April 28, 2005

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, 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 and 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 -877 -753 -3341.

And now with today's topic, here is James White.

The Pope, Civil Disobedience, and the Limits of Evangelizing Europe

I was just looking at my blog feed here and this one just popped up. It was quite interesting. It says, those waiting to see whether Pope Benedict XVI will be an attack dog or a puppy dog may be getting an answer.

The once deeply Catholic Spain is on the verge of passing a bill legalizing gay marriage and gay adoption. What's new about that? You heard about Elton John getting married, right? Oh, I'm sorry, civil unions, as if that really means anything.

Anyway, the measure has passed the lower house of parliament and is expected to breeze to the Senate, but a Vatican official, the head of the Pontifical Council in the family, has issued a statement that if the law passes, civil officials in Spain must refuse to carry out the law to the point of civil disobedience.

Under the last Pope, similar measures in Belgium and the Netherlands were merely strongly denounced. Telling Catholics to disobey their own governments on such issues is an aggressive position that would be in line with the Pope's stated desire to reassert the Christian foundations of European culture and his explanation of why he took the name Benedict after the saint known for evangelizing Europe.

Well, boy, a lot you could go after there. Evangelizing Europe? Well, if you don't actually change people's hearts and you don't have the evangelist, it's sort of hard to evangelize anybody, isn't it?

And simply telling people to do this without changing the heart isn't going to accomplish anything, so who knows what's going to happen there? I certainly don't know, but that is a rather interesting little note that just popped up right as we were getting the program started.

Not what I plan on talking about today. Actually, I have in my hand here. Oh, by the way, just in passing, I noted on the blog today the no-compromise wristbands are in. They are here, and so if you have been waiting because it was a pre-order situation, they are here, and I've got one right here.

See, I'm holding it up to the microphone, and I like it, and it's nice to see it, and of course you can help support the ministry with that, and well, it's all on the blog. I have in my hand, not around my wrist, I have in my hand the uncorrected proof.

I wish I had, and it'll come tomorrow. That's how it always works. I have ordered a different Jesus by Robert Millet. It probably will come tomorrow, maybe on Saturday, depending on how it was shipped, but it is now out from Erdman's, but what I have in my hand is the uncorrected proof copy.

The reason I wish I had the real thing, I doubt the text has changed, honestly, but the pages aren't the same. I can tell the paperback published edition, 244 pages. This has 214, and so there's how it works, but I have it in my hand, and what I'm going to do is I am going to be looking at what this book is about, reading some of the sections.

We can go into a little bit more depth on the program than we can even on the blog, simply because it takes so much time to write that kind of stuff up, and I think it's a vitally important issue. We have an LDS work of apologetics being published by Erdman's.

I think the founders of Erdman's, honestly, would be absolutely positively spinning in their graves. They would be just mortified at the fact that their company is doing this, but that's just where we are today.

That's just the way things are now. It doesn't hurt as much if you just simply recognize that quote-unquote Christian publishers aren't really Christian publishers. They're just publishers. They might publish religious works, but the idea of having any type of theological standards is old hat.

That's just the way it is, so it's a sad situation to look at. But before we take a look at that book, we're going to go ahead and take a quick call and then take a look at the book. Let's go to St. Paul and talk to Gary.

Hi, Gary.

Hello, Dr. White.

How are you?

Good. How are you?

I'm doing all right.

Hey, before I ask my question, could I greet all the Toadies, Minions, and Lackies in the channel?

Sure, that would be fine. Just realize that they will all kick you and ban you when you come back in tomorrow.

Oh, okay.

But you're used to that, aren't you?

Hello, Toadies, Minions, and Lackies in the channel.

But you're accustomed to that. How many times do you think you were kicked or banned today?

Only twice. It was a slow day.

No, no, no. You're wrong, because I saw Spidey nail you, Hobster nailed you, and then immediately I sent you to purgatory. So that was three in one shot.

Oh, okay. Like you said, I'm getting used to it.

What can we do for you, brother?

Well, if you start to talk to Catholics and say that they don't have the Gospel, often, well, when did we, if that's your claim, that we don't have the Gospel?

Right.

So where would you say in the history of the Church is the Gospel? And can you identify that point and after that point that kind of straddled that time?

Yeah, that's a good question. It sort of raises one of the important points I try to make fairly regularly, and that is when you see these lists of dates and frequently they're put into a pamphlet form, things like that, people say, this is when such and such came into existence, and this is when such and such.

The problem is history doesn't work that way. It's not like people wake up one morning and go, hey, let's believe in transubstantiation today. It takes place over time, and so folks want to have specific dates when such and such took place.

You can do that only as far as dealing with something like dogmatic definitions of, for example, the dogma of transubstantiation, Fourth Lateran Council 1215. You can look at specifics regarding justification at the Council of Trent in the middle of the 16th century.

But before that, the problem is you can find, for example, really, really, really bad theology in any particular writer in any particular century, but at the same time that doesn't necessarily mean that he represents a good writer or maybe even a good preacher who wasn't writing in the same century.

And given the way things were in the olden days, you could have wide variances of opinion in different geographical areas. I mean, we're so connected to one another. I mean, as anybody can tell from what you said when you called in, during the day we are chatting, and you're up in Minnesota, and I'm in Phoenix, and it sort of makes the world a little bit of a smaller place.

That didn't happen. I mean, people just a couple hundred years ago could not have even begun to imagine such a thing prior to something like a telegraph or something like that. So that also introduces a whole other issue here.

Basically, especially when you talk about the Gospel, what you're dealing with there, from my perspective, I really try, I believe it or not, I actually have some levels of optimism hiding somewhere in my character someplace.

And when I look at the history of the Church, I recognize that there's all sorts of people, even in the earliest days, for example, in some of the earliest writings, we will find some people who call themselves Christians, or at least identify with the Christian movement, who seem to have almost no knowledge whatsoever of the New Testament.

And as such, their theology is just really, really, really bad. At the same time, at the very same period in history, you can have individuals who have brilliant insights into elements of the Gospel and justification.

That shouldn't surprise us, because that's what we see in the New Testament. I mean, obviously, if the Judaizers were writing in the same period of time as Paul's writing Galatians, you're going to have two different viewpoints being expressed at the exact same period of time.

And so, it shouldn't surprise us that if that's what's going on even when the Apostles are on the earth, then it's going to happen afterwards as well. And you really don't get the dogmatic definition of certain beliefs until you have a Church that is organized enough to create such dogmatic definitions.

And even then, the Church, for example, the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, could not have even begun to understand your question. And the reason being that they would have understood Catholic Church in a very different way than you and I are using that term today, because I was assuming, as you asked your question, that you were using it of the Roman Catholic Church, which, in reality, is an oxymoron.

It is two contradictory terms brought together. No one at the Council of Nicaea, for example, would ever use that terminology. They wouldn't have understood what it meant, for that matter, what Roman Catholic would have meant, because the simple fact of the matter is they did not believe that Rome defined the Catholic Church, or that the Bishop of Rome defined the Catholic Church, for that matter.

And so, you've got the difference in those early years, those early councils in the first number of centuries, focused upon very different issues than you have in regards to the questions that we would like to ask.

And so, as I look at history, certainly we have to look at, when people ask, when do you think the Roman Catholic Church started? Well, again, I don't think it started at any particular point in time.

You can find, for example, Stephen, the Bishop of Rome, at the same time that Cyprian is the Bishop in Carthage in the middle of the 3rd century, you can see him starting to make claims like modern Roman Catholic popes and bishops.

But, no one really believed him. No one really gave in to him. Cyprian fought him, and councils did as well, and it was just a matter of a rather arrogant fellow up in Rome. And so, but is that something that demonstrates a beginning?

Well, yeah, and then when the Western portion of the Roman Empire falls, the Bishop of Rome picks up a whole lot more authority, but still, he's not to that point either. And it is a lengthy process where all sorts of different elements come together over time that brings together the final form of the Roman Catholic Church that we have today.

Well, when in all that mess do you have an official repudiation of the Gospel of Grace? Well, those were not the primary issues. I would look at 1215, and I would look at the Doctrine of Transubstantiation as a very important point.

No question about it. And without any doubt at all, the Council of Trent does so as well. What about before then? Well, you know, you see Gottschalk being chucked in jail for believing what Augustine believed about salvation in the 9th century.

And so there's obviously people who are still around that don't feel that they are out of step with the institutional church to believe truths about the Gospel. But you also have a whole lot of really, really, really bad theology at that period of time as well.

And you have to pick and choose. Is it easy to find people who are still holding on to important elements? Not really. It's not easy to find them just a couple hundred years after Augustine. But somebody was being picked on by innocents and his armies during the beginnings of the Inquisition and things like that.

There's somebody running around at that period of time. And they, at least if we can trust almost anything that is recorded about why those people were attacked and literally slaughtered by the Inquisition, by the papal armies, they believed some odd things about baptism or about the sufficiency of Scripture or they rejected certain traditions that had developed in Rome.

So that makes you go, hmm, at that particular point in time. But a lot of what they wrote hasn't come down to us. The churches in Piedmont Valley, for example, only fragments of what they believed have come down to us.

So that's what makes the identification of a particular time rather problematic because it's not going to be representative of everybody. We don't have a complete history in written form that we can say, ah, here's this, here's that, here's the other thing.

So you need to look at a particular individual in his context when he was writing and ask the question and take it back to the only standard we can take it back to, and that is to take it back to Scripture.

And that's what we try to do today, too. Unfortunately, so many people get caught up in the other elements of it that they don't allow it to come back to really an examination of what the Scripture is all about.

A Catholic in general just said, didn't Augustine also come up with purgatory? No. He had a purgation kind of concept, but he did not have purgatory as a development. In fact, it was Gregory the Great who really made a large move that direction around 600, and even then his doctrine is not what eventually becomes the doctrine of the 13th century when it's finally officially defined on a conciliar basis.

So each one of those, there's another example of the doctrine of purgatory develops over time, and you see a little bit here and you see a little bit there, but it's certainly not something that went back to the apostles and can be traced in that way.

So church history, it defies the nice, simple ways that people try to fit it into a particular category, and it's especially true as far as individuals are concerned in the history of the church. And so I certainly, obviously since Trent, you can look at a dogmatic assertion, but you can go back to the 2nd century and find folks that had a false gospel, but at the same time you can find folks that had true gospel.

And the thing that bothers a lot of folks is you find a lot of people in between. If you don't have a touchstone in the scriptures that you apply to everyone equally at that point, you're really not going to be able to come up with any type of meaningful conclusions from merely an examination of history itself.

But can you not say that the council of Nicaea had a grasp of the entire gospel, therefore can you not say things like that?

But they don't address it. See those, especially when you're talking about issues like justification, it's just that is not the subject of the day. They don't answer our questions. We wish that they would answer our questions, but since they don't, there would have been probably a fairly wide variety of perspectives on the part of the participants at Nicaea, but we don't really have any way of determining that outside of looking at maybe the scraps of literature that survive.

Even if we take the number like 318 bishops, for the vast majority of them, we don't have anything that they ever wrote. So we just can't answer that question as far as the council is concerned. That was not an issue that they were addressing in any way, shape, or form.

So was there no real organized catechism or gathering of a coherent doctrine at that point or not?

No, remember that for the first five centuries, up until the controversy between Augustine and Pelagius on the issue of the nature of grace and the nature of the will, until that took place, the vast majority of the controversies had been Christological and Trinitarian in content, some canonical in regards to Marcion and Gnosticism, but the issue of justification and things like that, no.

And then, even when they do come up, look at what happens with Augustine. Augustine is no longer dealing with the scriptures in their original languages, he can't read Hebrew, he's not good with Greek, and as a result, his doctrine of justification is deeply influenced by the fact that he's looking at it in Latin, and the Latin term for justification indicates something that the Greek does not, and so that ends up coming into his theology as well.

And so, that's why I say the touchstone for all of these, whether it's someone as great as Augustine or someone who's hardly even known at all, the touchstone for all of them has to come back to the inspired scriptures themselves.

Okay, well that's a very helpful answer.

All right, Gary, I appreciate your calling.

Thank you, Dr. White.

All right, God bless you. Bye-bye. 877 -753 -3341, I guess we're taking a few phone calls today. Let's go ahead and talk with Jason over in the UK. Hello, Jason.

Hi there.

How are you doing?

I'm fine. I'm going to have to ask a very quick question, and I'm going to hang up because my credit will probably run out.

Okay, I'm sorry.

That's fine. I sometimes talk to Roman Catholics, and sometimes one of the things they say is that they object, like they think that the proper term is Catholic, and they say that you should call this by a proper name.

I was just wondering if you would comment on that.

Would you like to just hang up, and I'll comment on it and let you save your credit? Well, thank you for ringing us up. Thank you, Jason. Bye-bye. Well, you know, I have seen that, and I'm sorry. I'm not doing a good job on my phones today.

Part of it is because I did a massive arm workout this afternoon, and, man, I'm going to tell you something. If you hear me all of a sudden go, ah, and scream, it's because my arms are cramping. I'm glad I don't have to comb my hair, because if I did, I would be in a lot of trouble right now.

There's nothing to comb up there, thankfully, so I'm all right. Anyhow, in regards to Jason's question, I've never understood this objection, given the fact that I hear the use from Roman Catholics constantly.

It's in their writings. It's in their books. It's in their apologetics. It's all over the place. I mean, if you were listening during the death of the Pope and the election of a new Pope, you heard Roman Catholics talking about the Roman Catholic Church all the time.

And so it really seems to me, in the vast majority of instances, to be a means to just simply sidetrack the conversation. Obviously, the term Catholic means universal or of all people, and Roman Catholic would be that universal church focused in Rome.

And it is useful to identify those who are in communion with the Bishop of Rome over against those who are not. But the fact of the matter is, there's no reason to object to it in any way, shape, or form.

So those who do, generally I have discovered, are doing so for less than useful reasons, shall we say. And so, anyway.

All right.

With that, I go back to, let me give you some background here. For those of you who may be new to the program, this ministry really began out of a meeting that took place in, I believe, 1982. Yes, it was 1982.

I had been married for about three months, maybe four months at that particular point in time. I was 19 years of age, and two more missionaries, Elders Reed and Reese, came to my sister-in-law's home.

Now, my wife is an identical twin, and so they were visiting with my sister-in-law, who is the identical twin of my wife. And I know why they wanted to come by, because my wife and her identical twin are very pretty, still are.

I was going to say pretty young ladies, but this was 1982, so you can sort of start figuring things out, but they're still very pretty. And so these young more missionaries liked making visits like this.

And she called us up and mentioned that the missionaries are coming by. I think about two years earlier, I had read a single book on the subject of Mormonism, a book that even today I would not say was really the best.

And so I came over on a Monday and spoke with these two missionaries for about two and a half, three hours. We got together again on Thursday. Between Monday and Thursday, I read at least three, maybe four more books on the subject of Mormonism.

And that began what then came into existence only about six months later as Alpha Omega Ministries. I was all of 20 years of age when this ministry began. And for a while there, our sole focus was upon evangelizing the LDS people.

We started with one little photocopied tract and a copy of the Journal of Discourses. That was about the extent of what we had. And we have gone up to the General Conference, the Mormon Church. We had been doing that for many, many years until stopped by the King James only street abusers.

We have been going out to the Easter pageant of the LDS Church in Salt Lake City. In fact, for those of you in the Phoenix area, the first time I ever went out to that, I took my blushing bride with me on the back of a Kawasaki 440.

And what we call the Superstition Freeway ended at Mesa. No, not even Mesa, Country Club Drive. Country Club Drive at that point. For those of you who know Phoenix are going, wow, that was a while back.

That was 1983, I believe. Because in 84 we began really passing out tracts and witnessing to folks. And 85 was the big, big year where we had the tracts that were printed up and everything else. Anyway, we have been very focused upon Mormonism for a long, long time.

I have written two books on the subject. Unfortunately, neither of them are any longer in print. We need to get them back in print in some way, shape or form. And I have just been slow in doing that. And I need to change that.

I've thought about rewriting them and sort of combining them. But anyway, for those of you who are on the East Coast, those of you who are outside the United States, Mormonism may strike you as something that is sort of odd.

You see the missionaries once in a while, but it's not a major thing in your area. Believe me, here in the Valley of the Sun in Phoenix, it is a very major thing. In the Intermountain West, especially Northern Arizona, Utah, Idaho, these are heavily LDS areas.

And so it's much more of a current issue. And especially during that period of time, Mormonism was growing at an incredible rate. Its growth rate has slowed tremendously. There was a time in the late 1970s, early 1980s, when Mormonism was growing so quickly, and especially through conversions, that you would have, I remember one of the statistics was that your average Southern Baptist church had 274 members in an average week.

273 Southern Baptists became Mormons. That's a church wholesale per week, 52 churches per year becoming LDS. And another statistic back from the 80s was that for every one Mormon that left the Mormon church and became some type of Baptist, 24 Baptists became Mormons.

And that is no longer the case, thankfully. Mormonism's growth has slowed. They recognize this. They see the weakness in their numbers. And I can tell you why it is, by the way, just in passing, for a number of different reasons.

But one of the reasons for this was mentioned on a secular radio program today, and that is a man was mentioning a religious study that noted that the religions that demand something of their followers, that demand a change in life, that demand a belief in a clear set of doctrinal truths, are the religions that are doing well.

The religions that are dropping those requirements are the religions that are dying. And Mormonism is at a crossroads. It really, really is. They have much to decide as to what the shape of Mormonism is going to be down the road.

They really do. And right now it does not look like they're going to make the decision to remain unique, but that they are going to continue the course that they've charted over the past about 20 years now, 15, 20 years, and that is of seeking to mainstream, seeking to break into the mainstream Christian denominational scene, in essence.

And we see that type of thing developing. And this book, I think, is just a part of it. And so I have a tremendous amount of experience in dealing with Mormonism. I have a huge LDS library. I've read a tremendous amount of LDS material, spent innumerable hours in dialogue with LDS people, LDS missionaries.

And as such, to see Erdman's, William Erdman's publishers, producing a book that is nothing but a Trojan apologetic. It is clearly meant, even though, and Erdman's has, you can see this on their website if you want to see it.

It was sent out with the book. This is their description of it. It says, a leading Mormon scholar who has spent much of his career in conversation with traditional Christians in their writings, were traditional Christians, by the way.

Robert Millet discusses what constitutes Christianity, examines how the Latter-day Saints fit or do not fit within that rubric. Intended to, and here's the line, intended to inform rather than to convince or persuade, a different Jesus clears away misconceptions and doctrinal distortions that characterize more polemical works about Mormonism.

Millet points out the many beliefs the Latter-day Saints hold in common with traditional Christians, yet he also emphasizes differences where they exist. Now, I'm sorry, I don't know who wrote this. You really can't hold Robert Millet accountable for this, though I would think that he would probably agree with it.

But when it says, intended to inform rather than to convince or persuade, that simply is not true. That is a false statement. I don't know who wrote it. Somebody in the publicity department, probably at Erdman's, wrote this, but they're wrong.

It is plainly, clearly intended to convince and to persuade. It is laid out in an apologetic fashion. The fact that the key issue that separates Mormonism from Christianity is buried in the last quarter of the book and barely touched, while the beginning of the book seeks to utilize all sorts of citations from C .S. Lewis and evangelical writers to demonstrate these connections between Mormonism and, quote-unquote, historic Christianity.

The fact that it is laid out in that fashion clearly indicates to me that they can get away with this because very, very, very few evangelicals, and I use that term broadly these days, have read as much Mormonism as I have.

Very, very, very few people have read thousands of pages of LDS writing. I have. I know where Farms is coming from. I know where Millet's coming from, and so I can recognize this, but the vast majority of other folks just going, Wow, that's really interesting.

I hadn't thought about that. Well, you know, Lewis seems to have had that idea, too, and maybe I have been misled. It is a clear apologetic. There is absolutely no question about it. And so I find it really, really deceptive, maybe not on Millet's part, but at least on Erdman's part, to not be open about what the purpose of this book is.

Now, is it really all that shocking that this book is being put out by Erdman's? I mean, InterVarsity Press puts out stuff by John Sanders and Gregory Boyd and Clark Pinnock that is basically on the same level of pure heresy as Mormonism, and they put it out because to be a publisher means you're to embrace academic freedom and you're to embrace all this other stuff, and you want to be out there on the bleeding edge.

Well, they're definitely bleeding. There's no two ways about it. And so should we really be surprised? Should we be overly surprised, for example, that I mentioned just a few weeks ago, I was staying in line at Bree and Christian Books where I look over, and here's a bunch of stuff on Pope John Paul II, Pope John Paul picture books, right there next to the checkout counter for everybody to pick up.

I mean, you can't walk into a quote-unquote Christian bookstore today and actually functionally think that it's a Christian bookstore. You really can't do that. If you do that, you are very, very naive.

There's no two ways about it. And you're going to get in trouble. So should we really be overly shocked that Erdman's has opened this door to the publication of a book that's intention is to convert people to Mormonism?

I can guarantee you that is what it's going to do. Should we really be shocked? I don't think so. We'll continue with that, and we have another phone call to handle, but we're going to take our break first and be right back.

Such a rarity today. So many stars, strong and true, and quickly fall away. Under the guise of tolerance, modern culture grants alternative lifestyle status to homosexuality. Even more disturbing, some within the church attempt to revise and distort Christian teaching on this behavior.

In their book, The Same-Sex Controversy, James White and Jeff Neal write for all who want to better understand the Bible's teaching on the subject, explaining and defending the foundational Bible passages that deal with homosexuality, including Genesis, Leviticus, and Romans.

Expanding on these scriptures, they refute the revisionist arguments, including the claim that Christians today need not adhere to the law. In a straightforward and loving manner, they appeal to those caught up in a homosexual lifestyle to repent and to return to God's plan for His people.

The Same-Sex Controversy, defending and clarifying the Bible's message about homosexuality. Get your copy in the bookstore at aomin .org.

Alaska, the unspoiled land of nature and immensity. Both in its realities and its possibilities, Alaska can stir our hearts and minds like no other place on earth. Join us this summer for the 2005 Alpha Omega Ministries Alaskan Cruise, as we cruise the inside passage to the great land of Alaska with Dr. James White and Christian recording artist Steve Camp, as they explore the great doctrine of Sola Scriptura.

For our guests, the journey north is an odyssey of glorious landscapes and majestic wildlife, as we sail on the luxury five-star Sun Princess by towering glaciers into some of the most remarkable points on earth.

All this, and at prices beginning at $624 per person, plus port taxes and fees, half the price of other offerings to Alaska with other groups. Contact us today at aomin .org or at 877-SOV-CRUISE.

Millions of petitioners from around the world are employing Pope John Paul II to recognize the Virgin Mary as co-redeemer with Christ, elevating the topic of Roman Catholic views of Mary to national headlines and widespread discussion.

In his book, Mary, Another Redeemer, James White sidesteps hostile rhetoric and cites directly from Roman Catholic sources to explore this volatile topic. He traces how Mary of the Bible, esteemed mother of the Lord, obedient servant and chosen vessel of God, has become the immaculately conceived, bodily assumed Queen of Heaven, viewed as co-mediator with Christ and now recognized as co-redeemer by many in the Roman Catholic Church.

Mary, Another Redeemer, is fresh insight into the woman the Bible calls blessed among women and an invitation to single-minded devotion to God's truth. You can order your copy of James White's book, Mary, Another Redeemer, at aomin .org.

The Gospel of John 6:44 and the Father's Drawing

This portion of the dividing line has been made possible by the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. The Apostle Paul spoke of the importance of solemnly testifying of the gospel of the grace of God. The proclamation of God's truth is the most important element of his worship in his church.

The elders and people of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church invite you to worship with them this coming Lord's Day. The morning Bible study begins at 9 .30 a .m. and the worship service is at 10 .45.

Evening services are at 6 .30 p .m. on Sunday and the Wednesday night prayer meeting is at 7 .00. The Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church is located at 3805 North 12th Street in Phoenix. You can call for further information at 602 -26-GRACE.

If you're unable to attend, you can still participate with your computer and real audio at prbc .org, where the ministry extends around the world through the archives of sermons and Bible study lessons available 24 hours a day.

Now the pilgrim's progress is not an easy way. It's a journey to the sun day by day. And welcome back to The Dividing Line.

Wow, it's already 23 minutes till. How did we do that? I guess I went late. Anyway, we're going to take a quick phone call and then get back to looking at a different Jesus book. We're going to go down to Tucson here in Arizona.

Hello, Brian.

Hello, Dr. White.

How are you?

I'm doing well, thank you. The reason I'm calling is I've got a good friend of mine. You know him. By Silly Brit 2.

Yes, uh-huh.

And anyways, he emailed me a copy of your blog that you did. I think it was on either Monday or Tuesday, a little study on the passage in John 6, and specifically dealing with verse 44.

Right, in regards to the Wilkins debate.

Yes, exactly. And I just had a couple of questions regarding that. I really enjoyed it. I thought it was very well done, and I wholeheartedly agree with you. But I had a question towards the end, and I just, at the end of the article, you had mentioned, let me find it, I'm referencing here, I'm sorry.

You begin, I think it's the last paragraph, with, it is simply not natural to read the text so that the hymn who is raised up at the end of the verse is to be defined by the phrase, no one is able to come to me.

And then you go on to say, the natural is drawn by the Father. Can you expound on that just a little bit?