Francis Chan and Church History, Leighton Flowers and Romans 3

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00:28

Well, you've probably heard the line before, a little Greek is a dangerous thing, they're not talking about what kind of food you're eating or anything like that, they're talking about normally having just a small amount of knowledge of the

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Greek language in regards to Christian theology and apologetics and things like that, and certainly we've all seen examples of that.

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The same thing is true when it comes to church history, a little knowledge can be a very dangerous thing, but sometimes no knowledge at all can be much worse than that, and we are certainly in a day when the millennial

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Z -Gen generations have been given a worldview that fundamentally disregards the importance of history.

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History has become a tool to be used to shape the thinking of the younger generation rather than a source of wisdom.

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The younger generation seems to think that those that came before us, since they did not have the technology that we possess today, therefore could not possibly make meaningful decisions, as if technology is the mechanism by which you make meaningful decisions.

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And so, we've all seen with horror, I think Jay Leno started doing it and now everybody does it, people walking on, especially university campuses, asking basic fundamental historical questions of people, and they can't identify who the vice president is, they don't know who the vice president before the vice president was, they don't know who most of our current leaders are, and certainly, as soon as you start going more than five years back in history, identify a certain war, a battle, great leaders of the past, influential people that actually formed and shaped the way that we think and act today, no earthly idea.

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As soon as a people becomes disconnected from their history, they are easily controlled by demagogues and totalitarians, and that's exactly what we're seeing happening in the

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West. Well, in the Church, this shouldn't be. We have the command of Scripture. When you look at Scripture, you are automatically forced to be looking back at the examples of those who came before you, you have the promises of God, he's going to build the

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Church, therefore, it's just utter foolishness on our part if we do not take the time to look at what the

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Holy Spirit has done in the lives of those who came before us. And yet, there are entire segments of what would broadly be called

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Protestantism that do, as a regular aspect of their theological thinking, denigrate the witness of the past.

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When I was raised, there was no emphasis upon Church history. The only time

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I heard Church history was in regards to defending a particular kind of eschatology. The fundamentalist,

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I have met more than one fundamentalist that honestly believes that the whole, if you've never seen it,

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I don't know where my copy is, it's stuck in a box someplace, but the trail of blood, the idea that the

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Baptists have always existed as Baptists, and I've honestly met people that really thought that the

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Apostles wore three -piece suits and a tie and used the King James Version of the Bible, and sang Blessed Assurance, Jesus is

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Mine, and they really, really did believe that. They have been, they've had communicated to them the idea that, well, when you think of the fundamentalist mindset, anything that differs or varies from my experience of Christianity is non -Christianity, is anti -Christianity, and therefore, if the early

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Church writers were different in almost any way, then they couldn't possibly have been true

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Christians because we exhaust the category of true Christians. So, once those folks, if those folks are exposed to the truth of history, to the truth of differing views of Baptism in the past, and differing views of the

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Lord's Supper, His administration, its meaning, the form of the Church, I mean, there are certain people that are truly troubled and disturbed when they discover that one pastor hired by a group of deacons is actually not how the

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Apostles set up the New Testament Church, and it's like, just shocking, stunning to them that that would be the case, and the fundamentalist mindset automatically pushes back on that and says there must be something wrong with this person, and starts looking for ad hominem argumentations against this person.

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Not the position they're saying, not the facts that they bring forth from history, but you attack the person.

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So, this really helps to explain a lot of what we see in social media and the internet today, and the abysmal level of conversation and discussion that takes place.

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All of this to say that there is much to be learned from the video clip that surfaced a couple days ago from Francis Chan.

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Now, I've never met Francis Chan, my understanding is Francis Chan's a graduate of Master's Seminary. So what?

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So what? I don't understand why it is that there are still so many people that go, well, he went to such and such an institution, therefore, therefore what?

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What does that mean? Well, he should know this, that, and the other. Well, look, let's say you go to the best seminary on the planet, most balanced, best professors.

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The fact is, you're going to get out of that experience what you bring into it. There are people that can skate through, there are people who are going to be so distracted with other things, they're only going to get a partial understanding of what they're being taught.

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They may still pass, but it may not stick. I mean, most of it depends upon the person, what their specific situation was, etc.,

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etc. The idea that where you go determines your scholarship is just, we've got to get rid of this idea, folks.

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I mean, we are still honoring graduates of Princeton. Why? All of the

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Ivy League schools, all the big schools have become ideological brainwashing centers.

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They're not places where you're taught how to think, they're places where you're taught what to think. And so, why do you invest any kind of special...

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I said to a friend of mine recently, who hasn't spent a lot of time in social media, so doesn't realize what's going on, ventured in, brilliant guy, he just wants to talk certain kinds of scholarship.

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And within one day, he's got people coming down on him like a ton of bricks. And he's like, what did

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I say? He said, you don't have to say anything. The fact that you breathe on the internet means that there are going to be people that are going to come after you, because you don't breathe at the same rate they do.

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I mean, really, that's true. And I said to him, the motto that I live by, you invest in the criticism of any individual, the amount of weight that their life work earns them.

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So I look at a person, I look for what they've accomplished in life, consistency over time, are they...

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can they stay in a church more than six months or a year? You are not a mature Christian if you cannot do so.

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Now, you may live someplace, there's only one Christian church. I'm talking, if you're in a place, you know, there are certain people that just, they can't get along with anybody.

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And I look at a person, I go, what have you done in life? And if a person has accomplished something in life, and then they have criticism,

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I'll hear what their criticism is, I'll give consideration to it. But that also means the vast majority of the stuff you encounter on the internet is just noise.

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It's just noise. There's no reason to even give it a second thought, and yet a lot of people are eaten up by it.

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And I've just learned, you will be eaten up by it. Those likes and dislikes, who cares?

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The only... first of all, you should only be concerned about what God knows, what you've done, what you...

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in my heart, this is why I did X, Y, and Z. God's going to judge, that's going to be the final analysis.

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But when it comes to other human beings, what have you done in life? Show me what you've accomplished, and then

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I'll consider what you have to say. Otherwise, you know, even in the church, we've embraced this idea that everybody's opinion is equal.

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No, they're not. And we don't live that way. There is no way that if I start hearing a sound in my relatively new car, that I'm going to drive over to my favorite

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Mexican restaurant and ask the cook to come out to take a look at it. Okay?

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I mean, the way cars are anymore. I mean, I've got a Subaru, and I love it.

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I mean, I've heard about them for years and years and years, and I knew lots of people that had hundreds and hundreds of thousands of miles on them.

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And I rented one, you know how rentals are, you just...

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they give you what they give you. Here, it's in this spot. Okay, whatever. And it was supposed to be an economy,

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I was a super forester, I loved it. I mean, I love gadgets, I'm a gadget guy, everybody knows that.

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And this thing has got enough gadgets to keep me happy forever. I feel like I'm flying a

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Star Trek shuttle, every time I get into it, here we go. And you know, the sensor is saying all this kind of stuff.

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Well, even if the guy at the Mexican restaurant can change a tire, he ain't got the equipment to deal with all the sensors and everything else going on in my vehicle.

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So we do not treat everyone's opinions as the same. You start having heart issues, you're going to go to a cardiologist because you recognize everyone's opinions are not the same.

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But when it comes to religion, everybody's opinion is the same. No, it's not.

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No, it's not. And nobody actually functions that way. But there are a lot of people who try to do so.

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So back to Francis Chan, just because he went to a good seminary doesn't mean anything.

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You can have a good education, and then the things that happen to you afterwards cause you to move away from that, to move away from where you once were.

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And that can be a purposeful move on your part. It can be something you don't even realize is happening.

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There's lots of different forces that can be behind all of that. So we've got a short clip to listen to.

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I want it to be educational for us because these are important issues.

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And it's similar to some of the things that we were talking about with the Jay Dyer thing on the last program.

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And once again, I just remind folks, there's a 13 -part series in response to Jay Dyer on his comments on Calvinism on our website from back in 2009.

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Just put Jay Dyer in and it'll—all 13 parts come up, Church and Fan wrote that. Take a look at that.

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But these—there seems to be a lot of—just over the past couple weeks, I've encountered many people who would claim some type of Reformed standing, whether they've been

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Reformed for any period of time or not, I don't know, but who are all of a sudden saying, well, how do we respond to this?

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And it's a basic question from the Reformation. It's a basic question that Luther dealt with or Calvin dealt with or whoever dealing with issues of Church authority, form of the

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Church, stuff like that. And it's—it again is demonstrating to me the fact that there are many people who, because of the nature of how we learn things today via computers, often embrace positions without a recognition of what that position means in any other area of their faith system.

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Because it used to be you learned stuff from books. And books took time to read because books addressed things much more in -depth and much more broadly.

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The internet by its very nature is fractured. You rarely see the big picture, the connections between areas, because the nature of how much information is available on the internet, those connections can become even less clear because of the clutter.

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And as a result, a lot of people have embraced a form of Reformed soteriology without embracing

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Reformed thinking. And of course, since I'm a Credo Baptist, I'm a

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Paedo Baptist, every good, truly Reformed person is saying, including you, the difference being that I actually know what the issues are and have engaged them numerous times.

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And I've actually read Calvin and Turretin and the rest on the subject of baptism, and so I know what the issues are, and we tend to actually read those guys.

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You don't read us. You never do. I can count on one hand the number of good

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Presbyterian brothers who've actually read Reformed Baptist works and Covenant theology and baptisms, it just doesn't happen.

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It's just extremely rare. So anyway, be it as it may, the point is that there's more to being

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Reformed than the Five Points. There's an entire theology that stands behind the

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Five Points, that the Five Points don't really make any sense if you don't have that understanding of God as the sovereign

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Creator who is glorifying Himself. There is no reason to expect someone to embrace

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Reformed theology if they think man is the center of all things, and that the primary reason

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God created was to save men. The primary reason God created was to glorify Himself.

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Mankind is the gracious object of His salvation, but mankind is not the central aspect of these things. And if you think otherwise, you're not even going to give a second thought, really, to any serious analysis of Reformed thinking,

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Reformed theology. So the point being that when you read books that introduce you to Reformed theology, they will almost always, at least books that were written more than 20 years ago, will almost always include historical foundations for you to understand where this came from.

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Okay, I know Reformed people of my generation who didn't do the homework they needed to do, and likewise, when we did the tour prior to the 500th anniversary of the

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Reformation back in 2017, pretty much everybody in my tour group, with just a few exceptions, were very surprised to learn some of the things they learned about Luther, Luther's connection to the medieval period, how various aspects of that time period deeply influenced his thought and his life, and so on and so forth.

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So I'm not saying that everybody has done this, but it was much more common in the past to recognize and understand the deep connection to history.

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I remember when I was early 20s, right after I graduated from,

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I was just about to graduate from seminary, so that would have been, what, 20, 23, well, no, actually mid -20s, anyway,

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I ran down to Tucson. There was a real well -known church historian back then,

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I think he's passed away since then, but, certainly retired, but, that had a well -known six -year

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PhD program at the University of Arizona. I sat in on a doctoral seminar, and it was about Calvin's interaction with Sadaletto, the

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Roman Catholic bishop. And it was all about his letter, taking it apart, and it was just fascinating.

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It was just, that's how you're supposed to do things. You don't just read the letter, you want to know who he's responding to, what that guy had said, what the situation in Geneva was, you know, that's just, the connection to history has always, for me, been extremely important, and I've tried to communicate that to others.

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You have to understand where these things, what all this came out of. Well, one of the things that caught my attention about the

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Francis Chan thing is that he is mouthing arguments that I have heard by those on the road who are either, here's the two terms, either swimming the

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Tiber or swimming the Bosporus. Those are terms I used on Facebook, I'm not sure how many people caught what the issue was.

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Swimming the Tiber, probably a few more people would know that, but the Tiber River forms the western boundary of the ancient city of Rome.

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And so there is the Milvian Bridge, and I've got a picture of me on the Milvian Bridge.

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I would like to get a new picture, I should mention this to Mike. So Mike, if you happen to catch this, the only time

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I've been in Rome before, and I took a picture staying on the Milvian Bridge, was when

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I was the heaviest. I was in the weightlifting days, but I was past the healthy part of my weightlifting days.

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I think it was 2004, and I was big, really big. And so I'd like to get a new picture on the

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Milvian Bridge, because I won't be taking up nearly as much of the frame as I did 16 years ago.

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So anyway, if you swim the Tiber, then you're entering into Rome.

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Bosporus is the, technically anyway, is the body of water that separates

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East and West, so going into Eastern Orthodoxy. Some form of Eastern Orthodoxy. There can be Greek Orthodoxy, which would mess up the boundary of the thing there a bit, but anyway, the point is,

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Russian Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodoxy. Swimming those bodies of water is metaphor for entering into one of these two systems that claim to be the

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Apostolic Church. Both sides, not so much in their leadership today, but historically, have viewed themselves as the embodiment of the continuation of Apostolic Succession.

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And I argue that Apostolic Succession is to stand in the teaching of the

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Apostles. Historically, what that came to mean was a claim of genealogical ecclesiastical authority through the continuation of particular bishops, however you defined that.

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Rome had to define that in some pretty wild ways, given the history of the Bishop of Rome, the pornocracy and everything else took place historically, the

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Babylonian Captivity of the Church, all that kind of stuff. And, of course, it's taken in a significantly more nebulous liturgical fashion by the

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Eastern Orthodox folks. But both make a claim to a continuation of Apostolic Succession, and therefore

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Apostolic Authority. People making that trip speak like Francis Chan is currently speaking.

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And what you will hear is you will hear him saying, well, for 1 ,500 years, it was always done like this.

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There is almost nothing that that is true about. It's almost nothing that is true about. You'll hear it all the time.

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When John Paul II died, oh, when John Paul II died, and I know most people don't remember this, but there was just this, for days, every

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Roman Catholic apologist theologian on the planet managed to get their five minutes of fame on Fox News or whatever else it was, and what they were constantly talking about is the 2 ,000 -year tradition of the

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Church. The 2 ,000 -year tradition of the Church, as if there is this constant, consistent thing that's been going on without break for 2 ,000 years.

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Now, the Church has been, but the stuff they were talking about had not, and anybody who knows Church history knows that that wasn't the case, knows especially that the, and this is something that Orthodox would agree with me on, that the primacy of the

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Roman bishop is a later development that is not primitive in any way, shape, or form.

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And so, when you hear people utilizing that kind of argumentation, then you know that they're reading a particular spectrum of literature and information that is going to bring them to a particular conclusion.

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So we'll talk a little bit more about that as we listen to the specifics, so let's,

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I will try to link to the video. We can't show you the video today due to technical issues.

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We'll just be listening to the audio, but I'll try to remember to link to the video because it, like I said, it popped up,

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I think just yesterday or the day before, all over the internet. Taking of the body and blood of Christ somehow in some real way.

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Now what's really funny is he's standing outside, casually dressed, with a music stand and a microphone, and I can see a guitar or something case in the background, and a door, and a plain wall.

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So this is not what I would call liturgical setting, okay? This is about as caj as you're going to get.

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But the whole thing is going to be about the body and blood of Christ, and that's what he's starting off about.

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Taking of the body and blood of Christ somehow in some real way. Again, I'm not making any, like, grand statements,

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I'm just saying some of the stuff I didn't know. I didn't know that for the first 1 ,500 years of Church history, everyone saw it as the literal body and blood of Christ.

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Okay, that's just simply a wildly false statement. I mean, okay,

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I don't know Francis Champ. I don't know if he slept through Church history class.

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I don't know if his Church history class actually went through a discussion of what the difference between transubstantiation or real presence is, or what real presence would have even been interpreted.

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Does he understand the influence of Aristotelian categories of accidents and presence, accidents and substance, sorry, in the development of the doctrine of transubstantiation after 1 ,000

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AD? Does he even know the development of the Pyx monstrance and Siborium and Tabernacle in the early medieval period within Roman Catholicism?

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Does he know that in the early Church that consecrated hosts were not kept and were not worshipped?

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That was a development that comes along at a later point in time. Has he read meaningful documentation that demonstrates the differences of opinion that existed between people like Fulgentius or Cyril of Alexandria or Caesarea?

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There's so many... Anybody who makes this kind of statement is reading a very narrow band of literature that is meant to produce conversion.

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It's not serious history. But how many

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Christians have read serious history upon this? I mean, it is...

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I was an unusual seminary graduate because I was already involved in apologetics.

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I was already involved in apologetics. I was already doing debates.

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Well, no. I actually got my... I graduated from Fuller in 89 and I did the first debate in 90.

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But we were already doing the trips up to Salt Lake City, so I already was engaged with Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, and Jehovah's Witnesses.

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So I already knew the importance of church history to all of this stuff.

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But the vast majority of seminary graduates, the vast majority of master's seminary graduates are not going to have any reason while in seminary to be looking carefully at that assertion.

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That is, was there a universal belief for 1 ,500 years?

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Let's ignore Gottschalk and let's ignore Augustine, okay, ignore

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Augustine, that's the end of that. There is, you know, Augustine taught directly that the church has been deprived of the physical presence of Christ.

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So you've got to understand his Eucharistic doctrine within that context. They were not

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Aristotelians. A spiritual presence of Christ would be just as real to major portions of the early church would be more real than a physical presence would be.

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So there's just, it is childishly simplistic to make this kind of statement, but I don't know that Francis Chan knows any better.

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I don't know who speaks into his life, I don't know. But I'm just here to tell you, there is so much wrong with that statement that you, why are you making it?

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You know, when you repeat that kind of thing, then you end up misleading others in that kind of assertion.

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And it wasn't until 500 years ago that someone popularized a thought that it's just a symbol and nothing more.

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Okay, that's not even an accurate representation of Zwingli's view.

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Because Zwingli, again, take a look at the

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Marburg Colloquy, take a look at any serious discussion amongst the Reformers.

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At Marburg, they agreed on 14 out of 15 points. This was the one point, or was it 13 out of 14? This was the one point that they couldn't get to.

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And you read the actual reports from the discussion, and you recognize that Zwingli actually convinced a number of people of his position, but to reduce even

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Zwingli's memorialist position to nothing more is to do him injustice and to not be being honest with history.

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And certainly, it sounds like what he's saying is that this is what all the

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Reformers believed. It's not what Calvin believed. It's not what Farrell believed.

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It's not Ocolumpatius. I mean, we can go down the road and demonstrate that a bare memorialism, which does exist in many evangelical churches today, is not what the

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Reformers believed. And I have criticized, not so much on this program, because I don't think it's necessarily the function of this program to do this, but I am on record criticizing the evangelical de -emphasis of the

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Supper long before Francis Chan videos popped up saying something like this.

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And in fact, if you want clear evidence of that, at the end of 2019, the last about four or five, about four times,

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I think it was four or five, I forget how many it was, four or five times I preached at Apologia Church.

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What did I preach on? The Lord's Supper. And I preached specifically first on the biblical teaching from Matthew and 1

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Corinthians, primarily. And then I went straight through the chapter in the

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London Baptist Confession of Faith on the Lord's Supper. And if Francis Chan has ever read the

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London Baptist Confession of Faith on the Lord's Supper, he could never stand there and say what he just said, as if you've either got the 1500 years of the ancient church all agreed—they didn't—and now

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Protestantism, and it's nothing more than a mere memorial, and they all agree, which they don't.

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I have criticized the de -emphasis in evangelicalism on the

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Supper. I've criticized when it's simply made something you do out of tradition once a quarter, without any explanation of its importance, its meaning, anything along those lines whatsoever.

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I obviously believe that the local body has the right to determine frequency of observation, issues along those lines.

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I fully understand the people who, for example, do it once a month and say that weekly is too often, and I hope that those people understand the arguments of people that would say, no, it needs to be done weekly.

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I mean, there's certainly an apostolic argument to be made from that. It's pretty obvious in the New Testament it was done weekly. But that doesn't necessarily mean it has to be done that way today.

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I understand what the arguments are. The issue is it has to be taken seriously as one of the two ordinances of the church commanded by the

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Lord Jesus himself. Almost all of our statements of faith—if we have a statement of faith even long enough to cover it—almost all of our statements of faith make that statement.

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Baptism and the Lord's Supper need to be understood, need to be seen as central, need to be seen as identifying us.

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Extremely important stuff. Um, so if Francis Chan's experience—see, what happens is when you get an evangelical—man,

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I'm really going long on this. I've gotten through 30 seconds of what the guy said. Uh, when you have an ahistorical evangelicalism of whatever form—fundamentalistic, whatever, whatever your eschatology is—when you get disconnected from history, then you become liable to discovering that there were other perspectives in the past that you've never seen before.

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And if you're already somewhat dissatisfied with your current experience, all of a sudden, ooh, that looks neat.

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That looks cool. You see, we actually set our people up for this kind of conversion syndrome when we don't—see, the mindset from a lot of people—I had—I was taught—I was told this when—especially in—toward the end of my

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Bible college years in the seminary, when I started realizing just how much broader things were than what

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I had thought. I had a lot of people tell me, you know, just don't talk about that kind of stuff.

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That can unsettle people. Well, there's a cost for not unsettling people in the context of faith.

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Because, you know, just ask the Jehovah's Witnesses. Back years ago, they could control all the in and the out.

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All the in and the out. Then television came along, and then videotapes came along, and then the internet came along, and now they can't control that.

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And that has fundamentally changed. They've lost millions—millions with an

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M—of people because their entire system was based on the ability to control all the information going in and out.

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Can't do that. And we can't do that either. So, if we don't place—if we do not lead our people to be satisfied with where they are in the choices they've made, in the place they stand confessionally, knowledgeably, knowing what the arguments are for paedo -baptism, knowing what the arguments are for differing forms of church government, knowing the best

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Rome argues—not just the worst, not just the twisted, but the best they have to argue—make them to be an intelligent, knowing, confessional people, rather than just people who are afraid to hear any other perspective because it might be different enough that they might go,

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If they're used to listening to other perspectives and critically analyzing them and remaining firm, that's one thing.

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But if they've never done that, they hear another perspective. You know, if the pastor was mean to them last week, they might go,

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Hey, I'm going to throw all this stuff out and go this direction. That's what the emergent church was. The emergent church movement was simply fundamentalists going,

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I'm tired of all this. Throw the baby and the bathwater out. Let's put everything back out on the table.

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The Bible is the word of God, the Trinity, the cross. Let's put it all out there and rethink everything.

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That's what the emergent church was about, which is why it died as well. But that's what it was about.

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Some of you have never even heard of the emergent church. It's already pretty much dead. But it was a big thing, you know, 15 years ago.

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So all this to say we have to educate our people properly to appreciate truth and to be able to analyze these things in an appropriate fashion.

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I didn't know that. I thought, wow, well, that's something to consider. And while I won't make a strong statement,

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I will make a statement about this. By the way, saying that everyone for 1500 years believed

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X, when you're wrong about that, is a strong statement. If you're trying to say,

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I'm not gonna make strong statements, you already are. You already are, and you're in error about it.

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It was at that same time that for the first time, someone put a pulpit in the front of the gathering.

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Because before that, it was always the body and blood of Christ. So what he's saying is, well,

38:51

I'm sorry. Let me see if he made, there was a statement he made.

38:58

Let me back up just a second. Body and blood of Christ that was central to their gatherings. For 1500 years, it was never one guy and his pulpit.

39:09

Being the center of the church. There it was, okay. One guy and his pulpit. Okay. I don't know if, less than 1 % of the audience today.

39:24

Less than 1 % of the audience today will remember, what was that guy's name?

39:33

Oh, anyway, I think we covered it on Radio Free Geneva. The guy was a rabid anti -Calvinist.

39:39

Rabbit, and I mean rabid. Not rabbit, rabid anti -Calvinist.

39:46

And he came out with a video about how bad R .C. Sproul was.

39:53

Because at R .C. Sproul's church, which R .C. designed, the pulpit was not in the center.

40:03

If I recall, it's on from the pulpit side, it's on the right -hand side.

40:09

Um, from the people's side, I think it's on the left -hand side, if I recall correctly. Now, if you go into, for example,

40:19

I was just in the cathedral in Parramatta, down outside of Sydney in Australia.

40:27

And most, if, okay, look at the, um, look at the videos from the

40:36

Anglican church that we've done two or three debates in, in Durban, South Africa.

40:43

You'll see the same thing there, the ones with Yusuf Ismail. You'll see two pulpits.

40:48

One is generally on the left, is where the preaching is done from.

40:54

The one on the right is where readings are done from, generally. Um, if you look at the church,

41:03

I think it was also, was that Australia? Oh man, which trip was that?

41:09

Anyways, I did a, um, I did some videos with some guys.

41:15

Where was I? I know it was overseas, but I'm not thinking it was

41:21

Australia. I'm thinking it was somewhere in Europe. Anyway, um, we recorded in a small church, but again,

41:32

I was on the right, from the audience side, I was on the right -hand side.

41:38

And the pulpit was on the left -hand side, but there was a lectern on the right -hand side. And so, so there's, what this demonstrates, to me, anyways, is

41:47

Francis Chan hasn't been around a whole lot, um, to, to realize that that's not a universal type thing.

41:59

Um, secondly, when you say for 1500 years, again,

42:07

Christians couldn't even build churches, until sometime in the second century, then only rarely, there was no absolute consistency of, um, architecture of anything that we can even safely assume was built to be a

42:27

Christian church until after the time of Constantine. And what you do need to recognize is that there was a massive shift in the

42:42

Reformation that reflects the early church. There is a reason why

42:47

John Chrysostom was called John Chrysostom. You know what John Chrysostom means? Chrysostom means golden mouth, golden tongue, golden mouth stone.

42:56

Um, he was a preacher and that meant oral preaching.

43:03

And there were a number of men in the early church that were known for that. But something major happened.

43:13

If you know something about church history, this is again, we're, gotta learn church history, people.

43:19

There was, um, something called the Fall of Rome. And with the end of the

43:27

Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome, travel became much more difficult. When you have a peaceful period, uh, with great control as you had under the

43:39

Romans, you had a large amount of freedom and hence you had freedom of travel, hence freedom of commerce, education, literature.

43:51

When Rome falls, travel becomes extremely dangerous and rare, so much so that by the medieval period, by 1100, the average person in Europe never travels more than seven miles, any one direction from where they are born.

44:09

Their experience of the world is extremely small. And this is why they envisioned the biblical stories, when you see them painting about David, he's riding a horse in armor with his knights, because that's all they knew.

44:25

They had never been to the Holy Land. They never knew anyone who had been to the Holy Land. The Crusades started changing some of that when people would actually come back and say, hey, things are a lot different over there.

44:36

But the point is that with the Fall of Rome, you enter into a period of time where literacy declines greatly.

44:47

And learning declines greatly. Then you have, only two centuries later, the rise of Islam and the loss of major Christian centers.

44:58

Carthage, North Africa, which had been Christian areas, are no longer Christian areas, at least as far as the majority of the people there.

45:08

So, this does bring a fundamental change to Christian worship.

45:16

Well, there's numerous things that bring fundamental change to Christian worship. These are external things that make a fundamental change.

45:25

The rise of a concept of an external tradition makes a huge difference.

45:31

The rise of allegorical interpretation shuts out the Old Testament from having any meaningful impact upon the development of Christian theology in many instances.

45:43

And you put all this together, and by the lowest point of the medieval period, the proclamation of the gospel has become a minor side element being done by a rather unlearned man to even more unlearned men, which gave rise to the stained glass window.

46:07

Those were ways of communicating the gospel story. Because you're talking to people who can't read.

46:14

They don't have the scriptures, and I'd encourage to have the scriptures any longer. That is controlled by the church.

46:20

It's in a language that most people can't read. Remember what happened to Wycliffe when he wanted to translate the

46:26

Bible into English? A vulgar tongue? They eventually dug up his bones, burned him, and threw him into the

46:33

River Swift. So, you have all sorts of contextual issues.

46:42

The rise of tradition, the diminishment of the centrality of the preaching of the gospel, the issue of illiteracy, all of these things do lead, in the

46:54

Reformation, to a radical change. Following after Wycliffe and Hus, Luther has a massive emphasis upon the provision of the scriptures in the language of the people to the people, and the centrality of the preaching of the whole counsel of God from scripture.

47:12

You can thank Luther for that. Now, Luther does not, as a result, have a diminishment of the importance of the

47:22

Supper, but there is a refocusing away from the massive abuses of the altar that especially became introduced at the

47:38

Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. But 200 years before that, with the rise of the doctrine of transubstantiation, you do have a much -needed correction in the refocusing upon the preaching of the scriptures and the

47:57

Word of God. But this is a simplistic, oh, everybody back then, it was the body and blood that was the center.

48:05

No, it was the priest. I mean, if you really knew Roman Catholic theology in the period prior to the

48:12

Reformation, then you would know the focus was on the priest. The people didn't even get to partake except of the bread.

48:22

The wine had been removed from them because of the doctrine of transubstantiation. It was too easy to spill God. The priest was partaking in the wine in the part of the people as their representative up at the altar, where an altar

48:40

Christus was making Christ present upon the altar. As a re -presentation, an unbloody sacrifice.

48:49

That's what had developed by the time of the Reformation. And that is a blasphemy against the finished work of Christ.

48:58

It truly is. Remains that way. Now, the irony today,

49:07

I don't see how Francis could actually believe that. I don't think he has the worldview to actually believe what historic

49:18

Orthodox Roman Catholicism actually teaches about what he himself is doing when he holds up that wafer.

49:27

That's another fascinating thing. What? John Modine.

49:32

2006. John Modine. Man, I remember him.

49:39

Wow, that was a fire breather. So just look up John Modine on our...

49:50

J -O -N. John Modine. You'll find the old... Were we even videotaping back then?

49:57

No, we weren't videotaping back then. So it's just audio, but you can... I think we did a Radio Free Geneva.

50:03

Yeah, I think it was Radio Free Geneva. But anyway, yeah, John Modine. He was going after R .C.'s

50:09

role because of where you put the pulpit. Not what's preached from the pulpit. The pulpit has to be in the center.

50:16

But is that really Francis Chan's universal experience? He wasn't in John Modine's circles.

50:23

Yeah, no, I don't think so. This is only a three -minute clip. This is going to take you forever to edit this one.

50:35

Sorry about that. It was the body and blood of Christ. And even the leaders just saw themselves as partakers.

50:43

No, they didn't! No, they didn't! You do not understand Alter Custus. You do not understand

50:49

Roman Catholic Eucharistic theology here at all. Because, again, if this guy is going toward Eastern Orthodox, it's a different thing.

50:57

But he's the one who introduced the Reformation as the dividing line. And from the Eastern Orthodox perspective, that's just the division between all the people that split off from the true church anyways.

51:06

So... Oh man, we're not worthy. We're not worthy. We're not worthy. I say that because the church is more divided than any time in history.

51:18

What does this book tell us clearly? That he does not want any divisions in his church.

51:26

And for... Okay, you ready? You ready for... You ready for the big numbers? Because...

51:33

We've been hearing this forever. Thousand years, there was just one church. Did you know that?

51:38

We're so used to growing up in a time when, literally, there are over 30 ,000 Christian denominations right now.

51:45

There you go! For the first thousand years, there was just one. What was interesting is...

51:52

The first thousand years, there was just one. So... Doesn't that sound great?

51:59

Everybody could just get along. There were no divisions. You just...

52:05

You just don't know nothing about church history, you can say that. I mean, wow. There was no

52:13

Donatist controversy. There were not 700 Donatist churches in North Africa. Nope, they were not there. All those divisions you had over persecution in the early church and stuff like...

52:25

No, nothing. There was nothing there. Again, like I said, when

52:30

John Paul II died, we got this massive revisionist history. These glowing... That just make...

52:36

Just sit there and you just go... All you gotta do is go over to the shelf and read any volume of Shaft's history of the church.

52:44

But you're not reading that stuff, are you? Or you're in some honeymoon phase of some kind of weird conversion experience or something.

52:53

I don't know. Communion was at the center of the room every time they gathered. And it wasn't a pulpit where a guy preached.

53:01

Yes, yes, there was. It was just not in the center. And after studying in his office by himself for 20 hours...

53:11

Is there something wrong about... Now, when you say studying by yourself, that's probably meant to be me and my

53:18

Bible alone under the trees. Again, it just seemed... Forgive me, but I've spent too much time with people who swum the

53:28

Tiber or the Bosporus. I've heard it all before. I've seen the end result.

53:35

The end result is always bad. Really, really, really bad. Okay? And so I've heard this stuff before.

53:45

And the idea is it's just... You know, you're reinventing the wheel. Hey, what a wonderful thing if there are men who really do take 20 hours to prepare a meaningful, researched, sound sermon.

54:02

But if you're going to do that, you're not going to do that, quote -unquote, alone. You're going to be standing on the shoulders of giants.

54:09

If you sit in your office, what are you going to be accessing? Well, I hope you're starting, unlike what some people say,

54:15

I hope you're starting with meaningful, honest exegesis. But who are you dependent upon when you do that?

54:21

Well, there are lexicographers, and there are people who've done all this work to provide you with this tremendous of insights into the original languages of the text and stuff like that.

54:30

But you're eventually going to go to commentaries. You're eventually going to avail yourself of the wisdom of those in the past.

54:36

And in the process, you're going to discover that on almost any passage of Scripture you're looking at, there's going to be people who've taken different perspectives.

54:44

And so you're going to have to be making decisions. There's something wrong with this?

54:50

That it sounds to me like Francis Chan is saying there's something wrong with this. What are you supposed to do?

54:55

Just simply reread John Chrysostom's sermons? They're worse. But he wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination.

55:04

So what are you supposed to do? What is the idea here? Hard to say.

55:11

See, right now, we've got guys like me that go in a room, study. You know, that's what

55:19

I was doing for years. Meanwhile, other guys went in their rooms and studied. And then we started all giving different messages, so many contradicting each other.

55:29

Now, this sounds to me, again, I know what he's reading, and what he should be saying is we were so often influenced by things outside of just Scripture.

55:44

Because presuppositionally, what's at the bottom of what's being said?

55:51

That the study of Scripture will only lead to massive confusion. When the reality is, the more consistent your study of Scripture is, the closer the conclusions everybody comes to.

56:02

The more you use external sources, the wider the areas of disagreement become.

56:09

If this guy hasn't seen... Francis, you know, if someone points you to this, if you haven't seen it, please, go talk to some

56:24

Roman Catholic priests in southern Mexico. Some of the old -time priests in Spain.

56:34

Go talk to my friend Peter J. Williams, with whom

56:39

I debated indulgences in Ireland just the year before last.

56:47

Or was it May? I think it was May of 17. Was it May of 18?

56:53

Yeah, May of 18, I think. Maybe it was May of 19. I don't know. Can't keep track of these things.

57:00

Go talk to Peter J. Williams. Then go to, well, most of the popes, most trusted bishops and cardinals.

57:09

Go to Boston College. Talk to the priests there. You will find a much wider variation of theology and worldviews between those men than you will find in any of the, and there aren't 30 ,000, but any of the 500 meaningful

57:30

Protestant denominations that still believe in Sola Scriptura.

57:36

There's the key. Because once you abandon Sola Scriptura, then you're at Union Theological Seminary.

57:45

But the fact is, professing Sola Scriptura results in a considerably more narrow range of interpretation and teaching than believing in the infallibility of the

57:58

Roman Magisterium. Because if you can't tell the difference between what

58:06

Francis teaches and what any pope 50 years ago taught, well, now 60 years ago taught, you're missing.

58:14

You're missing it. It's as obvious as the day is long. But there was, in that statement, there was an underlying shot at scriptural sufficiency.

58:28

And pretty soon as I follow Piper, I follow Chan, I follow, you know, it's just like everyone's following different guys.

58:36

I'm just saying, I believe there was something about taking communion out of the center of the church and replace it with a gifted speaker.

58:51

Not that that gifted speaker is not a part of the body of Christ and a gift to the body of Christ, but the body itself needs to be back in the center of the church.

59:03

You guys, I've been dreaming about this. I've been praying about this. Man, I would love it if one day in our country here in the

59:14

U .S., people understood the body of Christ, that they were just a part of it, and they got excited to gather and partake of the body and blood of Christ.

59:29

And they celebrated together, and that's why we gathered. Okay, and that's the end of it.

59:37

That was the clip. I'm sure there was more to that. Look, no matter how you respond to something like this, you end up having to focus upon the negatives.

59:50

One of the really bad aspects of social media and our ability to communicate, and we're communicating that way right now, even though we tend to go a little bit longer.

01:00:01

We're not so much sound clips. I mean, how long have I got? How long are we right now?

01:00:07

Do you know? About an hour? Okay. We tend to require you to have a little bit longer attention span, but one of the negative things is that we tend to focus only upon the negative.

01:00:24

The tendency of human nature is for us to loathe to recognize when someone that we want to disagree with says something that's true.

01:00:40

The result is we end up disagreeing with things we shouldn't be disagreeing with in the first place.

01:00:49

Is it true that there has been a diminishment in the position of the Lord's Supper in many

01:00:55

Protestant churches? It is. Is it true that many

01:01:02

Protestant churches have superstars as the preacher, and the person becomes more important than the message?

01:01:11

Yep. I think a lot of that is just cultural. I don't know if that's purpose.

01:01:17

For some people, it's very purposeful. For false teachers and people making money off of all this just because they want to be...

01:01:24

For the Kenneth Copelands of the world, remember that two years ago when that reporter caught him in his vehicle and the demon snuck out for a second?

01:01:36

I was like, oh, wow. That was scary. But those folks...

01:01:42

Okay, I get it. I understand. So is it true that there is a danger of losing biblical balance with superstar culture?

01:01:59

No one's going to argue that one, either. Is it true that there seems to be far more desire to divide than to unite?

01:02:08

Yep. Where does that come from? Partly simply because there are just a lot of people who don't even understand grace that call themselves

01:02:16

Christians. But on the proper side of things, we live in a day of so much...

01:02:24

Not so much more error than ever in the past, but because of the availability of communication, so much more knowledge of how many errors there are and people promoting those errors, that as a result, we have to be extremely focused upon discerning what is error and then finding that line.

01:02:50

It's one thing to say, I think that this person over here is in error on the subject of baptism, such that I could not be a part of the same church.

01:03:01

Does not then mean, and therefore, I have to send that person to hell. There's where the problem lies.

01:03:10

And so there are numerous things where you could go in a particular context.

01:03:18

Yeah, that's true. But there are fundamental issues that cannot be compromised.

01:03:26

We have to have a clear understanding of what those are. And we can't just automatically assume.

01:03:34

And this is what a lot of... This is what a lot of Francis Chan's former classmates would,

01:03:41

I think, assume. And that is, if you're willing to compromise there, then

01:03:47

I'm going to suspect that you've gone on this and that and the other thing, and you're already gone.

01:03:55

So I'm just going to separate from you immediately. If Francis Chan is received into the

01:04:00

East Northwest Church or the Roman Catholic Church, I will mourn yet another person who has shown that they never fully understood what it meant to rest in the imputed righteousness of Christ, because both of those communions do not rest in the imputed righteousness of Christ.

01:04:21

They deny the imputed righteousness of Christ. I will... Let me just say, there are strands of Eastern Orthodoxy that would allow for it.

01:04:33

It'd be unusual. The fact is, the imputed righteousness of Christ is a doctrine defined in Western thinking.

01:04:40

And this is why I say dealing with Orthodoxy is just so difficult, because they don't think in that way, and therefore things can happen that you don't expect to happen.

01:04:49

Anyway, if he makes that move, then you treat him as an individual who once made profession of faith

01:04:58

X and now is saying not X. But till then, there is no reason to...

01:05:04

There is much reason to question where Francis Chan is going and his wisdom, but there's also still reason to pray for him and not to do the...

01:05:19

You've already... You're already gone. Pray for him, exhort him, correct his errors, direct him to sound information, warn him, this looks like where you're going, and that's a bad place to end up, and that's going to separate you from the gospel.

01:05:39

But it just seems to me, I'll just be honest with you, there are people, I know people, I could name people, that want that to happen.

01:05:47

They want that to happen. In fact, they'll be disappointed if it doesn't, because they want to be able to put out the articles and say, we've always been right about this guy, and we said this back then, and if he doesn't, they're going to be upset, and I find that disgusting.

01:06:06

I hope you do too. I hope you do too, and I hope that that exceptionally long conversation, with all the things we talked about, is somewhat helpful to you.

01:06:22

I touched on a lot of stuff there. People always ask me, what do

01:06:27

I need to read? Read Two Thousand Years of Christ's Power by Nick Needham.

01:06:33

I've recommended him before. Uh, if you start with Nick's stuff, and then if you get that, and see, he's easy to read.

01:06:45

Nick is easy to read. Nick is not like reading LaTourette or Schaff.

01:06:52

But if you get done with Nick and you want more, then I'd recommend you read LaTourette, two volume.

01:07:00

He has, well, both LaTourette and Needham want to try to recognize that there is an

01:07:07

Eastern church. A lot of the Western histories that we read focus almost totally on the

01:07:12

West. Both Nick and LaTourette. I don't know LaTourette. I know

01:07:18

Nick. Nick's a very good friend of mine, dear brother. And so, I mean,

01:07:25

Nick's such a good brother. He sent me a picture recently of wearing a coogee that I gave him.

01:07:31

So sorry, Rich, but he did. So read

01:07:37

Needham, read LaTourette. You'll get some good balance there, at least the best we can offer from here in the

01:07:45

West, with getting some of the background Eastern Orthodox churches. Nick knows a lot about the Eastern Orthodoxy stuff. And then

01:07:52

Schaff is eight volumes long. And you might not read all eight volumes, but man, it's good to have the resources and the references.

01:08:02

Is it old? Yeah, it's out of date. But it's still some of the best material that's available.

01:08:10

And you can generally find them fairly cheaply online, you know, the entire sets and things like that.

01:08:15

You can get them at sales and stuff like that. There's a lot of them running around. Yeah. You mentioned, is it out of date?

01:08:23

I get a lot of phone calls from people wanting, is there a book on this subject? Is there a book on that subject?

01:08:29

Et cetera, et cetera. And I have to tell them, and this goes to the point you're making about it being out of date.

01:08:37

Publishers are looking to publish books that people will buy and then read. There's no reason for a lot of these guys to spend that kind of money to publish something that nobody's going to buy.

01:08:50

So the question has to come back. That's the reason it's out of date, because the people that used to be interested in this stuff used to be going and buying them out of their bookstores aren't anymore.

01:09:04

Well, what bookstores? And that says something about our culture, and it's... What bookstores? Well, there's that too.

01:09:10

What bookstores? People don't go to bookstores. I mean, the brick and mortar bookstore is becoming the rarity.

01:09:18

There's no... And Christian bookstores? Yeah. Yeah, and Amazon is...

01:09:27

We've sold our soul to the devil in that process. And I can only blame myself along with everybody else in that process.

01:09:34

Anyways, that is neither here nor there. We need to go on, because I am almost hesitant.

01:09:43

We've gone over an hour. You sure? Because the longer it takes, the longer it takes for you to render and to...

01:09:52

All right, because here... We're doing this on Monday. I don't know when it's going to get posted.

01:10:00

Lord willing, I'll be able to do something on Thursday. I've got a 24 -hour trip tomorrow that I'm really looking forward to.

01:10:09

I hope there aren't any delays. One single flight delay, and the whole thing falls apart. But I'm going to be doing something tomorrow that I'm hoping will be something

01:10:18

I'll remember for the rest of my life. Okay, so Thursday, we'll be able to come back.

01:10:24

But I really felt like some of this stuff is extremely important. And I'll be honest with you, most of what

01:10:30

I was seeing in response to Francis Chan just was... Well, I've got a little unique position here.

01:10:37

I don't know of anyone else who's talked to as many people who've swum the Tiber as I have. So, yeah.

01:10:46

You raised the microphone again? I was just going to say that the...

01:10:55

I have not done what we did on Friday for a long time. So there's a lot of the elements of that that I forgot.

01:11:01

So I made a lot of mistakes along the way. I had to go back and correct them. So you're hoping to have this up before tomorrow? I'll learn my lessons, and I expect this is going to go well.

01:11:09

So, okay. That's all I'm trying to say. That's all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll see.

01:11:14

It's... The way we do it, normally, when we can do it, is a very efficient, time -wise way of doing it.

01:11:21

This is all there is to it. So, anyway. All right, we got to shift gears, sort of. We're still dealing with some historical issues.

01:11:34

Layton Flowers posted an article. This is giving me

01:11:39

January 4th as the date. No one can do good, question mark, by Layton Flowers.

01:11:46

And it was under a banner at some point. There was some graphic. I think it was maybe the video graphic title or something.

01:11:55

Decalvinizing Romans chapter 3. Now, we responded to the decalvinization of Romans 8.

01:12:01

Now, the decalvinization of Romans 3. And over the years,

01:12:11

I and many others have sensed a strong affinity on the part of this small provisionist movement.

01:12:20

That's the new term they're using. For a while, it was traditional, because it was associated with the

01:12:25

Southern Baptist Convention. Now, it's provisionism. God provides salvation, but it's up to us to take advantage of the provision.

01:12:33

And this, of course, is the very issue that I have laid out for a long, long time.

01:12:39

This was the issue of the Reformation. The issue of the Reformation was not the necessity of grace.

01:12:46

Even Rome said grace was necessary. The issue of the Reformation was the sufficiency of grace, not the necessity of grace.

01:12:56

Is grace sufficient to save? Is salvation monergistic? Or is it only necessary but not sufficient?

01:13:06

Salvation is synergistic. This was, if you read the Bondage of the

01:13:13

Will, if you read Erasmus on the Freedom of the Will, this is necessary to the sacramental system of Roman Catholicism.

01:13:21

And this was the dividing line. That dividing line has been crossed over by a large portion of those who call themselves

01:13:32

Protestants today. And so, I have seen, in much of what

01:13:40

Leighton Flowers has been saying, a not -so -hidden Pelagianism or Semi -Pelagianism.

01:13:50

Now, Pelagius denied the necessity of grace for salvation. He believed that each man was a new

01:13:57

Adam, and that he had within himself the capacity to, well,

01:14:03

A, to live sinlessly, but to bring about his own salvation.

01:14:08

The Semi -Pelagianism was the rather natural response and correction to the

01:14:17

Augustinian lurch, where Augustine emphasizes God's sovereign grace, and as such, the doctrine of election.

01:14:28

Don't be confused. Augustine was not a Calvinist. Calvin was

01:14:33

Augustinian, as was Luther. But, on the specifics, especially in light of some of the traditions at the time of Augustine, for example,

01:14:48

Augustine would have believed that there could be people who could be saved, but not persevere, because they were not of the elect in the first place.

01:14:56

I would not believe anyone could be saved who was not of the elect. And so, we would have disagreements with Augustine, but he had a huge impact in fighting against Pelagius, and against what

01:15:12

I would say is the standard human bent of anthropocentrism, and putting man in the center, and God just provides.

01:15:27

And Augustine said, no, God doesn't just provide, he actually accomplishes. So, I have seen for many years that there is a dangerously, minimally semi -Pelagian, if not full -on

01:15:47

Pelagian, tendency in Leighton Flower's argumentation. Of course, he has mocked that, and argued against that, and I happen to notice, because I, was it last night or this morning, when

01:16:01

I put something up about what the dividing line is, I wanted to link to his article. And so,

01:16:07

I had to go to the website, and one of the first things that pops up on his website is a video, and I see myself.

01:16:15

Of course, I see myself all the time on that website, but I see myself in the last kuji that I wore, which is one of my brightest ones that I own.

01:16:27

And it's one of these live response things. Can I just mention something for both Leighton Flowers and for the other guy who likes to do live responses?

01:16:35

That's the most childish thing I've ever heard in my life. It's the most childish thing

01:16:40

I've ever heard in my life. If you want to prove that you are childish, do that. Why? Because you're not listening.

01:16:46

Every parent knows that if the child's mouth is moving while you are attempting to instruct them, they are not listening.

01:16:55

Okay? The two can't happen at the same time. So, you're missing a bunch of stuff.

01:17:00

You're just picking up something, I'm going to respond to that, then all the stuff that goes after that gets lost. Stop it.

01:17:07

Just stop it. Grow up. It is childish. There are certain people that love that kind of thing because they are not at all concerned.

01:17:21

So, I got to get through this. Stop putting that microphone up. So, a while ago, he actually posted an article against prevenient grace.

01:17:33

Now, prevenient grace is the Arminian concept that you need the grace of God in a prevenient sense to bring you to a position of being able to respond.

01:17:46

And he does not believe that. He believes that man in his natural state without gracious intervention, he just sees the gospel as that gracious intervention.

01:17:58

But man in his natural state has the capacity to properly respond to the graciously offered gospel.

01:18:10

There is nothing—I do not believe that Leighton Flowers actually believes in any meaningful doctrine of the federal headship of Adam or original sin.

01:18:22

I just don't believe it. I just don't believe it. He can say it, but look at what he says.

01:18:30

There is no impact upon the capacity and ability of man outside of what

01:18:36

Pelagius would have admitted is just simply, well, we live in a fallen world, and so we have fallen examples around us, and that's why people sin is because we have examples.

01:18:44

That's what Pelagius taught. So, when

01:18:51

I saw the article about prevenient grace, I made a note of it. I saved it in Evernote someplace.

01:18:57

Didn't get around to it. And so now, this article comes out.

01:19:04

No one can do good? Hey, you ought to pop over to his YouTube channel and see if what

01:19:11

I suspect might be happening is. No, because I—why can't you?

01:19:19

Oh, that's true. Yeah, he can't do a live response. We're not streaming.

01:19:29

That's true. That's maybe how we have to do everything in response to certain people in the future is just do it this way, and then they can't do a live stream response.

01:19:39

Well, they can still do it. They just run it and ignore it. Anyway, so this article comes up.

01:19:49

No one can do good? All right, let's see what it has to say. Good deeds are worthless as a filthy rag in the sight of God, not because the motive of the doer is necessarily wrong, but because the debt of sin owed is too great to be overlooked on account of such deeds.

01:20:13

Stop right there. Leighton, you can stand on your head.

01:20:21

You can wear a pink tutu and spin in circles. You are a Pelagian. You may be so averse to the description that you just simply can't hear it, but the reason our works are as filthy rags is because of the imperfections of our motivations and our fallen nature, not because the debt of sin owed is too great to be overlooked on account of such deeds.

01:20:57

That's a completely different issue. You are completely changing the historic, yes, even the historic

01:21:06

Baptist understanding of the corruption of the human soul.

01:21:14

You are, sir. If you can't hear that, listen to, would someone in Leighton's life please come along that he trusts and warn him he is on the road to Jesse Murrellville.

01:21:31

He really is. If people just keep pushing him to be consistent with what he's said in the past, he's going to continue down this road.

01:21:47

Good deeds, why does it say that our deeds are filthy rags before the Lord? Because of the debt, the amount of debt?

01:21:57

What if we had less debt? Are they less filthy? No, we are fallen in Adam, and so all of our motivations are self -centered.

01:22:13

We cannot do that which is pleasing in the sight of God, Romans chapter eight. So you see a complete category shift in the first sentence of the article.

01:22:29

So you're being told that your good deeds are worthless as a filthy rag.

01:22:35

See, worthless and filthy rag are two different things. Worthlessness in undoing the debt of sin is one thing, and we're not talking this type of thing.

01:22:47

Sin has to be atoned for. This is what the law teaches us. Filthy rag, menstrual rag, is what it literally is in Isaiah, is due to the motivations and nature of the doer of the works.

01:23:08

He continues, no deed, even if motivated by a genuine faith and selflessness, can pay off our debt of sin.

01:23:17

Are we talking about an unregenerate person or a regenerate person? Because in Leighton Flowers' world, there isn't much of a difference between the two.

01:23:31

Only the blood of Christ wipes away our sin, and God graciously chooses to bestow the righteousness of his son to whosoever trusts in him.

01:23:41

And it's always based upon human faith. That is the ultimate determining factor for Leighton Flowers, for David Allen.

01:23:51

When we get around to doing the, and it's going to take a while because it was a lengthy series, response to David Allen's three -part blog post, we will see, again, the provisionist, traditionalist elevation.

01:24:09

The primary initiatory element of the ordo salutis, in their perspective, is the autonomous act of the human will.

01:24:19

There's no question about it. None, none. Therefore, the

01:24:25

Bible isn't attempting to say that no one can do a genuinely selfless deed motivated by sincere faith in God.

01:24:36

The Bible is only saying that even these good and faithful deeds are worthless apart from the provision of Christ on Calvary.

01:24:45

The apostle Paul taught, there is no one who understands, there is no one who seeks God, Romans 3 .11.

01:24:51

In an effort to demonstrate that all people have fallen short of the glory of God and broken his law,

01:24:57

Paul quotes from Psalm 14, 2 -3, which says, the Lord looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who understand, any who seek

01:25:05

God. All have turned away, all have become corrupt. There is none who does good, not even one. There are basically two theological approaches for interpreting this passage.

01:25:13

I have said for a long, long time that Leighton Flowers and I have completely different definitions of the term exegesis.

01:25:25

He believes exegesis is dealing with the text so as to leave open as many possibilities as possible, and I believe that the very word means to bring out the meaning of the text, not to say, well, it's not saying this, and it's not saying that.

01:25:44

That may be an element, but it's insufficient to be the core of what actual exegesis is.

01:25:51

So, we are told that there are two ways of looking at this, the Calvinistic approach and the non -Calvinistic provisionist approach.

01:26:00

So, the Calvinistic approach, apart from a divine, irresistible work of regeneration by which

01:26:07

God changes a chosen individual's nature and desires, that is, and I'm providing this, raises you from spiritual death to spiritual life and does give you a new nature, yes.

01:26:20

Mankind cannot willingly seek to know, understand, or follow God. Or, more properly, for someone who claims to have been a former

01:26:30

Calvinist, though there are a lot of people who knew him back then that say, no way, the reason mankind cannot willingly seek to know, understand, or follow

01:26:42

God is because man's desires are centered upon the self.

01:26:48

So, you have a rebel sinner who is intent upon remaining in his or her rebellion against God.

01:26:58

Number two, the non -Calvinistic provisionist approach. I love when folks come up with new terms because no one's ever really understood things as well as I have.

01:27:07

Apart from God's gracious initiative in bringing His Son, the

01:27:13

Holy Spirit, and the inspired gospel appeal, notice there's nothing here about grace.

01:27:23

There's nothing prevenient grace? No. He says he—so, what is grace?

01:27:31

It's a gracious initiative. So, in other words, God has provided graciously an initiative in the gospel, but you are capable in and of yourself without prevenient grace, without regeneration, without any—I guess he would say there's some type of conviction of the

01:27:57

Holy Spirit, but of course, I would go, well, does the Holy Spirit convict everyone the exact same way?

01:28:05

If not, why not? What is the nature of conviction? Because I would recognize a restraining action of the

01:28:16

Holy Spirit of God in convicting men, in reminding men there's going to be a judgment.

01:28:22

I think there's been more than once that a person didn't pull a trigger because they feared eternity. That's not the same thing as conviction of sin under repentance and salvation.

01:28:32

So, what is this role of the Spirit? Is it equally done? It would have to be equally done because there can't be an elect people.

01:28:40

There's no sovereign decree upon which to have the identity of the elect. The elect is filled by the autonomous actions of mankind.

01:28:47

So, anyway, that's what's gracious. The gracious initiative in bringing

01:28:53

His Son, the Holy Spirit, and the inspired gospel appeal. By the way, Pelagius would have agreed with all of that. No one can merit salvation or consistently seek to obey

01:29:02

God in a way that will attain his own righteousness. So, apart from God's gracious initiative in bringing

01:29:11

His Son, the Holy Spirit, and the inspired gospel appeal, no one can merit salvation or consistently seek to obey God in a way that will attain his own righteousness.

01:29:18

So, a provision has been made, but there is no necessity of a divine grace in the soul of the individual.

01:29:26

That's Pelagius. That is Pelagius. There are obviously other perspectives that weren't mentioned here.

01:29:39

Every Armenian is going, oh, wait a minute. Okay, the contrast between these two perspectives can be illustrated by this simple question.

01:29:46

Does proof that I am capable of calling the president on the telephone also prove that I am incapable of answering the telephone if the president were to call me?

01:30:04

Of course not, yet that is essentially the principle Calvinists are assuming in their theological approach to this text.

01:30:12

I don't mean to laugh, but sometimes Dr. Flowers just says things.

01:30:19

I mean, this will now be, how do you answer the telephone at the choice meets store?

01:30:34

Yeah. Okay. I want to spend what little time

01:30:41

I have on Romans 3, so let me just get through this. Calvinists read this text to mean that our lack of initiative somehow proves our inability to respond positively to his initiative.

01:30:51

Our lack of initiative? We're rebels. We are suppressors. There is no seeker after God.

01:31:00

We'll show this and we can get to Romans 3. They presume that God's work in sending his son, the Holy Spirit, and the inspired gospel, calling for all to be reconciled to the faith of Christ is insufficient to enable the lost to respond in faith, but the text simply never says this.

01:31:13

Insufficient. No. It is part of God's intention to save his specific people, and it is made absolutely effective by the fact the

01:31:20

Holy Spirit can raise you to spiritual life, and he doesn't need your cooperation to do it. This is the difference.

01:31:27

And I had, there were a couple of his followers on Facebook all of a sudden, I'm so sick and tired of you saying man -centered versus God -centered, but that's what it is.

01:31:36

That's what you have right here. That is what you have right here. It's right in front of your eyes.

01:31:42

Open your eyes to see it. In Romans 3, verses 10 through 20, the apostle is seeking to prove that no one can attain righteousness by means of the law.

01:31:54

No. That is not what he's doing. We'll prove it. You're one step too early, and in the process, fundamentally compromise biblical anthropology and,

01:32:04

I believe, the gospel itself. But in verse 21, he shifts to reveal a righteousness that can be attained by means of grace through faith in Christ.

01:32:12

Exactly. 21 is the shift. What you've missed is that you're still in the section on the universality of sin.

01:32:21

Calvinists seem to think that because mankind is unable to attain righteousness by means of the law, they must be equally unable to obtain righteousness by means of grace through faith in Christ.

01:32:31

Means of grace means provision, not prevenient grace, and not saving grace.

01:32:39

You see how he's using our language, but filling it completely different meaning. This, however, is never established anywhere in the pages of scripture.

01:32:46

Okay. Of course, we all can affirm that no one is righteous with regard to the man's law, but there have been many throughout the pages of scripture who have been declared righteous by means of grace through faith.

01:32:59

He does not mean an external act of saving grace. He means mankind being worthy to partake of these things by being the ones who are sensitive and being the ones who he has a whole list of verses that he calls from the

01:33:14

Old Testament and as Pelagius says, see, mankind has this ability apart from the changing work of the

01:33:24

Holy Spirit of God to do these things. This isn't semi -Pelagianism anymore.

01:33:30

This would not even be considered to be Orthodox from our own Catholic perspective anymore. This is pure Pelagianism.

01:33:37

It's pure Pelagianism. But how do you prove this fundamentally? The most important thing here is to understand what

01:33:46

Romans chapter 3 is about, because I cannot tell you how many people I, over the years, walking through this text led them to an understanding of their own sin before God and their need to flee solely to the righteousness of Christ.

01:34:02

Let's remember where we are. Romans chapter 1, verse 18, transitions into the discussion of the gospel.

01:34:09

You have the introduction, mentions the gospel, and then beginning of verse 18, from verse 18 to Romans 3, 19, is the bad news.

01:34:22

The bad news of the universal sinfulness of man. Why is this important? Because this is central to understanding

01:34:28

Paul. Paul cannot abide the idea of a Jewish Christian church and a

01:34:35

Gentile Christian church. There is one body. And so, if there's going to be one body, then it has to be one need and one

01:34:41

Savior. If you're going to have one need and one Savior, then one righteousness will avail for both the

01:34:49

Jew and the Gentile. That means there cannot be the situation that his

01:34:55

Judaizing opponents presented, where you had to become a Jew before you could become a Christian, as if the

01:35:02

Jewish person had the leg up. So, what do you have? 118 to the end of the chapter, universal sinfulness of man, but the

01:35:08

Jew is sitting back going, yeah, yeah, yeah, Paul, go ahead, but we're different. And Paul's argument in Romans chapter 2 is, no, you're not.

01:35:17

Mere possession of the law does not bring about righteousness. It actually brings about condemnation, because the

01:35:25

Gentiles do according to the law without having the law, because of what's written on their conscience.

01:35:32

They don't do it consistently, they don't do it enough to be righteous, but the point is, you possess the law and then you break the law.

01:35:39

You actually have the greater sin because you have the greater light. And so, chapter 2, oh,

01:35:46

Mr. Jewish person who thinks that I was just simply talking about the Gentiles there, I wasn't talking about just the

01:35:51

Gentiles there. So, in chapter 3, so what advantage has the Jew? If this is all true, then what advantage has the

01:35:59

Jew? Or what is the benefit of circumcision? Great in every respect. First of all, that they were entrusted with the oracles of God.

01:36:08

So, it's a wonderful thing to be entrusted with the oracles of God, with God's very word. What then?

01:36:15

If some did not believe, their unbelief will not nullify the faithfulness of God, will it? So, even though he gave them the oracles of God, and yet they did not believe, does that mean that God's faithfulness has been undone?

01:36:29

May it never be. Rather, let God be found true, that every man be found a liar, as it is written, that you may be justified in your words and prevail when you are judged.

01:36:39

This is where we get the issue of theodicy, the justification of God. This is what he's going to demonstrate at the end times and the day of judgment, that everything he's done has been according to justice and has been brought about his glory, so on and so forth.

01:36:51

So, let God be true, though every man be found a liar. That's a great text that I would love to stop and preach on.

01:36:59

But the point is that God, this is, if you want an argument for theocentrism versus anthropocentrism, there it is.

01:37:09

God is to be found true, that every man be found a liar. But if our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, what shall we say?

01:37:17

The God who inflicts wrath is not unrighteous, is he? I am speaking in human terms. This will be a subject he's returned to back in Romans 9.

01:37:25

So, he touches on it here, but he's going to return to it in Romans 9.

01:37:31

This is one of the reasons why when David Allen, for example, tries to make the human autonomous action of becoming a believer, determined of everything

01:37:40

God does in Romans chapter 9, he's completely missed the boat. It is a fallacious, simplistically fallacious attempt to, because Paul is going to, here he's talking about, here's what the gospel is, here's what we're proclaiming, here's how we're made right with God.

01:37:57

Then in 8 and into the beginning of 9, he's talking about, so what is the grand purpose in all of this?

01:38:04

What is, how does this answer the question of Jews and Gentiles together, what God's grand purpose in all this? And basically,

01:38:10

Allen's interpretation is, well, if he talked about this in chapters 3 and 4, then he can't ever go back and go to a even previous or prior level of meaning later on.

01:38:21

It always has to be determined by the human autonomous action of free will. That's what we're going to get in that.

01:38:27

But anyway, so he asks, the God who inflicts wrath is not unrighteous, is he? I am speaking in human terms.

01:38:33

May it never be, for otherwise, how will God judge the world? The idea that God would judge the world is given as an axiom here.

01:38:40

It is absolutely necessary that God will judge the world. There will be justice done, God will judge, has to be done.

01:38:47

But if through my lie the truth of God abounded to his glory, why am I still being judged as a sinner?

01:38:53

And why not say, as we are slanderously reported, and as some claim that we say, let us do evil that good may come.

01:39:00

Their condemnation is just. Sometimes when people lie about you, the best thing to say is their condemnation is just, and just leave it there.

01:39:09

I have a feeling I'm going to be saying that a lot very soon. All right. What then? Are we better than they?

01:39:18

Not at all. For we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin.

01:39:27

So whatever you do in interpreting Romans 1 and 2, and man, there have been some messy attempts at interpreting these things.

01:39:38

Paul gives you what his purpose was. It's right here. This is what we've charged.

01:39:46

Both Jews and Greeks are all under sin. They're all in the same boat.

01:39:52

They all have the same need. That's why there's one Savior and one righteousness that can avail for them.

01:39:58

So, as it is written, so here's his final, and this is the final element of the bad news.

01:40:09

This is his final, I'm going to collect all this stuff from the pages of Scripture to demonstrate that Jews, Romans 3, 23, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

01:40:22

The all there is Jews and Gentiles. That's his conclusion. The only way you can get to the good news is to have a proper understanding of the bad news.

01:40:35

And none of this is Paul saying, well, actually, you see, it's just that none of these actions you can do are good enough.

01:40:45

You might do them with a clean heart and with proper motivations, but they're not enough to undo the sin debt.

01:40:53

No, he's saying you're all sinners. And so, as it is written, there is none righteous.

01:41:03

I do not believe. You see, this is how, see, okay, latent flowers will go to the

01:41:12

Old Testament and say, well, there's a righteous man here, there's a righteous man there, there's a righteous man there. And therefore, when it says there's unrighteous, that's a contradiction in Scripture.

01:41:19

And so, I have to make a decision. So, I'm either going to have to take those texts in the

01:41:28

Old Testament and understand them related to that particular time period, and not as an overarching statement, this person was actually righteous in God's sight, as to the point of having righteousness that would allow them into the presence of God.

01:41:41

They were sinless. Or I will have to take a text like Romans 3, where Paul is laying out the entirety of the gospel in a thought -out process, and in the section that's talking about the universality of sin that's about to introduce justification, you take that as the ultimate understanding, and hence, you look back at the

01:42:05

Old Testament text and read them as not referring to the same thing, but as referring to individuals who, in their time period, were more righteous than others, but not righteous in the sense of apart from God's grace in their life.

01:42:21

He chooses one direction, Orthodox Christianity has chosen the other direction down through history, and today, there's all sorts of folks who don't even know that we've argued about that in the past, so they don't really care.

01:42:34

There is none righteous, not even one. There is none who understands.

01:42:41

Now, he will want to say, well, has perfect understanding or has sufficient understanding.

01:42:48

No, there is none who understands. How can you understand what you are to do, what these gracious provisions are, if you are a non -understanding one?

01:43:03

Because understanding would not be some merit -giving concept in the first place. The whole thing about, well, these aren't good enough, these aren't enough to undo the great weight of sin.

01:43:13

But what about understanding? There is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God. How is that meritorious in the first place?

01:43:22

There is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God. In other words, Jew or Gentile, Jew or Gentile, no righteous

01:43:29

Jews or Gentiles, no understanding Jews or Gentiles, no Jews or Gentiles seek for God.

01:43:35

All have turned aside, every one of them. Together, they have become useless, and if you're useless, all the mere provisionism without the power of resurrection means nothing.

01:43:53

If someone dies of poison from a particular snake and they are dead, and you simply put the antidote on the ground next to them, you accomplish nothing.

01:44:09

They're dead. They're dead. Provisionism is a denial of the power of God.

01:44:22

All have turned aside, together they become useless. There is none who does good. Repentance and faith are good works.

01:44:30

They're good things. There is not even one. Their throat is an open grave.

01:44:36

With their tongues, they keep deceiving. The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.

01:44:44

Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their paths, and the path of peace they have not known.

01:44:50

There is no fear of God before their eyes, and the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.

01:44:59

Wisdom would tell you what provisions to take care of. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

01:45:10

Now, we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God, because by works of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

01:45:31

So, how does Paul conclude his own section?

01:45:37

Because beginning verse 21, but now apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.

01:45:45

So, we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the become accountable to God.

01:45:53

What was his introductory statement? We have charged that both

01:45:58

Jews and Greeks are all under sin. Here's the accusations, and what's the result?

01:46:08

So that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God.

01:46:17

Every mouth closed. So, if you can read

01:46:23

Romans 3, 10 through 18 and then put a whole list of verses together where you think that what's happening is that people apart from God's grace, apart from being part of the remnant, had the ability in and of themselves outside of the exercise of divine grace to be good enough to do all these things, then you are overthrowing the apostle's argument, and you're saying there are people whose mouths can continue flapping in God's presence because they, without divine grace, only provisions over here, they had the ability to do it.

01:47:13

No one else is going to do. And so, their mouth is still flapping, still moving.

01:47:19

You see, the point of the bad news is to get the person to shut up, to stop speaking of their own righteousness.

01:47:36

The picture here is of the person who stands before the judge, their head is down, and their mouth is closed.

01:47:43

They recognize the judge's authority to judge them, they recognize their own guilt, and their absolute helplessness.

01:47:53

That's what Romans 3 is saying. That's the person who's then ready to hear about a righteousness apart from the law by faith in Jesus Christ, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

01:48:06

Jew and Gentile together, all have sinned, all fall short of the glory of God, all are undone.

01:48:16

That's the situation they're all in. No one's arguing, well, we'll get into that right now, but no one's arguing that faith is not the sole instrument.

01:48:32

The question is, once you come up with the idea that that kind of saving faith is not the work of the

01:48:38

Spirit of God, but is simply the capacity of the human heart, outside of prevenient grace, regenerative grace, whatever, you are going to have a completely different perspective on everything else.

01:48:56

On everything else. But what is Romans 3 telling us? There is no flapping of the jaws any longer.

01:49:06

Every mouth may be closed, all the world may become accountable to God. That's why you have one

01:49:13

Savior, one righteousness, one body. You don't have a Jewish Christian church, you don't have a

01:49:20

Gentile Christian church, you have one. So, you can try to decalvinize any passage you want, but the more you keep trying to do this, the more consistent you're going to have to become in constantly emphasizing the capacity of man in the fallen state.

01:49:47

The very things where the Bible says, not able, not able, not able, you have to be constantly saying, able, able, able.

01:49:57

That's where this leads. That's where this leads. So, you do have choices to make.

01:50:06

There's no two ways about it. And in looking at Paul's teaching, what closes the door to every other option, but to the righteousness of Jesus Christ as the only means of standing before a holy

01:50:24

God, is a thoroughly biblical anthropology that says there is none righteous, there is none who understands, there is none who seeks

01:50:35

God, there is none who does good. And if you say, well, no, then that will end up having a fundamental impact on what you believe about justification and everything else, and everything else.

01:50:54

Okay, well, I actually tried to rush that just a little bit, because we've gone almost two hours.

01:51:03

I didn't expect that, but there we did, there it is. Hope it is useful to you, Lord willing, and there aren't any travel issues.

01:51:10

We'll be back on Thursday. Hopefully, I will be a happy and refreshed person, unless something goes wrong, and then

01:51:16

I'll be a very unhappy, grumpy person. But we'll try to be here one way or the other.