Hank Hanegraaf and Eastern Orthodoxy, David Allen’s Refutation, and an Insightful FB

Alpha & Omega Ministries

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

Comments are disabled.

00:35

And greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. We have a lot to cover today.

00:42

I would like to begin by please requesting that people stop sending me things in Twitter, Facebook, and by other means telling me all about Hank Hanegraaff and the

00:56

Eastern Orthodox Church. I'm well aware of of the situation, and you can stop with all of the stuff.

01:07

Yeah, I was, yeah, I know, I know. Cannot help but comment on the situation, have to, between about 96 or so,

01:22

I forget when we did that first program on the King James Only issue, but up through 2003,

01:32

I don't remember how many times I was on, more than 10, less than 20. I think it was like 14, something like that.

01:38

I've lost track, but we did a lot of programs. We did a couple with Tim Staples, one with Jimmy Akin.

01:45

We did King James Only -ism. We did various topics, and I contributed fairly regularly to the

01:54

CRI Journal during that time period. That was when the ministry was located at a fairly large building in Southern California.

02:05

And I have not had a, any more than a brief conversation.

02:12

I've had two brief conversations with Hank Hanegraaff since 2003. One was at a funeral, and one was a brief conversation in Mexico.

02:26

And that's been the extent of our interaction, because in 2003, was the last time

02:35

I was on the Bible Landsman broadcast. Within 20 minutes of its starting, I wrote on the notepad and showed it to the gentleman who was with me,

02:46

Eddie D 'Alcour. And I had written on it, that this is the last time

02:53

I'll ever be on BAM. And I didn't mean by that that I would never come back on.

02:58

It was that I was never going to be invited back on. And I was right. I was correct. Because in that situation, it was an ambush.

03:06

It was pre -planned, a pre -planned ambush to try to, with the assistance, and this was the bad mistake, the assistance of George Bryson, to promote a form of synergism.

03:22

And anybody who's heard that program, the three hours of it, knows that it backfired badly.

03:29

And so I've really not had much interaction with CRI since that time.

03:37

I may have written one or two things after that, but those invitations eventually ended. And then

03:44

CRI went off the air off of most of the Salem network. It had been, I forget when it was, sometime in the afternoon here in Phoenix.

03:52

And once it disappeared, I just lost track of what was going on, or if anything was going on, so on and so forth.

04:04

So, over the past number of years, there's been, you know, you've seen stuff on on social media and things like that.

04:17

And just a couple days ago, there was a TriBlog article where people are going, you know, it sort of looks like Hanegraaff's coming

04:28

Eastern Orthodox, because he's saying this and he's saying that. And then last night, the picture came up, and oh,

04:36

Drat, I reset my system. So I, yeah, here we go.

04:43

The picture came up, and it's all over the place.

04:50

And let me see here. You've always got to mess this thing up to be able to get back to whatever.

05:11

Maybe that's because it's not showing it there. What am I, what am I using here? I'm using TweetBot, TweetBot.

05:17

And I think that should be it. You got that? Well, that's nice.

05:28

How about that? That's just the main window. Okay, it won't show you anything.

05:34

I'll show you this. That's nice. That's great. Well, you can sort of see it there. But this is the picture that hit

05:46

Twitter last night, and that's Hank there in the middle being received into the

05:51

Eastern Orthodox Church. Believe me, that's not the only part of the ceremony.

05:57

It's a rather long thing. Most Orthodox services, Eastern Orthodox services are.

06:04

I'm not sure why that won't come up. But anyway, so, all right, we can go ahead and take that down.

06:12

So this is all over the place. It's very, very,

06:17

I'm going to have to turn something off here, or it's going to be flashing at me the whole time that I'm on the program here.

06:23

Yes, and home. There we go. So I don't have, you know,

06:33

I wasn't asked for my opinion on conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy or anything related there, too.

06:41

So nobody asked my opinion, and I'm certain Hank would know what my opinion would be if he were to ask.

06:49

Many people have asked me over the years to address the issue of Eastern Orthodoxy, and I have a few times on the program made a few brief comments.

07:03

The problem is that addressing

07:09

Eastern Orthodoxy is extremely difficult to do because of the fact that the worldview of the

07:18

East is so fundamentally different than the worldview in the West. For real

07:25

Eastern Orthodox, now again, as in any religious system, you have your believing people and you have your nominal people.

07:37

Within Eastern Orthodoxy, you have entire nations that are technically Eastern Orthodox, and are we having some problems?

07:48

Oh, just someone on Facebook saying the live stream is frozen, so it's probably just on their end, hopefully.

07:57

Oh, okay. Anyway, you have your nominal folks that is, especially when you have any kind of church -state relationship, any type of sacralism, you're going to have a lot of people that are part of religious bodies simply because they were born in a particular area.

08:20

So in Russia, Greece, Ukraine, many

08:27

Eastern European nations, you're Orthodox because you're Orthodox, that you're born into it, you just simply, you know, that's your experience.

08:41

You don't have any particularly strong conviction about it. It's just what you are. There's a tremendous amount of nominal

08:49

Roman Catholicism in Catholic nations. There's a tremendous amount of nominal Protestantism. Nominal Protestantism becomes, it just dies because it doesn't have a, it frequently doesn't have a real strong cultural foundation.

09:04

But you've got all sorts of nominal Southern Baptists. You've got all sorts of nominal Muslims. There's all, so much of the

09:10

Muslim world, it's nominal. You are what you are, but you don't really have much vested interest in it.

09:17

You just do the prayers just to get along. You've got nominal

09:23

Buddhists, you've got nominal Hindus, the whole nine yards. The nominal people of any religious group are going to be the people that bring the most disrespect onto the religion rather than the people who actually seek to honor their faith, live their faith, that type of thing.

09:47

So anyway, you have a lot of nominalism within Eastern Orthodoxy. And in those nations that are

09:55

Orthodox by politics, you have really a dead formalism.

10:06

You have serious issues. I've been going to, I'll be in Ukraine in a little over a month, and the first time

10:16

I went there, I'm like, so hey, I think we could arrange a debate or something like that.

10:25

Everybody's like, no. And I'm like, why not?

10:30

Because Orthodox don't do that. They don't have any interest in that at all. They don't do evangelism.

10:37

They don't do apologetics. They're not interested in it. It's just, and when you find

10:43

Orthodox folks who do those types of things, it's almost always in the West. So one of the difficulties is to recognize there's all sorts of different flavors.

10:59

Well, once you get into Orthodoxy, Russian Orthodox versus Greek Orthodox versus this, that, and the other thing, there's all sorts of divisions and issues along that line.

11:09

But what I'm referring to is, let's put some of that stuff aside, the nominalism aside.

11:18

For the vast majority of believing, committed, thinking

11:24

Orthodox folks, we in the West ask all the wrong questions. We're asking all the wrong questions.

11:30

They view us as in non -Roman

11:36

Catholics, evangelicals, Protestants, whatever terminology you want to use, they view us and the

11:43

Roman Catholics as simply the flip side of the same errant coin.

11:51

The arguments that we are having with each other, between us and Roman Catholicism, from the

11:58

Eastern Orthodox perspective, are irrelevant. We're asking all the wrong questions. When I deal with Roman Catholicism, I reach over here and I grab the

12:10

Universal Catholic Catechism and I can look things up, and it's sort of organized nicely, and there's an index in the back, and there is no such thing as this for Orthodoxy.

12:22

There just isn't. And a real Orthodox theologian is going to say, of course not, because the systematic theology, the whole idea of a systematic theology, is sort of abhorrent, because the theology is contained in the worship and the prayers and the traditions of the

12:47

Church. It's experience, not put into a book, and in fact, to put it into a book and think you could actually put it into a book that would actually pretty much cover everything, is to denigrate the ultimate theology of Orthodoxy.

13:07

From their perspective, belief is something you experience.

13:12

It's much more mystical, much more mystical. You get sort of a little bit of a um

13:20

You get somewhat of a similarity with the mystics within Roman Catholicism during the late medieval period into the early

13:30

Reformation period. You do get some similarities there, but there's much more mystery.

13:37

And from their perspective, you know, we in the West are forensic and judicial in our thinking.

13:45

That's why you can have a book like this. You can have rules and canon law and stuff like that.

13:52

It's not they don't have rules and canon law, but they are reflective of something else.

13:59

They really can't be embodied in that kind of thing. And hence, from their perspective, arguments about justification are just missing the point.

14:12

And as a result, when when we try to interact with real

14:20

Orthodoxy, not the westernized version. There is a westernized version that, you know, the

14:29

Orthodox Church has to exist in the West, and so they can no more strip a worldview out of people's thinking that comes through the door as we can in our churches.

14:39

And so they're going to have people that join up their churches, and they're going to have questions. They're going to say, well, what do we believe about this?

14:45

And they're going to utilize western thinking, and it's not always easy to say, well, we just don't really put it that way.

14:55

So when I I don't think I'm not sure if they're still on the local radio station, but there used to be a

15:01

Eastern Orthodox Church that was on local radio station on Saturdays or something like that.

15:07

They'd take shots at me every once in a while when I would say something about them, but their their arguments against Sola Scriptura didn't differ at all from Rome's.

15:23

In Eastern Orthodox countries, I think those arguments would take a different form, but there is in America, in American Eastern Orthodoxy, the the flavor ends up changing.

15:46

And that's why a lot of Orthodox folks that come over from another nation find themselves somewhat uncomfortable in a rather Americanized Orthodox Church type situation because it doesn't fit quite right.

16:01

So to boil all that down, what that means then is that so much of you know,

16:12

I can sit here and if we want to talk about what indulgences are within Roman Catholicism, we can we can talk about that.

16:17

I can lay it out. I can go to a document like Indulgentiarum Doctrina, a post -apostolic constitution on the revision of indulgences, and here it's laid out, and this is where, you know, it started development over here, and then it went over there, and you can do that kind of stuff.

16:35

You just can't do that with real Orthodoxy. It's very, very difficult to do.

16:44

As a result, there's a lot of different understandings of how to answer particular questions.

16:53

In a general sense, and you can only be general, in a general sense, the primary problem with Eastern Orthodoxy as I see it is you do have the exaltation of tradition, the denial of Sola Scriptura, but because you don't, well, let's just think historically here for a second.

17:20

If you were to envision a map of the ancient world like you'd have in the back of your

17:27

Bible, and if you were to look at that map of the

17:32

Mediterranean, and you were to ask yourself the question, which churches, which major churches here in this area claimed to have been founded by an apostle?

17:49

Well, on the right side, the eastern side, you would have

17:56

Antioch, you'd have Jerusalem, eventually Alexandria, eventually

18:05

Constantinople, even though that really, yeah, was questionable, but you'd have a cluster of major, what eventually became patriarchates or places where an archbishop,

18:20

I just covered the Council of Nicaea in the church history class at North Phoenix, right?

18:26

Phoenix Reformed. Hey, I'm getting old, man. And there was a 30th lesson, man, we are going slow in that thing.

18:36

If you want to listen to it, it's on sermon audio. But anyway, just covered Nicaea, and I read the sixth canon from Nicaea, which clearly says that the bishop of Alexandria has his rights in these particular areas, as Rome does in that particular area, and Antioch does in this particular area.

18:54

In other words, there was no idea that any one bishop was the universal bishop. It just didn't exist.

19:01

The idea of the papacy and Rome's claims didn't exist, and Eastern Orthodox folks agree with us about that.

19:08

But if you were to draw a line sort of down the middle of that map, you'd end up with all these cities over on this side that claimed that kind of apostolic authority, apostolic sees.

19:19

But on the left side, what do you have? One. Rome. That's it.

19:27

And it's fascinating to me that when you compare Rome Catholicism, as it exists today, with Eastern Orthodoxy, you have a system of one leader, and then you have the equality of the apostolic sees within Eastern Orthodoxy.

19:47

Collegiality is what they call it. Well, the problem is that once you deny sola scriptura, the reason you can define

19:58

Roman Catholic teaching, well, until Francis came along, but the reason you could generally define

20:03

Roman Catholic teaching, is you've got a singular focus for that interpretation.

20:10

You don't have that in Eastern Orthodoxy. And so you get a much broader experience, spectrum of experience.

20:21

Again, we're leaving the nominalism out to the side. The problem is, I guess we can't leave the nominalism completely out to the side for one simple reason.

20:29

When you deny sola scriptura, then you have collegiality. What has happened in Orthodoxy is you get what

20:37

I can only call the fossilization of tradition. Just as in, you know, once Rome proclaimed herself to be infallible, this makes exegesis fairly irrelevant, which is why you can have the papal biblical commission pumping out liberal exegesis.

21:02

And yet, Rome isn't affected by that. Why not?

21:08

Because, well, because,

21:18

I keep getting distracted by a flashing light, because you have this tradition that has been established.

21:32

And in Rome, that tradition becomes defined by a very specific authority. So you get specific beliefs.

21:39

But in Eastern Orthodoxy, you have this tradition that then becomes interpreted in different ways.

21:47

Within a general framework, yeah, but in different ways. And so you end up with different perspectives.

21:55

So, we can only speak generally of Eastern Orthodox beliefs.

22:03

We can talk about a fairly universal belief, for example, in theosis, the divinization of mankind.

22:12

Not to the point of polytheism, but absorption into the divine being, in a sense.

22:20

God became man, that man may become God. Not what the Mormons are talking about at all.

22:26

But, that's the terminology it's utilized. You can certainly give them props for being thoroughly

22:35

Trinitarian. Thoroughly Trinitarian. They will say that Western Christianity is primarily monotheistic, but not really

22:47

Trinitarian. And there's, I would say monotheistic or polytheistic, depending on which church you're going to.

22:56

But you do have that element. One of the other important areas is in anthropology, and this is also reflected in the fact that in Eastern Orthodoxy, you have very strong emphasis upon incarnation and resurrection.

23:11

Whereas in the West, the emphasis is upon the cross. But, what's important to see there, is that it ends up impacting the overall theology, because it is joined with an extremely sub -biblical anthropology, an extremely sub -biblical view of man.

23:38

There is fundamentally really no original sin, the idea of total depravity. And so, you end up with a really skewed view of grace, and all that kind of stuff going on.

23:51

Whoever is texting me, please stop. It's driving me insane. I'm gonna have to throw my phone out the window. I've never seen,

23:58

I've never had it flashing this much. It's insane. No, it's all right.

24:04

Hopefully, it'll stop. It doesn't matter, because I've still got my watch on, and it's going to keep buzzing, as long as it's within 30 feet of me.

24:12

Anyway, so, grace, justification, imputed righteousness, these are issues that Eastern Orthodoxy has a much less clear understanding of.

24:34

Partly because they've not had to deal with it in the way the West has, in the sense of the clarification the

24:41

Reformation brought to these things, so on and so forth. And that kind of thing.

24:47

Oh, I know what's going on. It's good old Ken. Could you text Ken and tell him, stop, cease and desist?

24:53

You have him in there someplace. Tell him he's interrupting the dividing line. So, anyway, these issues are vitally important issues.

25:05

I'm not for a second going to be saying that they're not vitally important issues.

25:11

We are talking about the nature of the gospel. Is it appropriate to simply make an equation, from our perspective, between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy?

25:29

No. Can we say that dead, nominal, and of course, they're not going to call us dead, but I mean,

25:42

I'm talking about the nominal encrusted state churches of Orthodoxy are just as far away from the gospel as the nominal encrusted state churches of Roman Catholicism?

25:55

Yes. And the nominal encrusted state churches of Protestantism. Because that's the nature of nominal encrusted anyway.

26:07

But when it comes down to that minority who have serious, shall we say, spiritual fervor, because of the the room that is created by the lack of specificity in the leadership of Orthodoxy in general, it would seem to me, you know, when people ask about Roman Catholicism, is every

26:43

Roman Catholic going to hell? And I go, no, not every Roman Catholic is going to hell. But if they are saved, it's because they believe in a gospel other than that being taught by Roman Catholicism.

26:56

Because formally, dogmatically, the teaching of Rome falls under the anathema of the

27:02

Book of Galatians. There's no question about that. So, we often say such a person is saved in spite of Roman Catholicism, not because of Roman Catholicism.

27:16

What about Eastern Orthodoxy? Is it a similar situation? It's similar, but I would actually open, hold open a wider range of possibility.

27:28

Because of the fact that within Eastern Orthodoxy, you don't have that papal clarity,

27:36

I guess you could say. And just for historical chuckles,

27:42

I would point out a rather interesting gentleman that if you studied church history, you may have heard of.

27:54

Cyril Lucaris. Cyril Lucaris was the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople as Cyril I in the early 17th century.

28:13

And he is known for having tried to bring into Orthodoxy Reformed Theology.

28:25

Let me read you a section from him. There was a time when we were bewitched before we understood the very pure word of God.

28:35

And although we did not communicate with the Roman pontiff, we abominated the doctrine of the Reformed Churches as opposed to the faith, not knowing in good truth what we abominated.

28:45

But when it pleased the merciful God to enlighten us and make us perceive our former error, we began to consider what our future stand should be.

28:52

And as the role of a good citizen, in the case of any dissension, is to defend the juster cause, I think it all the more to be the duty of a good

28:59

Christian not to dissimulate his sentiments in matters pertaining to salvation, but to embrace unreservedly that side which is most according to the word of God.

29:09

What did I do then? Having obtained through the kindness of friends some writings of evangelical theologians, books which have not only been unseen in the

29:18

East, but due to the influence of the censures of Rome, have not even been heard of, I then invoked earnestly the assistance of the

29:25

Holy Ghost, and for three years compared the doctrines of the Greek and Latin churches with that of the

29:30

Reformed. Leaving the Fathers, I took from... check this out. This is where he got in a lot of trouble.

29:37

Leaving the Fathers, I took from my only guide the scriptures and the analogy of faith.

29:44

At length, having been convinced through the grace of God that the cause of the Reformers was more correct and more in accord with the doctrine of Christ, I embraced it.

29:58

Was he able to convince other people of that? Not really.

30:07

Cyril was also particularly well disposed towards Church of England and corresponded with the Archbishops of Canterbury.

30:16

There was some communication between them. In 1629 in Geneva, the Eastern Confession of the Christian Faith was published in Latin containing

30:23

Calvinist doctrine. In 1633, it was published in Greek. But the

30:28

Council of Constantinople in 1638 anathemized both Cyril and the Eastern Confession of the Christian Faith.

30:34

But the Council of Jerusalem in 1672, especially engaged in the case of Cyril, completely acquitted him, testified that the

30:40

Council of Constantinople cursed Cyril not because they thought he was the author of the confession, but for the fact that Cyril hadn't written a rebuttal to this essay attributed to him.

30:50

However, Western scholars continue to insist on the Calvinism of Cyril, referring not only to a confession, but also in his extensive correspondence with Protestant scholars, etc.

30:59

So, it didn't go well. There really isn't any place in historic traditional

31:12

Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodoxy, for the necessary anthropology to make the doctrines of grace make sense.

31:26

So, that's a little interesting historical tidbit to keep in mind what happened in that case.

31:33

But what I'm saying is, it would seem to me that there is a broader spectrum to Orthodoxy, which does not for a second diminish the tremendous danger of an unbiblical doctrine of justification, the denial of Sola Scriptura, the elevation of tradition.

32:02

That tradition has become fixed through the liturgy and the prayers of the

32:07

Church. And while it's not as irreformable as the

32:19

Roman concept, I can't see how it could be reformed without an embracing of the ultimate overriding authority of Scripture and an embracing of a method of exegesis that would allow for, well, to obey

32:36

Jesus. Because Jesus taught us that any tradition, even tradition that claims to come from God, has to be tested by the ultimate authority of Scripture.

32:46

And I don't think that that comes from, that that's,

32:54

I don't see how that could work. I don't see how that could work. So anyway, just covering those few little issues, those few little things, demonstrates that there's just so many topics.

33:15

And trying to get Western thinkers to think like Eastern thinkers is really, really difficult.

33:22

It's very hard. And that's why I've never sought to engage this particular subject.

33:33

The amount of reading would be massive and I just, you know,

33:38

I didn't want to do Islam either, but Lord changed my heart on that one, but certainly not going to be considering going that direction.

33:51

So, what does this whole situation with Hank Hanegraaff mean? Well, it certainly is a reason for tremendous concern.

34:04

It's one thing to talk about someone who does not have a knowledge of what the issues are.

34:14

Hank was sitting in the studio every time we debated Sola Scriptura with Jimmy Akin or Tim Staples, and what you need to understand is what he's done means he now agrees with them.

34:27

Not in the final conclusion as to what the ultimate authority is, but when it comes to the subject of Sola Scriptura, he's definitely changed sides.

34:36

And that's a huge thing. That's a huge thing. So, I hope that there will be a little more thoughtful interaction with these issues.

34:58

But look, let's just be honest with one other thing. The vast majority of the people that are attracted to Eastern Orthodoxy are attracted to it not because of any of the theological things

35:06

I've been talking about. That's another reason why I haven't engaged it. The vast majority of people who convert to either

35:13

Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy out of an evangelical background is because they are attracted to the liturgy, not saying this in a disrespectful manner, but to the smells and bells.

35:32

Architecture for Orthodoxy, it's the iconography, the idea of connectedness to an earlier time period that, look, the vast majority of quote -unquote

35:52

Protestant worship doesn't have any of that. There's very little discussion of church history.

35:58

That's why I'm teaching it right now. But the idea of standing in the great tradition, having a meaningful connection to those who've come before us, don't get that at Calvary Chapel.

36:13

You don't get that at your local Baptist church, even if they have the trail of blood, which, anyway, you don't get that there.

36:24

And people who are wanting something more than that, sometimes they've, look, all this comes back to a simple thing.

36:33

And now I'm not even addressing EO -ism, but let's talk about us. If you do not see the church in a truly biblical fashion, if you do not believe that you are encountering

36:52

God in his word, meeting with the Spirit, just a good illustration of this, how seriously does almost anyone take the

37:04

Lord's Supper in most, I'll have to say this clearly, in most non -reformed

37:12

Protestant churches? Leave the liberals out. I'm talking about believing people here. Leave them out.

37:19

The vast majority of Baptist churches, just something you do about every three months, and no one's really quite sure why.

37:25

And all it does is make you a little bit late that night. Right? I mean, the idea of preparing for the supper, desiring to go to the supper, the idea that church discipline would preclude you from partaking of the supper, how many people would care?

37:48

That's what I'm referring to. Now, notice I said non -reformed. I suppose there are

37:53

Reformed folks who would fall in the same camp if you're nominally Reformed. But if you understand Reformed theology, if you actually try to live it, then you understand something about church history, and hopefully not just back to 1517 or, ah, let's go all the way back to Wycliffe.

38:17

But you're going to have some type of serious doctrine of the Lord's Supper. Read either the

38:23

Westminster Confession or read the London Baptist Confession of Faith. It's amazing to me how many Reformed Baptists have never read the

38:29

London Baptist Confession of Faith on the Lord's Supper. It's a whole lot deeper than most Reformed Baptists have any idea.

38:35

A whole lot more there. Much more Calvin than Zwingli. If you read it, most people haven't.

38:43

So, it is the Puritanization.

38:52

Some people just fell off their chairs. Love the Puritans. But Puritan worship is for Puritans, and if you can focus upon the theology, if you have the same depth of theology that Jonathan Edwards had that would cause him to break down weeping at the contemplation of the

39:14

Trinity, cool! You don't need anything more than that. Some lesser human beings might need a little bit more in the sense of communal worship and liturgy and things like that.

39:31

And that's why I'm not one of those people who thinks that every single church should look like every single other church. There's going to be differences.

39:37

And that's a good thing, not a bad thing. But the desacritization of church is one of the primary things behind the attraction of Eastern Orthodoxy.

40:00

The little box with nothing more there than some pews and the idea there's nothing...

40:14

Well, you know how long ago was now? 15 -20 years ago. I remember having some disagreement with someone very close to me theologically, but who was basically saying,

40:28

I just cannot agree with this Reformed emphasis upon the sacred task of preaching or the sacredness of the pulpit.

40:38

And a lot of churches today what used to be represented by how you would dress up to go to church.

40:45

Hey, you know, I'm no fan of our governmental system right now or most of the people in it, but if I were to meet the president,

40:56

I'm not going to show up in jeans and a t -shirt. There's something about dressing appropriately.

41:05

And yet in a lot of Baptist churches today, that's not seeker -friendly anymore.

41:16

So in other words, the church has become focused upon the people piling in, not the sacredness of what goes on there.

41:23

And all this stuff that focuses upon worship as being the emotional experience of the person and the pew and so on and so forth.

41:30

It really just detracts from the sacredness of the ministry of the word, the sacredness of the gathering of the body.

41:41

A lot of that's been lost. And when it's lost, people start looking for it because it should be there.

41:49

And so if you don't have a meaningful doctrine of the church, if you don't have a meaningful doctrine of the ordinances, you don't have a meaningful doctrine of the fact that the preaching of the word of God is how

41:58

God meets with his people and all the rest of that stuff, I can see why you want the smells and bells. I get it.

42:07

But when you do have a biblical understanding, then you don't sacrifice the gospel and biblical authority for these substitutes that can never really fully satisfy.

42:20

I mean, I did not expect to go that long on that. I apologize, but there you go. What can

42:26

I say? So there's my thoughts on that particular subject, sort of wandered around over.

42:35

Like I said, Eastern orthodoxy even defies being able for you to even be able to put it into an outline form.

42:46

It's really difficult. It's really difficult because there's so much interweaving of things.

42:54

It's a challenge. Were you? No, I was just going to say,

43:02

I mean, this is frustrating. And there are folks that are,

43:09

I know they're pounding on you on Twitter and I'm getting emails and I, you know, while you're doing the show,

43:16

I had a fella post the story right there on my own personal Facebook page and Of what?

43:25

Of Hank. Oh. We don't run CRI. Okay. I don't know anyone at CRI.

43:34

I don't have influence. I don't know what's been going on with him. And so if you call me,

43:40

I'm just as clueless about what's going on over there as you are. And so all

43:47

I can do is say, folks, you know, take a deep breath. Obviously, I'm just simply, the primary reason

43:59

I've commented on it is it's a teachable moment, necessary moment. I've been on on BAM in the past, but that was coming up on many, many years ago now.

44:09

I mean, wow, we're coming up on 14 years since the last time I was on. That's a long time. I haven't had any influence there for a long time.

44:17

But it's a teachable moment. Again, there are going to be people who are going to say, ah, you're soft on that, too, mainly because I try to point out that there's a lot of different experiences of orthodoxy and there's a lot of different kinds of orthodoxy.

44:36

Look, my experience of orthodoxy in Ukraine is uniformly negative. Uniformly. It is a dead religious shell without a gospel, period.

44:49

But I recognize that's not the only expression of orthodoxy. So I've tried to focus upon the key issues, the imbalances, the lack of the appropriate anthropology.

45:05

Obviously, in regards to worship, any Reformed person is going to break out in hives at the iconography and things like that, and as long as you break out in hives at all the other idolatry that we ourselves fall into, then you can jump up and down and scream and yell about that, too.

45:28

But the key issue is to try to recognize why it is we don't see.

45:36

Go do a search. How many books are there from a Protestant perspective, believing

45:41

Protestant perspective, in Roman Catholicism? Compare that with how many in Eastern Orthodoxy. Why is that?

45:47

Because it's really, really hard to discuss. And most people want simple answers. They want simplicity.

45:55

They want everything black and white. They don't want anything you have to think about and go, don't want to do that.

46:01

I realize our audience, at least the audience that supports us, already realizes that we can't do that, that we have to be more careful about things like that.

46:11

All right, so first 45 minutes on that.

46:17

Yeehaw! We could end up going a really, really long time at this rate of speed because I didn't intend to do that.

46:27

I was going to only do half an hour, and so we went longer. All right. switching over now, trying to ignore the various messages and everything else coming my direction.

46:46

Thank you, Mike. Appreciate that. Anyway, and I know you're watching.

46:56

Over last week, we put forward an invitation to Dr.

47:06

David Allen of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary to engage in a debate in October on a subject that, well, we tried to make sure there was no barriers in the way.

47:25

Wrote a book on the subject. The scriptural stream would be a text of scripture that he's written an entire commentary on.

47:36

Coming to Dallas, doesn't have to travel. Just make it as easy as possible. Well, I forgot to open the thing here.

47:46

Let me see if I can find it real quick. Oh, great.

47:54

I left it on the I left it on the desktop on the computer in the other room.

48:03

I think, nope, you wouldn't be able to open up because it doesn't have your fingerprints. So, drat.

48:10

Somewhere in Facebook is Dr.

48:16

Allen's comment. I thought I put it in Dropbox. My apologies. I messed up. It's Dr.

48:24

Allen's comment where basically he's, it basically was a read my book moment. If any of you remember that same

48:31

Bible Answer Man broadcast where in talking with George Bryson, you know, he made that comment, read my book.

48:43

That's pretty good. Read my book. Well, actually my voice is getting scratchy. So it's easier to sound like George. Read my book. That's pretty much what

48:51

David Allen said. He said, I refuted James White on like a dozen different points in my book.

48:57

Perhaps he'll engage those. So I guess that's his comment. No, I'm not going to debate just read my book.

49:07

I'm not telling anything to this audience that you don't already know. Debates are useful because they bring the two sides together and give you the opportunity of examining the two positions in the light of the other.

49:26

Simply going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth between videos and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

49:34

Oh, thank you, Garrett. I did post it in the chat channel and Garrett, the geek, well, okay, no, no, no, no.

49:46

Okay, I've got that up. No, this was Dr. Allen's comment in Facebook. Sorry about that. The value of debates going back and forth, back and forth, instead of doing that back and forth, you get the two in one place and you can actually ask meaningful questions and force someone to answer questions rather than just spinning things.

50:08

That's what the value of debate is. So what

50:15

I'd like to invite anybody in the audience to do who actually is considering Dr.

50:22

Allen's presentation. Get his book. I have it on Kindle.

50:28

I have it up on the screen. Well, actually, I have Potter's Freedom up right now, but I have both of them. Get his book.

50:36

Get the Potter's Freedom and read the two chapters that I wrote on this particular subject.

50:48

Now, obviously, from the Reformed perspective, this is just a part of the woven tapestry of divine revelation in regards to soteriology.

51:00

There's a number of things that come through this. I tried to bring that out in those two chapters.

51:09

And so, thank you.

51:15

B. Forbes, who is also the guy that allowed me to switch over to textual in IRC and brought me all my scripts and stuff.

51:23

Thank you once again. David Lewis Allen. Dr. White made a case for limited atonement in two of his books.

51:29

I have critiqued him on roughly a dozen points. Perhaps he'll respond point by point. That was posted since I put up my challenge.

51:37

There's no question he knows about the challenge, the invitation to debate. So I guess that's it. People who are going, yes, let's do this.

51:45

There's a response. It's one, three short sentence response.

51:52

Dr. White made a case for limited atonement in two of his books. Oh, look at that. I have critiqued him on roughly a dozen points.

51:58

Perhaps he'll respond point by point. So there's, that's it. That's the extent of it.

52:04

That's what's sitting on the desktop on the other computer. You know what we need

52:11

Ryan to do? I need to be able to pull up my desktop from in there on this like that.

52:20

And that should be doable. No, not the way it's configured at the moment.

52:28

So anyways, that's something we need to do. All right. We won't argue about it right now. So I went to Dr.

52:40

Allen's book because I started getting informed over the weekend that an entire video had been put up.

52:50

Even Sam Shamoon linked to it. Here's the refutation of James White. And then

52:55

I looked at the video and discovered it was Leighton Flowers sitting there reading from the relevant section of Allen's book about me.

53:07

This is what we've been diminished to is videos of people reading books.

53:14

This is the depth of interaction we're going to have. Great. Wonderful.

53:21

So I How do

53:27

I even say this respectfully? The section on Particular Redemption that I wrote in The Potter's Freedom, I remember

53:39

I sent it to one individual, a very well -known individual. If I mentioned the name, everybody would go, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He endorsed the book.

53:46

But that's not saying much because there were how many 30 some odd endorsements on the book when it came out.

53:55

He wrote to me privately and said Almost dost thou convince me to become a Calvinist?

54:00

Because that's the one area. He's not totally on line with the L. He believes he's a sort of four -pointer type guy.

54:09

To say that Dr. Allen's response to me is surface level, disjointed, incoherent, and utterly unsatisfying is to tremendously understate the case.

54:27

I would just invite anybody. I invite anybody. Check me out. Buy his book.

54:33

I'll advertise Dr. Allen's book. You can get it on Kindle. Buy his book and read my chapters on Particular Redemption.

54:47

Hopefully you'll take the time to recognize that they are a part of a larger work and hence there's a flow to the argumentation.

54:56

And then read Dr. Allen's response. And I believe that the vast majority of unbiased individuals will go that doesn't even touch it and now

55:11

I understand why he's not debating. I will give you an example.

55:18

I was gonna do this backwards, but let me just give you an example here.

55:28

I'm looking for here we go. All right.

55:36

I think you should have that. Do you have that? All right.

55:42

Now, go ahead and bring it down for just a second. Remember what I challenged him to do.

55:48

Go ahead and bring down for a second. What I wanted to do, you see,

55:56

I wasn't raised as a Calvinist. I have said this over and over again, and I will say it again.

56:03

The reason that I believe what

56:10

I believe in this area is because when I purposefully apply the same exegesis that I will use in just over two weeks time in Rapid City, South Dakota to defend the

56:28

Trinity and the deity of Christ against Iglesia Ni Cristo, when

56:35

I take that form of interpretation, exegesis, and hermeneutics and apply it to the issue of soteriology and especially the atonement of Christ, I come up with the belief that there is perfect harmony between the

56:54

Father, the Son, and the Spirit in the work of salvation, that salvation is primarily what

57:01

God is doing to glorify Himself, that the Father has a role, the

57:07

Son has a role, the Spirit has a role, each perfectly undertakes their roles, and that there is nothing in Scripture that teaches me that what they do is dependent upon me and dependent upon my will to cause them to be successful.

57:30

And that the Father elects a particular people for whom the

57:38

Son dies so as to bring about their salvation and the Spirit then makes application and brings them to spiritual life.

57:46

This is this is the result of the application of the same methods of interpretation.

57:53

That's why I believe this. And so the invitation was, let's go to the book you've written a commentary on,

58:01

Hebrews, and let's see if it teaches what you teach about the atonement or what

58:09

I'm teaching about the atonement. So what I'm saying is I believe this because of exegesis.

58:16

I believe this because it is the revelation of Scripture. It's not because of the Synod of Dort. It's not because of John Owen.

58:26

These can be wonderful mechanisms and methodologies of elucidating truth, but they are secondary sources.

58:36

They can enlighten us. They can help us see things we've not seen before. But the reason

58:41

I believe in this is because I believe in, and I'm going to make this point in against INC, sola

58:49

Scriptura, tota Scriptura. Scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith.

58:54

I believe all of Scripture. So when you read, when you read those two chapters, you will see an exegetical presentation, exegetical presentation.

59:17

Now in light of that, when we turn to Dr.

59:23

Allen's book, we read the following, White discussed

59:32

Romans 8, 31 through 34 and Hebrews 7 through 10 as affirming limited atonement.

59:39

Yet nothing in either of these passages affirms limited atonement. And then he moves on.

59:48

That's it. A man who wrote a commentary on the book of Hebrews, I argue from Hebrews 7 through 10, for pages, preached multiple sermons through Hebrews 7 through 10, before and after.

01:00:12

And the only response we get is yet nothing in either of these passages affirms limited atonement.

01:00:22

That's the nya nya response. Or the oh, yeah. I can see why you would not want to defend that in debate because, you know,

01:00:32

I was talking like a three -hour debate and it wouldn't take long to get past that level of response.

01:00:41

Yeah, that's it. All the argumentation about the consistency of Romans chapter 8, ignore it.

01:00:51

Hebrews 7, ignore it. Oh, well, he must address those someplace else.

01:00:56

Well, not really.

01:01:03

There's some really confusing stuff. Really, really, really confusing stuff elsewhere in the book.

01:01:16

I'll, again, this is going to sound very, you're just being mean. Get the book.

01:01:23

Get the book. Read it yourself. Some of it simply doesn't even make any sense.

01:01:32

It certainly is not written to try to communicate anything to anybody. He lays out these arguments and 0 .1,

01:01:43

0 .2, 0 .3, 0 .4, and then, and let me just read you a section here.

01:01:49

This is, I wish that it had the page numbers, but it's location 6491 in Kindle.

01:01:55

With respect to P3 and P4, the Hebrews text does not state that offering and intercession are part of the same ceremonial function.

01:02:06

It is plain from Hebrews 9 that P3 is false since the text states that Christ enters the

01:02:12

Holy of Holies to offer his blood to God. At this point, he has not already offered it.

01:02:17

P4 is false on three counts. Owen confused offering with intercession. Two, Christ's intercession is done at the right hand of God after he has made his offering.

01:02:27

And three, the offering is once for all, but the intercession is continuous. Christ's duty as mediator begins after his cross work and is in fact based upon it.

01:02:37

Now, first of all, that's hard to follow, but at least we were getting close to something there.

01:02:44

We were getting close to something there. But did you, but you have to almost, I have to almost unpack it for you to even understand what he's saying.

01:02:52

He is saying that mediation and intercession are two separate things.

01:03:00

And in essence, he's trying to destroy because he has to do this. He has to destroy the

01:03:07

Old Testament paradigm of Christ as high priest and what the high priest had to do.

01:03:14

Because if you recognize, if you recognize what the high priest actually did and you recognize that it's part and parcel of the argumentation of the book of Hebrews, that Christ is fulfilling this in himself, particular redemption becomes a given.

01:03:32

Because the offering in the temple was for those who drew near.

01:03:39

It was not for the Egyptians. It was not for the whole world. It was not even for unbelieving Jews. It was for those who drew near in worship.

01:03:48

The sacrifice was only part of the act of the high priest.

01:03:56

If you try to say the high priest did his duty by the sacrifice, not unless he's presented the blood on the mercy seat he hasn't.

01:04:03

That was all part and parcel. They have to cut that up. Because intercession and mediation before the father, they recognize they are in essence saying that Christ can fail at this.

01:04:19

They recognize that if you take biblical theology as a whole, if you see the beauty of its consistency and all the threads coming together, if you see all of that, then you see why this is such a beautiful and biblical teaching.

01:04:39

They have to try to take it apart. But as far as exegesis, missed it.

01:04:50

Missed it. It was funny, back at let me see if I can find this here real quick.

01:04:59

When he first introduced me, at least didn't call me a hyper -Calvinist, he did say insufficient, accuses me of characterizing

01:05:17

Arminianism, a bunch of stuff like that, primarily coming from Tony Byrne, I think.

01:05:31

I couldn't find that section. Well, let's just cover this. Let me cover at least one of the things that was read, because this is a section that was read by Leighton Flowers.

01:05:42

See if you can figure this out. Right after the section that I just read, where he just blows off Romans 8 and Hebrews.

01:05:52

Perhaps the most egregious error, the most egregious error, you ready for this, folks?

01:05:58

You want to see my egregious errors? You want to see what they think is pure refutation, absolute refutation of yours truly?

01:06:08

Here we go. Here we go. Perhaps the most egregious error White made is hermeneutical in nature.

01:06:14

Well, I'm glad we have something to deal with. Referencing Galatians 2 .20, he stated, but let us ask this question.

01:06:22

Can the justly condemned sinner who stands upon the parapets of hell and eternity to come, screaming in hatred toward the halls of heaven say,

01:06:32

I was crucified with Christ. He loved me and gave himself for me. Surely not.

01:06:39

First and obviously, the context has to do with real or vital union with Christ.

01:06:46

This is why Paul goes on to say, it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh,

01:06:52

I live by faith in the son of God. No unbeliever can say I have been crucified with Christ, even if it is an elect unbeliever, for none of them is living by faith in the son of God.

01:07:05

If White considered the text and his own theological assumptions carefully, even he would have to say that Christ died for more people than can say,

01:07:14

I have been crucified with Christ, since some of the elect are still in unbelief.

01:07:20

The same goes to the passages that say Christ laid his life down for the church. That statement likewise only concerns believers.

01:07:28

All parties, whether Calvinist or not, grant that Christ died for more than are in a believing state.

01:07:33

High Calvinists think Christ died only for those who will eventually come to believe, not only for those who presently believe.

01:07:40

White, as is common in his argumentation, is unwittingly placing union with Christ before faith and assuming that all the elect as such can therefore say,

01:07:51

I have been crucified with Christ. Second is a straw man concerning both

01:07:57

Arminianism and moderate Calvinism. Notice he uses the absurd terminology of moderate Calvinism.

01:08:03

None of them use Galatians 2 .20 to advocate their position because they all easily recognize the verse obviously pertains to those in vital union with Christ.

01:08:13

None of them think that the damned in hell can say, I have been crucified with Christ, but only that they can say,

01:08:19

Christ has died for me. White's opponents assert the latter of all men, not the former.

01:08:25

White argued as if these two propositions are the same and thus misrepresented his opponents as well as the text.

01:08:33

Now, that's it. That's it on Galatians 2 .20. Now, do you, that's hard to follow.

01:08:41

I realize that's hard to follow. Let's take this apart because if this is seemingly, this is the best he's got.

01:08:50

This is the best he's got. So, if he's wrong here and if we can demonstrate he's wrong here, then he has utterly failed to even begin to make a dent and even begin to respond, which makes the first three sentences, which just blows off the vast majority of the argumentation, all the more egregious.

01:09:12

Let's remind ourselves of what we're dealing with here, okay?

01:09:17

Let's see why we even, why did

01:09:23

I bring this up in the first place? Well, here is the relevant text,

01:09:30

Galatians 2 .20, which

01:09:35

I'm going to have to back up the Greek here because of the different division in the

01:09:42

English text and the Greek text. I have been crucified, well, back to verse 19, for through the law

01:09:51

I died to the law so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer

01:09:59

I who live, but Christ living in me. But Christ lives in me and the life which

01:10:07

I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, the one,

01:10:13

I live, here's the Son of God, the one loved me, that's an aorist participle, and gave himself up huper emu, in my behalf.

01:10:29

So, the demonstration of the love of the Son of God is in his giving up of himself huper emu.

01:10:37

Here is substitutionary atonement and it is personal for me. This is the demonstration of his redemptive love and it's the same love which now causes him to be living within me.

01:10:52

Now, let's take that down for a second and I will go back to the book and go to the library and go to the

01:11:08

Potter's Freedom. Now, what had I said? Here is the context.

01:11:16

This is actually toward the end of the presentation. Let me just back up a little bit here and take a running start so you can know just how much is being ignored in the response.

01:11:33

I quoted Matthew 121, she will bear a son, you should call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins. Why is the

01:11:38

Lord even named Jesus? Because he will save his people from their sins. We are not being trite to point out the obvious.

01:11:44

He is not called Jesus because he will make savable a vague indistinct general group of people who exercise their free will to enable him to redeem them.

01:11:53

He is called Jesus because one, he has a people, his people, and two, he will save them from their sins.

01:12:00

He does not try to save them, seek long and hard to save them, but he saves them. He saves them by making propitiation for their sins and I quote from Hebrews chapter two, which would be in part of the debate if we ever were to have it.

01:12:15

Therefore, he had to be made like his brethren in all things so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

01:12:29

Sins of the people. I just note in passing, that would be a specific people in the context of the

01:12:37

Old Testament. You'd never read that for the sins of the people, that is every single human being who's ever existed.

01:12:43

That's not how the Old Testament would be read. That's not what it would have as a meaning. Propitiation is the sacrifice that brings forgiveness and takes away wrath.

01:12:53

What people is here in view? It is the many sons of 210, those he sanctifies, 211, my brethren, 212, the children

01:13:01

God gave me, 213, those subject to slavery all their lives, 215, the descendant of Abraham, 216, his brethren, 217.

01:13:10

In light of this, we understand the statement of Hebrews 2 .9, so by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone. Maybe that's why he didn't want to debate on Hebrews.

01:13:18

Another passage often cited without context by Arminians, yet defined so plainly in the text, that's specifically referring to Hebrews chapter two, verse nine.

01:13:29

It is not the message of the Bible, is it not the message of the By what warrant do we read the following verses and change their meaning to wants to save, or makes savable, or saves synergistically with the assistance of the sinner himself?

01:13:45

Luke 19 .10, the son of man has come to seek and save that which was lost. First Timothy 1 .15, it is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom

01:13:56

I am foremost of all. Matthew 20 .28, just the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.

01:14:05

Isaiah 53 .11, as a result of the anguish of his soul, he will see it and be satisfied by his knowledge.

01:14:10

The righteous one, my servant, will justify the many as he will bear their iniquities.

01:14:16

John chapter 10, I'm the good shepherd, the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, even as the father knows me, and I know the father, and I lay down my life for the sheep.

01:14:28

When we keep in mind the biblical teaching of the power and completeness of Christ's atonement, we can see in these passages the particularity that is so vehemently denied by the

01:14:40

Arminian. And how can we not see the particularity of the following words? So there's the context of my citation of Galatians 2 .20.

01:14:49

I have been crucified with Christ. It is not only I who live, but Christ lives in me. In the life which I now live in the flesh,

01:14:55

I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me. Then notice what was not quoted by Dr.

01:15:02

Allen. Consider for a moment how precious it is that the Christian can say,

01:15:07

I have been crucified with Christ. This is personal atonement, personal substitution.

01:15:16

We revel in the awesome love of our Savior who loved us as individuals and gave himself up for us, for me, me, the hate -filled sinner who spurned him and his love.

01:15:29

How much less glorious is the idea, quote, Christ loved a generic group and died so as to give them the opportunity to possibly join the group and hence receive certain benefits, end quote.

01:15:44

That's the part that was not included in the response. Then we have what was.

01:15:50

But let us ask this question. Can the justly condemned sinner who stands upon the parapets of hell and eternity to come, screaming in hatred toward the halls of heaven, say,

01:15:59

I was crucified with Christ. He loved me and gave himself up for me. Surely not.

01:16:05

Can such a person say, my sins have been punished twice. First, they were perfectly atoned for on the cross of Christ.

01:16:11

And now I am undergoing punishment for them again here in hell. The very idea causes us to recoil in horror.

01:16:17

You see, particular redemption means personal redemption. Christ died in my place, not generically, but individually.

01:16:26

What a glorious savior. That is what I actually said.

01:16:32

And you will notice that the majority was not responded to. And this is referred to by others as a complete refutation.

01:16:43

I certainly see why that debate doesn't look like it's going to be happening. Would have been a perfect opportunity.

01:16:49

Oh, it would have been a perfect opportunity. But no, no, no, we can't. Can't do that. Now, what you see then in the argumentation of Dr.

01:17:05

Allen is the necessity of taking apart what

01:17:13

God has done in salvation so as to not see the connectedness, the coherence, the consistency of the actions of the

01:17:25

Triune God. So, where they really, I consider this dangerous.

01:17:32

It's absolutely dangerous. Union with Christ is not the sovereign action of the

01:17:40

Father in eternity that elects a people and joins them to Jesus Christ so that his death becomes their death.

01:17:49

His burial, their burial, his resurrection, their resurrection. No, no, no, no. Union with Christ is the result of your free will action.

01:18:00

Your free will action. And the way they go about this is they try to raise the issue of, but we have to experience this in time.

01:18:09

We have to experience this in time. And so, you get this strange argument.

01:18:20

First and obviously, the context has to do with real or vital union with Christ. Exactly. Exactly.

01:18:28

That's exactly what it has to do with. And the only real and vital union with Christ is of the elect who are joined to Christ by the power of the

01:18:39

Father. This is John 6. This is why these folks will never, ever win in the realm of debate because they have to chop up what the

01:18:53

Bible states. And in a debate, I won't let them do that. Not just me, but anybody else who knows what this is all about will not let them get away with that.

01:19:02

We will keep bringing together what they want to take apart. And what's dangerous here is the very nature of union with Christ.

01:19:10

Remember the fact that Ephesians chapter one, that whole section about predestination election, you know where the word actually occurs, which isn't just about a group, but is about a certain people.

01:19:24

It's personal. Remember that's where 10 times in 13 verses in him, in him, in Christ, in the beloved, that's where union with Christ comes with.

01:19:34

And it's a part of God's activity. It's a divine thing. It's a divine act.

01:19:40

It's an extension of divine power. You have to disconnect this from everything else

01:19:48

God is doing in the atonement. You have to. Because if union with Christ is a divine action, then it must be seen consistently with the decree and the accomplishment, father, son, spirit, and hence you get particularity.

01:20:11

Because as he's going to argue here is, well, sure, but this is only about, no unbeliever can say

01:20:17

I have been crucified with Christ. Why not? Well, because the atonement and actual crucifixion with him are two different things.

01:20:27

That's what he's saying, if he didn't catch it. What he's saying is

01:20:32

Christ can die for you, but you not be crucified with him. Because what happens is he dies for you, but you only get crucified with him if by your free will, you choose to be saved.

01:20:48

Then you are considered to have been crucified with him. Do you see how this destroys the very foundation?

01:20:54

It destroys the very foundation of justification itself when you really think it through because you're atomizing this, you're disconnecting them.

01:21:02

And why do you have to disconnect? Because you're trying to shoehorn that unbiblical human autonomy into the

01:21:07

Bible and it doesn't fit. So you got to disconnect stuff to get it in there because of that idol.

01:21:14

And it is an idol because you're trying to cram it in where it doesn't belong. You got to disconnect stuff to make room.

01:21:22

No unbeliever can say I've been crucified with Christ, even if it is an elect unbeliever, for none of them is living by faith in the

01:21:31

Son of God. He actually thinks that it's a meaningful argument to point out that until you experience the grace of God, until you experience spiritual life, then you have not yet been crucified with Christ.

01:21:46

That's the idea. So this was the same thing that led to the controversy about eternal justification.

01:21:58

The idea that, well, if we are joined with Christ as the elect in his death or resurrection, then there you go.

01:22:10

That means you've been eternally justified. No, the Bible does not say that we have been eternally justified.

01:22:17

Justification takes place by faith. Well, but you have to. No. Sola Scriptura, Tota Scriptura.

01:22:27

You must follow the biblical text. And the biblical text teaches that justification is an act of God whereby he justifies the person who believes in Jesus based upon what

01:22:42

Christ has already done for him. Now, these folks are trying to say, well, but see what Christ's already done for him is just this impersonal thing that provides a ground and basis for God to then justify on the basis of saving faith, which is exactly what

01:22:56

Rome says. The death of Christ provides the ground or basis for justification. It's infused through the sacraments.

01:23:05

For them, it's given by faith. But it's an impersonal thing, not a personal thing.

01:23:15

So, the whole idea here is that from what they're saying is, no, no, no.

01:23:21

It's not those who are united with Christ who will experience salvation and hence come to understand what

01:23:31

Christ has done for them. No, no, no. What you've got is a hypothetical atonement.

01:23:38

And then when you actualize it, then somehow you are considered to have been crucified with Christ.

01:23:47

Somehow. The point is that either that's a real atonement or it's not a real atonement.

01:23:57

Either Christ died in behalf of every single individual or he didn't die in behalf of every single individual.

01:24:03

Why does any person in vital union with Christ say, I have been crucified with Christ? Because of substitutionary atonement.

01:24:11

These folks are asserting substitutionary atonement that is universal. So, none of this changes the fact that the person in hell in full final rebellion against God can say, ha, you tried to save me.

01:24:24

It was your intention to save me. Christ died to save me and I frustrated you. That was my point.

01:24:30

They missed it. They didn't miss it. They feel the force of it. But this is this incredibly weird way of trying to get around the force of the argument by saying, well, but what about the non -elect

01:24:45

Christian? I'm sorry. What about the elect Christian who hasn't yet experienced salvation? How is that relevant to my argument?

01:24:51

It's not. It's not even close. Why would any rational person, any rational person,

01:24:58

Leighton Flowers or David Allen, why would any of them think that that's a meaningful argument?

01:25:05

I'm not talking about the elect person who has not yet received regeneration. How is that?

01:25:12

They will. God is sovereign over time. God is working out his decree.

01:25:17

They will experience that. I'm talking about in the final state. Will there be people that God attempted to save, gave his son to save, his blood was shed in their behalf, the spirit tried to bring them to salvation, and in their final rebellion, in their expression of hatred to God, they can cry out,

01:25:38

I destroyed the work of the Son of God on my behalf. I say no, you say yes. Just be honest about it.

01:25:45

That's exactly what you're saying. It's exactly what you're saying. And that's exactly the point of my book, if you'd read all of it and respond to all of it.

01:25:55

Maybe that's why you don't want to debate, because I'd bring this type of stuff out. Dr. Allen, why didn't you only quote a part of it? Why didn't you quote that in its content?

01:26:02

Why didn't you quote what it's actually said? See, when I'm quoting his book, I'm putting the whole text on the screen. There's a difference.

01:26:09

It's how we approach things. So there you go.

01:26:15

Wow. That's amazing. If White considered the text and his own theological assumptions carefully, even he would have to say that Christ died for more people than can say

01:26:29

I've been crucified with Christ, since some of the elect are still in unbelief. They will not remain in it.

01:26:38

Every single one of the elect will be drawn in. Christ will not lose even one of his sheep because the

01:26:43

Father said to the Son, this is my will for you. He will accomplish it. I have a perfect Savior.

01:26:49

You're telling people you have a Savior who tries real hard. That's the difference.

01:26:55

That's the difference. And thank you for the opportunity of illustrating it to an even greater depth.

01:27:06

Still awake in there? Hard to sleep when I'm pounding on the desk, huh? Gonna take a breath, take a drink.

01:27:18

Yes, sir. You want to fill in? Is there something you'd like to talk to us about? I am reminded of the debate with Trent Horne.

01:27:24

If there was one point that Trent Horne made that stood out like a sore thumb to me was when he plainly and clearly stated there's all kinds of times when

01:27:36

God doesn't get his will. And that is the basis of this argument. There's all kinds of times when

01:27:42

Jesus fails. I can't tell you how many times I was sitting there listening to Trent Horne. I was going, I hope

01:27:47

Leighton Flowers is listening. Yes, absolutely. Because you and this guy are on the exact same page.

01:27:53

Before the debate was over, I turned to Mike Gadosh and I said, this can be summed up in two sentences.

01:27:59

James's case is Jesus never fails and Trent's case is Jesus ever fails. And that is what this whole thing boils down to.

01:28:08

They are arguing that Jesus failed. Well, I ask this simple question. How then can you rely upon a failed

01:28:16

Savior to save you? Because that's your argument. He fails all the time.

01:28:24

But I'm depending on him. For me, right? Sorry.

01:28:30

Yeah, I see. I'm not even gonna go there. There was a tweet

01:28:35

I'd like to take apart because it's ridiculous, but I'm gonna skip it. All right.

01:28:42

I know we've gone jumbo right here, but there's one more thing

01:28:47

I wanted to cover. We'll go an hour 45. How's that sound? Something like that. It's funny.

01:28:58

What was the comment that someone made down here? Yeah, this is on Ijaz Ahmed's Facebook page.

01:29:06

So I'm now shifting over to Islam. We've covered everything. Eastern Orthodoxy, the faux, and by the way,

01:29:14

I call them faux traditionalists because it is an inappropriate term. It is not the traditional

01:29:19

Southern Baptist perspective to be like that. That's been demonstrated, documented by good scholarship.

01:29:27

But anyway, and now a little bit on Islam. There was a thing.

01:29:38

Resurrection did not happen, BBC News. And I, well, here, let me read you what

01:29:49

I posted on Ijaz's page in response to that. They say, as long as you guys keep missing the mark like this, well, it is just sad.

01:29:57

On the one hand, you demand rightfully to be differentiated from the monsters who murdered Coptic Christians today in Egypt, all in the name of Allah.

01:30:03

Got it. Then you turn around and post inane, stupid headlines from that paragon of theological insight, the

01:30:10

BBC. Resurrection did not happen, say quarter of Christians. Excuse me, but if you'll try for a little consistency, even you would be replying, well, once again, the

01:30:18

BBC, which misrepresents Muslims all the time, has done it with Christianity today. For obviously, if you do not believe in the deity of Christ and resurrection, you're not a

01:30:25

Christian to begin with. Perhaps it is your idea that one is born a Muslim that allows you to think people are born as Christians.

01:30:31

Not that the explanation Muhammad gave of everyone being born on Fitra actually fits that idea, but they are not.

01:30:37

There is content of the Christian confession just as there is necessary content to the shahada. Deny that content of the

01:30:44

Christian confession and you're not a Christian. Just as denying the content of the shahada means you're not a Muslim.

01:30:49

You guys should be the first to not jump on the bandwagon of the secular loony media.

01:30:56

But my experience is, as long as it is opposed to Christianity, especially on the issues of the deity of Christ and the death and resurrection of Jesus, we will buy it, promote it, etc.

01:31:06

Disappointed indeed. So, pretty straightforward. Ijaz responded,

01:31:12

I do understand your point of frustration, James. I think you'll be more akin to comparing Qadianis with mainstream Sunni Islam, which you've rightfully distinguished before, rather than making the discussion about violence, which should have not been mentioned in the first place, though I do deplore such violence and rightfully so.

01:31:28

I just wanted to point out the premiere Christian radio, who I'm sure you're very much acquainted with, have used and continue to use

01:31:35

ComRes, their polling data. They've done it for Easter and Christmas previously, I believe. I've got no problem if you disagree with the headline or the content, but the point of note here should be that the article makes it clear that these are people who identify as Christian, not people who identify with confessional

01:31:50

Christianity. It doesn't mention sect or creed, so it's something general, not specific, so I do believe that distinction is quite clear to the reader.

01:31:58

Thanks for your feedback, though. I'll take it on board with future posts. Well, I don't think that it's clear to the reader.

01:32:08

And I pointed out in response, I am bothered by the fact that I'm seeing more and more from people that I respect, from Christians, I see more and more this simplistic willingness to throw up a horrible picture from Sweden or whatever else and just simply say,

01:32:34

Islam again. How would you like it if during the wars in the

01:32:41

Balkans, Christians versus Muslims, you showed some terrible thing that were done by, quote unquote,

01:32:47

Christian forces? Ah, Christianity again. The first thought across your mind is, don't blame me for that.

01:32:55

My theology doesn't provide a basis for wiping out a village or this kind of thing.

01:33:03

But there are a lot of Christians that are just simply, they're doing what I've decried over and over again, and that is just throw them all in the same bucket and just call it

01:33:14

Islam. That's what the

01:33:19

BBC is doing here. If you deny the resurrection, you're not a

01:33:27

Christian. I mean, what if you saw a headline, one quarter of Muslims do not believe

01:33:36

Muhammad existed? You'd go, you can't be a

01:33:42

Muslim if you don't believe Muhammad existed. You can't be a Muslim. And I'd agree, you can't.

01:33:49

You may self -identify as that, but folks, let's not start doing this self -identify thing. There needs to be, once we start getting to, well, they identify as Christians.

01:33:59

Well, you can identify as anything anymore. There used to be an objective grounds for dealing with language and the meaning of words, which has been lost.

01:34:11

But what I wanted to get to, what I wanted to read, was

01:34:16

Abu Ayyub. And here is the comment. The issue here,

01:34:22

I think, that we Muslims are trying to point out is what happens to a religion when you secularize it into oblivion.

01:34:30

Sometimes, folks, it's nice to get a viewpoint from another perspective. Listen, try to set aside your bias and your prejudice and your bigotry long enough to listen, maybe.

01:34:42

I hope that my listeners automatically will listen. But man, there's some folks out there that, well, that's

01:34:48

Abu Ayyub. He's a Muslim. I can't listen to him. No, listen. He actually has some good insights here.

01:34:54

And then when I disagree, then that makes it even better, right? Because we're actually talking with one another.

01:35:00

The issue here, I think, that we Muslims are trying to point out is what happens to a religion when you secularize it into oblivion.

01:35:09

And by the way, if you're part of the Church of England, listen. I'm not sure where Abu Ayyub is.

01:35:17

Ijaz, if you're listening live, could you message me? If he'd be willing for me to know where he is, because it'd be interesting to me.

01:35:26

Anyway, right now, Christians in the West are constantly trying to place themselves as morally superior, especially to Muslims.

01:35:34

I'd like to say that's not true, but it is. That's what

01:35:40

I'm talking about with all those memes out there that just automatically throw them all into one thing. And in doing so, are forced to compromise huge tenets of their theology and history.

01:35:51

What does he mean by that? The minimalist movement is a direct result of Christians facing pressure from secularists and atheists about their doctrine.

01:36:00

Who's said that before? I have. You know, mere

01:36:05

Christianity, the mere Christianity move, make the target as small as possible. I've studied under a number of Christian historians that are forced to remove all forms of miracles or doctrinal concepts from historic events.

01:36:21

He's right. So, for instance, historians will assume that since the story of Gilgamesh was written prior to that of the

01:36:27

Torah, then the Torah must have copied from the Mesopotamians. He's right.

01:36:33

I've said a million times. Also, the claim that the second commandment was actually, you should have no gods before me, meaning that the children of Israel actually recognized other gods, but that Yahweh selectively chose them,

01:36:48

I think. How long ago was it? Man, this was back when we were at the condominium.

01:36:54

But remember the night that Richard Mow went on AOL chat and I asked him a question about Mormonism and his response was, well, the early

01:37:04

Israelites were henotheists. They weren't monotheists. It's exactly what he's talking about at Fuller.

01:37:11

That's what I got. This continues down the line with all the stories in the

01:37:16

Bible where they try to scientifically explain things, remove miracles altogether. Anyone who has seen the

01:37:23

Exos movie funded by Rupert Murdoch can see this concept being practiced in broad daylight, that is, the river becoming red because of crocodiles.

01:37:30

I missed that one somehow. Did you know what he's talking about? I'm sorry. I missed that one. But it doesn't surprise me.

01:37:38

Then when you enter in the field of apologetics, it just becomes chaos. Whether Christians and Jews want to admit it or not, the majority of Islamic laws and punishments can also be found having been practiced by God's people in the

01:37:50

Old Testament or the Talmud. Abu, have you not heard me saying that? Have you not heard me warning people?

01:37:58

You better know your own scriptures before you go after these things. Now, and I hope you have heard me likewise say that the difference is in what we call, and in fact, this is something

01:38:12

I brought up in my dialogue with Abdullah in London just a few weeks ago, something called the

01:38:18

New Covenant. The New Covenant is the very essence of what the church is about today.

01:38:29

It defines the church. And what you're referring to was the law in establishing the theocratic nation of Israel.

01:38:41

What we're talking about today is the application and establishment of the New Covenant in the church, and there is a difference between the two.

01:38:52

And so, I hope you all have heard me tell Christians, you need to recognize that I've said this numerous times.

01:39:04

I started off a talk in St. Charles last year. I said, how many of you believe as Christians that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess to Jesus Christ?

01:39:19

Someday that will happen. And everybody's like, I said, from the world's perspective, you're radical.

01:39:26

Because if as a Muslim, you say that everyone needs to say a shahada and submit to God, surreal, radical, what's good for the good is good for the gander.

01:39:39

The difference between us is how it happens. It is a spiritual change of heart resulting in conversion.

01:39:52

It cannot be forced from the outside. Now, there are many Muslims, don't jump up and down yet.

01:39:58

There are many Muslims who also believe that the shahada cannot be forced upon someone. I got that.

01:40:04

There are others that don't. Oh, okay. Thank you, Ijaz. Ijaz is listening live.

01:40:11

And I'm hoping that since you told me this, that it's okay. So, this is interesting.

01:40:17

This makes it even more interesting to me. Abu is speaking from Kuwait. So, it would be interesting that a lot of this would be mediated by how prevalent the

01:40:29

United States is in Kuwait because of what took place back in the 1990s. So, that's interesting. But I think he said he was born in the

01:40:35

U .S. So, maybe that's more of it there. I don't know. But anyway, all right. And the only way we could demonize

01:40:45

Muslims in this modern context is to reinterpret history or just play dumb and ignore the Old Testament.

01:40:50

I don't ignore the Old Testament. But I do. Here's my argument,

01:40:56

Abu. At this point, my argument is this. I'm not ignoring the Old Testament. But the

01:41:02

Old Testament established the people of God through whom the Messiah came. The Messiah has come.

01:41:09

He has established his church. And the way to peace with God is through faith in his name and in the sacrifice that he has made in behalf of his people.

01:41:20

There has been a change in history. And as I see it, um, sorry.

01:41:29

You gotta send it all at one time, Ijaz. I'm sorry. I assume. I apologize. I apologize.

01:41:36

But it's water over the bridge now. This is live. So, because I said, please, make sure that something

01:41:45

I can say. So, I apologize. What I see is, and this is an argument that I haven't gotten a lot of interaction with.

01:42:00

From the Old Testament to the New, you have the deep fulfillment, the deep intertextuality, the prophecies, so on and so forth.

01:42:10

Once you get to the Quran, you have a U -turn. You have a U -turn.

01:42:15

You go back instead of accepting the fulfillment in the

01:42:21

New Covenant and in the New Testament, in the coming of Christ, in the message for the whole world, you turn around and you go back to, well,

01:42:30

Jesus was only a Messiah for the people of Israel, the Old Testament laws, dietary laws, the laws that define the theocratic nation of Israel, but now attempt to apply them in a much broader spectrum.

01:42:45

And that's what's causing the problem. That's a huge issue. That's a huge issue right there.

01:42:53

So, yes, I understand why Ijaz is posting this because it is showing how massively astray the church has gone to appease secularists.

01:43:00

Anyone can have the moral high ground when you remove yourself from all opinions and doctrinal concepts and create a religion that can constantly reinterpret itself in each generation.

01:43:08

Got to agree with you there. This is why whether Protestants want to admit it or not. Now, here, this is one of the reasons

01:43:13

I wanted to mention this. Listen to this. Listen to this. This is why whether Protestants want to admit it or not, tradition is needed to some extent when it comes to doctrine.

01:43:22

Did you catch that? Let me read it again. This is why whether Protestants want to admit it or not, tradition is needed to some extent when it comes to doctrine.

01:43:31

What you need to understand is Muslims like this gentleman or Yasser Khadi view themselves as standing in the tradition of the highest understanding of Islamic society and law, fiqh, as having a parallel in Roman Catholicism with the traditions of Rome.

01:44:04

And they see ISIS, Daesh, Al Qaeda, the radicals, as Protestants who overthrow the tradition.

01:44:24

Been really busy today. So, from their perspective, they're seeing the radicals as having abandoned the tradition as the

01:44:35

Protestants did. Now, my only response to that would be to point out that our scriptural, the canon of scripture itself, is so much broader, deeper, 1 ,500 years, 40 authors, two and a quarter languages.

01:44:56

It's so much bigger and deeper than the

01:45:02

Quran is that it is sufficient without the uninspired traditions.

01:45:13

I just don't think the Quran is big enough or coherent enough without the

01:45:19

Sunnah, without the Hadith, whatever. That's why you need it. And so,

01:45:24

I don't think it's a direct parallel, but that's something that could be discussed. And Ijaz then commented right after that, having looked over the comments in this thread,

01:45:34

I have to say that we took an initial disagreement, expressed our differences politely, and in the end, all benefited from each other.

01:45:42

Okay, thank you. I wish someone would screenshot this conversation. It would benefit a lot of people on all sides of the theological spectrum.

01:45:51

This is what well -intended, meaningful conversation is. Gotta agree. Gotta agree.

01:45:57

And you know what's weird? We're actually talking about the rarity of a conversation in Facebook that actually got to important issues where disagreements were discussed, and no one went after somebody else and called them names and demonized them and everything else, which says something about the state of social media.

01:46:23

It really does. It really does. But it can be done. It can be done. So, there you go.

01:46:30

I wanted to read that and share that with folks, that it can happen. And I thought there was some really interesting insights, especially that last line.

01:46:40

This is why, whether Protestants want to admit it or not, tradition is needed to some extent when it comes to doctrine.

01:46:46

I'd like to discuss what you mean by tradition, because the early church fathers talked about apostolic tradition, but it was sub -biblical.

01:46:55

It was derived from Scripture. I think, in your perspective, this would be external to Scripture, whether you're talking about the

01:47:04

Quran or the Bible. It'd be interesting. But I wanted to go there. There is, once again, a very multifaceted dividing line.

01:47:19

I understand there's some weird stuff going on in Twitter here that I missed. Yeah. Yes, it's good old

01:47:35

Sam. He's responding to me. Pass this on to James White. In his most recent

01:47:40

DL show today, he claimed that Dr. David Allen's response to portions of the book The Power of Freedom is surface -level, disjointed, incoherent, and utterly unsatisfying.

01:47:48

He then challenges people to read Allen's book and his own and compare the two. I'm glad he was accurate in all of those things.

01:47:54

And you'll notice that I read from Dr. Allen's book. Since I have read White's book when it first came out,

01:48:00

I can confidently tell you that White's claim here is a bold -faced lie and nothing more than ad hominem.

01:48:06

In fact, I am so sure of this that I'll be more than happy to debate White on limited atonement. And if he wants to make it even more focused, then

01:48:11

I am willing to debate him on what he calls the Big Three, specifically Matthew 23, 37, 39, 1

01:48:17

Timothy 2, 4, and 2 Peter 3, 9. So we see how well he does in defending his assertions against me. In fact, even after having read his book,

01:48:24

I still ended up abandoning limited atonement. So inform him that I'm calling out his bluff and that I can meet him in October to do this if he is interested so he can then demonstrate just how surface level, disjointed, and incoherent

01:48:34

Allen's case is. Do you catch something here? I hope you're watching, Sam. Those aren't the texts about limited atonement,

01:48:43

Sam. And if you'd actually read it and understood it, you would know that.

01:48:50

There's a chapter in my book called The Big Three. That's about unconditional election. And my book pointed out that people in this issue confuse their objections against unconditional election with limited atonement.

01:49:02

So you never did understand it. So it doesn't surprise me that you so easily abandon it just simply to try to get back at me.

01:49:09

Shame on you, Sam. Shame on you. Thank you for posting that and having an opportunity to respond to it.

01:49:17

I don't know what's happened with you, man, but you have lost it. You have lost it. And it is a shame.

01:49:24

It really is. I mean, to change your theological positions out of personal spite, where are you going, man?

01:49:33

You're posting Stephen Anderson stuff. It's amazing. Everyone's just sitting back going, whoa, wow, dude.

01:49:42

Have you noticed that? There's a reason why things are going the way they're going for you, my friend.

01:49:48

And I'm sorry for you. I really am. But that's just crazy. Just crazy talk.

01:49:55

Oh, no, there's crazy talk on Facebook. Who would have known that there could be crazy talk on Facebook? But there is crazy talk on Facebook.

01:50:01

Yeah, there you go. All right. Well, we didn't quite go the full two hours, but I had hoped for only 90 anyway.

01:50:08

So boy, we cover a lot. We cover a lot today. And you said we were doing a morning show 11 a .m.,

01:50:19

which is 2 p .m. each daylight time on Thursday. In other words, we're not going for a mega.

01:50:29

Okay. Well, we can, but you will be leaving before then. Huh? Okay.

01:50:37

All right. All right. We can do a jumbo. Otherwise, it's going to be like a four hour show because there's no off button for you.

01:50:44

Well, I have to have to. Like I said, there's no off button for you. I control the vertical and the horizontal.

01:50:51

Gotcha. Gotcha. All right. Thanks for listening today. Hope it was useful to you. We'll see you next time. God bless.