May 3, 2005

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Casting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.
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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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Our host is Dr. James White, Director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an Elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the
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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. Okay, so the postman just goes by and so I get this package.
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I open it up and ordered this book and especially a lot of books I like to get or need to get aren't in print anymore but you look for them and you can buy them, you know, from a used bookseller or something like that, it becomes so much easier to find books, it really has.
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I sort of feel like I'm in a barrel again here. And anyway, I had ordered
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The History of the Council of Florence and it's a fairly unusual book here and it's in good shape
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I'm looking at here, this is good. Anyway, it's from the Orthodox side I can tell.
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But on the outside of the wrap, I mean, this just happened, Rich will tell you I walked in two minutes before the program started from getting this and just got it open.
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So this is the breaking news on the dividing line. And on the, the book has been wrapped in, you know, the brown type of wrapping paper thingy.
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And there are three sticky notes, handwritten sticky notes on the thing.
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And it says, thank you very much for your purchase, you know, this is a used bookstore so and it's here in Phoenix.
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So I'm wondering, do I know this person? I'm starting to wonder, given the name, if I do, but I'm not sure.
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Anyway, here's, here's the, here's the, what's on the sticky notes. P .S.
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The best book I have seen refuting the Petrine claims of Roman Catholicism is the
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Papacy by Ab, is it Guete? I'm having trouble reading this. That is
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Father Vladimir. I like Father Vladimir much more than I do Abbe Guete or I don't even know, is it
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French? I mean, there's so many different ways you can pronounce this. Anyway, written in the late 1800s, Vladimir quotes the very church fathers
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Roman Catholics do to support the primacy of Peter and then by quoting those same fathers elsewhere proves
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Petrine supremacy to be a great myth. The entire book, the Papacy, is online if you
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Google it. I'm sure someone in channel is about to Google the Papacy by Father Vladimir and will pop up a
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URL here in a second. A fellow named Valentin put up the entire book since it is now public domain and yet this book has never been refuted by RC apologists.
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So just saying, I don't know this person, what if I was a
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Roman Catholic, wouldn't that be hilarious? And there's all this information on little sticky notes on my thing here and I just heard it from Amazon.
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It's one of the used books folks, you know, from Amazon and so I just found that very very funny.
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It's great and I'm sure that we will have a URL here before long and then
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I'll have to figure out a way to download it. And you know the neat thing is I don't have to print it out. All I got to do is download it and with RepliGo, a wonderful program if you're a
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Palm user, you need RepliGo. I mean there's just no two ways about it. It is by far the best document reading program that I have found.
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It doesn't matter if it's a web page, PDF, Word document, whatever, as long as you can open it and print it from your computer, you can print it to RepliGo, it'll be on your
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PDA, fully readable, very very readable, really really neat and I would highly recommend it.
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I'm not, you know, getting any money for this or anything like that, but no, that's a
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URL is incorrect, whatever that thing there was, but anyway, welcome to the
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Dividing Line. I mentioned the last program that I assumed that we would probably,
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I would probably have in my hands the actual final edition of the Millett book by the time we did the next program and I am,
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I was semi -prophetic there, not really overly prophetic to assume that. Does that work with Pocket PCs, RepliGo?
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I don't know. I honestly don't know that part. Google RepliGo and it's Repli and then
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Go is part of the same word, but it's capitalized Geo. I forget the maker,
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I have a couple of other programs. I have so many programs in my Palm anymore, it's not even funny. I can't even keep track of them all.
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I mean, there's almost nothing that my Palm can't do to my laptop except play CDs and the
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T5 has a USB port in it, so you can plug in like your
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USB expansion stuff or your jump drives and stuff. So, I mean, basically there's just no limit anymore to the amount of memory that you can have and for those of you who remember, that's
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Repli, R -E -P -L -I -G -O. For those of you who remember the early Palms, remember those things?
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I got my first early Palm at a Christian Bookseller's Association meeting. I bought it off of my editor and it had been expanded to two megs of RAM.
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You could put one Bible on it and if you want, don't even bother doing a search.
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I mean, you could search a paper Bible faster than that could do that.
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Anyway, but to have what we've got now, I mean, I carry, and guys, if you want to get your wives to let you buy one of these things like a
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T5 or something, because I've got a T3, I'll eventually have to go with a T5, because man, being able to go USB, that's just incredible.
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Because, I mean, I've got a one gig USB jump drive I carry around with MP3s on it and stuff like that, so that's just incredible.
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But the way to get your wives to let you do that is to put all your family pictures on it or show them someone who has.
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That's what I do. I do that for the guys when I go to various churches. I pull it out. I start showing all my family pictures, like here's my wife and my daughter and they're full color and they're gorgeous and all this stuff, and it's just a perfect selling point.
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Because then she's like, oh, well, that looks a lot nicer than those old ratty pictures you've got in your wallet, you know?
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And yeah, it makes a great Mother's Day gift too. Yeah, that'd be good.
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Look, dear, I got you a Palm T5. Isn't that wonderful? Anyway, what I was trying to say was, and I'm not sure how,
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I've got to stop watching the channel because there's too many odd people in there. Well, there's always odd people in there, but anyway,
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I did get the Millet book and I was just, I hadn't yet done the main thing
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I need to do, and that is to check page numbers. In fact, I'm doing that even as we speak right here, because probably the most important statement in the book is in the afterword by Richard Mao.
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It's on page 183 of the manuscript I looked at, so I'm putting that down now.
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I'm turning to page 183 of the book and I think they are the same. Yep. Oh, goody, goody, goody.
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I don't have to change any of the numbers. That's wonderful. That's wonderful. Page 183 of the book is page 183 of the manuscript.
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So I'm happy about that. That means I don't have to change any of the review that I wrote for the CRI Journal. But it arrived, and the only difference is that we now have the endorsements.
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And if any of you have been following the blog, you know the endorsements are part of the news as well.
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But before we do that, before I go to the book, and I'm going to spend some time in the book today, hold off on calls until at least, someone try to remind me, we'll see where we are at half past and figure out if we're going to take calls from there.
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But I need to look at a few things. I got the issue 59 of the
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Founders Journal. Just got it today. And I was very pleased to see that the very first article, it sounds very familiar.
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It sounds familiar because I think this is pretty much what Tom Askell presented,
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Dr. Tom Askell's pastor of Grace Baptist Church, Cape Coral, Florida. And I have a feeling that his presentation at our conference last year in Los Angeles, some of you may recall that, was on the subject of imputation.
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And I have a feeling the first article up on page one is a summary or expansion or, you know, based on that.
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And I note that at one point, there is a footnote to my discussion with, my discussion about Dr.
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Mark Seyfried, Christ Our Righteousness. That's footnotes seven and eight at that particular point.
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And there is a discussion of it. And I'm very glad to see that.
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I've got to admit, I'm looking forward to getting a chance sometime.
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I didn't have a chance in California. Hopefully, I will in Seattle because I think I can now verify that Dr.
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Askell will be speaking for us in Seattle, at least I know we've invited him to. I think if Michael Fallon is listening or somebody is listening who can tell me that, that we've been able to verify that.
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One of the things I'm going to absolutely ask is that somehow I find time to have dinner with Tom because,
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A, I appreciate the fact that he addressed that subject. It is near and dear to my heart as well.
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But beyond that, I just, I can tell that Tom Askell is going to be another person who would fully understand, one of the folks on the channel last night and I were talking about this, a young fellow by the name of Dale Valente who comes in the channel, he's in there right now in fact.
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And we were talking about how, you know what, we sort of feel, you feel out of sync with the external trappings of Christianity today.
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You really do. If you have, if you have a biblical set of priorities, you know,
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I mentioned to him in the channel, I said go read 1st 2nd Timothy, Titus, 2nd
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Peter and Jude. And you, you read those books and you're just not going to feel comfortable with a lot of the modern quote -unquote evangelicalism, which
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I don't call evangelicalism anymore, it's pseudo -evangelicalism, post -evangelicalism, whatever.
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If you don't have a concern for the gospel, how do you call it evangelicalism anyways? You just feel, you feel out of place.
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You sort of feel like you're on a different page, you know what I mean? And it seems like what's important to everybody else isn't important to you.
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You know, you're not running around with your Jabez stuff and your purpose -driven life stuff and you just don't find those things to be, you know, overly attractive and interesting and in fact you find them to be fluffy and unbiblical and what you want to talk about is not what they want to talk about, you know?
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And I fully understood that and I have a feeling Tom would understand that because I just imagine in writing this article on the imputation of the righteousness of Christ and issues related to the active and passive obedience of Christ and these are things that, again, if you're new to the program, and I know there's a lot of folks that are, it's obvious from the fact that a couple of days ago we get up in the morning and our website's down because we ran out of space, well bandwidth actually, and because we set all new records.
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I mean, just people hitting us right and left and so you're probably listening and this may be the first time you have listened to the program or you've just started listening to it, you've just started following the blog and things like that.
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But these are issues we have discussed rather extensively in the past. Last summer we were addressing the issue of Dr.
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Seifried's work and his statements about imputation, the active and passive obedience of Christ, things like that and there are just only a certain, there's only a certain spectrum of people today that find that to be at all something that, to borrow the terminology of John Murray, rings the bells of the heart.
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He was talking about how justification as a whole doesn't tend to do that and he was talking about it in his own day, it's considerably worse
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I would say today than it was then. You just don't find a whole lot of discussion of these things and sadly what discussion you do find is of people who once confessed that that was central and important and now are repenting of their having believed that that was important, they're repenting of their over -emphasis upon systematic theology and they're repenting of their having been reformed, they're repenting of their narrow -mindedness, etc.,
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etc., etc., there's a lot of that kind of repenting going on I guess. And so I just wonder when
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I see an article like this, I imagine amongst the founders folks, because let's see the next article is on, is some
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Tom Nettles recapturing the complementarity of law and gospel is the next one and then the moral silence of divorce,
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Peter Yoder, that looks real interesting. Anyway, I'll just drop it on the keyboard and shut down the whole computer.
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I would imagine at least the folks who are going to be reading something like that would find those articles to be somewhat interesting but still, that's not going to make that the most popular journal on the planet.
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That's not going to make your ministry big and huge and massive and it's not going to get you the fancy cars and the big speaking invitations.
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It's just not going to happen that way. And I certainly recognize that. I mean, people look at the things we focus upon and they just roll their eyes.
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I mean, I feel sorry for anybody who tries to market this place. I mean, really.
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Oh, great. You made a name by mentioning the issues of the gospel when the
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Pope died. That was real popular. That made a lot of people love you. And now you're going after Eerdmans because they're publishing
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LDS apologetics works from a real nice Mormon. He's a nice man. Haven't you read it?
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He's a very nice man and Richard Mouw likes him and Craig Blomberg likes him, too.
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And you're just so mean and narrow -minded. It's like we are absolutely intent upon being as little as possible forever.
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And I know that's what it looks like. It's not. That's going to be the inevitable result of trying to stand for truth in the midst of an entire flow of apostasy.
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And that's what we see around us. I mean, how else do you describe it? You know, and I can just hear the people rolling their eyes.
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I say, sectarians, they're not really Catholic. They don't want unity in the body.
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Well, where have you heard that type of stuff before? Isn't that somewhat similar to the kind of mockery of the prophets in Israel during times of apostasy?
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You know, get on board. Why are you such a stick in the mud? You know, there's 99 prophets that are prophesying peace, and you're the one stinking guy that can't get on the train here.
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What's your problem? You just like being mean and nasty, doesn't it?
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And that sounds somewhat familiar. And yet, who was right? Was it the 99 prophesying peace? No, it wasn't.
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Ask the Egyptians when they came flooding in, or the Babylonians, or the Assyrians, or whoever is running the people of Israel over that particular point in time.
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And so when you're in the middle of a culture that is absolutely intent upon denying
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God's law, denying morality, denying the rulership of God, the creatorship of God, and it's embracing a worldview of postmodernism that is anti -Christian, it is opposed to the way that God had created us.
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I do not believe a person can think as a postmodernist without it being sin. Do you hear that? It's sinful to think that way.
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Emergent church folks, hello, earth to emergent church folks, you are coddling sin. It is rebellious, it is sinful to think in the way that postmodernism would have you to think.
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God is the creator, God has spoken, God has revealed his truth.
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He can do that. He can use language to do that. And so if you stand against that stuff, you're going to look like, well, like what we look like today.
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That's just all there is to it. And it's just the way it is.
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Anyways, I want to get a chance to sit down and have lunch, dinner, or something with Tom Askle when we go to Seattle.
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No one ever told me whether I was right about that, or I missed it if they did. But I think that he is going to be speaking for us there, at least
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I hope so. So anyway, I've heard rumors. You've heard rumors? I've heard rumors. I know we want him, but they're not he wants us.
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There's a guy. That does seem to be our problem these days. Might be a different story, but I know we want him.
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That does seem to be our problem these days. There's someone who's allegedly in channel right now who's ignoring us, and he would be able to tell us one way or the other.
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Because I thought for certain I saw a PM from him a couple days ago saying that Tom was deaf and had just confirmed that he'll be there.
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So I hope so. But anyway, I did. See, I started preaching, and now
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I don't have. Oh, I just got a bunch of pics from the. I just got a picture from the debate with Bob Wilkin.
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And it's even before the debate started. So this is before I knew what was going to happen. And you can see the look on my face is
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I don't know that I want to be in this picture right now. That's funny.
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That is really funny. Who did this come from?
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Oh, this is from Wilkin's folks. I need to forward this on to somebody across the way here, because they're asking about DVDs and CDs of the debate.
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I think you need to explain them. We'll send you raw footage, but if you want to make it, you get to make it yourself. So anyway.
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Yeah, blog it. I thought that was taken on his camera, and it was.
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And there it is. And the look on my face is I'm not sure that I want to. Yeah, hold it up to the microphone.
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Well, no. Come on. It's right on the screen. The screen's right there next to the microphone. You should be able to see it. Just imagine things.
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Anyways, I do want to get to this book. Good grief, I started preaching again. I'm looking, of course, at another
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Christ, at another Jesus, the book. How many things can we talk about here?
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My goodness. I'll have to confess, how long has it been since we have discussed
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Mormonism on this program? I don't remember the last time we did, for example, the
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Eternal Law of Progression presentation. We did that, what, maybe four years ago, maybe?
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Three at the earliest, where I made the PowerPoint presentation available for download, and then
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I was able to go through it here on the program. I think we did it over the course of two programs, if I recall.
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Somebody tell Ray to shut up. I'm not blogging the picture. Maybe later on, but I don't exactly have time to sit here and take a huge picture and shrink it down to the proper size and FTP it to the proper site.
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I can multitask, but I can't do that. I'm sorry. I have my limits. Anyway, it has been forever since we have talked about Mormonism.
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And the sad thing is, the result of that, I think, for a lot of folks, I know there's a number of regulars on the channel, for example, that have probably never heard an in -depth discussion of Mormonism from me, and I apologize for that.
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Part of it, I'll be honest, part of it is due to the fact that we don't go up to the general conference every six months anymore.
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I mean, that obviously kept you fairly fresh. You had to review things.
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You talked with LDS people.
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And, yeah, Ian Nielsen was just telling us that March 2001 looks like, looking back at the archives, and it's been a while.
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And part of it is because, you know, I was only at the Easter pageant one night this past year because I was in England, and it's sort of sad.
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And I'll be very, very honest with you, a lot of the drive that I had to deal with Mormonism began to be sapped away at the same time as this movement began that is specifically designed to blunt any type of apologetics to the
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LDS people. It's specifically designed to blunt outreach to the Mormon people. And the people who've been involved with it, the quote -unquote evangelicals who've been involved with it,
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I don't know if they're just grossly naive. I don't know what their problems are, but they don't realize, at least
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I would like to think they don't realize, well, some of them don't realize. I have my doubts about others, but some don't even realize that they have been used and that the
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LDS apologetics community is just laughing their heads off, going,
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I cannot possibly believe that these people have handed us this kind of victory, handed us this kind of endorsement, just unbelievable.
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We will never have to address a meaningful issue ever again because we've got so much stuff we can throw out now to derail conversations and to distract people.
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All we've got to do is quote Richard Mao now, and we won't ever have to deal with any of the tough stuff that we haven't been able to deal with all along.
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We can just throw all this stuff out there, and that's pretty much it.
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And so I started, you know, when you're somewhat the lone voice in that type of situation, it's not that we stop doing the outreach, it's just that your passions move elsewhere.
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It's a whole lot harder for me to deal with alleged evangelicals, with alleged
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Christians who become the servants of evil in essence by betraying the truth than it is to deal with straight -up heretics.
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Walter Martin put it that way. I said, you know, I'm glad that Benedict XVI is
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Pope because as Walter Martin put it, I'd like my heretics straight up please, thank you. And it's a whole lot easier to deal with someone who's straightforward than it is to deal with the others, and that's the case.
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I would much rather, you know, I have something to say to a believing Mormon, a
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Mormon who is unafraid, a Mormon who will not, you know, soft -sell
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Joseph Smith, a Mormon who believes what Brigham Young said and says, excuse me, but anyone who honestly reads the sermons of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young and the
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Twelve Apostles when they went to Utah and reads what these men said knows that the
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Mormon Church claimed clear and explicit knowledge that God was once a man who lived on another planet and was exalted to the status of Godhood.
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That's not even a question. I mean, when we first started witnessing to Mormons, the young kids were defending that.
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They knew that. That's what made Mormonism Mormonism. And now you've got BYU professors going, well, you know, all we've really got is this one little statement of Joseph Smith, and all you've really got is this one couplet from, you know,
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Lorenzo Snow, and, you know, we just don't know much beyond that.
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Well, what do you mean you don't know much beyond that? Your entire temple ceremony is wrapped around the concept of exaltation to Godhood and that God was once a man.
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I mean, these people will sit there and, I mean, it's the standard farms tactic.
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It really is. The standard farms tactic is when you quote from the Journal of Discourses, well, you know that's not scripture.
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And when you quote from Orson Pratt, well, good grief, don't you know, you know, Brigham Young had to rebuke him and they had disagreements and that's not mainstream and da -da -da -da.
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Well, guess what sources Millett is constantly quoting from in his book? The Journal of Discourses, the
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Discourses of Orson Pratt, they get to quote whatever they want and they can spin it any direction they want.
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If you dare quote from those same sources and then demonstrate, as I did, and you know what, Rich was saying this and I, we've got to do this.
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I don't know what it's going to cost to do it. I don't know how we're going to do it. But we've got to get Is the Mormon My Brother back in print.
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We can do it. We just need somebody who's willing to publish it or, you know,
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I'm going to talk to the folks at Solid Ground and see what their situation is. Wouldn't it be cool to take that book, because I have it all on disk, take that book, add a chapter or two to bring it up to the current situation in response, for example, to a different Jesus, you know, because all the documentation is there.
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I mean, I spent nearly 100 pages just going over how do Mormons determine what is revelation, how to determine what is authoritative, and then
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I broke down page after page after page after page after page of citations from the
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LDS Church into the categories. And we still have a few of those left, don't we?
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Aren't there still some? Yeah, we still have a number of them left, but the number is dwindling fast. Okay.
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And I anticipate with this particular issue at hand and fresh and new again, we're going to run out of those pretty quick.
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Well, and that's good. It needs to get back out there, and we need to do something with it. But I took the time to exhaustively document and break it down into the levels of authority.
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I mean, talk about bending over backwards to do what these folks won't do.
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Yeah, let's see if Erdman's will do it. Yeah, let's contact Erdman's and see if they'd like to put this, or my brother, back in print.
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You know, the funny thing is that's exactly what a lot of these companies would do. That's exactly what they would do.
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Just try to say, see, we're fair. Fair and balanced. Yeah, we're Fox, and we're the
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Fox News of Christian publishers. Anyway, bent over backwards to accurately represent this stuff.
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But the fact of the matter is, let me just read something to you. I know, I'm sounding rather excited today.
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Here's question five, page 143, for those of you who have obtained the book or will obtain the book or are taking notes or something, whatever.
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Page 143, under recurring questions. Question number five, Joseph Smith taught that man may become like God, and that God was once a man.
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Now remember, this is page 143. We're finally now getting to this. This should have been, to any meaningful discussion of the fundamental foundational differences between Mormonism and Christianity, this is where it starts.
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You don't wait until page 143. If you wait to page 143, either
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A, you don't know what the fundamental differences are, and don't tell me Robert Millet doesn't know. Don't tell me that,
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I mean, if he's been running around with Greg Johnson and Craig Blomberg and all the rest of these guys who are a part of the
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Night of Friendship up in the Tabernacle and all the rest of that stuff, if any of those guys haven't been like really open and saying, excuse me, but the fundamental difference here is that we're monotheists and you're not, then shame on them.
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But something tells me even then, that's, he knows.
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That's why it is on page 143 and not on page 3. That's why it's there. How can
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Latter -day Saints believe such ideas, that is, that God is once a man? Are they not blasphemous and do not lower the
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Almighty in the eternal scheme of things? Answer. I think that I have never opened myself to questions before a group of persons, not of our faith, and I have not been asked about our doctrine of God and the
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Godhead, particularly concerning the teaching of Joseph Smith and Lorenzo Snow. I stop.
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Excuse me, Joseph Smith and Lorenzo Snow? How about Brigham Young and Orson Pratt and every single stinking one of the
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General Authorities up to only 30 years ago, who were very clear about these things?
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Go read Joseph Hillingsworth. Go read Bruce R. McConkie. Come on. Joseph Smith and Lorenzo Snow?
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That's why I look at this and I go, this isn't non -purposeful. This is very purposeful. You don't, you do not limit.
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If I were to say, if someone were to ask me a question about Calvinism, and I were to purposefully limit
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Calvin's teaching on predestination to Calvin and the first generation of Calvinists, am
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I not trying to insinuate to you that we no longer believe those things or that it's a very limited presentation, whereas the fact of the matter is any
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Calvinist talks about those things? Of course. So anyway, particularly concerning the teaching of Joseph Smith and Lorenzo Snow, I generally do not have too much difficulty explaining our view of how, through the atonement, man can eventually become like God, become more and more
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Christlike. For that matter, Orthodox Christianity, a huge segment of the Christian world, still holds to a view of human deification.
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Now, I stop. There's another reason why Is the
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More of My Brother needs to be put back in print is because one of the longer, and it's at least one of the more accessible, it's not that it's the most in -depth thing on the planet, it's plenty in -depth for most folks, but one of the longest discussions of this, it's actually accessible to people, understandable to people, regarding what quote -unquote deification in Eastern Orthodox theology was all about, called the term theosis, is in Is the
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More of My Brother. And that was unfortunately taken out of print by Bethany House a couple years ago now.
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Anyway, that is a, I believe, a misrepresentation of the
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Orthodox view regarding deification. The Orthodox are not polytheists. The Bible itself teaches that men and women may become partakers of the divine nature, 2
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Peter 1 .4. Join heirs with Christ, Romans 8 .17. Gain the mind of Christ, 1 Corinthians 2 .16.
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And become perfect, even as our Father in Heaven is perfect, Matthew 5 .48. Remember folks, this is published by Erdmann's.
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Just so you, are you, see those of you who know Mormonism are sitting there going, yeah, yeah, that's the standard Mormon line, that's what the
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Mormon missionaries say, that's what we talk about out on the street corner. And isn't it amazing to discover that it's being published by Erdmann's.
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It was just by our amazing high -tech system. Amazing high -tech system.
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Here at the massive palatial offices of Alpha and Omega Ministries, CD number 442 at aomin .org
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is the discussion of deification on the radio in Salt Lake City. And then if you listen to that one, you'll get really somewhat, how do
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I put this, frustrated. Because I was up against two Mormons, the host of the program was not a host, he was a debater.
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And the host of the program was a Mormon attorney who, I'm going to be perfectly honest with you, was pretty snotty on the program, was pretty short and curt.
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And what you want to do is after you listen to that, is you want to get the debate that I did with him on the plurality of gods and what the
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Bible teaches about that in Salt Lake City, because it's absolutely amazing the difference that having control of the microphone makes when it comes to a presentation like that.
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I don't know what the order number for that one is, but it's the one with Martin Tanner, and you can look for Martin Tanner, it should come up.
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Our very fast, highly complex technological system is looking, which means
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Rich is over there tapping away at Internet Explorer or Mozilla or whatever it is. He's using,
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I use Mozilla, I detest Internet Explorer. But anyway, if it's ever found,
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I will remember to, you know, it would help if I opened up a window there, then it would just show up.
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I forgot to open up my super -duper window. All right, I go back to reading here.
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The Apostle John declared, Beloved, now are we the children of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be.
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We know that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 1 John 3 .2. In addition, this doctrine is taught clearly in Modern Revelation, D &C 76, 58, 132, 19 -20.
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Once again, fully responded to in certain books that are no longer in print and need to be put back in print.
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And so we will certainly pursue that. The tougher issue for many Christians to deal with.
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Now notice this. The tougher issue for many Christians to deal with. We have to deal with this? Can men become gods 449?
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Sounds right. Maybe it's 449. Anyways, for those we're looking at. The tougher issue for many Christians to deal with is the accompanying doctrine set forth in the
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King Follett Sermon and the Lorenzo Snow Couplet, namely that God was once a man.
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Now let me stop once again. Excuse me. That is a partially true statement.
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It is partially true. No one can read the King Follett funeral discourse.
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And I, please, if you have any interest at all in Mormonism, you need to read the
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King Follett funeral discourse. I reproduced the vast majority of it in Is the
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Mormon My Brother? You need to read it. All you get here is a sentence.
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Joseph Smith was not mentioning this in passing. He presented it as the first principle of the gospel, and Mormons for a century believed him.
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More than a century. All the way up through, I would say,
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Spencer W. Kimball, it was front and center. It was not hidden.
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It was part and parcel of what defined Mormonism. So it's not just these two sources.
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It's not just Lorenzo Snow. Lorenzo Snow was simply repeating what was being preached by Brigham Young and by Orson Pratt and Wilford Woodruff and all the rest of the early leaders of Mormonism.
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There's no question of any of this. To limit it to only two sources like this is to, again, prey upon the fact that 97 .5
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% minimally of the people who are going to be reading this book don't have any knowledge whatsoever of the background of these things.
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And so they're not going to even know that they're being taken to task. That they're in essence being deceived at this point.
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Anyway. Name that guides one to man. Latter -day Scriptures state unequivocally that God is a man, a man of holiness,
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Moses 6 .57, who possesses a body of flesh and bones, Doctrine and Covenants 130 .22.
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Quite true. These concepts are clearly part of what Mormons call the doctrinal restoration. We teach that man is not a lower order or different species than God.
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I'm glad that made it in there. This, of course, makes many of our Christian friends extremely nervous, if not angry, for it appears to them that we are pulling
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God down and thus attempting to bridge the creator -creature chasm. Well, there is no question of it.
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No question of that at all. I mean, if God was once a man who lived on another planet like you and I, how does that not destroy that chasm?
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That is a question I just realized. I just now looked at the clock. Is there a particular reason? Do we have something new that we need to cover today during the break?
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No? Okay. All right. We'll just keep going because I've... Thank you. We'll have something new the next time maybe,
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Thursday? I understand that there's a new, okay, a new tremendously high -quality production heading our direction.
39:56
So that's what we'll do. Okay. Hey, if Rush Limbaugh can talk to his production guys, then
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I can too. There's only one of them. It'll be on the debate. We will have not just a...
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We will not... It is probably the most famous spot we've ever had is the
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Alaska spot. You know? And it's beautiful. Isn't it well done? I mean, I just, you know, you cannot help but know we're going to Alaska at the end of August, early
40:28
September. This is about the debate with John Dominick Crossan. Some of you are putting off.
40:33
You're making reservations. You know, we need rooms. We need to know who's coming.
40:39
We need to know all the stuff about, you know, how many people to expect and all that stuff. And you need to be making your reservations now.
40:46
And that's what the program, the spot's going to be, not program, the spot's going to be about. So make sure to tune in on Thursday evening to hear the new
40:54
Alpha Omega Ministries commercial spot. You got to admit something, folks.
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We take one break. One break. How many breaks? Remember when I was interviewing
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Marty Minto? I think he got tired because Rich kept mentioning in the private message window,
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Marty would have taken 14 breaks by now. Marty would have taken 28 breaks by now. And it's true. I mean, you don't have to talk for more than about, you know, three -and -a -half minutes in a row when you're doing most of the talk radio formats.
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You only have to really think hard for about three -and -a -half minutes and then you're off into some commercial break for the next three -and -a -half minutes and then boop, boop, boop, boop.
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That's just sort of how it works. That's how they pay the bills. Anyhow, I continue on.
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All we can say, now here's, anyone who knows Mormonism, who's read the
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Journal of Discourses, who's read McConkie, who's read Joseph Fielding Smith, who's read Articles of Faith, who's read
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Jesus the Christ, you've taken the time to read and honestly listen to what
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Mormon apostles. Remember, Robert Millet is not even a general authority.
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He's not even a general authority. He's not an apostle. He's a scholar at BYU.
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All right? If you've taken the time to read all this stuff, you know how central this is.
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You know how this is absolutely central to the religion of the
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Latter -day Saints, their historical beliefs, their building of temples, genealogical work, everything.
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And here is what, let's see, one, two paragraphs.
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I will read them and I will do my best not to stop. I may break my own word there, but two paragraphs is all this gets.
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Here it is. All we can say is that from our perspective, the distance between God and man is still tremendous, almost infinite.
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Latter -day Saints worship a God in heaven who is infinite and eternal, from everlasting to everlasting, the same unchangeable
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God, the framer of heaven and earth and all things which are in them, D &C 2017. Our Father in heaven is indeed omnipotent, omniscient, and by the power of his
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Holy Spirit omnipresent. He is gloried, exalted. He is agloried.
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I'm not sure if that's supposed to be glorified. But he is a gloried, exalted, resurrected being, the only supreme governor and independent being in whom all fullness and perfection dwell.
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In him every good gift and every good principle dwell. He is the Father of lights. In him the principle of faith dwells independently.
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And he is the object in whom the faith of all other rational and accountable beings center for life and salvation.
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Modern revelation attests that the Almighty sits enthroned with glory, honor, power, majesty, might, dominion, truth, justice, judgment, mercy, and an infinity of fullness,
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D &C 109 .77. Second paragraph. And what do we know beyond the fact that God is an exalted man?
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What do we know of his mortal existence? What do we know of the time before he was God? Nothing! Exclamation point.
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We really do not know more than what was stated by Joseph Smith, and that is precious little.
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Insights concerning God's life before Godhood are not found in the standard works, in official declarations or proclamations, in current handbooks or curricular materials, nor are doctrinal expositions on the subject delivered in general conference today.
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This topic is not what we would call a central and saving doctrine, one that must be believed or understood in order to hold a temple recommend or be in good standing in the church.
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End of discussion. Well. Okay, did you trip over what
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I tripped over? I don't know. Almost infinite? Oh, I. Isn't that kind of like saying she's almost pregnant?
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Yep. That's, yep. I mean, one could say, well, gee, our God's almost finite?
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No way! I. There is. It's. I'm dying. I know. I. That's why
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I emphasized it. I've said this for the last several years. These guys have taken the political method of spin.
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Oh. As their way of presenting their religion. Well, that's certainly how the apologists are handling it, and it's worked.
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Oh, has it worked. They've accomplished exactly what they've wanted to accomplish. Thanks to the likes of Richard Mao, they have used them like, oh, unbelievable.
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Yes, it's almost infinite. Then you'll notice that, and again, folks, when
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I quoted, when I said a God in heaven who is infinite and eternal from everlasting and everlasting, same unchangeable God, then
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I quoted Doctrine and Covenants 2017. How many of you, I'd like to ask the studio audience, which is called the channel, how many of you in channel have ever read the
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Doctrine and Covenants of the LDS Church? Anybody in there has ever read the Doctrine and Covenants of the
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LDS Church? How many of you, let's put it this way, how many of you even possess the Doctrine and Covenants of the
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LDS Church? Well, I happen to have the
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Doctrine and Covenants in my hand. And I've certainly read them and studied them. And immediately off the top of my head,
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I realize how, okay, I'll use the term, deceptive this citation is.
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You know why it's deceptive? You see, the person who is reading this, who picks up this book at the local
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LDS bookstore and at this point is completely confused. And I'm sorry, did I say LDS bookstore? See, I've been at this too long.
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The person who picks this up at their local Christian bookstore and reads this says, well, there it is in the
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LDS scriptures. The problem is, as anyone knows who's actually taken the time to study this stuff, is that the
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LDS scriptures are not written at one point. And the Doctrine and Covenants represent the revelations of Joseph Smith over a period of years.
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And in point of fact, Joseph Smith's theology and his Doctrine of God evolved massively in the middle 1830s.
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When Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon, 1829 -1830, he was not a polytheist.
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In fact, he was a modalist. Look at Mosiah chapter 15 in the Book of Mormon. That is a bad attempt on Joseph Smith's part to express the
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Doctrine of the Trinity. He didn't understand it. He made the same mistakes that many evangelicals make, but he was still a
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Trinitarian. He still said there was only one true God. The Book of Mormon says that over and over again. And Doctrine and Covenants section 20 just happens to have been written when?
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April of 1830. April of 1830.
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Now that's long before he developed the very doctrine that is allegedly under discussion at this point in time in Millett's book.
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Now does Millett know that? Of course Millett knows that. So why are you quoting a section of LDS scripture that was written before Joseph Smith ever began talking about the plurality of gods as if this is somehow relevant to the subject?
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His view changed. His view changed. Then the next big section is quoted from the lectures on faith.
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Again, prior to his development of the concept of a plurality of gods.
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So to say that we know nothing of the time before God was God, well then why did
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LDS apostles speak about it? Why did
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Orson Pratt preach about it? How many people reading this book would know that they did?
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How many would know the centrality of the idea that we need to recognize that God went through this mortal probation like we're going through this mortal probation and he proved himself to be faithful and he was worthy and he was exalted to the status of godhood?
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I may have missed it, but I don't think I did. I don't think Dr. Millett mentions anywhere in this book the fact that their own hymnal and maybe they'll change this now too,
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I don't know, that their own hymnal talks about our heavenly mother. That God was a polygamist.
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That he has plural wives. How in the world did our heavenly mother end up in the
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LDS hymnal if in point of fact we don't know anything about these things?
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This is really an honest presentation? Yeah, it's about as honest as when
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Daniel C. Peterson identified as 19th century scattered speculation the doctrine that God the
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Father is the literal physical parent of Jesus Christ. There's another big long chapter in Is the
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More of My Brother, which they've never responded to by the way, documenting the errors of that kind of assertion as well.
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It is this kind of presentation, this is why I have been somewhat exercised when
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I see Eerdmans defending this book. When I see
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Eerdmans saying, well, you know, this really isn't that big a deal and you need to understand what we're trying to do here.
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The current blog article, by the way, is all about this. The one for May 2nd.
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Eerdmans is talking about the good things about the book. The good things about the book and says, there are a lot of Mormons in the
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US and across the globe. 5 .2 million strong and growing. Well, it's actually 12 million.
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We're just a little bit off on our numbers there. Listen to what Eerdmans is saying. This is from Mr.
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Thompson, who is the head of sales for Eerdmans. I'm sure he's quite concerned about what's being said.
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If I was the head of sales, I would be too. While there is a fair body of literature, it tells evangelicals and other
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Christians how to witness or evangelize Mormons. How to witness? Is there a word to missing there?
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There is precious little published that clarifies what Mormons themselves think. Really? I don't think
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Mr. Thompson has been to the LDS bookstore recently. Frankly, he says, a lot of evangelical material about Mormons is inaccurate.
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Well, thank you, Mr. Thompson. Thank you very much for saying that. Would you like to be more specific, please?
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You see, I've said that. I've said that the Ed Decker stuff is inaccurate on a number of issues.
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Some of the stuff is good, but I got Ed Decker all mad at me back when
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Godmakers 2 came out because I opposed it. And I said, this is wrong. You don't engage in this kind of argumentation.
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See how much that gets you. Thank you very much, Mr. Thompson, for buying into the
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Mal apology that, of course, has no specificity to it and just simply throws everyone who has witnessed to the
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Mormons for the past decades, especially I think of people, I'm not even thinking first and foremost of myself there, people who were there long before I was,
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I think of Gerald and Sandra Tanner and their faithfulness up there all these decades.
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Thank you, Dr. Mal, for throwing them under the bus, for handing their enemies the greatest gift they could have ever wanted.
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We thank you, Dr. Mal. How about Wally Tope? Yeah, good old
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Wally. Well, he was the firebrand, last person to die in the Los Angeles riots, beaten to death by looters.
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He was up there in Salt Lake City. He was up there in Provo. Throw them under the bus, Dr. Mal. Thank you, sir.
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Appreciate that. Don't bother reading what any of those people have done. Don't bother looking at the lives they've dedicated to witnessing the
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Mormons and have dug up. No, Dr. Mal lives up there in academia and he's met with the
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BYU professors and we know BYU now runs the Mormon church. The prophets and apostles have been demoted.
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They are now just figureheads. It is the folks at BYU who run Mormonism and if they say it, then it must be true.
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Thank you very, very much. Frankly, a lot of the evangelical material about Mormons is inaccurate.
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We won't tell you what it was, but we'll say that. Granted the serious departures in Mormonism from more orthodox views of Christ.
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Ah! Did you hear that? Granted the serious departures in Mormonism from more orthodox views of Christ.
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What is the only really way to understand that language there? Now, what they're saying is, well, you know, there's very serious departures here, but, but, that's only from more orthodox views of Christ.
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Shouldn't that fact want to make Christians better understand the Mormon view of Jesus? Hmm. Well, where are you going to get accurate information at that point?
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Are you going to get it from those who have been deceived by false teaching? Should Paul have recommended to us that we go by the
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Judaizers books? Or maybe Paul should have included in the New Testament a book by the Judaizers, so we would better understand their own views.
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Is that what we should do? I'm left absolutely speechless here.
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It's amazing to me that anyone could speak this way and not realize the utter inanity, the complete lack of logical coherence to anything they're saying.
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I guess part of it, you know, if you're wondering why I'm so agitated about it, if you had witnessed to as many
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LDS people as I have stood on the street corners for decades in Mesa, in Salt Lake City, thousands of people over those years, and then to hear these people who obviously haven't a clue what they're talking about.
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They've never been out there. I never saw them. I never saw Mr. Thompson. I never saw Dr. Mao out there.
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I never saw them stand there talking to those missionaries. I've stood in the parking lot of the
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Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah with Mike Beliveau, the co -founder of this ministry.
56:19
We had had to stop at the dam up there in Page.
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On the way up, a couple days earlier, as we were driving up in my 1964 Dodge Dart with no two body panels the same color, had holes in the floor panels, so the cold air was coming through.
56:35
We had to stop and get multiple socks on our feet so we wouldn't freeze. And we nursed that old beast into the parking lot there.
56:44
And I've stood there with the LDS missionaries. I've been escorted off the property by the security. When we walked right into the
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Missionary Training Center, the two of us and 1 ,500 missionaries. I mean, at least it looked like that.
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I've never seen so many dark pants and white shirts in my life. I didn't see Richard Mao there.
57:02
I didn't see Mr. Thompson there. I didn't see any of those folks who have handed to farms the greatest smoke -blowing device ever created in the apologetic realm.
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It's because they weren't there. They've decided to accept the views of the few at the cost of the many.
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I can hear somebody right now go, Well, Mormonism is changing. Yeah, it is. But we don't know what it's going to change into.
57:39
And you still got to deal with it the way it is now, not the way you speculate it might become. When it becomes that, fine.
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We'll deal with it. We will certainly be able to demonstrate that it has absolutely positively no basis for claiming divine authority because it has taught falsehood about God in the past by the very same people who claim authority today.
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So, we'll deal with that when it comes. Just amazing to me.
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Shouldn't that fact want to make Christians better understand the Mormon view of Jesus? Well, you know what, Mr. Thompson?
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I published a book that accurately explains the Mormon view of Jesus. Do you want to say otherwise?
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Have you ever read it? I can guarantee you haven't. If one intends to discuss
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Jesus and Mormon neighbors, wouldn't it be helpful to understand what they believe? Oh my goodness, yes it would. And sir, you don't.
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That's the whole point. That's the whole point. And you have handed to one of their leading apologists your own publishing house as a willful tool to make sure that those who want to share with their
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Mormon neighbors will be confused and disheartened in so doing. Like I said, we live in a day of incredible apostasy.
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And an incredible lack of basic discernment. My goodness.
59:08
My goodness. Just, I I just as I said in the response,
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I said when will we be issuing apologies to Arius? Because we need to.
59:27
Arius makes the Mormons look orthodox, doesn't he? Yeah, he does. So we need to give some apologies to Arius.
59:33
We are far too nasty to him. Council and I see I can barely in the background hear just a tiny little bit of music.
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It needs to come up a little bit as we head on out. Thanks for listening to Dividing Lines today.
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We will be back Thursday afternoon, Lord willing. And then that's going to be it for a while, folks. I'm heading off to speak in Italy for a number of weeks.
59:53
And it'll be probably the 26th of May. Yep.
01:00:00
26th of May before we get to be back with you. But hey, the blog's going to keep on going so keep track of that.
01:00:08
We'll see you Thursday afternoon. God bless. It's been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.
01:01:11
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01:01:23
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