November 8, 2005

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.

Get 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. Welcome to The Dividing Line or good morning if you happen to be in the

West Coast or here in the Mountain West or wherever in the world you are. Morning, afternoon, whatever time it is, welcome to The Dividing Line.

And I just finished watching that new movie. I've been hearing a lot about it and even my dear friends over in England had asked me to address it when

I come over there the beginning of next year, early next year actually. So we ordered in The God Who Wasn't There.

If you have not heard about this film, you probably will. It's a Michael Moore style film.

A fellow by the name of Brian Fleming, a former fundamentalist, has put this together.

And don't worry about there being anything serious in it as far as anything new. There really isn't.

Don't worry about there being any fairness in it. Don't worry about there being any balance. Don't worry about there being any providing any opportunity for response.

In fact, I think the guy who got the most time on camera was a fundamentalist, premillennial dispensationalist who runs raptureletters .com.

Seems like a nice guy, but not really a television personality. And he got the most time in providing a response.

And of course, he was just there to be mocked and to make people scared that you can send letters to your loved ones that will be delivered to them after the rapture.

And so, bad, bad stuff. Standard, it's the lower level

Jesus seminar stuff. It's not even the upper level. It's not even John Dominic Crossan level stuff. It's even worse than that. Jesus didn't even exist.

Just the bland, you know, it's just Dionysius hero stuff. Made it all up. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Throw Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John even farther down the road than Crossan does. Crossan looks like a conservative compared to this stuff.

But they don't bother trying to prove any of it. They don't bother trying any of that kind of stuff. It's, you know, doesn't work.

So, anyway, the sad thing is at the end of the film, it really starts getting very personal because the guy went to like village

Christian school or something like that in California. And he goes back to that school.

And there's been all sorts of, you know, how scary it is that Christians who believe this silliness, you know, elect judges and blah, blah, blah, blah.

Typical left -wing radical wackoism. And he sets up an interview with the current principal of the school.

And the principal ends the discussion because it's obvious that he didn't expect this was going to be some sort of an apologetic thing.

Evidently, he did know that this guy had gone to the school at some point, somewhere along the lines. So, the guy ends the interview.

And then, I'm just going to play the last section. It's the very last section of the film. You know, he's been going after this school for a long, long time now.

It gets, like I said, very personal. This was where he was taught that the scariest, he said, that the greatest sin in Christianity is thinking.

And that the only sin that he was tremendously scared of when he was there at Village Christian School in the chapels on Fridays was the blasphemy of the

Holy Spirit. Okay? And so, he finishes this interview. And then, he says, as we were leaving, we noticed the chapel was open.

So, he goes into the chapel. And he's shooting with his camera. It's just he himself. He's shooting with his camera. And this is how this film ends.

Dr. Sipas wouldn't talk to me on camera anymore. So, there wasn't much reason to stay. But then, as I was leaving,

I noticed the chapel was open. This is the chapel where I accepted

Jesus Christ as my personal savior. Sat right here on this bench once and did that.

Also sat over here and did it again because I had backslid. And then, in a later grade,

I sat back there and did it yet again. I was born again.

At least three times, I think. Let me just stop there and just sort of make the rather obvious comment.

Theology matters. I've got to hold up the camera myself. Here in this chapel where I first accepted

Jesus as my personal savior, I just want to say one thing. I deny the

Holy Spirit. And that's the end of the film.

Well, actually, there's some stuff during the credits that gets rather nasty. But that's the end of the film.

Now, you think maybe, possibly, sort of, you think there's any chance at all that maybe there was a little bias involved here?

Maybe just something going on, possibly? Yeah, yeah. I would say that there's a fairly decent chance that there was something going on there.

Yeah, no question about it. Well, anyway, we'll be talking a little bit more about it.

Robert M. Price, who is a Jesus Seminar Fellow, was in there. Richard Carrier, Sam Harris, what they did was they would go back and forth between Sam Harris, who wrote

The End of Faith, who's a very well -spoken skeptic, and this guy from rapturedletters .com.

They're obviously just trying to make this massive, huge contrast between someone who's, you know, obviously not overly well -studied and not well -spoken versus, you know, this brilliant person demonstrating that, you know, you have to be pretty stupid to be a

Christian, and so on and so forth. Well, I mentioned that I was listening,

I mentioned on the blog that I was listening to a debate, again, while writing, between Shabir Ali and Robert Morey, and I was,

I've ordered in Shabir Ali's books. I wasn't where he, I don't know, is 42 pages a book?

I guess I've written a couple that were like 60, so I guess that's more like a booklet type of a situation.

But I was listening to some portions of the debate, shall we say.

And like I said, it's always odd to me when you're listening to a debate and you're writing or you're hiking or something, you always remember exactly where you were on the road when certain things were said.

It's very odd the way the human mind works. It's very interesting to me. There'd probably be some,

I could probably discover something there that would allow my memory to be a lot better than it is. It's just, maybe

I just need to learn while moving. Maybe the problem is if you're sitting at a desk studying, there's no way to track things like that.

I don't know, maybe it's a possibility. Anyway, I, again, I keep talking about almost riding off the bike trail, but it's because at times

I'm just like, what on earth did I just hear? Did I really hear what

I just heard? I'm listening to a discussion between Robert Morey and Shabir Ali on the issue of Muhammad and the

Koran. Morey's made the argument that the Koran is, in point of fact, explainable on the grounds of pre -existing materials that Muhammad could draw from,

Christian materials, Jewish materials, Arabian myths and legends, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And Shabir Ali responds, first of all, by one of the big things that Muslims do is argue that the

Koran presents certain scientific things that couldn't be explained naturally, et cetera, et cetera.

And then, I guess the way it was designed, Morey went first, then you had his rebuttal, then you had

Shabir Ali's opening statement. So he's already done a rebuttal before he does his opening statement, and then Morey gets a rebuttal of his opening statement.

I guess that was the format. I understand how that would work, though. It could result in some small amount of confusion.

Anyway, in his opening statement, Shabir Ali starts after the

Bible, as he always does. He's quoting from Magnus Magnusson's work and the

Bible's history and all the rest of that stuff. And then he says the following. Now, if you've not heard the other programs, this isn't going to make a whole lot of sense to you,

I'm afraid. But if you listened to the debate between Shabir Ali and Sam Shimon, and if you've taken the time to track down some other debates as well, it's going to strike you even more strongly.

And that is, Shabir Ali, his constant methodology is to utilize liberal

Christian, or at least liberal theology and historians, naturalistic, materialistic stuff that questions the existence of the supernatural, it's based upon a completely different worldview, all the rest of that stuff, to attack the

Bible. He loves especially liberal Christians, who he can at least still call them Christians, but then he can say, and they admit that this isn't right, and that isn't right, and blah, blah, blah, blah.

And so to hear what we're about to hear, when you've listened to him misusing those sources, remember over and over again as we were listening to that,

I kept saying, gross inconsistency of sources. He's using sources here that if they were applied to the Qur 'an would disprove the

Qur 'an. He's using people here who, not only is he taking them out of context, and he's not applying it correctly here, and there's all sorts of responses to be given, but the fact of the matter is, these people would laugh at his own views of the

Qur 'an. And so, why is he doing this, etc., etc., etc.? He does all this, and then, once you attack the

Qur 'an, and it's really funny, later on, I don't have this one queued up, but later on, he attacks

Maury's book and said, you made a mistake in alleging an error in the Qur 'an. And I really tuned in at this point, because you said that, you assumed that what's down here in verses, you know, ayah 30 or something like that, in this certain surah, is relevant to what's up here in ayah 70, in verse 70, and there's all sorts of stuff that came between.

In other words, his whole argument was, you weren't reading the Qur 'an in context. In context, the

Qur 'an's not making the connection you made. So, he recognizes, very clearly, the necessity of reading a document in its context, of honestly dealing with the text.

And yet, did we not hear him say to Sam Shimon, I don't have to deal with the Bible. I don't accept the Bible as being the perfect Word of God, so I don't have to do that.

I can take one verse, and if the verse before or the verse after says something different, and it changes the context, who cares?

I don't have to do that. So, in dealing with the Qur 'an, one set of standards.

Dealing with the Bible, a completely different set of standards. And on any logical or rational grounds, Shabir Ali is completely disqualified from any meaningful apologetic role at all.

By that fact. Unless he had come out and said, you know what, I was wrong. I apologize. I retract everything

I've ever written or said based upon that. I will now treat the Bible the same way I treat the Qur 'an, in the sense of, even if I don't accept it as being the infallible

Word of God, I will at least treat it as a document, and I will interpret it in context. Which, of course, we shouldn't really expect that to be happening any time soon.

But listen to what he says, now that he's having to defend the Qur 'an. Muslims and Christians will no doubt reject the conclusions of these men.

We believe that the creation and the flood are not ancient myths, but God -given truths. However, ladies and gentlemen,

Muslims and Christians will agree that just because a certain truth was known before the Bible, or known before the

Qur 'an, that does not mean that God did not reveal it to a certain prophet like Moses or to Jesus.

We will not agree with these men in saying that the commandments which Moses gave to his followers, that these commandments

Moses somehow borrowed it from the law of Hammurabi, or that the flood story in Genesis is a myth that was copied from the ancient

Babylonian flood myth, the Epic of Gilgamesh, or that the creation story was one of the

Babylonian creation myths, as Isaac Asimov has already said. What surprises me, however, is that some

Christians feel that they can attack the Qur 'an in this particular way, and they don't realize that they're shooting themselves in the foot when they use this method.

Because the same method disproves also the Qur 'an. However, Dr. Morey, you have an interesting way of going about this.

Because when Dr. Morey uses this particular method, Dr. Morey says that he's a Western scholar.

But he forgets for the moment that he's also a Christian. Does he wear two hats, once as a

Western scholar and then as a Christian? I would like Dr. Morey to wear one hat so we can thin him down and say, this is what you should believe in.

If you say that this is your method, then believe neither in the Qur 'an nor the Bible. We've already seen, too, that Dr.

Morey disparages the miracles. For example, Camel coming out of a rock, no, that's foolish.

But do we disparage the miracles that are mentioned in the Bible, too? If we believe that miracles are true, then we should find some different way, other way of denying that a certain miracle took place or not.

Not that we disparage a miracle. So we have to make up our minds. If we are believers in God, then we cannot deny that these things are true, and we cannot use that particular method by which the

Western scholars disbelieve in both the Qur 'an and the Bible. I'm sorry, but consistency, you cannot define the word truth without using categories of consistency.

And Shabir Ali has just demonstrated beyond all question that he simply cannot be consistent in any way, shape, or form.

He can't do it. His arguments that he's relied on, I mean,

I listened to one debate where he must have quoted Raymond Brown 147 times.

I mean, over and over and over and over and over and over again. It was his primary source, and maybe it was because of who he was debating.

Maybe he just changes his entire debate tactic depending upon who he was debating.

But the fact of the matter is that this is how he has debated in the past, and now he just said that everything he did in the past was all wrong.

Of course, he doesn't admit that he did it in the past. And he'll do it again, I can guarantee you. I don't have,

I need to construct, if I could somehow figure it out, a chronology of exactly when each one of these took place, because I bet you anything, after making this statement, we will find him again using those same sources against the

Bible in other debates. That's what I mean by gross inconsistency.

Constantly misusing the sources that he is utilizing. And it just, as far as there being any kind of credibility left, after making that kind of statement,

I just, I honestly just don't know what to say about it. Now, then later,

I typed this one out. I actually took the time to transcribe this and put it on the blog, because I just couldn't believe it. And then I found out right after blogging this that he has a little booklet out, and I ordered it in.

I ordered all this stuff that's available from islamicbookstore .com. I've ordered it all in.

And basically taking the same approach that was taken by Hamza Abdul Malik in our debate in regards to the deity of Christ.

And does New Testament teach the deity of Christ? I think it was the book, something along those lines. And so at one point he decided to just go off on a tangent for a while in this particular debate.

It wasn't on the actual topic of the debate. But he likes to throw this one out here. And I guess it's because he finds this to be useful.

Maybe he finds Christians to be incapable of responding.

I don't know. I don't know why he finds this. But this is not the first time I've heard him do this. Listen to what he says, not only in regards to the incarnation, but then listen to what he says about the deity of Christ.

...to tell her that she will have a son. However, when Mary asked, how can I have a son when no man has touched me?

According to the Quran, the answer she got was, so it will be. For Allah creates what he wills.

When he has decreed something, he says to it only be, and it is. The Quran, Surah 347. Now according to the

Bible, the answer is different. And you must wonder, how come Muhammad did not copy that answer from the Bible? Listen to the answer.

The Holy Spirit will come upon you. And the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the

Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God. Luke chapter 1, verse 35. The benefit of the

Quranic expression can be clear when you realize that many of the lay people make a confusion when they read the

Gospel of Luke here. They imagine that God replaced the male element in the birth of Jesus.

And then they have a further confusion as to who exactly is the Father of Jesus. Is it the Holy Spirit that came upon Mary and fathered

Jesus? Or is it the Father in Heaven who is the Father of Jesus? That level of confusion is pretty similar to what you find in Brigham Young.

I mean, that's... but that's not the point. Here's the section I put on the blog.

But I cannot help you with this sort of confusion, ladies and gentlemen, except to invite you to the truth that God has revealed to correct all of this confusion.

Ladies and gentlemen, I noticed this confusion here today as well when during the prayers we noticed that some people were praying to Yahweh and some were saying, yes,

Jesus, praise be to Jesus. Because Yahweh and Jesus, according even to the Trinity, are two different persons, they're not one and the same.

If you say that Yahweh is Jesus, then how can you say that Yahweh sent His Son? Then who is His Son? Not Jesus?

There's the section I put on the blog. And has anyone ever seen...

because I'm sitting here thinking about it. I'm thinking about, for example, a lot of publications that are put out for witnessing the

Jehovah's Witnesses. And interestingly enough, I was shocked. He has a book, again it's about 42 pages, on responding to the

Jehovah's Witnesses at your door. Wouldn't that be fascinating to see Shabir Ali in a Jehovah's Witness debating? Well, actually there's something similar to that.

Anthony Buzzard, he and they did a quote -unquote debate, which doesn't really make a whole lot of sense anyways.

But anyhow, all the publications I've seen on the Doctrine of the Trinity, have you not seen sections that talk about the reality that the one divine name is used, or the

Father, the Son, the Spirit? Is that not the standard? Is that standard in almost every publication you're going to see explaining the

Doctrine of the Trinity? There's a whole chapter on it in my book. And I'm thinking of this one, sort of 8 1⁄2 by 11, sort of 11 by 17 folded over type book.

Very popular on the Doctrine of the Trinity. On the very back, it's got one of those pinwheel type things where you've got

Jehovah on one side, and then you follow the line across, and the fulfillment in Jesus on the other side. And all the rest is...

isn't this just really basic stuff? How come

Shabir Ali doesn't know it? Or if he does know it, why would you lie about it?

I mean, this guy's not stupid. You can tell... he can quote sources, and he can do the research.

How could he have missed this? How could he not realize...

Is it just the overwhelming, overriding assumption of Unitarianism that the name

Jehovah has to be attached to only one person? Are we looking at the exact same thing that we saw with Greg Stafford in Tampa two years ago, next month?

Is that possibly what's going on here? Is it Jehovah has to be just the Father, and we're not talking about the use of the name

Yahweh, of Father, Son, and Spirit? Is that what we're dealing with here? Does he know that there are many

Christians, and there are many passages? Has he ever dealt with Hebrews 1 or John 12 or any of those?

I've ordered his books, and we'll find out. Maybe. Maybe. But if so, why make a statement like this?

It just absolutely makes no sense. And for me, again, the frustrating part...

And by the way, the phones are open. 877 -753 -3341. We said Thursday. How many weeks have we been doing this now?

About three weeks with some breaks. I have responded to a very wide range of claims made by Islamic apologists, specifically by Shabir Ali, but I've also played

Osama and Nadir Ahmed and Sabeel Ahmed and others.

Was there another one? There may have been another. In the course of the past number of weeks, I've responded to a number of issues, lots and lots of misrepresentations of Christian belief.

Now's your time. 877 -753 -3341 had lots of folks calling me, saying how scared

I was of this person or that person. None of them ever were able to really do any correspondence because when

I'd respond, only one guy actually wrote back to me once or twice and had nothing meaningful to say.

But hey, 877 -753 -3341, sort of hard to hide when you have a toll -free phone number.

If I'm so wrong about all this stuff, then it's real easy to call in and to demonstrate that. But one of the things that, for me, really, really bothers me, is you can ask the powers that be here at Alpha Omega Ministries.

I've been building my Islamic library. You've got to have original sources.

And I thank all of you who support the ministry so that we can do that. I just ordered in the nine -volume

Sahih al -Bukhari set, which is English and Arabic. Why do that?

Because you have to have the original sources. There was an issue that came up in this debate where it went back to, what is the

Arabic term that's being translated here? You've got to have it. You've got to be able to go to those sources. I mean, that's what people depend upon us to do, and so you've got to have the materials there.

Yesterday, I think I ordered in, let me count them, eight, nine, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, plus four, twenty -three books yesterday, all in this area, to provide that kind of documentation.

And we've done that with Arabic. You've got to look around the shelves of my office here. If someone publishes a book on a subject,

I'm not going to debate that person without, I mean, there's a whole section here of John Dominic Crossan, right?

Marcus Borg, Jesus Seminar. A whole section the year before from Federal Vision, Douglas Wilson.

Please, I am not putting Doug with John Dominic Crossan. I'm sure that Doug Wilson would have enjoyed my debate with John Dominic Crossan and probably would have been jumping up and down wanting to get involved with it.

But the point is, if you're going to debate a subject, you've got to study it. And if someone has published on it, you want to address exactly what they themselves are saying, right?

That's why there's multiple copies of the multiple printings of the multiple editions of What Love Is This on my shelf.

I don't want to have to get all that stuff, you know? And once the debate's over, I'm probably not going to be sitting there thumbing through that again.

But you've got to do that kind of research. It's just required of you, isn't it?

Doesn't truth demand that? Well, why are we the only ones that seem to do that?

Okay, I take that back. We're not the only ones to do that. We're not the only ones to do that. And I'm not talking about Christians at all.

There are just so many people that I debate. They don't do that. They don't do that.

They absolutely, positively refuse to take the time to find out what, you know, Peter Stravinskis knew he was going to be debating me.

Did he read anything that I wrote on the subject of Purgatory? No. You listen to that debate.

It was very one -sided. Why? Because I had everything he had ever published on the subject of Purgatory in my handspring visor in front of me, and he had not even bothered to read anything that I had written on the subject.

That doesn't make for a really good debate, to be perfectly honest with you. Or it may make for a very good debate, depending on what the situation is.

But the point is that it puts me at a real advantage and him at a real disadvantage.

And I just don't understand the mindset of somebody who will address issues and either just completely misrepresent it, just absolutely positively go, well,

I know they say this, but I'm going to take this direction, or just simply don't even take the time to find out what the person actually believes.

Now, at least one thing was clear, and that was that Shabir Ali had read a couple of Dr.

Mori's books on the subject of Islam. It might have helped him if he had read some others on the subject of the

Trinity. He might not have made the same mistakes. But is this just one of those situations where overriding tradition, overriding

Unitarianism, whatever it is, so blinds the person and they just can't see something on the page?

I guess that's a possibility. That's certainly the case. There's no question about that. In fact, that is the case with a lot of folks.

That is the case with a lot of Muslims. When we look at the video of the debate with Hamzah Abdul -Malik, the questions were asked afterwards very, very clearly.

That's where that was coming from. They hadn't heard what I had said. Of course, most of them had left their prayers anyways and hadn't heard my major presentation.

But it didn't matter how many times I repeated the same thing. No ears to hear. Just not interested, not really dedicating much in the way of thought to that particular issue.

You're wrong about this. I'm just going to repeat, you're wrong about this. I'm not going to listen to what you're saying in response. So I know that's possible.

But is that the possibility of someone like Shabir Ali, who obviously spends much more time in this kind of an environment, this kind of a discussion?

I just don't know. I just don't know. I know, though, that to honor the truth properly, you've got to do work.

Is studying the Arabic alphabet and the vowing system and initial forms and medial forms and ending forms, is that fun?

No, not particularly. It is interesting to me to see the connections with Hebrew and the

Semitic languages and things like that and the triliteral roots and things that I'm accustomed to from Hebrew.

Yeah, okay, that's interesting, but it's not as interesting as some other things could be.

But why do all that? Because if you're going to address the issue properly, you need to do so in such a way that it's honoring to the truth.

That's what we try to do around here anyways. 877 -753 -3341. The phone lines are open for anybody.

If you would like to talk about the guy who wasn't there, the

Islamic situation, stuff we haven't talked about in a while, we come back, maybe we'll chat a little bit about the big debate next year.

That's been the big topic on various Reformed boards. The fact that there's going to be a quote -unquote debate prior to the pastor's conference at the

Southern Baptist Convention between Al Mohler and Dr. Patterson on the subject of Calvinism.

Maybe we can chat about that. 877 -753 -3341. We're going to take a break and be right back.

Do your best and nothing less to be blessed. Try to save your soul from death.

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The Roman Catholic Controversy Everybody in channel is with the name of the young lady who recorded those commercials a number of years ago.

Has anyone figured that part out? I haven't figured that part out. I gotta know who that is. Who is that lady?

Who is that? Is that Dr. White's wife? It's just like, anyway.

I don't know. Hey, Rich, is this thing working in here? I see some lights on.

There's six lines. No, we don't have six lines. How many lines do we have? Do we have four? Four.

Four lines? Actually, five. We have five, but I'm using one for the dial -up right now, right? Yeah. Did the lights burn out?

No. No? No. The time changed. The time changed. We have all those

Eastern listeners. They'll be calling in an hour. Is that the idea? No, I think it takes them about two or three weeks to get caught up.

Yeah. And to actually realize that something's going on. Right now, or actually an hour from now, they'll all be sitting at their computers complaining that real audio won't work.

That's right. And then sending me emails wondering why the link is bad. Okay. But there's still certain people out there that would be ready to call if they really had something to point out about all the errors that I've made.

Oh, well, there's no doubt about that. What do you think? I mean, we didn't block anybody from calling, right?

Oh, no. The phone lines are working good. They're working good? Yep, yep. Sure enough. Just checking.

I didn't want to, you know. If you can use certain terms. I don't know. We may want to get one of those time delay things.

You know what? Inviting one of these kind of callers. Uh -huh. Uh -huh. Oh, yeah.

You know how that used to work? Honestly, before the digital delays and stuff, what you used to do.

Oh, I remember the reel -to -reel thing. Reel -to -reel. That was the weirdest thing I'd ever seen. Yep. You'd actually play off of the tape of your own program.

And when somebody did that, you just stopped the tape, passed it, and kept going again. Well, I saw something.

When we were over at KHEP years ago, I saw something that was like this. It was like a ten -second tape.

Yeah. And it just kept going, going, going, going. And it was like constantly feeding what you'd said ten seconds ago.

Right. And re -recording it and then feeding it. And it was the weirdest thing I'd ever seen. But that's how you did it back in those days.

Because I worked at a radio station. We had something called Tradio on the radio. It was back before eBay.

So everybody today who's an eBay fanatic was a Tradio fanatic. And you'd call in. It really did work.

I mean, I even used it once. I called in and I said, I want a 40 -channel CB, if anybody has a 40 -channel

CB they'd like to sell. And by that afternoon, I was out in Whitman someplace buying a really nice 40 -channel

CB. And you know how many people are listening right now have no idea what a CB is. Isn't that sad? I think it's very, very sad, personally.

How many that do remember CBs remember when you had to have a license to have a

CB? Oh, KZI 3581, Arizona Wood Pusher, right here. Yep, yep. I won't tell you what mine was.

Okay, well, hey, I said Arizona Wood Pusher. But KZI 3581 was my official

FCC -assigned license. Yeah, I had one, too. Yeah, cool. I had a third -class radio telephone certificate, actually.

Because I worked radio stations, so I had to be able to operate the transmitters. What are we talking about?

I don't know. It's good to sit around and have a good old time. You have digressed. We have digressed a little bit, yes.

That's because I'm just waiting for all those phone calls. 877... Let me try it. Have I said it wrong?

877 -753 -3341. There you go. That'll get it. I just must have said it too fast.

I'm waiting. Okay, excellent. Breaker 1 -9, we got ourselves a convoy.

That's right. I got that song, believe it or not. I have the rubber ducky in my music match.

I really do. I can play it. But I'm not going to afflict anyone right now. And we all thank you.

Yes, yes. Toll -free. Yes, it is toll -free. Thank you very much. There's a Smokey on I -95.

That's right. I mentioned before the break, before we totally lost control of where we were going here, the fact that the big discussion, and I've known this,

I don't know how long, a month and a half, whenever the news first broke. It sort of broke amongst a small number of us.

I didn't really say much about it. And then Tom Askell put it on his blog, and everybody has been telling us all about the fact that as a part of the pastor's conference next year.

Now remember what happened this year at the Southern Baptist Convention. If you're not familiar with this, before the big, big, big, big convention.

And where is that going to be again? I forgot. I've seen it. Where it's going to be. All I know is it's not going to be in Phoenix.

But before the big, big convention, you have the pastor's conference.

And, you know, getting asked to speak at the pastor's conference is sort of,

I don't know. It's sort of like how people get rewarded for being on the uptick.

You're getting lots of baptisms and things are going well. And you're growing, at least you're growing the way that Southern Baptist numbers are designed to show you growing.

I remember a few weeks ago I mentioned a pastor friend of mine in Florida who mentioned the fact that he has seven members of his church that came from a particularly large

Southern Baptist church in Florida whose pastor, we have reviewed his anti -Calvinistic sermons and found them to be grossly wanting, of course, and misrepresentational.

And those seven people represented 17 baptisms in that particular church.

More than 2 .3 or so, 2 .45, whatever it is, per person.

And it was sort of interesting if you heard the clip at the beginning of the program that that fellow talked about getting saved three different times in one chapel.

Well, you know, that's not overly uncommon. When you present the gospel without a sound theology, when you present it in a way that's presented in a lot of evangelical churches today, it's not overly shocking or surprising that that type of thing takes place.

And so anyways, this pastor's conference thing, Mubabi, you get invited to come speak there.

And we played a couple clips from the pastor's conference.

Remember they had our friend from Lynchburg, Virginia, preaching at the

Southern Baptist Convention because he's, I guess, allegedly a Southern Baptist. And he was going against Calvinism, and another guy made some comments, and there was a lot of discussion about it.

And that's where you heard, we've got to get away from that and get back to the book, was one of the parts of the sermons that we listened to.

Well, as a part of the pastor's conference prior to, yeah, Jerry Falwell. I don't know why.

All I can remember is Lynchburg, Virginia, with Jerry Falwell anymore. As part of the pastor's conference this coming year, wherever it's going to be, there is going to be, you know, my tendency is to call it a debate.

I have a feeling it's going to be more of a discussion. I have a feeling it's probably not going to be more than 60 to 90 minutes long, at the most.

I have a feeling there's probably not going to be a whole lot of cross -examination or a whole lot of exegesis.

But there's going to be a discussion between Al Mohler, the president of Southern Seminary, and Patterson, the president of Southwestern.

We reviewed a portion of Patterson's anti -Calvinism sermon from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and let's give credit where credit is due.

In comparison to a lot that we have listened to. For example, I would not put

Patterson on Radio Free Geneva, because he's obviously not as quote -unquote bad as most of these people are.

He's not just simply taking an Adrian Rogers sermon, pumping it up a little bit with some

Dave Hunt citations, rearranging a few points, and spitting it back out, which we have heard from lots of other folks on Radio Free Geneva.

He's not that. And he's not the type of person, you know, he will hire reformed people.

He's just not quite, you know, you've got to, like I said, give credit where credit is due. So, anyway, someone on the channel is saying,

I read someplace Patterson denying there is any debate planned. Well, that would be interesting, but that's the word right now, is that there's going to be this discussion.

And I have mixed feelings for a lot of different reasons. I have mixed feelings because I am concerned about the current atmosphere in the

Southern Baptist Convention regarding this particular subject and the open discussion of it.

There are many people who don't want any open discussion. So, on that level, if it happens, yee -haw, that would be great on that level.

Though, if it doesn't accomplish anything, in the sense of it not being designed to do so or not being allowed to do so, then what

I can foresee down the road would be every time you try to talk to someone who was there or talk to a

Southern Baptist on the subject, well, you know what, if Dr. Patterson and Dr.

Moeller can't figure this out, then there's no reason for me to think about this either, because they're a lot smarter than me.

And seeing people using it as an excuse to shut things down, then, again, there's nothing you can do about that.

If someone is that close -minded and that weak -minded, to be perfectly honest with you, no offense intended, but if you're so weak -minded that, well, those two people disagreed, so I'll never figure it out, then maybe you shouldn't be talking about it.

I don't know. So, be that as it may, at the same time, what kind of Calvinism is going to be defended?

How is it going to be defended? Is there going to be time to do any type of exegesis?

Yeah, sure, I don't care. I'm just standing here talking. I'm actually standing here talking at the moment. You're standing?

I'm standing. Oh, okay. Well, that's one of the nice things about our silent microphone thing. Yes, yes.

And your phone's ringing now. No, that's mine. How about that? There's a first.

Mine rings during the dividing line while I'm talking. But, you know, I think about some of the debate challenges that we have put out in the direction of some of the folks that you have brought on the air or you've played on the air.

Well, by that, we've actually invited Dr. Patterson to do so. And the responses that we've gotten have been a little...

Less than encouraging? Well, less than encouraging is one way of putting it, but it's this mentality of, well,

I don't see that that's constructive. You know, there's people out there who need

Jesus and they're dying and going to hell, and you want to debate Calvinism? Right, right.

I don't understand. And it surprises me that from that corner is where this is coming from.

And after all that has taken place, after all that has been said, some of the most incendiary things

I think I've heard have come out of the pulpits of Southern Baptists. And it's like, if you can say it in your pulpit, why is it something that's not debatable?

And I mean a genuine debate where there's cross -examination, where there's some real inquiry. Yeah, well, you've got to realize there is a sense on the part,

I think, of most Southern Baptists that what you say... And this is interesting. And again, let's put all our cards on the table.

This is where our Presbyterian brothers will say, us Baptists have missed it.

Because the Baptist idea is, what I say in my pulpit is finally only my responsibility.

There's no accountability to anybody beyond me. Now, the problem, of course, is that we're talking here about Baptists who do not have a biblical ecclesiology of a plurality of elders.

But the Presbyterian would say, ah, see, no accountability outside of your single local church.

And so you can say whatever you want in your pulpit, and the idea that you would ever have to defend that outside that context, that's where the disconnect takes place for a lot of Southern Baptists.

Is it, hey, I can say what I want in my pulpit, and I don't have to defend that to anybody, because I'm the pastor of this church, and that's all there is to it.

Now, of course, having honestly, I think, and accurately represented that concern, the fact of the matter is that the reverse of that, that is having a hierarchy above the local church, while it can be useful in dealing with irresponsibility in the pulpit at that point, the problem then becomes, once that hierarchy itself is corrupted, which in many times it becomes corrupted, it becomes the single most effective method for squelching the truth, and for communicating error.

So, you know, the question isn't a what works better issue, in the sense of, well, let's be pragmatic about it.

The question always has to come back to, well, what does the scripture say as to what God's purpose for the church is, as an organization of the church, and that's how

I argued the issue in the book on church government. But, to answer your question, yeah, for me, if I were preaching a subject, if I were preaching on something, and I'm making the kinds of statements these people are, and I'm calling a theology arrogant and blasphemous, if someone comes to me and says, you don't know what you're talking about, here's the misrepresentations you made, here's the documentation of it, and if you're going to take the position you do, why don't you discuss it publicly, yeah,

I would feel a tremendous weight upon my shoulders to do something about that, but these folks don't, and they don't because,

I think, of the perspective that they have of the autonomy of the, not the local church, because that would be a corporate autonomy, the autonomy of the local pastor.

That's a very different thing from the autonomy of the local church. Well, I have to respect the fact that a pastor does have that position and responsibility to stand in his pulpit and say what he needs to say to his congregation, but he also has to feel that that responsibility can be held accountable.

Yeah, of course. To whom? And that's understandable, but if none of the sheeple are willing to stand up and say,

Hey, wait. Sheeple? Sheeple. Sheeple? Sheeple. If none of the members of the congregation who are sitting there just soaking it up, because they don't know better, aren't willing to stand up or aren't able to stand up and say, hang on just a second, but the fellow across the street who's preaching in a

Reformed church hears about this and says, wait a minute, I can't let you go unchallenged.

Maybe the best way for us to do this is to just simply get together and have a public debate and let what you have to say be said and what

I've got to say be said and let's find out from the Scriptures where the truth is. Yeah, you're living in a dream world there, my friend.

I'm sorry. That idea of interaction, we've done it for so long now.

We've been doing this since 1990 as far as the formal debates go and before that as far as up in Salt Lake.

We've been doing it for so long, that's second nature to us. We've got to realize that is just another planet to most of these folks.

It's another planet in their churches. It was another planet to them in seminary. And I recognize that. I find it hard to take that a guy is comfortable standing behind his pulpit making a case that for whatever reason is to be challenged by someone else on any subject.

And he's unable to defend his remarks. We go back to what went down with Dave Hunt and the fact that way in advance of that book coming out we marshaled a lot of people.

There were a lot of people going to Dave going, time out. You really don't want to go here because you really don't know what you're talking about.

And all it did was encourage him and stoke the fires all the more. And I don't see a whole lot of difference here between a

Dave Hunt going to print with a book that he flat out just didn't know what he was talking about.

And there's even the circumstance we did a program a long time ago where he preached six months after his discussion or debate with you on the radio.

Six months later after he says, I don't know anything about the reformers. I've never read the reformers. And six months later he's sitting there talking about how he has a whole library full of them and he knows all about them.

I know, but he's not in a position to be held accountable for that simply because of his ecclesiology.

And these folks, their ecclesiology likewise does not see any connection, any accountability to other people.

Obviously from my perspective if you're going to talk about somebody, if you're going to make certain statements about someone's theology, you better be ready to back it up.

But that's a pretty unusual viewpoint amongst folks unfortunately. And that's what we see going on here.

And besides that, look at the consistency of this. I mean, to me it almost seems like there's direct correlation.

The stronger the person is in their denunciation, the less likely they are to even respond to your contacting them with a modicum of courtesy.

No, that crossed my mind very clearly. Like I said, you made a great point.

It's the bravery, the bravado by which they present this case.

And we can think back of a few programs you aired. And I mean, oh my gosh, not only just incendiary, the conviction.

Folks believe everything I've said. Don't question me. This is absolute. It's the dogma by which this is presented.

And you just sit back and go, oh my goodness. Well, that's their tradition. That's how people respond.

And we've seen that response over and over again. We get these nasty e -mails from people blaming us for everything under the sun simply because we raise particular issues and quote a

Bible verse, and they're uncomfortable with that. Very, very common. I've never gotten used to it.

It still concerns me. And the problem is we assume that someone who has reached such a lofty pinnacle as the pastor of a huge church.

But, you know, that's we just have to recognize in a lot of circles today you can be the pastor of a very, very, very large church.

And the means by which you got there was actually involved a constant diminishment of exposure to theology and to literally the things of God.

You got there because of your people skills and your organizational skills, and you did not get there for any other reason than that.

And that's a sad, sad commentary. And as, you know, to tie everything together, we started the program off with a clip from a former fundamentalist who used to attend that very same kind of a church and that very same kind of Christian upbringing.

And there's nothing unusual, by the way, about Brian Fleming. An unregenerate person is going to respond to a

Christian upbringing in that way. There's nothing unusual about that. But the point is that kind of fluffy theology, that feel -good fluffyism, resulted in him thinking, first of all, he doesn't have any meaningful understanding of what the sin against the

Holy Spirit is. He obviously has a very evangelical -ish, evangelical -ish view of conversion because he got converted three different times within about four years there.

And so there obviously was something lacking in the teaching that was being brought to this young man.

That's not an excuse for what he's doing, but it is a reflection. And when we look at what's coming against our young people, my goodness, have we given them a foundation upon which to be able to stand when our society is crumbling around us and when the one thing that's consistent about our society is going to be a hatred of Christianity, whether it's a hatred born of Islam or it's a hatred born of secularism, the fact of the matter is these types of movies are coming out, this type of attack upon the faith is a constant.

What kind of foundation is going to be able to stand against that kind of an onslaught?

Well, just more evidence of the dumbing down of America. It really is a dumbing down of the church and everything.

And mark my words, I think this debate, if it happens, is going to be basically what we would expect out of a typical presidential debate.

Everything's orchestrated. Everything is lined up. And especially if it's going to be televised and it's going to be put in front of a big crowd of folks, they're going to want it to move.

They're going to want it to click. And I'm sorry, but you can't deal with this issue in five -minute soundbites or three -minute soundbites or anything of the kind.

Now, if anybody can do a decent job, I mean, Al Mohler has much more experience than Paige Patterson has in doing radio, television, etc.,

etc. He can express himself in a very succinct manner. There's certainly no question about that.

But how far can you get? I mean, what in the final analysis has normally been what has caught people and stopped them and made them really think, but the exegesis of passages like John 6 and Romans 8 and Romans 9 and Ephesians 1 and asking questions from Hebrews about the

Atonement of Christ. You have to actually be getting into the text. And you can't lay a proper foundation.

You can't do proper exegesis in three -minute soundbites. It just can't happen.

About the best you can do is to go, well, you know, the founders of the Southern Baptist Convention believe this or that, and there's this person and that person.

And you're really not telling anybody anything they didn't already know at that point in time.

So I don't know. I don't know. I could be completely wrong. It could be a three -hour, wonderful, in -depth experience.

Yeah, just something tells me if the curtains were pulled and you were able to see behind the scenes, there's some handlers involved here.

Well, there has to be. And they're going to orchestrate this thing up one side and down the other.

Well, we'll see. It's all in the Lord's hands. We'll see. Hey, you know, I never did see those little lights blinking down there, so I guess what that means is all those folks are writing to us and talking about how afraid

I was and things like that. I'm not going to say that you all are afraid, but I am going to say that evidently you didn't find anything wrong in what

I had to say. So that's a positive thing. Thanks for listening to The Dividing Line. We'll be back again

Thursday evening, 4 o 'clock our time, 6 o 'clock now,

Eastern Standard Time, here on The Dividing Line. We'll see you then. God bless. This has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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that's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.