Is John 6 Only About the Apostles?

You constantly hear people that are Calvinist harp on this.

Baa, baa, God's suffering, God's suffering, baa, suffering, suffering, suffering.

They just keep repeating it, and they repeat it so much you start to think it's a Biblical truth.

Outside the tomb of Lazarus, she says, Lazarus, come out. And Lazarus said, I can't, I'm dead. That's not what he did, Lazarus came out. She didn't mean to tell me a dead person can respond to the command of Christ.

And then you take lessons from Judas White and Jeff Durbin, it shows in this kind of sequential format.

Do you really believe that it parallels the method of exegesis that we utilize to demonstrate those other things? Um, no.

New Calvinists, even pastors very openly smoke pipes and cigars just as they drink beer and wine.

Even Jesus cannot override your unbelief.

A verse like that to him, you know what it would sound like if he were listening to it? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It wouldn't make any sense to him.

A self-righteous, legalistic, deceived jerk.

You need to realize that he's gone from predeterminism, now he's speaking of some kind of middle knowledge that God now has to...

I deny and categorically deny middle knowledge.

Don't beg the question that would demand me to force you to embrace it.

You're not always talking about necessarily God choosing something for no apparent reason, but you're choosing that meat because it's a favorable meat. There's a reason to have the choice of that meat.

Radio Free Geneva: John 6 and the Limits of Synergistic Readings

From our underground bunker deep beneath the faculty cafeteria at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Saint. From all those moderate Calvinists, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and re-read George Bryson's books, we are broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to say for his own eternal glory.

Well, greetings and welcome to Radio Free Geneva. It's been a while, but when I am sent an article that includes a paragraph such as this, quote, this is why James White wants to debate John 6 only. If he can limit his opponent to John 6, if his opponent is allowed to go outside of John 6 and take in the whole context of the scriptures, the Calvinist argument that John 6 is about us is a special pleading made in the face of every other time those given are spoken of in John.

So we have an article by a fellow that I have, by name of Eric Kemp. I believe I have seen someone named Eric Kemp on with Leighton Flowers a number of times. I just made the mistake of, for the first time in a very long time, looking at the Soteriology 101 YouTube channel.

And they have done the, they've got somebody who does comic graphics. And so what they've done is they've uploaded a image for each video. And again, it reminds me, I'm running into a lot of YouTube channels that make me feel like, you know, that I'm looking at a kid's channel, someone who's between 11 and 14 years of age, somewhere along there is really into gaming, really into comic book stuff type things.

And I'm in there a lot, a lot, a lot. And there isn't even a semblance of an attempt at balance. People just went after me horribly when I used terminology years ago. And all I have to do is now just go look at the YouTube channel.

It's a one string banjo. It's just one topic and it's one note. That's what it is. So I'm fairly certain. I could be wrong, but I'm fairly certain that this Eric Kemp guy has been on with Leighton and doing their two, three hour synergistic ritualistic thing that they do.

But it is a article posted on the Soteriology 101 website. John 6 is not about you. Okay, John 6 is not about you. So let's remember something. John 6 is where Jesus explains the unbelief of the Jews.

John 6 is about the centrality of Jesus to the spiritual life of believers. John 6 is where we're introduced to the reality that it is by union with Christ, by looking to Him and believing in Him that you have eternal life.

None of that's relevant to us. That was only the disciples. It's only the disciples. So all those promises, looking, believing, all that has nothing to do with us. We'll have to find that someplace else, I guess.

But that was only about the disciples. Over the years, we have... I don't know how many years it's been now. I think it was around 2001 that we did our first Radio Free Geneva, someplace where we were...

I was responding to Adrian Rogers, as I recall. It was extremely popular. So it might be 20 years or so now, but for a long, long time, we have been examining many different types of attempts to get around all sorts of passages, Ephesians 1, Romans 9, whatever, but especially John 6.

It has been our assertion for decades now that you simply cannot start at the beginning of the chapter and walk verse by verse utilizing standard historical grammatical exegesis based on the original language.

You cannot walk from beginning to end and come up with some type of synergistic understanding of what's taking place. The ways that mankind's mind have come up with to try to get around the compellingly clear testimony of this passage of scripture are myriad.

We've had hyper-dispensationalist attempts and just about everything has been thrown at John 6. It almost always requires you to run immediately to someplace else. You cannot walk through John 6. You have to take some kind of overriding exegetical assertion from someplace else and then use that as the lens, the hammer to cram the words of John 6 into whatever synergistic system it is that you're promoting, whether it's a simplistic synergistic system or a complicated synergistic system or whatever.

And so it's never been all that difficult to point out where the errors are, where the inconsistency and incoherence of the exegesis is. And the reason we've challenged Leighton Flowers to exegete John chapter 6 is because we don't believe he can do it.

He couldn't do Romans 9. He can't do John 6. He can't do Ephesians 1 because these texts don't say what he says they say. And he has to bring in all sorts of external concepts. He can't simply walk through the text and have it say what he says it says.

That's why. So here's an attempt to turn that on its head. In fact, here's a quote. The Washington Post recently popularized the phrase democracy dies in darkness. Well, Calvinism dies in context. Now, I love that because it's upside down.

It's the exact opposite. Obviously, we've demonstrated that for years. I would debate Eric Kemp on that in a second. He knows that and there's no way he's going to do it. He would never sit down. Here, I'll show up at your church with nothing but this.

Okay, you won't do it. We know you won't do it. None of you guys will do it because you know in your heart of hearts that you can't do the exegesis consistently because the rules that I will follow in Exegeting John 6 are the same rules I follow in Exegeting John 5 in responding to Muslims who are using John 5 to deny the deity of Christ or when I respond to Jehovah's Witnesses in Colossians 1 or when I respond to Mormons in 1 Corinthians 8.

I'm using the same system. You are not and you know it. You know it's in your heart and you know that I'm still young enough to point that out. I still can get through the debate well enough to point out that that's why one of the quotes in the opening of Radio Free Geneva is from the debate with Leighton Flowers where I said, okay, here's the exegetical method we use for the resurrection and for justification by faith and for the deity of Christ.

Are you using the same exegetical methodology for your position? And he's like, no. So for us, that's the end of the conversation. You're having to use different weights and standards, different scales.

So the argument's pretty much over at that point. So anyway, it is context that demonstrates the real problem with Eric Kemp's argumentation. It's also fascinating that reading from the article, this post is adapted from a brilliant social media discussion by Drew McLeod.

I don't know who Drew McLeod is, but when I responded on Twitter to this, someone responded to me and said, just so you know, we kicked Drew McLeod out of our Calvinism Facebook group about two years ago because he's an open theist.

And I'm once again left chuckling at the fact that we feel sorry for Leighton Flowers. He wants to be an open theist so badly. But his position currently in a Southern Baptist entity precludes that from happening.

For now, who knows what the future is going to bring. Maybe he could make the argument that whoever wrote that section of the Baptist faith and message was plagiarizing it for somebody else, and therefore he doesn't have to follow it.

So anyway, so Eric Kemp is following the arguments of someone who I am informed is an open theist, and his argument fundamentally is John 6 is only about the disciples. It's not about us. Well, and here's the fundamental argument is the disciples are differentiated from the rest of us in Jesus' high priestly prayer in John chapter 17.

Even though we're all together, those that are to be unified with the Father and the Son by God's sovereign action, so it doesn't really fit, doesn't make any difference. But anyway, I mean, good luck trying to make John 17 a synergistic text.

It doesn't work. But clearly in John chapter 17, the initial discussion about Jesus keeping his disciples is about the disciples. And then it says, and I pray for those who will believe because of their word that they might be one in us and so on and so forth.

And so once again, as we have shown so many times in the past, what somebody's got to do is they've got to leave John 6, go somewhere else, get an interpretation, and then read that backwards in time back into John chapter 6 to try to in some way remove this from having the obvious relevance that it has.

We've seen this before. This is the John 12 thing too. You go to John 12, 32, you take that, you interpret it, you misinterpret it, but you interpret it, and then you read it backwards into John 6, 37 through 44 or so, and all of a sudden the drawing is of all men, every single human being, so on and so forth, and you allegedly get rid of the element of divine election in John chapter 6.

But when you have to take someone's work, such as the Gospel of John, and say that earlier chapters are actually incoherent without you having to read the rest of the book, because we're not talking about a murder mystery here, okay?

The Gospel of John is not meant to be a murder mystery where the author is specifically misleading you by the information he exposes you to early on so he can get you with the catch at the end. That's not what Gospels are meant to be.

Instead, we have people telling us, you've got to go later, we're going to get an interpretation back here, and we're going to read it back into John chapter 6, and that's going to help us keep this from being what we don't want it to be, and that is what it says, that God the Father gives a specific people to Jesus Christ, and he saves them perfectly.

We don't believe that God can do that. We don't believe he ever would do that, and so we're going to find some way to get around the text of Scripture that says that. So, what happens when you try to do this is what we want to look at today on Radio Free Geneva.

First, we want to look at the article. Is John 6 about Gentile Christians 2 ,000 years after Jesus walked the earth? No, actually, it is about the elect of God from beginning to end. When Jesus says, It is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day, verse 39, are those that are given by the Father to Jesus, you and me?

No, it is all the elect of all time, because those are the ones that are given eternal life. So, if you're going to have eternal life, this is how you get it, unless you're going to show us another way of getting eternal life, which you would have to demonstrate, if that's what you're saying, is that there's multiple ways of getting eternal life, that the apostles are going to have eternal life on a level other than you and I.

So, there's different churches, I guess. There's the church of the apostles, and then the rest of us who don't have the same thing. How do we get eternal life, if we get eternal life differently than the apostles do?

So, there's multiple ways of getting eternal life now. I don't think, there is really almost nothing that synergists will not do to avoid biblical teaching on this subject, because they are so completely committed to the concept of the autonomous free will of man.

No autonomous free will of God, but autonomous free will of man. That's the big thing. So, if that even means that there's multiple ways of salvation, they'll do it. I mean, the dispensationalists, the extreme dispensationalists, do that too.

So, I suppose they'd be willing to do that. And if, again, this is coming primarily from an open theist, there really isn't any limit to how far you'll be willing to go with the text of scripture. Of course, John 639 is in that context of what?

As we'll see, Jesus is explaining the unbelief of whom? Not the apostles, but of the men who've come across the lake, seeking after him. So, there is a context that is completely ignored. It's not even there in Kemp's article.

This is eisegesis on steroids, but, again, provisionism, synergism, it produces that, and it produces it regularly. And we can just be thankful when other folks don't do it, when they are restrained from doing so.

Anyways, so, the context of the entire Gospel of John says no. Actually, it's not the entire Gospel of John. It is, I'm going to read something back from John 17. I'm going to look at some of these other passages, and that makes it the entire Gospel of John.

So, then we have Calvinism dies in context. To the claim that John 639 is about you and me, Drew McLeod answered, but why, though? The context makes clear that it isn't. What context is Drew talking about?

Let's look at John 17, 12 first. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Immediately, we realize this is coming from 11 chapters down the road. And so, that's not the context of John 6. This is just, I mean, this is failure at exegesis 101.

It is, if you want to try to say this type of stuff, then you need to start at the beginning and derive this limited meaning from John 6, and then move forward with it. What they're going to do is they're going to go to Jesus' high priestly prayer in John 17, come up with a limitation there, which is a valid limitation, at least in the application that's being used in John 17, which is not the same context as John 6.

I mean, this attempt by Kemp and McLeod fails miserably at every level. It really does. I mean, we don't have a passing grade in basic exegesis here for any of these guys. But it would have to start, see, if you actually start in John 6, then you get this much clearer, believing, unbelieving people given to Christ, people not given to Christ, false disciples who walk away at the end of John 6.

And it is only the disciples and the devil, the son of perdition, at the end of John 6. So you could say, well, see, there you go. So everything in the gospel is just about the disciples. So evidently, all the promises of having eternal life from John 3 onward, if you were led to Christ with those you relied to, how else can you get around it?

How else can you get around it? You can make an argument that, well, it doesn't say specifically that people 2 ,000 years later, okay, well, if you want to go that direction, then the church for 2 ,000 years has completely missed what your brilliant insights have now provided to us.

The problem is you've now completely and totally changed the nature of the gospel. Congratulations on that. But let's look at it. Let's take it apart point by point. And so once again, we will have the opportunity of seeing and recognizing the consistency of this text.

And it's a beautiful consistency to see. It really is. Oh, we did not turn down the error in here. Yes, there we go. We will do so now. What? Yeah. Oh, okay. You said you have to listen. I put the earphone in.

Oh, oh, oh, oh. Radio Free Geneva, now with even more choice meets. Yes, indeed. Well, thank you, Tim, for listening in today while sitting at your computer, obviously, and not listening very closely to what I'm saying, but playing with the graphics programs.

There you go. All right. Okay, so we jump out of John 6, as always, to John 17. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I've guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except some perdition that scripture might be fulfilled.

See the same language from John 6, 39. He has given me equals you have given me. Okay, once again, Mr. Kemp is an extremely poor exegete. Just, he's an eisegete, not an exegete. Extremely poor exegete.

These are two different contexts. There is no context in John chapter 17 of Jesus addressing unbelievers. Okay, let's try to, let's help Brother Kemp out here so he can deliver himself from this rather embarrassing article that he has posted.

Let's remind ourselves of what John chapter 6 is about. Remember, longest chapter in the Gospel of John starts the feeding of 5 ,000. Jesus leaves, disciples leave, and there are men who the next day come looking for Jesus.

He's not there. They row across the lake to Capernaum, and there they find Jesus in the synagogue. And so, in verse 26, we read, Jesus answered them and said, Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek me not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.

Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on him the Father God has set his seal. Now, let me just ask, who's Jesus speaking to?

He is speaking to men who have come looking for Jesus. And Jesus knows what their actual motivations are. And he is saying to them, do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life.

Is this the context of John chapter 17? No, it is not. John chapter 17 is Jesus' high priestly prayer. It is the great prayer offered right before the high priest makes that final offering of himself.

And it's recorded only for us in the Gospel of John. So, is there a completely different context here? Yes, one is explaining the unbelief of these men and the reality that when the exclusivity of Jesus as the sole source of spiritual life is presented to these men, they will walk away.

Why? Because they are not believers. Is that the context of John chapter 17? No, it is not. Mr. Kemp did not even attempt to either read the Gospel of John in an orderly fashion or to make the proper connection between the contexts.

Failure number one, which leads to all the rest of the failures in the argument. Therefore they said to him, what shall we do so we may work the works of God? Jesus answered and said to them, this the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.

And so, instead of allowing men to be looking at some kind of system that they are to be working out, Jesus points to himself. He has been sent by the Father and the work of God is that you believe in him whom he has sent.

So, there is even an element of acceptance of Jesus' uniqueness as the sent one of the Father. So, they said to him, what then do you do for a sign that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform?

Our fathers ate the man, the wilderness as it is written, he gave them bread out of heaven to eat. Jesus then said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread of heaven, it is my Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven.

For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven and gives life to the world. And they said to him, Lord, always give us this bread. And so, obviously, they are interpreting this within the light of the feeding of the 5 ,000, which they had just seen.

It was a great miracle, but it's a miracle with a background. Jesus' answer, again, speaking to them is, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will not hunger. Now, let me just stop. Are we to believe that when Jesus says this, he is only talking about the disciples?

Is that Jesus' position? Has that been the position of anyone down through history? That when Jesus changes from direct address to them to a substantival participle, ha-er kamanos, the one coming to me, the one coming to me will not hunger.

Is this true only of disciples? Is this true only of Jewish unbelievers in the first century? Or is this a message recorded by the Holy Spirit of God in the Gospel of John to be used by the Spirit of God to draw so many of God's elect unto himself and has been used in that way?

If John 6 is not about you, then you will hunger and you will thirst. Because Jesus says, the one coming to me will never hunger. The one believing me will never thirst. But that's only about disciples.

It's only about the 11. These words are only about 11 people in the history of the world. It's only 11 people. It's not about you. Hmm. I'd like to say that what Jesus is saying is that he is the bread of life for all people and that the one coming to him will not hunger is everyone who believes in Jesus.

And he who believes in me will never thirst is everyone who believes in Jesus will find him to be the full and perfect source of all spiritual nourishment, food and drink. And that it's not just the disciples that are in mind.

It's not just the disciples that are being addressed. In fact, these words aren't addressed to the disciples. They are addressed to people that Jesus is going to say in the next breath. But I said to you, you have seen me.

Cai u Pistuete. You are unbelievers. You are not believing. You are not believing. These people who had rowed across a lake. You're not believers. Well, why are you not believers? Because all the Father gives me will come to me.

And the one, Tan Er Kamanan, Pras Emei. The one coming to me, I will never cast out. Do you truly love your synergism so much that you're willing to tell the world that promise has nothing to do with you?

Evidently, there were only 11 spots that were so special as to receive those beautiful words. Just think of how many millions of people have lived their lives in utter deception. And we just now found out on the internet.

We just now found out on the internet that this tremendous promise that the one who comes to me, I will certainly not cast out. No, it's the 11 that come to me. I will certainly not cast out. But that's it.

It's like, I mean, we thought the 144 ,000. I remember we had a kingdom hall of Jehovah's Witnesses right behind my house in a rental house we lived in when I was a kid in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania. And it was right across the street.

And so I remember asking my dad, what's with these folks? They weren't really all that nice. They were a little put off-ish and stuff and didn't like me riding my bike past on the road and stuff like that.

And so he explained to me about the 144 ,000. Now 144 ,000 sounds like a lot of people, but it's actually not. That's a pretty limited number of folks. Well, that's a big number in comparison to 11. And yet evidently there are people willing to sacrifice this kind of promise that Christians have claimed as their own so that you don't have to accept the first part of the sentence.

Because see, the second part of the sentence is great. The one coming to me, I will never cast out. Is there a promise anywhere else in scripture for the second-class Christians? Because this sounds like the disciples, the apostles get a real first-class salvation system that the rest of us don't get.

So is there any place else? Well, does Paul get in on this? That is a good question. I suppose they could say that he takes Judas' place, maybe. Yeah, Matthias, sorry, he's toast. So the one who comes to me I will certainly not cast out is preceded by all that the Father gives me will come to me.

So that all, we are told now, is only 11 people. It's only 11 people. And those 11 people, they will certainly not cast out. He will certainly not cast out. So check this out. For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of Him has sent me.

So Judas and the Father, perfect harmony. John 5, once again, that theme was in the preceding chapter, which is how you do ex-Judas, you don't jump to something later on or read it back in and try to jerry-rig stuff.

But I have come down out of heaven not to do my own will, but the will of Him who has sent me. This is the will of Him who sent me. So this is why Jesus came from heaven, to save 11 people. I didn't write it.

I don't know why people didn't think it through before they published it. I don't know why Layton Flowers didn't go, Oh, do we really want to say this? Do we really want to say that Jesus came down out of heaven to save 11 people?

Well, but He came to do that. But wait a minute. This is the will of Him who sent me, that of all that He has given me, I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day. And He's saying this to people who are going to walk away, to false disciples.

Different context of John 17. This is the will of Him who sent me, that of all that He has given me, I lose nothing. But raise it up on the last day. Of all that He's given me. That's a different context than Judas, who is the son of perdition.

So these folks want to ignore the fact that there is clearly a giving of the 12 to Jesus, with the reality that one of them is the son of perdition. I wonder if they actually believe that Judas could have done something differently.

An open theist will almost always say he could have. An open theist will almost always say he could have. And I'm sure in the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of anti-Calvinist videos that Leighton Flowers has produced over the past few years, that he has to have discussed this at some point.

I'd be interested in knowing, will he come out and say, yes, Judas could have done other than what Judas did. There is no sovereign decree. That he had to be the son of perdition. I'd be interested in knowing if he actually believes that.

Because we've seen that with other people, where they come to that conclusion. But, rather than the glorious truth, that the will of Him who sent me, the will of the Father for the Son, is not that He be a perfect Savior of the entire elect people of God.

But that He save 11 people. And that's who's going to be raised up on the last day. So, whatever you do, if John 6 is not about all of the elect, including the elect who are alive today, and who will be alive tomorrow, and the next year, and so on and so forth.

If it is only about the 11, then the 11 have a way of salvation totally different than anybody else's. Because they'll be raised up on the last day in distinction from everybody else. Because Jesus came to save them in a very special way, unlike anybody else.

Just the 11. Now, of course, this makes a mockery of the fact that Jesus is clearly teaching that they are going to be sent out into the world, and the gospel is going to go to the Gentiles. It is absurd, but we're just going with the absurdity.

I mean, when you try to rid Scripture of its teaching of the absolute sovereignty of God, you will put yourself in a position of teaching this kind of absurdity. And it's embarrassing, but if you're going to put it out there, someone's going to take the time to go, no, that's not what it says.

And there you go. So, there's the key text from their perspective. So that of all that He has given me, because the disciples are given to Jesus 11 chapters down the road. Yeah, 11 chapters down the road.

Do the math real quick. Because that's coming, you read it back into this, and you limit it. Rather than, here is the general statement, in contrast to the unbelief of false disciples, that will have a greater fulfillment.

And so all these promises, Jesus being the bread of life, eating His flesh, drinking His blood, I guess only the disciples do that. Only the disciples are taught of God. Well, that's not what that's about.

Careful there. I'm glad all y 'all here in the background, the Peanuts teacher thing. Because sometimes it's like, no. I'm getting distracted from other things. I'm doing something really quick. I'm doing something for the Runner Academy tomorrow.

I'm doing a Q &A thing. And then I guess right afterwards, we'll sort of be loosey-goosey as to when we do the program tomorrow. We'll fit it in somehow. But we've got a lot of stuff to cover tomorrow.

And I'm getting stuff from folks about certain slanderous videos that have been posted about me and stuff like that. No, yes, once again, by certain people who have just completely lost connection with reality.

Yeah, I'm aware of all that stuff. I mean, I haven't watched that one, to be honest with you, because I just feel so sorry for that particular person. But we will get to all that stuff, so don't worry about that.

We've got to stay focused on this, and there's lots of stuff to be talking about tomorrow. Much, much to get to. Anyway. So. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who beholds a son... Now, stop.

Everyone who beholds a son. Pas ha thearon tan huyan. Who's that about? If this isn't about us, then everyone of the eleven who beholds a son, right? Because there's a tuta. This is connected to what came before.

Now, in the real world, what Jesus is saying is, I've come down out of heaven to save those the Father gives me, and the result of that is that those who are given to me will look to me, and so that's the will of my Father.

Everyone who beholds a son, believes in him, will have eternal life. There's only one way of eternal life. Jesus raises you up to that. The elect look to Jesus. They find in him their all in all. Their spiritual food, their spiritual drinks.

There's beautiful consistency in the text, which is sacrificed and just thrown on the altar of the autonomous will of man by Synergists. But, and I myself will raise him up on the last day. Who has the promise that Jesus will raise him up on the last day?

I get the feeling that the Synergists are going to want to go, oh man, can we really let that one go? We've used that one forever. And they have. They've used that one forever. Out of its context, remember that's what Norm Geisler did.

He jumped to this, then tried to read it backwards in the preceding sentences, and stuff like that, rather than seeing where it functions in the flow of thought, in the flow of the argument. But if you're going to say that this is not about the elect of God down through time, then you're pretty well stuck going, well, okay, yeah.

The will of the Father in verse 39, and that's the specific verse they focused on, he says that's not about us. So it can't be in verse 40 either. You have the same will of the Father. Is this a different will of the Father?

For a different group of people? I don't know. I myself raised him up on the last day, therefore the Jews were grumbling about him because he said, I am the bread of life, cannot have heaven. We know about this.