A Saturday Dividing Line

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line.

My name is James White.

Most of me is here.

It's a Saturday and we didn't get a chance to do The Dividing Line at all last week.

It was not for lack of desire to do so.

It's been a long week.

It's actually been a long couple months in some ways.

I thought, you know, I hate to have a week go by where we don't do the program

and so much stuff is happening to comment on and things like that.

So here we are on a Saturday.

Just briefly, next week, we'll get the unit home, unpacked, and

start working toward the trip in July to Colorado.

Please pray for trying to get some debates set up up there.

Two of them, actually.

It's really hard.

It looks like

we would like to address in a meaningful fashion, not in a

spitball fashion, the subject of open theism.

Unfortunately, there is a small vocal group of open theists

who don't know how to behave.

They don't know how to be adults.

They don't know how to control themselves.

You know, I appreciated my debates with John Sanders.

John Sanders is a scholar.

And John Sanders behaved in that fashion in our debates.

He was a little more aggressive the last time we were on Unbelievable together, but still, you can respect

the man.

But there are other people, and I've commented on them, that there's no reason to respect them.

Their behavior does not require it.

So we're trying to find some folks.

One guy that lives up in the Denver area just says he's not available.

I was hoping, because we're looking for one debate in Colorado Springs and one debate in

Denver.

I was hoping that since he couldn't make the Colorado Springs debate, maybe he could make the Denver debate.

Because that's a week later.

We'll see.

But pray toward those.

We'd like to do those.

We definitely have a debate.

I think it's in...

I won't give names until I can double verify it.

But it's the weekend before the Fight, Laugh, Feast,

Prodigal America thing in Fort Worth.

Which I think is the weekend after Reformation Day.

So I think it's the first weekend of November.

So I'm going to have two trips there that are going to be pretty close together.

Because we've got St. Charles.

We're trying to arrange a debate for St. Charles too.

I'll be honest with you, I'm...

I don't know.

I'm trying to challenge a former world -class salesman

to demonstrate that he can sell sand to Arabs to make that

work.

But so far it hasn't happened.

And so we're looking for one there.

The one before that.

Yeah, we could hopefully finish off with maybe as many as four more moderate public

debates.

Not online ones.

In -person ones.

Before the end of the year.

And then who knows what the situation in the United States is going to be after that.

I'll just be perfectly honest with you.

It's hard for me right now to think much

about the next year.

Because I just don't know what the situation is going to be as far as ability to

do anything.

Given where the United States might be.

So we'll see.

I'm not fearful of that.

The Lord's going to provide one way or the other.

It's just...

Why invest all the effort now in making plans when they're all going to go up in flames anyways one way or the other.

Didn't see the Northern Lights too far south last night.

But I'm excited for all of you who did.

I only saw them once in my life when I was in Alaska.

And they weren't this brilliant pink that everybody saw last night.

From what I'm reading, this is the most major solar storm in 19 years.

And I do follow space weather.

I know that sounds strange to people.

Space weather?

But yeah, I've got a bunch of solar apps.

I'm a friend of Jason Lyle.

What do you want?

His PhD is in astrophysics.

And his doctorate was on the surface of the sun.

So, you know, you learn stuff that way.

And our sun is fascinating.

Just absolutely fascinating.

People find it weird that I enjoy that kind of stuff.

But hey, I was Department Fellow of Anatomy and Physiology.

I have a science background.

And I've always found that stuff fascinating.

So, these coronal mass

ejections, CMEs, that spit straight at us.

And they're hitting us with a weakened magnetic field around the earth.

The magnetic poles have shifted many times in the history of the world.

And they may again in the near future, which will create havoc for a while.

But in the process, the magnetic field weakens.

And hence, we're more subject to this kind of stuff.

And especially older satellites are just

going to turn into French fries up there.

If we get hit with the one they had.

What year was it?

18...

I forget which year it was.

In the late 1800s.

We got hit with a coronal mass ejection that fried

telegraph lines.

I mean, that's all we had back then were telegraphs.

And no satellites.

And the telegraph lines went up in flames.

Started fires.

I mean, it would have been a global EMP

event.

All of our computers, all of our cell phones.

Can you imagine what that would be like?

I mean, I remember what it was like before all this stuff.

But we have become so dependent.

So much of our data.

So much of our records.

Medical stuff.

Oh my goodness.

Yeah.

There you go.

Lord's in control.

Well, again, if I was a secular humanist, I'd be

really figuring we're toast one way or the other.

It's going to happen.

I didn't watch it, but there was some television series a couple years ago.

Something happened that turned out all the lights.

And you couldn't get electricity to work again on Earth.

And it was how mankind tried to survive in the darkness of that.

Which, of course, mankind had survived for a long, long time.

But not with 8 billion people on Earth.

That's where the issue really, really lies.

So, anyway.

So, I want to look at something on the provisionist scale.

It's been a few weeks, and I'm thankful that it's been a few weeks.

We'll look at something in a moment.

But, I got home.

And it was, I'll admit, it was torture.

Because, for those of you who don't follow on Twitter and things like that, I was headed

home.

And on Tuesday morning, I was supposed to arrive in Holbrook.

Spend the day in Holbrook.

I wanted to get all my grading done for a class.

And then drive home the next day.

And as I started for Holbrook, stuff went really, really

south with my kidney situation.

And as bad as it had been a week earlier, that had put me in an ambulance in

a hospital in Texas.

And so, I probably shouldn't have driven to Holbrook, but I made it.

And I know exactly one human being in Holbrook.

And, what?

Two?

Well, that's her husband.

I'm talking about...

Yes, I know that, but I only came to know him through her.

And thankfully, she was home.

And thankfully, I got there.

The last 100 meters, literally, was the

corkscrewiest, most extreme turn I've ever taken.

And hit bottom on the RV.

I think it was just the hitch in the back.

I'm not pulling anything behind that RV, so I'm not overly concerned about that.

But, there wasn't anything I could do about it.

I had to get there.

I was at the end of everything at that point.

And so, my fellow pastor, Jeff Durbin, and a dear brother from our church who does

IV stuff and things like that.

They jumped in a car.

Well, they jumped in Jeff's car.

And drove up to Holbrook.

It's a three and a half hour drive.

And stuck me in the back of that van.

Behind all of Jeff's baby seats.

Because he has twin baby girls that they adopted.

And all the stuff they went through with that is truly amazing.

But anyways, and drove me straight to the ER at Banner Thunderbird

down here in Phoenix.

And so, there I am.

I'm 4 .3 miles from my house.

I haven't been home in three weeks.

I'm 4 .3 miles from my house.

Do you have any idea how much torture that was?

And surgery the next morning.

I really liked the guy.

He seemed really disappointed when I saw him after the surgery.

Because it didn't do what we wanted it to do.

And I've got surgery a week from Monday.

Again, third one in a month and a half.

And without going into a lot of details, these are not pleasant things to go through.

Very, very unpleasant.

And I'm feeling a lot of pain today.

Us old people, when you get injured, it takes a few days for stuff to really start hurting.

When you were young, you always knew when you would just hurt yourself.

It was fast.

And then you get into your 40s and two days later, it's hurting.

And you're like, what did I do?

And once you get into your 60s, it's three days later.

And by then, you really have no idea what you did.

Because your memory doesn't go back that far.

And so, yeah, here we are.

Yay, yay, hoo.

And it's perfectly fine.

The Lord knew what all this was going to be.

So, I get back.

And Jeffrey Rice,

one of the packages at my home is right here.

And I'm going to open this live right now.

It's still all taped up.

Jeffrey has sent one of his world -famous Bibles in.

And Rich, likewise, is this the one you're talking about?

Rich, likewise, has made this multi -layer.

Is there a special name to these things?

It's called a layered cross.

What do you know?

That seems to be an accurate description.

Layered cross.

Rich does woodworking, as you can see.

So, once in a while, you'll hear, huh, huh, huh, in the other room.

And so, we've got this from Rich and this from Jeffrey Rice.

And Derek Melton did make a knife, but he made it too nice.

He made it too personalized for me.

So, he's going to make another one that may be less personalized that we will then be able to...

And what are we going to do?

Is this going to be a raffle -type thing?

Auction?

Same as before.

Okay, I thought you wanted to do something different than before.

Oh, well.

So, we're going to have an auction.

Rich will tell you about it next week for the cross, for this, and the blade when Derek

sends that in.

Man, this has got to be the dullest knife that has ever been used to open up anything.

And by the way, I have a brand -new knife sharpener that Derek got me

because, you know, he knows knives.

He knows knives.

Anyway, we will put these up for auction.

And this is to help with the cost of the new RV that

we will be taking in.

And I'm sure I've mentioned this, but just real quickly.

What?

Oh, real quickly.

When I pulled out a month ago, not quite a month ago now, we had come to

realize that the RV we had purchased, even though it was four years old, had a grand

total of about 80 miles on it.

It had never been taken on a trip.

So, this was a shakedown trip.

So, there are things we need to have worked on when we get back.

You always do.

I don't care what the manufacturer is.

You start bouncing something down the roads and stuff happens.

And it has to be—stuff has to be adjusted.

So, I will say this.

This thing was a joy to pull.

It is so balanced.

It is so well -made.

The hitch on the front.

Oh, my goodness.

If I had had this hitch all along, life would have been so much easier.

It's just a wonderful unit.

And we had upgraded the hitch in my truck.

Well, in the Ministry's truck.

It's not my truck.

So, I had real confidence there.

I mean, because sometimes there's nothing you can do about it.

You'll hit some of these bridges.

I'm sorry.

I don't know who was in charge of building them, but they should be horse -whipped.

And made to fix the bridge with nothing but a hammer and a screwdriver.

You just get thrown around like I don't know what.

If you've never pulled something, you don't know the dynamics of the—.

The front hits something, but the back hasn't hit it yet.

And so, it creates tension.

And I was so thankful that we had gone with the top -end

hitch, the $25 ,000.

Because I just had confidence.

I just had confidence with this unit.

And it's a true blessing.

It really, really is.

Very, very thankful to have it.

And so, these are to help us to

defray those extra costs.

And so, what Jeffrey normally does, he's done here.

Here is the external—.

So, he buys what he calls bricks, which are the—.

What he's dealing with is the pages, the bound pages together.

And so, this is a ESV—.

Oh, it's an ESV creeds and confessions.

So, here is—.

I have an ESV creeds and confessions from Jeffrey.

Why does Styrofoam attach itself to everything?

I'm not sure.

This is my ESV creeds and confessions from Jeffrey.

So, it's got the stuff in the back.

The larger catechism, Heidelberg, Westminster Confession of Faith.

I think it—.

Does it have the London in there?

I'm not sure.

I'd have to look.

So, I have one.

That's a really neat resource to have.

And so, here is the new one here.

And don't worry.

I'm not going to use a knife or anything like that.

And as normal, very, very well wrapped and kept safe for transport, which

means we'll just have to wrap it again.

But I want people to be able to see what they're going to be bidding on anyways.

And this is the fun part.

You know,

the problem is, once it starts layering up, it gets stronger and stronger.

I'm seeing sort of a—.

This isn't black.

This is brown.

Very deep, dark—.

I think this is that—.

Wow.

I'm sure that Jeffrey could send me a description of exactly what it is, but I don't think I've

seen this leather before.

Wow, look at that.

We're going to take a moment to reflect upon.

Now, this is fascinating.

This is unique.

It has no imprinting whatsoever.

Completely clean.

And it's got a deep—.

You can sort of see the different tones there.

It's a little bit more rustic.

You can see the pages haven't been separated.

I won't steal someone's thunder in doing that.

But so smooth.

Oh, goodness.

That is beautiful.

That is beautiful.

So, this ESV, Creeds and Confessions—.

I didn't figure it would actually fit back in there again, because there's more leather on it now than there used to be.

We will have available, after someone vacuums up all the mess I've made of it.

ESV, Creeds and Confessions from Jeffrey Rice.

And like I said, Brother Derek is going to send us a blade, and we've got the

layered cross from Brother Pierce on the other side of the window there.

It hasn't been oiled yet, so that means it will squeak.

So, we've got mineral oil that will bring out the depth of the colors.

Because all you can hear is the Charlie Brown thing.

You got no mic?

Oh.

Yeah, there's no stain on this right now.

So, it's all the natural colors, and they will get deeper when he oils it.

So, be looking next week for that, to help with the costs on

the new RV.

Okay.

I'll just leave those there.

I guess you can—yeah, you can sort of see them off to the side there, from that angle anyways.

And press on here, because I have somewhat of—.

I've got to do this pretty much in an hour, because the truck

is my means of transportation, and it's in Holbrook.

So, I'm borrowing the wife's car right now, and she's got stuff to do.

And let me just thank everybody for all the prayers.

When I got into real problems on Tuesday, people were doing everything.

I mean, I had one brother back east literally volunteer to fly out.

He's a truck driver to drive the unit back to Phoenix for me.

And I'd fly back, and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

And just a lot of folks that were very concerned, saying, hey, we need to have you around.

There were even people on the other side of a number of issues that were praying that— they'd rather defeat

me in debate than defeat me in a surgical suite or something like that, I guess.

So, I appreciate all of that very, very, very much.

But again, I've said multiple times, and people are even asking today, well,

why do a program?

Why not just rest?

So, it would be a whole week, the world's not going to come to an end.

Well, I have a

very strong conviction that while the sun is

up, we need to be working.

I mentioned to you on the last program, and I was listening, even toward the end, as I was

dying on the way to Holbrook, I was listening to an audio book that I purchased on the life and ministry of

Adoniram and Ann Judson.

And if you're at all familiar, highly recommend to you get

an audible book, do something just to thoroughly familiarize yourself with not only him, but

there were so many in our past, so many great men and women who

have suffered greatly to lay the foundations,

missionaries who gave it all.

It was just astonishing to me how much death

surrounded these people.

And I'll be honest, I've said this before, I'll say it again.

I think the fact that we hide from death, we hide it from our children,

we don't think about it.

Scripture tells us, what does scripture tell us?

Scripture says it is better to spend a day in the house of mourning than a day

in the house of feasting.

Now, that does not mean that it is wrong to feast

and to rejoice in God's goodness, to rejoice in God's blessings.

But in this world, life is but a

vapor.

And the reality is that we

learn so much, and our priorities are

aligned to God's will when we suffer.

And we do everything in our power to avoid suffering.

I'm not saying you have to be like people in your early church that ran out to try to become martyrs or something like that.

If we seek to live a godly life, we will experience suffering.

But one of the things, one of the reasons I would like to do at least one or two debates on

open theism, I don't believe that open theists

can for a second understand what Adoniram Judson went through.

He himself said if he did not have a firm, heartfelt conviction of the sovereignty of

God, he could never have survived the simple calamities that he

experienced.

I mean, this man was going to London to raise funds for foreign

mission work.

Remember, you and I, foreign missions, everybody, foreign missions everywhere.

Not back then, not back then.

It was a brand new radical idea that a lot of people didn't even like.

It was Calvinists who were spearheading it too, by the way.

And he's going to London, and the ship that he's on gets

taken, it's captured by the French who were at war with England.

Of course, what's new about that?

And he came this close to disappearing into a dungeon, never to be seen again.

Experienced great deprivation, suffering, starvation, even in that period of time.

And if it weren't for an American military officer who heard him, as they're

taking him to the prison where, you don't come out of this prison.

He's going, I'm an American, we're not at war with you, this isn't right.

An American military officer hears him, tells him, quiet, quiet,

you're going to get yourself killed.

And then a few hours later, in the dungeon, the door opens, and there is a military

officer, and he has bribed his way in and gets him out.

And hustles him to a ship and gets him out of France.

And he finally is able to get to London, and then back.

And remember, these trips would take months, weeks, and months.

We do this overnight, weeks and months for travel.

And then his dear wife, who gave so much for him,

and gave so much for the Burmese people, three children lost.

He married three times, because his wives kept dying.

And if I recall correctly, the majority of children born to him died before he did.

And so many of the missionaries that went over there died.

In fact, one of the women that he married was the widow of one of the missionary couples that came over to help them.

They had children, it was a practical thing.

It was sort of almost a needful thing.

Because there was so much death.

And the thing that struck me over and over again, was how they

responded.

Their response of trust, their response of non

-complaint, was due to the fact that they believed in the sovereignty of God.

They believed this came from His hand.

The open theist cannot say that.

Can not say that.

It steals and robs the children of God.

The confidence they can have, that what happens in their life,

comes from His hand, and comes from infinite goodness and mercy.

They can't have that.

And I just don't know how these people even start to read the stories of these people that did so much.

Because they don't believe in that God.

They don't believe in the God of those missionaries.

And the small, still struggling, Burmese church,

is there because of Adoniram and Ann Judson.

No question about it.

When you read the story of, he translated the Bible into Burmese.

He learned the language.

And then he translated it, not from English, but from Hebrew and Greek.

This guy was brilliant.

He was brilliant.

And to my knowledge, I could be wrong about this, but I did read somewhere, that that's still the

only translation in Burmese.

Not an English translation, that's the only translation of the Bible in Burmese.

I could be wrong about that, but at least until recently it was.

And the miraculous way in which God protected that translation, because he was put in prison

due to a war between Burma and England.

How he survived, what he went through in that prison, I don't even begin to understand.

But the miraculous way in which that translation was protected and eventually

published.

Providence of God.

Sovereignty of God.

It's right there in front of us.

And extremely challenging.

Introduce your kids to the stories of these great men and women.

And be honest about it.

Don't make cartoons out of these people.

They weren't superheroes.

They weren't sinless.

They weren't perfect, but they were willing to suffer for Christ.

And for me, sitting here in discomfort, it's like

when Adoniram Judson was in that prison, I forget how long it was.

It was a very, very long time.

In the first prison they were in, in Rangoon, I think,

or up the river, one of the two, I forget.

I'd have to look.

Their feet were shackled.

If you didn't have somebody on the outside to bring you food, you starved to death.

And they were put in a single cell.

No windows or any light.

No chamber pots.

You just went.

I can't imagine what it smelled like.

You never washed.

And at night, these sadistic guards would take your shackles

and they would hang them over a bamboo pole and then they'd raise the bamboo pole up so that at

night you slept and the only thing touching the floor was your shoulders and your head.

Your feet would be up in the air.

I don't know that I'd survive the week.

And many of them didn't.

Many of them did die of dysentery and all sorts of horrific diseases.

Not only in the prisons, but sometimes just out in the streets, just the way things were.

And still are in many places in the world.

Anyway, that's a good reason, I think, to go for the open theist topic.

Because it

robs people of the biblical God.

It really does.

It reduces God to sort of an exalted man.

Did you know Jehovah's Witnesses are open theists?

Watchtower's official theology is amenable to

open theism.

All right, so I was sent about three weeks ago.

Let me see here.

I actually have up here.

This would tell me exactly how long ago I was sent this.

April 13th.

So it's right at a month.

No, April 11th.

April 11th.

Okay, so yeah, right there.

I was sent this, and the individual who sent it to me I think is correct.

Because he identifies what's being said here as truly central

to the quote -unquote provisionist argument.

And so often this stuff sounds like it's a spitting match, like

it's just for people who like to go online and have arguments with other people and stuff like that.

That's not what we're talking about.

Oh, by the way, you made no comments about my shirt.

There are comments.

I can't see the comments.

What are the comments?

Turning the shirt down?

It's too bright?

Hawaiian shirts are always bright, but it's that it's cute.

Because look, see, there's Dini.

So I have a shirt with Dini, and I have a shirt with Foxy, and a shirt with

Sophie.

And I matched the flowers and stuff to sort of match their color schemes.

We need to pray for Dini.

Dini's living in a tree.

Dini struggles to adjust to other kitties, and he and Foxy.

Foxy's fine.

Foxy just wants to play, but Dini just doesn't want anything to do with him.

So Dini's literally living in a tree right now.

Or objecting.

Some of us love the shirt.

Okay, well, good.

So you can go online, and this is only for people who are weird like us, but there are a lot of you out

there because you've talked to me.

I see you on Twitter.

And you can take your favorite pictures of your furry friends and have a shirt made.

So I don't care what anybody thinks.

It's Saturday.

I've had two rough surgeries in one month, and I don't care what you think.

It's comfortable, and it's my little Dini boy.

Last night, Sophie was with me the whole night.

And, in fact, for a while, she was on top of me for at least two hours, I would say.

And when I was gone, she did that with Kelly.

But now that I'm home, she's doing it with me again.

And so Kelly walked into the office today, and she's like,

traitor.

I see you, traitor.

Because Sophie's cuddling with me.

And I was gone, and so what can I say?

The two of us, I was holding Foxy today.

And he doesn't really like to be held, but both Kelly and I started petting him

ferociously.

And so he's sort of like, oh, this isn't all that bad.

So anyway, I'm very happy to be home and

see people who accept me unreservedly, shall we say,

my little cats.

Anyhow, all right, so this video clip was sent to me.

It has been about a month since I listened to it, so it's sort of going to be new for me, too.

But I remember having listened to it that, yeah, this is key and central to

the issues that people should be thinking about when it comes to provisionism.

So if I recall, this is not an overly long.

Now, that's really weird why it looks that way.

But anyway, hopefully I'll be able to hear it, and let's listen to

what is said here.

I was just saying, this has to do with indwelling the spirit.

The spirit indwells believers.

And so if David, who is indwelled by the spirit, is speaking, the words of the spirit are in his tongue.

The spirit is actively guiding David, and he's speaking the word of the spirit.

And he's inspired in his speaking of that word to his audience, or writing it, or whatever it may be.

And so the Holy Spirit is not indwelling the unbeliever.

He's indwelling the believer so as to work on the unbeliever.

So the spirit of the Lord is actively at work through a human means.

Now, he may do some other means, like some supernatural vision, or some whispering, or

something like that too.

But what I'm saying is that the work of the spirit through the human vessel is a necessary and sufficient

means.

In other words, my challenge is to say you have to establish total inability in order to

suggest that there has to be something extra going on.

You have to establish, because I'm not making the positive claim that people are born unable to believe divinely

inspired truth.

You are.

So you have to establish that from the Bible, that total inability is true.

And then you can assert, therefore, something else is needed besides the

presentation of the Scripture, the Holy Spirit working through indwelled messengers to proclaim truth

clearly for the world to believe it.

And so that's, I think, the burden.

And I may be wrong.

You can show me where I'm wrong here.

But I think the burden is on you for making the positive claim that total inability is true.

And therefore, there needs to be some extra -provenient working of grace to cause people to have the

ability to believe plainly spoken truth.

That last phrase, that last section, let's play that

again.

Total inability is true.

And therefore, there needs to be some extra -provenient working of grace to cause people to have the

ability to believe plainly spoken truth.

Okay.

Extra -provenient work of grace.

With all calm respect, that's not

even up to the level of Rome's view.

Rome has a higher view of grace.

And that's an amazing thing to say.

But Rome has a higher view of grace than Leighton Flowers has.

Because if you're listening, what he says at the beginning sounded like

he believes that the primary work of the Spirit

in, I guess you can't even call it drawing someone, because

there seems to be something in his theology that drawing was different in the past and now after the cross

it's different today, and all that kind of stuff.

But when someone comes to Christ,

it sounds like he believes that everyone possesses

in and of themselves the capacity to believe divine truth

without a supernatural work

of the Spirit of God within them to free them

from slavery to sin.

Because the language that he used was that the Spirit's in the believer, not the unbeliever.

This is not a special work of the Spirit.

Obviously, if a special work of the Spirit is needed

to open blind eyes, to take out stony hearts, to bring the bones

together in the Valley of Bones, all that biblical stuff, the pictures, the biblical stuff.

If the Spirit of God is required to do that and can actually

accomplish it, then that proves election.

That proves election.

Because the Spirit of God has accomplished that in specific people's lives.

Now you might say, well, but he tries.

But the point is, if the Spirit of God frees you from slavery to sin,

raises you to spiritual life, opens spiritual eyes, gives a heart of flesh, takes out a

heart of stone, all these things, if those are spiritual works

that are required for a person to have true and saving faith,

then the Spirit of God is going to obviously work in harmony with the Son and with the Father.

You can't have disharmony between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And so you'd have to believe in election, which is the last thing on the planet they're actually going to believe in.

A biblical doctrine of election, not a vague class election type thing that

doesn't have God as the source of the choice.

And so it sounds like what he's saying is that the role of the Spirit,

somehow he connects the role of the Spirit in inspiring Scripture.

Because he said David is indwelled with the Holy Spirit and gives inspired.

That's inspiration of Scripture.

That's a completely different category.

Provisionists stink at categories, to be perfectly honest with you.

But it sounds like what he's saying is that the only

role, at least normatively, that the Spirit has is

in the believer in presenting divine truths.

Now, I don't know what he's talking about when he talks about whispers.

I don't even know how to deal with something like that.

Where is the Spirit whispering in Scripture?

I have no worthy idea.

So he does sort of leave that door open just a little bit.

But it's that last...

He uses the term prevenient grace.

Again, utterly unbiblical concept.

Completely indefensible.

It's grace that doesn't accomplish anything.

It's grace that brings everybody to the same point.

Depends on who's using it.

But prevenient grace is the cellophane tape of Arminianism.

It's how you hold together a system that simply doesn't work.

And so that last statement...

Total inability is true, and therefore there needs to be some extra -prevenient working

of grace.

Extra -prevenient working of grace.

So, prevenient grace would be for everybody.

But I have no idea what that's supposed to mean.

Because it sounds like in the provisionist scheme

that prevenient grace is just simply what God has done in making the Gospel available.

And in having people proclaim it.

Now, that raises all the questions of well, how come it's being proclaimed

regularly in certain nations and not in other nations?

Does that mean God couldn't get it into those other nations?

Again, provisionism lacks a coherent, biblical

theology of God.

It doesn't start there.

It starts with man.

I've said that from the start.

And I'll keep saying it because it's true.

If you don't start with the biblical revelation of God, you

are going to end up in error somewhere.

It may be anywhere on the map because it's the doctrine of God that holds everything together in the center.

You start with God's self -glorification, God's nature, God's

unchanging purposes, the harmony that must exist between Father, Son, and Holy

Spirit for the Trinity to even cohere logically, let

alone reflect the range of biblical data that forces us to believe in the doctrine of the Trinity.

You have to start there.

And they don't.

They do not.

That is not their grounding.

That's not their starting point at all.

I've had to listen to way too many hours of provisionists

for me to not know that that is not their starting place in any way, shape, or form.

So because they don't, and because they start with man, and these unbiblical

concepts such as prevenient grace, then now you have this

extra spiritual working being required.

And he's saying, you have to prove that.

Not difficult to do, but every illustration that I

just mentioned, Heart of Stone, Heart of Flesh, Valley of the Dry Bones, we can go to Romans 8,

there's just so many places.

And yes, they have their surface -level responses.

They're incoherent and inconsistent, but they have them.

It's not their first rodeo.

But this is the issue.

Because as I said, this is sub -Roman, let alone sub

-Reform.

These people are, this did not come out of the Reformation.

Historically, the Reformation opens up the opportunities for

groups like this to exist.

But as far as having a meaningful theological connection to

people who've come before us, these people are not even

close to the Reformation.

They don't believe in the bondage of the will.

They're certainly not coming from that perspective at all.

And look, most Lutherans don't believe in the bondage of the will either.

A whole lot of Presbyterians today.

There is such diversity now

because of a willingness to deny foundational elements of the system.

You've got Presbyterians who believe everything.

You've got Lutherans who believe everything.

You've got Anglicans, Episcopalians who believe everything.

You've got Roman Catholics who believe everything.

That's where we are today.

But to listen to the proclamation of the gospel that came from the

Reformation at that time, and then to ask the question,

what do the provisionists believe concerning the nature of grace, the

priority...

I remember one of the last dividing lines we did

live on terrestrial radio.

No one had ever even heard of terrestrial radio back then.

That was not a term that was used.

It was just radio.

One of the last series that we did on the dividing line when we were on

KPXQ was in response to Norman Geisler who had appeared on the Bible

Answer Man talking about Roman Catholicism.

And the issue was how grace was seen

by the Reformers.

And he's telling everybody, look, you need to understand, Rome believes in the necessity of

grace.

Rome anathematized the Pelagians.

Rome anathematized anybody who says that apart from the grace of God, you can be saved.

And my response, always has been and always will be,

yeah, that's true.

No question about it.

But that wasn't the issue of the Reformation.

The issue of the Reformation was not the necessity of grace.

It was the sufficiency of grace.

The power of grace.

The accomplishment of grace.

The relationship of grace to God's self -glorification.

And Trent denied that sufficiency

by adding in the actions of man in the sacramental system.

The provisionists, as much as they detest the term and waste time arguing about what

Pelagius did and did not believe, the provisionists just simply do not seem to understand

that what they are saying, both sides of the Reformation

recognized that man was in a significantly

more dangerous spiritual state than the provisionists do.

Because what I just listened to was an ostensive Southern Baptist

stating that any individual

without a supernatural work, and this is why during the debate he wouldn't say that conversion,

regeneration, is a miracle.

He wouldn't say it.

Because he doesn't believe it.

And everybody in the Reformation recognized that was necessary.

So the provisionists are sub -Roman when it comes to the issue

of the nature and sufficiency of grace.

And so how do you deal with that?

Well, I don't know that

anyone can, there is no, there are no

magic bullets if, you know I remember

a number of years ago preaching at a church in New Jersey and I

preached out of Romans 2 and 3, end of 2, end of 3.

And I preached the text where Romans 1, universal

sinfulness.

Romans 2, the Jews go, yep, everybody out there is bad.

And Paul's argument is, you're actually worse.

Because you have God's law but you don't do God's law.

And so mere possession of the law does not bring you

any closer to God.

And then you get into chapter 3 well, then what's the benefit of the Jews?

Well, they have the scriptures, etc.

But then you have that catena of passages where the apostle brings together these

texts to say that the accusation of universal sinfulness

is for everyone.

That Jew or Gentile all stand before God on the

same ground.

And the application that the apostle makes is

once we recognize this then every mouth is stopped.

Every claim of self -righteousness is done away with.

The only person who is ready to hear the gospel is ready to

hear the saving power of Christ is ready to hear that God

justifies the one who believes in Him.

Not the one who brings works but the one who believes in Him.

That has to be a person whose mouth has been stopped.

Who stands head down.

No more excuses.

I accept that I am a sinner before God and He can do with me as He pleases.

That's the person who is then ready to hear about justification by faith.

That's the person who is ready to hear the gospel.

And what we have done in the church today is we skip the bad news

to get to the good news.

But without the bad news, the good news isn't really good news.

And once a person realizes their utter

undoneness the utter propriety of judgment

they're the ones who will be able to extend that empty hand of faith.

But how do you get there?

Does every person have that innate capacity to just be reasoned through

to that point?

Or is it not a given that the Spirit of God is necessary?

When Jesus said, if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

Do you really need to be set free?

Is that really necessary?

That seems like a radical thing.

And if the Son sets you free will you not therefore be free?

How does prevenient grace fit into the Son setting someone free?

These are questions that I don't think provisionism can answer in a meaningful

fashion.

And most evangelicals are

completely it's not the essence

of what is preached.

It's not the essence of what is preached.

So that they're still open to a compromised position.

And the compromise is yeah, God does most of it, but I'm the one that enables him

by my free will act to save me.

And the results are right in front of us.

I think we can see that very clearly.

So I I think this is the issue.

But that's also why provisionism has gained a hearing is because most of

evangelicalism since it doesn't root its understanding of the gospel

in God's glory and God's purpose and the perfection of the work of Christ and the perfecting

power of the work of the Spirit and everything else leaves this door open.

Invites this kind of compromise.

And they use much of the same language but it doesn't have the same meaning that it has in scripture.

And so I appreciate this clip being sent to me.

You can go ahead and take that down.

I appreciate that clip because I think that it does

illustrate very clearly for us the issue that the reformers

had with Rome but these guys aren't even up to Rome's level.

That's the amazing part.

Now I know you have this graphic was given.

Just listening to you describe this made me think of this picture.

That was years ago.

This is interesting because this is on the back of the picture.

And I have to hold this far away to read it now.

Just a second.

Hold on a second.

A few people know what I just said.

In December of 2001 I presented a discussion of the doctrine of justification on the Bible Answer Man broadcast.

Isn't that ironic?

A man was listening to those programs and as I spoke of the imputed righteousness of Christ which covers us and gives us

peace with God he drew this picture.

It is very special to me.

I hope your heart rejoices when you look at it and remember you are clothed in the righteousness of another.

Romans 4, 4 -8.

I'm not sure where this sticker came from.

2001 was almost a quarter century ago for us now so we can be forgiven.

You can see this forlorn looking man but he's covered

in the righteousness of another.

That's the clothing that he has.

This was drawn by someone it looks like it says barren at the bottom

to picture the perfection of the righteousness of Christ.

It's not something that we bring.

It's not something we add to.

It certainly is not something that Roman Catholics don't understand.

Certainly in the debate with Jimmy Akin that came out rather clearly as well.

But honestly I don't think it's something a provisionist understands either.

So we will continue to proclaim the truth and hope and pray that the Spirit of God will

honor that in the lives of others.

So we will be Lord willing

we'll be back next week probably not on Tuesday.

We are going to be working with the unit at that particular point in time but we will try to get

programs in next week.

And then right now I am scheduled for yet another very

unpleasant surgery on the 20th of May.

So that's a week from Monday.

And I would just pray that like I said the doctor that I have what

touched my heart honestly is he looked as disappointed when I came to in the

recovery room.

He looked as disappointed as I was.

We had had really high hopes.

And we got about 20 % of that done.

Pray that what I'm going through right now process I'm going through right now things they've put

into me right now will have the desired effect and will allow

this to be this next one to be the last one.

Because I'll be honest with you if there's a whole series of these coming

I already feel like a pin cushion um that's

almost two weeks ago now you can see the black and blue marks from a nurse

that knew there was a vein in there somewhere.

Some nurses are good some not so good.

Um yeah anyway so uh for those who wish to pray

or wish to pray against me but there's no one to be listening to you if you're praying against me anyways so I don't really care.

You can be praying toward those ends and I certainly want to be I

would certainly love to experience at least a level of the fitness and health that I've had in the

past but if that's not the Lord's will then I just need to

be able to do the things he calls me to do for as long as I get to do them.

And that's totally in his hands and God is good through all of it.

God is good through all of it.

So thanks for listening to The Dividing Line today.

Remember next week we'll probably put something out on the app

um and then maybe start the auction stuff off with the next

program so we can let everybody has the

auction.

Evidently there's conversation going on in the room about auctions

versus raffles type stuff.

So we'll figure it all out but again this will have even deeper colors because Rich will be

doing the oil staining on it.

And then once again the ESV I guess we'll call this the

clean cover look because it doesn't have any imprinting on it.

Smells wonderful.

It's a little bit, I'm going to have to ask did we get anything from Jeffrey?

Um, I didn't look at Facebook because he always communicates with me.

Yeah, I don't see anything.

Um, I guess I'm just going to have to find out from him what he

calls this.

But it's the ESV creeds and confessions wonderful smooth,

beautiful but more rustic um, deep brown with a little bit of

burgundy type in the the leather Bible

that will be getting out there too.

So be thinking about that.

Prayers appreciated and prayers appreciated on Monday because I'll be driving the unit

back down and on this whole trip this was the leg that I

was concerned about most because if I go one direction it's just

technical rough road surfaces, two lane roads things like that and we end up on the other

side of the valley have to come across through heavy traffic if we go the other direction a bunch of single lane

construction um, which is not a whole lot of fun when you're 57 feet long um, that's

all there is to it so that's what we'll be doing on Monday and I need to have all

the physical strength that I can muster for that particular event so we

will see you in God's will next week.

Thanks for watching God bless.