February 19, 2006

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Webcasting 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. Really simple, where are you to go to France and insist they speak
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English? Oh, listen, you need to speak my language. I love French, but not the
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French. Not if you're going to change the rules. The thing is, culture cannot define truth, so culture runs on feeling.
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It happens in our pulpits, God help us. Not your pulpit, I promise you, not my pulpit, not with Dr. Falwell, but it happens.
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Pulpits used to be filled with people who would thunder, thus saith the Lord, the
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Bible says. Now, it seems to me, um,
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I feel. What? What?
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What time does this service end, Dr. Powell? What time?
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Say again? 1030. Alright, let me ask you a question.
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Why did you dress up? Some of us are in ties. I have to be.
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You do know Jerry Falwell, don't you? He was born with a tie.
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I saw him mowing his yard with a tie. Why? Why?
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Why did you get dressed up? Did you come to hear somebody's opinion? I didn't. I come to hear somebody expound the word of God.
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And if it hurts my feelings, good! That is Dr. Ergon Kanner of Liberty University preaching on the 10th of December.
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And I listened to this presentation.
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It was sent to me by a friend who I will not name so he doesn't have to deal with any of Dr.
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Kanner's fans. But I had never gotten a chance to listen to Dr.
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Kanner preach on a non -Calvinistic subject. He did mention hyper -Calvinist once, but he didn't say any more about it.
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And this was supposed to be a Christmas sermon. And I just gave you a taste of it there and gave you a little bit more.
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Maybe this is what a lot of people are accustomed to. Maybe this is what's popular today. I don't know.
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Maybe I'm a little sheltered. Maybe I'm just accustomed to – if I'm not preaching,
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I'm listening to Don Frey preach. So that's what I've gotten accustomed to over 15 years now. And so I don't hear a whole lot of other preaching, to be honest with you.
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But I listened to this entire thing. He did go to a text in Isaiah for about 40 seconds,
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I'd say, read it, made some basic comments about the context, and then very quickly departed therefrom.
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My friend mentioned something that Spurgeon said. And as we listen to the end of this sermon, how it ended,
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I think that this really says something. Spurgeon said,
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Thank you very much. That's evidently I still have the sounds on the notepad program that I use there.
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But I just – I don't know how to describe the range of things that are discussed in this 24 or 28 minutes – about 30 minutes, about half an hour, about half an hour.
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I don't know how to discuss. I don't even know how to start cataloging them. I guess the only way that I can explain it is just listen how this ends.
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These little kids this big show up to school, this big.
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Dr. Kenner, I eat and I eat and I eat and I cannot gain weight.
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I'd like to roll you in breadcrumbs and deep fry you. Why don't you keep that to yourself?
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What if they start gaining weight? Is their face shaking? What if they lose their hair? Face shaking?
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Is it feeling or is it fact? Is it based on truth of who God is or is it based on the way
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I respond to it? Know, believe and understand, he said. That's a deeper type of faith.
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That's a type of faith that goes beyond just my feelings.
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I served in churches in the south, my entire pastorate. I lived and was raised in the city.
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And they played a little game out there called Torture the Immigrant Yankee. It was because of the game
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Torture the Immigrant Yankee that I found myself in a field at 5 a .m. with a burlap sack in my hands yelling for something called snipe.
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You are evil for laughing at that. And the things they did to me were horrific.
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I had a cough once and they gave me some cough syrup. Cough syrup.
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It was my father -in -law. I couldn't stop coughing in the morning service. We had to clear the platform out for the pageant that evening.
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And I couldn't stop coughing. Nothing's open. We're an hour from town. He said, I got some in my truck.
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Who's got cough syrup in their truck? I expect him to come back with Robitussin, Dimetapp.
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It's a mason jar. Some of y 'all know because you got some cough syrup at home.
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And I said, what is this? And Braxton, my father -in -law, Braxton, he said, never mind preacher, just hold your nose and take two good gulps and step away from the truck.
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And I chugged it. I chugged it because I believed it because he told me it was true. And I finished it.
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And I got rid of my cold. At least that's what they tell me. I don't remember nothing.
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I don't remember nothing. My wife says I prowled the stage like Ric Flair. I was walking around going, to be the man, you gotta beat the man.
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I'm not taking your word for it.
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Every time I trusted them, I got into the baptistry, and there was no baptistry. I went to the back, there was nothing there.
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Where are we going to baptize? We do it at the river. I said, we're going to the river. I've never baptized in the river.
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Got in the water. Deacons got in the water with me. That was awesome. I was like, what are the deacons doing in the water with me?
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This is awesome. And they got sticks. Now I'm nervous. Deacons got sticks.
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What do they have sticks for? Snakes. Oh my Hindu. Let me tell you something.
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If I knew there was one snake in that water, I would have been the second person to successfully navigate walking on top of it out.
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I got into the water, said my stuff. They had me facing her the wrong way.
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Deacons thought that was funny. I didn't know that you don't have them facing upstream when you baptize in the river. So I got to my little part that I memorized, buried in the likeness of his death.
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And she shot out of my arms. Because the water went up her nose. I love you.
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I love Fort Myers, and this place is extremely special to me, and this pastor, and this church is very special to me. But I don't have faith based on you telling me so.
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My faith is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I don't have a faith that's a believe so, feel so, or hope so.
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I have a faith that's a know so. I know whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which
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I have committed unto Him against that day. Why? Because my faith isn't in a system or a denomination.
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My faith is in the true, living, only, sovereign Lord. He is
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King. I ain't nothing. And if you're going to celebrate that holiday of His incarnation,
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His birth, God in the flesh, don't you mess with it and call it winter solstice, or season's greetings, or happy holidays.
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We are celebrating the birth of the one who saved me. Merry bloody Christmas.
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Stop playing games. So don't be a moron.
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Don't be willfully ignorant. Don't be an idiot. And if you're on my turf, if you're in the area where we're talking about the one who saved us, don't mess around.
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We'll call you on it. Merry Christmas. Okay. Most everybody is just sitting there going,
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You're kidding, right? You made this up. No, I couldn't. I couldn't.
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I couldn't make this kind of thing up. That's what the whole sermon was like. That was the last five minutes or so.
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And the whole sermon was a disjointed string of stand -up comedy routines for Christian nightclubs.
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I mean, that's the only way to describe it. It's get a laugh, get them clapping, and push the envelope at times.
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Go ahead. I love the
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French language, but not the French. He likes to take on Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and throw that type of stuff in there and show how very up to date he is with the youth culture and stuff like that.
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And this was supposed to be a Sunday morning sermon in a church. And that's what the entirety of the thing was.
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And when I first started listening to it, I sort of assumed, Well, there's going to be something here about Calvinism.
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That's why someone would direct me to it. No, it was just this disjointed rambling.
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As far as I can tell, that's not preaching. I don't know how anyone can call that preaching.
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That's a comedy routine. And there are a couple of funny spots. He's got fairly decent comedic timing at times.
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Sometimes it's strained and really pushed, but he can communicate. I'm not sure what he was communicating.
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The majority of times, the jokes, the funny stories didn't have anything really to do.
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It was a massive stretch to make the connection. But there you go.
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That's what you have as preaching by the president of Liberty Seminary.
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I have a feeling that Charles Haddon Spurgeon would have gone,
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Yep, that's who I'm talking about. Close the door or lock it. Because that's...
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I don't know. That's a definite pulpit crime. That entire sermon was a pulpit crime of immense proportions.
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I don't know. I would be interested in listening to that first part that you played when we came in, because it seemed like the last part that you played totally violated what he was saying about the way men used to preach.
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Oh, of course. That was the irony, was him saying, I didn't come here to hear somebody's opinion.
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I came here to hear someone proclaim the word Lord from the Bible and stuff.
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And then he... It sounds to me like he wasn't even there for either one of those. He was there for a good laugh.
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That's all I heard. But unfortunately, I mean, how many churches are turning into story time with their famous fisherman pastor or something like that who likes to tell fish stories or something or comedy routines?
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Let's get the folks in the seats and make them enjoy and be entertained, and they'll come back and pay next week.
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And how often, in just what I played there, did we hear the applause?
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There was a tremendous amount of applause, and Kiernan was feeding off of it. If there had been an applause, if the people had sat there and gone, excuse me, this is not why
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I came, I don't know what he would have done because I don't know what he was prepared to do anything else. But once people start doing that and approving of it by their applause and by their laughter and, ah, this is great,
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I doubt anybody was getting up and walking out, that's what you feed on.
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I think it's also just as much of a commentary on his preaching as it is to their listening and what they find approval of in their church and what they find to be spiritual.
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Don't know, I can't say anything about the church. I'd never heard of the church before.
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I just listened to this, and when it ends the way that it ended,
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I'm just left going, you're kidding me. Well, I'm preaching both services on Sunday, so I suppose people will be able to see if I hold myself to my own standards, but anybody who's ever been to PRBC knows that we're not going to be having any of those particular kinds of jokes appearing in a discussion of Isaiah and the prophetic texts regarding Christ.
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Will be in Isaiah, though, he went to Isaiah something. Didn't stay there very long and never really made any much of an application of it, but that's another issue.
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Well, anyway, we do get emails, and I wanted to spend some time on the program today responding to some emails that we have received.
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First of all, I had about four or five people send me the entire quotation from Doug Wilson.
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It's Volume 10, Issue 3 of Credenda Agenda, and the full citation is, and you know what
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I should have done? Why didn't I grab his book to see how much of this quotation he put into it?
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Oh, well, my mistake. The quotation is, George Bryson is a very unusual non -Calvinist.
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He is able to describe the doctrinal position of Calvinism without putting any extra eggs in the pudding. His descriptions are fair and accurate, and he clearly knows his subject.
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The first portion of the book, the place where he does all this, is very good. The second, where he turns to reputation, falls in another category.
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The name of this book is The Five Points of Calvinism, Weight, and Found Wanting. Just thought you might be interested, my writer says.
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And, yes, I had recalled that and that, in essence, what Wilson had said was, okay, you know, in the section where he's quoting
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Calvin, that's one thing, but then when he tries to interact with it, that's where you run into the real problems.
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And I doubt, I mean, I don't know, but I sort of doubt that George put the second part.
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The second, where he returns to reputation, falls in another category, which is Doug's way of saying it's not overly good.
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Then I had this email. As a
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Calvinist, I have a question about Matthew 11 .23. If the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.
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And its implication on Reformed theology, particularly total depravity, I've heard Reformed preachers say that it shows that God does not intend for all to be saved, which
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I agree with. I see that the verse demonstrates that God chose not to show them such mighty works and not give them the opportunity to repent.
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However, if an opponent of Reformed theology were to use this verse in connection to total depravity, not necessarily
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God's election, and argue the verse in this manner, this verse implies that man is not totally depraved, for Jesus even said that if the people of Sodom would have seen his works, they would have believed, implying that they had the ability to believe.
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How would you respond? I haven't personally received this objection, but as I was reading this verse, I noticed that this could be taken in such a way.
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Well, I have many times, and it's actually quite common for people to take judgment passages and attempt to argue from them that, well, yes, this is the way it happened, but the implication is that if God hadn't acted in judgment, then they had the natural capacity to believe.
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That is not an unusual argument at all. The problem is, this introduces us again to the necessity of understanding something called the analogy of faith, and what does that phrase mean?
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It, in essence, is illustrated by this question, and that is that Scripture is the context for the interpretation of Scripture, and that is because the nature of Scripture, in most instances, if you were dealing with a merely natural book, that would not necessarily flow from the nature of the book itself.
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But given the time frame over which Scripture is given, and given the nature of Scripture itself, the totality of Christian truth is not to be found in any particular text isolated from all others.
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You can take a text, and you can isolate it from all others, and what do I mean by that? Well, let's apply it to this situation.
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Total depravity is a doctrine that is directly stated in Scripture. You have the direct statement of man's deadness and sin.
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You have the direct statement of man's inabilities over and over again. Inability, inability, unable, unable, unable.
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The statement of the extensiveness of sin. You just read through Jeremiah.
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Can the leopard change its spots? So can those then who are accustomed to do evil can do good.
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And the whole point is, they can't. There is a constituent problem. You have Romans 1. You have all these texts that make these extensive and clear teachings on the subject, and so by isolating a judgment passage and saying, well, okay, this isn't what happened, but the implication is that if a counterfactual had taken place, that this would then imply a capacity in man.
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Well, the problem is that's not what the text is about in the first place. Secondly, you're isolating it from those, and it is those other texts.
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It is the context of Scripture as a whole. It is the revelation of God as a whole that provides the ability to rein in that kind of errant reading of the text.
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Now, this also brings up the fact that many people are somewhat troubled by the fact that they want an answer on every single text.
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They'll frequently say there must be something in the Greek that contradicts that, right? Well, look at this text.
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You're taking the implication of the negation of what actually happened and drawing a conclusion from the implication, and so you're not even dealing with the text at that point.
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The issue isn't Greek. It isn't syntax. Sometimes there are. Sometimes there are clear grammatical issues involved.
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We had, for example, a charismatic King James -only Armenian come into the channel this week, and he was trying to argue that in 2
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Thessalonians 2, Paul is saying that God chose us because we believe.
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The ground of faith was our believing, and the ground of God's choice was our believing.
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And I tried to point out to him, no, I'm sorry, that doesn't work. You're ignoring the parallel in this phrase here, and you're making a sub—
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And I just went through all the grammar and syntax stuff with him, and that didn't have the slightest bit of impact upon him.
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But there are times when that just simply doesn't work. I remember—it's still up on the website.
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There is an illustration from Mormonism where this one very intelligent LDS apologist had argued from John 4, as I recall, that Jesus and his disciples were baptizing.
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And I point out to him, no, you're missing the use of the nominative here and the grammar just all wrong.
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At least he had the temerity eventually to go, yeah, you know what? You're right. I've misread that one all along, and you are correct.
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But sometimes there's something right there that does answer the question.
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But that's not always the case, and especially in a situation like this where you have such an extended argument based upon implication.
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Well, but if that didn't happen, then this—clearly the grammar and syntax isn't going to be something that's going to address a subject like that.
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And sometimes people get just a little bit concerned or worried if there's not a compelling argument of an isolated text that will protect it from misinterpretation.
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And that's why I keep saying the entirety of Christian theology, the entirety of Christian truth is delivered to us in the entirety of the
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Bible, not just in any one text. And so if you isolate any one text, there are times when taken out of the context of Scripture, you can read it in multiple ways, and some of those multiple ways are heretical and untrue and false, and that's what the cults do.
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But you can't disprove that reading solely on the basis of that one text.
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It's an issue of the entirety of the text that address that particular subject. And so we're talking there specifically in regards to the analogy of faith and its importance at that point.
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Then one more email that we have received. By the way, the phone number is 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341.
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I have a theological question, intramural of course, as I believe the concept or reality of predestination to be irrelevant in terms of destination.
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To explain, I mean to say that as long as one has accepted Christ as their Lord and personal Savior, then any doctrinal confusion on free will changes nothing.
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My question is, why would an atheist choose to accept Christ if he were to understand that it is not his choice to begin with?
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I've got to admit, sometimes the questions are a little bit difficult to follow and to understand there.
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That is, first, I wouldn't agree with the statement. I mean to say that as long as one has accepted
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Christ as their Lord and personal Savior, then any doctrinal confusion on free will changes nothing. I think that it has a tremendous impact to just look at the difference in the kind of preaching that flows from someone who recognizes
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God's free will, and man's creaturely will, and his enslavement to sin, and the sovereignty of God in salvation, and his freedom over against the creaturely freedom of man, controlling all things in essence.
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And those who believe the other, I think it has a tremendous impact.
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So I think it does, when it says it changes nothing, I don't accept that. But then the question is, why would an atheist choose to accept
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Christ if he were to understand that it is not his choice to begin with? Well, that begs the entirety of the question. And that is, it's assuming that the only reason someone accepts
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Christ or repents and believes is because they somehow feel like they have the ability to do so.
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In the sense that, well, it's totally up to me, and so that makes me feel good.
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And so because it makes me feel good, then I'm going to go ahead and do this. That's not the reason why anyone believes in the first place.
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There is this thing called the Holy Spirit of God, and there is this thing called the conviction of sin. And there is this thing called regeneration, and the taking out of a heart of stone, and the giving of a heart of flesh.
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And the whole question seems to be based upon, well, we have to make the atheist want to do something.
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No, we need to make the atheist understand who he is, and he already knows who he is.
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We just need to be involved in reminding him forcefully through the power of the
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Holy Spirit that he is God's creature, and he is suppressing the knowledge of his creator, and that he is in a state of denial.
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And if God is merciful to that individual, he will reveal himself to him and draw him to himself.
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And that's how true saving faith that will continue on over a long period of time is going to be born in that person's heart.
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So I would simply say, why would an atheist choose to accept
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Christ? No, why would an atheist bow the knee before his creator?
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Well, because God in his mercy has removed the rebellion that is inherent in his heart and has been merciful to him.
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That's how I would respond to that particular question. 877 -753 -3341.
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We have three lines have lit up since I mentioned the phone number there just a few moments ago.
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So we'll be taking your phone calls once we take our half -hour break, and we'll be right back right after this.
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Alpha and Omega Ministries is pleased to introduce the Christmas Morning CD by Todd Lindstrom. Passion and peace are what sets
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Todd's music apart from others. These twelve instrumental favorites will bless and inspire you as you entertain guests and spend
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Christmas morning with your family. You can find this beautiful music that celebrates the birth of our
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Lord in the bookstore at aomin .org. Public Crimes.
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The criminal mishandling of God's word may be James White's most provocative book yet. White sets out to examine numerous crimes being committed in pulpits throughout our land every week as he seeks to leave no stone unturned.
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Based firmly upon the bedrock of scripture, one crime after another is laid bare for all to see. The pulpit is to be a place where God speaks from his word.
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What has happened to this sacred duty in our day? The charges are as follows. Prostitution using the gospel for financial gain.
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Pandering to pluralism. Cowardice under fire. Felonious eisegesis.
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Entertainment without a license. And cross -dressing, ignoring God's ordinance regarding the roles of men and women.
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Is a pulpit crime occurring in your town? Get Pulpit Crimes in the bookstore at aomin .org.
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This portion of the dividing line has been made possible by the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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The Apostle Paul spoke of the importance of solemnly testifying of the gospel of the grace of God. The proclamation of God's truth is the most important element of his worship in his church.
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The elders and people of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church invite you to worship with them this coming Lord's Day.
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The morning Bible study begins at 9 .30 a .m. and the worship service is at 10 .45.
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Evening services are at 6 .30 p .m. on Sunday and the Wednesday night prayer meeting is at 7.
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The Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church is located at 3805 North 12th Street in Phoenix.
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You can call for further information at 602 -26 -GRACE. If you're unable to attend, you can still participate with your computer and real audio at prbc .org,
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where the ministry extends around the world through the archives of sermons and Bible study lessons available 24 hours a day.
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What is Dr. Norman Geisler warning the Christian community about in his book, Chosen But Free? A New Cult?
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Secularism? False Prophecy Scenarios? No, Dr. Geisler is sounding the alarm about a system of beliefs commonly called
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Calvinism. He insists that this belief system is theologically inconsistent, philosophically insufficient, and morally repugnant.
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In his book, The Potter's Freedom, James White replies to Dr. Geisler, but The Potter's Freedom is much more than just a reply.
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It is a defense of the very principles upon which the Protestant Reformation was founded. Indeed, it is a defense of the very gospel itself.
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In a style that both scholars and laymen alike can appreciate, James White masterfully counters the evidence against so -called extreme
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Calvinism, defines what the Reformed faith actually is, and concludes that the gospel preached by the
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Reformers is the very one taught in the pages of Scripture. The Potter's Freedom, a defense of the
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Reformation and a rebuttal to Norman Geisler's Chosen But Free. You'll find it in the Reformed Theology section of our bookstore at aomen .org.
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And welcome back to The Dividing Line. We go to our phone calls and talk with Michael.
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Michael, how are you? Hey, how are you? Very good, thank you. Yes, sir. Hey, I wanted to ask you,
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I actually have one question, and then maybe the other one's more personally oriented about a situation
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I'm in regarding baptism. But I listened to your debate with Bill Shishko on baptism.
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I got it off the net. And I had real trouble following one of your arguments, and it's simply because of the pace that the debate took place at.
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Okay. But repeatedly you said that he was exegeting Scripture in one place with a method that he didn't use in another to support his case for baptism.
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I was wondering if you could elaborate on that a little bit, help me understand that a little better. Yeah, that was one of the primary arguments that I made, and that is that the hermeneutic that is used, for example, to look at the text, for example, in regards to Lydia or especially to the
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Philippian jailer, and to come to the conclusion that the rest of the family, the
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Philippian jailer's family, though they had had the word preached to them, rejected that word and were not saved, and yet they rejoiced with him that he had accepted
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Christ, that that seems to me to—I don't think that in any other context a
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Reformed hermeneutic would see unbelievers rejoicing in the acceptance of Christ by someone when they themselves have rejected that very same message.
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And yet that's the kind of interpretation that you hear repeatedly, especially by those who want to very strongly emphasize that only he had believed, that he alone was—his faith was the basis upon which everyone else was baptized and that they had not believed.
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It's a very unusual way of interpreting the text, and it only seems to come up in this particular area when we're dealing with this particular concept.
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I don't see that if we were looking at any other text of Scripture where you have believers and unbelievers that a
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Reformed individual would jump to the conclusion that unbelievers are rejoicing in their rejection of the gospel, but rejoicing with those who accepted it.
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And the same thing with Lydia, and this came out in the cross -examination question, and that was that I even asked, in regards to the rest of the household, a question, and Bill's response was,
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Oh, I would imagine the rest of the household did repent and believe because that's what they did back then. I kind of remember that, yeah.
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And I still don't understand what it means to say that's what they did back then. I think what it means is if the head of the household did something, the rest of them did it too, but that doesn't—
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Again, there's just such a different hermeneutic being used in those contexts that I even had some
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Presbyterian friends comment to me that a lot of the presentation about children and things later on in the debate, they were just like,
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I didn't really see the direct relevance to the subject of baptism of those particular presentations.
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I said, Yeah, I didn't either. And it really surprised me that the closing statement, in essence, was,
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This is all about the children. And it's not all about the children. I'm sorry. It's all about Christ as king of his church determining the ordinances of his church.
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It's not all about the children. And so that's just not how
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Reformed folks normally exegete the scriptures. And we're talking about the resurrection or the inspiration of scripture or the deity of Christ or judgment, justification, whatever.
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That's not the kind of interpretational methodology that I see in those situations. Well, thank you very much.
37:49
At this pace, out of the context of the debate, the media context of the debate, I can follow what you're saying a lot better.
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It might help a little bit once the DVDs are available, because hopefully when you can see something, that sometimes will help.
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And we're still missing one of the things, aren't we? Well, I'm sorry? Got it yesterday.
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All right. We got the second video yesterday. But now what we've got to do is take two different types of video and the audio and try to figure out what was missing in the audio and try to put all three of these things together, if you can imagine what that's going to look like, and sync them up so it's going to be fun.
38:27
Anyway. I've got one other bit of personal application here. About three or four years ago,
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I kind of came around to the Reformed view of things, and here at Central PA, I mean, it's a lot different now than when you were here in the 70s, but there's not a whole plethora of Reformed churches.
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I come out of a Baptistic background, but we're currently attending and just finished a membership program in an
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Orthodox Presbyterian church. They know my beliefs on the Baptism thing, and they're working with me, and I'm under no specific pressure or anything.
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But here's my situation. I am a believer in two -fold, two believers,
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Baptism only. But I think you'll be able to simplify it a little bit because you're a father, but I have a handicapped daughter.
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What do I do with her? She's mentally handicapped. She may never, ever be able to offer a credible profession of faith.
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Well, you know, toward the end of the debate, Bill asked some questions along those lines, and again,
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I was a little bit confused as to what was being asked. It seemed that he was asking, well, don't we have objective promises concerning our children?
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And at the same time, I thought he had said he doesn't believe in any type of Baptismal regeneration, so I'm not really—wasn't really sure
39:50
I was following the argument at that point. But what I had tried to indicate in my response to a somewhat similar question, it wasn't specifically about that kind of a concept, but I had said, look, you know, there are all sorts of very difficult and challenging pastoral issues that come up in the church on all sorts of subjects, subjects about which the
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Scriptures speak very clearly. You think of, for example, the teaching on resurrection is very clearly taught in Scripture, and yet we know that when we talk about infants dying in infancy or things like that, or why bad things happen to good people and everything else, there's still, you know, pastoral applications and things that are not simplistic in how you give a response.
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And when it comes to this issue in regards to your daughter, you know, the question that I would obviously first have to ask is, do you believe that—you know, you don't believe, given what you just said, that baptism is something that is a salvific ordinance in the sense of it's somehow saving someone from their sins.
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No, I absolutely don't believe that. Yeah, and I don't know, obviously, the state of your daughter as far as if she's just— has a diminished capacity or basically no capacity to understand it all,
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I don't know. I have no way of— I would call it greatly diminished. From what we see now, the depth of her ability to comprehend literally may never exceed,
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I know that Jesus loves me. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, in that type of situation, the question then becomes, what is the purpose of baptism, and what would be the purpose and desire on the part of other people for a person to be baptized within that context?
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I mean, I remember— Well, that's kind of what I'm wrestling with on a personal level. Right, right.
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We had—when I first came to PRBC, the man who became what we called our elder, who passed away a few months ago, he had a
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Down syndrome son. And his— That is the problem with my daughter,
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Down syndrome. Okay, right. And, you know, he was there with his elderly parents.
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He lived to be about 52, 54. Was it in his 40s? I thought he—well, okay.
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Anyway, anyway, he was there Sunday in and Sunday out, and that was a testimony to all of us.
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That was a testimony about his parents. That was a testimony that God was sustaining that family, and we knew, you know, the difficulties that are inherent in that situation, but it was a testimony to everyone.
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And I would really resist anyone saying that that testimony would in any way, shape, or form be lessened if that boy had not been baptized, because I don't believe that he was.
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I could be completely wrong about that, but I don't believe that it's been. If he was, it was long before they came to Phoenix Fort Worth Church.
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It didn't happen. It didn't happen there, to my knowledge. And my point would be that what is the nature of that testimony, and is there an overwhelming feeling that that testimony is somehow going to be lessened without that?
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And then I would have to follow that up with, what about the Lord's Supper? Right. I mean, if we're going to be consistent, then where are we going to go with that?
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Are we going to— Same question, different problem, or however you want to put it. Yeah, but I see, and that was one of the arguments
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I made in the debate, is I think there is a consistency in my position in that we treat the two ordinances consistently with one another.
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That is, we have the same audience in both ordinances, which is not the case with Brother Shishko.
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It would be the case with those Presbyterians who practice paedo -communion. So my point was there is a consistency issue, because consistency is important within the context of a debate.
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Dr. Roy, and related to all this, and this is something I have yet to find a straight answer for anywhere in writing, and perhaps there isn't a straight answer, but assuming that the view of baptism that you debated with Pastor Shishko is right, or that believers are only baptism is right,
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I mean, one of them is going to be right, one of them is going to be wrong. Maybe I'm oversimplifying it, but what is the spiritual danger of engaging in it wrong?
44:39
What is the danger for the incorrect party? Yeah, well, you know, both of us, I think, sort of hinted at that, though both of us have in our own sermons on the subject indicated what we think the spiritual dangers are.
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I will just briefly say that my Presbyterian brothers would say that the spiritual danger of my practice has to do with not encouraging your children by giving to them what
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God has provided for them. Obviously, we disagree that that is a part of God's provision for them in that context.
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But from my perspective, there are a number of things. I've spoken to many a person who was baptized as an infant, and it is very, very difficult to avoid two things.
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It's difficult for the person to avoid the idea, even if it is strongly preached against, of baptismal regeneration, that somehow that baptism that was theirs indicates the favor of God given to them and that that exists outside of their personal confession of faith in Christ at a later time in their life.
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I cannot tell you how many people I have talked to who trust in something that happened to them as a child when they were not even cognizant of what was taking place and view that as somehow their entrance into the presence of Christ.
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Yeah, I have some personal experience there, not with myself, but with my wife, actually. She was raised in a
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Lutheran tradition. Right, that's a tremendous danger. But there's also the danger of the parents. I have encountered many a good
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Presbyterian who, while they maybe outwardly might eschew the concept of infantile regeneration, in essence function on a presupposition that my children are of the elect until they prove otherwise.
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And I think that there is a major difference between approaching your children and saying, I'm going to assume that you are saved until you prove otherwise, or the way that I did it, and that is,
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I'm going to assume that you are not until you prove otherwise. That is, I'm going to keep calling you to faith and repentance.
46:44
Yeah, so, you know, obviously the whole reason we did a debate is because we both feel it's important enough, actually, to address in that context and take the
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Word of God. Because while I can preach at Bill's church and Bill can preach at my church, I could not be an elder at his church and he could not be an elder at mine.
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And so there is a division between us on that level. And it does… As I went through the membership program, that was made clear to me.
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They said, because I have a desire to preach in the Sunday school classes. And they said, that's fine, but you're going to kind of have to avoid this topic and…
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Actually, you're going to… You're going to be eligible for an elder. Right. And I said, well, I'm not too concerned about that at this point. Yeah, and in fact, the terminology that's been used to me is, you would be able to exhort but not to preach.
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You have to be ordained to be able to preach. So that's just a terminology issue. But, you know,
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I don't want people… I want to call people to recognize that while we see this as important, we don't allow it to divide us as brothers.
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We stand shoulder to shoulder in defense of the gospel. But yes, we need to discuss it because it does have,
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I think, important impacts upon the nature of the church, the structure of the church. And it does have some theological ramifications in regards to the…
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For example, my argumentation about Hebrews 10, the New Covenant, and the perfection of that New Covenant.
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Some forms of infant baptism theology would not be able to use the same kind of argumentation against the mass that I utilize.
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So I recognize these things and pray for the day when there will be perfect unity.
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But that will probably be around the throne and not in this human experience.
48:30
Thank you very much, Michael. Thank you so much, Mike. God bless you. God bless you. Bye -bye.
48:36
Bye -bye. All right, let's go to Paul in Springfield. Hi, Paul. Hey, Dr., how you doing?
48:41
How you doing? Good. I've got a question pertaining to… It relates somewhat to Cantor's sermon that we were listening to earlier.
48:47
Oh, yes. I had almost cleansed my mind of the recollection, actually. I'm sorry.
48:53
And here, you know, it all comes flooding back. Yes, yes. I guess my question is this, because I would agree definitely that it was a terrible sermon, because, you know, he did not deal honestly with the text.
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He just stood there and told jokes for the entire half hour. Yeah, I don't—to be honest with you,
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I wish he hadn't even read a text. Yeah. If he had just stood there for half an hour and told jokes,
49:15
I could handle that a whole lot more than throwing in a precious text from Isaiah and then immediately completely abandoning it and going back to the comedy routine.
49:28
That would be a whole lot easier for me to handle, personally. Yeah, I think I could do that, too. I guess my question, though, for you is, at what point, though, what is an appropriate balance for using humor from a pulpit, from your perspective?
49:43
I guess what I'm trying to get at is that, you know, I've got some friends who are very orthodox in their
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Reformed views, and, you know, can exegete the Scripture just wonderfully, and yet for the average person in a church trying to listen to them...
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They wouldn't be able to follow him very long because there's no interest. Yeah, because it doesn't stick, because it gets a little boring, shall
50:10
I say. And again, that depends a lot on the hearer, of course. Oh yeah. But, you know, there's some things that we have to do at times,
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I feel, anyway, to hold attention. Yes. And are you opposed to things of that nature, or how do you feel about that?
50:24
Well, yeah, it is a very important question, and it's not an easy question. I am not averse to the utilization of humor.
50:33
It does tend to wake people up. It tends to refocus people. But the humor has to be natural to the person using it.
50:41
Right. It cannot be something that's forced. I really struggle with purposefully inserting it beforehand in the sense of, okay,
50:53
I need to have—this topic looks like a three -joker. That's where it becomes,
50:58
I think, rather forced. The vast majority of the humor that appears as I speak is natural.
51:05
It comes from the illustrations. It comes frequently self -deprecating, which is pretty easy to do.
51:13
Well, it is for me too, that's for sure. And I don't beforehand go, okay,
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I need to use so many jokes or something in this, anything along those lines at all. If it's natural, if the illustration actually directs attention to what you're attempting to accomplish, it cannot take a life.
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It cannot become something that takes on its own life and becomes the—
51:41
If people think back on your sermon and what they remember are the jokes, you missed it.
51:47
Definitely. If all they remember is the humor, you missed it. The humor should disappear because all it's done is refocus things and brought you back to the actual issue.
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It can't be the centerpiece of what you're doing, which unfortunately is what it is definitely in what we listened to earlier.
52:05
So at the same time, you mentioned something very important sort of in passing, and that is we do need to call the congregation to a much higher standard in doing what we call at our church the work of worship.
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If people recognize that the central reason we're there is for this time period, the prayers and the scripture readings and the hymns have been preparatory for this, and that we are now meeting with God and we honor his word and we have one of his ambassadors standing before us who is prepared to bring to us the word of the king, and that this is our central act of worship, is with hearing ears and seeing eyes and obedient hearts to be hearing the word of God in this context, they're going to focus a little bit better than if they have the idea that, okay, the fun stuff's over with.
53:04
I look at my watch, okay, hopefully I can survive 35 minutes. I'll start doing my foot -stretching exercises to keep the blood moving so that I don't nod off halfway through this and someone elbows me because I'm snoring too loud, etc.,
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etc. If it's only seen as an appendage to the real worship that has already taken place in the singing and in the special music and all that kind of stuff, then there really has to be some instruction of the people of God as to what we're doing so that they can bring the right attitude to the ministry of the word as well, which then cuts back on the need for speaking mechanisms to keep postmoderns awake, basically.
53:53
So I'm certainly not averse to strongly calling people to that very thing so that, you know, maybe it's wrong of me, but I'm still reacting in some ways to the experience
54:12
I had at a very large Baptist church many years ago where the minister of education called me in and told me that when
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I teach the Sunday school lesson in this adult Bible study department, which in that church the adult
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Bible study departments were as big as many churches are in other contexts, that I was to keep in mind that every lesson that I presented, that every person sitting in front of me, this was the very first time they had ever been in a
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Sunday school, and I was to do that week in and week out, never go past level one, week in and week out.
54:48
Maybe I'm just reacting against that and saying, look, that is a tremendous recipe for disaster.
54:57
That is a recipe to keep people in the infantile stage of understanding and to eventually drive those that are hungry away because you're just giving them just enough sustenance to keep them alive from one week to the next.
55:13
And maybe I'm just responding against that. I don't know. It may be the case, but still I agree that living by the weakest link is not going to get it done, and we do need to call them to a higher understanding.
55:23
But I think it is a difficult question. Yeah, and I think we know when we start pushing it.
55:31
And what we need to keep in mind is who is our audience. Yes, we do need to keep people going with us.
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We need to keep people interested in what we're saying. We need to work on our ability to speak, to organize our material, to utilize our voices in such a way as to communicate with force and clarity.
55:51
But the fact of the matter is they also need to be coming in prepared for instruction from the
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Word of God too. And the balance is that we can't keep everybody, especially if they've shown up after having been out till who knows when,
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Saturday night, Sunday morning, and they're just not prepared to worship. We can't try to dumb it down or entertain them into sticking with us.
56:18
I think that's where we run into a problem. Okay. Okay, thank you. All right. Thank you very much.
56:23
God bless. Bye -bye. Bye -bye. All right. Well, that was excellent questions, and hopefully just the way that we responded to those questions provides a strong enough contrast to what we heard to start off the program.
56:41
I still am just left shaking my head in true wonderment. I didn't see that we had lost our last caller.
56:47
I was going to try to sneak the last one in, but of course that last call would have received approximately 70 seconds.
56:54
And we know what happens when someone calls the big man and only has 70 seconds, and they get all nervous.
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And I'm not the big man. He's the guy who goes like that, which is a very cheap sound effect, by the way.
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What did that cost us? Almost nothing at all. A good microphone, though, because if we had a really cheesy microphone, you might not be able to hear it.
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But anyway, we will be here on Thursday, and in fact I will be joining
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Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron on Thursday on WNYG. I'm going to be discussing a subject that I will be perfectly honest with you,
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I hate talking about. I hate talking about it. We'll be talking about grieving.
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We'll be talking about surviving the holidays, especially if you have lost a loved one over the past year.
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It can be a real pitfall. It can be a real difficult thing. Believe it or not, I did write a book on the subject a number of years ago that many people have found to be extremely useful.
57:55
I was a hospital chaplain, and again, many of you are going, you're kidding! Yes, yes, indeed.
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But we'll be discussing that subject. The reason I don't like talking about it is not because it doesn't bless folks. It does.
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But because I never learned the secret of turning off my emotions in dealing with those things.
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I never figured that part out. And so it's just exhausting. It is extremely hard to do.
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But it's necessary to do once in a while. So that will be on WNYG, Iron Sharpens Iron on Thursday at its regular time, which
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I think is around 1 o 'clock our time, 3 o 'clock New York time, I think is when it is. So if you want to catch us then, we'll be there.
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And then here on The Dividing Line as well. See you then. The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.
59:35
If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.
59:40
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59:46
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.