The Dividing Line August 7, 2008

Somebody else on the line, just a moment ago, was calling, I think, on your behalf, but I'm going to put my phone on mute.

The Dividing Line and the Call to Give a Defense

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

Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the United States.

It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is James White. 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?

Actually, I'm doing very well. I'm in better health now than I have been probably in 15 years, James. With the notable exception of a bad wheel, I have a bad knee, and I'm scheduled for a total knee replacement surgery next Thursday.

I can't wait for it. Oh, my.

Next Thursday? Yes. 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 23rd. Yeah, I've been out there before.

You know, the dry heat is so much better than what we have here. Here, we don't know what dry heat is. No.

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, are you 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?

Yes, not only to Reformed theology, James, but also to the Christian faith in general as well. 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 Edward 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. This is one of the most constant questions that I hear all the time, as I'm sure you're aware of, James. I've never met a Christian in my life who said that they didn't believe in the sovereignty of God.

But the idea that's pervasive out there in the culture is that God's sovereignty is limited by human freedom. And, of course, if that were the case, then it's not God who would be sovereign, but we would be sovereign.

On the contrary, we would say, yes, that human freedom is real, but it's limited, and it is always and everywhere limited by God's sovereignty, so that we have to place the limitation. The other problem that I think that all Christians wrestle with, particularly in America, is that when we talk about free will, we tangle that concept with the notions that we have been, we are children, not realizing that 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 opt for good or for evil, that there's no inclination, tendency, or bias that restricts our choices. And, as I say, that's a secular view of free will.

It's not the biblical view. The biblical view says that we still have a capacity for choosing, we still have the power to choose what we want to, but the fundamental problem is that the want to is in bondage to sin.

And so, any time you talk about willing, from a Christian perspective, you have to account for this bondage of which the Scripture speaks.

The Bondage of the Will and the Need for a Biblical Worldview

Well, now, let me ask you, you have been ministering the Word many more years than I have. I'm catching up percentage-wise, but 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 the 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?

Without question, James, I really believe that every one of us, no matter how well trained we may be in theology or how devoted we are in our personal faith, we're exposed every day to all kinds of ideas that are on a collision course with the biblical truth, and we don't always recognize them, and I think all of us have allowed certain ideas to creep into our thinking uncritically, and one of the goals of the Christian life is to gain the mind of Christ.

That means that every value that I have, every concept that I have, every viewpoint that I espouse, I have to keep examining according to Scripture.

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?

In my 45 years of teaching, James, I haven't been able to find any other place to root that, and I think this is one of the great weaknesses of the church today is that we're looking everywhere else except to the Word to find answers to our questions and resolutions to the difficulties that we face.

I think we've, in many cases, we've lost confidence not only in the truth of the Word of God, but in the power of the Word of God. I keep telling my students in ministry, that's where the power is. The power is in programs.

The power is not in education. The power is not in eloquence. The power is in the Word, because that's where God plans.

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 would really help me out when I'm preaching, too.

Well, if you guys don't have it in the Reformed Baptist community, what do you think it's like in the Christian community? You're God's bros of Joseph. Nobody calls that amen in my church. I stop and say, thank you very much.

I know exactly what you mean by that. But, you know, 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?

You know, there may be a lot of truth in that, and it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. You know, nobody's name is more closely identified with historic Reformed theology than John Calvin. A lot of people like to keep that a secret because he's been so vilified.

But among other things, Calvin was described as the theologian of the Holy Spirit. Suddenly that the preaching of the Word is impotent and less than it is accompanied by. I preach every Sunday morning and Sunday night, James, and before every message I pray for the Spirit's power to descend.

And it's not a rote because I understand that my words will be absolutely useless unless the Spirit. Reformed theology puts a great deal of emphasis on regeneration, on rebirth. It's where the sovereignty of God is most powerfully influenced and affected.

It changes the disposition of the heart. So all people who should be proclaiming the power of the Spirit should be Reformed people.

Right, right. And yet you certainly have to have been just as... The only term I can use 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, just about every day as you can imagine, James. But I mean, I wish that every Christian who is struggling with this question would just be a fly on the wall listening in to a conversation that's recorded in the Bible, in the same chapter where we have John 3 .16, in the discussion between Nicodemus and born again.

Jesus talks to Nicodemus about rebirth. He makes it clear that there's a necessary condition that has to happen before they come to saving faith. Our Lord, it's our Lord, not John Calvin or Paul or anybody else, it's Jesus.

He says, unless a man is born, he can't even see the kingdoms of Christian people who are out there saying faith. 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, 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 that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and the necessary condition for saving faith is rebirth.

You know, Jesus reiterates that in the sixth chapter of John. 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.

That's faith, and then as you know, James, that rebirth precedes saving faith. Because we're born again, we're in the flesh, 100 percent in the flesh. And as Jesus indicated, the flesh profits nothing, and Luther reiterated that by saying that nothing is not a little something.

What Is the Gospel?

Well, I know that I have taken a lot of heat for saying similar things in regards to the logical 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, you have been over your career involved in so many discussions about so many aspects of the Gospel.

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 just go back a little bit. Several years ago at the National Christian Booksellers Convention, a Christian organization took a poll on the floor of the convention where they asked people there, and these were people who were in Christian publishing or owners of bookstores, and these were people who were not secular and not on the edges of the Christian church, but were right in the middle of Christian education.

And they asked a simple question, what is the Gospel? They asked people to define it. The ratio that they got was that about 1 out of 100 answers was regarded as an acceptable answer to the question, what is the Gospel?

There's the word. Everybody seems to think they know what the Gospel is. You ask people, what is the Gospel? And they'll say it means that you can have purpose in your life or that Jesus can be your Savior and you can have forgiveness and all of these wonderful things that are the consequences of the Gospel.

But from a biblical perspective, there is a clear, that idea of Gospel in the New Testament and the fundamental content in the life and death of Jesus. The Gospel is done. We receive the benefits of His Word.

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. I teach a doctoral ministry program and I'll do the same thing.

I'll ask the clergy there, tell me what the Gospel is. And they fumble all over the place. And they don't get it that there is content in the New Testament about the Gospel of Jesus.

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've 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.

The way you stated that thing that I turned upside down, I would just like to just hone that a little bit. Basically what I've said in that context is in the final analysis, the question is not do you know Jesus, but does Jesus know you?

And I draw that from the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 7, when Jesus said that many will come to him on the last day saying, Lord, Lord, didn't we do this in your name? Didn't we do that in your name?

And he's going to look at them and say, who are you? Depart from me. I never knew you. And the reason I think that's so urgent is this, James, that one of the big props we have in our zeal for evangelism, and I wish we had even more zeal for evangelism than we do, but we want so much, so desperately to see our friends and loved ones and even our people who we've never met before come to a saving knowledge of Christ that we kind of try to prime the pump and encourage them to make a decision for Christ and get them to make a profession.

And we have multitudes of people who profess Jesus. They come to the altar. They raise their hand. They say their prayer. The biblical doctrine of justification is not justification by the profession of faith, but it's justification by the possession of it.

And Jesus gives that alarming warning, one of the scariest things he ever does. He says, look, these people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Not only professes faith in Christ, he has faith in Christ, and his life is changed.

You know, you hear all this stuff about the carnal Christian, the person who is really saved, but his life doesn't change. You can't find that in the Bible. That's nonsense. That's a theology that's been created.

It's professions.

The Nature of the Gospel and the Danger of Empty Profession

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 mean, how many people have you seen over your lifetime 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 pastors every year leave the ministry. Oh, my. There's a wide variety of reasons for that, but that's a huge number.

It is a huge number, 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 Presbyterian Churches better than I do.

I know 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 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?

Well, you know the organization called Together for the Gospel, which is an alliance of several leaders including John Piper and John MacArthur and Lick Duncan and Al Mohler, and I'm involved in this.

Every other year we have conferences for clergy. Last year I believe we had like 5 ,000 of them there, James, and the amazing thing to me was the vast majority of these clergy were in their 20s and early 30s.

And so I was very much encouraged by this young group of pastors who are coming up and they're being informed about his and what the role of the pastor is. You have the Shepherds Conference that John MacArthur runs out there, and he gets 5 ,000 or 6 ,000 ministers to that, and he's encouraging them to be expository preachers on the ministry of the Word, in a secular world where the minister is expected to be a CEO, a guidance counselor, and every other thing instead of principally being a shepherd of the Word.

Most definitely, and I think so many people, I see it in teaching in 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?

Well, let me tell you all of the different questions that are going to be addressed. The first one is, has science disproved the existence of God? The second one, why does God allow so much suffering and evil?

The third one is, if God is sovereign, how can man be free? The next one is, is Jesus the only way? The next one is, should the church embrace postmodernism? And then finally, what is the gospel? So you can see there's a variety of questions.

These are what we call the tough questions that Christians face, not only from outside the church, but from within the church. Right, right.

And so all of these, especially what John MacArthur is 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, postmodernism, these are all extremely difficult questions that are coming into the church.

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.

Well, 25 years ago, James, I used to spend four months a year in Scottsdale writing. And I would go play golf sometimes out in the desert. And where I used to go play golf isn't a desert anymore. No. It'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.

Yes, 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. 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. All right.

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.

Church Relations, the Local Church, and the Value of Conferences

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. White. It's a delight to be with you today. 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 conference as well. Sure.

Dr. White, I'm the Church Relations Director, and that means that when I get to interact with local church leaders and pastors all over the country, I get to hear stories just like what you told about the last time or the first time that you had a conversation with R .C. Sproul.

It's a lot of fun, really, to talk to ministers, young and old. I get an opportunity to come to towns like Scottsdale and Phoenix and meet with folks in the area and try to build our relationship with the local church.

Before I get into all of that, though, I want to say I'm a big fan of the dividing line, and I love to keep up with what you're doing down there in the Valley of the Sun and appreciate the ministry of Alpha and Omega very much.

Well, I appreciate that.

I know that a few years ago I had the opportunity of having correspondence with and then conversation with the I've heard people use other terms of familiarity, but I just call them J. Ligon Duncan, and I know there are shortened versions of that, but I'll never get used to it.

So I remember hearing him on a 9 March program once, and one of the people was just always calling him by three letters, and I was just like, oh. But anyway, 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, that is our conviction as well, Dr. White. Our goal is to reach a group of people who are somewhere between Sunday school and the seminary, and so we do tend to get a lot of lay folks interested in Ligonier, whether that's one of our conferences or whether that's a regional event, a pastor's gathering.

We have a pastor's conference, and then, of course, we have our regional conferences, like the one that will be in Phoenix at the end of September. There are a lot of different folks who come to our events.

A lot of folks listen to us on radio. But really, if we're not encouraging and plugging these folks back into the local church, that's really where the action's at, and that's where the means of grace live, and that's really our goal is to encourage these folks in their understanding of the knowledge of God but do everything we can to encourage them to be active within the local church.

You know, R .C. preaches still three times a Sunday, and I think he views everything he's doing in the local church as every bit as important as what he's doing on the conference circuit and with his radio ministry.

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

And, 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.

That's so interesting you say that. This sort of touches on something R .C. mentioned as you had your conversation with him. We see something at Ligonier, and I would be interested to see your observations, Dr. White, because I know you interact with folks in the academy and in the local church, but we really do see an interesting, reformed, evangelical, conservative, reformed wave of folks out there right now.

And, of course, a lot of that can be attributed to ministries like Ligonier, perhaps to our friend John MacArthur and John Piper and the many people who they have sort of brought on board the arc of reformed thinking.

But we really do see something of a youth movement going on out there, and it's pretty exciting to go to places like Portland or to Dallas or to Charlotte, all of which are regional events we've held in the last year or so, and see how the audience seems to be getting younger.

And it's very exciting because a lot of folks like to lay a lot of claims at the feet of people who believe in reformed theology, but it seems to be this generation is more interested in the kind of ideas that reformed folks have held to firmly for many years.

What do you think about that?

A New Generation Drawn to Reformed Theology and Gospel Clarity

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, there 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, et cetera, et cetera. 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 know, you have suffering, you have Jesus is the only way, postmodernism. All these subjects eventually devolve down to a discussion of the Gospel itself.

And, you know, Dr. White, you've observed and talked about for many months now how the Gospel has been under assault both from within and from without. I don't think I'm a relatively young man. I'm in my late 30s, but I don't remember any time in my lifetime where the Gospel from without has been under assault like it has the last few years.

The atheists are the nouveau riche of society right now. You know, you've got your Dawkins and all of these other Sam Harrises and Christopher Hitchens that are really in an upfront, right out loud, in front of the whole culture kind of way, ridiculing Gospel distinctive.

And I think you've seen something of a renewed interest from folks within evangelicalism to do a better job of articulating Gospel distinctive to the broader culture, to the broader front that we're facing in the culture wars.

Also, I think you see a little bit within this Calvinistic reform resurgence of a revival and a love and an appreciation of the doctrines of grace. And I think you see that within Southern Baptist circles.

We have all kinds of folks from a variety of theological backgrounds. At our pastors' conference, we may have 20 or 30 different kinds of church backgrounds represented from a mainline church to a community or a Bible-type church to everything in between.