"The God Who Wasn't There" Reviewed then Calls

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.

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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll -free across the

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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

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James White. Hi, good morning. Welcome to The Dividing Line. On a Tuesday morning, let's start off with a program note.

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The class I'm teaching on apologetics for Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary begins this evening, so it will also be going on Thursday evening and it starts at 5 .15

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in the evening. And that means we're going to need to change the timing on The Dividing Line this

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Thursday and next Thursday to the normal morning time instead of the afternoon time.

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Apologize for that, but there is no possible way that you can get from here to there in 15 minutes, unless you have a helicopter or something along those lines, and that wouldn't work either.

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So we will be doing the Thursday – this Thursday's Dividing Line and the

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Thursday Dividing Line next week. The 4th and the 11th will be at the same time we're doing it right now.

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So those of you who listen in the evening, I apologize for that, but we'll be back to our regular schedule fairly shortly after that.

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Though actually, now that I think about it, I think that the 18th – yeah, the next

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Thursday, I'm on my way to New Jersey anyway, so it doesn't really matter, but we'll figure something out along those lines.

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Lots of neat stuff going on. I am taxing my laptop this morning.

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I've got all sorts of programs running with all sorts of things that we'll try to sneak into the program today, but my laptop has nothing to do with the fact that we do not have a studio audience.

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We have in -studio guests. We have in -studio guests that are not actually in the studio, but they're sort of like outside the studio, but I can see them, so it's fairly clear.

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Anyway, visiting from the humid climes of Tampa, Florida, we have a fellow who frequently joins us via the telephone, but today gets to join us right here in -studio, and that, of course, is our good friend,

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Mike O 'Fallon. Hi, Mike. Greetings, James. How are you, sir? I'm doing pretty well now. Have you recovered from our last cruise and conference yet?

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Could you say again? I couldn't hear you. You just have to turn the speakers on out there so he can hear me that way, and we'll just hope that we don't get any feedback out of him because we're not getting the headphones to work there.

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So have you recovered from our last cruise and conference yet? Depends on what you mean by recovered.

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Have I lost any weight? No. But I'm sure we can do that today. This is actually my first visit here to your new studios and your new offices here in Phoenix.

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It is quite a bit larger than your previous offices and studio, and I was planning on challenging both yourself and Rich to a rousing game of hide -and -go -seek after we're done.

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Well, we would probably do better at that than you would because we know which boxes are empty and which ones have stuff in them, so that would probably be a little bit dangerous.

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But we have a wonderful cruise coming up in October, and I wish we had all sorts of neat announcements to make today as to something we're working on, but I can only assure folks that there is more coming as to what we're attempting to arrange for folks.

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But right now, a number of folks took advantage of the January 1st deadline, and we've got some neat folks coming with us.

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I want to make sure everybody understands that the price didn't quadruple or something come

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January 1st or anything like that. It's still incredibly affordable, is it not?

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Absolutely. It's still, I believe, in terms of the cruises that we've done over the past seven years, still the cheapest cruise we've ever done.

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We do have, through to the end of the day, though, the ability to still offer the rate that was previous to the

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January 1st deadline, and the reason being is simply because Celebrity Cruises was closed. So because of that, they're allowing us to be able to register you.

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If you want to go in on the early rate that is listed on our website at aomin .org, you can go ahead and register there, and you'll still get that early rate.

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That will be up until about 5 o 'clock Pacific Standard Time today, and today, of course, being the 2nd of January.

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So if you're listening to this tomorrow, you're going to be a little late. I'm sorry about that.

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Folks, one thing about this entire cruise, and this is, I think, our seventh, isn't it?

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Well, I've done nine, but I've gone twice by myself.

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So this will be my 10th, so it should be our 8th, I think, with the ministry.

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Yes, collectively, Alpha and Omega Ministries, this will be our 7th cruise. Folks, just to let you know, a lot of folks wonder why we do this.

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First of all, this is a unique experience to anything else that's really offered out there right now.

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My intentions several years ago in beginning this cruise, and of course with James White, was to offer folks an opportunity to be a part of something that's like a seminary at sea.

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Very intensive training. This is not exactly your Charles Stanley type of cruise, and if you're bringing other folks along,

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I know that there's a lot of folks that always say, hey, you know, they talk to their relatives and say, you need to come along with us, and this is going to be a wonderful Christian cruise, and somehow, sometimes these friends that come along think it's going to be your best life today or something, when actually we are parsing...

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Is that Joel Osteen? Every time I see that book in the airport, my mind just goes blank anyway, so I have no idea what the title is.

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That sounds like Joel Osteen. Well, so every year, usually, we have some folks that are sitting with us in some of our sessions, and they say, what did he just say about the

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Pope? I can't believe he said that. Oh, no. So there's always that sort of thing going on, where people are saying, you know,

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I'm sorry, I just don't understand Greek, but this is really a unique experience in and of itself, as well as the fact that we have, at night, our theology talk sessions, which, judging by this particular cruise, we have already, and this is only a month and several weeks into this, this is the earliest that we've had this many people respond to a cruise, but we have more people from Prosopologian in this cruise so far.

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Those are, to those of you that just listened to us via RealPlayer or whatever, those are channel rats. We have more people that are from channel on this cruise than ever before.

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So this should be extremely interesting. Well, you know what that means, is that what we're going to do is we're going to set up a local area wireless network, and when we have the theology talks, we're all just going to sit there on our laptops and chat back and forth to each other, because we don't know how to interact personally.

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Because we're so used to, we can have channel sounds, you know, can you imagine some of the discussions that we had on the last cruise, if we had channel sounds, we could play

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Pinky and the Brain and stuff like that. I mean, it would have just been an incredible addition to some of the, you know, talk about emergent church and throw

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Pinky in. I mean, isn't there a connection there? Well, you know, it's that we have so many channel geeks there, we might actually have this cruise dress up as your favorite

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Star Trek character night, too. But we certainly are going to be having a great time.

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And, you know, again, this is intense. You might want to hit your cough button there, you're laughing so hard. But the opportunity that we have this year is to really be able to, to really delve into the real biblical understanding of the cross, its meaning, its historicity, the theology behind understanding the

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Atonement and the cross. It's going to be fantastic, which will be followed possibly by something that will be really exciting.

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Can't announce it yet, but it's going to be fantastic. I look forward to that.

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But, folks, as well, as intense as this is, I think sometimes people say, well, you know,

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I have a spouse, and my spouse, as much as they appreciate theology and Bible study, will there be something else to do?

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And, yes, there will be. For folks that have spouses that maybe don't want to go to every single session, of course you have the spas on board.

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You have all the other activities on board the Celebrity Mercury, which is possibly one of the finest ships at sea.

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Well, and you specifically mentioned to me a couple days ago that the

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Mercury is going into dry dock between now and then. And so there's going to be, I'm even going to be looking around at some new things.

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Well, yeah, this ship is only right now about nine years old, but it is listed by Condé Nast Traveler as the number five ship in the world as far as beauty, service, food, et cetera.

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It's just fantastic. Those folks that were with us several years ago when we were on the Mercury, it's probably the finest ship that we've done a cruise on.

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This will be my third time on the Mercury. Absolutely. So he knows it well, folks. I do. Now, that means that, of course, you have all those activities.

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You as well have the short excursions. And I think it's Nanaimo. I think I'm saying it correctly. And as well as Victoria, British Columbia, which is gorgeous.

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It's like a European city, a European city with morals and heterosexual people.

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But it's beautiful. It's gorgeous out there. For those Presbyterians there, yes, you can order a bottle of wine and so forth.

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And, yes, the casinos are open. So for Presbyterians. But for everybody else, yeah, we will be having, of course, all of our sessions, our theology talks and so forth going through the day.

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Might occasionally have to take a break if Rich Pierce is with us, if he doesn't feel so well.

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But also we are going to. Now, let me mention that. That being said, I want to repeat what

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I said last week. We are going to be in the Inside Passage, and we're going to be on the Mercury. Now, I know the Mercury. I've been on the

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Mercury more often than any other ship. And she's a smooth -sailing ship.

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She's beautiful, the best food around. And since we're going to be in the Inside Passage, it's simply going to be like glass.

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I mean, we're not going out to sea in the middle of a storm someplace and get thrown around because we're in the Inside Passage.

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And so there have been people who have said, you know, I'd love to bring my wife along, but she's really sensitive to motion, movement, et cetera.

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I can't think of another cruise that would be more ideal for someone who has that kind of an issue because of the fact of where we're going to be.

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Absolutely. I mean, not only the fact that we're going to be surrounded by mountains and the vistas all around us.

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There's always going to be something to look at. And also, folks, you know, if you're thinking of, you know, gee, if I went on a cruise,

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I'd like to have a balcony. Well, this is the time to do it because you can't get it at a better price, believe me. No, you can't.

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It's going to be absolutely gorgeous. But, yes, on a ship this size, which is 77 ,000 tons, on a very smooth -sailing ship as well, and the fact that there's not going to be any wave action going on out there, it's going to be fantastic.

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And, folks, the fellowship is great. So, you know, if you haven't had the opportunity to sign up yet, and you were thinking about it, or you think, oh, gosh,

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I missed the deadline, well, do try to make sure you do it today. And if not, folks, if you're listening to this in the future, the price is only going up $50, and that's just so we can keep inventory for the rest of the year.

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Yeah. I'm really looking forward to it. It's going to be exciting. It's going to be a great bunch of folks, and it's going to be unique.

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Let me tell you that. I just happened to have encountered some of the Catholic cruises coming up.

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They're going over to Europe. And just the cost, not getting there, not including the cost of like that,

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I mean, you know, you're talking in the two -grand area for almost anything for that kind of a cruise.

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And you're not going to be getting a seminary -level class on the doctrine of the

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Atonement and the cross and the historicity and theology and so on and so forth going on those cruises in any way, shape, or form.

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So we're doing something here that's extremely unique, very unusual, and I'm glad people are taking advantage of it, and I would love to have just a wonderful group of folks there.

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They're all focused upon what we're doing, and I really hope that what we're working on will work out, because it will be taking place at the end of our time together, which is, again, unusual.

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Normally we've had something happening at the beginning, then we go on the cruise, and everybody gets off the boat and everybody scatters their various directions.

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If this comes off the way we're hoping it's going to come off, then it's going to make it to where the cruise becomes something to where we're looking forward to something, we're working towards something, and that's going to be really neat if that works out.

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Amen. Well, that could be something that we can announce soon. Hopefully we can within the next few weeks.

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But, folks, believe me, this is going to be a great trip, something that, you know, if you take a look at the price and consider what just a weekend or a couple days away with your family would cost, remember that this is including all your food, all of your drinks, unless you're a

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Presbyterian, and then as well as all of your conference time and so forth. There's no extra prices here.

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The only thing that you have is port taxes and government fees, which is not a lot for this cruise. So, folks, do take the opportunity to do that.

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We really look forward to having you on board. And it's good to have you with us today, Mike. Now, Rich, you're going to have to keep an eye on him because I'm going to be stuck in here with the door closed.

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If he wanders into my office, would you sort of keep an eye? You might need to lock the door, yeah. Your office, is that the thing that looks like an old

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Dr. Who set? An old Dr. Who set? I'm sorry.

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Why would that look like it? Because of all the lights and things like that? Just kidding. Thanks. Appreciate that,

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Mike. I'm always keeping a good list of who my friends are. And he's talking about Star Trek.

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Dr. Who ever watched that? British people do. British people watch Dr. Who. Let's not offend our

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British audience. I actually saw an episode of Dr. Who at the Glasgow Airport while waiting for an easy jet flight recently.

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And it was almost up to Star Trek standards. Not quite. I mean, the original Star Trek.

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But they're getting there. So they've changed the program a good bit. It's changed a lot, yeah. It has.

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Okay. Well, thank you very much, Rich. And thank you very much, Mike. Appreciate that. Good to have a studio audience.

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Of course, he's probably making faces at me here pretty soon and things like that. But I'm looking forward to the cruise. Moving on.

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Got lots of stuff here to discuss. Just wanted to briefly mention, I was looking at the information that we have from – he's sort of a channel rat,

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Tiquid in channel. There is an article today about Luther and some of the discussions that take place over at the

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Catholic Answers website and in their forums and things like that.

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And Mr. Swan's blog called

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Beggars All, Reformation and Apologetics. It's at – no, it's at beggarsallreformation .blogspot

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.com is the URL for that. Great stuff if you're studying the area of Roman Catholicism.

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He does a good job in especially dealing with all the Luther myths that are out there. And there's a number of links in the current blog article that you might want to take a look at.

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It might be very useful to you. Someone mentioned last week that Tim Staples is advertising a series on papal infallibility.

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I did find something on the website about the pope, what the Bible teaches about the pope or the

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Bible and the pope or something along those lines. I did find that. But I was listening. I tried to listen starting fairly late last night, didn't have a lot of time this morning to try to find an advertisement for it.

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But I was listening to Catholic Answers Live. And as most of you know, we've been attempting to arrange something with Tim Staples again for a number of years since he's moved over to Catholic Answers.

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The reason we didn't deal with Tim Staples after the papal infallibility debate was because of the business with which he was associated,

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St. Joseph Catholic Communications, and the fact that they in writing said they'd do one thing and then in practice did another.

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And at the debate in Fullerton, we had a moderator who actually is with Catholic Answers who wouldn't moderate.

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And Mr. Staples himself wouldn't exactly follow the rules either. And of course, they've never made that debate available.

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If we hadn't grabbed the tapes that night, I don't know that we would be able to make that debate available, to be perfectly honest with you.

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It was a disaster for their side. And the Catholics there were very unhappy. And within just a few months, we did a debate with the

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Robertson -Genis in Tampa. And Robertson -Genis, that was the self -moderated debate.

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And Mike's smiling because I'll never forget the look on his face when

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I had to take over moderatorial duties. That's exactly right.

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Memories. We could sing a duet on that one. Anyway, we had a debate with Robertson -Genis.

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And of course, St. Genis, in essence, basically contradicted many of the things that Staples had said as to how to defend, how you would defend the infallibility of the

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Pope. And you put the two of them together, and I think it's a powerful testimony as to the real problem with the concept of papal infallibility itself.

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So anyway, we didn't have anything more to do with Tim Staples. But then he left, and he's now with Catholic Answers.

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And he's on their program frequently, and he's traveling around. When he first joined the staff, we contacted him.

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Actually, Chris Arnzen contacted him to try to have him involved in the great debate series on Long Island. And we were informed at that time that Carl Keating wanted him to have a year to get settled in.

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And then the next year, it was, well, Carl wants him to be developing new product.

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But then starting last year, maybe a little bit longer ago than that, I started hearing stuff about basically, hey, we want to have

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Tim come and speak at your parish. We want to get him out of here, you know. And they want him to start traveling, but we're still having some problems.

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And I've pointed out that Tim's putting stuff out on the very subjects we want to debate.

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I want to debate Tim Staples and the Marian dogmas. And he's put out a book. He's put out CD sets and DVDs.

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And now he's putting stuff out on the papacy. Interestingly enough, not our debate, but that's probably because that debate from the

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Roman Catholic perspective never took place. Sort of like the PACO debates that are sitting on videotapes someplace.

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And we'll never, ever, ever see the light of day. Because, you know, well, if they thought they had won those, they would have put them out.

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So anyway, so I was listening to Catholic Answers live last night. And I just went back to the last

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Tim Staples program. And it started off, and Tim Staples said the following.

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To be with you. It's been a little while. Yeah, it has. I've been traveling around. A little vacation. Yeah. Having a little fun.

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And in fact, just got off the radio doing a series of debates with a

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Protestant apologist up in Salinas, California. It's been going really well. We're doing a five -day debate every day, doing an hour on different topics.

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And it's going fantastic. Nice, nice. So you've done that two days, and you've got the rest of the week you're going to do that.

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That's right. We did authority on Monday, and then the papacy today. I just got finished. So if my voice sounds a little rough, that's why.

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And then tomorrow we'll be doing Marian beliefs. And then sacraments. No, sacraments is on Friday.

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The Eucharist on Thursday. So we're hitting some hot topics. Steve Gregg is his name.

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He's a very gracious guy. And it's going very well. Now, so here

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Tim seems to be willing to debate other folks. And we would certainly be happy to have

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Tim Staples on our program. And I think what would be wonderful would be if we would have him on our program, and then

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I'd go on his. Because isn't it odd that the Catholics don't seem to have many of us on their programs?

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I don't hear them playing entire clips of our lectures.

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I don't hear them playing David King or Eriks Fenson or myself or Bill Webster. But we play entire sections of theirs.

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Some of you know I've gone through entire programs from Catholic Answers before and start and stop and respond to things.

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And so that would be wonderful. And we'd still like to get Tim Staples to actually do a moderated public debate.

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And this time the moderator would actually be able to do, you know, moderatorial things. And we would have a little more discussion beforehand rather than just a few minutes beforehand about what cross -examination means.

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And sort of like the last debate I did where, you know, the person

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I'm debating isn't overly concerned about what cross -examination means. In fact,

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I was used to what Spong did because Staples did it. And what year was that?

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Was that 2000? Because we did 96 and 2000, I think. And it was in Fullerton during the cross -examination period.

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I think it was a 12 -minute cross -examination period. And I had someone listen to the tape.

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They did this voluntarily and contacted me. And they felt they counted four to five distinct questions that Tim Staples asked me in 12 minutes.

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And that he spoke more during the 12 minutes than I did. So he took most of that time just to make statements and, you know, all the rest of that stuff.

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And that I asked, as I recall correctly, that I asked Tim Staples minimally 41 distinct questions during my 12 minutes.

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That's called doing cross -examination. And we'll have, you know, we'd have to have a little discussion about what cross -examination is and things like that.

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So anyway, we'd like to be able to do that. And it certainly sounds from what we just saw there, what we just listened to there, that that's something that he would be amenable to doing because he's doing that right now.

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Well, anyway, I brought, I dug out of a box the

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DVD of the CD, the DVD of the film,

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The God Who Wasn't There, a film beyond belief. This came out in 2005, early of 2005, as I recall, because I used this last year when

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I was in England. Maybe that was just in, was that in February? It was in February. Anyway, this is the film that is being given away on the

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Blasphemy Challenge website that I talked about last time. That if you will record yourself saying,

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I deny the Holy Spirit and blaspheming God and put it on YouTube, they will send you a free copy of this particular film.

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And the person who put it together is a gentleman by the name of Brian Fleming. And I want to play just a couple little clips here.

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And obviously, the disadvantage of playing a DVD on a webcast is that only

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I get to see the pretty pictures. But you can at least hear what is what is being said.

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I want to play some sections of this just to give you a sense of what it's what it's like if you have not seen it and then offer some commentary on it.

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This is this is so much of what we are encountering, what I especially our young people are going to be encountering within the culture.

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If you send anybody to a secular school, sadly, doesn't necessarily mean it's not going to happen at a quote unquote religious school either.

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But into the university setting, this is the stuff that they're going to be getting hit with and hit with repeatedly.

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And so I wanted to play some sections of that for you today and make some comments on it and also replay the section

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I mentioned last time at the end where Fleming sort of starts the blasphemy challenge type stuff and how he does it in the tone of his voice and stuff like that.

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So going back, just give you an idea that the primary quote unquote scholar that is that is cited in this film is

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James Price. Now, if you're not familiar with James Price, I think one of his most recent books is entitled The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man.

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He is beyond Jesus Seminar. I think he's part of the GSR, but he's beyond Jesus Seminar, doubts the very existence of Jesus is way, way out on the on the outer fringe of things.

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But their word is taken as final gospel truth by by many individuals.

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And so the whole theory that is being presented, there's lots of stuff thrown out about timelines.

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You'll hear him saying, for example, that Mark mentions the fall of Jerusalem. Therefore, it had to have been afterwards.

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A good humanistic presupposition that if you mention something that you must have been writing after the time that it took place, there can't be anything called prophecy, of course.

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And so you make the gospels as late as you can and try to introduce the idea that basically everyone forgot all about Jesus until Jesus was made up by these people many, many years later.

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At the end of the first century into the second century, and that is how Christianity got its start, that Jesus never actually existed, et cetera, et cetera.

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And then he's going to make some arguments about Paul. And we'll let you give an idea of it first and we'll get into that time to see what really did happen too far.

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Let's go back to the first century in the year of our Lord. Jesus Christ is said to have lived this life here in the first three decades of the century, dying somewhere around the year 33.

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The gospels all came later. Mark was the first one written, and the other three are clearly derived from Mark.

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Mark mentions the destruction of the Jewish temple, which happened in the year 70. So the gospels all came later than that, probably much later.

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There's a gap of four decades or more. Most of what we know about this period comes from a man who says he saw

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Jesus Christ come to him in a vision. He was the apostle Paul, formerly known as Saul of Tarsus.

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After many days of hard traveling, Saul's caravan was near its destination, Damascus.

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The journey was nearly over. He uses a lot of old Christian films, really cheesy

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Christian films, and check out the sound effects and stuff. It's all meant to make it look as silly as is humanly possible.

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This is from like 1956 or something. Paul says the

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Lord told him to start spreading the word of Jesus Christ, and he did it with a vengeance. Your heart is not right before God.

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Repent, therefore, of this wickedness of yours, for I see that you are in the bond of iniquity.

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Paul was a bit of a scold, but the salvation he offered through the God he called Christ Jesus was very popular.

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He traveled widely and in his wake left behind groups of new Christians who formed the early Christian church. Paul wrote lots of letters about Christianity.

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In fact, he wrote 80 ,000 words about the Christian religion. These documents represent almost all we have of the history of Christianity during this decades -long gap.

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And here's the interesting thing. If Jesus was a human who had recently lived, nobody told

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Paul. Paul never heard of Mary, Joseph, Bethlehem, Herod, John the

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Baptist. He never heard about any of these miracles. He never quotes anything that Jesus is supposed to have said.

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He never mentions Jesus having a ministry of any kind at all. He doesn't know about any entrance into Jerusalem.

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He never mentions Pontius Pilate or a Jewish mob or any trials at all. Paul doesn't know any of what we would call the story of Jesus except for these last three events.

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And even these, Paul never places on earth. Let me just freeze that for just a second.

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There's a graphic and the last three events are Christ put on the cross, the resurrection, the ascension, just obviously mentioned.

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So in other words, unless Paul rewrites the Gospels or writes the Gospels before the Gospels or anything else, then he doesn't know about any of these things.

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I mean, the historical methodology of the film is, of course, utterly laughable. I mean, that's why this man will not debate.

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That's why this man will only debate folks who already agree with him, which means they wouldn't have a debate anyways. Because what is the real argument here?

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Paul is writing epistles to churches based upon a common gospel proclamation.

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And therefore, if he doesn't rewrite each of the Gospels in his letters, therefore, he doesn't know about any of these things.

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Now, you could clearly argue that he makes allusions to all sorts of these things. But the point is that there was a common body of belief amongst all the apostles.

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Notice he's made Paul the only person we know of during this period of time, which, again, is absurd because you have to put all the other people, all the other apostles.

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You have to ignore their ministry. You have to ignore the historical setting, all the rest of this stuff. But this is really meant for people who are looking for a reason not to believe.

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And the problem is many Christians have not thought through the chronological development of the New Testament. Therefore, they're not really quick at giving a really good answer in demonstrating where this all went wrong in the first place.

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But those are the three things he's saying. Now, let me stop right there.

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Obviously, he's going to make the connection. And we're going to look at that in just a moment, all the myth stuff.

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But right now on the screen is a graphic. If Jesus had been on earth, he would not even have been a priest.

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Hebrews 8 .4. That's what's on the screen. Now, no translation is cited at this point, and there's probably a reason for that.

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That's because that's not what Hebrews 8 .4 says, and that's certainly not what it means. He's actually trying to argue here that according to Hebrews 8 .4,

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which he's attributing to Paul, first of all, which gives you some idea of his own religious background, that what

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Paul is saying is if Jesus had ever come to earth, he would not even have been a priest.

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And so, allegedly, all this stuff about death, burial, and resurrection is all in heaven. It's mythical.

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It's not a historical reality. Of course, what it actually says is now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are those who offer the gifts according to the law.

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This is written after the point in time of Jesus' ascension and resurrection, and the whole argument in Hebrews 8 is he's not a part of the

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Aaronic priestly line. And so his priestly line is different than the

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Aaronic and is superior to it. It's the Melchizedek line. So totally isolating the argument from what has been said, from the fact that the book of Hebrews has already clearly affirmed the fact that Jesus Christ took on human flesh and that he suffered and died and that this was all very much a real historical reality, etc.,

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etc. Ignoring all of that, you just throw this line up there. If Jesus had been on earth, he would not even have been a priest, as if somehow this has something to do with reality.

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Paul doesn't believe that Jesus was ever a human being. He's not even aware of the idea.

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And he's the link between the time frame given for the life of Jesus and the appearance of the first gospel account of that life.

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You can, again, see, I mean, that's why this film is just so bad and is utterly indefensible, is that its entire thesis is based upon stuff that is simply laughable on any type of historical level.

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This is why you don't hear many Christian leaders talking about the early days of Christianity. Because once you assemble the facts, the story is that Jesus lived, everyone forgot, and then they remembered.

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But it gets even shakier than that. Allegorical literature was extremely common back then.

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Let me go to the next section. Oh, that is the next section. I thought this was...

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Paul doesn't believe that Jesus was... Let's just skip over that. ...talk to me on camera anymore, so there wasn't much reason to stay.

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But then, as I was leaving, I noticed the chapel was open. This is the chapel where I accepted

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Jesus Christ as my personal Savior. I sat right here on this bench once and did that.

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Also sat over here and did it again, because I had backslid. And then in a later grade,

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I sat back there and did it yet again. And what did

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I say when I played this before? Theology matters. I was born again at least three times,

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I think. I've got to hold up the camera myself. You can now see him in the shot.

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In this chapel, where I first accepted Jesus as my personal

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Savior, I just want to say one thing. I deny the

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Holy Spirit. And then the closing line says,

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I am not afraid. And that is how the film ends. And that, of course, is why they want the various people to do the same thing on YouTube.

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Let me see if I can find a section here.

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I wanted to play a section where they are interviewing...

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This is called really professional stuff here. There's some really scary stuff about...

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Here we go. I'm wondering if either one of you are familiar with Osiris or Mithras or Dionysus.

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Hardly at all. I'm wondering if you've heard of Osiris or Mithra or Dionysus. I've heard of Dionysus.

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The other two, I don't think I've heard of. And do you know anything about Dionysus? No, it sounds like an interesting

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Greek name, but no. Was he a contemporary of Jesus or the early church?

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I'm wondering if you've heard any of those theories or... Well, you know it's probably good that I haven't. I've never heard of any of those gods.

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But if you were... I've never heard of any of those pagan gods, no. No, I haven't heard about it.

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Now, everyone that they're showing here are people that they had started the film out talking about how they loved Jesus and how

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Jesus had changed their lives. And now they're demonstrating that these folks are clueless because, of course, they've quoted

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James Price and others who have said, well, all Jesus is is an amalgamation of all these pagan gods like Osiris and Dionysus and so on and so forth.

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And how would you respond to that? I mean, it's one thing to look at that and go, oh boy, that's bad argumentation.

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But that's what our kids are getting hit with. How would you respond if someone said, well, if you don't know anything about Osiris, how do you know that there isn't a parallel and that they weren't just stealing from this?

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There's all sorts of problems. It's one of the reasons a few weeks ago I once again blogged a book called

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Reinventing Jesus, What the Da Vinci Code and Other Novel Speculations Don't Tell You. Dan Wallace is the main name that you would know of the three authors of the book.

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And there is a chapter on parallelomania, parallelomania, which is an excellent way of describing trying to create parallels where none in reality exist, that parallels that have no meaning.

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And just to give you an idea, Osiris. Now, some of you probably know something about Osiris if you studied

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Mormonism. And the reason you'd know something about Osiris is because he actually makes a guest appearance in the book of Abraham.

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He gets identified as somebody else by Joseph Smith, who didn't know what he was talking about at that point. But you get to see him in the images in the book of Abraham in the

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Pearl of Great Price. And so you're probably familiar with some aspects of things. And is

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Osiris, you'll hear about Osiris, the dying and rising God. See, they just got that from Osiris.

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They got that from Egyptian mythology. Let me read you. This is, again, coming from Reinventing Jesus.

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This is the quotation from Nash's work about the ISIS -Osiris myth. OK, here's here's the story.

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The basic myth of the ISIS cult concerned Osiris, her husband, during the earlier Egyptian and non -mystery stage of the religion.

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According to the most common version of the myth, Osiris was murdered by his brother, who then sank the coffin containing

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Osiris's body into the Nile River. ISIS discovered the body and returned it to Egypt. But her brother -in -law once again gained access to the body, this time dismembering it into 14 pieces, which he scattered widely.

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Following a long search, ISIS recovered each part of the body. It is at this point that the language used to describe what followed is crucial.

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By the way, let me stop here. In certain versions, and this is, again, point out, there are all sorts of different versions of every one of these stories.

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While you have a core that doesn't change in the Christian proclamation, you've got oodles of different variations in these religions.

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The reason being, they didn't care about dogma. They weren't saying this actually happened.

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They could change it without feeling like they were lying about something, because they weren't saying it historically took place anyways.

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Which is different from Christianity. In one of those stories, she only found 13 of the 14 parts, so he was always missing a part afterwards.

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Anyway, sometimes those telling the story are satisfied to say that Osiris came back to life, even though such language claims far more than the myth allows.

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Some writers go even farther and refer to the alleged resurrection of Osiris.

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One liberal scholar illustrates how biased some writers are when they describe the pagan myths in Christian language.

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Quote, the dead body of Osiris floated in the Nile, and he returned to life, this being accomplished by a baptism in the waters of the

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Nile. End quote. Notice the specific attempt to use Christian terminology to create parallels where none actually exist.

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This biased and sloppy use of language suggests three misleading analogies between Osiris and Christ.

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One, a savior god dies. And two, then experiences a resurrection accompanied by, three, water baptism.

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But the alleged similarities as well as the language used to describe them turn out to be fabrications of the modern scholar and are not part of the original myth.

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Comparisons between the resurrection of Jesus and the resuscitation of Osiris are greatly exaggerated. Not every version of the myth has

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Osiris returning to life. In some, he simply becomes king of the underworld. Equally far -fetched are attempts to find an analog of Christian baptism in the

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Osiris myth. The fate of Osiris' coffin in the Nile is as relevant to baptism as the sinking of Atlantis.

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End quote. What's more is, in most of these versions of the Osiris myth, he's basically a zombie.

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He's zombified. Or he's just the king of the underworld. I mean, think of the film

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The Mummy, okay? If you want to have an idea of the vast differences that exist. So what is

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Brian Fleming doing, running around, asking Christians if they've ever heard of Osiris?

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Because from his perspective, well, if you knew about Osiris, then you'd know that the Jesus story is not unique.

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Well, the Jesus story is unique. And the vast majority of these alleged parallels are fictions created by the use of language.

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For example, Dionysus. Just go online and look around and read about Bacchus.

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That's the Roman name, Dionysus. Just read what he was about. He was the god of wine. And the whole idea about him being resurrected.

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Oh, Dionysus is resurrected. That's where it came from. I pulled this up.

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One source of this claim grows out of the Semele. That was supposed to be his mom in one version of the story.

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Semele. Related vein of his mythology in which he is born to a female deity, torn to pieces by Titans, re -gestated by Semele, who is accidentally incinerated and then sewn into the thigh of Zeus Jupiter until he reaches full term for the second time and is born for the second time from the thigh of Zeus Jupiter.

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So he gets torn out of his mother's womb, gets sewn into the thigh of Zeus Jupiter, obviously the two

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Roman and Greek names, and then is born from the thigh of Jupiter. And that's resurrection.

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That's somehow the parallel to the concept of resurrection in the

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Christian faith. So when you hear these people, you know, the Mithra cult.

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That was really popular with Roman soldiers, for example. And there were cults, for example, where you would be put into a pit and a great would be put over you and an ox would be slaughtered over you so that the blood would flow all over you.

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And that somehow has something to do with being cleansed in the blood of Jesus. Any religious activity at all, it doesn't matter if it's completely removed.

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It's in polytheism. The worldviews are completely different. It's completely disconnected.

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It doesn't matter. These folks will use Christian language to describe it and then attach it even if, and this is the amazing thing, even if these cults did not flourish for 100 to 200 years after the time of Christ.

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They'll still throw it out there as if somehow that is the source for these Christian beliefs.

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And it's just simply stated as fact within so many classrooms today that these are the real sources of Christianity, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

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So that's what's going on out there, folks. That's the stuff that we need to be prepared for. We need to be ready to give an answer to, and that's what we try to sort of do here on the program.

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877 -753 -3341. I was going to go back to Bryson, but we have a call on George Bryson, and it is

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Dan. Hi, Dan. How are you doing? Pretty good. How are you doing, Dr. Wyatt? Doing all right. Hey, my question was,

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I'm an archived listener. I've been listening to that Bryson stuff, and I spent eight years at the

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Calvary Chapel, and I was born again there, and it was precisely that lack of substance in their apologetic and their preaching and their music, everything, that I had to leave.

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Which brings me to my question about Glaciers 221. If Paul says that if righteousness comes by the law, then

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Christ died in vain. So can we say that's true of all legal formulas, including the exercise of free will?

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Well, I would be very careful at that point, and I think this is the tipping point between where people fall into a form of hyper -Calvinism and where we need to try to maintain a level of balance.

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The specific people to whom Paul is writing are experiencing Judaizers who are very clearly saying faith in Christ alone is not enough.

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You must be circumcised. You must enter into the covenant. And Paul's argument to them is they are making the death of Christ absolutely worthless.

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They're claiming the death of Christ is central and important, but they are in fact emptying of its power.

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There's a scholar that I refer to frequently on my blog who has errantly come to the conclusion that the

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Judaizers in Galatia actually were just simply saying that Christ's death was irrelevant and that they didn't believe in Christ's death.

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But actually, they clearly are saying that it's very important. What they don't realize is by adding to faith, they are emptying of its power.

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Otherwise, Paul's argument here would be rather ridiculous. So, can we make application beyond that? Certainly.

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Any system that does in fact nullify the grace of God by saying that it is our righteous obediences to the law that makes us righteous before God would fall into the condemnation of this statement that in essence you are making the death of Christ needless.

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The problem though is that people like Mark Carpenter and people of his ilk will frequently say, well look, the conclusion to the thought process of full -blown

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Arminianism is that Christ died in vain, that there are things that we need to, that doesn't have to happen.

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And that would be true if they were consistent. But these folks aren't consistent.

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And George Bryson would very strongly assert that he believes that we're justified by grace through faith alone and Christ alone and that there's nothing we can do to save ourselves and all the rest of the stuff.

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Now, is the insertion of the concept of the autonomy of man, is that something that will inevitably when consistently applied lead to all sorts of difficulties and inconsistencies and contradictions?

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Yes. But are these individuals even aware of that reality? Sadly, as we played the clip from Chuck Smith last week, most of these folks never even think these things through.

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They're never even challenged to go to this level and to take their doctrine of God and their doctrine of Christ and their doctrine of salvation, their doctrine of the

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Bible and their doctrine of the church and get them close enough to one another to actually see whether they form a coherent whole or not.

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And so we need to be careful that the Judaizers did specifically know what they were doing and why they were doing it.

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We have to be careful when we're talking to folks who don't know what they're doing, who will speak the truth in one context but then will contradict themselves in others either out of ignorance or out of tradition.

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Now, am I saying that's not dangerous and that we should just not be concerned about that?

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Not at all. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that it is dangerous and that it is very damaging to the people to whom you're preaching when you do not give them the whole counsel of God.

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But what we need to be careful of is when people go to the point of, in essence, making the perfection of theological formulation the standard by which a person's salvation is gauged.

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Because I don't know about you, but I didn't understand all this stuff when I first bowed the knee to the Lord Jesus Christ and was first saved.

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There is a growth process. And some people say, well, but if they've been told and they still reject it, et cetera, et cetera.

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Well, okay, but I know people today who have confessed that when they first, for example, there's a fellow in Channel, and he first heard about the doctrines of grace on the debate program on the

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Bible Answer Man when I was debating George Bryson and Hank Hanegraaff. And he was angry.

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He was angry at me, but he was also angry at Hank and George because they weren't refuting me. And that started him.

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I think he was Calvary Chapel too, come to think of it. And that started him on the process. And it was the process that ended up convincing him of the truthfulness of the doctrines of grace, which frequently happens.

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And that's one of the reasons they don't want these dialogues take place because that does frequently happen. Once people start reading both sides, they realize that only one side is actually representing the other and engaging their arguments.

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But there was a period of time where he was angry when he first heard me. Now, would that be a basis of saying, oh, obviously you're not a

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Christian, you're a reprobate? No, sometimes there is a process. There is a time process. I mean, look at Peter.

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Years of teaching from the Lord Jesus, and he still blows it in Antioch.

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I mean, how many times have you heard Jesus preach the truth? He had the sheep brought down in front of him three times, and still he gives into his traditions at Antioch.

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Does that mean he wasn't a Christian? Or does that mean that traditions are really deep -seated things that sometimes take time for us to see really everything that what we've come to understand actually means?

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Is that not what the Christian life is all about? So we need to be very careful that we don't go past that line, do the

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Mark Carpenter thing where we end up drawing a circle that is so narrow that only we can stand within it, and then only on one foot, and maybe in danger of falling out ourselves as to who's actually in the truth.

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That's something we need to be very careful to seek to avoid. Yeah, definitely. All righty?

52:32

Well, thank you very much. Okay, thanks, Dan. God bless. All right. Bye -bye. All righty, let's continue on.

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I've got just a few minutes left here on the program, and I guess we'll get to remember. Let me remind you, those of you who weren't listening right at the beginning of the program, this coming

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Thursday we will be doing the program at this time, not the afternoon time. I've got a class starting this evening that I'll be teaching for the next two weeks, and then the 18th of January is when

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I fly out to New Jersey to be with the folks at Trinity Fellowship Church there on the 19th and the 20th, so we won't be doing a program that day.

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So, in essence, there will not be a Thursday afternoon dividing line for the next three weeks, but there will be a

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Thursday morning dividing line the next two weeks, so make sure to keep that in mind.

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And let's get our last caller in today. Let's talk with Patrick. Hi, Patrick. Hey, Dr. White.

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How are you doing? How are you doing? Long -time listener, first -time caller. I was wondering,

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I was a little off -topic in the program today, but I only more recently begun reading

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N .T. Wright, and I'm sure you're much more well -read on him than I am. I'm trying to get a grasp of his, well, you can call it new perspective if you want, but his understanding of Romans.

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I've heard him several times reaffirm his commitment to the Reformed position on justification by faith, but then elsewhere he also repeatedly affirms his position on justification by works, and particularly in the

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PDF that he's got on his website about the new perspective, and he says regarding justification by works, specifically with regards to Romans 2, 1 through 16, he says this passage has often been read differently.

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We heard yesterday that Augustine has problems with it, and perhaps the only thing in common between Augustine and E .P. Sanders is hardly surprising, but let's see.

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I'm sorry. Then he goes on to say essentially that the Reformed tradition has basically read this as if he talks about justification by works, but then he goes on to say that, oh, but nobody can really live up to that, and so he's kind of setting up a point, but, you know, okay, are you getting me?

54:55

I'm not really articulate on the matter. Yeah, it's not easy to, you know, put it all together, but especially because N .T.

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Wright is a voluminous writer, and people take him in all sorts of different contexts, and trying to answer every question about what his views on various things are is really very, very difficult to do.

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Let me just try to be brief because we have only a moment or two here really to get into it.

55:29

Let me just read you some of his own words so that you will understand where he's coming from. I think if you look at his book,

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What the Apostle Paul Really Said, here's his conclusion section on justification.

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Covenant. Justification is the covenant declaration which will be issued on the last day in which the true people of God will be vindicated, and those who insist on worshiping false gods will be shown to be in the wrong.

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Two, law court. Justification functions like the verdict in the law court. By acquitting someone, it confers on that person the status righteous.

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This is the forensic dimension of the future covenantal vindication. Now, be very careful. That is not what we have understood as forensic justification.

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There is no imputation of righteousness. There is nothing that takes place along those lines. His law court is simply a judge and the person being judged.

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There is no mediator in the law court whose righteousness is imputed to someone else. That needs to be understood.

56:19

Eschatology. This declaration, this verdict is ultimately to be made at the end of history. Therefore, and this is the vital thrust of the argument of Galatians in particular, but it plays a central role in Philippians and Romans as well, all who believe the gospel of Jesus Christ are already demarcated as members of the true family of Abraham with their sins being forgiven.

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Now, the question that everyone wishes to ask of N .T. Wright is the exact mechanism by which the sins are forgiven in regards to atonement, and he really just hasn't developed all of that quite yet.

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He says he will be over time. Then he goes on, Second, I must stress, again, that the doctrine of justification by faith is not what

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Paul means by the gospel. It is implied by the gospel. When the gospel is proclaimed, people come to faith and so are regarded by God as members of his people.

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But the gospel is not an account of how people get saved. It is the proclamation of the lordship of Jesus Christ. If we can only get that clear in current debates, a lot of other false antitheses, not least in thinking about the mission of the church, would quietly unravel before our eyes.

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Let us be quite clear. The gospel is the announcement of Jesus' lordship, which works with power to bring people into the family of Abraham, now redefined around Jesus Christ and characterized solely by faith in him.

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Justification is a doctrine which insists that all those who have this faith belong as full members of this family on this basis and no other, which then becomes the basis of the idea that basically justification is a church issue.

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It's not a soteriological issue. And what the result of that then becomes is this statement on page 159.

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One is not justified by faith by believing in justification by faith. One is justified by faith by believing in Jesus.

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It falls quite clearly that a great many people are justified by faith who don't know they are justified by faith.

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The Galatian Christians were in fact justified by faith, though they didn't realize it and thought they had to be circumcised as well.

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Now that's what you've got to get because what he's saying there is that when

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Paul writes to the Galatian Christians who thought that they had to be circumcised, they were still justified by faith, even though they didn't know it.

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Now I would suggest someone go read Galatians chapter 5, where Paul says if you are circumcised,

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Christ will be of no benefit to you. That is not in any way, shape, or form what the apostle

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Paul thought about what the doctrine of justification was. Unfortunately, Patrick, that's all the time we have on the program today.

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Hopefully that brief summary will be of some assistance to you. There's a number of books coming out. Guy Waters has put out some books you need to take a look at in regards to the subject of the new perspective, federal vision, things like that.

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You might want to track those down. Thanks for listening. Don't forget, this coming Thursday, this regular time, 11 o 'clock, see you then.

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We need a new Reformation day. It's a

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Saturday night. The truth is being trampled in and made some noise.

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I stand up for the twin birds.

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The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries. If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.

59:49

Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the

59:55

World Wide Web at AOMIN .org, that's A -O -M -I -N .org where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates and tracks.