The Rapid Leap of Socialism Then Radio Free Geneva and The Bee

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:43

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. It's a Friday. We're doing it today because yesterday was my birthday and I'm crazy and so I spent six hours and 47 minutes on a bike.

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I rode 125 miles climbing 5 ,860 feet and no, that wasn't really a whole lot of fun and I don't know why

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I do it, but I just know that if I stop doing it, I'll never get to do it again. So that's really one of the best reasons that you do things like that.

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I am going to be rethinking, I had this tradition starting in 2005, I climb 100 feet for every year of age on bike.

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So first year was 4 ,300 feet, this year is 5 ,800 feet and I turned 60 to be 6 ,000 feet.

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So there's a consistency here, mathematically speaking. And so I figure after that 60 one,

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I've got to come up with a new way of doing it. It's got to start going down because I'm already going,

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I'm already heading down that way, fast. So yeah, I got to do something.

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So anyways, that's what we're doing the program today, but it's a really busy day. I was just teaching church history for my dear brothers and sisters in Germany and we talked about the

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Didache today and that was fun. And I've got to get out to Mesa because this is birthday week.

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My grandson's birthday was on the 14th and then Clementine and Cadence is tomorrow and mine was yesterday.

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So it's birthday week. And so my wife has lived in the kitchen. I think she was up at three o 'clock this morning and she has made,

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I don't know how many cakes and homemade frosting. She has just become, ever since she was forced into retirement by the great panic of 2020, she has finally, she used to watch all those cooking shows.

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Now she is the cooking shows. So there are, it's just, yeah, if you have a wife who's baking lots and lots and lots of stuff for lots and lots, lots of people,

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I guess they had a cookie exchange, all the ladies, the church did, and she only found out about like 18 hours before it was supposed to happen.

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And so she's putting together a lighted display with cookies and, but she whistles and hums while she's doing it, which means she's happy.

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So Hey, that's, that's all it, it's all it matters, I guess, in long run. So anyways,

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I've got to get out to Mesa for the birthday celebrations. So we only have a certain amount of time.

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That's why we're starting at an odd time. And I'm talking fast, because we've got to get as much done as we as we possibly can.

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What we're going to do in the program today is there's some things I felt like I needed to comment on. And then we're going to fire up the

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Radio Free Geneva theme, because there are some of you out there that are just weird. And you get all excited when you hear that, and it just makes your day.

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And so we haven't done it for a while. So we'll fire it up in the middle of the program, and we will do a

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Radio Free Geneva segment in response to the CEO of the Babylon Bee, Seth Dillon, who is on a campaign against Reformed theology that is making him say all sorts of things that if he were consistent, let's pray he doesn't become consistent that way.

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Let's pray he becomes consistent the other way. If he were consistent would require him to deny

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God's exhaustive knowledge of future events. I have said for years, and many people have disagreed, but no one has refuted the assertion that the most consistent form of synergism is open theism.

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If you try to hold together the affirmation that God knows exhaustively all future events and the concept of the autonomous will of man, it doesn't work.

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The open theists are right about that. They're wrong about everything else, but they're right about that. You can't hold the two of them together.

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It's not going to work. And we will illustrate that by looking at some of Seth Dillon's words.

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But we will do that as part of Radio Free Geneva. Before we get to that, I haven't seen it posted yet.

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I ran out of time to look for it today. I did preach a sermon on John chapter 9.

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I'm actually going to use it to sort of start off the Radio Free Geneva, but it might be up on YouTube now.

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I'm not really sure. I need to look, but I can't do it right now. All right, let's look at a couple of amazing tweets.

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I guess I'll go back in time. Duke Quan, I think, didn't have time to check on it,

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I think is a PCA elder. I think he's an elder in the Presbyterian Church of America. And he posted,

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The introduction of the COVID vaccine is a vivid metaphor of life between the two advents.

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We celebrate its arrival as decisive for our future, even as disease and death rage on.

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Not the end, but the beginning of the end. Once and future, already and not yet.

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So we hope, grieve, watch. That was responded to by Joshua Wu, PhD.

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And like the first advent too, many will reject the vaccine as they reject the good news and Jesus at the first Christmas.

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When I post that, this makes me just a little bit nauseous, and it does. Hard to even know what to say.

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As I said on the last program, I hope and pray that this vaccine is effective and safe.

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The thing is, when people look into a television camera and say, this is effective and safe, they are lying to you.

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What? And they're lying to you because they don't know that what they're saying is true.

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They're hoping. They have brief human trials. They have models, but they do not have the data.

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They cannot tell you. This will not cause autoimmune issues with you three years down the road.

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They can't tell you that because they've not been testing it for three years. It is a completely novel, new technology.

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And I like new tech. And new tech in the hands of the Christian worldview, great.

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New tech in the hands of secularists, not great. And they simply can't look you in the eye.

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And when you ask for what you could have asked for for almost any other vaccine, especially a genetically altered vaccine, a vaccine that literally sends genetic codes into your cells, okay?

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Never been done before. It's been done for, like, cancer. Never been done for this.

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Hundreds of millions of doses. And when you ask, could

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I see the two and five -year safety data? As we all know, they have to go, we have done.

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We don't have anything. So how can you say it's safe? Because the models project it to be, okay?

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And from what I understand, Facebook and Twitter, or is it just Facebook or Twitter or both?

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Anyway, very soon, they will simply delete any discussion of the safety of these issues.

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There you go. That's what you do when you have something that's safe and effective, is you just delete any discussion of it.

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So, it freaks me out when Christians can then take something like this and we celebrate its arrival as decisive for our future.

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Why is it decisive for our future? Because politicians have crushed the lives of so many citizens globally to make it decisive for our future, even as disease and death rage on.

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If you notice the woke are amongst the greatest of the panicked, there does seem to be a direct connection between the two.

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Not the end, but the beginning, once and future, already and not yet, so we hope, grieve, watch. This is all about the gospel.

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This is gospel language. The now and the not yet is what Paul talks about when he talks about the

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Christian experience, and this is being applied to a vaccine. And then

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Joshua Woo's comment is very similar to what we saw on the last program, where you had the serpent in the wilderness being the anti -brassers, and like the first Advent too, many will reject the vaccine as they reject the good news and Jesus at the first Christmas.

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So, you can't have, you can't ask basic common sense questions.

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You can't have common sense in this situation. You're not allowed to. You're, yeah, there you go.

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I don't even know what to say. Harold Schmidt, an expert in ethics and health policy at the

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University of Pennsylvania, said that it is reasonable to put essential workers ahead of older adults in receiving the new vaccine, given their risks, and that they are disproportionately minorities.

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Health workers are disproportionately minorities. Older population, quote, quote, this is not scare quotes.

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This is an actual quote. It says, Dr. Schmidt said, I know that doesn't mean much anymore.

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There's all sorts of stuff on the internet where it'll say someone said it has quotes and they never said it.

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That is a problem. But, quote, older populations are whiter,

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Dr. Schmidt said. Society is structured in a way that enables them to live longer.

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Instead of giving additional health benefits to those who already had more of them, we can start to level the playing field a bit, end quote.

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That's an expert in ethics and health policy. Critical theory and intersectionality is an evil, anti -human philosophy that destroys everything.

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And it has infiltrated and poisoned the entirety of academia.

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The entirety of it. And it is at the core of the worldview of the

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Biden -Harris administration that Big Eva told us it was okay. Because we can't have mean tweets.

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Can't have mean tweets. Can't have mean tweets combined with the protection of religious liberty and all the rest of it.

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No, no. That, no. Can't have it. This, this is good.

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This is good. So Big Eva told us. Thank you, Big Eva, for telling us these things.

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We appreciate it. If you want more of this critical theory madness,

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I know you don't want more. I don't want any more of it. But we're stuck with it.

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Here is another health expert telling us that we do not need to have sex designations on birth certificates.

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Sex designations on birth certificates offer no clinical utility. Let me stop right there.

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When I was in St. Charles, one of our old -time channel regulars came up to visit with his wife and to attend the conference.

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And I've known this lady for a while. She is about as no -nonsense as you can get.

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And she teaches nurses. And she told me, she said, the young students coming in, they are all completely sold out to this stuff.

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They are stunned when you say there are differences between male and female and that it's important.

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Remember about two and a half years ago, the story about the guy brought into the emergency room complaining of stomach problems, who gave birth to a stillborn because they thought it was a guy and didn't realize it was a she and she was pregnant?

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Yeah. No. You cannot be a rational human being and not recognize that if you're going to treat human beings medically, you must know whether you're dealing with a male or female.

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Dosages of drugs, different. You know they're different. Everybody with the slightest bit of medical knowledge knows that they are different.

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Hide these things and you'll kill people. And then you'll get sued for it.

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But hey, they've got insurance and money grows on trees. This is where we are.

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It's destructive. It destroys life. It's insane. It is absolutely, positively insane.

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We are a step, the new administration coming in, the new rulership coming in, at its core has an insane worldview.

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And we will pay for it. Every single one of us. Every single one of us.

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I go back to the quote, sex designations on birth certificates offer no clinical utility and they can be harmful for intersex and transgender people.

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And I might point out something else. There is a vast difference between intersex and transgender. If these are being used in any meaningful sense.

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There is a very small, very small percentage of human beings who are born with genetic abnormalities that result in ambiguity.

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XXY, XYY. There are issues, always have been.

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Studied them years and years ago when I studied genetics in college. It's part of the study of pathology and in the genetics courses as well.

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So there are people with genetic issues. 99 .9999 % of transgender people today are not those people.

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Moving such designations below the line of demarcation would not compromise the birth certificate's public health function but could avoid harm.

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The greatest social tool being used right now to change society, destroy liberty, and move everything toward a global socialist technocracy is the claim of public health.

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Amongst Christians, that's the love your brother, love your neighbor mantra.

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Everything now is everything has to be avoid harm, avoid harm, avoid harm, safe, safe, safe, safe, safe, safe, safe.

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This is the new world in which we live. And the medical claims are the most powerful tool being used.

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Well, you can't say anything against transgenderism. You'll cause people to commit suicide. You can use that for anything.

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Any behavior you want to protect. You can't say anything bad about people that are attracted to kids.

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They might commit suicide. There have been lots of them who've done that. You terrible person, you're killing people.

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See? Works real easily, doesn't it? It only works now because we have raised an entire two generations of safists.

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People who take no risks, who live in a bubble, wrapped in plastic wrap.

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You know, I was not the most adventuresome of kids. I was a good kid. I mean,

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I behaved, I got really good grades, I was never late for class, etc., etc., etc. But there was still some crazy stuff that I did because that's what you do when you're a kid.

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We had these great swings. When they put these swings in the park across the street, man, they were the ones with the, not the flat plastic, hard, but the soft, thick rubber thing, you know, they were made pretty well.

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But you could sit in that baby and man, they were tall. So you could get up there,

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I mean, you could really, and if you jumped at the right spot, you could sail out past the sand into the grass.

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I mean, you could fly. And man, that was scary. But man,

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I'm glad I did it. Now, no, no, no, no, no, no, not safe enough.

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Not safe enough. Oh, safism. Safism. Anyway, that's how we get, we're getting away with it now, is it's funny that this is happening right at the same time as the popularity of these gender reveal parties.

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You know, I remember when we found out the gender of our kids and it was like, you know, you call somebody and go, hey, guess what?

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You know, we never thought about pink cakes or blue cakes or explosive devices or whatever else people have come up with.

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But right at the same time when, well, I even made comment,

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I'm surprised I haven't been kicked out of social media. But someone posted a picture, excuse me, of the transgender activist who made the assertion that all children should be put on puberty blockers until they're ready to choose what gender they want to be.

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And having read Irreversible Damage in a description of the incredible, absolutely incredible impact of these horrific drugs, which are used to castrate adults, adult male sex offenders, which stops brain development, just horrific drugs, just destructive, fully destructive.

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To think of doing that to everyone is not only repulsive, it's repulsive as in this person wants to abuse all children, this person needs to be dealt with repulsive.

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But that's at the exact same time that we have our culture literally telling us all that to be good people, we have to insert into our bloodstreams and untested for more than what, three months, 90 days, 120 days?

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Is that the longest so far? Did you see the poor nurse? You watched the video, right?

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You didn't see it? No, no, the poor nurse who is live on the air, head of the

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ER and she just got her injection and all of a sudden she's mumbling and then she goes,

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I feel really dizzy and then right on camera, they're grabbing her before she hits the floor, go on, no, no, well,

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I hope not, but I'll be perfectly honest with you, if she had, I don't know, they would have told us. No, I imagine she just passed out.

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That can happen with inoculations. I'm not saying it's because this is going to kill everybody that takes it in any way, shape or form, but we don't have long term safety data on a brand new technology.

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What can explain that? At the same time, you've got wackos saying that we should start injecting our children with puberty blockers and give them the opportunity.

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You don't think there aren't enough people in the education system that would go, huh, that's a pretty good idea.

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Oh my. You know, I just noticed something. I was sent this coffee mug.

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I don't do coffee, but tea. I haven't done much tea this year either. 30 years of debates, 1990 to 2020.

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And then check out the cool cat on the back and then check out the coogee I'm wearing today. I'm sort of wondering if this wasn't the coogee that it was based on, because it's got the yellow things, and this is the only one

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I've got that has those. I think this is the one it was based on. I really do. I just realized that.

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And it's wearing sunglasses, and the sunglasses are blue. So, what do you think?

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I think it's right there. You can't do that, Rich, because you are unworthy.

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Just unworthy. That's all there is to it. Okay. All right.

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So, with that, Brother Pierce, do you have something ready to go in there?

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Let's fire it up. I constantly hear people that are

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Calvinist harp on this. They just keep repeating it, and they repeat it so much, you start to think it's a biblical truth.

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He just stands outside the tomb of Lazarus, he says, Lazarus, come out. And Lazarus said, I can't,

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I'm dead. That's not what he did. Lazarus came out. To me, to tell me a dead person can respond to the command of Christ.

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You take lessons from Judas White and Jeff Durbin, it shows in this kind of sequential format and...

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Do you really believe that it parallels the method of exegesis that we utilize to demonstrate those other things?

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No. Some new

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Calvinists, even pastors, very openly smoke pipes and cigars just as they drink beer and wine.

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Even Jesus cannot override your unbelief. You quote the verse like that to him, so he only would sound like if he were listening to it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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He wouldn't make any sense to him, a self -righteous, legalistic, deceitful jerk. And you need to realize that he's drawn from predeterminism, now he's speaking of some kind of middle knowledge that God now has to...

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I deny and categorically deny middle knowledge. Don't beg the question that would demand me to force you to embrace it.

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You're not always talking about necessarily God choosing something for no apparent reason, but you're choosing that meat because it's a favorable meat.

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There's a reason to have the choice of that meat. The cafeteria at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

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Safe from all those moderate Calvinist Dave Hunt fans and those who have read and reread George Bryson's book.

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We are Radio Free Geneva! Broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to say for his own eternal glory.

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Yes, indeed. There you go. Got everybody excited. Got the Radio Free Geneva theme played. Let me remind you of some truly,

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I think, basic things that Scripture teaches us concerning the fact that God is God and we are not.

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And that God is in complete control of his creation. He is accomplishing his purposes and those purposes include the actions of men.

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Let me remind you of just simply some very basic biblical foundations that unfortunately,

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I believe, are often lost today in a world where humanism, human autonomy is the fundamental element of the thoughts of mankind.

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I simply remind you of Yahweh's discussion with Moses in Exodus chapter 4 when

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Moses said, you know, I appreciate you sending me to Pharaoh and all, but I'm not a really good speaker.

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You know, I think you ought to send somebody else because I stumble over stuff.

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I got a little bit of a stutter once in a while and I say, hey, too often and things. And remember what

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God said to Moses in Exodus 4 .11. Yahweh said to him, who has made man's mouth or who makes him mute or deaf or seeing or blind?

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Is it not I, Yahweh? Now, let's just stop a second and ask what kind of a view of God would actually assert that genetic errors in the birth of children, blindness, seeing or blind, mute, deaf, things that would in that day almost certainly curse a person to poverty and an early death.

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What kind of a God says, I'm the one that does that. I'm the one that makes people mute.

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I'm the one that makes people deaf. I'm the one that makes people seeing. I'm the one that makes people blind.

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Is it not I, Yahweh? The expected answer is yes.

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And that was a radical thing because the gods of the peoples, that wasn't what they did.

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If someone was born blind or something like that, that was frequently the demonic forces and curses and magic and all sorts of things would come into that process.

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But the idea that God would have a purpose in doing all of these things, that's the real question.

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Hope you don't mind. My daughter had a shipment stolen right off of her porch today.

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We have the video of it. And unfortunately, 10 minutes after I left, two big

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Christmas presents for our grandchildren were delivered at our house and they're white out in the open.

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So I've turned the motion sensor on and if all of a sudden I stop and go, put those down!

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You'll know exactly why I'm doing that because my app is filled with people talking about,

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I mean, they're out. The porch pirates are out right now. They're stealing everything in sight. And so the chances of those boxes actually being there when

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I run home are going to be very small. Anyways, but we're doing this for you anyways and God is sovereign over these things as well.

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So, this statement on Yahweh's part was radical at the time and it remains radical today.

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But for different reasons. The people of that day, just simply the slaves of what was going on around them.

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The dark forces that they could not understand. Now we can understand why.

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We can actually determine in some instances exactly what the genetic issue was. Vision requires certain enzymes and proteins to be in the proper balance.

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And one genetic mistake and all that's gone. So now we know the why.

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That doesn't change the reality of the design nature of the system and the fact that something happens in development.

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And God says He's in control of that. And He takes responsibility for it. He says if calamity and evil strikes a city, is it not

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I, Yahweh, that perform it? In the 33rd

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Psalm, He very plainly contrasts the plans and intentions of men with the plans and intentions of God.

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And He says nations and men, God frustrates their plans and intentions. But His plans and intentions will be established forever.

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There is a 108 degree contrast that is drawn between the ostensible autonomy of man and the real autonomy of God.

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This is the God who says He knows all things. In fact, in the trial of the false gods in Isaiah 40 -48,

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He lays out how you can know the true God versus false gods. And you can know the true

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God versus false gods because the true God knows what's going to happen in the future.

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He can prophesy Cyrus. This is why you can sort of tell whether someone, whether a person that claims to be a

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Christian has a high view of Scripture or is embarrassed about the nature of Scripture as to whether they will allow

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Cyrus to be prophesied in Scripture. The vast majority of Old Testament scholars will not say that Isaiah prophesied

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Cyrus. They will say that that portion of Isaiah was written after Cyrus because how could Isaiah have known? Because there is really no prophecy.

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And if you deny prophecy, then you deny Jesus. Because the first thing

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Jesus teaches His disciples after His resurrection is, Moses and all the prophets spoke about me and let me show you where.

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So, how is that possible? God says He knows the future. What's more, and this is very, very important,

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He says He knows the past and why it took place. Historians can tell you certain things about the past, but very often we cannot tell you why.

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I was telling some friends recently that if Hitler had stayed out of the way of his generals during World War II, we'd be speaking

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German today. Because in almost every major failure where Germany was beat back, it was because Hitler interfered with his generals.

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His generals wanted to do X, he wanted to do Y, they did Y and they lost. If they had done X, they would have won. If he had supported

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Rommel in North Africa, they would have won. If he had done what Rommel said, Rommel knew we were going to invade at Normandy.

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He knew we weren't coming in at Calais. But Hitler ignored him. In the

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Eastern Front, the German generals wanted to do X, he wanted to do Y, they lost. So, how can

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God know any of this? How can God prophesy anything in light of the fact that almost any event is the result of so many autonomous choices by human beings?

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They think they're autonomous. They don't recognize any forces outside of themselves.

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And so, this is why open theists, who are people who believe that God, while he knows what he is going to do in the future, does not know what free creatures will do in the future.

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That's what makes them free. If God knows where I'm going to have lunch tomorrow, and his knowledge is infallible, and God cannot be in error about what's going to happen in the future, then that's the only place

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I can have lunch tomorrow. Let's say, well, since it was a little over a year ago that Jeff Durbin demonstrated a lack of culinary understanding in making fun of Arby's, then let's say

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I'm supposed to eat at Arby's tomorrow, according to God's infallible knowledge of future events.

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Can I do anything other than eat at Arby's tomorrow? If I am autonomous, then why can't

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I, at the last minute, because there's an Arby's and a

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Taco Bell at Glendale and 35th Avenue. Arby's is on 35th

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Avenue, and Taco Bell is on Glendale. Their back fences butt up against each other, basically.

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There have been times I was heading for Arby's and said, I'd like to have something a little spicier, so let's hang a right, go into Taco Bell.

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Can I do that? If there is no sovereign decree, then

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I can do that. Which means God cannot know what I'm going to do if I'm going to be free. That is the logical conclusion of open theism.

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The open theists recognize. Now, there is a result of that, though. There really can't be prophecy.

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There really can't be prophecy. That's why when I debated one open theist, he said, yes, Judas could have not betrayed

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Jesus. He could have chosen. He had to be free. He could have chosen to not betray

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Jesus. Jeff's watching live.

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Don't you dare. Arby's is trash. Hi, Jeff.

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How are you doing? Hey, I haven't seen this coogee in a while. Have you been wearing your coogee recently? I haven't seen you.

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You have not worn the coogee to church. It sort of hurts a little bit. I've given you some pretty nice coogees, and I've never seen one at church.

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It's starting to make me wonder. It really hurts, brother. It really does. Anyway, what were we saying? We were talking about open theism.

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Yes, but I'm not giving you one, Rich, because I don't want it burned. I really...

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You're perfectly fine, huh? Okay, all right. God has perfect knowledge of that truth.

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That Arby's is trash. I've just been informed by brother Durbin. You're exactly right.

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That turn is... that's not a good spot. That's true. But you can also get rear -ended trying to turn to Arby's, people trying to get through the light at 35th.

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And sometimes there's a bus there that you have to try, and it starts moving right as you're trying. Yes, God does know all these things, but does he know which one

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I'm going to do? That's the issue. Okay, so... Anyway, these topics are important in Scripture, because when you start pushing the open theists, who have as their highest priority the free will of man.

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Man must have autonomous free will. Therefore, if God has knowledge of what they're going to do, then they don't have autonomous free will.

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They cannot change their mind. And they would say it is simply

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Greek philosophy to prioritize the infallibility of God's knowledge of future events over the freedom of man.

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And, of course, they will engage in certain discussions about whether the future actually exists to be known in the first place.

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So I've said for many, many years, the only consistent Arminian is an open theist, because the

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Arminian, who on one hand, wants to say God has exhaustive knowledge of future events.

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The Bible claims that he does. Prophecy is based upon the assumption that he does. God has prophesied specific men by specific name.

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He's talked about nations. He's obviously prophesied exactly what happened in the life of the

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Messiah. And all of these things required specific knowledge of what certain people would do.

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The problem is every person that exists today exists because of literally millions of free will choices of autonomous human beings.

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Look at yourself. Look at your genealogy. Did any of the people in your genealogy have freedom to marry someone else?

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If one person in your genealogy married somebody else, your genetic makeup is different.

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Your gifts are different. Your height's different. Your hair color's different. Your eyes are different. Your intelligence is different.

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You are a unique person, and you're unique based upon, from a naturalistic perspective, the random choices that your forebearers made in mating, as well as where to live, what kind of traditions to hold.

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I mean, there are people who live longer lives because they live in places where the food is better for you than people who live in other places.

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So you end up living longer and being judged by God for more sins. Ha! You see, if it's all just this random mishmash, there would be no way for God to know the future.

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So the Arminian recognizes that Scripture talks about prophecy, and Scripture talks about God's knowledge of future events and past events, but also wants to affirm the idea of the autonomous will of man.

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So what does he do? Well, you have, and we're not going to spend time on this today, but you have the very odd, we've spent a lot of time on it in the past, the very odd concept of middle knowledge and Molinism, a concept that no one had ever thought of until, well, they argue about this, either the

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Jesuits or the Anabaptists. There are a few people who say there were a couple

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Anabaptists who came up with it before Ignatius Loyola did, but generally

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Ignatius Loyola is credited with the formulation of the concept. But you're talking in the middle of the 16th century, and up until that time, no one had found this in Scripture.

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It's not a Scriptural concept. It is a philosophical mechanism to allow you to try to get around the

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Biblical concept by using it as a lens through which to look at the text of Scripture and to insert itself into certain places so you can sort of get around what the

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Scriptures are actually saying. The simple foreknowledge view simply has to default back to some level of mystery.

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Well, yes, God, being eternal, sees all of time. Okay. What happens in time?

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Is it the result of God's decree? Or is it, did He simply start processes?

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Does He only adjust the course of history when He needs to? What is the nature of God's relationship to events in time?

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And people will say, well, knowledge is not causation. Remember that one from Hank Hanegraaff and Bible Answer Man years ago?

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Knowledge is not causation. God does know that does not mean that He causes.

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Well, okay. Then who causes? If you say that God does not cause, then you're saying that there is another source of causation that determines the final outcome of time itself that is not a part of a divine decree, a divine purpose, or anything else.

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And so, when God created, if He knew what the outcome was going to be, then you're faced with a number of questions that I've never heard anyone come up with answers for as of yet.

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So, every act of evil in the history of mankind, if God has exhaustive knowledge when

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He creates, then He knows they're all going to take place and He knows who's going to commit them, right?

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And so, He knows infallibly that the result of His creating in the way that He is creating will result in all of this evil.

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But the simple foreknowledge view is that, well, as God counts it, it's all worth it.

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It's all worth it. All of the most heinous crimes in history is all worth it to protect the free will of man and to establish a loving relationship between Creator and some of the creation that is based upon freedom.

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That's, in essence, what we were told. That's the best we can come up with.

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There's really no explanation outside of, well, how does God know what free creatures are going to do other than He just knows?

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He's eternal. He sees what takes place in time. The problem being, of course, that that actually ends up destroying the autonomy it's meant to protect unless you do the

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Molinism thing, which is why Molinists do what Molinists do. So, it is in that light, it is in the light that makes sense of Exodus 4 and Isaiah chapter 4, it's in light of what makes sense of John chapter 9.

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I mentioned this in the sermon on Sunday, that in John chapter 9, as Jesus passed by,

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He saw a man blind from birth and His disciples asked Him, Rabbi, who sinned? This man or his parents?

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He would be born blind. They had the false idea prevalent at the time and still prevalent to this day, that every sin, that every blindness or deafness or lameness or whatever, it was the result of a specific act of rebellion or sin.

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And so, they asked if this man or his parents had sinned, that he might be born blind.

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And so, Jesus answered, it was neither that this man sinned nor his parents, but it was so the works of God might be displayed in him.

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This man was born blind. He had been blind for,

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I would say, at least 14 years. Why do

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I say that? Because later on, when he's healed and his parents are dragged in and are quizzed and they're afraid because they don't want him put out of synagogue, they say he has age.

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He is old enough to answer for himself in a legal proceeding, which means he's past the age of bar mitzvah.

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He's past the age of being a son of the commandment. And that was 13. So, he's at least 14.

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He could be older than that. So, that's a difficult life.

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That's a hard life. And Jesus said he was born blind so that the works of God might be displayed in him.

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So, are we to say God wanted to display the works of God in him?

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God wanted this situation to happen, but he just had to wait till someone cooperated with his nudgings?

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There can't be a divine decree that specifically and purposely brings this man with his blindness and his sensitive heart.

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Because he turns out to be... Compare the blind man of John 9 with the man who's healed in John 5.

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Night and day. Which shows that the healing didn't have anything to do with the person being healed.

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It had to do with the God who was demonstrating something in the healing. But think about what you're saying when you say that, well,

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God just responded. God didn't know when he created that this man would exist.

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Because that's what open theism says. Open theism says God did not know you would ever exist when

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God created. How could he? You're the result of numerous free will actions.

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That's really the only way around it. Because if you give to God knowledge of future events, then what do you do with the idea of the autonomy of the will?

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You can't have an autonomous will. It's impossible.

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And then when you're asked the question, then who is responsible? You see, the open theist escapes responsibility for God's knowledge of evil in this creation.

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If you don't go that direction, then you have to answer the same questions we do. And we're more than happy to answer those questions in light of God's sovereignty, in light of the promise that in the end,

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God's glorious grace is going to be magnified and glorified. Because it was his purpose that was being worked out,

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Ephesians chapter 1. That's why his grace will be praised, is because he is the

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God who works all things after the counsel of his will. And he has chosen and elect people in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the world, not based upon looking down the corridors of time to see who would choose him.

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We believe because we love him because he first loved us. That's the teaching of the golden chain of redemption.

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That's the teaching of scripture. But if you're an Arminian who still tries to...

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You recognize the Bible teaches God knows future events. Then when he created, he knew every single act of evil that would take place.

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And that's what finally brings us to Seth. A couple of things that Seth said.

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This is the primary one. If you hold on to the idea that every event is willed by God, then you annihilate his good and holy character.

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You make him into a moral monster, indistinguishable from Satan. This is the primary problem with divine determinism.

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So, for anybody saying, you should be picking on Seth. Seth is the one saying that Reformed theology is outside the pale.

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It's outside the pale. You are annihilating God in his good and holy character.

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You make him into a moral monster, indistinguishable from Satan himself.

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Now, Seth Dillon is not the first person to make that accusation. Radio Free Geneva came into existence to respond to people who were making that type of argument from the beginning.

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But he has a platform, and there are a lot of people who appreciate what the

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B and not the B and discern and stuff does. And so you see these things.

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And you're like, well, wait a minute. You're not on the side that brought us the Reformation.

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You're opposing that. You have been on Erasmus' side in the debate with Luther. On the wrong side, the

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Tiber. There's a lot of problems here. There are. So, if you hold on to the idea that every event is willed by God, well, in the following discussion, it became very clear that Seth is very confused about what willing means.

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It does not seem to at least properly utilize in a balanced fashion the difference between God's decree and the will of God revealed in His law.

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So, the permissive and decretal wills of God, which you have to distinguish or you will not be able to make heads or tails out of anything in Scripture.

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You cannot take the law of God that says, Thou shalt not kill and then read Acts 4 where the church says that what

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Herod and Pontius Pilate and the Jews and the Romans did to Jesus was what God's predetermination,

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God's will and predestination decreed to take place. How do you put them together?

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Unless you make that distinction, you can't put them together. You can't deal with Genesis 50.

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You can't deal with Isaiah 10. You can't deal with any of these things. That's why the open theist does what he does. He takes the left -hand turn early on in the conversation to get away from having to deal with any of these things because there really isn't any way out once you start down that path.

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Once you recognize that if God has exhaustive divine foreknowledge, then there has to be a decree.

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I realize that I have friends who will say God does have exhaustive divine foreknowledge, but there is no divine decree.

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It's not a coherent system. It doesn't make any sense. When you push them, eventually they will have to go one way or the other.

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Either have to accept the decree or simply say, you know what? There is no...

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God really doesn't know. So, I made a comment.

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I said, we will do a Radio Free Geneva segment on the DL today explaining why

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Seth of the Bees should be consistent and embrace open theism, to which he said, a segment dedicated to a false choice between Calvinism and open theism sounds fallacious.

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Well, it's not a false choice. You've got to make the decision. It's very easy to sit back and make this type of argument.

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See, let me change Seth's original argument so it comes from my perspective.

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If you hold on to the idea that there is unplanned and unpurposeful evil in the universe, then you annihilate

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God and His holy character. You make Him into a moral monster indistinguishable from Satan.

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This is the problem. This is the primary problem with humanistic synergism. That was easy, huh?

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Probably would have even fit in the tweet. Easy to do. Now you've got to back it up.

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Now you've got to be consistent. Now you've got to explain what divine knowledge is, where it comes from.

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You have to be consistent with God as creator of all things. And that's where that system falls apart.

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That's where that system becomes very shallow. And that has been demonstrated for a very, very long time.

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But I don't find many proponents of synergistic systems that are actually willing to read what has been written since the

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Reformation. Because this was key at the Reformation. This is why Molinism was developed by the

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Jesuits as a mechanism to get away from the divine determinism that is the sovereignty of grace that was central to the

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Reformed message. And that's what the Jesuits were all about. That was their thing.

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They've abandoned it. The funny thing is, now you have non -Roman Catholics as the primary proponents of that kind of perspective now.

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Whereas things were very different back at that time. So what I'm saying is, if Seth Dillon wants to make the arguments that he's making, then he needs to join up with the open theists.

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Because they have separated themselves from historic Christian theism in that fashion so as to be able to say, no,

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God had no knowledge of these things. Because they recognize if he did, then he's responsible. He made the world this way.

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So you either have to say that he did so purposefully with reason, or you're left promoting the idea of a

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God who creates all these things knowing what the end's going to be without a purpose. It's a mess.

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But it's the best I could do. Well, then it gets you off into some weird form of Molinism at that point.

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It's a whole lot easier just to accept what the scriptures themselves state.

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Why was this man born blind? The works of God might be demonstrating to him. God has that right?

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Sure does. Sure does. God has the right to harden

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Pharaoh's heart. God has the right to send the Egyptians into that Red Sea and then drown every single one of them.

01:00:03

All the daddies with little kids at home, yes, he punished them. He did.

01:00:09

Yes, sir. So the one thing that always blows my mind is when they go to the next step when you bring up John 9.

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And they say, well, that was just that guy. That was just that guy. And it's like, okay, wait a minute.

01:00:26

Even if I go with you on that, let's talk about that guy for a second. But why is it just that guy?

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You can't see the fact that God is doing these things all throughout his creation?

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No, that is very, very common. In fact, if you listen to Doug Wilson's debate with a fellow on, I think it was

01:00:47

Unbelievable. No, it wasn't Unbelievable. Yeah, it was. I don't know, a couple months ago. That's exactly what he's saying.

01:00:52

Well, yeah, okay. In that instance, when God's doing something with Israel, okay, that's fine.

01:00:58

Yeah, okay, he can step in in the stuff in the Bible. That doesn't mean he always does it. So the biblical examples don't become a paradigm for everything else.

01:01:08

But then you have those basic statements, Psalm 135, 6. God does whatever he pleases in the heavens and upon earth.

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You've got Psalm 33 that doesn't say this is only about Israel. He says he's talking about the nations.

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The nations have their plans and their schemes, and God frustrates them all, and he has his plans and his schemes, and they're the exact same

01:01:28

Hebrew words, and he establishes them. So, yeah. But you're right.

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That's what they do. They say, well, it's just that one instance. No, it's not just that one instance. So what I'm saying, the only way really to hold on to this position and to be able to make the criticism that was made by Seth Dillon is to be an open theist.

01:01:48

And then, of course, you refute open theism on different grounds. We've done that. You can see the debates we've done on that subject with a number of different people, and I think they were rather compelling arguments in those instances.

01:02:00

Otherwise, Seth has no reason whatsoever to make any criticisms that he has, which would take us back to the biblical stuff, and when we've done the biblical stuff in the past, well,

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John 6 is John 6. John 10 is John 10. Ephesians 1, Romans 9, they are what they are, and there you go.

01:02:22

Okay, all right. I'm going to hopefully still rescue two of my grandkids'

01:02:29

Christmas presents from the porch pirates that are all over the place. What a life.

01:02:35

Let me tell you something. If you're running around stealing stuff off of people's porches the week before Christmas, remember that scene in Star Wars?

01:02:43

You need to go rethink your life. You really need to, which, by the way, you didn't start the music, did you?

01:02:55

I watched The Mandalorian this morning. It's the best thing they've put out.

01:03:04

If you enjoyed the original Star Wars but didn't like how weird they got afterwards, this is great.

01:03:10

It is really well done. I hope they don't ruin it, but yeah.

01:03:17

No spoilers, but my allergies kicked in real bad right toward the end of the program.

01:03:27

Let me tell you that. It was amazing. It really was.

01:03:32

If you haven't watched it, if you've not watched the series, don't go watch this episode, okay?

01:03:38

It will mean nothing to you. It won't have anything at all, but if you have, then just be prepared.

01:03:48

Just be sitting down. Don't be doing anything that you could mess up because wow.