June 15, 2004

The Apostle Peter’s Call to Defend the Faith

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us.

Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence. Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation.

If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602. Or toll-free across the United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is James White.

Hi, good morning. Welcome to The Dividing Line, 11 a .m. Mountain Standard Time and Pacific Daylight Time. And the only thing that really matters, unfortunately, is it's 2 p .m. Eastern Daylight Time.

I'm going to be heading back to that time zone on Friday. But that does mean we will have a program Thursday afternoon as normal, Lord willing. So then we'll be without the program the following week.

And then the next Tuesday, because I'll be traveling back on that Tuesday. And then a couple weeks on, and then off to Mill Valley to Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, teaching a summer class I teach there.

Beautiful, beautiful campus there. I always forget, because by that time in July in Phoenix, it's hot and it's muggy and it's just horrible. I always forget to bring a jacket. I end up having to buy one.

I have all these jackets I've purchased in Mill Valley, because especially if your class starts in the morning, which this time it doesn't. But walking up to the main classroom building is, well, as I've said many times, who was it?

What was his face? The old writer. Anyways, he said the coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco. So it can get very, very cool up that direction. And, of course, I'm just hoping that the big one doesn't hit the week I'm there, that it waits, you know, until after I've left.

There's a selfish thought for you, eh? 877 -753 -3341, which, oddly enough, I just looked at the channel. This program is a testimony, misspelled, to total depravity. Well, thank you very much. I'm not sure how to take that.

I don't know what that means, but that's okay. We've already had two folks call in for some odd, strange reason. You know, sometimes I have to threaten to have Warren Smith sing Elvis to get anybody to call in.

But not this time around. Didn't even get the music potted down before the beginning of the program. And we had two callers at 877 -753 -3341. So that would indicate we'll probably go with calls today.

I do have a couple things to comment upon, should things quiet down. But, hey, we will. Mark Twain, thank you very much. It just takes a little while. The mutated spud from wherever he's from.

Figured that one out.

Mutated spud. Hey, if you're not in the channel, you just don't know. That's just sort of how it works. 877 -753 -3341, let's talk with Troy in Waterloo.

How are you, Troy?

Good.

What's up, sir?

Having a little trouble hearing you.

Okay.

Well, I'm sure they'll try to adjust that for you. The very highly trained broadcast professionals that we just bleed money to, to get them to come in and do this, will adjust the volume to your comfort level.

And they're probably doing that even now.

Okay.

I had a question.

Yes, sir.

About Calvinism, and I'm a five-point Calvinist as well, but I just have been kind of struggling with this question. I haven't really been able to find an answer. It's about if we believe that men are totally depraved and unable to come to Christ, why do we read scriptures that say that God hardens people's hearts so that they won't believe?

Meaning, if they're already unable because they're dead in sin, why is it there seems to be, like in John 12, it seems to give us a reason. It says there's many miracles that were taking place and they could not believe because, as Isaiah said, he hardened their hearts and whatnot.

Yeah, it's a common, it's actually a common question. It's an objection that's raised. I've always found it to be a fascinating objection when it's raised by someone who holds to a libertarian free will because to recognize that God actually does that indicates that, in point of fact, he is acting in such a fashion as to violate the entire foundation of their entire system.

But the argument is, well, there wouldn't be a need to harden someone's heart if there was an inability, and therefore the hardening of these particular individuals' hearts actually proves that unless you have a specific statement that God hardens every person's heart, that there must be some sort of a capacity or ability that is thereby implied by that, despite the teaching of passages like Romans 8, 7 -8, and John 6, 44, and things like that.

What's interesting about it is it's not, I mean, I think either way you look at it, the Armenian's going to lose. It's like an in-house question.

Yeah, if consistency means anything, they're going to lose, but unfortunately I haven't found that consistency is all that overly compelling a factor. But I think what you have, especially in passages such as John 12, is you have there a judicial hardening.

There was a fascinating discussion, unfortunately. You know, I'm not sure that it's, let me think here for a second. Maybe, hmm, back when we were preparing for the Stafford debate, we had this email, not channel, but email group.

It still exists, but we were preparing for the Stafford debate, and one of the participants had a fascinating take, and now for some reason the passage is escaping me, and everybody on that group is going, man, he's really losing it.

But it was about the issue of judicial hardening, and if I can find that discussion online in the sense of accessible to everybody, I'll try to remember to make a note of it on the blog. But I think there are situations, especially in relationship to the ministry of Christ, and especially in regards to Paul's discussion of the Hebrew, the Jewish people, in regards to the, someone's trying to get a hold of me.

No one ever remembers what day we do the dividing line. Anyway, in regards to the gospel going out to the Gentile people, the hardening of the Jews, so on and so forth, that there is a special judicial hardening in those situations where people are standing in front of the incarnate Son of God.

They possess the Word of God, and yet there is a hardening of their hearts that transcends and has a specific purpose to it that is not a part of just the discussion of the necessity of grace to allow a person to have saving faith.

Just simply knowing, just think about it, just simply knowing the prophecies of the Old Testament, and watching, I mean, let's put it this way. What would it take to know the prophecies of the Old Testament and stand outside Lazarus' tomb and see this prophet call this man back to life and turn around and do what the Jews did?

I mean, turn around and go, we've got to destroy this guy. This guy is ruining everything. Wow, I mean, there is something going on there beyond the normal fact that man is involved in suppressing the knowledge of God and going about finding other ways of expressing his innate necessity of worshipping.

And so I think in those particular instances, you have those judicial acts of hardening that are part of a special act that God is about doing either in the ministry of Christ or when the Gospel is first going out.

I don't think that it's necessary. You know, some people, it is interesting. I don't know if you've ever read Geisler's book, Chosen but Free, but he actually takes the position that the hardening in Romans 9 means to make strong.

That is to strengthen Pharaoh so Pharaoh can survive the trials that he's about to go through. And I chuckle a little bit because of what he's trying to do with that, but there is a sense in which just simply in Pharaoh's instance, simple self-survival could have kicked in and he goes, out of here, get out of here, you know.

The frog thing was bad enough, but these boils, forget it. You know, just simply for simple survival, get out of my face. So there is actually, I think, a little bit of an element to that because God had a purpose in hardening Pharaoh's heart so as to despoil the gods of Egypt.

So that's how I would understand these specific places where that appears, and I think it's just simply a confusion of various categories in saying, well, if God has to harden somebody in a particular instance, then that means that they somehow have this natural ability of themselves that he somehow has to take away from just certain people.

That kind of reasoning doesn't follow.

Yeah, well, how would you even take, say, Romans 9, where it seems like he hardens whom he wills and he has mercy on whom he wills, kind of seemingly implying like there's two categories. You're either hardened or he has mercy on you and thus saves you.

Well, the point in Romans 9 that is very important to realize is what Paul is arguing for here. He is demonstrating in Romans 9, and again, I recommend everyone, even though it will take a little more effort than Left Behind or the Prayer of Jabez, but Dr. Piper's book on the subject of Romans 9, The Justification of God, not easy to read, but, you know, I think we'd all do a lot better if we actually tried to get through a few of those things.

But as he points out, there is an argument, it's a consistent argument, from the beginning of the chapter to the end of the chapter, that God has a sovereign right to do, in the face of the objection of the Jews, what he's doing.

And so the argument that is being made there is the utter freedom of God. That is, the parallel that exists is that whether there's mercy or whether there's hardening, it's God's freedom that is behind the both.

It's not meant to say, oh, well, what that means is either God has had mercy upon you or he's judicially hardened you in part of that other argument. The point is God's freedom to act with Pharaoh in one way and then act with someone else in mercy.

And the difference between the two is not in them. It's not to be found in the creature. It's to be found in the freedom of God. And that's where we go, I don't like that, I don't want that. I want God to be, in essence, under the control of the creature, and I want it to be something in me.

And that's where we go back to, man, anybody who holds that really doesn't have a very solid grasp of what the Bible says about us. That's where humanism and post-modernism has really created an entire lens through which people are either viewing the scripture or they're thinking about theology.

Because it's amazing that anybody would want the difference to lie within us. Because that's just disaster. Anyhow, all righty, sir.

Thank you. Do you have time for another question?

Oh, sure, and I've got one other, but we've got 45 minutes, too.

I've been studying the baptism issue a little more lately. I'm a fan of Greg Bonson and some other people, and they've started to make me question what I actually believe about baptism. I was wondering, do you have a book that you'd recommend that really positions?

Warning, warning, all Presbyterians, turn down your radio. Turn down your radio now. Yeah, a number. I'm looking back here to try to find where did I put the thing. Did someone steal that from me again?

I bet you somebody did.

I seem to have lost you. I can't quite hear you.

Yeah, that's because I'm moving my head around and trying to reach things. Well, I don't find it, but some of the more modern books that you might want to look at is Fred Malone just released a book entitled The Baptism of Disciples Alone, and that's probably the newest book on that.

Now, I don't know if you've heard of the Reformed Baptist Theological Review, rbtr .org, but in the next two issues of the Reformed Baptist Theological Review, I will have an article, it's a two-part article, 20 ,000 words, specifically on what is the newness of, what is the New Covenant?

What is the nature of the newness of the New Covenant? The first 11 ,000 words are exegesis. The last 9 ,000 are interaction with a couple of the chapters that appeared in the Greg Strawbridge book published by PNR last year, 2003, called A Covenantal Defense of Infant Baptism.

I specifically interact with my friend Jeff Neal's perspective.

Yeah, because I've heard his presentation.

Right. I specifically interact with that and respond to that, and then also contrast that, if you've got that book, with other presentations in the book that are actually directly contradictory to Pastor Neal's, if you read them, and you'll discover they come from very, very different perspectives.

Yeah, because I've been studying covenant theology and started to learn about that, and a lot of the baptism defenses I come across are usually more from a dispensational perspective. I don't know. I kind of have some issues with that, so I kind of want to find something that came from more of a covenantal perspective.

Well, it's good to look at both sides. In our channel right now, we have both Credo Baptists and Paedo Baptists, and every once in a while, the topic raises its head and we bat it around for a while, and then it goes back underneath the waves, sort of like the shark's tail.

But, yeah, it's something we discuss a lot, and for me, obviously, I am very, very familiar with the Paedo Baptist arguments and understand where they're coming from. For me, it's primarily an exegetical issue in regards to the nature of the New Covenant and the nature of what baptism actually represents.

Of course, that's a big issue right now in regards to the whole federal vision, new perspective, the whole nine yards. Oh, yeah, it's central to all of it, so it's an important issue.

Yeah, that's what I started to realize. It was kind of really simplistic to me at first way back years ago, but the more I look at it, how you answer this question, there's a lot of other deeper issues about the nature of the Covenant and the Old Testament and the New Testament.

There's just a lot of big fundamental issues that need to be answered before you can really answer that question.

Yeah, and I don't have the URL handy at the moment, but with Google, who needs to have a URL handy at the moment anyways? Do a search on the name Greg Welty, W-E-L-T-Y. He's written, I think, some very good Reformed Baptist articles on that subject as well.

Sure.

Okay.

Well, thank you much.

All right, sir, God bless.

Thank you. All right, bye-bye.

All right, let's talk with Jim down in Nashville, Tennessee, where they know how to sing country music. Hi, Jim.

Hi, how are you, sir?

I'm doing good.

And you'll have to excuse my lack of a southern accent.

Transplant or something, or just haven't been there long enough to pick it up?

Transplanted from Southern California.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Been here 14 years but determined not to pick it up. Although I talk to friends back on the West Coast and they claim that I now have a twang to my voice, I just don't buy it.

Okay, well, just remain in denial if you decide to do so, yes.

I have to agree with Troy, by the way. It's very difficult to hear you on this end of the phone.

Okay, well, our highly paid broadcast professionals just need to continue working on that issue, I guess.

And waiting on hold was a little slim.

Okay, all right.

Now, my question for you is, I made it all the way through the debating Calvinism book, and the only reason that it took me a bit was getting through sledding because I would get very frustrated and put down the book and then have to wait to come back and read it again.

Well, put yourself in my shoes.

And I did.

I often thought how patient you had to be.

Well, no, no, and I wasn't. Believe me, I would take those things. Because, see, I'd get them electronically first, and even before they were edited. Sometimes they didn't even look really good. And I would load them on my palm.

I don't remember where we were going. My wife and I were flying someplace, and we had to sit on a tarmac for a long time. So I'm sitting there with my palm reading, and I would get them seven at a time.

I didn't get to read them one at a time. I'd get seven of them in a row. So I'm sitting there, A, trying to remember what I had said, first of all, and then, B, trying to go through this thing going, oh, my goodness, how am I going to respond to this in such a way?

My focus, and I've said this from the beginning, my focus from the beginning was how do I get someone to stick with this? How do I get this back to the subject we're supposed to be talking about?

Yeah, there's no train of logic working there.

No, no, no, no, the train fell off about the first round, yeah.

Exactly.

A lot of question of category errors, and Hunt even argued that you're making the parallel between Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead and we being spiritually dead and needing to be resurrected. He argued, while not using the phrase category error, to say that just because Jesus did something physically.

I understand, and, you know, if there wasn't so much discussion of, if there wasn't so much use of terms like resurrection and dead and raised to life and all in a spiritual sense, and if Jesus himself in John 5 hadn't used the very same kind of language, if there was nothing else there, if that's the only thing we were basing it upon, that would be one thing.

But given the fact that I can honestly say Dave Hunt has always, from the time we started debating this, absolutely positively imploded on John 6, that he has come up with numerous ways of trying to defend it, each one of which has been shredded just simply by examining on an exegetical level.

Since John 6 comes before John 11, as does John 5, then I don't think it is an improper utilization of, especially the Gospel of John, where John wants to use terms to communicate spiritual realities.

He talks about hearing, for example, and he can talk about hearing in the literal sense, but then he's also obviously talking about hearing in the metaphorical, the spiritual sense. This is something that John does.

He builds his Gospel around these things. And so when Jesus has already talked about the fact that he is the Lord of life, that at his voice the dead will come forth from the graves, and that those who were dead shall live, and then he puts that in the spiritual realm.

Since all of that's already there, then you really are barking up the wrong tree, I think, for someone to make the argument that this is a category error, as if Christ can be Lord in the physical realm of life, but not Lord in the spiritual realm of life.

If none of that other stuff was there, okay. But the fact of the matter is, it is there. And I'm certainly not the first one who has utilized John 11 in that way at all. It goes back a long, long ways.

Yes?

Well, and I agree with you wholeheartedly. What I was going to bring up was, if it's true that your usage of Matthew 9, and it struck me that when Jesus healed the man that was sick of the palsy, that what he said to him was, be of good cheer, your sins are forgiven.

And the scribes and the Pharisees became upset, said it was blasphemy. Jesus said, what's easier for you to say, or what's easier for me to say? Your sins are forgiven. And then it says, so that you will know that the Son of Man gives sins.

He then said to the man sick of the palsy, Arise, take up your bed and walk. And the man was healed. Which I guess, according to Hank, means that Jesus made a category error.

Or according to, you know, I don't know who Hank is, but yes, Dave.

I was speaking of Hank, a particular Bible answer made.

Yes, yes. Well, you know, that's an excellent point. It's one of those times where I can go, you know what? I wish I had thought of that, and I wish I had used that. That's an excellent example, because he specifically does make the statement, the parallel passage in Mark 2.

So that you may know. So that you may see this. I will do this in your sight, so you may understand the spiritual reality. Very, very good.

Very, very true.

I will steal that from you, and since I have the foggiest idea of, you know, who you are, then no.

Seriously.

Well, considering the amount of material over the years that I've stolen from you, consider this one a gift.

A freebie.

A trade-off. All right.

It's a trade-off.

A trade-out. There you go.

It's yours. Run with it.

I really appreciate that. That is excellent. That's an excellent example. And I, you know, I almost feel badly when people start off the call the way you did in saying that I finally got through the book, because I just want everybody to know, you've probably heard me say this before if you've listened with any regularity, I told the publisher the day he called me that Dave Hunt was not capable of doing a debate and staying on one topic, that it was going to be confusing for the reader, that there was going to be exegetical issues, and I told them from the start, and they said, That's fine.

That's all the better for you. We still want to do this. So, you know, for everybody who's saying, Man, you just shouldn't have picked on somebody like that, look, the main reason I did it is look at the two endorsements on the back and figure out who's actually going to be reading this book who would never, ever, ever pick up a book with my name on it otherwise.

That's why I did it. That was the whole purpose to it. I thank you for your pushing through and surviving and for ministering down there in Nashville, Jim.

Thank you very much.

Well, all right.

And you take care. God bless. We'll talk soon.

God bless, sir. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Fellowship, Apostasy, and the Basis of Christian Unity

All right. 877 -753 -3341. You know, when we get these calls and you get to talk to people all across the United States, when I travel all around the U .S., we were able to, you know, Jim and Troy and I could communicate when the few Christians from New Jersey call in, Steve, and we can communicate with one another because we share certain commonalities.

Now, notice I did not ask Jim, Now, Jim, were you baptized in the name of the Trinity? I didn't ask Troy that either. I can sort of assume that because we share something more fundamental than that, more foundational than that.

We were reading in 1 John 1 Sunday morning at our church. We do a New Testament reading in the morning, an Old Testament reading in the evening, and I do the Scripture reading when I'm not preaching. And we read from 1 John, and I gave the background of the issue of the incarnation of Christ and the Antichrist denying the incarnation of Christ and things like that.

And then as I started reading 1 John 1, I read verse 3, and it says, What we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.

And it was almost distracting to me because I was struck once again by the fact that so much of the debate that goes on these days, especially amongst those who call themselves Reformed but are saying that the Reformed Church has as much idolatry in it as Rome has in her doctrines of Mary and how the Pope has been used by God to protect Christianity and stuff like that.

Ten years ago, I don't think anyone would have identified someone as Reformed except way off in the liberal denomination someplace that says things like that. But as I hear the debate, so little of it is based on Scripture.

So little of it deals with what the Scripture says. And here's a passage. Fellowship. Koinonia. How do we have fellowship with one another? Well, John never says we have fellowship with one another because we've gone through certain sacraments and ordinances and that's the basis upon which we're to stand with one another.

He says, What we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also. What's he talking about? He's talking about the Word of Life, the message of the Gospel, the message of who Christ is and what He's done. We proclaim this to you also so that you too may have koinonia with us, fellowship with us, and indeed, when that fellowship, that koinonia, is based upon the commonly held faith, belief, passion for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who He is, what He's done, then, as John says here indeed, our koinonia is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.

And the point of 1 John over and over again is going to be that in point of fact there are, yes, doctrinal things, doctrinal beliefs, that when rejected mean you don't have fellowship with the Father and with the Son.

In fact, you go to the second chapter, 1 John chapter 2, and John here says, Children, it is the last hour and just as you heard that Antichrist is coming, even now many Antichrists, plural, have appeared, from this we know that it is the last hour.

They went out from us. They. Who are the they? The they are the Antichrists. These Antichrists were once in the church. They have a pedigree. They were baptized. They may even be able to talk about the teaching they've done.

They may be able to talk about the people they knew, the books they published, the degrees they have from seminaries, even though they didn't have any seminaries back then. I'm making a modern application.

But it says they went out from us. They had once been in our fellowship and they went out from us. I think one of the key issues, and I'm going to address this some more when we come back from the break, one of the key issues here is the reality of apostasy and how people are handling that reality and bringing it back into a discussion of what Christian unity and the Christian faith is all about.

877 -753 -3341. I'm going to take a quick break. Be back to look a little bit more at 1 John 2 .19.

Right after this.

It's all works righteousness you know. Can I manufacture grace Myself and I in some religious place. By weeping hard on your face. Or saying prayers to some dead saints you know.

Under the guise of tolerance, modern culture grants alternative lifestyle status to homosexuality. Even more disturbing, some within the church attempt to revise and distort Christian teaching on this behavior.

In their book, The Same-Sex Controversy, James White and Jeff Neal write for all who want to better understand the Bible's teaching on the subject, explaining and defending the foundational Bible passages that deal with homosexuality, including Genesis, Leviticus, and Romans.

Expanding on these scriptures, they refute the revisionist arguments, including the claim that Christians today need not adhere to the law. In a straightforward and loving manner, they appeal to those caught up in a homosexual lifestyle to repent and to return to God's plan for His people.

The Same-Sex Controversy, defending and clarifying the Bible's message about homosexuality. Get your copy in the bookstore at aomin .org.

Answering those who claim that only the King James Version is the Word of God, James White in his book, The King James Only Controversy, examines allegations that modern translators conspired to corrupt scripture and lead believers away from true Christian faith.

In a readable and responsible style, author James White traces the development of Bible translations, old and new, and investigates the differences between new versions and the authorized version of 1611.

You can order your copy of James White's book, The King James Only Controversy, by going to our website at www .aomin .org.

What is Dr. Norman Geisler warning the Christian community about in his book, Chosen But Free? A New Cult? Secularism? False Prophecy Scenarios? No, Dr. Geisler is sounding the alarm about a system of beliefs commonly called Calvinism.

He insists that this belief system is theologically inconsistent, philosophically insufficient, and morally repugnant. 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.

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. In a style that both scholars and laymen alike can appreciate, James White masterfully counters the evidence against so-called extreme Calvinism, defines what the Reformed faith actually is, and concludes that the gospel preached by the Reformers is the very one taught in the pages of Scripture.

The Potter's Freedom, a defense of the Reformation and a rebuttal to Norman Geisler's Chosen But Free. You'll find it in the Reformed Theology section of our bookstore at www .aomin .org.

Apostasy, Doctrinal Boundaries, and Christian Fellowship

And welcome back to The Dividing Line. We are talking for a few moments here concerning the issue of Christian fellowship. What unites Christians? Is it because we have, and in some systems, at a time in our life we can't even remember, gone through a particular ordinance or sacrament?

Is that the objective foundation of Christian unity? And it's interesting to consider the fact that in 1 John 2, the writer John says, They went out from us. And so we are talking here about apostates.

We're talking about apostasy. And anyone who's been in the church for any period of time, sadly, looks back upon their lives, and they look back upon the years, and we don't tend to dwell on it, but we can think of people who used to be there, and they're not there anymore.

And it's not because they transferred to another church of like mind. It's because they're out in the world. They're not in the fellowship anymore. In fact, they may be a part of religious worship that is directly contradictory to the truth that they professed at one point in time.

That's nothing new. Even during the apostolic period, Paul talks about people who had left. Paul talks about people who opposed. And here John says, They went out from us. These antichrists went out from us, but they were not really of us.

For if they had been of us, they would have remained with us, but they went out so that it would be shown that they all are not of us. Now, I don't know how to understand these words within the systems that are being promoted by many today.

John says they went out from us, but they were not really of us. Well, of course they were really of us. They were properly baptized. And how dare you say they were not really of us when they were really of us objectively.

But notice it says,. For if they had been of us, they would have remained with us. There's something about this being of us that seemingly points to an internal reality. An internal reality that precludes going out, as the antichrist said.

Well, you'd have to believe then that baptism is an ordinance, a sacrament that regenerates and believe in the perseverance of those thusly baptized, if you're going to make baptism properly done the basis of Christian unity in light of what 1 John says.