December 22, 2005

Asking around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is

The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

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

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

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

James White. And good afternoon, evening to you on a very special edition of The Dividing Line.

The suspense is killing some people. I think poor Deo Valente is about to blow a gasket.

There are a few other people that are about to blow something, I'm not sure what. But we have some big news for you today on the program.

I will be joined in just a moment by Michael Fallon, who always joins me with big news, especially about upcoming conferences, debates, cruises and the like.

But before then, before we even get to the really, really big shoe, before we get to that, we have an opportunity of a second big announcement.

Just yesterday, I received word that in May, we're working on the date right now.

Don't worry, we will be giving you a heads up. We will let you know as soon as we have this, the date in May.

I will be at Biola debating Shabbir Ali, the same gentleman that we've listened to a number of times on the program, an apologist for the

Islamic faith. And we will be debating in California at Biola in May.

So that's going to be a tremendous opportunity. And we'll be giving you details on the topics.

We have three debates. Well, at least two debates, possibly three debates in April on the doctrines of grace.

Lord willing, at least one on the somewhere near Auburn University in March, Lord willing.

And now Shabbir Ali Biola in May. And that means 2006 is turning out to be a very, very big year, very, very busy year.

But more so than that, let's go ahead and bring Michael Fallon online.

Hi, Mike, how are you doing? Good evening, James. How are you, sir? I'm doing pretty well. It seems like I saw you just like last weekend.

Actually, I think it was, or the weekend before last. The weekend before last. We did have a chance to have a great time together and worship and really evangelize together.

Yes, it was very, very, very enjoyable there in Tampa. But you've been very, very busy since then.

And before we tell folks about the debate and stuff, let's back up a little bit and let's talk a little bit about the conference and the cruise that we have coming up.

Now, I cannot take credit for the title of our conference and cruise because someone you and I both know came up with this particular title.

Correct. Chris Arntzen came up with this title back a few months ago and really had it as an idea of something that we could build around a book that I believe that you're going to be starting to work on here in the next few months, and it should be out, actually, for the conference itself that we have.

You know, when you put deadlines like that on it, you tend to get stuff done. Absolutely. Well, it's a great idea, and so much has come out of this.

It's going to be the basis for basically everything that we do here in the next, I mean, gosh,

I guess it's only 10 months now, 10, 11 months that we have to go. But that's basically the entire theme of what we have going on, both for the cruise, for the conference, and to some extent with the debate as well.

I don't want to go too far into that, but... I think it all fits together very, very, very well.

Now, the idea of pulpit crimes, we live in a day where, unfortunately, the preaching ministry of the word is mocked by many and for good reason in light of what you see going on behind pulpits, what you see going on in television, what you see going on even in formerly

Orthodox churches, things that happen during worship services, what is taken for preaching today.

So there is a wide variety of subjects and topics that you can get into, of course, on the subject of pulpit crimes.

But aside from myself speaking, tell us a little bit about who's going to be,

Lord willing, joining us in November of next year. Well, in November of next year, we are going to be on the

Holland America VeeamDom, going out of Tampa and actually sailing to Playa del

Carmen, to Grand Cayman, and then also stopping at Ocho Rios, Jamaica.

And that'll be seven days on the Holland America VeeamDom, just a beautiful, luxurious ship, five -star ship with Holland America line.

And included in everything that you get there, you get your topics, you get your accommodations, you get your food, you get your drink, you get your

Presbyterian, you get all your drink and so forth. But it's just going to be an absolutely fantastic time.

And you can get all that for basically $579. And the gentlemen that we have coming on board with us this year are going to be

Phil Johnson, David King, Dr. James White, and once again, the prince of ecumenism,

Steve Camp. So I'm just kidding, Steve. But once again, and this is the same team that we had back in 2004,

James, would you say that some of our best times that we've had, really, of fellowship and getting to know people, being able to rub shoulders and so forth, and see what's on people's hearts and minds and so forth, has been on these cruises?

Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Most definitely. That's a tremendous time of fellowship and ministry. And of course, that'll be continuing the topics that we developed during the conference beforehand.

Now, you know these areas better than I do. First of all, we've never been to any of those places on the cruise, have we?

No, we haven't. Because none of them ring a bell at all with me as far as places we've gone. Now, everybody knows that I'm real big on getting off the ship and doing all sorts of exploring and things like that.

Yeah, but still, these are going to be new places that are not repeating places we've gone to before.

Correct. And that's always what we try to do. We try to make sure that we're always giving folks some variety. I know we had close to, golly, 160, 170 folks on the cruise with us two years ago.

This is actually the seventh cruise that we've done together, believe it or not, James. Yes, I do know that.

This one has some itineraries that, especially during that time of the year, Grand Cayman is just gorgeous in November, as well as Ocho Rios, Jamaica, and Playa del

Carmen. I was just down there with the Founders Cruise that we did for them. And I tell you, the ports, no matter what we do, folks, are always going to be unique.

Different kinds of destinations. If we're doing a tropical port, it's just going to be wonderful. Swing, palms, et cetera, that kind of thing.

But the real great part about it is really the time that we all get the chance to spend together.

I don't think you get to know people like you do on a cruise.

The time that you end up spending eating together, talking together, relaxing together, having fun together, that's what we do.

And it's probably the best time, and I think I could ask anybody in channel right now, I see Dale Valenti and a whole bunch of other folks, they would say, yeah, that is the best time that we've ever had.

But certainly, it's this year's topics that we have with pulpit crimes. And I don't know if you could maybe shed some light on some of these topics that we have here,

James. Topics such as felonious eisegesis. We actually spent some time on the last cruise coming up with some of these.

Actually, I came up with almost all of them. Then we had a group session where other people came up with stuff. But it was attempting to use the crime metaphor to explain the various things we can address.

That is, issues regarding what the nature of preaching is, the content of preaching, the fact that we have gone away from viewing preaching as a proclamation of God's truth, where you trust the

Holy Spirit of God to apply to people's hearts, to where we're using all sorts of isms and programs and everything to attract a natural man rather than worshiping

God. There's so many different directions you can go, as well as then dealing with issues such as who is to be involved in the proclamation of the word.

The qualifications of eldership, the issues of female elders, the issues of homosexuality coming up, of course, and the

Episcopalian church and Bishop Robinson and all the things that are associated with that. There's a tremendous range of things that you can address, which also will allow our speakers to have the ability to address issues as they would like to address them and the things that are really on their hearts.

Now, there's going to be a little difference between the conference itself.

Where is it taking place, and who's going to be speaking at it? Tell us a little bit about that. Well, sure. Before we leave on this great seven -day cruise, as we always have done, and this has been one of the focuses that we try to do, is we want to make sure that whatever area that we're starting in, we're getting a chance to really bless the churches that are in that area.

And the conference has been really the driving point of this cruise for years.

I think going back even to 1999, James, when we did it then, that was one of the main purposes of having the cruise, is that we could have a real great start.

And we are going to be having our conference this time actually in the Walt Disney World Resort at the

Hotel Royal Plaza, which is an official Walt Disney World hotel there in the downtown Disney area.

If you stay with us there at the hotel, you get free admission. Well, first of all, if you cruise with us, even if you're not at the hotel, you get free admission into the conference and debate, a guaranteed spot there.

If you stay at the hotel as well, for each day that you stay at the hotel there at Walt Disney World, you get admission free, free admission into the debate and conference.

And the hotel is actually right there across the street from downtown

Disney, surrounded by other big luxurious hotels and so forth. We've got our great rate there of $129.

That includes your conference fees and everything else. You can basically take a taxi from the hotel and come and stay with us there and use the

Walt Disney World transportation to go anywhere that you need to. So it's a very inexpensive way to come in, bring your family, let's say, if you want to come a day early and do the theme parks, go say hey to Mickey or do

Epcot or whatever the other theme parks that you want to go to. You can do that. But that is where our conference is going to be taking place.

And the conference itself is going to be still starting us on that same theme of pulpit crimes.

And the speakers? The speakers this year. We have a gentleman by the name of Dr. James White. He's always at our conferences.

Yeah, sadly. We keep trying to get rid of him. He just keeps showing up. I'm not sure why. Well, then we also have the director of Grace to You and the gentleman who has the famous Pyromaniac.

The Pyromaniac blog, yes. Yes, absolutely. The leader, the king of the blogosphere.

Yes, Phil Johnson and actually a couple of other guys that have some popular blogs. Dr. Tom Askell of the

Founders Ministry. That's right. And a very non -controversial gentleman, Steve Camp. Yes, yes.

I'll camp on this. Also, David King, we have returning again. Who does not have a blog, by the way.

No, he does not have a blog. He does not have a blog. But he does have BibleWorks now. Oh, really?

Oh, yeah. He just got BibleWorks. He loves it. Excellent. Well, we love Sky Man and he's great.

And he always does an incredible job at all the conferences that we have. And then, of course, we've got the editor of TableTalk Magazine, Burke Parsons from Ligonier Ministries.

That's the first time that we've had that. That's correct. And Burke has been a friend of the ministry for years.

He's been at a couple of our debates. I think a lot of the gentlemen over at Ligonier really love

Alpha and Omega Ministries and the things that you've been doing. And so kudos to you, gentlemen.

Thank you for supporting us. That's going to be absolutely wonderful. Just simply leaving me out, just as far as the other gentlemen are concerned, it'd be well worth traveling to Orlando, which is, by the way, a very wonderfully easy place to get in and out of, as far as that goes.

It's designed to be that way. And hence, it's going to be a whole lot cheaper for people to get in and out of.

In fact, I'm wondering if it would have been cheaper to fly people into Orlando than Seattle last time around.

Just bus them across the US. It would have worked out. I mean, that's just the way it's designed. Obviously, they have to be able to get people in there cheaply to be able to do things.

Well, and that's true. I mean, if you take a look at folks wherever you are in the United States or even internationally, this is one of the least expensive places to fly into.

And then all you have to do is basically get yourself to the hotel there, Hotel Royal Plaza, and everything's taken care of for you.

You really don't need to rent a car or anything else. You can take the Disney transportation anywhere you want.

Within walking distance, within five minutes walking distance, you're actually in the middle of a couple of different theme parks like Blizzard Beach or I believe it's

Typhoon Lagoon. They're at Walt Disney World and so forth. I've never been there personally. I've only been to Disneyland.

I haven't been to Disney World. You've never been to Disney World? No, I've never been to Disney World. Well, we have to go to Epcot then and...

Take some cool rides. Before the debate, that might not be a really good idea. I think I might be a little focused.

In fact, we really need to get around this because the people and channel and stuff are starting to get ready to lynch both of you and I and take over the world if we don't get around to...

Actually, James, what I thought I'd do for some inspiration is... I've got disputations on Holy Scripture here.

I thought I'd read chapter four if we could. Well, let me say this, folks, is that this past year, of course, you know that we had the opportunity of debating

Dr. John Dominic Crossan in Seattle and he was very kind.

Really a nice gentleman, actually. Oh, very much so. We have extreme differences, obviously, in theology.

We don't really know where he stands spiritually and so forth. Well, I think we do. Yeah. It's pretty clear, actually.

I'm sorry. I really like the guy, but unfortunately, there's some real distance there. He did an incredible job in debating

Dr. James White and I think James absolutely held the biblical ground and really showed the position that Jesus' seminar holds to be quite lacking in several areas.

But there was somebody that we were actually trying to have debate last year that we didn't have the opportunity to and the subject matter that we wanted to tackle was going to be homosexuality.

And in fact, I think if we had told folks that the subject this year, the thesis will be, is homosexuality consistent with authentic Christianity, that would have really given them a fairly decent idea of what the debate was going to be about, huh?

Who it was going to be with. Yes, absolutely. And actually, I checked with Dr.

James Dobson and he said, if we're going to have this debate, it should be a Disney world. And so, you know,

I'm just kidding. But, you know, we approached this gentleman and his wife a little while ago, about two months ago, and have been negotiating and we finally got it done basically this past week.

And so we're ready now to announce. And James, do you want to go ahead and break it? I most certainly do.

Our debate for 2006 is going to be against the retired

Bishop of Newark of the Episcopalian Church, Reverend Bishop John Shelby Spong.

On the subject is homosexuality compatible with authentic Christianity. That will be taking place

November 3rd, the night before we embark upon our debate. And I am tremendously excited about this.

He has written many, many books. And in fact, his most recent book I am holding in my hand called

The Sins of Scripture, exposing the Bible's texts of hate to reveal the

God of love. And on page 119 in the chapter on the

Bible and homosexuality, it says, but since the defenders of the traditional condemnation of homosexuality depends so vehemently on this clear teaching, that's in quotes, from the quote, word of God, end quote,

I must enter their battlefield and confront these condemning texts. It is a way of removing from those staunch defenders the righteousness of their claims that the

Bible supports their prejudice. That, quite frankly, is not a very difficult thing to do, as I hope to demonstrate in successive chapters in which

I will examine in detail the text found on the opening page of this section. I'll begin with Leviticus, not because it is first, but because it is most frequently cited.

And then he moves on from there. So I certainly, one thing's for certain, I have his debate notes.

And if he does a little research, he would have mine, because this is not the first time

I've debated this subject. And there's a little book out there in publication called

The Same -Sex Controversy. So certainly, there shouldn't be much problem in both sides knowing exactly where the other one's going to be going, which makes for the best type of debate, where you have both sides fully prepared to be able to engage the subject.

Well, and actually, that's what we always try to do. I think that we always try to make sure that no matter what, that the two gentlemen that we have representing each side are the two strongest opponents, that they have the ability to defend their side in the best way possible.

And so that's really why we want to try to get Reverend Spong, because I think he has written probably more and has been the most outspoken spokesperson for this cause.

Oh, yes, very much so. I mean, it's throughout all of his books. I have a whole stack of his books sitting next to me.

Here I stand, born of a woman, new Christianity for a new world, living in sin, rescuing the

Bible from fundamentalism, why Christianity must change or die. And I would imagine, I think

I am correct to say that this issue comes up in every single one of them, every single one of them.

So it certainly would be a situation where some people may look at the

Barry Lynn debate and go, well, you know, he wasn't really prepared. He didn't have a Bible with him. He had to borrow yours during the cross -examination, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Here you have someone who obviously has, well, I've seen him debating

Walter Martin from years and years ago on the John Ankerberg show. This is not something that he's new to doing.

He's been in the forefront of this stuff for a long, long time and therefore makes an excellent debate opponent to have on November 3rd.

So not only can people look forward to a tremendous conference with Phil Johnson and Tom Askell and Burke Parsons, look forward to the cruise, but right in between the two, just as we did this year in Seattle, the debate with John Shelby Spong on the subject of homosexuality fits perfectly with, in fact, one of the chapter titles in my outline for the book is on the issue of homosexuality.

And so it fits exactly with the entire overarching theme of the conference and things like that.

And so that's what's been going on, of course. Talking with the man who arranged all of it.

I don't do that stuff. I'm not good at that kind of stuff. That's what folks like Mike are for, doing that kind of stuff.

And so I appreciate the effort that went into it. I know it took a lot of time, a lot of effort. And I'm very excited that it is going to take place.

Mike Ackerman Well, absolutely. And just, folks, remember, again, here's a couple of things, too, is that if you take a look at this, and we'll have the proper links up here probably within the next 15 minutes or so, but one thing to remember is that we do try not to ever overcharge for these sort of things.

We just want to make sure that we take care of the costs and so forth, the Gospels being proclaimed.

If you take a look at a lot of other conferences and so forth, sometimes you want to go to the charges are pretty high.

Maybe the average person can't do that. Hey, we're saying you can get in free if you get in now into your hotel rooms.

If you get in before February 28, you get into the conference. You get into the debate.

There's no other extra cost and so forth. It's a great way for you to be able to bring your family something that they could enjoy.

As well, if you're on the cruise, if you join us on the cruise, you get everything for free, whether you stay at the hotel or not.

So, once again, we're trying to give you the best value possible, give you an opportunity to get away with your family, to have a great time of retreat in a time when you can be really immersed in Reformed theology and Reformed apologetics, and also be a part of a great event like this.

This is something we've been trying to put together for years, really, and we're just glad to do it. James, blessings to you.

Thank you. Thank you. For standing for the truth, man. Well, thanks for being on the program today and letting everybody and Channel finally relax so their blood pressures can go down.

And I probably don't need to read out the URL. You said that that should be up on the site fairly quickly here?

For some reason, it's not going up just yet. So we're trying to work on that right now. Blank images and so forth.

Oh, well, that's not good. Well, if you want to go immediately, it's not too difficult to find www .sovereigncruises

.org. I just fixed it. Oh, you just fixed it? Oh, okay. Well, then you can...

Is that the magical wizard behind the screen? That's... Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

Well, let me say this, too. Let me give kudos both to Rich and then to my niece,

Kathy, who's also my business partner. Who's just spent all the time putting these links and pages together.

Just did a real pro job. It looks fantastic, so... Well, great. Yeah, it does. It does really look good. Get onto the conference website there.

There's all the information you need. Looks very, very professional. And, you know,

I've had a number of people asking me about the cruise because at this time of year, they are lining out their vacation time for next year.

And so that's why everybody needs to know about this now so they can get things set up and jump on it.

And it's going to be a wonderful time. Next year is going to be incredible. I mean, Shabir Ali and John Shelby Spong, all in one year.

Talk about covering both ends of the spectrum. We are your Equal Opportunity Apologetics Resource Center right here at Alpha Omega Ministries.

Thank you, Mike, for being with me today. Absolutely, brother. All righty. God bless. Bye -bye. And I thank him very, very much.

There you go. For all the work that went into this. And if you're hitting the website right now, you should be able to see the conference page and get all that working out for you and things like that.

Only one person prior to the beginning of the program, anyways. I now see some other people have jumped on board.

But we had a poll going in our channel. The options were Dan Brown, N .T.

Wright, Rick Warren, John Shelby Spong, Tony Campolo, Norman Geisler, William Lane Craig, Bart Ehrman, Brian McLaren, and Dave Hunt.

And the only person who voted for John Shelby Spong was

Clyde Bauman, our good friend Milo Mutato was the only person.

There's been a couple people since then who have thrown their vote in there. I saw

Red Goatee mentioning Spong. But I'm looking at the page right now. I don't see a vote there.

So if you don't know how to vote properly, what can I say? But anyways, kudos to Mutato for having gotten that one right.

Yes, he's waving to the crowd now. If I can have some sound here on my system, please.

There we go. There we go. Very, very well done. Mutato got it right.

And so anyway, excellent website there. I'm excited. We knew we've been working on this for a long, long time.

But we only got word last week that we were able to put it together. So start making your plans now.

There are many, many people who have said over and over again, oh, I wish I had been able to go to such and such a day.

I wish I had been able to do this. If I had just known earlier. Okay, no excuses not to know earlier at this particular point in time.

We've given you 11 months head start on this one, almost 10 and a half. So now you know.

And you're going to want to be there. You're going to want to be at the conference. You're going to want to be on the cruise. You're going to want to be at the debate. And obviously,

I also know that there are some who have little children. I don't think you're left out on this one.

If you come to the conference, stay at the hotel, come to the debate in the conference. Even if you can't take the little kiddies on the cruise, there's lots of stuff to do there in Orlando as well.

So don't feel like you're just always left out because, well, you know, it's that time you got the little kids and you don't want to, can't really do the cruise thing right now.

They're not quite big enough. But you know, there's stuff to do. There's lots and lots of ways to make this work out.

So we are very, very excited about this. And we will be speaking much more of it in the future, of course.

And I'll be getting the specific topics that each of the gentlemen will be addressing fairly soon here.

I wanted to wait till after the holidays because they're probably a little busy right now. And early next year, up to about midpoint next year is when

I'll be writing the book itself. And I've already got the outlines put together and have done some work on it.

But the actual writing itself will be coming up at that particular point in time.

So there's the big announcement. Thank you for joining it for us. We're not signing off now, however. I still have something to play for.

I'm going to play you a little clip from John Shelby Spong. Then we'll take a break. And if you'd like to comment,

I see a phone line lit up. I don't know what it is, but I see a phone line lit up. And I'm not sure if that's a call or just what it is.

If you'd like to comment on that. Oh, all right. We will take our phone call.

But I also like to play for you. I've got some more Bart Ehrman stuff queued up. But I want to play a section from The White Horse Inn.

I don't think they would mind if I played just a brief section of an interview that Mike Horton did with John Shelby Spong, give you some background, a little bit of a taste of where we're going to be going when we have the opportunity of engaging this debate.

So here is John Shelby Spong and his own religious background in his own words. I was raised in the

South in the Bible Belt as an evangelical fundamentalist. I was taught that every word of the

Bible was the word of God. The Bible was used to justify the segregation of my region.

It was used to justify treating women as not fully human. It was justified to enable me to hate other religions and Jews, particularly with impunity.

And it was used to justify oppression of gay and lesbian people that it defined as mentally sick or morally depraved.

And it is also, you know, if you look back in history, the Bible was used to condemn Galileo and to demonstrate that the earth was the center of the universe.

And so on you go through history. My difficulty with the Bible is not that I don't love it.

I spend time with it every day of my life. But the Bible, particularly the Gospels, indeed all of the

Bible, but I'm thinking particularly about the Gospels, are written inside the worldview of the first century.

That is not the worldview that I live in. And if I can't separate the essence of the

Bible from the frame of reference in which it is written, I find it difficult to ask people to accept the biblical experience.

So that my task is to sort of open the Bible to 21st century people who are put off by its framework.

Well, there you have that. That is a that particular presentation has been a part of almost everything

I've ever heard him say. And the idea of divine revelation, you know, he talks about the fact he lives post

Darwin, so he just can't view man the way the Bible does. Well, you know, I live post the discovery of biochemistry and DNA and the fact that there is such complexity in life that that Darwin wasn't even on the right page.

So he really does take a very odd view, as if the misuse of the scripture is somehow an argument against the scriptures.

If I were to take his book and misinterpret what he said and use it as a grounds for mistreating someone, does that make him right?

Does that make his book to be improper, et cetera, et cetera? I mean, I'm sure that's all going to be coming up in the discussion of the various texts of scripture.

And I can tell you right now the debate will eventually come down to in finality whether there is whether God has spoken or not.

And is that not what we always find is the case, no matter what, which one of these groups we engage, eventually what you get to is whether God has spoken and whether God has spoken with clarity.

Is that not what it comes down to? I think that it is. Well, we're going to take a break. We lost Paul in Chicago. Paul, give us a call back.

And we'll be listening to Bart Ehrman and taking your phone calls, 877 -753 -3341.

We'll be right back. What is

Dr. Norman Geisler warning the Christian community about in his book, Chosen But Free, A New Cult, Secularism, False Prophecy Scenarios?

No, Dr. Geisler is sounding the alarm about a system of beliefs commonly called Calvinism. He insists that this belief system is theologically inconsistent, philosophically insufficient, and morally repugnant.

In his book, The Potter's Freedom, James White replies to Dr. Geisler. But The Potter's Freedom is much more than just a reply.

It is a defense of the very principles upon which the Protestant Reformation was founded. Indeed, it is a defense of the very gospel itself in a style that both scholars and laymen alike can appreciate.

James White masterfully counters the evidence against so -called extreme Calvinism, defines what the

Reformed faith actually is, and concludes that the gospel preached by the Reformers is the very one taught in the pages of Scripture.

The Potter's Freedom, a defense of the Reformation, and a rebuttal to Norman Geisler's Chosen But Free. You'll find it in the

Reformed Theology section of our bookstore at aomin .org. This portion of the dividing line has been made possible by the

Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, The Apostle Paul spoke of the importance of solemnly testifying of the gospel of the grace of God.

The proclamation of God's truth is the most important element of his worship in his church. The elders and people of the

Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church invite you to worship with them this coming Lord's Day. The morning

Bible study begins at 9 .30 a .m., and the worship service is at 10 .45. Evening services are at 6 .30

p .m. on Sunday, and the Wednesday night prayer meeting is at 7. The Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church is located at 3805

North 12th Street in Phoenix. You can call for further information at 602 -26 -GRACE.

If you're unable to attend, you can still participate with your computer and real audio at prbc .org,

where the ministry extends around the world through the archives of sermons and Bible study lessons available 24 hours a day.

Under the guise of tolerance, modern culture grants alternative lifestyle status to homosexuality.

Even more disturbing, some within the church attempt to revise and distort Christian teaching on this behavior.

In their book, The Same -Sex Controversy, James White and Jeff Neal write for all who want to better understand the

Bible's teaching on the subject, explaining and defending the foundational Bible passages that deal with homosexuality, including

Genesis, Leviticus, and Romans. Expanding on these scriptures, they refute the revisionist arguments, including the claim that Christians today need not adhere to the law.

In a straightforward and loving manner, they appeal to those caught up in a homosexual lifestyle to repent and to return to God's plan for his people.

The Same -Sex Controversy, defending and clarifying the Bible's message about homosexuality. Get your copy in the bookstore at almen .org.

West Coast. Orlando. November 3rd, 2006. John Shelby Spong.

East Coast. So we're sort of covering everything here. And then we're going to be in the middle in April.

I'm going to be, I think it's in Kansas or Missouri. Sedalia, Missouri in April. Salt Lake, Lord willing, the week before that in the middle of April.

So we're sort of spreading coast to coast. Let's not talk about that.

We are definitely covering everything here in the process.

So that's very exciting. But let me tell you something, folks. 2006 is going to be,

I don't want to use the term stressful. That's like looking at the Apostle Paul and saying, well, now

Paul, do you really want to go toward Rome? It might be stressful. That's way too modernist.

But there's going to be a lot of stuff to do for a little ministry like ours, especially when we're moving our offices, as I've mentioned on my blog.

And moving is not easy. And that is very stressful because, you know, things aren't working the way they're supposed to work.

And you got to get them set up. And you got to build things and install things. And you know how that is.

And moving a library is just stressful, just simply on your back. And so we've got that going on.

And I'm spending half of February in the United Kingdom. I'm very much looking forward to that.

But I'm going to be gone during that period of time. And we're looking at minimally, let's say a bunch of the debates that haven't been nailed down yet fall through.

Minimally, I'm looking at, let's see, one, two, three, four, five debates.

Absolutely, at the least, five debates in 2006 on a very wide variety of things.

And possibly as many as seven. There are two that haven't been, or maybe three, actually. Could be as many as eight now.

Think about it. Wow. Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of stuff going on. So we are taking a big bite out of the apologetic task here, shall we say.

Because obviously, these debates then are MP3'd. They are put on CD.

They are put on a DVD. And that takes a tremendous amount of time and effort on somebody else's part.

I think it takes longer on somebody else's part than, well, I was going to say than me to prepare for it. But that's not true on some of them anyways.

And they are going to be made available for years and years down the line. And when

I travel, people will talk to me about how a debate that I did 12 years ago or a series

I did 12 years ago had very much helped them. And that's why we do all this stuff.

And this will put me, if I do five debates this year, that'll put me,

I think, somewhere around 62 or 63 debates that we've done. And almost all of those are available in some form from us, some of them in lesser full form than another.

But what a tremendous opportunity since we started. As I think about our first tape production machine was a ghetto blaster is what they used to call them.

It was just simply a two cassette machine that had a high speed button on it, which meant it would copy at twice the normal speed.

So it'd take 45 minutes to make a, well, no, it would, yeah, it would take 45 minutes to make a 90 minute tape instead of just the regular speed, one direction at a time.

That was, and we had file folder labels, which happened to fit on the cassette. That was, that's how we started.

You ran them through the 24 pin NEC dot matrix printer and printed out the title.

And that's how we started. Some of you may still have some of those tapes sitting around someplace, but that's how we started.

And things have changed. We're still rather small, but the reach has been absolutely amazing.

It truly is. So those are the announcements. Shabir Ali and John Shelby Spong for next year.

Those folks running around saying that I'm afraid to debate people. It's always, always funny when you start going, and exactly who do you know who has debated?

And then you start down the list, you know, John Dominic Crossan and Barry Lynn and up in Salt Lake City against the leading

LDS apologists. And just not too many folks do that, that kind of thing.

Let's face it. And from a reform perspective, that's why we view ourselves as unique.

Others view us as really weird. But that's another issue.

Well, since we lost poor Paul, Paul probably had to get someplace. He had a question on Calvinism versus hyper -Calvinism.

So I don't see that Paul has called back. So let's continue on with where we were last week.

We've been listening to an NPR interview with Bart Ehrman on his book,

Misquoting Jesus. And he has been, as I've mentioned a number of times, his favorite materials of Islamic apologists, atheists and others who seek to find a way to undercut the proclamation of the gospel by undercutting the authority of the word of God, which is a standard way that people do things.

And so we're going to continue with that interview. We're about 20 minutes in now.

Part of the problem in copying these texts is that there was no punctuation.

There was no capitalization, if you will, so that it must have been fairly difficult for them to decipher where one thought ended and another began.

Absolutely. In fact, they didn't separate paragraphs or sentences. They didn't even put separation between words.

So words ran on together, making it very difficult to copy these manuscripts. All that is is a recognition that the unseal form of writing, which was common in all, it almost makes it sound like this was just how the

Bible was rendered. But that's not the case at all. That's just simply how things were written at that time.

So does that mean we don't know what the historians were writing back then and we just can't figure it out?

No. Is the fact that we don't have spaces between words and punctuation, does that lead to some questions at times, especially when there is a textual variant, as to what a reading was?

Well, yeah. I mean, it comes up once in a while. And it certainly would be relevant, especially when you talk about homoeoteluton, similar endings, how the

I would skip from one group of letters. If we had how many

English words end with the T -I -O -N, shun, if you had that and you put those

English words without spaces between them and you had one word that ended like education and then you had just a couple words down the line, location.

Yeah, it would be easier without spaces between words for my I to catch the second shun and skip the intervening words.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. But that was the case with everything. That was the case with everything that was being written at that time.

It's not just simply the Bible that was transcribed that way, the manuscripts that existed in that way.

That was all of them. And that's how people wrote. And that's how it was done in those days, not just the

Bible. So again, it's like, here is a basic Bible history 101 fact.

Let's throw it in under the rubric of changing the Bible like we don't really know what it actually originally said type of a situation.

I want to understand that your use of the word heretic and heresy.

What kinds of things were they trying to address? In about 100 years or 200 years after Jesus, there were different Christian groups who were claiming different things.

This comes as a surprise to many Christians today who think that Christianity is one thing. But in fact, in early

Christianity, Christianity was many different things. Now, let me stop right here, because this is one of the big issues

I have with Bart Ehrman is as long as someone mentions Jesus or quotes a scripture, they're a Christian. The problem is, if anyone reads the

New Testament, is it not a simple fact of life that apologetic concerns take up a large portion of the

New Testament documents? Is it not clear that from the earliest days in the church, there was the issue of faith false teaching?

There was the fact that in God's providence, I fully believe in God's providence, it has been his desire, his will that the church, each generation must fight in regards to the faith.

Agonizomai, that's what Jude says. If you don't have to fight, if you don't have to expend effort in the defense of something, you take it for granted.

It's just something that's been passed down to you. It doesn't mean all that much. My kids went to a private school for a while, a private

Christian school, and I think they were the poorest kids in the school. My son drove this beat -up 1989

Nissan Sentra with 152 billion miles on it. There were people, literally, there were 16 and 17 -year -old kids parking next to him in brand new 2003, 2004 vehicles.

I'm not talking about just a new Sentra. I'm talking about a Lexus. When mommy and daddy just hands that to you, it doesn't mean as much as when

I had to buy my first vehicle, it was a 1974 Chevy Love pickup truck. Oh my goodness, that had the smallest engine.

I think my lawnmower had a larger engine in it than that 74 Chevy Love pickup truck. Fifty -eight miles per hour on the flats without a headwind, max.

That's all it could do. That was all it was capable of.

I had to pay for it. I had to work for it. I had to make payments on it. I think I appreciated it a lot more than even if that had just been handed to me and said, here, have this.

That's the way things are in the spiritual realm as well. If you don't have to agonize, if you have to put out some effort, then it's just sort of like, yeah, well, apathy sets in.

And that's what the church has to do. So every generation has to engage these issues.

The New Testament makes it very, very clear. So why do you assume, as Ehrman does, that, hey, as long as you say

Jesus, it doesn't matter if you violate all these apostolic commands. It doesn't matter if you have a worldview completely different than what is found in the

New Testament. We'll just call all of it Christianity, which, of course, helps you to add to the idea that there's this massive confusion.

Nobody has any idea what the truth is. That's really what's going on here.

For Christians who are claiming that there's not just one God, there are two gods. Some were saying that there were 30 gods.

We know of one Christian group that said there are 365 gods. OK, now, let's... 365 gods.

OK, excuse me. Excuse me, just a moment. Is someone suggesting, for just a moment, that any of these groups are taken seriously as being in line with the

Old Testament scriptures? Hello? Anybody? Want to put your hands up? 365 gods? What?

These are the... This is the succession from the apostles. This is...

This somehow is relevant. It's relevant to the fact that every generation has heresy to fight, yes.

But does that somehow matter? Yeah. What about in leap years? Is there one God who only comes on duty for, you know, once every four years or something?

I don't know. But when I hear this, there was a Christian group.

Excuse me. Hello? That's not a Christian group. Isn't monotheism absolutely definitional of what it means here?

Certainly seems that way in the New Testament. But, you know, if you want to just present the idea that, well, you know, the

New Testament was just chosen by this particular group, et cetera, et cetera. And that's, of course, where he's wanting to go, because he has his books out about ancient

Christianities and books that never made it into the New Testament and, you know, that kind of thing. And so that's why he does it.

So that's... There you go. They call themselves Christians. They claim that these were the teachings of Jesus and his followers.

Well, there's 165 groups that claim their teachings are the teachings of Joseph Smith. That doesn't mean you actually give credibility at all.

And they had books to prove it. Books allegedly written by Jesus followers. Yeah. In other words, books written in the second century that have no connection to the first century.

Big deal. There were some Christians who said that Jesus was human, but therefore he wasn't divine.

And there were Christians who were saying that Jesus was divine and therefore not human. Which you can see both those extremes in the

New Testament and dealt with by the apostles. There were Christians who said that God created this world, but other

Christians said God never had anything to do with this world. No Christian ever said anything like it. That's why someone is called a heretic, because they do not accept the

God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That's the whole point. And so all of these different Christian groups are battling for converts.

And they're all claiming to represent the views of Jesus. And they all have books that verify their views.

No, not all of them did. And beyond that, again, what is being suggested here by mere assertion without proof is that somehow second century

Gnostic Gospels have the same equal claim to validity that the canonical

Gospels themselves have. And where have we heard that before? There's nothing new here.

This is just Jesus Seminar stuff warmed over, but this time with a textual critical flavor thrown in that isn't normally a part of what you're going to be hearing from the

Cross and Borg and formerly Funk representatives. And so some Christians today might wonder, why didn't they just read the

New Testament and see that they were wrong? And the point, of course, is that the New Testament emerged out of these conflicts.

No, it did not emerge out of these conflicts. Again, it's just putting them all on the same level.

And then once you've done that, once you put them all on the same level, now someone has to come along and pick and choose as if somehow now that authority has to be removed from the documents themselves so that you have to place that authority in an external group rather than in the scriptures themselves.

That's why I mentioned this in channel a couple days ago. The presentation that I make on the subject of the canon, the nature of the canon, where the canon comes from, what the canon is, is so very, very important because this kind of perspective, if you start from the wrong viewpoint of what the canon is and what inspiration is and the relationship of the

Old and New Testaments and God's purpose in giving scripture, a lot of this stuff is just going to leave you befuddled.

You're really not going to have a basis upon which to try to respond to it in the first place. That's one of the reasons why we have to take the time to look at these things.

That the winning side decided which books are going to count as scripture and which books are going to be excluded.

And the books that were excluded then, of course, are deemed heretical, teaching false beliefs, and aren't included in the canon of scripture.

And only the books, then the 27 books that finally made it into the New Testament, are considered canonical.

Well, again, I guess you could argue that, well, he's just trying to summarize things briefly in an interview, but that doesn't get you very far.

That is a naive and, I think, very surface -level and silly way of trying to summarize a far more important subject than is presented here.

But again, when you're trying to sell books about early Christianities that you never heard of and early scriptures that you never saw, etc.,

etc., that's how you do things. That's how you present things. And as long as you're being presented as an expert on the subject, then most people just simply accept what you're saying, especially if what you're saying is opposed to the

Christian faith and opposed to the Christian faith having any historical validity. If you claim to be an expert and you're on the other side, then, of course, you're going to be questioned all along.

But that's just the situation we live in today. Suck it up and get used to it. No reason whining about it.

We just recognize it and move on from there. It sort of takes your breath away when you realize that there's a winning side and a losing side in terms of creation of a text that has become so central.

Winning side and a losing side, as if this was some battle and as if all these books that, you know, you notice he hasn't mentioned any of these alleged books.

He hasn't given us a single example. Because once you do start mentioning them, all of a sudden you go and read them and go, wait a minute.

No one could ever make this fit with Judaism. No one could ever walk in the streets of Galilee and speak like this.

That's absurd. That's why you don't mention them, see, at least until you've sucked somebody in and then they're not going to notice those things or so on and so forth.

But it wasn't this battle that is being referred to here in any way, shape or form. This is a gross misrepresentation of the historical reality itself.

But, you know, that's, again, what sells books. To our beliefs, our fundamental religious practices.

Well, that's exactly right. And what's happened among scholars over the last 20, 30, 40 years is they've begun to realize just how diverse early

Christianity was and how these losing sides, in fact, had a lot to say for themselves. Let's stop right there.

No, what you've had happening over the past 20, 30, 40 years is people who are willing to allow a political agenda of reshaping

Jesus Christ to completely overrun scholarship. Please do not insult the scholars of the beginning of the last century or the century before that as if they didn't know about the existence of the

Gnostics. Sure, we have more manuscripts available now. We've got Nag Hammadi and things like that. But don't insult these individuals.

Oh, we thought it was all monolithic. No, they didn't. They knew that these groups existed. We may know more about what they believe now.

That hasn't changed the reality of how far removed from a Christian and biblical worldview they were.

But they knew they existed. You can see many of these groups in the text of the New Testament itself.

He was talking about those who believed Jesus didn't have a physical body, the Dostetics. Read 1 John for crying out loud. He was well aware of where these people were coming from.

Want to see proto -Gnosticism? Read Colossians. And that, of course, is why they then take this evolutionary worldview, apply it to the

New Testament, and say, well, that's why Colossians couldn't have been written by Paul, because it uses specific Gnostic terminology.

And that came along later. So therefore, it couldn't have been written by Paul, et cetera, et cetera. You see how once you've got your political agenda online, then you can use it to trump anything.

And you raised the question earlier about politics. It isn't just politics about theology. It's politics that really matter.

For example, issues of what's the relationship of Christianity and Judaism. Are Christians opposed to Jews?

Was Jesus opposed to Jews? Well, it depends which text you read. What about the role of women in the

Christian church? Well, what do you mean? It depends what text you read. You mean if you read the

Gnostic Gospels, which are the canonical Gospels? I mean, you know, again, just throwing this kind of stuff out without specifics.

All right. I understand you're in a discussion with someone. You only have a small amount of time. But still, to throw this kind of stuff out without substantiating it,

I have a hard time with that kind of methodology. Are women to be silenced, as some of the books of the

New Testament suggest? Or are women to have a prominent role in the church? A little

Dan Brown Da Vinci Code action going on there. Mary Magdalene and so on and so forth. Scribes, who were copying these manuscripts, by the way, changed the text in light of their own views about Jews and about women and other political issues.

Give me an example in regard to women. There's a passage that's quoted commonly today in the arguments over whether women should be allowed a ministerial role in the church.

That's found in 1 Corinthians chapter 14, where the Apostle Paul, who wrote 1

Corinthians, evidently says that women are to be silent in the churches, that they're not to speak in the church services.

This passage, though, is a passage that is under dispute by textual scholars because there are some manuscripts that put these verses at a different place in the text.

And these verses have characteristics in them that make it look like Paul didn't write them. And so it looks like to many textual scholars today that these verses originated as a marginal note by a scribe who was opposed to women speaking in church, and that later these verses got stuck into 1

Corinthians 14. So they're not originally by Paul. What about... Okay, let's stop the tape, as someone says.

Oh my goodness, and the music's coming up. Oops. All right, I will roll it back to 1 Corinthians 14, and unfortunately it won't be on Tuesday, unless...

Well, it won't be on Tuesday. Maybe Wednesday. Well, I'll let you know on the blog when we'll be able to get together next time.

And we'll look at 1 Corinthians 14, 34 will be the text we'll be looking at.

And that'll be the next time on The Dividing Line. Thanks for being here. God bless. See you next time. Call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.

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

World Wide Web at aomin .org, that's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.