Prayer of Jabez, Harold Camping, Calls on Paedobaptism and Roman Catholic Apologetics

This is the Dividing Line. 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.

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

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

United States. It's 1 -866 -854 -6763. And now with today's topic, here is

James White. And good afternoon. Welcome to the Dividing Line. My name is James White. And, you know, we get a lot of interesting email around here.

We put a new website, a main website article up this past week. And in the process of doing so, you get all sorts of interesting responses from folks.

And those of you who haven't seen it or thought that we were going to have the same website article, main webpage article up for another six months or something like that, we did change it.

And I'm very thankful. There's an excellent article up there that is actually put together by Colin Smith.

He put together the work of himself, Eric Nielsen, and Mike Porter. All of them had commented on some of the things that Roberts and Jennis had said in response to the ever -growing dialogue that we had had.

And we had promised to post that eventually. We finally got around to doing it. And just to give you an idea of the kind of stuff we experience in cyber ministry,

I guess you might say, we got a response from a fellow, a

Roman Catholic fellow. And here's what he said. But, quote, I read your featured article on John 6 on your website.

Pretty lame, guys. Mike Porter is saying that Roberts and Jennis couldn't admit that he is wrong, yet James White is having others answer for him.

Sounds like an admission of defeat to me. Mistress and Jennis won the argument, argument's misspelled, on grammar, grammar's misspelled, and on context, where the best you could do is try to argue possible grammatic interpretations.

If you want others to start admitting when they are wrong, why don't you lead by example and start admitting when you got it wrong?

This fellow, Josh Morrison is his name, and interestingly enough, we took the time to respond.

In fact, Mr. Porter took the time to do a very lengthy response and a very full response explaining in tremendous detail the issues concerning the grammatical discussion and so on and so forth.

And so I took the time to read Mr. Porter's response.

And I went down to the bottom of it and I saw this message. And I thought, why is it that if I allow other people to become involved and to respond to this issue, why is that an admission of defeat on my part?

Why do I have to respond to everything or that means I'm defeated? What if, in point of fact, the point is so clear and so obvious that it's a waste of my time to continue to address it, and there are others that are perfectly capable of dealing with these issues and responding to them and so on and so forth.

So I took time to write back. Well, this is the interesting part.

As both Mr. Porter and I discovered fairly quickly, our responses bounced.

The address given to us was a bogus address. So you've got this guy who writes in on the subject and says, ah, you're all wrong, and you couldn't answer this, da -da -da -da -da, and then gives a bogus email address.

Now, let me ask you, if you're going to write to somebody and tell them they're wrong and then give them a bogus email address, are you really convinced that you're right and they're wrong?

Or maybe are you hedging your bets, or what's really going on here? It happens more than once, and it's sad because, obviously,

Mr. Porter spent quite some time writing back to this individual and put together an excellent response, but seemingly he'll never see it because he gave us a bogus email address to respond back to.

That doesn't really speak of a whole lot of confidence, though I'll have to admit I remember very clearly last week listening to,

I mentioned last week, I was listening to EWTN, and it was, half the time

I'd turn it on, I'd hear the rosary, and whatever.

And then the next part of time I'd hear some priest talking, and I'm not sure why it is that when priests go to seminary, they lose all emotion in their voice, but basically that's what happens.

I'm not sure if it's surgically removed or just what happens, but it's just sort of like ... But then, most of the rest of the time, they have the journey home on or something like that.

Some convert who has absolutely positively no idea what in the world they're talking about, but they stick them on the stage and they stick a microphone in front of them and a

TV camera in their face, and you discover very quickly the most effective apologetic arguments that are out there, and discover that the weakest apologetic arguments are actually the ones that work.

And so the ones that are constantly being repeated are the ones that are actually the easiest to answer, which basically tells me that these people converted without ever having seriously interacted with anyone who could really respond to what they were saying.

And of course, that's been my experience with everybody that I know of who has gone into the Roman Catholic Church. Of course,

I'm the last person on the planet they want to talk to, and they just want to ...

Why would that be? I mean, if the arguments are so overwhelming, why would there be anything to fear from anything

I would have to say? Well, it's pretty obvious the reason they don't want to talk to me is because they know that their arguments really do have responses and answers to them.

So there's something more going on. There's something more that is involved in the reasoning and in the psychology of conversion, and sometime we will have to do a program on the psychology of conversion, because it is fascinating.

I've talked to many, many converts and talked to people who were going to convert, and mainly with people who would only talk to me after the fact.

And so I've gotten some insights as to what causes people to convert, so on and so forth.

So anyways, that was interesting, and I have to admit, last Monday evening,

I tuned in to Scripture Matters, which is the program that Scott Hahn has live on 6 o 'clock

Pacific, so it's 9 o 'clock Eastern, and it was fascinating to listen to Dr.

Hahn speaking. He was talking about presenting a paper at some meeting in Rome, where there was mainly

Protestant scholars. I'm not sure what in the world they were doing in Rome, but anyways. And it was fascinating to listen to Dr.

Hahn. I remember very clearly speaking with him after the debate against gerimatotics at Northwest Community Church in December of 1990.

He and gerimatotics together, and just an incredible ability to speak, incredible confidence when he speaks.

He was quoting from memory from John Owen and Jonathan Edwards, brilliant fellow.

And it just made me more and more angry that someone with such intelligence could write a book like Hail Holy Queen that we reviewed a couple of weeks ago, a couple of months ago now.

That truly just makes it all the more inexcusable that someone who has such great capacities in that area could write something that is just so patently false.

People say, well, maybe he doesn't know. There's no way. There is absolutely positively no way.

I don't understand it. It truly is something that catches my attention every time

I see it. Excuse me. Ah, being struck down for that one.

I was going to mention that we're going to be covering a number of topics today, but you can throw your issue into the hopper if you would like.

866 -854 -6763, 866 -854 -6763 is the toll -free, please notice that word, toll -free phone number.

Some of you, many have been asking, I've gotten a lot of people asking me in the chat room or by email or whatever it might be, have you heard from Dave Hunt?

And the answer to that question is no, we have not heard from Dave Hunt as yet.

I believe that he would have had the materials. He should have had the tapes and materials now for about two weeks at least,

I would say. And at that point,

I think that maybe it's taken some time to listen, maybe it's taken some time to formulate a response, maybe asking some people what should we do,

I don't know. But we have not received responses yet and we still look forward to that opportunity.

I still want to see if the possibility exists to schedule the debate on the

Doctrines of Grace for December, early December is what I would like to do. I'm supposed to be going to Israel in January, and of course with things as they are in Israel right now, who knows, but I would like to see if we could get that done beforehand because I think this book against the

Doctrines of Grace and against the Potter's Freedom as well is supposed to be coming out in August.

In fact, August is going to be a very interesting month as we have mentioned. A little bit of updates on the upcoming books.

First of all, the new David King and William Webster books.

I have an early copy of the third volume sitting here in my hand.

Bill Webster has done a tremendous job in putting this material together on the publishing end.

He does a lot of his own publishing, Christian Resources, and I'm very excited to see this work especially the constant drumbeat about the subject of Sola Scriptura and things like that on EWTN and things like that.

It is very soothing to my soul in hearing about the constant attack upon Sola Scriptura and things like that To see this material coming out and knowing that the answers are going to be there available is very, very helpful to me anyways.

I know that that is going to help. Now, obviously, I know, I know, half of you are going, yeah, it doesn't mean those people are going to read it.

It doesn't mean those people would even care if they read it. You're right. There's no two ways about it. But there's just something good about speaking the truth and knowing the truth has been spoken and that's what bothers me.

I am not bothered really anymore by people who simply ignore the truth. It's when the truth doesn't get a chance to even be expressed, that's when

I get a little bit crazy and really wish there was an opportunity to do that. And so, hopefully this week we'll get the information from Bill Webster, I had written to him this week, and be able to put together an entire webpage so you can order this material.

Also, I should let you know, I think David and Bill have made a good decision.

The three volumes to the work will be available separately.

In other words, you can order volume one, you can order volume two, you can order volume three, you can order them all together. In fact, looking at them here, volume one, by David T.

King, The Ground and Pillar of Our Faith, A Biblical Defense of the Reformation Principle of Sola Scriptura.

Volume two, by William Webster, A Historical Defense of the

Reformation Principle of Sola Scriptura. And then volume three, A Patristic Catena on the Material and Formal Sufficiency of Scripture, which, as David King has pointed out, quite rightly is going to cause

Roman Catholic apologists to have a cow, in essence, when they see that.

Of course, any historical work does. I discovered that a decade ago when I dared cite early church fathers in some of my debates.

Catholics responded like, how dare you do that? Those are our guys, you can't use our guys.

And just the constant refrain, even on EWTN, I started reading the early church fathers and that's what made me

Catholic. And I sit there and go, what early church fathers were you reading anyways? Was it the ones who didn't believe all the stuff you believe in?

Or were you just reading citations out of This Rock or Envoy magazine or something like that?

I don't know. But the third volume, as I said, I have it here. And I was just going to share a quotation from this that I found,

I've always just found it fascinating. In fact, I found it fascinating when David and I spoke at a conference at Grace Reformed Baptist Church on Long Island, America, Long Island.

And at that particular time, David was going to be doing a presentation on the early church in Sola Scriptura.

And I was sitting there going, man, are you going to use any audio -visual stuff?

No, I was just going to read them. And I'm like, that's pretty tough on folks just to hear them read.

How about we put it on PowerPoint and I'll use my computer to project them so that people can read along.

And so he gave me the material. And one of the quotations that I found just absolutely fascinating is basically due to the fact that those of you who are familiar with apologetic methodologies are familiar with the name

Cornelius Van Til and the subject of presuppositional apologetics.

And a lot of folks, even quote -unquote classical apologists, would make the argument that presuppositional apologetics is the newcomer, the new kid on the block.

It doesn't have historical basis and all the rest of that kind of stuff. And so it was just fascinating to me to read this quotation from the writings of Salvian the

Presbyter. Now I'll admit, I studied church history and I read a lot of stuff and the simple fact of the matter is,

Salvian is not exactly the most quoted individual in the various works of church history.

But here you have a work from Salvian the Presbyter, 5th century.

And listen to what he says here. This is found on pages 131 through 132, for those of you who are salivating to get hold of this.

But, I need not prove by arguments what God himself proves by his own words.

When we read that God says he perpetually sees the entire earth, we prove thereby that he does see it, because he himself says he sees it.

When we read that he rules all things he has created, we prove thereby that he rules, since he testifies that he rules.

When we read that he ordains all things by his immediate judgment, it becomes evident by this very fact, since he confirms that he passes judgment.

All other statements said by men require proofs and witnesses. God's word is his own witness, because whatever uncorrupted truth says, must be the undefiled testimony to truth.

Now, those who are familiar with the arguments concerning presuppositionalism, and so on and so forth, recognize that that's absolutely in line with what

Van Til says, and what presuppositionalism is saying, and that is God, in his word, can give no higher evidence of his word, because it partakes of divine authority.

And since it does partake of divine authority, God cannot swear by any greater than himself, and that must be taken as an absolute authority.

Anything that you would bring to prove the truthfulness of that, is a lesser thing, and therefore cannot, in point of fact, address the issue of proving the truthfulness of God's word.

There can be no higher authority. And so, obviously, the relevance of that, for its citation in Holy Scripture, the

Ground and Pillar of our Faith, Volume 3, is that the very foundational viewpoint of Scripture, that I have pressed, over and over again, against my

Roman Catholic apologist opponents, who, of course, always say they believe in inerrancies, so on and so forth, even though the vast majority of Roman Catholic scholars today do not.

They just say they're not Roman Catholics. But every time I've pressed the issue, I've said, look,

Scripture is theanoustos. It is God -breathed. That is its nature.

We have to start there in answering questions about, well, how can you prove that it's sufficient, and so on and so forth.

And so the relevance of the citation of the passage is, obviously, there were those, and here's the 5th century, as late as the 5th century, who still understood the nature of Scripture, and understood the foundation and basis that it had.

And therefore, to argue that, well, no one could have held the position you hold, because they didn't have that view of Scripture, simply isn't true.

Obviously, Salvi and the presbyter did, and that's significant both for the sola scriptura debate, as well as for the debate regarding presuppositional apologetics, classical methodology, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So that work is going to be, keep your eye very closely peeled on the website, because as soon as we get the information, and the permission to basically go for it, and make the book available, we will be making it available.

There is also another book coming out, and actually there's someone in the chat channel that might be able to tell me exactly when it's going to be out, but Calvary Press is going to be releasing

Eric Svensson's book, Who Is My Mother, I think is the title of the book.

It's an excellent work. I really enjoy reading from this work.

There's just a tremendous amount of material that's gone into it. And that book, I believe, is supposed to be coming out fairly soon, along with the

Webster and King book, and of course I think we've already mentioned to you more than once that The God Who Justifies will be out

August 23rd. And therefore, when you put all those together, in the month of August now, we thought it was going to be

July, I know, but in the month of August we're looking at about 1750 pages of material that the

Roman Catholic apologists are going to be very interested in, and going to be very,

I think, taken back by. I was just told Fall 2001, so what is that, September, October maybe, for the

Svensson books? So maybe it'll be spread out over a couple months there before those books are all out.

But it's going to be an excellent opportunity for people to gather those books together and to find a tremendous amount of information and response to the stuff that is out there.

By the way, someone did ask the question regarding the

Barry Lynn situation, the Barry Lynn tapes. We have absolutely positively no developments, which

I'll be perfectly honest with you, since I have not heard a word from anyone,

I'm personally starting to wonder if there ever will be any developments, which may mean that evil wins one on this one,

I don't know. But I would think if there was going to be a real interest on the part of conservative attorneys to help us with this, that we wouldn't just be sitting here experiencing absolutely nothing at all.

And so since I really haven't heard anything, I'll have to admit that from the perspective

I'm looking at it, I'm not overly confident at the moment that we're going to be able to get around this issue.

And we live in a fallen world, and unfortunately sometimes evil wins, not in the long run, but in the short run.

And so that's the current situation as far as that goes. There were 600 people or so there that did get to hear it, and I hope that that is reversed, and I hope that other people will get to hear it.

But as I said, I haven't heard a word from anybody, and so right now it just doesn't look like that's going to be happening.

And that's very disappointing. But that's how things happen.

The evil people do evil things. That's exactly what you expect evil people to do. 866 -854 -6763 is the phone number, the toll -free phone number.

I don't see anybody online yet. That's probably because I haven't pushed any hot buttons yet.

I'm not sure exactly how I couldn't have been, but 866 -854 -6763 is the phone number.

By the way, someone has pointed out to me, and in fact

I listened carefully yesterday, to a phone call on the

Open Forum program with Harold Camping. Harold Camping seems to have the seven -year itch.

The seven -year itch is basically the idea that he needs to come up with a new heresy every seven years.

1994 was the last time we had the end of the world right around the corner.

So we're doing the Jehovah's Witness thing. That was seven years ago. So now it's 2001.

What's Harold Camping up to now? Harold Camping has decided in his infinite wisdom to study the

Scriptures. Me and my kids listened to a phone call yesterday on Open Forum asking him about this.

If you've ever listened to Harold Camping, you know that if you ask, if you ask,

Harold, what time is it? You need to sit back and, in essence, get ready for,

I don't know, a 20 -minute response? At least a 20 -minute response to what time it is.

And that's what happened yesterday. In essence, the question was asked, and Harold just goes on and on and on.

It is just interminable. And most of the time, it has basically nothing whatsoever to do with the actual question, except I think we do need to listen to be able to understand the thinking process that Harold Camping goes through.

If it can be understood. I don't really think that it can be. I was trying to think how I would respond to some of the things he was saying yesterday, and I just sit there going, what do you say?

It reminds me, without the shrill part and some of the goofiness of Gail Ripplinger.

It really does. But he was just, well, here's the thing. God's done with the

Church. God's done with the Church, and the

Church has been so infected with false teaching and stuff that you can barely find anyone who's faithful in churches anymore and is teaching sound doctrine.

Of course, I think Harold Camping thinks he's the determiner of what sound doctrine is. And so God's done with the

Church, and now he's going to press forward with parachurch ministries that, seemingly, interestingly enough, look just like family radio.

And so that's what he's doing now. Now, he did say yesterday that he's not done studying this.

And he's not really come to his final conclusions yet.

But he was bopping all over the Scriptures, looking for this, that, and the other thing. And the final presentation was truly goofy.

But we'll talk a little bit more about Harold Camping and take the millions of phone calls coming in right now at 866 -854 -6763.

We'll be right back. And welcome back to The Dividing Line.

My name is James White, and we're taking your phone calls today at 866 -854 -6763.

I've been multitasking a little bit here. One of the Internet Jehovah's Witness apologists,

Rick Stamp, has been banned from our channel many, many times. And he just came back in.

And even while I was talking to you, normally when you hear me sort of slow down and go, uh, it's because I'm doing something in the channel and nailing somebody.

And I did. And so he's now complaining about, well, you know, you just can't debate anyone.

You can't defeat easily and all the rest of this stuff. And so he's whining about in channel right now.

Actually in message right now, not in the channel, because I banned yet another host mask. We just keep adding those host masks to the various lists as we take care of folks who sneak in under the radar screen, shall we say.

But anyways, we were talking about Harold Camping. Cultists everywhere today, but Harold Camping's new heresy.

And as I listened to him going on and on yesterday, well, every time you listen to Harold Camping, you can't help but sit there.

And when you listen to a response, go, how does he see these scripture references that he's quoting?

How does he see them connected to one another? I mean, it really is on the level of sort of the

Bible codes thing where you just, you know, basically you just go looking for verses that have some words in them that maybe if you ignore their original context and say, well, it's, you know, this word actually meant this in this context, and it sort of sounds like this and all the rest of that stuff.

You know, that kind of a situation. Maybe that's how we can put all this stuff together.

And I'm listening to Camping going on and on, and he's jumping over to Revelation. Of course,

Revelation's always a wonderfully easy book to go jump and grab things for. But then he'd run over to Jeremiah and then over to Isaiah and then over to here and over there, just all over the place, and trying to put together this argument that God's done with the church.

And the thing that I'm sitting there listening and listening, and the thing that I was waiting to hear is, if you were going to talk about the church, it's similar to how, for example,

Roman Catholic apologists deal with the doctrine of justification. You know, they'll run over to a reference in Matthew, or they'll run over here and over there, and they'll try to tie these things together, none of which actually comes from the main plain passages in the

Bible where justification is discussed. Well, if you're going to talk about the church, the nature of the church and the future of the church, the glory of the church, where are you going to go?

You're going to go to Ephesians, right? Ephesians, you're going to go to the pastoral epistles, but especially you're going to go to Ephesians.

And of course, did I hear anything from Harold Camping from Ephesians?

No, because there's nothing in Ephesians that's going to help him to come up with this new idea that God is done with the church, and the church is supposed to parallel Israel, and since he rejected

Israel, well, now he's rejected the church, and all the rest of this stuff. And so you're supposed to fellowship together around the radio, and da -da -da -da -da, just unbelievable stuff.

We've got a new cult leader out there, and unfortunately he's playing pretty music, and there's going to be a lot of folks that sit there and go, you know, he predicted 1994, now he's getting rid of the church, and I'm really not sure why anyone like Robertson Jennis puts in his biography that, or in his bio, that he used to work for Harold Camping.

I really don't think that that is really relevant. So anyways, speaking of things that demonstrate that the church is royally a mess,

I'm going to get you all involved here, and I'm going to take some phone calls with some other subjects.

But first I'm just going to let you know that I am going to make some comments, you know, just unless the phones just go nutsy.

I am going to make some comments on the prayer of Jabez today.

And I remember a few weeks ago, before I knew anything about this, well, it was actually a couple months ago now,

I remember a call coming in to a national talk program, and there being some real hesitancy to address the subject.

And I can see why. I mean, this book has been at the top of the Amazon .com bestseller list for I don't know how long now.

It's just going all over the place. It's all over churches.

It's everywhere. And so I have it sitting right here, and I want to make some comments on the prayer of Jabez coming up a little bit later on.

But let's go ahead and start taking some phone calls. The number again, 866 -854 -6763.

And let's talk first with one of our regulars, Johnny on line one.

Hi, Johnny. How you doing, James? It's a pleasure to talk to you again. How you doing? All right. I did want to say this.

I have taken your advice, yours and Pastor David King's advice, to try to stay away from the

Roman Catholic apologists, at least on a one -on -one level, until I'm ready for it. That is wisdom.

Yeah. I'll try to learn from the men that know a lot better than I do. I'm only 23, going to be on 24 next month.

I remember those years. I really do. I had hair and everything. It was cool. But my question is, one of the comments

I did receive from men like Jesse Romero, of course I told you about that. Jesse Romero has consistently spoken to me about how, well, you know,

I'm setting up this litmus test for finding out what the truth is, and what about the person that lived, say, a thousand or fifteen hundred years ago, and didn't know how to read, and such and so forth.

And in doing that, he's quoted the Protestant scholars, such as J. N. D. Kelly and D.

A. Carson, or J. I. Packer. I told you about J. I. Packer. And how they said such and such, and how they admit, as historians, that the

Roman Catholic Church did exist in the early centuries of the Church. But my question particularly, and I'm trying to give you the full context on it, is that they keep...

What I hear from Roman Catholic apologists, you know, Scott Hahn, Robertson Jennings, even

Peter Stravinskas in the last debate that you had, they keep painting Church history with an incredibly broad brush.

I remember in... I got this... I don't know if you're familiar with the Jim Burnham set of beginning apologetics, these folders?

Uh, no. This is for students that want a general introduction to Roman Catholic apologetics to witness the

Protestants. And it's nothing that you haven't heard before, but it's very simplistic for those that are really trying to get an introduction to it.

Right. And one of the points that they make is that, you know, did the Roman Catholic Church add seven books to the

Old Testament, or did Martin Luther throw them out? Things like that. And my question is dealing with the papacy in this respect.

I've read some quotations from guys like St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and St.

Chrysostom, where they have explained that the keys of the kingdom were not given only to Peter, but to all of the apostles.

Right. Which is in direct contradiction of the First Vatican Council. And you know why that is? Uh, could you explain?

Well, really quickly, the reason for that is because of the fact that the distinction between the power of the keys and the power of binding and loosing only developed under papal authority and directive long after the time of Augustine.

And so Augustine and the early fathers see the power of the keys and the power of binding and loosing as being the same thing, because obviously it is.

I mean, it is in the New Testament, it is in the Jewish sense of what the keys were meant to do and binding and loosing are in Matthew 18, 18,

Matthew 16. It obviously is the same concept that is involved there.

And so it took time and it became, in essence, it was under Rome's own self -interest that it became popular to differentiate between the power of the keys and the power of binding and loosing.

So that's another of the many historical anachronisms. I mean, you can go back and say, alright, if you think that these people were believed in a papacy, don't you find it a little bit strange that a.

their interpretation of Matthew 16, 18 by the vast majority is not what

Rome offers today, and b. their very understanding of the concepts of the keys versus binding and loosing was not the same as what you have today?

Well, my question in particular was, because only in the quotations that I have seen, and I'm sure there's a lot out there that I haven't read, is that the three most dominant church fathers, at least to my knowledge, were

Jerome, Chrysostom, and Augustine. And though they did not see a distinction between the power of the keys and the power of binding and loosing, is this the overall view of the church fathers within the first five or six centuries, or was there a diversity of view, or was there any church father that distinguished between the keys of the kingdom and the power of binding and loosing?

I can't answer... Excuse me. Excuse me again.

I can't answer the question, was there any. I've never seen one. The reason being, again, that to my knowledge, that distinction came out of Roman apologetics later on.

And so it was understood by anyone who read the New Testament that the keys and binding and loosing were the same thing, and it is more of an apologetic technique to attempt to differentiate between them.

It comes much later down the road. That's why I was attempting to say earlier that really that's an anachronistic interpretation.

That is, it inserts back into church history something that simply did not exist at the time of the original writings, which without anachronism, there would be no

Roman Catholic historical apologetics. I mean, other than just immediately going to the

Newman stuff and saying, development, development, development, if you attempt to defend modern

Roman Catholic theology historically, you just simply can't do it without engaging in anachronism. It's just how it works.

So you're saying that because of the development, you're saying that you don't know of a church father with any kind of certainty, that you personally do not know of any church father inside the first 500 or 600 years of Christianity that said the keys of the kingdom were given to Peter alone, but the power of binding and loosing is something else that was given to everyone or something like that.

Right. No, I'm not aware of that, and I think that actually starts to develop in the

Roman area probably after that period of time, certainly after the time of Augustine.

And whatever you do, it's going to come out of Rome. It's going to be a Roman innovation. Was the development before or after the

Pseudo -Isidorean Decretos? It would probably be around the same time period, maybe a little bit earlier.

The possibility exists. I've not looked at it at all, personally.

But it is possible that that actually is where it came from.

I mean, I cannot rule that out as a possibility, but I've not looked into the specific interpretation of that issue as to find out exactly who initially started it.

Okay. Well, how do Roman Catholic apologists, and I got the book by Mr. Eric Venson, I don't know if he's a doctor, but he's

Dr. Eric Venson. He wrote a book called Evangelical Answers, which you recommend highly, where he talks about transubstantiation in his book, and he says that there are some church fathers that could be argued that did believe in it.

However, there are others, and he does cite at least two or three of them, off the top of my head, I don't remember, where they explain that there was a variety of views among the early church fathers as to how they viewed the real presence of Christ in the

Eucharist. And I think he lists a discussion between these men where one of them said that the body and blood become transformed into the body and blood of Christ, and the other one said, no, the likeness of the bread and wine remained the same.

Well, yeah, the debate that I had with Robert St. Genes, we went through a number of citations on that, and I would not agree that you could insert transubstantiation in the early church for the simple reason that the whole concept requires an

Aristotelian background that simply would not be present for anyone, and was not present for anyone until the 10th century as far as the whole concept.

And as I argued against Robert St. Genes, if that's what they believed, then they did not treat the elements in the only logical way that you would have to treat them if you actually believed in transubstantiation.

Real presence and transubstantiation are two different things. And they just gloss over that and just, again, engage in anachronism and just shove into church history what they have to find there, not recognizing that if, in point of fact, they want to try to put transubstantiation into an early father, then they're creating far more questions than they can possibly answer.

So, no, I don't think that's... But again... But what about the church fathers that actually do...

I think that clearly, as an honest person that reads church history, you as a historian can actually read certain church fathers and say, if, let's say, such and such church father did believe in it, which is arguable, but let's just say he did, we cannot say the same for this other church father over here.

Well, obviously... Of course, there's no such thing as... You know, Rome engages in pick -and -choose methodology in determining what of the early church fathers she's going to accept and what she's going to reject.

Even Peter Stravinskas said in the debate on Purgatory a few weeks ago, he said, well, we all know that any individual church father does not speak of the church, it's the body of the church fathers.

Well, what's that supposed to mean? I mean, Rome continues to get to choose what of the early church fathers she'll accept and how she'll interpret what the early church fathers said.

It's sola ecclesia, all over the place, and there is no united viewpoint on the subject in any way, shape, or form.

And so, certainly, it is well known, if you actually let

Augustine speak for Augustine, if you allow for his viewpoint to be fully expressed, that he believed that a particular individual, that the particular physical body of Jesus Christ went to heaven and that we are deprived of his physical presence until he comes again.

Do you have that citation? I'd like to get my hands on it. I used it in the

Syngenis debate. I do not have the citations in front of me now. But we listened to this just a few weeks ago in our

Sunday school class at church, and if you read what he says, he has a very strong doctrine of the physical resurrection of Christ, and he's very clear in emphasizing that the physical body of Jesus Christ is in heaven and that the

Church has been deprived, he uses that term, deprived of the physical presence of Christ until he comes again.

So you simply, you know, Schaaf, when he discusses the origination and the development of the doctrine of transubstantiation starting in the 10th, 11th, 12th centuries, actually 11th, 12th, 13th centuries, mentions that one of the issues that had to be gotten over was

Augustine's own doctrine on the very subject. And so it's clearly there, and to ignore it is just simply to play games with history for the purpose of, you know, selling another $26 set of tapes, basically, is really what's going on with many of these folks.

So are there Roman Catholic scholars that would at least be honest enough, or, well, let's use another word, responsible?

But remember what people like Tim Staples will say about a Roman Catholic scholar that says that.

Oh, he's not a Catholic. Remember if you've seen the debate with Jerry Matitix when

I mentioned a citation of a Roman Catholic. Now this guy's a Mariologist.

I mean, this guy would be considered a conservative in the broad spectrum of things. But when

I cited what he said, Matitix's response was, well, I'm not particularly concerned about the words of scholars who have been imbued with the spirit of rationalism.

That's right. The spirit of rationalism is how he put it. So in other words, as long as they disagree, then they're not really

Catholics. Now the Church can give them the sacraments. The Church cannot excommunicate them.

The Pope can place these people on papal commissions and make them the scholars that are referred to in his documents.

But hey, when it comes up against Roman Catholic apologists, all of a sudden the apologists become their own little mini -popes.

And they somehow have a new insight into the meaning of what the

Pope is saying that nobody else does. And there is a real broad, and this is one of the things

I like about Eric Fentz's book on Mary, is that he documents the tremendously broad chasm that exists between Roman Catholic apologists and Roman Catholic scholarship.

Roman Catholic scholarship tends to be very open. Has the book come out yet? No, it's supposed to be,

I was told in the channel it's the fall of 2001, which I'm not sure what that means, but maybe

September or something like that. I don't know. I was hoping for August. I've read the book, and there's a very good documentation of the tremendous gap that exists between what

Roman Catholic scholars say about Mary and about the New Testament evidence of Mary, and what someone like Gerry Matitix or Tim Staples would say concerning Mary.

And so there's a reason why these folks are apologists, and they're speaking in parishes to youth groups and things like that, but they're not teaching at Notre Dame.

The reason is that Roman Catholic scholarship, and this is a scholarship that's recognized by the papacy, which should be,

I would think, relevant to a Roman Catholic. I mean, I remember when, I think it was

Eric Fentz, and actually in a debate with Matitix on Mary, when he quoted Raymond Brown, again,

Gerry did the eh -eh -eh about Raymond Brown, and the response to Tim was, how many papal commissions have you been asked to serve on?

You know, if the Pope is putting these people on his own commissions, I get the feeling they're the ones that we should look at as being representative of Roman Catholic scholarship.

Well, what about Roman Catholic scholars now? I don't know too much about Dr. Scott Hahn, but from what

I hear, he's their pride and joy. Well, he's the pride and joy of the apologists, as far as scholarship goes.

He's not the pride and joy of the Roman Catholic theological community. In fact,

I was reading an American magazine where his new book was panned pretty badly by them as being the fluff that it is on Mary.

The Roman Catholic magazine? Yes. So, again, Roman Catholic mariologists and scholars of history know that what

Rome teaches today is not something that was ever believed by anybody in the first few centuries. This isn't some apostolic tradition passed down through the

Church. It's something the Church has made up in the centuries that have immediately preceded us.

But the issue then becomes, does the Church have the authority to do that? But that's not what the Church originally claimed.

And that's a whole different apologetic issue than what the Roman Catholic apologists defend.

Roman Catholic apologists tend to be very, very conservative, basically because liberals don't have anything to defend anyways.

I mean, liberals don't tend to believe that there's a need for apologetics in the first place.

And so you generally are not going to find a Roman Catholic liberal being in any way or shape or form interested, for example, in debating me because we start from completely different places.

Same thing with the Protestant liberal. So, really, it's amongst the conservative

Roman Catholics that this is an issue. But, interestingly enough, the Pope, when he chooses theologians, doesn't choose the apologists.

He chooses, basically, the liberal theologians and scholars. So they have the problem of having to explain what the

Pope does. But, James, in one of your discussions, remember, I think you mentioned this in your debate against Fr.

Peter Stravinskis, you said that there are Roman Catholic apologists that have actually criticized.

There's apologists now that have criticized the Tim Staples, Scott Haunus, all these guys,

Joe Roberts and Jennings, for talking about so many denominations, where they're actually telling them, no, there are not that many.

Well, I had mentioned that there are actually now some Roman Catholic apologists who are admitting that that is a gross exaggeration.

And I was referring to, especially, some internet apologists at that point who had, within the past few months, admitted that they need to stop using those numbers.

28 ,000 that Stravinskis used is actually a little bit smaller than the numbers that are being thrown about now.

33 ,000, 35 ,000, it keeps growing every time I talk with one of these folks. But, yeah, a number of them have admitted,

I believe it was Dave Armstrong that admitted that that number is simply not a meaningful number, and it's not a number that should be utilized in that context.

But Stravinskis was just throwing out the standard stuff. I did not get any feeling that he had ever taken the time to interact with any serious

Protestant response. I think he honestly feels that most of us are clones of Jimmy Swaggart, and that we've never really thought deeply about these issues.

Or Jack Chick. Or Jack Chick. And as a result, there's a whole flock of Catholic apologists who only deal on the surface levels.

And what they say just doesn't make any sense. It's been refuted many times before. But they don't know it, because they don't take the time to...

They're not going to read the new Webster King work. They're not going to work through 1 ,050 pages.

1 ,050? I thought it was 1 ,200. Actually, it's 1 ,050 in three volumes. And do you know when that book is coming out yet?

Well, look deeply into your phone and see right here in front of the microphone. I've got it right here in my hand.

I'm sorry. Well, again, we're hoping to have all three volumes available in just a couple of weeks.

The note that I have here, a handwritten note from Bill Webster, literally says, hopefully the other two will be finished in a couple of weeks.

So we're looking real close on that. I mean, if I have the third volume in my hand, there's still a little editing that needs to be done on that.

But if I have the third volume in my hand, we're getting pretty close. Do you have all three volumes yourself? I have the third volume bound as a book.

The first two volumes were sent to me in a different format, in a printout format, just like a galley proof type thing.

Well, I'm taking a lot of your time. All righty, man. In fact, we got to take a break. So, hey, thanks a lot for calling in today, Johnny. Thank you.

All right, God bless. 866 -854 -6763. We're going to take our top of the hour break and then come back with Randy and Tim and their questions and yours at 866 -854 -6763.

We'll be right back. And welcome back to The Dividing Line. We do have callers online.

And some of you are going, but you need to say something about the Prayer of Jabez. Well, we'll get to it. Maybe. We'll see. Depends on how long these calls take.

Let's talk to Randy in Denver. Hi, Randy. Hi, James. I have a dream someday you'll introduce me as a regular caller.

A regular caller. All righty, man. Yeah, that's my goal in life. Okay. But I just finished Roman Catholic Controversy today, so good job on that.

Enjoyed that. Well, good. I actually have two questions. My first one, is it still possible to get any of those

PowerPoint presentations you mentioned, like the AV -1611 and some of those things you've mentioned in the past?

Yeah, Request 1A and AV -1611 still work. I still get a few folks asking for those.

I still haven't done the King James thing, but I had a few requests come through while I was in San Francisco, and I can't process them when

I'm away, but I just leave them there. Okay, so you're not going to make them available as a direct download or anything? Well, they're available in the same way they've always been available, and that is you have to use the subject line and e -mail, and my system will send them back to you.

Okay. So if you put AV -1611 in the subject line and send an e -mail to NA27 at AOMIN .org,

then it will automatically just send it back to you. Okay. I tried that once and never got a response, so I'll try it again.

Okay. My main question is related to Greek. I know just enough to be dangerous, so I'm like Dave Hunt and the

Earthformers. Yes, yes. But in Titus 2 .14 and 13 and 14

New American Standards, it says, Looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed and to purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for good deeds.

I was doing some study on that, and I noticed that where he says gave himself, in the

Greek there it's indicative of a statement of fact, but for redeem and purify, are both subjunctive, describing something that may or may not occur, and I was just wondering how a true

Greek scholar would respond to somebody saying that that sort of refutes particular redemption. Well, you've unfortunately just made the mistake of Tim Staples and the

Jimmy Swaggart School of Greek Interpretation. I hate to tell you that, but we're going to rescue you from it now, so it'll make you feel much better afterwards.

Good. Basic, and for those who don't know what I'm referring to, Tim Staples, there's an article about this on our website.

If you look in the Roman Catholic section, you might want to read the section, the article that Colin Smith wrote in response to Tim Staples' error on the

Bible Answer Man, where he focused in upon the use of the word should or would, and basically looked at the subjunctive and said, well, see, that's doubtful hesitation or affirmation, so on and so forth.

There is a usage in the Greek language that he seemingly was ignorant of, and that sometimes when people just look at words in isolation, instead of looking at words in syntax, they'll make this kind of error, and that is, both of those verbs, leutrosetai and then katharise, are both in a hinnah clause.

They come after the word hinnah, and hinnah introduces a purpose or result clause.

And so when it says, who gave himself in our behalf, that, as you said, is an aorist indicative, and then the hinnah clause explains the purpose or reason for the giving of himself.

And so it's not that the subjunctive there is less powerful than the indicative.

When it's following in a hinnah clause, it's simply giving you the reason of the action, the result of the action, so that's why it's called a purpose or result clause.

And so it is not introducing a hesitancy of affirmation. It is simply giving you the reason why the action of the main verb took place.

So anyone who would, like Mr. Staples, who would focus upon the subjunctive to say, well, he gave himself so that we might be saved, just simply doesn't understand what a hinnah clause is and what a purpose and result clause is.

So the hinnah clause would be compound because of the chi before the... Right. Excellent.

Well, see, that's why I called you. There you go. Thanks a lot. There you go. And we have your address in our database.

I can send you the bills later? Yeah. Okay, good. All right. All right, thanks, James. All right, thanks a lot. God bless. Bye -bye. Bye -bye.

866 -854 -6763. Let's talk with Tim up where I just got out of,

San Francisco, California, where it was only in the middle 60s most of the time

I was there. It is currently, according to my computer, 105 degrees, with 52 -degree dewpoint here.

It is miserable. Anyways, Tim, how are you? All right, Brother James. How are you doing?

Doing all right. It's been a little bit abnormally cooler around here.

Yeah, and I didn't mind that at all. Yeah, last year it was fairly warm. It got a little toasty, yep.

Well, my main question is I'd like to see what you have to say about the eternal sonship versus the incarnational sonship.

John MacArthur had renounced the incarnational sonship three or four years ago, and I know

Walter Martin held to that position up to his dying day, as far as I understand. And not long ago

I'd seen a repeat of a John Ankerberg debate with Calvin Beisner and Walter Martin with Robert Serbane.

And I remember it kind of blew me away because Walter Martin said, you know, we're not talking about the eternal sonship, and how he was trying to defend the eternality of Christ was just kind of interesting, you know, in that position.

What would be your catch on that? How do you differentiate that?

Yeah, well, Martin was wrong, and so was Samuel Clark, or was it

Adam Clark? Well, some of the last name Clark. Obviously I disagree with those.

I disagreed with John MacArthur up until he made the change in his viewpoint. The relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit is eternal.

That these terms are not merely in regards to the sending of the Son and the

Incarnation, but that when Paul says that we've been transferred into the kingdom of his

Son, and then goes on to refer to the Son as the creator of all things, he's not there making a mistake.

He's not there utilizing anachronistic terminology that would have to be reinterpreted.

He doesn't have any problem referring to the Son in that way. There has been an eternal relationship between them in that fashion, and I just don't think there's really any way around that.

The issue, probably the only issue that really gets raised on that one is the subject of the early church's use of terms like genetos and agenetos and issues like that in regards to the relationship between the

Father and the Son and the temporality of it, or the non -temporality of it, I guess, would be the issue.

But as far as incarnational versus eternal sonship, no, I don't think there's really any question about that at all.

So the people that hold that view, I guess, even though it's not orthodox, obviously several of them are brothers in the

Lord, it's just kind of hard how they defend it. Well, I know how they defend it.

I understand what motivates them as well, and I don't fault their desire to defend the eternal nature of Christ.

I understand that their concern is that if we call him the Son, that there was a time when he was begotten, etc.,

etc., etc. So I understand the concerns, but I just don't think that that's the way to handle it.

Well, I appreciate that. Before I let you go, I definitely want to hear your intake on the prayer of Jabez.

There's been a couple of articles recently. I just got one on the email from the guy, I forgot his name, but it's at discerningreader .com,

The Right Books. I'm not sure if you're familiar with them. I'm not familiar with it. Antithesis .com, pretty good ministry. They sell a lot of really great books, and he wrote an article.

I'll have to check that out. But since you're on the topic of Harold Campbell, I just wanted to mention something real quick.

When I got saved in 1994, somebody turned me on to his radio station because I had all these questions.

And I think God used them at the time because I was laid up with my physical infirmities and to keep me safe from all the wacko charismatics on TV that wanted to heal me through the screen, you know.

And I praise God for that. But one thing I realized, because I listened to him for a long time, and a lot of people

I don't think, because I know a lot of people around here that still follow him, which I try to open their eyes to these things, is that one thing

God just hit me real hard one time, just opened my eyes, was a cultic mentality that he has, besides other ones, is that he constantly recommends, he says the

Bible alone in its entirety, but it's really the Bible alone in his interpretation. And he never recommends any kind of works but his own booklets that he writes.

And this is definitely cultic in that regard. And it's kind of scary because there's a lot of people that still just want to hang on to family radio.

And family radio has some really good things, some great old hymns and things, but I don't know how they're staying together as he continues to get ridiculous.

I don't know. Well, they did in 1994, but they lost people. I mean, there were people with integrity who had to leave over the 1994 issue.

But people like that just keep going on. And for some reason, despite their history, there are people who are willing to forgive and forget and put people in positions of authority that they shouldn't have.

I don't exactly know why it is, but it seems to be something that people are willing to do. Seriously, one last insight.

I think you'll find this interesting. I think it was a couple of years back, because Harold's definitely a

TR, King James kind of guy, because I know some people in there at family radio, dear souls, but Harold actually made everybody sign a thing if they were going to work there.

They had to agree upon that King James was the Bible, not in the

KJV -only sense, but that New King James is okay and J .P. Gree's Modern King James.

But there was people who actually quit because they wouldn't sign it because they were convicted whether they read the

NIV or NSAB. But those are just some of the ridiculous things. I know. I've heard about it.

Okay, man. All right, James. Thanks a lot. God bless. 866 -854 -6763, your comments and questions today.

And we now go to someone who seemingly wants to throw a little grenade into our happy little fellowship,

Scott in Modesto, California. Hi, Scott. Hey, James. I don't want to throw a grenade anywhere, man.

I don't want to be divisive. No, all of us don't want to be divisive. I especially never want to be divisive.

Yeah, well, my question is on infant baptism, and I've been struggling with this for a little while.

I listened to a lecture that Greg Banson gave, and he's an advocate of infant baptism.

He was. He was. I don't believe he is any longer. He was, yeah.

But I noticed that you call yourself a Reformed Baptist, and I know that traditionally the

Reformed position has been an advocate of infant baptism, not in the

Roman Catholic sense, but, you know, it's more of a dedication type thing.

What's your position on that? Well, it's not really a dedication type thing. I don't think that most people who hold to the

Reformed or Calvinistic view of infant baptism would want to call it dedication.

They very firmly believe that baptism is the New Covenant fulfillment of the

Old Covenant sign of circumcision, that the parallels between the

Old and New Covenant require the continuation of the practice, that they would really say that the full reason for continuation of the practice is because there is no recension of it in the

New Covenant, and that since, very clearly, baptism becomes the New Covenant sign, that it would be a fundamental shift in the structure of the family, so on and so forth, to not engage in it.

Actually, I have spoken on this subject, and I'm not sure if Rich—I know

Rich was going to make a sermon that I delivered at Faith Reformed Baptist Church on Long Island about this available.

I'm not sure if we've actually put that on there. And, in fact, we did a debate a couple of years ago, myself and another pastor, versus Gary Johnson and Robert Strimple from Westminster Seminary on that subject, and so many people are now aware of it that we might as well just make it available.

It is, I think, a subject that we need to discuss. We discuss it often in the chat room. We have a pretty equal representation in the channel between Presbyterians and Reformed Baptists, between Credo Baptists and Paedo Baptists, in essence, and sometimes the discussion gets hot and heavy, and sometimes it doesn't.

It all depends, but we've all— I just got one of the Reformed pats on the head from someone who—

I get that a lot, you know, you're a Reformed Baptist, but someday you'll come to understand. A very common thing—actually,

I'm somewhat addressing this issue, if you're interested, in the sermons that I did in July and I'll be doing in August at the

Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. You can get those sermons from www .prbc

.org. You can request them there, and I've been going through the book of Hebrews, because, for me, the issue really is the nature of the

New Covenant. When you hear Presbyterians and Reformed Baptists exegeting Hebrews 8, you get very different responses as to what the nature of the

New Covenant is. The Reformed Baptist says, Hebrews 8, says that the New Covenant is a better covenant, not in degree, but in kind, and that all who are in the

New Covenant all know him. The Presbyterian says you're going too far with that.

That's not really the meaning there, that it's a matter of degree. In fact, just to give you an idea of the

Presbyterian interpretation of it, I happen to have a book sitting here next to me by Douglas Wilson called

To a Thousand Generations, and I'll give you his own interpretation of this. You can contrast it with my exegesis of Hebrews 8 from that sermon at www .prbc

.org, which may still be online, by the way, I'm not sure. It may still be in there and available to listen to in real audio.

I'm not sure if it's still there or not, but you can get the tape from them. So this is what

Wilson says. That's from page 37 of To a

Thousand Generations. Now, I simply say that is eisegetical, that is simply completely missing the entire point of Hebrews 8.

I do not believe that the terminology used in the Greek refers to better in degree.

I believe it refers to better in kind. And in point of fact, I think that Dr. Wilson's interpretation would completely turn

Hebrews 8 on its head, as far as that goes. And if, in point of fact, there is a disjunction between the

Old and New Covenant to where the New Covenant, which is the covenant in Christ's blood, and we believe in particular redemption, you put those together, and I do not see the

Presbyterian position as being self -consistent in giving a covenant sign to a child that is admitted to not yet be regenerate, not a part of the

New Covenant, not under the blood of Christ, to give a sign to a child only in hope. I don't see baptism in the

New Testament as being something looking forward to a hope for fulfillment. Baptism in the

New Testament is always looking back to its fulfillment in the cross of Christ. And how would you deal with the passages,

I can't give you one exactly, but the passages where we're told to baptize the whole household or people in the

Bible... Well, again, I find a lot of problems with the argumentation that is put forward about household baptisms.

I was amazed in a debate that I did in New Mexico with two

Presbyterians who, interestingly enough, ended up spending more of their time debating with each other about paedo -communion than with us about paedo -baptism, which, interestingly enough, if you've thought about that, the arguments against paedo -communion are almost identical to the

Reformed Baptist arguments against paedo -baptism, but that's a whole other issue. They brought up Acts 16 in the

Philippian Jailer, because here you have a household baptism. And it was fascinating because the argument they wanted to make was, they wanted to specifically assert that the members of the household were not believers.

They were not believers, and yet they were baptized. And I pointed out, they rejoiced with the jailer at his belief in Christ.

You're telling me that unregenerate non -believers rejoice when people accept Christ? And they actually went so far as to make that kind of an argument.

So it was fascinating. So I have a lot of problems with those who say, well, these have to have been baptisms of entire households that had infants.

I don't think that historically that that holds up. And the main issue is, it's fascinating to me, when you read the

Westminster Confession of Faith, or any of the Reformed Confessions of Faith, as they define baptism, it is always talking about the sign and seal of our union with Christ.

Why give that to someone that we admit is not yet united with Christ? That makes it something that looks forward to a hope for fulfillment.

And if that then places that child in the New Covenant, you have, in my opinion, exegetically impossible objections on the basis of the book of Hebrews in regards to the fact that Christ is the mediator of the

New Covenant. And that becomes a whole big issue. And as I said,

I'm addressing that in the exegesis of Hebrews. I started in Hebrews 6, fascinating place to start, but I did

Hebrews 6 and 7 on one Lord's Day. I did Hebrews 8 about two Lord's Days ago in the morning.

And then I'll be preaching again for two weeks in August. And I'll do 9 and 10, and then wrap it all up with a discussion of all of that at the end of that.

So keep an eye on prbc .org, and you can request the tapes from there. Okay. Could we go back to the jailer for just a second?

Sure. Now, could you just go over that statement that you made?

Would you say that he was a Gentile? The jailer certainly was, yeah. Yeah, okay. And so what was your...

Well, the argument that came up was if we look at... Let me go down here.

Where did it go? There it is. And he took them that very hour of the night,

Acts 16, 33. And he took them that very hour of the night and washed their wounds. And immediately he was baptized, he and all his household.

And he brought them into his house and set food before them and rejoiced greatly, having believed in God with his whole household.

They made the assertion, and I don't know that without having prepared for it that I could give you all of the exact things here.

Let me see if I have the ASV. They made the assertion based upon...

I don't know why I didn't bring Acts 16, 34 up in the ASV. Acts 16, 34.

There it is. Yeah, here we go. Acts 16, 34 in the

American Standard Version. And he brought them up into his house and set food before them and rejoiced greatly, with all his house, having believed in God.

And here is the argument that they were making. That the jailer had believed in God, but they had not.

And the whole reason was to establish that baptism of people who were not open believers took place in the

New Testament. And I argued that syntactically, translationally, and everything else, it made no sense that the

New American Standard was right, having believed in God with his whole household, and that from a Reformed perspective, how could we expect people who don't believe in God to rejoice with him?

Since the rejoicing says that they rejoiced with all his house, how would they rejoice with this man in his acceptance of Christ if they're not believers?

That's not an argument that every Presbyterian I've talked to has raised, but they did to specifically attempt to present a place where unbelievers were baptized.

And as I recall, my partner asked them, so if someone came to you today with a 17 -year -old son who was a rebel unbeliever, would you baptize that 17 -year -old son in your understanding of baptism?

They said, yes, we would. Even though he might be an acid -taking punk rocker who blasphemes

Christ, yes, we would still baptize him because of the covenantal structure. But then, of course, he then becomes a covenant breaker, and then wrath comes upon him, and so on and so forth.

But like I said, that particular group ended up spending more time arguing with each other about paedo -communion than they did with us.

Well, thank you, James. You've definitely shed some light on this subject. Like I said, drop us a note.

Rich says that he's going to list those in the Reformed Theology section. The sermon that I did and the debate that we did, it wasn't the same debate in New Mexico, for some reason that didn't get taped, but the one that was done here in Phoenix should be listed this week in the

Reformed Theology section, and request those others from prbc .org. Okay, thanks. All righty, thanks a lot.

God bless. Let's see if we can sneak... Do we have... Yeah, we have one more caller, David. David, are you there?

Hello, David. No, maybe not? Is there no one... Okay, all the lights went bye -bye.

Okay, well, I thought I saw another light there, and I thought someone had said that we need to have another call.

Very quickly, and maybe we can just push past the time here or something, but if I'm going to address it,

I want to at least have a few moments to address it. Very briefly, without getting into a lot of the concepts here and a lot of the critiques that could be offered to the prayer of Jabez, here's my problem.

Toward the end of the book, let me just read, this is from page 83, it's not exactly a long book, called

The Cycle of Blessings. As you repeat the steps, you will set in motion a cycle of blessing that will keep multiplying what

God is able to do in and through you. This is the exponential growth I referred to at the close of the previous chapter. You have asked for and received more blessing, more territory, more power, and more protection, but the growth curve soon starts to spike upwards.

You don't reach the next level of blessing and stay there. You begin again, Lord, bless me indeed, Lord, please enlarge, and so on.

As the cycle repeats itself, you'll find that you are steadily moving into wider spheres of blessing and influence, spiraling ever outward and upward into a larger life for God.

The day will come, and come repeatedly during your life, that you will be so overwhelmed with God's graciousness that tears will stream down your face, etc.,

etc. Now, those of you who don't know what The Prayer of Jabez is, it is a book that has just absolutely spread like wildfire.

It refers to a single verse in the Scriptures, a single prayer that is recorded in the

Scriptures for us. Allegedly, the praying of this prayer, found in 1

Chronicles 4, beginning at verse 9, which says, Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother named him

Jabez, saying, because I bore him with pain. Now Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, O that you would bless me indeed and enlarge my border, and that your hand might be with me, and that you would help me, that you would keep me from harm, that it may not pain me.

And God granted him what he requested. Now, the issue is, you're supposed to pray this prayer, a specific interpretation of it is provided to you that is not necessarily overly relevant to the original context anyways, but this prayer is supposed to open up all these opportunities of blessing, more territory, more power, this cycle that goes on, so on and so forth.

Very quickly, here's my problem. It assumes that God has to answer this prayer the way that God answered

Jabez's prayer. When it says God granted him what he requested, God didn't have to do that.

And God may have fulfilled that particular prayer in a very different way. His will for Jabez's life may have been the opposite of this.

That is not allowed into the equation. God's freedom and sovereignty is severely limited when we say to people, if you will pray this prayer, this is what the result will be.

We don't know that to be the case that takes away from God's freedom, and this whole thing, to be honest with you, is nothing more than name it and claim it under a new mask.

And it's amazing and saddening to me that the church is embracing this, and so many people uncritically so.

We'll have more to say about that in the future. Obviously, we didn't have a whole lot of time to deal with it today. There's now a big discussion of paedo -baptism going on the channel.

I need to weigh in. So anyways, we will be back next week here on The Dividing Line. Look forward to seeing you then.