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Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:15

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.

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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the

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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

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James White. And welcome to the Dividing Line on a Tuesday morning, a warm Tuesday here in Phoenix, at 118 a couple days ago, and it does not help that the air conditioning is out here at the office.

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Well, okay, two thirds of the air conditioning is out. One third down the hall is still working and so we have a fan set up and trying to blow some cool air down, but that's not overly efficient, especially when you're in a closed in studio.

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So you might hear a little extra noise in the background, that's a fan that I have aimed at me and whether that's going to do a whole lot or not,

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I don't know. But I could say it's going to be a hot program today, but that's not really what

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I would mean anyway. So by the way, you can blame

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Carla for this. On Thursday of this week, by necessity, we are going to have to have another

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Radio Free Geneva. We have to because Carla sent me my very own Radio Free Geneva shirt and so I have to wear the shirt, but what would it make any sense to wear the shirt if I wasn't doing

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Radio Free Geneva? I mean, that doesn't make any sense. So we're going to have to do a

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Radio Free Geneva and thankfully I have, I wonder why my seat sank while I was gone.

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It's there's been some weird stuff, the alarm going off down here when there's nobody around and stuff like that. It was pretty, pretty odd down here anyways.

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We need to do a Radio Free Geneva. Thankfully I had one queued up as far as I had listened to a sermon while climbing up the ski station outside of Santa Fe and Pastor Coy from Fort Lauderdale, I believe it is, in Texas, Calvary Chapel there.

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So we're going to do a Radio Free Geneva and there is a couple of new things in that sermon. A couple arguments

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I had never heard before and so that's not always necessary.

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Sometimes it's just educational to go through the standard arguments, but there's some new ones in this one and some of the regular ones are in here as well.

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So we will do that on Thursday, Lord willing, and if anyone doesn't like that, then you're going to have to take it up with Carla because it's

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Carla's fault. And if you do like it, then you can take it up with Carla as well. So we'll have a Radio Free Geneva on, someone's suggesting a daily

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Radio Free Geneva. That would be a little bit of an overkill and a lot of people might like it.

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There are a couple cage -stagers out there that would think that's all we should ever do, is just stop all the dividing line stuff, just do the

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Radio Free Geneva all the time. Well, with the way back, that might be possible. I don't know if we've done enough

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Radio Free Genevas. Remember, phase two will give our listeners the ability to request.

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Aha! Shows to be piped up to the head of the line. So they could search for Radio Free Geneva in the dividing lines on the blogs and request those dates and voila, there would be daily

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Radio Free Genevas. That would be interesting. That would be interesting.

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We've had lots of positive feedback to the 24 -7 Wayback Machine.

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I'm wondering, though, if people are getting a little bit confused because, you know, like, for example,

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I need to talk a little bit about what's coming up in Brisbane in October.

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I'm going to be doing a debate down in Brisbane, I believe,

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I think it's the 21st. This calendar I have on this unit isn't synced.

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I don't have it set up for my Google calendar, so I'll have to fix that. But I believe it's the 21st of October down in Brisbane with a

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Oneness Pentecostal. And, you know, if people are listening to me talking about that, they may be, you know, two years from now on the

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Wayback Machine, they may be thinking that I'm going down to Brisbane two years from now to debate a Oneness Pentecostal.

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So you've got to keep in mind that, do we mark, like, the stream with something that says, like, this is live?

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Or this is Memorex? Well, the Wayback Machine has encoded in the tag the date of the program.

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Yeah, but how many people are there that still today come in a channel, I can't, it's a Dividing Line upload, it hasn't been blogged yet, and they haven't figured out that it's just the date?

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You know, it's been the same format for years, but they just... Yeah, well, if their player has the feature, the player shows them what date is playing.

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But back to phase two, phase two will actually transition to a web page with a flash player.

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And all that information is going to be showing you currently playing in the information that's the date that it was recorded, the whole nine yards.

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So when we switch to live, it'll actually show you the Dividing Line live on that page.

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That's good. Pretty cool. Is that like Catholic Answers Live? No, not at all. No, it's not because we actually speak the truth.

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Anyways, yeah, okay, that's... Remember that debate?

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Remember it? Remember a debate? We had a debate here. I remember this debate. We had a debate with Tim Staples here on the

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Dividing Line. That was in January of 2010, I think.

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And to my knowledge, it has never once been mentioned on Catholic Answers Live.

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I wonder why. There are only two possibilities as to why it's never been mentioned on Catholic Answers Live.

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One possibility is that they feel that Tim just so overwhelmingly won that they don't even want to mention it.

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Sorry, I had to say it, but I knew I couldn't get through all of it. Because we know that they've advertised the

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Jimmy Akin CRI program, which was not a debate, as a debate for so long.

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If they had one where they really felt that they had won, you would see it in all the

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Catholic Answers forums, and you'd hear it on all the advertisements. The only other reason I can think of is that, well, they don't want people to listen to one of the foremost

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Catholic apologists, foremost scripture scholars... What are all the different names they've used of Tim Staples over the years?

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Just not prevail in any way, shape, or form in a debate. Maybe they just don't want their folks to see that.

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I don't know. But anyhow, that was over. And in fact, the date today is the 5th.

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Four more days. Four more days. And I really need to find a time.

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Oh, is there a gift card with that, Carla? Okay, well, I'll have to look. I didn't see anything. I looked at the thing.

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I looked at the thing that was included with the shirt, and I didn't... I know,

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I know. I'll go check it a second time. But it's the Channel Rats that provide me with Radio Free Geneva.

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So you can blame the Channel Rats for the next Radio Free Geneva. I'm wearing the First Corinthians 12 .3

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cloud shirt right now, actually, aren't I? Which I really like. Which also Carla has available. Anyway, four more days, and it will be

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July 9th. And what is July 9th? July 9th is the day one year ago where I posted the video asking

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Dr. Norman Geisler three questions. Just three questions. Well, it was a year ago. Can you believe that?

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Rich just fainted. His face is now embedded in the soundboard. Can you believe that was a year ago?

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Yeah, that was a year ago. And, you know,

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Dr. Geisler has been on all sorts of other programs. In fact, I was sent a link to... You know, he's out promoting his book on evil,

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If God, Why Evil? Which is, of course, not in any way, shape, or form a reformed theodicy.

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But he's out there doing those programs. He's got all the time in the world to be answering questions.

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But that's one set of questions that, for some reason, a man known by some as one of the world's greatest apologists simply will not answer and will not respond to in any way, shape, or form.

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And one of those questions, of course, was, Dr. Geisler, will you please tell us what

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Hadith 2425 is and how it's relevant to the Quran? And we are all waiting for that.

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I think it's a very fair question. And four more days. It'll be a year.

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I'm going to have to find the time to record a video on that and repost it.

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Because he is making the rounds. He's talking about Veritas Evangelical Theological Seminary.

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That was actually a misspoken word. But hey, it's fitting. If you're going to treat truth like that, cemetery might be the way to put it.

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Lovingly known until those who are involved with Veritas come clean and start speaking truth about the

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Ergen -Kanner situation and are consistent as Pravda, the

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Pravda Theological Seminary. And he just ain't going to answer?

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Nope, nope. Not going to answer that question. Or, you know, we posted a picture, the picture of Ergen -Kanner's 10th birthday.

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And I asked Emir -Kanner, remember? Dr. Emir -Kanner, you who have been seeking to fly under the radar, you who have been trying to avoid the collateral damage of your brother's meltdown and yet still benefit from what you've gotten from it in the past, you know, sitting on programs as an expert on Islam and things like that.

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Dr. Emir -Kanner, was that picture taken in Turkey? Or was that picture taken in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio?

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And we don't, we haven't heard any answers to those questions. And now there's a new group of people responsible for answering such questions.

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They're called the Board of the Arlington Baptist, it's not seminary, it's college or Bible school or something like that.

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And they've now decided to pick up that mantle. Whether they will ever respond,

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I sort of doubt it. I sort of doubt it. But that's the way it is. 877 -753 -3341.

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By the way, I was saying in Brisbane, going to be debating a Oneness Pentecostal.

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Matt Slick has debated him. And I should get to listen to most of that debate on my ride tomorrow.

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Really looking forward to getting back on the bike, I'm not really looking forward to getting back on the bike in these temperatures, because the lows...

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The lows when I left were still getting down in the 70s, which was nice. But not anymore. Dew points in mid 60s, so the lows are in the mid to upper 80s.

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And so even when you head out before sunrise, it's stinking hot.

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So anyways, I'll be listening to that debate. And I was caught by surprise on this one.

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You know, the church contacted me and they gave me a name. I wasn't familiar with the name. And I just assumed,

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I mean, I guess I shouldn't make these assumptions, but I just assumed that this fellow was local.

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Then down the road, a good bit down the road, I find out they're flying him in from the

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United States to Brisbane for the debate. And I'm like, wow, that's dedication.

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I would have gone for like a two -night debate if I had known that, but I made other plans there in Brisbane.

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Of course, the problem with debating one of those

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Pentecostals, and it will be on the doctrine of the Trinity, the person of the Holy Spirit, so on and so forth. We'd love to do some other debates on such things as, you know, is speaking in tongues necessary for salvation and other specific oneness teachings along those lines.

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But it's hard to divide the Trinity topic up into more than one debate.

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Because there's really only one issue. And the issue is, did the

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Son as a divine person exist prior to his incarnation in Bethlehem?

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If that was just a plan, if there was not a divine person, just a plan or a thought or a foreknown thought or something along those lines, then the oneness side prevails.

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If there is evidence, and there most clearly is, that the Son, as the

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Son, as a divine person, as a person with the capacity to think and to act and to will prior to the incarnation, if there was such a thing as the

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Son prior to the incarnation, not just as a plan or as a forethought, but as a divine person, then oneness

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Pentecostalism is thereby proven false. Period. End of discussion. And that's what you need to focus on.

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And actually wandering off into other topics dilutes the force of the discussion that needs to be had with oneness

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Pentecostalism. So I'm looking forward to this, especially because you may recall the recordings that we got of the

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Sabin debate, especially in video. We can only find half of it. Half of it's on YouTube.

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We found one videotape. We could not find the second. We looked and looked and looked. And who knows?

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It'd be nice if it would show up someday. But something could have been recorded over it for all we know.

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I don't know. But at least this time, we will be able to get modern.

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That was 99, I believe it was. Modern quality, high quality video of that.

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And we'll be providing that because it's an important subject. Lord willing, we'll be doing a debate in Sydney at the beginning of that week.

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So that's going to be a very intense time period. Because, folks, let me tell you something. This time, hopefully,

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David is aware of the fact that... David Ull down there should be aware of the fact that he remembers what

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I looked like when I spoke at a church in Sydney the night of the morning that I arrived.

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Because that's right when the jet lag hits. Now I can tell you something.

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When you fly, when you shift 17 hours... Oh, that thing die already?

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Oh, that's good. I guess I forgot to plug it in and recharge it. Oh, well. So much for any video today.

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When you shift 17 hours, it just throws everything off. Of course, the little 14 -hour trip in the plane doesn't help a whole lot either.

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But anyways, it's going to be a busy, busy, busy, busy time. And then as soon as that's over,

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I'm heading down to Louisiana. I'm going to be down with Phoebe and the folks and other folks. Two different places.

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Down south. And maybe Phoebe will take me out.

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We'll do some nutria hunting or something, you know? Well, Phoebe hunts nutria with a knife.

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She jumps out of a tree on top of them and it's a scary thing. But yeah. Anyway, so we've got lots of stuff.

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In fact, I'm here for two months. I think I am. Yeah, that's a little bit scary. When I think

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I'm here for two months, I might need to review my month.

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But as far as I know, I ain't going anyplace in July and August to do a lot of preaching.

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I've got to get book stuff done. I got to do debate preparation and stuff like that. I think the next time that I leave is for the

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Psalm 119 conference in Ohio, which

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I believe is the first weekend in September. I will double check that. That is what we've got coming on.

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Lots and lots of stuff coming up and lots and lots of writing to do. Do we have

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Skype up today? Dividing .line via Skype. Dividing .line.

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Via the plain old. You know, your microphone's on. Look at that.

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877. I thought I was hearing noises. And then as soon as I saw you moving those tapes around, I'm like, okay, I definitely am hearing noises.

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877. We are professionals here. I mean, how many years of training have we undergone to be the professionals that we are?

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He's ignoring me now. Rich gets a slick on his face and he's ignoring me. But I can tell he's not actually ignoring me.

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But he's ignoring me anyways. 877 -753 -3341, 877 -753 -3341.

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Once again, before we talk to Mike in Columbus, my sincere thanks to Alaskabiff and the folks at the various churches up there in Anchorage and Wasilla and Eagle River and Big Lake and wherever they're located, the churches that were involved in coming out.

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We had a good time at the conference. And I really always enjoy speaking at something where Phil Johnson's speaking.

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It was a bit of a contrast this time. He was basically doing exegesis of Ephesians chapter two.

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And I did... Is that my phone that you're looking at there? I'm sorry?

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My wife. Okay. Any word? No? Great. Wonderful. There is one sad thing that I hope

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I can get to announce later has been resolved. But they lost my gun. Yep, got here.

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My gun didn't. And so who knows if I'll ever see it again?

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That's what happens when you, you know, they've got all these rules for how you have to check firearms on an airline and yet somehow it didn't get back to Phoenix.

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And the first flight from San Fran's already landed and I haven't gotten any calls. And so it's not looking good.

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And so that would be, that'd be sort of a down thing to end the trip on.

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Because it was a great time. I enjoy being there with Phil. And we were, he was exegeting

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Ephesians two. And I was, why is, did we lose our first caller?

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Did we lose our first caller? You started, you've changed it to Wesley. So, and Wesley's been around for 15 minutes?

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That doesn't make any sense. There was some other caller that wanted to talk about Romans one and I, I, I'm not sure where, what?

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You typed over it. So whoever's on line one is still on line one and it's about Romans one, right?

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Okay, well, I'll get to it in a second. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah,

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Phil was talking about Ephesians two and I'm talking about Islam. So it's like, how do you tie these two together?

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Well, I, I worked on it to try to tie the two together. And then I ended up speaking out in a big lake.

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It was funny. It's just a big lake. And I was preaching on, I was starting to get preaching going, even though I was talking about Islam.

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And there's a lake nearby. And up there in Alaska, you've got float planes, planes that, you know, land on lakes.

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And right in the middle of my sermon, we've got the windows open because nobody has air conditioning up there. Why would anybody want air conditioning up there?

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But right in the middle of sermon, here comes this plane. And I'm going to tell you something. It, you ever watched, you know,

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World War II movies where the plane's diving on, remember like at Pearl Harbor where the Zeros were diving on that one ship and shooting it up?

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That's what it sounded like. Right over top of the building. I just expected to hear, you know, machine gun fire as it's going by.

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And I just had to stop. And I just, everybody was quiet and everybody's looking at me. And I go, December 7th, 1941.

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That's what it sounded like. It sounded like he was going to land right on top of the place. It was a little bit of an interesting interruption.

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And then last, it wasn't last night, night before last, I was preaching at Church of the

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Wildwood. And I start preaching and I start hearing someone talking while I'm preaching.

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And you start looking around and, you know, something going on and it just stays steady. It's not overly loud, but certainly loud enough for me to hear.

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And I'm, you know, I'm, I'm looking around and I'm trying to see if it's some kids and it's really incredibly distracting.

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I mean, there were times I was just so struggling to try to keep my train of thought.

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I think part of it was because I was tired. And I was just like, who is doing this to me? And it took three quarters of the sermon for me to finally figure out what was happening was in the very back of the room.

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There was a woman and I guess she was translating from English into some

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Oriental language for somebody else. And I just, no one had told me, in fact, no one knew about it.

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And I'm going to tell you something. When you're a speaker and you hear someone talking like that, I once was speaking once and somebody started trimming their toenails in the back of the room.

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Do you want distraction? Click, click, click.

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And you know what it is. In fact, I could see them. I was like, oh man.

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Anyway, some of the things that you experience in those times. Oh, so we lost the second caller and we've still got the first call.

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Okay, well, we'll figure this out. Was I just talking too much or what? 877 -753 -3341.

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Let's talk with Mike. Hi, Mike. Hello, sir. Good to hear your voice.

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I'm looking forward to seeing you in September at the FOMO -19 conference. Yeah, somebody was asking where in Ohio that is.

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It's some Apple something, isn't it? I don't know. I know it's at a

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Mennonite church and it's about an hour and a half north of where I live. Right, okay. Okay, someone just put the link up here.

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So let me see if I can pop it up real quick. Let's see here. September, Fairlawn Mennonite Church, Apple Creek, Ohio.

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September 8th through 9th. The speakers are... Phil didn't even remember if he was there or not.

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He is. Todd Friel, Phil Johnson, R .W. Glenn, and yours truly.

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And so, yeah, that's September 9th and 10th. So I'm looking forward to seeing you there.

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Good. Well, my question is about Romans 1.

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I'm actually going through... I'm memorizing a bunch of scripture with my kids.

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And four of them we're memorizing these passages with.

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My oldest is seven. And I want to go through the whole book of Romans. And we're kind of stuck on verses 26 through 30,

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I think it is. Because it's... How do you explain to a four or five and six or seven -year -old these things?

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I kind of wanted to get some input from you. Like what... If you got any ideas, I'm trying to get as many as I can.

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I'm kind of being a procrastinator in this. We've gotten this far. And there's only one way that I can think of to teach them about these things that...

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And I really want to because I know that if I don't, then the world is going to. And so do you have any suggestions on how that may be done?

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Well, are you talking specifically about Romans 1 and its discussion of homosexuality?

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Yeah. Okay. We got into the part where it says that they were doing things contrary to nature.

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And so my son says, nature, what's that? And so we explained the natural order of things. I mean, the way that God has put things into place and how the sun and moon and stars work and trees grow and mommies and daddies have babies and things like that.

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He's given us a little bit of a segue into the next part. But I've never explained these sorts of things to very young children before or any children at all.

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So you as a parent and someone who has done much study in this area in order to be able to explain it to people,

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I just figured that your input would be valuable. Well, I don't know that I have much to suggest on the dividing line as to how you explain the birds and the bees to kids or even if you really have to necessarily go quite to that depth in this particular situation.

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I mean, I think you can simply state that there are natural relations that God has ordained that bring about life and then mankind in his rebellion against God twists those relationships and as a result brings about death and cannot bring about life.

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And this is one of the clearest indications of the twistedness of the rebellious person is that rather than accepting the great gifts that God has given that lead to life, they twist that, they turn it around and they want to deny

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God's right to define such things and the result is inevitably a banishment from life, a diminishment of life and death itself.

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So I don't know if you necessarily have to get into the specifics with someone who's not reached puberty or something like that.

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That's probably something that comes up when you're explaining the birds and the bees. But I think if you're memorizing the scriptures, you could certainly give an accurate and sufficient interpretation on that level and not necessarily go into the mechanics of anything else.

29:55

While we're coming up on the verse that says that the men were consumed with passion for one another and committing shameless acts of men, resigning themselves to be punished for their error, the reason that I thought this was such a good idea and I convinced my wife forward with it is because she flipped on the

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TV and they're talking about families and having two mommies, two daddies, and it really kind of enrages me that we have to deal with this stuff.

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We live in a post -Christian society that hates God and his laws and is intent upon self -destruction.

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Normally, at least the suggestion I've always had and what

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I followed is providing a positive teaching first and then explaining deviations from that at a later point.

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So that might be something that you can go with. Yeah, it's really up to you and your wife as to when that discussion takes place, but I don't think that's necessary for being able to explain that what these folks are doing is going against the way that God has determined that we are to live and as a result are twisting that.

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That's what all of this is about, is twisting the relationship of the Creator and the creation. That's helpful, actually.

31:29

Like I said, I'm trying to get input from as many areas as I can. I've talked to my pastor about it, and I've called in to ask a question for Todd's Braille, too, because I listen to you guys, you know, you two are, like, the only recorded programs

31:44

I listen to, so... Well, actually, it's a live one right now, so... Oh, yeah! I never do that, actually, until today.

31:50

Oh, good. So I notice you're from Columbus, Ohio. A lot of jihadists around there.

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You speak Arabic and debate imams, because, I mean, being from Columbus, Ohio, automatically makes you an expert in Islam.

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Did you know that? I kind of figured that from all the natives, the stories they're telling.

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The natives, yes. I actually had a little bit of... Yeah, right. He is a native, actually. I would consider him to be.

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But I had a little bit of correspondence with him back when you two were planning the

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Calvinism debate, and he didn't respond to my emails when I was being nice and saying, dude, you know, would you just tone it down a bit?

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I mean, this is not a good testimony, and you're really acting out of line here, and he didn't respond, didn't respond, didn't respond, and then when

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I put in the subject line, you're a sham, and I had a lot more, you know, you know, a more heated, you know...

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Yes, I understand. He jumped right in there, and he loves the controversy and the confrontation,

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I tell you. He's an interesting fellow, but I don't know how that's going to work down there at Arlington Baptist Bible College, but it should be interesting.

33:07

All right, look forward to seeing you in September, Mike. Yeah, I mean, you too. All right, God bless, bye -bye.

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877 -753 -3341 is the phone number, and yeah, if I'm going to be in Apple Creek, what do you bet

33:22

I fly into someplace like Columbus? I'm not sure what the... I, in fact, I need to talk to them about the airline stuff and making sure that's arranged properly, but, you know, if I flew into Columbus, if I flew in a little bit early,

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I might be able to, like, go find this mosque, you know, and take some pictures and find the high school, you know, and get some shots there and stuff, and, you know, who knows, maybe

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I'll run around a little bit there in Columbus and, you know, just sort of get the feel, because, you know, according to Ergon Kanner, he grew up there without ever knowing what

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Christians believed, had no idea about Christians, so it must be 99 %

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Muslim, Columbus, Ohio must be. What's that? Oh, yeah, more than Dearborn.

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Yeah, definitely more than Dearborn. Have to be, because he did not know what Christians believed. He thought we all hated them.

34:17

He had never, he knew nothing about Christianity, so there, clearly, we need to be setting up missions boards and stuff like that to send people to Columbus.

34:26

In fact, Mike may be the only Christian in Columbus, given that, so who knows.

34:35

877 -753 -3341, I keep hitting refresh on the lost luggage screen.

34:42

Please, I want it back. It's just disgusting. That's sad.

34:53

Anyway, yes, what new people widget? What, man, does

34:59

Google always come up with new stuff? Update your photo. I just updated that photo recently. Anyway, phone lines are open, folks.

35:12

This is your time. This is your chance. We had all sorts of phone calls on Tuesday, and I had to rush through them because I've got

35:21

Phil Johnson sitting there, and I didn't want to bypass the opportunity. Phil did try to go out and sort of, you know,

35:30

I don't know, sort of get caught up with me, because when guys get together, there's a little bit of competition type thing going on.

35:38

I went out in the Alaskan wilderness, and I got myself a bear.

35:46

I forgot which night it was. I think it was Saturday night. Yes, Saturday night. You got to remember, up in Alaska right now, it doesn't get dark.

35:55

I mean, it just simply doesn't get dark, and that's weird. I mean, when you've got sunlight,

36:01

I mean, literal sunlight at 1030 at night, and even at the darkest it gets is like between 1245 and like 130 or two, and then it starts immediately getting light again.

36:18

And, you know, we were coming out from the hunt. We got home at 230, and it was starting to get bright again, but we were coming out at probably the really darkest point, and you could still see.

36:31

I mean, I had the lights on in the ATV I was driving, but you could still see. And so, if you're a person who is very light sensitive as to your sleeping habits, you'd have to be a bear up there.

36:44

You'd get minimal amount of light during the winter, and just all sorts of light right now.

36:51

So, it's pretty wild. So, he went out fishing. He was going for a king salmon, but only one guy in the boat got a king salmon.

36:58

So, there was a little competition thing going on there, but hopefully, Phil will get a chance to go up there and have his own

37:04

Alaskan wilderness adventure somewhere along the lines. So, that would be nice.

37:13

I spoke on John chapter 5 at the Church of the Wildwood. I forgot to ask if they were going to be posting that or if they do post their material.

37:24

I got a lot of positive feedback because it was one of those situations where, again, I tried to tackle a large text of scripture and just give the background, then zero in on the sort of the central portion and just walk through it and make application, specifically in regards to the claims made by Muslims that John chapter 5 is one of those texts they will go to.

37:47

You know, Jesus says, I do nothing except when I see the Father. I can do nothing offhale to of myself.

37:53

And I really wanted to try to present a positive case for the unity, the perfect unity of the

38:03

Father and the Son in everything that they do. So, I'm going to have to look and see if they have a website where they post those sayings or if it's something you need to request from the church or something along those lines.

38:16

I don't know. Maybe that's the UPS guy delivering something for me. I don't know. Probably not. Maybe that's how

38:24

I should have shipped it. What do you think? Next time I'm going to have to think about that because I just...

38:31

Remember last year my luggage got rifled and the video camera, the flip video camera was stolen and now this.

38:40

We live in a fallen world. It's not a good thing. 877 -753 -3341.

38:48

Do you have any recordings out there, Rich, of Warren singing Elvis? You know, on the

38:56

Wayback Machine, those might show up because back in the olden days, we would try to get people to call by threatening to have

39:09

Warren Smith, who at that time was able to come down with us to the station. It was before he was married and had kids and, you know, those young guys, they get to do anything they want.

39:22

And we do have someone, we do have UPS delivering out there, Rich, just so you know. Hopefully Matt can get that.

39:27

Anyway, this is live. You can tell it's live. And we would just say, look, if people don't start calling in, we're going to have to have

39:39

Warren get on it. And Warren's not really a vocalist by his own self -admission.

39:47

No, no one has actually, Turret and Fan, called in about Carapi. But to be honest with you,

39:53

I'm not up on what the most recent developments are, the last I heard about the situation.

40:03

And there is your friendly neighborhood UPS man. Hi, friendly neighborhood UPS man. We have a friendly neighborhood

40:08

UPS man. We're live on the air and now he is too. Have a good day there, sir. It's always good to keep

40:15

UPS men liking you. I think that's a very, very important thing to have

40:21

UPS men like you. I don't know what the situation is. The last I heard about the Carapi situation was that he had,

40:28

I'm not sure, it's improper to say had resigned from the priesthood because that's really not how it works.

40:38

I mean, given that ordination is in Roman Catholic theology a sacramental thing, it's not something you can necessarily resign from.

40:49

I mean, there is a permanent mark made upon the soul by ordination to priesthood when you are proclaimed to be an alter

40:58

Christus, another Christ and all the rest of this stuff. And so there's a process that you have to go through.

41:06

And I'm not really sure where he is in that process or just what it is. I really don't even know what's going on with that situation.

41:15

I sort of fell off the edge of the earth when I left to go to Alaska. And that was sort of nice,

41:20

I'll be perfectly honest with you. You know what? I scanned through a few

41:26

RSS feeds. You've got the internet up there. It's not like it's another planet. But I'll have to admit, being out in the woods, being next to a stream, seeing,

41:37

I've got two phones ringing, seeing the beauty of the wilderness and stuff, not hearing about whatever it is

41:47

President Obama's doing to corrupt our society. Yeah, I had to think a little about the

41:53

New York thing and gay marriage thing. But it was good to get away from it for a while. Because you know what?

41:59

It's easy to really get down about that kind of stuff. So I was glad to do that.

42:05

All right, we're lining some folks up now. The threats for singing evidently did the job.

42:11

Let's talk with Nick right here in Mesa. Hi, Nick. Hi, Dr. White. How you doing? Doing good. Good.

42:17

I just had a quick question. I've been talking to a lot of family members about Reformed theology. And I had a question.

42:24

You're not in the cage stage, are you, Nick? In the cage stage? What does that mean? The cage stage is when you're a brand new

42:30

Calvinist and it's all you can talk about. It's a brand new

42:37

Calvinist and he wasn't married and he was dating girls and he'd go out on a date and he'd come back and I'd go, so how'd it go?

42:45

He says, well, I don't know if she's going to go out with me again. I said, Rich, you didn't. Yeah, we ended up talking about Romans 9.

42:52

I said, Rich, you don't talk about Romans 9 on the first date. And it kept him single until he was 40.

43:01

Well, I guess I'm right around there. I ordered it just yesterday, the

43:07

Reformation Study Bible. Well, that might be cage stage, but not necessarily.

43:14

I mean, if you can still talk about some other theology without automatically asking, are you a

43:22

Calvinist? If you can do that, then you're probably still okay. But we got to be careful about the cage stage.

43:27

Okay. Well, my quick question is, could you talk about a philosophy of evangelism within Reformed tradition?

43:33

One thing that I hear that people say is, how can you go out evangelizing people if they already have elect written over their head and how do you know who and what's the point?

43:43

Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, well, yeah, we've talked about it many times. In fact, I've done a number of seminars.

43:49

It's a frequent request when I travel and speak because, obviously, if people have been trained in a non -Reformed evangelistic methodology that presents

44:02

God as just wishing that everybody would do the right thing and the gospel's not a command, it's sort of a begging type situation.

44:13

A lot of people have the question, well, how do we get that out of our minds? We are so accustomed to the pre -programmed methodology of evangelism where you place everything upon the sinner and place him in control.

44:28

How do you maintain the sovereignty of God and yet call a sinner to a responsible act of faith?

44:36

Because we do believe that we believe. We do believe that we repent. We do believe those are gifts of God.

44:42

But as Acts chapter 17 says, God commands men everywhere to repent. And so we reflect

44:48

God's commandment in the proclamation that we make. Well, I think the best way to do that is to recognize two things.

44:56

First of all, to proclaim the gospel is not merely to have only one audience in mind.

45:04

Paul said in Romans 115 that he wanted to evangelize the church at Rome as well.

45:10

Now that means that there is an element of gospel preaching that includes the proclamation of that work of Christ, the lordship of Christ, within the context of those who have accepted that.

45:27

And so there is that element that's normally lost in the Arminian world. You don't think of that.

45:34

You don't think of the continuing proclamation of the gospel, explanation of the gospel, rejoicing together in the lordship of Christ, so on and so forth, especially in those

45:42

Arminian churches where the lordship of Christ is specifically denied as having anything to do with the gospel anyways. So you have that element of it.

45:49

And that expands out then what evangelism is. But secondly, I really encourage people to look at how the apostles evangelized.

45:59

Look at the sermons and Acts. Look at the early church. And that's somewhat difficult for some people because there's so much

46:07

Old Testament, and there's so much, well, they're preaching to the Jews. Well, not always, but yeah, in the early period there was a lot of preaching to the

46:15

Jews, but Cornelius isn't a Jew. And seeing the

46:20

Bible -centeredness of it, the fact that what is being proclaimed is that God has acted.

46:27

He has acted decisively in only one way, and in an absolutely unique way, in Jesus Christ and the call to all people.

46:38

There's no evidence the disciples looked for evidence of election or something like that.

46:44

They had an indiscriminate call to all people to do what? Well, it wasn't just to believe.

46:50

It was to repent and believe. And believe in what? Well, first and foremost, the proclamation of the lordship of Christ.

46:57

And then, in light of the lordship of Christ, the reality that the person who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins and eternal life.

47:05

We turn that around to where forgiveness of sins and eternal life is sort of like the goody that you get.

47:12

It's the prize that you get, and this is what you need to do to get it. Rather than the prize, the central aspect is

47:22

Jesus Christ is Lord, and those who repent and believe in him for his honor and his glory also are forgiven of their sins and are made right with God and receive eternal life and do not come into judgment but have passed out of death into life.

47:41

And so we put the result as the prize, and as the result, the real goal in the proclamation of lordship of Christ becomes either secondary or completely lost in the standard proclamation.

47:58

And that's what then tends toward focusing things upon the sinner rather than upon the Savior. And so that's the fundamental difference is that we can proclaim the gospel, a gospel of power, which is a command.

48:09

God commands men everywhere to repent. We can proclaim that beautiful message to all people, and we do not have to be looking for signs of election.

48:20

We do not have to be playing games. We don't have to have 32 stanzas of just as I am.

48:26

We can do all of this in such a way as to glorify God and to trust the

48:34

Spirit of God will then apply that in the lives and hearts of people. Yeah, one of the things I brought up with my wife,

48:39

I said, is couldn't Jesus have done another way to atone for our sins? Couldn't they, you know,

48:44

God could have done anything the way He wanted to, but He chose to use the cross in the same way He chooses to use preachers in that sense, right?

48:52

Yeah, okay. Well, yeah, I mean, I suppose if people like sitting around asking questions like, well, could

48:58

God have done it differently? You know, if you get into that type of thing, I suppose,

49:03

I don't know why there seems to be so many people that, you know, speculation is the big thing, but yeah, could

49:12

God have done, God was free to choose the methodology that He used, but this is the way that He chose to bring about the full demonstration of all of His attributes, and it's amazing that what that includes is the

49:27

Incarnation and the death of Christ. I mean, the depths of that, most of the speculators never really spend a lot of time plumbing the depths of that.

49:38

So, all righty. All right, thank you. Hey, thanks, Nick. All right, God bless. Bye -bye. 877 -753 -3341.

49:45

Let's talk with, boy, there's only three seconds between when these two calls came in, but let's talk with Jesus.

49:52

Jesus, how are you? Hello? Yes, sir. How are you doing, Dr. White?

49:58

Doing good. Good. Thank you for your ministry. It's been a great benefit to my walk.

50:04

Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you very much. I just had a question. I've heard you mention that there still needs to be a lot of work to be done in respect to how we are to give a defense when, let's say, the homosexual supporter takes us to Leviticus to show how we're inconsistent in saying that, that which gives us the right to pick and choose what laws to follow.

50:24

Right. But it seems to me that as being under the law of Christ and the New Covenant, that there shouldn't really be that much of a difficulty to be able to respond to the person.

50:37

So, I wasn't too sure as to what you meant exactly as to the work that needs to be done to make the distinction.

50:43

Because I've heard you mention that Bonson had mentioned something along that nature. Well, what

50:49

I was specifically referring to was the fact that there is a lot of work to be done in looking at the

50:56

Holiness Code and the revelation of God's moral law in the Old Testament, and distinguishing, for example, between that which was specifically tied to a specific context amongst the

51:10

Jewish people and that which has abiding moral validity, and seeing how laws that even though they did have a specific application at a specific time, continue to have moral application to us today.

51:25

I mean, the law that is written, and this is an area of dispute among some people, but I don't see how exegetically one can avoid this.

51:33

The law that is written upon the heart in the New Covenant in Jeremiah 31, there's only one law that can be.

51:41

And while God's law in the Old Covenant had specific elements that are fulfilled in Christ and were only relevant to the

51:50

Jewish people at a point in time, there's so much that very clearly the

51:57

New Testament indicates goes beyond that, and I don't think that it's a matter of, well, it's only if the

52:03

New Testament repeats it that means it's valid for us today. What we're seeing in the use of the law in the

52:08

New Testament is a recognition of the continuing validity of elements of it, and what the work needs to be done is, the reason so much work needs to be done on it, is that unfortunately this is one area where our traditions and all sorts of external things, even during the time of the

52:26

Reformation, for example, the fact that many of the Reformers were very much sacralists in the sense of a church -state relationship, that deeply influenced the interpretation of these matters.

52:42

And so what I was saying is the area where work needs to be done is looking at Leviticus 18 through 20, looking at the backgrounds, recognizing, for example, there's clearly stuff that's happening in Leviticus, both in Leviticus 18 and 20, that has to do with pagan beliefs about the dead and how the

53:04

Jewish people were to be separate from those who either honored the dead or feared the dead, did things because they were concerned the dead were going to come back, or curses and things like that.

53:18

You know, we don't have the religions that were teaching those things, they don't exist today.

53:25

But does that mean that those things are now irrelevant? Well, I don't think so.

53:30

I think there are things we can learn from that. There are still applications to be made, and that's the area of work that I was talking about.

53:38

Not so much work in regards to the specific texts on homosexuality, because I think they're very straightforward.

53:44

We've done a lot of work on that. The meaning of ars iniquitas and things like that, I think, is very straightforward. But those counter -arguments is where frequently we end up stumbling.

53:55

I see. Okay. Okay. Well, I appreciate your time. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you.

54:01

All right. God bless. Bye -bye. Bye -bye. All right, and let's get one last chance here, and let's talk with Turretin Fan.

54:08

Hello, Turretin Fan. How are you? I'm pretty well. Thanks for taking my call. I'm just thrilled that you would be able to take a break from Lectulous to join us on the program.

54:21

I mean, how many games are you playing at one time? Well, typically I play against the inimitable

54:28

Milo Hotzengler. Oh, and he's a monster. He really is. Yeah, and sometimes also a game against Katie or Book.

54:39

Yes, Book is... I think it's unfair taking on a Book in a game like that.

54:44

But anyways, that's not why you were calling. Did you have... Has there been any, by the way, since you're the one who asked the question,

54:52

Channel, has there been any further developments over the past week in the Carapi situation? Evidently, his order,

55:00

I believe it's his order, issued some kind of new announcement. They usually don't do it, but because there's so much public interest, they do, and it accuses him of various things, including some very specific allegations of impropriety.

55:15

Apparently, the most important of which to them is the fact that, according to them, he did not follow his vow of poverty and actually had over a million dollars in assets or something like that.

55:27

Oh, okay. Well, these folks end up on TV and radio.

55:35

I mean, I'm still wondering where that... What was it? 17 .5 million dollar loan that I heard about from Family Radio.

55:43

I'm still wondering where in the world that went to. So who knows? We may never find out now.

55:48

But is that what you're calling about? Because I have Sola Scriptura here. I was actually...

55:54

Yes, I was calling about Sola Scriptura, and I had a follow -up question about the Qur 'an, actually, but only if you have time.

56:01

The question about Sola Scriptura is sometimes these soundbite apologists like to latch on to comments like,

56:08

Sola Scriptura wasn't practiced by the apostles. Yes, yes. But if we actually start breaking out

56:15

Sola Scriptura into its various component doctrines, material sufficiency, formal sufficiency, and so forth,

56:21

I was wondering what your take was on John 20, 31, which says that these things were written so that you may believe on the

56:27

Lord's... Let me give you the exact words. These things are written that he might believe that Jesus is the

56:33

Christ, the Son of God, and that believing, he might have life through his name. Do you think it's fair for us to take those words as telling us that even just John's Gospel has enough in it that someone could read

56:47

John's Gospel and savingly believe on the Lord? Oh, I don't think there's a question about that, because the tautat, the beginning of the verse, these things, is clearly in the context of a summary statement of what has preceded this.

57:04

And even Paul's words to Timothy, he says that the Old Testament Scriptures are able to make you wise so that you might, you know, believe in Jesus Christ.

57:15

So there's... I don't think there's any question that the Gospel is adequately explained in each one of the

57:23

Gospels so a person might have faith, because we know of many people who were saved, and all they had was even a portion of the

57:31

Gospels. That doesn't mean, though, that that's all God intends us to have.

57:37

There's a difference between, of course, the minimum amount of revelation that is necessary for the

57:44

Spirit of God to bring about regeneration, in that sense, in a normative fashion, in the proclamation of the

57:49

Gospel, and the fact that we have been given all sorts of further revelation for the benefit of the

57:55

Church, and the ordering of the Church, and all these other things that are necessary for the proper functioning of the

58:01

Church. I mean, if all we had was John, then there'd be all sorts of stuff about the Church we wouldn't know about. So, yeah,

58:08

I don't think there's any question that if one were to simply read the Gospel of John, I know many people who have been saved just reading the

58:15

Gospel of John, but then you have much more that's been revealed beyond that is just to our riches.

58:22

And so, is that where you're going with that? Well, yes, yes. In other words, if someone had said, the foremost sufficiency is the foremost sufficiency of Scripture, something that the then you could answer that one way, even if they have additional revelation at that time, additional prophets, like Agabus was going around prophesying.

58:47

Right, yeah, there's no question about that, yeah. Real quickly, because I imagine the music is probably supposed to be up in the background here.

58:53

What was your second question? My second one was about Sura 2180 from the Qur 'an. It says, it was we who taught him,

59:01

I guess talking about David, the making of coats of mail for your benefit, to guard you from each other's violence.

59:06

Right. Will you then be grateful? I've been reading a few places where that's listed as an identification of an anachronism in the

59:14

Qur 'an, because the chain mail was not actually invented until maybe the third century after Christ.

59:23

Yeah, there are a couple of lists of what seem to be anachronisms similar to that, especially, for example, the crucifixion in Egypt and things like that.

59:34

There are lengthy responses to those at certain websites, and I like to point to them because Muslims like to say to us, hey, look, you have all these problems in the

59:47

New Testament, and you have to spend all this time answering these things. God's Word wouldn't be like that. Well, they have to do the exact same thing, and so if they're going to be consistent, they need to point that type of thing out.

59:58

But hey, thank you, turrets and fan, for your phone call and the information. Thanks for listening to The Dividing Line today, everybody, especially those who called in toward the end and stopped me from wandering about and meandering and just talking about every little thing.

01:00:09

It's hard the day after traveling to get really focused on things, but don't forget, on Thursday, Radio Free Geneva.

01:00:16

We'll see you then. God bless. For we need a new reformation day.

01:00:55

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