Bob Wilkins, False Faith, Lordship, and Assurance

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I don't like Calvinists because they've chosen to follow John Calvin instead of Jesus Christ. I have a problem with them.

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They're following men instead of the Word of God. And I'm going to be the one standing on top of my hands, standing on top of my feet, standing on a stump and crying out,

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He died for all those who were elected, were selected. For still our ancient foe does seek to work us woe,

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His cross and bow our grave, and long with cruel hate.

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Well, first of all, James, I'm very ignorant of the Reformers. On earth it's not as it was.

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I think I probably know more about Calvinism than most of the people who call themselves

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Calvinists. For God so loved the world that He gave

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His only begotten Son, that whosoever. Ladies and gentlemen,

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James White is a hyper -Calvinist. Now whatever we do in Baptist life, we don't need to be teaming up with hyper -Calvinists.

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I said the other day in class that I don't understand the difference between hyper -Calvinism and Calvinism.

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It seems to me that Calvin was a hyper -Calvinist. Right, I don't think there is typically any difference between Calvinism and hyper -Calvinism.

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Read my book. And now from our underground bunker deep beneath Bruton Parker College where no one would think to look, safe from all those moderate

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Calvinists, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and re -read George Bryson's book, we are

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Radio Free Geneva, broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to say for His own eternal glory.

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Yeah, there you go. A mighty Radio Free Geneva.

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Yeah, I don't know when

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I'm going to get to it, because it's going to take so much extra study time and stuff, but we are going to get to the

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James Brownson material, specifically on Romans 1. Sometime next week, Michael Brown is going to join me and we're going to talk about his new book,

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Surviving the Gay Revolution, and I'm going to challenge him on some issues that have come up recently.

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But before then, someone sent me a tweet.

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This is a Radio Free Geneva that is the result of a tweet that, you know, that's where some of the best stuff comes from.

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I'll be perfectly honest with you. I can't always click on everything, and sometimes I click on things and immediately unclick things, but I was sent a video from Bob Wilken.

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Now, I suppose I should have queued up. Do we have the Wilken debate up in video?

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We do. I should have queued some stuff up, because where was that?

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I thought it was somewhere in Oklahoma. I don't remember exactly what year it was.

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It was before 2010, obviously. Sometime between, what, 2005 and 2008,

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I would guess. I went down to Oklahoma and I did a debate with Bob Wilken.

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Now, Bob Wilken is with the Grace Evangelical Society, which is one of the primary promoters of what, well, anti -lordship salvation.

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And we haven't talked about this in a long time, because it was just such a distasteful experience on my part.

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The behavior of my opponent was significantly below what I expected for someone with his background.

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Let's just put it that way. It was difficult to keep breathing for all the straw men that were burning in the room.

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It was really, really tough. Fire alarms going off. It was bad. We have addressed it numerous times in the past.

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There have been a couple of times. It sort of bubbles up every once in a while. I have often said that it is one of the main things that has hamstrung a lot of conservative evangelicalism in the

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United States. I consider it not only a horrific error, but in its full -blown form, a purely false gospel.

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Just not an issue of, well, you know, we've got our disagreements, but just straight out described in scripture, warned against, completely out there, not my brother type stuff.

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So when I saw who it was that was answering this question about Calvinists and assurance,

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I'm like, oh, great. Something tells me he's going to be going after Calvin and English Puritanism.

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He did the whole nine yards, but even mentioned me and my inability to answer his questions.

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Well, I would invite anybody to watch the debate and judge for yourself.

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It's a good thing. It's hard for people to understand.

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I had some people on Twitter that watched it and went, well, that guy is an Armenian. He doesn't get it.

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No, no, he's not even an Armenian. When the position they hold is that salvation is by a dead, spoken only faith alone.

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There's no repentance. There's not even the need for continuation of faith.

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As long as you make a statement of faith that Jesus died and rose again, your ticket's punched.

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You're going to heaven. You can go become a Buddhist, an axe murderer, whatever.

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Now, they don't suggest that you do this. And they will say that it's a good thing.

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It was 10 years ago, 2005. They will say that it's a good thing to repent and it's a good thing to live a holy life.

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But that's not what saves you. It is an act of intellectual assent alone.

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They will go watch the debate. They attack anything in regards to the fact that saving faith has more than one aspect to it.

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If you want to see the most amazing example of the twisting of Scripture, listen to a

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Bob Wilkin or a Zane Hodges, any of these guys, deal with James chapter 2.

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If you just want to see them implode, explode, whatever, listen to their amazing abuse of James chapter 2.

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Because James chapter 2 is directly aimed at exactly their position.

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Because they are saying that a spoken faith alone, no repentance, no evidence of its continuing existence, that saves you.

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And, of course, one of the reasons that this movement has survived as long as it has is that if you're an

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Arminian, if you're a synergist, if you do not believe that saving faith is the work of the

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Spirit of God in the heart of the elect, if you don't believe that God has an elect people, if you don't believe he's accomplishing his particular purposes according to the divine decree, etc.

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You don't have a basis for really fighting against this.

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I mean, it's a gross caricature of the Reformation Sola Fide. It's a gross caricature.

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It is so far removed from what Sola Fide actually meant that it's laughable from a historical perspective.

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And it's one of the reasons, by the way, just in passing, one of the reasons that I really don't have much use for one particular, well, he would be identified as a

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Reformed writer, but I think if you're not even on the right page on this one, I'm not sure how you can be called

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Reformed. But there was one imbalanced person who

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I've identified as a Calvinist that these folks love to quote. That's why I don't really have any use for him or those who follow after him, which is why they tend to attack me a lot.

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But aside from a very, very, very, very narrow outside the stream stream, it has always been the

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Reformed understanding that God saves his elect people for a purpose and that faith and repentance are both the works of the

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Spirit of God in the heart of God's people and that Christ is glorified in the fact that it is

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God's intention to conform his people to his image. And all of the whole purposes of God in sanctification, the whole purposes of God in his own self -glorification, so that repentance and faith are his gifts.

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They're not things that we can boast in of ourselves. They're not accomplishments that we have. They're the result of the work of the

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Spirit of God within us. All of this, from a Reformed perspective, is how you can remain balanced in talking about faith and repentance, not turning them into things that we do, that then add to the work of Christ.

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Christ's work can't save unless you add these things in. No, the Arminian, though, that doesn't have all of this, that doesn't have the work of the

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Spirit of God and doesn't have the work of regeneration. And regeneration is something we can bring about by our own activities and so on and so forth.

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The Arminian is really in a tough spot to attempt to fight against the anti -lordship perspective.

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But from a Reformed perspective, its errors are just so obvious and so manifold and so many that it's truly amazing.

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So Bob Wilkin represents a position that says you're saved by faith without repentance.

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There is no repentance involved. It may have been the first thing Jesus preached, but John never mentions it.

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So therefore, and that's where we had criticized, for example, I think the last time we really took this on was a local thing in 2011 or 2012.

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There was a local conference of folks and one of the primary speakers was anti -lordship and we listened to some of his criticisms and responded at that time.

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That's probably the last time we actually got into this. But of course, these people are strongly anti -Reformed.

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They have to be for obvious reasons because of the fact that if God is the one that's in charge of salvation, if God is the one who saves, if there is a particular elect people, if there is such a thing as regeneration, which is wrought by the

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Spirit of God, not the result of the actions of man, so on and so forth, well, then their whole position is completely out there and is refuted.

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So let's take a look. We'll go ahead. It's five and a half minutes, almost six minutes long. But let's listen to the whole thing first and then go back through it.

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It's posted on YouTube. I've given the URL a couple times so you can watch.

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Here is Bob Wilkin on Calvinism, Predestination, and Assurance.

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Bob, I have a lot of friends who are Calvinists. I went to a Reform school.

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And while they're very strong in believing in the doctrine of predestination, they themselves aren't sure they're one of the elect, and so they don't have assurance of salvation.

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What do you think of the Calvinistic doctrine of assurance? That's a great question, Sean. R .T.

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Kendall, Dr. R .T. Kendall, wrote his doctoral dissertation on Calvin and English Calvinism to 1647.

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And one of the things that startled him in his doctoral studies in Europe was that he said as he studied the

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Puritan divines, and the divines is the name they use for the leaders of the English branch of the

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Reformation, is that almost to a man, as they were on their deathbeds, they were lamenting the fact they were probably dying and going to hell.

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And he said the reason for this was because as they were dying, they were scanning their lives, taking personal inventory of their lives, and they were seeing all the flaws in it.

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They were seeing the fact that they didn't live a perfect life. Oh, yes, they may have given up a lot for Christ, they may have done a lot of good things, but they realized, you know,

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I fell short in a lot of areas. And so as a result, almost to a man, they were doubting their eternal destiny.

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And the truth is that is a common problem. Let me give you an example. I had lunch,

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I believe it was around the year 2000. I went to the Ligonier Conference, Dr.

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R .C. Sproul and his group. And while I was there, I had breakfast with a leading

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Calvinist theologian, Ph .D., pastoring a large church, teaching in a leading five -point

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Calvinist seminary. And he was a very cordial man. So we got to talking and I said, well, tell me, is it true, according to Reformed thought, that only those who are elect are going to get into the kingdom?

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And he said, yes. And I said, and is it true that all of the elect will persevere to the end of their lives?

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He said, well, of course. And I said, well, doesn't it seem that the scriptures teach that it's impossible to know whether we'll persevere to the end of our lives or not?

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And he said, well, of course. He says, you know, Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9, 27,

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I discipline my body and bring it to subjection, lest when I preach to others I might be disqualified.

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He said if Paul wasn't sure he was going to persevere, we can't be sure either. And I said, well, then correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the

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Calvinist position then that we don't know where we're going until we die and we can't know where we're going until we die?

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And I remember his response like it was yesterday. He said, well, I see in my life what

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I think are the works of the spirit. But I must admit, it's possible

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I could fall away and fail to persevere. And if I do, I'll prove that what I thought were the works of the spirit really weren't the works of the spirit, and I'll go to hell.

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I mean, that's the sad position of reformed assurance.

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Because in Calvinism, election is mysterious. God doesn't tell us who the elect are.

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And in Calvinism, faith is mysterious. It's almost like John 3 .16 reads like this,

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For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever should not perish but have everlasting life.

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And since we don't know what is, then we need to look for signs of.

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And what are the signs? My works. So Calvinists are looking for secondary signs of election and secondary signs of faith.

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But since none of those signs are definitive, they can't be sure. And their whole system is flawed.

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I debated Dr. James White about 10 years ago on the issue of faith and assurance.

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And over the course of the debate, I kept hammering this point home. And Dr.

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White wasn't able to say that he was certain of his eternal destiny because Calvinism doesn't allow that.

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I also debated Dr. Ken Sarles in 1991 at Dallas Seminary in a brown bag.

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He came right out and said he was 99 % sure of his salvation. He said you can't be 100 % sure, you know, because we're still in this life, etc.

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And I was thinking, well, you might be 99 % sure when everything's great and rosy, but what happens when you have an argument with your spouse?

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You say something you shouldn't, you do something you shouldn't. Doesn't your assurance drop well south of 50%, 40%, 10%, whatever?

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And when that same person gets on their deathbed, don't they start taking inventory? And I think, you know, one of the dangers of this is people just stay so busy so they don't have to think about the fact they don't have assurance.

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To me, that would be a terrible way to live. And I don't mean that these people aren't well -intentioned.

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They are. But in my estimation, the reform position is flawed.

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And in fact, there was even an argument within Calvinism. There was the Merrill Controversy, and it led to a whole discussion of this.

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Back in the early 1700s, they had the Merrill Controversy, and it was all this discussion, you know, 300 years ago.

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Okay, so there you go. We have all of us

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Calvinists. I have one right here. That's what this is here. You thought it was a

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Fitbit HR charge, but it's actually a Calvinist assurance meter.

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And it's a special gadget that we all secretly have, because Calvinists are so secretive.

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And it keeps track of where your assurance is by how you've been fulfilling all the works righteousness requirements that you have to do to make sure, because, you know, those

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Puritans were on their deathbeds. They were just, okay, yeah, there you go. Sorry, it's hard to keep a straight face sometimes.

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All right, let's think about what we just heard here.

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I'm going to go back through it in a few moments. But let's lay some basic foundational things here.

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First of all, a Calvinist assurance. The issue goes back to something we have talked about many, many times before.

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And that is that Calvinism is theocentric.

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All synergistic systems, and certainly the anti -lordship, cheap grace position is very, very man -centered.

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They're all man -centered. They're all anthropocentric. They're all centered upon what man does. God has made salvation a possibility.

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He has made it a potentiality. But every synergistic system, it ends up going down to what man does.

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God's made the provision, but it's all up to man. And you can have a long list or a really, really short list, but whatever the list is, that's what is going to determine whether God is going to be successful in this salvation thing or not.

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And this whole discussion is very much illustrative of the fact that by talking about how you can have assurance, that's very, very important because, you know, this is just one of many videos that they've posted.

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But we need to understand what is his assurance? What's it based on?

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And the horrific thing here, because pastorally,

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I've seen this. When this false teaching inserts itself into a church, the result, of course, is having a church filled with driftwood, with unregenerate people who think they're saved.

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They walk down an aisle, they shook a hand, they were assured, look, 1 John 5, 13, right here, sign your name.

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And I saw what that did. I saw what that did in a huge Southern Baptist church where the back door was bigger than the front door.

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And you were running people through, you were giving them assurance of salvation, you'd get them dunked, and then, poof, that was it.

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You'd never see them again. Until you went out on visitation and tried to talk with these folks, and, well, you know, they could just look at you and say, but the deacon told me.

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You know, well, the deacon told me

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I'm saved. You get down from there, kid. The deacon told me I was saved. I still got the

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Bible they gave me right there, you know. I'm not interested in doing anything about it.

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I'm not interested in, you know, being called to holiness and repentance.

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No, no, no. I'm a good person. I saw the result too many times.

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Now they would say, well, that's a misrepresentation of us. Well, you know, I'm sure that in your better moments that you really want to try to get people to live a good life.

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But the fact of the matter is, because you have boiled the gospel down past its minimum to where it's a false gospel, to where it is no longer the work of God, whereby he changes the heart and makes that heart repentant, since you've gotten rid of repentance and turned it into a human work that you may or may not want to do down the road someplace, the result has little connection to the gospel of Jesus Christ itself.

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And it ends up producing all sorts of people.

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And pastorally, I don't have time to get into all of it, but how many times you, you know, just in a, let's leave the false assurance thing aside.

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Dealing with a mother whose son dies in a car accident.

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And you knew the kid. And there was not the single shred of evidence whatsoever that this young person knew

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Christ, had no interest in holiness, no interest whatsoever in following after Christ.

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Deny yourself, take up the cross. When you make that only for super Christians, but you leave open the lesser

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Christian route. Well, it produces all sorts of things. And so you get this mother and she wants, you know, you've been asked to do the funeral.

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And she wants you to just pass him on into, into the very presence of God and talk about how, what a wonderful Christian he was and everything else.

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And you happen to know that in reality, this particular individual had absolutely not the first inkling of any spiritual thing at all.

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The results have been disastrous. Ask any pastor who has gone into a church that has been infected with this false teaching and tried to teach biblically about what it means to be a

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Christian and tried to call this congregation to holiness. Since all the results are a horrible, horrible thing to see.

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So where's the assurance in this system? Well, the assurance comes from never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever asking.

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Whether you have a true saving faith or not, because there's no such thing as a non -saving faith.

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There's no such thing as a hypocrite. As long as you've said the words, boom, you're in, ticket punched.

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You, if you, if you question that you're questioning God's own word, you're questioning the validity of the gospel, et cetera, et cetera.

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So you can't even talk about true faith versus false faith. All faith is saving faith.

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If it's faith, it saves. That's the, there's no question about it. And so all the parables, you know, the parables, the parables, soils, let's not worry about that.

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And James 2, let's not worry about that. And, you know, Paul's talk about examining yourself. And oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

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We don't deal with any of that stuff. That's just for super Christians. That's just for, those are discipleship issues.

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We just, we just lay all that stuff aside. So the, the assurance is not something that you experience.

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It is actually just simply accepting this theological statement that you've gotten your ticket punched and that's it.

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And it really, it results in such a surface level theology to where you really, you, you can't enter into any of the important texts of scripture where you have to see how all the threads of soteriology are related to one another and how they come together in this beautiful, you can't go there.

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You can't talk about the warning passages in Hebrews. You can't talk about Paul's discussions of anything because you can't see how all of this comes together because you have such a surface level, this, this deep kind of soteriology that, hey, you tipped your hat toward God.

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You got that right. Now there's your, there's your assurance. Don't, the assurance is don't ask any questions.

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Now, if you want to call that assurance, okay. You want to know what real assurance looks like?

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I had just become an elder at our church and one of the former elders who had had to step down due to just extreme ill health.

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I and my fellow elder went and visited him the day he died. The day he died.

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He knew that death was right there. He, his, his heart had always been so weak and, and my fellow elder sat next to his bed and asked him, who is your only hope in life and in death?

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Are you trusting in Christ alone for your salvation? And to hear that feeble saint say, oh yes, he is my only hope.

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He wasn't looking to himself. He wasn't sitting there with a checklist. Well, my assurance level, let me check my assurance level here.

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How in the world can I be quite this passionate about this? My heart rates 55 beats per minute right now.

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That's, that's, that's frightening. Okay. It actually is a fit, but we, we, for those of you who are confused, we don't have assurance meters.

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I, I'm hoping we're not getting any, any emails and going, why didn't they get mine?

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How do I get it? It will be offered in the store later this afternoon. You can get it for 99 .99.

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Amazon doesn't list it. Therefore it doesn't exist. Right. You know? Anyway, I just sort of did scare me a little bit there.

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Anyway, if you want, if you want to know what assurance looks like, that kind of assurance that that dear brother had did not come from ticket punched surface theology.

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That's not where it came from. Let me tell you where it came from. It came from listening to words like this.

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All of the father gives me will come to me. And the one who comes to me,

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I will certainly not cast out for. I've come down from heaven, not do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.

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And this is the will of him who sent me that of all that he has given me, I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day.

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You see, when you don't try, when you're, when you're not deathly afraid of the sovereignty of God, and you're not deathly afraid of allowing

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God to be a perfect savior, then you don't engage in all sorts of wild and strange.

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I said, Jetical gyrations to get around Jesus's words here.

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And you realize that they are in fact for all of Christ followers, not just for his disciples.

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And as a result, you recognize, you know what? The one coming to me, I will certainly not cast out.

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Well, yes, that is present tense. The one coming to me. But as long as you recognize the sovereignty of God, you don't as a result go, oh,

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I have to be the one that keeps coming and I've got to work this up within myself and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

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You recognize the beautiful balance. All that the father gives me will come to me.

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The reason I am coming to Christ present tense is because I've been given by the father to the son.

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It's the result of what God, the father has done and what God, the son has done and what

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God, the spirit is continuing to do within me. And for,

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I have come down from heaven. Jesus says not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.

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And what is the will of the one who has sent the son into the world? This is the will of him who sent me that of all that he has given me,

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I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day. There is assurance. The assurance of the believer is found in looking away from self and looking to the one who is able to save, who says he has the ability to save.

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The father's will for the son is that he'd be a perfect savior, that he'd be a perfect savior, that he lose none of those that have been given to him.

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Not based upon some idea of God looking down the corridors of, oh, he's going to believe in me.

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I'll give this a totally backwards. Leaves you with no assurance either, but totally backwards from what

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Jesus actually teaches. The reason that a believer has assurance and confidence is because in,

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I'm not looking at myself and seeing if I've checked off this, checked off that checked off this. The reason is first and foremost, the only foundation for assurance is in the perfection of Christ's savior hood.

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So for any reformed person, for any meaningful

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Calvinist, it's not my looking to myself. It is my looking to a perfect savior and to the confidence that comes that he has begun a good work and you will continue it until the day of Christ Jesus.

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So our, our foundation, the bedrock is it's not some surface level.

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You get your ticket punched, go off, do whatever you want. That is so far removed from anything in the new Testament that until the modern period,

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I can't think of anyone ever believed it. I can't think of anybody who ever believed it. I mean, that's exactly what

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James is preaching against. That's exactly what's preached against in first John. Go listen, go listen to the debate.

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You want to know who couldn't answer questions in debate? It's the guy in the video. It's, it's the, it's the guy engaging in the most amazing flights of ISIS.

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Jesus. Well, in between his putting really funny stuff on the screen, you know, well, anyways, you, you have to watch it to see, did we get, how did we get that on the video?

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By the way, we didn't. So you don't, do you, you don't get to see that. There are spots where the, the camera pans back wide enough to be able to see what he's putting up there.

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Does the, does the ramshackle shack get on there? I think it does. Yeah. Good. Good. I hope so. Cause, cause I don't know how anybody can understand what he was saying and what

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I said in response to him. They didn't see that. Yeah. That is the one problem. And having those kinds of presentations, but anyways, if you want to see the guy who failed the exegesis one -on -one test guy in the video, but there's, there's the foundation.

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Then let's look at, at, at first John five for a second. Could we, I may get to, to play his comments.

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I don't know. Maybe I won't. And I don't think anybody in channels even listening.

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They're, they're talking about stem cell research and stuff. They're off doing, doing their thing. So I, I don't even think they're listening to that.

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That's okay. First John five, one, whoever believes that Jesus is the

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Christ is born of God. And whoever loves the father, loves a child born of him. Don't have time to go into what's said here, but what is said here is everyone believing that Jesus, the

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Christ has been born of God. The reason you're believing is because you've been born of God. That's why you're believing.

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That's why there's a present tense. Belief is because of that work of regeneration. By this, we know that we love the children of God.

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When we love God and observe his commandments. Now, I just, I just stopped by this.

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We know what, what's John talking about? Because this is how we know we love the children of God.

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When we love God and observe his commandments, that's not a type of thing.

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That's not a point action type of thing. That's something that you experience over time. That's the result of the work of the spirit of God.

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That's the result of having been born of God. For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments and his commandments are not burdensome.

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Whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith. By the way, when anti -lordship advocates try to say that John never talks about repentance, can you read this and do this without repentance?

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Seriously? I mean, this whole idea of chopping the Bible up into parts and isolating things, that's, that's a good liberal thing.

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These people aren't liberals, but they do strange things. You don't see repentance there?

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The word's not there, but, do you really, is your, is your understanding of the nature of man so removed from biblical teaching that you, you think that that doesn't involve repentance?

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For whatever is born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith.

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Who is the one who overcomes the world? But he who believes that Jesus is the son of God. This is the one who came by water and blood,

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Jesus Christ, not with water only, but with the water and with the blood. It is the spirit who testifies, because the spirit is truth.

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For there are three that testify, the spirit and the water and the blood, and the three are in agreement. We're not going to talk about the Kamiohaniom today or any of the rest of that stuff.

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Not even get it, not even going there. If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater.

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The testimony of God is this, that he has testified concerning his son. The one who believes in the son, and again, hoppist you on here, present tense participle, same as it was up in 5 .1

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and in other places in John. The one who believes in the son of God has the testimony in himself.

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The one who does not believe has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has given concerning his son.

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And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his son. He who has the son has the life, he who does not have the son of God does not have the life.

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So clearly, it is being in possession of the son of God or being united with him, to use the language that would reflect the entire

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Yohanim corpus of teaching here. That's how you have life, is that there is this, well, to use

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Paul's terminology, union with Christ, in him, having the son, you have the son, you have life,

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John chapter 5, going back to the gospel, et cetera, et cetera. This, those 12 verses, that's what comes before verse 13.

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These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.

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This is the confidence, that's about, I would say that hei pate sia is about as close as you're gonna get in English to assurance, confidence.

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This is the confidence which we have before him that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.

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So, it was very, very common in Southern Baptist circles years and years ago.

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If you were one of the counselors who would counsel the person coming forward, that one of the things that you were to share with them was 1

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John 5, 13. Sort of to close the deal. That's what it was sort of about, was to close the deal, to give them assurance that they now knew

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Christ. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.

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What are these things? It says, tauta egrupsa.

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These things I have written. What things? Well, pretty obvious, it's actually the entire epistle.

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I mean, the immediately preceding section, but it's the whole epistle.

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And what is the whole epistle about? Loving God?

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Loving the one born of God? Loving believers?

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Keeping his commandments? Is that Te Reo concept in there?

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Keeping the commandments? Demonstrating your love for God by obedience?

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We were misusing this when we used it the way we did with a person who's just walked down the aisle.

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You could use this text in a meaningful fashion to say, you know, as you encounter the word of God, as you allow the word of God to to shine in your life and to expose those areas of your life where you want to learn to bring every aspect of your being under the lordship of Christ and you want to be pleasing to him.

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This is not how you save yourself. This is what saved people do. This is what their desires are. This is when you've taken out that heart of stone, you give a heart of flesh.

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What's that heart of flesh like? Now, what

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Dr. Wilkin in the video and we may have just we may never even get back to replaying it.

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I guess I'm just going to address all of it just in in this way, I guess. I don't know. What the anti -lordship people are trying to attack is the idea that as you live the

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Christian life, you grow in assurance because you you can't grow in assurance.

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It's ticket punched. The hole's there. That's it. There's no there's no growth in that.

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How can you be any more certain than that? Aren't we to grow in the grace and knowledge of the

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Lord Jesus Christ? Isn't it just a one -time thing? I know Jesus.

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That's it. Well, for some people, it's what it ends up being. Oh, but if we were to grow in the grace and knowledge of the

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Lord Jesus Christ, why is there something wrong in growing in our assurance? Because you see, as I get to know

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Jesus better and better, I grow in my assurance of his perfect ability to keep me and to save me.

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Does that mean I had false faith before and now I have true faith? No. Of course not. I sure hope if you're married, you know your wife better today than you did when you got married.

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Does that mean you weren't married before? That you weren't committed before? The reality is that there is a blessed truth in our sanctification and that is the saint that walks the

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Lord year in, year out, decade in, decade out.

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You wonder why so many of them have this this peace?

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Oh, every believer has peace with God. No question about it.

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But are you are we so surface level that we can't understand that there can be a growth in our experience, appreciation of, understanding of peace?

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Think about let's think about an example that we all are familiar with.

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Remember the peace that came to that blessed saint, the

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Lord in the concentration camp, in the hiding place,

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Kori Tenbu. Did she not have peace as a child?

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Did she not have peace as a young lady before the war began?

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Well, of course. But can't we understand how the peace that she experienced in the face of constant death and deprivation and and everything else that that has become a deeper peace that it has become an ever more precious peace?

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And the saint of God who sees himself or herself kept by the grace and power of God over and over again despite the many times

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I've had to be taught the same lesson over and over again.

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How many times I said, Oh, God's never gonna have to teach me this lesson again. And six months later, he's had to teach to me again.

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Did my did my assurance meter beep, beep, beep and say I'm in big trouble? I'm going to hell now? No. The fact that he has remained faithful to me through all of that only causes me to not only grow in my love for God and for his grace and for his mercy and for his long suffering, but it increases the character, nature, and depth of my assurance of his ability to continue to keep me.

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Otherwise, and this is one of the reasons that in my opinion, the anti -lordship position cannot produce maturity in Christians.

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I'm going to tell you something. When you have to answer a question like this by going, it does not produce maturity.

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And that was one of the things that shocked me in our debate. Ben is not mature. He acts in an amazingly childish way.

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But this, this whole perspective that tries to so, it produces a two -dimensional

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Christianity. There's no room for growth. There's no room for maturity. There's no room for a deepening of appreciation and understanding and experience.

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Now, when I look at what the scriptures teach on this subject, what

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I see is the absolute necessity of Christian maturity.

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And what is Christian maturity? I said it over and over again. Learning to keep your balance.

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On the one hand, and there's two, there's two, you know, you can always fall off the cliff one way or the other.

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I mean, it's like some of those videos that these guys wearing GoPros will do when they're up at the top of these incredible mountains and they're, they're walking along, you know, it's this wide.

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And then it's just, I can hardly even watch those things. Or riding.

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I can't, I can barely even watch those things. Unfortunately, that's exactly what we have here.

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There's, there's two sides you can fall off of. And I honestly believe that only the reformed understanding gives you the balance to be able to not fall off on one side or the other.

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I honestly believe that. On the one hand, we look away from ourselves.

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We recognize that if we are going to be saved, we are going to be saved solely by Christ by the work of His Spirit within us.

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That every sign of sanctification, of godliness, it all comes from His hand.

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It's all to His glory. It's all a part of His purpose. We see that. We're not synergists.

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We're not, you know, I remember my mom telling me years and years ago about going to a, a funeral.

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And I don't remember I think it was Seventh Day Adventist. We had a lot of Seventh Day Adventists in my family.

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And it was all about, well, I, I hope he didn't have an evil thought right before he died.

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I hope he was all fessed up. I hope he was ready. No assurance.

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Fear. No ability to rejoice at the life of and celebrate the life at the, at the end because there's this,

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I don't know, don't know, we can't know, we can't know on the other side.

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No, you don't want to go there. You get the ticket punch, never think about it stuff.

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You can fall off either direction. As a believer, I look at the word of God. I embrace the fact that my salvation is completely of Jesus Christ.

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At the same time, he wants me to walk in holiness.

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He wants my entire life to be a life of repentance and therefore,

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I have the biblical command. I must examine myself. He doesn't want apathetic surface level followers.

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That's not the work of the spirit of God in my life. And so, you say, but you said, you look away from yourself for my assurance, but in obedience,

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I look at myself and I have to recognize there are apostates in scripture.

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In this system, there isn't. I have to recognize there are apostates.

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You, you, you say, but you're a Calvinist, you don't believe in apostates. No, I don't believe that Christ loses any of his sheep, but there is plenty of false profession, plenty of false profession.

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I take serious. I really actually believe the parable of the soils and there are those you spread the seed and what happens?

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There's this instant growth and then the sun comes up. There's no root.

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There's no depth. There's never any fruit. Not true life.

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Jesus said that if you are in him, you will bear fruit. That's the point of John 15.

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And so, I don't take some surface level, got my ticket punched, fall off one side of the cliff that direction.

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I have to listen to all of Scripture. I have to hear all of Scripture. Does that mean that I somehow then, well, now it's up to me.

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No, there's only one, there's only one place where the balance is found where you can walk that path, but cutting something off because you're concerned about losing balance is not dealing with Scripture in an honest fashion.

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And as I said, this perspective go ahead and find it.

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I'm sure you can find it. I'll bet you anything there is a video online someplace of Bob Wilkin massacring

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James chapter 2. I'll bet it's there. But you cannot use the same exegetical methodology that you use to defend the deity of Christ, the resurrection, the atonement, the trinity, monotheism, etc, etc.

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You will not be able to use the same methodology of interpretation that you used for those things and then take that to James chapter 2 and follow

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Bob Wilkin through that. It can't be done. It can't be done. It won't happen. You'll have to shift.

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You'll have to change. And what have I said? Over and over and over again.

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Once you change your method of exegesis, that is the indication of a tradition.

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Here's my tradition. Here's where I am actually abandoning scriptural teaching and I am exalting a traditional teaching.

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Is who can utilize the consistent exegetical methodology all the way through.

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That's how you honor God's word. The only way you can say this is God speaking is if you use the same method of exegesis all the way through.

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And when you don't, there you go. There you go. There's the issue. So, wow,

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I didn't even go back through and replay it but I addressed the issue. And something tells me there's going to be all sorts of Twitter and Facebook discussion of this.

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Maybe you know obviously real quickly and if you want to walk through James chapter 2 24 pages

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James chapter 2 addressed right here look at that before saying oh you're being look at that first and who knows maybe we'll have to get to that but to be honest with you gotta get to Brownson eventually.

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It's it's absolutely for the church for our culture absolutely necessary that we get to Brownson as soon as we can.

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All right. With that said I hope that's useful to you. I hope that's helpful to you. Thanks. It's not an easy program but hopefully one that will have some some help be of help to people down the road.