those people who went out from the fellowship, who denied the incarnation of Christ, denied the physical body of Christ.

This is what the Antichrist were doing in first John, chapter two. I would not call that person my brother and sister in Christ, even if they had been baptized.

And, you know, that just made me think of a question I should have asked. What I should have asked is, here is an example of someone who was in the fellowship of the church and they left.

Here is someone who made a profession of believing the truth and now they have apostatized, they have left. Would you call that person, even though they've been properly baptized, but now they have left, would you call them a brother, sister in Christ?

When do you stop doing that? Does formal church discipline have to take place for that to happen?

Because you'd assume formal church discipline had taken place in regards to the Antichrist. So, anyway, so just in answer to the discussion that I saw a

Roman Catholic in the channel going, well, ouch, boy, you know, just make me equal with the

Antichrist. Well, we're talking about the issue of apostasy in first John, chapter two.

And I'm not sure why, even though this Roman Catholic in our channel has heard me address this many, many times, why it always seems somewhat odd to this individual that I believe that Rome's false gospel doesn't save.

There can't be multiple gospels that save. It's just not possible.

And I don't believe Rome's gospel brings salvation, so a person holding to that false gospel is a person who needs the truth.

They need to hear about the real gospel, because there aren't multiple gospels that save.

So that's something I've mentioned many times before. Anyway, so I had nice conversations with Pastor Wilson.

We didn't, there just wasn't the blood left on the floor. And there is going to be some folks who, you know, oh, you were just too nice to him, or da -da -da -da -da.

There's nothing I can possibly do about that. The next day, we had a conference, and I was truly impressed.

I was truly encouraged by the people.

Let's see. Do -do -do -do -do -do -do -do -do -do -do -do. Reading something just came in. Hm -hm -hm -hm -hm -hm -hm.

Okay, that tells me something. Anyway, I was truly impressed by the people that were there.

I mean, they were diehards. It was a long day. Let's face it. We went from 8 .45

in the morning, a brief lunch break, and I got done right around 4 .10

or so. That's a long day of presentations. David King started off.

I did the PowerPoint thing for him. We had all sorts of lots of quotes and information.

Then Tom Askell spoke on the issue of imputation. Then Steve Camp spoke, and Eric Svensson spoke.

Eric Svensson, by the way, Rich, has a much cooler clicker than I do. He has a super -duper

USB port clicker thing that allows you to do PowerPoint, go backwards, forwards, and all sorts of neat stuff like that.

It had a long range. It was just plug and play for XP, and I'm experiencing techno envy big time on that.

So we need to find out from Eric where he got that because that was really, really, really, really useful. It worked really, really, really well because he was a long ways away from my computer, and yet he was still going backwards and forwards and able to do all sorts of neat stuff like that.

So we just need to keep that in mind. Anyway, he had an excellent presentation.

He had told me before he went up there that there were Roman Catholics at the conference and that they had started trying to argue with him at his table, and I knew there was one of them in the second row.

He had pointed one of them out in the second row. So it almost seemed like they wanted to be right down front.

Was there an intimidation thing there? I don't know. But I know that after the conference,

I was talking with other folks and missed a Roman Catholic who just went after Michael Fallon and some other folks who are former

Roman Catholics and became nasty, used profanity, which is nothing new in talking with a lot of Roman Catholics, to be perfectly honest with you, and then ended by walking away going,

Nyeh, nyeh, nyeh. That I would like...

Yo, you didn't hear about that? That I would like to have seen.

The nyeh, nyeh, nyeh methodology of apologetics. So it was...

I would really, really, really like to have seen that, like to have been involved with that, actually, and had the opportunity of talking to that person.

So I'm watching Michael Fallon comment upon this on the channel at the same time. So anyway,

I just sort of wrapped things up at the end because, God bless him, a couple of our speakers just really felt the spirit moving and so they didn't quite wrap up on time.

And so it just kept getting later and later in the day, and it's really good that I had sort of predicted that, and so I didn't have a firm outline that I couldn't cut anything out.

You know, sometimes you have a presentation, and man, if you just uncover all of it, none of it's going to make any sense. Didn't have that. But I had already decided that I wanted to try to grab from everybody else's presentation and maybe amplify some things, comment on some things, be a little bit more on the easygoing side in wrapping things up.

And that's what I did, and that's how we were able to get out of there, even though they were already setting up tables. You know, when you're in a place like the

LAX Gateway Sheraton there in Los Angeles, they're on a schedule and you better get done or they're just going to start moving you out of the way anyway.

So we managed to wrap things up at the proper time. And if you were there, and by the way, it was so neat to get to meet so many folks that, you know, we keep mentioning the channel.

People on the cruise probably got sick and tired of hearing about the channel. Well, you know, I'm sorry, but the channel is a family.

There are people in the channel. I mean, when certain folks disappear from the channel for a while, we're on the phone trying to find out what's going on, okay?

And it's a family. There have been times when people on the channel have lost their job. And the people on the channel take a collection and send it to them.

I mean, that's just what it's like. It's not a church. It can't be a church. But it has aspects of Christian fellowship in it that would be like a church.

And, oh, thanks for not shooting me as you walked to the elevator at the end of the conference on Saturday.

I don't have any idea. You'd have to remind me a little bit more than that because I met all sorts of folks.

But anyways, it was really neat getting to meet some folks that I've known in channel forever.

I mean, I met someone from the channel that I've known, pfft, 98 maybe, since 1998 or so.

Never met the person. All sorts of folks in the L .A. area. That was really, really, really neat to get to meet everybody.

And, of course, if you were there, if you're listening, and you were there, or you're going to get the

CDs, the DVDs, because, remember, we recorded that too. You were very sleepy.

Yeah, I imagine by that time of the day I was. Keep in mind, this didn't just happen.

I mean, there was a tremendous amount of work that went into this, and I can't name everybody who was involved, but obviously the three people that were at the head of things were, of course,

Rich Pierce, that voice and the laughter in the background and things like that, and Michael Fallon and Simon Escobedo.

They were sort of at the top of the ladder, and then they had all sorts of folks like Rusty and Christina and Shuey.

My wife was involved. The Jankas were involved. Jim Broyles came over.

Warren and Olivia Smith were there. There were just, I mean, I kept joking with people that, like, half the, well, not half, a third of the population, what am

I talking about? A third of the membership of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church was there. The Pierce's were there, and I think

Mrs. Broyles would have been there too if she was not about to give birth. So, I mean, it must have been really quiet at church

Sunday morning. So there were just folks everywhere.

My daughter even helped out Steve Camp at his table, and it was just a family affair.

It was a group effort to get everything done there. And, of course, the day of the summer was signing autographs.

She was. She really was. There were people who asked her to sign some of my books. It was very, very funny.

So, anyways, on the conference day, we had these black

Alpha and Omega shirts for both the guys and the gals that were volunteering. And, man, when

Eddie Dalkour puts on a black shirt, he's scary looking. And so it was really great to see everything came together and, you know, all this stuff.

It was wonderful. So we had a great time, learned a lot about how to put on a conference, learned a lot about dealing with hotels and tickets.

And, you know, you learn from everything. You know, you learn how to do stuff more effectively and more efficiently.

And, you know, this is our first time around. I think we did very, very, very well for the first shot, and we will probably be able to improve from our experience.

That's just how it is. But setting it up someplace other than where you're headquartered, that's not easy to do.

So it was great. So I'm very, very thankful for that. We got a lot of good, positive response from it.

And that, of course, the whole reason you do it is you want to try to encourage people of God.

And I think that the presentations were made, touched on everything. I really enjoyed Phil Johnson's presentation on N .T.

Wright. Phil teaches a lot like I do. That's very similar.

If you listen to the MP3s of what I did on N .T. Wright last year and then listen to what

Phil did this year at ours. His, of course, was briefer because I had three, four hours. He had one hour.

And he was rushing a little bit to get into his one hour. But still, very many of the exact same points, exact same quotes that I had given.

And it's neat to see that. It's neat to, you know, we didn't work together on it. We didn't communicate with one another, and yet we're coming to the exact same conclusions and seeing the exact same things, quoting the exact same things.

There's confirmation in a situation like that. And, of course, the only thing is, and you can see on the website,

I put a picture of the speakers from the ship. Tom Askell wasn't able to go with us.

Eric Svensson is not there. But you can see Phil, myself, David King, and Steve Camp on the main page of AOMN .org

yet. Right now, just down under 1115. Well, everything is under 1115 right now,

I guess. And you'll notice poor Phil only has striped ties.

Some of them are colorful. The one in the picture isn't overly colorful. But he only has striped ties.

And so I didn't get a chance to talk to him because once we got on the cruise, when we were in Puerto Vallarta, he had to leave, he needed to get back for a ministry reason, so he had to fly out from there.

And so, in fact, I ended up taking his speaking spot. But I wanted to get a chance to talk to him about the fact that he needed us to provide him with some

Rush Limbaugh ties, some fractal ties, some of my

Coogee ties. I could help him to find them on eBay. But the striped tie thing, you can only have so many striped ties.

That's just, that's just, that's, you know, yeah, Kevin Channel is going, what's a tie? I mean, if you want to see a nice Rush Limbaugh tie, the picture of myself and my wife and my daughter at dinner, that's one of my favorite

Rush ties. That's a gorgeous Rush Limbaugh tie. It goes well with a blue shirt, too. And, you know, but Phil just has these striped ties.

And so it's sort of sad. So anyhow, we had a great conference. We got on the boat, the boat, the ship.

77 ,000 tons is a ship. This is the largest ship we have been on. It was, without a question, one of the prettiest ships we've been on.

And without question, it was the smoothest sailing ship we have ever been on.

I've been on six cruises now. I've been on the Imagination, the Paradise, the

Mercury, the Volendam, the Zondam, and now the Vision of the Seas. And without question,

I mean, I didn't even have, I didn't even develop sea legs to wear when I come home. You still feel the world moving.

It was so smooth. Even when we started getting some moderate seas, we started having some white caps.

Man, when we were on the Zondam, we were rocking and rolling in the white caps. Nothing. I mean, a little bit around 9 o 'clock on Saturday night, there was a little more movement than there had been the rest of the week.

But it was smooth as glass. So I can say on that level, if that's an issue for you, the

Vision of the Seas might be a ship you might want to consider. Because it was absolutely as smooth as it could be.

And I was in an outside cabin. And if you think about the movement of a ship, obviously if you want the least movement, you want to be inside.

And toward the middle of the axis of movement. And so it was really, really, really, really good.

And so anyway, the ship was beautiful. I spoke four times as far as formal presentations.

Each night we have these theology talks. And they really developed out of a bunch of people getting together and just having all sorts of conversations, theological conversations.

And sometimes, I'll be honest, you can't force that. I mean, sometimes that just develops. The first two nights of the theology talks were basically presentations on my part, too.

As long as I'm there, I sort of kill them. The second night, for example, Phil Johnson was supposed to be leading it.

But he just interviewed me. And I liked the questions, yes. They were good questions. And they were fun. And people wanted to get answers to some of those questions about debates and what

I knew about people like gerrymantics and things like that. But the first two nights were basically me. And so I absent myself from some of them just so that people can talk.

If I'm there, they're not going to. If I'm there, it's going to be a Q &A. That's just fact.

It cannot be disputed. It cannot be debated. And so that takes place after dinner toward the evening.

But there were presentations primarily while we were at sea. When we're in port, people want to get off the boat, except for me.

I don't get off the boat. I'm a little bit odd on that level. But people want to get off the boat and go do stuff. They want to go jet ski. And they want to go shopping.

Like my family in Puerto Vallarta did, from their perspective, the single best excursion they had ever had.

$65 a person. They went on this pirate ship thing. And they said everything was absolutely

A, number one, perfect. They had the most incredible food.

And it was exciting. All the time.

And they just could not stop talking about it. They said it was the best excursion they had ever, ever had.

And they almost canceled it, too. But people, when they're in port, want to go do stuff.

So we generally don't have presentations. I've heard that this other company that exists out there forces the speakers to do presentations while they're in port.

And they'll have four people there. Why in the world make the poor speaker work if you have four people there?

I suppose you can make tapes or something. I don't know. Anyway, so the first presentation that I did while we were at sea on the way out was on the relationship of the doctrine of sin to justification.

If you really believed in total depravity, a large portion of the errors concerning justification would disappear.

On the way back, I needed to take Phil Johnson's place in his speaking. And so I did a presentation on basically giving an overview of all the current, not really all, but the majority of the current controversies on the subject of justification.

And then to take Phil's place, I sort of looked at my laptop and I did a PowerPoint presentation.

I had only done it once before at a church in Dallas or somewhere in Texas. I forget where it was. On Norman Geisler's book,

Chosen but Free, and his responses to me and the character of those responses. And I also then dealt with the

Big Three, Matthew 23, 37, 2 Peter 3, 9, 1 Timothy 2, 4. And then Saturday morning,

I did a presentation on the doctrine of justification as one of the doctrines of grace. We frequently don't view it as being one of the doctrines of grace.

We view it as something separate, as if it's not related to the sovereignty of God. But it is. So we did a presentation on that.

And then Saturday afternoon, Steve gave, I think, one of the best concerts he's ever given on all of our cruises.

And it was great. It was wonderful. And so that's what we did on the cruise.

The only thing I'm going to have to say is my family watched the video of the cruise last night.

And they bought some stuff for the get -together and stuff and brought some of the stuff home.

And some of the stuff that was brought home was some chocolate cake. And I had some of that chocolate cake this morning.

And let me tell you something. That was by far the best chocolate I've had in the past ten days. I don't know what it was.

Maybe it's because of the size of the ship or something. But the food just wasn't overly good.

I mean, it was edible. But it was sort of like, well, sometimes it wasn't even up to Denny's level, to be perfectly honest with you.

I had one good steak. The beef tenderloin was really good. But that was it. Everything else just wasn't there.

The hamburgers, it just wasn't there. So I don't know why. I think it had to do with,

I happen to know that my, not my cabin steward. He never talked to me. But my waiter, my waiter knew.

My waiter tried as best he could to sort of say, go this direction, get this.

And the problem is, I don't, the stuff that, I'm sure there was some really good stuff that wasn't like beef or chicken or something.

But that's not my kind of stuff. And he kept looking at me like, you know.

And so part of it was, I've been spoiled. I mean, when we went to Alaska last time on the

Mercury, honestly, it was like every single meal.

You just sit there and you embarrass yourself. You know, you bite into this steak or this prime rib or something.

It's like, oh. You make these odd noises because, oh. It's just so good.

And then the desserts have always been good. It was like there was a sugar shortage on this trip.

I mean, the chocolate wasn't sweet. It's like, come on. Throw some sugar in there.

People, we were dying for some sugar. I had my wife pick me up some

Nestle's Crunch Bars in Mazatlan. Just so I could have some chocolate that had sugar in it.

It was odd. So that was the only strange thing. But you know what? We all survived that and still had lots of fun at the dinners.

Because someone posted on the channel, my family site, this really funny picture of like three or four of our people all in line.

And they all happened to be looking down at their digital cameras. And I happen to remember who this was.

Me and my family were posing at the head of our table. And everybody got up and started taking pictures. And someone took a picture.

I think it was Sam took a picture of the people taking pictures. Hear that arrest you? No, it was Sam. Sam took the picture of the people taking pictures.

I mean, especially the formal nights. It's really neat to see everybody get all cleaned up and look all spiffy and stuff like that.

So it was wonderful. Let me just mention, like I said, I mentioned at the beginning of the program.

And this is not just meant to be a big, long travel log here. But people want to know what happened and how things went.

And so I'm reporting on it. Wow, look at this stack of stuff I need to take care of. Oh, my goodness. Anyway, next year, the travel itinerary,

I don't even know how they do this, to be honest with you. But the travel itinerary takes in some places that you just,

I don't know how to describe them. I've been to Alaska twice. I was there on the

Mercury with a group. And then I was there on the Volendam by myself while writing Scripture Alone, or trying to write

Scripture Alone. And the Mercury visited

Hubbard Glacier, and that was gorgeous. I mean, seeing that glacier calve, and calving is where the blocks of ice fall into the water.

And there's this huge, the sound is what amazes me. You cannot catch the sound of a glacier calving on a recording device.

It cannot be done. And the reason I say it, well, the only way it can be done is if you had like a professional way of doing it to where you could do the stereo surround sound stuff.

Someone's trying to send me a file and channel right now. A, I cannot do so, and B, I wouldn't do so well on the air anyways.

That's the only way you could do it, because it surrounds you. The sound is so loud, the popping beforehand, and then when it gives way, and the sound of the water, you just, it bounces off the mountains around, because there's almost always mountains around, given the nature of a glacier.

You just, you can't, you can't describe it. It's just absolutely amazing. And so we had gone to Hubbard Glacier on the

Mercury. And that was gorgeous. That was beautiful. And then on the

Volendam, we went into Glacier Bay. And only Holland America and Princess goes into Glacier Bay.

And some of you have seen, don't we use one of my pictures from Glacier Bay on our

DVDs? Is that the background that we use in the printing? Someone told me we did.

And it shows how much I know that I'm going, do we? Yes, we do. Do we do?

Well, that's a picture. It's on the DVDs, and it's on the cover of the Christian message track. Yeah, it's on the cover of the Christian message track, right.

And I took that picture as we sailed into Glacier Bay. It is just one of the most gorgeous places on the planet.

There's just, that's the only way to describe it. It is incredible. Well, this cruise gets both of them and more.

I mean, if you want to see glaciers, from what I can see on the itinerary, we are going to see glaciers.

And one of the reasons is it's only a one -way trip. One of the reasons these other cruises can't see that much is because of the fact that you have to get back to Vancouver.

So you can only go up, catch some glaciers, and then go back to the direction. This one, you just keep going up.

And we're going to see glacier after glacier after glacier after glacier. And these things are 100, 150, 200 feet, 300 feet tall mountains, the walls of ice.

And you're on this huge ship, and your ship seems little next to these things. It is incredible.

It's just the mountains and the ice and the snow, and it's just, wow. Absolutely, positively unbelievable.

And so we're going to be going up to Anchorage. And then next year, next year, there is a five -day optional extension.

And I don't think there's anything on the website about this, but we're doing it. We're just trying to get group rates on it right now.

I haven't had a chance to look at the website because it was finished like 30 seconds prior to the program.

Not yet working on it. Okay. But we are planning on doing a five -day optional thing at the end of the cruise on these bubble railcars where the roof is, it's see -through.

And you take these railcars into Denali National Park to Mount McKinley. And at night, you stay at these special lodges just out in the middle of Alaska.

If you want to see Alaska, this is the chance to see Alaska. I think they call those

Vista cars or something like that. Something like that, yeah. I can't imagine. Canopy over the top and just see everywhere.

I'm going to have to, like, buy a 100 -gig external drive just to store all the pictures that you can be taking.

Just unbelievable. And you might be saying, well, that sounds really cool, but what about what you're going to be talking about?

Well, some of you may have noticed, and we haven't absolutely come to the final conclusion on this, but it seems we want to try to be relevant.

You don't want to miss things. And I had mentioned to everybody that I wanted to do something that didn't necessarily involve a debate.

At the time, we were planning this. I mean, I wasn't even going to do anything. This is only 10 months out. I mean, we're really close.

You fly back from Anchorage, for those that are wondering. If you don't take the rail thing, you fly back. It's one way we all have to move there, yeah.

Well, yeah, we all have to move to Anchorage after this. That's how they're getting people to pump up their economy. You get to open up your tire store. I get to open my tire store up there, yes.

But no, you fly back. Either way, you fly back out of Anchorage, whether you get off the ship and go to the airport or you get off the rail cars afterwards and go to the airport.

Either way, you fly back from Anchorage. So I had said, look, if we're going to do something in 2006, which seemed really, really close and it's a lot of work to do, could we just do something like on a passion for purity, sanctification, stuff like that?

Something that wouldn't necessarily involve controversy and all the rest of that stuff.

And that's fine. Yeah, open a gun shop instead. Yeah, I may have to if my gun shop has disappeared.

But anyway, that must sound very random to people who aren't watching the channel.

But that may be what we do, but it may not be what we do in the sense that there is most definitely a really pressing need.

That's very, very clear. The news came out yesterday. Some major league hitters in Hollywood, people who have big, big movies under their belt, are going to be producing the

Da Vinci Code. Dan Brown must be the richest man on the planet now, even catching up with what's -her -face

Rowling for the Harry Potter stuff. And Tom Hanks, it seems, is going to be playing the main character from the

Da Vinci Code. Now, the Da Vinci Code is really just so far out there from anybody who has any knowledge of history, any knowledge of just handling facts with some semblance of seriousness.

It looks at the Da Vinci Code and just goes, you've got to be kidding me.

This isn't even decent fiction. It's so far removed from anything.

But the fact of the matter is, I have mentioned many times as I've been traveling over the past year, goodness gracious,

I see it everywhere. It's in every single airport. People walking around with this stinking book in a bag, or they're sitting there reading it.

It's right out front in all the bookstores. It's everywhere, and it is clearly an anti -Christian screed.

It is meant to inculcate a very, very skeptical attitude toward the canon of Scripture, the content of Scripture, the authorship of Scripture, all that stuff.

There's no question about that. And so, there is a need, a real need.

I think the second cruise we did, with a much smaller, different group, was on the subject of Sola Scriptura, the sufficiency of Scripture, the canon of Scripture.

We had a presentation on the canon of the Old Testament, but we were using an overhead for this and stuff like that.

I'm sorry. Again, you have to be watching the channel to really understand.

I'm sorry. Something was just said on the channel that I can't necessarily... It's not because it's bad, it's just because it's true.

I have no context whatsoever. But anyhow, there is a real need, a real need in the

Christian community for every Christian, not just apologists, not just Christians who are interested in apologetics, but there is a real need for every

Christian to know so much more about how we got the Bible.

What about the issue of the canon? What about the issue of transmission? What about the issue of corruption?

That's why I wrote Scripture Alone. But certainly, we can go farther than what we did in Scripture Alone.

We can examine textual variants. We can talk about Mark 16, 9 through 20.

And we can do all that stuff. And so, obviously, the question is, will there be a conference beforehand?

And what will be the topics? And then, do we want to include within that a debate with someone who would wish to, for example, attack the validity of Scripture or something along those lines?

I mean, those are the possibilities. We'll be talking about that over the course of the next number of weeks and getting those things settled in and so on and so forth.

So, certainly, we would want to try to include with the crews studies that would allow people to return to their homes, return not just with a hard drive filled to the brim with five megapixel gorgeous images of glaciers and oceans and mountains in Alaska.

That's wonderful. It is real easy. But let me tell you something.

We can't guarantee this, obviously. But I've only seen the Northern Lights once. And I saw them on the

Alaska cruise on the Mercury with this group. So, that was a religious experience for me that's hard to even begin to describe.

It was so gorgeous. It's very easy to worship God in Alaska. It's very easy to do that.

But beyond that, we need to provide teaching that is going to have an even more lasting impact than just simply, wow,

Alaska is gorgeous. When someone's sitting on a bus and they feel confident to respond to the, yeah, let's debate

Dan Brown. Hey, Unical Man will call him. Unical Man will call Dan Brown. You better believe he would.

He'll get on it. He'll call him right away. And we'll get it done.

So, anyway, if someone feels confident to address the canon of scripture or say, you know what?

What that book says about the origin of scripture, that's not true and here's why.

Then we will have done what we wanted to do. And so that's what we're going to do. I didn't get to Salt Lake City.

I cannot believe that I went so long on that. There's so much I wanted to discuss about Salt Lake City.

That'll probably give me a little more time to absolutely verify who the speakers were other than Ravi Zacharias, Mr.

Johnson. The things that were said up in Salt Lake City at the Mormon Tabernacle, that's what we'll start with on Thursday on the dividing line.

We'll start with that. I need to make sure, make a note to myself that that's where we're going to start.

And hopefully by then maybe there will be some recordings available because I would love, love, love, love to hear those and also to react to them.

And I'd like to hear what at least the news reports say Richard Mao said, the president of Fuller Seminary, what

Johnson said. Because if the things that have been reported to me accurately represent, which

I have no reason to believe they don't, what they said, I'm not only offended but I must respond to them because these are people who've never stood outside that tabernacle and witnessed people.

And I don't like being accused by them of doing the very things that I've never done.

I'm not appreciative of evangelicals saying that we're guilty of lying about them.

I'm the one who's sat on KTKK radio with BYU professors and said that movies like The Godmakers 2 were wrong and that they were inaccurate in things they said about X, Y, and Z.

I don't appreciate people accusing me of things that are just simply not right from my side, allegedly my side of the fence.

And so I'm going to respond to that. But then I also have, as I mentioned, I recorded last night the interview that Tim Staples did in 1995.

This was before we first met and before we had our first debate and things like that, of a person who converted from the

OPC. I'd be very interested in knowing if this person is still a Roman Catholic.

That would be a very interesting thing to find out. Maybe we can find out one way or the other.

But those are the things that we will be doing the next time we get together on The Dividing Line, which is

Thursday evening. Those of you who do not understand time, once again,

I hate to tell you this, but time changed and we are always on Mountain Standard Time.

There's people coming to the channel right now going, how come The Dividing Line's over? Well, because The Dividing Line is always on at 11 a .m.

Mountain Standard Time. Not Daylight Time, Mountain Standard Time.

And it will be on at 7 p .m., 5 p .m., 5 p .m.,

4 p .m. Ah! Look at the website, figure it out yourself. Just remember, it's Mountain Standard Time.

Daylight Time changed. We'll see you Thursday. Bye. I believe we're standing at the crossroads.

Can't let this moment slip away. We must contend for the faith our fathers fought for.

We need a new Reformation day. Brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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