Regeneration and Perseverance (White vs Wilkin)

This lecture series is named after one of the great Christian heroes of American church history, namely Dr. Warfield. He was a tireless defender of the Reformed faith and a great scholar. Though dead, the truths that he held so dear live on in many churches today.

I would like to acknowledge the contributions of some other organizations, namely KQCB that has given us a number of radio talks as we came down to this time, as well as the Meijer School of Business here at OCU.

Perhaps the most important tele-announcement of this evening is where the restrooms are. If you go out into the foyer, to the north there are some double doors. If you go through those double doors and turn right or east, conversely, if you turn to the south, there are some double doors.

And likewise, turn back to your left and you'll find the restrooms. If you would, please turn your cell phones off so we will not detract from our speakers. This evening we're delighted to have and welcome to Oklahoma City Dr. Bob Wilkin, who comes to us from Dallas and is the Executive Director of Grace Evangelical Society.

Dr. James White is from Phoenix and is the Director of the Alpha and Omega Ministries. Their respective positions are on the overhead to your respective front, and of course they will fill those out for you as they speak.

We are capturing the audio, and you will be able to recover that yourselves on either my website, GraceModels .org, or their websites. The rules here are quite simple. We're going to follow the stated agenda.

We've got some indicators and stopwatches for our respondents to follow. Given their relative size to me, I ask them to stop. I would ask you to refrain from any applause so as not to detract from an already ambitious agenda.

Lastly, in many respects, since both of these men profess to be Christian, to belong to the Church of Christ, even though they are going to contend very earnestly in their respective positions, I know they will do so with great charity.

I would ask that you adopt that same stance as well. It is always good in the Christian faith that we contend for the truth, that we express charity and love. It is my desire as the moderator that we follow the agenda.

It's my desire that the Scripture be clearly presented, and of course that the truth will prevail. If you have a question that comes to your mind, there are some three-by-five cards out in the foyer.

Wipe them out and turn them in to the ladies and gentlemen out there. And we'll collect those up and try to get to as many of them as we possibly can during the time allowance. Before we begin with Dr. White, let us bow our heads in that way.

Lord, we recall the great prayer from the Scripture, sanctify us by the truth. Thy word is truth. In God's grace, we ask it. Amen.

James White: Regeneration Precedes Faith in the Ordo Salutis

It is indeed a pleasure to be with you this evening. I thank you for coming out for this very important subject tonight. I hope that you will be blessed by this discussion. I hope that this discussion only begins your interest in the subject.

I hope that for many of you this evening, you'll be going home, and you will be looking in your Bibles, not just tonight, but for quite some time to come. I come here this evening as an elder of a reformed Baptist church, one who believes firmly in what are often called the doctrines of grace, and as one who believes that these issues are not merely areas of small disagreement that can be glossed over, but are instead central to how we define the gospel, the church, and the very purpose of our existence.

Our debate this evening, sadly, is very brief, and we will have little opportunity to expand upon many points that I'm sure both Dr. Wilkin and I would like to treat much more fully. Our debate this evening truly touches upon the foundational differences between a reformed Calvinistic theology and a non-reformed, non-lordship position.

I believe a disciplined, full-orbed, consistent exegesis of the text of Scripture, and Scripture alone, teaches us that the triune God is glorifying himself through the redemption of a people in Christ Jesus, a people who are zealous for good deeds.

I believe salvation is all of the Lord, and that we err grievously when we look at it from the underside, from the human perspective, rather than seeing it first and foremost as having its focus upon God's glory, God's freedom.

I firmly believe the only consistent reading of the entirety of Scripture reveals that men are dead in their sins, unwilling and unable to come to Christ in faith, outside of the drawing of the Father, and that the Spirit of God must raise all such sinners to spiritual life before they can exercise that saving faith that is natural to the reborn soul.

But I need to emphasize at the beginning this evening that unless you are familiar with the unique position of non-lordship salvation presented by Dr. Wilkin, you may well misunderstand much of what is said this evening.

I have taken the time to read Dr. Wilkin's book, Confident in Christ, and to examine relevant journal articles in the Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society, and if you are here this evening coming from a Reformed background, I need to provide a very, very brief synopsis of key issues that directly impact our topic this evening so as to avoid confusion.

These are citations on the screen in front of you from Confident in Christ, page 19. None of us would ever seek God if left purely to our own initiative. But since God is seeking each and every one of us, we are free to respond to the light God gives us.

Also on page 21, Jesus paid the complete penalty for our sins by his death on the cross. It made us savable, and the italics are in the original. Please note the difference between viewing the death of Christ as substitutionary in the sense of with the elect, which affirms and brings about something and making us savable depending upon what we do in regards to an act of faith.

Page 21 says, The gospel simply stated is this, By virtue of his death, burial, and resurrection, Jesus Christ gives eternal life to anyone who just believes in him for it. If you are convinced of this, you have believed the gospel.

Whether it seems too simple or not, that is the gospel. Though it doesn't include turning from sins, commitment of life, and doing good works, that is the gospel. And finally, as far as just to give you an idea of what the non-lordship position is, so you can hear the word faith as it is being used tonight, quote, none of us, I'm sorry, none of us can be sure that our experience of faith will remain intact until we go to be with the Lord.

Not all believers successfully navigate their way through this life. Yet God guarantees all believers eternal life, even those who suffer shipwreck concerning the faith, 1 Timothy 1 .19. There is no time requirement on saving faith.

At the moment of faith, the believer receives eternal life once and for all, whether he dies shortly thereafter, whether he lives for 100 more years, even if a person believes only for a while, he still has eternal life.

So we are not engaging the normal Calvinist-Arminian debate over the ordo salutis, the order of salvation this evening, for not even the remonstrants went so far as to say that repentance was in fact unnecessary.

And surely the reformers never defined sola fide in this fashion either, as we will see later. Now, to establish my point, I must establish the following truths as being ground in biblical revelation so as to establish the relevant portion of the ordo salutis, this first portion of our debate.

That is, regeneration precedes faith. To prove this, I must present the free sovereign decree of God to save and elect people. Secondly, the deadness of man in sin. Thirdly, the inability of man to believe because of the number two.

And fourth, saving faith as the gift of God. Now, if in fact God has sovereignly chosen to glorify himself through the free, gracious redemption of a people in Christ, then it follows that his work will answer to man's situation, to man's need.

Therefore, since the Bible says we are dead in our trespasses and sins, incapable of coming to Christ on our own, then the work of the Spirit of God in regeneration will need to provide us that which we need, including the gifts of faith and repentance, the two sides of the one coin that represents the response of the reborn soul to Christ.

Faith in him, a turning from sin, that sin that nailed him to Calvary's tree. Now, I believe that God freely chooses to save and elect people. Though outside our strict subject this evening, the fact is that disbelief is part of what separates the two sides tonight.

At the most basic level, the freedom of God to save is what separates monergists from synergists and leads to our differences in other areas as well. A monergist, a person who believes that there is one effective power or source that brings about salvation, a synergist believing that there is a cooperation.

Even if it's a cooperation of a big, huge force and a very small force, it is still a matter of cooperation. Now, the fact that God has chosen in eternity past, Ephesians chapter 1 verses 4 through 12, to save a specific people in Christ Jesus and in him alone is clearly the testimony of scripture.

Those who are thusly elected in time through the instrumentality of the Holy Spirit believe, that is the message of Ephesians chapter 1 as you follow it through, God's eternal choice results in our faith in time.

It is not God looking down the corridors of time and acting according to what he sees us doing. That is never the meaning of the verb to foreknow when God is the subject. Our belief is the result of God's eternal actions.

In the same way, in the golden chain of redemption, in Romans chapter 8 verses 28 to 30, this golden chain tells us that those who are predestined are also called, justified, and glorified. Since justification is by faith, faith itself cannot be a wild card in the salvation of the elect, but a part of the work of God itself.

The Lord Jesus taught that he would save a particular people given to him by the Father and that he would not lose a single one of them in John chapter 6 verses 37 through 39. In fact, he said it was the Father's will for him that he would not lose any of those who were given to him.

Likewise, eternal life is given to all whom the Father has given to the Son, John chapter 17 verse 2. That is important to remember, for it's going to be asserted that, well, you believe any act of belief results in eternal life.

But it is interesting that in Jesus' own prayer in John 17, he indicates that he gives eternal life to those whom the Father gave him. Well, what does that mean? Well, one side has said, well, that means the Father looked down the corridors of time and does what he does based upon what he foresees.

The Bible teaches that the reason I come to Christ is because I've been given to the Father, I've been drawn by the Father to the Son, and that is why God is glorified in the salvation of undeserving, elect sinners.

Reformed theology teaches that the result of the divine electing grace of God is the perfect salvation of all those thusly chosen. But since salvation is also said to be by grace through faith, faith itself cannot, unless salvation is uncertain and election conditional, be anything other than a part of the work of the Spirit in regeneration.

The flip side of divine election relevant to this matter is the deadness of man in sin. The Lord Jesus plainly taught, no one is able to come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.

No man has the ability in and of himself to come to Christ. Because of the slavery to sin, no man has this capacity. And further, not all are effectively drawn by the Father to the Son. If it is your bent to immediately go from John 6 to John 12 to try to get around what Jesus says here, please realize something.

All those who are drawn by the Father to the Son are raised up by the Son in John 6, 44. There is no distinction there. So if you are going to try to say, well, God the Father draws all men, well, then you're sort of stuck being a universalist.

All men are going to be saved. They're going to be raised up by Jesus Christ, which means to give eternal life. Ephesians 2, verses 1 -4 teaches that we are dead in our trespasses and sins. In Romans 8, Paul presents the contrast between being in the Spirit and being in the flesh, and this is not a discussion about kinds of Christians.

He also tells us there is none who seeks for God, Romans 3, 11, and the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, 1 Corinthians 2, verse 14. These are not exactly flattering descriptions, but they are honest descriptions of man in his sin.

Man's fallen spiritual state results in his inability to do the very thing that brings salvation, believe, come. Anyone coming to me, as Jesus said in John 6? Looking to Christ, John 6, 40. Note Jesus' words as to the impact of sin.

Jesus answered them, Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear my word. He who is of God hears the words of God.

For this reason you do not hear them, because you are not of God. This passage reverses the standard Arminian order that all men can hear if they just choose to do so, that all can understand if they simply choose to do so, but Jesus teaches in a very different fashion.

Lydia, likewise, illustrates the necessary action of the Spirit of God prior to the response of the sinner. Remember the words in Acts 16, 14. A woman named Lydia from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics, a worshiper of God.

She was one who attended the synagogue services, though not a full proselyte, was listening, and the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul. Why would that have to be? Why would God have to act in this particular fashion to open her heart to respond if it is simply within the capacity of all men?

Earlier, Paul had experienced this divine work firsthand. Acts 13, 48 says, When the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.

It's not they believed and therefore were appointed to eternal life. It is many as had been appointed to eternal life believed. The scriptural testimony to the necessity of a specific, effective work of grace prior to faith is wide indeed.

Now, saving faith is described as the gift of God in numerous ways. Thanks is given for the faith of the saints along with their love, showing that these are gifts of God. Faith is said to come through Christ, and we are said to believe through him.

Our faith in him is specifically said to be granted to us in Philippians 1, 29. That is why Ephesians 2, 8 through 9 can include faith along with grace and salvation as a gift from God. But, as time is very, very fleeting and has gone by very, very quickly, at least for me, maybe not for you, let's get to the heart of the matter.

I'd like to present the Apostle John in 1 John as a prime witness for this particular section of the debate, and that is the fact that regeneration precedes the exercise of saving faith. The Apostle John spoke of the one who is born of God in these words.

1 John 2, 29. If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of him. So I ask you a question. What is the relationship between practices righteousness and is born of him?

What is the relationship between those particular terms? You see, we see from everything that's come before the foundation of why Reformed theologians believe the sinner must be raised to spiritual life before he or she can exercise that rich divine act called saving faith.

The dead sinner enslaved to sin, opposed in heart and mind to God with every sinew and breath, suppressing the knowledge of God, is hardly a candidate to believe savingly in the Savior. Such a person will not desire to be joined to Christ, to abide in him, to look to him for all spiritual sustenance, to love him rather than the world.

Joining these truths, the fact that faith is described as a gift given to the elect, and man's inherent inability to believe savingly outside the special work of the Spirit in their lives, and the necessity of regeneration to precede and provide the basis of saving faith is plainly seen and established.

But looking at a passage like this, asking the one question, what is the relationship? Does one practice righteousness so as to become born again? You see, in 229, practice is righteousness is literally the one doing.

It's a present tense participle. Obviously, one does not do righteousness so as to be born of God. One does righteousness because one has already been born of God, and this is the natural reading of the Greek as well, for has been born of him is a perfect passive verb.

Now, you say, what does that have to do with faith? Notice the relationship and follow these along. Now, notice here, 1 John 4, 7, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

Once again, as in 229, a present tense participle, the one loving, is connected to has been born of God. Do we love so as to become born of God, or do we love because we have already been reborn? Hopefully, no one here this evening is confused into thinking that the biblical message is you do works of righteousness to be born again.

You do acts of love so as to be born again. So what is John's consistent testimony? That this being born of God, the things that these people are doing right now, they're loving, they're doing acts of righteousness, the reason they're doing those things is because they have been born from God.

So that takes us to 1 John 5, 1. Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him. Notice yet once again, what's the relationship between believing and being born of God?

This is a direct parallel to the first two. The believing is the ongoing action, being born of God, the perfect passive, and so if in the other two passages being born of God results in our loving, being born of God results in our doing works of righteousness, and John is consistent with himself, then what does 1 John 5, 1 teach?

That being born of God results in our ongoing faith and belief in Him. It is the renewed nature that causes us to continue in our faith. Regeneration precedes saving faith. So what does it matter? If saving faith can be exercised by the spiritually dead person, why does God say He will take out our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh since the heart of stone can savingly believe already?

If a slave can simply choose to be free, was he or she a slave to begin with? And if we are truly spiritually dead, would it have made sense to ask Lazarus to have faith when he was in the grave? Certainly not.

Regeneration, C .H. Spurgeon said, is not a thing which takes place upon matter, it is the thing of spirit. The birth of spirit must be the subject of consciousness, and though a man may not be able to say that at such and such a moment he was regenerated, yet the act of faith is a consciousness of regeneration.

The moment I believe in Jesus Christ, my faith is an index to me of work that has gone on within, and the secret work within and the open act of faith without, God has joined together and let no man put them asunder.

Why does this matter? What is the point? If saving faith is the capacity of the rebel sinner, if saving faith is merely the ability of any person outside the work of the Spirit of God, then why is it that God is the one who is glorified in the salvation of sinners when he simply has made us savable, but he has not himself actually brought about our salvation?

Does he share his glory with the creature, and why is it that you believe tonight, and not the people walking past the window to our right, to your left? Are you better than they? Smarter? Wiser? More spiritual?

If we do not believe this, then we have to say that somehow we ourselves made the decision, and somehow we ourselves are accountable for why we have been saved, and they have not. The Scripture teaches it is God's place, not man's place, to make that decision.

Thank you very much.

Which one is yours? This one here? The one where generation precedes, yeah. Does that come up as a whole? Great. And I advance by just hitting the right arrow? That's correct. You'll just need to...

Start the 20. You hook this on. You just kind of... Jam it on there? Sort of. Okay.

Robert Wilkin: Faith as Conviction and the Assurance of Eternal Life

Our topic this evening, in the first hour, is the question, does regeneration precede faith? According to the Bible, faith is the conviction that something is true. And when we're going to talk about regeneration preceding faith isn't important.

We know what faith is. And unfortunately, when we talk about Dr. White's view of faith, we get an illogical and unbiblical presentation of what faith is. Dr. White's view of faith does not correspond with what the Scriptures say.

And one of the things I like to do when I'm talking with people is I will say, Jesus said, he who believes in me has everlasting life. Do you believe in Jesus? Oftentimes in America, people say yes, right?

And you ask them, do you believe in... They say yes. So I say, well, what do you have? You know, Jesus says, he who believes in me has everlasting life. I don't know. So then I say, well, this isn't rocket science.

You say you believe in Jesus, and Jesus says, John 6, 47, he who believes in me has everlasting life. Oh, oh, well, I see what you're saying. If it was that simple, I'd have everlasting life. Right? But it's not that simple.

Oh? Well, no, you know, if you read the Bible, it's obvious in the Bible there's a whole lot of things God wants us to do, a whole lot of commands, and you've got to keep all these commands in order to make it to heaven.

Well, now, that line of reasoning would not work with Dr. White. With many people, you could argue that way, and the person would say they're not believing what the Bible says because Jesus says, he who believes in me has everlasting life.

They say they believe in him. They don't know they have everlasting life. Obviously, they don't believe what Jesus says. But Dr. White cannot fall into that issue because for Dr. White, Dr. White's issue would be, I don't know if I believe.

In fact, we're going to see tonight that Dr. White is not sure he's born again. He's not sure he has eternal life. He's not sure whether he has temporary faith or permanent faith. He's not sure whether he's elect or not.

He's not sure whether he's a true or a false professor. And yet, he's here debating this subject today because you see, what he would say is, I'm still in the flesh, and I'm committed to Jesus, but what if my commitment isn't enough?

Or worse yet, what if I fall away in the future? I might fall away in the future and prove I never really was born again in the first place. So unfortunately for Dr. White, Dr. White does not know where he stands on the issue of his own eternal destiny.

Let's take a look at a few of the quotes from Dr. White. Last year, on Reformation Day, October 31, 2004, in a message entitled Sola Fide, which I think we all know means by faith alone, he's advocating Paul's view of justification by faith alone, and he was telling people how they could be clear when they evangelize and give Paul's Sola Fide message.

He said, Objection. How do you answer this objection? That sounds too easy. God must demand more of me. Immediately, the next word out of Dr. White's mouth were, quote, Yes, he actually demands all of you.

That's what faith is really all about. Now this is in the Sola Fide message, and he's telling us that faith is not propositional. Faith is a total commitment of your life to Jesus Christ. At the Alpha and Omega Ministries website, on February 28th of this year, Dr. White had a little bit to say about this debate.

Notice what he says. Dr. Wilkin is a leading anti-lordship advocate. That's not the way I advertise myself, but... From my perspective, his position is grossly imbalanced because it insists upon only a single element of the truth to the exclusion of everything else.

He goes on. Faith alone becomes faith separated from the work of regeneration, the spirit, the new nature, let's see, the new nature, etc. Faith without repentance, all repentance passages are consigned to discipleship, belief without discipleship, etc.

It is a very imbalanced perspective, one that comes from an overreaction to a works salvation mindset. A bit later on, he said, keeping Christ's word is surely more than a naked faith. It's interesting.

When I searched his website, I found his statement of faith. Notice this on his statement of faith. As a result of this faith, and he was talking about God's gift of saving faith, based upon the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, God justifies, or makes righteous the one who believes.

Now, the traditional Reformed view is the imputation of righteousness, not the impartation of righteousness. Most Reformed people would say God declares us righteous. That's what justification is. However, at Dr. White's website, they say God makes us righteous.

I believe this is either an error on their website, or it flows out of his view of faith being this really big thing that includes what we believe, and also our commitment, our obedience, our repentance, our turning from sins, our perseverance, etc.

Now, Dr. White's faulty view of faith has four catastrophic consequences, and I'd like to talk about those briefly. First, Dr. White's view of faith garbles the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let's look at some of the statements we just read.

Yes, he actually demands of all of you, that's what faith is really all about. Naked faith, we're told, is not sola fide. Now, that's kind of funny here, because when you think of sola fide, in Latin it means by faith alone.

Wouldn't faith alone be faith alone? But no, we've got to dress up faith with good works in order for it to be biblical faith. I mean, wouldn't sola fide sound an awful lot like naked faith? He also says God justifies or makes righteous the one who believes.

Well, notice what he's saying here is, he does admit that justification is for the one who believes, so belief precedes justification. Belief, in his view, does not precede regeneration, but it precedes justification.

We'll look at this more in a minute, but notice he says it makes righteous, and notice he says it's a very imbalanced perspective, one that comes from an overreaction to a work-salvation mindset. I'm sorry, but when you read the book of Galatians, Paul is real worked up about a work-salvation mindset.

Read Galatians 1, 6 through 9, when Paul anathematizes anyone preaching any other gospel than what he preached, which I take it to mean put them under the curse of God, and Paul's not real thrilled, and in chapter 5 in verse 12, he says, I wish they wouldn't just circumcise, but I wish they would cut everything off.

I mean, the Apostle Paul is real worked up in the book of Galatians over work-salvation mentality, and what Dr. White implies here is it's okay to have a mild reaction to a work-salvation mindset. That I find extremely disturbing.

Secondly, Dr. White's view of faith leads him to believe that regeneration and justification occur at different times. Now this is not typical within Reformed thought, at least the people that I've read.

They say justification and regeneration occur simultaneously. Because if justification is God declaring us righteous, and regeneration is God giving us eternal life, then obviously those would occur together.

But in Dr. White's view, at least from a logical standpoint, you have people who are born again, but who are not righteous. Born again, but they're not declared righteous in God's sight. So you would have unjustified regenerate people.

Does that make sense? It doesn't make sense to me. I don't understand it. Now, why is it that he comes to this position? Well, Dr. White believes that regeneration is not a result of works, which is great.

But Dr. White believes that faith is laced with works so that faith itself, in his view, is meritorious. Are you with me on this? Because this is a crucial point in this debate. He believes faith is work.

Faith is commitment, it's obedience, it's turning from your sins, it's perseverance and good works. So when he loads it all up with works, then he says, aha, regeneration has to precede faith. But then, how is it that he says that justification follows faith?

Now does he believe that justification is by faith, but faith is work, so that's the same as saying justification is by meritorious works, isn't it? I don't understand what's going on here. Because his faith is a work, he's got this justification by works and it's quite confusing.

Three, his view of spiritual deadness is not a biblical understanding of what spiritual deadness is. For example, he likes to talk about various passages in the scriptures that talk about spiritual deadness.

And he implies that spiritual deadness means a person has no spiritual sensitivity whatsoever. For example, you may have heard his allusion to Lazarus coming forth. In many of his debates, he talks about this and says, Lazarus being called by Jesus to come forth from the tomb is an illustration of regeneration preceding faith.

Yet, most Calvinists do not believe that Lazarus coming forth from the tomb is an illustration of regeneration preceding faith. You see, Lazarus was already born again at that point. How is he an illustration of an unregenerate person being regenerated when he's simply a regenerate person being brought back to physical life?

It doesn't make sense. That's eisegesis. That's reading your theology into the text. Also, one of the things Dr. White does not talk about is the Greek words for dead and death, nekros and nekrao. Those words, when they are used metaphorically, that is figuratively in the scriptures, do not literally mean death.

And yet, when you find Dr. White talking about these things, you find him assuming that the audience thinks we're talking about literal death. But, for example, in the scriptures we don't see it this way.

In James 4 .19, we're told that when Abraham conceived a son, his body was quote, already dead. Well, it was dead in the sense that he did not have the ability fully to pull this off. It was ineffective.

His body was ineffective, but it didn't mean that he was lifeless. It didn't mean he wasn't alive, which is what the way Dr. White would press the illustration. Or, for example, in Colossians 3 .5, Paul commands, put to death your members which are on the earth.

That is, don't give power to your flesh, but yield to the Spirit of God. Or, in the Prodigal Son, Luke 15 .24, this my son was dead and is alive again. That is, he was cut off from me in terms of fellowship, and now he's back in fellowship with me again.

The figurative uses of necros and necroo do not refer to total inability. They refer to someone who is ineffective, something that is unprofitable. Now, look at the Ephesians 2 .5 passage. It's interesting that he alluded to this.

Even when we were dead in our trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved. Notice what we have here. Dead is the opposite of being made alive in Ephesians 2 .5. So he could say even when you were unregenerate, he regenerated you.

So death in Ephesians 2 .5 means you did not have eternal life, and he gave you eternal life. It doesn't say anything about whether you have the capacity to believe. It doesn't say anything about spiritual inability.

It just means the person lacks eternal life, and they are dead. But it's used metaphorically in this context to refer to a spiritual death, lack of the life of God. And by the way, notice there's no mention of Lazarus, there's no mention here of dead bodies, no mention of rocks or spiritual insensitivity.

It's interesting that in Ephesians 2 .5, let's see if I have this up here. No, okay, we'll come back to that in a second. In Ephesians 2 .5, he says, Notice he defines what saved is by made alive. Saved in Ephesians 2 .5 is regenerated, made alive.

Well, we'll come back to this more if we have time. It's interesting, in his debate with Pastor Barker, Dr. White said that Nicodemus was led by the Holy Spirit to come by Jesus in John 3. My question for Dr. White is, if Nicodemus was not born again when he came to Jesus in John 3, and spiritual death means you have no spiritual sensitivity whatsoever, how did the Holy Spirit get in touch with Nicodemus?

How could Nicodemus respond to the Holy Spirit? Are you suggesting he was born again when Jesus said you must be born again? And if he wasn't born again, how in the world did the Spirit guide him? Maybe you misspoken in the debate with Dr. Barker, but I'd like you to discuss that.