California Continues Cultural Collapse

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 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. Well, good morning, good afternoon, whatever time it is, wherever you are, welcome to The Dividing Line on a, let's see, today's

Tuesday, yes, indeed, it is a Tuesday. It's hard to keep track, but did you know that the year is more than half over now, and it just started, and tomorrow night, we're not going to get to watch fireworks, because it's going to be raining.

I'm just making a prognostication right now. There'll be a lot of clouds out there, and I think we're going to have some thunder gusters coming in, and we're going to end up having our hot dogs inside after.

I had raindrops on the cruise in this morning. Oh, yeah, yesterday when I was at South Mountain, I got not only drizzled on a couple times, but my car was just messed up, too.

Don't forget, I got those hot dogs with coupons for 28 cents, and I'll bring you some. I really think that other people are going to be providing those.

Why did you let? I'll cut that out later. Will you take care of that? Okay. Appreciate that. In case you've noticed, the dividing line is a little short today.

You're not going to really know why, but let's just say that for a moment, Rich lost control of the soundboard, and he is taking steps to ...

Could you put a password on that thing or something like that? Would that be the way to handle that? Okay. All right.

Notice that Barry is here today, because Barry heard that we weren't able to play his masterpiece piece for the last program, and so we have it now, and we can play it now, except we're not doing that now.

We're not doing Radio Free Damascus today. Sorry. We're going to catch up with Harry Knox, actually, if that's okay with everybody.

I want to start off, however, we will have the phone lines open if you'd like to comment on what's going on in the world, 877 -753 -3341.

I won't be getting to you very fast, but the phone lines will be open anyways. I'm not doing any amazingly obscure historical questions from Johnny either.

It's just not going there. If it actually has something to do with the topic of the program, maybe, but Johnny's amazingly obscure questions are just going to have to pass for the day.

I was looking at an article online. I have a folder in my bookmarks, and it's titled

Cultural Decay. I started it a while back. If I actually really used that, if I used what my browsers ...

It's pretty easy to bookmark stuff in browsers anymore. Sometimes you can just use a key sequence or something like that.

That thing, is there a maximum size to a folder in a browser?

I bet there is. These days, if you're actually looking for evidence of just the incredible collapse of common sense, common morality, common ethics, the fleeing at full speed away from a

Christian heritage and a Christian foundation and a Christian worldview, if you were actually looking for that kind of stuff, that would be a full -time job.

I don't think the day would be long enough for you to actually keep up with such things.

I'm looking at a article from the Sacramento Bee. This is from July 2nd, so it's not exactly out of date, is it?

This is yesterday. The title of the article is,

California bill would allow a child to have more than two parents. Beaver had

June and Ward, Ricky had Ozzie and Harriet, mom and dad, same -sex couples or blended families,

California law is clear, no more than two legal parents per child. When adults fight over parenthood, a judge must decide which two have that right and responsibility.

But that could end soon. State Senator Mark Leno, a

Democrat, San Francisco, in case you were wondering, is pushing legislation to allow a child to have multiple parents.

See, folks, we've been saying for a long time, by the way, let me just remind everybody, Thursday, Thursday, Dr.

Michael Brown joins me on the program at 2pm, 2pm our time, 5pm

Eastern Time. We're going to go 2 -3 with Dr. Brown and then we'll do a regular dividing line afterwards. So that's Thursday.

And he's going to be talking about his new book, The Real Kosher Jesus. Who knows, maybe we can talk him into staying over for a few minutes to talk about everything that's going on in the cultural decline area as well, which we're talking about right now.

But we've been telling you for a long time that those who are seeking to completely disengage the moral and ethical essence of Western culture from its

Christian foundation will not stop. Give them an inch and they'll take a yard is an old saying, but the reality is give them an inch and they will take over everything.

They do not simply want to extend marriage rights to a limited group.

Don't buy that lie. It's a lie. That's not what they want. Look at every place where this has happened.

And once they get, well, we just want to have marriage for just loving monogamous couples.

No, they don't. It's a lie, folks. It is an absolute lie. That's not what they want.

Once they've got that, they continue on. It's not just a slippery slope.

It's a cliff. Slippery slopes at least have a slope to them. You know what I mean? I mean, one of my most terrifying, terrifying images in my mind was a few years ago in the

Tour de France, which is going on right now. And everybody in this audience knows I am a wild eyed nutcase cyclist.

And I invest a lot of energy in that. And I was watching the

Tour de France a couple years ago. And there was this young guy. It was a new guy. I've forgotten what his name was, but he had beaten everybody to the top of a certain climb.

And then you have to go down these things. And I love going up mountains. I'm not quite as hot about going down them.

I've gotten better at it. I've really had to push myself. But you know, some of these roads they go down, oh my.

And this kid, and he was a kid, like 22, 23 years old, he's flying down this mountain.

And he misses a turn. And he goes off the side of the road. And he was smart enough to get off the clips, get off his bike.

And he's spread eagle in the dirt, sliding down this incredible slope until he stops.

The bike just keeps on going. I don't know how far down it was. And it was, you know,

I don't know how long it was till people get there. And I mean, literally, he's trying to climb back up, but people are throwing ropes down to him.

And, you know, that's the kind of thing that scares me to death. If it were to happen to me, really, well, at least there was a slope there.

It wasn't a cliff. It was a slope. So he was able to, you know, grab on to something and save himself.

But there's no slope here, culturally. It's a cliff. And when you jump off of it, there ain't no stopping.

Listen, these folks do not want that there is such a tiny percentage of the homosexual community that is made up of monogamous individuals, tiny percentage.

The vast majority have no desire for monogamous relationships. The whole reason they're doing what they're doing is because they like having sex with lots and lots and lots and lots of people.

And the studies have proven that the normal male homosexual has hundreds of sexual partners in his life, hundreds of them, some thousands.

OK, this is this is the lifestyle. This is what it is. They don't they don't want to take an inch.

They want everything. They want to completely redefine marriage so that your marriage is no longer the normative.

Remember I read the thing about from the Canadian last week, you know, de -normalizing heterosexuality.

Well, that's what these folks want. That's what that's what their goals are. And that's what they're accomplishing in every culture where they have been allowed to overthrow the moral and ethical reality of how we've been made by God.

So state Senator Mark Leno is pushing legislation to allow a child to have multiple parents.

This the bill brings California into the 21st century. Because, see, if you don't, if you're not in this stuff, you're not in the 21st century.

So you're just you're behind. You don't want to be on the wrong side of history, boy. The bill brings

California in the 21st century, recognizing that there are more than Aussie and Harriet families out there. I was terrible to have

Aussie and Harriet families, wasn't it? Stability and I don't want to have that. The San Francisco Democrat said, and that's not a newspaper, that's

Mark Leno. Surrogate births, same sex parenthood and assisted reproduction are changing society by creating new possibilities for non -traditional households and relationships.

The possibility that that is a bad thing is not mentioned. Benjamin Lopez, legislative analyst for the

Traditional Values Coalition, blasted Leno's bill as a new attempt to revamp, redefine and muddy the waters of family structure by a leader in the drive to legalize gay marriage.

It comes as no surprise that he would try to say that a child has more than two parents. That's absurd, said Lopez, whose group calls itself a leading voice for Bible -based values.

Under Leno's bill, if more, if three or more people who acted as parents could not agree on custody, visitation and child support, a judge could split those things up among them.

Have you, have you all noticed the absolute surrender of all common sense, liberty and everything else to the judiciary?

A judge gets to determine these things. And what happens when we, what happens,

I wonder, when we, we don't have righteous judges? Hmm. SB 1476 is not meant to expand the definition of who can qualify as a parent only to eliminate the limit of two per child.

Isn't it amazing what happens when simple common sense and sanity is lost in a society?

SB 1476 is not meant to expand the definition of who can qualify as a parent only to eliminate the limit of two per child.

Under current law, a parent can be a man who signs a voluntary declaration of paternity, for example.

It can also be a man who is married and living with the child's mother or who took a baby into his home and represented the infant as his own.

Leno's bill, which has passed the Senate, well, that's California, what do you expect? I mean, I mean, sanity was deported from California, which is the only thing that can be deported from California a long time ago.

Leno's bill, which has passed the Senate, is now in the Assembly, would apply equally to men or women and to straight or gay couples and to eventually to pedophiles and everything.

It's not in there, but that will happen as well. Examples of three -parent relationships that could be affected by SB 1476 include a family in which a man began dating a woman while she was pregnant, then raised that child with her for seven years.

The youth also had a parental relationship with the biological father. A same -sex couple who asked a close male friend to help them conceive, then decide that all three would raise the child.

Or a divorce in which a woman and her second husband are the legal parents of a child, but the biological father maintained close ties as well.

Now this is where it's really, wow. SB 1476 stemmed from an appellate court case last year involving a child's biological mother, her same -sex partner, and a man who had an affair with the biological mother and impregnated her while she was separated temporarily from her female lover.

So that's where it came from. That's where it came from. I... What can you say?

I mean, yes, I see you out there, sir. I'm still hung up on the... We really need to have some parameters for the participation of the studio audience.

I'm still hung up on the man who takes a child into his home and represents it as his own.

I don't know. I mean, that provision is so wide open. I could go down the street, kidnap a child, and...

I don't know. Ah! I don't know. I don't know. I do not know.

It is just a wonderful example of the utter collapse of simple morality in a nation that has turned its back on God, and God says,

You want moral confusion? Someone on the channel just stated the really, really obvious...

Someone hand -farshad the really, really, really obvious Statement of the

Day award. Anderson Cooper of CNN also just came out yesterday and admitted he is gay.

As if anyone didn't know that! Talk about a complete non -news story. I mean, like, really?

Wow! Did my RSS feed get stuck in 2006? You know, sometimes a website will all of a sudden throw up a bunch of really old articles from long ago because they changed over their system or something like that, and it floods your

RSS feed. I was wondering if that was what... Yes, farshad gets the

Captain Obvious award for the day. Oh yeah, a little golf clap there.

Amazing stuff. Amazing stuff. Okay, anyhow, let's get back to the

Harry Knox stuff. We haven't gotten to this for a while, and that's unfortunate.

We've been dealing with a lot of other things. And if you're not familiar with this, we have been reviewing a debate between Michael Brown, who will be my guest on Thursday, and Mr.

Harry Knox, who at the time... Well, now he's actually been appointed to a position by the president, and he's quite high up in the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, queer,

LGBTQ, whatever, and that eventually will be 12 letters long movement, and at the time was with the

Human Rights Campaign, which is not about human rights, it's about homosexuality.

But that is part and parcel of this movement, is to hijack civil rights and try to apply them to how you have sex, and to the perversion of human sexuality as if that's somehow the same thing.

And they're doing a debate, and we're listening to Harry Knox's presentation. And we had started this,

I don't know how long ago, I apologize for bouncing around other things, but I think that's some of the charm of the program, is that we are able to, you know, whatever's going on, we can deal with it as we see fit.

So, let's dive back into what Harry Knox was saying. I backed up about 10 -15 seconds so we can get a little bit of a running start here as to where we last were.

The city is called Gibeah. Same scenario, strangers, people we don't understand, people not like us, people not from around here, you might call them immigrants, are taken in by the householder, and the men of the city show up demanding that they be turned over to them.

The householder refuses, but does precisely what Lot had done in the same situation.

He offers his daughter to the men instead. Women, are your hands shaking yet?

Unlike the men of Sodom, the men of Gibeah accept the householder's daughter, and they rape her until she dies.

They throw her dead body up on the steps, and the householder, hard to call him a father, cuts her up in 12 pieces and mails one piece to each of the 12 tribes of Israel.

The tribes are so incensed at this horrible act of injustice, hard to just call it inhospitality, that they dispatch 12 armies to wipe

Gibeah off the map. The sin of Sodom is not homosexuality, and the sin of Gibeah is not heterosexuality.

Their sin was the same. Now, this is one of the standard arguments, and it's one of the better arguments at least.

It can be presented, you know, when you listen to a presentation like this, even though we recognize the tremendous bias that is brought to this by Harry Knox, and we're going to especially hear that once Michael Brown has the opportunity of bringing a

Biblical rebuttal, even though it's a very brief Biblical rebuttal, that Harry Knox just collapses.

He just abandons even the pretense of making a

Biblical argument. But what they do is they start off with Biblical arguments, and then if the person they're talking to proves themselves to be

Biblically illiterate, which unfortunately is what a lot of people they encounter does, then, you know, if they aren't

Biblically illiterate, then they can just let that stand, and it sounds like they have the stronger case from the

Bible. If the other person knows they're talking about demonstrates the many errors in their argumentation, then what happens here will happen there, and that is, well, we don't really want to drive our beliefs from the

Bible. I mean, it's sort of an old document, you know. I mean, we can still honor it in some ways, but we don't really want to believe what it says, and you just throw the

Bible under the bus, which is what's going to happen here in a little while. But this is one of the better arguments, is you draw a parallel, you ignore the differences.

You ignore... Remember, when we went through the Matthew Vines thing, we saw how much of the

Sodom and Gomorrah story he skipped, because it doesn't fit into his paradigm. And we saw

Harry Knox do the same thing. We saw the brevity of the treatment of the text, so that you can create parallels in the minds of your listeners, because what can you count on?

It's something that, unfortunately, a lot of preachers count on. The ignorance of the audience.

I mean, what an amazing thing when your presentation is purposely designed to play off of the ignorance of your audience, but when it comes to the text of the

Old Testament, let's face it. How many ministers do you know who really know the

Old Testament? I mean, I've taught Hebrew, but there is so much more work that I need to do, especially in the minor prophets and in historical backgrounds.

You could spend your entire life. You really could. And it should be something many of us have a much deeper desire to do.

Isn't it sad that the good books on things like biblical backgrounds and things like that are the books that sell the least?

The only reason any of those books ever get published is because there are still people in Bible colleges that use them as a textbook.

That's just it. I mean, we should be people who voraciously devour the good and recognize the bad, and know the

Word very, very well, but that's not a description of the large portion of the

Christian Church. If you're the exception, praise God for you. Help the rest of us. But that's how you can get away with this.

That's how you can ignore the differences, play up the similarities, and there are direct similarities.

I mean, it's not like this type of thing doesn't, sadly, happen every day in our modern world, especially in places like Africa, where there's tremendous strife and ethnic cleansing, and this type of stuff, unfortunately, happens a lot.

But you then create the parallel and say, well, since the issue wasn't heterosexuality in the one, then it wasn't homosexuality in the other.

And for a lot of folks, they go, wow, never seen that before. He must be right. Because, see, when someone offers an insight you've never seen before, you automatically assume that it's correct, because that's playing on your ignorance, and also the fact that a lot of us don't think critically when arguments are presented to us.

Certainly nobody in Douglas Wilson's audience at the

University of Indiana would be considered to be a critical thought studies major in the behavior that we saw in the last time that we looked at that.

So that's how you get away with it. Now, what's the fundamental problem of the argument there?

It makes heterosexuality and homosexuality equal things, so that the abuse of heterosexuality in rape becomes the issue and not the toeva, the abomination of the homosexuality in the situation in Sodom and Gomorrah.

And so that's how you get around it. There's three or four different methods used by people to try to get around the

Sodom and Gomorrah story, but primarily it's not about homosexuality, it's about gang rape, it's about inhospitability, it's something like that.

That's the essence of the argumentation. And the fact that these people are wiped out and the fact that there's armed conflict and that this is inter -clan warfare and all the rest of that stuff, which is not a part of the issue in Sodom and Gomorrah.

Remember, he read into the text in Sodom and Gomorrah. He tried to set this up by creating parallels that were not there.

Remember, when we heard it, we were like, where did he get that? What do you mean these are like enemy agents or people sneaking in and all the rest of that stuff?

That's just not there, but he asked to insert it to strengthen his argument in trying to create the parallel that actually isn't there and to get around the fact that part and parcel of what is evil in the identification of Lot is the fact that homosexuality is right up front.

It is right there on the surface of the text.

This is how you do it. Do you see why this works for most people? Why? Because most people don't have a clue what the

Bible teaches. And as long as you're willing to play on the ignorance of your audience, that's how good despots work.

You play on the ignorance of your audience and get them to believe whatever you have to say. Gross mistreatment of the stranger, the person not known or understood, and the horrid use of rape as an act of war.

These were hate crimes. Crimes committed not just against the immediate victims, but perpetrated in order to send a message to everyone remotely like the victims.

You are not welcome. You are not welcome. You are not welcome.

Neither story actually has that as its... Where in anywhere in Genesis 18 and 19 do you get the idea that what

Sodom and Gomorrah was saying to everybody around them, you are not welcome? They would love to have some more people to engage in their sex parties.

Come on in as long as you're willing to do what we do.

Bring your flocks in. Bring your... Hey, great! Not this you are not welcome, you are not welcome stuff.

This is called eisegesis. It's reading into the text the very material that is a part of your argument, but is not a part of the text itself.

And for these sins, Sodom and Gibeah were removed from the earth, but not from our history.

I used to read Genesis 19 and Judges 19 and 20 and think they were good stories, but they didn't apply to me.

But then I saw the pictures from Abu Ghraib prison. Men stripped naked and stacked on top of each other.

Dog collars and leashes hanging from their necks. And a soldier, one of my neighbors from America, grinning stupidly beside them.

And my hands started to shake. I dropped back to Leviticus and wrestled the

Holiness Code for a blessing. Well, there's a transition there.

So what you do and again, these folks are polished, prepared, talented speakers who know how to muddle the minds of postmodern

Americans who have been brought up over the past 20 years in the educational system in the

United States and only told what to think, not how to think. Let's face it.

Our educational system produces people who have the attention span of a five -year -old.

Is that not true? I mean, we know historically that sermons in the

Puritan days were hours long. They were hours long. Nobody does that today.

And none of us could survive it. We are so accustomed to being entertained, to having what is coming into our senses changed and altered.

I've noticed this with my own kids. They're uncomfortable with silence. They're uncomfortable with silence because they've always had earbuds, iPods, music, going, going, going.

Silence is bothersome. It's distracting, in fact.

You've got people and you've got a culture where people are getting their news from Jon Stewart now.

Really? Even getting your news from Katie Couric's not doing this anymore, is she?

I don't even know who's doing that. Does anybody watch that kind of stuff anymore? I don't. I certainly don't. That used to be the way you got your news.

Even then, I've covered the entire world in half an hour. I'm good. You've got one perspective.

You've got one very surface level slice there. The idea of extended thought, contemplation, meditation, that kind of stuff.

What you do is you learn how to manipulate people by your words, by what you say, what you don't say, and how you say it.

If you know that you are around people and that the people in your audience have certain fundamental incapacities of thought, you utilize their weaknesses against them to get them to think the way you want them to think.

And that is what you have in politics and here you have it as a fundamental perversion of the

Word of God as well. My son just tweeted me.

He heard what I said. He's wondering if he needs to take his headphones off because he's listening to me right now.

Well, if I were singing, then yes. But I'm not. I think he'd have to admit that I'm right.

It would be difficult for him to compare but my generation was just starting to have the technology to be able.

Remember the old Walkmans? I mean cassette tapes.

Back when I was really young, cassette tapes had a very short lifespan. Remember those things?

Because they would get eaten. Remember? I was really in my early teens when the

Walkmans started coming out and even then you knew you put that cassette in there it was eventually going to eat that thing.

Things have changed a lot. We just did not have stuff coming at us constantly the way that the next generation does.

And it has changed the way that people think and it has changed the way that people communicate.

It's changed our language. There's a bunch of folks in our chat channel. They think I don't know this but I really do.

They play a game online called Lexulous. Evidently we've got some complete freaks in channel as far as their ability.

We have one bot in channel named Turretinfan who we don't actually think is a human being but is a program.

What's that? You are Turretinfan? Oh and Sir Brass is

Turretinfan too. Anyway I guess this is a electronic version of Scrabble and it requires a very massive vocabulary.

You really have to know Turretinfan weeps little oil tears.

If you're a bot you're not going to weep tears. It would be digital tears. I just got tired of hearing back to you.

I got 34 points for the word blah blah blah. So I said no more of that. Now they're pretending they're reading the early church fathers and they'll say things like I just read

Athanasius for 39 chapters or bird watching.

I just saw 37 birds back to you. And they think

I don't know what they're doing but I know they're not listening right now. I'm surprised that game now these guys are weird.

Turretinfan and Mutato together have these massive pulsing brains when it comes to that kind of stuff.

I'm sort of surprised these games are popular because has anyone else noticed the degradation of our language in written form in our day?

Just the degradation of language. People don't want to learn new vocabulary words and I keep words with friends and I keep going back to 1984.

If you have not read 1984 I'm telling you it's not a Christian book but you need to read 1984.

You really do. I'm rereading it again

I read it back in high school but I'm actually reading I'm not listening to it I'm actually making my eyes go back and forth over words yes it's on a screen because I've got it on my

Kindle but the section

I'm at right now is this conversation between the primary character and this guy who works on Newspeak which is the language that the ruling party uses to basically control people they control the language and what they're doing is they are destroying words and this guy is talking about the beauty of destroying words why should you have two words good and evil when good and ungood works just as well and you don't need to have all these different synonyms and antonyms and ways of expressing nuances the government needs to control all this because that way they can promote their perspective and it's happening it is happening all around us yes

I know I got off on a tangent I'm sorry but I observe these things and I am just amazed as long as I've got my

DVR and my cable and my pod and my music do with me as you will

I don't need to worry about my liberties I don't care if you're actually fundamentally telling me what to think and how to act

I just want to throw myself into the arms of Big Brother take care of me from the womb to the tomb and you finally get enough people in a culture that want that and that's what you're going to get and it's dehumanizing and it's anti -christian but that's the way that it is anyways

I'm not really sure how I got there but my cultural commentary for the day sometimes it's hard to take the holiness code of Leviticus 18 and 19 seriously and we can tell

Mr. Knox that you do not take it seriously at all are you going to give up eating shrimp and pork wearing wool coats with cotton pants and playing football in order to prove you're a good person now how many times

I know we've dealt with this a lot recently and Harry Knox sounds like an intelligent person and that means

I am convinced that Harry Knox well knows that that argumentation is thoroughly completely and fully meant only to convince the ignorant and that it has no meaningful biblical value at all it is a fundamentally insulting argument it's insulting to the intellect it's insulting to the

Bible it's insulting to the holiness code but let me ask you a question let me ask a question and this is only for people who saw this and a lot of people did in fact

I will ask the Turretin fan bot in channel to tell me how many views my

Dan Savage response has had so far about a month and a half, two months ago

April, May, somewhere around there remember when the Dan Savage stuff blew up I did a response to Dan Savage and I just don't have time to look on YouTube real quickly to find out what it's hits are but one of the things that I did and maybe

I'm wrong about this maybe I just haven't done the kind of looking around that I need to do but what it struck me that I needed to do in that response was do something

I don't see other people doing with regularity Monty has beaten

Turretin fan to the punch and says right at 11 ,000 views so if you're listening to this and you're one of the 11 ,000 and you've seen this maybe you can think back to it what

I did is I just opened up my browser actually I opened up Accordance and I just looked at the text and I went through because remember he used profanity to describe it as being worthless garbage and so I went through and I looked at what's actually there all you hear from these guys is about shellfish and the fact you're not to mix cloth which by the way all of this as we've already explained so many times before is the purity code for the people of Israel it's to set them apart from the people around them oneness of God doing these things as evidence of their dedication to God etc.

and that these laws some of which are moral in character some of which are ceremonial in character there's so much more depth to them than the vast majority of Christians recognize let alone individuals like Harry Knox who are just using this as a means of promoting his agenda with other people but what

I did as I went through and I looked at all the stuff they don't want to talk about like honoring the elderly standing in their presence showing them respect being of assistance to them that thing about loving your neighbor as yourself actually

Jesus quoted a lot from the holiness code they don't generally want to tell you that but he actually did and he saw that love of neighbor as yourself as fulfillment of so many of these things but we don't want to talk about Jesus quoting stuff like that because we know

Jesus never said anything about homosexuality it's obvious that this is also where you have the prohibitions on bestiality and incest and rape but you also have the positive exhortation to the positive treatment of the alien and you'd think with what he just got done talking about immigrants and stuff like that he'd want to bring that out but that doesn't really fit his agenda either so he doesn't do that but I went through and there is just so much positive that everyone would recognize well at least now but that could change in the near future but so many things that people would recognize as positive moral values and they're right there but all you ever hear about is mixed cloth and pig skin and sowing various kinds of seed in your field that's all you hear about and it makes it hard for me to really respect people that make this kind of argumentation because one of two things is true either they like Harry Knox and they know this is bogus and they know it's unfair and they know it's untrue but they repeat it anyways because they have a broader agenda and they can trust that the majority of the people they want to reach are just not going to be intelligent enough as far as their training goes ok let's say educated enough not intelligent enough educated enough to catch him that's one group then you have the other group and we saw them last time when we listened to what happened to the

University of Indiana and they're the ones that repeat what these guys say and they think it's good they've never checked it out but they repeat it, they go on with it and that's how it works so we're going to continue on with this

I've got one phone call we'll get to Kyle it's a completely different topic so I'll leave a few minutes toward the end of the program to catch that and we'll get a little bit more of Harry Knox because I think

I've only gotten less than three minutes all those things are on the list of prescriptions that includes me lying with a man as with a woman but are they the same commandment?

are they on the same level? does the Bible as a whole treat that in the same way?

no so what has just been presented as an argument is that every element of the holiness code is identical to every other element therefore on a moral scale the prohibition against homosexuality is no different than the prohibition against the mixture of cloth now is that really what's being communicated by the holiness code?

well of course not, but that's what he has to try to get people to believe so that you can say well if the one isn't binding then the other isn't as well but the problem is, does he then follow through with that and likewise say that the prohibition against bestiality incest, rape all of which are right there are likewise no more morally binding or relevant than the prohibition against mixing cloth that's the question and that's what's just been communicated if you do not think carefully about what's being said there are a lot of people who want me to live up to the holiness code and I understand why

I understand the desire to live as a reflection of the love of God in a world that wallows in the dark misery of sin

I really do I'd really like to know how

Harry Knox defines sin I think we'll get a much better idea in the future as we especially hear the interaction as to what sin might be

I hear with power and resonance the teachers command to the Israelites wandering in the desert to set themselves apart from the idol worshippers of the land to which they were going isn't that unloving?

I mean seriously what if the idol worshippers say that God made me this way

He made me desirous I can't just worship one God I have so much love in me

I have to love many gods that's just the way

He made me and you're suppressing my rights and you're making me unhappy and I know some polytheists who have committed suicide because your terrible horrible

Bible said they're only supposed to worship one God you should stop preaching that you say that's ridiculous that's also why the vast majority of homosexual argumentation is ridiculous as well because it's the same thing how is that different?

how is that different? well no one's arguing that you're... well nevermind it isn't different that's the whole point to set themselves apart by not wearing the kinds of clothes the

Canaanites wore by not eating the local foods or touching the dead skins of the unclean pigs that must have seemed nasty abominable to sheep herders and I surely understand a rule against copulating with homeless boys taken in as temple prostitutes by the priests servicing the

Canaanite idols now what you just heard was a complete eisegesis you've just taken an entire range of meaning and you've crammed it into Leviticus and said it's only about this now did you hear anything?

maybe I was distracted by Twitter or something but I must have missed the lengthy discussion of the original languages and context that would have substantiated that I don't think

I missed that at least I don't think I had time to miss that I sometimes do zone out for a while but I don't seem to have missed that but what you've just heard is you throw out something plausible you throw out something people have basically no way of analyzing because you have not even attempted to give an argument for it you throw out a conclusion as an argument and then you never substantiate now obviously if the audience were to be doing what an audience should be doing and that is analyzing what's being said for content, consistency things like that well then he's going to be pretty much disqualified as far as the debate is concerned but that's not what audiences are doing they're watching body language facial expressions what color tie he's wearing and they're looking for emotive quality and they're not actually examining the argumentation that is being presented to them good children of Abraham that we are we wouldn't want to do the things that might cause us to be mistaken for those who recognize any

God other than the one true God is that a good thing or a bad thing? I don't see how given the perspective that he is going to enunciate of scripture and human freedom and what love is he doesn't derive this from scripture so wouldn't it be hateful and unloving to be children of Abraham and to limit the expression of worship to just God?

What about the Buddhists? What about the Hindus? Isn't that equally acceptable to God?

Something tells me he thinks it is but for some reason he doesn't want to be direct and say all this stuff monotheism, worshipping

God it's all wrong it's all suppressing of people's rights

I get that what I don't get is what any of that has to do with my love for my partner well

Harry let me explain it to you because it's really pretty much straightforward it's not overly difficult to grasp this what it has to do with you and your same -sex partner is that the text says a man shall not lie with a man as he lies with a woman it is an abomination and that's what you're doing and you might say but that's only a part of what we do and that's fine but it is a very important part of what you do and in fact it is definitional of what you do and therefore it's directly relevant to what you do and Harry tell me anybody in Jewish history through the time of Jesus who disagreed anybody was there anybody in Jesus' day

Harry that believes what you believe or were they just not enlightened enough did

Jesus believe what you believe I mean you'd have to say he did but it's funny he never actually said anything like that in fact he said just the opposite so what you want to really tell us is that's what the holiness code is about and if you want to tell us that nasty section in Leviticus 18 those nasty words in Leviticus 20 .13

if a man lies with a male as with a woman both of them have committed abomination they shall be put to death their blood is upon them that's not just about temple prostitutes that's not about little children that's clearly man with man that's exactly what

Paul is representing in Romans 1 when he talks about two men burning in lust toward one another that's what he's talking about so that's the connection and I think it's a pretty obvious connection it's a direct connection well we've had one person on hold for quite some time all the way up in another land in a land lacking many of our freedoms

I'm not sure that I want to go there or I'd end up in a Mountie gulag a gulag run by Mounties let's talk with Kyle up in Canada hi

Kyle hey Dr. White thanks for taking my call and by the way if you do show up I would gladly attend whatever seminar that would be you're welcome to come up to Saskatchewan anytime yeah but all you

Canadians say that but then your leaders do weird things like this free speech thing is starting to get really iffy up there so we'll see anyway

I just have a question here and by the way I'm a

Christian and I accept the doctrines of grace and I guess I've never really contemplated the topic of federal headship and I think possibly up until now maybe

I've had sort of a Pelagian view of it but anyway I guess one of my questions is obviously

Adam is our representative in federal headship teaching and so are we held responsible for Adam's sin or are we just affected by Adam's sin well that does seem to be the issue today

Pelagius certainly held that while men sin they sin because they're given an example of sin and that each man is a new

Adam and it is his environment that leads him to sin not a connection to Adam or a degradation or fallenness of his essential nature and so there is a fundamental denial of that element of the relationship that we would have with Adam within Pelagius' theology which of course is opposed by Augustine and all this goes back especially

I mean the classicus locus is Romans chapter 5 and the fact that what you have in Romans chapter 5 are two humanities you have one humanity in Adam which is exhaustive and then you have the humanity in Christ which is adoptive that is a believer starts off in Adam and then by grace is joined to Christ so that you can only receive from your federal head what he can provide to you

Adam can only provide you with a fallen nature and with death because of his failure and his fallenness whereas Christ and all those in Christ receive from him what they can receive from him which is obedience, righteousness, life because of the one act it is not a one -to -one correspondence in the sense that Romans 5 .15

says but the free gift is not like the transgression for if by the transgression of the one the many died much more did the grace of God and the gift of the grace of the one man

Jesus Christ abound to the many so what I have in Christ is greater than what

I would have had in Adam had he not fallen but the representation is there and I would say that we are born as sinners because of a relationship to Adam which is why death includes those who have not yet sinned in the sense of a volitional choice because of their relationship to Adam and the eternal death well, when you say eternal death now you're raising the issue of what is the end of infants who die in infancy or something like that I don't want to go that route per se

I guess the issue that I'm kind of struggling with here and tell me if this is a poor analogy but the analogy would be somewhat like suppose a guy goes out and robs a bank and then the judge, he stands before a judge and he says well not only are you guilty but your children are guilty as well and we would say well that's a perversion of justice we should hold so and so accountable for his actions

I guess in one sense I have a hard time with it because naturally

I see an objection because I'm like now wait a minute, we inherited a sinful nature from Adam it's like in essence we're imprisoned to a nature that we didn't choose and we are then therefore judged based on that nature and so that's kind of what

I'm struggling with and that's a common objection but it's the same objection that therefore would mean that you could not possibly accept what

God has done in Christ either because by one act of obedience that many were made righteous so the entirety of union with Christ and forgiveness of sin, imputation of righteousness it's all done on a federal level as well the federal headship model so if you're going to reject the one you're going to have to reject the other, which a lot of people do

I'm not rejecting it, I'm just trying to come to grips with it I understand, but see the analogy that you used was based upon American law and there's a direct analogy to the issue that you raised and that was the sin of Achan when the people of Israel are going into land

Achan breaks God's law, he does so purposefully he takes from that which is not supposed to be taken and what was the punishment that was specifically meted out it wasn't just Achan, it was

Achan and his family and his doggies and his kitties well ok, I'm using the new living translation at that point but you get the idea and so there is a picture more than one picture in the

Old Testament of this federal concept and really the question is does

God have the right to deal with fallen sinners as he sees fit and I would say that once the fall has taken place anything beyond just utter destruction immediately upon birth is totally up to him he gets to do that because he could be perfectly just to do otherwise the analogy you used assumes a state of innocence which can't be imported into this because we're talking about mankind's relationship to God and the fallenness of mankind so it is something that is difficult

I think for some western thinkers especially American thinkers to grasp, but it's clearly the way

God has dealt with his people but ultimately though innocence like for instance we're born in iniquity like David said, we're wrought in iniquity and so even before we commit any moral actions in essence we're guilty we are fallen sons and daughters of Adam and not only are we guilty but we are reprehensible before God and could be punished by him and we love that in the sense that you've never had to teach a child how to lie but you do have to teach a child how to do what's right and so that's our nature and unless by grace if it was anything else then you could get away with arguing that the reason that I am in the presence of God is because I'm better than somebody else but when you really understand this there is only one possible way of salvation and it's grace, completely and totally there's no way we can intrude ourselves in upon the glory of God and salvation and I think one of the real things is what this requires us to recognize is in defining the gospel we have to define it on the basis of the fact that this is

God's self -act of glorification and we just get to be in on it and the vast majority of Christians view the gospel as first and foremost about us and that being there by a means of judging

God and his goodness and that's two very different ways of looking at it I guess, and to keep you strung on a line there

I guess the analogy well, I guess, I don't know if I want to use another analogy per se but it's like God punishes sinners not necessarily because of their sin

I mean, their sin is I guess, imputed to them from Adam I don't know if that's accurate or not

The sin of Adam means that the only nature we can have is that which is despoiled in God's sight and so yes, we are fallen in him just as we are justified in Christ and so that is why there is death and that is why we experience what we experience but keep one thing in mind anybody who would object to that is saying

I would have done better than Adam did and I don't think that anyone could ever make that argument and yet that is part of the fundamental objection people don't want to enunciate that but part of the assertion is that's not fair because I would have done better than Adam did yeah again, my question is still kind of within me

I don't know if I really got it all properly but I guess how you could summarize that is

God through his own purposes, for his own good pleasure has chosen to demonstrate his justice by punishing people for their sinful nature it's almost like you plant an orchard of apple trees and apple trees produce apples because that's what apple trees do it's according to their nature and so sinners produce sin and that's according to their nature but yet we see it's like God's chopping down the apple tree for producing apples that's just the analogy that's in my brain

I just keep seeing this yes, we love our sin we commit these sinful acts but those all come from our nature keep in mind about a year ago

I addressed an email that was sent to me by someone that really was touching on this same issue and I spent

I've forgotten, was it four and a half? I don't remember how many hours

I spent going through this but if you go back to the archives I think it was July or August of last year you might find some even more in -depth discussion of a lot of this stuff at that point but the thing to remember is that God would be just given the fact that through our relationship to Adam he holds us accountable do any of us transcend the example given to us by Adam it's not that God is standing there with a gun saying do bad things we come into this world and part of the reason we don't get this is because we don't see what the law was pointing to when it talks about pure and impure things holiness and unholiness let's face it, most of us just try to survive reading through Leviticus we don't really ponder it we don't spend much time in it and when you actually give it some thought what you're seeing is that which is holy and that which is unholy that which is set aside for God's purposes that which is not the offerings are an aroma to cover up the stench of sin the seriousness of the breach between God and the creation the insanity of sin the fact that creatures would actually rebel against their creator the only just thing that God could do would be to wipe them out but he doesn't he finds ways of dealing with them he extends grace, he extends mercy not because they are worthy of it but because this provides him the means of illustrating and demonstrating the full range of his attributes not just his holiness and his wrath and his power but also his love and his mercy and his grace but all of this goes back to the idea that we are born in such a way that we are not neutral and we are not good we are fitting objects of the wrath of God we are there and we love it we don't go, oh

I wish I wasn't this way we love it, we think that's wonderful and in fact, you look around our society today and you get the idea, once God removes his hand of restraint that's what man's really all about and there he is, and he knows what

God wants him to do and says, uh uh uh, ain't going there, I'm doing it my own way and yet, through the midst of all that you have this extension of grace that changes hearts and minds and all of it emphasizes just how radical that work actually is and if it was any other way,

I don't think that radical nature would be there and so when you say, well, but it just seems like we're doing what's natural for us to do because of the choice that Adam made now

God, I suppose, could have just made everybody a new Adam but everyone would have fallen in the same way so, what is gained or lost?

I mean, where is the real issue other than, yeah, but from an American perspective he should have to do that with every person over and over and over again rather than, because that would what would be the natural result of that?

if he did that, how could salvation take place? because Christ would have to die individually for each person over and over and over again if you reject the federal headship in the one, you can't have the federal headship in the other and so what it does is that that means of dealing with it prepares for the amazing thing that God has chosen to join a totally undeserving people to himself through the

Incarnation, through his Son which is just an absolutely mind -blowing proposition but that's really what we're saying

God has done and Kyle, we've gone about 11 minutes past when we were supposed to stop and I thank you very much for taking my call and I appreciate it

I appreciate your phone call, it was an excellent phone call, and thanks for listening today alright, see there's the only other two

Christians in Canada were obviously at work today we've got one third of the

Christian population in Canada calling at once excellent question, thank you very much for listening to the program today remember, remember, remember, tomorrow

Thursday, Dr. Michael Brown will be with us 5 o 'clock eastern time, we'll be talking about his book

The Real Kosher Jesus and we'll probably do a full length dividing line right afterwards maybe we can ask him to stay over we can talk a little bit about what's going on in the world in other areas as well, we'll see thanks for listening, we'll see you on Thursday, God bless

I'm going to make some noise I'm going to make some noise I'm going to make some noise

I'm going to make some noise I'm going to make some noise I'm going to make some noise

I'm going to make some noise

I'm going to make some noise

I'm going to make some noise I'm going to make some noise