Sam Waldron and Richard Barcellos

Webcasting 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. Good morning, welcome to Dividing Line on a Tuesday morning, beautiful Tuesday morning here in the

Valley of the Sun. We are living up to our name. The cold weather is gone, mid -70s through most of the week.

It's actually going to become frigid at the end of the week, down to the upper 60s for the high.

So, boy, when I see the air thing on there, that worries me because, you know,

I don't know if that person's on the air or not, hopefully they're not on the air yet. Good, it's just blue.

I've never seen a blue air thing before, but that's okay. We are doing the Dividing Line today.

We will do it again, Lord willing, on Thursday and next Tuesday, but not next Thursday.

Starting the 27th, we got a little problem. Got something

I need to do the 27th and then heading off to jolly old England on the 31st.

And I'm not sure how this is going to work.

I would assume that there probably won't be any way on the 2nd for people to listen live to the two debates that I'll be doing that day, one in the morning, one in the evening, both broadcast.

They will be broadcast live, but they'll be broadcast live in the UK. And my recollection is that the

Unbelievable radio broadcast is not live on the air, live on...

I'm sorry. Yeah, it's recorded and then played at a later point, so I'll just let you know when that's going to air.

Normally, it's a couple of weeks after, a week or two, something like that, after you do it. Revelation TV might be, might live stream.

I don't know. I really honestly don't know. My recollection is last time I had to post the video of the program

I was on, but both will be on the King James only subject. So that'll be on the 2nd. And then we're going to be bouncing around,

Lord willing, Dublin, Glasgow, then back to London for a debate on the 12th with Bassam Zawadi and then back on the 14th.

So two weeks away. Will we get some dividing lines in there? Don't know.

I just, right now, I cannot know what my schedule is going to look like. For example,

Thursday, going up to Dublin, don't know what my internet connection situation is going to be like, anything like that.

And I know the next Thursday I'm traveling. And one of the Tuesdays I'm in Glasgow, I might have a stable enough connection to do something by Skype.

I just, there's just no way of knowing until I get there. So we'll see. We'll see what happens.

Until then, we'll just have to fly turrets and fan out. I think we could,

I think there might be a room over there for a sleeping bag. We could probably, yeah, there might be room right over there, right next to the ball for a sleeping bag.

And we'll just bring turrets and fan out. And he's going, really?

No, not really. But maybe we can try to work something out to where at least have one live program in there if I just can't work it out when

I'm traveling. We'll see. We will see. I have been doing a lot of traveling. And in fact, that's what brings us to our program today.

I have some guests. I don't, I was such, I'm such a bad host that I did not even think through.

Because I'm just assuming, knowing these guys, they're so talkative, that I'm probably just going to have to be able to ask one or two questions and probably go do some work in the other room or something like that.

But I didn't even think through whether we were just going to ask them, when do you want to finish up?

Do you want to do five minutes? Do you want to do the whole hour? What do you want to do? You know, I don't know. It's lunchtime back in Owensboro.

So they might want to do five minutes. I don't know. But, I am very glad to be joined today by two very important folks that I got to meet with just last week when

I was back in Owensboro. And so if you want to sort of get a facial recognition of these folks, then

Pastor Samuel E. Waldron, Ph .D., the Academic Dean of the Midwest Center for Theological Studies has joined me along with Pastor Richard Braselis, the

Administrative Assistant to the Dean. I love those nice long titles. They're so big. And by the way,

Barcelou, this picture of you here, how old is that? I think we took it last week.

I don't think so. I'm sorry, because first of all, you're wearing a suit and a tie, and I don't know, it just looks like it's, you know, a little bit older than that.

But Sam looks the same. You haven't aged, Sam. You're doing all right. Barcelou's doing all the aging for the team back there.

Thank you, brother. That's very kind of you to say that. I didn't know facial recognition of either of us was a good idea, actually.

Well, people like to know who they're talking to or hearing speaking or something like that, I suppose. So you can go to mctsowensboro .org

and find out more about their work. But I'd rather find out from the folks. How long,

I'll let you guys fight over who gets to answer the questions, but how long has MCTS been in operation now?

We've been in operation, this is Sam, by the way, we've been in operation since the fall of 2005, brother.

Okay. And give us some background. What was the drive to,

I mean, aren't there enough theological seminaries out there? Yeah. Well, there certainly are a lot of seminaries out there and a lot of Orthodox and Reformed seminaries out there that we don't want to make it our life's calling to criticize.

So we're very thankful for them. But the drive to this was a shared belief between Pastor Christian and myself that theological education is best done in the context of a local church, as is all ministry and fulfillment of the

Great Commission. I know you believe that, James. And so the other thing, though, is that one of the distinctives was that oftentimes it's hard to get the local church context mixed with really current, cutting -edge scholarship, because pastors are busy and they may not have time to keep current with what's going on in the theological world, and may be distracted with many responsibilities.

So we started Midwest Center to try to combine two things that are often hard to get together, and that's

Informed Scholarship with a pastoral heart. That's really our motto, actually. Right, right. In fact,

I believe that's the symbol, the shield, tries to sort of indicate that as well.

Now, it's not easy to get things going with something like this.

Everybody wants to do something like this. Everybody will sit back and agree, but there's got to be some type of driving force and some people to put some, quote -unquote, boots on the ground.

So obviously this would be something that you would have wanted to have been doing for a while. What finally got everything going?

Well, 2005 was when I actually graduated from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary with my

Ph .D. in systematic theology, and the fall was then when we could get it going.

Pastor Ted has had a burden for this. It was our shared vision that really got it off the ground, and Ted's a real visionary and a man who has been able to accomplish a lot in the starting and nurturing of the church here.

So we're thankful for his work and efforts on behalf of the

Midwest Center, including fundraising and a lot of other things he's done over the years. Now, that church would be the

Heritage Baptist Church of Owensboro, Kentucky. Right. Okay, yeah. Not everybody would be familiar with that.

Now, I was a little surprised, you know, for Reformed Baptist -type folks, that's a big congregation.

Well, we don't think of ourselves that way, I suppose, but the church has a membership of 225 -plus, and then it's on Sunday mornings, gotten all the babies in the nursery of 350 -plus,

I guess. Well, for Reformed Baptist churches, that's certainly one that is a little bit on the larger side for most of our churches.

Well, Pastor Ted came down here almost 40 years ago now to start the church, and has been there ever since, working his head off to see the church grow and to have it stand for the truth of God's word.

Right. Yeah, that's long -term leadership. What a wonderful blessing that is on a church.

So you get things started, you're attracting students and things like that. What ever got in your mind to get

Richard Braselis involved with all of this? Richard, you're going to have to answer that one.

I suppose I got in their minds so that they might get me to come here. I see.

Okay. I served on the board from the inception, and after one or two board meetings,

I remember calling Pastor Ted Christman back one time and said, you guys are in a dilemma.

If you build it, they'll come, but you can't build it unless more students come. You have to have funding, you have to have a lot of things, you have to have more than just one professor.

You need to branch out. So I told him, I said, you know, I think somebody just needs to roll the dice.

Roll the dice? Well, trust the Lord and move there and try to get the...

James, you can't make the connection between those things? Oh, I can make the connection.

I just, you know, I can read the Book of Mormon, too, but it's not necessarily orthodox. Somebody needs to trust the

Lord and extend themselves and move there and see if they can help get it more established and developed.

And that was just a point in my life and my Christian ministry in California and pursuing my

Ph .D. that I needed a breath of fresh air, I needed to come up for air and finish that dissertation.

I just couldn't do it where I was doing it and decided to move. All the way from California?

Would you guys have me come? Allow me to come for about a year and a half and see what

I can do. I'd like to finish my dissertation, help the school get going, and they haven't been able to get rid of me since. That was four years ago.

They haven't been able to get rid of you since? So do you sense some efforts in that direction? If I were them, yes.

Well, I got the feeling that the resident students there seem to, for some reason, seem to like both of you guys a lot.

It's amazing, isn't it? Yeah, I have to admit. Well, for those who are listening going, well, why are you talking about MCS?

Well, that's where I was the week before last. I've been traveling so much that it's hard to realize it's already the week before last.

But I had an opportunity of seeing these folks up close and personal, so I want to let folks know what's going on back there.

Now, looking at the resident faculty page here on the website, there are some questions

I'd like to ask to sort of help give people an idea of who you guys are and what kind of education they might be looking at under your tutelage.

Sam, you've written some interesting books, probably best known, at least—I don't know what your best -selling book is or stuff like that, but I certainly—how long ago did you write the

Modern Exposition of the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith? How long ago was that? Yeah, that was—so,

I wrote it in 1989, which was the 300th anniversary of the 1689, which kind of is what gave me the idea to do what

I'd just got done teaching for about three years, the Confession. After I got done, I said, boy, there's a lot you could want to know and teach your people about the

Christian faith that isn't in here one way or the other. And I thought, people need to know what's in here.

And so I sent a few chapters off to Evangelical Press, and they published it right at the end of 1989.

It's been in print ever since then, so yeah, I think that's—although

I don't know the actual numbers, publishers don't seem to want to keep me up with those things. I don't know if you find that, too,

Jim. But I think that's probably the book I'm generally speaking best known for, although there are some others that I'm infamous for as well.

Well, I was going to say, when it comes to the term infamous, when I think of the end times made simple, and then your recent

MacArthurist Millennial Manifesto, a friendly response, have you ever found your picture maybe being displayed on that—out here, it's a channel.

I never mentioned a specific TV channel, but it's between 20 and 22, and it's the

Trinity Broadcasting Network, you know, and I'm certain that you've had to turn them down over and over again.

I'm sure they're constantly contacting you and asking you to come on to discuss eschatological issues.

Is that the case? No, you know, actually, I really wouldn't know, because I have a very hard time bringing myself to watch so -called

Christian TV. Yes. I guess if I want to know what the world's doing,

I'd like it straight up and unadulterated, you know, rather than the version of the world you get on Christian TV.

Yeah, but wouldn't they find your eschatology just to—I mean, you and—I bet you and Tim LaHaye are

BFFs on Facebook. What do you think? I'm so behind the times that I can't even remember what

BFF means, but at any rate, no, we're probably not. But I'm encouraged.

In Times Made Simple has—even though some people don't think it's as simple as the title makes it seem—has done a lot of good, and I've been, over the last number of years since it was published, quite encouraged that we're striking a ball for biblical truth there, and it's continuing to get some readership.

So you were willing—see, I'll be perfectly honest with you, I don't do eschatology.

I just—I've tried to read the books, I've tried to get into it,

I have my own views, but I just can't do it. And I'm very thankful that you did, because there is just so much emotion invested in that particular topic that,

I mean, that particular contribution on your part is about as innocuous as my

King James Only controversy, okay? I mean, talk about making people love you.

That's just—did you realize that when you wrote it? Could you sort of see that coming down the pike? Well, you know,

I tried to write it kindly, and I was raised and saved in a church that taught the view that I rejected.

And yet—but I probably knew it was coming. Anyway, no matter how kind you try to be, you're still going to get some reaction.

Oh yeah, and what kind of reaction have you gotten? Wait a minute, wait a minute. Hold on a second.

Yes, sir? Sam, the first page of that kind book, doesn't it say something like,

How can everybody else be so wrong? Well, that taught me a lesson, actually.

If you take a closer look at covers, titles, when publishers supply things like that—

Oh yes, oh yes. Yeah, I know it's kind of controversial. How could everyone be so wrong?

But you know, if you read the actual context of that statement of the book, it's entirely opposite of the impression.

And I guess it gives a lot of people on the cover page. Because I'm putting it in the mouth of some objector, and he's saying,

Well, you know, this is really different than anything I've ever been taught. What most people believe. How could everyone be so wrong?

But when you put it on a title page out of context, it looks like I'm an arrogant jerk, actually. So actually, thankfully, in the most recent edition of it, that somewhat offensive subtext and blurb has been removed.

Well, I can certainly understand the context, but one thing I have learned is that when someone's criticizing your book, generally context has become irrelevant to them at that point anyway.

So the very plea to have it put in a context doesn't make much sense. So was it the fact that so many people had read

The End Times Made Simple, is that what prompted you to put on the asbestos suit again and respond to John MacArthur's Shepherd's Conference sermon?

I don't know about that. What really moved me to respond to MacArthur's sermon was that I felt it gave people like myself an opportunity to explain some things using

MacArthur's fame or notoriety to get out there.

I asked some corrections. You know, MacArthur uses the

PC language that's become popular that amillennialists like myself believe in replacement theology, that we're, to use another big word, supersessionists.

You know, and I just, I really think that that kind of language is misguided and creates a wrong impression of what

I, we believe. And so I thought, well, he raises some important issues that since his sermon is getting so much press,

I can use it to correct some of the misimpressions that are being promulgated and promoted by people from his point of view about what their opponents believe.

And so I thought it was a great opportunity to teach some truth and use

MacArthur's notoriety to get something that I might say out there with far less notoriety than MacArthur does.

And of course, since it happened at a conference where you had a lot of reformed people, and it was in the context, as I recall, that if you're a self -respecting

Calvinist, then you should hold this viewpoint. So it certainly got folks talking about it.

With one exception, I want everyone to know, there was one exception to the everybody -was -talking -about -it rule, and that was yours truly.

That's right. I left it to everybody else. So Sam, do you have anything on the burners now?

Is there a book waiting in your nimble fingers, or what?

Well, Evangelical Press has what amounts to a

Bible study booklet, a booklet to help men read Bible studies entitled

The Two Things You Must Do to Be Saved, which I have some reason to hope they're going to publish in the next year whenever they get through a fairly lengthy review process.

And I'm hopeful that that'll be a basis to give Christian leaders,

Bible study leaders, a basis to teach new Christians, or Christians who want to be able to present the

Gospel better, the truth about what God demands of sinners, that they should be saved.

It's based on Acts 20 -21, where Paul went solemnly testifying repentance toward God and faith toward the

Lord Jesus Christ. And so I just opened those two subjects up in 20 or 25 short chapters, explaining what they mean, what they don't mean, and trying to clarify what the

Gospel demands are. I was over against a lot of the misunderstandings that you have around today.

Do you specifically take aim at or address the rampant popularity of the non -lordship, no -repentance type

Gospel amongst evangelicals? Absolutely. Easy -believerism is one of the enemies of the

Gospel today. And in talking about that, we not only deal with repentance, the whole doctrine of repentance, using the tree illustration, and just opening up very carefully, but there's also a chapter that I've included which is specifically entitled

The Differences Between True and False Faith. And so we address that.

On the other hand, I try to deal with some of the new perspective tendencies and the overreactions to easy -believism, which tend to go something like this.

Repentance involves good works. Repentance is the condition of forgiveness. Doing good works is the condition of forgiveness.

And I try to distance the doctrine of repentance from that misuse and misunderstanding as well.

Well, I look forward to that, because that continues to be, I think, one of the biggest problems in many evangelical churches is that form of cheap grace, easy -believism, no -repentance.

I see how it fits in Arminianism. It just doesn't make the slightest bit of sense in a Reformed understanding of the

Gospel at all, and certainly no biblical sense either. So, Richard Braselis, I just posted a video on my blog a couple days ago that proves that you and I actually have met and that we've sat in the same room and stuff like that.

I was shocked when I saw that video, by the way. I just looked terrible. I mean, why didn't you mention that?

I was just glowing like I don't know what. It was just terrible. We saw that.

We thought you looked a lot better than you did during the week. Oh, well, thank you. I appreciate that.

Wow, that was... Okay, what do you want to throw into the middle of this, Mr. Pierce? Now, I have something to say here, because every time we turn a camera on you, you glow, pal.

It doesn't matter what the lighting is. Well, not like this. This was like somebody had poured corn oil on my head or something.

We continually say, can we put a little bit of... No, no, no.

You're not coming anywhere near me with that stuff. People come near me with powder all the time. I just couldn't believe this.

I think it was a setup. I was going to blame Jeremy, but the way that Barcelos is laughing,

I think he was behind it as well. So I just really appreciate you guys doing that. That'll be great when we get to the last one we did, too, where I sat there enduring your slings and arrows and insults, and I just returned them with love and kindness and brotherly compassion.

I was really nice. So anyway, you are even less popular,

I think. Oh, way less. If Sam is unpopular with certain crowds for his amillennial defense, your book,

In Defense of the Decalogue, I mean, are you a Seventh -day Adventist or something, or what? No, sir.

No? Don't you like that introduction there, Richard? Come on. Let's see how you handle it.

Let's see how you handle it now. Well, I'm not handling it very well because of the preparation you gave me yesterday.

I want everybody to know this. I was preparing yesterday. I wanted to know what we were going to talk about.

I sent a text to Phoenix, and it goes to James White and says, What are we going to talk about? He replied a couple minutes later.

It was very helpful, by the way. Religious stuff. What is nonspecific about that?

Come on, that's fairly straightforward. We're talking about religious stuff. It narrows it down.

Yeah, it does. So I'm asking you. I mean, you wrote In Defense of the Decalogue. I mean, Ten Commandments.

Aren't the only people who are into the Ten Commandments? You know, Seventh -day Adventists or something like that? Well, yeah.

Today, a lot of people think that, unfortunately. There's a long history behind why

I think that's happened. But traditionally, especially for Reformed theology, the

Ten Commandments have been seen as very important to both Old and New Testament theology and Christian ethics and the doctrine of justification itself.

So there's a lot of things connected to it. I wrote that book to respond to a very small portion of evangelicalism among Calvinistic Baptists just to debate and discuss the issue of New Covenant theology, which has changed since then in many circles.

But I tried to bring the confessional, historic Reformed position to bear its light on those issues.

Now, for folks in the audience, and we get new listeners all the time, for folks in the audience, and how long ago was it, by the way?

I'll take a brief sidestep here. We had a discussion about this subject on this program a number of years ago.

And were both of you on at that time? I don't think I was. I don't think

I was. It must have been just me. It was three or four years ago because I had moved here, and I was here when

I did it. Okay. All right. It's hard for me to remember, after all the years, what program and what year and things like that.

But wasn't that the program that resulted in one of your students contacting you, who has since then been involved with the school?

Was that what you were talking about before I spoke? Yeah. I'm not sure which program it was. I think you had both of us on one time.

And we had a student—well, he wasn't a student at the time. He was actually in the Air Force stationed in Japan, and he was listening to the dividing line.

And a few weeks later, I started getting emails from him. And about six months later, he got out of the military and moved to Owensboro, Kentucky, became one of our students, and ended up marrying a single gal here and now married and a father.

Well, it's best that he married a single gal. That's a good, positive step there. If he's from Utah, it really is best that he married a single gal, yeah.

That's true. It is Kentucky we're talking about here. This guy was from Utah.

He married a single woman. He had a plurality of women. We got it.

We figured it out. So, one of my hopes, honestly, is that I get people contacting me all the time who are saying, look,

I'm not sure where I'm going in life. I want to do education. I want to learn more.

I want to get a foundation. But man, it's so difficult in light of my family situation or financial situation, whatever else it might be.

And a lot of folks just don't know what the options are out there. So, who knows? Maybe we can bring somebody else who's out in the military right now and get ready to get out or something.

I'll go, hey, I need to look up MCTSOwensboro .org and see what these guys are doing.

But back to the subject of Defense of the Decalogue. Explain, if you could, briefly.

You said you really did have something you were seeking to respond to in the book.

And there's a lot of confusion. It's almost like the position you're responding to has taken the high ground of terminology by its own self -described terminology.

I mean, who wants to say something negative about New Covenant theology? I mean, really, come on. The New Covenant. It's great.

It's awesome. It's wonderful. Why are you so down on the New Covenant, Richard? You remember, he married a single woman.

Not two. While Richard is thinking about how to answer that, let me just say,

I was talking with someone yesterday who was attending a church that one of the pastors is

New Covenant, and they showed me this document. There were like 66 bullet points of what

New Covenant theology believes. They wanted me to look at it and see what

I thought of it. The first 25 or 26, if I recall something like that, were just statements that anybody who believes the

Gospel and thinks that the Christian life should be Christ -centered believes. So I got through the first 27, and I said,

I believe all of that stuff. It wasn't until I got to the actual what that meant with regard to the law about bullet point 28 or something that I found out that I began to see the stuff that I know

I disagree with. Let me say this, that the book that I wrote didn't attack it wasn't an attack it was more of a discussion of trying to defend the perpetuity of the

Decalogue or Ten Commandments as a constant expression of moral law I think as grounded in creation, goes all the way through the

Old Covenant and is promised in Jeremiah 31 33 when the prophet says,

I will write, God says, through the prophet I will write my law on their hearts. Many Old Testament commentators that aren't even confessional would say that Jeremiah is referring to there the law that God wrote on the stone tablet he was going to rewrite on the hearts of all the citizens of the

New Covenant to all saved people under the New Covenant so what I was trying to argue for was the perpetuity of the historical language of the moral law as best represented in the

Ten Commandments and New Covenant theology does not agree with that doctrinal formulation of the

Westminster Confession the Baptist Confession other traditions, theological traditions within Protestantism and prior to the

Reformation held this view, probably Roman Catholics probably even hold the view that there's something unique, something important something constant about the

Ten Commandments and that if we try to even take one commandment out of it it unravels a whole lot of things that you don't want to unravel so that was my thesis and that their way of arguing for ethics under the

New Covenant actually puts a wedge between ethics under the

Old and ethics under the New that's unnecessary because we have something in common with Old Covenant Jews just like we have something in common with Muslims where creatures create the image of God with a law written on our heart and it was that common theme of law written on the heart and then revealed in Scripture in various ways that I tried to argue for the perpetuity of that and it's the traditional

Protestant Reformed position Well, we'll take a look a little bit more at that and maybe some of the ramifications of that but we actually have a caller that I think might need to help clarify some of the statements that have been made here let me see if we can get all three on the air here oh, that's really loud so, a fellow by the name of Michael is on the air

Michael, did you have a comment you wanted to make? Yes, it feels like deja vu for me because it was about 2006 that I was listening to both these gentlemen in Japan and it was their talk on your show that got me out of the

Air Force and brought me to Owensboro Well, we don't want to start a rumor that MCTS is anti -patriotic or anything like that but so you were listening to The Dividing Line in Japan and heard these two guys and you still went to Owensboro?

I went to them because I had listened to you for so long I thought, well, if Dr. White is having them on their show and he's not disagreeing with them, then they must be pretty good so I decided to check them out

Actually, Richard just knows too much about me, so I have to be nice to him I know no one can tell that but that's the real reason

Honestly, Michael, first of all, let me thank you for your contributions to the online class

Let me explain to the audience, if you're not catching some of this, when I taught the module on polemics in Owensboro, I really liked the setup there.

I liked the intimacy of the class, but there is also an online component. There were people who were online, and Michael, my understanding is you were having some physical issues.

I hope those are going well for you You weren't able to be in class, but you were online and I very much appreciated the participation because the students online can ask questions and you were posting stuff

You had pulled up, for example, the section from Surah 7, 171 -172 on the mithaq in the

Quran and things like that So I very much appreciated the participation that you had there, and I've been told and I don't know if I've had anything to do with this, but I've been told that you have a real interest in textual critical issues and may be pursuing further studies in that area.

Is that where you're headed? That's my goal, Lord willing, if I can get there.

Dr. Barcellas always made fun of me because in Greek class he'd say I do my devotion from the footnotes of Dan Wallace but just textual criticism and your book, particularly on the

King James only controversy just kind of got me started, so right now as soon as I finish up my

Masters here Lord willing, I'm going to try and get to Scotland, University of Edinburgh to study with Dr.

Larry Hurtado who's well -known in that field and see what can go from there, but that is the direction

I'm heading. Whenever I hear anybody say something like that, and I'm certain that you have gotten good advice from the gentleman on the phone with me here who both obviously know you well whenever I hear somebody say something like that maybe it's just my flesh maybe it's a lack of faith and trust or something like that but I just automatically want to say to somebody you know

I don't care what you're studying but especially in that field you really need a firm footing in a well -balanced church and a well -balanced

Christian life because there's just so much unbelief, so much rampant secularism and humanism even within what calls itself

Christianity in those areas that there's just such a need for a vital spiritual life when you are spending a lot of time in the footnotes and hey, that's the way

I was I mean, my Greek professor had the same complaints I was always looking down at the notes and he was wanting me to be looking at the text a little bit more often and I understand that fascination and hopefully

I have used that to the benefit of the church but I would just encourage you with every fiber of my being to stay strong and balanced even in the midst of that study because there's just so much there's so much unbelief listen to what anybody says,

I don't care who they are from a presuppositional perspective examine the foundations because it's so important.

Absolutely and if I could, on that same note, give a plug for MCTS because having gone there and gone through almost all their, pretty much everything they've offered now, that MCTS, because it is so church based,

I think has given me such a solid church foundation that even if you were saying in your polemics class that apologetics still need to be done within the church you can't be outside of it doing your own thing, that just a solid foundation as to how the church ought to be run and everything that is just about that is so necessary and one thing that MCTS has given me,

I feel like is that church base for theology and from that to do textual criticism

I can tell how much my wife loves me after we got married

I asked her to take a trip with me to North Carolina to listen to Dr. David Parker on textual criticism and we sat on North Carolina's campus and he raised the same

NA27 blue hardback cover Greek New Testament in there that if you believe that Paul wrote these words, you're crazy and he said that to a bunch of freshmen and I was just I honestly was just torn up because I'm thinking, this is what these kids are being fed pretty much everywhere somebody somebody needs to be in the university who can counter what

Dr. Parker Dr. Ehrman are saying so having that class just really kind of fueled me.

Well and it's such a tragedy that so much of the funding that goes into that field of study now came from God -fearing people giving and sacrificially building institutions in the past that now have been taken over by those who don't believe those things and it's sad to hear that especially because I know

Bart Ehrman's position and from Ehrman's position hey we're just tinkering as far as the original text is concerned.

Is DC Parker that far removed from Ehrman at that point? Did he provide any kind of mediating context, that kind of statement?

Not really it was a very surface level just because it was a freshman class and we looked around, half the kids were asleep and my wife even noticed that one girl was on her computer looking at wedding dresses so it wasn't really deep.

A lot of his argument, he showed little like vein diagrams almost just to show just to show how close after 400

AD the text of the manuscripts were actually to one another, they didn't veer very far off but then would just make the statement but before 200 that's when all the changes took place so we really can't know he would just kind of throw blanket statements out there and not back anything up but I did ask him

I wanted to see how far he would push it so I asked him, I know you're saying this in regards to the

New Testament text but would you say that we can't know what has been said for any work of antiquity and he said yes so that just kind of well, if you can't know antiquity then what are you arguing for here?

Yeah, why are you doing what you're doing would be a question I would ask but silly me to think that you should actually be doing something you actually love doing and believe in but so you've studied under both of these gentlemen here's your big chance why and since you said you're almost done, this isn't going to affect your grades anyways so you're pretty safe now but if someone wants to pursue their education what have you found to be the greatest blessing of being able to do so through MCTF?

I guess I would say two things off the top of my head. The first was the relationship that you have with your professors who are also your elders who invite you to their home, who will go out and play basketball when

I was able to once upon a time just that relationship and getting to know them better I think has been extremely helpful for me in just seeing how they function, how they work, how they're thinking and that it almost on a continual basis is very churchly because they are elders of the church as well.

They're thinking about the church and how what they're doing is going to affect the church and the body and even if they're looking out towards the schools, colleges around Owensboro to reach the loss, it's still in the mind of the church and that would be

I guess the second point would just be how to understand theology in the context of a church because I came from a church here in Utah which as you know there are not too many churches here that the ecclesiology was almost non -existent and they had

I guess a unique eschatological viewpoint as you and Dr. Waldron were talking about before so I had real no basis to say, oh this is how a church should run, but having gone to Heritage, having gone to Owensboro it's been so eye -opening to me that now that I'm back here in Utah for a little bit,

I feel that I'm better equipped well prepared to help the church

I'm at, which is a different one than I started with in not only helping them in the church, but they've let me teach a couple times and I'm able to more focus my teaching for the members of the church, so those would be the two main things the context of the church and the ability to get to know your professors elders in a more intimate area outside of the classroom right, well you know it's unfortunately extremely rare in my experience anyways that someone completes, you know attends a school, completes a degree whatever the situation might be, and their testimony is that after doing all of that they have a higher view of the local church than when they went in my experience is unfortunately in a lot of theological education, that the result of the theological education is a diminishment of the attachment one has to the church not a strengthening of it, and I think that's one of the main problems, and Sam, Richard, if either of you would like to comment on that, that has been one of my main problems with how we have decided to do theological education is that we take somebody we disrupt their life we pull them out of the church that has nurtured them, we ship them off some place, we indebt them to their eyeballs and then kick them out into a cruel world with a huge debt hanging over their heads and basically all alone here, start on your own and we wonder why we end up creating an entire legion of computer techs as a result.

Any comments either of you would like to add to that? I agree more brother, just one of the things we're trying to do here is give men contact with pastors and keep them out of those kind of situations one of the things in one sense, we're still on the day of small things, and one of the things we have to offer men is you go to a lot of the big seminaries and you're in churches around those seminaries if you're in church at all, as you pointed out you're in churches around those seminaries where you're there with another hundred seminarians, and the pastors simply can't mentor you in that kind of context, and we're able to offer men that because we have the time where we're overwhelmed with thousands of students that we're doing well if we could just present a decent lecture in our classroom.

Quite true, I've got a whole sermon on this, but I'm going to avoid it, but anyway

Michael, thank you very much for joining us today. Thank you very much, I appreciate it.

You too. God bless, bye -bye. If you have any questions about this module we were doing was actually being was a part of three different schools together.

How does that work? How do you work together with other schools like that? One of our

Go ahead Richard, do you want to say something? I was just going to say that's a good question.

This cooperation has been growing and developing over time. James, you know that the

Institute for Reformed Baptist Studies at Westminster Seminary started a continued education program?

You know that, right? Yes, uh -huh. Okay, well this course was actually the second course in that curriculum.

I see. They want to offer to pastors full -length semester courses that are on DVD and they can take them just in their own living room, their own studies, and watch them study with men like James White, Sam Waldron, and James Ranahan.

So when we made a contact with Dr. Ranahan about this, or he made contacts with us, we just kind of suggested since we were going to have

Dr. White over here already, maybe we can cooperate on it. And that's how this really started.

And then the Reformed Baptist Seminary from Taylor, South Carolina heard about it and wanted to see if they could co -sponsor it and utilize it as well.

So other things behind the scenes took place, but that's how it all kind of came about. That's how the three institutions co -sponsored it, and I think it went well.

Oh, yes. Just the fact that there is that cooperation, that level of cooperation and that desire to bring folks together, that was extremely encouraging to me to see that, and I wish we could see more of that in the future.

But if anyone in the audience, 877 -753 -3341, if you have some questions about MCTS, or, you know, hey,

I think that pretty much any eschatological question whatsoever, we can throw it

Sam's direction. Hey, let me put it this way. Everybody knows that when you call the dividing line with an eschatological question, it's like you get the door slammed in your face, okay?

It's just, Rich just laughs and hits disconnect, and that's the end of that. So this is your one shot, folks.

We've only got a few minutes left in the program. This is your one shot for someone who actually enjoys discussing eschatology with Dr.

Sam Waldron, or if you, you know, if you're one of those folks on the New Covenant side of things that thinks that it's now appropriate to marry your sister, you can call in and talk to Richard Veselas, who would very much like to talk with you about the issue of New Covenant theology.

Hey, you and I both know there's a background to that particular statement. You and I both know that there are those who have taken this so far that if it's not repeated in the

New Covenant, then it's okay. And that, I think that sort of illustrates something, big time, from my perspective, which

I said we'd get back to, but I think it really does say something about that Jeremiah 31 passage and the fact that the law that is written upon the hearts isn't some new thing that Jeremiah would have gone, hey, never thought of that.

And certainly the people listening to those original words when they were uttered by the prophet,

I just don't think they would have come to those conclusions at all. It's interesting.

I'll refer back to the conversation I was having yesterday. On the one hand, you can read in their books that the

Old Testament law and commandments or otherwise has nothing to do with the Christian. It's been abolished.

At the same time, they make, I think, odd, from the standpoint of their own theology statements, like we should inform and interpret the statements and especially the statements with regard to the law of Christ for Christians.

We should inform them from the Old Testament. And I have a question about that.

If the Old Testament law is abolished, then what are we doing interpreting the law of Christ in light of the

Old Testament? How do we know that disciplining children involves the rod from the

New Testament alone? Because that's all that stuff for the

Old Testament. Yes, we have the words discipline and so forth, but who knows what that means because they have to be taken on their own basis and not interpreted in light of the

Old Testament, except now they're inconsistent. They say we should let the Old Testament inform such statements.

I don't get how those things are consistent. Well, you know what, Sam, we have a caller for you.

We've gotten a couple calls here, and we actually have a call specifically for you from Jyoti in India.

Jyoti is in India. Let's talk with Jyoti. Hi, Jyoti. Hi there.

How are you? It should be a good night or good evening, good morning, because it's quarter past twelve at India.

Ah, yes, yes. You have a question for Sam Waldron. Yes, please. Look, I'm a convicted

Reformed Baptist. I was born in a brethren's home, Plymouth brethren home, where the strong emphasis on pre -millionism was there.

And pretty much with the line with John McArthur, but after reading your book, it made me to think.

I picked up that book from Chapel Library of mine. Now, I just wanted to find out, is there any other books

I should read on this subject to get more convinced in what you're coming up?

And number two, there's another question, if I can ask you a question very quickly.

Being a Reformed Baptist, you know, one of the things most of the Reformed people here in South Asia don't consider us as Reformed.

And one of the issues they bring up is the covenant issues. So if you mind to recommend some books on this so that I can do some readings on the covenant, on the

Baptist view of covenant. And I don't know whether you remember me. I met you in the

Together for the Gospel for very briefly in 2009. Well, it's good to hear your voice again,

Chiadi. I'm afraid my memory isn't quite that good, but thank you for the encouragement of hearing that End Times Made Simple was helpful to you.

Let me just answer that part of your question. Yeah. First of all, and you'll see this book cited in End Times Made Simple, if you can procure

Anthony Huckamist's The Bible and the Future, I think you'll find that very helpful.

It was very helpful to me, and I often assign it as a textbook when I teach eschatology.

Also, William Hendrickson's I'm trying to get the name back, I think it's

The Bible and the Afterlife or something like that is also very good. And then let me plug my own two books out there as a sequel to End Times Made Simple.

I'll call more of the End Times Made Simple and also the one that Dr.

White mentioned, MacArthur's Millennial Manifesto or Friendly Response.

Yeah, I have that book. Yes, yeah. Let me recommend those. Your second question, actually,

Richard, I think you should respond to that because I think the book on New Covenant Theology that you guys published is probably a good resource there, isn't it?

Richard? I didn't hear the question. Was it about a Reformed Baptist view of covenant and baptism?

Yes. Okay. Well, there's a book that I was the co -author, only because the real author wanted my name in it, called

A Reformed Baptist Manifesto, The New Covenant Constitution of the

Church. That deals with the New Covenant from a Reformed Baptist perspective and interacts with dispensationalism, antinomianism,

Arminianism, and paedobaptism. And it's just over 100 pages, a brief book, but I think it covers a lot of the things that you're probably wondering about.

And then a new book that just came out, written by a former paedobaptist.

It's called From Paedobaptism to Craedobaptism. And it was written by Dr.

Gary Crampton. And that's a very helpful book for a Baptist to understand issues of covenant theology and how it relates to baptism.

So those two books I could definitely recommend. Would you mind to repeat the first book,

Reformed Baptist Manifesto? Right. A Reformed Baptist Manifesto by Sam Waldron and Richard Barthelus.

In other words, you guys are talking to each other. Thank you very much for your phone call. Thank you ever so much for having me on the show.

Thank you, and God bless you, sir. Real quickly, we're almost out of time, but let's try to get, if we can, sneak one more call in, because Gregory from St.

Kitts West Indies is calling. Gregory. Good day to everybody. Yes, good day to everybody.

I'm calling quickly with two questions on prophecy. First of all, can you please tell me when the

Valley of Dry Bones prophecy was fulfilled? I think it was in Ezekiel. And secondly, there are those who say that people who believe that Israel today is the church, they accuse them of taking the blessings for Israel, to give it to the church, and they are taking the curses and leaving the curses on Israel.

The nation of Israel. Okay. And the argument is, if you're going to say

Israel is the church, then both the blessings and the curses have to go on the church.

Okay. And not take one for one and leave the other for the other. Okay. Gregory, are you listening online as well?

Yes, I'm listening online. Go to your website, Dr. White. Okay. Could we ask you to take your response online so we can hear

Richard and Sam real well? Okay. Thank you, sir. Thank you for your call. Thank you.

God bless. Let me respond to this. To the second question. Uh -huh.

I'm getting feedback here. Yeah. I'm not sure what happened there, but hopefully it's cleared up now.

Okay. Our brother there from St. Kitts is raising one of the issues that MacArthur raises in his sermon.

And to men like MacArthur, it seems inconsistent to say that the church is

Israel, but let the church just have the blessings for Israel, but none of the curses.

And I address that in my book, MacArthur's Millennial Manifesto, so I just required someone to read the relevant chapters there, but the long and the short of it is we don't just say the church is

Israel, we say the church is the new and true Israel. And the fact is the

Old Testament and the New Testament distinguishes between outward and physical Israel, and the spiritual

Israel of God. The church is the continuation not of external

Israel, but of the God's remnant according to the election of grace. And because that's true, the church does not inherit

Israel's curses, but only Israel's promises, because the new and true Israel of God is now composed not of the physical children of Abraham, but only of the spiritual children of Abraham.

And as Romans 11 clearly teaches, all the unbelieving branches are broken off, and believing

Gentile branches are grafted into the one -eyed tree, and so of course the church only receives the blessings and not the curses of Israel.

And either one of you really quickly, because we've gone a little bit over time, the Valley of the

Dry Bones, do you see that primarily as a picture of regeneration then? I guess so.

I have to admit, I've never done any in -depth study of that particular passage, so I'd be shooting from the hip, but I don't like doing such things.

But I do think it's a picture of the regeneration of Israel under the

New Covenant in some way, shape, or form. How about you, Richard? Do you shoot from the hip?

If I did, it'd be just like what Sam said. Wise man. I will venture into the field to say that as a prophetic vision, given the fulfillment and the utilization of that prophetic material in John in regards to the new birth,

I think that's the best way of seeing that. Maybe what was behind the question has something to do with Romans 11 and the entirety of the people of Israel, something along those lines.

Maybe that's how they were connected. I couldn't tell from the question, but unfortunately, we're pretty much out of time going there.

If that's where it was going, then there would probably be a little bit more to look at. Gentlemen, thank you so much for spending an entire hour of your day with us today.

I really enjoyed it, and I really hope that if folks want to get in touch with you, how do they do so?

mctsholensworld .org will have contact information on it, and that's the easiest way to do it.

Okay. I hope they will do so, and who knows? Maybe there's a serviceman in Japan even today.

Who knows? I appreciate Michael's calling in. Thanks for listening to the program today. We'll see you on Thursday, Lord willing.