Drawing the Lines: Matt Walsh, Serene Jones, Ron Underwood

Alpha & Omega Ministries

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

Comments are disabled.

00:16

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. I'm coming to you live or hopefully live.

00:22

We're going to hope that we'll continue to be live for as long as we're trying to do this. From the city of Westminster in London, United Kingdom, some of you may have seen a link

00:34

I posted earlier, had the opportunity of visiting the world famous Grace Life Church in London.

00:40

And I say that it's world famous because Kofi made it famous for the years that he was there.

00:48

And so I got to teach and preach there yesterday. And tomorrow morning

00:54

I will be recording two unbelievable radio broadcasts, one on the subject of Islam and one on reformed theology.

01:04

We're going to be debating Romans 9 again and no, not with Leighton Flowers, but with someone else.

01:12

And so then I'm heading off to the Netherlands and then I'll be back here next week for a debate in the

01:21

East London Mosque as well. So we're keeping busy while traveling here, though not as busy as I have been in the past, so much so that I'm actually sleeping well, which is really nice.

01:32

I've had beautiful weather so far, not a spot of rain that's going to end starting tomorrow evening, I believe, looking at the weather.

01:39

But it has been gorgeous here in London, which means the crowds have been out.

01:45

I tried to, I walked up to my favorite little Mexican restaurant in Trafalgar Square a while back and coming back, especially when

01:54

I got near the Westminster Tube Station, which is right across from Big Ben, which right now you can't see. For years we're not going to be able to see

02:02

Big Ben or hear Big Ben toll because they're doing renovation work on a large portion of Parliament, Big Ben, so on and so forth.

02:12

Every building around here seems to have stuff encasing it as they're working on stuff. But anyway, so we are in London and that's where we're coming to you live.

02:22

Since I haven't seen anything from Rich saying that anything's going wrong, I'm going to assume that this is working and we will go on from there.

02:29

I am wearing my Tube shirt. I've wanted to,

02:36

I had bought Summer a Mind the Gap shirt years and years ago.

02:42

I think she said Jannie destroyed it, threw up on it or something, I forget what it was. But anyways, so I went into a store yesterday or the day before and found and had this

02:56

Mind the Gap shirt and then another one. I took a picture, sent it to her and she chose this one. And so I had gotten one,

03:02

I've still got it packed away. And I thought, that's a nice shirt. So I went by today and I got myself a

03:07

Mind the Gap t -shirt as well. The only sad thing is they're planning on new trains here in the

03:14

Tube system eventually that will not have a gap. And that's just, I think it's just wrong.

03:20

Some of those gaps are pretty big. You really do have to mind them. I could see something small, a person, a small person, a leg, whatever, getting stuck down there would be pretty, pretty bad.

03:30

I'm sure it happens rather regularly despite their saying Mind the Gap. Anyway, so that's where we are. And so my thanks to everyone who makes these trips possible.

03:43

We have mentioned before the Travel Fund, how important it is to be able to do these kinds of things and the unusual nature of the things that we get to do when we're traveling.

03:55

And so let me just mention real quickly that there are three more overseas trips that we need to work on coming up this year.

04:10

There will be one to South Africa. And we're working on the scheduling of that right now.

04:16

And was just talking with the folks down in Randberg on that particular subject.

04:23

Sorry about the sounds. Those are computer sounds. And I'm not exactly completely certain how to turn them off. You just have to live with it.

04:30

They may be the same sounds you use, which means you're looking at your computer going, what's going on? But that's just, that's just life. That's modern communication.

04:37

If you can survive the babies crying during the sermon, you don't have to be bothered by that. Anyway, so we're looking at August for that.

04:47

And then in early October, Sydney, Australia, we will be announcing a major debate with a well -known

04:55

Roman Catholic apologist there in Sydney in October. And then three weeks later, we'll be announcing a major debate here in London that I'll be coming back for.

05:07

So three overseas trips. And so your support makes this happen. We don't have, we've never found that big donors who have deep pockets are overly long -term reliable.

05:21

It's just regular folks. And that's how we've been doing it. And that's how we'll continue doing it until we get shut down or whatever else is going to happen in the future.

05:30

And we'll see what happens when that, when that takes place. Anyway, so thank you very much for making this possible and letting you know, just letting you know about the future opportunities coming up and your ability to be a part of that.

05:44

So today on the program, let me start with some biblical passages.

05:49

And then I've got, I think a really important study that I think this audience especially will find needful and helpful.

06:00

I've told the folks an apology about this. And by the way, I did link to my Sunday sermon at Grace Life.

06:08

I think I put, I think I put it on Facebook, if I recall correctly. I don't think I remember to cross link it over to Alpha Omega's Facebook or put it on our blog.

06:17

I need to, I need to do that if I can remember to do that. And this morning, I listened to my fellow pastor,

06:22

Jeff Durbin's sermon. And it was fantastic. I know I'm biased, but I, it's so much better than mine, but I don't claim to be much of a preacher.

06:34

I'm more of a teacher. So be watching for that when the video comes out. I listened to it on while running along the

06:41

Thames, which was really slow this morning because it was, I was running a lot of very uneven surfaces.

06:48

And last thing I want to do is fall and break something while I'm traveling. I always run much more slowly when

06:53

I'm overseas. Cause I just, just, you know, if you fall at home, you've got certain things you can do.

06:59

And when you fall overseas, it's a completely different issue, but anyhow. So what are we talking about here?

07:05

Well, I'm going to begin in Romans chapter 14 and sorry to look at be looking away, but I managed to get my iPad hooked up to my computer so that I have two screens.

07:16

It's amazing how difficult it is to cram everything that you do for a program like this onto one laptop screen.

07:23

So I have one of those big honking iPads. It's nearly as big as my laptop. And so my

07:30

Bible programs over there, Romans chapter 14, beginning of verse 18, you know, Romans 14, judging others, weaker and stronger faith, eating of food, issues, issues of Christian freedom.

07:46

And the fact that there will be disagreements between Christians in regards to how we understand certain things and the lengths to which we can go in Christian freedoms.

07:59

Romans chapter 14, normally the first part of the section is looked at. I'm going to look at the end part.

08:06

Verse 18, for he who in this way serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. So then we pursue the things which make for peace and building and the building up of one another.

08:20

Do not tear down the work of God for the sake of food. All things indeed are clean, but they are evil for the man who eats and gives offense.

08:28

It is good not to eat meat or to drink wine or do anything but what your brother stumbles. The faith that you have, have as your own conviction before God, happy as he does not condemn himself of what he approves.

08:38

Now, primarily within the context of the local church, the local fellowship,

08:43

I mean, the idea of expanding that out in an unlimited way wouldn't make any work, wouldn't make any sense because there's going to be people who are going to be offended by something all around the globe simply because of cultural issues.

08:59

But primarily within the local context where someone is going to be, you are in fellowship with someone, then what you want to do is you, you want to pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another.

09:17

Well, okay, that's a important concept.

09:25

It's one of the many commands that we need to accept and add into our thinking, and we need to be constantly considering it.

09:39

All right, with that in mind, are there not other texts that we can, that we need to look at?

09:47

There are, that would give us another aspect of this. So this is within the church, there are differences of opinion.

09:56

What are they on? Well, even he says, all things indeed are clean.

10:03

There's a theological statement, but they're evil to the man who eats and gives offense.

10:09

And so there are principles that must be applied.

10:16

And this is, you know, some of my Muslim friends, for example, say that the Quran is better, that Islam is better than Christianity because you have such specific and clear rules within Islam.

10:28

You don't have rules in Christianity. Well, you have principles that must then be applied. That takes a tremendous amount of thought.

10:34

I think it's a much higher thing than just simply having a rule book that you then enforce on every single culture.

10:40

We have principles that must be applied cross -culturally and across the centuries as well, lest we get stuck in one century, which

10:49

I think is what you have with a lot of the forms of, at least historic forms of Sharia. But here are some principles laid out for us.

10:59

Okay, all right, let's go to the next set of verses. Galatians chapter one,

11:05

I'm amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, which is really not another, that is not another of the same kind.

11:14

Only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. So there are people who can disturb the fellowship and they want, they literally want to distort the gospel of Christ.

11:27

That is their desire. We're not talking here about people who do not want to distort the gospel of Christ, who do not believe they're distorting the gospel of Christ.

11:41

I'm talking about people who want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we are an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we've preached to you, let him be accursed.

11:50

He is to be accursed. Said before, so say now again, if any man is preaching you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed.

11:57

And so the same apostle who writes concerning the freedom within the fellowship to have disagreements over applications, obviously does not take that to mean that, oh, there are no rules.

12:14

We can believe what we want. There are clearly definitional, central aspects that Paul says, here's the dividing line.

12:27

And the gospel is one of them. And you've heard us talk about this for years. This is where we disagree with the mere

12:33

Christianity movement. The mere Christianity movement will properly recognize that who

12:39

God is, who Christ is, is absolutely vital. Cross, resurrection, absolutely vital, definitional.

12:47

Without them, you don't have the Christian faith. But what mere Christianity does is say, but the gospel issues are too tough.

12:52

We're going to lay them off to the side. You can have just all sorts of, you know, you don't have to worry about that.

12:59

Apostolically, Paul draws a line, but he draws a line specifically in regards to the nature of justification.

13:12

In other words, the aspects of the gospel that Paul says brings the anathema of God are those aspects that would divide the church.

13:21

It would give you a Jewish Christian church, Gentile Christian church. And that comes out in the second chapter, in those extremely important verses.

13:32

Verse four, but it was because of the false brethren, the pseudedelphos, the false adelphoi.

13:42

They looked like us, they talked like us, but they were false. So he recognizes, we must as Christians recognize the danger of false brethren.

13:56

He is in verse, in chapter one, talked about people who want to distort the gospel. He's later on going to talk about these people want to bring us into bondage.

14:04

They want to spy out our freedom. He says it was because of the false brethren secretly brought in, who had snuck in to spy out our liberty, which we have in Christ Jesus for a reason, in order to bring us into bondage, in order to bring us into bondage.

14:25

But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

14:33

So there is a truth of the gospel. The false brethren want to do away with it.

14:40

And this truth of the gospel has to do with freedom. It has to do with not being brought into bondage.

14:45

When we read all of Galatians, it has to do with how we are made right before God in the exact same way, whether we're

14:53

Jew or Gentile. We know what they were trying to do. They were trying to tell people you had to become part of the old covenant before you could become part of the new covenant.

15:01

You had to receive the sign of circumcision. And so in light of that, Paul says, no, that would have resulted in a division in the church.

15:11

You would have had a Gentile Christian church, a Jewish Christian church. And Paul says, no, that will destroy our freedom.

15:16

That brings us into bondage. This is about justification. This is about how we have peace with God. And therefore, there can be absolutely no compromise on this matter whatsoever.

15:28

Those preaching that gospel are anathema, and they are pseudodelphoi. They are false brethren.

15:35

That's just all there is to it. Now, is that the only thing that brings that kind of condemnation?

15:42

No. Let's turn to the Apostle John, 1 John chapter 2. Children, it is the last hour, and just as you heard that Antichrist is coming, even now many

15:53

Antichristoi, many Antichrists have appeared. From this we know that it is the last hour.

15:58

They went out from us. So whatever your theology and your eschatology does with the term

16:04

Antichrist, you need to recognize that it's found in the plural in Scripture, and that it had to do with false teachers who went out from the

16:15

Christian church, who at one point were part of the Christian church, who would have been identified by Paul as pseudodelphoi. They went out from us, but they were not really of us.

16:24

For if they had been of us, they would have remained with us, but they went out so it would be shown that they all are not of us.

16:31

But you have an anointing of the Holy Spirit, and you all know. I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie is of the truth.

16:42

Who is a liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ?

16:47

This is the Antichrist, the one who denies the Father, the Son. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father. The one who confesses the

16:54

Son has the Father. Also, elsewhere in 1 John, he also adds other Christological elements denying that he's the

17:01

Christ. That may have had to do with denying the Jewishness of Jesus, because there was an anti -Jewish polemic among some of the

17:09

Gnostics, because they certainly liked the Tanakh, the Old Testament. But also, he says that they denied that Jesus Christ came in the flesh.

17:17

So the incarnation is a part of these things. And so what do we see here? We see that we have biblical basis.

17:24

Paul had said in Galatians, for example, that when you did not know

17:33

God, you worship those which by nature are no gods. So you have to have the right

17:39

God. You have to have the right Jesus. There has to be a desire for truth in these areas.

17:48

You can't just simply connect Jesus to Buddha and say, good enough.

17:54

No. Jesus taught us about the one true God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

18:00

So there are definitional lines that are absolutely necessary, absolutely necessary.

18:09

Where do we draw them? This is what I want to talk about today.

18:15

This is where we have to have maturity, we have to fight compromise, and we have to have grace.

18:31

And it's finding that interface of grace and maturity and not compromising that some of you, who

18:44

I consider my brothers and sisters in Christ, may disagree with me.

18:51

You may say, no, I can't go there. I draw the line here. I draw the line there.

18:57

Okay, but we need to have the conversation. And we're going to need to have the conversation repeatedly in the future.

19:05

Because the fact is, in Western society, we are being forced, compressed, closer and closer to one another.

19:16

There was a time in the past where, especially people from a fundamentalist mindset, might live their entire life and hardly ever have any meaningful theological interaction with the

19:26

Roman Catholic. And so the bad anti -Roman Catholic stuff, and there's a lot of it out there, the

19:33

Jack Chick type stuff, the, sorry, Dave Hunt type stuff, would be enough, because you'd never really be challenged.

19:44

Especially if you came from a fundamentalist background, liberalism, you would no more walk across the room to greet a

19:49

Lutheran than you would a Satanist. Any type of liberal perspective, you just simply dismiss, without ever listening to it, without ever understanding where it's coming from, how these people are arguing, why they view you in basically the same way you view them, any of that kind of stuff.

20:10

All of that is changing, partly because of the internet, which is how you're watching me right now, and partly because we are being pressed together by the rising secular nature of Western society around us.

20:29

And so this conversation needs to be had. Each one of us needs to think these things through.

20:35

I have to think these things through all the time. I do not claim infallibility for myself. I am glad to learn from others.

20:44

But if we are going to be actively seeking to proclaim the Lordship of Jesus Christ, we have to put down some stakes and say, this is where we're going to stand.

20:55

This is where we're going to stand. And so what caused me to think this through?

21:01

Three different things, just over the past 24 hours, as I have been doing stuff over here in London, made me think about this, and the fact of our announcement of my becoming elder at Apologia, because Apologia is so mightily active in doing things.

21:24

We just did an Apologia radio where we talked about the difference between biblical justice and the social justice movement.

21:29

Because our people would say, hey, all that stuff you're doing about abortion, hey, if you're not into the social justice stuff, then you're wasting your time, because you're being inconsistent, and things like that.

21:38

And so we were addressing issues like that. And again, it was a joy for me to be sitting there, and Jeff and I are on the exact same page.

21:46

We're talking about, well, it's this Imago Dei thing, and you've got to understand the image of God. And if you don't have the image of God, all the things that fit together, the consistency that is found there.

21:56

Three things. Let me mention the three of them. I listened to the cross -politic episode with Matt Walsh.

22:10

Now, Matt Walsh is a Roman Catholic. He is a Roman Catholic.

22:16

Now, I don't know how orthodox he is. I don't know how conservative he is. But anyone who's followed

22:22

Matt Walsh for any period of time at all knows he hates reformed ideology. He hates the sovereignty of God and salvation.

22:31

He rejects Sola Scriptura. And so he is a

22:37

Roman Catholic. We have a little experience in dealing with Roman Catholicism. And I listened to the episode, and I listened as the guys spoke about the gospel and about the

22:54

Bible. About the Bible being the word of God. About bringing people to the gospel.

23:00

Problem was, in the entire episode, never was it brought out. And by the way,

23:06

Matt, do you still really think that Jesus is represented on the altar in a perpetuatory sacrifice by a man who claims to be an alter

23:16

Christus, and that you receive partial forgiveness of your sins because of your attendance to a ceremony where you bow before that?

23:23

Which, by the way, is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. He's said a lot of stuff against Pope Francis.

23:35

That's fully understandable. There's lots of Roman Catholics to do. But the Roman Catholic gospel and what must be done in the sacramental system.

23:46

If you can read Galatians and then look at what Rome actually teaches on the gospel and go, yeah, it fits.

23:52

We're on another planet. If we need to have that discussion,

23:58

I've just met so many modern non -Roman Catholic evangelicals who don't have a clue.

24:06

Don't have a clue what traditional Roman Catholic theology is, where that is today.

24:14

I recognize there are so many in the Roman communion who do not, do not, do not believe what

24:19

Rome teaches. That doesn't mean that there is a new teaching that's taken its place. There is still a

24:25

Roman Catholic orthodoxy, even if the Bishop of Rome doesn't have to profess it. The other

24:30

Bishop of Rome guy did, even though with a modern spin on it, I would say on some level.

24:37

Ratzinger is who I'm referring to. Anyway, it was frustrating to listen to the discussion because the foundations had not been laid and there's a chasm.

24:52

On the one hand, I'm listening to the Reformed guys talking about the gospel's power of God and the centrality of scripture and the nature of scripture.

25:00

I'm sitting here going, Matt doesn't believe any of those things. You can sit there and talk to them until the cows come home, but you're using a different lexicon.

25:10

It's a little bit like talking to a Mormon that way. There's a different set of meanings attached to these things.

25:16

You've got to know that or nothing's going to be accomplished. I wrote some questions on Twitter.

25:23

It started to get a little bit of response before the program started. There may be something going on on Twitter right now that I'm not watching.

25:29

I only have so much space here to be able to do so. This issue would definitely cause me to be distracted if I was trying to follow

25:40

Twitter at the same time. That was the first. There you have an example of Matt Walsh, Roman Catholic.

25:53

How does that impact our understanding of who a Christian is? I have said, and I've never been given reason to abandon this, exegetically anyways.

26:05

I've been given a lot of emotional relationship arguments, but exegetically,

26:11

I have never been given a reason to abandon this. I believe that there are saved people in the

26:27

Roman Catholic Church, but they are saved in spite of Rome's gospel, not because of it.

26:37

They may have heard a simple message of Christ. They may think that's what's being said in the church.

26:45

I am not going to limit God's grace in that way. There are some people who just simply say, hey, if you walk to the door of that church, you're going to hell, that's it.

26:52

Just flush them. There are a lot of people that do that. There's no question about that. But I can have the hope that there are simple saints who hold to a simple yet sufficient, and this could be important, what is a sufficient gospel over against an insufficient gospel?

27:11

What is the difference between a false gospel and an insufficient gospel? What is the difference between a person who seeks to fully understand all of gospel truth and consistently make application, and the person who has traditions that interfere with their being able to do that?

27:32

And is there any one of us that does not have some tradition that impacts our understanding to some point of falsity?

27:42

The idea of doctrinal perfectionism is another issue we'll look at.

27:48

Second example, as I said, there are three. First, Matt Walsh on cross -culture. Second example,

27:55

Serene Jones, Dr. Serene Jones of Union Theological Seminary. I'm in the future right now, eight hours ahead of home, so I was seeing the

28:11

Nicholas Christoph, Serene Jones stuff even before the briefing this morning from Albert Muller that read from some of the portions of the article, which were absolutely amazing, unless you know liberalism.

28:27

If you know liberalism, then reading the Serene Jones stuff, where basically

28:33

God really isn't a divine, isn't a being, but it's sort of almost the force, and Jesus just happens to look a lot like Serene Jones, and this physical rising of the dead thing, that's just, you know, that never happened, and the virgin birth thing, everything.

28:52

If you want to see where social justice ends up going, how it perverts every element of Orthodox Christianity, just look to Serene Jones.

29:01

Look to Union Theological Seminary. This is the fulfillment of Machen's book, the reality that truly, without question, liberalism is a different religion than Christianity.

29:17

Union Theological Seminary is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a Christian seminary.

29:23

It is a seminary of humanistic liberalism. It's a different religion. They have no resurrection.

29:29

They have no meaningful crucifixion. They've got nothing, and that's why they all die, and that's why

29:35

Union, for example, they don't get enough students to stay alive from the old dying mainline seminaries, and so what have they done?

29:46

They have chosen to become fully involved in the promotion of the social justice stuff, which is why, just a matter of days after the statement of social justice came out, they came out with their counter articles, which started with what?

30:03

The Bible's not an error. Let's just start from there. So I won't go into too much more of that.

30:11

I was actually going to read some of the material, but I've already taken too much time. If you listen to this morning's briefing, it's

30:19

Monday, you will hear Albert Mohler talking about Serene Jones, and again, this is one of the reasons why, in God's providence,

30:32

I had to go to Fuller Theological Seminary for my first master's degree.

30:40

Yes, I got great education, had a number of professors that I had had at Grand Canyon, so they weren't all just a bunch of wild -eyed liberals, but I had to be exposed to liberalism and learn how liberals think, because I've had to deal with that apologetically now for decades, and I am thankful.

31:02

It wasn't enjoyable at the time, but I'm thankful now that that's what I had to go through at that particular point in time.

31:09

So here you have someone who claims to be a Christian, claims to be a

31:15

Protestant minister. She's not a Protestant, she's not a minister, and she's not a Christian. And upon what basis do

31:22

I say it? She rejects the God of the Bible, the Jesus of the Bible, the crucifixion, the resurrection. Every element of historic

31:31

Orthodox faith is denied by this woman. Matt Walsh is considerably closer to the truth than Serene Jones ever could be seen as being close to the truth, by any stretch of the definition.

31:46

The problem is people really struggle to make these distinctions, especially people with a fundamentalistic mindset.

31:55

They'll just throw Walsh and Serene Jones in the same pot. You can't do that.

32:01

You cannot come up with that. That's impossible. If you don't make it, if you can't intelligently discuss and function within the categories that would allow you to understand the differences between Serene Jones and Matt Walsh, you will never be able to be used to reach either one of them, and that's one of the major problems.

32:20

One of the major problems with the application of fundamentalist mindset is that these individuals are rarely concerned about reaching these folks.

32:35

I've seen people come out of liberalism to embrace Orthodox Christian truth.

32:41

I've seen many people come out of Roman Catholicism to embrace Orthodox biblical truth, to walk in the light, to honor the scriptures as the word of God, and to follow

32:52

Jesus Christ and his lordship. If you don't want to reach those people, then you can just simply throw them all into one big basket if you want to, but if you actually want to encounter them, you have to make proper category distinctions.

33:10

As that leads to the third of the issues, the third thing that I brought up,

33:20

I was looking at, I ran across a discussion.

33:30

Turretin Fan, my friend Turretin Fan, had posted an article on Facebook because I was being criticized for not dealing with Arminianism, and everybody's like, yeah,

33:50

I guess you have looked at his books and debates and stuff like that, but it's a different context. An individual started commenting on that particular

34:01

Facebook article, and I felt like what he said was so useful in illustrating this third perspective, and these are people who are more

34:14

Calvinistic than Calvin, much more Calvinistic than Calvin, who would be embarrassed by Calvin's willingness to interact with people who did not cross the t's and dot the i's exactly as they think they should be.

34:31

He was obviously way too liberal for most of these folks, but a fellow up in Denver by the name of Ron Underwood responded to Turretin Fan.

34:44

I'm just going to read you. James White is an Arminian in Calvinist clothing, and what comes out of his mouth, considering Arminian's brethren, confirms what he actually believes in his heart, that the false universal atonement gospel and failed

35:02

Christ is still, in his mind, the power of God into salvation. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks idle words, contradictions, blasphemy, idolatry, and an outright denial and rejection of the gospel of Lord Jesus Christ and what his death actually accomplished.

35:14

And James's cowardly lackey, Francis Turretin, has to use a pseudonym for his own name.

35:21

What a coward. See the similarities in how they hide their faces, like their Muslim terrorists and counterparts, who they consider their mentors?

35:29

Disgusting. Now, not exactly the way to start. Normally, I would just simply block someone like that, ignore it, because they're just obviously filled with hate and imbalanced and stuff like that.

35:43

And you know where they're getting half their stuff. When someone uses the term mentor, you know they're getting it from Brannon House.

35:50

And you know they're referring back to the fact that I, very plainly, openly admitted that I actually have taken time to learn about Islam, even from Muslims.

36:02

And that in listening to Yasir Qadhi's lectures, his

36:08

Arabic pronunciation was excellent and extremely useful, so on and so forth, that I think at one point I used the term

36:13

I had learned much from him, mentor. And for this mindset, that's impossible.

36:21

No Christian should ever learn about Islam from a Muslim. Now, we all sit back and go, well, you know, it's probably best to learn heart surgery from a heart surgeon.

36:34

Yeah, yeah, right. But most of these folks, again, it's a fundamentalist mindset.

36:40

And the fundamentalist mindset, you're not allowed to do that. Firsthand knowledge, direct knowledge, direct study of original sources, utilization of interaction with people.

36:52

Just read Christian books written by somebody else about that stuff, and that'll be enough.

36:59

Which results, of course, in the fact that they have zero impact amongst these people, which is understandable.

37:09

But then there was, and I had had these all up,

37:16

I'm sorry, but then I had to reset my system. Then this next comment,

37:26

Francis Turreton, he considers them brethren, which means he believes that that false gospel saves.

37:33

Doesn't matter if he claims to be a Calvinist, doesn't even matter if he says Arminianism is heresy like R .C.

37:38

Sproul. Can you not see the contradiction? It's irreconcilable, nonsensical double talk. A child can see it.

37:44

Can you, for one second, just set aside the exaltation of men in your preacher worship and look at this through the lens and logic of scripture?

37:52

What's more important to you, fallible men and their ministries or the glory and honor of Christ? Is James White more important to you than the

37:57

Lord Jesus Christ? And this is, again, this fellow is pretty aggressive. You hear it.

38:07

But then here was the most important one. And this was, come on, bring it up.

38:14

There we go. And this is the one I responded to. Speaking to Francis Turreton, he says, anyone can claim to be a

38:25

Calvinist and yet deny it by what comes out of their mouths. All Arminians are lost and need to be evangelized.

38:35

And most Calvinists are lost. Why? Now listen to why. Because they have divorced the gospel and the main thing, the righteousness of God as revealed in the gospel and what the death of the

38:51

Lord Jesus Christ actually accomplished from the very doctrines of grace they claim to believe in.

38:58

I was a lost five -point Calvinist for over 10 years.

39:04

There it is. There's the statement. I had gotten through all the other nastiness to see that and it's important.

39:15

I was a lost five -point Calvinist for over 10 years. Until when? Until he came to understand, to reach that level of enlightenment.

39:29

And he denies this, but this is what I call doctrinal perfectionism.

39:36

That is, there is a level of doctrinal perfectionism you must attain to before you're truly a

39:46

Christian. And it's not just the five points. It even goes beyond that.

39:51

It's evidently recognized in all Arminians are lost and that they need to be evangelized.

39:57

You need to get every Arminian to believe in particular redemption. They have to accept doctrine of limited atonement.

40:06

And if they don't, they're going to hell. And no person evidently in the history of the church has ever been saved who did not confess limited atonement.

40:22

So I responded and said, you know what? I will try to remember to go over your comments on the dividing line as a warning to others who may confuse

40:30

DP -ism, doctrinal perfectionism, with Christianity. To which he responded, I am not afraid of you or your bullying tactics.

40:37

And your response is telling. In building and burning your straw man of doctrinal perfectionism here, you claim victory through blatant dishonesty and misrepresentation.

40:47

How? By refusing to debate Sonny Hernandez and openly lying about something I do not hold to doctrinal perfection as a condition of salvation.

40:55

Consequently, now how you avoid this is the issue. Consequently, you are now taking this to the

41:01

DL to accuse saints of the living God and draw disciples onto yourself by telling your audience what we believe apart from engaging us.

41:07

This is disturbingly underhanded. For the record, I nor anyone has ever claimed doctrinal perfection as a condition of salvation.

41:14

James, salvation isn't conditioned upon doctrinal perfection but upon Christ. Okay, if that's true, then what do you do with the person who professes faith in Christ, believes that Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation, that only by God's grace can anyone be saved, but does not believe in particular redemption, believes in universal atonement?

41:46

Oh, well, that means they're not really trusting in Christ. Oh, no, wait a minute. So you have a specific formulation that you demand that they accept.

41:56

And if they don't accept it, then they're not believing in Christ, right? Now, right here, here is where the challenge comes in, because why couldn't someone say that what

42:18

Ron Underwood is doing is the same thing that Paul did when he wrote to the

42:26

Corinthians and warned against false Christs, similarly in Colossians, warning against these

42:34

Jesuses that would not save? Isn't that just a narrow formulation?

42:41

And we're just being consistent in making other narrow formulations?

42:49

I mean, I believe in particular redemption. I've defended it. I've explained it from Hebrews and Romans 8 and 9, and did the long discussion with Michael Brown about it just a few weeks ago.

43:05

I've never shied away from defending this. So am

43:11

I the inconsistent one for defending something as being biblically consistent?

43:17

See, I believe that the deity of Christ is biblically consistent.

43:22

I believe that particular redemption is biblically consistent. So why would I embrace a person who, why would

43:29

I reject anyone who rejects the pre -existence of Christ, deity of Christ, etc.,

43:37

etc., on the one hand, but accept as a believer someone who denies particular redemption, someone who believes in universal atonement?

43:46

The argument is that's inconsistent. You've got to either deny both or accept both.

43:52

That's the argument. And of course, the issue is biblical.

44:00

I can show you and have in the passages that we looked at. You deny

44:06

Christ came in the flesh? Antichrist. You have a

44:11

Jesus other than the Jesus we've proclaimed to you? Doesn't exist. Jesus is the creator of all things.

44:20

Straightforward biblical teaching on all these things. What comes to the gospel? What element of the gospel is made non -negotiable by Paul?

44:33

What unifies us as believers? Justification by faith. The fact there's only one righteousness that saves.

44:41

There is not a different righteousness for one group or another group. It's not for Jews or Gentiles or Scythians or barbarians.

44:48

That's why the social justice stuff is so dangerous, because they're dividing right along those very lines.

44:55

But that's the element of the gospel, grace alone, faith alone, that is made the determining factor.

45:07

Now, would I say that consistently? That consistently, if you really understand grace alone, then you're going to have to recognize that faith has to be the gift of God.

45:20

Well, that's going to require you to have a whole concept of biblical anthropology. It's going to take you time to understand the prophetic message, starting with the

45:31

Old Testament, all the way to the New Testament through Romans 1. Are we really going to say that you have to basically have a

45:40

Bible scholar's knowledge of the interconnectedness of all of these things to become a

45:48

Christian initially, or is this what we understand to be growing in the grace and knowledge of the

45:54

Lord Jesus Christ? There is a vast difference between having a heart that desires to know

46:02

His truth and is willing to be molded by biblical categories of revelation and someone like Serene Jones that has no interest whatsoever, none in biblical authority, in an external source of authority, but is instead her own authority.

46:28

All the difference in the world. Let me use this illustration.

46:39

I'm sure that I could ask Ron Underwood a number of theological questions, that I could trip him up about perichoresis and Trinitarian theologies and Eutychianism and Nestorianism.

46:54

I mean, there's tricky stuff there, and I could probably trick him into saying something heretical in in -depth

47:03

Trinitarian theology. Wouldn't be difficult to do with almost anyone, with almost anyone.

47:11

Does that mean he's been lost an entire time because he has doctrinal imperfections? And if that doctrinal imperfection does not disqualify you, why would these other doctrinal imperfections disqualify you?

47:27

This is why when people say, well, you know, I really wasn't born again until I learned the five points.

47:34

I just cringe because I followed Jesus as my savior when

47:42

I still had fundamentalistic traditions that at first made me just dismiss the concept of particular redemption out of hand.

47:51

It was strange. It was different. I had never heard or seen anything like that before.

47:59

And so that's not right. Did I lose my salvation?

48:05

Was I not saved until I figured out the consistency? But the reality is

48:11

I accepted particular redemption before I really fully understood it. All of the deep biblical foundation behind it,

48:21

I accepted particular redemption before I had worked through the Hebrews passages on the high priest and things like that.

48:28

So was I partially saved and I got more saved? Or was I not saved until I really got the deep part of it?

48:34

Or exactly how does any of that work? Where did the apostles ever function this way? You see, the reality is when you look at their analysis of the gospel, there are non -negotiables.

48:55

Then there is revelation that goes far beyond those non -negotiables.

49:01

And if we desire to glorify God, we will want to learn those things and understand those things and embrace those things.

49:08

And we should always, I am always challenging my non -reformed brethren to think through, to the glory of God, what they believe and where there are traditions that are getting in their way.

49:24

And I just, I want to be used of the Lord to graciously press them on these issues.

49:34

I want to be used as a gracious, loving tool in their life.

49:42

And I don't think saying they need to be evangelized is being a gracious and loving tool.

49:49

I don't think saying that they are actually enemies of God and enemies of Jesus Christ.

49:56

And if they die in this state, they're going to go to hell is useful or truthful.

50:03

In fact, I find it dangerous, very dangerous. So those are the three perspectives.

50:12

I almost got too far into that one to go. Okay. So there's, here's our three examples.

50:18

We've got Matt Walsh, Roman Catholic. We've got Serene Jones, allegedly

50:25

Protestant, but not by any stretch of the imagination, not historically speaking, not even Christian theistically speaking.

50:33

And then we've got Ron Underwood, fire -breathing five -point

50:40

Calvinist. If you don't believe in the five points, you're going to hell in a handbasket.

50:48

Asserting that if I recognize that I have had to grow, and that in fact,

50:56

I need to continue to grow, I will listen to others. And I will appreciate what

51:03

I hear and grow in my understanding of the interrelatedness and the harmony of reformed theology.

51:12

If that process ever stops, that's a bad thing. And so I'm, I'm very blessed to get to travel, to hear other people speak.

51:23

I mentioned Jeff Sermon from, from Sunday. It was great. I learned stuff from it. It's like, ah, this is glorious.

51:29

That's wonderful. That's a great connection there. That's how it should be. Am I now more saved than I was before because I've grown in the consistency of my own faith?

51:43

No. What we have to see is that there are definitional things.

51:50

Then there are core things. And then you get out to eventually the

51:56

Adiaphora, to the things that we can disagree on. And, and that as Paul says, we, we must work toward peace and the building up of one another.

52:10

That's what I want to do. I believe that the way I can produce peace amongst believers and the building up amongst believers is not to use an

52:21

AR -15 as my chosen means of creating peace and building people up because it doesn't, it's not going to work.

52:30

Um, I want to boldly, without compromise, challenge men like Michael Brown to think these things through.

52:43

But I recognize, you know, and, and Michael's, and I've, I've told Michael this, I've even asked him, what do you think about this?

52:50

But from my perspective, Michael associates Reformed theology with the lowest spiritual point in his

52:55

Christian life, the point of coldest passion for God. He just does.

53:02

And so no matter how I seek to show him a passionate love for God from a

53:12

Reformed perspective, I think that's a real tough tradition, personal experience tradition to get over.

53:21

And so the, the, the question that someone like Ron would say, well, don't you think the

53:26

Holy Spirit can accomplish these things? Yeah. But the Holy Spirit took at least 20, 24 years in my experience before I came to understand, maybe longer than that, maybe a quarter of a century before I came to understand

53:48

Jesus's role as high priest, what that meant as far as the sacrifice, that type of stuff.

53:57

And if I learned something now, if I, in listening to a fellow speaker at a conference go, wow,

54:07

I did, I had never seen that before. What a great insight. Why did he wait all that long to show that to me?

54:15

And does he, is, is there a timetable? Why does

54:22

God save some people and have them die a week later? They didn't get to do much growing.

54:30

Why do you have men like Keith Green? I imagine Ron Underwood would probably say Keith Green went to hell, but seven years, only seven years, a bright star, but burned out quickly, seven years.

54:44

Why? I don't know. God has his purposes. Sometimes he saves people in their deathbed.

54:52

Sometimes he gives them 80 years of life. But one thing I know is every saint that I've known who's had the 80 years of life recognized at the end, they had not yet arrived, which means it has never been

55:06

Christ's intention to perfect someone in doctrinal knowledge in this life.

55:12

There's always room for growth. And sometimes in important areas, even in Trinitarian areas, gospel areas, that doesn't mean that there's not absolute core issues.

55:26

And if you ask Michael Brown, what he believes, the man went into IHOP and defended penal substitutionary atonement against Brian Zahn and did it well and did it biblically.

55:44

What are you going to do with that? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter.

55:51

Well, you've now become the Holy Spirit. You've now decided that you know when

55:57

Christ is going to bring each one of his sheep to your standard of doctrinal perfection.

56:05

Thankfully, we all know that's not true. But that's what this mindset actually is.

56:13

Well, but I didn't ask. I was going to. I just wonder, how well do these folks fit into their churches?

56:21

I know a number of them now, and they almost always end up as lone wolves. They almost always end up either splitting churches, only being slightly associated with churches, because there's an attitude here that is just not overly gracious, doesn't make for the building up of others, as we saw in Romans chapter 14.

56:44

So in each one of these three instances, you get a sort of a different take and perspective that helps to illustrate what is absolutely necessary, what is definitional.

57:03

And you may draw the lines in a different place, but one thing's for sure, where you draw those lines is probably going to determine where you're going to be able to minister as far as the church is concerned, because you need to draw those lines pretty much where the church does, that you're a part of.

57:26

There needs to be a consistency there. And so this is one of the reasons why there are some fellowships that just can't do anything with others, and we live in a fallen world, that's the way it is.

57:42

But when you get to the point of insisting that all our minions are lost, that gets to the point of real danger.

58:01

I really, just as they accuse me of being a falsity or something,

58:06

I really think someone like that is in grave spiritual danger, grave spiritual danger. At the same time, anyone who can look at a

58:14

Serena Jones and go, oh come on, she's so dedicated. No, we don't even have the same

58:21

God. Now when people, there are people who will actually say that in the

58:27

Calvinist -Arminian thing, and if you can say that on that level, what you're assuming, first of all, is that every

58:33

Arminian is consistent in the application of principles, which, thanks be to God, they are not. But if you can't see the difference between what

58:41

Serena Jones says categorically, and your assertion that, well, if you take it to its logical conclusion, this would mean this, then you're going to be useless, absolutely useless in doing anything meaningful in a positive way in promoting the gospel of Jesus Christ amongst the followers of Serena Jones.

59:09

Which again, I've just not found these people to be overly concerned about one way or the other. And then we take it over to Matt Walsh, and man, do you see the confusion.

59:21

Man, do you see the need once again for us to focus upon where are those lines?

59:28

And from my perspective, when you deny sola scriptura, which

59:35

Rome does, when you have dogmas that people must accept, bodily assumption, immaculate conception, infallibility of the

59:43

Pope, the whole sacramental system, and when you specifically have a gospel that can never bring peace, denies justification by faith, makes the mass a perpetuatory sacrifice, if you can't see that Roman Catholicism absolutely, absolutely goes much farther than the

01:00:13

Judaizers ever went in Galatia, if you can't see that,

01:00:20

I don't even know what to say. It's so obvious. I mean, it can be documented to the nth degree.

01:00:28

This isn't simply a matter of inconsistency on Roman Catholic's part. This is the teaching as dogma of a complete denial of the very apostolic message that Paul said was the truth of the gospel in Galatians chapter 2.

01:00:45

He did not identify in Galatians chapter 2 the correct and proper understanding of particular redemption relationship to the number of the elect as the truth of the gospel that defines the church.

01:00:59

That's the difference. The one, justification by faith, definitional, without it, no life.

01:01:08

The other, a divine truth, and I pray that Christ's sheep will hear

01:01:14

Christ's voice. I want to be a gracious instrument of introducing them to those truths, even if they have been given traditions that get in the way of that, but I am simply not going to stand here and say that until you agree with me on that, you are not an heir of grace, because for the vast majority of them, it's not some type of recalcitrant rebellion against the truth that they see.

01:01:41

They truly don't see it, and I believe it's up to the

01:01:47

Spirit of God to reveal it to them, and I don't get to tell the Spirit of God when He's going to do that. Now, if you want to take over for the

01:01:55

Holy Spirit of God and the shepherd of the sheep and say, nope, it's got to be done now, right now, or they're out, you get the answer to that.

01:02:04

I'm not going to do it, and I'm going to warn everybody else that if you think you can do it, you've probably got a major spiritual problem, major spiritual problem, and you know what?

01:02:13

It'll manifest itself. It'll manifest itself. Given time, it'll manifest itself.

01:02:19

I just happen to notice that the guys that are into that type of stuff, they tend to split churches.

01:02:26

They don't tend to be able to get along with other people for any period of time at all.

01:02:33

I wonder why that is. I think of a fellow, he's passed away now, but one of the main things that in his life was demonstrated to be true was he could never be a part of one church for more than about six months before he split it.

01:02:51

To me, that says everything. That really, really says everything. So, three different, very different perspectives.

01:02:59

Matt Walsh, Serene Jones, Ron Underwood. What each of these allows us to do is to have a light coming from a different perspective.

01:03:08

That's why I wanted to bring the three together. And I have not answered every question because this is something that you need to be thinking about.

01:03:19

I would invite serious -minded listeners to add a fourth from your own reading, your own experience, and ask yourself the question, how do

01:03:34

I draw these lines? There are many church bodies, unfortunately, in the

01:03:41

West that have just never spent any time thinking about this, have just been going with sort of a default position.

01:03:48

And the pressures that are going to be coming against us, this is stuff we've got to be thinking through now, not when the government's knocking on the door saying you need to close down unless you accept this, this, this, and this.

01:04:03

These are things we've got to think through long, long before that. And so,

01:04:09

I am thankful that at Apologia, we've obviously had to be thinking about this type of stuff for a long time.

01:04:16

But even then, I don't think any of us are going to say, yeah, we've got it all figured out. No, we've got to be thinking about it.

01:04:23

There are certain stakes that must be driven to the ground. And I would say anybody who can look at Rome's gospel, well, first of all,

01:04:31

Serena Jones, that's just basic stuff. But once you get into Roman Catholicism, it's going to help you to find stuff.

01:04:42

And then switching over to the other side, to the extreme side, and the other side, you might go, oh, we don't want to go there.

01:04:50

That's where we've lost our footing. So there needs to be a balance in here.

01:04:57

And so we need to be thinking carefully about what each of these issues are. So hopefully, that is helpful to folks.

01:05:05

Once again, tomorrow morning, at least London time, so in the middle of the night, your time, two debates that will be recorded on Unbelievable.

01:05:17

And of course, we'll let you know when those become available, when they will drop. Sometimes it's normally within two months, one way or the other, depending on what holes

01:05:27

Justin Briarley has to fill in his schedule. And then we're going to be heading over to the

01:05:34

Netherlands with some of Paul Washer's guys. We're going to be with HeartCry talking about real challenging issues, human sexuality, and dealing with the secular age, and so on, so forth over there.

01:05:51

Then coming back next week here to London, debate Thursday night, and then hoping to have the information by tomorrow in regards to what will be happening right after that, where I'll be speaking and stuff here locally, and get a chance to meet some more of our friends here in the

01:06:14

London area before we head home. And a very busy May of ministry as well.

01:06:22

So thank you very much for watching the Dividing Line today, live from London.

01:06:28

See, behind the gap. I topped up my Oyster card yesterday, so now

01:06:33

I can just go everywhere and get my app out and jump on the tube. It's different than Phoenix, let me tell you that.

01:06:42

It truly is. But I love London. I did not love the communist environmentalist wackos that shut down the streets around here.

01:06:53

They're gone right now. But I think they're trying to come back because there were hundreds of police down there when

01:06:59

I walked that area just a few hours ago. And we all know why they're there. As soon as they try to set up camp again, those police are going to be bum -rushing them.

01:07:07

So I bet you we'll see something pretty soon. It's just nuts. Anyways, but we're here, and we'll be home eventually.

01:07:16

I'll try to do a Dividing Line from the Netherlands as well, and maybe another one from here when we get back next week.