Today on the DL

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 1 -800 -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.

Upcoming Conference, Cruise, and the Resurrection of Christ

And to the strains of Steve Camp's run to the battle, which I was, there's a bunch of people in channel saying the same thing. I can't hear run to the battle anymore without expecting to hear Rich's voice.

I'm not sure what Steve would think about that, but hey, he played that for us, and I thought that was great on the cruise before last. And speaking of such things, well, first of all, I have a warning for all lamers.

That's L-A-M-E-R-S. That's an I-R-C description of people who are lame. Not that they can't walk or something like that, but that they're sort of a waste of bandwidth. I have a button now. Not one of these buttons.

I can sort of just turn myself like that. See, that's a cough button. I've had that for a while, and that's necessary at certain times of the year. But I now have, oh wow, now there's all sorts of blinking lights.

I now have the button of power, in fact, multiple buttons of power right here at my fingertips. I no longer have to take the time to type out a note to someone on the other side of the wall that says, dump this guy or something like that.

I can now bring people on the air all by myself with much power and ability. So now those of you who've been saying that I cut everybody off on the radio or on the dividing line, the webcast, now I can actually do it.

I figure if you're going to accuse me of it, why not? That's sort of fair. So we have the button of power that is available to me. And with that button of power, I am now going to blow up the entire system that Rich has put together by bringing Mike O 'Fallon on the line with me.

Oh, the green light turns to red. That's cool. Hi, Mike.

How are you, sir?

I've got a new gadget, so I'm very happy. I'm very easy to please when it comes to gadgets. It's sort of a sad thing, really, when you think of it. It has lights and different colors. I'm OK.

I'm the life of a techie.

The life of a techie. Well, that's something, brother, I don't think you have to worry too much.

No, no. Unfortunately, no. I'm the caveman in those GEICO commercials, you know.

Oh, man. I thought that was the ugly house-buying dude or something. GEICO has the little gecko.

Ah, OK. So, anyway, I've got to do another point now.

He doesn't get out much, Mike. You have to.

So, Mike, you know, I put on the blog this morning that we were going to announce who was going to be on, and then someone pointed out this. If you just looked over to the right of the page, it had the names right there.

A big announcement, ladies and gentlemen.

I'm really good at this stuff.

There's no attention to the right-hand side.

Well, you know, the sad thing is, I bet you there are people tuning in, I wonder who it's going to be, because they didn't notice it. They didn't look.

Yes, and to those of you that are actually on right now, please don't PM either one of us while we're talking.

Well, I can handle it, because, you know, I can multitask. I'm a Windows system. You're DOS 3 .1, man, all the way.

As if I even know what that means. Anyway, I guess I've gotten you into a nice, fine mess here.

Oh, why's that?

This coming August.

It looks like it.

Yeah, that's, I guess, the reason why we're on, but at least I'm on. But we have something really incredible to announce to folks this afternoon. And if you are someone who has considered going to the conference or to the cruise, kind of sitting on the fence, I think we have a real good reason why you should be with us.

And this really is a historic event, I think, in a lot of ways. But, James, I don't know enough about Dr. James Renahan. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about him.

Well, you know, as you know, and I'll make this very clear here, the first person that I thought of when we began asking ourselves the question, all right, who would we like to? Well, first, it was just who would we like to speak at the conference in Seattle?

And the first thought across my mind is I would really want to get Jim Renahan involved. The reason being, of course, I had the opportunity a couple years ago of going over to Westminster Seminary in Escondido, where Dr. Renahan is a professor.

He is the head of the Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies, and probably certainly one of the preeminent Reformed Baptist scholars today. Obviously, being entrusted with the Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies and those precious young men who are studying there, a very high calling.

And yet, I've also had the opportunity of being in Dr. Renahan's home and meeting his family. And last year, we had the opportunity to have Jim Renahan preach in our church. It was during the ARBCA conference here in the valley.

It's very rare I ever hear anyone preach at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church other than Don Fry, because if Don Fry is not preaching, I'm preaching. So, it's very, very rare that we have anyone other than the Elders of our own congregation preaching.

And if there is someone else preaching, that means neither myself nor Don Fry is there that day. Either he's ill or it's one of his very, very, very rare vacations. And so, Dr. Renahan came and spoke for us on a Sunday morning on Revelation 4 and 5.

And I have recommended that folks listen to this. I had linked to it. I hope it's still on PRBC's website. I should have checked before I mentioned this. But he spoke from Revelation chapters 4 and 5.

And it was just wonderful. I was so blessed. It was so clear. It was so compelling. Just wonderfully, wonderfully done. I really, truly enjoyed it. And so, once I heard that, and of course, I'd heard him speak on historical subjects at Westminster itself when I was speaking there.

And so, I wanted to have him there. Then when this opportunity came up, I really thought, you know, there would be such a wonderful opportunity here to have Dr. Renahan with us. And of course, he's currently on sabbatical in England, where I'll be going next month, but not to do what he's doing.

And so, he's been very gracious to agree to be with us. So, I think it's going to be a wonderful opportunity to hear this discussion. And the discussion, of course, we're talking about here, specifically on the ship in regards to the resurrection of Christ.

Just a wonderful addition. And I've been talking to folks, and people are really starting to get the idea. You know what? This is something I've always wanted to do. I've always wanted to go to Alaska.

I've always wanted this cruise. Sounds like it is the best cruise you can do in Alaska, if you really want to see glaciers and things like that. And I want to go with Christians. I want to have the opportunity of Christian fellowship.

I want to hear Steve Camp sing. I want to have presentations on the ship with Christian people that I'm in harmony with. And to just throw the frosting on the top of the debate in Seattle, and then that discussion on board has gotten a lot of folks excited.

I mean, there's just no two ways about it. And so, I'm really looking forward to having Dr. Renahan on the ship with us. He's a wonderful man of God, a very personable fellow, much nicer than I am. And so, after this year, I will no longer be invited to my own cruises, and other people will take over at that point.

Well, we really, I think, need to help folks understand it. You recall the debate between William Lane Craig and Dr. Preston a few years ago, which I believe was a written debate, if I'm not mistaken.

Actually, that is available. I'm just going to go ahead and tell everybody. That is available in recorded form at equip .org. CRI makes that available. And it's also in written form from Baker Academic Books.

It's sitting on my shelf here.

I think one of the issues that came up out of that was that there was some talk and so forth that the issue of the resurrection was not really addressed by the side of those who are part of the Westar Institute and the Jesus Seminar.

And Dr. Borg, I think, did engage in the back of that book, if I recall correctly, in a discussion about the resurrection to some extent, but did not answer all the questions that I believe were given to him.

So, this is an opportunity to really have a one-two punch. Number one, to discuss the historical Jesus School. And I use that term only in the sense in which they mean it. Where they are approaching and saying, well, you know, there's certainly some reason to doubt the scriptural account of Jesus of Nazareth, etc., if we even need to call him Jesus of Nazareth, and also then, of course, denying or taking a different look at or a different approach to the resurrection account as presented in the scriptures.

There's both of these issues that have been, I think, the foundational issues in regard to the Jesus Seminar and their approach. I think that we have the opportunity on this particular conference and cruise to deal with these two main foundational issues.

And that's never been done before of this sort, of this kind, between scholars. In the past 10, 15 years that the Jesus Seminar has been around, not that I can recall. James, did you want to follow up on that?

I was just going to mention on page 122 of Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? A debate between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan. You have Marcus Borg's section, actually, it begins on page 117.

And you have the statement, it says, it will come as no surprise to learn that my own position is quite similar to Crossan's. Put simply, it seems to me that whether something happened to the corpse of Jesus is irrelevant to the truth of Easter.

And then he gives three reasons for why he says that that's the case. And so, obviously, a very foundational difference in approach from every angle. I mean, not only from the historical foundation of the Gospels themselves, but from a theological perspective in regards, of course, to, well, every aspect of Christian faith.

Christ's resurrection is the promise of my resurrection. So you can't have the promise of the Christian view of resurrection if you do not have the resurrection of Christ. And so on and so forth. There's just so many things there that come into it.

And so you had mentioned that it's actually toward the middle of that particular little.

Book.

And I think people are going to be, certainly, I would encourage people, those who have already made the decision they're going to attend, and they're going to be there at the conference, they're going to be on the cruise, or just the conference, if that's all they can do.

Certainly, we have a number of people who are going to do that as well, of course, that they read ahead. I think someone who would take the time, and in fact, what I'll end up doing is I'll end up putting a reading list out, probably a few months before the cruise, for people who want to read ahead.

People who read ahead will get much more out of the encounter because of their self-preparation, as anyone would. I mean, even if you take the time to read the sermon passage prior to showing up to church on Sunday morning, if you happen to know where you're going to be, you're going to be a step ahead of somebody who hasn't.

And so I'm hoping that folks will show up that will do that little bit of extra work, and will be excited as a result in going back into their communities, maybe going back in their colleges, especially.

I really hope to see some young college folks. I can't tell you how often I have young college people telling me about their constant battles with people who promote the Jesus Seminar type materials within their classes.

In fact, we just had a college-age young man leave channel to go to class, and one of the things that's going to happen in the class, I believe it was today, it might be tomorrow, is a discussion about his openly stating class he was a Christian.

Now everybody's going to be coming down upon him like a ton of bricks. There's so many of our brothers and sisters in the Lord who are young, who are in that type of situation. My hope and prayer, of course, is this will help to equip them as well.

Well, and I think one thing that we need to bring up about this is those of you that are really looking forward to hearing the debate between Dr. White, Dr. Renahan, and then Dr. Casson and Dr. Borg on the resurrection, and if those of you are thinking, well, I'll wait for the DVD or for the MP3 to come out on audio.

Rich, are you on? Do you have any news about that?

Well, first of all, we're going to get that DVD out on the debate itself as quickly as possible, but folks need...

The debate itself in Seattle.

Right, in Seattle. Back up, I'm sitting here pushing buttons and stuff like that. Refresh me. Did I understand you correctly? You were talking about Seattle?

Well, I was talking about the debate on the ship.

Okay, all right.

Yeah, I was going to get there. Sorry.

Take a deep breath.

But as far as the CDs and the DVDs for the debate in Seattle, we're going to get those out as quickly as we possibly can, but folks need to understand something, and that is that the debate and the discussion that occurs on board ship is not going to be recorded.

And so if you want to witness a historic interaction between four scholars from two totally different paradigms, you need to be on board that ship. And so not only is this an excellent opportunity to go see Alaska, this is also going to be an awesome apologetic opportunity that those who will be on board that ship will have the unique opportunity to be able to see and hear for themselves, because it's not going to be distributed.

And also there's the possibility, because we might be actually having this debate, we will be having it on board, is that if it's held in one of the lounges there, that the non-reform side could get really interesting by the end of it.

But no, we do have the opportunity to have all—.

Is there some way of editing that out, Rich?

We're going to have to do that, yeah.

Is there a dump button somewhere on this thing? Where's the delay? Where's the delay?

Dr. Weiss is going to continue buying drinks. Could you guys link another one there before we get on to the next subject?

Okay, well, it's just all got canceled, folks. Never mind. It's over with. We're going to be pulling away from the doc waving at Mike as he stands on the dock.

Bye, Mike!

Have a nice day!

No, anyway.

So in Seattle, though, folks, we do need to tell you, we are in the preparations now of starting our advertising in the Seattle area for the debate between Dr. White and Dr. Casson.

And we have about, what, $12 to advertise? Is that the budget?

A little more than that. We will. I think that we are both anticipating, and we have already been, the time that Dr. White had put on his blog about the debate occurring and the conference occurring, we were flooded with emails.

Yeah, this came together so fast.

Yes, that debate we anticipate selling out. And we anticipate it selling out quickly.

Yeah, and by the way, the order page, the shopping cart, has just been put online from the main page at amn .org. You did that just before we went on the air. So people know about that.

Right.

In other words, you can get tickets now. Is that what you're saying?

You can get tickets. We also have the offers. And for those of you that are students or of resources and funds to be able to do things like this with other ministries, we are giving you the opportunity to really get in on some great deals.

Before May 31st, if you reserve a room at the Seattle Marriott, you can get in for free.

Do you mean March 31st?

Excuse me, March 31st, pardon me.

Correction.

We'll have to edit that as well. But March 31st, if you sign up in the room before that date, you will be able to get in for free. That's something that we're trying to say. We'll do everything we can to make this affordable to you.

It's not just a question of Alpha and Omega is not trying to use us as a profit generating deal. We're all we're trying to do is make sure that we're able to cover our costs, but we're going to do everything possible to be able to extend those deals to you, especially if you're someone who's faithful in supporting Alpha and Omega Ministries or you're in the chat channel.

Sure that we give everyone the opportunity to be a part of this historic event and a conference is going to be fantastic as well. So you have Dr. Renahan, you have Dr. White, you have Steve Camp is going to be talking in the conference with possibly another person to be added in in the near future.

Just something that you really want to make sure you're a part of. If you're planning on going to any this year and you're paying oodles and oodles of money just to get into the door, consider ours because we're not going to do that to you.

Not only that, but this is going to have a substantial amount of edification going on for the Reformed believer as well as for those that are really battling with some of the issues in the Bible. This is really going to give you an opportunity to be under some incredible teaching to get some things clear and to be able to prepare yourself apologetically.

It's almost like a year's worth of seminaries in a week and a half.

It is a tremendous opportunity and it's tremendously exciting to see this all coming together. But basically, Mike, what you're saying is don't be one of those folks that puts it off to the last second because you might discover at the last second that that's not going to.

Work for you.

Well, I think both Rich and I would both agree that if you put your hotel room off for very long, you might find yourself just not being able to go.

Yeah, absolutely, and I want to emphasize the fact that as quickly as this came around, we didn't have the shopping cart ready. We didn't have a lot of the behind-the-scenes particulars, and both Mike and I have been getting absolutely hammered with people saying, how do I get my tickets?

I want my tickets now. How do I get on board? So folks, I'm really emphasizing here, don't delay. If you want to get in on this and the time to do it is now. If you wait, I can guarantee it's going to be a sold-out room and you're not going to be able to participate in it.

We have cheap sound effects here.

We're trying to say this so we don't disappoint anybody. We really want to make sure that everybody that are going to be there, because I'm telling you, I don't think that this, especially at debate, is going to be sold.

I think that Dr. Croissant is going to have a tremendous amount of supporters there as well. So you think about Seattle and the Northwest, that's not a real Reformed Christian, Evangelical Christian-friendly area.

Could be a very one-sided audience, and it could be the other side.

Right, I mean, some people are going to be taking the night off from embracing trees and coming down.

Or bring your tree.

Exactly.

Buy a ticket for your tree.

We sold how many tickets to the Doug Wilson debate yesterday?

Yeah, we did. I mean, you think about how many people that we had at the Wilson debate, and I think we would have made that crowd at about 700 or so. The capacity is 600.

Yeah, you better get to it now.

Yeah, absolutely.

No two ways about it.

Make sure you get your tickets.

All right. Okay.

We'll let Centurion go ahead and ask his question, and we look forward to seeing you guys in August.

All right.

Thanks a lot, man.

Take care.

God bless.

Bye-bye.

All right.

That was Michael Fallon, who arranges all this stuff and is the go-getter. And so if you've enjoyed the cruises and you've enjoyed the debates in the past, going all the way back, the first debate was the Syngenis debate on papal infallibility in Tampa.

Actually, Clearwater. But that's how far back that goes. So if you've enjoyed that, then he's the man to say thank you very much for all of that hard work, because it is a tremendous amount of hard work.

You know, it's funny. I was looking at an email list that normally is just dead quiet. Woke up because Chris Arnson posted an announcement about the upcoming debate between myself and Bill Rutland on Long Island on June 9th.

And lo and behold, we have a hyper on the list, a true hyper-Calvinist. I mean, the real type of hyper-Calvinist. I'm not even a Christian to him. If you think any Arminian whatsoever could ever be saved, then you're not a Christian.

Either.

I mean, we are talking the classic kind of internet hyper-Calvinist who has absolutely not the first semblance of grace whatsoever. I mean, the circle this person draws around himself, there's only room for one, and he has to stand on one foot to stay in the circle of the elect.

There's only one person left, and it's him. And one of the things that he was pointing out that proves that I'm not a Christian is the fact that we have to charge for the tickets to the debate on Long Island.

This man obviously will never be invited to do a debate on Long Island. He has no concept of the fact that when you rent a room on Long Island at a place large enough to do it, it's extremely expensive.

They want thousands and thousands of dollars to do this. And it's the only way you can do it. I mean, unless you're just filthy rich and you've got Daddy Warbucks just throwing millions at you, which I guess some people do.

I've not found those folks. And they say, well, you should have it in a church. Well, a lot of times, what church? There are a lot of churches that don't want a Roman Catholic speaking in there. There's a lot of Roman Catholic churches that don't want me speaking in there.

And so it's the nature of things. So it proves that I am not a Christian, because we actually have to pay to have a room. That's I just hyper Calvinist. Just, you know, there's so little similarity between myself and a hyper Calvinist.

It's one of the things that bothers me when I hear critics of Calvinism slipping back and forth between hyper and myself so easily. They have no idea how much hyper Calvinist detest me. I'm the guy that that talks about Calvinism out in the in the marketplace.

I'm on the radio with Chuck Krismeier trying to disabuse this man of the fact that he doesn't understand what Calvinism is. And I don't do it by calling him names. Oh, that's terrible. How dare you do that?

How many people sitting on our channel right now were once opposed to Reformed Theology? And what they needed was someone to come along and explain to them what Reformed Theology actually is. They just didn't know.

They were ignorant. Aren't we glad that we recognize that these hyper Calvinists just simply don't have any clue as to as to what's really going on. They are not Reformed. They are not Calvinist in any way, shape or form.

A Caller on Bible Translations and the Latin Vulgate

So we continue on. Let's see if we can sneak at least one call in before the break. And let's talk with Kev. Hi, Kev, how you doing?

Hey, how you doing, Dr. White?

Doing all right.

Calling you from the land of fruits and nuts.

Yeah, well, we realize that Calvinism is proven true by the fact that there are still Christians in California. And besides that, California and Calvinism start with the same four letters, except for people who think that Calvin is spelled C-A-L-V-A-N.

And those are the folks who come into channel saying that Calvinism is wrong. And we sit around saying we agree. And they get very confused. Isn't this James White's chat channel? Yeah, it is. But I thought he was a Calvinist.

Oh, he's not a Calvinist. No, he's a Calvinist.

They're Armenians, right?

Yeah, that's right. You know, I think Frank did that the first time he came in. I think Frank was talking about Armenians and Calvinism, don't you think?

I think so.

Well, we'll say it was him. And now watch the explosion in channel here in about 22 seconds. Anyways, yes, sir. What's up?

Well, being from California, I have to do the California thing. And apparently I have to give a shout out. That's what we do here, apparently. So I'll give a shout out to the doctrinal ogres in Ridgecrest.

You sound like a Reformed Baptist. Come on, get on with it.

I'm actually calling. It's not my question. I'm calling for a friend of mine who is at work.

Sure, yeah, we've all heard that one before. This isn't really my question. This is someone else's question. I've got this friend.

He's got this Sunday school to teach on Bible translations and whatnot. And of course, I directed him at first to your book, The King James Only Controversy, which is, as far as I know, the best primer on those kind of things out there.

And so he read through that, and he's pretty much ready to go. But he just had a question that he wanted me to ask you. And he said, just ask him in channel. And I thought about that. And I said, yeah, that's what Dr. White wants.

He wants people to just pop in channel and just ask questions, because he's always ready to answer them.

Oh, yes, always.

And so, of course, I thought better of him. And I thought, why not set an example and call in the dividing line?

Indeed.

All those in channel right now would do well to note this. You probably want the question before the break.

That would help.

OK, he wants to know what texts were used to translate the Vulgate. And would the Vulgate more closely resemble, say, a majority text or a critical text approach?

Well, that's an interesting question. Because the fact that one of the key issues that got Erasmus in trouble when he produced his own fresh Latin translation along with the Greek, it wasn't just that he had a Greek text, but he had a fresh Latin translation, was Erasmus had recognized through the work of an earlier man by the name of Lorenzo Valla.

Valla had recognized by just thinking about it that, you know what? Handwriting produces errors. It produces problems. And so the Latin Vulgate is now, if we put it around the year 400 approximately, is now over 1 ,100 years old.

And therefore, there's probably been some changes due to transcriptional errors over time. Now, Valla would not put his conclusions about this in print, because he would have been burned as a heretic.

That's the way things were at the time. But what Valla did is he reasoned, you know what? Jerome's commentaries that he writes after translating the Vulgate would obviously use the Vulgate. He'd be using his own translation.

So if I find differences between his commentaries, which are not going to be transcribed nearly as often as the text itself is, then that's evidence that there has been a change. And of course, he went and did that study.

And lo and behold, there were differences. And most of the differences were errors that had crept into the transmission of the Vulgate over time. So the Vulgate that Rome finally... I mean, you're probably familiar with the fact that Pope Sixtus tried to come up with an infallible version of the Vulgate.

And that was a major whoops. And so Rome has recognized they've had to engage in textual critical study of the Latin Vulgate just as much as anyone else. Now, as far as its background goes, it is a mixture because Jerome is working in the Palestinian area, basically.

And it doesn't follow any one particular text type. And different books of the New Testament will be influenced more or less, depending on what kind of manuscripts Jerome had available to him for that.

So it's not just one kind. It's not a slavish reproduction of the Byzantine or something like that. There's Caesarean readings in it, and there's Alexandrian readings in it. But it's mainly part of what's called the Western text that lies behind the Latin Vulgate, as far as what we would identify the Greek text that end up predominantly appearing in Jerome's work.

OK.

All right.

That sounds good enough to me.

OK, man. Make sure to tell your friend about that.

I'll tell him to listen when he can.

Ah, OK.

I think he's going to have to catch the archive.

There you go. Oh, you can't repeat all that to him?

Oh, you know, I was going to try, but...

I'm sure you can.

...wonders of modern technology.

All right, man.

Thanks a lot.

Thanks a lot.

All right, God bless.

Bye-bye.

877 -753 -3341. I have all sorts of flashing lights on my new toy thing over here. And we're going to get to all of you after we take our break. At least, I think we're taking a break today.

I mean, I...

Oh, there's Keith singing. Keith knew what was going...

Keith!

There's Steve singing. Steve knew what was going on before I did. We're going to take our break. We'll be right back right after this.

...righteousness, you know. Can I manufacture grace? Myself and I in some religious place.

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

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

All this and at prices beginning at $624 per person, plus port taxes and fees, half the price of other offerings to Alaska with other groups. Contact us today at aomen .org or at 877-SOV-CRUISE. Answering those who claim that only the King James Version is the word of God, James White in his book, The King James Only Controversy, examines allegations that modern translators conspired to corrupt scripture and lead believers away from true Christian faith.