The Dividing Line August 7, 2008

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 -4111.

For toll free across the United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341.

And now with today's topic, here is James White. And good afternoon and evening, welcome to The Dividing Line on a

Thursday afternoon. And I know today that most people are tuning in not to listen to me whatsoever, but to our special guest today.

So I will forego the normal opening commentary and bring online with me the gentleman that you all want to listen to and that is

Dr. R .C. Sproul. Dr. Sproul, how are you doing today? Hey James, it's great to talk with you again.

Now I have a question that I think everybody that I know of is most interested in finding out and it's normally one of those questions you ask in polite conversation.

But this time, everybody really wants to know, how are you? Backward. Oh my, next

Thursday? Yeah. Well, all I can say is hopefully dry heat is good for knee replacements because that's what you're going to get when you come to Scottsdale in late

September. The monsoons should be over, so the humidity should be gone. And the highs, well,

I hate to tell you, we've had it as high as 103 on October 29th. Yeah, I've been out there before, but the dry heat is just wet heat.

Well, hopefully it will be very good for you and hopefully you'll have a wonderful time out in Scottsdale.

Now I'm looking at the lineup that you have put together for the conference the 26th and 27th of September at Scottsdale Bible Church and I'm seeing a bit of a theme here.

You are speaking on, if God is sovereign, how can man be free in the evening session, the first night, and then in the afternoon, what is the gospel?

So that sounds to me like you're going to be addressing, or you're going to be addressing,

I guess would be the way I put it, some of the more common objections to Reformed theology in those titles?

They're always welcome. Okay. Now I recall very, very clearly reading,

I was about to, you've got to remember, since I wrote The Potter's Freedom, there's another chosen book in my life, not

Chosen by God, but some other one that I forget the title at the moment. But anyway,

I remember very clearly in reading Chosen by God, a line that you used at that time when you spoke of man's freedom and God's freedom, you said,

God is free, man is free, God is more free than I am, when my freedom runs into God's freedom,

I lose. And I appreciate the fact that you expressed that without quite the long sentences that Brother Edwards used to express a similar concept.

He may have had long sentences, but nobody ever said it better than Edwards did. No, that's true.

But I sort of wonder if more people have read your explanation than his, because it's much more accessible in the same number of years since it was written.

But the first talk you're going to be giving, a lot of folks hear you on the radio, and they know something about this

Reformed theology business, and yet most of the time their objections have to do with the concept of man's will.

Are those the people you want to reach there? Oh, sure. I mean, but the idea that's prevalent in the case, then it's limited, and the common and popular understanding of free will is not the

Christian view, but is a humanistic, secular view. You know, the common view of free will is that we have the ability, equal ability, to...

Let me ask you, you have been ministering the Word many more years than I have.

I'm catching up percentage -wise, but so never will in any other way.

And I have noticed, so I'd like to get your take on this. I have noticed that it certainly seems to me like coming through the front door of the church is a veritable flood of worldly thinking.

So many in the church today do not have a purposely formed Christian worldview.

And as such, they bring the very concepts you were just speaking in regards to freedom of the will and things like that, they bring it right into their interpretation of the

Christian faith. Have you seen a trend toward that that makes it, for each passing decade, that much more necessary to cover the basics and to challenge people to have a biblical worldview, because it's so invasive within the church?

With ideas, ideas to creep into our thinking.

Now you are involved, of course, in the ministry of the church. You're involved with being obedient in that way, as we're all called to be that way.

Wouldn't you agree that really that's where God has intended that kind of remedial reformation, being conformed to the image of Christ, resisting the pressures of the world?

Isn't that first and foremost to be found in the proclamation of God's Word within the church?

Wow. Hi, I'm resisting saying too many amens here, because I'm a

Reformed Baptist, we don't really do that. But if that's the one thing

I have to complain about, about Reformed Baptists, is we do not amen enough. It just, it would really help me out when

I'm preaching, too. Well, if you guys don't have a pressure, then you very much don't.

I know exactly what you mean by that. But when you say, when you were just speaking of a lack of confidence in the ministry of the

Word, the authority of the Word, the power of the Word, and I would say, could we criticize ourselves, could we criticize

Reformed people that in some ways we tend to be afraid of speaking of the power of the

Spirit, likewise being so absolutely necessary for the successful preaching of the

Word? And it's not a rote thing.

I would be absolutely useless unless the

Spirit, the theology puts a great deal of emphasis on regeneration, on rebirth.

And we understand that's where the sovereignty of God is most powerfully influenced and affected by the

Spirit's power to change the disposition of the heart. So of all people who should be proclaiming the power of the

Spirit, it should be Reformed people. Right. Right. And yet, you certainly have to have been just as, the only term

I can use is, is shocked to read so many non -Reformed men who, when you proclaim the freedom of God and bring about regeneration, you proclaim the power of the

Spirit and taking out the heart of stone, giving a heart of flesh, the terminology that is often used to, in essence, disagree and I have a hard time not saying sometimes mock that freedom of God, saying that God is engaging in divine rape or He's rewiring us against our will, so on and so forth.

It truly concerns me when I hear that kind of response to the assertion that it's

God through the preaching of the Word, the power of the Spirit is glorifying Himself through the

Gospel and drawing His people unto Himself and to see people treat it that way. Do you ever have opportunity of talking with some of those folks and saying, what in the world are you talking about when you say that kind of thing?

I mean, sure, between Nicodemus, where Jesus talks, and when

Jesus talks to Nicodemus about rebirth, He makes it clear that there's a necessary condition before they come to saving faith.

Our Lord, it's our Lord, not John Calvin or Paul or anybody else, it's Jesus, who says unless a man is born of the

Spirit, he can't even see the Kingdom of God, let alone enter it.

And yet we have multitudes of Christian people who are out there saying that you can come to faith without being born again.

The whole idea is that you have faith and then as a result of your faith or the result of your decision, the result of your choice, then you will be reborn.

It's just the opposite of what Jesus says. Jesus says we're born in the flesh and the flesh can do nothing and now we're just born in the flesh's flesh and the necessary condition for saving faith is rebirth.

You know, Jesus reiterates that in the sixth chapter of John when He says nobody can come to me unless it is given to him by the

Father. So I think the great line of division historically on this point of theology is the order.

Does faith come and then rebirth? Or does rebirth come and then faith?

As you know, James, that rebirth precedes faith and if it didn't, saving faith.

Because until we're born again, we're in the flesh and as Jesus indicated, the flesh profits nothing and Luther reiterated that by saying that nothing is not a little something.

Well I know that I have taken a lot of heat for saying similar things in regards to the theological precedence of regeneration to saving faith, but that's okay, we'll continue to take that heat as we look to what the scriptures say about the gospel.

But it really takes us back to the upcoming conference in September because you're going to be finishing things up by talking about what is the gospel.

Now is that, you know, you have been over your career involved in so many discussions about so many aspects of the gospel, is it, are you going to be addressing a particular aspect here or is this more general?

What direction are you planning on going when you speak to that subject? Well, let me, answers was regarded as answer to the question, what is the gospel?

Jesus can be your savior and you can have forgiveness and the idea of gospel in the

New Testament and we receive the benefits of his word through faith alone.

And so we need to go back to the fundamentals here to understand, people say I'm in the gospel ministry but they don't even know what the gospel is.

You said something many years ago that again has stuck with me for a long, long time, but it really bothers a lot of people,

I don't mean to upset you, to inform you that you said things that bother people.

Something tells me you're fully aware of that fact and I very much appreciate your willingness to do that, but you like to sometimes turn things on their head, things that have been sort of accepted traditionally, turn them upside down to make people think and correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty certain it was you that said the question is not what will you do with Christ, the question is what will

Christ do with you? And that is so counter to so much of what's called evangelicalism today, that it truly causes people to stop and think and many people find that offensive and yet what you just said about the gospel sounds to me like you're saying, look the gospel is about what

God has accomplished in Christ first and foremost. Many will come to you and say, didn't we do this in your name, didn't we do that in your name, for me, the point is this

James, that our zeal for evangelism, and I wish we had even more zeal for evangelism than we do, but we want so much to see our friends and loved ones and we have multitudes of people who profess

Jesus, they come to the altar, they raise their hand, they say their prayer, and of course

Jesus gives them, look these people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are farfetched, but his life doesn't change.

You can't find that in the Bible, that's not theology that's been created.

Most definitely, and when you look at the result in the church of filling the church with people who have no concept of the holiness of God, they have no concept of their own sin, they have no concept of repentance toward God, can there be a more terrible thing than to instruct a man to go and try to minister the life of God to spiritually dead people.

I know people who had a desire to go into ministry, they encounter that and now they do computers, they do something completely different than that.

The last number I heard was 16 ,000. And I think part of it, part of that number we can't know what, is due to the tremendous trial of trying to lead an unregenerate flock, and there is so much pressure.

You know the Bible that recently a lot of attention was focused on the

Southern Baptist Convention, and the fact that their baptism numbers are down, and there's discussion about the passage of a resolution at the convention, actually promoting the idea of church discipline, what an amazing thing that was.

And yet there is such a pressure placed upon us today to especially young pastors to in essence quote unquote perform.

But is there anybody out there telling these young pastors that the standard that they have to reach for is that which they will bring before the throne of God, not the numbers standards that the denomination might be coming up with?

Most definitely, and I think so many people, I see it in teaching and seminary, so many of those young men are extremely conflicted because they see what the word says, what they're supposed to be doing, and yet the church does require them to wear so many different hats, and to do so many different things that they are truly torn.

And as a result, unfortunately, frequently take the shortcuts when it comes to sermon preparation, and when that becomes necessary to keep the numbers up, it's a sad thing to see.

Now, our time's running out with you, I just wanted to give you one last opportunity when you are going to be speaking in Scottsdale, and you're going to be addressing what is the gospel.

Would this be something that we would want to bring people to who maybe have some misunderstandings concerning the nature of God's grace, concerning maybe have some inflated views of man's role in regards to salvation?

Is this something we'd want to make sure that they hear? So you can see there's a variety of questions.

These are what we call the church.

Right, right. And so all of these, especially what John MacArthur's going to be addressing, is

Jesus the only way? I'm assuming the rampant pluralism that's going to be addressed at that point,

J. Ligon Duncan, post -modernism, these are all extremely difficult questions that are coming into the church, and so I would imagine you're hoping that everyone from across the

Valley of the Sun, which by the way, are you aware is the fifth largest urban area in the

United States? We passed Philadelphia a couple of years ago. Yeah, it's a big place, lots and lots of people, many, many unchurched people here.

120? No, no.

That's part of metropolitan Spain. Oh yes, oh yes, believe me, I moved here in 1974, and there wasn't much out there.

There is now. I don't know where all these people work, and I don't know where we get the water for them either,

I really don't, but they're still moving here, and if we had the kind of weather we have during the winter here all the time, we wouldn't have a place to stack the people, but thankfully it's about 106 degrees and semi -humid outside right now, and that helps keep the population down.

It does. Well, now you said that you're going to be having some surgery, so I'm certain that myself and many others would wish to pray for you and pray for your rapid recovery from that, and so that would probably mean that when you come to Scottsdale this next time, you're not going to be looking at playing any golf.

No, I don't think so. I don't think I'll be ready for that yet. Yeah, well, we just hope that you have an excellent trip out.

I'm sure that many people will be looking forward to having the opportunity of greeting you, and certainly

I want to thank you for taking the time to be with us today on the program, and that there will be many people who will make the choice to be there in September to hear these important questions faced, and certainly are thankful for your lifelong ministry and equipping the people of God.

Well, I appreciate it, and I hope I get to see you when we're out there. Well, I certainly hope so as well. Thank you very much, sir. Alrighty.

Thank you. Thank you for calling. God bless. Bye. Bye -bye. That, of course, is Dr. R. C.

Sproul. Anyone can recognize Dr. Sproul's voice. I will never forget,

I'm going to tell a story before we bring Mel Duncan on. I remember in 1995 at the

Christian Booksellers Association Conference in Denver, Colorado, myself and some other wide -eyed, young,

Reformed folks managed to track Dr. Sproul down in a hallway, and I remember he was very gracious to speak with us.

At the time, our big question had to do with the issue of evangelicals and Catholics together, and he had some very excellent insights for us on that particular subject, and so very thankful for Dr.

Sproul's ministry. Now we're joined on the phones now by Mel Duncan calling in.

Thank you. Mel, are you able to hear me? I sure can, Dr. Day.

Well, it is awfully good to be with you as well. Now, Mel, help us to understand your relationship here to Ligonier and to the upcoming conferences.

Sure. Well, I appreciate that.

I know that a few years ago, I had the opportunity of having correspondence with and then conversation with –

I've heard people use other terms of familiarity, but I just call him

J. Ligon Duncan, and I know there are shortened versions of that, but I'll never get used to it. I remember hearing him on a

Nine Marks program once, and one of the people was just always calling him by three letters, and I was just like, oh.

But anyways, I very much appreciated some of the insights that I was able to gain from Dr.

Duncan at that time, and so it's good to see the body working together.

We all have different gifts, and it's important that we share them with one another.

So Ligonier is seeking to have relationships with churches.

I really appreciate that because I am a churchman, and I believe very much that the church is the focus.

There is just too much in the New Testament about the church for it to be treated like it so often is in evangelicalism today.

And so I really appreciate that, that you seek to have that kind of relationship. There are a lot of ministries out there that sort of bypass the local church and seek to go directly to the people, and I've always had a real hard time with that.

Well, I personally think that if a man is seeking to minister within the church and to take what he is studying, take what he's writing, and make it understandable within the context of the brothers and sisters in Christ that he sees on a regular basis, it has an incredible impact on the public ministry that he then has when he's not in that local church.

I mean, I'll never forget speaking to the young people at my church for many years.

We had a schedule on Wednesday evenings. I had to teach the young people, just like all the other adults in the church were taking that turn, and speaking to them about the doctrine of the

Trinity. You know, you can write books about really high theology, but when you have to communicate it to the kids, you find out if you really understand it.

And I have seen that over and over again. Maybe that's one of the secrets to R .C.'s

ability to communicate to such a wide spectrum of people, is that if you don't do that,

I think you can really end up sinking into the mire of the academy speak, shall we say, and failing to be able to communicate.

Well, yeah, I do see that. I did a debate a few years ago in Los Angeles at the

Anaheim Vineyard. The name probably rings a bell. I had never seen a church that had as much room between the front pews, and this was really a stage, it wasn't a pulpit there, but this huge area.

And I remember standing there sort of looking at it before the debate, and someone said, well, the reason that's there is that's where all the people get slain in the

Spirit. And I was sort of like, okay, all right. And I was debating George...

Presumably this wasn't a KJV -only debate. It was not. I was debating George Bryson of Calvary Chapel, who's written a book like The Dark Side of Calvinism.

And we were debating salvation, who's in charge. And I was amazed at who turned out.

I don't think anybody from the Anaheim Vineyard was there. We had trouble finding people to turn lights on, but part of it was because they were having a mime show that night.

But anyways, and the Calvary Chapel folks. What was really encouraging to me was

I had young men coming up to me during the break, and they were saying, don't hold back.

The Calvary Chapel people need to hear this. Your book, The Potter's Freedom, has helped so many of us to learn what exegesis is and how to do this.

Please don't hold back. Preach it, brother, is basically what they were saying. And these were men who had given up something to hold this viewpoint.

They had taken the road less traveled, shall we say. And so, yeah,

I do see that kind of hunger on their part, these younger people's part, to have a connection to something that has been consistent.

It's biblical. It honors the Word of God. It honors God's holiness. It is consistent with what we see in the world around us, and man's sinfulness, etc.,

etc. And the fluffiness of the opposites, shall we say, just is not attractive to those who really want to have a deep -seated commitment to truth.

And so, yes, I do see that, and it is truly exciting to see. And I'm glad that you're seeing that at the

Ligonier conferences as well. So, the one coming up in Scottsdale, you're focusing on tough questions, but they all seem to be related very closely to the

Gospel itself. I mean, obviously, R .C.'s topics are right there, but you have suffering, you have

Jesus is the only way, post -modernism. All these subjects eventually devolve down to a discussion of the

Gospel itself. And, you know, to the broader, it'd be a great conference to have them.

Well, especially people who have imbibed the idea, which, unfortunately, we can certainly understand where they get the idea, and that is that Christianity is a faith that invites you to, in essence, turn off your brain, stop engaging in critical thinking.

And, unfortunately, let's face it, when people turn on certain television networks that will remain nameless, even though here in Phoenix, it's on the channel between 20 and 22, that Christians don't think about...

You're not talking about the channel with people with purple hair, are you? No, I wouldn't. I am so politically correct,

Mel, that I would never do anything like that, of course, because that would just be too easy to figure out through any broadcasting who we're talking about.

But, seriously, I mean, you listen to these people preaching, and if people...

Let's face it, we get painted, you know, in the same colors, whether it's fair or not, whether we chuckle about it or not, we get painted in the same colors.

When you listen to Richard Dawkins speak, you will often hear him addressing that kind of a mindset.

Now, it may be completely different than how you and I approach the faith, but, unfortunately, that's how people view us as well.

And so it would seem that people, if they think that, could come to this conference, and they'd certainly get a different viewpoint.

We hope so. Yes, yes.

It's a small building. That's right, that's right. A barn -like structure. That's right. And, yeah, we really appreciate what you have.

That's why she didn't think about a left field and the interplay between...

I just really hope that we can manage to keep it below 110 for you.

Some of you folks, even from the South, and I'm sorry if I can tell you're from the

South. There's a little reason why I came, but I won't tell you what it is. Honestly, September, though, by that point in September, the humidity's broken, and it is gorgeous here.

It truly, truly is. It's going to be my first trip to the Valley of the Sun. Really? And I'm sure...

Oh, yeah, that'd be very enjoyable. I'd love to do that. It's been great to have been in and out over this area.

Even before you brought it up, I was looking at the conference, and the next thing I was going to mention to you is, now,

I know some people who might criticize you for having John MacArthur and R .C.

Sproul on the same ticket, and I remember back in the 90s hearing a very brotherly exchange between R .C.

and John on the subject of baptism. I think it was at the Shepherds Conference, wasn't it? Was that where that was?

I'm trying to remember. It very well could be. I think it was. I know the year.

I think it was, and I think that that encounter, and then two years ago,

Bill Shishko, I'm not sure if you know Bill, but... I know Bill very well. Okay, good. Bill and I had our debate, and I don't know if you've heard it, but I was so appreciative of the fact that the night before we had that debate,

I was at the Franklin Square Presbyterian Church, Orthodox Presbyterian Church, need to put that in there, and I was speaking on Islam, and I have preached from his pulpit, and we are brothers in the

Lord. I've had him here on the program. He and I addressed new perspectivism on the dividing line together in the past, and there is a unity, and I really think it's the unity we have on the essence of the gospel that gives us the freedom to then go to the

Word of God and disagree on these other issues, and to do so in such a fashion that we shake each other's hands, and we can identify each other as brothers in the

Lord, and it's just so different, because most of my debates, I can't do that. I'm not in that position.

As you know, in January, debating Bart Ehrman on the issues that are raised by his books and things like that.

It's just a completely different realm, and it's so wonderful to be able to do those things, and unfortunately, people on both sides of the aisle don't think we should be doing that kind of stuff, but I really think that it's very important.

Oh yeah, most definitely.

Well, as you probably know then, between, well actually, the week before the

Ligonier Conference here in Scottsdale, I'm going to be doing three debates on Islam in Southern California, and then just a few weeks later,

I'm going to be heading over to, actually a little bit more than that, in November, over to London for three debates there, going to Speaker's Corner, and then flying back and debating one of the

Islamic apologists that I have been extremely impressed with. In fact,

I saw a paper that he wrote against the deity of Christ, which is one of the most involved arguments that I have seen coming from the

Islamic perspective, Dr. Zulfiqar Ali Shah. We will be debating in Durham, North Carolina as well, and so I'm engaging this area, and yet I'm doing so from a

Reformed perspective, and it is very interesting that that emphasis, that Christocentric element, that theocentric element of Reformed theology, is something that I've seen resonate with the

Muslims. That's something that they can understand, that we are not subjecting the

Gospel to merely human standards, that we have the highest view of Scripture, the highest view of God's holiness.

And so, you know, I have a saying you've probably heard a few times, theology matters, and it does determine how we do our apologetics, and what we focus upon, and what's really important, and what we're willing to debate about, and what we're willing to allow to be off to the side, and things like that.

And it really seems to me that we need to encourage the

Reformed community to gain more passion about this need to proclaim the

Gospel with clarity to the Muslims. They are in the news all the time, but my experience is most

Christians are somewhat scared of them. Well, you're a many miles long evangelical scene out there, and it's exciting.

Oh yeah. You know, it's so unusual for me to be talking to someone younger than me.

As you get older, there's a transition period where you start realizing that your doctor is younger than you, and you start going, oh man, the

Lord has put road signs along the way that's sort of warning you. The end is near.

Be prepared to enter into eternity. And your body gives you those signs, too. Unfortunately, you haven't gotten to 40, so you don't know anything about that yet.

Well, let's see how I do in the valley of... Yes, indeed. But you know, as I've been looking at the fact that, you know,

I'm past the halfway mark in my life, you start thinking about what do I want to leave?

What do I want this life to really be all about? And it changes your priorities.

And one of the reasons I've really gotten involved with the Islamic work, in fact, as soon as the program's over here,

I'm meeting with my Arabic tutor for another lesson. That's just what I've, you know, when you're 45, picking up your seventh language is not the easiest thing you've ever done.

And the reason I'm doing that is I want to leave a body of literature, and not any more.

It's not just literature. It's on the Internet. It's video. It's the whole nine yards. But I want to leave behind something that is going to 20, 30, 50 years after I'm gone still be edifying the people of God.

And that's not easily done. I mean, books that are relevant past their publication time and past the lives of their authors are rare books.

They really, really are. And I know for me, R .C.'s works, especially

The Holiness of God and Chosen by God, had that character.

And they will continue to have that character. They will continue to speak to people for decades and decades and generations and generations.

And that's a testament, it really is, to the quality of the work that he produced and then his ability to communicate very important things the

Spirit of God can then use in people's lives. And I know those two books, especially, were so important in grounding me.

I had been forced by the Word of God to recognize these divine truths, but to be able to communicate them, to be able to see their consistency, to be able to understand really what they meant for the whole of life was something that was accomplished.

And those books are not exactly theological tomes in the sense of being super long. They're very accessible to people.

And so I have always been extremely thankful for that. And the only reason

I didn't say that to R .C. directly on the air is I already told him that over dinner last year when we were out in Hawaii together.

But that's what Ligonier has done, and I'm very appreciative of that. And obviously there are many more people who need to hear that message, read those books.

And so we certainly hope and pray that these upcoming conferences will continue to be blessed by the

Lord in that way. One more time.

Certainly. Please do. Please do. If you are interested and we can give you a break, a different begin is going well.

Well, Mel, I really appreciate it. Thank you very much for joining us. Please thank R .C. for investing his time with us as well.

And Lord willing, especially since I've got three Islamic debates the week before, Lord willing, we will be with you in Scottsdale and see you there.

Thank you very much for joining me today. All right. Thank you for having me. All right. God bless. Bye -bye. All right.

Well, that was a very fast hour. Thanks again to R .C. Sproul and Mel Duncan for joining us.

We will be back for the last Divine Line for a little while next Tuesday here on the