Radio Free Geneva: Atheists, William Lane Craig, Warren McGrew

You constantly hear people that are Calvinist harp on this. God's offering! God's offering!

God's offering! God's offering! God's offering! They just keep repeating it, and they repeat it so much you start to think it's a biblical truth.

Jesus stands outside the tomb of Lazarus, he says, Lazarus, come out! And Lazarus said, I can't,

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

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

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

Um, no. Some new

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

Even Jesus cannot override your unbelief.

To him, you know what it would sound like if he were listening to it? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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

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

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

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

Saint from all those moderate Calvinists, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and read George Bryson's book, we are

Radio Free. Casting the truth about God's freedom to say for his own eternal glory.

And welcome to Radio Free Geneva in the AO Max studio for the first time.

Yes, if you're watching live, then you of course are amongst those few who will be able to tell your grandchildren that you saw the first Radio Free Geneva in the

AO Max studio. And they will go, what are you talking about, Grandpa? Because they won't have any idea.

Nobody will remember. Anyways, that's okay. You'll feel better about it. You know, I was thinking we might need a really good video of Tim Buschong doing that now.

Don't you think? I mean, because now we're in a studio. And you know what?

I think even Tim would agree that there would be one way to even beat that.

There would be one way to even beat that. And that is if Skillet would do it.

Can you imagine Skillet ripping through a mighty fortress with the pyrotechnics and everything else in the process?

I'm just planting a seed there, John. Just planting a seed. You know, I could see some shots of Seth doing his thing.

And Jen's back there on the drums. And Cory's on the keyboard. And yeah, I could see this.

Anyway, welcome to Radio Free Geneva. If you have no earthy idea what in the world you just stumbled into, I'm not sure how you're watching us.

But I can understand how that used to work on television, because there were like only three stations.

So you didn't have much of a choice. You turned it on, and there it was. But Radio Free Geneva is where we address objections to Reformed theology.

Very often, really bad objections to Reformed theology. But sometimes the better stuff, too.

It all depends. We've covered the gamut over the how many years?

When was the first one we did? We were in the garage when we did that first one. So that was probably 2002, 2003, somewhere around there.

It's been a long time. In fact, before we actually get into the

Radio Free Geneva part, I do need to say something. It's just, today is

March 17th, is it not? And March 17th, 2021.

And so I just need to acknowledge that it was 40 years ago today, 40 years ago this evening, that I convinced a gorgeous, beautiful 17 -year -old girl.

Yeah, 17. She was a minor. Then again, I had just turned 18. To go out on a date with me after church, it was a

Sunday, to a fancy, fancy place called

Peter Piper Pizza. And that was the last time that she dated anyone but me.

And 15 months later, approximately, we were married. The marriage wasn't 40.

I haven't gotten to 40 yet. That's next year. But we went out on that first date 40 years ago today.

That's as long as Israel wandered in the wilderness. That's a generation.

It's like, wow, okay. All right. That starts giving you some perspective, when you think about it.

But yes, so I'm looking forward to 40th wedding anniversary coming up next year.

But for now, 40 years ago. I'm not going to tell the story. My wife would absolutely kill me.

Because I like to do that personally. I've done that all over, literally all over the world.

I've told the story of how I got my wife. But anyways, that was 40 years ago today.

Or you could figure last Sunday, if you do it as the day of the week or something. It was March 17th. 17 was a big number for us.

I was born on the 17th. She was born on the 17th. A lot of stuff happened on the 17th for us. That doesn't mean anything.

It's just everybody has their little things like that. That was 40 years ago, which was before Radio Free Geneva.

But we've been doing this a long time now as well. So let's see what we've got here.

You know what? I don't want to do that one. I want to do this one.

I've been asked to look at this. And this fits fairly well with the main element of today's

Radio Free Geneva, where we are going to be listening to and interacting with Dr. William Lane Craig's comments on the topic of Romans chapter 9.

Now again, if you're new to us and new to the program, things like that, you might want to at some point go back and look at the debate that I did on Romans chapter 9.

I did it. I did my part on Romans chapter 9. Leighton Flowers did his debate on another topic.

But on the subject of Romans chapter 9, available on YouTube. And you can watch that there and engage in the subject.

It is not my intention to completely revisit everything there is in Romans 9, though we're going to have to touch on a lot of things once we start dealing with William Lane Craig.

But I just sort of thought this just less than five minute clip fits in rather well with William Lane Craig's comments.

Because you're talking with William Lane Craig, you're talking about a Christian apologist. And so how you defend the faith is going to be impacted by what you believe about God.

I mean, that should be fairly straightforward. And it has been our criticism of the famous Dr.

Craig for many, many years that it is our conclusion, having reviewed hours and hours and hours and hours of his materials, that Dr.

Craig primarily begins with a philosophical foundation and then uses that as the lens through which biblical revelation is to be filtered, rather than deriving your foundations from Scripture and judging all of man's philosophical assumptions on the basis of divine writ.

And so he is not reformed. And in fact, when asked to identify a false

Christian belief years ago by the redoubtable Mr. Hitchens, he identified

Calvinism as his chosen error in Christianity. I would just compare and contrast

Craig's encounters with Hitchens with Doug Wilson's entire movie of encountering

Hitchens. And you will tell very, very quickly that even Christopher Hitchens was like, wow, you're coming from a very different perspective.

That's really interesting. Just for instance, if you haven't watched it, it's called

Collision. I need to watch it again. It's been a number of years, but watch it.

And especially, and I have to be real careful here, but especially catch the section where Christopher Hitchens decided to demonstrate that Jesus was a false prophet.

And this is very, very, very, very, very common for people to accuse

Jesus of being a false prophet because he prophesied his coming, and yet he didn't come.

And if you are a partial preterist, and like Doug Wilson and myself, a post -millennialist,

Hitchens was left stuttering when Doug Wilson said, well, actually, you've completely misunderstood what's going on here, ran through it, and Hitchens is left going,

I've never heard that before. Because what you do is you turn around and you say, actually, this is

Jesus prophesying what's going to happen, and it happened exactly as he said. And so go watch

Collision. It's great, and you'll see. Anyway, so we'll get to William Lane Craig and the impact of those things.

This I first saw when Warren McGrew said that he was going to be utilizing this clip.

And this is an atheist and a Calvinist, and I'll be honest with you,

I don't know what the context is, and I don't know what came before and after it, so I think that's a little bit unfair.

And I don't know how much value there is in having a debate with an atheist about this subject.

I don't think that's what the debate was on. I don't get that feeling. But my point is, the only meaningful way of discussing whether God is sovereign, whether he has a decree of election, is within the context of divine revelation.

I mean, we are claiming—it'd be like debating the Trinity with an atheist. Why? The only reason to believe in the doctrines of Trinity is because you believe in the entirety of Scripture, and that it's all been revealed by God.

And so you're believing Tota Scriptura, all of Scripture, and Sola Scriptura, Scripture alone.

And you put all that together, and you harmonize what the Scriptures teach, and you have the doctrines of Trinity.

But why debate that with an atheist? I'm not sure what the benefit of that is.

All you're doing is allowing someone to just rail at God's truth without actually dealing with the foundations that make it true.

So anyways, this has been posted, and so it's being thrown around. And obviously, if you're dealing with someone who is an atheist, if you as a—you know, this morning

I retweeted an R .C. Sproul clip where he said that God's absolute sovereignty isn't an argument amongst

Christians, it's an argument between theists and atheists. Now obviously, a lot of Christians would disagree with that today, but I think you can make a strong case along those particular lines.

But there is great frustration to be had, because it reminds me of the debate that never happened in Missouri, back around 1999 -ish, when

Dean McCoy invited me out, and this radio station wanted me to debate

Dan Korner. I guess he's still around somewhere. And Dan Korner only wanted to debate on eternal security.

And he wanted—he actually put together something I would have to sign in regards to this debate.

And the assertion was that I could not make reference to any of the other four points of Calvinism.

And I was like, um, no. No, I'm not doing that.

What are you talking about? You can't address the final point, which is based upon the preceding literally five points, the sovereignty of God first.

That's cutting it off from the foundation that gives it any meaning. I'm not going to do that.

And so the debate never happened, because he demanded that, no, I won't debate you if you're going to raise the other points of Calvinism.

And similarly, you're looking at the same situation here. There's no reason to be discussing sovereign grace of God and things like that with someone who just doesn't even believe in the existence of a personal

God to begin with. But let's start working through this and provide some quick responses.

I'm not going to stop at every single point, but I want to work through this and make some comments on it.

Okay, I'm not hearing anything. Are you hearing anything? We played this right before everything started.

And so it's going to be a very short program. If we don't have sound.

So Rich has got that I -have -no -idea look on his face right now. And this is not a good thing.

Yes, it has. So what are we going to do about that? Sorry, folks.

We did test all of this. It was working just fine. And that is the one thing in the back of my mind.

Because you had to play something, a digital output 100%. Everything is still fine there.

I don't know what the problem is, but things got a mind of its own, huh?

You ready for me to try it? All right, let's see.

How do I become a Christian? Okay, so is this thing just rebellious?

Is it heretical? It's sinful. Okay, all right. Because it worked fine, but somehow it changed its output without any input from us.

So this makes me very concerned about debates and things like that. I'll be perfectly honest with you.

Anyway, sorry about that, folks. We'll probably go back eventually and cut that part out. All right, so here is the section.

Let's start listening to it. How do I become a Christian? You believe. You're a friend of your sins.

You believe in Christ. I don't believe, though. So how would I ever become a Christian? You have to be regenerated.

How do I get regenerated? By the Holy Spirit. How do I get the Holy Spirit to regenerate me?

You don't. You're right. You gave the right answer. I was going to lie to you and say, well, you have to believe in your heart.

Yeah, I mean. Does it bother you that basically the reason why I'm not a Christian and if I die a non -Christian, does it bother you that the reason

I do not inherit eternal life is because God didn't do something to me first?

Okay, so let's stop there. Obviously, this particular atheist has some level of knowledge of Reformed theology.

And so what he's going to do is he's going to make an argument that is going to ignore the justice of God against sin.

It's going to ignore, for example, the federal headship of Adam. It's going to ignore

Romans chapter 5. It's going to ignore Romans chapter 9.

It's going to ignore all of that. And as you just heard it expressed, does it bother you that the reason that I will not go to heaven is because God didn't do something for me?

What's the assumption? Once again, whenever, and I'm not saying that Derek, I don't know

Derek personally, or I can't tell from this screenshot if I've met Derek.

Maybe I have someplace. My reviewing this is not meant to be a criticism of Derek or anything like that at all.

But we all must learn to think presuppositionally.

We have to learn to look at an argument and see it almost visually.

I've expressed that a number of times that I literally see arguments in the sense that I see how they are related to one another.

Not so much like a graphic or anything like that, but you hear what's being said.

And basically what your mind is doing is, if this person were actually making a sound argument, what would it sound like?

What would be the elements that would be being expressed? What's missing and why is it missing?

Is it because they don't understand it or is this the misrepresentation and is it purposeful?

You can't always necessarily know that last part. So when someone says, does it bother you that I won't be in heaven because God didn't do something for me?

What's what's foundational that that God in some sense or fashion is accountable and responsible for doing something for you?

What is that? Something that something is an act of grace. That something is free grace and mercy.

Grace and mercy cannot be demanded. So there's there's problem number one is that the assumption here is that God is under some type of compulsion to do this.

Assumption number two, there's nothing here about this man's willful rebellion against his creator.

His creation of arguments that try to get rid of the fact that he's a pot and it says right there at the bottom on the pot made by the potter.

And so there is the continuing rebellion, which is a moral reality.

It is rebellion against God. It is continuing sin in and of its own self.

Then you have the relationship to Adam, which again, a lot of Christians today have abandoned this.

It's not preached. But they will then turn around and talk about their relationship to Christ being in Christ and having the righteousness of Christ, not realizing that the biblical foundation of that is called federal headship.

And so Christ is the second Adam. You're in the first Adam. You get from Adam what

Adam can give to you. And then if you are in the second Adam, you receive from the second

Adam what he can give to you. But that's federal headship. That's one representing an entire group.

And so the idea that is, again, underlying the question and underlying the assertion ignores all of these categories and especially works within Western categories today, especially with the fact that mankind thinks of himself autonomously, puts

God in the dock and says God needs to respond to my challenges and so on and so forth.

So it's just a natural thing for the rebellious man to to embrace that kind of argumentation.

But so you have to step back and have to go, well. We are God's creatures. And God has justly dealt with us in our representative,

Adam. Now, there's there's the issue right there. I mean, that's that's where the whole thing comes down.

The creature is going to say, I reject my creator's right to deal with me as my creator sees fit.

And so if they even wanted to try to deal with theology as it's actually revealed in Scripture, they would have to say something along the lines of, does it bother you that God treats me in Adam?

To which I would say it can bother me no more than he treats me as I am in Christ.

So it is righteousness becomes my righteousness. It can't bother me any more than that.

Then behind all this, and that's about to be fleshed out in a moment, behind all of that then comes the whole creaturely denial that there can be anything outside of what is fully expressible by temporal human language.

In other words, I have to take the eternal and collapse it into time and make it all one simple two dimensional thing.

That is really the problem. And I was, you know,

I'm going to do it anyways. I should have had this. I should have had this queued up. I apologize. But if you go to aomin .org,

you will see, and hopefully on a phone, I can pull this up fairly quickly.

I'm not sure what it actually looks like in our mobile thing. But let me see here.

Related articles. Maybe on the mobile thing, that wasn't a really good idea.

We are working on that. Great. If you go over to Theology Matters, there it is.

You only have to scroll way, way down there. I put up just this morning,

I wrote this on Twitter and then eventually got it onto Theology Matters.

Here's what I wrote. Consider, the one in whom all things hold together, Suneste Ken from Colossians 1 .17.

Became flesh, Sarx Agenata, John 1 .14. The eternal acted in time.

This validated the importance of the temporal without transforming the eternal into the temporal or thereby limiting it.

That's a key assertion. And I'm trying to do this in bits and pieces on Twitter.

But the entrance of the Son of God into time validated the importance of time.

Time is not, therefore, merely some kind of puppet show.

I've said many times, the Incarnation proves that time is important to God and what happens in time is important to God.

Human language is necessarily temporal in nature, as is our thought process.

Our entire language is based upon time. All of our verbs, past, present, future, ongoing action, completed action, the past, future action, whatever it might be, is based upon the fact that we are time -bound creatures.

And hence, that then conditions the way that we think and the way that we then hear things.

And it limits us in that way. Because of this, the temptation of our creatureliness is to transfer our limitation to the divine, rather than seeking the divine solution to our limitedness.

So, in other words, since we start with ourselves and we are limited due to the temporality of our experience and our language, then we tend to push that off, project that off onto God.

So, rather than seeking the divine solution to our limitedness, if God had not condescended to communicate to us in our finitude, we could only rise as high as our best minds could take us.

But divine revelation, which is settled in heaven, has been revealed to us in time, Psalm 119, 89.

By submission to, obedience to, and meditation upon that divine word, we can, by taking its entire revelation together, not merely in parts, go beyond our temporally limited thoughts to grasp, as best we can, the

God who has created all things. This causes us to seek consistency and harmony, not on a shallow, simple, man -pleasing surface level.

Is there a problem? Okay. Man -pleasing surface level, but at the depths of Scripture, where grand themes and truths are woven together into an intricate fabric of divine truth.

We can then, at least, begin to grasp the sweep of the description of our

God as the all -things -working one. That's a rather poor

English translation of the Greek phrase, The one, all things, working,

Ephesians 1, 11. The more man comes to know of this vast creation about us, the greater will be the temptations seen in secular humanism to consider man insignificant, and life on this planet a wild but empty cosmic accident.

That is now the dogma of Western society. But in the Theanthropos, the

God -man, comes divine balance. Only in him does the vast eternal come into proper relationship with the temporal and created.

Outside of him, all dissolves into chaos, disorder, and emptiness. Even in the grand reality of purpose and thought, it is true,

Christ, or chaos. So, that is a Christian cosmology that is based upon the

Incarnation, and recognizes that the temporal realm, the realm of time, is important to God, but that it is part of his created action.

That does not make the temporal realm determinative of the eternal. It means the temporal is dependent upon that which is decided in the eternal, but it remains absolutely central to God's purpose.

Now, I don't expect an atheist to have anything in his worldview to even begin to contemplate any of this.

But he must be told, rather straightforwardly, that he has no right to be sitting up on that throne, or that judgment seat, judging

God in the first place. He is going to go into his grave and stay there.

The one who said, I will go into the grave and rise again the third day, tells him, repent and believe.

That is the challenge. Not sure how long we jumped out of that, but let's jump back in.

Well, as Charles Spurgeon, who is a Calvinist, he talks about weeping for dead souls, and until the day they die, you try to grab their ankles and hold them from going to damnation.

Of course it bothers me. It would bother, and a lot of people get this mixed up, but as a Calvinist, as a

Christian that is a Calvinist, I don't know. You could be one of the elect,

Doug. You might become a Christian 20 years from now. Right. I don't know. I understand the Calvinist view very well.

However, if it's true that before the creation of the universe, God foresaw me not to be a

Christian. Okay. Now, I'm not sure what that terminology, foresaw me not to be a

Christian. That's not what foreknowledge really means, so I'm not sure what the terminology is supposed to mean there.

I would assume that what he would be saying is, if God did not choose to exercise mercy and grace toward me, that's not something that can be known in this life with absolute certainty.

There are people that God snatches from the flames right toward the end, but if God does not choose to be gracious to me in this life, isn't that all on him because he made that decision before I came into existence?

So, what is that objection? Well, that objection, again, requires that you place the fundamental parameters of justice in time upon what

God does in eternity. So, God cannot have a purpose. I think he called this gentleman

Doug. God cannot have a purpose for Doug's existence that would be morally sufficient for Doug to exist and then to experience justice for his actions.

So, God cannot, and of course, we're going to go to Romans 9, so God can't have any pharaohs.

God cannot demonstrate. God cannot even have the desire for the demonstration of his wrath and his justice and his power.

It can't be done because there are no categories for that within the creaturely realm because there is no creator

God that is limited to the creaturely realm. And so, that's the idea. You get people going, well,

I'm just the victim here. I'm the poor victim. It's sort of like when we were looking at what

Warren McGrew said about Judas. He's just the victim, that poor man. I mean, he was forced into this.

He wanted to be a good guy, and God's standing behind him with the big bad gun and telling him, you be bad, bad, bad.

When the reality is, what you see in Scripture, is God is constantly restraining the evil of man.

And when he allows that evil to be expressed, he does so in such a way that, in the final analysis,

God is going to be glorified in how he handled evil in this world, even if we cannot, in our very small little minds and small amount of information, see how that works out right here and right now.

But once again, the idea is you cannot have a purpose of God that is going to be fulfilled over here someplace.

There has to be along the road in the temporal realm, rather than the eternal realm, all these stopping points where God has to be judged for whether he's doing things the right way somewhere along the line.

And if he never regenerates me, I'm going to hell for eternity, correct? Yes. And it's not because of something that I did or didn't do.

It's basically all God, right? Okay, did you catch that? It's not because of something I did or didn't do.

The judgment that will be rendered upon anyone will be based upon what you did or didn't do.

It is in the realm of time because that's the only place you've existed. You can't be judged on the basis of something outside of this.

Again, the objection should be, well, I just don't think I should be in any way held accountable for Adam.

And I'm going to blame Adam for my fallen nature. And yeah, you know what?

I actually enjoy my sin. I'm actually sitting here really enjoying my arrogance in arguing against the existence of God.

And in fact, there are going to be people who are going to think I'm really, really cool because I can do this type of thing.

But I'm not going to worry about the fact that that's actually sinful, that I am actually denying God his glory by using his gifts in my life in such a way as to deny his existence.

I'm not going to worry about any of that stuff. Instead, I'm going to put it all on God.

And I'm going to say that he owed to everyone in eternity the extension of grace.

Now, they will say, well, most of them have probably never thought about it because most Christians haven't thought about it either.

But the judgment that takes place is a judgment in time.

It's a judgment based upon our doing what we desired to do. It is not a judgment that is based upon some type of action in eternity.

And so a person who is judged by God is judged on the basis of the light that they have had.

Jesus teaches that there's going to be different kinds of judgment based upon the amount of light that people received.

And so it's going to be more tolerable for Bethsaida and Chorazin for Sodom and Gomorrah than Bethsaida and Chorazin in a day of judgment.

Why? Because Sodom and Gomorrah did not have the sinless Son of God walking through their streets preaching in their synagogue.

And so they had much greater light that they sinned against. And the objection that is put in is, well, but if God decreed everything that happens, then their rejection was even decreed.

They're just simply puppets, which is why I started where I started. Because if we are just puppets, then so was

Jesus. If we are just puppets, then all the saints today and everything they do, just puppets.

No meaning. The incarnation demonstrates. The Word of God was sufficient in the garden for Adam to understand that what takes place in time is important.

He didn't have to have all the rest of that. That would be enough. But if you want the ultimate demonstration, when the

Word becomes flesh, then the realm of flesh is vitally important to God.

And therefore, the judgment that God will render upon individuals and the very fact that Acts chapter 17 says the resurrection is

God's proof that he will justly judge by the one that he has chosen,

Jesus Christ. Remember Acts chapter 17, we talked about this a couple months ago.

It had struck me for the first time in my adult life, what Paul had actually said at the end of Acts chapter 17.

And that was not that the proof that God had given to men was of the resurrection. The resurrection was proof to men that God would judge the world in justice in the

God -Man. So the God -Man is where eternity and time meet. If you're an

Orthodox Christian, you believe Jesus was the Theanthropos. That's a term that I used in the article that I posted this morning.

He's the Theanthropos, the God -Man. And that's why it's Christ or chaos.

That's why it's Christ or chaos. Because he is absolutely unique.

He is the center point of history. So as the God -Man, he is able to bring the eternal and the temporal together just as you brought the divine and man together in a hypostatic union without confusing the two.

See, what the synergists and the provisionists and the open theists and all the rest of these people do is they conflate the two and it's sort of like breaking up the hypostatic union.

The eternal realm is the eternal realm. The temporal realm is the temporal realm. You don't have to mix them together to try to come up with some third thing just as you don't do that with the nature of Jesus either.

And so the judgment will be just in light of what these individuals have done and the light that they have received.

They will be judged perfectly by Jesus Christ in light of these things in time not based upon whether God did or did not choose to use them to his glory through their salvation.

He does use them to his glory one way or the other, either in his justice or in salvation.

But that's a matter of grace which is being made something that can be demanded, something that can be said to be must be given to me or there is somehow some unfairness in the system.

No, there's still a responsibility for what you do. Right, but I have no responsibility to attain salvation.

It's all God. I can't do anything to become a Christian, correct? Not of yourself. So it's a monergistic thing.

It's all of God that he works concurrently with you, not synergistically, but concurrently. Right, so if I go to hell, it's because of what

God didn't do in me, correct? No, it is not. When you have partial truths that ignore vital aspects of the whole truth become untruths.

So you're hearing, God did not in eternity past—well, we don't know this, obviously, but theoretically, and a part of anyone who will receive

God's judgment at the end of time, God did not decree to extend grace and mercy to me.

I sinned my entire life. I enjoyed it and God didn't stop me.

So it's God's fault because God's eternal and God knew things

I didn't know. That's really what the argument honestly is, and that resonates with people who have been taught autonomy.

It did not resonate down through church history because the vast majority of people were smart enough to realize they're not autonomous.

They are subject to God's decrees in this world, but it works real well today.

I mean, if feelings are your judge of these things, which for most people they are. No, it's because you never believed in Him, even though—

No, the default position is hell, correct? And if God has to do something in me in order for me not to go to hell. The default position is hell, why?

The default position is judgment because of sin. The default position is if you're in Adam, you can only receive from Adam what

Adam can give to you. That's the default position. So the argument is being, and therefore

God is under obligation to remove me from Adam and put me in Christ against my own decision.

Decision that he's illustrating. It's interesting that basically they're arguing that this should be done against man's will.

Well, yeah, in a sense it is, except there's no discussion here of spiritual deadness and inability. So, yes, but it's not

God's fault. So you're getting into like, I'm a double predestination guy, but I don't believe in equal ultimacy.

In other words, God has to work in you to believe, but I don't believe he has to work in you to keep you from believing as some hyper kind of Calvinist believe.

So God will work in you to believe and regenerate you. And all of a sudden, you desire, like, whoa,

I desire this now. And then he passes over those who he passes over, everyone else.

He doesn't have to work them to damnation because they love their sin and they stay in their sin. And that's the whole point.

But I still don't see how I'm wrong with what I just said. If I go to hell for eternity, it's because of what God didn't do.

Partial truth. No, because that's not... Is there something I can do to get salvation?

Not of your own. So God has to do something, right? And if he doesn't do it, I go to hell for eternity. See, he's talking about attaining salvation as if it's some state or something that you go into.

I'm not even sure exactly how that would work, but attaining salvation. Look, there's one command from God.

And he's running past what the commandment is into things that are not any of his business.

To be perfectly honest with you. And that is repent and believe. Don't put me, don't try to put

God on trial. Repent and believe.

That's what you were called to do. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. He's Lord of all.

You know you have sinned. You know you're in rebellion against God. Repent and believe. It will not be an excuse.

Well, you know, I thought through the whole thing and I just didn't like how it all worked out in the end. Well, you, oh arrogant man,

I can assure you when standing before the judgment throne of God, there will be more than sufficient new revelation available to you at that time that you will not make that argument.

You may arrogantly think as some puny little creature that you're going to stand, you know, that's what

Christopher Hitchens, I'm going to tell God that I just didn't want to live in North Korea, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I can assure you when you're standing before the glory of God, your mouth could be shut. Your mouth is going to be shut and you're not going to be making those arguments.

They may work in the atheist Facebook groups. They won't work elsewhere. But it's because of your sins.

And I know, I understand what you're saying, but there's a category mistake here because you're still the prime, you're still a cause to your sins.

Like you're actually sinning or you're actually not believing or you're rejecting God or whatever it is. I think he said, I understand

I'm still responsible. And yet it seemed that the argument was, but my responsibility is somehow evaded because God does not grant me something on another context.

But see, you're not a lifeboat analogy person. Like this is why I love Calvinists is because I'm sinking,

I'm in the ocean, I'm drowning. Right. But if you know Calvinists, you're not sinking in the ocean.

You're at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. Great white sharks ate you on the way down.

Now there are creatures down there we've never even seen before that have pretty much left almost nothing there.

Okay. So it's, it's not the, I'm glad that he realizes we're not the lifeboat people.

That's, that's helpful. But it's still not a full understanding of, of what it actually means.

And, and it's not Calvinism is not God is handing you a lifeboat or a life preserver and saying, if you grab it, you're saved.

No, God actually has to give you the life preserver through Christ. Pick up your hand, take your hand and have your hand, grab the life preserver and then carry you up out of the water.

God is doing all that. Correct. Yes. We believe, we believe he actually saves people. Unlike a lot of other

Christians. So if I go to hell, it's because of what God didn't do. He didn't grab my hand. He didn't place it on the life preserver.

He didn't lift me up. Okay. To make it more accurate. I was dead.

I was actively in rebellion. I was mocking God. If you want to use, if you even want to get to the life preserver thing, if he reached for my hand,

I spit in his face. I swam the other direction. I fired flares at him. I mean, there's all sorts of things we could, we could, we could do here.

And that part just gets buried because of the conflation of the eternal and the temporal.

It wasn't that God came down and this was a per, what you really want to make sure you understand.

I wasn't swimming toward that lifeboat and God keeps pushing me away. Never happened.

Never happened. There is no one who has ever turned to repentance of faith, Jesus Christ, that have not found him to be a perfect savior.

The issue is what is required for someone to do that. And that is a spiritual act of God.

That's how deep depravity really is. That's how deep depravity really is.

But it's not based on what God didn't do, unless you're saying you only exist because of God.

Because if he passes over, if he passes people over, which he does, they still die in their sins.

There's still a command to be saved. There's still a command to repent. Right. But I can't repent. Can I? Without God?

Not without God. Yeah. So God has, God grants repentance. And this is multiple times in scripture and all this. Yeah. So I can't repent.

I can't cry out to God. I can't believe in God unless God does his work in me first. At least he has to start the ball rolling.

Right. And why is that? Now, see, this is why

Warren McGrew will probably be using this, is he'll say, no. No, you can do all those things. And that's what the provisionist has said.

That's what Leighton Flowers has been saying. No, you can do all of that stuff. It is completely up to you.

You have the ability. The extension of grace is simply the giving of the gospel.

The idea of grace being something that raises you, that frees you from slavery.

At this point, this is where I would just suggest to Derek, and I don't know what, again,

I don't even know what the topic was. I just don't know. But at this point,

I would have said something along the lines of, I would want to bring a scriptural text to bear and maybe one of Jesus.

Maybe this is where you, well, you know, Jesus himself said, no one could come to me unless the

Father who sent me draws him. And he said that facing individuals who had actually rowed across a lake because they wanted to get free food and to hear more of his teaching and things like that.

And a couple of chapters later, he said to people who had believed in him, that if you continue in my word, then you're my disciples.

Indeed, you shall know the truth and the truth will what? Set you free. So what you're really saying is

God owes it to me to set me free from the slavery to sin that I love and that you're demonstrating right now.

That's just a tactical issue there that helps to bring some of those strong statements to bear.

I don't know how you sleep at night believing this, to be honest, because every single person in hell today is in hell today, if your worldview is correct, because of what

God didn't do. OK, that's again, to take the statement, what

God didn't do, and recognizing that the doing is the extension of grace and mercy, is to say that God is under obligation to extend grace to rebel sinners.

If you're going to say that, I would think that the only real atheistic argument should be to go the other direction and to say that the only reason that everything turns out the way that it does is because of the positive decree of God to glorify himself.

So what he really needs to do is to say, my objection is that God does not have the right to deal with his creation in the way that scripture reveals that he's going to deal with his creation.

I, as the creature who lived but a little time, I am likened to a flower that flourishes in the morning and fades by the evening.

I have decided that God is not right to deal with his vast creation in the way he's chosen to deal with his vast creation, because that's really the only argument.

That's the only argument that you can put there. OK, so I went absurdly long on that, and I apologize for doing so, because it's going to make it hard to get here.

But and it's what I've promised, so we will we will get to it. Let's jump immediately over to William Lane Craig and Romans chapter nine.

And this is almost nine minutes. Last was only five minutes. Hopefully you ate lots of food before we got started.

I wasn't I wasn't planning on doing a two and a half hour radio free Geneva. But let's I will try to be somewhat concise here.

And let's let's let's go. Now, someone might say, but doesn't Romans nine teach that human beings are completely inert in the process of salvation?

Now, I you say you're not to get very far if you don't get him more than 10 seconds in. But that was one of the first things, first objections

I wanted to raise. Completely inert. If what you mean by completely inert is the doctrine of monergism, and that is that the power of grace that saves is found solely in God and not at least partially in man.

OK. But what is normally missed is that man is not inert.

Man is in rebellion. In the Potter's Freedom, when I responded to Norman Geisler's illustration of the boys swimming in the swimming hole and and someone just capriciously choosing to save a certain number of them rather than all the boys that are drowning in the swimming hole.

I pointed out that if you were going to be biblically accurate in responding to what was being said, you would have to liken it much more to people to rebels who have invaded

God's castle and have killed his son and are busily burning the place down on top of themselves.

So there is a tendency on the part of man to greatly diminish the role of man and the energetic role of man in his idolatry, his rebellion, his suppression of God's truth.

All of these things. Very, very, very common. So when you hear someone using terms like inert or something like that, make sure you have the whole truth there in your in your thinking.

That it belongs entirely to God's will who is elect and who is reprobate and left unsaved.

Doesn't Romans 9 teach a strong doctrine of predestination and irresistible grace that excludes any sort of human role in terms of a free response such as I have suggested?

Well I'd like to suggest for your consideration a very different reading of Romans 9 than the one that we so often hear.

Typically people think of Romans 9 as God's narrowing down the scope of election to just those few people that he wants to save.

Now let's start with the correction. That may very well be how

William Lane Craig understands Calvinism. I honestly have heard

Dr. Craig express such a,

I wouldn't use the term loathing, but disrespect toward Reformed theology.

That I do not get the feeling whatsoever that he has ever read even contemporary

Reformed scholars with much of an open mind as to the actual fundamentals of the system.

Let alone any of those who've come before us. I don't get the feeling that he's spent much time with Calvin or Sharnock or Princeton divines or Edwards or whatever.

And so maybe that's how he sees it. I don't know. But the point is that the idea that this is a narrowing down, what we need to see in Romans chapter 9, that this is a defense of the consistency of God's freedom in granting the covenant promises throughout time.

Now the assumption is that's a narrowing down. Well, it wasn't a narrowing down because the covenant promises that you see, for example, in Genesis 12 and Genesis 15 include that your descendants shall be as the stars in the heavens as the sand of the sea.

And so that's not a narrowing down. And in fact, you have the promise that this covenant blessing would eventually be to all the nations.

And so that's actually a widening out. What you're going to get is this section in Romans 9 is

Paul's. What is he just finished? Romans chapter 8. Go back and listen to our very full responses to the provisionists on Romans chapter 8 that we have provided numerous times over the past three years or so.

We have gone in depth into the text and demonstrated that what you have in the golden chain and what comes after that is a very defensible, very clear proclamation of the sovereignty of God and salvation as you have it in Reformed theology.

And so what Romans 9 then is the transition into, well, if this is all true, then what about unbelieving

Jews? Is it not the case that the unbelief of the people of Israel is demonstrating something wrong either with what

Paul is saying or with the promises of God as Paul is interpreting them? And it's very plain that this this was something that he had experienced, that he had had thrown at him more than once.

No question about it. And so the the key issue is going to be found in the words of Romans chapter 9 and specifically verse 6, but it is not as though the word of God has failed for they are not all

Israel who are descended from Israel. That is the key text.

They are not all Israel who are descended from Israel. There has always been, even in the physical lineage of the people of Israel, the freedom of God expressed in his his election.

He is saving his elect people. Very, very important to see that that is the case.

He passes over the broad mass of humanity to selectively save those few that he has picked out.

OK, I reject this as a misrepresentation.

The broad mass of humanity. Again, I'm not going to go into it right now, but maybe the next time

Doug Wilson and I get together and we discuss, I'm not sure what that is, Rich. OK, Rich has found the special effects key.

Be careful, everybody. Rich is now putting his hands down here. OK. Didn't find it on purpose, huh?

OK. See, I can see what's going out over there. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. Not really sure that that's what is that?

OK. We're having fun here on Radio Free Geneva.

Next time that Doug Wilson and I do a sweater vest dialogue, I'm hoping I don't have, you know what?

Hey, wait a minute. Hold on. Hold on just one second, because I saw this come in once we got started. And so I might be able to say something here.

Yep. Next week. Next week, I am hoping to have a guest over on the other screen on the other side there.

We'll set it up to to do our guest arrangement here in the

AO Max studios. Dr. Joseph Boot, the author of The Mission of God, Ezra Institute up in Canada.

And we'll be talking a lot about what's going on in society right now. We were all rejoicing today at the word that the doctor that the pastor

Coates is going to be freed from prison, at least temporarily. That doesn't really mean that much has changed, to be honest with you.

But we are thankful that he will be able to be with his family and his children once again. The actions of the

Canadian government, they're simply reprehensible. But we'll be talking about things like that. But I also want to talk with Dr.

Boot about issues related to this, because I preached in a sermon a few weeks ago.

And I came to a point where I threw something out that still makes me think all the time, because it's so outside the realm of what

I have been accustomed to thinking. And I honestly think this is an area that you please just step back and think about this for a moment.

Most of us have been raised with a view of the future that not only says we are at the end right now, but what that means is, looking at human beings who have lived on this planet, that the words to Abraham that your descendants will be as the sand of the sea, as the stars of the heaven, it's sort of hard to figure out how that could be.

Because even though there are lots of people today who claim to be Christians, we also recognize there's a lot of false faith in the world.

And just looking back over history, it does not seem like a large portion of those people were in proper relationship to God.

But one of the things that has struck me and has forced me to be rethinking a lot of things is, what if we're in the early church?

Now for a lot of folks, it's just not possible. Nope, this is it, we're right at the end.

And that's what every generation from the start has thought. Every generation from the start has had the exact same thought.

What if we're in the early church? What if there is a period of tremendous blessing yet to come? Then this entire objection fails.

And I just point out to you, I can give you quote after quote after quote from this guy, not really an important guy, not even sure where he's buried, but his name was

John Calvin. And that was his view. So you might want to think about it.

You might want to consider it. Because it does put a completely different light on this objection that, well, you know, all election's really saying is,

God's just going to save a couple, a small little group over here, and everybody else is just, you know, straight into the flames of fire, and that's just all there is to it.

That is not a necessary element of the system at all. I want to suggest that Paul's burden in Romans 9 is exactly the opposite.

What Paul wants to do here is to broaden the scope of salvation, not to narrow it down to a...

Okay, so I hope you see the fundamental refutation of Craig's position is, that was a misrepresentation, that's not necessary, and we're not saying it is a narrowing down in any way.

It is an explanation of how God's choice has functioned through the history of Israel, which then gives

Paul his apologetic response to the Jews who would say, you're saying God's promises have failed.

And he's saying, no, not all who are of Israel actually are Israel. We have all these examples.

God is sovereign in this matter. He will demonstrate his justice and his power.

Look at what he did to Pharaoh. But he's bringing the Gentiles in. This is a widening in a major way in fulfillment of scriptural promises and an understanding of covenant theology, which covenant theology is not really an element at Biola, let's just be honest.

That's not what its background would have exposed William Lane Craig to in his time there either.

He wants to broaden it as wide as possible.

You see, the problematic that Paul is dealing with in Romans 9 concerns

Jewish persons who think that because of their Jewish ethnicity, they have a sort of leg up on salvation with God.

Those who were ethnically Jewish found it unthinkable that God would reject his chosen people,

Israel, and instead allow these execrable Gentiles to go into the kingdom of God rather than his own people.

How God could prefer over the Jews these

Gentile dogs and save them and pass over the

Jews was just unthinkable for these Jewish people.

So, what Paul wants to emphasize in Romans 9 is

God's sovereignty in electing and saving whomever he wants, regardless of their ethnic background.

Now, at that point, we can accept that. I mean, that statement is absolutely true.

God can sovereignly save whoever he chooses, no matter their ethnic background.

And as far as there is any emphasis upon the

Jewish objection, we've already said, what's the whole point? Verse six, they are not all

Israel who are descended from Israel. The promises have always not been narrowed down, but have been specific.

They have been specific. And so you have the twins that are discussed, and it's emphasized.

It's not because of what they did. It's not because of any will of man. It's because of God. The younger will serve the elder.

Jacob I've loved, Esau I've hated. And then he then utilizes the example that every

Jewish person would embrace. And that is the reality of the destruction of the gods of Egypt in the

Exodus. That defining action that brings the nation of Israel together in the

Passover, that origins story. He makes it very clear.

God has the right to do with Pharaoh and the people of Pharaoh as he wishes.

And he will harden whom he hardens, and he will have mercy upon whom he will have mercy.

God has been free in this matter from the start. And this included the extension of grace in a way that some

Jewish people might object to. But also the extension of judgment against the pagan

Egyptians, sure. But also judgment in the house of Israel to those that God did not choose.

Judgment came upon Esau. Even though he is of that family. And so there is freedom for God to demonstrate the fullness of his character.

That's why at the end, Paul can say, what if God, willing to demonstrate and to make his wrath and power known, endured with much patience, vessels prepared for destruction, in order that he might then show mercy to vessels of mercy.

That's the whole point. And so he expands beyond that, but to take, but to try to, what people try to do is they try to get around what's being said.

God is free in the matter of who receives grace and who receives judgment.

This is something that God is free in. That's the point of Romans 9.

Not a limitation, not a narrowing down. That would, that would depend on what you believe about the number of the elect and the fulfillment of the covenant promises and all the rest that kind of things, which isn't really a part of Craig's critique in any context.

But let's stay focused on what Romans 9 is actually focusing in upon.

Whether Jew or Gentile, it is God's choice as to who will be saved.

So, you notice at the beginning of chapter... I only want to, I only stop for a second to emphasize that it sounds like he's saying what we're saying here.

But he's a Molinist. And so you have to factor that in.

Because he's, behind all of this is the actuating the world in which you have the least amount of sin, the most number of people saved, or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and all the rest of that stuff.

It's all based on middle knowledge. And there is no freedom of God in the actual salvation of individuals.

The freedom of God is limited in his Molinistic system to the actualization of a particular world that is then formed by the free will actions of creatures.

And he actualizes that world based upon his middle knowledge of what's possible and what is not possible.

So, sounds like we're saying something similarly. Unfortunately, there is a major, major difference.

Paul expresses his anguish concerning those

Israelites to whom all the promises of the Old Covenant belong that are not believers in Christ.

He says in verse 6 that it is not as though God's word had failed, rather, he says, that not everyone who is descended from Israel belongs to Israel.

Not everybody is a real child of Abraham just because they are his physical descendant.

Just because you're ethnically Jewish doesn't mean that you have some sort of a favored status with God.

Rather, as Paul illustrates with the story of Jacob and Esau, God has the freedom to choose whom he wills to be saved.

Just being descended from Abraham physically is no guarantee.

So, in verses 6 to 24, Paul says God is free to save whomever he wants, and that no one can call into question

God's choice. No one has the right to talk back to God.

No one has the right to say that God has to prefer his own people,

Israel, over these Gentiles. If God wants to broaden the scope of salvation to include

Gentiles in addition to, and even instead of, his chosen people, the ethnic

Jews, then no one can talk back to God. Now remember, however, that the illustration after Jacob and Esau is

Pharaoh, and so it's not just the Jews. It is the continuing validity of the sovereign free choice of God that cannot be constrained, and in Pharaoh you have the demonstration of God's wrath and power, and God is about to bring his wrath and power to bear historically.

Remember, Romans is written early 50s, maybe mid 50s. What's yet future?

Construction of Jerusalem. God's going to bring his wrath to bear, and so God is just in all of this, and the

Jew can't object to this because this is their own history. So he's going to broaden beyond just the

Jewish question. He eventually is going to get, in chapter 11, well what about the Jews and Toto?

But he's answering the objection that exists now in the context of his own ministry.

Oh look at all that incredible stuff you're saying in Romans 8, and what God is doing, and it's just gorgeous, but it doesn't really work because there's so many unbelieving

Jews. No, God has been sovereign and free in that matter all along.

It is God who has mercy upon whom he has mercy, and has compassion upon whom he has compassion.

So here is the key question. Who is it, then, according to Romans 9, that God has chosen to elect if it is not those who are ethnically

Jewish? The answer is those who have faith in Christ Jesus.

So now we get to where everything changes, because we've been sitting there, and you're hearing

God has the freedom to save, da da da da da da da, but now you get to the dividing line, and that is for the

Molinist, the Synergist, you have class election. So God chooses not individuals, not people, but classes.

He chooses to save those who will believe, and that is not a part of his choice.

And in fact, he only can find out who's going to believe based upon this magical middle knowledge that finds its origin in something other than his own creative decree.

It is an irrational concept. It really is an irrational concept. I don't care how, you can stand on your head, you can do whatever you want, but to sit there and say that God can know what person

X will do before God decrees to create person X with all of the traits and attributes that make him person

X makes no sense to me at all. It never will. This is called the grounding fallacy. It is,

I believe, the fundamental flaw of the Molinist system. But what it allows then is for this concept of a class.

God is not selecting individuals, but a class who do something, and that something is belief in him.

That's how you get around the issue. Those are the ones that he has chosen to elect and save, and so in verse 30 he writes,

What shall we say then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, righteousness through faith, but that Israel who pursued the righteousness which is based on law did not succeed in fulfilling that law.

Why? Because they did not pursue it through faith, but as if it were based on works.

Now isn't it interesting, isn't it fascinating, that rather than staying in the key text between verses 6 and 24, you jump to the next section that now ties the answer that has been given by Paul into his continuing discussion of what then is going to happen with the

Jews. So you can't stay in this section in Romans 9, because even though he says,

Well, you know, Jacob I loved, Esau I hated, in order that God's purpose according to his choice might stand, not because of works, but of him who calls, it was said to her,

The older will serve the younger, just as written, Jacob I loved, Esau I hated. Well, here's the problem. What is that saying?

In order that God's purpose according to his choice might stand.

In regards to what? In regards to what? It's not because of works, but because of him who calls.

So it is, we'll go ahead and do our thing.

That probably comes right through on the thing, doesn't it? Oh yeah, yeah, there you go. We have to get fast on that.

Not of works, but, adversative of Allah, Ectu kaluntas, from the one calling, that's

God, so there is God. So God is the one who is calling, it was said to her,

The older will serve the younger, just as written, Jacob I loved, Esau I hated. So what is the object of choice here?

It's not simply an impersonal group. There were individuals who were, the greater one, and the lesser one.

It's Jacob and Esau. So, God is then going to,

God knows what the objections to that is going to be. And so, verse 14, what shall we say then?

And here is the issue. What shall we say then? Is there any unrighteousness with God?

And that is the assertion, that is the assertion of the anti -reformed, is that if you believe this, then you are asserting there is unrighteousness with God, this is all the stuff about God's character, etc, etc.

For he says to Moses, Exodus 33, I will mercy whom

I mercy, that's a verb in Greek, and I will harden whom

I, those whom I, well, actually he's going to get down to.

Did you not scroll with me? Yeah, I know,

I know, we'll get it all, we'll get to it. Okay, actually, it's just the size of the screen,

I'm sorry. We'll get to it here, I'll turn that mask off and quit drawing on stuff.

I can actually, you know what, I can actually draw on this too. There's two different ways that I can do it.

So, I will mercy whom I mercy, I will compassion, not harden, harden's down below. I will compassion whom

I have compassion. The whole point is, in verse 15, now

I can see it over here a little bit easier. The quotation from Exodus, I will mercy whom

I mercy, and then oik tereso is future, just as the mercy was future, both emphasizing

God's freedom in doing what? In giving grace, in giving grace.

The hardening comes down below. So, in 15, Moses, I'm going back to Moses, you can't argue about this, whoever

I give compassion to, whoever I give mercy to, and that is an action on God's part, is up to me.

So, what does that have to do with this? He has said, may it never be that there is unrighteousness with God, why?

Because mercy and compassion, I know,

I, oh, that's even better. Ugh. Sorry, folks.

I'm still fighting with Windows, and that was what was causing the problem over there, and I tried to click on that, close that, and too many things that are sensitive to being touched.

And those of you who know the difference between Windows and Apple know that everything's on the wrong side of the screen, and we'll figure it out eventually.

So, anyway, back to the point here. May there never be the charge of unrighteousness because the giving of mercy, the giving of compassion, comes from whom?

From God. Therefore, it is not the one willing, it is not the one running or engaging in activity, but, adversative

Allah, the one mercying, the

God mercying. This is the point that is being made by Paul in this text, and this isn't just about Jews and Gentiles.

He quotes Moses because Moses, Abraham, these are definitive for the people of God.

And he's saying, from the beginning, it has always been about the mercying God. It has always been about God's mercy.

And if you want the example, then look at what happens with Pharaoh. For this very reason,

I raised you up. For this very reason, the most powerful man in the world at the time was put into the position that he had.

For this very reason, I raised you up. That's a singular. Now, people are going to argue, well, yeah, it's a singular nation or something like that.

This was said to Pharaoh. What? That I might show in you.

In you. This word here, if I'm recalling correctly,

I didn't look this up, but if I recall correctly, is the same root that's used in James 2 when it says, show me, show me.

It's to demonstrate. That I might demonstrate, that I might show in you, what?

My power. My power. And that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.

In all the earth. Now, let's just be honest. For most people, God's, the demonstration of God's power and the proclamation of his name in all the earth, not overly relevant.

Not overly relevant at all. God says it's vitally important. And because of that, because that is the case, therefore, there's to mercy.

And there's to harden. Therefore, whom he wills, he mercies.

And we'll use a different color so that you can see the difference. Whom he wills, he hardens.

Now, you may want to go, well, this only has to do about nations. You can jump through hoops, whatever you want.

But this was the, if verse 18 is going to be relevant to what verse 17 said, then these words have to be about what he did to Pharaoh.

What he did in raising Pharaoh up. And then, immediately, upon that, and unfortunately, this is just one of the things we're working on right now.

I don't have enough text up on the screen. That's what was causing me problems before. Okay.

Now we've got enough text up on the screen to be able to see it. Here you have the mercying.

Here you have the hardening. Whom he hardens, skleruni, you've heard of multiple sclerosis, atherosclerosis, hardening of arteries and things like that.

You will say to me, therefore. What's the therefore?

Because of this. He hardens him, he mercies whom he mercies, he hardens whom he hardens. You will say to me, why does he yet find fault?

For who can stand against his will? So what is the fundamental aspect of the argument that comes after this?

Well, he can't judge. For who can stand against his will?

If what you're saying is true, then he has no basis upon which to do what?

To judge. That's the fundamental argumentation. And the response, if this was what we are being told by Craig and others, that this isn't,

Romans 9 isn't talking about all this. This isn't talking about individuals. Then why does it say, oh man, who are you the one answering back to God?

You're talking back to your creator. Well, what's the problem?

Well, the objector recognizes exactly what this means. The objector understands what this means.

And the problem is that we really, let's be honest. Let's just be as honest as we can with ourselves.

The thing formed will not say to the one who formed it, this is the issue right there.

Why'd you make me like this? We struggle with the fact that we are this.

We are top plasma. And he is the one who formed.

Why did you make me, not us, why'd you make me like this?

This is an individual speaking. This is personal. This is personal. Does not the potter have authority, power over the clay from the same lump to make indeed one vessel ice to main to honor and another unto a to me on dishonor.

Does he not have that authority that right? The answer obviously is yes, he does.

And here's, here's the issue. Now, once again,

D D D D D D D way, way, way too sensitive for some reason.

He has that authority. And what if God, what if God was willing to make known and here's, here's, here's really where the problem is or gain wrath, wrath.

Let's be honest that that's the issue, isn't it? God's wrath.

What? He wants to, he wants to demonstrate his wrath and to make known his power.

I've said many, many times before, this is really where it is. We don't think

God has that right. And we will actually, I've heard many, many people say, I will not worship a

God like that. And I always say, yeah, you're right. I know you won't. What if he endured with much patience, much patience, vessels of wrath prepared unto destruction.

What are these vessels? Don't, don't, don't there have been people who have gone into the

Greek here to try to get, well, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean people. No, they're vessels of wrath. You had, you had vessels of honor up here and you had vessels of dishonor.

Stay with the, stay with, with what the author is saying. And he endures with much patience in order that he might make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of what mercy.

And if we could scroll back up, I could show you there's, there's the mercy that, that appeared earlier in, in the text.

And when he continues on with that, then he, he says, Hey, I, I have called a P people are not my people.

This is low on me and on me. It goes, starts going into some of the, um, uh, profits.

The demonstrate that again, this is consistent with what we've had in, in all of these things. And so this, this attempt to limit what is being spoken of here to a class election.

And it's, he's just as chosen that anyone who believes we'll receive this, anybody who receives, receive that, et cetera, et cetera, that simply doesn't fit with what the text itself says, which is why

Dr. Craig didn't deal with any of that, but he did jump to the end of the chapter.

Once the subject had been changed, that's not an answer to Romans nine.

That's not dealing with this. What does it mean to make his wrath and his power known? You got to go through there before you get to the stuff later on.

That's, that's what exegesis actually requires it. Okay. So, um, what we're going to do now, there was a little bit left on that, but I have gone very, very long today and I, I apologize for that.

Um, but, uh, let me see if I can, what?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I know. Yeah. Yeah. too much stuff here, too much stuff.

Uh, don't save. Okay. Figure out what works, find out what doesn't, and, uh, none of that would have happened if the commands were on the right side of the screen.

Um, and, oh, no, I'm not even, that, okay.

Well, last thing here, I'm sorry. I apologize. This is what I wanted to pop up real quick.

I promised to deal with, uh, uh, nope. I don't know how to do it.

Sorry. I've tried. It's Windows. Um, so, a comment was made.

I was going to deal with this, uh, yesterday, I think the day before yesterday, and I forgot to do it when

I was dealing with, uh, Warren McGrew's, um, statements. I had this saved at the time, and I, I forgot.

I just wanted to show this, and then respond to it, as an illustration of the necessity and the need to be able to do serious, meaningful, um, exegesis.

A conversation, you'll notice this is not directed directly to me. It's just, you know how these Twitter things go.

Someone comments, and you respond to them, and then you're tagged in that, and it just grows, and grows, and grows, and grows, and grows, and grows, and grows.

And it can become very confusing. but, uh, here, in a discussion of the sacrifice of Christ, a, a discussion had come up about Revelation 13, 8, and the lambslain from the foundation of the world, and this was

God's intention from the beginning, and Mr. McGrew was saying, No, it's not. Uh, the incarnation, and the sacrifice of Christ, is in response to Adam's actions.

It's not something that God had eternally intended to do. And so here you have the statement, no, 2nd

Timothy 1 .9 is referring not to the crucifixion, but the purpose God had for us in Christ, see

Genesis 1 .26. You're reading crucifixion into this passage. The text is saying

God decreed to make us in his image. As a result of sin,

God responded via the Incarnation to restore. So what

I want to do in the last bit of time we had was to look at 2nd

Timothy 1 .9 in response to the idea that it's not referring to the crucifixion, but to the purpose

God had for us in Christ. Now immediately I would go, but Christ is the

Messiah, so he's the incarnate one. And so those are the same things.

What 2nd Timothy 1 .9 is talking about is something that's eternal. So if the

Incarnation was plan B, if it came as a result of what mankind did, then the distinctions here don't seem to flow or follow at all.

But, important thing is to actually be able to look to the text, and I am able to bring that up, yay!

Without any issues, hopefully, to look at what we have here, even though I did scroll a little bit.

I'm not sure why I did that, but there we go. Verse 7 is where we want to begin.

And so Paul, writing to Timothy, says that God has not given to us a spirit of cowardice.

Dialeus. Now we could preach for a while on this these days, but we won't right now, just keep these texts in mind.

God has not given to us, it's plural, I mean, spirit of cowardice.

But, rather, again, a lot adversive, rather than cowardice,

God has given us a spirit of power and love.

And one of my favorite words in all the Greek New Testament, Sophronus Mos, here in the genitive singular,

Sophronus Mos. Some translations will say a sound mind, discipline, self -discipline.

This is a term that really should be very much foremost in our thinking in our days.

So, over against cowardice, you have power and love and a sound mind.

This marks the spirit that has been given to us. Some would argue, are we talking about the

Holy Spirit here? Probably not, even though all of these things would be brought to us by the

Spirit of God. Probably here, especially spirit of cowardice, certainly isn't going to be attached to that, but it's the spirit that brings us power and love and a sound mind.

Because of this, then, Timothy is not to be ashamed of the testimony of our

Lord, neither of me the Lord's prisoner, but to enter into the suffering, enter into together this pathos of the gospel, and to do so according to the power of God.

Alright? Then, what you have, you'll notice here that the

Greek text then lays this out as poetry.

And hence, is this a hymn fragment? Is this a early confessional statement?

Is this, you know, what exactly are we looking at here? But, scholars see that this has a hymnic poetic form to it, beginning in verse 9 through through verse 10.

So, the description that is given to us here, according to the power of God, who is described as the one who saved us.

Now, sozo here, you'll notice the alpha is always your sign of the accusative in this context, in the participle.

The one who saved us. So, this is a soteriological context.

It is a soteriological context. It has to be if sozo. I mean, that's that's where soteriological comes from.

Soter, same same root. This is a soteriological context that is being discussed.

He saved us, and then, parallel to the same, you have kalesantos.

So, God is the saving and the calling one. And he called us with a klesai hagia, a holy calling.

Now, again, no one really should be arguing that this is anything other than rather obvious soteriological language being used in the early church.

So, God is the one who saved us and called us with a holy calling, especially because you have ukata tata erga haemon.

Not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace.

Okay, this is Ephesians 1, this is Romans 8, this is Romans 9, this is soteriological, this is sovereignty, holy calling, the calling of God, it's the effective, effectual calling of God.

It actually accomplishes because the calling actually brings about our salvation, etc, etc, etc.

Okay, so we have a holy calling, and it's according to his own purpose and his own grace, and it is that grace,

I think, is important to emphasize. That grace, then, which, notice the article is connecting us back to Chodron, grace, which was granted to us in Christ Jesus when, and this is what brought this to the attention of the discussion and why we're looking at it, before, now how do you have ages but the times of the ages, before the ages of time, in eternity past.

In eternity past, what was granted to us in Christ Jesus?

Grace. Why do you need grace? Why do you need grace?

You see, if you have the idea that God created, but he didn't really know what was going to happen, he knew possibilities, he had dynamic omniscience, he knew possibilities, but he could not know for certain what was going to happen until Adam does what

Adam does, right? So why would you need grace? Grace is always needed in the context of bringing about our salvation.

Why? Because we've fallen! That's why. We've fallen. And so he has granted to us, he has given to us, in Christ Jesus, before time began, according to his purpose and grace, that which brings about our calling and our salvation.

How do we know this? Because now it has been phoneraoed, it has been known, it has been made manifest, but now has been made manifest through the appearing, the epiphany, epiphanias, of our

Savior Christ Jesus, our soteros. Did Jesus become a soteros because of what mankind did?

Is that what makes Jesus a soteros?

Because of the appearing of our soteros, Christ Jesus, who made null death and brought to light life and immortality through what?

Through the gospel. If this isn't all soteriology, what is it?

What is it? It's so plain, it's so clear, it's so obvious, when you do exegesis.

Instead of having a system that you then filter every text through so that it fits your system.

And that's what we saw in that comment. That's where that came from. So I wanted to get to this, because I think this is one of the most beautiful sections you could ever have.

Here, I'll move over. It's been too long for Rich.

Rich fell asleep, and so I'll just find the camera here. How's that? Hey, if I can pull my stuff down because it gets caught on the button of my jacket, and you know, we're just doing our thing.

But I, you might say, well, why make it so because I think this part's important.

I think being able to go over here and go, now look, see this word, this is because it's attached here, and that was granted.

I think this is really, really important to be able to see it, and to be able to recognize what's being said.

And so that's why we'll keep working on it until we get better at it, and be able to do so.

So there you go. So there is a, I think, compelling reason to not believe what was said by Warren McGrew in that particular tweet, and to recognize what's actually being said there.

So we've covered a lot of ground today, and we did so in almost two hours, but we got it in in under two hours.

So there you go. I'm very happy to have been able to announce that Dr.

Boot will be joining us next week, but it is my intention to do another program yet tomorrow.

So we'll see what we're gonna do with that. We haven't done,

I'm not talking about in here, don't don't faint over there, Rich. But we haven't done phone calls in a very, very long time.

But that's not something that we do in here. What's wrong,

Rich? You don't, you know, you don't want to try to do that one too? Yeah, oh yeah, that would be, that would, that would not be, that would not be enjoyable at all.

But we'll think about that. We'll see what, I mean, I still have, I still have other things on the list that I haven't gotten to.

And so I'll just, I'll do some listening. There's a ticking time bomb that I could address and call, it's called the

Leaving Loud Movement that people like Jamar Tisby are promoting.

And we'll see. I mean, we've already, for the fourth and last program of the week, right before a weekend,

I'm not sure that I want to, you know, hit a topic like that in that context. We'll see. But it needs to be addressed.

It's important. What? I need to minimize that? Why? Why? So that, so that it's got the

Radio Free Geneva thing? That's, there you go.

Oh, I know how it happened. I know exactly how it happened. So we got, we got squibbles on the board.

And that's perfectly fine. Those scribbles had a, had a purpose. So there's our Radio Free. It looks a little, it's a little bit bright there, but we've got our

Radio Free Geneva logo. Thanks for watching the program. Thanks for putting up for our flubs and things like that as we learn how things work.

Hopefully the information, once we got to it, is useful to you. And Lord willing, we'll see you again tomorrow here on The Dividing Line.