Lauren Daigle’s Comments, Ed Shaw’s Views, Steven Anderson on Hebrews 2:9

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:09

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line.

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My name is James White, and this isn't how we normally look here, but that's okay.

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We are live from the heart of Oklahoma.

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Well, okay, maybe not so much, but it looks like we've got a fairly decent connection.

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Hope it stays stable. Wanted to comment on some things that are going on.

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And sometimes when I travel, once I get back, there's so many pressing things to comment on, stuff gets left behind, and I sort of feel left out, quite honestly.

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And in fact, one of the reasons later on we'll be looking at a clip of a

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Steven Anderson thing is because Jeff and the gang at Apologia Studios got to comment on some of the stuff he was saying.

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He went after Jeff at some... What is it with independent fundamentalist

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Baptists? Who started this strange, normally not very well done, painted background thing that you have to stand in front of?

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What is that? Is that the IFB regulative principle being applied or something, that you have to have some goofy painting behind you to be able to preach well or something?

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I mean, it's weird. But anyway, he was someplace other than his own place in Tempe, and actually said that I had moved to Tempe.

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I haven't, so I'm not sure what that's all about. But they got to respond to that even before I got to, so I feel like I'm falling behind.

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So we're going to do a little something along those lines. But I will confess before everyone right now that I have no idea, honestly, who

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Lauren Daigle is. I don't keep up with contemporary

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Christian music. I did at one point when I was contemporary.

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I'm not anymore. So I've never, maybe

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I've heard a song because once in a while there's something else on, and so I have the local

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Family Life Radio thing on or, you know, by the way, I worked for Family Life Radio back in 1985, 86, somewhere around there.

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And I remember very, very clearly. This was back when you spun vinyl records, you chose your music, and you put records over here and you queued them up and then you spun the record.

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That's how long ago this was. But I remember very, very clearly Post on the Wall was the criterion for what music you get to play, and one of the specific things was that it should not feature a strong drum beat.

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Yeah, that was Family Life Radio in the 1980s. If that piece of paper still exists, they've put it in a frame and put it in a museum someplace because that's not what you hear on FLR or on any of the other,

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K -Love, whatever that network is, that stuff. Anyway, Once in a

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Blue Moon, I'll tune over there. So maybe I've heard some of her songs. I just don't. I'm sorry. I just don't know who she is.

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And so maybe there's a reason why everyone is jumping up and down doing handstands, because she reflected the fact that she doesn't know much about the

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Bible, doesn't know much about Christian theology, doesn't have much of a solid foundation. But I'm sitting here going, did we expect that?

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I mean, honestly, you put these people up on a pedestal and then you put them on the road and you let them travel for 40 weekends out of the year.

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They're not under regular teaching. They're not under regular preaching. I don't know what kind of a church she even goes to, if she goes to a church or is a member of a church or anything like that.

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Do we really expect them to have some level of theological education and understanding of things, a solid theology?

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They're singers. And you might sit there and go, oh, but her songs are so pretty.

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That doesn't mean that she's been theologically trained. And so I'm just like, really?

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People are calling in and they're doing special programs about the apostasy of this young lady and all the rest of the stuff, and I don't even know where she goes to church.

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What she said was your standard cultural Christian response when someone pushes back on homosexuality.

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And what it demonstrates is, sadly, this is how most

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Christians are thinking today. They recognize the huge cost in standing against the cultural trend.

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And if you are not convinced that this is a key biblical issue, if you're not convinced that it's a

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Christian worldview issue, that it's an authority issue, that it's really a sin issue, that if you cannot define what sin is any longer, then you clearly cannot in any way, shape, or form present

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Jesus as the Savior from sin when you don't have any concept of what sin is.

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And so it is an important issue, and so I suppose I can understand why people are like, oh, you need to understand.

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But I don't understand why anybody—the level of response has indicated that you would expect a young female

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Christian singer to have a high standard of theology. There are young Christian female singers who do, yay!

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But let's just be honest, they're sort of the exception, not the rule. And so I was just sort of like, well,

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I'm really disappointed in that response. It doesn't seem like she really knows what the issues are, or maybe she doesn't have a commitment to scriptural authority.

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I don't know. I just wondered why people responded so very strongly, unless at some point in the past she has made strong statements on the other side and now has abandoned them.

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But that's not what it sounded like. It sounded like, oh, I don't know, I'm not God, I can't judge, you know, you read the

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Bible for yourself, blah, blah, blah. That's your standard American Westernized cop -out type thing that says,

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I don't want to get in the middle of this, and I don't want to, you know, lose my recording contracts,

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I guess. It's a possibility, I don't know. But her response was clearly unbiblical, as would be the response of the vast majority of people.

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If you want to get upset with somebody, get upset with the people who are ministers, who are leading their entire churches to abandon, minimally,

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Jesus' authority as a moral teacher. I mean, you can't come up with Western sexual ethics from looking at what

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Jesus taught. That's just, you know. So get upset with them. There's plenty of them out there, like I said, trying to keep up with the books that are coming out today that promote this kind of perspective.

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Pretty difficult to do. Pretty difficult to do. So I wanted to start off with that, because I actually heard

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I was driving to Tupelo from Tulsa.

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I'm not sure where I am these days, actually. Because what's confusing is it probably would have taken me less time yesterday to drive from Tupelo here to Pryor than it did to fly, because I had to drive from Tupelo to Tulsa, and then wait there for two hours, and then fly for two hours to Dallas, and wait there for three hours, and then fly from Memphis, wherever I was.

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Yeah, that's right. Tupelo to Memphis, Memphis to Dallas, Dallas to Tulsa, and Tulsa to Pryor.

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Put it all together, I probably would have been faster to drive, but I wouldn't have got my miles. So there's that,

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I suppose. And that trip, that drive from Tupelo to Memphis, trucks everywhere.

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Man, I felt like this little, you know, because FedEx trucks, there's a huge FedEx Central thing there at the airport, and they were all over the place in the dark, and I felt really small.

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But anyway, so what am I doing here? Well, last night,

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I decided to do something sort of strange. I'm at Grace Life Church here in Pryor, and I've been here,

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I've been told, twice before. I do seem to recall that. I'll be honest with you,

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I don't remember all the details of exactly how I got hooked into this the first time.

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Does somebody have something on me that I don't know about? Shooting?

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Well, I know I've gotten to go do some cool shooting stuff here, but I don't remember what all the...

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Everything now with all the traveling is just sort of mixing together, and it's like, yeah, I remember being there, and I don't remember what year it was, and I'll remember snippets and little bits and pieces and stuff, but it's all melding together.

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But one of the connections here that I just tweeted about and put on Facebook is the fact that it was when

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Kofi posted a picture of his post -Tenebrous

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Lux rebind from Jeffrey Rice that I went, ooh, that looks really cool, and fairly shortly after that, the pastor here in Pryor posted a picture of his that has, well, we could have used it, and I'm not sure why we didn't,

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I suppose we could have just taken a picture of that as the advertisement for the seminar, because it's all the solos on the binding, so we could have done that.

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But anyways, it was like, aha, see, here's somebody I need to get in touch with, and that's what led, of course, and I was just showing this off here in my room, that's what led, of course,

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I do have it with me, to my own Greek New Testament, and I'm actually carrying it around, and when the folks who watch this program show up and they're like, can

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I see the Greek New Testament, it's just creepy, but I get it out, and I've actually let people hold it, and I probably shouldn't, because all of a sudden

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I can just see somebody going crazy and running out the front door with it and never seeing it again. But that's what led to, that's what he's going to do, okay, there's a little bit of a studio audience here that is on the other side of the room, but I'm not sure

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I can trust them to be involved in the program or not, so we'll see. So anyways, so I posted a picture,

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Jeffrey Rice got to join a club before me, and that is

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Brother Melton here at the church is a knife maker, so here is my

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Melton original, so if you try to take my

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Greek New Testament, there are places on the planet I can't carry this, unfortunately, but Oklahoma is not one of them, they've still got the

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Second Amendment and a few other things down here, but that's a beautiful knife,

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I love the, it's got some beautiful turquoise in the handles, so that's special stuff.

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So I'm here, and I started off the study of the

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Solas, the Reformation, rather oddly. I reprised a presentation similar to what

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I did last Sunday morning in St. Charles, where I started off with the story of Munster.

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And this time I got to tell the story a little bit more fully than I did during the Sunday school because they only had 45 minutes then,

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I took over an hour on this one, even though that's still a fast summary to try to get through Munster in that amount of time.

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But the reason I did that was so that we could illustrate what happens when the Solas are violated, and of course one of the arguments that Roman Catholics make is that things like Munster, the

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Anabaptist movement, all the Protestant denominations, stuff like that, are the result of Sola Scriptura, when plainly and clearly they are not.

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Sola Scriptura was not being practiced at Munster, and you cannot blame

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Sola Scriptura for Jan Mathis claiming to be receiving revelations from God, or Jan of Leiden, either one.

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That has nothing to do with accepting Sola Scriptura, in fact that's a fundamental denial of Sola Scriptura.

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But it is a common Roman Catholic practice to make that kind of argumentation and to say, see, this led to this, this led to that, and all the rest of this kind of stuff, and it just simply isn't true.

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So it's important to keep that in mind. Okay, next thing real quick,

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I had mentioned this when I was still in Phoenix.

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There is an article at livingout .org, and it is by Ed Shaw.

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Now why is this relevant? Because my understanding is that Ed Shaw is one of the primary speakers that livingout .org

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sends out into conservative churches to speak on the subject of same -sex attraction, homosexuality, and there are what we would ostensibly identify as very conservative individuals, especially within the

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Southern Baptist Convention, and related entities, okay, so Evangelicalism as a whole, and the

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Southern Baptist Convention specifically. There are individuals who are promoting these individuals, who would be saying to pastors, because they have a rather public persona and perspective, they are basically saying to churches, yeah, go ahead and have these folks in.

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They're solid, they're biblical, they'll help your people to grow and understand this particular issue, and things like that.

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And this article, let's see, this is dated

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November 27th, at least is when I clipped it, so it may be earlier than that, but by Ed Shaw from livingout .org

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called, What's Wrong With a Permanent, Faithful, Stable, Same -Sex Sexual Relationship?

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Now, could I just point out, there are almost none of these. I mean, the surveys are clear that if permanent, faithful, stable, opposite -sex sexual relationships, that is, long marriages, are rare enough.

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You know, one thing, watching the funeral of President George H .W.

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Bush yesterday, and then again today, actually, in Houston, real reminder, 73 years of marriage.

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You've got to take your hat off to that, you've got to salute that, that's, and obviously, a very good marriage, in the sense of the real commitment going on there.

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Anyway, that's rare enough. Far more rare is the idea of a permanent, faithful, stable, same -sex sexual relationship.

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That almost never happens. And if it does, it's almost always going to be amongst women, not amongst men.

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It's somewhat of an elusive thing. But, here's part of the article, and here's why

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I wanted to comment on it. Subtitle says, the good in something doesn't make it right in God's sight.

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We'd be crazy to deny the good in permanent, stable, faithful, same -sex sexual relationships.

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Read accounts of the gay community of the height of the AIDS epidemic, and you'll be moved to tears by the self -sacrificial love of couples who devotedly nurse both loved ones and complete strangers.

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We need to realize how much the gay community has to teach us about the meaning of the word community. Now, analyzing this from a

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Christian worldview, you immediately are sensing that the term good here is being used not as it would be derived from a

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Christian concept, but from a worldly concept. He says,

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Andrew Marin writes, I have never met a more loving community in my life than the

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GLBT community. Obviously, there are exceptions in any community, but in general I've found that GLBT people don't care if you're skinny, hairy, fat, pimpled, a millionaire, or dead broke.

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There is room for everyone. All they want is to give the same love to others as they want to receive themselves. You know,

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I've certainly read this coming from those promoting that community, but obviously from a

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Christian worldview you have to step back and go, wait a minute, the fundamental foundation of this community is selfish, self -centered, and does not lead to the flourishing advancement of the individuals involved with it.

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How can you call this loving and good? These are terms, good and loving here are being used in completely secular contexts, not in any biblical context at all.

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There's no differentiation being made. This is very troubling. It goes on to say, we certainly don't deny that there are real elements of beauty in the relationship of the nice gay couple next door.

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I do, I do and I will. Beauty is a biblically defined concept.

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Um, there is beauty in a 73 year long marriage of a man and a woman.

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I will deny that there's beauty in a 73 year long relationship between a man and a man because of what it has resulted in, in the diminishment of both.

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So I'm, I'm not going to, I'm not going to give in to this, this, uh, mantra being now promoted within conservative churches.

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Well, that's a beautiful thing. Hold on a second. Um, it goes on to say their commitment and love.

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And again, I define commitment and love on biblical foundations, not on, on secular foundations.

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Their commitment and love are part of God's common grace to humanity.

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So, so the relationship and the long lastingness of it is part of common grace.

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Um, could this be transferred to any other aberrant, unnatural, disordered, sexual relationship take out homosexual and, and put pederastic in here?

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Does that fit? Hopefully you go, no. Okay. Why? Where's the difference?

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What's, what's the issue here? Um, the happiness your niece is enjoying is a good that God has created for us to enjoy.

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Her happiness is real. I guess there was a question up above. I'm sorry that I forgot to grab, um, that someone had, uh, had asked that specifically, um, mentioned, uh, that that would give some type of a context to it.

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But anyway, um, the happiness your niece is enjoying is a good that God has created for us to enjoy.

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You're telling me that a person who enjoys a disordered relationship and receives joy from that, this is a part is a good that God created for us to enjoy.

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No, by, by the very act and orientation, they're shutting themselves off from the good that God intended for us to enjoy.

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And then it says her happiness is real. This is at livingout .org.

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This is one of the speakers that goes out into churches, conservative churches, and is presenting this.

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Could anyone imagine this five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago? I, I, I can't.

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Now, uh, goes on to say, but crucially, the good in something doesn't make other aspects of it right in God's sight.

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Well, it's true as far as it goes. I just dispute the good part. All human beings are capable of doing things that are good, if never completely so.

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I'm sensing a, a less -than -thoroughly biblical anthropology here. Um, but these echoes of our original perfection do not make us right in God's sight.

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Jesus' death is required for God to declare that so. In other words, the imputed righteousness of Christ.

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Similarly, the many good things we might see or experience in a permanent, faithful, stable, same -sex sexual relationship, when you have to come up with something that's an entire sentence long to describe it, it probably doesn't exist.

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Um, but this is something that's very, very common today, is from the other perspective, what you do is you create this image of this committed, monogamous homosexual relationship.

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Now it's gotten expanded even beyond that. But this committed homo, uh, not homogenous, uh, committed, uh, monogamous, with an

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M, not an H, committed monogamous homosexual relationship, which almost never exists or happens, it is by far the minority, minority, minority, minority 0 .1

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% type thing, and you use that to then normalize the 99 .9. Nothing new about this.

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This is, this is pretty standard. Um, similarly, the many good things we might see or experience in a permanent, faithful, stable, same -sex sexual relationship don't by themselves, now listen here, listen what goes up, happens here, don't by themselves make the sexual aspect of the relationship legitimate.

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At its center is sex outside the permanent, stable, faithful marriage of a man and a woman, something that God has never declared to be right in His sight.

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The good in the relationship doesn't, can't ever make its sexual dimensions right to Him.

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Now, the narrow focus of that is something we would have to agree with, but notice what is fundamentally being done there.

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A division is made, being made between the, all the rest of the external good stuff, and the only thing that's really wrong is the sex act.

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And this to me is really problematic because the sex act is a part of an entire complex of desires that are disordered.

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Finding your, let's go back to Genesis, eter connecto, your, your proper helpmate, the one that is corresponding to you in another male or in another female in a same -sex relationship is a disordered thing, and I'm getting the feeling that Living Out doesn't want to say that that's true.

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I'm getting the feeling that Living Out does not want to say that the actual homosexual desire is disordered and inappropriate.

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That's what I'm hearing, I think. And by just saying, well, it's just the sex act part, so everything else can be good.

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There's nothing wrong with that. It's the sex act part that is wrong. That is very problematic.

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And then it goes on to say, but of course all this begs the question, why is a same -sex sexual relationship so wrong in God's sight?

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And then goes the second key truth, real sex is unity in difference. That would go to the eter connecto issue as it should.

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But I'm just really concerned with the acceptance amongst, the growing acceptance amongst formerly conservative, and I mean formally as in 10 years ago.

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I mean, that's how fast this is happening. Formerly conservative individuals in the promotion of the idea that same -sex attraction is not in and of itself a disordered desire.

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This is what you had at Revoice, this is what you're getting here, and it's extremely concerning to me, especially when it's being promoted in conservative churches, because,

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I'll be honest, in conservative churches you have not had a whole lot of meaningful teaching on this subject.

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We need to get to it, but a lot of those who are ministering in those churches are having to work through these issues themselves because this has not been something, certainly wasn't something that was central in the teaching of seminaries when

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I was in school long ago, and so it's something a lot of ministers are extremely uncomfortable dealing with.

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We can't avoid it anymore. But it takes us back to the first story, and that is, some of the responses

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I was seeing to that singer were not only very ungracious, but they were also marked by ignorance, and there's still a lot of ignorance on the part of conservative

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Christians who will say, oh, I'm against all that, but why? Why are you?

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What's the foundation? What's the real issue? Can you enunciate in a meaningful, compelling fashion why it is that homosexuality is not something that we can either just close our eyes to, or can you explain why it is destructive to God's purposes in someone's life, and do so in a way that they can understand it, that is biblical and faithful?

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That really is a question that has to be asked. So, I want to make a reference to that, and it is interesting, just a real quick one, and then

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I'm going to go to the Steven Anderson thing. Back on, also, November 30th, an article appeared on my

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Facebook feed. Ventura Unified Superintendent announces he will resign amid sermon controversy.

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And a fellow by the name of David Creswell has announced he's going to be resigning because the recording of a—here,

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Creswell came under fire earlier this month after the school board was made aware—I can guarantee you what kind of people were involved in making them aware—made aware of a sermon that he delivered while an elder at Redeemer Baptist Church in Riverside.

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Keep something in mind, if there's an open microphone anywhere near you, first of all, treat all microphones as if they're open in the first place, but if there's an open microphone anywhere near you and you are speaking and teaching, you are probably going to hear those words again.

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So, whatever you say, be prepared to live with it. In the sermon,

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Creswell said he was flipping through a yearbook when on the superlative page under best couple, he saw a gay couple embracing.

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He said, oh boy, here we go, here's our world. He said that under most changed was a transgender woman who was pictured in makeup and a dress holding a photo of the male she was born as.

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Well, of course, I wouldn't write this myself that way. That is a boy pretending to be a girl.

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And then he said, this is the definition of most changed, this is the definition, he said, according to the audio of the sermon, which has since been removed from the church's website, at Creswell's request, there's a growing sector of our culture, of our society that says that's good and that's normal and I need to embrace it.

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We're now celebrating it. Now, that's a statement of fact. There was nothing wrong with that in any way, shape, or form.

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I realize that the moral and ethical totalitarians of today may not even, who knows, maybe this will be the

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YouTube video that gets us bounced out. But I realize that those people are doing that, but we still have the right to believe true things.

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And what bothered me about reading this article, aside from the reality of the totalitarianism and the quashing of free speech and the anti -Christian nature of all this, is that they pulled the sermon.

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There wasn't anything wrong with the sermon. And then Creswell apologized for the remarks after he said he met with people in the

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LGBTQ community in Ventura and in the district. That's, that was like, well look,

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I understand the pressure undoubtedly that would have been put upon him, but apologize for speaking the truth?

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There wasn't that, I mean, I've heard things that Christians have said, I fully get why they apologized, because they didn't have the right attitudes.

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They weren't saying the right things. But it is a perfectly fair observation to point out where our society is going on the basis of this kind of thing.

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And to apologize for it and then resign seems really backwards to me.

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But that's, that is what is going on, all three of the opening stories there, common threads that we're dealing with every day.

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It's just the way things are. Okay, it makes me chuckle, to be honest with you, every time someone comes up to me and says, hey,

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I really enjoyed your debate with Steven Anderson. See, I just chuckled, so I was telling the truth. We've never had a debate.

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And we did an interview, and it was an interview that almost never happened, because someone who remained nameless,

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Rich, got the communication from Anderson.

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And, you know, it was just like, he's never going to want to do that. So he wasn't even going to pass it on to me.

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And I forget exactly how the conversation went, but there was some, somehow, for some reason he brought it up and said, you know,

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Steven Anderson wants to do an interview with you for a movie they're going to be doing.

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And he just about fainted when I said, okay, all right, do it here at the office?

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Or, you know, because, you know, he's in Tempe, I'm in Phoenix. And it was like, well,

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I guess, you mean you actually want to do this? And I'm like, yeah, why not? So that's what led to the famous two hour and 20 minute interview that is on YouTube.

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90 seconds of which, or maybe less, was used in the movie. They didn't really get what they wanted.

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And, in fact, what they used in the movie was irrelevant to the points they were making. Well, they were trying to make, anyways.

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But over the years, you know, Steven Anderson has been more someone you would, you know, play clips of and just go, can you believe this guy?

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You know, his getting tased at the California border one was absolutely classic.

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I'm not sure that my law enforcement friends would find that to be a classic thing, because they have to risk themselves breaking windows and reaching in there and tasing people and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

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But that's sort of how it ends with his, you know, made a lot of us, you know, chuckle just a little bit in the process.

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But then, you know, when he's kicking his pulpit and, you know, when he first started, well, hey, when we first started doing the dividing line on video with the white background and the ceiling things on the wall and the horrible lighting and all the rest of that kind of stuff,

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I suppose we were doing something similar. But, you know, it's just clear they just had a little camera up on a tripod someplace.

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And he's doing the things he's doing. Sadly, his movement has grown.

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And not only locally, but across the nation. And, you know, he's become known for his questioning of the

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Holocaust and just all sorts of just weird, weird, weird stuff, let alone his behavior in the pulpit.

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I mean, he just he just looks like an angry cult leader.

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And in many ways, he is, even though for some reason they had an explosion of oneness belief in his church, anti -Trinitarians in his church.

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And so he somehow wanted to be seen as a defender of Nicene orthodoxy or something by the way he went after the people in his church and kicked them out.

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You get out of here. You know, it's kicking people out of the service and by name and stuff like that.

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And rah, rah, rah, whatever. So Anderson is

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Stephen Anderson. He's not a stupid man. OK, you need to understand that he's worked as a German translator in the past.

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He can speak fluent German much better than I can. So he's not a stupid man.

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So these, you know, his behavior, if he was himself, always out of control or immature or ignorant or something like that, you might be able to go,

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OK, you know, the guy's got a problem. That's not the case. He clearly has the ability to do meaningful study.

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He just does not want to think in a disciplined manner. And I think he truly enjoys the power that he exercises over other people and getting them to follow him.

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There's a lot of people like that in the world. All of your religious cults have the same orientation along those lines.

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So every once in a while, you know, people will send a link. And the last link someone sent was, like I said, this conference that they were doing someplace may have been in Texas.

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I don't remember where he went after Jeff Durbin primarily.

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But he mentioned me in passing and mentioned how

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Jeff Durbin's in Tempe. I've moved to Tempe, which was wrong. And then everybody's come to Tempe.

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And then then he quotes Matthew 16. But the gates of hell will not prevail against Christ Church because they're in Tempe.

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Yeah. So his exegetical prowess is questionable, just a little bit.

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Right around the same time, someone sent me a link. And I was able to track it back down because I downloaded it.

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But I left it on my computer at home and forgot to put it in Dropbox. So I don't have it on this one. I travel to a much, much smaller computer.

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It's just so much easier to get through TSA. And it's lighter and all the rest of that stuff. It does what

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I needed to do. Anyways, so I was able to track it down. I may do a dividing line.

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In fact, I've invited Jeff. Maybe he can find the time. I don't know, given it's the holiday season.

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And I'm going to be gone like the first two months of the year, basically. But maybe you can come over and we can do a

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Kuja -fied Radio Free Geneva where we walk through this video.

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Because it does have relevance. At least the verses that he's presenting in defense of quote -unquote universal atonement are the standard verses.

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It's not like he's come up with wacky stuff that no one else would understand. But what

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I wanted to do is I wanted to look through the text that he utilizes and then listen to his comments.

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I realize that's sort of the opposite way that it's normally done.

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You normally listen to the comments and you go to the text and rebut it.

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I like walking through the text first so that when you then hear the comments, you can immediately see where the issues are, where the problems are.

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And it is one of the key texts. Oh, and by the way, by the way, by the way, December 17th is a week from Monday.

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And I think it's a week from Monday. Yeah. Yes, no, maybe. Well, I do have a phone in my hand and it does have this little cool thing.

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Yes, it's a week from Monday. And it's a major day in history because it happens to be my birthday, which doesn't really mean anything at all.

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Actually, all I know is when I was born in Minneapolis on December 17th, it was frigid cold with lots of snow.

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Not overly surprising for Minneapolis this time of year. Anyways, on December 17th, there is going to be a debate, an online debate between Michael Brown and Sonny Hernandez on limited atonement.

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I only found out about this last night. I saw something in my feed. I don't know if Mike posted it or who posted it.

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I commented before that I was very disappointed in the previous debate, which was an in -person debate between Theodore Zacariades and Michael Brown on the spiritual gifts, speaking in tongues specifically, if I recall correctly.

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Mainly because Theodore's opening statement was almost incoherent.

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No one, even on his side, were all sitting there going, what? What are you talking about?

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What was that? And didn't really get to most of the standard argumentation that a biblical cessationist would use until the cross -examination.

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And that's too late. Once you get to cross X, you cannot be establishing meaningful parameters in a debate.

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If you don't get to your point until then, you blew it. So it wasn't useful. I did not find it to be a useful debate in any way.

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But you know that Theodore and Sonny do, well, at least last I knew, do this thing together.

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They call themselves Dorotean Calvinists. And so Arminians are their primary mission field.

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Not Arminians as Christians, but Arminians who need to get saved and become

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Dorotean Calvinists. And so we've had this discussion before, especially back when

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Sonny and Theodore did that debate with the traditionalists, or the Arminians, or whatever you want to call them, including

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Layton Flowers, which in and of itself was, well, my hotel here isn't very far away from some train tracks.

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And so if we had two trains coming full speed and they just crashed right out there, pretty much similar to what that debate was all about on a theological level.

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Anyway, you know, I don't want to prejudge.

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My concern, obviously, is going to be the level of self -restraint that Sonny Hernandez can manage to muster up, because Michael knows how to use that, just as I do, when the other side starts getting all riled up, you know you've won.

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That's just all there is to it. And so I'm not going to get to listen that day,

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I'm going to be traveling that day, listen live, but I will definitely be listening quickly.

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And I've already mentioned to Michael, depending on how it goes, maybe we could do something on this, because I think it's a very important issue.

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I hope, honestly, that Sonny Hernandez will present what needs to be presented.

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And from my perspective, the key issue that needs to be presented in the issue of the extent of the

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Atonement, the intention of the Atonement, is the Trinity. When was the last time you heard that emphasized?

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Well, if you read John Owen and go back then, you will see it. It's foundational. And from my perspective, when we

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Reformed folks do not start there, we're wasting our time. And you may say, well, what do you mean?

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Real simple. There has to be unity in the actions and intentions of the

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Father, the Son, and the Spirit in salvation. The power of the

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Reformed understanding of what's called Limited Atonement, or Particular Redemption, is not in it as a unitary doctrine, because it can't exist as a unitary doctrine.

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You cannot talk about the Atonement without talking about the intention of the

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Father in election, the result of the sacrifice of the Son in light of the

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Father's intention, and in light of the Father and the Son sending the Spirit to redeem who and to accomplish what.

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So, the doctrine makes absolute perfect sense, and is beautiful, and is consistent, and is biblical, in the context of the whole doctrine of Reformed salvation flowing from key texts on the nature of God, the sovereignty of God, His elective decree, and then that provides the background for being able to understand, then, the work of the

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Son and the Spirit. The Son is going to save perfectly those given to Him by the

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Father. If you don't establish the reality of that divine election, you don't really have any basis for defining the realm in which that's going to take place.

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So, I hope that's what's presented. If it's not, then, yeah.

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But anyway. So, if we turn to Hebrews 2, real quickly, this is the clip

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I want to play for you. This is one of the primary texts that someone who denies particular redemption is going to throw at you.

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Let's go back. Remember, Hebrews chapter 1, establishment of the supremacy of Christ, identify the education of Him as Yahweh, Psalm 102, 25 -27 is quoted in Hebrews 1, 10 -12, all this stuff, very, very important.

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And then in chapter 2, the supremacy of Christ to the angels is continuing. And so, verse 5, for He did not subject the angels, subject to angels the world to come, concerning which we are speaking.

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So, again, a contrast to supremacy of Christ. But one has testified somewhere saying, what is man that you remember

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Him, or the Son of man that you are concerned about Him? You have made Him for a little while lower than the angels. You have crowned

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Him with glory and honor, and have appointed Him over the works of your hands. You have put all things in subjection under His feet.

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For in subjecting all things to Him, He left nothing that is not subject to Him. But now we do not see all things subjected to Him.

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But we do see Him who was made for a little while lower than the angels, namely

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Jesus, because of the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, and then here is the key phrase they focus in on, so that by the grace of God, He might taste death for everyone.

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Specifically, hapos karati the 'u huper pantas gyusetai thanatu.

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Now, just, and I'm looking at the clock and I've got limited time here, but just in passing, in case you're going, this text is important for another reason.

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Right, because of the textual variant. There is a textual variant here, it's a,

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I would consider a very minor textual variant, but there are some manuscripts that say karati the 'u, by the grace of God, say chorus the 'u, apart from God, and if you're thinking, if what's kicking around your head is, this is one of the texts that Bart Ehrman uses when he wants to say that we don't really know what the

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New Testament message necessarily is, because this would completely change the concept in the book of Hebrews if it's chorus the 'u, apart from God, because this would mean that Jesus was separated from God in His death, or something along those lines.

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Now obviously, theologically, if that's what was being said, there would have to be an explanation of it, and it would not fit with so much else, which is in the book of Hebrews itself.

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But the reality is that the manuscript evidence for that reading is ridiculously weak, and Ehrman, I think, uses it primarily for shock value more than anything else.

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But that may be, if you were thinking about going, this text has another application, what was it? Well, that's what it is.

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So anyways, there is the phrase, so that, by the grace of God, who peripontos, in behalf of all,

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He might taste death. And so, if that's all you had, it sounds like a universal statement of Christ tasting death for all.

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But what you almost never hear the advocates of universal atonement doing, because Hebrews is a tough text to do this from, because there's so much in Hebrews that is amenable to and consistent with and flows from particular redemption, especially later on, especially,

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I mean, Hebrews 7, 24 almost screams it.

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And here, as is mostly the case, you are deriving this idea from, well, if it's saying this, then it must mean this.

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It's not a direct statement, it's just, it implies something. But what you don't hear is reading the rest of it. So, because it goes on with Agar, so, "...for

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it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things," hearkening back to the beginning of Chapter 1,

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Christ's power of creation, "...in bringing many sons to glory," now it's interesting, it was

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Christ who was doing these things, and now, before, now it's the

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Father, they're both united in their work in creation, and now in salvation as well.

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Again, a theme we could expand upon if I had more time. "...for it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings."

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Now, you stop immediately. Who is being brought to glory?

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There is a specific people who have an author of their salvation, not just someone who makes it possible, because when you look at the term that is used, archaigon, leader, head, source, origin, if you want to say that He has tasted death for every single human being, was

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He the archaigon Soterios, Salvation for everyone who does not experience salvation?

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There is a specific people here, and they are called, "...in bringing many sons to glory."

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Many sons, same terminology you'll find found, for example, in Isaiah 53, the many who are justified by the sacrifice of the servant of Yahweh in Isaiah 53.

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So, you have a specific group of people, many sons to glory, He is the author of their salvation, and He authors that salvation through sufferings.

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So, we're still talking about the cross, we're still talking about redemption, the tasting of death, for both

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He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one

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Father, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren. Does Jesus call brethren

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His enemies, those who will be for eternity in opposition to who

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He is, even when they've had to bow the knee to admit that He is Lord, not in a salvific fashion, Philippians chapter 2.

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Will they be called His brethren there? The only way to try to fit a universalistic reading of Hebrews 2 .9

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in with 2 .10 and 11 and then 12, which we'll look at in a moment. The only way to do it, folks, and see,

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I never see these folks dealing with this perspective, so they don't seem to feel the weight of this problem, is to become a universalist.

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And that's where many people have gone. I mean, you can come up with a universalistic reading of this, but Stephen Anderson is not a universalist.

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The vast majority of people quoting Hebrews 2 .9 against particular redemption are not universalists, but neither do they seek to consistently read their understanding from verse 9 into the explanation that comes afterwards.

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So, we have people who are being sanctified, take that to Hebrews chapter 10, see who that is, it's pretty clear.

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For he who sanctifies knows who are being sanctified are all from one father, for which reason he is not ashamed to call them brethren.

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So, whoever the everyone is, in verse 9, is his brethren, sons to glory, and he is the author of their salvation, in verses 10 and 11, saying,

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I will proclaim your name to my brethren in the midst of the congregation, I will sing your praise. Wait a minute, brethren is here paralleled in Hebrew parallelism, because it's a quotation from the

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Old Testament, to whom? The congregation. And again, I will put my trust in him, and again, behold,

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I and the children whom God has given me. Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death he might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.

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The only way you can read this is one of two ways. Either, 2 -9, when it says for everyone, is using the term everyone in the same way as Revelation chapter 5 and so many other places.

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Men from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. And that therefore you have the congregation, the brethren, the sons that are brought to glory, the people who are sanctified, which is consistent with the rest of Hebrews, because that same term, sanctification, is to be used for those who draw nigh unto

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God by him, and he saves them completely. Or, the only other consistent interpretation is this is universalism.

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So that he takes death for everyone, everyone's in the congregation, everyone's the son that's going to be brought into glory, everyone is going to be sanctified, either now or in a post -mortem state or whatever kind of universalistic interpretation you end up coming up with.

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The perspective expressed by Arminians, they stop at 2 -9, they don't even pretend to then read their understanding through verses 10 and follow it.

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They just disconnect all of it. May I prove my point? Okay, I'm just going to,

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I'm not going to try to, we've survived so far just doing this, I'm just going to play it for you.

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You can look it up on YouTube. I found it, just put in Stephen Anderson, limited atonement.

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It's one of the first ones that comes up. Just grab it and you can watch it if you want. I'll just play the audio and see if this isn't exactly how it works.

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Where did I return? Hebrews 2, look at verse 9. Since all doesn't really mean all, let's see if every really means every.

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Hebrews 2 -9, but we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, that he, by the grace of God, should taste death for every man.

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So did Jesus just die for certain people? I mean, how can you call yourself a Bible -believing Christian and say,

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I believe the Bible is the word of God, and then look at this verse, Hebrews 2 -9, and say,

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Jesus didn't die for everybody. You're a liar is what you are. You're a false prophet is what you are.

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You don't believe this book. You believe in lies written by man. Whether that man's named

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John Calvin or whatever his name is, you are believing in lies and heresy. Let me tell you something.

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Jesus Christ tasted death for every man. I believe it. Do you believe it? So there you go.

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Now, what did you get there? Did you get any exegesis? Did you get any thought? Did you get any context?

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Did you get any honest dealing with the text? No. Unfortunately, what you got is someone who knows how to manipulate weak -minded people.

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That's what you got. That's how cult leaders work, and sadly, sometimes even in the true

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Church, we fail and utilize similar methodologies to manipulate people.

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But that is manipulation of people. That is not teaching. He did not take the time to read what any of us have written on this subject and go, oh, they connect 2 -9 to 10, 11, and 12 and the consistency of the language and go back to the

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Old Testament and do stuff like that. And so I need to offer a response to that.

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No. You read it, and then you insult people, and you get people amening, and you get their emotions going, and you've accomplished your purpose.

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That's all there is to it. That is manipulation. And of course, the best thing to do when you're acting as a false teacher and we're acting as a false prophet is to accuse everyone else of being a false teacher and a false prophet so as to hide your own activities in that way.

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And that's what Stephen Anderson does. It's not difficult to respond to this stuff, but the fact of the matter is truly handling the text of Scripture takes time, and it requires you to lay aside the emotional aspect so as to establish the foundations first, and then you can get as emotional as you want about the beautiful truth that results, but you can't reverse the order, and that's what's going on with someone like a

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Stephen Anderson. So there you go. There's a whole lot more in that video that we would be able to provide responses to, but it's very, very plain that in this subject, one side approaches the text seeking consistency and depth, the other side has a list of verses and then rattles them off and then tries to get people to emote.

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That's really what this issue is all about. So there you go. So anyway, thanks for joining us on the program today.

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Lord willing, be back next week to somewhat of a sort of regular schedule, kind of, maybe.

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I'm glad this one seemed to work out all right, at least I hope it seemed to work out all right, because I'm going to be doing a lot of traveling over the next period of time, and I like doing this.

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I don't have any cool swords in the back. Here, there's sort of a sword in the back.

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It's not as long as my, much sharper than my claymore, but I don't think

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I'd do too well against somebody with a claymore with this. It really wouldn't matter how sharp it was, one way or the other.

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But not quite the same as the studio, but hopefully the content is pretty much the same, whether I'm here or in Phoenix.

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So my thanks to Rich Pierce for setting this all up so we could do it. And Lord willing, we'll see you next week here on The Dividing Line.