Church Membership, Adding “P” to LGBT, Matt Chandler & Prophecy, Open Phones

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. We are live from Evergreen, Colorado. It's too warm outside to be outside today.

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Sorry about that. I enjoyed sort of being in the FBI Witness Protection Program bright background shadow thing.

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But I mean, it's nice and breezy, but it's over 90 degrees and it's it's a little bit.

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I was smart enough to close all the windows, keep all the cool air in as much as I could. Anyways, we are live from up here in Colorado.

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This should be the last time that I'm going to be on the road for a little while. I'm home, August. We should have the should have some word hopefully pretty soon on the final arrangements for the debate in early

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September in Florida, where Michael Brown and I are going to be teaming up to debate two homosexuals.

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We've wanted to do that for a long, long time. And finally, it looks like that's going to happen. That'll be in early

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September and then in early October, Israel and hopefully going to try to work something out maybe for Scotland.

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And but not super, super long. I mean, this is another three week trip. I was three weeks out in May overseas primarily and not helping me get things done.

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So we'll see. Anyways, we all that, meaning that we should be fairly regular with the program come come

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August. So, well, really starting next week. So we'll see what happens.

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We'll see what happens with that. We'll take phone calls a little bit later on in the program. Won't open the phone lines quite yet.

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Sometimes, you know what, you know, comes up right as you're starting the program, you go, man,

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I got I got I got to address that. I was directed to a

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Facebook article. And from Jason Pedigo, it was posted

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July 16th, 837 p .m. Anyone who is dismissed and those looking for a good church, let me encourage you to visit

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Rowlett's Baptist Church. Any of the others mentioned in comments? Well, the comments thread is fascinating enough.

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But it is a picture of a letter from Cave City Baptist Church.

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And in essence, what it is, is it's informing certain people that there has been,

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I guess what you would call a purge of the membership roles of the church of people who basically haven't been showing up.

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It specifically makes reference to members are expected, first of all, to be faithful in all the duties essential to the

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Christian life and also to attend habitually the services of this church to give regularly in support and its causes and to share in its organized work.

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This letter is informing you that your name has been removed. The membership role of Cave City Baptist Church is our sincere hope that you are living a life of faith.

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A life of faith is certainly more than having your name on a membership list. It is about worshiping, studying

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God's word, serving the name of Christ and receiving the nourishment of the Lord's Supper. It is about gathering regularly with other sisters and brothers of the faith.

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That is what is important. Please feel free to contact us should you have any questions. Now, what caught me is

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I started looking at the comments in this. Basically, if you actually believe in church discipline, if you believe—well, any more if you even believe that you should have an active membership role in a church.

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Now, I've spoken on this subject before. I don't know how you can do church discipline, which almost nobody does anymore anyways.

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How can you do church discipline if you don't have a role? How can you exclude someone from the Supper who is in a state of unrepentant sin if you don't know who the sheep are?

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How can you be a shepherd if you don't know who your sheep are? The modern world that has gotten into this church -is -just -whoever -shows -up -on -a -Sunday attitude is far, far, far from the biblical standards by any stretch of the imagination.

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And what was obvious—I mean, there was one here. Now, before I read some of the comments, if there was no contact made, if this was just simply a, let's look at the roles, and if no one has given or darkened the door of this place in X amount of time, if there was no effort made to find out why people weren't coming, that would be the one reason to object to what has been done.

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Now, I don't know if this church has elders. I don't know if they have a truly biblical ecclesiology.

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I have no idea. Quite probably it might be pastor -led, deacons -type thing.

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I consider that to be a sub -biblical ecclesiology. But if there was an attempt to find out where these individuals were, why they weren't coming, were they going to another church, whatever it might be, then this would be something that would be a necessary and proper thing for a church to do.

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You don't carry people on a membership role when you are not at all able to fulfill the requirements that you have to minister the

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Word of God to them because they don't show up. They don't do what they said they would do.

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Now, again, maybe this church doesn't have – when you join the

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Phoenix Deformed Baptist Church, where I'm an elder, you have – you need to read the London Baptist Confession of Faith, you need to read the

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Constitution of the Church. You have a meeting with the elders, and we ask you questions, and do you understand your duties as a member of this church, and those things are laid out in the

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Confession of Faith and in the Constitution, and voila. So if you don't do that and people didn't know that they were supposed to show up, well, okay, that seems a little weird, but let's assume that most intelligent people would recognize the fact that if you're a member of a church, you're probably supposed to show up once in a while, and in fact regularly, and that your support is supposed to support that particular church.

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Okay, with all that said, if there wasn't any attempt to contact people, okay, that's problematic.

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If there was, then this is what we do at PRBC. We have an annual meeting every year, and if someone has stopped coming – first of all, if they stopped coming very quickly, they're going to be contacted.

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But then before that annual meeting, if they habitually continue to do that and do not give any indication they're coming back, then they will be contacted one last time, and they will be informed.

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This is what you agreed to, and if you're not going to come to our church, we can't show up with the police and drag you into church.

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This isn't a sacral society. And so if you're not going to come to our church, then you're not going to be on the membership rolls.

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We're not going to take any responsibility for attempting to shepherd you. Well, oh my goodness.

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I would imagine that the same media sources that were hyping this, can you imagine if they got hold of just basic church discipline issues?

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If such and such a church has excluded someone from the Lord's table, and put it in the newspaper, and you'd get the same kind of unbelievable comments that you see.

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It's amazing the number of Christians who – I didn't see anybody in here. Maybe I missed somebody, because the reply, reply, reply thing that you get replies going off into – you can't find stuff.

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But the number of Christians who are saying, well, come over to our church. So you want the people who don't show up ever to just come over to your place.

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What kind of thing is that? A bunch of people saying, well, come over to this church, or come over to that church.

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And then there was one –

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I mean, this is so – yeah, yeah, here, here. Kinthea Alice Rosgiel.

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And people wonder why I turned my back on religion and took up witchcraft. Well, also they have much nicer pot.

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Yeah, okay. But then there's all this stuff, dollar sign, dollar sign, dollar sign, dollar sign.

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Why would anyone want to go to that church? How disrespectful and insulting. I mean, wow.

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Really gave me a clear example, once again, we've talked about before, of how modern churchianity in America has little connection at all to anything that could be considered biblical.

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As to a proper ecclesiology, a proper recognition of the nature of the ordinances of the church.

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Oh, goodness, what a mess that was right then and there.

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And it's just one example that you could give over and over and over again of how few there are that take seriously the fellowship of faith, being called to serve in a local church.

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You know, the church -hopping mentality, it's all about me, it's nothing about my service to others, or giving myself in service to others.

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There's no Philippians 2 attitude amongst any of these folks. It is truly a troubling thing.

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See, what should you expect from Facebook, but there you go.

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So I had just seen that, and it just struck me, and so I thought I'd mention it. I guess we'll go ahead and open the phones.

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We'll get to the phone calls in just a moment. 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341.

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Two other things. One was, you know, you get in trouble amongst certain people if you dare recognize great insight made by someone that they don't like, and I get that.

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And this particular individual, I've even debated on the other side of this individual, but there are times when he just knocks it out of the park, and you've got to admit that he knocks it out of the park.

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Well, a couple days ago, Douglas Wilson posted an article called

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This Cabalcade of Concupiscence. Doug does like to use many words that require people to stop and use dictionary .com

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or go ask Siri a question or something like that to be able to figure out what he's talking about.

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But I wanted to read a portion of this because I think he's smacked out on.

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I believe it is past time for us to add the P to our Congo line of kink. The reason we must add the

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P, standing in for pedophile, is that we have already in principle added the P.

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This already happened with virtually no one noticing when it happened exactly. There is a difference between crossing the

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Mississippi and Minneapolis compared to Memphis, but you are crossing the same river in both instances. Pedophilia has already been accepted by our culture.

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The only thing that remains for us to discover that this is so, and for lots of clueless evangelical cultural observers to smack their foreheads five years after the fact, who knew?

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Why weren't we told? Why weren't we warned? My argument is an off or teori one. A how much more argument.

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If it is now legal for a minor to begin the process of transitioning, with that process including the use of hormone blockers to prevent the onset of puberty, and to go under the knife, which is a monumental and irreversible decision, shouldn't they be allowed to experience sexual activity of whatever kind they want?

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If a child is competent to decide to allow a 35 -year -old surgeon to cut off her breasts, then why is she not competent to allow a 35 -year -old surgeon to fondle them, which is the bigger decision, which has the greater long -term consequences.

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We can rest assured that there are, in fact, 35 -year -olds who do want to fondle them, because there always are, and we can be equally assured that there are 35 -year -old surgeons, because money talks, who will want to cut them off.

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Not only is this kind of iniquity legal and approved, but it is also hate to be critical of it.

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The reason disagreement is deemed hatred is because this kind of hatred of God loves to project, and ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake.

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That is a classical example of projection. Progressivism is progressing all right, in tighter and tighter clockwise circles, approaching the sucking nadir of our drain to the sewers, which our demented salons and pubas want to call the apex of our enlightenment.

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Now, admittedly, our laws are in a state of flux, and it might be a few years before everything is sorted out.

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Right now, in many states, if you fondle them, it is off the big house for you, while if you simply cut them off, your chances of a

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TED Talk gig and a book deal are pretty good. Think about that. So there are what he calls angularities.

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We should allow ourselves some leeway for such inconsistencies to get ironed out. But here, given the current state of our culture, which way that inconsistency is going to be reconciled is kind of obvious.

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And he is exactly right. There are inconsistencies right now.

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But what you're seeing from the left is the push to get rid of those inconsistencies and to put into the form of the entirety of the law this kind of abject human anarchy and autonomy, because that's what the two things are.

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So—well, there's more. I wanted to go to something else as well, but I just recommend the article simply because it points out in a very clear fashion the reality that—well, everyone saw the link.

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I imagine everyone saw the link to the TED Talk, and I think it was a TED Talk, presenting the idea that pedophilia is an immutable human sexual orientation, just like homosexuality or bisexuality or transgenderism or anything else.

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And once you go there, once that—and how could you not go there? How can a

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Birgefell not go there? Once you go there, there's no going back without a fundamental moral and ethical revolution to say, you know what?

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We took the wrong turn a long time ago. We need to go back. We need to change all this.

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And I don't see any evidence yet that that's going to happen, and I'll be perfectly honest with you. As far as I can tell from church history and from the history of the world, the only time that a nation or a culture makes that kind of radical change is when some kind of major disaster befalls that society or that culture.

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That causes them to rethink and to recognize the existence of God and his right to rule over his creation.

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I don't see how a Western society that is blessed with material blessing can escape the malaise and apathy of prosperity so as to make that kind of radical change.

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And that means—that's why judgment comes. That's why I think we will see judgment upon Western culture is because we continue down this road with our elites firmly in control of the steering wheel, even if there are a few bumps and a few hesitations along the way.

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That's where they want to go, and that's what they want to do. One more thing before we start taking our phone calls.

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David, hold on just one moment. I was directed to Matt Chandler's recent sermon promoting a continuationist view of the concept of prophecy and encouraging a continuationist practice of prophetic words amongst the people.

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Now, it would be worthy of—and

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I would imagine that there will be those who will do an extended review of—there weren't too many texts that were used, to be perfectly honest with you—but do an extended review of the sermon.

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There was one particular portion that I wanted to play for you and make a brief comment on that before we go to our calls.

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Hopefully, this will be able to be heard. I'm not going to do this screen share thing.

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It gets too complicated. But the audio should be fine. I hope it is. Let's find out.

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Let me—that should be loud enough. If not, I can replay it.

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I'll let Rich know. So let's listen to this one section.

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So we receive from the Lord a word that doesn't contradict the Scriptures, doesn't stand in contrast to the sufficiency of the

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Scriptures, but it personalizes the Scriptures. Okay, so he's defining prophecy.

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Let me back it up here just a little bit. Let me do this a second time. When we're talking about prophecy, this is what we think the

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Bible is talking about. Prophecy consists of Spirit -prompted, spontaneous, intelligible messages orally delivered to a person or community intended for edification or encouragement.

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You with me? You tracking? This is what we mean—this is what we think the Bible means when it talks about prophecy.

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So we receive from the Lord a word that doesn't contradict the Scriptures, doesn't stand in contrast to the sufficiency of the

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Scriptures, but it personalizes the Scriptures. Were you able to hear that?

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I didn't see anything that said—you were able to hear it. Okay, good.

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Does not contradict the Scriptures. The example he gave of an impression of a pirate ship with guns being chased by a shark—well, yeah.

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How would you even place that into a category to even ask the question, does that contradict

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Scripture? And does not compromise Scriptural sufficiency.

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I guess that depends on what you think Scriptural sufficiency means or how you make application of it.

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But personalizes Scripture. That was the part that made me go—because the example that he gave of a dream of a pirate ship with guns being chased by a shark—now,

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I don't think he was saying that he had had that particular dream, but it was just an example, so I've just got to go with the example that he gave.

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How does that personalize Scripture? It might personalize your experience, but I don't see how that personalizes

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Scripture. I really, really don't. I have—again,

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I mentioned briefly another time, but I think sometime down the road, because I've been doing a fair amount of reading on this, gotten some books, probably doing too much reading on it.

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But the story of Munster and the

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Anabaptists, and especially Jan Matthias and Jan of Leiden, good stuff to keep in mind when you start promoting this kind of—

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Why don't you go to a certain person and tell them this? You know, he had this guy come to him before he had his brain tumor, and say that this charismatic told him that God was going to circumcise him, and through that circumcision cause him to become a father to many sons.

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And that after his operation and during the chemo and stuff, he remembered that and went, oh, that's what that was about.

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So he's got an experiential thing that's factoring into this interpretation of the text of 1

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Corinthians 14. I can guarantee you that. And I don't know if the text was actually exegeted before or after the sermon

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I listened to, because there wasn't any exegesis here. This was just story time. There wasn't any real proclamation of the text at all.

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So maybe the week before it had been dealt with or was going to be dealt with afterwards or something, I don't know.

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But the whole concept of, well, we need something more here.

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What concerned me is he was actually encouraging the church to be seeking after this. And yet if this is something the

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Spirit does, you don't need to seek after it. The Spirit's going to provide that in and of himself.

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And once you start encouraging people to do that, you're going to have a bunch of people running around saying, you know, this is my word for you type of situation.

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You see how that has ended up in most charismatic circles and the abuse that ends up coming from that.

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But the real question is how do you define scriptural sufficiency in light of this?

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And at the same time, how do you not fall into a the

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Spirit can't do anything but what I already understand of the Bible attitude?

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Because I recognize that that's a danger as well. It doesn't seem to be as well. I was going to say it doesn't seem to be as big of a danger.

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But I guess if you want to include all of the dead formal denominations in the list that maybe you could you could make it make a case.

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But we certainly have seen the chaos that results when you go the direction of those

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Anabaptists in Munster or the Charismatics today. Because, well,

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I said I'll tell I'll tell the whole story sometime. We may we may just do a dividing line on that because it's it's pretty fascinating.

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So I listened to that and I was and I just had to ask myself, I wonder what it was like after that service.

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What was what was going on? Because he was telling people, if the Lord places somebody upon your mind, then you need to go and you need to share that with that particular individual.

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So it must have been a pretty fascinating fellowship time after that particular particular service.

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And I just wonder how many pastoral problems are now going to be being dealt with. Don't get me wrong.

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Like I said, if you've if you've been a

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Christian for any period of time, there are going to be things that when you look back upon them were very supernatural in their origination and their character.

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But the things that I look back on over decades now of Christian service that strike me as the most supernatural experiences, miraculous experiences were not things

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I was ever seeking for. In fact, they were surprising. And they were almost always in the context of evangelism, upholding and defending

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Christian truth. Most of the stuff that you hear about all the time and that's not what it's about.

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And, you know, when I when I look at walking by the

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Spirit in Scripture, but I say walk by the Spirit and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.

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The flesh sets its desire against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. These are in opposition to one another so that you may not do the things that you please.

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But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now, the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are and you have the long list of things of which

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I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

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But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness.

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I'm sorry, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control. Against such there is no law.

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Now, those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the

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Spirit, let us also walk or be under the control of the Spirit. Let us not become boastful, challenging one another and being one another.

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You'll notice that what's around all this stuff is very much incredibly practical, godly living, holiness, sanctification.

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It would seem to me that the greatest supernatural activity of the Spirit of God is to be found in the sanctification of believers, not in our running around saying, well,

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I had a vision of pirate ships and a shark chasing. It seems to be a very, very different thing.

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Anyways, 877 -753 -3341. 877 -753 -3341.

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See, that's the way I can remind myself of it in case I end up forgetting. So let's go ahead and talk to David in New York.

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Hi, David. Hey, Dr. White. Hello, Dr. White. Thanks for taking my call. It's always a pleasure.

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It's a pleasure talking to you. Yes, sir. Hey, I have a question about Matthew chapter 27, verses 50 -54.

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So it says that when Jesus died, pretty much that the veil of the temple was torn in two and the earth shook and graves were opened and many bodies of the saints which slept arose and came out of the graves after the resurrection.

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So I was having a conversation with some Jehovah's Witnesses again, and they said that everyone who died since the beginning of the world are all still asleep in the grave.

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And so I referenced this scripture. I said, well, what about Matthew chapter 27? They told me that that is not consistent with scripture and that it only means that the earth shook so much that dead bodies rolled out of the grave and had to be reburied.

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I was wondering if there was like a textual variant that I was missing or did they really actually get up and walk around?

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No, there's not a textual variant that we're missing. Rich, I'm getting me coming back at me big time this time.

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So I'm not sure if that's happening on your end or just what, but I'm hearing me much, much stronger than I did last time.

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So just letting you know that's there. Hopefully you can still hear me as well.

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This is a text that evidently you might not be aware is the focus of a tremendous amount of controversy from about six or seven years ago.

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Maybe now when Mike like Kona, Dr. Mike like Kona put out a book, a lengthy book on resurrection and basically identified this as a mythological text with apocalyptic overtones, which is a nice way of saying it didn't really happen.

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And I'm not really sure what in the world it's about is what he was saying. And so he was attacked by Norman Geisler for denying inerrancy.

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And it became sort of a, I don't know, a text that people argue about a lot. And so I have commented on a number of times because I certainly disagreed with like Kona, but I didn't agree with Geisler's approach to the response to like Kona.

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And my Muslim friends like to pick this one up and they call it the zombie apocalypse and atheists use that.

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And in fact, in the debate between like Kona and Herman about six or eight months ago, maybe a little bit more now, that's what

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Herman called it. And like Kona agreed to the terminology, which I found very distressing.

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So I have addressed this a number of times. There's no way that the Jehovah's Witness interpretation has any possibility whatsoever.

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Because you'll notice that it says the tombs were opened and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.

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And coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they entered the holy city and appeared to many.

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And so you have you have.

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One term coming out of the tomb tombs and then ice ale fawn, they entered into the city.

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It's not that they rolled down a hill or something. They entered the city and appeared to many.

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So there's there's no way that this is just simply some bodies that were kicked out of graves that people happened to walk by and see.

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That's what a lot of people wanted to try to do. First of all, this is a limited number of people.

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And secondly, they would have had to have been people who had recently passed away.

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Why? Because otherwise they wouldn't have even been recognized for who they were. It says they went into the into the holy city and appeared to many.

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So somehow they were known. Well, how would they be known while they're wearing grave clothes?

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Well, I don't think that's what appeared would would mean that the idea would be that this is a a symbol of the first fruits of the resurrection.

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Maybe these were people like Anna or Simeon who had been greatly looking forward to the

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Messiah. And so they are the ones who are raised up and they they get to see the beginning of the proclamation of the gospel.

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We're not told. But we what what isn't said is that all of the dead are raised.

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This is a small number. And it's it's localized around what's called specifically the holy city, which has been made holy by the sacrifice of Christ outside of its gates.

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I might point out. And since it says they appeared to many, there's no way around the reality that these are not zombies or something.

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These were recognizable individuals who would have had some connection to people who were still alive at that time to know who in the world they were.

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And therefore, what the significance of their having been raised from the dead at the very same time that Jesus dies upon the cross would be.

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There is no explanation given by Matthew. It is not mentioned by Mark or Luke or John.

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And therefore, people just automatically dismiss it or do whatever they whatever else. But that ignores the fact that even

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John says, if everything Jesus had done was been written down, the world itself couldn't keep the keep all the books that would be written.

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So the point is that each one of the authors of the Gospels has the right as an author to determine what he's going to say and what he's not going to say, what he's going to cover, what he's not going to cover.

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And this is an instance where something takes place that only Matthew covers. Now, if you want to go naturalistic and go, well, why wouldn't

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Mark have mentioned this or why wouldn't Luke have mentioned this or whatever else? There may be things that Matthew knew that Luke didn't.

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I mean, Luke says he interviewed people. Maybe he didn't interview someone who had been witness to this.

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Maybe because Matthew has a particular audience, primarily Jewish people, that they would find this partial resurrection, something that was extremely significant.

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There's all sorts of possibilities. And only if you take a naturalistic perspective and ignore all of that can you just simply dismiss it out of hand.

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But no matter what you do with it, you have to you have to let it stand. There is no question that it is a genuine part of the original writing of Matthew.

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Anybody who wants to say, well, this has been inserted later, zero evidence. Well, it wasn't in the original

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Hebrew Matthew, zero evidence of the Hebrew Matthew. It's all speculation. You're just not wanting to deal with the text as it stands.

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It's there and there really isn't any way around it. At the same time, you have to be careful about reading too much into it to try to expand it beyond the very limited few words.

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I mean, it's literally maybe about 14 words or something like that. And there's no further explanation of it.

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So you have to allow for that to be the reality. OK, thank you.

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Thank you very much. Was that was that more than you wanted or did that help? No, that helped a lot.

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That helped a lot. That was perfect. Thank you. OK. All right. Thanks for your call. Eight, seven, seven, seven, five, three, three, three, four, one.

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Let's talk to Micah. Hi, Micah. Hi, Dr. White.

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Thanks for taking my call. Can you hear me OK? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yeah. You're tweeting in these beautiful Colorado landscapes is making me feel very confined in my office.

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So thank you. I'm only a few more days, so I'll get a few more of those pictures.

39:05

I'm heading back to the torrential rains and humidity and heat of Phoenix. There you go.

39:11

Well, enjoy your time away. I've got a question. I'm trying to I've been trying to formulate the question to you so I can simplify it.

39:22

But it may be a complex question. I think you'll know where I'm going as soon as I start. So whenever you're talking to a

39:27

Mormon, they always end up going back to this sort of burning of the bosom, this sort of subjectivism of, you know, you can point out to them, look, your your version of Christ contradicts the scriptures.

39:42

Your version of God contradicts the Old Testament scriptures. And this is objectively true. But the response is, but I've got this personal revelation.

39:50

I've got this burning of the bosom. And so it ultimately leads to subjectivism. When I'm talking to the atheist, the atheist will point out all these contradictions in scriptures.

40:01

And I will try to take him to context. I'll try to show objectively that these are not contradictions. But I know as a

40:07

Reformed person that 1 Corinthians chapter 2, the natural man cannot accept the spirit of God.

40:18

That regeneration is required. The work of regeneration is required by the spirit for a man to believe the scriptures are from God and believe the gospel for the power of salvation.

40:29

So I guess my question is, how is regeneration different? And how does it not lead to subjectivism?

40:36

How is it different than the Mormons burning of the bosom? You see where I'm going with this question?

40:44

How is it different? I suppose. I mean, there's two different categories there.

40:50

The Mormon is making the claim that they are receiving a form of revelation that is consistent with the teachings of the apostles of Jesus Christ.

41:07

Of course, they redefined the apostles of Jesus Christ, but they talk about the Holy Spirit. And so they're making a claim, an almost revelatory claim, while at the same time they actually deny the necessity of regeneration.

41:25

Regeneration is not a meaningful LDS category because they have no meaningful doctrine of sin.

41:33

So man doesn't need to be regenerated. Adam fell upward according to Mormonism.

41:38

So it sounds more like you're dealing with an epistemological issue.

41:45

And what you've got is the contrast between the unhinged subjectivist who is accepting all sorts of contradictory revelatory sources, such as the

42:04

Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and feelings, their own alleged testimony of the Holy Spirit of God, over against an individual who, likewise unregenerate, places ultimate authority in their own intellect or rejects the existence of the supernatural.

42:26

So I see a huge category difference between the two.

42:33

They each present their own real challenges as to how to deal with them.

42:41

With the atheist, you're having to deal with that individual presuppositionally in the sense of placing them within the context of God's world that they have been made in and demonstrating that they cannot live in the world that they've created because they're living in God's world, so there's going to be inconsistencies in their thoughts and their actions and so on and so forth.

43:08

Over against the Mormon, where you have claims of supernatural authority, but they're inconsistent and incoherent claims.

43:18

And that even within Mormonism, one of the biggest problems that Mormonism has had is the balancing between the ideas of personal revelation and priesthood authority.

43:36

The Mormon male may have quote -unquote priesthood authority, but the problem with that claim is he can't then use that priesthood authority to contradict the teachings and actions of someone who has a higher priesthood authority.

43:54

So there is a necessary objective element within Mormonism.

44:02

You can't have a system if it's just anarchy and everybody gets to decide what they want to believe.

44:08

And so that's where Mormonism right now is actually struggling greatly. And in my 30 -plus years of ministry to Mormons, I have certainly seen that stress, that argument being worked out amongst the

44:29

Mormons and going towards subjectivism. Mormons used to be significantly more confident of there being an objective basis to their religious faith, like the

44:44

Book of Mormon actually being true and the prophecies of Joseph Smith actually being verifiable.

44:50

They're losing that because the more study you do, the more scholarship is applied, the less those types of beliefs are at all credible.

45:00

And that's causing a major – that's what's causing – one of the reasons that you're seeing a major, major opening of the back door within Mormonism and a great widening of the spectrum of belief amongst

45:18

Mormons as well. So – but I do see a major category difference between the two, and so I'm not sure if that addressed your question or not.

45:30

Yeah, I think it's getting there. So if, for example, if you were dealing just with a skeptic in general, an atheistic skeptic who's obviously presupposing naturalistic worldview, and he's looking at me and I'm saying, look,

45:44

I know the Scriptures are the Word of God because of its inherent qualities, of its wisdom, of its power, of its truthfulness.

45:52

All of these are objective truths, and I see these objective truths. And the atheists are saying, I don't see them.

45:59

Why not? And I say, because you're unregenerate. You're a rebel against God.

46:04

It's your nature. And he looks at me and says, but that's what the Mormon said. Well, see,

46:11

I would not put it the way that you did. I would not say the Bible is the Word of God because of these things.

46:19

I would say these things are consistent with the claim that the Bible is the Word of God. But these things are not what prove that or demonstrate that.

46:28

They are consistent with the reality of the fact that we live in a creation where we communicate with one another.

46:40

There is clearly a creator in light of what we see around us, and that creator has communicated to us.

46:48

But we have to be very, very careful. When you say these things, this is why

46:54

I know these things. If Scripture is the anustos, then as an ultimate authority, there cannot be another authority that it appeals to to prove its truthfulness.

47:12

So when you swear in a court of law, I swear by the

47:18

Bible, is how we used to do it, that what I'm going to say is true. What we're saying is here is a higher authority than myself that I am going to appeal to, to guarantee the truthfulness of what

47:29

I'm saying. God can't do that. As Scripture itself says, who's God going to swear by? There is nothing for him to swear by, and thereby, if Scripture is his word, if it is truly the anustos, then there will be consistency with lesser authorities.

47:47

But if you – and Christians do this all the time – but if you say, well, fulfilled prophecy proves that the

47:55

Bible is the Word of God, now you have fulfilled prophecy as a higher authority to which

48:00

Scripture is appealing to demonstrate its own inspiration, and that gives you an incoherent doctrine of Scripture.

48:11

And so it takes us back to the reality that ultimate authorities cannot appeal to sources outside of themselves, and if the

48:24

Mormon tries to make himself the ultimate authority, well, that's obviously the problem in and of itself right there.

48:34

You're a sinful creature, and you're now making yourself the ultimate authority, and that's where the real problem lies, and then you have to test for consistency.

48:43

And really, you're testing for consistency with both of them, just on very different grounds. Very different grounds, indeed.

48:50

Yeah, that's very helpful. Actually, that second answer there helped me, but thank you very much. I won't take any more of your time.

48:56

Just an area I'm struggling with right now. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you. God bless. Have a good day. Thank you.

49:03

877 -753 -3341, coming to you live from Evergreen, Colorado.

49:11

You know, I have my solar scope set up. I want to show my hosts the surface of the sun.

49:18

But you may have noticed, you see the light and dark of the camera? Those are the clouds.

49:25

And I'm looking out there going, yeah, I don't think this is going to work too well. But that's what happens when you try to look at the sky.

49:35

There are these white, fluffy things that get in the way. And two days ago, it decided to rain on me all the way down Juniper Pass on the 103 at a fairly decent speed as well.

49:51

And if you've ever been on a bike at 40 miles an hour, rain hurts.

49:58

You're hitting those raindrops. Drive down the road at 40 miles an hour and stick your face out the window when it's raining.

50:05

And you'll get an idea of what cyclists go through. Did you start talking to me? I thought

50:11

I heard something coming back at me. It may have just been me. All right, let's talk to Alexander.

50:18

Hi, Alexander. Hey, Dr. White. Thanks for picking my call. Yes, sir. So my question is this.

50:29

A while ago, well, actually today, I was listening to one of your presentations on Jehovah's Witnesses.

50:36

The one from Grace Community Church? Huh? The one from Grace Community Church?

50:43

Actually, well, yeah, I was listening to that one. But I was also listening to another one that was much older.

50:50

I don't remember where that one was from. But I think actually, no, this one was the one where you were in Hawaii.

51:00

Yeah, that was the easy one to remember because I generally don't wear Hawaiian shirts while teaching.

51:06

But when you're in Hawaii, you do as the Hawaiians do. So, yeah, okay. Go ahead. Yeah. And I remember you saying that a

51:14

Jehovah's Witness basically believes that you are a soul and that you don't have a soul.

51:23

And my question is, is that implying that you believe that we merely have a soul and not are a soul?

51:31

Because I'm really confused as to the matter of what we are in relation to the spirit and the soul and stuff.

51:37

So I'm like, what is the Bible's position? Why is the Jehovah's Witness wrong slash right? Well, the

51:44

Jehovah's Witness does not believe that there is a spiritual aspect to man that survives death, for example.

51:51

So man ceases to exist when he dies. There is no spiritual aspect.

52:00

And in fact, there is such a disjunction that in Watchtower of theology, when you die, you cease to exist.

52:11

And in the millennium, what is resurrected is based upon God's memory of who you were, which really means that there's no connection between you and whatever it is that's created in the future.

52:26

You don't have any continuity at that point, which

52:32

I think is one of the devastatingly discouraging concepts of Watchtower of theology, especially when they face death.

52:41

Yeah, because that's not actually you. Exactly. That's the whole point.

52:47

And it's so important in Watchtower of theology that that's the same issue with Jesus. Is Jesus Michael?

52:54

Well, sort of. But Michael is a spirit creature who ceased to exist, and then

53:01

Jesus was a human being and lived on Earth for 33 years. And then he ceased to exist, and Michael's recreated.

53:07

So there really isn't a line between connecting those things. Even though there's a connection conceptually, there really isn't a line connecting those things.

53:18

It's one of the oddities of Witness theology that who knows? You know, the Witnesses change theology fairly regularly, or they'll change that too.

53:26

But anyway, what do Christians believe? Well, you have people who take a bipartite or a tripartite view of man.

53:36

The body, soul, spirit position that strongly distinguishes between soul and spirit.

53:45

Normally the soul will be identified there with man's intellectual life and then spirit, the spiritual life that continues after death.

53:58

And then others would take more of a bipartite. There is the spiritual aspect of man, and there is the bodily aspect of man.

54:09

And would see spirit and soul as more synonymous or referring to different aspects of the same spiritual nature of man.

54:21

And so you'll get argumentation on that particular subject. You know,

54:28

I know good tripartite men. I'm more of a bipartite individual. My seminary training really strongly emphasized,

54:37

I think properly, the fact that there has been a lot of Greek philosophical speculation that has informed a lot of people's understandings of these things.

54:54

And certainly in the Hebrew understanding of man, there is a unity of man, not to deny the category of the physical aspect of man or the spiritual aspect of man.

55:11

But that no matter how much you might want to dig into distinguishing between terms such as numah, sukkah, nefesh in the

55:24

Hebrew, ruach, whatever, that our tendency as Westerners is to make really deep distinctions there that are not necessarily a part of the

55:39

Hebrew mindset at all. And so you have to balance those things, and you always have to remember that no matter what distinctions you make in those other areas, man is still created to be man.

55:55

And hence, for example, it is unnatural for man to exist in a disembodied state.

56:04

That's why the resurrection is so important. That's why that term is so central to New Testament anthropology and to the final judgment of all things, and all the rest of that.

56:18

So you'll find good discussions of who lines up where, and all the arguments in decent—any good solid systematic theology will lay out where the arguments are on that particular subject.

56:36

But the key issue between Orthodox Christianity and Jehovah's Witnesses on that issue is that they deny any spiritual aspect that survives death whatsoever, whereas very clearly there is a spiritual aspect of man that, as Peter says, those who are, for example, are unrighteous, continue—God keeps them under punishment until the day of judgment.

57:05

So there was—Dr. Peterson from the

57:10

Covenant Seminary, the old Covenant Seminary, has a fairly extensive work that will go into various aspects of that.

57:20

And even Bob Morey did good work in that area back in the day, before other weirdness happened.

57:28

I think his book was called Death and the Afterlife, if I recall correctly. Okay. Well, so basically, if I could sort of make an application to what you're saying, since there's a lot of disagreement between Christians on this particular issue, would you say it's not really worth talking to Jehovah's Witnesses about debating their view on it?

57:50

No, I wouldn't, because though we may have disagreements as to the specific referent of soul and spirit in comparison to one another, what is fundamentally necessary is a recognition of the spiritual nature of man.

58:10

There's got to be something that, you know, Paul says when he dies, to be absent of the body is present with the

58:18

Lord. In Jehovah's Witness theology, to be absent of the body is to cease to exist, not to be present with the Lord. Well, with that in mind, how do

58:25

Jehovah's Witnesses typically interpret that passage? Well, remember, not all of the

58:33

New Testament's written for them. Only the 144 ,000 enter into a spiritual existence.

58:45

But the Jehovah's Witnesses, because they're going to be spirit beings in Heaven. They're the only ones that go to Heaven.

58:52

The great crowd exists in a physical body here on Earth. So large portions of the

58:58

New Testament aren't even written for them. I mean it's a really depressing religion when you think about it.

59:08

It's sad because a lot of people have a, let's just say just a real dislike of Jehovah's Witnesses, maybe because they've woken them up too many

59:16

Saturday mornings or whatever. But when you really think about what they believe, it's depressing. It's sad.

59:22

We should feel horrible for these people and want to be amongst those who bring a gospel of truth to them.

59:29

And so I think it is important because for no other reason than their view of Jesus and atonement is deeply influenced by their non – their belief that Jesus doesn't rise physically from the dead.

59:44

But as a spiritual creature, that would be an important reason too.

59:50

Okay? Yeah. Well, I don't want to take up any more of your time. Thank you, Dr. White, and thank you for all the things that you guys do.

59:59

All right. Thanks a lot. God bless. Okay, let's take – thank you. Let's take one more call and then wrap things up here.

01:00:06

We've already gone for the hour we were going to do, but we'll take one more. Yeah, Rich wasn't watching the clock.

01:00:13

He's just having so much fun, you know, just learning so much that – oh, okay.

01:00:22

Now you've confused me. So which one are we taking here?

01:00:28

Because you've put two into the thing now. Okay. I don't know who

01:00:35

I'm going to be talking to. You've given – I oopsed the other guy. So you hung up on him is what you're saying.

01:00:45

Yeah, oopsed is a rather non -technical term. So RC, sorry.

01:00:52

Rich oopsed you. So one last question, talking to Thayer in Minnesota.

01:01:01

Hi, Thayer. Hello. How are you doing, Dr. White? Doing good. That's good.

01:01:06

Well, first, thank you for taking my call, and as a Muslim, you know, I like to watch your shows. I think you're very fair and very respectful, and, you know, you open your arms to Muslims as well, and I appreciate that.

01:01:19

But my question is, you know, in today's age, we live in a very secular and liberal society, and I believe, and I'm sure you believe that, you know, society is morally decaying.

01:01:32

Yes. So my question to you is, what do you think about Muslims and Christians uniting on the same side and settling our differences and speaking or debating against the other side, which is the atheistic, secular worldview?

01:01:49

Would you ever do it? Well, I'm not sure what that would look like. When you say settling our differences, it sounds like what you're saying is lay our differences aside.

01:01:59

Yes. Yeah, and I think that there is a place for recognizing that Muslims and Jews and Christians together have a worldview based in atheistic worldview that gives them a ground for, example, addressing issues such as human dignity, abortion, sexuality, all of the things that are being pushed by the left that are so dehumanizing, and so we can speak together in that sense.

01:02:43

However, I don't think that we can cooperate in a way that does not include as an essential element of it the continued respectful but necessary dialogue and disagreement between us, because, for example, well,

01:03:08

A, as a Christian, it's just absolutely necessary that I give testimony of the gospel to anyone, and if I love my

01:03:17

Muslim brother or sister, we don't agree on the gospel, and that's just central to who

01:03:23

I am. And so in the same way that you would openly want me to say the

01:03:30

Shahada and to submit to Sharia, I say to my

01:03:35

Muslim friend, this is who Jesus is, and this is the way of eternal life, and those things can't be set aside.

01:03:43

They always are central and need to be understood, and it's always a part of the conversation given the situation that we're in.

01:03:52

And I think you'll admit that when we try to make application—for example, when

01:04:00

I try to bring God's law to bear within the context of Western culture in the

01:04:07

United States, if I say, for example, that God has clearly revealed

01:04:15

His will for marriage, you and I have disagreements on that issue.

01:04:22

We may both come from a theistic perspective and say that God has the right to determine these things, but the historical development of Islamic Sharia regarding marriage takes a hard turn away from the

01:04:41

Christian concept of marriage, and that goes back to the sources that we have.

01:04:47

And so you have the Quran within the context of the Hadith. We have the

01:04:52

Old and New Testaments together, and as a result, we're going to address the issue of marriage and even sexuality with some commonality but with significant differences as well that would come out in that conversation.

01:05:11

And so, you know, I just think it's necessary—in my experience, as I've looked at places where Muslims and Christians have attempted to sort of call a truce on the theological side and say, hey, let's deal with the cultural issues, that has always ended up, sadly, requiring a fundamental abandonment of some of the core principles that gave rise to our specific positions.

01:05:46

And so, you know, I can certainly sit next to Yasir Qadhi and talk about things that we have in common, but part and parcel of that conversation was these are the things where we have fundamental differences, and they give rise even to differences as to how we deal with the culture around us.

01:06:08

And so, you know, I try to give an example of how we can respectfully have these discussions, but you can't get away from the fact that those fundamental issues are there, and they need to be addressed.

01:06:25

Yeah, I mean, would you agree that, you know, instead of, in a way, being divided, we should kind of unite together or have mutual respect for each other to at least— you know, because I know

01:06:44

Muslims and Christians are both conservative people, and, you know, I find that in today's society, it's very—you know, it's degrading, you know, there's a lot of gay marriage and whatnot, and I know—I believe that we should just have basic moral truth to speak against this stuff, or at least talk about the existence of God, but I don't know what you—

01:07:11

Yeah, well, in the sense of, again, when we agree about something, being able to say we agree on this without— you know, there are some

01:07:25

Christians, I guess some Muslims too, who are afraid when, for example, it is said that Christians and Muslims are monotheists, for example.

01:07:37

There are some Christians who will—well, Muslims will say we're not, but then there are some

01:07:43

Christians who will say, no, no, no, you can't say that we have anything in agreement with Muslims.

01:07:50

Well, that's silly. We believe God created the heavens and the earth. There are all sorts of areas where there are points of agreement, but the tendency in Western society, then, is to take those points of agreement and say that the points of disagreement therefore become irrelevant or unimportant, and they're not.

01:08:12

Especially because in example after example that we would have to go through, when we start giving the specific reasons why we hold the positions that we hold to, the reason that a

01:08:25

Muslim holds to certain positions that are similar to that of a Christian are different in light of what we believe about Christ.

01:08:35

They go back to our theology. They go back to our fundamental theological differences. So as long as we are having open and honest and foundational discussion of what our disagreements are, and we're not pushing them under the rug, then we can—only in that context can we then say, these are the areas where we agree, these are the areas where we disagree.

01:09:02

If we don't do that, then there's going to be no communication going on whatsoever. So on the one end,

01:09:08

I would have to go, yeah, we have to decide what we agree on so that we can then focus upon what we disagree on.

01:09:15

And when some of my Christian friends say, we don't agree on anything, they don't realize that they've just shut down all conversation.

01:09:22

But at the same time, societally, the reasons, for example, that Christians would hold to particular aspects of marriage theology are not present within Islam, and we can't say that we necessarily agree as to our motivation at that point.

01:09:45

And if we're having honest discussion about that elsewhere, great. If we're not, then we've got to be careful.

01:09:52

All right, well, thank you for taking my call. I hope you have a great day. Thank you. Thank you very much for your phone call.

01:09:58

I appreciate it. God bless. All righty. Appreciate that call from Minnesota.

01:10:05

My own home state was born there. Didn't live there very long, but I could tell you stories, but I won't.

01:10:13

The land of 10 ,000 lakes and 100 billion mosquitoes. So, yeah, that's just the way it is.

01:10:21

Anyways, thanks for listening to the program today. As I said, I return home, Lord willing,

01:10:27

Monday. Prayers appreciated. It looks like the weather is going to be—looks like the monsoons is going to be all the way that I'm traveling.

01:10:34

I'm going to be having bad weather, so prayers appreciated for that. But Lord willing, somewhat close to a regular schedule.

01:10:42

I'm not sure if Tuesday necessarily, the day after a 12 -hour, 12, 13 -hour trip, would be good.

01:10:47

But we will try to be back in studio and doing what we do for the rest of July and August anyways.

01:10:56

Fairly regular stuff there as far as the program is concerned. So, appreciate your watching.