July 20, 2006

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Casting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.
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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602, or toll free across the
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United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. And welcome to The Dividing Line on a
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Thursday afternoon, and yes, it is my second attempt at soloing here on the program, and so, you know, aside from the whiners and complainers out there, so far we're doing okay.
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And the biggest thing, really, honestly, the biggest thing that is truly amazing to me is that I managed to get the program up in the archive.
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Getting this part done, really, that wasn't the big thing. You know, the big part was after you get done, converting the files and knowing where to send them, and that's the hard part.
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So we did it once. We will see whether we will be able to do it a second time.
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Lord willing, Rich will be back next week, and then there we'll make it a little bit easier.
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Anyhow, no, I'm not, ignore that number, ignore the 877 -753 -3341 number, because I do not have the phone lines fired up.
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Instead, we are going to be listening to, before we go back to Mr.
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Martignoni and his discussion on a Roman Catholic perspective on eternal security,
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I mentioned on the program that we are going to listen to Dave Hunt.
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And once again, we are in a situation where you just, you know, after a while, you just wonder.
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It is so frustrating to have a man who is simply beyond correction.
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There is no one who can talk to him. There's no one. And, you know, he ends this cut, in fact, I'm going to go down here to the end and play this first.
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Just listen to what he says at the end, and then think about how often he has been corrected.
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He wrote an entire book. How often these issues have been addressed. How many times people have written to him.
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Does he just protect himself from these things? Is he not doing any of his own writing? What's the story? Listen to what he says toward the end.
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It is through believing the gospel that we are born again that we are not regenerated ahead of time. So there he says, any
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Calvinist listening, please write in, explain to me what I don't understand about this. What are we supposed to do?
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We've done it over and over and over and over and over again, and he will not listen.
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There's no one who has more basis for saying they have explained this, Dave Hunt, than I do.
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I've written a whole book with him. We had him on the air. I've written letters to him.
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We've done blog articles. We've done dividing lines. And if I thought there was any confusion on his part, if he just didn't understand, it's not a matter of not understanding.
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I mentioned in the blog article that they've put out another edition of What Love Is This.
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Now I mentioned, I'm holding the current edition or the previous edition in my hand here.
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And $27 to get another one. And of course my question, the big question that crosses my mind is have they tried to fix the problem with Acts 13 -48?
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Have they tried to fix it? If you're looking for it, it's on page 264. It's the famous redacted
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Hebrew version. Gouffa, remember that one?
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If you haven't been listening for a long time, we caught Dave once again.
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Dave has just been desperate in trying to find some way around the subject of Acts 13 -48.
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He just can't get around this text. And so he's tried the
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New World Translation and he tried the redacted
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Hebrew. This is page 264. The Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as comments from early church writers, indicate that the first 15 chapters of Acts were probably written first in Hebrew.
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The Greek would be a translation. Some scholars claim that going back to a redacted Hebrew version based upon word -for -word
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Greek -Hebrew equivalents would render Acts 13 -48 more like as many as submitted to, needed, or wanted salvation were saved.
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And as soon as we found this in the new, in this hardback edition that Brian Call put out, page 264, we were all over it.
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And remember, Brian Call started sending out emails quoting from a cultic website about a
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Hebrew original of Matthew, as if that had something to do with Acts. And finally, after everything he said was just completely taken apart,
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Brian said, well, you know, it was just speculation. You know, it was just an interesting thought, blah, blah, blah, blah. So the question is, does the new edition of What Love Is This continue that silliness, that inane type of assertion?
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Or does it correct it? I don't know that I have $27 worth of interest in that.
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I imagine somebody will probably track it down and will let me know one way or the other, but it would be interesting to know.
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Well, anyway, they have a fellow who goes to my church, dropped me a note, and I don't know if it was right after I got back from England or what, but he said on June, I think it was 26th, yeah,
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June 26th, on the Brian Call radio program, there was a topic and the topic was, was the
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Good Samaritan a Calvinist? And as you'll hear, the announcer reads this question to T .A.
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McMahon and to Dave Hunt. And it's a simple question that anyone who has even a basic knowledge of Reformed Theology would not have any questions with at all.
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Why do I say that? It's a question that basically is about what's called common grace. It is about the
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Samaritan doing what was right. And well, does that mean he had to be regenerated? And if you really, really, really believe that unregenerate men could do no good, see.
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And if Dave Hunt had any teachable spirit or had actually done any meaningful scholarly study, then he would have said, well, of course, from the
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Reformed perspective. Well, first of all, this is a this is a parable. And so we can't push it so far as to as to make any.
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And of course, this text isn't talking about regeneration, the relationship, regeneration to any of these things.
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And so we're just sort of speculating here. He would have said all those types of things. Then he would have said, well, this is an issue about what common grace is.
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And Calvinists do believe that men do things. And when men do things that are good, it's due to God's common grace.
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It's both a restraining thing. It restrains the evil of the heart of man. But it's also what brings about the the fact that men are capable in certain situations of living together, killing each other.
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And when God withdraws his hand, then you see what's happening in our world today. But but when unregenerate men do things that they show kindness to one another, this is due to God's common grace.
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And it is not just as just as Calvinists recognize that God's love is a multifaceted thing.
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There is a general love expressed in common grace to all of creation, where men who are unregenerate, even
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God haters are able to do things that demonstrate their knowledge of the universe and they're able to be kind to their cats and dogs and so on and so forth.
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That just as we recognize those various aspects to God's love, so there are to God's grace as well.
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There is that that common grace that upholds men. And then there is that saving grace which actually saves men.
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All right. And so that would be his response if he knew anything about Calvinism and had any concern whatsoever to be accurate about it.
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You can sort of tell already those of you who've listened to it that, well, that's that's not what happened.
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So let's listen to let's listen to this and then take it apart. Still ahead, Dave and Tom continue their weekly in -depth study of the doctrine of salvation.
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Please stay with us now contending for the faith in this regular feature. Dave and Tom respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call.
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Here's this week's question. Dear Dave and T .A., I have a question that's been buzzing around in my head ever since I read
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Dave's book on Calvinism. What love is this? Since most Calvinists believe that humanity is totally depraved and therefore cannot choose to do good without first being regenerated, which is dependent on God's arbitrarily choosing him or her as one of the elect.
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I'm puzzled as to where the good Samaritan would fit into all of this. Didn't he need to be regenerated before being able to minister to the man who was robbed and beaten?
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Now, let me just stop it right there and say no. There's nothing in Reformed theology.
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There's confusing two completely different areas here. When we talk about men being able to do what is good in God's sight, we're talking about being able to do that which flows from having a right relationship to him.
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Even the good Samaritan. And again, we're talking about a parable here. Talk about completely missing the boat.
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But let's just state for a moment that the good Samaritan was not regenerate.
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I mean, there's no reason for assuming that. Let's just go with the argument here. There is nothing in Reformed theology.
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It does not say that God and his common grace can cause people to extend kindness to others. There's nothing about that whatsoever.
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When we talk about men being incapable of doing anything good in of themselves, we are talking about the necessity of grace.
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And specifically, when we talk about Romans chapter 8, verses 7 through 8, men being incapable of doing what is good in the sight of God, submitting themselves to the law of God.
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Well, are we going to get a discussion of that from this writer or from Dave Hunt? No, unfortunately, we don't.
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But that, of course, is the context of regeneration, the doing of good deeds and things like that. Completely different context than a parable.
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But anyhow. Furthermore, why would Jesus use such an obvious non -elect individual as a
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Samaritan to show the elect Jews how far removed they were from doing what
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God has commanded? What? The elect Jews? How do we know these were elect
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Jews? I mean, there's so many assumptions in the question here. It's hard to even take it seriously that this was actually being written in.
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But even if it was, you see what happens when someone trusts Dave Hunt and his books for their understanding of Reformed theology.
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Dave, the issue of total depravity and the scriptures tell us that there is none that doeth good.
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No, not one. What do you think? Now, that's Romans chapter three.
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And I have mentioned and you're going to hear this again. I have mentioned the fact when I listened to Dave Hunt address
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Romans chapter three at the Calvary Chapel in, I think it was the Costa Mesa one, but it was a large one in California.
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He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt underneath a sport jacket. It was quite interesting. Anyway, when
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I listened to him address Romans chapter three a number of years ago. I was like, wow, the only way
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I could even address what he was saying was to say that it was really bordering on and at times going right into Pelagianism.
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It really was going into a discussion that is unorthodox.
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It's simply unorthodox. Dave is so bent upon attacking
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Calvinism that he's gone the other direction so far that you're going to hear him, in essence, try to define what it means to be doing good as doing good so as to appease
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God and get rid of one's sins. Which really he does believe that men can do good before God outside of God's grace.
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He's going to basically say that. Listen. Well, Tom, this person has read What Love Is This?
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We've already answered all these questions. I would say even more startling examples. Well, this is a Samaritan.
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Yeah, I don't think you point out in What Love Is This the good Samaritans. I don't recall, but I do point out some others.
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For example, the Philistine king, his name is Abimelech, and he is more just than Abraham.
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Abraham, as you recall, pretends that Sarah is his sister, and she goes along with it because she's a very attractive lady.
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And he's afraid that this king will kill him in order to get his wife.
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But the king is more righteous than that. He takes her. He hasn't had sex with her yet, brings her into his harem,
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I guess, preliminary step. And God speaks to him in a dream, says, you got somebody else's wife.
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And you find this in Genesis chapter 20. And Isaac does the same thing later on.
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Now, wait a minute. What on earth does that have to do with anything? In fact,
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Genesis chapter 20, verse 6 says, Then God said to him in the dream, Yes, I know that in the integrity of your heart you have done this.
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And I also kept you from sinning against me. Therefore, I did not let you touch her.
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So, God, how does that fit free will? I kept you from sinning against me.
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Therefore, I did not let you touch her. God is the one who kept him from doing these things. What does any of this have to do with the question that's being asked?
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I fail to see its relevance whatsoever. Amazing. And so he says, says to Abraham, I have done for you nothing but good.
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Now, you quoted, there's none that do good. No, not one. That's not saying that there aren't people who can do some good deeds and they don't have to be inspired of God.
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I wouldn't say this man was inspired of God, but he did have a conscience. Now, what does he say?
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It sounds like he's contradicting Paul. And he's saying, well, there's a special kind of good that Paul is talking about,
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I guess, that people can do good without being inspired by God. Well, again, here's another good reason why
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Dave Hunt's detestation of systematic theology causes problems. I mean, what do you mean inspired of God?
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That's a term inspired of God that is only used to scripture.
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So how is that relevant? Obviously, he's using it in some other way. But it sounds like he's saying that men, apart from the common grace of God, apart from the operation of the
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Holy Spirit, can do that which is good. And we are saying that men, by common grace, do that which is good, both positively and negatively.
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Positively in the sense that God, with Abimelech or with any of these other examples we could use, brings about these good things without necessarily bringing about the salvation of the individual, but also negatively in the restraining of the evil of the heart of man.
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Both of these are actions of God. It seems to me that Dave Hunt is saying, no, man has the capacity in and of himself.
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He's not so dead in sin. He's not so fallen. He has the capacity of doing what is good before God. Now, how he would answer the question, what do you mean good before God?
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Are you actually saying that a person who is unregenerate can do things that are good before a holy
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God, that they meet his standard? I would hope at that point he would say no.
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But that's one of the reasons Dave Hunt refuses to expose himself to cross -examination and debate on the subject, because he knows once we get into this level, he's lost.
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He has no way of answering these questions. Listen to the first radio program we did, which his own ministry makes available, and would even be more pointed if we were to do anything now, which is why he does everything he can to avoid it.
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But there are some people who do good, but they are not doing good that will wipe away their sins.
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So there's a, you can do good, and then there's another kind of good that's expiatory, that accomplishes propitiation?
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Is that what's being said here? Again, who knows? It's hard to say.
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Because once you've sinned, you can't make up for it by doing good. But anyway, here he talks about a just man, a good man, and so forth.
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And the point you're making here, Tom, or I guess the questioner is, how can they do this without being regenerated?
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Because Calvinism says we're all totally depraved. And by that, they don't mean we're bad, but they mean we can do no good.
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We cannot do anything that is good. Now, they take that statement in Romans chapter 3, there's nothing to do with good, no, not one, they're all gone out of the way, and so forth.
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They take that, it's a quote from Psalm 14. What they're going to add to this, there's no choice in the matter.
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Everything that we do, prior to being regenerated, there's no choice. We're going to do evil, according to Calvinism.
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You just have to stop once in a while, and just take a deep breath and go... What are these guys doing on the radio, talking about stuff that clearly they don't know anything about?
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They're completely ignorant of these things. I mean, oh my goodness, what can you say?
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And I tried, I tried to tell him before he put that book out. You shouldn't write on this stuff, because you don't know what you're talking about.
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And T .A. McMahon sounds like he's just completely wandering about. I mean, if Dave Hunt is confused, and T .A.
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McMahon is completely confused, what in the world are they talking about here? They keep confusing so many different categories, that it's not even funny.
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They're not even dealing with the text. I mean, we're talking about total inability. Inability to do what?
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Well, you know, John 6, come to Christ, do that which is good and pleasing the sight of God, submit yourself to the law of God. I mean, why not get into the texts that actually address these issues, and recognize you're talking about something completely different than the idea that men do good deeds in the sense of not every man, you know, when we drive down the roads, we don't every day veer off into the left lanes to try to crash into people.
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Okay, why is that? Well, a lot of it's just quite simply self -preservation. And he just admitted, well,
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Calvinists aren't saying that we're as bad or as evil as we could be. Well, yeah, exactly.
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Total depravity speaks of the fact that sin has touched every aspect of the human being, but some of the things that from an outward perspective look like they're good are simply self -preservation on our part.
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He's not even dealing with the issue of what is good in God's sight, what is holiness in God's sight, what's the relationship between these types of activities amongst men and doing what's good in God's sight and salvation and coming to Christ and submitting oneself unto the law of God and the conscience.
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I mean, there's so much more here. And it's just like you just throw it all in one bowl and mix it all up and go, ah, see,
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I know what I'm talking about. I spent two weeks reading Calvinist books and now I'm an expert in all things. And that's exactly what he did when he eschews systematic theology and he eschews using terminology in an accurate way.
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This is the same problem we've got with the canners and the issue of hyper -Calvinism and omnibenevolence. They don't care what those terms have meant in history.
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They just get to make them up as they go along now, claiming all the while to be biblicists in the process. And so in his writings,
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Dave will just interchange regeneration, saved, sanctified. He'll just make them all mean the same thing as if they are synonyms of one another and the resultant confusion is completely incomprehensible.
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It makes no sense at all. And it's no wonder his followers are completely confused now as to what in the world is being talked about because no one can make heads or tails out of what he's saying anyway.
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Even after, there's no choice, really. God has to do it all for us. Now, we believe that God does everything, but we do have to be willing.
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What? How is that? Thou speakest out of both sides of the mouth.
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What is that? Well, we do believe that God does all things, but we have to be willing.
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Is that sort of like Norman Geisler's I believe in irresistible grace? Grace is irresistible for those who are willing?
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Is that... Why even bother mouthing these words when there's no meaning in what you're saying?
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Is there something really attractive and cool about saying things that have no meaning?
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I just... It's a partnership. But anyway,
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Tom, if you go back to the... Catch that? It's a partnership. What's a partnership? What is the specific term to describe partnership, especially in matters of salvation?
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It's called synergism. Yes, monergism versus synergism.
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Psalms, you'll find it all around Psalm 14, where it says there's none that do us good, none that want our help, none that go out of the way, and so forth.
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None that seeketh after God. It talks about men seeking God. You have probably several hundred examples in the
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Old Testament. Now, again, if you've read the book, you're sitting there going, no, wait a minute, okay. Two things going on here.
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First of all, whenever you hear Dave Hunt say several hundred, that means he can't find any particular text to fit his argumentation, so he's just going to throw the several hundred number out.
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Because every time you go through one of the texts he brings up, you demonstrate he's wrong, and then his response will be, well, we don't need that one anyways, because we've got several hundred others.
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That's the process you're going through there. But have you heard this kind of argumentation before?
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I have, and I hear it from Roman Catholics, who are trying to get around Romans chapter 3 and the concept of total depravity.
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And so what he's saying is, well, Paul may have said there's none that seek after God, but there's all sorts in Psalm 14 about men seeking
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God. So what's your point, Dave? Why don't you come straight out and say Paul was wrong?
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Why don't you dig into Romans 3 and tell us what he was really saying? What he was saying was, well, not all men seek after God, but some do.
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Is that what he was saying? Is that his point? No, you can't get that out of Romans chapter 3. And therefore, if you listen to all of scripture, then what are you going to do?
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You're going to realize that Paul is saying there is no God seeker, and therefore, if Psalm 14 does refer to someone who's seeking after God, what had to happen first?
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See? But if you believe that, then you become one of those dreaded Calvinists, and so we can't do that.
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So instead, we just, in essence, contradict what Paul just said. This is where I would want to be able to challenge him in person.
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All right, you take your reading of Romans 3, and now you follow it through. Let's hear some exegesis here of the text.
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Finish that catena of passages, Romans 3, 10 through 18, go to verse 19, and tell me how your interpretation substantiates and supports and leads into the rest of Romans chapter 3 in discussion of justification.
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You can't do it. And evidently, he keeps himself in a position of never having to be forced to do so.
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About those who sought God. I sought the Lord, and he heard me, and I found him.
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Seek ye the Lord while he may be found. Yes, those are commands from God, but what does that mean?
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That simply demonstrates the absolute necessity of God's grace. I mean, again, this is why at times you go, is this man a
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Pelagian? Does he even know what a Pelagian is? His particular tradition loves to, in essence, stand back and say, well, we eschew all this scholarship, and we're not really concerned about churches.
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Remember, I've told the story many times. Back in about 1991, 15 years, over 15 years ago,
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I sent a tape to Dave Hunt of my debate with Jerry Matiticks on the papacy that was recorded at the
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City of the Lord over in Tempe, Arizona. And I got this little thing back from him that said, well, you know, I don't argue church history with Roman Catholics.
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I just stick with the Bible. Now, that's not completely true if you look at stuff that he's written, but that's what he said at that time.
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Again, this was 15 years ago. And, you know, because we discussed the papacy, and I had gone into some of the historical stuff and given some patristic citations and things like that.
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And that is his idea. I don't want to argue about history stuff here, even though he goes into history about Calvin and things like that.
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He's rather selective about these things. But since they don't want to see themselves where they stand in church history, they don't want to see how things have affected them, as if they are somehow, again, just completely disconnected from the history of the church.
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And they're starting with the blank slate. And they don't have any traditions.
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Remember, you know, Dave Hunt's the same guy. I don't have any traditions, James. Remember that from the first radio program.
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And because of that, they don't see, not only the inconsistency of their use of language, their inconsistency of the positions that they've taken, but they don't really care that people have discussed all this stuff before.
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They've been there, done that, got the t -shirt. And so they will make statements, and anyone who knows anything about the historical debate goes, well, wait a minute, wait a minute.
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But they don't know about it. And they just go on from there. Isaiah 55 says, anyway, the
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Calvinist is taking one side of a picture. When it says it has nothing to do with good, no, not one, it doesn't mean nobody ever did a good deed in their lives, because we have examples of unsaved, godless people who do good things now in the scriptures.
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What it means is this is the attitude, the general attitude of the human heart. This is the way we're going.
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And so Calvinism then teaches that you can't even believe the gospel.
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You couldn't possibly turn to Christ. You couldn't possibly respond to the gospel because you're dead, trespassing and sins.
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You are totally depraved. Therefore, Tom, this is the most astonishing doctrine in Calvinism that I know of.
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And I discussed Calvinism for years with Calvinists before I ever found out that this was what they believed.
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You must be regenerated first. Did you hear that? He just admitted that he had discussed these things, and he said that he has been opposed to Calvinism all along.
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So that means he was opposed to Calvinism while in ignorance of it, and he just admitted it. And of course, all we say is,
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Dave, you still are. Nothing's changed much. You've just simply gotten a few more quotes to quote, but you still don't know what you're talking about.
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You're still ignorant of the fundamental things. And if you had come to the conclusion it was wrong before you even knew the fundamentals of it, what's surprising then that the rest of us are going, hey,
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Dave, you still don't get it. You still don't understand. And you're still missing the boat.
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And he is. But he is beyond correction and beyond admission of error.
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And why? Well, we'll talk about that. You've got to be born again. Can you imagine that?
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Can you imagine that? I mean, 1 John 5 says those who have been born from God believe. And yeah, that being born from God precedes the believing, and that's the basis of the continuance of the believing.
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But can you believe anyone could have written that there in 1 John 5, 1? And that's why you won't find any meaningful discussion of 1
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John 5, 1 in his writings, because he can't deal with those things, and that's why he avoids engaging in debate on this subject, because, well, it would be a bad thing when you know you're wrong.
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And he does know that. The Bible says you are born again through believing the gospel. The covenant says you've got to be born again, regenerated by the
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Holy Spirit, before you even can believe. Now, remember what
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I said before. He just simply throws regeneration, being born again, be saved, justified, sanctified.
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That's just all one big word for him. He refuses to distinguish between them, which, by the way, would make it impossible for him to deal with the
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Roman Catholic concept of justification and sanctification, because they confound the two. Is he consistent at that point?
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No, of course not. But he just throws them all in one big lump and says, See, you have to believe to be saved, and therefore that means you have to believe to be born again, and it means you have to believe to be regenerated, and so this whole thing just can't work.
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And then, after you are born again, then
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God gives you faith to believe the gospel, and it must come through irresistible grace, so there's no volition on your part.
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Oh, oh, it must come through irresistible grace, so there's no volition on your part. Which means, once you're raised to spiritual life, and you're made a new creature in Christ, you have no volition.
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You're not going to naturally believe, because you've been forced to believe. Again, you know,
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T. A. McMahon, he doesn't know. He's just going with... T. A. McMahon could never disagree with Dave Hunt on anything.
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So, he's just simply going with what Dave Hunt has told him, and so he's just, you know, parroting the line.
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So, you know, I'm not saying he's not accountable for parroting the line, but the fact remains, that's what he's doing, and you see the snowball.
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I've mentioned this to you before. How many times have we played other people in the past couple of years who are simply quoting
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Dave Hunt as if he's somehow an authority on these things, and so the same error just gets repeated over and over and over and over again.
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We see it all the time. Right. And that turns the Bible into a charade. What is all this pleading, don't do this, please repent, come to me, you know.
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So, you know, anybody read Debating Calvinism? Did I not address that many, many times?
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Did he not ignore the addressing of it many, many times? It's just...
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And then to hear the man, as we've played on this program, speaking at churches saying that I didn't want the book published because he did so well and just refutes
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Calvinism. It really makes you wonder at times. Hey, man person, come into me and drink.
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You've got this all through the Bible. So, Tom, we've talked about that a number of times. It makes no sense.
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And remember, you can't be born again yourself. That's true. You can't be born again yourself? John 1, 13, they're born not of blood, nor the will of man, nor of the flesh, but of God.
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But Calvinists, I've never found a Calvinist that acknowledges. Verses 11 and 12 precede verse 13.
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And they say, as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become the sons of God, even to those who believe on his name.
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So it's very clear that you must believe on his name and you must receive him. Now, here you have
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Dave pushing, and by the way, it's just sort of dishonest to say that there's no
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Calvinist who admits that verses 11 through 12 come before verse 13. I don't think there's any
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Calvinist who denies that verses 11 through 12 come before verse 13. The question is, do verses 11 through 12 plus verse 13 give us an ordo salutis?
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Or is verse 13 taking us back previous to the actions of verses 11 through 12?
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Upon what grammatical or syntactical basis does he argue, and successfully so, that verses 11 through 13 present a single ordo salutis?
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How then does he explain, who were born, not of the will of flesh, nor the will of man, when he's saying that we are born of the will of the flesh?
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How does he do that? Again, since he won't debate, and since in a book
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I can't force him to answer questions, the editors were unable to force him to stay with one particular subject and to just talk about one particular subject.
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Like I said, in certain of his presentations, he covered seven different topics when he was supposed to be covering one.
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Since he refused to even do what he said he would do in the writing of the book, and that is stick to one subject, because I told him at the beginning, look, if either one of these sides in a book like this goes wandering all over the landscape, the books could be confusing.
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It's going to be next to impossible to follow any particular line of argumentation. And I was told initially, oh, no, we'll make sure that everybody stays on subject, blah, blah, blah.
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Well, Hunt refused. He refused to be edited in that way. They didn't have to ask me to do that, because I follow the rules.
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But he didn't, and so you can't force Dave Hunt to answer these questions.
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I can raise the issues, but I can't force him to answer a question.
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If we're in a debate, and you've got cross -examination, and I can look at him and say, all right, let's look at John chapter 1.
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Let's work through verses 11 through 13. Let's open the text. Let's go to the Word of God. That's what
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I want to do. Why can't I get Arminians to do this? Why can't I get the anti -Reform to do this? They want to have free -for -alls like the
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Canners. They want to avoid all debates at all possible. They want to say, well, I don't debate Christians. Whichever person out there who loves to take on Calvinism, you name them, and they'll either not even respond to your challenges, or they'll respond in these ways, but they won't sit down with the
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Word and get into these very kind of issues. Then God will regenerate you, but it's not by some sovereign act before you believe, but it is as a result of believing, and let me just quote what...
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As a result of believing, therefore it is by the will of man that you are born again.
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Again, it's 1 John 5 .1. I tried to walk through the syntactical parallel passages in 1
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John chapter 4, 1 John 2 .29. Does he answer any of that in the book? No, of course not.
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He can't answer those things, and he knows... John says in John chapter 20 at the end of it, he says, these things are written that you may believe on the name of the
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Son of God, and that believing you might have life through his name. See, so he assumes having life through his name is not like John 10.
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I have come, they might have life, and I have more abundantly. He wants to make that regeneration. Upon what basis?
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Well, we can't find out, because we can't ask. And even if you write a letter, even if you try to get them to deal with these kind of things, you know what's going to happen.
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They're going to wander off the point, and unless you're in the person's presence, and you both have microphones, and you can both speak, you're not going to get them to deal with these things.
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Clearly, belief comes before regeneration. Or Peter, 1 Peter chapter 1, verse 22, 23, and so forth,
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Peter says, being born again by the word of God.
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As if there's a Calvinist that doesn't believe that. And I, again, pointed that out.
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The use of means, the proclamation, that's what God does. And you really have to wonder if he even bothered reading the sections that came back to him, other than just simply looking for things that he could pick on, rather than trying to understand what it was saying.
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And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you, and when the gospel is preached, we must believe it, okay?
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And it is through believing the gospel that we're born again. We are not regenerated ahead of time. And nothing he said actually has anything to do with his conclusions, but that's because we're dealing with his traditions.
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Any Calvinist listening, please write in and explain this doctrine, and tell me where I've gone astray on this.
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There you go. Is that not what he just said? Tell me where I've gone astray. Explain this to me from the
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Bible. Well, feel free to write in. You know, you can just simply quote directly out of debating
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Calvinism. We certainly addressed it numerous times. We can, you know.
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But you've got to understand, what is it with Dave Hunt? He can write on other subjects and get it right.
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Why on this is there such blindness? Is there such circularity? Is there such clear contradiction?
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There is one reason. Ah, yes, tradition.
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And if you don't know where that came from, you have missed a really good movie, and you need to go out and rent it or something.
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It's called Fiddler on the Roof. But anyway, tradition, that's where it comes from. That's Dave's problem.
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He is a slave to tradition. We've said it many times before, but if you're new to the program, and you're going, hey, wait a minute,
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I thought Dave Hunt and you would be on the same side. No, no, because Dave Hunt believes what
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Dave Hunt believes because Dave Hunt believes his traditions. And we were on a radio program here in Phoenix a number of years ago now when this whole thing first started to develop, and I said to him, that's your tradition speaking,
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Dave. I think we were talking about John 6, as I recall. And he says, James, I have no traditions.
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And my response was the same. And then it would be today, Dave, the man who thinks he has no traditions is the man who is enslaved to his traditions.
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And that is what has been proven over and over and over and over again in attempting to deal with Dave Hunt, in attempting to explain how a man who on other issues could get it right can come up with Hebrew originals for Acts chapter 13 and unnamed scholars who give us
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Greek for Hebrew, word for word translations. I mean, folks, that is just so absurd.
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He would never accept something like that, never accept something like that in regards to the deity of Christ or the resurrection or something like that.
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But when it comes to the service of our tradition, especially defending the main idol of man's tradition, his sovereignty over God, his libertarian free will, then there is no tool beyond the utilization of man, even the man who calls himself a
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Christian. That explains Norm Geisler, who can quote
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John 6, 44 and say, there is free will. No man can come to me unless the
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Father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up on the last day. There is free will. You know, that's...
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Go to Romans 9, there is free will. How does that get in there? What kind of glasses have to be so firmly ensconced upon your faces to see that kind of thing?
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Those are the glasses of tradition. And that's where it comes from.
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Well, so there you go. Was the good Samaritan a
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Calvinist? Well, we move from such things to, once again, listening to a discussion provided to us.
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For those of you who missed the past couple of weeks, I was sent a set of CDs, and they came with a note.
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Here are seven CDs from a great Catholic apologist associated with EWTN. I don't think you stand a chance in refuting him.
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So I figured you would like to meet your match. He has already eaten your lunch, so listen and weep.
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Listen to once saved, always saved first. So wanting to, of course, do as we are instructed by Mr.
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J. Lee. J is just the letter J. J. Lee. I haven't heard from J. Lee, unfortunately.
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I hope J. Lee is listening. We have been, so that I can eat lunch, because the man is eating my lunch, and I've gotten tired of this man eating my lunch.
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We are listening to Mr. Martin Yoney talk about once saved, always saved. And he had made an appropriate, somewhat appropriate comment the last time we were listening to him, where he had said once saved, always saved is actually based on Sola Fide.
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And from a Reformed perspective, that would be true. Again, only because the
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Fide of Sola Fide, the faith of Sola Fide, is the gift of God. It is the work of the
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Holy Spirit in the heart of the elect, the redeemed. It is the person who has been raised to spiritual life is given the gift of faith and repentance.
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Now, that's not something that Dave Hunt can say. In fact, Dave Hunt holds to that very unorthodox view of Bob Wilkin and Zane Hodges and those others.
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He's an anti -lordship person. And so you can't even discuss the issues of true faith and false faith with Dave Hunt because there's no such thing as a true faith or a false faith.
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That is in his book as well. And so much of what
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Mr. Martin Yoney would be relevant to people like Dave Hunt, it's not relevant to those who are Reformed because it's based upon a false understanding.
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So he had just made that statement, and we continue on with that. The reasoning is that since we are saved by faith, and faith alone, according to this doctrine, we are saved by believing that Jesus is our personal
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Lord and Savior. And since, according to this doctrine, works play no role whatsoever in gaining our salvation, then works cannot play any role in losing our salvation.
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Yes and no, sort of, maybe. One of the things that bothers me about listening to Mr. Martin Yoney is about the only citation he gives is an unnamed person on the
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Internet defining this belief. Can you imagine if I put out a
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CD where the only resources I gave had to do with that?
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I mean, I'm representing Roman Catholicism on the basis of an unnamed citation from the
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Internet, and yet this is acceptable and it comes in a direction for some odd reason.
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But anyway, sort of, works in the sense of works of righteousness do not gain our salvation.
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Yeah, but he's using the term works there in an equivalent sense that I don't see that that would be the relevance.
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Obviously, and I'm hoping Mr. Martin Yoney will listen to the response. In fact, I need to drop him a line, let him know that we've begun to respond to these things, so that if he's interested that we can let him know that.
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But that would not be the reason that I would say. The reason
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I would say Sola Fide is directly related to the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints is because it's all the work of God.
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And it is not my works that gains me a righteous standing with God. The imputation of Christ's righteousness to me is not based upon things that I do, and therefore since my sins have been imputed to Christ, then he has borne them in perfection.
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What then can bring about my condemnation? In fact, one of the very few, and he addresses very, very few, of the positive texts that speak to the perseverance of the saints, the perfection of the work of Christ, but one of them that he tries to anyways is
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Romans chapter 8. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And of course,
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I would say, see, in Christ Jesus, union with Christ. How am I united with Christ? Dave Hunt would say by my free will choice.
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I would say by the eternal choice of the Father who unites me with him. So that his death becomes my death, his burial my burial, his resurrection my resurrection.
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And so that he has borne in his body upon the cross the penalty of my sin. If the penalty of my sin, the wrath of God against my sin, has been propitiated, has been truly been taken away, then now we can understand who the blessed man of Romans chapter 4 is.
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The blessed man to whom the Father will not impute sin. Why? Because he has imputed it to my substitute.
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And Roman Catholicism has no answer for the question, who is that blessed man?
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Because they have no concept of non -imputation in the context of Romans chapter 4 and the blessedness that comes upon the man who receives righteousness by faith and not by any works that he might do.
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In other words, once you are saved, there isn't anything that you can do to lose your salvation.
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Or, to put that better, there is nothing that I can do to add to the perfection of the righteousness that has been imputed to me.
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See? And I fully understand this. Mr. Martin Noni, I know that we've even got,
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I think, some Roman Catholics that are going to have a cow when I say this, but Mr. Martin Noni and many evangelicals look at salvation from man's perspective.
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And that's understandable. Many people do. They don't see salvation as being
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God -centered. They don't see this as being something God does to glorify himself. And when you make man the defining element of the gospel, not only in choice, but also in scope and purpose, the whole context is man, rather than God, glorifying himself.
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Then the whole concept of the perseverance of the saints, one saved, all is saved, eternal security, whatever, doesn't make any sense.
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I would agree. I mean, if I got into this mess by my own free will, then
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I can get out of this mess by my own free will. If I got into salvation by my own free will, then I can get out of it by my own free will.
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I mean, that does make sense. But that's the huge difference between being
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God -centered and being man -centered. If you're man -centered, yeah, the gospel, it's going to have to be focused upon my accomplishment, what
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I do. But if you're God -centered, and if you recognize that the gospel, what's the purpose of the gospel?
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That his grace might be praised in eternity itself. The praise of his glorious grace.
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Ephesians chapter 1. If that then becomes the controlling factor, then we have a little bit of a different approach here.
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And it's very clear to me that Mr. Martin does not understand that. That's not the kind of folks that he's, quote -unquote, running into on the internet.
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And so he doesn't even hardly, doesn't even address that. Including sinning.
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You see, according to Protestant theology, once we have accepted Jesus Christ into our heart, then
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God, like a judge in the courtroom, declares us innocent. We are hid with Christ, as it says in Colossians 3, verse 3.
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In other words, since you are hidden in Christ, the judge, God, doesn't see you and your sins.
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He sees only Christ, the innocent victim who has paid the price for all men's sins.
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See why theology matters? See, some of that sounded pretty good, right? Some of that, you know, some of the people he's talked to, evangelicals will, you know,
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I remember saying the very same type of things before I started realizing where the inconsistencies in my theology were.
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And I started looking at what it means to talk about Christ atoning for the sins of every human being and ignoring the concept of election and predestination and things like that.
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But then you get to that last part and it's like, whoops! Whoa, wait a minute. Because as soon as you introduce this concept of universal atonement that does not actually bring about any propitiation, and you open that door, see how the whole thing falls apart?
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Because, see, part of this was right on. Union with Christ, being hidden in him, but who is it that's united with him?
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And why is it that when the Father looks at us, he doesn't see our sin? Well, because the imputation issue, which wasn't coming up there with a whole lot of clarity.
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See why you need to have that, you know, theology matters. I don't know how anybody can do apologetics and not recognize that what you believe about systematic theology is going to determine how you do apologetics.
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There's no two ways about it. Seeing only Jesus, he renders a verdict of innocence. And this innocent verdict is then applied to all who are hid in Christ.
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All the believers. The elect, actually. And once the verdict has been rendered, once you have been declared innocent, there is nothing that can happen that will ever cause
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God to reverse his judgment. Because you possess the righteousness of Christ.
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Let's get the whole thing in there. We're only operating on half the cylinders here if we don't get the positive aspect in as well as the negative aspect.
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After all, you are hid in Christ. You will often hear
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Romans 8, verses 1 and 2 quoted to you. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
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For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death.
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There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
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See, these folks will say, once we are in Christ, we cannot be condemned.
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And why would they say that once we are in Christ, you cannot be condemned? What's the reason for that?
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I mean, they need to be pressed on the consistency of their assertion as well, because they will. I mean, you're going to hear evangelicals quoting
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Romans 8, but why? What's the background? What's the foundation?
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How do you fit that together with the concept of universal atonement and a theoretical propitiation that isn't a real propitiation?
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See, that's where the consistency part comes in, and if you don't have it, the wheels fall off.
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Now, I want you to listen to this following quote, and it's written in your booklets there. I put it in your booklets because it's an important quote, and I thought you ought to have it in front of you even after you leave the talk tonight.
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This quote is a very good summary of the doctrine of once saved, always saved.
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Now, of course, the question is, where does it come from? Here's a good summary statement. I pulled this off the
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Internet. Now, don't get me wrong.
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We all pull things off the Internet. I pull things off the Internet every day. But I've never written a book about Roman Catholicism and said,
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Hey, I got all these books here up on my shelf. Actually, I don't have any shelves yet, but I will.
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I will soon, won't I, Eddie? There's going to be shelves someday, won't there? Yes, Eddie's here. The captain is in the house.
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I don't know what you're doing in there, but you're driving me nuts. You've been sitting there typing on the keyboard, but I don't see you saying anything in channel.
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So I'm sort of wondering if you're like formatting the hard drives, installing viruses. I mean, we've really got to trust you to let you sit there.
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Yeah, pulling all the stuff out, destroying the dividing line. I'm actually sitting here talking to myself. It's a little bit scary.
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We could have had you screen the calls, too. That would have been sort of fun, too. Anyway, now you see you've got me completely thrown off as to what in the world
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I was talking about. So I guess we'll just let him finish talking for a second. It's an evangelical Protestant writing to a
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Catholic. Oh, yeah, okay. Internet, Internet. Pull things off the Internet. I've never written a book about Roman Catholicism.
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I've got all these books on my shelves about all these dogmatic cans. We don't need dogmatic cannons and decrees.
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We don't need to quote Vatican 1. We don't need to quote Trent or Vatican 2 because we can just get it off the
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Internet. I'm sorry, but it does seem that the standards are a little bit different at times, and it would be nice if the guy's name was given, you know, some foundation upon which to say, well, okay, he represents this particular perspective, you know, but it's just this is representative of all of Protestantism.
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Quote, however, it is not merely from the Levitical laws that we were discharged, but also from the moral ones.
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Whoa, what? Immediately you've just entered into an area where there's all sorts of discussion amongst
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Protestants, but this is just going to be thrown out there, and it's going to be repeated over and over again. We're discharged from the moral law. We're discharged from the moral law.
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What does that mean? If you don't discuss Christ's fulfillment of the law, if you do not discuss his, and here you get into an argument right now in regards to people who deny the active obedience, passive obedience distinction in the righteousness subdued to us.
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I don't know how they are actually going to deal with this either, but if you don't talk about these type of things, it makes no sense at all.
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And so to miss that, to me, means that Mr. Martinoni is really dealing with a very surface level understanding of the positions that he's denying and hasn't really been challenged yet, or at least listened to the challenges yet, on a much more serious level.
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God only has one law. Does that mean we can sin freely? No, for God hates sin, and if we love
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God, we will live according to his commandments. However... And why will we do so?
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What is the source of this love? Of course, the whole source is regeneration.
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The whole source is what God has done within us. He's made us into new creatures.
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That is the whole issue that needs to be addressed. And unfortunately, like I said in the introduction, yeah, there are certain levels of this particular discussion that are not overly relevant to us, but this is the kind of stuff you're going to run into in talking to Roman Catholics, and you need to be prepared to take it to a higher level and challenge these folks.
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Well, thank you for listening to Dividing Line today. We made it through a second program solo, and Lord willing,
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I can see him in channel, Rich is going to be back next week, and that means we can actually take phone calls, and who knows?
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Maybe Charles the liver -hearted brave guy will call in, or Bob Ross, or some of those troublemakers out there, but then again, they probably won't, because, well, that's not the way to do things.
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But anyway, we'll take phone calls, continue our discussion of Mr. Martignone, and who knows?
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Maybe Dave Hunt will come up with something. Maybe something will develop in the Cantor situation. I don't know, but we'll see you next week here on The Dividing Line.
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I believe we're standing at the crossroads Discontent for the faith our fathers fought for We need a new reformation day
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59:45
World Wide Web at aomin .org, that's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.